Grand Strategy for a Divided America

[Edward Campbell]

On the surface and given its headline, this article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, belongs in the Canadian Politics area but after reading it over a few times I decided that there is, really, little about the Liberal Party of Canada and lots about Grand Strategy and, in the final paragraph a sensible prescription for America, divided or not:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/second-reading/andrew-steele/are-liberals-up-to-challenge-of-total-strategic-overhaul/article2277475/singlepage/#articlecontent

Are Liberals up to challenge of total strategic overhaul?

ANDREW STEELE

Globe and Mail Update
Posted on Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Strategy is a word that gets thrown around a lot, and defined too little. Often, it is confused with the challenges of problem solving, optimizing efficiency or issue management.

The word comes from the Greek, meaning the commanding role of a general in a war. The conduct of individual engagements is tactics; the marshalling of the individual engagements into a co-ordinated, war-winning effort is strategy.

Texts from The Art of War to Clausewitz, added to the general understanding of military strategic thinking with concepts like positioning and the culminating point. Military strategy emphasizes work beyond simple planning to the adaptations that take place in response to enemy movements and changing conditions.

However, the military applications of strategy themselves define war as a subset of Grand Strategy or the organizing principals of nations, reducing even their own work to a tactic in the overall national strategy. Examples of Grand Strategy are the “Germany First” decision the Allies made in 1942, or the concept of containment during the Cold War.

While Grand Strategy is a fascinating topic, the academic work around it is not generally applicable. Study of grand strategy often focuses on the historical choices or current options facing international relations, rather than how to theoretically optimize strategy at its highest level.

One of the best definitions of strategy comes from business theory, and Harvard Professor Michael Porter. He argued that the essence of strategy was “choosing to perform activities differently than rivals do. Otherwise, a strategy is nothing more than a marketing slogan that will not withstand competition.”

The argument he makes is that strategy is about building a sustainable competitive advantage, ideally one that is virtuous and builds on itself constantly.

It must be something that competitors cannot mimic easily, otherwise it is not sustainable. It must be something that provides a real edge in differentiating your offering from others, or it is not a sufficient advantage to matter.

Perhaps most importantly, a good strategy is about trade-offs, and picking what you will and will not do. There will be excellent tactics offered up that could bring temporary gains, even great ones, but if they do not reinforce your sustainable competitive advantage, they may not be the right tactics.

A great example is Wal-Mart. Their low prices lead to market share, which gives them the ability to squeeze suppliers, which leads to lower prices, and so on. Each move Wal-Mart makes a decision increases its virtuous circle, whether it is a new IT system to link suppliers directly to their inventory system or an advertising campaign. The clarity of their strategic vision makes decision making more simple at a tactical level, and it makes it very difficult for rivals to catch up to their low price-market share-squeezed suppliers advantage.

Strategy as sustainable competitive advantage is a definition that can be translated to different settings. Just as there is no one “perfect” strategy for a nation state, the realities of a political campaign or business must be grounded in the resources available, the position of the organization on the competitive terrain, and the actions of the competitors themselves, finding a niche that builds and sustains a competitive advantage.

Applying this definition to politics, you can see that federal Liberals received a catastrophic thumping in this year’s election due to the loss of any sustainable competitive advantage.

Liberals are foremost the “party of power,” an organization whose ability to broker consensus among competing interests keeps them in office for long periods of time. However, the advantages of ideological flexibility, incrementalism and moderation become disadvantages in opposition, where clarity, boldness of vision and consistency are typical virtues.

As such, the Liberal positioning in opposition is a non-ideological “natural alternative government.” The Grits will wait, generally aligned with government orthodoxy but opposing the Conservatives on some symbolic issues, and then wait for the Tories to implode and the country to come back to them. They hold their position of alternative government by virtue of history, shouting down other challengers with claims of inevitability and strategic voting, and resting on a base of past clients of their brokerage politics.

However, this last election saw the Liberals eclipsed not just by the governing Tories but the traditional third party, erasing not just their government advantage but their opposition differentiation as well. At the same time, the Conservatives may have developed the skills and patience to recreate the strategic advantage over the past few years, adopting a more flexible and incremental approach compared to the Mulroney, Diefenbaker or Bennett eras.

As such, the Liberals will be hard pressed to use their past strategies to regain power, and will have to rebuild an entirely new strategy different from their typical “wait for the Tories to blow up” approach.

Canada as a nation has a strategy as well. I wrote a long piece for The Globe last summer on Canada's  Grand Strategy, which I won’t repeat here.

The Journal of Military and Strategic Studies includes some of the most interesting relevant work on Canada’s strategy. Jack Granatstein argues that Canada cannot actually have a grand strategy akin to great powers, because we lack the resources to sustain them.

What is intriguing about strategy in the national sense is the difficulty in identifying all but the most obvious examples. China, for instance, clearly has a strategy, but defining it is a difficult effort, far more complex than the classic “Germany First” strategy of the Allies.

But what is certain is that the United States has failed to develop a coherent national strategy since the end of the Cold War, and that absence can be directly attributed to the scattered and incoherent responses to international challenges like 9/11 and the Arab Spring, but also domestic failures in political consensus building.

Like the Liberals, the current struggles of the United States are strategic, and require the hard work and decisiveness to decide what they will do differently from competitors and – perhaps most importantly – to make the trade-offs of what they will no longer do.

The "trade-offs," what America will decide not to do, will have a real impact in the world. There are few nations able, much less willing to pick up all the pieces. China, for example, recognizes its dependence upon maritime trade and has begun, partially to combat piracy - even as it conveniently ignores the problem of Chinese pirates based in Fujian province and operating in the South China Seas, but it is not interested in becoming a global policeman. If, actually when America decides to make essential trade-offs who will pick up the tasks it "trades" away?

 

[Kirkhill]

There is something to be said for Principle #1:

To wit - Selection and Maintenance of the Aim.

Harper’s flat-tire federalism

Missing Bush

 

[Edward Campbell]

There is something to be said for Principle #1:

To wit - Selection and Maintenance of the Aim.

Harper’s flat-tire federalism

Missing Bush

Paul Wells (Haper's flat-tire federalism) might be taken more seriously if he wasn't innumerate - like 90% of his journalistic colleagues.

The Canada First Defence Strategy does indeed promise to raise defence spending from $18 Billion to $30+ Billion BUT it also promises to cut defence spending as a percentage of GDP (a much, much more meaningful measure of the government's policy) - assuming any sort of reasonable GDP growth above, about, 1.5% per year. When, not if, the Great Recession ends (in, say, 2015/16) there is still 12 or 13 years during which the economy will likely grow by 2+ then 3+ and even 4+% per year making a sustained average growth rate of 2.5% per year from 2008 to 2018 a likely model and making the Canada First Defence Strategy a recipe for disarmament.

 

[a_majoor]

VDH discusses the idea that there is no "Grand Strategy" being followed by the United States:

http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/winning-battles-losing-wars/?print=1

Winning Battles, Losing Wars

Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On May 20, 2012 @ 1:43 pm In Uncategorized | 29 Comments

Can We Still Win Wars?

Given that the United States fields the costliest, most sophisticated, and most lethal military in the history of civilization, that should be a silly question. We have enough conventional and nuclear power to crush any of our enemies many times over. Why then did we seem to bog down in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan? The question is important since recently we do not seem able to translate tactical victories into long-term strategic resolutions. Why is that? What follows are some possible answers.

No—We Really Do Win Wars

Perhaps this is a poorly framed question: the United States does win its wars—if the public understands our implicit, limited strategic goals. In 1950 we wanted to push the North Koreans back across the 38th parallel and succeeded; problems arose when Gen. MacArthur and others redefined the mission as on to the Yalu in order to unite the entire Korean peninsula, a sort of Roman effort to go beyond the Rhine or Danube. Once we redefined our mission in 1951 as one more limited, we clearly won in Korea by preserving the South.

In Vietnam, the goal of establishing a viable South was achieved by 1974. Congress, not the president or the military, felt the subsequent peace-keeping commitments and air support were too costly. They allowed a renewed Northern invasion that led to a second and lost war, and then were surprised that the North Vietnamese proved to be not campus radicals but hardcore Stalinists.

Panama, Grenada, and Serbia were successful small enterprises. In the first Gulf War, the strategic aim was to oust Saddam from Kuwait—or so we said. That succeeded, though it did not solve the problem of what Saddam would in the future do with his vast oil revenues. In the second war, the mission was to remove him, birth a democracy, and then leave Iraq better than before. That more ambitious aim too succeeded—not, however, without enormous costs.

Our strategic objective in Afghanistan was to oust the Taliban and ensure that it did not return to host terrorists on Afghan soil. The former mission was done over a decade ago, the latter hinges on the Afghans themselves after we leave. We vowed to rid Libya of Gaddafi and we did—and did not exactly promise that what followed would be immediately better than what we removed. In such special pleading, the U.S. has won its wars as it has defined them. Note the great success of the Cold War that ended with the destruction of the Soviet Empire.

Not So Fast

But wait—North Korea was on the ropes and now over a half-century later still threatens our interests, and with nukes no less. Should not the destruction of that system have been the real aim of the Korean War? North Vietnam united the country under a communist government, whatever way you cut it. Iraq was a mess, and its democracy may in time prove no more than an Iran-backed Shiite autocracy. In Afghanistan, does anyone think our Afghan partners will keep out the Taliban after our departure? Are the Libyan riffraff that took over all that better than Gaddafi as they kill tribal rivals, hunt down blacks, and desecrate military cemeteries? What exactly were we doing in Lebanon and what did we do after terrorists killed 241 of our people?

Strategy, What Strategy?

Why, then, does the use of American military forces not guarantee sure victory? The most obvious answer ib why we argue over the results of our interventions is an inability to articulate our strategic objectives—what exactly do wish to see follow from our use of force and for how long and at what cost? Do we wish to rid the world of Bashar al-Assad? We could do that quite easily and probably without ground troops. But would the region be more or less stable? Would Iran suffer a blow or find ways to fund more terrorists? Would the collateral damage from funding insurgents or bombing be worse or not as bad as the current Assad toll? Would the insurgents prove reasonable, or more like those in Egypt and Libya—or even worse? Many of our problems seem to hinge on explaining to the public what we wish to do, why so, how, at what cost it is to be accomplished, and what we want things to look like when we’re through.

Off the Table

Then there is the question of restraint—the inability to use our full forces to their full effect, in the manner that we did in World War I or World War II. From 1945 to 1989 the Cold War defined and limited the rules of engagement, given the nuclear arsenal of the Soviet Union and its various trouble-causing clients who hid behind it. In Vietnam and North Korea there were certain options that were off the table because of fear the Soviets or Chinese might strike elsewhere or the fighting could descend into a nuclear exchange. “Limited” wars are now the new normal when so many countries can claim a nuclear patron.

Law, not War

But in the last twenty years there is an even greater restraint to operations—a moral, if not smug, self-restraint that has turned fighting from a quest for victory into a matter of jurisprudence in which how we fight a war is more important than what we actually achieve. The old Neanderthal formula — we will level your cities, defeat and humiliate your military, impose our system of government upon you, and then give you our aid and friendship as you reinvent yourself as a free-market capitalist democracy — certainly worked with Germany, Japan, and Italy.

But does anyone believe that we could have bombed Saddam as we did those in Hamburg? The country that tore itself apart over waterboarding three confessed terrorists who had an indirect hand in the murder of 3,000 Americans seems ill-equipped to inflict the sort of damage on enemies that in the past made them accept both defeat and redemption. War is now a matter of legality, or nation-building before, not after, the enemy is fully defeated, and that means, given the unchanging nature of man, that it is very difficult to win a war as in the past. Note, in this context, Obama’s drone campaign, which he expanded seven- or eight-fold upon inheriting it from Bush. Is it not the perfect liberal way of war? There is no media hand-wringing over collateral damage; no burned faces, charred limbs, headless torsos on the evening news; no U.S. losses; no prisoners at Guantanamo. There is only a postmodern murderous video game and a brief administration chest-thump that “we’ve take out 20 of the top 30 al-Qaeda operatives.”

Wars of Choice

We are forgetting yet another wild card: since World War II, all our serial fighting in Asia, Central America, the Pacific, and Africa has involved optional wars—fighting that did not question the very existence of the U.S. Other than a few stand-offs with the Cold War Soviets at places like Berlin or Cuba, the United States had not faced an existential threat since the end of World War II. September 11 might have posted such a challenge, since had bin Laden or his epigones been able to repeat the initial attacks, then air travel as we know it would have ceased, along with the idea of an open, modern commercial economy.

But other than the efforts to go after al-Qaeda, most of our fighting has been optional—whether in Somalia or Libya—and that makes it hard to galvanize the American public. (Which also explains why administrations try to hype WMD, or Saddam, or al-Qaeda, or Gaddafi, or the monstrous Assad in order to turn these peripheral threats into existential enemies.) In optional wars, the public can disconnect, as fighting can be conducted without disruption of the civilian economy. Victory or defeat does not immediately either please or endanger the public at home. And the result is that our leaders do not necessarily wage these wars all out, with the prime directive of winning them. (Note how the monster-in-rehab Gaddafi, whose children were buying off Western academics and putting on art shows in London, by 2011 was back in our imaginations to the 1986 troll, and how the Assads of Vogue magazine are once again venomous killers.)

Too Rich to Fight?

Then there are classical symptoms of Catullan otium: societies that become leisured like ours grow complacent (otium et reges prius et beatas perdidit urbes). They see military activity of all sorts coming at the expense of social redistributive programs: each dollar in aid campaigning abroad comes at the loss of one less new expansion in Medicare or Medicaid. Why then spend money overseas, when we could redistribute it for bread and circuses at home? A cruise missile is not seen as a wise investment in deterrence, but as a boondoggle that means one less Head Start center.

In postmodern America, we are all removed from mayhem, the killing of game for dinner, the sight of blood altogether. War is something “they” do, not our far more sophisticated selves, who have far greater claims on the federal treasury. Given that the therapeutic society of iPhones and Facebook believes that human nature has transcended violence, and no longer is prone to Thucydidean irrationality like fear, honor, or perceived self-interest, we believe that Libyan rebels are sort of like errant protestors of Occupy Wall Street, or the sometimes corrupt Chinese communist apparat that can be persuaded to be nice to Tibetans. That means war no longer involves good and evil, much less the elemental dirty means of using the former to destroy the latter.

Or Too Poor to Fight?

But wait, we are $16 trillion in debt, with serial $1 trillion budget deficits. Indeed, we are $9 trillion more in debt than when we went into Afghanistan. Any intervention now requires us to borrow the money from someone else. The truth is that for years we have been like Rome around AD 300 or Britain circa 1950—lots of supposed responsibilities, not enough money budgeted to fulfill them. The idea of a nation gearing up to smash an enemy when it has borrowed over $16 trillion on mostly social entitlements and pay-outs makes war a bad, if not absurd, investment.

On to Syria—or not?

With all this in mind, consider Bashar al-Assad. There is a growing movement in the press and Congress to go into Syria—either by arming the rebels, training them, or providing them air cover. But while we know that we have the power to do so (or rather can borrow the money from the Chinese to do so), do we have a strategic aim? What should Syria look like after the war (a constitutional state that would not support Iran, fund Hezbollah, undermine Lebanon, start a war with Israel, or build another reactor)?

Are U.S. arms and influence without ground troops able to see those laudable aims realized, or would a post-Assad Syria end up like Libya or Egypt—and would that still be better or worse than the present-day Syria, for us, for Christians and other minorities, for Israel, etc.? It is not enough to state the obvious: Assad is a U.S. enemy and a monster who is killing his own; we have the ability to take him out; ergo, we should.

Yet the same calculus applies to dozens of renegade states. If some advisor, pundit, general, or senator wants to go into Syria, then he must explain why Syria is more important than, say, the Congo or Somalia or the Sudan (or that we are following strategic self-interest in the Middle East, not humanitarianism)—and why we can leave the nation a far better place than under Assad, and how that is possible, given the nature of the dissidents and the fact it is the Middle East.

Remember, there is also an ironclad law about the Middle East, one we keep forgetting: Arab intellectuals (many of them educated or residing in Western universities) hate the U.S. for backing dictators; they hate the U.S. for intervening to remove them; they hate the U.S. for trying to impose postbellum democracy upon them; and they hate the U.S. for staying clear and letting Arabs be Arabs on their own.

Take out Saddam—”you created him in the first place”; stay to rebuild the country—”a neo-imperial enterprise to impose your values on a traditional society”; stay away and let him kill his own, or allow his successors to kill each other—”a callous disregard for the suffering of innocent others.”

Remember the critiques of Gulf War I and Gulf War II:

    Gulf War I: a needlessly large coalition that curbed our options, a hyped-up war that did not warrant the huge forces we deployed, a shake-down of our allies to turn war into a money-making enterprise, a cynical disregard for the Shia and Kurds who yearned for democracy, a video-game war in which we slaughtered the inept without incurring much risk or danger;

    Gulf War II: a too-small coalition that did not win international respect, too few forces deployed for the mission, a wasteful enterprise that did not demand monetary contributions from our allies, a naïve romance that Arabs could craft their own democracy, a dirty war in which we needlessly exposed our troops to mayhem and death.

Common denominator: whatever a Bush was for, critics were against.

We should posit one simple rule about intervening in the Middle East from now on. Please some honesty: we intervene for strategic advantage (no apologies for that), not humanitarianism. If those who advocate taking out Assad claim that it is to stop the bloodshed, then they must explain why there—and not where far more are slaughtered in Africa.

Again, state the proposed mission, debate the need and envisioned cost, articulate the strategic outcome, and then obtain it with overwhelming force—or otherwise forget it.

Article printed from Works and Days: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/winning-battles-losing-wars/

 

[a_majoor]

Without articulating the "Grand Strategy", everything could be lost due to indifference and domestic politics:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/05/22/shock-poll-51-of-voters-want-us-troops-out-of-europe/

Shock Poll: 51% of Voters Want US Troops Out of Europe

The Rasmussen polling organization is out with a shock poll that the entire Washington establishment needs to study: 51 percent of voters surveyed said they wanted all US troops out of Europe, now. Only 29 percent favored keeping the troops where they are.

US troops have been in Europe since World War Two. In the Cold War, they not only kept the Russians out; they gave the rest of the Old World the confidence that Germany would not come storming back for a rematch. The presence of US troops helped give western Europe its longest era of peace since Roman times.

Since the end of the Cold War the US presence in Europe has made much less sense to the average American, but foreign policy junkies like yours truly think that it still serves a purpose. Not only do those troops provide security in new NATO countries like Poland and the Baltic republics; US bases in Europe are important in dealing with terror and other problems in the Middle East and without the US presence in Europe it is unlikely that NATO in its present form can survive.

The Rasmussen poll notes that 29 percent of the public still supports the US presence in Europe and that 20 percent is undecided. My guess is that with strong presidential leadership those numbers would change. The arguments for the US presence in Europe are credible, clear and compelling.

Unfortunately the current White House doesn’t like to talk about the pointy end of American foreign policy. It uses troops and sends them into battle around the world, but the President doesn’t often use the bully pulpit to explain why we must fight, why we need a strong military, why we need to deploy, and why sometimes it is cheaper and safer to have our first line of defense thousands of miles from our shores.

My guess is that if President Obama went to leading Democratic and Republican officials, they would join him in an effort to explain the importance of the NATO alliance and our European bases — and that this effort would turn those numbers around.

But foreign policy in a democracy isn’t a chess game for elites. If you don’t build support for your policies and your commitments, the support ebbs away. It is very natural for Americans to wonder why we still have troops in Europe almost seventy years after World War Two and a generation after the end of the Cold War. And it’s reasonable for people to ask why we should spend so much of our money to provide a security shield for countries who refuse to carry their fair share of the common burden.

These are reasonable questions — and they have reasonable answers. But this administration hasn’t done nearly enough to lay out the facts and the ideas behind America’s grand strategy in Europe to the public. (To be fair, the same criticism could be made of its predecessor.) Our national leadership is taking the national commitment to Europe and to NATO for granted, and this is a major mistake.

Americans over a certain age don’t really need to be told why we built NATO and why we are so determined to keep it strong, but every new generation needs to reach its own understanding of the pillars of our foreign policy. Given that many colleges fail to teach much about American foreign policy (beyond, perhaps, some references to the horrors of Vietnam and the dangers of Islamophobia), and that the national leadership is largely silent on the subject of America’s strategy, it’s not surprising that support for our European deployments is weak.

My guess is that while Governor Romney and President Obama differ on some details about our NATO policy, they are in fundamental agreement on the main lines of our European strategy.  It would be nice to hear some of that during this campaign, but whether or not that happens, the Washington establishment needs to stop taking the public for granted. There is a certain arrogance at work here — a belief that public opinion can be ignored for decades and that the peasants will pay taxes and do what they are told without asking questions.

That isn’t how it works anymore, and unless the establishment figures this out, much more than the NATO alliance could be at risk.

 

[tomahawk6]

Looking at the poll numbers its pretty clear that this poll is worthless.According to the poll 51% said they wanted US forces out of Europe.Some 29% were opposed and 20% were undecided.The margin of error is 3%. :

 

[a_majoor]

While this blog post is initially about Syria, the destruction of the Westphalian system of states is of much greater concern. Doctrines like R2P explicitly negate the sovereinity of State actors, and other assaults like the proliferation of NGO's essentially claiming State powers or the ability to interfere with and regulate State power continue as well. How the international system will remain workable under these conditions is a good question, (one of the other points this author makes is may nations are not "States" in any real sense of the word). Much to ponder:

http://www.barrelstrength.com/2012/06/24/the-end-of-the-westphalian-state-system-responsibility-to-protect-and-other-nostrums/

The end of the Westphalian state system: “responsibility to protect” and other nostrums
June 24, 2012 12:17 am Oban Uncategorized

The Thirty Years’ war was so catastrophic that the system which ended it, called the Peace of Westphalia, insisted that whatever went on inside some Prince’s state was his business. There would be no interference in someone else’s domestic affairs. The principle holds true today, despite the fact that we are no longer ruled by hereditary princes [Kennedy pretensions notwithstanding]. It is thought bad manners, and a breach of diplomatic courtesy, for a foreign leader so much as to comment on the internal arrangements of a foreign state.

Richard Rodriguez, writing in the Belmont Club, cites the problem of interference in the affairs of other states.

Nations — and those who formerly controlled them through the vote in countries where they voted — ain’t what they used to be. They’re in the way now. In place of Merkel’s “it’s for the Euro” the principle “it’s for the children” is substituted for a reason everywhere else. But the problem, as Kissinger points out, is that having abolished the Westphalian principle in one country after another where does it stop?

“If adopted as a principle of foreign policy, this form of intervention raises broader questions for U.S. strategy. Does America consider itself obliged to support every popular uprising against any non-democratic government, including those heretofore considered important in sustaining the international system? Is, for example, Saudi Arabia an ally only until public demonstrations develop on its territory? Are we prepared to concede to other states the right to intervene elsewhere on behalf of coreligionists or ethnic kin?”

This brought Oban out of his silence.

“I agree that D2P (duty to protect) is both doomed to fail as too selective and arbitrary to serve as a basis for settled policy. It is only possible where there is no overriding interests of a principal actor at play or where the particular regime is too heinous for even its allies to watch. But we are never going to intervene if Russia or China or the USA decides to slaughter its citizens. I am also under no illusions that the regimes that are emerging from the Arab spring are likely to be sustainable, nor friendly to the West and its values. The suppression of middle class politics has gone on too long and so debased civil society and its institutions that it is unlikely that we will see anything resembling the rule of law, democracy, or anything other than crony capitalism in our lifetimes or those of our children.

“As Kissinger himself points out, the mid-east never had Westfalian style states or doctrines of non-intervention. It is actually hard to say that there were states there of any description: it always came down to clanship systems of the devision of spoils. The families divided up government posts, industrial jobs etc on a conveyor belt of patronage and personal obligation. Remove that and you get Lebanon. The Egyptian army is intent to protect its spoils system and so is the Assad regime.

“As I see it, the biggest thing that is going on in the middle east is the reemergence of Turkey as a regional power. It is the most likely power to counteract Iranian interests, and it is closer to the scene to make Russian meddling ineffective in the long run. Iran is also unlikely to to share long term interests with Russia, except to the extent the Mullahs can divert the attention of the Turks from their customary role as liege of the petty dynasties of the Levant.

“I rather suspect that it will be the Turks who deploy force to stabilize Syria and Lebanon, and in doing so will crush the Iranian puppets and keep the Sunni successors to Assad and his hangmen on a shortish leash.

“It is too bad that Israel has so badly missed the opportunity to deal with the Palestine issue, as that is the essential element for peace with Turkey in the long term. Netanyahu is not playing a long game in strategic terms. He sees settlement in the West Bank as a key to Israeli security. It is an illusion. Security will come from being able to count Turkey, Saudi Arabia (for the next 20 years or so), and Egypt as unwilling to intervene or upset the status quo in Israel. The settlements issue is destabilizing to any status quo and hence tendentially encouraging of intervention or support for the next intifada.

“Meantime, with all due deference to Mr. Kissinger, the Westphalian system was destroyed by Napoleon. The result of that was the emergence of Prussian state Germany (Kleindeutschland), which destroyed the state remnants of the Westphalian system, and set in place the race to nation states that destabilized the European state system completely and led to the emergence of a string of pseudo-states in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. We are now seeing the play out of WWII with the emergence of Germany as again the principal glue to European cohesion, France busy squandering its European role on a frolic of its own, the destruction of the Brussels system, and the end of pretence that the European institutions have any meaning without a European state.

“As it happens, only Germany can be the centre of a European state, and France may again, to the destruction of all that has been built, serve to undermine the European mission. Many won’t regret its passing, but it not be without consequences that will be felt by us all, most likely in a negative way. Bring on the Trans Pacific Partnership!

 

[a_majoor]

Robert Kaplan's new book. Kaplan has always been an exponent of the idea that "History is Geography"; emphasizing how the landscape defines human affairs in his books and articles.  This has been a theme since "Balken Ghosts", and he has explored the concept in depth and in many contexts (read "The Ends of the Earth", "An Empire Wilderness" or "Monsoon" to get the full flavour of this idea).

While History is not always Geography, Kaplan's insights should be read and understood by anyone thinking about policy, foreign affairs or strategy as a foundational grounding.

The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate is next on my reading list.

In this provocative, startling book, Robert D. Kaplan, the bestselling author of Monsoon and Balkan Ghosts, offers a revelatory new prism through which to view global upheavals and to understand what lies ahead for continents and countries around the world.

In The Revenge of Geography, Kaplan builds on the insights, discoveries, and theories of great geographers and geopolitical thinkers of the near and distant past to look back at critical pivots in history and then to look forward at the evolving global scene. Kaplan traces the history of the world’s hot spots by examining their climates, topographies, and proximities to other embattled lands. The Russian steppe’s pitiless climate and limited vegetation bred hard and cruel men bent on destruction, for example, while Nazi geopoliticians distorted geopolitics entirely, calculating that space on the globe used by the British Empire and the Soviet Union could be swallowed by a greater German homeland.

Kaplan then applies the lessons learned to the present crises in Europe, Russia, China, the Indian subcontinent, Turkey, Iran, and the Arab Middle East. The result is a holistic interpretation of the next cycle of conflict throughout Eurasia. Remarkably, the future can be understood in the context of temperature, land allotment, and other physical certainties: China, able to feed only 23 percent of its people from land that is only 7 percent arable, has sought energy, minerals, and metals from such brutal regimes as Burma, Iran, and Zimbabwe, putting it in moral conflict with the United States. Afghanistan’s porous borders will keep it the principal invasion route into India, and a vital rear base for Pakistan, India’s main enemy. Iran will exploit the advantage of being the only country that straddles both energy-producing areas of the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. Finally, Kaplan posits that the United States might rue engaging in far-flung conflicts with Iraq and Afghanistan rather than tending to its direct neighbor Mexico, which is on the verge of becoming a semifailed state due to drug cartel carnage.

A brilliant rebuttal to thinkers who suggest that globalism will trump geography, this indispensable work shows how timeless truths and natural facts can help prevent this century’s looming cataclysms.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Despite our varying views on Iraq and the Arab world and Afghanistan and, indeed, Burnett’s gap, which includes pretty much all of the so-called Muslim Crescent, I think we can agree that the single most important driver for the coming decade and more, for that region and the world, is US foreign policy.  Here, reproduced from Foreign Affairs (July/August 2007) under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act is a lengthy article which might provide a good jumping off point.

The authors, two distinguished American academics, offer a valuable history lesson, reminding us that what most Canadians – especially journalists and the commentariat – think of as traditional American foreign policy is only about 70 years old – dating from the Roosevelt administration.  Next they offer a six point programme which I think is worthy of debate.

While I find nothing to which I might object, I suspect that all six points will be controversial in some most almost all US political circles.  Readers who are familiar with Walter Russell Mead’s  Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World (Knopf, 2001) will recognize that president Bush is, in Mead’s terms, a pure Jacksonian while Kupchan and Trubowitz are proposing a mix of Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian policies.

We are still a bit away from the day when China or India will challenge American hegemony but, as Prof Pan Wei of Peking University wrote (Harvard International Review), Under this poor leadership [provided by President Bush], a previously “benign hegemon” is becoming an oppressive tyrant that suffers opposition almost everywhere in the world.  Prof. Pan worried that vis à vis China President Bush’s foreign policy ” will ultimately cause the decline of US power, and it may not succeed in precluding China’s emergence from a new decade of political reform. Instead, belligerent confrontation will only lead to an escalation of tensions.”  It is, in my view, likely to do the same with India, Europe and much of the rest of the world, too.

That being said, it will be hard for a Republican administration to turn its back, completely, on Bush and his policies if only because of the political power of the religious right.  It will be equally hard for Democrats to do the same.  American power needs to be rebuilt, enhanced and then maintained – cutting and running is not the best way to build power.

Anyway, here it is:

Part 1 of 2

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070701faessay86406/charles-a-kupchan-peter-l-trubowitz/grand-strategy-for-a-divided-america.html

Going all the way back to P.1 of this thread (and five years in time) I still think US foreign policy is vitally important to Canada and the world. With that in mind, here is a view of foreign policy and presidential politics by Christopher Preble of the (libertarian inclined) Cato Institute. It is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisons of the Copyright Act from the Cato Institute's website:

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/when-obama-and-romney-talk-foreign-policy-who-wins-2/

When Obama and Romney Talk Foreign Policy, Who Wins?

Posted by Christopher Preble

The presidential campaign will focus on foreign policy for a few hours on Tuesday when President Obama addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York City while his Republican challenger Mitt Romney will address the Clinton Global Initiative just a few miles away. Each will try to wring some political advantage from speeches that are generally directed at foreign audiences.

Neither candidate is likely to come out a winner, although for different reasons. It will be difficult for President Obama to convince the electorate and the world that U.S. policies, particularly in the volatile Greater Middle East, are succeeding. But Mitt Romney’s challenge is greater. He must convince voters that his policies would result in tangible gains. It isn’t clear that they would, however, nor that his policies are sufficiently different from the president’s to convince voters to change horses in mid-stream.

The president is likely to call for staying the course. Echoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s remarks from last week, he will try to convince the people of the Middle East that the United States remains their friend and partner, and he will tell skeptical Americans that the feeling is mutual. He may point to the large quantities of aid that U.S. taxpayers have sent to the region to win points with foreign audiences, but this risks alienating the voters here at home.

Obama may also emphasize that the United States intends to maintain a large military presence in the region so as to, as Secretary Clinton said last week, “help bring security to these nations so that the promise of the revolutions that they experienced can be realized.” But foreign listeners aren’t convinced that the United States has helped bring security to anyone, and they certainly don’t want U.S. help now.

Obama’s message to Americans, delivered between the lines of his UN speech, is that the United States cannot afford to disengage from the region. Be patient, Obama will say. Many decades of trying to manage the political affairs of other countries, often with the heavy hand of the U.S. military, has carried high costs and delivered few clear benefits, but it could have been worse.

Not so, says Romney and the Republicans. President Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world has clearly failed, they claim. The Cairo speech in 2009, followed by the belated support for anti-Mubarak protesters in Egypt in 2011, and finally the decision to use U.S. military power to topple Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, don’t appear to have purchased us much good will. On the contrary, anti-American sentiment is running high, higher even than when Obama took office, according to some polls. The violence against U.S. officials and property merely punctuates the grim statistics, and invites ominous parallels to 1979.

But while Obama’s task will be difficult, Mitt Romney has an even higher hill to climb. He must differentiate his policies from the president’s and persuade U.S. voters, especially, but also the skeptics abroad, that his policies would be much better. His surrogates have implied that the events of the past fortnight certainly would not have occurred had Romney been in the Oval Office, but they haven’t explained how or why that is true.

Meanwhile, the few concrete policies that Romney champions are deeply unpopular in the region, and not much more popular with U.S. voters. His calls to add nearly $2 trillion in military spending over the next decade suggest a willingness to increase the U.S. military presence around the world, but especially in the Greater Middle East. Most Americans want U.S. troops to be brought home. His leading foreign policy adviser has criticized the Obama administration for refusing to intervene in the Syrian civil war. This suggests that the problem with U.S. policy has been too little meddling in the internal affairs of foreign countries, whereas most Americans believe that there has been too much. And Romney did not endorse Sen. Rand Paul’s effort to tie U.S. aid to conditions, so it is hard to see how he can score points against President Obama by promising to stick with the status quo.

However, all of these other issues pale in comparison to the most visible U.S. policy in the region of the past decade: the Iraq war. That disastrous conflict will hang heavily over Romney’s speech, as it has over his entire campaign, and over the GOP for several election cycles. Although most Americans now believe that the war never should have been fought, and most non-Americans never thought that it should have been, Romney refuses to repudiate it. On the contrary, he has staffed his campaign with some of the war’s leading advocates. Given his famous aversion to anything that might be construed as an apology, Romney is unlikely to evince any doubts about the war in his speech on Tuesday. But if he wants to convince voters that he will be a more capable steward of U.S. foreign policy than Obama has been, he must at least explain what lessons he takes away from an unpopular war. Otherwise, his implicit assertion that it couldn’t get any worse will fall flat with those who believe that it certainly could.

Christopher Preble • September 24, 2012

Please: NO OBAMA OR ROMNEY BASHING OR I WILL, PERSONALLY AND QUICKLY, ASK THE MODS TO LOCK THIS THREAD, TOO. THE TOPIC IS GRAND STRATEGY: YES IT IS ABOUT "DIVIDED AMERICA' BUT IT IS NOT ABOUT TWEEDLE-DUM AND TWEEDLE-DUMBER.

In my view, Preble has it about right: American foreign policy has drifted farther and farther off any constructive course since the 1950s. Eisenhower, and especially the Dulles brothers, gets some of the blame; Kennedy gets a whole lot more, he and people like McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara really screwed the pooch but it kept going downhill, except for a brief Nixon interlude when enlightened self interest regained pride of place, until now it makes no sense at all.

Rogues gallery:

 

 

 

John Foster Dulles                                Allen Dulles                                  McGeorge Bundy                Robert McNamara

 

[a_majoor]

Too right. I cheated a bit and read the penultimate chapter on Americnan destiny in Kaplan's new book, and he makes the rather obvious point that while the Us spends blood and treasure in the Middle East, the American elites tend to ignore the very massive problems on their own borders; especially the southern one.

In Kaplan's view, the American destiny will be fulfilled by embracing a North-South vision rather than an East West one (Kaplan is speaking of the parochial "sea to shining sea" East-West), and expending much of her time and effort to making the North South effort work. (Note, some of his other ideas along these lines flow more from "An Empire Wilderness", seeing the future more as a series of "city states" based on urban and exurban economies linked by local geography and continental trade).

American Foreign Policy seems to be informed by a McKindererite view of the world; preventing anyone from occupying the "heartland" in order to dominate the "World Island" might be the underlying "Grand Strategic" idea; but as any player of Risk will tell you; it is danmed hard to do and most people canot carry it off.

 

[tomahawk6]

I am of the school of thought that evil must be confronted. German and Japanese expansion had to be stopped and the US reluctantly was dragged into WW2. The need to confront communism resulted in two regional wars Korea and Vietnam. Now the fight is against radical islamists who see their calling to force islam on the rest of the world. Were it not for the US and its allies they might be successful. The problem with radicals is that want change now. Whereas if they simply bided their time and worked within the western democracies they might achieve in time the quiet islamization of the west.

 

[a_majoor]

Evil must be confronted, but given limits of time and resources, you need to pick your battles and utilize your resources to the best effect.

Radical Islam in the "heartland" is probably best dealt with through "containment"; the United States was quite successful using this strategy against the USSR, and the supposed membership of the Caliphate is even less able to project power than the Soviet Union. Develop and export Fracking technology will undercut the one main reason the Middle East is interesting at all; collapsing the world price of oil will do wonders  for economic growth and political stability throughout the world

 

[tomahawk6]

Containment doesnt work.Sanctions dont work. The bad guys take and take until finally they have taken everything. Some things are not negotiable. Freedom and our way of life are the biggies for me. All of us have lost friends and loved one's in this fight and we do them a disservice not to confront evil until it is no more.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Containment doesnt work ...

Yes it does! See USSR 1946 to 1991 ~ for 45 years we, the American led West, contained the USSR until, finally, it collapsed. It tested us a few time - most notably in Korea, where it used proxies to actually engage us - but it never managed to meet us, face-to-face in battle because it knew it could not win.

George F. Kennan
Author of the Containment idea, and
an American hero in his own right

 

[Journeyman]

Containment doesnt work.Sanctions dont work.

I would suggest now is a good time to re-read Gaddis' Strategies of Containment. While pre-dating the Cold War's end by two decades, it still provides some relevant lessons. In particular, I'd look at the differences between George Kennan's "long telegram" and what played out due to NSC-68.

Kennan argued that the source of Russia's insecurity [read Islamist insecurity] was internal and could not be alleviated through diplomacy. Because the Kremlin [Ayatolas] could not govern by any means other than repression, portraying the outside world as being "evil, hostile, and menacing" was a boon to Soviet [Islamist] legitimacy.

Unfortunately NSC-68 committed the US to defending everywhere. Kennan's containment vision was one of attacking specific weaknesses, arguing for a strategy of "patience and firmness" that recognized disputes but maintained "a calculated relationship of resources to objectives."

I suspect that containment will work, letting the "internal contradictions" of the modernizing Persian/Arab world play themselves out. We just need to be rational about how we play out our containment policy, avoiding knee-jerk reactions.

All of us have lost friends and loved one's in this fight and we do them a disservice not to confront evil until it is no more.

Sorry T6, but the emotional grab actually detracts from any argument's logic. I also suspect that a policy of complete annihilation can only strengthen the Islamists' determination, adding fuel to their argument about the intentions of the "evil west." Containing them as they struggle through their own Reformation is neither appeasement nor a disservice to our fallen.


Edit: Obviously, ERC types faster than I. 

 

[Edward Campbell]

I would suggest now is a good time to re-read Gaddis' Strategies of Containment. While pre-dating the Cold War's end by two decades, it still provides some relevant lessons. In particular, I'd look at the differences between George Kennan's "long telegram" and what played out due to NSC-68.

Kennan argued that the source of Russia's insecurity [read Islamist insecurity] was internal and could not be alleviated through diplomacy. Because the Kremlin [Ayatolas] could not govern by any means other than repression, portraying the outside world as being "evil, hostile, and menacing" was a boon to Soviet [Islamist] legitimacy.

Unfortunately NSC-68 committed the US to defending everywhere. Kennan's containment vision was one of attacking specific weaknesses, arguing for a strategy of "patience and firmness" that recognized disputes but maintained "a calculated relationship of resources to objectives."

I suspect that containment will work, letting the "internal contradictions" of the modernizing Persian/Arab world play themselves out. We just need to be rational about how we play out our containment policy, avoiding knee-jerk reactions.


Sorry T6, but the emotional grab actually detracts from any argument's logic. I also suspect that a policy of complete annihilation can only strengthen the Islamists' determination, adding fuel to their argument about the intentions of the "evil west." Containing them as they struggle through their own Reformation is neither appeasement nor a disservice to our fallen.


Edit: Obviously, ERC types faster than I. 

I guess I do type faster than JM, but I wish I had said the highlighted parts.  and +300 Milpoints

 

[Journeyman]

.. but I wish I had said the highlighted parts. applied liberally stolen insights from John Lewis Gaddis to our current situation  ;D

  Sometimes "wisdom" is just knowing who to quote.

 

[a_majoor]

Don't think that containment is a passive process T6 (even if our historical example wasn't particularly "activist").

Using communications to implant memes, disrupting their trade (by suppressing oil prices) and judiciously supporting elements within such as the Kurds will keep the self styled Caliphate busy for decades, and given the shape of the Islamic Crescent along the shores of Africa, through the Levant, Iran, across the north of India and south into Indonesia we can employ a maritime strategy, positioning ourselves in the Indian Ocean and using the "interior" position to strike at the times and places of our choosing, should that be the desired strategic response to some provocation or other.

The prohibition against land wars in Asia are fully in force here, especially given the demographic imbalance over a long war, but we also have allies in the containment policy; Russia in the Caucus and Trans Caucus regions and the 'Stans, China in the East and India in the center of the crescent. They mostly do not share our values or even goals, but all have a pressing interest in keeping Radical Islam contained, so will be working more or less in concert with the West on containment.

 

[Old Sweat]

Let me ask a couple of questions. If we accept that a campaign strategy that worked in one theatre will probably fail given a different set of circumstances, how would you apply containment that was successful against the Soviets to the Islamist crescent with its fairly wide variations in culture and the contradictions caused by various branches of creed and tribal/ethnic background? It may be that frontier soldiering like we practiced in NATO for 40 years would be counter-productive.

On another tack, given that appeasement and apologies can be treated with suspicion and/or considered a sign of weakness, how do we convince them restraint on the part of the west is not a sign of fear?

 

[tomahawk6]

How do you contain a religion ?