The MSM have been spilling a lot of ink over the "success" of Obama's "leading from behind" doctrine as exhibited in Libya. Some experts in the field of geopolitics have gone so far as to extend the Libyan outcome as being but the latest in a string of unappreciated but real "successes" or at least non-failures attributable to the Nice Young Man From Chicago.
All things considered, there has been one real victory achieved by President Obama. His combination of responding to domestic political pressures--particularly the pervasive Democrat fear of being seen as "weak" on national security--combined with lofty, progressive rhetoric of the Bill Clinton sort has removed foreign policy from the election table. From his decision to allow the lethal takedown of Osama bin Laden to the murky way in which the US backed into the Libyan adventure in regime change, Obama responded more to the dictates of the public's political mood than any realistic assessment of US diplomatic needs and goals.
While it is no doubt true that defense and foreign policy will not play any discernible role in the 2012 election, which is a misfortune to say the least, the canny political sense of the incumbent in denying the Republicans any point of legitimate attack constitutes a real advantage to the Obama campaign. Also offering powerful assistance to the president's reelection effort is the combination of amazing ignorance and retro thinking which typifies the current elephantine field in its collective consideration of America's role in the world.
It is to be regretted greatly that none of the current GOP aspirants have yet gone after the record of failures which is the record of the present administration. The universe of discourse is both vast and central to the near and mid-term future of the US.
Consider Iraq. Yes, we are out of the place. That is good. But the cost of our exit has been to see failure left in the wake of the endeavor. True, the initial blunder belongs for all eternity to George W. Bush and his neocon ninny soulmates. But the Obama people knew the withdrawal date fixed by the Status of Forces Agreement was looming. They also knew that total withdrawal would be dangerous, perhaps fatally so for Iraq. So did the Iraqis. Yet, with nearly three years to act, the administration failed to find a formula which would allow sufficient troops to stay with the requisite legal immunity. Rather than search for the obvious alternatives to an act by the Iraqi parliament, Obama opted to get out of Dodge--and place the blame on the Boys In Baghdad.
Some success that--for the mullahs in Tehran and their local Iraqi henchmen.
In Afghanistan, the Obama authorized "surge" provided two results. The first was a short duration set of battlefield victories, which were meaningless given the publicly announced draw down and pull out dates giving the adversaries all they needed to know to stay the course. The second accomplishment of the Obama surge was to provide political cover and advantage as the surge forces come home before the elections.
The result was to embolden both the Taliban and Haqqini network as well as their Pakistani handlers. A second result was to undercut the will of the Karzai government to conduct the needed reforms, to develop an effective national force, or to prosecute the war with vigor. Along with the totally wrongheaded firing of General Stanley McChrystal, the date certain withdrawal schedule did nothing to enhance either the will or the operational ability of US and other foreign forces to conduct their mission with high morale and the most effective approaches on both the tactical and operational levels.
What a "success." Yes, for Islamabad and their proxies in Afghanistan.
Then there is Israel and the Palestinians. The Obama policy not only froze a bad dynamic in place, it worsened matters to a point that the two state solution has become even more unlikely now than at the end of the reign of George W. The truckling Cairo speech raised Arab expectations to a level that could not be met by a mere American president, particularly one whose guiding star was provided by domestic politics. As if that were not bad enough, the president has a very bad personal as well as political relationship with the Israeli prime minister, which in no way made it probable that Israel would go along with Washington's policy preferences.
What a success--if you are Palestinian head of government Abbas.
The "Arab Spring" had to be a success, right? After all it was the triumph of democracy over autocracy, and how can anybody see that as other than a success? Sure, it was--if you are a member of an austere, political Muslim group. As was the case in Iran all those long years ago, the legendary power of the people, the voice of the democratic ballot box, the exercise of free voting, will most probably bring austere Muslims into power. And, once there, it will take more than merely voting to get them out. (Once again see Iran as the paradigm.)
How about the "war on terror?" Fortunately our intelligence, law enforcement, and military forces are highly competent, so we have not suffered a homeland hit for ten years now. None of this is due to brilliant policy on the part of Mr Obama and his "team." On the policy level, the Obama administration has been every bit as clueless as its predecessor. BH Obama is no more willing than was George W to acknowledge that terror and other forms of asymmetrical war we have faced for more than a decade have been and are predicated on the religion. The same religion serves as the motivation of the various austere, political Islamists who carry out the acts of war and terror. Failure at the basic level of knowing the nature and character of the enemy assures the overall war will not be successful.
OK, the Geek hears you object, what about the standing of the US in the eyes of the world? It's gotta be better now than when Cowboy George was in the Oval.
You betcha, bucko. It is. And, more importantly, it is not. But that is a subject for a different post. Maybe tomorrow if the weather and the tetchy computer allow.
Showing posts with label President Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label President Obama. Show all posts
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011
What Victory(ies)?
Today The Clueless Guy In The Oval announced (as expected) that all US troops other than the embassy guard will be out of Iraq by the end of the year. Instantly if not sooner, the political flacks which surround the Oval sprang into action averring with straight faces that this was the desired result as well as the fulfillment of a major campaign promise.
What a crock!
As American military and diplomatic officials including both the past and current Secretaries of Defense have maintained with a fair degree of passion, the continuation of a US military presence was essential for assuring that the past nine years, something on the order of a trillion dollars, and, most importantly, over 4,000 lives had not been wasted. Iraq's internal stability is very fragile on the best of days--and there are damn few of those. In addition, the Iranians present a clear and present threat against which Iraq has no credible means of either deterrence or defense. Beyond that, the Iraqi forces need much more training in their new weapons systems as well as in the areas of intelligence, logistics, air support, and communication.
Over the past year, the Obama administration had and threw away numerous opportunities to keep a suitable number of training, combat support, special operations, and combat forces in Iraq. The alleged block was the unwillingness of the Iraqi government to grant immunity from Iraqi judicial processes to the US personnel.
This, too, is a crock.
The administration--the president--insisted that legal immunity be granted by specific action on the part of the Iraqi Council of Representatives. This would have been politically impossible as the Obama foreign policy "team" must have known. There were other means of obtaining the requisite immunity which would have sidestepped the field of mines which constitutes the Council of Representatives as well the total Iraqi parliament. The simplest means would have been to list the names of each and every spook, special operator, trainer, and trigger puller on the embassy personnel roster, which would have made diplomatic immunity automatic. The Iraqi ForMin was wide open to this gambit as were other senior members of the Iraqi executive branch.
While it is true that Allawi--the head of the opposition bloc which was narrowly and questionably defeated by Maliki's bloc--complicated the matter, the US had and has sufficient juice with Allawi to end the stall he introduced. In short, there were no insurmountable obstacles in Baghdad to continuing the American presence even at the level of 20,000 troops.
The real deal was the Nice Young Man From Chicago was and is hoping that by bringing the last troops home against the rhetorical backdrop of declaring victory he will gain political mileage for the upcoming reelection bid. He has been purposefully willing to toss aside the last nine years, the trillion dollars, and the lives of more than 4,000 Americans for personal, partisan reasons.
The same applies to the specious claims of victory in Libya following the killing of Gaddifi yesterday. It was not a victory for the US. Nor was it one for NATO. While it is true that without the US/UK/French/NATO air campaign, on the ground advisers, weapons and equipment supplies, intelligence support, and diplomatic game playing, "Brother Leader" would still be oppressing the Libyans and haunting the international scene. But, the only "victors" were the assorted militias who did the fighting and dying--and who will now claim the rewards.
It will be up to these sundry groups of trigger pullers as well as the myriad of tribal and religious leaders who more or less control the men with the AKs to decide which reward will go to who. The probability of continued and escalating violence is somewhere between high and extremely high. Rewards will be claimed and fought over. Payback will be the word of the day for months to come. The body count, already high, will increase. The NTC is losing support, in large measure because its actions and decision making are as transparent as a sandstorm. Regional, tribal, and religious loyalties far exceed any attachment to something called "Libya" or the "Libyan nation."
The death of the "King of Kings of Africa" removed whatever thin and tenuous glue held the competing factions and their guns together. Now it is a matter of every region, every tribe, every city, every clan, even every individual for him or itself. Every man raises his AK or RPG or MANPAD against every other.
There is no "victory" here for the US or France or the UK. There is and will be only more challenges to regional stability, regional peace, to international efforts on behalf of these worthy end states. There is utterly and absolutely nothing for the US--or Mr Obama--to crow about or see as a good lesson for tomorrow.
There is only the hope on the part of the president and his advisers that the Libyan adventure in "leading from behind" will bolster his fading reelection chances. (Note the recent Gallup poll placing his approval rating at the new low of 41%.)
Iraq is frail. Libya is even worse. The risks and sacrifices taken and made in both have been in vain by any rational calculus. One can only hope that the Obama campaign will not be aided by these false "victories."
What a crock!
As American military and diplomatic officials including both the past and current Secretaries of Defense have maintained with a fair degree of passion, the continuation of a US military presence was essential for assuring that the past nine years, something on the order of a trillion dollars, and, most importantly, over 4,000 lives had not been wasted. Iraq's internal stability is very fragile on the best of days--and there are damn few of those. In addition, the Iranians present a clear and present threat against which Iraq has no credible means of either deterrence or defense. Beyond that, the Iraqi forces need much more training in their new weapons systems as well as in the areas of intelligence, logistics, air support, and communication.
Over the past year, the Obama administration had and threw away numerous opportunities to keep a suitable number of training, combat support, special operations, and combat forces in Iraq. The alleged block was the unwillingness of the Iraqi government to grant immunity from Iraqi judicial processes to the US personnel.
This, too, is a crock.
The administration--the president--insisted that legal immunity be granted by specific action on the part of the Iraqi Council of Representatives. This would have been politically impossible as the Obama foreign policy "team" must have known. There were other means of obtaining the requisite immunity which would have sidestepped the field of mines which constitutes the Council of Representatives as well the total Iraqi parliament. The simplest means would have been to list the names of each and every spook, special operator, trainer, and trigger puller on the embassy personnel roster, which would have made diplomatic immunity automatic. The Iraqi ForMin was wide open to this gambit as were other senior members of the Iraqi executive branch.
While it is true that Allawi--the head of the opposition bloc which was narrowly and questionably defeated by Maliki's bloc--complicated the matter, the US had and has sufficient juice with Allawi to end the stall he introduced. In short, there were no insurmountable obstacles in Baghdad to continuing the American presence even at the level of 20,000 troops.
The real deal was the Nice Young Man From Chicago was and is hoping that by bringing the last troops home against the rhetorical backdrop of declaring victory he will gain political mileage for the upcoming reelection bid. He has been purposefully willing to toss aside the last nine years, the trillion dollars, and the lives of more than 4,000 Americans for personal, partisan reasons.
The same applies to the specious claims of victory in Libya following the killing of Gaddifi yesterday. It was not a victory for the US. Nor was it one for NATO. While it is true that without the US/UK/French/NATO air campaign, on the ground advisers, weapons and equipment supplies, intelligence support, and diplomatic game playing, "Brother Leader" would still be oppressing the Libyans and haunting the international scene. But, the only "victors" were the assorted militias who did the fighting and dying--and who will now claim the rewards.
It will be up to these sundry groups of trigger pullers as well as the myriad of tribal and religious leaders who more or less control the men with the AKs to decide which reward will go to who. The probability of continued and escalating violence is somewhere between high and extremely high. Rewards will be claimed and fought over. Payback will be the word of the day for months to come. The body count, already high, will increase. The NTC is losing support, in large measure because its actions and decision making are as transparent as a sandstorm. Regional, tribal, and religious loyalties far exceed any attachment to something called "Libya" or the "Libyan nation."
The death of the "King of Kings of Africa" removed whatever thin and tenuous glue held the competing factions and their guns together. Now it is a matter of every region, every tribe, every city, every clan, even every individual for him or itself. Every man raises his AK or RPG or MANPAD against every other.
There is no "victory" here for the US or France or the UK. There is and will be only more challenges to regional stability, regional peace, to international efforts on behalf of these worthy end states. There is utterly and absolutely nothing for the US--or Mr Obama--to crow about or see as a good lesson for tomorrow.
There is only the hope on the part of the president and his advisers that the Libyan adventure in "leading from behind" will bolster his fading reelection chances. (Note the recent Gallup poll placing his approval rating at the new low of 41%.)
Iraq is frail. Libya is even worse. The risks and sacrifices taken and made in both have been in vain by any rational calculus. One can only hope that the Obama campaign will not be aided by these false "victories."
Saturday, September 24, 2011
A Bad Day For (American) Politicians On TV
Two politicians, one Democratic--President Obama--and the other a Republican presidential wannabe--Rick Santorum--embarrassed themselves and, in so doing, tossed a pie in the faces of many Americans. Of course, it is a bit unfair to equate the two as one is a member in good standing of a large but still fringe group of We the People and the other is the chief executive of a country which is still a Great Power even in its self-inflicted decline.
Santorum, in his bid for commemoration in the Hall of Exceptional Bad Taste In Politics was assisted by members of the audience present for the Fox/Google Debate in Florida. A large portion of the audience was comprised of the same sort of self-destructive Republicans as had made noteworthy performances in two previous debates. These people constitute the slavering red meat eaters of the intellectually challenged segment of the Party of Elephants whose most evident characteristics are a lack of good taste, a deficiency in empathy, and, most importantly a strong unconscious desire to lose elections.
The former senator from Pennsylvania and champion of the farther Right shores of the badly misnamed "social conservative" wing of the GOP was goaded into a profound demonstration of deep ignorance regarding the realities of military life particularly during wartime by a question posed by a gay soldier currently stationed in Iraq. The question had to do with the deletion of "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) so that homosexuals can serve openly in the US armed forces.
Needless to detail at length, Mr Santorum is against the current policy. He would seek to turn the calender back to the years of DADT with the accompanying demand that non-heterosexuals engage in a combination of deceit and denial. Leaving aside the political impossibility (and ignoring the boos issuing from the oral cavities of the denizens of the Very Very Right) suffice it to note that Santorum's stated desire to emulate Dr Who or Mr Peabody constituted the lesser part of his exceptional ignorance of military life.
The peak of Santorum's idiocy and lack of knowledge came when he stated, "any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military."
That observation is a show stopper for sure. As any and everyone who has spent time in any of the armed forces knows, sex is a constant and highly favored activity often bordering on obsession. So it has been since Achilles was a private. So it will be as long as young people are found in a military service. Even years hence when combat is delegated to machines, it is highly probable that the people monitoring the killbots will have a hard time keeping their utilities buttoned tightly.
Not since the anti-sex campaigns of World Wars I and II when the American morality police pretended that our troops were so pure of heart and mind that they must be protected from the evils of prostitutes both amateur and professional has anyone betrayed the degree of out-to-lunchness exhibited by Mr Santorum. If, indeed, he really does believe what he said, then he has disqualified himself from serious consideration for any office of trust and confidence under the Constitution by virtue of pure, unadulterated ignorance and irremediable stupidity (or ideological blindness.)
A far more important bit of televised damage was inflicted on the US by President Obama's speech to the UN General Assembly. It was more than enough to make a person squirm in raw and unrelieved embarrassment as the POTUS delivered a set of remarks which could have been written by the execrable foreign minister of Israel, Avigdor Lieberman. The kindest explanation for the presidential exhibition of seriously pathetic policy arises from the overarching Obama need to be reelected--and the crucial relation between that goal and the Israel Lobby.
As the recent by-election in New York demonstrated, there is a strong current of unhappiness with Obama's stance on Israel within the American Jewish community. Shoring up support in this portion of the eroding Democratic base is an urgent matter. Not surprisingly, more than a few political analysts both here and abroad have identified this as the prime mover behind the Obama position, which constituted a nearly complete reversal of policy (such as it was) a year ago.
The problem with this explanation even if it is as accurate as appears, is that international politics is a more unforgiving arena than the domestic sort. Very real lives are at stake. Very real countries with equally real interests are in play. The issue of an Israel-Palestinian settlement is inherently existential in nature and does not allow for the flexibility or retakes common in domestic affairs.
The president threw away the good offices stature once enjoyed by the US. The strident tones and relatively extreme nature of his position taken in the context of past stances undercut any possibility of Washington being seen as an honest broker seeking a fair and equitable solution to the several seemingly intractable problems besetting the Israelis and their Palestinian interlocutors.
This leaves the task to such as the European Union or the Quartet with the US playing a marginal role at best. Mr Obama's "approved by AIPAC" speech also eroded to the point of nonexistence any influence Washington might have had with the Palestinian Authority or its Mideast state supporters. Worse, the president appeared to put the US squarely in opposition to the majority of the "Arab Spring" movers and shakers.
This last consideration is arguably the most critical of all. While the US would see its influence reduced in any event as the groups espousing austere, politically oriented Islam will be the power either in or behind the throne in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and elsewhere, there was and remains no need to reduce influence all the more. The status of the Palestinians ranks high as a motivator on much of the "Arab street." While it is more than a bit hypocritical that this was not the case in the ancient days when Jordan "occupied" the West Bank and Egyptian troops held the supreme hand in the Gaza Strip, it is a reality today which must be recognized and addressed by American policymakers.
Obama's Mideast policy (to use the term generically only) has been and remains an area deserving of the attentions and ministrations of FEMA. He and his "team" have done the seemingly impossible--gotten each and every aspect wrong for more than two and a half years. Far more than even George W. Bush, the Nice Young Man From Chicago has managed to alienate every stakeholder in each and every Arab state as well as non-Arab countries such as Turkey. The UNGA address was the final nail in the coffin of American presence in the Mideast.
Santorum (with the able aid of the boo happy bunch) humiliated the Republican Party in the eyes of all but the most avid of elephants. Mr Obama did much more. The president managed--without assistance--to put the US firmly behind the eight ball throughout the rapidly changing Mideast.
No American president has done that before. No American president in search of reelection has ever degraded the influence of his country in pursuit of votes. Finally, Mr Obama has something real to apologize for.
Santorum, in his bid for commemoration in the Hall of Exceptional Bad Taste In Politics was assisted by members of the audience present for the Fox/Google Debate in Florida. A large portion of the audience was comprised of the same sort of self-destructive Republicans as had made noteworthy performances in two previous debates. These people constitute the slavering red meat eaters of the intellectually challenged segment of the Party of Elephants whose most evident characteristics are a lack of good taste, a deficiency in empathy, and, most importantly a strong unconscious desire to lose elections.
The former senator from Pennsylvania and champion of the farther Right shores of the badly misnamed "social conservative" wing of the GOP was goaded into a profound demonstration of deep ignorance regarding the realities of military life particularly during wartime by a question posed by a gay soldier currently stationed in Iraq. The question had to do with the deletion of "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) so that homosexuals can serve openly in the US armed forces.
Needless to detail at length, Mr Santorum is against the current policy. He would seek to turn the calender back to the years of DADT with the accompanying demand that non-heterosexuals engage in a combination of deceit and denial. Leaving aside the political impossibility (and ignoring the boos issuing from the oral cavities of the denizens of the Very Very Right) suffice it to note that Santorum's stated desire to emulate Dr Who or Mr Peabody constituted the lesser part of his exceptional ignorance of military life.
The peak of Santorum's idiocy and lack of knowledge came when he stated, "any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military."
That observation is a show stopper for sure. As any and everyone who has spent time in any of the armed forces knows, sex is a constant and highly favored activity often bordering on obsession. So it has been since Achilles was a private. So it will be as long as young people are found in a military service. Even years hence when combat is delegated to machines, it is highly probable that the people monitoring the killbots will have a hard time keeping their utilities buttoned tightly.
Not since the anti-sex campaigns of World Wars I and II when the American morality police pretended that our troops were so pure of heart and mind that they must be protected from the evils of prostitutes both amateur and professional has anyone betrayed the degree of out-to-lunchness exhibited by Mr Santorum. If, indeed, he really does believe what he said, then he has disqualified himself from serious consideration for any office of trust and confidence under the Constitution by virtue of pure, unadulterated ignorance and irremediable stupidity (or ideological blindness.)
A far more important bit of televised damage was inflicted on the US by President Obama's speech to the UN General Assembly. It was more than enough to make a person squirm in raw and unrelieved embarrassment as the POTUS delivered a set of remarks which could have been written by the execrable foreign minister of Israel, Avigdor Lieberman. The kindest explanation for the presidential exhibition of seriously pathetic policy arises from the overarching Obama need to be reelected--and the crucial relation between that goal and the Israel Lobby.
As the recent by-election in New York demonstrated, there is a strong current of unhappiness with Obama's stance on Israel within the American Jewish community. Shoring up support in this portion of the eroding Democratic base is an urgent matter. Not surprisingly, more than a few political analysts both here and abroad have identified this as the prime mover behind the Obama position, which constituted a nearly complete reversal of policy (such as it was) a year ago.
The problem with this explanation even if it is as accurate as appears, is that international politics is a more unforgiving arena than the domestic sort. Very real lives are at stake. Very real countries with equally real interests are in play. The issue of an Israel-Palestinian settlement is inherently existential in nature and does not allow for the flexibility or retakes common in domestic affairs.
The president threw away the good offices stature once enjoyed by the US. The strident tones and relatively extreme nature of his position taken in the context of past stances undercut any possibility of Washington being seen as an honest broker seeking a fair and equitable solution to the several seemingly intractable problems besetting the Israelis and their Palestinian interlocutors.
This leaves the task to such as the European Union or the Quartet with the US playing a marginal role at best. Mr Obama's "approved by AIPAC" speech also eroded to the point of nonexistence any influence Washington might have had with the Palestinian Authority or its Mideast state supporters. Worse, the president appeared to put the US squarely in opposition to the majority of the "Arab Spring" movers and shakers.
This last consideration is arguably the most critical of all. While the US would see its influence reduced in any event as the groups espousing austere, politically oriented Islam will be the power either in or behind the throne in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and elsewhere, there was and remains no need to reduce influence all the more. The status of the Palestinians ranks high as a motivator on much of the "Arab street." While it is more than a bit hypocritical that this was not the case in the ancient days when Jordan "occupied" the West Bank and Egyptian troops held the supreme hand in the Gaza Strip, it is a reality today which must be recognized and addressed by American policymakers.
Obama's Mideast policy (to use the term generically only) has been and remains an area deserving of the attentions and ministrations of FEMA. He and his "team" have done the seemingly impossible--gotten each and every aspect wrong for more than two and a half years. Far more than even George W. Bush, the Nice Young Man From Chicago has managed to alienate every stakeholder in each and every Arab state as well as non-Arab countries such as Turkey. The UNGA address was the final nail in the coffin of American presence in the Mideast.
Santorum (with the able aid of the boo happy bunch) humiliated the Republican Party in the eyes of all but the most avid of elephants. Mr Obama did much more. The president managed--without assistance--to put the US firmly behind the eight ball throughout the rapidly changing Mideast.
No American president has done that before. No American president in search of reelection has ever degraded the influence of his country in pursuit of votes. Finally, Mr Obama has something real to apologize for.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Hey! Israel--Before Cheering, Look At Taiwan
Much ink both real and virtual has been spilled in Israel as well as pro-Israeli outlets in the US praising President Obama for his forthright stance regarding US support of the embattled and increasingly isolated Jewish state. Even a man who has to be a bete noir around the Oval, Benjamin Netanyahu, almost broke his arm patting Obama on the back.
Given the context of the impending UN action on the request for recognition requested by the Palestinian Authority, the outpouring of hosannas is not surprising. However, the Israelis and their American supporters would be well served by taking a close look at the Obama administration's handling of the request by the government of Taiwan for a significant upgrading of their aerial self-defense capacities.
By way of background, it must be recalled that the US is committed to assure that the island nation has sufficient means to defend itself against attack by the Peoples Republic of China. This commitment is contained in the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) of 1979. This piece of legislation was a key part of the complex mechanism by which the US finished the job of facing the reality that the PRC was a real state with a real government deserving of both American diplomatic recognition and the status as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. The TRA was designed by members of the Congress to assure that Taiwan would not be taken over by the mainland by either the reality or threat of military attack. It was passed by overwhelming majorities in both houses of the Democrat controlled Congress and quickly signed by Jimmy Carter.
Until recently, the act served to assure that the US sold or provided military means adequate to the task of deterring Beijing's ambitions to reclaim the "rebellious" province. Things changed in the past decade as the Chinese military underwent a transformation. The vast modernization program has resulted over the past few years in the PRC developing a massive preponderance of force.
During the last two years of the George W. Bush administration, the Taiwanese government forwarded a set of requirements for an expansion and modernization program including new F-16 fighters and submarines. A portion of the request was filled before the days of Bush/Cheney came to an end. A second part was filled (along with supplemental items) by the Obama administration. Along the way, the submarines were deleted by the US side. The desired F-16s of the C/D model remained in limbo.
In limbo they stay today. The administration did not deny the request but offered in its stead an upgrade package for the 160 or so F-16 A/B variants in the Taiwanese inventory. The upgrade package for these now aging aircraft (dating back to 1992) do not include new engines capable of higher speeds and greater combat endurance. As a consequence, the improvements in sensor, guidance, and weapons suites do not give the Taiwanese air force the additional capacities needed to survive in the air against the several hundred more modern, more competent, mainland fighters.
In a slight but pardonable exaggeration, the average Taiwanese pilot flying an "upgraded" F-16 might survive long enough to shout, "Mayday" before being shot down. This is not the end the congress had in mind when it passed the TRA.
Whether or not the Nice Young Man From Chicago simply capitulated to Beijing's opposition to this (or any) arms deal with Taiwan is, as they say, "a subject fit for adjudication." The fact remains that the Obama "team" effectively eviscerated the TRA.
Given the continued force draft development of the PRC's air, naval, ground, and missile forces as well as the probable running down of American air and naval power in the Pacific, all that Beijing needs to do is be patient for a couple more years and then take back the "lost" province with a short, sharp, and decisive little war. The US will be able to do nothing other than ask the Security Council for a resolution. That, of course, will be vetoed by the Chinese.
The Obama administration's interpretation of American responsibilities under the TRA gives a strong hint as to the reliability of his steadfastness under pressure. No political leader in Israel should see the president's words at the General Assembly as other than empty rhetoric. Even the prospect of an American veto of the PA's request shows no depth of commitment, no willingness to run real risk.
Should some larger consideration enter the American field of view, the seemingly resolute support of Israel radiated yesterday will evaporate with blinding rapidity. All that need be kept in mind is that before the PRC embarked on its massive rearmament program, Washington went ahead with arming Taiwan, showing total indifference to the whims of Beijing. Now, affairs are a bit different.
Should the OPEC bully boys decide on another oil embargo, the US would be sorely tested in its relation with Israel. Should such a hypothetical occur during the run up to a presidential election, it is doubtful that the smart money would be placed on the Israeli connection trumping.
Fifty years ago, the hard hearted, cold eyed Charles de Gaulle acted on a belief that many Europeans shared when he ordered the creation of an independent French nuclear force. He was of the view that the US would never place Chicago at risk to defend Paris. We will never know if the general was right, but his apprehension was well placed and well rooted in history. The US has not always been noted for consistency over administrations, particularly if new and unpleasant realities develop as they have in China.
The takeaway for Israel is both simple and disheartening. As Taiwan has found out over the past four years, an American promise--even one enshrined in law--is not bankable. How much less is a piece of oratory given by a president up for reelection in a tough environment?
Given the context of the impending UN action on the request for recognition requested by the Palestinian Authority, the outpouring of hosannas is not surprising. However, the Israelis and their American supporters would be well served by taking a close look at the Obama administration's handling of the request by the government of Taiwan for a significant upgrading of their aerial self-defense capacities.
By way of background, it must be recalled that the US is committed to assure that the island nation has sufficient means to defend itself against attack by the Peoples Republic of China. This commitment is contained in the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) of 1979. This piece of legislation was a key part of the complex mechanism by which the US finished the job of facing the reality that the PRC was a real state with a real government deserving of both American diplomatic recognition and the status as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. The TRA was designed by members of the Congress to assure that Taiwan would not be taken over by the mainland by either the reality or threat of military attack. It was passed by overwhelming majorities in both houses of the Democrat controlled Congress and quickly signed by Jimmy Carter.
Until recently, the act served to assure that the US sold or provided military means adequate to the task of deterring Beijing's ambitions to reclaim the "rebellious" province. Things changed in the past decade as the Chinese military underwent a transformation. The vast modernization program has resulted over the past few years in the PRC developing a massive preponderance of force.
During the last two years of the George W. Bush administration, the Taiwanese government forwarded a set of requirements for an expansion and modernization program including new F-16 fighters and submarines. A portion of the request was filled before the days of Bush/Cheney came to an end. A second part was filled (along with supplemental items) by the Obama administration. Along the way, the submarines were deleted by the US side. The desired F-16s of the C/D model remained in limbo.
In limbo they stay today. The administration did not deny the request but offered in its stead an upgrade package for the 160 or so F-16 A/B variants in the Taiwanese inventory. The upgrade package for these now aging aircraft (dating back to 1992) do not include new engines capable of higher speeds and greater combat endurance. As a consequence, the improvements in sensor, guidance, and weapons suites do not give the Taiwanese air force the additional capacities needed to survive in the air against the several hundred more modern, more competent, mainland fighters.
In a slight but pardonable exaggeration, the average Taiwanese pilot flying an "upgraded" F-16 might survive long enough to shout, "Mayday" before being shot down. This is not the end the congress had in mind when it passed the TRA.
Whether or not the Nice Young Man From Chicago simply capitulated to Beijing's opposition to this (or any) arms deal with Taiwan is, as they say, "a subject fit for adjudication." The fact remains that the Obama "team" effectively eviscerated the TRA.
Given the continued force draft development of the PRC's air, naval, ground, and missile forces as well as the probable running down of American air and naval power in the Pacific, all that Beijing needs to do is be patient for a couple more years and then take back the "lost" province with a short, sharp, and decisive little war. The US will be able to do nothing other than ask the Security Council for a resolution. That, of course, will be vetoed by the Chinese.
The Obama administration's interpretation of American responsibilities under the TRA gives a strong hint as to the reliability of his steadfastness under pressure. No political leader in Israel should see the president's words at the General Assembly as other than empty rhetoric. Even the prospect of an American veto of the PA's request shows no depth of commitment, no willingness to run real risk.
Should some larger consideration enter the American field of view, the seemingly resolute support of Israel radiated yesterday will evaporate with blinding rapidity. All that need be kept in mind is that before the PRC embarked on its massive rearmament program, Washington went ahead with arming Taiwan, showing total indifference to the whims of Beijing. Now, affairs are a bit different.
Should the OPEC bully boys decide on another oil embargo, the US would be sorely tested in its relation with Israel. Should such a hypothetical occur during the run up to a presidential election, it is doubtful that the smart money would be placed on the Israeli connection trumping.
Fifty years ago, the hard hearted, cold eyed Charles de Gaulle acted on a belief that many Europeans shared when he ordered the creation of an independent French nuclear force. He was of the view that the US would never place Chicago at risk to defend Paris. We will never know if the general was right, but his apprehension was well placed and well rooted in history. The US has not always been noted for consistency over administrations, particularly if new and unpleasant realities develop as they have in China.
The takeaway for Israel is both simple and disheartening. As Taiwan has found out over the past four years, an American promise--even one enshrined in law--is not bankable. How much less is a piece of oratory given by a president up for reelection in a tough environment?
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Rick Perry And The Big, Bad World
As had been expected for several weeks, Rick Perry has entered the GOP contest. Of this the Geek is both glad and positive. Governor Perry appears to possess the stomach and head necessary for a down and dirty campaign against the Nice Young Man From Chicago which is singularly lacking with other Elephant hopefuls.
The Geek became a fan of Texas politics during the years necessity compelled him to live and work in the Lone Star Empire. The doings at that model of law making decorum called the "Lege" were and are as fascinating as the inner workings of the Cook County (Ill.) Democratic machine. The emergence of Perry showed him to be a man having a strong, visceral understanding of the political soul of most Texans. Over the past year Perry's performance has demonstrated that this gut level talent is not restricted to the denizens of the LSE but extends to many of We the People.
It is important to enter an important caveat here, a warning of relevance to international politics. Other significant leaders who have exhibited a strong, visceral understanding of their people's national politics such as Vladimir Putin have seen that understanding stop abruptly at the border. They have little if any understanding of the political mood or mode of other people in other countries.
Governor Perry stated strongly in Charleston that he was a strong believer in "American exceptionalism," which places him in very sharp contrast with the relativistic Mr Obama. This posture while laudable in itself demands yet another caveat in the arena of global affairs. The "exceptionalism" part of the phrase consists of characteristics, attributes, and values which are under a permanent export ban. American exceptionalism is not only made in America by dint of suffering, war, political struggles, and endless effort, it must forever stay in the land of its fabrication. It is unique to us for it is uniquely us and ours. No bayonet, no tank, no stealth fighter, no UAV, no aid program, no propaganda effort, no executive order or congressional enactment can force its export to other, foreign soils. As a transplant it must fail.
On his campaign website, Mr Perry avers that his service as a C-130 driver as well as his many foreign trips as governor give him insight into the needs of American diplomatic and national security policy. While it is true that the governor flew Herky birds with numerous RONs and TDYs, the result would be an intimate acquaintance with nocturnal resorts of entertainment and recreation but little contact with the dark doings of foreign chanceries or the gavottes in distant corridors of power. (To this truism any person with a peripatetic military experience can attest.) And, as governor Mr Perry's overseas jaunts were in the interest of the economic development of the LSE not the national interests of the US.
In his speech at Charleston, the Texan was more than kind when he characterized whatever passes as foreign policy within the Obama administration as a "muddle." It is, of course, far worse than that. It is even worse than a collection of blunders wrapped in empty, high sounding rhetoric. Rather, it is an ideologically driven exercise in ad hoc reaction coupled with a set of self-defeating visions of how the world ought to be if only it were designed in Left leaning academic salons located near the University of Chicago campus.
At least implicitly (if Rick "No One Crosses Me and Lives" Perry can ever be merely implicit) the Texas Cyclone of Prayer vowed to change this. He evidently intends to assure the US once again walks tall and proud on the international stage. This would be a welcome change after the years of "leading from behind" but carries with it yet another, larger caveat.
This caveat resides in the coterie Perry has assembled to date as his advisers on foreign and national security affairs. Without notable exception, it is comprised of neocon ninnies out of the years of the Bush/Cheney administration. At the head of the list is the execrable Doug Feith, the top architect of the debacle in Iraq. Other members have an equally illustrious record. From their post administration writings and speeches, it is apparent they have neither learned nor forgotten a single iota. None have seen the failings produced by their own ideologically predicated view of the world and the role of the US in that world.
Unless Governor Perry expands his advisory staff, there is a very grave danger that his understanding of the abilities and limits of American power will be as disastrously off the mark as were those of George W. Bush. Neither the US nor the world can live with yet another ideologically predicated misreading of what the US can and cannot do with respect to the internal workings of other countries.
It is important to note that not since George H.W. Bush left office has the US enjoyed the services of a president who was both internationally focused and relatively bereft of ideological blinders. The many years of Clinton, George W. Bush and His Hindmost, Barack Obama--each with either or both a disinterest in foreign affairs or ideological predicates of overwhelming power--have seen the steady decline of the US as a Great Power with influence and potency. Given that the next president will be laboring under serious budgetary constraints, the question of the relations of the US with the rest of the world as well as the American capacity and will to defend and advance its national interests will be under very severe challenge.
More than ever we will need a president who realistically assesses our national interests and tailors our diplomacy and military to protect and advance those interests regardless of extraneous considerations including ideological preferences and prejudices. The next president will face a world which remains what it always has been--a dangerous place replete with countries which oppose us and our interests and actors both state and non-state who wish to do us harm. The world will also contain countries which share values and norms with us and with which we have coinciding national interests.
The next president must do what the present incumbent has failed to do with striking obviousness--parse between the enemies and the allies. He must be able and willing to cozen and stroke the latter while drawing in a credible manner the necessary lines in the sand regarding the former.
As Perry lacks any significant foreign policy experience and whose direct experience with military affairs and war fighting is limited to the perspective offered from the cockpit of a C-130, he will depend heavily on his foreign policy and national security teams. Given his first picks as advisers, there is, unfortunately, little if any reason to be hopeful in this regard.
In the future national interest as well as his own personal political fortune, Governor Perry ought to fire the present advisory staff. It is the only smart and prudential thing to do. He has to put daylight between himself and George W. Bush, and listening to the old gang of neocon ninnies is not the way to offset the inevitable Obama camp attacks seeking to make Perry look like the much disliked (not to say hated) Bush, Jr.
(Full disclosure in blogging statement: The Geek is not angling for a job with the Perry camp as he is constitutionally incapable of working for anyone.)
The Geek became a fan of Texas politics during the years necessity compelled him to live and work in the Lone Star Empire. The doings at that model of law making decorum called the "Lege" were and are as fascinating as the inner workings of the Cook County (Ill.) Democratic machine. The emergence of Perry showed him to be a man having a strong, visceral understanding of the political soul of most Texans. Over the past year Perry's performance has demonstrated that this gut level talent is not restricted to the denizens of the LSE but extends to many of We the People.
It is important to enter an important caveat here, a warning of relevance to international politics. Other significant leaders who have exhibited a strong, visceral understanding of their people's national politics such as Vladimir Putin have seen that understanding stop abruptly at the border. They have little if any understanding of the political mood or mode of other people in other countries.
Governor Perry stated strongly in Charleston that he was a strong believer in "American exceptionalism," which places him in very sharp contrast with the relativistic Mr Obama. This posture while laudable in itself demands yet another caveat in the arena of global affairs. The "exceptionalism" part of the phrase consists of characteristics, attributes, and values which are under a permanent export ban. American exceptionalism is not only made in America by dint of suffering, war, political struggles, and endless effort, it must forever stay in the land of its fabrication. It is unique to us for it is uniquely us and ours. No bayonet, no tank, no stealth fighter, no UAV, no aid program, no propaganda effort, no executive order or congressional enactment can force its export to other, foreign soils. As a transplant it must fail.
On his campaign website, Mr Perry avers that his service as a C-130 driver as well as his many foreign trips as governor give him insight into the needs of American diplomatic and national security policy. While it is true that the governor flew Herky birds with numerous RONs and TDYs, the result would be an intimate acquaintance with nocturnal resorts of entertainment and recreation but little contact with the dark doings of foreign chanceries or the gavottes in distant corridors of power. (To this truism any person with a peripatetic military experience can attest.) And, as governor Mr Perry's overseas jaunts were in the interest of the economic development of the LSE not the national interests of the US.
In his speech at Charleston, the Texan was more than kind when he characterized whatever passes as foreign policy within the Obama administration as a "muddle." It is, of course, far worse than that. It is even worse than a collection of blunders wrapped in empty, high sounding rhetoric. Rather, it is an ideologically driven exercise in ad hoc reaction coupled with a set of self-defeating visions of how the world ought to be if only it were designed in Left leaning academic salons located near the University of Chicago campus.
At least implicitly (if Rick "No One Crosses Me and Lives" Perry can ever be merely implicit) the Texas Cyclone of Prayer vowed to change this. He evidently intends to assure the US once again walks tall and proud on the international stage. This would be a welcome change after the years of "leading from behind" but carries with it yet another, larger caveat.
This caveat resides in the coterie Perry has assembled to date as his advisers on foreign and national security affairs. Without notable exception, it is comprised of neocon ninnies out of the years of the Bush/Cheney administration. At the head of the list is the execrable Doug Feith, the top architect of the debacle in Iraq. Other members have an equally illustrious record. From their post administration writings and speeches, it is apparent they have neither learned nor forgotten a single iota. None have seen the failings produced by their own ideologically predicated view of the world and the role of the US in that world.
Unless Governor Perry expands his advisory staff, there is a very grave danger that his understanding of the abilities and limits of American power will be as disastrously off the mark as were those of George W. Bush. Neither the US nor the world can live with yet another ideologically predicated misreading of what the US can and cannot do with respect to the internal workings of other countries.
It is important to note that not since George H.W. Bush left office has the US enjoyed the services of a president who was both internationally focused and relatively bereft of ideological blinders. The many years of Clinton, George W. Bush and His Hindmost, Barack Obama--each with either or both a disinterest in foreign affairs or ideological predicates of overwhelming power--have seen the steady decline of the US as a Great Power with influence and potency. Given that the next president will be laboring under serious budgetary constraints, the question of the relations of the US with the rest of the world as well as the American capacity and will to defend and advance its national interests will be under very severe challenge.
More than ever we will need a president who realistically assesses our national interests and tailors our diplomacy and military to protect and advance those interests regardless of extraneous considerations including ideological preferences and prejudices. The next president will face a world which remains what it always has been--a dangerous place replete with countries which oppose us and our interests and actors both state and non-state who wish to do us harm. The world will also contain countries which share values and norms with us and with which we have coinciding national interests.
The next president must do what the present incumbent has failed to do with striking obviousness--parse between the enemies and the allies. He must be able and willing to cozen and stroke the latter while drawing in a credible manner the necessary lines in the sand regarding the former.
As Perry lacks any significant foreign policy experience and whose direct experience with military affairs and war fighting is limited to the perspective offered from the cockpit of a C-130, he will depend heavily on his foreign policy and national security teams. Given his first picks as advisers, there is, unfortunately, little if any reason to be hopeful in this regard.
In the future national interest as well as his own personal political fortune, Governor Perry ought to fire the present advisory staff. It is the only smart and prudential thing to do. He has to put daylight between himself and George W. Bush, and listening to the old gang of neocon ninnies is not the way to offset the inevitable Obama camp attacks seeking to make Perry look like the much disliked (not to say hated) Bush, Jr.
(Full disclosure in blogging statement: The Geek is not angling for a job with the Perry camp as he is constitutionally incapable of working for anyone.)
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Time For The "Nuclear Option"
The US and assorted other civilized states have been making noises and ugly faces for some years now over the Iranian efforts to attain nuclear weapons. Diplomatic and economic sanctions have been employed. So have more robust measures ranging from the more or less covert such as computer viruses to the rather obvious, the shooting of nuclear researchers.
Th net result has been the continued and accelerating Iranian quest for the bomb.
Years ago, the notion of Iranian science or work in advanced technology would have been seen quite properly as an oxymoron. During the early days of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, science and technology were downgraded severely as a matter of theologically predicated policy. It was only years later, years marked by the stalemated bloodletting of the Iran-Iraq War, that the mullahs and ayatollahs changed their religious tune. Only after the near defeat at the hands of the technologically superior Iraq convinced the Supreme Guardian of the Revolution that the deity did, after all, will Iran to have sufficient and sufficiently advanced weapons to protect the revolution.
Science and technology came back to the front and center of Iranian governmental life in the late Eighties and beyond. Oil money poured into new and reinvigorated institutes and university departments. Chief among these were those entities which dealt with nuclear research and development as well as key support systems of nuclear weapons including but not limited to ballistic and guided missiles.
The Iranians deserve great credit for accomplishing much over the next two decades. In both nuclear and missile development, they were very much on their own. Only South Africa was as internationally isolated during its nuclear development period--and even then the Pretoria regime received some assistance from Israel including supplies of tritium necessary for boosted fission as well as fusion bombs. Other than some early model centrifuges from A.Q Khan's ring in Pakistan, the Iranians pulled themselves up by their own fission bootstraps.
The monolithic Western governmental opposition linked with the earlier conviction that only a nuclear capacity would assure Iranian survival in a future war to enhance greatly the firm belief that the possession of nuclear weapons was an existential matter. The existential foundation of the nuclear option was reinforced by Tehran's observation of how the US treated the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The Islamabad Bad Boys were handled with gentility and respect by Washington for one simple reason--Pakistan had the bomb.
This meant that should Iran match Pakistan's accomplishment, the result would be elevated status on both the global and regional stages. Not only would the "Mahdi Bomb" assure Iran's survival as an Islamic theocracy, it would propel the country to the status of regional hegemon and global actor of real potency. These were two very fine reasons to bear heavy burdens and make great sacrifices for the years it would take to develop a credible nuclear capacity.
There is no doubt but the many sanctions regimes imposed, particularly those of recent origin focusing on shipping and insurance, have place very heavy loads on the Iranian economy. There is no doubt but the sanctions taken in total have forced the Iranian government and people to make sacrifices over and above those required by the inefficient and repressive nature of the government.
Most importantly, there is no reason to conclude that the sanctions and diplomatic pressures have modified Iranian behavior--other than to make the mullahs and their frontmen more intransigent, more creative in sanction evasion, and more committed to acquiring the bomb no matter what the price.
Not to put too fine a point on the matter, in the battle of political wills between the US led West and Iran, it is the latter which is winning. In this context, the Iranians have introduced a form of game changer--a new generation of improved centrifuges which will reduce greatly the time needed to turn twenty percent enriched uranium into weapons grade stuff. Further, they have acted in a prudential manner, placing the new fast-spinners in deep dug bunkers.
Now ninety plus senators have urged the immediate introduction of a game changer from the American perspective. In a letter to the president, this overwhelming majority of the senate have demanded the imposition of sanctions against the Iranian central bank, the bank created some fifty years ago to act as the interface between the consumers of Iranian oil and the Tehran government. This move, described as the "nuclear option," would, if enforced, prevent the clearing of payments to Iran from all purchasers of oil.
For its part, the government of Iran has stated this move would constitute "an act of war."
While not being an armed action, the isolation of the Iranian Bank Markazi would be the equivalent in effect of the US freezing of all Japanese assets in the summer of 1941. That action, the culmination of a long campaign of escalating economic pressures, prevented Japan from acquiring oil and other strategic materials from the US. This gave the government of Imperial Japan the choice of a humiliating surrender to American political dictates or war.
As you know, the Japanese chose the second alternative. The decision makers believed that the fortunes of war might favor Japan given other constraints operating on the US including the ongoing Great Depression and a preoccupation with Nazi Germany.
It would not be irrational for Tehran to make the same choice today or into the near future. The US is in the throes of a severe economic challenge including possibly the second of a double dip recession. It is still engaged in an unpopular and seemingly inconclusive war in Afghanistan. The current administration is perceived as both irresolute and feckless.
The senators hint at the possibility of legislation compelling the imposition of the ultimate sanction should the president decide not to use the authority he already has to make the move. This make the challenge both direct and definitely non-trivial. As the choice is both clear and stark, it will be difficult for Mr Obama to "lead from behind" or equivocate. And, it is debatable whether or not he has the political capital necessary to stare the senators down.
Were the Iranians to choose war, now is the least-worst time for us to fight it. Looking ahead, there is no doubt but the American military will be significantly weaker a year or two hence. The budget battles assure the Pentagon will take a heavy hit. In this context is is important to recall that people close to the Oval have intimated the president would be happy to see the military budget at or below fifteen percent of total expenditures. This would be a funding level not seen since the years immediately preceding Pearl Harbor.
We forget how unready the US was for World War II. We forget how difficult it was to mobilize our industrial resources and manpower for that war. Perhaps most important, we overlook the fact that playing the sort of catch-up now that we did so well seventy years ago is quite impossible. It is no longer feasible or even possible to undertake the kind of forced draft military build-up today which we did between 1941 and 1944. The radical changes in military technology have been responsible for this ground truth as they are for the companion reality that a draftee based armed force is not possible.
Right now or in the next few months, the US is quite capable of decisively defeating Iran should the latter be so ill-advised as to treat our imposition of the "nuclear option" as a literal act of war. Further, it is a war which would be widely supported by We the People--provided only that it was fought as a retaliatory and punitive action without any follow-on occupation and rebuilding of the place.
President Obama is long overdue in making a defecate or get off the pot decision about Iran and its search for the bomb. We have played the escalating sanction game long enough and have had more than sufficient opportunity to have observed the counterproductive results. Diplomacy of the talk sort has also run its course without beneficial results.
The senatorial letter is forcing a final decision. Either we have to admit that we can live and the world can live with a nuclear capable Iran and all that implies or we have to take the final, decisive act. The president would be best off acting on his current authority so he will look as if he were actually a "decider guy" as George W. used to put it. Better to look as if you are acting of your own volition than to be seen as being frog marched by the senate.
Should Iran respond with war-like acts either directly or through surrogates, by overt military actions or through terrorism, let it be. As George W. memorably put the matter, "Bring it on!"
Th net result has been the continued and accelerating Iranian quest for the bomb.
Years ago, the notion of Iranian science or work in advanced technology would have been seen quite properly as an oxymoron. During the early days of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, science and technology were downgraded severely as a matter of theologically predicated policy. It was only years later, years marked by the stalemated bloodletting of the Iran-Iraq War, that the mullahs and ayatollahs changed their religious tune. Only after the near defeat at the hands of the technologically superior Iraq convinced the Supreme Guardian of the Revolution that the deity did, after all, will Iran to have sufficient and sufficiently advanced weapons to protect the revolution.
Science and technology came back to the front and center of Iranian governmental life in the late Eighties and beyond. Oil money poured into new and reinvigorated institutes and university departments. Chief among these were those entities which dealt with nuclear research and development as well as key support systems of nuclear weapons including but not limited to ballistic and guided missiles.
The Iranians deserve great credit for accomplishing much over the next two decades. In both nuclear and missile development, they were very much on their own. Only South Africa was as internationally isolated during its nuclear development period--and even then the Pretoria regime received some assistance from Israel including supplies of tritium necessary for boosted fission as well as fusion bombs. Other than some early model centrifuges from A.Q Khan's ring in Pakistan, the Iranians pulled themselves up by their own fission bootstraps.
The monolithic Western governmental opposition linked with the earlier conviction that only a nuclear capacity would assure Iranian survival in a future war to enhance greatly the firm belief that the possession of nuclear weapons was an existential matter. The existential foundation of the nuclear option was reinforced by Tehran's observation of how the US treated the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The Islamabad Bad Boys were handled with gentility and respect by Washington for one simple reason--Pakistan had the bomb.
This meant that should Iran match Pakistan's accomplishment, the result would be elevated status on both the global and regional stages. Not only would the "Mahdi Bomb" assure Iran's survival as an Islamic theocracy, it would propel the country to the status of regional hegemon and global actor of real potency. These were two very fine reasons to bear heavy burdens and make great sacrifices for the years it would take to develop a credible nuclear capacity.
There is no doubt but the many sanctions regimes imposed, particularly those of recent origin focusing on shipping and insurance, have place very heavy loads on the Iranian economy. There is no doubt but the sanctions taken in total have forced the Iranian government and people to make sacrifices over and above those required by the inefficient and repressive nature of the government.
Most importantly, there is no reason to conclude that the sanctions and diplomatic pressures have modified Iranian behavior--other than to make the mullahs and their frontmen more intransigent, more creative in sanction evasion, and more committed to acquiring the bomb no matter what the price.
Not to put too fine a point on the matter, in the battle of political wills between the US led West and Iran, it is the latter which is winning. In this context, the Iranians have introduced a form of game changer--a new generation of improved centrifuges which will reduce greatly the time needed to turn twenty percent enriched uranium into weapons grade stuff. Further, they have acted in a prudential manner, placing the new fast-spinners in deep dug bunkers.
Now ninety plus senators have urged the immediate introduction of a game changer from the American perspective. In a letter to the president, this overwhelming majority of the senate have demanded the imposition of sanctions against the Iranian central bank, the bank created some fifty years ago to act as the interface between the consumers of Iranian oil and the Tehran government. This move, described as the "nuclear option," would, if enforced, prevent the clearing of payments to Iran from all purchasers of oil.
For its part, the government of Iran has stated this move would constitute "an act of war."
While not being an armed action, the isolation of the Iranian Bank Markazi would be the equivalent in effect of the US freezing of all Japanese assets in the summer of 1941. That action, the culmination of a long campaign of escalating economic pressures, prevented Japan from acquiring oil and other strategic materials from the US. This gave the government of Imperial Japan the choice of a humiliating surrender to American political dictates or war.
As you know, the Japanese chose the second alternative. The decision makers believed that the fortunes of war might favor Japan given other constraints operating on the US including the ongoing Great Depression and a preoccupation with Nazi Germany.
It would not be irrational for Tehran to make the same choice today or into the near future. The US is in the throes of a severe economic challenge including possibly the second of a double dip recession. It is still engaged in an unpopular and seemingly inconclusive war in Afghanistan. The current administration is perceived as both irresolute and feckless.
The senators hint at the possibility of legislation compelling the imposition of the ultimate sanction should the president decide not to use the authority he already has to make the move. This make the challenge both direct and definitely non-trivial. As the choice is both clear and stark, it will be difficult for Mr Obama to "lead from behind" or equivocate. And, it is debatable whether or not he has the political capital necessary to stare the senators down.
Were the Iranians to choose war, now is the least-worst time for us to fight it. Looking ahead, there is no doubt but the American military will be significantly weaker a year or two hence. The budget battles assure the Pentagon will take a heavy hit. In this context is is important to recall that people close to the Oval have intimated the president would be happy to see the military budget at or below fifteen percent of total expenditures. This would be a funding level not seen since the years immediately preceding Pearl Harbor.
We forget how unready the US was for World War II. We forget how difficult it was to mobilize our industrial resources and manpower for that war. Perhaps most important, we overlook the fact that playing the sort of catch-up now that we did so well seventy years ago is quite impossible. It is no longer feasible or even possible to undertake the kind of forced draft military build-up today which we did between 1941 and 1944. The radical changes in military technology have been responsible for this ground truth as they are for the companion reality that a draftee based armed force is not possible.
Right now or in the next few months, the US is quite capable of decisively defeating Iran should the latter be so ill-advised as to treat our imposition of the "nuclear option" as a literal act of war. Further, it is a war which would be widely supported by We the People--provided only that it was fought as a retaliatory and punitive action without any follow-on occupation and rebuilding of the place.
President Obama is long overdue in making a defecate or get off the pot decision about Iran and its search for the bomb. We have played the escalating sanction game long enough and have had more than sufficient opportunity to have observed the counterproductive results. Diplomacy of the talk sort has also run its course without beneficial results.
The senatorial letter is forcing a final decision. Either we have to admit that we can live and the world can live with a nuclear capable Iran and all that implies or we have to take the final, decisive act. The president would be best off acting on his current authority so he will look as if he were actually a "decider guy" as George W. used to put it. Better to look as if you are acting of your own volition than to be seen as being frog marched by the senate.
Should Iran respond with war-like acts either directly or through surrogates, by overt military actions or through terrorism, let it be. As George W. memorably put the matter, "Bring it on!"
Friday, July 15, 2011
More "Followership" From The Hindmost
Coming late and out of breath from the unusual bout of exertion, the US today decided that the rebels, The Transitional Government" is the only legitimate game in Libya. The US has extended full diplomatic recognition to the far less than coherent bunch in Benghazi. The practical effect of this move is the freeing of the billions of Gaddafi bucks languishing in American custody, impounded under UN sanctions.
The American extension of recognition comes long after similar acts by the UK and France as well as other, lesser members of the anti-Gaddafi coalition. The reasons for the lengthy American delay are inscrutable although it may be contended that Mr Obama has been too involved with negotiating a treaty over the deficit with his Republican interlocutors to have had much time to waste on minor matters such as Libya.
Arguably, there was no real need to grant diplomatic recognition and the international legitimacy that entails in order to give the Libyan money back to the Libyans in the personage of the Transitional Government. Arguably, the granting of diplomatic recognition was premature in that the nature of the Benghazi crew is not exactly pellucid. It is still unclear as to who holds the balance of power in the Transitional Government--the advocates of violent political Islam (some of whom have pulled triggers against Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan) or the secularists. There is no way of being sure that the end result of the regime change will be more or less favorable to American national and strategic interests.
There is a larger reason to have not extended the prize of diplomatic recognition to the Lads In Benghazi. The US has no direct stake in the country. Other than the general imperative of countering the actions of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the US has no definite or definable interests in play. That reality enough was enough to have militated against our involvement in the air campaign against Gaddafi and Company. It is also sufficient to undercut any push to granting enhanced status to the rebels whose interests more likely than not do not run in parallel with our own.
There is something even more disquieting contained within the delayed but unnecessary recognition of the rebels as the only legitimate government in Libya. It is the same disquieting factor already seen in play with the vacillating policy regarding Mubarak and the "Lotus Revolution" in Egypt or the similarly disconnected set of moves masquerading as policy regarding Syria.
The disquieting, not to say alarming, dynamic at work in Libya, Syria, and Egypt is that of indecision, lack of focus, and an apparent unwillingness to engage in the messier, less pleasant aspects of diplomacy. The Nice Young Man From Chicago is too given to compromise, too willing to evade responsibility, too averse to making clear cut decisions and holding to them (unless a basic tenet of his ideology is at work) to engage in the risky business of establishing and hewing to a foreign policy. While the Secretary of State may not be as averse to muscular diplomacy, it has become evident that Ms Clinton lacks the capacity to differentiate between that which is really important and those options which simply appeal on an emotional level.
One of the inevitable results of the Obama approach to foreign policy has been that of eroding confidence in the will of the US to undertake difficult actions. An excellent example of this is the Saudi decision to broaden their weapons acquisition efforts to include Germany and Russia. The movers and shakers among the gerontocracy running the Kingdom have concluded that the US is unreliable even as a source of expensive hardware.
The Saudis have noted with interest and no doubt considerable apprehension the way in which the US under both George W. Bush and Mr Obama has evaded the formal request by Taiwan to purchase sixty new generation F-16 aircraft. In doing so the Obama administration has blatantly violated the law, specifically the law requiring the US to see to Taiwan's defense needs as defined by Taiwan not the US. Considering that not selling the F-16s to Taiwan will result in the loss of thousands of good paying jobs during economically tenuous times, not even American self-interest can offset the stifling influence of Beijing on US policy.
If Beijing can put the screws to the US such that American jobs are sacrificed along with the law and US interests in Asia, Prince Bandar among others must have reasoned, what are the odds that at some point the US will go lame in an area crucial to Saudi existential interests? Right now only one feature ties US interests to those of the Saudis.
No, bucko, not oil. The only real coinciding national interests between ourselves and the Saudis is fear and loathing of Iran. It is important in this context to underscore the importance of the recent high profile allegations of Iranian complicity in lethal attacks on US service personnel in Iraq. These statements are aimed in part at the bootless excuse for a central government in Iraq to be sure. But there is a far more important audience.
That more important group of auditors is located in Tehran. In a real sense the comments regarding Iranian sponsorship of the attacks on Americans stands as a proxy for the most recent developments in the Iranian nuclear weapons program. The Iranians have installed examples of two next gen centrifuges. More importantly, these as well as hundreds of the older, less efficient models have been placed in hardened, underground facilities.
Taken together, these twin, interlocking developments make manifest the nature of the Iranian nuclear effort. It is focused on getting the bomb. Period. There is no need for any more discussion on that aspect of the Iranian nuke program.
Rather, the only place for discussion is on the general question of options available to the US. In this discussion the unique Obama approach to policy in the Mideast becomes relevant, highly so. As the administration's fit-and-start facsimile of policy in Libya, Syria, and Egypt demonstrates, it is germane to ask whether or not the US will deign to lead from the front.
"Leading from behind" is not, as the White House creator of the term must have believed, a feat of brilliant statesmanship putting Obama on a par with Bismark or Talleyrand, but rather a total abdication of leadership. As the resulting mess in Libya shows in full color and stereo sound, the concept of leading from the rear is not only intellectually bankrupt but operationally equates with self-inflicted defeat. A robust, albeit unpopular, US presence at the head of the NATO pack would have allowed a bad policy to be redeemed from the failure it so richly deserved. The absence of the Americans in any meaningful, violent way from the effort has assured that the bad policy would fail, and, worse, would fail in a way which rebounded to the discredit of NATO as well as key allies.
Despite the documented successes of the sanctions imposed on Iran, most notably those impinging on maritime trade, the mullahs move closer to the "Mahdi Bomb" with every spin of every centrifuge. This means that push-comes-to-shove time looms closer by the day, by the hour. We the People place great faith in the efficacy of diplomatic and economic sanctions as the best form of coercive diplomacy. In doing so, the American public overlooks the unpleasant reality that the effectiveness of sanctions rests in the last analysis on the perceived will and ability of the imposer of sanctions to use military force should the sanctions fail.
Not to put too fine a point on it, the Iranian government and the mullahs behind it are convinced the US lacks the will to use military force. They may (in private) be willing to grant that the US has the material capacity to destroy not only the nuclear facilities but Iran, but they are of the view that mere material ability is irrelevant. The mullahs are right in this. Ability without political will is simply so much very expensive hardware.
The Iranians are not alone in this appreciation. The Israeli government shares it. Benjamin Netanyahu along with the majority of his cabinet and party are convinced that the US is a toothless tiger regarding the looming Iranian threat. They are also certain that the Obama administration is already willing to adjust its policy to an Iran with nuclear capabilities along with the implications this brings to the region and the world. A similar sense of things must be growing as well in Saudi Arabia and other conservative Gulf states.
The current government of Israel is both crazy enough and filled with existential dread enough to go it alone in a strike on the Iranian nuclear plant. There may even be a lingering belief that should Israel start the war, the US must join in. If nothing else, the Netanyahu ministry probably believes that should Israel mount the first strikes and cause a mass attack in return by Iran and its closer adjuncts in Lebanon and Gaza, the American congress will do the necessary heavy lifting to assure the US moves fast and hard to bring the new war to a successful conclusion.
Given the power of the Israel Lobby in Congress, the Israeli calculus is not irrational. It is a realistic reading of the political landscape of the US. Even though an Israeli originated war with Iran would be devastating to the fragile American (and global) economic recovery, the US would have very few choices other than to join the fight with the goal of bringing the war to the most rapid and decisive conclusion.
The most rapid and decisive ending to an Israeli-Iranian war would be the total destruction of the Iranian governmental, military, and economic infrastructure. The US could accomplish this using only conventional munitions, but the job would be longer and more difficult than might be presumed at the outset. As the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya have shown, the ancient saw holding that wars are always longer and more difficult to end than seems to be the case at the beginning has not been obviated by changes in technology.
A war between Israel (and the US) on the one side and Iran (and its proxies) on the other would be a world historical event. But, the obtaining of a nuclear capacity by Iran would prove to be such as well. This means the matter is a choice regarding the perceived lesser of two evils.
To the Israelis, particularly the government of Netanyahu, the choice is a no-brainer. To the US, the choice is not so simple and clear cut. However, to be in the position to make a choice, the US, and, more specifically the Obama administration, must be universally perceived as a leader. In this context it is critical to recall that the most effective form of leadership is leadership from the front.
The leader, as the Infantry School at Fort Benning makes plain, shouts, "Follow me!" The leader does not say, "Go ahead, I'm right behind you."
As today's decision regarding the rebels in Libya shows, Mr Obama has not yet learned this vital fact. By default he has handed control of the future of the US and the world to Benjamin Netanyahu. That is not a failure of policy. It is not even a simple error of judgement. It is a world class blunder.
The American extension of recognition comes long after similar acts by the UK and France as well as other, lesser members of the anti-Gaddafi coalition. The reasons for the lengthy American delay are inscrutable although it may be contended that Mr Obama has been too involved with negotiating a treaty over the deficit with his Republican interlocutors to have had much time to waste on minor matters such as Libya.
Arguably, there was no real need to grant diplomatic recognition and the international legitimacy that entails in order to give the Libyan money back to the Libyans in the personage of the Transitional Government. Arguably, the granting of diplomatic recognition was premature in that the nature of the Benghazi crew is not exactly pellucid. It is still unclear as to who holds the balance of power in the Transitional Government--the advocates of violent political Islam (some of whom have pulled triggers against Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan) or the secularists. There is no way of being sure that the end result of the regime change will be more or less favorable to American national and strategic interests.
There is a larger reason to have not extended the prize of diplomatic recognition to the Lads In Benghazi. The US has no direct stake in the country. Other than the general imperative of countering the actions of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the US has no definite or definable interests in play. That reality enough was enough to have militated against our involvement in the air campaign against Gaddafi and Company. It is also sufficient to undercut any push to granting enhanced status to the rebels whose interests more likely than not do not run in parallel with our own.
There is something even more disquieting contained within the delayed but unnecessary recognition of the rebels as the only legitimate government in Libya. It is the same disquieting factor already seen in play with the vacillating policy regarding Mubarak and the "Lotus Revolution" in Egypt or the similarly disconnected set of moves masquerading as policy regarding Syria.
The disquieting, not to say alarming, dynamic at work in Libya, Syria, and Egypt is that of indecision, lack of focus, and an apparent unwillingness to engage in the messier, less pleasant aspects of diplomacy. The Nice Young Man From Chicago is too given to compromise, too willing to evade responsibility, too averse to making clear cut decisions and holding to them (unless a basic tenet of his ideology is at work) to engage in the risky business of establishing and hewing to a foreign policy. While the Secretary of State may not be as averse to muscular diplomacy, it has become evident that Ms Clinton lacks the capacity to differentiate between that which is really important and those options which simply appeal on an emotional level.
One of the inevitable results of the Obama approach to foreign policy has been that of eroding confidence in the will of the US to undertake difficult actions. An excellent example of this is the Saudi decision to broaden their weapons acquisition efforts to include Germany and Russia. The movers and shakers among the gerontocracy running the Kingdom have concluded that the US is unreliable even as a source of expensive hardware.
The Saudis have noted with interest and no doubt considerable apprehension the way in which the US under both George W. Bush and Mr Obama has evaded the formal request by Taiwan to purchase sixty new generation F-16 aircraft. In doing so the Obama administration has blatantly violated the law, specifically the law requiring the US to see to Taiwan's defense needs as defined by Taiwan not the US. Considering that not selling the F-16s to Taiwan will result in the loss of thousands of good paying jobs during economically tenuous times, not even American self-interest can offset the stifling influence of Beijing on US policy.
If Beijing can put the screws to the US such that American jobs are sacrificed along with the law and US interests in Asia, Prince Bandar among others must have reasoned, what are the odds that at some point the US will go lame in an area crucial to Saudi existential interests? Right now only one feature ties US interests to those of the Saudis.
No, bucko, not oil. The only real coinciding national interests between ourselves and the Saudis is fear and loathing of Iran. It is important in this context to underscore the importance of the recent high profile allegations of Iranian complicity in lethal attacks on US service personnel in Iraq. These statements are aimed in part at the bootless excuse for a central government in Iraq to be sure. But there is a far more important audience.
That more important group of auditors is located in Tehran. In a real sense the comments regarding Iranian sponsorship of the attacks on Americans stands as a proxy for the most recent developments in the Iranian nuclear weapons program. The Iranians have installed examples of two next gen centrifuges. More importantly, these as well as hundreds of the older, less efficient models have been placed in hardened, underground facilities.
Taken together, these twin, interlocking developments make manifest the nature of the Iranian nuclear effort. It is focused on getting the bomb. Period. There is no need for any more discussion on that aspect of the Iranian nuke program.
Rather, the only place for discussion is on the general question of options available to the US. In this discussion the unique Obama approach to policy in the Mideast becomes relevant, highly so. As the administration's fit-and-start facsimile of policy in Libya, Syria, and Egypt demonstrates, it is germane to ask whether or not the US will deign to lead from the front.
"Leading from behind" is not, as the White House creator of the term must have believed, a feat of brilliant statesmanship putting Obama on a par with Bismark or Talleyrand, but rather a total abdication of leadership. As the resulting mess in Libya shows in full color and stereo sound, the concept of leading from the rear is not only intellectually bankrupt but operationally equates with self-inflicted defeat. A robust, albeit unpopular, US presence at the head of the NATO pack would have allowed a bad policy to be redeemed from the failure it so richly deserved. The absence of the Americans in any meaningful, violent way from the effort has assured that the bad policy would fail, and, worse, would fail in a way which rebounded to the discredit of NATO as well as key allies.
Despite the documented successes of the sanctions imposed on Iran, most notably those impinging on maritime trade, the mullahs move closer to the "Mahdi Bomb" with every spin of every centrifuge. This means that push-comes-to-shove time looms closer by the day, by the hour. We the People place great faith in the efficacy of diplomatic and economic sanctions as the best form of coercive diplomacy. In doing so, the American public overlooks the unpleasant reality that the effectiveness of sanctions rests in the last analysis on the perceived will and ability of the imposer of sanctions to use military force should the sanctions fail.
Not to put too fine a point on it, the Iranian government and the mullahs behind it are convinced the US lacks the will to use military force. They may (in private) be willing to grant that the US has the material capacity to destroy not only the nuclear facilities but Iran, but they are of the view that mere material ability is irrelevant. The mullahs are right in this. Ability without political will is simply so much very expensive hardware.
The Iranians are not alone in this appreciation. The Israeli government shares it. Benjamin Netanyahu along with the majority of his cabinet and party are convinced that the US is a toothless tiger regarding the looming Iranian threat. They are also certain that the Obama administration is already willing to adjust its policy to an Iran with nuclear capabilities along with the implications this brings to the region and the world. A similar sense of things must be growing as well in Saudi Arabia and other conservative Gulf states.
The current government of Israel is both crazy enough and filled with existential dread enough to go it alone in a strike on the Iranian nuclear plant. There may even be a lingering belief that should Israel start the war, the US must join in. If nothing else, the Netanyahu ministry probably believes that should Israel mount the first strikes and cause a mass attack in return by Iran and its closer adjuncts in Lebanon and Gaza, the American congress will do the necessary heavy lifting to assure the US moves fast and hard to bring the new war to a successful conclusion.
Given the power of the Israel Lobby in Congress, the Israeli calculus is not irrational. It is a realistic reading of the political landscape of the US. Even though an Israeli originated war with Iran would be devastating to the fragile American (and global) economic recovery, the US would have very few choices other than to join the fight with the goal of bringing the war to the most rapid and decisive conclusion.
The most rapid and decisive ending to an Israeli-Iranian war would be the total destruction of the Iranian governmental, military, and economic infrastructure. The US could accomplish this using only conventional munitions, but the job would be longer and more difficult than might be presumed at the outset. As the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya have shown, the ancient saw holding that wars are always longer and more difficult to end than seems to be the case at the beginning has not been obviated by changes in technology.
A war between Israel (and the US) on the one side and Iran (and its proxies) on the other would be a world historical event. But, the obtaining of a nuclear capacity by Iran would prove to be such as well. This means the matter is a choice regarding the perceived lesser of two evils.
To the Israelis, particularly the government of Netanyahu, the choice is a no-brainer. To the US, the choice is not so simple and clear cut. However, to be in the position to make a choice, the US, and, more specifically the Obama administration, must be universally perceived as a leader. In this context it is critical to recall that the most effective form of leadership is leadership from the front.
The leader, as the Infantry School at Fort Benning makes plain, shouts, "Follow me!" The leader does not say, "Go ahead, I'm right behind you."
As today's decision regarding the rebels in Libya shows, Mr Obama has not yet learned this vital fact. By default he has handed control of the future of the US and the world to Benjamin Netanyahu. That is not a failure of policy. It is not even a simple error of judgement. It is a world class blunder.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
The Otherworldly Realism of T-Paw
Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty is stuck in the second tier of Republican hopefuls despite a strenuous effort to break to daylight. He has already taken a definite stand on matters economic with strong support from the media and no palpable result in the public polling. Now he is trying to do the same in the area of foreign affairs, putting distance between himself and the neo-isolationists of the GOP on the one hand and the neocons of the George W. Bush days on the other.
T-paw's essay in self-definition came yesterday n a speech delivered to the Council on Foreign Relations. While represented as a tour of the horizon, the candidate focused on the Mideast, Israel, and Obama's failures of policy in the region.
There is little doubt but the Obama approach to affairs in the Mideast specifically and the world generally have been marked by far more failure than success. The primary reason for this is to be found in the world view of the Nice Young Man From Chicago with its blame-America-first core. Being a perfect academic, Mr Obama is given to avoiding action in favor of words whenever possible. Then as a matter of personality, the Clueless Guy in the Oval resembles a Pearson's Puppeteer.
(For those of you who do not read science fiction, the Pearson Puppeteer was an alien species created by the fertile mind of Larry Niven. The species is characterized by a degree of caution which surpasses the merely cowardly. The "leader" of the Puppeteers is called the Hindmost--which rather resembles in concept the idea of "leading from behind" offered recently by a member of the administration in admiring tribute to Obama's presumed statesmanship in the Libyan Affair.)
The characterization of Mr Obama's approach(es) to the "Arab Spring" and the Israeli-Palestinian Question offered by Governor Pawlenty are unexceptional. So also is his emphasis on the importance of Israel to US national interests.
Where T-paw misses the cliched bus is in his fervently expressed belief in the ability of the US to act effectively in the creation of freedom and democracy in the Mideast in the wake of the recent and ongoing tumult. He is of the view that authentic democracy, genuine freedom, real Western style government with full fledged protections of minorities including women and non-Muslims can be created and maintained over time with the assistance and support of the US.
It would be very nice if the Pawlenty vision was accurate. It is not. Whether dealing with the environment of post-authoritarian Egypt or Tunisia, or contemplating how "reforms" might be facilitated by American efforts in kingdoms such as Jordan, Morocco or, most importantly of all, Saudi Arabia, Mr Pawlenty discounts the force and universality of Islam, particularly the form of Islam embraced and promoted by Salifists and Wahhibists.
The well-meaning Pawlenty (or his advisers and speechwriters) ignore the fundamental realities of Islamic thought which focus upon the deity as the source of all legitimate law. Also overlooked is the oft-repeated meme that neither democracy nor liberty as understood in the West is compatible with the dictates of the deity contained in the sacred literature as interpreted by generations of scholars of Islamic jurisprudence. The Pawlenty stance also overlooks the fundamental orientation of Islam on the duties of the believer. Not to put an inaccurately fine point on the matter, Islam elevates duty, duty to the deity over any and all personal rights. In short there is no concept of individual rights which equates in any way with the prevalent definitions of rights and responsibilities in the US or the West generally.
The failure to comprehend accurately the impact of faith and its all-inclusive nature constitutes the rock on which Mr Pawlenty's ideas of constructive engagement with the new forces of the Arab states must founder. While the people oriented toward secular concerns and world view dominated and continue to dominate the media coverage of events in the Arab states, these folk are a minority, even an endangered species. Many of the more secular minded are quite aware of this aspect of the post-authoritarian dynamic as is seen with the repeated calls in Egypt for a delay in the elections so as to allow the secularists to organize well enough to take on the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist political groups.
Mr Pawlenty's call for the next president to motivate the Saudi royal house to take the path of reform is also quite otherworldly. The House of Saud exists today because of the bargain made generations ago to link its fortunes with those of the Wahhibists. There is no way on this Earth that the austere world view of Wahhibism would continence let alone participate in any sort of reform such as mentioned by T-paw. There is no chance that the Wahhibist theology is about to go along with extending any rights to non-Muslims or see the error of Mohammad's ways regarding the status of women.
In his remarks Mr Pawlenty warns against the elections which produce results antithetical to genuine democracy, authentic freedom. He may have had Iran in mind when he said this as there is no better example of a people committing political suicide at the ballot box than that. It will take far more than support for the "reform" movement of 2009 for the verdict of self-destruction by vote to be reversed. The Iranians willingly and to the later regret of some surrendered all vestiges of political autonomy to the dictates of theology. The same may happen in at least some of the Arab states celebrated as having sounded the tocsin of freedom by Mr Pawlenty.
A central point made by the presidential aspirant deserved more emphasis. The reality of political Islam, particularly violent political Islam will be with us for many, many years to come. As long as that reality existss the US will be the major target of its hate and violence. This status will not be removed even if the US were to unilaterally withdraw from every last member state of the Organization of the Islamic Conference--or even if the US were to vote for the dissolution of Israel.
The necessary conclusion is the US must not retreat to some sort of Fortress America. Surrender to violent political Islam is not an option simply because surrender will not work. It will not immunize the US against future attacks, future terror, future war. Nothing short of every last American--all 312 million of us--facing east and banging our foreheads on the floor would grant immunity from the hatred of the groups dedicated to violent political Islam.
The US may have, as Mr Pawlenty suggested, one political party which argues for American decline, withdrawal, disengagement and isolation. He thinks that there is no need for a second. He is right. He would have been even more on target had he said that one such party is one too many.
T-paw's essay in self-definition came yesterday n a speech delivered to the Council on Foreign Relations. While represented as a tour of the horizon, the candidate focused on the Mideast, Israel, and Obama's failures of policy in the region.
There is little doubt but the Obama approach to affairs in the Mideast specifically and the world generally have been marked by far more failure than success. The primary reason for this is to be found in the world view of the Nice Young Man From Chicago with its blame-America-first core. Being a perfect academic, Mr Obama is given to avoiding action in favor of words whenever possible. Then as a matter of personality, the Clueless Guy in the Oval resembles a Pearson's Puppeteer.
(For those of you who do not read science fiction, the Pearson Puppeteer was an alien species created by the fertile mind of Larry Niven. The species is characterized by a degree of caution which surpasses the merely cowardly. The "leader" of the Puppeteers is called the Hindmost--which rather resembles in concept the idea of "leading from behind" offered recently by a member of the administration in admiring tribute to Obama's presumed statesmanship in the Libyan Affair.)
The characterization of Mr Obama's approach(es) to the "Arab Spring" and the Israeli-Palestinian Question offered by Governor Pawlenty are unexceptional. So also is his emphasis on the importance of Israel to US national interests.
Where T-paw misses the cliched bus is in his fervently expressed belief in the ability of the US to act effectively in the creation of freedom and democracy in the Mideast in the wake of the recent and ongoing tumult. He is of the view that authentic democracy, genuine freedom, real Western style government with full fledged protections of minorities including women and non-Muslims can be created and maintained over time with the assistance and support of the US.
It would be very nice if the Pawlenty vision was accurate. It is not. Whether dealing with the environment of post-authoritarian Egypt or Tunisia, or contemplating how "reforms" might be facilitated by American efforts in kingdoms such as Jordan, Morocco or, most importantly of all, Saudi Arabia, Mr Pawlenty discounts the force and universality of Islam, particularly the form of Islam embraced and promoted by Salifists and Wahhibists.
The well-meaning Pawlenty (or his advisers and speechwriters) ignore the fundamental realities of Islamic thought which focus upon the deity as the source of all legitimate law. Also overlooked is the oft-repeated meme that neither democracy nor liberty as understood in the West is compatible with the dictates of the deity contained in the sacred literature as interpreted by generations of scholars of Islamic jurisprudence. The Pawlenty stance also overlooks the fundamental orientation of Islam on the duties of the believer. Not to put an inaccurately fine point on the matter, Islam elevates duty, duty to the deity over any and all personal rights. In short there is no concept of individual rights which equates in any way with the prevalent definitions of rights and responsibilities in the US or the West generally.
The failure to comprehend accurately the impact of faith and its all-inclusive nature constitutes the rock on which Mr Pawlenty's ideas of constructive engagement with the new forces of the Arab states must founder. While the people oriented toward secular concerns and world view dominated and continue to dominate the media coverage of events in the Arab states, these folk are a minority, even an endangered species. Many of the more secular minded are quite aware of this aspect of the post-authoritarian dynamic as is seen with the repeated calls in Egypt for a delay in the elections so as to allow the secularists to organize well enough to take on the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist political groups.
Mr Pawlenty's call for the next president to motivate the Saudi royal house to take the path of reform is also quite otherworldly. The House of Saud exists today because of the bargain made generations ago to link its fortunes with those of the Wahhibists. There is no way on this Earth that the austere world view of Wahhibism would continence let alone participate in any sort of reform such as mentioned by T-paw. There is no chance that the Wahhibist theology is about to go along with extending any rights to non-Muslims or see the error of Mohammad's ways regarding the status of women.
In his remarks Mr Pawlenty warns against the elections which produce results antithetical to genuine democracy, authentic freedom. He may have had Iran in mind when he said this as there is no better example of a people committing political suicide at the ballot box than that. It will take far more than support for the "reform" movement of 2009 for the verdict of self-destruction by vote to be reversed. The Iranians willingly and to the later regret of some surrendered all vestiges of political autonomy to the dictates of theology. The same may happen in at least some of the Arab states celebrated as having sounded the tocsin of freedom by Mr Pawlenty.
A central point made by the presidential aspirant deserved more emphasis. The reality of political Islam, particularly violent political Islam will be with us for many, many years to come. As long as that reality existss the US will be the major target of its hate and violence. This status will not be removed even if the US were to unilaterally withdraw from every last member state of the Organization of the Islamic Conference--or even if the US were to vote for the dissolution of Israel.
The necessary conclusion is the US must not retreat to some sort of Fortress America. Surrender to violent political Islam is not an option simply because surrender will not work. It will not immunize the US against future attacks, future terror, future war. Nothing short of every last American--all 312 million of us--facing east and banging our foreheads on the floor would grant immunity from the hatred of the groups dedicated to violent political Islam.
The US may have, as Mr Pawlenty suggested, one political party which argues for American decline, withdrawal, disengagement and isolation. He thinks that there is no need for a second. He is right. He would have been even more on target had he said that one such party is one too many.
Monday, June 27, 2011
A Manic-Depressive Polity
In the individual the states of mania and depression can cycle in a matter of weeks or days, even hours. The collection of individuals known as a society, or as a political actor, a polity, being larger takes longer. Still the result is the same, a cycling from the peaks of mania to the depths of depressive despair. Ten years represents the cycle length for We the People.
Ten years ago the majority of We the People were exploring the delightful high country of collective mania. The dot com bust having been weathered with surprisingly little broad gauge effects, a sense of hyper confidence in both today and tomorrow had taken hold. It may not have been the unlimited sort of let-the-good-times-roll mood which typified the highest point of the Sixties, but it ran a close second. The economy was not just sound, it was rip-roaringly good. The impact of outsourcing had not yet spread through the ranks of potentially unemployed. The housing bubble was inflating rapidly driven by a mix of ill-advised governmental actions and the nice, old fashioned greed of financial institutions. Jobs, money, liquidity, the notion of one's home as an ATM with two bathrooms were all abroad in the land.
The US was at peace. Or so we thought, being tone deaf regarding the hostile religious music tooting through sections of the Mideast. Islam was simply one more religion, not the source of terror and war it would become. The president, George W. Bush, promised a foreign policy based upon both American leadership and strength and a concomitant "humility." Strong but meek constituted a view of our role in global affairs which rang well and true with most of We the People.
American preeminence, American leadership, and American restraint were seen as both appropriate and laudable by the majority of us. There was no question regarding the truth of "American exceptionalism." We were on a roll both globally and at home. There were no problems we could not solve. No challenges we could not meet almost without effort.
Flash forward a decade. Actually it is necessary to move the calender only eight years. The euphoria of mania was gone. Instead of the high of confidence, certainty, the sense of being divinely protected, divinely motivated, We the People now wallowed in the slough of despair. We were beaten, defeated, and broke.
The bubble of economic confidence had shattered into even more pieces than had the housing bubble. Net worth plummeted for many. An unconscionable number were unemployed, many having become so discouraged by prospects that they had surrendered the task of seeking employment, leaving the jobless job market completely. Two long wars had come to nothing. There was no sense of victory as there had been no reality of success in either Iraq or Afghanistan. At the same time, the institutional reaction to the very real threats of Islamic terrorism had created a permanent empire of fear.
A trip to the airport had become for many a visit to hell's anteroom. Security warnings, the loudly announced arrests of yet another wannabe Muslim martyr, the periodic successes of those who shout "Allahu akbar" as they pulled the trigger or pushed the clicker, the pervasive awareness of terror's dark shadow blocked the sunny nature of American society to a significant extent.
Then there was our domestic elite. You know the legions of our self-appointed best and brightest, the shining lights of politics, the media, academia. The constant refrain from all these fine folks--including the president of the United States, a academic and political elitist of the first water--was that We the People and our country were in decline, a deserved decline. We were told by both word and deed that if there was such a thing as "American exceptionalism" it was only negative.
Our "betters" of the hoi olligoi assured us that other cultures were every bit as good and meritorious as our own. We were told that Islam--a religion where there was authority for the stoning of women, the murder of homosexuals, the existence of a permanent state of war with all infidels, the use of lies to mislead those who were not Muslim--was every bit as moral as all other belief systems. Against the evidence of the senses and logic, our "betters" hectored us to the effect that those Muslims who bombed, who stoned, who flew jet airliners into buildings, who used eight year olds as bomb mules, were not really, really Islamic but rather "misunderstanders" or 'hijackers" of the faith.
The economy was in the tank. The combination of outsourcing, of moving manufacturing offshore to, primus inter pares, China, very poorly conceived and executed government programs and policies, and, not least, the inability or unwillingness of many within We the People to answer creatively a single question, "how much is enough?" put the domestic economy down for the count.
Years of practicing the very politics of self-destruction, governments of both parties had competed in bribing the polity with federal give aways subsidies, and tax cuts. The combination was, as had been predicted by not only practitioners of the dismal science--economics--but all those of relatively clear vision, fatal to the federal budget and provided the killing deficit. Financial collapse bred economic collapse which in turn made the deficit crunch lurch to the very verge of terminal collapse.
And still the wars lingered on. By the end of the decade which started on 9/11/01 the US was by and large out of Iraq--although this June has been the most deadly for our forces in over two years. We know that the sacrifices of irreplaceable lives and hundreds of billions of (hopefully) recoverable dollars has bought nothing worth the price. Iraq is caught in ever increasing sectarian violence with Shiites killing Sunnis in wholesale lots in Anbar province. Bombs and snipers compete for attention in Baghdad. The government is caught in stasis, a stasis of sectarianism and personal rivalry. The only point where the majority agree is that Americans are bad and Iranians are good.
In Afghanistan the strategic morass had resolved itself sufficiently to show that the combination of nocturnal raids and constant pressure was working on the military level to progressively reduce the will and ability of Taliban and the Haqqani network to wage war. At the same time all of the nation-building efforts have proven a failure. The government and its security forces remain inept, corrupt, and monuments to inefficiency and illegitimacy. What Taliban and the rest are losing on the battlefield, they are recouping with interest on the governmental level.
The totality of the Afghanistan GDP less three percent is provided by American and other foreign origin military and economic aid. The vast tsunami of money coupled with a lack of financial oversight has given the endemic culture of corruption a massive boost. This, in turn, has reduced the appeal of both the central government and its foreign sponsors to the average Afghan--particularly if he has not been able to grasp a handful of the goodies as they flowed by.
Last week President Obama delivered the most sickening speech ever heard or read by the Geek. His we-have-been-bested in Afghanistan remarks were a potpourri of lies and half truths which beggar description and surpass imagination. Even though he has committed the US to withdrawing its forces prematurely, this was not enough for others within his elite company. Nancy Pelosi, a not inconsiderable presence even after last November's election, has demanded an even faster schedule of pull out. In this she has been joined by a number of deficit hawk Republicans.
There is no doubt that the majority of We the People want out of Afghanistan ASAP! The absence of success, even the absence of a plausible reason for our continued presence could have no other effect. The Obama administration like its predecessor has never articulated a plausible, rational, understandable set of reasons for our continued efforts in Afghanistan. Often proclaimed the "good war" or the "necessary war," the US and its allies have never stated a clear goal for our operations, instead producing loads of fine sounding but vapid mood music about democracy, good government, stability, and human rights.
The mood music about Afghanistan as was the case with the identical sounds regarding Iraq have never been believable to or believed by many, even most, of We the People. Without saying so in a direct, blunt way, it is clear that We the People have not and do not trust the so-called elite to be honest with us concerning intentions and results in these wars. The distrust felt by so many of us came forth regarding a military commitment in Libya. We may have been quite sympathetic with the rebels and their goal of ridding their country of the noxious Gaddafi family, but there was no way we would put our people in harm's way on the behalf of the rebels.
Had Obama or his predecessor been true leaders, they would have put forth believable reasons for our efforts in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Libya. The failure of each to undertake this basic presidential task successfully joined with the shocks of economic collapse and the reality of the never ending threat of terror to erode the manic mood of decade's beginning.
There is one more reason for the awesome mood shift of the past ten years. The result of the years of indoctrination in the American educational system from pre-school to grad school. The blame-America-first generation which emerged from the Sixties has controlled the public educational system for two decades and more now. The repeated message, built into curricula and handbooks of instructions is and has been profoundly anti-American in its orientation. The end result is a large and growing segment of We the People is predisposed to think the worst about their country, their government, and the actions of both, past and present alike.
Millions of minds have been conditioned by twelve and more years of education to believe the US had much to apologize for. The same minds believe the US is not capable of doing good for itself or others in the world. At the same time they have been oriented to reject the notions of national or cultural exceptionalism--or even superiority. The US is simply one country among many, no better than any--and worse, much worse than most. In a real and basic sense there are millions in our midst who have been raised to believe that we deserve nothing but failure and defeat as redress for our earlier sins, our previous arrogance, our long standing exploitation of others.
The synergy between elite and the common folk is perfect. The elite, a product of the same blame-America-first orientation as their slightly younger non-elite fellow citizens has preached and lectured, exhorted and hectored on the subject of American wrong doing, American unexceptionalism, American exploitation, the beauties of the multicultural and multilateral, the evils of going it alone, of acting to protect and advance national interest. The success achieved over the past years is attributable not to the persuasiveness or inherent truth of the message but rather to the propensity of the auditors, the children of the past thirty or forty years to believe what they hear and read.
The US and We the People have faced threats and challenges equaling or surpassing those today. In the past we have not surrendered to either. We have not succumbed to depression before. It is different today simply because the "kids" of the Sixties particularly those who were activists of one sort or another became successful beyond their wildest dreams when they took over the educational system of the US over the course of twenty years. Because of this success, the victory of the blame-America-first ideology, We the People now have lost confidence not only in our institutions and actions but in our very selves. We no longer trust ourselves and our ability to handle life's challenges and threats.
When looking at the palpable decline of the US, at the national nadir of depression, the old saying of Pogo is more true than ever before--"We have met the enemy and he is us."
Ten years ago the majority of We the People were exploring the delightful high country of collective mania. The dot com bust having been weathered with surprisingly little broad gauge effects, a sense of hyper confidence in both today and tomorrow had taken hold. It may not have been the unlimited sort of let-the-good-times-roll mood which typified the highest point of the Sixties, but it ran a close second. The economy was not just sound, it was rip-roaringly good. The impact of outsourcing had not yet spread through the ranks of potentially unemployed. The housing bubble was inflating rapidly driven by a mix of ill-advised governmental actions and the nice, old fashioned greed of financial institutions. Jobs, money, liquidity, the notion of one's home as an ATM with two bathrooms were all abroad in the land.
The US was at peace. Or so we thought, being tone deaf regarding the hostile religious music tooting through sections of the Mideast. Islam was simply one more religion, not the source of terror and war it would become. The president, George W. Bush, promised a foreign policy based upon both American leadership and strength and a concomitant "humility." Strong but meek constituted a view of our role in global affairs which rang well and true with most of We the People.
American preeminence, American leadership, and American restraint were seen as both appropriate and laudable by the majority of us. There was no question regarding the truth of "American exceptionalism." We were on a roll both globally and at home. There were no problems we could not solve. No challenges we could not meet almost without effort.
Flash forward a decade. Actually it is necessary to move the calender only eight years. The euphoria of mania was gone. Instead of the high of confidence, certainty, the sense of being divinely protected, divinely motivated, We the People now wallowed in the slough of despair. We were beaten, defeated, and broke.
The bubble of economic confidence had shattered into even more pieces than had the housing bubble. Net worth plummeted for many. An unconscionable number were unemployed, many having become so discouraged by prospects that they had surrendered the task of seeking employment, leaving the jobless job market completely. Two long wars had come to nothing. There was no sense of victory as there had been no reality of success in either Iraq or Afghanistan. At the same time, the institutional reaction to the very real threats of Islamic terrorism had created a permanent empire of fear.
A trip to the airport had become for many a visit to hell's anteroom. Security warnings, the loudly announced arrests of yet another wannabe Muslim martyr, the periodic successes of those who shout "Allahu akbar" as they pulled the trigger or pushed the clicker, the pervasive awareness of terror's dark shadow blocked the sunny nature of American society to a significant extent.
Then there was our domestic elite. You know the legions of our self-appointed best and brightest, the shining lights of politics, the media, academia. The constant refrain from all these fine folks--including the president of the United States, a academic and political elitist of the first water--was that We the People and our country were in decline, a deserved decline. We were told by both word and deed that if there was such a thing as "American exceptionalism" it was only negative.
Our "betters" of the hoi olligoi assured us that other cultures were every bit as good and meritorious as our own. We were told that Islam--a religion where there was authority for the stoning of women, the murder of homosexuals, the existence of a permanent state of war with all infidels, the use of lies to mislead those who were not Muslim--was every bit as moral as all other belief systems. Against the evidence of the senses and logic, our "betters" hectored us to the effect that those Muslims who bombed, who stoned, who flew jet airliners into buildings, who used eight year olds as bomb mules, were not really, really Islamic but rather "misunderstanders" or 'hijackers" of the faith.
The economy was in the tank. The combination of outsourcing, of moving manufacturing offshore to, primus inter pares, China, very poorly conceived and executed government programs and policies, and, not least, the inability or unwillingness of many within We the People to answer creatively a single question, "how much is enough?" put the domestic economy down for the count.
Years of practicing the very politics of self-destruction, governments of both parties had competed in bribing the polity with federal give aways subsidies, and tax cuts. The combination was, as had been predicted by not only practitioners of the dismal science--economics--but all those of relatively clear vision, fatal to the federal budget and provided the killing deficit. Financial collapse bred economic collapse which in turn made the deficit crunch lurch to the very verge of terminal collapse.
And still the wars lingered on. By the end of the decade which started on 9/11/01 the US was by and large out of Iraq--although this June has been the most deadly for our forces in over two years. We know that the sacrifices of irreplaceable lives and hundreds of billions of (hopefully) recoverable dollars has bought nothing worth the price. Iraq is caught in ever increasing sectarian violence with Shiites killing Sunnis in wholesale lots in Anbar province. Bombs and snipers compete for attention in Baghdad. The government is caught in stasis, a stasis of sectarianism and personal rivalry. The only point where the majority agree is that Americans are bad and Iranians are good.
In Afghanistan the strategic morass had resolved itself sufficiently to show that the combination of nocturnal raids and constant pressure was working on the military level to progressively reduce the will and ability of Taliban and the Haqqani network to wage war. At the same time all of the nation-building efforts have proven a failure. The government and its security forces remain inept, corrupt, and monuments to inefficiency and illegitimacy. What Taliban and the rest are losing on the battlefield, they are recouping with interest on the governmental level.
The totality of the Afghanistan GDP less three percent is provided by American and other foreign origin military and economic aid. The vast tsunami of money coupled with a lack of financial oversight has given the endemic culture of corruption a massive boost. This, in turn, has reduced the appeal of both the central government and its foreign sponsors to the average Afghan--particularly if he has not been able to grasp a handful of the goodies as they flowed by.
Last week President Obama delivered the most sickening speech ever heard or read by the Geek. His we-have-been-bested in Afghanistan remarks were a potpourri of lies and half truths which beggar description and surpass imagination. Even though he has committed the US to withdrawing its forces prematurely, this was not enough for others within his elite company. Nancy Pelosi, a not inconsiderable presence even after last November's election, has demanded an even faster schedule of pull out. In this she has been joined by a number of deficit hawk Republicans.
There is no doubt that the majority of We the People want out of Afghanistan ASAP! The absence of success, even the absence of a plausible reason for our continued presence could have no other effect. The Obama administration like its predecessor has never articulated a plausible, rational, understandable set of reasons for our continued efforts in Afghanistan. Often proclaimed the "good war" or the "necessary war," the US and its allies have never stated a clear goal for our operations, instead producing loads of fine sounding but vapid mood music about democracy, good government, stability, and human rights.
The mood music about Afghanistan as was the case with the identical sounds regarding Iraq have never been believable to or believed by many, even most, of We the People. Without saying so in a direct, blunt way, it is clear that We the People have not and do not trust the so-called elite to be honest with us concerning intentions and results in these wars. The distrust felt by so many of us came forth regarding a military commitment in Libya. We may have been quite sympathetic with the rebels and their goal of ridding their country of the noxious Gaddafi family, but there was no way we would put our people in harm's way on the behalf of the rebels.
Had Obama or his predecessor been true leaders, they would have put forth believable reasons for our efforts in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Libya. The failure of each to undertake this basic presidential task successfully joined with the shocks of economic collapse and the reality of the never ending threat of terror to erode the manic mood of decade's beginning.
There is one more reason for the awesome mood shift of the past ten years. The result of the years of indoctrination in the American educational system from pre-school to grad school. The blame-America-first generation which emerged from the Sixties has controlled the public educational system for two decades and more now. The repeated message, built into curricula and handbooks of instructions is and has been profoundly anti-American in its orientation. The end result is a large and growing segment of We the People is predisposed to think the worst about their country, their government, and the actions of both, past and present alike.
Millions of minds have been conditioned by twelve and more years of education to believe the US had much to apologize for. The same minds believe the US is not capable of doing good for itself or others in the world. At the same time they have been oriented to reject the notions of national or cultural exceptionalism--or even superiority. The US is simply one country among many, no better than any--and worse, much worse than most. In a real and basic sense there are millions in our midst who have been raised to believe that we deserve nothing but failure and defeat as redress for our earlier sins, our previous arrogance, our long standing exploitation of others.
The synergy between elite and the common folk is perfect. The elite, a product of the same blame-America-first orientation as their slightly younger non-elite fellow citizens has preached and lectured, exhorted and hectored on the subject of American wrong doing, American unexceptionalism, American exploitation, the beauties of the multicultural and multilateral, the evils of going it alone, of acting to protect and advance national interest. The success achieved over the past years is attributable not to the persuasiveness or inherent truth of the message but rather to the propensity of the auditors, the children of the past thirty or forty years to believe what they hear and read.
The US and We the People have faced threats and challenges equaling or surpassing those today. In the past we have not surrendered to either. We have not succumbed to depression before. It is different today simply because the "kids" of the Sixties particularly those who were activists of one sort or another became successful beyond their wildest dreams when they took over the educational system of the US over the course of twenty years. Because of this success, the victory of the blame-America-first ideology, We the People now have lost confidence not only in our institutions and actions but in our very selves. We no longer trust ourselves and our ability to handle life's challenges and threats.
When looking at the palpable decline of the US, at the national nadir of depression, the old saying of Pogo is more true than ever before--"We have met the enemy and he is us."
Thursday, June 23, 2011
The Beauty Of Asymmetrical War
Last night in his announcement of his intended draw down of American forces in Afghanistan, President Obama underscored the beauty, the appeal of asymmetrical war for those who put their strategic fortunes in its ample basket. Stripped of its camouflage, cover, and concealment the president's words conveyed the simple appeal of asymmetrical war--it works.
Asymmetrical war worked in Afghanistan. That is obvious. The US has lost. And announced that defeat in the verbiage of declaring victory. The president made all the expected genuflections before the alter of economic necessity. He took the position that now was the time for "nation-building" here in the US. But, under this convenient shelter, the reality remains. The reality is blunt. The US, We the People, the government which purports to represent us and seek to protect our national interests abroad, has lost the political will to continue the war.
This, my friends, is the goal in all asymmetrical wars. Defeat the numerically and technologically superior enemy by progressively exhausting his political will to continue. Taliban, the Haqqani network, even the not-quite-pathetic remnants of al-Qaeda as well as their supporters and sponsors in Pakistan have succeeded in so enervating the political will of the US that we are tossing in the sponge even as we teeter on the edge of military success.
The announcement does nothing to advance the progress of the very tentative talks with Taliban representatives. History in both the Korean and Vietnamese wars shows that diplomacy of talking depends for progress let alone success upon the diplomacy of the gun. The battlefield and negotiating table are connected head, shoulder, and hip. Only the continued demonstration of political will in combat serves to convince the talkers at the table that they had best make the best deal possible as quickly as possible lest they lose everything on the bullet raked fields of battle.
Given that the only campaign of vital interest to President Obama is Campaign 2012, his decision to undercut the efforts of the past two years in Afghanistan and declare the losses of dollars (replaceable) and hundreds of lives (irreplaceable) to be written off in fact if not in rhetoric was to be expected. He would have announced an even faster pull out, such as that demanded by his progressive base, if that move would not have simultaneously cost him potential votes among the rest of the electorate. As it was, his decision was informed far more by the polls showing the escalating war weariness among We the People than the expert advice of the commanders on the ground.
Ten years ago the thought that the US would suffer one more defeat in an asymmetrical war was almost unthinkable. Within the military there was a widespread belief that the phrase "no more Vietnams" meant or at least implied that the US would never again engage in an intervention or, if we did, it would be of the very limited sort typified by the operations in Kosovo. Overall, the men in uniform thought that the so-called Powell Doctrine would prevail. No significant military commitment absent an overwhelming force and full domestic support.
The small number of people both in and out of uniform who had spent the decades of the Eighties and Nineties studying asymmetrical war under its several different names--unconventional war, interventionary operations, limited war, counterinsurgency--were not so optimistic. The end of the cold war had liberated a number of pressures which would result in small, nasty wars some of which would put American interests in peril. At the same time the effects of the Iranian Islamic Revolution and the ongoing Arab-Israeli war served to promote the growth of violent political Islam. The net result was the conclusion that the US would be in an asymmetrical conflict with an Islamist adversary within the next ten years--and, neither the military nor the civilian government would be ready to fight that inevitable war.
The past ten years have shown, as the Geek adumbrated in yesterday's post, the power of asymmetrical war in a way both dramatic and unmistakable. Now that the power of that sort of war has been underscored by President Obama's message of American defeat, asymmetrical conflict will be more common around the world at the same time as the US will be decreasingly willing to take up the challenge.
Now, like the coach sez, "let's get back to basics."
One basic about asymmetrical war is that it is nothing new. Over the sanguine centuries of warfare--defined as the centrally directed, organized application of violence to a political goal by a state, a pretender to statehood or a non-state actor--asymmetrical wars have been as numerous as peer-to-peer conflicts. Insurgencies, both offensive (revolutionary) and defensive (separatist,) have been and continue to be asymmetrical in nature. All peacekeeping or peace imposition (stability) operations are inherently asymmetrical. The increasing use of proxies, the growth in sponsored transnational terrorism, the rise of narco-warfare, all of these constitute sub-sets of asymmetrical wars. All will be common in the future for reasons to be considered in later posts.
A second basic about asymmetrical war is that it is identical to conventional peer-to-peer conflicts in one essential respect. The intent is to bring about a better state of peace by bending the enemy to your political will. The difference, a very critical one, between the peer-to-peer war and its asymmetrical kin is found in the means of bending the enemy to your will. The side initiating the asymmetrical conflict seeks to attack and progressively reduce the target's political will and social cohesiveness by imposing costs which are politically and economically unacceptable while remaining tolerable to the attacker.
Here is the takeaway, the nitty-gritty which was not understood ten years ago but is blindingly apparent today: The goal of al-Qaeda and similar entities was to inflict such politically and economically unacceptable costs on the US employing means which capitalized on strengths inherent to Muslims such as to compel the US to accede to a set of political demands. Based upon the American responses to earlier attacks, the expectation that the attacks of 9/11 would be sufficient to force the US to bend to Arab political will was not lunatic in nature.
The weak and ineffective responses by the US to the series of terror strikes on American targets both overseas and domestically convinced Osama bin Laden and others (including some holding positions of authority in Pakistani agencies) that the proposed 9/11 attacks would be effective at low risk for retaliation. While the Clinton administration was correct to have responded to the truck bomb attack on the World Trade Center as a law enforcement matter, its limp wristed reactions to later attacks, Khobar Towers, the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as well as the water borne hit on the USS Cole were not only too little, too late, they were de facto admissions of impotency. Each demonstrated the power resident in asymmetry. It was only logical to anticipate the same sort of non-linearity when nineteen good Muslims converted commercial aircraft into manned cruise missiles.
Bin Laden and company blew it. They had misjudged the American character. They didn't understand the Pearl Harbor syndrome and its potency in the collective American mind. Instead of the expected flight of easily evaded cruise missiles, the Mighty Men of the Great Sheik got a reasonable imitation of a military full court press.
Now comes one of the most, perhaps the most, thoroughly delicious ironies known to the Geek (a devoted collector of historical ironies.) The Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Neocon Ninny administration blew their phase of the asymmetrical war as much or more than bin Laden blew his. They failed to understand what previous leaders had discovered. In the counter strike period of an asymmetrical war, one uses overwhelming force quickly and decisively. The superior force must be employed so as to bring the speedy and complete destruction of the inferior.
The archaic, politically impolite but quite accurate term for this counter strike is "punitive expedition." The goal is to demonstrate political will as well as military supremacy by obliterating the enemy who mounted the attack while "punishing" what and whomsoever supported, facilitated, or gave safe haven to the attacker. The purpose of the exercise is not judicial in nature.
One is not interested in bringing an alleged offender before the bar of justice, but to eliminate him. With respect to those who aid, abet, and protect the enemy, the purpose is to inflict an unacceptable level of economic, social, and political damage upon him. The superior force uses his capacities to squash the offensive but inferior one in a manner akin to the Monty Python giant foot descending irresistibly from the clouds.
The response of the attacked but superior target is quick, brutal, and decisive. The word "brutal" may be offensive to today's hyper-sensitive ears but in the final analysis it is a far more humane approach than would be the ineffective efforts at "nation-building" embarked upon by the clueless bunch in the Bush/Cheney White House and continued until last night by the successor Obama administration.
Afghanistan has been termed the "graveyard of empires" not because the empires lacked the means to successfully defeat and occupy the land and people of the region but rather because the "empires", British, Russian, and American, have lost their political will in the face of the rugged physical and, even more, the spiky human terrain of the place. All, and, most particularly, the American, efforts have foundered because the invader has lacked the political will necessary or the correct strategic and operational concepts to prevail.
The takeaway here is simple. When entering an asymmetrical war, the US must not only employ sufficient means quickly and firmly, it must limit its goals to those which can be achieved by purely military means. These goals are few and easily defined. Military force can topple a regime, but it cannot build one. It can impose a peace but it cannot create stability. It can punish a malefactor but it cannot rehabilitate one. It can back the diplomacy of talk, but it cannot replace it. Most importantly, military force can terminate hostilities, but it cannot resolve the underlying conflict which resulted in the outbreak of hostilities.
Whether any of us like the idea or not, there will be future challenges in the area of asymmetrical war. The specter of transnational terror has not left the world. Nor has the threat posed by violent political Islam. Even if peace breaks out in Afghanistan, there are plenty of other locations where asymmetrical attacks might be planned and mounted. There is Yemen. There is Somalia. There is Sudan. There is Pakistan. Any or all of these might become necessary targets of an American counter strike. So also might a number of other failed or failing states.
There is more to be learned from a defeat resolutely and honestly studied than a victory celebrated. Now that the president has announced an American defeat (or, if it makes you feel better, an incomplete success) in Afghanistan, the time has come to take a very long, very hard, and very honest look at what was done wrong--and right--in Afghanistan. We must be prepared to do the job right the next time out, for there will be a next time regardless of the wishes of any of us.
Or, there is an alternative. We can build a very high and very thick wall around the US and pretend the rest of the world isn't out there.
Asymmetrical war worked in Afghanistan. That is obvious. The US has lost. And announced that defeat in the verbiage of declaring victory. The president made all the expected genuflections before the alter of economic necessity. He took the position that now was the time for "nation-building" here in the US. But, under this convenient shelter, the reality remains. The reality is blunt. The US, We the People, the government which purports to represent us and seek to protect our national interests abroad, has lost the political will to continue the war.
This, my friends, is the goal in all asymmetrical wars. Defeat the numerically and technologically superior enemy by progressively exhausting his political will to continue. Taliban, the Haqqani network, even the not-quite-pathetic remnants of al-Qaeda as well as their supporters and sponsors in Pakistan have succeeded in so enervating the political will of the US that we are tossing in the sponge even as we teeter on the edge of military success.
The announcement does nothing to advance the progress of the very tentative talks with Taliban representatives. History in both the Korean and Vietnamese wars shows that diplomacy of talking depends for progress let alone success upon the diplomacy of the gun. The battlefield and negotiating table are connected head, shoulder, and hip. Only the continued demonstration of political will in combat serves to convince the talkers at the table that they had best make the best deal possible as quickly as possible lest they lose everything on the bullet raked fields of battle.
Given that the only campaign of vital interest to President Obama is Campaign 2012, his decision to undercut the efforts of the past two years in Afghanistan and declare the losses of dollars (replaceable) and hundreds of lives (irreplaceable) to be written off in fact if not in rhetoric was to be expected. He would have announced an even faster pull out, such as that demanded by his progressive base, if that move would not have simultaneously cost him potential votes among the rest of the electorate. As it was, his decision was informed far more by the polls showing the escalating war weariness among We the People than the expert advice of the commanders on the ground.
Ten years ago the thought that the US would suffer one more defeat in an asymmetrical war was almost unthinkable. Within the military there was a widespread belief that the phrase "no more Vietnams" meant or at least implied that the US would never again engage in an intervention or, if we did, it would be of the very limited sort typified by the operations in Kosovo. Overall, the men in uniform thought that the so-called Powell Doctrine would prevail. No significant military commitment absent an overwhelming force and full domestic support.
The small number of people both in and out of uniform who had spent the decades of the Eighties and Nineties studying asymmetrical war under its several different names--unconventional war, interventionary operations, limited war, counterinsurgency--were not so optimistic. The end of the cold war had liberated a number of pressures which would result in small, nasty wars some of which would put American interests in peril. At the same time the effects of the Iranian Islamic Revolution and the ongoing Arab-Israeli war served to promote the growth of violent political Islam. The net result was the conclusion that the US would be in an asymmetrical conflict with an Islamist adversary within the next ten years--and, neither the military nor the civilian government would be ready to fight that inevitable war.
The past ten years have shown, as the Geek adumbrated in yesterday's post, the power of asymmetrical war in a way both dramatic and unmistakable. Now that the power of that sort of war has been underscored by President Obama's message of American defeat, asymmetrical conflict will be more common around the world at the same time as the US will be decreasingly willing to take up the challenge.
Now, like the coach sez, "let's get back to basics."
One basic about asymmetrical war is that it is nothing new. Over the sanguine centuries of warfare--defined as the centrally directed, organized application of violence to a political goal by a state, a pretender to statehood or a non-state actor--asymmetrical wars have been as numerous as peer-to-peer conflicts. Insurgencies, both offensive (revolutionary) and defensive (separatist,) have been and continue to be asymmetrical in nature. All peacekeeping or peace imposition (stability) operations are inherently asymmetrical. The increasing use of proxies, the growth in sponsored transnational terrorism, the rise of narco-warfare, all of these constitute sub-sets of asymmetrical wars. All will be common in the future for reasons to be considered in later posts.
A second basic about asymmetrical war is that it is identical to conventional peer-to-peer conflicts in one essential respect. The intent is to bring about a better state of peace by bending the enemy to your political will. The difference, a very critical one, between the peer-to-peer war and its asymmetrical kin is found in the means of bending the enemy to your will. The side initiating the asymmetrical conflict seeks to attack and progressively reduce the target's political will and social cohesiveness by imposing costs which are politically and economically unacceptable while remaining tolerable to the attacker.
Here is the takeaway, the nitty-gritty which was not understood ten years ago but is blindingly apparent today: The goal of al-Qaeda and similar entities was to inflict such politically and economically unacceptable costs on the US employing means which capitalized on strengths inherent to Muslims such as to compel the US to accede to a set of political demands. Based upon the American responses to earlier attacks, the expectation that the attacks of 9/11 would be sufficient to force the US to bend to Arab political will was not lunatic in nature.
The weak and ineffective responses by the US to the series of terror strikes on American targets both overseas and domestically convinced Osama bin Laden and others (including some holding positions of authority in Pakistani agencies) that the proposed 9/11 attacks would be effective at low risk for retaliation. While the Clinton administration was correct to have responded to the truck bomb attack on the World Trade Center as a law enforcement matter, its limp wristed reactions to later attacks, Khobar Towers, the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as well as the water borne hit on the USS Cole were not only too little, too late, they were de facto admissions of impotency. Each demonstrated the power resident in asymmetry. It was only logical to anticipate the same sort of non-linearity when nineteen good Muslims converted commercial aircraft into manned cruise missiles.
Bin Laden and company blew it. They had misjudged the American character. They didn't understand the Pearl Harbor syndrome and its potency in the collective American mind. Instead of the expected flight of easily evaded cruise missiles, the Mighty Men of the Great Sheik got a reasonable imitation of a military full court press.
Now comes one of the most, perhaps the most, thoroughly delicious ironies known to the Geek (a devoted collector of historical ironies.) The Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Neocon Ninny administration blew their phase of the asymmetrical war as much or more than bin Laden blew his. They failed to understand what previous leaders had discovered. In the counter strike period of an asymmetrical war, one uses overwhelming force quickly and decisively. The superior force must be employed so as to bring the speedy and complete destruction of the inferior.
The archaic, politically impolite but quite accurate term for this counter strike is "punitive expedition." The goal is to demonstrate political will as well as military supremacy by obliterating the enemy who mounted the attack while "punishing" what and whomsoever supported, facilitated, or gave safe haven to the attacker. The purpose of the exercise is not judicial in nature.
One is not interested in bringing an alleged offender before the bar of justice, but to eliminate him. With respect to those who aid, abet, and protect the enemy, the purpose is to inflict an unacceptable level of economic, social, and political damage upon him. The superior force uses his capacities to squash the offensive but inferior one in a manner akin to the Monty Python giant foot descending irresistibly from the clouds.
The response of the attacked but superior target is quick, brutal, and decisive. The word "brutal" may be offensive to today's hyper-sensitive ears but in the final analysis it is a far more humane approach than would be the ineffective efforts at "nation-building" embarked upon by the clueless bunch in the Bush/Cheney White House and continued until last night by the successor Obama administration.
Afghanistan has been termed the "graveyard of empires" not because the empires lacked the means to successfully defeat and occupy the land and people of the region but rather because the "empires", British, Russian, and American, have lost their political will in the face of the rugged physical and, even more, the spiky human terrain of the place. All, and, most particularly, the American, efforts have foundered because the invader has lacked the political will necessary or the correct strategic and operational concepts to prevail.
The takeaway here is simple. When entering an asymmetrical war, the US must not only employ sufficient means quickly and firmly, it must limit its goals to those which can be achieved by purely military means. These goals are few and easily defined. Military force can topple a regime, but it cannot build one. It can impose a peace but it cannot create stability. It can punish a malefactor but it cannot rehabilitate one. It can back the diplomacy of talk, but it cannot replace it. Most importantly, military force can terminate hostilities, but it cannot resolve the underlying conflict which resulted in the outbreak of hostilities.
Whether any of us like the idea or not, there will be future challenges in the area of asymmetrical war. The specter of transnational terror has not left the world. Nor has the threat posed by violent political Islam. Even if peace breaks out in Afghanistan, there are plenty of other locations where asymmetrical attacks might be planned and mounted. There is Yemen. There is Somalia. There is Sudan. There is Pakistan. Any or all of these might become necessary targets of an American counter strike. So also might a number of other failed or failing states.
There is more to be learned from a defeat resolutely and honestly studied than a victory celebrated. Now that the president has announced an American defeat (or, if it makes you feel better, an incomplete success) in Afghanistan, the time has come to take a very long, very hard, and very honest look at what was done wrong--and right--in Afghanistan. We must be prepared to do the job right the next time out, for there will be a next time regardless of the wishes of any of us.
Or, there is an alternative. We can build a very high and very thick wall around the US and pretend the rest of the world isn't out there.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Cranking Up A (Too) Rapid Pull Out From Afghanistan
Reportedly the Obama administration is ginning up a public relations effort oriented at justifying a very rapid withdrawal of significant combat forces from Afghanistan. Jerking out a giant posse of grunts from the Land Of Karzai will not only meet with widespread approval within the war weary American public, it will be greeted with hosannas on the part of Obama's base, particularly the congressional contingent where a very other worldly congresswoman has demanded that fifty thousand trigger pullers be brought back to CONUS ASAP.
The thought of a faster withdrawal will not only fit with the recently revealed conversations between the US and representatives of Mullah Omar but also with the latest expression of distaste for the presence of the "foreign forces" delivered by Hamid Karzai. The US should be talking with Taliban. The participation of this group in a comprehensive peace agreement is fundamental. Given that Mullah Omar has long repented of his ill-advised extension of "Muslim hospitality" to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, there is strong reason to conclude that the old leadership of the group is ready to exchange the politics of the AK-47 for a less robust means of acquiring and exercising power.
Karzai is comfortable with Taliban as he and they share language and cultural ties as well as religion. Taliban without the al-Qaeda dimension is no threat to Pushtu dominance. The other ethnic and cultural groups which make up the Afghan mosaic are not so sure. And, considering the memories of Taliban's repressive regime, there is no reason for women to support any role for Taliban in the future. However, it is probable that Mullah Omar and his generational colleagues learned some key lessons in the limits of theocracy and may well be less objectionable in their attitudes and actions regarding women, education, and popular culture. In any event, the US is well advised to abandon the hopelessly misguided Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Neocon Ninny notion of creating a modern Western style nation-state in Afghanistan.
The necessity of a political solution including Taliban is recognized and has been so for years by all observers well oriented in time and place. The administration's new add-on in justifying a rapid and steep draw down in US combat forces centers on the effectiveness to date of our efforts to destroy al-Qaeda's organizational integrity and efficiency. There is no doubt but the Predator strikes in the FATA along with special forces operations including but not limited to the Great Abbottabad Raid have severely degraded al-Qaeda's upper and mid-level management. The organization has been disrupted severely.
This does not mean al-Qaeda no longer exists. It does. Nor does it mean that al-Qaeda no longer represents a threat to the US or other civilized states. It does. Rather, the point of the administration's argument is simply that al-Qaeda in Afghanistan no longer is central to the panoply of threats presented by assorted advocates of violent political Islam. This is true.
It is also far less relevant than the administration would have any of us believe.
There are two ramifications of an overly rapid, overly steep withdrawal which the administration does not credit. The first is the recuperative power of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan given the ready availability of support from Pakistan and the unwillingness of the Pakistani military or intelligence service to block that support. The second is the power of history.
The US must not cut and run in a way which will allow the advocates of violent political Islam and their supporters or apologists to write a narrative in which the centerpiece is the assertion that the Mighty Warriors of the One True Faith defeated the infidel crusaders. It was the willingness and ability of Osama bin Laden and others to claim victory over the Soviet forces which provided the original legitimacy for al-Qaeda and other similar groups--including the Taliban of Mullah Omar.
The Islamist version of history is not only specious, it is a total fabrication giving credit to Arab fighters which was and is totally undeserved. Insofar as anyone defeated the Red Army, it was the Afghans--and the support they received from the US. Afghan courage, blood, and endurance along with American technology defeated the Soviets--as much as they were defeated by external pressures. The down and dirty truth was that the Soviets were not defeated. They simply gave up. This loss of political will was the made-in-the-Kremlin equivalent of the American self-inflicted defeat in Vietnam. In a very real sense, the Afghan fighters simply had to keep on fighting, refuse to admit defeat until the Soviets packed it in. This, of course, is the basic cause of any insurgent's success right on back to the patriot "victory" in the American War of Independence.
The Arab hijacking of reality in the according-to-Osama interpretation of history was a work of fiction which prevailed simply because nobody challenged it at the time. The cause driven bin Laden invented a tale and kept telling it to all who would listen until one fine day it was taken, at least in the Arabian Peninsula, as the gospel truth. The tale-telling sheik told his tale of faith and fighting so well and so often that the money and recruits flowed in. Osama's version of history may not have been a Big Lie as Dr Goebbels understood the term, but it turned out to be a Great Lie, the greatest lie of the last decades of the Twentieth Century.
The bin Laden approach to creative fiction as history recommends itself to any and all advocates of violent political Islam today--and into the future. If the American forces are withdrawn hastily and in too great a number, the next bin Laden will claim that the infidels were militarily defeated by the Holy Fighters Of The Koran.
It will not be a true and accurate history to be sure. That does not and will not matter. It will be the history that many Muslims will want to believe. It will be history as they deeply wish it to have been. There is no Islamic concept of history as we in the West understand the concept. Rather, all history is in Muslim eyes a record of great men doing great deeds on behalf of the faith and in the pure name of the faith. Thus the defeat of the infidel crusaders by the followers of Islam, the followers of the "martyred" Great and Learned Osama bin Laden will be believed eagerly and fervently by many future recruits to the cause of violent political Islam.
This powerful ground truth is not and will not be accepted by the Deep Thinkers in and around the Oval. Yet it exists as a reality, a reality as potent and long lasting in effect as the American deficit and the war weariness of We the People. In the contest between a work of fiction, a myth on the one hand, and mere facts, mind numbing statistics, the aggregate of countless after action reports, the first will defeat the second--particularly when the myth meets the needs of people who perceive themselves to have been exploited, marginalized, trivialized even though they are the members of a community promised global dominance by the deity and his prophet.
Wars are ultimately won and lost not on the physical battlefield but on the ineffable terrain of the human mind. It is this foundation truth that gave the Osama bin Laden fictional history of how the Arab true believers defeated the Red Army its power and persistence. It is this foundation truth which will give some future myth maker vast potency when he creates the fiction holding the infidel Americans were defeated by the blood, courage, and conviction of the Men of Islam.
Contrary to a prevalent American belief, history does matter. It matters far, far more than money and elections--even the reelection of Barack Obama.
The thought of a faster withdrawal will not only fit with the recently revealed conversations between the US and representatives of Mullah Omar but also with the latest expression of distaste for the presence of the "foreign forces" delivered by Hamid Karzai. The US should be talking with Taliban. The participation of this group in a comprehensive peace agreement is fundamental. Given that Mullah Omar has long repented of his ill-advised extension of "Muslim hospitality" to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, there is strong reason to conclude that the old leadership of the group is ready to exchange the politics of the AK-47 for a less robust means of acquiring and exercising power.
Karzai is comfortable with Taliban as he and they share language and cultural ties as well as religion. Taliban without the al-Qaeda dimension is no threat to Pushtu dominance. The other ethnic and cultural groups which make up the Afghan mosaic are not so sure. And, considering the memories of Taliban's repressive regime, there is no reason for women to support any role for Taliban in the future. However, it is probable that Mullah Omar and his generational colleagues learned some key lessons in the limits of theocracy and may well be less objectionable in their attitudes and actions regarding women, education, and popular culture. In any event, the US is well advised to abandon the hopelessly misguided Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Neocon Ninny notion of creating a modern Western style nation-state in Afghanistan.
The necessity of a political solution including Taliban is recognized and has been so for years by all observers well oriented in time and place. The administration's new add-on in justifying a rapid and steep draw down in US combat forces centers on the effectiveness to date of our efforts to destroy al-Qaeda's organizational integrity and efficiency. There is no doubt but the Predator strikes in the FATA along with special forces operations including but not limited to the Great Abbottabad Raid have severely degraded al-Qaeda's upper and mid-level management. The organization has been disrupted severely.
This does not mean al-Qaeda no longer exists. It does. Nor does it mean that al-Qaeda no longer represents a threat to the US or other civilized states. It does. Rather, the point of the administration's argument is simply that al-Qaeda in Afghanistan no longer is central to the panoply of threats presented by assorted advocates of violent political Islam. This is true.
It is also far less relevant than the administration would have any of us believe.
There are two ramifications of an overly rapid, overly steep withdrawal which the administration does not credit. The first is the recuperative power of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan given the ready availability of support from Pakistan and the unwillingness of the Pakistani military or intelligence service to block that support. The second is the power of history.
The US must not cut and run in a way which will allow the advocates of violent political Islam and their supporters or apologists to write a narrative in which the centerpiece is the assertion that the Mighty Warriors of the One True Faith defeated the infidel crusaders. It was the willingness and ability of Osama bin Laden and others to claim victory over the Soviet forces which provided the original legitimacy for al-Qaeda and other similar groups--including the Taliban of Mullah Omar.
The Islamist version of history is not only specious, it is a total fabrication giving credit to Arab fighters which was and is totally undeserved. Insofar as anyone defeated the Red Army, it was the Afghans--and the support they received from the US. Afghan courage, blood, and endurance along with American technology defeated the Soviets--as much as they were defeated by external pressures. The down and dirty truth was that the Soviets were not defeated. They simply gave up. This loss of political will was the made-in-the-Kremlin equivalent of the American self-inflicted defeat in Vietnam. In a very real sense, the Afghan fighters simply had to keep on fighting, refuse to admit defeat until the Soviets packed it in. This, of course, is the basic cause of any insurgent's success right on back to the patriot "victory" in the American War of Independence.
The Arab hijacking of reality in the according-to-Osama interpretation of history was a work of fiction which prevailed simply because nobody challenged it at the time. The cause driven bin Laden invented a tale and kept telling it to all who would listen until one fine day it was taken, at least in the Arabian Peninsula, as the gospel truth. The tale-telling sheik told his tale of faith and fighting so well and so often that the money and recruits flowed in. Osama's version of history may not have been a Big Lie as Dr Goebbels understood the term, but it turned out to be a Great Lie, the greatest lie of the last decades of the Twentieth Century.
The bin Laden approach to creative fiction as history recommends itself to any and all advocates of violent political Islam today--and into the future. If the American forces are withdrawn hastily and in too great a number, the next bin Laden will claim that the infidels were militarily defeated by the Holy Fighters Of The Koran.
It will not be a true and accurate history to be sure. That does not and will not matter. It will be the history that many Muslims will want to believe. It will be history as they deeply wish it to have been. There is no Islamic concept of history as we in the West understand the concept. Rather, all history is in Muslim eyes a record of great men doing great deeds on behalf of the faith and in the pure name of the faith. Thus the defeat of the infidel crusaders by the followers of Islam, the followers of the "martyred" Great and Learned Osama bin Laden will be believed eagerly and fervently by many future recruits to the cause of violent political Islam.
This powerful ground truth is not and will not be accepted by the Deep Thinkers in and around the Oval. Yet it exists as a reality, a reality as potent and long lasting in effect as the American deficit and the war weariness of We the People. In the contest between a work of fiction, a myth on the one hand, and mere facts, mind numbing statistics, the aggregate of countless after action reports, the first will defeat the second--particularly when the myth meets the needs of people who perceive themselves to have been exploited, marginalized, trivialized even though they are the members of a community promised global dominance by the deity and his prophet.
Wars are ultimately won and lost not on the physical battlefield but on the ineffable terrain of the human mind. It is this foundation truth that gave the Osama bin Laden fictional history of how the Arab true believers defeated the Red Army its power and persistence. It is this foundation truth which will give some future myth maker vast potency when he creates the fiction holding the infidel Americans were defeated by the blood, courage, and conviction of the Men of Islam.
Contrary to a prevalent American belief, history does matter. It matters far, far more than money and elections--even the reelection of Barack Obama.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
The Power Of Values--And the Value Of Power
In his speech to parliament in Westminster last week, President Obama made much of the values shared between the US and the UK. Leaving aside his total--and, hopefully, intentional--misstatements regarding the history of the Anglo-American relationship, his remarks did constitute a fair evaluation of the importance of shared values, norms of behavior, understandings of the nature of government and its relationship to the citizenry, as well as the ties of history and tradition. His remarks were both accurate and long overdue.
The fine words were also in large measure irrelevant.
There is a very real and easily demonstrated potency resident in the core defining values and norms of both American and British origin. The particular features of both make each quite attractive in the estimate of many people around the world. While the greatest gravity well pulling people to American shores has been and is economic, the magnetic attraction of the values and norms, the world views, the understanding of the dignity and worth of the individual which provide the foundation of economic success must not be underestimated. Even those who come to the US--or the UK--due to the potential of personal prosperity do not undervalue the benefits of those intangibles which constitute a definable "way of life."
The value of the cultural, social, and political aspects of a country's life is enshrined in the unfortunate phrase, "soft power." What makes this phrase uniquely unsatisfying is the implication that "soft" aspects of a state's potency are somehow inferior to those of more kinetic sort, such as the size of the navy or the number of deployable battalions. It is always necessary to keep in mind that it is the "soft" aspects of a country which provide the basis for the "hard" features of economic and military power.
Mr Obama was right to pay proper attention to and give appropriate credit to the shared values and imperatives which have served to bring the UK and US closer together, to provide a broad set of coinciding national interests which allow for expansion or particular expression by normal diplomatic means. In a very real sense the root of the "special relationship" is the ease with which "vanilla" diplomacy can be employed.
However, it is necessary to point out that the operative word is "special." In this context special implies unique. The relative absence of any need for any coercion. The same applies to American relations with other English speaking, UK descended states such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. While there are differences between Washington and the capitals of these states as has also been the case with the UK, these can and have been resolved quickly and with very little stress or pain by working from the extensive base of common values and shared interests.
What Mr Obama overlooked in his paean to the Magna Carta, etc. is the same does not apply with most other countries on Earth. The US may have a wide set of common values with Western Europe. Once that area is left behind, the number of shared values, norms, customs, imperatives and world views shared between the US and We the People on the one hand and the governments or citizens of other countries shrinks--often starkly.
Mr Obama implied that the West has been very successful in exporting its common values and imperatives. This has been a recurrent theme in many of his recent statements. It is also a something of a cliched meme within the elites of the West. Like all cliches, this one contains a germ of truth. But it is a truth which must not be taken too far, exaggerated too much.
The events of the "Arab Spring" provide a perfect context in which to see the potent temptation to believe entirely too much in the power of such made in the West values as democracy. To Westerners in general and Americans in particular living in an environment in which all the hard, bitter but necessary preparatory work has been done, the inherent value of democracy is too self-evident to require parsing. We run on the comfortable but hallucinatory belief that the voice of the people expressed in an election constitutes a sovereign remedy for all that ails a nation.
Our belief in the self-evident righteousness of human rights as we define such is similar. If allowed to do so any people, all people, everywhere without regard to the larger cultural context or history will subscribe to the same understanding of human rights as we do. Indeed, if one runs down the list of American values, norms, customs, and imperatives the same dynamic is seen. If it works here, it will work everywhere. If we believe in it so also will everyone everywhere.
This set of self-imposed delusions is particularly striking in its impact on the elites of the West, including that of the US. It resides at the root of the two "multis" which so often confounds effective foreign and national security policy and manufactures social tensions which otherwise need not exist. The first of these "multis" is "multiculturalism. The second is "multilateralism."
The basis of multi-culturalism is the specious and pernicious notion that all cultures are equal in all respects. No one culture may see itself as ethically superior to others. No culture may be seen as legitimately dominate--even if its members constitute the defining majority of a population and have largely created that society's values, norms, and imperatives.
There is an irony here. It is an irony which evidently escapes both Mr Obama and fellow members of the American elite. On the one hand they celebrate the "soft" power strengths of Western and American culture. On the other they maintain that it is wrong, even offensively arrogant, to maintain that the culture of the US and the rest of the West is superior to those extant elsewhere in the world.
Duh?
The second of the "multis," multilateralism, denies that the US or any country can act without the approval of others, the OK of the "international community." On one level there is nothing objectionable about the concept of seeking allies in a common effort to a collectively defined goal. That has long been at the heart of diplomacy. It has long been at the center of effective warfighting.
The problem comes when the concept is taken too far. This point comes when international structures are given priority over national sovereignty. Mr Obama and his "team" crossed this point, at least as regards the UK, when he and they exalted the Lisbon Treaty and the new, improved European Union at the expense of the national sovereignty of the UK.
Mr Obama, again in common with the academics, journalists, politicians, and others of the elite, sees the supra-national as inherently superior to the national. He and they view nationalism and national interest with the utmost of suspicion if not total hatred. Collective fictions such as the mythical beast, "the international community," as well as supra-national entities such as the EU and UN are viewed by Mr Obama and his ilk as morally superior to individual sovereign states. These people sincerely believe that supra-national bodies are both disinterested enough and broadly constituted enough to be trusted with solving any and all problems which might beset not only the world, or a region, but an individual state.
It is this understanding of the moral authority and disinterested nature of the supra-national entity as compared with the individual nation-state which has given rise to the new form of intervention in the affairs of a state. The specific manifestations of this belief have been and are being seen around the world. From the former Yugoslavia during the mid-nineties to the application of R2P in Libya, the causes and effects of reliance upon an overextended understanding of multilateralism are highly visible.
Equally obvious are the failures of a reliance on the "international community" and supra-national entities. There is another irony resident at the edges of multilateralism of the expansive sort. As is so evident today, the tensions between R2P and national interest are seen in the bombers over Libya as compared with the silent sky over Syria. The failed state of Somalia as well as the failing state of Yemen stand as monuments to the inappropriateness or uselessness of the multilateralist approach to internal failures of a state. Enough said.
In an ideal world predicated on the successful exportation of Western values coupled with the moral suasion of the "international community," Vladimir Putin would be the tribune of open, transparent, free wheeling democracy. In that world the Trolls of Beijing would become exemplars of human rights. Advocates of violent political Islam would take off their suicide vests and forswear even political subversion becoming open participants in the marketplace of ideas willing to accept defeat graciously should that be the will of the people.
Mr Obama was silent on the subject of force in his speech in Westminster. This was to be expected. He, once more in common with the Western elite generally, finds the use of "hard"power objectionable. Even though Western aircraft were delivering hot metal on target in Libya and the president was riding a wave of popularity generated by the killing of Osama bin Laden, military force remained a subject not fit for polite company.
In some deep recess of his mind, however, Mr Obama is undoubtedly aware that in the real world values without the force necessary to protect them and even extend them constitute no particular advantage. Absent a competent military and the political will to use it, the US and the West would rapidly become an endangered species. Ultimately, the position and influence of the US (and the West) rests upon its ability and will to use force effectively and decisively in support of policy.
When night falls, it is impossible to separate the power of values from the value of power, military power. That is a ground truth. It may be a hard truth for Mr Obama and others of the elite to accept, but that is the way the world and its human cargo operates, like it or not.
Over the long sweep of history, the values of the US, of the West, may subvert those of other, arguably inferior origin. Until that day comes (if it ever does), there is no substitute for force--except surrender.
The fine words were also in large measure irrelevant.
There is a very real and easily demonstrated potency resident in the core defining values and norms of both American and British origin. The particular features of both make each quite attractive in the estimate of many people around the world. While the greatest gravity well pulling people to American shores has been and is economic, the magnetic attraction of the values and norms, the world views, the understanding of the dignity and worth of the individual which provide the foundation of economic success must not be underestimated. Even those who come to the US--or the UK--due to the potential of personal prosperity do not undervalue the benefits of those intangibles which constitute a definable "way of life."
The value of the cultural, social, and political aspects of a country's life is enshrined in the unfortunate phrase, "soft power." What makes this phrase uniquely unsatisfying is the implication that "soft" aspects of a state's potency are somehow inferior to those of more kinetic sort, such as the size of the navy or the number of deployable battalions. It is always necessary to keep in mind that it is the "soft" aspects of a country which provide the basis for the "hard" features of economic and military power.
Mr Obama was right to pay proper attention to and give appropriate credit to the shared values and imperatives which have served to bring the UK and US closer together, to provide a broad set of coinciding national interests which allow for expansion or particular expression by normal diplomatic means. In a very real sense the root of the "special relationship" is the ease with which "vanilla" diplomacy can be employed.
However, it is necessary to point out that the operative word is "special." In this context special implies unique. The relative absence of any need for any coercion. The same applies to American relations with other English speaking, UK descended states such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. While there are differences between Washington and the capitals of these states as has also been the case with the UK, these can and have been resolved quickly and with very little stress or pain by working from the extensive base of common values and shared interests.
What Mr Obama overlooked in his paean to the Magna Carta, etc. is the same does not apply with most other countries on Earth. The US may have a wide set of common values with Western Europe. Once that area is left behind, the number of shared values, norms, customs, imperatives and world views shared between the US and We the People on the one hand and the governments or citizens of other countries shrinks--often starkly.
Mr Obama implied that the West has been very successful in exporting its common values and imperatives. This has been a recurrent theme in many of his recent statements. It is also a something of a cliched meme within the elites of the West. Like all cliches, this one contains a germ of truth. But it is a truth which must not be taken too far, exaggerated too much.
The events of the "Arab Spring" provide a perfect context in which to see the potent temptation to believe entirely too much in the power of such made in the West values as democracy. To Westerners in general and Americans in particular living in an environment in which all the hard, bitter but necessary preparatory work has been done, the inherent value of democracy is too self-evident to require parsing. We run on the comfortable but hallucinatory belief that the voice of the people expressed in an election constitutes a sovereign remedy for all that ails a nation.
Our belief in the self-evident righteousness of human rights as we define such is similar. If allowed to do so any people, all people, everywhere without regard to the larger cultural context or history will subscribe to the same understanding of human rights as we do. Indeed, if one runs down the list of American values, norms, customs, and imperatives the same dynamic is seen. If it works here, it will work everywhere. If we believe in it so also will everyone everywhere.
This set of self-imposed delusions is particularly striking in its impact on the elites of the West, including that of the US. It resides at the root of the two "multis" which so often confounds effective foreign and national security policy and manufactures social tensions which otherwise need not exist. The first of these "multis" is "multiculturalism. The second is "multilateralism."
The basis of multi-culturalism is the specious and pernicious notion that all cultures are equal in all respects. No one culture may see itself as ethically superior to others. No culture may be seen as legitimately dominate--even if its members constitute the defining majority of a population and have largely created that society's values, norms, and imperatives.
There is an irony here. It is an irony which evidently escapes both Mr Obama and fellow members of the American elite. On the one hand they celebrate the "soft" power strengths of Western and American culture. On the other they maintain that it is wrong, even offensively arrogant, to maintain that the culture of the US and the rest of the West is superior to those extant elsewhere in the world.
Duh?
The second of the "multis," multilateralism, denies that the US or any country can act without the approval of others, the OK of the "international community." On one level there is nothing objectionable about the concept of seeking allies in a common effort to a collectively defined goal. That has long been at the heart of diplomacy. It has long been at the center of effective warfighting.
The problem comes when the concept is taken too far. This point comes when international structures are given priority over national sovereignty. Mr Obama and his "team" crossed this point, at least as regards the UK, when he and they exalted the Lisbon Treaty and the new, improved European Union at the expense of the national sovereignty of the UK.
Mr Obama, again in common with the academics, journalists, politicians, and others of the elite, sees the supra-national as inherently superior to the national. He and they view nationalism and national interest with the utmost of suspicion if not total hatred. Collective fictions such as the mythical beast, "the international community," as well as supra-national entities such as the EU and UN are viewed by Mr Obama and his ilk as morally superior to individual sovereign states. These people sincerely believe that supra-national bodies are both disinterested enough and broadly constituted enough to be trusted with solving any and all problems which might beset not only the world, or a region, but an individual state.
It is this understanding of the moral authority and disinterested nature of the supra-national entity as compared with the individual nation-state which has given rise to the new form of intervention in the affairs of a state. The specific manifestations of this belief have been and are being seen around the world. From the former Yugoslavia during the mid-nineties to the application of R2P in Libya, the causes and effects of reliance upon an overextended understanding of multilateralism are highly visible.
Equally obvious are the failures of a reliance on the "international community" and supra-national entities. There is another irony resident at the edges of multilateralism of the expansive sort. As is so evident today, the tensions between R2P and national interest are seen in the bombers over Libya as compared with the silent sky over Syria. The failed state of Somalia as well as the failing state of Yemen stand as monuments to the inappropriateness or uselessness of the multilateralist approach to internal failures of a state. Enough said.
In an ideal world predicated on the successful exportation of Western values coupled with the moral suasion of the "international community," Vladimir Putin would be the tribune of open, transparent, free wheeling democracy. In that world the Trolls of Beijing would become exemplars of human rights. Advocates of violent political Islam would take off their suicide vests and forswear even political subversion becoming open participants in the marketplace of ideas willing to accept defeat graciously should that be the will of the people.
Mr Obama was silent on the subject of force in his speech in Westminster. This was to be expected. He, once more in common with the Western elite generally, finds the use of "hard"power objectionable. Even though Western aircraft were delivering hot metal on target in Libya and the president was riding a wave of popularity generated by the killing of Osama bin Laden, military force remained a subject not fit for polite company.
In some deep recess of his mind, however, Mr Obama is undoubtedly aware that in the real world values without the force necessary to protect them and even extend them constitute no particular advantage. Absent a competent military and the political will to use it, the US and the West would rapidly become an endangered species. Ultimately, the position and influence of the US (and the West) rests upon its ability and will to use force effectively and decisively in support of policy.
When night falls, it is impossible to separate the power of values from the value of power, military power. That is a ground truth. It may be a hard truth for Mr Obama and others of the elite to accept, but that is the way the world and its human cargo operates, like it or not.
Over the long sweep of history, the values of the US, of the West, may subvert those of other, arguably inferior origin. Until that day comes (if it ever does), there is no substitute for force--except surrender.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)