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?