After watching the Sunday newsies with clips of Bush, Cheney on camera and Hadley the functionary, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that we, Americans are chasing phantoms in the world, phantoms carefully cultivated in a surfeit of seminars and an excess of Jungian memory.
The president says that we are locked in an ideological struggle —– OK, So what are the ideologies involved?
!- Freedom? On our side? That includes the Pakistanis, Saudis, Israelis, The Siniora government in Lebanon, Abu Mazen in Palestine, the Shia government of Iraq? The Iraqi Kurds? Turkey? Libya? Egypt? Yemen?
2- "Islamic Fascism" On the other side? Hamas, Syria, Iran, The Sunni insurgents (various), the jihadis?
This is tricky stuff. The Saudis? The administration’s "pet" Lebanese? The "freedom" list looks more like a list of our client states than anything else. Saudi Arabia has no consitution other that the Quran, no law except for Sharia and that of the Hanbali variety. Pakistan is one man’s life away from being a Shariah state. Yemen? Libya? My God! The Israelis? Sorry folks, but Carter is right. From the point of view of the the Palestinians Israel/Palestine is not a free place.
"Freedom" and "Islamic Fascism" clearly have "special" meanings here. I say that "freedom" as the bushies use the term is code and really means westernization and "globalization" in the sense that we want to see the world "ironed out" flat so the it meets the egregious Friedman’s dream of a homogeneous world. "Islamic Fascism" means, I think, simply "Islam." That is, Islam as it has been understod by millennia of Muslims. That is, as an all encompassing view of the world and man’s relationship to God. "Ah, but these are not real Muslims," I can hear the outcry now. Rubbish. We non-Muslims can not dictate to any particular group of Muslms what Islam means to them. We want an Islam similar in its role in life to the emasculated role that Christianity plays for most Americans in their lives? Sorry! We do not get to choose for them. There wil be a reaction to what I have written here. It will be similar to the outrage vented on me by a former congressman from the Midwest who went on and and on about the nice ladies who come to his office to tell him that Muslims are a peaceful lot. Peaceful? Yes? Within limits.
My analysis leads me to the belief that in reality we are fighting against traditional Islam. What do I mean by that? I mean that the US government claims that it is opposing only the extreme jihadis whether Sunni or Shia, but, in fact is opposing the whole structuire of traditional Islamic life and law in the name of “universal values” which are, in fact, Western in origin. In this context “democracy,” “globalization” are mere code for the goal of acculturating the Muslims in the direction of the West.
—————————————————————
Iran and the international jihadi movement are existential threats to Israel. They are not existential threats to the the USA. Fight over that one. Just think about what it would take to kill the USA. It would take a lot, a hell of a lot. Think about potential jihadi or Iranian capabilities. Think about ranges, throw weights. Think about "the unthinkable." Undertand that the death of a city will not kill the United States. We are Israel’s ally. We are prepared to go to war for Israel. I do not question that as policy, but if we go to war with Iran at root it will be because of the Israelis reasonable fear them as an existential threat. pl
“The president says that we are locked in an ideological struggle.”
No.
HE is locked in an ideological struggle. WE are just his captive audience. HE is a fanatic. WE are just trying to do our everyday lives. There are millions of muslims who are not zealots. There are millions of western Christians who are not following the tenets of the old testament. These are not the middle ages. Turning the whole world into Israel vs. Palestine was not the best way to go on 9/12/01.
Reasonable, rational, thinking people need to take the reigns of power away from the people who are still advocating this so-called ideological struggle.
Enough already.
Dear Pat,
I have not read Carter’s book. I agree with you that “this is tricky stuff.” I would be the last person to defend the Israeli occupation of Palestine. I support a two state solution with the 1967 borders. However, I think it is a mistake to put the US and Israel on opposite sides. What is the real moral difference between our functioning democracy and that of Israel? And what is the difference between what we are doing in Iraq–unacceptable and against our interests and what the Israelis are doing in the territories–unacceptable and against their interests? Doesn’t that make moiety?
Michael Singer
Michael
This is a good point. Like the Israelis we now are the occupying power over an alien people. I suppose I will hear about the Indians now from someone. you are right. We are no better.
“My analysis leads me to the belief that we are fighting against traditional Islam.”
Why Iran is Next
Dear PAt,
On your second point about going to the defense of Israel were they to be attacked by Iran or whomever. I understand you supprt that policy. In the long list of rotten, fascistic, monarchies, dictatorships and oil and mineral rich regimes over which Presidents have shed American blood and treasure, Israel looks like a flawed but decent enough ally to fight with and for.
Smedley ButlerUSMC had it right along time ago. And so does Brezsinski and the peaceniks:Iraq is a colonial–blood for oil–war and equally it is Us against Islam though I think Lina adds much needed grey to this manichean struggle.
Michael Singer
Michael
We will obviously defend Israel if it is attacked. My point is that if WE attack Iran it will really be for the purpose of defending Israel. pl
I say that “freedom” as the bushies use the term is code and really means westernization and “globalization” in the sense that we want to see the world “ironed out” flat so the it meets the egregious Friedman’s dream of a homogeneous world.
True, so much of the reform and governance efforts in Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and elsewhere have been to bring those countries within the fold of the WTO, IMF, WIPO and their economic and legal guidelines.
Globalization, as Friedman preaches it, is another utopian project, so much like Communism in its ideal form. The “flattening” of the world will attenuate all of the old ethnic, religious and economic divisions of mankind and bring about a world in which we can all sing the Ode to Joy: Alle menchen wurden Bruder. Of course the “Ode to Joy” is the anthem of the EU, the most advanced globalist governance structure.
The globalist project will also destroy local mores, cultures, religions and habits of trade (e.g. the souk replaced by the Mega-Mall filled with transnational retailers like The Gap), but to its proponents like Friedman, it’s a small price to pay for world peace and prosperity.
We want an Islam similar in its role in life to the emasculated role that Christianity plays for most Americans in their lives?
My analysis leads me to the belief that we are fighting against traditional Islam.
Of course, the globalist/modernist/rationalist project which we provide the muscle and money for is a relentless enemy of all religions, not just traditional Islam. This is a main source of of religious/cultural conflict in the USA: the Founders, with their Enlightenment ideas and vague Deism, wrote a Constitution which operates now to give primacy to secularism in the public sphere. The free expression and neutrality about religion produces thousands of works everyday which are subversive to religious doctrine: from the most rarified scientific work to the lowest pornography. The scientific and media output of the West is destroying religious belief.
I think that “existential threat” is a bit of a sticky question. Can violent radicals who aren’t the government of a major power destroy the United States physically? No, in that I agree with you.
But a very large part of our way of life is quite fragile, relying on low-cost transportation, communications, and computing and the marginal cost/benefit ratios of those things are threatened by an uptick in terrorism. The analogy here may be the North and the South during the American Civil War. The North did not have the ability to destroy the South in the sense of physically destroying it (obviously, since it still exists). But it could and did destroy the way of life there.
I don’t know whether we’re at war with traditional Islam or not. I don’t know enough about the subject to render an informed opinion. But I suspect that business and cultural practices that rely on controlling information and the access to information have already lost the war whether you’re talking about retailers with high margins or cultural practices that are only allowed to survive while they can be kept in the shadows.
Col. Lang:
I agree with you, unfortunately. Some of the US President’s speeches several years ago left we wondering when he would be stitching a cross to his chest. I also think the US & EU elites are fundamentally misjudging what is going on. They seem to be modeling their policies and responses on the Cold War where 2 (post-Christian) branches of the Western Civilization faced off each other.
I do not believe that US is in an ideological struggle with Islam; that struggle is over and Islam has won; ergo no struggle.
Furthermore, from a religious point of view one can argue that the manner by which Freedom, Pluralism, Democracy etc. are presented by the US & EU elites leads one to conclude that these are new idols. Thus, from a strictly monotheistic religious (Judaic, Christian, Islamic) point of view, such idols must be resisted, like any other idol – for they are against the one True God. In fact, 2000 years ago, based on similar reasoning, the Jewish Rabbis rejected Rome for her godlessness and idol-worship.
I would also like to observe here that US & EU are going to have similar problems with Hinduism once it enters its militant phase. It will make the current difficulties with the world of Islam look like a picnic. And you heard this from me first!
My impression (listening to various former and current US officials) has been that they are not fearful of a nuclear attack on US by a state. Rather, it seems to me, that they are fearful of a terrorist attack. If so, I think then that they are going about it the wrong way – in my opinion.
In regards to Israel and the Palestinians – I believe that the 2-state solution is a pipe-dream. After 40 years of evolution of the West Bank and Gaza under Israeli occupation I cannot see how paper agreements can change those facts on the ground. I think that the only workable approach is a bi-national state; which, then, by definition, would mean the end of the Zionist project.
I do not know of any formal treaty of defense between Israel and US. I cannot see the utility of a treaty between US and Israel – a state without defined borders. The answer to Israel’s security could have been found in her joining NATO but then Israelis did not want that – it interfered with their land grab policy since their joining NATO would have required defined borders.
I think the best thing that US could do for Israel was to get her to recognized international borders and build on that. Now it is too late – the character of the war has changed – it is now a war between Judaism and Islam.
The neo-Salafi (a.k.a. International Jihadi Movement) is also a threat to Shia in general and Iran specifically. Shia in Pakistan have been targeted for more than 10 years long before 9/11. There were terrorist attacks against Iranian targets in Pakistan all throughout 1990s long before US woke up to their danger.
And lastly, you are right: Muslims are not a bunch of dead-dog liberals, offering the other cheek. Islam is not Christianity and will never be like it – which reminds of a speech by Ayatollah Khomeini in which he questioned the authenticity of the (Hadith) “…offer the other cheek”. For him (Khomeini) it was inconceivable that a Prophet of God – who is ordained to oppose oppression- would make such a statement.
Kevin:
The Iranian oil bourse would have been good for both buyers and sellers because it would have taken the middle men out. It was not a threat against US – it would have been beneficial (indirectly) to US.
It has not yet seen the light of day because there are powerful interests inside Iran that benefit financially from the current opaque situation (a.k.a. corruption).
Conclusion that may imply much the same end result r being drawn in the arab world.
There was alot of concern within the cultural left in the 1990’s, that economic globalization would homogenize the world’s cultures. It did the opposite by empowering the forces of nationalism and religeous fundamentalism. India and China are the two big cases.
The westernization of any eastern people is a complete fantasy. Iran 1979 anybody? Modernization, ofcourse, is a different story. Would the aigis of religeous nationalism be the best bet for Iraq to modernize under, socio-politically? I think so, but unfortunatly we are at war with Iraq’s religeous nationalists.
According to The Chinese Machiavelli: 3000 Years of Chinese Statecraft, by Ching Ping and Dennis Bloodworth, the first lesson of statecraft is “respecting the king and repelling the barbarian.”
[W]hen the feudal states feuded, the first thing that happened was that the more uncouth tribal fiefs on their fringes rose against them…The royal house of Chou might have fallen into decay, but the king was still the king, the lord of All under Heaven, and the great Duke of Ch’i would stop playing the bully the other feudal states of the Middle Kingdom would accept his leadership and unite behind him against the woollier tribes threatening its periphery Chinese Machiavelli at p. 6.
Following this logic, an appropriate strategy for a weak king, who needs support, is to manufacture barbarians who appear to be threatening. Essentially Bush is now doing this.
I urge people to read this book. It complements H. John Poole’s Phantom Soldier and The Tiger’s Way, by setting forth Oriental political and diplomatic stratagems to match Poole’s Oriental warfare.
It’s interesting how for decades Israel was somehow able to contemplate its future existence with the Islamic Republic of Iran until after our invasion and occupation of Iraq–which Israel supported and which intentionally removed one of their sworn enemies and replaced it with a new “ally” in the Freedom Train ideology.
Yet now Iran has been elevated by Israeli and Republican rhetoric into an existential threat that we (Israel’s only ally) must either defang or vanquish on their behalf.
So Saddam was the appararent key to the entire world being able to live with Iran, eh? He was pretty darn useful, it seems.
For Bush, “freedom” means corporate freedom. All his actions make sense in that context. In the law, there is a legal fiction that a corporation is a “person.” Some people can’t distinguish a legal fiction from fact.
Iran is not an existential threat to Israel. Israel’s nuclear arsenal (mutual assured destruction) will always deter any such possibility. Iran is an existential threat to Israeli hegemony. There is a big difference.
It’s not even about Israel. It’s about GREATER Israel. Not about Islam, but the Salafists that grew enraged that the Saudi Royal House got too close to Cheney in the early 90’s.
Baker and Carter are right. Solve the Israel/Palestine problem and the rest of the puzzle falls into place. Because it removes the NeoKon Likudniks agenda. They are the driving force of policy in this country.
‘My analysis leads me to the belief that we are fighting against traditional Islam.”
Yes, you are absolutely right because we can not admit we are fighting to maintain our privileged position in the international economic system. How can we say that we fight for rentiers and resource thieves? Indeed, the fight “against traditional Islam” seems strongest in those locales which are actual or potential sources of oil or that are actual or potential transit states for oil. The ideological struggle is over who controls a state’s resources: that state or multinational corporations. While elites fight the battle of greed and avarice, the rest of us are going to settle scores and wage religious-metaphysical warfare over our souls and consciences.
The issue of how Israel fits into overall U.S. foreign policy lies beyond rational discourse. Of course we will go to war for Israel. Hell, we’ll go to war for almost anything, just give us a convincing lie errrr excuse.
Provocative topic, again, my compliments.
Patrick Buchanan, a former Presidential speechwriter has correctly parsed the Great Deciders (“GD”) recent speech.
He makes the points that 1)the stakes are hi, 2) the troop surge is not going to do it, and 3) the GD’d GD has announced his ace in the hole, to wit: bombing Iran.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=18914
All the indicia were there in the speech. Networks supplying weapons. Dispatch of another carrier. Patriot air defense systems to protect our friends from retaliation when we bomb Iran.
It’s coming. Now, we”ll see how the NeoKon Likudniks control both sides of the Congressional aisle.
Will
Nah. The deciders are not sophisticated enough to really believe that. The talk about “extremists” is for the purpose of deception of others and themselves about the real nastiness. pl
David
Nah. The “deterrence” point is something out of war gaming seminars.
Ask yourselves if the Israelis will be willing to live with an Iran which is restrained from destroying Haifa and Tel Aviv by “deterrence.” pl
I can’t see him not going for it. It’s his last chance to make good.
“As George Bush reflects on his legacy, an urgent question must be pressing in upon him each day.
Will I leave here as the man who launched failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that cost thousands of U.S. dead, to no avail? Or can I yet enter history as the Churchillian statesman who used U.S. power to save America and Israel from the mortal threat of atomic weapons in the hands of the Iranian mullahs? ”
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=18836
But more importantly
“Needed today are courageous men and women of both parties who will introduce and pass a congressional resolution stating, “In the absence of a direct Iranian attack on U.S. forces or personnel, or an imminent threat of such an attack, President Bush has no authority to launch a pre-emptive strike or a preventive war on Iran.”
Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Defense Dept. has been looking for new enemies to rally the American people against. On Sept. 11, 2001, they found it, or so they thought…
The US narrative was that the US was the super-powerful remaining superpower whose power was unlimited.
When a country becomes powerful, it first becomes economically strong, then diplomatically strong. Last of all, it becomes militarily strong. Smart leaders are very careful in their willingness to use military power; most believe in the power of diplomacy, and have had the good sense to read Sun Zi.
When a country goes into decline, it first declines diplomatically, then politically, then economically. Last of all, it sinks militarily. The US is now following this path of decline; it has accelerated under Bush.
Although Muslims are against US policy in the ME; in fact, they have had no personal hatred for the US until the Iraq debacle. Now, the fight has become personal.
My greatest fear is that if the US loses big-time in Iraq, there will be a wave of anti-Semitism in the US, as the neocons and their unquestioning support of Israel’s irredentist policies will fuel a tremendous amount of animosity. This is unfortunate, as there are many good Jewish-Americans who stand for reason in the ME; Carl Levin of Michigan is a good example. However, there voices are comparatively unheard. Their voices of reason are completely ignored by the Bush administration, which prefers the Lieberman line.
Even more interesting is the rise of Islam in the US Bible belt. This is not a small movement; just watch this video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9184353144432289069&q=Islam+in+Texas
The end result is that the US will no longer be the single dominant power; it will be replaced on the economic and diplomatic fronts by China, which is much more popular worldwide than the US. This is already rapidly happening now, at a much faster pace than the Chinese are comfortable with. The Chinese want to rise, but not so fast. However, they have no influence/control over the rapid rate of decline of the US.
The next generation of American leaders will have to come up with a new American narrative to explain how the country got to where it is going. Saying that America is the greatest country in the world just won’t cut it anymore.
The Plan for Economic Strangulation of Iran
One 9/11 – and we have habeas corpus suspended, the government without warrant listening to our phone calls, reading our email, obtaining our credit records, the President greatly expanding executive power and is the Decider answerable to none – what is all that other than a existential threat to the United States? What would happen after a more severe attack? Sure, the physical infrastructure will creak along, but the meaning would have vanished.
Very nice statement. I am not sure I entirely agree, but you highlight issues that are interesting to think about. In particular, My analysis leads me to the belief that we are fighting against traditional Islam. is at once thought provoking and disturbing as it is a losing proposition.
This silly anti-globalisation screed, however, is pure fantasy:
The globalist project will also destroy local mores, cultures, religions and habits of trade (e.g. the souk replaced by the Mega-Mall filled with transnational retailers like The Gap), but to its proponents like Friedman, it’s a small price to pay for world peace and prosperity.
Local choices make local cultural changes (I leave aside the nitwit Friedman, you will not find more effective critiques of his simple minded cheerleading than from informed ‘pro globalisation’ writers such as Martin Wolfe.), and to the extent that a shopping mall is favoured over the traditional souq, well that will be the choice of the local consumer.
Fetishisation of “local” shops over the fiction of “trans-national retailers” (rarely of any import outside their home markets in terms of sales) is merely illiterate fear-mongering.
Is it not deterrence that kept the cold war in check? I do not think that MAD is the stuff of war games alone. If Israel and our own government cannot show more respect for the legitimate aspirations of other peoples and adhere to the cold logic of deterrence then we are indeed doomed.
A final item, to my friend Dave Schuler supra.
While the global economic system is indeed a thing that can be disrupted, I do not see in my knowledge of logistics chains and economies, a real existential threat from al-Qaeda, nor most any Islamist movement.
A nuclear exchange – well not even there unless the protagonists hit the Gulf oil fields.
soar
You think that Iran is the equivalent of the USSR? pl
The US did live with an existential threat during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. These are now Russian missles not Soviet, but they are still there, so if the retrogression of Russian leaders continues, the existential threat could return.
Your post brings two question to mind:
1) What would the world look like today if during the Cold War, the US had followed methods similar to Bush and Cheney’s in order to deal with the Cold War existential threat from the Soviet Union?
2) I was a very small child when the US was targeted by Soviet missles, but I do remember the tension. If the US lived with it, and solved it by a patient policy of diplomacy and deterrence, why should Israel not do likewise? Do you think the real long-term leadership of Iran are less rational than those of the old Soviet Union. The crazy Iranian President’s party already took a drubbing in recent elections, and his opponents are trying to move up the next presidential election to finish him off politically.
Iran will not become a nuclear power for five to ten years, and even after that, if it occurs, why should Israel get a special dispensation from having to live with an existential threat? Who was around to give the US a special dispensation from its existential threat? Israel is a very important ally, and I agree that that the US should guarantee that it will respond if Israel is attacked, to make the policy of deterrence as strong and convincing as possible. If that sounds like I am anti-Israel, I would respond that I am firmly convinced that I am very firmly convinced that the policy I favor is much more likely to work in the long run.
Also, what do you mean by ‘traditional Islam’? Do you believe that Islam as practiced in, say Malaysia or Indonesia is the same kind of threat as that practiced in Saudi Arabia or by Pakistani fundamentalists?
Also I can’t help responding to one commenter’s statement that any threat to our economis way of life is a threat to our freedom. And my response is that if you look at a map of how Middle Eastern Oil gets to to the US and Europe, it seems to me that the Bush/Cheney approach is an equally grave threat to our economic way of life, and therefore an equal threat to our freedom.
Overall I think you’re right on both counts. As to the first, it’s become clear that that bush and his people never use the important words the way everybody else understands them. They have secret meanings that have to be decoded.
A question or addendum, though. One of the bushies’ core convictions has always been that terrorism and terrorist networks– the famous “non-state actors”– never count for much; only when supported by states are they anything to pay attention to. That’s why Condi didn’t care about the famous AQ warning, for example, and why even now they’re attempting to move against Hezbullah by threatening Syria and Iran.
This is an amazing theory. (See, eg, the history of Israel 1947-9, of the US 1776 as portrayed in _Washington’s Crossing_, the “NJ rising” in particular. See also 9/11.)
But it points to where I think Brzezinski is essentially right about this being a colonial war. Iran is the very symbol of autonomous Islam these days, as Iraq was for a long time the symbol of an autonomous secularist but largely Islamic state. Egypt, also somewhat autonomous, doesn’t have any oil to speak of, is desperately poor and internally riven, so who cares? Etc.
Ultimately then I’d say that bush is really making war on the possibility of autonomous points of view in areas of the world whose resources we care about. That’s pretty colonial.
On the other issue, I agree with the poster who points to the centrality of Palestine for everyone else. I’d add that one of the big dangers for us is the way we’ve completely taken over the Israeli view of non-Israelis in that region– where does anyone think we learned the interrogation techniques we’ve been using there? But of course that only reinforces the colonialist nature of what’s going on.
One other question, somewhat off-topic: I’ve always understood Mesopotamia to be very tribally-based in the way that Chinese society is family and clan-based, and I’m wondering about the overlap of tribalism and sectarianism now that we’ve destroyed the Iraqi state.
Calling what’s going on there “tribalism” would say that the society’s loyalties are much more fractured than does calling it “sectarianism.” Conversely, speaking of “sectarian” strife implies that the two (or three) main groups are pretty cohesive. Is there any value in thinking of it as a tribal place rather than, or in addition to, a sectarian place?
Am having trouble with my keyboard as previous gobbledygook shows. Forgive me.
This is by far the most intellectually stimulating blog on the Net. Thinkers are posting here.
I have but one comment to add to all the statements that have gone before. George Bush has spoken the truth about what is going down, and he did so right after 9/11: he called it a “crusade.”
Depending on how one counts them, there have been 20 such…and the West has won none of them!
Col. Lang:
Nuclear weapons have not and will not bring security to Israel.
If they really truly wish to be secure in the Near East for centuries (or at least decades) they will fly to Tehran and kiss Ayatollah Khamenei’s robe and ask him to be their godfather.
Altoid:
There are some Arab tribes that have both Shia and Sunni branches.
On the other hand, in Somalia, the civil war has been among clans of the same tribe.
Kurds are also tribal (Barzani and Talabani in Iraq). But there are also Shia Kurds and Kurds that are no longer tribal at all.
You have to look at it from the point of view power.
While I could agree that the Israel-Palestine War is a central concern of the Arabs (and Muslim) people its resolution (which is now impossible) cannot usher in a solution to all issues.
There is fear in Saudi Arabia, for example, that the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan might some day la claim to Saudi Arabia. There is general fear of Iran in the Persian Gulf. There is the animosity between Jordan and Syria. There is the issues between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, between Yemen and Saudi Arabia etc.
Why can’t the mad idea work with Iran, you have said (I think) that they would be up and running again quickly after an airstrike.
Of course this then leads to the neo-crumb wet dream of regime change.
Sir: You state Israel is our ally, and we are obligated to defend her…Please share with me information on the treaty we have with Israel? I cannot find any information on a treaty that says we have this obligation. Wouldn’t such an obligation have to be codified in a treaty negotiated by the president and ratified by the Senate?
pl… Sorry folks, but Carter is right.
Michele Malkin will never read your blog again, Col.
col. Lang:
very provocative post.
i wonder if it doesn’t beg the question “is traditional islam at war with us?”
after all, it takes two to tango.
I’ve been wondering whether somewhere, lurking in the shadows of all of this are two question both sides seem to be wrestling with. the first might be something like
“whatever are we to do with modernity?”
and the second might sound something like
“what on earth are we to do with capitalism?”
and somehow, the two are conflated by both sides to the great dismay of those who do not see the two as inseparable.
i think there is a substantial number of muslims who do not see themselves as outside of modernity- indeed they are insulted, even humiliated, by the idea that they are somehow seen as pre-modern.
it is this posture within the islamic body politic that is simultaneously threatened and threatening to the salafist/ jihadi strain.
meanwhile the ‘dominant regime’, our side, has wasted no time in dictating the post war rules of the game to the troublesome arab hinterland: the price of modernity will henceforth be the subjugation to capitalism (globalization, flatness, whatever.) resistance to these terms, be it in the name of nationalism, arabism, islamism, leftism, whatever, is lumped into the only officially recognized -ism left: terrorism.
the stakes are exceptionally high indeed, because if this effort fails, or if we, here, somehow are able to dissolve the link between modernity and capitalism once and for all, then the consequences for this regime and all how benefit from it are indeed catastrophic.
I do question going to war for Israel as a policy. What utility does that have anymore? The primary potential value Israel brings to the US table right now is as a diplomatic sacrifice.
Well said anon.
I do believe that we and the Israelis should show Iranians proper respect, as they are very shrewd operators, adept at playing us like the chumps we have become. This business of treating the Iranians like children, somehow incapable of rational conduct & deep strategic thinking has got to stop. If any can be thus accused it would be our own pitiful leadership whose actions are rooted in conceit, prejudice, ignorance and impulsive hostility.
There has been a rising tide in all of the major religious faiths, except possibily The Buddhist one, of increasing reistance to the impact of the modern world and its scientific, economic, social and cultrual disruptions of traditional mores and beliefs. If you want to understand it look at the rise of the religious right in the US. when one is objectified and rendered essentially valueless, reistance is one option and traditional religious structures and beliefs can be very active in that pursuit. Note the impact of the Roman Church in Poland in recent past. In the complex of variables that arise in any confrontation like this all sorts of allies will be looked for. Fundamentalism of any type is hard to confront and root out unless you can create a different and more attractive culture. And that will be reisted ferociously and frequently with armed might. Review the 17th Centur’s Wars of religion to get a small flavor of the kind of intensity that can develope. It was only in the neext century, when the rise of modern science and its methodologies had sufficiently undercut the forces of both religion and autcracy that the thinking that led to our revelotion and Republic. it was Diederot, I think, who said “…that human kind would not be free until the last lawyer was hung with the guts of the last priest”. The Col. is correct, Islam and the Islamic World have not gone through an analogic process and consequently we are slowly stumbling into a confrontation wiith it and them. Our own religious fundamentalist aupport that confrontation so it begins to look like a war of faiths as well as a traditionalist. With this President the ‘religion’ card has been crucial to his rise and support and for his party. Faiths are not finally available to “reason” in the final analysis, in diasagrement they are only available to conflict. Part of the ‘war against Islam’ is fuled by Christian belief and rhetoric. Since we are at war within ourselves on these issues [modernity and religion ] we cannot ‘think coherently as a society about what we’re up to. The more our elites pander to religious extremists in our own society the less able we are of act coherently. We need to solve our own internal religious wars and not export them to some enemy.
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board/viewtopic.php?t=10012&sid=9a35221b16b9bd8a9791c2ca756834ce-
The ‘Salvador Option’
At this point, legendary Iraqi blogger ‘Riverbend’ reported that many of the supposed suicide bombings were in fact remotely detonated car bombs or time bombs. She related how a man was arrested for allegedly having shot at a National Guardsman after huge blasts struck in west Baghdad. But according the man’s neighbours, far from having shot anyone, he had seen “an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion. Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued. He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it. He was promptly taken away.”
I’d like to know what treaty obligations have been signed which state that the US will attack anyone that attacks Israel. Since–I imagine–there is no such treaty, the assumption that this is the US position should be submitted to Congress and debated.
Perhaps there is a rationale for asserting this desire on the part of America, although I personally see nothing but some nostalgic religious sentiments that are exploited by politicians in the US and Israel to bolster the view.
Having said this, I wonder what the founding fathers would have said about the idea that the US is defending on religious principles one state over another. As some have noted, John Adams and the US Senate signed a treaty with Islamic Tripoli (now known as Libya). In this treaty, it is explicitly stated that the US does not discriminate in pursuing its interests based on religion.
Juan Cole quotes the treaty:
This quote shows that it has been US policy not to decide its political interests with reference to religious affiliations.
This is not to deny that there are various interests that the Israelis support vis a vis the US in the Mideast. I would argue, however, that the founding of the state of Israel and its continuing destabilization of the Mideast has formed the basis of more threats to US interests than not.
On the other hand, there seems to be little ground for the idea that various Islamic governments such as Iran and Syria are not amenable to diplomatic relations with the US. This was borne out recently with Iranian help in Afghanistan, approaches by Iran to normalizing political relations between the two countries, and Iran’s attempts to negotiate its nuclear/energy programs well before the time this issue went into crisis mode.
To say that the US is in a war against Islam seems, by historical standards at least, deeply unAmerican. If the President wishes to change that history and that ideology, then those intentions should come under scrutiny and be debated in those terms. To have this type of activity go unnoticed and unquestioned lays a dangerous precedent whose future ramifications bode ill for US diplomatic efforts.
Great post Colonel. Thank you very much.
It would be great to sit at a late night cafe with you and some of your friends and listen and maybe add a bit of my own. Mostly to learn though.
Yes, let us reclaim the reigns of power from those equivocators who are promoting ideological struggle. It is a large task though: Mr. Wolfowitz and Mr. Cheney are only the surface of the melting iceberg. Is it a hopeless dream, and thus endlessly frustrating? Or are we powerless and thus open to a grace that is embodied in any true spiritual path? Yes, all religion, all spiritual paths appear challenged by corporate power and person.
However, any spiritually true way cannot be blocked by that sort of force. There is, in Christian language, the Annunciation – a willingness to accept birth of a new way, the betrayal – of the earth, of indigenous cultures, the Crucifixion, global warming, endless killing of innocents, a threat of nuclear holocaust. However,the Resurrection and then the Ascension are promised. The True Light cannot be extinguished by those who seek or hold worldly power.
And yes, I agree, liguistics is vital today. What are the code words, what are the daily shifting meanings and rationalizations? And when will rational, truly kind and centered people begin to use our language and marketing skills?
Freedom from, Freedom to, Freedom of – speechwriters put forth words very quickly for consumption. Define ideology please. And please don’t pull a Leo Strauss on me saying I’m not capable of understanding, or it needs to be withheld from me for my own good.
Again, however, expecting those sorts of questions to be answered by Madame Secretary Rice or Gen. Powell or Douglas Feith or any on that level, until they reach an epiphany similar to Robert McNamara’s, is well almost a guaranteed resentment and heartache.
Maybe Chuck Hegal will answer some of those things and talk straight talk. I’d love to see you, Col Lang, speak with him. Again thank you.
Just wanted to pay my compliments to Col. Lang for his clear-ended, honest and knowlegeable opening post, and for this forum in general. This blog helps to counter the floods of cant from Washington, reminding non-Americans that honesty, decency and intelligence are not yet dead in the USA.
This war can not be won militarily; which is what the Democrats & Liberals have been saying all along. The Republicans & the Conservatives have totally abandoned their Judah-Christian teaching which state “That the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds.”
If we are truly fighting a war on terrorism, which is an intangible enemy then any Christian worth his salt should know that the war will not be won with guns and bombs
After watching the interview of President Bush on 60 Minutes tonight, I can sleep better tonight.
When Scott Pelley asked the president if he was a stubborn person, he answered that he considered himself to be an “open-minded, flexible person.”
That is so reassuring. I have been worrying that we had a president who had run amok, who would ignore a newly assertive Congress and is hellbent on war with Iran and Syria, in addition to fighting a 40-year war (Cheney’s words) with Islam, I mean “terrorism” (as defined by him).
Now that would have been scary, wouldn’t it?
“when you don’t like the facts, enforce rules”. we’ve observed this in the Bushitburo’s domestic politics, and the GWOT policies at home & abroad. coercion by force is the only means of control with which they are truly comfortable.
it surprises me that old-school Conservatives are not organizing marches on the WH – they always claimed to be willing to fight for their beliefs.
on modernity; who owns it – the inventors or the best practitioners? if China does to modernity what Japan did to the US auto industry, we may get flat after all, just not “our” kinda flat.
Your post gives me the impression there has been a change in your thinking, Colonel. Are you still alarmed by the prospect of a war with Iran? Or have you resigned yourself to it, thinking maybe it won’t kill us to do one more war for Israel after all?
Please let me know before I dig up any more of the back yard for my Victory Garden.
Brenda
Resignation is not the same thing as acceptance. pl
Fetishisation of “local” shops over the fiction of “trans-national retailers” (rarely of any import outside their home markets in terms of sales) is merely illiterate fear-mongering.
You’ve never been in The Gap in Kuwait or Dubai, or a Carrefour hypermarket, or a mall in Bahrain, Dubai, or Kuwait, with all its Dunkin’ Donuts, Marks & Spencers’ and Starbucks?
The “choice” between the small retailer in the souk and the large transnational retailer may be a rigged one: if the big retailer has the market power to sell goods below-cost to drive its competition out of business, what “choice” will the buyer have after that?
I’ve seen too many deserted downtown storefronts and streets in the USA to be sanguine about the outcome.
In tackling Islam the US tries to change a way of live that is ancient, something much more deeply rooted in an entire civilisation than communism ever was or possibly could be. Unsurprising, that generates a response. It doesn’t matter if it was a conscious, or unconscious, intended or unintended action. If you have a guitar and pull or touch a string, it will resonate.
In my understanding 9/11 came out of the wrong impression that the US were waging an undeclared war against Islam. If the US did, they were unaware of it.
To solve that problem, Bush has responded by making it official.
It was said well many years ago and bears noting again today:
“We had been told, on leaving our native soil, that we were going to defend the sacred rights conferred on us by so many of our citizens settled overseas, so many years of our presence, so many benefits brought by us to populations in need of our assistance and our civilization. We were able to verify that all this was true, and, because it was true, we did not hesitate to shed our quota of blood, to sacrifice our youth and our hopes. We regretted nothing, but whereas we over here are inspired by this frame of mind, I am told that in Rome factions and conspiracies are rife, that treachery flourishes, and that many people in their uncertainty and confusion lend a ready ear to the dire temptations of relinquishment and vilify our action. I cannot believe that all this is true, and yet recent wars have shown how pernicious such a state of mind could be and to where it could lead. Make haste to reassure me, I beg you, and tell me that our fellow citizens understand us, support us and protect us as we ourselves are protecting the glory of the Empire. If it should be otherwise, if we should have to leave our bleached bones on these desert sands in vain, then beware the anger of the Legions!”– Letter from Marcus Flavinius, centurion in the 2d Cohort of the Augusta Legion
‘Is it not deterrence that kept the cold war in check?’, asks soar. As the question of the relevance of Cold War experience for assessments of the implications of an Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons is obviously critical, it may be worth looking more closely at certain basic strategic realities created by the outcome of the Second World War. Obviously we are dealing with might-have-beens where one cannot be sure, but I think the conventional view soar is restating is actually very implausible. I apologise for the length of what follows, but I think the issue really is crucial.
According to the NSC 68 paper of April 1950 – probably the most significant American Cold War policy paper – the American production of motor vehicles was more than ten times that of the Soviet Union. It was, after all, Stalin who described modern war as a ‘war of engines’. A crucial weakness of the United States had to do with the difficulty of maintaining forces in being – particular ground forces – in peacetime, and the substantial time it would take putting its industry back onto a war footing and training up forces. Accordingly, in a world without nuclear weapons, if the Soviet Union is to avoid defeat in an all-out war against the United States, it needs to exploit the ‘window of opportunity’ before the United States can do this in order to eliminate the bridgeheads on which American power can be deployed. The logic was spelt out in an article in the confidential Soviet journal Military Thought by Major-General V. Khlopov in June 1950, which was discussed in Raymond Garthoff’s 1958 study of Soviet Strategy in the Nuclear Age; also in Strategic Guidance for Industrial Mobilization Planning produced by U.S. Joint Staff Planners in May 1947.
Accordingly, nothing whatsoever follows about Soviet intentions from the very evident capabilities threat to Western Europe that emerged in the late Forties. In relation to Western military requirements, the point is secondary, in that it is commonly highly unwise to define one’s military requirements on the basis of estimates of an adversary’s intentions. In relation to the kind of theories of ‘deterrence’ that were elaborated by academics in the West, however, it is extremely relevant, in that in general such theorising was explicitly or implicitly based upon assumptions about Soviet intentions. But the view that the Soviet leaders were prepared to risk the survival of their system in the USSR in support of territorial expansion was not held by the principal U.S. State Department experts of the late Forties – George Kennan and Charles Bohlen – and I do not think anything that has emerged subsequently calls their views into question. There is really very little warrant for the notion that Stalin or any of his successors would have been enthusiastic about involving themselves in a military conflict against an adversary whose potential power was so much greater than theirs, when their best option was stalemate. This was of course precisely what the Japanese had done in 1941; but the outcome hardly suggested they had acted wisely, and in any case Marxist-Leninists had a word for the kind of strategy the Japanese had attempted – ‘adventurism’.
A closer look at NSC 68 actually suggests that nuclear weapons, and even more thermonuclear weapons, destabilised the relationship between the Cold War antagonists rather than stabilising it. Crucially, they opened up the possibility that the Soviets could foreclose the possibility of the United States turning potential into actual power by an all-out preemptive attack on the American military-industrial base at the outset of a war. In fact Kennan thought that the Soviets would prefer if possible to keep war conventional, in order to avoid nuclear attacks on the Soviet homeland. But Kennan’s arguments only made sense in the context of his insistence that the United States needed to get away as soon as possible from reliance on nuclear first-use. If in fact the Soviets were going to face all-out nuclear attacks on their cities in any case, it was natural to assume that they would not forego the advantages of attacking the American military-industrial base.
Contrary to what is commonly believed, in arguing for a massive American conventional build-up the architects of NSC 68, of whom the principal one was Paul Nitze, were not repudiating Kennan, but following him. However, a. they did not believe that the build-up they recommended would be adequate to get away from threats of first-use, and so make the possibility of keeping war conventional a real one, and b. in order to marshal political support for the conventional build-up, they ended up portraying the implications of the Soviet acquisition of nuclear weapons in apocalyptic terms. And indeed, in their suggestion that the Soviet leaders might decide to liquidate the subversive threat posed by the very idea of freedom by all-out nuclear attack, they anticipated very directly the kind of arguments used by the Bush Administration. Both Kennan and Bohlen thought that NSC 68 was disseminating a hopelessly exaggerated view of the Soviet propensity to take military risks. And in Kennan’s view, this kind of threat inflation was more likely to precipitate war rather than avoid it. Accordingly, he rewrote history, confusing what he had actually advocated with what he wished in retrospect he had advocated, thus contributing greatly to the difficulties of making intelligible the arguments of the early Cold War.
The implications of all this seem to me to be somewhat double-edged. I would be very cautious about taking Cold War experience as demonstrating that a balance of terror in the Middle East would be stable. On the other hand, if indeed an Iranian nuclear capability is an ‘existential threat’ with which Israel cannot be expected to live, large questions arise as to whether there is any strategy available which can guarantee Israel’s security in the longer term. Following earlier discussions on this blog, I am sceptical that the Israelis have the military capabilities to deal with the potential Iranian nuclear threat. An American attack is, I think, a very high risk option indeed for Israel. It could go well, but if it precipitates either a catastrophe for American troops (and also the remaining troops from my own country, Britain) or a major world recession, then it might fundamentally undermine the American popular support on which Israel’s security ultimately depends. The inhibition against anti-Semitism which has been central to Western culture in the post-war period might do the same.
A final point. At the end of his life, Nitze embraced the agenda for the abolition of nuclear weapons which he had repudiated when put forward by Kennan back in 1950. As is evident from his 1999 NYT op-ed on the subject (available at http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/nwc/news/e19991028ourselves.htm), and will become clear to from an attentive reading of NSC 68, he had never repudiated the moral and prudential reservations Kennan had about strategies of first use. The agenda for the abolition of nuclear weapons may well be hopelessly utopian. However, the propensity of the Bush Administration for brandishing nuclear threats in relation to Iran hardly seems helpful. Moreover, given that it is now the United States which enjoys an unquestionable superiority in the kinds of military power relevant to large-scale conventional operations, I find it both ironic and worrying that the arguments elaborated by ‘deterrence’ theorists can so easily be adduced by the potential enemies of the United States in support of the notion that acquisition of nukes is indispensable to their security.
JFM:
What is now Iran and Iraq was Parthia – an Iranian Empire. It had its own civilization and its own tradition; it fought with Rome for centuries.
Great to follow the flow of thoughts amongst this group of fine minds. I am much the richer.
I recall reading that post-republican Roman arrogance, greed, and overconfidence led to triumvirate-Emperor Crassus losing his head, Mark Anthony barely escaping death, Emperor Valerian getting skinned and stuffed, and Emperor Julian dying of a spear wound. All this took place near Greater Persia/Mesopotamia. These powerful leaders sought plunder in the ME and lost big time to the Parthians/Sassanids/Persians. Each of these Romans strongly believed in the invincibility of their legions and themselves. These traits seem prevalent in our empire’s current set of alpha males.
Welcome to post-republican, 21st century America as history repeats.
Thanks to all for an excellent
thread, in particular to MarcLord for tersely uttering the unspeakable. As to Col. Lang’s comment “Resignation is not the same as acceptance”, I can scarcely imagine a bleaker choice of epigram at the present juncture.
Analysis of political reality, and suggestions for rational intervention thereon must take
fanaticism, avarice, simple
stupidity, and hormonal throbbings into account, yet it seems to be extremely difficult to factor these human failings into such debate without underestimating their overall importance. I also find Babak’s observation that it is too late for a solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be right on target (as a result of both the above factors and
Israel’s crack-pot realism).
Col Lang’s recently proposed a “grand bargain” also seems, to me, to be far too reasonable to have any true prospect for being realized, unless (improbably) MarcLord’s view suddenly gains
favor. Finally, I am tempted to ask Chris Marlowe if a major readjustment of American MidEast
policy would not, in and of itself, be construed as anti-semitism by the Likud-Kash-Israel-Beitanou lobby in the U.S. (a potent force which, I agree, does not at all coincide with American Jewery).
My Dear innocent:
You’ve never been in The Gap in Kuwait or Dubai, or a Carrefour hypermarket, or a mall in Bahrain, Dubai, or Kuwait, with all its Dunkin’ Donuts, Marks & Spencers’ and Starbucks?
I have indeed, many times.
Kuwait, Dubai and even Bahrain are not Iraq.
And regardless, no one forces anyone to consumer Starbucks, nor Dunkin’ Donuts.
If malls win consumers, it’s because of their convenience.
The “choice” between the small retailer in the souk and the large transnational retailer may be a rigged one:
Bollocks.
The choice, without scare quotes, is according to the taste of the consumer.
The numerous failures of major “transnationals” – a scare word for mere franchises under local management, renting the name in the case of retail outlets – in penetrating other markets illustrates the falseness of your presumption. The American Walmart has failed in numerous developed markets, notably Germany, while equally there have been emerging market failures (Ahold in MENA, e.g.).
if the big retailer has the market power to sell goods below-cost to drive its competition out of business, what “choice” will the buyer have after that?
A false problem – obviously selling below-cost is a violation of almost any countries’ competition laws, and hardly a problem limited to “transnationals” which are looking to earn a return, not lose money in such markets, I rather see it more frequently with national companies such as ONA in the Maghreb, looking to drive out competition and getting away with it due to national connexions.
Has nothing the bloody hell to do with “transnationals” or the like, and has to do with innovation in retailing along with the quality (or not) of regulation and its application.
I’ve seen too many deserted downtown storefronts and streets in the USA to be sanguine about the outcome.
The USA is not MENA, and the fetishisation of downtowns frozen in a pre-20th century mode of serving clients is part of the problem.
If local developers build malls, and local consumers find malls attractive, then either the souq responds or it dies.
Local choices, not the mythologised “transnational” make or break these investments. I have seen enough fail in MENA to see the dynamic, and have nothing but contempt for your scaremongering foolishness.
brenda / for the record i started my victory garden on 9/12/01 and anyone who remembers WW2 did the same / shoot, i even learned to can everything in the garden / it’s not too late / i think / or maybe not
this is a mighty wonderful blog, Col Lang, this old lady reads every word and the comments too / thank you so much
Col. Lang, I salute you, probably one of the greatest comments we will see this year, and it’s only January.
Great posts all as usual. Except no one in postions of power in Washington or the MSM are listening.
JFM, great quote, when I read those ancient Roman writings I get a chill down my spine. As Babak pointed out, the Parthians have ages of hsitory behind them fighting western imperialism. John Milton cites some of the greatest military defeats ever suffered by Rome, all at the hands of the Parthians defending their homeland. The campaign of Crassus in particular is counted as one of the greatest military disasters in history – and it seems the Bushies are hell-bent to emulate him. Parthia was never conquered by Rome, and their descendants carried on that tradition to destroy Byzantium as Muslims. The lessons of history go un-mentioned, and most certainly un-learned.
“a dangerous precedent whose future ramifications bode ill for US diplomatic efforts.” That Rubicon has already been crossed, just ask most citizens of the world what they think about America today. The MSM may be able to keep opposing viewpoints out of the USA with their neocon intellectual firewall, but the rest of the world sees America clearly for what it is now. That view is not pretty. Some 70% (varies up and down by region/religion/race) see America as the greatest threat to world peace today, and based on recent events, for good reason. In BushWorld, everyone should back America because they ARE America, torch of freedom, home of democracy, blah, blah, blah. In RealWorld, (other than Israel), those who have to support America do so grudgingly and in their own self-interest, and only when they have to, only for as long as they have to – if the Russians or Chinese or anyone else make them a better offer, they would probably accept it. Reluctant self-interested allies are not very dependable, liable to break from the alliance for their own reasons at any time. As the Col. pointed out, America’s “allies” in the Middle East read like a list of nations that should be morally opposed, not allied with.
“if indeed an Iranian nuclear capability is an ‘existential threat’ with which Israel cannot be expected to live, large questions arise as to whether there is any strategy available which can guarantee Israel’s security in the longer term.” Israel has chosen to live by the sword, which leads inevitably to death by the sword someday. Military superiority cannot be maintained for ever in all aspects, and when that superiority fails, so does the nation relying on it. If you make no effort to establish a real peace or at least be a good neighbor, based on mutual recognition and respect, the end result is inevitable. Surveys indicate every generation of Muslims hate Israel more than the previous – and the Israeli response seems to be to hate them back (Avigdor in the Cabinet now). Without a huge change in their policies, Israel is doomed in the long run, IMHO, nuclear weapons or USA support notwithstanding.
In the past 2 weeks, the Bushies have widened the “100 year war” to Somalia and Iran/Syria. I am sure most Muslims see this as just another aspect of the New Crusades, confirming what they already suspected.
The irrational fear of Muslims is greatest among the neo-cons, proving how pathetic their cowardice and bluster really are. As has been well commented above, America has little actually to fear except fear itself, yet this abject fear and moral cowardice only serve to drive the country into more foreign wars for no good reason – which can only serve to increase the hatred they cite to initiate the war in the first place. It’s a self-reinforcing feedback loop, an echo chamber of fear and loathing driven by stupidity, incompetence, self-righteousness and lack of vision.
America has fallen so far so fast that any prediction of where this will all lead is probably under-estimating the state of the crisis. Imagine what the Founding Fathers would say about all this – or Lincoln. It is the whole world’s curse to have to live through the Bush years.
Hannah K. O’Luthlon–
Your question is based on the premise that the US will remain as a single unified state with one government.
If the US policy in the ME collapses dramatically on the military and diplomatic fronts, with the collapse of its main client state, Israel, it is likely that the collapse would be so dramatic that the US itself would fragment into separate countries. Most likely, this fragmentation would be along the North-South divide, with the Republican party remaining in power in the south, while the rest of the country becomes more liberal.
Anyhow, we could kiss the US constitution goodbye. It would be seen as largely irrelevant in a new Mad Max -like world dominated by private militias, such as Blackwater, Halliburton KBR, CACI and Titan. (These Republican-funded militias are getting important government-contract funding and practice in Iraq now.)
I call this the Second Civil War scenario. With its large base of fundamentalist Christians, it would be interesting how the Southern leadership would explain this train of events.
On the demographics level, the South would be predominately white, while in other areas, whites would eventually make up less than 50% of the population. What was the US would generally fragment along ethnic/racial/education lines with the non-South areas being generally better educated.
If you are interested in learning more about this interpretation, I’d recommend that you read Kevin Philip’s book, American Theocracy. Its website is at http://www.americantheocracy.net
‘Is it not deterrence that kept the cold war in check?’, asks soar.
That’s an interesting question. Adding to what David Habbakuk has contributed, I would direct soar, and David, to The National Security Archives recent 2005 publication of “A Cardboard Castle?” An important historical work based on recently declassified Warsaw Pact documents, and let you decide for yourselves.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB154/index.htm
Very interesting post and comments. However, I have to point out to swerv21 that any number of ‘non-capitalist modernities’ have been tried out by developing countries since WWII and have ranged from partial to catastrophic failure. Whereas some efforts to create a local form of capitalism that could beat the big boys at their own game have been fairly successful.
I suppose I will hear about the Indians now from someone.
You make it sound like a personal rebuke.
Today’s Wash Post, p. A10, caption to an AP photo by Nasser Ishtayeh:
“An Israeli soldier grabs a Palestinian boy, dressed as a Native American at a protest at a [the Hawara] checkpoint in the West Bank city of Nablus. Palestinians carried signs comparing their plight to that of American Indians. One asked, ‘Is this our reservation?'”
http://es.news.yahoo.com/14012007/24/foto/an-israeli-soldier-grabs-palestinian-boy-dressed-as-native-american.html
The figure isn’t new, & isn’t used only by one side. Benny Morris, the eminent Israeli historian, famously has morally justified the dispossession of the Palestinans so:
“Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh & cruel acts …”
I emphasize that Morris is no obscure lunatic. This is the moral climate we’re in.
My Dear Colonel
It appears some of my readers at Aqoul have some misapprehension as to your meaning (or in the alternative, I lack a command of the language of Shakespeare after these many years fraternising with Latins & Arabs).
My Dear Lounsbury
You will have to be clearer with me. No comprendo.
Y’r Obd’t Servant
pl
” Parthia was never conquered by Rome ”
Notwithstanding Crassus’ defeat, the Romans ultimately adapted to the Parthians tactics of armormed cavalry and heavy archery to break up their tortoise defensive formations. The standards of the defeated legions were recovered.
Ctesiphon (and even Susa) was looted and burned many times, notably by the emperors Trajan and Septimus Severius.
Finally, the Muslim Arabs arose as a third force betwixt the Persians and Eastern Romans and deprived both of their Middle Eastern Empires.
Raw Story reports: The Jan. 9 dispatch, describes Israel as “not prepared to prepared to accept the same doctrine of ‘mutually assured destruction’ that kept the peace during the Cold War. Israel is adamant that this is not an option for such a geographically. small country.”
Pat, because you are an expert in the Middle East, I bet you didn’t have to read that ING letter that was sent out to know that is the position Israel will adopt. What I don’t get is, if Iran is ten years away from having nuclear capability, why attack them now? I do realize that they would not wait until Iran has that technology before attacking, but why would they not attempt to come to an agreement that allows both of their countries to survive?
Is Isreal choosing this route because Olmert is a warhawk and so too is the Bush Administration? I’ve been hearing rumours that Olmert will shortly be replaced. Any chance his replacement will perceive Iran with more logic? Iran does not presently pose a danger to Israel. The loss of life will be horrendous.
Ah well, in short some of my colleagues read you as saying precisely the opposite of what I read you as saying with respect to your meaning on “My analysis leads me to the belief that we are fighting against traditional Islam” Trivial but queerly they are shy.
And I second my dear Antiquated Tory’s comment supra.
Being an actual direct investor in these markets, I have rather more confidence in the capacities to compete with the “West.” And look forward to it.
Lounsbury
What I meant was that the Bush/Cheney hides behind statements that it is engaging Islamic extremism but what it is really doing is fighting traditional Islam whether or not they will admit it to others or themselves. pl
A false problem – obviously selling below-cost is a violation of almost any countries’ competition laws
Oh, please, L. First, do all MENA countries have competition laws? I think not. Second, are the laws which do exist enforced evenly and fairly? Even in the west, enforcement of such laws and consumer protection laws is often lax, depending on the philosophy of the government in power. Third, I’m not sure that a large retailer selling some staple items as “loss-leaders” is always a violation of anti-comepetition laws in the retail sector, however adverse the effect might be, say, on the tea seller in the souk of Carrefour always selling its tea below-cost.
Aside from whether items are sold “below-cost,” as I said, is there no social value to the small independent retailer who will never have the “category-killer’s” economies of scale? Or zoning to prevent the destruction of small retail districts?
The debate is about allowing reasonable local regulation or subsidy to preserve values other than market values. It’s done all the time. It not even about globalization per se, it’s about the form of globalization.
The experience of Wal-Mart in Germany makes my point – it was partly local values expressed in regulatory matters like zoning, labor and corporate governance issues which did them in.
Surely you recognize that there is some radicalism in some of the advocates of globalization: they would sweep away every zoning and labor regulation. Aren’t they what you referred to as “right-Bolsheviks?”
That’s the point I made originally – comparing the utopian dreams of free-market fetishists and Communists.
“What is the real moral difference between our functioning democracy and that of Israel? ”
While both Israel and the USA are settler states, at least in the US today a Native American can get a passport, vote, and exercise all other rights of a US citizen.
If you look at the outline of the greater state of Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza, you will see a place in which 3 million people, indigenous residents (i.e. ancestors living there for centuries, not just generations) can’t vote in Israeli elections, can’t carry Israeli passports, and are pushed around with no rights.
The Israeli sociologist Tamer Sorek first laid this picture out for me. This is not a democracy, when you have a country with 9 million people, 3 million of whom have no rights whatsoever.
Whatever you want to say about what we Americans did to the Indians and the Blacks, they all still can vote, sue for habeas corpus, and exercise all other rights of any US citizen. And any Palestinian who gets a green card here in the US, keeps his nose clean for five years and gets his citizenship is entitled to all those rights, too. But not in Israel! Because why???
The American Narrative has always depended on domination of nature and other cultures.
First it was the Indians, then the slaves, then developing the western part of the country, then it was the Germans and the Japanese in WWII, then in the Cold War it was the Soviet Union.
Now under Bush/Cheney, it is defending “freedom”, which is a lot like saying that you are fighting against the enemies of air and water.
The most important part of the American narrative is its dependence of having an enemy which threatens the very existence of the nation and its values. The military-industrial complex and mass media plug into this, acting as a chorus for the Great American Narrative, and turning it into a profitable enterprise in the best American tradition. They have been very successful, and have turned many Americans into unquestioning zombies, incapable of critical thought. Their job is made all the easier by the fact that most Americans do not speak other languages, and have not lived outside the US for extended periods of time.
Part of the reason for the need of this narrative is that America’s cultural roots do not go deep, and as whites become less than 50% (according to the Census Bureau, this will happen in 2050), the very definition of what is American is being challenged.
The internal struggle in the US between “conservatives” and “liberals” is actually a fight over the definition of what is American. Karl Rove says that it is white and fundamentalist Christian, with a base in the South and its Old Testament militant evangelistic interpretation of Christianity. They are the intellectual and social descendants of the KKK, except they wear suits and ties, go to their evangelical church, and follow Pat Robertson and his ilk.
Liberals advocate a more open definition to what is American. Friedman is one of the spokesmen for this group, even though I find his American-centric interpretation of globalization very ill-informed and naive.
I agree with the Colonel that Bush/Cheney are selling a struggle with traditional Islam. I see the struggle as a battle between fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam, with a lot of messy spillover and blowback for both sides. both sides will be losers, creating an opportunity for the rise of East Asia, with Russia and China as the dominant players. This is already happening.
For many Arabs, the presence of Israel in the ME is seen as a second series of Crusader attacks on the Islamic umma. Islam is a tremendously diverse religion, and it is very hard to bring the community together, but the US has done it.
This is a war the US cannot win. When the US loses, the whole Great American Narrative will fall apart, and a whole new definition of what is American will have to put forward and accepted by the populace. For it to work, this New American Narrative cannot rely on the creation of new enemies; most people will be sick of that story. If it doesn’t work, then the nation will fragment.
Basically, the nation is approaching middle-age with a great deal of fear, self-doubt and trepidation.
The Lounsbury:
Malls, specially the enclosed ones, are a Western imitation of Bazar. Malls will be right at home in MENA-CA.
Frank Durkee:
Yes, I am in agreement with you – in cannot reliably draw on the experience of the Cold War and apply it to ME.
For example, because the (relatively) small geographical area there is no difference between strategic and tactical delivery platofrms.
Another difference is that most MENA states have vert little to no strategic depth as opposed to US and USSR.
And while Iran is no USSR, Israel is most definitelty is no US.
Col. Lang:
This has been one of the best commentary threads I have encountered in a long time. Thank you.
to Dear Aunti Tory and Lounsie:
I won’t reveal my ignorance by attempting to argue this point too much further. But is it not true that, in all instances, attempts to create a non-capitalist modernity had to first deal with the thorny problem of ‘primitive accumulation’? It was never attempted in a society technically advanced enough to have a prayer of pulling it off. Not to let the old ghosts out of the closet.
In any case the point worth making here is not the above mentioned, but that of green zone cafe’s. Globalization is as old as rome, if not older. The question is, in this round, who dictates the terms? Who controls the technology? And for what price?
I used to live in Dubai, and shopping at Fendi while sipping a double mocha frappucino is a cute experience- but it is hardly the product of indigenous enterprise. I used to marvel at the way some young khaleeji’s voraciously consumed technology they knew nothing about.
also:
I’m Lebanese by birth and a Southerner by the grace of the U.S. immigration policy, and so i feel compelled to respond to Chris Marlowe’s onslaught by bringing up a couple of kinks to his characterizations of the South. Atlanta, my home town, is the capital of the black middle class, currently being ably led by a very successful black woman mayor, Shirley Franklin ; the population here is one of the youngest and most highly educated in the country. Meanwhile 70% of southern voters, according to recent polling, are against the surge.
It’s not that I disagree with the general point that regions will reassert their power in the face of a weakened federal goverment (just listen to the governators last speech, or consider the romney health care initiative), it is the sweeping generalizations of the South that are…irritating.
If you want proof that political diversity is alive in the American South,just look at the top of your browser right now, the name of this site….
All:
The Iranian nuclear capability is a fait accompli. The power to undo the Iranian nuclear capability does not exist in the international arena. The only way to make certain that Iran will not build a bomb is by occupying that country. And as I said before, I do not believe in the efficacy of Air Power for thi specific purpose.
As for Israel, my impression, reading open sources, has been that the Government of Israel has been very careful in its statements regarding Iran – that government has not committed itself to war against Iran. Perhaps they are hoping that US will attack Iran and they will not have to make a stratgic choice.
Iran i different than Iraq – I belive Iraq was a co-beliigerent in 1973 war against Israel. Iran and Israel have not fought a war against each other and I think that Israel will not want to start now.
Will:
Parthia was overthrown by the Sassanids – an internal revolt.
Ask yourselves if the Israelis will be willing to live with an Iran which is restrained from destroying Haifa and Tel Aviv by “deterrence.”
This would result in Israel or the United States annihilating all of Iran. The Supreme Leader is a hardliner – not a suicidal nutcase. Iran has offered to recognize Israel within a two state solution. The US rejected the offer out of hand.
Perhaps we should ask a better question. What deterrence does Iran have to prevent Israel from nuking it? Not very much, and US/Israeli plans to use ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons against Iran prove it. If the United States was serious about stopping nuclear proliferation, it would negotiate with Iran – not bomb it. Threatening or bombing Iran just makes nuclear weapons more attractive, because its the only thing that can really deter the American juggernaut.
The Iranians offered to make peace in 2003. We want war:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c9a07ee2-da41-11da-b7de-0000779e2340.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/24/opinion/24leverett.html
Those brief articles are a must-read to understand what (isn’t) driving American policy toward Iran.
” is there no social value to the small independent retailer who will never have the “category-killer’s” economies of scale?”
What does ” social value” mean ?
To me it sounds like these businesses should be subsidized or freed from competition by government regulation because they fit some kind of romantic notion of ” the good life”.
swerv21–
It is not my point to make sweeping generalizations, there are very many good smart people in the South now; one of my favorite blogs is written by Dana Blankenhorn, who also lives in Atlanta.
But there is something called trends. Generalizations don’t move, but trends do. The bad thing about negative trends is that good people get caught up in them, and find themselves unable to resist the force.
Example: Iraqis are generally good decent people, well-known for their generosity and hospitality to guests. However, Iraq, through no fault of the vast majority of Iraqis, is now a hell-hole.
Another example is America, which has now become something which many Americans do not feel comfortable with, and with which many are just beginning to show their unhappiness and displeasure with. Is it enough to make a difference? We’ll find out.
Nothing would please me more than to be wrong about what I have written. But if there is one thing the Bush/Cheney administration represents, it is an accelerating trend in favor of what I call corporate capitalism, and a really ugly form of jingoistic nationalism. And we all agree that it is not moving in the right direction.
When people find that they have substantive irreconcilable differences, the best thing to do is to have a civilized separation. The best example is the separation of Czechoslovakia into the Czech and Slovak republics in 1993.
If only more people could be like them.
swerv 21, mark safranski,
For years, the United States has protected or subsidized certain industries and types of farming. Subsidies are direct, or by tariff or by the rules of government purchasing. This is for reasons of national security, employment and even for the preservation of agrarian values.
Local zoning and licensing rules regulate the types, sizes, location and building design of businesses. Some businesses are prohibited in certain areas.
This is to fit some kind of romantic notion of “the good life” as the federal or local governments see it. It’s why porn shops and rendering plants are not located everywhere.
The problem is that global governance authorities often see the protection of local businesses and the cultural values attached to them as some great affront. Rules are seen to be unequally applied to developed and developing countries, as the recent Doha round problems demonstrate.
This plays out in the Islamic world, as the Colonel says, as “freedom” as the bushies use the term is code and really means westernization and “globalization” in the sense that we want to see the world “ironed out” flat.
This includes the cultural effects, because beyond the economic effects, there are the other effects of the American model: Daniel Bell wrote about it in 1978 in the book The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. The values which capitalism excites — desire, leisure, consumption, profigacy — undermine the Protestant ethic of hard work, modesty and frugality which it depends on.
The current problem of these cultural contradictions was described by William Pfaff in a recent column:
In 1996, in the 20th anniversary edition of his book, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, Daniel Bell wrote that the Wall Street of mergers and takeovers already posed grave new problems of law, morality, and the accountability of business executives.
The primitive capitalism of female and child labor in the “Satanic mills” of 19th century Britain was defended by its creators and theorists as the product of inevitable and unchallengeable forces — regrettable as the result might seem to the tender-hearted.
The social struggles in late 19th and early 20th century Europe and America, Marxist revolutionary upheaval in Russia, plus two world wars and the Cold War, left a wounded West with a certain social equilibrium, and a regime of social justice. . .
Today, the two-decade decline in status of workers, and the reduction in the overall share in the wealth of society possessed by ordinary people, have been important steps backward from that equilibrium. This is a far more significant development than most political figures seem to recognize. The stability of modern America and Europe is not set in concrete.
Alienation and Modern Capitalism
islamofascism- As defined by Western administrations, is any group that has its religion as its core and does not kow-tow to US policy for the region. To the Western governments that is essentially everyone from Al Qaeda to Al Sadr, from Hamas to Hizbollah.
If the US insists on rolling all these groups into one entity and fighting them all, then yes, it will be fighting traditional Islam, because to most Muslims all the above bar Al Qaeda are the real “moderates”; Not the corrupt, self-serving corrupt bag of kings and tyrants currently ruling the various countries.
Babak:
I think you are probably right in suggesting that nuclear weapons will not bring security to Israel, in the long run. But they may also be very double-edged for Iran, in the long run. For one thing, while Israel is not the U.S., it has a large nuclear arsenal, it is very genuinely under ‘existential threat’, and it also has something of a Massada complex: both because of the history of how we Europeans treated Jews and because the Holocaust has become the foundational myth of the society. I think further reflection on the Cold War suggests that it would be in everyone’s interests if neither Israel nor Iran had nuclear weapons, although this is doubtless a utopian dream. A Middle Eastern nuclear confrontation could very easily end in war, in which case arguments about the history of Israel and Iran may become of purely academic interest, in that neither society will survive in any meaningful form, and the rest of us will have some rather serious problems.
I this connection, I would like to comment on the ‘Cardboard Castle’ material to which JT Davis very rightly points.
I read the materials relating to the ‘Cardboard Castle’ study available on the web when they appeared, but have not yet read the whole study: so these are preliminary impressions. However, my initial sense is that the treatment of the material by the National Security Archive authors is somewhat tendentious.
When I read the headline on the webpage — Soviets Planned Nuclear First Strike to Preempt West., Documents Show — I feared I would find conclusive proof that the understandings of the evolution of Soviet military strategy I had derived from the writings of the ‘revisionist’ school of which Raymond Garthoff and Michael MccGwire are the leading members were wrong. What I instead discovered was in the main a breathless presentation, as startling novelty, of facts about Soviet contingency planning for war which were discussed in Garthoff and MccGwire’s writings prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, on the basis of analyses of already available Soviet writings and – crucially in MccGwire’s case – of the equipment, training and exercising of Soviet forces.
I am not talking, incidentally, about Cold War ‘revisionism’, and economic interpretations of American strategy, but about debates over whether the Soviets were planning to fight and win a nuclear war. In the Eighties, the view taken by Richard Pipes and the neocons, and also many others, was that the Soviets continued to believe that they could fight and win a nuclear war, and that plans to do this were central to their strategy. This was disputed by Garthoff and MccGwire, both then at the Brookings Institution. Both men incidentally had a technical intelligence background, incidentally. Garthoff had been one of the pioneers of the academic study of Soviet military strategy at RAND at the Fifties, was the CIA from 1957 to 1961, and then moved on to the Foreign Service. MccGwire joined the Royal Navy in May 1942, and ended his career twenty five years later as head of the Soviet naval section of our Defence Intelligence Staff, after accumulating a wide range of experience in intelligence and as a NATO war planner.
A first point however comes from the writings of another figure who was at Brookings in the Eighties, Bruce Blair, now President of the Center for Defense Information. Put simply, if you are planning to fight a nuclear war, you do not plan to go strike second. The notion that in envisaging pre-emption Soviet planners were doing anything different from their American equivalents comes from confusing American declaratory strategy, the product of civilian theorists like Albert Wohlstetter, with force employment strategy, worked out by professional military officers. That the two had limited relation was born in on Blair as a Minuteman launch control officer in the early Seventies. It was clear from the drills he was doing that the American strategic nuclear force was being prepared either to launch pre-emptively or to launch on warning.
The reason for this was not that men who planned the strategy were wicked. It was that the option of riding out a Soviet attack which was basic to American declaratory strategy presupposed a command and control system robust under all-out nuclear attack. If one reads Albert Wohlstetter’s famous 1958 ‘Delicate Balance of Terror’ paper, available on the RAND website, one discovers that he treats the ability to ‘make and communicate the decision to retaliate’ as one of the ‘hurdles’ to be surmounted if a the capacity to strike second is to be achieved. The implicit assumption is that the brilliant men who theorise about nuclear strategy can issue a set of requirements, which they can expect the professional military to fulfil. But it is really rather odd, is it not, to assume that it is possible to devise a command and control system which is robust under all-out nuclear attack? And what Blair establishes – and has been confirmed by the former Strategic Air Command chief General Lee Butler – is that it proved impossible to operationalise the concepts devised by the academic theoreticians. The military men expected that their command and control would not survive an all-out Soviet attack, and planned accordingly.
What Blair has shown is that these kinds of problems led both the American and Soviet arsenals to be put on a launch-on-warning basis, a fact that most American political leaders failed to grasp – the exception being the always admirable Sam Nunn. If you have two nuclear arsenals put on a hair trigger in this way, then the risks of accidental nuclear war are very considerable.
These problems will recur, and imply that in situations of very acute political tension – such as are likely enough between Iran and Israel – the chances of eventual nuclear use are considerable. Moreover, they increase very greatly under conditions of high political tension. In normal circumstances, for example, erroneous indications of an attack will be ignored – in conditions of high tensions they may not be. Accordingly, threat inflation – of the kind of which Wohlstetter and his wife were adept practitioners – can be a very dangerous game.
Blair’s views are summarised in writings at http://www.cdi.org/blair/.
Reverting to the question of Soviet nuclear strategy. The distinction which the headline on the ‘Cardboard Castle’ obscures is central to the arguments about the evolution of Soviet strategy. It is actually central to the ‘revisionist’ case that, in the early Sixties, Soviet contingency planning for war was based upon the assumption that a major war with the West would inevitably escalate to an all-out nuclear conflict. Accordingly, at least in theory, Soviet planning was based upon all-out preemption at the start of such a conflict, and was also based upon the belief that victory in a nuclear war was possible — and of course such victory would require nuclear superiority. In the mid-Sixties, following the Western replacement of ‘massive retaliation’ by flexible response, the Soviets concluded that a war would not necessarily be an all-out nuclear confrontation. Accordingly, they shifted to their own version of ‘flexible response’, designed to try to wage a war in such a manner as to avert the nuclear devastation of the Soviet Union. The shift was consolidated in the Seventies when Soviet planners became sceptical about the idea that a strategy of pre-emption could produce anything that could meaningfully be described as victory in a nuclear conflict.
What this meant is a shift from preemption at the outset of a war, to launch-on-warning. The ‘Cardboard Castle’ webpage tells us breathlessly about Soviet ‘Plans to initiate the use of nuclear weapons, ostensibly to preempt Western first-use’. But that was precisely the point of the changed strategy. It was a strategy of launch-on-warning, warning interpreted as unambiguous evidence of NATO intent to go nuclear. These documents are presented as telling us something new when they don’t.
The ‘Cardboard Castle’ documents supposedly reveal ‘The shift beginning in the 1960s from defensive operations to plans to launch attacks deep into Western Europe.’ Again, tell us something new. This is precisely the change analysed by MccGwire in his 1987 study Military Objectives in Soviet Foreign Policy. The abandonment of strategic pre-emption makes offensive conventional operations of far greater importance, for three reasons: a.. It becomes imperative to knock out NATO theatre delivery systems by conventional means, removing the first rung in the escalation ladder; b. If NATO bridgeheads can be eliminated rapidly at the outset of a war, the whole question of escalation may become moot, c: the eschewal of strategic pre-emption means that it becomes impossible to attack the American military-industrial potential. Accordingly, the central imperative of preventing its effective deployment in Eurasia, crucial at the outset of the Cold War, reacquires its original salience. If the vast American military-industrial potential can be effectively deployed in Eurasia, over time the Soviets will lose.
Strategic warning is generally a matter of having the correct context in which to make sense of information. According to the Pipes version, Gorbachev’s adoption of the agenda for the abolition of nuclear weapons was in radical tension with the realities of Soviet nuclear planning, and was to be dismissed as disinformation. According to the Garthoff/MccGwire version, it was simply a radical development of existing lines of thinking. The new conventional strategy was aimed at avoiding the nuclear devastation of the Soviet Union. Accordingly, the accent in nuclear planning shifted from war-fighting to intra-war deterrence, an objective perfectly compatible with parity. In seeking nuclear arms control, accordingly, and also proposing no first declarations, the Soviets were not practising Machiavellian deception – because what the political spokesmen proposed was in harmony with the contingency plans developed by the professional military. And the move from parity to parity at zero was a natural enough one.
Where the Soviets were in bad faith was rather in negotiations on conventional forces. To eliminate the bridgeheads, they need a clear preponderance on the Central Front. But, by the same token, any signs that the Soviets were seriously interested in conventional force negotiations could only mean a major change in strategy, in that it involved abandoning the hope of liquidating Western bridgeheads, which would mean that in the event of general war they would eventually lose. So in 1986-7 Garthoff and MccGwire were scrutinising Soviet statements, to see whether these pointed to substantive change in the force posture. When signs of such change became apparent, they suggested that fundamental change was involved. But of course by then the CIA, demoralised by years of neocon subversion and then the corrupting influence of Robert Gates, with his anxiety to tell his political masters what they wanted to hear, was largely out of its depth.
A lot of silly nonsense about ‘reversibility’ then obscured the fact that, in all the terms that mattered, the United States was an immensely strong position – and also had very strong interests in rethinking some traditional orthodoxies. It was crystal clear that the Soviet model of development had run up against the buffers. The whole Leninist framework in terms of which Soviet military strategy made sense – based upon the notion that the route to development lay in escaping participation in the American-led global economy – had been decisively disproved. All the horrendous sacrifices imposed by the Soviet model of forced industrialisation looked vain. One had only to look at the constrasting economic performance of North and South Korea, as indeed Soviet economists were doing. It was also clear that developments in information technology were shifting the balance of conventional military power in ways with which a command economy and a political system dependent upon the control of information could not conceivably hope to keep up. Among other things, this meant that the prospects of success for the Soviets in a conventional blitzkrieg were fading. At the same time, not only were the economic burdens of the existing strategy inordinate, but the ideological blinkers were falling off Soviet thinkers, so that they could glimpse the possibility that the offensive nature of their planning aroused understandable suspicions in the West and made more war likely.
However, just as the ideological blinkers began to disappear in the Soviet Union, so they grew thicker in the West: so much so that they now seem to blind us almost completely. One consequence – and here one cannot primarily blame the neocons – is that, at a time when the balance of conventional military power was shifting decisively to United States, Western theorists went on hymning the virtues of strategies designed to counter superior conventional power by threatening first-use of nuclear weapons. Indeed, in black daydreams, I sometimes imagine myself in the role of a member of an Iranian policy planning staff, arguing for an all-out drive to acquire a nuclear capability. With the aid of quotations from John Lewis Gaddis, Tony Judt, Martin van Creveld, Sir Lawrence Freedman – a collection of the most eminent Western authorities – I am confident I could intellectually pulverise any opposition.
But of course one of the things about all these figures is that they don’t seem to read George Kennan – he is treated like a religious prophet, who one invokes but ignores when what he says is inconvenient. Another black fantasy I have is of the ghost of Stalin returning from Hell to face a Saddam-style trial – and calling the ghost of Kennan as a defence witness. In September 1952, Kennan sent back from Moscow a paper arguing that, precisely because the Soviets had had no intention of attacking Western Europe, and were much weaker military than they were portrayed as being in the West, they took Western ‘deterrence’ strategies as actually having an offensive agenda. The memorandum is available online at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB14/doc1.htm. Ironically, half a century later the authors of the ‘Cardboard Castle’ volume still seem to find it difficult appreciating that the Soviets might not have taken for granted that Western nuclear threats were defensive. Actually, one of them – Vojtech Mastny – has written a paper attempting to call into question Kennan’s judgment – entitled NATO in the Beholder’s Eye. I don’t find his argument convincing. It seems to me simply another incidence of the common and potentially lethal Western habit of assuming that the innocence of one’s intentions must be evident to others. In trying to plan strategy, it is generally wise to think in terms of how one’s actions are likely to be interpreted, rather than of how one thinks they ought to be. The fact that interpretations of one’s actions may be biased, ignorant, or fantastic, and those who produce them may be died in the wool villains, is not the point. This is the basic truth which academic ‘deterrence’ theorists largely ignored, and which in general we continue to ignore today, at our own peril.
” My analysis leads me to the belief that we are fighting against traditional Islam.”
That’s an extraordinary statement, not least because it confirms what the jihadists have said from the outset. To my knowledge, you are the first reputable ( and sane) non-Muslim to state this so matter-of-factly. I’d be greatly interested to hear how you arrived at this conclusion, Col. Lang, and respectfully ask you to elaborate.
Peter Principle
A rhetorical gesture to those who need to be persuaded. pl
Daoud,
My, my, you ARE an arrogant person. “Of your background..” “A little scholarship might be in order…” My. My. What do you know of my “background?”
As for the line that upset you, you might try reading things in depth and not just for surface meanings.
What I meant was that the Bush/Blair people claim that they are fighting a war against Islamic extremism,but, in fact, they understand so little that they group together the vast majority of Islamic groups and practise and call them “extremist” even while claiming to be pro-Muslim.
In that sense they are fighting “traditional Islam” even if they claim not to be.
As for the ladies who plead for acceptance of their rhetorical version of Islam, that is their bussiness but I am not obligated to accept their opinion any more than a Muslim would be who does not accept their view. Republican congressmen, perhaps any congressmen are gullible. Is that what you like?
I quote a comment on this post by “Mo.” “..islamofascism- As defined by Western administrations, is any group that has its religion as its core and does not kow-tow to US policy for the region. To the Western governments that is essentially everyone from Al Qaeda to Al Sadr, from Hamas to Hizbollah.
If the US insists on rolling all these groups into one entity and fighting them all, then yes, it will be fighting traditional Islam, because to most Muslims all the above bar Al Qaeda are the real “moderates”; Not the corrupt, self-serving corrupt bag of kings and tyrants currently ruling the various countries.”
pl
ir786,
As stated, they are picking fights with some of the most popular groups in the region and therefore picking a fight with most Muslims and therefore traditional Islam.
The sooner the Wester administrations radically re-define their definition of a moderate Muslim the better. As the Colonel states quite succinctly, truly moderate Muslims are more than willing to stand their ground and while peaceful are so within limits.
I don’t think everything in life can be valued purely in economic terms. With respect to globalization, perhaps someone knows whether a nation of Walmart employees or a nation of small shopkeepers is better at advancing the nascent political liberties that obtain in many developing countries.
Similarly, is the as-yet-unconsolidated media in a country like India better at advancing political and social reform than having most media outlets owned by one or other of five multinational corporations?
David Habakkuk:
Thank you for your detail post and the information therein.
I would like to add a few points to your discussion – not as counter arguments but rather as additional points.
1- Unless and until Iran is attacked by US, Israel, Pakistan, or any of the other nuclear states, she will not exit the non-proliferation treaty since she has made too many promises to too many other states in this regard. This is my opinion.
2- I could conceded that tactical nuclear weapons could be if use to Israel in countering numerically superior forces that are about to overwhelm her conventional defenses. But why does she have hydrogen weapons: these are weapons of terror against cities and she has had them for several decades?
3- US & USSR were two highly structured and highly integrated states with largely urban populations. They had nothing to gain by a war. So they set about rationalizing their relationship: ergo SALT I, II, etc.
4- The legacy of the Iran-Iraq War cannot be ignored; its implications are rather like WWI in Europe. The fact remains that Iran had been attacked by WMD weapons countenanced by US, EU, USSR, China. In fact, I recall the only people protesting against WMD use against Iran (excepting the Iranians) were a few people from Israel. Additionally, over the last 100 years Iran has been invaded by Turkey, Russia, UK, US, Iraq, and USSR. In what manner do you propose to guarantee the security of Iran?
5- As I have said before – the Iranian nuclear capability cannot be undone. And I do not believe Israel will disarm either. Nuclear Free Middle East is a pipe-dream.
6- While you are couching your analysis in the form of a confrontation between Israel and Iran you are missing the potential threat to Iran from a Sunni Fundamentalist ruled Pakistan. What is US, EU, China, or Russia prepared to do in the event of a nuclear attack on Iran by Pakistan? Or threat thereof?
6- Margaret Thatcher stated that the nuclear weapons have kept piece in Europe; why not in West Asia?
Mo:
We alreay know whom the West considers to be “Moderate Muslims” – those that do not oppose (rather misguided) Western strategies in the heartland of Islam. Some those are very despotic states: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and some of them are restricted representative republics (Turkey) and others are soft dictatorships such as Jordan.
Habakkuk,
thanks for the insightful post.
It would be tiresome and besides the point to enter into a debate of economics, emerging markets and globalisation here, being at once off topic and tangential to the actual interests, however a few clarifications.
First, the long blathering on by Cafe with respect to “capitalism” is without interest. I am uninterested in Left academic hand-wringing and ‘culture’ critics.
But second, to substance:
First, do all MENA countries have competition laws? I think not.
All?
Well, probably not all, I am not familiar with the Socialist paradise that is Syria’s legislation in this area, nor Yemen’s – but most do in fact have such legislation. Generally copy paste from whichever Western model is their preferred reference point (UK, France, USA, or EU).
Effectively applied?
Certainly not, but no laws, except those serving State Security are generally effectively applied in the developing world.
That answers:
Second, are the laws which do exist enforced evenly and fairly?
In general laws are enforced to the benefit of the ruling elite, to the disadvantage of foreigners.
Even in the west, enforcement of such laws and consumer protection laws is often lax, depending on the philosophy of the government in power.
Boo hoo, such is your opinion. In my experience, with all its comparative value between EU, USA, Canada, and the developing world, enforcement of competition laws is quite robust in the developed world (ex Japan); you whinge on about marginal items.
Third, I’m not sure that a large retailer selling some staple items as “loss-leaders” is always a violation of anti-comepetition laws in the retail sector, however adverse the effect might be, say, on the tea seller in the souk of Carrefour always selling its tea below-cost.
Carrefour is not going to sell its tea below cost, and regardless, the consumer benefits so long as the market is kept competitive.
Whatever the fetishisation of the idealised souq.
Aside from whether items are sold “below-cost,” as I said, is there no social value to the small independent retailer who will never have the “category-killer’s” economies of scale? Or zoning to prevent the destruction of small retail districts?
Social value?
What a fine ambiguous serve-to-justify anything idea.
Social value is best determined in the market, by consumers making choices.
Not by intellectual idealising conditions and setting up barriers.
The debate is about allowing reasonable local regulation or subsidy to preserve values other than market values.
You can debate what you want, it’s clearly a loss for the population at large, and generally applied as nice little bit of dupery for people like you, by the rentier elites extracting extra money out of the ruled.
Green Zone Cafe wrote:
“Local zoning and licensing rules regulate the types, sizes, location and building design of businesses. Some businesses are prohibited in certain areas.”
Zoning, and I have some years of experience sitting on such boards, is not the same thing as what you are prosposing. A locality not permitting, say a porn shop, to open next door to an elementary school or a Church is not equivalent to prohibiting competition with an already existing business.
While zoning boards are certainly liable to favortism, corruption and old-boy networks, these would represent an *abuse* of such systems rather than their proper *use*. And usually, at least in America, these potential abuses are checked by statutes and functioning courts.
What you are arguing for, in simple terms, is that, as a rule rather than an as an exception, all economic activity should be in the first instance, subordinated to centrally directed political considerations.
In other words, you are embracing these abuses and calling them virtues.
Will: I stand corrected, I have to dig out my old copy of Gibbons “Decline and Fall”, if I could find it, it’s packed away in a stack of boxes of books somewhere here. You are correct, Rome did get their revenge on the Parthians, as at Ctesiphon. Yet they did not go on to rule those lands for very long, the Legions were withdrawn to the Empire proper after the campaigns IIRC. Can you recommend a good website where I can read more on the Roman history there?
The maps I remember looking at showed the greatest extent of the Roman empire’s western border in the area of what is Syria today. Probably due to the unruly locals and the great distance to Mesopotomia making logistics and communication difficult. I was trying to draw a parallel to today, what I should have said was that the Roman example shows this region has always been hostile to outsiders – and the British colonial experience in Iraq mirrors this.
As has been commented, when Westerners ask “Why don’t those *&%$ Moslems like us?”, (or Bush asking plaintively why they aren’t more grateful) they are forgetting (or never heard of, or choose to ignore) the colonial legacy of exploitation which has been ongoing since oil was found to be valuable. Having done some reading recently on the British campaigns in Iraq in the 1920’s, the parallels to today are disturbingly apparent. If the Middle East had no oil their 20th century would have been totally different, I have little doubt.
What I was trying to say was if Bush really needed (and had a valid reason) to go into Iraq he should have imitated Rome: invade, loot and withdraw without trying to occupy and rule. If the oil could have been packed up and shipped out like looted gold, I am sure he probably would have. Instead, he has to stay there and force Iraq to pass the egregious new Oil Law.
Ideology often serves as a sugar coating for business interests.
VP Cheney has said that the conflict with Islamofascism may last 40 years. What interest does he have in the war lasting so long, and how does it advance his agenda?
The modern Republican party represents a very strange convergence of corporate interests, fundamentalist Christian interests, and ideologues.
The corporate interests part are represented by Grover Norquist and the K Street Project, which sought to bring in funding for the “conservative” ideological position from corporate interests. This is a 30-year project which started right after Watergate, and really blossomed under the Reagan administration.
Now, let’s look at the companies which are called “private defense contractors”, and have really made out like bandits from the Iraq war. Four companies come up:
Halliburton KBR
Blackwater
CACI
Titan
I would encourage you to Google these companies, then their management, you will see that they are heavy contributors to Republican party causes. In a few cases, they are also contributors to Christian fundamentalist causes. I call these companies private armed militias.
Do you see why Bush/Cheney are so in favor of privatization? It provides the best means to divert US tax dollars to their benefactor’s coffers.
The Iraq war provides a great income opportunity to these companies; some of this money finds it way back to contributions back to the Republican party.
Why is it these contractors companies are paid 3-4 times more than US military , and have better equipment, while American soldiers have to wait until later to get better equipment and armor than these private defense contractors? Both the US military and the private defense contractors are funded by US taxpayers.
Of course, all the traditional defense contractors also do very well out of this war policy. This makes the military/industrial complex supporters of the government’s ideological foreign policy goals.
It is very hard to get Americans to buy into a 40-year war unless they feel they are under constant threat of attack. This is why foreign policy needs to be directed at intimidating all Muslims into hating the West in general, and the US in particular. The goal is to provoke Muslims into hating and then attacking the US to keep the ruling party in power in the US.
Capturing votes depends on Christian evangelicals such as Pat Robertson, who can sell the ideological and religious foundation for this militant foreign policy to their constituents. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, right-wing talk radio and others are also very handy for selling this simplistic interpretation to their constituency.
It is much easier to sell their supporters on the message “All Muslims want to kill us”, than to say that “The Middle East is a very complicated place with complicated alliances.” Most Americans just don’t have the time and attention to follow complicated arguments.
When there is another attack on the US, then Americans will again unquestioningly do whatever their government tells them to do, surrendering whatever freedoms they have in the name of the “War on Terror”.
It is a cycle which will go on and on, unless Americans step in to stop it.
So, the US government has it in its best interests to declare war on traditional Islam, while saying that it is only fighting Islamofascism.
mark,
it can be argued that for the sake of the greater good, inefficiency of a small shop is inherently better than the efficiency a large retailer brings.
The latter primarily concentrates the gain in one person where the previous spreads it in a larger group. It will allow more persons to live on a given amount of money, albeit probably with a lower standard. That certainly is in-tune with obligations to care for the extended family as to be observed in Islamic societies.
Of course, one can and will then argue that the larger shop also generate new jobs, and keeps people employed. I daresay it’s a difference if you work in your own small shop or clean or sort the wares in a Walmart, or flipping burgers at a Burger King. That only starts with salaries.
I would also be very hesitant to make efficiency or the market a primary consideration in such matters. Neither efficiency nor the market are ends in themself. They serve a purpose, that is, humans.
Depending on the circumstances it might be a very good idea to subordinate business interests under social considerations. That doesn’t mean we’re descending down into dreaded socialism. It’s about different priorities.
As for Walmart’s failure in the German market, my take on it is that Walmart’s key cost-cutter in the US, employee exploitation, is well beyond what’s legal after German Law. Without that advantage, they couldn’t compete with ALDI and Lidl.
Babak,
I agree, hence my saying the West or at least Western Administrations need to re-define their definitions of moderate Islam if they want to make any progress in the region.
Zoning boards, and the business and neighborhood groups they are beholden to, inhibit competition all the time. I’ve been to lots of meetings where the plea of, e.g. the small pharmacist threatened by the big Eckard or Walgreen’s is given a lot of weight.
Lounsbury, your responses leave me unsure how you differ from what you called “right-Bolsheviks.”
Plus, it seems all you can do is deny reality: large retailers never sell below-cost, competition laws are effective in developing countries, etc., and dismiss any value other than market values.
Values other than market values – which include religious values, which is why this discussion is relevant to this topic – are politically defined.
In a democracy, it’s perfectly legitimate to limit market forces for these other, non-market, values. It’s not the “rentier elite,” or central planning commissars which set the rules, it’s voters.
So yeah, in a democracy it’s legitimate that economic activity should be in the first instance, subordinated to centrally directed political considerations but for the “centrally.” The more local devolution, the better. If Burlington, Vermont doesn’t want its downtown retailers killed off by a Wal-Mart outside the town center, it’s up to the voters of Burlington, not the federal government or WTO.
Billmon has a good posting about how business interests, the war against Islamofascism, US national energy security, Republican party finances, Christian fundamentalism, right-wing ideology and global privatization all come together in the Bush/Cheney foreign policy map:
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2007/01/the_global_ener.html
Colonel, in the sea of political commentary on our present situation, your weblog has become indispensable because of your military & strategic expertise. I don’t know if you would be interested in addressing a non-military crisis which is waiting in the wings for our country as well as every other country in the world. I am referring to the peak oil energy crisis and global climate changes. Most/all developed countries have comprehensive energy policies to off-set the imminent oil crisis, so do some US states and cities, but the US federal gov’t does not. (If it does, it’s not sharing with the population) The US gov’t (non)response to Hurricane Katrina demonstrated our deficit/inability/lack in the face of global climate problems.
Against that picture I place your military analysis of the aftermath in this country of an attack on Iran, and an Iranian/Islamic counter-attack:
“Just think about what it would take to kill the USA. It would take a lot, a hell of a lot. Think about potential jihadi or Iranian capabilities. Think about ranges, throw weights. Think about “the unthinkable.” Understand that the death of a city will not kill the United States.”
My question, if you care to entertain it and I would understand if you do not, is this: Given the twin, related crises of oil and climate problems, do you still see this coming war as NOT being an existential threat for the United States of America?
Do you think we could emerge intact from a 3rd World War, from crippling oil & natural gas shortages, from the economic depression which is sure to attend the oil flow problems, and from the loss of more US cities from flooding brought on by global warming savage storms? I would value your opinion should you care to give it.
Regarding efficiency:
In Japan (and also N.J., US) gas stations are required, by law, to have attendants. Take your pick – give people money to stay home (welfare) or force businesses to hire people (that are not needed).
Babak Makkinejad:
Thanks for your comments, which provoked thought.
Mrs Thatcher’s view that nuclear weapons have kept the peace in Europe was one that I used to hold.
I now think it decidedly dubious. Some of the reasons were given in my earlier comments, but it may be worth pointing out some specific reasons why mainstream British views on the matter should be treated with caution. The British got very comfortable with the Cold War order. They were quite happy to see the Russians contain German power – when in the late Eighties indications began to emerge that the Russians might retreat from Germany, these were met with frenzied denial and something close to panic, not least by Mrs Thatcher. Meanwhile, so long as the United States was locked into Europe (Gulliver tied down by the threads, as it were), the British did not think that Soviet military action against Western Europe was remotely likely. Accordingly, like other West Europeans, they were extremely resistant to American efforts to get them to spend the kind of funds on defence which would have made it possible to have a force posture which made military sense and to get away from reliance on nuclear weapons. It may also have been relevant that nuclear ‘deterrence’ became something like the Thirty Nine Articles in the Anglican Church – a set of formulae which disguise different views, which people can live with because they are familiar, but which if revised could produce explosive disagreement: as indeed happened when in response to McNamara’s moves away from ‘massive retaliation’ the French left the integrated command of NATO. Accordingly faith in the peace-keeping properties of nuclear weapons became a kind of orthodoxy, remarkably resistant to contrary evidence and argument. If people in the Middle East take seriously British views on nuclear weapons – or standard British texts like Sir Lawrence Freedman’s The Evolution of Strategy, recently republished in a third edition with basic historical mistakes uncorrected – they do so at their own risk.
On the question of the security of Iran. I come to this blog in search of expertise on the Middle East and military technicalities, both areas in which my ignorance is palpable. However, in focusing on Israel I did not mean to suggest that this was the only problem about which Iran needed to be concerned. And for what it is worth, I think that if I was an Iranian strategic planner I would be in a state of the most acute possible alarm about a whole range of different threats. I would be racking my brains to think of every possible means by which I could counter the power of a long list of actual or potential adversaries. And not having a mind wrecked by a University of Chicago education, I might be remarkably inventive.
I would perhaps be weighing the costs and risks of looking for nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union, and of a very large number of ways in which through means conventional or unconventional I could strike at the Americans, the Israelis etc: a range which, given the availability of potential clients and the increasing availability of accurate weaponry, is increasing. And I would certainly be attracted by Western ideas of nuclear ‘deterrence’, and be reflecting on the familiar problem of how to negotiate the period of maximum danger when one is seeking such a ‘deterrent’ but has not actually got one. I still think, however, that Iranian planners would be wise not to swallow the snake-oil of Western ‘deterrence’ theorists uncritically.
The Bush Administration has been remarkably resistant to attempts to contemplate the possibility that the Iranians might not simply be prepared to play the game by American rules – witness the failure of Lt.-Gen. Paul Van Riper’s attempts in the 2002 Millenium Challenge war game to make the Defense Department think about what would happen if Iran took the initiative and used unconventional methods. (The Soviet military leadership did the same when Tukhachevskii tried to have Germany take the initiative in a war game in 1935.) The result is a strategy which turns the basis principles of ‘compellence’ on its head, in that it attempts to deploy inadequate and inappropriate means in support of maximalist ends (‘regime change’ in the ‘axis of evil’) which risk leaving the adversary feeling that he may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. So far, the Bush Administration seems to have been doing its level best to unleash a kind of war of all against all in the Middle East, with some aid and encouragement from our Prime Minister, who is unfortunately overcompensating for a silly radical past by swallowing neocon hogwash. An optimistic view would be that the poor results of the strategies pursued so far would discredit the lunatics and lead to a more sober rethinking of security, in which those with experience, expertise and judgement like Colonel Lang or Ambassador Freeman would be heeded. If things changed in the United States, it might be possible to have a much wider rethinking about what security means, in today’s very interconnected world. Part of such a rethinking might be a realisation that while power politics are endlessly with us, we all share a certain common interest in preventing conflicts run out of control. And here, I think some sceptical rethinking of elements of the Cold War experience would help.
My Dear Cafe:
Lounsbury, your responses leave me unsure how you differ from what you called “right-Bolsheviks.”
Then you have little understanding of either my position or that of the Right Bolshies.
Quite simply, the Right Bolshies – call them Neo-Cons – have a profoundly interventionist approach and view of politics and economics, Statist in the end despite their pretensions otherwise, and messianic, to convert the world to their view.
I have no desire for intervention, except in genuine self-defence [not dressed up pretext as in the case of Iraq (contra Afghanistan where the US was perfectly justified, pity they bollixed it all up afterwards)].
Nor do I have a desire to impose by force some idealised liberal economic or political system; the liberal economic and political system I do consider objectively superior, but it can not be imposed by armed force.
For the political side, unlike the Right Bolsheviks (or a Bolshy approach generally, Left or Right), I have no belief in transformation. Political liberalism, as a mass political value, has to develop from indingenous roots and I am fairly convinced excessive interventionism in this area is utterly counter-productive, even when the goals are good in theory. In MENA, that means realism about the real depth of the so-called pro-Western parties, I would add, and not being duped by the Chalabis, the corrupt rent-seekers and faux-liberals [in a European sense] speaking honeyed words in English to sell a bad product to the gullible.
In economic terms, it means I am absolutely in favour of trade liberalisation and a minimum of interventionism by developing country governments, as in my experience the regulatory and other structures supposedly in place to protect public interest generally operate to rape the ruled for the benefit of non-productive, vampire elites (whether they pretend to be Socialist or Capitalist, they are vampires in actual fact).
Nothing, in short, can be further from the Right Bolshies.
I am, in effect, an old school Liberal (or if you wish, to use American language, Libertarian, although without the irrational paranoia aspect with respect to government and regulation for in countries with a robust political culture, I fully see the value delivered by some regulation).
Plus, it seems all you can do is deny reality: large retailers never sell below-cost, competition laws are effective in developing countries, etc., and dismiss any value other than market values.
What a lovely set of straw men.
Large retailers sometimes sell below cost, although it hardly is the problem you think it is. They often sell below the cost that small retailers can, due to efficencies in logistics, which is a positive good to the population.
Nor do I see competition laws as being effective in developing countries, indeed if you read my clear statement supra for actual comprehension, I state the exact opposite, but add that I do not see any evidence that regulation in developing countries to be particularly effective except as a means for the parasites to extract rents from the productive sector.
As for supposed values other than market values, well one can piss and moan about values, but I prefer to let individuals decide what values they prefer, unobstructed by laws put in place by persons presuming to speak for them and by law, impede them from making their own choices about what they prefer.
Values other than market values – which include religious values, which is why this discussion is relevant to this topic – are politically defined.
They may be politically defined, or politics via the dead hand of the State may intervene to impose values based on the airy pretensions of wool gathering intellectuals who like to bat around abstractions.
Regardless, the problem of MENA with respect to values is poverty, and poverty is only solved by economic growth.
In a democracy, it’s perfectly legitimate to limit market forces for these other, non-market, values.
One can limit what one wants.
Limitations have costs.
Of course, the key opening phrase is democracy – you may add well-functioning democracy (by reasonable pragmatic standards, not intellectualised ideals).
All choices have costs and benefits.
To make intelligent choices, effective choices, one has to weigh total costs and benefits.
Limiting the market may be worthy, or it may not.
Depending on the circumstances, and those circumstances may change – always do actually, over time.
It’s not the “rentier elite,” or central planning commissars which set the rules, it’s voters.
Well, strike me dumb.
You’ve gone off and started to talk about the US of A when I rather thought the subject was MENA, and Malls, and the like.
I’m uninterested in Vermont USA or its petty local politics, although it escapes me what the WTO has to do with Vermont outside of ignorant Left mythologies. Regardless, on MENA try not to base your analysis on provincial experience.
Babak Makkinejad:
Thanks for your comments, which provoked thought.
Mrs Thatcher’s view that nuclear weapons have kept the peace in Europe was one that I used to hold.
I now think it decidedly dubious. Some of the reasons were given in my earlier comments, but it may be worth pointing out some specific reasons why mainstream British views on the matter should be treated with caution. The British got very comfortable with the Cold War order. They were quite happy to see the Russians contain German power – when in the late Eighties indications began to emerge that the Russians might retreat from Germany, these were met with frenzied denial and something close to panic, not least by Mrs Thatcher. Meanwhile, so long as the United States was locked into Europe (Gulliver tied down by the threads, as it were), the British did not think that Soviet military action against Western Europe was remotely likely. Accordingly, like other West Europeans, they were extremely resistant to American efforts to get them to spend the kind of funds on defence which would have made it possible to have a force posture which made military sense and to get away from reliance on nuclear weapons. It may also have been relevant that nuclear ‘deterrence’ became something like the Thirty Nine Articles in the Anglican Church – a set of formulae which disguise different views, which people can live with because they are familiar, but which if revised could produce explosive disagreement: as indeed happened when in response to McNamara’s moves away from ‘massive retaliation’ the French left the integrated command of NATO. Accordingly faith in the peace-keeping properties of nuclear weapons became a kind of orthodoxy, remarkably resistant to contrary evidence and argument. If people in the Middle East take seriously British views on nuclear weapons – or standard British texts like Sir Lawrence Freedman’s The Evolution of Strategy, recently republished in a third edition with basic historical mistakes uncorrected – they do so at their own risk.
On the question of the security of Iran. I come to this blog in search of expertise on the Middle East and military technicalities, both areas in which my ignorance is palpable. However, in focusing on Israel I did not mean to suggest that this was the only problem about which Iran needed to be concerned. And for what it is worth, I think that if I was an Iranian strategic planner I would be in a state of the most acute possible alarm about a whole range of different threats. I would be racking my brains to think of every possible means by which I could counter the power of a long list of actual or potential adversaries. And not having a mind wrecked by a University of Chicago education, I might be remarkably inventive.
I would perhaps be weighing the costs and risks of looking for nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union, and of a very large number of ways in which through means conventional or unconventional I could strike at the Americans, the Israelis etc: a range which, given the availability of potential clients and the increasing availability of accurate weaponry, is increasing. And I would certainly be attracted by Western ideas of nuclear ‘deterrence’, and be reflecting on the familiar problem of how to negotiate the period of maximum danger when one is seeking such a ‘deterrent’ but has not actually got one. I still think, however, that Iranian planners would be wise not to swallow the snake-oil of Western ‘deterrence’ theorists uncritically.
The Bush Administration has been remarkably resistant to attempts to contemplate the possibility that the Iranians might not simply be prepared to play the game by American rules – witness the failure of Lt.-Gen. Paul Van Riper’s attempts in the 2002 Millenium Challenge war game to make the Defense Department think about what would happen if Iran took the initiative and used unconventional methods. (The Soviet military leadership did the same when Tukhachevskii tried to have Germany take the initiative in a war game in 1935.) The result is a strategy which turns the basis principles of ‘compellence’ on its head, in that it attempts to deploy inadequate and inappropriate means in support of maximalist ends (‘regime change’ in the ‘axis of evil’) which risk leaving the adversary feeling that he may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. So far, the Bush Administration seems to have been doing its level best to unleash a kind of war of all against all in the Middle East, with some aid and encouragement from our Prime Minister, who is unfortunately overcompensating for a silly radical past by swallowing neocon hogwash. An optimistic view would be that the poor results of the strategies pursued so far would discredit the lunatics and lead to a more sober rethinking of security, in which those with experience, expertise and judgement like Colonel Lang or Ambassador Freeman would be heeded. If things changed in the United States, it might be possible to have a much wider rethinking about what security means, in today’s very interconnected world. Part of such a rethinking might be a realisation that while power politics are endlessly with us, we all share a certain common interest in preventing conflicts run out of control. And here, I think some sceptical rethinking of elements of the Cold War experience would help.
Colonel Lang:
I think I have posted a comment twice — if so of course please ignore the duplication!
Green Zone Cafe wrote:
” I’ve been to lots of meetings where the plea of, e.g. the small pharmacist threatened by the big Eckard or Walgreen’s is given a lot of weight.”
I’m sure you have. So have I. Please see my prior remarks on abuse vs. use of zoning powers.
“So yeah, in a democracy it’s legitimate that economic activity should be in the first instance, subordinated to centrally directed political considerations but for the “centrally.” The more local devolution, the better”
You get points for honesty, if not logic. How do local worthies protecting their comparative advantage at the expense of their neighbors differ morally from doing the same thing at a state or national level ?
Why is either version of crazyquilt, ad hoc, regulation better than having uniform rules ?
Most people will define “fairness” as whatever benefits themselves personally and harms the interests of those they dislike. The market is certainly an imperfect mechanism but at least it contains some rational yardsticks with which to make relative and absolute comparisons.
The Lounsbury’s remarks regarding costs being calculated rather than waved away, are astute.
Louns,
I don’t think we would disagree much on individual cases of regulation in MENA, I would agree that extensive deregulation is needed.
I would say I am a little more sentimental about modes and mores swept away by the “creative destruction” of capitalism, and wary of the political backlash from the economic and cultural “losers.”
My Dear Cafe:
I don’t think we would disagree much on individual cases of regulation in MENA, I would agree that extensive deregulation is needed.
Well, then, we’re simply boosting Col Lang’s comment record then, aren’t we.
Well any good blog owner likes to have an odd entry that goes off the rails.
I would say I am a little more sentimental about modes and mores swept away by the “creative destruction” of capitalism, and wary of the political backlash from the economic and cultural “losers.”
Amigo, I am do not lack either a degree of sentimentality about souqs, traditional life or an awareness of the problems of transitioning from traditional life to modern economic life.
I am merely aware from first hand experience that (i) for the real “average joes” to have future opportunities that economic growth has to happen, (ii) that the most significant barriers to opportunity are those that are indigenous, and not related to Western firms, or multinationals or even globalisation. They are tied to the rentier vampire elites.
Elites supported, sadly, by the West, in direct contradiction with the West’s own values and goals.
As a good market liberal, I am deeply annoyed and disappointed by this. However, I am also a pragmatist. There are real reasons why even well-intentioned Western governments have engaged in risk aversion.
Not easy questions.
In any case, I believe it is clear that I am not a Right Bolshevik.
Why is either version of crazyquilt, ad hoc, regulation better than having uniform rules?
Mark, uniform rules for what matters and what polities?
Zoning is really the last local regulatory holdout, as it should be. Everything else is regulated federally, by the EU or other supranational organizations, or at least on a national basis. Nothing wrong with that, as long as there is the consent of the governed. “Consent of the governed” seems to be a problem with the EU, at least when I read the British tabloid writing about Brussels bureaucrats obliterating English trade customs.
It’s OK by me if a town wants to write its zoning code to preserve “main street.” And you know it can be done, with lot size and parking lot restrictions.
All:
I’ve enjoyed very much the many threads posted here. Particularly the comments on nuclear deterrence.
Lounsbury said:
“Of course, the key opening phrase is democracy – you may add well-functioning democracy (by reasonable pragmatic standards, not intellectualised ideals).”
I agree that this the sine qua non for a functioning market in a ‘liberal economic system’, whether it is objectively superior or otherwise.
But, again, doesn’t this beg the question of whether the political and economic practices that are coincident to modernity are an essential ingredient?
Can a genuinely indigenously inspired order produce a recognizably ‘well functioning democracy’, by the standard of the Lounsbury?
What recourse to power would the clan and tribe have in such an order?
What of Islam? For example (an easy one) what impact would the prohibition against interest have on said order?
What indigenous systems of power and rule would be displaced or transformed beyond recognition in order to prevent the rejection of this ‘graft’ by the host?
Against the backdrop of Iraq, it does seem comical to talk about the preservation of ‘main street’.What a luxury! That’s not what these people are killing each other over. ( Main street might wither away, but the city continues to thrive supplanted by the strip mall and small retailers and business owners who are able to benefit from an anchor tenant like Wal-Mart, on this we would, I’m sure agree).
But we haven’t really seen evidence of any real economic integration with the west in the middle east absent the tremendously distorting effect of petroleum.
TGZ,
british tabloids are traditionally xenophobic, populist and hostile to the EU in general. They represent a right wing British view, and should be understood as that. Nothing less, but also nothing more.
swerv21:
The British Crown Colony of Hong Kong was never a democracy, much less a liberal order. Nevertheless it thrived since there was minimal micro-management of its economy by the Colonial Government. Additionally, the Colonial Government enforced the rule-of-law more or less evenly.
TThere war prosperity and economic development in the Odessa region (under Tsar Alexander I) and NEP (under Lenin) both under non-liberal governments.
And I am not even going to talk about PRC, Korea, Taiwan, and Indonesia.