Anglosphere

Of the tsunami and Mt. Fuji

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I’ve been thinking quite a bit about William Carlos Williams and his observation in Asphodel, That Greeny Flower:

Our news media blare with (apocalyptic but not revelatory) trumpets…

while Hokusai, painting circa 1831, conveys the vulnerability of the (Japanese and human) situation with his image of boats in a storm.

*

Here’s Dr. Barnett, in my own transcript of his video this week:

The surprise factor here really shouldn’t exist in our minds. I mean the mega-disaster of a tsunami plus and earthquake plus a nuclear meltdown in Japan well, those three are already highly linked. Japan highly depends on nuclear power, it’s one of the most seismically active island chains in the world, and tsunami is a Japanese word. So if you are going to put a forty year old very aging early technology nuclear power plant right on the coast in Japan, the only mega-disaster you’re going to get there is an earthquake-triggered, tsunami-delivered nuclear meltdown. So these are not surprising connections, we’re just bumping into the connectivity that’s natural and only becoming more expansive as globalization advances.

That’s exactly right and Hokusai should have been an early warning.

The only thing missing from Barnett’s analysis, and present in Hokusai, is Mt. Fuji or what TS Eliot (to circle back again to “verbal” poetry) would call “the still point of the turning world”.

Defining American Victory in Libya

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This is how I see America’s definition of victory in the current Libyan War:

Total American Victory

1) Qadaffi dead or fled and,
2) A stable successor state that is not a terrorist haven, and,
3) A democracy.

American Victory

1) Qadaffi dead or fled and,
2) A stable successor state that is not a terrorist haven.

Marginal American Victory

1) Qadaffi dead or fled and
2) Unstable state run by junta or autocrat, very anti-Israel to maintain power, hostile to Al-Qaeda.

Marginal American Defeat

1) Qadaffi dead or fled and
2) Unstable state run by junta or autocrat, very anti-Israel to maintain power, neutral to supportive of Al-Qaeda.

American Defeat

1) Qadaffi dead or fled and
2) Iranian aligned, Al-Qaeda terrorist supporting state.

Total American Defeat

1) Qadaffi survives in power, or

Special Victory Conditions:

1) America suffers total defeat if we get a 9/11/2001 class terrorist attack connected to the Libyan fighting, regardless of any other outcome.

2) Drop our victory level by one level for every successful, less than 9/11/2001 class, domestic terrorist attack linked to foreign terrorists during Libyan fighting.

3) Drop victory level by two levels if the victory requires extended commitment of a division plus (20,000) of American troops for more than a year.

This is what comes of President Obama channeling Theodore Roosevelt:

America wants Perdicaris alive, or Raisuli dead!

Yet Another Overworked Metaphor For Understanding American Foreign Policy

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If the Government of these  United States was truly engaged in a War on Drugs, it would avoid building precision guided munitions designed to target individual midnight tokers. Instead, the USG would concentrate on one particularly dangerous narcotic that floods United States markets from time to time:  Wilsonianism.

When the 15-20 Americans (on a good day) that think about current U.S. foreign policy in the light of past U.S. foreign policy, their use of the term “Wilsonianism” embraces three out of four of the “New Testament” of Walter McDougall’s  American foreign policy traditions:

(5) Progressive Imperialism (comprising Navalism, Overseas Bases, and the Open Door Policy)
 
Born 1898, reaffirmed or enlarged 1901-17, 1940-41, 1949 to the present
 
Annexation of Spanish islands, Panama Canal Zone and Roosevelt Corollary, Pacific and Caribbean naval bases, FDR’s hemispheric defense, Truman, Eisenhower, Carter, and Bush doctrines, and foreign bases and global power projection during and since the Cold War, Gulf War I, NATO expansion, and GWOT
 
(6) Wilsonianism, or Liberal Internationalism (as more accurately called)
 
Born 1918, reaffirmed or redefined 1921-29, 1940-46, 1977-79, 1993-2000, 2009-?
 
Wilson’s 14 Points and League of Nations Covenant, Hughes’s and Kellogg’s 1920s engagement in Asia and Europe, FDR’s Atlantic Charter and United Nations, Carter’s human rights agenda, Clinton’s Enlargement and Assertive Multilateralism, Obama’s Engagement (?)
 
(8) Global Meliorism (aka Democratization, Nation-Building, Foreign Aid and Development)
 
Born 1899 and practiced  et seriatim, esp. 1901-23, 1944-52, 1961-68, 1977-80, 2003-09
 
McKinley’s Philippines Speech, Wilson’s “Idea of America” and War Message, Hoover’s Relief Programs, FDR’s Bretton Woods and UNRRA, Marshall’s Plan and Truman’s Point Four in Inaugural, Kennedy’s Inaugural and May 25, 1961, address, The “Best and Brightest” strategy in South Vietnam and Third World, Carter’s Third World agenda, G. W. Bush’s “democratization of the Middle East”

Three of McDougall’s four “Old Testament” foreign policy traditions are often offered up as Wilsonianism’s evil nemesis under terms like “realism” or “isolationism” (depending upon who you ask):

(1) Independence, Unity, and Liberty At Home, or “Exceptionalism” (as properly understood)
 
Born 1776, reasserted 1796, 1800, 1812, 1821, 1848, 1863  et seriatim until 1898
 
Declaration of Independence, Tom Paine’s  Common Sense, Washington’s Farewell,  John Quincy Adams’ Fourth of July Address, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, etc.
 
(2) Unilateralism, or “Isolationism” (as mistakenly derided)
 
Born 1796, reasserted 1801, 1812, 1885, 1917, 1920,  et seriatim to 1947
 
Washington’s Great Rule, Jefferson’s Inaugural, Cleveland’s Inaugural, Wilson’s War Message, Reservations about League of Nations, Borah’s self-definition, etc.
 
(3) The American System, or Monroe Doctrine (as commonly called)
 
Born 1783, codified 1823, reaffirmed or enlarged 1841, 1861, 1895, 1904, 1941, 1962
 
Tom Paine, Treaty of Paris, Monroe’s Message to Congress, Tyler’s Corollary, Union Blockade, Olney’s “14-inch gun,” Roosevelt Corollary, etc.

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Nothing Is Inevitable

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Neither rise nor decline. Pay attention, American-declinist intelligentsia of various stripes:

Is 2011 the year that the India story—carefully buffed for the better part of a decade by boosters and dispassionate observers alike—begins to lose its sheen? If foreign investors are a bellwether, then the answer may well be yes.
 
In January, foreign institutional investors, driven in part by high inflation and the sluggish pace of economic reforms, pulled $900 million out of India’s stock markets. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, foreign direct investment in India plunged 32% last year to $24 billion, making it Asia’s only large economy to suffer a decline in that period. (China attracted more than four times as much FDI as India in 2010.) A recent survey of 89 fund managers by Morgan Stanley showed that only a quarter of buy-side investors believe that India will beat other emerging markets this year, the glummest outlook in two years.

Sadanand Dhume, WSJ-Asia (via the AEI Enterprise blog.)

America wastes no talent
 
Conventional wisdom holds that America’s global competitiveness is driven by geniuses flocking to its shores and producing breathtaking inventions. But America’s real genius lies not in tapping just genius — but every scrap of talent up and down the scale.

Shikha Dalmia, the Daily (via HotAir.)

 
My father likes to make the same point (“America finds a way to use everybody.”) Some immigrants pay attention, you know. Sometimes better than certain intelligentsia.

Some time back Lexington Green asked, musingly, what exactly drew us all to this corner of the blogosphere known as ChicagoBoyz?

One underlying theme, in my opinion, is how hard it is to create and sustain a prosperous, safe society. Rule of law, a sound moral grounding, a good quality educational system, scientific study, a well-trained and funded military, proper planning and understanding of various logistics, a keen sense of what is possible and what is not, and so on. Wealth, beauty, comfort, kindness, and, well, “goodnesses” of all sorts don’t just happen. It takes effort. It takes thought. It takes understanding.

It takes a lot of hard work. Nothing is inevitable. Neither rise nor decline. We Americans have many advantages. We should cultivate them.

Assorted Links

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Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will be making a trans-continental trip to India in March to speak at the India Today 2011 conclave in New Delhi, Palin aide Rebecca Mansour tweeted Wednesday.

The Daily Caller

I first saw the news of Sarah Palin planning to visit India “tweeted” at an Indian think tank website – the Takshashila Institution.

AMERICA’S MACROSTRATEGIC environment is chockablock with assets unavailable to any other country. If nothing else, the United States has an often-overlooked and oft-neglected bulwark of allies: the Anglosphere. This is Washington’s inner circle of defense ties, and it finds no equivalent in its competitor nations’ strategic arsenals. The Anglosphere is perennially—and incorrectly—declared dead or in decline by the media and politicians. Nevertheless, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and the United States remain extremely close in their military and intelligence relations and exchange vast volumes of sensitive information daily, as they have for decades. On terrorism, virtually anything and everything is shared. The National Security Agency and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters have been nearly inextricable since World War II. The same is largely true of the CIA and Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. The various English-speaking nations, in practical terms, even assign individual parts of the world to each other, and each worries about the others’ security equities.

Robert D. Kaplan, Stephen S. Kaplan – The National Interest (via CNAS)