Hey! Israel--Before Cheering, Look At Taiwan

Much ink both real and virtual has been spilled in Israel as well as pro-Israeli outlets in the US praising President Obama for his forthright stance regarding US support of the embattled and increasingly isolated Jewish state.  Even a man who has to be a bete noir around the Oval, Benjamin Netanyahu, almost broke his arm patting Obama on the back.

Given the context of the impending UN action on the request for recognition requested by the Palestinian Authority, the outpouring of hosannas is not surprising.  However, the Israelis and their American supporters would be well served by taking a close look at the Obama administration's handling of the request by the government of Taiwan for a significant upgrading of their aerial self-defense capacities.

By way of background, it must be recalled that the US is committed to assure that the island nation has sufficient means to defend itself against attack by the Peoples Republic of China.  This commitment is contained in the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) of 1979.  This piece of legislation was a key part of the complex mechanism by which the US finished the job of facing the reality that the PRC was a real state with a real government deserving of both American diplomatic recognition and the status as a permanent member of the UN Security Council.  The TRA was designed by members of the Congress to assure that Taiwan would not be taken over by the mainland by either the reality or threat of military attack.  It was passed by overwhelming majorities in both houses of the Democrat controlled Congress and quickly signed by Jimmy Carter.

Until recently, the act served to assure that the US sold or provided military means adequate to the task of deterring Beijing's ambitions to reclaim the "rebellious" province.  Things changed in the past decade as the Chinese military underwent a transformation.  The vast modernization program has resulted over the past few years in the PRC developing a massive preponderance of force.

During the last two years of the George W. Bush administration, the Taiwanese government forwarded a set of requirements for an expansion and modernization program including new F-16 fighters and submarines.  A portion of the request was filled before the days of Bush/Cheney came to an end.  A second part was filled (along with supplemental items) by the Obama administration.  Along the way, the submarines were deleted by the US side.  The desired F-16s of the C/D model remained in limbo.

In limbo they stay today. The administration did not deny the request but offered in its stead an upgrade package for the 160 or so F-16 A/B variants in the Taiwanese inventory.  The upgrade package for these now aging aircraft (dating back to 1992) do not include new engines capable of higher speeds and greater combat endurance.  As a consequence, the improvements in sensor, guidance, and weapons suites do not give the Taiwanese air force the additional capacities needed to survive in the air against the several hundred more modern, more competent, mainland fighters.

In a slight but pardonable exaggeration, the average Taiwanese pilot flying an "upgraded" F-16 might survive long enough to shout, "Mayday" before being shot down.  This is not the end the congress had in mind when it passed the TRA.

Whether or not the Nice Young Man From Chicago simply capitulated to Beijing's opposition to this (or any) arms deal with Taiwan is, as they say, "a subject fit for adjudication."  The fact remains that the Obama "team" effectively eviscerated the TRA.

Given the continued force draft development of the PRC's air, naval, ground, and missile forces as well as the probable running down of American air and naval power in the Pacific, all that Beijing needs to do is be patient for a couple more years and then take back the "lost" province with a short, sharp, and decisive little war.  The US will be able to do nothing other than ask the Security Council for a resolution.  That, of course, will be vetoed by the Chinese.

The Obama administration's interpretation of American responsibilities under the TRA gives a strong hint as to the reliability of his steadfastness under pressure.  No political leader in Israel should see the president's words at the General Assembly as other than empty rhetoric.  Even the prospect of an American veto of the PA's request shows no depth of commitment, no willingness to run real risk.

Should some larger consideration enter the American field of view, the seemingly resolute support of Israel radiated yesterday will evaporate with blinding rapidity.  All that need be kept in mind is that before the PRC embarked on its massive rearmament program, Washington went ahead with arming Taiwan, showing total indifference to the whims of Beijing.  Now, affairs are a bit different.

Should the OPEC bully boys decide on another oil embargo, the US would be sorely tested in its relation with Israel.  Should such a hypothetical occur during the run up to a presidential election, it is doubtful that the smart money would be placed on the Israeli connection trumping.

Fifty years ago, the hard hearted, cold eyed Charles de Gaulle acted on a belief that many Europeans shared when he ordered the creation of an independent French nuclear force.  He was of the view that the US would never place Chicago at risk to defend Paris.  We will never know if the general was right, but his apprehension was well placed and well rooted in history.  The US has not always been noted for consistency over administrations, particularly if new and unpleasant realities develop as they have in China.

The takeaway for Israel is both simple and disheartening.  As Taiwan has found out over the past four years, an American promise--even one enshrined in law--is not bankable.  How much less is a piece of oratory given by a president up for reelection in a tough environment?

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.

Russia And China Get It Together

The state of play in Russo-Chinese relations shows the two behemoths moving closer together on a couple of key fronts.  One is economic.  The other is diplomatic.

In economic matters it is clear that the two are close to a pricing agreement on the sale of thirty billion cubic meters of natural gas annually starting in 2015.  The deal is good for both.  There is no doubt but China needs the energy and Russia would very much like to diversify its hydrocarbon market--and pocket a good deal of cash in the process.

While the natural gas agreement is important, it must take a backseat to the increasing harmony between Moscow and Beijing in international matters.  It is clear that both are using the Libyan adventure of NATO (and, at least indirectly, the US) as the catalyst for what the Russians have termed "tight cooperation" on such key questions as the UN, R2P and interventions generally.

Both states have guarded the rights of states to be free of UN interference for decades.  Since the end of the Cold War, the stance of both in this area has become, if anything, more and more hardline.  Both countries have more than a bit of self-interest at stake in their guarding of national sovereignty as each faces recurrent political unrest.  While both signed the convention on responsibility to protect there is no doubt but each saw the document as being one of those feel-good productions like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which everybody signs but not everyone takes seriously.

The doubts held by the Lads in the Kremlin and the Trolls of Beijing regarding the interventionary ambitions of the US and the West were given a shot of growth hormone by the passage of the Security Council resolution authorizing the no-fly zone in Libya and further calling upon member states to take actions such as to protect the civilian population of that country.  While delicately (and misleadingly) worded so as to avoid a veto, the resolution was troubling to Russia and China as well as other countries such as India and Brazil because its loose wording could be generously interpreted by Western states.

That a generous interpretation was intended from the beginning was obvious in the statements of assorted leaders including President Obama which declared goals far more expansive than simply assuring the safety and humanitarian relief of endangered civilians.  As the bombs fell in ever widening patterns, the Russians took the lead in stentorian denunciations of the NATO effort.  In the past few days they have been joined in the chorus by China.

When Chinese president Hu goes to St Petersburg on 16 June to attend the "Russian Davos," it is highly probable that the opportunity will be used to further orchestrate joint Sino-Russian opposition to an extension of the no-fly mandate as well as any introduction of NATO ground forces under any guise.  The fear is the US and its NATO partners, France and England, will arm twist Secretary General Ban into requesting NATO protection for UN humanitarian operations with the result the troops will land in regime changing force.

While there is a whiff of the conspiratorial in this Russian (and Chinese) apprehension, it is not baseless.  The air campaign is not only obviously biased in favor of the rebels, it is also not working rapidly or all that well.  Despite the attrition inflicted on loyalist arsenals, the pro-Gaddafi forces still have a robust combat power, effective tactics, and political will.  Even if the rebels are no longer losing dramatically, neither are they winning in any meaningful sense of the word.

To the Russian and Chinese observer, it seems only natural that the West would seek to retrieve victory nearly lost by the introduction of ground forces.  Should this move occur before the mid-June sidebar summit, one can anticipate very vigorous resistance from both states.  They will be joined by others.  Brazil, India, South Africa, various Central Asian republics--and the members of the Arab League.

The Arab League has repented of its early enthusiasm for internationalization of the Libyan internal conflict.  This is seen by the monolithic opposition from both the AL and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to any robust action being taken against Syria.  The AL, having tossed one Arab leader off the troika, is now covering itself with self-protecting protection of Bashir al-Assad.  To circle the Arab and Muslim wagons under the protective banner of two Great Powers is comforting to the Arabs and the OIC alike.

It will be comforting as well to the African Union (AU), which has been consigned by events to the further shores of irrelevance not only in Libya but deep in the heart of the continent with the way in which the UN and France dealt with events in the Ivory Coast.  This has allowed the Russian and Chinese diplomats to pull out and play the fear of neo-colonialism card with effect.  To many in Africa as in the Arab and Muslim majority states, the specter of Western neo-colonial acts has risen from the grave (if indeed it was ever really buried, which is debatable at best).

All of this implies that push-comes-to-shove time is arriving rapidly in Libya.  Unless the NATO/rebel combine can pull a rabbit (or better yet, a dead Gaddafi) out of their collective hat, there will be very rough diplomatic waters ahead.  Renewing the no-fly zone mandate (due by 24 June) or the use of ground forces will produce a diplomatic contretemps at Turtle Bay of major proportions.  Even absent that, the opposition to future application of R2P by China and Russia backed by an impressive number of lesser states will be massive and monolithic.

Even though the current administration has been staying deep in the shadows, the US still has a bull in the herd.  Our declaratory policy is still one of Gaddafi must go.  We are still more or less committed to R2P--at least when it is convenient and doable.  We are still trying to sort out just what direction we will take with the fast and sharp changes in Egyptian foreign relations.

All of this implies the US must carve out a defensible and credible stance vis a vis both Russia and China in their current mood of totally distrusting NATO and the force they perceive to be motivating the alliance--the US.  This may mean concessions to the Russians on the ABM basing issue as well as current plans to base US aircraft in former Warsaw Pact states.  It may mean backing down a bit in Asia to mollify Chinese fears.

Both of these would be quite negative for American national and strategic interests.  Yet the temptation to offer appeasing gestures of some substance may prove all too appealing to members of the Obama administration who would like to see foreign policy concerns recede to the back burner.  After all they have an election to win in only slightly less than eighteen months, an election which will hinge far more on economic issues than foreign policy concerns.

Or, of course, Mr Obama might want to see if Boat Six can take a whack at Brother Leader.

More--And More Important--Fallout From the Death Of OBL

The end of Osama bin Laden will accelerate demands that the US ramp down its presence in Afghanistan.  Such a move fits well with the Obama agenda and reelection effort.  The more rapid the ramp down the better is the perspective of many Americans, particularly those of budget deficit hawkishness or (strange partners here) the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

The withdrawal of sizable segments of the American force in Afghanistan would provide several collateral benefits.  One of the most important of these is an increase of leverage on the we-play-both-sides crew in Islamabad.  There is a simple equation here: Fewer troops means less need for the supply routes through Pakistan, the closure of which constitutes the only real threat the government there can levy.

Additionally, the reduction of US presence will automatically shift more of the burden for suppressing the out of control Frankenstein's monster created by ISI.  The causal chain here is less direct than that with the supply lines.  Lowering the crucial nature of the land lines of supply allows the US more freedom in lessening its extortion payments which will have the result of shifting costs on to Islamabad.  The elite in Pakistan will have the stark choice of accepting a growth of the insurgents and their brand of violent political Islam which brings with it an existential threat or paying the costs of suppressing the insurgency without significant American contributions.

The Pakistanis have been spared facing the implications of their fixation on India and reliance upon proxies motivated by violent political Islam as an operational concept.  Initially they were insulated against the consequences of folly by the dynamics of the Cold War.  Later, the events of 9/11 continued to benefit the Pakistanis.

Now the death of OBL along with the rapidly warming relations between the US and India make the old Pakistani connection irrelevant to American interests in the region.  When the prime minister of Pakistan made his recent suggestion to Karzai that both countries disengage with the US and engage with China, the Geek thought that was an excellent idea.  Certainly Pakistan has been moving ever more into the orbit of China.  The US now has the freedom to say, get on with it, pal.

The relation between the US and India is both more natural as a confluence of national interests and core values than that with Pakistan has been.  The mating of the US and Pakistan was an unnatural one, an artifact of Indian politics of the Cold War and American hyper-reactions to that.  A close relation with the US is in the interests of India and the region, far more than is the one between the US and Pakistan.

The linkage of Pakistan and China brings up another bit of fallout from the Great Abbottabad Raid.  With the death of Osama the Trolls of Beijing are once more shaking more than a little over the prospect that the US will put China back in the crosshairs.  Their fear is not without justification.

The US has gained stature and influence in Asia and the Western Pacific as China has become both more wealthy and militarily potent as well as diplomatically high profile.  The Trolls (or at least the think tanks which serve them) have become more and more convinced that China is a very lonely country with few, if any, natural allies while the US is Ms Popularity in comparison.

The Chinese have not failed to observe that the reality of American democracy is the glue which binds it with Asian democracies such as South Korea, Japan, Australia, Singapore, the Philippines, and, India.  It has hit the Trolls that democracies not only appeal to one another but feel threatened by authoritarian states, particularly those with very, very large military establishments and robust diplomatic agendas.

To the Trolls the fact that the US is a democracy means the US is automatically unpredictable over time.  Every election brings with it the possibility of a great shift in US policy in all areas.  The Chinese strategic thinkers and military strategists alike fret endlessly about this inbuilt threat of American democracy.  The fretting focuses on means by which the US can be limited, bound, or otherwise denied freedom of action on the global and regional stages.

The Trolls (or their Deep Thinkers) have also belatedly realized that the US benefits by not being a power located in Asia.  Simultaneously, it has hit the same crew that the US magnifies this benefit by having no territorial claims or ambitions in Asia--quite unlike the Chinese.  As a consequence, countries which are not democracies edge closer and closer to the US, a gravitational attraction which runs counter to Chinese strategic and national interests.

The Chinese claims on Arunachal Pradesh have no doubt reinforced India's move toward the US.  It is not coincidental that the relation has widened and deepened in a way which is positively correlated with China's military build up and diplomatic aggressiveness.  In a similar fashion the Chinese claims on some eighty percent of the South China Sea have gone a far piece to convincing Hanoi to allow bygones to be bygones and seek tighter relations with the Great Enemy Of The Vietnamese People.

Of course the Chinese have been responsible for much of the isolation confronting them.  Not since the Germany of Bismark, Wilhelm, and Adolph has a country exhibited such consistently inept diplomacy managing to either alienate or scare the hell out of almost every country in Asia to say nothing of other areas of the world.  The combination of implicit military threats, aggressive acquisition of land in faraway countries, diplomatic bluster, lack of international cooperation on such matters as Iran and North Korea, shows a state with no sense of diplomatic nuance and profound tone deafness as to the best way to win friends and influence policy.

The tub thumping of the Chinese military may even accomplish something thought impossible--cause the US to rethink seriously its love affair with the floating sovereignty behemoths called supercarriers.  Their "smart spike" ballistic missiles may (in conjunction with the budget concerns at home) cause the gradual replacement of the Nimitz class and larger ships with larger numbers of smaller, cheaper, and more competent vessels.  This would be a development to be hoped for in the most profound fashion.

Of course all of this might be moot given the problems inherent to China today.  Dropping water tables, loss of arable land, demographics, a crisis of rising expectations, the movement of American investment in physical plant and industrial production in consumer durables and capital goods back to the US, the steep increase in energy demands including refined petroleum products, the ramp up in internal suppression, the impact of new information and communication technologies may pose some well nigh onto insoluble problems for the Trolls.

With these contextual matters in mind, the Geek says, "Take Pakistan--and welcome to it."

Form Up The Battalions!

The French are not only punching above their weight in the tough arena of coercive diplomacy, the go-out-and-get-them approach of President Nicholas Sarkozy has taken France from the doldrums of diplomatic irrelevance where it languished as recently as February to the position of calling the West's diplomatic tune.  Not a bad record even for an inveterate gambler, addicted to high-risk, high-payoff ways of playing politics with enough personal energy to (if focused) replace the lost Japanese nuclear reactors.

Sarko currently has French forces deployed in six actual or nearly actual shooting wars--Ivory Coast, Libya, Afghanistan, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Somalia.  As one French observer noted recently, in comparison George W. Bush was a blooming pacifist.  While the French public has exhibited a fair degree of disenchantment with the Afghan operation, the other "overseas contingency operations" have not met with significant disapprobation.

More than a little ink--both physical and virtual--has been expended on the possible motives for the new French assertiveness.  To many onlookers, the prime reason has been assigned to Sarkozy's political ambitions coupled with his low standing in the polls, strong opposition, and poor showing in recent municipal elections.  While there is some measure of truth in this interpretation, it is doubtful it is the whole story.

Another input to the Sarko decision making process in recent weeks has been the embarrassment caused by France having botched policy during the "Jasmine" and "Lotus" revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.  Make no mistake about it, the French policy debacle was an embarrassment to Sarkozy, his party, and, most importantly, the French public.  Simply sending an inept--or merely unfortunate--foreign minister to the scaffold was not enough to repair the damage to both reputation and influence.

Another input may well have been a strong desire on the part of Sarkozy to step out from the shadow cast by Germany and its chancellor in the Eurozone.  Germany and France have not been good yokemates, to say the least, with respect to the economic challenges which have beset the EU the past several months.  But, foreign policy gave France--and Sarkozy personally--the chance to shine, shine much brighter than the timid Germans with their fear of all things military and love of all things financial.

Not to be dismissed without consideration is the gentlemanly pushing and shoving between Sarkozy and David Cameron regarding leadership in the newly emerging military relationship.  A robust policy backed by military force gave the French a leg up by demonstrating just which country had the real muscle now.

Nor is it possible to overlook the role played by the US.  Or, somewhat more accurately, the failure of the US to act in its traditional Great Power role.  Whether this deficiency was attributed to the cover story of American overextension and budgetary limitations or the weak kneed nature of the American president, the vacuum existed at the top.  And, Sarkozy well understands that international politics like nature abhors a vacuum.

Then, of course, one might take Sarkozy at his word.  France does have a set of norms, values, and customs by which right is parsed from wrong.  Acting quickly and robustly to protect unarmed civilians from mortal harm at the hands of a regime which had announced its intentions to inflict bloody repression was in complete tandem with French norms and values.  Bombing tanks in Libya or mortar positions in Ivory Coast were exercises meeting the highest tests of French morality regarding governmental conduct.

M. Sarkozy's motives were, as psychiatrists would put it, "overdetermined."  They were the expectable mix of the cynical and the principled, the transient and the eternal, the personal and the disinterested.  The issues which matter most are not those of motivation or intent but rather those of outcome and precedent.

Both Libya and the Ivory Coast constitute situations in which the outcome is not clear.  Should, as seems quite likely at the present, the war in Libya bog down into a protracted stalemate with a de facto partition of the place, the cheers which met Sarko's actions initially are highly likely to turn into jeers of disillusionment.  In the Ivory Coast should it prove out that the supporters of the internationally recognized incoming president, Ouattara, have been responsible for atrocities on a large scale (again as currently appears to have been the case) the applause within France will be replaced by shrugs of disengagement and sneers of disapproval.

In either case the presumption of failed overreach will go a long way to assuring that M. Sarkozy is a one term president.  High-risk, high-payoff gambles are like that.  And, as Clausewitz pointedly noted, "no plan survives first contact with the enemy".

Win, lose, or draw, the precipitous action of the French government has gone a far piece toward reinforcing the notion of R2P as an overarching responsibility of civilized states.  Arguably, R2P, as the Russians and Chinese have maintained, constitutes an unwarranted increase of UN authority.  It is ironic, but France's exercise in sovereign decision making particularly as regards two former colonial possessions and particularly the Ivory Coast intervention, transforms R2P into just what its opponents claim it to be--colonialism under a different and nicer term.

The reality is that most of the world's governments and publics accept the nation-state as the basic unit of global political organization.  This runs against the world view of the Western elites which hold the nation-state to be a relic of the past--and a very dangerous one at that.  The Western elites have embraced the supra-national organization with a lust which boggles the imagination.  The underlying proposition in the mind of the collective Western elite is that the planet is too small and common problems too large to allow nation-states the unfettered sovereignty which they have enjoyed for the past five hundred years.  The size and scope of problems coupled with the lethality of contemporary technologies of war fighting and the power of ideological conviction demand that power reside with international organizations alone.

The historical record of the past half century is littered with examples of governments run amok, of mounds of bodies piled up at the command of governments or non-state actors both fueled by racial, religious, or ideological hatreds.  The ability with which governments can and have killed their own people, generated refugees in the millions, inflicted fear along with physical casualties and destruction has been demonstrated with nausea producing regularity.

It is small wonder that the R2P doctrine was formulated and formally approved by an overwhelming majority of the UN membership.  It is equally of no surprise that the precursors of R2P all the way back to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were similarly passed by universal acclamation.  In the waves of disgust and enthusiasm for having created a "better way" on paper, the assembled diplomats lost sight of what might occur when some country and some future time took the strictures seriously and demanded effective enforcement.

The inevitable result of such a demand would be the bringing into sharp conflict of the basic principle of sovereignty and the ideal of international duty.  The always realistic men in the Kremlin and Forbidden City have always held a firm line against the international community intervening in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.  Both have always relied upon their Security Council veto to protect against excesses of Western enthusiasm for intervention of this sort.

For reasons of short-term diplomatic interest both abstained on the Libyan no-fly/civilian protection resolution.  Both are probably regretting having done so as by not going the "No!" route, they have allowed for a crack of precedent to be formed.  How quickly the crack could be widened was seen by the UN peace keeping force in the Ivory Coast ordering four Ukrainian gunships into action against forces loyal to outgoing president Gbagbo.  This attack constituted a significant change in UN peacekeeping operational practice.

The French have pushed a precedent which seems good at the present moment but is fraught with problems for the future.  Chief among these are where will the line be drawn  At what level of international nausea will the civilized states or one of them seek R2P authorization?  What will happen if and when the Security Council does not give its blessings?  Or can the UN be bypassed, with reliance upon one regional organization or another acting in its place?  What happens if the UN says, "yes," but the regional entity decrees "no?"

There are other problems as well.  Some have been outlined in Libya.  Who is responsible for executing any specific R2P operation?  What about the internal mechanisms of any state for approving such expeditions?  This is particularly relevant with regard to the US while totally lacking relevance for the French whose president has royal level prerogative to employ armed force for reasons of state.

Nicholas Sarkozy has well and truly kicked the fire ant hill when it comes to looking ahead.  Without any intention to do so, he has created a precedent with more problems than solutions, more difficulties for tomorrow than certainties.  It may even prove that more civilians in the future will die at the hands of their governments than otherwise would have been the case as an unintended consequence of M. Sarkozy's  motives and consequent action.

Who ever said that irony is not a major feature of history?

James Clapper Has Problems With Words

Yesterday in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Director Of National Intelligence, James Clapper, made a series of blunt statements which perturbed the senators massively.  The remarks regarding the possibility of Gaddafi prevailing in the current insurgency were bad enough apparently.  Even worse was Clapper's contention that Russia and China presented the greatest "mortal threats" to the US.

The Clapper testimony coming as it did on top of his earlier contention that the Muslim Brotherhood had become a primarily secular organization sent at least one powerful Republican senator, Lindsey Graham (SC), into high Earth orbit level dudgeon.  The Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, the antediluvian Democrat from Michigan, Carl Levin, confessed himself nonplussed, saying that Iran and North Korea came to mind far ahead of Russia and China.  With its usual courage and eagerness to defend honestly held and expressed conclusions, the White House dispatched National Security Advisor Tom Donilon to declare Clapper off the reservation and damn his interpretation of events in Libya as too static and having failed to take into account the fluid, dynamics of the situation.

A less impassioned view of the Clapper comments shows that the DNI was not being overly pessimistic.  Nor does it show the man to be somehow demented or terminally out to lunch.  Rather, the larger context indicates that Clapper, a man with nearly a half century in the intelligence racket, was providing an assessment based on capacities without regard to intentions.

The Geek has never been a fan of the Office of National Intelligence.  He saw it (and sees it) as an unnecessary complication in the already overly complex US intelligence community.  The ONI arguably is an artifact of Congress, a disfiguring carbuncle created by poorly informed politicians in response to an overly rapid and superficial analysis undertaken in the panic ridden aftermath of 9/11.  The gestation of ONI was the consequence not so much of a documented need for such an addition but rather the result of the usual politician's need to appear to able to take charge and move out, to do something, anything, so as to reassure We the People that someone, somewhere, is taking care of the store.

The ONI and its Director are presumably the tip of the Great American Intelligence Community Pyramid.  It is to be presumed that the DNI has the best analyses available predicated upon the totality of the best catch.  So, what is wrong?  Why are the senators--and some representatives--so torqued off with Clapper that they want his head detached from the rest of his body?  Is Clapper's view so out of touch with the facts and the analyses that his comments merit only contempt?

Or does the retired Air Force general simply have a problem with words?  Does he choose to speak too bluntly?  Would he be better off if he were to have shaded his assessments, qualified them with appropriate covers of vagueness, and expressed them with well nuanced euphemisms?

Well, let's step back and take a closer look at what Clapper said and what predicates support his views.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a many faceted creature.  As testimony before Representative King's subcommittee brought forth yesterday, the vast majority of Muslim terror plots in the US can be traced in one way or another to some faction or personality in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.  Homegrown terror appears to develop best if provided with foreign fertilizer.

At the same time, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has had to learn to deal with the real world's real problems in realistic ways during its years of operating an impressive array of social and educational services throughout the country.  It is not surprising that the Brotherhood has discovered the strictures and duties of the Koran do not provide all, or even most, of the solutions which must be constructed to meet the real and pressing needs of Egypt's massive impoverished population.  This has provided a significant impetus to adopting secular answers to the challenges confronting the Egyptians.

The tension between these two poles of the Brotherhood has existed for some years.  It has grown in recent months and weeks.  The uprising in Egypt and the consequent removal of Hosni Mubarak have accelerated the growth of the tension.

This implies strongly that Clapper was not wrong in his assessment but did not express it in a way which properly noted that while tensions exist, it is too early to say with certainty that the Brotherhood would tilt more and more to the secular side of the continuum as the outflow from the Mubarak overthrow continues.  He would have been far better off to have noted the foundations of the tensions, the results to date, and the range of most probable outcomes over the next few months.

In short, Clapper wasn't so much wrong as he was inarticulate.

In his assessment of Gaddafi's potential for success in the insurgency, Clapper was on solid ground.  Gaddafi has billions of dollars worth of cash stashed in and around Tripoli.  He has sufficient money to keep his mercenaries well paid.  He has sufficient cash on hand to hire more.  He has more than enough of the old vigorish to pay off his indigenous supporters.  He even has enough bread to get more weapons and munitions on the black market where cash is king and ethics totally situational.

Given that Gaddafi has no safe harbor (other than, perhaps, Venezuela) as well as a world class case of megalomania, it is certain that he has the political will to continue the war.  The US and the rest of the West have stiffened this political will by the threats of criminal prosecution.  (Way to go, guys!)

At the same time, the insurgents have a number of very serious problems.  Compared to the "elite" battalions of the Libyan army commanded by Gaddafi's kids, the rebels are untrained, poorly armed, badly organized, and overstretched in the logistics area.  While they have many reasons to keep on fighting, the coherent political will required for protracted insurgency has not had time enough to develop.  Also, compared to Gaddafi, the insurgents lack financial resources.  This, in and of itself, is a major, major disadvantage.

Overall, the correlation of forces is such as to favor Gaddafi greatly over the longer term.  The rebels failed to take the country by assault.  Now the war is rather like a siege.  There are serious reasons to doubt the capacity of the insurgents to maintain coherence and will as the siege drags on.

Neither the Senate nor the White House might have liked to hear Clapper's contentions.  That does not make the DNI wrong.  He would have been better off had he been vague, superficial, and hewed to the official White House line.  Of course, this ignores the reality that intelligence officers are presumed to have the intellectual and moral courage necessary to tell it as they see it regardless of the reaction up the chain of command.  In short, Clapper did his job.

Russia and China, "mortal threats" or not?  James Clapper was asked to rate threats.  He concluded, after having touched on Iran, North Korea, and violent political Islam, that Russia and China constituted the only "mortal threats" to the US.  This assessment sent Graham into his high Earth orbit.  This position nonplussed Levin.  Clapper's words will also disturb the Boys in the Kremlin and the Trolls of Beijing, who will use the characterization as being "Cold War rhetoric" and similar shopworn slogans.

Clapper based his contention on perceptions of capability.  This is a well established and conservative way to measure threats.  There can be no doubt but in current and near term potential capabilities, only Russia and China present a genuine threat to the US as well as its national and strategic interests.  Both countries have impressive conventional and nuclear forces today.  Both are committed to major upgrades in both the conventional and nuclear areas.  In either case, but more so with respect to China than Russia, the proposed procurement plans will result in forces far in excess of those necessary for purely defensive measures.

Both countries, again China more than Russia, are current threats with the capacity to deal a mortal blow to CONUS.  Given the upgrades both are undertaking, each will be even more of a potentially "mortal threat" in a very few years.

It is true that the US has requested "clarification" from the Trolls of Beijing and the Boys in the Kremlin regarding current and future intentions.  Neither have responded in unambiguous fashion.  This is how it should be.  No self-respecting nation-state would believe itself to be obligated to justify its military expenditures to another nation-state.  (It boggles the mind that the Obama administration actually believed it had the right to ask let alone expect an honest answer from either county.)

Historically, intelligence agencies, military services, and governments have used perceptions of capability to equate with perceptions of intent.  While Clapper did not directly address intent, his accurate assessment of capabilities demands close attention be paid to probable intents in both the Kremlin and Forbidden City.  No one in Congress or the White House wants to do this.

If one takes Clapper's assessment to its logical conclusion, the US would have no choice but to assume the intentions of either or both the Boys in the Kremlin and the Trolls of Beijing are not beneficent toward the US.  One would have no choice but to conclude that at the least either or both governments want to challenge US national and strategic interests.  This would require the US to invest more in its own military capabilities both conventional and nuclear (as well as newer critical arenas such as space and cyberwarfare.)

Spending more on defense (to use the polite euphemism) is not a popular notion today.  Ideology and fiscal constraints conspire to put defense on the slow track.

This is a tough matter.  On the one hand, there is a strong impetus not to spend more on the military.  On the other, the DNI honestly and too bluntly identified the "mortal threats" facing the US.  So, the best answer is to do the equivalent of shooting the messenger.  Denial is cheaper and ideologically more satisfying than facing a highly unpleasant and most inconvenient truth.

And, when the balloon does go up, when the US wakes up to find itself outclassed by one or two countries that have an agenda opposing our own, the politicians of both parties have an easy out.  They will point fingers and claim with one united voice, "Intelligence failure!"   Then they will create yet one more senior intelligence office.

The Darkness Of The Future

Some years the future is clear.  For example, the global political stage was highly visible and future developments easy to predict during much of the 1990s.   It was evident that the weak responses of the Clinton administration to the aggressive acts and "declaration of war" by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda would result in more, larger attacks.  It was not exactly difficult to predict that the "opening" of China to US trade would result in an ever growing torrent of money flowing to the Trolls of Beijing who would use the swag to power up their ambitions to have a global footprint.  Nor was it mentally taxing to conclude that the combination of hectoring and paternalism with which the US treated Russia would stoke the two primary characteristics of Russian policy--messianic zeal and galloping feelings of inferiority vis a vis the West coupled with a pervasive sense of insecurity.

In the background lurked the Iranian Islamic Revolution, the impact of which was growing across the Islamic world during the Nineties.  The growth of political Islam, particularly violent political Islam was evident not only with al-Qaeda but with the triumph of Taliban in Afghanistan, the presence of Iranian agents in the southern Philippines, the rise of political Islam in Pakistan, and the sectarian conflict in the rubble of Yugoslavia.  From that context prediction of the future trajectory was close to being a no-brainer.

It is not so easy today.  The rapid series of political disruptions in North Africa and the Mideast has introduced a set of complications which greatly complicates the prediction of future international trajectories.  If the current conflict in Libya continues and becomes a long duration (more than three months) internal war, the complications will be magnified.  

It is plain that Iran will continue to seek advantage in the Gulf region.  Its struggle with Saudi Arabia for regional hegemon status will both continue and grow.  Tehran will seek to exploit the Shiite disaffiliation in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.  Similarly, it will use its agents of influence in the less than monolithic Iraqi government to fill the vacuum which will necessarily develop further as the American presence recedes.  At the same time there is no doubt Ayatollah Khamenei will keep on consolidating power in his hands.  The carefully orchestrated removal of Ayatollah Akbar Rafsanjani from his post as head of the important Assembly of Experts is the most recent gambit in Khamenei's march to total and unquestioned authority.  It can be expected that the handpicked tool, Ahmedinejad, will follow up on this with a move against the Larjani family.

The imponderable (at least as to timing) in Iran is when will the lash back take place.  The Rafsanjani family like that of the Larjanis is both wealthy and powerful.  The more moderate clerics of Qom are much enamored of Rafsanjani and not overly impressed with the theological credentials of Khamenei.  Nor are they thrilled with the progress of Iran socially and economically the past few years.  The Green Movement has demonstrated a degree of committed perseverance totally unexpected in the wake of the first protests nearly two years ago.  So, the big question is: When will the balloon go up?

There are some features of the future which are clear.  Russia will continue to be an obstruction to effective collective action in Libya.  So too will China.  Both countries will also act to impede the implementation of a solution to the North Korean nuclear question.  And, should the continued centralization of authority in Iran reach the point of provoking widespread and violent internal unrest, both will be an obstacle to finding a viable solution for that challenge.

Another clear future of the tomorrows to come is the increasing potency of political Islam oriented groups and individuals in the new governments of Tunisia, Egypt, and other countries with governments under internal threat.  The presence of advocates of political Islam in governments of Egypt or Tunisia or Bahrain tends to scare the hell out of at least some Americans.  This degree of alarm is not necessarily justified as shown by the AKP in Turkey which is far more nationalist in its political philosophy than Islamist.  

The head of Tunisia's Renaissance Party has pointed to Erdogan and the AKP as a relevant role model.  So has Moussa, a leading candidate for the first post-Mubarak civilian president.  The historical experience tends to favor nationalism trumping Islam.  This does not mean there will be a total absence of Islam, a wall between mosque and state.  Rather it implies that while features of a country's internal and judicial policies will be tilted strongly in the direction of Islamic requirements and strictures, and public criticism or opposition to Muslim groups practicing violent political Islam will be muted in deference to the Islamic imperative on community solidarity, the governments will pursue national interest and not that of some mythical caliphate.

While there is some historically based reasoning to be calm in the face of governments dominated by political Islam, this does not imply that the future is secure or even that it can be seen so clearly that one has a high confidence in predictions at this point.  The assorted advocates of violent political Islam including those with the unlimited goal of a global caliphate will continue to exist.  They will also continue to be creative in their use of local grievances in the context of the "will of Allah" to recruit supporters and silence dissent from their goals.  But their potential growth will be limited if the US and other Western states pursue policies which give due regard to the very easily bruised nationalism which exists in all the countries experiencing unrest or its aftermath.

This suggests strongly that caution is the word to use when considering no-fly zones or any other intervention in Libya--or in some country yet to implode.  Interventions no matter how justified in terms of stopping massacres outrage national sentiments.  When the national sentiments are magnified by feelings of religious persecution, the result is very negative for the outsiders.  It is like domestic violence situations--ask any street cop what happens when the battling partners are faced by the well intentioned outsiders there to enforce the impartial law.  So it is with people  generally--unite against the outsider, particularly when that outsider represents another, maligned religious community.

The combination of prickly nationalism and religious imperatives also suggests that the US and other Western countries had best develop realistic and limited goals for their policies concerning new governments.  It is all well and good to play upbeat mood music about democracy, but that is not a policy, let alone a realistic and limited one.  The process of formulating appropriate policy goals starts with a coldly realistic assessment of just what national and strategic interests are in play in each country of the regions.

Here we encounter the real basis of why the future is dark.  The current administration has yet to demonstrate that it understands what national and strategic interests might be.  There is no general text covering national interest or its extension, strategic interest.  Rather there have been hazy almost bumper sticker mouthings such as "comprehensive Mideast peace" or "fostering democratic and transparent government without corruption" or "assuring women play their full role in the new system."  

Nice sound bites do not make policy, let alone realistic, achievable policy oriented toward the goal of achieving American national and strategic interests.  Nor are appeals to the "international community" and multilateral bodies a substitute for policy aimed at US interests.  

To say the Obama administration is adrift at the policy level is almost too kind.  Yet that is the ground truth at work today.  This means there is a real danger that Congress will interject itself into the making of foreign policy.  Congress may have its strengths, but the formulation and execution of foreign policy is not numbered among them.  Worse, absent definite policy a severe uptick in the level of violence in Libya or one of the other instable venues might excite the emotions of We the People to the point that political considerations compel action.  History records that such hasty, politically predicated excuses for reasoned policy are well described by a single word: failure.

The US has lurched from failure to failure under the forces of ideology and sheer naivety for most of the past eighteen years.  As a consequence, an avoidable one, the US has witnessed a progressive decline in its status and influence around the world.  If this sorry record continues through the current round of developments, the result will be a US which is irrelevant, a US which finally merits that Sixties vintage appellation, "a pitiful helpless giant."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile, Far Away From The Mideast

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some More Reasons China Will Defeat The US

There are two contests currently underway in global affairs.  In each the stakes of the game are nothing less than planetary preeminence.  One of the two "games" is between adherents of political Islam, particularly violent political Islam, and the civilized states both great and small.  The other is between the US and the Peoples Republic of China.

Both are dangerous.  Both directly threaten the US and We the People.  Without going unacceptably far out on the limb of doom laden speculation, each--and particularly the second--are existential in the sense that should the US be on the losing side, life will change for Americans, and not for the better.

As was the case in World War II when the US was faced by war on two fronts, war conducted by two qualitatively different enemies, a choice must be made as to which enemy deserves priority.  In 1941 the leadership of the US and UK correctly estimated that Nazi Germany constituted the greater threat and thus merited the greater effort by the Western Allies.  Now, the leadership of the US must make a similar decision.  It must evaluate which threat--violent political Islam or expansionist China--is greater and, thus, must take pride of place in American efforts.

It is not an easy choice to make.  There is no doubt but violent political Islam constitutes a clear and present danger.  There is no arguing against the proposition that should the adherents of this objectionable religion based political philosophy gain greater influence around the world, the consequences for the US and other civilized states would be unpleasant and all too often lethal.  However, the potentials of violent political Islam pale when compared to the threat contained in Chinese expansionism.

Unlike the majority of those who advocate the triumph of political Islam (which are actors of the non-state sort), China is a fully functioning state with all the appurtenances of statehood.  Not only is China a nation-state, it is an authoritarian one, which means it has automatic advantages in long term planning and execution of policy.  China is not only a nation-state with an authoritarian political system, it is a country with both a long history and an equally long record of being quite historically conscious.  Historical consciousness implies that policy is more often than not based on trajectories and world views of very long standing, backed as it were by the power of time.

Given its advantages of organization, economic and technological predicates, population size and cohesiveness, unitary political will, and the very real force of time, China possesses a number of advantages in the Great Game of Nations which are denied to the adherents of political Islam.  In short, China is today's equivalent of Nazi Germany in 1941 while the practitioners of political Islam are the contemporary version of Imperial Japan in 1941--a major annoyance, an enemy which must be defeated in the fullness of time but not a true existential menace.

When considering the match up between China and the US, it is clear that China has a number of very potent advantages.  Some of these have been examined in earlier posts such as Beijing's severely narrow focus on Chinese national and strategic interests, its capacity to assure monolithic political will, or the Trolls' well demonstrated ability to plan and execute foreign policy with an emphasis on the long term.

There are other factors which amp up China's tactical capacities which merit close consideration since without effective tactics even the best strategy will fail.  A second justification for scrutinizing certain tactical matters is that the differing approaches taken by the US and China are illustrative of larger factors which militate against American success in the current contest.

Consider for the moment the notion of "doing good."  The notion of "doing good" is inherent in the concept of "nation-building."  And, as has been demonstrated by our interventionary operations in the post-World War II decades, the slippery critter called "nation-building" has been a centrality.  Actually, the roots of nation-building go back nearly a century when Woodrow Wilson sent the Marines ashore in Mexico in order "to teach the Mexicans to elect good men."

Nation-building is one of those ideas which reads well in academic conferences or policy discussions by ad hoc inter-agency working groups sitting around highly polished fine wood tables in some chancery somewhere.  In the real world, particularly among those benighted folk upon whose backs a nation will be built, the idea is not so well received.

The idea is even less well received when it is presented--as it always is--with overtones of condescension, of the well intentioned expert parachuting in with salvation for the heathen contained in his briefcase or on his flash drive.  The wannabe nation-builder does nothing to enhance the favor with which his efforts at uplift are received when--as inevitably it must be--hectoring replaces mere condescension.

No one likes to be told he is somehow lacking, somehow inferior, somehow in need of guidance, moral uplift, political transformation.  No member of a traditional society and culture enjoys hearing how it is deficient and what he must do to "build" his nation.  The universal crustiness of the human critter assures that the most well intended nation-building will fail unless the "builders" limit their role to that of provider of money and other goodies.

The Americans (and other Westerners as well) have never gotten the message no matter how often it has been delivered by different recipients of our nation-building efforts.  In Afghanistan today as in South Vietnam fifty years ago or Mexico a half century before that, Americans are committed to nation-building complete with the ribbons and bows of hectoring and implicit superiority.  The result is simple: No matter how much "good" we do, the efforts are invariably resented and rejected by the objects of our succor and assistance.

The Chinese are not so high minded.  Perhaps because China was the target of nation-building in bygone days, the Trolls and their agents are willing to simply pass out money and urge that Chinese companies be hired for infrastructure projects.  China does not seek to build nations but rather to secure influence within existing governments and the states these rule.  To this end the Trolls will distribute money, seek to recoup as much of the dole as possible through the awarding of contracts, and in the process gain and retain influence within both the government of the target state and its associated elite(s.)

This is a coldly realistic process of pursuing Chinese national and strategic interests.  The Trolls have no lofty aspirations of uplifting the heathens, of changing the local culture, society, or polity for the "better" or otherwise doing "good" for the local "masses."  Chinese national and strategic interests in no way require the transformation of the recipient country into a simulacrum of China.

This diplomatic philosophy is in sharp opposition with that of the US (and some other Western states.)  It doesn't matter if neocon ninnies or High Minded Progressives are running the White House or congress, the US always demands the recipient become some sort of Western style democratic polity with a society marked by the full panoply of "rights" enjoyed by Americans today and an economy having all the features of a well regulated, "rule of law" approach.

The implications of this sharp set of distinctions are too self-evident to require elucidation.  Or, at least, they should be.

For the Deep Thinking Denizens Inside the Beltway, the distinctions and their impact do not seem so self-evident.  This dynamic comes into sharper focus in another area of difference between the methods of the Trolls and those favored by the US government and its fellow travelers within our domestic elites.

The second illustration of the differences between the Chinese and American ways of 'nation-building" is the role of corruption.  To Americans at the policy level corruption is anathema.  To the Trolls it just another way of acquiring and keeping influence.  To us it is a sin.  To the Chinese it is a fact of life to be used in the pursuit of interest.

In many places around the world graft, corruption, nepotism, and a lack of transparency are a normal and expectable part of life.  When these features of quotidian existence become a problem for the local elite or the citizenry generally, it is usually because the fruits of corruption are not distributed equitably.  It is not the corruption per se but rather its lack of breadth which cause outrage.

The American answer to corruption is to stamp it out with the moral fervor of a health Nazi facing a McDonald's warehouse.  The Chinese response is to build corruption in as a normal cost and try to make sure it is spread around appropriately.  The more spreading the better as such assures more people will be tied in effectively to the Chinese program.

Our approach is more--more laws, more regulations, more courts, more commissions, more oversight, more investigators, more cops.  The Chinese approach is also more--more money and more widespread distribution.

Pop quiz:  Which approach is more likely to produce more positive results with more people in the recipient traditional society?

This brief consideration of two tactical advantages enjoyed by China over the US today illustrates why it is critical for us to stop and take a hard look at the two threats facing the Americans today.  It also helps in understanding why China is the larger, more important threat as well as why the US is not likely to prevail in the contest underway today.

To put it all quite simply, when the deck is stacked against you is it is with respect to the Trolls time is not on your side.  The US does not have the luxury of sitting back and wondering what we should do--if anything.  The real deal is the Obama administration has no viable option other than to remove its collective head from the sand and realize that the Chinese are cruising on by us on the fast track to global preeminence.

Really, Mr Obama is that why you received the Nobel Peace Prize?

Back To Playing The Human Rights Card

The Obama administration in the person of Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has moved human rights back into play in the Great Game with China.  This, of course, is a reversal of the earlier stance underscored by Ms Clinton in her remark early on in the Obama years that human rights would not be allowed to "interfere" in our relations with the Trolls of Beijing.

There is no doubt that the new emphasis on human rights pleases the folks on the Left.  In addition to the domestic benefits of rediscovering that the Trolls are willing to repress any and all dissent, raising the issue of how the Chinese regime treats its citizens allows the US to attempt the insertion of a wedge between the more or less reform minded Trolls such as prime minister Wen Jiabao and the high command of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA.)  Such a wedge may prove beneficial to American interests next year when the five year term of the rather weak and pathetic President Hu comes to an end.

While that possibility exists it is too slight a reed to support any significant US policy regarding China.  To put it bluntly but not inaccurately, the leadership of the Han tribe is not overly concerned with the views of the US or any other barbarian state in the amorphous area of human rights.

The reason for this is simple.  The cohesion of the Han tribe is the absolute centrality of Chinese society, polity, and economy.  For centuries the structural integrity of the Han has been seen as the cause of Chinese success and, conversely, any cracks in that integrity have been held responsible for Chinese failures.  The social and political compact between rulers and ruled hinges on the capacity of the rulers to insist upon cohesion and the willingness of the ruled to accept cheerfully and fully the imposed collective integrity.

A member of the Han tribe who rejects or demurs from the requirements of cohesiveness has placed himself outside the tribe if not in opposition to it.  The non-Han who happens to live in China, who perforce is a subject of the Han, has no voice in the matter.  The role of the non-Han (roughly ten percent of the population) is to accept his lot in silence, grateful for whatever crumbs fall from the master's table while showing always a willingness to obey his betters.  (Perhaps the non-Han can take some comfort from the fact that he lives within the Central Empire and not among the denizens of the outer darkness, the assorted barbarians of the world.)

The Han view is not one of recent origin.  It has typified Chinese thinking for a long, long while.  The notion of the Han as superior, of China as the Central Empire, was well developed back when the British were painting themselves blue and burning captives in wickerwork cages, since the days when Rome was a hick village on only one hill.  The idea of the Han tribe, of the cohesion of the Han as central to the success or failure of China, has a long and honored history.

It is not surprising that the constellation of ideas which comprise the concept of the Han tribe and its necessary cohesion based on a compact binding rulers and ruled in a web of collective obligations has brought in its wake a large measure of xenophobia, a larger measure of supremacist ideology, and a hefty amount of indifference to the human rights of non-Han or the Han so ill-advised as to dissent from the imperatives of the tribe.

More than any other institution in China, the PLA is the custodian of the most robust expressions of Han supremacy.  This means that the PLA is the most nationalistic as well as the most militaristic component of the Chinese state.  As is the case with all continental powers, the army is the ultimate guarantor of both nationhood and statehood.  But, this dynamic is magnified in China.  Mao recognized this in his famed dictum that "political power comes from the muzzle of a gun."

In an ideal world cohesion comes from consensus.  In the less than ideal world called reality, consensus is not always enough.  Consensus must be reinforced by coercion from time to time.  The military, today the PLA, is the instrument of coercion.  Over the two dozen centuries of China's existence as an organized polity, the fate of the Han and their ruler have depended upon the capacity of the army to coerce effectively.  The fate of the nation, the fate of the state, have waxed and wained according to the capacity of the army not only to defend borders, but, more importantly and often, to coerce effectively--to suppress dissent and force non-Han to accept subordination.

The current system of Chinese political organization came to pass because the PLA was more effective in coercing acceptance of Mao's version of Communism than was the army commanded by the Nationalists.  China exists as it does today not because the PLA outfought its armed opponents, although it did so.  China exists as it does primarily due to the efficiency with which the PLA suppressed dissent, forced consensus, and restored cohesion.

The PLA was the midwife of the Revolution.  Since then it has been the ultimate protector and custodian of both nation and state.  Had it not been for the effectiveness of the PLA in its internal security role, the wheels would have come off Mao's state during the Great Famine following the Great Leap Forward or as a result of the bloody consensus destroying excesses of the Cultural Revolution.  And, it should never be forgotten that it was the tanks and bayonets of the PLA which in 1989 crushed the pro-democracy movement and bought the regime the time it needed to pursue economic liberalization with the results we are so well acquainted today.

The PLA at the senior levels knows perfectly well that the ambitions of the Trolls for regional hegemon status as well as its lofty plans for securing a Great Power role equivalent to if not surpassing that of the US depends upon its capacities.  Likewise, the PLA command structure is well aware that the Trolls depend upon it to suppress the non-Han and squash any Han dissenters.

This implies that the level of civilian supremacy in China is not so high as Secretary of Defense Gates has pretended in public.  The actual relation between civilian government and military high command is more like a co-dominion with Trolls and military chiefs being essentially equal.

From this one can draw a necessary inference: While both President Hu and Prime Minister Wen may genuflect before the totems of reform, democracy, and other warm fuzzies, when and if push comes to shove, the PLA is secure in its belief that it can impose and enforce the necessary degree of Han cohesiveness.  As a result, the American hectoring about human rights can be ignored with impunity.

To a degree which surpasses the civilian Trolls, the commanders of the PLA are realpolitikers.  They are also ideologues.  This is a very dangerous combination.  The high command of the PLA is of the view that China is entitled to be regional hegemon.  It has a right to Taiwan.  China is the Central Empire.  These axioms mean that China must accept the probability of conflict with the US.  The set of "givens" means the PLA must be prepared for war with the US.

The massive modernization of the PLA (fueled in large part by money from US consumers) is plainly aimed at the US.  The continued acquisition of evermore sophisticated weaponry and other military equipment (some of which is the result of poorly considered co-production and similar agreements) is also aimed at the US.  There is not a single aspect of Chinese military procurement or reorganization which is not far in excess of any realistic defensive need.  Rather, each and every aspect of China's military reorientation and enhancement effort is offensive in nature.  The only credible target of an offensively oriented Chinese military is the US.

In the face of this set of very unpleasant developments, the Obama administration's putting the human rights card into play during President Hu's state visit is less than pathetic.  Rather the "new found assertiveness" promised by Secretary Clinton and President Obama is redolent of the tactics of desperation and hints at a strategy utterly lacking intellectual content.

We should consider ourselves fortunate if the Chinese president refrains from laughing.

Then There Is China

When neo-liberal Bill Clinton "opened" the door to China, the Geek went into one of his here-there-be-tygers moods.  Contrary to the peace, love, and flower power words of the Arkansas Terror, the Geek viewed the normalization of trade and financial relations with the "Central Empire" (to use the most accurate translation of the ancient Chinese term for their country) as a severe self-inflicted injury to the US and its national interests.

The Geek made a set of fearless predictions in those bygone days to assorted military and foreign policy audiences.  Among those were a massive hemorrhage of dollars and jobs to the benefit of the Trolls of Beijing.  He also warned that the self-same Trolls would use their bushels of bucks to do the following: massively ramp up their military capacities, purchase allies wherever possible, seek exploitable fossil fuels particularly oil and national gas, seek to immunize themselves against crop failures, and, lastly but most importantly, undertake all measures possible to become both the regional  hegemon of Asia and a Great Power able to limit the ability of the US to operate on the world stage.

The Geek's credible imitation of Cassandra was pooh-poohed by many who were in the audiences but the Geek serenely assured all, "Just wait fifteen years or so."  Well within the time limit, all the dreary forecasts have proven correct as well as other, equally dismal, events not foreseen by the Geek.  The Geek missed, for example, the Chinese scarfing up of Uncle Sam's IOU's  to say nothing of the extent of the debt which was to come.  He also failed to see that the Trolls would pursue crop failure immunization by purchasing farmlands in Africa by the multiples of square miles.  He also overlooked Chinese ventures in strategic metals.  But, overall he did get the picture correct.

In return for the loss of jobs--even entire industries and cargo ships filled with bucks--the American public got mounds of non-essential but inexpensive consumer expendables courtesy of the big boxes with Walmart at the forefront.  More than the biblical character, We the People sold out our heritage for a mess of potage--shoddy pottage at that.

The Han Chinese, courtesy of the differing ideological imperatives of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush abetted by the sheer greed of the American consumer and the bottomline fixation of American businesses, have become the largest, most coherent, and self-confident tribe on the planet's surface.  The combination of economic success, personal enrichment, an ever more powerful military, a very self-assured and authoritarian leadership have given the Han tribe both the political will and material capacity to treat the rest of the world, the barbarians, as a pseudo-colonial environment upon which to work their will.

The Central Empire has returned--on steroids.

The Chief Troll, President Hu Jintao, is soon to arrive for a state visit with President Obama.  While President Hu is arguably the weakest chief of state since Mao declared the revolution to have succeeded over sixty years ago, his coming to Washington is an imperial procession, the Emperor meets the Chief Barbarian.  It will be interesting to see the optics of the visit, to see if the given-to-fawning American president bows and kowtows in appropriately servile fashion.

It is commonplace to assert that the current relations of the US with China are "troubled" or passing through a period of "difficulties."  This sort of terminology not only belabors the obvious but masks the fundamental reality.

The ground truth is that the US and China are rivals in a zero sum game.  Insofar as the Trolls gain an advantage diplomatically, economically, or militarily the US loses.  Insofar as the US can maintain the status quo, the Trolls lose.  And, should the US miraculously reverse the negative trend of the past decade and more, the Trolls lose big time.

These considerations as well as the nature of the specific game of nations now being played by the US and China imply that the upcoming Hu-Obama confab has powerful subtexts at work below the facade of ruffles, flourishes, and banquets.  The stakes are very high.  One can be sure President Hu knows this.  One cannot be so sure that Mr Obama does.

The reason for uncertainty regarding President Obama stems from the fact that while the Trolls practice a realpolitik of remorseless and ruthless sort, the American does not.  Neither Mr Obama nor some senior members of his administration--think Secretary of State Clinton--are given to realpolitik other than on an episodic basis.  This puts the Americans at a profound disadvantage when facing men who pursue the national and strategic interests of China all the time.

The American president has shown that he has no clue regarding the essential nature of national interest.  He appears unaware that national and strategic interests are both subjective and defined only by the government and associate elite in any given nation-state.  He also shows no sensitivity to the role played by history, both objective and subjective, in the formation and pursuit of national interest based goals. This means that Mr Obama and other key players on his "foreign policy team" are both blind and deaf in comparison with their Chinese interlocutors.

Given the profoundly different historical predicates of contemporary national interests as well as the zero sum nature of the game being played, it is arguable that the US and China have very few, if any, coinciding national interests.  The gulf between the world views and perceived interests of both countries may be greater than that which existed between the US and the Soviet Union in the Fifties and Sixties.

A good illustration of the differences between the Cold War on the one hand and today's zero sum game with China is seen in the very conservatism of the Soviet leadership.  The Soviets never sought to extend their influence as broadly and blatantly as have the Trolls in places far removed from the homeland.  China has shown a capacity for "adventurism" in Africa, for example, far surpassing even the most ambitious aspirations of the Soviets during the post-Vietnam decade.

China's lack of cooperation on Iran or North Korea also has been emblematic of the gulf in national interests between the US and Beijing.  Quite simply, the Trolls see little if anything threatening about the Iranian nuclear quest.  Their intelligence and diplomatic establishments have discounted (correctly) any negatives emerging from the Iranian quarter.  They have no interests directly involved in the Gulf states or the Mideast generally.  The Chinese interest in Iran is limited to oil and money.  As a consequence, leaning in the direction of Tehran suits the Trolls perfectly.  The collateral benefit of the Iranian contretemps fostering division and diversion in the West is just a bit of frosting on the cake.

Maintaining the status quo in North Korea is what Beijing focuses on.  The matters of nuclear weapons research and development or companion work on missiles is of no interest to the Chinese as the Trolls have the means and will to assure no threats come their way.  The Trolls are rightly worried about a disastrous miscalculation in Pyongyang and will take the minimum necessary steps to reduce that potential.  They will and are doing the same in the event of governmental collapse in the Hermit Kingdom.

The game moves from non-cooperation to direct confrontation in Southeast Asia.  The Trolls are of the view that they are the regional hegemon by right.  In short, the Trolls have picked up the mantel once worn by the Imperial Japanese.  As a consequence, the countries of Southeast Asia have cozied up to the US.  This gravitational movement has set the stage for direct confrontation between the US and China.

In Southeast Asia and the western Pacific littoral, the confrontation must be direct.  Unlike the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the Trolls have no credible local proxies to wage the war on their behalf.  The various and sundry proxy wars of the Seventies and Eighties gave the US and the Soviet Union an automatic firebreak and thus precluded escalation which, once started, must eventually run the risk of crossing the nuclear threshold.  With the possible exception of Burma--a proxy of a proxy--China has no straw men to set up to do their dirty work in the region.

The Chinese awareness of the direct nature of the potential confrontation has been made manifest in their new weaponry and doctrine.  The ballistic missile powered "spike from space" is directed against the floating sovereignty of an American aircraft carrier.  The recently test flown J-20 is anti-US in its missions.  Cyberwar is the hottest game in China--with the US as the main target.

Against this the US is operating in a--to put it mildly--budget constrained environment.  The US will be cutting its defense establishment as the Chinese continue to develop theirs.  While the Americans enjoy some technological advantages as with the next generation of remotely operated and autonomous unmanned platforms, we should not overvalue the advantages this confers.  Nor is the US well advised to do in the future what it has done so often in the past, undervalue the capacities of an Asian adversary.

The Trolls do, fortunately, face some very real challenges at home.  Inflation is growing and this may succeed where American importuning has failed, cause the Trolls to appreciate the value of their currency.  China is also facing twin crises of farmland degradation and decline in the agricultural water supply.  This will put a very real squeeze on the Trolls just as the majority of their citizens have come to appreciate a Western style diet.  With the explosive growth in personal motor vehicle ownership, China will need ever greater amounts of oil at a low price lest the population suffer a crisis of rising expectations.

In addition, the Han tribe faces challenges from the ten percent of the population which is non-Han.  The inevitable requirement will be for more and more repression.  Ramping up repression will cause collateral and potentially destabilizing effects on members of the Han tribe.  Balancing the needs for repression of the minority while assuring a minimal but growing amount of freedom for the educated youth of the Han tribe will prove to be a non-trivial problem for the Trolls of Beijing.

Recent polls have shown a disturbing acceptance of American decline and Chinese ascendancy on the part of a large segment of We the People.  There is no need for this sort of bland indifference, for this meek agreement to an evermore constricted global role for the US.  The worst need not come to pass if the present administration as well as what and whoever comes to the Oval in 2013 plays a realistic game of pursuing American national interest.

It is to be hoped that Obama 2.0 contains a backbone as well as an eye for American supremacy.  The test comes off camera during the state visit.  It comes not with respect to any American hectoring over Chinese respect for human rights but rather in the blunt or soft speaking on matters military and diplomatic.  The test comes with President Obama either saying or avoiding saying, "Here I stand.  I can do no other."