Third Time, Lucky?

The US tried.  It failed.  Ethiopia tried (with US backing.)  It failed.  Now it is Kenya's time.  The third country up in an attempt to restore some semblance of order to the bloody chaos called "Somalia."  Will this effort end as did the two predecessors with failure, humiliating withdrawal, and the leaving of a geographic expression with no real reason to exist as a state in even more of a sanguinary mess?

The US failed as a combination of mission leap, one disastrously ill-planned operation, and the lack of both a policy focus and political will in and around the Oval.  When Bill Clinton inherited the "humanitarian" operation initiated by George H.W. Bush, he neglected to define the goal of the force deployed in country.  For reasons which escape rational analysis, his administration decided it was necessary to engage in regime change.  This was odd as there was no real regime to change but rather a welter of tribal leaders engaged in a robust contest for supremacy.  The man on the top at that moment was particularly unpleasant but no threat to the long term prospects for the Somali people.

In a fit of absent mindedness, someone decided--and others farther up the food chain confirmed this choice--to go after the Unpleasant Guy On Top.  The result was the loss of nearly two dozen special forces troops, the bodies of whom were depicted being pulled around, naked, in the dirt of the streets by gangs of cheering women.  This nauseating vision was displayed on the televisions of Americans with the result that Clinton and Company determined to cut and run rather than take proper action against the Somalis responsible.

This loss of political nerve was not justified and counterproductive, not only in Somalia but all over the Arab and Muslim world.  It was this ostentatious failure of testicular and policy fortitude which gave the muscle to Osama bin Laden and his odious outfit as well as other advocates of violent political Islam.

With American support and assistance, the Ethiopian army invaded Somalia in the opening years of this century.  They were successful in toppling the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) which was an effective government albeit given to policies and means antipathetic to American and Western norms.  The ICU was speedily replaced by "the Youth" better known as al-Shabaab.  This crew was orders of magnitude more dedicated to the cause of austere, violent political Islam than the ICU had been.

The Ethiopians rapidly found out that they had bitten off far more than they (or their now preoccupied American sponsors) could chew and swallow conveniently.  For two years the Ethiopians held on, never secure even in their own bases, unable to broker a coalition of Somali tribal leaders willing to take over the burden of freeing their own country from the ever less popular zealots of al-Shabaab.  Finally, the Ethiopians tossed in their towel and departed, leaving the field to the victorious "Youth."

From there it has been all down hill not only for the people caught in Somalia but for the West generally.  As international diplomats played the game of creating a government and the African Union--well at least two member countries--deployed "peace keeping" forces to the center of Mogadishu, al-Shabaab consolidated its hold on the southern third of the country while pinning the Transitional Federal Government and its AU troops to a few blocks around the presidential palace.

During the same time, ambitious Somalis found a new and very profitable line of work--piracy.  Even now with warships of several dozen navies on patrol, the maritime marauders commandeer ships every week with tens, no, hundreds of millions of dollars of ransom collected.  The consensus of "experts" around the world is the pirates will not be defeated unless and until there is a functioning government with effective control of the Somali coast.

In recent months, the Gangbangers of Somalia, both landbased and maritime, have expanded their actions to include the kidnapping of Westerners frequenting expensive Kenyan resorts within in a convenient distance of Somalia.  This has perturbed the Kenyans mightily.  Even more disconcerting to Nairobi has been the tsunami of refugees flowing over the border.  The tidal wave has grown since the drought enhanced famine has been worsened by al-Shabaab's stopping of food aid by international agencies.

The hundreds of thousands of Somalis self-dumped on Kenya is an unacceptable economic burden on the country.  More, it represents a clear national security threat given Somali claims on the northern portion of Kenya and the large number of al-Shabaab agents living in Nairobi and Mombasa.

Kenya has clear reasons to see the end of al-Shabaab at least in the southern portion of the place.  With this in mind, Nairobi aimed at the Somali port city of Kismayo.  The port is the major source of al-Shabaab revenue: taxes on trade, particularly charcoal, headed for Yemen.  It is also a prime source of pirates.

With its invasion, Kenya is doing a service not only for itself but for the West generally.  Al-Shabaab is a threat not only to African states and the sea lines of communication but more broadly.  Not only is it "officially" allied with al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab has direct operational links with al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) and Nigeria's Boko Haram.  Adding al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) to the mix is apparently in the works.  Given the widespread proliferation of weapons including MANPADS from the old Libyan arsenals, it is to be expected that al-Shabaab's military competence and potential for transnational terror will grow.

The biggest question is simply: Will Kenya succeed where others have failed?

The prognosis is, at best, mixed.  The Kenyan armed forces have no real experience with war, even the limited sort of which al-Shabaab is capable.  The forces are large, reasonably well equipped and trained, but without combat experience, it is hard to see if these factors are all that important.  The launch of the invasion just as the annual rains were scheduled to start (they commenced on time) shows a lack of proper planning.  The two thousand men across the border have been bogged down in the mud for some days now with the mechanical transport totally immobilized.

Overall the force (ten thousand at most) seems too small to deal with a highly mobile opponent along with the demands of MOUT--if the Kenyans do reach Kismayo.  The Kenyan air dominance will not matter once their ground forces are in close contact with al-Shabaab fighters.  The fight will become a slogging match between the mechanized, fire power heavy Kenyans and the more mobile, lightly equipped guerrilla opponents.

At that point, it will be what all asymmetrical wars must be--a contest of political wills.  Already there are indications that the Kenyan opinion molding elite lack the stomach for a protracted war, which is exactly what the invasion will become without a game changer.

There is only one game changer which might be available.  Not the African Union.  Not the other states of the Horn of Africa.  Nobody local is capable of altering the nature of the war.

The role of game changer properly belongs to NATO.  Fresh off its "victory" in Libya, most of the NATO combatants already have a dog in the fight--the pirates.  Certainly NATO ships have been heavily involved in the anti-pirate patrols and have actually killed pirates!

The leaders of France, the UK, the US and perhaps some of the others will be well advised to man up and back the Kenyan play.  NATO has the aircraft, the ships, the logistics, the special forces, the intelligence assets necessary to change the game in Somalia quickly and surely.  The pirates along with the bloody hands of the brutal killers of al-Shabaab provide more than enough justification for entering the war, even for invoking the doctrine of R2P.

There is no need to invoke the UN.  Even the opposition of the AU can be ignored with impunity.  The morass of Somalia is intolerable now--and will only get worse should the Kenyans suffer the same fate as did the Americans and Ethiopians.  A robust NATO effort will be gratefully acknowledged (even if privately only) and might even silence some of the loud voices criticizing the alliance's efforts in Libya.

Get on with it, Messers Sarkozy, Cameron, Obama--the history books are waiting.

A Slick Trip Down The Islamist Tubes?

The Islamist AKP has gained an apparent unassailable superiority over the armed forces of Turkey.  The shocking simultaneous "early retirement" of the military chief of staff and three other service commanders over the weekend seemed to have put the final nail in the coffin of the military's role as the ultimate guarantor of Turkish secularism and the legacy of Ataturk.

The act came on the eve of the semi-annual meeting of the combined armed forces senior leadership with the head of the civilian government, the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and has been seen by many observers, Turkish as well as foreign, as a welcome sign of Turkey having become a normal democracy where civilian supremacy over the military is a given.  In the past, there has been a great deal of discomfort in the US and Western Europe over the periodic military excursions out of the barracks and into the presidential palace.  The European Union (or at least France) demanded that the armed forces be defanged as a prerequisite for membership.

The recent mass resignation must be taken in conjunction with the ongoing trial of nearly three hundred past and present senior commanders (ten percent or so of the entire flag officer complement) on charges which are at best politically motivated and most likely fabricated in whole or major part.  The massive series of arrests over the past year or so constituted the AKP's direct attack on the military, which was the only plausible obstacle to permanent Islamist domination of Turkish politics.

The armed forces and AKP have been at daggers drawn since the once-banned AKP won power in 2002.  The military missed its chance to send the Islamists packing in the wake of the narrow electoral victory mainly out of regard for EU sentiments and a proper regard for the benefits of EU membership.  As the years slipped by, the chances for a military coup slipped away until they were lost beyond any hope in the most recent election where AKP took no prisoners at the polls.

Erdogan had made much of his stated intent to pursue EU membership even though it was more than slightly obvious that France would spare no effort to block the application.  The economic success of the AKP has been based not on trade with the EU but upon increased ties with the Mideast and the Turkish speaking Central Asian Republics.  In the process, a new class of very rich middlemen and entrepreneurs drawn from urban migrants originating in the Anatolian highlands has become a key component of the AKP base.  These new millionaires join with displaced peasants in the slums of Istanbul and Ankara and "conservative" clerics to provide the electoral majority.

The rivals to the AKP drive to the east have been the senior officers of the armed forces along with the "traditional" business and commercial elite of Istanbul.  The military has at its upper ranks men who are far more Western in their outlook, far more liberal in their views as well as far more educated than the mass of the political class and the new moneyed class.  Their instinctive perspective is Western.  That of AKP and its base runs to the East, to the Muslim marches of Central and Northwest Asia--and the states of the old Ottoman Empire.

The seemingly decisive victory of AKP over the inheritors of Ataturk is not universally welcomed in Turkey.  There are more than a few Turks who fear that without the army as a counterweight there will be no limits on Erdogan and AKP.  There is an undercurrent of apprehension that now the Islamists will be free to pursue the goal of reestablishing the old caliphate with all that implies.  Others, unsurprisingly, pooh-pooh that notion and welcome AKP confining the armed forces to a subordinate role and, thus, allowing a return to the values and norms of the pre-Ataturk era.

Very few Turks are aghast at the new diplomatic muscle enjoyed by Ankara in the Mideast and Central Asia. Likewise, very few resent the new economic options brought by the "Ost politik" practiced by Erdogan.  Other than some trepidations over Turkey's ever closer ties to Shia Iran, there have been few complaints over the foreign policy of Erdogan and company.  There is definitely majority support for the very hard line drawn by Erdogan over Israel, particularly the IDF takeover of the Mazi Marmora "humanitarian relief" ship over a year ago.

The net effect has been the tilting of the longstanding conflict between nationalist and Islamist, secularist and Islamist in favor of the latter.  For the moment this is just jake with the majority of Turks.  But, there is likely to be a quick withdrawal of support for AKP should there be heavy handed attempts to "purify" Turkish society of "infidel" aspects.  So far, the party has been sensitive to this dynamic and has moved only slowly to "Islamify" Turkey.

Almost overlooked in the political discussions of the resignations has been another, critical subject: The impact of Turkey's Muslim oriented "Ost politik" on NATO.  In as much as Turkey's membership in the alliance has been considered, it has been in the boilerplate terms of "NATO's second largest army."  As if size matters.

Turkey's large army is also quite irrelevant to NATO in the post-cold war period.  Not only is the army incapable of any effective action outside of Turkey, it has not shown any particular utility in the local "forever war" against the Kurdish defensive insurgency.  Pace NATO public statements (or those of Admiral Mullen), the armed forces of Turkey are totally irrelevant to NATO today and into the future.

The armed forces of Turkey, while large, are also largely immobile, poorly trained, indifferently equipped, overly expensive, a drain on the Turkish fisc, and a political drag on the alliance.  The new Erdogan ministry strongly opposed the US driven invasion of Iraq making much political hay from proclaiming the operation as a "war on Islam and Muslims."  In addition, the Turks have been a major non-participant in the NATO mission in Afghanistan.  And, the AKP government bitterly opposed the no-fly zone and its follow-on in Libya.

There is no reason not to believe that Turkey has passed along critical NATO information to Iran as a part of its charm offensive with Tehran.  The same may be true regarding the opposition in Afghanistan and, possibly, Libya.  Having Turkey in NATO today is tantamount to having the Italy of Mussolini sitting in on the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff during World War II.

If it is true, as it appears to be, that the Islamists have won in Turkey, the time has come to restructure NATO without Ankara.  The hoary alliance is at a difficult crossroads.  There is looming, embarrassing failure in Libya joining with the rush for the exit in Afghanistan to undercut any lingering credibility accruing to it.  Given further that most NATO members have shown an ability to hit the funding targets akin to the performance of a visually impaired sniper, the time is now to rethink the alliance.  The time is now to contemplate the impossible: The dissolution of NATO.

It is questionable whether or not NATO has any utility or even relevance to the world of now and tomorrow where the major enemy of any and all civilized states are the advocates of violent political Islam.  The best way for civilized states to counter the threat resides not with NATO or any other Cold War artifact but rather with "coalitions of the willing," ad hoc structures of states with coinciding national interests which perceive the threat from violent political Islam or the challenges presented by any particular failed, failing, or hollow state in similar ways.

As George H.W. Bush showed during the Gulf War, the ad hoc coalition can work well provided the necessary preliminary diplomatic work is done with care.  Even George W. Bush's ham handed counterparts worked reasonably well.  In comparison, the NATO effort in Libya has been an example of how not to go about the task.  While this can (correctly) be blamed on the relative absence of the US from  the shooting war, the real lesson to be learned is that the effort was not undertaken by a genuine coalition of the willing.

The AKP has taken Turkey away from the West.  Its lurch to the lands of Islam is understandable and even forgivable.  It is, after all, a choice made by the Turkish electorate--at least up to a point.  We can have no beef about it.

Rather, we should embrace the Turkish policy.  We should use the stimulus to take a long hard look at the role of NATO in our alliance system, and jettison it as currently constituted unless a very strong argument can be made for its continuation.  The inclusion of Turkey was contextual to the cold war; it has no permanent root in the Atlantic community.  This is the geographical, cultural, and political reality.  We should admit it with at least as much honesty as have the Turks.

The ideological and political blocs of the world have reformed since the end of the bi-polar world.  Turkey has recognized this.  The AKP has acknowledged bluntly that religion and language ties trump the artifacts of global alliance politics.  Erdogan and company have chosen their side.

The US and Western Europe can and should do no less.

Down With The Nation-State!

The end of the cold war was marked by more than merely the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact "empire."  The unfreezing of the bipolar icecap which had put a heavy and quite repressive hand on global politics as well as the internal politics of the component parts of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact subordinates started a series of escalating attacks upon the nation-state generally.  After centuries of unquestioned dominance as the basic unit of international relations, the seemingly eternal nation-state was under threat on two fronts.

One axis of attack was both predictable and fully expected by observers of global affairs: the internationalists, particularly those of the Western European and American elite.  Some sang the praises of supra-national organizations both regional and global.  Others gave one shout-out after another on behalf of transnational business entities.  Both groups damned the narrow, parochial focus of the nation-state with its preoccupation concerning national and strategic interests.

With far more joy than sorrow, infinitely greater anticipation than regret, members of the several elites drawn from both the Left and the Right consigned the nation-state to the status of museum curio while anticipating that the new age of globalization and supra-national organizations would mean a better future for all people everywhere.  Abandoning the nation-state for new, bigger, better forms of organization would, it was repeated, usher in a world of peace and plenty, of prosperity and environmental purity.

Slightly less than ten years ago, the presumably unilateral George W. Bush did his not inconsiderable bit to further the cause of the supra-nationalist camp.  Far from being a robust adherent of the go-it-alone school of international relations, George W. Bush showed himself to be squarely in the middle of the American version of multilateralism.

It would have been politically and diplomatically possible, arguably even preferable, to have declined the offer of assistance given by NATO in the wake of 9/11 and dealt with Afghanistan, Taliban, and al-Qaeda with purely American means.  The later seeking of a UN figleaf to cover the policy genitalia of the Bush/Cheney administration with respect to regime change in Iraq did the US no useful service while holding the American effort ultimately hostage to the views, policies, and politics of other countries.

By seeking the support and agreement of supra-national organizations, the Bush/Cheney administration stood solidly in the diplomatic tradition of Harry Truman and LBJ far more than in the footsteps of his father who relied on a US constructed ad hoc coalition when he went to war a decade earlier.  By so doing, the allegedly unilateralist George W. acted to lessen the future freedom of the US to act as a fully sovereign nation-state.

George W. Bush shared the common view of the American and Western European elites that the nation-state should be lessened in the exercise of untrammeled sovereignty.  Regardless of his sometimes less than temperate rhetoric, this President Bush had a faith in the ability of supra-national institutions to restrain the nation-state from pursuing its national interest regardless of the costs imposed on others.  He was also a deep believer in the capacity of transnational business to increase stability and real wealth.  In essence, he stood on the Right but leaned to the Left.

Over the past decade the view of the nation-state as being an obstacle to creating solutions to global problems has grown greatly.  Whether the problem at hand is one of keeping the peace, protecting the environment, creating greater economic stability, assuring access to food and clean water, providing employment and fairly distributing wealth, or assuring human rights, the default position has been to seek the proper supra-national organization, public, or private.

During the past decade, the UN has constantly sought to extend its reach.  Along with its subordinate agencies, the UN has looked for ways by which it can intervene in the domestic affairs of member states.  There have always been good intentions in play: protecting refugees, protecting civilians against repressive acts by their governments, assuring human rights.  Typified by the convention based on the doctrine termed "responsibility to protect," the UN's reach has far extended beyond its practical grasp.

In the years since the end of the cold war, there has been a proliferation of defensive insurgencies by ethnic and religious communities chaffing under the governance of majorities coming from different groups or beliefs. What has been observed ever since the blood letting in the wreckage of the artificial nation-state once called "Yugoslavia" has been a real world application of the self-determination of nations, a doctrine first given form by Woodrow Wilson nearly a century ago.

From Kosovo to the Northern Caucasus to Darfur and South Sudan, defensive insurgencies (aka separatist movements) have resulted not only in massive loss of life and even more massive refugee streams but military interventions or the calls for such interventions.  In all cases the calls have been directed to and answered by supra-national organizations ranging from the UN to NATO to the African Union.  There is no indication that the trajectory of defensive insurgency has reached its apogee yet.  This means there will be more demands for more international intervention in the future.

In recent months, offensive insurgencies (revolutions) have joined with the defensive sort as a very popular pastime.  This has resulted in one more outpouring of demands for outside intervention by the "international community."  The demand has been answered in Libya by a combination of three supra-national organizations, the Arab League, the UN and NATO.  Similar demands with regard to Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria have yet gone unanswered.

The single greatest reason the latter three states have been given a "pass" and left unmolested by missiles and bombs delivered by aircraft operated by governments responsive to the doctrine of R2P is the existence of two countries which do not share the negative view of the nation-state so prevalent in the West.  These two countries are Russia and China.  Neither accept the proposition that the nation-state is either evil or obsolete (or both.)  Neither go along with the belief that countries have the right to intervene in the internal affairs of another if given the OK by the UN or some other supra-national organization.

But all the foot dragging on well-intended, forceful interventions is not confined to the Boys in the Kremlin or the Trolls of Beijing.  Nor are the Boys and the Trolls the only people who reject the negative view of the nation-state.  In a delightful irony the views put forth in the Kremlin and the Forbidden City are shared by the common folk, the hoi polloi in both the US and the countries of Western Europe.  Blinded by an arrogant certainty in the correctness of their own multilateral, multinational, multicultural beliefs, the political, media, and academic elites of the US and Western Europe do not understand that their view of the nation-state is rejected completely by their own fellow citizens.

As recent elections in Europe have shown, there is a strong rejectionist current running among the European citizenry.  "Populist" right wing parties have done very very well at the polls in large part due to their rejection of the primacy of supra-national organizations.  While not yet tested in an election in the US, there are strong hints that We the People are not ready to embrace the notion that American sovereignty should be ceded in part to supra-national organizations.

The number of challenges to the nation-state by defensive insurgencies will probably continue to grow in the nest few years.  It is also to be expected that there will be an ever increasing call for international intervention not only in the case of defensive insurgencies but also under the doctrine of R2P.  At least some of these demands will be answered by one supra-national organization or another.  Even if the UN Security Council does not heed the call due to the ever present Russian or Chinese veto, some other entity will pick up the slack.

Even in the event no structured supra-national organization does take responsibility to intervene, one or another of the oft maligned and purportedly obsolete nation-states will do so--if its interests require.  From this it is legitimate to infer that the number of nasty little wars of peace imposition will grow in the years to come.  Practically speaking this means the number of asymmetric wars will grow apace.

Against the backdrop of asymmetrical wars it becomes conceivable, even desirable, for states to use proxy conflicts as an instrument of policy.  This will go beyond the past practice of governments such as the Syrian to use terrorist groups as instruments of state policy.

Not too pretty a scene to contemplate, eh, bucko?  Makes you wish for the good old days of the cold war when affairs might have been risky, but the world was remarkably stable.  Looking ahead, the only thing which gives grounds for thanks is that the elites have been wrong.  Tomorrow more than ever it will be the self-interested nation-state which serves as the bulwark against raging instability and war.

In a world full of candidates for devolution, the only genuine force for stability, peace, and some semblance of prosperity is the self-centered nation-state.  It and not the supra-national organization is and remains the last, best hope of human kind.

It is time the elites and their iconic figures such as President Obama and Secretary Clinton get a grip on that defining reality.  Otherwise, their delusions of a UN inspired heaven on Earth will be the death of us all.

Gates Doubles Down On NATO

NATO--the US has a hard time living with it but believes it cannot live without it.  For better than sixty years now we have been in a relationship with a tedious bunch which was not sought by us.  The treaty which ties the US to a couple of dozen other states was and remains a form of shotgun marriage--compelled by force of circumstance and, presumably, preferable to the alternative.

Nearly every secretary of defense has been frustrated by the pervasive unwillingness or inability of the member states to carry their fair share of the alliance's water.  Yesterday, Robert Gates, feeling free with his impending departure from the Pentagon, let it all hang out as he reamed the group for its collective failures of political will and military capacity.

His words were not particularly harsh.  Neither were they the petulant complaints.  His assessments were not even new.  Each and every one of the criticisms mentioned in his speech have been said before.  Often.  What made the Gates Warning substantially different was that it came in public.  The words were not murmured behind closed doors, minister to minister.  No.  These came in public for all to hear.  And, that sort of thing is just not done, don't you know.

Stripped to the essentials, the Gates Warning was simple and blunt.  As the cold war faded as even a memory, the American people and their representatives were decreasingly willing to spend ever more scarce resources underwriting the defense needs of countries unwilling to shoulder their own responsibilities.  Pointedly, Gates noted, the US carried roughly half the aggregate NATO military budget just before the Berlin Wall crumbled soon to followed by the Soviet Union.  He added the kicker: Currently the US staggers under three quarters of the total NATO military budget.

This one metric suggests strongly that something is amiss in NATO.  In case anyone missed the point, Gates commented that only four countries (the UK, France, Greece and Albania[!]) joined the US in spending more than the target two percent of GDP on defense.  The target figure of two percent was not established by some sort of fiat out of Washington but rather by consensus of all NATO members.  Nor is it some fossil of the cold war having been established long after the collapse of the Vanguard of the Proletariat.

More than a few of the assembled Dignitaries and Deep Thinkers must have squirmed when Gates not only acknowledged an awareness and appreciation of the budget crises enveloping most of the NATO members but went on to demonstrate how some (very) small countries were "punching well above their weight" by having used their defense money in an intelligent, forward looking, and combat focused way.  He singled out the Libyan efforts of Norway and Denmark in this regard.  By so doing Gates obviated the cringing and whining response offered by such European apologists as Daniel Korski, a senior fellow at the European Council of Foreign Relations.  Or, for that matter, the spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry who protested that Germany was pulling an awesome amount of freight in Afghanistan.

The reality of NATO is as it has been for many, many years.  That reality is simply the belief on the part of chancelleries throughout Europe that the US would always be there to pick up whatever burdens were necessary to guarantee European security.  The view has been the US has no alternative but to do so as Europe was the frontline of American defense.  As a consequence for three generations now the several old members of the alliance have shirked in defense so as to underwrite the extensive programs of social benefits and security which have long been the distinguishing characteristic of post-World War II Europe.

The majority of the old members of NATO have ridden in great comfort on the alliance's gravy train while the made-in-America locomotive pulled the freight.  The new, post-cold war members, the former Warsaw Pact states which have joined the alliance, have been quite willing to do the same--while complaining that the US is not doing enough to deter and inhibit the Russians in their efforts to reestablish some form of suzerainty over the Eastern European glacis.

NATO was challenged with the end of the cold war.  The collapse of the Soviet Union removed the reason for the alliance's existence.  More than ever it became obvious that the organization was an ill-assorted array of bed fellows who had little, if anything, in common beyond apprehension regarding Soviet ambitions in the West.  Not even geography tied the group together given that it spread from Turkey to Canada, Norway to Italy and Spain.  The very term, "North Atlantic Treaty Organization" had no rigorous meaning.  Arguably only one word, "treaty," was factual.  All the rest was well-intended diplomatic fiction.

The big question of 1991-2 which was never really asked let alone answered was, "What is NATO's justification now?"  The pseudo-answer focused on some critter called "out-of-theater operations."  That term is one of those phrases which is every bit as portentous rolling off a diplomat's lips as it is empty of actual substance.

The first "out-of-theater" NATO mission was not particularly "out-of-theater" if one defines NATO's area of responsibility to be Europe.  Specifically, it was the confused peace imposition operation in Kosovo.  That meant it was an R2P campaign without the term.  The US as always carried the majority of the burden despite the very compelling fact that no salient American interest was in play in the ruins of Yugoslavia.  Insofar as any state or states had interests in play, those states were all European.  NATO was invoked simply because the directly effected states (can we say, "Germany?") were unwilling to act.

The next "out-of-theater" operation was the ongoing mess in Afghanistan.  NATO with a rush and a flourish invoked its famous an-attack-on-one-is-an-attack-on-all article for the very first time while the smoke still hung heavy in the air over lower Manhattan.  What came out of this demonstration of one for all, all for one solidarity was the unfortunate applicability of the alternative meaning for the abbreviation ISAF.  To many Americans who have fought in the place the abbreviation does not mean International Security Assistance Force but I Saw Americans Fighting.

While some NATO contingents such as those from the UK, Canada and, shockingly, France have actually taken the war to the bad guys, others, (can we say, "Germany?") have done everything possible to avoid, evade, and ignore even the most remote chance of actually encountering the enemy.  Leaving aside the responsibility which must be assigned to the Bush/Cheney administration in the conduct of the war in Afghanistan and the alienation of allies attendant upon the invasion of Iraq, the residual actuality on the ground in Afghanistan is simply that NATO as an organization has done all too little relative to its capacities.

Now NATO is engaged in yet one more "out-of-theater" operation.  This time, unlike the previous efforts, the US has been a major non-participant.  Indeed, we would be even less involved if NATO had sufficient assets in critical areas such as overhead surveillance, reconnaissance, targeting, mid-air refueling, and electronic warfare.  Secretary Gates as much as said this as he detailed the glaring deficiencies in the NATO effort.  He also underscored that the engaged NATO contingents had already run short of critical munitions thus requiring urgent American restocking.  This, he stated, was the foreseeable consequence of not properly spending even limited defense money.

In its post-cold war missions, NATO has shown itself to be a coalition of the unwilling and unready.  This reality is not mitigated by the excellent performance of some national contingents in each and every of the three "out-of-theater" endeavors.  Nor can it be lessened by pointing to budgetary matters.  Neither can the situation be expected to improve any.  In his optimism, limited as it was, Dr Gates is being entirely too kind, too considerate of ruffled diplomatic and political feathers within the alliance's membership.

(In connection with this it is of more than passing interest that the Obama White House attempted mightily to put blue sky between Secretary Gates' position and its own.  An unidentified White House "official" took the stance that the Secretary was either speaking solely for the Pentagon or was expressing his personal frustration with some NATO states.  The most the white-feathered crew at the White House was willing to grant was that Gates had raised "legitimate issues."  A fine bunch of courageous statesmen and women in and near the Oval, don't you think?)

Dr Gates warned NATO that the day would soon come when post-cold war Americans would cease funding Europe's defense needs.  That day may be far closer than the secretary indicated.  The dismal record compiled by NATO in its post-cold war actions shows rather conclusively that it has no reason to keep on keeping on.

The concept of "out-of-theater" operations is intellectually bankrupt, ethically suspect, and diplomatically useless.  Beyond that, it is a military nullity marked with asymmetry of effort, confusion of command, vagueness and contradiction politically.  NATO is a broken tool without any real purpose other than inhibiting Russian ambitions should such exist with respect to Central and Eastern Europe.

The US would be far better served by assembling an ad hoc coalition of states with coinciding national interests when interventions of whatsoever nature might be required.  The diplomacy of George H. W. Bush in the run-up to the First Gulf War is paradigmatic in this regard.  Ad hoc coalitions might be a bit difficult to put together, but no more so than achieving consensus within the councils of NATO.  Should it be necessary for the US to carry the overwhelming majority of the water in a coalition, there is at least the advantage that such groups are short duration (provided the war is fought with an appropriate doctrine and force package.)

The time has come to say to NATO, "Thanks for the memories."

The House Draws A (Very Faint) Line In The Sand

Today the House made a small first step toward recapturing some authority as to the deployment of US forces into combat.  It passed the milder of two alternative resolutions relating to President Obama's use of force in Libya and his concomitant apparent violation of the War Powers Act.

The resolution, which has no practical impact given a SCOTUS holding that resolutions lack the force of law as the president has no opportunity to exercise his veto, still does have symbolic effect.  And, as history shows quite clearly, politics can be all about symbolism.

Should the White House deign to respond to the resolution's requirements, the task isn't particularly onerous.  All the Deep Thinkers surrounding the Oval need do is explain what its intentions in Libya are, what the cost of attaining these has been to date, and some other ancillary matters.  There is no demand that an assessment of probable success be offered.  However, the resolution does seek an explanation as to why the president did not abide by the sixty day provision of the War Powers Act.

It would be nice to see a unitary, internally consistent statement as to the goals of the operation in Libya.  To date there have been two not necessarily congruent goals attributed to the NATO run air campaign.  On the "official" level, it is to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe by protecting innocent civilian lives.  On the "unofficial" level of presidential declaratory policy, the goal is the removal of Gaddafi from power.  While it is possible to merge the two, the logic is less than direct.

The cost to date is, as wars go, quite modest.  But even modest expenditures must be justified given the current parlous state of federal finances.  Beyond that, it would be nice to see an estimate of consequential expenses such as the reduction in air frame and powerplant hours.  Aircraft and their systems age, and it is not desirable to push them into mechanical senescence absent good reason.

Most interesting of all would be the Obama and company's reasoning behind its ignoring the requirements of the War Powers Act.  While no administration has cottoned to the Act, all have more or less gone along with its spirit--the involvement of congress--by seeking and receiving some sort of support, usually in the form of a joint resolution authorizing the proposed action in broad and necessarily vague terms.  The Obama "team" has not followed the custom.

One reason given by the Deep Thinkers is rather preposterous on the face.  It has been held that the use of air delivered ordnance alone does not cross the line triggering the War Powers Act.   It has also been argued that since all the US has been doing since the first few days has been supporting combat forces supplied by other NATO members, the threshold has not been transgressed.  This is reasoning on a par with that of President Clinton who held, in effect, that getting one's knob polished in an anteroom to the Oval was not having sex.

The most important implication of this rare act of congressional courage is by passing this resolution the body is trying to get some measure of dual control with the president in the making of war.  This is a very good thing and very long overdue.

Not that congress would necessarily provide an effective check on a president's desire to flex a little bit of military muscle.  Both House and Senate have demonstrated the reflexes of a lap dog when past presidents have sought congressional buy-in on a proposed adventure in regime change.  The politics of partisan advantage will and have taken precedence over any reasoned discussion of just what national interest might be at stake or what might constitute the better state of peace expected to emerge when the shooting and killing stop.  The resolution authorizing use of force in the wake of 9/11 went through with a whoop and a hollar and an absence of mature consideration as to what was at stake or how long and difficult the "war on terror" might be.  The same was true only more so with regard to the invasion of Iraq, arguably the greatest foreign policy blunder since Wilson took the US into World War I.

There is a very real reason why congress should be involved up to and including passing a declaration of war before the US mounts an intervention.  All interventions are both contingent and asymmetrical in nature.  All are contests of political will in which the opponent has the greater since he has the most at stake.  By fully involving congress in the decision to go to war, the opponent is put on notice that the war is supported by the totality of the American political structure and is not simply the personal exercise of pique and power by the president.

Meaningful congressional action at the start of a war will go a very long way to toughening the American political backbone.  It would make the process of turning the war to partisan advantage far more difficult.  It would go a great distance to assuring escalating support should demands of the war increase, as they always do.

Congressional involvement of a meaningful as opposed to a pro forma sort would also put a check on overly quick or robust presidential action particularly if neither party dominated both branches of government.  It might even make an administration think through what it hoped would come as a result of the proposed war in support of policy.

Since the vast majority of wars will continue to be limited ones in support of policy.  (Real, existential, total wars will probably come upon us too rapidly for any consultation until after the use of force has been commenced.)  Consultation with congress, the need for congressional approval might combine to produce both a better policy and a better understanding of the limits of military employment.  This would be a very, very fine change from past practice.

The practice of treating congress as an equal in the decision making process might even, to get a bit utopian, have the effect of educating the more lofty thinking liberals in House and Senate who believe that diplomacy is some sort of totem or fetish to be waved whenever a threat looms.  They might even come to realize that there are situations in the world where the best diplomat carries an M4 carbine or is at the controls of an F16 or a Predator.

The point of the exercise, however, is not education of warm hearted liberals or clipping the wings of overly imperial presidents but providing a context best suited for assuring the level of political will without which no intervention can have any hope of succeeding.  To be united means to win.  And, to be united requires that congress be a full and effective partner with the president.

War is not (or should not be) partisan in nature.  Neither is it one belonging to one branch of government.  It is to be hoped that this mild, almost apologetic, resolution is the first indicator of congress belatedly becoming aware of reality.  Well, the Geek did write "hoped."  That's all one can do.

Sudden Silence Over R2P

The slow agony of Yemen's collapse was both easy to predict and difficult to watch.  At the level of the individual, the failure of Yemen is a tragedy.  On the macro level, however, it is a type study in what can happen when no outside force sees anything to be gained by seeking an intervention.

The "international community" is highly selective in its invocation of the Responsibility to Protect convention signed a few years back in a fit of remorse on the part of some states over what happened in Rwanda and in a spasm of me-tooism on the part of governments which desired to be seen as "progressive," "liberal," and "humanitarian" such as China and Russia.

At the time many Western states were in an orgy of self-congratulations over the intervention in Bosnia, an intervention which would serve unfortunately as a prototype for the concept that air power could effectively end atrocious behavior on the part of obnoxious governments.  Why this meme took flight is hard to fathom considering that the real impact of air delivered death and destruction had impact only after Serbian civilians died under NATO bombs and missiles.

The presumed efficacy of air delivered "shock-and-awe" stood behind the Sarkozy/Cameron driven UN resolution allowing the imposition of a civilian protection program and no fly zone in Libya.  To date the efforts of the operating agent for this R2P based Security Council authorized program, NATO, has been nowhere near as successful as the Bosnian conflict progenitor.  Perhaps this is due to the low cost of Libyan civilian lives.

Libya may or may not be the graveyard for the Gaddafi family enterprise.  That question is still open regardless of the highly optimistic statements of UK Defense Minister Fox or the NATO Secretary General.  Rather more certain is the proposition that Libya is the tombstone of R2P.

The corpse of this well-intended creation of the lofty thinking and tender hearted of the global community may have its grave marker in Libya but its place of burial is Yemen.  Yemen is every bit as worthy for the application of R2P as was Libya.  Arguably, had the Libyan situation been a bit slower to develop and Yemen a tad more rapid to fall apart, the NATO jets would be hitting targets in and around Sana'a rather than Tripoli.

But, perhaps not.  Libya is close to Europe.  There are a number of European interests in play there ranging from the economic to the fear of being overrun by hordes of refugees.  Yemen has neither.  It is small, faraway, lacking exportable resources, and generally without any direct importance to either France or the UK.

Even without the Libyan anchor hanging around the necks of Western leaders, there is no real sense that any national or strategic interest is at stake should Yemen collapse.  Without this impetus, moral imperatives of R2P so vocally engaged a few weeks ago in the Libyan context are now seemingly absent.  Not even the US can work itself into a flurry of concern beyond the pro forma despite the fact that it has some very real national and strategic interests potentially in play with the collapse of Yemen.

This is at it should be.  Even the existence of national and strategic interests--such as the high likelihood that AQAP will find an even finer home than that which currently exists or the potential for the pirates of Somalia to be joined by colleagues from Yemen to the further detriment of maritime commerce--does not override the governing reality that peace imposition in Yemen would be an even greater "mission-impossible" than doing such in either Somalia or the FATA.

Even the Saudis, the people with the most cows in the regional herd, have limited their efforts to a combination of cash and palaver.  Whether jointly or individually, these two traditional pillars of Saudi influence have done nothing definite to solve the rapid decay in Yemen.  At the same time, the House of Saud knows perfectly well that were it to dispatch a powerful enough ground combat force, the result would not be peace for Yemen but a horrid combination of forever war there and increased domestic instability back in the Kingdom.

The Saudis are not going to risk their internal security by sending troops to Yemen.  The Kingdom would be reluctant to lower its internal security capacities in the face of Shiite based threats not only in their Eastern Province but in Bahrain.  Experience has shown even the few fire eaters extant in the Kingdom that the barren mountains of Yemen can swallow whole armies without a trace.  Well, that is an exaggeration, but the reality remains that the army would be cut up without victory as a payoff.

As any, well, at least most, observers have noted over the months and years, Yemen is a place without any real reason to exist as a state.  The Yemeni are people with tribes but without a genuine and compelling national identity--provided you leave aside a very small number of educated members of the elite and Saleh's inner circle.  Beyond that, it is a geographical expression currently being torn not only by the out-with-Saleh movement and its tribal adherents but also by two insurgencies, one offensive and the other, in the south, defensive in nature.

This combination means that there simply ain't no way to impose peace let alone a national identity, a national and representative government, or to build a nation-state in Yemen.  The attempt would be very, very prolonged, equally lethal, and ultimately crowned by abject failure.  In this respect, as in so many others, Yemen is Somalia--on steroids.  Even humanitarian relief operations of the Somalia sort would most likely end as did the ill-fated effort there in the early Nineties.

The abject failures of good intentions in Somalia and the less than breathtaking success in Libya to date ought to serve as clear warnings to the high minded and lofty thinking folks who want somebody to rush in and do something, anything, to stop the killing and relieve the misery of the locals.  As the neocon ninny crew should have realized from the outcomes to date in both Iraq and Afghanistan, there are very real limits to both doing good and using military force to protect and project the doing of good.

All hands need to get a grip on a foundation truth: Limits of intervention regardless of the precise nature of the intervention are imposed by the intended recipients of the intended good.  The locals have to work out their own destiny, their own future, their own systems of society, polity, and economy in their own way and at their own pace--even if this means much suffering, and much spilling of blood.  There is no shortcut to this process as we in the West ought to know from our own history.

It may be hard to stand by and watch as people slaughter one another.  It is most difficult to do so today without the aesthetic distance and emotional detachment afforded in former days by slower and less comprehensive communications, but it is the only path to final peace and stability.

The most difficult and problematic task of any government is to recognize when neglect is in fact the most benign policy.  It is even more difficult and problematic for the monstrous legion of NGOs dedicated to doing good to accept a hands-off approach.  It is most difficult and problematic of all for the UN and its inferior agencies to realize the limits of the "international community" and keep out of the local morass.

There are times and places where the least-worst thing to do is let the internal violence of a place and a people drown in its own blood.  Yemen is such a place.  Now is such a time.  Get a grip on it.

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.

A Fiftieth Anniversary--And An Object Lesson For Today

Cuba went all giddy a couple of days ago.  The reason was the Fiftieth Anniversary of the failed Bay of Pigs "invasion" of Cuba by an American trained and equipped motley brigade of refugees.  The initial plan for the operation came during the closing days of the Eisenhower administration.  The plan was predicated upon highly overly optimistic projections of weakness on the part of the Castro regime plucked from the imaginations of recently arriving political refugees.

The Eisenhower administration passed the plan along to the incoming Kennedy people.  The bunch surrounding JFK was comprised of steely-eyed cold war liberals eager to show how the job of containing and rolling back communism should and could be done.  Propelled by faith in their ideology, the New Frontiersmen backed the evermore ambitious plans of CIA for their proxy army.  A glittering assemblage of unjustified assumptions and fond hopes was assembled.  By the time it was necessary to make a final go/no-go decision, all hands with the exception of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had convinced themselves that the operation would succeed.  Even the handful of doubters took comfort in the belief that should the operation stumble, the US military would come to the rescue.

When push did come to shove as it must, the belief that the cavalry would back the play of the invaders was proven false.  For reasons good or bad President Kennedy refused to allow the US Navy, which was offshore with aircraft fueled and bombed up, to take part in the rapidly failing effort.  Our aircraft were limited to making demonstration passes safely offshore, and the Marines most assuredly did not land.

Within two days it was all over.  The invaders were all dead or captured.  Castro was more firmly in control than ever.  The US was humiliated.  And, a valuable lesson should have been learned--there is no such thing as a plausibly deniable military operation after the administration of the United States had declared that a given foreign leader was unacceptable to it.

Before embarking on his strangely bifurcate effort in Libya, President Obama would have been very well advised to revisit the misadventure in Cuba.  After all Mr Obama had made it clear that the policy goal of the US was the removal of Brother Leader Gaddafi (or choose the alternative spelling you prefer.)  Once these words had passed the president's lips, the whole world knew just what the US, the purported front porch dog of the Free World, wanted in Libya.  The real deal of the attendant UN Security Council resolution, for all its diplomatic pap (inserted so that neither Russia nor China would exercise the veto) about protecting civilians, was that the US in conjunction with at least two other Great Powers, France and the UK, sought the removal of Gaddifi.  The Colonel would go, peacefully if possible, violently if that was the only option.

Every halfway thoughtful observer knows perfectly well that the removal of an obnoxious regime is not difficult.  The US did the job in a matter of days in Afghanistan and mere weeks in Iraq.  The removal part of regime change is easy to accomplish.  The problems in both Afghanistan and Iraq came later--in the bootless attempt to create a modern Western style nation-state in Afghanistan and the very difficult task of seeing Iraq create of itself a reasonable simulacrum of a functioning nation-state with some aspects of democracy and rule  of law.

In Libya the same paradigm would have applied if the Obama administration had not opted to retreat behind the screen of proxies, in this case NATO.  When this choice was made, the path to a replay of the Bay of Pigs was charted.

Showing an abysmal ignorance of history--even very recent history, Mr Obama confused the removal part of regime change with the what-next? effort of seeing a new government created by a society unused to the freedom of creating its own polity.  He also failed to understand that there is no way the US can hide the bright light of its policy under the bushel of a proxy.

Had the US gone full bore into Libya, including the use of ground forces for combat against Gaddafi's loyalist units, Brother Leader would be gone already.  It is important to note that by removing the obnoxious leader the US would not have accrued an automatic responsibility for maintaining the good order within Libya.  Nor would it have taken the burden of turning Libya into a modern, pluralistic Western style democratic nation-state.  Both of these are misapprehensions.

The sole responsibility of the US would have been the execution of its declaratory policy--removing Gaddafi and by so doing protect civilians against the harm created by his loyalist forces.  The follow-on of creating a national polity from the tribal matrix of Libya would have been up to the Libyans with whatever assistance from other states or international organizations they might request.  The doctrine of R2P does not impose an unending task upon whatever state or states removes the threat to the civilians in need of protection.

Obama like Kennedy wanted to eat his cake while retaining it intact.  Both presidents wanted to abate a nuisance to American policy interests but had no desire to carry the long term freight of reconstituting the polity.  To this end both sought to use proxies.  In part Obama has seen the rebels in Libya as the equivalent of the exile Cuban "freedom fighters" with NATO playing the role which should have been undertaken by the US at the Bay of Pigs.

The Libyan insurgents are an even weaker reed than were the exiles at the Bay of Pigs.  This implies strongly that the Libyans would need even greater amounts of outside aid than did the Cubans of a half century ago.  An acceptance of this ground truth places an even greater onus on the US to use effective military force against Gaddafi and his loyalists.  Passing the buck to a divided and force impaired NATO set the stage for a stalemate in Libya and a loss of credibility for NATO.

Fifty years ago JFK made the worst decision possible.  If Castro was as American declaratory policy had maintained completely unacceptable to us, a threat to the peace and stability of the Western Hemisphere and a potential threat to CONUS, the right decision was to send in our forces in sufficient numbers to abate the nuisance quickly and decisively.  If, on the other hand, Castro was in fact a mere annoyance, a diplomatic conundrum, an embarrassment, the proper choice was to do nothing.  The worst option by far was the unsupportable attempt at covert invasion by proxy forces.

So it is in Libya.  If Gaddafi really is a challenge to national or strategic interests as Mr Obama's rhetoric holds, then the proper option is to go in fast and hard so as to remove the man and his forces.  If, to the contrary, Gaddafi is a threat only to his own people, then the US should have stayed out.  Or, if R2P is now to be a cornerstone of US policy, the correct choice is once again to move in openly, fast, and hard and then, after the removal of Gaddafi, back out and turn affairs over to the Libyans and whatever leaders they find in their midst giving only such aid as may be requested and justified.

From that list Mr Obama had a two in three chance of getting it right.  He didn't.  He chose the only bad option in the lot--the proxy effort to achieve American declaratory policy.  He sought to justify his blunder by what must either be spectacular ignorance of recent history or flat out tergiversation.  His use of Iraq, his "we have been down that road before" remark is a complete misrepresentation of what happened in Iraq.  The regime was changed in mere weeks and the consequent internal war was in large measure the foreseeable and preventable consequence of an ill-founded effort at nation-building which could have been avoided by the simple expedient of leaving the matter up to the Iraqis and providing only such aid as they requested specifically.

The same could have been accomplished in Libya.  All that was necessary was the assurance that the political goal was carefully and narrowly defined and that military force was crafted to achieve that goal.  Bereft of any implied responsibility for giving the Libyans a turn-key modern Western style state (which they don't want in any event) the task of directly turning declaratory policy into actual events would have been easy.

JFK is one of Obama's heroes.  It is too bad that the Nice Young Man From Chicago could not learn one simple lesson from Kennedy's second biggest blunder.

Libya And The Credibility Of NATO

NATO has been with us for more than a half century now.  It served its purpose well during the Cold War by providing Europe with a credible capacity to commit suicide.  It was this American furnished capacity which convinced the Soviet Union time and time again that there was nothing to be gained by either invading Europe or merely threatening to do so.  Occupying a radioactive wasteland was not a profitable foreign policy course of action.

With the ending of the Cold War, the demise of NATO was cheerfully forecast in numerous quarters both in the US and Europe.  As was the case with Mark Twain, reports of death were premature.  Still the Big Question remained: What role would NATO serve with the end of the Warsaw Pact/Soviet threat?

The affray in former Yugoslavia which marked so many of the years otherwise dominated by Whitewater and assorted Ladies of the Oval Office appeared to provide an alternative mission for the semi-defunct alliance.  At the time, you may recall, there was debate over whether or not the US had a bull in the Bosnian herd.  More than a few Deep Thinkers of the Clinton administration believed it to be a purely European matter.  A few held the contrary opinion, that the fate of ethnic and religious minorities in the rapidly and energetically disassembling one time country presented a challenge to American values and norms.

The European house was divided on the issue.  Some political leaders and public intellectuals remembered that World War I had its origins in the conflict zones of Bosnia and adjacent areas.  While the analogy was both poor and unconvincing, it did take hold on some imaginations.  But others held different views.  Germany, for example, stood back while providing assistance to one of the successor mini-states, Croatia.

Finally, the US did what the US was expected to do--make a decision and provide leadership.  The Clinton administration having been convinced by advocates of air power that a few strikes from the blue would suffice to bring the Serbs to their senses authorized an air interdiction effort to be conducted under the official auspices of NATO.  With the aid of a few anemic air forces from others of the alliance, the US did "shock and awe" the Serbs.  There were more than a few collateral civilian casualties as when the bombers visited Belgrade.  The deaths and destruction did not do the trick, so ground forces were ultimately (and quite reluctantly) added to the force package.

The US did step back a bit after the opening weeks of the intervention, but there is no doubt the heavy lifting was performed by American forces both air and ground.  When the dust settled, there was a general agreement that NATO had passed the test, imposing peace and saving Muslims from the killing fields.  This conclusion can be debated but was nonetheless almost universally accepted.  NATO had a new lease on life.

The Bosnian precedent was in play when NATO after 9/11 invoked Article V of the charter for the very first time and joined with the US in the invasion of Afghanistan.  This nasty little war started with whoops of unrestrained enthusiasm.   Now, a decade later the enthusiasm is not even a dim memory, and most of the NATO contingents still in country are seeking the earliest departure date possible.

Other NATO members who joined the invasion have long since gone.  Part of the reason for the early bailouts and reluctant remaining can be assigned to the pathetic leadership offered by the Bush/Cheney administration, particularly their decision to march off to Iraq with the job in Afghanistan barely begun let alone finished.  The Great Adventure in Regime Change in Iraq was not widely supported in NATO.  Even in those NATO members which accompanied the US on the road to Baghdad, the support was not deep and had no real potential to be prolonged.

The combination of "mission leap" in Afghanistan and invading Iraq undercut the capacity and political will of NATO for out-of-theater operations.  Worse, the style and strategy of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld crew severely eroded American leadership in the alliance.  A widespread distaste for being seen as instruments of a made-in-the-USA policy with no authentic European interests grew to the mutual disadvantage of both the US and NATO.

It is within this context that the NATO operations in Libya must be considered.  The actions must also be viewed against the backdrop of the Obama understanding of multi-lateralism and American leadership in such.  Context and backdrop frame the current operations in Libya.  The manner in which the framing operates does much to explain why and how the credibility of NATO is at stake.

The importance of credibility resides not with the continuation of NATO.  The alliance will soldier on.  Rather it lies with how NATO is seen by states hostile to either or both Europe and the US.  This list includes the obvious--Iran--and the less self-evident or longer term such as Pakistan, Russia, China, and non-state actors having state support or safe haven.

To be a credible instrument of deterrence, the alliance must be seen and generally understood as possessing both the military means and political will necessary to wage effective war at all levels of the intensity spectrum from the smallest asymmetrical conflict to full bore conventional war with or without a nuclear aspect.  Any perceived failure by NATO in either military means or political will can erode the deterrent potential of NATO as it can that of any individual nation-state.

When the newly muscular Nicholas Sarkozy determined that France would be on the mythical "right side of history," he could have opted to put together a "coalition of the willing" in the manner of George W. Bush on the eve of invading Iraq.  There was at least one other "willing" state, the UK.  Between them, Sarkozy and Cameron could have induced (dragooned?) other states into joining the coalition.  But, Sarko and Cameron did not take this route.

The reason is easy to see.  As had been shown so plainly and painfully by the US and its "coalition" in Iraq, such ad hoc assemblages have lesser legitimacy than that possessed by older, well established systems such as NATO.  The most legitimate but most inhibiting route of all was that taken by Sarkozy and Cameron--a Security Council resolution with ultimate execution under the flag of NATO. The biggest insect in the ointment was not the Security Council--even though, as might have been anticipated, the resolution was too limited to allow the accomplishment of the ultimate goal, the removal of Gaddafi--but rather the role and attitude of the US as defined by the Obama administration.

The US had even less national and strategic interests in play with respect to Libya than it had in the Bosnian affray.  The uber-realist Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, could adduce only the most hazy of interests in play--that of regional stability--to justify any American involvement in Libya.  Had American decision making been left to the dictates of realism, there would be no US aircraft in the sky over Libya.  However, idealism had its very effective advocates within the administration, the Three Furies of Hilary Clinton, Samantha Powers, and Susan Rice.

Siding with the Three Furies, the Clueless Guy In The Oval then had two critical decisions to make.  The first was definition of the goal of military operations, would they  be restricted to the no-fly and protect the civilians substance of the Security Council resolution or would they be expanded to include the president's expressed desire to rid Libya of Gaddafi.  The second was the role to be played by the US: Would we lead the exercise which implied doing the majority of the heavy lifting or would we hand off to some other executive entity such as NATO and retire to a support position in the relative shadows?

As was to have been expected, Mr Obama split the difference or, to err on the side of accuracy, sat down firmly between two stools on both issues.  Operationally, the US and others would abide by the restrictive provisions of the resolution while rhetorically overkilling Gaddafi.  We would run the show--and do the overwhelming majority of the work--for a few days and hand off to NATO while doing a few specialized missions.

The firm sitting between two stools in each matter has set up NATO for a perceived failure.  By limiting the operations to the narrow focus allowed by the Security Council resolution while continuing to exercise the most belligerent oratory, the US has acted to strengthen the political will of Gaddafi and his sons while simultaneously leading the rebels to believe that we and NATO would assure their victory.  Our hand off to NATO knowing that the alliance lacked not only the basics such as adequate stockpiles of precision munitions and aircraft as well as the most important consideration of all--unity of political will--was not only ill-advised it set up the alliance for a perceived failure.

While there are cheerleaders for NATO who argue eloquently for the alliance, proclaiming that after a rough start matters are improving rapidly, it is hard to accept these arguments at face value.  In point of fact there can and will be no certain security for the non-combatants of Libya as long as Colonel Gaddafi is in charge.  The Security Council resolution was predicated upon the R2P doctrine.  This means that the removal of Gaddafi must be subsumed in the overall orientation to protecting non-combatants.  This does not mean handing the rebels a victory as so many of their amorphous leadership seems to believe but simply the ending of Brother Leader's rule.

The Obama administration should have made US support for the Sarkozy/Cameron program contingent upon the removal of Gaddafi being placed front and center as the public goal of the air effort.  Anything less constitutes an exercise in futility.

The removal of Gaddafi requires more than the establishment of a no-fly zone.  It requires more than the partial neutralization of armor, artillery, or other heavy weapons.  The protection of non-combatants as well as the removal of Gaddafi demands the defeat of Gaddafi's armed forces.

The defeat of the Gaddafi loyalists requires the application of overwhelming force in as time limited a manner as possible.  High combat tempo requires large forces.  NATO lacks these as was well understood by the US.  By handing over responsibility to NATO, the US condemned Libya and the Libyans to a prolonged war in which more people would die and more destruction occur than otherwise would have been the case.

The paucity of forces available to NATO, which has been compounded by the very limited inventories of precision guided munitions as well as the absence of interoperability between some NATO air forces and readily available American PGMs, has assured the air campaign has been characterized by missed opportunities and incomplete successes.  Yes, some tanks and tube artillery have been destroyed, but more tanks, more tubes, and more Grad launching trucks remain often unmolested despite clear skies and good, actionable intelligence.

As the days have gone by in their bloody progress with stalemate seemingly more certain with every sunset, the military competence and political will of NATO collectively are increasingly open to question.  The use of cluster munitions against civilian population centers most notably Misrata as well as the resolute rhetoric employed by Saif Gaddafai recently all bespeak of enhanced will on the part of the current regime to keep itself in power.

The US did not exercise the leadership expected of it.  President Obama did not act as President Clinton did with respect to Bosnia.  This did not sit well with the countries of NATO oriented toward ending Gaddafi's reign.  Nor did the US leaving the frontline for a support position sit well either.  Regardless of national pride and irrespective of the burdens put on the US forces by other commitments, only the Americans have the force necessary to carry out a high tempo operation across the full breadth of Libya.  There was, no doubt, an expectation that the US would do what it has always done in the past--lead and fight.

When the US did not behave as expected--and as Mr Obama himself warned a year or so back in Trinidad--there was consternation in NATO.  There has also been a degree, a high degree of despair, among the rebels who hoped and expected more from NATO--and the US.

The situation has reached a point that the credibility of NATO as a deterrent is at stake.  The generally perceived failure of the alliance to suppress the fourth rate military of Gaddafi to a point that it doesn't threaten non-combatants on an hourly basis has undercut its value.  This implies the US now has a national interest in play in Libya--the perceived credibility of our longest standing military alliance.  Perhaps the time has come for the Americans to get off the bench and back into the war.  We have a good enough reason to.

Well, In Afghanistan, It's That Time Of Year--Again

Traditionally, the campaigning season in Afghanistan starts around Mayday.  The snows in the high passes have melted; travel across the FATA/Afghanistan border is easier.  The high country cold has retreated and so the armies can advance.

While the winter break this time around has not been as pronounced as in previous years and wars, the tempo of enemy driven operations is expected to increase over the next few weeks.  As that happens, as the number of Taliban or Haqqani network suicide bombers grows, as the density of IEDs ticks up, so also will the number of friendly forces killed and wounded.  Equally important, as the tempo of operations accelerates, the number of incidents involving collateral non-combatant casualties will ramp up as well.

As the bodies of maimed or dead non-combatants are piled higher and higher, Afghan outrage at the actions of the Americans and other infidel foreigners will escalate as well.  It will not matter if the dead die as a result of insurgent actions or those of the US/ISAF/Afghan National Forces, the result will be the same--demands that the Americans stop whatever it is that they are doing.  One can be sure that both the Karzai government and Muslim clerics supportive of political Islam will be in full-throated anger over the purported massacres of Afghan women and children.

The combination of religious and political imperatives admits of nothing else.  To Muslims, the notion that Muslims kill Muslims is infinitely less unacceptable than is the killing of Muslims by infidels.  Even the indiscriminate slaughter by IED is seen by Afghans as less worthy of condemnation than a misguided airstrike or a stray artillery round, or even the nocturnal raid of an insurgent occupied compound by infidel forces.

The single largest advantage enjoyed by the insurgents is the simple fact that they are Muslims and as such are not subject to condemnation under the guiding Islamic stricture of avoiding any appearance of division, of disagreement within the community of believers.  The power this particular and very fundamental requirement holds on most Muslims precludes any opposition to even the worst excesses of the tactics of murder practiced by Taliban or any other insurgent group.

At the same time the demands of solidarity within Islam as well as the division of all humanity into the opposing camps of "the House of Peace" (Islam) and the "House of War" (infidels, that is everyone who is not a proper Muslim) assures that all culpability for all casualties within the former is assigned unthinkingly to the latter.  As a consequence, the infidels are to blame when one Muslim kills another--particularly when the killing is technically unintentional as is always the case with an IED and is plausibly claimed with respect to suicide bombers hitting soft, civilian targets.

As Taliban et al escalate their efforts this Spring, it is to be expected that Afghan support for a compromise peace will grow with every non-combatant casualty.  The Karzai government will be found baying in the van of the "peace now" movement in Afghanistan.  Insofar as it can escape its ISI minders so also will much of Taliban.  This group has taken very heavy hits at its mid-level ranks as well as among its footsoldiers from the US/NATO/ISAF moves into their former heartlands.  The leadership echelon has also been the victim of attrition courtesy of the UAV attacks in the FATA.

The Haqqani network is unlikely to join in any peace oriented conversations as it is joined shoulders and hip with ISI.  Frantic to secure its fiction of strategic depth against the Indians, there is no way that either ISI or the Pakistani military will surrender any control over either the Haqqani network or any factions within the badly riven Taliban.  Nothing scares the Pakistani military more than the prospect they will lose a seat at the head of the table as Afghanistan enters its endgame phase.

No mistake should be made about this: The Afghanistan war is entering its endgame this spring.  Regardless of protestations to the contrary by, for example, NATO foreign ministers, the US and its "partners" will start an accelerating process of disengagement this summer.  The political realities within the various countries dictate an exit sooner rather than later and at any cost less than a frank admission of military failure or defeat.

No less an expert on covering the political posterior than Harry Reid in the course of an interview filled with internal inconsistencies has acknowledged the pull-out will be coming with greater certainty than Nancy Pelosi's next injection of Botox.  In short compass, the Nevada senator stated that he had "no confidence" in the war coming to a satisfactory conclusion, averred great respect and confidence in the optimistic predictions of General Petraeus, and blamed the upcoming debacle on the American public's "short attention span."  To cut to the chase, the Democratic leader expects the minority support for the war to erode further and for the war to be an issue of note in next year's elections which can be addressed successfully only by a withdrawal.

The situation is the same in all the other Western participants.  The war has no support among the various electorates.  Given the totality of economic and political circumstances, there is no real stomach for continuing the effort anywhere.  Even the several combatant forces are not enthralled with going on with a war which is fundamentally one which cannot be won for circumstances far removed from the sphere of military competence.

As night falls in the next few months, the best which can be expected is the infliction of sufficient damage on Taliban and the Haqqani network to force a compromise peace which does not favor the advocates of violent political Islam.  Afghanistan will remain a semi-hollow state with much of the real power accruing to Islamabad at the expense of Kabul.  The country will remain a cesspool of Shariah in all its reprehensible manifestations.  It will exist as an area ripe for exploitation by outsiders including both Russia and China, both of which have an eye on the vast mineral resources proved out by American experts.  Once again the biggest losers will be as was the case the last time the US disengaged from Afghanistan the people of the place who desire to live without the oppression of a Ninth Century regime.

The tragedy of it all is that the debacle was a 'preventable accident.'  Had the Bush/Cheney administration focused on executing a punitive expedition without any thought of either appeasing Pakistan or playing at nation-building in Afghanistan, the outcome would have been vastly different.  Had the military used a more relevant doctrine in the opening months of the war, the outcome would have been vastly different.  Had President Obama not given into a momentary snit and fired the only man, General McChrystal, capable of going mano a mano with Karzai--and winning, the outcome would have been vastly different.  If General Petraeus could be as good at fighting a war as he is at practicing military (and Congressional) politics, the outcome would have been vastly different.  If President Obama had the guts and realism so sadly lacking with President George W. Bush and not given in to the extortion efforts of the Pakistanis, the outcome would have been vastly different.

But, what has happened, happened.  The war will soon start fading away to an endstate which will not be fully satisfactory and an accompaniment of whimpers and recriminations.  However, if the US and its partners can inflict sufficient losses on the insurgents and keep on with the decapitation strikes in the FATA while coddling Karzai to the fullest extent necessary, it is not too late to retrieve enough of an imitation of victory to make the sacrifices of life, limb, and money almost justifiable.

"The Europeans Wanted The No-Fly Zone---"

There is a historically based truism about war--even a very small war hiding behind an euphemistic moniker and a poetic code name.  The truism can be summed accurately in a single word: unity.  There must be a unity between political goal and military goal.  There must be a unity between the goal and what can be termed the "definition of victory."  There must be a unity--or at least a tight cohesion--between the definition of victory and the "theory of victory," which is the specific mix of military and non-military means intended to result in victory.  Finally, there must be a unity of command so as to assure that all forces employed are marching to the same band.

Unity in all the forms mentioned is critical to war waged by a single power.  It is even more critical when the war is undertaken by a coalition.

To date Operation Odyssey Dawn (as the Americans term the effort in Libya) or Operation Ellamy (as the Brits have dubbed it) fails in most of the ways listed above.  There is no unity of political goals as between the several coalition members.  There is no unity between political and military goal as regards the US.  There is no unified definition of victory.  Thus, there can be no definition of victory.  Nor can there be a unified theory of victory.  And, looking forward, the unity of command and common effort is nowhere to be seen.

Operation Odyssey Dawn has been through yesterday a predominately American effort.  Nearly two thirds of all sorties have been flown by US aircraft.  American planes flew 212 sorties while the British and French as well as other NATO states contributed 124.  This trend continued during the past twenty-four hours with the Americans flying 113 sorties and the other twelve coalition partners contributing 63.  This is an improvement on the 85 percent Made in America record of a couple of days earlier.  The overwhelming majority of the 162 Tomahawk missiles fired were American (the British have fired a dozen or so from a submarine which represents a goodly chunk of the 64 Tomahawks in the British inventory.)

In this respect the operation represents business as usual.  Way back when during the days of H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton the no-fly zone was primarily an American effort.  The US flew five sorties for every one undertaken by the UK.  (The French were not involved at all.)  The situation was much the same during the Bosnian affray.

All this "joint" effort has put a lot of hours on the airframes of American aircraft.  It would be interesting to know how many hours had accumulated where and when on the F-15E Strike Eagle which crashed in Libya as the result of an "equipment malfunction."  The use--perhaps bordering on overuse--may be one reason the US military seems anxious to pass the baton to someone else in Libya.

It is not the only nor even the primary reason the US is looking so eagerly for an early exit from its current leadership role.  Leaving aside the motives and their worthiness, the most important consideration is whether or not the American bowing out will help or hinder the gaining of unity in all the forms mentioned.

The primary requirement, the requirement from which all subordinate forms of unity descend, is that of political goal.  With respect to Libya this seems to be quite elusive.  The French seem to be wedded to an endstate which sees Gaddifi gone.  The British have acknowledged they have no exit plan, which implies the absence of a final political goal.  The American president has drawn a line between an expansive political goal and a very, very narrow military one.  The Germans are opposed to everything which may bring with it the possibility of someone shooting someone.  The Turks are likewise inclined.  The Arab League is adrift in a sea of confusion bordering on despair.

The upshot of this sorry state of affairs is there is little if any probability of a unified political goal emerging regardless of who or what finally takes over the political direction of the war.  With this reality in place at the most foundational level, it almost doesn't matter who runs the actual conduct of daily operations.  But, politics guides that as well.  The UK with phlegmatic realism understands that NATO has the command and control capacity to run a coalition war.  The French and others are against this for the frankly political reason that NATO is Western and as such will alienate the Arab states whose political cover is essential for the effort.

The internal political contradictions and tensions which afflict not only the AL but many of the member states as well prevents the League from adopting and keeping to a unified political goal or even collaborating with non-Arab states in formulating one for the Libyan Question.  This reality makes an imitation of the ISAF in Afghanistan a fiction.  (Not that the ISAF is a model of unity--consider the risk averse nature of many contributor countries such as Germany whose ROE's virtually prevent firing an angry round.)

When night falls there will be a cobbled together simulacrum of a central political directorate.  Command and control of daily, routine operations will devolve to someone, perhaps the French or a joint Anglo-French body, or, just maybe, NATO.  The political directorate will not make the hard choices of the what-do-we-do-next? sort of decisions which will be popping up in a very unpretty way shortly.  These matters will be kicked back to the national leaders.  The notion that the assorted leaders of the main players (which will continue to include the US as only the US has many critical capacities such as enough aircraft) will achieve a consensus on the questions of what-now? is hallucinatory at best.

The yawning gap between President Obama's declaratory policy--"Gaddafi must go"--and the no-American-boots-on-the-ground pledge underscores the impossibility of coming to effective terms with the what-now? genre of questions.  The vast differences in motivation among the assorted NATO states which have contributed aircraft of basing facilities further exacerbates the question.

The American stance toward the effort in Libya is epitomized in the quote giving this post its title.  Of course this view ignores the vast differences in motives and intents within the "Europeans."  Frankly, the effort is the brainchild of France and the UK.  This allows the inference that these two should be the political directorate, but such is totally unacceptable to all others.

So the necessary unities will not exist.  This redounds to Gaddafi's advantage.  The greatest irony in this is simply that should Brother Leader come out of the current fracas still in power, the states with the most to worry about are those of the Arab League.  Given Gaddafi's past love affairs with terror groups and the current political tumult in most Arab states, his capacity for mischief is unlimited.

A line from an old Jefferson Airplane song is relevant: "Go away or go all the way in."  This is the fundamental dilemma facing the mock coalition in the sky over Libya.  The states with the most dogs in the fight are those of the Arab League.  The collective and individual unwillingness of these states to address the ground truth in play in Libya right now constitutes a major failure of political will and acumen.  In time this failure may well lead to more failed states where Arabic is the language.