If you read only one thing today, let it be this

If you read only one thing today, let it be this.

re: "8 myths about American grand strategy"

Peter Feaver at Shadow Government ("Notes From The Loyal Opposition") thinks about grand strategy (so you don't have to).

Money quote(s):

"Grand strategy appears to be the flavor of the month in the strategic community. I have planned or been invited to numerous conferences looking at the topic and the debates on this topic are as lively as I can remember in a long time. Just recently, I gave a talk to a grand strategy conference at NDU on the myths that afflict the field."

Mr. Feaver listed eight myths; CAA has selected his favorite three for your consideration.

"Myth 1: The U.S. can't do grand strategy

Many critics claim that the United States is simply too disorganized to do strategy on a grand scale.

In fact, we had a coherent grand strategy during the 19th century build around the Monroe Doctrine. We had a coherent grand strategy during WWII built around winning in Europe first. And we had a coherent grand strategy during the Cold War built around the idea of containment." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

&

"Myth 3: A grand strategy has to have a 3-syllable label that rhymes with "ainment"

This gets to the heart of why you get the odd argument that we had a grand strategy during the Cold War but we haven't since. When critics say that we haven't had a grand strategy since the end of the Cold War, what they really mean is that we haven't had a label like "containment" that enjoys widespread popularity. This is true, but trivial.

In fact, since the fall of the Soviet Union a 5-pillar grand strategy has been clearly discernible:

Pillar I. The velvet covered iron fist. Iron fist: build a military stronger than what is needed for near-term threats to dissuade a would-be hostile rival from achieving peer status. Velvet covered: accommodate major powers on issues, giving them a larger stake in the international distribution of goodies than their military strength would command to dissuade a near-peer from starting a hostile rivalry.

Pillar 2. Make the world more like us politically by promoting the spread of democracy.

Pillar 3. Make the world more like us economically by promoting the spread of markets and globalization.

Pillar 4. Focus on WMD proliferation to rogue states as the top tier national security threat.

Pillar 5 (added by George W. Bush). Focus on terrorist networks of global reach inspired by militant Islamist ideologies as another top tier national security threat, i.e. co-equal with WMD in the hands of rogue states. The nexus of 4 & 5 is the ne plus ultra threat.

No administration described the strategy in exactly these terms. Every single president succumbed to the political temptation to product differentiate and especially to describe one's own actions as a bold new departure from the "failed" efforts of his predecessor. Yet a fair-minded reading of the core governmental white papers on strategy, especially the National Security Strategy reports prepared by each administration, as well as the central policy efforts each administration pursued, reveals a broad 20-year pattern of continuity.

All post-Cold War presidents championed the first 4 pillars. The last two presidents (Bush and Obama) adopted the last 2. And the major grand strategic moves of the period derive from one or more of these pillars: eg. The outreach to India derives from Pillar 1, the invasion of Iraq derives from Pillars 4 and 5, and so on.

Obama campaigned as if he was going to make a grand strategic innovation by adding a 6th pillar: elevating climate change to be co-equal with WMD and terrorism. But he chose to do health care instead." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

&

"Myth 7: A grand strategy requires an existential threat

It may be easier to describe the grand strategy when there is an overarching existential threat to concentrate the mind. But as the post-Cold War has shown, it is possible to have a coherent grand strategy even when the threats are dispersed and less-than-existential.

The Cold War was not a time when everything was simple or when everyone knew priorities or everyone agreed on the threat. And it sure wasn't "a time of great stability and security unlike these really dangerous times today," -- a curious view that I hear most often from students who never lived through the Cold War era.

But it was a time when the much more obvious, and by the late 1950's possibly existential threat posed by the nuclear confrontation overlaid on top of a global ideological contest with the Soviet Union circumscribed strategic thinking in a way that is not the case today.

Compared to the Cold War period, we have more slack in our security environment and that introduces a certain amount of indeterminacy in the strategic debate."

Having "won" (i.e., we survived, Russia survived to become, er, Russia, Eastern Europe survived to become "Central Europe," and Western Europe survived to become the Eurozone) the Cold War, it's fun (for values thereof) to see so many latter-day Reaganites coming out of the woodwork to pretend that all along they'd meant to " jump on the team and come on in for the big win ."

11/23

re: "The ideologue’s fairy tale"

Karl at Patterico's Pontifications ("Harangues that Just Make Sense") considered election strategies for 2012.

Money quote(s):

"(T)he fact that the 7%-10% of voters who end up deciding elections are almost by definition not swayed by ideology does not lessen the importance of making the case for smaller government, economic freedom and personal responsibility."

The unstated (and mostly correct) assumption that the remaining 90+% of voters split evenly (more-or-less) between each of the two major candidates.

Most election years, that's true, regardless of whether those voters self- identify as Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, moderates or independents.

In other election years, one candidate (or party platform) is simply so discredited or another is simply so overwhelmingly popular, that this breaks down into a landslide. Wooing of "independents" in those years is unnecessary; they're self-wooed.

"(O)ne of the fundamental cliches of the progressive left is pragmatism, i.e., that they are simply doing “what works.” It is also one of the progressive left’s fundamental falsehoods.

The past century has been one in which progressives have put forth the idea that Soviet communism is what works, that Eurofascism is what works, that Maoism is what works, and that Eurosocialism is what works. The actual history of the past century is one in which Eurofascism was defeated in WWII, Soviet communism was defeated in the Cold War, Maoism has degenerated into a fascism and crony capitalism that only Tom Friedman finds attractive, and Eurosocialism is taking its own road to the dustbin of history."

5/6

re: "Publishing In A Handbasket"

Sarah A. Hoyt at According to Hoyt ("playing the authorial game") discussed conspiracies, propaganda, disinformation, and "the narrative."

Money quote(s):

"“I entered our section offices through a washroom booth in MacArthur Station. You won’t find our offices in the phone lists. In fact, it does not exist. Probably I don’t exist either. All is illusion. Another route is through a little hole-in-the-wall shop with a sign reading RARE STAMPS & COINS. Don’t try that route either – they’ll try to sell you a Tu’ penny Black.” Robert A. Heinlein, The Puppet Masters."

Forget the movie version, read the book.

(Although CAA quite enjoys Donald Sutherland in general and thought Julie Warner was scrumptious as "Mary.")

"There is nothing so inherently human as feeling a frisson of excitement at the idea that behind the rational, dry world we know, conspiracies move in the shadow, manipulating men and societies to their whims."

Not that conspiracies don't exist in the real world. Quiet the opposite. The thing is there are so many conspiracies (for values of "conspiracies"), each working at cross-purposes, that it's hard to see any one or another getting much in the way of an upper hand.

The most successful conspiracies develop a narrative, a world-view, into a consensus that is self-perpetuating over the long term. (Which is a subject for another time and a better writer.)

"Science Fiction and Fantasy is particularly rife with conspiracies and long-held secrets. Part of this is that for some of our premises, say “there are aliens among us” or “the fairies have always been here” or even “of course there are vampires. They all work for the IRS.” "

The best science fiction takes just a single fact about reality or possible futures (or pasts) and twists it just so, and lets the logic flow therefrom.

"(E)ven in Puppet Masters, Heinlein had the UFO landings be real and the government has sat on them.

Yesterday I was talking to a young friend about conspiracies and the possibility of conspiracies, particularly by the US government. You have to understand, my own young self was convinced that the US government well well-night omnipotent, and I think so are most Europeans of all ages. I remember when, a few years ago, I told my parents that our passports were going to take – I think – six months (aftermath of 9/11) and was told I was lying. This was impossible. “Big country like that. Such an efficient government.”

I think I preferred it that way. Yes, yes, I saw all the movies with evil CIA does something evil. Sorry. I still preferred the idea that our government was sharp like a well-honed blade and capable of doing things and keeping them secret for years. Why don’t I believe that? Well… I first came to the States as an exchange student during the Carter presidency. Very few illusions can survive killer rabbits."

Just so.

"(F)or the record let me say right now that I don’t believe there are UFOs hiding among us. If the IRS employs vampires, they must survive on blood sausage. And the Kennedy assassination was a conspiracy. Well, duh. Of course it was. It was a soviet conspiracy. That was why Oswald was trained. He came to the US to kill Kennedy. Look, children, sometimes things are what they appear to be, and that’s the greatest conspiracy. (And why, you ask. Oh, tons of reasons, including the fact that our sainted president WAS on prescription drugs that lessened his self control. But it’s also possible it was an agit prop operation, something the Soviets were VERY GOOD at. Look at its effect: it succeeded in radicalizing the leftwing of US politics as nothing before it had. And sometimes the effect is exactly what it was meant to be.)" (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Remember what I said about above about the most successful conspiracies? Communism or bolshevism or marxism or whatever narratival expression of the "original" conspiracy did of course exist and many unspeakable (or least barely spoken-of) and fell deeds were committed in its furtherance and in its behalf. And that just scratches the surface. Adding Kennedy to that body count, justifiably or not, is in essence the merest feather-weights increase to that weighty collection of evils.

(Look, you can take CAA out of the Cold War, but you can't take the Cold War out of CAA!)

"I don’t believe in conspiracies, but I do believe in misinformation. As all of you know, I stop short of being Roman enough to deify Heinlein. BARELY short. So I will refrain from saying that his starting with the conspiracy and then leading us to the real way something really big can keep secret RIGHT UNDER OUR NOSES was deliberate and a work of genius. Perhaps it was. Ginny is no longer alive for me to ask.

It’s also entirely possible he just used the conspiracy to draw us in, and of course the misinformation was part of what he saw with World War II and the Cold War. The juxtaposition is possibly accidental.

The facts of the Kennedy assassination are right in the open. Have always been. But even those who know Oswald was a communist and had a Soviet wife, will say “yes but…” and then on go on blab about the climate of hatred or evil conservatives. Why? Because all the books, most of the articles and ninety nine point nine percent of the dramatizations involving Kennedy go haring off those points and leaving the obvious, visible truth by the way side as something of little importance." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Misdirection. It also works in magic, politics, and other stage performances.

"(W)hile I can’t believe in conspiracies – particularly conspiracies by bureaucracy (wikileaks, anyone?) I do believe in the efficacy of “the big lie”. It works because it doesn’t try to cover up every proof of what really happened. Instead, it suppresses the truth by repeating the lie so often and so loudly, and by accusing anyone who challenges it of being crazy or worse, until truth shuts up and goes away. It’s still there. It’s just that no one looks at it." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Just because Hitler used it (and did so successfully) doesn't mean others don't use the same technique. He also used staircases, automobiles, sidewalks, and tableware.

"(H)ere’s the thing, right now (wikileaks, Journolist) the levers of power and the “shut up, we’re smarter” aren’t working. There are to many other channels of communication, people are talking and posting phone videos of what they actually saw. Oh, some of it still works. The whole Arab Spring thing is not going anywhere as positively as it was painted. I’m sure the readers of this blog, innocent and fragile flowers all, will be shocked to know in most cases it might just be a way to more extremist religious regimes." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

CAA hasn't, yet, read any of Mrs. Hoyt's books but, if her fiction is as good as her web log, that is going to have to change!

"They learned at college that they are smart because they believe a set of things their professors told them — and that only ignorant people believe otherwise. And they want to go on thinking they are smart. They want to be able to tell all those squabbling bloggers and indie writers to “shut up” and “you’re irrelevant” and “we’ll never invite you to the nice parties.” "

10/17

re: "diplomacy"

CAA (that's me!) continued his response to Jeff Emanuel's post at RedState:, responding to Jack_Savage's comment of Friday, February 10th at 8:40 AM EST(link).

Jack Savage said:

"When we are in a foreign land, aren’t we ALL diplomats?"

My response:

"Only when we screw up.

Seriously, I got that same briefing as a Private (E-2) in Germany back during the Bad Old Days (TM) of The Cold War as well.

So in a broad-swath philosophical sense that’s true.

From a perspective of international law (specifically the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations), anybody we send over on a diplomatic passport (IF THEY ARE GRANTED A DIPLOMATIC VISA BY THE IRAQI GOVERNMENT) is a “diplomat.”

But in terms of reality, it’s our Foreign Service Officers (FSO; both from State, USAID, and Dept. of Commerce “Foreign Commercial Service) and Foreign Service Specialists (FSS) who are “actual” diplomats by training and profession.

You could add to that some (but not all) of the various attaches (such as military ones) from other government “tenant agencies” as they get specialized training for working in a diplomatic environment."


2/11

re: "Ambassadors for Atlantis"

Andrew Stuttaford at The Corner ("a web-leading source of real-time conservative opinion") relays a story that all diplomats should become familiar with.

What were the "Ambassadors for Atlantis":

"That’s the evocative term used in this post by Edward Lucas on the Economist’s Eastern Approaches blog to describe those exiled Baltic diplomats who flew the flag for their countries’ independendence throughout the long Soviet occupation"

Money quote:

"Sometimes, justice prevails."

From about 1933 until the end of the Cold War, there are some shining exemplars of diplomats and consuls who should be held as role models and heroes for the rest of us latecomers. The surviving diplomatic corps of the Baltic states provided a significant slice of them.

re: "Islam, Is It like the others?"

DiploMad at The DiploMad 2.0 ("Wracked with angst over the fate of our beloved Republic, now in the hands of Morons who (mis)govern it, the DiploMad has returned to do battle on the world wide web, swearing death to political correctness, and pulling no punches.") takes us around the bases on the subject of Islam (for those who haven't been paying attention since 2001) (or 1998) (or 1993).

Money quote(s):

"We, however, must ask, is our commitment to freedom, to the Constitution and its Bill of Rights a suicide pact? What do we do when faced with powerful organizations here at home that don't believe in freedom? Organizations motivated by hatred precisely for those freedoms and the practice of tolerance? Organizations that openly seek to use our freedoms to destroy them?

During the Cold War we faced such a foe, Soviet Communism. We adopted common sense measures at home to limit the ability of Communists to undermine our nation. Communists, for example, could not hold certain sensitive jobs; they were denied security clearances; the CPUSA was treated as the agent of a hostile foreign power and was subject to penetration and surveillance by the FBI. Foreign Communists were ineligible for visas to the US or for citizenship. Did we infringe on the freedom of Communists? Yes, no doubt. Given, however, what we all should now know about the extent of Soviet espionage against the USA, and the role that the CPUSA played in efforts to undermine America, those measures seem eminently reasonable. We have had similar restrictions on Fascists, Nazis, and KKK members. All infringements, all justifiable."

This is one of those historically proven facts, well known in literate circles, that tends to cause cognitive dissonance among those indoctrinated to see no enemies on the Left, to believe Sen. McCarthy was a wrong-headed monster, to believe Alger Hiss (and the Rosenbergs) were innocent.

All of which was proven, again and again, to be counterfactual; i.e., lies and untruths.

Google "venona papers" or "mitrokhin archive" if these assertions trouble you.

"Those of us who have served in Muslim states know that when we go to those countries we must respect their culture -- OK, fine. But it turns out that when they come to our country, we also have to respect their culture -- or at least the Disney version they peddle. As I have said on many occasions, try to build a church or a synagogue in Saudi Arabia, not possible; try to prevent Muslims from building a mosque in your home town, not possible. We all, especially those of us in government, have to recite the mantra of "Islam is a religion of tolerance and peace.""

A long time ago, before becoming a diplomat, I had a very interesting interview with an officer and a gentleman whose task that day was to evaluate me for "a position of trust and responsibility with the U.S. Government." Actually, it wasn't anything to do with my security clearance (for those of you who recognize the phrasing) but everything to do with whether I was fit or suitable to lie, cheat, and steal for my country.

(As some of our special operators will tell you, "if you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'.)

To shorten an overlong story, I was able to convince the gentleman that, despite my Eagle Scout background, I was willing to do what was necessary on behalf of my country, to do very un-nice things to un-nice people.

Fast forwarding, I recently found myself getting into a semi-public debate about whether American diplomats should tell lies. One party (who was not a diplomat) assumed I was accusing a fellow diplomat, who was our mutual acquaintance, of being a liar. Au contraire.

The mutual acquaintance, a senior FSO for whom I have boundless admiration, is someone in whose word I would place great confidence. On the other hand, I also understand the truth in the saying "A diplomat is an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country."

Pres. Bush (#43) understood (even if he never articulated it particularly well), that getting into an existential struggle with a world civilization a la Huntington, wasn't a particularly good idea.

It's still not a very good idea, but it may be one which we are unable to finally avoid.

So I'm not all that troubled by having to say the mantra. (I'm more troubled by people who know me thinking I'm stupid enough to believe it.)

"We are at war with a totalitarianism as much as we were with Communism and Fascism. It's going to be a long, long war, one in which we have to inflict repeated defeats on the Islamists"

"The Soviet Empire in practice was a social, economic and human disaster by just about any measure you care to use. Islam, likewise, as it is practiced in the modern world has produced some of the most retrograde, repressive, and violent regimes and organizations in existence. Nearly all Muslims might not be terrorists, but nearly all terrorists are Muslims. And they draw their inspiration from somewhere." (Bold type added for emphasis, primarily because this can't be said too often. - CAA)

&

"Bottom line: Do we have the right and obligation to defend ourselves against a brutal and totalitarian ideology, or do we have to put up with it because it has the label "religion?""

re: "The Entangling Alliance"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog *") has some thoughts on NATO.

Money quote(s):

"We have transferred operational control of the Libya operation from a USAF general to a USN admiral, but the admiral is head of NATO. Presumably there is a logic to this, but I confess I don't understand it; but then I don't understand the necessity for the US to be in NATO in the first place. NATO is an entangling alliance. The warning against entangling alliances is usually attributed to George Washington, but we actually inherited it from Thomas Jefferson: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations -- entangling alliances with none." It is of a piece with Washington's warnings. The purpose of NATO originally was to keep the Russians from taking West Germany and going to the Rhine. NATO was formed by Truman during the early days of the Cold War when governments in Europe were falling to Communist coups and the Iron Curtain was descending. It became a military alliance with a formal structure as a result of the Korean War. In those days, NATO was a mutual security organization: an attack on one member was an attack on all of them.

When the Berlin Wall came down NATO no longer had a purpose, but the Iron Law of Bureaucracy took over and NATO actually expanded"

&

"(O)f course the expanded NATO must have more missions: it needs to justify its existence.

In fact it has no reason for existence. NATO is an expensive luxury we cannot afford."

re: "NATO: Hey, We'll Bomb The Rebels, Too"

Ace at Ace of Spades HQ just keeps getting smarter all the time.

Money quote(s):

"If America wants to enter other states and declare a monopoly on sanctioned violence, well, that's a good way to keep outrages against civilians low, but comes at the cost of using American troops for every damn fight in the world.

If you're going to go a different way -- supporting indigenous fighters with air capabilities and intelligence -- you have to accept that there are going to be some vicious slaughters of civilians by "freedom fighters," but certainly you want as few such massacres as possible. What do you do? You can threaten an end to air cover and supply. But that doesn't thwart a slaughter in progress.

I'm not sure a threat to attack the rebels we're supporting is necessarily a bad thing. We need them to keep it clean. The temptation in any war, especially a civil one, is to get dirty and vicious as soon as possible and then keep topping yourself. Our troops don't do that (except for the occasional psychopaths who are then court martialed), but we don't want to have to insert our troops into every situation where we might want to flex some military might.

If we're going to fight in this limited fashion (and I think the old Cold War model of limited support is well worth revisiting), we do need to let our "freedom fighters" know that there are some things we just won't/can't countenance, and there's no way we can stay in a fight if our "freedom fighters" decide to unleash their inner Al Qaeda.

As for actually bombing them, though: I really can't think of a more preposterous situation than bombing both sides in a civil war.

Oh, and meanwhile, SecDef Gates said there won't be any ground troops in Libya as long as he's serving in his job. So, like, implicitly, he's threatening to walk."

&

"(O)f course, any time you have pilots in a war it means you're just one shoot-down away from a hostage situation."

re: "Threats and Security"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog *") explains an aspect of asymmetrical warfare.

Money quote(s):

"Modern warfare often incorporates a form of jiu jitsu, the martial art that causes the opponent to use his strength against himself. Clearly al Qaeda is ahead on points in this conflict: they have taken casualties and sustained high costs and losses, but they have caused us to expend far more blood and treasure than they have."

&

"(T)he United States has people better at strategic planning than this. We have people who know something of jiu jitsu -- we did, after all, win the Cold War despite many communist sympathizers among the leading intellectuals in the US -- but they do not seem to have a great deal of influence now."

The good news is, there are still quite a few of us old Cold Warriors still on the payroll, and we know where lots of the (still living) rest can be found.

And, if all else fails, we have an entire upcoming generation of military leadership, blooded in Iraq and Afghanistan, who are absolutely itching to solve this problem.

re: "Wishful Thinking and Indecisive Wars"

Hat tip to the Small Wars Journal editors ("facilitates the exchange of information among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field") for bringing this Ralph Peters article to my attention.

A word about Ralph Peter first.

Ralph Peters is a retired U.S. Army officer, a strategist, an author, a
journalist who has reported from various war zones, and a lifelong traveler. He is the author of 24 books, including Looking for Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World and the forthcoming The War after Armageddon, a novel set in the Levant after the nuclear destruction of Israel.

Retiring as a lieutenant colonel, Ralph Peters was a military intelligence officer. He's written (and obviously read) extensively on the topics of strategy and conflict in the world that's come to be since the end of the Cold War.

LTC Peters is, in some respects, sort of like that crazy uncle in the family who says the impolite-but-true things at family gatherings. If we didn't have him around to say those things, to think the unthinkable and say the unsayable, we'd have to invent him.

During the Cold War, there came to exist whole professions of people whose business it was to think the unthinkable and plan for the unspeakable. By and large these were decent, educated, moral people, trying to keep their countries and their families alive and free. Their moral and spiritual heirs exist today throughout the military and intelligence services.

The opener:

"The most troubling aspect of international security for the United States is not the killing power of our immediate enemies, which remains modest in historical terms, but our increasingly effete view of warfare. The greatest advantage our opponents enjoy is an uncompromising strength of will, their readiness to “pay any price and bear any burden” to hurt and humble us. As our enemies’ view of what is permissible in war expands apocalyptically, our self-limiting definitions of allowable targets and acceptable casualties—hostile, civilian and our own—continue to narrow fatefully. Our enemies cannot defeat us in direct confrontations, but we appear determined to defeat ourselves."

Allowing attorneys to pronounce on the acceptability of targets and objectives is an awful misstep, very difficult to retract, and incredibly has become necessary due to the scapegoating-in-hindsight which has come to be the norm in American politics today.

Some money quotes:

"(I)rregular warfare is not new—it is warfare’s oldest form, the stone against the bronze-tipped spear—and the crucial asymmetry does not lie in weaponry, but in moral courage. While our most resolute current enemies—Islamist extremists—may violate our conceptions of morality and ethics, they also are willing to sacrifice more, suffer more and kill more (even among their own kind) than we are. We become mired in the details of minor missteps, while fanatical holy warriors consecrate their lives to their ultimate vision. They live their cause, but we do not live ours. We have forgotten what warfare means and what it takes to win."

"(C)ollective memory has effectively erased the European-sponsored horrors of the last century; yesteryear’s “unthinkable” events have become, well, unthinkable. .... I am stunned by the common notion, which prevails despite ample evidence to the contrary, that such horrors are impossible today."

Rwanda. South Sudan. Democratic Kampuchea. Darfur. Teheran. Mexico.

"(E)nding the draft resulted in a superb military, but an unknowing, detached population. The higher you go in our social caste system, the less grasp you find of the military’s complexity and the greater the expectation that, when employed, our armed forces should be able to fix things promptly and politely."

Thank CNN, gun camera footage, and video games. Everything looks like it's neat and settled and then cut to commercial break. Mysteries are solved and the inscrutable unscrewed in either 30 or 60 minutes time.

"Our rising generation of political leaders assumes that, if anyone wishes to do us harm, it must be the result of a misunderstanding that can be resolved by that lethal narcotic of the chattering classes, dialogue."

Intelligence analysts have lots of terminology for the sort of mental biases endemic to this sort of thing: mirror-imaging, rational actor bias, &tc. Long before I ever heard of such a thing, it was very apparent to me that some of our national policy leaders seemed to think that their counterparts had all attended the same seminars at Harvard's Kissinger School or something.

"(H)istory is no longer taught as a serious subject in America’s schools. As a result, politicians lack perspective; journalists lack meaningful touchstones; and the average person’s sense of warfare has been redefined by media entertainments in which misery, if introduced, is brief."

Even within the military, intelligence, and foreign-policy services, the poverty of our educational system has resulted in a deficit of historical knowledge and perspective among the people who need it most. The good ones spend their careers playing catch-up, trying to fill in the intellectual potholes which are the legacy of public education in America.

"We have cheapened the idea of war. We have had wars on poverty, wars on drugs, wars on crime, economic warfare, ratings wars, campaign war chests, bride wars, and price wars in the retail sector. The problem, of course, is that none of these “wars” has anything to do with warfare as soldiers know it. Careless of language and anxious to dramatize our lives and careers, we have elevated policy initiatives, commercial spats and social rivalries to the level of humanity’s most complex, decisive and vital endeavor.

One of the many disheartening results of our willful ignorance has been well-intentioned, inane claims to the effect that “war doesn’t change anything” and that “war isn’t the answer,” that we all need to “give peace a chance.” Who among us would not love to live in such a splendid world? Unfortunately, the world in which we do live remains one in which war is the primary means of resolving humanity’s grandest disagreements, as well as supplying the answer to plenty of questions. As for giving peace a chance, the sentiment is nice, but it does not work when your self-appointed enemy wants to kill you."

In war, the enemy gets a vote. The truism about no battle plan surviving contact with the enemy is true for a reason. The enemy has his own plan and it's not one you're likely to favor; that's why he's called "the enemy."

"(O)ur expectations of war’s results have become absurd. Even the best wars do not yield perfect aftermaths."

A truly brilliant opponent would melt away before a Western invasion, shower the liberators with roses, pop-up with a democratic collaborationist government, and then quickly usher the Westerners back out of the country. Sort of a double-reverse Grand-Fenwickian strategy.

"Expecting Iraq, Afghanistan or the conflict of tomorrow to end quickly, cleanly and neatly belongs to the realm of childhood fantasy, not human reality. Even the most successful war yields imperfect results. An insistence on prompt, ideal outcomes as the measure of victory guarantees the perception of defeat."

Lack of clearly communicated objectives in war only makes it easier for the media and for opposition politicians (but I repeat myself) to move the goalposts and declare a quagmire.

"We have the power to win any war. Victory remains possible in every conflict we face today or that looms on the horizon. But, for now, we are unwilling to accept that war not only is, but must be, hell. Sadly, our enemies do not share our scruples."

The American political public really only has a visceral grasp of the last half-dozen of the nation's war. Anything earlier than World War II is essentially pre-history not quite rising to the level of mythology, other than Washington crossing the Delaware (why didn't he cross on one of the Interstate highway bridges?) and Martin Sheen losing at Gettysburg.

So our national knowledge of war is limited to World War II (a global, existential struggle between good and evil), Korea (reruns of M*A*S*H but nobody's quite sure why we were there), Vietnam (we lost and that's a good thing, right?), &tc.

No wonder there's ignorance and confusion about the nature of war.

We're supposed to win, except when we're not, and the enemy population should greet us a liberators (none of them were really nazis). And in the hindsight of three-score years things like the Marshall Plan and the German economic miracle look easy.

"The willful ignorance within the American intelligentsia and in Washington, D.C., does not stop with the mechanics and costs of warfare, but extends to a denial of the essential qualities of our most-determined enemies. While narco-guerrillas, tribal rebels or pirates may vex us, Islamist terrorists are opponents of a far more frightening quality. These fanatics do not yet pose an existential threat to the United States, but we must recognize the profound difference between secular groups fighting for power or wealth and men whose galvanizing dream is to destroy the West."

Islamist terrorists do not yet post an existential threat to the United States, but.....

They'd like to.

(Honor the threat.)

"The problem is religion. Our Islamist enemies are inspired by it, while we are terrified even to talk about it. We are in the unique position of denying that our enemies know what they themselves are up to. They insist, publicly, that their goal is our destruction (or, in their mildest moods, our conversion) in their god’s name. We contort ourselves to insist that their religious rhetoric is all a sham, that they are merely cynics exploiting the superstitions of the masses. Setting aside the point that a devout believer can behave cynically in his mundane actions, our phony, one-dimensional analysis of al-Qaeda and its ilk has precious little to do with the nature of our enemies—which we are desperate to deny—and everything to do with us."

Having taken prayer out of the schools in homage to the second-most-easily-offended religious group (i..e, atheists), with the Ten Commandments taken out of the courthouses, Christmas displays from out of the town squares, and memorial crosses out of national and state parks, it's no wonder that our political classes are so clue-less about religion.

"The notion of killing to please a deity and further his perceived agenda is so unpleasant to us that we simply pretend it away. U.S. intelligence agencies and government departments go to absurd lengths, even in classified analyses, to avoid such basic terms as “Islamist terrorist.” Well, if your enemy is a terrorist and he professes to be an Islamist, it may be wise to take him at his word."

Honor the threat. It's not up to us to define our adversaries; our adversaries will do that nicely enough for themselves. It is up to us to avoid willful blindness in that regard.

"To make enduring progress against Islamist terrorists, we must begin by accepting that the terrorists are Islamists. And the use of the term “Islamist,” rather than “Islamic,” is vital—not for reasons of political correctness, but because it connotes a severe deviation from what remains, for now, mainstream Islam. We face enemies who celebrate death and who revel in bloodshed. Islamist terrorists have a closer kinship with the blood cults of the pre-Islamic Middle East—or even with the Aztecs—than they do with the ghazis who exploded out of the Arabian desert, ablaze with a new faith. At a time when we should be asking painful questions about why the belief persists that gods want human blood, we insist on downplaying religion’s power and insisting that our new enemies are much the same as the old ones. It is as if we sought to analyze Hitler’s Germany without mentioning Nazis.

We will not even accept that the struggle between Islam and the West never ceased. Even after Islam’s superpower status collapsed, the European imperial era was bloodied by countless Muslim insurrections, and even the Cold War was punctuated with Islamist revivals and calls for jihad. The difference down the centuries was that, until recently, the West understood that this was a survival struggle and did what had to be done (the myth that insurgents of any kind usually win has no historical basis)."

Even some of the insurgents believed in common knowledge to have won, did not, as a matter of history, do so in fact. The Viet Cong did not defeat South Vietnam and the U.S. military. After the Tet Offensive in 1968, the Viet Cong were essentially obliterated and rendered permanently non-combat effective. Most of the "insurgents" from that time forward were actually NVA regulars infiltrated south from the DMZ. South Vietnam fell to armor-heavy regular forces from North Vietnam.

"When the United States is forced to go to war—or decides to go to war—it must intend to win. That means that rather than setting civilian apparatchiks to calculate minimum force levels, we need to bring every possible resource to bear from the outset—an approach that saves blood and treasure in the long run. And we must stop obsessing about our minor sins. Warfare will never be clean, soldiers will always make mistakes, and rounds will always go astray, despite our conscientious safeguards and best intentions. .... we must return to the fundamental recognition that the greatest “war crime” the United States can commit is to lose."

I pray for the safe return of American citizens trying to exit some of the Middle Eastern countries which are now experiencing uprisings and other instability. Some of our fellow citizens may well experience something of what it's like to "lose" in a war, as four yachters recently experienced off the coast of Somalia.

"Yet another counter-historical assumption is that states have matured beyond fighting wars with each other, that everyone would have too much to lose, that the inter-connected nature of trade makes full-scale conventional wars impossible. That is precisely the view that educated Europeans held in the first decade of the twentieth century."

Globalization is not new. It wasn't new when Marco Polo was working the issue. It's a process and a tendency. It's not a panacea or an immunity.

"(W)e need to remember that the apparent threat of the moment is not necessarily the deadly menace of tomorrow. It may not be China that challenges us, after all, but the unexpected rise of a dormant power. The precedent is there: in 1929, Germany had a playground military limited to 100,000 men. Ten years later, a re-armed Germany had embarked on the most destructive campaign of aggression in history, its killing power and savagery exceeding that of the Mongols. Without militarizing our economy (or indulging our unscrupulous defense industry), we must carry out rational modernization efforts within our conventional forces—even as we march through a series of special-operations-intensive fights for which there is no end in sight. We do not need to bankrupt ourselves to do so, but must accept an era of hard choices, asking ourselves not which weapons we would like to have, but which are truly necessary."

Recall that in 1929 Germany was doing everything in its not-inconsiderable power to hide its ability to rearm and to make war. It did so quite successfully, with horrific results for its neighbors and the world.

"Whether faced with conventional or unconventional threats, the same deadly impulse is at work in our government and among the think tank astrologers who serve as its courtiers: An insistence on constantly narrowing the parameters of what is permissible in warfare. We are attempting to impose ever sterner restrictions on the conduct of war even as our enemies, immediate and potential, are exploring every possible means of expanding their conduct of conflicts into new realms of total war."

If you don't believe this, start reading some of the stuff posted over at Opinio Juris. Those are some big-brain lawyers over there, who really know their international law (if there can be considered to be such a thing, which is another debate), and some of what they write about amounts to a handicapping system weighted against Western powers involved in armed conflict. I know they mean well but they really need to go on some patrols on the bad side of Basra for a few weeks, or take a long field trip to the Kandahar valley in winter.

"Our homeland’s complex infrastructure offers ever-increasing opportunities for disruption to enemies well aware that they cannot defeat our military head-on, but who hope to wage total war asymmetrically, leapfrogging over our ships and armored divisions to make daily life so miserable for Americans that we would quit the fight. No matter that even the gravest attacks upon our homeland might, instead, re-arouse the killer spirit among Americans—our enemies view the home front as our weak flank."

Adm. Yamamoto understood the risk, and paid the ultimate price, for awakening the sleeping giant.

"Our potential enemies believe that anything that might lead to victory is permissible."

And so it is. The laws of land warfare and other codes of conduct clustering around the various Hague and Geneva conventions are Western artifacts, not laws of nature. The American experience fighting practicioners of, for instance, the code of Bushido, was very instructive in this regard. These strictures are not meant to be suicide pacts (at least not the earlier ones) or strait jackets, but ways to minimize the suffering of innocents during wartime. When fighting an adversary who, in the main, respects these norms, we should by all means return the courtesy. When not so fortunate, we must dust-off those articles of war dealing with reprisal and apply them with strict interpretation.

"Today, the United States and its allies will never face a lone enemy on the battlefield. There will always be a hostile third party in the fight, but one which we not only refrain from attacking but are hesitant to annoy: the media."

The unbiased media. On my way out of Iraq in 2004 was when I was first exposed to "unbiased" and "objective" journalism as it was then practised by such networks as CNN and MSNBC. Their reporting was so at odds with the reality of Iraq as I had just spent the prior year experiencing, the cognitive dissonance so awful, that I became an immediate convert to the Fox News Channel. I had colleagues who, upon their return home, actually broke their television sets they were so angered by the biased reporting. Most just turned them off.

"The phenomenon of Western and world journalists championing the “rights” and causes of blood-drenched butchers who, given the opportunity, would torture and slaughter them, disproves the notion—were any additional proof required—that human beings are rational creatures."

Daniel Pearl. Lara Logan.

"Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media. Perceiving themselves as superior beings, journalists have positioned themselves as protected-species combatants. But freedom of the press stops when its abuse kills our soldiers and strengthens our enemies. Such a view arouses disdain today, but a media establishment that has forgotten any sense of sober patriotism may find that it has become tomorrow’s conventional wisdom.

The point of all this is simple: Win. In warfare, nothing else matters. If you cannot win clean, win dirty. But win. Our victories are ultimately in humanity’s interests, while our failures nourish monsters."

&

"We need to regain a sense of the world’s reality.

Of all the enemies we face today and may face tomorrow, the most dangerous is our own wishful thinking. "

re: "Arab Uprisings: The Limits of Diplomacy"

Charles Crawford explains about non-MTS ("Muddle Through Somehow") events.

Money quote(s):

"For far too long we all have got used to dealing with a sizeable group of miserable dictatorships and autocracies, some relatively benign and/or rich, others not. Even when truly appalling things happened, we looked away."

"Part of it goes right back to the depths of the Cold War and European decolonisation in Africa. Some sort of psychological/political reaction against European rule was more or less expected if not inevitable (and for Cold War leftists, highly desirable). The Soviet Union piled in, offering these newly liberated territories an ideological 'anti-imperialist' approach to the 'West' plus arms sales and the control-freak blandishments of central planning.

And it worked. Western/European liberal ideas which had quite respectable roots across North Africa were more or less wiped out in favour of a motley mish-mash of repressive national socialism and pan-Arab 'nationalism'."

This was a much wider phenomenon not limited to North Africa or the Near East, but extending to the whole of the "Non-Aligned Movement."

"(D)uring the Cold War we got used to making the best of dictatorships in all sorts of places. Unfortunately, when the Cold War ended we quailed at the thought of bringing the Arabs to have a hard look at themselves. We came up with no idea of a reforming partnership with the Arab world's misgovernments."

By then, things like OPEC and Arab terrorism had come into their own and many governments rightly feared rocking those boats.

"(T)he costs and benefits of policies compound up over time. Compounding stupidity dragging on for decades produces fearsome negativities, not least the public debt crisis threatening the credibility of the EU and USA alike.

The Middle East's compounding stupidities have led to a momumentally wretched outcome now."

And we ain't seen nothin' yet.

"It surely is better to do more or less honest business deals with dictatorships, as the very act of engaging with the professional western world gradually (OK, very gradually and perhaps at the risk of helping these villains stay in power) creates a new requirement rippling out into the local system for better training, accountability, due process, and so on. Constructive engagement and all that.

Perhaps the most pernicious aspect of the sheer longevity of these decadent Arab regimes is that it reinforced a quasi-colonialist quasi-racist idea that 'Arabs can't do democracy'.

In my 27 years in the FCO I don't recall hearing a single expert on the Middle East talking about how the region might become substantively more democratic. Planning papers on the issue were inconceivable and unwritten."

Constructive engagement is a seductive idea. We do it with un-free societies the world over, from China throughout the whole of the developing world. It might even work, perhaps, in the long run, if nothing else interrupts it.

(But something almost always happens to interrupt it.)

"Not only did Western governments suck up to 'Arab' dictatorships for far too long. Everyone did - Right, Left and Centre!

Above all, so did their own people. For the best part of fifty years tens of millions of Arabs have passively accepted brutal, unaccountable regimes, sub-optimal living standards, a desert of intellectual poverty, reduced choice and freedom. That's not our fault. It's theirs."

&

"It looks as if the Arabs are finally waking up - and realising in a rage what has been done to them by their own fatalism"

re: "Street Crime, or Chinese Retaliation?"

TSB at The Skeptical Bureaucrat ("Giving my fellow Americans the view from my cubicle") starts connecting the dots.

Money quote(s):

"(T)here may have been a foreign angle to the unsolved murder of William Bennett, a retired U.S. Army officer and former CIA contractor, and the near-fatal beating of his wife, in suburban Virginia two weeks ago (Spooky murder in Loudon County, VA connected to 1999 Chinese embassy bombing?)."

"I normally scoff when people advance convoluted assassination theories to explain what could more easily be explained by ordinary street crime, but in this case I find an assassination plausible."

"Mr. Bennett and his wife were attacked while they were walking or jogging along a road in Lansdowne at 5:30 AM, which is a time and place when I wouldn't expect to come across meth-heads or crack addicts. For another thing, the only witness to any part of the incident said the attackers left in a white van, a type of vehicle that I also don't associate with gang-bangers out cruising.

Furthermore, Bennett was a former Army Special Forces officer. Retired old geezer or not, he certainly would have put up a hell of a fight when he and his wife were attacked by - as is reported - three men armed with blunt weapons."

He then asks the essential question:

"Would the Chinese actually track down and murder Bennett in retaliation for his accidental targeting of their Belgrade embassy? It seems so, well, Cold War-ish."

Answer: I just don't know. - CAA (FSO and former "Cold Warrior")

S&S - Stryker Cavalry celebrates 172nd birthday with party at Vilseck

From my archive of press clippings:

Stars and Stripes

Stryker Cavalry celebrates 172nd birthday with party at Vilseck

By Seth Robson, Stars and Stripes

European edition, Sunday, May 25, 2008

Seth Robson / S&S Pvt. Carroll Shavasia of Newark, N.J. slaps a pie in the face of 1st Sgt. Veronica McReynolds at the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment birthday party on Friday.

VILSECK, Germany — The 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment — the Army’s oldest continuously serving active regiment — celebrated its 172nd birthday Friday with a party at Vilseck. Members of the regiment’s rear detachment donned Stetson hats and spurs for the party, which was a chance for families of 2nd Cav soldiers deployed to Iraq to let their hair down. Bouncy castles, face-painting and balloons were the big draws for Ailani Rucobo, 3, according to her mother, Yvonne Rucobo, 34, of El Paso Texas.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"Maj. Tiger Bartle, 33, of Seattle, said the regiment is the only one in the Army that hasn’t been inactive in the past 172 years.

The unit started during the Seminole Wars in Florida, served in World War II and spent 47 years in Germany during the Cold War before heading back to the States. It returned to Germany and deployed to Iraq last year, he said."

re: "The Other Don't Ask Don't Tell"

Charlie at Undiplomatic ("dedicated to covering the intersection of diplomacy, global issues, U.S. politics, and pop-culture") addresses the issue of same-sex partners in the Foreign Service.

Money quote(s):

"(F)oreign service officers who were member of Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies, who were fighting to get recognition for same sex spouses.

Although benefits were a big part of what they were fighting for, an equally important issue was how their spouses were treated overseas. The reality is that unlike a number of European countries, American gay and lesbian spouses do not enjoy the same status overseas as their heterosexual colleagues. That means, among other things, that they do not have the rights, privileges, and protection that other spouses do."

"(W)hen I was in the Clinton Administration, gay spouses did not have even the most basic rights and privileges. To its credit, the Bush Administration changed some of the rules — permitting partners/spouses to attend security and other introductory seminars — but not much more."

"It’s not as discriminatory as what happens in the military: gays and lesbians no longer are drummed out of the foreign service as a result of their sexual orientation. But they are asked to pretend that they are not second-class citizens."

"(S)ome folks at State may nervous about “granting” full rights and privileges to same sex spouses because they’re afraid of how some countries — particularly the Vatican, most African states, and Muslim-majority states — may react. You could call it the Anglican church precedent: rock the boat and you create problems. That’s a fallacy, of course — it hasn’t been the case for other countries that have given same-sex spouses full rights and benefits — and it’s allowing diplomacy to mask discrimination."

I used to see this as a reasonable enough objection to recognizing same-sex partners in the diplomatic context; that it would alienate some of our host countries. But I've come to realize that there are so many things about our culture and lifestyle that such countries will find objectionable that it essentially constitutes a form of Dhimmitude, of civilizational surrender, to let that be a factor.

"I’ll never forget a meeting I had during my time at State when a foreign service officer told how diplomatic security gave him a choice: forget about a foreign service career or out himself to his parents, who did not know he was gay. Another was actually outed to his parents by diplomatic security."

From a counterintelligence standpoint, the issue above isn't that an FSO is gay (at least not any more), but rather that what he or she was concealing from their parents made them vulnerable to blackmail or extortion by hostile intelligence services.

You always have to remember the four motivations for treason: Money, Ideology, Compromise, Ego.

_____
Note: This is not to suggest that gays or lesbians are more or less likely to commit treason. Among Americans, money tended to be the most common motive during the Cold War, although some Cold War traitors were homosexuals. (Don't believe me? Do your own homework.)

NYT - Obama Is Urged to Open High-Tech Exports

New York Times

Obama Is Urged to Open High-Tech Exports

By CORNELIA DEAN and WILLIAM J. BROAD

Published: January 8, 2009

When Barack Obama takes office as president, he should immediately change or even scrap many cold-war-era regulations on high-tech exports and on immigration by foreign scientists and engineers, an expert panel said Thursday.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"Brent Scowcroft, a former national security adviser, was on a panel that criticized immigration restrictions on scientists.

Restricting foreigners’ access to strategically important technology might have been useful decades ago, when the United States was the undisputed world leader across the technological spectrum, the panel said in a report issued by the National Academy of Sciences. But today, it said, the nation is losing scientific and engineering dominance even as militarily useful advances come increasingly from civilian research.
The regulations do little for the nation’s security, the panel said, while significantly hampering economic growth and innovation."

&

"But Baker Spring, a national security analyst with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group in Washington, said that while there might be merit in some immediate changes, anything that could be done quickly “is almost certain to be incomplete.”

Mr. Spring, who said he had not read the report, said he favored a country-by-country approach because policies appropriate for “close allies” like Britain or Australia might not be appropriate for countries like China.

Among other things, the panel said the president should do the following:

¶Restructure the export-control process to advance economic competitiveness as well as national security, allowing “openness and engagement to prevail unless a compelling case can be made for restrictions” which, in turn, must have “a rational basis.”

¶Require controls to be reassessed at least yearly.

¶Establish two independent panels within the National Security Council to assess controls and decide disputes about export limits.

¶Streamline the visa process for scientists and engineers and automatically allow foreign students to remain in the country at least a year after earning advanced degrees in scientific or technical fields.

¶Allow American experts to vouch for “well-known scholars and researchers” seeking to enter the United States."