INSTANT HISTORY




Picked up both of these on a lark on Saturday, as I cruised through Border's with The Son of Zenpundit, who was getting some independent reader level books about Spider-Man fighting -well- some villain or other. The usual suspects.

Any thoughts from readers as to how high these tomes merit being placed on the "Must read" pile ? I'm currently innundated with things to read, so prioritizing is a must.

Labels: book, bush, COIN, foreign policy, history, insurgency, iraq, islamic world, islamist, mideast, war

  ¶ 7:35 PM 2 comments

  ARABISM, NATION-STATES AND ISLAM

This should intrigue readers with a range of research interests and disciplinary perspectives. Reading it right now as I post.

Dr. Christine Helms - "Arabism And Islam: Stateless Nations And Nationless States" (PDF)

Hat tip to Colonel Lang.

Labels: arab world, foreign policy, islamic world, national security, sic semper tyrannis, state building, state failure

  ¶ 9:43 AM 0 comments

  BLOGGING ON BURMA

Wizards of Oz, Enterprise Resilience Management Blog, Thomas P.M. Barnett, TDAXP, Hidden Unities, Pundita, Agam's Gecko, Democracy Project , Simulated Laughter -New!

Free Burma!

Labels: burma, democracy, foreign policy, state terrorism

  ¶ 7:39 PM 5 comments

  WANTED! FOR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY



Senior General Than Shwe of Burma

Than Shwe and all members of the instrumentalities under his authority as commander-in-chief and Chairman of the State Peace and Development Council, are accused of crimes including, but not limited to, actions defined under Article II. and Article II. of The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:

"Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Article III: The following acts shall be punishable:

(a) Genocide;(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;(d) Attempt to commit genocide;(e) Complicity in genocide. "

The mass and systemic suppression and extrajudicial murder of Buddhist monks and ongoing ethnic cleansing campaigns against the Karen minority qualify for a referral to the UNSC for the establishment of an international tribunal to investigate, indict and try Burmese leaders suspected of crimes against humanity and genocide.

Labels: burma, foreign policy, genocide, international law

  ¶ 12:00 AM 0 comments

  THE BURMA RISING



As you are no doubt aware, Buddhist monks have led the largest protests against Burma's military-socialist junta, which has misruled Burma in various guises for almost sixty years, since the student democracy movement was crushed in 1988. Given the track record of this exceptionally brutal regime, only intense international pressure from the US, the EU and especially, Burma's major economic trading partner and supplier of military equipment, China,prevent an epic massacre.

As my blogging time is sharply constricted at present, I can recommend others who have been following these developments:

Pundita: Burma: Oh ho! The aged emperor is isolated!, Hello, CNN, we're trying to prevent a massacre, Diamonds are a dictator's best friend; beware the white heads!

Duck of Minerva: Crackdown, Photos from Myanmar

Labels: burma, democracy, foreign policy

  ¶ 6:57 AM 4 comments

  THE NIXON ROUNDTABLE

H-Diplo released a roundtable discussion (PDF) on the recent books about Richard Nixon by the following scholars:

Robert Dallek - Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power

Margaret MacMillan - Nixon and Mao: The Week that Changed the World

Labels: America, biography, diplomatic history, foreign policy, h-diplo, historians, historiography, history, nixon, politics

  ¶ 9:37 AM 0 comments

  RARE RETREAD: BLACK GLOBALIZATION AND SMALL WARS

Very seldom do I ever lift something from the archives, but I came across a guest-post I did a number of years ago for blogfriend Josh Manchester at his now defunct The Adventures of Chester blog. The basic content of the post has held up fairly well, though some of the original links that supported the data have since vanished ( reminding me that links are really, really, transient but a footnote is forever); most of the economic data came from NIC/CIA.gov PDFs that have been moved or removed from the web, so take that for what it is worth (the dollar figures are more than stale now, regardless):

"BLACK GLOBALIZATION AND SMALL WARS

When Saddam Hussein emptied his prisons prior to the Iraq War it seemed at the time a sign of his regime’s impending doom. Either Saddam’s amnesty was an act of desperation to shore up support among the Iraqi people or his grip on power had so weakened that he had lost control even over elements of his own security apparatus. In actuality, the dictator had made a preemptive asymmetrical strike against American forces by releasing Iraq’s professional criminals whose well-organized networks badly undermined the CPA and today are connecting an otherwise heterogeneous insurgency. Although this move ultimately did Saddam Hussein little good it demonstrated the potential power that “Black Globalization” has to effect the outcome of military interventions, even those of the United States.

It’s rather strange that given our history, American intelligence did not forsee this outcome in Iraq. It was the United States government that used the Mafia of Charles “ Lucky” Luciano to gather naval intelligence, suppress sabotage on the dockyards and enlist the Sicilian Mafia to undermine Mussolini’s rule to soften the island for Allied invasion. WWII however was the age when nation-state control and the exercise of sovereignty and economic autarky were at their zenith and non-state actors like criminal syndicates were peripheral to events.

Today, the strategic situation is vastly different. The relative primacy of nation-state sovereigns has been eroded by globalization that opened their economies and borders to greater flows of “connectivity” and challenges to their political legitimacy mounted by international, transnational and subnational actors. Some of these, the WTO or the internet for example, at least have brought tremendous benefits. Not so the metastasis of transnational criminal networks that constitute black globalization and have an economic reach that in the aggregate, rivals the greatest of regional powers and are centered on a few geographic nexus points. A sampling of annual estimates:

Governmental Corruption $ 500 billion

Global Narcotics trafficking $ 400-500 billion (matching or exceeding U.S. Defense budget)

Conflict Diamond trafficking $ 24 billion/ 10 % world market

Human Trafficking $ 7 billion

Stolen Automobile Smuggling $ 9 billion

Piracy ( maritime) $ 16 billion ( high end estimate)

Even leaving aside minor or hard to estimate contraband markets or legal “ gray “ markets like international arms dealing, these revenues are enough to field armies or acquire the most expensive technology to evade capture or launch asymmetrical attacks on state forces.

Clearly, the days when even a weak state ruler like Ngo Dinh Diem could scattter a criminal organization with a whiff of grapeshot are over. Expeditions into failed Gap states like Somalia or major military invasions of countries like Iraq must take Black Globalization networks into account during strategic planning as they would subnational or even full-fledged state actors. In terms of on the ground, policy, options for U.S. policy makers and commanders for engaging these networks would include:

Alliance ( Luciano Model)

Benign Neutrality ( Transactional Model)

Armed Neutrality ( Deterrence Model)

Active Containment ( Limited military action)

Belligerence (Counterinsurgency model)

Ideally, the U.S. would seek to prevent the Black Globalization network from actively aligning itself with the enemy and avoid direct engagement to suppress the network until the primary mission was accomplished. Imagine the state of Iraq today if the criminal networks were working hand in glove with American and Iraqi troops to root out the insurgency instead to aid the insurgents against coalition forces. Circumstances, however may not always prove to be so simple, corrupt and violent networks being what they are, any negotiated result is at best transient.

A second indirect form of pressure could be exerted on the money laundering aspect of Black Globalization which must at some point attempt to “ clean” their cash flow through or by acquiring legitimate banks and financial markets in Western countries. Strategic financial attack was evidently taken against the major backers of Slobodon Milosevic during the Kosovo War with positive results. Exploiting this avenue might require that the Marines have more than just a few good accountants, a genuine financial intelligence service would be required to maximize effectiveness.

The complexity of small wars is almost enough to make diplomats and generals long for the good, old days of the Warsaw Pact. Almost. "

Labels: best of zenpundit, black globalization, brave new war, COIN, foreign policy, globalization, IC, insurgency, iraq, military, networks, piracy, small wars council, transnational criminal organization

  ¶ 7:24 PM 4 comments

  MICRO ROUND-UP ON THE CIA'S IG REPORT

Here's the news story.

The SWJ Blog links to the IG Report executive summary. (PDF)

Here are a few reactions ( originally, I planned a wide spectrum of blogospheric opinion but found too much of it to be simpleminded, partisan, blather, so I stuck with the available informed commentary):

Haft of the Spear:

"They are basically saying that not only were parts of the system broken, anyone with half a wit should have been able to see that and take action (or at least raise an alarm). That no one bothered says that either leadership was not all it was cracked up to be, or that the way the system treats squeaky wheels is such that no one - witless or not - thought raising a stink was worth the risk. Stupidity and fear, fortunately, are not excuses."

Sic Semper Tyrannis:

" The CIA like the DIA failed miserably to penetrate the apparatus of the takfiri jihadi networks. Such penetrations would have enabled the US to anticipate coming jihadi actions.
Once again it will be said that penetrating these groups is "too hard to do." Rubbish. I know better. Why were these groups not penetrated?

Timidity. Fear of Risks, Bureaucratic inertia. Poor leadership at the top in all the significant organizations. Has anything changed? I doubt it. If it had, bin Laden would be dead by now."

When a system is fundamentally broken you do not need to simply look for loose bolts or missing parts or even a new mechanic ( though firing an old one might be a useful message to send to their replacement) - what you do is find some engineers and a drawing board.

Labels: al qaida, CIA, defense, foreign policy, IC, intelligence, national security, terrorism

  ¶ 8:19 PM 2 comments

  YOU CAN SPEAK SOFTLY BUT MONEY TALKS

Beltway based Pundita observes:

"The US is fighting a war in a region where we've been very hostile to two countries bordering the war zone. Pundita is of the mind that the top priority is to win the war, and for that we need all the help we can get.

Right now Syria's government is overwhelmed with looking after refugees from Iraq. So I would try offering Syria considerable help in exchange for vigilance with foreign travelers.

When it comes to asking Iran and Syria for help with Iraq, I see too much halfhearted trying from the US, then waving of hands and saying, 'See, they won't deal.' Try harder."

I agree. Iran and Syria are nasty regimes whose actions we must often oppose but where they are willing to cut some fair deals we should get down to business. Freezing Castro in the diplomatic equivalent of absolute zero has only served to help preserve his Communist- caudillo regime until the dictator's old age while irritating most of our allies and trading partners. Do we really want a 92 year old Bashar Assad still in power someday ?

Labels: diplomacy, foreign policy, iran, iraq, mideast, pundita, strategy, syria

  ¶ 9:55 AM 3 comments

  DETERRENCE AND IRAN

A set of papers from The Washington Institute for Near East Policy entitled "Deterring the Ayatollahs: Complications in Applying Cold War Strategy to Iran".

Hat tip to Jedburgh of The Small Wars Council.

Labels: deterrence, diplomacy, foreign policy, iran, mideast, national security, nuclear, small wars council, strategy

  ¶ 8:00 PM 0 comments

  YOU CAN BLEED THEM WHILE YOU NEGOTIATE WITH THEM



When Robert Gates, the current Secretary of Defense, retired from government service after the end of the first Bush administration, he wrote a memoir , From the Shadows, in which he described the no-nonsense, George Schultz as " the toughest Secretary of State I ever knew" who " saw no contradiction" in bleeding the Soviets in one part of the world while negotiating with them in another. Secretary Schultz, whose opinion of the CIA on a 1 to 10 scale hovered in the negative integers, was not nearly as complimentary to Robert Gates in his own, ponderously unreadable, memoirs, but that is a story for another day.

I bring this anecdote of a less complex era up because of the furor over the Bush administration classifying the Pasdaran ( the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps) as a terrorist organization in order to take action against those business enterprises that are connected to the Pasdaran. The objections to this move appear to be two-fold: first, that it hypothetically puts American military personnel at risk of maltreatment and, secondly, that it could disrupt negotiations with Iran on a range of bilateral and international issues, most importantly, Iraq.

The critics are incorrect. It is a move a quarter-century overdue.

In the first instance, correctly identifying the Pasdaran as a state sponsor of international terrorism, which as a matter of historical record, it clearly is, does not prevent treating it's uniformed personnel as POWs in case of an armed conflict between Iran and the United States. The Pasdaran, by contrast, has already tortured two Americans to death - Beirut CIA station chief William Buckley and USMC Colonel William Higgins - at a time of peace between Iran and the United States.

Cry me no river of tears for Pasdaran agents in Iraq being held captive by the U.S. military or who are being whacked in some alleyway by Sunni tribals in our employ. The Iranians knew the risks, from the inception, of the rules they chose to operate under, violating the most basic precepts of international law. It did not have to be that way - even the CIA and the KGB came to a rough modus vivendi during the Cold War that prevented most escalatory incidents - Teheran though has chosen to play rough. Let them enjoy the bed they have made for themselves.

Secondly, until we have an agreement with Iran we do not have any agreement and the regime should be squeezed at every point until we do. I'm all for negotiating in earnest, making the realistic, even generous, concessions that we can easily afford, finding areas of common interest and ( eventually) normalizing relations. We should scrupulously keep our word and demonstrate to the Iranians through actions that we will deliver exactly what we promise. But until that point in time, Teheran should get no favors, no breathing space, no economic freebies of any kind until we come to an arrangement.

The leadership of Iran is a nasty and brutal group. Within that circle, Ahmadinejad represents some of the regime's worst elements but, as a whole, the Iranians do not seem irrational, simply adversarial. We can cut a deal with them but we should proceed without any illusions.

IRGC STORY LINKS:

Thomas P.M. Barnett

The Newshoggers

Counterterrorism Blog

The Glittering Eye

Pundita

Right Wing Nuthouse

Labels: bush, diplomacy, foreign policy, international law, iran, mideast, terrorism

  ¶ 8:30 PM 5 comments

  A GLITTERING EYE ON RICHARDSON'S NEW REALISM



Dave Schuler has a superb examination about Governor Bill Richardson's major foreign policy essay in the Harvard International Review.

I can applaud the serious effort by Richardson, a former high level diplomat, to address foreign policy in a thoughtful way, even though I agree with Dave that many of Richardson's proposed solutions do not logically address the strategic trends he identifies ( thought they probably appeal to regular, middle-class, Democratic activists if not the wackiest of the wingnuts).

Labels: 2008, bill richardson, diplomacy, foreign policy, glittering eye, international law, national security, terrorism, war

  ¶ 8:58 AM 0 comments

  THE STRATEGIC THOUGHT DEFICIT

Dr. Barnett, opining yesterday on the recent NYT op-ed on Kennan:

"The dearth of strategic thinking reaches a new low, or maybe this is just a Kennan scholar pre-hawking his new book.

Now we get the out-of-time argument that containment is the answer on radical Islam.

It's not much of an argument, but rather a decent rehashing of Kennan's thinking on the Sovs. The problem here, of course, is that al-Qaida doesn't translate well to an authoritarian empire already in existence.

Another problem, which I flayed at length in PNM, is that global historical forces are moving in a direction very different from that of the late 1940s and early 1950s. We're not in some bilat standoff of camps with little dynamic interchange between them. We're watching a consolidation period unfold following a massive expansion of globalization, one that's simultaneously accompanied by its further expansion thanks to the huge resource draw from rising Asia. "

We have a severe shortage of Kennans these days. While of course, there was only one Kennan writing the Long Telegram there were also the Stimsons, Marshalls, Achesons, Nitzes, Forrestals, Vandenbergs, Lovetts, Dulles', McCloys, Wohlstetters, Kahns and many others who came before and after Kennan who made their own contributions to the development of the Containment strategy. Our diplomatic and national security bench was deep in those days and often, these statesmen brought real experience in international finance, logistics and linguistics to the table ( Wohlstetter and Kahn were the cutting edge of the academic -strategist wave that replaced the Wall Street and Railroad company lawyer generation).

Today, we see most of our big picture and thinkers outside of government and often academia as well, writing books, giving speeches or building private sector companies. Tellingly, the most innovative policy of Bush's second term was developed not by a White House aide or a Cabinet secretary but by General David Petraeus - and his counterinsurgency strategy for Iraq was only accepted by the powers that be out of political and military desperation. The Democrats are no better, having had essentially no new policy ideas in almost two generations and a deep desire to ignore the existence of foreign policy altogether.

In part, this is a generational problem. Not only are the Boomers an amazingly self-centered lot, endlessly obsessing on ( and trying to re-live) the political traumas of their now distant youth, but the statesmen among them cut their teeth on the Cold War, bipolar, pre-Globalization, rigidly hierarchical world and are, for the most part, unwilling to revisit their anachronistic assumptions. There are exceptions but these people are usually outliers in some way, personally or professionally.

We may need to construct our defenses for the 21st century by retooling civil society to become more resilient, adaptive and dynamic - for the short term, our governing class may be a lost cause.

Labels: 20th century, 21st century, barnett, diplomacy, foreign policy, george kennan, history, national security, society, strategy

  ¶ 7:18 PM 11 comments

  OBAMA VS. ROMNEY

Cheryl "CKR" Rofer of Whirledview dissects in great detail the Foreign Affairs articles by Senator Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney. It was a yeoman effort on Cheryl's part to drill down that much detail in a blog post.

I'm curious to know the "how" of these articles - ghostwritten? Personally revised drafts written by junior staff? Written in conjunction with a key adviser or two ? Fundamentally their own views ? Knowing that would tell us as an awful lot about the candidate's real comfort zone with foreign policy issues.

Labels: 2008, elections, foreign policy, national security, obama, romney

  ¶ 8:41 PM 3 comments

  ALL HAIL ZENPUNDIT I., EMPEROR OF GREENLAND



A New Power Is Rising

In the spirit of Russia's recent and entirely specious claim to the sea floor of the Arctic Ocean , I would like to formally announce my claim to the imperial crown of Greenland as well as subsidiary overlordship over Baffin Island. Once the grateful natives and polar wildlife acclaim my benevolent, absentee, rule of the Greenlandic Empire, I will get about the business of issuing postage stamps, selling foreign ship registries and writing a few, slightly shady, bank secrecy laws.

Sure, Denmark already has de jure sovereignty over Greenland and they still have some kind of quaint, Scandivanian, bicycle-riding, monarchy rattling around Copenhagen and, technically, my blog is not yet considered a sovereign power, but what the hell ? The rule book has been thrown out! I don't even think you need to be a nation-state anymore - call it a virtual, fourth generation, imperium. Plus, the chances of a punitive military expedition from Denmark reaching the Chicago area are relatively low. It's not even that great that they'd make it to Greenland.

On a more serious note, the Russian claim to the Arctic may be complete nonsense in legal terms but the strategic energy policy behind the outrageous territorial grab it is not. It makes good sense for Russia to attempt maximize it's future share of a tightening global oil and gas market as a way of boosting it's geopolitical and economic influence. Without making too much of it in terms of noise, Washington needs to firmly rebuff Russia's claim because any success will set off a scramble of imitators and splendid little wars across the globe between third and fourth tier powers. Or worse, larger powers like China with extensive but quiet claims of their own might begin to press them with greater vigor.

The world has enough headaches without re-starting the 19th century.

Labels: foreign policy, humor, international law, russia, vladimir putin

  ¶ 7:55 PM 6 comments

  OBAMA'S LACK OF SEA-LEGS IN FOREIGN POLICY



Or the politics of foreign policy. Senator Barack Obama is being blistered by his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination:

" Barack Obama's offer to meet without precondition with leaders of renegade nations such as Cuba, North Korea and Iran touched off a war of words, with rival Hillary Rodham Clinton calling him naive and Obama linking her to President Bush's diplomacy.

Older politicians in both parties questioned the wisdom of such a course, while Obama's supporters characterized it as a repudiation of Bush policies of refusing to engage with certain adversaries.

It triggered a round of competing memos and statements Tuesday between the chief Democratic presidential rivals. Obama's team portrayed it as a bold stroke; Clinton supporters saw it as a gaffe that underscored the freshman senator's lack of foreign policy experience.

"I thought that was irresponsible and frankly naive," Clinton was quoted in an interview with the Quad-City Times that was posted on the Iowa newspaper's Web site on Tuesday."

As a tactical diplomatic move, a change of administrations is a good time to quietly investigate de-escalating conflicts with adversaries or improving frigid relations with important partners or allies. In principle, it makes more sense than a blanket refusal to ever negotiate. An early, high profile volte-face in relations with previously hostile countries, provided there are substantive achievments with which to point as well, can be a very important signal to the rest of the world for a new president.

On the other hand, giving out something as valuable as presidential face-time, across the board to some of the world's worst state actors, in exchange for nothing, is stupid. It diminishes the value of a presidential summit, undercuts our diplomats and demoralizes our friends while giving our enemies all the wrong incentives. If I were to guess, I'd say this empty, photo-op, gesture was the brainchild of Tony Lake, a fountainhead of bad national security analysis for four decades and currently Obama's top foreign policy guru.

I could be wrong. Lake may have had little to do with Obama's statement but the political fallout at least would have been easy to predict if it had been widely discussed on the Obama team. My two cents is that Obama should broaden his advisory circle, or avail himself of the experience available to him as a Senator in the form of staffers, elder statesmen and thought leaders. The questions are only going to become harder and sharper from this point on.

Labels: 2008, democratic party, diplomacy, elections, foreign policy, national security, obama

  ¶ 4:01 PM 11 comments

  HISTORICAL PALEOCON-PESSIMISM

Colonel W. Patrick Lang, a former analyst on the Mideast and now a sharp character on the internet, recently put forward an excellent example of a genre of thinking I like to call the " empire argument". It is a school of thought, a critical one, that prevails on the paleoconservative Right and the anti-war Left, the the two variants use some markedly different assumptions in framing their argument but arrive at a similar conclusion.

Like the historian, Paul Schroeder, Lang eschews much of the hysterical, romanticized, rhetoric that typify the "American empire" writers and sticks to a much more thoughtful, realpolitik interpretation.

"Jefferson might not agree.." Peter Principle"

"I'm afraid I have to side with Britannicus (and Livia, the murderous old hag) on this one. It is in the nature of things for republics, if successful enough, to evolve into empires. It is certainly unrealistic to expect a global superpower like the United States, with worldwide political and economic interests requiring the worldwide projection of military power, to remain one indefinitely. The framers, with their horror of standing armies and European militarism, would probably be surprised to learn it has lasted as long as it has, despite more than 60 years of permanent wartime moblization.

There was a time (like the 1950s) when those who thought about such things could hope that the enormous powers of modern bureaucratic institutions -- corporations, unions, the Pentagon, big media, the organs of state security -- could and would be counterveiling, allowing a system designed for the less gargantuan 18th century to survive into the 21st. But instead those institutions are either in terminal decline (the unions) or are integrating and evolving into a more perfected form of imperial control and self-control. Meanwhile, dissent and opposition (terms that already sound almost archaic) are increasingly channeled to the essentially neutered arena of the fringe parties and the Internet.

I'm not sure how much mourning is called for here. Two hundred and thirty some years is a pretty good run, as constitutions go. The framers built well, but no structure lasts forever. We can pine for a lost republic (which, like it's Roman predecessor, was never as golden as it appeared in hindsight) or we can accept reality and see what can be done to make our new empire more humane and rational than it is at the moment."

I disagree, first of all that America has moved into an " empire" state, though I would agree that aspects of our political system are working poorly and that our bipartisan elite are more timorous, self-centered and corrupt than we have seen in some time. That may be, in part, a generational effect of the current Boomer domination of government and the media and could pass as they move off center stage ( unwillingly, kicking and screaming, no doubt). We will have to wait and see if the Boomer legacy is an institutionalization of their cultural narcicism or a reaction against it.

I also do not believe that "imperial control" is the objective of the cultural shift away from hierarchies toward networked structures, as Lang alludes, so much as that globalization and information technology have made hierarchical modes of organization less efficient than in any time since the rise of the state and the industrial revolution. These are fundamental, global, structural and economic shifts that are going to occurr with or without regard to U.S. foreign policy decisions.

Lang however, still posits an interesting argument regarding the health of the republic. Is it remaining in form, while slowly ebbing in spirit like Rome did in the first century B.C. which was increasingly dominated by strong men, polarized politics and civil war ? I think Colonel Lang's view is overly pessimistic and that the Roman analogy has to be taken in context with the very significant differences between the mindsets and culture of ancient Romans and modern Americans. We aren't them. George W. Bush is no Caesar or Sulla much as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are not Cicero or Cato. Our times, Iraq included, are not nearly as bad as the troubles that ripped Roman society apart.

Labels: America, empire, foreign policy, history, roman empire, sic semper tyrannis

  ¶ 7:53 AM 2 comments

  A 4GW QUESTION



This will delight some, intrigue many and annoy others but I found it to be a good counterintuitive question worth considering.

Ahistoricality, posting at ProgressiveHistorians regarding the latest Failed States index, wonders about applying the criteria for state failure, used by Foreign Policy, to the linchpin of the global Core, the United States:

"The annual "Failed States Index" is out. The concept is an interesting one, indicating our very recent idea that national governments are supposed to be stable, almost eternal, and that society is supposed to manage all its conflicts with policy, that all land and people deserve stable governance. I'm not criticizing the ideas, I'm just pointing out that they are recent conceits, not eternal verities, and up to the end of WWI the most likely response to a failed state was imperial takeover.

The headlines regarding the index are highlighting Iraq's precarious position as the second most failing state in the world, but it was a tight finish between the Sudan, Iraq, Zimbabwe and Somalia for the top spots. The only two non-African nations in the top ten of this list are Iraq and Afghanistan. Two things come to mind immediately when I look at this list: first, our imperial interventions are clearly short-term disasters, and; second, the history of failed post-colonial states suggests that they might well be long-term ones.

The full list of 177 states is interesting reading. The top thirty-two (the most critical, by their reckoning) are dominated by post-colonial African and Asian states. The rest of the top sixty adds some Latin American and Central Asian governments. Russia and China are tied with Azerbaijan and Lesotho for 62nd place.

The US ranked 160th, or 18th from the top in terms of state stability. I wonder, though. I'm including the list of factors they considered: do you think we're as safe as all that?

Social Indicators

1. Mounting Demographic Pressures
2. Massive Movement of Refugees or Internally Displaced Persons creating Complex Humanitarian Emergencies
3. Legacy of Vengeance-Seeking Group Grievance or Group Paranoia
4. Chronic and Sustained Human Flight
Economic Indicators
5. Uneven Economic Development along Group Lines
6. Sharp and/or Severe Economic Decline

Political Indicators
7. Criminalization and/or Delegitimization of the State
8. Progressive Deterioration of Public Services
9. Suspension or Arbitrary Application of the Rule of Law and Widespread Violation of Human Rights
10. Security Apparatus Operates as a "State Within a State"
11. Rise of Factionalized Elites
12. Intervention of Other States or External Political Actors"

Naturally, I disagree that the United States is in danger of imminent or medium term state failure though such things are not impossible. The secession crisis before the Civil War was an event of critical state failure. Late 1932 and early 1933 saw at least symptoms of state failure and delegitimization amidst the economic implosion of the Great Depression and the collapse of the banking system.

What do you think ?

Labels: 4GW, America, counterintuitive, foreign policy, national security, state failure, theory

  ¶ 5:46 PM 5 comments

  RICHARDS ON STRATEGIC TRANSFORMATION

Dr. Chet Richards of DNI has posted the introduction to his forthcoming book, If We Can Keep It. From what I have gathered, this book will be an extension of the radical military analysis Richards began with his previous work, Neither Shall the Sword: Conflict in the Years Ahead . An excerpt:

"Three national myths

The first is that “terrorism” poses the most serious threat to our survival and our way of life. In fact, the physical damage that terrorism does is small in comparison to other threats to our national well-being, and there are means available to reduce it even further. The greatest threat of “terrorism” is the damage we do to ourselves in sincere but misguided attempts to deal with it.

The second national misperception is that we still require a military establishment whose cost exceeds not just that of the next most powerful nation or even the next three, but of all the rest of the world, combined. Most of this expense goes into conventional (non-nuclear) forces that are no longer needed or even useful. The reason for this is not that world brotherhood has broken out, as earlier generations of pacifists mistakenly assumed, but that nuclear weapons have made wars between major powers impossible. States that are not nuclear powers, on the other hand, are either U.S. allies or are far too weak to pose any kind of military threat, and our attempts to use military force against non-state opponents, such as the “terrorists” mentioned in the previous paragraph, have not proven particularly successful.

The third, and perhaps the most dangerous because it seduces us into thinking that we can make military force into a normal tool of policy, is the notion of counterinsurgency theory. The problem is not that insurgencies cannot be defeated, but that proponents of this theory sometimes fail to distinguish between different meanings of the term “insurgency.” Several observers, recognizing this limitation, have proposed classifications. Biddle (2006) distinguishes between “people’s wars,” in which groups try to overthrow the government, and “communal civil wars,” where groups are fighting to avoid genocide. Metz (2007) classifies insurgencies based upon whether a legitimate government exists or can be created. These are both valuable and help explain why some insurgencies succeed where others do not.

....In the specific area of national defense policy, I recommend that the Department of Defense be gradually downsized to roughly the current U.S. Marine Corps plus special operations forces and supporting tactical air. This is more than adequate to deal with any future military threat. Concerning strategic – nuclear – forces, 10,000 weapons are more than we need to preserve the proven doctrine of mutually assured destruction (Blair, 2007a). Some reduction in this arsenal is clearly feasible.

Such a reordering of priorities towards our real problems implies a restructuring of the federal government. We should immediately disband the terrorism bureaucracy, particularly the Transportation Security Administration and its parent, the Department of Homeland Security and should review the roles and functions of the other agencies and departments.

Over time, as the Defense Department assumes its natural size, as has already happened with most of our European allies (Bacevich, 2006), intelligence will assume a more important function. Although military operations in the future will be rare, it becomes more important than ever that they be perceived by our friends and allies as justified, and when they do occur, they must be rapid, daring, and successful. Achieving this standard requires a step-function improvement in the integration of intelligence, diplomacy, and operations, so it will make sense to consolidate these functions in a single body where the controlling function is intelligence."

Read the entire introduction here.

It would appear that Richards, whose analytical framework is deeply rooted in the ideas of John Boyd, is throwing the 4GW hat into the ring of grand strategy, remediating a frequent criticism that 4GW thinkers are focused primarily upon tactical conflict and the destructive rather than constructive levels of strategic thinking. It will no doubt be an interesting and thought-provoking book that will stampede an entire herd of sacred cows beloved by defense intellectuals off of a cliff. That alone will make it a useful read.

My questions ( and Richards may very well answer them in his forthcoming book) raised by If We Can Keep It, would hinge on several variables:

* The utility of nuclear deterrence, upon which Richards' strategic transformation seems to depend, in an era when significant power (WMD capacity) appears to be devolving to progressively smaller ( and potentially less accountable, predictable and deterrable) substate and non-state networks. The history of nuclear deterrence and accompanying theory represents a large and complex literature with such thinkers as Brodie, Wohlstetter, Kahn, Kissinger and others who never satisfactorily arrived at answers to the conundrum presented by nuclear weapons.

Eisenhower-Dulles " massive retaliation" and "brinksmanship" put a brake on defense spending ( as Ike intended) but it was a very risky and blunt instrument. The idea that Washington would "trade New York for Paris" with the Soviets was never entirely a credible one. Nor did America's massive nuclear arsenal prevent Nasser from closing the Suez or Ho Chi Minh from subverting Saigon or even deter Khrushchev from his nuclear gamble in Cuba (in fact, our lopsided nuclear advantage probably was an incentive in Khrushchev's eyes to gain parity on the cheap).

* Steady-state assumptions about nation-state behavior in the international arena if conventional American power projection capacity was drastically reduced to levels proportionate to Western Europe. This is a major point to consider when offering a non-interventionist alternative to current strategy - American military power is the focal point of most regional security systems ( or opposition to them). To my mind, statesmen calculate their actions and plan their military expenditures based upon assumptions of American hegemony, welcome or not. The inability to even get to the starting block for military competition with the U.S. - we must think not just in terms of annual military budgets but in the colossal sunk costs of establishing a military-industrial base - is inhibiting regional arms races to a degree. Remove American preeminence from the equation and foreign statesmen are going to arrive at different calculations regarding their interests and security.

I look forward to reading it and entertaining Dr. Richards' argument in full.

Labels: 21st century, 4GW, America, chet richards, COIN, defense, deterrence, dni, foreign policy, insurgency, john boyd, military reform, national security, nuclear, small wars council, strategy, theory, war

  ¶ 7:01 PM 5 comments

  RUSSIAN ROULETTE





The major media have taken note of the poor state of Russian-American relations in the past week and the increasingly dark cast that Putin's siloviki regime has taken at home and abroad. However, neither condition is exactly new. On the one hand, American policy toward Russia has been unimaginative, erratic, shortsighted and occasionally neglectful at least since the re-election of Boris Yeltsin; on the other hand, Vladimir Putin has been exercising a "soft" dictatorship for stabilitarianism and the reconstruction of state power since Russia's liberals and democrats politically self-destructed in 2004.

That moment would have been a good time for the Bush administration to consider the results American and Western policy toward Russia but the administration, engrossed with Iraq, was content to continue to leave policy on autopilot, following the the lead of the EU and of the State Department experts who were running relations into the ground. In a nutshell, we have managed a trifecta of appearing to Moscow to be at once meddlesome and overbearing, ineffectual (in the face of Russian bullying of its "near abroad" neighbors) and uninterested in any kind of strategic partnership with Russia. This is not a recipe for diplomatic success.

In fairness to the Bush administration, our poor foreign policy record in regard to post-Soviet Russia stretches back through Clinton-Gore to the last years of Bush I. where Richard Nixon was virtually tearing his hair out in frustration. Moreover, American policy can only effect Russia on the margin. The locus of choice lies with Putin and his siloviki circle who have opted for creeping authoritarianism; but the U.S. might have made it a good deal easier for them to choose to move forward rather than to turn the clock back.

A few articles across the spectrum that are worth your time to read if you are interested in Russian-American affairs:

"Why Putin is determined to make Russia strong again" by Trevor Royle

"Russia Redux" by Vladimir Popov in The New Left Review ( hat tip to Lexington Green)

"Post-Weimar Russia? There Are Sad Signs." by Dr. Andreas Ulmand at HNN

Labels: foreign policy, russia, vladimir putin

  ¶ 11:08 PM 3 comments