A Little Fear Would Mean A Great Deal Of Respect

The days when the US was both feared by its enemies and respected by its allies and most of the nonaligned are over.  That is a given.  It is also self-evident.  Equally obvious is the absence of American influence in the councils of states both hostile and friendly.

The reason for this does not reside with the economic catastrophe which started in late 2007 and continues to date.  The reason the US is largely irrelevant to the calculations of governments around the world is the failure of the Obama administration, most particularly and importantly the president personally, to develop and consistently implement a foreign policy which is rooted in American norms and values and seeks to foster or protect our national and strategic interests.

Mr Obama is personally responsible for the decline and near fall of the US as a Great Power.  He is personally responsible for the simple and sad fact that no country, no dictator, no advocate of violent political Islam, no aggressive, ambitious regime fears us.  The wrath of the United States is seen to exist no longer.  Without the perception of potential wrath there is no fear.  And, without the capacity to engender fear in those who oppose us, there can be no respect in the estimate of those who are favorable in their inclinations to us.

As recently as 2008 the US was seen as a leader.  Seen as the Greatest of Great Powers.  Seen through the prism of fear by opponents.  And viewed with genuine respect by all others.

Whether the motivations are ideological or purely personal or some mixture (a subject more suitable for a practitioner of a discipline other than history), the fact remains that the US has lost its capacity to influence the world.  While still a Great Power by all the metrics applicable, the president and his "team" have pretended that we are no different, no better, no more powerful than any small and marginal country anywhere on the face of the Earth.  As a result, the states of the world can afford to ignore us and seek leadership elsewhere.

One result of this is implied in a question posed by Nile Gardner in the Daily Telegraph: "Do tyrants fear America anymore?"  The answer, of course, is, "no."  Gardner places the blame correctly on Mr Obama's timid approach to global politics.

If anything, this interpretation is too kind.  The Obama way of dealing with foreign affairs is not merely timid.  It is far worse.  The Obama approach is a combination of utter indifference, contempt for the past role of the US in world affairs, and ideologically predicated naivete.  As a consequence he has been well behind the wave in each and every one of the recent developments in the Mideast.  Another result has been that he has alienated allies ranging from the UK to Israel.  Still another is the simple fact that both Russia and China can turn a blind eye to American policy entreaties without hesitation--or adverse result.

Obama could learn from history--were he so inclined.  He could learn from the example of Ronald Reagan, a man with whom he has compared himself recently.  Early in the Reagan presidency the administration directly tackled the problem of low global fear of the US.  In carefully calculated moves, the US quickly refurbished its image as a strong and borderline ruthless state by (1) invading Grenada under plausible pretenses and (2) attacking Libya by air with even more plausible pretenses.

Neither operation was really necessary to safeguard directly threatened American interests either national or strategic.  Both were utterly essential in rebuilding the respect and fear which had been so completely lost during the disastrous Carter years.  Whether the result was fear, respect, or, in the case of the rather anti-American French government, the "crazy American hypothesis," the net consequence  was that all, both foe and friend, had to recognize that the US was back as an independent and assertive actor on the world stage.

Should the Clueless Guy in the Oval tire of presiding over the Incredible Shrinking United States, and decide the time had come for a little creative and effective fear engendering, a very good target of Uncle Sam's wrath would be the port havens of the Somali pirates.  The recent killing of four Americans gives a good enough plausible reason to forcibly abate the nuisance presented by the pirates of Puntland.

The key to the success of a fear and respect engendering exercise in American power projection is contained in one word--punitive.  The goal would not be the creation and building of a nation-state in Somalia.  Such is impossible as the disaster in Afghanistan and the near debacle in Iraq have made manifest.  The purpose of the exercise would be the liberation of as many hostages as possible and the killing of as many pirates, broadly defined as is convenient in the scope of a short duration military raid.

Lest the current administration be inhibited by residual folk memories of "Blackhawk Down," it needs to recalled that the operation was very poorly planned and worse in its execution.  It needs to be noted that had the operation been postponed a matter of hours, the Marine light armored vehicles would have been available for ground support.  Such a ground component would have militated against any success by the Somali forces even with their numerical advantages.

It is also important, indeed vital, to note that the US has a number of very experienced combat forces in its inventory even with the Afghan war still in progress.  We have learned volumes in both Iraq and Afghanistan which is directly transferable to a short duration punitive expedition.  Such an operation would not be manpower heavy.  Nor can it last more than a matter of a few tens of hours.  Combined with air action, an up close and personal raid would not only free captives but kill gun slingers and intimidate potential successors to those who have died for the "cause."

Provided the operation meets the requirements of being hard, fast, violent, and highly lethal, there is no reason the US cannot nor should not mount it unilaterally.  After all, it was our citizens who died at the hands of the pirates.  Retaliation is a recognized right.  It was the right invoked by the Bush/Cheney administration for the invasion of Afghanistan.

Provided the Americans and retrieved international hostages are evacuated fully in a matter of hours, two days at the most, the diplomatic repercussions will be favorable.  Yes, there will be cries of horror from the ever-so-sensitive members of the Western European and American elites, but even Mr Obama might be able to ignore the expectable.

Somalia will be no more of a mess afterward than it was before.  There might even be some improvement given the deterrent impact of such a punitive raid on the survivors, even those at a distance from the action.  The Somali gun thugs have no experience with the high degree of lethality American forces dispose in even limited usage venues.  For once, "shock and awe" would have a high degree of applicability.

In a way, the mounting of a punitive expedition on the pirate lairs would give us a chance to replay Afghanistan correctly.  This would be good.  It would draw a line between that which can be done--punish bad guys--and that which is impossible--construct a modern Western style nation-state from a traditional, tribal Muslim base.  It would also be good in that such an operation would put all bad actors on alert as to what might come their way should they get too over the edge.

Most importantly and most beneficially, a quick and dirty raid would show the world, from our allies in Western Europe to our opponents in the Kremlin, Tehran, Beijing, Caracas, and elsewhere that the US was not a potted plant decorating the global arena.  And that, bucko, is something the world needs badly right now.

Edging Toward "Kill Or Be Killed"

The jolly maritime marauders of the Somali coast may have finally gone a skiff too far.  The wanton killing of four wrong-side-of-middle-age American yachters by a temporarily leaderless and faction riven clutch of Somali pirates might serve as a long overdue tipping point in the policy of the US and other countries regarding the self-proclaimed Somali "coast guard."

The deaths of the four Americans being held hostage on the fifty-eight foot sailing vessel Quest has provoked the inevitable insinuations of bungling by the American hostage negotiator, but when stripped to the essentials it was an act of brutality for which the Somali perpetrators alone are responsible.  Not even the squid ink spouted by the pirates to the effect that the US Navy fired first--a truly preposterous notion worthy of the mind of someone who has chewed too much khat--alters that.

At root the pirates blundered.  Once they saw that they were almost literally surrounded by combatant ships of the American navy, they must have known the gig was blown.  Instead of accepting the (overly) generous US offer of the Quest as theirs to take, of course leaving the hostages with the Navy, the chuckleheads turned out to be less than serious.  As the American negotiator, reportedly an experienced FBI man, realized he was dealing with an insincere duo he ordered them detained.  The pirates were advised to think the matter over.

Whatever passed for cognition among the Brave Muslim Raiders Of The Briney Deep resulted in two salient actions.  One of the pirates fired an RPG at the nearby frigate.  Others on the seized yacht started shooting.  Among those who stopped bullets with fatal result were the four Americans.  This gory and tragic part of the story was discovered by the SEAL boarding team which also terminally neutralized two overly zealous Somali "coastguards."

The thirteen surviving members of the once merry band of pirates joined their two fellows in enjoying the comforts of the brig on the aircraft carrier Enterprise which introduced them to their most probable future--sterile bulkheads and locked doors.  It also dropped the what-do-we-do-with-them problem in the lap of Attorney General Holder, a man who rather enjoys lecturing Americans on their "cowardice" more than he does enforcing the US Code.

It is not surprising that the Holder Department of Justice has taken a noncommittal "we are considering the options" stance regarding the inconvenient presence of the Somalis in American custody.  It is rather like the Holder view of members of the New Black Panther Party waving clubs in the faces of potential voters outside a Philadelphia polling place--a sort of  well-the-boys-were-just-acting-out-a-bit approach to clear cut violations of the law.

The immediate problem will be solved.  The Somalis will be prosecuted in an American court.  There is no other politically viable way to go.  The pirates had their chance to walk (or, more accurately, sail) away.  They failed to take it and must now take the consequences.

The immediate problem is, of course, the easy one.  Far more difficult is the larger one, the reality that the pirates of Somalia are not only still around but ranging ever farther afield.  More ships and more cargoes and more crew are at risk today than ever before.  This despite the large number of naval vessels from numerous countries dedicated to maintaining safety in the critical sealanes of the region.

The nature of Somalia as a mere geographic expression in which the pathetic excuse for a central government controls very little outside of its official buildings is not going to change in the near future.  The recent combined offensive by forces of the African Union peacekeeping force, the Transitional National Government, and the Ethiopian army along with the militias currently fighting on the side of the government has not altered the balance of power in the venue nor extended stability more than a few blocks.

This means the Deep Thinkers who argue there is no solution to the pirate problem until Somalia once more has a stable, effective government are simply kicking the can down a long and dusty street.  As the pirate threat extends its shadow over more and more of the key routes to and from the oil terminals of the Persian Gulf, there is a very real menace to the global economic recovery.  Additionally, there is an object lesson to other advocates of violent political Islam including those in the environs of the Straits of Malacca showing the power of piracy to hobble the economies of the "infidels" and "apostates" around the world.

Taken in total there is only one response now available to any realistic government.  Actually, it is a response with several components.  The first is the creation of yet one more special international tribunal with jurisdiction over acts of piracy.  The second is a prohibition of ransom payments by ship owners and others.  The third is the mandatory formation of convoys in the affected areas.  The final consists of the stationing of armed guards--preferably regularly organized units of national navies or marine forces--on board ships transiting the danger zone.

This combination would increase the costs of doing business while reducing the profit potential.  While there are alternatives such as armed guards with shoot-to-kill authority and immunity from liability in the (inevitable) incident of misidentification, these are less satisfactory than the full panoply of defensive measures.  Admittedly, there will be resistance to the prohibition of ransom payment, but that resistance can be overcome.  The same is true with respect to the use of deadly force by shipborne defense forces.

It does not good to excuse the piracy with smooth words about just how the poor Somalis have no chance for honest employment or the removal of some pirates will simply assure that new, younger, and more violent candidates will take their place.  Nor does the argument that any robust measures will place the lives of the several hundred hostages currently held in Somali ports at risk deserve genuflection.

The pirates have altered their behavior toward the hostages.  Reports of torture and threats have grown significantly in recent months.  The day will come soon when hostages are killed in exemplary fashion in order to force faster payment of larger ransoms.  The only way this can be defeated is to add a major raid with the objective of freeing as many of the present hostages as possible and the killing of as many pirates as might be conveniently accomplished to the defensive mix.

"Millions for defense; not one cent for tribute!" may have been a popular toast of two hundred years ago when the US faced the pirates of Tripoli.  It was true then.  It is true today.  The US eventually prevailed in the long and unpleasant war with the Bey of Tunis and others of his ilk back then.  The same may--indeed, must--be true today.

The stakes are higher than a mere cost add-on to international trade.  Lives are at risk as shown with the killing of the four Americans.  Beyond that, the pirates are a form of maritime jihadist whose acts can threaten the peaceful commerce of much of the world, a threat which can benefit only those who wish the West harm.

It is to be hoped most ardently that the current administration might take a firm grip on the realities of the world including the pirates and what they mean to the US and other civilized states.  While this hope may be pious given the record to date of the Obama administration, the reality is too dark to admit of being passed on down the line in the hope that a more reality oriented and more robustly minded president may be in the Oval two years hence.

When The Feces Hits The Fan In North Korea, Where Will Obama Stand?

The President of the United States has managed to avoid taking a real, effective stand with respect to the opposition movement in Iran.  Sorry, words of regret and condemnation don't cut it.  On Egypt, the POTUS entered the lists both late and after a series of internal contradictions within members of his "team."

Then along came Libya.  Sure, it was convenient to excuse the absence of effective action on anxiety that Americans in Libya would be at risk.  The British managed to take a far stronger albeit primarily rhetorical stand before extracting their civilians by means which included a virtual commando operation aimed at the oilfield workers deep in the desert in isolated camps.  The declaration of unilateral sanctions has come late in the game and will have no genuine, immediate impact on the confused mind of Gaddafi.

The POTUS had the power to order the freezing of all Libyan assets in banks doing business in or with the US.  This act particularly if taken early on and accompanied with a loud pronouncement of what was being done and why might have lowered the zeal of Gaddafi's mercenaries.  Coming late, particularly after the drum roll of threats regarding criminal prosecution, presumably under the Statute of Rome and before the International Criminal Court, financial freezes, sanctions, and jawboning has served only to enhance Gaddafi's die-in-place political will as well as the akin sentiments of family and coterie.

As the game nears its end, a primary risk in Libya is the use of chemical munitions, primarily mustard agent, left over from Gaddafi's earlier flirtation with weapons of mass destruction.  The only thing (other than apprehension regarding the loyalty of his air force personnel) which will assure that Gaddafi does not employ chemicals against his own people will be the immediate enforcement of a no-fly zone over the entirety of Libya enforced by NATO.  The US may not, as Robert Gates has asserted, have the air assets available, but the rest of NATO certainly does.  It is past time for the US to urge its allies to do so--immediately.

The dilatory and poorly focused reaction of President Obama to events in the Mideast and Iran does not boost confidence that the US will handle a regime collapse in North Korea with the necessary speed and skill.  The US and other countries should not assume that the status quo in North Korea is any more permanent than that in Libya appeared to be say ten or fourteen days ago.  To do so is to invite disaster on a massive scale.

Not only is North Korea facing the challenge of an orderly succession, it is in the throes of the latest famine.  This particular episode of mass starvation has been exacerbated greatly by the outbreak of hoof and mouth disease in the animal stockpile of the Hermit Kingdom of the North.  The disease has had major impact on two key areas of food production.  It has been wasting the draft animal population upon which most North Korean agriculture depends at an awesome rate of knots.  Further, the hog farms which provide most of the protein eaten by the North Korean military have been devastated by the disease.

The North Korean regime has responded to the new crisis in the usual ways.  Internationally, the diplomats of the Hermit Kingdom have extended their begging bowls.  Backing this and aimed directly at opinion in both the South Korean population and the American, the North Koreans have been ostentatiously preparing facilities for a possible third nuclear test--the test which might actually go off well.  Additionally, the Hermits have moved at least half of their noisy, vulnerable troop carrying hovercraft to a new port convenient to South Korea.  This move has not been secret in the slightest.  Extortion is backing the begging ploy.

There is little doubt but the Pyongyang regime has been following events in the Mideast closely--particularly the role played by the Egyptian army in the end of Hosni Mubarak.  Given the matter of succession, there may be real cause for worry on the part of both Kim and his son regarding the reliability of the armed forces.  And, it must never be forgotten, of all North Korean institutions, the NKPA is most conservative, most fearful, and most resistant to change as well as most oriented toward carrying the blessings of the Northern way of life to the South.

The danger in the situation as it is developing currently is that Kim may in a sense emulate Gaddafi.  He may role the dice for a winner take all high risk, high payoff strategy which would involve a military strike of significant size against the South.  This option would be more attractive if either the military looks to be going all wobbly on the succession deal or the starvation reaches a level as to propel some sort of people power expression of desperation.

Even the lesser threat of a successful multi-kiloton test would constitute a severe challenge to the Obama administration.  Perhaps even a larger challenge than a large scale but time limited raid on Southern territory by Northern forces.  Each would require a prompt, firm, unequivocal response by the US.  Anything less would be to risk a wide spread war on the Korean peninsula with all that implies.

Mr Obama has demonstrated that not only is he naive about the workings of global politics but that he is totally uninterested in correcting his lacking in this area.  Nor has his foreign policy "team" inspired confidence despite the presence of Gates on it.  His cabinet level UN Ambassador has been absent, presumably with leave, when the dramatic end of Mubarak came as well as during the Security Council meeting last week which issued the pusillanimous "press statement" on Libya.  And, the Secretary of State has merely made fine words about "all options being considered" which is scarcely an act of resolute statesmanship.

The Obama administration has bobbled so much in two years.  Should North Korea pose a challenge, the betting has to be the Obama "team" will drop the ball one more time.  That probability is most likely a major factor in the decision making presently underway in Pyongyang.

Gates And The Future Of The American Army

Robert Gates has a long and distinguished record of saying unpleasant things which need to be said.  He did it again today in remarks at West Point delivered to the Corps of Cadets.  Among his ruminations on the future of the US army were his view that the US should not again fight a ground force heavy intervention of the Iraq or Afghan sort anywhere in Asia, Africa, or the Mideast.  He also and correctly noted the army will have to change its culture regarding career development or run the risk of losing its best junior and mid-rank officers to the tedium of clerical and budgetary work.

His view of our misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan merit close study  While he refrained from offering any direct criticism of the decisions leading to either war, his cautionary not to say pessimistic thought about any future repetition give a strong hint as to how he would have done the job had he been in the Pentagon back in 2001-3.

It is important to understand that Dr Gates did not retreat behind an update of the preposterous refrain of so many decades, "No more Vietnams!"  Rather he implied that the US may find it necessary to intervene in failed or failing states, or states which offer cover and comfort to hostile non-state actors, but any such future operations must not be massive exercises in regime change and nation building.  In his understanding, interventions must be of (to use an archaic but respectable term,) "punitive."  These would be conducted primarily by air and naval assets but of necessity would include specialist ground formations tasked with the neutralization or capture of designated personnel or facilities.

Interventionary operations, if the Geek is understanding the tenor of Gates' position correctly, would be short, sharp, well-defined as to goals but would leave the larger political questions up to some entity other than the US military.  Certainly, this is how it should have been in Afghanistan.  The military should have been focused simply on destroying al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime.  Much of this could have been undertaken successfully by air assets, but the use of ground formations would still have been necessary.  With the evolution of remotely operated aerial vehicles, this sort of operation could be conducted more efficiently now or in the future than it could have been a decade ago, but even so specialist ground troops will remain essential in the years to come.

The prime concept governing interventionary operations must be a combination of economy of force and economy of time.  The job must be done swiftly and with the lowest possible investment in the "men-at-risk" category.  Since political, social, and economic reconstruction and reform are both lengthy in duration and intensive in human capital requirements, this area of task must remain beyond the competence of the military.

It is legitimate to infer from Dr Gates' words that the best adventure in regime change is the one which is undertaken using indirect means.  This implies little if any role for the military particularly the ground forces.  The Gates view is historically justified.  The only sort of regime change which will work is one which is conducted by the locals, one which arises organically from legitimate political disaffiliation on the part of a segment of the population.  Indeed, that is an operational definition of insurgency.  The outsider may play indirect roles in applying pressure to the status quo regime and support to the dissidents, but must not go any further.

Dr Gates stated categorically that the army will have its hands full justifying the expense of maintaining its heavy formations.  With this proposition, the Geek disagrees.  The threats confronting American national interests are not confined to those of failed, failing, hollow, or captive states or the non-state actors which flourish in those soils.  The threats also include large, complexly organized, technologically advanced states with ambitions which will run counter to the interests of the US, its allies, and clients.  The two top candidates on this list are China and Russia.

Again, the primary tools of deterrence and the war fighting on which deterrence is based are air and naval in nature.  But the utility of heavy ground formations in this area where diplomacy and war intersect cannot and must not be minimized.  The hoary question attributed to Joe Stalin when told the Pope was opposed to some Soviet initiative, "How many divisions does the Pope have?" applies to the Men in the Kremlin and the Trolls of Beijing today and into the foreseeable future.

The credible capacity to coerce which includes the credible capacity to deter is based on the perception that a country possesses both the means and the will to wage war effectively.  As the nuclear deterrent slides down in direct relevance, the metric of war fighting will rest increasingly on conventional air, naval, and ground forces.  In the latter category the primary index will be the size, number, and perceived competence of heavy formations.

The essential task confronting both the Army and Marine Corps in the era of the Incredible Shrinking Budget will be that of maintaining a credible capacity to fight both interventionary and conventional inter-state wars.  This may require some very creative out-of-the-box thinking on the part of both services with the final result being some sort of division of tasks with the heavy, conventional conflict duty accruing primarily if not exclusively to the Army.  Admittedly, the notion of preparing for the least likely of wars is frustrating to those who spend entire careers doing so, but boredom is the price of deterrence.

The fundamental nature of war is essentially unchanged and unchangeable, but the devil now and into the future resides in the details.  The world is not on the verge of universal peace and long term stability.  Governments such as those in Iran, Pakistan, Venezuela show this as do events in the Mideast.  Russia has announced an enormous military redevelopment program which will see a quantum level improvement in the materiel basis of the Russian military forces over the next decade.  The Chinese show no indication of abandoning their drive for a military second to none across the board: air, sea, ground, cyber, and space.

Nor is there any use appealing to the fiction on the banks of the Hudson river.  The UN has unlimited ambitions but no real capacity in its primary, arguably only, reason for existence--keeping and enforcing the international peace.  Similarly, there is no joy in the position so often adopted by the self-appointed academic, media, and political elites in Western Europe and the US, the notion that nationalism and the nation-state are dead or rapidly dying.

The reality remains that the US will continue to have national and strategic interests which will need to be defended against the hostility of other states.  Another reality will continue: There are states and non-state actors who are hostile to the US--regardless of who is occupying the Oval this year.  So will a third reality: the US must look first and foremost to itself in pursuing and defending its national and strategic interests.  Then, of course, there is the inconvenient fact that the US remains a Great Power, not as great a Great Power as just a very few years ago but a Great Power nonetheless.  This is a status that cannot be surrendered; it can only be lost or taken away by the acts of others.

This means the US will have to fight more interventionary conflicts.  It means the US must be able to show each and every day for years to come that it has both the means and will to fight a high intensity war against a peer.  This means that the US Army and other services will still have a job and We the People must be both able and willing to pay the associated costs.

The alternative remains what it always has been: A curtailment of American freedom to act on the global stage, and, when night falls, surrender to the forces of fear and hate.

I Am A Chinese Citizen! Trolls, You Must Protect Me!

From the time of Rome through the eras of the British Empire and the American "Century," the citizens of assertive Great Powers have demanded their government protect them and their interests whenever threatened by the acts of "lesser breeds without the law."  And, so it is now with the thirty thousand or so Chinese living and working in Libya.

The WSJ reports that the Chinese version of Twitter is filled with demands for governmental action to assure the safety of Chinese and Chinese property in Libya.  Pictures as well as text accounts of the actions of "gangsters" harming Chinese abound in these and similar Internet postings.  In response, the Trolls of Beijing have stated they will take all necessary measures.  Don't you like the ambiguous phrasing?  That term "all necessary" can cover a multitude of options including the one the Trolls do not yet possess--a blue water naval capacity and the force projection ability such confers.

It is worth noting the Trolls have worked faster and more effectively to retrieve their citizens than has the Obama administration.  The Chinese have evacuated more than four thousand of their nationals primarily via chartered Greek flagged vessels.  The US has managed to stash a couple of hundred Americans including diplomatic personnel on a ferry which has not yet left port due to "high waves."  This means the Americans are still living under the guns of Gaddafi's hired hands with itchy trigger fingers.

The current violence in the Mideast has caught the Trolls both exposed and unprepared.  The Chinese presence in Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere in the region has increased geometrically in the past few years as Beijing controlled enterprises have proliferated in all areas of economic activity from resource extraction and agriculture to the sale of manufactured products both durable and consumer oriented.  At the same time the Chinese have taken a higher profile in the internal affairs of these states.

While not receiving much play in the American or European media, the Chinese have shown an ability to make themselves personally unpopular with the "natives" not only in the Mideast but elsewhere, most notably Africa.  The "native" press in a number of places over the past few years have compared the Chinese unfavorably not only with Americans but the previous colonials.  It appears that Chinese working in areas scattered around the globe have managed to engender a perception in the minds of the "natives" to the effect that China is a land of arrogant xenophobes laden with contempt for others.

Every now and then the local appreciation of Chinese manners and mores will hit the radar screen of Western MSM as in the case of the Chinese managers of a mine pulling and using guns with lethal effect on some striking workers who made so bold as to challenge the conduct of their "betters."  True, this was in the Congo, a place not noted for civilized behavior, but even the pathetic excuse for a government did take a dim view of gunning down strikers.  Not that the dim view resulted in prosecution, and the whole matter faded away covered by the shadow of Chinese money.

The Geek has great respect for both the age and unchanging nature of so much of Chinese culture and world view.  He has noted in prior posts the accomplishments of Chinese and the Chinese emperors in the days when Europeans were barely beyond painting themselves blue and tossing one another into the nearest bog, but the notion of the "Central Empire" which has colored Chinese attitudes toward all those so benighted as to have been born outside the sacred precincts of the Empire has never been a particularly admirable feature of the Chinese mental landscape.

After having been submerged by the all conquering wave of European (and, later, American) advance and expansion, it appears the ancient sense of "Central Empire" superiority has reemerged with a vengeance.  Powered by money flowing from the US and Western Europe as the inevitable and fully predicted result of the Clinton era fascination with "globalization," the old Central Empire is flexing its muscles in every conceivable way.  This includes treating the "natives" wherever they may exist with triumphalist contempt.

This context helps explain why the insurrectionists in Libya may target Chinese and their enterprises.  He who has not only cozied up with the dictator but also cocked the snoot repeatedly at the locals will not be the recipient of bouquets when the worm turns even a little.

One result of the clamor for protection coming from Chinese in Libya will be a move to increase the interventionary capacity of the Chinese military.  It is not as if the Trolls need any excuse.  The very impressive qualitative (and quantitative) increase in Chinese military capabilities has been underway even before the vast expansion in offshore economic activities.  The impact of the events in Libya and elsewhere will simply give a plausible justification for further enhancement of power projection capabilities.

This coupled with an ever more assertive Chinese diplomacy puts the squeeze on the US.  We can either assure a continued superiority in air, naval, and other, newer forms of defense capacities or we can accept the Chinese as an equal--or superior--in global affairs with all that implies to American freedom of action.  Given the perilous state of American fiscal affairs in the wake of the global recession and the inept attempts by the current administration to deal with both the recession and the installation of its own ideologically driven agenda, the defense budget is not likely to be up to the challenge.

There is no use in talking of how trade makes for good, peaceful neighbors.  The Chinese government is highly nationalistic in its definition and pursuit of interest.  It is also driven by the notion of the "Central Empire."  This implies that there will be many places and occasions where the interests of China and the US will not coincide sufficiently for conventional diplomacy to have any utility.  And, absent both a credible military capacity and the perceived political will to employ that capacity, no coercive diplomacy is or can be effective.

In a very real sense the US has a last best hope in the ability of the Trolls and the Chinese working abroad to make themselves detested.  We can and should take cheer in the attacks on Chinese facilities in Libya.  They are a symptom of the weakness of China--its Central Empire way of thinking.  To the extent that Chinese working in countries around the world can alienate the "natives" by their attitudes and actions, the US benefits, If at the same time Americans exhibit attitudes and undertake actions which convey our openness to others, our ability to listen and learn from the locals, our respect for the traditions and customs of the locals, we put more and more positive space between ourselves and the minions of the Trolls.

There are places and people where the US will not be able to make itself look good.  In spots like Pakistan, there is no hope the locals will abandon quickly or easily the decades of increasing hatred of all things American.  But, there is reason to hope--even believe--that the Chinese will be able to make themselves even more disliked, distrusted.

Admittedly it ain't much.  But, given the current realities--including the dilatory conduct of the Obama administration in the face of what has been happening in Libya and the Mideast generally--we do not have much else going for us.  Disgusting, isn't it, bucko?

Well,Golly, Really, Someone Ought To Do Something

De facto, Libya has fissioned.  There is no longer one Libya other than within the lines on a map.  In the real world there is now an East Libya centered on Benghazi and Tobruk (or Tobruq, if you insist on current spelling) and a West Libya comprised of Tripoli and the oilfields to its south.  It merits mention that East Libya also has its own oilfields and loading facilities.

The residual government of Brother Leader and associates has no sway over any of East Libya which is now an independent if not yet sovereign entity.  The tribes of East Libya have withdrawn all allegiance to the Gaddafi regime while the armed forces have defected in wholesale lots to the insurrectionists.  The latter occurred because the attraction of region, of tribe, of clan outweighs all the artifices of Gaddafi's view of socialism, Libyan style.

In West Libya, the man who identified himself as "history," as "revolution," and other abstracts, is having more than a few problems killing enough and terrorizing enough to keep even the semblance of power in the capital and its environs.  The mercenary and militia forces currently loyal to the one time strongman have demonstrated a capacity and taste for killing people.  This has not yet translated into security for Brother Leader.

The greatest advantage Gaddafi has in West Libya is the absence of a coherent resistance.  The uprising in Tripoli unlike that in East Libya has been inchoate from the beginning.  While the leaderless uprising has some advantages--it is uniquely invulnerable to decapitation strikes by the status quo--it lacks the organizational and structural integrity which can  assure the survival of a resistance movement even under heavy and deadly pressure.

A critical question therefore is why the difference between East Libya, the home of an organized, long standing anti-government movement, and West Libya, the site of a genuine leaderless movement?  In a major way the difference between what happened in Benghazi or Tobruk on the one hand and Tripoli on the other is a reflection, even a consequence of Libyan history.

Prior to the forced unification of Libya by Italy in 1931 at the end of a twenty year campaign, Libya had been three quasi-states: Tripolitania, Fezzan, and Cyrenaica.  Cyrenaica is East Libya.  Tripolitania is West Libya--absent its oilfields.  These are found to the south in old Fezzan.  The three divisions are ancient, dating back to the days of Rome and Carthage.  The divisions are not simply geographic.  Nor are they simply lines on old maps.

The divisions run more across the human terrain than the merely physical.  They coincide with tribal and clan homelands, homelands which have existed since the mythic dawn of time.  As the Italians discovered when they embarked on their great adventure in imitating Rome, the differences between the three regions were starkest when expressed in the degree of opposition to the new colonials.  While none of the three were easy nuts to crack, Cyrenaica was the hardest by far.

The New Rome of Mussolini determined to erase the existence of the historical consciousness of the tribesmen of the newly conquered provinces and for that reason decreed the new "state" of Libya into existence.  Decreeing is easy, doing much harder.  The Italians were never able to create a unified Libyan state, and their efforts not only were unsuccessful, they became counterproductive.

The Anglo-American forces which occupied Libya from 1943 to the end of the war contented themselves with administering the territory for the convenience of the war effort.  This approach, which paid utterly no attention to the nature of the human terrain, continued into the post-war period with the creation of a monarchy far more artificial than organic.  The not made in Libya monarchy lasted until it fell to Gaddafi's 1969 coup having been kept alive until then by the Cold War needs of the US and its NATO partners as well as the development of the domestic oilfields.  The important fact to keep in mind is that at no time during the quarter century of its existence did the monarchy, the foreign supporters of the monarchy, or anyone else attempt to create a unified national identity for Libya.

At the time King Idris left to nobody's real sorrow, the old divisions continued to exist with some small changes.  Due to the development of the oilfields of West Libya there had been a degree of integration between Fezzan and Tripolitania.  There had been no such process with regard to Cyrenaica, the population centers of which were separated from Tripoli by some five or six hundred kilometers of sand crossed by a single all weather road and a number of ancient caravan tracks.

The proving of oilfields in Cyrenaica during the early Gaddafi years served to reinforce the separate identities of East and West Libya, or, to use the old terms, Cyrenaica and Tripolitania/Fezzan.  Then as a matter of policy driven by a deep fear of military coup, Colonel Gaddafi reinforced the ancient divisions by not only refusing to integrate tribes and regions in national institutions including the army, but by deepening and widening the divisions.

His version of divide and conquer may have been successful in precluding a military coup but did so at the price of assuring profound disaffiliation in Cyrenaica.  For at least the last quarter century there has been a palpable and growing sense of "Cyrenaica for the Cyrenaicians."  When Gaddafi ordered the prison massacre in Benghazi in 1996 he gave this growing movement a shot of growth hormone.

Since 1996 the anti-government sentiment in Cyrenaica has developed silently but profoundly with results which were stunningly obvious in the first seventy-two hours of the insurrection.  Bluntly put, the Gaddafi regime lost Benghazi and Tobruk and the other towns of East Libya almost instantly.  Local army units changed sides in a heartbeat and took their weapons with them.  Air force and navy units did something similar, at least defecting to foreign shores rather than shoot on fellow tribe and clan members.  Cyrenaica for the Cyrenaicians!

The fact that Gaddafi moved in foreign mercenaries from Chad and sub-Saharan Africa shows he well understood that the loyalties of tribe and clan would trump any appeal held by his "revolution."  He knew and knows that his heavy heel has an Achilles tendon.  The foreigners were the splint for this potentially fatal weakness.

Whether the Rent-A-Killer forces will prove sufficient along with those Libyans who have a vested or visceral interest in the status quo to keep Brother Leader in power in West Libya remains to be seen.  One can be more certain about Gaddafi;s political will.  If nothing else he both believes his own propaganda and understands that he has no retirement haven waiting for him.  He has to stay and fight it out, to die in place if that is the way it plays out.  The same applies to his two most visible sons.

The dissidents of Cyrenaica have the political will as well.  They well understand the price of failure and the Egyptian border may prove to be a line in the sand too far should the Colonel and his killers gain the upper hand.  The so far successful insurrectionists of East Libya (Cyrenaica) also have both the organizational and material means to wage prolonged defensive war.  In addition, the majority of the population is with them.

This implies the war within the borders of Libya could continue for a long and bloody time absent sufficient outside pressure to end it.  East and West Libya could exchange inconclusive blows for weeks, months, even years if the oil continues to flow in sufficient amounts and can be exchanged for the necessities of life and war. It would not be pretty.

It is this far from unlikely eventuality which makes the insipid reactions of the Obama administration and other governments so disheartening.  The Security Council limiting itself to a "press statement" would be risible were it not both tragic and, given the long standing policies of China and Russia, predictable.  Far more disturbing was the absence of UN Ambassador Susan Rice from the Security Council vote.

Ms Rice who has worked herself into an excellent imitation of war fever over the plight of people in Darfur was off to South Africa for a confab on "global sustainability" and thus too preoccupied to consider the situation in Libya.  Her boss, President Obama, is also absent.  Sure, his press flack assures us the Clueless Guy in the Oval will have something to say apropos Libya today or tomorrow, but that is scarcely the sort of laid back approach the situation demands.

Gaddafi has to be forced out quickly.  He has to be made to go--alive or dead--before the cycles of killing reach the point that Bosnia will look like a Baptist Sunday Social in comparison.  The US and other civilized states such as the UK and Italy can freeze bank accounts, impose travel bans, put sanctions in place, prohibit arms sales, order their national corporate citizens to halt all activity, even use NATO assets to impose naval and air blockades.  None of these require a great deal of head scratching, consultations, joint communiques, but all demand action.

Somebody really, really has to do something.  All the somethings are well understood.  All are easy to do.  None require the UN do anything.  All demand the civilized states including the US put pens on paper, sign the required orders, and apply the pressure.

Even symbolic actions, the freezing of funds for example, would undercut the willingness of the mercenaries to stay in Libya and embolden even the leaderless movement in West Libya to keep on keeping on.  If, at the same time, the civilized states would make the right sort of noises exempting low ranking trigger pullers from prosecution, the pro-Gaddifi forces would be weakened even more.  There are other easy to take and quick to operate measures as well, but this roster gives some indications of the great number of tools available to assist in the ending of the Gaddafi madness.

But, someone has to go first.  That is what the US formerly did.  What is wrong now, Mr Obama?

Meanwhile, Far Away From The Mideast

While events in the Mideast, most recently Libya, have been sucking all the media and diplomatic oxygen, a faraway state in Central Asia faces both internal and external threats.  Tajikistan hasn't made the news, but it is currently facing set of challenges which threaten to turn it into either a failing state or a hollow one.

Tajikistan is the poorest of the former Soviet Central Asian Republics.  Its poverty has not helped in the process of repairing the deep social and political wounds inflicted on the country by the five years of warfare between Tajiks and Uzbeks.  Even though that particular war ended nearly fourteen years ago, the scars run Grand Canyon deep across economy, society, and polity alike.  Insofar as there has been any recovery from that disastrous little war, it has been the inadvertent consequence of the attention and money flowing into Tajikistan following the invasion of Afghanistan.

Not unexpectedly that money and the "recovery" have served just as much to exacerbate underlying problems as it has to rehabilitate the place.

The sole reason the US or anyone other than either Russia or China is interested in the remote Wisconsin sized region is Afghanistan.  Tajikistan has a twelve hundred mile border with Afghanistan.  This border edges the formerly peaceful northeastern portion of Afghanistan.  The operative word here is "formerly."

Tajikistan borders China for a bit more than four hundred kilometers.  While much less than the borders with any of its other neighbors, the Chinese one has been the focus of international tensions.  Recently the tensions slacked apparently with the signing of a treaty which ceded some Tajik territory to China.  The government of Tajikistan crowed about its victory in that the Chinese gained only a small percentage of the territory it claimed.  But, to Tajiks living near the Chinese border, the victory was hollow at best.  In a side agreement the government agreed to lease ten square miles of land to China at, to put it delicately, well below market rates.  Also, the government permitted China to provide several hundred (thousand? reports differ) farmers to use the land.

President Rahmon has been attacked over the China deal which is seen even in Dushanbe by the microscopic local elite as a sell-out to Beijing.  There is a fair amount of belief that China will seek to "lease" more agricultural and pastoral land in the near future while defenders of the president see him as a canny player of the China card as a make weight to Russia.

There is a good deal of accuracy in the notion that President Rahmon is attempting a balancing act so as to curb the possible de facto takeover of Tajikistan by the Kremlin.  At the moment Tajikistan is heavily dependent upon Russia for external defense as well as the heavy lifting regarding the insurgency mounted by advocates of violent political Islam.

Rashmon is shaking in his boots over the ever increasing presence of the advocates of political Islam, particularly those of the violent sort.  He has been facing a shooting war for the past five years in which the security forces of Tajikistan have not covered themselves with glory--or even much success.  Not to overstate the matter, there is a direct link between the uptick of insurgents in the border region and the insertion of larger numbers of lethal and well motivated Afghan Taliban into the northern part of Afghanistan.  Given that the Tajik-Afghan border is so porous as to make the Great Fence of the Southwest look more impenetrable than ever was the Berlin Wall, this development should not have surprised anyone--even the Germans who sought service in north Afghanistan as a way of doing something for NATO without actually having to be involved in a shooting war.

The only effective force on the Tajikistan side of the border is a unit of the Russian army.  It is there both to stop insurgent border crossers and drug smugglers.  The border area is a primary, perhaps the primary, land route for opium and its derivatives on route to Russia and Eastern Europe.  The most recent estimates from the Tajikistan government is that some 130 million "doses" of heroin cross the border every year.  There was, of course, no source for this figure.

While the amount of drug traffic may be in doubt, there is no doubt who controls the route to and through Tajikistan.  The men who run the affair are all advocates of violent political Islam.  Most are native Tajiks.  The drugs are, along with unemployed workers, the major export of Tajikistan.  The Kremlin is of the view, with accuracy, that many of the migrant workers from Tajikistan are themselves members of groups espousing violent political Islam which increases the domestic threat from that quadrant.

The Rahmon regime has taken measures against the growth of political Islam.  Some of these have been unique and wide reaching.  Notable are the severe restrictions placed upon Tajiks studying in foreign madrassas.  Equally severe limits have been placed upon the number of mosques, madrassas, and religious students allowed in Tajikistan.  Most recently Rahmon's ministers have proposed prohibiting any person younger than eighteen from attending religious services of any sort.  This would affect Muslims primarily as ninety percent of the people are Muslims (eighty-five percent Sunni, five percent Shiite.)

The government has taken the firm position that the unrest, the drug trafficking, and the internal instability are all the result of Islam.  While the suppression of the religion may be impossible, it is clear the government has determined to lower the impact of political Islam to an irreducible minimum.  As a one time Soviet nomenclatura member, he recalls the old ways and days with fondness.

The Kremlin is quite willing to back Rahmon as it is better to rule the Tajiks from a distance than up close and personal.  At the same time any significant growth of the Tajik presence in the North Caucasus based Muslim insurgency will result in more direct, more significant Kremlin involvement in Tajikistan.

The most basic need of the country is money.  The problem is the place has little to offer in return for investment.  Only the Chinese can see a real potential in Tajikistan.  That potential comes not from the microscopic hydrocarbon resources under the soil but the soil itself.  The areas closest to the Chinese border are those with the best soil, longest growing season and, the big consideration, the best water.  China is facing crop and water shortages at home such as to occasion investment in farmland in Africa.  Extending Chinese agriculture and pastoral activities over a few hundred (or thousand) square kilometers of Tajikistan is both cheaper and more convenient.

Should the proposed hydroelectric dams be completed either with World Bank or Chinese investment, they will produce not only quite a bit of electricity (most of which will have to be transported hundreds of kilometers to market), but also irrigation water.  This implies that even more land can be brought under (Chinese?) cultivation.  If the Chinese insist on providing their own labor force, the difficulties with Tajikistan could be monumental given that nearly eighty percent of the Tajik population is agrarian or pastoral.

Should the Chinese displacement of native Tajik workers continue, and the Islamist insurgency not be fully suppressed, the combination would spell failed state for the Dushanbe government.  The only alternative would be to become an independent government and state in name only.  This would make Tajikistan the first "hollow state" within the Central Asian Republics.  It would probably not be the last.

While most US attention has been directed to other of the several "stans" in Central Asia, it has a dog in the Tajikistan fight.  The long, open border with Tajikistan means Taliban and others have free access to Afghanistan not only from Pakistan.  As has been seen in recent months, this provides the insurgents with opportunities for horizontal escalation which render American battlefield victories less impressive in their overall effect.  Also the convenience of Tajikistan as well as the tightly organized Muslim Tajik cartels which handle the cargo provide an alternative cash cow route.  This, in turn, means that even a total halt to flows through Iran or Pakistan will not end the utility of narcotics to the Taliban and others.

All of the various assessments of the state of American strategy (if what we are doing really deserves that term) in Afghanistan have given very, very short shrift to the Tajikistan connection both material and religious. This has been another of the numerous blind spots which have plagued American Deep Thinkers tasked with finding success in that dismal contest.

Just a little reminder that important things are underway far from the attention of the fly-by-night media and their diplomatic cousins.  It is an interesting world even when the television cameras aren't there to record.

Watching A Regime Crumble?

Saif al-Islami Gaddifi, the usually well oiled, politely mannered, western-style number one son of the Libyan Brother Leader has become the public face of the embattled regime.  Given Brother Leader's unusual shyness this is an expectable move.  Saif is seen both inside Libya and by foreign observers as a rational, reform-minded, and totally adult sort of guy, quite unlike either his father or younger brothers.

However the message delivered by Saif was not one of peace, reform, and good feelings.  Rather he warned darkly of "civil war" and "hundreds of thousands dead" in appearances on state television.  Events over the past twenty-four hours show his remark must not be taken as hyperbole.

Neither should his observation that his father would fight to the "last man, last woman and last bullet."  The blood spilled in Benghazi coupled with the horizontal escalation of the violent protests to other cities including Tripoli show the matter has become existential to the regime--and family.  The uprising is already existential for the protesters.  If they fail in their goal of ending the Gaddafi regime, the agents of the regime will end them, if not today than certainly in the days and weeks to come.

When conflicts are seen by both sides as directly existential, it not only increases political will, it assures the struggle will become continually more lethal until one side or the other in effect is obliterated.  This has raised the Libyan internal conflict well above those waged in Egypt or Tunisia--and perhaps above that in Bahrain where voices of compromise are still speaking.

As the Gaddafi government stepped up its suppression with the use of fast mover aircraft, it accompanied the purely military and Saif's propaganda with pro-Brother Leader demonstrations in Green Square, Tripoli.  The carefully orchestrated show of popular support for the Gaddafi regime was unintentionally undercut by reports of both airstrikes and automatic weapons fire being heard not far from the Square as the demo went down.

Nor is the legitimacy of the Gaddafi regime enhanced by such high profile kicks in the crotch as the mass resignation of the Libyan delegation to the UN under the leadership of its deputy permanent representative.  It is not known if the Libyan ambassador to the UN shares the views of his mission.  What is certain is the families of the dissident diplomats back home in Libya are not good life insurance risks now--unless the regime collapses.

Perhaps more alarming to the Gaddafi family enterprise is the reported defection of members of the armed services.  Reportedly the defectors include two air force officers who took their jets to Malta rather than attack civilians in Benghazi.  One of the two pilots, both of whom claim to be colonels, has taken the wise precaution of requesting political asylum.  Can't be too safe--if the insurrection fails of its goal.

Other, far lower ranking defections from the army and other security forces have also been alleged.  The allegations are most probably accurate, particularly if those changing sides belong to the same tribe or clan as those being attacked.  Clan, tribal, and regional loyalties trump mere institutional affiliations in Libyan life.  They can even trump religion qua religion.

The National Front for the Salvation of Libya, the primary opposition group among the rudimentary political culture which has survived the forty years of suppression, is ginning up for a return home.  Its Washington based spokesman, Ibrahim Sahad, has not received much play in American media but has been quoted overseas as predicting that this time the Brother Leader cannot survive.  He offers no reasons for this conclusion beyond the self-evident and widely known failures of the Gaddifi regime and the impetus given by the use of mercenaries, heavy weapons, and aircraft against the demonstrators.

While no objections can be offered as to Mr Sahad's arguments regarding the weakness of the regime, his group can not yet offer a clear vision of what must be done the day after the regime collapses.  Nor does he make any useful suggestions for the role which might be played by Western governments in facilitating regime change in Libya.  These lacks are indicative of the large, very large problems which will confront the Libyans in the wake of a collapse of the Gaddafis, particularly if the collapse is preceded by a welter of blood letting, a potential which must be taken seriously by outside observers.

Considering that the web of internal security and domestic intelligence organizations involves as many as one in six Libyans, there are a lot of asses in the sling potentially.  This implies there will be no going gently into that good night of exile.  Considering further the conflicting tangle of tribal, clan, and family alliances both for and against the status quo and the large number of potential scores to be settled, betting on a peaceful and orderly transition (such as is pro forma called for by any number of outsiders) is about as likely as a cold day in August in the dunes south of Tobruk.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi is, sadly, almost certainly correct in averring that "rivers of blood" will ensue unless the protests stop.  As there is no high likelihood of the anti-government folk packing it in and waiting to be arrested by the internal security wallahs, the number of bodies is doomed to grow--perhaps exponentially.

The US, the EU, and the UN have been dithering too long already.  It is more than passingly strange that the Security Council can get its collective panties in a twist over a person being killed in Lebanon but remain totally unconcerned about the looming slaughter in Libya.  It is equally interesting that the US, which has shown a remarkable capacity to work itself into a lather over other, less bloody exercises in repression, has been tongue tied about Libya.  Then there is the EU.  That organization can work itself into the highest of high dudgeons over the allegation of a single Palestinian dying at the hands of the IDF but has confined itself to the barest sighs of concern over the use of heavy weapons against civilians in Libya.

Italy and the UK both have large direct investments in Libya,  Italy is the preferred destination of any and all of those who can board a boat on the Libyan coast.  It surpasses understanding why both London and Rome have not become directly, substantially, and materially involved in ending the crisis in Libya before the worst realistic case comes to pass.

Admittedly, Brother Leader is not the poster boy of rational policy or carefully considered reaction to outside influences, but that is no reason to sit back with folded hands as the escalating dance of death continues in Libya.  As the American ambassador to the Court of St James is reported to have said yesterday, Her Majesty's Government bears a measure of responsibility for enhancing the international legitimacy of the Libyan dictator.

The fact that the enhancement occurred during the previous New Labor government is all the more reason the Coalition has both the political freedom and ethical responsibility to take the lead in the EU to seek ways of effective intervention in the Libyan crisis.  While Italy may have a greater direct stake in the outcome of the events in Libya, the current political state of affairs in that country shifts the load to the UK, which has both means and justification for seeking action on the part of the EU and UN.

The US can and should play a supporting role to any British initiative.  The current weakness of the US not only in the region following the incomprehensible veto of the West Bank settlement resolution in the Security Council as well as the all too obvious working both sides of the street during the "Lotus revolution" has drastically curtailed our diplomatic influence and prestige and thus ability to directly operate in Libya.  But, we can still back the play of another responsible actor--and the UK is the best candidate for the role.

It is critical that the end of Gaddafi come before the body count grows much more.  As is the case in every internal war in human history (and most all inter-state wars as well) the dead dictate policy.  The more protesters who are killed the more vengeance will be demanded.  The more vengeance which is feared by partisans of the status quo, the more desperate and lethal the attempt to suppress.  The cycle is clear, and, once started, not easy to interrupt before it has run the full course, until people are simply sickened by the slaughter they have perpetrated and suffered.

Time is running out.  It is running out for the Gaddafi regime.  It is running out for the international community (whatever that might mean in this context) to take measures intended to limit the suffering, end the killing, and start a new clock on a new future.

The Game Is Getting Much Rougher In Libya

The Geek has to admit his hot wash on the initial unrest in Benghazi missed the mark.  He discounted the demonstrations too much because Benghazi has been the epicenter of Hate-Brother-Leader since the prison massacre in 1996.  He also overestimated the positive impact of Gaddafi's unique brand of tribal based politics which is omnipresent even in the army.

It is true that the ongoing protests have centered on Benghazi.  The second largest city in Libya has had the greatest butchers' bill by far.  And, most importantly, the protesters have matched the government in the escalation game.  

Not only have the anti-government forces matched the security wallahs in vertical escalation, they have engaged in successful horizontal escalation as well.  Other cities in eastern Libya have now joined the violence.  Tobruk of World War II fame as well as Al-Bayda, Ajdabiya, and Darnah have seen violent unrest.  In Darnah the insurrectionists briefly seized and held an arsenal, finally leaving with an unknown amount of weaponry.  

In Ajdabiya the protesters burned down several buildings including the local headquarters of Gaddafi's political party and declared the burg to be a "free city."  In Benghazi, the central government in effect has been run out of town.  The anti-government groups attacked the military base (which contains Gaddafi's "Eastern Palace") with an explosives laden vehicle at one point--and with an armored vehicle at another.

The focus on the military installation is understandable given that hours earlier security forces had sallied forth from it in order to attack the funeral demonstration which was carrying the bodies of those killed the previous day to the graveyard.  In an important development, reports from Benghazi indicate that Gaddafi has brought in mercenary troops from Chad to do the dirty work.

The mercenaries whether from Chad or elsewhere were described by locals as kill crazy, a sort of "wild eyed pistol waver not afraid to die."  Grisly tales of people jumping from a bridge to avoid the mercenaries and their bullets compete for attention with stories of helicopter gunships spraying machinegun fire on fleeing civilians.

While it is not possible to divine the truth in the welter of words, it is unmistakable that Brother Leader has decided to ramp up coercion to a degree surpassing that employed in Bahrain or Yemen.  He must be feeling more than a tad desperate.  

The desperation is powered by a fear that the entire east of Libya will go the way of Benghazi, setting the stage either for a tumbling row of dominoes ending in Tripoli or a resumption of the inter-regional warfare which existed prior to the Italian occupation a century ago.  Either development would be fatal to Gaddafi's idiosyncratic forty-two year old regime.

So far Brother Leader has kept a low profile, appearing on state television only briefly.  Apparently, he has given over day-to-day control of the security operation to his number three son, Saadi.  The son is a thirty-seven year old former vocational soccer player who has been described as "fiercely loyal" to dear old dad as well as a potential follow on to Gaddafi senior in running the family business.  He is probably more than tough enough to oversee very robust repression.

In addition to using mercenaries, automatic and even heavy weapons, the Gaddafi regime has taken the customary step of pulling the plug on the Internet and blocking other horizontal communications methods.  Libya is already one of the most isolated countries on the planet and became even more so with the ending of cell phone and Internet communication.  Given the vast distances involved (Benghazi is a thousand kilometers from Tripoli), this does hurt the anti-government movement significantly.

Merely impairing the communications capacities of the protesters does not address the basic conditions which have produced the violent unrest.  Unemployment is at least thirty percent.  Housing is scarce and usually allocated on the basis of political connections.  There is no true national identity but rather a patchwork of clan, tribal, and regional affiliations which are reflected in every institution of state including the armed forces.  There is absolutely no organized political opposition to the Gaddafi regime and its political party expression.  Nor is there any excuse for an open and free media.  In comparison, Egypt was a wide open boisterous democracy and Tunisia a free for all.

The Gaddafi regime has expended (squandered?) vast amounts of its oil and natural gas revenues on utter non-essentials including support for foreign insurgencies, a quest for nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, a military without a real mission, and grandiose schemes to drill deep wells in the south to bring water to the north.  Very little money has gone to long term development needs whether in infrastructure or education or economic alternatives to the oil and gas.  What did not go to the quixotic delusions of Brother Leader went to the pockets of the well-connected.  The combination has assured damn little has been left over to benefit the Libyan in the street or provide any basis for either long term order or the slow emergence of stability in an evolving national system.

The overthrow of Gaddafi would be a good thing for the Libyans--maybe.  The caveat comes from the simple fact that the four decades of dictatorship have left the country without any semblance of a political culture.  This means Libya is starting from less than Tunisia or Egypt.  In both of those countries there had been a long history of organized opposition.  The opposition might have been suppressed but it was never eliminated.  Even if in exile the opposition continued to develop, to plan, to prepare.  The suppression by Brother Leader has been so complete, so absolute, so far reaching that there is little in the way of an organized and forward looking political alternative to the status quo.

The situation in Libya is also complicated by its having no clear national identity well supported by national institutions.  When even the army reflects tribal and clan roots, it is hard to see from where a unified sense of being Libyan will be found.  Taken in aggregate these factors assure that any overthrow of Gaddafi will not result in a quick transition to a democratic government.  It is not easy to see just who will run the country on even a caretaker basis should Brother Leader and his sons catch the next flight to the Land of Unemployed Dictators.

Both Italy and the UK have large exposures in the Libyan oil and natural gas industry.  Both governments should be working overtime right now on just what can be done practically to keep the trains running on time as well as dissuade the Gaddafi family from further very robust exercises in suppression and set the ground rules for a post-Gaddafi government.  It is not practical to suggest that some foreign or international entity step in to secure a peaceful transition, such would not be acceptable to any Libyan in the street, but the so called international community needs to shoulder a legitimate burden in the sense of aiding the endgame and the emergence of an organic Libyan government.

At least the Obama administration has been mainly silent on events in Libya.  This is as it should be.  Libya is one of the few spots in the Mideast or North Africa where the US interests are minimal.  But, our government would be well advised to nudge the UK, Italy, and the EU generally in the area of contingency planning for the day after the revolts succeed in their goal--or the day the security forces violate any sense of decency in their shedding of demonstrators blood.

It's called being "proactive."  Sadly, the record shows this is an area where the US (and the West) is more than a little deficient.

Pucker Factor Has To Be On The Rise In Saudi Arabia

Now that the government of Bahrain has reversed course on its treatment of the anti-government protests there, the House of Sand must be more worried than before.  There are two reasons for the probable uptick in uptightness in the Kingdom.

First, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia is right across the narrow waterway from Bahrain.  The Eastern Province, like Bahrain, is majority Shiite in makeup.  Further, the Shiites of the EP echo their coreligionists in charges of discrimination at the hands of the Wahhibist regime and larger population.

Second, the House of Saud does not trust the current US administration.  The belief in Saudi Arabia is the Obama administration has gone wobbly with respect to the status quo in the Mideast.  The government at its highest levels is particularly torqued off over the administration having abandoned Hosni Mubarak with unseemly haste and without any eye on the future.  Of course, the future which Saudi Arabia worries about centers on any extension of Iranian influence in the region.

For several years now the primary concern of the House of Saud has been Iran not Israel.  The Saudis would be willing to sell out every Palestinian extant if that would help secure a future safe from Iranian ambitions.  The Saudis, as the WikiLeaks cables make clear, has lost no opportunity in conveying this position to the Obama administration as it did the Bush/Cheney team.  Any sign by Washington of decreasing interest in maintaining the status quo pushes the worry beads into hyperdrive all over the Kingdom.

Saudi Arabia has always been worried about being encircled.  In the old days of Pan-Arabism and the Soviet Union, the fear was the combination would create a Soviet controlled bloc running from Egypt to Iraq as well as from Egypt to Yemen.  Now the anxiety is that Iran will do something similar using proxies ranging from Hamas and Hezbollah to the Muslim Brotherhood as well as its "official" state ally, Syria.    The Saudi regime is now of the firm view that the US is not sensitive to this potential.

The House of Saud is not willing to believe its own propaganda.  The fear is the combination of gobs of money, Wahhibism, and a more or less popular royal house will not prove to be enough to defeat some full throated, Iranian assisted exercise in local "people power."  The first expression of this belief can be seen in the probable role being played by Saudi officials in the response by Bahrain to the pro-change demonstrators.

There is strong reason to believe (although no direct proof) that the very muscular response of the Bahraini security forces was orchestrated in Saudi Arabia.  The unexpected overnight shift to "dialogue" including the withdrawal of the army from Pearl Roundabout constituted a Bahraini act of regret.  Should the new, velvet glove approach not payoff and quickly, the fifteen mile causeway built by the Saudis exists for a reason far more military then providing a quick weekend getaway for Saudis in search of a drink.

The situation in Bahrain is far from settled.  The (perhaps temporary) back down by the government will probably prove insufficient to end the demonstrations permanently.  The blood of the martyrs will not allow such an easy out.  At the same time the House of Saud is not going to allow any move which smacks of regime change to occur.  While the Saudi army is probably not combat capable against the Iranians or any other real armed force, it is up to the task of squashing unarmed demonstrators.

The Obama administration will have to factor Saudi fears as well as probable Saudi actions into whatever passes as policy regarding Bahrain.  The Saudis will insist on order, the order of the status quo, being maintained against all comers and all American desires.  The Deep Thinkers of Team Obama will have to keep in mind the reality that the word "change" is an obscenity in the minds of the Saudi regime.

Recalling the rumors of Saudi campaign cash flowing into Obama coffers, one cannot help but wonder if the House of Saud believes now that it got value for its money.

Murder, Murder Most Foul

It continues to appear that the government of Afghanistan, a creation of the United States and its associates in the ISAF, is committed to perpetrating judicial homicide on a man named Said Musa.  The crime which will lead Mr Musa to meeting the public hangman is that of having converted to Christianity.

Said Musa is an amputee having lost a leg to a landmine while serving in the Afghan army some years ago.  More recently he has married, sired several children, worked with the Red Cross as an advisor to and facilitator of Afghans who had lost limbs--and become a Christian.  His conversion became a matter of record last May when  his image appeared on television as part of a program featuring private religious services conducted by and for Afghans only.  He was arrested on 31 May as he sought asylum in the German embassy in Kabul.

Since his arrest he has been confined in the most rigorous and debased conditions.  He has been threatened, assaulted, sexually abused, tormented, and tortured.  That was by the other prisoners.  The court operating under the provisions of a constitution which was approved by the US and in part written by American and other foreign experts, convicted Musa of the capital offense of conversion from Islam to Christianity.  It may be noted that Mr Musa received no defense as the lawyers both refused his case and spit in his face--literally.

The government of Hamid Karzai--our guy in Kabul--has justified its action by pointing to the constitution and laws of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.  They have, in essence, hoisted us by our own petard.  They have mocked our notion of the rule of law.

As Paul Marshall commented yesterday, Mr Musa's plight has received little attention in the Western media.  He also noted that Mr Musa has written to President Obama addressing him as "brother."  The salutation was undoubtedly meant in the same way the Apostle Paul wrote to his "brothers and sisters in Christ."  In his letter Said Musa begged for help.  None has been forthcoming beyond a mild chiding from Secretary Clinton.

It is not so much that Mr Musa begs for his life although it is clear that he in a manner akin to that of Jesus hopes very much that the bitter cup will be passed elsewhere.  Indeed, his major plea is for transfer to a less oppressive, less torment ridden prison.  He is willing to die for his faith and according to the dictate of his conscience.

Mr Musa is a martyr in the making.  He is not a martyr of the Muslim sort eager to die provided that in the process of dying he can kill.  Rather he is a most reluctant martyr, prodded to his death not by thoughts of paradise and waiting soulless virgins but by acceptance of the gift of redemption provided by the sacrifice of Jesus, defined in Christian doctrine as simultaneously the son of man and the Son of God, pure in nature in both aspects.  In this way Said Musa is identical to legions of earlier Christian martyrs from the time of the Roman arenas down to modern times in the former Soviet Bloc.

The looming judicial murder of Said Musa underscores in a particularly tragic way the underlying reasons why the effort to build a modern nation-state in Afghanistan has been doomed to fail but also why the US and other civilized states must abandon any notions of peaceful coexistence with states dominated by advocates of political Islam.  It points to the most fundamental reason that relations with Muslim majority states will be asymmetrical at best.

The root cause of failure in Afghanistan is the nature and character of Islam itself.  The same applies to our attempts to modify Iranian behavior or to broker a peace in the Mideast.  Islam in and of itself can provide an absolute barrier.

In ways which are terrifyingly evident, Islam is a religion of insecurity, fear, and hatred.  The theology of Islam is based on fear, fear of hell, fear of somehow, in some way, failing to do what the deity wills.  Islam's endemic insecurity is obvious in its intolerance, its refusal to compete in the marketplace of ideas, theological or otherwise.  Its insecurity is blindingly evident in the sentence of death imposed on Mr Musa for the crime of following his own conscience.

The antidote to both insecurity and fear prescribed by Islam is hatred.  Not only the Iranian government with its "Day of Hate" demonstrations yesterday in Tehran and elsewhere, but Muslim clerics beyond counting have demanded hate, hate of Christians, hate of Jews, hate of idolaters, hate of infidels, hate of apostates, hate of whomsoever we point our bony fingers of blame at.

No religion other than Islam demands its adherents hate.  No Christian pastor, no Jewish rabbi, no Buddhist bonze, no Hindu guru would urge hatred upon his fellows, would demand hate be directed at all who were beyond the pale of narrowly defined community.  Only Islam prescribes death as the necessary punishment for conversion.

That, bucko, is insecurity, fear, and hatred in one small package.  And, the label on the package is "Islam."

Looking at the case of Said Musa and the context surrounding it, one can only wonder at what sort of drugs the Bush/Cheney decision makers were taking when they shifted the American mission in Afghanistan from a purely punitive one to one of "nation-building."  One must also wonder at the good sense of the Obama administration in having failed to understand that while we are arguably winning the military engagements in Afghanistan, we are losing the overall war.

Had we stopped with a purely punitive objective in Afghanistan, we would have seen the last of that benighted place years ago.  Also we would have fired a cautionary shot across the bows of the Pakistanis who favor political Islam.  And, we would not have the blood of Mr Musa on our hands.

The lessons for the future are clear.

If we ever must consider an armed intervention in a Muslim majority venue, the intervention must be sharply focused on punishing the bad guys.  There must be no thought of nation-building or otherwise uplifting the great unwashed.

The other lesson is broader.  Islam is the problem.  The US and other civilized states must not only understand this bitter truth, they must start firm and ongoing programs with the goal of undercutting the ideological appeal of Islam, particularly those forms most given to political expression.  The US and other civilized states as an urgent matter of self-interest and self-defense must put an increasing emphasis on the values and norms of the West most directly responsible for the overall success of the West over the past centuries.  In short, we must blow our horn--loudly.

Full disclosure:  The Geek is not a member or adherent of any faith community.

The Old Whore Keeps Repainting Her Face

War formerly was easy to recognize and define.  In the good old days of not that long ago, most (but, critically, not all) wars were fought between states using organized, identifiable armed forces.  Almost as much ink as blood was spilled on defining the nature of belligerents, the rights of non-combatants, and the limits which might be applied reasonably in the use of armed force.

The exception to the readily defined inter-state war was insurgency.  But even that breed of cat came to be defined and understood over the past two hundred years.  Over time the customary rights and immunities were extended from uniformed soldiers under national flags to those seeking the overthrow of the established political order by force and violence.  After World War II the major powers of the world even came to official agreement regarding the rights of an occupied citizenry to resist the occupying forces even though in the real world these understandings are often more honored in the breech than in the observance.

In most recent years the introduction of non-state actors, part time insurgents, full time terrorists, criminal gangs with ambitions which transcend mere minor league avarice have come to complicate the old picture with results which are most discomfiting to policy makers and military operators alike.  Accompanying these instrumental changes has been a major shift in motivation on the part of advocates of violence.  High on the list here are the reawakening of religious passions and the profit motive.

Both religion and profit have raised the attractiveness of the newer and less readily defined forms of war.  When looking at venues as disparate as Afghanistan and Mexico, the observer not only sees the prominence of the newer forms of non-state, non-uniformed combatant forces but also the potency of both belief and the quest for profit.  For practitioners of older forms of war and coercive diplomacy, the development of alternative means and motives has been an unwelcome and all too often unrecognized phenomenon.

To look briefly at Afghanistan, it has become unpleasantly evident that the power of the mosque, or, to err on the side of accuracy, the local cleric, has more than simply offset the effectiveness of both the escalation of American forces and the new technologies of battlefield supremacy.  It has become the key to looming American defeat.  Not to put too fine a point on this Afghan dagger, the universal message of the thousands of clerics holding forth every Friday has been the need for solidarity in resistance to the foreign infidel.  Given that the mosque and the Friday sermon are the single most important source of news and opinion in Afghanistan, this is a development filled with difficulty for the US.

The resolutely anti-American, anti-foreigner, anti-West, anti-infidel message not only empowers those in the Afghan population most opposed to the outside presence, it undercuts all the well-intentioned efforts at "nation building" in the country.  The total inability of the US and its allies to sell their good intentions to the clerical establishment of Afghanistan has assured that each, every, and all the dollars and lives expended in the quest to transform Afghanistan have been wasted.

The clerical resistance couched as it is in the compelling language of belief has both grown and become more strident year to year since the first American boots hit the Afghan soil.  When the US made the fateful choice to switch objectives in Afghanistan from those of a simple punitive expedition to ones of national transformation, the door was immediately opened to the linkage of faith and nationalism--a linkage which cannot be either undone or defeated.

The single greatest reason the security situation has continued to deteriorate year over year is not the open border (although this is a non-trivial consideration) but rather the monolithic opposition of the Muslim clerics.  The opposition is so solid and so widespread that it has political implications, as when Karzai echoes the complaints of the clerics.  Taken with the corruption and inefficiency of the Karzai government, his necessary tilt in favor of the clergy serves to put the international coalition under stresses which will enervate its effectiveness, fatally.

The US is posed for failure not because the opposition has any military advantage.  It is posed for failure not because it has fought the war with inappropriate tactics and methods.  It is facing failure because the faith which motivates the opposition as well as the uncommitted majority of Afghans has proven obdurate.  The US is facing failure ultimately because decision makers failed to consider the nature of the human terrain in the country and limit the goals of the war to those which would be acceptable to the majority of the human terrain.

In short, the US and its allies are likely to be defeated because the Bush/Cheney administration did not recognize the nature of war as understood by Afghans.  As a result of this, the administration allowed or encouraged a redefinition of goals which was way, way too expansive.  At the end of it all, what can be written is that the US was defeated not by bullets or by the enemy having a better theory of victory but by the very nature of the human terrain and its understanding of war.

To our immediate south Mexico is engaged in a prolonged and very bloody conflict.  The irony is that the Mexican government cannot define accurately what is going on beyond the self-evident outpouring of corpses on the streets of Mexico.  The US government is no better off being unable to decide if Mexico is in the throes of insurgency or simply an unusually large scale turf battle between criminal syndicates.  Not that the semantics matter to the average Mexican as he steps over the blood and bodies of the previous day's festivities.

But, what is at work in Mexico is not an academic dispute over semantics or theories of conflict.  It is hard if not impossible to fight any sort of war without knowing what is at stake, what would constitute the better state of peace for which the war is being waged.

Four years ago when he launched the effort against large scale criminal, primarily drug trafficking, gangs, President Calderon probably believed he was inaugurating a simple program of robust law enforcement.  Whether policemen or soldiers did the job, it was the traditional task of compelling acceptance of the law's dictates by the criminally inclined.  There was nothing new at work here.

Whatever Calderon's intentions might have been, no matter what he expected, the outcome was both far more prolonged and bloody as well as inherently destabilizing than he or anyone anticipated.  The Mexican police and military quickly became simply one more combatant in an already underway multi-party struggle over territory and markets.  The government unintentionally became one more gang in a several gang armed contest.

Paradoxically, the entrance of the government allowed greater inter-gang violence.  Whether because of suborned treachery or simply as a fallout from its efforts, the armed forces and police would tilt toward one gang or another in each of the several contested areas.  By so doing, the security forces assured a process of consolidation would occur which would ultimately strengthen the successful gang in its goal of having a "law free zone" in which to carry out its profit making activities.

The process favored the criminals from the beginning.  The drug smugglers knew why they were fighting.  They had goals.  They defined the better state of peace.  By limiting its concept of operations to one of traditional law enforcement, the government was actually clueless in the real world.

The narco-trafficking gangs wanted two things: To eliminate rivals in the several corridors and to establish law free zones so they could operate without fear.  With a few psychopathic exceptions, the leaders of the several syndicates were indifferent as to which of the two traditional methods of accomplishing these goals would be used.  Silver or lead, the choice was up to the recipient not the grantor.

The combination of means as well as the unity of goals gave the advantage to the criminals.  Had Calderon never initiated his Made In Mexico war on drugs, the contest would have been settled with rather less blood and much more corruption.  One gang would have bought out the survivors of the others and established a profitable monopoly.  The law free zones would have been created through corruption not killing and terror.

This conclusion is predicated not on some belief that Mexicans are naturally given to crime and corruption to any unusual degree.  Rather it is based on the history of Mexico, the long-standing traditions of buying one's peace, one's freedom from authority.  More it is based on the equally hoary social, political, and economic dynamics of Mexico, including the remote indifference of the Mexican elites and their tool, the government, from the realities of life as they impinge on the majority of people.

The challenge presented by the Calderon Declaration of War resulted in the development of a form of war not seen even in the days of "narco-democracy" in Columbia two or three decades ago.  The new form of war represents a hybrid of gang conflict and defensive insurgency.  Over the past four years the criminal syndicates shifted from use of graft and corruption to secure territory to a reliance on violence and terror to create the necessary law free zones.

As a result, one which was easily predictable, the gangs have become the de facto shadow government in large swaths of Mexico's border states.  These same states are productive of more than a quarter of Mexico's GDP.  Most of their population and more of their territory now exist outside the authority of Mexico's government or governmental forces.

By virtue of not recognizing that the government was embarking on a new form of the old game of war, the Mexicans have lowered the national flag over a goodly part of their state.  At the same time the criminals have become a de facto government, in effect levying taxes--and collecting them, establishing whatever passes for law along most of the border, and have expanded their criminal enterprises into areas far removed from mere smuggling of drugs to the US.  This means the gangs have given themselves both more political will and more means to act in lieu of the official government.

This does not imply that Mexico is a failed or failing state.  It does imply that Mexico is in a far more desperate contest for survival in recognizable form.  It implies that US policy with respect to assisting the Mexican government has failed as well.

This failure will provide more challenges for the US in the months and years to come.  As the smugglers become more ambitious and more far reaching in their efforts and connections, the probability of diplomatic linkages with states hostile to the US increase as does the risk of adverse personnel and supplies being inserted into the US.

Other than the outcome, there is no real close resemblance between traditional forms of war and what is happening in Mexico.  When night falls, either the Mexican government will or will not be in control of the border states.  It either will or will not have unimpeded sovereignty over its territory.  Right now it looks very dismal for Mexico.

The irony here is that the impending Mexican failure like that of the US in Afghanistan is rooted in a failure to identify accurately the new features of war in play.  It is also rooted, again like the American failure in Afghanistan, in not realising that the local folk define what constitutes war and how to fight it.  It is, again like Afghanistan, based on an insistence that there is only one play book for war fighting--and the government wrote the book, not the locals.