Too Good For Our Own Good

Over the past century or so the primary characteristic of American foreign policy has been the tension between realism and ideology. While there has been some seesawing back and forth between the extremes of realpolitik and idealism run rampant, the overall trend has been toward the ideological pole.

Ideals have a very real place in the making and executing of foreign policy. Even ideology in and of itself is not necessarily bad. When, however, the dictates of ideology--any ideology--suppress a careful calculation of the realities resident in a situation, the consequences are most likely going to be poor, even disastrous.

In this context it is utterly essential to remember that governments are not moral beings like individual humans. Governments are impersonal constructs which function as agents on behalf of the nation, the society, or, more properly, that component of society which functions as the polity. It is the polity which sets the pace. The polity determines the nature of national interest. The government functions as the agency which seeks to advance or protect the national interest.

Government is to polity as a lawyer is to the client. That analogy is not precise but it is close enough to the reality of global life to serve as a quick guide.

National interest is composed of concerns or values widely shared within the polity. Some of these are long-lived, virtually permanent features on the national landscape. Others are evanescent, driven into existence by a high profile event, acted upon and then flicker out as new events, new concerns flash across the horizon of the polity's awareness. Still others, arguably the most filled with potential disaster, are the result of a specific ideology.

Stepping back in time a bit, for the first century and more of its existence, the US had little in the way of foreign relations. The men who founded this country were practical politicians and realists. Their view was simply that the US had only one true, compelling national interest--survival. They realized that this new nation was a very small fish in a large ocean populated by sharks with long, sharp teeth.

Despite some horrid miscalculations early in the Nineteenth century, which included almost getting into simultaneous wars with both England and France, the US played a cautious, highly conservative, and ideologically flat role in the world through and beyond the War Between the States. Even our advance into the colonial adventure at the bitter end of the Mauve Decade was justified as conservative--a defensive action needed to assure that our long standing national interest of open, free maritime commerce and access to foreign markets remained intact in the Pacific and Asia.

The first real excursion into an ideologically driven policy came at the bitter end of the Nineteenth century when John Hay announced the famed "Open Door" policy with respect to China. This policy was of the declaratory sort which meant it had neither legal standing nor an inbuilt capacity for enforcement. It is doubtful that any country among the collection of raptors who regarded China with appraising eyes saw any need to heed the new US policy--including the US itself.

On occasion, declaratory policy is harmless, a kind of feel-good move in keeping with the prevalent opinion within an influential segment of the polity. The Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact is one example. No one took this measure seriously beyond a few really sincere peace advocates. Others such as the Open Door policy or the Monroe Doctrine come to be enshrined as national interests worthy of implementing unilaterally if necessary--by force of arms if that is required.

We got away with the Monroe Doctrine in largest measure because the British saw no profit in challenging it. We did not escape unscathed from the Open Door because the Japanese saw great profit in challenging it. So embedded had the Open Door become that the US had no wiggle room for negotiation when the Japanese started to close the door--firmly and permanently. The result was in all the media a few years back. It was called World War II in the Pacific.

Ideology went front and center in both the definition of national interest and the conduct of foreign relations during the years of Woodrow Wilson. President Wilson was a Christian man, a very Christian one, who had strong views on international morality. He saw nations as being bound by the same moral codes as operated on individual people. And, just as a person who violates the moral code may be subject to either punishment or some other form of correction, so should a state which he saw as a bad actor.

Acting on a moral base and totally overlooking the reality that governments are agents not principles, Wilson sought to "teach the Mexicans to elect good men," using Marines and, later, the Army as instructors. Horrified at the submarine's necessary sneakiness and apparently believing that the presence of an American civilian on a British ship (even one which was legally a warship) rendered that boat immune from attack, Wilson worked with vigor and effect to guide the US into war only months after he had been re-elected on a "he kept us out of war" platform.

It is always important to keep in mind that the US had no national interest, nothing which directly, substantially, and materially affected its status in the world, its prosperity, its security in issue on the battlefields of the war. Further, at the time Wilson was spinning his moral distaste with the submarine and the Kaiser for whom they sailed into a full-bore crusade to "make the world safe for democracy," and to wage a "war to end wars," the belligerents on both sides of No Mans Land were on the ropes, approaching collapse economically and psychologically.

A peace of exhaustion was in the offing. This peace would have come even allowing for the Bolshevik Revolution and the subsequent offensive on the Western Front. The German offensive ran out of human steam well short of a meaningful end. It was not a war-winner let alone an attack defeated by the efforts and losses of the recently arriving American "doughboys."

Had the US stayed on the sidelines, the war would have ended in mutual exhaustion. Arguably the peace would have proven both more equitable and much longer lasting than did the one hammered out (to the accompaniment of the disillusionment of Wilsonian ideals) at Versailles.

Wilson's ideals--including the League of Nations--were ideologically driven pure and simple. While they were momentarily popular with the common folk of Europe, they foundered not only on the cynicism of European leaders, but more importantly, on the bedrock of nationalism throughout the continent--and in the US. The outcome of the ideologically predicated, completely unnecessary American involvement in WW I and the peace process was highly negative to all parties. Its effects linger on even today to the continued vexation of US interests in the Mideast.

In a rational world, the lessons of the Wilson misadventure would have resounded loudly down through the years. This world being marked by an absence of rationality, they did not.

The aftermath of WW II which was called into existence by the unintended by well neigh onto certain merging of the effects of the Open Door and the Versailles Treaty was marked by another burst of idealism and ideology.

The UN was FDR's genuflection before the alter of Wilson. The systemic flaw--that the architects of the UN deemed any and all "nations" to be fully functional "nation-states" in which the large and the small, the mature and the juvenile, the democracies and the autocracies were all seen as equal--constituted a fatal flaw. This flaw was joined by a second. The misplaced belief that the US and the USSR possessed a broad spectrum of coinciding national interests regardless of the vast gulf of history, values, and sense of security which existed between them.

Then there was the Cold War and the concomitant militarization of the doctrine of containment. The Soviet Union represented a massive political threat to Western Europe, particularly France and Italy in the closing years of the Forties, but it was no military threat. Nor would it become one for many, many years--if ever. The US in particular mis-read the blustering rhetoric of the Stalin regime and constructed a bogeyman of gargantuan proportions.

The false image of Soviet military expansion linked with the rise of domestic anti-Communism to create an atmosphere in which the ideology of opposing Communism, assumed to be a global conspiracy of super-human brilliance and persistence became the defining American foreign policy force. This, in turn, produced NSC-68 and the resulting arms race which was, unsurprisingly, mirror imaged in the Soviet Union.

There is not sufficient space here to trace the several historical trajectories and political agendas which resulted in this ideological dynamic. But, you can trust the Geek; he is a doctor. Suffice it to say, the Soviet Union was a hostile entity; it held no brief for the US; it would seek political advantage anywhere in the world where it could do so without running any real risk of a direct, military confrontation with the US which it (correctly) saw as technologically, economically, and culturally superior to itself.

But, rather than playing the Game of Nations as it was, rather than defining our national interests realistically and narrowly, we chose to play the game as our defining ideology feared it might be. This meant that we had to involve ourselves directly and substantially in the affairs of countries in which we had no genuine national interest in play. It also meant we fought a long, and, finally, lost war which was neither necessary nor in our interests.

While the game which we played during the Cold War had some good outcomes such as the success of Apollo in 1969, overall the consequences were far from beneficial to our longer term interests. One of those fields which suffered during the Cold War with results which still detain us at length is found in the incorporation of ideologically derived features into the overall definition of national interest.

Consider democracy. Consider the infinitely amorphous area termed, "human rights." Both have become permanent, central features whenever US policy and national interests are discussed. Such was not the case in past years, way back in the distant decade of the Seventies, remember them? Disco, gas shortages, stagflation, Jimmy Carter? Yeah that was the Decade From Hell.

It is also the decade when the US discovered support of democracy, and focusing on human rights to be central to our national interests. Before the epiphany of that time the US had mouthed much on democracy and done little. We had been content to cozy up with any dictator even the most unseemly if that regime gave the appearance of short-term order (which we cheerfully and quite improperly interpreted to be the equivalent of long-term stability) so as to keep the commies out.

Similarly we were remarkably indifferent to human rights (whatever the term might mean in any given context.) This unengaged attitude applied not only to the actions of "our" dictators but operated with respect to Moscow or Beijing as well. We were silent to all but the most egregious Soviet acts unless there was immediate propaganda hay to be made as in the case of the Berlin Wall, the crushing of the Hungarians in 1956, or the Prague "Spring" eleven years later.

All this changed when the tsunami comprised by Watergate, the debacle in Vietnam, the revelations of the Church and Pike committees, and the revulsion over the Pinochet coup in Chile rolled over the domestic political landscape. Politicians as dissimilar as Scoop Jackson (the senator from Boeing) and Jimmy Carter waved the banner of "human rights" as the Europeans held a mighty convention which gave forth a document on human rights signed by all, including the Soviets, which promised a new day for humanity not unlike the Soviet Constitution of 1937--and was equally a dead letter before the ink was dry.

The Reagan administration raised high the battle flag of democracy--at least rhetorically and joined in the human rights hymn. So well was the imagery of democracy and human rights portrayed that almost no one questioned the relevance of either to the requirements of American national interest. After all, who could be against either?

Both are good in principle, in the abstract. But, neither necessarily protects or advances our national interests such as global stability, open commerce, an absence of war, or economic success. And, each brought with it the potential for ideologically driven interference in venues both remote and tangential to national interests. Further, both carry with them automatically the potential for expansiveness of application which violates the constraints of realism.

The fact that democracy in and of itself brings no guarantee of either stability or peace is seen in the blunt fact that Hitler came to power via an election which met the tests of transparency, fairness, and inclusiveness used even today by Jimmy Carter and others of the election-fairness community. The reality that democracy does not bring leaders agreeable to American national interests is seen right now in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua. The reality that democracy does not lead to the sort of stability best for the US is dramatically apparent in Iraq.

Basing any aspect of foreign policy on human rights is to base it on the most slippery of slopes. There may be a Universal Declaration of Human Rights signed by all the member countries of the UN, but there is no one universally accepted protocol for defining, let alone enforcing this international version of declaratory policy. There is no practical mechanism for holding each and every country to a single standard in any area of human rights. That is self-evident in the differing fashions in which women are treated in Muslim as compared with non-Muslim countries or the vast gulf in the free exchange of ideas between China on the one hand and the US on the other or the exploitation of children in both industry and warfare.

Human rights and democracy are matters of aesthetics or sensibilities; they are not national interests. The same may be said regarding "humanitarian crises."

Consider Somalia in December 1992. Starvation was real, widespread in that geographical expression. International food aid through either the UN or the plethora of non-governmental organizations concerned with such matters was impeded or stolen by assorted gangs of thugs, various gunslinging bands of diverse warlords. It was not getting to the starving people clustered in camps.

This was disturbing to say the least. It made for images of compelling anguish on the TV screens of the developed world. It was a macabre spectacle of the best sort. But, was it a matter of such compelling US national interest that it merited the deployment of American troops?

George H.W. Bush thought so. For whatsoever constellation of reasons the recently defeated president sent the Marines ashore. He assured We the People the mission would be short, successful and, above all, the right-thing-to-do. Of course, it was longer, bloody, unsuccessful and set the stage for both the emboldenment of al-Qaeda and the concomitant hesitant policy of the Clinton administration in meeting the jihadist challenge.

Overall, the Somalia deployment was a bad thing for American national interests. But, it was neither the last nor the worst conflation of the ideological or the idealistic with the realistic requirements of American national interest.

That point came with George W. Bush. Flagrant idealism caused the mission leap in Afghanistan from a punitive expedition clearly in American national interest to the goal of "nation-building"--a clear impossibility given the history, demographics, and culture of that place. Worse, pure, unadulterated ideology aiming at the chimera of planting democracy in the Arab Mideast caused the invasion of Iraq. This action above all others taken by the US in the past quarter century if not more was the most harmful to US national interests both in the region and around the world which can be seen in the historical record. It was as if Dick Cheney took his famed shotgun and blasted the face clean off Uncle Sam.

Now, as has been noted in many, many posts, the post-modern, multi-cultural, community organizing on a grand scale ideology of President Obama is with us. So far the results have been as can be expected from history--a failure harmful to the real world interests of the US. Once again events are proving that when realpolitik is kicked aside in the interests of ideology, only disaster can be expected.

The question is this. Will the disaster be on the scale of Bush in Somalia or Woodrow Wilson in and after World War I? Well, bucko, only time will tell.

Personal Relations Do Matter, Mr Obama

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's The Economy, Stupid! (Or Is It?)

Recycling the old Clinton campaign adage is appropriate in part, but only in part for the looming Iranian presidential election. While we in the West are most hung up on Ahmedinejad's oratory on subjects ranging from the mullahocracy's pursuit of nuclear weapons to the necessity of expunging the "Zionist entity" to the strident proclamations regarding the non-existence of the Holocaust, none of these matter to the Iranian street. To the Iranians generally the name of the game is the economy.

To err on the side of accuracy, the real deal is the nearly prostrate condition of the economy as well as Ahmedinejad's propensity for prevarication on that reality. When Ahmedinejad won his unexpectedly convincing victory a while back, it was with the promise that Iran's oil riches would find their way to the dinner plates of the Iranian versions of Joe and Jane Sixpack. To say that the promise remains unfulfilled is to engage in world class understatement.

While the collapse of last year's record setting oil prices played a role in the meltdown of the Iranian economy, that was the lesser contributor to the current situation of high inflation and very high unemployment. The greater causes can be laid directly to the policies of Ahmedinejad and his clerical masters.

The mullahs and their mouthpiece have tossed oodles and gobs of the long green at military targets. The spinning centrifuges and the new generation of solid fuel boosters did not come cheap. Even without the sanctions which have caused an unspecifiable but far from negligible increase in costs, these projects and systems are big, very big ticket items.

Below the glitz of the centrifuges and missiles, the Iranians have spent an ever increasing percentage of their diminishing GDP on conventional weapons for their air, ground and naval forces. The overall size of the military, including its paramilitary components, have been increased--in part to offset the thirty plus percent unemployment among young men.

In addition, the Iranian government has continued to funnel large sums into their client groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Largess has also been spread among troublemaking groups from Afghanistan and Iraq to such far away places as the Philippines and Latin America. Quite simply, keeping and expanding the terrorist networks established as far back as the early Eighties is an expensive proposition, the costs of which are only partially offset by an increasing involvement in the fabrication, transportation and distribution of drugs.

Along with the guns, Ahmedinejad--with the necessary support of the senior clerics--has tossed money in the direction of "butter." The base of Ahmedinejad's support was and is the poor, the marginal and the most devout. Make work and relief projects as well as subsidies both open and disguised have been necessary to keep the support of these segments of the population. Holding the poorest from harm has been critical in Ahmedinejad's political future.

Mir Hossein Moussavi draws his support from the young, the "middle class," the less devout. His rivers of green draw from the waters of those who do not get the subsidies, the relief, the people who must work forty-eight hours a day to begin to make ends meet. The "Greenies" also include those who are nationalistic in what might be termed a "Persian" sense rather than one which rests on Islamism. These are the more educated, the more plugged into the world, who have been feeling an increased sense of embarrassment from Ahmedinejad's flights of oratorical excess around the world.

In addition the Moussavi supporters include those who rightly worry about the probable consequences of a continuation of intransigence on the nuclear issue. These Iranians have a sufficient grip on reality to recognise what will happen if Israel decides that the emerging Iranian nuclear threat must be removed regardless of costs.

The mullahocracy's policy of intransigence, more intransigence and even more intransigence has served the regime's interests well for thirty years now. Breaking the norms and customs of international relations has worked well--misleadingly well. The direct and proxy employment of terror, assassination and the other ploys of the twilight sort of war has also worked well--again misleadingly well.

Quite simply, all trains eventually reach the end of the line. The same may be coming true with respect to the thirty years of defiance, obstinacy, and lethal operations. Among the supporters of Moussavi this is a factor which equals or perhaps surpasses the economy.

President Obama does not want to see the military instrument employed in order to bring about a final solution to the Iranian conundrum. No American president has sought out war--not even Theodore Roosevelt despite rumors to the contrary. FDR didn't send the American navy against Japan on 6 December 1941. Harry Truman did not order an invasion of North Korea in 1950. The much maligned LBJ did not eagerly ship ground combat forces to South Vietnam in 1965.

Even George W. Bush didn't stare at a globe hoping to find a country to invade before 9/11.

The Obama version of "give peace a chance" is not new, not unprecedented. But, like the other peace oriented presidents before him, there well may come the day when war seems to be the least-worst option. That day may be upon him long before he or the rest of us expects or desires.

Undoubtedly there are Iranians who recognise this. There may even be members of the clerical elite, the powers in the back room of Iranian politics, who realise it as well.

Ultimately, it is the latter rather than the former who will make the crucial decision to drop the thirty year long policy and embark on a new course. No matter how the election turns out, the mullahs of Ayatollah Khamenei's inner circle make the decisions and enforce them.

The race in Iran is tighter now than any observer might have thought even two weeks ago. It is still unlikely that Moussavi will win. However, a strong showing by the challenger is enough.

Enough to fire warning shots across the bows of the mullahs and frontman Ahedinejad alike. There will be two rounds in particular in this electoral barrage.

The first is it's-the-economy,-stupid! The second is the limits of defiance.

The mullahs will have good reason to re-evaluate the commitment of vast amounts of the country's limited resources to military uses. They will have good reason to ask if they have pushed the forbearance of the West too far. They might wonder if they are perilously close to the line, the limits of tolerance.

The mullahs might even be so un-Islamist as to take a look at history. If they were to make such a bold move, they would discover that American presidents of the Democratic Party are the most likely to take the most robust military action when pushed over the line. Consider Woodrow Wilson, a peace loving man of almost True Believer status. Pushed beyond his limits, the Marines landed in Mexico and elsewhere, and the US went to war only six months after Wilson had won re-election as the man who "kept us out of war."

Or, they might consider Harry Truman's response to the North Korean invasion. Truman not only invoked the UN successfully as diplomatic cover for our military response, he signed off on NSC 68 which put us firmly on the road to the hydrogen bomb, long range missiles, the arms race with the Soviet Union and the doctrine of mutually assured destruction.

Or, they might reflect on JFK. The Kennedy White House following the president's humiliation at the Vienna summit went full tilt in a campaign against Castro, sent special forces to Laos and ramped up our ability to counter presumed Soviet sponsored insurgencies throughout the world. Among other consequences were the Vietnam War and the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world to the last nanometer of the brink of nuclear war.

Even Jimmy Carter, the most un-warlike man to sit in the Oval since Rutherford B. Hayes, would have sent the troops to Iran in 1979--had he not already dismantled our special operations capacity and rapid response interventionary potential.

Barack Obama does not have the kind of mentality to accept diplomatic kicks to the groin while keeping his famed smile intact. President Obama (and the Democratic Congressional leadership) likes to see himself as a progressive, a globalist, even a post-nationalist. But, as the historical record demonstrates clearly, people of a similar self-characterisation have gone to war with a rush and a fury which almost surpasses understanding.

The Iranian regime has lied, assassinated, terrorised and generally behaved as global Bad Actor without real hindrance for thirty years. Along the way the mullahs have repressed and impoverished their own people to say nothing of dragging the long generations of proud Persian nationalism through the mire of Islamism. Now, with a little bit of luck, the elections will produce results which include the clerics re-evaluating their relations with both the Persian people and the governments of the world.

However, if the Supreme Ayatollah and his ilk insist with continuing more of the same old, same old, they and the rest of the world are in for a stretch of very bad road. All that can be hoped for realistically is that Moussavi will do well enough to force the assorted ayatollahs, imams and other bearers of clerical authority to discover that Allah wills, "Cowboy, mend your ways--now!"

George W(oodrow Wilson) Bush

The American president holding the all-time record for an inability to pursue genuine US national security interests was formerly the one-time political science professor turned politician, Woodrow Wilson.

The Geek maintains that ole Woody has been replaced. By George W. Bush, one time playboy and part-time fighter jock turned politician.

There is irony to the situation. Both Woodrow and George were motivated in their successful quest to harm the interests and standing of the United States by the same driving force.

Both men gave ideology primacy over a realistic assessment of American national interests and American national security. Both men chased the same mirages, making the world safe for democracy and abating the nuisance of war.

Sure the details are different. That's the nature of history. Detailed differences but broad similarities if not identities.

Wilson ordered two invasions of Mexico. He ordered the Navy and Marines to Central America. Sent troops to revolutionary Russia twice. Worst of all, he sought American intervention in World War I in pursuit of his vision of a New World Order but leading instead to World War II. (He was also instrumental, if not critical in creating a country once known as Yugoslavia against the advice of an expert commission as well as dismembering the old Ottoman Empire, again against the advice of those who were experts on the Mideast.)

Not bad as a record of policies for today without a thought for tomorrow. Hard to beat.

However George W. Bush has done it. Let's go to the record. A misfought war in Afghanistan, which has served only to strengthen and spread the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Then there is the totally unnecessary war in Iraq, which has served only to increase the perception that the US is on an anti-Islamic crusade while frittering away American military capabilities and weakening the political will of the American public to make some hard choices and go through some necessary and very painful changes.

Worst of all, the Bush Administration has managed single-handedly and single-mindedly to do a fine job of starting a new confrontation with Russia. That represents a masterstroke of international relations that boggles the Geek's mind.

The first question is one of motivations. What was the reason which links all these stunning debacles which has cost the US most if not all of its international credibility and stature?

The short answer is ideology. The longer form is the current administration is full of neocons firmly convinced in the face of historical and cultural evidence that American style democracy replete with separation of church and state, ethnic and gender equality, liberal institutions, an independent judiciary and an affection for free-market economics can be successfully translated in a short time frame by force of arms.

In short, the current administration and its crew of neocon ninnies has updated and expanded the old Wilsonian dictum of teaching-the-Mexicans-to-elect-good-men.

In Afghanistan the administration was presented with two clear alternatives.

One was a sharp, short campaign directed to the end of killing the Taliban chieftan Omar, his henchmen and as many Taliban jihadists as possible along with bin Ladin, Zawahiri and the rest of the al-Qaeda leadership cadre along with as many jihadists as possible and then getting the hell out. We would then let the Afghans sort out what came next. The goal was to abate a clear and obvious menace to the US. Not create a better Afghanistan.

The second envisaged creating a Little America in the deserts and mountains of the tribal country. This task would be accomplished by a few US troops on the ground, a huge passel of American firepower overhead, a bunch of local proxies from the various ethnic minorities and regiments of civilian contractors. Time was not of the essence.

We know which option Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield and company took. We are watching how it turns out every day now, nearly seven years after the first bomb fell.

Eliminating Saddam Hussein was pure self-defeat in terms of real US national security interest. Under Saddam, admittedly a very un-nice person, Iraq along with Syria under Assad were watertight bulkheads against the stream of Islamist jihadists from points east. We didn't have to ask them, bribe them or threaten them. It was in the national interest of both Iraq and Syria to keep the uncontrollable jihadists out and to tightly control their own clients.

The toppling of Saddam along with the completely counterproductive alienation of Assad fils ended the blockade of the jihadists along with further destabilizing the Mideast. Other than the fact that Saddam was thoroughly unpleasant primarily to his own people and Assad's regime pursued policies in Lebanon in ways the current administration (and Israel) found annoying there is no justification for either the adventure in regime change or the alienation of Syria.

Neither has increased American national security. Both actions have lessened our security and weakened our capacities.

At this point the ideologues of the current administration would have given the Progressive internationalists of Wilson's day a run for the prize of foreign policy idiocy. But, the neocons had one more set of blunders to haul out to the disadvantage of the US.

Bush, et al, for reasons that escape explanation even by a psychiatrist, just had, absolutely had, to treat Russia as if it were a defeated, has-been power now prostrate in the rubble of a lost war, reduced to, at best, second class status. For years the current administration's tone in speaking to or about Russia alternated between patronising and condescending with occasional gusts of hectoring.

As the Geek has posted before on several occasions, the current administration failed to recognise the historic insecurity of Russia, its centuries of feeling massively inferior to the West, and its decades of seeing itself as inferior compared to the US. The current administration failed to treat Russia as the Great Power it believed itself to be--regardless of any reality.

It isn't so very hard to treat a second rate power as if it were actually of Great status. We did that for years and years with respect to France and even longer with our absurd pretense that Taiwan was really, really and truly China. Doing the same with Russia wouldn't have been nearly as difficult and the rewards would have been greater.

In the event, we ignored Russia's claims and stated interests regarding the independence of Kosovo. Then we made the catastrophic blunder of not taking the Kremlin's offer of using their ballistic missile warning radar in Azerbaijan.

(Yes, it wasn't as good a radar as the one we were going to build in the Czech Republic. But, we could have "partnered" with the Russians in upgrading theirs Sure, they would have stolen everything they could, but we would know just what they stole.)

Then, taking a handful of rock salt and rubbing into old wounds, the current administration loudly sang the praises of democracy (and NATO membership) in and for Georgia. This was complemented by a similar chorus on behalf of the Ukraine with its large Russian population and important Russian naval base.

The brilliant Bush team headed by the incomparable Decider Guy, even before the current Russo-Georgian contretemps, had gone a long way to resurrecting the corpse of the Cold War from the graveyard of history. Not even Woodrow Wilson could do the equivalent.

The next question is this. Who can better deal with the mess left by the current administration? The Nice Young Man From Chicago, Senator (and Cook County machine pol) Barack Obama and his foreign policy "expert" running mate, Joe Biden, or the one time Navy zoomie and ever-so-muscular opponent, John McCain?

The Geek has his idea.