Against Boredom

Another Biden Plan...

2009-10-02T01:32:00.006-04:00

Vice President Biden has a nasty habit of attaching his name to oddball foreign policy gambits. The last "Biden Plan" was the scheme to de facto federalize Iraq on sectarian lines, a "solution" that almost no Arab Iraqis were interested in and wishfully assumed the US could completely disrupt the Iraqi balance of power and withdraw its troops, with no consideration for the violence that might erupt between Iraqis and against Americans redrawing their country's maps.

Biden's previous foreign policy record included backing the 2003 Iraq War in the first place, while opposing the 1991 Gulf War. He has also taken credit for ideas that, in retrospect, one might not want to take credit for - coming up with the idea of the USA PATRIOT Act (years before 9/11), or in the VP debates, claiming sending NATO into Lebanon, a policy it does not seem he actually supported in 2006 that nevertheless would have been disastrous.

So, I can't help but be skeptical when he advocates the George Will strategy in Afghanistan. American troops will pull out, while drones and special forces will attack al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Once again, Biden prefers to ignore the actual political dynamics of the region. To Biden, everything comes down to a simple calculus - we spend $30 in Afghanistan for every $1 we spend in Pakistan. The ratio must change, because Pakistan is the greater threat.

Biden argues sending troops and conducting counterinsurgency in Afghanistan is simply throwing good money after bad. What is unclear is how this would be any different in Pakistan. American military aid to Pakistan has been notoriously squandered on weapons systems to use against India, and is in danger of simply fueling the country's rampant corruption. Biden continually assumes that factions can be bribed to oppose their geopolitical interests. Just as a central government to distribute oil money would keep allow Iraqi federalism to function without violence, aid to Pakistan will blind them to their national interest in a) supporting the Taliban to provide strategic depth and b) using defense spending to deter India.

What most advocates of drawdown do not acknowledge is that Pakistan's incentive to make peace with the Taliban and return them to power in Afghanistan increases if the US leaves a power vacuum. This means that the ISI will have increased incentive to protect Taliban and al Qaeda targets from US airstrikes, because most of the figures on our hit list will be potential Pakistani allies in a reconstituted Taliban. Why Pakistan would tolerate a necessarily heightened tempo of drone strikes, let alone the special forces raids that resulted in Pakistani guards firing on US helicopters?

I understand the point of the Afghan war was to deny al Qaeda a safe haven. However, the cooperative dynamic the Biden plan is dependent upon is less likely to play out in the drawdown it entails. Shifting operations to raids and drone strikes would not make the war "easy," and ultimately, the diplomatic challenges of counting on Pakistani cooperation while eroding our partnership through violations of their sovereignty and counteracting their interest will give way to the South Asia of the '90s - Pakistan and India pursuing politics as usual, Afghanistan in chaos or under Taliban rule, and al Qaeda extant but pestered by the occasional drone strike. Perhaps a bearable scenario, but hardly a desirable one.

Busy Brazil

2009-09-28T22:14:00.006-04:00

Attention to South American security politics tends to gravitate towards its most colorful and belligerent constituent state, Venezuela. With its oil reserves, multi-billion defense contracts, vocal opposition to US and Colombian policies, and occasional saber-rattling, it is easy to overlook the emerging power broker on the continent and wider Latin American affairs (besides, of course, the US), Brazil.

When Manuel Zelaya chose to return to Tegucigalpa, he did not go with Hugo Chavez, who previously threatened to militarily depose the transitional government. He stays in the embassy of Brazil. While controversy follows Venezuela's decision to purchase old missiles, tanks, and aircraft from Russia for $2.2 billion, Brazil is making a $4-7 billion deal to purchase state-of-the-art Rafale fighters from France, and is also seeking to buy submarines. Of course, Brazilian procurement politics mean efforts to produce its own nuclear submarines and helicopters will intensify, and fears of a Latin American arms race have ensued.

Most recently, the Brazilian Vice President, Jose Alencar, suggested that Brazil should seek nuclear weapons. Alencar has served as defense minister and ideologically, is a businessman of the Brazilian center-right, who Lula de Silva brought on to calm fears of his leftism. He is not the final word on Brazilian policy, but given Brazil's history and its current arms buildup, it is an opinion worth considering.

Brazil and Argentina pursued sophisticated and simultaneous nuclear arms programs during the Cold War. They bilaterally chose to scale them down for peaceful purposes, the but the capability to militarize these efforts remains. Taken in context with Brazil's role in the Honduran dispute and its military build-up, government officials pondering a nuclear program is an important reminder that even in a relatively peaceful region, military strength is still a vital element of national power. Democratic states pursuing idealistic goals (like supporting democracy abroad) are not content to rely on their virtue or economies in the pursuit of their national interest.

That Brazil might seek nuclear arms and a strong military, the accoutrement of a "20th century" power, even though the thought of this clearly bothers its neighbors, while seeking a greater role in Latin America and in the world (perhaps as a Latin American UN Security Council representative), is hardly contradictory. While the US declares a new "21st century" of shared interests, cooperation and de-nuclearization, Brazil seeks to be recognized as a great power on its own terms. Of course, Brazil is not about to embark on a war against anyone. But as new powers rise, let's remember that hard power, not just wealth or international goodwill, is still on the agenda.

Really?

2009-09-15T03:01:00.006-04:00

Via Andrew Sullivan, here's a fascinating celebrity delusion. Charlie Sheen won't drop the 9/11 truth bollocks. I have a question for Charlie Sheen (I won't pretend to interview him). In the minds of the 9/11 truthers, the attack was all government pretext for the invasion of Iraq and the broader crusade in the Middle East. So, Mr. Sheen: if 9/11 was staged to go to war with Iraq, and our own government couldn't come up with anything linking "staged" 9/11 attacks to Iraq, why didn't they write the conspiracy to actually implicate Iraq? Couldn't they have had some fake Iraqi hijackers? Or heck, throw in some Iranian ones to get that war going too.

CS – Mr. President, I implore you based on the evidence you now possess, to use your Executive Power. Prove to us all Sir, that you do, in fact, care. Create a truly comprehensive and open Congressional investigation of 9/11 and its aftermath. The families deserve the truth, the American people and the rest of the free world deserve the truth. Mr. President -

(He pauses. We shake hands).

CS – Make sure you’re on the right side of history.

(The President breaks the handshake).

PBO – I am on the right side of history. Thank you Charlie, my staff and I will be in touch.

(I watch as he strides gracefully out of the room, the truth I provided him held firmly by his side; in the hand of providence.)

You know who else were obsessed with being on the "right side of history" and thought they were doing providence's work too? The dreaded "neoconservative cabal." (They also both probably liked Red Dawn.) Please stop attempting to influence public affairs.

Furthermore, there is a dependent clause after that semicolon.

Going ballistic

2009-09-13T16:15:00.006-04:00

In the midst of this President's emphasis on Russian relations, the Afghan war, and now perhaps Arab-Israeli talks as his foreign policy keystones, it is perhaps too easy to forget the one country that might present a "peer competitor" to the US, China. Though China is far from replacing the US as hegemon, China's combination of rising wealth and military modernization are not cause for alarm, but certainly demand consideration. The US has been doing a relatively poor job of maintaining its status as hegemon. It has mired itself in debt, two wars and on top of that, its military procurement system has encouraged budgetary bloat and all too many weapons systems that neither meet the needs of present wars nor seem to have much use for the future.

It is important to note that the term "asymmetry" has more application in warfare than the counterinsurgency and guerrilla wars that occupy our current thinking on defense. The goal of any belligerent is to create an asymmetry over the enemy, whether it is the Taliban creating asymmetry through the use of IEDs in Helmand or the US creating asymmetry through overwhelming air dominance in its own combat operations. This understanding of asymmetry informs the People's Liberation Army as it seeks to develop "assassin's mace" capabilities, technologies and tactics that would allow it to defeat a qualitatively superior force. These technologies range from electronic countermeasures that addle our air strikes to ballistic missiles appropriated for conventional strikes against US airbases and carrier groups.

Keep in mind that while the US is experiencing "relative decline," it still maintains overwhelming air and naval dominance across the globe. China's "assassin's mace" technologies, while we ignore them at our own peril, are not cure-alls. Chinese electronic jamming, for example, may not be able to defeat current generations of American missile guidance systems. Chinese weapons systems, when measured against their US equivalents, are still a generation or more behind. Nevertheless, this dominance, particularly in the naval and air capabilities the US would first bring to bear against China in any conceivable war scenario, has spurred development in ballistic missile technologie s. These could be a potential "game changer" in a US-China war.

Why? No other country currently employs ballistic missiles against mobile naval target, nor do many other countries have the ballistic missile capabilities to challenge the United States. Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBMs) are much faster than cruise missiles, making them harder to intercept. They can be launched from land, unlike many anti-ship missiles, so US air-sea dominance will have less capability to counteract them. Other conventionally-armed ballistic missiles could be targeted against US airbases at Kadena, Okinawa, South Korea and Guam to achieve theatre-wide air dominance in an operation against Taiwan.

Notably, the PLA artillery command and the PLA Navy do not agree on the utility of these missiles. So let's not single out US procurement for having inter-service politics (the PLAN opposes ASBMs in part to preserve the importance of the navy) guide procurement. Another thing to keep in mind is the importance of things like US tanker capabilities, basing rights, and electronics (among many other factors) to the complexity of warfare at land and sea. It's not hypocritical to be worried about Chinese capabilities but think our resources are not best spent on the F-22 and other defense industry pet projects.

What overstretch really means

2009-09-10T15:19:00.004-04:00

I read Obama's address last night, I didn't listen to it. I don't plan on writing too much about it, because other commentators have done a better job of assessing its technical issues than I could. I'm not even going to get into the horse-race or narrative debate. That said, I'd like to take issue with a few key lines from the speech, not in the context of health care, but of the implications of our domestic expenditures on our national power.

Obama boldly declared, "I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last." Well, I would hope he has a lot more in the way of reform that this bill has outlined. Because while his plan may cover more uninsured, it does nothing to address the very real threat that Medicare cost increases pose to the budget. Are we really supposed to believe that Obama will keep his promises (or more realistically, that Obama's successors will keep Obama's promise) to cut programs to keep the health care plan deficit neutral? The plan, by CBO estimates, is likely to inflate costs and push out the cost curve, not reduce it. That's not even getting into the problem of Medicare spending growth.

Now, Obama retorts (and Steve Walt agrees) that his new health care plan costs less than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In other words, we shouldn't worry about entitlement spending, because we fight wars, and as Dwight Eisenhower said, our wars steal from public programs at home. This is true. But it's disingenuous to think that we could pay for our public programs if only we weren't fighting so many wars. Political Math breaks it down, and the implication is clear: defense is not the monster gobbling up our budget the way it was in the '40s and '50s, when Eisenhower spoke of the military industrial complex. The reality is that all wars end. Even Afghanistan will end. Mandatory spending, which health care will contribute to, not reduce, does not end. It won't be enough to cut the new health care spending, existing government spending in the form of Medicare is a major long term problem. On top of that, TARP and the stimulus package have created additional budgetary complications.

American overstretch is not simply about fighting too many wars, or even the costs exacted on the military. The US military survived Vietnam, it will survive Iraq and Afghanistan. The cost in human life is tragic, but it is not insurmountable. The appropriation of these wars for domestic policy rhetoric, though, is largely erroneous. Military spending is not the main threat to domestic spending, our debt is. Military spending is not driving our debt, domestic entitlements are. But this crushing debt is also a threat to our military capabilities, and more broadly, the strategic position of the US. Our eroding economic foundations both inhibit the US in absolute terms by harming our long-term economic outlook and in relative terms by constraining our ability to leverage our economic might. While we might argue that our economic situation makes wars like Iraq and Afghanistan prohibitively expensive, it is our domestic irresponsibility, not these wars themselves, that make the costs of our foreign and domestic endeavors prohibitive. To think we can wade out of the mess we've made for ourselves without taxes or budget cuts in both defense and domestic programs is simply kidding ourselves.

(and for the record, I still don't think Obama's health care plan will be the last. Or at least I hope it isn't.)

Afghanistan and false compromises

2009-09-08T20:13:00.003-04:00

Unsurprisingly, more Americans are starting to realize just how much of a challenge winning the war in Afghanistan will be. The "US Out of Afghanistan" crowd encompasses growing segments of the American left, traditional and paleoconservative voices like George Will and writers at The American Conservative, and realists like Stephen Walt. The mainstream consensus of this group is that America's military role in Afghanistan should be sharply reduced, and that we can accomplish what we want merely by picking off al Qaeda and Taliban from afar with drones, CIA operatives, and special forces soldiers. This would be plausible had we already not pursued this policy when the Iraq war diverted troops from Afghanistan. Trying to simply keep the Taliban and al Qaeda from taking over by killing the right people does not work.

For example, take the example of the Bundeswehr, which killed dozens of Afghans, many of them civilians, by bombing tankers it feared would become suicide bombs. Intercepting the tanker with ground troops would have been one thing, but simply letting an F-15 deal with it was the wrong choice. Or take our policy of "offshoring" Afghan policy in the late '90s - Bill Clinton took all the right steps of relying on intelligence and cruise missiles to retaliate for the embassy bombings, and of course we ended up with the USS Cole and September 11th. Sending special forces teams to shoot up AQ along the Durand Line did not do anything to stop the Pakistani Taliban and instead led to Pakistani border patrols shooting at our helicopters. McChrystal, our Afghan commander, was previously renown in military circles for his high-intensity campaign of targeted killings by special forces in Iraq. Yet McChrystal, elevated to command of the entire Afghan war, has emphasized counterinsurgency doctrine, not enemy-centric, highly kinetic special operations. Do George Will and other Afghan war skeptics understand something about the efficacy of special forces this veteran commander does not?

In reality, America and its allies tried and failed to halfway fight the war in Afghanistan. Over-reliance on airstrikes has had terrible consequences for civilians, and the enemy leaders we have eliminated has only left us with the war we are fighting now. The same goes for reliance on special forces. To once again invoke Sherman*, "Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster." We attempted to fight terrorism easily and safely throughout the '90s, and the Taliban easily and safely during much of our time on the ground. The killing-on-the-cheap model Will proposes has already failed.

That said, does this just mean America should entirely pull out of Afghanistan and leave the whole country to rot? I disagree - leaving Afghanistan now would be a humanitarian disaster and at best mark a return to the civil war we left the country in after Soviet withdrawal. From a pragmatic perspective, leaving Afghanistan would also leave open the possibilty of more terrorist attacks originating from revived training camps. No, withdrawing will not dry up the well of terrorists - the al Qaeda members who attack the US are not poor, uneducated Pashtun farmers who have lost a family member to American bombs. They certainly do contribute to the Taliban, but AQ's deadliest members are self-selected and educated who seek combat.

That said, there are two issues that I might qualify as necessary conditions for the war effort. One is regional stability. If US efforts to stabilize Afghanistan were to destabilize things to the point where the collapse of the Pakistani government is imminent, it might be better to have the usual Taliban in power than loose nuclear weapons in Pakistan. However, this is a difficult line to cross and even if US presence did seem destabilizing, leaving at that point might make things worse. The other thing that scares me about Afghanistan is how much we've let our efforts get tied up in Karzai, who is on the road to becoming Afghanistan's Ahmadinejahd in terms of legitimacy. If we are completely done with the war and think there is no way to solve Afghanistan's problems or protect our limited interests there, that one matter. It is another matter to assume we can solve those problems or protect our intrests them with past errors.

*It seems both Robert Gates and I are fond of using the same quote. I hadn't read that issue of Foreign Affairs until now, I promise...

Truth in advertising

2009-09-06T18:55:00.002-04:00

The Yemeni government has blamed deceitful insurgents for the collapse of its hours-long ceasefire in the north. In fairness, Yemen self-titled its efforts "Operation Scorched Earth" and it's rare to see states talking about their efforts much more honestly than that.

Other items of note:

Joshua Foust calls out the Bundeswehr in Afghanistan. I've earlier argued that our European allies aren't nearly as interested in fighting Obama's war as they are in praising his words. We should also recognize the US has come a long way in crafting counterinsurgency doctrine, and other NATO members may not be interested in reforming their own military forces to fight wars their governments aren't particularly interested in.

Support for organized labor in the US drops. Whether or not this was a new great depression, it's certainly clear that whatever progressive reforms are made will not follow in Roosevelt's footsteps. I remain skeptical that popular and legislative support, even should they return, can resuscitate organized labor's strength in the absence of effective industrial policy (which may be an oxymoron at this point in history).

Arming a declining power

2009-09-01T00:02:00.008-04:00

Although Biden has rightly highlighted the myriad weaknesses of Russia's socio-economic foundation, it's worth noting that Western powers have always been economically superior to Russia, and yet fears of rising Russian power persist throughout recent Western history. The ever-resurgent Russia threatened Britain in the mid-19th century, Germany (particularly Bethman-Hollweg) leading into WWI, and of course the US in the Cold War and now again in its wake.

Simplifying (crudely), many Russia hawks fear Russian military power enough to justify pushing NATO expansion further eastward, but believe Russia's latent weaknesses will grant the US leverage to undercut the Kremlin's response. Russia is up to little good, but this perspective is flawed. Russia has demonstrated throughout history its ability to function as a great power despite weak economic fundamentals. Not only that, but attempting to exploit Russian weakness to press further into its self-declared "sphere of influence" put us exactly in the situation we are in now.

Russia's declining economy can no longer support its massive Soviet-era military. The Russian government has both realized this, and realized it no longer needs to do so. Much like the United States, Russia has realized that its future battles will not be in the plains of Central Europe, and it is adjusting its procurement accordingly. For the first time in years, the Russian navy is purchasing new ships - not Russian designs, of course (the Russian defense industry is decrepit, especially shipbuilding), but French Mistral-class amphibious assault ships. Russia is downsizing its army and creating more permanently-staffed units. While in previous decades the USSR has relied on maintaining divisions that exist only as officer corps and equipment and then calling up troops to staff them, this strategy of mass mobilization is now obsolete. Instead, Russia is modeling more of its units along the lines of its airborne troops (and that of professional Western military forces) to ensure the capability for rapid response and expeditionary missions.

This leaner military is, to paraphrase Spengler, for war, and it may want war. Russia's strategic deterrent remains its nuclear arsenal, which is why up until now most Russian naval efforts were directed (not always successfully) towards strengthening its submarine-based nuclear arsenal. Now, rather than fielding an army useful only for or deterring against mass invasion, Russia wants a force for waging short, decisive wars. Russia has learned from its experiences in Georgia, where the paratrooper forces were immediately deployed and effective in combat. So, let's remember that even though the old Russian way of war may not be economically feasible, Russia is certainly adapting its forces to compensate for past weaknesses. Russia may not overcome its faults, but it is certainly trying to adapt. Russia's military reforms demonstrate it will not simply roll over to Western demands and retains a strong national interest in a sphere of influence.

The Mistral, though, raises an interesting question. What sort of countries does Russia need an amphibious assault ship to fight? The first possibility would be the Ukraine, and the Crimea in particular. Coming on the heels of Medvedev's heated rhetoric and accusations of Ukrainian nationalists (probably true) and government soldiers (less likely) participating in the Georgia war, Russia may be trying to scare the Ukrainian government (or perhaps the population) into a less anti-Russian stance. But that's a possibility that needs to be addressed on its own.

Don't worry, it's always been like this

2009-08-27T17:52:00.004-04:00

Terrorism and non-state actors are the biggest threat to world security today. The state system is in decline. Everything as we know it is changing irrevocably, and probably for the worse.

Such is the typical line of pessimist thinkers on today's international scene, and probably one this blog's writings strays into frequently. Critically, these trends point to a revolution in international affairs and the state system in particular. P. Michael Phillips, an Army liaison to the Pakistani armed forces, begs to differ. In "Deconstructing our Dark Age Future," he argues that yes, terrorism, mercenaries, and other non-state groups are problems and sovereignty is not so universally strong as we might prefer - but these are the same problems we've been dealing with all along.

The "Westphalian system" - a term theorists and use to describe an international system consists of sovereign, legally equal states whose internal affairs are not subject to intervention from others - is really a model, a way the world could work and the way we would like it to. In fact, many states are not absolutely sovereign, exercising supreme authority in their territory (Somalia), legally equal (Iraq) or immune from external intervention (Georgia). Alarmists assert these trends are dismantling our current system. Phillips instead shows how these problems have been endemic to the state system since Westphalia, and instead of overreacting to insoluble flaws to our model, we should change our model and our strategy accordingly. The article is well worth the read and only 17 pages.

I am inclined to agree with Phillips for the most part. Placing the Peace of Westphalia as the beginning of the state system overstates the importance of international law at the expense of power (Are not Thucydides and Machiavelli relevant today?), providing historical legitimacy for the expansion of international law's power, culminating in the League of Nations and UN. Unequal sovereignty and international interventions did not stop with Westphalia and have been part of the international system up until today.

However, I do think that the role of state-sponsorship in terrorism is more ambiguous than the article acknowledges. Like terrorism and "hostile non-state actors" in general, terrorism without state sponsorship has been with us for a long time too. Irish terrorist groups often collected money from diaspora, in the manner al Qaeda collects money from donors in Saudi Arabia. Many insurgencies and terrorist groups have local goals and do not attempt attacks on a Far Enemy. Over-attributing terrorism to state sponsorship has already lead to erroneous ideas about foreign policy (the supposed al Qaeda-Iraq link) and may still lead to overly bellicose responses in the future (Iran).

Sovereignty, like the Westphalian model, is "true" only insofar as they are supported by power. The power of the United States, perhaps, is in relative decline, and thus our ability to check breaches of sovereignty is too. But we have worked against sovereignty as often as we have tried to support it. We too use foreign intervention and take advantage of militia groups, like the Sons of Iraq. It is likely we will continue to undermine sovereignty in the future, as all strong (and truly sovereign) states can and sometimes must do. While we may not be entering a Dark Age, there are still plenty of questions about sovereignty, terrorism, and the role of the state left to answer. Just because answering them might change our preconceptions about the world, though, does not mean they change how the world itself works.

Following in the wrong footsteps?

2009-08-21T19:32:00.007-04:00

After launching a massive assault to retake the Swat valley that has been a humanitarian disaster and a questionable military victory, Pakistan has rightly decided it needs some help with counterinsurgency. However, Pakistan might be learning from poor examples. Pakistan has requested Sri Lanka's aid in training its troops. Sri Lanka, which finally ended its decades-long struggle with the Tamil Tigers, is not the country Pakistan should be emulating. Chinese and Indian political pressure dampens international condemnation, but if the US, Israel, or any other western country ever emulated Sri Lanka, the world would recoil in horror.
From a moral standpoint, the indiscriminate use of artillery and airpower against civilian population centers is bad enough. Add to that things like the massacres of NGO personnel and destruction of hospitals and churches, and it's obvious we should be a little hesitant to support Sri Lankan doctrine. Sri Lanka is also notable for its suppression of journalism in the war zone and the assassinations of critical voices.

Pragmatically, these tactics are unlikely to be effective in Pakistan. Sri Lanka took three decades to eradicate the Tigers by force alone. It also had the geostrategic advantage of fighting on an island. Unlike the LTTE, the Taliban will not be content to linger on their side of the Durand Line. Brutal Pakistani offensives will merely push the Taliban to some other locale, such as Baluchistan or Afghanistan or another section of the FATA/NWFP, leaving the civilian population to bear the brunt of the casualties. The LTTE was also a different type of threat than the Taliban. While the LTTE pioneered terrorist tactics like suicide bombing and pursued guerrilla warfare, they were far more similar to a conventional military in organization than the Taliban. Killing LTTE leadership contributed to the victory against the insurgency. Meanwhile, assassinating Baitullah Meshud, much like the many successful Predator strikes we've conducted in previous years, have failed to noticeably weaken or deter the Taliban.

Having the military adopt Sri Lanka's counterinsurgency doctrine is not likely to bring success without significantly weakening Pakistan's civilian government and its democratic credentials. A campaign of intense military operations within Pakistani borders would require the Pakistani government to cede control of vast regions of the country to the military and curtail Pakistani liberties outside of the combat zones to suppress domestic opposition. Given the additional ethnic, geographic, and strategic complexity of the Taliban's insurgency and Pakistan itself, such an undertaking would usher in de facto, if not outright, military rule.

Of course, it'd be a mistake to read too much into this. But in the wake of the Swat valley campaign and increasing American pressure to "win" in South Asia, it's worth reminding that a new plan isn't always a better plan. Treating the Taliban like the Tamils would be a moral and strategic mistake.

What we meant by 'compromise...'

2009-07-27T00:20:00.006-04:00

... Was Russia conceding to us. Joe Biden, after convincing the Arab media that we were going to let Israel go and bomb the Iranians, continues to tactlessly undermine Obama's diplomacy. This isn't a "good cop, bad cop" thing, this is a "good cop, incompetent cop" sort of thing. The headline in the WSJ says it all; Biden Says Weakened Russia will Bend to U.S. Money quote:

"It won't work if we go in and say: 'Hey, you need us, man; belly up to the bar and pay your dues,' " he said. "It is never smart to embarrass an individual or a country when they're dealing with significant loss of face. My dad used to put it another way: Never put another man in a corner where the only way out is over you."

This is correct. Usually, when the US wants to embarrass countries, this sort of thing only works after we've totally devastated them. So too is it correct to note that Russia's demographic situation is terrible, as we keep getting stories about campaigns for state-sponsored babymaking. It is also true that the economic crisis has cut the legs out from under Gazprom, and that trying to paper over chronic institutional failures to develop a market system that is not always prefaced with terms like "mafia" or "oligarchic" with resource revenues may not be a viable strategy.

But please, did this sort of thing work in the '90s? Russia was weaker then and saying, "Well Russia, there are no more spheres of influence, your economy is in the toilet, you're just going to have to shut up and let us run things from here" got us to exactly where we are now. Just because we won the Cold War doesn't mean that Russia must ask "how high" when we say "jump." As far as making commitments or claims to influence countries don't have the influence to back up, could we note our continued commitment to let Georgia enter NATO? After all, how much value does NATO-membership have if we showed we clearly weren't interested in defending Georgia?

Now, I am not saying that the US must necessarily be so conciliatory as the "reset" policy requires. Frankly, if the US thinks "reset" is a way to solidify its primacy among the world powers, it is quite mistaken. "Resetting" would require a substantive acknowledgement of a multipolarity that Biden is clearly not interested in and that I do not think the American public is particularly interested in either. If we think we're going to try and play nice with Russia by simply dismantling BMD but still insisting on NATO expansion and criticizing the Russian government, we might fool ourselves but we will not fool Russia. Russians are not so enraptured by Obama as much of the world is, and we are quickly exhausting Russian goodwill with statements like this, and they will refuse to concede to save face for the weakness we have illuminated.

Now, never mind that Russia is still aiming (if not necessarily succeeding) to reestablish its sphere of influence and that we're not doing much about it but talking and expecting them to stop. Georgia proved that we didn't actually see our new NATO members as worth going to war, but now we're supposed to add them despite proof that we don't particularly care enough to die for them? We have to remember that part of what made NATO an effective deterrent was placing US soldiers in Europe. Are we going to commit the resources to show we're willing to defend Georgia or Ukraine in the future? I know I have advocated NATO expansion in the past, but my opinion is either we don't expand it or if we do, we make sure it actually has a deterring effect on war. A middle course is just kidding ourselves. I have similar views on the "reset." If we want Russia to concede out of weakness, we're playing hardball, not "resetting" anything. If we want to make concessions of our own, then a "reset" will seem realistic. But refusing to make concessions and then expecting Russia to "bend" will require putting more pressure on Russia than we are willing to pursue. The best Russia policy is an open question. I can definitely say it isn't the self-contradicting one Biden is advocating now.

This moment in geopolitics...

2009-07-22T23:48:00.003-04:00

In the spirit of posts that aren't too long, here's some interesting news from places we haven't been hearing too much about in the mainstream news sources (with one exception for Pakistan and Afghanistan, which I hope everyone has been hearing about).

While Clinton has been touring Asia and making headlines about India and Iran, a few papers picked up on some of her comments about another possible nuclear threat to the region - Burma (Yes, I call it Burma). Though Clinton has tried to remain somewhat ambiguous about Burma's nuclear ambitions and capability, I can understand why we might not want to make too big of a fuss about this yet. After all, it wasn't too long ago Clinton lent credibility to a baseless conspiracy theory about Iran penetrating Central America through some sort of "mega-embassy" in Nicaragua. While Burma is probably somewhat far off in terms of its technical capability, it is certainly something to be concerned about. North Korea will sell nuclear technology to just about anybody willing to pay, and Burma, a partner of Russia and China despite international calls in the wake of protests, devastating typhoons, and the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi, might be resistant to further isolation. After ratcheting calls for intervention or infringing on Burmese sovereignty after each incident (and the DPRK's mockery of international nonproliferation efforts), a nuke might look pretty attractive to Naypyidaw.

Elsewhere, the Hague arbitrated the Abyei dispute between Sudan proper (north Sudan) and south Sudan. While Darfur captures most international attention, problems between north and south Sudan are gaining more attention. Rightly so - the 2011 referendum on independence, and this disputed territory here discussed, could give us the 3rd Sudanese Civil War, a continuation of one of the post-WWII era's bloodiest conflicts. On top of that, both sides are rearming - with a bit of US training assistance for the south, too. Keep an eye on this one.

Biden, in addition to being the de facto "special envoy" to Iraq (a country he tried to all-but-dismember circa 2005-2006), is busy repeating the American line in Georgia. Biden argues that the notion of a sphere of influence belongs in the 19th century. I would argue in response that yes, we can wish that, but that naive hope we can prevent great powers (especially Russia) from believing they should pursue a sphere of influence when it is within their power without actual deterrence is a naive notion that belongs to the utopians of the late 20th century.

On to bigger things - the Pakistani military, after the near-debacle that was its counterinsurgency campaign in Swat, is not exactly eager to deal with Baluchistan or the retreating Taliban from the offensive in Afghanistan. The military still seems to be pushing for the "make India give up Kashmir" option. However, Obama's done a good job, like Bush, of resisting the absurd Kashmir scheme and pursuing constructive great power diplomacy with India. Dealing with Afghanistan isn't getting any easier...

Back to East Africa, it seems conflict from Somalia is spilling over its borders again. With the TFG holding something like a few blocks of territory in Mogadishu, it's no surprise to me that Al Shabab ("The Youth," or "The Lads") is looking to go after countries like Kenya which generally oppose the Islamist movements and fighters in the horn. Over a decade ago Kenya was the victim of a major attack that helped put AQ on the international radar - now it seems that violence might come from closer to home.

Hopefully the only thing I have to say about health care

2009-07-22T13:47:00.003-04:00

So the big topic in DC is health care reform. Oh, joy of joys. I'll try and make this as quick and painless as possible. As usual, Obama sounds like a pretty reasonable guy when he talks about health care and Congress doesn't make any sense. Unfortunately, Obama is staking the party on health care reform, and I don't think he or any Democrats nervous about their seats in 2010 are going to let up, and will probably pass just about anything.

Of course, Obama has tried to emphasize cost control in his discussion of health care, which is very nice of him. Unfortunately, people ought to talk to Congress. The CBO has made it abundantly clear that universal health care will exacerbate health care cost problems, rather than solve them. As anybody who's been following Massachusetts knows, attempting to use mandatory or universal coverage to control costs has been a miserable failure, and now the state government is considering capitation - essentially putting a cost ceiling on how much money they are allowed to use on procedures. Expanding access will not reduce health care costs in any way. Obama's health care plan is more expensive and does nothing to cut increasing costs in both private health insurance and Medicare. Allowing people to switch from a private plan to a public option will not help either - either it receives public subsidies and runs into the cost growth problems, or it acts like a non-profit HMO and doesn't do much that non-profit HMOs already do, except give the Democrats credit.

So how exactly would we reduce the cost curve? I'm not going to go into the muddled and contradictory statistical argumenets both sides offer, but here's one reason why I'm skeptical we'll be able to. Doctors and technology. While Obama's plan is far from giving us something like the health care system in France, France is a perfect example of a country with good health outcomes and a much lower cost than the United States. This is pretty much undeniable. However, people ignore the fact that doctors make 3-4 times as much money in the United States as they do in France. Of course, reducing doctor pay is unthinkinable in the US. Medical students have to take on enormous debt loads to become doctors, and they need to pay them off. Our medical schools are the best in the world, and I'd be very skeptical that our government could step in and "solve things" there without negative effects on their quality. Doctor pay is a critical feature of the US health care system. There is a reason why we hear about foreign doctors coming to the US to learn and work, and why US doctors ususally go abroad as humanitarians.

Of course, maybe if we did have a system like France's, we wouldn't have to worry about doctor pay, right? Maybe, but many doctors (in particular the American College of Surgeons) support single-payer healthcare, price controls, or similar mechanisms for health care because they'd lock in high pay (and many oppose it for the opposite reason, knowing a financially sustainable national system would likely reduce their salaries). The health care bill comes with billions in new Medicare spending that will go into doctors' pockets. Tell me this doesn't have an effect on physicians' support for health care "reform." They are good people, they're just self-interested, like people who build F-22s*, auto dealers, or pretty much any American citizen tempted with the offer of more money. I don't see any meaningful reduction in the cost curve in the future without starting a huge fight with the AMA or ACS, and Obama has trouble enough as it is now.

Speaking of taking interest groups to the mat, Tyler Cowen points out something interesting - perhaps covering seniors through Medicare is an obstacle to health care reform. This does seem to make sense, and poll numbers show the elderly are not as behind health care reform, especially that which involves critical cuts to Medicare spending. To be fair, there are a lot of complicated issues in Medicare and ethical questions about treatment. But before trying to push a national system of health care on the US, the federal government will need to get its own house in order, too - and voting demographics don't bear that out.

To respond to Cowen's question about prospects for universal health care in the '70s in a world without Medicare, I'll go ahead and say we might. Actually, Nixon's plan included employer-mandated insurance and a federal plan based on Medicaid that Americans could also join.

*Speaking of F-22s, and to get back to this blog's usual topic, way to be Senate - Obama and Gates finally won one in the battle against unnecessary but cool and pork-tastic weapons projects.

A few words on the crisis in Honduras

2009-07-11T16:25:00.004-04:00

It may be tiring to hear of the constant critiques of democracy promotion and the "Obama effect," but a spate of recent events (some more recent than others - yes, this blog has been dormant for quite some time) helps put this misguided campaign into perspective. Criticism of democracy promotion has waned since its heyday in the Bush administration. The immediacy and scale of democracy promotion's flawed logic and human cost was much greater in 2003 than it is in 2009. That said, moving from a disastrous flawed policy to one that is merely weak and incoherent is not a substitute for policy change. Turning the volume down from 11 isn't enough.

Six months into the Obama presidency, it's time to remove the blinders of self-congratulation and take a frank look at the ideas and actions with which we wish to shape today's world. Teguicgalpa is one example. My aim here is not to side with those who claim Obama is in fact destroying democracy by promoting Chavismo. Instead, let's acknowledge a simple truth - we do not know what we are doing, and we are not fit to be picking sides nearly as often as what we do. For example, Zelaya violated the Constitution and ignored the Supreme Court and Congress of his country. The checks and balances in the Honduras, which allow democratic republics to function effectively, were undermined. Despite the provision of the Honduran constitution that Zelaya "immediately" (de inmediato) cease to function in his duties, the idea that a military intervention in civilian government might be constitutional unsettles us, and rightly so.

The reasons for the coup rest on two main lines of argument - firstly, the military must uphold the constitution of the Honduras and Zelaya would not have submitted to a civilian impeachment. This argument carries enough weight that it should make Obama and the OAS uncomfortable with their condemnation of the coup. For example, Article 272 of the Honduran constitution not only tasks the military with the protection of the constitution, but explicitly states that the military is responsible for ensuring the alternation of the Presidency. In fact, there is no clear legal process for impeachment. The Supreme Court thus resorted to the military's explict role in enforcing the constitution and in particular preventing continuismo, and in thus the coup is constitutional, if not "democratic."

The second argument for the use of the military is Zelaya's relations with ALBA, the Venezuelan-lead bloc of leftist countries. Many Hondurans believe that Nicaraguan and Venezuelan troops are either present in Honduras or mobilizing on the border with Nicaragua. This smacks of conspiracy, but Chavez isn't beyond mobilizing troops to coerce or intimidate his neighbors (on a side note, it is darkly amusing to find Chavez, who tried to seize power in 1992, denouncing a military coup). When Colombia launched a cross-border raid into Ecuador to kill FARC leaders, Chavez mobilized the army to the Colombian border. This, combined with Honduran entry into ALBA under Zelaya, gave many Hondurans the sense that their sovereignty was compromised and that Zelaya might call upon foreign allies to suppress internal dissent. Under these circumstances, it is understandable, if not necessarily right, that the military wished to get involved - they believed they were defending the sovereignty of Honduras, rightly or wrongly. Perhaps this prophecy was somewhat self-fulfilling, though - the coup lead Chavez to threaten a state of war with Honduras.

All this said, the new Honduran government, while constitutional, is less than admirable. While the new President is a member of Zelaya's party, the military has nevertheless cracked down on dissenting media outlets and used force against protesters, in contravention to the Constitution, which Congress has gotten around by declaring a state of emergency. They expatriated Zelaya to Costa Rica in a naked violation of Honduran law and may have denied him due process for arrest. The question is not whether the new government has done anything wrong, though; obviously it has violated Honduran law in the course of the coup, even if the coup itself is constitutional. The question is whether our proposed solution and demands on the Honduran government are all reasonable. I would say they are not.

Zelaya is not the legal President of Honduras. He cannot hold public office for 10 years. Insisting that he be the President of the Honduras is imposing a leader on the Honduras against the constitution. Perhaps, though, this is more democratic, since the Honduran constitution is undemocratic. It is certainly undemocratic for the military to arbitrate a political dispute. That said, what is so democratic or liberal about taking sides in a Honduran constitutional dispute? We claim to be doing it in the interest of democracy, not ideology, but at what point does this sort of intervention in the name of democracy become ideological? It is not as if Zelaya is particularly popular. He is, by some surveys, Latin America's least popular leader. He does not have the support of the majority of Hondurans, the Congress. Just because there are demonstrations does not mean he is the legitimate ruler any more than Mousavi is the legitmate President of Iran simply because there are demonstrations there.

However flawed the Honduran constitution might be, Zelaya cannot be President without violating the constitution and I hardly imagine restoring him to the Presidency will be productive in the least. If we want to support political resolutions to political dispute, Zelaya does not belong in executive office but in court upon his return. So too do the military officers who violated Honduran law in extraditing him. Identifying support of democracy or democratic institutions, though, with undermining the constitution of Honduras further will only further polarize Honduran society and cast more doubt on the legitimacy of the government.

The constitution, with the exception of the seven permanent articles, can be amended. In fact, it is amended quite frequently. Obviously it would be more democratic for the Honduras to provide some sort of civilian process for impeachment rather than directly delegating this power to the military. However, this is something for Hondurans to decide and the rest of the world to observe. Clearly, guaranteeing the fairness of this process will be difficult (the same goes the plebiscite Zelaya proposed), but election observers can play this role. Demanding the scrapping or directing the revision of the Honduran constitution, however, is little different than regime change. It is frustrating to acknowledge but there is not an easy way out of this one. As anyone who's read Federalist no. 10 knows, it can be hard to protect small republics from faction. Nor is a constitution imposed by foreign demands likely to solve the underlying problems of polarization in Honduras.

We can afford to screw up on this one because the days when banana republics factored into our national interest have passed. But with Iran and likely more protests of this nature to come, it's time to take a frank look at what we have a right to do as a state among states, and what is actually in our interests. Contra the President, we are not protecting democracy in any way in pursuit of Zelaya's reinstatement. Nor, however, would we be protecting it by simply letting the situation sit. Putting Zelaya back in power won't solve any of the factional problems undermining democracy in the Honduras, and undermining the constitution won't either. Nor does leaving Michletti in power. Democracy in the Honduras may in fact be something that we can't control or bring into being. It is one thing to condemn a coup as an undemocratic intervention in a country's government, it is another to think we have the right to intervene ourselves. For all our talk of empowering the demos, we are likely to hurt them if we continue suspending aid programs. Perhaps ending military aid to the Honduras is a good idea. But it seems silly that while we re-evaluate the efficacy of Cuban sanctions in regime change, we see renewed promise for them in Honduras.

Again, we're lucky this is happening in Honduras and not somewhere where our national interests come into play. Obama took the right stance by demanding a recall in Iran and keeping quiet since then, in recognition that interfering in Iranian domestic affairs (a la Operation Ajax) is counterproductive, and that our national interest in avoiding the success of the Iranian nuclear arms program or Iranian aggression must come first. There is no virtue in sacrificing all this for the sake of putting a somewhat less conservative and less anti-American candidate into a position that, as per the very undermocratic constitution of the Islamic Republic, has little meaningful power over Iran anyway.

Just because we think democracy is on the march does not mean we can command its ranks as an army. Institutions matter, interests matter, the conflicts that undermine democracy matter. We can't control some of these. If there's a force in history, it doesn't tell us that we're on the right side of it - it tells us we can't control it.

The nuclear-free case for missile defense?

2009-04-07T20:36:00.006-04:00

After the DPRK's less-than-impressive third try to demonstrate a functional ICBM capability, the President decided to take advantage of the occasion to bring up the ambitious goal of eliminating nuclear arms. It's easy to deride this idea as the kind of naive, ridiculous idealism conservatives love to tag Obama with, and indeed, many have done so. But it's a serious idea that deserves serious consideration - even if those lefties at the Hoover Institution endorsed it.

That being said, while cuts to nuclear arms are probably a great idea, I'm not sure I can get behind their total elimination. For one thing, as I mentioned way back, total denuclearization does not mean an end to nuclear proliferation. The idea that new nuclear states could be deterred rests on the assumption that economic sanctions, political pressure and conventional force would be sufficient to overcome the incentive of becoming the new sole nuclear power. I am not confident in this assertion.

For one thing, countries with the capability to develop nuclear weapons are generally countries that are wealthy and powerful enough to make their isolation a risky policy. Trying to shut out India and Pakistan the way we shut out (or would like to shut out) Iraq, Iran, and North Korea would be an incredibly risky policy. Even then, it is unlikely major sanctions would be effective without great power consensus. As the market power of countries like China rises, it will become difficult for sanctions on the part of the US & EU to have the decisive weight they might have once (e.g. the case of South Africa).

For another, who says conventional power is an adequate deterrent to a country's nuclear program? Ultimately, if a country has sufficient technical capacity to develop a nuclear weapon, in most cases it also has the military strength to make the strikes necessary to destroy that nuclear capability prohibitively dangerous except in the early stages (a la Iraq, Syria). But countries have learned from those attacks. Take Iran, a country that has its critical infrastructure widely dispersed enough to deter an attack by Israel, and the capability to wage hybrid/irregular warfare in areas such as Lebanon, Iraq, and the Persian Gulf, deterring the United States from making a "surgical" strike against its nuclear facilities alone. An attack against a minor power with nuclear ambitions would have to eliminate its nuclear capability and its conventional retaliatory capability. This is not an appetizing prospect for the great powers in most cases, either because they will be reluctant or other great powers do not perceive the target country's program as a threat and thus will not accept a counter-proliferation strike as in the interests of the "international community." The end result would be some kind of modus vivendi. Perhaps the new nuclear power might assert that its nuclear arms are purely for defensive purposes.

Ultimately, though, they would enable offensive action in a non-nuclear war. Suppose Saddam had a nuclear device in 1991 (he wasn't that far off from it then, compared to 2003, and by some miracle the nuclear-free-world discussed by Reagan and Gorbachev had achieved. Would an international coalition so quickly have formed against Iraq? Like all counterfactuals, it's hard to tell. After all, US forces in Iraq were put on DEFCON 1 and expected the use of chemical weapons. Without the coalition's nuclear deterrent, though, Saddam might well have used those weapons, as he did against the Iranians. Even a retaliatory escalation of conventional force could have been negated by the use of nuclear weapons. Under their own nuclear umbrellas, great powers might well learn to live with the offensive ambitions of other states. I do not think it is a coincidence that wars of territorial aggrandizement or wars terminating in the outright annexation of a whole country are no longer common in the nuclear age. Such goals are ludicrous in the face of the prospect of nuclear retaliation.

So how do we prevent denuclearization from paving the way towards a re-nuclearizing and perhaps more violent world? Embracing missile defense. As the DPRK demonstrated, developing an effective nuclear capability needs effective delivery systems, not just nuclear warheads. Developing missile defense networks are far less risky than launching counter-proliferation strikes. While missile defense is unlikely to ever achieve the technical capability to deter a nuclear arsenal of American or Russian magnitude, I don't think it is inconceivable that missile defense could be developed to deter those mid-level countries which are weak enough to doubt their conventional power to defend themselves against great powers, but strong enough to field a nuclear arsenal. Of course, there's a lot more investment and development necessary.

Yet critics of missile defense are often those in favor of denuclearization and counterproliferation. If denuclearization is to move beyond simply an idea and become a viable condition for the international system, we will need to develop options short of war to deter against new nuclear powers that can no longer be constrained by the old standby of nuclear arms. Missile defense (perhaps funded for by cuts in great powers' nuclear arms) is a potential option for preventing a new nuclear power from pursuing offensive war or coercing its neighbors, and certainly attractive because it does not involve the moral hazards of preemptive or preventative war.

Of course, I'm skeptical of denuclearization to begin with, which is probably obvious. But if we're going to pursue it, I think there's more we need to think about than arms control and sanctions regimes.

2009-03-11T11:50:00.015-04:00

A while back Daniel Drezner pointed out that the financial crisis would test theories of international great power relations that have been sidelined in favor of the debate over the war on terror and the neoconservatives vs. all-comers debate. Some scholars went so far as to point out Bush's relatively successful handling of East Asian affairs as evidence the administration did not fail on the "big" issue of great power politics.

But here we are in 2009, with a financial crisis throwing political and economic order into tumult across the globe. Theoretically, if globalization sputters to a halt and war breaks out between countries previously bound by international trade, we should deem liberal theorists correct. But perhaps of more interest to realists, or anyone concerned about shifting balances of power, would be the relative effects of economic decline. Certainly, global trade may face enormous setbacks. The G20's word on preserving free trade has been continually discredited by the actions of its member nations. It will not help that these international ties are weakened. But even if 5% of the world economy evaporates in a global market correction and the economy crashes, does that mean all countries are equally stricken by the loss? Of course not. Almost certainly, some countries have and will suffer more than others. The question is which ones, and what implications will their losses have on the global political order?

It is false to assume economic calamity automatically begets open state-vs.-state warfare. The 19th century panics produced no wars in their wake. WWI came at a time of unprecedented great power economic integration. (Internal conflict, on the other hand, is much more likely.)

Germany benefited disproportionately from the economic growth of the late 19th century thanks to the territorial acquisition of its predecessor states, while Russian economic growth in the early 20th century accelerated thanks to reform and investment (to some extent rearmament played a role in this, though arguably Russian rearmament was the reward, not the cause, of this growth spurt). The outcome, by the argument of some realists, was WWI - a nervous France and Britain seeking to hedge against Germany, and a Germany fearful of a modern, and thus preponderant, Russia on its border with its primary ally facing an existential threat. Economic changes altered the balance of power, and war was the result.

While history cannot tell us who will be facing down who in the aftermath of these recessions, it is likely the uneven setbacks and uneven recoveries that will drive great power political impacts, with the prospect of major combat delayed until revisionist great powers feel comfortable with challenging the ruling order. It takes time, after all, for economic disruptions to change the military status quo. The instruments of modern interstate warfare are costly and complex, and the tools necessary to challenge US air and naval superiority are especially so. Nuclear programs that could deter them take even more time, and are subject to international pressure. But the process by which a great power or minor power decides the US and its allies are unwilling or unable to prevent its gambit, by realist theory, would be inevitable.

Of course, this might not be the future at all. The US, contrary to worries that China is "buying low" on foreign assets and resources, might regain some sign of its traditional economic flexibility and come out the strongest. After all, China is wracked with all sorts of challenges to its seemingly permanent rise. Even if it does seem to come out ahead of the United States in relative terms, this recovery might require its government to forgo military spending so it can placate the population with developing schools, hospitals, and other infrastructure left behind by decades of short-term growth obsession.

With that in mind, I do not consider China's shenanigans in the South China Sea to be of profound consequence. They are not a harbinger of war, if anything they are a repeat of China's previous early-term showdowns as many commentators have pointed out. But they also serve to remind us of China's lingering (or growing, depending on your take) ambitions. China's interpretation of international law is ludicrous - exclusive economic zones are exclusive for economic purposes, they are not sovereign Chinese waters; China cannot exclude whatever vessels it will. The story is that the USNS Impeccable was mapping the seafloor, while China contends the hydrographic vessel was gathering military intelligence. Both could be correct. After all, scoping out the area around Hainan provides valuable intelligence for American submariners and subhunters, and as much of China's naval strategy relies on its southern approach, securing Hainan is vital to the PLA Navy.

Does the possibility of war between the US and China, or any combination of great powers, remain? Colin Gray believes so, and writes a convincing case for what is now an unfashionable argument: insurgency and terror are part of our present predicament but must not dictate strategy or force structure. But in America's Defense Meltdown, William S. Lind's chapter on the USN warns:

Overwhelming any comparison of fleets is the fact that war with either Russia or China would represent a catastrophic failure of American strategy. Such wars would be disastrous for all parties, regardless of their outcomes. In a world where the most important strategic reality is a non-Marxist “withering away of the state,” the United States needs both Russia and China to be strong, successful states. They need the United States to be the same. Defeat of any of the three global powers by another would likely yield a new, vast, stateless region, which is to say a great victory for the forces of the Fourth Generation. No American armed service should be designed for wars our most vital interest dictates we not fight.

Both economic and military catastrophe has the habit of producing insurgency. Earlier I parenthetically noted the danger to internal, not international peace, from this economic crisis. It is now cliche to cite Mexico and Pakistan as nearly-failed states, and it will likely soon be the same to lament Eastern Europe's financial insolvency. Then there are the already anarchic regions of Somalia and the DRC. Meanwhile America is still mired in Afghanistan and will have 50,000 "non-combat" (a meaningless distinction by most analysts' estimates) soldiers in Iraq. Despite the pressing need for successful counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, the financial crisis will test Europe's will in Afghanistan as NATO governments struggle to resolve the paradox of their commitment: the arbitrary limitations on the size and scope of European deployment will hinder the overall war effort, while the perceived failure of this effort further undermines Western support for the conflict's counterinsurgency campaign.

I do not hold the views of those fearing great power confrontation and state-vs.-state warfare and the "COINdinistas" and those focused on terrorism and "fourth generation" warfare to be necessarily incompatible. For example, while military conservatives argue that counterinsurgency campaigns will drain the country's military resources and willpower, counterinsurgents like David Kilcullen would respond that direct combat should be avoided until absolutely necessary. But there remain some glaring contradictions. Will non-state actors develop the capability to attack the modern "market-state" and thus force a revolution in strategic thinking, or does Thucydides remain the best guide for geopolitics? Should the US military strip down to fight the wars it is most likely to fight, or redouble its commitment to deterring great power conflict?

There are immediate limitations. On one hand, military spending seems like it will be crowded out by the massively expansionary spending of the Obama administration. For better or for worse, the government has reoriented towards domestic spending and the Obama-Gates team seems deadset on cost control for big projects like the F-22 and Future Combat System. This means the United States may not be able to ensure continued dominance in conventional affairs and restructure itself for COIN. Meanwhile, the wars America is presently fighting both dictate America's current military affairs (forcing America to learn COIN, leave, or lose - even former US commanders are saying America will be deployed in Afghanistan until 2025 to win) and circumscribe short and near term options. The consequence of the costly and difficult war on terror, piled on top of financial crisis, may be the sapping of American willpower and a retrenchment of power projection capability.

A possible, if hardly certain answer seems to be that warfare itself will, of course, evolve with the nature of the entities prosecuting it. War, by either the great power or COIN model, is still subject to Clausewitz's principles. But regular warfare is likely to become increasingly irregular, which means that state will adopt characteristics we identify with non-state actors, while irregular forces will become increasingly professional as they improve their technical capacities and the skill of their personnel. In other words, the true challenge is not necessarily to shift the military irrevocably in one direction or another, but to create a military (and a national security apparatus in general) that is flexible enough to respond to future threats. While it is likely impossible to satisfy both needs simultaneously, the military must become "a learning institution," while the procurement process must be radically overhauled so that weapons systems can at the very least be debated on their practical merit, not their political worth as jobs programs and corporate welfare.

This is, of course, easier said than done. Our Jominian, enemy-centric tendencies are still quite apparent in Pakistan, and the temptation now seems to be to kill as many AQ as we can, get out and leave, while hoping that any of the countless people we've alienated don't do anything else to disrupt our strategic interest. American politics, defense bureaucracy, and international institutions like NATO are not entirely conducive to counterinsurgency or anything that hints of a long term operation. Are we better off preparing for conventional war simply because that's what we know how to fight? Past experience tells us this is the case, and that the illusion counterinsurgency is something the US doesn't need to dirty its hands with will come undone eventually.

It's over when the Post says its over

2009-01-23T09:43:00.007-05:00

Ordinarily I'd hesitate before going against a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist (and one who has exposed some of the darkest aspects of the GWOT at that), but this article from Dana Priest seems wildly off the mark.

Since there is (free) registration required, I'll quote the parts that seem off base.

The problem starts with the title: "Bush's 'War' On Terror Comes to a Sudden End."

Tell it to Afghanistan and Pakistan. But what's the reasoning behind such a sweeping declaration?

While Obama says he has no plans to diminish counterterrorism operations abroad, the notion that a president can circumvent long-standing U.S. laws simply by declaring war was halted by executive order in the Oval Office.

Key components of the secret structure developed under Bush are being swept away: The military's Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, facility, where the rights of habeas corpus and due process had been denied detainees, will close, and the CIA is now prohibited from maintaining its own overseas prisons. And in a broad swipe at the Bush administration's lawyers, Obama nullified every legal order and opinion on interrogations issued by any lawyer in the executive branch after Sept. 11, 2001.

Keep in mind that these "counterterrorism operations" include occupying an invaded country, bombing targets inside its neighbor and other countries, and in some cases special operations incursions. These, to me, seem to be the "war" in the war on terrorism. I simply can't follow the train of thought here. If the argument is that Bush used war as an excuse to do illegal things, then how does no longer doing illegal things (while still fighting the war) mean the war is gone? To me, this just seems to say that the War on Terror will now be waged within certain legal limits... Which war, by the way, has regarding these sorts of issues.

Over the next 2 1/2 years, as Democrats gained power in Congress, as the violence in Iraq sapped public support for the president and as the fear of another terrorist attack receded, the debate over secret prisons, renditions and harsh interrogations grew louder. Presidential candidates felt comfortable to include these sensitive subjects in the debate on the efficiency of Bush's war against terrorists, and even on the notion that it was still a war.

Yes, but the main aspect of a war on terror, and indeed wars in general, is that they are conducted using military force. Obama has not in any way significantly reduced the use of state violence against terrorism. If anything, he is bringing the war on terror within the legal restraints we expect in our usual conflicts. Philip Bobbitt supports closing Guantanamo and ending official sanction of torture, too. But he believes more than most that fighting terrorism is still a war. Will Dana Priest tell him that he no longer believes in a war on terror?

During his campaign and again in his inaugural address Tuesday, Obama used a different lexicon to describe operations to defeat terrorists. "As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals," he said. ". . . And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you."

This is just the absurd punchline to the argument. Priest could have drawn a contrast to Bush by emphasizing the section of the speech in which he extended a hand to the Muslim world and cooperative states, but no, she chooses the section that everyone from Marc Ambinder to Jon Stewart has said sounds the most like W's rhetoric in the war on terror.

Summary: Priest first defines the war on terror as the aspects that have the least to do with military combat operations, which are in fact illegal under the laws of war, and then says that since Obama is ending those aspects, the war itself is over. In other words, we have a writer projecting their desires and opinions onto the President. The real question is, how long is this free credibility going to last?

What next for a war on terror?

2009-01-21T08:03:00.004-05:00

The war on terror doesn't seem to be much closer to being over. Gitmo changes aside, Obama still thinks it exists, we're in it, and that we'll win it.

We will not apologize for our way of life nor will we waver in its defense. And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that, "Our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you."

Is there really anything about this statement which differentiates it from the rhetoric of the past eight years?

Much as Eisenhower was able to reject Truman's failed management of the Korean War while still prosecuting and expanding the Cold War as a whole, Obama may have rejected the Bush administration's choice of battlefields and conduct of warfare, he has not rejected the war itself. Even as the British government reaffirms its disdain for the language (and the implicit structure contained within) of the "war on terror," Obama seems neither prepared nor interested in treating the battle against terrorism as anything less than a war. Obama reinforces the narrative of neoconservatives who treat the struggle against terrorism as on par with WWII or the Cold War, not by downplaying the importance of the war on terror but merely suggesting it be conducted differently - that we cooperate with countries we might otherwise not and moderate our campaigns when possible. Perhaps one could argue such forceful language is more rhetoric than heartfelt belief, but Obama's promotion of talks with Iran and derision of the invasion of Iraq should not detract from a record that is in favor of escalation in Afghanistan and, if necessary, military action in the wider region.

Now, there is a case to be made for the "war on terror" being treated as a sort of era-defining generational conflict on par with WWII and the Cold War (though its best proponent would consider those two conflicts part of one war, and prefers the plural "wars on terror"). This would rest on the presumption that modern terrorism (the focus here is on terrorist organizations and capabilities, not on the 20th century methods we conceive of as terrorism) presents a fundamental threat to constitutional order within states and the process of globalization that dominates the state system. Without a concerted effort in both specific regions and our broader global policy - a war on terror - modern terrorists will hollow out and struggling states and undermine strong ones. There is evidence the former is a real possibility, and the capability of terrorist organizations to acquire the resources to deal serious blows to modern states is a looming, if still distant, threat.

Obama's promises to revitalize NATO efforts in Afghanistan and rein in nuclear proliferation are, well... promising. It is also likely that only a more internationalist President like Obama will have the credibility necessary for a great power consensus on new international laws and norms, and campaigns to marginalize terrorist organizations. If Bobbitt is right (and there is a chance he is), then we really are at war against more than al Qaeda and perhaps more than radical Islam. Certainly we are at war with more than bin Laden, whose seclusion means killing him is unlikely to seriously hamper al Qaeda or terrorism in general. A war on terror treated as a war would become our overriding national interest. To adopt the rhetoric of war, or of the Cold War, or of another new notion of war that we must use to interpret fighting terrorism as a "war" while trying to insulate domestic society from its requirements is foolishness that will lead to disaster. We cannot continue the recent decade of bifurcation - where outside TSA check-in lines, the actual responsibilities and burdens of the war on terror are borne by a small segment of the population and the need for wider institutional reforms are ignored for political convenience.

We would of course like to do everything at once, but the war on terror has its own policy costs and public diplomacy can only go so far to prevent it from conflicting with some of our domestic, economic, and other international interests. If Obama is to speak of the war on terror without enacting the major changes necessary to prosecute it, then we as a country would be better off acknowledging that terrorism is not a priority and accepting a modus vivendi in which we pursue domestic concerns or progress on other international issues and terrorism is at least a thorn in our side. Terrorism will not go away simply with public diplomacy, more economic aid, and withdrawal from Iraq. Nor is certain that it poses a threat of the magnitude Bobbitt and others survive. We will have to live with the risk that terrorism would pose, and I would not consider this an admission of defeat or a disaster for American foreign policy under present circumstances. But if we are to lower terrorism on our list of national concerns, then we should not formalize this casual belligerence as a bipartisan policy where it will exacerbate the difficulties to the policies we would prefer to emphasize.

The men of the 3rd Batallion, 8th Marine Regiment, based at Camp Lejeune, are discovering in their first two months in Afghanistan that the tactics they learned in nearly six years of combat in Iraq are of little value here — and may even inhibit their ability to fight their Taliban foes.
Their MRAP mine-resistant vehicles, which cost $1 million each, were specially developed to combat the terrible effects of roadside bombs, the single biggest killer of Americans in Iraq. But Iraq is a country of highways and paved roads, and the heavily armored vehicles are cumbersome on Afghanistan's unpaved roads and rough terrain where roadside bombs are much less of a threat.

All that being said, whether we are engaged in just the first few battles of the "wars on terror" or merely preoccupied with righting the bungled execution of our response to 9/11, our national security priority should be resolving the wars we are presently fighting. While we have successfully negotiated a new SOFA that will let us withdraw from Iraq, Afghanistan is going poorly and unlikely to get any easier. Despite a drawdown in Iraq and the seeming success of insurgency tactics there, the "get out of Iraq to win Afghanistan" strategy is already showing its limitations:

The men of the 3rd Batallion, 8th Marine Regiment, based at Camp Lejeune, are discovering in their first two months in Afghanistan that the tactics they learned in nearly six years of combat in Iraq are of little value here — and may even inhibit their ability to fight their Taliban foes.
Their MRAP mine-resistant vehicles, which cost $1 million each, were specially developed to combat the terrible effects of roadside bombs, the single biggest killer of Americans in Iraq. But Iraq is a country of highways and paved roads, and the heavily armored vehicles are cumbersome on Afghanistan's unpaved roads and rough terrain where roadside bombs are much less of a threat.

So those MRAPs that Wesley Clark was previously fawning over seem not only to be rather unhelpful, but serious limitations on combat operations. Afghanistan doesn't just need infrastructure to win over hearts and minds - it needs it so our forces can even engage in combat patrols from their vehicles. But is that sort of strategy, necessary to the insulated bases Americans favor, even plausible in Afghanistan?

In Iraq, American forces could win over remote farmlands by swaying urban centers. In Afghanistan, there's little connection between the farmlands and the mudhut villages that pass for towns.

In Iraq, armored vehicles could travel on both the roads and the desert. Here, the paved roads are mostly for outsiders - travelers, truckers and foreign troops; to reach the populace, American forces must find unmapped caravan routes that run through treacherous terrain, routes not designed for their modern military vehicles.

In Iraq, a half-hour firefight was considered a long engagement; here, Marines have fought battles that have lasted as long as eight hours against an enemy whose attacking forces have grown from platoon-size to company-size.

We will not be able to conduct our war from the FOBs. Even with new roads, they would take years to develop and such construction would be marred by constant attacks. Without a real American presence in the countryside, our troops will make little headway against the Taliban. The article overall highlights the lengths to which a strategy of force protection in both our operations and our equipment have undermined our efforts in counterinsurgency. The failure to adequately win over and protect the population of Afghanistan, on the other hand, is quite clear. Instead of having to hide and fight amongst Afghans, the Taliban have adequate resources to field relatively large groups of combatants and have the good sense to clear out civilians before engaging. It is the Taliban, not NATO, that seems to be choosing when and where to engage, and whether or not civilians will be safe.

Perhaps one final passage from Obama's speech warns of a lesson yet to be learnt, and one of dire relevance to Afghanistan, the war on terror and foreign policy in general:

And because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

Does the lack of historical perspective in this really scare anyone else? Americans cannot help but believe it, but as anyone (like Obama) who's read Niebuhr knows, Americans cannot help but believe a lot of things that are just wrong. Just because we believe that someday we will live in a utopia without ethnic grievance or blind vengeance does not mean we can base our policy on that hope. Winning the war on terror requires addressing the fears of populations which intentionally or inadvertently harbor terrorists. If we cannot understand the very real, very present desires for retaliation and the persistence of tribes, then we cannot understand the fears of anarchy and tribalism that might lead Afghans to support the Taliban rather than what they see as an inept government. It is well and good Obama wants to usher in a new era of peace. But we must begin by recognizing the world as it actually is, not by how we cannot but believe it must become.

A skeptic at the National Mall

2009-01-20T16:09:00.010-05:00

I will admit it: my political affinity for Barack Obama has never been entirely consistent. But I did end up voting for him, and while it was incredibly moving to see him sworn in today, I cannot help but think that this day should be as much clarity and recognition of the difficulties that lay ahead as it is celebration. Election night's spontaneity was the best place for genuine, heartfelt happiness. We have known Obama would be President since November. Today should not be considered the start of a honeymoon, but of the real difficulties and challenges that come with actually being President.

To recap: I preferred the benediction to the invocation. Lowery was inclusive, genuine, and good-natured. Warren, on the other hand, seemed neither rhetorically impressive or able to reach far beyond his usual target audience. The poem seemed out of place, especially after a well performed speech.

I emphasize well performed. Because as Obama's first speech as President rather than candidate or President-elect, I found myself dwelling as much on the elements that originally left me skeptical of Obama as on those that lead me to eventually vote for him.

Perhaps the most troubling of the themes Obama outlined in his speech is the pervasive notion that the idea of trade-offs in a time of crisis are admissions of defeat rather than acknowledgments of reality (all emphasis in the speech is mine alone).

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land - a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights. Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America - they will be met.

Obama is right that these challenges will be met. But we will not meet them if we refuse to accept that sometimes, our hopes are too high or misplaced. For example, if we hope for peace in the world, it is not reasonable that we attempt to meet the challenge of spreading democracy or fighting terrorism with unrelenting energy. This sort of message, though, is poisonous to the political discourse of the leader even if it is the tool of a wise critic.

We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed.

Now, of course Obama is going to talk about having to make unpleasant decisions. But there is little hint to what they will be. What I found most interesting about this passage however, was how it was essentially John McCain's argument about the fundamentals of our economy being strong repackaged in a much more rhetorically effective manner. Obama's choice of the word capacity is interesting too - especially as we find it is not the lack of capacity, but overcapacity that will bedevil our plans to speed ourselves out of a recession.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage. What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.

Are our memories short? Obama is careful not to mention what big plans have been so successful - each can just laugh at those misguided cynics and let their minds wander to the good old days, whatever they are for each ideology. But the fact is that cynics do remember the New Deal, and they can recall the disastrous industrial and agricultural policies that delayed recovery, even if the optimists choose only to remember fireside chats, the FDIC, and Social Security. No, the ground has not shifted beneath cynics - it has shifted beneath the idealists. The past two decades have seen their plans torn asunder by historical force and human fallibility. The plans for a free, democratic and peaceful new world order were undermined by the realities of '90s military interventionism and ultimately shattered by 9/11. The plans for then protecting that order with force to defeat terrorism have squashed the dreams of a different sort of idealists. Domestically, anyone angry at the so-called legacy of deregulation or globalization in today's economic crisis should speak to the neoliberal idealists that permeated the Clinton administration (not just the Bush administration). The universal legitimacy of freedom, democracy, capitalism, and the American way of life and the American way of leadership, are no longer unquestionable. That is the change in ground, and it strikes against ambitious American Presidents, not cynics who are skeptical of the utility of American power abroad and planners' power at home. The prosperity of our lives and the legitimacy of our values are not natural facts.

The old arguments are not necessarily those of cynics - the clash between progressive left and "laissez faire" right on economics could have easily been described as idealist as cynical. Perhaps the use of idealist divisions by politicians who know the issues better is cynicism, but that does not make cynicism manifested as criticism of these idealist positions irrelevant too. Obama delineates that there are no false choices to be made between big and small government, market and intervention, liberty and security - all that remains is for the cynics to step aside, for their criticism and reluctance are the sole obstacle between vision and reality.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

While I admire Obama's Niebuhrian rhetoric here, Obama grossly simplifies the nature of alliances and convictions. We sacrifice our convictions to maintain our alliances - the United Nations tolerated the totalitarian USSR to defeat fascism, and dictatorships to defeat communism. Nor do I particularly think Obama should dress up any of our challenges today in the garb of the simplified binary rhetoric of world war or cold war. We do not live in a world where our enemies are on one side and our friends another, nor is there any one single struggle that dominates our agenda that can sift nations in such a manner. We face a complex strategic environment where states that befriend us to solve one issue will stonewall us on others.

We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment - a moment that will define a generation - it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all. For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies.

I do not find the call to embody the nationalist ethos as disturbing as I am sure some on the libertarian right will, not because I support blindly a government that believes the main problem with its citizens is that they are too individualist, but because this sort of rhetoric is endemic to American politics. After reading Bacevich's New American Militarism, too, one might describe wrapping policies and attitudes in battle flags as the sort of militaristic rhetoric a cynical politician might employ. More importantly, though, we see the main obstacle to success is not the failure of our policies or an overconfidence in our capabilities, but the failure of Americans to adequately embrace the attitude of optimism. It seems like a rhetorical fail-safe - criticizing or resisting any aspect of this ambitious transformation sows the seeds for its failures. Obama may support bipartisanship, but in a campaign that was based on hope, his administration will need to fight not necessarily the voices of Republicans but of doubt. It is a tough fight and not one I think is particularly wise. Because ultimately, the voice of cynicism can be a voice of reason, and we should be careful in these four years of presumed change and renewed hope about making an enemy of it.

Confirmation

2009-01-14T23:07:00.010-05:00

Steve Walt has an interesting take on the Clinton confirmation hearings. I tend to go on about how a major difference between partisan policies nowadays is ultimately not whether we exert too much power or too little, but who's exerting it. Hence a Democratic administration that speaks not of "soft power" but of "smart power." Now, while many progressives have cheered the latter as an effective re-branding of the former, Clinton explicitly states it will involve a mix of both military and diplomatic means - "the full range of tools at our disposal. With 'smart power,' diplomacy will be the vanguard of foreign policy." Which all sounds well and good, but what really differentiates it from, say, the second term of the Bush administration? Or many other recent Presidencies? Clinton, as Walt points out, seem to think that if we can just not be the Bush administration, it will be the beloved 1990s again. Americans, remembering the other Clinton, may be inclined to agree. But we're not going back to the 1990s and we can't try acting like we did in the 1990s and expect it to work very well. But clearly, the overriding message throughout most Democratic candidates has never been to claim the exertion of power is wrong, but that power has been squandered or misused. The fundamental insight that we seem to be lacking is that we are becoming less powerful relative to other countries and certainly less powerful relative to our objectives. It is not a matter of "smart power," it is a matter of smart policy to guide that power.

Walt's enumeration of Hillary's unmanageably and impossibly large list of "priorities" is perhaps too kind. Delineating each distinct objective, there are maybe 37 priority items dealing with perhaps 70 or more countries, excluding the rest which would doubtlessly be involved given the profligacy of "global" objectives. Who can imagine what the secondary and tertiary goals of this Department would be? As Walt points out, Clinton's recognition that priorities must actually be prioritized and realistically evaluated does not seem to reflect in her list of primary goals. There seems to be little acknowledgement of what efforts will come at the expense of others, and what goals may prove to be contradictory. For example, the idea that America will have a foreign policy consistent with its democratic values and principles while promoting human rights everywhere possible without being ideological seems a bit dubious as a 'non-ideological' policy. To many in the rest of the world, our commitment to democracy and human rights appears very ideological, and thus pursuing these goals may not be compatible with say, winning the war on Afghanistan which will require the aid of Central Asian countries with some autocratic tendencies. Can we simultaneously engage and strengthen our alliances India and Pakistan in a productive manner? Strengthen NATO and pursue a pragmatic Russian policy? Our foreign policy seems to be not only that we can have our cake and eat it too, but also have NATO, the UN, the G8 bake us cakes that we can continue to both have and eat.

Don't worry, though. We'll sort it out with smart power.

Wars without ends don't easily justify means

2009-01-13T17:34:00.005-05:00

The debate over Israel's alleged "war crimes" at the Atlantic lead Jeffrey Goldberg to bring up an interesting point: would we criticize American troops for killing hundreds of Somalis in the battle of Mogadishu?

First off, this seems to be false equivalence. It was not American bombing that inflicted thousands of casualties, nor was the decision to undertake operations that would directly lead to civilian casualties made at the operational level by American commanders. The deaths of American troops resulted from a "kill or be killed" decision made at the tactical level by individual soldiers. Somali gunmen firing from between the legs of civilians were a direct threat to the American soldiers who returned fire. The US did not set out seeking to destroy civilian infrastructure harboring militia members - firing at civilians was an inevitable necessity for individual American troops hoping to protect their own lives. Now, during the bombing one could make a similar argument, although less directly - those Qassam rockets were not going to kill IDF airmen - but the errors being made are slightly different. American troops killed hundreds of Somali civilians because of a lack of foresight by commanders who assumed a quick and easy operation could be conducted without engaging in a protracted urban firefight. Israel, on the other hand, has planned Cast Lead for months and deliberately targeted civilian-housed arms, militant, and Hamas infrastructure. Civilian casualties were treated as a lamentable consequence, but certainly not an unforeseen one. Indeed, some commentators have argued Israel is deliberately paying less attention to collateral damage to ensure the thorough destruction of the military wing of Hamas.

Morally, Israel's actions are lamentable even though they do not likely fall under the commonly enforced definition of war crimes. Legally, they are within Israel's rights and thus justified in that sense. But strategically, they are increasingly misguided. Israel is operating towards ambiguous ends that, as stated so far, seem vastly outstripped by the damage Israel is incurring. Means must be proportional to ends, too, and if Israel is pursuing legally proportional means to a strategically impossible ends, then they are not proportional in strategic terms. Nor, if the perception Israel is waging a pointless war at great human cost, will those deaths be viewed as ethically proportional even if they are in legal terms. International norms and international law are not necessarily synchronized, and not always (as is usually assumed) in favor of military action.

A military option - hot war, or hot air?

2009-01-10T23:25:00.010-05:00

So, as the last few days of the Bush administration wind to a close, it's perhaps comforting to know we didn't live through the worst of possible outcomes. New reports reveal that, despite earlier fears and rumors, Bush ultimately rejected Israeli requests to facilitate an attack on Iran. (That being said, Sanger appears to be wrong about his first line. A JPost article I linked to earlier notes that not only did we sell Israel GBU-39s, but they're using them now in Gaza.) Now that the US has handed most of Iraqi airspace back over to Baghdad, it seems Israel's last realistic chance to hit Iran without alienating its allies has passed.

Even if you're of the persuasion that the Iranian nuclear program should be stopped by any means, you should be glad the Israeli option isn't on the table. Letting Israel attack Iran would still result in all the same negative consequences for the US (and Israel) without having anywhere near the military effectiveness of an American lead-strike. While the IDF is well-equipped, its ability to use airpower strategically pales in comparison to the United States and would fall short of the level necessary to land a killing blow on the Iranian nuclear program. The entire reason Israel needed to buy GBU-39s in the first place was so Israeli fighter aircraft (F-15s and F-16s) could project the bunker-busting power without sacrificing the range larger ordnance requires. Even then, it's questionable whether Israel could muster enough forces to hit Arak, Ishafan, or Bushehr, Iranian air defense sites and C4I centers, or significantly hamper Iran's ability to retaliate against Israel by unconventional means.

Furthermore, Israel's ability to permanently cripple the Iranian nuclear program is unlikely. Since Iran's nuclear program is far better distributed than Iraq's in 1980, their planned strike at Natanz would still leave other nuclear facilities open. Even if some of them were hit, Israel would substantially increase the incentive for Iran to develop nuclear arms to deter Israeli attack, while only setting the program back a few years. Iran would also likely expel the IAEA inspectors and reject any sort of international controls on its program. Such an attack would be politically embarrassing enough for the US and EU to allow Russia and China to quietly (if even that subtly) provide political cover and material support for Iranian military and nuclear programs.

Meanwhile, the US would hardly escape the political fallout. Using American designed planes, American built bombs, and flying through what was then American patrolled airspace, the US would have been held just as responsible even if its pilots and aircraft were not directly involved. Iranian retaliatory action in Iraq or the Persian Gulf would be likely. As for the Israelis, the fretting about the comparative handful of rockets from Palestinian refugee camps would be nothing compared to the violence of action Hezbollah could achieve with Iran's full support in a retaliatory operation (or even achieved during the 2006 conflict). While Khamenei stands opposed to utilizing Iranian volunteers as martyrs to retaliate against Gaza, there is little doubt in my mind he would be aggressively backing them to respond to an Israeli attack.

That being said, could the United States really have done any better? Would it be able to in the future?

While American strategic airpower is magnitudes greater than anything Israel could hope to muster (bombers, superior basing locations, carriers in the Gulf, and thus the ability to bring more and heavier firepower to bear), airpower alone might not have the ability to prevent an Iranian nuclear program from continuing. The Bush administration originally mulled tactical nuclear weapons to ensure the destruction of Iranian bunkers. Additionally, there's no guarantee that the people and technological skills can be bombed away with the bunkers.

So, John Robb proposed something different - but, by his own admission, still liable to unleash blowback. Instead of simply targeting Iranian nuclear infrastructure, Robb proposes collapsing the Iranian state, and thus its capability to support a nuclear program at all - using Effects-Basd Operations (EBO) to systematically undermine the Iranian regime. But the notion of EBO was discredited the year that article was written - in Lebanon, Israeli reliance on EBO lead to a fiasco. The US military has effectively renounced the concept. So if the application of airpower at any level is unlikely to achieve the desired outcomes, and a ground intervention remains entirely out of the question, can the US honestly pursue a policy where the military option is kept "on the table?"

The credible deterrence value of such a policy is unclear. For Iran to believe we would allow an open-ended conflict we are unprepared to deal with across the Middle East (and into Central Asia where Iran's influence in Afghanistan might come into play), America would be the one playing the role of a "rogue state" that does not recognize Iran's deterrent through insurgency and state sponsored terrorism. But the military option has too much value as a political signal to voters scared of an Iranian bomb, and to countries thinking of withdrawing from the non-proliferation treaty, since the prospect of two countries withdrawing from the treaty and pursuing the nuclear bomb would undermine the NPT's credibility.

So even if diplomatic engagement with Iran is ultimately necessary, does the US really have a fall-back plan for Iran? I'll throw in my ideas later...

The justice and (f)utility of force in Gaza

2009-01-06T16:12:00.011-05:00

As Israeli troops enter Gaza and the human cost of Operation Cast Lead mounts, it is becoming increasingly difficult to justify - on moral or strategic grounds - the actions of the IDF. While Israel does have a right to defend itself against attack, it is unlikely that by any standards of just war that Israel is acting proportionately. The morality of interactions between polities - the legalistic morality idealists would like to govern international affairs - does indeed entitle Israel to recourse through force of arms. But war is a broad thing - and it is the execution of this retaliation, not its initiation, that one must examine if one would like any claim to fighting a "just war."

There is a mode of thought, present among proponents of Cast Lead as it is among all modern belligerents, that cuts off its concern with moralism once victimhood entitles one to retaliation. After that point, the ends of retaliation justify the means - military necessity and political-self preservation take precedent. While this argument usually attempts to extend the morality of beginning retaliation to all aspects of its conduct, the underlying message that morality is less relevant, if not irrelevant once both sides are in combat. The only relevant morality is that which entitles the victim to retaliation. There is a case to be made for emphasizing the moral objective or achieving retaliation of winning a conflict at the expense of moral conduct in battle, but it is not one we associate with the notion of just war theory.

When a government wages a war on the proposition that protecting innocent civilians from being bombed, proportionality in its own measures, especially when they are concentrated against an enemy that is not distinct from the civilian population, is necessary. Even in WWII, when the Allies conducted a policy of "total war," that conflict's inherent basis in a state system provided grounds for waging wars against countries (ones that did not recognize in themselves a separation between people and government) with established governments. But Israel does not intend to recognize Hamas as a legitimate government, and therefore it cannot simply write off the Palestinian people's desire for safety and claim they are conducting a just war, and not just invoking the idea of one.

Our sense of proportionality is inextricable from our preferences among the belligerents. How many commentators who claimed Russia's actions in Georgia were disproportionate now support Operation Cast Lead? This is likely why the notion of just war will remain more an elastic clause for belligerents than what it was intended as - an actual constraint on the use of force. Instead, it has become an enabler.

That being said, the ultimate reality of the situation is that even if Israel were to embrace a consequentialist outlook and use whatever means necessary to destroy Hamas, it will doom Cast Lead to failure. Israel's goal of destroying Hamas will prove incompatible with its goal of protecting its population without being forced to conduct a long occupation. Even as the IDF estimates it is killing and capturing hundreds of terrorists a day, more rockets keep falling on Israel. Destroying Hamas would likely require a long operation that approaches the problem in keeping with successful counterinsurgency tactics. Because counterinsurgency and modern warfare has become population-centric, simply going out and killing all of the terrorists is not possible and will not be helpful. Without a significant and sustained military presence, it is unlikely Israel will be able to remove Hamas from the fabric of Palestinian society or , and once Israel does leave Hamas can claim a propaganda victory since Hamas, contrary to Israel's aims, still exists as an armed force. Even if Hamas were to be destroyed, Ehud Barak's objective of ensuring there is "no terror activity in Gaza" would not be achieved. More radical groups like Islamic Jihad, who've been waiting for this war all along, could step in to fill the power vacuum. Gaza without Hamas would be more anarchic and unpredictable than before.

I do not expect the United States to make an all-out effort to resolve this misguided conflict, (especially since our diplomatic sympathies lie deeply enough with Israel to favor its perspective). Nor, ultimately, would it likely be able to. Ehud Barak and the Israeli government are acting out of their own interests and needs, and we will not make much headway in convincing the Israelis not to do so. America has its own share of flawed wars that need attention, and regional crises of much more direct relevance to American interests. There are some who would like to hand Israel-Palestine over to Clinton as soon as Obama is in office (Israel's ground operations will most likely be done with). Some Clinton proponents believed she would be the perfect Secretary of State to handle negotiations, thanks to her credibility among Israeli hawks, past sympathies for Palestinians and association with the most peaceful and (potentially) productive periods in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. But in the wake of Cast Lead, staking her credibility and legacy to dealing with an intractable conflict that will be of secondary importance to our own wars (and their necessary regional diplomatic efforts) does not strike me as a particularly good idea.

Finance, Industrial Policy and The Limits of Power

2009-01-03T06:40:00.004-05:00

I've been reading a lot of Andrew Bacevich lately, and while I may not be enamored with all of his diagnosis or prescriptions for the ailing American hegemon, they are impossible to ignore. At the very least lend a very useful framework for analyzing our present predicament. One of Bacevich's most important observations on domestic politics is that an ideology of "National Security" has, for the past 60 years, justified a relentless expansion of executive power.

TARP has given this expansion new relevance. Because bailout plans are guaranteed to fail if their credibility is undermined by major changes, the short-term well being of the economy is hostage to the will and whimsy of the executive branch. In Bacevich's latest book, America's economic ills consist of its entitlement to a culture of consumption and its underpinnings - cheap credit, cheap oil, and cheap imported goods. As far as economic policy goes, the conservative Bacevich savages Reagan's rhetoric of indulgent individualism. Because economic debate in the United States remains a left vs. right, government vs. market affair (even as the President once decried as "laissez-faire" does more to move America towards "socialism" than any has in years), it is tempting to analyze Bacevich in the same way. Such rhetoric compels the disgruntled to come away from The Limits of Power with a worldview that finds free market ideology complicit with this culture of consumption, and thus the obvious solution with a stronger government that can rein in finance, promote alternative energy and rebuild American industry to wean it off of imports. Reject "market fundamentalism," and the culture of consumption might wither away.

But such an interpretation is naive, if not delusional. If anything, Bacevich's thesis that our economic addictions are rooted beneath the veneer of partisan politics requires us to recognize it as naive and delusional. We have already seen a massive expansion in government power and reining in of the free market, and it has only served to further promote the underpinnings of this "culture of consumption." We have spent over a trillion already and potentially guarantee trillions more to ensure access to credit. The business cycle has taken care of cheap oil for us. As for cheap imported goods, perhaps the government might take a step in the "right" direction. But if you asked me, the widening trade deficit is more a symptom of our refusal to save than of a dangerous reliance on foreign products.

The evolving manifestations of America's insatiable entitlement have substituted government for the market to facilitate its addiction to consumption-fueled growth. The ideology of "National Security" may now find a new place in the bailout debates and industrial policy. Wesley Clark insists that the maintenance of American military power relies on the protection of our auto industry, and justifies his claims with a variety of arguments similar to those The Limits of Power targets. Take one paragraph:

In a little more than a year, the Army has procured and fielded in Iraq more than a thousand so-called mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles. The lives of hundreds of soldiers and marines have been saved, and their tasks made more achievable, by the efforts of the American automotive industry. And unlike in World War II, America didn’t have to divert much civilian capacity to meet these military needs. Without a vigorous automotive sector, those needs could not have been quickly met.

The ideology of "National Security" in The Limits of Power functions as an elastic clause to justify whatever the United States would prefer to do in the interest of power. In this case, Clark identifies the interests of American national security not just with equipping its massive military, but in paving the way for its transformation into fighting counterinsurgency and the war on terror. But he also implies that such debt is necessary so that these wars can be fought without influencing civilian life, hoping to insulate Americans from even indirect civic liability in their conflicts.

We should not be surprised if economic nationalist rhetoric strengthens its rhetoric of national security. The steel industry is never far behind in making similar arguments. While it may seem outlandish to read all such articles through the lens of Bacevich's thesis, it is important to fully absorb the book's argument. The culture of consumption and faith in militarism that brought us to this point was not the making of any one person or party. Neither will the effort that overcomes it be. If we accept his criticism of the past, we must recognize its relevance to our present and future, regardless of who is leading us.

I do not consider Bacevich one of the best critics of the Bush administration because I agree with him entirely (I do not think we can so easily and confidently revert to the purely defensive, conventional military posture he advocates, among other things). I consider Bacevich one of the best critics of the Bush administration because he understands the Bush administration's worst flaws in their proper context - not as the sole responsibility of some cabal that has hijacked America, but as the manifestation of long-term trends at all levels of government and society that both parties and most Americans have comfortably allowed to run rampant, if not encouraged. The root problems will not disappear simply because the party has changed even if the symptoms manifest themselves differently. The most sobering part of The Limits of Power is that we can see the trends it identifies continuing to manifest themselves today. Obsession with immediate economic gratification at the expense of managing debt, messianic ambitions of America's role in world affairs, a national security strategy focused on the "imperial periphery" and the appropriation of the concept to justify the interests of selfish interests in a broken system - these have not disappeared. The current iterations of these actions - the financial bailout, the move away from reducing budget deficits, our desire to regain moral world leadership and fix Afghanistan, to help American industries - are arguably more justified and clear-sighted than those of the Bush administration. But as the country waits in anticipation of the inauguration and an era of change, it is important to remember not only the limits the Bush administration came up against in exercising power abroad, but the limits we will face in truly changing how it is exercised.

You Break America, You Buy American?

2009-01-03T05:35:00.004-05:00

Chrysler is set to get a $4 billion loan from the US Treasury to aid its restructuring, the latest in a line of concessions to the American auto industry. I remain skeptical of the utility of these measures. At best, they will likely continue to struggle against foreign automakers with plants in other US States. At worst, there are now concerns we will set off a new wave of beggar-thy-neighbor policies, where "ghosts of Smoot and Hawley... will not announce themselves in their full protectionist garb."

Advocates of industry bailouts declaim criticism of these rescue packages as hypocrites and union-bashers, who would shovel trillions to Wall Street fraudsters whose con games with imaginary money created this mess, while scorning the real, Main Street Americans in Detroit who "make things" and are merely the victims of corporate greed and corruption. However, until financial liquidity is based on the provision of automobiles and not dollars, the same standards simply do not apply. Indeed, our government is theoretically ensuring trillions of dollars to prop up the financial sector. But that does not mean that other industries automatically deserve similar treatment.

No, the real problem with bailout hypocrisy will come when other American industries start demanding their own bailouts, handouts, and government directed favoritism. After all, Americans make more than just cars, and they have stopped buying more than just cars since this recession has hit. The process has already begun with Obama's proposed economic stimulus. The steel industry, for instance, has asked that a "buy American" clause be inserted into any stimulus legislation. Given that the most likely stimulus packages will focus heavily on infrastructure, this would amount to billions in guaranteed purchases of American steel. Theoretically the Keynesian multiplier effect would justify these costs, since the steel workers could in turn spend money and stimulate the economy further. But with the stimulus multiplier of 1.1 or lower likely and other potential pitfalls and inefficiencies to fiscal policy, it would make more sense to provide as many public goods as possible at the lowest cost. That means buying cheaper raw materials even if they come from abroad.

This is more important than just saving money by buying cheaper foreign products, though. Countries like China are desperate to provide some form of stimulus through exports, as their own citizens and governments are unlikely to provide an increase in consumption or spending significant enough to prevent serious slowdowns. In steel, for example, China may already be promoting its companies to export. Should we mix economic recovery with economic nationalism, these countries will have to respond with programs of economic nationalism of their own to compensate for being shut out abroad. Between Treasury involving itself in industry and not just finance and the potential of a "buy American" stimulus, perhaps these claims that fiscal policy might lead to global trade wars may not be so alarmist after all.

The Last Shots of 2008

2008-12-30T16:58:00.004-05:00

A month ago I referred to relying on resolving the Kashmir dispute to accomplish our foreign policy goals in South Asia is akin to relying on resolving the Arab-Israeli dispute to accomplish our foreign policy goals in the Middle East. So, true to form, the ceasefire in Gaza has erupted into violence that may lead up to a major ground offensive.

Just as in Kashmir, we would have to put pressure on a nominally allied country to gain the favor of Muslims. It is unlikely we will see any sort of grand settlement without moving Israel closer to its pre-1967 borders or stopping settlement in the West Bank. Meanwhile, that we supply Israel with billions in military arms does little to endear us to the Palestinians or the broader Islamic community.

That being said, Israel is acting entirely within its rights and responsibilities as a sovereign country. When Hamas launches rockets at Israeli homes, Israel is obligated to retaliate against Hamas. Putting pressure on Israel to make concessions as it responds to these attacks may seem like the sensible step for peace negotiations, but in all likelihood it would only strengthen hawks and reduce our leverage as a broker of negotiations, even if it enhanced our credibility among Palestinians.

So far Operation "Cast Lead" seems to be proceeding well for the Israelis. According to most reports, the IDF has caught Hamas unprepared and landed heavy blows against infrastructure and logistics. Thanks to this surprise advantage (and some new ordnance from Uncle Sam), Israel's tactics of using airstrikes seem to be working reasonably effectively so far, with "50 percent" of capability for rocket attack eliminated. (The IDF actually started its own Youtube channel to highlight its "precision bombing" in Gaza, while Arab networks have already brought Gaza to the center of their attention.)

But with 20,000 Hamas fighters in Gaza and the party's non-military wing firmly embedded in the Strip's social services, it's going to take more than a bombing campaign to destroy their operational capability. So far, the Israeli government has alluded to new phases of operations, possibly involving ground troops in an operation "to totally change the rules of the game." Even if this was enough to destroy Hamas, would Israel really want to? Because destroying Hamas would require destroying the government of Gaza, does Israel really have a Phase IV planned to pick up the pieces?

On top of all of this, the man who has the most riding on Operation Cast Lead, Ehud Barak, is also the man most to bring progress in negotiations - and with the election coming up soon, he cannot afford to bring Israel another July War.

In Afghanistan, Pakistan's offensive against the insurgents in Pashtunistan has closed off the Peshawar corridor. Since the majority of our supplies come through Pakistan, this is just one more reason why they will have to remain an ally in the war on terror. But since this route is becoming less and less reliable, we will need a new solution. This requires us to deal with two possible alternatives:

Strengthening the route through Russia into Central Asia. This means dropping human rights claims against the 'stans and increasing our reliance on Russia through rail transport. While Russia is generally glad NATO is doing its job in Afghanistan and fighting Islamic terror there, this course isn't particularly palatable to people concerned about human rights or worried about Russia's future course.
Trying to open the "East-West Corridor" from the Caucasus across the Caspian into Central Asia. Once again, we have to concede human rights issues to countries like Uzbekistan. This time, though, we would likely end up increasing our military presence in the Caucasus in a way Russia would be very unhappy with, possibly stressing the Western European NATO members who fear they will suffer the most from Russia's response to American penetration of the post-Soviet sphere.

An Afghan Awakening?

2008-12-24T02:09:00.004-05:00

The US is hoping to launch a second "Awakening" of tribal militias - this time in Afghanistan. While this idea might seem commendable, the more one examines Afghanistan, the less viable it seems without some significant changes from how it was accomplished in Iraq. While it will be important that we bring Afghans in the South and East who might otherwise ally themselves with the fundamentalist militias on board, accomplishing this by empowering the militias themselves will likely be a major mistake. Iraq's government had far more credibility at the national and local level, and provided both a pathway for integrating the militias in such a way that the government could eventually monopolize force in those areas, and in the transition could theoretically check potential excesses on the part of the Sons of Iraq, and thus helped balance power between combatant factions.

In Afghanistan, however, actual local governance is incredibly weak, since many officials aren't elected but appointed. If we pursue these tactics, we will be delegating more power to the tribes and people of Afghanistan in some ways, yes, but we will not be doing so in a sustainable manner. The Awakening in Iraq is working because it built on ties between Sunni communities and the militias; through the plan to integrate the militia members with the government, it in turn helped bind the militias to the government and thus would help reinforce the credibility of the Shia dominated government to Sunnis. The militia program in Afghanistan, however, seems to bypass the idea of building government credibility or ties between the militias and the government entirely:

During a weekend visit, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. focus on establishing a strong central government in Afghanistan may have been "overstated." He said the U.S. would now focus more on "enabling the communities, the tribes and their leaders."

"How strong the central government will be in the future, I think, is yet to be determined," he told reporters.

This is focusing on a legitimate problem but responding in a very risky way. I certainly have been critical of a Kabul-centric Afghan policy. That said, I don't think the solution is to create a parallel security force that does what the government is supposed to. Now, the creation of these militias is indeed only a first phase, but until we can integrate them with the de jure local governments they will require constant US handling to prevent them from further destabilizing Afghanistan in the long run. However, that integration cannot be effective until the people of Afghansitan see their local governments as legitimate, which means without fixing the problem of governance in Afghanistan this entire effort may be wasted.

To be fair, similar criticisms were voiced at the beginning of the Anbar Awakening, and fortunately many of these fears have not (yet) been realized. But again: different country, different problems. As we've already seen, Afghanistan there are the issues of governance to sort out. But there are also underlying problems in our military strategy, too. Where the United States had a significant ground presence in Sunni-dominated areas in Iraq, the ground presence in the turbulent regions of Afghanistan has proven inadequate. America cannot effectively combat today's hostile militias because when Americans (or whatever other ISAF force there is) go back to their bases, the Taliban can control the countryside. Replace "Taliban" with "warlords" and one can see why revitalizing non-governmental militias could be so dangerous. If warlords do come to control these militias, checking them will not be easy, since they, not the US, not ISAF, and not the Afghan government, will have the last words. Counterinsurgency needs to be population-centric to succeed, and without our soldiers being deployed accordingly, the militia strategy will indeed be counterproductive. If we do not want to send another hundred thousand or more troops into Afghanistan for a long, long time, we will need to begin deploying our men into the midst of the villages we hope to defend. Such a strategy may carry a higher cost in both blood and treasure, but there is no easy way to win this war.

Also in the news...

As the global economy flounders, Russia is organizing the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, in hopes of... "not creating a cartel." Keep in mind that Putin came up with the idea of a "Gas OPEC" in 2002 and that Gazprom board member and nominal Russian "executive" Medvedev hoped this organization would achieve OPEC's level of influence. How such an organization could achieve OPEC's influence without the power to manipulate the flow of gas is beyond me. And while yes, there are Russian ships cruising in the Carribbean again, those interested in geopolitics should be more concerned about Russia's energy deals than its military deployments. Russia's fleet is still not a viable challenge to the US on the open seas, and even if the era of "cheap gas" and today's falling energy prices ends, it still won't be enough - even when the gap between the US and USSR was narrowest, the US still had a clear naval advantage outside of the USSR's regional waters. However, because Gazprom intends to invest more in energy resources outside the post-Soviet sphere, Latin America is more important to the Kremlin for economic reasons than military ones. While countries like Bolivia and Venezuela are ideologically opposed to American influence and globalization, this does serve as a good reminder of why the US needs to stay politically active and economically open around the world - there are countries waiting to pick up where we left off, and they may not use such an advantage to our best interests.

Piling it On

2008-12-01T17:31:00.006-05:00

This is not looking like a good week for optimists.

The NBER threw in the towel and decided that despite the discrepancy between quarterly GDP forecasts and the official definition, the US downturn started in December 2007. Before people start grumbling about the worthless academics taking too long to get in touch with reality, remember when the stimulus package to "real Americans" was supposed to save the economy? Those were the days...

Mankiw and Cowen have good NYT editorials on the economy, in particular on what lessons we should really be taking from the '30s.

But, you shouldn't become too wrapped up in worrying about the economy. According to a bipartisan Congressional task force, you should also be worried about an attack on the US using weapons of mass destruction, the odds of which "are now better than even" between now and 2013. The report points out that a biological attack is more likely than a nuclear one, though nuclear proliferation and the destabilization of Pakistan will make loose nuclear weapons likely threats. It says the next attack on the US will also most likely originate from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan.

But, before we decide to stick to that promised policy of preemptive intervention to kill terrorists on Pakistani soil, it might be worth considering the precedent we're setting. Because there's a country that already has and it believes it has been once again attacked by terrorists based in Pakistan. Already, India has taken Obama's stance to indicate that it too has the right to kick down doors in the pursuit of justice. As Robert Kaplan, India faces a far graver threat from Islamic terrorism than the United States does.

Yet a policy that allows such attack on India's part could easily end up with a nuclear exchange - note that Pakistan does not have a "no first-use" policy on nuclear arms. While launching nuclear weapons at the United States would be futile, Pakistan does have a credible deterrent against India. This will likely be the second time that the United States must navigate its way through an Indo-Pakistani crisis while fighting the war on terror in Afghanistan.

Calls for Obama to take the "regional approach" and use Kashmir to convince Pakistan to contribute more troops to dealing with Islamic fundamentalists in its own borders and cease support for them outside of them seem more unrealistic than ever. India was hostile to the idea before the attacks, it will not be amenable to them now. The ideal outcome would be greater cooperation between the two powers on counterterrorism, but this is incredibly unlikely. As tensions increase, the US will find that Kashmir negotiations will not be able to proceed without taking sides, and treating Kashmir as a way to deal with American concerns about Afghanistan will inevitably draw the US to a pro-Pakistani line.

India has endured decades of Islamist violence on its own soil. If this sort of thing happened to the United States, we'd have taken up Armitage's cry and bombed them into the stone age. But we cannot expect that they will continue to tolerate such tragedies in a manner conducive to our goals. One way or another, Indians will feel compelled to respond. Relying on the Kashmir approach to win the war on terror is not viable. India, for its part, however, must improve its counterterrorist efforts. Watching Indian footage, city police fired at Kalashnikov-wielding terrorists with ancient bolt-action rifles while the response of more professional units has not impressed American analysts either. While there's obviously a lot more than small arms deficiencies that contributed to the problem, they are symptomatic of a deeper problem. India has invested well in its regular military but left the provincial-level counterterrorist and police forces underfunded. Terrorist attacks are thus more effective against India, and India cannot respond with its regular military without triggering a nuclear crisis. (We, too, struggle with managing the traditional gap between domestic law enforcement and the use of our military abroad. Fortunately we've managed to get by without a nuclear war scare... So far.)

The important thing to remember during all of this is that al Qaeda is hoping we'll overreact. Based on the latest tapes, they're having trouble coming up with an effective message against Obama without any policies of his they can criticize. Al Qaeda needs to provoke Obama into making a big mistake that involves perceived aggression and injustice against Muslims to maintain its base of support. This is something his cabinet should keep in mind as January 20th approaches. While I still take issue with sending Hillary Clinton to Foggy Bottom, I'm far more pleased with Obama's other national security picks. That being said, no matter what happens to the economy, sidelining foreign policy will come with consequences. Obama had really better trust his staff, because he is going to be a busy, busy man.

Pirates & More on Pakistan

2008-11-24T15:40:00.003-05:00

With Somali piracy back in the international spotlight, I'd figure now would be a good time to relate the issues of Somalia to the wider world - because what's happening does reflect on larger trends, and the immediate problem is not to be discounted either.

The largest tanker organization in the world called for a UN-lead naval blockade of Somalia. Citing the immense area of pirate operations, they have deduced that short of arming or escorting every tanker, intercepting pirate vessels before they reach shipping routes is the only effective prevention. Now, while this seems logical in theory, it will be much more difficult to implement in practice. Relying on the United Nations to stabilize Somalia has a pretty poor track record. However, it may be difficult for the United States to draw in non-NATO powers without one. Reluctance to intervene without a mandate aside, the Somali piracy episode is illuminating the effects of America's decline in relative power.

Proponents of stabilizing hegemons might note that American dominance cannot perform a function that seemed to be a given a decade ago - protecting the sea lanes and providing the basic security necessary for free trade. Unless the UN can effectively step in to create a genuine partnership to secure the seas, the natural result will be great power intervention. Though domestic concerns will make it difficult for Americans to concern themselves with a region that's frustrated us for the past 15 years, we should not be surprised when other powers pick up where we left off. Since rising and resurgent powers lack true blue water navies, the United States must recognize that a contribution by other great powers to stability in the Gulf of Aden must come with an expansion of rival powers' naval bases. The expansion of naval bases will further the decline in relative American power and de facto balance against US interests and capabilities.

On the other hand, the other great powers would be just fine with the US and NATO dealing with the problem. Russia's Ambassador to NATO suggested that they launch an invasion of the Somali coast. Of course, Russia may have ulterior motives for wishing such a maneuver. After all, with an American war in Iraq, a NATO war in Afghanistan and many other commitments, every new NATO deployment outside of Eurasia is one that may force western troops to leave Russia's desired "sphere of influence."

Speaking of which, go check out the Global Trends 2025 report.

Keep watching Pakistan. As support for Kashmir negotiations continues to grow in the west, it's important to remember just how risky pinning our hopes in Afghanistan on Kashmir will be.

Firstly, alienating India (as would be necessary to placate the Pakistani Army) will risk Afghanistan's long term stability, as India has been a major investor in Afghanistan and will likely play a large role in the region when NATO leaves. Secondly, negotiating on Kashmir does not automatically make fighting Afghanistan easier. Pakistan would have to decide India was no longer a threat, even though the rising wealth disparity due to India's economic success will likely contribute to a widening gap in relative military power. Ongoing religious/nationalist enmity will continue, and will likely be amplified in India as the US is forced to placate Pakistan. Even if Pakistan still didn't feel that India was its primary threat, it would have to remake its military for counterinsurgency warfare. Just as the surge required tactical and operational changes to work, so too will units trained and equipped to fight conventional warfare against India have to adapt to the nature of the NWFP and FATA conflict. Considering we arguably have yet to make this move, it may be unreasonable to expect the Pakistanis to do the same.

Furthermore, we must remember Islamic fundamentalists will have grievances with the Pakistani government for supporting the US and for its failure to live up to cultural, political, and economic expectations, regardless of how Kashmir goes. The fighting on the frontier will not disappear because not all terrorists and insurgents have the same motivations. If Pakistan feels it must play off tribal groups and political factions against each other to succeed (a tactic we should not complain about, given our trumpeting of the success of the surge), they will. Indeed, Pakistan supports anti-American and fundamentalist groups not only to fight against India in Kashmir, but so they can fight against anti-government groups on the frontier. Will support for these groups end, too? Dealing with Kashmir certainly won't end the radicalizing effect of American occupation in Afghanistan and intervention in Pakistan.

Relying on Kashmir to fix Afghanistan is similar to relying on Palestine to fix America's Middle Eastern problems. It is a nice idea on paper and could yield benefits if resolved in a manner pleasing both sides, but it has proven incredibly difficult to accomplish effectively. At least we have a well-established team of public servants with Arab-Israeli expertise. Do the same resources exist for Kashmir? What's worse, unlike in the Palestinian debate, America has a significant national interest in maintaining good relations with both sides. While America can afford to disagree with Israel and has already dealt with alienating the Palestinians, America needs the support of Pakistan in Afghanistan and India in broader, strategic terms. And, like Israel and Palestine, even when we manage to get the negotiations right, there are still plenty of other grievances against the US. We've had to have a Plan B for a Middle Eastern policy without the resolution of Israel and Palestine. What's our Plan B for dealing with South Asia without resolving Kashmir?

Eurasian Rumor Mill

2008-11-16T20:20:00.002-05:00

Interesting day for news in Afghanistan...

First up is Karzai's offer to protect Mullah Omar (whose head is worth $10 million as far as the US is concerned) so long as he agrees to hold talks with Kabul. If ISAF or anyone else has a problem, Karzai said they could remove him or leave Afghanistan - unappealing options for a coalition that is committed to an Afghanistan that is both stable and democratic. I doubt Omar trusts the Afghans to protect him that well, but if they could (and kept their word), it might put the US and its new President in an unenviable situation.

Another interesting development: Apparently, Gordon Brown floated the idea of placing Chinese troops in Afghanistan. Though there hasn't been much to substantiate this report, if true, could signal an interesting development in Chinese policy. One possibility is that the Chinese want to prove they're a responsible member of the international community, prepared to work with the west on common issues (after all, China has its own issues with Islamic militants in Xinjiang). Fighting in Afghanistan would give Chinese troops valuable counterinsurgency experience and allow them to observe the COIN tactics of other coalition members. The other possibility is that China might finally want to make the inroads into Central Asia commensurate with its status as a world power. Many analysts have speculated that China is preparing to get into Central Asia to secure its borders (by developing Xinjiang and Tibet through trade) and economic resources (energy, energy, energy).

From a realpolitik angle, building up a presence in Central Asia could provide China with access to resources the US cannot easily exclude. Despite a generally warm attitude and a vital trade relationship, China remains paranoid about its reliance on sea transport across the Indian Ocean for many of its raw material imports, since the US Navy patrols the Straits of Malacca. It's just one reason why the US cannot afford to shun free trade or economic integration with China if it wishes to avoid the pitfalls of multipolarity.

Medvedev changes his tune on Obama... Sort of. Given the combination of the missile movements and now this supposed overture, Medvedev may be putting on a bit of political theater to put the onus on Obama to make concessions even as he tries to embarrass or frustrate American goals. Such maneuvering would sour the strategic or domestic political climate to making those concessions, allowing Medvedev to sour Russian opinion about Obama by making it appear as if he is less reasonable or cooperative than otherwise believed. Given what occurred in Iran after the congratulatory letter incident, we may want to expect this sort of thing as more anti-Bush leaders attempt to shore up domestic credibility in the wake of Obama's victory.

Transitional Rumors, International Omens

2008-11-14T22:39:00.006-05:00

The big buzz about Obama's foreign policy is that Hillary Clinton is going to be Obama's secretary of state. It seems like a brilliant political move - something you'd expect from a guy who's read Team of Rivals. However, I question the wisdom of such a decision.

Obama needs to be heading into the real world, 2009, not cleaning up old grudges from 2008. Of course Obama, as a politician, is going to want to consolidate his support and prevent an internal struggle that one would expect from a big-tent political party like the Democrats. However, American foreign policy is already losing attention to the economy and it cannot afford to lose any more attention to domestic political maneuvering. To be frank, Obama's foreign policy is not going to work itself out. Once the soft power buzz of his own election wears off (and it will not be long), the President will need to attempt to help keep old allies on board, warm relations with former friends, and carefully engage rivals and enemies. Thanks to American unipolarity, the last two administrations have relied on force and the absence of balancing rivals to assert American diplomatic objectives. America's economic stability contributed to these ambitious foreign policies. With a general decline in relative American power (due more to the rise of others ) and the potential for economic disaster at home, the US will have its work cut out for it abroad.

Managing the complex negotiations to come - and all their attendant trade-offs, treaties, and concessions - will require an exceptional secretary of state. While many foreign leaders respect and admire Obama, once they begin interacting with him at the negotiating table questions of national interest will take precedence. Hillary Clinton is not entirely unqualified to be secretary of state. But she is by far not the most qualified, and claims that her experience as first lady will offer some unique advantage are mostly irrelevant. Firstly, the US already has the soft power namedropping advantage - his name is Barack Obama. Secondly, the first lady functions in a PR role, not as a major negotiator and her friendliness with the leaders of the '90s is not pertinent to today's leadership. Whatever personal connections she formed then, many are with leaders out of office now, or who never had to have Mrs. Clinton tell them anything they didn't want to hear. Memories of the good times will quickly fade when those countries national security and economic concerns go on the line. These personal connections also fail to address the secretary of state's biggest challenge - working with states like Iran, Syria, and North Korea that the US has previously shunned diplomatically.

As for secretary of defense, word is that Robert Gates will be held on for the transition. It's a good call and I hope that those rumors are true. Gates has done a lot to turn around American defense strategy, and given that Obama will be more than busy enough during the transition, it would be good to keep a competent, relatively strategically compatible cabinet member managing things to minimize disruption to American defense policy and distraction from the economic agenda.

Elsewhere, I suspect the Obama administration is keeping a close eye on what's happening in the DRC and Rwanda. The situation is already ugly and may be spiralling further out of control, as neighboring countries volunteer deploying their own "peacekeeping" forces in a scene reminiscent of foreign interventions of previous decades. Obama (not to mention his staff) has said a lot about humanitarian intervention. Given that a humanitarian operation in the Congo is more plausible from an international perspective (no great power like China looming over, and stronger, broadly supported UN presence), it may be the site of this administration's first big humanitarian intervention rather than Darfur.

Other places to watch out for - North Korea. China is taking Kim's disappearing act very seriously, and regime change could drastically alter US plans for the region. From Pakistan, we have the usual bad news and then the (seemingly) unusual bad news. It's worth remembering that the Iranians dislike the Sunni fundamentalist Taliban about as much as we do, and cooperating in stabilizing the region could be one of the fruits of a truly grand (though by no means assured) bargain with Tehran.

Also, this bit of Hayden's assessment of al Qaeda is interesting. Osama is cut off from regular AQ operations and focused more on his own survival - good. But what this should tell us is that we should not prioritize killing or capturing him over the broader effort against al Qaeda. One of the reasons why terrorism cannot be treated purely as a law enforcement issue is that AQ's organizational structure is complex and flexible enough to endure disruptions to its leadership. If we have to go into Pakistan guns blazing to take out someone already out of the organizational loop, we are probably going to create a lot more anti-American Pakistanis without necessarily severely disrupting AQ's ability to conduct a retaliatory attack. This isn't to say getting OBL isn't important, it's just an example of how we need to balance political objectives in the wider strategic context. An attitude that sees killing OBL as the "game over" in the fight against AQ will be disappointing at best and counterproductive at worst.

On another note, congratulations to General Ann Dunwoody, America's first female four-star general.

The world isn't waiting

2008-11-09T23:08:00.005-05:00

While Americans (and to some extent, everyone else) have a lot to be excited about, it sure hasn't taken long for the post-election euphoria to wear away. Obama's judgment and temperament helped him win the election, they will be among his best attributes going forward. However, Americans must remember that they are neither infallible nor may they necessarily lead to the policies we've come to expect.

On fiscal matters, the money for Obama's healthcare and other spending plans is gone - spent in the Paulson bailout plan. At least Paulson is moving towards the Dodd plan equity stake strategy rather than directly purchasing toxic assets, but the plan is (as we must expect) far from perfect. However, the fact remains that our financial sector is too vital to collapse - it is the engine of growth for our economy, especially in the long term. Eliminating or rolling back the bailout plan would be disastrous - not just for the immediate impact on the market, but for creating a climate of uncertainty hostile to investment. Nor will Obama's tax plans help very much. During a recession, increasing taxes on the very wealthiest and capital gains will have diminishing marginal returns - recessions, especially centered in the financial sector, will disproportionately reduce the incomes of wealthy investors (even if they suffer far less than ordinary Americans in absolute terms).

Though we should not foolishly cling to the impossibility of balancing the budget, we must spend wisely. So when the Big Three begin requesting billions in their own bailouts, we should not be so eager to appease them. While the auto industry and media will naturally claim that these companies, like the banks, are "too big to fail," the reality is that finance and manufacturing play vastly different roles in the American economy. Without solvent banks, simple but incredibly vital economic functions - saving and loaning money, for example, come into peril. Allowing for massive amounts of bank failures deprives the market of liquidity, crippling economic growth and innovation (starting a new company requires investment, after all). Car companies simply cannot claim to be this vital to the American economy, however important they are. Though undoubtedly the Big Three will get some form of bailout (Obama wouldn't want someone like Mitt Romney taking the industrial Midwest in 2012), it is likely this money could be better spent elsewhere. The jobs lost by these major companies will be highly visible - but not the jobs that will be lost in other companies due to the difference in allocation of resources. Even if someone were to point out this unemployment, the natural response would be, "good thing we bailed out those automakers, or they'd have gone under too!"

America cannot afford to constantly prop up every industry whose management and labor organizations legislate themselves into stagnation. We have bailed out the Big Three in better times - why do we think doing it now will help them finally achieve the magical recovery they've wanted? Even if we did stipulate the management be sacked and some new visionary team be put in place, can we really expect them to fix when even successful automakers are facing a hard year? Eventually, Washington will have to realize that doing the best thing for the workers will mean spending more money on new industries and trade adjustment assistance. This is the economic equivalent of "Weekend at Bernie's," and at some point we may have to stop waiting for the miracle that makes Detroit great again.

How far Obama deviates from his original platform is still unknown, but we should not be too shocked when - not if - he does. We can only hope that the deviations he does make will be positive - like promoting global cooperation on recovery by affirming free trade.

As for foreign policy, goodwill has failed to erase many of the expected dilemmas. On election day, Russia forced Obama to take Eastern Europe's side of the missile defense dispute by deploying missiles to Kaliningrad. This, combined with his preference for Ukrainian and Georgian NATO membership, will make Russian cooperation on Iran more difficult. Speaking of Iran, don't hold your breath for a great breakthrough there, either. Within days of the election, the mood of the BBC went from this to this. As for Pakistan, the economic crisis has only made intervening in the country more dangerous, while the recent calls for mediating the Kashmir dispute have the potential to harm our interests in the region even more. Germany, not just Britain, seems to be growing more skeptical about committing to Afghanistan - if this is indicative of a greater trend among ISAF members, we have a problem:

A new strategy would only work if Western countries openly discussed their
objectives in Afghanistan. They would have to admit that they cannot establish a
democracy, equal rights for women, or a welfare state in Afghanistan. Shifting
the focus from nation building to simply combating al-Qaida terrorists would
presumably be the only basis for Europeans and Obama to formulate a joint
policy.

And it isn't even January, yet.

Denial is a River in the Hindu Kush

2008-10-07T22:09:00.005-04:00

Obama continues to ignore the ramifications of his Pakistan policy. Osama bin Laden is killing Americans now. Pakistan is unable and unwilling to clear out the FATA and NWFP now. We likely have intelligence to put the heat on a lot of AQ and Taliban members now. By his standards, we should be lighting up the Pakistani frontier. This isn't a hypothetical, this is a reality. Either he is willing to resume raids in Pakistan or he isn't, and if he is he needs to acknowledge that attacking Pakistan is going to be just as damaging to support for the war on terror as supporting Musharraf in Pakistan. They were shooting at us. This isn't an academic question for point-scoring - this is a real policy decision, and Obama needs to tone down the rhetoric or prepare for a conflict that will be nowhere near as clear-cut as he would have us believe. Pakistan made a truce with the Taliban because they were tired of killing their soldiers and their citizens and because in counterinsurgency, sometimes you have to deal with the devil. Letting us smack around Pakistanis and tribal kinsmen is only going to create more attacks on the Pakistani government. We too will have to make deals with those tribes if we want to stabilize Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, McCain's Afghan policy continues to buy into the fantasy that another "surge" will save Afghanistan. It won't, unless you want a larger surge (let's talk 3-4x larger), and a replication of one of the pre-surge reductions in violence - an Anbar awakening. That means allying with some of the fundamentalist tribes that used to harbor or support al Qaeda, not hunting down and destroying every formerly anti-American tribe in Afghanistan (or, Senator Obama, the NWFP or FATA). We essentially have two options to stabilize Afghanistan without a massive long-term presence that will last generations - installing a less-than-democratic central government that has made peace with some of the belligerents and delegated to the tribes, or a new Iron Amir with dictatorial powers. America wants stability, democracy, and withdrawal within a few years - it will get two if it is lucky.

McCain had a stronger performance than his last debate, and seemed to tackle the real long-run issue for the "American empire" - domestic expenditures - more directly than Obama did. Both, however, were mum on Medicare, the biggest and faster growing of the American entitlement programs. Both made legitimate points on their own healthcare proposals, but ultimately as far as the "elephants in the room" are concerned, nobody really knows what to do about the immediate problems of global financial meltdown (especially since this will increasingly require linking foreign and domestic policies), and nobody really wants to talk about how many planks of their platforms will have to be torn out in January.

I haven't needed to wait long for the geopolitical hysteria over the financial crisis to start. Iceland, unable to bail out its financial institutions without compromising its fiscal solvency, hoped the EU would be able to bail it out. No such luck. Now Russia may offer the capital injection, and already some observers think it may be part of a Russian attempt to subvert NATO (and perhaps even establish a security presence in the North Atlantic!).

As usual, everything in the Middle East is going swimmingly.

Going long on dollars and bullets

2008-10-07T13:52:00.005-04:00

Recent rumors from Saudi Arabia, while very much overstating the militant-AQ split, are emblematic of the uncomfortable choices Americans may be forced to make in the future. If the United States is concerned about more than a manhunt, then we must accept some previously politically unacceptable things. Unfortunately, those American politicians who might otherwise support "talking to our enemies" are more concerned with the manhunt than winning the war. Going, guns blazing, into "where Osama lives" will, at best, severely undermine our ability to effectively deal with the Pashtun tribes, and at worst, start a war of truly catastrophic proportions.

More bad news for "the long war" - Congress seems set to choose pork-laden weapons systems over manpower expansion. Despite the fact that the military is already overworked and will be facing personnel strains in the near future, there's simply little politico-economic incentive to support military expansion when fighter planes with parts made in 48 out of 50 states might have to be chopped. One of John McCain's few good points during the last debate was that the government has to curtail wasteful defense spending. Given the economic constraints facing the next President (well, let's be frank -Obama), he will need to take on Congress if he wants a military ready for a future of counterinsurgency. Or we can just keep laying down firepower from standoff positions, aircraft and provincial capitals until OBL dies or we get tired of dealing with Afghanistan. I guess the realistic question is - which comes first?

On the subject of catastrophe, the American bailout has not done much to shore up confidence in the European economy. The inability of European governments to effectively cooperate to deal with bank failures that individual member states can no longer handle. As previously noted, European banks are often more ponderous than their American counterparts, at least proportional to the countries they reside in. Like the Georgia crisis, the coming weeks may be another test and indicator of the strength and cohesiveness of the EU.

Of course, things are going pretty poorly in the US too. As for the debate - expectations are low. The economic issues are too complex for reasonable political discourse and perhaps too global for a single government to effectively cope. Anyone who claims the next four years are going to be great is probably lying, at least as far as the economy is concerned. But what we should really all be worried about, with the "American" crisis clearly taking a global dimension, are the consequences of globalization "failing" - if history is any lesson, they will not be easy to ignore.

Global chaos aside, we can at least comfortably predict the outcome of the election (and so I invite the world to prove me wrong).

On Nonsense - Liveblogging the VP debate

2008-10-02T20:56:00.005-04:00

2100: I now have money riding on this.

2102: Biden - the failure of the government to respond to the economic crisis proves that the market has failed. Everyone who opposes Biden is a rabid laissez faire capitalist, even though both campaigns support the bailout.

2105: Palin thinks that John McCain is responsible for the probable success of the bailout bill and future oversight.

2107: Palin - McCain not wrong on the economy being sound because American workers are "the best" and saying the economy isn't doing well makes them feel bad.

2109: Palin - "Darn right it was the predator lenders." Wall Street is corrupt, also evil. Good to hear that Palin is on board with the 'fix the economy by putting people in jail' plan. I'm also glad to know that we're thinking of putting usury back on the list of threats to society.

2110: Biden is pulling out the old deregulatory trope and blaming it on George Bush. Never mind that the '90s were a massive period of deregulation, or that that regulatory expenditure expanded massively under George W. Bush.

2114: Oh God. Is Palin listing her record as Mayor as a qualification to be President and manage the American economy? She is right about McCain wanting to regulate whatever tickles his fancy, though.

2115: Biden reinforces the real issue of this debate - massive run on sentences. Corporations are not part of America now, too.

2116: Palin thinks patriotism is refusing to be regulated or taxed. Do either of these people know what patriotism is? Also - Palin makes a legitimate point about healthcare regulation across state lines.

2118: Biden argues that redistributing wealth is just "fairness," while demanding that the government not tax the wealthy's healthcare to pay for healthcare for the poor. Tyler Cowen is right - Americans really, really, really don't like means testing.

2120: Biden says that he will cut John McCain's tax cuts from his administration's future programs to counterbalance Barack Obama's spending. Unfortunately, budgetary credit may not transfer across alternate universes where Obama and McCain are simultaneously President. Hiring foreigners is now "unpatriotic" too.

2122: More oil company tax break football. She refuses to take anything off the table, simultaneously leave Americans alone while eliminating greed and passing a massive financial bailout bill.

2125: Great. They all agree on the windfall profits oil tax as a solution to our economic woes. Lowest common denominator politics at their finest.

2126: Please. Stop. Saying. Corruption. And. Greed. Does the term "market failure" mean anything to you?

2128: Palin always has to answer her last topic before addressing the current one. Someone's finally matched Biden in blowhardiness. She's also passed the essential political test of blaming foreign people and their filthy foreign oil for our economic problems.

2130: Being from "our nation's only Arctic state" qualifies her on environmental issues, too. "Real changes are goin' on in our climate." "Effect the impacts." Also, switching to domestic oil apparently will reduce warming, since, as we all know, everything foreign is more dirty.

2132: Biden really shouldn't be criticizing McCain for coming out against biofuels.

2133: Palin is proud of hosting the country's most expensive pipeline? I guess they're only wasteful earmarks when Alaskans don't like them. She also pronounces nuclear the "folksy" way.

2136: Same old conservative gay marriage trope. But she's tolerant and her family is diverse, so it's OK. Of course, nor does Biden support redefining marriage. Can these two agree on a good idea?

2139: More adulation for Petraeus. Why don't we let this guy be President?

2141: Barack and Joe think it's time for the Iraqis to start fixing their own stupid country. Since when is it our responsibility to take care of countries that we destroy?

2142: Palin - SURRENDER! THE SURGE! THE SURGE! THE SUUUURRRRRRGGGGE! More backhanded compliments to Biden on opposing all of Obama's votes.

2143: Biden argues that McCain was incorrect in arguing Iraq could pay for its own reconstruction, yet argues exactly this position now.

2145: Time to roll out the Pakistani disaster bandwagon. Biden thinks Pakistan is going to nuke Israel? I wasn't aware Pakistan gave a damn about that part of the Middle East. Biden wants to support the Pakistani democracy by illegally violating its borders whenever we feel like it.

2146: Palin - Petraeus thinks the central front of the war on terror is in Iraq, so it is. Always and forever.

2150: There really is no point to discussing diplomacy as a contrast issue without "nuance," is there?

2151: "Never again" applies to both Israel and... American homeowners. Took until now for Palin to apply it to the former, though.

2152: Joe Biden needs to stop referring to Joe Biden in the third person.

2153: Barack Obama and Biden are against ill-advised wars against Muslim countries unless they're Pakistan or... Lebanon? Do any Americans really think putting troops into Lebanon again is a good idea? Why is this a talking point now?

2154: "I'm so encouraged to know we both love Israel."

2155: Biden wants to know how John McCain's position differs from Bush's on Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq - increasingly, McCain differs by not moving toward's Obama's positions, for better or worse.

2156: Palin wants to implement the "surge principles" in Afghanistan... Without mentioning what exactly those are.

2158: For all Biden's bluster about arms control, he needs to explain how this is going to be possible when we go after Osama in Pakistan.

2159: Palin knows McClellan's name! Too bad she's about 150 years off.

2200: Biden thinks the American public has the stomach for success. Biden is against wars that aren't his idea. Good to know.

2202: Yes, Sarah Palin, it is very obvious you're a Washington outsider. But we can't blame you for trying to fit in with that flip-flopping speech.

2204: Biden think he can revoke the sovereignty of other countries and then invade them - that makes it OK.

2205: John McCain, on the other hand, knows how to win wars on his own.

2210: "Joe Biden's Neighborhood" sounds like it has potential as a CSPAN children's show.

2211: Shout out to 3rd graders. Is this a first?

2208: Palin winked again. What does it all mean?

2214: I WIN PALIN BINGO. A great day for all Americans who are me.

2218: "America is a nation of exceptionalism." Exceptional something, I'll give you that. Wait. Did she just misattribute "City on a hill?"

2224: Biden brings up the one court case Palin still knows.

2228: It's almost over. Thank God, it's almost over. Please let this never happen again. These are by far two of the most - "national security freedoms?" What?

2230: Joe Biden makes one last gasp attempt to show he hates CEOs more than Sarah Palin. Anyway, please let these two never appear in tandem for an extended period ever, ever again.

A Good Fight?

2008-10-02T19:39:00.005-04:00

If there's one thing Americans appear to agree on, it's Afghanistan - the war is winnable, but it needs more troops. Untainted by the stigma of preemption or unilateralism, Afghanistan is the "good war" that everybody can get behind. However, we should not confuse righteousness with feasibility.

There is no mistake that Afghanistan has been shortchanged since the beginning of the conflict. The effort to rectify this, however, is much larger than many imagine. Afghanistan, were it to have a level of military presence proportional to successful counterinsurgency campaigns, would likely require 400,000 troops for stability. Counting current NATO deployments and the Afghan security forces, that is twice the number of troops we have in Afghanistan today. Neither candidate has proposed sending anywhere near 200,000 troops to Afghanistan, nor could they feasibly be expected to do so. Nor is it likely that the United Kingdom, France, Canada or Germany will be willing to commit thousands more of their soldiers. Indeed, the British ambassador to Afghanistan has allegedly written off the Afghan campaign as futile, with a dictatorship that holds the country together as the optimal outcome - a new Iron Amir.

Of course, one might retort that a "surge" in Afghanistan could work as well as the one in Iraq did. However, this is far less likely to work out in Afghanistan. Afghanistan has dozens of millions of people, just like Iraq, and far more difficult terrain - a brigade in Afghanistan simply isn't as helpful as a brigade in Iraq. The surge in Iraq was also accompanied and preceded by significant changes in tactics that are far less likely to occur in Afghanistan. The Pashtun tribes that harbor al Qaeda and the Taliban are far less likely to switch sides, and in many cases al Qaeda is too deeply integrated with tribes to make such a strategy effective. Nor would the assassination campaign that JSOC conducted in Iraq work effectively in Afghanistan - enemy leaders are less accessible, and crossing the border into Pakistan is only making us more enemies on the other side of the border.

A strategy to stabilize Afghanistan would likely require rebuilding the tribal structure, perhaps even at the expense of the "national" level strategy, and placing more troops in harm's way. While Americans might have the stomach for such a war, European reactions to attacks indicate they may not, while the effects of the Anbar Awakening in Iraq should remind us that empowering tribes may create friction with the central government. We would also need to establish a long-term political, military, and economic commitment to Afghanistan. But with billions of dollars in bailouts down the pipe and an American public that will be clamoring for relief in the months to come (perhaps in Europe, too), NATO members will have a tough time convincing their people that Afghanistan is worth it. Success in Afghanistan is not likely to occur within the next four years. Perhaps not even within the next eight. Should we add a war in Pakistan into the mix, it may not be won at all. There is nothing wrong with believing Afghanistan is a just war. But if it is just, and we wish to win it, we're going to have to commit enormous resources to it. Something Americans should keep in mind as they throw all besides the economy to the wind.

Elsewhere, the Somali pirate drama has spotlighted a more disturbing trend - the looming escalation of the conflict between the Sudanese government and southern (ie, not Darfuri) separatists. Simultaneously, skepticism about AFRICOM does not bode well for American response capability or a "revolutionized" military policy in Africa.

Citizens of tomorrow, be forewarned

2008-09-22T11:25:00.009-04:00

Regardless of the merits and problems of the Paulson bailout plan, it emphasizes a lot of key trends and disturbing points about the direction in which the global economy is moving. Firstly, the US, for better or for worse, is still a major standard-bearer for Western and Westernizing economic norms. What we do will echo in the rest of the world, and we should not undertake any action that we would not want turned against us later on. As Drezner points out, the US, so far, is doing fairly well; other countries experiencing such financial turmoil have not been so lucky. The US, like its banks, is too big to fail - with around a fifth of world GDP, a financial collapse here would reverberate with massive consequences around the globe. The EU faces a huge test of its fiscal prowess even now, while China cannot afford a world economic downturn that would halt its rapid growth. The world economy for the past 60 years has increasingly been a positive-sum game. While this is not inherently enough to pretent catastrophe, there is no doubt turning it into a zero sum game only encourages it.

To cast a further cynical light on things, the bailout, from a separation-of-powers perspective, should be terrifying. The executive branch, in tandem with the Federal Reserve, can issue hundreds of billions of dollars without judicial review or much legislative oversight. What makes this all the worse is that the Federal Reserve is the only institution that has performed reasonably well throughout the crisis. Congress refused to back down from a program of aggressive homeownership expansion even in the midst of a housing bubble, while opportunities for both parties to reform the GSEs went unexploited. Confronted with the crisis, Congress passed an utterly useless fiscal stimulus bill. I have little confidence constructive responses will emerge in an expedient timeframe barring some massive shift in attitudes and norms in the legislature (Dodd's proposal is decent, but given some of its provisions, it is unlikely to fly through Congress and into law fast enough for Wall Street's liking). Ultimately, the economic crisis may give the executive - the one sitting, and likely whoever wins in November - powers the Iraq War could not grant them. These powers may remain theoretical, though. The burden of financing these bailouts will severely impede whatever discretionary programs they now promise - whether they be tax cuts or spending on social programs. If there is "Caesarism" in 21st century America, it will be centered around national power, rather than "bread and circuses."

On the other hand, we may have that Congressional oversight and those bread and circuses. The current proposal could easily be stacked with Democratic "riders" to bail out whoever that party thinks needs additional relief. Doing so, of course, would only further implicate Congress with a possible (some would say likely) failure of the bailout plan. With an election coming up, too many incentives are on politicians to wash their hands of current problems rather than take on the much more difficult task of fixing them. We may well be stuck between gridlock and the unchecked executive.

Meanwhile, much of the rest of the world so rudely refuses to act according to our preferences. Despite suffering a major terrorist attack which could have decapitated the government, Pakistan continues to stand against American intrusion. This seems illogical until one considers how al Qaeda started out - attacking "apostate" governments which turned to the US for security. Should Pakistan allow American intervention, it is reasonable to expect more bombs, not fewer, targeted at the Zadari government.

The Myth of Omnipotence

2008-09-16T13:20:00.004-04:00

A big commonality between any two American Presidential candidates these days is an overwhelming belief in American power. While candidates may argue that their opponent or predecessor has squandered this power and influence, rarely will they ever argue that they have permanently diminished it. Even if they privately feel their country is in irreversible decline, it's politically infeasible to admit as such - American exceptionalism is not dead, and will not be for some time. With the "good" people in charge, the problems that prevented the previous administration's grandiose schemes from working will disappear.

Neither candidate is immune from this fallacy. John McCain, despite his criticism of the Bush administration's implementation of neoconservative strategy, still thinks that those same botched wars could have worked if only someone who put "country first" and devoted the country fully to the task was in charge. So too does he believe that "big government" would work a lot better if the government shaped up to his values. Obama, for his part, holds some similar beliefs. America can undertake unilateralist actions - like attacks against Pakistan - so long as somebody sufficiently "understanding" of our allies is there to soothe their concerns. Similarly, many Democrats (likely Obama included) argue that if only "someone else" had been in charge, regulation could have been put in place to stop the current economic crisis - despite a lack of any clear steps the government could have taken to prevent it. So too has the government's heavy-handed response been underwhelming. But Bush is "laissez-faire," so if we had people who believed in government, it would have worked, right?

Returning to foreign policy and, (once again), Pakistan, there's one further danger to bring up. Obama, to his credit, has staked a huge amount of his foreign policy experience on nuclear nonproliferation. A successful nuclear attack could derail globalization, a constructive post-Bush fight against terrorism, and intensify animosity among great powers. However, it is impossible to develop an effective nonproliferation regime without the cooperation of Pakistan - a nuclear power and serial proliferator of technology. Between its offers to help other Muslim countries to develop nuclear technology or AQ Khan's black market, viewed in light of the cozy relationship between most organs of the Pakistani security establishment and Islamist militants, securing Pakistani arms and technology is absolutely essential to effective nonproliferation. However, it is difficult to imagine Pakistan cooperating on an issue it views as essential to its own security while the US violates its borders. Worse, the Pakistani nuclear program could easily be detached from civilian control, and a humiliated military would likely cling to its nuclear arms to compensate for its inability or unwillingness to retaliate to American attacks.

There are other dangerous precedents. Just as the next American President will want to rebuild America's relationships with its allies, America is demonstrating (and the candidates often affirming) that some allies (and the American national interest) are more important than others. This would be sensible and acceptable were not so much of Obama's campaign staked on rebuilding America as a moral leader in the world. Many Americans speak of rebuilding America's relationship with Europe - but Europe itself does not have a unified foreign policy. It will be difficult to please both pro-Russian natural gas customers like Germany and paranoid post-Soviet states like Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltics.

Meanwhile, the American abandonment of Georgia will likely lead other minor states near regional powers to question our commitment. When America will not even protect their territorial integrity, it may seem like a better idea to accommodate rising regional powers (Russia, China, Iran) rather than rely on the US Cavalry that may never come. There are fears this is already happening in the Persian Gulf. Allowing relationships between the US and states on the peripheries of rising powers to erode will be especially dangerous. If a strategy of negotiations and engagement fail, the US will have to turn to a strategy of containment. Without those peripheral states, such strategies can become much more difficult.

Ultimately, successful diplomacy cannot occur without clear objectives, and we cannot have clear objectives without acknowledging what concessions we will make and what goals we will not pursue. Is the United States willing to make concessions on free trade, environmental regulation, military aid, and tolerance of human rights abuses to keep other countries working with us? Sure, there are unilateral decisions the US can make - closing Camp X-Ray, ending torture, taking the lead on climate change legislation - but eventually the US will have to sacrifice degrees of either its idealistic aspirations or material ambitions to make multilateralism work. Rejecting the Bush Doctrine is not a concession; declining to invade other countries without the sanction of the international community is the bare minimum of accepted behavior for most states. Undoubtedly, the candidates do privately know what specific goals and concessions they are willing to work towards. The problem of course, is getting the American people to accept them when the illusion of Washington's omnipotence can no longer be upheld.

If it is Worth Doing...

2008-09-12T17:03:00.004-04:00

Usually one does not cite William Tecumseh Sherman in a rumination on military restraint, but...

Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and defeat.

... seems to be an appropriate turn of phrase lately. The war in Iraq was fought by exactly such a metric. It was a plan to fight the war from the air, move in with less troops than we used to liberate Kuwait, and spend a few dozen billion to have them sit around in a country where only a few hardened Baathists would resist our lovely presence. Five years later, here we are.

So, forgive me when I recommend an outspoken war critic and Presidential candidate not be so cavalier about attacking Pakistan, especially when he has no real plan for how to prevent such a conflict from escalating, or what the boundaries of such a mission would be. I will not go so far as to argue there are no circumstances under which we can attack Pakistan and buy into a foreign policy based on multilateral cooperation and support for Pakistani democracy. Faced against an increasingly uncooperative Pakistani government, attacks into the frontier may not be the worst option as far as the war in Afghanistan is concerned. Nevertheless, to be "realistic" about this aspect of the strategy means to stop clinging to any notion that we intend to pursue a policy of cooperation or support for democracy in Pakistan.

We are making a lot of enemies, ones with uniforms and nuclear bombs. I can't tell you how it will end, but I can say how it won't - there is not going to be a friendly Pakistani government. There is not going to be a cooperative Pakistani army willing to absorb thousands of casualties fighting tribesmen backed by the ISI while a foreign power humiliatingly violates their sovereignty. Do you want a prime example of the US shelling a society into support for extremism? Start watching Pakistan. Even if there is no escalation into a shooting war with Islamabad, we will poison democracy in Pakistan. The most basic function of a government is not education, or healthcare or welfare. It is protecting its citizens from coercion. Either the leader who allows his citizens to die will be replaced, or the system that put him into power will. Whether a stronger nationalist is voted into power or a coup occurs, Pakistanis are highly unlikely to tolerate such transgressions.

However destabilizing Iraq was, fomenting a crisis with Pakistan will be just as troubling with the international community in general. Sure, India might be happy, but who else will be? Europe operates in Afghanistan, too, and given the unease that many Europeans already feel about their Afghan troop presence, attacking Pakistan, if anything, would expedite their withdrawal. China will be very angry about an attack on its strategic partner, while the world public in general will see the unsavory aspects of the "Bush Doctrine" as permanent fixtures in America's 21st century policy, rather than a 7 year phase. In short: if you believe in soft power, you should be pleading with Obama-Biden to tone down their rhetoric on Pakistan. If you think attacking Pakistan is a good idea, maybe liberal internationalism shouldn't the keystone for your foreign policy this term. Perhaps the best Vietnam analogy isn't Iraq. Cambodia, after all, came from the guy who was going to "end the war," too...

Lest one assume I'm being too hard on Obama, let me point out that Palin's Charlie Gibson interview is more than proof enough that she is unfit to be Vice President come 2009. The idea that Mr. "Country First" would put her on the spot is extremely disturbing. Yes, she was a smart choice to unify the base. However, we've had 8 years of an folksy, outsider, common-man conservative ex-governor with no foreign policy experience. Excuse me if I am not willing to risk a few more.

Elsewhere in the world, OPEC has decided $100 is too low for a barrel of oil Any politician who tells you they've got a plan to enrich Americans by "lowering gas prices" or taxing "windfall profits" from oil companies is full of it - especially when the Gods seem to be on the side of higher oil prices, too. Also in unsurprising news today, Hugo Chavez has "had enough of so much shit" from the US.

A Few Words on Pakistan

2008-09-09T22:52:00.002-04:00

While it's great that Pakistan transitioned to a civilian Presidency peacefully, Zadari is likely to have a rough ride from here on out. Let's face it - if you think an American Presidential candidate has experience problems, wait until you hear about Zadari. As Robert Kaplan points out, his primary qualification is being the widower of Benazir Bhutto. Character aside, there is no indication he will be able to rein in the army or Inter-Services Intelligence, let alone the "Islamic Emirate" on the Afghan frontier. The Pakistani government is by no means in the clear, nor is it clear it has overcome the specters of the past. Zadari may be no friend of the courts, given the "Mr. 10%" moniker, which will ensure friction with the populace. While General Kayani is hardly another Musharraf, the military will become the de facto government where instability looms. The ISI, on the other hand, still sees Islamic extremists as viable proxies for the Pakistani national interest. Given recent tensions over Kashmir, it is important to remember that no matter what happens in Afghanistan, Islamabad will always have an interest in waging asymmetric warfare against its economically and militarily superior rival.

The US, for its part, is certainly not showing much faith in the Pakistani government. American troops attacked Pakistani soil without authorization, and have kept up bombing for good measure. While the President of the US and the one to follow will undoubtedly pay lip service to Pakistani democracy, Americans are going to have to accept that that democracy doesn't care for the direction the Afghan war is headed in. On top of it all, we have a ticket with two vocal Pakistan hawks. No, they're not Republicans (McCain has followed Bush's old line on Pakistan, while I doubt Palin's campaign manager has finished briefing her on what her opinion is supposed to be). While Obama gets praise for tracking Osama down to the "cave where he lives," Biden was way ahead of him. They absolutely have a point in criticizing Pakistan's response to the war on terror threat, but Pakistanis (who have lost over 1000 soldiers and 3000 civilians in the North-West War) were tired of the US line beforehand, and certainly not warming up to it. Countries that have sacrificed thousands of their own people for their partners only to get invaded by them tend to have grievances over such treatment. The Bush-Obama policy of military intervention in Pakistan would force Obama to do some major backpedaling if he hoped to gain any cooperation from the government in Islamabad, especially as the US-India nuclear deal moves forward.

Of course, given Pakistan's struggling economy, wouldn't it make sense to use non-military aid as leverage to elicit Pakistani cooperation? Yes, but that doesn't mean we can rely on it. After all, Pakistan is already quite cozy with a government less picky about their behavior in Afghanistan. In the long run, Pakistan might not need the US so much after all...

More of the Same

2008-09-01T13:34:00.002-04:00

For anyone wondering in what direction Russia is traveling, look to the headlines.

Medvedev's five principles of the new Russian foreign policy bode ill for America's next foreign policy. This will not be a new Cold War - hence the difficulty. America knows how to fight and win a Cold War, because we already did for half a century. The position Russia is turning to now - one with spheres of influence, halfhearted deferences to "laws of nations" and refusal to submit to a unipolar world - seems far more 19th century than 20th. These sorts of politics, based on the balance of power rather than the confrontation of superpowers, are exactly the sort Americans like to think they have historically avoided. During the 19th (and much of the first half of the 20th) century, we secluded ourselves from European realpolitik and played hegemon in our own hemisphere. Then, in the second half of the 20th century, we were the "good" in bipolar world. Both Democrats and Republicans aspire to this sort of situation. While the neoconservative movement is oft criticized for its desire to turn any foreign policy problem into a "good versus evil" struggle, so too do many modern liberals. "Talking with our enemies" does not exclude liberals from this trend. Ultimately, restoring America's moral leadership is a meaningless idea without some immoral force to oppose. While some countries will have a smoother ride than they might get with another neoconservative President, some will have rougher ones (think of trade and human rights disagreements). The communities formed in liberal internationalist systems have boundaries. On those boundaries, even morally upstanding Presidents are forced to practice realism rather than liberalism.

What kept those sorts of politics less prevalent within the liberal community in the 20th century were common interests. While globalization and interdependence undoubtedly produce huge common interests, they are not all equal. If Europe's economic interests in Russian petroleum outweigh its political interests in standing with the US, can we be sure they will stand with us? Recent history suggests they will not. The 19th century was one of constantly shifting alliances, where ethnic ties increasingly took precedence over moral ones, though back then those moral ties were often conservative rather than liberal in nature. Nevertheless, America's next President needs to understand more than how to restore moral or protect morals. We don't need another Truman, because this isn't the Cold War. We don't need another Reagan, because this isn't the Cold War. If anything, we need a Teddy Roosevelt (and I'm waiting for McCain to prove he is) - a pragmatist that does more than simply "stand up" for American ideals.

Other items of interest...

Fukuda resigns as PM, most likely successor, Taro Aso, is a China hawk and has all the ethnic sensitivity of Pat Buchanan. If you thought going back to the 19th century in Russia was bad, hope it doesn't happen in Asia.
Anbar goes to the Iraqis. Now if only they can integrate the Sons of Iraq, that 2011 timeline might look pretty nice.
Iranian nuclear deal with Nigeria. I'm not going to panic, but it makes you think...

A new Great Game?

2008-08-18T19:38:00.002-04:00

Well, it's August 18th and the Russians don't exactly seem to be withdrawing... What a surprise. Indeed, even as Russia slightly reduces its combat presence, it reserves the right to resume them and has fortified its positions in South Ossetia and the Georgian highway system. Essentially, Russia has ensured that if fighting resumes in Georgia, it will completely crush the government in Tblisi. Russian troop deployments along the strategic highway to Georgia, along with the deployment of SS-21 SRBMs to separatist regions (missiles that would be able to strike virtually anywhere in Georgia) compound on Russia's strengths while compensating for its weaknesses. Controlling the highways of Georgia provides a major strategic advantage in any land battle. The ballistic missiles, on the other hand, would allow Russia to launch on Georgian targets without having to risk its air force, which, regardless of the actual number of aircraft downed (anywhere between 4 and 21), significantly underperformed.

This may provide some additional explanation for Russia's anger at recent developments in Poland. Even though in 2007 only 30% of Poles supported the Ballistic Missile Defense program, support has jumped to 58% and the government has agreed to host interceptors. Now that Russia has put military force back on the table, Eastern Europe is unquestionably looking for help. However, to call BMD meaningful help for Eastern Europe or a check on Russia is to misinterpret the situation. BMD - in its current form - poses no significant threat to Russia's strategic arsenal - with only a few dozen interceptors, it cannot hold a candle to hundreds of Russian missiles that could be targeted against Europe. Nor does it endanger the world by altering the balance of MAD - Russian missiles targeted against America would completely bypass Europe and travel over the Arctic Circle. This is why NORAD's EW systems for defending the American mainland require the cooperation of Canada more than they do Europe.

What the new agreement does provide that it did not before is enhanced military cooperation - access to new weapon systems that would provide real gains for Poland's secrity. Patriot missiles and other advanced arms would top whatever aerial embarrassments the Russian air force suffered in Georgia. Perhaps in light of these favorable terms for Poland, Ukraine has offered to participate in the BMD program as well. Given that Ukrainian greivances about Russia directly threaten Russian military power, Ukraine has a major incentive to bulk up its miltiary and, preferably, secure NATO entry. If America continues such a strategy against Russia, the straining of relations between the US and countries like France and Germany may worsen - this gap may prove more significant than the one America opened with the invasion of Iraq.

---

To shift direction, here's a few other items of interest...

There have been no protests at the Beijing games. 74 of the 77 applications were withdrawn, while the government refused or delayed the other three. The supposed liberalizing effect of the Games has yet to be seen. (As far as I've noticed, I've seen Americans usually apathetic about politics responding very negatively to the Chinese. But the Olympics, of course, are likely meant more to impress the Chinese people than placate the world's concerns.)
Pervez Musharraf is stepping down from the Presidency. It's too early to say whether his replacement will be a boon or a hindrance to long term American interests in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Disturbing news from Iraq - the Maliki government may turn against the Sunni "awakener" militias.

Why Georgia Matters

2008-08-13T20:04:00.008-04:00

What is happening in Georgia is one of the most important geopolitical milestones of this decade, on par with 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq. To refer to Putin's Russia as a new Nazi Germany or Soviet Union that must not be "appeased" is a major exaggeration. However, neither is it something the United States or the Western world should passively accept. The ongoing (sadly, the ceasefire does not seem to have done much) conflict has profound implications for world politics and American interests and principles both.

Firstly, the world is officially unipolar no longer. While some would call other events in the past few years the "high water mark" of America's status as hyperpower, there can no longer be any question to America's ongoing unipolar "moment." It is over. In a fait accompli, Russia has demonstrated it too now has a sphere of influence, one from which it can effectively deny the United States. Russia does not have any apparent intent to recreate the Soviet Union by force of arms. Instead, it seeks to do what the United States has traditionally done in Latin America - exclude its "backyard" from major foreign influence. It still has a long way to go, but it may have had its first success. Russia's actions in Georgia serve as a valuable demonstration to Ukraine and other states - go too far towards the West, and Russia will make you suffer as soon as it has an excuse. While Georgia clearly offered one, Russia would not have found one in the Ukraine. Now, however, Russia can confidently interfere with whatever non-NATO members it wants. To grant Russian citizenship to the Crimean Tatars or Russians in Donetsk is not so difficult, and Russia could, in a decade or so, separate these provinces with greater ease. The Ukrainians, knowing that NATO will not commit to a non-member, would be far less likely to attempt Saakashvili's military leap of faith.

That Russia can rely on this exposes another major consequence of the Georgian invasion, that the interests of Western Europe and the United States are gravely divergent on Russian issues. Russia is still fundamentally doomed as a superpower - but on a solid foundation as a great power. As such, the consequences of angering Russia are far greater for Europeans than for Americans - no longer because Russian tanks threaten to cross Europe's borders, but because Russian natural gas pipelines already do. When European nations stand against the NATO bids of Georgia and the Ukraine, they do so not primarily because of fears of war, but of the diplomatic consequences. Even admitting more Russian border states into NATO might trigger pipeline shut offs, diplomatic lockouts, or the nationalization of European assets in Russia. As such, cheerleaders for the EU as a new, "moral" world superpower should quiet. Many Western papers hail Sarkozy, the EU's nominal representative, for the cease-fire; Europhiles should take this news with a shaker of salt at least. For one thing, the "cease-fire" is questionable at best. Not only that, but the decision to even claim an end to combat is likely motivated by Russian convenience - Russians do not want to have another Chechnya on their hands - and desire to put a PR smiley-face on the 58th's tanks, which still sit in Georgian territory. As for the challenges to the European superpower, they are twofold. Firstly, the EU, if it is truly a power, is more than the United States bound to petty, mercantile self-interest. The EU's fundamental accomplishment is that it provides a framework for a Europe at peace - to idly allow such a war to occur in its own backyard undermines any notion of a European policy based on values of peace and sovereignty. Secondly, Russia's new "sphere of influence" excludes not only the United States, but the EU as well. Europe is not willing to maintain the politico-military infrastructure and policies necessary to extend them, which means that Europe as a whole is a paltry excuse for a superpower. Of course, soft power is still a factor - but what did it accomplish here? A cease-fire that has done anything but end the conflict or tensions? What use is soft power as a primary substitute for conventional power when it cannot accomplish the same goals? What lies for the future of European soft power when the EU is increasingly reluctant to lift a finger in service of its core values? Is "sticky" power going to save the EU? While it does have a large economy, its use of economic might is neither unified nor independent - Russia has an economic veto over Europe's interests and will for the foreseeable future, especially with regards to the post-Soviet world. Of course, some EU countries have offered peacekeepers, but this seems entirely contingent upon Russian approval. The answer from the Russians, who still title their forces "peacekeepers" and have no interest in foreign meddling, will likely be nyet. Again, if Russia possesses such a veto, how much can we truly call this power?

America, too, has demonstrably become unable to reconcile its principles and its interests. That America only now is sending aid to Georgia - aid that is not ending the conflict by any means - is a severe blow to America's credibility among Eastern Europeans and our remaining allies. The message is clear - you can bleed and die for us in Iraq when so many would not, but ultimately, we will throw you to the wolves when your most critical national interest of all - the integrity and sovereignty of your state - is in question. Saakashvili undoubtedly made a severe error in judgment when he forced this question. While true, it is perception, not the facts that will matter for many countries. Will Eastern Europeans be as willing to stick their necks out for the United States without NATO membership? Will other countries threatened by more powerful rivals risk reaching out to us? Will the fervor remain for "color revolutions" and liberalization? At the very least, we have not done much to promote our country or our ideas to the rest of the world. Hence, Americans must recognize that a new foreign policy based on multilateralism, soft power, and the international rule of law has become a much greater challenge. Western Europe, our "lost ally" has shown it has less common ground with American interests than we thought, while Eastern Europe has found that the reward for cooperation is not as high as they thought. Europe has made it clear it will not risk political action, let alone military cooperation, that will anger Russia, while America's new allies will think twice before committing to any military cooperation that does not shield them from their former master.

So, indulge me as I once again bring out our two unlucky candidates for President for another tongue (keyboard?) lashing. Let's assume this all happened in August 2009. What would this mean for an Obama administration? Well, his rapprochement with Western Europe would be in a bit of trouble, unless he too decided to abandon Georgia and anger Eastern Europe. I suspect that up until now, Obama's response would have been quite similar to Bush's - afterwards, though, he would have the choice between accommodating Russia (giving us multilateralism without principle) or ratcheting up pressure, and in turn driving Europe away. Either way, a strategy of multilateral cooperation would be even more difficult for all but the most brilliant diplomatic team. John McCain would be in perhaps deeper trouble - the Georgian invasion would force any "League of Democracies" to sacrifice legitimacy (ie, the opinions of Western Europe) or functionality in its response to this crisis. McCain is also more likely to turn the Georgian conflict into WWIII. Enough said.

Assuming, as I so often do, that the US should have a more substantive response to the Georgia crisis, what steps would such a policy involve?

Major pressure to create an EU/multinational UN peacekeeping force for Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russia used the presence of its so-called peacekeepers to gain casus belli against any attempt by Georgia to restore its sovereignty by arms. Meanwhile, Russia appears to be undermining the "cease-fire" by using irregular militants from the Chechen wars, and Cossacks. (Side note: What better example would there be of Putin's purported "Tsarist" tendencies than the use of Cossacks to terrorize challengers to Moscow!). However, given that Russia is likely continuing drives into Georgia, it is unlikely they would agree to such a measure, which would sap its appeal to the Europeans. Even if such monitoring was permitted, Russia would certainly not allow them to interfere with the Russian occupation.
Make it clear the United States stands against regime change in Georgia or further combat operations, and provide non-combat (but militarily transported) aid to Georgia. Bush has taken these steps, and regardless of what happens in response, Georgia is going to need to be rebuilt anyway. Continued Russian presence in Georgia is unacceptable not only because it violates the agreement, but also because it likely signals an underlying desire to depose Saakashvili if negotiations do not go as planned (note the Russian tank commander's comment).
Make Ukrainian membership in NATO a major US foreign policy objective. Of course, many will argue this would only further enrage Russia - but the Ukraine's already made their NATO intentions clear, while unlike Georgia, Ukraine's potential separatist regions would make clear Russian provocation necessary for such a conflict (handing out guns and citizenship). The best way to ensure that Crimea and Donetsk do not become Ossetia and Abkhazia II is to a) force the Ukraine to agree to a no-first-strike clause on those regions in return for NATO membership, which b) would force the Russians to press their interests through non-military channels - people forget NATO's deterrent effect. The US should also contemplate supporting a Ukrainian denial of Sevastopol to the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
Make any effort possible to gain Russian cooperation on Iran, Zimbabwe and other issues. If the US still has to sacrifice its interests in Georgia, it should make sure it gets something in return. Iran would be a good start, but it is a bit of a long shot they'll cooperate.

Georgia on my mind

2008-08-11T02:58:00.013-04:00

It's hard to know where to begin after such an absence, but anyone at all concerned with foreign affairs should be paying close attention...

EDIT: Damn. Matt Yglesias got the idea for the title first on his new blog, about 18 hours ago. Not that I think my title was particularly clever.

Let's begin at the beginning. The very first thing to remember is that this did not begin with a Russian invasion of Georgia, it began with a Georgian invasion of South Ossetia. Saakashvili made an enormous miscalculation in thinking he could retake these areas - held by Russian "peacekeepers" and populated by Russian "citizens" - with the explicit backing of the West. His increasingly desperate pleas to the West to stand up for its values indicate he thought otherwise. Saakashvili's diplomatic and military mistake notwithstanding, Russia cannot escape a large part of the blame. Firstly, its diplomatic casus belli is shaky at best. The idea that Russian troops are acting as peacekeepers, when tension and violence has been escalating for years, is a propagandic fantasy. They are not UN blue helmets. UNOMIG has only a few hundred personnel, while Russia was allowed thousands of troops. Furthermore, as both South Ossetia and Abkhazia have actively expressed interest in joining Russia (look for shots of the "Vladimir Putin - our President" billboards in these regions), Russian troops are completely inappropriate for a neutral peacekeeping role. Would you have Croats peacekeeping in Bosnia in 1995? Syrians peacekeeping in Lebanon in 2006? The idea that Russia should have troops to protect its citizens in Georgia is similarly questionable. Russia granted citizenship to some members of an armed rebellion in a foreign country. Once they become citizens, they become armed Russians attempting to detach territory to Russia. If the US granted citizenship to Balochi and Khuzestani rebels in Iran, and then decided it needed troops to protect its new citizens from the reprisals by the Iranian government, what would one call it but raw bellicosity?

However, this is war. At war, what anyone ought to do is inseparable from what can be done.

This is something Georgia must keep in mind as it wages against a power that is unquestionably its military superior. Russia, which of course occupied the entirety of South Ossetia, deployed the 58th Army to the region, engaging in the battle for Tskhinvali, until sometime on August 10th, when Georgia reported it withdrew all troops from South Ossetia. Now, there's more to this sketchy overview. First of all, who was winning the battle of Tskhinvali? Of the conflicting accounts mentioned, I'm inclined to believe the government official giving the worst news for his own side. There is little incentive to lie in that direction for the South Ossetians. After all, the Georgians did have some advantages - the quality of their military has increased significantly since Operation Enduring Freedom, and they were fighting the kind of battle NATO always hoped to fight against Soviet troops - with the superior manpower of the Soviets stacked up behind them. Indeed, Russia's reinforcements to South Ossetia consisted not of regular troops, but airborne units flown in - indicative of either a lack of troops on hand, inability to move through South Ossetia quickly, or major risk to transit from the border, which must pass through the Roki tunnel (Incidentally, the Georgians claimed to destroy this tunnel earlier, though the Russians denied this).

But, Georgia has said it wants to observe a ceasefire and has pulled out of Ossetia. Given Saakashvili has been calling for a ceasefire since the Russians rolled in, this isn't unexpected. Most likely, given the physical and political geography favored a confrontation at Tskhinvali, Georgia hoped pulling to antebellum positions would increase the chances of such a ceasfire. No such luck. Russia appears to be pushing on Gori, and the Russian government didn't deny reports of clashes outside the city. Gori is key to Georgian military operations - they've relocated their primary combat hospital there, and it was expected to be the center of an Ossetian war. A loss there would spell the end of Georgia's defense short of reverting to a guerilla war a la Chechnya (Not a pleasant prospect, as Chechnya lost something like 50% of its usable land to combat).

But there are broader implications to Russia's intention to take the war to Gori. Gori is indisputably Georgian territory - Russia's already disproportionate response is rapidly losing legitimacy. So it does not appear Russia will be constrained much by international public opinion - perhaps fitting as they assault the hometown of Josef Stalin. However, it also lends credence to rumors that Russia hopes not just to detach Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but truly ruin Georgia and depose Saakashvili. The author suspected such earlier, when Russia initially refused to even acknowledge that Georgia had requested a ceasefire. Any chance of Georgians ceasing combat is unlikely as long as Russia remains operating outside Ossetia but hasn't finished the fight by taking Gori.

So... Why should we care? Allowing Russia to respond so disproportionately - taking the fight beyond the disputed regions - is not a step the West should allow Russia to take lightly. It is a severe blow to American interests in Eastern Europe - not only does the West stand to lose an ally if Russia gets its way, but it stands to lose even more in the post-Soviet sphere. We have shown that when its allies stand up to Russia by embracing the West, the West will not stand up for its allies - unless, of course, they're in NATO, as Ukrainians and Georgians mulling over their failed membership bids might conclude. A successful action on Russia's part, without backup from the West, may dissuade non-members from taking pro-Western actions. Pro-Western actions being anything and everything Put-... Er... Medvedev does not approve of. On the other hand, as a threat to other Eastern European countries, we might expect renewed strength in the NATO bids of Ukraine or other countries. After all, what, in the mind of a Ukrainian, would stop Russia from doing the same thing over time in Donetsk and Crimea within the next few decades? Indeed, Russia is not very happy about Ukraine's lack of interest in renewing the Black Sea Fleet's lease on Sevastopol. This is especially critical as Ukraine has threatened to deny this base to the fleet even as it operates against Georgia.

So, what should the NATO/EU/US response be? Well, trying to broker a peace without the Russians overthrowing Saakashvili hasn't worked so far. Indeed, in the UNSC Russia has gone so far as to try to get the UN to support its actions in Georgia, and shows no signs of letting its veto power allow anything less to pass. Ideally, this situation would end with neutral (perhaps EU, if not UN) peacekeepers taking over duties in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and holding a proper referendum. Practically, this is unlikely to be an option. So, what diplomatic pressure can the West put on Russia? It can demand that Russia comply with their demands on Iran's nuclear program in exchange for giving some concessions on Georgia. This, however, would make it appear the West allowed Georgia as a sacrifice to Russia, so is somewhat undesirable. Other options to pressure Russia could include stepping up US presence in Eastern Europe, refusing to cooperate with Russian demands in other regions, allowing the Ukraine into NATO, supporting its threat to refuse Sevastopol to the Black Sea Fleet, or promising to increase aid to Georgia after the war, or a variety of other options. Obviously, starting WWIII is a bad idea, but so is letting Russia roll over Georgia and oust Saakashvili.

Incidentally, some Russians claim we did something very, very disturbing: According to this newspaper (translated), Russian troops in Tskhinvali caught Georgian saboteurs after the claimed withdrawal, including a black (and thus likely non-Georgian) NATO advisor. This story has not been corroborated, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was entirely fabricated, but if it is going on... Yikes.

This will get updated in lieu of constant new posts, unless something major develops that deserves its own.

UPDATE: 9K Russian troops and 300+ AFVs in Abkhazia... and they're moving on to Senaki, which is another zone of Georgia proper. Gori fell, and Georgia is mounting a last ditch defense of the capital at Mtskheta.

May We Live in Interesting Times...

2008-08-08T04:01:00.006-04:00

"Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating."
- Carl von Clausewitz

The Georgians are moving in on South Ossetia and they don't look to be pulling any punches. This wouldn't be very worrying if it weren't for the way Russia's reacted. According to the Georgians, the Russians flew three Su-24s into Georgia and started bombing police stations. Now, the Russians haven't said anything yet and I doubt they'll say they did it - using Russian jets to harass Georgia is nothing new. The last time the Georgians claimed the Russians bombed them, the Russians said it was likely an incident fabricated by the Georgian government. To be fair, Georgia does operate a half-dozen or so Su-24s. Russia operates 458. Choose your verison of the truth, I suppose. However, even if Russia isn't "officially" fighting Georgia, that isn't going to stop them from helping out the Ossetians (or the Abkhaz). They can always supply weapons to the resistance movements themselves - even when it wasn't Kremlin policy, many Russian officers voluntarily did it (or were bribed) during the initial '91-'93 conflict. Russia's going to come down hard on Georgia for a number of reasons. One is letting American soldiers into Georgia from 2002-2004. Another is Georgia's continuing efforts to expand this relationship into NATO membership. Don't forget Georgia's offer to take part in the US missile shield - something that's gotten Poland in trouble too. Consider also Russia's promise to step up support for Georgian breakaway regions in light of Kosovar independence. If Russia really throws their weight into this, it's not just because Russia cares so much about regions that have the population equivalents of Providence, Rhode Island and Gary, Indiana - it's because Russia wants to reassert its traditional role in the Caucasus - hegemon.

UPDATE: Russia is throwing their weight into this. The 58th army has entered Georgia.

So, it being an Olympic year, we can look forward at least to some spirited matches between Russia and Georgia in the Olympics. The IOC's efforts to the contrary, the Olympics are a political event. China's using it as a nationalist popularity boost. The Uighurs are using it as an opportunity to lash out at the Chinese government (perhaps to gain some visibility with the Free Tibet crowd). The US has put a Sudanese refugee as its flag-carrier. But remember guys, the Olympics are not political. At all. Ever. So this one's won't be either. Believe it, and it will be true.

Pakistan's Parliament seems on track to impeach Musharraf. This, if it works well, is good news - Pakistan's civilian government hasn't been perfect, but it's better to forge a new relationship with a legitimate government than lose Pakistan moderates by clinging to an unpopular strongman. Of course, Musharraf (and the military), if they choose to fight it out, can shut down parliament, declare emergency law again, and throw the whole process for a loop. On the other hand, if this succeeds against the army's wishes, who knows how tight a leash the Pakistani government can keep on the army and ISI? Nevertheless, the US should do everything to ensure that Pakistan has a strong, legitimate government - we aren't ready for Kagan's nightmare.

Nuclear talks with Iran aren't progressing swimmingly, either. The risk-reward ratio is still skewed too far to justify a military attack, but this logic might not convince Israel. To go on a bit of a tangent, I consider an Israeli attack on Iran the worst of all possible options. Firstly, the political blowback in Iran and the wider Middle East would be just as catastrophic for the US - especially because geography necessitates we green-light any Israeli strike. However, there are so many nuclear sites in Iran (and Iran's air-defense network is well enough along) that a decisive blow against Iran's nuclear infrastructure would require the might of the USAF, not just the relative handful Israeli aircraft capable of reaching Iran's inland sites. I do not think such strikes are inevitable, though. I would, however, rate the Iranian chance of acquiring a bomb as higher than the chances there will be a conflict.

With a Friend Like This...

2008-08-02T01:12:00.006-04:00

Pakistan is one of the most frustrating countries for the US to deal with in the war on terror. It's a massive state sponsor of Islamic fundamentalism - something we found out the hard way when we had to subcontract their ISI to get into Afghanistan in the '80s. It has nuclear weapons, and thus has intentionally and unintentionally become a potential source of nuclear proliferation. And even if it becomes completely intolerable to American interests, it is far too massive for the US to invade.

Why has our Pakistan policy gone so badly?

First of all, America is not the hub of all international interests. Especially Pakistan's. Pakistan has plenty of built-in faults, like its hodgepodge of ethnic groups and a virtually permanent state of inferiority to its rival. Consequently, Pakistan's overriding motives are maintaining internal stability and checking India.

Which means that unless we can convince Pakistan we're going to destroy them, or give them real advantages against India, it's going to be really hard to get Pakistan's government to act the way we want. Let alone its people, which the government often has had a hard time getting to act the way it wants.

Until now, we've gotten Pakistan to ignore it's natural interest of exploiting Islamic sentiments to shore up support in the lawless Northwestern Frontier and check India by bribing them with military aid to India. Given the returns, however, this doesn't make much sense in the long run - India is a far more valuable ally than Pakistan, to be frank. Nevertheless, we need Pakistan's cooperation to deal with Afghanistan and terrorism in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Obama has suggested a policy of intervening in Pakistan without the government's permission. This makes sense when it is absolutely vital to, say, killing key al Qaeda members or existential threats to Afghanistan, but it is not a cure-all replacement for Pakistani cooperation. Indeed, even using this method when it is vital could have dire consequences - either it will induce a government extremely hostile to US interests, or US intervention could induce internal unrest and destabilization in Pakistan, especially given the fragile nature of Pakistan's parliamentary governments. Either way, worse for the US at this point.

It's important to note that nobody really wants Pakistan to collapse - its neighbors don't want to deal with the refugees, al Qaeda doesn't want to lose the shield of protection (if Pakistan were already in anarchy, there'd be no reason not to cross the border and mess around), China doesn't want to lose a client, Iran doesn't want to fight off the Baluchis, Saudi Arabia doesn't want to lose the ISI as a partner, and India doesn't want to lose a common enemy. Finally, the vast majority of the world doesn't want loose nukes. Even if they become more hostile, until they start handing out nuclear weapons, they're probably an enemy we want intact.

Also, if you believe Jared Diamond, this collapse is inevitable since Pakistan is committing ecological suicide.

The Post-Election World

2008-07-29T01:54:00.001-04:00

Americans are slowly being robbed of purpose. Between our ideological successes of the past 50 years and the policy failures of the past 10, we have created a world which we are fundamentally unprepared for.

That's the impression I'm getting, anyway. I picked up The Post-American World and The Return of History, and I liked both, despite their conflicting worldviews. I am inclined to agree with the claim of the former, that economic growth is not zero-sum, and the fear of the latter, that power politics is. Both, in their own ways, make this point - Zakaria in hopes of helping America find a new one, Kagan in deference to the "return of geopolitics".

This, of course, is political suicide. There is wistful speculation about McCain's "realist" tendencies, but ultimately his view of American purpose seems just as influenced by Kagan's earlier works as his latest (quite literally so [oh, the pun]). McCain's issues with the new Russia and stances on Iraq may be guided by some realist political assumptions, but they converge with international perceptions of neoconservatism. In the world's eyes, it is more important for America's next leader to not be a neoconservative than for him to be a realist. Even his less belligerent positions still rely on a sense of American purpose that now seems outdated - specifically, the League of Democracies. Now, Kagan actually proposes this, but I think there are some issues - mainly, I do not think it can reconcile a commitment to objectively democratic values and American interests without being seen as a US-dominated institution.

Using the Freedom House definition of democracy, countries like Mongolia are farther ahead than Turkey or Colombia. Yet it is hard to imagine a successful US policy in Latin America without Colombia, or a successful US policy in the Middle East without Turkey. At the same time, how will the League act effectively when it must consult countries like Argetnina or South Africa (the latter of which does not seem to be much of an ally of democracy in its own neighborhood). Maintaining an organization that is both inclusive of the world's liberal democracies and conducive to independent action and McCain's worldview would require constant application of US pressure - something that will grow less and less feasible with the "rise of the rest."

At the same time, Obama seems to significantly overestimate US power in diplomatic terms. The fundamental point behind Obama's foreign policy strategy is that the US can accomplish more with diplomacy than it can with its military. This is in many ways true. However, it's important to note that the US is and will be far more of a unipolar actor in terms of military power than it will be in economic or soft power in the future. The gap between the West and the "rest" is closing far faster in economic than in military terms, while countries are beginning to look to their fellow developing nations rather than the West thanks to the success of the BRIC bloc. The ideological influences of both candidates often like to point to Roosevelt and Harry Truman - neoconservatives because of their confrontation of totalitarianism, liberals because of their commitment to multilateralism and development. But just as radical Islam nowhere near rivals the power of the Axis or the USSR, so too does US "soft" and "sticky" power in the wake of WWII have little relevance to today.

It is common practice to invoke the Marshall Plan, but it is it really relevant? The Marshall Plan kept countries that were already friendly to us in that state. It shored up pre-existing institutions. Its success would not have been possible without significant structural reforms in many countries (Germany's economic miracle arguably came more from economic policy changes than US aid). It is not at all relevant to what the US is trying to accomplish today, certainly not to American policy in the Middle East. [As a sidebar, another rather irritating cliche is the comparison to some gargantuan program like getting off of fossil fuels to "putting a man on the moon" or "the Manhattan project." Yes, these programs were very ambitious but they did not reform society. The Manhattan project produced research, some nuclear facilities, and bombs. It did not switch the US over to an all-nuclear society, nor an all-nuclear military, within the course of its existence. The 10-year moon goal launched a handful of men to the moon, a few times. It did not reform society. It did not make landing on the moon cheap or easy - note we haven't done it since. The "fossil fuel" effort, on the other hand, would require changes to virtually every aspect of life and cost an enormously larger part of the economy and take much longer than a decade. There is no comparison to what a program to get off of fossil fuels would require.]

Obama also has yet to engage on issues that are specifically relevant to, well, our actual allies. So far, most of what I've seen involves simply conducting US policy in a way less offensive to the rest of the world. This will buy us some goodwill, but it is not building the foundation for some kind of new wonderful multilateral order, or Joffe's Bismarckian "spoke and hub" system. Assuming the US can win back world support by granting countries the concession of not bombing them or someone else without consulting them first takes a lot of hubris, too. Zakaria's first point about a new US policy is making choices - Obama cannot be all things to all people, nor, I suspect, will he be able to simultaneously build up international cooperation and goodwill while following Democratic policies to their full extent in Latin America (trade issues), China (trade, human rights, environment, etc), and the Middle East (Israel, and likely more).

To build a truly successful multilateral system, the next President will have to address genuinely foregin concerns, not just things America does that concern foreign countries. This applies to the claims that McCain's anti-torture positions will dramatically improve US relations, too. As I always seem to get around to saying, the next President will have to be more than Not George W. Bush.

"Future: That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured."
- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.

Random Thoughts

2008-07-24T01:14:00.004-04:00

Jon Chait writes a great review of the Shock Doctrine.

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Tyler Cowen's point about Europe becoming more like the US in economic terms seemed like a fairly simple suggestion at the time, and it's an interesting metric by which to evaluate European news... France is liberalizing their labor market by scrapping the legendary 35-hour mandatory work week and leaving it up to union-business negotiation. I am shocked to see such a thing could pass without some sort of disaster to psychologically subjugate the people. Also, Italy is cracking down on illegal immigrants. Actually, this latter part isn't necessarily becoming more like America, because Europe has its own proud tradition of not getting along with foreigners, too.

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Weird news lately about Russian involvement in the Western Hemisphere. First a replay of the Cuban missile crisis comes up for some bizarre reason. Then Chavez starts talking about Russian troops in Venezuela to defend it from the Americans. While in today's climate, Russia would never be able to wage an effective war across an ocean, the fact that this is even being discussed or worried about is a good reminder that old-style geopolitics aren't over yet.

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McCain is now running for god of war and victory.

Something longer later. As requested, I toned it down a bit.

Winning Battles, Winning Wars

2008-07-20T02:40:00.004-04:00

I think Maliki's endorsement of a 16 month timetable for withdrawal (Obama's Iraq plan, essentially) is great news. Firstly, it reflects the confidence of the Iraqi central government in the country's future - in 2006, you would not have seen this kind of discussion. Secondly, it validates my opinion that electoral pressures do not make for good foreign policies.

Why isn't this an unquestionable win for Obama? Well, because, as I mentioned earlier, in 2006, you would not have seen this kind of discussion between Bush and Maliki or Maliki and anyone else. Obama was wrong when he endorsed rapid withdrawal before the surge. Assuming all these reports are accurate: McCain was right on the surge, Obama was wrong; Now, McCain is wrong on withdrawal, and Obama is right. Ironically, both candidates have, at times, hinted of deviating from their stances. As mentioned earlier, there has long been suspicion that Obama wouldn't stick to 16 months if the "situation on the ground" didn't favor it. And McCain said he would support leaving Iraq if the government requested it.

After all the political "flip-flopping" on Iraq (and on other issues) in recent months, the message I am coming away with is notthat any particular candidate is more correct - though it seems barring a major reversal, Obama is certain to win - but that the next foreign policy is not going to be a drastically significant "improvement" - if you hadn't figured it out already.

One of the McCain staff's early responses to news of Maliki supporting a 16 month withdrawal was that Maliki was speaking out of "domestic political pressures" or something similar. Yet it appears that after examining the long, sordid history of both Obama and McCain, we can take away the same message. Given McCain's admissions and criticisms in the war of 2004, I think it is almost unquestionable that McCain has trapped himself on this issue by refusing to concede anything to the center for fear of angering his party's base.

In the spirit of The Shock Doctrine, I'll make a pretty questionable claim about foreign policy and the democratic system: the American democratic systems impede effective, transformative foreign policies. Ancient emperors didn't have to get elected, nor did William III of England. Bismarck and Metternich were not monarchs, but neither did they inhabit a democratic system. The internationalism of Wilson could not succeed until FDR marginalized the Republican Party and refused to follow the two-term limit tradition. Even the British prime ministers can adjust the times for general elections and have much more flexibility about the lengths of their government. There are obviously some exceptions - Nixon's foreign policy was a pretty big break, and he wasn't in power that long. But for many, his system was not necessarily a good or moral one, and as I've said, the grandest systems rely in large part on their creators, and you need only look to Bismarck to see the consequences of what happens when a system fails. Perhaps, even if we would like a Great Man as President, it is better we have the threat of popular referendum to adulturate their aspirations. After all, for every potential great policy, we have even more failures, with disastrous consequences.

Nevertheless, if John McCain's transition from having all the right policies on Iraq to the farthest right positions on Iraq (barring a pride-swallowing admission that would probably kill his campaign anyway) is something of a tragedy; then that this downfall was made possible by the vindication of his ideas is a suitably dramatic twist. If John McCain does not go back four years and state what he believed (believes, we can only hope), then all he will have left is to say he was right about the surge.

But he should think carefully before attempting to gain credit from past insights made obsolete:

Obama, after all, was right about the war.

Schlock Tactics

2008-07-18T22:34:00.011-04:00

DISCLAIMER: I read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine between Thursday and Friday, in the interests of balancing out my reading material. The following post is likely extremely sloppy, but the fact people consider this book a legitimate critique of capitalism amazes me. I decided to take a break from reviewing before I got to some even more ludicrious assertions about China, the UK, and other things.

This is possibly one of the most overrated books since The World Is Flat. As a critique of free market capitalism, it fails by lacking a solid empirical basis or a clear definition of what free market capitalism is. As a critique of American interventionism and neoconservatism, it says nothing that has not been stated better by other authors, and what original things it does say are too inextricably bound up in haphazard analogizing and inconsistent theory to be of much use.

The book suffers from major problems. One of which is its obsession with Milton Friedman. Friedman was indeed an orthodox libertarian - this is exactly why Klein's interpretation of him is incorrect. Klein's analysis presents a "conspiracy" in the truest sense of the word - it seems as if every single person, institution and belief system Klein disagrees with has been boiled into an evil, capitalist, warmongering gruel. The Shock Doctrine does not just oversimplify. When convenient, it does the reverse, obfuscating systems to the point where vastly different beliefs are indistinguishable. It presents us with a clear double standard. She attacks the notion that developmentalism and mixed economies were steps on the path to authoritarian communism. Her critique in that sense is legitimate, in many cases American leaders fell so far into anticommunist paranoia that social democracy and socialism, socialism and Stalinism, became inextricable.

Yet Klein asks us to reject a slippery slope on the left and embrace wholeheartedly one on the right - "neoliberal" market reforms is indistingusihable from "libertarian" free market orthodoxy is indistungishable from "neoconservative" statism and militarism. We find overwhelmingly that this is not the case. Neoconservatism and libertarianism are almost diametrically opposed belief systems. Libertarianism seeks a small government at home and a noninterventionist one abroad. A libertarian would not support "no bid" contracts, nation building, enormous increases in military expenditure, faith based initatives, torture, detention camps, wiretapping, and crony capitalism. Klein, of course, feels no need to qualify or even attempt to explain her categorization of the Cato Institute as "neoconservative" - perhaps because doing so would force her to acknowledge the overwhelming opposition of libertarians, Milton Friemdan included, to foreign intervention and torture, thus undercutting two thirds of her view of the "disaster capitalist" M.O. - invade, liberalize, repress.

Klein's selective misappropriation of Friedman's words and ideas does not end with foreign intervention. Her thesis, and her claim that Milton Friedman is its ideological lynchpin, begins in force with this quote from one of his "most influential [1962] essays:" (Oddly, the correct 1982 introduction citation comes 174 pages in)

“Only a crisis produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”

The first statement is essentially obvious. Crisis is definitionally linked with change. The second is also true. When governments and societies respond to crisis, they generally come to ideas that have been floating in the undercurrent, unimplemented but nevertheless developed. Theories about the utility of mixed economies existed long before the Great Depression, and theories about a proper, internationalist role for the United States existed before World War II. Free market theories were "lying around" during the economic crisis of the 1970s, as were the ideas of neoconservatives during the crisis of American foregin policy in the wake of Vietnam and Iran. Klein essentially acknowledges this a third of the way through the book. However, Klein refuses to acknowledge the difference between a descriptive and a prescriptive statement. Milton Friedman was making a basic observation about how the world worked, not how it should work. Milton Friedman and other economists did not invite disasters, precisely because of the implications of what ideas were "lying around." As Klein states, Milton Friedman and the Chicago School knew their ideas were deeply unpopular - thus, during a crisis, the ideas likely to be lying around were those of the socialist and left wing variety. The point of the preface was that believers in the free market should popularize their ideas, so economic freedom and the democratic system would not be at cross purposes. It is clear that Friedman prefers gradualism in a democratic system rather than induced crisis. Klein, however, ignores the intent of her ideological enemies' remarks, so long as they contain her favorite catchphrases. One is Friedman's preference for gradual reform over "shock therapy". Friedman, in the letter published on Klein's own website, notes that:

"For a country like the US, where inflation is around 10 per cent a yer, I favor agradual policy of ending it in two or three years. But for Chile, where inflation is raging at 10 to 20 percent a month, I believe gradualism is not feasible. It would involve so painful an operation over so long a period that I fear the patient would not survive."

Indeed, Friedman advocates shock therapy (that he also advocates Pinochet "[p]rovide for the relief of any cases of real hardship" is unsurprisingly omitted from Klein's analysis). Yet he explicitly states this is not the ideal form of treatment. A preference for the gradual implementation of free market reforms and macroeconomic adjustment, of course, helps to undermine Klein's thesis that a "Friedmanite counterrevolution" should consist of the inducement of crises. Nevertheless, Klein spends so much time and effort detailing Friedman's desire to separate the market and the state, she ends up, in her description of "Shock Therapy in the USA," describing a program in which enormous amounts of government spending are used to outsource government functions to corporations as "the pinnacle of the Friedmanite counterrevolution." Klein's vision of "disaster capitalism" and Friedman's views alternates between the (more accurate) laissez-faire doctrine in which industrialists hoping for government support are told to "go to hell" and a "corporatist" doctrine in which Friedmanites are purported to support what Klein herself calls a "vast protectionist racket." Klein is absolutely correct to note that Milton Friedman supported laissez faire even at the expense of industrialists and corporations. Many of the passages of Free to Choose are directed at corporations that benefit from government regulation and trade protections. She is also correct to note that the interactions between the Bush government and contractors often amount to a "mafia" arrangement between the market and state. However, to conflate Friedman's views with those of Bush for convenience is ludicrous. The fact she even uses the term Friedmanite after explicitly stating that "Chile under Pinochet and the Chicago boys was not a capitalist state... but a corporatist one" demands a serious explanation that Klein never delivers. The Shock Doctrine's tenuous linkage between these various forms of systems best summed up as "economic systems Naomi Klein doesn't like" employs fallacies of division and composition - that Friedmanite policies are perceived to favor business makes any pro-business policy automatically Friedmanite. She also presumes that since the Chilean government could only conduct free market reforms by political repression, advocating free market reforms, as Friedman did, is tantamount to promoting political repression. However, a government imposed by an unpopular coup requires political repression in some form merely to exist - any of its reforms, except ones to abolish itself, would require repression. Does Klein propose that third world dictatorships seeking to return to developmentalism and asking advice be rebuffed by technical advisors? (I await her condemnation of mixed-system and Keynesian economists for meeting with the USSR in the interwar years, and that of economists meeting with the vast majority of African and Central Asian countries today.) Even if the Chicago Boys of Chile can be blamed for the coup, foreign economists cannot. Milton Friedman wrote a letter to Pinochet and met with him for barely an hour. Friedman was not the architect of the arrangement that put Chicago economists into Chile - Klein admits that occurred long before Friedman became the dominant thinker at Chicago. The junta picked right wing economists, the economists did not pick the junta.

The abuses of logic are carried further - since the Chicago School taught a few Argentines and was associated with a junta in Chile, it occurs naturally to Klein that Argentina must have been a "Chicago School junta" as well. Yet there is little evidence of Argentina having anywhere near the same economic experience as Chile under its junta. While Jose Martinez de Hoz, Argetine financial minister, did reduce developmentalist trade barriers and deregulate the finance sectors, she fails to note that during the he allowed for massive amounts of inflation and his most infamous economic policy tools were wage and price controls coupled with the a bond and treasury policy that essentially amounted to fraud - he ws hardly a free market acolyte, but an economic nationalist seeking to strengthen Argentina's economy. Klein uses a letter describing torture and "planned misery" as "Chicago School" despite Klein's earlier admissions that a pro-business policy is not automatically a Chicago School policy; simultaneously it is clear Argentina's alternations between crackdowns on anti-business groups, government interventions and mixed deregulation point to crony capitalism or "corporatism" rather than the Chicago School. Of course, these ideas are only separate when they suit Klein's purposes. Klein only bothers to connect Argentina's government with actual "Chicago Boys" two decades later during the Argentine fiscal crisis, long after the terror.

Argentina's true "financial" shock of deregulation and "Chicago Boy" policy comes long after its shocks of intervention and repression. Klein, in the opening of her book, outlines Chile, Iraq, and other countries as examples of a clear pattern - disaster, economic change, and repression to protect it. She also stresses continually that "shock" requires these things occur in concert. No such thing occurs in Argentina, and her example falls apart elsewhere. Where was the torture in New Orleans after Katrina (and no, simply having the presence of security personnel and the National Guard doesn't count as "repression")? What, beyond the school reform, were the free market reforms?

Klein delights in the fact that no multiparty democracy has gone "full-tilt free market." By her own admission, Chile was corporatist, Iraq is a racket, and any reasonable examination of China today demonstrates a country practicing something closer to mercantilism or "state capitalism" rather than laissez-faire. So what society then, has gone "full-tilt free market?" Although Milton Friedman himself supported anti-trust legislation and emissions taxes, he is certainly a laissez-faire economist (though not as much as the Austrians, again something Klein admits). The reality is that the main flaw of Friedman's laissez-faire economics is not that they cannot be implemented in a democracy or without repression, but that they cannot be implemented. The government with the power to implement such laissez-faire reforms over the natural voting interests of people and lobbyists would naturally taint its economic reforms with "corporatism" just as naturally as the government with the power to implement complete socialism over the natural voting interests of people and lobbyists would taint its economic reforms with bureaucratic cronyism. There is nothing wrong with critiquing the practicability of laissez-faire or the brutality of armed corporatism. But the amount of self-contradictions in Klein's work, the twisting of history to fit an "all-encompassing" thesis, and its attempt to refute "neoliberal" reforms by conflating everything that smells of capitalism into an impossible system with no true ideological constituents is absurd. Free market economists widely acknowledge that successful free market reform is better taken in gradual doses rather than extreme "shock therapy"- the Chicago School is not representative of mainstream free market economic thought, nor has it ever been. In focusing her attacks on Friedman, she forfeits a legitimate critique of entirely separate economic systems. So too does she ignore the small triumphs of capitalism in the developing world, slowly liberalizing but rapidly growing. Klein is absolutely correct to state that extreme free market ideals are unpopular, but she is incorrect to assume then that this encourages "laissez-faire" "disaster capitalists" to team up with "corporatists" to try and implement them forcibly. The median economist, as Bryan Caplan and others note, is a centrist Democrat - supportive of a government role and sensible policy changes, but agreed on basic economic principles about the dangers of price controls, excessive regulation, and protectionism - policies that Klein seems to be very supportive of. Many support this book on the basis that the overwhelming praise for Friedman must be balanced out. This is foolish, firstly because Milton Friedman's most basic premise - that in general, economic liberty is a positive thing - is as true as any general claim about the benefit of responsible government. But secondly, much more reasonable and balanced criticisms of Friedman's economic policies come from left-leaning and centrist analysts with peer-reviewed, empirical studies. The deeper the left draws from the gutters to attack Friedman and other systems, the more the left plays into the conservative claim that the ultra-capitalists are in the "true" mainstream, and everyone else is supporting socialism - "unfettered capitalism" emerged after such crusades against its supporters, and it would be wise for the American left not to prime such another swing for the future. You do not need to prove that Milton Friedman and capitalism are the spawn of Satan to critique either.

Silly Music Post

2008-07-17T23:47:00.013-04:00

I was on The National's website and I saw the banner at the top of the page - I thought it was kind of interesting. Given Alligator came out in 2005, I suspect the song wasn't originally about him - or even the elections, but who knows? Well, actually, I don't think anyone would describe Obama as the "Great White Hope," though "new blue blood" would be a suitably snarky way for idiots with blogs to label a young, "elitist" Democrat. Before I lose my license for misappropriating lyrics, I would actually like to note that "I won't fuck us over" is, looking back on my previous posts, the campaign slogan for my preferred 2008 Presidential campaign.

Inspirational, I know.

The song in question.

Surviving Diplomacy

2008-07-16T00:35:00.001-04:00

Though Iraq is getting most of the attention from Presidential candidates these days, I'm not afraid to once again drag out the other "talked-to-death" foreign policy issue: Iran. Given it's not the primary concern of many voters, it is unlikely that either candidate will be elected for their stance on Iran. Assuming nobody bombs it between now and January, it is unlikely it will garner enormous amounts of public attention during election and post-election season either.

However, for Obama moreso than McCain, it's going to the subject of significant scrutiny when he starts his actual diplomatic efforts. Because Obama has drawn such a stark contrast between his position and that of McCain and the past three decades of American policy, if he follows through on what he's said (and he may not, of course), then he will be under far more pressure than McCain would be. Most Americans are not expecting a breakthrough with Iran, and given the mystery behind Iran's nuclear program, might not even be sure what a breakthrough would be. If elected, I do not think many Americans will be expecting McCain to make a diplomatic one - though it would disproportionately benefit his candidacy if he did.

For Obama, or indeed, any "dovish" candidate (this could well apply to Democrat 2012 or 2016, too!), the issue is going to be getting re-elected after all this. If Obama does get "soft" on Iran, it could potentially be an election-killer if it doesn't go very well. Obama can sit down with Iran and even begin a normalization of ties with them, but, if he doesn't want to turn his Iran policy into a major negative, he'll have to keep in mind the following:

Iran has regional interests that anger Americans which go beyond their nuclear program. For example, no matter what we do, we are not going to get Iran to keep its hands off of Iraq. It makes no diplomatic sense for the Iranians, and it would be very hard for American President to overcome this. Thusly, "solving" the Iranian nuclear issue and warming ties will likely not stop Iranian support for Hezbollah or the Shiite militias in Iraq. Americans (most likely conservative analysts and military personnel) may become very vocal about these issues not being addressed. The US President could have his staff walk away from the negotiating table, claim success on the nuclear question, and still have Hezbollah fighting in Lebanon and the Badr Brigade's Revolutionary Guard pensioned troops clashing with the government or US troops.
Negotiations that go well do not mean negotiations that work. In North Korea and Iraq, negotiations and inspection compliance do not necessarily answer the nuclear question. If Obama is perceived as being too soft or giving in too much and does not definitively solve the nuclear issue, he had better hope no evidence of mischief appears between the time of negotiations and the 2012 elections.
Big-mouthed Iranian Presidents. Despite the lack of definitive proof for an Iranian nuclear weapons program, belligerent statements by Iranian politicians, about Israel or otherwise, are still enough to catch media attention and anger Americans. Since Iranian politicians also have to pander to conservatives, do not count on negotiations toning this down to an insignificant amount. Israel will still be there, and it is incredibly unlikely Obama will be able to do much to warm Iranian-Israeli relations.

This is not to suggest that I think negotiations with Iran are an inherently bad thing - I just think the political risks are greater for a liberal than a conservative, and that still applies for Obama. I do not think the Middle East is "primed" for a breakthrough. The Arab press is widely skeptical about Obama, and it would not surprise me if the Iranian press were as well. Negotiating with Iran will still require diplomatic finesse rather than good intentions, and moving beyond the nuclear program to Iran's regional role to address concerns in Iraq and Lebanon will take even more. Americans should not put so much stock in diplomacy simply because it's not what we've been doing the last eight years (as I've said in so many more words earlier, the system is still going to be broken when Bush leaves), but because in many cases it does the least possible harm. I would prefer a Presidency that Obama has promised in the primaries to the one that McCain jokes about, but I have low expectations of what these negotiations will actually accomplish. Likely, Obama will stick to his clarification that he'll reserve such negotiations to times when we can definitively identify we can achieve something useful. Which, of course, does not escape the subjectivity required to identify when those times are.

Random thoughts on '08 and econ policy

2008-07-12T18:18:00.002-04:00

John McCain's 300 Economist statement is already turning into a fiasco. In all likelihood, most of these guys just signed on not because they think McCain's plan is that great (it would continue budget deficit spending, supports a silly gas tax cut concept, etc), but because they think it is better than the alternative (see next paragraph). The interesting thing about McCain's plan is that it makes more sense if you think we're going to be in a worse place economically in 2009 than we are right now. It avoids the things you generally want to avoid doing to exacerbate a recession - raising taxes, enacting protectionist legislation, trying to balance the budget - but that doesn't necessarily make it the best economic policy. If we are in a solid enough economic position that we can raise taxes to close the budget deficit, and the budget deficit is manageable enough to allow for new spending for domestic programs, then Obama's policy would be preferable.

Of course, that's also questionable. If the economy does get worse, doing things like raising capital gains taxes will be a doubly bad idea (first because capital gains taxes are perhaps the one form of taxation that has significant "supply-side" effects) because discouraging capital formation is the opposite of what the US should be doing when it is concerned about bank panics. The other problem is that, as has been pointed out months ago, most economic calculations of the future budget deficit include the Bush tax cuts being phased out. It's still pretty big.

The best case I think you can make for McCain's economic policy is that there will most likely be a strong Democratic Congress no matter what happens in November, which means that he won't be able to extend the Bush tax cuts, pass additional tax cuts, or any domestic spending programs that only Republicans like. He would also likely veto many domestic spending programs, whereas Obama would be under pressure to pass whatever Congress put in front of him.

As far as budget hawks are concerned, I think the current Democratic pretensions of being the real fiscally sensible party are deeper grounded in one-upsmanship than an overriding interest in fiscal restraint. This is not the DLC's party anymore. Obama infamously said he would increase capital gains taxes even if it decreased revenue. The Democrats have made universal healthcare a key campaign issue, and additionally are proposing major federal investment in infrastructure. The one area where Obama will be able to make headway is in spending on Iraq, but probably only after 2010. Even then, there will still be major aid obligations and an escalated effort in Afghanistan to pay for. This is not going to be the next Clinton administration, fiscally (nor would it have been if the other Clinton was going to win).

Ultimately, I'm going to base my economic preference on this - "who will do the least harm?" Both candidates have flawed policies, depending on the economic situation they will face in office. If the economy avoids a recession and improves, it will be largely due to the Federal Reserve and the private sector. I do not think either candidate will be able to easily implement the most fiscally favorable elements of their platforms. McCain will not be able to get away with a corporate tax cut or free trade agreements. Obama will find it very difficult to close the budget deficit by an economically significant amount (which would be an amount that prevents crowding out or inflation). In any case, we'll just have to see what happens. Discussing the full range of possibilities of what the economy could be like leads to a number of potentially contradictory stances. But, as Keynes said, when the facts change, so should our opinions.

Of course, much of economy is out of the President's hands - so we should vote primarily on what the President is most likely to influence... Which is foreign policy.

Really, How'd it Get This Way?

2008-07-10T01:00:00.000-04:00

Why can't America mind its own business? I posed the question earlier and touched on it briefly. But it's a question intruiguing enough to answer, and it comes from an opinion common enough to rile me. Since World War II, every American policy has been built around an interventionist approach to foreign affairs - even the most Wilsonian and internationalist of policies lead us into conflicts - from Korea to Kosovo, good intentions lead to the use of American power abroad. Why can't we be like every other nation?

There are several flaws to this argument, and even then it takes valances - the purely isolationist and the multilateralist being most prominent. These posts often reek of the strawman fallacy, but I assure you I have heard these arguments made.

The first is that, quite simply, America is not like every other nation. We are still one fifth of the world's economy. This is not to say that economic might paves the way for diplomatic right, but it is a figure you should keep in mind. America is still a bull in a china shop. Even when it lies down to sleep, it is still going to knock something over. Other countries expect things of the most powerful countries, especially when they are the only one that can deploy power anywhere in the world. Even with the rise of China, you are not going to see comparable military power. American aircraft will still patrol the Taiwan Strait and American carriers will still linger in the East China Sea. But I will bet money that you will not live to see Chinese CVNs at a permanent base in Hispanola or 30,000 PLA troops in Guatemala. India is even less prepared for a role as a military superpower. Russia virtually ended naval construction and its strategic air capabilities are unlikely to return to Cold War capabilities (Even Russia's traditional strong point, missile technology is on the wane - reporting botched Topol tests is a taboo subject in Putin's Russia). The EU might be least prepared of all potential superpowers - Europe includes powers, but it is not a power itself. The EU, internally, is a remarkable institution. But it is less than the sum of its parts beyond its own borders. (One could, of course, argue that we don't need any superpower lording over anyone, but this would be to assume there are no genuinely international problems or concerns that require a forceful resolution. History shows rather well that there are, and such an attitude generally results in the triumph of the nastiest superpowers.)

Even if we do have a role to play, then who will help us do it? This is the multilateralist form of the argument. Who wants to do what we do? If Europe is on the rise and will some day act as a unified power beyond its own borders, then it is the most logical ideological heir to America's role. So too, people would argue, it could also be America's successor in practical terms - after all, KFOR was representative of NATO, ISAF's non-American component is largely European, etc. But do they want to?

The answer, overwhelmingly, is no. Britain is a telling example. Iraq? Britain's been there, and it bought the T-shirt. Afghanistan? Also not a positive experience. But it's not just Britain: Europe is tired of anything that smells of empire. Want to see multilateral, institution-based, trans-Atlantic cooperation? French socialists are trying to avoid entering the NATO unified command structure precisely so they don't have to contribute or defer their national interest to others. When the choice comes down to spending more on the military so half of it doesn't walk away so they can fight wars of choice or maintaining a massive amount of morally unquestionable entitlement programs, which way do you think a democratic European country will swing? There are willing Eastern European countries, to be sure - the ones who remember American favors and Soviet boots, but Western Europe is sensibly enough more concerned about angering its petroleum supplier than getting more Ukranians in ISAF.

But the truth is, Europeans know issues like a potential Iraqi collapse, a crisis in the Taiwan Straits, and war in the Korean peninsula are real issues - they'd just rather have someone else dump half their discretionary spending into the military and hundreds of thousands of soldiers into permanent overseas bases. International security is a public good, and public goods are free rider problems. The UN will not likely be the "government" that resolves such problems when they appear on a national scale. Giving the US, UK, France, Russia and China vetoes alone is problematic enough, proposals to make the council more representative by giving the same to Germany, Japan, India, Brazil, and an Islamic Player to be Named Later is not going to help. So the superpower among great powers often does the work of others. To go back to Afghanistan's long history of interventions...

"On another hand, it's absolutely clear that Nato countries, and Great Britain among them, they are doing our job," he adds.
"Now western countries are doing our job and support tremendously Russian security."

There's the Catch-22 of American foreign policy. When our actions serve the interests of all international players, we will bear the brunt of the costs. When they do not, there will be fewer to help with whatever ones we do not.

But what about the 1990s? Or, to put it in a partisan manner, what about the Clinton administration? Our unipolarity then was also unquestioned, but we now nostalgically look back upon it as an era of hope for multilateral policy and the international rule of law. Well, part of that is justified. And much of it is a kneejerk reaction to the misguided policies of George W. Bush. But it is important to remember that while Bush's interest in nation-building came after 9/11, the neoconservatism of his advisors was already there. PNAC's letter petitioning Clinton to depose Saddam went out in 1998. Its famed "Rebuilding America's Defenses" came out in 1997.

Let's review:

The Battle of Mogadishu, 1993 - You've seen the movie, maybe even read the book, but the American withdrawal here was emblamatic of much of what neoconservatives thought was wrong about American foreign policy.
The Rwandan genocide, 1994 - The US decides to "do what everyone else is doing," which, in a collective action problem, is absolutely nothing. Using force to protect human rights starts looking like a good idea again.
Operation Deliberate Force, Bosnia, 1995 - NATO bombs the Balkans to the peace table. Russia prevents the UN from doing anything constructive.
3rd Taiwan Straits Crisis, 1995-1996 - China launches missiles over Taiwan, Chinese generals imply they would use nuclear arms against American cities if the US intervened. These war fears persist well into the beginning of Bush's first term... And then 9/11 happens. This is why PNAC is writing letters about rebuilding America's defenses.
Operation Desert Fox, Iraq, 1998 - Iraq refuses to comply with inspectors. America bombs Iraq, and Clinton signs the Iraq Liberation Act that supports anti-Saddam militias. The aforementioned PNAC letter to go further comes here.
Operation Infinite Reach, Afghanistan, Sudan, 1998 - In response to the African embassy bombings, the US bombs a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan and other targets in Afghanistan. Russia and the Muslims are angry, but the US is still riding enough goodwill from the attacks on its embassies that Europe gives it the general OK.
Operation Allied Force, Kosovo, 1999 - Similar story, slightly different location. The phrase "humanitarian bombing" is used intentionally by NATO spokespersons. KFOR - Western troops - are on the ground. Criticisms include the questionable use of UN resolutions as a justification, undermining of the international system, the unnecessary escalation of conflict due to a misreading of the target nation's actions, and committing the US to nation-building. Only this time, it's conservatives saying the latter rather than liberals.

Obviously, these events were not as blatantly unilateral as Bush's. Iraq was the first in a line of major military operations (1st, 2nd Balkans interventions, Afghanistan) to be without the backing of a multilateral institution. But I think the issue is not how we lost the goodwill America enjoyed in the 1990s, because by 1999 we were on our way to losing it (to extrapolate a counterfactual history, if we continued our interventionist projects into the 2000s without 9/11, a lot of the world, and NATO, would likely still be somewhat mad with us. Another counterfactual: if 9/11 occurred under a Clinton administration, how much less would we really overreact?). The issue is how we lost the world's goodwill after 9/11. Gitmo and the Green Zone explain most of that. I do not intend to assert or imply Clinton was as nearly as disastrous for foreign policy as Bush was.

Yet the system was broken before Bush came into power. Bin Laden escalated the war on terror, and when we escalated we found out we didn't know how to fight. Yes, George W. Bush was not the optimal in his conduct, to put it lightly. (Neither is he necessarily the worst - remember that we have yet to invade Syria, Iran and Pakistan as the doomsayers predicted. John McCain could have been President in 2001, too.) But the blowback we are reaping now is not all from Bush. Ossetia and Abkhazia are once again on the brink of war. Russia wraps up its support for these Georgian breakaway regions in a tu quoques argument based around NATO support for Kosovo. It would also be foolish to discuss Putin's hawkish tendencies without noting the US-lead effort to incorporate former Soviet puppets in 1999, or to discuss European skepticism (and Russian paranoia) about American hawkishness without remembering in 1999 when fellow NATO commanders refused to follow Wesley Clark's orders to start World War III.

The wounds of Afghanistan, Iraq, and America's looming confrontation with the reality of its own unpreparedness for a "global war on terrorism" were open, we've just spent the last 8 years worsening them. Modern advocates of multilateralism argue that while the US was a unipolar power in the 1990s, it was not unlimited in its capabilities or grossly irresponsible in its actions; and thus aggressive, unilateral policy cannot be used as the baseline for its 21st century actions. I agree, and I add: while multilateral systems in the 1990s were certainly more effective, they were limited in their capabilities and appeared increasingly irresponsible to those whose interests they did not serve. The problems inherent in these multilateral systems that lead, in part, to our rejection of them, still exist, because they are entrenched in these organizations themselves.

America cannot and will not act like just another country, or a nicely fitting cog in a multilateral regime because the system it inhabits will not permit such a policy. The abdication of international responsibility, to borrow a phrase from Therese Delpech, applies not only to America's conduct in the beginning of the 21st century but also to the reluctance of its presumptive allies in sacrificing their own limited self-interest and the actions of its rivals. The multilateral system will not live up to the expectations American internationalists are today setting for it as long as all the major players refuse to cooperate, whether that means the US, Europe, NATO as a whole, or Russia or China. But it is also worth noting that these international systems are more effective when they have a clear leader to guide them, as is the case when NATO acts. To the extent that the world becomes more multipolar, this too will be more difficult.

The "orderly" systems that are able to govern great powers are often, historically, self-defeating in the long run and thus require the work of a great diplomat to create and sustain them. When that diplomat is gone, the system breaks down. Metternich's system collapsed when there was no Metternich to defend it from Bismarck. Bismarck's realpolitik and "great wheel" failed when he was no longer around to keep it from imploding on itself. Wilson's system of internationalism was perhaps more disconnected with the reality in Europe than the previously mentioned ones, but it is unquestionable that the lack of his direct presence in the League of Nations and the lack of a suitable successor contributed to its failure. For our century, we have no adequate international order or system guarantee its stability, and we will likely need a great diplomat to build one. Unfortunately, "not being George W. Bush" is not a sufficient qualification. This system is too compromised, I fear, for anything less than brilliance and luck to fix it.

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That was a lot longer than I intended.

Just War Theory

2008-07-07T04:53:00.000-04:00

Americans have no great love for realism, so it shouldn't be surprising many today advocate the use of 'just war' principles. One of the problems, though, is that just as one can dismiss traditional realism for being outdated, so too can one dismiss just war principles on similar grounds. I think this is actually of greater consequence for just war theory, mainly because just war is primarily a prescriptive theory based on moral standards.

Legitimate authority - Someone should probably inform non-state actors, like terrorist groups, that they are not allowed to wage war. This is an obvious enough claim, but it has serious implications for many other just war standards.

Probability of success - The US cannot claim to wage just wars unless it has a clearly defined standard of victory. The probability of winning a 'War on Terror' is essentially zero. What are the standards of victory in Afghanistan? In the next intervention to prevent terrorism? Retaliation is not a legitimate goal in and of itself.

Proportionality - Starting any conflict against forces within a stable state that requires occupation, nation building, or the deployment of ground troops without the permission and aid of the local government is extremely vulnerable to the proportionality test. Civilian casualties are often going to be larger than enemy military casualties. Paradoxically, though, ending these wars once they've been started and mismanaged also fails the proportionality test, as power vacuums often claim more civilian lives than those of occupying Western soldiers.

Distinction - See legitimate authority.

Military necessity - Given the problems of distinction, are Americans really willing to sacrifice larger numbers of their own soldiers to minimize civilian deaths when the distinction between civilians and combatants isn't readily apparent?

Just cause for termination - Difficult, because the reasons we started the Iraq War and other conflicts will be very different from the reasons we will choose to stop them.

Public declaration and authority - Just war termination requires a legitimate authority to accept the peace terms. Given the lack of legitimate authority in declaring modern anti-terrorist wars, there will likely not be a legitimate authority to accept our terms.

Even Obama has tried to shake the perception that he would hesitate to use force "when necessary" (remember the Pakistan issue?). Really, there are very few American politicians who would actually pursue non-interventionism, and the vast majority of the rest still would prefer, in the American tradition, to have a foreign policy guided by strong moral underpinnings. The theoretical challenge of the 21st century "War on Terror" will be developing a moral framework that practically applies.

Reality is a hassle

2008-07-03T18:38:00.000-04:00

And so the move to the center continues...

It's good news, though. Americans want a President who understands the situation on the ground and reacts according to facts rather than gut feelings or ideological prejudices... Right?

No matter how you slice it, America is going to have combat troops in Iraq for quite some time, assuming the central government works out some sort of security agreement - and maybe even if it doesn't. Iraq is too important to turn into a talking point either way. Our gains in the surge are fragile, which means we need to leave in a far more sensible manner than we entered the country. Given Iran's current interests in the country, Turkey's incursion, and Saudi Arabia's pledges to intervene in the absence of US troops, we have a taste of what could come in Iraq. If the situation on the ground necessitates an American presence, then that's probably what should happen.

Besides, even if Obama did stick to his 16 month pledge, it's not hard to skirt - what are combat troops, exactly? Do we keep advisors? A force to protect the embassy? A rapid reaction force in case the country destabilizes? Special forces units to assist the Iraqi government in counterterrorist operations? These troops could be stationed in Iraq and still be under threat of IED attacks or assassinations without it strictly being "combat" as the administration wishes to choose it.

Embarrassingly Good

2008-06-28T05:11:00.001-04:00

Canada has better Presidential election debates than we do.

The Munk Debate in Toronto (if I didn't say the location, you could pick it up off the accent of the woman hosting) on the election is one of the most refreshing things I've listened to in some time.

Richard Holbrooke & Samantha Power vs. Niall Ferguson and Charles Krauthammer.

Partisan, yes, very much so, but in an intelligent manner. Even with some logical arguments with evidence and stuff, from both sides. Crazy, man. Crazy.

The nuttiest part: Niall Ferguson and Charles Krauthammer sway an audience of people from Ontario from 29% agreeing that a Republican administration can make the world safer to 46%. Probably a lot more slack than McCain will ever pick up in the States.

Listen to it here, and have every single McCain-Obama debate become an intellectual letdown.

"Spare us your lectures on supply and demand"

2008-06-25T03:42:00.000-04:00

An almost gag-inducing story from the Washington Post:

Another aide at the meetings warned the executives that no matter what arguments they muster, it would be hard to prevent Congress from acting. Referring to a vote earlier this year to impose new mileage standards on automobile makers, the aide said, "At 90 bucks a barrel, Congress rolled the autos for the first time in 30 years -- is it too much to think that Congress will impose more restrictions on you if oil goes to $150 dollars a barrel?"

No, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. Caplan's fallacy, anyone?

In any case, when Paul Krugman, Alan Reynolds and the Wall Street Journal agree on something, it's a good time to pay attention. Stop pretending we can just regulate away high oil prices. Especially you, Democrats (and Republicans, if you care about the environment). Please tell me this is some kind of plot to destroy investment in the oil industry, drive up prices further and thus more effectively promote alternative fuels. That would still be a bit disturbing, but at least it would be logical.

Sometimes life sucks and you become reliant on a finite resource. Pretending that oil price increases are due to Bush deregulating the futures markets is not only wrong, it's buying into a fantasy of cheap oil abundance the world can no longer afford to indulge.

Politicians have an excuse of needing to get elected to spout this sort of claptrap. But for those of you who have complained about the speculators (you know who you are)... You lost yours by getting this far.

Unusual Signs III

2008-06-23T03:30:00.001-04:00

Unusual should probably be closer to 'disturbing,' but it's interesting to see someone connected with the administration chiming in about the perennial "bomb Iran" rumors. Good news: it won't be us. Bad news: it could still happen. Doing it during the lame duck phrase is rather clever but a pretty terrible plate for your first Presidential course.

First off, I'm skeptical Israel has the power to pull it off and make it a 'finishing blow.' Iran is a big country. Iran has a lot more than one reactor. Iran has some pretty decent air defense equipment. I'm sure Israel could hit a few sites but... There's quite a few. My guess is a strike at Natanz, maybe coupled with Eshafan and Bushehr would be able to pretty much take out Iranian nuclear capability for the next few years. But such an attack by the Israelis, if it does not thoroughly destroy Iran's nuclear infrastructure, would likely only encourage Iran to get an actual nuclear weapon, and not just an ambiguous nuclear program.

I think Bolton's point about the Arabs has merit. After all, Israel bombed Syria without a massive reprisal, and I would imagine even fewer Arab countries would have much sympathy for Iran (with the exception of Iraq). Nevertheless, good luck to Israel resolving anything in Lebanon (and good luck to America in Iraq, most likely) should such a strike go through.

Argumento Ad Scandinavium

2008-06-21T01:02:00.001-04:00

A lot of the left has begun arguing that the US needs to start becoming more like Scandinavia in terms of its economical model. You know, health issues ("Well, in Sweden..."), labor markets, ("Well, in Denmark"), et cetera. This would be great, but aside from all the tired counterarguments (cultural geography, demographics, questioning the Scandinavian success itself), I'm sort of curious to know this:

Does the rest of Western Europe try and model itself on Scandinavia? After all, many in the American center-left say we don't have to be like slower-growth, higher-unemployment Germany, France, etc. So do France and Germany look to the Scandinavian countries too? Has a non-Scandinavian country tried to and successfully implemented the Scandinavian model? People with a better knowledge of Europe and its political predilection might know, but now I feel compelled to find out.

Irony

2008-06-20T23:19:00.000-04:00

Got tired of looking at potential new jobs.

Decided to read the Liberty Fund's Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.

Neoliberalism and hawkishness

2008-06-19T15:51:00.000-04:00

Does it make any sense to be optimistic and supportive of free trade and still support maintaining the world's most powerful air force and navy, things not particularly useful for our current conflicts? In other words, why do I want to trade with China (and other countries) but check its power? My response is somewhat rambling since I've never been asked this, and would probably be more coherent had someone else taken up the onerous burden of interrogating me.

Free trade is good for both "us" and "them" economically. Consequently, free trade does have some positive diplomatic effects - in addition to economic benefits, free trade is a diplomatic signal. Working through organizations like the WTO strengthens international institutions and multilateralism, thus reducing harsh feelings and anti-American sentiment - that whole "image" issue. With that apparent, why then would I still support the maintenance of instruments of traditional state warfare?

I don't believe the marginal effect of free trade is enough to push countries from "brink of war" to "peace" except in the very long run (very rich, liberal, democratic countries are less likely to fight each other, yes, and free trade can generally encourage the attitudes and institutions that promote the aforementioned things). WWI, after all, occurred despite very high levels of global economic integration.

It's important to note that not all wars are fought over economic issues. However, backsliding on economic agreements like free trade can still exacerbate things because of its value as a political signal and its inducement of political and economic volatility. Take the interwar period - the backsliding on free trade probably contributed to WWII to some degree, but economic autarky both encouraged and fed on radical political movements.

Also, there's the deterrence value - maintaining a globally active military and forging strategic partnerships discourages minor powers from fighting each other. Saudi Arabia and Iran in the Middle East, India, China and any of their regional rivals (including Taiwan), Russia and its neighbors spring to mind as well. Even if one country might not want to fight the US because of economic linkages or political incentives, it might still have an incentive to fight someone else.

Then of course there is the fear of shocks to the present international order. It is too soon to say whether the dystopian visions of conflict over natural resources will come true, but one never knows. I am not advocating invading other countries for their oil, but the US has a useful role as a balancer and peacekeeper as I have just mentioned.

While this post addresses the international stage in general, it addresses China in particular. One of the lines of argument specific to China is of China skeptics to lump all its faults together - political crimes, environmental damage, and poor working conditions, and consequently want to tie free trade to standards China is unlikely to accept. Such soft protectionism is unlikely to be useful in improving the lives of Chinese. In fact, by impoverishing China it would lessen the incentive to raise wages, improve labor standards, or clean up the environment. As for the argument that it is wrong to trade with a dictatorship, economic sanctions are useful for stopping specific policies, not for transforming societies. Economic sanctions did not make Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Burma, Iraq and others into liberal democracies. If anything, integrating autocratic countries into the global economy makes major social change more likely.

Maintaining policies that limit, say, arms trade with China are far more sensible than blanket policies that serve mainly to appease protectionist interests.

Historical references & the economy

2008-06-19T02:13:00.000-04:00

It's become trendy among economic alarmists to label the recess- er... well, slowdown as the next "Great Depression." Such complaints are generally followed with complaints about the economic policies of George W. Bush and a desire for the Democrats more left wing economic policies to save us from complete doom.

This can be rather amusing for several reasons. I will now resort to a Q&A format for purposes of my own amusement.

Why is it amusing at all? Weren't government interventions an important response to the Great Depression and unchecked capitalism?
Well, yes, but that doesn't mean all forms of government intervention are beneficial. For example, banning the charging of interest. Obviously nobody is proposing this (outside of Al Qaeda), but you get the general idea: if lack of intervention causes something bad, only some form of intervention make it better. Returning to the Great Depression idea - Keynesian economics dictate that during a recession, consumption (Demand) should increase. How do you do this? Well, you cut taxes and increase government spending. This is exactly what George W. Bush is doing and has done.

But isn't the deficit bad?
Why yes, it is, but if we're talking about avoiding the Great Depression it's rather irrelevant. If you really want to avoid a recession, Keynesian theory dictates you spend tons of money and have unfunded tax cuts. You know who responded to a recession by raising taxes and committing to balancing the budget (and protecting American jobs via trade restrictions)? Herbert Hoover. Seriously.

Obama wants to cut taxes for the middle class and increase them for the rich. Why can't that work?
Well, what taxes would you increase? Maybe you could get away with increasing just income taxes for the rich without worsening a recession, but the evidence is pretty shaky. More importantly, if you want to really tank the stock market, doing things like increasing capital gains taxes, corporate taxes, etc. during a period of economic volatility are good starts.

Well, surely you must agree that more regulation is necessary!
Yes, but that doesn't actually improve the immediate economic situation any more than putting on body armor is a way to improve a sucking chest wound. Increasing regulation on banks, the stock market, real estate, or whatever is not going to increase growth. It might protect us from befalling the same fate later, though that is dubious as well. So this aspect of the [opposite of GWB policy = recession doesn't turn into a depression] thing is pretty irrelevant.

But unchecked capitalism caused all this mess, right? Just like the Depression?
Well, see link in previous post. It caused it, but that doesn't mean checking it solves it. Also, the idea that unchecked capitalism is the only cause of the Great Depression is a gross oversimplification. Unchecked capitalism was the cause of the 1929 Stock Market Crash, but we have those all the time. The Hawley-Smoot Tariff, Hoover's tax increases, and the Federal Reserve contracting the money supply all contributed to turning a recession into the Depression.

Fine then, how about some constructive commentary then?
Firstly, a Second Great Depression is not inevitable. Secondly, if the economy looks worse or actually slips into a recession, wait until it gets better to raise taxes. Be intelligent about regulation - do not exacerbate the credit crunch. Don't try and "protect American jobs" by complicating trade liberalization. Finally, allow new appointments to the Federal Reserve, even if you think the one nominating them is Satan.

So, you know that Amity Shales came up with half these points in like, March, right?
Yes, or, I do now. Fact-checking your blog posts afterwards is a fabulous way to deflate your ego. Also, sometimes two snowflakes are alike.

Proliferation for whom?

2008-06-11T02:47:00.000-04:00

So, returning to the great question: who should have nuclear arms?

Theoretically this question is impossible to answer in any manner involving ethics. So I would suppose we'd have to deal with this one in the real world.

The "Official" Five Nuclear Weapons States: Good luck convincing them to give them up. Now, there is certainly a case to be made for reducing the size of their arsenals (with the potential exception of China, which has a very limited nuclear deterrent with regards to its peer competitors of America and Russia), but the balance of power, however repugnant the concept seems to many Americans, does have to be maintained when dealing with something like nuclear arms. As former, present and likely future superpowers (respectively), Russia, the USA and China all have the strongest cases for maintaining their nuclear arsenals. So what of the two European countries? Britain probably has the weakest case for maintaining an independent nuclear deterrent, given the general affinity between its own security interests and that of the United States. France would have a similar interest to disarm if not for the chance that it will lead the EU in any sort of combined-defense scheme, since it is more centrally involved in the European project than the UK and has a more powerful air force and navy than Germany. Were the EU ever to truly form a military alliance, France would be the natural candidate to provide its nuclear deterrent.

India and Pakistan: Again, good luck getting them to disarm. Even if India and Pakistan were to disarm bilaterally, this would not settle the region's nuclear question. Many in the West are not entirely cognizant that China is, and has been, more of an issue for India than America. They have border disputes, and fought a war over them in the 1960s. This is mostly settled now, but China's rise and support for Indian rival Pakistan could prove a sticking point. Then there's the darker possibilities of resource competition for not just fossil fuels, but possibly water control (a good number of major river systems in South and East Asia originate from China). Pakistan needs a nuclear deterrent against an otherwise militarily superior India, and India needs a nuclear deterrent against China. The system is in place, and it will take a long time and a lot of effort and goodwill to undo it.

Israel: The first important thing to note about Israeli nuclear weapons is that they've not done well as a deterrent against conventional attacks. They likely had nuclear arms during 1967, and this did not convince Arab states their conventional efforts would be useless (they built up troops that the Israelis then destroyed in the Six Day War). In 1973, the Arabs attacked directly and it took an American bailout to relieve conventional Israeli forces to win the war. Nuclear weapons did not deter the Arabs, they still had to be defeated on the battlefield. Though one might argue Israeli nuclear arms have prevented a similar clash since the Yom Kippur War, this probably has more to do with Israeli conventional superiority and knowledge that the US would bail Israel out as much as the nuclear threat. They work as a precautionary deterrent against WMDs such as Syria's chemical weapons stockpile and the potential Iranian (or Egyptian, or Syrian, or in the 1980s, Iraqi) nuclear device.

Speaking of '73, it's important to note that part of the reason the US bailed out Israel during Nickel Grass wasn't out of some great love for the state of Israel (we're talking about Nixon and Kissinger here, the former was pretty much an anti-Semite and the latter opposed the state's creation in '48!) , but out of Cold War politics. If the US didn't give Israel the means to defeat the Arabs conventionally, Israel would have had to use nuclear arms, and given the Soviet involvement in the conflict... That could have meant WWIII. Just another case of how 3rd parties make effective nuclear deterrence difficult.

Unusual Signs II

2008-06-04T13:38:00.000-04:00

Via Foreign Policy:

"Thank you, Uncle PLA!" said Elizabeth in the newly acquired Chinese vocabulary "Jiefungjun Shushu" meaning uncle soldier of the People's Liberation Army, "You saved many lives from ruins. You bring hope to each and every corner of China. We will never forget your love to the young, the old and to the people! I will never forget this new Chinese word that I learned today!"

Is Oregon that bad? Really? Or does everything translated by Xinhua from Chinese to English sound like Maoist propaganda? Grandpa Hu? Grandpa Wen? Uncle PLA? Seriously? It's mostly hilarious, but a little odd that somewhere little American girls are writing to CCP officials in prose straight out of the party handbook.

(For the record, I'd be pretty damn confounded if Chinese students wrote to "Grandpa Bush" during Katrina, too.)

UPDATE: I have since been informed by native Chinese speakers that the "grandpa" thing is just a result of literal translation of normal Chinese language. They agree on the "Uncle PLA" being weird, however.

Proliferation

2008-06-01T21:45:00.001-04:00

Is there a logical or ethical case for nuclear nonproliferation without disarmament? If there is what states should - and shouldn't - possess nuclear arms?

Firstly, is it hypocritical of the United States and other powers to maintain nuclear arsenals while discouraging Iran, North Korea, and others from doing the same? By most moral standards, absolutely. However, moral equivalence is not a particularly useful standard when dealing with the most destructive device available to human beings.

OK, so what makes the United States so qualified to have nuclear weapons? After all, we are the only country to, you know, actually use them.

Aside from the argument from historical circumstance (Max Hastings makes this point incredibly effectively in a mere page with two photos in Retribution: The Battle for Japan 1944-1945 - it's a fascinating book, read it), there's also the theoretically relevant circumstance - the use of atomic bombs occurred in the world's first and only period of nuclear monopoly. Because of this important circumstance, you essentially get the case for having two or more nuclear powers - when you can annihilate a city or two and your enemy can't do the same thing, why not do it?

OK, so how is that relevant? The point is, even if everybody in the world got rid of their nuclear arms, there'd still be a pretty significant incentive to develop them - moreso for states such as North Korea and Iran (and Pakistan and Taiwan and others) than the US, Russia or anyone else. Atomic arms first existed as a substitute for conventional force in WWII, but is unlikely the US would be engaged in that sort of apocalyptic pitched battle against a suicidally determined enemy - yes, neoconservatives, I find it very unlikely we'll see millions of Americans fighting millions of Islamic jihadists - look at AQ strength estimates in Iraq if you don't believe me, but I digress.

Here's the idea: if the US and North Korea, or heck, the ROK and North Korea, are in a confrontation, the obvious conventional advantage is to the US/ROK. These countries are richer, larger, and have more powerful and competent military forces. North Korea is going to lose any conventional conflict. What it needs to do is increase the price of attack so much that the opponent does not invade - and if you're already stretching your small country's conventional capability to the limit, the easiest way is to get yourself a nuclear bomb. Thus, nuclear bombs have two separate purposes as deterrents - against conventional military power, and nuclear military power. Advocates of the 'hypocrisy' argument say the fact other countries sit on so much nuclear power necessitates a nuclear deterrent for other states - this is, for the most part, ridiculous. Iran and North Korea are never going to deter US, Russian, or probably even French nuclear capability. The wealth and potential power disparity does come into play when you have to deter against hundreds or thousands of nuclear bombs. Current nuclear aspirants simply could not maintain the numbers of warheads, strategic aircraft, missiles and naval assets necessary to deter a major power's nuclear arsenal. What a smaller state can do is develop enough nuclear weapons to wipe out a division, carrier group, or base or two of an invading force - enough to make the cost of invasion prohibitive and ward off a neighboring, non-nuclear power or even a nuclear major power, which in many cases will be reluctant to enter a nuclear war even in a second-strike situation - if the situation gets out of control, the potential that another major nuclear power might launch is dangerous enough for the invader to write off the entire enterprise in the first place.

So in a denuclearized - and nuclearized - world, there remains a significant incentive to get a nuclear device, especially if the aspiring state is unpopular, unstable and/or weaker in conventional terms than a potential opponent. One might argue there is nothing wrong with 'self defense' nuclear weapons, but the ability to ward off potential opponents gives a great deal of offensive flexibility - a state can wage a campaign that might invite a wider conflict if it has a 'nuclear veto' over the entry of a potentially stronger opponent's conventional forces.

So... If nuclear monopoly and nuclear proliferation are generally dangerous, who then should have nuclear weapons? That will be the subject of a future post.

The End of Guano

2008-05-30T16:06:00.000-04:00

Once, 50,000 people from three countries died in a war over bird droppings.

Well, that's an exaggeration. But I couldn't help but think of the War of the Pacific when I read the NYT story on Peruvian guano. There have a been many conflicts fought over it - and though there is a slight revival now, guano will likely never move states to war again. The NYT article mentions guano as a parable for oil, but I think there's a key question if we go down that road - is the 21st century for oil going to look like the 19th for guano, or the 21st century for guano? Obviously it's not that clear cut. But if you believe the proposition that oil has been historically cheap given its world importance, then chances are we're only at the beginning of major resource conflicts for it. Or not.

As a side note, the guano wars provide an interesting frame of reference for the 21st century's potential battles over petroleum - many of the conflicts were not massive, land-based affairs like the War of the Pacific but naval skirmishes. The resource conflicts for oil, should they become more common, will likely (and arguably already have) feature many of the same characteristics. This is why I'm hesitant to downplay the role of the navy in modern strategy - just because the US navy is currently unrivaled does not mean we should forgo a deterrent against competing states on a regional scale.

Unusual Signs

2008-05-30T02:10:00.000-04:00

From the BBC:

Japan has decided not to a send a military aircraft to China to deliver relief supplies for victims of the Sichuan earthquake.
It will instead use a chartered plane to send the materials to the disaster zone, top government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura said.
The move came after some Chinese officials were concerned about allowing a military plane in, Mr Machimura said.
There is lingering anger in China over Japan's actions in World War II.
Ties between the two sides have improved in recent months, but only three years ago there were violent anti-Japanese protests across several Chinese cities.
Chinese officials were concerned about a backlash among people who remember Japan's war-time militarism, media reports said.

Now, I would not make too much of this, but the parallels, or perhaps lack thereof, with another incident are curious. Knowing the problems of historical memory in Asia remains quite prescient, especially given their grounding in the general population rather than the ruling elite. It has been remarked that Chinese nationalism is a threat to this elite, yet simultaneously that development will empower the masses politically, not just economically. Will nationalism dissipate with the empowerment of the people, or is the continued political stratification of China in the interest of regional stability? One wonders how a "China Lobby" of the 21st century might look.

Transparency & Accountability

2008-05-29T18:52:00.001-04:00

I hope you all feel safer now.

First post - On Education

2008-05-29T02:32:00.000-04:00

By popular demand - well, to the extent that the author is popular, of course - I have a blog. Rejoice, etc.

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Suppose China, or Russia, or a bunch of Middle Eastern countries decide that the US is an altogether too violent nation, with radical unilateralist policies, lack of economic opportunity, and a disproportionately lower-class military. Noting the oft-maligned state of American public education, they decide to start pouring money into the US education system. Oh, and they start discouraging parochial and private schools for good measure. Only money for public schools. That is, of course, if the US stops promoting wars and violence as instruments of foreign policy in its curriculum. That will have to stop.

If other nations started doing this, would Americans really like the rest of the world more? Maybe a few would be grateful for the extra money, but most likely the conservatives and hawks would be even more energized, and people would start talking about 'plots against America' by the foreign interests, and distrust their government for its compliance with these subversive outsiders.

So I wonder why people really expect doing the same sort of 'de-radicalizing' via educational systems is supposed to work in the Middle East and other regions. I'm not saying ALL Muslims or foreign citizens would be angry or paranoid, but there are enough out there to make things difficult, just as there are people in America who would flip out if they figured out their child's education was being bankrolled by the Saudis. Furthermore, secular schools hardly mean moderate students. Osama himself went to a secular "Model School" in Saudi Arabia. Having the West shove educational reforms down the throats of other nations isn't going to improve things politically. The US is still subverting fundamentalist beliefs, interfering in the affairs of others, and engaging in a conspiracy against some group or another. Will it anger all foreign citizens? Probably not. But we don't need all of them to want to fight for some to. It only takes a minority of the Muslim population to cause existing levels of terrorism, too.

I'm all for education. On the whole, it is a great thing. But it's not going to solve everything, terrorism included. This is not an appeal against supporting education in the Islamic world, or indeed any other area with US PR problems - only an appeal against using it as a substitute for an actual foreign policy.