Foreign Policy Success? What Successes?

The MSM have been spilling a lot of ink over the "success" of Obama's "leading from behind" doctrine as exhibited in Libya.  Some experts in the field of geopolitics have gone so far as to extend the Libyan outcome as being but the latest in a string of unappreciated but real "successes" or at least non-failures attributable to the Nice Young Man From Chicago.

All things considered, there has been one real victory achieved by President Obama.  His combination of responding to domestic political pressures--particularly the pervasive Democrat fear of being seen as "weak" on national security--combined with lofty, progressive rhetoric of the Bill Clinton sort has removed foreign policy from the election table.  From his decision to allow the lethal takedown of Osama bin Laden to the murky way in which the US backed into the Libyan adventure in regime change, Obama responded more to the dictates of the public's political mood than any realistic assessment of US diplomatic needs and goals.

While it is no doubt true that defense and foreign policy will not play any discernible role in the 2012 election, which is a misfortune to say the least, the canny political sense of the incumbent in denying the Republicans any point of legitimate attack constitutes a real advantage to the Obama campaign.  Also offering powerful assistance to the president's reelection effort is the combination of amazing ignorance and retro thinking which typifies the current elephantine field in its collective consideration of America's role in the world.

It is to be regretted greatly that none of the current GOP aspirants have yet gone after the record of failures which is the record of the present administration.  The universe of discourse is both vast and central to the near and mid-term future of the US.

Consider Iraq.  Yes, we are out of the place.  That is good.  But the cost of our exit has been to see failure left in the wake of the endeavor.  True, the initial blunder belongs for all eternity to George W. Bush and his neocon ninny soulmates.  But the Obama people knew the withdrawal date fixed by the Status of Forces Agreement was looming.  They also knew that total withdrawal would be dangerous, perhaps fatally so for Iraq.  So did the Iraqis.  Yet, with nearly three years to act, the administration failed to find a formula which would allow sufficient troops to stay with the requisite legal immunity.  Rather than search for the obvious alternatives to an act by the Iraqi parliament, Obama opted to get out of Dodge--and place the blame on the Boys In Baghdad.

Some success that--for the mullahs in Tehran and their local Iraqi henchmen.

In Afghanistan, the Obama authorized "surge" provided two results.  The first was a short duration set of battlefield victories, which were meaningless given the publicly announced draw down and pull out dates giving the adversaries all they needed to know to stay the course.  The second accomplishment of the Obama surge was to provide political cover and advantage as the surge forces come home before the elections.

The result was to embolden both the Taliban and Haqqini network as well as their Pakistani handlers.  A second result was to undercut the will of the Karzai government to conduct the needed reforms, to develop an effective national force, or to prosecute the war with vigor.  Along with the totally wrongheaded firing of General Stanley McChrystal, the date certain withdrawal schedule did nothing to enhance either the will or the operational ability of US and other foreign forces to conduct their mission with high morale and the most effective approaches on both the tactical and operational levels.

What a "success."  Yes, for Islamabad and their proxies in Afghanistan.

Then there is Israel and the Palestinians.  The Obama policy not only froze a bad dynamic in place, it worsened matters to a point that the two state solution has become even more unlikely now than at the end of the reign of George W.  The truckling Cairo speech raised Arab expectations to a level that could not be met by a mere American president, particularly one whose guiding star was provided by domestic politics.  As if that were not bad enough, the president has a very bad personal as well as political relationship with the Israeli prime minister, which in no way made it probable that Israel would go along with Washington's policy preferences.

What a success--if you are Palestinian head of government Abbas.

The "Arab Spring" had to be a success, right?  After all it was the triumph of democracy over autocracy, and how can anybody see that as other than a success?  Sure, it was--if you are a member of an austere, political Muslim group.  As was the case in Iran all those long years ago, the legendary power of the people, the voice of the democratic ballot box, the exercise of free voting, will most probably bring austere Muslims into power. And, once there, it will take more than merely voting to get them out.  (Once again see Iran as the paradigm.)

How about the "war on terror?"  Fortunately our intelligence, law enforcement, and military forces are highly competent, so we have not suffered a homeland hit for ten years now.  None of this is due to brilliant policy on the part of Mr Obama and his "team."  On the policy level, the Obama administration has been every bit as clueless as its predecessor.  BH Obama is no more willing than was George W to acknowledge that terror and other forms of asymmetrical war we have faced for more than a decade have been and are predicated on the religion. The same religion serves as the motivation of the various austere, political Islamists who carry out the acts of war and terror.  Failure at the basic level of knowing the nature and character of the enemy assures the overall war will not be successful.

OK, the Geek hears you object, what about the standing of the US in the eyes of the world?  It's gotta be better now than when Cowboy George was in the Oval.

You betcha, bucko.  It is.  And, more importantly, it is not.  But that is a subject for a different post.  Maybe tomorrow if the weather and the tetchy computer allow.

The Hardest Thing To Do--Nothing

The signs of ascendant, austere, political Islam are unmistakable in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.  The sharply Islamist party, the Renaissance Party, is expected to hold a plurality if not an outright majority in the new constituent assembly in Tunisia.  In Libya, the outgoing head of the National Transitional Council (NTC) announced changes in banking and family law to make Libya more Shariah compliant.  In Egypt, the Salifists who are the granddaddy of all the austere, politically oriented Muslim groups, are battling with the Muslim Brotherhood for the number one spot in the forthcoming government, with the inevitable result being the triumph of austere political Islam as the two entities share far more than not.

Throughout both Egypt and Libya, both Christian and Muslim communities are under direct, physical attack.  The Sufi shrines, venerated graves, and mosques in both countries have been vandalized, even destroyed by armed men bearing the symbols of Salifist affiliation.  As the world well knows, the Coptic Christians of Egypt have been brutalized, killed even, not only by mobs of the austere and violent but by security force personnel as well.  In Egypt as in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, Christians have become a highly endangered species, occupying the same slot in the local social and political ecology formerly possessed by Jews.

There can be no doubt but the austere groups--the Salifists, the Wahhibists, the Deobandis--are well on their way to establishing operational dominance in the countries of the "Arab Spring" as they are in Pakistan and the Arab Peninsula.  The Shia equivalents have done the same in Iraq.  The outcome in the next few months will not meet the expectations of the Western leaders and governments which embraced the purportedly democratic fervor of the "Arab Spring."

In the context of looming disappointment, the opinion molders of the West would be well advised to consider a chain of events which hit the tipping point twenty years ago in Algeria.  Back in 1991, Algeria was experiencing the same basic problems as ignited the "Arab Spring."  There was very high unemployment, particularly among the educated youth.  The economy was stagnant despite oil riches.  Internal divisions of tribal and class origin split the nation.  The long running autocratic government was out of ideas, and, more importantly, out of perceived legitimacy.

The government decided to call for elections.  The campaign was loud, enthusiastic, energetic.  Algerians went to the polls with joy, believing a real future beckoned.  When the votes were counted, the government, its supporting elite, and the armed forces were shocked.  The parties of the austere, political Islamists had won.

The army nullified the elections.  Next it took power directly.  Then, quite predictably, violent unrest started.  By the time the shooting stopped, more than 150,000 Algerians were dead.  Scores of thousands more had been wounded.  Even more had been jailed.  Many of these had been tortured.

Even today, more than a decade after the internal war ended, the scars remain.  Despite the return of a semblance of democracy, a sort of "guided democracy," the echoes of the police state soldier on.  Voices are quiet and furtive.  After sunset, streets are weirdly quiet, a testament to the curfews of the period of military rule.  The government supported Gaddifi until the bitter and bloody end.  And, jobs are still scarce, the economy still in doldrums, regardless of the special relation with France.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

There is no real probability that rule by austere Muslims will see the end of the myriad economic and social problems which propelled the demonstrations which brought down ben-Ali, forced the military to toss Mubarak to the wolves, and led to the NATO enhanced violence in Libya.  Prayer, beards, and putting women in garbage sacks will not assure jobs--particularly for the over educated, Western oriented youth which served as the shock troops in Tunisia and Egypt or provided many of the trigger pullers of the revolt in Libya.

Islam and the Koran will not, pace the Muslim Brotherhood's two best known slogans, be the answer.  When the faces of disappointed revolutionaries are rubbed in the mud of reality, the most probable result will be another round of violence.  Also, topping the list of outcomes to be expected will be the charges levied by the austere Muslims running affairs.

The folks in charge will accuse a sinister conspiracy on the part of the "Zionists" and the US for any and all failures.  There will be calls for jihad to defend the new, faith based governments against the cabal of Jews and Americans.  The path blazed by Iran (and to a lesser extent, Pakistan) will be traveled by the incoming regimes of Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt.

The countries will either go the way of successfully focusing anger on the mythical enemies in Israel, the US, and Europe or dissolve in a welter of internal war and blood.  In the latter case, it is to be expected that the military will step in to restore order in a manner akin to the process which drew a bright blood red line through Algeria twenty years back.

Absent a miracle of Biblical proportions which will do the impossible--squaring the circle of austere Islam with the real requirements for success in the contemporary world--the picture which will be painted across much of the Mideast and North Africa over the coming months and years will be ugly as hell.  The challenge to opinion molders and senior governmental wallahs will be to watch.  To watch while doing nothing.

Given the past record of Western colonialism, neo-colonialism, or plain vanilla intervention and interference, the West, including the US, has no viable alternative.  Rightly or wrongly, many, perhaps most, citizens of the countries in the regions see the West, its governments, its institutions, its corporations, its policies, its militaries as the props and supporters of dictatorships, the adversaries of indigenous desires, internal perceptions of dignity, as both indirect and direct exploiters, and as "the Crusaders" bent on the destruction of Islam.  The truth or falsity of this belief set is irrelevant.  What is relevant is simply that the beliefs are widely and deeply held.

The only viable option for the West, for the US, is to keep out.  The people in the several countries must travel the very rough road alone.  We must not even seek to use "soft power" methods to shorten the journey or pave over the worst parts of the road.

All we can or should do is make it clear that internal affairs of any and every Muslim majority state is of no concern to us.  Beyond this, we must make it plain that any export of political Islam, most importantly, any export by violent means, will be met by robust, very robust means.  As long as the austere, politically motivated Muslim governments keep it at home, they will be left to their own devices, but should they cross their borders, we will stop them by means of our own choosing.

This posture will be difficult, very difficult for NGOs given to humanitarian goals to accept let alone support.  It is an unfortunate truth that any approach other than patient watching and vigilant guarding of our interests will make life worse both for us and the people who live under the sway of Salifists and others of their ilk.  This is a stinging nettle of the sharpest sort, but we all need to get a grip on it.

Don't Veto The Palestinian State

Palestinian Authority jefe grande Abbas has tossed down the gauntlet to Barack Obama and the rest of his "foreign policy team."  The PA will seek full membership in the UN as a sovereign state Abbas declared in a highly reported speech to his fellow countrymen.

This move seems to be a very severe defeat for both Israel and the Obama administration.  The Netanyahu ministry has done everything short of declaring war on the PA.  The Obama "team" including the president has not been much more restrained, threatening (or promising, if you prefer) to veto the move when it comes before the Security Council for action.

A veto would not be looked at with favor in the Arab states generally as was made palpably clear in a recent op-ed piece in the WaPo by one of those interminable Saudi princes and diplomatic heavyweights.  Participants in outdoor sports favored by the "Arab Street" such as riots and suicide bombings will be much less restrained in their disapprobation.

Advocates of realpolitik have noted that even admission to the UN either as a state or a state observer will change nothing for the better on the ground.  There is much to justify this view.  Likewise there is much to support the dystopian notions that the Palestinians will  use either state observer or state status to cause a world of hurt for Israel in the assorted UN sub-agencies and the International Criminal Court.

The pessimistic interpretations do not, however, merit the US using its veto power in the Security Council.  Doing such would only assure the PA would take its petition to the General Assembly in search of the consolation prize of state observer status, which would give it all the trouble making possibilities along with assuring a very large can would be tied to Uncle Sam's tail.

A far better course of action for the Obama administration to take is that of delay.  The process established for seeking recognition as a state by the UN provides an almost infinite mechanism of creative stalling.  The formal request must first go to the Secretary General.  The Secretary General does not have to handle the matter instantly but can request further information before forwarding the request to the Security Council.  Doing this can take weeks--or months.

The Security Council can also demand more information as well as proof that the proposed Palestinian state meets all the diplomatic requirements for state status.  This means the Council can find itself caught in a set of hearings and debates over the degree to which the Palestinian Authority and the territory under its purported control does in fact constitute a fully functioning state.  Given the deep and growing divide between the West Bank based Palestinian Authority and its rival in the Gaza Strip, Hamas, and the fiction that Palestine constitutes a single entity, this could lead to a number of second thoughts within chanceries seemingly committed to the idea of Palestinian statehood.

A full fledged inquiry and debate within the Security Council could even have the potential to undercut any move in the General Assembly for state observer status.  This is not a nontrivial benefit given the uncertainty and ambiguity extant within the European Union for this gambit.  The US might even enlist the cooperation of Russia in seeking a complete airing of whether or not the Palestinian state really exists by quietly noting that any approval by either the Security Council or the General Assembly would constitute a bad precedent from the Kremlin's point of view considering the current ethnic and religious unrest in the Northern Caucasus.  The name, "Tibet," whispered in certain ears might elicit a reasonably favorable response from Beijing.

The point is the US could lobby effectively for a prolonged inquiry by the Security Council, which would buy that most precious of commodities--time--for bilateral diplomacy to make another run at the moribund "peace process" between Israel and the PA.  Abbas would have his political posterior covered enough to keep him in his tenuous position for some while since he would have delivered on his promises and cannot be held personally responsible for UN protocol.

Sure there would still be some riots, some bombings, some threats of worse from the "Arab Street" and other usual Muslim suspects such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, but what else is to be expected?  The US would be spared the major problems which exercise of the veto would bring.

The Israelis, or at least some of them, would not be thrilled but, again, what else would you expect?  A delay might allow calmer heads (assuming there are any) around Netanyahu to provide sound counsel respecting the recommencement of talks with Abbas and company.  There is even the faint prospect that the Obama administration might find the right magic to convince Netanyahu to wake up to the new and alarming political realities in his neighborhood, realities which cannot be addressed by simple words and the implied threat of Israeli military displeasure.

A delay would benefit all interested parties.  A veto would not.  It looks like a no-brainer.  Of course, being the simplest and safest way to go means it is not acceptable to either the Deep Thinkers or the ideologues who populate too much of the foreign policy world, not only here but everywhere.

The "Fall" Of Tripoli And Other Polite Fictions

You will recall no doubt that NATO air forces have been operating under the authority of a UN Security Council resolution to "protect" civilians caught in the crossfire between rebels and troops loyal to noted humanitarian,  African "King of Kings," and Brother Leader, Muammar al-Gaddafi.  To some of the NATO countries such as Germany and Turkey, even this limited mission was unacceptably broad and all too fraught with the possibility that someone, somewhere, somehow might kill someone else.  To other members, the US, the UK, and France come to mind, the only way to accomplish the prescribed action was through the removal of Gaddafi.

Since all NATO decisions must be made by consensus, it was inevitable that the actual campaign would be fragmented, relatively ineffective, and of dubious utility in gaining an end to the obnoxious regime.  When President Obama ended the active American combat role in Operation Unified Protector and handed the task over to NATO so as to adopt the policy of "leading from behind," the already lurching effort shambled ever closer to the ditch of failure.  It was no surprise that the combination of NATO fecklessness and rebel ineptitude in the arts and crafts of war not only made the loyalist forces appear downright competent in comparison but moved the war to the dead waters of stalemate.

In the past few weeks, the rebels gained new strength, new courage, new competence and went from a stance of barely held defense to one of successful offensive, particularly in the Berber inhabited mountains of the west.  The mainstream media seemed more than a bit shocked by the sudden transformation.  Many attempts at explanation were offered, but only one seemed to gain traction.

The explanation which stood head and shoulders above all others was the redeployment of NATO aircraft from whatever they had been doing to direct, close, tactical air support of the rebel ground forces.  Whenever and wherever the rebels sought to advance they were preceded by (to  use the most common term employed by the amateur fighters of the rebels) "Mr NATO."  Airstrikes preceded and ran in parallel with rebel attacks such that the rebels were always successful at a surprisingly low cost in lives.

The reports from journalists in the field made it abundantly clear that the rebels had not turned into super-troops during the weeks of stalemate.  Often the advances were held up and even routed by a handful of snipers moving from roof top to roof top or apartment block to apartment block. The engagements were almost risible in their small size.  The associated body counts were equally small.  In short, no evidence of either side having fought with skill or mass was evident in all the myriad accounts coming from the frontlines.

As the NATO air attacks grew in number, there was no significant increase in collateral civilian casualties.  That should have raised flags with all observers.  There were darn few dots to connect.  The rebels were suddenly more effective.  "Mr NATO was always there, on time with hot metal on target.  There was no ramp up in the collateral deaths and damage.

Putting together the dots confirms one conclusion: The more robust proponents of getting rid of the obstreperous Leader had authorized the deployment of special forces personnel or operations officers of the clandestine service to provide training, advise, and, most decisively, forward air control.  In the past couple of days, due  in probability to the euphoria of achieving seeming success, the British and French governments have allowed that special forces personnel both active duty and retired had been and continued to be present in Libya.

The Americans have not been so forthcoming--yet.  In a sense there is no real reason.  After all who but Americans would have been driving black SUVs in conjunction with the advancing Berbers and others from the Western mountains?  Who but Americans wearing jeans and bush shirts would have been encountered standing next to the quite atypical for Libya black Suburbans?  Who but Americans would have been using very advanced commo gear and laser designators while parked on a convenient hilltop watching the rebels mount out as "Mr NATO" circled nearby?

Positing for the moment that the jeans wearing dudes glazing Qaddafi tanks and missile launching trucks were either Agency operations officers or sheepdipped special forces members, then Mr Obama has been telling the truth when denying the presence of American military personnel in Libya.  A narrow, technical truth is nonetheless a truth.  The combination of the primarily Berber forces (recall that the Berbers were never well and truly subjugated by the Italians or the monarchy and steamed hot under the heavy oppression of Qaddafi) are made up of men with many generations of guerrilla warfare in their blood and American directed air delivered firepower was highly effective.

The close cooperation of the Americans with the Western mountaineers also had the advantage of putting some blue sky between Washington and the forces controlled (if that is the correct term) by the Transitional National Council in Benghazi.  The conflicting agendas and presence of advocates of violent political Islam in the TNC makes the development of an alternative locus of political authority desirable.  The Western towns and tribes are under represented in the TNC which makes an alternative locus not only desirable but necessary.  The key role played to date by the Western mountaineers in the "conquest" of Tripoli assures that the future government of Libya will be more inclusive--a key American policy goal.

The results to date make manifest the effectiveness of the direct training, command, and control as well as forward fire direction services provided by British and French military personnel.  Without these critical components as well as the equally important intelligence and targeting assistance coming from the Europeans, the rebels would still be dithering around many, many klicks to the east of Tripoli.  In short, the discrete assistance made the rebels something more like a fighting force and much less of a source of comedic relief.

The important take away is the "victory" to date of the rebels is not a credit to NATO per se but rather to the decisions taken by three major members of the alliance. NATO has not come back from the graveyard of obsolete political assemblies.  Rather the effectiveness of "Mr NATO" and the rebels came despite the alliance not because of it.  On the ground, under the pressure of real world events, what started as a purported out-of-theater operation by NATO became a "coalition of the willing" in the same model as that patented back in 1990 by George H.W. Bush.  But, as a polite fiction the credit will be given to NATO.

A second, parallel polite fiction is already being written by the Obama administration and its supporters in congress and among We the People.  That fiction holds Mr Obama as a pillar of triumphant diplomatic policy and his "leading from behind" policy paradigm as the most important new foreign policy development since the Marshall Plan.  Hooey!  Obama did what he did in the way he did for domestic political reasons alone.  He attended closely to the polls which showed We the People had no inclination for one more war in a Muslim majority country.  This political reality was reinforced strongly by the simple fact that the US had no definite, marketable national interest in play in Libya other than a vague, emotional commitment to the ideal of democracy and a strong distaste for Qaddafi.  There was neither reason nor way in which even the most limited of wars could be sold to We the People and congress--and Obama did the only thing he could do other than abandon the UK and France as well as the Arab League to their own devices with the result that US influence would go even deeper in the tank than it is now.

There is a final polite fiction.  That is the tale of the "fall" of Tripoli.  Leaving aside the tragi-comic features of the last twenty-four hours, the fact remains that Tripoli is not under any sort of rebel control, military or governmental.  The companion fact is that even if Tripoli becomes fully under TNC authority, it does not mean the war is over let alone that a new Libya is well under construction.  The simple, ground truth, the brute fact of life in Libya is that the Libyans will have to be very, very lucky and careful in order to prevent the start of a long, bloody, and destructive set of internal wars.  Beyond that, a successful outcome (defined as a stable Libya with some plausible semblance of democracy) will depend upon the outsiders--the British, the French, the Americans, the UN, the brigades of ever ready NGOs-- to do very little.

The danger from outside Libya is that the well-intentioned foreigners both governmental and NGO will try to do too much rather than too little.  Particularly if there is a period of settling scores, of payback violence, of armed quest for political authority, there will be an almost irresistible temptation to interfere, to impose and keep the peace, to "teach the Libyans to elect good men."  No matter what happens, no matter how much blood might flow, no matter how loud and obnoxious the rhetoric might become, it is critical, utterly central, that the outsiders keep their hands off.  For Libya to emerge eventually as a stable, peaceful, hopefully democratic society and polity, it is imperative that the processes leading to that end state be organic to Libya and the Libyan people.

A new polite fiction is emerging to the effect that we, particularly the British but also the Americans, have learned the big lesson of the dreadful and avoidable experiences in Iraq.  That may be true in an abstract, academic way, but down deep in the emotional brain which drives the really big decisions, it is not.  Should Libya enter a period of adjustment marked with retribution and revenge, it is doubtful that the Deep Thinkers in government and media throughout the US, the UK, France, and elsewhere will be able to kick back and remind the critics, inform the anguished humanitarians, chastise the eager to intervene, that this time the mistakes of Iraq will not be repeated.

The biggest challenge ahead for Libya and its people will not be the capture or killing of Qaddafi.  It will not be which way should the TNC go in preparing for its eventual demise.  It will not be transforming the fighters of the deserts and mountains into a professional constabulary capable of keeping the internal peace.  It will not be who will try the criminals of the former regime.  None of these begins to match the really, really big challenge.

That challenge?

Simple, bucko, the make-or-break of Libya's future is found in a short and easy question: Can the High Minded and Lofty Thinking of the West keep their hands off and their mouths shut.

If the past is any guide, the answer is short and bitter: No.

Smart(?) Power In Action

The other day Hilary Clinton and Leon Panetta were on stage at the National Defense University.  In the course of the action Ms Clinton bragged on the use of "smart power" by her boss, The Nice Young Man From Chicago, with respect to the Syrian conundrum.  She went on to imply strongly that the graduated escalation of economic and diplomatic sanctions in support of the anti-government demonstrators was both without precedent in American diplomatic history and (drum roll, please) constituted a paradigm for the future.

This multi-tier exercise in pure idiocy would normally provide grounds for a Bugs Bunny Memorial "What a Maroon!" Award but as the Secretary of State just received one of these highly coveted tributes only a week or so ago, she was (temporarily) ineligible.  Instead Ms Clinton will be given an Honorable Mention in the Rampant Distortions of History and Reality For Base Political Purposes.

While the term "smart power" must mean something else in the Clinton lexicon, to the disinterested observer it can only signify an exercise in simulated policy covering hesitation, irresolution, hemming and hawing to say nothing of the lack of a clear focus on American national interest and an inability to understand the limits of coercive diplomacy.  "Smart power" also serves to obscure if not hide completely the utter failure of the Obama administration to properly calibrate the relation between policy and the mechanisms by which policy might be implemented effectively.

Years ago, way back when the current president was blathering on constitutional law and plotting radical change in the parlors of such as Bernadine Dohrn and her co-revolutionist, Bill Ayers, and Ms Clinton was in Little Rock, President George H.W. Bush showed just how "smart power" is supposed to work in the real world of enemies, partial enemies, allies, pseudo-allies, and the usually uncommitted states-in-the-middle as he patiently assembled an ad hoc coalition under US leadership to eject the Iraq of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.

In the past, Ms Clinton has characterized "smart power" as the process of coalition building with the goal of meshing diplomatic, economic, and military assets into an effective package to counter a given threat or meet an unexpected contingency.  In principle, her understanding is correct.  It should be--it was taken directly from the record of the H.W. Bush administration.

The response of the H.W. Bush administration to the unexpected Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 is the practical expression of "smart power."  All any successor administration has had to do is read the book that Dad Bush wrote and follow its guidance.

Leaving aside one very embarrassing factor basic to the Iraqi invasion--the US diplomatic misstep which seemed to Saddam to have given him a clear signal of any lack of American interest in the readjustment of the Iraqi border--the Iraqi attack and occupation of Kuwait came as both a surprise and a major challenge to the US.  Long standing American policy opposed any single state gaining hegemony over the oil states of the Persian Gulf.  It was for this reason that the Nixon administration provided military assistance to the Iran of the Shah as well as to Saudi Arabia.  It was for this reason that the US established and expanded its military presence in the Persian Gulf.

The Iraqi occupation of Kuwait would have violated this policy.  Certainly the notion of Saddam Hussein controlling so much of the oil reserves in the region was against American interests.  And, worst of all, the prospect of Iraq either pushing on into Saudi Arabia or exercising an oppressive influence upon the Kingdom was both destabilizing for the region and against American strategic interests.

The decision to roll back the Iraqis was not difficult to make.  Far more demanding was the process of doing so.  Unilateral action would have been unacceptable given the political dynamics not only of the region but also in the rapidly changing international political environment following the collapse of the old Soviet Union.  The status and sensitivity of the Kremlin was a major consideration as the new Confederation of Independent States tried to assemble itself out of the wreckage of the Soviet Union.  Also exercising great influence on the problem of rolling the Iraqis back was the tenuous nature of the Israeli-Arab conflict.  These major factors along with a host of lesser issues meant the US could not act hastily or without the broadest possible base of international political support.

Military considerations were also an important limiter on the rapidity of American action.  The rolling back of the Iraqis from Kuwait could not be accomplished by air and naval power alone.  Sure, the US could obliterate the Kuwaiti (and Iraqi) oil fields and their supporting infrastructure.  Certainly, the US could inflict great devastation on the Iraqi military and government.  It could even 'bomb Iraq back to the stone age' without resorting to nuclear weapons.  However, none of these alternatives would be effective in that each would cause counterproductive levels of destruction.  Winning a rubble field covered by a pall of smoke from ever burning oil wells is not a good definition of victory.

A ground war would be necessary.  To be successful, a ground war would of necessity have to be of short duration and very limited casualties.  A long war or an inconclusive one or one which resulted in too many Americans coming home in body bags would be politically insupportable at home.  To assure the war came to a speedy conclusion with an absolute minimum number of fatalities, a very large force would be necessary.  In order to assure a maximum degree of international support, the US would have to assemble a vast coalition of military contingents from countries lacking any real history of warlike cooperation.

These two foundation truths along with the diplomatic requisites took time.  And they took great effort, personal effort from the president and his most senior people.  Adding to the time requirements was the decision to refrain from using any established multilateral institution other than the UN in the assembling of both the diplomatic and military coalitions.

The use of the UN Security Council was a necessary preliminary.  Not only was gaining the proper authorization from the Security Council a proper preliminary to coalition building, it was essential for securing universal political support domestically.  The Americans like the use of the UN baby blue flag as a figleaf covering the policy genitalia of the US.

The long months of the Fall and Winter of 1990 were well spent in assembling the coalition, transporting the very, very massive American military forces to the theater of operations, and integrating contingents from traditional American allies as well as assorted countries better known for opposing the US than cooperating with it.  The diplomatic and military preparations were highly visible thus giving Saddam ample time to reconsider his position and repent the error made.  (This period of reflection was, in and of itself, an important factor often overlooked at the time by critics and equally ignored by post-conflict writers.)

The war itself was conducted in a manner which well meets the requirements of "smart power."  The early, overly muscular, and unsubtle operational plans of the theater commander were rejected and replaced by a much better thought out use of American mobility and firepower.  The president ignored his critics who bayed for a quicker commencement of hostilities and who chaffed under the seemingly unnecessary delay of a very long preparatory period of aerial bombardment.

The final plan focused on the necessary--the ejection of Iraqi forces from Kuwait--and a limited incursion into Iraq itself.  This perturbed critics greatly as there were many who wanted the US to go all the way and eliminate Saddam for once and all.  The decision of the H.W. Bush administration not to go all the way, to resist the pernicious virus of the "victory disease' was proper.  The realities of both the domestic and international political scene militated against a total war.  A drive to Baghdad would have resulted in ever stiffening Iraqi resistance and a commensurate body count among friendly forces.  Further, the removal of Saddam would have saddled the US with the problems of post-conflict occupation and the specters of a crumbling coalition and a dissolving Iraqi society.

While there are grounds to criticize the post-truce American policy, on balance the end of the war was as good as could be expected at costs which were politically and economically acceptable.  It was an exercise in "smart power."

By comparison the Obama administration approach to the problems of Libya and Syria were demonstrations of "dumb power."  First and foremost, the administration did not choose the right battle against the right enemy.  Libya and Gadaffi were, at best, a nuisance, an annoyance.  Syria is an adversary of consequence.  As the US has not been able to influence Israel in the direction of returning the Golan Heights to Damascus which, of course, had the potential of prying Syria loose from the embrace of Tehran and ending Syrian support for Hezbollah and Hamas, the alternative is the removal of Bashir al-Assad with the hope that the new regime would be less threatening to both Israel and the West.  (Admittedly a weak hope given the potency of the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups espousing violent political Islam.)

Had the US opposed the delusions in London and Paris, there would have been some bloodletting in Libya but less than has accrued to date.  More importantly, the administration could have focused on the very difficult task of gaining support for strong action against Syria.  The difficulty of the task given the long standing relationship between Russia and Syria would have been extreme but not beyond the realm of plausibility.  It is not unthinkable that Moscow could have been persuaded to abstain in the Security Council and as a result Beijing would have done the same rather than be seen as the sole protector of a very unpleasant regime.

The months of diplomacy along with the necessary and highly visible redeployment of US and other forces would have given Assad pause and time for thought.  The lengthy preparations would have provided impetus for the Baathists to have found a face saving way out of the dilemma which came about more by accident and miscalculation than malicious aforethought.  The diplomatic ramp up to war could have made the war itself unnecessary.

This, bucko, would have been "smart power."  Sure, it would have required a level of political courage to prepare for yet one more war with a well armed, well prepared adversary in the face of opposition from the Obama political base.  And, political courage is not this administration's long suit.  It would have taken a high degree of diplomatic finesse along with patient persuasion to build a coalition.  Both of these have been qualities conspicuously absent of late.

"Smart power" ain't easy as the Gulf War demonstrated.  It is, however, far preferable to the hopeless, feckless series of spastic blunders which have scarred our diplomacy in the Mideast in recent months (and years.)

Madam Secretary, get it right.  Saying that something is "smart" doesn't make it so.

A Slick Trip Down The Islamist Tubes?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers And Tears For South Sudan

Yesterday South Sudan became the 196th independent sovereign state on Earth.  The raising of the new national flag was the result of intensive diplomatic efforts on the part of the US and UK to end a twenty year long defensive insurgency which pitted the primarily African, Christian south against the overwhelmingly Arab, Muslim north.  The post war road to independence has been long--six years--and filled with still unresolved difficulties such as the division of oil revenues and the status of disputed territory.

The most interesting aspect of the MSM coverage of the independence celebration in Juba, the capital, has been the recitation of a seemingly unending litany of problems confronting the place.  Mention is made of the poverty, the lack of education, the feuds which separate the leaders of the new government, the lack of infrastructure, lack of jobs, lack of medical care, lack of almost everything other than oil and fertile land.  Learned tongues cluck over the inexperience of the governmental personnel at all levels.  There is head shaking over the hostility still resident in Khartoum along with dire hints that the matter is not yet permanently settled.

Of course much mention is made of the international assistance which will be coming.  The British foreign minister has promised much.  The US is not far behind.  China, with an eye firmly on the source of the oil of Sudan, has indicated it will be inclined to be generous.  Then, of course, the NGO industry has already cranked up its not inconsiderable resources--most importantly its public relations and lobbying capabilities.  One gets the impression that donors almost beyond count are lining up hoping to toss some money in the general direction of Juba.

Looking at the mixture of hand-wringing and calls for as well as assurance of aid in abundance, one cannot help but think of the US at the time of its foundation.  It matters not which date is selected--that of the Declaration of Independence, the surrender of the British at Yorktown, the signing of the final treaty, or the adoption of the Constitution--the picture was much the same.  The birth of the US, the period from the first shootout at Lexington to the adoption of the Constitution, was a prolonged and painful process lasting the best part of two decades.  At no time would the smart money placed a bet on the success of the Americans.

The US was massively underdeveloped.  It had no industry.  Its only exports were agricultural products and naval stores.  And, the export market for these had been constricted by British action after independence had been gained.  The Americans were riven with internal divisions, not least of which was the split between states where slavery was commonplace and those where it was nonexistent.  The US was broke.  The circulating media were so worthless and specie (gold and silver) so lacking that barter was normal.

The American government was composed in the main of former insurgent fighters with little if any actual governmental experience.  The many strong personalities often clashed in contests of ego and ideology.  Corruption was rampant as is illustrated by the traffic by speculators in the land warrants used by states and Congress in lieu of pay for the men of the Continental Army.

The British had only partially and grudgingly acknowledged defeat when they signed the treaty ending the war.  In the aftermath London did not live up to its obligations under the treaty particularly as regarded the evacuation of military posts on the upper Great Lakes.  Together with their trade policy, this failure to abide by the requirements of the treaty indicated the British expected American independence to be transitory.  As if that hostility was insufficient, the French occupied the Mississippi Valley and showed no sign of leaving.  The Spanish from their colonial outpost in Florida schemed with Americans of doubtful loyalty to the new country to pry loose the territories of the old southwest and attach it to Madrid.

The American population was small in comparison to the land.  Medical care was absent outside the handful of major cities (more like large villages than true cities) and often inept even where it existed.  While Americans were notably literate by the standards of the day, the overall rate of literacy was not much better than the twenty-five percent reported for South Sudan.  And, despite the agrarian nature of most of the US, hunger was far from absent given the lack of a circulating medium of constant value as well as problems with transportation stemming from the very limited and rudimentary infrastructure of the period.

There were no international donors lining up to toss money at the US.  No NGO took up the American plight as the poster cause of the moment.  No UN, no WHO, no WFP stood by eager to provide whatever humanitarian assistance might be needed.  At best, the world was massively indifferent to whether or not the US survived and prospered.  More than a few European states rather hoped that this radical experiment in democracy would sputter and die--the sooner the better.

The US and We the People were very much on our own.  For the Americans of the independence period it was, to use a phrase of the day, a matter of "root, hog, or die."  We would have to solve our internal frictions.  We would have to pay our debts.  We would have to create a government.  Create a currency.  Create an economy and the jobs which would come with it.  We, and only we, would have the duty and privilege of creating a country with a future--or not.

Arguably, the root of our success is not to be found in some sort of unique ability on the part of the leaders of the period.  Nor, it can be shown, was the success attributable to an act of divine providence.  The American success in all its fits, starts, blind alleys, and failures was simply the consequence of having no choice other than national extinction.

As the prospect of being hung in two weeks reputedly has the effect of concentrating the mind most wonderfully so also does the ever-present prospect of national death concentrate the efforts and will of many, many people.  The Americans chose to root rather than die.

The first two generations of independent existence were neither easy nor, in retrospect, pretty.  The challenges were many and great.  The failures of were plentiful.  Many individuals in positions of power acted in the most petty and self-serving ways imaginable.  It was a magnificent muddle with no light at the end of the tunnel until after the second war of independence ended in 1815.  After that, while much remained to do if the American experiment were to prosper, its survival was almost certain.

Perhaps it is most unfortunate that South Sudan will be denied the chance to make it on its own merits.  It may be regrettable that the South Sudanese will not be faced with the stark choice of "root or die."  Arguably, the laudable humanitarian impulses which motivate at least some of the offers of aid and assistance will be the cause of a moral dry rot which will sap the political will and energies of the South Sudanese to make a genuine go of it as a sovereign state with a unique national identity.

As the current situation in South Sudan is considered, it is worth remembering that every rich, powerful, and successful state in the world today was once no better off than is South Sudan.  Every last member of the G-8 or even the G-20 was as internally riven, as poor, as lacking in infrastructure, education, jobs as is South Sudan.  It is worth considering how each made it from that sort of dire beginning to their status today.  One commonality is the absence of external assistance.  Another is that success came only with time, difficulty, and the painful development of internal consensus on what to do and how to do it as well as putting that consensus into practice with genuine structures created organically and not in response to some outside "experts" opinion and advice.

Parents in their understandable desire to save children from pain and mistakes often forget how much they learned by failing, by making bad choices, by having to decide in microcosm to "root" rather than "die."  The same is true in spades when developed, successful states contemplate a new arrival in the international community.

Helicopter moms and dads often discover too late that their constant hovering has done more harm than good to the capacity of their children to fly free and alone in a hostile or at least indifferent world.  Perhaps it is time that helicopter states and NGOs including international organizations learn the same.  Whether hogs or states, not all root successfully.  Some die.

Pragmatism Or More Obama-esque Truckling?

Secretary of State Clinton has admitted that the US not only has been engaged in "limited" contacts with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood but intends to continue doing so, perhaps on a significantly expanded basis.  These contacts have been described as "official" by some unnamed sources but are more accurately seen as "informal" or "unofficial" so as to avoid both political and legal embarrassment.

In any event and under whatsoever term, the contacts with the MB will prove controversial.  Whether they will turn out as useful remains to be seen.

Not surprisingly, assorted bloggers on the Right have picked up cudgels to pound the current administration into so much jelly.  Individuals such as the redoubtable defender of Israel, Barry Rubin, have alleged the Obama administration is once again demonstrating its typical, ill-informed, and counterproductive genuflection before the political totems of the Islamists.  Certainly, this US policy lends itself to this interpretation given the context of Obama's apparent hostility to the government of Israel, at least as presently constituted.

It is possible to see the continued and perhaps expanding dialogue between the US and the MB as a pragmatic ploy given the political dynamics within Egypt today and into the near future.  The MB in the land of its origin is a very real, very potent political player.  Even with self-imposed limitations on the number of parliamentary seats and seeking the presidency, the MB is and will remain the most critical political force in Egypt--the power behind the throne even if a secular rump fills the exalted seat itself.  Beyond that consideration, which is non-trivial to say the least, a constructive relation with the MB would assist the US in gaining a degree of rapprochement with other groups in the region which espouse political Islam.

The inducements for the US to have contact with the present senior leadership of the MB is not reduced by the very evident generational split within the Brotherhood.  The "Young Turks" of the Egyptian Brotherhood may be quite annoyed with their elders, particularly with the ukase tossing any Brother out of the hood should he break the ban on running for the presidency or join a party other than the official MB organ.  The split is real, but its effects are easy to exaggerate.

Also easy to exaggerate is the purported differences between those Brothers who emphasize practical programs aimed at solving the numerous and almost overwhelming social and economic problems currently besetting Egypt and those Brothers for whom the establishment of an Islamic state based on all Shariah all the time is the goal.  There is a difference not so much in basic views and understandings separating these two wings of the MB as there is a disparity of tactics, of priorities, and of means.

Neither the "Young Turks" nor the "Old Guard" of the Brotherhood, neither the "practicalists" nor the "idealists" differ on a single basic and highly critical point.  Even if this one point is all that binds together the assorted sub-groups within the Brotherhood it would be sufficient to make the MB a potent threat looming over the future of Egypt and the region.  Here is the point:  No member of the Brotherhood has any more regard for the nature of democracy as understood in the West than Ron Paul has for the Federal Reserve System.

Of course there are a plethora of points upon which all Brothers agree.  Israel must go is one.  Another is that the sway of Islam must be extended over the House of War.  Still another is the debased, evil, and threatening nature of the US.  There are others, but you get the drift from this very short list.

The mere fact that the Muslim Brotherhood not only in Egypt but around the world would like to see Israel expunged as the deity laughed with delight or the population of the US boiled in the pit for all eternity as the blessed of the faith watched from the gallery thoughtfully provided in Paradise for the amusement of the Muslim saint is no bar to talking with the Brothers.  In past years the various administrations and their diplomats have talked both officially and otherwise with any number of people who sought our defeat.  Talking with those who oppose you is one of the most, arguably the most, important aspects of diplomatic work.

Given that the MB in Egypt is a very real fact on the political ground and will remain such for some time to come, it is critical that we convey to them the limits of acceptable conduct.  It is even more critical that the Brotherhood's leaders come to understand not only the limits but become convinced that the US will exact a price for any violation of these limits.  In this context "contacts" does not imply a dialogue between equals but rather the transmission of facts to an auditor.

If the contacts are limited to the task of delivering a clear understanding of the limits of acceptable conduct as well as the range of possible penalties, the exercise is worth the effort.  It is important that the contacts do not fall prey to mission creep.  Whenever conversations, particularly those of an allegedly "informal" or "unofficial" nature, take place, the temptation to expand, make official, or otherwise raise the importance and status of the talks exists.  This temptation must be resisted.  Regardless of any impressions to the contrary, there is no more chance that the Brotherhood or any significant sub-group within the MB will accept American views of proper governance, proper social and political equality, proper policy regarding Israel than there is the Tea Party embracing Obamacare.

The folks on the Right and other reflexive defenders of all things Israeli ought to get a grip and stand down from their ramparts of indignation.  The time to man those ramparts will come when and if the Obama administration and its diplomatic personnel get off the track of squaring away the MB on what US policy will allow and what it will not, wandering instead into the bottomless morass of palaver about democracy, transparency, the rule of law and similar (to the mind of a Brother) fables.

After all, Mr Rubin and all you others, it is not possible to draw a line in the sand without talking to the opposition.  For the benefit of the Egyptians, the Americans, and, yes, the Israelis, it is rather important that the US draw a line and tell the Brothers of all stripes where the line is and what will happen should they be so ill-advised as to cross it.

What A Difference A Decade Makes

Ten years ago a group of nineteen men primarily from Saudi Arabia were in the last stages of preparing for their dramatic exit from this world.  In the US the major political news revolved around the Social Security "lockbox" and dire warnings of dark conspiracy afoot with Vice-President Cheney's energy task force meeting behind locked doors.  The most recently completed Quadrennial Defense Review was silent on asymmetrical warfare and made little mention of unmanned combat systems (UCS.)  The "Gang of Five Hundred" had reached a quick consensus on George W. Bush being a one-term president.

And, the US was rolling in bucks.  The federal budget was running an embarrassingly large surplus.  There was so much loot in Uncle Sam's pockets that tax cuts were agreed by one and all to be a very good idea.  There was also a wide consensus on the desirability of increased spending on education and health care for senior citizens.  Americans were feeling almost guilty about all that money littering the floors and vaults of the Treasury Department.

The overall American mood was optimistic.  There was a degree of buoyancy within We the People that even the boom days of the early and mid-sixties seemed grey and dismal in comparison.  The "go-go" years of that famed decade paled into dimness compared with the confidence, even exuberance, seen on Wall Street and Main Street alike.  The Summer of '01 was very much a period of "let the good times roll!"

The US was the globe's only superpower.  The economy was booming in all sectors--even housing and real estate.  Jobs were plentiful.  There were no real enemies abroad in the world, only a handful of annoying Arab terrorists such as those who attacked the USS Cole and our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.  Hardly enough to worry about, right?

We now know that the Summer of '01 was the last season of the ancien regime.  We know now that the past decade has been the opening period of several rather revolutionary dynamics in national security and foreign affairs.

The concept of asymmetrical warfare has come front and center.  The US and other civilized states now must prepare to deter or defeat opponents at any point on a conflict spectrum which runs from the use of terror to the employment of missile delivered nuclear and thermonuclear weapons.

The introduction and very rapid evolution of unmanned combat systems (UCS) whether in the air, on land, or in and under the sea indicates that the new technology bodes well to be a game changer equivalent in impact to the introduction of gunpowder weapons.  There can be no doubt that even in this early stage of development, the UCS far surpasses in impact both current and near term potential of the submarine, the aircraft carrier, or aircraft themselves.

The nation-state which has served to define global politics for the past five hundred years is now threatened on two fronts.  One of these is the supra-national organization.  The other can be best seen as sub-national or, to use a longer term, national entities living uneasily within the confines of a state dominated by a different and larger nation.

Another feature which has come to the center of global politics is the latest restatement of a very long standing conflict.  It is a conflict which has emerged many times over the centuries.  The defining foundation of this very ancient and basic tension is between philosophies of life which center on the individual and views which put the priority upon the community and see the individual as important only insofar as he contributes to the common good of the community.

The tension between individualism and communitarianism dates back to the time when agriculture emerged as a rival to the far more ancient hunting and gathering way of life.  To be successful the agriculture based approach to life requires stable communities in which land and labor can be monitored, controlled, guaranteed.  The hunting and gathering economy depends upon the voluntary cooperation of individuals so that every person's strengths can be utilized and their weaknesses offset.  Agriculture requires both the subordination of the individual to the needs of the community and a hierarchy to assure this subordination.

The individualistically oriented view of life emphasizes the rights of the individual while properly linking these rights with concomitant duties.  The communitarian understanding puts a great weight on the duties of the individual--often to the point of ignoring the concept of "rights" completely.  The polities which tend to the individualistic end of the spectrum are open and democratic to a significant degree.  Polities which lean in the communitarian direction are authoritarian, even autocratic.

In the past, the conflict between the individualistic and communitarian has been seen in the wars between Western democracies and authoritarian ideologically driven states such as Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.  It was the conflict of world views and understandings which hid under the term, "the Cold War."  Today it exists as the struggle between civilized states and the exponents of violent political Islam.

Running as a connecting thread between all of these several substantial and rapid changes in the practice of global politics is the equally fast and major transformation of the technologies of information transmission and communication.  As a means for facilitating the organization of ad hoc constituencies or as a tool for perception manipulation or as a political force multiplier, the Internet, the cellphone, and their dependencies such as social media have only begun to demonstrate their power and potential quite recently.

Then there is the change in the way in which We the People see ourselves, the world, and our future.  In a very important sense, the change in mood and perception during the past decade is also a revolution.  Perhaps it is the most important revolution of all.  This contention is predicated on a commonplace: The perceptions, attitudes, and, thus, actions of the American public place very real and powerful inducements and constraints on decision and policy makers.    In short, the mood of Americans generally is the context in which all national security and foreign policy actions are taken (or not taken.)

(It has gotten too bloody hot to go on for now--105 degrees F here at the computer. Please indulge the Geek and let him go and cool off secure in the knowledge that he will go on with this "thought piece" on the morrow when it might be a tad cooler.)

Newt Turns To Foreign Policy

Newt Gingrich, a man who has habitually given himself very high marks in the native intelligence department, is in the process of renewing, redefining, relaunching or repairing his quest for the presidency.  While it is tempting to dismiss him as Georgia's answer to Donald Trump--far more interested in promoting his brand than actually putting his hind end in the Oval, that seductive idea must be resisted.  The man takes himself far too seriously for that sort of thing.

It is in this context--the concept of Newt as serious contender--that the former House Speaker's address to the Republican Jewish Coalition must be considered.  Of course, the speech was carefully tailored to the audience, its concerns, fears, anxieties, hopes, all of which focus quite unsurprisingly on Israel.  Thus the impression given by the Gingrich remarks to the effect that the Israeli tail would wave the American dog with even greater vigor than usual in a Gingrich administration must be discounted.

Mr Gingrich must be intellectually honest enough to understand that the fate of the state of Israel is not the be all and end all of US foreign affairs.  This is not to imply that Israel and its relations with the Arab and Muslim states is not a trivial consideration in the calculus of American interests, but it does mean that Israel, even in a Gingrich presidency, would not be the only or even the major consideration guiding our playing of the game of nations.

In his remarks Gingrich offered nine specific points which would mark his mode of operation in global politics.  Some are inconsequential on the macro level while important to some in Israel and most of the Israel Lobby here in the US.  (The executive order transferring our embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv on the first day of the Gingrich administration stands out in this area.)  Other bullets have genuine salience.

In this area is Gingrich's rejection of the Obama Formulation regarding the borders of Israel.  Given that Newt did not quote the Formulation with total accuracy, his main criticism holds true.  The 1967 borders of Israel do not meet the requirement set forth in Resolution 242 to the effect that the borders must be both secure and defensible.  Even with land swaps to accommodate the "settlements" and giving due regard to the changes in military technology which have occurred over the past forty years, the borders put in place at the time of the armistice ending the wars of independence do not meet the "secure and defensible" test.  At the least the Israelis must have a military presence in the Jordan valley to provide some early if not particularly distant warning of impending attack by land.  In addition, the government of Israel would need some means of assuring the Palestinian territory remained demilitarized and free of the crude but deadly missiles so beloved by Hamas and similar terror oriented Islamic groups.

Also salient and relevant to reality was Gingrich's renunciation of any "right of return" on the part of Palestinians displaced by either the wars of independence or the Six Day War of 1967.  While some of the displacement was forced (particularly during the wars of independence) by Israeli forces, most of the refugees were cozened by Arab governments into leaving their homes and lands with the expectation of returning behind the ever-victorious Arab armies.  That the expectations were thwarted by Israeli military prowess in no way provides some right of return.  Gingrich properly notes that the allowing of unlimited return by the refugees or their descendants would constitute a form of demographic suicide.  He might have added that the alternative of financial compensation would be the same in economic terms.

On an issue which is of great importance to Israel which is also one of concern to civilized states generally, Gingrich stated that he would take more robust actions against Iran so as to prevent it realizing its nuclear objectives.  What might be done beyond that which has already been tried and failed, the Deep Thinker from Georgia did not say.  The idea of Iran and its eschatological leadership gaining nuclear weapons does not provide for easy repose.  But, absent the use of force there seems very little probability of preventing the regime from acquiring the bomb.  Admittedly, it would be politically suicidal for a potential candidate to commit his administration to preemptive war, but does Mr Gingrich really, really believe that all who hear or read his speech could conclude other than he anticipated using the "military option?"

The Gingrich Nine Point Plan shows the former congressman is not a big supporter of the UN.  He makes this clear with two of his bullets.

He proposes closing the UN refugee camps.  This is a good idea and long overdue as the camps, originally intended to be short term emergency shelters for those displaced during the wars of independence over sixty years ago, have transmogrified into permanent enclaves of the impoverished, the disaffected, the alienated, the dependent, the hopeless.  As such they have proved perfect recruiting grounds for assorted terror groups both secular and Islamist.

While he wants these camps shut down he provides no mechanism for their replacement.  Even if one grants all the negatives regarding the camps which he lists, it is not enough to merely shut them down.  Presumably the new Palestinian state and government would take the responsibility of integrating the former refugees and their descendants but this will require (unfortunately) some measure of foreign assistance.  To be credible as opposed to merely emotionally evocative, Newt should have outlined a process, a system at the least.

But the one time bomb thrower saved his larger critique of the UN for the subject of that body recognizing an independent Palestinian state.  In essence the Gingrich administration would stop paying UN dues should the folly by the Hudson play create-a-state.  He considers it likely that the UN will do something akin to creating a state called Palestine given the organization's well established record of beating up on Israel.

It is true that the UN generally and the UN Human Rights Council in particular loves kicking Israel around on a regular basis.  It is also true that the UN has delusions of adequacy with respect to acting as if it were some sort of governing body, but even in its worst moments there are sane diplomats in Turtle Bay with the result that the UN will not create a Palestine.  This will most likely be the case even absent the US veto in the Security Council.  (Hint: Think Russia and China and their apprehensions regarding the UN and its ambitions of overreach.)

Gingrich would have done his campaign and his audience a greater service had he taken a principled position on the UN itself.  The UN may have outlived whatever utility it might have had in bygone decades.  The time may be here for a new, tighter organization in which the genuine liberal democracies with a commitment to such features as open inquiry and expression, separation of church and state, independent judiciary, free enterprise, and the dignity of the individual constitute the membership.  If so and if he shares that view, why not say so?  Bashing the UN because it bashes Israel is fun but not useful.

Gingrich shows himself as Gingrich most pure and simple with point nine of his list.  He wants to totally transform the culture of the State Department.  His reasons are vague at best as are his accusations against the crew at Foggy Bottom.  His taking on the State Department with a full throated call for "new blood was redolent of the days when assorted Republicans considered the department to be filled with lily livered Red loving cookie pushers.

The reality is quite different from the Gingrich caricature.  As has been demonstrated by the contents of the infamous WikiLeaks data dump, We the People are being very well served by a foreign service of highly competent and quite dedicated nature.  As a historian specializing in 20th Century military, diplomatic, and intelligence history, the Geek has become convinced that our State Department has never been better.  It has faults--for example it is too bureaucratized--but these can be addressed without the draconian approach advocated by Gingrich.  Simply put, in this contention, Newt is off-the-wall and out-to-lunch.

When one does not support a war--don't blame the grunts.  And, Newt, when one does not like a foreign policy--don't blame the foreign service officers.  In both cases the blame (if any) rests with the politicians, with the president and his "team."  Get rid of them and you are rid of the obnoxious policy.

Presumably this is what Gingrich wants to do--get rid of Obama and his "team."  While it is doubtful that Gingrich is the man to do the ridding, he is to be given two thumbs up.  One is for making the out-of-right-field effort to answer the question of "who will rid us of this meddlesome president."  The other is for bringing foreign policy back to center stage even if only briefly and in a patently tendentious way.

Gates Doubles Down On NATO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Suggestion For Republican Presidential Aspirants

The next election is going to be decided primarily but not exclusively on the matter of jobs and who has the better ideas for creating them.  Other matters such as the deficit, national security, and foreign policy will be (much?) further down the list of voter concerns.  Of course, a terrorist outrage will change the priorities rather rapidly.

The reality is that jobs and the deficit are linked directly and materially to both national security and foreign policy.  There are a lot of people who may not like that linkage, may even argue that it doesn't exist today any more than it did in the good old days of the cold war.  Wishful thinking, for the world and its politics to say nothing of its economic dynamics have shifted markedly since the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union faded away.

The short period of apparent American unipolar dominance has ended.  The globalization phenomena have continued.  And, the threat of violent political Islam remains upon us.  All of these provide links between jobs, the deficit, national security, and foreign policy.  Given that no serious contender on the GOP side has put forth any excuse for a foreign and national security policy beyond traditional boilerplate and bromides, the Geek being public spirited has taken it upon himself to provide some ideas for the so far empty Republican platitudes.

Any viable foreign policy for the future must be predicated upon a few clear cut predicates which are both in our national interest and comport reasonably well with our historical values and norms.  Fortunately, it is not hard to have a policy which is true to our roots while protecting and advancing our future.  The matter is actually so simple that even a politician can grasp it.

The first principle of American foreign policy must be that of non-intervention.  By this, it is meant that the US will not intervene in the purely internal affairs of a sovereign state.  We may deplore and rhetorically condemn a state for what it does to its citizens.  We may deny it any cooperation, assistance, or support, but we will not use any method to seek regime change.  Unless.  Unless a state harbors, facilitates, or engages in the direct or indirect use of force against our interests, our citizens, or, under carefully circumscribed circumstances, those of states with which the US has a close and ongoing relationship.  Unless a state infringes on this bright and shining line, it and its leaders are safe from our kinetic capacities.

The US should get out of the foreign aid game except for humanitarian needs and then only in conjunction with ad hoc coalitions of states and NGOs having a shared concern in the specific need.  It is particularly critical that the US not provide any direct aid to any Muslim majority state so as to preclude the usage of that aid as "proof" that the US is paying jizya.  All too often Muslim clerics have taken the public position that the foreign aid provided by the US to, say, Egypt, is not aid but rather the protection money paid to Muslims under the doctrine of infidel submission to Muslim protection.

In a similar way, the US should ramp down its payments to the UN both for direct operating expenses and peacekeeping until they reach a level that the American per capita payment is no more than the average per capita contribution from the General Assembly's aggregate membership.  The UN is not particularly useful nor effective in meeting the needs of now and the future.  Far better are ad hoc coalitions brought together by coinciding national interest.  These coalitions have been far more effective from the days of the First Gulf War until now than has either the UN or regional organizations.

The US must also get out of the arms transfer game.  No more free weapons to anyone.  While direct military sales should remain intact, the long standing program of providing free or cut rate weapons to "friendly" states has long outlived its usefulness.  Over the decades, this approach has done much to perpetuate in power an array of highly distasteful dictatorships to no real advantage of the US and many disadvantages.

The time has come to dismantle the web of overseas military bases which are a no longer needed legacy of the cold war.  A few, small joint tenancy bases for rapid reaction and special operation forces must be retained but major overseas deployments and basing of heavy American units is not a strategic advantage any longer given the changes in the nature of future threats and defense technology generally.

Now for something radical.  The time is on us to furl the nuclear umbrella.  It is not credible any longer given the changes in the makeup of the nuclear club in recent years.  While the US must retain a finite deterrent oriented nuclear capability, the reality of now and the future is that regional balances of nuclear deterrence is more likely to be more credible to those smaller powers most tempted to go to war over long standing frictions or ambitions.  While this necessarily implies nuclear proliferation, this consequence will not make the globe less safe, rather it extends the dynamic of high risk equals high stability which was the hallmark of the cold war to potential regional conflicts.

This proposal does not mean an end to conflict but rather makes the world safe for war.  Conflicts will have to be carried on in ways which decouple the potential of escalation across the nuclear threshold.  With the possible exception of an eschatological regime, states are not given to mutual suicide pacts.  This in turn implies that most future wars--at least those between nuclear capable states--will be conducted by proxy, terror, targeted killings, or will occur in cyberspace.  Not pretty to be sure but without the globe rocking impact of even a very limited nuclear exchange.

This radical proposal is not radical so much as it is an honest acknowledgement that the nuclear control regime as well as the missile technology control counterpart sought by the status quo powers of the US, the USSR, and China has failed substantially.  States for reasons which are sufficient to themselves have violated the agreements which they have signed and transferred or allowed to have transferred prohibited knowledge and materials to non-nuclear, non-missile states.  This will continue with or without a clear abandonment by the US of the failed agreements and dependent regimes.

Knowledge is the key word here.  Not simply for nuclear and related matters but as a prime, perhaps the prime criterion for defining American relationship with other states.  Given that invention, innovation, and the pursuing of new knowledge is the key to a better, more prosperous and perhaps more stable and secure global future, it is imperative that the US guide its foreign relations on the principle of commitment to open and free inquiry and expression in all fields of discourse without exception or limit.

Our closest, broadest, and most profound relations must be with states which show a total dedication of some duration to free and open inquiry, expression, and exchange of information.  While relations with states which limit freedom of inquiry and expression are both possible and necessary, these must be both ad hoc and based simply on specific coinciding interests.  The most intimate relations the US can have are those with states which share the value of untrammeled inquiry and expression.

The more restrictive a state is of free inquiry and expression, the more arm's length the relation with the US should, must be.  This will work to the disadvantage of the restrictive state over time as will its very restrictiveness.  Indeed, a viable national security strategy is to cooperate with the restriction of information flow to the restrictive state.  This will hurt the restrictor far more than it will the US and its collaborators in this form of intellectual blockade.

Even though the US must retain a nuclear arsenal of finite deterrent orientation, our emphasis must be on approaches suitable for the post-nuclear environment.  This means further development of post-nuclear weapons systems whether hyperbaric explosives, smart nails, or similar projectiles and means of delivery.  It also means a much greater capacity in special operations including those of a lethal and black nature.  And, above all, it means a focus on cyberspace in both defensive and offensive ways.

The day of the massive naval fleet, the floating sovereignty of the nuclear powered aircraft carrier battle group, are ending.  This also applies to heavy armored forces which demand forward deployment or a long build-up period.  Arguably, the day of the manned bomber is also over or nearly so given the rapid improvements in the technology of UAVs.  On the budget front, this is a mix of good and bad news: less money for force maintenance but a lot more bucks for research, development, and procurement.  Such is life--no peace dividend.

This cursory view of the national security and foreign policy waterfront is meant to be indicative not a prescription.  The real deal on which to get a grip is simply that the world has changed and is changing more and much faster than the Romney-Gingrich-Palin-Huntsman-or whoever group appears to recognize.  It has changed more and much faster and in directions quite foreign to the mind of Professor Obama.  Someone out there needs to understand this and make some detailed policy statements that show they are actually well oriented in time and place.

It won't happen of course.  But one can hope for a change.  It is our future which is at risk.