A Change That Might Be For The Good

The recent announcement that the Obama Administration has reversed one of George W. Bush's ill-advised decisions is more than welcome. In a move that defies rationality (that is to say one which is based on ideology) the previous neocon crew dropped US participation in the UN Human Rights Council. The Obama-ites have reversed this.

The US must be in the fray at the Human Rights Council. To do anything else is to surrender the field to the opposition. To those such as the members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference who seek to repress freedom of expression. To those such as China, Cuba and, yes, Russia, which define "human rights" in a notably narrow and self-serving fashion.

Now, for the critical caveat. The inevitable, "but."

Whether this change of policy will be good for the US and all other countries in the world with an expansive understanding of the term "human rights" or not depends upon the details of implementation. The outcome will be good, bad or indifferent depending upon the stance taken by the US in the Council as well as the personality and dynamic of the person appointed to sit in the chair behind the sign reading, "United States of America."

The UN Human Rights Council is not a place for a tender minded, ever-so-sensitive person who frets about how empathic the US is with the customs, traditions and religious sensibilities of other governments. The UNHRC is a venue in which a tough, persistent and hard-driving representative of American (and Western) values of human dignity and liberties must wage a constant fight on behalf of the ideals and their expression which are the legacy of generations of war with repression.

If the High Minded of our society are correct, if the bumper sticker philosophy of "We are all passengers on space ship Earth," is to have any significance beyond some warm fuzziness, then all of us, all members of the Order of the Belly Button must have the same rights, the same privileges, the same dignity and the same responsibilities. Further these must be defined and construed in the broadest possible way. There can be no levelling down of these aspects of human life and the human condition.

The Geek is neither High Minded nor Lofty Thinking. The study of history precludes such. He is a realpolitiker. Nonetheless both the lessons of history and the dictates of realpolitik demand that human rights are real and very broad. Anything less opens the door wide to brutal authoritarianism. The pervasiveness of great fear. The snuffing out of technological, social and political progress. It degrades life and makes for mere biological existence.

An environment in which human rights are curtailed, in which the individual is degraded, in which expression is repressed is one rife with the potential for war and all the attendant features of that all-too-common aspect of the human experience. Over the sweep of recent history the vast majority of wars, and certainly all the most devastating ones, were started by regimes which were both authoritarian and of necessity suppressive of the rights of the individual.

The US and other countries are rather good at protecting and expanding the rights of the individual in their domestic contexts. The US is good, even very good at preaching to both the choir and those sitting far from the pulpit about human rights.

The US is not very good at fighting (rhetorically that is) for rights and against those governments which seek under whatsoever color to restrict them. Now, that may change.

It may change if, and only if, the Obama Administration follows through with a firm set of policies and a very determined representative at the UNHRC. We may have to fight a very long and very difficult diplomatic and oratorical contest in that venue, but it is something we must do for our own good. And the good of the oppressed throughout the world.

"Their Views Are Primative And Unconstructive"

So said George Kennan of the Soviet Union after a stormy meeting in the Kremlin. His words were well considered then and they deserve a new employment regarding the rhetoric (and behavior) of the last Stalinist state on Earth--North Korea.

The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (as the Hermit Kingdom of the North prefers to be known) is a totally obnoxious and quite dangerous state. Both characteristics are seen plainly in the DPRK's export oriented approach to nuclear and missile technology.

"What!" You exclaim, interrupting the Geek's prolixity, "You mean it's like that line in the old Steve Martin movie...?"

Yeah, that is exactly what the Geekmo means. For the Hermit Kingdom the nuclear and missile technologies developed and developing are not mere matters of prestige, diplomacy and power, they are, as the Steve Martin character put it, "a profit deal." The WSJ ironically underscored this capitalist aspect of the communist country yesterday with a headline reading "Successful Test Will Mean Sales."

The export oriented nature of North Korea's missile and nuke programs is also highlighted by the high level Iranian delegation which will be on hand when the ICBM (oops! The Geek meant to write peaceful-communications-satellite-launch-vehicle) lifts off some time in the next ten days. Considering the rather lackluster performance of Iranian home made rockets, a purchase might be in order--if the DPRK bird gets off the ground for more than a handful of seconds.

Of course the Iranians might be in North Korea to take a dekko or two at the nuclear technology the industrious workers and peasants have developed. If, as most close observes believe to be the case, the North Koreans have weaponised their plutonium such that it can be boosted by their already extant medium range ballistic missiles, the Iranians might have a close professional interest in this as well.

True, the Iranians have gotten the big noise from their uranium enrichment program. Also true, the technology applicable to a plutonium bomb is not directly transferable to the most common design of uranium weapon, but the Tehran crew will not be plutonium deficient for that much longer considering their heavy water reactor will go power-up later this year.

Other than minerals and metallurgical products the Hermit Kingdom has little to sell. Except, that is, for military equipment and related technology. The Northerners have specialised in recent years in the export sale of high-end items particularly surface-to-surface and anti-ship missiles. And, they have sold aspects of production technology for these as well as for nuclear weapons manufacture.

As is well known the Iranians have been good, steady and reliable customers both directly and through intermediaries such as Pakistan. You bettcha, for Pongyang, the upcoming launch is "a profit deal."

The Hermit Kingdom has had little to gain long-term and much to lose by actually seeing a successful (from the US, Japanese or South Korean perspective) conclusion to the well neigh perpetual Six Power Talks. As the North Koreans (and their Chinese partners) demonstrated conclusively during the talks leading to the 1953 Armistice of the Korean War, they are masters at prolonging negotiations.

Now as back then, the Northerners have shown a positive artistry with their capacity to take full advantage of American imperatives to make a deal and get it over with.

----They are perfectly attuned to and take full advantage of the propensity of diplomats to invest ego in the progress of negotiations and the reality of the final product.

----They are highly skilled at the diplomatic version of bait-and-switch.

----They can pull an end-of-game stall that would make any NBA coach drool with envy.

----They have a capacity to wring maximum concessions for minimum payment which would make legendary American labor leaders like John L. Lewis and Walter Reuther shout with joy.

----They have an unmatched talent for ramping up apparent crises.

Consider the latest demarches from the Hermit Kingdom. The two American women of Asian ancestry who work for the New Media television outfit started by Al Gore are not only under arrest having been captured in ill-defined circumstances at the hazy Tuman River border area, now Pongyang has announced they will stand trial for "actions hostile to the state."

The language of both the announcement and the discription of the charge is quite redolent of the Soviet show trial period. So is the potential penalty. Ten years "corrective labor."

This episode is simply the first rachet up of the made-in-North Korea crisis.

The second is the reaction of the Pongyang regime to the announcement by the Japanese government that its military and naval forces were prepared to shoot down the missile should it or any part of it threaten Japanese territory. Considering that the announced flight plan will take the ICBM over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, this action is not unjustified nor is it hostile.

That is unless you're Pongyang. Then its a whole different thing.

Comes now the state controlled Korean Central News Agency. In an article today the regime trumpeted, "Should Japan dare recklessly to intercept the DPRK's satellite, its army will consider this as the start of Japan's war of reinvasion more than six decades after the end of the Second World War." Whatever that might mean or imply.

Rather than allowing the North Korean statement to pass by with the silence it deserves or dismiss it with a brusque comment in the style of Kennan, SecState Clinton made the usual blather to the effect that the North Koreans would face "consequences" should they proceed with the launch in contravention to the UN Security council resolution. Considering that the Hermit Kingdom of the North has a record of ignoring the Security Council which surpasses that of Iran, the Clinton warning has no probative value.

The launch is going to go off as scheduled. Whether this effort will be any less of a failure than its predecessor a few years ago remains to be seen. The Japanese will not attempt a shoot-down unless the emissary from across the Sea of Japan goes dangerously astray. Tokyo is no more eager for a confrontation than is the US.

Even if the rocket does a belly flop thirty seconds into flight, the Iranians will not go home empty handed and disappointed. North Korea will have shown them a technique far more useful and far more worthy of payment than a mere missile.

North Korea will have shown Tehran just how its done. How a country can successfully stave off several of the richest, most potent states of the world without the slightest penalty.

And, the Iranians are very apt students.

Are We Headed Back Into "The Big Muddy?"

The ghost of the Vietnam "quagmire" has been raised from the grave by politicians and pundits alike since President Obama announced the new American "strategy" for Afghanistan. The most cited cause for anxiety has been the lack of an "exit strategy" within the package of measures adumbrated by the president.

The shadow of the debacle in Southeast Asia hangs heavy and black over us even today thirty-four years after the last helicopter left the embassy roof. There is good reason for this. Twenty years, sixty thousand lives and gigabucks of cash bought the US the first and only clear cut defeat in its history.

For years the memory of the defeat paralysed our foreign policy. Worse, it caused self-induced amnesia in our military. Rather than a sober, harsh analysis of what we did wrong during our years of intervention, the military pretended that we would never again face the unique face of interventionary warfare. (Or to use the new, approved, if not improved, term, Overseas Contingency Operations.)

The Powell Doctrine of Gulf War fame was the epitomization of this institutional lobotomy. We would fight only with overwhelming force, a very clear goal and monolithic political support within We the People.

A few years after the quasi-victory in the Gulf, the US military undertook interventionary operations in Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia. The first was a failure due to a combination of mission creep, incorrect force package and one episode of disastrously wrong tactics. The second was short and successful as long as one does not look closely at the days after the initial success of inducing the condemned regime to leave office. The third was a success because it relied primarily upon the use of airpower to accomplish a limited end.

In short, none of the three "Overseas Contingency Operations" either allowed or encouraged the US military at the highest command levels to evaluate closely and carefully the nature of prolonged interventionary operations, particularly those which, like our effort in Vietnam, involved counterinsurgency. The crew in and around the Oval Office were even more clueless with respect to the realities of intervention than the military.

Seven years of on-the-job training has given the military a far better understanding of counterinsurgency than it has possessed institutionally at any time since the late 1930s when the Marine Corps issued its justly famed Small Wars Manual. The experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan finally linked with the resurrected historical consciousness of the US involvement in the Wars of Vietnam to produce a doctrine which is both relevant to counterinsurgency and generally accepted now on the basis of the successes in Iraq.

The approach outlined by President Obama indicates that the painfully won understandings of counterinsurgency and interventionary operations have penetrated the highest levels of government. The Obamians are not going to repeat the gross errors of either SecDef "Shock-and-Awe" Rumsfeld or cringe behind the parapet of the Powell Doctrine.

As in Vietnam the US military has two main jobs to perform simultaneously. Defeat enemy main force units in the field. Train, equip and support indigenous military and security forces to finish the job and keep the joint quiet after we leave.

There is a danger hiding in these two tensely cooperative tasks. The danger is simple to see, easy to describe but difficult to avoid in practice.

The danger is that US and allied forces will tell the locals, "Out of the way, little guy, we'll do the job."

This attitude of explicit superiority in Vietnam assured that the South Vietnamese army (ARVN) would stand aside, let us do the heavy lifting and not until it was too late take up the burden of war with effectiveness. We came close to doing the same in Iraq, but narrowly avoided falling over the edge.

By keeping a residual presence in Iraq for some time yet, the US will go a long way to assuring that when the indigenous forces finally have the full load they will not collapse under the strain. This is one reason that a clearly announced exit strategy is inappropriate at this time. We can have no idea when the Afghan military and police forces will be up to the task of unaided defense.

Provided the US and allied militaries avoid the impatience driven get-out-of-our-way,-indige, there is every reason to believe that the tasks of breaking the back of the Taliban/al-Qaeda main forces is possible (even if not highly probable) while laying the basis for a tolerably effective Afghan National Force. Accomplishing the second job is important only because it provides necessary political and diplomatic cover for leaving the area after having assured that Taliban and al-Qaeda are denied the chance to claim military victory and present a threat to the US.

The assorted "nation-building" aspects of the Obama Strategy are to be applauded if and only if they are implemented as tools for demobilising support from Taliban and remobilising it to the central government or assuring the uncommitted majority of the population that the government will and can act to both insure peace and promote domestic welfare. The problem is one of implementation.

And, that is one big damn problem.

The problem resides in a well-documented historical reality. People charged with the non-military aspects, the "nation-building" components of counterinsurgency, tend to come with High Minded agendas which rarely, if ever, fit well with the realities of the human terrain, its history, its values, customs, traditions, its fears, hopes and needs. It is even more rare that the agendas of the non-military advisers fit with the grim and harsh requirements of military counterinsurgency.

The historical landscape of the American intervention in Vietnam is littered with civil affairs, nation-building and related programs which served ultimately to fracture the coherency of the war fighting efforts of the US while furthering the political rivalries and corruption which served as an ultimately fatal form of political pernicious anemia for the government of South Vietnam. A set of similar dynamics can be seen blighting our stability oriented efforts in other venues. That includes Iraq.

The endgame of successful counterinsurgency often, but not always, includes some form of power sharing between the government and the insurgents. The precise nature of the final arrangement cannot be seen until after it has emerged. But, it is critical to understand that whatever the final form power sharing might take, it arises organically from the historical soil of the society at large as well as the experiences of the indigenous belligerents. It cannot--must not--be imposed by any external intervenor no matter how High Minded.

The folks with the "nation-building" portfolio seem to have a far more difficult time understanding this fact of historical life than the grunts and those who command them. The documents from previous US interventionary operations as well as those of other countries such as France and the UK indicate this results from the civil uplift types having a greater certainty that their views are correct, ordained On High as it were. In contrast, the hairy chested guys who spend tours in the mud, sand and mountain sides have a more realistic view of those they must fight and those in whose midst they operate.

As long as the Obama administration keeps its collective eye on the central prize--the stated goal of defeating Taliban and al-Qaeda as a threat to the US and its allies (at least in the short- to mid-term) and keeps a tight rein on the "nation-builders," there is a good to very good chance that the US will achieve its minimum necessary strategic goal within the next two or three years. If, however, the people on the non-military side of the team slip the leash and pursue agendas of uplift, Westernization and similar, there is no chance that the "Big Muddy" will be avoided.

You no doubt have noticed that no reference has been made of Pakistan, of the FATA.

"Yer right, Geek. What gives? Chicken?"

No, good buddy, not chicken. Just prudent. Pakistan is a whole different problem. It was not really addressed in the Obama Strategy. That's a subject for another post.

Challenges, Challenges And Even More Challenges

The foreign challenges are coming to President Obama thicker and faster than Joe Biden's cracked crystal ball forecast during the election campaign. Obama is not enjoying the six months without a major challenge which Verbose Joe predicted.

It goes almost without saying that the international community of wolves is circling the American wagon as it sits in the global desert with the mules dead or dying and the wheels threatening to crack off. Of course this is to be expected.

If there is anything every ruling elite--friend and foe alike--enjoys, it is the prospect of kicking the corpse of Uncle Sam. Joy at American weakness and distress is and has been for beaucoup years a feature of international politics. This time the long knives are sharper and the grins of anticipation more vulpine than usual as a direct result of the ill-advised arrogance of George W. Bush's focus on unilateralism.

George W. had the hubris. Now governments and leaders from countries great and small see themselves as a species of nemesis.

It has been a mort of years since the US appeared both so powerless and so challenged on the world stage. The last time the wolfpack formed was during the years of the Ford and Carter administrations.

The US, shaken by the debacle of the War in Vietnam and the fallout of the Great Watergate Caper, was also rocked by a combination of inflation and flat economic growth. The lackluster administrations of two less than dynamic presidents stood by watching with evident helplessness as countries and conditions hostile to our national and strategic interests prevailed, expanded and developed around the world from Latin America to Africa, to Asia, and to the Mideast and the Persian Gulf.

To paraphrase the lyrics of one form of the "Bug Out Boogie" from the Korean War, "Hear the patter of tiny feet/That's the USA in full retreat."

Tongue-tied, knee-knocking and naval-gazing, We the People and our government watched the wolves dine at our expense and worried not about the ultimate costs. There were even those among us--academics, pundits and others of the High Minded caste--who argued that the world was better off without our active participation. We were just too dirty for our filth not to rub off on the pure innocence of the ayatollahs, commissars and tin-plated dictators who were running rampant.

Within the elites of our allies in Western Europe there was much nodding of agreeing heads. The smiles of joy in our suffering were discretely concealed behind lofty talk of multi-polar politics and the end of the American "hegemony." The Japanese went further than that. They went out not only to buy as much of the US as possible, at least one major figure went so far as to allege that we deserved our diplomatic and economic ruination because the Americans were a mixed race, mongrel people.

Now the scene is replaying with some difference in detail.

The major features are unchanged. The US is undergoing severe economic problems. (The Geek is a historian so he will pass on the key question of whether the assorted expenditure programs undertaken and proposed will ameliorate or exacerbate the underlying problem.) As a result of this, every foreign policy test must be viewed through the distorting lens of domestic worry over the economy as well as the magnifying glass created by the enormous debt which the US must foist off on foreign investors.

The unnecessarily prolonged war in Afghanistan and its apparent failure to date has served to severely undercut the potential deterrent effect of US military capacities. The undercutting has in no way been alleviated by the mixed (to put it kindly) results today in Iraq.

Regardless of what the High Minded and Lofty Thinking might wish to be the case, a credible capacity to coerce is a foundation of effective diplomacy. As the knowledgeable realpolitiker Joe Stalin knew when he famously inquired when advised that the Catholic Church opposed Soviet ambitions in Eastern Europe, "How many divisions does the Pope have?"

It will take more, much more than a new strategy for Afghanistan,no matter how correctly focused, or tough talk on Face the Nation to convince states hostile to our interests that they should take our diplomatic demarches seriously. From the perspective of hostile capitals such as Tehran, Pyongyang, Beijing or even Moscow, the hoary characterisation once offered by Chairman Mao regarding the US is accurate today. (That characterisation should you not remember it was "paper tiger.")

The utter absence of any perceived will and capacity on the part of the US to effectively coerce is seen quite blatantly with the North Koreans. While supported in its diplomacy by Japan and South Korea (and in a semi-hemi-demi way by China and Russia), the US effort to abate the North Korean nuclear program including its proliferation component and long-range missile ancillary has been a notable failure.

The Hermit Kingdom of the North has been successfully rattling Uncle Sam's cage off and on for over a decade. The rattling has become increasingly intense of late. The up-coming "satellite" launch is one facet of this. Another is the seizure of two Asian descent American women journalists near the vague border on the Tuman River separating China and North Korea.

The best that the US can offer now as the countdown clock ticks and interrogators of the NKPA intelligence operation question the two women is silence on the second matter and the position advanced by SecDef Gates that more economic sanctions rather than shooting down the "illegal" missile should it get off the ground is the preferred option. Admittedly the Hermit Kingdom has proven itself remarkably impervious to outside pressures or inducements, but that is still no justification for ruling out the shoot-down option.

However, the route of going to the UN Security Council for a specific authorisation to abate the missile as an action compatible with previous UNSC actions is not much better than a mud road. The probability of gaining (or cozening) support from the other Permanent Members is nil. For this the US can thank the misuse of Security Council procedures by the Bush administration with respect to Iraq.

The success of North Korea in cocking a snoot at the US is an encouragement for Tehran. As if the mullahocracy needed any. The sanction regime has proven painful to people in Iran but bootless as regards the Iranian nuclear effort.

US posturing over the Iranian support of Hamas and Hezbollah has been even less effective. Our close ally, the UK, has gone right ahead and started diplomatic conversations with Hezbollah in Lebanon arguing with the usual British bland face that there is a meaningful distinction between the military (terrorist according to the US, EU and UN) and political portions of Hezbollah.

This do-it-my-way approach simply reflects the position taken by assorted European governments regarding the sanctions against Iran. Economic considerations trump the sanction regime. Anyway, what can the US do about it?

Americans historically have evinced an irrational desire to be loved throughout the world. We have fretted and engaged in mental masturbation when our desire for affection is unrequited, or, worse, rejected. For some reason even intelligent, well-educated Americans seem to believe that nation-states should be like individual people equipped with the same emotional suite and capacity for empathy of an individual. We speak of "friends" in the international context in a way identical to that with which we talk of our friends next door or at work.

Get a grip! Nation-states do not have emotions of the human sort even though they are comprised of and run by people. Although when warped international politics can become all too personal, by and large the slogan "the personal is the political" is as wrong in foreign affairs as a cat barking.

States have interests. Diplomacy works in one of two ways. It finds coinciding interests which can be developed, widened or exchanged. Or, it uses coercion. At root all diplomatic coercion depends for its success on the existence of a credible will and capacity to employ military force as the ultimate argument.

Appeals to past relations, to loyalty, even to shared domestic values are not useful tools in diplomacy. For the US to succeed in safe guarding its national and strategic interests, it is essential that we abandon any notion of personal feelings, love or hatred.

Instead, even in the present economic crisis (or perhaps it is more accurate to say, because of the current global economic mess) the US needs to do several things. We must do them fast. Before the wolves and sharks of the globe strike.

Define and achieve a consensus among the politically articulate as to the nature and extent of US national and strategic interests. Pursue those interests coherently employing all the instruments of national power. Remember that coercion is a legitimate part of a coherent strategy. Remember that coercion of all sorts rests upon the existence of a believable will to employ a demonstrably competent military force.

How's Your Spanish?

If your grip on Spanish of the Central American-Mexican variety isn't good, you had best get to work on it. There is still time to master the tongue. But (you knew this was coming, right?) from the perspective of Mexico City, not too many days or maybe minutes. Those lads seem to be in a heck of hurry or muy pronto, if you prefer.

Consider a couple of recent articles from the Mexico City press. The first is from Excelsior and was published a couple of days ago. According to the report the full assembly of the Chamber of Deputies has passed what they term a "Point of Accord" in which the sense of the Chamber is conveyed to the Foreign Minister.

To put the thrust of the Point of Accord bluntly but not unfairly, the Chamber wants the ForMin to work with dispatch toward the less-than-modest goal of convincing the US to "regularise" the status and "end human rights violations of migrants now living and working in the US." Unpacking this demand makes it read as a Mexican version of President Reagan's famed call at the Berlin Wall, "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

Among those speaking in favor of the Point of Accord was Edmundo Ramirez Martinez, chairman of the Population, Borders and Migratory Affairs Committee. This politico is perturbed by the US attempts to control its own borders. Or at least that which is presumed to divide the US from Mexico.

He pulled out the rhetorical stops and put the tongue's pedal to the metal with a luscious rhetorical fusilade.

"We regard with concern some of the statements of Secretary Janet Napolitano, in which she sets forth that the militarization of the border would be to bring the end of organized crime on the border, because in these statements she continues to associate the issue of migration with that of security. The Mexicans who work there are not terrorists and for that reason we have stated this to North American congressmen with great concern"

A fine counterpoint to the Mexican position was reported the same day by El Universal. The leaders of several Central American countries were having a high level palaver in Managua. The president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, was reported to have said, “to emigrate is a human right and not a crime and we’re going to ask him that the issue of migrants be removed from the security agenda and that it be moved to the development agenda.” By context it is evident that the "him" referred to was Vice-President Biden. Why the veep and not the Prexy, the Geek knoweth not.

If you put the two reports together you get a good view of the policy direction not only in Mexico but in the republics of Central American generally. The policy might be characterised as "Cross the line and you're home free, compadre."

The governments down south have some strange ideas about the nature and character of borders as well as a nation's right to control those borders. One cannot help but note the robustness of Mexico's efforts to prohibit, or at least limit, "undocumented" movement across its southern border. The same pattern can be noticed with each and every of the CentAm countries.

The Geek can well understand the internal forces at work in Mexico and the others. Honduras, for example, is a very poor country with an official exchange rate GDP for 2008 of 13.78 billion dollars which is significantly less than the same year's "GDP" of the Mexican drug rings which is conservatively estimated at twenty billion bucks. With a per capita income of less than four kilobucks, it is easy to see why the Honduran president would love to see wide open American borders.

Honduras' per capita income is less than Guatemala's $5,400 or El Salvador's $6,400 and far behind the $11,900 of Costa Rica. While the newspaper was silent on the matter, the Geek has to wonder whether President Daniel Ortega who presides over an economy so pathetic that the per capita GDP is even lower than that of Honduras seconds the opinion that the US must open its borders to all comers from down south.

The US has no obligation to become the hemispheric sump for all those millions who are economic refugees. That is a given. While any number of employers have been and continue to be eager for very low paid undocumented workers, this is no reason for the US to drop impediments to free flow "migration" (to use the term preferred by the Mexican and CentAm governmental elites.)

The basic concept of the nation-state depends upon two conditions being met: Defined borders is one. Control of movement across the borders is the other.

The nation-state is a political reality which has existed as a bulwark against the unrestricted movement of peoples. While many High Minded sorts in academia and other (usually) harmless enclaves have long decried the existence of the nation-state as the fount of all wars and related icky-poo aspects of the human experience, the nation-state is not dead. It isn't even on life support.

The representatives of the nation-states which signed and ratified the various international conventions which define the movement of people as a "human right" had as their stated intent the removal of all barriers to the exit of people from a country. The President of Honduras should have been aware of this. Honduras is a signatory to the relevant agreements.

Nowhere is there any reference to "free" or "unrestricted" entrance to any nation-state. The US along with Mexico or Honduras has an absolute right under international law and convention to place restrictions of whatsoever nature on the right of entrance. Indeed, any and every state has an affirmative duty to restrict entrance when that is in the best interests of the indigenous population.

Admission of foreigners to a nation-state is an act of national self-interest or, on occasion, an act of international mercy. If the political elites of Mexico or other CentAm states want to see more of their "surplus" citizens admitted into the US, it is necessary to demonstrate how this is in the American national interest or how it is a fit matter for mercy.

This implies that Mexico and others must engage in the usual game of diplomatic horse trading. There must be a quid for the pro quo of admitting or regularising the status of their citizens.

This means simply that it is up to Mexico and Honduras and the others to make an offer that we can't refuse. Give the US government and We the People a reason to let more and more inhabitants of the Lands Down South to come here, perhaps to stay.

The Geek has a suggestion to make to Mexico. Open your oil fields to American investment and development. Not only will that help Mexico's economy it will benefit the US. Benefits deserve a bit of reciprocity. Say, something like an easier course to regularization and a reduction of ICE raids in the workplace.

The Geek knows the suggestion won't fly with the ever-so-tetchy nationalists of Mexico. But, without something along the lines of the exchange of money for people, there will be no ready solution that is minimally acceptable on both sides of the Great Fence of the South.

The World--The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Well, war fans, Coach Obama has announced the new game plan for the Afghanistan venue. As a hot wash, it looks good. At least it has all the features widely touted by a counterinsurgency specialist at all the US military schools ten and more years ago.

According to the model presented back then, an insurgency had several major components. All of them had to be addressed with effect if the battle for the human terrain was to be won by the counterinsurgents.

The starting point of the model was simply that most people in an insurgent environment simply want to be left alone, left in peace to do their own thing, raise their children and hope for a better life in the future. That starting condition is met in Afghanistan.

Focusing on the insurgent force(s) the model posited three circles, nested one inside the other.

The outer, largest circle was the passive mass support base, people who were willing to cooperate with the insurgents as long as doing so required minimal risk.

The next circle was the active mass support base. This group provided direct, material support to the insurgency including fighters both full and part-time.

Finally there was the hard core insurgents. The full-time, fiercely dedicated militants who were ready and able to give their all to achieve the goal of the insurgency.

On the counterinsurgent side the circles were equal and opposite. The government had its own hard core, its own active mass support base and an outer fringe of passive supporters.

Surrounding both sets of circles was the majority of the population. The ever present people in the middle whose support and allegiance or at least tacit acceptance would be necessary to final victory by either side.

The new strategy announced by President Obama contains features which are explicitly directed to the overlapping tasks of killing the hard core insurgents, demobilizing support from the insurgent active and passive mass support base and seeking to attract members of the uncommitted majority to the government's passive (and it is to be hoped, active) mass support base. This is precisely the approach which should have been taken by "shock-and-awe" delusionist Rumsfeld and the rest of the neocon ninnies at the get-go seven plus years ago.

(That assessment is given with the predicate that for domestic political reasons and to placate the sensitivities of High Minded Western Europeans, the US had rejected the rational approach of a punitive expedition which would have been quick, dirty, conclusive and left Afghanistan as it was found--a collection of tribes in uneasy coexistence open to Pakistani hegemony.)

The Obama strategy kind of, sort of addresses the sanctuary problem. Doing something effective with the FATA is absolutely essential if the US is going to achieve the necessary strategic minimum of abating the threat of transnational terror acts planned and commanded from that region.

Cross-border sanctuaries bedeviled the US throughout the War in Vietnam. Bombing raids and cross-border incursions never settled the problem and, arguably, enhanced them. The use of deep penetration special operations forces including indigeneous but American led paramilitary groups provided the start of a solution but were never carried out for sufficient duration with sufficient forces.

The single largest swamp of doubt in the Obama strategy is the will and capacity of Pakistan to work with positive results to end the insurgency in the FATA. So far there is no indication that Islamabad either understands the counterinsurgency model outlined above or, if it does, has both the will and capacity to at accordingly.

The Pakistani military and paramilitary forces have undertaken any number of highly visible operations in the FATA but without noticable effect. The sweeps have generated refugees and resentments in wholesale quantities which has (if history is a guide) benefited the insurgents and only the insurgents.

The "peace" agreements recently concluded with "moderate" Islamists are not any sign of Islamabad demobilizing support for the Taliban insurgents. The men who signed on behalf of the "moderate" Islamists are themselves neither moderate nor pro-status quo. The groups which hold sway now in Swat and areas of the FATA are totalists in pursuit of the same ends as the trigger-pullers and suicide vest wearers. Identity of ends implies identity of interests, identity of support for Islamism and identity of opposition to the current regime.

Without Pakistan as a full and effective collaborator in the border area, the US in Afghanistan is in the same position as it was with relationship to Cambodia and Laos during the War in Vietnam. The insurgents and their external supporters have both base areas and lines of supply readily available on soil controlled by ineffectual or pro-insurgent governments.

Overall, the preliminary assessment of Coach Obama's new game plan must be mixed. It does not have a real thrust to the sanctuary conundrum. It is very good on paper in the pure counter insurgency component. But, paper ain't practice. And, there is a very wide and deep gulf of difficulty between the words on paper and the doings in the field.

So much for the "good." Now for the "bad."

The International Criminal Court (ICC) tops the list of the bad today. This creation of the High Minded and Lofty Thinking legalists of Europe and elsewhere has shown once more (if such needed to be demonstrated yet again) that High Minded behavior that ignores the messy realities of human activity automatically invokes the Law of Unintended Consequences. Take a dekko--

Omar Bahsir has cocked a snoot at the ICC and the High Minded generally with his recent trips. True, he has been properly cautious flying only to countries coterminous with Sudan. (The first real, albeit theoretical risk will come when and if Omar jets off to Doha for the Arab League get together.)

The Trips of Omar have not been intended nor have they served simply to make a rude gesture toward the ICC. They have been intended to underscore the degree of antipathy held by the African Union and, more to the point, the Arab League for the ICC issued arrest warrant. They also serve to ramp up the pressure on the UN Security Council to suspend the warrant.

The Tribulations of Omar have had the unintended consequence of highlighting the alleged "double standard" held by the West regarding presumed violations perpetrated by the IDF in Gaza. This argument will gain great force with the accusations currently hurled at Israel regarding the actions of its forces during Operation Cast Lead.

Then, of course, the ICC action put the refugees of Darfur squarely in the cross hairs. The ejection of major international aid groups and other subsequent actions by Omar Bashir's regime were both predictable and (in the eyes of the regime) justified. Considering that the regime has shown itself quite willing to see the population of Darfur die in large numbers, there is no reason to believe that it will suddenly turn tender in its affections for the displaced and mal-treated Muslims of the predominantly black refugee population.

There is also no reason to believe that threats to hold Bashir responsible for the consequences of the ejection of aid workers such as were made by SecState Clinton prior to her we-feel-your-pain visit to Mexico will have any useful effect. How many arrest warrants can the ICC issue on one man? How many new charges can it bring? What difference will that make?

The ICC and its High Minded backers are definitely "bad" on this issue. One can only hope that the Security Council will bring some political sanity to the matter. That would be "good."

And now, the "ugly."

Seeing the "ugly" in international affairs in the past few days isn't as hard as it seems. The UN Human Rights Council runs away with the title.

And, why is that?

By a vote of 23-11 with 13 abstentions, the foes of free expression and those of a cowardly disposition passed the measure long pushed by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference which seeks to ban something called "defamation of religion."

The relevant language reads, "Defamation of religion is a serious affront to human dignity leading to a restriction on the freedom of adherents and inciting religious violence." Zeroing in on the real deal, the resolution continues, "Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism."

Oy veh! The chutzpah of the OIC is nothing short of overwhelming. Either that or the panjandrums of the group are living in an alternative reality. While the resolution has no binding effect and similar language has been removed from the draft outcome document for Durban II, this exercise in Orwellian distortion and speech suppression is nonetheless the nose of the camel in the tent of the West.

There are already misguided public opinion molders and political figures in Western countries such as the goo-brained Canadian whose name the Geek gags at writing who have honestly (?) argued that religions and their adherents deserve special protection lest sensitivities be irritated. By this reasoning (if that word is accurate) the British medical journal Lancet deserves severe castigation for having editorially accused Pope Benedict XVI of having "publicly distorted science" in his recent remarks regarding the non-utility of condoms in preventing HIV infection.

Hey, the Pope likes cats. He's gotta be a sensitive sort of guy, right? And, his religious postulates regarding sexual conduct are a matter of Church doctrine. He and they have been defamed within the scope of the wording adopted by the Human Rights Council.

Suppressing speech, expression generally, inquiry, are all ugly. Almost as ugly as shouting, "Allahu akbar" while flying an aircraft into a building, pushing the clicker on a suicide vest while in a mosque or stoning, burning or beheading women. But, the Geek can't write that, given that Islam is "defamed" by his words.

Right. Fer sure, dudes.

Attack Of The Killer Bots

Science fiction writers back in the Fifties and Sixties wrote a number of high quality yarns dealing with the notion of autonomous, lethal robots as the primary war fighters of the future. While none had the planet-busting capacities imputed to Gort in the classic flick, Day the Earth Stood Still, these fictive creations were impressively deadly.

Continuing the trajectories of the past seven or so years modestly into the future as the fine folks at the Defense Research Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) and other components of the DoD's research and development community (which collective the Geek refers to as Weapons Advanced Research Investigations Group or WARPIG) are tasked to do, it is evident that reality will have caught up with sci-fi by 2015 at the latest. The people in the air-conditioned control facility in Nevada running Predators and Reapers on the other side of the Earth will be as obsolescent as the eyeball only forward controllers of past years and wars.

The High Minded Deep Thinkers of the Legal War variety are already in a tizzy over the potential of gun and missile slinging autonomous killerbots roving the earth below and the sky above looking for someone to kill, something to blow up. These academic and jurisprudential types are fretting over the prospect that without a human in the loop, future wars will of necessity be cluttered by heaps of dead non-combatants and piles of ruins which were previously hospitals, orphanages and religious facilities.

The techno-wonks reply, "Pashaw!" They argue that properly written programs will prevent such targeting errors. They add that killerbots will lack the emotions which cloud human decision making.

The Geek is not competent to comment on programming matters. He is, however, qualified by both experience and study to acknowledge that in contact, in a firefight, after being covered by slime which a moment ago was one's buddy's brains, cool and rational thought is impaired, the emotions run high and the right index finger can twitch with wild abandon.

The techo types finally argue that the pace of some combat operations such as air-to-air contact is simply too rapid for slow human mental processes. Besides, they contend, autonomous systems typified by the Navy's Phalanx Close-In Weapons System have been in use for years without controversy.

The Geek finds nothing wrong with these two contentions.

However, both the techos and the war ethicists miss a critical point. They both show a lack of understanding as to the nature and character of war. This point was also missed by the science fiction writers of past decades.

War is waged in order to force one side to submit to the policy dictates of the other. Both sides are pursuing a political end by violent means. In the eyes of each belligerent, the political goal represents a better state of peace. They can't both be right. The gods of battle determine which will prevail.

War is at root a contest not simply of arms and armies but of political will, of determination, of the capacity to endure regardless of sacrifice, regardless of misery, regardless of bloodshed and destruction. It is a contest between humans and the material agencies they create.

Historically war between enemies of equal technological capacity and levels of organisational complexity has ended either in an inconclusive stalemate or in the obliteration of one combatant's forces in the field, political will and social cohesion. Wars between belligerents which are not relatively equal in industrial/technological capacities and political/social organisational complexity have ended when one side loses political will and quits.

The only exceptions to that general statement have come when the "winning" side has such an abundance of material and human resources as well as a very high level of political will that the war ends with the total subjugation of the loser. The best, most recent examples of this are the vast number of colonial wars waged across North and South America, Africa and Asia during the Fifteenth to Nineteenth Centuries.

Importantly, no war--that's right--no war has been a contest between materiel per se. No country has been defeated simply through the destruction of materiel and physical plant. Not the Confederate States. Not Germany in either World War. Not even Japan even after the US Air Forces had leveled square mile after square mile of every Japanese urban industrial center.

People continue wars because men of their side die in combat. In a very real sense every war reaches a stage where the dead dictate policy. Where the collective political voice of a nation demands that their dead shall not have died in vain.

People end wars because enough folks on their side have died. Because the fear and loathing of death and destruction become more powerful than the initial commitment to the goal of the war or even the belief that the dead shall not have died in vain.

When the course of political will is tracked in every war of the modern (and now the so called post-modern) period, there is a direct link between combat deaths and, first, an increase in determination, followed by a progressive enervation of political will until terminal war weariness sets in.

In short, wars are not some sort of high-tech, high-expense form of chess. Without the up-close and personal human involvement in war, there can be no outcome. Not even semi-permanent closure of hostilities.

A war waged in whole or in major part by autonomous killer robots would, at the very best, resemble the limited wars of the Eighteenth Century in Europe. The wars were limited in death. Very limited in destruction. And, very, very inconclusive. As a result wars followed one another like circus elephants in trunk-to-tail procession.

Not until the wars of the French Revolution did war become a bloody, human contest with goals beyond the adjustment of boundaries or the satisfaction of royal egos. Then and only then did war once again become a struggle of political wills with genuine and long lasting results--including, it must be added, the cause of future wars.

Even the limited war in support of policy (or as it now called "overseas contingency operations") is at root a contest of political will. For Americans this kind of war, the most common it should be noted, is particularly difficult to understand and fight. We have a particular horror of casualties, particularly those of the fatal sort, so we bend our abilities to the task of winning while saving American lives.

There is nothing wrong with desiring to save the maximum number of American lives. The Geek is all in favor of that. With one proviso.

If, in the attempt to limit American exposure to risk, the US forces fight in a way which fails to undercut the opponent's political will, the war will drag on and on without an end in sight. There will be no better state of peace emerging.

OK, to err on the side of accuracy, there is another proviso, but it is linked to the first. If the US wages war in the wrong way or uses the wrong weapons, the very fact of doing so will strengthen the enemy's political will to resist. This is particularly true when the war is, to the Americans, a mere limited effort in support of some policy, and, to the enemy, it is an existential war or a war of transcendent significance.

The war currently being waged in Afghanistan and (in pertinent part) the FATA of Pakistan is such a war. For us it is merely an excursion in policy and punishment. For the Islamist jihadists of the target area, it is a war which is both existential and transcendent.

Our stand-off way of fighting can and has inflicted casualties on the enemy. It has killed key leadership cadre members.

But (here it comes again, the big "but") it has not undercut political will. Indeed, more than adequate information exists to support the contention that the remote control Predator and Reaper operations like air delivered death generally has been defined by potential targets as pusillanimous at best. They hold us in contempt for the way we fight.

You don't win by machines breaking machines. You don't win by machines merely killing people. You don't win by killing people. You win by killing political will within a group.

This means some must be killed. But, they have to be killed in the right way. Killer robots are not and never will be able to fill that mission.

What's Up With The Overseas Contingency Operations?

Yes, that is the new, improved and more-or-less officially approved term for the old Global War on Terror. Let's say it all together now, "Overseas Contingency Operations."

Good. Very good, even.

While lacking drama the new bureaucratic term has the advantage of being more accurate than the phrase it replaces. True, the Geek being a traditionalist prefers the long passe, Interventionary operations, but, what the hey? It is time for a change.

More change is required than simple alterations in the Official Lexicon. Of these, three stand out as being particularly time sensitive. In order of importance these are:

1.) Deciding just what our operations are directed for or against,

2.) Determining the goal of our contingency operation in Afghanistan,

3.) Assuring that our withdrawal from Iraq is both orderly and effective.

The complication?

As is (or should be) self-evident the three tasks are tightly joined. No single one can be addressed with effect without considering the impact on the other two.

Throughout the past eight years there has been a nearly impenetrable fog surrounding the nature and character of our strategic goals in the two totally disconnected wars we have been waging. That fundamental intellectual and policy flaw has prevented any chance of formulating a unified goal. It has prevented an effective and proper definition of the "enemy" against which our operations are directed.

Of all the mistakes and blunders committed by the W. Bush administration, the largest and most serious was that of falsely linking the punitive expedition against al-Qaeda and its accessory Taliban with the invasion of Iraq. From that flows all the other contradictions, confusions and conundrums of US strategy (if that is the right word) over the past seven plus years.

Since the pressure of high visibility combat operations in Iraq has been removed, the time has come to determine just what the enemy is now. Is the enemy the armed fighters in Afghanistan? Does the enemy include the combatants in Pakistan? Or, as some have argued for years, is the enemy the large and somewhat amorphous mass falling under the term "jihadist?" Does the enemy include all Islamists who pursue the totalistic goal of imposing Sharia in countries where that is not now the case?

How the enemy is defined controls what the political goal toward which the instruments of national power including lethal military capacities will be directed. That in turn serves to define not only "victory" but the markers which help measure progress toward the goal. The definition of the enemy also helps to determine how and where armed force should or must be employed in order to achieve the political goal.

This necessary first step was never undertaken by the previous administration. Now, despite the breather provided by the slackening of combat operations in Iraq, it seems that the Obama administration is too concerned with defining trees to stand back and demarcate the forest.

If this continues there is every possibility that the Obama administration will not see any greater success than did its predecessor. Where the Bush regime saw the seemingly successful end to the Iraq invasion, the Obama crew may see an end to combat operations in Afghanistan. Neither has nor will do anything to insure the long term national security and strategic interests of the US.

If the goal in Afghanistan is, as at least some of the President's remarks seem to indicate, the eradication of any base of terrorist operations in that country, then the US and its allies must focus exclusively on killing al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters, commanders and members of its active mass support base. There is no requirement for any "nation-building."

So far, all the effort and money placed into the "nation-building" side of the massive efforts in Afghanistan have not produced a pay off commensurate with the expense. Or, such is the conclusion of the congressionally mandated special inspector-general, Arnold Fields. The thirty-two gigabucks have been in large measure blown away for no useful purpose.

True, in light of the proposed budget the money is not even up to the chump change level. What is important is that its expenditure past, present and proposed underscores the lack of strategic or even tactical focus which has, is and will bedevil our efforts to defeat Taliban et al on the ground.

One solution is to turn over "nation-building" to an amphyctony of the High Minded, kick in our fair share of the money and get on with the key task of militarily defeating Taliban et al. That job is big enough. But, unlike the vision of constructing a nation-state out of the tribal and linguistic morass called Afghanistan, it is achievable.

Arguably, the task of defeating Taliban in Afghanistan cannot be accomplished without defeating Taliban in Pakistan. That contention is explicit in the geographic, demographic and political realities on the ground. There are two ways to include Pakistan in the goals of our "contingency operation" in Afghanistan.

The first is direct. This implies not only continuing with our Predator and Reaper attacks in the FATA (and beyond if necessary) but adding in special operation and American controlled and directed paramilitary units as well. Of course, the direct route has the strong potential of further destabilization of the current Pakistani government. Running that increased risk requires as a foundation a clear definition of who we are fighting--and for what goal.

The second approach to the Pakistani complication is the indirect. At root that means continuing what we have been doing in providing support to the Pakistani government and military but, hopefully, doing this with greater benefit. The state of play in Pakistan whether from a political or a demographic perspective gives no great ground for optimism. No strong reason that the indirect approach will work one whit better in the future than it has in the past.

Pakistan is heavily polluted by Islamist ideology. The Pakistani military, intelligence service, much of the government and many within the population have been, are and will continue to be focused on India. Islam, including the Islamist variant, has always been and will continue to be the single definer of Pakistan in relation to its Sub-continent neighbor. Afghanistan, as the Geek has argued before, constitutes part of Pakistan's strategic depth. So also do the Muslim populated Central Asian Republics.

The notion of an "Islamabad Caliphate" holding sway over these areas makes a great deal of sense to more than a few in the command circles of the Pakistani military, intelligence sevice and government. It would not be an unwelcomed development to the indigeneous Islamists of Swat, the FATA and elsewhere in the state.

This underlying reality is critical to any decision broadening the definition of enemy to include the Islamist jihadists of Pakistan. Still, if the overall national security goal of the US and other countries is the elimination of sanctuaries for those contemplating acts of transnational terror, Pakistan is even more critical than Afghanistan.

Once again the identity of the enemy tells you where, how and why to fight him. It also tells you what the goal and definition of victory must be.

We are at the point of more-or-less declaring "victory" in the unnecessary "contingency operation" in Iraq. The violence is down. Way down.

(Last week the central morgue in Baghdad reported no unidentified corpses were recovered from the city streets for the first time since the US invasion. Two years ago, the daily count reached nearly two hundred.)

There is a government in place. It is functioning--sort of. A number of critical issues of governance, economics and infrastructure are not being addressed with dispatch and effect. The reconstruction effort is far from complete even though the US flooded the place with greenbacks and Iraq floats on an ocean or two of oil.

Still paying the price for the years of Saddamist repression and US sponsored total confusion, Iraqi bureaucrats and technocrats lack the skill or personal authority to make decisions, get projects underway and completed or perform other critical functions. For similar reasons the security situation while greatly improved is still far from one of tranquility.

And, the long shadow of Iran hangs like the smoke of an oilfield fire over Iraq.

The US and Iraq are committed to the extraction of US forces. The exact timing is still unclear given that the Iraqi people are going to vote on the matter in a couple of months. But, in any event the overwhelming bulk of our troops both combat and support will be gone in well under two years.

If we take history as our guide (think South Vietnam after 1973) once our forces leave, they ain't ever coming back. While a frank Iranian attack would be sufficient to assure our return to the area, anything less overt will not pull our national trigger.

As W. Bush finally admitted in the last days of his administration, what will come about in Iraq may not be "all" or even, (the Geek adds) anything of what we hoped for in March 2003. So be it. Short of an outrage such as an Iranian invasion we and the world will be stuck with whatever the Iraqis create in the months and years to come.

That includes the potential of another Islamist jihadist sponsoring regime. This will demand once more that we define the enemy.

Even the most broad definition of enemy does not include Islam per se or Muslims generally. The most expansive definition conceivable in the real world is that the enemy is the Islamist: the Muslim who pursues the goal of establishing Sharia by force, threat of force or political subversion. A more narrow yet still realistic definition of enemy is the jihadist: the persons or groups which seek to employ open or clandestine violence in pursuit of an Islamist goal.

The narrowest definition is that of meeting a specific threat. The enemy is defined simply and solely as the person or group seeking to undertake or which has undertaken a specific action against the domestic peace or strategic interests of the US.

This narrow definition could be further refined by goal. Will our "contingency operation" be preventative in goal? Disruptive? Or will it be reactive, punitive?

The W. Bush administration attempted in a less-than-nuanced form to define the enemy in the narrow sense with an emphasis upon preventative or disruptive efforts. The much maligned "Bush Doctrine" tried without meaningful success to assure the US and those who wished us ill that we would act before we were attacked.

The Obama administration would be very well advised to revisit the Bush Doctrine. Revise it perhaps, reformulate its wording quite possibly, but make a decision on the nature of the enemy. Decide if the enemy was to be the object of an "overseas contingency operation" before he struck. Or, is the US going to adopt a "second strike" policy and wait until the enemy defines himself by an overt act, an attack?

The first principles of national security and the protection of strategic interest demand the administration make a choice. Make a definition. Make it publicly. Make it quickly.

Another Trip Down The Rat Hole

The Obama administration is celebrating the start of Year 41 of the Humongous War On Drugs with the commitment of another 700 or so megabucks to up the US-Mexican cooperation in the new, improved border war. One of the justifications for this expenditure of money, manpower and diplomatic effort is the sudden recognition of a long standing reality. Mexican distribution networks have set up shop in more than two hundred US cities.

So, now, in a flurry of press releases, speeches and assorted viewings-with-alarm, the administration is seeking to execute a number of tasks under the rubric of War On The Border. Of course, the President and his people want to impose further restrictions on firearms possession by Americans. Of course, the President and his SecState wish to smooth the prickled quills of the Mexican nationalist porcupine. Of course, of course, of course.

The President, the SecState and sundry other movers-and shakers of administration and Congress will reportedly "renew the commitment to reduce demand in the US."

If any of these assorted politicos and policy wonks really, really think that after forty years of repeated and escalating failure to reduce demand for (illegal) drugs in the US, this is going to suddenly and miraculous change just because the beatified Obama decrees it, they are smoking, dropping or shooting up some fantastically righteous substance.

There is only one action which will remove the motive behind the violence and corruption in Mexico. There is only one action which will pull the ground out from under the street corner clockers who are the final point of sale.

And, we all know what that action is.

Meanwhile, further south of the border, Hezbollah continues to crank up its drug trafficking operations in both Central and South America. Hezbollah moves drugs, mostly cocaine, but now includes South American origin opiates for two reasons: It makes money for the cause; it presumably weakens the Great Satan and its allies.

Way to the east, Taliban protects the growing and movement of opium and morphine base for two reasons: It makes money for the cause. It presumably weakens the enemies of Islam.

There is only one action the US (and other governments) can take which will remove the money as an incentive for Hezbollah. And Taliban.

We all know what that action is.

Nearly a hundred years ago the Harrison Narcotics Control Act was passed in a wave of racist propaganda directed against the Chinese and their "opium dens." (This conveniently overlooked the historical fact that Great Britain fought a war with China in order to secure the right to sell opium to the Chinese. Before this opium use was virtually unknown in the Central Empire.)

Later, the sway of the Bureau of Narcotics was expanded to include cocaine in a wave of carefully orchestrated racist propaganda directed against Blacks who were portrayed as becoming sexually crazed predators under its influence. (This overlooked the historic fact that Coca-Cola originated with a refreshing mix of cocaine and cola nut without apparently inflaming its southern source with hordes of sexually crazed coke sippers.)

Ultimately Henry Anslinger, head of the old Bureau of Narcotics, was able to put marijuana under his control after yet one more racist campaign. This one, as the name of the drug makes clear, was directed against Hispanics. (Here is a fine reason for the Mexican government to be perturbed with us.)

Richard Nixon was no slouch when it came to using propaganda. Taking full advantage of the fear and loathing felt by the "Silent Majority" for their own kids, he launched the War on Drugs with waves of praise from pundits, pulpit orators and politicians alike.

The Humongous War on Drugs has been very, very good for government. It has allowed and encouraged restrictions on civil liberties and individual rights. It has provided for jobs in law enforcement and the rest of the criminal justice system almost beyond count. It has pumped money into rehab programs which do not work, punishment systems that do not work, search and destroy missions in foreign countries which do not work.

The HWOD has undercut foreign governments. It has funded foreign insurgencies. It has alienated foreign societies and polities alike. It has complicated diplomacy time and time again.

The HWOD has diverted resources at both the national and state levels from far more pressing and important usages. Arguably it has undercut education, health care, social programs generally. It certainly has diverted intelligence and military assets from tasks far more central to their mission.

The HWOD has enervated respect for law and government alike for decades, generations. It has bred a contempt for law and governmental honesty alike. It has created a credibility problem of significant size in the minds of nearly everyone who has been young at any time since the mid-Sixties.

The one thing that the HWOD has not done is limit either the appeal or availability of drugs, all sorts of drugs.

Now the Obama administration promises more of the same. More money. More enforcement. More restrictions. More of everything. Except success.

Get a grip on reality, Mr Obama. The HWOD was lost before Nixon declared it. There is no shame in admitting that. There is shame--and loss--in continuing down the well trod path of failure.

Just as one cannot kill his way to victory in an insurgency, one cannot kill or arrest his way to victory in a "war" on the human desire to alter consciousness.

There is just one action which can be taken to end the profits which propel the ambitious to traffick. We all know what is.

We're afraid to say it. The moralisers scare us. The fear mongers scare us.

FDR's famed aphorism, "All we have to fear is fear itself," is apropos in the context of the HWOD.

Get out from behind the wall of fear. The time is long past when rational people have no choice but to shout it out, "End the sham! Legalise drugs. Now!"

Identity Politics--It's All The Rage

Usually when the term "identity politics" is invoked one thinks of the US political tableau. For years now much of the American political dynamic has rested upon the rolicking gavotte of assorted victim groups and their competing claims for redress, protection and compensation.

Identity politics is playing an increasingly large role on the international stage. Nowhere is this more evident than on the shores of the Persian (or is Arab) Gulf. Here national affiliation either intertwines with religious and linguistic identity or wars against it.

The relation between identity politics and regional stability came into very sharp focus just over a month ago when an Iranian official, Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri , who is an advisor to Supreme Ayatollah Khamenei blandly asserted that Bahrain was not a sovereign state but rather Iran's long lost fourteenth province. Well, on one level this was no big deal. Nateq Nouri was right, sort of.

Way back when Iran was still Persia between 1602 and 1783, Bahrain was a province of the country. Later it bounced in the vacuum at the margin of the Ottoman Empire, finally enjoying (if that is the right word) the sloppy, haphazard suzerainty of the British Empire until 1970. Following a UN sponsored referendum in which the locals voted for independence rather than a return to Iranian authority, Bahrain came into sovereign existence.

Since 1971 the Tehran regime both under the Shah and the mullahs has huffed and puffed asserting its "historic" claim to the strategic outpost island. Even as recently as 2007 when the Iranians made the assertion of proprietorship the the world, the region (but not the Bahraini royal house) greeted the pronunciamiento with a yawn.

This time was different. The Arab states generally went exoatmospheric in fast-burn mode. The yowls of outrage and keening of animus culminated with Morocco severing relations with Iran.

So, why the immense escalation in reaction? Why the quick change from indifference in 2007 to the screams of Arab solidarity in the face of Persian provocation last month?

Some features of the Bahraini reality certainly have not changed. The population in the island-state is roughly two-thirds native born and one-third outlander. That percentage has not shifted appreciably in the past two decades. The majority of the population is Muslim. Again no change. The majority of the Muslims is Shia. That also isn't a new development.

The royal house and elite generally are Sunni. Once more, no change. Iranian supported subversive and terror oriented groups litter the Shia landscape. Say it again, with feeling, "No change here."

"So, what the heck has changed?" You ask.

To which question the Geek replies, "The context. Or at least a couple of essential factors in the context."

The first factor to have shifted in recent years is, to put it bluntly, Iran is getting ever more uppity. Some of this is pure talk as when President and Orator-in-Chief Ahmedinejad announced in February that Iran was now a super-power and no country in the world would consider threatening it.

But, as the Arab Gulf states well realise there is an unpleasant amount of reality beyond the Orator-in-Chief's grandiose pronouncement. The Iranians have developed an impressive military capacity which was displayed at sea in December 2008 with a series of naval exercises which demonstrated capabilities and threat potential far surpassing the Arab ability to equal, let alone counter.

Perhaps more to the point, Iran has fought a war within living memory. The war was a long, bloody stalemate yet the Iranian military demonstrated a capacity to learn as it fought. No Arab force has fought an opponent to a stand still since the Arab Legion back in the days of Glubb Pasha did so. (Not even the short-lived, even if surprising, success of the Egyptian Army in 1973 equals what the Jordanian unit did in 1948.)

Reinforcing the demonstration of Iranian military potential is the clear success of the Iranian proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon. Not only did Hezbollah inflict unacceptable losses on the IDF in the course of a poorly planned and pathetically executed Israeli incursion, the group has been politically successful beyond expectations becoming the de facto controlling force in Lebanon's government.

Even more recently the defiant attitude and policies of Hamas have added luster to the Iranian threat. Put simply the Arab states correctly see the Iranians, Shia the lot of them, have a demonstrated capacity to penetrate Sunni populations with vigorous success. As subversives, the Iranians have shown a rare talent.

The second contextual factor to have changed is an Arab loss of confidence. There are a number of contributory considerations at work here. One is the continued inability of the Arab states working in concert or individually to do anything effective in the perpetual Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Militarily the Arab states have been a nullity. They have been scarcely more effective in their application of diplomacy. Even the use of the "oil weapon" has been bootless.

The collapse of last year's oil bull market is a second fact which the Arab Gulf states must consider. Far from being immune to the economic web which entangles the globe, the oil producers can be the first to feel the baleful effects of contraction in the western economies. Members of the Arab elite blessed with a memory might recall that after the oil embargoes of the 1970s, western countries, particularly the US, embarked upon successful conservation programs which cut demand for the only revenue generator the Arabs possess.

The rhetoric in the US concerning alternative sources of energy or the moves to open off-shore fields to development represent a long-term threat to Arab financial underpinnings even as demands for increased social spending to buy regimes' peace grow apace. Making the picture bleaker is the emergence of new rivals such as Brazil's off-shore deposits and the expansion of long standing competitors such as the development of Mexico's seabeds.

The oil consideration loops into another consideration. How long will the US continue to have a national and strategic interest in the Gulf region? Since the US has more than sufficient sand to meet its requirements indefinitely, the only remaining reason for our interest in this unpleasant area has to be oil.

The day will come when the US has a sufficient alternative to Gulf oil. When that day will come is imponderable at the moment. But, (here it comes, the big "but") the hoary and somewhat irrelevant They-Put-A-Man-On-The-Moon based apprehension of the enormous potential of American technological invention and innovation is going to come sooner rather than later.

Making this apprehension teeter on the border of genuine fear is the fact that the US has a president (or at least its own Orator-in-Chief) that seems to be firmly committed to the development of alternatives to Mideast oil. And, a Congress willing to spend gigabucks in that direction.

So, how long can the feudal kingdoms of the Gulf expect the American military (including nuclear) umbrella to extend one millimeter beyond the borders of Israel? That thought can be (and apparently has become) a real stomach clencher around the Gulf littoral.

Then there is the matter of religious identity. Sunni Muslims have been comfortable for centuries looking down their collective clerical noses at the apostate Shia. Shias have always been the despised minority. They were consigned to the furthest marches of Islam, the outland of Persia, the margin of the Arab world in Iraq. Shias? Piffile!

Shia roared back with a vengeance in the Iranian Revolution. It has been roaring ever since. Fighting successfully against Iraq--even though Iraq received US support. Standing off the Great Powers led by the US and UK as Shia Iran developed its military, missile, and nuclear capacity.

Shia whispered as well. Extending its subversive tentacles throughout the Muslim states. Even reaching to the Western Hemisphere, the bailiwick of the Great Satan.

It is small wonder that Shia is seen as the superman version of Islam to so many among the youth of Islamic countries--particularly Arab states. Shia kicks butt! Youth admires butt-kickers. Youth (defined as those under 25) represents the absolute majority of the Arab population. Many, how many is one of those famed Rumsfeld "unknowable unknowns," youth are gravitating to the Shia camp.

Wahhabist and Salafist clerics as well as the states which give them homes and support are faced with a genuine challenge. From the perspective of the government either the option of confrontation or that of accommodation pose grave, possibly unacceptable risks. A choice will have to be made. The clerical tiger on which the feudal states ride will demand it.

Sunni versus Shia joins with Arab versus Iranian as the sharp and threatening dividing line within the heartland of oil and Islam. The Chimera of Arab solidarity shimmers more and more like a desert mirage.

The mullahocracy will do nothing in the near or mid-term to perfect their claim to Bahrain. The lesson of Iraqi ambitions in Kuwait is too recent. Besides that, there is no need. The need is simply to perturb the Arab states of the Gulf. That need has been filled.

By simply kicking the Arab anthill, the weaknesses, the uncertainties, the failures of Arab solidarity have been both exposed and exacerbated. The paradox is that the seeming single voice of outrage greeting the February announcement failed to disguise the weakness of both the Arab states and the Arab identity.

At the same time the boldness of the announcement, taken in context, reinforced the Shia-as-superman image which Iran has been projecting for decades. This means the appeal of Iranian branded Shiaism has been boosted in the critical target population--Arab youth.

Not bad for a single television clip, eh? But, the founder of the Revolution was the most underrated practitioner of absolutist politics in recent generations. The old Ayatollah Khomeini would be proud of his successors.

Let 'Em In Or Keep 'Em Out?

Two matters loom very, very large in the relations between the US and Mexico. One, as has been noted in several earlier posts, is trafficking in illegal drugs and its attendant violence. The other is (as the Mexican government puts it) migration or (as many? most? Americans see it) illegal immigration.

The two are joined at the head (diplomacy) and hip (law enforcement.) In addition both problems are easily distorted by emotion, particularly fear. Yes, and both have a complex history the effects of which continue to be played out today.

The powerful motivations for unrestricted immigration are most obvious when examining the American experience of the Nineteenth Century, particularly the years following the Mexican War and Gold Rush. To put it bluntly without (hopefully) oversimplifying: The American economy desperately needed cheap, warm, expendable bodies if it was to expand.

Thanks to a fungus and British governmental inefficiency and indifference, Irish fugitives from the Famine were available in great numbers just as industrialization based on steam power was getting up and running.

(In this context it deserves mentioning that Southern slave owners would not risk their valuable property in dangerous jobs such as feeding the boilers on river steamboats. That was left up to Irishmen whose deaths cost no one anything.)

The Irish of the 1840s, '50s and beyond were plentiful, hard working, hard drinking and Catholic. Therein resided the rub.

The Irish were culturally different from those who saw themselves as "native" Americans. The old breed was Protestant, and at least pretended they were not hard drinking. The stereotypes of the Irish both revealed the antipathy felt toward the newcomers and the resentment that reality dictated the necessity of their presence.

The American antipathy was predicated on fear. A fear that the newcomers would somehow change the identity of the American nation. This fear was a manifestation of the seemingly never-ending American identity crisis.

This crisis is understandable. The US is unique in being a totally artificial country and nation based not on geography, nor on language per se, nor long standing historical forces organic to the society.

The American identity was based on myths of (at that time) recent origin, a theory of government which was still underdeveloped and a handful of ideas and values the implications of which were only vaguely apparent. Arguably there was not even a genuine national identity yet, but rather a collection of regional identities in search of a common center.

Catholicism per se was widely viewed as a threat to the tenuous national identity. True to the heritage of the Reformation in its more extreme expressions, Americans were deeply, darkly suspicious of the Church hierarchy, to say nothing of its rituals and liturgies, its institutions such as monasteries, convents and parochial schools.

(A flourishing literary sub-genre of the mid-1800s was the (at the least) semi-pornographic portrayal of sexual misconduct behind convent walls or in the sacristies of Catholic Churches. The sexual content was always carefully mixed with a presumed Catholic affection for what were quaintly called, "ardent spirits." This matched the public perception that Irishmen loved whiskey to an outrageous extent.)

American industrial prosperity was built on the bodies of the Irish, and the Central Europeans--Poles, Czechs, Bohemians. (Note the racial epithet "honky" is itself a derivation from the late Nineteenth Century term of derision "hunky" meaning anyone from Central Europe but drawn from the word, "Bohemian.") Later sacrifices to the industrial alter were largely Italian.

It is important to understand that a very large percentage of the later waves of immigrants from Central and Southern Europe were, like the Irish, Catholic. It is equally important to recall that the single greatest reason the US took only the underpopulated northern fringe of Mexico following the Mexican War was fear that the US could not survive swallowing the large number of Spanish speaking Catholics such a move would entail.

The wave of immigration restrictions seen in the first half of the Twentieth Century was driven quite explicitly by the identity crisis. Americans of the early decades of the last century demanded a time out regardless of any consequences to the economy. The demand was typically put in terms of "racial" (meaning ethnic) purity. The fear of a presumed slackening of "Anglo-Saxon" vitality was expressed by religious, political and academic leaders alike.

Congress responded with a series of measures which ramped down the number of immigrants from Central, Southern and Eastern Europe allowed into the US. This practice was not even waived in the face of documented genocide directed against Jews before and during World War II. It did not modify until the mid-1960s.

From that time to the present all measures of immigration reform have been couched in terms of High Minded humanitarianism. Under the rhetoric of Lofty Thinking, the reality has been the squalid needs of the American economy. Even a post-industrial economy needs legions of low priced and relatively expendable labor. The immigrant fills that role.

Sectors caught in a cost-price squeeze such as construction and agriculture need cheap workers. In recent years this has meant illegal Mexicans and Central Americans. It has also meant Chinese and other Asians. In some places such as Boston, it has meant skilled Irish nurses.

It is critical to keep in mind that while the debate the past couple of years has focused on Mexicans since they represent the largest component of the illegal workforce, people of many other nationalities are involved as well. Whatever policy helps or hurts Mexicans will help or hurt the others as well be they from Europe, Africa, Asia or Latin America.

Mexico, the Central American countries as well as some South American nations all rely on the US as a sort of escape valve. The Colossus of the North is the Latin American version of the old frontier--a place where fortunes can be sought, or at least money might be made.

Most illegal workers from Mexico and the other Latin American countries have no intention of residing in the US permanently or even for a significant length of time. Their goal is to make money. Make money and send it back home. Make money and go back home to buy a better life for self and family.

This remittance based approach to temporary immigration is not new in the American experience. At many times in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century nearly as many people returned to their countries of origin as arrived in the US from those countries. Over the years only sixty percent of Italians decided to stay in the US. The rest took their savings and went back to the old country with a sizable grubstake. The same was true with Poles particularly when Poland re-emerged after World War I.

In short, a good case can be made for the contention that immigrants mulct the American economy almost as well as American industry has exploited the immigrants.

At this point the Geek would, if he were the High Minded sort, launch into a hymn of praise for the immigrant contribution to the evolving American identity. He won't. Two reasons: It would betray the three-eighths of his genome which comes courtesy of the Hot Springs Apache. It is unnecessary being self-evident that, at the very least, the American identity has survived the onslaught of Catholics, Jews, Buddhists and may very well survive the coming of the Muslims.

The reality is simple and easy to get a grip on. The economy needs cheap, temporary workers. Immigrants whether legal or not are willing and able to work for cheap. Some of those "temporary" workers will become permanent. Some will not.

A rational avenue must be available for those who choose (or are forced for whatsoever reason) to stay here permanently to assimilate, regularise their status and join as full members in the collective American identity.

This proposition has some very unpleasant implications and ramifications as the Geek would be the first to acknowledge. It has the merit of being a realistic acceptance of past and present dynamics which show no sign of having changed in nearly two centuries. Nor is there any indication that alteration is probable in the near to mid-term.

At the same time the US should not--must not--pursue an Open Borders policy. It is quite impossible for the American economy to absorb any and all comers. Further, it frees the governments and affiliated elites in Mexico and elsewhere from the obligation to take effective measures which will provide a genuine stimulus for folks to stay in the land of their birth. Closing the safety valve is actually an act of international "tough love."

What Mexico (and other countries) needs is not an "Office of Migration" as is the case currently but an "Office of Migration Control." This means that the government and its supporting elite must finally realise that it is not possible to reverse the result of the Mexican War by some sort of population infiltration scheme. The government has to put its resources where its people are not simply where the graft sticks.

Migration control means dropping the fraudulent front of "nationalism." It means allowing, inviting foreign direct investment in the new offshore oilfields as well as in the process of repairing and upgrading the decayed infrastructure of Pemex generally. It means realising that the decades of internal war ended nearly a century ago and the expropriations which might have been appropriate then are counterproductive today and positively fatal to Mexican national interest in the near-term.

Unless and until the Mexican government institutes an Office of Migration Control the US will be justified in building Great Walls of the South, sending the ICEmen into the workplace in armed raids, and other supposedly (according to Nancy Pelosi) "unamerican actions.") Unless and until the Mexican government allows and invites American talent, technology and investment to head South of the Border, we are relieved of an affirmative obligation to serve as the Big Frontier of the North.