The Art of War

This week has witnessed the escalation of Donald Trump's trade war against the world and the selection of John Bolton, a man who is comfortable with idea of actual shooting wars against Any US adversary, as National Security Advisor.  Neither action bodes well for Amreican economic security or influence in the world.  The trade war minimizes one of the most effective tools for avoiding actual shooting wars.  Trading with other nations establishes relationships that typically preclude military conflict.  Trading partners are more likely to seek to resolve disputes with diplomacy than attacking each other.  Trump's trade war turns that relationshp on its head by asserting that US interests are superior to all others.

Same-same with soon-to-be National Security Advisor John Bolton who takes the America First concept all the way to military action against any nation that does not accept American hegemony.  Fifteen years after cheerleading the disastrous US invasion and occupation of Irag, Bolton insists that the US military action n was correct and beneficial.  He will most likely encourage Trump's innate militarism.  In comparison a trade war seems like nothing of consequence.

In fact, a trade war is war.  Armies are not shooting at each other but the logic is the same.  In either case one nation believes that its interests are so threatened by one or more other nations, that it must agressively assert its interests to the detriment of those others.  The means differ--tarrifs versus armed force--but make no mistake, the point is to take something from another unilaterally without mutual consent.  War also means the other may retaliate and begin an escalating cycle of hostility and resentment.  Throw in ill-informed, nationalist politicians pandering to their base and it's easy to see how trade wars can morph into actual shooting war.

Donald Trump thinks trade war is "easy to win?"  John Bolton thinks war is always the answer. 

I do not see this ending well.

Will the US Nuke Russia Over Election Interference?

A Washington Post op-ed this morning lays out what seem reasonable approaches for defending the integrity of US elections.  The proposed first step is for the US to state that that it views any foreign attempt to influence our election processes through covert or clandestine means as an attack on the fundamental underpinnings of our system of government, that we will not tolerate such activity, and reserve the right to respond to such activities.”  
A second step recommends that Congress consider codifying the Obama administration’s designation of election systems as critical infrastructure.

The words "attack" and "critical infrastructure" caught my eye.  Those same words appear in the recently completed Nuclear Posture Review which states the US may use nuclear weapons in response to non-nuclear attacks which include cyber attacks on critical infrastructure.

If nuclear weapons are a valid response to attacks on critical infrastructure and election systems are critical infrastructure, then interfering in US elections is and attack on critical infrastructure could warrant a nuclear response.  At least that's where the logic leads.

The fact that our alleged president wholly rejects the idea of electoral interference and is therefore unlikely to take any action, much less launch a nuclear attack, is cold comfort.

A low threshold opens many doors.

War Words

All my life the words "appeasement" and "Munich" meant cowering before the totalitarian bully, a metaphor that encouraged war sooner rather than later.  I heard it about the Soviet Union.  I heard it about Vietnam.  Fortunately, we avoided war with the Soviets but went to war with the latter and took  me personally to the farthest edge of that dark national experience for no good reason.  So I've always discounted the bias against negotiating with adversaries.  For me "appeasement" and "Munich" are catchphrases meant to avoid serious discussion and debate. 

Now it turns out that recent scholarship shows those canards to be as empty as I thought.  With greater access to wartime records, researchers are able to paint a more nuanced picture of the difficult choices facing Great Britain as Germany re-armed under the Nazis.  Instead of the cowering democracy afraid to confront the threatening Nazi bully, Neville Chamberlain played a weak hand as best he could.  In return Britain got one more year to prepare for a war it was in no position to win in 1938. 

Chamberlain's biggest mistake was declaring that he had secured "peace for our time" when all he'd done was buy time.  At least he got that much--time--of his grandiose statement.  A more useful result than a more recent grandiosely stated accomplishment.

Almost Nuked

The Guardian reports that, but for one last fail-safe device, a four megaton hydrogen bomb would have detonated over Goldsboro, North Carolina in January 1961 after being released by a disintegrating B-52 bomber.  The article does not discuss why a B-52 disintegrated in mid-air which is somewhat of a side story to the much larger one of losing an American city and unleashing lethal fallout as far north as New York city. The article clearly notes that only one of four safety devices worked as intended.  A copy of the classified report adds a certain amount of black humor to the affair.  Humor which is only possible well after the fact that a nuclear weapon almost exploded here in the Homeland.  Of course, the US wasn't the Homeland back then but was definitely home and that was definitely an all-too-near nuclear miss.

The whole affair was awfully close to home for me.  Goldsboro is less than 150 miles from where I was living at the time.  I imagine I would have gotten a hefty dose of that radiation in my early teens.  It would have been pretty ugly. 

Or maybe duck and cover would have saved me.

Disappointments

My expectations of President Obama were never high so I never thought he could disappoint me.  I was wrong.  Betweenhis ill-advised Afghanistan surge and the expanded drone war, Obama has been far more of a war president than I expected.  Add Syria on top of that and he's a typical "shoot first" American hawk.  He's a bit smoother than his predecessor and I'm sure he ponders the situation more than GWB but in the end, he sends in the drones and cruise missiles.   Somehow I was hoping that Obama would be smart enough to maneuver the US in the world without resorting to military force. 

I agree with the president that using chemical weapons should not be ignored.  I don't know what the most effective response is but I know that it is not a unilateral American missile attack.  Upholding and enforcing an international norm is an international responsibility.  America has plenty of allies who also condemn chemical weapons use in Syria but few share our taste for military force.  Obama would disappoint me less if he sought to mobilize serious diplomatic and economic international actions against the Syrian regime rather than simply launching a missile attack.  Something like this, maybe.

Even more than Obama, John Kerry has disappointed me.  Here's a fellow Vietnam veteran who once spoke eloquently about a mistaken war now shilling for an uncertain military action with no clear objective in the midst of a civil war and regional unrest in which the US has no good choices.  I was disappointed with Kerry as a presidential candidate so I guess this is no surprise.  I was proud of him as a Vietnam Veteran Against the War, speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during Dewey Canyon III.  He was a powerful image of veteran opposition to war at a time when I was humping the boonies in Vietnam.  Later as a member of VVAW, I learned that Kerry was regarded by some VVAW leaders as a self-promoting opportunist.  He certainly never acted strongly on those anti-war in later years as a senator and his "I was before the [Iraq] war before I was against it" was a barely-concealed attempt to play both sides of the issue.

So these days John Kerry is playing the hawk who would protect us from another Hitler at Munich, another Holocaust and a world full of proliferating nuclear weapons starting with Iran's.  These are the same arguments we heard about Vietnam and so many of America's military actions in the years since.  Those canards are as bogus now as they were then.

Barack Obama was smart enough to see the folly of the Iraq war in 2003.  John Kerry saw war's folly his youth.  Age and experience does not guarantee wisdom.

More Syria

Common Sense Across the Pond

UK Parliament votes against military action in Syria.

Hear! Hear! 

Syria

What Ranger said.

Endless War

The tenth "anniversary" of the the initial assault on Iraq passed by without a comment from this humble blog.  Maybe I've lived with the war so much in the past decade that the years have simply fused together into what seems like a never-ending present.  No matter that American troops no longer occupy Iraq--we have plenty of foreign engagements to keep ourselves, our adversaries and plenty of  unlucky non-combatants bleeding for years to come.

Focusing on the Iraq war misses the point.  Rather than some new and surprising initiative, the US invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation were simply the follow-on to a decade of sanctions.  Those actions were part of America's arc of hegemony that began after World War II and saw a host of interventions and military action around the world including Vietnam, the war that gave me my own personal introduction to combat.  So rather than seeing Iraq as some unique event, I view it as an act within a long-running play.  Or maybe a play within a play as in Hamlet.

As a Baby Boomer, war has been a constant in my life.  Not war as experienced by the targets of American policy--no one ever fired at me in my home, on my way to school or during any of the daily activities that were typical of life in America in the 50's and 60's.  Still, war was part of the landscape.  We all expected Soviet bomber or ICBMs sooner or later.  Even as that threat receded, Vietnam took center stage.  And following Vietnam, came Ronnie the Popular and more threats of nuclear war followed by a host of covert wars.  About the only thing unique in the Iraq war was the open aggression and the constant wear and tear on a small, volunteer military.

And, of course, Iraq is "over" (for most Americans, at least) but we still have Afghanistan, Pakistan,Yemen, sub-Saharan Africa and anyplace else where someone yells "Death to America!"  Barack Obama has certainly been no improvement over CheneyBush in that regard.  So looking back at March 2003 as something entirely new in American policy ignores seven decades of American war-making.

So I take the tenth anniversary of the Iraq invasion as something to be noted in the context of "the beat goes on".  More catastrophic than previous actions, certainly, but nothing entirely new.  Still, much about Iraq should be remembered; Tom Englehardt has a good summary of the many things that most Americans have either forgotten or never paid much attention to--all worth remembering if we are ever to move America from a militarized to a civilian economy but more than likely will be ignored as successive administrations hype the fear that has turned the supposedly mightiest nation on earth into a paranoid giant, shooting at everything that moves.

Results Will Vary

Our logic is not always theirs:

Most governments declare, as policy, that they will not negotiate with terrorists. But this leading faction of Algeria’s military, driven to anti-compromise zealotry by the civil war, seems to mean it in a way that few others do. The audacious assault that may have killed several hostages shocked Western governments. But in the logic of the Algerian civil war, which ended 13 years ago everywhere but in the minds of the Algerian generals and Islamists who squared off this week in the remote Saharan desert, this was just another skirmish.

His Name Should Become a Synonym for Murderer.

A harsh judgment on a man who richly deserves it--Henry Kissinger--in Michael Yates' review of the Vietnam episode of Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States.  Beyond that nice turn of phrase, Yates is appalled that Barack Obama is commemorating what Oliver Stone shows to be a a true crime against the peoples of Southeast Asia.

It is appalling but, as Yates points out, Americans have no sense of the destruction we wreaked in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.  Our national myths will never allow us to honestly acknowledge our responsibility for that destruction.  Maybe the reason we must continue to commemorate the Vietnam War (the American War to the Vietnamese) is because it we can never escape the fact that it was a crime based on a lie compounded by ignorance, arrogance and greed.  So we keep piling on the patriotic bullshit to keep that truth away.

And because we refuse to learn that lesson we continue to wage war.   And need ever more of that bullshit to cover our doubts.

I'll pass on the commemoration.  I saw that shit in Vietnam and learned that lesson.  I haven't forgotten.

Our Everlasting War

Drones never sleep.
They fly and kill in our name.
Until we say, "No more!"

Aliens on Our Own Planet

Zbignew Brzezinski makes a strong case against US military strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.  He calls military action against Iran "reckless" and very likely to create a number of adverse results for the US and many of its allies.  Among the reasons, all credible predictions based on experience, Brzezinski did not include one very unfortunate result:  America would be alienated from Iran for generations to come.  Iranians are already rightly suspicious of the US as a result of our overthrow of an elected nationalist Iranian government in 1953 and the 26 years dictatorship under the American backed Shah Reza Palavi.  And still, many Iranians have managed to retain at least some admiration for American culture and our professed ideals.  A military attack, especially one serious enough to destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities, would pretty much wipe out any remaining favor for America in Iran.

So what's the big deal.  I mean, who needs Iran?  My selfish answer is I need Iran because I want to be part of the entire world, to embrace all as friend and fellow human.  The United States needs Iran for that same reason; my country should not dismiss one of the oldest civilizations on earth as some historical vestige with no current worth, as a nation whose interests and national pride count for nothing, to be marginalized at every turn.  To me that is living in a Fortress America.  Instead of the fortress being behind two oceans as in the late 1930's, the Fortress America of the 21st century is surrounded by its archipelago of military bases and casts its net world wide.

Stepping back from war on Iran can be a step toward fuller and peaceful engagement with the world.

America and the rest of the world would be better off for the change.

More Coda for a War

Another sign of American/NATO/Western failure in Afghanistan.  Students of either gender can no longer attend school in many Taliban controlled areas.  The number of those places are increasing as American/NATO/Western forces draw down.  The one hopeful note is that students still make sacrifices to become educated.  Perhaps someday they will lead their nation to a peaceful future.

Two comments liken America's fate in Afghanistan to its fate in Vietnam.  One strategic thinker describes the draw down as a:

... facade of peace [that] will crumble within few years after the departure of US troops and Pakistan will bring Afghanistan under its suzerainty with reimposition of Taliban rule just as it did in 1996 while tired and financially broke Uncle Sam will helplessly look the other way just as it did in 1975.

A lesson we should have learned in 1975.  Foreign war is a losing proposition.  Maybe this time the lesson will take.

A second comment is from a two-tour US officer who worked with South Vietnamese forces Vietnam:

The countryside was left pretty much to the VC and NVA, unless we conducted sweeps. It was like sticking your finger into a glass of water. As soon as we finished a sweep the water level (VC/NVA) assumed its former level.   

Afghanistan these days does sound much like Vietnam in the early 70's.  The US is exiting and leaving behind a semblance of non-Taliban government and will, no doubt, also leave behind advisors, contractors and others to assist in various ways.  The Karzai government will last as long as he keeps the Western money spigot flowing.  Sooner or later, the money may dwindle.

If Vietnam is the analogy, then is Afghanistan's future Vietnam's present?  That's a better fate than I would predict.  Vietnam present would be a considerable improvement for most Afghans.

As for the United States, we'll call the mission a success as long as we don't have to evacuate from the embassy rooftop.  That way we can say no one died for a mistake.

Call Me Isolationist

For as long as I've studied history the term "isolationist" has been more of an epithet than any representative of any kind of systemic thought.  It conjured up images of Americans naively believing their nation had no interests or responsibility in the larger world, foolishly attempting to ignore the rest of the world.  The proof of Isolationist folly was fascism and World War II.  The Cold War only made Isolationists even more irrelevant, we were told. 

I came across a book review and a follow-up letter (actually the other way around) in The Nation that gave me an entirely different understanding of the opponents of American international engagement in the first half of the 20th century, the many who were derided for their views.  Promise and Peril:  America at the Dawn of the Global Age by Christopher Nichols offers a far more nuanced view of the Isolationists than is acknowledged by the conventional wisdom.  The money quote:

Isolationism, as Nichols insists, “did not entail cultural, economic, or complete political separation from the rest of the world.” On the contrary, “the inner logic of isolationist arguments turned on the inner life of the nation and on visions of national self-definition, serving to reinforce many, albeit limited, forms of international engagement.” Isolationists were not provincial bumpkins; they were cultural cosmopolitans who distrusted the impact of empire—not only on “native” populations abroad but on US society and character at home.

[...] 

 What became known as isolationism was by no means an effort to wall off the United States from the rest of the world; it was the basis for a foreign policy strategy that encouraged cultural and economic involvement with other nations while discouraging political and military intervention—even as it recognized that such interventions might occasionally be necessary. This was hardly the ostrich-like caricature created by its critics.

That last paragraph sums up my world view.  If that be Isolationism, then I am an Isolationist and will proudly join the company of Thomas Jefferson, William James, W.E.B. Du Bois, Randolph Bourne, Eugene Debs and Jane Addams, all of whom understood the value of engaging with other nations but questioned military engagement. They had a different view of America in the world.

Many opponents of foreign military engagement recognized the inherent danger of a militarized society, which is the reality of America in the 21st century.  They feared the corrosive effects of a standing army. So did the the men who wrote the Constitution.   Article I, Section 8 requires Congress to "provide and maintain a Navy" while only authorizing Congress to "raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation for that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years."

The Framers were men who understood the dangers of standing armies and powerful executives.  So too, did many Americans--the Isolationists--in the early years of the last century.

Twenty-first century America would do well to remember.

 

A Prophet Ignored

A diplomat looked at his own country:

In 1968, when kidnapping, brutal interrogations and political assassinations of suspected Communists by state-sanctioned security forces were rampant, [Deputy Chief of Mission in Guatemala Viron P.] Vaky wrote that it was morally wrong to ignore the “violence of right-wing vigilantes and sheer criminality” of the Guatemalan regime.
[...]The “most disturbing” conclusion, in his view, was that “we have not been honest with ourselves . . . Have our values been so twisted by our adversary concept of politics in the hemisphere? Is it conceivable that we are so obsessed with insurgency that we are prepared to rationalize murder as an acceptable counter-insurgency weapon?”

Forty-some years on, the unfortunate answer is "yes".  What good does it do a nation to have knowledge and fail to use it?
 
Godspeed, Ambassador Vaky.

Coda for a War

 Eleven years on, the violence continues. 

“The ground shook and everyone started to run,” said Abdul Wali, 25, a hardware shop owner whose gaping glass storefront was still covered with a blanket Monday. “I don’t know who would do such a terrible thing, but we have no security at all. The police beat people, the Americans raid our villages and still we are not safe. We would be happy if they all left tomorrow.”

A great deal of happiness would ensue if Mr. Wali gets his wish.  I don't doubt that some difficulty will occur along the way to that happiness but I know that the likelihood of Afghans coming to terms with one another will be enhanced with Americans out of the equation.  I also don't doubt that after 2014 Americans will continue to be in Afghanistan.  They won't be the bigfoot highly visible foreign occupiers, though.  After 2014 Americans will morph from foreign occupiers to a big money foreign interest.  I hope Mr. Wali's village finds safety in the changes to come.

More Than Just Intelligence

 A Washington Post article on CIA and military intelligence reorganization included some language that made me me pause.  Early on, is this statement (my emphasis in quotes),

 Through its drone program, the CIA now accounts for a majority of lethal U.S. operations outside the Afghan war zone.

Lethal operations?  A sterile term for what is assumed to be a routine function of government.  It all sounds so normal.

Later on,

The plan reflects the Obama administration’s affinity for espionage and covert action over conventional force. It also fits in with the administration’s efforts to codify its counterterrorism policies for a sustained conflict and assemble the pieces abroad necessary to carry it out.
[...]
 DIA needed to be repositioned as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan give way to what many expect will be a period of sporadic conflicts and simmering threats requiring close-in intelligence work.

The bad news is that conflict is in the nation's future.  The good news (I think) is that the Obama administration is looking for more nuanced and cost-effective ways to deal with the potential threats that might arise from those conflicts.  Still, all this intelligence activity addresses (maybe) symptoms, not causes, so the conflict is likely to last.

Lethal.  Sustained.  Conflict.

Our choice.

Good Questions

Walter Pincus, who gets into the federal budget better than any reporter I know, reports today on the US Navy's Special Forces budget request.  The request funds "wet" and "dry" operations using underwater and shallow water combat submersibles.  Also included is $1.3 for a Mobile Landing Platform in 2015, to be followed by the  Afloat Forward Staging Base for which no amount is specified.  It's a mind-boggling array of technology all needed to, as stated in the budget's forward, "...build and sustain tailored capabilities appropriate for counterterrorism (sic) and irregular warfare.” 

It's also part of the Navy staying in the game.  The Army and Air Force have a Special Operations Command, which means the Navy will need to do same.  No branch of service wants to miss out on the current war.  Recall that even the US Coast Guard served in Vietnam.  War is a time of opportunity for the military, especially for the military bureaucracy; rank, budget and prestige grow during war time.  "Counterterrorism" is the name of the game and the Navy wants to keep its hand in.

Pincus asks the right questions:

How are all these Special Forces capabilities in all the services being integrated? How many overlap? How many are needed, and how many can this country afford?

 I would add only a follow up to the how many are needed:  Why? 

Telling It Like You Want It To Be

 Former assistant secretary of state for public affairs P.J. Crowley makes a good case for more public disclosure of government activity and information on national security matters.  He discusses the many and varied types of leaks and motivations.  But it all comes down to politics:

Are leaks about politics? Absolutely. Administrations that effectively explain what they are doing tend to be reelected; those that struggle to create a successful media narrative don’t.

[...]

 Leaks can involve crimes — as, allegedly, in the case against Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, accused of passing classified information to WikiLeaks — but most don’t. Explaining what the government is doing to keep America safe is a vital governmental duty to be responsibly employed, not excessively controlled.

I can buy that it's important for an administration to explain what it does to "keep America safe".  What I don't buy is that what the administration tells me it's doing is actually keeping me safe.  Occupying foreign lands and indiscriminately killing civilians all while chasing a small criminal syndicate that can occasionally pull off some mass killings, few of which match the carnage inflicted by our own arms, does not add up to a safer America.

Don't take my word on it.  Go read Ranger Against War for a professional opinion.