Archive for the 'International Affairs' Category

Story:

President Obama today affirmed American neutrality in the dispute between Argentina and England over the Falkland Islands. In the process, he made clear that the “special relationship” between the UK and the United States is not very special.
 
Obama’s comments were made during a speech in Cartagena, Colombia, at the Summit of the Americas. It was delivered in English, but Obama chose to refer to the disputed islands by their Spanish name – the Malvinas. Argentina has insisted that the islands should always be referred to as “the Malvinas,” while the British have been adamant about calling them “the Falklands.” Obama’s choice of Malvinas might have been seen as a slap at the UK. Instead of feeling slapped, though, the British might be amused: He called them “the Maldives.”
 
The Maldives are a group of Islands off the coast of India, half a world away from the Falklands. The story for people who enjoy presidential gaffes is that Obama got the wrong islands in the wrong ocean, but because Obama is so clearly brilliant, we’ll just file this away as an anomaly, along with the extra states. The real story is that he wanted to call them “the Malvinas” in the first place. It puts the British on notice that if push comes to shove, they might expect us to be as neutral as France.

I agree with the quote. The big deal to me isn’t the Maldives vs. Malvinas gaffe (although it is unbelievable that our president would actually make that mistake), it is the fact that he isn’t calling them what they are. The Falklands. As an aside, who in gods name does Obama have making his speeches/helping him with public appearances? I get the fact that he hates Great Britain, but at least fact check the Maldives/Malvinas. Sheesh.

I am an avid user of Facebook, for better or worse. The last few weeks many of my friends have been engaging in a large amount of slacktivism by linking a video called Kony 2012.

Some of the scenes in this video may be disturbing, as the topic is general violence and exploitation of children in Africa.
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Madhu, I’m glad you’re seeing a lot of engineers vs humanities discussions on mil blogs; it means I’m not the only one who has noticed this problem. The problem is that even so-called “educated” liberal arts PhDs are scientifically illiterate and couldn’t pass a simple test like this one: http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/1209/Are-you-scientifically-literate-Take-our-quiz/Composing-about-78-percent-of-the-air-at-sea-level-what-is-the-most-common-gas-in-the-Earth-s-atmosphere
 
Schools with ROTC programs tend to be land grant universities so many (but not most) military officers have degrees in engineering, hard sciences, or agriculture. Fast forward 15 years and we get assigned to the Pentagon or Defense Agencies, and we are shocked to find the places being run by all those dumb kids we laughed at in high school because they couldn’t pass math. The dumb kids are now Ivy League “foreign policy” PhDs who have all these strong opinions on various subjects, but don’t know anything about those subjects. Their PhD consists of learning a bunch of neo-mystical opinions from tenured Ivy League professors who formed their opinons in the 1960s and haven’t learned anything since.
 
You use the example of military intelligence. It’s a great example. If intel weenies used the scientific method to make a hypothesis, experiment to test the hypothesis, revise the hypothesis etc, we would have a better picture of the battlefield. Instead they jump from wild-ass-guess to assuming their guess is true with no intermediate steps. Then they pronounce with 100% confidence that the enemy will do this or that. A scientist would never think this way. A scientist can entertain multiple hypotheses at once until one by one the hypotheses are disproven, leaving one theory that is apt to be the truth. No military intelligence officer would ever see the sun rise in the east and conclude that it’s the Earth that’s really moving. Instead they do things like neglect to share that terrorists are in the US training to fly airplanes but not land them, or spur the President to invade countries over non-existent weapons of mass destruction.
 
In fact, the problem is particularly acute in the area of weapons of mass destruction. One simply must have a rudimentary knowledge of chemistry, biology, and physics to comprehend chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons. Yet most of the Defense Department jobs responsible for combating weapons of mass destruction are held by liberal arts educated policy wonks who can’t tell an organophosphate from their organic apple juice. Their minds shut down if anyone speaks of “vapor pressure” or “gamma radiation” or other scary science words like that. Our society has biologists and chemists flipping burgers, and the crony system is hiring foreign policy majors to be WMD experts. As long as they can spout in-group buzzwords like “interagency writ large”, and “stakeholders” and “resilience” they can progress to positions of greater and greater responsibility and power.

– commenter Shinobi No Mono, Small Wars Journal

Friends, I ran across the most interesting thread at Small Wars Journal the other day and wanted to highlight one of the comments. What do you think of the points made? I don’t view it as either/or and think both the humanities and science are important. I believe my medical practice has improved as I have broadened my reading base to include literature and history, especially military history. Well, in theory. Time is always an issue.

CommodityOnline:

India’s crude oil imports from Iran is facing a risk of potential disruption as increasing US and EU sanctions make it impossible for Indian ships to obtain insurance.

Greg Scoblete, The Compass Blog (Real Clear World):

I imagine if I were an Indian official, I’d be a bit peeved to learn that acting “responsibly” means privileging the interests of the United States over my own country. Nevertheless, Burns has a point. After all, India may rely on Iran for 12 percent of its oil imports, but look at what the United States has been willing to do for India:
 

Presidents Obama and Bush have met India more than halfway in offering concrete and highly visible commitments on issues India cares about. On his state visit to India in November 2010, for example, President Obama committed the U.S. for the very first time to support India’s candidacy for permanent membership on the U.N. Security Council.

 
I don’t know about you, but if the U.S. was asked to forgo 12 percent of its oil imports in exchange for another country’s endorsement for a seat on a multilateral forum, I’d make the trade. I mean, c’mon, 12 percent? The U.S. gets about that much from the Persian Gulf – and we barely pay that area any attention at all…

Europa:

“The EU-India free trade agreement will be the single biggest trade agreement in the world, benefiting 1.7 billion people,” said president Barroso. “It would mean new opportunities for both Indian and European companies. It would mean a key driver for sustainable growth, job creation and innovation in India and Europe.”
 
The EU is India’s largest trading partner, accounting for about €86bn of trade in goods and services in 2010. Bilateral trade in goods rose by 20% between 2010 and 2011.”

Asia Times Online:

Last year Israel supplied India with $1.6 billion worth of military equipment and is India’s second-largest defense supplier after Russia. Sales are only going to rise. Indian defense procurements from Israel in the period 2002-07 have touched the $5 billion mark.

And this doesn’t even get into the China-EU-US-Israel-Saudi Arabia wheels-within-wheels complications when it comes to arms deals, hoped for arms deals, trade deals, hoped for trade deals, energy politics, and the rest of it….

It’s not 1985, now is it? The past is a different country, a Russian (Soviet)-oriented Cold War country used to thinking in terms of “Kissengerian” alliances and blocs. An intellectual adjustment may be needed. It’s like 3-D chess out there….

Speaking of energy:

“Was Saudi Arabia involved?” (Asia Times Online.) If it makes you feel better, let me point out that Saudi petrodollars continue to fund all sorts of interesting educational activities on the subcontinent, in Africa, and elsewhere, along with Iranian monies. So that’s nice.

Cross-posted at zenpundit.com

PRAGATI - the Indian National Interest Review has published my review of John Lewis Gaddis’ biography George F. Kennan: An American Life 

The creative art of strategy 

….Into the breach strides eminent diplomatic historian John Lewis Gaddis, offering a magisterial 784 page biography, a quarter- century in the making, George F. Kennan: An American Life. Gaddis, a noted historian of the Cold War and critic of revisionist interpretations of American foreign policy, has produced his magnum opus, distilling not only the essence of Kennan’s career, but the origins of his grand strategic worldview that were part and parcel the self-critical and lonely isolation that made Kennan such an acute observer of foreign societies and a myopic student of his own.

Gaddis, who is a co-founder of the elite Grand Strategy Program at Yale University, had such a long intellectual association with his subject, having been appointed Kennan’s biographer in 1982, that one wonders on theories of strategy at times where George Kennan ends and John Lewis Gaddis begins. Giving Kennan the supreme compliment among strategists, that he possessed in the years of the Long Telegram and the Policy Planning Staff, Clausewitz’s Coup d’oeil, Gaddis does not shy away from explaining Kennan’s human imperfections to the reader that made the diplomat a study in contradictions….

Read the rest here.

Cross-posted from zenpundit.com

Mr. Nyet 

World affairs are much more like spider’s web than the neat little drawers of an apothecary’s cabinet. In the latter,  the contents of each drawer are cleanly isolated and conveniently compartmentalized. What you do with the contents of one drawer today has no bearing on what you do next week with those of another. By contrast, with a spider’s web, when you touch a web at any point, not only do you find it to be sticky in a fragile sort of way, but your touch sends vibrations through every centimeter of the lattice.

Which alerts the spiders.

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A common refrain among the Left can be summarized as “moral equivalence” – i.e., comparing the negative events that the US is involved with (i.e., Abu Ghraib) or the inherent difficulties involved with attempting to turn a despotic state such as Iraq or a “failed state” such as Afghanistan into a functioning democracy with the horrors of the Russian invasion of Chechnya or the Chinese armed suppression of Tibet and then concluding that “we are all the same”.

While the individuals here at Chicago Boyz never bought into the “moral equivalence” model it is true that the US had to prop up and stand by some odious regimes for quite a while in order to win the Cold War. While South Korea today is a vibrant democracy and certifiably free country it wasn’t always this way and while that is the ideal there are other countries that are at varying steps along this path.

With the “Arab Spring” the US is looking at things differently. While we supported Egypt and Tunisia it was clear that we weren’t giving them unlimited support against their people; our contacts (the military) in fact minimized the violence in the overall situation and now at least these countries have an opportunity to have a democratic society.

On the other hand you can see how the former Soviet “client states” are treating the uprising – with unimaginable brutality against unarmed civilians protesting peacefully. Libya and Syria behaved (and are still behaving, in the case of Syria) with insane behaviors such as opening fire with anti-aircraft weapons and tank fire against peaceful citizens which is a slaughter. This type of behavior of course is perfectly acceptable to a Russian style client state trained military, which use all means of oppression available to preserve the power of the ruling class against the will of the people. There is no “state” or “populace” of value; there is only the power of those in control (Gaddafi or Assad’s clique, or Putin’s clique, for example) and thus an ever escalating chain of violence is OK in their interpretation of events if that is what it takes to control power.

As a country the US certainly has made mistakes but we LEARN from mistakes and are now on the side of freedom and voices for the people. And it isn’t only the US; France and Britain led the Libyan intervention much to the dismay of THEIR left wing.

And yet Russia today shows why moral equivalence was NEVER correct; they are fundamentally anti-freedom and supporting regimes with the same core values of their own. One of the best description of the former USSR was that they were just “third generation gangsters” and it is clear that Assad is just a “second generation gangster” (Gaddafi’s second generation were mostly hunted down and killed or about to stand trial, something Gaddafi would never have done for his opponents).

Russia continues to veto resolutions that would support unarmed citizens against Assad; their logic is clear – the goal of a regime is to CONTINUE TO EXIST and all means necessary to do this are OK. The will of their own populace is irrelevant, and the doctrine of “do not interfere in country’s affairs” provides the justification. There are obvious parallels to the situation in Putin’s Russia in that he will do everything to retain power (stuff the ballot box, threaten violence, blame foreign powers, or actually deploy violence in ever escalating levels if needed).

Whatever the sins of the US in the modern era there are no equivalents of using anti-aircraft weapons and tanks against unarmed citizens, and using scorched earth tactics against civilians. This never happened. Instead the US took great pains to shield civilians and grow nascent democratic institutions, although the outcome of this is never certain.

China too waits in the wings; the “third generation gangster” label could be applied there but they are more circumspect in the use of violence and do seem to believe that their goal as a regime does include raising the overall standard of living and giving people freedom (except to criticize the government, of course). Since Russia will block all effective sanctions against Syria, China has an out. This doesn’t stop China from crushing dissent where it suits them (Tibet) in a way that Western nations could never pull off; and a Beastie Boy concert or two obviously hasn’t dissuaded them a bit from their activities.

And yet there are no protests outside Russia or China’s embassies by the Left; this isn’t a battle that concerns them (Syria or Libya), because it doesn’t fit their narrative that all the governments are oppressive and of moral equivalence. There are no angry posts on left wing blogs about these issues. It doesn’t fit their pre-defined agenda that the US is an oppressive place since birth and that we are all the same.

That is the definition of moral bankruptcy.

Caroline Glick:

Today’s principal form of Jew-hatred is anti- Zionism. Anti-Zionism is similar to previous dominant forms of Jew hatred such as Christian anti-Judaism, xenophobic and racist anti- Semitism, and Communist anti-Jewish cosmopolitanism in the sense that it takes dominant, popular social trends and turns them against the Jews. Anti-Zionism’s current predominance owes to the convergence of several popular social trends which include Western post-nationalism, and anti-colonialism.

Worth reading in full.

UPDATE: David Foster provides a link to a well written blog post about a BDS conference at U. Penn.

The US could be almost self-sufficent for energy by 2030, while the EU will be the most vulnerable region for energy security, BP said on Wednesday.
 
Growth in shale oil and gas production would mean the US needed few imports, while North America as a whole could be self-sufficient, BP forecast at its Global Energy Outlook 2030.
 
BP forecast that Eurasia could also become self-sufficient, based on the prediction that Europe would being a net importer of energy, and the former Soviet Union countries net exporters by a similar amount.
 
In practice, this would leave the EU the most vulnerable region for energy security.

– The Telegraph

Friends, I have no particular knowledge of this subject. If you have anything to add in comments, I’d love to hear it.

Ah, age. One of the most daring aspects of this novel is that Lively is concerned with the hearts and problems of older characters. Her major players are well past their youth, and a boyish up-and-coming historian (the snake in Lord Henry’s mansion) doesn’t become important until much of the novel has passed. “How much remains when youth is gone?” Lively seems to be asking. And the answer is, “An abundance.” Here middle and old age are times of blossoming identity and possibility, miraculous bursts of sunshine.

– The New York Times on Penelope Lively’s “How it All Began.”

Even as a twenty-something, I was fascinated with literary representations of middle age. An odd one, that’s me.

In a previous post, I asked a question about leverages in terms of foreign policy:

A key–an essential–question on leverages at Abu Muqawama (Dr. Andrew Exum):

Where things get tricky is when one tries to decide what to do about that. The principle problem is one that has been in my head watching more violent crackdowns in Bahrain and Egypt: the very source of U.S. leverage against the regimes in Bahrain and Egypt is that which links the United States to the abuses of the regime in the first place. So if you want to take a “moral” stand against the abuses of the regime in Bahrain and remove the Fifth Fleet, congratulations! You can feel good about yourself for about 24 hours — or until the time you realize that you have just lost the ability to schedule a same-day meeting with the Crown Prince to press him on the behavior of Bahrain’s security forces. Your leverage, such as it was, has just evaporated. The same is true in Egypt. It would feel good, amidst these violent clashes between the Army and protesters, to cut aid to the Egyptian Army. But in doing so, you also reduce your own leverage over the behavior of the Army itself.

Okay, so we have leverage with an Army cracking down on its own people, an Army fattened on US military aid and training. I thought bilateral military training was supposed to mitigate the worst instincts of some armies? Isn’t that the theory? What does it mean to have leverage? To what end? To what purpose? I don’t know the answer and I don’t think anyone does, so Dr. Exum has a point. We have no strategy (link goes to Zen) within which to place “trade offs”. Well, if we do, I can’t see it.

Greg Scoblete at The Compass (RealClearWorld) asks the question in a much better fashion (I enjoy reading that blog, whether I agree or disagree with specific points):

But all of this begs an important question – leverage for what? The idea is that the U.S. invests in places like Bahrain and Egypt because it needs or wants something in return. During the Cold War, it was keeping these states out of the Soviet orbit. In the 1990s and beyond, it was ensuring these states remained friendly with Israel and accommodative to U.S. military power in the region. Today, what? What is it that U.S. policy requires from Egypt and Bahrain that necessitates supporting these regimes during these brutal crack downs?

How should we view American policy toward the Middle East? What is the larger strategic framework within which we ought to view the various relationships? What is the optimal posture for the United States? Folks, I don’t know. I’d love to know your opinions on the subject.

- Hebert E. Meyer memorandum, Nov. 30, 1983 (via National Review Online).

(We really should take up the President’s suggestion to begin planning for a post-Soviet world; the Soviet Union and its people won’t disappear from the planet, and we have not yet thought seriously about the sort of political and economic structure likely to emerge.)

- Reagan and India: ‘Dialog of Discovery’ (News India Times).

If his sunny disposition and easy manner charmed the original “Iron Lady” during their first encounter in Mexico, his administration’s ingenious framework to strengthen bilateral relations laid the foundation on which today’s U.S.-India strategic partnership rests.
 
In a clear departure from the preceding administrations – including the sympathetic Kennedy, Johnson and Carter administrations and the nearly hostile Nixon White House – President Reagan decided to engage India on areas where there was agreement and mutual interest instead of trying to resolve outstanding issues that were intractable.
[break]
The Reagan White House had to placate Islamabad – which was hell bent on gaining a military edge over India – without either weakening or hurting New Delhi, which was already furious at Washington’s move to arm Pakistan and cast a Nelson’s eye on its nuclear program.
 
The Reagan administration accomplished this impossible balancing act by rejecting the notion that U.S. relations in South Asia were a zero-sum game. So, while it appeased Pakistan’s Zia-ul Haq with aid and arms, it upped the ante on political and business relations with India. The president went about it by establishing personal relations with Indian leaders, including lavishly hosting Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and, later Rajiv Gandh, at the White House.
 
Unlike his predecessors, who regarded Indira Gandhi to be somewhat recalcitrant and obstinate and approached her warily, Reagan respected her forthrightness and strength.

A far thinking man, too. Unfortunately, post 9-11, someone within our National Security Complex thought replaying the Reagan Islamabad playbook might be a good idea. Unwise, given that the Pakistani-supported Taliban turned out to be a bit problematic for us in more ways than one (to put it mildly). I still don’t understand Rick “Musharraf” Santorum’s thinking or what I sometimes jokingly refer to as the “Musharraf corner” of National Review’s online Corner? You know, the pundits that turn up periodically to remind us how the secular Pakistani military is our best hope? Post-Abbottabad, I have to wonder about the ability of some analysts and pundits to put 2 and 2 together and come up with 4. The non-state actor/jihadi project is a long-standing and detailed design of the GHQ. You can’t just “hire” one General to go after a few assets and expect the whole thing to reform itself. That isn’t logical. And as far as the Al Q we supposedly did scoop up (to date)? I wonder just how much of that intelligence has been independently verified and just how much comes via our complicated CIA-ISI liaison relationship? Who knows?

Lest our progressive friends feel a bit “I told you so” about all of this: aid is fungible. Any money the US might spend on the civilian sector eventually gets into military hands one way or another so I wouldn’t feel too smug. Plus, the Taliban that the Obama administration is attempting to negotiate with have only to pretend to negotiate and then wait it out with Pakistani help (aided with our very own tax money).

Anyway, regarding the original topic of this post, President Reagan had the absolute correct instincts and I think he got it right in terms of the big picture. He can’t be blamed for the decisions that came after the Soviet Union collapsed, and besides, if Steve Coll’s book “Ghost Wars” is correct, the danger of the jihad project was downplayed by CIA higher-ups and others in his administration – and administrations that came after his. A President can’t do everything by himself, after all. How does the CIA keep getting away with being so wrong, time and time again? Or am I being unfair?

Ghost Wars II – if such a book is ever written – is going to be an interesting book….

Update Aspects of Indira Gandhi’s tenure were, er, problematic (emergency rule, certain domestic policies) and I am not a fan of her governance. I am learning (being so poorly educated on these topics), however, that grand strategy and national statecraft are tough and you can’t afford to make an enemy out of every nation whose governance you don’t like. Note to self, really, as I think about optimal policies for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Obama administration wishes to “pivot” to Asia. How should we think about this in terms of American Strategy and what does pivoting mean?

Commenter Lynn Wheeler writes at zenpundit:

“….Boyd would comment in the 80s that the approach was having significant downside on American corporations as former WW2 officers climbed the corporate ladder, creating similar massive, rigid, top-down command&control infrastructures (along with little agility to adapt to changing conditions, US auto industry being one such poster child).”

Wheeler’s comment reminded me of the following post that I had meant to blog earlier:

One occasion in particular in the late 1970s brought this home to me. McNamara had come to one of our staff meetings in the Western Africa Region of the World Bank, where I was a young manager, and he had said he would be ready to answer any questions.
 
I felt fairly secure as an up-and-coming division chief and a risk-taking kind of guy. So I decided to ask McNamara the question that was on everyone’s lips in the corridors at the time, namely, whether he perceived any tension between his hard-driving policy of pushing out an ever-increasing volume of development loans and improving the quality of the projects that were being financed by the loans. In effect, was there a tension between quantity and quality?
 
When the time came for questions, I spoke first at the meeting and posed the question.
 
His reply to me was chilling.
 
He said that people who asked that kind of question didn’t understand our obligation to do both—we had to do more loans and we had to have higher quality—there was no tension. People who didn’t see that didn’t belong in the World Bank.

– Steve Denning

This too from a speech by Robert McNamara, “Security in the Contemporary World”:

The rub comes in this: We do not always grasp the meaning of the word “security” in this context. In a modernizing society, security means development.
 

Security is not military hardware, though it may include it. Security is not military force, though it may involve it. Security is not traditional military activity, though it may encompass it. Security is development. Without development, there can be no security. A developing nation that does not in fact develop simply cannot remain “secure.” It cannot remain secure for the intractable reason that its own citizenry cannot shed its human nature.
 

If security implies anything, it implies a minimal measure of order and stability. Without internal development of at least a minimal degree, order and stability are simply not possible. They are not possible because human nature cannot be frustrated beyond intrinsic limits. It reacts because it must.
[break]
Development means economic, social, and political progress. It means a reasonable standard of living, and the word “reasonable” in this context requires continual redefinition. What is “reasonable” in an earlier stage of development will become “unreasonable” in a later stage.
 

As development progresses, security progresses. And when the people of a nation have organized their own human and natural resources to provide themselves with what they need and expect out of life and have learned to compromise peacefully among competing demands in the larger national interest then their resistance to disorder and violence will be enormously increased.

Think about this in terms of the “armed nation building” of the past decade or so and in terms of successive Clinton, Bush, and Obama administration policies. Really not that much difference if you look at it in terms of securing stability through development – armed or otherwise. Not a novel observation in any way, but bears in mind repeating as the 2012 Presidential campaign continues its “running in place” trajectory….

Update:“Running in place” and “trajectory” don’t really go together, do they? Oh well. You all know what I mean….

A Terrorist’s Call to Global Jihad: Deciphering Abu Musab al-Suri’s Islamic Jihad Manifesto by Jim Lacey (Ed.)

Cross-posted at zenpundit.com

Previously, I read and reviewed Brynjar Lia’s Architect of Global Jihad , about Islamist terrorist and strategist Abu Musab al-Suri. A sometime collaborator with Osama bin Laden and the AQ inner circle, a trainer of terrorists in military tactics in Afghanistan and an advocate of jihadi IO, al-Suri was one of the few minds produced by the radical Islamist movement who thought and wrote about conflict with the West on a strategic level. Before falling into the hands of Pakistani security and eventually, Syria, where al-Suri was wanted by the Assad regime, al-Suri produced a massive 1600 page tome on conducting a terror insurgency,  The Global Islamic Resistance Call, which al-Suri released on to the jihadi darknet.

Jim Lacey has produced an English digest version of al-Suri’s influential magnum opus comprising approximately 10% of the original  Arabic version, by focusing on the tactical and strategic subjects and excising the rhetorical/ritualistic redundancies common to Islamist discourse and the interminable theological disputation. There are advantages and disadvantages to this approach.

Read the rest of this entry »

I did a tour in Korea in 1993-94, which hardly makes me an expert on the place, seeing that I have that in common with a fair number of Army and Air Force personnel over the past half-century plus. Reading about the expected fallout from the change of régime-boss north of the DMZ I think of that tour now as something along the lines of being put into place rather like an instant-read thermometer: there for a year in Seoul, at the Yongsan Army Infantry garrison, where I worked at AFKN-HQ – and at a number of outside jobs for which a pleasant speaking voice and fluency in English was a requirement. One of those regular jobs was as an English-language editor at Korea Broadcasting; the national broadcasting entity did an English simulcast of the first fifteen minutes of the 9 PM evening newscast. I shared this duty with two other AFKN staffers in rotation: every third evening, around 6PM, I went out the #1 gate and caught a local bus, and rode across town to the Yoido; a huge rectangular plaza where the KBS building was located, just around the corner from other terribly important buildings – like the ROK capitol building. Once there, I’d go up to the newsroom – which was a huge place, filled with rows of desks and computers, go to the English-language section, and wait for any of the three or four Korean-to-English translators to finish translating the main news stories for the evening broadcast, correct their story for punctuation and readability, stick around to watch them do the simulcast at 9 PM, critique their delivery.
Read the rest of this entry »

One of humanity’s oldest forms of national economy is the “palace economy.” Under this system, the king would have the harvest brought into a central granary for storage. In Genesis 41, Joseph interprets Pharoah’s dream as predicting seven good harvests and seven poor ones, and says: “Let Pharaoh do this, and let him appoint officers over the land, and take up the fifth part of the land of Egypt in the seven plenteous years. And let them gather all the food of those good years that come, and lay up corn under the hand of Pharaoh, and let them keep food in the cities. And that food shall be for store to the land against the seven years of famine, which shall be in the land of Egypt; that the land perish not through the famine.”

Egypt, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, the Minoans, and the Mycenaean Greeks all had similar arrangements. It was a command economy, with subsistence farming as a base and the excess over bare necessity taken into the care of the government. Many examples of early writing are simply accounting records for the acquisition, storage, and disbursement of grain, wine, and olive oil. In theory, the stored food would be redistributed to the poor and, in times of shortage, to the people in general. In practice, it put the weapon of hunger into the ruler’s hands.

Politically, the ruler was the representative and near relation of the gods, and was invested with divine attributes. That may or may not have included shooting 18 holes-in-one in a single round of golf.

Is any of this starting to sound familiar?

Good riddance to the god-king of North Korea. I hope his fellow god-king Stalin has saved him a seat by the fire.

Jonathan Yardley in the Washington Post:

I still love novels, but fewer and fewer contemporary novelists (American ones especially) appeal to me, and I find it ever more difficult to avoid writing formulaic fiction reviews, which are no treat for me or my long-suffering readers.

Yardley’s two fiction recommendations from 2011 are “Saints and Sinners” by Edna O’Brien (a favorite writer of mine) and “The Cut” by George Pelecanos:

“The Cut” is his 17th book but the first featuring Spero Lucas, a veteran of the Iraq War who hires himself out to track down missing items of value to their owners….It also gives Pelecanos the opportunity to paint a remarkably broad and deep portrait of places in Washington that probably are little known, if at all, by people who read (or write) book reviews.

I confess, I am fascinated by the apparent intellectual “seediness” of Washington Beltway culture and its machinations. Fascinated and appalled. Fascinated because it is so appalling. And yet, I know there are good people embedded within the system, all trying to do good work. A mystery. An appallingly mysterious seediness. Why do you suppose this is so?

Peter J. Munson on Kennan:

Kennan took up this issue again in a 1985 Foreign Affairs article entitled “Morality and Foreign Policy.” He urged America to concern herself with the “interests of the national society” it governed, particularly “military security, the integrity of its political life and the well-being of its people.” This, in and of itself, was such a daunting task in Kennan’s mind that the government would have little capacity for other issues. This was a warning. He specifically stated that, “Democracy, as Americans understand it, is not necessarily the future of all mankind, nor is it the duty of the U.S. government to assure that it becomes that.” He indicted the tendencies of special interests pursuing their moral objectives as a major cause of America’s crusading bent, and of our overextension, stating that it was a duty to limit the country’s commitments to those which it had a reasonable chance of actually and predictably influencing the international environment. He was skeptical, however, (as am I) that this capability for influence was nearly as broad as many thought it.

I started out the decade of the “noughties” and post 9-11 thinking one thing, and now think I another. Flip flopping? Lack of steadiness in my character? Embarrassingly, I’d say it was my own ignorance. An ignorance I am only beginning to address.

A key–an essential–question on leverages at Abu Muqawama (Dr. Andrew Exum):

Where things get tricky is when one tries to decide what to do about that. The principle problem is one that has been in my head watching more violent crackdowns in Bahrain and Egypt: the very source of U.S. leverage against the regimes in Bahrain and Egypt is that which links the United States to the abuses of the regime in the first place. So if you want to take a “moral” stand against the abuses of the regime in Bahrain and remove the Fifth Fleet, congratulations! You can feel good about yourself for about 24 hours — or until the time you realize that you have just lost the ability to schedule a same-day meeting with the Crown Prince to press him on the behavior of Bahrain’s security forces. Your leverage, such as it was, has just evaporated. The same is true in Egypt. It would feel good, amidst these violent clashes between the Army and protesters, to cut aid to the Egyptian Army. But in doing so, you also reduce your own leverage over the behavior of the Army itself.

Okay, so we have leverage with an Army cracking down on its own people, an Army fattened on US military aid and training. I thought bilateral military training was supposed to mitigate the worst instincts of some armies? Isn’t that the theory? What does it mean to have leverage? To what end? To what purpose? I don’t know the answer and I don’t think anyone does, so Dr. Exum has a point. We have no strategy (link goes to Zen) within which to place “trade offs”. Well, if we do, I can’t see it.

The Bush Doctrine (theoretically and confusedly) meant to be a break from the old cosiness with illiberal regimes, but it turns out that we Americans are so connected to so many different nations given our “finger in every pie” national interests, that our “Foreign Policy Apparatus” is confused. Doesn’t matter which party and I am not really talking about any one person. Without a sense of national self–and without a larger grand strategy driven by sense of self–there is no way to understand what is essential. Our grand democratic rhetoric sounds hypocritical to large parts of the world and that is because it is hypocritical. The Bush administration continued the same relationships we had always had with the Saudi-Pakistan alliance for a variety of reasons (including nothing more than habit), but the bottom line is that American life doesn’t mean much when larger geostrategic concerns over “vital national interests” animate foreign policy thinking. Unfair? I think President Bush took protecting Americans very seriously but it all got out of control. It got out of control because when everything is a vital national interest, nothing is a vital national interest. Not a novel or original thought, but there it is. Pundita puts it this way:

Would the U.S. pay Pakistan’s military to help murder American troops if the U.S. had military conscription?

Through it all — throughout all the deceptions, denials, evasions, rationalizations and insultingly useless advice given over the years by Americans in civilian government, the military and academia — there is one question relating to U.S. tolerance for Pakistan’s proxy war against NATO and Afghanistan that towers above all others. And yet it’s the one question that has never been asked of a public figure. So in the title of this post I’ve put the question to the public.
I’d say the answer to the question is “Very unlikely.”

I’d say this is not about Pakistan which is the point of the linked post. It’s about us. I’ve heard all the rationalizations for why we did what we did. For anyone that knows anything about that part of the world outside the “Matrix” of conventional wisdoms pumped out by civilian and military officials over the years, the rationalizations don’t hold any water. I am NOT banging the war drum, or arguing for containment, or for discontinuing work with the Pakistani Army where our interests overlap. It didn’t have to be this way, though. That is my contention and that is where my thinking lies today.

James C. Bennett, author of The Anglosphere Challenge (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), and Michael J. Lotus (who blogs at Chicagoboyz.net as “Lexington Green”), are proud to announce the signing of a contract with Encounter Books of New York to publish their forthcoming book America 3.0.

America 3.0 gives readers the real historical foundations of our liberty, free enterprise, and family life.  Based on a new understanding of our past, and on little known modern scholarship, America 3.0 offers long-term strategies to restore and strengthen American liberty, prosperity and security in the years ahead.

America 3.0 shows that our country was founded as a decentralized federation of communities, dominated by landowner-farmers, and based on a unique type of Anglo-American nuclear family.  This was America 1.0, as the Founders established it.  The Industrial Revolution brought progress, opportunity and undreamed-of mobility.  But, it also pushed the majority of American families into a new, urban, industrial life along with millions of unassimilated immigrants. After the Civil War, new problems of public health, crime, public order, and labor unrest, on top of the issues of Reconstruction, taxed the old Constitution.  Americans looked for new solutions to new problems, giving rise to Progressivism, the ancestor of modern liberalism.

America 3.0 shows that liberal-progressive solutions to the challenges of America 2.0 relieved some problems, and kicked others down the road.  But they also led to an overly powerful state and to an overly intrusive bureaucracy.  This was the beginning of America 2.0, the America we grew up with, which dominated the Twentieth Century.

America 3.0 argues that the liberal-progressive or “Blue State” social model has reached its natural limits.  Even as it continues to try to expand, it is now dying out before our eyes.   We are  now living in the closing years of the 20th Century “legacy state.”  Even so, it has taken the shock of the current Great Recession to make people see the need for change.  As a result, more and more Americans are calling for a return to our founding principles.  Freedom and individualism are on the rise after a century-long detour.

America 3.0 shows that our current problems can be and must be transcended with a transition to a new America 3.0, based on modern technology, decentralized communities, and self-reliant families, and a reassertion of fiscal responsibility, Constitutionally limited government and free market economics.   Ironically the future America 3.0 will in many ways be closer to the original vision of the Founders than the fading America 2.0.

America 3.0 gives readers an accurate, and hopeful, assessment of our current crisis.  It also spotlights the powerful forces arrayed in opposition to the needed reform.  These groups include ideological leftists in media and the academy, politically connected businesses, and the public employees unions.  However, as powerful as these groups are, they have become vulnerable as the external conditions change.  A correct understanding of our history and culture, which America 3.0 provides, shows their opposition will be futile.  The new, pro-freedom, mass political movement, which is aligned with the true needs and desires of Americans, is going to succeed.

America 3.0 provides readers a program of specific “maximalist” proposals to reform our government and liberate our economy.  America 3.0 shows readers that these reforms are consistent with our fundamental culture, and with our Constitution, and will make Americans freer and more prosperous in the years ahead.

America 3.0 provides a “software upgrade” for the Tea Party and for all activists on the Conservative and Libertarian Right.  It provides readers with historical evidence and intellectual coherence, to channel the energy and enthusiasm of the rising mass political movement to renew America.

America 3.0 shows that our capacity for regeneration is greater than most people realize.  Predictions of our doom are deeply mistaken.  We are now living just before the dawn of America’s greatest days.  Within a generation, positive changes beyond what we can currently imagine will have taken place.  That is the America 3.0 we are going to build together.

(Cross-posted from the America 3.0 blog.)

Foreign Secretary William Hague on UK-Pakistan relations at the 60th Anniversary of the Pakistan Society:

And my message to you all this evening is that Britain’s relationship with Pakistan is here to stay. What happens in Pakistan matters to Britain, and we will stand by Pakistan as it addresses the challenges it faces and build a durable relationship that we know will stand the test of time.
 
We can be confident of doing so because ours is not a new relationship founded on a narrow set of interests.
 
We enjoy a tremendous latticework of connections of history and shared experiences, embodied in one million people with close ties to Pakistan living in Britain today and the thousands of our citizens who travel back and forth each year to work, study and support projects or for simple enjoyment.

Yahoo News India:

The United States Defense Department has awarded a 42.3 million dollar contract to Lockheed Martin, one of the world’s largest defense contractors, to provide 10 upgrade kits for Pakistan’s F-16 A/B aircrafts.
 
According to the Daily Times, the contract has been awarded under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) programme for Pakistan Air Force (PAF)’s Block 15 F-16 A/B Aircraft Enhanced Modernization Program.

Aviation Week blog:

Given how opaque the Saudi government is, it is unclear what is prompting the latest bout of uncertainty. Among the top reasons government and industry officials cite is Riyadh’s unhappiness the U.S. did not support a Palestinian bid for UN membership. Another is that the recent turmoil in Saudi Arabia — with Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz named new defense minister after his predecessor died — has simply created too much uncertainty for the arms package to move forward.
 
Boeing has a lot riding on the deal — especially since it would keep F-15 production alive past 2020 — and company officials recently indicated it was still on, without projecting timing. It is important for Boeing, financially, too, since it has already spent money to avoid a production gap.

India and Britain – the new special relationship? – RUSI

Council on Foreign Relations:

In this Vanity Fair adaptation of The Eleventh Day, by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, the authors explore connections between the Saudi royal family, the September 11th attacks, and the Bush administration’s suppression of critical evidence.
 
For 10 years now, a major question about 9/11 has remained unresolved. It was, as 9/11-commission chairmen Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton recalled, “Had the hijackers received any support from foreign governments?” There was information that pointed to the answer, but the commissioners apparently deemed it too disquieting to share in full with the public.

Clinton Cites Pakistan Anti-Terror Help in Bid to Avert Aid Cut – Bloomberg

(This is an essay I constructed some time ago, for the Daily Brief – but in light of ongoing events in the Middle East is still quite relevant, and worthy of being recycled to a larger audience.)

The pufferfish is an odd little creature with mostly poisonous flesh, which has developed as a primary defense, the ability to inflate itself in order to appear larger to predators. In addition, the spiny pufferfish is covered all over it’s body with short bony barbs.  In full defense mode, it looks like nothing so much as a small spiky ball, a sort of aquatic porcupine, attempting to look larger and more combative, more dangerous than it actually is. I was reminded of these qualities a some years ago,  when I read something apropos of  an Islamic hissy-fit over Pope Benedicts’ mildly stated observation as regards violence and Islam. I am not quite sure where I read it, or anything but the general thrust of the suggestion, which was in a way, revolutionary. Read the rest of this entry »

Now, I also think it’s important to take a little historical review. If you go on YouTube, you can see Sirajuddin Haqqani with President Reagan at the White House, because during the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the United States Government, through the CIA, funded jihadis, funded groups like the Haqqanis to cross the border or to, within Afghanistan, be part of the fight to drive the Soviets out and bring down the Soviet Union.
 
So when I meet for many hours, as I do, with Pakistani officials, they rightly say, “You’re the ones who told us to cooperate with these people. You’re the one who funded them. You’re the ones who equipped them. You’re the ones who used them to bring down the Soviet Union by driving them out of Afghanistan. And we are now both in a situation that is highly complex and difficult to extricate ourselves from.” That is how they see it.

– Remarks at the Kumpuris Distinguished Lecture Series: Audience Question and Answer Segment (Secretary Hillary Clinton)

Uh huh. Well they “see it” wrong and you very well know that, Madam Secretary. Zia directed the monies and toward the end, we attempted to work around the Pakistanis. You know the history. And you’ve seen the intelligence. Didn’t your own State Department sign off on the certification for Kerry-Lugar-Berman after the bin Laden raid? What’s worse? Supporting an insurgency during the Cold War when officials couldn’t see into the future with a crystal ball, or signing off on an aid package after this?

This New York Times report on the murder of a US soldier on May 14, 2007 by Pakistani troops in Teri Mangal is an absolute must read if you are interested in understanding the frustration and contempt for Pakistan that exists among those who have been warning of that nation’s duplicity and complicity in the murder of US, NATO, and Afghan troops.

– Long War Journal

Let’s review some more, shall we?

Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76:
 
Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
 
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
 
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
 
Brzezinski: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

excerpt via this Pundita blog post. Emphasis mine.

In order to have a relationship with Pakistan during the Cold War – and subsequently the War on Terror – various American officials and institutions had to, er, well, invest themselves in particular narratives. Nice to see Secretary Clinton continuing the tradition:

Back in January 2009, Secretary Clinton vowed to make development once again one of the pillars of America’s engagement as she said it would be an “equal partner” with diplomacy and defense. The so-called “3-Ds” would need AID to be “strengthened”, “adequately funded”, and ultimately given leadership after a decade of neglect and intentional weakening under the previous Secretary.

– Small Wars Journal

I don’t know what to think anymore. (I originally had something harsher here and then deleted it. I remain flabbergasted at her comments. Particularly given the history of the Clinton Administration during the ’90s. Everyone got it wrong on this one. Darn near everyone. The Americans weren’t the only ones to get it wrong, either. The Pakistanis were the main supporters of the jihadists – and for their own purposes. It’s simply not true that the Generals and others were passive observers. Neither were any of the neighbors. Everyone’s always “played” in that neighborhood. The poor Afghans. The poor mothers and fathers of young people in Afghanistan just learning how far the foreign policy establishment in Washington is willing to go in order to preserve cherished ideological myths – and self-importance or institutional funding, a skeptic might say.)