Back To Playing The Human Rights Card

The Obama administration in the person of Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has moved human rights back into play in the Great Game with China.  This, of course, is a reversal of the earlier stance underscored by Ms Clinton in her remark early on in the Obama years that human rights would not be allowed to "interfere" in our relations with the Trolls of Beijing.

There is no doubt that the new emphasis on human rights pleases the folks on the Left.  In addition to the domestic benefits of rediscovering that the Trolls are willing to repress any and all dissent, raising the issue of how the Chinese regime treats its citizens allows the US to attempt the insertion of a wedge between the more or less reform minded Trolls such as prime minister Wen Jiabao and the high command of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA.)  Such a wedge may prove beneficial to American interests next year when the five year term of the rather weak and pathetic President Hu comes to an end.

While that possibility exists it is too slight a reed to support any significant US policy regarding China.  To put it bluntly but not inaccurately, the leadership of the Han tribe is not overly concerned with the views of the US or any other barbarian state in the amorphous area of human rights.

The reason for this is simple.  The cohesion of the Han tribe is the absolute centrality of Chinese society, polity, and economy.  For centuries the structural integrity of the Han has been seen as the cause of Chinese success and, conversely, any cracks in that integrity have been held responsible for Chinese failures.  The social and political compact between rulers and ruled hinges on the capacity of the rulers to insist upon cohesion and the willingness of the ruled to accept cheerfully and fully the imposed collective integrity.

A member of the Han tribe who rejects or demurs from the requirements of cohesiveness has placed himself outside the tribe if not in opposition to it.  The non-Han who happens to live in China, who perforce is a subject of the Han, has no voice in the matter.  The role of the non-Han (roughly ten percent of the population) is to accept his lot in silence, grateful for whatever crumbs fall from the master's table while showing always a willingness to obey his betters.  (Perhaps the non-Han can take some comfort from the fact that he lives within the Central Empire and not among the denizens of the outer darkness, the assorted barbarians of the world.)

The Han view is not one of recent origin.  It has typified Chinese thinking for a long, long while.  The notion of the Han as superior, of China as the Central Empire, was well developed back when the British were painting themselves blue and burning captives in wickerwork cages, since the days when Rome was a hick village on only one hill.  The idea of the Han tribe, of the cohesion of the Han as central to the success or failure of China, has a long and honored history.

It is not surprising that the constellation of ideas which comprise the concept of the Han tribe and its necessary cohesion based on a compact binding rulers and ruled in a web of collective obligations has brought in its wake a large measure of xenophobia, a larger measure of supremacist ideology, and a hefty amount of indifference to the human rights of non-Han or the Han so ill-advised as to dissent from the imperatives of the tribe.

More than any other institution in China, the PLA is the custodian of the most robust expressions of Han supremacy.  This means that the PLA is the most nationalistic as well as the most militaristic component of the Chinese state.  As is the case with all continental powers, the army is the ultimate guarantor of both nationhood and statehood.  But, this dynamic is magnified in China.  Mao recognized this in his famed dictum that "political power comes from the muzzle of a gun."

In an ideal world cohesion comes from consensus.  In the less than ideal world called reality, consensus is not always enough.  Consensus must be reinforced by coercion from time to time.  The military, today the PLA, is the instrument of coercion.  Over the two dozen centuries of China's existence as an organized polity, the fate of the Han and their ruler have depended upon the capacity of the army to coerce effectively.  The fate of the nation, the fate of the state, have waxed and wained according to the capacity of the army not only to defend borders, but, more importantly and often, to coerce effectively--to suppress dissent and force non-Han to accept subordination.

The current system of Chinese political organization came to pass because the PLA was more effective in coercing acceptance of Mao's version of Communism than was the army commanded by the Nationalists.  China exists as it does today not because the PLA outfought its armed opponents, although it did so.  China exists as it does primarily due to the efficiency with which the PLA suppressed dissent, forced consensus, and restored cohesion.

The PLA was the midwife of the Revolution.  Since then it has been the ultimate protector and custodian of both nation and state.  Had it not been for the effectiveness of the PLA in its internal security role, the wheels would have come off Mao's state during the Great Famine following the Great Leap Forward or as a result of the bloody consensus destroying excesses of the Cultural Revolution.  And, it should never be forgotten that it was the tanks and bayonets of the PLA which in 1989 crushed the pro-democracy movement and bought the regime the time it needed to pursue economic liberalization with the results we are so well acquainted today.

The PLA at the senior levels knows perfectly well that the ambitions of the Trolls for regional hegemon status as well as its lofty plans for securing a Great Power role equivalent to if not surpassing that of the US depends upon its capacities.  Likewise, the PLA command structure is well aware that the Trolls depend upon it to suppress the non-Han and squash any Han dissenters.

This implies that the level of civilian supremacy in China is not so high as Secretary of Defense Gates has pretended in public.  The actual relation between civilian government and military high command is more like a co-dominion with Trolls and military chiefs being essentially equal.

From this one can draw a necessary inference: While both President Hu and Prime Minister Wen may genuflect before the totems of reform, democracy, and other warm fuzzies, when and if push comes to shove, the PLA is secure in its belief that it can impose and enforce the necessary degree of Han cohesiveness.  As a result, the American hectoring about human rights can be ignored with impunity.

To a degree which surpasses the civilian Trolls, the commanders of the PLA are realpolitikers.  They are also ideologues.  This is a very dangerous combination.  The high command of the PLA is of the view that China is entitled to be regional hegemon.  It has a right to Taiwan.  China is the Central Empire.  These axioms mean that China must accept the probability of conflict with the US.  The set of "givens" means the PLA must be prepared for war with the US.

The massive modernization of the PLA (fueled in large part by money from US consumers) is plainly aimed at the US.  The continued acquisition of evermore sophisticated weaponry and other military equipment (some of which is the result of poorly considered co-production and similar agreements) is also aimed at the US.  There is not a single aspect of Chinese military procurement or reorganization which is not far in excess of any realistic defensive need.  Rather, each and every aspect of China's military reorientation and enhancement effort is offensive in nature.  The only credible target of an offensively oriented Chinese military is the US.

In the face of this set of very unpleasant developments, the Obama administration's putting the human rights card into play during President Hu's state visit is less than pathetic.  Rather the "new found assertiveness" promised by Secretary Clinton and President Obama is redolent of the tactics of desperation and hints at a strategy utterly lacking intellectual content.

We should consider ourselves fortunate if the Chinese president refrains from laughing.

Then There Is China

When neo-liberal Bill Clinton "opened" the door to China, the Geek went into one of his here-there-be-tygers moods.  Contrary to the peace, love, and flower power words of the Arkansas Terror, the Geek viewed the normalization of trade and financial relations with the "Central Empire" (to use the most accurate translation of the ancient Chinese term for their country) as a severe self-inflicted injury to the US and its national interests.

The Geek made a set of fearless predictions in those bygone days to assorted military and foreign policy audiences.  Among those were a massive hemorrhage of dollars and jobs to the benefit of the Trolls of Beijing.  He also warned that the self-same Trolls would use their bushels of bucks to do the following: massively ramp up their military capacities, purchase allies wherever possible, seek exploitable fossil fuels particularly oil and national gas, seek to immunize themselves against crop failures, and, lastly but most importantly, undertake all measures possible to become both the regional  hegemon of Asia and a Great Power able to limit the ability of the US to operate on the world stage.

The Geek's credible imitation of Cassandra was pooh-poohed by many who were in the audiences but the Geek serenely assured all, "Just wait fifteen years or so."  Well within the time limit, all the dreary forecasts have proven correct as well as other, equally dismal, events not foreseen by the Geek.  The Geek missed, for example, the Chinese scarfing up of Uncle Sam's IOU's  to say nothing of the extent of the debt which was to come.  He also failed to see that the Trolls would pursue crop failure immunization by purchasing farmlands in Africa by the multiples of square miles.  He also overlooked Chinese ventures in strategic metals.  But, overall he did get the picture correct.

In return for the loss of jobs--even entire industries and cargo ships filled with bucks--the American public got mounds of non-essential but inexpensive consumer expendables courtesy of the big boxes with Walmart at the forefront.  More than the biblical character, We the People sold out our heritage for a mess of potage--shoddy pottage at that.

The Han Chinese, courtesy of the differing ideological imperatives of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush abetted by the sheer greed of the American consumer and the bottomline fixation of American businesses, have become the largest, most coherent, and self-confident tribe on the planet's surface.  The combination of economic success, personal enrichment, an ever more powerful military, a very self-assured and authoritarian leadership have given the Han tribe both the political will and material capacity to treat the rest of the world, the barbarians, as a pseudo-colonial environment upon which to work their will.

The Central Empire has returned--on steroids.

The Chief Troll, President Hu Jintao, is soon to arrive for a state visit with President Obama.  While President Hu is arguably the weakest chief of state since Mao declared the revolution to have succeeded over sixty years ago, his coming to Washington is an imperial procession, the Emperor meets the Chief Barbarian.  It will be interesting to see the optics of the visit, to see if the given-to-fawning American president bows and kowtows in appropriately servile fashion.

It is commonplace to assert that the current relations of the US with China are "troubled" or passing through a period of "difficulties."  This sort of terminology not only belabors the obvious but masks the fundamental reality.

The ground truth is that the US and China are rivals in a zero sum game.  Insofar as the Trolls gain an advantage diplomatically, economically, or militarily the US loses.  Insofar as the US can maintain the status quo, the Trolls lose.  And, should the US miraculously reverse the negative trend of the past decade and more, the Trolls lose big time.

These considerations as well as the nature of the specific game of nations now being played by the US and China imply that the upcoming Hu-Obama confab has powerful subtexts at work below the facade of ruffles, flourishes, and banquets.  The stakes are very high.  One can be sure President Hu knows this.  One cannot be so sure that Mr Obama does.

The reason for uncertainty regarding President Obama stems from the fact that while the Trolls practice a realpolitik of remorseless and ruthless sort, the American does not.  Neither Mr Obama nor some senior members of his administration--think Secretary of State Clinton--are given to realpolitik other than on an episodic basis.  This puts the Americans at a profound disadvantage when facing men who pursue the national and strategic interests of China all the time.

The American president has shown that he has no clue regarding the essential nature of national interest.  He appears unaware that national and strategic interests are both subjective and defined only by the government and associate elite in any given nation-state.  He also shows no sensitivity to the role played by history, both objective and subjective, in the formation and pursuit of national interest based goals. This means that Mr Obama and other key players on his "foreign policy team" are both blind and deaf in comparison with their Chinese interlocutors.

Given the profoundly different historical predicates of contemporary national interests as well as the zero sum nature of the game being played, it is arguable that the US and China have very few, if any, coinciding national interests.  The gulf between the world views and perceived interests of both countries may be greater than that which existed between the US and the Soviet Union in the Fifties and Sixties.

A good illustration of the differences between the Cold War on the one hand and today's zero sum game with China is seen in the very conservatism of the Soviet leadership.  The Soviets never sought to extend their influence as broadly and blatantly as have the Trolls in places far removed from the homeland.  China has shown a capacity for "adventurism" in Africa, for example, far surpassing even the most ambitious aspirations of the Soviets during the post-Vietnam decade.

China's lack of cooperation on Iran or North Korea also has been emblematic of the gulf in national interests between the US and Beijing.  Quite simply, the Trolls see little if anything threatening about the Iranian nuclear quest.  Their intelligence and diplomatic establishments have discounted (correctly) any negatives emerging from the Iranian quarter.  They have no interests directly involved in the Gulf states or the Mideast generally.  The Chinese interest in Iran is limited to oil and money.  As a consequence, leaning in the direction of Tehran suits the Trolls perfectly.  The collateral benefit of the Iranian contretemps fostering division and diversion in the West is just a bit of frosting on the cake.

Maintaining the status quo in North Korea is what Beijing focuses on.  The matters of nuclear weapons research and development or companion work on missiles is of no interest to the Chinese as the Trolls have the means and will to assure no threats come their way.  The Trolls are rightly worried about a disastrous miscalculation in Pyongyang and will take the minimum necessary steps to reduce that potential.  They will and are doing the same in the event of governmental collapse in the Hermit Kingdom.

The game moves from non-cooperation to direct confrontation in Southeast Asia.  The Trolls are of the view that they are the regional hegemon by right.  In short, the Trolls have picked up the mantel once worn by the Imperial Japanese.  As a consequence, the countries of Southeast Asia have cozied up to the US.  This gravitational movement has set the stage for direct confrontation between the US and China.

In Southeast Asia and the western Pacific littoral, the confrontation must be direct.  Unlike the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the Trolls have no credible local proxies to wage the war on their behalf.  The various and sundry proxy wars of the Seventies and Eighties gave the US and the Soviet Union an automatic firebreak and thus precluded escalation which, once started, must eventually run the risk of crossing the nuclear threshold.  With the possible exception of Burma--a proxy of a proxy--China has no straw men to set up to do their dirty work in the region.

The Chinese awareness of the direct nature of the potential confrontation has been made manifest in their new weaponry and doctrine.  The ballistic missile powered "spike from space" is directed against the floating sovereignty of an American aircraft carrier.  The recently test flown J-20 is anti-US in its missions.  Cyberwar is the hottest game in China--with the US as the main target.

Against this the US is operating in a--to put it mildly--budget constrained environment.  The US will be cutting its defense establishment as the Chinese continue to develop theirs.  While the Americans enjoy some technological advantages as with the next generation of remotely operated and autonomous unmanned platforms, we should not overvalue the advantages this confers.  Nor is the US well advised to do in the future what it has done so often in the past, undervalue the capacities of an Asian adversary.

The Trolls do, fortunately, face some very real challenges at home.  Inflation is growing and this may succeed where American importuning has failed, cause the Trolls to appreciate the value of their currency.  China is also facing twin crises of farmland degradation and decline in the agricultural water supply.  This will put a very real squeeze on the Trolls just as the majority of their citizens have come to appreciate a Western style diet.  With the explosive growth in personal motor vehicle ownership, China will need ever greater amounts of oil at a low price lest the population suffer a crisis of rising expectations.

In addition, the Han tribe faces challenges from the ten percent of the population which is non-Han.  The inevitable requirement will be for more and more repression.  Ramping up repression will cause collateral and potentially destabilizing effects on members of the Han tribe.  Balancing the needs for repression of the minority while assuring a minimal but growing amount of freedom for the educated youth of the Han tribe will prove to be a non-trivial problem for the Trolls of Beijing.

Recent polls have shown a disturbing acceptance of American decline and Chinese ascendancy on the part of a large segment of We the People.  There is no need for this sort of bland indifference, for this meek agreement to an evermore constricted global role for the US.  The worst need not come to pass if the present administration as well as what and whoever comes to the Oval in 2013 plays a realistic game of pursuing American national interest.

It is to be hoped that Obama 2.0 contains a backbone as well as an eye for American supremacy.  The test comes off camera during the state visit.  It comes not with respect to any American hectoring over Chinese respect for human rights but rather in the blunt or soft speaking on matters military and diplomatic.  The test comes with President Obama either saying or avoiding saying, "Here I stand.  I can do no other."

Is Tunisia The New Paradigm?

Many observers, particularly those who live in the Arab countries of the Mideast, see the overthrow of the aging authoritarian president, Ben Ali, as a sign of things to come in countries such as Egypt, Algeria, even the feudal oil kingdoms of the Gulf.  These optimistic folk revel in the apparent success of an unprecedented exercise in "people power."

There are striking but superficial similarities between the social, political, and economic dynamic which brought an end to the quarter century of Ben Ali's reign and those obtaining in other Mideast countries, particularly Egypt.  But, as history has so often shown, the differences are far more critical than the appealing similarities.

Ben Ali was only the second chief of state in the fifty plus years of Tunisian independence.  His predecessor, Habib Bourguiba, ushered in both independence and a rigid one party state rule.  Bourguiba was a realist in his domestic and foreign policy pursuing good relations with the ex-colonial power, France, while insisting on secularization, educational development, and economic progress domestically.  His thirty-one year regime provided a sound basis for Tunisia both socially and economically while stunting the country's political growth.

Ben Ali displaced Bourguiba in a non-violent coup in 1987.  His early terms in the office of president were distinguished only by his fealty to Bourguiba's visions.  However, by the end of his fifteenth year in power, Ben Ali had become increasingly repressive, given to nepotism and familial corruption and evermore remoteness from the people of Tunisia.  During terms number four and five, the general distaste for the regime grew apace, but manifestations of discontent were handled readily by the police.

As distaste for the regime grew so also did the wealth of the presidential family including the relatives of his second wife, a nearly illiterate one time beautician.  The situation would have remained in stasis had it not been for the impact of the global recession, particularly the hit taken by the large, educated, secularized, and European oriented youth of the country.

Bourguiba had emphasized the control of population growth with excellent results.  This insulated Tunisia against the early effects of too much education and too few suitable jobs.  However, the global recession upset the delicate balance with results which disproportionately hit the urban under thirty population.  In this context it should be mentioned that Tunisia is heavily urbanized with seven out of every ten people living in the cities.  Similarly Tunisia boasts an unusually large number of people with a post-secondary education.

In many but not all of these features--urbanization, a precarious balance between population growth and job growth, a significant number of young, educated, and under- or unemployed people, a rigid, one party political dynamic, inefficient, overbearing repression by police, corruption and nepotism at the highest level of government, maldistribution of wealth--Tunisia is closely resembled by Egypt, Algeria, and the Gulf states.  The same is true to a slightly lesser degree with respect to Jordan, Libya, and Syria.

None of this should be taken to imply that Hosni Mubarak is soon to go the way of Ben Ali.  The reason is to be found in the differences between Tunisia and the other Arab states.  Most of the critical differences are matters of degree rather than substance.  For example, Tunisia's population has a higher percentage of recipients of post-secondary education than the other countries in the region.  The average family size in Tunisia--an important consideration when evaluating the potential for political involvement by youth--is smaller than in the other Arab states.  The percentage of urbanites is larger.  The percentage of under-thirties with direct experience living in Europe is larger.  In short, the population of Tunisia is disproportionately educated, urban, technologically savvy, literate, and comes from a childhood of relative privilege.

Other differences are structural.  Tunisia has a small and non-politicized army.  While the police are more political than not, the army sat--and continues to sit--on the sidelines.  Its high command refused to suppress the escalating demonstrations/riots.  This was critical to the decision by the president to leave and the prime minister to step aside in favor of the legislative speaker.  Also structural is the matter of religion.  Tunisia is Muslim to be sure, but it is a country in which the seeds of violent political Islam or even the purportedly non-violent sort peddled by the Muslim Brotherhood have never been allowed to take root.

The act which triggered the final month of escalating unrest is quite atypical for an Arab/Muslim state and society but quite emblematic of Tunisia's uniqueness.  The event was the public self-immolation of a twenty-six year old university graduate who was forced to support himself as a fruit and vegetable peddler.  After being hassled by the police for having no license, Mohamad Bouazizi, took his own life in the same attention demanding way as did the famed Buddhist monks of South Vietnam fifty years ago--he doused himself with gasoline and struck a match.

Some Muslim clerics along with government spokesmen condemned Bouazizi's suicide as "non-Islamic."  This attempt at marginalization was unsuccessful to say the least.  It can be argued that the condemnation offered by Muslim clerics deligitimized any Islamist message.  Because of the widespread use of Internet, SMS, and other horizontal means of communication the death of Mr Bouazizi had an impact far from the small town of Sidi Bouzid.

Unemployed graduates were joined by urban workers and others in demonstrations and riots publicized by SMS and social networking sites in a manner redolent of raves and flash crowds.  The demonstrators were never effectively and efficiently repressed by the police.  It is important to note that the Tunisian organs of internal security were not and never have been efficiently repressive.  They could oppress but never gain the unchallenged upper hand which provides the necessary suppression of opposition.  In short, the police could repress enough to be counterproductive but not enough to be suppressive.  That has always been the worst case for an authoritarian regime.

In this very critical way then Tunisia is at a distance from countries such as Egypt.  Hosni Mubarak has a very efficient set of repressive instruments at his disposal including the army.  The same is true with other regimes which superficially resemble the old government in Tunisia.  Not to put too sharp a point on the matter, all the other potentially threatened governments have both the will and the ability to drown the opposition in blood.

It must never be forgotten that other countries from Algeria to Egypt and beyond have strong groups adhering to violent political Islam.  This means the usually more secular folks who would constitute a "people power" opposition would not have the field to themselves but would face Islamists as well as the status quo government and its supporting elites.

Putting together the similarities and differences leads to one conclusion: The events of the past month and days in Tunisia do not constitute a new paradigm for other societies and polities in the Arab Mideast.  While it would be very nice if the contrary were the case, the probability of any other authoritarian regime in the region being toppled in a manner akin to the downfall of Ben Ali is very slim to none.

Still there is a lesson here for the Deep Thinkers of the current administration.  It would behoove the US and other Western states including former colonial powers to take a long hard look at the possibilities for assisting "people power" movements in the region.  The neocon ninnies of the Bush/Cheney administration were right in pushing for democracy in the Arab states even if they were dead wrong in their belief that armed exercises in coerced regime change constituted the best means to foster democracy.  Working with nascent or incipient "people power" movements, even or especially those of the "leaderless" sort constitutes a far, far better way.

Hillary Clinton: One For Two In Gulf Jaunt

By education Ms Clinton is a lawyer.  By concatenation of political circumstances she is a diplomat.  Among the many features the two occupations share is a reliance upon words.  Words which are carefully considered, accurately employed, and possessed of certain denotative value and connotative freighting.  Thus it was both shocking and disheartening when Ms Clinton exhibited sloppy thinking, false analogy, and harmful shoddiness of expression in assorted Arab media following the Tucson shooting incident.

Specifically Ms Clinton debased the English language, fudged truth, created a very false analogy, and further obscured the nature of the threat presented to the US and other civilized states by violent political Islam when she equated the action of Jared Loughner and the motives of the 9/11 Himmelsfhartkommando.  She was blunt, averring that Mr Loughner, like Mohammad Atta and his Eighteen Companions, was an "extremist."

This sort of casual mislabeling is a sure sign of the dynamics at work not only inside the Beltway but throughout the American elites which have assured a persistent inability to name the enemy at our gates.  Mr Loughner is not an "extremist."  In all probability he is psychotic whether or not his defects of perception and reasoning qualify him as legally insane.  Mr Atta and his Eighteen Companions were not psychotic. They were not suffering under some defect of reasoning or emotional disturbance.  Neither were they mere "extremists."  The killers of 9/11 were--at least in their own minds and the minds of other adherents of violent political Islam--good Muslims.  They were Muslims who sincerely believed they were protecting and advancing the One True Faith by their actions and by their deaths.

By her words, Ms Clinton once again gave a free pass to those Muslims in and out of government who tacitly support or at least passively accept the presence of violent political Islam.  She encouraged the false perception that only psychotics can seek martyrdom, can wear suicide vests, plant roadside bombs, persecute and kill Christians.  By her stating that a moral equivalence existed between the Loughner shooting and the acts of war on 9/11 Ms Clinton did a vast disservice to the cause of the US and its associates in the struggle against violent political Islam.  Simultaneously she removed a burden from Muslims, specifically the moral obligation to openly, publicly, and repeatedly seek the exclusion of adherents of violent political Islam from the Muslim community generally.

Ms Clinton's (in highest probability) politically motivated depreciation of the 9/11 attackers and their ilk, her marginalization of these men by linking them to the evidently disturbed Tucson shooter, her sweeping aside of the role of religion in the events of 9/11, all harm our interests both short and long-term.  Her ill-chosen and factually insupportable characterization of the martyrdom seekers as well as the psycho shooter as "extremists" underscores the unwillingness or inability of the Obama administration to accurately describe both our enemy and what is at stake in the contest.

Had Ms Clinton's trip ended on this pathetic note, she would have merited the much prized Bugs Bunny What A Maroon! Award.  Fortunately for her reputation and, far more important, the interests of the United States, Ms Clinton had another bite at the rhetorical apple.  A bigger bite before a very important audience.

At a major meeting of the region's elites in Doha, Qatar, Ms Clinton had some very well chosen, quite accurate words for the assembled officials and business leaders.  In a fine example of Hillary at her hectoring best, she gave a trenchant cowboy-mend-your-ways series of admonishments regarding endemic corruption, pervasive maldistribution of wealth, political inequality, absence of transparency, and a form of democracy illustrated more by its lacking than its abundance.

Her message was blunt and tough.  Unless the states of the Gulf, and, by implication, elsewhere in the Mideast changed their basic social, political, and economic structures; allowed more freedom in both politics and the economy; halted the corruption; ended the hyper-privilege of the narrow elites; fostered economic growth; then all would "sink in the sand."  Her performance was "tough-love" diplomacy at its best, being a fine combination of exceptional truth telling and accurate assessment.

The salience of Ms Clinton's lecture has been underscored with bloody drama by recent events in Tunisia.  The riots have been the result not only of economic doldrums, which have had a major impact on the young, but of a thorough revulsion with the corrupt, authoritarian, and nepotism riddled regime of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.  The seventy-four year old president has been running things for more than a quarter century with results which have been very, very good for himself, his wife, the families of himself and his wife as well as assorted favored cronies but not particularly good for everyone else.

Tunisia, which has long been regarded with more hope than realism as a modern, dynamic, and tolerant society, polity, and economy has been exposed in recent months as a wallow of all the political, social, and economic sins which beset the Arab Muslim countries generally.  Ms Clinton has called it as it is and not as the local elites would like it to be seen.

Her warning that without major changes the disaffiliated youth of the region would respond with increasing fervor to the appeals of those who peddle violent political Islam is bang on and long overdue.  It is this sort of realism and not the fantasies of the Obama Cairo Address which the region, the world, and the interests of the US and other civilized states need desperately.

Ms Clinton is to be congratulated for her Doha remarks.  She should be encouraged to keep hitting the same notes in the future.  The baseless praise so beloved by Mr Obama for all things Islam does no service for the people of the countries dominated by narrow authoritarian albeit Muslim elites.  Nor does the Obama stance benefit the interests of the US.  The stance taken by Ms Clinton (with or without presidential approval) is the only one which has any potential of useful outcome either in the region or for the US.

To say that Ms Clinton has a mixed record as America's top diplomat is to belabor the obvious.  In Doha she swung her personal diplomatic pendulum far into the positive range.  One can only hope that she will do more of the same in the future and refrain from making disastrous analogies about "extremism" either of the Muslim or the made-in-the-USA sort.

Nine Years, Two Wars, Billions Of Bucks--Why Aren't We Safer?

About a week ago Foreign Policy published the results of a survey of acknowledged experts on countering terrorism, particularly terror practiced by advocates of violent political Islam, the greatest threat currently abroad in the world.  The consensus was the US and the West generally were only marginally safer today than on 9/11.  If anything, in the Geek's estimate, the consensus errs on the optimistic side.

While there is little doubt that the original Big Black Turban of violent political Islam, al-Qaeda, is weaker today than on 9/11, this in no way ensures enhanced security against the threats of the bigger beast, political Islam.  The proliferation of both Baby al-Qaedas and lone wolf actors underscores this dreary contention.

The FP collection of experts fingered Pakistan as the fountainhead of risk.  With this the Geek is in complete agreement.  Pakistan is well on the road to failed state status.  Unless the elite of government, army, and intelligence service take very swift and exceptionally determined action to suppress the growing wave of violent political Islam, it is quite probable that the country will achieve collapse within five years and possibly as few as two.  No amount of US bribe money will alter that trajectory absent an unprecedented upsurge of political will by government, army, ISI, and supporting elites.

The most dangerous short-term adversaries of the US and the West live and work in Pakistan.  Not simply in the FATA under the stare and menace of the CIA operated Predators but in much of the country.  These men, the planners, organizers and commanders of operations such as the Mumbai attack or the failed Times Square bombing are existing right under the eyes of Pakistani authorities without any perceptible hindrance.  This melancholy reality is indicative of the schizophrenic stasis of the Pakistani government.

Most of the FP expert panel pointed at the Great Adventure in Regime Change in Iran as the single greatest mistake in the so-called global war on terror.  Regardless of any abstract merits, the overthrow of Saddam and the ensuing long and bloody war were a major diversion from the goal of suppressing violent political Islam in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The Iraqi detour assured the US did not finish the task in Afghanistan or effectively lean on the Pakistanis back then to work with us in the FATA for joint benefit.

In addition to the direct military effects of the Iraqi detour, the Great Adventure in Regime Change served to cause splits in the ranks of NATO and the West generally.  In the US it gave rise to an alienated anti-war movement on the Left with consequences which have progressively sapped the political will of the American public to continue the present war of national survival.

The invasion of Iraq, the consequent war there, along with the necessary military emphasis in Afghanistan have not only provided both impetus and breathing room for the practitioners of violent political Islam to proliferate, recruit, co-opt, and escalate horizontally, they have caused a paucity of imagination in the counterterror elements of the Agency, the State Department, and Pentagon.  While some of the armed actions such as the UAV attacks in the FATA and the nocturnal raids in Afghanistan have been effective, they are effective but not sufficient as a French expert noted in the FP piece.

The ultimate defeat of violent political Islam will not come from military means--no matter how critical these may be in the short to mid-term.  Nor will it come from economic development and aid projects.  It will not come from futile exercises in nation-building as has been undertaken in Afghanistan.

The ultimate defeat of violent political Islam can only come from the ranks of Muslims.  It can come only when a school of Islam rises to counter effectively the Wahhibist inspired and rooted jihadis.  The wellspring of violent political Islam is in the Wahhibist or Salifist understandings of Islam even if that was not the intent of those who sponsored the exportation of these schools of belief to places far from their locales of birth.

An excellent candidate for an Islamic response to an Islamic threat is found in the Sufi interpretation of the common religion.  As noted in previous posts Sufism was predominant in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Punjab Pakistan until quite recently.  It is a view of Islam which is introspective, ecstatic, mystical, and totally disengaged from politics.  It focuses on the development of inner peace and harmony which in turn brings about community harmony in an atmosphere of respect and tolerance.  Beyond that Sufism is emotionally engaging and satisfying in its liturgies and rituals--at least as much so as shouting "Death to ..." in the streets or stoning women.

It is surprising that none of the behemoths of our national instruments of power have discovered Sufism as it exists today in the challenging theaters of current operations.  The seed exists everywhere the threat does currently.  It is only necessary to water and fertilize the Sufi seed so that a new, more peaceful Islamic majority can grow over time.

No special magic is needed to do this job.  The clandestine cultivation of indigenous Sufis can be conducted by the normal tradecraft means, the standard protocols which existed to the Geek's knowledge decades ago and presumably still exist.  All that is needed is the wit and will to look beyond the usual means of force and foreign aid, the wit and will to go outside of the box of conventional wisdom.

It may take a generation or more to see final success in this purely Muslim approach to a purely Muslim threat but it is a low risk, low cost, and high payoff strategy that merits serious consideration and rigorous undertaking.  We may be lucky and find a few really charismatic Sufi clerics who will survive the assassination attempts and prevail.  But, the alternative is stark.

The stark alternative is simply that within twenty years we in the West will have lost to the bomb wielding Thugs of the Koran.  The consensus of the FP experts is that the US or Europe will suffer a major terror attack before the year is out.  Their pessimistic view also foresees a Mumbai II operation in the not too distant future.  The Geek is equally dismal in his view.

Beyond the next year the correlation of forces favors the advocates of violent political Islam.  The Western and American elites have lost faith in themselves and their cultures.  The people of both the US and Western Europe are sick of the Long War.  The economic collapse lingers with no defining end in sight, which reduces morale and political will all the more.

Time is on the side of the Bad Guys.  The only alternative to defeat is to try something very new--set a Muslim to defeat a Muslim.  It is worth a try.  Better by far than defeat.

Calling It Like It Is

It is hard to tell very unpopular truths.  In the West to do so is to run the risk of falling afoul the myrmidons of political correctness, the minions of multi-cultural affection, or simply those who cow down to the fear of maybe, perhaps, offending someone's sensitivities somewhere, somehow.  In other countries, Pakistan is on the list near the top, to tell it like it is means to run the very real and present hazard of being killed by a person so warped by the perverse messages of faith as to lose his mental and moral moorings.

In the recent weeks a pair of blunt spoken advocates of human rights, particularly the right to one's personal conscience, have made it plain what is at stake in the struggle between the advocates of violent political Islam and their opponents.  The pair are French president Nicholas Sarkozy and Pakistani member of parliament Sherry Rehman.

In a speech a week ago to an interfaith conference in Paris, M. Sarkozy set his sights on the Mideast.  In specific he drew a steady bead on the violence perpetrated by Muslims on Christians.  He stated the campaign of bombings, shootings, beatings, and general intimidation was an effort at "religious cleansing."  The phrase is redolent of the damning "ethnic cleansing" against which the US and other countries employed armed force a bit more than a decade ago.

M. Sarkozy linked the two forms of "cleansing" as conjoined twins of evil.  As the French president sees life and the world, "religious cleansing" deserves the same sort of active opposition as did ethnic cleansing in the ruins of Yugoslavia.  The Muslim attacks on Christians as well as the lame efforts of Muslim majority governments to protect Christians are, in M. Sarkozy's view, assaults on the liberty of conscience, which is a bedrock principle on which French society and polity have existed for a mort of years.

Sherry Rehman is a pillar of courage in a swamp of cowardly violence.  She is a principled person whose goal is simply human rights for all Pakistanis--including Christians.  In this she is following the course set by Pakistan's founding father.  Her specific goal at the moment is the ending of the Zia era blasphemy laws.  To this end the former government minister and PPP heavyweight has introduced a Private Member's Bill to end the death threat of the blasphemy law.

As a consequence the lady has been marked for death by assorted clerics of the political Islam end of the Muslim spectrum.  She has been declared officially by these men as an "infidel," and branded "worthy of death" in fatwa after bloody fatwa.  No doubt all these death messages were presented in the name of "Allah the Merciful and Compassionate."

Thus the probability of Ms Rehman being done to death by a True Believer in the same manner as Salmaan Taseer is high, very high.  President Zardiiri with the courage of a startled rabbit has urged Ms Rehman to leave the country until the "situation is stabilized."  With a physical courage which matches her moral and intellectual bravery, Ms Rahmen has spurned the request.  Pakistan is her country and there she will live and die, triumph or fail.

Surrounded by tens of thousands of fear driven, insecure men who seek an identity in True Belief, the stance taken by Ms Rahmen can only excite the greatest respect.  She transcends borders with her stance and her courage.  Even should she die under the assassin's knife or gun, the coward's bomb, Ms Rehman must serve as a beacon for any and all Pakistanis who seek to see their country among the ranks of the Civilized States rather than within the narrow and reactionary tribe represented by such as Taliban in all its incarnations or al-Shabaab or the assorted Baby al-Qaedas--or the Iran of today.

The reformers of Pakistan are at the point of decision.  They can leave for the West which will welcome them.  They can lay low, hide out, talk only to one another, and hope the clerics and their mobs miss them.  Or, like the late Punjabi governor Salmaan Taseer and Ms Rehman, take a stand and fight it out against the forces of the Eighth Century.  They may die, but in that case their deaths will mean something.  If they do nothing, they will live with the knowledge that they failed in their obligation to themselves and their fellow countrymen.

M. Sarkozy for his part has tossed down the gauntlet to his fellow Western leaders.  They can either take up his challenge and repudiate the "religious cleansing" underway throughout the Muslim majority states with all the instruments of national power at their disposal or they can remain silent.  They can either stand on the side of the most basic human right of freedom of conscience or they can in their denial surrender to the forces of reactionary fear driven prejudice and hate.

The US and UK no less than France have long stood for freedom of belief.  It would be shameful as well as self defeating for either Prime Minister Cameron or President Obama to fail to measure up to the French President.  It is to be hoped that M. Sarkozy will bring the matter of Christian killing, Christian intimidation, Christian terror to the attention of Mr Obama when they meet in Washington a few days hence.  It is to be devoutly hoped that Obama will shed his pose of multi-culturalism and tell it like it is with respect to events in Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Nigeria, and other Muslim majority states.

Quite simply the "religious cleansing" deserves the same measure of response as did the ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia.  Any less is to say the assorted conventions on human rights espoused by the UN and subscribed to by the US as well as all the Muslim majority states are, as Bismark once was reputed to have said, "mere scraps of paper."  It is also to cast aside a foundational principle of the US.

For the American president as for the reformers of Pakistan the choice is simple: Fight or surrender.  For the US, the second choice is to admit to self-inflicted defeat.

Lenin Was Right! And Wrong

The Geek is back.  The two week break was involuntary.  It was imposed by Al Gore Weather--snow, cold without precedence in all the years here in the canyon.  With the cold came frozen, broken pipes which tested the Geek's less than well evolved handyman skills to the max.  Now the water is flowing, the snow is melting and the world continues to give much (disastrous) grist for the mill.

You all  remember Lenin, right?  The man had a glib tongue, a facile pen, and one profound insight which led in the fullness of time to the Soviet Union.  The not overly bright Bolshevik-in-Chief gained his success by hitting on a truth which has, can, and will apply to all  human societies.

Here is the Lenin Insight: Because the vast majority of people are preoccupied with the mundane realities of quotidian life, a small, well disciplined group can use a combination of propaganda and terror to overthrow a regime which lacks confidence in itself and has little if any legitimacy in the estimate of the inertia enchained majority.

Lenin depended first and foremost on his ability to impose discipline on his followers.  He was convinced that only rigid, from the top authority enforced by the most robust measures would provide the hardened and sharpened tool of revolution necessary to accomplish the goal of Communism over all.

The Lenin method worked in Russia.  And, you can't argue with success.  The Lenin method was also successful in its several export versions.  From China to Vietnam to Cuba to Yugoslavia it worked like a charm.  And, you can't argue with that kind of success, can you?

With the Lenin Insight, the ability of a very small number of True Believers to impose their views on a majority more focused on the matters of living than on True Beliefs and against a government lacking self-confidence and widespread perceived legitimacy is possible.  Lenin's Insight is bang on.

But, it is possible, indeed, necessary to dissent from Lenin's Method, the method of a tightly disciplined group ruled strictly from the top in which, as the Germans used to put it, "corpse like obedience" is required and enforced.  We even have a case in point which demonstrates that the Lenin Method is not necessary to cause a government to waver and a radical, revolutionary movement to come ever closer to power.

That case in point is called, "Pakistan."

It is not a dedicated, hardened, and sharpened movement under rigid discipline which threatens the stability and future integrity of Pakistan but rather a set of ideas fostered and magnified, spread and implanted by a loose assemblage of clerics.  The ideas may be rooted at some point in the sacred literature of Islam, but in their current manifestation are the products of the minds of men and not the word of the deity.  If anything, this makes the words, the ideas, and their impact on the minds of men throughout Pakistan more deadly not less.

The shooting of the governor of Punjab by a member of his own bodyguard as well as the widespread praise of the killer and his deed give ample example of both the breadth and power of the words of clerics who, propelled by fear and hate, have served to find and stroke the suitable lines of Koran and Haddith with the intent and goal of spreading their views farther and harder.

In a very real sense, the process is the hijacking of a religion by a very small number of clerics and their followers.  The truth of this is, however, irrelevant.  It is irrelevant because of the powerful accuracy of Lenin's Insight.

The utter and absolute accuracy of the Lenin Insight is the reason that the Geek has groaned (or worse) every time some "authority" has proclaimed that political Islam, particularly in its violent form, is the product of a "tiny minority" of Muslims generally.  It may be an accurate observation, but it is massively irrelevant.

In short, Lenin was wrong in insisting on the necessity of a tightly disciplined cadre, a "vanguard of the proletariat."  It is sufficient to have a set of ideas, rooted in a shared belief system, articulated over and over by men of persuasive tongue to an audience disenchanted with their identity, their status, their lives generally.  Given this and the fact that most people, most of the time, simply want to live their lives with a modicum of dignity, peace, and certainty, the potency of the tiny minority is awesome.

The power of the minority is potentiated by the willingness of the clerics and their followers to employ violence in the service of the "Cause."  The violence can be low level like street demonstrations.  Or it can be high and lethal as in the killing of the governor of Punjab.  In either the result is the same.

Over time the social compact is tested to the point of failure.  Over time people are forced to choose sides.  Over time the adherents of political Islam will gain strength.  Over time the government will find its self confidence further eroded.  The polity and society fall into a graveyard spiral.

Humans detest risk.  Uncertainty is risk.  The true cause of the graveyard spiral underway in Pakistan is the growing uncertainty in the minds of the vast and all-too-silent majority.  As the "liberals," the reformers such as the dead Punjabi governor, retreat in fear the uncertainty is accelerated.  The only voices are those of the New Order, the advocates of political Islam.  In search for certainty, in quest of lowering risk, the majority will fall ever deeper in the gravity well created by the clerics and their fellow travelers in the mob.

The Obama administration is attempting to reinforce the spine of the Pakistani government and military by the promise of more money.  Money and cooperation, the Deep Thinkers of the administration believe will bring the reformers out of their funk, mobilize the government, the army, and the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence to abandon support tacit or otherwise of groups or individuals espousing political Islam.  It is not likely that this proposed increase in bribe payments will be any more successful than all the earlier efforts to buy Pakistani political will.

The dreary conclusion is that Pakistan has passed the tipping point.  Whether the current trajectory can be arrested, let alone reversed, is up to the Pakistanis alone.  It is up to the cowed reformers, the ever silent majority, to decide if they really want to live in the future envisioned by the clerics and their mobs.  The US can do little to change the minds, to charge the courage, to bolster the political will of the government and the elites of the country.

Realistically, the only course of action available to the US is contingency planning regarding the Pakistani nuclear capability.  In addition, the Afghan operational planning must take into account the continued existence of cross border safe havens in the FATA and beyond.  This, in turn, implies that the US and other civilized states must contemplate the prospect of failure in Afghanistan and plan accordingly.

Hating to start the New Year on a pessimistic note, the Geek must point out that a similar dynamic is under way in Iran.  This time the dynamic is running against the theocratic regime.  There are profound indications that in the contest of political wills, the Green Movement is gaining the upper hand.  The Supreme Guardian and his stooges are showing increasing signs of confusion, of non responses to the challenge of the opposition.  There is a failure of political will to squash the Green Movement leadership despite very tough talk.

Iran like Pakistan exhibit the critique of Lenin's Method as they show the correctness of his basic insight.  In both countries the anti-government movements are diffuse in leadership.  In both it is the power of words and ideas which galvanize the discontented, the disaffiliated, the alienated.  In both the government and supporting elites have been lacking faith in themselves and their position of power.  In both places the majority simply want a lack of risk, an abundance of certainty in the pursuit of daily living.

Most importantly, in both Pakistan and Iran, the long suffering and inarticulate majority will gradually, perhaps with glacial slowness or, less likely, with fulminating speed, move to the side which most credibly promises the prospect of certainty and absence of risk.  The Obama administration would be well advised to consider the truth of Lenin's Insight in the formulation of policy with respect to both countries.

Only in this way can failure be avoided.