T.R,s Timeless Insight--Today More Than Ever

During the run up to American participation in World War I as Woodrow Wilson was trying  to frame a reason for our coming into this purely European civil war, former president Theodore Roosevelt--personally in favor of the US going to war--wrote to his fellow progressive Republican, Henry Cabot Lodge, Senator from Massachusetts.  TR knew a thing or two about war.  He knew even more about the American people.  This shows in his words.

"In my experience," he wrote,"the American public is not disposed to overseas wars unless there is a great cause involved or the goal is plainly clear."  While the ex-president believed there was a "great cause" to be fought in the trenches of the Western Front, he properly concluded that it was not possible yet to convey this to the great mass of We the People in a way which would assure full-fledged support.  He was right.  Even later, after Wilson had put forth his vision of the "great cause" such as to gain nearly monolithic support, it was necessary in the estimate of the administration to put into place the most draconian laws restricting free speech and assembly in the Republic's history and back these laws with a shadow army of millions of hyper-patriotic snoops.

In the aftermath of the war when the noble vision of Wilson turned to foggy and nasty reality, the American public recoiled against any involvement in the affairs of Europe and Asia.  This, the era of isolationism, made both World War II and the ensuing Cold War the next thing to inevitable.

The lesson was and is clear.  "Great causes" must be real and not the artifacts of ideology or ideals.  A goal which is "plainly clear" is far more important than the purported greatness of the cause.

The lessons to be derived from TR's insight are applicable right now as the US considers when, how, and at what speed we should/must ramp down our war in Afghanistan.  The original intent, the goal, of the invasion of Afghanistan way back in the Dark Age, was twofold: Remove by killing or capture Osama bin Laden and his fellows of al-Qaeda; punish the Taliban regime for having harbored al-Qaeda even after 9/11 and repeated diplomatic efforts to accomplish the capture of the al-Qaeda heavyweights.

The goal was "plainly clear."  And, the motive did, in the estimate of most Americans, constitute a "great cause."  Not since 7 Decemember 41 had there been such uniformity of conviction regarding both the necessity and justice of going to war.  The TR dictum had been followed, well and truly.

Almost before the first American boot hit the ground in Afghanistan, the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld Neocon Ninny crowd betrayed the "plainly clear" goal and undercut the credibility of the "great cause."  This was accomplished by a surprising, even shocking, set of awesomely stupid decisions driven by skewed perceptions of the requirements of political opinion both domestic and foreign.

The administration came to the conclusion that the American public or at least the left-leaning elite would support the war if and only if the American goals were enlarged to encompass the creation of a modern Western style nation-state in all its full splendor.  It was the apparent belief of the decision makers that the war would be gutted of public support without the goal of nation-building replacing the narrow, "plainly clear" one of destroying al-Qaeda and administering condign punishment upon Mullah Omar and the Taliban.

That decision as well as its predicate were both as wrong as a cat barking.

Another decision, this one powered by diplomatic considerations, made the situation immeasurably worse.  In total spite of the reasonably well developed intelligence picture which showed the long standing relation between the Pakistani military and intelligence service with Taliban and its protectorate, al-Qaeda, the administration failed to put sufficient pressure on Islamabad to seal the border or arrest fleeing Talib and al-Qaeda personnel who flooded across the border with their Pakistani hand-holders.  Nor did the US provide adequate and properly positioned forces to do the job at the border itself.  (In this context it might be recalled that credible testimony exists as to American units receiving stop orders as they closed in on critical border crossing points.)

The Afghan situation was changed quickly into a protracted multi-party insurgency in which the foreign interventionary forces had neither the numbers nor the doctrine to convert defeat into victory at least in a reasonable amount of time.  The Iraq invasion--which also fails the TR test completely as regards "great cause" and, again by self-imposed mission-leap, fails the goal being "clearly plain"--supervened to assure the situation in Afghanistan would improve only from the perspective of Taliban, the Haqqani network, al-Qaeda and, of course, the Pakistanis.

Now, not quite two years into our belated effort to retrieve some semblance of success in the place, the combination of the killing of Osama bin Laden, the new focus on the deficit and government economy as well as an election only eighteen months in the offing, the debate has shifted from how-can-we-succeed to how-can-we-get-out.  There is no doubt but that We the People have lost any and all desire to keep on keeping on in Afghanistan.

The largest single reason for this widely held view is not the passage of time.  Nor is it the quite modest losses incurred by American forces.  Rather it is simply because our "cause" there is not "great" and our goal is most definitely not "plainly clear."

Rather than engage in a sterile and bitter controversy over how many troops should be withdrawn when and with what effect, the US would be better off to define what our goal is now that the icon of terror is sleeping with the fishes.  Is our goal now what it was in the beginning, the defense of the US and other civilized states by suppressing the offensive capacities of al-Qaeda along with convincing the adherents of Taliban to stop giving "Islamic hospitality" to groups which practice violent political Islam against Western targets?  Or is our goal the more expansive one of nation-building together with forceful counterinsurgency?

The first alternative is cheaper.  Counter-terrorist operations require a lower number of boots on the ground--albeit a highly skilled and specialist bunch in those boots.  The offense-defense of counter-terrorist operations allows us to ignore the nature and character of Afghan society, polity, culture, and economy.  As long as the Afghan government and its armed forces offer no hindrance to our efforts, we can overlook any and all objectionable features of the regime and its personalities.

The downside to this operational concept is the possible blowback from Americans offended by our having left the Afghan population at the "mercy" of political parties espousing political Islam.  As a number of Americans are offended deeply by the practices of some Muslim regimes, it is probable that there will be significant opposition to drawing back from the goal of seeing Afghanistan become a stable, democratic, multi-party, free enterprise state with an honest, transparent, and responsive government which includes an independent judiciary.

The other option is, quite simply, the pursuit of the totally impossible.  Even a successful counter insurgency campaign will end with negotiations, negotiations which will see Taliban and others as part of the government. The ultimate result will be women in burkas, and clerics in charge.  Perhaps not as absolutely as during the heyday of Taliban dot one, but bad by liberal Western norms and values.  But, no purely military effort can do more than kill the most highly motivated and least given to compromise among the insurgents while placing effective pressure on the others to join in the process of negotiation.  The military by itself cannot make the status quo government legitimate either functionally or existentially.  Nor can the military by itself create an atmosphere which draws the support of the uncommitted majority.  That is up to the indigenous government.

The time is here for the Obama administration to choose one of the two options.  Choose and then make the goal "plainly clear."  At the same time the administration would not be wrong to insist that there was a "great cause" underlying our efforts in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.  That cause is no less than the critical one of protecting the country against future attack by Muslims who are motivated by the goals of violent political Islam.

Even the smaller, less costly in both lives and money alternative will not see us totally out of Afghanistan for many years.  It will also necessitate putting the real screws on Islamabad to go into North Waziristan so as to put actual pressure on the black turban guys to put down the guns and stick to preaching and stoning women.

Years ago the Geek predicted that the conflict between the civilized states and proponents of violent political Islam will last so long as to render the Cold War a short lived blip in our history.  It will still be going on when President Obama is getting social security--that is if it still exists in twenty years.

Memorial Day

The holiday we know today as Memorial Day started as a commemoration to Northern troops who were killed or died of disease during the War Between the States.  There were many to mourn.  The fatalities both North and South were massive, the largest ever experienced in relation to total population size by we Americans.

The awesome butcher's bill was the consequence not only of the size of the armies involved or the new technologies of killing developed and fielded during the war.  The greatest single cause of the body count, a body count so large as to permanently change the American way of warfighting arose from the nature of the war.  The American Civil War was a total war of national survival for each side.  The struggle was existential with a capital "E."

Since the guns fell silent over the battlefields of that war nearly one hundred fifty years ago, the US has engaged in only one war which might be described accurately as an existential affair, a total war of national survival.  That war was, of course, World War II.

Even if the Imperial Japanese government had not made entering the war easy as well as obligatory, there would have been no realistic way in which the US could have sat on its hands much longer.  It was apparent to many thoughtful people that desirable as the peace of isolation might seem, it was an impossible dream.  A world dominated by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan would have constituted a world entirely too hostile to both the defining core values of our country as well as its national interests to be long endured.

World War II may not have been as it has been termed "the good war" as no war can be said to be "good," but it was a most necessary war, a justifiable war, or, to be brutal, a least-worst option sort of war.  By the time the Japanese representatives signed the instrument of surrender in September 1945, the US had fought two existential conflicts, two wars of national survival in eighty years.

A lot of men were killed in each of these existential wars.  Only the fact that each war was existential and total provides justification for the great loss of life.  The lives of these men made and preserved the nation-state.  Without their violent deaths, the US would not have become and remained what it has been.   The modern United States, indeed, much of the modern world, has been erected on the corpses of these men.

(A point of personal privilege here.  The Geek cannot stomach terms such as "sacrifice" or "gave their lives" or "fallen," or any of the other commonly used terms in a vain attempt to cover up the brutal reality that these men were killed.  None sought out death.  Death, violent death, was inflicted upon them.  These men had done to them what they would have done to their enemy had the toss of fortune's coin only gone differently.  There ain't no way around it: War is a matter of killing or getting killed, of getting or getting got.  It cannot and should not be prettified.)

All  of the other wars we Americans have fought over the past century and a half, the Spanish-American War, World War I, the Korean War, the War in Vietnam, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, all the myriad of skirmishes, interventions, raids, humanitarian relief missions gone awry, were not matters of national existence nor even material national interest but rather national policy.  All were limited wars in support of policy.  Arguably, most were neither necessary nor justifiable in any realistic way.

Being wars men were killed in all.  A lot of men.  Even the lowest cost of these many nasty little policy exercises saw scores of American men killed.

After the Civil War, the American view of war and how to fight it became one not of avoiding war but rather of finding ways to both fight and win which resulted in the fewest number of Americans being killed.  More than any other state, the US sought and employed technologies of killing which were most effective at the lowest risk to American lives.  The hectatombs of the War Between the States taught Americans that there is nothing heroic in getting killed.  As General George S. Patton Jr. put it, "You do not win by dying for your country.  You win by making the other sonofabitch die for his."

Even though the US has been very successful at limiting friendly deaths, the reality remains that American troops are killed in the course of limited wars in support of policy.  More importantly, these men are killed without the ultimate justification that their deaths preserved the nation from existential obliteration.

It is for this basic reason that We the People question and finally turn against the continuation of limited wars in support of policy should such not be successfully completed at a low body count in short order.  Our repugnance for "small" wars being waged for obscure reasons of state has had several equally negative ramifications for the way in which the US approaches the difficult subjects of national security interest and coercive diplomacy.

One of these is the predilection of administrations (of both parties) to oversell the war or to overstate what is at stake in the conflict or to expand the mission so as to make it more politically acceptable.  The prototype for all three courses of action was President Woodrow Wilson's framing of our entrance into World War I.  But the Wilson approach was eagerly, if even unconsciously, followed by later administrations.

The War in Vietnam was oversold and overstated.  So too was the invasion of Iraq.  The operation in Afghanistan was reprogrammed from one of a purely punitive nature to the impossible goal of "nation-building" in order to put a proper gloss on the underlying reality.  Even the most easily justified war in support of policy, the Korean "police action," fell prey to mission-creep following the invasion of Inchon when the goal changed from restoring the status quo ante to that of eliminating North Korea as a functioning state.

Another effect of addressing the American distaste for wars in support of policy is that of prevarication.  While the "Jive at Five" press briefings of the Vietnam period stand as the towering monument to this particular attempt to stave off the effects of public disenchantment, the same dynamic has been at work in every American war following World War II.  Successes have been magnified.  Difficulties have been downplayed.  Mood music intended to sooth the potentially savage beast of political disaffection has been played often and loudly.

Worst of all, the various administrations have seen it necessary to build coalitions in order to give the appearance that the US was not fighting a limited war in support of American policy and national interests but rather was acting in concert with other states in a common, preferably universally supported, cause.  By avoiding the public appearance of fighting a war by and for ourselves, the administrations have undercut the clarity of purpose, certainty of goals, and unity of effort necessary to bring the war to a quick and successful conclusion.

By yoking ourselves to coalitions which may be far more an artifact of diplomacy than an organic expression of coinciding national interests, the US both complicates the problem of pursuing critical national interests and renders the achievement of these interests less rather than more likely.  The chimera of multilateral action is sought in order to lower the political risks to an administration which seeks to wage a limited war in support of a policy which it perceives as critical to national or strategic interests of the US.

The history of limited war shows that such wars are the least likely to be successful.  That is, they are the least likely to lead to a better state of peace at the end of fighting.  In the past, these wars have been quite unlikely to provide a firm base for permanent peace in the contested area.  In largest measure this has been the consequence of failing to understand properly the linkage between diplomacy of the negotiation sort and diplomacy of the fighting variety.

More than a contest between organized bodies of armed men, a war is a contest of political wills.  Each party to a war is wagering that it has the greater political will.  Each party is putting the lives of its men at risk as a demonstration of its determination to win.  Battles are a way of upping the ante, corpses are chips pushed to the center of the table.

One of our limited wars in support of policy--the one in Korea--put this linkage in stark relief.  The most bitter as well as most pointless combats were waged over obscure terrain features of no intrinsic value while the armistice talks were in progress.  It took the Americans a while to tumble to the fact that these battles, exemplified by the one at Pork Chop Hill, were being used by the Chinese as a demonstration of their political will--and a test of ours.  The side which was willing and able to quite literally "waste" the greater number of lives was the side possessing the greater political will.

This key lesson taught by the killing of Americans on bleak hillsides in Korea during 1952 and 53 had been forgotten fifteen years later as the North Vietnamese used the same process during the Paris Peace Talks.  Nor has the US remembered these lessons today when they would be applicable to combining talking and killing in the context of Afghanistan.

To put the matter simply and in no way oversimplified, the only way in which the limited war in support of policy can achieve a better state of peace and thus begin to justify the leaving of American bones to (metaphorically) bleach in some far away place with an unpronounceable name is the proper combination of the diplomacy of talking and that of killing.  Simply declaring victory and heading home or (as in Vietnam) establishing a "date certain" and then cutting off all funding for the war neither redeems failure nor makes right the killing of American personnel.

In the total war, the existential struggle between peers, there is no substitute for victory as General MacArthur properly noted.  However, the reality in the limited war in support of policy is different.  In this kind of war, the "small" war of limited lethality, limited means, limited scope, and limited goals, there is a substitute for victory.  The substitute is the achievement of a better state of peace by demonstrating superior political will.  The means of doing this is the proper linkage between the killing kind of diplomacy and the palaver variety.

Talking does not mean--nor should it--that the shooting must stop.  Nor does the continuation of the shooting render talking either impossible or unproductive.  Now and in the future when wars will continue to be of the limited policy directed sort, the realization of the crucial nature of political will is needed along with a commitment to the capacity to talk and shoot at the same time.

Sure, it is a multitasking approach, but we Americans invented the concept so we ought to be good at it.  Why not give it a try in Afghanistan?  If we can  pull it off there we will be in very good shape for the many small wars yet to come.

The Power Of Values--And the Value Of Power

In his speech to parliament in Westminster last week, President Obama made much of the values shared between the US and the UK.  Leaving aside his total--and, hopefully, intentional--misstatements regarding the history of the Anglo-American relationship, his remarks did constitute a fair evaluation of the importance of shared values, norms of behavior, understandings of the nature of government and its relationship to the citizenry, as well as the ties of history and tradition.  His remarks were both accurate and long overdue.

The fine words were also in large measure irrelevant.

There is a very real and easily demonstrated potency resident in the core defining values and norms of both American and British origin.  The particular features of both make each quite attractive in the estimate of many people around the world.  While the greatest gravity well pulling people to American shores has been and is economic, the magnetic attraction of the values and norms, the world views, the understanding of the dignity and worth of the individual which provide the foundation of economic success must not be underestimated.  Even those who come to the US--or the UK--due to the potential of personal prosperity do not undervalue the benefits of those intangibles which constitute a definable "way of life."

The value of the cultural, social, and political aspects of a country's life is enshrined in the unfortunate phrase, "soft power."  What makes this phrase uniquely unsatisfying is the implication that "soft" aspects of a state's potency are somehow inferior to those of more kinetic sort, such as the size of the navy or the number of deployable battalions.  It is always necessary to keep in mind that it is the "soft" aspects of a country which provide the basis for the "hard" features of economic and military power.

Mr Obama was right to pay proper attention to and give appropriate credit to the shared values and imperatives which have served to bring the UK and US closer together, to provide a broad set of coinciding national interests which allow for expansion or particular expression by normal diplomatic means.  In a very real sense the root of the "special relationship" is the ease with which "vanilla" diplomacy can be employed.

However, it is necessary to point out that the operative word is "special."  In this context special implies unique.  The relative absence of any need for any coercion.  The same applies to American relations with other English speaking, UK descended states such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.  While there are differences between Washington and the capitals of these states as has also been the case with the UK, these can and have been resolved quickly and with very little stress or pain by working from the extensive base of common values and shared interests.

What Mr Obama overlooked in his paean to the Magna Carta, etc. is the same does not apply with most other countries on Earth.  The US may have a wide set of common values with Western Europe.  Once that area is left behind, the number of shared values, norms, customs, imperatives and world views shared between the US and We the People on the one hand and the governments or citizens of other countries shrinks--often starkly.

Mr Obama implied that the West has been very successful in exporting its common values and imperatives.  This has been a recurrent theme in many of his recent statements.  It is also a something of a cliched meme within the elites of the West.  Like all cliches, this one contains a germ of truth.  But it is a truth which must not be taken too far, exaggerated too much.

The events of the "Arab Spring" provide a perfect context in which to see the potent temptation to believe entirely too much in the power of such made in the West values as democracy.  To Westerners in general and Americans in particular living in an environment in which all the hard, bitter but necessary preparatory work has been done, the inherent value of democracy is too self-evident to require parsing.  We run on the comfortable but hallucinatory belief that the voice of the people expressed in an election constitutes a sovereign remedy for all that ails a nation.

Our belief in the self-evident righteousness of human rights as we define such is similar.  If allowed to do so any people, all people, everywhere without regard to the larger cultural context or history will subscribe to the same understanding of human rights as we do.  Indeed, if one runs down the list of American values, norms, customs, and imperatives the same dynamic is seen.  If it works here, it will work everywhere.  If we believe in it so also will everyone everywhere.

This set of self-imposed delusions is particularly striking in its impact on the elites of the West, including that of the US.  It resides at the root of the two "multis" which so often confounds effective foreign and national security policy and manufactures social tensions which otherwise need not exist.  The first of these "multis" is "multiculturalism.  The second is "multilateralism."

The basis of multi-culturalism is the specious and pernicious notion that all cultures are equal in all respects.  No one culture may see itself as ethically superior to others.  No culture may be seen as legitimately dominate--even if its members constitute the defining majority of a population and have largely created that society's values, norms, and imperatives.

There is an irony here.  It is an irony which evidently escapes both Mr Obama and fellow members of the American elite.  On the one hand they celebrate the "soft" power strengths of Western and American culture.  On the other they maintain that it is wrong, even offensively arrogant, to maintain that the culture of the US and the rest of the West is superior to those extant elsewhere in the world.

Duh?

The second of the "multis," multilateralism, denies that the US or any country can act without the approval of others, the OK of the "international community."  On one level there is nothing objectionable about the concept of seeking allies in a common effort to a collectively defined goal.  That has long been at the heart of diplomacy.  It has long been at the center of effective warfighting.

The problem comes when the concept is taken too far.  This point comes when international structures are given priority over national sovereignty.  Mr Obama and his "team" crossed this point, at least as regards the UK, when he and they exalted the Lisbon Treaty and the new, improved European Union at the expense of the national sovereignty of the UK.

Mr Obama, again in common with the academics, journalists, politicians, and others of the elite, sees the supra-national as inherently superior to the national.  He and they view nationalism and national interest with the utmost of suspicion if not total hatred.  Collective fictions such as the mythical beast, "the international community," as well as supra-national entities such as the EU and UN are viewed by Mr Obama and his ilk as morally superior to individual sovereign states.  These people sincerely believe that supra-national bodies are both disinterested enough and broadly constituted enough to be trusted with solving any and all problems which might beset not only the world, or a region, but an individual state.

It is this understanding of the moral authority and disinterested nature of the supra-national entity as compared with the individual nation-state which has given rise to the new form of intervention in the affairs of a state.  The specific manifestations of this belief have been and are being seen around the world.  From the former Yugoslavia during the mid-nineties to the application of R2P in Libya, the causes and effects of reliance upon an overextended understanding of multilateralism are highly visible.

Equally obvious are the failures of a reliance on the "international community" and supra-national entities.  There is another irony resident at the edges of multilateralism of the expansive sort.  As is so evident today, the tensions between R2P and national interest are seen in the bombers over Libya as compared with the silent sky over Syria.  The failed state of Somalia as well as the failing state of Yemen stand as monuments to the inappropriateness or uselessness of the multilateralist approach to internal failures of a state.  Enough said.

In an ideal world predicated on the successful exportation of Western values coupled with the moral suasion of the "international community," Vladimir Putin would be the tribune of open, transparent, free wheeling democracy.  In that world the Trolls of Beijing would become exemplars of human rights.  Advocates of violent political Islam would take off their suicide vests and forswear even political subversion becoming open participants in the marketplace of ideas willing to accept defeat graciously should that be the will of the people.

Mr Obama was silent on the subject of force in his speech in Westminster.  This was to be expected.  He, once more in common with the Western elite generally, finds the use of "hard"power objectionable.  Even though Western aircraft were delivering hot metal on target in Libya and the president was riding a wave of popularity generated by the killing of Osama bin Laden, military force remained a subject not fit for polite company.

In some deep recess of his mind, however, Mr Obama is undoubtedly aware that in the real world values without the force necessary to protect them and even extend them constitute no particular advantage.  Absent a competent military and the political will to use it, the US and the West would rapidly become an endangered species.  Ultimately, the position and influence of the US (and the West) rests upon its ability and will to use force effectively and decisively in support of policy.

When night falls, it is impossible to separate the power of values from the value of power, military power.  That is a ground truth.  It may be a hard truth for Mr Obama and others of the elite to accept, but that is the way the world and its human cargo operates, like it or not.

Over the long sweep of history, the values of the US, of the West, may subvert those of other, arguably inferior origin.  Until that day comes (if it ever does), there is no substitute for force--except surrender.

Those Paks Never Give It A Rest

Farahnaz Ispahani, a chief adviser to Pakistani president Zardari, has made a modest proposal to the US.  No doubt but with the most straight of faces the man has the unmitigated nerve to propose that We the People move immediately to provide a "Marshall Plan" for Pakistan.  (Please note that while the link is to a Pakistani site, the Ispahani proposal was put forth in an op-ed piece on USA Today, but the Geek was too lazy to search for this.)

The way Pakistani politics is structured we can be certain that Ispahani would not have penned the piece had it not been pre-approved by his boss.  So it can be taken as a trial balloon launched by the most senior levels of the civilian government(?) of Pakistan.  It is  official.

Not only official but also a disgusting travesty.  Part of the travesty is the man's probably willful failure to comprehend the nature of the original Marshall Plan, the iconic model of self-interested but nonetheless altruistic foreign aid.

First, the Plan was not aimed at any one country but rather was open to all European states including the Soviet Union and those old nations of Middle Europe which had fallen under the sway of the Red Army.  It was a mechanism for the sorting out of friends from enemies at least in major part, and in this it was quite successful.

Second, the intent of the Plan was the forcing of European joint decision making.  Individual countries might have their own shopping lists, but a priority was placed upon those projects which would benefit the region to the greatest extent.  There was a desire on the part of the US to see greater and more rapid European integration on the economic and political levels alike.

Third, it was necessary for the recipients of Plan aid to spend the majority of the money in the US.  The real selling point to Congress was the blunt reality that the money would be recycled to the US and thus assist in post-war economic readjustment at home.

None of these factors are present in Pakistan.  There is no need to force Pakistan to choose a side--it has already done that in practice if not in rhetoric.  There is no need to foster regional integration.  The Pakistanis have a concept of integration which extends as far as Afghanistan.  It is called operational dominance.

Finally, the Pakistanis would like to spend the money wherever they please.  It might, for example, best suit the needs and hopes of Islamabad best if the mulcted money were to be spent with the Trolls of Beijing and not with the Capitalist Infidels of the US.

The president and his man seem to believe that Pakistan deserves largess without end simply because some three thousand Pakistani troops (primarily from the undertrained, poorly equipped and usually unpaid Frontier Corps and not the regular army) have been killed in conflict with the Taliban et al.  Should we cruel and heartless infidels not think that is sufficient sacrifice of lives, the presidential adviser throws in the two thousand police who have died purportedly at the hands of the jihadi.

The Marshall Plan was not American atonement for the European lives lost in World War II.  It was not the product of a collective feeling of guilt over having failed to prevent the outbreak of the war or of having entered the war only after Pearl Harbor.  Rather, it was a piece of calculated self-interest as was the creation of NATO, a carefully considered mechanism of defense against a perceived threat.

Ispahani makes the usual attempt to preempt this approach.  He alleges that massive economic aid will provide the necessary basis for internal improvement which will automatically reduce the appeal of violent political Islam.

There is a word for this: Crap!

There no evidence that poverty on its own is correlated positively with violent political Islam.  Indeed, there is evidence behind the contention that violent political Islam is far more the province of the better off, better educated members of society--including that of Pakistan.  The money which has gone to direct support of Pakistani development projects after surviving the hazards of graft, corruption, kickbacks, and assorted insider deals has not shown any benefit accruing either to the image of the US or the conditions of life affecting the recipient communities.

The record of previous civilian aid programs ranging from the building of dams to the provision of emergency food aid is a dreary and disgusting tale of misappropriation, illegal and improper diversion, and, even when every thing goes correctly, a resulting sense of Pakistani entitlement.  (Think back and recall the farmer whose fields and property had survived the floods last year due to an American designed and constructed dam.  Was he appreciative?  No way!  He was bent out of shape because the Americans had not been back to properly maintain and upgrade the dam and its associated irrigation projects.)

President Zardari and his advisers would be better off if they were to contemplate the real causes of violent political Islam which has inflicted so much alleged damage, death, and despair on their country.  The real causes are simple.

There is a misplaced sense of victimhood focusing on India and its alleged Satanic supporters, Israel and the US.

Then there is the ultimate impact of the program of "Islamification" instituted by Zia more than twenty years ago.  The importation of the austere Saudi form of Islam along with Pakistani modifications has provided more than one generation with the mythology of Islamic superiority, Islamic entitlement, Islamic victimization which has looped together with the preexisting sense of Pakistan having been denied its deserved place of sub-continent supremacy by the machinations of India.

Then, of course, there is the success of ISI through its Wing S in creating and operating groups predicated on violent political Islam as a substitute for more conventional forms of war.  As Frankenstein's monster escaped its creator's control so also have the advocates of violent political Islam.

To any objective observer, the problems of Pakistan are those of Pakistani manufacture.  They have all been made in Islamabad or Rawalpindi.  For decades now the powers that be in Pakistan have rejected an honest search for peace with India, preferring a sort of forever war.  They have also turned their backs on conventional war in favor of nuclear poker and very lethal use of terror.  It is totally unsurprising that they are now being burned by the inevitable blowback.

The same intellectual bankruptcy seen in the forever war with India and the use of violent political Islam as a proxy is seen in the arguments advanced by Ispahani and his boss.  They, like the government and military in general, know only one trick--bluster and extort.  This is how they met Secretary Clinton today.  This is what rests behind the demand for a new Marshall Plan.

If the Obama administration has any sense at all, any orientation as to time and place, it will make clear that, to quote Maxwell Smart, "The trick is old!  The trick is stupid!"  And in this case the trick will work no longer.  To say that the US has no options in the region other than to continue to pay Pakistan off and hope for the best is to show a level of intellect such as to make a tapeworm seem like a genius.

We have options.  It is certain that the administration knows perfectly well what they are.  The only question is whether or not it has the political will to take a better course than business as usual.  It may be time to tell the lads in Islamabad that they best peddle their goods to a different buyer, say, China.

The African Union Is Off Its Meds Again

There are some real problems in Africa.  Problems which well deserve the full attention of the African Union's Peace and Security Committee.  This crew is chaired by Ramtane Lamamra, who should be a very busy man.

Insofar as Mr Lamamra is busy it is not with the war in Somalia.  Nor is it with the invasion and occupation of Abyei by Sudan.  No, these are mere bagatelles in the estimate of Mr Lamamra and his colleagues on the Peace and Security Committee--or so it appears.

The African Union and its Peace and Security Committee are meeting in Addas Abba with only one pressing item on their agenda.  That issue is Libya.  To err on the side of accuracy, the issue is not so much Libya per se but rather the AU's perception that it has been shunted to the sidelines as "an observer in this calamity."  Jean Ping, another AU heavyweight, echoes the plaint of African irrelevancy.

The AU is desperately keen on ending the NATO program of air strikes.  Mr Ping and Mr Lamamra are of the expressed view that it is terribly, terribly necessary that the NATO planes sit silent and bereft of bombs on the runway if a political solution is to be found for Libya.  The AU is also quite sure that it has a plan, a road map to use their term, which will lead to a peaceful and successful outcome in Libya.

The problem in the estimate of the AU is the noise of the exploding bombs is so loud that no one will listen to their plan.  The minor detail that the AU plan allows Brother Leader to remain in power while the details of change are worked out and this is quite, quite unacceptable to the rebels seems to be unimportant--at least in the estimate of Mr Ping and Mr Lamamra.  The unpleasant matter of the rebels having rejected the AU approach is not seen by the AU as important.

The rebels are suspicious of the AU.  They have taken the uncharitable view that the strong financial ties between the AU and Gaddafi renders the organization a less than neutral party in the present matter.  Of course, the rebels are simply giving due recognition to reality--Gaddafi has been a major money man behind not only the AU but a wide selection of African politicians including not a few current heads of state.

The AU blithely overlooks the realistic position of the rebels.  The organization also ignores its own record of complete incompetence in dealing effectively with the armed chaos of assorted collapsing African states over the past couple of decades.  The body even manages to focus a blind eye on its lack of substantial let alone effective actions in the morasses of Somalia or Sudan.

No more than the Arab League is the African Union capable of brokering a peace in the context of an internal war.  Libya is no more susceptible to the good offices of the AU than was the situation in Yemen amenable to the efforts of the Gulf Coordinating Council.  In both states there was finally no room for even the slightest compromise between the rivals for power.  Gaddafi no more than Saleh is willing to give up and go into that good night without a fight to the edge of death--and perhaps beyond.

The Arab League was sensible enough to realize it could play no useful role in Yemen.  The members recognized that the political differences between the various regimes precluded a single political will and without that the AL had no credible capacity to coerce and thus no way of influencing the outcome in Yemen. Rather than expose this to global view, the AL simply looked the other way.  The GCC was willing to give it a shot having more to lose by not trying than by trying and losing.

The AU has the political and military potency of a steer.  It normally accepts this condition by ignoring unpleasant situations such as those in Sudan or Somalia.  Normally, the AU tries to keep its sheer impotency out of public view.  The ill-advised peace mediation effort in Libya is an anomaly understandable only in terms of the organization having a sense of loyalty to a man who wrote some very large checks to it.

Libya is a tough nut to crack as NATO has been discovering.  It is a tough nut because the slyly nutty man who has run Libya for two generations is personally tough.  He is not going to surrender or accept a humiliating defeat which would see him in jail, on trial, or facing the hangman.  Negotiation is a means of buying time and only that.  The solution to the Libyan problem will be found only in the death of Gaddafi.

Even that may not be enough.  The rebels are poorly organized with no common agreement beyond the proposition that Gaddafi must go--preferably feet first.  The rebels are no more amenable to negotiations than is Gaddafi.  What might or will happen the day after Gaddafi's body is buried remains very much up in the air.  There is no rebel consensus.  Nor is there a Western concept--other than sweet mood music about democracy and the like.

The AU has been so blind to the real dynamics in play in Libya--or owe such a debt to Gaddafi--that it ignored the non-negotiable foundations of both sides.  This diplomatic tone deafness is in no way covered up by a campaign of whining about the noise of NATO bombs.  The AU should stop its bitching and simply accept that it is an entity without any real reason to exist other than the egos of the respective members.

Becoming A State Isn't Enough To Bring Peace

There is no doubt that the Palestinian Authority (PA) can usher a state called "Palestine" into existence.  There is nothing magical nor even particularly difficult about achieving the status of "state."  Even the longest standing, most broadly accepted basic definition of statehood, The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, which dates back to 1933, establishes rather minimal requirements for state status.

The Montevideo Convention provides only four prerequisites.  (1) A permanent population, (2) A defined territory, (3) A government, and (4) The capacity to enter into relations with other states.  In practice these requirements have been further reduced.  As a practical matter, a state can be said to exist when other states say it does.

Even when territorial limits are hazy, poorly defined or still in the process of being determined, an established state has the sovereign right to declare another entity has achieved the same status.  This is also the case when a government is not fully formed, fledged, or functioning.  All that is necessary is that other states recognize the new kid on the block.  The recognition need not be universal.  Nor does the new state need the recognition of any or all of the Great Powers to come into full, legal form.

History is full of examples of states being recognized long before they had achieved either defined borders or a fully functional government.  (Recall that the US falls into this category.)  History is also replete with examples of states and governments which were widely but not universally recognized or lacked recognition and acceptance by one or more of the contemporary Great Powers.  (The US non-recognition of the Bolshevik regime in Russia or that of Mao in China did not make these two states sudden nonentities.)

A state need not be contiguous (pace Constitutional law professor and president Barack Obama) to be both recognized and viable.  At its creation Pakistan consisted of two parts separated by more than a thousand kilometers of India.  It was both recognized and (until the fruits of Punjabi racism and Islamabad's inefficiency matured) viable.  Pakistan existed with its two disparate components because enough other states said it did.

To make it simple but without undue simplification: States come into existence when enough other states recognize its existence and enter into relations with it.  That's all, folks.  There is no need for UN action.  While the General Assembly upon recommendation of the Security Council can extend membership to a new state, this is not required for the state to exist as both independent and sovereign.

All of this brings us back to Palestine.  An increasing number of countries ranging from Brazil to Russia have extended some form of diplomatic recognition to the territory of Palestine as governed by the PA.  As this tide gains force, it can be expected that most of the current membership of the UN will do likewise regardless of the well-intended but quite irrelevant counsel of President Obama.

By the old standards of diplomacy, this should mean that Palestine would come into existence as an independent and sovereign state.  But, the old norms do not apply.  There are two constraints which taken together render the old way inapplicable in this case.  One of these is the Oslo Accords, which formed an agreement between Fatah and Israel.  The PA is not mentioned.  It couldn't be--it did not exist at the time.  Nor was Hamas referenced.  Only Fatah and Israel.

The sundry agreements which fall under the appellation of the frosty Norwegian capital sharply limit the ability of the PA to exercise jurisdiction over territory and persons alike.  The Oslo agreements served to place the Palestinian territory under an ongoing form of Israeli suzerainty.  To a major extent, the effect of the Oslo agreements was to put a diplomatic and political gloss on an underlying brute fact.

The brute fact was (and is) the Israeli occupation.  Even if the territorial extent of full Israeli occupation has been reduced over the years, it still exists as the rock upon which the independence and sovereignty of the PA must founder.

The combination of the Oslo agreement and the fact of ongoing Israeli occupation renders the past experience with the process by which states come into existence nugatory.  This dreary reality is well understood and publicly accepted by PA officials.  They know that even if every country on the face of the globe extends diplomatic recognition, this will not change realities on the ground--as long as the US does not do the same.

Israel's stance in comparison is not central.  There are precedents of states and governments receiving full diplomatic recognition even though they were under full or partial military occupation.  Indeed, that was a key principle underlying the political integrity of governments-in-exile during World War II.  It can be argued that by failing to end its long condemned occupation, Israel has created a Palestinian version of a government-in-exile which has a legitimate claim on the international community for aid in regaining its (temporarily) lost land.

The PA (particularly if Hamas is left out of the picture somehow) has a good case for UN intervention based on both the government-in-exile precedents and international law generally.  Assuming the UN General Assembly took some sort of action equivalent to extending full membership to the PA controlled Palestine, so as to duck any US veto in the Security Council, would it really matter with respect to the larger and more important question--peace?

The short answer is no.  An independent Palestine would still have to deal directly with Israel regarding all the critical matters such as borders, land swaps, an Israeli military presence in the Jordan valley, the status of Jerusalem, and the return of Arab refugees.  These matters would be no less contentious and vexing should Palestine become an independent state than they are right now.

The best which could be asserted about potential benefits to the PA is it would have some additional diplomatic leverage.  As an independent state Palestine could be more effective in opposing additional growth in the Israeli "settlements."  As an independent state Palestine could sign on to the Statute of Rome giving it the right to seek prosecution of purported Israeli war criminals before the International Criminal Court.  This threat would have great leverage in and of itself.

A well coordinated use of mass mobilization of Palestinians in a move on the Israeli Wall and checkpoints along with diplomacy could bring about the desired UN action without US support.  Indeed, it is hard to see how the combination of non-violent mass action and diplomacy could be openly opposed by the Obama administration given the coming of the next election.

The reconciliation between the PA and Hamas has shored up the political base of Abbas.  Now if he and his fellows can show a modicum of smarts in orchestrating global opinion and the photogenic appeal of a series of totally non-violent marches on the Great Wall of (specious) Security behind which Israel cowers, he can pull off the coup of the decade--and mousetrap the Obama "team."

The record of the Palestinians in the theater of global politics and the realities of international diplomacy has more often than not been one of dismal incompetence and self-inflicted defeats.  But, sometimes all it takes is one successful attempt at swinging for the fence.  This time Abbas may do it with the result that Palestine will come into existence.

But, this may well not lead to peace.  And, one cannot expect the Palestinians to make it two-for-two.  That would take Elohim and Allah working in perfect harmony.  Anyone want to make a bet?

Rubes Versus City Slickers

A few years ago the US military started hiring cultural anthropologists and embedding them in combat units in Afghanistan.  The idea was a better appreciation of cultural mores would make for more sensitive and effective use of combat power--that we could avoid the negative consequences of door kicking and mosque invading which had produced a wave of backlash in much of Iraq.  This notion was a good one and did have some real benefits for US effectiveness.

But, it was too limited.

In Afghanistan as in Iraq before as well as in Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, even Turkey and Syria today, there is a much larger problem involving the anthropology of culture.  It is a dynamic with which we Americans are--or should be--quite familiar.  In our own history this particular dynamic was in large part responsible for such events as Prohibition.  It is also responsible to some degree for the more recent "culture wars" which have been so much a feature of our politics.

The phenomenon is the divide which separates folks who live in urban environments and those who dwell in remote, often rugged, always sparsely populated, and usually relatively impoverished areas.  In Afghanistan or Pakistan, it is the gulf separating the hill people from the urbanites.  In Libya, it is the distinction between the ethnics of the western mountains and the coast dwellers.  Elsewhere, it is the age old tension between subsistence and marginal farmers on the one hand and those who have migrated to the cities for the opportunities which are believed to exist there and only there.

Throughout the developing world, in all continents, in countries as far removed in geography, culture, and governmental styles as China and Mexico, Russia and Indonesia, the same dynamic is at work.  Often, the work is destructive of social and, more importantly, political harmony.

There is a set of characteristics by which the hill people, the subsistence peasants, the "exiles" of remote and rugged regions define themselves in opposition to those of their fellow citizens who live in the cities.  We Americans have seen the same definitions of self and opponent in our own recent past.  There is nothing different with the far away folks in Afghanistan and the host of other countries where the destructive tension scars the social, cultural, and political landscape.

At the risk of some over simplification, the people who live far from the seductive attractions and entrancing visions of wealth existing in the cities see themselves as more moral, more honest, more honorable, more truly human than their opposites in the city.  The rubes understand themselves to be the last vestige of honor, honesty, integrity, and religious morality.  They also see themselves as being under constant, unremitting attack by the corrupt, immoral, irreligious forces of urban life.

The rubes see the cities as vast moral swamps.  They understand the goal of urbanites to be that of attracting and perverting the sons--and more particularly, the daughters--of rural purity.  The rubes fear the appeal of the cities, the seductions of wealth, bright lights, loud music, open sexuality.

For their part, the urban dwellers, whether a century or more ago in the US or today throughout the developing world, view the rubes with disdain.  The hill people, the peasants, are all seen as rude, uneducated, unsophisticated, backward looking, fear ridden, clingers of the past, chained by religious superstition.  The rubes are dismissed as the last of a deservedly dying breed.

The two groups stare at each other through prisms of distortion--or the crosshairs of a telescopic sight.  Each distrusts the other.  Each views the other as irredeemable.  The city slickers are convinced that the rubes are hopelessly outdated, ignorant, superstitious, hung up on irrelevant concepts such as personal honor.  For their part, the rubes are certain that all city slickers are pervasively corrupt, purveyors of moral degradation, apostles of apostasy, and generally as exploitative, manipulative people given to enriching themselves at the expense of their moral betters.

As a general rule, over time the rubes are willing to strike a bargain with the city slickers.  The basis of the tacit agreement is simple: You city types just leave us alone and in return we will do the same for you.

Rarely do the rubes seek to replace the city slickers as the source of collective government.  Rarely do the rubes seek to impose their social and cultural mores on the urban population by either politics or force of arms.  To this extent the American experience of Prohibition or the more recent political activities of conservative, predominantly rural origin Christians constitute exceptions to the general experience.

In a similar way the emergence of violent political Islam is also an exception to the historical norm of "you leave us alone and we will leave you alone."  The primary appeal of violent political Islam has been to threatened rubes.  The threat may be as direct as an attempt by the urban based central government to extend its sway over the remote regions or it may be the more indirect but pernicious one of inducing the young of Rubeland to emigrate to the cities.

The hill dwelling tribesmen of Afghanistan or Pakistan's FATA are not necessarily more violent by inherent nature than others of their nationality.  Rather, they see and have seen themselves as under threat from the dishonorable, corrupt, irreligious people of Kabul or Islamabad.

The situation was not different in the US a couple of centuries ago.  The Scotch-Irish who moved to the rugged and remote frontier of the eastern mountains did so not because they were inherently of a greater man-against-nature mentality than Americans who lived in the flatlands of the coastal regions.  Nor did they and their descendants remain in the far distant hollows because they were inherently antisocial.  Neither did their more recent exemplars violently resist the incursions of mine owners, state governments, or federal "revenoors" due to some inbuilt streak of cussedness.  No.  They wanted to be left alone.

To the well intentioned outsiders of urban America, the hill dwellers of Appalachia may have appeared to be hopelessly backward, trapped in endless generations of poverty and deprivation, "clinging to their guns and Bibles" (to use the formulation of a noted and successful presidential candidate) due to personal fear of progress and change.  And, to some small extent, the impressions--at least those of poverty and deprivation--might have been true.  But, far more important was the self-belief of moral purity, the upholding of time honored traditions and values.

The folks of Appalachia were quite willing to accept some of the benefits offered by larger American society such as electricity, better medical care, economic opportunity, better housing, better nutrition.  But they were not willing to take the benefits if these were offset by participating in systems both tangible and otherwise which were antithetical to basic beliefs and values.  It took American social engineers generations to find the right approach, the proper mix, the best way to include the hill people without destroying with unacceptable rapidity the values and norms which had long sustained these people.

This is also the challenge in Afghanistan, the FATA, and other parts of Pakistan.  It is the same in the other countries currently facing collapse and failure.  Put simply, the trick is that of extending the good things of modern life to the rubes without pulling the rug of tradition, traditional values, norms, and mechanisms from under their feet.  Change is acceptable as long as it is neither too fast nor too shattering in extent.

It is the rock of time upon which the grand ship of nation building must flounder.  This is the case in Afghanistan.  This is the case in Pakistan.  Insisting on a rapid and complete penetration of the land and life of the rubes by the city slickers and their foreign supporters can only promote resistance--violent resistance.  The insistence upon extending the "corrupt" and "irreligious" systems of the city into the mountain heartlands of the rubes can only result in a more ardent embrace of those ideas--in particular the religious--which make armed opposition legitimate.

The most basic war being waged in the vast arc of countries from Afghanistan to Tunisia is not between Islam and infidel.  Nor is it between the adherents of violent political Islam and those of a more secular persuasion.  It is not even a conflict between modernity and the warm certainty of the past.  Rather it is the war between the traditionally oriented "exiles" of the hills and the city slickers.

In this war of culture, the city slicker (which includes the US government)is  its own worst enemy.  A prime characteristic of the city slicker is impatience.  For the city slicker, particularly the American, the cliche, "Time is money," constitutes an imperative.  But, to the rube, time is eternal.  Time is something the rube possesses in great quantities.

The key to success in an insurgency is contained in a simple historical reality.  The side which can afford time and accept casualties will win over the side which must save both time and lives.

What this confluence means is both easy to understand and bitter to accept.  From Afghanistan to Tunisia and at all points in between, the city slickers of the West are doomed to lose.  For the insurgent rubes, powered by the force of both the past and the ideology of religion, a line from an old Rolling Stones song applies, "Time is on my side."

What A Great Day!

This is one of those days which makes a guy glad to be alive--that is if he is a maven of how much can go wrong in the world all at the same time.  So much has gone so terribly out of whack in the past twenty-four or so hours that is hard to decide what most tickles the brain, that is, what deserves the virtual ink.

It is quite tempting to take a few shots at that LST (large slow target) named "Pakistan."  It is a hoot and a half to contemplate that less than a couple of dozen Mighty Warriors Of The One True Faith can take over a major naval air installation.  That these Glorious Fighters Of The Koran can hold off assorted Pakistani military forces for seventeen hours, destroying a pair of P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft, gifts of the American people delivered only last June, in the process.

Not since a similar commando unit hit and held the Pakistani army's headquarters a couple of years ago has the Islamic Republic been so humiliated.  It is presumed that the Great Strategists of Islamabad are down on their prayer rugs giving thanks to the deity that the Taliban trigger-pullers did not hit a certain facility only ten klicks over, conveniently adjacent to an airbase where nuclear weapons are stored.  For such small favors, the Pakistanis should give great and prolonged thanks.

For the rest of us, the Taliban raid raises the long standing questions regarding the security of Pakistan's arsenal of one hundred or so nukes to new heights.  After all, the night squad which cut its way through a pair of barbed wire fences and used low tech ladders to scale a wall were not in the same league as the men of Boat Six of Great Abbottabad Raid fame.  If a handful of jihadists with nothing more sophisticated than RPGs, AKs, and a willingness to die could storm the heavily guarded naval airfield, is it impossible for a similar group to do the same at either a nuclear weapons depot or manufacturing facility?

On the upside, such muscular measures might not be needful given the omnipresence of ideological soulmates within the Pakistani military and intelligence services.  Or the direct method might be obviated by the Pakistani version of the hoary Mexican approach of "silver or lead."  It is not unthinkable, considering the prevalence of corruption in the Islamic Republic, that the promise of silver might trump the threat of lead.

On another continent, the ardent observer of frothing wars and failing states must feel a pleasant glow contemplating the attack over the weekend by Sudanese forces on the contested oil center of Abyei.  The Khartoum regime has maintained with a straight face that its attack complete with air strikes and armored units was "retaliation" for the ambush last week of a UN convoy escorted by Sudanese army personnel.  To the not yet officially independent state of South Sudan, the occupation of Abyei constituted an act of war.

Abyei was supposed to have voted as to which side it would join--Sudan or South Sudan--at the same time as the overall referendum on Southern independence.  This did not occur because Khartoum insisted on including a nomadic tribe of Muslim affiliation among those franchised to vote in the election.  This demand was vetoed by the southerners.  As a result, the Abyei question has not been settled.  Nor is it likely to be settled by means other than the violent.

The UN has done the expected--denounce the attack and demand Khartoum withdraw its forces.  Assorted advocates for South Sudan (mainly George Clooney and assorted NGOs) are making predictable noises regarding the US and UK doing something to compel Khartoum to back down.  And, to insure the decibel level of rhetoric is high enough, spokesmen for South Sudan are warning darkly that the occupation of Abyei bodes well to restart the war between South and North which ended in 2005 after twenty-two years and hundreds of thousands of lives due to the diplomacy of the US and UK.

Just what the US or UK can do short of using highly kinetic coercive diplomacy to gain Khartoum's adherence to our policy requirements is unclear.  What is clear is that neither Washington nor London are in any hurry to send warplanes or troops anywhere beyond current theaters of operation.

The upcoming meeting between President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron has some potential for both sparks and amusement.  The two leaders are not in perfect tandem regarding what is being done in Libya to say nothing of what should be done.  The British and French are all in favor of more hairy chested efforts than those made to date.  In earnest of this intent, both have announced the deployment of helicopter gunships to the country.  The British will operate Apaches and the French machines of local manufacture from carriers in the Mediterranean.

Both states (the British more vocally) want the US to come back to Libya in a larger and more noise producing way than has been the case in recent weeks.  The redeployment of American A-10 and AC-130 aircraft is much desired by Whitehall.  While more muted in their stance, there is little doubt that M. Sarkozy's government would be very happy to see the weight of the US more heavily on the scales in favor of the rebels.

There is no indication that President Obama is in a mood to honor the requests.  Certainly, there is no evident pawing of the ground in favor of more and more high profile operations visible at the Pentagon.

This contretemps gives added importance to a little noticed event scheduled to occur during the Obama-Cameron meeting.  Reportedly the US and UK will establish a joint national security entity which will coordinate the perceptions and plans of the two countries to allow more effective joint and combined actions globally.  Considering the negative view held by Mr Obama regarding the "special relationship" between the UK and US, this is a surprising development.  If the reports are confirmed by events, it is a most welcome one as well.

While such a joint body may easily be nothing more than a pro forma exercise in policy futility, there is some chance that it will evolve into a genuine mechanism for meshing together the national security strategies and programs of two natural allies.  It might even point in the direction of growing to include several UK descended states--Australia, New Zealand, Canada and India--along with the US and UK into a tightly integrated political/military bloc which would be virtually unchallengeable in years to come.

Now, that sort of "international community" is one which is very pleasant to contemplate.  It gives the Geek a warm feeling and, being a sensitive sort of guy, he will end this post on this potentially very high note.

We Will Not See The Likes Of Him Soon

Robert Gates gave a splendid example of why he will be missed sorely when he steps down as Secretary of Defense next month.  His remarks at Notre Dame University's commencement provided an excellent epitome of his intellectual honesty as well as his breadth of thought and imagination.

The subject of Gate's address was the future of American national security forces--and, thus, the role to be played by the US in the world.  Pointedly, he noted that the US cannot resign its role as a Great Power.  As he commented, his travels around the world as Secretary of Defense have impressed him with the number of countries which want the US to play a larger role in global politics and not a smaller one.

In short, Dr Gates saw first hand, up close and personal, proof of the historical maxim holding no country can resign its status as a great power--although that status may be taken away by the actions of others.  In this context, the Secretary commented upon the salient--but to many on the political Left, unpleasant--reality that the final shield of American core values has been the strength and reach of our military power.

As an add-on of key importance, the Secretary warned that there existed other Great Powers whose interests and goals were not completely compatible with our national and strategic interests.  This means that only the continued capacity of the American military exists as a check on these ambitions.  It was a very clear warning to and about the Trolls of Beijing.

In his reading of history, Gates drew a lesson regarding the ability of the American people to "avert their eyes" from events occurring in distant, remote places.  It has been difficult to the point of impossibility for We the People in the past (and the present, he might have added) to see how some affair in a small and far distant country may rebound to the immediate disadvantage of the US and its citizens.  It is this willful blindness conditioned by our history on a continent protected on both east and west by broad oceans which has given rise not only to our periods of isolationism but also this diminuendo form of being unable or unwilling to connect the dots linking us with some far off place filled with people having unpronounceable names.

The implication of these twin phenomena of large scale isolationism and small scale who-cares-ism for the Secretary is that of gutting the American military.  Gates has lived through several periods during which We the People allowed--even demanded--the hollowing out of our military, air, and naval forces.  In each case, a war had just been ended.  In each case, there were strong economic imperatives in play.  In each case, We the People were sick and tired of the sacrifices required of us.  And in each case--after World War II, after the Vietnam War and after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union--the ultimate impact on our capacity to conduct diplomacy as a Great Power was lessened along with our ability to wage effective war if and when required.

We are in a similar situation with these earlier periods today.  More so given the potential enervating impact of the federal deficit.  There is both a need and a set of political imperatives to engage the national debt and current deficit with effect and dispatch.  As the Secretary well knows and has publicly stated on numerous occasions, the defense appropriations cannot be held harmless during the process.  They will not be.  That is a for sure.

But, as Dr Gates argues in his Notre Dame speech, the process of reducing military expenditures cannot be done at the expense of our real world combat capacities.  Administration, overhead, some categories of personnel expenses, some force components can and should be reduced or removed all together.  Core combat and force/power projection capabilities as well as the research and development of next gen systems must be taken off the table.

As a Great Power, as the Great Power most trusted by countries around the world to act quickly and decisively in the face of threats, the US has the unique responsibility to maintain a significant full-spectrum capability which can do all missions.  The US military, air, and naval forces must be able to do it all--deter or, if necessary, defeat peer opponents, execute low or no lethality interventions, provide humanitarian relief, train and equip friendly forces--the entire ambit of war and warlike utilities.

Dr Gates made reference to a statement purportedly made by Winston Churchill after World War II, ""With greatness comes great responsibility."  It is obvious that Gates agrees with Churchill that the US cannot avoid either its greatness nor the responsibilities which come with it.  It is evident in Gates' remarks that he believes that continued American greatness depends upon getting our financial affairs in order--and by doing so without gutting our military capabilities.

Gates projects optimism regarding our will and ability to address the parlous financial condition of the country and maintain the basis of global diplomacy--our military potency.  He correctly notes all the times in our collective history when we have successfully overcome challenges as large or larger than those confronting us today.  His optimism is tempered by a clear headed understanding that the US--its military and civilian decision makers but not excluding We the People--must undertake a penetrating review of our strategic needs and national interests so as to separate properly those which are truly central from those which may be nice, desirable, optimal but remain on the periphery of core interests.

It is easy to infer from his speech that the Secretary does not think this necessary review will be accomplished either easily or quickly.  The debate will be both noisy and often uncouth, couched not in the national interest but in far more parochial concerns.  Nor will the debate end with all sides walking away with broad smiles.

The review and its consequences will be both long and not pretty.  It will be marked by missteps perhaps too many to be counted with ease.  But, when night falls Gates remains hopeful.  He demonstrated his hope by resort to another, perhaps apocryphal quote from Churchill.  "The United States will always do the right thing--after they have tried everything else."

Defense, Diplomacy, And Development

Those three words constitute a sort of mantra which issues from the mouth of Secretary of State Hilary Clinton at every opportunity.  They also define much of the debate soon to be entered into by the congress as the US makes another of its fitful attempts to come to grips with the deficit and the government's chronic inability to live within its means.

When congress in its collective excuse for wisdom makes the attempt to limit American expenditures, it will be traveling a road already passed over by the British Parliament.  The Coalition government of Cameron and Clegg  inherited a financial debacle from the Labor predecessor which has necessitated deep and painful cuts in all areas of the British budget.  High on the list of those cut was the Ministry of Defense.

The British military, naval, and air services were not simply cut, they were mangled.  The Royal Air Force now possesses the fewest aircraft since before the first shots of World War I.  The Royal Navy in its entirety would not be adequate to provide anti-air and anti-submarine screening for a single US aircraft carrier.  The Royal Army has shrunk to a level which would preclude a successful replay of either the Falklands War or even the intervention in Sierra Leone.

Bad is this seems, there are more cuts in the pipeline.  Dr Liam Fox, the Minister of Defense, has promised more whacks will be taken as soon as the British wrap up their ground presence in Afghanistan.  While Dr Fox specifically mentioned "redundant" vehicles, it is generally understood that the draw down in forces will go beyond vehicles and to the troops who ride them, drive them, and fire their guns.  At least another brigade equivalent in the general purpose forces will permanently case its colors.

Given that Prime Minister Cameron is chomping at his bit to hit the Afghan exit, the next ramp down of British military capacity will come sooner rather than later.  Even though the prime minister and his defense colleague assure the British public (and the US government) that the UK will remain capable of "broad spectrum" operations and will retain its "superb" special operations forces and will acquire more of the new generation of submarines, doubt as to British capacities to join with allied forces in combined and joint operations must linger.

It is clear that the British expect the US to retain its military capacities unscathed by the same budgetary and financial forces which have buffeted the UK.  The same thinking seems to apply generally across Western Europe.

How this wishful thinking can be maintained in the face of accelerating American force withdrawal from Europe boggles the imagination.  There are currently 42, 000 US personnel in Europe.  By 2015 the figure will drop to 37,000.  In comparison there were 213,000 stationed in Europe as the Berlin Wall fell.  And, that number was down from the high point in 1962 of nearly 277,000.

The American justification for the continued retreat from Europe is purely financial.  The aggregate GDP of the European Union is ten percent greater than that of the US.  At the same time the combined defense budgets of the EU states is a mere fraction of that imposed on the US.

It is worth noting that the logic of withdrawal has a momentum of its own.  Force strengths like rocks tend to roll down hill.  And, the imperatives of finance can far outstrip the power of gravity.

The US will lose some significant tactical flexibility and rapidity of response by pulling out of Europe.  It will take measurably longer to move force across an ocean.  More importantly, the interposition of an ocean between the US and the likely conflict areas of the Mideast and Africa provide an important political distance between any future flareup and the decision makers inside the Beltway.  Political and psychological distance is far more critical in slowing or preventing a response than the mere add-on of a few thousand miles.

It may be that this consideration will be moot by the time 2015 rolls around.  There is no way that the American defense department is going to be spared the budget trimming meat ax.  President Obama has made that clear.  Outgoing SecDef Gates has concurred, wholeheartedly.  At least four hundred billion dollars will go over the next decade.  Probably more.  Perhaps even a lot more depending upon the electoral fortunes of the defense conservatives of the Republican Party.

Implicit in the mantra of Secretary Clinton is the hope that insofar as the "defense" leg of the triad is shortened, the legs of "diplomacy" and "development" will be elongated in compensation.  This hope is both false and misplaced.  There is no powerful base of support for either diplomacy or development.

For many of We the People, even among those who are most aware of global politics and the Game of Nations, "diplomacy" is seen as a quasi-mysterious process involving gobs of talk, rounds of dinners, and photo ops.  Whatever it is that diplomats do and with whatever results, there is no belief that it should cost much money.  "Diplomacy" is something like a wand which is waved at vexing problems rather than a useful tool of state in the estimate of many outside of that dismal profession.  So, why does it need money?

"Development" is in even worse shape in the mind of many of us.  Foreign aid is tantamount to an obscenity in the estimate of many conservatives both in and out of congress.  At best it is seen as a form of bribery, a form of rent-a-friend which all too often does not pay off.  At worst it is conceived of as a way of furthering corruption in the recipient country while fostering tumor-like growth in the bureaucracy which doles it out.

Again the recent experience in the UK points at the limits of both debate and understanding when it comes to diplomacy and development.  Critics of the Coalition have pointed with disdain to the Cameron proposal to increase the development budget of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office by more than a third at the same time that the British military is undergoing enforced, unilateral disarmament.

Advocates of the British move argue that by fostering education, good governance, and economic development in unstable or collapsing states, the need for military intervention or active defense against terror attacks originating in such places will be obviated.  The same points have been advanced here not only by Secretary Clinton and others in Foggy Bottom but also by Secretary Gates.  If anything Mr Gates has been a more robust proponent of foreign aid as a means of precluding later military action than have the denizens of State and USAID.

In principle it is hard to dissent from the perspective that prevention through foreign development assistance is far preferable to sending in the Marines at some future date.  In principle a strong case can be made for the effective use of foreign aid as a means of helping to create political and social tranquility within a recipient country such as to preclude it becoming a failing state.  In practice, though, it is far easier to identify the examples where foreign aid has not brought about either internal political and social harmony and progress or bribed the recipient government into accepting American policy leadership.

The Cold War landscape is carpeted with the corpses of failed foreign aid programs.  Africa is littered with the results of foreign aid driven corruption, inefficiencies, and betrayed expectations of a better life.  The same is true in large swaths of Asia and Latin America.  The aid has not been simply from the US.  Americans are not the only people to have failed in the development through aid game.  All who have played it have experienced more failures than successes.

Nor did the situation change with the end of the Cold War.  One need look no further than Pakistan than to see that truism at work.  But, if more convincing is necessary, all that is needed is to take a peek at the totality of those receiving development assistance at the government-to-government level to see that lack of success trumps success by a huge margin.

The palpable lack of success in the government-to-government development efforts will go a very long way to assure that budget cutters will find the funding for these programs a politically attractive target even though very few real dollars will be saved even if the totality of US foreign aid in all categories were to be zeroed out.  Slashing here is one of those look-good, feel-good votes that are so attractive to politicians unwilling and unable to make tough decisions.

While diplomacy is no magic wand to be waved at international problems and development no anodyne for internal debacles, both are necessary, even valuable, complements to defense.  The "vanilla" diplomacy of building upon coinciding national interests as well as carefully targeted development aid focusing on projects which are modest in scale, immediate in visible effects, and sustainable over time by local resources alone can go along way to limiting the need for more robust measures--and cost a lot less.

At the same time it must be recognized that "vanilla" diplomacy and targeted development have very real limits.  There are states which require a coercive approach.  There are states which will collapse and fail or have governments come to power which are not only adverse to the interests of the US and its allies but are willing to use asymmetrical means to demonstrate this.

In these contexts it must be remembered that all forms of coercive diplomacy rest finally upon the material ability and political will of the US to employ force in support of its policies.  Likewise the hostile state must be defanged.  The collapsed or collapsing state might well require outsiders come and impose peace.  In all these eventualities, eventualities which will become more rather than less likely over the next decade or two, credible and relevant military force is necessary if a positive outcome from the perspective of the US is desired.

Schoolrooms in Pakistan will not necessarily prevent violent political Islam from taking firm and continuing root there.  Nor will clinics in Yemen assure the place does not collapse into a welter of internal warfare.  Sudan will not become a thriving multi-ethnic, multi-religious, democratic state simply because some donor or another pumps in buckets of cash.  The same caveats may be made with respect to many other psuedo-states.

These unpleasant ground truths imply strongly that planners, both those dealing with budgets and those whose game is international strategy, must put defense first.  This does not mean the US is condemned to be an impoverished bunker, but it does mean that the existence of a full-spectrum and flexible military capacity cannot be sacrificed on the alters of diplomacy and development.

Nor does it mean the cost of budgetary sanity is surrender to hostile forces.

It does mean, however, that the congress and administration must be intelligent and realistic in their world view.  That, unfortunately, is probably too much to expect.

And, Always There Is Israel

The most commented upon section of President Obama's "major" address on US policy in the Mideast has been the reference to peace being based upon the pre Six Day War borders with negotiated land swaps to accommodate Israeli "realities on the ground."  The formulation in and of itself is not outrageous--necessarily.

But an evaluation of the pre-1967 border requires an appreciation of the oft repeated Israeli demand for "secure and defensible borders."  It also demands an understanding of the Israeli insistence upon maintaining a residual force along the Jordan river.  Mr Obama's words seem to ignore the first and totally disallow the second.  Rather the president appeared to rely upon the Palestinian state being "demilitarized."

The concept of "demilitarization" may be useful, but only if the mechanism by which this status would be assured over time is defined and agreed to by Israeli and Palestinian alike.  The record of Egyptian actions in the weeks leading up to the Six Day War, in particular the ejection of the UN truce monitoring unit, shows that even international guarantees of "demilitarization" may not prove reliable.

Prior to the Six Day War, the narrow waist of Israel was less than ten miles in width.  High speed aircraft could not turn 180 degrees and stay in Israeli air space.  More to the point today, ten miles is well within the range of the crude home made rockets so loved by Hamas.  The takeaway is simple: The pre-1967 borders would be neither secure nor defensible now and into the future.

This reality requires that a prudent Israeli government continue a military presence in the valley of the Jordan river.  This would be necessary even if some hypothetical future Palestinian government were to be so dedicated to peace that its territory was truly "demilitarized."  Without the forward basing of high mobility, high firepower IDF units, it would be easy for hostile forces to be concentrated in Jordan, in positions well suited for a quick bounce into Israel.

Presumably, someone in Obama's foreign policy and national security "team" had the knowledge necessary to advise the president regarding the defensive importance of an IDF presence along the banks of the Jordan.  If that were the case, Mr Obama deserves a severe down check for having ignored the reality.  If no such counsel was available, then the administration must be down checked for failing to give the president the information he needed.

Even the Netanyahu ministry is not dedicated to keeping the totality of the potential Palestinian territory occupied.  Doing so would be too expensive in resources and global status to maintain in perpetuity.  At the same time, no Israeli ministry, even the most dovish, would sleep soundly absent forward basing in the Jordan valley.  To withdraw completely to the pre-1967 borders would require a level of trust and confidence in both the pacifistic nature of the Palestinian government and its ability to police its territory effectively that does not and cannot exist yet.  Nor will such exist for many years, perhaps generations, to come.

Mr Obama called upon the Netanyahu government to be "bold."  The government of Israel has shown an ability to be "bold" as in the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.  The "international community" including the US promised Israel that this act of bold statesmanship would not result in violence--and, if it did, the "community" would respond with effective aid to Israel.  The record written by blood on the sands of Gaza and Israel alike is one of shabby betrayal by the guarantors of Israeli peace and base hatred on the part of Hamas and other practitioners of violent political Islam.

Considering this history of boldness and its consequences, is there any wonder that Prime Minister Netanyahu  and many others both in and out of government in Israel rejected the Obama formulation as soon as it left his lips?  Undoubtedly, Mr Obama expected this reaction.  He courted it on the eve of Netanyahu's arrival in Washington.  He used it to feather his own political nest without risk.

This cynical ploy was made possible by the simple fact that the Fatah dominated Palestinian Authority cut its own throat by signing the reconciliation agreement with Hamas.  Mr Obama knew and knows that Israel will not negotiate with the two headed hydra as long as Hamas does not embrace the Quartet requirements.  Mr Obama knows as well that the US will not and cannot deal with Hamas even indirectly as long as it remains a "terrorist organization," a status it will not lose unless it does the impossible and surrenders its fundamental identity.

Mr Obama was thus able to present himself as a "friend" of the Palestinian people as well as their myriad of supporters throughout the Arab states.  The inevitable rejection of the Obama formulation by the Israelis could be offloaded on Netanyahu.  From the perspective of the reelection oriented White House, the result would be win-win.  From the ground level view of the Mideast, the appearance would be more of the lose-lose sort.

It is to be expected that Mr Obama and his team will put pressure on the Israelis.  The president made an allusion during his speech to the vulnerable point.  That solar plexus of diplomacy is the Palestinian threat to take the matter to the UN, to demand that the body do for the Palestinians now what it did for the Zionists sixty plus years ago--create a country.  The US has been called upon by Israel to block this move by using its influence on European and other states at the least and its Security Council veto if necessary.  This gives the US a very great degree of leverage on Israel.

However much leverage the Obama administration has or believe it possesses, the amount is not sufficient to induce Israel to place itself in a suicidal position.  This is precisely where the Jewish state would be if it did not have a military presence along the Jordan river.

Any realistic negotiations for a final comprehensive settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must start with the pre-Six Day War borders.  But it cannot end there.  Not only must there be negotiated real estate swaps to protect the Israeli "settlements" or at least those that are largest and closest to Israeli territory, there must be an effective addressing of Israel's very legitimate security concerns regarding the Jordan valley.  Until such time as both Muslim Arabs and Israelis have had sufficient time and experience to justify the latter's confidence in the will and ability of the former to maintain peace, the Israelis must be allowed to keep a force of sufficient size and capability to deter or defeat any ground attack originating from beyond Palestinian controlled land.

At best Mr Obama was being disingenuous when he called for the complete ending of the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank territory.  At worst he was being dishonestly manipulative for personal political reasons.

In either case the tension between rhetoric and reality resident in yesterday's Foggy Bottom oration calls Mr Obama's intellectual honesty into question.  The US is facing a plethora of foreign policy and national security challenges the meeting of which requires the highest possible intellectual and moral courage on the part of the president and his senior advisers.  If his performance yesterday is any guide, Mr Obama has set a very low standard.  Should that low standard continue to prevail with respect to the other matters on the overfilled plate, the republic is in for some very, very bad times.

Perhaps even bad enough for one to have wished Harold Camping had counted the days correctly.

One More Speech--One More Missed Opportunity

President Obama made his long anticipated "major" address regarding the Mideast and US policy in the region today over at Foggy Bottom.  It reads well and probably sounded even better.  Overall, the hot wash has to be a gigantic, "so what?"

The ever ready to cheer WaPo seems to be of that view in its instant report on reaction from the "Arab street."  If the account is accurate and representative of the larger understanding--and there is strong contextual reason to believe it is--Obama made the wrong speech, or the right speech many months too late.  Many of those quoted in the piece were disappointed that Obama did not get on his knees and grovel in apology for past American "sins."  Others were bitterly disappointed that the US still seemed to base policy on American national interest rather than the delusions, dreams, and dilemmas of (fill in one or another Arab nationality).  The majority though reflected a sentiment of American irrelevance to the events of the recent future, an irrelevance which will continue  into the future.

Of the various local takes on the Obama speech, the one which is both most trenchant and germane to US policy is the one of American irrelevance.  To a large extent the support or lack thereof for the demonstrators of Tunisia or Egypt was irrelevant to the participants--even if not to the outcome of the protests.  The Egyptians see themselves as having been solely responsible for the downfall of Mubarak.  There is no general willingness to see let alone accept the proposition that US pressure was the final cause of Mubarak's reluctant retirement to private life.  This is a classic case of not letting mere facts get in the way of creating and enjoying a pleasant exercise in national mythology.

The same dynamic albeit to a lesser degree was in play earlier in Tunisia.  When neither France nor the US was willing to do other than turn a back to the embattled dictatorship, the repressive fossil had no option but to board the next plane to Saudi Arabia.  Arguably, had the US taken a firmer, more public line with respect to the ouster of Gaddafi early in the protests, the matter would have been settled quickly and at far less cost in both lives and long term instability in the country.  Ditto on steroids as regards Yemen.

The blunt and painful truth is that the US was totally behind the curve in all the early manifestations of the "Arab Spring."  Whether this was the result of bad intelligence, bureaucratic inertia, lack of political vision and will, shootouts between the realpolikers and the idealists, or simple presidential indifference (or, most likely, some combination of the foregoing) is immaterial.  All that matters is the US was running far behind (to use one of Obama's favorite formulations,) "the arc of history."

As an old maxim of naval warfare dating back to the days of sail held, "a stern chase is a long chase."  The US is engaged in a stern chase right now with respect to Mideast policy.  The length (and success) of the chase is in no way helped by a rhetorical focus on democracy and the other desirable aspects of a modern, Western nation-state.  Nor is the chase made any less lengthy or more probably successful by a mere genuflection before the alter of economic development--the one billion dollar debt forgiveness and companion infrastructure development package promised to Cairo.

While Mr Obama made an appropriate bow to the young Tunisian man whose self-inflicted death by self-immolation served to ignite the demonstrations which escalated to the totality of the "Arab Spring," he failed to mention the man's motivation--poverty, lack of employment opportunity for himself, a college graduate, and harassment by the police over petty regulations.  The man did not die in pursuit of the vote.  He was not a sacrifice to the abstracts of democracy or transparent governance.  His life was not pledged to any cause beyond the base and degrading reality of impoverished, hopeless unemployment resulting from a badly performing economy.

The hopelessness of joblessness--particularly within the class of young people with post-secondary educations, a modicum of technological sophistication, an acquaintanceship with Western political, social, and cultural values--coupled with systems of polity and economy which were both inefficient and unresponsive caused the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt and beyond.  The change that was demanded was not so much political as economic.

The gloss of politics was an add-on.  It was added not only by the more sophisticated and Western oriented of the local protesters but also by the applauding Western observers.  Western media, Western academics, Western pundits, the Western molders of public opinion took the monolithic view that the demonstrators were eager democrats one and all.  The protesters were all seeking to gain a political and (implicitly at least) a social system based on those of the West.

While there were no doubt individuals in all the countries who held this goal, it is easily arguable that most simply wanted a better, more just, more efficient economy where jobs might be plentiful and remunerative, sufficient at least to provide for a standard of living such as to allow the raising of a family with a reasonable expectation that the children's future would be better than their parents' present.  That goal was sufficient as both motivation and goal for the vast majority of those who braved bullets and arrest.  Anything beyond would be nice, but not a requisite.

Many observers of the "Arab Spring" have confessed themselves to be reminded of the uprisings which scarred Europe in 1848.  Others call up the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union.  In both analogies, the pundits and politicians have concurred the motive was the quest for democracy.

The Geek is reminded not of those two major periods of political tumult.  Being a guy of small mind and limited imagination, the Geek is put in mind of Poland.  Specifically the events of the "Arab Spring" have reminded him of the Poland of the days of Solidarity.  It will be remembered that this precursor of the far more sweeping and dramatic changes of a decade later emerged not from the suppressed desire of Polish shipyard workers for a meaningful vote, but rather from pervasive economic discontent.  The combination of inflation and stagnant or falling wages was the consequence of very poor decision making on the part of the authoritarian government.

The result of the economic pressures was a push back of labor along the lines of a classic sit down strike.  The intent of the strikers was economic reform which would benefit them directly and substantially.  The reaction of the government transmogrified the sit down strike to a semi-violent demand for broad gauge political reform.  When the government belatedly brought some reform to bear along with repressive action, then and only then did the movement fade to the underground where it waited for the shift in political winds which finally came at decade's end.

Even now with promises of elections having been made by the "temporary" and "transitional" regimes, the root causes of economic discontent wait to be addressed.  Elections without any change in the economy will bring only further tumult and may eventually result in the election of more extremest governments in both Tunisia and Egypt.  In short, democracy and elections in and of themselves are not a guarantee of stability.  Far more likely to bring this result is the development of a more open, more equitable economic system.

At the risk of belaboring the all-too-obvious, the Geek is constrained to point out that rigging elections and creating the illusion of democracy is far easier to accomplish than is the remaking of economies into some semblance of efficiency--particularly when the states involved lack the essentials for this.  The creation and support of democracies which are economically dependent upon international handouts is no service to either the people of the effected country or the stability of state and region.

By ignoring the economic aspects of the unrest in order to pander to the feel-good emotions of supporting democracy and its relatives, Mr Obama missed making a real mark on the region.  He missed the chance to get on the "arc of history."  He missed the opportunity to regain some of America's lost influence in the Mideast.  He made the stern chase both longer and less likely to produce an outcome beneficial to the locals and suiting our national and strategic interests there.

Of course, the nature and impact of the Obama speech should have been drearily predictable.  The current Guy in the Oval has botched every foreign policy challenge--and opportunity--to come his way to date.  Why should this hazy mass of mood music at Foggy Bottom have been any different?