re: "Iraq, Libya, and Imperialism"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor (" The Original Blog and Daybook. ") shared his thoughts on NATO's Libyan intervention.

Money quote(s):

"Qaddafi was likely executed by one or another militia faction, or even by a militiaman, possibly for his possessions. He was shot by rebels, which may have been merciful compared to what they might have done with him. It’s hard to say that beating him to a pulp then shooting him out of hand wasn’t justice. Qaddafi wasn’t quite the monster that Uday Hussein was, but he’d done enough to earn his fate, and indeed the US Air Force tried to kill him with TFX fighter-bombers in the 1986 Operation El Dorado Canyon. They didn’t get him, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. It was an old fashioned harbor bombardment from the old days of Great Powers diplomacy. Reagan acted in retaliation for Libyan terrorist activities after consultation with the Congressional leadership of both parties. Had Gaddafi been killed in the raid the history of North Africa would have been considerably different.

In any event, NATO has brought the tyrant down, which must have been the mission. The official authorization for air NATO air strikes (including US acts of war) in Libya was a UN resolution mandating the protection of civilians from a Khaddafi massacre, but it’s very difficult – for me impossible – to connect an air strike against a convoy fleeing a city just before it falls to the rebels with the mission of protecting civilians. Even assuming that most of those in the convoy were military – and surely some were not since it was a chief of state and his entourage – there were likely to be civilian casualties from the air strikes, not to mention possible massacres in the looting that followed the convoy’s defeat.

And that does raise the question of whether the President of the United States has the authority to order such acts on his own authority. The UN cover mandate didn’t authorize regime change or execution of the chief of state of Libya. The President did tell Ghadaffi to get out (but apparently wasn’t willing to let him get out alive)." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

&

"The Constitution empowers Congress to declare war. The President has the authority to protect and defend the Constitution, but unlike the King of England he has not the power to make war on whomever he pleases (a right that remains with the Ministers who act for the Crown to this day). In England you must go to Parliament to get the financing to pay for a war, but the King along can declare it. That right was specifically and intentionally taken from the President and given to Congress (along with the power of the purse). Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who passionately believed that the US ought to be involved in the War in Europe that began in September 1939, understood this very well. He could promise Churchill that the US would come to Britain’s aid, but that was restricted to support until December of 1941 when Germany honored the Axis alliance and declared war after the US and Japan were at war. In those days war was considered a serious event.

The problem with going to the rescue of the Libya rebels without any declaration of war is that the US has little say in what happens next. Perhaps we shouldn’t have any say.

On the other hand, we have spent about $1 Billion on our Libyan adventure, and we don’t know what we have put into power in Tripoli. We do know that one faction claiming to speak for the rebels has said that the basis of law in Libya will be Sharia. It is clear that had we not spent the $1 Billion, Libya would either remain unified under Khaddafi or be partitioned, probably at Marble Arch. Whether that would be a better outcome than unified under Sharia law is not clear to me. It is also not at all clear that the White House thought this through before committing us to borrow a billion dollars from the Chinese in order to intervene in the Libyan civil war. Was this outcome worth the cost?"

It certainly was for someone, but not necessarily the U.S. taxpayers who'll have to pay back the Chinese. With interest.

"I am not much in favor of imperialism as a policy for the United States, but I do favor competent imperialism over the present policies. If we must have an empire, should we not be competent at it? Of course there is the problem that Afghanistan has little to nothing that we want.

I was opposed to extending our Afghan adventure beyond the punishment of the Taliban for harboring out enemies; left to me we’d have been out as soon as Kabul fell to the anti-Taliban forces, with perhaps a billion dollars in bribe money squirreled away to be spent at the discretion of whomever we left behind as resident. Our policy in Afghanistan should have been simple: don’t harbor our enemies, don’t let your country be used as a base for attacks on the US, and apply to the Ambassador if you need anything. Been good to know you. A policy, by the way, that would have been as welcome to the Afghans as to the Legions." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

CAA rather likes Dr. Pournelle's punitive expeditionary model for Afghanistan. Of course, it's much too late for that now.

"There is no way that we could leave US troops in Iraq subject to the tender mercies of the Iraqi courts. US troops are not going to be subject to Iraqi law. But can you imagine the Japanese making that sort of demand as part of their surrender in 1945?

The result of the Iraqi war? We have removed Iran’s worst enemy. We have installed a Shiite government in Iraq. We have succeeded in changing the Middle East beyond Iran’s fondest and wildest dreams. This is the result Iran has worked toward since we invaded Iraq. They have their goals. Now we go home." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA)

10/23

re: "Avoiding Armageddon with China"

Dan Blumenthal, Mark Stokes, and Michael Mazza at Shadow Government ("Notes From The Loyal Opposition") look at changing U.S. perception of China's intentions.

Money quote(s):

"It is good news that James Traub, a highly regarded journalist and writer, may be startled out of his belief that China is a "status quo" power, based in part on a paper we wrote.

We hope that more writers of Traub's caliber will be similarly startled by China's growing menace. The truth is that like every rising power in history (including the United States) China wants to change rules, territorial delineations, and laws written while it was weak."

CAA is by no means a China (or even an "Asia") "hand." Not my speciality. But for any practicioner or student of foreign, military, or intelligence affairs, China is simply too big to ignore.

Like unto Texas, there are (or should be) more than one China. Probably (again like unto Texas), there should be at least five Chinas. And that doesn't even include Formosa in the count.

"Throughout its history, China has lumbered into disaster after disaster, costing untold sums in lives and treasure (e.g. the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, Beijing's war with Vietnam). Certainly as China re-emerged as a power it had its chance to "bide its time and hide its capabilities" as Deng Xiaoping instructed. But instead, it decided to build a highly destabilizing military (see the last decade of Department of Defense reports on China's military power, the latest of which is here) and has proceeded to rattle its saber against Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, South Korea, and, most troublingly, the United States. It has now created the conditions for the encirclement is so fears."

There's this concept of imperial overreach. Make no mistake about it, any China larger than one-fifth of its current mass constitutes an empire and may be expected to behave (and misbehave) accordingly.

Hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

"Responding to years of Chinese harassment of U.S., Japanese, Vietnamese, and Philippine ships, last year Clinton broke new ground by declaring at a summit in Hanoi that "The United States, like every nation, has a national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia's maritime commons, and respect for international law in the South China Sea." This is a diplomatic way of telling China that we will continue to exercise our forces inside its exclusive economic zone, consistent with international custom, and we will ensure that our partners in Asia are able to resist Chinese bullying.

This brings us to what seem to be Traub's biggest problem with the paper: that doing what Gates and Clinton proclaimed we need to do (respond with our own military programs and ensure freedom of navigation and open access to Asia's maritime commons) is expensive. True enough. National security is an expensive endeavor. But as our own history shows (pre-Pearl Harbor, pre-Korean War) military weakness in the face of new threats are more expensive still, in lives and in treasure."

Nothing I read in our nation's capital newspaper(s) give me any confidence that we are any less likely to re-commit our interwar and post-WW2 forefathers' mistakes with respect to military preparedness. And as my WW2 veteran grandfather rather chillingly put it to a much younger CAA, young men end up paying for that with "a bayonet in the guts."

"The Cold War is too simple a metaphor to describe Sino-U.S. relations. China is an economic partner, and Washington is deeply engaged in a diplomacy that tries to convince China to peacefully take its place as a great power. At the same time, we are balancing China's power and hedging against a more bellicose China."

Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. China certainly is, expanding its military and naval capabilities at a rapid pace, becoming in fact the peer-competitor that theorists like to pontificate about.

"The idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy -- of turning China into an enemy by treating it as one -- is like a unicorn; it is a make believe creature that still has its believers. The United States has done more than any other country to "turn China into a friend" by welcoming it into the international community. Alas, China has not fulfilled this U.S. "prophesy of friendship." Instead China has built what all credible observers call a destabilizing military that has changed the status quo by holding a gun to Taiwan's head even as Taiwan makes bold attempts at peace, by claiming ever more territory in the South China Sea, and by attempting to bully and intimidate Japan."

Engagement works both ways. All the economic levers we attempt to work into our engagement with China run right back to us through our own economy and international economic institutions and arrangements. And China's military theorists aren't shy in their theorizing about the multidimensional nature of any future conflict with the U.S. Forewarned isn't necessarily fore-armed, but it's a start.

"(I)t is time for the United States to offer more serious assistance so that matters do not get out of hand. A strong U.S. presence and commitment to the region's security can help avoid a regional nuclear arms race, for example. The United States can be a force multiplier by providing the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance that only Washington possesses, and by training, and equipping our allies and friends.

This strategy is one way of beginning to put Asia back in balance as China changes the status quo. Not doing so, we fear, would lead to Armageddon."

(9/6)