Form Up The Battalions!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gaddafi Stays On Message While The US Doesn't Have One

It would be easy to admire Gaddafi's tenacity if, indeed, he had any other option.  With an International Criminal Court indictment hanging over his head and very few safe havens to contemplate, Gaddafi has little choice other than to fight on.  As a result it is a no-brainer to see why Brother Leader has stayed on message.

The brain sweat comes in with a question.  Why is it necessary for the US, the assorted European states, the members of the Arab League, and African Union to make it so much easier for the Colonel to keep on keeping on?  Why do all these players seem to have an agenda calculated to assure that not only will Gaddafi maintain power, he will be around to cause enormous amounts of trouble until and unless the indirect pressures of economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation take effect?

The Arab League has walked back from its walk back concerning the imposition of the no-fly zone--"What!  You mean you have to fire missiles and drop bombs?"  Apparently working under the assumption that Muslims wouldn't lie about such a matter, the Arab League took Gaddafi's word for appalling civilian casualties but then were convinced just possibly the Gaddfi noise machine was exaggerating the body count.

But the Arab League trepidations found a quick echo in the foreign ministers of both the EU and NATO.  For the last couple of days, the loudest sound in Europe has been that made by knees knocking with fear.  Given that few of the countries represented in either group is noted for resolution in the face of the uncertainties which come with every use of military means, this is no surprise.  It is so unsurprising that it would be a very real shock if the Gaddafi family--some of whose members are very well acquainted with Western ways--had not counted upon this sort of division and worked assiduously to provoke it.

The opposition which has come from one of the Boys in the Kremlin and the Trolls of Beijing is also no shock.  Again it was so expectable that it bends the mind to believe that once again the Gaddafi family was not counting upon it.  The offers by the Gaddafi family to cancel the current oil and natural gas leases and offer them to other countries including China, Russia, and India show some base cunning at work.  The pursuit of divide and conquer particularly with assemblages which are already divided needs no deep thinking.  The payoff has been handsome with India, Brazil, and South Africa joining Russia and China in a chorus of very loud denunciation.

Public support within the US and UK for the current ill and perhaps mis-defined military mission runs around one in three.  It may be higher in France as its citizens seem to be willing to take pride in their country doing something which is compatible with both national interests and national values.  However, the low support in the US has shown itself in the opposition presented to "Obama's War" from the left, right, and center of both parties.

Much of the opposition is predicated upon the all too obvious dichotomy between the goals of the current air operations and the Obama declaratory policy which holds, "Gaddafi must go."  The lack of congruence between the stated goals and the declaratory policy is guaranteed to undercut public confidence and, thus, support for the effort.  President Obama has either been very economical with the truth or quite hallucinatory regarding the endgame in Libya.

Other very obvious disconnects between US actions and policy in Libya with its actions and policies elsewhere in the Arab states also undercuts both understanding and support.  We are in an active shooting war with the announced aim of protecting civilians from an arbitrary and brutal regime in Libya while being merely "concerned" when the same is taking place in Yemen albeit on a arguably lesser scale.  The Obama administration has not even worked itself up to the level of being concerned when it comes to the situation in Bahrain, which leads to the conclusion that oil is thicker than blood given the close cooperation between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

The lack of coherent goals couples with distaste for the war against Gaddafi and the fear of upsetting the always sensitive Muslims to provide the interesting lack of eagerness on the part of everyone to take over the lead in Libya.  The Obama administration is quite keen on passing the baton to someone else.  But there is a palpable lack of takers.  Even if NATO showed willingness to do the job, the Arab League has opposed the idea as have NATO members Turkey and France.  Given the need for all decisions to be made by consensus, Turkish and French opposition kills the concept.

Perhaps France is angling for the job.  Assuming the command and control resident with French forces is up to the job, there is no objection to this.  Even the subordination of American combat units to such a command has precedent.  In this context it might be recalled that the US handed over command during the Dominican Republic intervention in 1965 to Brazil.  American combat forces including ground units served as a part of an Organization of American States task group with the complete approval of the US Congress and media of the day.

Perhaps the muscular and ambitious Nicholas Sarkozy, who has done more than any other single person to push for the current intervention without a salient goal, is or will have second thoughts as the gravity of the "what next?" question sinks in.  There can not be a single observer well oriented in time and place who believes the no-fly zone even with the add-on of strikes against Gaddifi's forces will provide for a stable, secure outcome.  The current operation will not and can not remove Gaddafi and without this there is no possibility of an outcome even tangentially favorable to Western interests and values.

In the best case the current operation will end with Libya divided into two zones.  The eastern one will remain under Gaddafi.  The western one will eventually fall under the sway of advocates of violent political Islam.  All must remember that the west, Cyrenaica, was not only the fountainhead of insurgency against Italy but also the homeland of a very austere form of Islam derived from the old Salifist doctrine.  This is a connection which is as true today as it was a century ago.  We must not forget or overlook this ground truth.

The policies and actions of the West are riddled with internal contradictions.  They are laden with ambiguities. They are freighted with uncertainties to a degree surpassing previous "optional" wars such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It is no surprise that support for the effort is narrow and very shallow.

All that can be written with certainty is that the world will be a nastier and more fearful place should Gaddafi remain in power even over a truncated form of Libya.  It is equally certain that in war unlike other forms of human endeavor, a full loaf is infinitely preferable to a half loaf.  And, what is being done right now is a half loaf approach at best.

Well, Now We're In--Why Should We Not Lead?

Yesterday Secretary of State Clinton warranted to the world's media that the US was not playing a leading role in the aerial intervention in Libya.  She assured all who would listen that American forces were playing only a supporting role in the complex operation of establishing a no-fly zone and, to follow the wording of Admiral Mike Mullen, get Gaddafi's forces to move back to garrison.

It seemed passingly strange that Ms Clinton would sound that particular note considering the widespread reports that it was her pressure which finally carried the day against the opposition of Robert Gates and Admiral Mullen. The most charitable characterization of her comment is that it carried Obama's water.  There is no doubt but Mr Obama would have been far, far happier to sit this particular fracas out while letting more robust governments such as those of Nicholas Sarkozy and David Cameron do the heavy lifting.

As the Obama administration's handling of most of the political unrest in the Mideast and North Africa has shown clearly, the president and his "team" seek a world in which the US is not a leader but rather a dutiful follower of consensus achieved elsewhere by others.  There may be many reasons lurking in the intellectual shadows surrounding this strange course of action, but two overt mechanisms are evident.  The president fears being equated with George W. Bush and his "Freedom agenda."  The president and at least some of his closest adherents eschew the crude realities of nationalism and national interest as well as the necessary concomitant, the US as a Great Power.

It was not statesmanship which forced the president and his people to cower behind a berm of contradictory messages regarding Libya ranging from the overly bellicose--Khadafi must go!--to the humbly pacifistic--this is a matter for the Libyan people.  It was not statesmanship which compelled Mr Obama to stand in the darkness downstage as David Cameron and Nicholas Sarkozy marched upstage, grabbing the spotlight as they did so.  It was not statesmanship, carefully calculated and deliberately decided policy which caused the POTUS to hide the US military lamp in the bushel of military nothingness which is the current British defense establishment or allow the French to jump in first, grabbing attention and credit as their zoomies occupied the safe sky over Benghazi.

Mr Obama's motives were far more mundane, not to say base than the requirements of global diplomacy.  He was afraid.  Fearful of looking like George W. Bush.  Affighted of having to make the very tough decisions which must be made in the next few days and weeks.  Frightened of losing his base and of alienating further the independents of the American electorate--a non-trivial consideration in that the Obama 2012 campaign is already well underway.

Then, of course, there is the hovering cloud of apprehension caused by uncertainty as to just what Arab and Muslim states and populations will say and do as the missiles and bombs fall on Libyan soil and heads.  Mr Obama--and a good many others--is quite scared of the unpredictable consequences of Muslim sensibilities being outraged by the realities of warfare--even of imposing the no-fly zone demanded by the Arab League.

There are two reasons why the US and other civilized states should be involved in Libya.  One is severely pragmatic--preventing Gaddafi from staying in power and presenting an ongoing threat to the civilized world, perhaps a much worse one than previously.  The other is not at all practical; rather it is one of ideals, of principles, of values and norms.  Gaddafi's conduct in recent days is repugnant to even the most loosely defined standards of acceptable governmental conduct.

The reality right now is that the air strikes and no fly zone may well leave Gaddafi in power.  This possibility has been acknowledged by Admiral Mullen.  This eventuality would render nugatory all the efforts made by the present coalition.  Yes, it would be nice if someone close to Gaddafi would be so kind as to grease him.  But that is what George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton both hoped would be the fate of Saddam Hussein.  The providential assassination is not a firm base for policy.

The necessary inference is a ground operation may prove necessary.  Such need not be an army which would remain in occupation, a military force providing security during an exercise in nation-building.  British ForMin Hague has left the door more than ajar for an invasion.  If the actual goal of the current operation is--as it should or must be--the removal of Gaddafi and the prevention of a bifurcation of Libya, it is hard to see how that may be accomplished without the introduction of ground forces.

The prospect of a replay of the experiences of Afghanistan and Iraq can be nullified by careful limitation of the ground force mission to the defeat of Gaddafi's troops and the removal of Gaddafi.  There would then be no responsibility for long term presence in a stability role while the do-gooders practice nation-building.  While some sort of nation-building is no doubt required, this should be undertaken by the Arab League or the UN with "stability" forces being provided by the former under the auspices of the latter.  This would allow Western combat forces to be withdrawn without the horrid endgame seen in Iraq and without the never ending counterinsurgency of Afghanistan.

It the US wants stability in Libya it must bend every effort to assure that Gaddafi is removed, Libya not partitioned, and any ground commitment be short and focused.  We cannot do this by playing support to a coalition headed by France and the UK.  We can only obtain the goals we want by exercising the leadership role the world--including Cameron and Sarkozy--want.

Everyone has had a brief glimpse of a world political order without the US front and center.  No one found it to be as happy a place as they may have imagined or wished.

Sic 'Em, Dave, Sarko

David Cameron continues to take the hardline regarding the imposition of a no-fly zone on Libya.  Reportedly he has told his cabinet that there is no need for a UN Security Council resolution in order for the UK or any other country to place Libya under aerial interdict.  In this view Cameron has been joined by Nicholas Sarkozy.  The rather mercurial French president has gone so far as to recognize the rebel national committee as the legitimate government of Libya.

While the UK lacks the resources to do the no-fly job on its own, the British could do so in conjunction with the French.  Considering the recent agreement regarding joint military operations, the possibility of this happening moves up the list of likelihood.

If Cameron continues to feel muscular on the Libyan Question, President Obama will be more isolated in his calculated posture of apparent prudence and cautious statesmanship behind which lurks the fear of being seen as George W. Bush reincarnate.  The pressure ramped up ever so slightly yesterday when Secretary Gates clarified his earlier remarks on the difficulty of imposing a no-fly zone.  The secretary allowed in Manama that the US could do the job all on its lonesome should "President Obama so order."

With the Arab League having unanimously passed a resolution approving a no-fly zone and demanding that the Security Council act accordingly, the assorted member states have picked up a good measure of the political consequences which would ensue should the no-fly zone result in civilian casualties.  This move will reduce, albeit marginally, the negative narrative which will be written by anti-Western elements in the Arab and Muslim majority states generally in the wake of even a very pacifistic airspace denial effort.

The real questions do not involve the ability of the US or the Anglo-French duo or any other major power to impose and maintain a no-fly zone.  The most trenchant question is: Will a no-fly zone actually benefit the insurgents in a significant manner?  As important is this: What actions will follow the imposition of an unproductive no-fly zone.  And, of course, there is the most fundamental question of all: What is the goal of the exercise?

To take the last question first: The actual goal of any intervention either by air or ground must be that of utterly defeating the current regime.  The US and the rest of the West cannot afford a Gaddafi in power after his crushing of the insurgency.  It would not be a return to the status quo ante.  A victorious Gaddafi at best would be the Gaddafi of the worst of the bad old days.  You know, the Gaddafi of PanAm 103.  The Gaddafi who supported any and every movement or regime which opposed the West.  The Gaddafi who sought weapons of mass destruction with an ardor which surpassed that demonstrated by Saddam Hussein.

Preventing this version of Gaddafi, the basic Gaddafi 1.0 who strutted and terrified in the years before the US invaded Iraq, must be the highest priority of any and every responsible Western government, our own included.  All other goals pale into insignificance in comparison.

Now as to the first question: Would a no-fly zone really matter?  Would it preclude a Gaddafi victory?  The answer is simple, blunt, and unpleasant.  The answer is: No!  It is possible that Gaddafi would not even challenge the zone.  He has no need to do so.

The air attacks may scare the untrained, inexperienced people down range, but so far the effect of the attacks has been negligible.  The pilots--whether Libyan or hired hands from Syria or Sudan--have not shown the ability to hit targets.  As a consequence, the strikes have been acoustically and visually impressive but militarily useless.

The winning weapons for the Gaddafi forces have been of the indirect fire sort.  Unguided rockets, tube artillery, the backbones of standoff warfare have done the heavy lifting for the Colonel's killers.  Only after extensive preparatory fire has the armor moved forward to finish the job.

The untrained, poorly organized, massively inexperienced insurgent fighters lack all the basic wherewithal to withstand the physical and morale effects of standoff, indirect fire weaponry.  The same applies to facing down armor, even antiquated main battle tanks and similar vintage infantry fighting vehicles.

In a combat between a small but well equipped force such as the four or so battalions commanded by Gaddafi's kids and a mob, the small force will win.  To put it a slightly different way, the Gaddafi forces enjoy the bravery of being out of range.  Their possession of standoff weapons allows the Colonel's thugs to kill without the risk of being killed.  Any number of wounded insurgents quoted in Western MSM have moaned about the melancholy reality that the Gaddafi troops are never seen let alone shot at but stay safely out of AK-47 or RPG range and pound the holy hell out of the rebel positions.

Conclusion?  A no-fly zone will not tilt the battle in favor of the insurgents.  They are doomed as long as Gaddafi's forces can continue to move slowly along the one road, stopping to shell any insurgent held area into powder until they finally fetch up at the center of resistance, Benghazi.  At that moment it is all over for the insurgents.  Those who can run will fast step to the Egyptian border; those who can't will stay and be blown into small bloody fragments by the Colonel's artillery, rockets, and armor.

(At this point a no-fly zone would benefit the refugee stream heading for Egypt by assuring it would not be decimated by air attack.  That would be a humanitarian good deed, but is not a war winner.  It is not a way of achieving the goal of a Gaddafi free Earth.)

This leaves the second material question:  What happens after the no-fly zone proves nugatory?  Assuming that the leaders of Western governments, including the Clueless Guy in the Oval, concur that the ongoing presence of Gaddafi constitutes everybody's worst nightmare, there is only one option.  The last option standing is the introduction of ground combat units.

There is much fear over doing such.  Some anxiety is merited by factual, historical experience; some, even most, is not.  Drawing on the historical record it is safe to conclude that an operation limited to one discrete goal--the halting of the Gaddafi advance on a predetermined line, for example--markedly reduces the probability of "mission leap" along the lines of what happened in Afghanistan.

The difficulty in employing military intervention is not that of tactics.  Nor is it one at the operational level.  The only real problem is that which comes at the political level--defining in a properly limited way the goal to which the use of force is directed.  Provided that the goal consensually achieved by the major Western powers is that of enforcing a stop line, there is no requirement for "nation-building," no taking of overall responsibility for the future of Libya.

Admittedly, this limited a mission would leave the Gaddafi regime in charge of a truncated Libya.  On the upside, this truncated version of his previous domain coupled with the long term impact of sanctions would serve to erode Brother Leader's material capacity to continue in power.  It would also serve to curtail Gaddafi's potential for international mischief making most gratifyingly.

There is a very unfortunate but very real temptation for political leaders not to leave well enough alone.  They seem to be constitutionally disinclined to accept a half loaf when the full loaf seems to be so much more attractive.  Here the American experience in Afghanistan and Iraq are the most important object lessons.  Had the neocon ninnies of the Bush-Cheney years been at all able to restrain their unlimited ambitions, the effort in Afghanistan would have been restricted to a highly doable punitive expedition and the Great Adventure in Regime Change in Iraq would have been limited to the removal of Saddam Hussein.

The US should have rejected any responsibility for doing anything beyond removing two odious regimes, assuring that al-Qaeda was destroyed and eliminating any residual capability in Iraq for the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction.  All the rest, all the follow-ons of "nation-building" or the constitution of new governments would have been passed on to the indigenous populations with the assistance of those members of the "international community" which cared to offer such.

The goal of any ground intervention must be restricted to the establishment of a stop line beyond which the Gaddafi units would not be allowed.  Taken in conjunction with the existence of an alternative, legitimate government and the assorted international sanctions, the result would be the ejection of Gaddafi from power.  This would be facilitated if the threat of prosecution for crimes against humanity were to be lowered even if not removed totally.  It must be recalled that the Taylor prosecution served as the single greatest spine stiffener provided to Gaddafi and family.

At the moment both Cameron and Sarkozy have shown both greater insight and courage than has Mr Obama.  Having written that, the Geek is constrained to add that neither man has been honest--at least in public.  Their military advice must have emphasized the irrelevance of the no-fly zone.  Their political and diplomatic advisors must have pointed out the array of negative consequences which would attend a Gaddafi victory.  These factors imply that each man must be aware that when night falls, only a ground intervention would prevent the Colonel from emerging triumphant and emboldened.

Since the British and French leaders have led on the Libyan Question, it is now incumbent upon them to tell it like it is.  They must prepare themselves, their publics, and the rest of the world for the necessity of a ground intervention in the very near future.  This also means they and their military and diplomatic high command must design a properly limited mission definition.  And, they have to drag Obama kicking and screaming in their wake.

So, Dave and Sarko, sic 'em!

Need A Country Commit Suicide In The Name Of Human Rights?

The British Prime Minister has put the UK in the center of the storm which has been brewing for years both in Europe and the US.  In a speech before an international conference on terrorism held in Munich, David Cameron mounted a direct frontal assault on the bastion of multi-culturalism.  In spring loaded responses, assorted UK Muslim groups as well as fellow travelers from the British Left countered that Mr Cameron by his stance promoted, among other evils, racism, xenophobia, marginalizing Muslims, and, horror above horror, giving aid and comfort to the far right English Defense League.

In his remarks, the PM drew a sharp distinction between Islam per se and political Islam, particularly that of the violent sort.  He announced that the government would be reversing a course followed by his Labor predecessors.  Instead of remaining silent--or, in fact, even facilitating by money and public facilities--groups and individuals who espoused positions on gender issues, law, and democracy repugnant to defining British values and norms, the government would robustly counter these.  No longer would Her Majesty's ministers genuflect before the multi-cultural totems of de facto segregation, turning a Nelsonian blind eye to "preachers of hate" or allowing separate development of non-majority social and cultural groups.

In the tenor and scope of his remarks, Mr Cameron followed the path explored earlier by German chancellor Merkel and French president Sarkozy.  Not that this reality inhibited the automatic excoriations pouring from both Muslims and the denizens of the Left.  The views offered by the Big Three of the European Union may be offensive to the deeply held beliefs of the "sophisticated" and ever-so-tolerant elites of Europe (and the US) but accurately reflect not only the realities which have insensibly developed in Europe over the past couple of decades but the perceptions of most of the hoi polloi of the UK, France, Germany, and, for that matter, the rest of Western Europe.

As Cameron made clear, the relation between Muslim groups and Muslims generally within the UK and the majority population of that country has profound implications for the internal security of the realm.  Due to rulings by the overreaching European Court of Human Rights, it has become virtually impossible for British authorities to deport even very dangerous, terror inclined believers in violent political Islam.  The same unintended consequence of the ever-so-tolerant-and-accepting elites' decision to invest very broad powers in the unelected, unaccountable Human Rights Court applies to every member of the European Union.

As a report Thursday by the top monitor of counterterrorism in the UK, Lord Alexander Carlile, made plain, the result of the European Human Rights Court decisions taken in conjunction with the rapid growth of violent political Islam in the UK has been to make the country a "safe haven" for terrorists and their supporters.  Similarly, the briefings given to visiting American congresspeople by MI-5 emphasized that the security organ as well as the police are nearly overwhelmed by the number of primarily young Muslims who have surrendered to the appeal of violent political Islam.  The clear implication for the Americans was the threat could not be confined to the UK but could easily cross the Atlantic.

This dreary reality underscores the earlier lessons from Germany.  A decade ago it was the ever-so-tolerant German milieu which allowed the nurturing of several well-educated, economically well-off, young Muslim men to gravitate to the flag of violent political Islam with results which arrested the world's attention on 9/11.  Even with that capstone to a series of earlier outbreaks of violent political Islam, it took years before the German government made any moves to inhibit the activities of those who pursue the defeat of the West.  The power and seductive appeal of multi-culturalism held too great a sway with the German political, media, and intellectual "elite" to do otherwise.

France traveled a similar route albeit without the enormity of 9/11.  Years of violence by "youth" were waved aside by the elite as being nothing more than rage and frustration caused by economic and political marginalization.  It took great political courage as well as the growth of a backlash by French people wondering what had happened to "their France" before the government commenced actions intended, in essence, to compel and end the self-inflicted Muslim segregation from the majority population, the majority culture, the norms, values, and world views which defined the French nation.

Cameron is calling for nothing less.  He is demanding an end to segregation.  True, the segregation was in large measure well-intended by the True Believers in multi-culturalism and cultural relativism.  These True Believers, members in good standing of the self-selected, self-anointed hoi ollogoi, really thought that separate development of Muslim communities following their own native customs and religious traditions would benefit them and, by some mysterious process, the country as a whole.  Well intended segregation even when embraced wholeheartedly by those being segregated is still segregation.  And, segregation harms all, those who are put in the ghettos and those who do the putting.

No matter what gloss is put on the matter, there are no upsides to segregation.  The record of history is very clear on that.  Whether the Jews of Europe or Americans of African ancestry in this country, segregation does only damage, grave, even well nigh onto fatal damage.  The intentions of multi-culturalists does not change this reality one iota.

Cameron, like Merkel and Sarkozy before him, called for (to use a lawyer loved phrase) a bright and shining line to be drawn between Islam as a religion and Islam derived political ideology.  While that sounds like a good idea, it is one which is fraught with danger in application.

The fundamental difficulty is simply that there is no dividing line between Islam as a religion and Islam as a political ideology.  Islam is a self-consciously totalistic system covering all aspects of life, the profane as well as the sacred, the political and economic as well as the theological and eschatological.

On one level Islam is a very simple religion to accept and practice.  Its five pillars are straight forward.  Its basic requirements and strictures are likewise simple, direct and not at all difficult either to articulate or to follow.  The basics of being a good Muslim are arguably simpler in application than are those of being a good Catholic or a good Presbyterian or a good reform Jew.

On  another level, Islam is a very difficult religion to practice in its totality.  This is particularly true when one is a Muslim living in a secular Western country.  The assorted imams, ayatollahs, and sheiks who have preached on the utter incompatibility of Islam and democracy are not perverting the faith.  If, as these clerics believe, all law must come directly from the deity, then the laws of a democracy being made by men are anathema unless they are somehow certified by a cleric as fully compatible with the law of the deity.

Similarly, if, as these clerics preach, women are inherently inferior to men by the will and design of the deity, then any human created laws to the contrary are anathema.  The notion of gender equality is directly contrary to the expressed will of the deity and is an attack upon the deity.  The same reasoning applies to any number of other features of life and law in contemporary Western states.

The lack of any separation between the political state and the religious community, which is a baseline position articulated by any number of Muslim clerics, as well as the absence of any concept akin to the radical British development nearly a thousand years ago of the "King's Peace" assure immense practical difficulties confront Mr Cameron's goal of full integration of Muslims into the larger British comity.

Mr Cameron must recognize this as he asserted in his speech a truth which will not sit well with either many Muslims or their multi-cultural supporters.  He averred that the responsibility to conform with larger, defining British norms, values, world views, and traditions resides with the individual Muslim.  To put it bluntly, Cameron challenged each and every individual Muslim to decide between accepting the defining characteristics of British culture, society, and polity on the one hand or getting out of the UK on the other.

The choice is blunt but fair.  A society, a nation, as well as the state, the polity, is defined by a set of values, norms, traditions, world views, all of which have been developed over generations.  The job of defining is never finished so each and every nation as well as the state which embodies it is a work in progress.  This means that each and every Muslim by agreeing to accept the norms and values currently governing the nation and state in which he lives can enter into the process of the never completed work in progress.

The UK or the Germany or the France or the US of a century hence will not resemble its current incarnation in many aspects.  That is a given.  This implies that Muslims are free to do what so many non-majority groups have done in each of these countries for many generations now--accept the present in order to participate in creating the future.

This ground truth implies that Prime Minister Cameron has issued an invitation which is far greater than the explicit ultimatum.  He has invited the Muslims to leave their cushioned ghetto and enter the mainstream in order to be full participants in creating the UK and the British nation of the years to come.  Seen this way, it is hard to understand why the Muslim groups and their Left wing apologists did other than praise the PM for his generous invitation.

As well as inviting Muslims to join the "Big Society," Mr Cameron has issued a challenge to the elites of Europe to reevaluate their stance.  Implicit in his remarks is a demand that each and every member of the EU as well as their component elites step back and reexamine just what human rights might mean.  He has implicitly demanded that the Human Rights Court be looked at closely and harshly.

Most particularly in the sub-text of his speech, Cameron has rejected the stance of the Court on the balance between the rights and privileges of an individual and the legitimate security needs of a state.  In all too many of its decisions the Court, has seemed to be of the mind that a state must commit suicide in order that a single person's human rights might receive the most generous of protections.

To his credit the British PM has challenged that dubious proposition.  This challenge has come rather late in the day, but finally it has been made.

Calling It Like It Is

It is hard to tell very unpopular truths.  In the West to do so is to run the risk of falling afoul the myrmidons of political correctness, the minions of multi-cultural affection, or simply those who cow down to the fear of maybe, perhaps, offending someone's sensitivities somewhere, somehow.  In other countries, Pakistan is on the list near the top, to tell it like it is means to run the very real and present hazard of being killed by a person so warped by the perverse messages of faith as to lose his mental and moral moorings.

In the recent weeks a pair of blunt spoken advocates of human rights, particularly the right to one's personal conscience, have made it plain what is at stake in the struggle between the advocates of violent political Islam and their opponents.  The pair are French president Nicholas Sarkozy and Pakistani member of parliament Sherry Rehman.

In a speech a week ago to an interfaith conference in Paris, M. Sarkozy set his sights on the Mideast.  In specific he drew a steady bead on the violence perpetrated by Muslims on Christians.  He stated the campaign of bombings, shootings, beatings, and general intimidation was an effort at "religious cleansing."  The phrase is redolent of the damning "ethnic cleansing" against which the US and other countries employed armed force a bit more than a decade ago.

M. Sarkozy linked the two forms of "cleansing" as conjoined twins of evil.  As the French president sees life and the world, "religious cleansing" deserves the same sort of active opposition as did ethnic cleansing in the ruins of Yugoslavia.  The Muslim attacks on Christians as well as the lame efforts of Muslim majority governments to protect Christians are, in M. Sarkozy's view, assaults on the liberty of conscience, which is a bedrock principle on which French society and polity have existed for a mort of years.

Sherry Rehman is a pillar of courage in a swamp of cowardly violence.  She is a principled person whose goal is simply human rights for all Pakistanis--including Christians.  In this she is following the course set by Pakistan's founding father.  Her specific goal at the moment is the ending of the Zia era blasphemy laws.  To this end the former government minister and PPP heavyweight has introduced a Private Member's Bill to end the death threat of the blasphemy law.

As a consequence the lady has been marked for death by assorted clerics of the political Islam end of the Muslim spectrum.  She has been declared officially by these men as an "infidel," and branded "worthy of death" in fatwa after bloody fatwa.  No doubt all these death messages were presented in the name of "Allah the Merciful and Compassionate."

Thus the probability of Ms Rehman being done to death by a True Believer in the same manner as Salmaan Taseer is high, very high.  President Zardiiri with the courage of a startled rabbit has urged Ms Rehman to leave the country until the "situation is stabilized."  With a physical courage which matches her moral and intellectual bravery, Ms Rahmen has spurned the request.  Pakistan is her country and there she will live and die, triumph or fail.

Surrounded by tens of thousands of fear driven, insecure men who seek an identity in True Belief, the stance taken by Ms Rahmen can only excite the greatest respect.  She transcends borders with her stance and her courage.  Even should she die under the assassin's knife or gun, the coward's bomb, Ms Rehman must serve as a beacon for any and all Pakistanis who seek to see their country among the ranks of the Civilized States rather than within the narrow and reactionary tribe represented by such as Taliban in all its incarnations or al-Shabaab or the assorted Baby al-Qaedas--or the Iran of today.

The reformers of Pakistan are at the point of decision.  They can leave for the West which will welcome them.  They can lay low, hide out, talk only to one another, and hope the clerics and their mobs miss them.  Or, like the late Punjabi governor Salmaan Taseer and Ms Rehman, take a stand and fight it out against the forces of the Eighth Century.  They may die, but in that case their deaths will mean something.  If they do nothing, they will live with the knowledge that they failed in their obligation to themselves and their fellow countrymen.

M. Sarkozy for his part has tossed down the gauntlet to his fellow Western leaders.  They can either take up his challenge and repudiate the "religious cleansing" underway throughout the Muslim majority states with all the instruments of national power at their disposal or they can remain silent.  They can either stand on the side of the most basic human right of freedom of conscience or they can in their denial surrender to the forces of reactionary fear driven prejudice and hate.

The US and UK no less than France have long stood for freedom of belief.  It would be shameful as well as self defeating for either Prime Minister Cameron or President Obama to fail to measure up to the French President.  It is to be hoped that M. Sarkozy will bring the matter of Christian killing, Christian intimidation, Christian terror to the attention of Mr Obama when they meet in Washington a few days hence.  It is to be devoutly hoped that Obama will shed his pose of multi-culturalism and tell it like it is with respect to events in Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Nigeria, and other Muslim majority states.

Quite simply the "religious cleansing" deserves the same measure of response as did the ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia.  Any less is to say the assorted conventions on human rights espoused by the UN and subscribed to by the US as well as all the Muslim majority states are, as Bismark once was reputed to have said, "mere scraps of paper."  It is also to cast aside a foundational principle of the US.

For the American president as for the reformers of Pakistan the choice is simple: Fight or surrender.  For the US, the second choice is to admit to self-inflicted defeat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now for the really bad idea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, bucko, that is a really bad idea.

Personal Relations Do Matter, Mr Obama

Once upon a time a man was elected president. He was by nature cool, aloof, passionate in a detached, controlled fashion. This new president was an academic, a specialist in the American constitution. He focused on great themes, lofty ideals, the power of an informed and rational population. And, he eschewed the personal. The very notion of enduring, intimate contact leading to trust and confidence between individuals, including individual leaders, was outside his purview of understanding.

The man's name was Woodrow Wilson, not Barack Obama. However, Mr Obama has been giving the impression of having been channeling the spirit of Wilson in his conduct of foreign affairs--with one notable and troubling difference to be considered a bit later.

President Obama, like his predecessor of nearly a century ago, has focused rhetorically on very lofty, idealistic themes. Also, like the Princeton political science professor turned politician, Obama has sought to reach over the heads of government and state to strum the sentiments of the public at large.

Again like Wilson, Mr Obama has made the grave error of misinterpreting public applause and media approval as meaning that influence over the policies and actions of foreign governments had been achieved.

Wilson, for example, sincerely believed that the public huzzahs which greeted his arrival in Europe for the Versailles Peace Conference, the crowds lining the roads and railroad tracks, the flowers cast before his processions, the naming of streets, squares, and children after him, assured that his view of a perfect peace would be actualized regardless of the hostile positions taken by European leaders.

Wilson was as wrong. Desperately wrong. Ultimately disastrously wrong as proven by World War II.

Obama apparently drew a Wilsonian conclusion during his Great European Tour of 2008. This conclusion was evidently reinforced by public acclaim and media cheers not only with his Cairo Address but also during and subsequent to his other declamations in Europe, Turkey, and elsewhere.

Obama has been wrong. Desperately wrong. Fortunately, it is still early enough for him to see that he had been disastrously wrong. For this all one can write is, "Timing is everything."

Wilson's delusion and its failure came too late in his presidency, too late in his life to allow for corrective action, for a mid-course change. Obama has made his blunder early enough--and obviously enough--to not only allow but demand a change in direction.

Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and even the often maligned George W. Bush made very real, quite sincere, and often highly effective efforts to both understand and establish firm personal relations with their foreign counterparts. It was this aspect of foreign relations far more than the details of policy or the dynamic of day-to-day diplomacy which provided the basis of so much of the foreign policy successes of all three administrations.

Other presidents such as Jimmy Carter and even Bill Clinton (who had a fine capacity for projecting the political in personal terms on the campaign trail) did not establish the personal chemistry which typified the three Republican presidents. (To demonstrate that Republicans can make the same failure to personalize diplomacy at the highest levels, one need only consider the grave deficiencies in this area demonstrated by Richard Nixon.)

Lest one object that overly personalized, too friendly relations with a foreign leader would hinder an American president in conducting national policy it is only appropriate to recall that Dwight Eisenhower had a close relation with Anthony Eden which extended back to the early days of World War II. That in no way impaired Ike's capacity to personally tear a strip off Eden's backside when England joined co-conspirators France and Israel in the Suez War of 1956. Ike reportedly demonstrated his mastery of the profane, scatological, and obscene during his phone conversation with Eden over the ill-advised nature of the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion.

The shoe fits the other foot as well. The warm relations between Maggie Thatcher and George H.W. Bush did not prevent her making the famed, "Don't go all wobbly on me, George," comment during the run-up to the Gulf War in 1991. A strong argument can be made for the proposition that only the friendship which extended back to Bush's years as Reagan's veep allowed the comment to be both made and heeded.

Foreign relations are both made and executed by human beings. They are not the abstract product of soulless processes conducted by remote entities devoid of emotions, likes, and dislikes, and all the other myriad irrationalities which serve as the basis of human perceptions, beliefs, and actions. Nor are foreign relations conducted between mass abstracts such as "peoples."

Policy is made and executed by humans whether the worker bees low in an embassy's table of organization or as highly placed as the POTUS. Contact, understanding, even smelling the "emotional air" of the interlocutor are critical to gaining influence on the perceptions and actions of the other guy.

The abbreviated meeting between Hamid Karzai and the American president was not only important in its own right but also because it demonstrates that Obama may be coming to the slow realization that personal contact, face time, is critical to either the success or failure of US policy. So also may be his dinner tete a tete with Nicholas Sarkozy.

When Mr Obama was in Paris a few months ago he stiffed Sarkozy when invited to dine at the French president's residence. The reason given was Obama's need for a private night on the town with his wife.

Sarkozy did not appreciate being "Gordon Browned" by Obama and has wasted no opportunity over the subsequent months letting Washington know about his displeasure. Now Mr Obama is making amends--just as he did in Kabul when the "disinvitation" delivered to Karzai for a state visit to Washington was cancelled.

If President Obama is now in the amend making business he has a number of others to address. The list may be led by the name of the British prime minister. It was, after all, the shabby treatment afforded Mr Brown during his state visit shortly after the inauguration which gave first warning of the Obama indifference to personal relations.

The dissing of Brown looped with other, earlier indications to put Europe on notice of the major difference between Woodrow Wilson and Barack Obama. The latter in no way shared with the former a focus on Europe. Indeed Obama often seemed totally uninterested in Europe as if it had already been cast into the waste heap labeled "The Past."

The malign indifference with which Mr Obama treated Europe on the personal level was rapidly mirrored by diplomatic disdain as evidenced by the blundering way in which the administration handled the change from land based ABM to a sea based equivalent in an apparent effort at truckling to Russian demands. That this resulted in a general growth of a "what-is-this?-I-thought-we-were-friends-or-at-least-allies" syndrome in the chancelleries of Europe is both understandable and fully expectable.

While cozying up with hostile regimes whether in Moscow, Beijing, Caracas, or even Tehran has it place, that place does not necessitate shoving long standing allies into the deepest diplomatic shadows. Leaving aside the irony that Mr Obama and his fellow progressives appear bent on turning the US into a clone of Western European democratic socialism, the fact remains that the US needs the wholehearted understanding and cooperation of Europe if any of its foreign policy goals are to be achieved. We and they and a handful of other states constitute what a former head of French intelligence brilliantly termed, "The League of Civilized States." We cannot forget that ground truth save at our peril--and theirs.

Obama needs a friend, a friend of the Maggie Thatcher sort, to tell him just that. Perhaps, just perhaps, the notably blunt spoken Sarkozy will prove to be the friend Obama so needs. That would make the dinner affair something beyond a mere fashion show featuring the two most shining examples of First Lady going today.

The Climate, National Identity, And Extortion

At first, the "mixed messages" sent by President Nicholas Sarkozy to the Muslim population of France and the ongoing rhubarb at the Monster Rally Against Global Warming seem to have little in common. A bit of reflection, however, shows a deep and necessary connection.

Mr Sarkozy stated that discrimination against Muslims was unacceptable to French law and French historical traditions. He went on to say in no uncertain terms that Muslims who came to France as well as those born in the country had to accept the realities of French and European history, which included the centrality of such non-Islamic features as equality before the law, transparent democracy, and--most un-Muslim of all--the powerful impact of the Christian religion on all facets of life.

President Sarkozy bored directly to a vital question not only in France or Europe but throughout the world. That question revolves around both the nature of national identity and the cruciality of national identity to matters of international relations.

The Sarkozy position on national identity and its necessary twin, nationalism, runs counter to the myth making of the chattering, academic, and (some of the) political classes in both Western Europe and the US. The French president spoke reality. He spoke truth.

The truth of his position has been underscored rather dramatically in the brouhaha which has emerged since one of the discussion drafts prepared by the host government, Denmark, was leaked to the Guardian in the UK. This so-called "Danish Text" ignited a firestorm of protest by representatives of the G77 states as well as their advocates among the NGO crowd such as Oxfam.

The important features of the draft discussion text include the apparent scuttling of the Kyoto Accord, the removal of the UN from the role of largess distributor, measures which would limit the economic destruction of the world's advanced economies, and the replacement of hard and fast decrements of carbon emissions by hazier goals. None of these features are exceptional given the current status of the questionable science undergirding the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis, the fragile state of the recovery from the Great Recession, the past record of the UN when administering wealth transfer programs, or the technological realities of carbon reduction.

Nor are any of the features exceptional when considered in terms of national identity, or, to be more blunt, national interest.

The reaction of countries at the bottom end of the international economic spectrum show just how powerful and real national interest, nationalism, is right now in Copenhagen. Lumumba Stanislaus Dia Ping, the Sudanese ambassador to the G77, called the draft document another manifestation of imperialism. In words which would have done any Marxist-Leninist revolutionary proud, he said, "The Empire has always relentlessly and ruthlessly grabbed natural resources."

Presumably the "natural resources" being "grabbed" this time by the "Empire" (whatever that might mean) are the atmosphere and climate of the world. This, of course, overlooks the minor fact that the "Empire" shares both air and weather with even the Sudanese.

A more salient exhibition of the power of national identity and nationalism is resident in the threat by the "poor" countries to walk out of the climate conflab unless their demands for money are adequately met. Again, it was Mr Dia Ping who set the tone by decrying the ten billion dollars to be committed by the "rich" nations (presumably the "Empire") as a "wholly inadequate bribe" which put the "climate crisis" on a lower priority than the Great Recession.

If ten billion dollars per year for the period 2010-2012 is an inappropriately small "bribe," what would Mr Dia Ping consider to be an acceptable figure? Twenty billion? Fifty billion? No limit?

Apparently, the small, poor nations can't agree on the number, but they have achieved a consensus on the notion that "compensation" is necessary. Without the iron clad guarantee of proper wealth transfer from the industrialized nations to the assorted "have nots," there is a threat that the latter group will simply walk out of the Monster Rally.

This dramatic gesture would simply be a means of attention grabbing as well as an instrument of extortion. Most of all, it would be a strong, even strident example of nationalism at work. It might be a very good idea if the G77 states would stage a walk out. Such an action would force the political and perhaps even the chattering class to reevaluate their prize notion that nationalism is a dead or dying force in the politics of international relations.

Both the "Danish Text" and the G77 response show the power of nationalism--cloaked in the garments of national interest--has the compelling power ascribed to it by President Sarkozy's remarks on the relation of French history and culture with that of Islam. The lens of national interest bends whatever light passes through it. It must distort.

But, that distortion is not one of evil intent. It is one of the unique history of a people, of a nation which produces as an inevitable consequence a particular view of the world and what the nation must seek or accept in the dynamics of international relations.

Governments as a result must look out for their own interests, their own survival first and foremost. Democratic, pluralistic countries produce governments which serve their own interests by effectively (appearing to be) serving the best interests of their citizens. Other, less democratic, less pluralistic, less open governments skip the charade of serving the interests of the nation and focus on the personal fortunes and futures of those in government or most tightly connected to it.

The government of Sudan--and many of the G77 states fall in the latter category. These worthies have little if any concern for the well being of those unfortunate to live under their sway. They do, however have a great concern for personal well-being, personal survival, personal finances.

Not surprisingly, the representatives of these governments look to the US and the other industrialized, advanced economies as cash cows to be milked at length. It is for this reason as well, these governments would love to see the UN in charge of wealth redistribution programs as the chances for graft and corruption would be magnified thereby. (For proof of this unflattering contention simply review the Oil-For-Food Program as administered for a decade by the UN.)

Nationalism and its underpinning, national identity, are alive and well every moment of every day. They motivate as well as conceal the efforts by governments great and small to do the work of both running a state and playing the Great Game of Nations in all its many forms. It is this ground truth which links head, shoulder, and hip the cautionary statements of Mr Sarkozy and the gavotte in progress at the Monster Rally in Copenhagen.

More examples of the interesting times in which we live.

Sarkozy Storms The Golan--But Will He Take It?

Nicholas Sarkozy is a take-charge-and-move-out sort of man. Since the French "Elect-A-King" form of government wisely places foreign policy and military matters firmly in the hands of the president, Sarkozy is able to work on his own policy imperatives as such are seen solely by him and his cabinet to further French national and strategic interests.

With this as context and taken in conjunction with M. Sarkozy's firm disdain for aspects of Islamic life and politics, it is neither surprising nor out of character for him to have jumped in what is potentially the most profitable direction for Mideast peace. During a recent Paris meeting between himself and Bashir Assad, the French president offered his assistance in gaining Israeli agreement to the return of the Golan to Syria.

By focusing on Syria and ignoring the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, and the other diversions so beloved by the Obama administration, M. Sarkozy is being both realistic and willing to take a risk. He made no flights of glittering (and historically wrong) rhetoric praising Arabs and Islam. Nor did he demand the Israelis do something dramatic--and self-destructive.

All M. Sarkozy did was to build upon his good personal relations with both Assad and Israeli PM Netanyahu as well as his correct understanding that Syria was the key player in the Mideast. He called upon both countries to start direct negotiations without preconditions.

Of course, Sarko knows that there is one precondition resident in any talks between Israel and Syria. That, of course, is the Golan Heights. Israel must commit to rapidly and completely leave the Golan in order for any Israeli-Syrian peace talks to have meaning.

Assad knows this. Netanyahu knows this. Presumably any individual with any interest in and knowledge of the dynamics of the Mideast knows it as well.

Syria regains full control and exercise of sovereignty over the Golan Heights and a peace treaty comes quick and complete. Syria does not regain full control and exercise of sovereignty over the Golan Heights and there will be no Mideast peace regardless of any papers signed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

The Golan Heights represents the purist and most difficult test of Israel's desire for peace. If the government of Mr Netanyahu does not take up M. Sarkozy's offer promptly and effectively, the only legitimate conclusion is that Israel does not genuinely want permanent peace in the region regardless of what it might say.

The Golan Heights issue is clear, constrained, well defined, and free of the complications resident in the other disputed territories. Israel has no legitimate security concerns involved in the Golan. It has had no real-world military anxieties regarding the Golan region for at least thirty years. Not only has the UN monitoring mission worked completely, the changes in military technology which have occurred over the past three and more decades obviate the slight justification for the initial Israeli occupation forty-two years ago.

A refusal by Israel under whatsoever coloration to pick up the Sarkozy offer cannot help but put the lie to all that country's allegations of "security" issues being the fatal obstacle to regional peace. A refusal to work out the details of quickly returning the Golan Heights to Syria proves to even a very Israelophilic observer that the June War of 1967 was a land (and water) grab pure and simple. It would demonstrate to even an Arabophobic observer that the oft repeated Arab allegations that Israel is an aggressive, expansionist state have a strong seed of truth.

The Obama administration should be strongly backing the French offer. It is not enough simply to undo a bit of the damage in US-Syrian relations inflicted by the Bush/Cheney bunch. It is necessary to accept that Assad is a very, very important player in the region. More important than Mubarak or Abdullah II or even the Saudi monarch.

The administration should be doing all it can in support of the French move since the Golan is the clearest, purest, and most readily achievable test of both Israeli and Arab willingness to make peace. Best of all, dealing with Assad does not require either bowing to the Saudis, kissing the hem of Muslim skirts, or making any demands upon the Israelis which would be politically onerous.

Yes, there is one demand that must be laid on Israel. It is simple. Easy to understand. Hard to evade with honor and veracity intact.

Here it is: Put up or shut up. If you want peace, make it march. If you don't, just go ahead and stall, wiggle around, play word games, pull out the Israel Lobby, but the fact remains that you won't have peace and you have been exposed as a land (and water) snatching miniature imperialist. That would make continued American support very difficult.

The administration and President Obama must understand that the Sarkozy gambit has the potential to break open the stalemated game of peace making in the Mideast. Sure, it must bruise your ego(s) a bit to have the upstart Frenchman, who reputedly remarked to his cabinet apropos the US president, "Beam up, Barrak," accomplish a feat which has eluded your blandishments and threats alike.

But, Mr Obama, Ms Clinton, and the rest of you: If you really, really want peace in the Mideast, the time has come to take second place to the French and back them to the fullest.

Ghaddafi Proves The Need For The Veto "Powers"

Way back in the Pleistocene when the UN was not yet of drinking age, the Geek took part in one of those interminable celebrations of early model globalism--a Model United Nations. In the company of hordes of pink cheeked consumers of adolescent idealism, the Geek went through all the requisite motions of pretending to submerge the perceived interests of a foreign state in the pursuit of common human goals--like peace, nuclear disarmament, ending global poverty, and protecting the world's environment.

In today's allegedly grown-up world, it is indeed refreshing to see the presumably adult leadership of countries large and small, great and pissant, acting is if they were at some Model UN instead of the real, honest-to-gosh one. The flood of idealistic rhetoric flowing from President Obama, President Sarkozy, and others was sufficient to cost Noah his ark.

Then came the noted humanitarian, Muammar Ghaddafi, with a message which quite unintentionally called the Specter of Rationality back to the Edifice On The Hudson. There can be no doubt that nothing was further from the (poorly) aging Libyan jefe grande's mind than invoking realpolitik in a place which is seldom willing to admit that grim presence.

Gaddafi called attention to a fundamental reality of the UN. Despite the soaring declaration in the preamble to the UN Charter, all nations are not created equal. The basic tension between the ideal of the UN being some sort of Parliament of Humankind and the practical matter that some countries are stronger, more powerful, and thus capable of imposing their will on others was recognized by everyone connected with the process of creating the body.

The UN, after all, had its origins in both the failure of the Wilsonian League of Nations and the need to fight a war in order to clean up the mess which came in the wake of the League's failure. This reality implied several (to Gaddafi and others of a more genuinely idealistic bent) disagreeable features would characterize the UN.

First and foremost, the UN was a creation of the nations which won the war(s) against Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan. This reality was embodied in President Franklin Roosevelt's notion of "The Four Policemen." Later raised from four to five in a genuflection to French pride, the "policemen" concept was based on the misperception--or pious hope--that the wartime alliance of convenience would extend into the peace.

Although the necessary breakup of the shotgun marriage between the Soviet Union and the Western nations was foreseen by Winston Churchill types, the dark shadows of realpolitik were dispelled by the false dawn of peace. The implication resident in the tension between the Soviet Union and its co-victors meant that the Security Council would be powerless if it sought to take action counter to the self-defined national interests of either of the two diametrically opposed blocs. At the same time, the thinking which had made the Security Council the locus of power in the UN was fully justified in the minds of most by the well remembered total failure of the far more "democratic" League of Nations.

The processes and procedures of the League assured it was unable to take any effective action in the face of a threat to peace. Regardless of the nature and character of the threat, the League was toothless not because the US was not a member but because its charter, its processes, its procedures assured that no genuine threat would be countered by a response other than rhetorical appeals and toothless sanctions imposed as the members saw fit--or not.

The General Assembly was never intended to be more than a talk shop. Like any legislative assembly from village councils on up the food chain, the General Assembly has verbiage as its primary product. The process of talking both in the arena of the Assembly--and in the periphery of the Delegates Lounge and corridors--has genuine utility. But, the Security Council was intended to have the ability--in principle--to take effective action.

Yes, Colonel Gaddafi was right (even if his number was too small) in that the Security Council has been very poor in performing its original intended task--preventing aggressive wars. While it is painful to write so, the Colonel was far more on target with his criticism than was President Obama with his proclamation of UN success in healing countries broken by war.

However, the Gaddafi criticism is irrelevant. The Security Council--in tandem with bilateral acts both tacit and overt--limited the scope of wars. It helped prevent both horizontal and vertical escalation.

Ironically, the Security Council collaborated with nuclear weapons to make the world safe for wars. Limited wars, wars which were often far more internal than external. Wars which had the potential to widen drastically did not do so in part because the Security Council provided a fine auxiliary to the bilateral and inter-bloc efforts at decoupling of war from the nuclear threshold.

For the best part of a half-century, the Security Council, while acting not as a global cop on the beat but rather as a discrete forum for tacit agreement, had a fine record of assuring wars did not rage out of control. This was possible because the Security Council is small, very small when only the five Permanent Members are considered.

As the General Assembly grew ever larger with the proliferation of "new"states, it became even less of a "Parliament of Humankind" and more of a fractious congeries of competing blocs, regional factions, and naked self-interest. Not unlike the parliament of the later Dual Monarchy, the General Assembly became a disorderly house. The problem was not, as Colonel Gaddafi would have it, a lack of "democracy" but a surfeit, an excess of that commodity.

Compared to the activities of blocs, regional groups, religiously based assemblages, and the machinations of Great Powers in the General Assembly over the years, the backroom deals, logrolling, special interest group and corporate lobbying in the US Congress pale into utter insignificance. The votes in the "democratic" General Assembly have been for sale on the basis of foreign "aid," appeals to regional solidarity, and, most recently, calls to religious sodality. This, of course, leaves aside the even more seedy aspects of personal and institutional corruption which have made the General Assembly resemble the worst features of Boss Tweed's New York or Hizzoner Daily's Illinois.

Put simply, Colonel Gaddafi's proposal that the Security Council be stripped of the Big Five, the Veto Powers, and be expanded by the inclusion of regionally allocated seats would be to make the Security Council a clone of the General Assembly. The Colonel's waving of the totem called "democracy" was both destructive and patently self-serving. It would also mean the end of the United Nations as a body having the slightest shred of credibility or potential.

This is not to imply that the UN does not need significant reform. It does. But, not in the way intimated by the speeches of President Obama or his French counterpart. The UN needs to get back to basics.

The organization was established first and foremost to keep the international peace. The primary intent of those who founded and developed the UN during its first fifty years of existence was to prevent and punish international aggression. While its record at this is not the best, it is nonetheless good enough.

When the UN lost sight of its initial, primary function and wandered into intervening in the domestic affairs of member states, it attenuated its focus, lost credibility, and took on the most impossible of missions--restricting the sovereign ability of states to conduct their own affairs.

This mission leap allowed the UN to seek authority over individual regimes. Admittedly many, most even, of these governments were obnoxious, violated the rights and dignity of their own citizens and did any number of throughly reprehensible things. Still, unless and until these regimes violated the borders of their neighbors their actions should have resided outside the purview of the UN either the Security Council or the General Assembly.

The employment of fraudulent mechanisms such as the US supported notion that the issuance of refugees from the ambit of an obnoxious regime constituted a potentially destabilizing situation allowed the UN to take its eyes off the prize of international peace and instead take a jaundiced look at noxious behavior on the part of regimes that some country, some power did not like for whatsoever reason. This sort of hazy view allowed even the travesty committed by the W. Bush administration when it invaded Iraq under the color of UN resolutions.

An increase in "democracy" or an elevation of "ideals" would provide the basis for actions in the future which would transcend even the Bush adventure in regime change. The existence of global problems of economy and environment provide an attractive basis for a further expansion of the UN's self-perceived mission of interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign states for some external, abstract reason.

Colonel Gaddafi and his ilk from the so-called "lesser developed world," or as has been dubbed in recent years, "The Global South," know this temptation is part and parcel of the UN in all its many subsidiary institutions. They know it is in the very air of the General Assembly.

Nothing excites the diplomats and leaders of the Global South more than the idea of taking advantage of the Global North. Of gaining power at the expense of the Great Powers of the North. That is what the Gaddafi version of "democracy" is all about. That is why he expressed what so many in the by and large irrelevant minor countries of the world think and say to each other.

Ironically, in his call for "democracy," in his demand for "equality" the Colonel demonstrated just why the Permanent Five are so necessary. He also showed the leaders of the Five just what is at stake should they or their successors ever allow an excess of altruistic or guilt-driven ideals override the dictates of practical realpolitik.

Yep, bucko, that's right. The end of civilization as we know it.

Al-Qaeda In The Islamic Maghreb Puffs Its Chest

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has been doing a fair bunch of threatening and killing in recent weeks. The group has been littering the desert with bodies in Algeria and Mali. When AQIM could take time off from shooting soldiers and murdering captives, it wiled away the long hours by making threats.

First the group threatened France. The Islamist jihadists were mightily put out by the derogatory remarks made by Nicholas Sarkozy concerning the wearing of the burqua (AKA "a garbage sack") by women in France. Using the high and lofty wording which Islamists generally employ to justify their intentions to butcher, injure, and terrorise, AQIM warned it would "protect the honor of our sisters" living under the threats of "Islamophobia" in France. The Bravos of Allah's Army called upon French Muslims to join in the "war" against the Crusader oppressors.

Showing a resolve more closely approaching that exhibited at Verdun in 1916 than the version on display in May 1940, the French parliament went ahead with hearings on whether or not to put the body-enclosing bag beyond the pale of law. All that is missing to date is for President Sarkozy to come out singing, "Form your battalions! March! March."

Not at all taken aback by the failure of the Muslims resident in France to take up the challenge and throw up barricades in Paris, AQIM has taken on a bigger target. A much bigger target.

China. That's right, China. The scrofulous group best known for massive atrocities in Algeria and, more recently, ambushing the poorly trained and equipped troops of Mali, has tossed down the gauntlet to one of the world's most formidable militaries backed by a very fine clandestine service and political will almost beyond measure.

But, what else could a poor, humble but True Believing Warrior For the Prophet do given the provocation offered by China in its repression of the Uighurs? While Islamic governments may shy away from confronting Beijing, and the Islamic neighbors of China, the Central Asian Republics, even ally themselves with the Very Big Satan, the Desert Swords of Islam will rise to the occasion.

North Africa, particularly Algeria, is a target rich environment. There are more than fifty thousand Chinese nationals living and working there. Spread thinly across a huge, potentially hostile physical and human terrain, the Chinese, whether oil field workers or employees of other Chinese government sponsored business activities or private citizens pursuing profit and pleasure according to individual definitions, all are now at an elevated risk.

Unlike previous threats or attacks against Chinese nationals as in the Sudan, Beijing responded quickly, vigorously, and publicly to the AQIM declaration. Qin Gang, a ForMin spokesman stated that China would take all necessary measures to protect Chinese personnel and institutions against attack in Africa.

One measure which will not be taken is any backing down in Xanjiang. The central government is--quite literally--death on the three evils of "separatism, terrorism, and extremism." In the estimate of Beijing, the Uighurs are guilty of all three "evils." Being foreigners, the best AQIM can aspire to is guilt in the second two categories. That will be enough, more than enough, if AQIM carries through with its threat.

The Deep Thinkers of the Band of Relentless Fighters For Muslims Everywhere might be well advised to consult history. Knowing these devout adherents of killing their way to the Perfect Peace of the New Caliphate are too busy with prayers or bomb making to consult the books, the Geek, in his public spirited way will give a thumbnail of the relevant historical experience.

Long ago (say in the 1980s CE) and far away (in a place called Lebanon) there were a number of groups which combined True Love of the Prophet with such secular concerns as driving Israel into the sea, freeing the Palestinian people from bondage, removing the apostate rulers of sundry Islamic states, and generally raising merry hell. As part of achieving these Glorious Goals and assured eternity in Paradise, these Fine Men of the Faith practiced the kidnapping of hostages.

They took captive assorted Americans and Europeans. Some were (in a style already familiar to AQIM) murdered after torture. Others (again in a way copied by AQIM) were released upon the payment of ransom. Still others were held until somehow, somewhere, sometime, they simply disappeared.

Simultaneously flushed with success and frustrated at their failure to drive Israel into the sea, free the Palestinians from bondage, force the US to abandon its role in the Mideast, and achieve other goals sanctified in the Koran, the Deep Thinkers of one group among the multitude resolved to alter matters by kidnapping some Russian diplomats.

Some appropriate minions of the Soviet state were duly taken hostage. The captors sat back secure that they had achieved a measure of leverage over events previously denied them.

Having failed to study Soviet history and the methods by which the Soviets often responded to such acts of base counter-revolutionary activity, the hostage-takers were themselves taken by surprise.

Far from bowing to the Will of Allah as expressed by the kidnappings, the Soviet leadership dispatched a team from their highly efficient clandestine service. This team snatched close relatives of the chief kidnappers. After getting frankly Medieval on the bodies of these relatives they were delivered personally to the local Thug-in-Chief.

The surviving Soviets were speedily released. Appropriate funeral services were held for the relatives taken by the clandestine team.

End of story. Well, not quite. The real end is that while Americans, Europeans, and even Israelis were captured by the Intrepid Men of the One True Faith, Russians were now immune from this fate.

The sweep of Chinese history both before and after the Communist Revolution indicates strongly that the Chinese are far more likely to take the Soviet approach than they are to emulate the hand wringing, can't-we-talk-this-over approach of the Americans, particularly the Americans of the Age of Obama. The French did not roll over and ask AQIM to forgive them for the nasty things said by their president. The Chinese are even less inclined than the French to collapse before AQIM's interpretation of the Will of Allah.

Here endeth the lesson--unless AQIM has a further attack of terminal stupidity. (As Allah wills.)