For those of you who are wondering why Herman Cain's Libya Moment is so important, we can start by acknowledging that national security is something that we shouldn't play games with. We shouldn't leave our national security thoughts and judgments to personal biases and moments of the mob. I think we can all agree to that, right?
That said, in my International Relations class I often start the quarter by showing this Monty Python clip, which illustrates what happens when you embrace biases and mob moments.
This is why Herman Cain's Libya Moment is so important. You can see him searching for President Obama's policy, and then circling the drain so that he can oppose it. It's that simple. Check it out here:
Several points here. First, Cain doesn't understand what President Obama's policy is in the region. Second, this also showed that Cain doesn't understand that President Obama has a larger foreign-global policy approach that he outlined at Oslo (which former Speaker Gingrich said bordered on the "historic"). Finally, it also showed that when it comes to national security and foreign policy Herman Cain is always ready to play politics, and run with the mob, instead of looking at how real problems are solved. This is not a good thing.
On the surface this is what most Americans see ...
After massive demonstrations, Tunisia's Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was forced to flee his country as protesters forced him into exhile ... Facing similar conditions, Eypt's corrupt Hosni Mubarrakwas forced to resign in February of 2011 ... Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi is hunted down and killed by Libyans, after 41 years of ruling his nation through fear and intimidation.
But there is much more to the overthrow of three corrupt and kleptocratic regimes in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. In fact, in many ways, it all started with a vegetable seller in Tunisia.
After Tunisian police confiscated Mohamed Bouazizi's only means of earning a living in December of 2010 he set fire to himself. He was fed up with a corrupt regime that would take his only means of earning a living. Street protests were initiated. They became uprisings. Subsequent events in Tunisia, and then throughout the Arab world, are now known as the Arab Spring.
The Arab Spring, in turn, has both drawn from and given life to the Obama Doctrine (which he first articulated in Oslo in 2009). In simple terms the Obama Doctrine is about Peace through cooperation, Order through strength.
In the real world it means, when possible, encouraging our allies to go through international institutions, like the United Nations and NATO, to assist repressed people looking to overthrow corrupt regimes. But the Obama Doctrine also means relentlessly pursuing those who threaten America's security.
Killing Osama bin Laden in a stunning raid led by U.S. Special Forces in May proved this. This, in turn, was followed up by another spectacular military operation in September that killed the most potent post-Bin Laden al Qaeda threat to the United States, Anwar al-Awlaki.
It would be easy for me to say that cooperation and successful military raids are sufficient to understand the Obama Doctrine. But, as President Obama's comments on Israel demonstrate, this doesn't do justice to the complex thinking that the Obama Doctrine involves.
It is the difference between a checkers player and a chess player. Consider how it worked in Libya.
About a month after the protests in Libya started President Obama imposed powerful sanctions, froze Colonel Qaddafi’s assets, secured a UN Security Council resolution, organized an international coalition, executed another stunning military campaign through NATO, pushed Gaddafi’s forces back with air strikes, which effectively neutered Gaddafi's military and left them (and Gaddafi) to flee towards safe havens.
Allies. International institutions. Strategic restraint.
And the best part? It was all done without having to put American troops on the ground. This meant no American military casualties and only a handful of Libyan civilian casualties. All of this allowed the British and French to lead the United Nations and NATO - at the request of the Arab League - to continue pursuing a crippled regime on behalf of a beleaguered civilian population.
Ultimately the Obama Doctrine doesn't provide the media with the "shock and awe" fireworks of a U.S. military invasion, or the pomp and pageantry of a Mission Accomplished photo op. But it's working.
While all of this may all be too much for those who want to turn every conflict country into parking lot, today's developments - understood in the proper context - help us see the Obama Doctrine for what it really is. An approach to global politics that's starting to win the United States new fans. That it's happening in an historically antagonistic region bodes well for America, on many levels.
- Mark
Addendum: This is probably the best interactive on the Arab Spring I've seen. Check it out.
Nine years ago I wrote an op-ed on Middle East tensions for our local paper, the Bakersfield Californian. Most of the article covered basic historical information. At the end of that article I wrote that for Israel to avoid another century "drenched in blood" - as King Saud predicted would happen - that accepting pre-1967 borders, "or adjusting those borders," so that the Palestinians can have a state that they call their own, was the key to building a foundation for peace in the region.
If this were to happen, I wrote, there would be a reason for the Arab world to begin cooperating on the issue of Israeli security. This is why I was so impressed with President Obama's Middle East speech last week.
"We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states."
And just like that President Obama initiated a discussion that those of us who follow the region understand needs to take place if we are to secure a modicum of peace in the region.
Perhaps more importantly, with Osama Bin Laden dead, we are currently witnessing the consolidation of the Obama Doctrine - Peace through cooperation, Order through strength - in real time. By pushing the Israelis to see how their future security is tied to building bridges with the Arab world - no matter how reluctant they may seem at the moment - President Obama is demonstrating that he isn't interested in pushing empty and unrealistic "Road Map to Peace" agendas.
And by taking Bin Laden out earlier this month, President Obama has made it clear that he's ready to take risks, which includes his willingness to put the future of his presidency behind his agenda for the region.
This is serious stuff, and the major players involved know it.
Better yet, what President Obama is doing is slowly leaving his domestic enemies (mostly in the GOP) and regional critics with little more than petty sound bytes.
With Prime Minister Netanyahu supporting President Obama's proposal for mutually agreed land swaps, the professional naysayers and the GOP may soon find themselves left with little more than empty rhetoric and petty grandstanding media ops to hang their hats on - as this Lawrence O'Donnell clip makes clear ...
We are currently watching history being made in real time. And the fact that the GOP doesn't see or understand what's happening is just one more reason why President Obama will be reelected in 2012.
- Mark
UPDATE (11-21-12): If you want to read an excellent book on the Obama Doctrine take a look at David E. Sanger's Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power (Random House, 2012). It provides a detailed look at the Obama Doctrine by outlining the president's use of coalitions when broader U.S. global interests are evident (like the intervention in Libya) and aggressive unilateralism when specific U.S. security interests are involved (the drone attacks and the killing of Osama Bin Laden). For a quick but still nuanced review of the Obama Doctrine check out Joseph S. Nye's article, "The Obama Doctrine's First Term." And, of course, there's my earlier blogpost on the Obama Doctrine as it was being defined in 2009.
I've been far too busy to comment on President Obama's Libya speech. But make no mistake. He is following a path that he laid out long ago. Rather than recount the Libya speech, and how it fits into the Obama Doctrine - Peace through cooperation, Order through strength - take a look at President Obama's Oslo speech. The long term approach for Libya is in there. My comments on what the Obama Doctrine means can be found here and here.
Interestingly, many conservatives - including former Speaker Newt Gingrich - praised President Obama's Oslo speech.
I have to run off to class so I'll leave my comments on the rants of Sarah Palin, and other clueless wonders, for another day. I'll try and make specific comments about the Libya speech at a later date too.
From the group Metallica ... While I'm not a fan of Metallica (my son shared this with me), "King Nothing" is a music video that hits on many of the topics we've been discussing in my International Relations class. Specifically, we've been focusing on the rise and decline of empires, and how empires over time have consistently pursued conflict and war (i.e. what ends up being hegemonic war) when they sense their hold on power is slipping away. Things don't go well towards the end.
Fair Warning: While some of the clips in the video may be a bit strong for some, the "King Nothing" message is provocative and offers some insight into why we're not safer after conducting our War on Terror ...
Many years ago, the U.S. Army conducted tests in the Philippines using human guinea pigs. While some accounts, especially the U.S. Army Medical Department's Office of Medical History, seem to brush over, or go light on the Army's procedures, other accounts make it clear that the U.S. Army actively infected "the natives" with diseases like the plague and beriberi (a debilitating disease that involves gradual nerve degeneration, with muscle atrophy and loss of reflexes).
Several members of the U.S. Army medical team, who participated in these projects in the late 1800s and early 1900s, were later awarded professorships in prestigious universities across the U.S. for their efforts.
I bring this up because it appears that, in the name of science, we did something similar in Guatemala in the 1940s. The NY Times is reporting that from 1946 to 1948 "American public health doctors deliberately infected nearly 700 Guatemalans — prison inmates, mental patients and soldiers — with venereal diseases." The goal was to test the effectiveness of penicillin.
American tax dollars, through the National Institutes of Health, even paid for syphilis-infected prostitutes to sleep with prisoners, since Guatemalan prisons allowed such visits. When the prostitutes did not succeed in infecting the men, some prisoners had the bacteria poured onto scrapes made on their penises, faces or arms, and in some cases it was injected by spinal puncture.
To be sure, the US experimentation with bio-weapons goes back to the distribution of cholera-infect blankets to American Indian tribes in the 1860s. But we were at war with the Indians (not that this makes it acceptable). The Philippines and Guatemala were actually on our side when we decided to turn parts of their populations into human petri dishes.
On the positive side, at least we didn't engage in forced sterilization programs in these regions, like we did in the United States.
Recall, in an effort to revitalize, punish, or genetically clean out any targeted group of "undesirables" many U.S. states actively pursued eugenics as a matter of policy. To be sure, we did this in the name of therapy, and sterilized only habitual criminals, the insane, schizophrenics, and those born with other genetic deformities. But the reality is individual states embraced the policy (think about that the next time someone clamours for "states' rights").
Worse, they did so without notifying those who were sterilized. In fact, we became so accomplished at the practice that the Nazis cited U.S. precedent (and, specifically, California policy) when they were accused of practicing mass extermination.
With the announcement of what we did in Guatemala, we're at least acknowledging what happened. That's good, I guess.
Apparently President Obama's Oslo speech not only swayed conservatives but, as I suggested two days ago, has set the tone for what appears to be an emerging Obama Doctrine: Peace through cooperation, Order through strength.
This, as will become clearer below, demonstrates that President Obama, like the post-war architects of 1945, has a much more sophisticated understanding of power than his predecessor, and many of his contemporaries.
While conservatives have focused on President Obama's muscular comments that "the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms" they completely ignored what President Obama said about how "global security" has been maintained. Specifically, President Obama made it clear that Pax Americana - the American Peace - was made possible because the United States openly embraced multilateral institutions.
These institutions (NATO, the United Nations, the Bretton Woods institutions, etc.) helped shape diplomacy and maintain order after World War II. As President Obama noted:
In the wake of such destruction, and with the advent of the nuclear age, it became clear to victor and vanquished alike that the world needed institutions to prevent another world war. And so, a quarter century after the United States Senate rejected the League of Nations -- an idea for which Woodrow Wilson received this prize -- America led the world in constructing an architecture to keep the peace: a Marshall Plan and a United Nations, mechanisms to govern the waging of war, treaties to protect human rights, prevent genocide, restrict the most dangerous weapons.
In many ways, these efforts succeeded. Yes, terrible wars have been fought, and atrocities committed. But there has been no Third World War. The Cold War ended with jubilant crowds dismantling a wall. Commerce has stitched much of the world together. Billions have been lifted from poverty. The ideals of liberty and self-determination, equality and the rule of law have haltingly advanced. We are the heirs of the fortitude and foresight of generations past, and it is a legacy for which my own country is rightfully proud.
What President Obama was telling the world, which conservatives rarely acknowledge (or simply don't understand) is that institutions and treaties matter. Put more bluntly, he was pointing out that modern diplomacy and global stability has moved beyond the simple embrace of balance of power, shifting alliances, coercion, and brute force.
This is critical because history tells us that order built on shifting alliances and simple coercion alone tend to break down, and have swallowed the world into increasingly destructive wars. Indeed, over the past 400-plus years we have seen the destruction of "global" (European) order via increasingly vicious wars. The bloody wars of religion brought on the Protestant Reformation, which reached a climax with the Thirty Years War (ending in 1648). These wars were followed by the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714).
The instability and carnage that the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815) brought to the European continent was followed by the ugliness and destruction of World War I. With it the world came to realize that, as President Obama put it, "The capacity of human beings to think up new ways to kill one another proved inexhaustible ..."
World War I, as we know, was followed by the destruction of World War II, which inspired scholars to think of both WWI and WWII as modernity's version of the Thirty Years War.
This is important to understand because President Obama is acknowledging that, over time, we have learned that patterns and expectations created by treaties have had an impact. Treaties crafted at Westphalia (1648), Utrecht (1713), Vienna (1815), Versailles (1919), and at Bretton Woods (1944) and Potsdam (1945) have helped to establish international rules, protocols, and global patterns that, in many ways, create the functional equivalent of a global constitution (for an excellent book on this, see G. John Ikenberry's After Victory).
Established patterns have created expectations that have built - as I constantly tell my international relations students - islands of order in the sea of anarchy. This doesn't mean that war can (or will) be eradicated. It only means that the proclivity toward war can be reduced. This can only happen if other nations see the institutions, and the nations that create those institutions, as legitimate.
Legitimacy today, as President Obama emphasized, comes only when responsible leaders are prepared to use force with cause. But it also comes when everyone, including the biggest actors, play by the rules established by the treaties and institutions created. As President Obama put it:
So part of our challenge is reconciling these two seemingly inreconcilable truths -- that war is sometimes necessary, and war at some level is an expression of human folly. Concretely, we must direct our effort to the task that President Kennedy called for long ago. "Let us focus," he said, "on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions." A gradual evolution of human institutions.
What might this evolution look like? What might these practical steps be?
To begin with, I believe that all nations -- strong and weak alike -- must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I -- like any head of state -- reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation. Nevertheless, I am convinced that adhering to standards, international standards, strengthens those who do, and isolates and weakens those who don't.
There's more. Much more. So do yourself a favor and read the speech (it's that good).
But make no mistake. By advocating Peace through cooperation, Order through strength, President Obama presented the world with a more responsible way of thinking about global security that, as former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich put it, bordered on the "historic."
- Mark
UPDATE (11-21-12): If you want to read an excellent book on the Obama Doctrine take a look at David E. Sanger's Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power (Random House, 2012). It provides a detailed look at the Obama Doctrine by outlining the president's use of coalitions when broader U.S. global interests are evident (like the intervention in Libya) and aggressive unilateralism when specific U.S. security interests are involved (the drone attacks and the killing of Osama Bin Laden). For a quick but still nuanced review of the Obama Doctrine check out Joseph S. Nye's article, "The Obama Doctrine's First Term."
In my International Relations class I always introduce students to the key theories that help us understand developments over time and around the world. The goal isn't to reaffirm or convince the students of one approach over another. At present - while we must pay attention to certain truths, like the security dilemma - no one approach is superior for understanding international relations.
The idea is to get my students to see that it isn't sufficient in the modern world to say, "We are more civilized and my club is bigger than yours so we will win." The British learned this lesson by the middle of the 20th century. The French learned this lesson too. The Soviet Union learned this lesson in Afghanistan at the end of the 20th century.
At the same time, in the modern world it is not sufficient to embrace the thinking of those with bumper stickers that read, "Won't it be a Great Day When the Navy has to Hold a Bake Sale and Schools Have All the Money they Need?". There are - as President Obama noted during his speech - moments where wars are just and necessary.
The grand chessboard of global politics isn't simply a function of "kicking ass" or turning an island into a parking lot. It's not about seeing who has the most rifles, bombs, and troops. But it's also not about moralizing to the point of embracing the undertones of the Beatles' song "All You Need is Love." Understanding global politics involves knowing how to create and sustain systemic stability with both a sword and a pen. Under the American Peace, or Pax Americana, we've increasingly embraced the pen. This is something to brag about. It's not only what you do during war, but what you do after victory that counts.
Knowing when to employ aggressive strength or strategic restraint is what creates the historic tales of grand masters on the global stage.
This is why I thoroughly enjoyed President Obama's humble but realistic Nobel Peace Prize speech. While I'm still not convinced about the fuzziness of his Afghanistan policy, it's clear that he gets it when it comes to international relations. The art of global politics involves understanding power and the responsibility that comes with that power. Crafting a policy that threads those two needles is what turns an ordinary politician into a statesman. President Obama looked like a statesman at Oslo.
Addressing the challenges that come with trying to create global security, President Obama reminded the world that more than six decades of stability had been established under an enlightened America that used it's military strength. President Obama seems to understand that if he must operate in a world that doesn't provide black and white answers he must be both a warrior and a statesman.
Embracing these contrasting and seemingly contradictory positions - as Howard Fineman told us - is what's so reassuring about President Obama. In the immortal words of F. Scott Fitzgerald:
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
If President Obama laid the groundwork for the beginning of an Obama Doctrine, it is his embrace of a rules-based multilateralism, seasoned with this maxim from Machiavelli:
The rule of man is law. The rule of the beast is force. In order to insure the former, you must have access to the latter.
Again, while I'm not thrilled about his rationale for Afghanistan at this point, President Obama's Oslo speech suggests he knows what he's doing.
- Mark
UPDATE: For those of you who agree with my sentiments here, and enjoy reading Reinhold Niebuhr, this post from Dailykos puts my Obama Doctrine suggestion on another, more philosophical, level. For those of you unfamiliar with Niebuhr, you might know him through the serenity prayer ("God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can change, And wisdom to know the difference.").
President Obama has decided to put more troops in Afghanistan. This decision is not a surprise. We have been hearing about this decision for weeks now. While the White House is making it clear that this is not an open-ended commitment I don't know that this is going to make things better. What's the mission? What's the exit strategy? How are we going to pay for this?
Without answering these questions, or at leat addressing them, more troops will only serve to transfer President Bush's Blundering Wars Project on to President Obama. We should be leaving Afghanistan rather than - as John McCain might put it - "muddling through." I don't like this.
The Obama skeptics are bound to find comfort in these two articles.
These two articles - one from Germany's Der Spiegel and the other from the NY Times - suggest that President Obama's approach to world affairs isn't winning him any friends. Indeed, the Der Spiegel piece ("Obama's Nice Guy Act Gets Him Nowhere on the World Stage") suggests that President Obama is losing stature because of the "new limits" of the United States, which President Obama is just learning about. Our financial mess here at home, and the wars in the Middle East are draining both our capacity to influence and our moral authority, according to Gabor Steingart. Fair enough.
The Times' article, "Obama in his Labyrinth," written by Roger Cohen, points to a President that is on the verge of being overwhelmed by what Fareed Zakaria might call the "rise of the rest." Simply put, other nations have taken advantage of the relatively peaceful post-war world created by the United States and its allies to develop and become more assertive on the world stage. While the results of our post-war plans should be hailed, they also are now placing greater demands on U.S. relations around the world. In a world made less stable by President Bush's Blundering Wars Project, the rise of the rest was bound to place strains on any U.S. president in the 21st century.
So how is President Obama really doing? While I haven't always agreed with Henry Kissinger he makes a poignant observation about President Obama:
He reminds me of a chess grandmaster who has played his opening in six simultaneous games ... But he hasn’t completed a single game and I’d like to see him finish one.”
Simply put, you can't judge a grandmaster by his opening moves. I agree. Those of you who have taken my courses in international relations understand why. For those of you who haven't taken my IR classes, let me be clear: Politics on the world stage demands a grandmaster. Our previous president didn't understand the grand chessboard. President Obama is trying to dig us out of a checkers' player nightmare. If he succeeds he becomes the next Disaraeli, Bismarck, Metternich and perhaps even a Cardinal Richelieu.
If he fails, the Carter references will be loud and wide. I'll leave it at that for now.
Here's South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham (R-Clueless) over the weekend discussing Iran's nuclear program:
"We're walking down the road to Armageddon."
Here's Graham (R-Clueless) commenting on what would happen if President Obama doesn't commit another 40,000 troops to Afghanistan:
"We're going to lose. We'll be driven out. The Taliban will come back stronger than they were before, [and] the moderates in Afghanistan will go back in hiding or get killed. NATO will be seen as a failure, and America will go it alone in the future."[Here's my question: Why didn't Graham think this way when President Bush decided to pull troops out of Afghanistan to invade Iraq, pretty much alone?]
Here's Senator Graham (R-Clueless) in 2007 explaining why he supported the war in Iraq on Meet the Press:
"... I was wrong about certain things. The weapons of mass destruction issue ... I think Saddam believed he had the weapons, but apparently he didn't."
Here's Lindsey Graham (R-Clueless) on Meet the Press, explaining what we can all learn from his history of failed analysis in the region:
"Here’s what I can promise you ... no one wants to talk about this."
Drawing from Graham's last two comments, and as a point of reference, can you imagine if I had the following conversation with my bank:
"I was wrong about certain things. The money in the bank issue ... I think my creditors believed I had money in the bank, but apparently I didn't. Here's what I can promise you, and no one wants to talk about this ... so lend me more money."
OK, here my question. At what point does Lindsey Graham admit he's a clueless partisan hack who has no idea what the hell he's talking about when it comes to the Middle East?
Almost two years ago, when I started this blog, I posted two items tied to international relations that questioned President Bush's competence as a world leader. In a few words I argued that stable global relations require someone who understands movements over time and place, and can play like a chess player. This is especially the case when you're the President of the United States. George Bush, unfortunately, played like a checkers player, and left a legacy abroad that proved it. His actions made the U.S. - and the world - less safe.
Because of the issues surrounding Iran's nuclear program, and President Obama's remarks yesterday, I've re-posted my 2007 comments below.
______________________________
On Thursday the United States, the British and France put forward evidence to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran has secretly been building a non-civilian nuclear facility in northern Iran. Standing with President Obama when he presented the news to the world were the leaders of Britain and France. France's President Sarkozy - who is not known for such threatening statements - even went so far as to tell Iran that they need to change their program within two months, or face sanctions. As well, Britain called Iran's program part of a “serial deception of many years” that led to a rare Russian rebuke of Iran, and a milder warning from China.
These developments can not be understated.
After President Bush single-handedly undermined America's credibility abroad with aggressive unilateralism, lies, torture, and his blundering wars project, it was tough for him to get other nations to support the U.S. on important issues, like Iran's evolving nuclear program.
Now, let's keep in mind that few doubted Iran's capabilities and intentions to secure a nuclear weapons program. We even suspected - if not knew - what they were doing. The problem was that no one wanted to follow the U.S. lead on the issue. At least as long as George W. Bush was in the picture.
It appears that this is beginning to change under President Obama.
There are several reasons for this. As MSNBC's Rachel Maddow so cogently points out here, President Obama's decision to change the direction of our missile defense program in Poland - which was directed against Russia - helped convince Russia's President Medvedev to go along with the U.S. position on Iran. This was absolutely necessary, in my view, because of the missteps of the Bush administration when it came to Russia. I wrote about them here over a year ago. They're not pretty.
More importantly, President Obama's actions and decisions abroad helped convince the United Nations Security Council (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia) to follow the U.S. lead in condemning Iran's program. We want to keep in mind here that Russia and France balked at supporting U.S. initiatives after eight years of being strung along, lied to, and lectured by President Bush.
Having the UN Security Council with us on this is big news. I like Rachel Maddow's observation: "If diplomacy got reported like war does,I think what we'd be reporting right now is 'Shock and Awe'." If you read my December 2007 posts below, or take a look at George W. Bush's "Russia" policies, you'll get a better understanding of why Rachel Maddow said this (and why Andrea Mitchell concurred).
- Mark
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Dissecting Bush"s Strategic Failures, Part I
By way of Kevin Drum we have Niall Ferguson explaining why the United States is not the Roman Empire, or even the British Empire ...
Less than a century ago, before World War I, the population of Britain was 46 million, barely 2.5% of humanity. And yet the British were able to govern a vast empire that encompassed an additional 375 million people, more than a fifth of the world's population. Why can't 300 million Americans control fewer than 30 million Iraqis? Three years ago, as the United States swept into Iraq, I wrote a book titled "Colossus," which offered a somber prediction, summed up in its subtitle, "The Rise and Fall of the American Empire." My argument was that the United States was unlikely to be as successful or as enduring an imperial power as its British predecessor for three reasons: its financial deficit, its attention deficit and, perhaps most urprisingly, its manpower deficit. Rather cruelly, I compared the American empire to a "strategic couch-potato ... consuming on credit, reluctant to go to the front line [and] inclined to lose interest in protracted undertakings."
Not content, Kevin Drum introduced another variable: The “Rise of the Colonials” …
[Niall Ferguson’s argument] leaves out by far the most important reason for American failure: today's colonials fight back. Britain occupied India with a tiny force because the Indians mostly let them, and on the rare occasions when they rebelled the British (like all the other European colonial powers) felt free to crush them in the most brutal manner imaginable.None of that is true today. The people of Iraq are flatly unwilling to be ruled by outsiders, they have the weaponry to fight back effectively, and the West is no longer willing to spill rivers of blood simply to show them who's boss. If those things had been true a century ago, Britain never would have had an empire in the first place, let alone been able to keep it.
I have another variable to add. Let’s call it the "Grandmaster" variable.
I've used chess as a metaphor for international relations since reading Zbigniew Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives. While it’s almost 10 years old, the book is still a good read and offers an understanding of strategic thinking that George Bush's foreign policy team obviously lacks. What we learn is that you can’t have rank amateurs, who think and act like they're playing checkers (with a club) when global challenges demand we think like chess players. With the power, influence, and global position of the United States the American Grand Chessboard really demands a Grandmaster. Or at least a tournament level player.
The chess player metaphor is even more appropriate when we include the discussion Joseph Nye, Jr. offered on U.S. power and the challenges that confront our world.
In The Paradox of American Power Nye argues that global power is distributed in a pattern that resembles a three-dimensional chess game. On the top board level we have military power, where the United States remains supreme. On the mid-level board we have economic power, where the United States is one of several states that can significantly influence global economic developments. On the bottom level we have “transnational” issues where no one country can dominate, or hope to solve problems on its own. Here we see issues like drugs, global warming, aids, criminal activities, environmental pollution, terrorism, etc.
According to Nye the world needs to work together because “the paradox of American power at the end of this millennium is that it is too great to be challenged by any other state, yet not great enough to solve problems such as global terrorism and nuclear proliferation.”
With record budget deficits and OPEC threatening to the dump the dollar as its reserve currency (the 2nd tier), and Bush’s failed policies around the world (the bottom tier), it's hard to disagree with Nye that you can't focus simply on the military, or first tier, level and expect to win. And now, with the U.S. military under strain, we can't be sure about the power and influence the threat of U.S. force used to bring.
Simply put, the idea that the United States can act like past empires – whether it was the British Empire or the Roman Empire – reflects a serious problem of analysis on the part of Team Bush. And it began almost immediately after 9/11, when an unnamed Bush official told reporter Ron Suskind:
We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality--judiciously, as you will--we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
This arrogant, insipid, child-like attitude toward the ideas of others tells us that George Bush and his neo-conservative team never believed in understanding issues. Rather, their goal has always been to wield power to shape the world in a way that reflected their stunted vision of reality.
As we have seen in Iraq, that vision was never well thought out. As we are left to “study what [they] do” you can be sure that “history’s actors” will be judged by the “realities” they created. Our problem is that we have to live through their strategic incompetence and the havoc their realities bring us today.
Again, I don't need a Grandmaster to play America's Grand Chessboard. I'd settle for a beginning level tournament player. With Bush, we're not even close.
While it's far too early to make any long term projections, it appears that President Obama's approach to the Middle East and his Cairo speech may be paying dividends.
In Lebanon voters handed an American-backed coalition a victory in Lebanese parliamentary elections on Sunday. Regional political experts cite domestic issues for the results but are also giving a nod to President Obama’s outreach efforts to the Arab and Muslim world. According to the NY Times ...
Most analysts had predicted that the Hezbollah-led coalition, already a crucial power broker in the Lebanese government because of its support from Shiites who make up a large part of Lebanon’s population, would win handily. In the end, though, the American-aligned coalition won 71 seats, while the Syria-Iranian aligned opposition, which includes Hezbollah, took only 57.
Talk of the "Obama Effect" in the Middle East will get a significant boost on Friday if Iran's hard-line anti-American President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad loses against his main moderate challenger, Mir Hussein Moussavi.
President Obama's Cairo speech strikes a new tone and puts America on a broadened path with the Middle East.
If you want to read the entire speech, with interactive (streaming) video, click here.
President Obama pointed to several areas that demonstrated religious tolerance in the U.S. and how Islam has always been a part of our history. Among those included his reference to Morroco being the first nation to recognize the United States and how an elected member of Congress used the same Koran that Thomas Jefferson had in his library at his swearing in ceremony.
On the surface, it appears that President Obama's trump card is that he is not President Bush (who derailed the 2003 "Road Map to Peace" proposal). Put another way, the messenger matters.
I'll touch on this and other issues facing the U.S. in the Middle East on Saturday.
One of the things that draws me to challenge the sincerity of our Teabagging Republicans, and their FOX News patrons, is how their Anti-Tax Jihad not only exposes our country to geo-economic blackmail but how their Teabagging Temper Tantrum fails the "Adam Smith" test.
Think about this. Our nation depends on the good will of others to fund what we do. Currently, the top six purchasers of our debt - China, Japan, Russia, "Oil Exporters", Brazil, Caribbean Banking Centers (i.e. off-shore tax havens) - hold at least $2 trillion of our securities.
Of these only Japan, and perhaps Brazil, can be considered friendly to the U.S. The others could turn on us at any time ... yes, that includes the money that comes from the tax haven Caribbean nations, which are filled with tax cheats, money launderers, and wealthy traitors seeking to escape paying their fair share here. These groups are the real Pirates of the Caribbean.
The interesting point here is that rather than having our nation's richest and most leisure class (the same group who gained the most during the Reagan/Bush Years) pay what they paid in taxes under Ronald Reagan, Republicans and their Teabagging Buddies at FOX News want our nation to continue borrowing from people and nations who aren't our friends. Yes, they want to continue exposing our nation to the threat of economic blackmail. So much for "Country First" ...
As well, the Republicans are completely clueless to the fact that their anti-tax Jihad wouldn't sit right with the founding father of capitalism, Adam Smith.
While writing The Wealth of Nations (1776) the intellectual Godather of Capitalism recommended, and even encouraged, taxing the wealthy at a higher rate than the middle class. He argued, for example, that luxury carriages should pay higher tolls than regular or commercial travelers because he believed that "the indolence and vanity of the rich" should be made to contribute to larger societal goals.
And what do our economic elites do when confronted with the prospect of helping to put our nation's economy on firm financial footing? They send their money off-shore. According to recently released reports the United States loses up to $100 billion a year in tax revenue to offshore tax havens (the cost to individual states can be seen here).
Who do you think has to make up the difference? Yes, that's right, you and me. Worse, we're forced to go to the Chinese, tax cheats, and OPEC & other oil nations to fund our debts so that we can fight wars Republicans don't want to pay for, and refuse to fight.
This, my friends, explains what the Teabaggers at FOX & Republicanlandia want to promote with their political temper tantrum.
With the U.S. economy in shambles, record budget deficits, and the wholesale looting of taxpayer money by the financial sector it dawned on me that what's happening here would not be tolerated by the U.S. in other parts of the world.
Anyone familiar with the history of economic development knows that when countries start running large budget and balance of trade deficits, and then experience the type of meltdown we are experiencing, that the U.S. and its Western allies have arrived to impose "structural adjustment reforms" on the country that has lost its way economically. This usually means draconian budget cuts, imposed policies, and forced financial terms.
In the past - using the U.S. Embassy as its base to direct events - the U.S. has even forced unwanted leaders from power. With this in mind, after being asked about developments in the U.S., Chile's President Michelle Bachelet joked:
The reason why in the United States there has never been a coup d'etat is because in the United States there is no United States embassy.
Keep in mind that this is from the president of Chile, one of two nations in Latin America that tries to do what we ask of them (Colombia is the other, but doesn't really count because we stuff them with arms and money for their war on drugs). President Obama has a lot of work in front of him.
As if screwing up in Iraq were not enough, the Bush administration continues to demonstrate they don’t know what the hell they’re doing in the world. But let me get this out of the way first ...
Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice was/is considered an expert on Russia and the Soviet Union. What’s going on in Georgia (a former state in the USSR) should not be hard to figure out ... and could have been prevented. But just in case you’re not in tune, here’s a brief overview of Georgia’s history from the BBC.
What’s happening in Georgia is, in part, a product of larger on-going issues between George Bush’s failed positions in the region, and the administration's continued inability to see or anticipate events.
Specifically, the Bush administration has been meddling in Russian affairs, and getting in Russia’s face for the better part of six years. So when the Bush administration decided to warn Russia on Georgia, you can imagine Moscow's response. To be sure, Russia has genuine interests in Georgia, but President Bush’s actions have not helped improve conditions, or our hand, in the region.
STUPIDITY IN THE BALTICS
President Bush visited Moscow in 2005 to observe the 60th anniversary of the Allies' victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. In the process he irritated old WWII wounds in the region by bringing up a past that is better left alone. Here’s a brief review of a past he should have left alone.
The Russians believe they should be thanked for “liberating” the Baltics from the Nazis during WWII. They also feel they are being polite to the Baltic states (Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia) for not mentioning large scale collaboration on their part with the Nazis. The Balts, however, do not feel the Russians liberated them because the Russians turned around and occupied their land and, in the process, wiping them from global maps for 50 years.
On the other side of this mess, the Baltic want to forget how eager many of them were to help Germans kill Jews, with the Riga Ghetto being one of the largest in Europe. To counter this, many Balts remind the Russians that many of their countrymen fought in the Red Army, and are not shy about reminding Russia about the Russian soldiers who defected to the Nazis (these soldiers were executed on the spot when captured by Russian troops).
At this point it should be pretty clear why it might be a good thing to “let sleeping dogs lie,” right?
Enter our President, the Idiot Prince, to make sure that all of this gets revived. Rather than simply saying he’s in Moscow to celebrate the end of WWII he wrote a letter to the three Baltic heads of state stating the end of World War II "also marked the Soviet occupation and annexation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and the imposition of Communism." Nice.
The letter arrived in the Baltic states right before Bush arrived in Moscow for the WWII ceremonies in Spring 2005. As you can imagine Putin was ecstatic.
But just to show that President Bush really has no idea what he’s doing, he didn’t back off. Instead Bush told a Lithuanian reporter that he confronted Mr. Putin on how he needs to work on democracy in Russia and to remind him that "the remembrances of the time of Communism [for the Baltic states] are unpleasant remembrances.”
Reminding a people of two occumpations. Digging to uncover old Nazi wounds. Insulting prospective hosts on the eve of arriving in their nation. A trifecta in dimplomatic incompetence.
To Mr. Putin’s credit, in a May 4 interview with the CBS program "60 Minutes" (which aired May 8, 2005) Mr. Putin said that America should not be lecturing him about rollbacks on democracy when "four years ago your presidential election was decided by the court." Ouch.
Score one for Putin.
STUPIDITY IN THE CAUCUSES?
OK, back to the present dispute ...
Just last month Condaleeza Rice was in Georgia telling Georgia’s president Mikhail Saakashvili one thing, but sending Russia another set of signals.
Specifically, while asking President Saakashvili (who has a law degree from Columbia University) not to antagonize the Russians by using Georgia's military force to settle the separatist movements in issue (specifically in Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Ajaria), it appears that the Bush administration had been going out of its way to, well, antagonize the Russians. They did this by: (1) sending military advisers to bolster the Georgian military, including an exercise last month with more than 1,000 American troops (aren’t they needed in Iraq?); (2) working hard to bring Georgia into NATO, while providing few assurances to Russia; (3) providing material support for the 2003 Rose Revolution, which replaced President Eduard Shevardnadze, a former communist party man, who had ruled Georgia for more than 30 years, and (4) loudly proclaiming support for Georgia’s territorial integrity at the same time Russia was making clear their concerns over Georgia’s separatist enclaves.
With these developments in the background you can imagine how the Russians felt after Condaleeza Rice provocatively told the press (and Putin) on the eve of her July 2008 visit to Georgia, “I’m going to visit a friend and I don’t expect much comment about the United States going to visit a friend.”
Score one for arrogant, child-like, hubris.
As you can imagine, after all this, Moscow was in no mood to be lectured by the Bush administration after they began bombing Georgia on “behalf” of Russians and Ossetians. It also helps to explain why the U.S. is virtually absent from the on-going cease fire dialog. Russia is in no mood to listen to President Bush.
Making matters worse, we now have John McCain trying to score cheap political points off of this disaster by attempting to make it appear that he knows what's going on ... while clumsily reading from a prepared script (no doubt prepared by the same foreign poliy aide who was a lobbyist for Georgia, and whose firm is still being paid by Georgia).
There’s more. But it doesn’t get any better. In real simple terms, President Bush will go down as an historic incompetent on many levels. The man is a fool.
