The governments of Iraq, Afghanistan and Russia have given the US an excellent opportunity and an even better impetus to rethink just what our national security interests are as well as just what and who threatens them. Undoubtedly Maliki, Karzai and Putin did not intend to provoke any wholesale reorientation of US policy, but that is the nature of unintended consequences.
In a widely reported statement, al-Maliki has made it clear that all US forces, not simply combat troops, must be out of Iraq by the end of 2011. There should be no problem with beating that date. The approach followed by the US in the past year reached the cross-over point some months ago. We can no longer militarily lose in Iraq. That means we have met the minimal policy goal.
The US can no longer lose the war. True "not-losing" is not the same as "winning." That was true in Korea as well. The US achieved the third option of war: not losing. That was good enough.
It is good enough in Iraq as well. We should be grateful that it took only four thousand plus lives and gigabucks almost beyond counting to achieve the minimum in an unnecessary and unjustifiable war.
Now it is up to the Iraqis to "win" or "lose" the process of re-inventing Iraq following years of bloodshed and destruction and decades of totalitarian rule. It's their country. Their future.
There is now no real need for the US to maintain a military presence in Iraq. Or, to err on the side of prudent caution, there is no foreseeable need to maintain forces, either combat or support in that country past mid-2010. All indicators hint a point of diminishing returns bordering on the counterproductive arriving within two years. It's necessary to go with the flow and not seek to swim against it.
In Afghanistan the US has not reached the cross-over point. We not only can lose that war--we are doing so at the present.
"Wait one!" you object. "What about the battlefield exchange rate? Whaddabout the number of Afghans who are micturated off by Taliban suicide bombings on soft civilian targets? Whaddabout the troops in the pipeline? We're going to have a lot more boots on the ground."
All true, the Geek cheerfully admits. The exchange rate is favorable, very favorable. And, every time a Taliban/al-Qaeda martyrdom seeker blows up a passel of women, children and old men, the irritation level rises in the affected village. No doubt, there are numerous reports, some of which might be true, that more US and NATO personnel are on route to Afghan Land.
It may not matter.
There are several reasons why all the factors mentioned may not matter in the slightest. One is quite evident: Pakistan is energetically disassembling. Another is equally obvious: The vast rugged Pashtun speaking area of the FATA is controlled by the hostiles. The third reason has been commented upon for months: The black turbans have an unlimited cash cow in the opium trade.
Now, a fourth reason has raised its ugly head. Karzai's minority government is bowing to the Islamists. Quite unsurprisingly Karzai's regime seeks to keep itself, if not in power, at least alive when the shooting is over. This reality is evident in the hysterical behavior of Karzai and others with their allegations to the effect that US airstrikes killed (take your pick) seventy-six civilians or ninety civilians, most of them children and women caught at prayers in a building near where a handful of enemy combatants were napping or shooting or something.
Having been nearly greased a couple of times by zoomies who were a little be "incontinent" in their delivery of external stores, the Geek is aware that collateral damage can occur with airstrikes, but the claims by Karzai and company are over the edge. Undoubtedly, some civilians were killed. That's what happens when the shooters lager up in the midst of civilians. At worst it is an expectable "tough shit" sort of event.
Karzai's reaction indicates strongly that his regime has decided that the weather has turned against the outsiders and in favor of the Taliban and their associates. You may not have to be an Afghan to be attuned to the nuances of political currents in that long, deeply fractionated area--but it helps. And, when the Afghans start acting as though the political currents have shifted, you darn well better pay attention.
The real job in Afghanistan when the shooting started nearly seven years ago was the killing of al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders and as many shooters as possible. The neocon ninnies following the dictates of a rigid ideology perverted that task into a labor which could never be completed. At least never completed in this world--creating a secular multi-party democracy with free market leanings.
By this mission "creep" we created today's political currents, currents that run against us. The task and challenge now is to get out. No, not a cut and run. Rather a return to the original genuine national security goal. Kill as many al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders and shooters as possible in as short a time as possible and get the hell out of the mountains.
True it will be harder, a lot harder, today than it would have been seven years ago. Nonetheless, it has to be done if the US is going to accomplish the minimum policy goal of not losing. There is utterly no need to "win" in the sense of leaving behind us a democratic, free market, secular nation state called Afghanistan.
"Saving" Afghanistan is up to the people who live there as it always has been. Our national interest, our national security, requires only that we pile up al-Qaeda and Taliban bodies in sufficient number to inhibit any future Afghan or Pakistani government from providing aid and comfort to those who seek to harm us.
Short and sour, that is the reality of the situation. Yes, the Geek realises that those who are agenda driven, those who are High Minded, those who believe in Just War Doctrine uber alles as well as European elitists will howl, scream and wring their hands.
So what? They are not responsible for our national security. We are. Our government is. The time is long past for USG to get off the stick and do so.
Now there is Russia. Russia is back and it's bad. Fifteen years ago, in the sunny days following the collapse of the Soviet Union when the "end of history" was declared and celebrated by the Geek's co-workers in academia, he had occasion to speak to an audience at the National War College. In answer to a question the Geek predicted that the Soviet Union would be back.
No, it wouldn't be Marxist-Leninist and it wouldn't be called the Soviet Union. Rather it would be a form of corporate state fueled by nationalism, powered by oil and other natural resource money and it would be eager to flex its capacity as a Great Power.
When asked how long this process would take, the Geek opined, "not more than fifteen years."
History shows that the Russians can't be kept down for long. The combination of resources and long standing, deeply rooted sense of cultural inferiority would assure a Russian resurgence. The current administration did everything possible to make sure that when Russia reemerged from temporary eclipse, it would come out fighting.
So it has.
We cannot pretend that Russia has many national interests which coincide with ours. We cannot pretend or hope that Russia will adjust itself gracefully to second class power status and allow the US (or the PRC) to run the world for its convenience.
The next administration is going to have some tough choices. We the People are going to face some difficult times. Far from being over as the academics of a decade back thought, history is alive and demanding. We have to recognise what our national interests are, what constitutes true national security and how our instruments of national power both hard and soft can be applied most effectively.
There is a guiding principle. A principle that the High Minded, the Globalists, the Seekers After Profound Change won't like.
The nation-state works.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Feeling Delusional? Think Foreign Aid!
For sixty some years now Administrations and Congresses of both parties have been very generous with the money of American taxpayers. Under a plethora of rubrics and for reasons of utility ranging from the dubious to the nonexistent, gigabucks have been doled out to recipients worthy and otherwise with results running from the counterproductive up to excellent.
It is against this background that Senator Obama has entered his only significant piece of legislation, Senate Bill 2433 aka The Global Poverty Act of 2007. He was joined in this effort by fifteen other senators, all but two being Democrats. Having already passed the House in a whoop and a holler, the GPA was reported out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Senator Joe Biden with a favorable recommendation.
The Committee did not hear witnesses or take written testimony. It spent a minimum amount of time considering the Bill and made only slight changes in i ts wording. Considering the potential impact of this towering monument to hazy words and ambiguous but goodhearted intention, the Committee exercised little care and expended less thought than seems justifiable.
The Bill is worthy of close and careful scrutiny. Its sentences need, no, demand the most scrupulous parsing. The Geek strongly recommends you do so, if you have not already made intimate acquaintance with a piece of legislation which may have dramatic impact in the years to come. It is definitely policy for the future potentially without regard for its affect on each passing today.
Take a look at S2433 on either of the following. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s110-2433 or http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-s2433/text.
The Global Poverty Act builds on the long tradition of American (mis)adventures in foreign aid. Don't get the Geek wrong. He is not one who is convinced that all foreign aid is necessarily and intrinsically bad. He is not prepared to argue from the basis of history that all foreign aid has failed to serve American national interests including national security.
He is, however, ready to argue that much, even most, foreign aid has been provided regardless of its potential to enhance American interests. He is prepared to argue that much, if not most, foreign aid has been awarded for reasons other than legitimate American interests.
To put the matter short and not particularly sweetly: Most American foreign aid has been chucked down assorted ratholes for reasons of domestic politics or international bribery.
Sixty plus years ago the program commonly known as the Marshall Plan set the standard for the correct balance of national self-interest and altruism in foreign aid. This standard has rarely been matched in all the decades and billions of dollars since.
The Marshall Plan worked because of the unique circumstances which obtained in the months and years immediately following the end of World War II in Europe. It worked because the US kept its distance as the European countries decided how to allocate and spend the money. It worked because European economic recovery was critical to European political and social stability. It worked because the Soviet Union (as must have been suspected by the Foggy Bottom authors of the European Recovery Act) said nyet to participation by itself or those countries sitting under the treads of Red Army tanks.
The upside of the Marshall Plan's success was the recovery and stability of Europe as well as its affect on the growing political movement in Europe for economic and political unification. The downside of the Plan's success was its impact upon American political decision makers.
We were victimised by our own success. We were erroneously convinced that economic assistance was a sovereign remedy for latent political instability and would thus serve to increase American security automatically.
Through the Fifties and Sixties economic aid became a strategic weapon of choice for gaining influence on the governing elites of recently independent states throughout Africa and Asia. At the same time it was joined with the growing torrent of military assistance programs to assist stabilizing regimes in longer established countries.
As various US Administrations increasingly confused the appearance of short term order with a reality of long term stability in authoritarian regimes throughout the world, our aid programs degenerated into a vast array of poorly thought through, very expensive "rent-a-friend" efforts.
Since foreign aid money had to be spent somewhere (usually in the United States) Congress wallahs became increasingly enamored of it as another source of pork for the companies back home. Whether tanks and helicopters under the military assistance programs or corn and soybeans under the rubric of Food For Peace, the foreign aid budget became a very attractive barrel of pork fat.
In the years following the Camp David Accords, foreign aid transmogrified into a bribery program. Israel was heavily bribed not to go to war (too often.) Egypt was bribed according to a set percentage of the Israeli bribe to pretend that it was a peaceloving secular state that simply loved to cooperate with the "Zionist Entity."
While any number of glosses can be put upon the foreign aid debacles to date--and have, the end result is that a great deal of money has bought very little American national interest and even less American national security.
The Geek is not in favor of poverty. He has worked and lived in pits of poverty in several continents. He has been grindingly poor himself. He has seen and experienced the negative affects of poverty upon the human flesh and spirit.
The Geek would like to see an end to poverty wherever it might occur. In the US. Around the world.
He maintains, however, that the post-modernist fogginess of The Global Poverty Act is not the way to do it. Further, he maintains that The Global Poverty Act will not enhance either American national interests or American national security.
If Senators Obama, Biden and the rest be genuinely convinced that eradication of poverty globally is a desirable, even necessary goal, then they can donate their personal fortunes to any one of a number of non-governmental organisations dedicated to that end. The same approach is open to any person whose sensibilities are wounded by the thought of billions of humans trying to survive on a measly one USD per day.
They are even at liberty to donate money to the assorted United Nations components who wage war on poverty and its ills. That is, if they can bring themselves to overlook the spectacular UN corruption during the Oil For Food program in Iraq. A scandal which may have extended all the way to the Secretary General of the UN.
The money of US government, which is to say the money of the American taxpayers, should be husbanded more carefully and expended only in a tightly focused manner. Demanding, as S2433 does, that the next administration develop a plan for eradicating poverty around the world is not a prudent, tightly focused application of American resources to American national interests.
The challenge for the next administration is not one of global wealth redistribution for such is, according to the record of numerous national histories, doomed to fail. No. The challenge for the next administration is quite different.
The next administration would be best advised, in the best interests of the US to immediately zero out the foreign aid budget. To zero it out ignoring the howls and wails of all those whose personal moral sensibilities or corporate financial concerns have been injured.
Zero out the bribes. Zero out the indirect subsidies for American agribusiness and defense contractors alike. Zero out the plush funding of the "administrative overhead" components of recipient non-governmental organisations.
Sure the noise level will be astonishing. The foreign aid gravy train has been rolling along unchecked and unchallenged for decades now. There are mobs with a vested interest in keeping the status quo going in perpetuity.
The reality is simple. Our national interest and our national security demand a rethinking of foreign aid. It is (or can and should be) a vital component of our instruments of national power. Foreign aid must be guided as it was with the Marshall Plan by a somber appreciation of our genuine national and security interests and a clear eyed understanding of how best to match our resources with the genuine requirements.
Will this process happen? The Geek is a historian. That means he is a cynic. No, the next administration will not have the intellectual and moral courage to zero the beast out and go back to the drafting board.
The odds are that we will continue to try to rent friends and pay bribes, and recycle taxpayer dollars to NGOs and corporate suites. The odds are we will be signing on to some sort of UN overseen Global War on Poverty.
Odds are the name of the Marshall Plan will be taken in vain again and again as we lurch along the same old road to failure.
It is against this background that Senator Obama has entered his only significant piece of legislation, Senate Bill 2433 aka The Global Poverty Act of 2007. He was joined in this effort by fifteen other senators, all but two being Democrats. Having already passed the House in a whoop and a holler, the GPA was reported out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Senator Joe Biden with a favorable recommendation.
The Committee did not hear witnesses or take written testimony. It spent a minimum amount of time considering the Bill and made only slight changes in i ts wording. Considering the potential impact of this towering monument to hazy words and ambiguous but goodhearted intention, the Committee exercised little care and expended less thought than seems justifiable.
The Bill is worthy of close and careful scrutiny. Its sentences need, no, demand the most scrupulous parsing. The Geek strongly recommends you do so, if you have not already made intimate acquaintance with a piece of legislation which may have dramatic impact in the years to come. It is definitely policy for the future potentially without regard for its affect on each passing today.
Take a look at S2433 on either of the following. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s110-2433 or http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-s2433/text.
The Global Poverty Act builds on the long tradition of American (mis)adventures in foreign aid. Don't get the Geek wrong. He is not one who is convinced that all foreign aid is necessarily and intrinsically bad. He is not prepared to argue from the basis of history that all foreign aid has failed to serve American national interests including national security.
He is, however, ready to argue that much, even most, foreign aid has been provided regardless of its potential to enhance American interests. He is prepared to argue that much, if not most, foreign aid has been awarded for reasons other than legitimate American interests.
To put the matter short and not particularly sweetly: Most American foreign aid has been chucked down assorted ratholes for reasons of domestic politics or international bribery.
Sixty plus years ago the program commonly known as the Marshall Plan set the standard for the correct balance of national self-interest and altruism in foreign aid. This standard has rarely been matched in all the decades and billions of dollars since.
The Marshall Plan worked because of the unique circumstances which obtained in the months and years immediately following the end of World War II in Europe. It worked because the US kept its distance as the European countries decided how to allocate and spend the money. It worked because European economic recovery was critical to European political and social stability. It worked because the Soviet Union (as must have been suspected by the Foggy Bottom authors of the European Recovery Act) said nyet to participation by itself or those countries sitting under the treads of Red Army tanks.
The upside of the Marshall Plan's success was the recovery and stability of Europe as well as its affect on the growing political movement in Europe for economic and political unification. The downside of the Plan's success was its impact upon American political decision makers.
We were victimised by our own success. We were erroneously convinced that economic assistance was a sovereign remedy for latent political instability and would thus serve to increase American security automatically.
Through the Fifties and Sixties economic aid became a strategic weapon of choice for gaining influence on the governing elites of recently independent states throughout Africa and Asia. At the same time it was joined with the growing torrent of military assistance programs to assist stabilizing regimes in longer established countries.
As various US Administrations increasingly confused the appearance of short term order with a reality of long term stability in authoritarian regimes throughout the world, our aid programs degenerated into a vast array of poorly thought through, very expensive "rent-a-friend" efforts.
Since foreign aid money had to be spent somewhere (usually in the United States) Congress wallahs became increasingly enamored of it as another source of pork for the companies back home. Whether tanks and helicopters under the military assistance programs or corn and soybeans under the rubric of Food For Peace, the foreign aid budget became a very attractive barrel of pork fat.
In the years following the Camp David Accords, foreign aid transmogrified into a bribery program. Israel was heavily bribed not to go to war (too often.) Egypt was bribed according to a set percentage of the Israeli bribe to pretend that it was a peaceloving secular state that simply loved to cooperate with the "Zionist Entity."
While any number of glosses can be put upon the foreign aid debacles to date--and have, the end result is that a great deal of money has bought very little American national interest and even less American national security.
The Geek is not in favor of poverty. He has worked and lived in pits of poverty in several continents. He has been grindingly poor himself. He has seen and experienced the negative affects of poverty upon the human flesh and spirit.
The Geek would like to see an end to poverty wherever it might occur. In the US. Around the world.
He maintains, however, that the post-modernist fogginess of The Global Poverty Act is not the way to do it. Further, he maintains that The Global Poverty Act will not enhance either American national interests or American national security.
If Senators Obama, Biden and the rest be genuinely convinced that eradication of poverty globally is a desirable, even necessary goal, then they can donate their personal fortunes to any one of a number of non-governmental organisations dedicated to that end. The same approach is open to any person whose sensibilities are wounded by the thought of billions of humans trying to survive on a measly one USD per day.
They are even at liberty to donate money to the assorted United Nations components who wage war on poverty and its ills. That is, if they can bring themselves to overlook the spectacular UN corruption during the Oil For Food program in Iraq. A scandal which may have extended all the way to the Secretary General of the UN.
The money of US government, which is to say the money of the American taxpayers, should be husbanded more carefully and expended only in a tightly focused manner. Demanding, as S2433 does, that the next administration develop a plan for eradicating poverty around the world is not a prudent, tightly focused application of American resources to American national interests.
The challenge for the next administration is not one of global wealth redistribution for such is, according to the record of numerous national histories, doomed to fail. No. The challenge for the next administration is quite different.
The next administration would be best advised, in the best interests of the US to immediately zero out the foreign aid budget. To zero it out ignoring the howls and wails of all those whose personal moral sensibilities or corporate financial concerns have been injured.
Zero out the bribes. Zero out the indirect subsidies for American agribusiness and defense contractors alike. Zero out the plush funding of the "administrative overhead" components of recipient non-governmental organisations.
Sure the noise level will be astonishing. The foreign aid gravy train has been rolling along unchecked and unchallenged for decades now. There are mobs with a vested interest in keeping the status quo going in perpetuity.
The reality is simple. Our national interest and our national security demand a rethinking of foreign aid. It is (or can and should be) a vital component of our instruments of national power. Foreign aid must be guided as it was with the Marshall Plan by a somber appreciation of our genuine national and security interests and a clear eyed understanding of how best to match our resources with the genuine requirements.
Will this process happen? The Geek is a historian. That means he is a cynic. No, the next administration will not have the intellectual and moral courage to zero the beast out and go back to the drafting board.
The odds are that we will continue to try to rent friends and pay bribes, and recycle taxpayer dollars to NGOs and corporate suites. The odds are we will be signing on to some sort of UN overseen Global War on Poverty.
Odds are the name of the Marshall Plan will be taken in vain again and again as we lurch along the same old road to failure.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
George W(oodrow Wilson) Bush
The American president holding the all-time record for an inability to pursue genuine US national security interests was formerly the one-time political science professor turned politician, Woodrow Wilson.
The Geek maintains that ole Woody has been replaced. By George W. Bush, one time playboy and part-time fighter jock turned politician.
There is irony to the situation. Both Woodrow and George were motivated in their successful quest to harm the interests and standing of the United States by the same driving force.
Both men gave ideology primacy over a realistic assessment of American national interests and American national security. Both men chased the same mirages, making the world safe for democracy and abating the nuisance of war.
Sure the details are different. That's the nature of history. Detailed differences but broad similarities if not identities.
Wilson ordered two invasions of Mexico. He ordered the Navy and Marines to Central America. Sent troops to revolutionary Russia twice. Worst of all, he sought American intervention in World War I in pursuit of his vision of a New World Order but leading instead to World War II. (He was also instrumental, if not critical in creating a country once known as Yugoslavia against the advice of an expert commission as well as dismembering the old Ottoman Empire, again against the advice of those who were experts on the Mideast.)
Not bad as a record of policies for today without a thought for tomorrow. Hard to beat.
However George W. Bush has done it. Let's go to the record. A misfought war in Afghanistan, which has served only to strengthen and spread the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Then there is the totally unnecessary war in Iraq, which has served only to increase the perception that the US is on an anti-Islamic crusade while frittering away American military capabilities and weakening the political will of the American public to make some hard choices and go through some necessary and very painful changes.
Worst of all, the Bush Administration has managed single-handedly and single-mindedly to do a fine job of starting a new confrontation with Russia. That represents a masterstroke of international relations that boggles the Geek's mind.
The first question is one of motivations. What was the reason which links all these stunning debacles which has cost the US most if not all of its international credibility and stature?
The short answer is ideology. The longer form is the current administration is full of neocons firmly convinced in the face of historical and cultural evidence that American style democracy replete with separation of church and state, ethnic and gender equality, liberal institutions, an independent judiciary and an affection for free-market economics can be successfully translated in a short time frame by force of arms.
In short, the current administration and its crew of neocon ninnies has updated and expanded the old Wilsonian dictum of teaching-the-Mexicans-to-elect-good-men.
In Afghanistan the administration was presented with two clear alternatives.
One was a sharp, short campaign directed to the end of killing the Taliban chieftan Omar, his henchmen and as many Taliban jihadists as possible along with bin Ladin, Zawahiri and the rest of the al-Qaeda leadership cadre along with as many jihadists as possible and then getting the hell out. We would then let the Afghans sort out what came next. The goal was to abate a clear and obvious menace to the US. Not create a better Afghanistan.
The second envisaged creating a Little America in the deserts and mountains of the tribal country. This task would be accomplished by a few US troops on the ground, a huge passel of American firepower overhead, a bunch of local proxies from the various ethnic minorities and regiments of civilian contractors. Time was not of the essence.
We know which option Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield and company took. We are watching how it turns out every day now, nearly seven years after the first bomb fell.
Eliminating Saddam Hussein was pure self-defeat in terms of real US national security interest. Under Saddam, admittedly a very un-nice person, Iraq along with Syria under Assad were watertight bulkheads against the stream of Islamist jihadists from points east. We didn't have to ask them, bribe them or threaten them. It was in the national interest of both Iraq and Syria to keep the uncontrollable jihadists out and to tightly control their own clients.
The toppling of Saddam along with the completely counterproductive alienation of Assad fils ended the blockade of the jihadists along with further destabilizing the Mideast. Other than the fact that Saddam was thoroughly unpleasant primarily to his own people and Assad's regime pursued policies in Lebanon in ways the current administration (and Israel) found annoying there is no justification for either the adventure in regime change or the alienation of Syria.
Neither has increased American national security. Both actions have lessened our security and weakened our capacities.
At this point the ideologues of the current administration would have given the Progressive internationalists of Wilson's day a run for the prize of foreign policy idiocy. But, the neocons had one more set of blunders to haul out to the disadvantage of the US.
Bush, et al, for reasons that escape explanation even by a psychiatrist, just had, absolutely had, to treat Russia as if it were a defeated, has-been power now prostrate in the rubble of a lost war, reduced to, at best, second class status. For years the current administration's tone in speaking to or about Russia alternated between patronising and condescending with occasional gusts of hectoring.
As the Geek has posted before on several occasions, the current administration failed to recognise the historic insecurity of Russia, its centuries of feeling massively inferior to the West, and its decades of seeing itself as inferior compared to the US. The current administration failed to treat Russia as the Great Power it believed itself to be--regardless of any reality.
It isn't so very hard to treat a second rate power as if it were actually of Great status. We did that for years and years with respect to France and even longer with our absurd pretense that Taiwan was really, really and truly China. Doing the same with Russia wouldn't have been nearly as difficult and the rewards would have been greater.
In the event, we ignored Russia's claims and stated interests regarding the independence of Kosovo. Then we made the catastrophic blunder of not taking the Kremlin's offer of using their ballistic missile warning radar in Azerbaijan.
(Yes, it wasn't as good a radar as the one we were going to build in the Czech Republic. But, we could have "partnered" with the Russians in upgrading theirs Sure, they would have stolen everything they could, but we would know just what they stole.)
Then, taking a handful of rock salt and rubbing into old wounds, the current administration loudly sang the praises of democracy (and NATO membership) in and for Georgia. This was complemented by a similar chorus on behalf of the Ukraine with its large Russian population and important Russian naval base.
The brilliant Bush team headed by the incomparable Decider Guy, even before the current Russo-Georgian contretemps, had gone a long way to resurrecting the corpse of the Cold War from the graveyard of history. Not even Woodrow Wilson could do the equivalent.
The next question is this. Who can better deal with the mess left by the current administration? The Nice Young Man From Chicago, Senator (and Cook County machine pol) Barack Obama and his foreign policy "expert" running mate, Joe Biden, or the one time Navy zoomie and ever-so-muscular opponent, John McCain?
The Geek has his idea.
The Geek maintains that ole Woody has been replaced. By George W. Bush, one time playboy and part-time fighter jock turned politician.
There is irony to the situation. Both Woodrow and George were motivated in their successful quest to harm the interests and standing of the United States by the same driving force.
Both men gave ideology primacy over a realistic assessment of American national interests and American national security. Both men chased the same mirages, making the world safe for democracy and abating the nuisance of war.
Sure the details are different. That's the nature of history. Detailed differences but broad similarities if not identities.
Wilson ordered two invasions of Mexico. He ordered the Navy and Marines to Central America. Sent troops to revolutionary Russia twice. Worst of all, he sought American intervention in World War I in pursuit of his vision of a New World Order but leading instead to World War II. (He was also instrumental, if not critical in creating a country once known as Yugoslavia against the advice of an expert commission as well as dismembering the old Ottoman Empire, again against the advice of those who were experts on the Mideast.)
Not bad as a record of policies for today without a thought for tomorrow. Hard to beat.
However George W. Bush has done it. Let's go to the record. A misfought war in Afghanistan, which has served only to strengthen and spread the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Then there is the totally unnecessary war in Iraq, which has served only to increase the perception that the US is on an anti-Islamic crusade while frittering away American military capabilities and weakening the political will of the American public to make some hard choices and go through some necessary and very painful changes.
Worst of all, the Bush Administration has managed single-handedly and single-mindedly to do a fine job of starting a new confrontation with Russia. That represents a masterstroke of international relations that boggles the Geek's mind.
The first question is one of motivations. What was the reason which links all these stunning debacles which has cost the US most if not all of its international credibility and stature?
The short answer is ideology. The longer form is the current administration is full of neocons firmly convinced in the face of historical and cultural evidence that American style democracy replete with separation of church and state, ethnic and gender equality, liberal institutions, an independent judiciary and an affection for free-market economics can be successfully translated in a short time frame by force of arms.
In short, the current administration and its crew of neocon ninnies has updated and expanded the old Wilsonian dictum of teaching-the-Mexicans-to-elect-good-men.
In Afghanistan the administration was presented with two clear alternatives.
One was a sharp, short campaign directed to the end of killing the Taliban chieftan Omar, his henchmen and as many Taliban jihadists as possible along with bin Ladin, Zawahiri and the rest of the al-Qaeda leadership cadre along with as many jihadists as possible and then getting the hell out. We would then let the Afghans sort out what came next. The goal was to abate a clear and obvious menace to the US. Not create a better Afghanistan.
The second envisaged creating a Little America in the deserts and mountains of the tribal country. This task would be accomplished by a few US troops on the ground, a huge passel of American firepower overhead, a bunch of local proxies from the various ethnic minorities and regiments of civilian contractors. Time was not of the essence.
We know which option Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield and company took. We are watching how it turns out every day now, nearly seven years after the first bomb fell.
Eliminating Saddam Hussein was pure self-defeat in terms of real US national security interest. Under Saddam, admittedly a very un-nice person, Iraq along with Syria under Assad were watertight bulkheads against the stream of Islamist jihadists from points east. We didn't have to ask them, bribe them or threaten them. It was in the national interest of both Iraq and Syria to keep the uncontrollable jihadists out and to tightly control their own clients.
The toppling of Saddam along with the completely counterproductive alienation of Assad fils ended the blockade of the jihadists along with further destabilizing the Mideast. Other than the fact that Saddam was thoroughly unpleasant primarily to his own people and Assad's regime pursued policies in Lebanon in ways the current administration (and Israel) found annoying there is no justification for either the adventure in regime change or the alienation of Syria.
Neither has increased American national security. Both actions have lessened our security and weakened our capacities.
At this point the ideologues of the current administration would have given the Progressive internationalists of Wilson's day a run for the prize of foreign policy idiocy. But, the neocons had one more set of blunders to haul out to the disadvantage of the US.
Bush, et al, for reasons that escape explanation even by a psychiatrist, just had, absolutely had, to treat Russia as if it were a defeated, has-been power now prostrate in the rubble of a lost war, reduced to, at best, second class status. For years the current administration's tone in speaking to or about Russia alternated between patronising and condescending with occasional gusts of hectoring.
As the Geek has posted before on several occasions, the current administration failed to recognise the historic insecurity of Russia, its centuries of feeling massively inferior to the West, and its decades of seeing itself as inferior compared to the US. The current administration failed to treat Russia as the Great Power it believed itself to be--regardless of any reality.
It isn't so very hard to treat a second rate power as if it were actually of Great status. We did that for years and years with respect to France and even longer with our absurd pretense that Taiwan was really, really and truly China. Doing the same with Russia wouldn't have been nearly as difficult and the rewards would have been greater.
In the event, we ignored Russia's claims and stated interests regarding the independence of Kosovo. Then we made the catastrophic blunder of not taking the Kremlin's offer of using their ballistic missile warning radar in Azerbaijan.
(Yes, it wasn't as good a radar as the one we were going to build in the Czech Republic. But, we could have "partnered" with the Russians in upgrading theirs Sure, they would have stolen everything they could, but we would know just what they stole.)
Then, taking a handful of rock salt and rubbing into old wounds, the current administration loudly sang the praises of democracy (and NATO membership) in and for Georgia. This was complemented by a similar chorus on behalf of the Ukraine with its large Russian population and important Russian naval base.
The brilliant Bush team headed by the incomparable Decider Guy, even before the current Russo-Georgian contretemps, had gone a long way to resurrecting the corpse of the Cold War from the graveyard of history. Not even Woodrow Wilson could do the equivalent.
The next question is this. Who can better deal with the mess left by the current administration? The Nice Young Man From Chicago, Senator (and Cook County machine pol) Barack Obama and his foreign policy "expert" running mate, Joe Biden, or the one time Navy zoomie and ever-so-muscular opponent, John McCain?
The Geek has his idea.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Israel Is Not Part Of The United States
Is there something hard to grasp about that fact? Is it impossible to understand that the national interests of Israel as defined by that country's citizens and government might not be in the national interests of the United States?
Up until 1961 the USG and We the People seemed to have no difficulty understanding that Israel was a sovereign state and not part of our Union. Before Kennedy came to the White House no American president appeared to have the slightest problem differentiating between the national interests of the US and those of Israel.
The US was first to recognise the new State of Israel but accompanied recognition with a total embargo on arms sales even though the country was in a desperate struggle for survival. The embargo on arms instituted by Truman continued under Eisenhower. It was a policy both for the present and the future. It allowed the US to act as and, more importantly, be seen as an honest broker by some if not all the Arab states.
The US concern for stability in the region, particularly during the Eisenhower Administration, was driven by a need for oil. Not a need for oil to turn into gasoline powering the monsters of chrome and cast iron on American highways. Not even a need to protect the profit margins of major oil companies.
No. Ike and company were worried about getting enough oil to Europe quickly enough to meet NATO's warfighting needs in the event the Crimson Tide rolled over the Trace. It was all a matter of escort vessels and convoys but the bottom line was clear: oil from the Arabian Peninsula and Persia was key to a successful conventional defense of Europe. The Europeans agreed since the idea of being nuked by "friendly fire" didn't appeal to a single German or Frenchman or Briton.
American even-handedness went so far as to throw down the flag on the play made by our NATO partners France and Great Britain along with their co-conspirator, Israel, during the 1956 Sinai War. For almost the last time in history to date, applause for an American president echoed from Cairo to Damascus to Baghdad and beyond.
The applause was less but still audible a year later when the US fired a warning shot across the bows of the Soviet Union and its local assets by landing Marines in Lebanon to impose and maintain the peace during elections. Arguably the operation was both ill-advised and unnecessary but it did have the redeeming feature of helping give Lebanon another fifteen years of relative peace and prosperity.
All good things come to an end. American even-handedness ended along with the embargo on arms sales to regional countries during the Kennedy years. While the weapons sold were defensive (HAWK surface to air missiles) the nose of the camel was well under the tent flap.
A couple of years later with LBJ in the Presidency the rest of the camel came in and squatted down. LBJ overruled the advice and analyses of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA and at least some elements of the State Department and ordered the sale of M-60 main battle tanks and F-4 Phantom fighter-bombers to Israel.
The JCS had warned that the capabilities of the F-4s and M-60s made them excellent offensive systems. The body recommended that the requested items be denied and replaced by refurbished and upgraded M-48 tanks and new production A-4 strike aircraft. In both cases the limitations of range would render the systems less effective in offensive than in defensive employments.
LBJ was warned the Israeli armed forces would need about two years to integrate the new systems and could be expected to initiate aggressive war at that point. The IDF and IAF beat the estimate by a few months as they opened the expected war in June 1967.
The Kennedy and Johnson decisions were not in the national interests of the US. Neither decision enhanced American national security. Indeed, the sum of the two was a decrease in our national security. Neither decision represented a policy for the future. Unless one wants to describe the tossing aside of a policy that had served our interests well in order to replace it with one which would increasingly harm US security and interests.
So why were the decisions made?
A one word answer fits perfectly: politics.
The processes of politics--raising money, getting elected, cutting deals, log rolling, getting money--are all activities of the now. They all require policy for today and today only. The potency and pervasiveness of both formal and informal lobbying actions of the Israelis and their domestic supporters is right up there with the American Medical Association and the National Rifle folks. In close national elections as well as in a myriad of Senatorial and Congressional races, the stance of the pro-Israel groups can be critical.
Master politicians understand that reality with a vengeance. Not surprisingly Kennedy, who had come to office by the whisker of disputable votes in Illinois and Texas, looked to the electoral future and not the national security needs of the US and abandoned the firewall of neutrality with the HAWK sale. Even less surprising was the decision by LBJ, a supreme politico, to open the American tent all the way and approve the offensive weapons systems sale in the face of universal professional opposition.
The use of US weapons in the Six Day War went a long way in destroying the reputation of the US as a White Hat in the Arab-Muslim countries. Further demonization of the US was facilitated by the spineless reaction of the Johnson Administration to the attempt by the Israelis to sink the ELINT ship Liberty.
It didn't help that American newspaper cartoons, TV comedians and others made fun of the defeated Arabs and made no secret of our admiration for the Israelis. It was as if we were cheering for the home team.
That sort of bubble in the stream wouldn't have mattered if Washington could have influenced Israel to hand back at least some of the occupied territories in the weeks following the Six Day War. The archives show that the Administration did try to jawbone Tel Aviv into making at least symbolic withdrawals. The effort such as it was had no success. No Israeli politician seemed at all willing to look at the downside of victory.
We didn't press them too hard either. After all 1968 would see the next election cycle and the Administration as well as the Democratic Party were in the deep doo-doo of Vietnam to say nothing of schisms developing within the American society.
Fast forward to the most critical year. The year that well and truly saw the Israeli tail start wagging the dog of American foreign policy.
The year was 1973. The pivotal event was the Yom Kippur War of October. The crucial decision was President Nixon's choice to go toe-to-toe with the Soviet Union while airlifting critical replacement supplies to Israel.
There were two results from Nixon's politically motivated decision. One was the oil embargo engineered in OPEC by Saudi Arabia. The second was the apparently permanent tying of Israel to the United States as if it were in fact as well as joke, the Fifty-first State.
Uncle Sam became Samson tied to two posts. One post was Muslim, more to the point, oil from under Muslim sand. The other was Jewish, more to the point nuclear weapon equipped Israel.
We are still tied to those two posts. Still unable, or, to err on the side of accuracy, unwilling to pull down the house.
Temporizing from day to day, lurching from one slight change of policy for today to another, politicians from Nixon on to the current Bush have invoked "Israel's right to exist" while making occasional mumbles concerning the desirability of "energy independence."
Let's look at those two buzz phrases.
What "right to exist?" No nation, no state (including our own) has a "right" to exist. If a nation-state has demarcated borders and if it has the capacity to effectively defend those borders and if it has the capacity to effectively repress or restrain internal centrifugal forces, then it can maintain its existence. If any of these three prerequisites does not exist then the state will go to the dung heap of history. (Ask the city fathers of Carthage after the Third Punic War if this is true or not.)
The United States fought a defensive insurgency lasting nearly a decade as well as a conventional inter-state war lasting three years to establish its capacity to exist independent of Great Britain. The US also fought an internal war lasting four years to maintain its corporate existence.
"Right" had nothing to do with it. Establishing and maintaining the United States took blood, sacrifice, time and resources. Not once but repeatedly.
Israel has no more "right" to exist then the US. So far it has shown the capacity to exist. The Geek hopes it continues to do so. But, he is unwilling to see the US endanger its national security in order to provide reinsurance to Israel.
Politicians and pundits are also fond of telling us that Israel is our "ally." The test for an alliance is simply what is in the relationship for both countries. In the context of the US-Israel dyad there may be a great deal of benefit for the Israel but the upside for the US is hard to see.
Israel has cost us a great deal of money (it is our number one foreign aid recipient.) The relationship has also assured that we have diminished influence in the Arab countries while giving powerful impetus to those amongst the Muslim population of the world who wish us ill.
It has been argued that we must support Israel because it is an island of democracy in an ocean of feudal, authoritarian regimes. Get a grip!
Democracy is a fine thing. We might get it right some day here at home.
The encouragement of democracy by our example is a good thing. We should continue doing it as we have by sheer existence for more than two centuries now.
But, we have no specific national security interest in protecting another democracy simply because it has regular elections and an independent judiciary.
Our relationship with Israel must be evaluated in the stark terms of self-interest. What benefits do we accrue? What risks and liabilities do we shoulder? Weigh the two. If the real, substantial benefits to our national security, our national interest are greater than the liabilities and risks, then the relationship should continue as it has. If not, scale the relationship so that the costs and benefits are in balance.
When our good friends and close (coffee only) drinking buddies the Saudis organised the 1973 oil embargo, a government, an administration with the capacity to make policy for the future rather than temporizing policy for today, would have grabbed the opportunity to mobilize the resources of the US and We the People for genuine energy independence.
There was sufficient oil yet to find and exploit outside of OPEC's sway to buy the time necessary for the development of other energy technologies. To put it bluntly--we blew it. We continued to blow it over the next ten years as the search for new technologies degenerated into a race for the Federal cash cow by businesses great and small.
New emotional attachments of dubious utility to the cause of national security and national interest such as environmentalism and global warming combined with marginal improvements allowing conservation and a generally improving economy so that no real search for independence from the Muslim governed oil fields was politically possible. We stumbled on with one policy for today superseding its predecessor.
Had the US been more independent from Mideast oil would there have been any justification for the Kuwait War of 1990-91? As it was, the genuine relation of that war with any definable American national security need is hazy at best. Without the fear of too much oil falling under the control of one objectionable dictator there would have been zero national security or national interest requirement for the war.
The Kuwait War would have been unnecessary, completely unnecessary, if the US had possessed even a modicum of genuine energy independence. There would have been no need to shuck, jive and lie to the House of Saud so that US troops could enter the Kingdom of the Two Mosques. Osama bin Ladin would have been denied his best card in declaring war on the US a few years later.
History would have been quite different. No doubt about that. Unfortunately the facts remain as they were. We blew it.
We the People and our governments under both parties embraced hazy shifting policies for today. We and our "leaders" didn't think of the future at all. We--and they--assumed that somehow the future would take care of itself as long as we watched out for today.
Worse, we have thrown aside the necessity of defining national security and national interest narrowly in terms of our survival and flourishment. Instead we have rushed off pursuing seductive mirages such as "human rights," "democracy," "pluralism," multi-culturalism.
Like all mirages these lead only to disaster.
Stay tuned.
Up until 1961 the USG and We the People seemed to have no difficulty understanding that Israel was a sovereign state and not part of our Union. Before Kennedy came to the White House no American president appeared to have the slightest problem differentiating between the national interests of the US and those of Israel.
The US was first to recognise the new State of Israel but accompanied recognition with a total embargo on arms sales even though the country was in a desperate struggle for survival. The embargo on arms instituted by Truman continued under Eisenhower. It was a policy both for the present and the future. It allowed the US to act as and, more importantly, be seen as an honest broker by some if not all the Arab states.
The US concern for stability in the region, particularly during the Eisenhower Administration, was driven by a need for oil. Not a need for oil to turn into gasoline powering the monsters of chrome and cast iron on American highways. Not even a need to protect the profit margins of major oil companies.
No. Ike and company were worried about getting enough oil to Europe quickly enough to meet NATO's warfighting needs in the event the Crimson Tide rolled over the Trace. It was all a matter of escort vessels and convoys but the bottom line was clear: oil from the Arabian Peninsula and Persia was key to a successful conventional defense of Europe. The Europeans agreed since the idea of being nuked by "friendly fire" didn't appeal to a single German or Frenchman or Briton.
American even-handedness went so far as to throw down the flag on the play made by our NATO partners France and Great Britain along with their co-conspirator, Israel, during the 1956 Sinai War. For almost the last time in history to date, applause for an American president echoed from Cairo to Damascus to Baghdad and beyond.
The applause was less but still audible a year later when the US fired a warning shot across the bows of the Soviet Union and its local assets by landing Marines in Lebanon to impose and maintain the peace during elections. Arguably the operation was both ill-advised and unnecessary but it did have the redeeming feature of helping give Lebanon another fifteen years of relative peace and prosperity.
All good things come to an end. American even-handedness ended along with the embargo on arms sales to regional countries during the Kennedy years. While the weapons sold were defensive (HAWK surface to air missiles) the nose of the camel was well under the tent flap.
A couple of years later with LBJ in the Presidency the rest of the camel came in and squatted down. LBJ overruled the advice and analyses of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA and at least some elements of the State Department and ordered the sale of M-60 main battle tanks and F-4 Phantom fighter-bombers to Israel.
The JCS had warned that the capabilities of the F-4s and M-60s made them excellent offensive systems. The body recommended that the requested items be denied and replaced by refurbished and upgraded M-48 tanks and new production A-4 strike aircraft. In both cases the limitations of range would render the systems less effective in offensive than in defensive employments.
LBJ was warned the Israeli armed forces would need about two years to integrate the new systems and could be expected to initiate aggressive war at that point. The IDF and IAF beat the estimate by a few months as they opened the expected war in June 1967.
The Kennedy and Johnson decisions were not in the national interests of the US. Neither decision enhanced American national security. Indeed, the sum of the two was a decrease in our national security. Neither decision represented a policy for the future. Unless one wants to describe the tossing aside of a policy that had served our interests well in order to replace it with one which would increasingly harm US security and interests.
So why were the decisions made?
A one word answer fits perfectly: politics.
The processes of politics--raising money, getting elected, cutting deals, log rolling, getting money--are all activities of the now. They all require policy for today and today only. The potency and pervasiveness of both formal and informal lobbying actions of the Israelis and their domestic supporters is right up there with the American Medical Association and the National Rifle folks. In close national elections as well as in a myriad of Senatorial and Congressional races, the stance of the pro-Israel groups can be critical.
Master politicians understand that reality with a vengeance. Not surprisingly Kennedy, who had come to office by the whisker of disputable votes in Illinois and Texas, looked to the electoral future and not the national security needs of the US and abandoned the firewall of neutrality with the HAWK sale. Even less surprising was the decision by LBJ, a supreme politico, to open the American tent all the way and approve the offensive weapons systems sale in the face of universal professional opposition.
The use of US weapons in the Six Day War went a long way in destroying the reputation of the US as a White Hat in the Arab-Muslim countries. Further demonization of the US was facilitated by the spineless reaction of the Johnson Administration to the attempt by the Israelis to sink the ELINT ship Liberty.
It didn't help that American newspaper cartoons, TV comedians and others made fun of the defeated Arabs and made no secret of our admiration for the Israelis. It was as if we were cheering for the home team.
That sort of bubble in the stream wouldn't have mattered if Washington could have influenced Israel to hand back at least some of the occupied territories in the weeks following the Six Day War. The archives show that the Administration did try to jawbone Tel Aviv into making at least symbolic withdrawals. The effort such as it was had no success. No Israeli politician seemed at all willing to look at the downside of victory.
We didn't press them too hard either. After all 1968 would see the next election cycle and the Administration as well as the Democratic Party were in the deep doo-doo of Vietnam to say nothing of schisms developing within the American society.
Fast forward to the most critical year. The year that well and truly saw the Israeli tail start wagging the dog of American foreign policy.
The year was 1973. The pivotal event was the Yom Kippur War of October. The crucial decision was President Nixon's choice to go toe-to-toe with the Soviet Union while airlifting critical replacement supplies to Israel.
There were two results from Nixon's politically motivated decision. One was the oil embargo engineered in OPEC by Saudi Arabia. The second was the apparently permanent tying of Israel to the United States as if it were in fact as well as joke, the Fifty-first State.
Uncle Sam became Samson tied to two posts. One post was Muslim, more to the point, oil from under Muslim sand. The other was Jewish, more to the point nuclear weapon equipped Israel.
We are still tied to those two posts. Still unable, or, to err on the side of accuracy, unwilling to pull down the house.
Temporizing from day to day, lurching from one slight change of policy for today to another, politicians from Nixon on to the current Bush have invoked "Israel's right to exist" while making occasional mumbles concerning the desirability of "energy independence."
Let's look at those two buzz phrases.
What "right to exist?" No nation, no state (including our own) has a "right" to exist. If a nation-state has demarcated borders and if it has the capacity to effectively defend those borders and if it has the capacity to effectively repress or restrain internal centrifugal forces, then it can maintain its existence. If any of these three prerequisites does not exist then the state will go to the dung heap of history. (Ask the city fathers of Carthage after the Third Punic War if this is true or not.)
The United States fought a defensive insurgency lasting nearly a decade as well as a conventional inter-state war lasting three years to establish its capacity to exist independent of Great Britain. The US also fought an internal war lasting four years to maintain its corporate existence.
"Right" had nothing to do with it. Establishing and maintaining the United States took blood, sacrifice, time and resources. Not once but repeatedly.
Israel has no more "right" to exist then the US. So far it has shown the capacity to exist. The Geek hopes it continues to do so. But, he is unwilling to see the US endanger its national security in order to provide reinsurance to Israel.
Politicians and pundits are also fond of telling us that Israel is our "ally." The test for an alliance is simply what is in the relationship for both countries. In the context of the US-Israel dyad there may be a great deal of benefit for the Israel but the upside for the US is hard to see.
Israel has cost us a great deal of money (it is our number one foreign aid recipient.) The relationship has also assured that we have diminished influence in the Arab countries while giving powerful impetus to those amongst the Muslim population of the world who wish us ill.
It has been argued that we must support Israel because it is an island of democracy in an ocean of feudal, authoritarian regimes. Get a grip!
Democracy is a fine thing. We might get it right some day here at home.
The encouragement of democracy by our example is a good thing. We should continue doing it as we have by sheer existence for more than two centuries now.
But, we have no specific national security interest in protecting another democracy simply because it has regular elections and an independent judiciary.
Our relationship with Israel must be evaluated in the stark terms of self-interest. What benefits do we accrue? What risks and liabilities do we shoulder? Weigh the two. If the real, substantial benefits to our national security, our national interest are greater than the liabilities and risks, then the relationship should continue as it has. If not, scale the relationship so that the costs and benefits are in balance.
When our good friends and close (coffee only) drinking buddies the Saudis organised the 1973 oil embargo, a government, an administration with the capacity to make policy for the future rather than temporizing policy for today, would have grabbed the opportunity to mobilize the resources of the US and We the People for genuine energy independence.
There was sufficient oil yet to find and exploit outside of OPEC's sway to buy the time necessary for the development of other energy technologies. To put it bluntly--we blew it. We continued to blow it over the next ten years as the search for new technologies degenerated into a race for the Federal cash cow by businesses great and small.
New emotional attachments of dubious utility to the cause of national security and national interest such as environmentalism and global warming combined with marginal improvements allowing conservation and a generally improving economy so that no real search for independence from the Muslim governed oil fields was politically possible. We stumbled on with one policy for today superseding its predecessor.
Had the US been more independent from Mideast oil would there have been any justification for the Kuwait War of 1990-91? As it was, the genuine relation of that war with any definable American national security need is hazy at best. Without the fear of too much oil falling under the control of one objectionable dictator there would have been zero national security or national interest requirement for the war.
The Kuwait War would have been unnecessary, completely unnecessary, if the US had possessed even a modicum of genuine energy independence. There would have been no need to shuck, jive and lie to the House of Saud so that US troops could enter the Kingdom of the Two Mosques. Osama bin Ladin would have been denied his best card in declaring war on the US a few years later.
History would have been quite different. No doubt about that. Unfortunately the facts remain as they were. We blew it.
We the People and our governments under both parties embraced hazy shifting policies for today. We and our "leaders" didn't think of the future at all. We--and they--assumed that somehow the future would take care of itself as long as we watched out for today.
Worse, we have thrown aside the necessity of defining national security and national interest narrowly in terms of our survival and flourishment. Instead we have rushed off pursuing seductive mirages such as "human rights," "democracy," "pluralism," multi-culturalism.
Like all mirages these lead only to disaster.
Stay tuned.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Foreign Policy For Today--But Not Tomorrow
If there was an Olympic event in short-sighted foreign policy, the US would win the Gold, and the Silver, and the Bronze. Pretty darn good, if you're not an American.
Perhaps it was in recognition of this ineptitude that prompted Senator Obama to announce his status as global citizen to the enthralled multitude in Berlin. Perhaps it was his personal way of announcing that, should he become president, the world could expect a continuation of business as usual in Foggy Bottom.
As a historian and as an American the Geek has been and continues to be overwhelmed by the sheer asininity of most US foreign policy initiatives and stances over the past half-century at the least. There is a simple reason for his total disenchantment with the efforts of most presidents and virtually all Secretaries of State since Theodore Roosevelt.
Most of the worthies We the People have sent to the White House from Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush have either forgotten or never known the foundation principle of foreign and national security policy. It's not that the basis is hard to understand or difficult to remember.
Heck. It's simple and easy,
Here it is in one nice well-wrapped little package. The purpose of foreign policy of which national security policy is a major subset is to effectively counter and defeat threats to the existence and core interests of the United States.
Forgetting this fundamental has inexorably assured that one Administration after another, one Congress after another, has engaged in a series of fatal confusions. Time after bloody time existential matters have been confused with gee-wouldn't-that-be-nice issues. Time after bloody time the purpose of alliances has been misunderstood or blurred into meaninglessness.
And, most importantly, time after bloody time the exigencies of today have been given pride of place over the requirements of the future. Political feel-good has trumped national interest think-well.
To survive and prosper, a country must take a rather cold-hearted stance. The governing question must be, "What's in it for me?"
Sounds utterly selfish, doesn't it?
That's because it is. Nation-states are inherently self-centered to the max. That's why they exist. That's why they will continue to exist. The security and continuation of a nation-state is its prime concern. The nation-state (which appears to be the largest assemblage of human beings that can inspire a sense of identification and loyalty among its inhabitants bound together as they are by a shared language, a common history and a defining mythology) exists in order to exist. Period.
As a result the nation-state defines subjectively what its national interests might be and what constitutes a threat to those or to its physical existence.
Come along with your friendly tour guide, the Geek, as we walk down the trails of time and look at some examples of good and bad American foreign policy in their natural habitat.
The first exhibit is Woodrow Wilson. Wilson, not unlike Theodore Roosevelt, was a Progressive Internationalist. Unlike TR, Woodrow Wilson acted from a base of Christian (Presbyterian) morality as opposed to a clear sense of what was necessary to protect and advance American national interests in a world filled with large and dangerous animals.
By "enlightened" moral standards TR was a lout. He stole Panama from Columbia so a large ditch might be dug. Then he effectively clamped the American occupation on the necks of the Filipinos simply to prevent some other country from doing so.
Now, consider WW. He authorised two military interventions in Mexico. One had the purpose of "teaching the Mexicans to elect good men." The other was a punitive expedition having the goal of killing or capturing a terrorist named Pancho Villa.
Wilson entered World War I with the moral goals of "making the world safe for democracy," and fighting a "war to end wars." He had a grand vision of a world body dedicated to preventing or punishing aggressive war (at least amongst the "civilised" states.)
Arguably the United States had a national interest and long range national security interests in play when TR went after the real estate needed to build the Panama Canal. Arguably the same might be said concerning the Philippine occupation or even the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.
There were no definable US national security or national interests involved in the Wilsonian efforts in Mexico. It must be pointed out that the only hypothetical interest, compensation for property seized from Americans by the revolutionary Mexican government(s), was not brought forward in the context of either military (mis)adventure.
No less a self-interested British observer than Winston Churchill maintained during the 1930s that the US had made a major blunder by entering WW I. In Churchill's view the war would have ended in a truce of exhaustion in the summer or fall of 1917 had it not been for the prospect of US troops arriving in force during 1918 and beyond.
A close look at the aftermath of the mutinies in the French Army during 1916 and the state of the German civilian population in 1917 shows that both nations were a spent force with the French holding on only because the Yanks were coming.
Churchill also observed that the US could have exploited the truce of exhaustion by dictating any sort of peace it wanted to see. More, the US could have enforced its vision of peace by using its agricultural abundance as a weapon far more effective than any employed on the battlefield.
Of course, Wilson the moralist could not even use our food as a weapon when he encountered resistance to his ideas of a Peace Without Victors. Apparently in his mind Wilson thought the killing of human beings by bomb and bullet was more moral than causing hunger cramps in the bellies of civilians.
In any event it is virtually impossible to discern any national security or national interest imperative worth the US entry into World War I. Yes, the Kaiser was a dunderheaded loudmouth with delusions of adequacy and U-boats were scary, but neither represented an actual or even distant potential threat to the US surviving and flourishing.
The same could not be said regarding the Germany of Adolph Hitler. While Imperial Japan did not and could not represent an existential threat to the US, Nazi Germany could. Given the resources of Europe, Germany would have developed into an existential threat of the highest order.
Even though this reality was well understood by the Administration of Franklin Roosevelt, this master of political legerdemain tacked, bobbed and weaved until the decision to go to war was made for him on 11 December 1941 when the rubber stamp parliament of Germany declared war on the US.
World War II was an exercise in naked self-interest by the US. Not only was one of the three enemies a near-term potential existential menace, the war had been thrust upon us. We fought it hard, dirty and smart. The Soviets were too close to the truth to be humorous when the Foreign Minister of the USSR suggested that the US wanted to see, "The last Russian kill the last German with the last bullet of the war."
Only the combination of inefficiency, narrow self-interest and a claque of American supporters prevented the US from using the Nationalist Chinese in the role of bullet catchers. As it was we hammered, kicked, cajoled and bribed Chaing to fight enough to pin down the vast bulk of the Imperial Japanese Army so we wouldn't have to fight it.
Then, to the never ending dismay of the Blame America First school, we dropped firebombs on civilian population centers, (to say nothing of the concentrated essence of firebomb raids delivered to Hiroshima and Nagasaki), engaged in unrestricted submarine warfare on Japan and employed devastating levels of firepower on the Germans. We fought in order to win as quickly and at the lowest possible cost in American lives as humanly possible.
We won. Decisively. At the lowest cost in lives of the major combatants.
But, even as we won, we found ourselves in another war. The Cold War. FDR and his senior advisers as well as US military commanders discovered that another enemy was approaching us through the ruins of Berlin.
Wars of national survival can and do make for strange alliances. World War II in Europe was no exception. The Soviet Union and the US had no coinciding national interests beyond defeating Nazi Germany. Absent the common threat there were no points of agreement between the Kremlin and Washington (or London, or Paris for that matter.)
This reality, unpleasant as it might have been, was apparent in the intelligence and diplomatic reporting of the war years and before. The realities were ignored by an Administration and a We the People who saw war or even political confrontation as an anomaly.
The Truman Administration was quick to see and adjust to the new realities of the post-War world and laid out the basic architecture which, refined by the Eisenhower Administration, would give the world nearly a half-century of tense but ultimately relatively peaceful existence until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990-91.
Whereas the American entry into World War I was both unnecessary and ultimately unjustifiable, the fighting of its follow-on was necessary and justifiable. Thus, the waging of the Second World War by the US is an excellent example of "policy for today." In so far as it was considered by the FDR Administration as "policy for the future," it was a failure. A failure brought about by the inability of the Administration to recognise that the Great Alliance was an unnatural occurrence.
The Cold War Doctrine of Containment and its Eisenhower manifestation Mutually Assured Destruction were good examples of "policy for the future." While the Blame America Firsters may gnash their teeth over some of the techniques and tactics used during the long glacial years of the confrontation between US and USSR, and in particular may bemoan the Vietnam involvement or the robust rhetoric and actions of the Reagan Administration, the end result proves the validity of the policy.
The USSR is no more.
Woodrow Wilson, Democrat, and Harry Truman, Democrat, give two conflicting examples of how to formulate and execute policy. Wilson's was based on fuzzy morality and an inability to properly appreciate realities on the ground. Truman's was based on coolly calculated appraisals of US national security needs and national interest requirements with little, if any, genuflections to the political feel-good needs of the moment. Tough and realistic choices were made in Europe, in Asia and regarding nuclear weapons. Sentiment was ignored. Facts on the ground were faced.
Alliances were made by Truman's Administration on the only basis which is valid. How can an alliance with any particular country benefit the United States. If an agreement with a nation or collection of nations aid the US, then it was entered into. Even the controversial decision to recognise the new state of Israel was finally predicated, not on sentiment but on the acceptance that not to do so would benefit the Soviets who, it was known, were ready to do so.
The Eisenhower Administration was quite realistic regarding the development of Mutually Assured Destruction. That doctrine would have, Ike recognised, the greatest potential for making certain that nuclear weapons might be built and stockpiled and deployed--but never used. The Eisenhower Administration was not so realistic regarding alliances. The (in)famous "pactomania" of the period tied us to a number of countries which had little if anything to offer and represented net drains on our ability and freedom to pursue national interest.
So far, so good. By 1960 the world was frozen in a tense but stable balance of terror. Wars could be fought on the margins for limited goals and with the utmost care to decouple these peripheral nibblings from the potential of vertical escalation.
Then the wheels started to come off. The Administrations of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon lost sight of the cool calculation of national interest and security, lost a grip on the idea that the best policy was one which focused on the future not on today.
The reason was Israel.
The results were disastrous.
Stay tuned.
Perhaps it was in recognition of this ineptitude that prompted Senator Obama to announce his status as global citizen to the enthralled multitude in Berlin. Perhaps it was his personal way of announcing that, should he become president, the world could expect a continuation of business as usual in Foggy Bottom.
As a historian and as an American the Geek has been and continues to be overwhelmed by the sheer asininity of most US foreign policy initiatives and stances over the past half-century at the least. There is a simple reason for his total disenchantment with the efforts of most presidents and virtually all Secretaries of State since Theodore Roosevelt.
Most of the worthies We the People have sent to the White House from Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush have either forgotten or never known the foundation principle of foreign and national security policy. It's not that the basis is hard to understand or difficult to remember.
Heck. It's simple and easy,
Here it is in one nice well-wrapped little package. The purpose of foreign policy of which national security policy is a major subset is to effectively counter and defeat threats to the existence and core interests of the United States.
Forgetting this fundamental has inexorably assured that one Administration after another, one Congress after another, has engaged in a series of fatal confusions. Time after bloody time existential matters have been confused with gee-wouldn't-that-be-nice issues. Time after bloody time the purpose of alliances has been misunderstood or blurred into meaninglessness.
And, most importantly, time after bloody time the exigencies of today have been given pride of place over the requirements of the future. Political feel-good has trumped national interest think-well.
To survive and prosper, a country must take a rather cold-hearted stance. The governing question must be, "What's in it for me?"
Sounds utterly selfish, doesn't it?
That's because it is. Nation-states are inherently self-centered to the max. That's why they exist. That's why they will continue to exist. The security and continuation of a nation-state is its prime concern. The nation-state (which appears to be the largest assemblage of human beings that can inspire a sense of identification and loyalty among its inhabitants bound together as they are by a shared language, a common history and a defining mythology) exists in order to exist. Period.
As a result the nation-state defines subjectively what its national interests might be and what constitutes a threat to those or to its physical existence.
Come along with your friendly tour guide, the Geek, as we walk down the trails of time and look at some examples of good and bad American foreign policy in their natural habitat.
The first exhibit is Woodrow Wilson. Wilson, not unlike Theodore Roosevelt, was a Progressive Internationalist. Unlike TR, Woodrow Wilson acted from a base of Christian (Presbyterian) morality as opposed to a clear sense of what was necessary to protect and advance American national interests in a world filled with large and dangerous animals.
By "enlightened" moral standards TR was a lout. He stole Panama from Columbia so a large ditch might be dug. Then he effectively clamped the American occupation on the necks of the Filipinos simply to prevent some other country from doing so.
Now, consider WW. He authorised two military interventions in Mexico. One had the purpose of "teaching the Mexicans to elect good men." The other was a punitive expedition having the goal of killing or capturing a terrorist named Pancho Villa.
Wilson entered World War I with the moral goals of "making the world safe for democracy," and fighting a "war to end wars." He had a grand vision of a world body dedicated to preventing or punishing aggressive war (at least amongst the "civilised" states.)
Arguably the United States had a national interest and long range national security interests in play when TR went after the real estate needed to build the Panama Canal. Arguably the same might be said concerning the Philippine occupation or even the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.
There were no definable US national security or national interests involved in the Wilsonian efforts in Mexico. It must be pointed out that the only hypothetical interest, compensation for property seized from Americans by the revolutionary Mexican government(s), was not brought forward in the context of either military (mis)adventure.
No less a self-interested British observer than Winston Churchill maintained during the 1930s that the US had made a major blunder by entering WW I. In Churchill's view the war would have ended in a truce of exhaustion in the summer or fall of 1917 had it not been for the prospect of US troops arriving in force during 1918 and beyond.
A close look at the aftermath of the mutinies in the French Army during 1916 and the state of the German civilian population in 1917 shows that both nations were a spent force with the French holding on only because the Yanks were coming.
Churchill also observed that the US could have exploited the truce of exhaustion by dictating any sort of peace it wanted to see. More, the US could have enforced its vision of peace by using its agricultural abundance as a weapon far more effective than any employed on the battlefield.
Of course, Wilson the moralist could not even use our food as a weapon when he encountered resistance to his ideas of a Peace Without Victors. Apparently in his mind Wilson thought the killing of human beings by bomb and bullet was more moral than causing hunger cramps in the bellies of civilians.
In any event it is virtually impossible to discern any national security or national interest imperative worth the US entry into World War I. Yes, the Kaiser was a dunderheaded loudmouth with delusions of adequacy and U-boats were scary, but neither represented an actual or even distant potential threat to the US surviving and flourishing.
The same could not be said regarding the Germany of Adolph Hitler. While Imperial Japan did not and could not represent an existential threat to the US, Nazi Germany could. Given the resources of Europe, Germany would have developed into an existential threat of the highest order.
Even though this reality was well understood by the Administration of Franklin Roosevelt, this master of political legerdemain tacked, bobbed and weaved until the decision to go to war was made for him on 11 December 1941 when the rubber stamp parliament of Germany declared war on the US.
World War II was an exercise in naked self-interest by the US. Not only was one of the three enemies a near-term potential existential menace, the war had been thrust upon us. We fought it hard, dirty and smart. The Soviets were too close to the truth to be humorous when the Foreign Minister of the USSR suggested that the US wanted to see, "The last Russian kill the last German with the last bullet of the war."
Only the combination of inefficiency, narrow self-interest and a claque of American supporters prevented the US from using the Nationalist Chinese in the role of bullet catchers. As it was we hammered, kicked, cajoled and bribed Chaing to fight enough to pin down the vast bulk of the Imperial Japanese Army so we wouldn't have to fight it.
Then, to the never ending dismay of the Blame America First school, we dropped firebombs on civilian population centers, (to say nothing of the concentrated essence of firebomb raids delivered to Hiroshima and Nagasaki), engaged in unrestricted submarine warfare on Japan and employed devastating levels of firepower on the Germans. We fought in order to win as quickly and at the lowest possible cost in American lives as humanly possible.
We won. Decisively. At the lowest cost in lives of the major combatants.
But, even as we won, we found ourselves in another war. The Cold War. FDR and his senior advisers as well as US military commanders discovered that another enemy was approaching us through the ruins of Berlin.
Wars of national survival can and do make for strange alliances. World War II in Europe was no exception. The Soviet Union and the US had no coinciding national interests beyond defeating Nazi Germany. Absent the common threat there were no points of agreement between the Kremlin and Washington (or London, or Paris for that matter.)
This reality, unpleasant as it might have been, was apparent in the intelligence and diplomatic reporting of the war years and before. The realities were ignored by an Administration and a We the People who saw war or even political confrontation as an anomaly.
The Truman Administration was quick to see and adjust to the new realities of the post-War world and laid out the basic architecture which, refined by the Eisenhower Administration, would give the world nearly a half-century of tense but ultimately relatively peaceful existence until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990-91.
Whereas the American entry into World War I was both unnecessary and ultimately unjustifiable, the fighting of its follow-on was necessary and justifiable. Thus, the waging of the Second World War by the US is an excellent example of "policy for today." In so far as it was considered by the FDR Administration as "policy for the future," it was a failure. A failure brought about by the inability of the Administration to recognise that the Great Alliance was an unnatural occurrence.
The Cold War Doctrine of Containment and its Eisenhower manifestation Mutually Assured Destruction were good examples of "policy for the future." While the Blame America Firsters may gnash their teeth over some of the techniques and tactics used during the long glacial years of the confrontation between US and USSR, and in particular may bemoan the Vietnam involvement or the robust rhetoric and actions of the Reagan Administration, the end result proves the validity of the policy.
The USSR is no more.
Woodrow Wilson, Democrat, and Harry Truman, Democrat, give two conflicting examples of how to formulate and execute policy. Wilson's was based on fuzzy morality and an inability to properly appreciate realities on the ground. Truman's was based on coolly calculated appraisals of US national security needs and national interest requirements with little, if any, genuflections to the political feel-good needs of the moment. Tough and realistic choices were made in Europe, in Asia and regarding nuclear weapons. Sentiment was ignored. Facts on the ground were faced.
Alliances were made by Truman's Administration on the only basis which is valid. How can an alliance with any particular country benefit the United States. If an agreement with a nation or collection of nations aid the US, then it was entered into. Even the controversial decision to recognise the new state of Israel was finally predicated, not on sentiment but on the acceptance that not to do so would benefit the Soviets who, it was known, were ready to do so.
The Eisenhower Administration was quite realistic regarding the development of Mutually Assured Destruction. That doctrine would have, Ike recognised, the greatest potential for making certain that nuclear weapons might be built and stockpiled and deployed--but never used. The Eisenhower Administration was not so realistic regarding alliances. The (in)famous "pactomania" of the period tied us to a number of countries which had little if anything to offer and represented net drains on our ability and freedom to pursue national interest.
So far, so good. By 1960 the world was frozen in a tense but stable balance of terror. Wars could be fought on the margins for limited goals and with the utmost care to decouple these peripheral nibblings from the potential of vertical escalation.
Then the wheels started to come off. The Administrations of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon lost sight of the cool calculation of national interest and security, lost a grip on the idea that the best policy was one which focused on the future not on today.
The reason was Israel.
The results were disastrous.
Stay tuned.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Ahh, It's So Easy To Forget--And So Dangerous
Gather 'round kiddies and Ole Uncle Geek will tell you a story. A story that has obviously been forgotten by assorted academics, politicians (both here and in Europe) and pundits (again both here and overseas.) A story that is relevant to our current problems with the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Resurgent Russian Empire.
Long ago (the 1930s) and far away (Europe) there lived a man who was leader of his country. The country had been broken and impoverished and embittered by having lost a war. The leader wrought an economic miracle and made the people of his country feel strong and proud again. Now the leader and his newly empowered army faced a challenge.
The challenge was in a neighboring country. According to the Leader and his country's news media, the government of this next door neighbor was abusing and oppressing citizens who spoke the language of the Leader and his fellow countrymen.
The Leader proclaimed that this oppression of his co-Germanophones was unacceptable. A clear violation of their human rights. (Although, to be honest the Leader didn't use that term. It hadn't been invented yet.)
The Leader also gnashed his teeth over the government of this small eastern neighbor having signed agreements with large and powerful states located to the west of the Leader's country.
Something had to be done!
It was.
The heads of the western governments met with the Leader in the old and scenic city of Munchen for a conference designed to placate the Leader and assure "peace in our time."
Peace was assured. For one whole year. The small neighbor was ceremoniously dismembered and left open to a full occupation by the Leader's army.
Germany had triumphed. Hitler rode high on his charisma, political sagacity and the appearance of a military/diplomatic walkover.
A year later Hitler would try to do the same in Poland. For a while he was successful.
Now, kiddies, lets go back a few years earlier. Back to when the Leader rolled his political dice for the first time. Back to when he ordered the new and splendidly non-competent Wehrmacht to reoccupy the demilitarized west bank of the Rhine in violation of the treaty ending World War I.
A small contingent of German troops marched into the Rhineland under orders to beat feet beaucoup schnell if they met any resistance, no matter how slight. A single French military cop would have been enough.
There were no French MPs. There was no French response. The British likewise stood still and silent. Some even offered apologies and excuses for the German action.
It was, after all, their country, wasn't it?
And, the Versailles Treaty was too harsh, wasn't it?
And, Germany is too important economically to aggravate, wasn't it?
In truth, the governments of France and Great Britain took counsel of their fears. In truth, both governments made policy for today and hoped the future would take care of itself.
(The Geek calls this tendency of governments to make policy for today while disregarding the future consequences "The Aehrenthal Doctrine" after the Austrian Foreign Minister of the years preceding World War I. Famously, he once said, "I make policy for today. Let the future take care of itself.")
It would have been very easy to thwart Hitler at the time of the Rhineland move. It would have been reasonably easy to stop him at the time of Munich. It would have been harder, but not impossible, to stop him before the tanks and Stukas moved on 1 September 1939.
It was a hell of a lot harder to stop him later.
Well, kids we forgot all this with regard the Iranian nuclear ambitions. And, buckos, we have (or are) forgetting it all over again as the Russians make their moves to reestablish operational dominance over the states the Kremlin calls "the near abroad."
Arguably, even the dimwitted neocon ninnies of the current US administration have a better handle on the historical analogies then do our European colocutors. While the Geek doubts that the current administration is using historical analogy based reasoning in forming policy, it is clear the Europeans have forgotten completely what happened in their own area less than seventy-five years ago.
The Germans have made this quite explicit with statements to the effect that "now is not the time to lay blame or question motives." The German government has already opposed allowing Georgia and the Ukraine into NATO lest doing such annoy the Kremlin. Now, the Germans don't want to say anything harshly truthful about the ongoing Russian occupation of portions of Georgia such as the city of Gori.
Why this willful act of historical lobotomy?
The reason is the same as at least one of the primary motives behind the obviously long planned Russian invasion. It's all in one word,
OK, three words. Oil. Natural gas. Thirty plus percent of the first. Nearly half of the second.
Energy for Europe.
The Germans are simply more willing than others to appease the Leader in the Kremlin.
Don't you find it passingly interesting that the ceasefire brokered by French President Sarkozy on behalf of the European Union is silent on such key points as the territorial integrity of Georgia? Isn't it a tad instructive that the agreement allows the Russians to "augment" their "peacekeeping" presence in the secessionist provinces?
Can we say, "Munich--The Sequel?"
Now a quick turn to the Iranian front. The Germans are the biggest sanction busters in Europe. They talk a great game. They play a pathetic one.
Of course, the Germans and others might think and say that the Iranians haven't crossed any actual red lines in their nuclear work to date. They might honestly believe that there is plenty of time before any drastic action might be necessary.
A good case might be made for believing that time still existed in which to seek a compromise with Tehran or with the Kremlin. The Geek would be willing to make one himself---
Except for a couple of bothersome details.
To make a case for a long and easy process of diplomacy and accommodation with either or both Russia and Iran would require ignoring the lessons of history, which show conclusively that the earlier one acts to abate a nuisance, the easier it is.
And, it would require making policy for today in the hopes that the future would take care of itself.
Long ago (the 1930s) and far away (Europe) there lived a man who was leader of his country. The country had been broken and impoverished and embittered by having lost a war. The leader wrought an economic miracle and made the people of his country feel strong and proud again. Now the leader and his newly empowered army faced a challenge.
The challenge was in a neighboring country. According to the Leader and his country's news media, the government of this next door neighbor was abusing and oppressing citizens who spoke the language of the Leader and his fellow countrymen.
The Leader proclaimed that this oppression of his co-Germanophones was unacceptable. A clear violation of their human rights. (Although, to be honest the Leader didn't use that term. It hadn't been invented yet.)
The Leader also gnashed his teeth over the government of this small eastern neighbor having signed agreements with large and powerful states located to the west of the Leader's country.
Something had to be done!
It was.
The heads of the western governments met with the Leader in the old and scenic city of Munchen for a conference designed to placate the Leader and assure "peace in our time."
Peace was assured. For one whole year. The small neighbor was ceremoniously dismembered and left open to a full occupation by the Leader's army.
Germany had triumphed. Hitler rode high on his charisma, political sagacity and the appearance of a military/diplomatic walkover.
A year later Hitler would try to do the same in Poland. For a while he was successful.
Now, kiddies, lets go back a few years earlier. Back to when the Leader rolled his political dice for the first time. Back to when he ordered the new and splendidly non-competent Wehrmacht to reoccupy the demilitarized west bank of the Rhine in violation of the treaty ending World War I.
A small contingent of German troops marched into the Rhineland under orders to beat feet beaucoup schnell if they met any resistance, no matter how slight. A single French military cop would have been enough.
There were no French MPs. There was no French response. The British likewise stood still and silent. Some even offered apologies and excuses for the German action.
It was, after all, their country, wasn't it?
And, the Versailles Treaty was too harsh, wasn't it?
And, Germany is too important economically to aggravate, wasn't it?
In truth, the governments of France and Great Britain took counsel of their fears. In truth, both governments made policy for today and hoped the future would take care of itself.
(The Geek calls this tendency of governments to make policy for today while disregarding the future consequences "The Aehrenthal Doctrine" after the Austrian Foreign Minister of the years preceding World War I. Famously, he once said, "I make policy for today. Let the future take care of itself.")
It would have been very easy to thwart Hitler at the time of the Rhineland move. It would have been reasonably easy to stop him at the time of Munich. It would have been harder, but not impossible, to stop him before the tanks and Stukas moved on 1 September 1939.
It was a hell of a lot harder to stop him later.
Well, kids we forgot all this with regard the Iranian nuclear ambitions. And, buckos, we have (or are) forgetting it all over again as the Russians make their moves to reestablish operational dominance over the states the Kremlin calls "the near abroad."
Arguably, even the dimwitted neocon ninnies of the current US administration have a better handle on the historical analogies then do our European colocutors. While the Geek doubts that the current administration is using historical analogy based reasoning in forming policy, it is clear the Europeans have forgotten completely what happened in their own area less than seventy-five years ago.
The Germans have made this quite explicit with statements to the effect that "now is not the time to lay blame or question motives." The German government has already opposed allowing Georgia and the Ukraine into NATO lest doing such annoy the Kremlin. Now, the Germans don't want to say anything harshly truthful about the ongoing Russian occupation of portions of Georgia such as the city of Gori.
Why this willful act of historical lobotomy?
The reason is the same as at least one of the primary motives behind the obviously long planned Russian invasion. It's all in one word,
OK, three words. Oil. Natural gas. Thirty plus percent of the first. Nearly half of the second.
Energy for Europe.
The Germans are simply more willing than others to appease the Leader in the Kremlin.
Don't you find it passingly interesting that the ceasefire brokered by French President Sarkozy on behalf of the European Union is silent on such key points as the territorial integrity of Georgia? Isn't it a tad instructive that the agreement allows the Russians to "augment" their "peacekeeping" presence in the secessionist provinces?
Can we say, "Munich--The Sequel?"
Now a quick turn to the Iranian front. The Germans are the biggest sanction busters in Europe. They talk a great game. They play a pathetic one.
Of course, the Germans and others might think and say that the Iranians haven't crossed any actual red lines in their nuclear work to date. They might honestly believe that there is plenty of time before any drastic action might be necessary.
A good case might be made for believing that time still existed in which to seek a compromise with Tehran or with the Kremlin. The Geek would be willing to make one himself---
Except for a couple of bothersome details.
To make a case for a long and easy process of diplomacy and accommodation with either or both Russia and Iran would require ignoring the lessons of history, which show conclusively that the earlier one acts to abate a nuisance, the easier it is.
And, it would require making policy for today in the hopes that the future would take care of itself.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
An Old Mystery--And A New One
Nearly thirty-three years ago on 29 December 1975 at 1833 hrs a bomb exploded in the baggage claim area of the TWA terminal at La Guardia Airport. Eleven were killed and seventy-five others wounded. It was New York City's most lethal terrorist incident since the 1920 bombing of Wall Street which killed more than three dozen and injured hundreds.
Officially the La Guardia bombing was never solved. The FBI never got its man.
Or did it?
A fellow by the name of Zvonko Busic who was quietly paroled from Federal prison late in July and repatriated to his native Croatia is thought by non-Federal investigators including former members of the highly respected NYPD bomb squad to have been responsible for the La Guardia mass murder. Busic was never charged in the case.
He was, however, convicted of having planted a bomb virtually identical in all respects to that which wreaked the carnage at La Guardia in Grand Central Station. That bomb killed a bomb squad member who was working to defuse it and badly wounded his partner.
The motive behind the bomb planting in a luggage locker at the crowded rail terminal was to divert attention from a planned aircraft hijacking. Busic was a member of a Freedom for Croatia group proving that terrorists and freedom fighters are one in the same critter.
Those close to the investigations claimed that Federal interference prevented conclusively demonstrating that Busic was also involved in the La Guardia atrocity. This view has been espoused by a former prosecutor, former cops who interrogated Busic and a crime writer who interviewed Busic at Lewisburg Federal prison. (See The New York Times online edition, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/nyregion/10laguardia.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th)
From all appearances the Feds didn't use the thirty plus years they had Busic in custody to solve the La Guardia mystery. There was not even an attempt to get him to talk under some form of immunity so that valuable intelligence could be developed. Busic did his time for the crime of which he was convicted and was paroled under the condition that he never return to the US. Case closed.
What makes the old mystery relevant is the presence of a more recent one. Who was behind the anthrax mailings of 2001?
The performance of the FBI in the case of the anthrax deliveries is seemingly no better than it was in the aftermath of the La Guardia bombing. Forensics work was done in both cases including the most advanced scientific techniques available. The soles of innumerable shoes were worn thin as dozens, even hundreds of individuals were "interviewed," property searched and evidence collected.
In the anthrax case the FBI fingered suspects, "persons of interest" in today's jargon. In the process careers were ruined, marriages destroyed, one scientist drank himself to death, another collected megabucks from the taxpayers of the US in compensation for Federal damage done.
And one committed suicide. Bruce Ivins, the man the Feds now claim was the mad scientist anthrax mailer killed himself. Depending on your willingness to believe the FBI, he took the lethal Tylenol with codeine either because the Long Arm of the Law was about to clamp itself around his throat or because the Feds had hounded an emotionally unstable man to a point that death was the least worst option.
So which was it? Innocent emotionally distraught man? Mentally ill paranoid killer?
The Feebie and its overlords at the Department of Justice want us all to believe Ivins did it. Unfortunately the evidence so far adduced comes far short of doing that job. The circumstantial nature of it is not the major problem. Most criminal cases rely on circumstantial evidence.
The problem is the ambiguity of so much of the Feds' "proof." Some of the ambiguity is inherent to the incomplete nature of the evidentiary release. But most of the uncertainty comes from the simple fact that actions, words and circumstances can be subject to vastly different, even antipodal interpretations.
That's the way the Feds case against Ivins stands at the moment. Evidence equally compelling for innocence or for guilt.
Given a history which includes the Great Cold Case of the La Guardia bombing, the Geek is more than slightly sceptical of the Government's conclusion that the anthrax mailings is now Case Closed.
"But," you object, "the FBI did solve the first attack on the World Trade Center."
Sure. They did. After the terrorists were so stupid as to come on back to the rental agency and demand their deposit back, claiming that the truck had been stolen. Then the Feebie could roll up the case with the critical aid of an informant-in-place.
The anthrax mailer, like those who planted the bomb in a luggage locker in the TWA baggage claim area, were not so stupid. The FBI had no informant conveniently in place.
Now, again as in the case of the La Guardia blast, the FBI and DoJ are rushing to place the case behind them. In the 1975 incident the Feds resorted to silence. Now they are noisily declaring victory.
Case closed?
Officially the La Guardia bombing was never solved. The FBI never got its man.
Or did it?
A fellow by the name of Zvonko Busic who was quietly paroled from Federal prison late in July and repatriated to his native Croatia is thought by non-Federal investigators including former members of the highly respected NYPD bomb squad to have been responsible for the La Guardia mass murder. Busic was never charged in the case.
He was, however, convicted of having planted a bomb virtually identical in all respects to that which wreaked the carnage at La Guardia in Grand Central Station. That bomb killed a bomb squad member who was working to defuse it and badly wounded his partner.
The motive behind the bomb planting in a luggage locker at the crowded rail terminal was to divert attention from a planned aircraft hijacking. Busic was a member of a Freedom for Croatia group proving that terrorists and freedom fighters are one in the same critter.
Those close to the investigations claimed that Federal interference prevented conclusively demonstrating that Busic was also involved in the La Guardia atrocity. This view has been espoused by a former prosecutor, former cops who interrogated Busic and a crime writer who interviewed Busic at Lewisburg Federal prison. (See The New York Times online edition, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/nyregion/10laguardia.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th)
From all appearances the Feds didn't use the thirty plus years they had Busic in custody to solve the La Guardia mystery. There was not even an attempt to get him to talk under some form of immunity so that valuable intelligence could be developed. Busic did his time for the crime of which he was convicted and was paroled under the condition that he never return to the US. Case closed.
What makes the old mystery relevant is the presence of a more recent one. Who was behind the anthrax mailings of 2001?
The performance of the FBI in the case of the anthrax deliveries is seemingly no better than it was in the aftermath of the La Guardia bombing. Forensics work was done in both cases including the most advanced scientific techniques available. The soles of innumerable shoes were worn thin as dozens, even hundreds of individuals were "interviewed," property searched and evidence collected.
In the anthrax case the FBI fingered suspects, "persons of interest" in today's jargon. In the process careers were ruined, marriages destroyed, one scientist drank himself to death, another collected megabucks from the taxpayers of the US in compensation for Federal damage done.
And one committed suicide. Bruce Ivins, the man the Feds now claim was the mad scientist anthrax mailer killed himself. Depending on your willingness to believe the FBI, he took the lethal Tylenol with codeine either because the Long Arm of the Law was about to clamp itself around his throat or because the Feds had hounded an emotionally unstable man to a point that death was the least worst option.
So which was it? Innocent emotionally distraught man? Mentally ill paranoid killer?
The Feebie and its overlords at the Department of Justice want us all to believe Ivins did it. Unfortunately the evidence so far adduced comes far short of doing that job. The circumstantial nature of it is not the major problem. Most criminal cases rely on circumstantial evidence.
The problem is the ambiguity of so much of the Feds' "proof." Some of the ambiguity is inherent to the incomplete nature of the evidentiary release. But most of the uncertainty comes from the simple fact that actions, words and circumstances can be subject to vastly different, even antipodal interpretations.
That's the way the Feds case against Ivins stands at the moment. Evidence equally compelling for innocence or for guilt.
Given a history which includes the Great Cold Case of the La Guardia bombing, the Geek is more than slightly sceptical of the Government's conclusion that the anthrax mailings is now Case Closed.
"But," you object, "the FBI did solve the first attack on the World Trade Center."
Sure. They did. After the terrorists were so stupid as to come on back to the rental agency and demand their deposit back, claiming that the truck had been stolen. Then the Feebie could roll up the case with the critical aid of an informant-in-place.
The anthrax mailer, like those who planted the bomb in a luggage locker in the TWA baggage claim area, were not so stupid. The FBI had no informant conveniently in place.
Now, again as in the case of the La Guardia blast, the FBI and DoJ are rushing to place the case behind them. In the 1975 incident the Feds resorted to silence. Now they are noisily declaring victory.
Case closed?
At Last! A War Over Oil (Really)
For a long while now it has been an article of faith among some on the Left that the current administration's Great Adventure In Regime Change was caused by a slavering need to assure that Iraq's oil would be safe for Exxon et al.
Before that there were dark suspicions that H.W. Bush took his Grand Coalition to war not to roll back the Iraqi tide from Kuwait but to protect American oil interests in the Gulf region. At the time some of the Geek's academic coworkers hinted that somehow he was involved in this great plot to save the shareholders at the expense of American lives.
In the years before Desert Storm, long before invading Iraq was even a small glint in the eyes of Messrs Bush and Cheney or others of the neocon ninnie persuasion, folks on the Left imagined that the American efforts in South Vietnam were on behalf of Big Oil, making the South China Sea safe for Mobil and Chevron.
All these specters of dank conspiracies to sacrifice lives in order that Big Business might be provided with a few more significant digits in its bottom line must give a frisson or two of pure delight to those on the Left. Heck, the Geek even wishes they were true, documentable from the archives and not mere projections of fears or wishes, as he likes a good conspiracy hypothesis as well as the next guy.
Unfortunately they are not.
That is why it is so nice, so satisfying that we are finally looking at a real honest-to-gosh shooting war where the cause, the real deal, the shore enough is oil. Oil and the need to protect and enhance a monopoly in its distribution and sale.
It is even more delightful that the war is being waged on behalf of this supreme capitalist goal by the Kremlin. By Vladimir Putin. By Russia, onetime Vanguard of the Proletariat.
While Georgia might have swung the first punch in its ill-advised attempt to bring the secessionist province of South Ossetia back under its control, the Kremlin reaction showed all the hallmarks of long standing planning and preparation as well as a goal far more expansive then simply "protecting" Russian "peacekeepers and citizens" in the province.
In the closing years of Putin's presidency it became increasingly clear to all but the most addleheaded that Russia was feeling more than a little steroidal. The Kremlin was (and is) most unhelpful in the Iranian uranium enrichment problem. Putin (and his handpicked successor) have been both obdurate and seemingly blind to reality on the matter of basing American anti-ballistic missiles and radars in Poland and the Czech Republic. Russian strategic bombers are again flying in the finest Cold War fashion near the US and the UK.
The reason for this boisterous behavior after years of quiescence is simple. Russia has oil. Lots of oil. The old, badly dilapidated Soviet Siberian oil fields have been expanded and renovated in large measure by foreign investment. New pipelines have been built. Russian oil flows to Western Europe. The Euros flow back in a flood.
There is a speed bump in the highway of continued Russian oil based prosperity and the political advantages which can accrue from a monopoly on either or both production and distribution. There is oil in several of the Central Asian Republics. There are new pipelines which connect the producers in Asia with the consumers in Europe (and elsewhere.)
The most important of these big tubes runs across Georgia. Right through pro-West, pro-US Georgia. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) line runs from Azerbaijan to Turkey. It is US-backed.
The Russians bombed it yesterday. Considering the immediate irrelevance of the BTC to the operations being conducted by the Russian Army against the Georgian forces in South Ossetia, it is legitimate to ask, "Why?"
The answer isn't hard to find. Putin's goal is not removing Georgian troops from the disputed secessionist provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. No. Putin's goal is much more than that. He wants to eliminate the long standing annoyance of Georgia's pro-American president, Mikhail Saakashvili in a short, sharp and salutary war.
This goal loops into another goal long held by Putin and company. Pacify the Caucasus. Pacification through effective hegemony. The same goal which fascinated various Czars and later attracted the full attention of Lenin and Stalin.
Hegemony over the Caucasus region provides the necessary first condition for re-establishing operational dominance if not full hegemony over the Central Asian Republics. Ah! A thought that would warm any Russian heart.
Particularly when operational dominance over the oil bearing areas of the Caucasus and Central Asia assures a Russian monopoly of non-Mideast origin oil to Europe and elsewhere. Capitalists and Communists agree on one thing: Nothing beats a monopoly.
Putin has long understood the power of possessing a scarce critical commodity. Russia has one. Russia flaunts the wealth and power which its possession confers. It is not surprising that Russia, like a crack dealership, wants to inhibit competition and raise prices.
An uptick in global oil prices as a result of the current fracas in the Caucasus is good for Russia. Good for Putin. A short war with a victorious conclusion would be infinitely better.
This possibility is worth taking a few risks to turn into reality. From the Kremlin's perspective the risks are very small indeed.
Georgia doesn't have much of an army. It will have to seek a negotiated settlement rapidly in order to preserve independence. The settlement might well include features far removed from autonomy or independence for the two break away provinces such as the removal of Georgia's president.
Given the retreat of a US presence in Central Asia to say nothing of the current American preoccupations with Iraq, Afghanistan and spinning Iranian centrifuges in the closing days of a badly discredited Administration, Georgia lacks Great Power support beyond soothing words and mood music. The Georgians are on their own. That's tough for them.
True the war might go badly for the Russians. It has the potential, if the Kremlin is not careful, very careful, to turn into a never-ending guerrilla affair in the Chechnya mode. Putin will have to take great pains to assure that this eventuality does not come to pass.
Vladimir might have been smiling with anticipation as he flew back from Beijing but his gut might have tightened just a bit if he remembered an all-too-true maxim of Clausewitz: No plan survives first contact with the enemy.
Before that there were dark suspicions that H.W. Bush took his Grand Coalition to war not to roll back the Iraqi tide from Kuwait but to protect American oil interests in the Gulf region. At the time some of the Geek's academic coworkers hinted that somehow he was involved in this great plot to save the shareholders at the expense of American lives.
In the years before Desert Storm, long before invading Iraq was even a small glint in the eyes of Messrs Bush and Cheney or others of the neocon ninnie persuasion, folks on the Left imagined that the American efforts in South Vietnam were on behalf of Big Oil, making the South China Sea safe for Mobil and Chevron.
All these specters of dank conspiracies to sacrifice lives in order that Big Business might be provided with a few more significant digits in its bottom line must give a frisson or two of pure delight to those on the Left. Heck, the Geek even wishes they were true, documentable from the archives and not mere projections of fears or wishes, as he likes a good conspiracy hypothesis as well as the next guy.
Unfortunately they are not.
That is why it is so nice, so satisfying that we are finally looking at a real honest-to-gosh shooting war where the cause, the real deal, the shore enough is oil. Oil and the need to protect and enhance a monopoly in its distribution and sale.
It is even more delightful that the war is being waged on behalf of this supreme capitalist goal by the Kremlin. By Vladimir Putin. By Russia, onetime Vanguard of the Proletariat.
While Georgia might have swung the first punch in its ill-advised attempt to bring the secessionist province of South Ossetia back under its control, the Kremlin reaction showed all the hallmarks of long standing planning and preparation as well as a goal far more expansive then simply "protecting" Russian "peacekeepers and citizens" in the province.
In the closing years of Putin's presidency it became increasingly clear to all but the most addleheaded that Russia was feeling more than a little steroidal. The Kremlin was (and is) most unhelpful in the Iranian uranium enrichment problem. Putin (and his handpicked successor) have been both obdurate and seemingly blind to reality on the matter of basing American anti-ballistic missiles and radars in Poland and the Czech Republic. Russian strategic bombers are again flying in the finest Cold War fashion near the US and the UK.
The reason for this boisterous behavior after years of quiescence is simple. Russia has oil. Lots of oil. The old, badly dilapidated Soviet Siberian oil fields have been expanded and renovated in large measure by foreign investment. New pipelines have been built. Russian oil flows to Western Europe. The Euros flow back in a flood.
There is a speed bump in the highway of continued Russian oil based prosperity and the political advantages which can accrue from a monopoly on either or both production and distribution. There is oil in several of the Central Asian Republics. There are new pipelines which connect the producers in Asia with the consumers in Europe (and elsewhere.)
The most important of these big tubes runs across Georgia. Right through pro-West, pro-US Georgia. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) line runs from Azerbaijan to Turkey. It is US-backed.
The Russians bombed it yesterday. Considering the immediate irrelevance of the BTC to the operations being conducted by the Russian Army against the Georgian forces in South Ossetia, it is legitimate to ask, "Why?"
The answer isn't hard to find. Putin's goal is not removing Georgian troops from the disputed secessionist provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. No. Putin's goal is much more than that. He wants to eliminate the long standing annoyance of Georgia's pro-American president, Mikhail Saakashvili in a short, sharp and salutary war.
This goal loops into another goal long held by Putin and company. Pacify the Caucasus. Pacification through effective hegemony. The same goal which fascinated various Czars and later attracted the full attention of Lenin and Stalin.
Hegemony over the Caucasus region provides the necessary first condition for re-establishing operational dominance if not full hegemony over the Central Asian Republics. Ah! A thought that would warm any Russian heart.
Particularly when operational dominance over the oil bearing areas of the Caucasus and Central Asia assures a Russian monopoly of non-Mideast origin oil to Europe and elsewhere. Capitalists and Communists agree on one thing: Nothing beats a monopoly.
Putin has long understood the power of possessing a scarce critical commodity. Russia has one. Russia flaunts the wealth and power which its possession confers. It is not surprising that Russia, like a crack dealership, wants to inhibit competition and raise prices.
An uptick in global oil prices as a result of the current fracas in the Caucasus is good for Russia. Good for Putin. A short war with a victorious conclusion would be infinitely better.
This possibility is worth taking a few risks to turn into reality. From the Kremlin's perspective the risks are very small indeed.
Georgia doesn't have much of an army. It will have to seek a negotiated settlement rapidly in order to preserve independence. The settlement might well include features far removed from autonomy or independence for the two break away provinces such as the removal of Georgia's president.
Given the retreat of a US presence in Central Asia to say nothing of the current American preoccupations with Iraq, Afghanistan and spinning Iranian centrifuges in the closing days of a badly discredited Administration, Georgia lacks Great Power support beyond soothing words and mood music. The Georgians are on their own. That's tough for them.
True the war might go badly for the Russians. It has the potential, if the Kremlin is not careful, very careful, to turn into a never-ending guerrilla affair in the Chechnya mode. Putin will have to take great pains to assure that this eventuality does not come to pass.
Vladimir might have been smiling with anticipation as he flew back from Beijing but his gut might have tightened just a bit if he remembered an all-too-true maxim of Clausewitz: No plan survives first contact with the enemy.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Terror? Call The Cops?
The Geek has always objected to the current administration's Great Global War on Terrorism. As the Geek and numerous others have pointed out ad nauseum, the idea of declaring war on a specific tactic of war is absurd at the least, and flat out counterproductive at worst.
Comes now the famed think tank by the sea in Santa Monica, Rand Corp, to say in a prolix and almost well based study that using military force against terror employing groups is not justified by historical experience. (Go to the following and click on through for the entire pdf document http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9351/index1.html )
The conclusion of the political science types is simply that the majority of terror employing groups have ended their campaigns due to either political or police measures taken by their opponent. The researchers note pointedly that military action (narrowly defined adds the Geek) has been successful in defeating terror employing groups only seven per cent of the time,
None of this is either objectionable or surprising. Provided that the term "military action" is defined to include the use of special operations forces in tightly targeted missions, the employment of military units in a constabulary role and the use of military reconnaissance, surveillance and intelligence assets to support both police and political actions.
The employment of heavy, conventional military units in a "counterterrorist" or "anti-terrorist" role is not justifiable on an historical basis. The Geek is tempted to go further than did the lads at Rand. He is willing to go to the extreme and assert that the batting average for conventional forces in either role is zero. Maggie's drawers. Zip. The big goose egg.
In making this assertion the Geek parses between the use of infantry units in a constabulary role emphasizing presence, limited killing and an orientation toward psychological enervation of the adversary and more traditional military operations. The pressure of constant harassing presence by security forces not only severs connections between a terror employing group and the surrounding population. The constabulary also introduces operation-impairing friction between the component cells of the blackhats.
Think of it as a cop-on-the-beat approach on steroids.
Realise also that it is a mission that can rarely--if ever--be effectively performed by US troops. Cops, regardless of what they are called, must be familiar with the geographic and human terrain of their area of responsibility. This means that US forces are inappropriate outside of the United States.
The inappropriateness of employing US military assets for this purpose within the US can pass by without comment as being self-evident except under exceedingly rare conditions unlikely to occur outside of a Dick Cheney nightmare.
The use by the United States of stand-off weapons such as Tomahawk missiles that were so beloved by the Clinton Administration is also unjustified by the historical experience. Even when target intelligence has been both timely and accurate, the reaction time has been too lengthy to provide for useful results.
While it is true that the reaction loop time can be diminished by the National Command Authority giving prior approval to forces in the area to launch and further reduced when the next generation of supersonic missiles comes on line, the use of such advanced technology is unlikely to prove successful in ending or even diminishing a terrorist oriented group's will or ability to continue.
"Get real, Geek!" You object.
"Get a grip on this," replies the Geekmo.
The cultural matrix which has been producing terror employing groups and is most likely to do so in the future is unimpressed by death per se. It is most unimpressed by death coming from a cowardly distance. So the use of stand-off weapons in and of itself is counterproductive.
(The Geek suggests to the deep thinkers out in Santa Monica that they take a close look at this hypothesis. The results might be useful albeit disturbing to the Air Force hand that feeds them.)
Even the Predator fired Hellfire missiles which have proven delightfully useful in killing assorted black turbans from Yemen to Pakistan suffers from the drawback of being seen down range as the weapon of a coward. The crux here is simple: To win it is necessary to out macho the opposition. To make them afraid of you--up close and personal.
Understanding this key feature of the human terrain points to a critical mission for military assets. This is the use of special operations personnel for targeted operations based on actionable intelligence against key members of the terror employing group. The goal is simply neutralization. (That term is employed to cover all the possibilities from arrest to killing to simply assuring that the target(s) disappear from human ken.)
Having said that the Geek is of the view that one of the best uses of American intelligence capacities is to support the efforts of friendly foreign governments in counter- and ant-terrorist operations. Only in the event that the foreign government proves unable or unwilling to act upon US provided intelligence in a timely and effective manner should US assets be employed operationally.
It should go without saying that the highest priority of US intelligence should be the detection of threats directed at the US or its citizens overseas. The connections between overseas and domestic intelligence as well as between the entire intelligence community and American domestic law enforcement have been improved since 9/11. They need to be improved more as is indicated in the sub-text of the Rand study.
At home we are only as safe from the actions of a terror employing group or individual as the local police. The Geek notes with interest a large number of terror oriented groups, individuals and actions that were not investigated by the Randies but which occurred within the United States. In the overwhelming majority of these--dating back to the 1880s--local police either thwarted the threat or detected and arrested the perpetrators.
Ultimately a terror act by a non-state actor is not an act of war. It is a violation of the law, a breach of the peace. Cops exist to prevent breaches of the peace and arrest law breakers. The Randies are correct in underscoring this. We should all do the same.
The boys by Santa Monica Bay might also have demonstrated from their study of nearly a thousand terror oriented groups and their actions one salient fact. It's a fact that should make all of us feel better about life.
History shows that most terrorists are even more stupid than most crooks. If we trust the cops to deal with the second groups, we can trust them to do more about the first.
Terror? It's a crime. Not a war.
Comes now the famed think tank by the sea in Santa Monica, Rand Corp, to say in a prolix and almost well based study that using military force against terror employing groups is not justified by historical experience. (Go to the following and click on through for the entire pdf document http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9351/index1.html )
The conclusion of the political science types is simply that the majority of terror employing groups have ended their campaigns due to either political or police measures taken by their opponent. The researchers note pointedly that military action (narrowly defined adds the Geek) has been successful in defeating terror employing groups only seven per cent of the time,
None of this is either objectionable or surprising. Provided that the term "military action" is defined to include the use of special operations forces in tightly targeted missions, the employment of military units in a constabulary role and the use of military reconnaissance, surveillance and intelligence assets to support both police and political actions.
The employment of heavy, conventional military units in a "counterterrorist" or "anti-terrorist" role is not justifiable on an historical basis. The Geek is tempted to go further than did the lads at Rand. He is willing to go to the extreme and assert that the batting average for conventional forces in either role is zero. Maggie's drawers. Zip. The big goose egg.
In making this assertion the Geek parses between the use of infantry units in a constabulary role emphasizing presence, limited killing and an orientation toward psychological enervation of the adversary and more traditional military operations. The pressure of constant harassing presence by security forces not only severs connections between a terror employing group and the surrounding population. The constabulary also introduces operation-impairing friction between the component cells of the blackhats.
Think of it as a cop-on-the-beat approach on steroids.
Realise also that it is a mission that can rarely--if ever--be effectively performed by US troops. Cops, regardless of what they are called, must be familiar with the geographic and human terrain of their area of responsibility. This means that US forces are inappropriate outside of the United States.
The inappropriateness of employing US military assets for this purpose within the US can pass by without comment as being self-evident except under exceedingly rare conditions unlikely to occur outside of a Dick Cheney nightmare.
The use by the United States of stand-off weapons such as Tomahawk missiles that were so beloved by the Clinton Administration is also unjustified by the historical experience. Even when target intelligence has been both timely and accurate, the reaction time has been too lengthy to provide for useful results.
While it is true that the reaction loop time can be diminished by the National Command Authority giving prior approval to forces in the area to launch and further reduced when the next generation of supersonic missiles comes on line, the use of such advanced technology is unlikely to prove successful in ending or even diminishing a terrorist oriented group's will or ability to continue.
"Get real, Geek!" You object.
"Get a grip on this," replies the Geekmo.
The cultural matrix which has been producing terror employing groups and is most likely to do so in the future is unimpressed by death per se. It is most unimpressed by death coming from a cowardly distance. So the use of stand-off weapons in and of itself is counterproductive.
(The Geek suggests to the deep thinkers out in Santa Monica that they take a close look at this hypothesis. The results might be useful albeit disturbing to the Air Force hand that feeds them.)
Even the Predator fired Hellfire missiles which have proven delightfully useful in killing assorted black turbans from Yemen to Pakistan suffers from the drawback of being seen down range as the weapon of a coward. The crux here is simple: To win it is necessary to out macho the opposition. To make them afraid of you--up close and personal.
Understanding this key feature of the human terrain points to a critical mission for military assets. This is the use of special operations personnel for targeted operations based on actionable intelligence against key members of the terror employing group. The goal is simply neutralization. (That term is employed to cover all the possibilities from arrest to killing to simply assuring that the target(s) disappear from human ken.)
Having said that the Geek is of the view that one of the best uses of American intelligence capacities is to support the efforts of friendly foreign governments in counter- and ant-terrorist operations. Only in the event that the foreign government proves unable or unwilling to act upon US provided intelligence in a timely and effective manner should US assets be employed operationally.
It should go without saying that the highest priority of US intelligence should be the detection of threats directed at the US or its citizens overseas. The connections between overseas and domestic intelligence as well as between the entire intelligence community and American domestic law enforcement have been improved since 9/11. They need to be improved more as is indicated in the sub-text of the Rand study.
At home we are only as safe from the actions of a terror employing group or individual as the local police. The Geek notes with interest a large number of terror oriented groups, individuals and actions that were not investigated by the Randies but which occurred within the United States. In the overwhelming majority of these--dating back to the 1880s--local police either thwarted the threat or detected and arrested the perpetrators.
Ultimately a terror act by a non-state actor is not an act of war. It is a violation of the law, a breach of the peace. Cops exist to prevent breaches of the peace and arrest law breakers. The Randies are correct in underscoring this. We should all do the same.
The boys by Santa Monica Bay might also have demonstrated from their study of nearly a thousand terror oriented groups and their actions one salient fact. It's a fact that should make all of us feel better about life.
History shows that most terrorists are even more stupid than most crooks. If we trust the cops to deal with the second groups, we can trust them to do more about the first.
Terror? It's a crime. Not a war.
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