After working on capitol Hill for three deades, I didn't expect much for today's hearing at the Senate Armed Services Committee with General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. I was not disappointed. My comments follow:
The Best and the Worst of Congressional Theater
There Really Is No Difference
By Winslow T. Wheeler
It does not get any better than this – quite literally. And, that is the pity of it.
I have just finished watching the four and a half hour gala of the Senate Armed Services Committee “questioning” General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, America’s high commissioners for Iraq. The hearing was greatly bally-hooed as a major Washington event on the war in Iraq – to say nothing of the significance it held for the two presidential candidates on the committee, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Hilary Clinton (D-NY), and their opportunity to impress us all as ready to raise a right hand to swear a new oath of office.
The hearing left nothing to disappoint. It had all the panoply of a modern congressional hearing and what we have come to expect from senators confronting important witnesses. We saw –
* Speeches parading as questions.
Senator Kennedy had lots of competition, but he was the leader of this pack. He read off a long pre-prepared statement about his stalwart opposition to the war, and prefaced the thing he was pretending was a question with “Americans want to know…” – a dead give-away that no real question was to follow.
* Staff prepared questions read off, again and again; no matter what the answer.
Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI) read off several questions, barely waiting for the answer before he read off the next one. At one point he got an amazing answer: General Petraeus said that “the Army would be best to answer” Akaka’s staffer’s question about whether troops only get six months of “quality time” with their families before going back to the war in Iraq. Seeming to not note General Petraeus’ Army affiliation, Akaka moved on to another question. Petraeus, finding success with the “ask the Army, not me” response, gave it again.
* Asking a non-question and sternly demanding a specific response.
Here we must honor the Committee’s chairman, Carl Levin (D-MI). Being the first to ask anything, he bored in on the recent fiasco of the Iraqi army collapsing in the face of Shi’a militias in Basra. Taking note of the obvious, he insisted on a “direct answer” to his question whether the Iraqi army had properly planned and prepared for their operations. Successfully hiding from public notice what, if any, great concession he thought he was extracting from General Petraeus when he agreed that they could have been better prepared, Levin left this battlefield of the minds and moved on to asking something entirely different.
* Platitudes pretending to be questions.
Senator Sessions (R-AL) was the specialist in this line. He skillfully coupled several platitudes (“extraordinary sacrifice,” “defining moment,” “just magnificent American military”) to ask Petraeus about the prospects for success. Petraeus, to his credit, gave him a nothing answer.
* Failure-to-launch oversight.
Senator Clinton, gave what she must have thought was the obligatory speech to demonstrate her vast experience in national security (and stating her support for the troops). Then, surprisingly, she came dangerously close to asking a real question and exercising what Congress holds these hearings for – oversight. After reading off some staff pre-drafted questions on what conditions would permit withdrawal – not that she had any of her own – she asked a question she clearly came to by herself. She noted she heard Petraeus intimate earlier in the hearing that the US might have had its own plans for military operations in Basra before Maliki’s fiasco was launched. (Gad Zooks! A member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who spent a least some time listening to the witness before it was his/her turn.) Almost seeming caught off guard with a non-scripted, non-fluff ball question, Petraeus gave a very vague non-answer, but it seemed to confirm Clinton’s query. But then, Clinton utterly failed to follow up and to nail down the first real information the hearing threatened to reveal. Seeming to be almost relieved that her time was expired, she didn’t even ask for permission to ask a simple follow up – not even in writing. Nor did she stick around for a second round of questions; nor did she get any of her colleagues who followed her to follow up. So much for all that vast experience on how to get government working and straightening out the national security mess.
If that call ever comes at 3:00 in the morning, will anybody be home?
* Studied posing as president-to-be.
Senator McCain’s people did a better job preparing him for this non-hearing than did Clinton’s. McCain’s questions – all designed to elicit responses about how right he has always been about Iraq – were asked in a studied monotone with an air of seeming legitimate inquiry. There was none of the usual harsh, lecturing tone – directed at either the witness or other senators – that is the typical McCain hearing performance. Clearly, he knew he was on stage to show “presidential-ality,” and he did as well as John McCain ever will on that dimension. He also – he surely thought – scored big points with the cooperative witness agreeing with every nuance of McCain’s grasp for omniscience about the catastrophe he helped to stage and now wants to extend.
There was much more (Collins [R-ME] reading off questions designed to position herself safely with both opponents and supporters of the war; Inhofe [R-OK] making sure everyone knew he had been to an Iraqi veteran’s funeral; Warner [R-VA] giving Petraeus a second shot at a question he had flubbed when he testified to Congress last September; and Lieberman [D-CT] aping reasonableness by trying to get “everybody to agree on the facts” – his facts, that is), but the undoubted highlight of the hearing was -
* Desperate grasp for political cover poorly disguised as a question.
The hands down winner was Evan Bayh (D-IN). In an inarguably pitiful performance, he tried to get Petraeus to agree with the platitude that “reasonable people can disagree” about the war – an obvious attempt to get cover from Petraeus that Bayh is as “patriotic” as anyone, war supporters Petraeus and McCain included. Petraeus - bless his conniving little heart – refused to cooperate, saying “Lots of things are arguable.” Bayh shamelessly tried a second time on the same theme. No dice from Petraeus; the best Bayh could get was “We fight for the right for people to have other opinions.” After some self-embarrassed babble, Bayh wandered off into rhetorical oblivion.
Throughout all this palaver – I can’t say “questioning” because no real questions were asked - there were no answers that advanced our knowledge of what is going on in Iraq. General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker were never in danger of facing anyone who informed him- or herself well enough to know when they were being feed baloney - or if they did, enough spine to correct the general’s and the ambassador’s vague, uninformative answers.
After all, the “questioners” were clearly not after information; they were after political advancement or protection.
If they were after information, they are gross incompetents.
Last word: after Chairman Levin gaveled the hearing to a close, protesters in the room started signing a song. To the listeners on TV, their words were totally incoherent. A fitting end, I must say.
Final note: Senator Barak Obama (D-I) was not present at this hearing; he is not a member of the Armed Services Committee. He will, however, have a chance to show his stuff when General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker appear before the Senate Foreign relations Committee this afternoon. He will have to wait, however, until after the Chairman of the Committee, Joe Biden (D-DE) stops talking. That may take a long time. We will have to be patient.
Winslow T. Wheeler spent 31 years working on Capitol Hill with senators from both political parties and the Government Accountability Office, specializing in national security affairs. Currently, he directs the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information in Washington.
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Tuesday, April 8, 2008
What Motivates the Terrorists? by Jacob Hornbergert
Hornberger’s Blog
http://fff.org/blog/index.asp
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
What Motivates the Terrorists?
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Immediately after 9/11, U.S. officials, led by President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, announced that the attacks were motivated by hatred for America’s freedom and values.
Not so, responded we libertarians. Instead, the anger and hatred that people have in the Middle East for the United States is rooted in U.S. foreign policy, specifically the bad things that the U.S. government has done to people in that part of the world.
What libertarians were referring to were such things as the ouster of Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, the support of Saddam Hussein, the Persian Gulf intervention, the intentional destruction of Iraq’s water-and-sewage treatment plants, the more than a decade of brutal sanctions, the statement by UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions were “worth it,” the illegal and deadly no-fly zones, the stationing of U.S. troops on Islamic holy lands, the support of authoritarian monarchies, and the unconditional financial and military support of the Israeli government.
Recently, eight British Muslim men were put on trial for terrorism in London. Consider the following statements made by these men, as reported in an article in last Saturday’s Washington Post:
“This is revenge for the actions of the U.S.A. in the Muslim lands and their accomplices, such as the British and the Jews.”
“This is a warning to the nonbelievers that if they do not leave our lands, there are many more like us.”
“Sheik Osama has warned you many times to leave our lands or you will be destroyed, and now the time has come for you to be destroyed.”
“Stop meddling in our affairs.”
“I say to you disbelievers that as you bomb, you will be bombed, and as you kill, you will be killed. And if you want to kill our women and children, then the same thing will happen to you.”
Now, I ask you: In all those statements, how much hatred for America’s (or Britain’s) freedom and values do you find? On the other hand, how much anger and hatred for U.S. (and British) imperial and interventionist foreign policy do you find?
At the very least, don’t the American people and the British people owe it to themselves to accept reality with respect to their governments’ foreign policies rather than live lives of falsehood and delusion? At least then, they would have a better grip on what their troops and citizenry are killing and dying for and what they are losing their liberty for.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
http://fff.org/blog/index.asp
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
What Motivates the Terrorists?
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Immediately after 9/11, U.S. officials, led by President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, announced that the attacks were motivated by hatred for America’s freedom and values.
Not so, responded we libertarians. Instead, the anger and hatred that people have in the Middle East for the United States is rooted in U.S. foreign policy, specifically the bad things that the U.S. government has done to people in that part of the world.
What libertarians were referring to were such things as the ouster of Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, the support of Saddam Hussein, the Persian Gulf intervention, the intentional destruction of Iraq’s water-and-sewage treatment plants, the more than a decade of brutal sanctions, the statement by UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions were “worth it,” the illegal and deadly no-fly zones, the stationing of U.S. troops on Islamic holy lands, the support of authoritarian monarchies, and the unconditional financial and military support of the Israeli government.
Recently, eight British Muslim men were put on trial for terrorism in London. Consider the following statements made by these men, as reported in an article in last Saturday’s Washington Post:
“This is revenge for the actions of the U.S.A. in the Muslim lands and their accomplices, such as the British and the Jews.”
“This is a warning to the nonbelievers that if they do not leave our lands, there are many more like us.”
“Sheik Osama has warned you many times to leave our lands or you will be destroyed, and now the time has come for you to be destroyed.”
“Stop meddling in our affairs.”
“I say to you disbelievers that as you bomb, you will be bombed, and as you kill, you will be killed. And if you want to kill our women and children, then the same thing will happen to you.”
Now, I ask you: In all those statements, how much hatred for America’s (or Britain’s) freedom and values do you find? On the other hand, how much anger and hatred for U.S. (and British) imperial and interventionist foreign policy do you find?
At the very least, don’t the American people and the British people owe it to themselves to accept reality with respect to their governments’ foreign policies rather than live lives of falsehood and delusion? At least then, they would have a better grip on what their troops and citizenry are killing and dying for and what they are losing their liberty for.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Leaked Draft Agreement Reveals Iraq End-game: Indefinite Occupation
Leaked Draft Agreement Reveals Iraq End-game: Indefinite Occupation
by Joshua Holland,
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/#81690
by Joshua Holland,
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/#81690
Cost of Occupation in Iraq: $3 Trillion Estimate Was Too Low
Cost of Occupation in Iraq: $3 Trillion Estimate Was Too Low
Joseph Stiglitz, Linda Bilmes, Comment Is Free
War on Iraq: Notwithstanding Bush's response, our original estimate of the cost of the Iraq war was too conservative: in reality, it will be much higher.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/81589/
Joseph Stiglitz, Linda Bilmes, Comment Is Free
War on Iraq: Notwithstanding Bush's response, our original estimate of the cost of the Iraq war was too conservative: in reality, it will be much higher.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/81589/
If America Declines, Don't Expect Anyone to Talk About It by Kevin Phillips
If America Declines, Don't Expect Anyone to Talk About It
Kevin Phillips, Viking Press
Is our political system too far gone to even discuss the predicaments of the volatile dollar, run-amok debt and Middle East disasters?
http://www.alternet.org/story/81652/
Kevin Phillips, Viking Press
Is our political system too far gone to even discuss the predicaments of the volatile dollar, run-amok debt and Middle East disasters?
http://www.alternet.org/story/81652/
Petraeius Testimony to Defend False "Proxy War" Line by Gareth Porter
Petraeus Testimony to Defend False 'Proxy War' Line
by Gareth Porter
A key objective of the congressional testimony by Gen. David Petraeus this week will be to defend the George W. Bush administration's strategic political line that it is fighting an Iranian "proxy war" in Iraq.
Based on preliminary indications of his spin on the surprisingly effective armed resistance to the joint U.S.-Iraqi Operation Knights Assault in Basra, Petraeus will testify that it was caused by Iran through a group of rogue militiamen who had split off from Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and came under Iranian control.
But the U.S. military's contention that "rogue elements" have been carrying out the resistance to coalition forces was refuted by Sadr himself in an interview with al-Jazeera aired March 29 in which he called for the release from U.S. detention of the individual previously identified by Petraeus as the head of the alleged breakaway faction.
The idea of Iranian-backed "rogue" Shi'ite militia groups undermining Sadr's efforts to pursue a more moderate course was introduced by the U.S. military command in early 2007. These alleged Iranian proxies were called "Special Groups" – a term that came not from Iran or the Shi'ites themselves but from the Bush administration.
In April, after U.S. forces captured a former spokesman for Sadr, Qais al-Khazali, Petraeus himself announced that they had detained "the head of the secret cell network, the extremist secret cells," he said. Petraeus referred to it as "the Khazali network."
U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner asserted in early July that Khazali's network was a "Special Group," which was financed, armed, and trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and in some instances was even "directed" by it. He said Iran was using a Hezbollah operative to organize such groups to do its bidding in Iran.
The identification of Khazali as head of a "rogue" faction was highly suspect, however. One of Sadr's most trusted aides, Khazali had played a key role in recruitment for the Mahdi Army in its formative stage in 2003. He had gone underground in late 2004, just after heavy fighting in which the Mahdi Army had suffered heavy casualties and just as Sadr was entering into a long period of retreat from military operations.
In a March 30, 2007, press briefing, Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero of the U.S. Joint Staff said both Khazali and his brother were linked with the "Sadr organization."
A pro-war military blogger named Bill Roggio, who maintains close relations with the U.S. command in Baghdad, revealed in February 2007 that the real purpose of the line about Iranian-controlled "Special Groups" was to facilitate Petraeus' strategy of dividing the Mahdi Army. "The 'rogue element' narrative provides Mahdi Army fighters and commanders an 'out,'" wrote Roggio. A Mahdi Army unit commander could either "choose to oppose the government and be targeted," he observed, "or step aside and join the political process."
U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker's first comment on the armed resistance in Basra in a March 26 interview emphatically denied that the forces resisting the Iraqi-U.S. operation represented Sadr's Mahdi Army.
"What you're seeing there is not a rising by Jaish al-Mahdi [Mahdi Army]," Crocker insisted. It was "a subset of Jaish al-Mahdi, the so called 'special groups' that really are basically just criminal militias that are the difficulty here," according to Crocker.
An article by neoconservative military historian Kimberly Kagan in the Wall Street Journal April 3 suggests, however, that Petraeus has slightly reformulated the proxy war line in light of the obvious role played by the Mahdi Army itself in limiting the advance of the U.S.-Iraqi operation.
Kagan is married to Fred Kagan, one of the main author's of Bush's surge policy, and is a full member of the administration's team for conveying its political-military thinking to the elite public. Her article evidently reflects conversations with Petraeus and other officials in Baghdad during the previous week.
Kagan, unlike Crocker on March 26, makes no effort to deny that the Mahdi Army itself was fully involved in the armed resistance in Basra, Baghdad, and elsewhere. But she claims that it was "Special Groups" – not the Sadrists – who "coordinated the unrest and attacks of the regular Mahdi Army in the capital and provinces."
Furthermore, Kagan describes the Mahdi Army as "a reserve from which the Special Groups can and will draw in crisis." And Sadr himself is dismissed as ultimately a figurehead. "For all of his nationalist rhetoric," writes Kagan, "Mr. Sadr is evidently not in control of his movement…."
The new version of the proxy war narrative still attributes ultimate control over the most powerful Shi'ite political-military force in the country to the shadowy "Special Groups."
But in an interview with al-Jazeera taped just before the Basra operation was launched and broadcast on March 29, Sadr demanded the release of Qais al-Khazali, whom Petraeus had identified as the head of the alleged "Special Group" that had broken away from Sadr, from U.S. custody.
That confirms the earlier indications that Khazali was never involved in a breakaway faction, and that what the U.S. command refers to as "Iranian-backed Special Groups" never existed.
The March 30 story by McClatchy's Leila Fadel on the ending of the Basra crisis shows that Iran's real strategy in Iraq bears no resemblance to the one portrayed in the U.S. proxy war narrative. Fadel reported that Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Quds (Jerusalem) brigades of the IRGC, brokered a cease-fire with Sadr after representatives of the Shi'ite parties now supporting the Maliki government traveled secretly to Qom, Iran March 29-30, to ask for his intervention.
Suleimani's role in reducing the violence in Basra underlines the reality that Iranian power in Shi'ite Iraq is based on its having worked with and provided assistance to all the Shi'ite parties and factions. Iran's determination to stay on good terms with all the Shi'ite factions has made it the primary arbiter of conflicts among them.
Iran has no reason to look for a small splinter group to advance its interests when it already enjoys a relationship of strategic cooperation with the government itself.
The Mahdi Army has received training in both Lebanon and in Iran and has undoubtedly used financial assistance from Iran to procure weapons. But Sadr revealed in his al-Jazeera interview that he had told Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on a trip to Iran that he did not agree with the "political and military interests" that Tehran had pursued in Iraq. That was an apparent reference to Iran's pronounced tilt toward Sadr's Shi'ite rivals who remain in power with joint U.S.-Iranian support.
Ironically, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Iraq in early March, both Maliki and Supreme Council chief Abdul Aziz al-Hakim publicly dissociated themselves from the U.S. "proxy war" line, insisting that Iran was restraining Sadr rather than egging him on.
The interest of Bush administration in keeping the proxy war line alive has nothing to do with Iraqi realities, however. As a strategic weapon for justifying the administration's policies toward both Iraq and Iran, the theme of Iranian interference through "Special Groups" is bound to be a central thread in the testimony by Petraeus and Crocker this week.
(Inter Press Service)
http://www.antiwar.com/porter/?articleid=12649
by Gareth Porter
A key objective of the congressional testimony by Gen. David Petraeus this week will be to defend the George W. Bush administration's strategic political line that it is fighting an Iranian "proxy war" in Iraq.
Based on preliminary indications of his spin on the surprisingly effective armed resistance to the joint U.S.-Iraqi Operation Knights Assault in Basra, Petraeus will testify that it was caused by Iran through a group of rogue militiamen who had split off from Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and came under Iranian control.
But the U.S. military's contention that "rogue elements" have been carrying out the resistance to coalition forces was refuted by Sadr himself in an interview with al-Jazeera aired March 29 in which he called for the release from U.S. detention of the individual previously identified by Petraeus as the head of the alleged breakaway faction.
The idea of Iranian-backed "rogue" Shi'ite militia groups undermining Sadr's efforts to pursue a more moderate course was introduced by the U.S. military command in early 2007. These alleged Iranian proxies were called "Special Groups" – a term that came not from Iran or the Shi'ites themselves but from the Bush administration.
In April, after U.S. forces captured a former spokesman for Sadr, Qais al-Khazali, Petraeus himself announced that they had detained "the head of the secret cell network, the extremist secret cells," he said. Petraeus referred to it as "the Khazali network."
U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner asserted in early July that Khazali's network was a "Special Group," which was financed, armed, and trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and in some instances was even "directed" by it. He said Iran was using a Hezbollah operative to organize such groups to do its bidding in Iran.
The identification of Khazali as head of a "rogue" faction was highly suspect, however. One of Sadr's most trusted aides, Khazali had played a key role in recruitment for the Mahdi Army in its formative stage in 2003. He had gone underground in late 2004, just after heavy fighting in which the Mahdi Army had suffered heavy casualties and just as Sadr was entering into a long period of retreat from military operations.
In a March 30, 2007, press briefing, Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero of the U.S. Joint Staff said both Khazali and his brother were linked with the "Sadr organization."
A pro-war military blogger named Bill Roggio, who maintains close relations with the U.S. command in Baghdad, revealed in February 2007 that the real purpose of the line about Iranian-controlled "Special Groups" was to facilitate Petraeus' strategy of dividing the Mahdi Army. "The 'rogue element' narrative provides Mahdi Army fighters and commanders an 'out,'" wrote Roggio. A Mahdi Army unit commander could either "choose to oppose the government and be targeted," he observed, "or step aside and join the political process."
U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker's first comment on the armed resistance in Basra in a March 26 interview emphatically denied that the forces resisting the Iraqi-U.S. operation represented Sadr's Mahdi Army.
"What you're seeing there is not a rising by Jaish al-Mahdi [Mahdi Army]," Crocker insisted. It was "a subset of Jaish al-Mahdi, the so called 'special groups' that really are basically just criminal militias that are the difficulty here," according to Crocker.
An article by neoconservative military historian Kimberly Kagan in the Wall Street Journal April 3 suggests, however, that Petraeus has slightly reformulated the proxy war line in light of the obvious role played by the Mahdi Army itself in limiting the advance of the U.S.-Iraqi operation.
Kagan is married to Fred Kagan, one of the main author's of Bush's surge policy, and is a full member of the administration's team for conveying its political-military thinking to the elite public. Her article evidently reflects conversations with Petraeus and other officials in Baghdad during the previous week.
Kagan, unlike Crocker on March 26, makes no effort to deny that the Mahdi Army itself was fully involved in the armed resistance in Basra, Baghdad, and elsewhere. But she claims that it was "Special Groups" – not the Sadrists – who "coordinated the unrest and attacks of the regular Mahdi Army in the capital and provinces."
Furthermore, Kagan describes the Mahdi Army as "a reserve from which the Special Groups can and will draw in crisis." And Sadr himself is dismissed as ultimately a figurehead. "For all of his nationalist rhetoric," writes Kagan, "Mr. Sadr is evidently not in control of his movement…."
The new version of the proxy war narrative still attributes ultimate control over the most powerful Shi'ite political-military force in the country to the shadowy "Special Groups."
But in an interview with al-Jazeera taped just before the Basra operation was launched and broadcast on March 29, Sadr demanded the release of Qais al-Khazali, whom Petraeus had identified as the head of the alleged "Special Group" that had broken away from Sadr, from U.S. custody.
That confirms the earlier indications that Khazali was never involved in a breakaway faction, and that what the U.S. command refers to as "Iranian-backed Special Groups" never existed.
The March 30 story by McClatchy's Leila Fadel on the ending of the Basra crisis shows that Iran's real strategy in Iraq bears no resemblance to the one portrayed in the U.S. proxy war narrative. Fadel reported that Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Quds (Jerusalem) brigades of the IRGC, brokered a cease-fire with Sadr after representatives of the Shi'ite parties now supporting the Maliki government traveled secretly to Qom, Iran March 29-30, to ask for his intervention.
Suleimani's role in reducing the violence in Basra underlines the reality that Iranian power in Shi'ite Iraq is based on its having worked with and provided assistance to all the Shi'ite parties and factions. Iran's determination to stay on good terms with all the Shi'ite factions has made it the primary arbiter of conflicts among them.
Iran has no reason to look for a small splinter group to advance its interests when it already enjoys a relationship of strategic cooperation with the government itself.
The Mahdi Army has received training in both Lebanon and in Iran and has undoubtedly used financial assistance from Iran to procure weapons. But Sadr revealed in his al-Jazeera interview that he had told Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on a trip to Iran that he did not agree with the "political and military interests" that Tehran had pursued in Iraq. That was an apparent reference to Iran's pronounced tilt toward Sadr's Shi'ite rivals who remain in power with joint U.S.-Iranian support.
Ironically, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Iraq in early March, both Maliki and Supreme Council chief Abdul Aziz al-Hakim publicly dissociated themselves from the U.S. "proxy war" line, insisting that Iran was restraining Sadr rather than egging him on.
The interest of Bush administration in keeping the proxy war line alive has nothing to do with Iraqi realities, however. As a strategic weapon for justifying the administration's policies toward both Iraq and Iran, the theme of Iranian interference through "Special Groups" is bound to be a central thread in the testimony by Petraeus and Crocker this week.
(Inter Press Service)
http://www.antiwar.com/porter/?articleid=12649
Obama Meets the Lobby by Philip Giraldi
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/giraldi.php?articleid=12647
Obama Meets The Lobby
Philip Giraldi
The considerable buzz in conservative circles about Barack Obama, best exemplified by Andrew Bacevich's article "The Case for Obama" in The American Conservative, has largely focused on his potential as the only candidate who might actually end the war in Iraq. Maybe he would or maybe he wouldn't, but it is dead certain that neither John McCain or Hillary Clinton would rush out of Baghdad, nor would they put an end to the neocon-derived globalism that threatens to involve the U.S. in still more wars of choice in places like Iran. Obama might be better on both counts, hence his appeal to some conservatives, most particularly the ones who believe that the war in Iraq is a truly existential issue for the United States and must be ended at all costs.
Conservatives and other voters who have been concerned about U.S. foreign policy in general and who long to see a shift away from Washington's unflinching support of an Israel-centric Middle East might also be intrigued by Obama. To be sure, Obama has had to run the gauntlet of the Israel-firsters, imitating every other candidate but Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich in swearing fealty to Tel Aviv's politicians and policies no matter what impact they have on the national interest of the United States. Barack Obama has nevertheless been on the receiving end of more vitriol from the Israel Lobby than any other candidate, possibly because his middle name is Hussein and he lived in Indonesia. The Abe Foxmans of this world, sensitive to even the slightest whiff of disloyalty to Greater Israel, detect that Obama might not be completely faithful to the cause. On March 18, while delivering his highly praised speech on racism in America, Obama was forced to perform the ultimate obeisance, diverging wildly from his theme to condemn naysayers who see "the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam." Score a big one for stalwart ally Israel, whose subjugation and occupation of Arab Palestine apparently has nothing to do with anything.
One suspects, however, that Obama might well resent the way he has been treated by The Lobby and its friends, which has applied to him a litmus test on anti-Semitism that has not been applied to any other presidential candidate ever, not even Jesse Jackson. In January, Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, demanded that Obama denounce Louis Farrakhan as an anti-Semite. Obama is no disciple of the Nation of Islam and no friend of Farrakhan, but his own pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, had given Farrakhan an award for his positive work in the black community. Farrakhan is at best a marginal political figure, but his genuinely anti-Semitic comments are frequently cited when black politicians are taken to task for the problems between African-Americans and Jews. Obama's subsequent denunciation of Farrakhan as an anti-Semite was a good first step, but apparently not enough. Wright, whom Foxman described as having "very strong anti-Israel views," was the real target. After Foxman raised the issue, allegations of Wright's anti-Semitism permeated a number of pro-Israel blogs and then found their way into the mainstream media, where they continue to percolate.
More disturbing to The Lobby have been Obama's own views, which, prior to his run for president, were relatively nuanced on the Middle East: he advocated fairness and justice for the Palestinians while questioning the efficacy of knee-jerk support for Israel's politicians. Obama has also defended Wright, noting that his view of Israel was conditioned by Tel Aviv's support of apartheid South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s, which included assistance in the development of a South African nuclear weapon and the supply of hundreds of millions of dollars of Israeli-made weapons in contravention of a UN-imposed embargo. Water cannons used to attack black demonstrators were manufactured in the Israeli kibbutz Beit Alfa, for example.
More recently, Israel's friends have been taking aim at Obama military policy adviser and national campaign co-chairman retired Air Force Gen. Merrill McPeak. McPeak asserted in an interview given in Oregon in 2003 that American politicians are afraid of Jewish voters who "vote … in favor of Israel and no politician wants to run against it." He also said that Israelis must "stop settling the West Bank and Gaza Strip." Both McPeak's and Obama's views would be considered moderate and uncontroversial in many places, but not in the eyes of Foxman and the Israel Lobby. McPeak has also reportedly said that many born-again Christians supported the war in Iraq to help Israel. Robert Goldberg, a pundit writing for The American Spectator whose credentials on the Middle East may derive from his vice presidency of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, describes McPeak's views as "bigoted," adding that he "has a penchant for bashing Israel, or more particularly, Jews who oppose negotiating with terrorists." Per Goldberg, "Obama has a Jewish problem."
Another Obama adviser, Robert Malley, has also been criticized by Israel's supporters for advocating negotiations with Hamas. The recently fired Samantha Power, who correctly but inappropriately described Hillary Clinton as a "monster," has also been excoriated for suggesting that the billions of dollars "servicing Israel's military" should actually be invested "in the state of Palestine" if one truly wants to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East.
So Obama has taken his lumps from The Lobby. And he might not like it. Unlike Hillary and McCain, he may not be as beholden to political contributors who might tie the money they offer to unconditional support for Israel. Hillary dominates among contributors who demand total loyalty to Israel's interests, but Obama has done well from a more liberal Hollywood constituency that does not insist on such allegiance and indeed may be disturbed by it. He is also more than doubling Hillary's contributions through Internet fundraisers. Obama knows that he has to say the right things about Israel if he wants to get elected, particularly as the mainstream media would turn on him if he were to do otherwise, but once in office he might actually remember the abuse he took and assert himself. He would have to confront a Congress that is bought and paid for by The Lobby, but there might actually be some wiggle room in terms of how he initiates and manages State Department and Pentagon initiatives that pertain to him as the nation's chief executive. Also, if he takes the lead he just might find that the public is hungry for a settlement in the Middle East that recognizes inter alia that the Palestinians have been badly treated by Israel and ignored by Washington. Opinion polls suggest that that is the case. An Obama Middle East initiative is a possibility that might intrigue many voters from across the political spectrum, and it might just be one more good reason to take his candidacy seriously.
Obama Meets The Lobby
Philip Giraldi
The considerable buzz in conservative circles about Barack Obama, best exemplified by Andrew Bacevich's article "The Case for Obama" in The American Conservative, has largely focused on his potential as the only candidate who might actually end the war in Iraq. Maybe he would or maybe he wouldn't, but it is dead certain that neither John McCain or Hillary Clinton would rush out of Baghdad, nor would they put an end to the neocon-derived globalism that threatens to involve the U.S. in still more wars of choice in places like Iran. Obama might be better on both counts, hence his appeal to some conservatives, most particularly the ones who believe that the war in Iraq is a truly existential issue for the United States and must be ended at all costs.
Conservatives and other voters who have been concerned about U.S. foreign policy in general and who long to see a shift away from Washington's unflinching support of an Israel-centric Middle East might also be intrigued by Obama. To be sure, Obama has had to run the gauntlet of the Israel-firsters, imitating every other candidate but Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich in swearing fealty to Tel Aviv's politicians and policies no matter what impact they have on the national interest of the United States. Barack Obama has nevertheless been on the receiving end of more vitriol from the Israel Lobby than any other candidate, possibly because his middle name is Hussein and he lived in Indonesia. The Abe Foxmans of this world, sensitive to even the slightest whiff of disloyalty to Greater Israel, detect that Obama might not be completely faithful to the cause. On March 18, while delivering his highly praised speech on racism in America, Obama was forced to perform the ultimate obeisance, diverging wildly from his theme to condemn naysayers who see "the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam." Score a big one for stalwart ally Israel, whose subjugation and occupation of Arab Palestine apparently has nothing to do with anything.
One suspects, however, that Obama might well resent the way he has been treated by The Lobby and its friends, which has applied to him a litmus test on anti-Semitism that has not been applied to any other presidential candidate ever, not even Jesse Jackson. In January, Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, demanded that Obama denounce Louis Farrakhan as an anti-Semite. Obama is no disciple of the Nation of Islam and no friend of Farrakhan, but his own pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, had given Farrakhan an award for his positive work in the black community. Farrakhan is at best a marginal political figure, but his genuinely anti-Semitic comments are frequently cited when black politicians are taken to task for the problems between African-Americans and Jews. Obama's subsequent denunciation of Farrakhan as an anti-Semite was a good first step, but apparently not enough. Wright, whom Foxman described as having "very strong anti-Israel views," was the real target. After Foxman raised the issue, allegations of Wright's anti-Semitism permeated a number of pro-Israel blogs and then found their way into the mainstream media, where they continue to percolate.
More disturbing to The Lobby have been Obama's own views, which, prior to his run for president, were relatively nuanced on the Middle East: he advocated fairness and justice for the Palestinians while questioning the efficacy of knee-jerk support for Israel's politicians. Obama has also defended Wright, noting that his view of Israel was conditioned by Tel Aviv's support of apartheid South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s, which included assistance in the development of a South African nuclear weapon and the supply of hundreds of millions of dollars of Israeli-made weapons in contravention of a UN-imposed embargo. Water cannons used to attack black demonstrators were manufactured in the Israeli kibbutz Beit Alfa, for example.
More recently, Israel's friends have been taking aim at Obama military policy adviser and national campaign co-chairman retired Air Force Gen. Merrill McPeak. McPeak asserted in an interview given in Oregon in 2003 that American politicians are afraid of Jewish voters who "vote … in favor of Israel and no politician wants to run against it." He also said that Israelis must "stop settling the West Bank and Gaza Strip." Both McPeak's and Obama's views would be considered moderate and uncontroversial in many places, but not in the eyes of Foxman and the Israel Lobby. McPeak has also reportedly said that many born-again Christians supported the war in Iraq to help Israel. Robert Goldberg, a pundit writing for The American Spectator whose credentials on the Middle East may derive from his vice presidency of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, describes McPeak's views as "bigoted," adding that he "has a penchant for bashing Israel, or more particularly, Jews who oppose negotiating with terrorists." Per Goldberg, "Obama has a Jewish problem."
Another Obama adviser, Robert Malley, has also been criticized by Israel's supporters for advocating negotiations with Hamas. The recently fired Samantha Power, who correctly but inappropriately described Hillary Clinton as a "monster," has also been excoriated for suggesting that the billions of dollars "servicing Israel's military" should actually be invested "in the state of Palestine" if one truly wants to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East.
So Obama has taken his lumps from The Lobby. And he might not like it. Unlike Hillary and McCain, he may not be as beholden to political contributors who might tie the money they offer to unconditional support for Israel. Hillary dominates among contributors who demand total loyalty to Israel's interests, but Obama has done well from a more liberal Hollywood constituency that does not insist on such allegiance and indeed may be disturbed by it. He is also more than doubling Hillary's contributions through Internet fundraisers. Obama knows that he has to say the right things about Israel if he wants to get elected, particularly as the mainstream media would turn on him if he were to do otherwise, but once in office he might actually remember the abuse he took and assert himself. He would have to confront a Congress that is bought and paid for by The Lobby, but there might actually be some wiggle room in terms of how he initiates and manages State Department and Pentagon initiatives that pertain to him as the nation's chief executive. Also, if he takes the lead he just might find that the public is hungry for a settlement in the Middle East that recognizes inter alia that the Palestinians have been badly treated by Israel and ignored by Washington. Opinion polls suggest that that is the case. An Obama Middle East initiative is a possibility that might intrigue many voters from across the political spectrum, and it might just be one more good reason to take his candidacy seriously.
Three Faces of Infantilism: NATO's Bucharest Summit by Anatol Lieven
Anatol Lieven on the NATO summit. This appears in the National Interest.
Three Faces of Infantilism: NATO’s Bucharest Summit
by Anatol Lieven
04.04.2008
The Bush administration’s push for an immediate offer of a NATO membership action plan to Georgia and Ukraine at the NATO summit in Bucharest has been blocked, which is good. Not so good is the fact that this was only thanks to the opposition of Germany and France; that NATO leaders like the organization’s Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer continue to insist that an offer in the fairly near future is inevitable; that since both the U.S. parties and all the U.S. presidential candidates favor this course, they may well be right; and that in the United States and most of Europe, a question of immense importance for the security of the West was not even seriously debated in public.
What was also not so good—no, why engage in diplospeak? What was virtually criminal in its strategic irresponsibility and intellectual fatuity was the fact that this push took place against the background of three developments, any one of which should have counseled the greatest caution in assuming new and dangerous responsibilities.
The first is obviously NATO’s and America’s growing difficulties in Afghanistan, which provided the other major issue at the summit. And what a success the summit was! What a tribute to NATO’s commitment to the common effort in Afghanistan, and spirit of collective self-sacrifice! France came up with 700 new soldiers, which makes approximately one for every 400 square miles of Afghan territory or for every 40,000 Afghans. The richest group of countries on earth came up with 18 new helicopters for Afghanistan; a fraction of the numbers it takes to ferry millionaires to their European ski resorts on any given day.
The way things are going, NATO will either have to fight on in Afghanistan for a decade and possibly a generation, or the war there will be lost; and if it is lost, what credibility will the alliance retain when it comes to guaranteeing anyone else’s security? And can anyone guarantee on today’s evidence that the Canadians or Europeans will in fact have the will to go on fighting there indefinitely?
Secondly, there was the new crisis in Iraq, and especially in Basra, which appears to have been brought to an end in a draw largely thanks to Iranian influence. This casts severe doubt on the lasting success of the Bush administration’s “surge” strategy and rips to shreds whatever was left of the ludicrous British claim that we are withdrawing from southern Iraq because we have succeeded in stabilizing that area.
However, quite apart from the hostility of British public opinion to the entire Iraqi operation, Britain simply had to withdraw most of its troops from Afghanistan if it was to increase its essential troop presence in Afghanistan. In Britain as in the United States, there is now nothing left for any other new and sustained military deployment. So: a U.S. and British force to defend Georgia, anyone? From where exactly? The cast of Dad’s Army?
Finally, there is the global economic downturn. We do not know how deep this will go, and must hope for the best. Some of the predictions from sober and reliable experts are however very gloomy indeed; and already-impeccably free-market commentators like Martin Wolf of the Financial Times are writing that some of the key economic ideas that have guided Western policy in the past 20 years will have to be abandoned or radically changed.
It is not just that such an economic situation cries out for caution when it comes to the assumption of new and possibly very costly responsibilities; it is that if God forbid we end up in a really severe global recession, many of the political and cultural assumptions that have underlain Western policy, and EU and NATO enlargement, may come into question, not forever, but for a critical few years. Chief among these is that democracy too is on a fixed and inevitable path of expansion.
In circumstances of sharp economic decline, I wouldn’t give ten cents for the survival of democracy in Georgia or Ukraine. If these countries have been made members of NATO, we will all be faced with a horrible embarrassment—something that may already be around the corner in Turkey, if the military establishment, via the courts, presses ahead with its apparent desire to ban and disempower the ruling Islamist party. Indeed, if living standards worsen drastically, democracy in parts of Eastern Europe, relations with immigrant communities in Western Europe, and the attraction of the entire Western democratic model could be called into question, at least for a while.
In these circumstances, it is hard to see what conceivable rational calculation could support the extension of NATO membership to two new countries, one of them (Georgia) involved in unsolved civil war, and the other (Ukraine) with a population a large majority of which opposes NATO membership. And this is called “spreading democracy”?
Leaving aside domestic political calculations in the United States, what this whole process reflects is the profound infantilism of many of the Western attitudes concerned. In the United States, the infantile illusion of omnipotence, whereby it doesn’t matter how many commitments the United States has made elsewhere—in the last resort, the United States can always do what it likes; in much of Western Europe, the infantile syndrome of dependence on the United States, nurtured by a profound desire not to have to think and act in an adult fashion concerning the needs and costs of European defense; and in Eastern Europe, an infantile obsession with historical grudges against Russia.
If this process continues, then we will find ourselves in a situation where NATO has made an Article 5 commitment to fight if necessary for a Georgian Abkhazia and a Ukrainian Sevastopol. Mr de Hoop Scheffer has been urging NATO expansion to these countries, and has even—unconscionably—sought to preempt democratic debate within the organization of which he is supposed to be the servant by declaring that the discussion is over and that Ukraine and Georgia will definitely be admitted soon whatever happens. Scheffer is Dutch. Is he suggesting that the Dutch army—to give it that name—would fight to defend Ukraine or Georgia? Having given the absolutely obvious answer to that question, does anything more really need to be said?
Anatol Lieven is a professor in the War Studies Department at King’s College London, a senior editor at The National Interest and a senior fellow of the New America Foundation in Washington, DC. His latest book, Ethical Realism: A Vision for America’s Role in the World, coauthored with John Hulsman, is published by Vintage.
Three Faces of Infantilism: NATO’s Bucharest Summit
by Anatol Lieven
04.04.2008
The Bush administration’s push for an immediate offer of a NATO membership action plan to Georgia and Ukraine at the NATO summit in Bucharest has been blocked, which is good. Not so good is the fact that this was only thanks to the opposition of Germany and France; that NATO leaders like the organization’s Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer continue to insist that an offer in the fairly near future is inevitable; that since both the U.S. parties and all the U.S. presidential candidates favor this course, they may well be right; and that in the United States and most of Europe, a question of immense importance for the security of the West was not even seriously debated in public.
What was also not so good—no, why engage in diplospeak? What was virtually criminal in its strategic irresponsibility and intellectual fatuity was the fact that this push took place against the background of three developments, any one of which should have counseled the greatest caution in assuming new and dangerous responsibilities.
The first is obviously NATO’s and America’s growing difficulties in Afghanistan, which provided the other major issue at the summit. And what a success the summit was! What a tribute to NATO’s commitment to the common effort in Afghanistan, and spirit of collective self-sacrifice! France came up with 700 new soldiers, which makes approximately one for every 400 square miles of Afghan territory or for every 40,000 Afghans. The richest group of countries on earth came up with 18 new helicopters for Afghanistan; a fraction of the numbers it takes to ferry millionaires to their European ski resorts on any given day.
The way things are going, NATO will either have to fight on in Afghanistan for a decade and possibly a generation, or the war there will be lost; and if it is lost, what credibility will the alliance retain when it comes to guaranteeing anyone else’s security? And can anyone guarantee on today’s evidence that the Canadians or Europeans will in fact have the will to go on fighting there indefinitely?
Secondly, there was the new crisis in Iraq, and especially in Basra, which appears to have been brought to an end in a draw largely thanks to Iranian influence. This casts severe doubt on the lasting success of the Bush administration’s “surge” strategy and rips to shreds whatever was left of the ludicrous British claim that we are withdrawing from southern Iraq because we have succeeded in stabilizing that area.
However, quite apart from the hostility of British public opinion to the entire Iraqi operation, Britain simply had to withdraw most of its troops from Afghanistan if it was to increase its essential troop presence in Afghanistan. In Britain as in the United States, there is now nothing left for any other new and sustained military deployment. So: a U.S. and British force to defend Georgia, anyone? From where exactly? The cast of Dad’s Army?
Finally, there is the global economic downturn. We do not know how deep this will go, and must hope for the best. Some of the predictions from sober and reliable experts are however very gloomy indeed; and already-impeccably free-market commentators like Martin Wolf of the Financial Times are writing that some of the key economic ideas that have guided Western policy in the past 20 years will have to be abandoned or radically changed.
It is not just that such an economic situation cries out for caution when it comes to the assumption of new and possibly very costly responsibilities; it is that if God forbid we end up in a really severe global recession, many of the political and cultural assumptions that have underlain Western policy, and EU and NATO enlargement, may come into question, not forever, but for a critical few years. Chief among these is that democracy too is on a fixed and inevitable path of expansion.
In circumstances of sharp economic decline, I wouldn’t give ten cents for the survival of democracy in Georgia or Ukraine. If these countries have been made members of NATO, we will all be faced with a horrible embarrassment—something that may already be around the corner in Turkey, if the military establishment, via the courts, presses ahead with its apparent desire to ban and disempower the ruling Islamist party. Indeed, if living standards worsen drastically, democracy in parts of Eastern Europe, relations with immigrant communities in Western Europe, and the attraction of the entire Western democratic model could be called into question, at least for a while.
In these circumstances, it is hard to see what conceivable rational calculation could support the extension of NATO membership to two new countries, one of them (Georgia) involved in unsolved civil war, and the other (Ukraine) with a population a large majority of which opposes NATO membership. And this is called “spreading democracy”?
Leaving aside domestic political calculations in the United States, what this whole process reflects is the profound infantilism of many of the Western attitudes concerned. In the United States, the infantile illusion of omnipotence, whereby it doesn’t matter how many commitments the United States has made elsewhere—in the last resort, the United States can always do what it likes; in much of Western Europe, the infantile syndrome of dependence on the United States, nurtured by a profound desire not to have to think and act in an adult fashion concerning the needs and costs of European defense; and in Eastern Europe, an infantile obsession with historical grudges against Russia.
If this process continues, then we will find ourselves in a situation where NATO has made an Article 5 commitment to fight if necessary for a Georgian Abkhazia and a Ukrainian Sevastopol. Mr de Hoop Scheffer has been urging NATO expansion to these countries, and has even—unconscionably—sought to preempt democratic debate within the organization of which he is supposed to be the servant by declaring that the discussion is over and that Ukraine and Georgia will definitely be admitted soon whatever happens. Scheffer is Dutch. Is he suggesting that the Dutch army—to give it that name—would fight to defend Ukraine or Georgia? Having given the absolutely obvious answer to that question, does anything more really need to be said?
Anatol Lieven is a professor in the War Studies Department at King’s College London, a senior editor at The National Interest and a senior fellow of the New America Foundation in Washington, DC. His latest book, Ethical Realism: A Vision for America’s Role in the World, coauthored with John Hulsman, is published by Vintage.
Badmouthing Beijing by Daniel Bell
Badmouthing Beijing
China is far from perfect, but the west is demonizing it just when the country is making the most progress
Daniel A Bell
April 2, 2008
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/daniel_a_bell/2008/04/badmouthing_beijing.html
John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, first published in 1859, is the most influential defence of free speech ever written. What is less well known is that Mill worried more about "public opinion" than about state censorship. As Mill puts it, the tyranny of public opinion is "more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself". Yes, he was writing in Victorian England and our time may not be as conformist. But it's worth asking if his worries are still relevant today. My own experience writing about China suggests that it depends on the context. Today, Mill's thesis is right about the west but wrong about China.
In China, it will come as no great surprise that the heavy hand of state censorship is the biggest problem. Chinese translations of my own books have been approved for publication, but they are being held up because the material is too "sensitive". Actually, I'm not a free speech fundamentalist. I made and OK-ed revisions so that the book would get through the political censors. I'm perfectly willing to rewrite an argument in a somewhat roundabout or indirect way if that's what it takes for my writings to see the light of day. I'm even willing to cut an argument or an example if it's not central to the main thesis. But, apparently, these cuts have not been sufficient. First I was told that we'd have to wait until after the 17th party congress held last October, because it's best not to rock the boat during party congresses, held every five years. This year, the need for stability during the Olympics means that writers must be "cautious". Who knows what it will be next year?
I should say that publishers and editors in China are on my side and want my books to be published. But they must get approval from party apparatchiks, elderly revolutionary comrades who may not share modern ideas about the importance of free intellectual exchange. Why are they given power to make decisions? I'd argue the traditional value of respect for the elderly still plays an important role. This makes me optimistic about the future: things should improve once the relatively openminded new generation of leaders occupy more positions of power. That might take a couple of decades, though glasnost-like signals from the top would help to speed things up.
In western countries, by contrast, the real threat comes from public opinion. Certain public prejudices make some stories more newsworthy than others, and those stories further reinforce those prejudices. Consider the way that China is demonised in the western press. A social critic beaten up by local thugs is bound to make the headlines in dozens of newspapers (one rarely hears about such occurrences in Uzbekistan, Eritrea, or India). I do not mean to suggest that such facts are unimportant. It's especially important for western reporters to write about them, since Chinese reporters can rarely do so. But if that's all people read (or want to read) about China, they will get a very skewed picture of what's happening in a country of 1.3 billion people that is undergoing the most rapid and comprehensive social transformation in the history of mankind.
How many people in the west know that hundreds of millions of Chinese people have been lifted out of poverty? That the majority of Chinese citizens have personal freedoms almost unimaginable 30 years ago? That the Chinese government learned not to overreact to provocations from Taiwanese pro-independence forces, thus paving the way for better relations with Taiwan? That the party has implemented mechanisms for relatively smooth transitions of political power, including mandatory retirement ages for leaders? That European human rights groups are working with the Chinese authorities to reduce the incidence of torture in police investigations? That implementation of the death penalty has been substantially curtailed of late? Or that the official newspaper China Daily recently printed a photo of two young Chinese men in the throes of a passionate kiss in a pro-queer piece headlined Pride and Prejudice?
Over the past year, the litany of bad news coming out of China - the poisonous foods and medicines, exploitation in factories and deaths in mines, pollution in Beijing, etc - has shaped and reinforced negative perceptions about China to the point that absurd comparisons between the "genocide" Olympics in Beijing and the "Nazi" Olympics in Berlin can get lots of airplay (a better comparison would be the 1988 Olympics held under an authoritarian regime in Seoul). Does anybody seriously believe that China will launch a world war after the Olympics, like the Nazis did after their Olympics? And where's the racism that was so central to Nazi ideology? Yes, the Chinese government is indirectly implicated in the killings in Darfur but it's not alone - Russia sells more weapons to Sudan, and Japan buys more oil - and arguably, it's working to improve the situation. Yes, it oppresses the Tibetan people and any political solution needs to involve the Dalai Lama, though he has not always been politically realistic in the past.
But one might have thought that the recent killings of Chinese civilians and burning of Chinese shops had punctured the idealised view of peace-loving Tibetans in the western mind, yet the riots and the subsequent crackdown seem to have hardened western opinion against China, with growing calls to boycott the Olympics even though the Dalai Lama himself has argued against it. I've received emails from western friends asking me about the oppressive atmosphere in China, as though the whole country is under military siege. Anything positive about China leads to accusations about being an "apologist" for the regime. Once in a while, a story that attempts to provide some context or balance gets placed in the western press, but they are drowned out by the daily drumbeat of hostile reports.
Why do I worry about the one-sided reporting in western countries? It's not just that the "nattering nabobs of negativity" reinforce public fears about China that occasionally seem to border on racism, with Chinese influence viewed as inherently malevolent unless it conforms to western values and practices. Such reporting actually makes things worse in China, stoking up crude nationalist responses and making the government more paranoid. It also detracts from thinking about pragmatic solutions to problems. There are progressive forces within the Chinese Communist party - a huge organisation with 73 million members - and those forces should not be dismissed out of hand. For example, the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao has toned down rhetoric towards the Dalai Lama and left the door open for negotiations.
Most worrisome, the trend to demonise China plays right into the hands of rightwing militarists looking for another excuse to test their weapons. As the Atlantic correspondent James Fallows writes, "the same people - same individuals, same organisations, same publications, same blog sites - that ginned up a war with Iraq, and that have supported ginning up a war with Iran, are settling in for a longer-term confrontation with China." If John McCain becomes the next US president, such people will be welcomed at the White House and they will be supported by public opinion and hostile reporting about the new "Evil Empire". That is really scary.
China is far from perfect, but the west is demonizing it just when the country is making the most progress
Daniel A Bell
April 2, 2008
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/daniel_a_bell/2008/04/badmouthing_beijing.html
John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, first published in 1859, is the most influential defence of free speech ever written. What is less well known is that Mill worried more about "public opinion" than about state censorship. As Mill puts it, the tyranny of public opinion is "more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself". Yes, he was writing in Victorian England and our time may not be as conformist. But it's worth asking if his worries are still relevant today. My own experience writing about China suggests that it depends on the context. Today, Mill's thesis is right about the west but wrong about China.
In China, it will come as no great surprise that the heavy hand of state censorship is the biggest problem. Chinese translations of my own books have been approved for publication, but they are being held up because the material is too "sensitive". Actually, I'm not a free speech fundamentalist. I made and OK-ed revisions so that the book would get through the political censors. I'm perfectly willing to rewrite an argument in a somewhat roundabout or indirect way if that's what it takes for my writings to see the light of day. I'm even willing to cut an argument or an example if it's not central to the main thesis. But, apparently, these cuts have not been sufficient. First I was told that we'd have to wait until after the 17th party congress held last October, because it's best not to rock the boat during party congresses, held every five years. This year, the need for stability during the Olympics means that writers must be "cautious". Who knows what it will be next year?
I should say that publishers and editors in China are on my side and want my books to be published. But they must get approval from party apparatchiks, elderly revolutionary comrades who may not share modern ideas about the importance of free intellectual exchange. Why are they given power to make decisions? I'd argue the traditional value of respect for the elderly still plays an important role. This makes me optimistic about the future: things should improve once the relatively openminded new generation of leaders occupy more positions of power. That might take a couple of decades, though glasnost-like signals from the top would help to speed things up.
In western countries, by contrast, the real threat comes from public opinion. Certain public prejudices make some stories more newsworthy than others, and those stories further reinforce those prejudices. Consider the way that China is demonised in the western press. A social critic beaten up by local thugs is bound to make the headlines in dozens of newspapers (one rarely hears about such occurrences in Uzbekistan, Eritrea, or India). I do not mean to suggest that such facts are unimportant. It's especially important for western reporters to write about them, since Chinese reporters can rarely do so. But if that's all people read (or want to read) about China, they will get a very skewed picture of what's happening in a country of 1.3 billion people that is undergoing the most rapid and comprehensive social transformation in the history of mankind.
How many people in the west know that hundreds of millions of Chinese people have been lifted out of poverty? That the majority of Chinese citizens have personal freedoms almost unimaginable 30 years ago? That the Chinese government learned not to overreact to provocations from Taiwanese pro-independence forces, thus paving the way for better relations with Taiwan? That the party has implemented mechanisms for relatively smooth transitions of political power, including mandatory retirement ages for leaders? That European human rights groups are working with the Chinese authorities to reduce the incidence of torture in police investigations? That implementation of the death penalty has been substantially curtailed of late? Or that the official newspaper China Daily recently printed a photo of two young Chinese men in the throes of a passionate kiss in a pro-queer piece headlined Pride and Prejudice?
Over the past year, the litany of bad news coming out of China - the poisonous foods and medicines, exploitation in factories and deaths in mines, pollution in Beijing, etc - has shaped and reinforced negative perceptions about China to the point that absurd comparisons between the "genocide" Olympics in Beijing and the "Nazi" Olympics in Berlin can get lots of airplay (a better comparison would be the 1988 Olympics held under an authoritarian regime in Seoul). Does anybody seriously believe that China will launch a world war after the Olympics, like the Nazis did after their Olympics? And where's the racism that was so central to Nazi ideology? Yes, the Chinese government is indirectly implicated in the killings in Darfur but it's not alone - Russia sells more weapons to Sudan, and Japan buys more oil - and arguably, it's working to improve the situation. Yes, it oppresses the Tibetan people and any political solution needs to involve the Dalai Lama, though he has not always been politically realistic in the past.
But one might have thought that the recent killings of Chinese civilians and burning of Chinese shops had punctured the idealised view of peace-loving Tibetans in the western mind, yet the riots and the subsequent crackdown seem to have hardened western opinion against China, with growing calls to boycott the Olympics even though the Dalai Lama himself has argued against it. I've received emails from western friends asking me about the oppressive atmosphere in China, as though the whole country is under military siege. Anything positive about China leads to accusations about being an "apologist" for the regime. Once in a while, a story that attempts to provide some context or balance gets placed in the western press, but they are drowned out by the daily drumbeat of hostile reports.
Why do I worry about the one-sided reporting in western countries? It's not just that the "nattering nabobs of negativity" reinforce public fears about China that occasionally seem to border on racism, with Chinese influence viewed as inherently malevolent unless it conforms to western values and practices. Such reporting actually makes things worse in China, stoking up crude nationalist responses and making the government more paranoid. It also detracts from thinking about pragmatic solutions to problems. There are progressive forces within the Chinese Communist party - a huge organisation with 73 million members - and those forces should not be dismissed out of hand. For example, the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao has toned down rhetoric towards the Dalai Lama and left the door open for negotiations.
Most worrisome, the trend to demonise China plays right into the hands of rightwing militarists looking for another excuse to test their weapons. As the Atlantic correspondent James Fallows writes, "the same people - same individuals, same organisations, same publications, same blog sites - that ginned up a war with Iraq, and that have supported ginning up a war with Iran, are settling in for a longer-term confrontation with China." If John McCain becomes the next US president, such people will be welcomed at the White House and they will be supported by public opinion and hostile reporting about the new "Evil Empire". That is really scary.
Boom to bust? by Arnaud de Borchgrave
http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20080407/COMMENTARY/942967017/1012
Boom to bust?
April 7, 2008
By Arnaud de Borchgrave - Borrowing $2 billion to $3 billion a day from other countries to maintain the world's highest standard of living, based on conspicuous consumption, in an age of growing world shortages, while fighting two wars whose costs will soon ring up a $1 trillion tab, is tantamount to living on borrowed time.
Valium and Tylenol sales are up,Viagra down, in the banking world. So far, the subprime tsunami has wiped out half a trillion dollars from the books of major financial institutions in the U.S. and Europe.
At first, the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), one of the world's three most prestigious, figured it had lost $19 billion. That's when Singapore's pension fund kicked in $11 billion, figuring UBS was still a sound investment over the long haul. UBS then revised its loss estimate to $40 billion — for one bank!
As Congress debated clamps vs. band aids to stop the hemorrhaging, a downcast U.S. economy in recession became a tempting target for the world's 54 "Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWF)," a descriptive term for separate pools of government funds, mostly dollar surpluses accumulated from China to Japan to the Arab Gulf to Singapore. Instead of hoarding depreciating U.S. Treasury paper and dollars, SWFs invest in hard assets wherever they see opportunities in the world.
Foreign central banks keep looking for ways to unload stockpiles of dollars without disrupting their economies or the global financial system.
Edwin M. Truman, a senior fellow at the Petersen Institute in Washington, is the world's leading authority on SWFs. He estimates their total assets today at $5.3 trillion, about $1 trillion of it invested in the United States. The more financial trouble the U.S. finds itself in, the better the investment climate as U.S. business and financial entities decide to opt out into the arms of a foreign buyer rather than seek bankruptcy protection.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's financial bailout plan got mixed reviews on Capitol Hill. Republicans, predictably, said too much government interference in free markets that should find their own bottom, and Democrats said, predictably, not enough. Their bipartisan compromise: a paltry $15 billion over the next 10 years in tax rebates chiefly for the housing industry. Meanwhile, the wrecking ball keeps swinging.
Over the weekend, Deutsche Bank said losses from "securitized" subprime mortgages were heading for $400 billion. Wall Street insiders said it would be more than half a trillion dollars.
The dollar is described as the leper at the birthday party. Fear of contagion is everywhere. So when Mr. Paulson said, "a strong dollar is in our nation's interest and should be based on economic fundamentals," he looked and sounded like Popeye desperately trying to find a can of spinach. But the magical powers of spinach can't stop the train this time.
According to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland, another massive bubble that keeps ballooning is the derivatives market, which has quintupled in five years since 2002 to over $500 trillion — not billion.
Like the insurance industry, derivatives transfer risk from those who do not want to bear it to those who do — for a fee. Blamed for the market's phenomenal growth are (1) the Federal Reserve's cheap money policies that created the subprime-mortgage boom; (2) war budgets that strained the U.S. Treasury and future entitlement programs; (3) trade deficits with China and others that eroded the value of the dollar; (4) oil- and commodity-rich nations moving to equity payments — and the euro — rather than U.S. Treasury paper.
Fed interest cuts mean to the rest of the world that the Fed continues to print money at an alarming rate. Banks are borrowing from the Fed and then hoarding cash, apparently fearful the worst is yet to come. House prices are still falling — at the fastest rate on record.
The magnitude of the $500 trillion derivatives bubble is brought home by America's largest dollar figures: for GDP ($15 trillion); Federal budget ($3 trillion); U.S. government's maximum legal debt ($9 trillion). Also by the GDP for all nations ($50 trillion); total value of the world's stock and bond markets (more than $100 trillion). By way of reassurance, BIS' 2007 annual report also says the $11 trillion "gross market value provides a more accurate measure of the scale of financial risk transfer taking place in derivatives markets" every day.
A snapshot of what is actually happening is unfettered free market capitalism — and government spending. A blistering Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found 95 major defense weapons systems have far exceeded their original budgets by a total of almost $300 billion, bringing their total cost to $1.6 trillion.
A 22-year-old defense contractor, operating out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, landed a $223 million Pentagon deal to supply surplus ammunition for the Afghan army. The ammo delivered was decomposing and made in China 40 years ago.
More serious in the field of mismanagement was the Air Force shipping to Taiwan in August 2006 four electronic fuses designed to trigger nuclear Minuteman III ballistic missiles — instead of batteries for utility helicopters listed on the waybill — and not discovering the mistake until 2008. In 2007, airmen from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota accidentally ferried and lost track of six nuclear warheads flown on B-52 Stratofortress to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana.
This past week, government auditors discovered almost half of 28 contracts to manufacture body armor for Army soldiers were concluded without the product ever being tested.
Discipline and manners have given way to violence and rudeness. Foreign frequent travelers to the United States have noticed the polite greeting has been replaced by gruff questions. Many TV commercials depict violent or risky behavior in prime time. (e.g. Comcast-ic). Local TV news from coast to coast is mostly about local and national crime. The 10 and 11 p.m. crime roundups are presumably linked to sleep disorders for America's hardworking millions.
A return to the traditional values that made America the greatest country in the world is not a bad program for our next president.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.
k
Boom to bust?
April 7, 2008
By Arnaud de Borchgrave - Borrowing $2 billion to $3 billion a day from other countries to maintain the world's highest standard of living, based on conspicuous consumption, in an age of growing world shortages, while fighting two wars whose costs will soon ring up a $1 trillion tab, is tantamount to living on borrowed time.
Valium and Tylenol sales are up,Viagra down, in the banking world. So far, the subprime tsunami has wiped out half a trillion dollars from the books of major financial institutions in the U.S. and Europe.
At first, the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), one of the world's three most prestigious, figured it had lost $19 billion. That's when Singapore's pension fund kicked in $11 billion, figuring UBS was still a sound investment over the long haul. UBS then revised its loss estimate to $40 billion — for one bank!
As Congress debated clamps vs. band aids to stop the hemorrhaging, a downcast U.S. economy in recession became a tempting target for the world's 54 "Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWF)," a descriptive term for separate pools of government funds, mostly dollar surpluses accumulated from China to Japan to the Arab Gulf to Singapore. Instead of hoarding depreciating U.S. Treasury paper and dollars, SWFs invest in hard assets wherever they see opportunities in the world.
Foreign central banks keep looking for ways to unload stockpiles of dollars without disrupting their economies or the global financial system.
Edwin M. Truman, a senior fellow at the Petersen Institute in Washington, is the world's leading authority on SWFs. He estimates their total assets today at $5.3 trillion, about $1 trillion of it invested in the United States. The more financial trouble the U.S. finds itself in, the better the investment climate as U.S. business and financial entities decide to opt out into the arms of a foreign buyer rather than seek bankruptcy protection.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's financial bailout plan got mixed reviews on Capitol Hill. Republicans, predictably, said too much government interference in free markets that should find their own bottom, and Democrats said, predictably, not enough. Their bipartisan compromise: a paltry $15 billion over the next 10 years in tax rebates chiefly for the housing industry. Meanwhile, the wrecking ball keeps swinging.
Over the weekend, Deutsche Bank said losses from "securitized" subprime mortgages were heading for $400 billion. Wall Street insiders said it would be more than half a trillion dollars.
The dollar is described as the leper at the birthday party. Fear of contagion is everywhere. So when Mr. Paulson said, "a strong dollar is in our nation's interest and should be based on economic fundamentals," he looked and sounded like Popeye desperately trying to find a can of spinach. But the magical powers of spinach can't stop the train this time.
According to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland, another massive bubble that keeps ballooning is the derivatives market, which has quintupled in five years since 2002 to over $500 trillion — not billion.
Like the insurance industry, derivatives transfer risk from those who do not want to bear it to those who do — for a fee. Blamed for the market's phenomenal growth are (1) the Federal Reserve's cheap money policies that created the subprime-mortgage boom; (2) war budgets that strained the U.S. Treasury and future entitlement programs; (3) trade deficits with China and others that eroded the value of the dollar; (4) oil- and commodity-rich nations moving to equity payments — and the euro — rather than U.S. Treasury paper.
Fed interest cuts mean to the rest of the world that the Fed continues to print money at an alarming rate. Banks are borrowing from the Fed and then hoarding cash, apparently fearful the worst is yet to come. House prices are still falling — at the fastest rate on record.
The magnitude of the $500 trillion derivatives bubble is brought home by America's largest dollar figures: for GDP ($15 trillion); Federal budget ($3 trillion); U.S. government's maximum legal debt ($9 trillion). Also by the GDP for all nations ($50 trillion); total value of the world's stock and bond markets (more than $100 trillion). By way of reassurance, BIS' 2007 annual report also says the $11 trillion "gross market value provides a more accurate measure of the scale of financial risk transfer taking place in derivatives markets" every day.
A snapshot of what is actually happening is unfettered free market capitalism — and government spending. A blistering Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found 95 major defense weapons systems have far exceeded their original budgets by a total of almost $300 billion, bringing their total cost to $1.6 trillion.
A 22-year-old defense contractor, operating out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, landed a $223 million Pentagon deal to supply surplus ammunition for the Afghan army. The ammo delivered was decomposing and made in China 40 years ago.
More serious in the field of mismanagement was the Air Force shipping to Taiwan in August 2006 four electronic fuses designed to trigger nuclear Minuteman III ballistic missiles — instead of batteries for utility helicopters listed on the waybill — and not discovering the mistake until 2008. In 2007, airmen from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota accidentally ferried and lost track of six nuclear warheads flown on B-52 Stratofortress to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana.
This past week, government auditors discovered almost half of 28 contracts to manufacture body armor for Army soldiers were concluded without the product ever being tested.
Discipline and manners have given way to violence and rudeness. Foreign frequent travelers to the United States have noticed the polite greeting has been replaced by gruff questions. Many TV commercials depict violent or risky behavior in prime time. (e.g. Comcast-ic). Local TV news from coast to coast is mostly about local and national crime. The 10 and 11 p.m. crime roundups are presumably linked to sleep disorders for America's hardworking millions.
A return to the traditional values that made America the greatest country in the world is not a bad program for our next president.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.
k
Monday, April 7, 2008
Withdraw from What?
Withdraw from What?
Withdrawing from Iraq either on John McCain's schedule, or Hilary Clinton's, or even that of those who want out immediately, will solve nothing if we do not address far more fundamental problems in how we think about ourselves and the world. In an article that appeared in the April 2008 Armed Forces Journal, retired Air Force Colonel Chester Richards explains the fundamental decisions that would be required. The subjunctive case is necessary here, as no one in American politics even seems to acknowledge that such choices are called for.
This article appears in the just released April edition of Armed Forces Journal at http://www.afji.com/2008/04/3369506.
It is also reproduce below:
The fight for friends
U.S. national strategy should refocus from military operations to intelligence
BY CHET RICHARDS
Polls show that most non-Kurdish Iraqis blame the U.S. for the condition of their country and believe that their situations will improve after we leave. If, some five years after the invasion, this describes the mood of those we came to help, it suggests that we and the Iraqi people will obtain — at best — an Iraq that is worse off than it was before our occupation and one that could provide a breeding ground of resentment against American interests for as long into the future as we can imagine.
At worst, our withdrawal from Iraq could result in hundreds and possibly thousands of additional American casualties, the abandoning of billions of dollars of equipment, and the emergence of powerful and determined entities allied with Iran in the case of the Shiites, or with the most regressive political and social forces in the Middle East in the case of Arab Sunnis.
How did we get ourselves into this predicament? We cannot fault the efforts of the American military. Our armed services have suffered some 4,000 deaths and several times that many seriously injured. As a nation, we have supported the effort with a generational spending obligation that will likely top $2 trillion, including interest on the money we’ve borrowed to fight the war and what we will spend to care for our critically wounded service members.
There are two major reasons for our problems. One is that, in the words of retired British Gen. Rupert Smith, “Military force [today] is considered a solution, or part of a solution, in a wide range of problems for which it was not originally intended or configured.” Simply put, military forces — that is, conventional military forces — are intended to defeat other conventional military forces on the battlefield. Ours are the best in the world at that, but when we ask them to do other things, like stability operations, we shouldn’t be too surprised when they have problems.
So AFJ writer Ralph Peters is undoubtedly correct when he writes in “Dishonest doctrine” [December] about “killing those who need killing,” but he never explains why American troops should be the ones doing the killing or how, if we do, the Iraqis will ever recover the ability to do it themselves. Al-Qaida caused no problems for the Iraqi population before March 2003.
Which raises a second major reason for our problems: our refusal to think in terms of grand strategy. If you make this observation among policy groups, you will likely be greeted with beatific smiles and politely stifled yawns, but our emphasis on strategy — how to use military forces — at the expense of grand strategy — why to use military force — explains most of our problems.
Grand strategy is nothing more than the art of making more friends and allies than enemies. Grand strategy is why Hitler lost World War II: Many more people were willing to fight him than wanted to join him, which ultimately offset the battlefield brilliance of the Wehrmacht. Today, we need to concentrate on keeping the friends we have — no more denigrating an “old Europe” — while building our relationships in the developing world, where most terrorism is spawned.
People in the developing world, like people everywhere, need stable, functioning governments that enjoy a substantial degree of legitimacy. And these governments need to be integrated into what Thomas Barnett calls the world’s “functioning core.” Under these conditions, nonstate threats to security become manageable. They become seen as what they are — organized crime with an ideological veneer — and these can be dealt with through enhanced international cooperation on intelligence and law enforcement.
OCCUPATION TROUBLE
What does not seem to work, or work very reliably, is what British military historian Basil Liddell Hart derided as the “direct approach.” An intervention by foreign armies, even for the best political and humanitarian reasons, is still an invasion and an occupation. After a while, the locals are going to resent it and then resist it, as the fall of empires (including the Soviet Union) in recent years demonstrates. Some people, however, will tell you that Iraq could have turned out differently. If only they had been listened to, the Iraqis would be living in a prosperous, secular, Western-oriented democracy today. Perhaps, but the one thing that all who make such claims have in common is that they have never done it.
It is impossible to prove that an alternative occupation would have led to a more favorable outcome, as if the world could be replayed enough times to reach statistical significance. What data we do have suggests that occupiers should expect problems: A recently published study by Patricia Sullivan at the University of Georgia, for example, found that of 122 uses of military force by major powers against weak powers since the end of World War II, nearly two-thirds of those that needed “target compliance,” which includes occupations, were unsuccessful. It is impossible, in other words, for would-be occupiers to obey Sun Tzu’s injunction that victorious armies should win first and then, and only then, go into battle. We should not risk our blood and treasure, not to mention those of our intended beneficiaries, on such gambles.
The goal of American grand strategy should be, in the late strategist John Boyd’s pithy summary, to pump up our morale, deflate that of our opponents and attract the uncommitted to our cause. Do that and we “win first,” and usually will not feel compelled to invade anyone. Unfortunately, this blithe description of grand strategy hides a brutal game, for one element in attracting the world’s uncommitted is demonstrating that our cause is so compelling that we are not afraid to die for it. As historian Martin van Creveld of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem summarized modern conflict in his recent book, “The Changing Face of War”: “Compared to the willingness, or lack of it, in men (and women) to die for their cause, virtually all questions of policy, organization, doctrine, training and equipment pale into insignificance.”
It does not take a grand strategic genius to figure out which side in the “war on terror” is winning in this respect. Our military forces, as the casualty figures from Iraq and Afghanistan tragically show, are doing their part. However, walk into any airport in the U.S. and you see a nation that is scared to death. Some of these security measures are undoubtedly justified, but the sight of the citizens of the world’s greatest power meekly shuffling along in sock feet must make Osama bin Laden’s heart beat proud.
THE DEFENSE WE NEED
If the next administration is to go down in history as recovering from the mistakes of the early 21st century and setting the nation back on the path to prosperity and improved standards of living, we must place the use of armed force back into its proper context. When conducting external affairs, our emphasis must be on building a deep understanding of what is happening in the world and why — on achieving “objective perception.” With a clear and unbiased picture of what is going on, a little force at the right time and place can produce spectacular results without the risks of a prolonged occupation.
Refocusing the national security emphasis from military operations to intelligence would also allow significant reductions in the nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars we spend every year on the various aspects of our national defense. Stuffing the defense spending genie back into the bottle will also produce major benefits to the economy and to the quality of life in the country as a whole.
To put defense spending in perspective: If we could refund a half-trillion dollars to the taxpayers, we would put about $4,000 (tax free) back into the pocket of every household that filed a tax return for 2005. We would do that every year as far into the future as the budget-eye can see, and the amount would grow 10 percent or more each year, just as the defense budget has been growing for the last several years. By comparison, the one-time stimulus rebates recently passed by Congress and signed by the president will be, at most, $1,200, to be “paid for” by increasing the deficit.
While eliminating the entire defense budget is not realistic, you can get an idea of what is realistic by looking at what we spend on the Marine Corps. This force, which exceeds the capability of any opponent we might actually confront (i.e., excluding major nuclear powers and U.S. allies), costs about $30 billion per year. The Marine Corps budget, in fact, exceeds the combined military budgets of all the members of the “axis of evil,” plus all the countries of the Middle East that are not U.S. allies.
Although a Marine Corps-size force by itself would not constitute a complete defense capability — it would require additional ships and aircraft to move and support it, and there are some missions, such as nuclear deterrence, anti-piracy and some special missions, that it cannot perform — it lends credence to the idea that a budget in the $200 billion to $250 billion range could be both reasonable and effective. It would still be the largest national defense budget in the world — by a long shot. Plus, it never hurts to remind ourselves that we do have allies, and with a good grand strategy, we will have a lot more.
THE PAYOFF
Reducing the defense budget to rational proportions does not mean that we withdraw to our North American sanctuary and hope for the best. It does mean that we work to grow the family of nations that share a common view of security and place a high value on trade and other interactions with each other. And it means that we contain the dangers offered by the rest of the world — states and nonstates — through means appropriate to the dangers they represent.
Our everyday tools for this purpose include intelligence, law enforcement, trade, personal interaction (tourism, student exchanges, etc.) and diplomacy. Can military force be ruled out? Of course not. With a clear understanding of world dynamics, the military can be used adroitly to further national goals. Put another way, on rare occasions — for example, hostage rescue, reinforcing international law enforcement, and prevention of genocide — the core nations acting in concert may supplement the “soft” means with military actions that are — and are seen to be — unavoidable, rapid, daring and successful.
Withdrawing from Iraq either on John McCain's schedule, or Hilary Clinton's, or even that of those who want out immediately, will solve nothing if we do not address far more fundamental problems in how we think about ourselves and the world. In an article that appeared in the April 2008 Armed Forces Journal, retired Air Force Colonel Chester Richards explains the fundamental decisions that would be required. The subjunctive case is necessary here, as no one in American politics even seems to acknowledge that such choices are called for.
This article appears in the just released April edition of Armed Forces Journal at http://www.afji.com/2008/04/3369506.
It is also reproduce below:
The fight for friends
U.S. national strategy should refocus from military operations to intelligence
BY CHET RICHARDS
Polls show that most non-Kurdish Iraqis blame the U.S. for the condition of their country and believe that their situations will improve after we leave. If, some five years after the invasion, this describes the mood of those we came to help, it suggests that we and the Iraqi people will obtain — at best — an Iraq that is worse off than it was before our occupation and one that could provide a breeding ground of resentment against American interests for as long into the future as we can imagine.
At worst, our withdrawal from Iraq could result in hundreds and possibly thousands of additional American casualties, the abandoning of billions of dollars of equipment, and the emergence of powerful and determined entities allied with Iran in the case of the Shiites, or with the most regressive political and social forces in the Middle East in the case of Arab Sunnis.
How did we get ourselves into this predicament? We cannot fault the efforts of the American military. Our armed services have suffered some 4,000 deaths and several times that many seriously injured. As a nation, we have supported the effort with a generational spending obligation that will likely top $2 trillion, including interest on the money we’ve borrowed to fight the war and what we will spend to care for our critically wounded service members.
There are two major reasons for our problems. One is that, in the words of retired British Gen. Rupert Smith, “Military force [today] is considered a solution, or part of a solution, in a wide range of problems for which it was not originally intended or configured.” Simply put, military forces — that is, conventional military forces — are intended to defeat other conventional military forces on the battlefield. Ours are the best in the world at that, but when we ask them to do other things, like stability operations, we shouldn’t be too surprised when they have problems.
So AFJ writer Ralph Peters is undoubtedly correct when he writes in “Dishonest doctrine” [December] about “killing those who need killing,” but he never explains why American troops should be the ones doing the killing or how, if we do, the Iraqis will ever recover the ability to do it themselves. Al-Qaida caused no problems for the Iraqi population before March 2003.
Which raises a second major reason for our problems: our refusal to think in terms of grand strategy. If you make this observation among policy groups, you will likely be greeted with beatific smiles and politely stifled yawns, but our emphasis on strategy — how to use military forces — at the expense of grand strategy — why to use military force — explains most of our problems.
Grand strategy is nothing more than the art of making more friends and allies than enemies. Grand strategy is why Hitler lost World War II: Many more people were willing to fight him than wanted to join him, which ultimately offset the battlefield brilliance of the Wehrmacht. Today, we need to concentrate on keeping the friends we have — no more denigrating an “old Europe” — while building our relationships in the developing world, where most terrorism is spawned.
People in the developing world, like people everywhere, need stable, functioning governments that enjoy a substantial degree of legitimacy. And these governments need to be integrated into what Thomas Barnett calls the world’s “functioning core.” Under these conditions, nonstate threats to security become manageable. They become seen as what they are — organized crime with an ideological veneer — and these can be dealt with through enhanced international cooperation on intelligence and law enforcement.
OCCUPATION TROUBLE
What does not seem to work, or work very reliably, is what British military historian Basil Liddell Hart derided as the “direct approach.” An intervention by foreign armies, even for the best political and humanitarian reasons, is still an invasion and an occupation. After a while, the locals are going to resent it and then resist it, as the fall of empires (including the Soviet Union) in recent years demonstrates. Some people, however, will tell you that Iraq could have turned out differently. If only they had been listened to, the Iraqis would be living in a prosperous, secular, Western-oriented democracy today. Perhaps, but the one thing that all who make such claims have in common is that they have never done it.
It is impossible to prove that an alternative occupation would have led to a more favorable outcome, as if the world could be replayed enough times to reach statistical significance. What data we do have suggests that occupiers should expect problems: A recently published study by Patricia Sullivan at the University of Georgia, for example, found that of 122 uses of military force by major powers against weak powers since the end of World War II, nearly two-thirds of those that needed “target compliance,” which includes occupations, were unsuccessful. It is impossible, in other words, for would-be occupiers to obey Sun Tzu’s injunction that victorious armies should win first and then, and only then, go into battle. We should not risk our blood and treasure, not to mention those of our intended beneficiaries, on such gambles.
The goal of American grand strategy should be, in the late strategist John Boyd’s pithy summary, to pump up our morale, deflate that of our opponents and attract the uncommitted to our cause. Do that and we “win first,” and usually will not feel compelled to invade anyone. Unfortunately, this blithe description of grand strategy hides a brutal game, for one element in attracting the world’s uncommitted is demonstrating that our cause is so compelling that we are not afraid to die for it. As historian Martin van Creveld of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem summarized modern conflict in his recent book, “The Changing Face of War”: “Compared to the willingness, or lack of it, in men (and women) to die for their cause, virtually all questions of policy, organization, doctrine, training and equipment pale into insignificance.”
It does not take a grand strategic genius to figure out which side in the “war on terror” is winning in this respect. Our military forces, as the casualty figures from Iraq and Afghanistan tragically show, are doing their part. However, walk into any airport in the U.S. and you see a nation that is scared to death. Some of these security measures are undoubtedly justified, but the sight of the citizens of the world’s greatest power meekly shuffling along in sock feet must make Osama bin Laden’s heart beat proud.
THE DEFENSE WE NEED
If the next administration is to go down in history as recovering from the mistakes of the early 21st century and setting the nation back on the path to prosperity and improved standards of living, we must place the use of armed force back into its proper context. When conducting external affairs, our emphasis must be on building a deep understanding of what is happening in the world and why — on achieving “objective perception.” With a clear and unbiased picture of what is going on, a little force at the right time and place can produce spectacular results without the risks of a prolonged occupation.
Refocusing the national security emphasis from military operations to intelligence would also allow significant reductions in the nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars we spend every year on the various aspects of our national defense. Stuffing the defense spending genie back into the bottle will also produce major benefits to the economy and to the quality of life in the country as a whole.
To put defense spending in perspective: If we could refund a half-trillion dollars to the taxpayers, we would put about $4,000 (tax free) back into the pocket of every household that filed a tax return for 2005. We would do that every year as far into the future as the budget-eye can see, and the amount would grow 10 percent or more each year, just as the defense budget has been growing for the last several years. By comparison, the one-time stimulus rebates recently passed by Congress and signed by the president will be, at most, $1,200, to be “paid for” by increasing the deficit.
While eliminating the entire defense budget is not realistic, you can get an idea of what is realistic by looking at what we spend on the Marine Corps. This force, which exceeds the capability of any opponent we might actually confront (i.e., excluding major nuclear powers and U.S. allies), costs about $30 billion per year. The Marine Corps budget, in fact, exceeds the combined military budgets of all the members of the “axis of evil,” plus all the countries of the Middle East that are not U.S. allies.
Although a Marine Corps-size force by itself would not constitute a complete defense capability — it would require additional ships and aircraft to move and support it, and there are some missions, such as nuclear deterrence, anti-piracy and some special missions, that it cannot perform — it lends credence to the idea that a budget in the $200 billion to $250 billion range could be both reasonable and effective. It would still be the largest national defense budget in the world — by a long shot. Plus, it never hurts to remind ourselves that we do have allies, and with a good grand strategy, we will have a lot more.
THE PAYOFF
Reducing the defense budget to rational proportions does not mean that we withdraw to our North American sanctuary and hope for the best. It does mean that we work to grow the family of nations that share a common view of security and place a high value on trade and other interactions with each other. And it means that we contain the dangers offered by the rest of the world — states and nonstates — through means appropriate to the dangers they represent.
Our everyday tools for this purpose include intelligence, law enforcement, trade, personal interaction (tourism, student exchanges, etc.) and diplomacy. Can military force be ruled out? Of course not. With a clear understanding of world dynamics, the military can be used adroitly to further national goals. Put another way, on rare occasions — for example, hostage rescue, reinforcing international law enforcement, and prevention of genocide — the core nations acting in concert may supplement the “soft” means with military actions that are — and are seen to be — unavoidable, rapid, daring and successful.
Credit Bubble Bulletin: Liquidation is only solution to crisis
CREDIT BUBBLE BULLETIN
Liquidation is only
solution to crisis
The latest US strategy of substituting government-backed debt for Wall Street-backed finance is blind to the fact that the underlying economic structure is now the serious issue. There is no choice but to "liquidate" bad debt, labor and insolvent institutions as part of a massive reallocation of resources. Only this will resolve the credit crisis.
Doug Noland reviews the previous week's events each Monday.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JD08Dj01.html
Liquidation is only
solution to crisis
The latest US strategy of substituting government-backed debt for Wall Street-backed finance is blind to the fact that the underlying economic structure is now the serious issue. There is no choice but to "liquidate" bad debt, labor and insolvent institutions as part of a massive reallocation of resources. Only this will resolve the credit crisis.
Doug Noland reviews the previous week's events each Monday.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JD08Dj01.html
The General and the Trap by Ira Chernus
The general and the trap
The George W Bush administration's missteps in Iraq will not be apparent in the shadowboxing among Washington's "best and brightest" when General David Petraeus, the "surge" commander in Iraq, and US ambassador Ryan Crocker testify before congressional committees on Tuesday. And any debate focused on military success or failure is a trap, with Petraeus' testimony as the bait for unwary Democratic presidential hopefuls. - Ira Chernus (Apr 7, '08)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JD08Ak02.html
The George W Bush administration's missteps in Iraq will not be apparent in the shadowboxing among Washington's "best and brightest" when General David Petraeus, the "surge" commander in Iraq, and US ambassador Ryan Crocker testify before congressional committees on Tuesday. And any debate focused on military success or failure is a trap, with Petraeus' testimony as the bait for unwary Democratic presidential hopefuls. - Ira Chernus (Apr 7, '08)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JD08Ak02.html
The Taliban's Shadow Hangs over NATO by M K Bhadrakumar
The Taliban's shadow hangs over NATO
Following the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit and the meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President George W Bush, the Russians say they were "defeated": the US's missile defense shield in Europe and NATO's expansion will go ahead. This is a smokescreen. Moscow, by agreeing to the transit of food and non-military cargo and "some types of non-lethal military equipment" across Russia to Afghanistan, now has a role in NATO's operations in Afghanistan. - M K Bhadrakumar
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JD08Ag01.html
Following the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit and the meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President George W Bush, the Russians say they were "defeated": the US's missile defense shield in Europe and NATO's expansion will go ahead. This is a smokescreen. Moscow, by agreeing to the transit of food and non-military cargo and "some types of non-lethal military equipment" across Russia to Afghanistan, now has a role in NATO's operations in Afghanistan. - M K Bhadrakumar
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JD08Ag01.html
Saturday, April 5, 2008
An Obsoltet Alliance by E. Wayne Merry
An Obsolete Alliance
By E. Wayne Merry
It is axiomatic that nothing in government is so long lasting as temporary measures. Policies, programs and appropriations initiated to respond to a transitory issue take on lives of their own, spawning institutions which not only outlive their purpose but themselves create new problems to justify their continued existence.
On the international stage today, the most egregious example of this principle is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). An alliance created in response to the devastation of the Second World War in Europe and the onset of the Cold War is now approaching its seventh decade, two generations beyond the restoration of Europe's economy plus a large measure of European unity and a full generation beyond Gorbachev's acceptance of failure in the Cold War. Over the years, NATO has turned its back on its inherently defensive and conservative origins to become a shameless hustler after engagements to justify its own perpetuation. Rather than defending European territory or deterring threats to North Atlantic interests, NATO has followed with a vengeance the advice of Manfred Woerner, its Secretary-General in the early 1990s, that it "must go out of area or go out of business."
A cynical American might still accept NATO as a useful complement to other international engagements, except that NATO has become a net liability to the United States and one this country need no longer sustain. NATO's contributions to our interests are more apparent than substantive, while the costs of our trans-Atlantic welfare program remain huge. Worst of all, NATO subordinates American power and influence to European interests and preferences under the false rubric of "shared values."
What Is An "Alliance" Anyway?
Any discussion of NATO should begin with clarity about what it is. NATO is an alliance, based on the Treaty of Washington of 1949. It began as an alliance should, in response to the real and shared security requirements of its members, and undertook mutual obligations to assure their interests. Unfortunately, the words "alliance" and "ally" currently are employed without precision or even meaning. An alliance is a concrete undertaking of states in a defined context to do certain things if required. The best alliances (albeit not all) are codified in treaties, so there can be reference to what its purposes are—and are not. The Founders of the American Republic were rather fussy in this regard, wishing to spare this country the frivolous and often secretive deals among monarchs which engendered almost unending inter-state violence in the Europe of their day. The North Atlantic Treaty was the product of difficult and protracted negotiations (the record of which is now largely declassified) and was subject to serious scrutiny and debate by the United States Senate before achieving ratification.
The Washington Treaty is purely defensive; nothing in it can legitimize use of force other than in response to a direct attack against its members. Article V, contrary to popular myth, does not even commit its members to the use of force. The Treaty is not a substitute for U.S. constitutional prerogatives, nor for the role of the Security Council under the United Nations Charter (to which to Treaty often defers). The Alliance is, therefore, conservative in the most precise sense of the term: it is a mechanism for sharing risk. The Treaty is not expansive in either purpose or geographic application (so-called "out of area"). Those who want NATO to play an ever-increasing role as global policeman or intervention force should, if they are honest, seek renegotiation under Article XII to give the Alliance these additional functions and obtain ratification by national legislatures. A "global NATO" without such treaty revision is nothing short of a silent political coup d'etat, and a clear demonstration that its supporters care little about legal constraints, whether international or American.
Sadly, recent trans-Atlantic "dialogue" has trended in the opposite direction. NATO is now routinely portrayed as a mechanism to combat global warming, for international law enforcement, as a substitute for other international treaties (such as that on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons), and for a variety of humanitarian purposes. A case in point is a recent study by the International Institute of Strategic Studies, whose European and American authors explicitly advocate an almost unlimited agenda for "the trans-Atlantic alliance."[1] The authors use the term "alliance" interchangeably with "partnership," "relationship" and even "solidarity." These are not the same thing, however, and to treat them as synonymous warps rational policy debate.
Any War Will Do
Conflating the Alliance with other trans-Atlantic issues is pernicious, but it has deep roots. NATO lost its basic raison d'etre years ago, as Europe's need for American troops ended long before the Cold War did. The European members of NATO collectively dwarfed the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact within a generation of the signing of the Treaty. However, proposals for a reduction in American forces, such as from Senator Mike Mansfield in the early 1970s, elicited near-hysterical denunciations from European governments which, with few exceptions, had never met even their rather modest military obligations to the Alliance.
However, NATO really went off its rails with the Soviet collapse, which left it without threat or legitimate purpose. Although by logic NATO should have voluntarily followed the Warsaw Pact into history, the survival instinct which unites amoeba and bureaucracies prevailed. NATO took on a mentor role for the militaries of its former adversaries, prepared to become a peacekeeping strike force, and expanded inexorably eastward. In doing so, it exacerbated inter-state tensions with Russia, rather than ameliorating them. There was almost no debate as to whether the United States even had a legitimate security role in post-Cold War Europe, or if it was not time for Europeans to re-assume responsibility for their own continent.
For NATO, the collapse of Yugoslavia was a gift from heaven. The largest European state which had sat on the fence during the Cold War ironically supplied the rationale for a Cold War alliance to become an international peacemaking force, something its founders never conceived and the U.S. Senate never would have ratified. The fighting in the western Balkans certainly challenged Europe in many ways (such as refugee flows), but it did not threaten its security—at least not as defined by Article V. More to the point, the Yugoslav wars did not compromise the security of the United States at all. Whatever our humanitarian concerns, the Republic was not endangered. Managing the Balkan mess was therefore appropriately a job for Europe, not NATO.
The ensuing "hour of Europe" was a sad display of bickering and indecision, with poor appreciation of Balkan realities and faulty application of force in a fraught political environment. (Europeans who gloat over our mismanagement in Iraq might recall their own in Bosnia.) However, the capacities of the European powers were more than adequate to the task. Sadly, after decades of deference to the United States on almost all things military, the Europeans were unwilling (not unable) to muster the force necessary to restrain fifth-rate Balkan powers. What the Europeans did want, as one of their diplomats bluntly put it, was "American blood on the ground" in Yugoslavia.[2] They wanted Americans to do the dirty work, again.
Supporters of NATO rejoiced at the opportunity to demonstrate its continuing "relevance." They ignored the lack of legal authority for the Alliance to intervene in Balkan ethnic fighting (although some governments, notably that of Germany, did require parliamentary approval for their respective roles). While the misuse of NATO in Bosnia was bad enough, the ensuing conflict over Kosovo was much worse. An American president took the United States to war with a foreign state (Serbia) which had not attacked or threatened us, and proclaimed legitimacy for doing so not in the Constitution nor in the United Nations Charter, both of which do contain applicable authority, but in the North Atlantic Treaty, which does not.
The public relations rationale for NATO's first actual use of force was even more inverted than the legal legerdemain. On both sides of the Atlantic, the Kosovo war was justified as a way to preserve NATO's "credibility." Ponder that logic: a defensive alliance initiates a non-defensive war to give itself legitimacy, or at least the appearance of viability. In short, NATO bombed Belgrade to show that it could bomb. The rationale for war was weakened still further by the scare tactics and inflation of the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo, where brutal villains abounded on both sides, and because NATO ignored far more pressing humanitarian crises elsewhere.
These precedents are frightening. Where, now, is the limit to what may be justified under the rubric of NATO? What prevents a future American president from initiating war via NATO for almost any purpose, anywhere? The implications for our republican form of government are daunting.
Allies, Auxiliaries or Hangers-On?
However, critics might protest, does not NATO greatly enhance American power in the world? Is not NATO, as some have expressed it, a "toolbox" for the United States to supplement our own forces? The record on both scores is decidedly mixed.
Europe remains a net security consumer from America. Despite the large forces maintained by the European states and the existence of some excellent units, their collective security quotient is fairly modest. European militaries remain organized on a national—rather than regional—basis, with vast duplication, overlap and waste of resources. Many European "militaries" exist more for prestige and domestic job creation than for force projection. Indeed, the very concept of projecting military force remains toxic in many European countries and in almost all political parties of the left. In Germany, conscription actually supplies more young men to the national health program through alternative service than it sends to the armed forces.[3] While the much-vaunted "European pillar" of NATO can tabulate more soldiers, tanks and airplanes than we, the effective whole of Europe's forces remains much less than the sum of its parts.
The American security contribution to Europe is not free, and the balance is clearly in Europe's favor. Europe absorbs more security from the United States than it contributes. European elites are well aware of the benefits they enjoy from NATO and of the transfer of wealth which the American working class through its taxes and sons provides to the European middle and upper classes. Whenever there is American discussion of closing or reducing U.S. facilities or deployments in Europe, the European reaction is negative and couched in terms of money, not security. The Americans provide a low-cost service which frees European public funds for more popular programs, such as subsidized health care and opera. So, when Europeans acclaim the "shared values" of NATO, it may be the value of American manpower and defense spending they enjoy sharing.
As there is no credible military threat to Europe now or on the horizon, NATO justifies itself through "out-of-area" operations, although the Treaty is explicitly limited to "the North Atlantic area." Under the "NATO as toolbox" concept, Europeans should be useful auxiliaries for America's non-European engagements. However, experience shows the "toolbox" is not always Washington's to employ—and may not contain the appropriate tools anyway.
After all, an alliance is only as good as its performance in a crisis, and NATO has shown several times it can stymie American efforts to mobilize European support. Even during the halcyon days of the Cold War, our European allies refused U.S. requests to use our NATO bases or even to overfly their territory when the issue involved the Middle East (i.e., the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and the 1986 U.S. bombing of Libya). U.S. forces labored under allied restrictions even on routine operations which might offend Europe's southern neighbors. Nor did the United States receive NATO support in either Persian Gulf war, although a number of members participated on a national basis. European governments refused U.S. efforts to involve NATO because operations against Iraq were not covered by the North Atlantic Treaty. The lesson is clear: Europeans can and do say "no" when Washington wants to use NATO for purposes they do not share.
A Model Not To Follow
Afghanistan is often portrayed as the acid test of the "new NATO," and in perverse ways it is. Afghanistan was appropriately America's war, not Europe's. We had been attacked and pursued our attackers to their refuge. Washington did not want to remake Afghanistan, but to destroy al-Qaeda. Over time, however, objectives have shifted. Today, bin Laden and his senior associates remain at liberty, while the Taliban is resurgent in many parts of the country. This happened because the United States did not follow through on its initial military success, but diverted into a "nation building" mission of dubious utility. Had the United States concentrated on its limited initial goals in Afghanistan, the local population might reasonably have seen their self interest as linked to ours. A prolonged occupation by foreigners, by its very nature, must eventually exhaust its welcome.
Ironically, NATO participation in Afghanistan has contributed to this failure. The offer of European forces encouraged American policymakers to turn away from the pursuit of al-Qaeda and its local allies—a job that should have been the top priority of the U.S. defense establishment until achieved. Sadly, however, U.S. operations in Afghanistan quickly assumed secondary importance to preparations for the Iraq war, and were starved of specialist personnel and key resources during critical months of the campaign. It is difficult to believe Washington would have done this had it not expected NATO to pick up the slack. While European governments certainly did not seek such an outcome, the practical effect of NATO engagement in Afghanistan was to allow the United States to fumble in that conflict, at incalculable long-term cost.
Many European units deployed to Afghanistan contain high-quality personnel who have done excellent (and often heroic) work. However, the governments which sent them were always more interested in influencing Washington than in transforming Afghanistan. (Whether the latter is possible or even desirable is another issue entirely.) Indeed, the very invocation of Article V for the first time after 9/11 was highly dubious, as the Treaty obviously envisages an attack by a state, rather than a terrorist group. Many previous attacks on European territory by Palestinian groups had not provoked NATO's retaliation on Middle Eastern countries sheltering them. Nor was Article V invoked in response to IRA attacks in the United Kingdom, including one in 1984 which almost killed much of the British government including Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (and the Alliance did not contemplate occupying Ireland).
What made the terrorist attacks of September 2001 different for NATO was concern by Europeans that American attention would turn away from them. The goal for European governments was to "prove" NATO's continuing worth to increasingly skeptical Americans. The solution was modest national contingents in Afghanistan under NATO auspices. In reality, many of the deployments fell short of commitments and have operated under national rules of engagement which severely restrict their utility on the ground. Nonetheless, the policy was a success, in that it is cheaper to send a few men to Southwest Asia than to replace the huge American security subsidy of Europe. That some Europeans serve in Afghanistan with distinction cannot obscure the ulterior motives which sent them there.
Thinking the Eminently Thinkable
What would a post-NATO European security system look like? Would it not revert to the endemic conflict of previous centuries without an American ordnungsmacht to enforce peace, or might it not fall prey to Russian domination? Neither fear reflects reality.
European integration, while imperfect, has effectively eliminated armed conflict among its participants, while almost the least militarized power in the Western world today is once-menacing Germany. That a unified Germany threatens none of its neighbors and feels threatened by none of them is a great historic achievement, for which the United States can rightfully assume some credit. Whatever its shortcomings, the European Union is unlikely to collapse if American uniforms were no longer on the continent. Having encouraged and shielded the process of European unity, America should not now worry that Europe is unable to live in peace. How Europeans would then choose to transform NATO into a European regional security system is entirely for them to decide, not for us. The legatees of Talleyrand, Palmerston and Bismarck are up to the job.
The principal security concern for many Europeans is Russia. Yet Russia, though in a resurgent nationalist phase, is incapable of major military adventures. Behind the glitter of oil and gas wealth is a country with 170 deaths per 100 live births (the corresponding figure for Italy is 103/100).[4] The twin crises of demographics and health are the central challenge for Russia in this century, even if her leaders have their eyes fixed on restored greatness. No country can be expansionist with a fertility rate at half of replacement, a rapidly shrinking conscription pool of young men weakened by endemic childhood vitamin and calcium deficiencies, and an economy based largely on commodity exports. It is noteworthy that little of the oil and gas money amassed by the Kremlin in recent years has gone to the Russian military, or is planned to. The Russian Army has not even replaced the conventional equipment and munitions it expended in Chechnya, while the planned construction of new strategic missiles and submarines will result in a faster decrease of the country's nuclear deterrent force than took place under the tenure of Boris Yeltsin. The Russian Air Force must worry not only about aging aircraft but even more about aging pilots, while all the armed services continue to hemorrhage young officers and officer cadets, who correctly foresee a life of penury in uniform. As a military power, then, Russia is in a position to saber-rattle toward its former Soviet possessions, but not much more.
To be sure, Russia does have other instruments of national policy. Whereas in the late Nineteenth Century it was said in Russia that it had only two friends, her army and navy, today those have been replaced by oil and gas. To the evident surprise of many Europeans, Russia's leaders employ their limited national assets as means of influence and geopolitics rather than as strictly commercial undertakings. This demonstrates only that Europeans, who often like to lecture Americans about dealing with Moscow, still see what they want to see in Russia. Europe will face continuing challenges in dealing with Russia on energy issues, but three realities are clear. First, NATO is of no use in that calculus; there is nothing in the Alliance arsenal that can affect hydrocarbon pipeline routes, throughput, price or availability. As an American labor leader once said, you cannot dig coal with a bayonet. Second, Europe has none to blame but itself for its difficulties with Russia. The European Union dwarfs Russia by any relevant index, but can only exercise its strategic weight if it does so united. This is a European, not a trans-Atlantic, task that Europe must face up to. Third, global energy markets are changing rapidly. Russia will decline as a petroleum exporter while its piped natural gas exports will face real competition in price and availability from liquefied gas. To be sure, Russia is and will remain a problem for Europe, but not one of mass armies or nuclear intimidation. The appropriate responses to Moscow now and for the foreseeable future are political and economic, not military.
The Dubious Value of "Values"
What purpose, then, does NATO now truly serve? According to its adherents, the Alliance is a mechanism for exporting democracy and a vehicle for "shared values." The signatories of the 1949 Treaty would surely have reacted to such rhetoric with incredulity. The member states vary widely in their forms of democracy, but all share basic rule of law and citizen rights. While such concepts warrant wider application in the world, recent experience casts doubt whether they can be successfully promulgated at gunpoint. Modern militaries are good for a number of things, but persuading other cultures to emulate our own is not one of them. In any case, America's military has commitments far beyond its reduced force structure. If this country is to have armed forces able to fight and win our wars (which inevitably will come again), we need to let them concentrate on that ultimate task.
European rhetoric about "values" to justify NATO plays on enduring American gullibility. The underlying message is "you should support and subsidize our security, doing tasks we are quite capable of if we chose to spend the resources, because thereby we together are spreading American 'values' around the world." One could admire the cleverness of this gambit were it not so shameless. European elites do not share American values and never have. This is true of both the political right and left. America represents a rejection of European values, which revolve around inherited national identities and a social order defined by inherited social classes. America is a created nation (many Europeans deny we even are a nation, or could be), revering individual liberty and opportunity, and rejecting class warfare as unnecessary and destructive. The European right always detested America as a threat to the legitimacy of their neo-feudal privileges and inherited status. The European left dislikes the American experience because it challenges their faith in social revolution and the class struggle. The popular American notion that our country was widely admired in Europe in the past is false. Europeans as individuals have often done so, and many have chosen to join us. But Europe as a whole, and elites especially, long disliked and feared America as inimical to their own way of life and their centrality in world affairs. Europeans embraced America when they needed us, not to emulate us. That many Europeans today, especially among the best educated, define themselves in anti-American terms is a reversion to an historic norm, rather than a departure from it.
NATO was a continuation of Europe's need for American power to prevent its own systemic collapse. In two World Wars (both of European origin) and the Cold War (the product of European ideologies), Europe could not bring order out of chaos without imported power. Europeans sought to harness American resources to serve European interests. In the First World War, French and British military and political leaders planned to use our troops in their own force structures and were genuinely shocked when informed the Americans intended to fight under their own flag and command. Europeans leaders in both wars conceived of the United States as comparable to their own colonies and dominions, albeit larger and richer. For them, America was an extension of Europe and a replacement for deficits of European manpower and money. Despite greatly altered circumstances, this basic perception remains: America is (or should be) essentially European and the servant of Europe. Americans see their country and themselves in quite different terms, however. Certainly, the United States has been a European power for most of the past century, but it is not a European country, society or culture. America is not European, and there the "shared values" rationale for NATO dies.
An America Able To Say "No"
European purposes in NATO are clear: to subordinate American power and resources to their interests and to maintain a mechanism by which to constrain the United States. Whether a European policy judgment may be wise in any particular case is largely irrelevant. The subordination of American policy is a clear infringement of our national sovereignty and freedom of policy choice. If our policies are ill conceived or executed, it is our responsibility to rectify them, rather than to surrender our judgment to that of Europe, whose historical record is hardly one that bears emulation.
Europe today is inward-looking and regional in ambition, while the United States (for better or worse) has global interests and responsibilities. Any reasonable assessment of the century ahead indicates our future is more likely to be linked with the emerging destinies of Asia than of Europe. It is noteworthy that our image is significantly more favorable in most Asian societies than in European ones; there is a basic affinity between Asian countries and our own, if we can recognize it. Even the American demographic is shifting away from European origins at a rapid pace, making America increasing a global nation of nations. Europeans hate this trend, for it foretells an America that will cease to feel the historical European affinities from which they profit so much.
The trans-Atlantic relationship ("relationship," not "alliance") will doubtless remain of immense importance to the United States. Europe and North America are linked by a dense web of economic and other ties which remain robust and are likely to thrive for generations to come. Together we constitute something like half the global economy and most of the developed world. However, economic relationships do not require military ties to flourish. To believe they do is Cold War thinking, not supported by either American or European history. No other country defines its external economics as inexorably linked to military deployments and alliance obligations. America need not and should not do so.
Whether superpower or hyperpower, the United States does not possess limitless power. We need not maintain a foreign obligation just because we did so in a very different past. It is often noted that America possesses much more of the world's wealth than our share of its population, but rarely is the liability side of the ledger shown. Today, the asymmetry of America's global security obligations in comparison with those of other centers of wealth and power is striking. Our commitments are excessive, both when gauged against our capacities and the benefits accrued to the Republic. Obviously, some global burdens come with a global role, but there must be reasonable limits based on a sober assessment of national interest and of the capacities of other countries.
After almost a century of carrying Europe's water, it is time to stop. The Washington Treaty obligated this country to NATO for twenty years (Article XIII); thus, for almost four decades our role has exceeded our commitment. Europe is more than capable of looking out for itself and maintaining security in surrounding areas, including the Mediterranean and Black Seas plus much of Africa. Europe has the institutions, talent, technology and finances to manage the security of its corner of the planet. If (as seems likely) Europe does not choose to play a broader global security role, that is probably just as well. A provincial Europe is not a bad thing. What is not sustainable is that a restored Europe should remain a security protectorate of the United States. Security is the most fundamental aspect of public affairs, and European unity can never become fully mature until Europeans provide it for themselves. NATO is not a vehicle for European security integration; it is an impediment to it.
America remains the global leader in many fields including military power, but that is a national asset better husbanded than expended. Our armed forces need replenishment and a wiser choice of commitments. European security is one military burden America can and should lay down.
Wayne Merry is a former State Department and Pentagon official and now a Senior Associate of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC. He writes here in a personal capacity.
[1] Dana H. Allin et al, "Repairing the Damage: Possibilities and Limits of Transatlantic Consensus," International Institute of Strategic Studies Adelphi Paper no. 389, October 2007.
[2] Private conversation with the author, 1996.
[3] See, for example, "Defense Economics Reform IV: Budgets and Expenditure Choices in the Post Cold War," Conference Sponsored by the Conference Center of the George C Marshall European Center for Security Studies and the NATO Economics Directorate; Wildbad Kreuth, Germany; September 15-18, 2002.
[4] M.G. Field, "The Health Crisis in the Former Soviet Union: A Report from the 'Post War' Zone," Social Science and Medicine 41, no. 11 (1995), 1469-1478.
By E. Wayne Merry
It is axiomatic that nothing in government is so long lasting as temporary measures. Policies, programs and appropriations initiated to respond to a transitory issue take on lives of their own, spawning institutions which not only outlive their purpose but themselves create new problems to justify their continued existence.
On the international stage today, the most egregious example of this principle is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). An alliance created in response to the devastation of the Second World War in Europe and the onset of the Cold War is now approaching its seventh decade, two generations beyond the restoration of Europe's economy plus a large measure of European unity and a full generation beyond Gorbachev's acceptance of failure in the Cold War. Over the years, NATO has turned its back on its inherently defensive and conservative origins to become a shameless hustler after engagements to justify its own perpetuation. Rather than defending European territory or deterring threats to North Atlantic interests, NATO has followed with a vengeance the advice of Manfred Woerner, its Secretary-General in the early 1990s, that it "must go out of area or go out of business."
A cynical American might still accept NATO as a useful complement to other international engagements, except that NATO has become a net liability to the United States and one this country need no longer sustain. NATO's contributions to our interests are more apparent than substantive, while the costs of our trans-Atlantic welfare program remain huge. Worst of all, NATO subordinates American power and influence to European interests and preferences under the false rubric of "shared values."
What Is An "Alliance" Anyway?
Any discussion of NATO should begin with clarity about what it is. NATO is an alliance, based on the Treaty of Washington of 1949. It began as an alliance should, in response to the real and shared security requirements of its members, and undertook mutual obligations to assure their interests. Unfortunately, the words "alliance" and "ally" currently are employed without precision or even meaning. An alliance is a concrete undertaking of states in a defined context to do certain things if required. The best alliances (albeit not all) are codified in treaties, so there can be reference to what its purposes are—and are not. The Founders of the American Republic were rather fussy in this regard, wishing to spare this country the frivolous and often secretive deals among monarchs which engendered almost unending inter-state violence in the Europe of their day. The North Atlantic Treaty was the product of difficult and protracted negotiations (the record of which is now largely declassified) and was subject to serious scrutiny and debate by the United States Senate before achieving ratification.
The Washington Treaty is purely defensive; nothing in it can legitimize use of force other than in response to a direct attack against its members. Article V, contrary to popular myth, does not even commit its members to the use of force. The Treaty is not a substitute for U.S. constitutional prerogatives, nor for the role of the Security Council under the United Nations Charter (to which to Treaty often defers). The Alliance is, therefore, conservative in the most precise sense of the term: it is a mechanism for sharing risk. The Treaty is not expansive in either purpose or geographic application (so-called "out of area"). Those who want NATO to play an ever-increasing role as global policeman or intervention force should, if they are honest, seek renegotiation under Article XII to give the Alliance these additional functions and obtain ratification by national legislatures. A "global NATO" without such treaty revision is nothing short of a silent political coup d'etat, and a clear demonstration that its supporters care little about legal constraints, whether international or American.
Sadly, recent trans-Atlantic "dialogue" has trended in the opposite direction. NATO is now routinely portrayed as a mechanism to combat global warming, for international law enforcement, as a substitute for other international treaties (such as that on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons), and for a variety of humanitarian purposes. A case in point is a recent study by the International Institute of Strategic Studies, whose European and American authors explicitly advocate an almost unlimited agenda for "the trans-Atlantic alliance."[1] The authors use the term "alliance" interchangeably with "partnership," "relationship" and even "solidarity." These are not the same thing, however, and to treat them as synonymous warps rational policy debate.
Any War Will Do
Conflating the Alliance with other trans-Atlantic issues is pernicious, but it has deep roots. NATO lost its basic raison d'etre years ago, as Europe's need for American troops ended long before the Cold War did. The European members of NATO collectively dwarfed the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact within a generation of the signing of the Treaty. However, proposals for a reduction in American forces, such as from Senator Mike Mansfield in the early 1970s, elicited near-hysterical denunciations from European governments which, with few exceptions, had never met even their rather modest military obligations to the Alliance.
However, NATO really went off its rails with the Soviet collapse, which left it without threat or legitimate purpose. Although by logic NATO should have voluntarily followed the Warsaw Pact into history, the survival instinct which unites amoeba and bureaucracies prevailed. NATO took on a mentor role for the militaries of its former adversaries, prepared to become a peacekeeping strike force, and expanded inexorably eastward. In doing so, it exacerbated inter-state tensions with Russia, rather than ameliorating them. There was almost no debate as to whether the United States even had a legitimate security role in post-Cold War Europe, or if it was not time for Europeans to re-assume responsibility for their own continent.
For NATO, the collapse of Yugoslavia was a gift from heaven. The largest European state which had sat on the fence during the Cold War ironically supplied the rationale for a Cold War alliance to become an international peacemaking force, something its founders never conceived and the U.S. Senate never would have ratified. The fighting in the western Balkans certainly challenged Europe in many ways (such as refugee flows), but it did not threaten its security—at least not as defined by Article V. More to the point, the Yugoslav wars did not compromise the security of the United States at all. Whatever our humanitarian concerns, the Republic was not endangered. Managing the Balkan mess was therefore appropriately a job for Europe, not NATO.
The ensuing "hour of Europe" was a sad display of bickering and indecision, with poor appreciation of Balkan realities and faulty application of force in a fraught political environment. (Europeans who gloat over our mismanagement in Iraq might recall their own in Bosnia.) However, the capacities of the European powers were more than adequate to the task. Sadly, after decades of deference to the United States on almost all things military, the Europeans were unwilling (not unable) to muster the force necessary to restrain fifth-rate Balkan powers. What the Europeans did want, as one of their diplomats bluntly put it, was "American blood on the ground" in Yugoslavia.[2] They wanted Americans to do the dirty work, again.
Supporters of NATO rejoiced at the opportunity to demonstrate its continuing "relevance." They ignored the lack of legal authority for the Alliance to intervene in Balkan ethnic fighting (although some governments, notably that of Germany, did require parliamentary approval for their respective roles). While the misuse of NATO in Bosnia was bad enough, the ensuing conflict over Kosovo was much worse. An American president took the United States to war with a foreign state (Serbia) which had not attacked or threatened us, and proclaimed legitimacy for doing so not in the Constitution nor in the United Nations Charter, both of which do contain applicable authority, but in the North Atlantic Treaty, which does not.
The public relations rationale for NATO's first actual use of force was even more inverted than the legal legerdemain. On both sides of the Atlantic, the Kosovo war was justified as a way to preserve NATO's "credibility." Ponder that logic: a defensive alliance initiates a non-defensive war to give itself legitimacy, or at least the appearance of viability. In short, NATO bombed Belgrade to show that it could bomb. The rationale for war was weakened still further by the scare tactics and inflation of the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo, where brutal villains abounded on both sides, and because NATO ignored far more pressing humanitarian crises elsewhere.
These precedents are frightening. Where, now, is the limit to what may be justified under the rubric of NATO? What prevents a future American president from initiating war via NATO for almost any purpose, anywhere? The implications for our republican form of government are daunting.
Allies, Auxiliaries or Hangers-On?
However, critics might protest, does not NATO greatly enhance American power in the world? Is not NATO, as some have expressed it, a "toolbox" for the United States to supplement our own forces? The record on both scores is decidedly mixed.
Europe remains a net security consumer from America. Despite the large forces maintained by the European states and the existence of some excellent units, their collective security quotient is fairly modest. European militaries remain organized on a national—rather than regional—basis, with vast duplication, overlap and waste of resources. Many European "militaries" exist more for prestige and domestic job creation than for force projection. Indeed, the very concept of projecting military force remains toxic in many European countries and in almost all political parties of the left. In Germany, conscription actually supplies more young men to the national health program through alternative service than it sends to the armed forces.[3] While the much-vaunted "European pillar" of NATO can tabulate more soldiers, tanks and airplanes than we, the effective whole of Europe's forces remains much less than the sum of its parts.
The American security contribution to Europe is not free, and the balance is clearly in Europe's favor. Europe absorbs more security from the United States than it contributes. European elites are well aware of the benefits they enjoy from NATO and of the transfer of wealth which the American working class through its taxes and sons provides to the European middle and upper classes. Whenever there is American discussion of closing or reducing U.S. facilities or deployments in Europe, the European reaction is negative and couched in terms of money, not security. The Americans provide a low-cost service which frees European public funds for more popular programs, such as subsidized health care and opera. So, when Europeans acclaim the "shared values" of NATO, it may be the value of American manpower and defense spending they enjoy sharing.
As there is no credible military threat to Europe now or on the horizon, NATO justifies itself through "out-of-area" operations, although the Treaty is explicitly limited to "the North Atlantic area." Under the "NATO as toolbox" concept, Europeans should be useful auxiliaries for America's non-European engagements. However, experience shows the "toolbox" is not always Washington's to employ—and may not contain the appropriate tools anyway.
After all, an alliance is only as good as its performance in a crisis, and NATO has shown several times it can stymie American efforts to mobilize European support. Even during the halcyon days of the Cold War, our European allies refused U.S. requests to use our NATO bases or even to overfly their territory when the issue involved the Middle East (i.e., the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and the 1986 U.S. bombing of Libya). U.S. forces labored under allied restrictions even on routine operations which might offend Europe's southern neighbors. Nor did the United States receive NATO support in either Persian Gulf war, although a number of members participated on a national basis. European governments refused U.S. efforts to involve NATO because operations against Iraq were not covered by the North Atlantic Treaty. The lesson is clear: Europeans can and do say "no" when Washington wants to use NATO for purposes they do not share.
A Model Not To Follow
Afghanistan is often portrayed as the acid test of the "new NATO," and in perverse ways it is. Afghanistan was appropriately America's war, not Europe's. We had been attacked and pursued our attackers to their refuge. Washington did not want to remake Afghanistan, but to destroy al-Qaeda. Over time, however, objectives have shifted. Today, bin Laden and his senior associates remain at liberty, while the Taliban is resurgent in many parts of the country. This happened because the United States did not follow through on its initial military success, but diverted into a "nation building" mission of dubious utility. Had the United States concentrated on its limited initial goals in Afghanistan, the local population might reasonably have seen their self interest as linked to ours. A prolonged occupation by foreigners, by its very nature, must eventually exhaust its welcome.
Ironically, NATO participation in Afghanistan has contributed to this failure. The offer of European forces encouraged American policymakers to turn away from the pursuit of al-Qaeda and its local allies—a job that should have been the top priority of the U.S. defense establishment until achieved. Sadly, however, U.S. operations in Afghanistan quickly assumed secondary importance to preparations for the Iraq war, and were starved of specialist personnel and key resources during critical months of the campaign. It is difficult to believe Washington would have done this had it not expected NATO to pick up the slack. While European governments certainly did not seek such an outcome, the practical effect of NATO engagement in Afghanistan was to allow the United States to fumble in that conflict, at incalculable long-term cost.
Many European units deployed to Afghanistan contain high-quality personnel who have done excellent (and often heroic) work. However, the governments which sent them were always more interested in influencing Washington than in transforming Afghanistan. (Whether the latter is possible or even desirable is another issue entirely.) Indeed, the very invocation of Article V for the first time after 9/11 was highly dubious, as the Treaty obviously envisages an attack by a state, rather than a terrorist group. Many previous attacks on European territory by Palestinian groups had not provoked NATO's retaliation on Middle Eastern countries sheltering them. Nor was Article V invoked in response to IRA attacks in the United Kingdom, including one in 1984 which almost killed much of the British government including Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (and the Alliance did not contemplate occupying Ireland).
What made the terrorist attacks of September 2001 different for NATO was concern by Europeans that American attention would turn away from them. The goal for European governments was to "prove" NATO's continuing worth to increasingly skeptical Americans. The solution was modest national contingents in Afghanistan under NATO auspices. In reality, many of the deployments fell short of commitments and have operated under national rules of engagement which severely restrict their utility on the ground. Nonetheless, the policy was a success, in that it is cheaper to send a few men to Southwest Asia than to replace the huge American security subsidy of Europe. That some Europeans serve in Afghanistan with distinction cannot obscure the ulterior motives which sent them there.
Thinking the Eminently Thinkable
What would a post-NATO European security system look like? Would it not revert to the endemic conflict of previous centuries without an American ordnungsmacht to enforce peace, or might it not fall prey to Russian domination? Neither fear reflects reality.
European integration, while imperfect, has effectively eliminated armed conflict among its participants, while almost the least militarized power in the Western world today is once-menacing Germany. That a unified Germany threatens none of its neighbors and feels threatened by none of them is a great historic achievement, for which the United States can rightfully assume some credit. Whatever its shortcomings, the European Union is unlikely to collapse if American uniforms were no longer on the continent. Having encouraged and shielded the process of European unity, America should not now worry that Europe is unable to live in peace. How Europeans would then choose to transform NATO into a European regional security system is entirely for them to decide, not for us. The legatees of Talleyrand, Palmerston and Bismarck are up to the job.
The principal security concern for many Europeans is Russia. Yet Russia, though in a resurgent nationalist phase, is incapable of major military adventures. Behind the glitter of oil and gas wealth is a country with 170 deaths per 100 live births (the corresponding figure for Italy is 103/100).[4] The twin crises of demographics and health are the central challenge for Russia in this century, even if her leaders have their eyes fixed on restored greatness. No country can be expansionist with a fertility rate at half of replacement, a rapidly shrinking conscription pool of young men weakened by endemic childhood vitamin and calcium deficiencies, and an economy based largely on commodity exports. It is noteworthy that little of the oil and gas money amassed by the Kremlin in recent years has gone to the Russian military, or is planned to. The Russian Army has not even replaced the conventional equipment and munitions it expended in Chechnya, while the planned construction of new strategic missiles and submarines will result in a faster decrease of the country's nuclear deterrent force than took place under the tenure of Boris Yeltsin. The Russian Air Force must worry not only about aging aircraft but even more about aging pilots, while all the armed services continue to hemorrhage young officers and officer cadets, who correctly foresee a life of penury in uniform. As a military power, then, Russia is in a position to saber-rattle toward its former Soviet possessions, but not much more.
To be sure, Russia does have other instruments of national policy. Whereas in the late Nineteenth Century it was said in Russia that it had only two friends, her army and navy, today those have been replaced by oil and gas. To the evident surprise of many Europeans, Russia's leaders employ their limited national assets as means of influence and geopolitics rather than as strictly commercial undertakings. This demonstrates only that Europeans, who often like to lecture Americans about dealing with Moscow, still see what they want to see in Russia. Europe will face continuing challenges in dealing with Russia on energy issues, but three realities are clear. First, NATO is of no use in that calculus; there is nothing in the Alliance arsenal that can affect hydrocarbon pipeline routes, throughput, price or availability. As an American labor leader once said, you cannot dig coal with a bayonet. Second, Europe has none to blame but itself for its difficulties with Russia. The European Union dwarfs Russia by any relevant index, but can only exercise its strategic weight if it does so united. This is a European, not a trans-Atlantic, task that Europe must face up to. Third, global energy markets are changing rapidly. Russia will decline as a petroleum exporter while its piped natural gas exports will face real competition in price and availability from liquefied gas. To be sure, Russia is and will remain a problem for Europe, but not one of mass armies or nuclear intimidation. The appropriate responses to Moscow now and for the foreseeable future are political and economic, not military.
The Dubious Value of "Values"
What purpose, then, does NATO now truly serve? According to its adherents, the Alliance is a mechanism for exporting democracy and a vehicle for "shared values." The signatories of the 1949 Treaty would surely have reacted to such rhetoric with incredulity. The member states vary widely in their forms of democracy, but all share basic rule of law and citizen rights. While such concepts warrant wider application in the world, recent experience casts doubt whether they can be successfully promulgated at gunpoint. Modern militaries are good for a number of things, but persuading other cultures to emulate our own is not one of them. In any case, America's military has commitments far beyond its reduced force structure. If this country is to have armed forces able to fight and win our wars (which inevitably will come again), we need to let them concentrate on that ultimate task.
European rhetoric about "values" to justify NATO plays on enduring American gullibility. The underlying message is "you should support and subsidize our security, doing tasks we are quite capable of if we chose to spend the resources, because thereby we together are spreading American 'values' around the world." One could admire the cleverness of this gambit were it not so shameless. European elites do not share American values and never have. This is true of both the political right and left. America represents a rejection of European values, which revolve around inherited national identities and a social order defined by inherited social classes. America is a created nation (many Europeans deny we even are a nation, or could be), revering individual liberty and opportunity, and rejecting class warfare as unnecessary and destructive. The European right always detested America as a threat to the legitimacy of their neo-feudal privileges and inherited status. The European left dislikes the American experience because it challenges their faith in social revolution and the class struggle. The popular American notion that our country was widely admired in Europe in the past is false. Europeans as individuals have often done so, and many have chosen to join us. But Europe as a whole, and elites especially, long disliked and feared America as inimical to their own way of life and their centrality in world affairs. Europeans embraced America when they needed us, not to emulate us. That many Europeans today, especially among the best educated, define themselves in anti-American terms is a reversion to an historic norm, rather than a departure from it.
NATO was a continuation of Europe's need for American power to prevent its own systemic collapse. In two World Wars (both of European origin) and the Cold War (the product of European ideologies), Europe could not bring order out of chaos without imported power. Europeans sought to harness American resources to serve European interests. In the First World War, French and British military and political leaders planned to use our troops in their own force structures and were genuinely shocked when informed the Americans intended to fight under their own flag and command. Europeans leaders in both wars conceived of the United States as comparable to their own colonies and dominions, albeit larger and richer. For them, America was an extension of Europe and a replacement for deficits of European manpower and money. Despite greatly altered circumstances, this basic perception remains: America is (or should be) essentially European and the servant of Europe. Americans see their country and themselves in quite different terms, however. Certainly, the United States has been a European power for most of the past century, but it is not a European country, society or culture. America is not European, and there the "shared values" rationale for NATO dies.
An America Able To Say "No"
European purposes in NATO are clear: to subordinate American power and resources to their interests and to maintain a mechanism by which to constrain the United States. Whether a European policy judgment may be wise in any particular case is largely irrelevant. The subordination of American policy is a clear infringement of our national sovereignty and freedom of policy choice. If our policies are ill conceived or executed, it is our responsibility to rectify them, rather than to surrender our judgment to that of Europe, whose historical record is hardly one that bears emulation.
Europe today is inward-looking and regional in ambition, while the United States (for better or worse) has global interests and responsibilities. Any reasonable assessment of the century ahead indicates our future is more likely to be linked with the emerging destinies of Asia than of Europe. It is noteworthy that our image is significantly more favorable in most Asian societies than in European ones; there is a basic affinity between Asian countries and our own, if we can recognize it. Even the American demographic is shifting away from European origins at a rapid pace, making America increasing a global nation of nations. Europeans hate this trend, for it foretells an America that will cease to feel the historical European affinities from which they profit so much.
The trans-Atlantic relationship ("relationship," not "alliance") will doubtless remain of immense importance to the United States. Europe and North America are linked by a dense web of economic and other ties which remain robust and are likely to thrive for generations to come. Together we constitute something like half the global economy and most of the developed world. However, economic relationships do not require military ties to flourish. To believe they do is Cold War thinking, not supported by either American or European history. No other country defines its external economics as inexorably linked to military deployments and alliance obligations. America need not and should not do so.
Whether superpower or hyperpower, the United States does not possess limitless power. We need not maintain a foreign obligation just because we did so in a very different past. It is often noted that America possesses much more of the world's wealth than our share of its population, but rarely is the liability side of the ledger shown. Today, the asymmetry of America's global security obligations in comparison with those of other centers of wealth and power is striking. Our commitments are excessive, both when gauged against our capacities and the benefits accrued to the Republic. Obviously, some global burdens come with a global role, but there must be reasonable limits based on a sober assessment of national interest and of the capacities of other countries.
After almost a century of carrying Europe's water, it is time to stop. The Washington Treaty obligated this country to NATO for twenty years (Article XIII); thus, for almost four decades our role has exceeded our commitment. Europe is more than capable of looking out for itself and maintaining security in surrounding areas, including the Mediterranean and Black Seas plus much of Africa. Europe has the institutions, talent, technology and finances to manage the security of its corner of the planet. If (as seems likely) Europe does not choose to play a broader global security role, that is probably just as well. A provincial Europe is not a bad thing. What is not sustainable is that a restored Europe should remain a security protectorate of the United States. Security is the most fundamental aspect of public affairs, and European unity can never become fully mature until Europeans provide it for themselves. NATO is not a vehicle for European security integration; it is an impediment to it.
America remains the global leader in many fields including military power, but that is a national asset better husbanded than expended. Our armed forces need replenishment and a wiser choice of commitments. European security is one military burden America can and should lay down.
Wayne Merry is a former State Department and Pentagon official and now a Senior Associate of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC. He writes here in a personal capacity.
[1] Dana H. Allin et al, "Repairing the Damage: Possibilities and Limits of Transatlantic Consensus," International Institute of Strategic Studies Adelphi Paper no. 389, October 2007.
[2] Private conversation with the author, 1996.
[3] See, for example, "Defense Economics Reform IV: Budgets and Expenditure Choices in the Post Cold War," Conference Sponsored by the Conference Center of the George C Marshall European Center for Security Studies and the NATO Economics Directorate; Wildbad Kreuth, Germany; September 15-18, 2002.
[4] M.G. Field, "The Health Crisis in the Former Soviet Union: A Report from the 'Post War' Zone," Social Science and Medicine 41, no. 11 (1995), 1469-1478.
Start another war? With what? by Dan Thomasson
Start another war? With what?
DAN K. THOMASSON
GUEST COLUMNIST
WASHINGTON -- Now and then predictions of a pending U.S. invasion of Iran still raise their ugly head on the Internet no matter how illogical or unsustainable. That secret plan scenario is most assuredly going to follow President Bush and his fellow plotters right out the door of the White House nine months from now.
The simple question to those propounding that and other allegations of planned U.S. aggression outside of Iraq and Afghanistan is: "Invade with what?"
The brutal truth is that both the Army and the Marine Corps have been so strained by the current campaigns they would have trouble engaging the security forces of Monaco. In fact, leaders of both services told a congressional subcommittee last week that readiness to meet demands outside the present conflicts is at the lowest level since the abandonment of the draft. Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Cody said the stress level inflicted by the current deployment threatens the viability of all-volunteer military.
When the 30,000-troop surge in Iraq and Afghanistan began, Cody told the Senate Armed Services Committee readiness panel, it "took all the strokes out of the shock absorbers for the United States Army." He added that even if the five brigades were pulled out of Iraq by July it would take some time before the Army could return to 12-month deployments for its troops -- a not very encouraging assessment for all those alleged secret plotters of more military adventures operating in Pentagon backrooms and allied think tanks around the Beltway.
If the Army can't do it, send in the Marines! Right, except that they aren't in much better shape. According to Gen. Robert Magnus, assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, the service's ability to train for other conflicts has been significantly damaged ("degraded" is the way he put it), mainly because of an increased presence in Afghanistan. He said that although his forces involved in the surge already have pulled out, some 3,200 of them are on their way to Afghanistan keeping the pressure on viability high. The pace of operations is "unsustainable," he said, noting that the corps has limited ability to command and supply a divided force.
These bleak reports are hardly surprising given the reliance on reservists and National Guard personnel in both Iraq and Afghanistan. They come at a time when Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, is expected to testify to Congress that it will be necessary to temporarily halt troop withdrawals. This pause would likely bring howls of protest not only from Democrats and their presidential candidates but put even more stress on forces that have become increasingly resentful of extended and repeated tours.
Further complicating matters has been growing unrest in military families about extension of service beyond the enlistment contracts. Those who joined for specific terms have found their enlistments prolonged because of the war zone needs, a not uncommon practice during major conflicts. A new movie about this problem, "Stop Loss," is likely to stir more resentment and, some believe, hurt recruiting at a time the Army and Marines are trying to boost their active-duty rosters to 547,000 and 220,000 respectively.
It is doubtful that the abolition of the draft and the switch to all volunteers in the military following the long debacle in Vietnam anticipated fighting wars on two fronts while trying to maintain obligations in Europe and Asia. Moving from the huge draft-fed machine to the smaller, ostensibly more elite volunteer force was supposed to discourage military adventurism. Yet the requirements of occupying both Iraq and Afghanistan and fighting off insurgents have severely strained that concept. Both wars, if that is the proper term, have been going on longer than American involvement in World War II.
Does this support the argument for reinstating the draft? At this time, it would be politically unfeasible. But, as the experts told Congress this week, anything beyond the current level would require some major rethinking.
Meanwhile, all those Internet predictions of further military expeditions should be considered in the context of feasibility or the lack thereof. This coupled with a new report about the huge cost overruns in spending by the Pentagon on weapons of questionable effectiveness has put the Defense department and its military charges under more pressure than at any time since the fall of Saigon. It isn't a great picture, but it could change dramatically given the outcome of the November election.
Dan K. Thomasson is former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service.
DAN K. THOMASSON
GUEST COLUMNIST
WASHINGTON -- Now and then predictions of a pending U.S. invasion of Iran still raise their ugly head on the Internet no matter how illogical or unsustainable. That secret plan scenario is most assuredly going to follow President Bush and his fellow plotters right out the door of the White House nine months from now.
The simple question to those propounding that and other allegations of planned U.S. aggression outside of Iraq and Afghanistan is: "Invade with what?"
The brutal truth is that both the Army and the Marine Corps have been so strained by the current campaigns they would have trouble engaging the security forces of Monaco. In fact, leaders of both services told a congressional subcommittee last week that readiness to meet demands outside the present conflicts is at the lowest level since the abandonment of the draft. Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Cody said the stress level inflicted by the current deployment threatens the viability of all-volunteer military.
When the 30,000-troop surge in Iraq and Afghanistan began, Cody told the Senate Armed Services Committee readiness panel, it "took all the strokes out of the shock absorbers for the United States Army." He added that even if the five brigades were pulled out of Iraq by July it would take some time before the Army could return to 12-month deployments for its troops -- a not very encouraging assessment for all those alleged secret plotters of more military adventures operating in Pentagon backrooms and allied think tanks around the Beltway.
If the Army can't do it, send in the Marines! Right, except that they aren't in much better shape. According to Gen. Robert Magnus, assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, the service's ability to train for other conflicts has been significantly damaged ("degraded" is the way he put it), mainly because of an increased presence in Afghanistan. He said that although his forces involved in the surge already have pulled out, some 3,200 of them are on their way to Afghanistan keeping the pressure on viability high. The pace of operations is "unsustainable," he said, noting that the corps has limited ability to command and supply a divided force.
These bleak reports are hardly surprising given the reliance on reservists and National Guard personnel in both Iraq and Afghanistan. They come at a time when Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, is expected to testify to Congress that it will be necessary to temporarily halt troop withdrawals. This pause would likely bring howls of protest not only from Democrats and their presidential candidates but put even more stress on forces that have become increasingly resentful of extended and repeated tours.
Further complicating matters has been growing unrest in military families about extension of service beyond the enlistment contracts. Those who joined for specific terms have found their enlistments prolonged because of the war zone needs, a not uncommon practice during major conflicts. A new movie about this problem, "Stop Loss," is likely to stir more resentment and, some believe, hurt recruiting at a time the Army and Marines are trying to boost their active-duty rosters to 547,000 and 220,000 respectively.
It is doubtful that the abolition of the draft and the switch to all volunteers in the military following the long debacle in Vietnam anticipated fighting wars on two fronts while trying to maintain obligations in Europe and Asia. Moving from the huge draft-fed machine to the smaller, ostensibly more elite volunteer force was supposed to discourage military adventurism. Yet the requirements of occupying both Iraq and Afghanistan and fighting off insurgents have severely strained that concept. Both wars, if that is the proper term, have been going on longer than American involvement in World War II.
Does this support the argument for reinstating the draft? At this time, it would be politically unfeasible. But, as the experts told Congress this week, anything beyond the current level would require some major rethinking.
Meanwhile, all those Internet predictions of further military expeditions should be considered in the context of feasibility or the lack thereof. This coupled with a new report about the huge cost overruns in spending by the Pentagon on weapons of questionable effectiveness has put the Defense department and its military charges under more pressure than at any time since the fall of Saigon. It isn't a great picture, but it could change dramatically given the outcome of the November election.
Dan K. Thomasson is former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service.
After five years of US occupation, Iraq is destroyed as a country by Patrick Cockburn
After five years of U.S. occupation, Iraq is destroyed as a country
By PATRICK COCKBURN
THE INDEPENDENT
"It reminds me of Iraq under Saddam," a militant opponent of Saddam Hussein said angrily to me last week as he watched red-capped Iraqi soldiers close down part of central Baghdad so the convoy of Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, might briefly venture into the city.
Five years after the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. and Iraqi governments claim that the country is becoming a less dangerous place, but the measures taken to protect Maliki told a different story. Gun-waving soldiers first cleared all traffic from the streets. Then four black armored cars, each with three machine-gunners on the roof, raced out of the Green Zone through a heavily fortified exit, followed by sand-colored American Humvees and more armored cars. Finally, in the middle of the speeding convoy, we saw six identical bulletproof vehicles with black windows, one of which must have been carrying Maliki.
The precautions were not excessive, since Baghdad remains the most dangerous city in the world. The Iraqi prime minister was only going to the headquarters of the Dawa party, to which he belongs and which are just half a mile outside the Green Zone, but his hundreds of security guards acted as if they were entering enemy territory.
Five years of occupation have destroyed Iraq as a country. Baghdad is today a collection of hostile Sunni and Shiite ghettoes divided by high concrete walls. Different districts even have different national flags. Sunni areas use the old Iraqi flag with the three stars of the Baath party, and the Shiite wave a newer version, adopted by the Shiite-Kurdish government. The Kurds have their own flag.
The Iraqi government tries to give the impression that normality is returning. Iraqi journalists are told not to mention the continuing violence. When a bomb exploded in Karada district near my hotel, killing 70 people, the police beat and drove away a television cameraman trying to take pictures of the devastation. Civilian casualties have fallen from 65 Iraqis killed daily from November 2006 to August 2007 to 26 daily in February. But the fall in the death rate is partly because ethnic cleansing has already done its grim work and in much of Baghdad there are no mixed areas left.
More than most wars, the war in Iraq remains little understood outside the country. Iraqis themselves often do not understand it because they have an intimate knowledge of their own community, be it Shiite, Sunni or Kurdish, but little of other Iraqi communities. It should have been evident from the moment President Bush decided to overthrow Saddam Hussein that it was going to be a very different war from the one fought by his father in 1991. That had been a conservative war waged to restore the status quo ante in Kuwait.
The war of 2003 was bound to have radical consequences. If Saddam was overthrown and elections held, then the domination of the 20 percent Sunni minority would be replaced by the rule of the majority Shiite community allied to the Kurds. In an election, Shiite religious parties linked to Iran would win, as indeed they did in two elections in 2005. Many of America's troubles in Iraq have stemmed from Washington's attempt to stop Iran and anti-American Shiite leaders such as Muqtada al-Sadr filling the power vacuum left by the fall of Saddam.
The U.S. and its allies never really understood the war they won that started on March 19, 2003. Their armies had an easy passage to Baghdad because the Iraqi army did not fight. Even the so-called elite Special Republican Guard units, well-paid, well-equipped and tribally linked to Saddam, went home.
Television coverage and much of the newspaper coverage of the war was highly deceptive because it gave the impression of widespread fighting when there was none. I entered Mosul and Kirkuk, two northern cities, on the day they were captured with hardly a shot fired. Burnt-out Iraqi tanks littered the roads around Baghdad, giving the impression of heavy fighting, but almost all had been abandoned by their crews before they were hit.
The war was too easy. Consciously or subconsciously, Americans came to believe it did not matter what Iraqis said or did. They were expected to behave like Germans or Japanese in 1945, though most of Iraqis did not think of themselves as having been defeated. There was later to be much bitter dispute about who was responsible for the critical error of dissolving the Iraqi army. But at the time the Americans were in a mood of exaggerated imperial arrogance and did not care what Iraqis, whether in the army or out of it, were doing. "They simply thought we were wogs," says Ahmad Chalabi, the opposition leader, brutally. "We didn't matter."
In those first months after the fall of Baghdad it was extraordinary, and at times amusing, to watch the American victors behave exactly like the British at the height of their power in 19th-century India. The ways of the Raj were reborn. A friend who had a brokerage in the Baghdad stock market told me how a 24-year-old American, whose family were donors to the Republican Party, had been put in charge of the market and had lectured the highly irritated brokers, most of whom spoke several languages and had Ph.D.s, about the virtues of democracy.
There was a further misconception that grew up at this time. Most Iraqis were glad to be rid of Hussein. He had been a cruel and catastrophically incompetent leader, who ruined his country. All Kurds and most Shiite wanted him gone. But it did not follow that Iraqis of any description wanted to be occupied by a foreign power.
Later Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair gave the impression that overthrowing the Baathist regime necessarily implied occupation, but it did not. "If we leave, there will be anarchy," friends in the occupation authority used to tell me in justification. They stayed, but anarchy came anyway.
In that first year of the occupation, it was easy to tell which way the wind was blowing. Whenever there was an American soldier killed or wounded in Baghdad, I would drive there immediately. Always there were cheering crowds standing by the smoking remains of a Humvee or a dark bloodstain on the road. After one shooting of a soldier, a man told me: "I am a poor man but my family is going to celebrate what happened by cooking chicken." Yet this was the moment when Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were saying that the insurgents were "remnants of the old regime" and "dead enders."
There was also misconception among Iraqis about the depth of the divisions within their own society. Sunni would accuse me of exaggerating their differences with the Shiite, but when I mentioned prominent Shiite leaders they would wave a hand dismissively and say: "But they are all Iranians or paid by the Iranians." Al-Qaida in Iraq regarded the Shiite as heretics as worthy of death as the Americans. Enormous suicide bombs exploded in Shiite marketplaces and religious processions, slaughtering hundreds, and the Shiite began to hit back with tit-for-tat killings of Sunni by Shiite militia death squads or the police.
After the Sunni guerrillas blew up the Shiite shrine in Samarra on Feb. 22, 2006, sectarian fighting turned into a full-blown civil war. Bush and Blair strenuously denied that was so, but by any standard it was a civil war of extraordinary viciousness. Torture with electric drills and acid became the norm. The Shiite Mehdi Army militia took over much of Baghdad and controlled three-quarters of it. Some 2.2 million people fled to Jordan and Syria, a high proportion of them Sunni.
The Sunni defeat in the battle for Baghdad in 2006 and early 2007 was the motive for many guerrillas, previously anti-American, suddenly allying themselves with American forces. They concluded they could not fight the U.S., al-Qaida, the Iraqi army and police and the Mehdi Army at the same time.
There is now an 80,000-strong Sunni militia, paid for and allied to the U.S. but hostile to the Iraqi government. Five years after the American and British armies crossed into Iraq, the country has become a geographical expression.
Patrick Cockburn writes for Britain's The Independent from Iraq.
By PATRICK COCKBURN
THE INDEPENDENT
"It reminds me of Iraq under Saddam," a militant opponent of Saddam Hussein said angrily to me last week as he watched red-capped Iraqi soldiers close down part of central Baghdad so the convoy of Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, might briefly venture into the city.
Five years after the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. and Iraqi governments claim that the country is becoming a less dangerous place, but the measures taken to protect Maliki told a different story. Gun-waving soldiers first cleared all traffic from the streets. Then four black armored cars, each with three machine-gunners on the roof, raced out of the Green Zone through a heavily fortified exit, followed by sand-colored American Humvees and more armored cars. Finally, in the middle of the speeding convoy, we saw six identical bulletproof vehicles with black windows, one of which must have been carrying Maliki.
The precautions were not excessive, since Baghdad remains the most dangerous city in the world. The Iraqi prime minister was only going to the headquarters of the Dawa party, to which he belongs and which are just half a mile outside the Green Zone, but his hundreds of security guards acted as if they were entering enemy territory.
Five years of occupation have destroyed Iraq as a country. Baghdad is today a collection of hostile Sunni and Shiite ghettoes divided by high concrete walls. Different districts even have different national flags. Sunni areas use the old Iraqi flag with the three stars of the Baath party, and the Shiite wave a newer version, adopted by the Shiite-Kurdish government. The Kurds have their own flag.
The Iraqi government tries to give the impression that normality is returning. Iraqi journalists are told not to mention the continuing violence. When a bomb exploded in Karada district near my hotel, killing 70 people, the police beat and drove away a television cameraman trying to take pictures of the devastation. Civilian casualties have fallen from 65 Iraqis killed daily from November 2006 to August 2007 to 26 daily in February. But the fall in the death rate is partly because ethnic cleansing has already done its grim work and in much of Baghdad there are no mixed areas left.
More than most wars, the war in Iraq remains little understood outside the country. Iraqis themselves often do not understand it because they have an intimate knowledge of their own community, be it Shiite, Sunni or Kurdish, but little of other Iraqi communities. It should have been evident from the moment President Bush decided to overthrow Saddam Hussein that it was going to be a very different war from the one fought by his father in 1991. That had been a conservative war waged to restore the status quo ante in Kuwait.
The war of 2003 was bound to have radical consequences. If Saddam was overthrown and elections held, then the domination of the 20 percent Sunni minority would be replaced by the rule of the majority Shiite community allied to the Kurds. In an election, Shiite religious parties linked to Iran would win, as indeed they did in two elections in 2005. Many of America's troubles in Iraq have stemmed from Washington's attempt to stop Iran and anti-American Shiite leaders such as Muqtada al-Sadr filling the power vacuum left by the fall of Saddam.
The U.S. and its allies never really understood the war they won that started on March 19, 2003. Their armies had an easy passage to Baghdad because the Iraqi army did not fight. Even the so-called elite Special Republican Guard units, well-paid, well-equipped and tribally linked to Saddam, went home.
Television coverage and much of the newspaper coverage of the war was highly deceptive because it gave the impression of widespread fighting when there was none. I entered Mosul and Kirkuk, two northern cities, on the day they were captured with hardly a shot fired. Burnt-out Iraqi tanks littered the roads around Baghdad, giving the impression of heavy fighting, but almost all had been abandoned by their crews before they were hit.
The war was too easy. Consciously or subconsciously, Americans came to believe it did not matter what Iraqis said or did. They were expected to behave like Germans or Japanese in 1945, though most of Iraqis did not think of themselves as having been defeated. There was later to be much bitter dispute about who was responsible for the critical error of dissolving the Iraqi army. But at the time the Americans were in a mood of exaggerated imperial arrogance and did not care what Iraqis, whether in the army or out of it, were doing. "They simply thought we were wogs," says Ahmad Chalabi, the opposition leader, brutally. "We didn't matter."
In those first months after the fall of Baghdad it was extraordinary, and at times amusing, to watch the American victors behave exactly like the British at the height of their power in 19th-century India. The ways of the Raj were reborn. A friend who had a brokerage in the Baghdad stock market told me how a 24-year-old American, whose family were donors to the Republican Party, had been put in charge of the market and had lectured the highly irritated brokers, most of whom spoke several languages and had Ph.D.s, about the virtues of democracy.
There was a further misconception that grew up at this time. Most Iraqis were glad to be rid of Hussein. He had been a cruel and catastrophically incompetent leader, who ruined his country. All Kurds and most Shiite wanted him gone. But it did not follow that Iraqis of any description wanted to be occupied by a foreign power.
Later Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair gave the impression that overthrowing the Baathist regime necessarily implied occupation, but it did not. "If we leave, there will be anarchy," friends in the occupation authority used to tell me in justification. They stayed, but anarchy came anyway.
In that first year of the occupation, it was easy to tell which way the wind was blowing. Whenever there was an American soldier killed or wounded in Baghdad, I would drive there immediately. Always there were cheering crowds standing by the smoking remains of a Humvee or a dark bloodstain on the road. After one shooting of a soldier, a man told me: "I am a poor man but my family is going to celebrate what happened by cooking chicken." Yet this was the moment when Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were saying that the insurgents were "remnants of the old regime" and "dead enders."
There was also misconception among Iraqis about the depth of the divisions within their own society. Sunni would accuse me of exaggerating their differences with the Shiite, but when I mentioned prominent Shiite leaders they would wave a hand dismissively and say: "But they are all Iranians or paid by the Iranians." Al-Qaida in Iraq regarded the Shiite as heretics as worthy of death as the Americans. Enormous suicide bombs exploded in Shiite marketplaces and religious processions, slaughtering hundreds, and the Shiite began to hit back with tit-for-tat killings of Sunni by Shiite militia death squads or the police.
After the Sunni guerrillas blew up the Shiite shrine in Samarra on Feb. 22, 2006, sectarian fighting turned into a full-blown civil war. Bush and Blair strenuously denied that was so, but by any standard it was a civil war of extraordinary viciousness. Torture with electric drills and acid became the norm. The Shiite Mehdi Army militia took over much of Baghdad and controlled three-quarters of it. Some 2.2 million people fled to Jordan and Syria, a high proportion of them Sunni.
The Sunni defeat in the battle for Baghdad in 2006 and early 2007 was the motive for many guerrillas, previously anti-American, suddenly allying themselves with American forces. They concluded they could not fight the U.S., al-Qaida, the Iraqi army and police and the Mehdi Army at the same time.
There is now an 80,000-strong Sunni militia, paid for and allied to the U.S. but hostile to the Iraqi government. Five years after the American and British armies crossed into Iraq, the country has become a geographical expression.
Patrick Cockburn writes for Britain's The Independent from Iraq.
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