There can be little doubt but the advocates of violent political Islam have determined that no Christian shall remain above ground anywhere in Muslim majority countries. From Morocco to the Philippines, from Egypt to Nigeria, it is a very risky business to be a practicing Christian. It is nearly as lethal to be a practicing Christian in the Muslim dominated states today as it was to have been a Jew in Nazi Germany.
Having purged Jews from their midst to a degree which would have warmed the hearts of Hitler, Himmler and Co., the Muslims now have set their very deadly sights on the Christian communities. As events of recent vintage in Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt, and other, nearby locations have made plain, there is a slow motion sort of holocaust underway.
And, the reactions of Christians generally? The response of major American denominations? The US government?
With the notable exception of a few articles of protest and a handful of Congressional Resolutions, the word best characterizing the push back by Christians in the US as well as the US government is "none."
Nor is the lack of outrage, of protest, of sharp rebuttal limited to American denominations and officials. The Pope in his Christmas address to the faithful made a low key reference to the plight of Iraqi Christians while reserving his big rhetorical guns to support the Catholics in China who resist the official, government approved pseudo-hierarchy The Archbishop of Canterbury, who is the head of the world wide Anglican communion, took his Christmas opportunity to demand that the rich share in the sacrifices of governmental austerity.
Perhaps so few religious and political leaders care much because the Christians under attack generally are not members of well established, well-known denominations either in the US or Western Europe. Copts and Syriac Christians are not long standing communities of faith in the US or Western Europe. Few who occupy the pews of American churches are aware of the long history of these groups, how they trace their roots back to the days shortly after Paul and the other Apostles shook the dust of so many towns across the Middle East, leaving behind the seeds of a potent view of life and God which would give rise ultimately to these denominations now under terminal threat.
In dogma and doctrine, the Christians of Iraq, Syria, Egypt and elsewhere may differ markedly from Western denominations, but in their basic confession of faith they share identity with all the myriad Protestant churches as well as both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox communities. They are Christians as have been their ancestors in the region for the past two thousand years. Only Jews have been constantly present in the Mideast for longer than these Christian confessions.
And, like the Jews, these Christians have been the target of Muslim hostility since the all conquering scimitar first cut through the clear air of the region spreading the words of the Prophet not by force of reason but by sheer force of arms. In recent times, resurgent political Islam has taken up the scimitar with even deadlier intent and consequence.
The ancient approach of "convert or die" has been replaced by the simpler, "die, Christian." And as the blood flows and fear grows, the West watches in silence. The Christians of the West as well as the governments of the purportedly Christian majority Western states watch, wring their hands, and neither do nor even say anything in protest, in opposition, or in support of their badly beleaguered Brothers and Sisters in Christ.
What a far and shameful distance this behavior is from the days of the Cold War when all Christian denominations as well as the governments took sharp issue with the treatment of Christians meted out by the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe. Those of a certain age can remember well the days of prayer, the petitions of protest, the resolutions of condemnation focusing on the Christian martyrs to their faith and the persecution they suffered from the atheistic governments of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact states.
The American Congress was so motivated by the atheistic nature of Communism and the concomitant persecution of Christians that it inserted the words, "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Public schools, not simply those of a parochial nature, invited speakers whose subject was the relentless oppression of Christianity and Judaism by the Communists.
All together the subject of Christian persecution by Communists was a constant theme of American culture through the Fifties and most of the Sixties. It was a very big deal, a sort of social and political definer, a way of expressing the superiority of Western (particularly American) ideals and values.
None of that exists today. Nor, given the triumph of faux-sensitivity and its operational handmaiden, political correctness, can it be expected to exist. Not without intense, focused effort on the part of Christians of genuine commitment to their faith.
The simple fact that President Obama condemned violence in Iraq following the savage attack on the Baghdad church without once using the words "Christian" or "church" is telling. It bespeaks the utter failure of commitment or even sensitivity to the rights and dignity of a group--Christians--which is subject to lethal attack simply because it is Christian.
Once before American leaders and Christian congregations were silent in the face of evil predicated upon religious belief. That time was the Thirties when the first intimations of the foul antisemitism which would produce the extermination camps of the Holocaust were printed in American papers. In the face of mounting evidence that the Jews of Germany and Europe generally were at risk of being wiped out, most American denominations kept silent. The same was true of the US government.
It was because of the silence in the run up to the Nazi slaughter that American churches and government alike became so vocal in the denunciation of Communist persecution of Christians and, later, Jews. We had learned the dangers of silence, of business as usual, of fearing to make a bad situation even worse.
Now, we Americans apparently have forgotten the truth of the Thirties and are somehow embarrassed by our collective behavior of the anti-Communist days of the Fifties and Sixties. It is telling that today's leaders both in pulpit and politics were young in the worst days of the Cold War, were exposed unceasingly to the rhetorical overkill of those days. We learned, falsely it seems, that speaking out is somehow ill-mannered and insensitive, somehow boorish and unsophisticated, in some mysterious way damaging to the self-esteem of the haters, the persecutors, the killers.
In the instant case, the Muslims, or at least those who are either exponents of political Islam or by their silence tacit supporters of those who preach hate, demand "death to Christians." The situation today is far closer to that which prevailed in Germany during the Thirties and that makes silence by us in the West either personally or through leaders who fear to take a stand complicit in the crimes committed in Muslim majority states.
It is long past time for American denominations to stand up and demand an end to the butchery being done in the name of Islam. At the very least American churches should insist that our government take a principled position against the slow motion holocaust underway in so much of the Muslim world. American Christians should be insisting that our government use all the instruments at its disposal to stop the persecution, end the killings, succor the hurt, give refuge to those who must flee literally for their lives.
Anything less is not only anti-Christian it is most assuredly un-American.
(Full disclosure: The Geek is not a member of any denomination or community of faith.)
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Friday, December 24, 2010
Iran Goes Fishing
The long established but well concealed linkage between Iran and both al-Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan has received a little bit of light in recent days. The US announced the capture back on 18 December of an officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp by Special Forces troops. The man, the first officer yet captured or killed in Afghanistan, was described as a "facilitator" of weapons transfer to Taliban.
This happy event was enlarged upon by the Times of London in a report picked up by Fox. The report focused on the recent release of al-Qaeda personnel from Iranian prisons where they had been held for some years. The intent is that the released heavyweights will go to the FATA in order to rebuild the shattered remnants of the old al-Qaeda structure.
The effort to assist al-Qaeda has been underway for several months but escalated recently perhaps in a bid to gain the release of an Iranian diplomat kidnapped and held by either al-Qaeda or its close affiliate, the Haqqani network. Regardless of precise motives, the release of the captives will be a booster for al-Qaeda given the losses it has suffered at the hands of the US forces in the past year. It may even be enough to breathe new life into the rather moribund organization.
The Iranians are playing a double game--as usual. On the one hand, Tehran has agreed to hold joint military exercises with both Turkey and Afghanistan. On the other, the mullahs have decided to increase their support for Taliban. The ball is in Karzai's court on whether or not to accept as bona fide the Iranian pretenses of friendship and goodwill. The ball is in our court on whether or not to add the Iranian hostility in Afghanistan to the set of issues to be considered at the next meeting between the P5+1 and Iran early next year.
The Iranian government may have made its real inclination clear with the recent and unexplained ban on fuel exports to Afghanistan. Of course, the Iranians could justify this move by referencing their domestic lacks in this area, but to do so would be to tell the West that the sanctions are hurting badly enough to undercut their diplomatic charm offensive directed at Kabul.
The best indication that Taliban is joining al-Qaeda on the ropes comes from the UN. In its most recent report, the organization concludes that not only has the number of civilian casualties directly attributable to the actions of the insurgents increased, it now accounts for three out of every four civilians killed or wounded. This development is not accidental. It is a matter of policy. Deliberate choice.
As the US military pressure has increased and the Afghan National Forces gained competence, the insurgents have been forced to seek the softest of targets: civilians. The use of suicide bombers against civilian targets has grown in direct relation to the losses of territory and combat power at the hands of the coalition forces. So to has the use of roadside bombs, which by their nature are more lethal to civilians than military forces.
The intent insofar as there is one is to spread demoralization among the civilian population. But, the use of similar tactics in past insurgencies has redounded to the credit of the security forces. Civilians resent being killed or injured, and they tend to demonstrate their resentment against those who do the killing and not the security forces for having failed to offer perfect safety. The increased formation of ad hoc and not really legal home security forces by villagers throughout the more risky portions of Afghanistan show the same dynamic is present there.
The Iranians have been fairly pinched in their attempt to fish without a license in the troubled waters of Afghanistan. The Obama administration would be well advised to use the information contained in the intelligence community to hold the feet of the mullahs to the fire. To allow the positive proof of Iranian hostility to stability in Afghanistan to go by without effective exploitation would be worse than a tragedy. It would be a blunder of great magnitude.
Next to North Korea, Iran is the world's greatest troublemaker. No opportunity to push back must be allowed to go past unused. The capture of the al Quds officer by American forces provides the necessary hook on which to hang all the information which can be released without peril to sources and methods regarding Iranian malfeasance in Afghanistan.
We have been handed an early Christmas present by the Spec Force men. Unwrap it and use it--quickly and to the max. Doing so would be a service to peace in the Season of Peace.
This happy event was enlarged upon by the Times of London in a report picked up by Fox. The report focused on the recent release of al-Qaeda personnel from Iranian prisons where they had been held for some years. The intent is that the released heavyweights will go to the FATA in order to rebuild the shattered remnants of the old al-Qaeda structure.
The effort to assist al-Qaeda has been underway for several months but escalated recently perhaps in a bid to gain the release of an Iranian diplomat kidnapped and held by either al-Qaeda or its close affiliate, the Haqqani network. Regardless of precise motives, the release of the captives will be a booster for al-Qaeda given the losses it has suffered at the hands of the US forces in the past year. It may even be enough to breathe new life into the rather moribund organization.
The Iranians are playing a double game--as usual. On the one hand, Tehran has agreed to hold joint military exercises with both Turkey and Afghanistan. On the other, the mullahs have decided to increase their support for Taliban. The ball is in Karzai's court on whether or not to accept as bona fide the Iranian pretenses of friendship and goodwill. The ball is in our court on whether or not to add the Iranian hostility in Afghanistan to the set of issues to be considered at the next meeting between the P5+1 and Iran early next year.
The Iranian government may have made its real inclination clear with the recent and unexplained ban on fuel exports to Afghanistan. Of course, the Iranians could justify this move by referencing their domestic lacks in this area, but to do so would be to tell the West that the sanctions are hurting badly enough to undercut their diplomatic charm offensive directed at Kabul.
The best indication that Taliban is joining al-Qaeda on the ropes comes from the UN. In its most recent report, the organization concludes that not only has the number of civilian casualties directly attributable to the actions of the insurgents increased, it now accounts for three out of every four civilians killed or wounded. This development is not accidental. It is a matter of policy. Deliberate choice.
As the US military pressure has increased and the Afghan National Forces gained competence, the insurgents have been forced to seek the softest of targets: civilians. The use of suicide bombers against civilian targets has grown in direct relation to the losses of territory and combat power at the hands of the coalition forces. So to has the use of roadside bombs, which by their nature are more lethal to civilians than military forces.
The intent insofar as there is one is to spread demoralization among the civilian population. But, the use of similar tactics in past insurgencies has redounded to the credit of the security forces. Civilians resent being killed or injured, and they tend to demonstrate their resentment against those who do the killing and not the security forces for having failed to offer perfect safety. The increased formation of ad hoc and not really legal home security forces by villagers throughout the more risky portions of Afghanistan show the same dynamic is present there.
The Iranians have been fairly pinched in their attempt to fish without a license in the troubled waters of Afghanistan. The Obama administration would be well advised to use the information contained in the intelligence community to hold the feet of the mullahs to the fire. To allow the positive proof of Iranian hostility to stability in Afghanistan to go by without effective exploitation would be worse than a tragedy. It would be a blunder of great magnitude.
Next to North Korea, Iran is the world's greatest troublemaker. No opportunity to push back must be allowed to go past unused. The capture of the al Quds officer by American forces provides the necessary hook on which to hang all the information which can be released without peril to sources and methods regarding Iranian malfeasance in Afghanistan.
We have been handed an early Christmas present by the Spec Force men. Unwrap it and use it--quickly and to the max. Doing so would be a service to peace in the Season of Peace.
The Hermits And Governor Bill
The Geek has been conflicted over the question of whether or not Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico deserves the highly coveted "Bugs Bunny, What A Maroon! Award." Finally, after more than a bit of dithering he has decided the outgoing (praise be to whoever) Governor Bill had not quite made the high bar of supreme idiocy demanded for the high honor. He did come close, however. You can decide if the Geek was right or not.
The fat faced one time US Ambassador to the UN and almost Obama cabinet member has long been Pyongyang's favored American interlocutor surpassing even Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. The Hermits have accorded this position to Governor Bill (as he has been affectionately (?) known for his two terms here in New Mexico) because he is a reliable conveyor belt of the desired image and message. Once again he has done his duty.
According to Bill's view the leadership of North Korea is far more "pragmatic" than the state controlled media. This is an interesting take on the affair given that not a word is put out by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) without having been vetted and approved, if not written by, the factotums occupying the highest levels of power. Even Governor Bill should realize that there is no daylight between the belligerent rhetoric of KCNA and the Hermits At The Top.
Governor Bill had barely unpacked his bags back in Santa Fe when the Hermit In Charge of the Military was blasting South Korea and assuring any Southern "aggression" would result in a "sacred" or, alternate translation, "holy" war of defense. Kim Yong-chun is hardly the "North Korean media," governor.
Minister Kim's remarks as well as their amplification in the KCNA and other Hermit owned and operated media came at the end of the large three day live-fire maneuvers thirty miles from the DMZ. This military exercise was not only the trigger for Minister Kim's bellicose declarations, it was also the motivator for Bill Richardson's call for Southern "restraint."
It is more than passingly strange that the high profile diplomatic "troubleshooter," whose trip to the Land of the Hermits was approved by the Obama administration, can demand restraint from the South while acknowledging that even the Hermits realize they may have gone a bit too far by "shooting those civilians on that island." He "hopes" that the Hermits may now pull back a bit and avers that he has some new initiatives on arms control from the Hermits.
As the governor outlined, the "new" initiatives the result is one of "deja vue all over again." The combination of inspections, an offer to sell fuel rods to the South, and let's-come-reason-together combine to be an offer to sell the US and South Korea the same old dead horse one more time. To employ an analogy from US history, the offer is Pyongyang's version of the failed LBJ approach to North Vietnam of "progressive squeeze and talk."
The attack(s) of the past several months have been the "squeeze" portion of the exercise, the "initiatives" offered to Governor Bill are the "talk" part of the game. As background noise, the North continues to wave the saber and make dark hints of yet one more test of a nuclear device--"See we can squeeze harder."
Governor Bill credited the Hermits with showing admirable restraint during the recently concluded military exercises. He may even think his presence in country during the period may have contributed to the pacific nature of the Hermits. If so, he shouldn't break his arm patting himself on the back.
A far more credible reason for Northern restraint is that China finally got the message and leaned on Pyongyang. The thinking here is that the recent high level US delegation to Beijing advised the Trolls that the next time Pyongyang kicked the hornets' nest, Washington would do nothing to soften or stop a South Korean response.
Leaving aside the question of whether or not President Obama has the testicular fortitude necessary for this warning, the fact on the ground which makes the argument persuasive is simply that the US would not be able to counsel restraint in the face of another Northern attack. Any holding back would be political suicide for the present South Korean government. Any hesitation would result in not only electoral backlash but demonstrations in the street and even the possibility of a military coup.
Even the (Clueless) Guy in the Oval must be aware of the downside resident in any Southern hesitancy if attacked in the near future. The Trolls of Beijing and the Boys in the Kremlin are undoubtedly aware of what might happen in the aftermath of one more military provocation by the Hermits. So, with or without any specific word from the US diplomats, the message and its consequences would be evident in the Forbidden City.
Pace, Governor Bill, but your latest bid to be the Greatest Peacemaker of the Decade is not going to put you number one in line for the next Nobel Peace Prize. You have served your role as a transmission belt of old, worn out Northern demarches, but these will prove no more the route to detente in the Korean peninsula than their predecessors. Get a grip on it!
To reward North Korea for its latest extortion attempt is as self-defeating as is any giving in to any extortionate power. The Hermits want much. They will give nothing of significance. That is the word of experience, the lesson of history.
Keeping to the policy which demands a real, verifiable move to denuclearization as a prerequisite for restarting the Six Power Talks--or any other diplomatic exchange--is the best way to go. Indeed, it is the only way to go. The administration is to be commended for having done so to date. It will deserve even more if it stays the course and hangs tough even in the presence of Governor Bill's latest package.
Considering the totality of the circumstances including the transfer of North Korean centrifuge technology to Iran, there is no alternative to staring the Hermits down, even at the risk of inadvertent, unsought war in the Peninsula. As night falls there can be no denying the fact that North Korea is the number one foreign policy troublemaker. Compared to it the challenges presented by Venezuela or even Iran are as trifles.
The fat faced one time US Ambassador to the UN and almost Obama cabinet member has long been Pyongyang's favored American interlocutor surpassing even Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. The Hermits have accorded this position to Governor Bill (as he has been affectionately (?) known for his two terms here in New Mexico) because he is a reliable conveyor belt of the desired image and message. Once again he has done his duty.
According to Bill's view the leadership of North Korea is far more "pragmatic" than the state controlled media. This is an interesting take on the affair given that not a word is put out by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) without having been vetted and approved, if not written by, the factotums occupying the highest levels of power. Even Governor Bill should realize that there is no daylight between the belligerent rhetoric of KCNA and the Hermits At The Top.
Governor Bill had barely unpacked his bags back in Santa Fe when the Hermit In Charge of the Military was blasting South Korea and assuring any Southern "aggression" would result in a "sacred" or, alternate translation, "holy" war of defense. Kim Yong-chun is hardly the "North Korean media," governor.
Minister Kim's remarks as well as their amplification in the KCNA and other Hermit owned and operated media came at the end of the large three day live-fire maneuvers thirty miles from the DMZ. This military exercise was not only the trigger for Minister Kim's bellicose declarations, it was also the motivator for Bill Richardson's call for Southern "restraint."
It is more than passingly strange that the high profile diplomatic "troubleshooter," whose trip to the Land of the Hermits was approved by the Obama administration, can demand restraint from the South while acknowledging that even the Hermits realize they may have gone a bit too far by "shooting those civilians on that island." He "hopes" that the Hermits may now pull back a bit and avers that he has some new initiatives on arms control from the Hermits.
As the governor outlined, the "new" initiatives the result is one of "deja vue all over again." The combination of inspections, an offer to sell fuel rods to the South, and let's-come-reason-together combine to be an offer to sell the US and South Korea the same old dead horse one more time. To employ an analogy from US history, the offer is Pyongyang's version of the failed LBJ approach to North Vietnam of "progressive squeeze and talk."
The attack(s) of the past several months have been the "squeeze" portion of the exercise, the "initiatives" offered to Governor Bill are the "talk" part of the game. As background noise, the North continues to wave the saber and make dark hints of yet one more test of a nuclear device--"See we can squeeze harder."
Governor Bill credited the Hermits with showing admirable restraint during the recently concluded military exercises. He may even think his presence in country during the period may have contributed to the pacific nature of the Hermits. If so, he shouldn't break his arm patting himself on the back.
A far more credible reason for Northern restraint is that China finally got the message and leaned on Pyongyang. The thinking here is that the recent high level US delegation to Beijing advised the Trolls that the next time Pyongyang kicked the hornets' nest, Washington would do nothing to soften or stop a South Korean response.
Leaving aside the question of whether or not President Obama has the testicular fortitude necessary for this warning, the fact on the ground which makes the argument persuasive is simply that the US would not be able to counsel restraint in the face of another Northern attack. Any holding back would be political suicide for the present South Korean government. Any hesitation would result in not only electoral backlash but demonstrations in the street and even the possibility of a military coup.
Even the (Clueless) Guy in the Oval must be aware of the downside resident in any Southern hesitancy if attacked in the near future. The Trolls of Beijing and the Boys in the Kremlin are undoubtedly aware of what might happen in the aftermath of one more military provocation by the Hermits. So, with or without any specific word from the US diplomats, the message and its consequences would be evident in the Forbidden City.
Pace, Governor Bill, but your latest bid to be the Greatest Peacemaker of the Decade is not going to put you number one in line for the next Nobel Peace Prize. You have served your role as a transmission belt of old, worn out Northern demarches, but these will prove no more the route to detente in the Korean peninsula than their predecessors. Get a grip on it!
To reward North Korea for its latest extortion attempt is as self-defeating as is any giving in to any extortionate power. The Hermits want much. They will give nothing of significance. That is the word of experience, the lesson of history.
Keeping to the policy which demands a real, verifiable move to denuclearization as a prerequisite for restarting the Six Power Talks--or any other diplomatic exchange--is the best way to go. Indeed, it is the only way to go. The administration is to be commended for having done so to date. It will deserve even more if it stays the course and hangs tough even in the presence of Governor Bill's latest package.
Considering the totality of the circumstances including the transfer of North Korean centrifuge technology to Iran, there is no alternative to staring the Hermits down, even at the risk of inadvertent, unsought war in the Peninsula. As night falls there can be no denying the fact that North Korea is the number one foreign policy troublemaker. Compared to it the challenges presented by Venezuela or even Iran are as trifles.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Vladimir Takes On Another Job
Vladimir Putin, who rose to prominence and power as a result of his bare chested, not to say bare knuckled, approach to peace imposition during the Second Chechen War, has appointed himself jefe grande of the Russian government's special commission on the economic and social development of the North Caucasus Region--which includes in its remit Chechnya as well as the several other provinces currently experiencing insurgency with combined nationalist and political Islamist goals. Putin's announcement on 1 December indicates that he is now personally going to undertake the mission of "clarifying and putting to order the situation in the North Caucasus" which he previously assigned to others.
The assorted former KGB personnel Putin tabbed for the duty have not demonstrated any convincing degree of success. The lack of their ability to "clarify and put to order" is shown in the recent statement by the Russian Deputy Prosecutor-General, Ivan Sydoruk, that insurgent violence has doubled this year over last in the North Caucasus Federal District. On the same day (8 December), President Dimitry Medvedev echoed the theme, improving on it by averring that any local officials who said the situation had improved were lying.
While any downtown street in Juarez is much more deadly than the totality of the North Caucasus, the Russian authorities have allowed that some two hundred local cops and Federal Security Bureau personnel have been killed by insurgents this year. Another five hundred or so have been wounded.
Not that the violence has run one way. The Deputy Prosecutor-General stated that more than three hundred insurgents have been "neutralized," which number included sixteen "leaders" officially pronounced as "killed." By official figures, an impressive number of weapons and explosive materials fell into government hands this year so far.
The fighting has not diminished since the words outpouring from Official Russia twelve days ago. Even though the weather conditions have been somewhere between foul and rotten, the insurgents have gone along planting IED's and conducting ambushes and hit-and-run raids on police facilities. The FSB and interior ministry forces have not taken the time off having conducted a number of nocturnal raids on the homes of suspected "militants."
And, so the war lurches along. Neither side seems capable of hitting a knock out blow. Given the size of the several distinct districts comprising the North Caucasus, there seems little probability that the Russian government can do so--unless it is willing to undertake a massive escalation and accept the consequences both domestic and international of doing so. Given the internal divisions which characterize the several separate insurgent groups, the probability of these developing sufficient organizational coherence to go beyond the very low level of combat and terror operations seen the past two years can be assessed as low to non-existent.
Even though the war is as low level in its intensity as can be imagined, the continuation of the several insurgencies in the North Caucasus does represent a real threat to the political and social cohesion of Russia. The insurgencies directly attack a systemic weak point of the Russian polity and society.
That weak point is nationalism. Today no less than during the long years of the Communist regime and before it that of the Czars, Russia is bedeviled by what Lenin termed "the Nationalities Question." In truth, Russia has never even made a pretense of being a "melting pot." It has been and remains a stew of different nationalities, different ethnic groups, different languages, different confessions of faith.
In this stewpot the Slavs have dominated. Have ruled. Have conquered. And reconquered. But the Slavs have never hit on a way of creating a Russian society and polity in which national identities merge into a single, greater whole. The results of conquest have never been consolidated, never assimilated, never unified.
The power of nationalism--both Russian, which is to say, Slav, and non-Russian, which is to say everyone else--was brought into high relief earlier this month in the "football" riots in Moscow. These outbreaks had much less to do with soccer hooligans than with offended nationalism. As Medvedev and Putin both made clear in their post-riot press encounters, the government fears these were the harbingers of more and worse to come. As is expectable in Russia, the immediate, default, response was a demand for more robust police action.
The Soviet Union was able to keep the nationalities question from being raised violently by constant, effective repression. Subsequently, the Russian government has been unwilling or unable to do the same. So far. And, by now, the resort to Soviet style methods might be both too late and unacceptable in the no longer bi-polar world.
By taking over the de facto top slot in the North Caucasus affair, Putin apparently is acknowledging that the Soviet methods cannot or should not be used. Rather, by focusing on economic matters, he is going to attempt to bribe his way to success. It will be interesting to see if money can succeed where force has not as this approach to counterinsurgency has never been made in a systematic and long-term way.
One rather suspects it will fail. Nationalism is too potent a force in the lives of people to be countered by mere money. Worse, when the nationalism has inflamed not only minorities but the dominant Slavs, the use of bribery in the North Caucasus region is likely to outrage those who are not in on the cash cow's flow. This means the Slavs.
So far, the appeal of outsiders who are proponents of violent political Islam have not had a major influence on the course of the nationalists in the North Caucasus. This does not mean the situation will continue. An increasing number of foreign fighters has been reported in the region. Even though these seem to be trigger pullers and not leadership cadre, the increased pressure on jihadi in Afghanistan, the FATA, and the Central Asian Republics, particularly Tajikistan, hints at a greater influx of more determined global insurgents over the next few months and years.
Putin has undertaken a Labor of Hercules with his self-assigned new post. He must funnel money in a way which undercuts the nationalists while not infuriating his Slavic Russian base. At the same time his security forces must keep effective pressure on the insurgent hard core so as to gain the initiative and erode insurgent political will and combat efficiency. While that is in progress, Putin's government and military must interdict the movement of outsiders into the North Caucasus theater of operations.
As if that is not enough to overload the Putin plate, he must nip incipient insurgent movements within other minorities who resent on an increasing basis the privileges presumably enjoyed by the Slavs. Then, he has to deal with the increasing ethnic and regional divisions which exist in the Russian armed forces fueled by the regionally based system of conscription.
Well, Vlad of the Bare Chest reportedly enjoyed being characterized as an "Alpha male" in one of the WikiLeaks leaked dispatches. The challenges he faces in the North Caucasus are such that only the most alpha of alpha males would think of tackling them.
It couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.
The assorted former KGB personnel Putin tabbed for the duty have not demonstrated any convincing degree of success. The lack of their ability to "clarify and put to order" is shown in the recent statement by the Russian Deputy Prosecutor-General, Ivan Sydoruk, that insurgent violence has doubled this year over last in the North Caucasus Federal District. On the same day (8 December), President Dimitry Medvedev echoed the theme, improving on it by averring that any local officials who said the situation had improved were lying.
While any downtown street in Juarez is much more deadly than the totality of the North Caucasus, the Russian authorities have allowed that some two hundred local cops and Federal Security Bureau personnel have been killed by insurgents this year. Another five hundred or so have been wounded.
Not that the violence has run one way. The Deputy Prosecutor-General stated that more than three hundred insurgents have been "neutralized," which number included sixteen "leaders" officially pronounced as "killed." By official figures, an impressive number of weapons and explosive materials fell into government hands this year so far.
The fighting has not diminished since the words outpouring from Official Russia twelve days ago. Even though the weather conditions have been somewhere between foul and rotten, the insurgents have gone along planting IED's and conducting ambushes and hit-and-run raids on police facilities. The FSB and interior ministry forces have not taken the time off having conducted a number of nocturnal raids on the homes of suspected "militants."
And, so the war lurches along. Neither side seems capable of hitting a knock out blow. Given the size of the several distinct districts comprising the North Caucasus, there seems little probability that the Russian government can do so--unless it is willing to undertake a massive escalation and accept the consequences both domestic and international of doing so. Given the internal divisions which characterize the several separate insurgent groups, the probability of these developing sufficient organizational coherence to go beyond the very low level of combat and terror operations seen the past two years can be assessed as low to non-existent.
Even though the war is as low level in its intensity as can be imagined, the continuation of the several insurgencies in the North Caucasus does represent a real threat to the political and social cohesion of Russia. The insurgencies directly attack a systemic weak point of the Russian polity and society.
That weak point is nationalism. Today no less than during the long years of the Communist regime and before it that of the Czars, Russia is bedeviled by what Lenin termed "the Nationalities Question." In truth, Russia has never even made a pretense of being a "melting pot." It has been and remains a stew of different nationalities, different ethnic groups, different languages, different confessions of faith.
In this stewpot the Slavs have dominated. Have ruled. Have conquered. And reconquered. But the Slavs have never hit on a way of creating a Russian society and polity in which national identities merge into a single, greater whole. The results of conquest have never been consolidated, never assimilated, never unified.
The power of nationalism--both Russian, which is to say, Slav, and non-Russian, which is to say everyone else--was brought into high relief earlier this month in the "football" riots in Moscow. These outbreaks had much less to do with soccer hooligans than with offended nationalism. As Medvedev and Putin both made clear in their post-riot press encounters, the government fears these were the harbingers of more and worse to come. As is expectable in Russia, the immediate, default, response was a demand for more robust police action.
The Soviet Union was able to keep the nationalities question from being raised violently by constant, effective repression. Subsequently, the Russian government has been unwilling or unable to do the same. So far. And, by now, the resort to Soviet style methods might be both too late and unacceptable in the no longer bi-polar world.
By taking over the de facto top slot in the North Caucasus affair, Putin apparently is acknowledging that the Soviet methods cannot or should not be used. Rather, by focusing on economic matters, he is going to attempt to bribe his way to success. It will be interesting to see if money can succeed where force has not as this approach to counterinsurgency has never been made in a systematic and long-term way.
One rather suspects it will fail. Nationalism is too potent a force in the lives of people to be countered by mere money. Worse, when the nationalism has inflamed not only minorities but the dominant Slavs, the use of bribery in the North Caucasus region is likely to outrage those who are not in on the cash cow's flow. This means the Slavs.
So far, the appeal of outsiders who are proponents of violent political Islam have not had a major influence on the course of the nationalists in the North Caucasus. This does not mean the situation will continue. An increasing number of foreign fighters has been reported in the region. Even though these seem to be trigger pullers and not leadership cadre, the increased pressure on jihadi in Afghanistan, the FATA, and the Central Asian Republics, particularly Tajikistan, hints at a greater influx of more determined global insurgents over the next few months and years.
Putin has undertaken a Labor of Hercules with his self-assigned new post. He must funnel money in a way which undercuts the nationalists while not infuriating his Slavic Russian base. At the same time his security forces must keep effective pressure on the insurgent hard core so as to gain the initiative and erode insurgent political will and combat efficiency. While that is in progress, Putin's government and military must interdict the movement of outsiders into the North Caucasus theater of operations.
As if that is not enough to overload the Putin plate, he must nip incipient insurgent movements within other minorities who resent on an increasing basis the privileges presumably enjoyed by the Slavs. Then, he has to deal with the increasing ethnic and regional divisions which exist in the Russian armed forces fueled by the regionally based system of conscription.
Well, Vlad of the Bare Chest reportedly enjoyed being characterized as an "Alpha male" in one of the WikiLeaks leaked dispatches. The challenges he faces in the North Caucasus are such that only the most alpha of alpha males would think of tackling them.
It couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Russia Chooses A Side
While it is not a surprise, the decision of Vladimir Putin's regime to join China in the support of North Korea (or, if not precisely that, in opposition to the South Koreans and thus the US) must be a disappointment to the Obama administration. If the vaunted "Team of Rivals" which constitutes the Obama inner circle had a realpolitik view of life, the sharp turn against Seoul and Washington would not be a disappointing further rejection of the "Reset Button" policy.
In calling for an emergency closed door UN Security Council meeting on the situation in the Korean Peninsula, the Russians were doing the expectable. In the Russian condemnation of the US for not immediately convening the emergency meeting in its role as this month's chair, Moscow was doing the predictable. When Moscow called for the cancellation of the impending South Korean live fire exercises on Yeonpyeong Island, the Masters of the Kremlin went over the edge. No longer could they maintain the pretense of evenhandedness; the characterization of the military exercises as a "dangerous aggravation" demonstrates clear partisan orientation.
In so closely associating itself with China, the Russians have embarked on a risky course of diplomacy, a course with one intention which may well result in a defeat on another, far more important diplomatic front.
The Russian move is linked to the ratification of the new START pending in the Senate. As the Russians have no bull in the Korean herd unlike Beijing, the goal of their demarche in the UNSC must be that of demonstrating to the Obama administration the consequences of a failure on the part of the "US side" to ratify the treaty without further delay or modification. The Kremlin is flexing its trouble making muscles in a high profile venue to show unmistakably that there will be a price to be paid should the Republicans stall the ratification process or insist upon modifications which would necessitate reopening the entire negotiation effort.
In the present Korean context, the North Koreans continue to be very much in the wrong. Their actions, whether sinking a South Korean warship or bombarding an island located to the south of the Northern Limit Line, Pyongyang has acted contrary to the provisions of the 1953 Armistice as well as relevant international law. The South Korean responses to date including the live fire exercises have been both "restrained" (to use the favorite word of both Beijing and, now, Moscow) and completely within its rights as a sovereign state. No observer unless blinded by the requirements of ulterior motives and objectives can deny that.
In its support of South Korea, which includes a refusal to engage in a re-run of the Six Power Talks without Pyongyang making serious and severe concessions in advance, the Obama administration is on the side of the angels. To hold talks with the Hermits of the North without the Hermits first demonstrating a genuine repentance would be to reward aggression, submit to extortion, and unduly reinforce the foundations of a regime facing a possible succession crisis. It would be, in short, counterproductive and self-defeating.
The Russian leadership is not comprised of situationally naive people. Putin, Medvedev and company well understand that the US position is both realistic and justified by regional political dynamics. More than most governments, that of Russia understands the political and diplomatic games of extortion from both sides of the relationship.
So there is no direct rationale for the Russian effort to muck about in the Korean swamp. There is, however, a very powerful indirect one. The Kremlin wants the new START ratified quickly and cleanly. The Boys at the Top understand that there is a potent opposition to the new treaty within the Republicans of the Senate. Thus they are hopeful that a bit of pressure might somehow, someway, push the Obama administration into doing something to pull the Republican fangs.
It is even possible that Putin, et al may even entertain the notion that the Republicans in the Senate might get the message, might come to understand what is at risk should the new START not be ratified. If this is the case, the Geek fears they have vastly overestimated the mentality of the Republican opposition. The current exhibition of Russian intransigence is more likely to stimulate left over Cold War apprehensions regarding the intentions of the Kremlin than to serve as an example of what might be expected absent START ratification.
The proposed treaty is not perfect from the American perspective particularly with respect to force modernization and anti-ballistic missile system development. Objections in these areas are not figments of feverish Republican imaginations, nor are they baseless renewals of Cold War fears.
Even with the asymmetries built into the treaty, it deserves ratification. There are benefits to the US. The most important of these is the reestablishment of the inspection regime which lapsed with the expiry of the former treaty. The reduction in (to use the old Soviet term) "nuclear charges" is to the advantage of the US as well given the expense of maintaining the larger number of active and reserve "charges" and delivery systems. Provided that the current or some future administration does not use the new START as a cover for an unwillingness to pay the economic and political price of force modernization, that feature of the treaty should not serve as an obstacle.
This leaves the objections centering on ABM research, development, and deployment as a legitimate point. This point along with the very ticklish problem of theater or tactical nuclear weapons can be put to one side for the moment without the US suffering any real disadvantage over time.
This implies that most of the Republican objections are not so much rooted in the language of START as they are in a general distrust or dislike of the Russian government today. While superficially resembling the so-called "Cold War mentality" so often invoked by rhetoricians in both Beijing and Moscow, it is not the same. The distrust and dislike of Russia's government stems instead from the highly nationalistic behavior of that government coupled with the perception that the Russian government is, in fact, a non-democratic regime tainted with corrupt authoritarianism.
These perceptions are accurate. Russia is not and never has been a democracy. It is not and never has been noted for honest, transparent governance. Russia is not and never has been free of a strong authoritarian bent.
So what?
It matters not that Vladimir of the Bare Chest cannot live up to the requirements of the Boy Scout Oath. It matters not that a Russian election is not open, fair, honest. It is utterly irrelevant that corruption is rampant. It is of no consequence that the rule of law consists of whatever the Person in Charge says it is.
All that really matters is the ground truth that Russia is what it always has been--a country strongly motivated by nationalism, by the unqualified pursuit of national interest. The very fact that Russia is nationalistic to an extent that few in the American elite can comprehend is the greatest single reason in favor of ratifying START. A new treaty puts some verifiable limits on Russian expansion in the nuclear arena. It places a ring fence around nuclear deployment and the size of the ready use nuclear arsenal.
To put it in very simple words: The more nationalistic a government is, the more vital it is to put limits, verifiable limits on its actions.
While imperfect, this is what START does. It is all it does. And, doing so is very much in US interests.
This is why the Russian posture on Korea is so troublesome. By its unnecessary skewing in favor of the Chinese defined line and totally unjustifiable tilt against South Korea exercising its sovereign rights, the Kremlin may have strengthened the opposition to START. It may even have provided a political impetus or at least cover for some conservative Democrats to break with Obama administration and vote against the treaty.
If this assessment of Russian motives and goals is close to accurate, it implies something larger and more important about the current Russian leadership. The implication is both simple and alarming. The Kremlin Boys, or at least the one who counts most, Vladimir Putin, has no clear understanding of how American politics operate or how Americans at the top of the political pyramid think.
Of course, with its emphasis on the fiction of a "Rest Button," the Obama administration generally and the president in particular have done nothing to educate the Russians topside in the whys and ways of US politics. If anything the administration and president have convinced the ever-so-muscular Putin that the US has gone soft, flabby, and irresolute, and, thus, is suitable for a bit of creative bullying.
If that is the case, the Kremlin has made another serious miscalculation. One mile of bad diplomatic road almost always leads to another.
In calling for an emergency closed door UN Security Council meeting on the situation in the Korean Peninsula, the Russians were doing the expectable. In the Russian condemnation of the US for not immediately convening the emergency meeting in its role as this month's chair, Moscow was doing the predictable. When Moscow called for the cancellation of the impending South Korean live fire exercises on Yeonpyeong Island, the Masters of the Kremlin went over the edge. No longer could they maintain the pretense of evenhandedness; the characterization of the military exercises as a "dangerous aggravation" demonstrates clear partisan orientation.
In so closely associating itself with China, the Russians have embarked on a risky course of diplomacy, a course with one intention which may well result in a defeat on another, far more important diplomatic front.
The Russian move is linked to the ratification of the new START pending in the Senate. As the Russians have no bull in the Korean herd unlike Beijing, the goal of their demarche in the UNSC must be that of demonstrating to the Obama administration the consequences of a failure on the part of the "US side" to ratify the treaty without further delay or modification. The Kremlin is flexing its trouble making muscles in a high profile venue to show unmistakably that there will be a price to be paid should the Republicans stall the ratification process or insist upon modifications which would necessitate reopening the entire negotiation effort.
In the present Korean context, the North Koreans continue to be very much in the wrong. Their actions, whether sinking a South Korean warship or bombarding an island located to the south of the Northern Limit Line, Pyongyang has acted contrary to the provisions of the 1953 Armistice as well as relevant international law. The South Korean responses to date including the live fire exercises have been both "restrained" (to use the favorite word of both Beijing and, now, Moscow) and completely within its rights as a sovereign state. No observer unless blinded by the requirements of ulterior motives and objectives can deny that.
In its support of South Korea, which includes a refusal to engage in a re-run of the Six Power Talks without Pyongyang making serious and severe concessions in advance, the Obama administration is on the side of the angels. To hold talks with the Hermits of the North without the Hermits first demonstrating a genuine repentance would be to reward aggression, submit to extortion, and unduly reinforce the foundations of a regime facing a possible succession crisis. It would be, in short, counterproductive and self-defeating.
The Russian leadership is not comprised of situationally naive people. Putin, Medvedev and company well understand that the US position is both realistic and justified by regional political dynamics. More than most governments, that of Russia understands the political and diplomatic games of extortion from both sides of the relationship.
So there is no direct rationale for the Russian effort to muck about in the Korean swamp. There is, however, a very powerful indirect one. The Kremlin wants the new START ratified quickly and cleanly. The Boys at the Top understand that there is a potent opposition to the new treaty within the Republicans of the Senate. Thus they are hopeful that a bit of pressure might somehow, someway, push the Obama administration into doing something to pull the Republican fangs.
It is even possible that Putin, et al may even entertain the notion that the Republicans in the Senate might get the message, might come to understand what is at risk should the new START not be ratified. If this is the case, the Geek fears they have vastly overestimated the mentality of the Republican opposition. The current exhibition of Russian intransigence is more likely to stimulate left over Cold War apprehensions regarding the intentions of the Kremlin than to serve as an example of what might be expected absent START ratification.
The proposed treaty is not perfect from the American perspective particularly with respect to force modernization and anti-ballistic missile system development. Objections in these areas are not figments of feverish Republican imaginations, nor are they baseless renewals of Cold War fears.
Even with the asymmetries built into the treaty, it deserves ratification. There are benefits to the US. The most important of these is the reestablishment of the inspection regime which lapsed with the expiry of the former treaty. The reduction in (to use the old Soviet term) "nuclear charges" is to the advantage of the US as well given the expense of maintaining the larger number of active and reserve "charges" and delivery systems. Provided that the current or some future administration does not use the new START as a cover for an unwillingness to pay the economic and political price of force modernization, that feature of the treaty should not serve as an obstacle.
This leaves the objections centering on ABM research, development, and deployment as a legitimate point. This point along with the very ticklish problem of theater or tactical nuclear weapons can be put to one side for the moment without the US suffering any real disadvantage over time.
This implies that most of the Republican objections are not so much rooted in the language of START as they are in a general distrust or dislike of the Russian government today. While superficially resembling the so-called "Cold War mentality" so often invoked by rhetoricians in both Beijing and Moscow, it is not the same. The distrust and dislike of Russia's government stems instead from the highly nationalistic behavior of that government coupled with the perception that the Russian government is, in fact, a non-democratic regime tainted with corrupt authoritarianism.
These perceptions are accurate. Russia is not and never has been a democracy. It is not and never has been noted for honest, transparent governance. Russia is not and never has been free of a strong authoritarian bent.
So what?
It matters not that Vladimir of the Bare Chest cannot live up to the requirements of the Boy Scout Oath. It matters not that a Russian election is not open, fair, honest. It is utterly irrelevant that corruption is rampant. It is of no consequence that the rule of law consists of whatever the Person in Charge says it is.
All that really matters is the ground truth that Russia is what it always has been--a country strongly motivated by nationalism, by the unqualified pursuit of national interest. The very fact that Russia is nationalistic to an extent that few in the American elite can comprehend is the greatest single reason in favor of ratifying START. A new treaty puts some verifiable limits on Russian expansion in the nuclear arena. It places a ring fence around nuclear deployment and the size of the ready use nuclear arsenal.
To put it in very simple words: The more nationalistic a government is, the more vital it is to put limits, verifiable limits on its actions.
While imperfect, this is what START does. It is all it does. And, doing so is very much in US interests.
This is why the Russian posture on Korea is so troublesome. By its unnecessary skewing in favor of the Chinese defined line and totally unjustifiable tilt against South Korea exercising its sovereign rights, the Kremlin may have strengthened the opposition to START. It may even have provided a political impetus or at least cover for some conservative Democrats to break with Obama administration and vote against the treaty.
If this assessment of Russian motives and goals is close to accurate, it implies something larger and more important about the current Russian leadership. The implication is both simple and alarming. The Kremlin Boys, or at least the one who counts most, Vladimir Putin, has no clear understanding of how American politics operate or how Americans at the top of the political pyramid think.
Of course, with its emphasis on the fiction of a "Rest Button," the Obama administration generally and the president in particular have done nothing to educate the Russians topside in the whys and ways of US politics. If anything the administration and president have convinced the ever-so-muscular Putin that the US has gone soft, flabby, and irresolute, and, thus, is suitable for a bit of creative bullying.
If that is the case, the Kremlin has made another serious miscalculation. One mile of bad diplomatic road almost always leads to another.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
A Golem Rises From The Dead--Maybe
The Obama administration once more has its panties twisted. This time it is over the issue of reawakening a corpse from the Great Cold War Graveyard. The corpse in question is that of surviving a nuclear attack made not by the Soviet Union, which remains safely buried in the GCWG, but by "radical extremists" or, to use a word more common outside the Beltway, terrorists.
The Deep Thinkers of the current administration have become convinced that, horror of horrors!, once again the Bush/Cheney administration had it right. A series of studies undertaken by the Ever So Smart Boffins at Lawrence-Livermore National Laboratory, using those terribly expensive computers out there, have concluded that an attack by nuclear terrorists would be eminently survivable provided certain elementary measures were undertaken.
The dilemma for the Clueless Guy in the Oval and the rest of the bunch is how to get the necessary information out to city and state authorities and the great unwashed of the citizenry as well without simultaneously scaring the Great American Unwashed to a collective heart attack. The Geek has to wonder, "Where is the problem?"
Mr Obama may be forgiven due to his youth, but there are a few in his inner circle such as Joe Biden, Hilary Clinton, and Robert Gates who are old enough to recall a basic fact of American life. That fact is simple: Every American born since 1940 and before 1980 has lived the majority of sentient life under the shadow of nuclear extinction courtesy of the Soviets.
Excepting only the two times--the building of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis--when the buying of fallout shelters swept through the American suburbs, the Americans viewed the potential of nuclear death with a remarkable sangfroid. Even movies such as On The Beach and Fail Safe did not perturb the equanimity. The black humor of Dr Strangelove or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb which had an approach heavily touched with the laughter of the gallows was shared by millions with delight and not fear.
Perhaps some of the adults surrounding Mr Obama can regale him with tales of school. Tales of "duck and cover." Tales of the lovable Bert the Civil Defense Turtle. If not, perhaps the Obama's can glom onto a copy of Atomic Cafe which contains all the memorable stereotypes of the Days of Civil Defense and Community Fallout Shelters.
The message from history is clear: The American public has a long and not particularly disturbing experience with living in the shadow of the mushroom cloud. The collective We the People can accept the facts, they can take a heavy dose of truth no matter how inconvenient or unpleasant.
The problem comes not with telling We the People the truth about nuclear terror weapons and survival but rather just how accurate is the study done by the Lads and Lassies of L-L? At the moment this is hard to determine as the essentials necessary to evaluate the study and its very optimistic conclusions were omitted from the several MSM articles covering its release yesterday and L-L has not seen fit to post it online as yet.
The conclusions of the study run somewhat against the grain of earlier efforts. The guts are quite simple and very sunny. In the event you see the bright flash, go to a "sturdy" building and stay there until the "authorities" tell you it is safe to leave. The authors even point out that an automobile can provide a significant measure of protection against the radiation (whether both direct and prompt or delayed as in fallout was unclear.) Overall the tone of the study seemed to be far lighter than even the much derided effort of the Reagan years which was dubbed by the cynical as "the with enough shovels" report. At least the Reagan period piece emphasized pre-attack preparations which is an area of consideration minimized in the L-L report.
The methodology employed was adumbrated as computer modeling of a hypothetical attack on New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and several other large and medium cities. Lacking from the outline were such significant considerations as the height above ground of the nuclear detonation (nudet) the yield of the nudet, the time of day when the nudet occurs, weather conditions, any biases built into the device such as one in favor of radiation at the expense of thermal and blast effects, or the nature of the device, gun type uranium or implosion type plutonium. All of these considerations, particularly those of height of burst and yield can have a direct and major effect on the nudet's characteristics and thus consequences.
Given some of the report features mentioned in the MSM coverage, such as the effect of the fireball on the vision of drivers, one gains the impression that the study assumed an air burst or, at least, the positioning of the device in the upper portion of the tallest building in town. This assumption on its own can directly effect the optimistic conclusions.
A ground burst by its very nature lofts a very great deal of highly irradiated and finely divided materials into the atmosphere. Most will stay in the low to mid-levels and fall out quickly and heavily on the areas immediately downwind of the nudet. An air burst, even one located in a tall building, will loft less material with the difference being most pronounced in devices of low yield and thus smaller fireball diameter.
As it is unlikely that terrorists will have a high kiloton or megaton range dial-a-yield at their disposal, the most probable yield range will be below fifteen kilotons, a range covered by both old nuclear artillery shells and the man portable atomic demolition munitions as well as some of the elderly air to air and surface to air missiles contained in both the US and Soviet inventories. As the US has a very good handle on what has been or continues to be in its inventory, a consideration which does not apply to the old Soviet Union and its successor states, the most likely way for an ambitious terrorist with beaucoup bucks to gain access to a big enough bang would be via Red Army Surplus.
The ten to fifteen kiloton range also covers the devices most easily fabricated by countries new to the nuclear weapons game. Thus the estimated range covers nicely the possibility of terrorists gaining access through the good offices of a friendly regime with a high tolerance for risk.
In either event, the most probable terror weapon will be in the small tactical yield category. To be most effective such a device is best used as a ground pounder in a city with comparatively few tall or massively constructed buildings which is on flat land preferably surrounded on at least two sides by relatively high hills or mountains. This would provide for maximum thermal and blast effect (which could be enhanced further by staging the nudet for the peak of summer at midday) while providing maximum local and mid-distance fallout of high radioactivity.
Choosing a mid-size city would also provide more casualties as medical facilities would be more readily overloaded. Big cities are spread out which means more first responders, more medical facilities, and more infrastructure will survive a small yield nudet. The smaller target, say one of the 100-500,000 range would give a very dramatic high casualty demonstration.
The news reports did not list all the cities simulated in this study, but if it didn't include places such as Tucson, El Paso, Albuquerque, Midlands-Odessa; it should have. Cities of this size meet the criteria for the most effective employment of small yield devices. They also have the advantage of being convenient to the international border.
Even an attack on a small town such as Las Cruces, NM would provide a very convincing demonstration of terror. In a real sense an attack on a small, inconspicuous place is more dramatic, more frightening, and easier to carry out than one on the usual suspects of NYC, Washington, LA, or the Windy City. Taking out half or more of the sixty thousand or so folks who live in Cruces would tell every American everywhere, "You ain't safe, bubba."
And that is what terror is all about.
The Deep Thinkers of the current administration have become convinced that, horror of horrors!, once again the Bush/Cheney administration had it right. A series of studies undertaken by the Ever So Smart Boffins at Lawrence-Livermore National Laboratory, using those terribly expensive computers out there, have concluded that an attack by nuclear terrorists would be eminently survivable provided certain elementary measures were undertaken.
The dilemma for the Clueless Guy in the Oval and the rest of the bunch is how to get the necessary information out to city and state authorities and the great unwashed of the citizenry as well without simultaneously scaring the Great American Unwashed to a collective heart attack. The Geek has to wonder, "Where is the problem?"
Mr Obama may be forgiven due to his youth, but there are a few in his inner circle such as Joe Biden, Hilary Clinton, and Robert Gates who are old enough to recall a basic fact of American life. That fact is simple: Every American born since 1940 and before 1980 has lived the majority of sentient life under the shadow of nuclear extinction courtesy of the Soviets.
Excepting only the two times--the building of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis--when the buying of fallout shelters swept through the American suburbs, the Americans viewed the potential of nuclear death with a remarkable sangfroid. Even movies such as On The Beach and Fail Safe did not perturb the equanimity. The black humor of Dr Strangelove or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb which had an approach heavily touched with the laughter of the gallows was shared by millions with delight and not fear.
Perhaps some of the adults surrounding Mr Obama can regale him with tales of school. Tales of "duck and cover." Tales of the lovable Bert the Civil Defense Turtle. If not, perhaps the Obama's can glom onto a copy of Atomic Cafe which contains all the memorable stereotypes of the Days of Civil Defense and Community Fallout Shelters.
The message from history is clear: The American public has a long and not particularly disturbing experience with living in the shadow of the mushroom cloud. The collective We the People can accept the facts, they can take a heavy dose of truth no matter how inconvenient or unpleasant.
The problem comes not with telling We the People the truth about nuclear terror weapons and survival but rather just how accurate is the study done by the Lads and Lassies of L-L? At the moment this is hard to determine as the essentials necessary to evaluate the study and its very optimistic conclusions were omitted from the several MSM articles covering its release yesterday and L-L has not seen fit to post it online as yet.
The conclusions of the study run somewhat against the grain of earlier efforts. The guts are quite simple and very sunny. In the event you see the bright flash, go to a "sturdy" building and stay there until the "authorities" tell you it is safe to leave. The authors even point out that an automobile can provide a significant measure of protection against the radiation (whether both direct and prompt or delayed as in fallout was unclear.) Overall the tone of the study seemed to be far lighter than even the much derided effort of the Reagan years which was dubbed by the cynical as "the with enough shovels" report. At least the Reagan period piece emphasized pre-attack preparations which is an area of consideration minimized in the L-L report.
The methodology employed was adumbrated as computer modeling of a hypothetical attack on New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and several other large and medium cities. Lacking from the outline were such significant considerations as the height above ground of the nuclear detonation (nudet) the yield of the nudet, the time of day when the nudet occurs, weather conditions, any biases built into the device such as one in favor of radiation at the expense of thermal and blast effects, or the nature of the device, gun type uranium or implosion type plutonium. All of these considerations, particularly those of height of burst and yield can have a direct and major effect on the nudet's characteristics and thus consequences.
Given some of the report features mentioned in the MSM coverage, such as the effect of the fireball on the vision of drivers, one gains the impression that the study assumed an air burst or, at least, the positioning of the device in the upper portion of the tallest building in town. This assumption on its own can directly effect the optimistic conclusions.
A ground burst by its very nature lofts a very great deal of highly irradiated and finely divided materials into the atmosphere. Most will stay in the low to mid-levels and fall out quickly and heavily on the areas immediately downwind of the nudet. An air burst, even one located in a tall building, will loft less material with the difference being most pronounced in devices of low yield and thus smaller fireball diameter.
As it is unlikely that terrorists will have a high kiloton or megaton range dial-a-yield at their disposal, the most probable yield range will be below fifteen kilotons, a range covered by both old nuclear artillery shells and the man portable atomic demolition munitions as well as some of the elderly air to air and surface to air missiles contained in both the US and Soviet inventories. As the US has a very good handle on what has been or continues to be in its inventory, a consideration which does not apply to the old Soviet Union and its successor states, the most likely way for an ambitious terrorist with beaucoup bucks to gain access to a big enough bang would be via Red Army Surplus.
The ten to fifteen kiloton range also covers the devices most easily fabricated by countries new to the nuclear weapons game. Thus the estimated range covers nicely the possibility of terrorists gaining access through the good offices of a friendly regime with a high tolerance for risk.
In either event, the most probable terror weapon will be in the small tactical yield category. To be most effective such a device is best used as a ground pounder in a city with comparatively few tall or massively constructed buildings which is on flat land preferably surrounded on at least two sides by relatively high hills or mountains. This would provide for maximum thermal and blast effect (which could be enhanced further by staging the nudet for the peak of summer at midday) while providing maximum local and mid-distance fallout of high radioactivity.
Choosing a mid-size city would also provide more casualties as medical facilities would be more readily overloaded. Big cities are spread out which means more first responders, more medical facilities, and more infrastructure will survive a small yield nudet. The smaller target, say one of the 100-500,000 range would give a very dramatic high casualty demonstration.
The news reports did not list all the cities simulated in this study, but if it didn't include places such as Tucson, El Paso, Albuquerque, Midlands-Odessa; it should have. Cities of this size meet the criteria for the most effective employment of small yield devices. They also have the advantage of being convenient to the international border.
Even an attack on a small town such as Las Cruces, NM would provide a very convincing demonstration of terror. In a real sense an attack on a small, inconspicuous place is more dramatic, more frightening, and easier to carry out than one on the usual suspects of NYC, Washington, LA, or the Windy City. Taking out half or more of the sixty thousand or so folks who live in Cruces would tell every American everywhere, "You ain't safe, bubba."
And that is what terror is all about.
Friday, December 17, 2010
The European Union Feels Neglected
The Baroness Ashton, who is the EU's head diplomat, has written a five page paper dealing with the needed changes in the supra-national entity's diplomatic relations. Much of the leaked exercise in whining deals with the perception in Brussels that Europe is no longer the primary focus of American foreign policy.
The Baroness, a person bereft of previous diplomatic experience or, indeed, governmental background beyond service on one of the UK's innumerable quangos, holds the cause of the current lack of EU influence on Washington to be the consequence of European lack of unity. Apparently, Ms Ashton has convinced herself that the failure of Europe to speak with a single voice has assured its irrelevance to American policy makers.
A cynic might be tempted to dismiss her assessment of both cause and effect to be a transparent effort in empire building. Ms Ashton's argument certainly leans in the direction of seeking to elevate the EU's diplomatic apparatus above the foreign policy establishments of the individual member states. There is no doubt that the Baroness's report to the EU is of a piece with earlier proclamations of the supremacy of the EU's ambassador in Washington over those of the individual states.
A less cynical but equally realistic person might conclude that the Baroness has thrown down the gauntlet of challenge. The document by its demands for a more unified European voice asserts that there is an authentic political entity called the European Union which is more than simply the sum of its sovereign parts. As such the document calls on the Euro-fanatics to stage a sort of foreign policy putsch against the national establishments.
Since there is no actual political entity hiding behind the name "European Union," there is no need nor is their any reason for the US to pay any particular attention to the desires or dictates of the Eurocrats in Brussels. Unless and until the EU morphs into a genuine political body with all the features of sovereignty which characterize a state, this situation will not change. Nor should it.
While the notion of a United States of Europe with all the attributes of central government sovereignty such as apply to other federated states has long beguiled segments of the European elites, the dream (or nightmare) is far from achieving reality as the current Euro zone monetary problems demonstrate. As a result, there is really no reason for the EU to have any influence in Washington beyond that achieved by one or another of its member states.
Apologists for the Ashton position would note that President Obama has demonstrated a remarkable lack of interest in or concern for Europe. Beyond the use of European locales for the Great Tour of 2008, Mr Obama has not only ignored Europe, he has scorned it. Even symbolic engagements such as meeting with European leaders on the sidelines of EU conferences have been allowed to slide by. Considering the importance of symbolism in foreign relations, this sort of back-of-me-hand approach has been seen by Europeans as a mark of profound disrespect.
Of course, the Obama treatment has been laden with disrespect. However Ms Ashton is wrong to conclude that they are emblematic of a unique disdain for the EU. President Obama has shown himself to be equally tone deaf in his treatment of individual leaders including those of the UK, the closest ally the US has in the fractious EU.
Then there is the other side of the coin. Just how good have the assorted countries of the EU been as allies and parters of the US? A strong case can be made for the proposition that with allies like those countries the US has no need for enemies.
The European states have not been close nor effective collaborators in the presumably joint effort in Afghanistan with the notable exceptions of the UK and France. The members of the EU were far more against us than with us in the great adventure in regime change in Iraq again with the notable exception of the UK.
In a not dissimilar fashion, the elites of the EU states have not been in close concert with the US on the critical matter of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Indeed, these worthies have been even more willing than their American counterparts to engage in systematic efforts to deny the legitimacy of Israel. Attempts to undercut the right of Israel to exist in peace and with defensible borders in no way assists in the effort to find a way to peace in the region.
While the EU has finally become more forthright and effective in its collective effort to back the American sponsored play in the matter of Iran and its quest for nuclear capability, that development came almost too late to matter. It must be noted that member states still seek creative ways to evade the sanctions for the benefit of their domestic economies. Overall, the EU in both actions and words has given very little reason for Americans to accept the contention that the body and its members are good allies in a common cause.
The EU apparently fears a US collaboration with China which leaves the Union out of the game. There is good reason for this apprehension. China is far more important to the US now and into the future. It is a formidable adversary of the US, which must be handled with great care and even greater realism less it become an even larger threat in the years to come. It is difficult enough to deal with Beijing on a bilateral basis. It is much harder to engage the Trolls of Beijing in the context of multilateral meetings as has been shown repeatedly by the Six Power Talks and their aftermath.
While there is minimal likelihood of the US and China ever establishing any simulacrum of a co-dominion or even the sort of bi-polar environment of the Cold War sort, there is a requirement for the US to establish in an effective way lines across which the Chinese cannot cross. In this context there is a role for the EU to play, but it is not one of equality as the Baroness apparently desires.
The Chinese, not unlike the Russians (or the advocates of violent political Islam for that matter), respect force above all other considerations. The immediate expression of force may be confined to the economic sphere, but must rest when night falls on the credible capacity and political will to use military might in pursuit of policy. The Europeans are even less likely than the Americans to accept this hoary but nonetheless true principle of diplomacy. Attempting to get the EU to agree to use armed force is a task compared to which the Labor of Sisyphus becomes a walk in the sun.
The near universal cuts in military expenditure in the EU underscores the melancholy fact that European diplomatic influence has become a rapidly wasting asset. This in turn undercuts the argument made by Ms Ashton that it will take only a single voice approach to foreign relations for Europe to reclaim its pride of place in American strategic considerations.
There is another very important point left unaddressed by the Ashton report. What is in it for the US should the EU speak with a more unified voice? That is, what advantages accrue to American policy if the EU reigns supreme over the often dissonant European chorus?
There is no immediately obvious answer to these questions. Actually, a stronger case can be made for the contention that European dissonance benefits the US. While the Americans have not and should not pursue an intentionally divide and conquer approach to the several European states, internal divisions in the continent allow the US to follow a course of exploiting to its advantage any of these organic divisions when such is necessary or desirable.
Ms Ashton, like the Eurocrats generally, has an inbuilt distaste for the nation-state. Again, like the European elites overall, she has a fondness for supra-national institutions which surpasses logical understanding. She has no choice but to see the future of European foreign relations in terms of the EU and not the self-defined national interests of its member states.
Ironically, she has a soulmate in President Obama. The Clueless Guy In The Oval would like to deal with the EU as a single voice rather than the cacophony of conflicting voices which has been and will continue to be Europe.
But the reality is the nation-state is far from the scrapheap of history. The Baroness Ashton is simply not attuned to reality. Unlike Mr Obama, she is not elected, not ultimately responsible to an electorate far more given to the appeals of nation and nationalism. As a result, she can afford to be totally out of touch with reality. And, bucko, as this five page ditty shows the lady is beaucoup out of touch.
The Baroness, a person bereft of previous diplomatic experience or, indeed, governmental background beyond service on one of the UK's innumerable quangos, holds the cause of the current lack of EU influence on Washington to be the consequence of European lack of unity. Apparently, Ms Ashton has convinced herself that the failure of Europe to speak with a single voice has assured its irrelevance to American policy makers.
A cynic might be tempted to dismiss her assessment of both cause and effect to be a transparent effort in empire building. Ms Ashton's argument certainly leans in the direction of seeking to elevate the EU's diplomatic apparatus above the foreign policy establishments of the individual member states. There is no doubt that the Baroness's report to the EU is of a piece with earlier proclamations of the supremacy of the EU's ambassador in Washington over those of the individual states.
A less cynical but equally realistic person might conclude that the Baroness has thrown down the gauntlet of challenge. The document by its demands for a more unified European voice asserts that there is an authentic political entity called the European Union which is more than simply the sum of its sovereign parts. As such the document calls on the Euro-fanatics to stage a sort of foreign policy putsch against the national establishments.
Since there is no actual political entity hiding behind the name "European Union," there is no need nor is their any reason for the US to pay any particular attention to the desires or dictates of the Eurocrats in Brussels. Unless and until the EU morphs into a genuine political body with all the features of sovereignty which characterize a state, this situation will not change. Nor should it.
While the notion of a United States of Europe with all the attributes of central government sovereignty such as apply to other federated states has long beguiled segments of the European elites, the dream (or nightmare) is far from achieving reality as the current Euro zone monetary problems demonstrate. As a result, there is really no reason for the EU to have any influence in Washington beyond that achieved by one or another of its member states.
Apologists for the Ashton position would note that President Obama has demonstrated a remarkable lack of interest in or concern for Europe. Beyond the use of European locales for the Great Tour of 2008, Mr Obama has not only ignored Europe, he has scorned it. Even symbolic engagements such as meeting with European leaders on the sidelines of EU conferences have been allowed to slide by. Considering the importance of symbolism in foreign relations, this sort of back-of-me-hand approach has been seen by Europeans as a mark of profound disrespect.
Of course, the Obama treatment has been laden with disrespect. However Ms Ashton is wrong to conclude that they are emblematic of a unique disdain for the EU. President Obama has shown himself to be equally tone deaf in his treatment of individual leaders including those of the UK, the closest ally the US has in the fractious EU.
Then there is the other side of the coin. Just how good have the assorted countries of the EU been as allies and parters of the US? A strong case can be made for the proposition that with allies like those countries the US has no need for enemies.
The European states have not been close nor effective collaborators in the presumably joint effort in Afghanistan with the notable exceptions of the UK and France. The members of the EU were far more against us than with us in the great adventure in regime change in Iraq again with the notable exception of the UK.
In a not dissimilar fashion, the elites of the EU states have not been in close concert with the US on the critical matter of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Indeed, these worthies have been even more willing than their American counterparts to engage in systematic efforts to deny the legitimacy of Israel. Attempts to undercut the right of Israel to exist in peace and with defensible borders in no way assists in the effort to find a way to peace in the region.
While the EU has finally become more forthright and effective in its collective effort to back the American sponsored play in the matter of Iran and its quest for nuclear capability, that development came almost too late to matter. It must be noted that member states still seek creative ways to evade the sanctions for the benefit of their domestic economies. Overall, the EU in both actions and words has given very little reason for Americans to accept the contention that the body and its members are good allies in a common cause.
The EU apparently fears a US collaboration with China which leaves the Union out of the game. There is good reason for this apprehension. China is far more important to the US now and into the future. It is a formidable adversary of the US, which must be handled with great care and even greater realism less it become an even larger threat in the years to come. It is difficult enough to deal with Beijing on a bilateral basis. It is much harder to engage the Trolls of Beijing in the context of multilateral meetings as has been shown repeatedly by the Six Power Talks and their aftermath.
While there is minimal likelihood of the US and China ever establishing any simulacrum of a co-dominion or even the sort of bi-polar environment of the Cold War sort, there is a requirement for the US to establish in an effective way lines across which the Chinese cannot cross. In this context there is a role for the EU to play, but it is not one of equality as the Baroness apparently desires.
The Chinese, not unlike the Russians (or the advocates of violent political Islam for that matter), respect force above all other considerations. The immediate expression of force may be confined to the economic sphere, but must rest when night falls on the credible capacity and political will to use military might in pursuit of policy. The Europeans are even less likely than the Americans to accept this hoary but nonetheless true principle of diplomacy. Attempting to get the EU to agree to use armed force is a task compared to which the Labor of Sisyphus becomes a walk in the sun.
The near universal cuts in military expenditure in the EU underscores the melancholy fact that European diplomatic influence has become a rapidly wasting asset. This in turn undercuts the argument made by Ms Ashton that it will take only a single voice approach to foreign relations for Europe to reclaim its pride of place in American strategic considerations.
There is another very important point left unaddressed by the Ashton report. What is in it for the US should the EU speak with a more unified voice? That is, what advantages accrue to American policy if the EU reigns supreme over the often dissonant European chorus?
There is no immediately obvious answer to these questions. Actually, a stronger case can be made for the contention that European dissonance benefits the US. While the Americans have not and should not pursue an intentionally divide and conquer approach to the several European states, internal divisions in the continent allow the US to follow a course of exploiting to its advantage any of these organic divisions when such is necessary or desirable.
Ms Ashton, like the Eurocrats generally, has an inbuilt distaste for the nation-state. Again, like the European elites overall, she has a fondness for supra-national institutions which surpasses logical understanding. She has no choice but to see the future of European foreign relations in terms of the EU and not the self-defined national interests of its member states.
Ironically, she has a soulmate in President Obama. The Clueless Guy In The Oval would like to deal with the EU as a single voice rather than the cacophony of conflicting voices which has been and will continue to be Europe.
But the reality is the nation-state is far from the scrapheap of history. The Baroness Ashton is simply not attuned to reality. Unlike Mr Obama, she is not elected, not ultimately responsible to an electorate far more given to the appeals of nation and nationalism. As a result, she can afford to be totally out of touch with reality. And, bucko, as this five page ditty shows the lady is beaucoup out of touch.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Uncle Sam, A Most Reluctant Cop
Some cables within the WikiLeak dump of diplomatic data, most importantly those coming from the several Gulf states, urge a re-asking of the old questions regarding the role of the US as a sort of global cop. The position attributed to several Gulf governments actually serves to expand the old stand-by questions which have surrounded the American entry into an already extant conflict (a category which includes both World Wars, Korea and Vietnam.)
Assuming the cables accurately reflect the views of the local interlocutors, there is a consensus among the Gulf states that an Iran equipped with a nuclear capacity is so threatening, so much a danger to peace that the Arab leaders want the US to take military action even before the Iranians actually achieve a deliverable nuclear weapon. The stated desire is for American preemption. This, of course, is a course of action qualitatively different from what the US has done traditionally.
The several Arab states are using the US invasion of Iraq as the precedent. This is unlike other, earlier wars from Korea to (at least arguably) Afghanistan, where the US has acted after the fact. Historically, the US has entered a war already in progress as in Korea and Vietnam or, with an almost plausible local invitation, sought to restore stability and stave off a threatened war as in Lebanon. The US has also, as in the case of the Dominican Republic and Grenada, deployed force to protect the lives of US nationals or, in Afghanistan, in retaliation for an armed attack on the US.
The Iraq precedent was another one of those recurrent slippery slope precedents. There was no direct attack on the US. There was not, as there had been in 1991, a breach of the international peace. There were no US lives at risk. There was certainly no plausible invitation from local political leaders. In place of these assorted justifications for the use of armed force, there was a stack of UN Resolutions and a heap of less than accurate intelligence. Judged by past American employments of force, the invasion of Iraq was even more poorly predicated than the war with Spain over a century earlier. And, that is saying a lot.
The Arab desire for the US to do something robust against the Iranian threat is understandable. No countries have more at risk than those of the Persian Gulf littoral. The scale of the Iranian threat is easily measured--compared to it none of the Arab states seem to have a thing against Israel. It is more than merely interesting that none saw the Israeli nuclear arsenal in being as a threat while all saw the Iranian nuclear arsenal in prospect to be terrifying.
Given this, it is not surprising that there was a monolithic call for the US to take out the Iranian threat regardless of other considerations such as how an attack might be justified to the world generally or the absence of a cause of war even as compelling as that provided by the pile of UN Resolutions directed at the Iraq of Saddam Hussein. Put at its most basic level, the call by the Arab states was prompted by a genuine and highly compelling national interest.
To the diplomats and leaders of the Gulf states, their countries and the US had a coinciding national interest in nullifying the Iranian nuclear program (and, quite probably the current Iranian regime.) And, as every person wise to the ways of international politics knows, the only reason that the Gulf states (or any state) has positive relations with the US is that doing so is vital to their national interest.
In this context it might be noted that Secretary of Defense Gates gave a short course in Diplomacy 101 the other day when he opined that other countries do not have relations with the US because they like us or because they trust us or because they believe we can keep secrets safe but only because such relations serve their national interests. The Arab proposition was predicated upon this concept pure and simple.
The Arab request hints at what attracts some states to seek and maintain good relations with the US. Even today as We the People drift in a depressant doldrums viewing our present to be poor and our future to be worse, there is a compelling attraction for states to seek and keep good relations with the US.
Put bluntly, other states are most impressed with our military capacities. They are struck with the potentials resident in that hardest of hard power capabilities--the military's ability to break things and kill people. It may be disconcerting to those Americans who value our economic power or the soft power appeals of our diplomacy, values, norms, culture, and so on, but in much of the world it is our military alone which gives appeal, which compels the seeking and maintaining of good relations, which defines coinciding national interests.
In short, there are more than a few governments--and not simply Arab autocracies in the Gulf region--which see the pistol on Sheriff Sam's hip and believe their interests (and ours) would be best served by using it against regional bad actors. Whether we like the notion or not, there are many, important states which want to see us in the role of global cop.
(OK, bucko, the Geek acknowledges that there are also many states which see the US as the Great Global Cash Cow to be milked at will. These states are also most likely to be most averse to Sheriff Sam ever pulling out the hog leg on his hip.)
Even the Western European countries which are quite willing, even eager, to accuse the US of being an international provocateur are quite happy to lay off the burdens both economic and political of global policing on the US. This happiness is only going to grow as the assorted states of the European Union facing a collective as well as individual economic challenges downsize their national military capabilities.
In the good cause of deficit reduction, the Coalition government in the UK has taken measures which will shrink their military forces overall to a point that would make a replay of the Falklands Island War impossible. Other NATO states are lessening their military expenses as well. The net result will be the rendering of NATO to the status of military nullity at least as regards out of theater operations. The longer term consequence of this downsizing trend is either shifting the burden to the US or surrendering the global insurgency to the purveyors of political Islam, including the adherents of armed Islamic insurgency.
The evil genii of the global Islamic insurgency will not skulk back to the bottle from which it has emerged over the past thirty or so years. It is and will continue to be a feature on the global political scene regardless of what we or anybody might wish. This means, quite simply, that war will not disappear soon from the experience of the human race.
The global insurgency will remain primarily a conflict of asymmetry, of wars almost too small to merit the name, of violence which is small scale but unending, of conflict which saps political will slowly but steadily over the years, the decades, perhaps generations. It is nonetheless a war which will determine both the nature of the future and the quality of life in the present, each year's successive present.
Insurgency and its counter depend upon both violent and peaceful tactics and methods. Within that truism the governing reality is that the violent portion is the more important. It is violence which acts most directly and with greatest intensity upon the political will of the contestant populations. And, as long as the violence continues, the conditions for that endgame necessity--conflict resolution--will not exist. The ground truth is simply that the insurgents have to be cowed into submission before there is any possibility of developing a long term detente between differing world views and concomitant civilizations.
In this context it is critical to recall that diplomacy depends upon either the existence of coinciding national interests or a credible capacity for effective coercion. With respect to coercion, when night falls, all the lesser means of coercion such as sanctions and diplomatic isolation rely upon the credible capacity and political will to employ force in support of policy.
Few governments question seriously the physical capacity of the US to employ force. Most have a good handle on just how much destruction we can inflict even without using our nuclear weapons. The quantum level improvements in all the many technologies involved in fighting wars made in recent years render even the observations from the Kuwait War no longer instructive. The US way of war in both Iraq and Afghanistan has used only a small, even a very small, fraction of the lethality resident in our conventional capacities. Still, most governments have a reasonably accurate appreciation of what the US could do should it need to.
Indeed, it has been American restraint in how it has fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan which has fed the long standing suspicions in many quarters of the world--including Iran and the purveyors of violent political Islam--that the US lacks the political will to use force in support of policy. From the time the US withdrew from the Vietnamese War on to the present, there has been a broad sentiment to the effect that the US cannot muster the will to fight a seemingly endless war, to accept the deaths of American service personnel in a "no-win" war, to spend never ending torrents of money in pursuit of what at best constitutes a stalemate of the Korean War sort.
The much maligned unilateralism of George W. Bush went a long way to settling the doubts held by so many leaders around the world. Unfortunately, the words of the Obama presidency have restored these doubts. The doubts have been enhanced by some of the administrations actions, such as the apparent willingness of the president and his foreign policy "team" to toss Israel off the sleigh and to the wolves. This lack of steadfastness disturbed the same Gulf state leaders who pressed the US to take swift and effective military action against Iran. It might even have prompted the requests as a form of test of American realism and political will.
The sine qua non for success in foreign policy generally and war fighting in particular is consistency and persistence. Radical shifts in either policy or action calls the reliability and predictability of the US into question in ways which do not further our national interests--or those of our more or less allies. In a real sense, Great Powers are not allowed to change their minds without penalty. That penalty is loss of credibility and with credibility goes the most important prize of diplomacy--influence.
For this reason the only rational choice for the Obama administration to make with respect to Afghanistan is to continue what we have been doing with one major addition. The addition is convincing Pakistan that the governments there have been wrong for sixty years, that Pakistan needs the US more than the US needs Pakistan.
It is for the reasons of consistency and predictability, for the reason of credibility and influence maintenance, that the US must not only draw a line in concrete regarding Iran but must use all means at its disposal to bend that country's regime to our policy requirements. The same applies to Israel and the Palestinians, choose a policy option which is in keeping with past American requirements and stick with it even if the Palestinians moan, groan, and toss a hissy fit.
While modifications in policy are a requirement of realism, these modifications must be on the margins and carefully explained to all parties. The requirement for careful explanation also applies to assuring that We the People both understand and support policy including the use of military force should such be necessary.
In that connection this administration in common with all presidencies past and future must understand that We the People are very reluctant global cops. The American public has never felt at home with the US being a Great Power. Down deep inside most of us are just fine with Ron Paul's isolationist position. Down deep inside where it counts, the majority of Americans past, present, and, probably, future see very few compelling reasons for Americans to leave their bones bleaching in the sun of some far away country the name of which most of us cannot pronounce let alone spell. We see very few compelling reasons to spend vast sums of present and future money on weapons. Most of us at the time agreed with Ike's "Farewell Address" and its warning against the "military-industrial complex."
We are not imperialists by nature any more. Our period of seeking empire ended more than a hundred years ago. Where we have been forced by reasons good or bad to send troops, we have never sought to stay. (It might be noted that many foreign governments are quite well aware of this and thus are less uncomfortable with American troops being in the neighborhood than is the case with soldiers of other nationalities.)
The irony of the situation resident in the Gulf states request is simply that foreign governments are much more eager to see Sheriff Sam than We the People are willing to pin on the badge. We Americans, pace many on the Left, are not seeking to be global cops on patrol. The reality, however, is the world generally is not ready to see us be other than the Good Cop.
Assuming the cables accurately reflect the views of the local interlocutors, there is a consensus among the Gulf states that an Iran equipped with a nuclear capacity is so threatening, so much a danger to peace that the Arab leaders want the US to take military action even before the Iranians actually achieve a deliverable nuclear weapon. The stated desire is for American preemption. This, of course, is a course of action qualitatively different from what the US has done traditionally.
The several Arab states are using the US invasion of Iraq as the precedent. This is unlike other, earlier wars from Korea to (at least arguably) Afghanistan, where the US has acted after the fact. Historically, the US has entered a war already in progress as in Korea and Vietnam or, with an almost plausible local invitation, sought to restore stability and stave off a threatened war as in Lebanon. The US has also, as in the case of the Dominican Republic and Grenada, deployed force to protect the lives of US nationals or, in Afghanistan, in retaliation for an armed attack on the US.
The Iraq precedent was another one of those recurrent slippery slope precedents. There was no direct attack on the US. There was not, as there had been in 1991, a breach of the international peace. There were no US lives at risk. There was certainly no plausible invitation from local political leaders. In place of these assorted justifications for the use of armed force, there was a stack of UN Resolutions and a heap of less than accurate intelligence. Judged by past American employments of force, the invasion of Iraq was even more poorly predicated than the war with Spain over a century earlier. And, that is saying a lot.
The Arab desire for the US to do something robust against the Iranian threat is understandable. No countries have more at risk than those of the Persian Gulf littoral. The scale of the Iranian threat is easily measured--compared to it none of the Arab states seem to have a thing against Israel. It is more than merely interesting that none saw the Israeli nuclear arsenal in being as a threat while all saw the Iranian nuclear arsenal in prospect to be terrifying.
Given this, it is not surprising that there was a monolithic call for the US to take out the Iranian threat regardless of other considerations such as how an attack might be justified to the world generally or the absence of a cause of war even as compelling as that provided by the pile of UN Resolutions directed at the Iraq of Saddam Hussein. Put at its most basic level, the call by the Arab states was prompted by a genuine and highly compelling national interest.
To the diplomats and leaders of the Gulf states, their countries and the US had a coinciding national interest in nullifying the Iranian nuclear program (and, quite probably the current Iranian regime.) And, as every person wise to the ways of international politics knows, the only reason that the Gulf states (or any state) has positive relations with the US is that doing so is vital to their national interest.
In this context it might be noted that Secretary of Defense Gates gave a short course in Diplomacy 101 the other day when he opined that other countries do not have relations with the US because they like us or because they trust us or because they believe we can keep secrets safe but only because such relations serve their national interests. The Arab proposition was predicated upon this concept pure and simple.
The Arab request hints at what attracts some states to seek and maintain good relations with the US. Even today as We the People drift in a depressant doldrums viewing our present to be poor and our future to be worse, there is a compelling attraction for states to seek and keep good relations with the US.
Put bluntly, other states are most impressed with our military capacities. They are struck with the potentials resident in that hardest of hard power capabilities--the military's ability to break things and kill people. It may be disconcerting to those Americans who value our economic power or the soft power appeals of our diplomacy, values, norms, culture, and so on, but in much of the world it is our military alone which gives appeal, which compels the seeking and maintaining of good relations, which defines coinciding national interests.
In short, there are more than a few governments--and not simply Arab autocracies in the Gulf region--which see the pistol on Sheriff Sam's hip and believe their interests (and ours) would be best served by using it against regional bad actors. Whether we like the notion or not, there are many, important states which want to see us in the role of global cop.
(OK, bucko, the Geek acknowledges that there are also many states which see the US as the Great Global Cash Cow to be milked at will. These states are also most likely to be most averse to Sheriff Sam ever pulling out the hog leg on his hip.)
Even the Western European countries which are quite willing, even eager, to accuse the US of being an international provocateur are quite happy to lay off the burdens both economic and political of global policing on the US. This happiness is only going to grow as the assorted states of the European Union facing a collective as well as individual economic challenges downsize their national military capabilities.
In the good cause of deficit reduction, the Coalition government in the UK has taken measures which will shrink their military forces overall to a point that would make a replay of the Falklands Island War impossible. Other NATO states are lessening their military expenses as well. The net result will be the rendering of NATO to the status of military nullity at least as regards out of theater operations. The longer term consequence of this downsizing trend is either shifting the burden to the US or surrendering the global insurgency to the purveyors of political Islam, including the adherents of armed Islamic insurgency.
The evil genii of the global Islamic insurgency will not skulk back to the bottle from which it has emerged over the past thirty or so years. It is and will continue to be a feature on the global political scene regardless of what we or anybody might wish. This means, quite simply, that war will not disappear soon from the experience of the human race.
The global insurgency will remain primarily a conflict of asymmetry, of wars almost too small to merit the name, of violence which is small scale but unending, of conflict which saps political will slowly but steadily over the years, the decades, perhaps generations. It is nonetheless a war which will determine both the nature of the future and the quality of life in the present, each year's successive present.
Insurgency and its counter depend upon both violent and peaceful tactics and methods. Within that truism the governing reality is that the violent portion is the more important. It is violence which acts most directly and with greatest intensity upon the political will of the contestant populations. And, as long as the violence continues, the conditions for that endgame necessity--conflict resolution--will not exist. The ground truth is simply that the insurgents have to be cowed into submission before there is any possibility of developing a long term detente between differing world views and concomitant civilizations.
In this context it is critical to recall that diplomacy depends upon either the existence of coinciding national interests or a credible capacity for effective coercion. With respect to coercion, when night falls, all the lesser means of coercion such as sanctions and diplomatic isolation rely upon the credible capacity and political will to employ force in support of policy.
Few governments question seriously the physical capacity of the US to employ force. Most have a good handle on just how much destruction we can inflict even without using our nuclear weapons. The quantum level improvements in all the many technologies involved in fighting wars made in recent years render even the observations from the Kuwait War no longer instructive. The US way of war in both Iraq and Afghanistan has used only a small, even a very small, fraction of the lethality resident in our conventional capacities. Still, most governments have a reasonably accurate appreciation of what the US could do should it need to.
Indeed, it has been American restraint in how it has fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan which has fed the long standing suspicions in many quarters of the world--including Iran and the purveyors of violent political Islam--that the US lacks the political will to use force in support of policy. From the time the US withdrew from the Vietnamese War on to the present, there has been a broad sentiment to the effect that the US cannot muster the will to fight a seemingly endless war, to accept the deaths of American service personnel in a "no-win" war, to spend never ending torrents of money in pursuit of what at best constitutes a stalemate of the Korean War sort.
The much maligned unilateralism of George W. Bush went a long way to settling the doubts held by so many leaders around the world. Unfortunately, the words of the Obama presidency have restored these doubts. The doubts have been enhanced by some of the administrations actions, such as the apparent willingness of the president and his foreign policy "team" to toss Israel off the sleigh and to the wolves. This lack of steadfastness disturbed the same Gulf state leaders who pressed the US to take swift and effective military action against Iran. It might even have prompted the requests as a form of test of American realism and political will.
The sine qua non for success in foreign policy generally and war fighting in particular is consistency and persistence. Radical shifts in either policy or action calls the reliability and predictability of the US into question in ways which do not further our national interests--or those of our more or less allies. In a real sense, Great Powers are not allowed to change their minds without penalty. That penalty is loss of credibility and with credibility goes the most important prize of diplomacy--influence.
For this reason the only rational choice for the Obama administration to make with respect to Afghanistan is to continue what we have been doing with one major addition. The addition is convincing Pakistan that the governments there have been wrong for sixty years, that Pakistan needs the US more than the US needs Pakistan.
It is for the reasons of consistency and predictability, for the reason of credibility and influence maintenance, that the US must not only draw a line in concrete regarding Iran but must use all means at its disposal to bend that country's regime to our policy requirements. The same applies to Israel and the Palestinians, choose a policy option which is in keeping with past American requirements and stick with it even if the Palestinians moan, groan, and toss a hissy fit.
While modifications in policy are a requirement of realism, these modifications must be on the margins and carefully explained to all parties. The requirement for careful explanation also applies to assuring that We the People both understand and support policy including the use of military force should such be necessary.
In that connection this administration in common with all presidencies past and future must understand that We the People are very reluctant global cops. The American public has never felt at home with the US being a Great Power. Down deep inside most of us are just fine with Ron Paul's isolationist position. Down deep inside where it counts, the majority of Americans past, present, and, probably, future see very few compelling reasons for Americans to leave their bones bleaching in the sun of some far away country the name of which most of us cannot pronounce let alone spell. We see very few compelling reasons to spend vast sums of present and future money on weapons. Most of us at the time agreed with Ike's "Farewell Address" and its warning against the "military-industrial complex."
We are not imperialists by nature any more. Our period of seeking empire ended more than a hundred years ago. Where we have been forced by reasons good or bad to send troops, we have never sought to stay. (It might be noted that many foreign governments are quite well aware of this and thus are less uncomfortable with American troops being in the neighborhood than is the case with soldiers of other nationalities.)
The irony of the situation resident in the Gulf states request is simply that foreign governments are much more eager to see Sheriff Sam than We the People are willing to pin on the badge. We Americans, pace many on the Left, are not seeking to be global cops on patrol. The reality, however, is the world generally is not ready to see us be other than the Good Cop.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Once Again It's "Strategic Review" Time For Afghanistan
While there is none of the delay and pseudo-drama of last year's "debate" over the Big Question of "Whether Afghanistan," there are definite and deep currents of difference regarding how well the US is doing in whatever it is purportedly doing in Afghanistan. There is the ongoing contretemps between Afghan president Hamid Karzai and the US--particularly General Petraeus--over where American and other NATO or ISAF troops should be doing what. And, not surprisingly there is the usual highly credentialed panel of self-designated experts damning the entire effort and the Obama ordered escalation as a total failure.
As if that were not a sufficient number of conflicting chefs to spoil the soup, the Pakistanis, which is to say the Army and Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has come roaring back demanding that Karzai enter into a power sharing agreement with Taliban and the Haqqani network without delay. It borders on the ironic that the proposal set forth by Pakistani Army Chief of Staff Asfaq Kiyani is simply a more robust form of the conclusions drawn by the twenty-three academics, journalists, and former government officials. Far less ironic and far more honest is the implicit admission by General Kiyani that Pakistan is and has been working both sides of the street in Afghanistan.
At the same time the Kiyani proposition underscores the major message of Karzai. For years now the oft derided (by senior American diplomats and policy makers) Afghan president has argued that without ending the Pakistani support of Taliban, the Haqqani network, and al-Qaeda or sealing the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan hermetically, there will be no end to the war. It is for this reason that Karzai has repeatedly and stridently demanded that the US and others deploy their combat power along the border rather than stage nocturnal raids on isolated Afghan homesteads or stage forcible entries into Afghan cities and towns.
While the US and its allies have seen the war in Afghanistan as one of counterinsurgency, Karzai and some others in both the Afghan government and military have seen it as one of an interstate nature. The truth is that the war is a hybrid. The war is an example of a very rare sort of conflict, the partisan war. In a partisan war the combatants may be organic to the society under stress but do not have sufficient capabilities on their own to continue the war successfully. The continuation of combat depends upon a direct cross-border supporter.
In the past century the best examples of partisan war are to be found in the several resistance movements in occupied Western Europe during World War II. In none of the countries under Nazi domination could the domestic, organic resistance forces have accomplished the goal of ejecting the occupier on their own. The French, the Dutch, the Danes, the Norse all relied not only on outside support from the Western Allies to continue their struggle but needed the outsiders to actually do the heavy lifting of killing Germans and destroying Germany.
The wars in South Vietnam contained partisan features when the North decided to answer the challenge of Operation Rolling Thunder by supplying and supporting the indigenous insurgents. The partisan nature of the war became clear when Northern forces directly entered the war in sizable numbers thus relegating the insurgents to a supporting role at best.
While it is unlikely in the extreme that Pakistani forces will cross the border into Afghanistan, there has never been any lack of evidence regarding the degree to which Pakistan supports Taliban and others. Nor has there been any doubt but Pakistan has established and controls the agenda behind the fighting in Afghanistan. As a consequence, characterizing the war(s) in Afghanistan as a mixed state involving both insurgent and partisan features is the most accurate way of defining the war and the operational doctrines necessary to bring it to a successful (from the perspectives of Kabul and Washington) conclusion.
Ending the war will be a two stage process. The first stage is that of hostilities termination. The second consists of conflict resolution. The first is primarily military in its accomplishment. The second, the final stage, is completely political in nature. It has been evident that the US at its senior decision making levels has never taken a firm grip on this reality.
Despite the impressive credentials of the "experts" and the cogency of their argument, their conclusion is fatally flawed at least in part. The Obama ordered escalation has provided the manpower necessary to take the war directly to the insurgents. The result has been a transfer in initiative from the Taliban to the US and its allies. The increasing pressure on the insurgents has constricted both their ability and will to operate. Even the resort to civilian casualty producing tactics such as the escalating employment of IEDs attests to this. The Karzai decried nocturnal raids by Special Forces units and Afghan partners has done much to disrupt the organizational integrity of the Taliban and Haqqani network.
The overall effects of the offensive operations have been attenuated severely by the existence of the cross-border sanctuary in the Pakistani FATA. Further attenuation has resulted directly from the on-going support and assistance provided by ISI and the army. As long as these partisan war features continue, so also will the war. It is just that simple.
The Predator and Reaper strikes against Taliban facilities and personnel in the FATA are not sufficient to offset the Pakistani assistance. While these strikes send a nice number of trigger pullers and a small group of leaders to the Big Mo and seventy-two virgins, the net effect is not crippling to the Taliban and Haqqani network. Crippling requires an end (or a serious reduction) of Pakistani support.
One can understand Karzai's frustration. He has seen the problem for years with great clarity. He has spoken and written to his American partners about it with force and moral courage. At the same time he must deal with the internal political fallout from the nocturnal raids as he must with the collateral casualties of air strikes or artillery bombardments. His political enemies (and he has many other than the insurgents) use every grievance real and pretended which results from a raid or air strike against him. This has to become a real drag after a few years.
Karzai is a nationalist first and foremost. This means he has to be treated as the head of a sovereign state. Even when he is tossing one of his many hissy fits, he must still be treated with the respect which he believes he is entitled to and which demonstrates to the Afghan people that he and they are sovereign, respected, dignified, not the puppets and lackeys of foreigners. General McChrystal understood this. It is not at all evident that General Petraeus does so as well.
The matter of interpersonal relations factors directly into the problem of gaining Karzai's support for the current approach rather than attempting the utterly impossible--sealing the Pakistani border the air tight level which would be necessary to stop effective Pakistani support. Karzai must be brought carefully on board. He must be shown why even the advanced technology available to the US is not up to the task of securing the border. At the same time he and his people must be given more approval rights with respect to the controversial nocturnal raids. Again, this requires very careful handling and a willingness to forgo a raid or two in deference to local (and militarily irrational) considerations.
At the same time the US has to put pressure on the Pakistanis. The new Pakistani "peace plan" gives adequate base to do so. They have admitted they have the juice with Taliban and the Haqqani network. They have effectively entered a guilty plea to Karzai's accusations. Use it to get the ISI and army to turn the spigot down if not all the way off.
The reduction of support need not happen overnight to be effective. It can be a process rather than an event as even a slight diminuation of Pakistani support will be reflected quickly by a degradation of insurgent combat capacity and will. Coupled with a modest decrease of outside support and access to the sanctuaries of the FATA, the current offensive efforts (including the nocturnal raids) will prove effective in hostilities termination within a politically reasonable period (twelve to eighteen months.)
At this point--the point of hostilities termination which, to err on the side of accuracy, is more a process than an event--the politically oriented matter of conflict resolution takes over. Importantly, as it the Afghans who must all live together in the years to come, the conflict resolution portion of the effort is almost entirely an Afghan owned procedure. The nature and extent of power sharing is up to the Afghans alone--even if we are not pleased with the result.
It is true that problems of governance and governmental legitimacy are in play even before hostilities are terminated. It is one more unpleasant ground truth that this is a matter for Afghans in which we outsiders play a limited role. The degree of acceptable corruption is an Afghan matter not an American or European one. As noted in a previous post bribery, graft, and corruption of both a political and economic nature are internal matters. It is up to the locals to say how much is enough as well as to define what might be called equality of opportunity to be corrupt.
The way in which the several tribes, linguistic groups, and religious communities define political legitimacy, judicial independence, openness, and transparency or even fundamental honesty in government will be messy, convoluted, and probably throughly unpleasant when viewed from a Western perspective, but that is the way life is lived--get a grip on it. Afghanistan is not, repeat, not, a contemporary Western polity and society in the making. And, it never will be. We have to get a grip on that as well.
Pace, experts, but we are not yet losing in Afghanistan. The Obama escalation is not yet a failure. Provided we do not make the fatal mistake we did in Vietnam of trying to take over both war and government, we will not lose, not militarily at least. Provided we allow the Afghans to be effective stakeholders, we can actually reach a reasonable facsimile of winning--again at least through the hostilities termination phase.
To do this we need to keep on with our current operational doctrine. We need to do a better job of bringing Karzai on board. Most of all we must, repeat, must, lean on Islamabad to start the process of tamping down the partisan war aspects of the conflict. Left to their own military and psychological resources, the organic insurgents can not hope to win. Their only hope is to end the hostilities and seek the best accommodation in the conflict resolution process.
The road to peace in Afghanistan runs, in major part, through Islamabad but not in the way the Pakistani army and ISI hope. The zealots in those two organizations must be brought to realize that without abandoning their duplicity in Afghanistan and getting right with Washington, they will lose access to the great American cash cow. Since the Chinese will not play the same sort of obliging game which we have, this means they will be left very high and dry while still facing their own homegrown existential threat.
Survival is the name of the game for the men in Islamabad. We just have to make certain that they understand it depends on the way in which they continue to play the game in Afghanistan.
As if that were not a sufficient number of conflicting chefs to spoil the soup, the Pakistanis, which is to say the Army and Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has come roaring back demanding that Karzai enter into a power sharing agreement with Taliban and the Haqqani network without delay. It borders on the ironic that the proposal set forth by Pakistani Army Chief of Staff Asfaq Kiyani is simply a more robust form of the conclusions drawn by the twenty-three academics, journalists, and former government officials. Far less ironic and far more honest is the implicit admission by General Kiyani that Pakistan is and has been working both sides of the street in Afghanistan.
At the same time the Kiyani proposition underscores the major message of Karzai. For years now the oft derided (by senior American diplomats and policy makers) Afghan president has argued that without ending the Pakistani support of Taliban, the Haqqani network, and al-Qaeda or sealing the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan hermetically, there will be no end to the war. It is for this reason that Karzai has repeatedly and stridently demanded that the US and others deploy their combat power along the border rather than stage nocturnal raids on isolated Afghan homesteads or stage forcible entries into Afghan cities and towns.
While the US and its allies have seen the war in Afghanistan as one of counterinsurgency, Karzai and some others in both the Afghan government and military have seen it as one of an interstate nature. The truth is that the war is a hybrid. The war is an example of a very rare sort of conflict, the partisan war. In a partisan war the combatants may be organic to the society under stress but do not have sufficient capabilities on their own to continue the war successfully. The continuation of combat depends upon a direct cross-border supporter.
In the past century the best examples of partisan war are to be found in the several resistance movements in occupied Western Europe during World War II. In none of the countries under Nazi domination could the domestic, organic resistance forces have accomplished the goal of ejecting the occupier on their own. The French, the Dutch, the Danes, the Norse all relied not only on outside support from the Western Allies to continue their struggle but needed the outsiders to actually do the heavy lifting of killing Germans and destroying Germany.
The wars in South Vietnam contained partisan features when the North decided to answer the challenge of Operation Rolling Thunder by supplying and supporting the indigenous insurgents. The partisan nature of the war became clear when Northern forces directly entered the war in sizable numbers thus relegating the insurgents to a supporting role at best.
While it is unlikely in the extreme that Pakistani forces will cross the border into Afghanistan, there has never been any lack of evidence regarding the degree to which Pakistan supports Taliban and others. Nor has there been any doubt but Pakistan has established and controls the agenda behind the fighting in Afghanistan. As a consequence, characterizing the war(s) in Afghanistan as a mixed state involving both insurgent and partisan features is the most accurate way of defining the war and the operational doctrines necessary to bring it to a successful (from the perspectives of Kabul and Washington) conclusion.
Ending the war will be a two stage process. The first stage is that of hostilities termination. The second consists of conflict resolution. The first is primarily military in its accomplishment. The second, the final stage, is completely political in nature. It has been evident that the US at its senior decision making levels has never taken a firm grip on this reality.
Despite the impressive credentials of the "experts" and the cogency of their argument, their conclusion is fatally flawed at least in part. The Obama ordered escalation has provided the manpower necessary to take the war directly to the insurgents. The result has been a transfer in initiative from the Taliban to the US and its allies. The increasing pressure on the insurgents has constricted both their ability and will to operate. Even the resort to civilian casualty producing tactics such as the escalating employment of IEDs attests to this. The Karzai decried nocturnal raids by Special Forces units and Afghan partners has done much to disrupt the organizational integrity of the Taliban and Haqqani network.
The overall effects of the offensive operations have been attenuated severely by the existence of the cross-border sanctuary in the Pakistani FATA. Further attenuation has resulted directly from the on-going support and assistance provided by ISI and the army. As long as these partisan war features continue, so also will the war. It is just that simple.
The Predator and Reaper strikes against Taliban facilities and personnel in the FATA are not sufficient to offset the Pakistani assistance. While these strikes send a nice number of trigger pullers and a small group of leaders to the Big Mo and seventy-two virgins, the net effect is not crippling to the Taliban and Haqqani network. Crippling requires an end (or a serious reduction) of Pakistani support.
One can understand Karzai's frustration. He has seen the problem for years with great clarity. He has spoken and written to his American partners about it with force and moral courage. At the same time he must deal with the internal political fallout from the nocturnal raids as he must with the collateral casualties of air strikes or artillery bombardments. His political enemies (and he has many other than the insurgents) use every grievance real and pretended which results from a raid or air strike against him. This has to become a real drag after a few years.
Karzai is a nationalist first and foremost. This means he has to be treated as the head of a sovereign state. Even when he is tossing one of his many hissy fits, he must still be treated with the respect which he believes he is entitled to and which demonstrates to the Afghan people that he and they are sovereign, respected, dignified, not the puppets and lackeys of foreigners. General McChrystal understood this. It is not at all evident that General Petraeus does so as well.
The matter of interpersonal relations factors directly into the problem of gaining Karzai's support for the current approach rather than attempting the utterly impossible--sealing the Pakistani border the air tight level which would be necessary to stop effective Pakistani support. Karzai must be brought carefully on board. He must be shown why even the advanced technology available to the US is not up to the task of securing the border. At the same time he and his people must be given more approval rights with respect to the controversial nocturnal raids. Again, this requires very careful handling and a willingness to forgo a raid or two in deference to local (and militarily irrational) considerations.
At the same time the US has to put pressure on the Pakistanis. The new Pakistani "peace plan" gives adequate base to do so. They have admitted they have the juice with Taliban and the Haqqani network. They have effectively entered a guilty plea to Karzai's accusations. Use it to get the ISI and army to turn the spigot down if not all the way off.
The reduction of support need not happen overnight to be effective. It can be a process rather than an event as even a slight diminuation of Pakistani support will be reflected quickly by a degradation of insurgent combat capacity and will. Coupled with a modest decrease of outside support and access to the sanctuaries of the FATA, the current offensive efforts (including the nocturnal raids) will prove effective in hostilities termination within a politically reasonable period (twelve to eighteen months.)
At this point--the point of hostilities termination which, to err on the side of accuracy, is more a process than an event--the politically oriented matter of conflict resolution takes over. Importantly, as it the Afghans who must all live together in the years to come, the conflict resolution portion of the effort is almost entirely an Afghan owned procedure. The nature and extent of power sharing is up to the Afghans alone--even if we are not pleased with the result.
It is true that problems of governance and governmental legitimacy are in play even before hostilities are terminated. It is one more unpleasant ground truth that this is a matter for Afghans in which we outsiders play a limited role. The degree of acceptable corruption is an Afghan matter not an American or European one. As noted in a previous post bribery, graft, and corruption of both a political and economic nature are internal matters. It is up to the locals to say how much is enough as well as to define what might be called equality of opportunity to be corrupt.
The way in which the several tribes, linguistic groups, and religious communities define political legitimacy, judicial independence, openness, and transparency or even fundamental honesty in government will be messy, convoluted, and probably throughly unpleasant when viewed from a Western perspective, but that is the way life is lived--get a grip on it. Afghanistan is not, repeat, not, a contemporary Western polity and society in the making. And, it never will be. We have to get a grip on that as well.
Pace, experts, but we are not yet losing in Afghanistan. The Obama escalation is not yet a failure. Provided we do not make the fatal mistake we did in Vietnam of trying to take over both war and government, we will not lose, not militarily at least. Provided we allow the Afghans to be effective stakeholders, we can actually reach a reasonable facsimile of winning--again at least through the hostilities termination phase.
To do this we need to keep on with our current operational doctrine. We need to do a better job of bringing Karzai on board. Most of all we must, repeat, must, lean on Islamabad to start the process of tamping down the partisan war aspects of the conflict. Left to their own military and psychological resources, the organic insurgents can not hope to win. Their only hope is to end the hostilities and seek the best accommodation in the conflict resolution process.
The road to peace in Afghanistan runs, in major part, through Islamabad but not in the way the Pakistani army and ISI hope. The zealots in those two organizations must be brought to realize that without abandoning their duplicity in Afghanistan and getting right with Washington, they will lose access to the great American cash cow. Since the Chinese will not play the same sort of obliging game which we have, this means they will be left very high and dry while still facing their own homegrown existential threat.
Survival is the name of the game for the men in Islamabad. We just have to make certain that they understand it depends on the way in which they continue to play the game in Afghanistan.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Today's Eighth Deadly Sin--Corruption
Of late one gets a clear impression from the news that the entire world has its collective panties in a knot over corruption. This big "C" is seen as being behind the successful recruiting efforts of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Legions of critics assert that corruption is the single greatest feature abroad in Vladimir Putin's regime and Russia generally. And, Transparency International, a group given to the study of such distasteful matters, assures us in a recent poll that perceptions of corruption are going up almost faster than can be tracked.
Apparently the defining feature of today's political, economic, and judicial arenas is the prevalence of corruption, that is the exchange of money for favored consideration. Whether Mexico or Pakistan, Africa or Eastern Europe, there is a widespread view that without the handing over of money, it is impossible to have access to necessary governmental or judicial services. Even in countries such as Denmark where no one seems to have had any direct encounter with corruption, the perception is that systems of law, economic order, political practices are rotten to the core with corruption and graft being normative.
The Geek has encountered discreetly outstretched palms in Asia, Latin America, and Africa--as well as the US. Her Geekness has a great tale of how her family was held for hours at the border of Bulgaria back in the days of the Cold War while other vehicles breezed through only later to discover the reason for the delay was her father's probity preventing him from passing over the required amount of valeuta, As these international encounters occurred long ago there is reason to believe that corruption is neither new nor as alarming in effect as recent reports hint.
If the journalists, academics, diplomats, and military people currently in such a snit over corruption and its harmful effects on US interests (to say nothing of local morality) were to take the briefest look at the diplomatic correspondence and the memoirs of travelers from a century or so back, they would quickly discover two salient facts. The first was that corruption was rampant not only in the Ottoman Empire, but in the lesser developed regions of the world generally, East and West, North and South alike. The second, and far more surprising fact, is the calm and creative way in which Americans and Europeans both diplomatic personnel and private citizens dealt with the plethora of corrupt officials and businessmen.
Only a few of the most moralistically inclined--mainly missionaries--actually objected to the widespread corruption or were of the view that corrupt officials prevented the exercise of diplomatic or commercial duties. There were very few who saw the outstretched hands and unctuous smiles as undercutting the ability of foreign governments to function. Whenever local citizens complained of corruption, it was with the same theme--the unfairness, the inequality with which the fruits of corruption were distributed.
To do business, as well as to prevent undue inflation in the bribe, graft, corruption, and kickback department, it was far from unusual to see Western embassies establish acceptable rates or percentages of corruption. In short, the diplomatic establishments of the Western countries institutionalized corruption. This model was quickly followed by commercial interests, tourists and, yes, even missionary organizations.
This approach allowed for corruption to be domesticated and, as a very real benefit, distributed with greater equity within the several recipient communities. It set limits and promoted cooperative competition within the locals both official and private.
Once institutionalized, there was no functional difference between corruption at the governmental level and corruption at the personal as in the bribes offered to restaurant personnel under the rubric of "tips." Both are understood, limited and fairly distributed forms of corruption. Indeed, at the personal level, the institutionalization of bribery has reached the point that the fixed percentage is built into the bill presented to the diner.
Looking back, even to relatively recent years, corruption was so well understood by Western governments and businesses that it was factored in to aid packages, contracts, and all the other forms of transaction where the passage of money could facilitate matters. In the Fifties and Sixties, there are numerous examples from both public and private accounts of the governmental equivalent of the comprehensive price system used by some restaurants. Just one more line item, no big deal, no reason to pump up a storm of moral outrage; it's just the way things are done around here.
The fascination not to say fixation on corruption is another unfortunate legacy of the Sixties. The fear and loathing, the spewing of moral opprobrium on corruption also paralleled the rise in concern on human rights which is a product of the Carter period. The parallel may be accidental but it is all too evident--and even more destructive of effective international relations than the human rights matters.
The objection to corruption put forth by Afghans or Pakistanis is identical: The bribes, the graft, the corruption generally is not equitably distributed; it is not available to all comers. The same sentiment can be detected in venues as disparate as Nigeria and Venezuela.
It rather resembles studies done with chimps which show that as long as every member of a troupe gets the same goody, say a cucumber, everyone is happy. But if some individuals get the much more prized melon slice or banana, those unfortunate enough to be stuck with a previously acceptable cucumber are outraged. Dissent, even violence erupts. Chaos ensues. The inbuilt sense of fairness has been insulted.
So it is with humans. As long as only some are eligible to receive the fruits of corruption or there is a wide differential between levels of corruption, the have-nots or have-less folks will be disturbed deeply and denounce the existence of corruption. If given a fair share, the protests fade with the speed of Obama's approval rating.
This suggests an easy solution, an answer to the problem of corruption which will be cheaper and more effective than the efforts to stamp it out. The answer is to duplicate past experience and build in the line item marked "corruption." Sure, a more euphemistic term would be necessary lest the morally pure and high minded sorts in Congress and the media be offended, but rebranding comes easily to politicians.
It doesn't even harm the counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan and elsewhere if the corruption flows in part to the insurgents provided it is used as a way of weaning these guys away from the lure of sleeping on the ground, eating bad food, and getting shot at. Insurgents, other than the most hard core sort who need to be killed, are amenable to the seduction of ready cash. That is as long as the cash is not tendered as a direct payment for abandoning the "Cause." The goal would be a manageable black economy in which corruption becomes a weapon for the central government.
The stresses imposed on traditional societies by the Western challenge, particularly in places long wracked with internal conflict can and should be assuaged by a creative use of corruption. The corruption is not going to suddenly vanish no matter how much it may be desired by the US government and others of well meaning orientation. It is a necessary part of the human face of these societies as well as a way in which leaders justify their position in life.
Once the ground truths both past and present involving the Big "C" are recognized and understood, the presence of corruption should be used to the advantage of American policy. To do otherwise is an act of incredible stupidity no matter how much moralizing is employed. To reject the potentials for success resident in the proper use of corruption is akin to inviting either defeat or an unnecessarily prolonged and bloody effort.
But, we are Americans and thus not given to allowing unpleasant, not to say immoral, realities to impinge on our consciousness.
Apparently the defining feature of today's political, economic, and judicial arenas is the prevalence of corruption, that is the exchange of money for favored consideration. Whether Mexico or Pakistan, Africa or Eastern Europe, there is a widespread view that without the handing over of money, it is impossible to have access to necessary governmental or judicial services. Even in countries such as Denmark where no one seems to have had any direct encounter with corruption, the perception is that systems of law, economic order, political practices are rotten to the core with corruption and graft being normative.
The Geek has encountered discreetly outstretched palms in Asia, Latin America, and Africa--as well as the US. Her Geekness has a great tale of how her family was held for hours at the border of Bulgaria back in the days of the Cold War while other vehicles breezed through only later to discover the reason for the delay was her father's probity preventing him from passing over the required amount of valeuta, As these international encounters occurred long ago there is reason to believe that corruption is neither new nor as alarming in effect as recent reports hint.
If the journalists, academics, diplomats, and military people currently in such a snit over corruption and its harmful effects on US interests (to say nothing of local morality) were to take the briefest look at the diplomatic correspondence and the memoirs of travelers from a century or so back, they would quickly discover two salient facts. The first was that corruption was rampant not only in the Ottoman Empire, but in the lesser developed regions of the world generally, East and West, North and South alike. The second, and far more surprising fact, is the calm and creative way in which Americans and Europeans both diplomatic personnel and private citizens dealt with the plethora of corrupt officials and businessmen.
Only a few of the most moralistically inclined--mainly missionaries--actually objected to the widespread corruption or were of the view that corrupt officials prevented the exercise of diplomatic or commercial duties. There were very few who saw the outstretched hands and unctuous smiles as undercutting the ability of foreign governments to function. Whenever local citizens complained of corruption, it was with the same theme--the unfairness, the inequality with which the fruits of corruption were distributed.
To do business, as well as to prevent undue inflation in the bribe, graft, corruption, and kickback department, it was far from unusual to see Western embassies establish acceptable rates or percentages of corruption. In short, the diplomatic establishments of the Western countries institutionalized corruption. This model was quickly followed by commercial interests, tourists and, yes, even missionary organizations.
This approach allowed for corruption to be domesticated and, as a very real benefit, distributed with greater equity within the several recipient communities. It set limits and promoted cooperative competition within the locals both official and private.
Once institutionalized, there was no functional difference between corruption at the governmental level and corruption at the personal as in the bribes offered to restaurant personnel under the rubric of "tips." Both are understood, limited and fairly distributed forms of corruption. Indeed, at the personal level, the institutionalization of bribery has reached the point that the fixed percentage is built into the bill presented to the diner.
Looking back, even to relatively recent years, corruption was so well understood by Western governments and businesses that it was factored in to aid packages, contracts, and all the other forms of transaction where the passage of money could facilitate matters. In the Fifties and Sixties, there are numerous examples from both public and private accounts of the governmental equivalent of the comprehensive price system used by some restaurants. Just one more line item, no big deal, no reason to pump up a storm of moral outrage; it's just the way things are done around here.
The fascination not to say fixation on corruption is another unfortunate legacy of the Sixties. The fear and loathing, the spewing of moral opprobrium on corruption also paralleled the rise in concern on human rights which is a product of the Carter period. The parallel may be accidental but it is all too evident--and even more destructive of effective international relations than the human rights matters.
The objection to corruption put forth by Afghans or Pakistanis is identical: The bribes, the graft, the corruption generally is not equitably distributed; it is not available to all comers. The same sentiment can be detected in venues as disparate as Nigeria and Venezuela.
It rather resembles studies done with chimps which show that as long as every member of a troupe gets the same goody, say a cucumber, everyone is happy. But if some individuals get the much more prized melon slice or banana, those unfortunate enough to be stuck with a previously acceptable cucumber are outraged. Dissent, even violence erupts. Chaos ensues. The inbuilt sense of fairness has been insulted.
So it is with humans. As long as only some are eligible to receive the fruits of corruption or there is a wide differential between levels of corruption, the have-nots or have-less folks will be disturbed deeply and denounce the existence of corruption. If given a fair share, the protests fade with the speed of Obama's approval rating.
This suggests an easy solution, an answer to the problem of corruption which will be cheaper and more effective than the efforts to stamp it out. The answer is to duplicate past experience and build in the line item marked "corruption." Sure, a more euphemistic term would be necessary lest the morally pure and high minded sorts in Congress and the media be offended, but rebranding comes easily to politicians.
It doesn't even harm the counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan and elsewhere if the corruption flows in part to the insurgents provided it is used as a way of weaning these guys away from the lure of sleeping on the ground, eating bad food, and getting shot at. Insurgents, other than the most hard core sort who need to be killed, are amenable to the seduction of ready cash. That is as long as the cash is not tendered as a direct payment for abandoning the "Cause." The goal would be a manageable black economy in which corruption becomes a weapon for the central government.
The stresses imposed on traditional societies by the Western challenge, particularly in places long wracked with internal conflict can and should be assuaged by a creative use of corruption. The corruption is not going to suddenly vanish no matter how much it may be desired by the US government and others of well meaning orientation. It is a necessary part of the human face of these societies as well as a way in which leaders justify their position in life.
Once the ground truths both past and present involving the Big "C" are recognized and understood, the presence of corruption should be used to the advantage of American policy. To do otherwise is an act of incredible stupidity no matter how much moralizing is employed. To reject the potentials for success resident in the proper use of corruption is akin to inviting either defeat or an unnecessarily prolonged and bloody effort.
But, we are Americans and thus not given to allowing unpleasant, not to say immoral, realities to impinge on our consciousness.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Change Leads To Fear--And Fear Leads To Jihad
Any number of scholarly commentators have noted that religious fundamentalists be they Jewish, Christian, or Muslim are united in motivation. The consensus is all fundamentalists, particularly those willing to employ violence in pursuit of their political or social goals, are driven by a pervasive fear of change. The unifying desire is to reclaim the stability of the past.
There is much value in this understanding, providing it is used with caution. It may well be that many, perhaps even most, adherents of the hazy world called "fundamentalism" are uncomfortable with both the pace and degree of change in their lives. This does not mean that most of these people are irrational or so unhinged by fear of inexplicable and seemingly unnecessary change in the political, social, and cultural environment where they live. Indeed, the fundamentalist response is rational in its origins even when the ultimate expression is violent.
It is critical to understand that most humans for most of their history have lived in static environments. Change in the basic characteristics of political organization, social structures, economic institutions, cultural norms, and ethical values typically has been very slow or even nonexistent. We forget today in the US where rapid change is not only normative but widely celebrated that the defining American experience for most of our ancestors right down to World War II has been the changeless rhythm of the seasons, the cycle of days in which every one was nearly identical to its predecessor and its successor.
Change of rapid and pervasive nature is of recent vintage in the US. Changes in the basic fabric of society, politics, economics, culture have been normative only for the past fifty years. True, the rapidity of change in American society and culture over the past half century has been remarkable--and quite dislocative. As recently as the Seventies, the words of a Springsteen tune were totally applicable not only in our rural areas but in the largest of our cities, "They bring you up to do just what your daddy did." In a major way life was cyclical, an endless wheel of generations with only marginal changes like the height of tail fins on the new model car.
Few, if any, Americans in 1970 would have accepted the proposition that before the end of the century the vast industrial infrastructure of this country would have become an endless belt of abandoned, rusting mills and factories. Few, if any, Americans in 1985 would have believed you if you said, "In five years the Cold War will be over and the Soviet Union will be no more--without a war."
The rapidity and universality of basic change in the US has made more than a few very uncomfortable. The pace and extent of change has resulted in a sense of rootlessness, a feeling of alienation, of being a stranger in a strange land. It is rational for a person under assault by change to seek stability, to need points of unchanging certainty, to demand that change be slowed.
Members of the American hoi ollogoi may be quite unconcerned by systemic change as they are insulated from ill effects or even the anxiety about the unknowable consequences of change by wealth, status, position or power, but not all Americans are so protected. Thus it is possible for a member of the "elite" such as Barack Obama to characterize Americans from the second, unprotected category as "clingers," holding on to symbols of the past such as Bibles, guns, and Republicans. It is possible for the elite to see the unprotected and apprehensive majority as irrationally fear ridden regardless of how divorced from reality this smug view might be.
American religious fundamentalists, be they Protestant or Catholic, may be apprehensive regarding the pace and extent of change. They may find some of the changes totally unacceptable and impossible to justify. They may "cling" to facets of the past both religious and secular which they believe to be desirable, beneficial, or down right necessary. None of this makes their motives irrational. None make their goal of conserving the best of the past while adapting and adopting desirable aspects of the new somehow unworthy of respect or meriting condemnation as fear driven clinging.
Chew over this a bit. If, here in the US where buildings may be torn down almost before the cement on the cornerstone has dried, change can be disturbing to well educated, established citizens of a mature democracy with a well ordered economic base and a long tradition of embracing the new, what is the effect of change on a traditional society with a unresponsive government and a history of stasis?
Changes of many sorts and degrees have assaulted traditional societies, inflexible polities, and rudimentary economic structures with a series of megaton blows over the past fifty years. The awesome footprint of the West has hit the very static Arab and Muslim world repeatedly. It is no shock that many resident where the great Western boot has landed have reacted with fear and loathing.
The West, and the US, by their very existence in effect have demanded that traditional societies and polities throughout the Arab and Muslim world toss out each and every feature which have defined and conditioned life for centuries and replace these instantly with virtually incomprehensible foreign implants. In essence the Western challenge has been, "You must not only do as we do, you must be as we are if you are to survive let alone prosper in the world we Westerners have created."
Consider just a couple of consequences of this Western challenge.
It has been necessary, we Westerners believe, that the traditional patterns of social and political relations which have provided a very satisfactory life for most Arabs and Muslims for centuries be discarded. This has meant that the old reliance on family, tribe, locality, relations which were personal and up close must be replaced by impersonal mechanisms of the market and the bureaucracy. This has meant the replacement of customary laws and traditions of the responsibility of local or tribal leaders with remotely imposed and enforced written codes of law. It has, in short, ripped out the face to face features of traditional societies and polities with the faceless one-size-fits-all approach of the West. (A faceless way of governing which has fried off any number of us who have lived under it all of our lives.)
The Western creature, the "Market," has no resemblance to the up close and personal bazaar. The Market has no human face, no human sensibility beyond getting the highest possible bottom line. It rips the human heart out of commercial intercourse offering presumed efficiency in place of person-to-person search for advantage, even mutual advantage.
We in the West have fought long, hard, and bloody wars over the basic questions of the relation of state and community of faith. We have done the same with respect to the establishment and expansion of "human rights." It has taken us centuries to get answers in these areas which are even rough approximations of "right." The same is true regarding democracy, The same applies to transparency of government and business. It is applicable as well to matters of social, political, and economic equity and justice. And, even after centuries of effort, no one can honestly say that the job has been finished.
Yet the Western challenge has demanded that the Muslim majority societies do the same instantly and without the bloodshed which has marked Western changes over the past thousand years and more. Even if a plausible case can be made for the superiority of the Western paradigm (which the Geek thinks can be made) the demand that the Muslim majority societies do the same in a matter of mere years is both unreasonable and quite contrary to the inertia filled nature of humans and their social or political constructs.
Faced with the Western challenge and its collateral imperatives, it is small wonder that a percentage of Muslims have reacted with fear and loathing which now expresses itself as violent political Islam rooted in an austere interpretation of the religion based on the foundations of the faith. Any other response would be nearly impossible.
The Muslim, particularly the Muslim man, has been faced repeatedly with a severe challenge to all aspects of his identity as well as his world view. Quite literally, he has been cut off from his roots by the impact of the changes demanded by the Western challenge. With this degree of internal alienation in play, the appeal of political Islam, including that of the armed sort, has grown high and fast.
It is quite easy for the Muslim man to conclude that only by seizing power, by bringing Islam to power, can he regain control of his environment, of his life. Even if he does not personally pull a trigger or push the clicker on a bomb, it is to be expected that many Muslim men will support and agree with those who do wage the good war against not simply infidels or apostates but on change itself. Better to die on ones own terms than to survive on the terms dictated by another.
As the global Muslim insurgency grows, the new task for Western decision makers, well, really for all of us in the West, is to create ways in which the Muslim guy in a traditional society can effectively accept and assimilate necessary change. This implies that we in the West have to lighten up on our demands that the Muslim in Afghanistan or Yemen or North Africa become just like us in his views and attitudes. This is necessary but not sufficient in and of itself to counter the Muslim insurgency effectively.
We cannot do even this minimal task unless and until we understand the relation between the changes demanded by the Western challenge and the fear it produces. Ultimately, the enemy facing both us and the Muslims we are fighting is the same--the fierce engine of change. Change may be both desirable and necessary, but it can also be our worse enemy.
Well, no one ever said life was easy.
There is much value in this understanding, providing it is used with caution. It may well be that many, perhaps even most, adherents of the hazy world called "fundamentalism" are uncomfortable with both the pace and degree of change in their lives. This does not mean that most of these people are irrational or so unhinged by fear of inexplicable and seemingly unnecessary change in the political, social, and cultural environment where they live. Indeed, the fundamentalist response is rational in its origins even when the ultimate expression is violent.
It is critical to understand that most humans for most of their history have lived in static environments. Change in the basic characteristics of political organization, social structures, economic institutions, cultural norms, and ethical values typically has been very slow or even nonexistent. We forget today in the US where rapid change is not only normative but widely celebrated that the defining American experience for most of our ancestors right down to World War II has been the changeless rhythm of the seasons, the cycle of days in which every one was nearly identical to its predecessor and its successor.
Change of rapid and pervasive nature is of recent vintage in the US. Changes in the basic fabric of society, politics, economics, culture have been normative only for the past fifty years. True, the rapidity of change in American society and culture over the past half century has been remarkable--and quite dislocative. As recently as the Seventies, the words of a Springsteen tune were totally applicable not only in our rural areas but in the largest of our cities, "They bring you up to do just what your daddy did." In a major way life was cyclical, an endless wheel of generations with only marginal changes like the height of tail fins on the new model car.
Few, if any, Americans in 1970 would have accepted the proposition that before the end of the century the vast industrial infrastructure of this country would have become an endless belt of abandoned, rusting mills and factories. Few, if any, Americans in 1985 would have believed you if you said, "In five years the Cold War will be over and the Soviet Union will be no more--without a war."
The rapidity and universality of basic change in the US has made more than a few very uncomfortable. The pace and extent of change has resulted in a sense of rootlessness, a feeling of alienation, of being a stranger in a strange land. It is rational for a person under assault by change to seek stability, to need points of unchanging certainty, to demand that change be slowed.
Members of the American hoi ollogoi may be quite unconcerned by systemic change as they are insulated from ill effects or even the anxiety about the unknowable consequences of change by wealth, status, position or power, but not all Americans are so protected. Thus it is possible for a member of the "elite" such as Barack Obama to characterize Americans from the second, unprotected category as "clingers," holding on to symbols of the past such as Bibles, guns, and Republicans. It is possible for the elite to see the unprotected and apprehensive majority as irrationally fear ridden regardless of how divorced from reality this smug view might be.
American religious fundamentalists, be they Protestant or Catholic, may be apprehensive regarding the pace and extent of change. They may find some of the changes totally unacceptable and impossible to justify. They may "cling" to facets of the past both religious and secular which they believe to be desirable, beneficial, or down right necessary. None of this makes their motives irrational. None make their goal of conserving the best of the past while adapting and adopting desirable aspects of the new somehow unworthy of respect or meriting condemnation as fear driven clinging.
Chew over this a bit. If, here in the US where buildings may be torn down almost before the cement on the cornerstone has dried, change can be disturbing to well educated, established citizens of a mature democracy with a well ordered economic base and a long tradition of embracing the new, what is the effect of change on a traditional society with a unresponsive government and a history of stasis?
Changes of many sorts and degrees have assaulted traditional societies, inflexible polities, and rudimentary economic structures with a series of megaton blows over the past fifty years. The awesome footprint of the West has hit the very static Arab and Muslim world repeatedly. It is no shock that many resident where the great Western boot has landed have reacted with fear and loathing.
The West, and the US, by their very existence in effect have demanded that traditional societies and polities throughout the Arab and Muslim world toss out each and every feature which have defined and conditioned life for centuries and replace these instantly with virtually incomprehensible foreign implants. In essence the Western challenge has been, "You must not only do as we do, you must be as we are if you are to survive let alone prosper in the world we Westerners have created."
Consider just a couple of consequences of this Western challenge.
It has been necessary, we Westerners believe, that the traditional patterns of social and political relations which have provided a very satisfactory life for most Arabs and Muslims for centuries be discarded. This has meant that the old reliance on family, tribe, locality, relations which were personal and up close must be replaced by impersonal mechanisms of the market and the bureaucracy. This has meant the replacement of customary laws and traditions of the responsibility of local or tribal leaders with remotely imposed and enforced written codes of law. It has, in short, ripped out the face to face features of traditional societies and polities with the faceless one-size-fits-all approach of the West. (A faceless way of governing which has fried off any number of us who have lived under it all of our lives.)
The Western creature, the "Market," has no resemblance to the up close and personal bazaar. The Market has no human face, no human sensibility beyond getting the highest possible bottom line. It rips the human heart out of commercial intercourse offering presumed efficiency in place of person-to-person search for advantage, even mutual advantage.
We in the West have fought long, hard, and bloody wars over the basic questions of the relation of state and community of faith. We have done the same with respect to the establishment and expansion of "human rights." It has taken us centuries to get answers in these areas which are even rough approximations of "right." The same is true regarding democracy, The same applies to transparency of government and business. It is applicable as well to matters of social, political, and economic equity and justice. And, even after centuries of effort, no one can honestly say that the job has been finished.
Yet the Western challenge has demanded that the Muslim majority societies do the same instantly and without the bloodshed which has marked Western changes over the past thousand years and more. Even if a plausible case can be made for the superiority of the Western paradigm (which the Geek thinks can be made) the demand that the Muslim majority societies do the same in a matter of mere years is both unreasonable and quite contrary to the inertia filled nature of humans and their social or political constructs.
Faced with the Western challenge and its collateral imperatives, it is small wonder that a percentage of Muslims have reacted with fear and loathing which now expresses itself as violent political Islam rooted in an austere interpretation of the religion based on the foundations of the faith. Any other response would be nearly impossible.
The Muslim, particularly the Muslim man, has been faced repeatedly with a severe challenge to all aspects of his identity as well as his world view. Quite literally, he has been cut off from his roots by the impact of the changes demanded by the Western challenge. With this degree of internal alienation in play, the appeal of political Islam, including that of the armed sort, has grown high and fast.
It is quite easy for the Muslim man to conclude that only by seizing power, by bringing Islam to power, can he regain control of his environment, of his life. Even if he does not personally pull a trigger or push the clicker on a bomb, it is to be expected that many Muslim men will support and agree with those who do wage the good war against not simply infidels or apostates but on change itself. Better to die on ones own terms than to survive on the terms dictated by another.
As the global Muslim insurgency grows, the new task for Western decision makers, well, really for all of us in the West, is to create ways in which the Muslim guy in a traditional society can effectively accept and assimilate necessary change. This implies that we in the West have to lighten up on our demands that the Muslim in Afghanistan or Yemen or North Africa become just like us in his views and attitudes. This is necessary but not sufficient in and of itself to counter the Muslim insurgency effectively.
We cannot do even this minimal task unless and until we understand the relation between the changes demanded by the Western challenge and the fear it produces. Ultimately, the enemy facing both us and the Muslims we are fighting is the same--the fierce engine of change. Change may be both desirable and necessary, but it can also be our worse enemy.
Well, no one ever said life was easy.
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