History Sides With The Insurgents--Usually

Insurgencies, whether defensive (AKA "separatist" movements) or offensive (AKA "revolutions"), appear complex, even chaotic. The reality is far different. While there can be an overlay of complexity caused by the precise local conditions which produced the insurgency, the overwhelming majority of all such wars for which sufficient information is available follow the same basic dynamic.

In the beginning there exists a climate of political disaffiliation within a definite portion of the population. The climate of nascent political disaffiliation and disaffection provides the human broth from which one or more anti-status quo groups self-organize. Almost inevitable the status quo, the government, which controls public space, ignores the self-organizing groups, making no effort to use them to mediate between grievances and government.

Over time, often a very short time, these new groups will coalesce and become structured organizations. Now the government will, indeed, must take notice of them. It is at this point the status quo must make its most critical single choice.

It must decide whether to seek to maintain total authority or accept effective operational dominance. It must choose between repression and some variant of power-sharing, exclusion, or inclusion. The typical response has been to opt for total authority, repression, and exclusion.

At this point the dynamics of the relation between the emergent system (as chaos theory uses the term) of the anti-status quo groups and the government assures two factors exist. The first is that the government and its supporters, having better mechanisms of decision making and execution, will drive the progress along the road to armed conflict. The second is counterintuitive but factual--the anti-status quo groups being self-organizing and emergent have the flexibility necessary not only to counter the status quo's repressive efforts effectively but also to raise the ante.

The status quo government's repressive efforts will ultimately have the effect of consolidating the anti-status quo forces as well as radicalizing them. The proto-insurgents will move to ever more radical positions and extreme demands since advocates of these are generally better organised, more committed, and possess the simple, appealing plan for the future.

Under pressure and with the impetus of tightly organised, totally committed radicals, the anti-status quo group will become ever more structured. It will finally be structured sufficiently to have all the operational features of a quasi-government including the capacity to coerce the unwilling within the population under its influence if not control.

More often than not it will be an ill-considered government action which precipitates armed conflict, but if that does not happen it is only a matter of (short) time before the insurgent entity will. When this happens it is because the insurgent leadership fears a collapse of will within its supporters. Fighting, will, it is believed, restore and enhance political will on the part of the membership.

Insurgent entities, even those with a very highly structured command and control system remain, at root, self-organizing. It is this feature which makes decapitation oriented counter insurgent tactics less than universally effective. The insurgents maintain a fundamental flexibility that all governments (and their "foreign" supporters) lack.

The war once started is not a war which can be won simply by killing people and breaking things. Whether both sides realize it or not, the avenue to victory is the progressive reduction of one side or the other's political will to continue the effort. Much of the effort by both sides must be bent not only to undercutting (more accurately, enervating) the opponent's political will but also to mobilizing support from the uncommitted majority of the population.

The contestant with the greater flexibility and greater ability to assist or facilitate the self-organizing of new support groups will have the greater chance of success. The side which acts coercively so as to compromise its legitimacy in the estimate of the uncommitted majority has the greater chance of defeat.

In most insurgent conflicts the insurgents have the advantage in these areas. The self-organizing and emergent system properties of the insurgents generally allow them to better incorporate an expanding base of support. The status quo with its generally greater reliance on coercion lacks the flexibility and ability to mobilize new support within the uncommitted population. (Of course, there are exceptions as demonstrated by the Islamist insurgents in Iraq.)

The combination of self-organization and fear of the consequences of losing gives the insurgent entity remarkable staying power. Even when the violence seems to have been suppressed effectively (as in the Chechnya and environs a few years ago), the insurgents continue to exist, biding their time, developing their strength, and waiting a better tomorrow.

This means that hostilities termination does not and never has equated with conflict resolution. This results again from the inherent flexibility of the insurgent entity. The insurgent controls the degree to which actual shooting and dying exists. If it is in the longer term interests of the insurgent to go to ground, stop shooting, and focus on population incorporation, it will.

When (and if) the active hostilities, the attention grabbing "war" stops, the problem of genuine conflict resolution continues to exist. The ground truth is that both the anti-status quo people and the status quo aligned people will have to coexist. The degree to which this coexistence is either genuinely peaceful or merely a time out before the noise picks up again is up to the status quo.

The status quo once again faces the same choice it had before the shooting started: inclusion or exclusion. While outside supporters of the status quo may hope for the former, for repression, even obliteration, of the insurgents, the best choice for the status quo is inclusion, power-sharing, the keeping of effective operational dominance.

This option remains a bitter pill to swallow for any government and the elite which aligns with it. The choice is all the more difficult when a powerful external supporting power urges keeping on with the effort to eradicate the insurgents.

Bitter or not, outside pressure or not, the historical record shows that only when the status quo opts for the risky attempt to maintain effective operational dominance is there any actual end to the insurgency. Any other course of action means the insurgency will be back, bigger, badder and better than before.

An even more stark picture emerges from the examination of the several hundred insurgencies the world has seen in the past two hundred fifty years. That picture is of successful insurgencies of both varieties outnumbering failures by better than four to one. This reality is the one upon which American policy makers must take the firmest grip before briskly marching the troops off on yet one more interventionary operation.

It is not that counterinsurgency cannot be successful. It can. The US has some splendid experience in doing just that. (As we have splendid experience at being a successful defensive insurgent.)

Rather, counterinsurgency is the toughest kind of political-military row to hoe. And, that is because the advantages reside with the emergent system called the insurgency.

In Swat Payback Isn't Just A Medevac

No. In Swat payback is graves registration. After the Pakistani security forces dismantled, or, to err on the side of accuracy, displaced the Taliban from Swat, the locals as well as some of the replacement Pakistani para-military and police units have been wreaking vengeance of those Talib and their collaborators who did not flee the region--and stay fled.

None of this should surprise anyone, although, the MSM of this country and the UK want to affect postures of both shock and dismay. While some of the killings are undoubtedly the work of outsiders--that is the Pakistani security wallahs--most are homegrown efforts at payback. The locals know darn well who were either Talib or Taliban sympathisers.

When the main forces of the Islamist jihadist group were either killed or disbursed by the Pakistani offensive, it was time to settle scores with the survivors of the once swaggering, gun brandishing, head chopping, Koran waving boys of the Taliban. And, in Swat as in other parts not only of Pakistan or the Northwest Asian world, the best way to settle accounts with those who killed is by killing.

People who have been forced to abase themselves under the guns of True Believers who are quite willing to kill, mutilate, dictate, and who use fear as their stock in trade yearn for the worm to turn. When the old worm does turn, and, history shows time after bloody time that it will, those who crept and knelt before the muscle of the thugs now reclaim their dignity and plunge long knives (or at least shoot bullets) into the one time oppressor and its supporters.

While this will cost him the Humanitarian Concerned Citizen of the Year Award, the Geek both understands and applauds the production of mysteriously dead bodies in the streets and byways of Mingora and other parts of Swat. If nothing else, the corpses littering the landscape demonstrate the degree of anti-Taliban sentiment resident within the formerly dominated population.

Of course, there are other benefits to the proliferation of deceased Islamist jihadists. One is that it shows the laddybucks of the Taliban and its ilk that there are costs involved with their attempt to impose by fear and force a set of True Beliefs which are neither totally organic to the local population nor palpably legitimate in and of themselves.

Another benefit totally overlooked by human rights advocates and their propagandists is the longer term effects of the locals reclaiming their dignity and sense of collective self. It proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that Islamist jihadists have no particular right to rule, that they are outsiders, a form of occupying power which showed itself to be even more unacceptable than the faraway, often corrupt, and normally inefficient and inattentive Islamabad government.

The stimulus of Taliban and the response of payback time may also awaken the locals to the power of self-organization which they possess. This, in turn, will allow the formation of a local interest oriented structure to mediate between the private space of the locals and the public space controlled by Islamabad to the ultimate advantage of the locals.

The Swat response, like the earlier and much more violent reaction by tribal groups outside of Kandahar to a spectacularly outrageous Taliban suicide bombing of a mosque during Friday prayers, proves that Islamist jihadists are their own worst enemy. Similar excess in killing, lopping off body parts, and invading traditional private space has sown the seeds of defeat for Islamist jihadists in Iraq and parts of Afghanistan.

Overlooked in the brouhaha over the "surge" in Iraq was the small, totally non-linear effect of the Islamist jihadist anti-smoking campaign in Anwar Province. The chopping off of fingers and lips of those caught committing the great crime against Islam of smoking was a small input. But, the contribution of the attendant outrage to the formation of the Awakening Councils and the Concerned Local Citizens was the key determinant of the ultimate defeat of the Islamist jihadists in the region. Even more than the American money, which facilitated the growth of these local groups, (which were initially self-organizing and only later sponsored by the US), the behavior of the Islamist jihadists epitomized in the anti-smoking lunacy spelled the end of the turban-topped, Koran-bashing jihadists.

(It deserves mention that when a central authority such as a religious denomination seeks to control the most private of spaces such as what you eat, with whom and when does a person have sexual relations, or whether people smoke or not, it is attempting to exert total and absolute power over the individual and by such control the totality of the individual's perceptions, beliefs, and actions. In the West one might consult the history of the Catholic Church or, if that is too sweeping, Calvin's Geneva theocracy to see this statement in action.)

The lesson for those contesting against Islamist jihadists everywhere is this. Often the best course of action will be to wait on any counter blow until the Islamist jihadists have over played their repressive hand with the locals. Then, even a minor counter strike will be non-linear in effect as it will embolden the locals to self-organize on their own behalf against the oppressive and quite illegitimate "occupying force" of the jihadis.

The Pakistani effort in Swat was, despite the temporary dislocation of nearly two million people and an exchange ratio of better than ten to one, a less than major, far less than total effort. It was a rather small change operation involving far more para-military personnel of the Frontier Corps than regulars. Even now, some months after the first bombs fell in Swat and the "assault" wave of Frontier Corps troops moved up the road, there are some three thousand organized Taliban guerrillas in remote enclaves. This is not the sign of a really resolute, full-scale attempt at destroying the bad guys.

The destruction of Taliban will occur not only in Swat but elsewhere in Pakistan when the jihadists get the message that they are not tolerated, not wanted, and will be killed by the locals should they emerge without having abandoned Islamist jihadism--and perhaps not even then if they have waged oppression on the locals. Rather than wringing hands over the collection of dead Talib on the streets of Mingora, the government of Pakistan and all of those outside the country who want to see an end to the odious presence of Islamist jihadists everywhere should be clapping, cheering on the hidden hand of payback.

And, that's a fact, Jack.

It's Our Space! Get Out Of It!

A corespondent who is unwilling to post comments has requested the Geek to dilate upon the role of self-organisation. The Geek is happy to oblige, hoping he is usefully elucidating rather than merely bloviating.

Political science has a very useful concept: The division between public and private space. Public space is open to intervention and regulation by the state through law and regulation. Private space exists for the self-organizing social and political groups of both formal and informal nature. The blunt (and brutal) reality is that public space--the space in social, political and economic activities liable to regulatory control by the bureaucratic state--has expanded at the expense of the private. The proponents of government owned (or at least regulated, policed, and controlled) public space argue that such is necessary for the accomplishment of the commonweal.

There is a powerful irony at work in the seeming triumph of public space. In the pursuit of lofty and seemingly utterly necessary goals such as assuring that no group is "victimized" and no group "privileged," the expansion of the public space has resulted in a private space push-back through the formation of self-organizing groups.

Self-organizing social, political, and economic groups are an ancient and honorable tradition in human experience. Their formation and dynamic stability as well as capacity for evolution, flexibility, and long duration are and have been universal--even in the most centralized examples of the bureaucratic state. Indeed, history demonstrates that in any tightly controlled venue, unless the organs of repression are highly effective, every increase in public space is countered by evasion and resistance oriented self-organizing groups.

Of course, not everyone living in a public space dominated environment will be part of evasion or resistance oriented self-organized groups. Some will collaborate as is the case with populations in territories occupied by a foreign enemy. Others, perhaps the majority, will duck and cover hoping to stay invisible to those who control the expansionist public space. Some few, again as is the case when the outsider conquers and occupies land, will self-organize so as to evade the regulated public space and resist its further expansion.

Regulatory, bureaucratic states practicing centrally controlled public space predominate in Europe, particularly in the West. Evasion and resistance are and have been commonplace. Consider, for example, the wide spread tax avoidance and flat out cheating which is of legendary proportions in Italy and France but far from absent elsewhere.

Admittedly, centralized bureaucratic states can extend public space to the extent that virtually no private space remains. Further, some such states can possess internal police mechanisms of very high efficiency. But, as the example of the former German Democratic Republic shows, the slightest weakening of either resolve or capacity to efficiently repress results in the very rapid implosion of the state. The same may be seen in the former Soviet Union, which quickly dissolved into a vast array of self-organizing entities of sizes ranging from the microscopic to full fledged states.

In short, the human impetus to self-organizing can be delayed but it cannot be denied. It is so deeply rooted in our very nature that it cannot be expunged, it cannot be extinguished, it cannot be conquered by threats, coercion, force, or violence. It is the basis of all our resistance movements of whatever size, nature, or opponent.

In the US ever since the emergence of the progressive movement and agenda over a century ago, both major political parties have shared a progressive belief in the supreme efficacy of the bureaucratic, regulatory, and centralized state. The two parties may disagree on the goals of the ever expanded public space, but they subscribe to the notion that the extension of public space at the expense of the private is both desirable and necessary for the benefit of all Americans.

For the majority of the past half-century and more, the available private space has steadily contracted as have the number of established but initially self-organized groups both formal and informal which mediated between the individual and the public space. Much of this dynamic occurred for reasons which may be seen (and were) as laudable: economic justice, equality of opportunity (and, in many cases, outcome,) internal security, and so forth.

While many, if not all, the posited goals would have been achieved through the interplay of the mediating groups of private space, it is important to recognize that the expansion of public space was brought about from the top down. It was an imposed expansion, imposed often not by political processes but by judicial fiat. Legions of litigators not precinct captains, squads of judges not divisions of citizens, decreed the public space with its regulations, controls, and dictates must supersede the messy, inherently chaotic emergent systems of the private space.

It is and has been argued that the very nature of the United States, its large and quite heterogeneous population, its mixed economy, its complexly organised structures and institutions, demand the expanded public space. It is and has been argued that without the regulated and controlled public space the people of the US would be at the mercy of the darkest emotions--greed, fear, exploitation, inequity.

Proponents of the ever larger public space view human nature with the most dour of Calvinist eyes. To them the individual and his private space is the residence of evil. This evil must be both exposed and constrained by the ever vigilant government operating bureaucratically in the public space.

Of course, being True Believers, these proponents are indifferent to the base desire for power, even total authority, which their agenda brings with it. These proponents of the expanded public space always understand their motives and goals to be of the highest, purist, and most lofty sort.

It doesn't matter if the motives and goals are secular (from neocon to Marxist) or religious (from Evangelical Christian to Islamist Muslim), the True Believers are always morally certain of the correctness of their intents. They impose from on high as did Calvin in Geneva with the sureness of the saved working to save all others from their own evil.

This delusion is powerful and pervasive. It might even be seen as universal. It is also wrong. That is why it is ultimately doomed to fail just as certainly as the Soviet Union and the DDR collapsed.

Humans will and always have evaded and resisted the imposition of public space upon them. They have evaded and resisted the reduction of their private space, the creation and operation of their self-organizing groups.

It is also why "nation-building" in Iraq or Afghanistan will fail. The well meaning outsiders including those from the US all represent states with expanded public space and a deficiency of self-organizing groups. They are in the process of attempting to impose these views on people who have no desire to give up the messy, chaotic dynamics of self-organization and the emergent systems which the interplay between self-organized groups must produce.

The dour view of human nature held by the advocates of an all-inclusive public space, their sincere belief that such will protect people from their own worst aspects, is not generally shared in non-Western cultures. While the Islamist may have an expansive understanding of evil, it is not the same as the Western proponent of the centralized, bureaucratic state. Nor is the bleak view of the Islamist or the Western state-lover shared by the vast mass of people in the world.

Europe and later the US have been on a century long voyage into the world of all-inclusive public space. The faults, the weaknesses, the failures of the public space orientation have already made themselves evident. Nonetheless, we press on both in our homelands and in our foreign adventures.

Perhaps the clear failure of "nation-building" which is unfolding in both Iraq and Afghanistan will give impetus to reexamine what we are all about in our well-intended effort to defeat the deep rooted human need to self-organize, to tell the powers that be, the powers on high, to get the hell out of our lives.

Well, one can hope. Can't one?

The Credible Capacity To De-Commit

In any interventionary operation it is critical that the intervening party never lose the credible capacity to de-commit from the venture. It is the ability to leave that gives the interventionary party leverage on the indigenous government. Without any believable departure option, the leverage available is limited, even fatally limited.

The US should have learned this critical lesson during the Vietnam War. Our ability to convince the Saigon governments to do what was in our and their best interest declined steadily as the number of American troops (and corpses) rose. The (often) corrupt, (usually) inefficient, (typically) self-involved, (normally) legitimacy lacking Saigon regime(s) could ignore American urgings, hectoring, advice, and guidance with the impunity of knowing that we had no choice but to stay and fight their war.

Only in the fading days following the Easter Offensive did the denizens of Saigon realize that the big Yankee Train was leaving the station for home--sooner rather than later. Not only did the train leave--it rolled right over the now fully alert, ready to act, able to fight South Vietnamese government and armed forces. (The latter was courtesy of the now robustly anti-war Democrats in Congress with the sainted Ted Kennedy baying in the van.)

Of course, by then it was way too late. The absence of an earlier credible capacity to de-commit had set up the South Vietnamese for failure. It had also cost the Americans lives and treasure needlessly.

Now the US is traveling the same road in Afghanistan. In large measure due to the utter and complete idiocy of the Bush/Cheney administration, we entered Afghanistan without either a narrowly defined mission such as the eradication of al-Qaeda and Taliban as well as the ground forces necessary for the task but without any credible capacity to leave the place.

As a result we have been joined hip and shoulder to an indigenous regime which is every bit as corrupt, odious, inefficient, out of touch, and unwilling to do anything in the way of effective war fighting as the worst days in Vietnam. The full extent of the failure to establish both a limited, doable mission and a credible capacity to de-commit is becoming all too visible in the wake of the presidential election.

The primary challenger to the incumbent Karzai, Abdullah Abdullah, has provided evidence of a high probative value demonstrating election fraud on a scale which might make even Ahmedinejad blush. Karzai can afford to blow off American and other outside protests or demands for a run off vote of demonstrable integrity as he is convinced the US has no choice but to stay and fight the war against Taliban and al-Qaeda for its own reasons and benefit.

Hamid Karzai is, of course, right in his stance. Because the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld crew entered Afghanistan without having limited the mission, providing sufficient forces on the ground, and allowing "mission leap" into the vacuum of nation-building, the Islamist jihadist entities grew in strength, numbers, and sophistication.

While Afghanistan qua Afghanistan has no importance to US national and strategic interests, the appearance, no matter how unjustified by fact, of an American military defeat by the Islamist jihadist is absolutely critical to the US--and the West generally. To redeem the failure of the past several years in that unpleasant place is essential for our future peace and security.

That is a brutal fact. It is, nonetheless, a fact, a real, powerful fact. Any odor of an American military failure, including a loss of political will on the part of We the People, will embolden the Islamist jihadists everywhere, meaning we will be neck deep in the martyrdom seeking, human rights abusing, True Belief driven thugs for years to come.

Sounds wonderful, doesn't it?

The Obama administration must make it utterly clear and unmistakable that the troops in country as well as the augmentation which must necessarily come in the future months are there for one purpose only. The purpose is not to build a nation. It is not to prop up the Karzai regime. It is not there to guarantee peace and security for all Afghans for all time to come.

The troops are there to kill Talib, destroy Taliban as a threat now and in the future. And, to do the same to al-Qaeda and any other Islamist jihadists who hope to gain paradise by killing Americans or other Westerners.

The only doable mission now, or in the future (or in the past for that matter), is the squashing of Islamist jihadist entities and the teaching to future Afghan governments that providing safe haven to Islamist jihadists is too risky to contemplate. The realities of Afghan culture, society, history as well as the foundation truth of human social groups as self-organizing precluded and precludes any more.

The current governments of both Afghanistan and Pakistan must be brought to understand, to know in their collective guts that we are interested only in the obliteration of Islamist jihadism in the region now and in the future. What the locals do with their own governments, their own societies, their own lives is their concern alone. Not ours.

Sure, it would be lovely as all get out to see Afghanistan as a liberal, pluralistic, secular democracy with free enterprise and social welfare, sexual equality, an independent judiciary, a free media, and clerics sticking to the mosque, but that is a self-defeating delusion. Good intentions, good hopes, high minded thoughts are simply a form of pavement.

Pavement for the road to hell.

Probable Reactions To A Proposed US Course----

There was a time when the Geek feared and loathed more than any other imaginable words, a tasking which started, "Estimate probable reactions to a proposed US course of action." Those dull, heavy, pedestrian words sent far more chills down the Geek's back than the shrill shriek of a fragment passing a few inches from his ear.

The cause of fear was simple. There is no way the estimate writer could possibly be both right and certain as to his correctness. Neither could the senior level "decider" personnel.

That is the horrid, brutal truth about policy choices. They are never certainly correct, no matter how carefully they are researched, staffed, and refined. There is, in fact, as we all should know, nothing more inherently risky in life than making a choice, a decision. Particularly if that decision involves something of greater, more lasting import than what to eat tonight, which sneakers to buy, or, even whether or not to accept a date.

There are three bases for the risk residing in decisions.

The first is that every choice made limits the number of future options. The result is a cone. At the top, the number of possible options is wide. Each decision, each specific option selected, results in the cone becoming ever more narrow. Finally, at the bottom tip, the options are effectively reduced to zero or, best case, one.

The second reason decision making is so darn risky is that both the direction and the magnitude of the response(s) to the choice cannot be accurately predicted. This is the necessary consequence of the reaction being essentially non-linear in nature. This means that there is no direct, predictable linkage or proportionality between the input (the decision) and the output (the reaction(s) by the target of the decision and others.) The relation between course of action and response(s) to that course is what math types call a "chaotic" or "emergent" system.

(A parenthetical note: One can be certain that a coercive decision, a course of action intended to apply pressure on the target will result in enhanced opposition to the desired result. To put it simply, pressure consolidates long before it fragments. The analogy between the process of turning loose snow into an ice ball and the effect of coercion on a target is precise.)

The third reason is the nature of human group dynamics. This is a universal, running from the smallest, most informal groups to the largest, most complex. All human groups are self-organizing systems which means they are all emergent in nature. Self-organizing systems are dynamically stable, ever changing, and remarkably immune to external pressure.

(Don't believe the old Geekmo? Check it out for--and on--yourself. Presuming you are alive, your body, your mind, your personality are all self-organizing emergent, dynamically stable systems which can resist an extraordinary amount of external threat and assault--at least by a virus and other icky little critters even if not fast moving pieces of metal.)

The three features of the context surrounding each and every policy choice, each and every "proposed US course of action" conspire, no, combine, to assure that the Law of Unintended Consequences will be invoked to greater or lesser extent. That's right, each and every option chosen will call in the Unintended Consequences in all their many forms and furies.

"Prove it, Geek!"

Well, bucko, the Geekmeister can try. Fortunately this is not a court of law and proof beyond a reasonable doubt is not required. History abounds in examples, indeed it can be argued fairly that most of the dismal history of the human race is the record of the Law of Unintended Consequences being applied and the effects of its application. The Geek will confine his examples to a few from recent US foreign policy.

When the US blithely announced the "Open Door" policy regarding China, it (inadvertently or not) established a cone of options regarding its relations with the emergent Japanese Empire. This high spirited action of attempting to provide a level playing ground so that all countries could plunder China equally rather than allowing only one to do so cast the US in the role of special protector of the territorial integrity and governmental sovereignty of an enormous land mass filled with people who owed no particular allegiance to a rapidly transforming governmental system which was both in the process of self-organization and establishing existential or at least functional legitimacy.

The Open Door was intended to be a sort of warning shot across the bows of both Germany and Japan. The latter was still in the process of self-organization following the Meiji Restoration, which meant it was in the full bloom of new nationalism and its concomitant, militarism. The American course of action increasingly was seen in Tokyo as an attempt to limit the "natural growth" of the new Empire.

The Naval Arms Limitation Treaty of the Twenties was not so much the "step toward peace" that it was touted to be as another course of action which both limited the cone of options and stimulated the Japanese to a non-linear reaction. The reaction was to exploit the categories of warship not covered by the Treaty, submarines and aircraft carriers, as well as to cheerfully violate on a wholesale scale the provisions of a later agreement barring fortification of Pacific Ocean possessions.

The unforeseen (but eminently foreseeable) rise of National Socialism in Germany coupled with the Great Depression and the triumph of the Army in internal Japanese politics to provoke the Japanese multi-step invasion of China. The US had few "courses of action" available to it.

The course of action selected was a continuous ramp-up of economic sanctions. Starting with chopsticks and ending with a total embargo on the sale of scrap metal and refined petroleum products, the sanction regime was truly (to use SecState Clinton's term) "crippling." This left the Japanese with few responses possible.

Tokyo had precisely two choices at the bottom of the cone: A humiliating capitulation to US policy demands or war. They chose war hoping that the US, being preoccupied with the greater threat presented by Nazi Germany and stunned by the naval attacks on Pearl Harbor and the invasion of the Philippines, would accept an accomplished feat.

The Japanese were wrong in their hope. But, the resulting war opened the door in China not for a universal opportunity for exploitation but for the success of the Communists of Mao. War, more than any other human interaction is an emergent system, with consequences which are totally non-linear and, thus, impossible to predict. The ChiComs were a self-organizing system existing in a resource rich environment, thus, their success was both certain and easily predicted, as some US diplomats and military personnel did (at later great personal cost.)

At war's end when the US made a set of casual, off-hand decisions, it insensibly created cones of options with respect to both the Korean peninsula and Indo-China. The US was preoccupied with the "big matters" of dividing Europe, the beginnings of the Cold War, and converting from a wartime to a peacetime economy; the margins of Asia simply were too unimportant to deserve any real attention. (Not unlike Osama bin Ladin's declaration of war on the US in the mid-Nineties.)

Had it not been for the context of the rapidly blooming bifurcate world of the Cold War, the hasty and negligent decisions regarding the division of the Korean peninsula and the repatriation of the Japanese forces in Indo-China would not have mattered. But, the context made these two courses of US action--dividing the Korean peninsula at the thirty-eighth parallel and allowing the Chinese Nationalists and British to temporarily occupy Indo-China while ignoring the de facto government in the north of Vietnam headed by Ho Chi Minh--"world historical" in effect.

Both cones rapidly narrowed until the US seemingly had no options except war. In the case of the slow slide into war in Vietnam, the US effort at coercion resulted in a non-linear increase in North Vietnamese will to resist, to accept pain, to endure, to outlast, to win.

The same narrowing cone of options, non-linear response, and self-organization can be seen in miniature in the months leading up to Operation Just Cause when the US military became the world's largest SWAT team in Panama. It can be seen in larger form with the US course of action regarding Cuba and, years later, Iran following the Islamic Revolution.

In these last two examples, Cuba and Iran, the net effects of the assorted US courses of action have not only been to limit options, but also to strengthen the adversaries. Both Cuba and Iran following their respective revolutions were self-organizing systems. Their processes of self-organization were facilitated by the US opposition. Even when the American actions were relatively low scale in impact (as in severing diplomatic relations), the consequences were non-linear in effect. Greater actions, such as sanctions, had greater but still not truly linear results.

In a very real sense, the Law of Unintended Consequences dictated what has happened in both countries. They exist in their present form in large measure because of US actions over the years.

Enough said.

The real deal is how decision makers can limit the application of the Law of Unintended Consequences. How they can choose policy options which have a less open ended, less non-linear outcome?

The very first requirement is to recognize that human systems are self-organizing. This means there are very real limits as to what can be imposed from without. The historical record demonstrates convincingly that outsiders can only effect the self-organizing features of a target population on the margins. The pace of events can be accelerated or retarded--slightly. The precise direction of self-organization can be modified--slightly. But, self-organizing systems cannot be started or stopped simply by external parties--unless the outsider is willing and able to create a desert and call it peace.

Because systems are self-organizing, it is critical to act as soon as possible while the emerging system is new, friable, and most susceptible to inducement or coercion. The only two profitable areas which can be addressed are the new leaders or the context from which the new self-organizing system draws its membership. Since each system--and each leader--is unique, there is no "one size fits all" approach or combination of approaches which will be viable. Each must be addressed in terms relevant to it and it alone whether those terms are soft or very, very robust.

The second requirement which must be met if the Law of Unintended Consequences is to be limited in its application is the narrowing of decisions. Decisions, the course of action, must be sharply focused, narrow in application, and directed toward a limited, even a very limited, goal--an achievable end, not a global one. For example, in Afghanistan the goal of killing Talib and Taliban leadership as well as that of al-Qaeda was appropriate, but the open ended notion of nation building was not.

By narrowing the focus it is possible to reduce to a manageable level the probabilistic smear of reactions. The broader the goal, the fuzzier the focus of the course of action, the more impossible it is to evaluate probable reactions--other than to say they will be bad if not worse for us.

Government leaders seem to have a pathological need to believe that the apparatus they control is somehow both all-powerful and always right. The governments of major countries have this pathology to a high degree. They are to be pitied for this delusion.

The reality is that self-organizing systems have a power far surpassing that of any government or any armed force--unless the goal is to work with the emergent system on the margins, to smooth the roughest edges, to advance favorable trajectories with the goal that the favorable ones will crowd out the unfavorable ones. That reality loops to another one, one which is particularly detested by decision makers who crave certainty (and they all do.)

The second reality is simply that events never play out according to either desires or intents. As Clausewitz correctly observed, "no plan survives first contact with the enemy," no attempt to impose external will on another nation will go according to planned intent. Dynamic stability, which is the normal course of human organizations, assures resiliency--and resistance.

There it is. The general answer to the requirement that one assess "probable reactions to a proposed US course of action." Now you are smarter than the Deep Thinkers in Beltway Land.

So, How's It Going In Pakistan?

From the perspective of the MSM, the government and army of Pakistan are either serious about winning against Taliban or not. An excellent recent example of the latter view is found in Time. A rare representative of the contrary is to be seen in the NYT.

Parsing what is happening in Pakistan is not unlike being a Kremlinologist in the days of the Cold War. Context is everything. In Pakistan the context consists of several equally important features right now. One is the state of play in the Pakistani government as it attempts to balance the power of pervasive nationalism against the appeal of Islamism. Another is the in-built fear and loathing directed against India. A third is the need to preserve the Army as both the only national institution and the bulwark against the presumed Indian threat with the need to at least stifle the Taliban insurgency. The final piece of essential context is the nature and internal dynamics of Taliban following the removal of Baitullah Mehsud.

The Pakistani government or at least its judicial system took a stance for the power of nationalism when it defied the ongoing US pressure over A.Q. Khan. The court ordered the removal of all restrictions on the life of Khan. While not as emotionally infuriating as the recent "compassionate" release of the convicted Lockerbee bomber, the lifting of all limits on Khan does not please the US. From the perspective of Islamabad this is good.

The Pakistani government is quite happy to receive money from the US and other countries which is furnished with the presumption it will go to stabilization efforts in the FATA. More than this is rejected by Islamabad. Again, this is both good and necessary from the perspective of the government which recognizes far more than do foreign chattering and academic classes that nationalism is the best, perhaps the only, palliative for a bad case of latent Islamist jihadism.

Frictions with India over the Mumbai bombing and the judicial aftermath have not decreased. Hiding behind the requirements of judicial process (nationalism again) the Pakistanis have been less than expeditious or determined in their investigation and prosecution of citizens alleged to have been involved in planning and executing the attack. Not even the issuance of a "red notice" by Interpol has impressed the Pakistani authorities. So little were the Pakistanis impressed by Interpol's action that they rejected the so-called Sixth Dossier, which will not improve the state of relations with India.

The Indian government was probably equally unimpressed with the troop shuffle conducted by the Pakistani Army on its border. By the time all the trucks had stopped rolling, three battalion equivalents had been withdrawn purportedly for the planned offensive in the FATA, but these had been replaced by four. Shell games to the contrary notwithstanding, the Indians remain Pakistan's "main enemy."

Without sufficient troops the chance of a genuine "offensive" into the Waziristans is improbable in the extreme. The Army is unwilling to take losses. Period. The government agrees. Period. There will be no ground offensive worthy of the name. Air strikes will continue. They are sufficiently "manly," low risk and, what the hey? might kill some Talib trigger-pullers.

Beyond that, the approach of Islamabad in the post-Baitullah Mehsud days will focus on dividing if not really conquering the component groups of Taliban. Some will be (literally) bought off. Others will be offered "truces" or even "peace treaties" exchanging modified Shariah and local autonomy for renunciation of violence. Others, Islamabad hopes, will be neutralized by the threat of American UAV attacks.

While it is plausible to impute cynical motives to the Pakistani government having adopted this strategy, there are also sound reasons. One is the role of Islamism in Pakistan, its Army, and, last but far, far from least, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI.) Islamism with or without the concomitant jihadism can be and has been a useful tool for ISI and is approved of in many parts of the nation, government, and military.

Another realistic justification for the non-campaign campaign against Taliban is found in the nature of the beast. Taliban is not a monolithic entity. It is a collection of local groups formed around a leader from the disaffiliated and Islamist leaning members of the society around him. Each group is independent. There is agreement amongst the groups on the goals and motivations, but none exists nor is necessary regarding means, methods, and tactics. The personality of Baitullah Mehsud allowed him to forge a degree of tactical alignment which others will have very great difficulty recreating.

This implies that each Taliban component must be dealt with in terms which are relevant to the cultural, social, economic, and personal relationship soil from which it has emerged and from which it receives daily nourishment. There is no "one size fits all" approach which has the slightest chance of succeeding. This includes a military offensive.

Force will be necessary but not sufficient to achieve even a "tame" Taliban. The ISI has more than sufficient contact with the assorted Taliban components to achieve the minimum operational goal of reducing the violence, if it chooses to use the opportunity. This remains to be seen.

The more-or-less in touch with reality number two in al-Qaeda may well be misreading the current situation with Taliban and the Pakistani Army. His latest production warns the "crusaders" and "apostates" of dire consequences should the offensive be pursued. On the upside, the Islamist jihadist blowhard agrees with most US observers that Pakistan is the primary battleground. But, where his side has no choice except fighting (if suicide bombings can be accurately labeled as fighting), the Pakistanis do not have to fight very much or very hard.

Given that the Talib fighters are members of a species of self-organising system and the personality of the leader is the locus around which self-organisation occurs, it is only necessary to "turn" the leader from following jihadism. The leader can be suborned into dropping jihadism from the group's agenda. He can be killed if he does not.

In the early mid-period of the US involvement in South Vietnam, the Quang Ngai Special Platoon Program was oriented toward this kind of action. Often, even quite often, the results were surprising in the number of people who changed sides and the low, even very low, body count.

A similar approach was undertaken with equal success by the Americans and locals in suppressing the post-WW II Huk Insurrection. In Malaya the British did the same during the long years of the Emergency. The lessons are there. Perhaps the Pakistanis have learned them. Time will tell.

In any event it is quite premature to characterize the Pakistanis as having tossed in the cliched sponge. The endgame may not be all that the US might wish, but there is a good likelihood that it will be sufficiently robust to provide a good measure of stability to the FATA and, thus, to the border with Afghanistan.

That's enough in this sort of war.

Keep The Mullahs In Power Above All Else

The party line in Iran has reversed course. The Supreme Leader has confirmed the change. He now avers that the West was not behind the unrest in Iran following the election. This development came hard on the heels of the Iranian decision to allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors into the Arak heavy water reactor and other sites previously prohibited to them.

The Charm Offensive has gained speed as Friday approaches. The big noise on Friday is the scheduled release of the latest poop out of the IAEA on the Iranian nuke projects. There is very real apprehension that the new report will contain the fruits of US, UK, Israeli, and IAEA intelligence showing the weaponization efforts of the mullahs. If the IAEA drops the ElBaradi protective shield, it will be the result of coordinated multi-lateral pressure and will result in enhanced pressure to "Do Something!" about the emerging Iranian threat on the part of Western opinion molders and politicos.

Reinforcing the potential that the West will "do something" are the recent remarks by both France's Nicholas Sarkozy and, today, Germany's Angela Merkel. Considering that both nations are in the "Billionaire's Club" in bi-lateral trade with Iran, the new harshness is not easily ignored in Tehran--or Qom. The potential of the new measures including the prohibition of gasoline shipments to the country puts added and very real pressure on the economic basket case called Iran.

The deep divisions demonstrated both in the Iranian public and the clerical elite that runs the country have destroyed the facade of the Iranian monolith. The weaknesses within have been and continue to be on display for all to see. In short, Iran looks as unstable as it actually has been for several years, years in which desperation has grown along with economic misery and increasing restiveness under the sway of the reactionary semi-theocracy.

The intent of the Iranian charm offensive is simply to delay the next measures proposed by the US and others, the "crippling sanctions" once promised by SecState Clinton. A second, perhaps overarching intent is to drive a wedge between the US and EU on the one hand and Iran's protectors, Russia and, even more, China.

The goal is to keep the centrifuges spinning in both announced and inspected facilities and the highly probable undisclosed ones. The end goal is to get the bomb. For in possession of the bomb lies the future security of the regime.

Iran has watched US policy to Pakistan closely. We cooperate, support, facilitate the government of Pakistan even though we know perfectly well that the Inter-Services Intelligence wallahs have supported and continue to support Taliban and al-Qaeda. We do this out of fear. Fear that the Pakistani bomb or fissionable materials might fall into the "wrong hands" in the event of a regime collapse. Whether there is any basis in reality for this fear, there can be no denying that it exists at least at the level of anxiety in Washington.

In short, the government of Pakistan may be obnoxious in some, even many, respects, but it is infinitely preferable to no government at all or a government dominated by Islamist jihadists.

The consequence is simple. We will act to secure its continuation in power regardless of other considerations such as expense, human rights violations, corruption, or even its level of perceived legitimacy.

The Supreme Leader in Iran wants the same sort of guarantee above all else. For Grand Ayatollah Khemenei, regime maintenance is what it is all about. This is buttressed by the clear indication that he desires to establish a family dynasty in the quasi-theocracy by seeing his son succeed him as Supreme Leader.

In the short run Iran depends upon its capacity to be a regional troublemaker as well as its foreign protectors China and Russia to purchase time and regime maintenance alike. In the longer term, say in another eighteen to twenty-four months, the Supreme Leader sees the "Pakistani Gambit" as a sovereign remedy to forestall the collapse of the government.

If the US fears the consequences of a Pakistani collapse or Islamist jihadist takeover of Pakistan, it would be even more fearful of Iran falling apart. Right now Iran faces three internal threats, regional defensive insurgencies in Kurdistan and down in Baluchistan. In addition the events of the post-election period show that the potential of an offensive insurgency pitting the large segment of totally discontented and disaffiliated Iranians against the Islamist reactionaries of the clerical establishment and its supporters of the Iran-Iraq War period, the Revolutionary Guard and the jihadist militia.

The specter of a nuclear Iran collapsing in a welter of insurgency and bloodletting with fissile materials at risk would be guaranteed to produce a number of Xanax moments in Washington. The less risky course of action would be to bite down on distaste and do what could be done to prop up the regime. At the least Washington would be deterred from throwing its weight behind one or another insurgent contestant.

Or so the logic tree of the Supreme Leader and his coterie must/might run. Buy time. Keep the centrifuges spinning. Get the fissionables. Play the Pakistani Gambit. Keep the regime running.

And, there it is, one more foreign policy challenge for the Nice Young Man From Chicago and his crew of progressives. Gotta hope they are up to it.

Yemen Zips On Down The Tube

Yemen is an important pimple on the collective rump of the globe. In that way it resembles the other important pimple sitting across the Gulf of Aden. You know, the one called Somalia.

The twin pimples are alike in another way. Both are in the process of succumbing to Islamist jihadist insurgent groups. Sure, Somalia has had all the big news play. Couldn't be helped; the morass in Somalia has been incrementally developing despite (or because of) the good intentions of outside actors including the US. It has also been helped in the old media exposure by the fun and games undertaken by the Merry Pirates of Puntland.

By comparison Yemen has sat back in the shadows unnoticed by the media and most foreign policy wonks. Quietly, but surely the place has been travelling down the same road as Somalia, just at a slower rate.

The spotlight flicked on recently when the government launched an offensive against the Shia insurgents in the north. This Islamist jihadist bunch is headed by Abdul-Malek al-Houthi and is, unsurprisingly, called the "Houthis." It is a revivalist branch of the Zaydi version of Shia. What this means theologically eludes the Geek completely, but it has importance in assessing the overall appeal of the sect to Yemenis generally.

With the start of the offensive including air strikes and armored operations (which while macho as all get out are of very dubious utility in countering tribal guerrillas in rugged terrain), the usual suspects--humanitarian entities and the UN--have raised the expectable cry of humanitarian crisis. Considering that the Yemeni forces are undoubtedly firing shells and heaving bombs with great enthusiasm and little skill, the generation of refugees has been and will continue to be the single major feature of the offensive.

It deserves mentioning that while the Yemeni armed forces are blowing holes in the desert, the country (the Geek uses that term generically only) faces two other, shall we say, "challenges." One of them is al-Qaeda. The other is a regional insurgency in the south which is so far at least relatively untouched by the hot hand of Islamist jihadism.

War has been endemic to Yemen (or, the Yemens, plural since for most of the past several decades there were two, one North and the other South) since 1962. In that far off year when JFK was in the White House and most Americans alive today not yet born, the thousand year old Zaydi imamate was overthrown. Since that distant day war has reigned supreme with assorted truces, ceasefires, peace treaties and even a partition having come and gone with the rapidity of mirages before the eyes of a desert traveler dying of thirst.

Oh, the Brits hung on for a few years trying to keep Aden (or North Yemen) alive and well. But, in 1967 following the "Battle of the Crater," the Labor Government tossed in the sponge and left the field "East of Suez." The ever-ambitious Egyptian government of the day kept on fighting a proxy war supporting South Yemen (AKA The Peoples Republic of Yemen) in its effort to subdue the North. Eventually even Nasser gave up and sought greener pastures by giving the Israelis plausible cover for their Great Land Grab War of 1967.

And so it went, hot war followed by cold peace. The place(s) dissolved more and more over time into a loose assemblage of tribes, religious sects governed locally only by sheiks, or others with local mojo. The central government(s) governed little and loosely.

Even the reconstitution of Yemen as a single entity did nothing to alter the basic dynamics as recent events have proven conclusively. There was little if any functional legitimacy attached to the central regime and utterly no existential legitimacy. The government governed only through the balancing of opposing forces or, less successfully, through naked coercion.

The vacuum at the center encouraged--no--demanded the Zaydi resurrection. That is the name of the game with the insurgent group in the north. It is avowedly Zaydi and demands the reconstitution of the ancient regime, the Zaydi imamate. Turning back time to the years prior to 1962 may be Quixotic, but that does not lower the appeal of the dream, particularly to those living in the long ignored, long impoverished, long futile, and frustrated folks of the North.

The fact that the Zaydi are a branch of Shia Islam is important because it has opened the doors to support by Iran both direct and through the Iranian proxy, Hezbollah. While proof of the involvement beyond rhetorical levels is absent, there is strong reason to suspect it, given the military capacities demonstrated by the Houthis.

Be that as it may, Iran has termed the conflict an internal Yemeni matter and called for a political settlement. But, what else would be expected? Iran is already in sufficiently deep kim chee not to desire further submergence.

There is less doubt that Saudi Arabia has been deeply involved on the side of the central government. The Saudis have furnished money, and perhaps more to the Saana regime in the hopes of bolstering the government sufficiently that Yemen will not become even more of a sanctuary for al-Qaeda and similar Islamist jihadist groups. The Saudis have a dog in the fight given the long record of al-Qaeda personnel training and equipping in the hills of Yemen for strikes on Saudi Arabia.

In a real sense the US does not give a fig who wins in the place. Provided that whoever comes out on top--Houthis, Saana or Southern insurgents--they do not give a safe haven to Islamist jihadists. The US administration has been keeping a (deliberately?) low profile in the resurgent fighting, limiting its direct involvement to an appeal to both sides to observe the truce agreement of last year.

The American caution is well-advised. There is no probability that the current Yemeni offensive will be successful even in the most limited definition of the word. Linking ourselves to the Saana government would be counterproductive in the longer haul, should the Houthis win or should they strike a deal with the southern insurgents.

The second alternative is not probable given that both the government and the insurgents in the south are Salafists and this is anathema to the Zaydis of the north. The Salafist orientation of Saana, of course, gives Saudi Arabia cover for its pragmatically based assistance.

Despite its growing military capacity, and regardless of (probable) foreign support and the presence of (possible) foreign fighters from Iraq and Afghanistan, the Houthis do not yet threaten Saana. This will come however as surely as dawn brings prayers across the bare mountains and desert of Yemen.

The worst case outcome from the perspective of Washington would be the emergence of an Islamist jihadist vise with one jaw in Somalia and the other in Yemen. Such a vise would be positioned perfectly to close on the critical southern approach to the Suez Canal.

The vise could also result from the success of an Iranian backed Zaydi government in Yemen. Stop and think for a moment about the implications of Iran having the potential to blockade both the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Aden.

Not a pleasant prospect, eh, bucko? The Revolutionary Guard in their famed inflatable boats could put quite a crimp in international trade and commerce without having to do much of anything. A further deterrent to the exercise of the "military option" in the matter of Iran's nuclear efforts?

Not in the near term, certainly. But, far from improbable in the mid- to long-term. Right now, the dynamics are running in favor of the Houthis. Without resolute assistance from some outside party or parties, selling insurance to the Saana government is a loser.

Oh well, as Allah wills.

Really, Really Stupid Policy Choices Of The Day

Some days you gotta wonder just how it is that humanity is still around rather than having expired from a surfeit of bad thinking, short-sighted blundering in its collective version of inter-personal relations AKA foreign policy. This is one of those days when flat-out silliness seems to be ruling not only in Washington but around the world. A few items which demonstrate this contention follow.

As usual the US, or, more properly, the Obama administration leads off. The issue this time is the ongoing imbroglio over the non-coup "military coup" in Honduras. Not only does the Deep Thinking Brain Trust In Charge Of Foreign Policy not yet get the fact that the removal of Manuel (Lefty) Zelaya was mandated by the Honduran Supreme Court and merely executed by the military but that the majority of the country's institutions support the continued ouster of the wannabe President For Life.

Another basic reality of human affairs which eludes the Deep Thinkers is that pressure consolidates long before it fractures political will. The addition of yet more pressure, in this case the restriction of visa services, will further the will and ability of the de facto government and its supporters to hang tough. The people in charge of such matters as this might be aggrieved that the Organisation of American States delegation was unable to achieve an acceptance of the compromise plan brokered by Oscar Arias, but they have neither asked why this is the case nor considered the impact of their attempt at applying more pressure.

Quite possibly had Sr Zelayas refrained from some of his more belligerent rhetoric and bellicose demands during his sojourn in the friendly and fraternal land of the Ortega regime, the de facto government would have gone along with the idea of letting Zelaya back in to fill the last few months of his term--provided he didn't seek some new electoral ploy. But, Zelaya and his supporters, headed by Hugo (Mouth of the South) Chavez couldn't be bothered by taking a time out from berating not only the "Great Military Coup and Death Of Democracy As We Knew It in Honduras but also the supposed sponsorship of the coup by the US. (Of course, they also sought with success the diplomatic support of the US while lambasting the Yankees.)

Now, bucko, all policy choices cause reactions. The reactions are, in the terms of mathematics, emergent systems. That means there is no linear relationship between the magnitude of the input--the decision--and the output--the reaction on the part of the target government, state, or people. History shows rather conclusively that policy choices which are meant to coerce, to force the target to bend to our policy, will cause a greater, much greater firmness on the part of the target to resist. The direction of the target's response--resistance--can be predicted correctly but, and it's a big but, the magnitude cannot. It is often disproportionate to the input stimulus.

So, pace, all you Brilliant Minds in Foggy Bottom and littering the White House landscape, your most recent essay in coercive diplomacy is not likely to pay off. It is, however, not unlikely that it will result in both short and longer term resistance and hostility from Honduras. And, guess what, guys and gals, it won't buy you any warm fuzzies with Hugo, Daniel, and Raul. Not even with Ewo and Rafael for that matter.

In second place--no--strike that--in a tie for first place in policy debacles du jour comes Russia. In a move which seems almost carefully crafted to assure that the Islamist jihadist plus nationalist insurgency in the North Caucasus continues, Vladimir Putin has gone on down to warmly embrace (at least metaphorically) the Kremlin appointed regional strongman, a man capable of creating a desert and calling it peace but failing to quell insurgency, named Ramzan Kadyrov.

Kadyrov is both corrupt and inefficiently repressive. The latter characteristic is the more important. Under his sway a simulacrum of peace emerged in Chechnya. The insurgency was not defeated despite Putin's claims to the opposite. It went underground. Became stronger. Took on far more of an Islamist jihadist tinge. And, came back. First in Ingushtia and then in Chechnya.

The insurgents are back, bigger, badder and better than ever. It will be far harder to defeat them now then it was during the desperately mis-handled First and Second Chechnya Wars. The Third Chechnya War started even before the bodies of the Second had been counted--but no one was willing or able to realize this unpleasant, brutal reality.

There is a way which has the potential to defeat the insurgents. The Geek even took the time to outline it. The historically derived way to win definitely did not have a role for people such as Ramzan Kadyrov, who, by the way, has already been repeatedly and severely castigated in elements of the Russian media for his repeated boorish acts which rival those of previous Soviet era failures.

The decision to continue more of the same old same old is another example of the tenacity and universality of decisions resulting in emergent systems. Again the direction of the response by the insurgents and uncommitted majority in the North Caucasus can be predicted--resistance--but the magnitude cannot be accurately estimated other than to say more, a lot more, blood will flow without positive, long-lasting result.

Vladimir Putin has demonstrated that he is sufficiently ideologically blinded and short-sighted to get a job in the current US administration or State Department should he find himself unemployed back at home. No greater insult is possible in the Geek's estimate.

In distant third place in the derby of asininity in foreign policy comes the Nonaligned Movement. Reportedly one hundred of the one hundred eighteen members of the NAM have signed on to The Protect Iran's Nuke Plants From Israel (and the US.) Over the years the NAM has been a source of much amusement given their collective propensity for loud sounds, posturing, and generally overly boisterous behavior at the UN and other global fora.

Does this unwieldy congeries of nations ranging from the important to the utterly inconsequential really, really believe that by running the Iranian proposal through the UN to protect Iran's nuke facilities from attack would be worth the paper it is written on? Even if the nuclear powers of the Security Council would be willing to restrict their nuclear counter-force targeting to be restricted by the UN in principle, in practice it would be ignored utterly.

The same is true for other countries including NAM leader India which would hit Pakistan's nuclear plants in a New York second if there was good (read "existential") reason. Why should Israel be any more constrained by the Iranian proposal should it be passed by the UN?

The subtext of the NAM support for Iran is that the member states harbor a number of unrealized (and perhaps, unrealizable) nuclear dreams of their own. And, many face regional rivals with which relations are less than peace, love, and flower-power.

The subtext of the support also bespeaks of animus toward the US and its presumed desire and need to constrict access to nuclear power in all its forms. The American policy toward the spread of both military and peaceful uses of the uranium atom has been mixed. Uncle Sam has shown a real ability to turn the Nelsonian eye on nuclear developments in some countries but not others.

This admitted and (perhaps) regrettable inconsistency has given rise to a degree of paranoia on the part of some members of NAM, but this is scarcely justification for siding with a dangerous, destabilizing, and relentlessly hegemonic power such as Iran. Perhaps these countries have swallowed the preposterous Iranian line that it simply wants electrical power. In that case, the words of Nicholas Sarkozy are relevant. "Frankly, who can believe them?"

Iran is not some poor little hounded victim of Israeli and American persecution. The member states of NAM have to get a grip on this. Otherwise they are condemning NAM to even more irrelevance in the international game. Numbers aren't everything--even at the UN, and the NAM has to understand that as well.

To be sure there are other examples of human idiocy in the foreign affairs arena today. But, three are enough. The Geek is getting old. His stomach churns too easily at sheer unadultrated stupidity these days.

Let's Feed CIA To The "Progressives"

While President Obama is hiding behind Attorney-General Holder in this despicable affair, there is no getting around the unpleasant thought that the special prosecutor taking out after alleged CIA abuses and abusive officers (or contractors) is a matter of heaving a sacrifice to the progressive base and Progressive Caucus in Congress. All in the name of getting health care reform through even absent the so-called "public option."

The heavily redacted but still usable CIA Inspector General's report which serves, in part, to justify the special prosecutor's proceedings shows questionable tactics to be sure. But, more importantly it shows positive results. Even the MSM including those usually eager to join in eviscerating the Agency are willing to acknowledge this fact.

True, the negative leads, but for those willing to wade on through to the end, the accomplishments of the interrogation are noted. The Agency should have and did investigate the way over the edge zeal of some employees and contractors. The worst offenses were apparently stopped.

That should have been that. The episodes were finished, over, done with. Even the Nice Young Man From Chicago seemed to go along with that during his high visibility visit to Langley some months ago. At that time he seemed, appeared to, kind of, sort of, commit himself and his administration to not persecuting (oops! Bad Geek!) that is prosecuting officers and others who complied with the legal opinions issued by the relevant lawyers for guidance. There was no mention of going after those who might have, in the very real heat of the moment, let the need for actionable information outweigh the fine points of legal debate.

The Geek is not without personal familiarity with the difficulties of interrogating very highly motivated, very experienced individuals deeply hostile to the US. While his approach did not include the various techniques authorized by the Bush/Cheney administration legal personnel let alone include the objectionable add-ons mentioned in the IG's report, he is not prepared to condemn those who went over the edge.

There is no reason to disbelieve that the urgencies of the moment seemed in the best judgement of those conducting the interrogations to demand the use of every means short of damaging physical torture necessary to acquire the necessary information. These people were not simple minded sadists, nor were they threatening for the joy of doing so. No. They were under the clear pressure of time and the urgent need to both protect the US and Americans from possible harm and to better understand the structure and nature of the command and operational echelons of al-Qaeda and Taliban.

As is the general case in military jurisprudence regarding both proportionality and the infliction of civilian casualties, the central matter is intent. If the commander and those under his command had no intent to use disproportionate means nor inflict civilian casualties, than any harm which occurs is held to be incidental, not intended: not a crime.

Poor supervision, lack of clear guidance as mentioned in the IG report do not constitute a criminal intent. Nor do the methods employed in and of themselves. In this matter, the matter of interrogating hostile prisoners, the core issue up and down the chain of command as well as on the part of the person conducting the interrogation is simply intent.

There is no indication of any intent to violate either law or customs of war. While the actual conduct of interrogations may not be the most sharply defined area of the laws and customs of war, and the Agency is not one which is specifically military, the same thinking should, no, must be employed.

That was the case during the Bush/Cheney administration. And, it appeared to be the case with the Obama administration until the past few days. The current Director of Central Intelligence must have been very well aware of the new direction in which the wind was blowing.

Leon Panetta is a consummate Washington insider. He well knows how the game is played. He knows that the progressives in and out of congress are in a hissy-fit over the presumed junking of the "public option" in the health care overhaul bill. He knows that bones have to be thrown to the ravening horde of progressives in return for any backsliding on letting the federal government take over health care.

Not only did this ultimate insider not act to protect the Agency--his Agency--he acted to presage the current Roman circus. He ran panting and sweating to Congress and media over a program which never was, breathless with indignation and fermenting in purity of mind and soul.

Leon The Gutless is more than simply willing to see the emasculation of the Agency even though the threats it confronts daily are not waning but rather still waxing. He is willing to place the Agency on the chopping block if it will protect the president from the ire of the "progressives."

Without even the transient justifications which allowed William Colby to turn over the "family jewels" to the Church and Pike committees a third of a century ago, Panetta is willing to see the long knives plunged into the back of a very, very important outfit: CIA. This is not only politics at its most base, it is a short-sighted act of self-inflicted defeat for the nation. In a time of war.

President Obama knows all of this. His spineless hiding behind the man he appointed Attorney-General is the act of a politician from Chicago--not an American president. The President is ably supported in his exercise in feeding the base by two other unscrupulous politicians for whom the success of the Agenda of Transformation is far, far more important than the well-being and safety of Americans and America.

To call it shameful is entirely too mild, too forgiving. But, to be accurate would require a mastery of epithet far surpassing the Geek's ability.

You Gotta Wonder How Serious Karzai Is

It is not unusual to read a piece in the NYT gleefully predicting defeat for the US in either or both Iraq and Afghanistan. It seems to be sort of mea culpa for having thumped the war drum so hard before the invasion of Iraq.

There are times when the Tales of Cassandra ring accurate and true. This is one of them. It passes the test of Inherent Probability. It was even foreshadowed.

The article details the difficulties, not to say flat impossibilities being confronted by one small, which is to say, understrength Marine battalion in the rugged, dry, hot terrain of Helmand Province. The impossible situation has been created by the Afghan government, which has not provided any of the civic action, police, or military units promised. These missing Afghan assets are the key to long term success in the region and thus in Afghanistan generally.

The Marines are able to provide an austere sort of security but nothing more. Their job was to clear the area of Taliban and then to provide the backbone of a "hold" strategy which depended upon Afghan Army and police forces for its full effect. The Marine shield was presumed to provide a cover for civilians and civilian action in the areas of government, education, and health care.

Well, the Marines are there. Taliban has withdrawn. But, the critical Afghan personnel both military and civilian are major non-participants. The police unit sent to the area was undermanned, untrained, tainted with criminal activity, and counterproductive in effect. The thirty man detail dispatched by the Afghan Army believed it was in the area for a little R&R before going somewhere else to fight. The health care, governmental, and educational folks never came to the party.

As a result the civilians (stand by for enormous shock) are sitting on the fence, happy to see Taliban gone but fearful of what will happen when (not if) the Marines leave. Taliban is not known for its charitable treatment of those it deems "apostates" due to cooperation with the foreign forces. The Marines are working with due diligence to gain the trust and cooperation of the locals, but the chance of developing the mechanisms let alone the record of mutual trust is low absent the Afghan portion of the mission.

As if to counterpoint the crucial nature of this microcosm of what gives the surface impression of having been a successful offensive campaign into Helmand by the Marines and their British colleagues, Admiral Mullen today described the situation in Afghanistan as "serious and deteriorating." How right he is.

As the Geek pointed out in a post last month, among the reasons for a (high potential) US defeat in Afghanistan are the unwillingness and inability of the Karzai government to cooperate effectively with the US and other foreign forces coupled with Karzai's basic imperative to stay in power no matter what it takes--including cutting deals tacit or otherwise with Taliban and al-Qaeda. At least one if not both of these considerations were at work when the offensive into Helmand commenced last month. The Afghan National Army and other pledged forces were missing in a significant way at the starting line.

The longer term implications of this Afghan lack of will or ability to wage war against the Islamist jihadists are all resident in the minor slice of life presented in the Times piece. As the Geek has said and written until he is both blue of face and arthritic of finger is that the locals finally win or lose the counterinsurgent conflict. It is up to them to make the "better state of peace" which must ensue if the end of hostilities marks the beginnings of conflict resolution.

The actions and attitudes of much (but not all) of the Karzai government hints that the idea of hostilities termination and conflict resolution currently held in Kabul is not simply one of power sharing, which isn't bad in and of itself, but rather some sort of surrender which leaves Karzai at the top of the heap--at least for some sort of "decent interval." This sort of delusional "peace without victors" has a genuine appeal for the Karzai government--and many others in Afghanistan, including Taliban.

While this endgame may be suitable from the perspective of Kabul, it is most certainly not so from an American point of view. Anything, any settlement, any hostilities termination which has the slightest odor of an American defeat attached will simply encourage other Islamist jihadists. Admiral Mullen must be aware of this ramification as he stated on a different TV talk fest that the primary American focus was on disrupting al-Qaeda and Taliban, which remain the single greatest threat confronting the US today.

Islamist jihadism takes courage from the slightest hint of failing political will and diminishing military capacity on the part of any of its enemies, headed, of course, by the US. This is what is at stake in Afghanistan.

Building a democracy, or assuring human (particularly women's) rights, developing the economic base in Afghanistan are all nice. But, they are not essential to US national and strategic interest. Even undercutting the production of opium falls in the "nice but not necessary" category. There is only one compelling reason for Americans to fight and die in that chunk of unpleasant real estate--the military defeat of Taliban, al-Qaeda, and any other Islamist jihadists polluting the place.

The war we are fighting is not against terrorism qua terrorism. Nor is it a war for freedom, democracy, and prosperity in Afghanistan.

The war we are fighting, the "war of necessity" as President Obama correctly termed it, is against Taliban, al-Qaeda and Islamist jihadism generally. It is a matter of defeating the hydra there or facing more of its heads elsewhere and elsewhen.

That's the brutal truth of the matter. Get a firm grip on it.

Obama Gets Something Right

Of late the excoriations and praise poured over the head of the Nice Young Man From Chicago have focused on domestic matters alone. Few of We the People pay much attention to the President's conduct of foreign affairs.

This is perhaps good considering the nature, quality, and effectiveness of whatever passes for foreign policy in the Obama White House and administration generally. If there is one area where Mr Obama and most of his henchmen (and women) lack competence, it is that of foreign policy and its close associate, military policy.

However, on occasion the President gets it right. On those rare moments the Geek is both willing and happy to acknowledge the fact.

A few days ago President Obama termed the war in Afghanistan to be a "war of necessity" while addressing the VFW annual convention. In this appraisal he was absolutely correct.

Later the President averred in response to the declining public acceptance and support of the war that it had not been underway for nearly eight years but rather for only those few months which have gone by since he approved the modest (17,000 personnel) increase in deployed US combat forces and appointed a new commander, General Stanley McChrystal. In this contention the President was absolutely correct.

The only point in then Senator Obama's record with which the Geek agreed a year and more ago was his opposition to the war in Iraq based on the view the Iraq effort diverted the US from the main goal of eradicating al-Qaeda and akin groups. While that is certainly not sufficient reason to elect a man president, it at least indicated that Mr Obama could be properly oriented as to time and place at least some of the time.

Afghanistan was and is a necessary war. The Taliban gave refuge and support to al-Qaeda including its jefe grande and refused to give him over following the 9/11 attacks. American and other diplomats placed all possible pressure on the Islamist jihadist regime to no avail. This meant that there was no meaningful option beyond invading the place.

There can be little doubt that Taliban and al-Qaeda of all ranks was shocked that the US would and did actually invade the sanctuary of Afghanistan. Previously our responses to outrageous attacks had been limited to ineffectual cruise missile strikes.

(Although, had Osama bin Laden not received a last second warning from a source in Pakistan on 20 August 98 there is a better than excellent chance he would have been caught by the incoming Tomahawks and the world would have been spared the rest of his handiwork. Osama's son, Omar recounts the tale in his new book thereby confirming what the Two Shops have long suspected.)

As the Geek has argued many times before in this blog as well as many other fora, had the Bush/Cheney administration waited a few weeks longer, brought more combat troops to the theater, and not depended so much on the locals from the Northern Alliance while at the same time giving the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence wallahs time and opportunity to spirit their Taliban clients and others out of harm's way, the "war of necessity" would have been over with both expeditiousness and full success. For reasons which may be adduced but defy both reason and logic, the administration opted to fight the war on the cheap, to send too few men and allow success to trickle away between their outstretched fingers.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Admiral Mullen, is both polite and politic enough to describe the effort in Afghanistan on the Bush/Cheney watch as being one of "an economy of force" nature. The Admiral undoubtedly knows full well that "economy of force" tactics are employed on the defensive--and only the defensive. The notion of "economy of force" in waging offensive missions is oxymoronic--and moronic.

Of course we well know that the neocon ninnies (or should that be morons) of the Bush/Cheney regime were cranking up for the main event--to quote Omar Bradley's famed comment on MacArthur's desire to go to war with China--"the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong enemy." The Bush/Cheney adventure in regime change in Iraq demonstrates in the most profound way possible (with the exception of Woodrow Wilson's performance at Versailles at the end of WW I) the ease with which ideologically driven True Believers can drag the US (and much of the world) over the cliff of blunder into the abyss.

(President Obama who has shown definite signs of being afflicted with the pathology of True Belief should take heed--and warning. But, history shows that True Believers are rarely, if ever, disabused of their ideologically based misapprehensions concerning how the real world works.)

The consequence of the previous administration's pathetic decision making and worse war fighting assured that the US never really fought a war in Afghanistan. Rather, it played at fighting with insufficient manpower, deficient material resources, an overly ambitious set of nation building goals, and commanders who reeked of the conventional war fighting mentality rather than that necessary to prosecute successful counterinsurgency in a large and rugged area populated by people long used to fighting against, not alongside, foreigners.

The results, which have been seen both on the ground and in the erosion of American political will to continue the war, are self-evident. The resurgence of both Taliban and to a lesser extent, al-Qaeda, were both predictable--and probably were.

Importantly, the growth of Taliban has made its destruction along with that of al-Qaeda more necessary than ever. The slightest indication that either or both have been or will be able to fight the US to a standstill will do nothing but assure the continued growth and horizontal escalation of Islamist jihadist entities around the world. Today, even more than on 9/12 it is utterly essential for American national and strategic interests that the US prove militarily superior to the Islamist jihadists in a clear and unmistakable way.

Anything less than a convincing military defeat of Taliban and al-Qaeda will place the US and other countries at far greater risk in the future. Anything less means that we will be fighting another war in another place in the not distant future with greater costs than those that will be incurred in Afghanistan.

Recently it has been reported that General McChrystal is going to recommend that somewhere between fifteen and forty-five thousand additional troops be deployed in country. If this report is accurate, and the Doctrine of Inherent Military Probability supports it, the Pentagon and President should approve it without delay.

Senator John McCain called for doubling the number of Marines in country from three to six battalions, that is from nine to eighteen thousand jarheads. This would be a good down payment on what is needed to clear and hold the Taliban dominated border regions.

The escalation for which President Obama takes the credit (or the blame) was probably the result of urgings by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and National Security Advisor James Jones. There is a high probability that these two experienced and monumentally realistic men would give the thumbs up to General McChrystal's request when it arrives formally next month.

Both Gates and Jones have been around the block often enough to know in their bones that counterinsurgency is a manpower intensive form of war. They both know that technology is no replacement for boots on the ground no matter how much it make those wearing the boots safer and more effective.

The US does not have much time to visibly reverse the tide of battle in Afghanistan. SecDef Gates opined a couple of weeks back that the American public would demand a pullout within no more than eighteen months. That estimate is, if anything, on the sanguine side. A very real change must be evident in less than twelve months. And, the only way to do that is by sending a lot more troops to the conflict.

The progressive base of the Democratic party will howl and protest mightily. Balancing this, the Republican party in Congress will have no choice except backing the escalation as well as the inevitable hike in casualties. Obama will have at least his right flank protected and, who knows, might even be able to demand some sort of Republican "pro quo" for the presidential "quid" of taking the heat for bailing out the Bush inspired failure in Afghanistan.

Some Europeans may wail in protest as well. But, you know who won't protest at all? Who will give tacit support including extending the new, liberal overflight policy?

That's right, bucko. Russia. Putin,, Medvedev, and Company, who face their own problems with Islamist jihadists, know perfectly well that any Islamist jihadist success anywhere, at any time, emboldens all Islamist jihadists. And, they are entirely too aware of this brutal fact to wish the Americans and their allies anything other than a complete victory in Afghanistan.

China Steps Up To The Plate--In Pakistan

China has long enjoyed an all-weather relationship with Pakistan. In the past the Chinese have been more than generous with aid of all sorts. Pakistan has received economic development assistance, military equipment, and, last, but far from least, nuclear technology, equipment, and materials.

The increasingly close relation between the US and India as epitomized in the recently concluded deal on civilian nuclear facilities after decades of more or less acrimonious estrangement may well be the reason China is showing a renewed interest in Pakistan. There is a single dominant national interest shared by Pakistan and China.

That's right, bucko, India. Each sees the other as a reinsurance policy against India.

Why the insurance is necessary, particularly by China, is difficult to fathom. It is true that Pakistan serves China as a sort of very low cost deterrent against any Indian ambitions, but that fails to answer the key question: What ambitions on the part of India are evident enough to make Beijing seek even very low cost deterrence over and above the scope and competence of their own armed forces?

There is no, or at least very, very little probability of China and India having another passage at arms such as the skirmish (which India lost) high in the Himalayas back in 1962. Forty-seven years of staring across the icy trenches in the thin air without another go-around indicates that the frontier is and will remain stable.

The most likely motivation for China's generosity toward Pakistan is found in the search for regional hegemony. In looking at Southeast Asia from Thailand to Malaysia, China sees only one theoretical rival for regional power status--India. Insofar as India remains focused on Pakistan and the potential threats emerging from that country, China can pursue its regional goals without any anxiety of Indian counters.

Playing to Pakistan's fears concerning India is one of the easiest diplomatic games to play. The Pakistanis are ready, eager really, to accept any conspiracy notion--as long as the villain lives in New Delhi. Currently Islamabad is convinced that India is conspiring with the US to establish its odious presence in Afghanistan to Pakistan's manifest disadvantage. Beyond this, the government of Pakistan as well as assorted opinion makers are firmly of the view that the sinister hand of India is behind the separatist movement in Baluchistan (perhaps with the consent or even approval and assistance of the US.)

India is after influence in Afghanistan. That much is true. That any increase in Indian influence may serve to hinder Pakistan's similar ambition in the country is not arguable. It is rather a zero sum game. There is little doubt that India would not weep should Baluchistan gain either a measure of autonomy or even independence.

It is beyond the realm of reality that the US is involved in any Indian effort in Afghanistan beyond that of wishing it would be more effective and less high profile. Even further in the land of paranoiac fantasy is the notion that Washington would like to see the energetic disassembly of Pakistan.

Reality is of less concern to the government of Pakistan and the Pakistanis generally than is the perception of the US as being hostile to it. The same is true-on steroids--regarding India. The recent launching of the Indian nuclear submarine has put Islamabad in a rhetorical tizzy. There is little doubt but Pakistan feels an obligation to at least match this accomplishment.

As Russia helped India build its missile capable boat, so might the Chinese assist Pakistan. Also, the Chinese might well be far more willing than is the US currently to supply high ticket systems suitable for use against India. The Chinese have an unsurpassed record in furnishing weapons without any stultifying restrictions about their employment.

The US having been burned no end during the days of the open wallet approach to military aid favored by the Bush/Cheney administration now supplies only those goodies suitable for low-intensity counterinsurgency operations. This approach is reflected in the US unwillingness to give UAVs to Pakistan as these could be shifted quickly from the FATA to the Indian border.

The Chinese are not at all likely to be so picky.

India is not without its degree of paranoia. The Indian government has protested even the most recent US commitment to sell (give) counterinsurgency oriented weapons to Pakistan alleging these will end up pointed at Indians. But, the Indians are utterly rational in comparison to the Pakistanis.

The result is China will furnish more weapon systems to Pakistan. Given its enormous cash reserves, China is also perfectly situated to bolster Pakistan's weakening currency and provide other economic assistance. In return, Pakistan may well invite China to explore and develop the sub-surface resources in Baluchistan. These may be considerable.

China would also be able to count on Pakistan's assistance in gaining increasing influence among the Muslim states generally. Considering the robust diplomatic effort of China to project itself into areas of Africa and the Mideast in which Islam predominates, this would be of some advantage. Pakistan's bought and paid for good will would also be of assistance in offsetting the inevitable negative reaction within the Islamic world if it has to really crack down on the Uighurs.

Put together, the possibilities offered by a deepening relation with Pakistan provides China with a diplomatic make-weight which would more than counter any Indian efforts to forestall a Chinese regional hegemony over Southeast Asia. It is the kind of low-risk, low-cost but high-payoff approach which the Chinese prefer.

And, best of all, given the current dynamics in the Indian Sub-continent and Northwest Asia generally, it is a move which the US cannot block, cannot even attenuate. Well, it's just another one of those foreign policy challenges that the Nice Young Man From Chicago must wish would go away. But it won't.