Going Out To Lunch With The Republicans

The other day a bunch of Republican congressional wallahs and governors launched a new outfit with the pretentious name of The National Council For A New America. The Geek will ignore his first response which was a question: Just what is wrong with the Old America?" The Geek will even set to one side his doubts concerning the capacity of a motley collection of Representatives and governors, both past and present, to discover the nature of this mythical "New America."

Instead the Geek will restrain himself to considering one of the five agenda items listed by the group as being a suitable topic for discussing in the search for the Land of Newness. The item is captioned, National Security. It comes in dead last after the economy, health care reform, education, and energy policy. Here is the NCNA understanding of national security--

The threats posed to our nation are more varied and evolving more than perhaps at any other time in our history. Modern communications, technology and the proliferation of weapons of all types have empowered our enemies and those who support them. Our national security policy must reflect these realities while allowing us to maintain technological superiority, support the most well-trained and well-equipped military in the world and have the intelligence capabilities to uncover and prevent attacks before they occur.

Sounds like it was recycled from a few hundred pieces of campaign pap left over from past lost elections to the Geek. How about you?

Now history does not lead the Geek or any other half-way aware individual to place a great amount of faith in the perceptiveness of congress wallahs or governors in the matter of defining either American national and security interests or determining the best ways to advance, protect and defend them.

It is sufficient to note that four of the five presidents preceding the present incumbent were governors before planting their rumps in the Oval. Of these only one, the much maligned (and overpraised) Reagan had some real measure of success in the foreign affairs arena. The others, from Carter to W. Bush presided over disasters ranging from the minor to the unbelievably major.

If the records of the non-governors are added to the mix the picture becomes no less bleak. JFK and his overly muscular "pragmatists" brought us the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the start of the Great Vietnam Misadventure. LBJ continued the pattern with his escalation of the Vietnam War thus giving the US the first of its two unnecessary, unsuccessful and arguably counterproductive military adventures. (The other, of course, was the invasion of Iraq.)

The assorted Republicans show no more ability than either the war drum thumpers of late 2002 or their long ago Congressional precursors in 1964-5. The dire threats are either undefined or overdrawn. The military response is given pride of place. No understanding of the military as an instrument of national power is exhibited. A faint odor of blood pervades the entire issue of national security. Worst of all, national security is seen as some sort of stand-alone without links to any or all other features of policy.

It is commonplace that the expenses of each of the two unnecessary wars had profound, negative impact on the overall health of the American economy.

The infamous "stagflation" of the Seventies was a direct product of the Johnson Administration's decision to fight a war without curtailing other categories of expenditure. In this decision the administration was joined at the hip and shoulder by the Democrats of congress.

More recently, the Great Adventure in Regime Change was undertaken in the context of a tax cut and continued, escalating appropriations for all categories of governmental expense. It is not realistic, no matter how politically attractive, to divorce the current economic debacle from the deficits driven by the war in Iraq.

Money blown on unnecessary wars is not available for other purposes such as development of alternative energy sources and technologies. It, and the money spent to fund the deficit, is not there for use in education or health care reforms. Both, self-evidently, will take thwacking amounts of money both public and private. If the money isn't there because it went to war or the associated costs of war which echo for decades after the guns go silent, the plans, no matter how High Minded or worthy, go for nought. Or the economy and the pockets of each of us suffer damage that otherwise might have been avoided.

Now that some of the crucial preliminaries have been (partially) addressed, the Geek wants to get down to it.

Listen up, Republican fonctionnaires and aspirants to Deep Thinking status and get a grip on a couple of basic realities of national security life.

Remember the ancient recipe for rabbit stew which starts, "First, catch your rabbit." Before you run off at the mouth blabbing about the "best trained" and "best equipped" military in the world or prattle about "proliferating" threats, define the threat. Also define how the presumed or perceived threat directly, substantially and materially affects national and security interests.

Is the threat some slippery critter called "terrorism?" Or, is it a political ideology rooted in carefully selected and interpreted features of religious doctrine, such as Islamist jihadism? Does the threat come from all failed or failing states or just some? If the latter, what are the necessities for determining the existence of an actual or potential threat? Do China or Russia present a threat? If so, to what degree and in what manner? Is all nuclear proliferation equally threatening? If not, what are the criteria for determining the degree and immediacy of the threat?

Sure, there are other rabbits to catch, but this list gives a helpful start.

Next, Lads, (the male term is correct judging from both the pictures and names on the NCNA webpage) stop and think about another basic question. What is the nature and character of the military?

That's right, boys, it is an instrument of national power. The instrument of last resort. The ultimate argument of politics in the international arena. It is a tool. As a tool it must be used only for the right job in the right way.

A military, no matter how well trained and equipped is limited in its usage by the nature of both its equipment and doctrine. In the Great Vietnam Misadventure we attempted to use a military which was trained and equipped to fight a high intensity war on a putatively nuclear battlefield against an enemy similarly trained and equipped. Then, in an attempt akin to using a hammer to tighten a bolt, we sent it off to fight a semi-unconventional war where constraint of lethal force and similar concern for the well-being and perceptions of the uncommitted civilian majority was paramount.

We lost.

Our well trained and equipped armed forces were sent to Afghanistan. They accomplished in part the original mission. But, then, in a manner not unlike using a quarter inch ratchet to drive a one inch bolt, the military was told to "build a nation" from the feudal fragments of a rarely cohesive society.

The same tale was told in the wastelands of Iraq. The Americans had no trouble quickly dispatching the conventional forces of Saddam. Then, the day after victory was declared, the real war started. Yes, the Americans learned, or more properly, relearned the lessons of counterinsurgency and ultimately we achieved the minimum necessary strategic goal of "not losing."

Have you political types learned the most important lesson of the wars of America over the past fifty or so years? Have you learned that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all military force, no matter how "well trained" and "well equipped?"

A military must fight with the doctrine to which it has trained and for which it has been equipped if it is to succeed quickly and at a cost in lives which is acceptable to the American public. This means that the military must have guidance as to the nature of the threats it is expected to counter. It must know what sort of wars it will be expected to fight in the near- to mid-term.

In our system that sort of decision is not up to the uniformed people in the Pentagon alone. It is a political view to which the senior civilian leadership must give informed input. Similarly, political decisions determine the relation of the military to all other instruments of national power. That's right, all other instruments.

The military does not operate in a vacuum. It supports the conduct of foreign policy. It supports diplomacy. Its actions, whether warlike or limited to non-violent actions such as humanitarian relief or in-country training, are dictated by the overarching political policy of an administration--and a congress.

The same dynamics are at work with the intelligence and clandestine services of the United States. It is all well and good to aver that the nation needs an intelligence capacity to detect threats before they manifest themselves in dramatic and bloody fashion.

That sort of sentiment is not enough. Not by a Texas mile or two. Intelligence services need guidance as to what the powers-that-be think is a threat. Is it the policy du jour to see drug traffickers as a national security threat? Or, perhaps, purported environmental degradation in Brazil? Do we keep an eye on one country or region or ideology in preference to another?

Money, personnel, computer processing time, must all be prioritised. There is no such thing in the real world of spooks as the all-seeing eye. It is the politicians, the president in particular, who sets the agenda for observation and analysis. It is the politicians who determine the limits of acceptable intelligence and clandestine service methods.

Remember, it was politicians who precluded the use of unsavory foreign nationals as sources. Then it was politicians who damned the intelligence services for not having properly detected and warned against threats. It was the political leadership who demanded robust methods be employed to develop actionable intelligence. And, then damned those who carried out the dictates of the decision makers.

If you stalwarts of the fading Grand Old Party are going to re-invent and re-launch the party (let alone discover this chimera, a "New America") you must first catch a number of rabbits.

To do that you must as a prerequisite drop the addiction to glittering, meaningless generalities. This is hard for politicians whose stock in trade is saying things which sound good but mean nothing. Without considering national interest and national security in cold, concrete and historically valid terms, you are just one more puff of smoke in the strong, cold gales of the real world.