The "Improbable" Artificial State Has One More Anniversary

The United States is unique--exceptional, if you will--in a number of ways.  Among these arguably the most important is the fundamental reality that it is a totally artificial state.  A second unique feature, arguably almost on a par with the first, is that the US is that rare bird, a state which has created a nation.

As a nation and as a polity, We the People, each and every one of us, is part of a purely artificial state.  We are defined not by borders per se nor by language.  We are not defined by religious confession, pace the large number of Christians who would wish it otherwise.

What defines us as a state and thus as a nation is a set of ideas.  That basement truth is what makes us both artificial and exceptional.  We are the product of that most ineffable and powerful entity--the intellect.  Founded on ideas, the ideas became our foundation.  Over time the memes by which Americans see and understand themselves have both remained fixed and highly mutable, evolving with changes in our size, our complexity, the shifting sands of science and technology, the alterations of our demographics, the creative destruction of our economy while staying unaltered in all the essentials, the cornerstones of thinking so often expressed in simple, almost buzzword terms: democracy, transparency, rule of law, separation of church and state, equality of opportunity, free enterprise, and so on.

The fact that we are citizens of a set of ideas made manifest in human structures and institutions usually flies below our personal and political radar.  Having been born and raised in this crowd sourced set of ideas, we are as unaware of its central and crucial nature as is the fish of the water in which it swims.  It takes the perspective of either the immigrant or of having returned to the US after a long absence abroad to awaken the consciousness, to become aware of just how faint and fragile the foundations of our collective enterprise actually are--and how powerful a force they effect upon us.

The existence, let alone the flourishing of the US has been termed "improbable" as far back as the end of the Nineteenth Century as the US emerged on the global stage for the first time.  Foreign observers, men of rank, power and learning saw the reality of the American experience with a clarity which eluded most Americans.  They saw the artificial nature of the US as both a great strength and an awesome source of potential weakness.

The strengths were self-evident.  The artificial nature of the US, its foundations being ideas, provided a haven for all, a safe harbor for all those ideas and individuals seen as too dangerous to be tolerated in the states of Europe founded on language, customs, borders, the verdicts of ancient wars.  The US was by its nature imbued with a degree of flexibility, a willingness to experiment, to take a chance far beyond any European country.  As the US and its people were defined by ideas and not by the accidents of precedent or ancestry there were more rewards for trying something new, for striking out in a new direction, for doing things differently.  At the same time the citizens of this artificial state and nation held onto the basics, the foundational principles with a rigor and a zeal almost beyond European comprehension.

The weaknesses were not so apparent, but were equally real.  One very important weakness which arose directly from our foundation as an intellectual artifact was uncertainty as to what it took to be a "real" American.

The US was caught in a never ending crisis of identity.  Being founded on ideas and having a population representing virtually every nation on Earth, We the People always wondered "who are we?"  At the core, what did it mean to be an American?  The endemic identity crisis peaked in epidemic outbreaks from time to time over the course of our history.  Recurrent waves of anti-immigrant sentiment represented a manifestation of this.  So also did the episodic outbreaks of religious frenzy.  Hyper-patriotism thrived periodically as we sought to reassure ourselves regarding our identity.

Another, closely related weakness was our uncertainty as to how and when we should have relations with other countries.  It had always been a given that the US would seek cordial commercial relations with all other states.  In this orientation we Americans showed ourselves to be the citizens of a maritime power, a state which sought the broadest possible networks of trade.  Beyond that one element there has never been a long lasting consensus on the role of the US in the world.  Isolationist or interventionist represent just two poles in the America foreign policy dilemma.  Idealism or realism are the verbal flags marking two other extremes in the foreign relations conundrum which grows from the artificial nature of the US.

The never ending swings between idealism and realism in our foreign policy as well as the equally drastic swings between withdrawal and engagement with the world both come from the unique, artificial nature of the US.  In a real sense our history shows that the US lacks permanent friends and enemies.  In this way we are not exceptional.  But, our history also shows that the US does not have many permanent interests.  Indeed, beyond free trade there is no present day national interest which can be traced back much beyond the administration of Theodore Roosevelt.

Lasting interests are the necessary products of states which do not have identity crises.  Lasting interests are defined as are the states which have them--by experience, usually that of ancient wars.  A sharp reminder of this dynamic and its difference from the forces at work in the US can be seen in the opposing ways in which many Mexicans and the majority of Americans see the war between their two countries.  To the Americans the affray of more than a century and a half ago is a null referent.  To the Mexicans it was a defining experience, a national humiliation the stain of which lingers on to the present moment.  The demand by so many Mexican apologists for a more "liberal" immigration policy on the part of the US is really an attempt to rewrite the verdict of a war most Americans are unaware of having taken place.

Because we are a state and a nation defined by ideas, ideas which are both unchanging and ever mutating we Americans fail to see just how long and complex the task of "nation-building" actually is.  We can blithely assume that since our defining ideas and the institutions which grow from them are and have been so successful, other people in other countries will want to adopt them wholesale just as soon as they are informed.  It was this simple assumption that propelled George W. Bush and his fellow neocons into the misguided and wrongheaded effort to transform Afghanistan and remake Iraq, not some perverse and evil impulse.  It might be noted that most of We the People thought the same until enough time and American corpses showed the error of the underlying assumption.

When the interventionary impulse leads to failure as it so often has, the reaction is withdrawal.  The American isolationist sentiment is predicated just as is our interventionary equivalent upon the defining ideas of the US.  Both are expressions of moral sentiments which reside deeply in our collective understanding of both our past and our present nature.  Moral sentiments ranging from being the shining city on the hill to its opposite, the cavalry riding to the rescue of the innocents threatened by external, violent evil are part, a central part, of our self-understanding, our collective self-definition.  We are doomed to continue to repeat the cycle of engage and disengage as we are that of being "realistic" only to turn "idealistic."

But our greatest weakness as an artifact of the minds of men is the potential to lose faith in our collective self, our shared institutions and structures, our capacity to shape our future.  The American identity is subject to seismic shocks.  Should one or a combination of those shocks result in a loss of faith in ourselves and our collective capacities, the result would be fatal to the American experiment.

The blame-America-first crowd along with those who celebrate cultural relativism threaten the American faith.  The constant refrain chanted by the tireless throats of these two groups which has pervaded so much of our collective consciousness for the past three decades is like water dripping on rock, slowly eroding, gradually corroding the solid and indestructible boulder to a handful of sand and mud.  Taken in the present context of war weariness, frustration with an implacable enemy addicted to terror, and the fear provoked by economic catastrophe looming, the soul sapping effects of the naysayers in our midst represent a very real challenge to the nature of the US and We the People.

We often give credit to ideas, particularly the ideas on which we are founded; we call them "powerful" and "eternal."  And so they can be.  It is also true that there is nothing more fragile and quick to flee than an idea.  Or a state and a nation founded simply and solely on ideas.

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."

The GOP And A (False) Forced Choice

Congress, more specifically the House of Representatives, and most particularly the GOP members of the House, have twisted their panties over the propriety, or, at least, the legality of the ongoing American operation in Libya.  The knot in the elephant's knickers is, of course, the War Powers Act.  The Republicans have been huffing and puffing mightily over the Obama administration's purported failure to abide by the requirements of this act, an act, it deserves reminding ourselves, the Republicans have often and loudly decried as unconstitutional.

The Nice Young Man From Chicago in no way helped his position when he declared that the US was not engaged in "hostilities" as such might be construed in the context of the War Powers Resolution.  This was an utterly preposterous notion which could only have been conceived by an academic with a potent lust for power.  The president took an unworthy stance.  By so doing he insulted the intelligence not only of the House Republicans but of Americans generally.  As an example of legal pettifoggery, the presidential assertion was on a par with the similar legalistic parsing engaged in by Bill Clinton to prove that getting one's knob polished in the environs of the Oval was not engaging in sexual activity.

Now the hypocrites in Congress are locked in a face off with the hypocrite in the Oval.  Regardless of which prevails in this imitation mano a mano exercise, the loser will be the United States.  What is at stake in this affray is the ability of the US to operate effectively on the global stage in forthcoming years.

The bent-out-of-shape Republicans in the House along with their liberal Democratic colleagues are seeking not simply the humiliation of Obama or the further clipping of the imperial presidency's extensive wingspan or seeking to economize in parlous financial times but rather the forcing of a false choice between an isolationist stance on the part of the US or the continuation of "wars of choice' as defined by the president.

The Republican "deficit hawks" along with their very strange bedfellows, progressive Democrats, are forcing a clear and ongoing limitation on the ability of presidents to wage what has been called "wars of choice."  The House leadership as well as most of the current Republican contenders for the Oval have been channeling the ghost of Robert Taft, the "Mr Republican" of sixty and more years ago.  Senator Robert Taft of Ohio defined more than any other single man the concept of isolationism.  More than other noted congressional proponents of this philosophy of total withdrawal from the political challenges of the world, Taft opposed any and all foreign "entanglements" and "adventures."  In support of his position he advanced economic arguments as well as contending without end that not only would our overseas activities end in failure, they would produce more enemies than friends.

The soi dissant conservatives on the Red side of the aisle have been making the same Taft type contentions.  Our overseas adventures whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, or Libya have ended in failure or will do so unless wound down speedily and completely.  Our overseas adventures have made us far more enemies than they have created friends.  And, certainly neither last nor least, our overseas adventures have been far too costly and can no longer be afforded.

The particular species of overseas adventure which has reigned supreme in the narratives of both progressive Democrat and deficit hawk Republican has been that of "wars of choice."  This is a fine term.  It gives the clear impression that presidents of both parties search the world from time to time looking for a war in which to involve ourselves.  This is a specious notion but like all truly preposterous ideas it contains a small but critical measure of truth.

Considering all of the military interventions in which the US has participated since the Reagan administration there have been some which were clearly optional in the sense the US had no critical national interests at stake in the conflict.  George H.W. Bush's humanitarian intervention in Somalia rests in the "optional" category.  So does his adventure in regime change, Operation Just Cause in Panama.  But the US response to the Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait is of the "mandatory" sort.  Key US national and strategic interests were in play in that war.

Bill Clinton's expansion of the Somalian operation fell in the "war of choice" column.  The same is true with respect to the American operations in former Yugoslavia.  The US had no bull in the herd in Somalia.  The bloody implosion of what had once been the totally artificial state of Yugoslavia was of concern to Europe but not to the US, pace the recently deceased Larry Eagleburger.

The invasion of Afghanistan, if that use of force had been confined to the original mission statement, was mandatory, a justifiable exercise in retaliation to an attack on the US.  However, George W.'s  invasion of Iraq fell clearly in the "war of choice" category.  It was an ideologically driven "build it and they will come" sort which produced if not a debacle certainly a bloody and expensive tragedy for both Americans and Iraqis, people who will be dealing with the aftershocks for decades if not generations to come.

The ideologically propelled "mission leap" in Afghanistan along with the "war of choice" in Iraq are the ghosts at the political banquet now being served over Libya.  There is a delicious irony at the banquet.  That irony resides in the main course of the meal--the War Powers Resolution.

The War Powers Resolution was passed by the Democratic Party controlled Congress as a reaction to the Vietnam War which was seen by the Democrats as having been a "war of choice" waged by imperial presidents.  The Democrats who so loudly demanded limitations be placed on the president's capacity to wage war cheerfully ignored reality as they voted.  The American entrance into the Vietnamese war was seen by both the Democratic presidents (JKF and LBJ) as well as the Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress to have been "mandatory."

If anything the documents show the congressional Democrats were far more willing and eager to go to war then either JFK or LBJ.  The Democrats along with the Republicans understood our commitment to the South Vietnamese to be central to our guarantee of the global status quo during a very frigid period of the cold war. Support for the introduction of combat troops, the commencement of the air war against North Vietnam, and the central decision to escalate our forces in country were all monolithically supported by the Democratic Party.  It was only after the war seemed (incorrectly) to have devolved to an unwinnable stalemate during the administration of the detested Richard Nixon that sentiment on the Blue side shifted so as to produce the War Powers Resolution.

Now the Republicans motivated by their political calculus are willing to invoke both the War Powers Resolution and the power of the purse to limit or end the Obama policy in Libya.  Standing in opposition to the efforts of the deficit hawk Republicans and progressive Democrats to end the minimal American presence in the Libyan "war of choice" is the neocon outfit, The Foreign Policy Initiative," which authored an open letter to the House leadership imploring a rejection of the proposed strictures and urging an expansion of US efforts in the Libyan Affair.

The neocons are no more correct than are the wing clippers in the House.  The answer to the problems of "wars of choice" is to be found in a more effective means of determining the nature of US interests in play in any given potential area of intervention.  The critical difference between "mandatory" and "optional" wars is to be found in the answer to one question: What key national and strategic interests are to be served and to what degree by this proposed intervention?

Had this question been both posed and accurately answered, the US would have not invaded Iraq.  It would not have expanded the mission in Afghanistan to include the impossibility of nation-building.  And, the US would have sat out Libya as it did conflicts even more bloody elsewhere in Africa.  The "wars of choice" all share a common feature--they were driven by ideology.  True, the ideology might have been clothed attractively in American values, norms, aspirations.  The motive might have been expressed in pleasant words regarding democracy, transparency, or the evil nature of repressive regimes.  The matter of refugees might have been adduced in support as well as concealment of the underlying ideological imperatives.

There is only one reason to go to war--when there is no realistic alternative way by which a better state of peace as defined by American national and strategic interests exists.  There is one large reason not to go to war--when the motive is one of ideology, of belief, of personal or collective vision.

How to parse between the two is the only effective way to assure the US does not waste blood and treasure in pursuit of impossible dreams.  And, parsing between the two is the only way to assure that when war in the national interest is necessary, we have the way and will to do so with success.

Of course, Congress being what it is, there is no chance the Deep Thinkers in that body any more than the Great Strategists in and near the Oval will consider this matter, the only matter which genuinely counts for more than a few votes more or less in some future election.

The Devil Lives In The Endgame

"It ain't over till it's over" and "It ain't over until the fat lady sings" may be cliches but both have the advantage of expressing self-evident truths.  Nowhere are these truths more obvious than in states experiencing violent political unrest or that plus the add-on of foreign military intervention.  Currently there are three places (one hesitates to call all three states) where the US is involved in endgames--or, at least, what the administration hopes constitutes such.

Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen are all in what it is hoped by decision makers throughout the West but particularly inside the Beltway to be entering the last chapter of their narratives of violent political unrest.  There is no doubt but the people of the US and its allied states are war weary.  It is increasingly difficult to muster and maintain support for any further involvement in the messy internal affairs of majority Muslim areas.  Not even the dire warnings regarding the AQAP will stimulate any feelings of alarm in We the People.  Libya has stalemate and lack of purpose written all over it.  Afghanistan is a write off in the minds of many--all the more so since the killing of Osama bin Laden.

The Afghanistan conflict is the only one in which any significant number of Americans is involved.  This means it is the only one where we can take decisive action.  The action most desired by many in both public and congress is an accelerated withdrawal.  The arguments in favor of this are powerful.  We have accomplished the main goal of our invasion--the death of bin Laden and the virtual destruction of al-Qaeda.  The Afghan government remains inefficient, ineffective, corrupt, and a frightful waste of American money.

The Karzai regime wants to hinder our most effective operational concepts whether night raids or the use of tactical air power.  At the same time he is resistant, to say the least, to our requirements that he clean up his house, work harder in the old governance reform thing, concentrate more on developing the Afghan National Force to the level where it can assume security duties on its own.  On top of that, he and all those around him appear to be complete ingrates considering the billions of dollars and nearly two thousand lives we have expended in large measure to support the existence of his government free of extremist control.

From the American perspective it seems the Vietnam Syndrome is back in play.  Congress using the deficit and federal budget constraints as justification will proceed to write-off the American lives and demand a firm timetable for total American withdrawal.  It, and, in essence, We the People, will declare our losses in fisc and lives to have been a poor idea and move to cut our losses, ignore the remaining and threatening loose ends left hanging in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and turn our collective eyes inward once again.

Regardless of what Secretary of Defense Gates said the other day in Singapore, this will introduce yet one more era of neo-isolationism.  There are more than a few within us who have surrendered Great Power status to the Chinese.  Representative Walter Jones (R-NC) whose district includes Camp Lejune is a potent opponent of the war in Afghanistan as he was that in Iraq.  The NYT points out that Jones is no longer a "pariah" in the party or unpopular in the district which he has represented since 1994.  This means the Republican neo-isolationist wing is more potent than ever.

The combination of liberal Democrat and deficit hawk Republicans will have the juice necessary to assure that not only will the administration be supported in an accelerated draw down in Afghanistan but that our overall foreign policy will become far less ambitious.  It may even carry the water necessary to assure significant, even enervating, cuts in the defense budget.

The net effect of any drastic, rapid cut out from Afghanistan means in real world terms that the US has lost the political will to oppose violent political Islam.  To put it more cruelly but no less accurately, we will concede victory to the enemy who will, unsurprisingly, seek even greater success against us and the rest of the civilized world.

There is an alternative to a simple pull out disguised as something rather less humiliating.  That alternative would be a combination of open negotiations with Taliban and continued military operations against that group and the ISI proxy, the Haqqani network.  As we learned in Korea and again in Vietnam, the requirement for even limited success is the demonstration of continued political will in a both talk diplomacy and its violent twin, war.  The will and ability to continue fighting--fighting well and hard--even as the endless palaver over very little continues in a seemingly pointless fashion constitutes the demonstration of continued political will which finally convinces the adversary to settle for the best terms we are willing to grant.  There is no doubt that the Karzai government will join in negotiations.  All that is needed is to bring the semi-secret limited contacts into the open while keeping our shooters at it in country.

Unfortunately, the probability of the current administration choosing this twin track route is as remote as the president admitting that he was out to lunch with his Libya "policy."  Libya is, to paraphrase Omar Bradley, the wrong use of air power against the wrong enemy in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Had the US and others been serious about removing Gaddafi, troops would have been landed before the smoke and dust of the first air defense suppression missile strikes had blown clear in the desert wind.  A quick removal of Gaddafi followed by an immediate withdrawal of foreign forces and the introduction of an international peacekeeping force from, perhaps, the Arab League, would have seen the job done in a timely and clean way.  But, the leaders of France, the UK, and the US took counsel of their worst fears based on the inappropriate model of W. Bush in Iraq.

The leaving of Gaddafi is simply the start of the endgame in Libya.  Where the endgame in Afghanistan will be some sort of coalition government which includes Taliban, the players in Libya are not so clear.  There is a strange assemblage of tribal figures, regionalists, secularists, and political Islamists involved in the so-called transitional government.  Their joint agenda beyond the removal of Gaddafi is the to-be-determined department.  The same applies to the role to be played in the future by those Libyans who were genuine adherents of Gaddafi's theory of government.  The foreign supporters of the rebels including the US have to put a major push on the transitional government to put a post-Gaddafi plan on paper at least.

Even if there is a post-regime change plan, this is no assurance that it will be put into effect.  The Western patrons had best realize this.  The Libya which comes into existence after Gaddafi may well not be a showplace of Western norms and values any more than will be the case in Afghanistan.  The post-Gaddafi Libya will be an economic basket case filled with people with scores to settle.  It will not be pretty.  And, it will have the correct climate to encourage the emergence of adherents of violent political Islam.  We will not be fond of that.  But, it may not be preventable.  Get a grip on it.

Everything that is true for Libya applies to Yemen--on steroids.  This will be true to an even greater degree if Saleh escapes from Saudi Arabia and heads back to San'a.  The probability of Yemen becoming a collapsed state is better than fifty-fifty even if Saleh stays in Saudi.  It goes to near certainty if he returns.  And, there is absolutely nothing the US can or will do directly about this.  The most likely "winner" in Yemen will be AQAP which will bode ill not only for Saudi Arabia but the civilized world as well.

The situations in Libya and Yemen make what we do in Afghanistan all the more important.  All eyes, particularly those of the adherents of violent political Islam, will be on what we do and don't do.  Should we go the accelerated withdrawal route, the Mighty Men of the One True Faith will be emboldened greatly.  But, should we demonstrate inexhaustible political will in the dual track of talk while shooting, they will be inhibited in their ambitions.

The choice will be soon in and near the Oval.  Given the political imperatives at work it is likely that the wrong decision will be made.  In that event we can save a little bit of money while cowering in our Homeland Security guaranteed bunker at the mercy at the next martyrdom seeker with a bomb or even no more than a gun show acquired semi-automatic weapon.

It's the world of the future, welcome to it.

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.

Coercion Is Not The Only (Or The Best) Way

George Kennan's "Long Telegram" of 1946 constituted a seminal moment in American foreign policy.  More, it served to define a strategic world view emphasizing the need to confront and contain threats.  While perhaps unintended by Kennan, there was a natural tendency on the part of American leaders both civilian and military to place an onus on coercion as the preferred instrument by which to confront and contain.

In his later years, the famed diplomat and historian bemoaned the "militarization" of his musings on containment as applied to one area--the Eurasian landmass--and one opponent--Russia under the Soviets.  He maintained that he had never implied containment to be a sovereign remedy of universal applicability or that coercive military threats should be the primary tool of diplomacy.

The Geek has always been of the view that Kennan's later appreciation of his thinking was honest and accurate.  Kennan had a profound mind capable of fine gradations of nuance.  Unfortunately the politicians and diplomats, the soldiers and operations analysts who were called upon to put containment into practice under the overall requirements of  the Long Telegram inspired NSC 68 were not so fine grained in their understandings of time and place, of world and politics, of threats and opportunities.  NSC-68 (signed by President Truman in 1950) has not only governed the warp and woof of American foreign and national security policies ever since but has served to make these policies increasingly irrelevant, increasingly unrelated to the contemporary realities of global politics and evermore counterproductive.

The reason for the persistence of the NSC-68 mode is simple.  It worked.  The doctrine of containment enforced primarily by coercive means headed by the US military did contribute significantly to the downfall of the Soviet Union.  While not the sole cause by any stretch, the American persistence in applying containment, in surrounding the Soviet sphere with a steel ring of bases and alliances, of being both willing and able to fight wars of dubious connection to the Kremlin, placed real and continued pressures on the inefficient Soviet regime with important consequences which served in aggregate to sap the political will of the Soviet elite to keep on keeping on.

Sanctified by apparent success, the draw-a-line-in-the-sand mentality of the Cold War soldiered on.  The natural inclination of people to divide groups into two categories--Us and Them--was reinforced by the intellectual legacy of containment.  The equally natural inclination of most people to rely on coercion first in the accomplishment of goals was likewise buttressed by the seeming success of militarily predicated coercion during the Cold War.

The short span of time which elapsed between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the onset of attacks by advocates of violent political Islam did not permit for any sort of measured appraisal of the containment-by-coercion mode of the Cold War.  As a result, the default response of the American government and We the People was rooted in the Cold War paradigm: divide US from Them, draw a line in the sand, employ military coercion to bend Them to Our will.

The focus on military based coercion was seen as early as the mid-Fifties to be having the expectable albeit unintended consequence of warping all aspects of American foreign policy, the national economy, and virtually all aspects of our domestic society and polity in ways that might not be at all beneficial over time.

In foreign relations the Are-you-with-us? test dominated all other considerations.  Foreign governments which failed the test were put beyond the pale as Nasser, among others, found out.

The economic effects of NSC-68 gave rise to what Ike notably called "the military-industrial complex" which extended far beyond cabals of generals and industrialists to include academia, the media, and even entertainment.  (Recall the "mine shaft gap" line in Dr Strangelove, the perfect risible parody of all the many "gaps" which punctuated political discourse for thirty and more years.)

Investment in both human and physical capital alike which were completely appropriate were justified politically as being required by "national security."  (Think of the Interstate highway system or even the name of the first federal student loan project, the "National Defense Student Loan" program.)

Even the first stumbling efforts of the national government in the field of civil rights were explained as being necessary not for reasons of inherent justice or domestic tranquility but rather to deny the "Communists" from reaping a propaganda harvest in the context of the decolonizing Third World.  And, it is worth remembering the assaults on free speech made by those seeking to present a unified American public resolute in its defense of all rights and freedoms against the "Communist" menace.

We are now a full twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the failed coup against the Yeltsin government in Russia.  We are now more than ten years into a seemingly endless confrontation with the forces of violent political Islam, seeking without measurable success to contain the new threat by coercion based primarily upon military means.

And, it might be asked fairly, "What have we learned?"

At the very least it might be asserted with accuracy that we have learned the limits or, to be more honest, the irrelevance of coercion based containment.  A sign, small but telling, that at least some of the American establishment has learned this highly valuable lesson.

Two serving officers, one Navy and the other a Marine, have delivered themselves of a very important "private" paper.  While "private," this product of two staffers on the Joint Chiefs of Staff would not have become public had it not been approved of by very senior members of the Defense Department.

Writing under the pen name of "Mr Y" in intentional imitation of Kennan who published an article in Foreign Affairs based on his Long Telegram under the pseudonym of "Mr X," the two officers, Captain Porter and Colonel Mykleby, have offered a viable alternative to the containment by coercion thesis of Kennan.  While not complete in itself, the paper points in a new direction, a direction which places far less reliance upon either coercion or the military and places far more emphasis on refocusing our efforts on traditional American values such as entrepreneurship and education and, in the foreign relations sphere, on engagement and influence rather than dominance.

At the center of the "Mr Y" paper is the contention that the world is not a venue composed of threats but rather a complex political ecology in which opportunities for engagement and influence far outnumber actual threats requiring deterrence or defeat by purely military means.  They argue forcefully against the contention that those who are not obviously "with us" must be resolutely "against us."  They also contend with vigor that the US has become destructively astigmatic in its focus on violent political Islam.

While there is room for debate regarding the second contention, the overall thrust against dividing the people of a complex and rapidly evolving global population into simple camps of threats and allies is well neigh onto impossible to defeat.  So also is a critical accompanying theme: The necessity of properly balancing the foundational reality of the nation-state with the need for and existence of supra-national entities.

This secondary theme deserves more consideration than the two officers give it.  For example, they overlook the critical reality that strong centrifugal forces are at work in a large number of "states."  The reality that some "states" are such in name only as well as the potent disintegrative pressures of language, culture, religion, and defining mythology are fracturing more than a few actual states, some of which have long historical existence.  The addition of sub-state entities to the mix gravely complicates the global political ecology.

With respect to the US the two authors are of the view that policy has gone very much astray.  They argue the self-evident but willfully ignored: the US has not invested well or enough in the development of its most important asset, its human capital.  In a way they are simply enlarging the perspective of that wise and insightful soldier, Dwight Eisenhower.  Ike held that the diversion of money into weapons and other military equipment came at the expense of human capital investment.  And that is a ground truth none can deny.

The same applies to the argument adduced by the captain and the colonel to the effect that the real strength, the fountainhead of all our instruments of national power, resides in the creativity, energy, and efforts of Americans in all fields of endeavor.  From those comes American prosperity, American self-confidence, the American optimism which has been such a notable feature of the American character for over two hundred years.  All aspects of national power, hard as well as soft, arise from the reality of prosperity, the actuality of confidence, the presence of optimism.

The authors contend for a diplomatic paradigm based on engagement and influence.  This approach, they imply but do not state, would allow for a level of American authority on the global stage which would equate to operational dominance without any of the obnoxious features of "with-us-or-against-us" which have so often blighted our relations with other states.  This assessment is so self-evident that the need to set it forth even by implication should not be necessary.  The fact that it was put forth serves to underscore just how drastically the Cold War model has skewed American diplomacy.

Mr Y has lit a candle against the current foreign and national security darkness.  One can hope it will ignite an intellectual firestorm, but as a historian, the Geek cannot be so optimistic.  As recent debates and votes on the budget demonstrate, the Congress is still stuck in the morass of coercion first and shows no sign of desiring otherwise. It is unfortunate, but it is quite unlikely that Mr Y's paper will have even a small fraction of the influence enjoyed by the Long Telegram.

Internal War--Neocons And The Tea Party

Like the shambling corpses in the classic black and white version of Night of the Living Dead, the neocon ninnies have been resurrected by the fragrant miasma surrounding the "Jasmine" and "Lotus" revolutions.  Eliot Abrams and Joshua Muravchik having been baying in the van, eager for a faster, harder intervention in Libya and chomping after the chance to depose Bashir Assad.

Back east (from the Geek's perspective) in the soon-to-be-wilds of caucus Iowa, the redoubtable neocon hawk John Bolton, in the context of a conservative Republican cattle call, not only lambasted the Obama view of foreign policy, he advised the GOP to add foreign policy to its current two arrow quiver.  The nonpareil unilateralist and one time UN ambassador is obviously of the view that foreign affairs will be an ever larger component of the domestic political scene--and all the Republican front runners were monumentally deficient in this aspect of the presidential job description.

Bolton's understanding both of the increasing importance of American foreign relations and the lack of both experience and talent in this area represented within the Republican front bench may be accurate, but it is far from unchallenged within the ranks of the elephants.  The Tea Party movement, or at least its favorites which gained election this past November, does not constitute a cheering section for US engagement with the rest of the world.

Senator Rand Paul has staked out an isolationist position which makes the (in)famous isolationists of the Thirties seem almost like globalists in comparison.  Other Republicans--not just Senator Paul's dad, Ron--are all for slicing and dicing foreign aid in all its myriad forms.  There seems to be a near universal consensus among those on the right of the aisle to stop paying dues or other assessments to the UN.

At the same time the standard issue defense conservatives of the GOP seek to keep as much money as possible flowing to the Pentagon, regardless of all other considerations.  It does not seem to be "more bang for the buck" so much as "more bucks for more bangs."

As if all these different and contradictory currents were not confusing enough, Republicans in Congress are simultaneously for and against the Obama intervention in Libya.  They are for it in the sense of feeling good because Made in the USA bombs and missiles are macerating goodly numbers of Gaddafi thugs.  They are against it because (a) Obama treated Congress like a collection of mushrooms, (2) the US isn't running the show, (3) the administration dithered too much, too long, (4) because it looks as if the US is dancing to a French tune.

The picture of Republican foreign policy is more disjointed and disjarring than one of Jackson Pollock's exercises in random splattering.  By comparison the Obama understanding of how to conduct the nation's international business appears almost rational, well considered, and tightly braided.

As the line on Monty Python ran, "Stop this sketch!  This sketch is silly."

The Republicans had best get a grip on a very inconvenient truth: The Man With The Moustache is probably right--foreign affairs will be far more central to American presidential (and congressional) politics a year hence than it is today.  At the same time both the neocons and the isolationist tilted members of the GOP and Tea Party movement are as wrong as a soup sandwich.

This set of contentions does not mean nor imply that the Obama hyper-multilateralist, apologetic, deferential way of dealing with the world is right.  It is not.  It is as wrong as grilled watermelon.

There are a couple of ground truths involved which render Obama as well as the neocons and the neo-isolationists wrong.

The first of these is simply that the US is a Great Power.  It is not simply first among equals.  It stands alone in its mixture of hard and soft power capacities.  There is an implicit but quite evident corollary to this.  The rest of the world is not only comfortable with this but expects the concomitant American leadership when unpleasant bumps occur in the global night.  (OK, to err on the side of accuracy, there are some states which are quite unhappy with the status quo, examples include Iran, Venezuela, and the two rivals, China and Russia.)

The second and equally critical foundational truth is this: The only sure guide to a state's foreign policy and diplomatic relations is national interest.  True, principles, that is, national norms, values, ideals, and aspirations as well as the inducements and constraints of domestic politics are an important component of the process by which national interest is defined, but they are not the sole determinants of this interest.

This positive statement is accompanied by a negative.  The worst, the absolutely worst basis for determining either national interest or foreign policy is ideology.  Ideologically driven approaches lead to blunders as in Iraq.  This is why the neocon approach is doomed to counterproductive failure.  As history has demonstrated times beyond counting, institutions cannot be transplanted to new and strange environments by force of arms.

The inapposite nature of ideologically predicated foreign policy is also why the unquestioningly multilateralist stance of the Obama administration is wrong.  The same can be applied to the neo-isolationist understanding of the Pauls and their soulmates in and out of Congress.  No Great Power has ever resigned its status.  The other countries just won't allow it without imposing very large and quite unacceptable costs.  Unless, of course, one considers the cost in lives and treasure extracted by World War II to have been just fine.

Looking ahead, it is necessary to ask a question: Have the events of the so-called "Arab Spring" been an earthquake or simply a foreshock?  A year from now will the world be shaking to aftershocks or will the real earthquake, a temblor of ten on the global political Richter scale?

Consider what might plausibly occur over the next six to twelve months in the Mideast alone.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood may gain political dominance through the much celebrated "democratic process" and, having done so, drop its secular cover and revert to its base: violent political Islam.  The MB has the advantage of tight organization, a well established hierarchy, a long developed agenda, and a large amount of perceived legitimacy.  Also, there is no reason to conclude that it has abandoned its core definer of commitment to political Islam including,where necessary, that of the violent sort.

If the Assad regime is overthrown, the most likely outcome will be a Sunni regime dominated by advocates of violent political Islam with any number of domestic and regional scores to settle and goals to accomplish.  Or, if hard pressed, the Assad government might choose to unite its restive population with the time honored technique of an external war.  Or, as a wrinkle to this, Hezbollah may be turned loose by its two sponsors, Syria and Iran, with predictable consequences for the region.

Libya may well turn out as a stalemate, a divided entity caught in a slow motion semi-internal war.  It is equally possible that the post-Gaddafi country will be one in which the Sufi inclined majority falls under the control of the Salifist derived advocates of violent political Islam who are quite thick on the ground of Eastern Libya, Cyrenaica.  This would give AQIM a secure and wealthy base of operations.  It would also mean for the majority of Libyans that they have simply exchanged a secular authoritarian regime for one of a Koran waving nature.

There is a better than excellent chance Yemen will collapse into a welter of feuding regions and tribes in which the single greatest "winner" will be AQAP.  In this regard it is well to recall that Secretary Gates this past weekend termed AQAP the largest threat confronting the West from all the assorted franchises of bin Laden's group.  Saudi Arabia would be put square in the crosshairs of AQAP should it emerge as the most potent faction in the riven remnants of Yemen.

Then, of course, there is Iran.  There is always Iran.  The mullahs will be a year closer to the goal of the "Mahdi Bomb."  The Iranian government will have had more months to cultivate and spread influence among the Shia of Iraq, Bahrain, and the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.  (Recall that the Eastern Province is majority Shia as well as the most prolific producer of oil in the kingdom.)

The Israeli-Palestinian Question will not be answered in the next few months.  The resumption of rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza points in a dangerous direction.  So does the restart of IED attacks mounted in all probability from the West Bank of the Palestinian Authority.  Once again the dead and the fearful will direct policy on both sides.  This implies the cycle of strike and counterstrike will escalate slowly but inexorably over the next year--unless a more dramatic war intervenes on the Northern Front of Israel.

This set of seismic shocks yet to come has been restricted to the Mideast.  The rest of the world has been ignored intentionally but this in no way should be taken to imply the rest of the globe--North Korea, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, even Latin America will be monuments to peace, love, and flower power, sections of the globe where overage diplomats and military officers can be safely put out to pasture, free to rusticate without unpleasant demands placed upon them.

John Bolton was right.  And, it would be good for the Herd of Elephants to pay attention to him.  Foreign matters will come closer and closer to center stage.  This will be the case to an even greater degree if We the People become more optimistic about the economy over the next year and if, (unlikely as this may be) Congress addresses the deficit to more than a symbolic degree.

The US has suffered through eighteen years of ideologically driven, situationally naive presidents.  We have at least two more years of this enervating situation yet to go.  Is it too much to hope that the days of True Belief will come to an end--along with the decline of American influence and status in the world--in 2012?

Unfortunately it is.  That is unless either Obama bows out or the Republicans come up with a person capable of being a president who is not out of his depth when he must play his role on the world stage.

And, make no mistake about it, the next president will have to play a great role--for the earthquake is yet to come.

Gates And The Future Of The American Army

Robert Gates has a long and distinguished record of saying unpleasant things which need to be said.  He did it again today in remarks at West Point delivered to the Corps of Cadets.  Among his ruminations on the future of the US army were his view that the US should not again fight a ground force heavy intervention of the Iraq or Afghan sort anywhere in Asia, Africa, or the Mideast.  He also and correctly noted the army will have to change its culture regarding career development or run the risk of losing its best junior and mid-rank officers to the tedium of clerical and budgetary work.

His view of our misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan merit close study  While he refrained from offering any direct criticism of the decisions leading to either war, his cautionary not to say pessimistic thought about any future repetition give a strong hint as to how he would have done the job had he been in the Pentagon back in 2001-3.

It is important to understand that Dr Gates did not retreat behind an update of the preposterous refrain of so many decades, "No more Vietnams!"  Rather he implied that the US may find it necessary to intervene in failed or failing states, or states which offer cover and comfort to hostile non-state actors, but any such future operations must not be massive exercises in regime change and nation building.  In his understanding, interventions must be of (to use an archaic but respectable term,) "punitive."  These would be conducted primarily by air and naval assets but of necessity would include specialist ground formations tasked with the neutralization or capture of designated personnel or facilities.

Interventionary operations, if the Geek is understanding the tenor of Gates' position correctly, would be short, sharp, well-defined as to goals but would leave the larger political questions up to some entity other than the US military.  Certainly, this is how it should have been in Afghanistan.  The military should have been focused simply on destroying al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime.  Much of this could have been undertaken successfully by air assets, but the use of ground formations would still have been necessary.  With the evolution of remotely operated aerial vehicles, this sort of operation could be conducted more efficiently now or in the future than it could have been a decade ago, but even so specialist ground troops will remain essential in the years to come.

The prime concept governing interventionary operations must be a combination of economy of force and economy of time.  The job must be done swiftly and with the lowest possible investment in the "men-at-risk" category.  Since political, social, and economic reconstruction and reform are both lengthy in duration and intensive in human capital requirements, this area of task must remain beyond the competence of the military.

It is legitimate to infer from Dr Gates' words that the best adventure in regime change is the one which is undertaken using indirect means.  This implies little if any role for the military particularly the ground forces.  The Gates view is historically justified.  The only sort of regime change which will work is one which is conducted by the locals, one which arises organically from legitimate political disaffiliation on the part of a segment of the population.  Indeed, that is an operational definition of insurgency.  The outsider may play indirect roles in applying pressure to the status quo regime and support to the dissidents, but must not go any further.

Dr Gates stated categorically that the army will have its hands full justifying the expense of maintaining its heavy formations.  With this proposition, the Geek disagrees.  The threats confronting American national interests are not confined to those of failed, failing, hollow, or captive states or the non-state actors which flourish in those soils.  The threats also include large, complexly organized, technologically advanced states with ambitions which will run counter to the interests of the US, its allies, and clients.  The two top candidates on this list are China and Russia.

Again, the primary tools of deterrence and the war fighting on which deterrence is based are air and naval in nature.  But the utility of heavy ground formations in this area where diplomacy and war intersect cannot and must not be minimized.  The hoary question attributed to Joe Stalin when told the Pope was opposed to some Soviet initiative, "How many divisions does the Pope have?" applies to the Men in the Kremlin and the Trolls of Beijing today and into the foreseeable future.

The credible capacity to coerce which includes the credible capacity to deter is based on the perception that a country possesses both the means and the will to wage war effectively.  As the nuclear deterrent slides down in direct relevance, the metric of war fighting will rest increasingly on conventional air, naval, and ground forces.  In the latter category the primary index will be the size, number, and perceived competence of heavy formations.

The essential task confronting both the Army and Marine Corps in the era of the Incredible Shrinking Budget will be that of maintaining a credible capacity to fight both interventionary and conventional inter-state wars.  This may require some very creative out-of-the-box thinking on the part of both services with the final result being some sort of division of tasks with the heavy, conventional conflict duty accruing primarily if not exclusively to the Army.  Admittedly, the notion of preparing for the least likely of wars is frustrating to those who spend entire careers doing so, but boredom is the price of deterrence.

The fundamental nature of war is essentially unchanged and unchangeable, but the devil now and into the future resides in the details.  The world is not on the verge of universal peace and long term stability.  Governments such as those in Iran, Pakistan, Venezuela show this as do events in the Mideast.  Russia has announced an enormous military redevelopment program which will see a quantum level improvement in the materiel basis of the Russian military forces over the next decade.  The Chinese show no indication of abandoning their drive for a military second to none across the board: air, sea, ground, cyber, and space.

Nor is there any use appealing to the fiction on the banks of the Hudson river.  The UN has unlimited ambitions but no real capacity in its primary, arguably only, reason for existence--keeping and enforcing the international peace.  Similarly, there is no joy in the position so often adopted by the self-appointed academic, media, and political elites in Western Europe and the US, the notion that nationalism and the nation-state are dead or rapidly dying.

The reality remains that the US will continue to have national and strategic interests which will need to be defended against the hostility of other states.  Another reality will continue: There are states and non-state actors who are hostile to the US--regardless of who is occupying the Oval this year.  So will a third reality: the US must look first and foremost to itself in pursuing and defending its national and strategic interests.  Then, of course, there is the inconvenient fact that the US remains a Great Power, not as great a Great Power as just a very few years ago but a Great Power nonetheless.  This is a status that cannot be surrendered; it can only be lost or taken away by the acts of others.

This means the US will have to fight more interventionary conflicts.  It means the US must be able to show each and every day for years to come that it has both the means and will to fight a high intensity war against a peer.  This means that the US Army and other services will still have a job and We the People must be both able and willing to pay the associated costs.

The alternative remains what it always has been: A curtailment of American freedom to act on the global stage, and, when night falls, surrender to the forces of fear and hate.

What Kind Of World Can We Live In---And Will It Exist?

For much of the last century--ever since Theodore Roosevelt dragged us, kicking and screaming, onto the world stage--the US has been a major player in global affairs.  With the exception of the periods of disillusionment and loss of confidence in ourselves and our institutions, the dull and dismal years when the Isolationists reigned supreme in the Twenties and Thirties or the hand-wringing decade of thinking small which followed our defeat in Vietnam, the US has been a major player, at times the major player in world affairs.

When we have been engaged with the world, our focus has been the preservation of democracy.  When we have retreated from the global stage, the loser has always been democracy.

One of the most compelling lessons of Twentieth Century history is that provided by the results of our twenty year love affair with isolationism.  The roots of this disastrous lurch were readily apparent then and now.  The outcome of World War I was not, as we had been promised by the highly idealistic President Wilson, an end to war and a world safe for democracy.  This unfortunate split between promise and consequence made it very easy to surrender to the appealing message of George Washington's Farewell Address and recoil from not only "entangling alliances" but any non-commercial relationship with any country beyond our borders.

The seductive nature of "minding our own business" was enhanced by a strong strain of nativism which ran through American society as reflected by the increasingly restrictive immigration laws of the post-World War I period.  Keeping to ourselves seemed to assure maintaining our purity.  The notion of foreigners and foreign ideas polluting us was reflected as well by the resolute policy of non-recognition regarding those evil commies of the new Soviet Union.

The consequences of our willful retreat from the world were not only drearily predictable, they were highly and immediately visible.  The iron jaws of authoritarian rule clamped hard and fast on Italy and, a few years later, Germany.  These ideologically propelled regimes formed two thirds of a new anti-democratic steel triangle.  The final component was the military dominated government of Japan.

All three anti-democratic, authoritarian regimes were expansionist.  In each case the expansionism was predicated largely upon artifacts of mythology which rivaled religion in their attractiveness and pervasiveness.  In these features the ideological/mythological bases of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Shinto/Imperial Japan were rivaled by the Marxist-Leninist faith of the Soviet Union.

The democracies of Western Europe never went "officially" isolationist, but, led by Great Britain and France, all had lost belief in the power of their own polities and societies in the mud and blood of the World War I trenches.  The self-confidence, the belief in national values, the assurance that one's way of life deserved protection even at the cost of millions killed had all perished in the vast slaughters of what was called, "the Great War."

Had the US not embraced the false security of retreat behind its own borders, it is arguable that not only would Hitler and his counterparts in Rome and Tokyo have had to take account of the US in pursuing ambitions, but the political will of the European democracies would have been reinforced as well.  The absence of the US, the almost literal rejection of the world by Americans, made certain that the wobbly democracies of Europe would wobble all the more--and the ambitions of ideological frenzy stoked.

When the US was finally given no choice--bombs on Pearl Harbor being an invitation that could not be declined--it entered the war with one paramount goal.  The goal was that of making the world safe for us by making it decidedly unsafe for dictators.

Stripped of cant and other rhetorical trappings, the goal of the US during the long, frustrating, and occasionally down right terrifying years of the Cold War was the same--self defense by preserving democracy against the threat of expansionist, ideologically committed authoritarian regimes.  While the monolithic global communist menace never existed in realty, and the Soviet Union often quite conservative, cautious in pursuing its goals, the fact remained that democracy--and its adjunct, state regulated capitalism--were under real, ongoing threat from the Kremlin, from the Forbidden City, from numerous other regimes which embraced Marxist-Leninist ideology.

Looking back at the half century of the Cold War it is evident that the single greatest category of errors committed by the US was that of counting as allies countries which were not democratic but merely "anti-communist."  By confusing means with ends we often were our own worse enemy.  Democracy cannot be preserved, let alone expanded, by authoritarian governments.

In hindsight the errors of relying on totalitarian regimes in the defense of democracy are in high relief.  No one can miss them-or their harmful effects.

There is a cliche which relates to this reality quite well: To be forewarned is to be forearmed.  The same cliche applies to the latest threat confronting democracy  both here and abroad.  We have been forewarned about both the threat posed by violent political Islam and the danger of reposing defense of democracy in regimes which are not democratic.

The US is at a tipping point.  The elections of 2010 and 2012 will go a long way in determining how--or even if--the US will seek to preserve and defend democracy against its latest adversary.

It doesn't matter that the most recent incarnation of anti-democratic, expansionist authoritarianism comes in the guise of religion or, at the least, religiously based ideology.  Quoting sacred literature, waving copies of a sacred book, invoking religious sensibilities does not make violent (or non-violent) political Islam any less of a threat to our democratic center than were those presented by secular ideologies.  As any number of contemporary Muslim clerics, scholars of jurisprudence, and governmental figures have made abundantly clear, there is no compromise possible between political Islam and democracy.

The threat is real.  It is here and now.  It will continue.  If successful, political Islam will result in a world in which the US is less secure, less influential, less comfortable.  If successful, political Islam will result in a world order in which the US is more isolated, more confined, more ill at ease.

The argument for confronting political Islam, by armed force if necessary, is identical in all respects to the one adduced to justify our opposition to the totalitarian regimes and their ideologies of the past century.  Stripped down to the essentials, it is defending the US by defending democracy throughout the world.  Their defense, the preservation of democracy over there is to defend ourselves, to preserve our core values.

The question confronting We the People is not so much "should we" as it is "who will?"  That means who, what group, which party, will have the best ideas, the greatest political will, the orientation necessary to adequately and effectively preserve democracy both here and abroad?

It has become painfully obvious that the current president not only has no clear vision of the nature of the enemy, he has no real commitment to the idea that the US deserves to be preserved even in the most basic feature of democracy.  Despite his recurrent mention of democracy in his speech to the UN General Assembly, one listens or reads Mr Obama's remarks with the uneasy feeling that he sees the US as being in some ineffable way inferior to the rest of the world.

In this Mr Obama is representing the strain of belief which permeated the American academy in the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate period.  This period was the second outbreak of isolationism in the US.  Unlike the first go-around during which Americans disengaged on the principle that the rest of the world was irredeemably inferior to the US, the second period, the one which was so influential on Mr Obama's world view as it has been the world views of so many others of the American hoi oligoi, grew from the warped notion that the US was inferior to the rest of the world.

It is the impact of the "blame America first" school of belief which is responsible not only for Mr Obama's hesitancy in defending American interests or even acknowledging that our interests and values are under attack by foreign exponents of political Islam but the identical attitude on the part of so many in the American political, media, and academic "elites."  These individuals sincerely believe that the US is so impeached by its past and present record of discrimination, exploitation, racism, environmental destruction that it is exceptional only in the evil which it has wrought on the "less fortunate" in the world.

This is not to imply that the neo-isolationists reside only in the big tent of the Democratic Party.  The advocates of disengagement are to be found in the ranks of the Republicans--and the Tea Party--as well.  In these contexts, the proponents of "mind our own business" are not throwbacks to the first generation of isolationists.  They, even the Ron and Rand Paul sort, are not atavistic in their arguments or conclusions.

Nor are they simple minded folk who equate our foreign involvements with the motives and goals of jihadists. They do not blame the US and the policies of administrations over the past sixty years for the attacks upon us by al-Qaeda and all the deadly others.

Their arguments and conclusions are based on the budgetary constraints operating on the US today.  Correctly, they contend these constraints will not evaporate in the near future.  As a result they are of the view that the US cannot afford either an ambitious foreign policy or the military forces which may (will?) be essential if we are going to preserve democracy.  They contend the US must cut its foreign and national security policies to fit the financial cloth available.

This is not an irrational position.  Nor is it irrational to view the American defense establishment and its collaborator, the foreign policy community, as vast money sumps in which dollars almost literally beyond counting can disappear without visible--or at least, useful--result.  Every detached observer of the Pentagon, including the current Secretary of Defense, agrees this is and has been the case all too often.

Wars are expensive.  But the wars we are currently fighting are on the cheap side of expensive costing less than either the Korean or Vietnam wars when expressed as a percentage of the GDP.  Using the same method--percentage of GDP--our current defense expenditures including those of the foreign policy and intelligence communities are half of what they were in the days of Ike. (Back then they ran about ten percent and today a little under five.)

Too much of a reduction, arguably, any reduction in our defense and foreign policies would be a false economy of the worst sort.  A retreat to our own borders might seem attractive not only for reasons of costs but also because our efforts seem so purposeless.  (Take a dekko at Pakistan for complete justification of the latter contention.)

We have traveled that road before.  Twice.  In the first case, the retreat ultimately cost us much more not only in dollars, but, infinitely more importantly, in lives.  In the second, the consequences were not so great, but that was due to an intelligent decision by We the People which aborted the second flirtation with withdrawal before the results became inordinately costly.

Given the state of play today with nuclear weapons available in Pakistan and soon to be such in Iran, the existence and growth of powerfully motivated groups adhering to violent political Islam, the existence of groups such as the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Arab League, and states willing to support these entities in pursuit of national interest, it takes very little time for the costs to reach the unacceptable level.  This means we do not have the luxury of time.  If We the People do not decide quickly that our best means of preserving our democracy and all that arises from that is through an effective and robust foreign policy backed by a highly competent armed force so that democracy can be preserved wherever it exists, the consequences will be both irrevocable and unpleasant.

It's real simple, bucko.  Democracy is worth preserving because we are worth preserving.  To paraphrase a famed American admiral during the Civil War, David Porter, "Damn the expense!  Full speed ahead!"

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Words And Reality

President Obama is very good with words. He sure does talk pretty. His rhetoric can be soaring. He invites one and all to share his lofty view of life and the world. He exemplifies all that is high minded and progressive.

If global politics depended only on honeyed words and fine sounding platitudes, on calls to a higher minded shared vision of the world and stroking the feelings of any and all people who feel themselves put upon and otherwise either insulted or ignored, Mr Obama would be the greatest foreign policy president in history.

Unfortunately for Mr Obama, the world cares not a whit about the mood music of his speeches. No speech, no capability for sounding good, not even a talent surpassing that of Winston Churchill buys a country the smallest particle of the most prized commodity in international politics.

The commodity?

Simple, bucko, influence. The capacity to substantially, materially, and directly occasion changes in the policies and actions of other governments in a way which serves the national interest.

In the acquisition and maintenance of influence, actions speak infinitely louder and infinitely more effectively than words. Words are useful only insofar as they provide either the context of action or amplify upon the intent of the action. More importantly, the words of a Great Power are useful in the influence game only when they are consistent with actions.

States, whether Great Powers or of a lesser status, demand the US speak clearly and consistently as to our policies, and, further, that our actions are congruent with the words. For generations now, foreign leaders and publics have expected the US to provide clear declaratory policy backed by actions including contractual understandings which are maintained consistently over time and between administrations of different parties.

It does not matter if the other country, again whether of Great Power status or not, agrees with American policy. What matters is that the US provides a fixed point of reference in global affairs. Other actors know in advance if a contemplated action will meet with American acceptance or rejection. They will know in advance of a contemplated policy or act if it infringes upon American national and strategic interests. And, if it does, to what extent will the US exact a cost.

The need for a clear conveyance of American policy limits can be well illustrated in the post-World War II diplomatic history of the world. In 1950, Dean Acheson neglected to put South Korea on the American side of the line delineating our sphere of concern. As a result, Joe Stalin concluded that the US would offer no objection to the proposed North Korean invasion of the South. Or, in 1990 the new American ambassador to Iraq was not given proper instructions from Foggy Bottom or the Oval with the result that she inaccurately gave Saddam Hussein the impression that an invasion of Kuwait would not meet with American disapprobation.

The congruence of words and actions is equally important with that of clear, consistent declarations of policy. This actuality eludes Mr Obama completely (as does, arguably, the first consideration.)

The long, drawn-out diplomatic dance with Iran has made the disconnect between words and deeds very apparent. In a similar way, the strong US denunciation of the North Korean sinking of the South Korean ship Cheonan coupled with the improbability of any action beyond a Security Council condemnation and a chance that Pyongyang will be put back on the list of governments sponsoring terrorism shows a failure to appreciate that words and actions must be congruent.

Mr Obama chose the graduation at the US Military Academy to lay out his new strategy for global politics. He said that his view of life meant that our strategy would rely upon diplomacy, upon strengthening old alliances and forming "new partnerships," on developing new "international standards and institutions." Unfortunately, in this noble view of a future which might be such as to justify his Nobel Prize, Mr Obama gave no hint of how he proposed to strengthen the old alliances, or with whom he proposed to form new partnerships or--get ready for the big event--any idea of just what might constitute American national interest.

In justice to Mr Obama it may be the case that he sees American national and strategic interests as coinciding to the point of identity the interests of the always-undefined "international community." In his answer to George W. Bush's West Point speech eight years ago, Mr Obama made the same numerous allusions to international institutions which have peppered all of his speeches dealing with foreign affairs. This encourages the inference that Mr Obama sees no blue sky between the interests of the US as a sovereign nation-state and that of assorted international institutions, with the UN heading the list.

If that is the case then it is easy to see the motives for as well as the justifications of Obama's curious practice of diplomacy. His cavalier treatment of old allies such as Great Britain, Germany, even Canada. His pressurization campaign against Israel.

The Obama version of "we are all passengers on spaceship Earth" also would allow a motive for his interesting way of establishing "new partnerships" such as the one way street arrangement with Russia which has such delightful features as exempting Russian arms sales from any new round of Iran sanctions or conceding Russia a membership in the WTO despite the country's flagrant flouting of WTO practices and the shared philosophy which serves as the group's foundation.

It is the same bumper sticker phrase which seems to be the intellectual underpinning of the Obama outreach-to-the-Muslims effort which has so far been as one way as the exchange with the Russians and as much of a success as the effort to derail the mullahs' march to the bomb. We can all agree that the Muslim hyper-sensitivity is a drag, a bore, an exercise in tedium without equal, but it is not reason to abandon honesty in the defining and securing of US national and strategic interests.

Genuflecting before Muslim groups and their totems is an excellent way to assure that goals of American national interest will not be achieved. Muslim majority states more than most appreciate and react favorably to a posture of consistent strength and resolve. The historical record shows the US has enjoyed its greatest success in diplomacy with Muslim governments when it has been perceived as having the ability and will to kick one in the teeth--to act the part of the strong horse.

Only weak horses bow, scrape, evade, equivocate, and fail to follow an announced and well charted course. Mr Obama, by his love affair of international organizations no matter how biased or ineffectual, has convinced more than a few of the pragmatically inclined leaders of Muslim states that he rides a very weak horse. One more example of nice words equal very non-nice results.

Great Power diplomacy of the successful sort depends upon three features: clarity, resolve, and strength. The latter feature includes but most assuredly is not limited to military force. It includes all the instruments of national power including the evident resolve of the American president.

The Guy in the Oval is the Man in the Bully Pulpit. He is seen as being the man in charge by kings, dictators, and presidents of powers great and small. His speech is seen as the functional equivalent of action. When the Guy in the Oval appears to be, as Jimmy Carter was and Barack Obama is, weak, irresolute, and in possession of the faintest of faint hearts, the US is impaired in pursuing its national interests.

Great Powers fail on occasion due to the over-reach of their leaders. Imperial and Nazi Germany are recent examples of this. So too, at least in argument, is the Soviet Union.

The decline and fall of Great Powers comes far more often because leaders have lost faith in their country or themselves. The fitful, rocky slide to oblivion of the Roman Empires, both West and East, stand as prime in this field. The same dynamic can be seen as operating in the case of the UK and France. Now it is self-evident with President Obama, the man whose vision does not include a role for the US as a Great Power.

The question before We the People is not if Mr Obama can see the error of his ways and rectify the already present, pernicious consequences but, can the next American president see and repair the damage before it is truly fatal. As the sidling of Brazil and Turkey to the arms of Iran show, the diminishment of the perceived potency of the US is already being acted upon by second tier countries. Soon it will be acted upon by those of the first rank.

Mr Obama, listen up and listen tight. Regardless of the words imputed to one of your aides, that you were elected, "to preside over the graceful decline of the US," this is not what you were put in the Oval to do. But, it is a very real reason to demand your replacement.