Bulldog, not Poodle

The Winter issue of Parameters, the Army War College Journal, is out. The one item that grabbed my attention is British Bulldog or Bush’s Poodle? Anglo-American Relations and the Iraq War, by James K. Wither, a Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army. The article is a good synopsis. Wither lays out the current forces driving the ongoing high degree of military cooperation between Britain and the United States. In addition to the personal leadership of Tony Blair, other critical factors include “the long-standing special Anglo-American relationship, an institutionalized habit of security cooperation between the two countries, an ambitious perception of Britain’s role in the modern world, and an apparently genuine conviction that Saddam Hussein’s regime posed a threat to national security.” Wither is correct in noting the relatively minor importance of any “special relationship” based on tradition or sentiment. Rather, it has been the assessment of Britain’s leadership for many decades that a close security partnership between Britain and the USA, with Britain in the role of “junior partner” is in Britain’s best interest. The British have been willing to pay the financial cost of sustaining themselves in this role. “The strategic defense reviews of 1998 and 2002 reinforced this standpoint, emphasizing continued close cooperation with the United States as Britain’s principal ally. Uniquely in Europe, Britain is committed to the development of military ‘network-enabled capabilities’ to remain technologically interoperable with US forces.” Other European powers have been unwilling to make this commitment. Wither also notes the long-standing sharing of signals intelligence between the USA, UK, Australia and Canada. This very close intelligence partnership benefits all parties and is a significant underlying component of the US-UK security relationship.

Wither concludes with a discussion of Britain’s desired role as a “pivotal” power between the US and Europe:

As the efforts to rebuild Iraq have graphically illustrated, the United States cannot carry the security burden alone. At the very least, it needs its European allies to contribute troops for peace support operations and resources for nation-building. However, if European states want to be in a position to influence the global strategic agenda, rather than having it dictated to them by the United States, they will ultimately need to be able and willing to contribute a “hard” security capability. If the European Union and the United States were to become true strategic partners, Britain would have a crucial role in facilitating revitalized military cooperation. The United Kingdom possesses the only armed forces with the prospect of remaining interoperable with the United States for the foreseeable future, while any serious attempt to build a European power-projection capability would be reliant on British commitment and expertise. In these circumstances, the UK might yet be able to remain both a leading player in Europe and a special partner of the United States and thus realize Prime Minister Blair’s vision of Britain as a pivotal power.

This is interesting in light of Blair’s recent dalliance with a proposed non-NATO European defense capability. Nonetheless, the main message here is that Britain remains a player because it has spent the money and political capital necessary to create and operate meaningful ability to project military power. The Europeans, with limited exceptions, have not been willing to do so.

A “coalition of the willing” must also be a “coalition of the capable”, and other than us, no one is more capable than the British.

The Promised Land …

Good column by David Brooks in today’s NYT. RTWT. Brooks, implicitly, responds to Jonathan’s post asserting that there is a lot of Clinton in Bush. The idea there being that Bush will trim his sails to be reelected, and that this is a disappointment to conservatives and libertarians who have principles, who recall the days when the Republican minority was motivated by the ideas of people like Milton Friedman and Hayek and Russell Kirk and Irving Kristol — and was led by ideological purists like Barry Goldwater and (so it seemed) Ronald Reagan and even Newt Gingrich. Brooks points out that this is all a function of being a majority party. You compromise your principles to stay in power. Intellectual clarity and revolutionary fervor are obstacles to actually winning elections and operating the government. The majority party gets to exercise power in a way which is at least partly consistent with its principles, while its opponent gets nothing. The minority gets to enjoy its own ideological consistency, while losing elections.

Minority parties are pure but defeated; governing parties are impure but victorious. The Republicans are now in the habit of winning, and are on permanent offense on all fronts. They offer tax cuts to stimulate the economy and please business. They nominate conservative judges to advance conservative social reform and satisfy religious conservatives. They fight a war on terror. They have even come to occupy the Democratic holy of the holies, the welfare state. In exchange for massive new spending, they demand competitive reforms.

Of course, a party which loses touch with its founding principles eventually withers, begins suffering defeat, and has to reinvent itself But that can be a very slow process. Look how long the New Deal coalition hung on to power.

I am not particularly dismayed by this process. It is fun to look back at the liberal wailing when FDR was president. They saw him betraying their principles all the time. Few now would say he wasn’t liberal enough for his time and place. He was as liberal as he could get away with, as he minimally had to be, to keep the liberals in his party on the ranch on election day. This is how it always is.

As den Beste put it, in another context “The standard isn’t perfection. The standard is the alternative.” The alternative is Daschle, Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, Dean, Sharpton and the whole sorry crew. Give me W, Bill Frist and Denny Hastert any day.

Public Transportation’s Real Costs

I just read Jay’s Nov. 25 post on this topic and you should too. The reason most people don’t take buses or trains to work is that they are rational. The time cost of public transportation is exorbitant unless your time isn’t worth much. (Never mind the financial cost, which tends to be exorbitant too, if you take into account, as you should, all of the costs and not just nominal ticket prices.)

And we aren’t even considering the valuable flexibility gained from using automobiles. It’s difficult to run an errand or visit someone on the way home from work when you’re taking the train.

UPDATE: I should have made clear that my comment about financial cost was directed at the newer mass-transit systems in places like DC, Miami and LA. The old systems in places like Chicago and New York are in a different financial category, their fixed costs having mostly been amortized. (The old systems are also probably much more useful to commuters.)

Thanks

I echo Lex’s wishes.

I also wish to thank my Chicago Boyz collaborators, from whom I have learned much and without whom this blog would still be receiving ten hits a day. And I thank our readers, for the same reasons.

My goal is to make it as rewarding as possible to post to this blog as well as to read it. Please don’t hesitate to make suggestions for improvement.