From Europe, One Good Idea And One (Very) Bad Idea

The British and French governments are demonstrating that they have a capacity for thinking on matters diplomatic and military which is infinitely superior to that monstrous international amphyctony known as the European Union.  The EU has grown from a rather decent, modest concept of enhanced economic unity to a bloated mastodon with delusions of adequacy while the British and French governments under more or less conservative leadership have shown a realistic appraisal of how diplomatic and military clothing must be cut to fit the economic cloth.

In a way quite unforeseeable only a few years ago, London and Paris are edging to a degree of military cooperation without precedent.  This merging of capacities not only magnifies the military strengths of both but addresses points of relative weakness to the advantage of both countries.  It is a foregone conclusion that this development will serve to amp up the diplomatic influence of both as well.

A few days hence French President Nicholas Sarkozy will hold a summit with British PM David Cameron.  The high point of the meeting will be the announcement of a military alliance between the two countries which will see among other features the reconfiguration of the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to accommodate RAF aircraft.  This will be a temporary(?) fix bridging the gap between the budget constricted requirement to retire the British fleet of Harrier jump jets and the commissioning of the next generation British carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, and the arrival from the US of the Joint Strike Fighter.

There will be other mergers of capacity in the structure of the new alliance.  But, far more important than the details is the existence of the agreement.  This bilateral approach marks a departure from the very tired thinking which has dominated Europe since the end of the Cold War and the rise of the EU.  It provides a viable alternative to both the highly undesirable combined EU military force and the increasingly irrelevant and politically divided NATO.

The alliance is a natural in several basic ways.  France and the UK are the only nuclear powers in Europe.  Both are permanent members of the UN Security Council.  Each has a sizable expeditionary force capacity and a recent history of distant operations including the ongoing one in Afghanistan where France has 4,000 troops deployed at present--not as many as the UK but more than simply symbolic.  The alliance would provide a firm platform for future distant operations provided, of course, the interests of both countries are directly involved.

An indirect benefit for both comes from economies which may result from the alliance.  This would assure that each state would have resources for necessary unilateral operations.  France has a wide variety of post-colonial commitments in Africa as does the UK.  But these commitments are of an individual not a joint nature, so it is critical that each have an autonomous capacity.  The same obtains with respect to the few residues of colonial majesty still sticking to the British lion's mane such as the Falkland Islands where it is unreasonable to expect France or any other state to offer direct assistance.

The recent defense and security review conducted by the Cameron government makes it clear that the UK must operate as a partner with some alliance in most conceivable military activities.  Whether with NATO or in a bilateral context with the US or, now, France, the UK has no realistic choice other than alliance based operations.  Still it is essential that the UK retain a sufficient independent capability to deter, say, Argentinian ambitions regarding the Falklands.

A closer merging of intelligence capacities will accompany the enhanced military alliance.  Both countries have good to excellent intelligence apparatuses and a further level of cooperation will enhance these as well.  When looking at the threats today and into the near future, the name of the game is intelligence.  Closer and more comprehensive sharing of assets and product will give both countries yet another leg up in the contest with advocates of violent political Islam.

All the way around, the developing alliance is a fine idea.  Even the US will benefit, at least incidentally, from its existence.  A thumbs-up to both London and Paris--even if it means Napoleon is spinning in his tomb.

Now for the really bad idea.

The European Union emboldened by the final ratification of the Lisbon Treaty has created a new diplomatic monster which will simultaneously undercut the ability of the individual member states to execute effective independent foreign policy and confuse the diplomatic landscape for everybody else.  The grotesquely named European External Action Service (EEAS) is an equally grotesque bureaucratic blight on the great garden of diplomacy.

The EEAS is headed by a Briton, the Baroness (life peerage due to Tony Blair) Ashton.  The Baroness is a person without any discernible qualification for her job to which she was appointed by Gordon Brown.  As the woman has no foreign policy experience, not even a professorship in diplomacy, one can only conclude she got the job as a reward for her years of toiling in assorted Labor Party supported quangos.  As a one time quangocrat Ms Ashton not only has no hands on acquaintance with the trenches of diplomacy, she has no direct contact with politics per se.  She is, in short, a veteran of the remote and lofty world of unelected, unaccountable policy making boards whose let-them-eat-cake attitude toward the inhabitants of the real world is legendary.

The Baroness has a true barony at her disposal.  The EEAS disposes of some 7,000 eurocrats who will labor not only in the Brussels headquarters but in some 137 embassies around the world.  Nor is the Baroness Ashton's fiefdom impoverished.  Its budget comes in at approximately twelve billion dollars.  That is pretty top drawer--as is the Baroness's own reward, nearly three quarters of a million dollars not including perks and bennies.

The personnel deployments are a bit confusing.  There will be forty-six diplomats in the tiny but luscious island of Barbados.  The Turkish contingent amounts to 132 which outstrips the 124 assigned to the US.  Morocco will get ninety-two nudging the less scenic and far more dangerous Afghanistan's eighty-five.  Twenty-nine eurocrats will fetch up in Tajikistan while thirty-one will wade ashore in Yemen.  The numbers roll on and on with little if any relation to either the interests in play or any other real world consideration until the least favored country of Togo gets a mere three, not even enough for a game of whist.

The assorted poohbahs and panjandrums will be housed in appropriately expensive quarters and will ride about in splendid armor plated limos.

As the citizens of the Barony of Ashton ride about so also will they sow diplomatic confusion.  The standard has already been set by the EEAS man in Washington, Joao Vale de Almeida, who let it be known that he spoke for all the EU member states.  He modestly told the assembled press that, where the EU had a unified position, "I am the one leading the show."

Well, this implies that either the EU will have a common position on everything, in which case the member states could save a lot of money by shutting down their embassies for all except routine functions such as visas, or there will not be many common stances, so even the EEAS heavyweight is superfluous.  In either alternative, the existence of the EEAS "ambassador" will raise the question of who is in charge here?

In the best of times, diplomacy is often conducted in turbid waters.  The addition of a foreign policy equivalent of a fifth wheel in no way clarifies the murk.

The Lisbon Treaty removed the requirement that all EU foreign policy decisions be unanimous.  This means that the EEAS may work against the policy interests of one or more member states.  For example, if a majority of EU members vote to cozy up to Tehran, the EEAS will do just that not only in Iran but in other capitals where the eurocratic version of ambassadors will press their host to also hug the ayatollahs tighter.

Stances to the contrary dictated by national interests would not matter.  Thanks to the splendors of democracy, the majority would rule, even if, as in the case of Iran, major players such as the UK, France, and Germany are in the dissenting minority.

The consideration of conflict between a majority position and those of individual members is not academic.  It has already been seen in the context of Hamas and the Gaza Strip as well as with regard to Israel.  It deserves noting in this regard that the Baroness has bloviated at some length about her "clout" in Gaza due to her record of securing financial assistance for the terroristic thugs who run the place.

Looking ahead, the EEAS poses a long term threat to the diplomatic establishments of all its member states.  Due to the very high salary schedules, a budding diplomat faced by a choice between his own country's foreign service and the EU's apparatus will be tempted sorely to go with the money.  This means over time each member will be bled of its most ambitious, most able, and most promising diplomats.  This may bode well for the dreams of the collectivists of Europe, but it has no good impact for the several states.

That was probably one of the intentions of those Eurocrats who designed and built the EEAS.  To these worthies the notion of nation is anathema.  So, they no doubt have hoped that starving each member of talent will be the best way of bringing the hated nation-state to the desired status of extinction.

Now, bucko, that is a really bad idea.

Happy Birthday, UN--Now It's Time To Retire You

The United Nations was "born" sixty-five years ago in an impressive ceremony held in San Francisco.  Like other things created in San Francisco, the Vigilantes, Beat poetry, Hippie, the UN seemed like a good idea at the time but far outlived its usefulness--or humor potential.

Sixty-five is a good age for retirement--outside of France, Greece, and other contemporary enclaves of workers who do not like to work.  It is certainly a good age for the UN to shuffle off, collect its FICA, put on lime green pants and a clashing shirt so better to develop proficiency at golf.  Maybe do a little bit of travelling before finally settling down in Del Webb's Sun City to watch the sunset on the "golden years."

When the UN was born, it was, as is the case with all babies, small.  Its small size helped to assure that the majority of the nations proclaiming their united nature shared a wide variety of political, social, and economic norms and values.  With the exception of the Soviet Union, the Arab states, and some Latin American countries, the membership of the UN was democratic in its politics, liberal in social values, and essentially free enterprise in economic theory.  With the same exceptions, the UN members shared a commitment to the freedom and dignity of the individual, tolerated a wide spectrum of dissent in speech and press, and loathed force as an instrument of internal or international politics.

The UN was created with a view to precluding the sort of stasis which had rendered the overly idealistic League of Nations from either protecting international peace or punishing those states which broke the peace. But, the UN was afflicted by its own idealism.  This time around, the idealism was predicated upon a total misreading of the "alliance" which had defeated the Germany of Hitler and the imperialists of Japan.

To the misfortune of generations yet unborn, the celebrants in San Francisco deluded themselves into believing that the wartime "partners" of the US--the UK, China, the Soviet Union, and France--would continue forward in amity and cooperation for the common good.  This exercise in willful self-delusion should have been impossible even in 1945, even before the ink was dry on the surrender instruments ending the greatest conflict in human history.

The USSR had already demonstrated an unlimited appetite for land in eastern Europe, the result of having been invaded and the concomitant desire to have a protective glacis when the next invasion came.  The paranoia of Stalin had been evident on numerous occasions during the war--and showed no signs of abating.

China was in the midst of an offensive insurgency in which the Communists were exhibiting will and ability far greater than that of the central government.  The probability of China staying under the same Nationalist regime was slim to none.  Beyond that, the Chinese had played no useful role in defeating the Japanese regardless of what President Roosevelt or the later "China Lobby" might have wished.  It was not a Great Power and did not deserve membership in the Security Council, the body created in order to preclude the stasis which had marked the League of Nations.

France was not a Great Power either except in the minds of Frenchmen.  It was a defeated colonial power which hoped to restore its lost grandeur by repossessing its old colonies in Southeast Asia and elsewhere.  Beyond that, France had played only a marginal role in ending the Nazis, regardless of myths to the contrary.

The UK was a Great Power.  However, it is was a fatally exhausted one.  Its days of Empire and glory were as gone as those of the French.  Still, the UK had carried great freight in the early days of despair and defeat so as to lay the way for eventual victory.

The US was indisputably the Great Power of the day.  Unlike the Soviet Union which had been bled white by the war, the US was intact in all respects.  And, the US had the Bomb.  While few in the know expected the comfortable monopoly would last long, at the moment, sixty-five years ago, it was an overwhelming reality.

The US, however, had a fatal weakness.  Ironically the weakness also reflected a great strength of the country as well.  We were a nation of idealists at the time of the sign-and-grin ceremony in San Francisco's opera house.  We did believe in the goodness of humankind.  We did believe that the combination of our Bomb and the new UN would assure a golden age of peace.

Besides, we wanted to get back to "normalcy."  The Great Depression and the war had combined to rob Americans of fifteen years of our great dream of prosperity and the goodies which come with that desired state.  Idealistic materialists, we were happy to demobilize and give peace a chance under the baby blue flag of the near fiction called the United Nations.

Those were halcyon days, sixty-five years ago.  Unfortunately, the grim, grey, and barren wastes of reality quickly intruded.  The UN almost failed its first major test of its self-defined main mission--preserving the international peace and punishing those who broke it by aggression.  Had it not been for the absence of the Soviet Union which was boycotting the Security Council over that body's refusal to seat the new Chinese Communists in lieu of the Nationalists who by 1950 ruled only the island of Taiwan, there would have been no UN call to end the North Korean invasion of the South.  The US would have been denied the international support so necessary to fight an unpopular war in a very distant land.

Moscow never made the same mistake again.  As a result, the Soviet delegate was always in his chair eager to veto any attempt to involve the UN in punishing international aggressors.  The UN was conspicuous by its absence in the many, many wars which merrily went on during the long decades of the Cold War.

The only other time the Security Council actually tried to execute its major mission--preservation of international peace and punishing international aggressor--was in the wake of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.  The Chinese abstained.  Their reason for not vetoing the resolution was simple, crass self-interest.  The Trolls of Beijing calculated that future prosperity under their program of "market reforms" depended upon penetrating the American market.  A veto would make sure such would be impossible.

The success of the Chinese economically now assures that they will not make the same calculation again.  They now feel secure to veto any Security Council measure which might impinge on their economic and diplomatic interests anywhere in the world.

In short, the UN Security Council will revert to the same stasis which marked it during the Cold War albeit as the consequences of a different dynamic.  Potential aggressors--provided they are useful to the Trolls or, in other cases, the Kremlin--can be sure the UN Security Council will be the most toothless of tigers.

As if to make up for the failure in the area of preserving the international peace, the UN has engaged in an orgy of mission creep.  The UN has come to the more than simply dubious conclusion that it can involve itself in the internal affairs of a state if those affairs serve to threaten the international peace by way of, for example, generating refugees or, another example, tromping on the "human rights" of its citizens.  Of course both of these are highly subjective and thus suitable to manipulation according to the diplomatic considerations of one or more of the Big Five on the Security Council.

Much of the UN mission creep has been powered by the General Assembly.  In the "one country, one vote" milieu of the General Assembly, the potency of regional interest groups--or, religious interest groups as is the case with the Arab League dominated Organization of the Islamic Council--can and have controlled the direction and actions of the huge, unwieldy body.

At this point, it is necessary to stop and reflect on a foundation truth regarding the General Assembly.  The majority of the members are small, often artificial states, with a dubious economic base and only the most vague of commitments to either democracy or the notion of a rule of law.  In this, the overwhelming majority of the General Assembly as well as the subsidiary organizations of the UN, such as the Human Rights Council, do not share the norms, values, or goals of the countries present in San Francisco sixty-five years ago.

It also means the majority of the UN membership does not share the norms, values, or ideals of the vast majority of We the People.  Even though We the People pony up twenty-five percent of the UN's annual budget and more than that when the notoriously unsuccessful "peacekeeping" missions or subsidiary organizations are considered, the truth remains--we are subsiding a profoundly un-American bunch.

Sporadic efforts to "reform" the corrupt and inefficient UN bureaucracy have failed miserably.  They will continue to fail as the culture has become both too deeply embedded and wide spread to admit of any meaningful reform.  Even the (temporary) withholding of American dues proved ineffective in countering even the worse and most evident of UN financial abuses.  Of course, it didn't help when a change in administrations brought with it a change in policy.

The same dynamic can be seen in microcosmic form with the US rejoining the Human Rights Council.  This well-intended to "bore from within" has failed.  The HRC is just as biased, just as anti-Israel, just as anti-US now as it was when we were on the outside.

The time has come to do a reappraisal of our relation with the UN.  It is a hopeless captive of states which do not share the ideals, the norms, the values, the goals of sixty-five years ago.  The bureaucracy of the Secretariat as well as most (but not all) of the subsidiaries have failed in its obligation to keep the international peace or punish international aggressors while creating ever more expansive missions and seeking ever greater power over the economic, political, and social spheres of member states.

It is hard to admit failure.  It is hardest to admit that institutions created by the best of values, the most noble of motives, and highest of ideals have failed--failed continuously and totally.  It is particularly hard to admit that an institution that has existed longer than most Americans have lived is a miserable failure.

But, our interests as well as the interests of people living in all the civilized and many not-so-civilized states demand we acknowledge the failure of the UN.  So also do the interests of our descendants.  The lives of children not yet born will be affected by our failure to deal with the failure of the UN.

Now is the time to take a long look at what is necessary for an effective international institution.  History shows that the most important single factor is the sharing of norms, values, and imperatives.  At the least, any international institution worthy of support is one where the members are truly democratic, truly committed to the freedom, dignity, and rights of the individual, truly subscribers to free enterprise in one of its many variants.  An institution deserving of the support of We the People is one committed to freedom of expression, freedom of religious practice, and separation between the state and the communities of faith.

States which are suitable for such an international body exist all around the world.  They do not include Muslim majority states with very few exceptions.  Nor do they include authoritarian states with a thin veneer of democratic processes.  Nor do they include states where the rule of law consists of the current desires or political/economic needs of the elite.

Sure this means any new "League of the Decent" will be small, perhaps no larger than the hopeful group assembled in San Francisco sixty-five years ago.  That is no bar.  Sometimes the hackneyed line. "smaller is better" is the greatest of truths.

One More War We Don't Want To Fight--And Won't

Over ten years ago, around the time of the embassy bombings, the Geek identified Yemen as a primary venue of threats directed against the US and the West by the purveyors of violent political Islam.  He went so far as to predict to his audience that Yemen would rival or surpass Pakistan as the Mother of all Islamist Threats.  He was, not surprisingly, pooh-poohed by the field grades and their civilian counterparts in attendance.

Then, and, even more now, Yemen is the perfect petri dish for breeding the bacillus of armed political Islam.  The reason is not simply that the fractured, desolate countryside is the homeland of Osama bin Laden, although that is a signal of the evil potential resident in the wadis, barren mountains, and scorching desert which constitutes the physical geography of Yemen.

Far more important than the physical makeup of Yemen is its human terrain.  In that area, the single most important consideration when assessing or countering threats from jihadist inclined Muslims, Yemen equals or surpasses Afghanistan, the FATA of Pakistan, and most other Muslim majority locations in exhibiting the features central to the flourishing growth of violent political Islam.

The context is the commonalities found when examining the heartlands of the assorted advocates of violent political Islam.  First, the fundamental social organizing locus above the family is the tribe.  Afghanistan, the FATA, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan are all tribal societies in which the concept of central government is elusive, has no claim on primary loyalties, and is held with the same fondness as a Tea Party member would see a tax hike.

In all the heartland areas, the hold of a central government is light at best and absent in the majority of cases.  Any central government presence is not only fragile and transient, it is viewed with great suspicion by the locals.  The most universal explanation for the lack of confidence in the central government given by residents in the several heartland areas is corruption.  This reason has much to recommend it as the several governments involved are corrupt.  Period.

In addition to pervasive corruption, the several governments are brothers in another critical way.  All are inefficient.  The universal inefficiency assures the central government will not have the slightest shred of functional legitimacy in the estimate of the locals.

The combination of corruption and gross inefficiency assures that whatever existential legitimacy the central government might have possessed has long since been eroded by the corrosive impact of repeated and highly frustrating experiences on the part of locals when dealing with representatives of the central regime.  There is no tradition, no history of viewing the central government as worthy of respect, loyalty, or obedience.

In none of the cited countries is there any set of even slightly compelling reasons for individuals to forsake tribal affiliations for one with the central regime.  Other than coercion, the government has no means by which to engage the locals.  Having no carrots, the regimes are left with only the stick.

Since pressure consolidates long before it fractures and the assorted governments have a record of being just as inefficient in repression as in all other aspects of governmental life, the result is a strengthening of anti-governmental attitudes and loyalties.  Insofar as the government attempts to coerce its way to authority, the result is a solidifying of resistance to it and an increase in the perceptions of illegitimacy.

Finally, there is the political incorrect need to underscore the role of religion.  In all of the several states mentioned, Islam of the most severe, austere form is prevalent.  Local clerics emphasize those aspects of the Muslim portmanteau of beliefs which authorize and even demand violent action be taken by believers against apostate rulers and infidels who support the apostates.  Some, but not necessarily all, of the local clerics also preach the need of ongoing, offensive violent operations against the infidels wherever and whenever they are found.

These factors, all of which are present in Yemen, are enhanced significantly when wealth is maldistributed.  This has been the case in-country with respect to the (now diminishing) oil revenues.  The money has gone in the main to those who are well connected, those who haul heavy freight with the government.  Very little has gone to any use visible to the general public--particularly that part which lives in the most remote, most desolate, most hard scrabble of the country's hinterlands.

Way back when the Geek issued his prediction on Yemen as well as today there are several features unique to the place.  All of these exacerbate greatly the impossibility of the central government suppressing the emerging advocates of violent political Islam.

Yemen is a artificial country.  It is not the end product of a long, organic process of social and political evolution.  More important than the period of British "colonial" presence was the overthrow of the ancient Houthi emirate a half century ago.  The instability of this action was in no way lessened by the division of Yemen into two sovereign states.  Nor were matters improved by the war which ensued, a war which was prolonged and made more bloody by the efforts of outside actors, most importantly Egypt.

The formalities of peace treaties and national consolidation were relatively easily accomplished during the Nineties.  But formalities do not reality make.  The reality remained what it had been during the years of division and war.  The North and South did not make an amicable family.  The supporters and descendants of the old Houthi regime were alive, well, and itching for a comeback.

The "international community" (whatever that might mean in this context) apparently decided that its involvement was no longer needed once the photo-op treaty signing and political reunification had come to an end.  The matter of making peace and reconciliation genuine was dropped onto the laps of the locals with the assumed benevolent(?) assistance of the House of Saud.

For a short while the pretense could be continued.  Even after al-Qaeda issued its declaration of war against the US, even (briefly) after the bombing of the USS Cole, the US and other Western states could afford to take a detached, somewhat bemused attitude regarding Yemen.  Later the focus on Afghanistan and Iraq assured Yemen was cast into the outer darkness of policy making concern.

For a long while even Saudi Arabia could afford the luxury of overlooking Yemen even though it was the largest, most inviting target of the armed political Islamists lurking in the bleak mountains on the border.  The government of Yemen was uncooperative in the common task of defeating the jihadists.  Moments of collaboration--the famed Predator strike stands out--were exceeded by years of obstructionism.

The relocation of the New Mexico born, US educated, English speaking cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, to Yemen made an already grave situation downright deadly as demonstrated by the failed "Underwear Bomber" and the tragically successful Fort Hood Shooter.  Al-Awlaki taken in conjunction with the announced formation of Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) changed the game radically.

Now Yemen equals or, perhaps, surpasses the FATA as the most important locus of anti-American, anti-Western violent political Islam.  Given that the government of Yemen has no effective control over the majority of the country and lacks the political base of support to expand its sway, the situation will only get worse.

The worsening of the Yemen Dilemma has been made crystalline with the air cargo bomb effort.  The Saudis proved their worth by giving the warning which allowed the attack to be prevented.  The precision of the heads-up assured that British and UAE security personnel were able to identify and neutralize the very carefully made and concealed bombs before they exploded probably far over the desolate wastes of the North Atlantic.  With this one action the Saudis have earned much of the aid and assistance provided them by the US.

The ground truth remains.  The prevention of one attack does not equal the abating of the threat behind the attack.  AQAP remains alive and well.  So does Anwar al-Awlaki.

The government of Yemen is no stronger, no more possessed of legitimacy in the eyes of most Yemeni now than it was the day before yesterday.  It is no more able or willing to take serious action against AQAP now than it was the day before yesterday.  And, get a grip on it, the US is no more in a position today than it was the day before yesterday to provide the degree and kind of aid which would assure the government of Yemen can and will destroy AQAP.

The long war in Iraq with its less than convincing success as well as the even longer and so far even less successful war in Afghanistan would have sapped American political will to engage in yet another war with a resolute, resilient, and elusive enemy even in the absence of the Great Recession and the economic constraints it has imposed.  The same applies to a greater degree with respect to the West generally.

This implies that even in the highly unlikely event the government of Yemen requested direct on the ground American presence that Washington would provide it.  The unnecessary war in Iraq combined with the unnecessarily protracted one in Afghanistan has left the US without either the will or the means to fight one more war.

Nor is it likely that Saudi Arabia will step into the breech.  The House of Saud has more pressing problems ranging from its own homegrown jihadists to the looming nuclear threat of Iran.  The shrewd calculators of the Land of the Two Mosques will do very little in Yemen unless they are directly and very seriously attacked by AQAP.  Even then it is debatable that the Saudis can act decisively enough and over a long enough period of time to deal a mortal blow to AQAP.

The picture is as dismal as the landscape of Yemen itself.  Eventually AQAP will succeed.  We will get creamed one of these days unless the US and its partners have a run of intelligence good fortune never seen before in the real world.  Then we will respond even if the government of Yemen doesn't like the idea.

It would be far, far better if the US bites down on the cliched bullet and introduces itself into the conflict sooner rather than later.  It is still possible to do so in a reasonably low signature way and still have some good effect.  It will be necessary to program more UAVs and more Special Operations forces both civilian and military.

However, the situation is still such that organizational disruption is possible.  Any significant perturbation of AQAP's leadership--to say nothing of removing al-Awlaki from the board--would cripple AQAP severely.  At the least this would buy time for the Saana government to establish some shred of legitimacy among more of the population.  It would allow creative arm twisting on the Saudis to play a larger role in stabilizing the Peninsula.

If any action in the direction of preempting AQAP is to be made it will be up to the new Congress.  President Obama has shown himself far longer on words than effective deeds when facing "credible threats" to the US and its interests.

This implies the ball will come to rest in the Republican court--if current predictions prove out come Wednesday morning.  Then We the People will discover if today's Republican Party is more like Ronald Reagan--or Jimmy Carter.

In Afghanistan We Are Winning--Except When We Are Losing

The difference a week makes!  Only seven or so days ago the Geek posted on how even the war hating folks at the WaPo grudgingly admitted that the US and its allies were compiling a record of success against Taliban and the Haqqani network.  Alas!  The WaPo must have gotten its facts wrong.  Or so it appears today.

Along with other MSM, the Leaders Of The Washington Press now takes the position that the US is not making any real progress in Afghanistan.  Sourcing the new stance to the usual unnamed people in "US intelligence agencies," the latest party line is so dismal that one gets the impression it is all over excepting the Taliban victory parade.

The British have taken a more nuanced (confused?) view of the situation.  The Foreign Secretary, William Hague, is under the impression that "progress" is being made.  Her Majesty's senior military figures are marching in the gloom parade, averring that the US/NATO/ISAF/Afghan national forces have "failed to inflict significant damage on Taliban."

It is self-evident that both interpretations cannot be accurate.  So, how to parse the contradiction?

The we-are-losing camp predicates its stance on several factors.  One is the resilience of the Taliban and Haqqani network, their ability to absorb casualties in the upper and middle rank leadership and not lose either political will or operational capacity.  The other is the existence of cross-border sanctuaries in the FATA providing ample space and time for recovery, resupply, and retraining.

As context it must be noted that both factors--inherent resiliency and cross-border safe-havens--have played critical roles in previous counterinsurgency operations.  Of the two there is no doubt but the self-organizing capacities of insurgent groups coupled with the imperative that defeat is existential in nature has provided the staying power of insurgencies from the American War of Independence on through to the contemporary events in Afghanistan.  The importance of cross-border sanctuaries is more debatable.

It has often been argued, for example, that the closing of the Yugoslav border by Tito to the Greek Communist guerrillas was critical in their defeat.  A closer examination shows that this thesis is untenable, that the Communist insurgents were actually beaten by a combination of their own political ineptitude and the growing competence of the US assisted and trained Greek National Forces.

The British success in the twelve year long Emergency in Malaya has been credited in large measure to the absence of external sanctuaries for the Communist insurgents.  While it is true that the "Bandits" of Malaya had no readily available safe havens, the actual cause of British success was their superior operational level doctrine, tactics, and the skill of their troops in the bush.

Critics of the American war in South Vietnam both at the time and retrospectively have attributed the US defeat to the ability of the Viet Cong and Peoples Army of North Vietnam to use safe areas in Cambodia and Laos for supply, unit restoration, and concentration centers.  American efforts to block the logistics routes through these countries both by air and land were not successful.  So, the critics have concluded, the enemy had unbeatable advantages with the result that the Americans and their South Vietnamese clients were defeated.

That analysis grossly oversimplifies a defeat which arose from many causes.  But, like other unicausal hypothesis, it is easy to understand and has the added advantage of displacing responsibility for failure from the Americans (their approach to fighting the war as well as their goals) to outside factors.  The worst that can be said of the American way of war in South Vietnam according to this view is that we were too kind, too gentle, too restrained.  We should have expanded the war to include the sanctuary areas and, if we had, we would have won.

The evaluation of the current conflicting views--are we winning or losing?--must be considered in terms of these past understandings.

Of the two factors referenced by the advocates of we-are-losing, it is easy to dispatch the one of insurgent resolve and resilience.  It is true.  It is also not all that relevant.  The irrelevance is indicated by the existence of preliminary conversations between elements of Taliban and the Karzai government.  Because Taliban is a loose assemblage of many different self-organizing groups, it is almost inevitable that some of the groups will have concluded that the degree of pressure and risk currently exerted by the US and its partners is too great for the potential rewards.  Thus, some have concluded that inclusion in the government structure through talk will provide all the requisite benefits without the risks.

Self-organization is thus both a strength and a weakness for insurgent entities.  It allows for great resilience under pressure.  At the same time it makes the path from violence to talks easy and attractive if the status quo power opts for power sharing while its military forces apply prolonged, unacceptably high pressure.

This leaves the question of the safety zones of the FATA.  There is no doubt that the insurgents enjoy a great advantage in having immediate and very convenient access to a high degree of safety right across the border in North Waziristan and other Agencies of the FATA.  It is not clear,  however, that the advantages are such as to constitute a war winner.

The US would like Pakistan to bite the bullet and move into North Waziristan.  The Obama administration has put great effort into convincing Islamabad to do its heavy lifting.  The efforts have failed.  Absent troops on the ground, the UAV campaign against Taliban and the Haqqani network will have only limited success.  The Predators and Reapers have killed a gratifyingly large number of insurgent leaders and trigger pullers.  The net positives of the campaign have been highlighted by the disapprobation expressed by UN officials and others of the you-Americans-don't-fight-fair crowd.

Even if by some miracle the Pakistanis were to move into the safe haven zone(s), the amount of benefit which would accrue is an open question.  As recent events have shown, the Pakistanis are ready, willing, and eager to allow the insurgents ample opportunity to leave the "threatened" area and relocate elsewhere.  The same would be expectable in any future operations.

Even with this in mind, it is to the advantage of the Obama administration as well as the governments of other countries exposed in Afghanistan to assure that a mighty moan is made regarding the sanctuaries of the FATA.  If nothing else, it allows the pinning of the tail of failure on the donkey of Pakistan.  In a more positive vein, the "leaks" from "US intelligence agencies" provide more pressure on Islamabad.  Looking ahead, should the Republicans do as well next Tuesday as projected, there will be more resistance in Congress to large foreign aid checks made payable to the government or army of Pakistan.

The administration can (or at least should) wave the Republican club in the direction of Islamabad.  "You want the money?  Well, you had best produce some results.  Fast."  This sort of (un)diplomatic language is easily understood by the extortionists in Islamabad.  It is, after all, the same game the Pakistanis have played for decades--only in reverse.

But, with all that, where does it leave us?  Are we wining or losing?

The short--and accurate--answer is: both.  Militarily we are winning in one very important sense.  The US and its partners hold the initiative on the battlefield.  A simple but highly accurate way of measuring who holds the initiative is comparing the number of friendly initiated contacts in comparison to the number of hostile initiated ones or those of a meeting engagement sort.  For most of the past year, the balance has swung to the US and its associates.  The swing has been most impressive in the past six months.

Another useful metric is provided by the nature of the tactics and operations used by the insurgents.  Over the past several months the insurgents have relied increasingly on indirect attacks on soft targets.  Roadside bombs, suicide bombers, and similar methods have been employed preferentially against civilians.  Other than when forced to do so by friendly forces, the insurgents have avoided force-on-force engagements.  This is not the sign of a confident enemy--or one of particular competence.

The losing occurs on the Afghan government side of the picture.  Put bluntly, the central government has not been able to provide services or even a credible presence in most of the territory cleared by military operations.  As a result there is no confidence on the part of the local populations that the insurgents will not come back as soon as the Americans or other foreign forces depart.

Confidence in the staying power or even the basic legitimacy of the central government is also eroded by the persistent corruption and systemic inefficiency of the central government.  This is worsened by the central government's extreme reluctance to see effective local instruments develop.

Continued failure on the part of Kabul in these critical areas will render all military successes irrelevant.  Indeed, the patterns of failure exhibited by the central government would render meaningless even the most successful Pakistani operations in the FATA.  In a way that is sublimely ironic, a hypothetical Pakistani military operation which resulted in the complete shut down of the safe harbors in the FATA would simply see the insurgents relocate to the Afghan side of the border.

The takeaway is just this: We are winning--except where and when we are losing.  But, the reasons pumped out as to why we are losing are not accurate.  They may not be bogus per se, but they are misleading.

Insurgent resilience is a given in every insurgency.  Cross-border sanctuaries are nice, but not war winners in and of themselves.  Most importantly, when night falls what matters is not simply the balance of success in battle but rather the capacities and perceived legitimacy of the government.  If either of those last features are absent or severely lacking, the war has been won by the insurgents no matter what the god of battles might have declared..

Be Careful What You Wish For--Particularly From The UN

The Palestinian Authority has been making noises about going to the UN General Assembly and demanding that body create an independent Palestine with the borders extant before the Six Day War of 1967.  This move may seem appropriate given that it is widely believed the UN General Assembly created an independent Israel with Resolution 181on 29 November 1947,  What the UN did once, it is argued, the UN can do again.

There is only one problem with this contention.  It is wrong.  The General Assembly did not create Israel with Resolution 181.

The resolution accepted the recommendations of the UN Special Committee On Palestine (UNSCOP) including a partition of the old British Mandate of Palestine into two states: one Arab, the other Jewish.  Overlooking the actual population differential in the Mandate which favored the Arabs by better than two to one or the land ownership pattern which showed Arabs owned over three quarters of the land with Jews holding less than ten percent, the UNSCOP report assigned fifty-five percent of the total area to the proposed Jewish state.  The Resolution kicked the details of creating the two states to the Security Council.

The UNSCOP report and the General Assembly action did violate the long standing and often invoked principle of self-determination which had been a hallmark of US policy put forth by Woodrow Wilson as part of the armistice and peace treaty ending World War I.  This troubled a number of observers both overseas and in the US but was overshadowed by the horrors of Nazi policy which had become a staple of the news during the preceding year.

The debate over the UNSCOP report and Resolution 181 did not focus on self-determination so much as it did the legality under the UN Charter of the Security Council or General Assembly creating countries by fiat.  The Soviet Union protested that action such as that proposed for Palestine violated the Charter.  This posture was adopted by Syria as well.  Other countries saw matters the same way.  Many of the ten abstentions and thirteen negative votes were predicated upon the concern that the resolution as well as any consequent Security Council actions would violate the charter, would confer upon the UN the undesirable status of "world government."

The US position as stated rather forcibly by Ambassador Warren Austin was that the Charter did not empower the Security Council to use force to implement a political settlement--even one instituted by the Security Council.  In point of fact the American position was an accurate reading of the Charter.  The coincidence that the US interpretation paralleled the view of the Arab Higher Council (as the several Arab states called their coordinating body) was unintended.  The US had no political ax to grind in the Palestinian question.  That would come later.

The Security Council was apprised repeatedly that any attempt to impose a partition on Palestine would result in a "breech of the peace."  There is a large dose of irony in this: The Security Council had as its primary task the prevention of breeches of the international peace, but in any attempt to partition Palestine, it would be causing the breech.  Delegations from Latin America, Europe, and the Arab Higher Council all warned that violence would be inevitable.

Given the warnings it would have been prudential to say the least if the Security Council moved first to create an international peace keeping force before even considering a change in the status of Palestine.  An alternative which was urged by several states was a referral of the matter to the International Court.  Neither of these courses of action were followed.  Instead the Security Council kicked the can down the road on 5 March 1948.

By this time Resolution 181 had been rendered nugatory by the realities on the ground.  War had broken out. The UN shifted its emphasis from create-a-state to find-a-truce.  The US supported armistice efforts provided they were "without prejudice" to the claims of either Jews or Arabs.  This was the most realistic position even though it almost guaranteed the war would continue until at least one if not both sides reached exhaustion.  Then, and only then, could the process of creating states be undertaken.

And, that is how it played out.  The ill-advised, emotionally driven acts of UNSCOP, and the General Assembly joined with the week-kneed position of the Security Council and the sheer ineptitude of the Arabs to hand over the Palestine Question to the gods of war.  When the shooting finally stopped at the end of the second round of fighting, the new state of Israel had even more land than provided by the generous UNSCOP plan, and the Arabs had nothing.

Ever since then the Arab states as well as the Palestinians have tried to reverse the verdict rendered on the battlefield.  Finally, after years of self-defeating war, terrorism, and diplomacy now worthy of the name, the PA has hit on a new paradigm.  The new approach relies upon delegitimizing Israel in the eyes, not of the world, not even of the majority of the world's people, but of the elites of Western Europe and the US.  In this context, the PA hoped that the new American president would carry the heavy freight of pressuring Israel into accepting a settlement far less than the best.

The American gambit has not paid off yet.  As a result the PA has brought the new arrow from the quiver.  The new arrow has a multi-bladed point, but each blade depends upon an international organization for its lethal sharpness.

One blade consists of the International Criminal Court where the PA is seeking de jure recognition as a state, ostensibly so that it might prefer war crimes charges against Israeli officials and military personnel but substantially so that it might claim to be a sovereign state already in existence.  This would power up its demands for UN recognition of statehood.

Another, even sharper blade, is the UN General Assembly itself.  The PA may well seek an new version of Resolution 181 which creates Palestine qua Palestine.  The UN Charter has not changed since 1947 but the passage of Resolution 181 provides that commodity most highly treasured by lawyers--precedent.  The PA can (and no doubt will) argue that the act in 1947 both justifies and demands correction with the issuance of an updated version.  The PA will have the support of the Arab/Muslim majority states, most of the so-called non-aligned movement and some others.  In aggregate more than enough to secure passage.

The PA will do whatever it can to assure any create-a-Palestine motion stays away from the Security Council.  Not only will the US (probably but not certainly given the Obama predilections) oppose any such measure but so also will Russia and (perhaps) China.  Neither of these states could feel comfortable with the idea that the UN can go around creating states in the interest of preserving international peace given the unrest and separatist movements which exist within their borders.

In the real world, any UN action will not be accepted by Israel.  As was the case back in 1947 when the Arabs were the party of "no," a deal needs two parties at a minimum.  In 1947 or 2011 there cannot be an agreement unless both Jew and Arab say, "yes."  One can safely bet one's booty on the proposition that Israel will not accept a UN diktat.

A PA gambit involving the UN General Assembly is not difficult for Israel to counter.  All that is needed is the political will to move the IDF into the "settlements" and coterminous areas and, with hands on hips say to the PA and its Arab/Muslim supporters  in an imitation of George W. Bush, "Bring it on!"

Far harder to counter effectively is the international demonization of Israel, the campaign of deligitimazation which has worked so splendidly in recent years.  Israeli defiance of the "will of the international community" will boost the efforts of the demonizers by orders of magnitude.  It would enhance the appeal of the peddlers of violent political Islam greatly.  More bombs will detonate.  More people in and outside Israel will die as a consequence.

It doesn't take a Nostradamus to predict that any increase in the lethal operations of groups practicing violent political Islam will bring a push back from the civilized states.  The political and opinion leaders of these states will have no genuine choice when the bombs go off killing their own citizens.  Not even the boasting Iranians can or will deter the inevitable response of the West to an increase in terrorist operations.  That, Jack, is a fact.

The UN muffed the play back in 1947.  It exceeded its brief.  Its reach far exceeded its grasp either as provided in the Charter or as existed in the political will of its membership.  Nothing has changed subsequently.  The UN has an excessive view of its mission and its capacity to undertake its sole genuine mission--preserving international peace.

The irony of 1947 would be repeated--on steroids--should the UN seek to impose a solution upon the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  As was the case in 1947, the body created to preserve and protect peace would, once again, be the cause of war.  This time around the war would bode well to be far more extensive and far more bloody than those of sixty-two years ago.

The takeaway for the PA and its supporters is simple: Be careful what you wish for--you just might get it.

Time To Hit The Foreign Policy "Reset" Button

If the results go as predicted a bit over a week from now, one of the options confronting the Nice Young Man From Chicago will be that of becoming a "foreign policy president."  It may be more attractive to a president who sees himself  both embattled and underappreciated to seek success on the international stage while leaving the nearly unsolvable problems of domestic and economic nature to the Republicans and whatever Democrats are left standing when the vote counting is done.

The idea of Barack Obama focusing his efforts on global politics can be frightening.  To date he has shown no particular capacity in this area.  His lack of capacity is matched by an apparent lack of interest in any foreign policy consideration beyond those rooted in his "progressive" ideology with an emphasis on blaming America first while seeing international organizations as sublime.  

However, the sting of defeat along with the bitter taste of personal failure and humiliation can focus the mind wonderfully, particularly for an individual who believes his own press releases as completely as does Mr Obama.  The cause for a sense of defeat and the horrid taste of having been personally rejected and humiliated comes in this context not from the American electorate but the words and actions of foreign leaders.  For most of two years now, more than a few leaders of states both great and small have acted as if Barack Obama was an inconsequential factor in their policy considerations.  Other leaders have seen the American president as both fatally naive and all too willing to abandon ancient allies in order to embrace recent enemies.

The increasing irrelevance of Mr Obama to the calculations of foreign politicians would have been avoided if his eccentric approaches to global politics had brought success.  A record of successful moves erases all sins in the wonderful and wacky world of diplomacy.  However, there have been no successes.  There have not been even the slightest hints of successes soon to become obvious.

Take China as an example.  Mr Obama has truckled shamelessly to the Trolls of Beijing with the expectation that a exhibition of a high quality kow-tow to the Central Empire would result in the Chinese becoming cooperative on a wide range of topics: balance of trade, currency value, nuclear proliferation, climate change, and terrorism.  In the real world the results of the Obama effort are self-evident.  In a word: Failure.

The Chinese have been so dismissive of the Obama demarches as to border on the insulting.  Beyond that, the Trolls have embarked upon a noisy diplomatic offensive which is both arrogant and triumphalist.  While the Chinese have not scored any great successes themselves with the new, muscle flexing tactics, particularly among their near neighbors, the in-your-face style of China during the past two years is a humiliating rejection of the Obama administration and the US.  In essence, Beijing has acted as if the US was so far in decline that it could be treated with the disdain due a has-been power.

For a man as proud and sure of his own importance as Mr Obama, the attitude exhibited by the Trolls has to be infuriating.  In this context it should never be forgotten that personal feelings, the power of an individual's emotions, have influenced the conduct of foreign relations on numerous occasions, sometimes for the good, often for the worse.

As the Geek noted in a post a couple of months back, the US made a tentative but important set of moves in response to the Chinese proclamation that Beijing had a special, "core interest" in the South China Sea warning the US and others to mend their ways and mind their own business.  SecState Clinton replied in Hanoi that the South China Sea was our own business.  As a matter of declaratory policy, Ms Clinton told the assembled ASEAN delegations--which included China--that the US had a history of supporting freedom of the seas and peaceful means of solving questions of competing sovereignty.

Ms Clinton's declaratory policy was backed up by a series of naval exercises in which the US Navy and allies conducted a number of war games in waters not all that far from the Chinese coast.  One planned exercise brought howls of protest from the Forbidden City.  That proposed exercise would see a joint US-South Korean task force including the USS George Washington, a CVN, operate in the Yellow Sea.

The Yellow Sea is an international water.  The right of the US or any other country to hold naval exercises anywhere in the Yellow Sea outside the territorial waters of China is well established.  Apparently, this reality was either unknown or unacceptable to the Trolls.  They went exoatmospheric.  The Chinese foreign ministry all but called the totality of the Yellow Sea Chinese territorial waters.

The US, based on remarks by Admiral Mullen and others including Robert Gates, seemed to be unperturbed by the Chinese reaction.  The exercises would proceed was a constant theme over the past ninety days.  Taken in conjunction with the ongoing effort by the US to buck up the small regional countries feeling threatened by the newly expansionist Chinese as well as to reassure both South Korea and Japan that we were back to the Pacific littoral to stay, it appeared the Obama administration was determined to out-stare the Trolls this time around.

All of that changed, maybe.  The exercise for the Yellow Sea has been cancelled.  This decision, according to South Korean sources, was taken in order that "certain countries not be antagonized as the G-20 meeting scheduled to occur in Seoul looms near.  The Pentagon for its part now denies that exercises were ever planned for the Yellow Sea.

Adrift at the policy level?  Perhaps.  The Obama administration is locked in a very real dispute with China over currency values.  The attempt by the Treasury Secretary to gain agreement prior to the meeting on a plan to limit trade surpluses/deficits came to nothing.  One of the countries objecting was China.  China was not alone, being backed by Russia and France among others.  This can lead to speculation that the administration is trying one more deep bow in the hopes the Trolls will change their tune, even if not officially.

If the cancellation is a tactical gambit, it will fail.  The Trolls will take it as one more sign of the president's personal weakness.  One more attempt at appeasement will result not in "understanding" but in more intransigence.  The Trolls will not be cowed by cowardice.

The only questions are these: When will Mr Obama react to one more insulting rebuff?  And, assuming his pride is finally wounded sufficiently, what options will he exercise?

There is an attractive option about to present itself up close and personal to the American president.  More of that after we consider another area of foreign policy embarrassment.

That area is Pakistan.  The administration has put great pressure on Islamabad to get off its duff and move into  North Waziristan.  At the same time the administration has backed quite openly the preliminary conversations underway between elements of Taliban and the Karzai government.  We have agreed with Karzai that these early talks about talks would be conducted without the presence of Pakistan or Mullah Omar, the Pakistani's man in command of Taliban.

In large measure due to the effects of American and ISAF operations in and around Kandahar coupled with the lethal impact of Predators and Reapers in the FATA, components of Taliban are now open to talks which may lead to peace negotiations.  While it is far too early to even hint at the chances of success, the fact that informal conversations are taking place and are openly acknowledged by all hands is an important development.

It is also a development which has outraged the Pakistanis.  The word from the Pakistani army, ISI, and parts of the civilian government is simply, "Without us no peace can happen.  Without our guy, Omar, there can be no peace."  At the same time the senior commanders of the what-us-fight? army of Pakistan have deprecated the effectiveness of recent and current US/ISAF military operations.

More than one braid encrusted wallah has opined that the claims of success offered by General Petreaus are bogus.  The party line is the stories of success are simply a political ploy of Obama as the midterm elections come closer.  The official view from Islamabad offered to anyone with a tape recorder or a camera is the Taliban is winning, the Americans are losing, and only Pakistan can assure peace.

On a more practical level, the Pakistanis are refusing point blank to undertake any operations against the hard core jihadists of Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the Haqqani network in North Waziristan.  As a contingency plan, the ISI and army have already been cranking up to facilitate the removal of the "threatened" leadership from North Waziristan to another Agency in the FATA.  This would duplicate the way in which ISI and army assured everyone who was anyone in the Taliban got out of Dodge before the slow motion army moved in during the operations into Swat and, later, South Waziristan.

In short, the Pakistanis are quite willing to accept billions of borrowed American dollars while demanding yet more and refusing to do anything useful against the advocates of armed political Islam which are a potentially fatal cancer more for Pakistan than for Afghanistan.  Nothing is going to change this ground truth.

And now for the option.  Mr Obama will be visiting India shortly.  India is a major and natural counterweight not only to Pakistan but China as well.  India has the potential to equal or surpass China economically.  It has a military capability which is orders of magnitude superior to that of Pakistan and is nearly a match for the Peoples Liberation Army.  Beyond that, India is a genuine multi-cultural society and a democratic polity.

Indian values and norms are far closer to those of the US and other Western countries than are those of either China or Pakistan.  Politically, economically, and culturally, India is a far more comfortable fit with the US and other Western countries.  It has a wide range of national interests which coincide with those of the US.  India, not Pakistan is best positioned to be a genuine ally of the US.

It is quite true that the US and India have a long record of troubled relations.  For decades, right up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, India tilted very far to the Left.  In the process, it irritated the US time after time, often to the point that our policies in the sub-continent lost all rational basis.

Those days are behind us.  While Left and far Left parties are a major political force in India, they are to a great degree a very spent force.  The growth of the middle class, the almost explosive development of the Indian economy, the inventiveness shown by Indian technologists and entrepreneurs alike all combine to thwart the agenda and appeal of the Left.

If Mr Obama makes the decision to focus on foreign policy, the Indian option presents a way by which he can not only advance American interests but go a distance in recovering from the insulting defeats inflicted upon him and his "Team" by China and Pakistan.  In words simple enough to be understood easily by the Guy in the Oval and his Foreign Policy Team: Tilt to India.  Tilt our policy in Asia in an open and obvious way in favor of India.

The triangle of India, Japan, and South Korea would constitute a stable alliance with the US.  While all four countries have current economic and economically related problems, these are neither insurmountable nor a reason not to form an understanding between countries sharing a wide range of interests and an equally broad set of norms, values, and aspirations.

A policy which seeks to link the US with India more effectively while establishing tighter ties between India and the other states currently allied with the US in Asia and the Pacific littoral would do much to inhibit China and show Pakistan the limits of acceptable non-cooperation.  Such a policy would also provide a sound base to incorporate Indonesia, which is the world's largest Muslim more-or-less democracy.

To succeed in foreign policy the president needs a new, clear vision.  It will necessitate abandoning the love affair with the UN and taking on new, regional lovers.  It will also require an accurate understanding of American national interests and an equally shrewd appreciation of the national interests of other states, both allied and hostile.

The possibility of a Democratic Party defeat in the midterms may have the unintended consequence of forcing Mr Obama to engage with foreign relations for the first time in his life.  Should, by some miracle, he do so with the sort of realistic, new vision hinted at above, he will have a unique opportunity to transform humiliation both by the domestic electorate and foreign leaders into a victory for the US.  And, it should be added, a victory for his country should be what an American president desires more than anything else.

Diplomacy By Tribunal

The fallout from the latest WikiLeaks monster dump includes a shot of growth hormone for one of the most disturbing recent trends in the conduct of foreign relations.  That new, dark development is an increasing reliance upon investigations conducted by tribunals operating under some sort of mandate from the UN or a subsidiary organization of the Really Big Folly By The Hudson.

The use of these tribunals, exemplified by the UN created travesty which goes by the name of the Goldstone Panel, is being expanded.  An excellent example of this mission creep is found in the call for a special "study" of the ethics, legality, and general humanitarian propriety of the employment of unmanned lethal systems typified by the US operated Predator and Reaper UAVs.  The long term goal of the "study" called for by the UNs new Special Rapporteur on Extrajudical Executions is the outlawing of these systems by international convention.  In this, the new guy, Christof Heyns, hopes to further the campaign of demonization started by his predecessor, Phillip Alston.

Mr Alston saw the use of Predators and Reapers as being especially vile as they operated at a remove from the immediate combat zone and, worse, did not put the operators at any physical risk.  The fact that the opposition command structure sought immunity from the consequences of its own actions by locating itself within the civilian population in a third country in no way bothered either Mr Alston or Mr Heyns.  Neither worthy were concerned about the cavalier attitude held by the senior leadership of al-Qaeda, Taliban, or other similar groups toward the local non-combatants among whom they sheltered.

Heyns no more than Alston worried in the slightest that the unmanned systems were actually more accurate in their targeting than would be the case with manned platforms.  Apparently, each man was most disturbed by the technological asymmetry favoring advanced countries such as the US and, horrors!, Israel.

The very success of the unmanned platform operations against leaders of groups practicing violent political Islam has built a momentum against the continued use of these systems.  One can be sure that the call for a "study" will be strongly supported by states which facilitate and support the operations of groups pursuing violent political Islam.  It is equally probable that states lacking equivalent technology but harboring deep hostility against the US and other Western countries will do the same.  It is almost as likely that Great Powers such as Russia and China will support the "study" since their efforts in the unmanned systems would be exempt from any proposed restrictions.

In short, the "study" demand is an excellent example of the conduct of diplomacy, the search to advance one's own interests at the expense of the interests of others using a modification of the "tribunal" method.  Since the notion of "arms limitation" has an appeal to people on the Left of the political spectrum and, since the object of the "limitation" is the US or other equally easy to demonize states, the approval for the "study" will be loud within the Left leaning elites of the US and Western Europe.

The same elites will loudly back the demands for investigations of the abuses committed by sectors of the Iraqi security forces set forth in some of the documents in the WikiLeaks dump.  Of necessity, the investigations will focus on the US for alleged sins of omission as well as Iraq for sins of commission.  In the eyes of some, including UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, the actions or inactions of both the US and the UK in Iraq merit probing.

The UN and its subsidiary Human Rights Council have already called for investigation.  There is a good chance that Iran will seek to tag its search for a UN investigation of purported US government involvement in the events of 9/11 onto any review of American culpability for alleged war crimes or human rights abuses committed by Iraqi security forces.  Admittedly, there is no logical let alone direct link between the two universes, but that sort of mundane consideration is of little merit in the UN.

The WikiLeaks "revelations" are likely to reinvigorate the search for "justice" by Turkey and its associates regarding the Israeli assault on the Mazi Marmora.  The whatever-we-can-do-for-the-Palestinians crew will barnacle their cause to any inquiry into alleged Iraqi abuses.  The new narrative will emphasize the unity between the US and its actions in Iraq and Israel and its actions vis a vis the West Bank and Gaza.

When night falls, the conclusion will be that the US turns a blind eye to the inhumane and inhuman acts of both its Iraqi and Israeli clients.  The US will be branded as the facilitator of crimes against humanity in both Iraq and the Mideast.  It will take only a very small slide down this very slippery slope to conclude the US not only facilitates and protects but also directly engages in the most vile abuses of human rights.

The goal of the narrative as well as the "studies" and "investigations" and "tribunals" on both the input and output end will be the global reduction of US influence by a consistent message of American indifference to human rights or the ethical conduct of military operations.  Truth is not a consideration.  Neither is that mythical beast, "justice."  All that is important is the diminishing of American influence, American ability or will to play a major role in international politics.

Because "tribunals," "studies," and "investigations" seem to reek of an even handed pursuit of truth, they will gain both support and acceptance within the US and the West generally.  The conclusions, no matter how unjustified or unjustifiable, will be warmly embraced by significant segments of the American and Western European population--the blame-America-first bunch.

It is this built in potential for support and acceptance which gives the new approach in diplomacy its appeal,  It is what makes it so dangerous to the interests of the US and other civilized countries.  The use of mechanisms which represent themselves to be detached, impartial, disinterested, which present themselves as judicial, uses the Western love of justice as a sovereign weapon against the West.

The enemies of civilization be they practitioners of violent political Islam, members of the profoundly alienated, self-hating Left of the West, or simply governments skilled in the pursuit of national interests have developed a new and powerful form of diplomacy.  It is a form which uses the strengths of civilized states against them.  It is a form of diplomacy for which we are poorly prepared to engage.  It is a form of diplomacy which may well lubricate the skids to Western impotence.

WikiLeaks and the MSM have given the users of this new form of diplomacy a new venue in which to operate.  WikiLeaks and the MSM have provided the enemies of civilization with a new set of tools to use against us.

The founder of WikiLeaks said "it is all about the truth."  He is wrong.  It is all about defeating the West and all it stands for.

Julian Assange has done a good job of work for whoever is paying his bills.  The paymasters have chosen well.  They got more than their money's worth.

The Winds Of Hypocrisy And Idiocy Blow Again

The rather disreputable bunch (or individual) at WikiLeaks has captured the attention of entirely too much of the world's mainstream media.  In a case which resembles a sort of "this verse, same as the first," WikiLeaks has provided its favorite media outlets with advance copies of an enormous (391,000+) low level, tactical "Significant Activities" reports.  These are the same sort and level of routine document as constituted the earlier and much smaller batch release.


The SigAct reports provide a blurry look at a complex war from the perspective of a myriad of eyes quite close to the ground.  Their content varies in actual significance.  Similarly, the documents range in quality from highly incisive to pretty much of a let's-pretend-we've-done-something-today sort.  There are more than a few occasions when two or more SigActs cover the same events in the same period of time but with such different perspectives that the result seems to be several different events occurring at widely separated times and places.  Depending on the mindset of the person compiling the SigAct, the verbiage may be so dense in milspeak as to be incomprehensible without a translator.


The reporting of the contents of the mountain of milspeak by the assorted mainstream media is like that which took place a few months ago after WikiLeak's first release.  The best way to characterize the MSM approach is to recollect a brilliant scene from the classic movie Casablanca.


Remember the scene where Claude Raines as the smarmy French police official tells Rick that his bar is being shut down?  "I'm shocked, shocked I tell you to find out gambling is going on here."  At that point a flunky comes in and says, "Your winnings, inspector."  


A more perfect emblematic rendition of hypocrisy cannot be found--unless it is in the media treatment of the current data dump.  Maidenly protests of shock have ensued over several matters found in the great mound of otherwise boringly repetitive, utterly mundane, and, taken overall, quite insignificant activities.  


(Shock the First) More Iraqi civilians may have been killed by either friendly or hostile forces than officially announced to date.


(Shock the Second) American troops did use lethal force when vehicles approaching checkpoints or overtaking convoys did not heed warning signals--including shots--and stop as ordered.


(Even Bigger Shock Number Three) Iraqi security forces abused, even killed, suspected insurgents without the Americans acting immediately and robustly to stop the illegal acts.


The media could not contain their surprise when the documents demonstrated that the oft repeated American accusations of Iranian direct involvement in the arming, training, and directing of insurgent forces were based in fact.  


Each and every one of these highlighted matters constitutes either base hypocrisy or utter idiocy for two simple reasons.  Simple reason number one: The assorted MSM outlets had reporters in theater, assigned to the relevant American and other allied forces throughout the period covered by this dump.  Simple reason number two: We have been down this road before, during the Vietnam War--and the same MSM had reporters covering that war as well.


If any of the Chorus of Shocked And Outraged Maidens had consulted their own morgues, the result would have been both educational and important for accurate framing of the Iraq story.  Leaving aside the one very high profile war crime committed by US personnel, the Mai Lai shootings, the files would have shown reports both spiked and printed of other American acts which could accurately be termed war crimes.  The files would also have disclosed the widespread and very widely covered stories of South Vietnamese security forces abusing captured hostile personnel and those suspected of assisting the hostiles in manifold ways--including murder.  The US and other media also noted the US personnel on scene usually did not stop the abuses.


The morgue search would also have revealed that in the Vietnam War as in wars generally, civilians are killed.  As in the cases cited from Iraq, the killing of civilians can and often has resulted from actions on the part of the civilians which seem to the soldier to be a threat.  Since war is a get-or-get-got activity, it should not surprise anyone oriented in time and place that the soldier will shoot if warnings have no effect.


Because civilians tend to litter the battlefield in unseemly numbers and at most inconvenient locations, it is not shocking that some are killed despite the best intents of the troops.  Nor is it shocking that fatality counts can vary widely over time.  Disparities of count between "official" reports and the SigActs is not evidence of cover up or a policy of understating the lethal effects of American combat operations.


The war in Iraq was an interventionary war after the defeat of the Saddam Hussein regime.  Even though the US was the major actor in theater, the legal and policy fiction that we and other foreign forces were operating in support of the Iraqi government was paramount.  The Iraqi security forces not unlike their South Vietnamese equivalents forty years earlier had a very touchy sense of nationalism.  


The sensitivities of Iraqi personnel--particularly at the command level--inhibited the capacity of the US to act robustly and rapidly to end abusive practices.  The relations between tactical units in the field in Iraq, as had been the case in Vietnam, were always problematic so company and field grade officers rarely felt free to get tough with their Iraqi counterparts.  This meant the most common response was to file a report, kick the problem upstairs, and hope the heavyweights topside would solve it.


More than that the Americans could not do if there was going to be any realistic possibility of shifting combat and security responsibilities to the Iraqi forces.  It is simple for a journalist to sit back and engage in condemnation.  That is not a luxury available to the guy at the spot.


Then it must be recalled that Iraq had a pre-invasion history which was heavy in torture and extajudicial executions.  The history lacked any appreciable dedication to the rule of law or the tempering of "justice" with either mercy or self-interest.  The same history also produced a lengthy record of scores in need of settling while abrading any concern about the judgement of the future.


Given the history of Iraq prior to the invasion as well as the nature of the war being waged between the security forces (including foreign contingents) and the insurgents propelled by faith in violent political Islam, the real shock is how few unnecessary deaths are recorded in the SigActs.  Considering the contexts, both historical and contemporary, the Americans not only fought a clean war but exercised a great deal of influence on the behavior of Iraqi security units.  Had it been otherwise the blood would have gushed rather than merely oozing from the released documents.


Either the NYT or the WaPo (they run together in the Geek's mind) characterized the SigAct reports as providing a "fine grained" view of the war.  That's true as long as it is remembered that in this case the view is an extreme close up, the sort of close up which distorts the image beyond both comprehension and accuracy.  The distortion is made all the greater when a media outlet chooses to ignore the weight of the majority of the reports--mundane, not filled with atrocities real or imagined, but replete with fire missions not fired, aborted air strikes, and all the other consequences of a command structure and operational doctrine which exhibited a sound and accurate understanding of the basic principle of counterinsurgency--You Cannot Kill Your Way To Victory--as well as the corollary--A Dead Civilian Is A Victory For The Enemy.


Arguably, the release of the reports by WikiLeaks has harmed both the US and the fragile polity in Iraq.  But it is incontrovertible that the treatment of the leak by the MSM has done even more damage.  By their framing and inexcusable idiocy, evidenced by willful historical ignorance as well as overlooking the presence of their own reporters during the time and at the places covered by the SigActs, the MSM has done a potentially great harm to the US.


The degree of harm is indicated by the totally expectable demands by the UN for a complete investigation of the American inaction in the presence of Iraqi human rights abuses and possible war crimes.  By setting the stage for an exhibition of America bashing by an organization filled with professional haters of all things and all actions American, the MSM--particularly those located in the US--have hit a new low point in their "buyers remorse" over having sung unquestioning hosannas in support of the invasion of Iraq.


American MSM have not been noted in recent years for having either a sense of shame or a commitment to telling it like it is rather than how they would like it to be.  The full-throated pursuit of a blame-America-first agenda by leading news outlets in the US does journalism no credit.  Nor is it in the better interests of the country or We the People.  


Nor will all the boiler plate special pleadings about the sacred right to know make the treatment of the leak and its contents any less dishonest.  The public does have a right to know, but that right is for the entire story, the whole truth, not carefully selected and framed portions of a complex reality.

The Bugs Bunny "What A Maroon" Award VII

This time around the coveted "What A Maroon!" Award goes to the foreign policy component of the Obama administration.  Rarely has an administration equaled, let alone exceeded the current one's capacity to be totally divorced from the real world requirements of national interest.  While the Obama foreign policy "Team" has tried hard to demonstrate just how far its policies could be removed from either reality or national interest, their handling of Pakistan surpasses all former gaffes.

Hilary Clinton announced the awarding of a two billion dollar package of aid to the Pakistani military.  With an irony far outstripping the merely heavy handed, the announcement came only hours after the same brain trust alluded to the possibility of barring some Pakistani military units from receiving American largess or training due to personnel from these formations having engaged in extrajudicial executions--at least one of which was caught on video.

By law the US government is precluded from providing aid to military forces which grossly violate the laws of land warfare or those governing human rights.  For reasons left unexplained the Secretary of State did not make any reference to the possible sanctions when passing the word of the latest attempt to bribe the Pakistani government and military.

The US government has a long, bi-partisan history of offering bribes to Islamabad.  These bribes have been unsolicited on rare occasions.  More typically the lads in Islamabad--whether in uniform or mufti--make extortionate demands of the give-us-money-or-something-horrid-but-unspecified-will-happen variety.  The US government showing the courage of a rabbit and the intellectual vacuity of a snail always pays up.

And so it is with Ms Clinton and the others of Team Obama.  Even Secretary of Defense Gates, a man normally well known for his realism, integrity, and intelligence has gone along with the grim charade.  This is most unfortunate as it provides a gloss of respectability to a policy which is both indefensible and contrary to longer term US interests in the region.

Bob Gates, after all, was around in the days of the Reagan administration.  He was there when all hands down in the lower levels of the food chain who were both situationally aware and unheeding of careers warned against turning over more responsibility to the Pakistanis in the end game period of the proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.  In those here-there-be-tiger days, the low ranking field hands stated categorically that further Pakistani involvement in Afghanistan would redound ultimately against the better interests of both the Afghans and the US.

The decision makers in and near the Oval trusted the assurances from Islamabad.  They trusted in the power of American bribes.  They trusted in the ability of the Pakistanis to stay bought once we paid their price.

Of course this attitude was unjustified by mere facts, the facts of Pakistani (and Muslim) history, the facts of the ongoing Indo-Pakistani conflict.  Afghanistan was an annoying sideshow.  Pakistan had been pro-US during all the years when the Indians were locked in a love fest with Moscow.  And, the Pakistanis came cheap--or so it seemed way back then.

It is not that the US did not know what Islamabad's ambitions in Afghanistan were twenty years ago.  We knew them as well as we know the current plans harbored by Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the army.  Then as now Pakistan wants to have operational dominance over Afghanistan for reasons outlined in numerous previous posts.

Ignoring Islamabad's plans were part of the bribe in those bygone years.  Similarly, the US had to publicly ignore Pakistan's nuclear hopes--until Islamabad pushed the "Fire!" button.  Even then, presented by an accomplished feat, the US rejoinders to this act of obstreperous nuclear proliferation was mild, not to say weak of knee.  Another part of the never ending bribery.

An unreasoning fear of just what the Pakistanis might or might not do has rendered the Islamabad extortion plot all the more effective.  It has forced our silence over the policies in Afghanistan.  It has forced our acceptance of their nuclear capacity without measurable cost to the proliferator.  It has cost us literally billions of dollars.

To date the positive results have been so close to zilch that an electron microscope would be necessary to detect them.  The negative consequences are far more evident.  They include among others: Taliban, the A.Q. Khan network, the origins of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, the stoking of Indo-Pakistani tensions, the support of terrorism in Kashmir and elsewhere, and the emboldening of advocates of violent political Islam .

Whew!

With that record it is hard to find any real world based justification for the latest bribe.  It comes hard on the heels of two previous handsome gratuities--the seven plus billion dollar multi-year civilian aid program and the enormous flood rescue and reconstruction effort.  In return for this set of payments, totalling well over ten billion dollars, the US must plan (hope?) to get something in return other than that mythical quality, "good will."

The US expects (wishes?) that in return for these commitments the Pakistani government and military will undertake two critical actions.  One is simply that the army will get off its collective duff and take the war to the final redoubts in North Waziristan.  The other is that neither ISI nor the army nor the government will attempt to derail the tentative talks between elements of Taliban and the Karzai government.

The talks which have been admitted to by both Afghan and US officials are in their earliest and most delicate stages.  The talks are underway in response to the success of the US/ISAF/Afghan national forces campaigns to date, particularly that near Kandahar.  (Even the NYT had to admit that we were having real success there, much to its chagrin.)

Taliban, or, more accurately, elements of Taliban are seeing that the better alternative is a political settlement giving them a role in Afghanistan's future.  Intentionally, Mullah Omar has been excluded from the talks along with others of high rank and under the control of ISI.  The position of many even in the Quetta Shura is that Omar's day has come and gone.  There is also a wide spread realization that too many in Taliban and other insurgent groups have suffered too much and too long not for Afghanistan and the Afghan people or even Islam but rather for the agenda of Islamabad, the ambitions of ISI.

In short, nationalism has conspired with battlefield realities to convince more than a few in Taliban that the time to give peace a chance is upon them.  The Karzai government, nationalist to the core, could not agree more.  Beyond that the Karzai government (and at least some in Taliban) know the US and its Western partners will be leaving.  Perhaps leaving soon.

They also understand perfectly that Pakistan is not leaving.  Pakistan is quite willing and able to use any and all means to control Afghan affairs for its own purposes and reasons.  No good Afghan is willing to accept that.  As has been the case before, nationalism trumps the "universal" nature of Islam.  The Pakistanis have ridden the Prophet's Horse too long and too hard.

Still the ISI and other Pakistan players have the potential to play the spoilers role.  There is no doubt but many in the army as well as the civilian government would be willing to do just that.  It is important to the US, our allies, and the Afghans that Pakistan not stop the talks or halt the move to peace in some other way.

Enter the bribe.

It won't be enough.  The Pakistanis will not abandon their goal of having operational dominance over Afghanistan any more than they will abandon their constant building of new and better nuclear systems.  Both are central to their anti-India focus.  While the specter of India may be a phantom now, it is the phantom which will not vanish with the coming of day.  Fear and loathing of India is not simply the only justification for the army's existence at its bloated and expensive level, it is the existential foundation of Pakistan.

It does not matter that there is no reality behind the black myth of India, its existence is central to the continued existence of Pakistan.  Should Pakistanis ever come to grips with the unpleasant truth that Muslims in India not only do not live at some disadvantage compared to their Hindu neighbors but actually have a present standard of living as well as future prospects which exceed those of most Pakistanis things might change.  But, absent that level of a sanity attack, nothing will alter for the better.

Not that anything so banal as reality will beat myth enhanced by generations of internally directed propaganda and reinforced by religion.

Pakistan will try to stop the talks.  Similarly, the army will not move with effectiveness against North Waziristan.  Moving against ones own clients is not in the cards. Or, so dictates the voice of reality.

The bribes will not work.  They will only encourage more demands, more extortion, more reluctance to offer more than minimal compliance to US policy requirements.

Admittedly, the latest bribes come with some thin, slight strings.  The conditions are enough to cause howls of protest from the ever-so-sensitive nationalists of the army and government.  They are not sufficient to have any benefits from the American perspective.

Mental illness, it has been said, exists when a person repeats the same unsuccessful efforts irrespective of experience.  The same might be said of governments, which, after all, are mere assemblages of individuals.

Or, they might just get the "What A Maroon!" Award.