Another Biden Plan...

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

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?

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

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 technologies. 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

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

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

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

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

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?

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...'

... 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...

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

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

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?

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.

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

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?

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.