Will miracles never cease!
For the second time in as many days, an official US government agency has admitted the truth of what has long been bruited about by people with a firm grip on reality. This time the teller of true tales is the National Intelligence Council which represents all sixteen (that's right sixteen! US intelligence agencies or services.)
In what should be a stop-the-presses-there's-a-remake-of-page-one news, the NIC in its "Global Trends 2025" report foresees the full re-emergence of a multi-polar world. The US will, it is projected, be only one of an international troika. The other two Great Powers are predicted to be India and the Peoples Republic of China.
Arguably, the NIC should have projected a four power structure since Russia is far from being down and out as recent events have demonstrated. Given the historical resiliency of Russia as well as the success to date of its statist approach to economics and the continued presence of significant strategic natural resources, Russia has both the latent will and ability to function as a Great Power. The Geek contends that the Russians are more suited to the Great Power role than the Indians.
The important point is not the number or even the identity of the other poles in a multi-polar global political gavotte, but rather that the short lived American dominance of the world's stage has ended. While no person well oriented as to time and place thought that the US unipolar role would last in perpetuity, it is fair to propose that the idiocy of the neocon ninnie ideology put into practice with such a heavy hand by the W. Bush administration hastened the end of the American pre-eminence.
The Deep Thinkers of the NIC showed an appreciation of history in their report by noting that the world of 2025 would be inherently unstable. Multi-polar global politics in the past have demonstrated convincingly that the more poles there are, the more the world wobbles on its multiple political axes.
All one needs to do is think back to the 1930s. The world was multi-polar at that time even though two of the poles--the US and USSR--were more potential than real. The emergence of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan were alive, well, kicking and laden with ambition for regional hegemony at the least. Although crippled and weakened both in political will and material resources by World War I, both the British and French empires were in existence and served either as foils to ambitions or rich areas to be dominated and plundered.
As had been the case in earlier periods of extreme multi-polarism such as the decades before World War I and in the second half of the Eighteenth Century, alliance systems between more or less congruent polarities emerged. The coalescence of polarities into alliance systems resulted in war.
An argument may be made on the basis of history that a bi-polar political structure such as existed during the Cold War or earlier during the years of Anglo-French rivalry can be both stable and risky. The Geek is unwilling to push argument by historical analogy too far as the risk of the Cold War period have often been understated and the stability was more apparent than real if one examines the entire world rather than staring only at the two Great Powers.
The emergence of China as an unquestioned Great Power should not give the American analysts or We the People any comfort. Perhaps it was the very disconcerting acceptance of the fact of China's arrival at Great Power status that persuaded the members of the NIC to put India on the list of tomorrow's Big Players. China and India have a long and not particularly peaceful history of contesting over regional hegemony. Does it stretch credibility beyond its Young's Modulus to assume that the prognosticators of the NIC are hoping that the two uneasy Asian bedfellows will be so preoccupied with each other that they will ignore the rest of us?
(In the past century American policy makers have often wished for an Asian duality which would assure that no country would emerge with regional hegemon status. Theodore Roosevelt hoped that Japan and Russia would keep each other in the crosshairs so that the Open Door in China would not be slammed in our face. Later, the Cold Warriors of the post-Eisenhower years bet on China and the USSR being locked in a sumo wrestler's embrace leaving us free to pursue our goals.)
The long and bloody record of history shows that competition over critical resources has been a cause of war more times than can be counted conveniently. The NIC prediction correctly notes that the resource base of the world is not getting larger. It stays the same or shrinks (as in the case of oil still in the ground) while the global population grows, and grows and grows.
Even if one does not subscribe to the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis, it is well established that many areas of the world (can we say, "Africa?") have population growth that far outstrips the carrying capacity of the continent's arable land. There are more than a few places around the planet where the supply of potable water is less than that required for basic human needs let alone any requirements of agricultural or industrial use.
Malthus may have been wrong generally, but that does not imply that the much maligned man's notions did not have applicability in particular situations. Social and political unrest, open violence both intra- and inter-state in nature, and recurrent humanitarian crises are the necessary and inevitable consequences of population needs which cannot be adequately met by readily available resources.
The NIC report was bang on in its pessimistic view of the future where and when these factors are considered. The group was also dead right in another, very critical human factor.
That factor?
Extremism. The day of al-Qaeda may have long gone by 2025 as NIC predicts. However, extremism will be far from a feature seen only in history texts. Resource scarcity or maldistribution breed desperation. As the Geek has written before: Desperate people (and states) do desperate deeds.
It may be taken as a given, even as axiomatic, that the wealth and resources of the world in 2025 will be unequally distributed among the people of the globe. It may be taken as a given, even if not quite so axiomatic, that many people will suffer a greater level of scarcity than that which exists today.
It follows with horrid but almost geometric logic that desperation will emerge to even greater proportions world wide than is the case today. The ambitious, the megalomaniac, the ideological True Believer will find ears eager for a message--any message--of hope, hope for a change, hope for a future better or at least not worse than the present.
This is the perfect formula for extremism: People who see no reason for living and leaders quite willing to rise to greater power on the corpses of the dead.
A realistic look at the world of today and thus of what is likely to exist less than two decades from now, forces agreement with the report's observation that some countries in Africa and Asia will go out of existence. The existence of countries which have no organic reason to exist is incontrovertible. The failure and collapse of such geographic expressions which have been elevated to the status of "states" by the actions of colonial powers or other external actors should be accepted as a fact of global political life.
Arguably, the attempt by well-intentioned(?) external entities to prop up collapsing states will ultimately serve only to stoke the fires of extremism. Certainly it will only prolong both the agony and the bloodletting.
The challenge today is not to stop trajectories already well in place or to attempt to implant foreign ideas on infertile human soil as the Administration of George W. Bush has done with such negative consequences. Neither is the challenge one of improvising a "Global Government" from the borning multi-polar environment.
The challenge for the next administration and We the People is quite different. Our challenge is harder. It is to determine just what our national interests are in the next few years and beyond. Our challenge is to realistically parse not only our genuine interests as distinguished from values or passing winds of enthusiasm but also our authentic strengths and weaknesses.
Only by determining realistically what our interests are and how we can best use our strengths and off-set our weaknesses in achieving our goals can we find the world of twenty years from now to be acceptable. Not pleasurable perhaps, not satisfying in a wave-the-flag way, but acceptable to ourselves and our progeny.
If we delude ourselves as we have in all-too-many years since the end of the Cold War, we will in all probability find ourselves living in a world of bloody turmoil. We may well find ourselves living with another prediction from the NIC: A world where nuclear proliferation is the rule and not the exception. A world in which extremists--"wild eyed pistol-wavers who aren't afraid to die"-- wave not pistols but nuclear weapons.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
It's Official! China is Espionage Central
The Geek always gets a warm glow when an American governmental body publicly admits something that has been known sub rosa for a long, long time. Just today, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a bi-partisan group created to advise Congress on matters involving US relations with the Global Gorilla on the far side of the Pacific, issued a report acknowledging among other things that the Chinese government is hoisting every bit of data it can hack from American businesses including defense contractors. It has also been doing its best to swipe everything that isn't virtually nailed down from the Pentagon.
Holy shrimp egg rolls, Caped Crusader!
Say it ain't so! Tell us that really the Chinese are what President Bill Clinton promised they would become when he opened the door to nearly unimpeded trade with the Mandarins of Beijing. Doubters such as the Geek were assured that a vast and fast growing web of commercial ties between ourselves and the Chinese would not only benefit the American consumer through lower prices but would guarantee peace and prosperity globally by bringing China fully into the world wide market.
Yeah. Right.
Then there is president-elect Obama. Unless he has taken a firm grip on reality in recent weeks, his view of China is every bit as out-to-lunch as Bill Clinton's. When campaigning, Obama held that "China is on the rise." (With that the Geek is in full agreement.)
The Nice Young Man From Chicago went on to observe that "China is neither a friend nor an enemy. It is a competitor. (With that the Geek is in full disagreement.)
While it is true that all countries routinely do a spot or two of espionage against all other nations including "friends," China's boisterous efforts are far over the edge. The wholesale pilferage both accomplished and attempted in no way comports itself with the usual range of espionage conducted between "friends" or even "rivals." No. China's gargantuan appetite for stolen information, as well as the uses to which the proceeds have been placed, takes it out of the "rivalry" category and places it well in the space marked "hostile."
As the Commission states, the recent Chinese efforts in military modernization and space oriented activities are both "impressive" and "disturbing." When coupled with statements of military doctrine coming from Chinese defense intellectuals in the past couple of years regarding the centrality of aerospace and information warfare, the very rapid increase of Chinese capacities in these areas is beyond being merely "disturbing." They have reached the level of "alarming" or even "scary."
There has been little doubt for years that the Chinese seek regional hegemonic status at the least. Beyond that, the Mandarins of the Forbidden City want to limit the capacity and will of the US to operate freely not only in Asia but globally. The Commission's report did properly appreciate the first, more limited goal. It did not directly address the second.
The foreign policy players of the Clinton administration apparently were so blinded by the light of globalization, of free movement of goods and capital, that they never considered what China might do with the money and technology access it acquired from the United States. Ideology overwhelmed prudence.
Now we face the consequences. Consider just a couple of significant bits of data. One is military and the other is financial. The military note: Chinese air defenses are improving at such a significant rate that within a very short time no aircraft in the world other than the American B-2 and F-22 will be able to penetrate their airspace without unacceptable losses. The financial consideration: China holds (as of the end of September) nearly six hundred billion dollars in US T-bonds--the largest single holding in the world.
There are other significant pieces of the Chinese puzzle which can be adduced as well, but to do so would only depress the Geek. So, for the moment we'll depart this unpleasant subject.
Apologists for a "go slow and talk soft" policy with respect to China are eager to underscore the obvious--that China holds a veto in the UN Security Council. Well, that's something that never crossed the Geek's mind and he is utterly terrified at the possibility that China might resort to the (dare he write the word?) Veto. You mean, actually vote nyet! on something the US would like to see passed? Oh! Perish the thought!
Apologists would also like those sceptical of Chinese good intentions to remember that the US needs the cooperation of Beijing on critical matters such as the North Korean and Iranian nuclear weapons threat. Well, the cooperation of the Chinese might be nice, but it is not necessary, nor would it be sufficient to deal with these two challenges or nuclear proliferation generally, or terrorism, or any other matter.
As the Geek has posited in previous posts, the Chinese need us (or at least our cash and our technology) more than we need them. He has also suggested that a "work-to-rules" treatment of Chinese imports might send a message which would be unsubtle enough to be understood in the deepest reaches of the Forbidden City. The FDA has recently adopted this approach regarding imports containing milk or milk derived components. Finally, the FDA has done something useful!
The mood music players of the MSM have sought to assuage the doubts of people such as the Geek by insisting that President Obama will "govern from the center." The mooting of numerous Clinton Administration retreads is a guarantee that the Obama Administration will be staffed by experienced practical people with a sound understanding of how Washington and the world work.
Sure. Right.
The Geek is much relieved. It is so comforting to be told that the same gripless bunch who handed the keys to the vault and the store alike to the Chinese are now going to be in charge of dealing with the consequences.
Ah, with this in mind, the Geek can sleep the sleep of the saved.
Holy shrimp egg rolls, Caped Crusader!
Say it ain't so! Tell us that really the Chinese are what President Bill Clinton promised they would become when he opened the door to nearly unimpeded trade with the Mandarins of Beijing. Doubters such as the Geek were assured that a vast and fast growing web of commercial ties between ourselves and the Chinese would not only benefit the American consumer through lower prices but would guarantee peace and prosperity globally by bringing China fully into the world wide market.
Yeah. Right.
Then there is president-elect Obama. Unless he has taken a firm grip on reality in recent weeks, his view of China is every bit as out-to-lunch as Bill Clinton's. When campaigning, Obama held that "China is on the rise." (With that the Geek is in full agreement.)
The Nice Young Man From Chicago went on to observe that "China is neither a friend nor an enemy. It is a competitor. (With that the Geek is in full disagreement.)
While it is true that all countries routinely do a spot or two of espionage against all other nations including "friends," China's boisterous efforts are far over the edge. The wholesale pilferage both accomplished and attempted in no way comports itself with the usual range of espionage conducted between "friends" or even "rivals." No. China's gargantuan appetite for stolen information, as well as the uses to which the proceeds have been placed, takes it out of the "rivalry" category and places it well in the space marked "hostile."
As the Commission states, the recent Chinese efforts in military modernization and space oriented activities are both "impressive" and "disturbing." When coupled with statements of military doctrine coming from Chinese defense intellectuals in the past couple of years regarding the centrality of aerospace and information warfare, the very rapid increase of Chinese capacities in these areas is beyond being merely "disturbing." They have reached the level of "alarming" or even "scary."
There has been little doubt for years that the Chinese seek regional hegemonic status at the least. Beyond that, the Mandarins of the Forbidden City want to limit the capacity and will of the US to operate freely not only in Asia but globally. The Commission's report did properly appreciate the first, more limited goal. It did not directly address the second.
The foreign policy players of the Clinton administration apparently were so blinded by the light of globalization, of free movement of goods and capital, that they never considered what China might do with the money and technology access it acquired from the United States. Ideology overwhelmed prudence.
Now we face the consequences. Consider just a couple of significant bits of data. One is military and the other is financial. The military note: Chinese air defenses are improving at such a significant rate that within a very short time no aircraft in the world other than the American B-2 and F-22 will be able to penetrate their airspace without unacceptable losses. The financial consideration: China holds (as of the end of September) nearly six hundred billion dollars in US T-bonds--the largest single holding in the world.
There are other significant pieces of the Chinese puzzle which can be adduced as well, but to do so would only depress the Geek. So, for the moment we'll depart this unpleasant subject.
Apologists for a "go slow and talk soft" policy with respect to China are eager to underscore the obvious--that China holds a veto in the UN Security Council. Well, that's something that never crossed the Geek's mind and he is utterly terrified at the possibility that China might resort to the (dare he write the word?) Veto. You mean, actually vote nyet! on something the US would like to see passed? Oh! Perish the thought!
Apologists would also like those sceptical of Chinese good intentions to remember that the US needs the cooperation of Beijing on critical matters such as the North Korean and Iranian nuclear weapons threat. Well, the cooperation of the Chinese might be nice, but it is not necessary, nor would it be sufficient to deal with these two challenges or nuclear proliferation generally, or terrorism, or any other matter.
As the Geek has posited in previous posts, the Chinese need us (or at least our cash and our technology) more than we need them. He has also suggested that a "work-to-rules" treatment of Chinese imports might send a message which would be unsubtle enough to be understood in the deepest reaches of the Forbidden City. The FDA has recently adopted this approach regarding imports containing milk or milk derived components. Finally, the FDA has done something useful!
The mood music players of the MSM have sought to assuage the doubts of people such as the Geek by insisting that President Obama will "govern from the center." The mooting of numerous Clinton Administration retreads is a guarantee that the Obama Administration will be staffed by experienced practical people with a sound understanding of how Washington and the world work.
Sure. Right.
The Geek is much relieved. It is so comforting to be told that the same gripless bunch who handed the keys to the vault and the store alike to the Chinese are now going to be in charge of dealing with the consequences.
Ah, with this in mind, the Geek can sleep the sleep of the saved.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
The Word For The Day Is BORDERS
That's right, kiddies, the Geek's word for the day--and many days--is "borders." Roll it around in your mouth, taste it, savor it. Better do it quick, because the force of the word, if not the word itself, may soon be of interest only to antiquarians.
The very concept of a border, a line of demarcation separating nation-states, has become the next thing to anathema in the minds of academics, some politicians, and other members of the self-appointed elite of the chattering class. To many--advocates of economic globalisation, mavens of multi-culturalism, and the High Minded--who see the independent, sovereign nation-state as the root of all evil, the idea of borders is iconic of reactionary long-outdated thinking.
Aren't we all "passengers on spaceship Earth?" Aren't all the real problems, the all-caps problems, global in nature? Isn't the nation-state the roadblock on the highway of progress?
Back when the Geek was a sort of urbanite, he discovered through experience that Robert Frost was right: good walls make good neighbors. The construction of an eight foot wooden palisade fence around the modest hooch occupied by the Geek and Geekess reduced to zero the frictions caused by the straying of neighbors dogs and chickens. Without the friction, harmony was increased, coinciding interests were discovered, and collaborative efforts to solve mutual problems enhanced.
A good fence did make for good neighbors and through joint efforts a better neighborhood.
The Geek now lives in the land of his ancestors, less than a hundred miles from the more controversial borders of the United States. As a result, he has been watching the debate over the Great Fence of the Southwest and the linked matters of illegal immigration and smuggling closely.
As part of his observation, the Geek has paid particular attention to the attitudes regarding these subjects in Mexico. He has viewed them with increasing dismay.
The Mexican government as well as many of that country's politically articulate elite despise and loath both the Great Fence and related attempts by the US to control and limit the amount of illegal immigration flowing north of the border.
He has come to the conclusion that it is the conscious policy of the Mexican government and its supporters to reverse the verdict of the Mexican-American war.
"But, wasn't that war a war of gringo conquest? Didn't it mark the coming of American imperialism, an unprovoked act of aggression by a large country against a small and weak one?"
That sure is the conventional wisdom here in the US. It is mouthed repeatedly even by those who should know better--professors of US history in our universities and colleges. It is given as the reason for war (in the rare event the war is even mentioned) in high school history texts. And, it is taken as an article of absolute truth down in Mexico.
This conventional wisdom, this piece of Mexican faith, is a lie. A big lie. A big lie which has been given the patina of truth only by virtue of repetition. The Mexicans wanted the war. The Mexicans prepared for the war. Motivated by a deep need to regain Texas, Mexico not only put an army much larger than that of the US into the field, they prepared an excellent plan of attack.
Urged on by the French and British governments who desired to see the US limited in its drive to the Pacific, the Mexicans used a pretext for war which was every bit as phony as that used by the Israelis to justify the Six Day War. The Mexicans were faced by an opponent which was relatively weaker and internally divided.
(Recall that the New England states which had the best equipped and trained militia forces refused to allow their troops to be used lest it work to the benefit of the "slavocracy." Remember also that the southern states kept their militias at home from fear of a slave uprising.)
The Mexicans lost by a combination of American generalship being superior and the lack of martial skills within their own army as well as political divisions. At war's end, the US in principle could have taken all or most of Mexico. Some Americans (primarily in the slave owning South) wanted to do just that. Others, motivated by anti-Catholic sentiments wanted only California and the landlines of communication between that prize and the American frontier. So the US scarfed up the sparsely populated (by Mexicans if not by Native Americans including some of the Geek's ancestors) of New Mexico and Arizona.
For one hundred sixty years the Mexicans have stewed over their defeat. The stewing was in no way lessened by the vast American presence in Mexico during the long years of the Diaz dictatorship. The Mexican army might have been defeated, but not Mexican pride.
While illegal immigration can be seen realistically as an economic and social safety valve for a country with more people than jobs and great wealth unequally distributed, that is not the only motivation at work.
Consider the Palestinian analogy. Demographics are seemingly on the side of the Palestinians. The birth rate is arguably greater than that of the Israelis. The introduction of millions of descendants of Arabs displaced during the 1948 and 1867 wars would tilt the demographic balance irrevocably in favor of the Palestinians. It is no wonder that the Israeli government rejects any peace agreement which would provide for the return of the dispossessed.
Hispanics are a larger minority population in the US than that composed of Americans of African ancestry. The Hispanic (predominently Mexican by heritage) community enjoys a high birth rate, much higher than that of the Anglos. It is a community well known for tight extended family ties and a will and ability to work hard and save for the future. The immigrants of the past years and centuries as well as their descendants are a fine addition to the American gumbo.
The Hispanic community has shown its political power. Arguably, the wholesale defection of Hispanics from the Republicans (their natural political home given social conservatism which is a hallmark of Mexican culture) to the Democrats was critical in the latter party's success in several closely contested states--including New Mexico.
The critical issues were the Great Fence and illegal immigration. The Great Fence is seen as a humiliating slap in the Mexican face. The question of immigration reform and in particular the regularising of the status of the some ten or eleven million illegals now in the US is seen as crucial in defining the role and status of La Raza in the US.
Removing the Great Fence and instituting a variety of immigration reform can also be correctly understood as a stealth way of reversing the decision of the Mexican War. In that respect, it is akin to the Palestinian insistence on a Right of Return existing under any comprehensive peace settlement with Israel.
This past weekend the Institute of Mexicans Abroad, which is closely affiliated with the Mexican government, announced plans to construct a major lobbying effort to be called The National Coalition For Immigration Reform. The goals of this entity are expansive including both measures to regularise the status of illegal immigrants already in the US and a "temporary" guest worker program with the option to become citizens. The Institute pointedly noted that "eighty-three percent of Mexicans with US citizenship" voted for Obama.
Almost simultaneously, the Mexican government's Office of Migration (note the name) listed all the economic and civic accomplishments attributable to Mexicans resident in the US. While not wishing to deprecate even by implication the genuine contributions or patriotism of American citizens of Mexican descent nor the positive benefits which have accrued to the US as the result of Mexican "guest workers" or illegal immigrants, the Geek was a bit overwhelmed by the Office of Migration's attempt to prove that US prosperity generally was based on the sweat and brains of Mexicans.
Also last week in an event not noted by the MSM outside of Dallas, former Mexican president Vincente Fox gave a speech to a civic group. The high point of his remarks was the demand that the Great Fence be removed. This implies a return to the essentially unregulated and un-patrolled border of a few years ago. In essence, Fox demanded the removal of even a pretense of a line of demarcation between Gringoland and Mexico.
Borders are important. Very important. A border, a real barrier between one nation and another is critical to the existence of both nations. Way back when, three and more centuries ago, the British and French arrived in North America. Both countries had a well-developed concept of borders, of saying, "This land is mine." The Native Americans had no such concept. The very idea that land could be claimed for eternity by one people for its sole enjoyment was outside their worldview.
As a result the Native Americans could never say, "This land is mine." They had no secure and defensible borders (to use the Israeli formulation.) Thus, they lost all. The British, the French, and, in the Southwest, the Spanish, kept moving the fence always at the expense of the natives.
Nearly two centuries ago, both the Mexicans and the Gringos understood the nature and necessity of borders. The Mexicans wanted to move the fence at the expense of the Americans. They tried. They failed. The fence was moved to the south and west.
And there it has stood. There it must continue to stand. Nations as well as individuals must live by the concept of good fences making for good neighbors.
The vexing problems of the border, of illegal immigration, of smuggling assorted forms of contraband can and must be solved. While the details of the solution are still lost in the fog of the future one thing is certain.
They can not be solved by removing the border. Get a grip on that, president-elect Obama.
The very concept of a border, a line of demarcation separating nation-states, has become the next thing to anathema in the minds of academics, some politicians, and other members of the self-appointed elite of the chattering class. To many--advocates of economic globalisation, mavens of multi-culturalism, and the High Minded--who see the independent, sovereign nation-state as the root of all evil, the idea of borders is iconic of reactionary long-outdated thinking.
Aren't we all "passengers on spaceship Earth?" Aren't all the real problems, the all-caps problems, global in nature? Isn't the nation-state the roadblock on the highway of progress?
Back when the Geek was a sort of urbanite, he discovered through experience that Robert Frost was right: good walls make good neighbors. The construction of an eight foot wooden palisade fence around the modest hooch occupied by the Geek and Geekess reduced to zero the frictions caused by the straying of neighbors dogs and chickens. Without the friction, harmony was increased, coinciding interests were discovered, and collaborative efforts to solve mutual problems enhanced.
A good fence did make for good neighbors and through joint efforts a better neighborhood.
The Geek now lives in the land of his ancestors, less than a hundred miles from the more controversial borders of the United States. As a result, he has been watching the debate over the Great Fence of the Southwest and the linked matters of illegal immigration and smuggling closely.
As part of his observation, the Geek has paid particular attention to the attitudes regarding these subjects in Mexico. He has viewed them with increasing dismay.
The Mexican government as well as many of that country's politically articulate elite despise and loath both the Great Fence and related attempts by the US to control and limit the amount of illegal immigration flowing north of the border.
He has come to the conclusion that it is the conscious policy of the Mexican government and its supporters to reverse the verdict of the Mexican-American war.
"But, wasn't that war a war of gringo conquest? Didn't it mark the coming of American imperialism, an unprovoked act of aggression by a large country against a small and weak one?"
That sure is the conventional wisdom here in the US. It is mouthed repeatedly even by those who should know better--professors of US history in our universities and colleges. It is given as the reason for war (in the rare event the war is even mentioned) in high school history texts. And, it is taken as an article of absolute truth down in Mexico.
This conventional wisdom, this piece of Mexican faith, is a lie. A big lie. A big lie which has been given the patina of truth only by virtue of repetition. The Mexicans wanted the war. The Mexicans prepared for the war. Motivated by a deep need to regain Texas, Mexico not only put an army much larger than that of the US into the field, they prepared an excellent plan of attack.
Urged on by the French and British governments who desired to see the US limited in its drive to the Pacific, the Mexicans used a pretext for war which was every bit as phony as that used by the Israelis to justify the Six Day War. The Mexicans were faced by an opponent which was relatively weaker and internally divided.
(Recall that the New England states which had the best equipped and trained militia forces refused to allow their troops to be used lest it work to the benefit of the "slavocracy." Remember also that the southern states kept their militias at home from fear of a slave uprising.)
The Mexicans lost by a combination of American generalship being superior and the lack of martial skills within their own army as well as political divisions. At war's end, the US in principle could have taken all or most of Mexico. Some Americans (primarily in the slave owning South) wanted to do just that. Others, motivated by anti-Catholic sentiments wanted only California and the landlines of communication between that prize and the American frontier. So the US scarfed up the sparsely populated (by Mexicans if not by Native Americans including some of the Geek's ancestors) of New Mexico and Arizona.
For one hundred sixty years the Mexicans have stewed over their defeat. The stewing was in no way lessened by the vast American presence in Mexico during the long years of the Diaz dictatorship. The Mexican army might have been defeated, but not Mexican pride.
While illegal immigration can be seen realistically as an economic and social safety valve for a country with more people than jobs and great wealth unequally distributed, that is not the only motivation at work.
Consider the Palestinian analogy. Demographics are seemingly on the side of the Palestinians. The birth rate is arguably greater than that of the Israelis. The introduction of millions of descendants of Arabs displaced during the 1948 and 1867 wars would tilt the demographic balance irrevocably in favor of the Palestinians. It is no wonder that the Israeli government rejects any peace agreement which would provide for the return of the dispossessed.
Hispanics are a larger minority population in the US than that composed of Americans of African ancestry. The Hispanic (predominently Mexican by heritage) community enjoys a high birth rate, much higher than that of the Anglos. It is a community well known for tight extended family ties and a will and ability to work hard and save for the future. The immigrants of the past years and centuries as well as their descendants are a fine addition to the American gumbo.
The Hispanic community has shown its political power. Arguably, the wholesale defection of Hispanics from the Republicans (their natural political home given social conservatism which is a hallmark of Mexican culture) to the Democrats was critical in the latter party's success in several closely contested states--including New Mexico.
The critical issues were the Great Fence and illegal immigration. The Great Fence is seen as a humiliating slap in the Mexican face. The question of immigration reform and in particular the regularising of the status of the some ten or eleven million illegals now in the US is seen as crucial in defining the role and status of La Raza in the US.
Removing the Great Fence and instituting a variety of immigration reform can also be correctly understood as a stealth way of reversing the decision of the Mexican War. In that respect, it is akin to the Palestinian insistence on a Right of Return existing under any comprehensive peace settlement with Israel.
This past weekend the Institute of Mexicans Abroad, which is closely affiliated with the Mexican government, announced plans to construct a major lobbying effort to be called The National Coalition For Immigration Reform. The goals of this entity are expansive including both measures to regularise the status of illegal immigrants already in the US and a "temporary" guest worker program with the option to become citizens. The Institute pointedly noted that "eighty-three percent of Mexicans with US citizenship" voted for Obama.
Almost simultaneously, the Mexican government's Office of Migration (note the name) listed all the economic and civic accomplishments attributable to Mexicans resident in the US. While not wishing to deprecate even by implication the genuine contributions or patriotism of American citizens of Mexican descent nor the positive benefits which have accrued to the US as the result of Mexican "guest workers" or illegal immigrants, the Geek was a bit overwhelmed by the Office of Migration's attempt to prove that US prosperity generally was based on the sweat and brains of Mexicans.
Also last week in an event not noted by the MSM outside of Dallas, former Mexican president Vincente Fox gave a speech to a civic group. The high point of his remarks was the demand that the Great Fence be removed. This implies a return to the essentially unregulated and un-patrolled border of a few years ago. In essence, Fox demanded the removal of even a pretense of a line of demarcation between Gringoland and Mexico.
Borders are important. Very important. A border, a real barrier between one nation and another is critical to the existence of both nations. Way back when, three and more centuries ago, the British and French arrived in North America. Both countries had a well-developed concept of borders, of saying, "This land is mine." The Native Americans had no such concept. The very idea that land could be claimed for eternity by one people for its sole enjoyment was outside their worldview.
As a result the Native Americans could never say, "This land is mine." They had no secure and defensible borders (to use the Israeli formulation.) Thus, they lost all. The British, the French, and, in the Southwest, the Spanish, kept moving the fence always at the expense of the natives.
Nearly two centuries ago, both the Mexicans and the Gringos understood the nature and necessity of borders. The Mexicans wanted to move the fence at the expense of the Americans. They tried. They failed. The fence was moved to the south and west.
And there it has stood. There it must continue to stand. Nations as well as individuals must live by the concept of good fences making for good neighbors.
The vexing problems of the border, of illegal immigration, of smuggling assorted forms of contraband can and must be solved. While the details of the solution are still lost in the fog of the future one thing is certain.
They can not be solved by removing the border. Get a grip on that, president-elect Obama.
What Happened To The "Global War On Terror?"
The Geek rarely agrees with any statement by an official of the Feudal Government of Saudi Arabia. Indeed, this may be a first. The first time the Geek has unreservedly agreed with a perspective offered by a Saudi official.
Following the seizure of the Saudi VLCC Sirius Star, the Feudal Monarchy's ForMin characterised the action as one of "terrorism" and demanded urgent action against the Jolly Pirates of Puntland.
For once the duplicity laden ruling family of the Kingdom of Mosques, Oil, and Sand has spoken truly. The favorite aquatic sport of the Somalis is no longer a mere nuisance. It no longer can be argued that the upsurge of maritime banditry is the result of either the absence of an effective government in the geographic expression known as Somalia or the lack of suitable employment and market opportunities for the simple fisherfolk of that region.
The linkage between the seaborne thugs and the land-based terrorists of the al-Qaeda variety is well established. The flow of money from the ransoms extorted by the pirates to the Islamist and jihadist groups both in Somalia and elsewhere including Yemen, Sudan, and points both east and west is likewise well known to the relevant western governments--including our own.
The newly but convincingly demonstrated capacity of the Allah and money driven raiders to operate at great distances from their homeports and employ weapons of greater lethality than previously points to an increase in the support (and thereby implicit command and control) from longer established, more experienced terror groups such as al-Qaeda.
Why this development "stunned" the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as has been reported astonishes the Geek. Even a cursory examination of the trajectory of improvement followed by the pirates of Puntland over the past eighteen months shows the increasingly tight coupling between their activities and the agenda of the al-Qaeda type Islamist/jihadist entities. Since Islamism and jihadism do not live on faith alone, the cash generating capacity of piracy must have been noticed quickly.
Given that the so-far quite successful insurgents in Somalia are Islamist to the max, it should not shock anyone to see the speedy development of mutually beneficial relations between the Islamist movement generally and the pirates. While some money obviously sticks in Puntland and environs, much goes to the Islamist/jihadist groups. In return, the outside entities can provide weapons, instruction, intelligence, and other necessary support functions.
Now that the pirates have shown a direct and material capacity to impair the economic interests of the US and other oil importing countries, the use of piratical terror becomes all the more attractive to the Islamists and their ilk. The goal as with other categories of attack remains the same--to directly, substantially, and materially affect the policy of the US and allied nations.
That is the purpose of terror. Cow the opponent into abandoning or altering policies that the terrorist finds obnoxious. That was the goal on 9/11. That was the goal of the 7/7 attacks in London. It was the goal of the Madrid subway bombers.
It is the goal of the entities that have jacked up the pirates of Puntland from the status of mere nuisance affecting only coastal shipping to that of global threat, putting the price and availability of oil in hazard.
Get a grip on that reality.
There is no excuse for the navies of the US and its NATO/EU more-or-less allies not to take robust action against the pirates. There is no excuse not to take action which will risk the loss of Somali lives or even the lives of crew members of hijacked ships.
The US and other navies have the requisite assets (typified by the Navy SEALS and the British Royal Marine Commandos) to board seized ships and subdue the criminals. True some--or even all--the pirates may head off to Allah in the operation. Such is the risk of piracy.
The US and other navies have the resources necessary to monitor small craft--particularly small vessels operating far from the normal fishing waters--and execute "stop and frisk" operations. In the event pirates fight back as they did last week against a combined UK-Russian force, fine. They will end up dead, as at least two or three pirates did that day. This will make trial unnecessary.
An objection that has been raised to robust action beyond a measure of convoy activity in the Gulf of Aden and along the Somali coast has been the absence of courts able to try suspected pirates. This objection is one which strikes the Geek as being particularly ill-founded, not to say flatly out-to-lunch. The US Code already provides statutory authority for the trial of pirates no matter where apprehended or under what specific circumstances. Other countries have similar laws.
If all else fails, the UN can create another one of its much loved special tribunals. If apprehending war criminals and bringing them to trial in the Netherlands is important, so also is the ending of a clear and present danger to open maritime commerce. The UN apparently abhors piracy and has called upon countries with navies to do something. It can add on to this inspirational message by creating a Piracy Tribunal so none can cavil at the lack of due process in the protection of pirates' human rights.
The Geek would love to know what brings about the silence in Washington? Where is the belligerent rhetoric of Dick Cheney? Where are the loudmouthed, testicle grabbing neocons? What's wrong, boys? There's no regime to change? No democracy to plant in hostile soil?
Is that why you all are so quiet? Is that why the opening of a new front in your Great Global War on Terror gives you so little cause for alarm? So little desire to "shock and awe?"
Or are you neocons simply sitting by with calmly folded hands hoping that your ideological counterparts in the next administration will screw the pooch as well and truly as you have the past seven plus years?
Following the seizure of the Saudi VLCC Sirius Star, the Feudal Monarchy's ForMin characterised the action as one of "terrorism" and demanded urgent action against the Jolly Pirates of Puntland.
For once the duplicity laden ruling family of the Kingdom of Mosques, Oil, and Sand has spoken truly. The favorite aquatic sport of the Somalis is no longer a mere nuisance. It no longer can be argued that the upsurge of maritime banditry is the result of either the absence of an effective government in the geographic expression known as Somalia or the lack of suitable employment and market opportunities for the simple fisherfolk of that region.
The linkage between the seaborne thugs and the land-based terrorists of the al-Qaeda variety is well established. The flow of money from the ransoms extorted by the pirates to the Islamist and jihadist groups both in Somalia and elsewhere including Yemen, Sudan, and points both east and west is likewise well known to the relevant western governments--including our own.
The newly but convincingly demonstrated capacity of the Allah and money driven raiders to operate at great distances from their homeports and employ weapons of greater lethality than previously points to an increase in the support (and thereby implicit command and control) from longer established, more experienced terror groups such as al-Qaeda.
Why this development "stunned" the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as has been reported astonishes the Geek. Even a cursory examination of the trajectory of improvement followed by the pirates of Puntland over the past eighteen months shows the increasingly tight coupling between their activities and the agenda of the al-Qaeda type Islamist/jihadist entities. Since Islamism and jihadism do not live on faith alone, the cash generating capacity of piracy must have been noticed quickly.
Given that the so-far quite successful insurgents in Somalia are Islamist to the max, it should not shock anyone to see the speedy development of mutually beneficial relations between the Islamist movement generally and the pirates. While some money obviously sticks in Puntland and environs, much goes to the Islamist/jihadist groups. In return, the outside entities can provide weapons, instruction, intelligence, and other necessary support functions.
Now that the pirates have shown a direct and material capacity to impair the economic interests of the US and other oil importing countries, the use of piratical terror becomes all the more attractive to the Islamists and their ilk. The goal as with other categories of attack remains the same--to directly, substantially, and materially affect the policy of the US and allied nations.
That is the purpose of terror. Cow the opponent into abandoning or altering policies that the terrorist finds obnoxious. That was the goal on 9/11. That was the goal of the 7/7 attacks in London. It was the goal of the Madrid subway bombers.
It is the goal of the entities that have jacked up the pirates of Puntland from the status of mere nuisance affecting only coastal shipping to that of global threat, putting the price and availability of oil in hazard.
Get a grip on that reality.
There is no excuse for the navies of the US and its NATO/EU more-or-less allies not to take robust action against the pirates. There is no excuse not to take action which will risk the loss of Somali lives or even the lives of crew members of hijacked ships.
The US and other navies have the requisite assets (typified by the Navy SEALS and the British Royal Marine Commandos) to board seized ships and subdue the criminals. True some--or even all--the pirates may head off to Allah in the operation. Such is the risk of piracy.
The US and other navies have the resources necessary to monitor small craft--particularly small vessels operating far from the normal fishing waters--and execute "stop and frisk" operations. In the event pirates fight back as they did last week against a combined UK-Russian force, fine. They will end up dead, as at least two or three pirates did that day. This will make trial unnecessary.
An objection that has been raised to robust action beyond a measure of convoy activity in the Gulf of Aden and along the Somali coast has been the absence of courts able to try suspected pirates. This objection is one which strikes the Geek as being particularly ill-founded, not to say flatly out-to-lunch. The US Code already provides statutory authority for the trial of pirates no matter where apprehended or under what specific circumstances. Other countries have similar laws.
If all else fails, the UN can create another one of its much loved special tribunals. If apprehending war criminals and bringing them to trial in the Netherlands is important, so also is the ending of a clear and present danger to open maritime commerce. The UN apparently abhors piracy and has called upon countries with navies to do something. It can add on to this inspirational message by creating a Piracy Tribunal so none can cavil at the lack of due process in the protection of pirates' human rights.
The Geek would love to know what brings about the silence in Washington? Where is the belligerent rhetoric of Dick Cheney? Where are the loudmouthed, testicle grabbing neocons? What's wrong, boys? There's no regime to change? No democracy to plant in hostile soil?
Is that why you all are so quiet? Is that why the opening of a new front in your Great Global War on Terror gives you so little cause for alarm? So little desire to "shock and awe?"
Or are you neocons simply sitting by with calmly folded hands hoping that your ideological counterparts in the next administration will screw the pooch as well and truly as you have the past seven plus years?
Monday, November 17, 2008
Foreign Policy--Coming From A Strange Brew
Historically US foreign policy is not a creature of rational calculation. It is not the result of clear, cold assessments of what course of action will best achieve national interests. It is not the result of realistic, proactive considerations of what kind of world order would best suit American needs and interests.
Nope. While we might like to think that our foreign policy and the mechanisms employed to implement it are and have been the consequence of intelligent analysis of problems and opportunities facing our commonweal, nothing could be further from reality.
Rather than being the result of flinty-eyed geopoliticians coolly looking at the globe and determining what, where, and how our national and strategic interests might be advanced, US foreign policy comes out of a messy, intellectually unsound, flawed mixture of national interests, national values and national enthusiasms as understood at the moment by politicians and others of the politically articulate elite. That the process often results in partial success at best and more often failure approaching or surpassing the level of debacle is not at all surprising.
The surprise comes when a policy actually works.
It's not misleading to see foreign policy as being a stew. There are three basic ingredients used. National interest. National values. National enthusiasms. These ingredients are mixed, blended and their proportions argued over by a myriad of cooks--politicians, academics, journalists, lobbying groups, corporations. Not making the preparation any easier is the existence of different cookbooks, each reflecting different ideologies.
The three ingredients are unspecified. It's like saying the stew has meat, spices, and veggies but not refining the list to a specific kind of meat, flavor of spice, or sort of vegetable. Each cookbook and most of the cooks differ on whether beef or pork, salt or pepper, carrots or lima beans should be thrown in the pot.
Worse, some cooks (not unlike the Reagan Administration school lunch program) will say that ketchup is a vegetable while others maintain it is a spice. Other cooks will insist that meatless recipes are best. And yet others will argue over the point at which a broth ceases to be a flavoring and becomes either a meat or a veggie.
Like the coach sez, "Ya gotta start with the fundamentals."
There is nothing more fundamental than a national interest. If nothing else it should be easy to agree on the most basic of national interests. The rock of all foreign policy is national survival. To expand slightly: The primal function of foreign policy is to protect and preserve the territorial integrity of the country as well as the integrity of its political, social and economic structures.
This back-to-the-most-basic-of-basics approach to foreign policy would work well if there could be agreement on just what it means. Construed quite narrowly, it implies that the most effective root of foreign policy would be one which produces an utterly impregnable, Fortress America with little if any need for intercourse with the rest of the world.
The isolationists of the Thirties stood almost at this extreme.
At other times the understanding of American survival demanded that the focus be on expansion of US territory or, later, expansion of unimpeded access to resources and markets abroad.
The reason for this wide variance in interpretation of even the most essential of national interests is simply that interest per se cannot be considered without the context of national values and even the transient winds of national enthusiasms.
Take a look at "free trade."
Is free trade (A) a national interest critical to the structural integrity of the American economy; (B) a national value honored in rhetoric but often violated in policy; (C) a national enthusiasm whipped up from time to time to serve purposes far divorced from national interest; (D) all of the foregoing at different times?
If you answered (D) you have a sounder grasp of the history of American policy both foreign and domestic than most.
Arguably, free trade has been a key feature in the list of American national interests. But, it has also served as a fetish to be waved by those pursuing expansive goals quite unrelated to the assurance of US economic stability and even inimical to other, even more core national interests.
In the alternative, the American national interest presumably contained in free trade can be ignored when its pursuit would be either inconvenient or conflict with other items in the foreign policy maker's agenda.
"Wait one, Geek! You're losing me."
OK. Walk through these bits of US history with the Geek.
Nearly two centuries ago the then small, weak, and barely born American Republic espoused freedom of maritime commerce as essential to its prosperity and internal stability. There is no doubt but that it was that as the US was a maritime power in the making and depended upon unfettered foreign trade for its survival.
When faced by a threat to open maritime commerce by the (Muslim) pirates of North Africa, the US responded by fighting a lengthy, expensive, and ultimately barely successful war against the seaborne thugs of the Barbary Coast and their political masters. The US government and politically articulate elite rejected the option of bribery even though various Europeans had taken that course successfully.
More recently the Reagan Administration responded to the Libyan claim that the Gulf of Siddra was Libyan territorial water and not, as the US looked at the map, international waters, with a show of force which escalated into a bombing raid on several Libyan targets. Arguably, this was an overly robust response to a minimal threat taken too quickly. However, in the context of the time, the response was taken not only from a generous interpretation of free trade and open seas but also from a national enthusiasm which, to put it mildly, was profoundly anti-Libyan.
Most recently the pirates of Puntand have made themselves a considerable nuisance to free maritime trade. The nuisance level was escalated significantly when the Somali brigands seized a very large crude carrier. This action had an immediate effect on world oil prices reversing at least temporarily their downward trajectory. Considering that four percent of the world's oil travels through the Gulf of Aden and an even larger percentage goes through the waters where the VLCC was hijacked, the impact on oil prices may become more significant and have a longer duration.
Even though the criminal actions directly and materially affect the structural integrity of the American economy, the actions of the US navy have been limited to "monitoring" the situation and providing hortatory advice to ship owners and operators. Free trade, at least as regards the maritime carriage of oil, does not seem to be a matter of national interest at the moment for the current administration.
This result may well be the inevitable outcome of a national enthusiasm of the present day. There is a deep and pervasive enthusiasm running against the current administration and its demonstrated proclivity for shooting first and talking later. Any use of force against pirates, no matter how justified and in the genuine national interest such might be, would be a needless distraction to the current administration in its closing days.
National interest, except in the immediate aftermath of an attack upon the US, is never undiluted by both national values and enthusiasms.
Other examples of the interaction between interest, values, and enthusiasms are easily seen in the history of the US.
Harry Truman, a most perceptive student of his country's history, took great pains not to arouse American enthusiasm during the Korean War. He and his administration generally correctly saw the war as being one of a limited nature in support of a policy--the policy of containment--that was intended to show the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China that when the US drew a line in the sand, that line could not be crossed with impunity.
The crusading enthusiasm of the American public was not aroused. This kept the war limited despite the urgings of General MacArthur and others to widen it, to use nuclear weapons, to invade the Chinese mainland. It also meant the war was profoundly unpopular and assured that Korea and its war were shoved to the furthest recesses of the American memory.
Truman was right. He waged a war of national interest. His conduct of the war did not invoke spurious appeals to American values such as democracy. It carefully caged the beast of public enthusiasm. It was successful even if completely lacking in glory.
Richard Nixon was not so coolly focused when he took over the running of our war in Vietnam. Under all the rhetoric of "credibility" and "peace with honor" ( to say nothing of the lives snuffed out in pursuit of these oratorical gems), Nixon was quite willing to leave Vietnam with one proviso.
That proviso?
As Nixon said to a (stunned) interlocutor in 1970, if the South Vietnamese elected a Communist government that wanted the US out so it could unify with the North, he, Nixon, would order the pullout without delay. True that was an extremely unlikely possibility given the nature of what passed for elections in South Vietnam, but Nixon's comment speaks loudly as to the power of an American national value.
In terms of national interest, it might be argued that democracies are desirable, more desirable than dictatorships. But, the active promotion of democracy, particularly by diplomatic means more robust than propaganda (OK, the Geek should have used the politically correct euphemism, "public diplomacy") is far more a product of national values than one of true national interest.
(If you have any doubts about the linkage between democracy and good-for-America, take a look at Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador or Paraguay. Like the old saying about drugs had it, "Not all highs are good highs,)
The US has gone to war because of the conflation of national interest and national value. The Spanish-American War is a good example of this. Another, even better one is to be found in Woodrow Wilson's completely unnecessary and ultimately counterproductive decision to enter World War I.
National values and national enthusiasms combined with an overly generous interpretation of national interest to propel the US into World War I. An overly generous interpretation of the requirements of the doctrine of containment coupled with a transient dose of enthusiasm opened the gates to defeat in Vietnam.
And, in the past few years we have seen another lesson, the best lesson yet in the reality that critical foreign policy decisions are made, not from rational understanding of primal national interest, but the dictates of national values as seen through the prism of ideology.
The single greatest challenge in foreign policy today is that of correctly parsing between the small number of genuine national interests and the plethora of possible applications of national values or national enthusiasms. National interest, to be effectively preserved, protected, and advanced, must be narrowly construed and rigidly divorced from the values espoused by the politically articulate elite. More important even than that is the necessity of decoupling interest from enthusiasm.
Difficult? Yes.
Impossible? No. Harry Truman showed that.
Nope. While we might like to think that our foreign policy and the mechanisms employed to implement it are and have been the consequence of intelligent analysis of problems and opportunities facing our commonweal, nothing could be further from reality.
Rather than being the result of flinty-eyed geopoliticians coolly looking at the globe and determining what, where, and how our national and strategic interests might be advanced, US foreign policy comes out of a messy, intellectually unsound, flawed mixture of national interests, national values and national enthusiasms as understood at the moment by politicians and others of the politically articulate elite. That the process often results in partial success at best and more often failure approaching or surpassing the level of debacle is not at all surprising.
The surprise comes when a policy actually works.
It's not misleading to see foreign policy as being a stew. There are three basic ingredients used. National interest. National values. National enthusiasms. These ingredients are mixed, blended and their proportions argued over by a myriad of cooks--politicians, academics, journalists, lobbying groups, corporations. Not making the preparation any easier is the existence of different cookbooks, each reflecting different ideologies.
The three ingredients are unspecified. It's like saying the stew has meat, spices, and veggies but not refining the list to a specific kind of meat, flavor of spice, or sort of vegetable. Each cookbook and most of the cooks differ on whether beef or pork, salt or pepper, carrots or lima beans should be thrown in the pot.
Worse, some cooks (not unlike the Reagan Administration school lunch program) will say that ketchup is a vegetable while others maintain it is a spice. Other cooks will insist that meatless recipes are best. And yet others will argue over the point at which a broth ceases to be a flavoring and becomes either a meat or a veggie.
Like the coach sez, "Ya gotta start with the fundamentals."
There is nothing more fundamental than a national interest. If nothing else it should be easy to agree on the most basic of national interests. The rock of all foreign policy is national survival. To expand slightly: The primal function of foreign policy is to protect and preserve the territorial integrity of the country as well as the integrity of its political, social and economic structures.
This back-to-the-most-basic-of-basics approach to foreign policy would work well if there could be agreement on just what it means. Construed quite narrowly, it implies that the most effective root of foreign policy would be one which produces an utterly impregnable, Fortress America with little if any need for intercourse with the rest of the world.
The isolationists of the Thirties stood almost at this extreme.
At other times the understanding of American survival demanded that the focus be on expansion of US territory or, later, expansion of unimpeded access to resources and markets abroad.
The reason for this wide variance in interpretation of even the most essential of national interests is simply that interest per se cannot be considered without the context of national values and even the transient winds of national enthusiasms.
Take a look at "free trade."
Is free trade (A) a national interest critical to the structural integrity of the American economy; (B) a national value honored in rhetoric but often violated in policy; (C) a national enthusiasm whipped up from time to time to serve purposes far divorced from national interest; (D) all of the foregoing at different times?
If you answered (D) you have a sounder grasp of the history of American policy both foreign and domestic than most.
Arguably, free trade has been a key feature in the list of American national interests. But, it has also served as a fetish to be waved by those pursuing expansive goals quite unrelated to the assurance of US economic stability and even inimical to other, even more core national interests.
In the alternative, the American national interest presumably contained in free trade can be ignored when its pursuit would be either inconvenient or conflict with other items in the foreign policy maker's agenda.
"Wait one, Geek! You're losing me."
OK. Walk through these bits of US history with the Geek.
Nearly two centuries ago the then small, weak, and barely born American Republic espoused freedom of maritime commerce as essential to its prosperity and internal stability. There is no doubt but that it was that as the US was a maritime power in the making and depended upon unfettered foreign trade for its survival.
When faced by a threat to open maritime commerce by the (Muslim) pirates of North Africa, the US responded by fighting a lengthy, expensive, and ultimately barely successful war against the seaborne thugs of the Barbary Coast and their political masters. The US government and politically articulate elite rejected the option of bribery even though various Europeans had taken that course successfully.
More recently the Reagan Administration responded to the Libyan claim that the Gulf of Siddra was Libyan territorial water and not, as the US looked at the map, international waters, with a show of force which escalated into a bombing raid on several Libyan targets. Arguably, this was an overly robust response to a minimal threat taken too quickly. However, in the context of the time, the response was taken not only from a generous interpretation of free trade and open seas but also from a national enthusiasm which, to put it mildly, was profoundly anti-Libyan.
Most recently the pirates of Puntand have made themselves a considerable nuisance to free maritime trade. The nuisance level was escalated significantly when the Somali brigands seized a very large crude carrier. This action had an immediate effect on world oil prices reversing at least temporarily their downward trajectory. Considering that four percent of the world's oil travels through the Gulf of Aden and an even larger percentage goes through the waters where the VLCC was hijacked, the impact on oil prices may become more significant and have a longer duration.
Even though the criminal actions directly and materially affect the structural integrity of the American economy, the actions of the US navy have been limited to "monitoring" the situation and providing hortatory advice to ship owners and operators. Free trade, at least as regards the maritime carriage of oil, does not seem to be a matter of national interest at the moment for the current administration.
This result may well be the inevitable outcome of a national enthusiasm of the present day. There is a deep and pervasive enthusiasm running against the current administration and its demonstrated proclivity for shooting first and talking later. Any use of force against pirates, no matter how justified and in the genuine national interest such might be, would be a needless distraction to the current administration in its closing days.
National interest, except in the immediate aftermath of an attack upon the US, is never undiluted by both national values and enthusiasms.
Other examples of the interaction between interest, values, and enthusiasms are easily seen in the history of the US.
Harry Truman, a most perceptive student of his country's history, took great pains not to arouse American enthusiasm during the Korean War. He and his administration generally correctly saw the war as being one of a limited nature in support of a policy--the policy of containment--that was intended to show the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China that when the US drew a line in the sand, that line could not be crossed with impunity.
The crusading enthusiasm of the American public was not aroused. This kept the war limited despite the urgings of General MacArthur and others to widen it, to use nuclear weapons, to invade the Chinese mainland. It also meant the war was profoundly unpopular and assured that Korea and its war were shoved to the furthest recesses of the American memory.
Truman was right. He waged a war of national interest. His conduct of the war did not invoke spurious appeals to American values such as democracy. It carefully caged the beast of public enthusiasm. It was successful even if completely lacking in glory.
Richard Nixon was not so coolly focused when he took over the running of our war in Vietnam. Under all the rhetoric of "credibility" and "peace with honor" ( to say nothing of the lives snuffed out in pursuit of these oratorical gems), Nixon was quite willing to leave Vietnam with one proviso.
That proviso?
As Nixon said to a (stunned) interlocutor in 1970, if the South Vietnamese elected a Communist government that wanted the US out so it could unify with the North, he, Nixon, would order the pullout without delay. True that was an extremely unlikely possibility given the nature of what passed for elections in South Vietnam, but Nixon's comment speaks loudly as to the power of an American national value.
In terms of national interest, it might be argued that democracies are desirable, more desirable than dictatorships. But, the active promotion of democracy, particularly by diplomatic means more robust than propaganda (OK, the Geek should have used the politically correct euphemism, "public diplomacy") is far more a product of national values than one of true national interest.
(If you have any doubts about the linkage between democracy and good-for-America, take a look at Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador or Paraguay. Like the old saying about drugs had it, "Not all highs are good highs,)
The US has gone to war because of the conflation of national interest and national value. The Spanish-American War is a good example of this. Another, even better one is to be found in Woodrow Wilson's completely unnecessary and ultimately counterproductive decision to enter World War I.
National values and national enthusiasms combined with an overly generous interpretation of national interest to propel the US into World War I. An overly generous interpretation of the requirements of the doctrine of containment coupled with a transient dose of enthusiasm opened the gates to defeat in Vietnam.
And, in the past few years we have seen another lesson, the best lesson yet in the reality that critical foreign policy decisions are made, not from rational understanding of primal national interest, but the dictates of national values as seen through the prism of ideology.
The single greatest challenge in foreign policy today is that of correctly parsing between the small number of genuine national interests and the plethora of possible applications of national values or national enthusiasms. National interest, to be effectively preserved, protected, and advanced, must be narrowly construed and rigidly divorced from the values espoused by the politically articulate elite. More important even than that is the necessity of decoupling interest from enthusiasm.
Difficult? Yes.
Impossible? No. Harry Truman showed that.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Who Has Ego Enough To Want The Job?
The job of Secretary of State, that is. Given the way the world is today a person would need an ego as big as that of a person aspiring to the presidency. Even bigger perhaps since in the event of failure the SecState would be expected to fall on his or her sword to protect the president from the splash over of debacle.
Whoever wants the job had best get a grip on this. Failure in one or more critical foreign policy areas is highly likely.
All the usual intractable problems remain. Israel and the Arab states aren't going to suddenly allow peace to break out. Absent a revolt on the part of its much abused citizens, Iran is going to keep on keeping on in the international troublemaking department;
It is doubtful to the max that North Korea, with or without the presence of the Dear Leader, is going to emerge from its isolated yet ambition laden mountains. The mandarinate of China is not going to drop its desire for regional hegemonic status nor its capacity to operate on the global stage--usually to the disadvantage of the US.
Russia will tack and turn, hem and haw, blow warm winds of peace and cold blasts of threat in its government's need to be seen and treated as a Great Power. The Kremlin's capacity for mischief should never be underestimated. Nor should its will and ability to operate in conjunction with the US be overestimated.
The long neglected continent to the south of us will become an increasingly important area of concern given the number of hostile regimes which have emerged courtesy of the democratic process. The old stand bys of Cuba and Nicaragua have been joined in the anti-American camp by Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay Several of these unfriendly governments have been establishing increasingly close relations with Iran (and Iran's surrogate Hezbollah), Russia, and China.
The "War on Drugs" will continue to rip Mexico into increasingly bloody ribbons. (One day last week the Mexican newspapers reported thirty-two drug related killings with an off-handed coolness bred of long familiarity.) Coupled with the social dislocation being inflicted by the return of now-unemployed illegal aliens from the US, the drug based violence has the potential to escalate into large scale, wide-spread armed domestic political discontent.
On the continent of collapsing states, Africa, the noise of failed pseudo-states will grow, Both Congo and Zimbabwe are excellent candidates for collapse. Nigeria may look robust but is riddled with tribal, sectional, religious, and socio-economic fractures while run by a collection of rascals only slightly less inept and corrupt than the predecessor military junta. Kenya, the land of the president-elect's male progenitors, looks calm at the moment but the lingering aftershocks of the recent political violence bode well to be the fore shocks of the next, larger round of killing.
The Kenyan situation will be exacerbated by the lingering death of Somalia and the refugee streams that Islamist fueled war is creating. The spill-over from Sudan is also unhelpful for the cause of Kenyan stability.
The Islamist/jihadist actions in North Africa can only grow in the months to come. None of the target states is inherently stable and all have significant sections of the population for whom the message of Islamism rings loud and clear.
Some of the growing international problems which will demand the undivided attention of the next SecState are of recent fabrication. The term "fabrication" is used intentionally and advisedly since both the current global economic situation and the "global warming" crisis are of human manufacture. The first is obviously such. The second is the creation of agenda-driven power-seeking politicians combined with a scientific basis which is far more ambiguous than the MSM (or the same pawing-the-ground-for-power politicos) are willing to admit.
Then there is the most recently fabricated "crisis." This one must be very close to the president-elect's heart given that he takes great pride in having introduced Senate Bill 2433, the Global Poverty Act. This piece of preposterous economics and airy-fairy thinking would impose what might best be called "reparations" on the prosperous states in order to transfer their wealth via the UN and subsidiary contractors to the impoverished nations.
Even if the worst case prognostications of writers on the Right are proven incorrect, the principle of wealth transfer would be established as a (disastrous) precedent. The transfer of wealth would do little if any good for the recipients as decades of foreign aid have proven.
Complicating already complex realities is the drive to address matters through the UN. The Security Council and, to an even greater degree, the General Assembly, have demonstrated a remarkable capacity to fail. Both bodies have failed to effectively address issues which arise under the single most important justification for the UN's existence--keeping the international peace. The repeatedly evidenced inability of the UN to operate effectively in the maintenance of peace has been mirrored in other areas too numerous to dilate upon in a single post.
To expect a body of over 190 sovereign states riven as it is with regional, economic, religious, cultural and historical differences, not to say passionate conflicts, to deal rationally, objectively, and disinterestedly with global problems of economics, environment, and ideologically based conflict is to expect the utterly impossible. From a historically based perspective of realpolitik, the UN has a utility equivalent to mammary glands on a bull.
In short, if the US is to deal effectively with the problems confronting it internationally as well as to regain the status and prestige it enjoyed before the current administration blew these vital bases of diplomatic influence in the neocon ninnie orgasms of regime change, it must create new frameworks of international cooperation. Time honored but potentially now obsolescent multilaterial entities such as NATO must be closely reexamined in the light of US interests as they exist today and into the near- and mid-term future.
New frameworks of international collaboration are not enough. The next administration must develop a more effective way of viewing the world. Using the old lenses of the Cold War is not a viable option. It is essential to realistically imagine a world in which the US can survive and flourish. To do this, it is necessary to define US national and strategic interests. Along with this, it is critical to define those values espoused by Americans that are tantamount to national interests.
Only by undertaking this process of defining both interests and core values will it be possible to establish a view of the world and new mechanisms of relations which avoid the chronic whipsawing between idealism and realism which has been a leitmotif of US foreign policy for decades. It has been and remains too easy and too appealing to define a "value" as an "interest." For example, deterring or at least detecting and defeating a surprise attack upon the US is a paramount national interest. Free trade is both a national interest and a national value. Free speech is a value which rises to the level of national interest. Gender equality is a value, but questionable at best as a national interest.
The US must take a long, hard look at the basics of foreign policy. We need a basis of policy which takes proper and accurate account of interests and values--and which does not confuse the two. We need to revisit long standing multilateral agencies to see if these meet the needs of our national interest effectively. We may well need to formulate new mechanisms of cooperation.
We also need to remember that the basic dynamics of international relations have not changed. Nor are they going to change. Diplomacy will still continue to exist in two forms. Either coinciding national interests are identified and built upon or coercion is employed. Coercive diplomacy, it must be recalled, always rests ultimately upon a state's will and ability to use armed force in support of policy.
Most importantly, we and whoever would be our next Secretary of State must keep in mind two foundational realities of diplomacy and international relations. All state actors are selfish. That is the most basic consideration of all. The second foundation is just as real and just as likely to be ignored: The Law of Unintended Consequences governs all interactions between states as surely and irrevocably as the Law of Gravity governs the relations of planets.
The Geek has one question. Given all of this, just who in hell wants the job?
Whoever wants the job had best get a grip on this. Failure in one or more critical foreign policy areas is highly likely.
All the usual intractable problems remain. Israel and the Arab states aren't going to suddenly allow peace to break out. Absent a revolt on the part of its much abused citizens, Iran is going to keep on keeping on in the international troublemaking department;
It is doubtful to the max that North Korea, with or without the presence of the Dear Leader, is going to emerge from its isolated yet ambition laden mountains. The mandarinate of China is not going to drop its desire for regional hegemonic status nor its capacity to operate on the global stage--usually to the disadvantage of the US.
Russia will tack and turn, hem and haw, blow warm winds of peace and cold blasts of threat in its government's need to be seen and treated as a Great Power. The Kremlin's capacity for mischief should never be underestimated. Nor should its will and ability to operate in conjunction with the US be overestimated.
The long neglected continent to the south of us will become an increasingly important area of concern given the number of hostile regimes which have emerged courtesy of the democratic process. The old stand bys of Cuba and Nicaragua have been joined in the anti-American camp by Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay Several of these unfriendly governments have been establishing increasingly close relations with Iran (and Iran's surrogate Hezbollah), Russia, and China.
The "War on Drugs" will continue to rip Mexico into increasingly bloody ribbons. (One day last week the Mexican newspapers reported thirty-two drug related killings with an off-handed coolness bred of long familiarity.) Coupled with the social dislocation being inflicted by the return of now-unemployed illegal aliens from the US, the drug based violence has the potential to escalate into large scale, wide-spread armed domestic political discontent.
On the continent of collapsing states, Africa, the noise of failed pseudo-states will grow, Both Congo and Zimbabwe are excellent candidates for collapse. Nigeria may look robust but is riddled with tribal, sectional, religious, and socio-economic fractures while run by a collection of rascals only slightly less inept and corrupt than the predecessor military junta. Kenya, the land of the president-elect's male progenitors, looks calm at the moment but the lingering aftershocks of the recent political violence bode well to be the fore shocks of the next, larger round of killing.
The Kenyan situation will be exacerbated by the lingering death of Somalia and the refugee streams that Islamist fueled war is creating. The spill-over from Sudan is also unhelpful for the cause of Kenyan stability.
The Islamist/jihadist actions in North Africa can only grow in the months to come. None of the target states is inherently stable and all have significant sections of the population for whom the message of Islamism rings loud and clear.
Some of the growing international problems which will demand the undivided attention of the next SecState are of recent fabrication. The term "fabrication" is used intentionally and advisedly since both the current global economic situation and the "global warming" crisis are of human manufacture. The first is obviously such. The second is the creation of agenda-driven power-seeking politicians combined with a scientific basis which is far more ambiguous than the MSM (or the same pawing-the-ground-for-power politicos) are willing to admit.
Then there is the most recently fabricated "crisis." This one must be very close to the president-elect's heart given that he takes great pride in having introduced Senate Bill 2433, the Global Poverty Act. This piece of preposterous economics and airy-fairy thinking would impose what might best be called "reparations" on the prosperous states in order to transfer their wealth via the UN and subsidiary contractors to the impoverished nations.
Even if the worst case prognostications of writers on the Right are proven incorrect, the principle of wealth transfer would be established as a (disastrous) precedent. The transfer of wealth would do little if any good for the recipients as decades of foreign aid have proven.
Complicating already complex realities is the drive to address matters through the UN. The Security Council and, to an even greater degree, the General Assembly, have demonstrated a remarkable capacity to fail. Both bodies have failed to effectively address issues which arise under the single most important justification for the UN's existence--keeping the international peace. The repeatedly evidenced inability of the UN to operate effectively in the maintenance of peace has been mirrored in other areas too numerous to dilate upon in a single post.
To expect a body of over 190 sovereign states riven as it is with regional, economic, religious, cultural and historical differences, not to say passionate conflicts, to deal rationally, objectively, and disinterestedly with global problems of economics, environment, and ideologically based conflict is to expect the utterly impossible. From a historically based perspective of realpolitik, the UN has a utility equivalent to mammary glands on a bull.
In short, if the US is to deal effectively with the problems confronting it internationally as well as to regain the status and prestige it enjoyed before the current administration blew these vital bases of diplomatic influence in the neocon ninnie orgasms of regime change, it must create new frameworks of international cooperation. Time honored but potentially now obsolescent multilaterial entities such as NATO must be closely reexamined in the light of US interests as they exist today and into the near- and mid-term future.
New frameworks of international collaboration are not enough. The next administration must develop a more effective way of viewing the world. Using the old lenses of the Cold War is not a viable option. It is essential to realistically imagine a world in which the US can survive and flourish. To do this, it is necessary to define US national and strategic interests. Along with this, it is critical to define those values espoused by Americans that are tantamount to national interests.
Only by undertaking this process of defining both interests and core values will it be possible to establish a view of the world and new mechanisms of relations which avoid the chronic whipsawing between idealism and realism which has been a leitmotif of US foreign policy for decades. It has been and remains too easy and too appealing to define a "value" as an "interest." For example, deterring or at least detecting and defeating a surprise attack upon the US is a paramount national interest. Free trade is both a national interest and a national value. Free speech is a value which rises to the level of national interest. Gender equality is a value, but questionable at best as a national interest.
The US must take a long, hard look at the basics of foreign policy. We need a basis of policy which takes proper and accurate account of interests and values--and which does not confuse the two. We need to revisit long standing multilateral agencies to see if these meet the needs of our national interest effectively. We may well need to formulate new mechanisms of cooperation.
We also need to remember that the basic dynamics of international relations have not changed. Nor are they going to change. Diplomacy will still continue to exist in two forms. Either coinciding national interests are identified and built upon or coercion is employed. Coercive diplomacy, it must be recalled, always rests ultimately upon a state's will and ability to use armed force in support of policy.
Most importantly, we and whoever would be our next Secretary of State must keep in mind two foundational realities of diplomacy and international relations. All state actors are selfish. That is the most basic consideration of all. The second foundation is just as real and just as likely to be ignored: The Law of Unintended Consequences governs all interactions between states as surely and irrevocably as the Law of Gravity governs the relations of planets.
The Geek has one question. Given all of this, just who in hell wants the job?
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Shut Up! Some Things Can't Be Talked About
There are some subjects which are thought to be off-limits for discussion. Topics about which some person or group somewhere on the planet is sensitive. Areas of discourse which might somehow offend deep seated sensibilities.
High, perhaps highest on the list, at least according to the Society Obsessively Protecting the Sensitive (SOPS) with headquarters at the United Nations, is religion.
It appears that people afflicted with a deep and abiding religious faith are so insecure in the value of that faith and its penumbra of beliefs and practices that the slightest hint of any questioning or criticism on the part of those who are not members of the individual's community of faith leads inexorably and inevitably to a crushing sense of despair and depression which can only be relieved by shouts of "Death to..." and threats or acts of violence directed against those who have uttered the questions, criticisms or denunciations. What a quaint and curious notion.
Actually this strange view surpasses the quaint and curious to enter the world of the bizarre. Considering that a deeply held faith is commonly supposed to strengthen the believer against the comments of those who do not share the belief, the movement to limit freedom of speech is identical to the excuse for failure so often advanced by those who seek to communicate with the dead in a seance--"There's an unbeliever here. The spirits won't talk with a skeptic present."
Originating with the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the movement to limit free expression on matters of religion has spread to the United Nations. After having gained the full support of the UN Human Rights Commission (to the extent that Sharia cannot be mentioned at their meetings) the gag-the-unbelievers contagion was caught this past week by the General Assembly.
It is easy to understand why the OIC and its member states are grotesquely perturbed by the idea of criticism or skepticism directed at the One Pure Faith. Islam, to an extent surpassing even that of the other monotheistic religions, is predicated upon fear. Fear and its partner in debilitation, personal insecurity.
Islam per se is based on fear. The fear of hell. Its statements of creed linger with pornographic detail upon the punishments which await the unbeliever and the apostate or the Muslim who breaks the laws of the lord when they die. The perils and torments of the pit are put forth with a degree of B movie detail which are scary in the extreme. From infancy on the individual in a Muslim society is raised on a diet of unremitting fear.
That Muslims, particularly Muslim men, are insecure in painfully obvious. The only rational explanation for the constant emphasis in both word and deed upon the subjugation of women is that men are afflicted with near terminal insecurity regarding their male nature and character. The same may be seen in the pathetic emphasis placed upon male secondary sex characteristics such as never shaving and on the presumed male propensity for violence.
Fear and insecurity alike are seen in the constant refrain about the "Muslim community" and the threat posed to that community by any slight odor of divisiveness, of fitna. Humans are a herd animal to be sure and many, even most, religions have sought to capitalise on that fact. At one time or another, for greater or lesser periods of time, each of the monotheistic faiths has sought to maintain its internal coherence by definitions based on exclusion.
But, only Islam has placed the definition of community so firmly on the rock of exclusion. Only Islam has made a article of faith and community membership out of the specious notion that the human race is divided into two camps: The House of Islam and The House of War.
And, in recent decades at least, Islam has stood alone in affirming that it can be and is victimised, threatened and persecuted by open inquiry and free expression. Islam, or at least many Muslims occupying leadership positions in Muslim societies, are more fearful of words and cartoons than they are of bombs and bullets.
Not only is Islam founded on fear, many Muslim majority societies are inherently authoritarian in nature. This is expectable. All too often throughout the sweep of human history people have shown themselves ready, even eager to adopt authoritarian rule in order to lower fear and reduce the insecurity which is a natural part of life.
Authoritarianism is the critical link between the OIC backed move for an international convention preventing "defamation" of religion and its acceptance in an ever-widening international arena. Consider the statement attributed to General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann last week.
D'Escoto said, “Yes, I believe that defamation of religion should be banned." He added, 'No one should try to defame Islam or any other religion. We should respect all religions.”
Miguel d'Escoto Brockman started life as a Roman Catholic priest. Catholicism is a hierarchical and authoritarian creed. It is also a religion that has been noted over the past couple thousand years for having made numerous attempts to prohibit free inquiry and expression. Even today it would be difficult, not to say impossible, to describe the Church accurately as espousing open inquiry, open expression and dissent over matters of faith and doctrine.
Sr d'Escoto joined the Communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua. The Sandinistas, as was typical for all Marxist-Leninist parties throughout the world, was rigidly hierarchical and authoritarian. Considering that d'Escoto became the Nicaraguan Foreign Minister during the years of Sandinista government, he must be quite comfortable with limitations on speech and inquiry. He probably even became poopy when the US government made remarks about his government which might be interpreted as icky-poo, as less than flatly adulatory.
Non-Communist, non-Muslim authoritarian regimes, particularly in the Third World, have been plumping for years at the UN and other venues to impose restrictions upon free speech and open debate. Slipping in a major limitation under the guise of protecting religious sensibilities from the potential of something called "defamation" must be a very attractive option for these less-than-high-minded rulers.
Of course Sr d'Escoto denied that preventing "defamation," a term which is impossible to rigorously and objectively define given that its nature depends upon subjective perceptions, would limit free speech. This same outrageous assertion has been and will be made ad nauseum by the OIC and assorted Islamic governments such as those in Pakistan and Iran. While there may be intellectually flaccid members of the Western European and American elites--all card carrying adherents of the Society of the Perpetually Indignant and Concerned, all up-to-the-minute with what is sensitive and politically correct--who accept this contention, it is bankrupt on its face.
Limiting inquiry, expression and debate (including mockery and satire) on a subject which is central to the human condition not only limits speech, it limits our very capacity to be human, to use that most exceptional of human organs--our brains. To declare, as the OIC and GA president d'Escoto want to, that religion is off-limits is to strike at the very heart of political free speech.
With respect to Islam, religion is politics. Given the current state of play in international politics, to deny expression--even expression subjectively felt to be "defamatory," is to surrender the ideological battlefield.
No amount of misplaced sympathy for those whose fears lead to a sense of having been insulted by word (or cartoon) can be allowed to interfere with a dynamic in the world which every day increasingly resembles a "clash of civilizations." No amount of mis-guided political correctness or ill-informed regard for the sensibilities of Islamic populations can be permitted to cause the US or the West to forfeit the contest with the witches' brew of Islamists, born-again Communists, and authoritarian governments which threaten both our lives and our liberties today.
High, perhaps highest on the list, at least according to the Society Obsessively Protecting the Sensitive (SOPS) with headquarters at the United Nations, is religion.
It appears that people afflicted with a deep and abiding religious faith are so insecure in the value of that faith and its penumbra of beliefs and practices that the slightest hint of any questioning or criticism on the part of those who are not members of the individual's community of faith leads inexorably and inevitably to a crushing sense of despair and depression which can only be relieved by shouts of "Death to..." and threats or acts of violence directed against those who have uttered the questions, criticisms or denunciations. What a quaint and curious notion.
Actually this strange view surpasses the quaint and curious to enter the world of the bizarre. Considering that a deeply held faith is commonly supposed to strengthen the believer against the comments of those who do not share the belief, the movement to limit freedom of speech is identical to the excuse for failure so often advanced by those who seek to communicate with the dead in a seance--"There's an unbeliever here. The spirits won't talk with a skeptic present."
Originating with the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the movement to limit free expression on matters of religion has spread to the United Nations. After having gained the full support of the UN Human Rights Commission (to the extent that Sharia cannot be mentioned at their meetings) the gag-the-unbelievers contagion was caught this past week by the General Assembly.
It is easy to understand why the OIC and its member states are grotesquely perturbed by the idea of criticism or skepticism directed at the One Pure Faith. Islam, to an extent surpassing even that of the other monotheistic religions, is predicated upon fear. Fear and its partner in debilitation, personal insecurity.
Islam per se is based on fear. The fear of hell. Its statements of creed linger with pornographic detail upon the punishments which await the unbeliever and the apostate or the Muslim who breaks the laws of the lord when they die. The perils and torments of the pit are put forth with a degree of B movie detail which are scary in the extreme. From infancy on the individual in a Muslim society is raised on a diet of unremitting fear.
That Muslims, particularly Muslim men, are insecure in painfully obvious. The only rational explanation for the constant emphasis in both word and deed upon the subjugation of women is that men are afflicted with near terminal insecurity regarding their male nature and character. The same may be seen in the pathetic emphasis placed upon male secondary sex characteristics such as never shaving and on the presumed male propensity for violence.
Fear and insecurity alike are seen in the constant refrain about the "Muslim community" and the threat posed to that community by any slight odor of divisiveness, of fitna. Humans are a herd animal to be sure and many, even most, religions have sought to capitalise on that fact. At one time or another, for greater or lesser periods of time, each of the monotheistic faiths has sought to maintain its internal coherence by definitions based on exclusion.
But, only Islam has placed the definition of community so firmly on the rock of exclusion. Only Islam has made a article of faith and community membership out of the specious notion that the human race is divided into two camps: The House of Islam and The House of War.
And, in recent decades at least, Islam has stood alone in affirming that it can be and is victimised, threatened and persecuted by open inquiry and free expression. Islam, or at least many Muslims occupying leadership positions in Muslim societies, are more fearful of words and cartoons than they are of bombs and bullets.
Not only is Islam founded on fear, many Muslim majority societies are inherently authoritarian in nature. This is expectable. All too often throughout the sweep of human history people have shown themselves ready, even eager to adopt authoritarian rule in order to lower fear and reduce the insecurity which is a natural part of life.
Authoritarianism is the critical link between the OIC backed move for an international convention preventing "defamation" of religion and its acceptance in an ever-widening international arena. Consider the statement attributed to General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann last week.
D'Escoto said, “Yes, I believe that defamation of religion should be banned." He added, 'No one should try to defame Islam or any other religion. We should respect all religions.”
Miguel d'Escoto Brockman started life as a Roman Catholic priest. Catholicism is a hierarchical and authoritarian creed. It is also a religion that has been noted over the past couple thousand years for having made numerous attempts to prohibit free inquiry and expression. Even today it would be difficult, not to say impossible, to describe the Church accurately as espousing open inquiry, open expression and dissent over matters of faith and doctrine.
Sr d'Escoto joined the Communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua. The Sandinistas, as was typical for all Marxist-Leninist parties throughout the world, was rigidly hierarchical and authoritarian. Considering that d'Escoto became the Nicaraguan Foreign Minister during the years of Sandinista government, he must be quite comfortable with limitations on speech and inquiry. He probably even became poopy when the US government made remarks about his government which might be interpreted as icky-poo, as less than flatly adulatory.
Non-Communist, non-Muslim authoritarian regimes, particularly in the Third World, have been plumping for years at the UN and other venues to impose restrictions upon free speech and open debate. Slipping in a major limitation under the guise of protecting religious sensibilities from the potential of something called "defamation" must be a very attractive option for these less-than-high-minded rulers.
Of course Sr d'Escoto denied that preventing "defamation," a term which is impossible to rigorously and objectively define given that its nature depends upon subjective perceptions, would limit free speech. This same outrageous assertion has been and will be made ad nauseum by the OIC and assorted Islamic governments such as those in Pakistan and Iran. While there may be intellectually flaccid members of the Western European and American elites--all card carrying adherents of the Society of the Perpetually Indignant and Concerned, all up-to-the-minute with what is sensitive and politically correct--who accept this contention, it is bankrupt on its face.
Limiting inquiry, expression and debate (including mockery and satire) on a subject which is central to the human condition not only limits speech, it limits our very capacity to be human, to use that most exceptional of human organs--our brains. To declare, as the OIC and GA president d'Escoto want to, that religion is off-limits is to strike at the very heart of political free speech.
With respect to Islam, religion is politics. Given the current state of play in international politics, to deny expression--even expression subjectively felt to be "defamatory," is to surrender the ideological battlefield.
No amount of misplaced sympathy for those whose fears lead to a sense of having been insulted by word (or cartoon) can be allowed to interfere with a dynamic in the world which every day increasingly resembles a "clash of civilizations." No amount of mis-guided political correctness or ill-informed regard for the sensibilities of Islamic populations can be permitted to cause the US or the West to forfeit the contest with the witches' brew of Islamists, born-again Communists, and authoritarian governments which threaten both our lives and our liberties today.
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