Response to Ricks suggesting story of General Braddock's demise at hands of French and their Indian confederates in 1755 ambush contains a lesson for America's military:

 "... you seem to have an agenda here, not sure what it is. Respect the natives? Seems to me America colonized its western frontier, as Europe had colonized the new worlds before it, by generally ignoring that sentiment. Shouldn't that be the true lesson here? Because respecting the ways of your enemy for the purposes of utterly destroying it is different from what you seem to be intimating. Or what exactly are you trying to say? That America's military suffers from a Braddock like arrogance? At this late date in these humbling wars? That I think would be quite a statement, which is why I think that is not your intention... just more liberal blather then... but for the facile edification of what?... or whom?..."

My response to a blogger's support of the idiot Andrew Sullivan's views concerning reform in Iran:

I love how the left likes to base its grandiose arguments on broad assumptions - like the reform movement in Iran is of course a good thing, or even a coherent and knowable thing for that matter, as Robin Wright points out on CFR's website:

"The Green Movement is a coalition of disparate forces who reflect many sectors of society and many different visions of the future. It includes former presidents [Rafsanjani, Khatami] as well as people who've never voted at all. We should have no illusion that they speak with one voice or they want one thing beyond the ouster of this particular president who commands a dictatorial rule. If they succeed in bringing about change, this coalition is almost certain to fall apart as traumatically as the revolutionary coalition did in 1979."

If the 'reformers' manage to topple the little dictator, what then? You can't simply assume it will be good, will lead to a more stable, more amenable, more approachable, more open Iran - in the chaos and disarray of conflicted goals and beliefs and intentions that follows the coming upheaval you want to sanction into being who knows what fills the vacuum? It could be worse, more extreme, more reactionary - Ahmadinejad has his supporters, conservative clerics have their supporters, the Republican Guard has an agenda - these people are not going to just simply fade into the background. Even if a 'reform agenda' manages to win out, given the inchoate nature of the movement we can't know what it will look like - it may not look much different from what exists now, simply absent the little dictator - maybe with a more palatable little dictator in his place.

As bad if not indeed worse than a possible extremist backlash that follows a 'reformist' upheaval in Iran is that should 'progressives' come to power they may prove to be reformers in name only but because the cowardly West will want to see them as 'liberals' we will turn a blind eye to the sham - for instance the supposed reformers could still want to pursue a nuclear program - there's plenty of evidence to suggest that's possible - but because they are viewed as 'progressives' the West won't be able to muster the will to stop them. Sullivan is already using preservation of the reform movement as a reason why a military intervention against Iran's nuclear ambitions is utterly unthinkable.

And then when a potential scenario unwinds of a governing reform coalition inevitably falling apart and the Republican Guard stepping in to re-establish dictatorial control, do they do so now armed with nukes?

If this country is listening to idiots like Andrew Sullivan we're doomed.

No silver lining without a cloud - possible downside of reform movement in Iran succeeding in toppling gov't? Many downsides I imagine, but pointedly this: reformers inchoate, incoherent agglomeration full of mixed signals, mixed intentions, mixed goals, mixed aspirations - a ragged but apparently resilient coalition - very likely to split apart if successful, leaving it to be taken over by elites and power brokers who the world will see or want to see as reformers but in actuality won't be that enthused by much of the 'reform' agenda - specifically, will still want to pursue nukes but because they can work under cover of being seen as 'progressives' we'll have no chance of stopping them - and then, after period of confusion and disarray and infighting, Republican Guard reasserts dictatorial control - but now they have the bomb. That's how something that seems encouraging could end up being quite the opposite.

"... you're a war monger - that's how a liberal answers a quite reasonable call by me in defense of keeping the military option viable viz Iran... not 'I see your point but respectfully disagree', not some logical breakdown of the argument... doesn't even address my very precise criticism that even if one is predisposed to blanch at thoughts of war it's still probably against the dictates of sound reasoning to simply ignore the possible merits of the military option given the threat... no, I must be a war monger and if I love war so much I should head to Afghanistan and join one, that's his response... and this is a fairly high profile analyst writing for a significant foreign policy magazine... and all he has to say in answer to me is that I must be a war monger... fucking liberals... dangerous fucking people..."

Surprising op-ed published in NY Times yesterday - immediately caught ones attention because it argued in favour of American military intervention to stop Iran's nuclear program - which pretty much goes against everything the Times wants to stand for and thus the surprise - the logic of the argument itself not a surprise since is something I myself have defended [not supported understand, defended - I personally don't know what's the right move viz Iran - but feel confident in saying that ruling out the US military means one has not seriously considered the nasty scenarios that could arise if Iran gets the bomb - there is no 'right' answer on Iran, it's rather a problem of figuring out the least bad of the few options available - but even I guess that's not true since there's no way Obama's using the military in Iran - so his choice right or wrong is made - Israel on the other hand...].

So, surprising enough by the Times that liberals everywhere immediately jumped up crying foul of their beloved Grey Lady and expressing aghast wonderment - no level of vigilance is apparently enough if such war mongering conservative bile can seep into the hallowed chambers of liberal enlightenment.

And that's what struck me about their whelping - enlightenment - all their arguments against even considering the possible merits of a military intervention by the US are based on the belief that the folly of such an enterprise would be obvious to a truly enlightened soul and therefore as truly enlightened souls they perforce must reject it - they're absolutely predetermined by sentiment to oppose the offending premise no matter what and therefore cannot, will not be convinced otherwise.

Suppose this is hardly an earth shaking observation on my part - still, it's troubling how much putatively 'objective' political discourse is tainted in this way.

"... your argument makes no sense... the anti-war stuff is driven by emotion and sentiment, no scientific method can elucidate it to a degree that will allow for the transcending of history, so why you dwell on it is beyond me since your main issue seems to be with matters of scientific method concerning 'certainty'... but our whole tradition of scientific inquiry is based on a healthy skepticism towards avowals of absolute truth... failure is fundamental to the game... so again, what's the point of your argument? That regardless of levels of expertise and sophistication and subtlety humans still manage to do stupid things? Ok... but I think we're all pretty clear on that one..."

Question: China is an oligarchy running successfully, for the moment anyway, a state driven and directed form of capitalism - how can such a thing ever become a democracy? Obviously, one assumes, it can, but if it does how problematic would the change be? What I'm thinking here is that a state controlled capitalism must have significant vulnerabilities in comparison to the open market, free enterprise driven form of  entrepreneurial based capitalism found in Western democracies - one doesn't notice the vulnerabilities hidden in China's approach to capitalism because their economy is just too robust right now - it's hard to hear the violin section is out of tune when the horn section is blaring so loudly - but you're gonna hear it eventually - my point being, should that state driven economy ever have to answer to the vagaries of voters, won't those vulnerabilities become a significant problem - won't their bastardized version of capitalism be rendered dysfunctional by inefficiency and waste and lack of innovation once the state has to answer to the whims and needs and wants of voters? Right now, the state sort of acts as an omnipresent CEO - bring voters into the system and that arrangement will struggle to perform [although with so much untapped or unexploited if you will capacity it's hard to know just how much inefficiency the Chinese economy could absorb before it starts to fall apart].

So, the way I see it then, the only way China moves towards democracy is if it first moves slowly towards a free market, private enterprise, an empowered-individual-is-king Western styled economy - but what if it won't or, possibly more telling, can't do that? How or why would the state seek to replace its current economic model that has proved so successful? Why invite that complication for the sake of becoming a democracy? The simple answer is it wouldn't and won't - therefore the only way China becomes a democracy is if something bad happens that upends the status quo and empowers liberalizing forces - and, as with Iran, this prosepctive upheaval could potentially lead to less freedom, not more. As things stand now it seems highly unlikely that China will voluntarily move towards democracy.

Allowing for that then, competing great powers with differing views of society, the individual's place in it and of the means and ways of economic production underpinning it all will dramatically alter, redefine, disturb the current international order over the next 25 years - these competing powers, because of needs and aspirations that will sometimes be complimentary, will seek to find a mutually beneficial equilibrium amongst themselves - history seems to suggest they won't easily find it.

Now, certainly one can argue that just because China can't or won't evolve into a democracy doesn't mean they are destined to become a foe of the West - but of course that's just a guess, there's no way to demonstrate the legitimacy of such a claim - and so me saying we are destined to come to blows at some point in the not so very distant future is an equally valid claim [unless of course Obama wins a second term, in  which case American might will become so hollowed out and emasculated that a significant confrontation between us and them won't even be possible - they'll have to settle on getting into it with India. Brave new fucking world indeed].

This post has been somewhat wandering and incoherent [and poorly written, don't forget that - and now of course the blemish of redundancy] - but the main point I think is fairly clear and not beyond being considered valid [despite me offering no evidence whatsoever in support of it*] - given the facts governing China's economy and its ongoing rise to great power status it's very hard to see why it would choose to embrace democratic reforms - of course one can argue China may be forced, because of various dynamics percolating through the society, to adopt democratic reforms regardless of what its leaders may want or wish - but still it's impossible to predict what those reforms may look like, how successful they may prove or if in the end they don't result in an even more entrenched absolutism among the ruling classes. Assuming then a powerful yet undemocratic China jostling for room and resources with a still powerful US, a rising India, an ineffectual but still important EU etc etc we see that this coming new international order - a mere 10, 20 at most 50 years away - will have to endure, tolerate if you will, some uncomfortable and ungainly arrangements and relations between its competing powers and competing blocs of powers. Finding comity amongst these arrayed powers and their influences will not be easy. It seems reasonable therefore to remain a China sceptic - assuming of course certain liberal elites do not succeed in turning America into Europe's coarse cousin [this is the hidden goal of the liberal agenda, no? To weaken America so it can't disturb this coming new order?].

* an article in FP talks about how China walked away from Copenhagen climate talks because of Clinton insistence on transparency - the writer's point being that China as a matter of state policy lies, distorts, fudges numbers related to its economy - last thing in the world it wants then are teams of climate control inspectors wandering the country opening doors and shining lights.

Is it true that Chavez made outlandish speech at Copenhagen climate fest descrying the twin horrors of capitalism and America and that a ruined planet is the bitter harvest the long suffering masses will reap from those blighted seeds sown? And that this speech was followed by mass murderer Mugabe unwinding with similar invocations of evil? And that the audience cheered loudly for them both?

Of course, possible only crackpots would attend lectures given by crackpots - still, who knows? It certainly raises a very troubling point: I don't know much about the science of global warming - I'd probably classify myself a mild [!] skeptic regarding it - but the politics of it definitely concerns me, and Copenhagen doesn't appear to be doing much to alleviate those fears - and when China refuses to support an American proposal because of Clinton insisting on guarantees of 'transparency' vis a vis reports of actual emissions being cut? That tells me my fears are justified - for some if not many countries this is more about geostrategic politicking [ie let's fuck America] and less about climate control. Just as the UN is farcically inefficient when it comes to 'big' issues because of the free rein given to entirely inappropriate and often delusional agendas and the fantasy of thinking you can drag some workable consensus out of that mire, so to with climate change one fears - how do you unmuddy those waters?

I admit to knowing little or nothing about the science - but I don't think you need to be an expert to see that no matter how sound the science may or may not be the politics underwriting it is decidedly worrisome.

Does the democrats, the hyper ones that is, the progressives, does their insistence on a public option reveal why they can never be allowed to run a powerful country like the US - their sentimentality, their framing everything with emotional imperatives that are largely disconnected from the realities of governing something as unsentimental as a superpower - or does it indicate their extremists have adopted the Machiavellian artifices so ably employed by republican extremists ie the 'public option' would be a great political tool for them in the same way god and guns are great utilities for the GOP? Important difference, I think - but, then again, maybe not? I mean, how useful can the tool be if you don't act in a manner consistent with the ideals associated with it? Which is why, lacking alternatives, better a conservative ideologue than a liberal one?

"... at this point I'd be willing to speculate that the only way to win in Afghanistan is by losing... what I mean is, the initial invasion was a success, everyone agrees on that, with far fewer troops than are committed now and some help from the Northern Alliance, we sent the Taliban running... the mistake made was that we didn't stop them from running and they disappeared into Pakistan where they continue to operate and recruit from today... Pakistan remains the problem since success seems impossible without their help and they won't commit to helping because they don't trust we're actually going to finish the job and they feel the Taliban is a good alliance for them to maintain should Afghanistan devolve into civil war again once we leave... which is why Obama setting a deadline for leaving was such a huge mistake... if Pakistan won't help then chances for victory are thin, if not non existent... so recreate the initial conditions by losing... lure the Taliban back from Pakistan, let them expose themselves by taking over again, secure Pakistan's support in locking down the border, drop thousands of American troops into the mountains to close off escape routes, and then redo the invasion... recreate the conditions on the ground that initially allowed for success but fix the crucial flaw... of course, it could never be that simple and the Taliban may not be the same animal regardless, they may not be as easily displaced this time... still, if you can't draw the Taliban out into the open, win Pakistan's support and shut down that border to a sufficient degree, I can't see how you win anything resembling a lasting victory in Afghanistan, especially with the restrictions regarding time and numbers that Obama has placed on the mission..."

Conservatives have adopted Obama's Nobel speech as if it came from one of their own - hawkish right wing luminary Max Boot called it a masterpiece - I can't agree, even though it was somewhat well crafted [aside from some cloying wobbles into sentimentality, but I suppose you have to appease public tastes with these things], generally free from his usual nebulous idealist effusions and presented a view of American foreign policy that was distinctly moderate and reasonable and unburdened by liberal guilt, realistic if you will [although many now are criticizing the obviousness of some of the points it attempted to make ie the idea of 'just war' etc etc - and George Will has written a nice piece drawing attention to the fact that Obama can't seem to make a speech about anything without the subject of himself coming to dominate it - Will is fascinated by how many times the personal pronoun appears in the Nobel speech even though ostensibly it was supposed to be a defense of American foreign policy]. Nevertheless, I can't share an optimism that wants to believe that the speech represents Obama moderating his liberal ideology, of him growing into the presidency, as I think Boot put it - it could be that, sure, it could also be him throwing red meat to conservatives before heading off to Copenhagen to sell the country down the global warming river [an extreme example of a possible ulterior motive, but not out of the question] - in short, another political calculation - in fact, from what so far has been revealed about Obama and his inner circle and their way of governing, I'd say that without supporting evidence it'd be naive to think the speech anything other than a political calculation - after all, as I've said before, having made the dubious choice to accept the honour what option did he have but to give a speech similar to this? But what if he doesn't actually believe in the rhetoric? What if subsequent actions do not adequately reflect the somewhat realist tone of it? In a wider context then, outside of its political utility, wouldn't the speech end up doing more harm than good if it's only intention was to be a clever speech that conservatives could embrace?

I don't wanna be the constant cynic here [well, I do, actually] but my tendency is to think it very unwise to read too much into the speech. I freely grant that it may represent Obama's world view maturing under the weight of his responsibilities - but my instincts tell me otherwise.

Obama picks up his Nobel Peace Prize today - when it was first announced the farcical absurdity of it was so astounding one quickly turned their back to it like to a bad joke one hopes to get away from - but now that the day is here I think I see what a mistake it was for him to accept the honour - he should have politely turned it down, that was the only honourable and, much more importantly, strategically sound thing to do with such a specious and tawdry attempt at manipulation - although I guess it's emblematic of his idea of leadership that he fancies the supposed brilliance of the coming speech will make everything seem right [regardless of him speaking of war as a necessary evil raised in defense of a common good, which I take it is a theme the speech did in fact broach - I mean, let's face it, for an American president, no matter how liberal he may be, to talk about 'peace' in terms other than that would have been ludicrous] [the honour bestowed is intended as a trap by those that dislike, distrust and disdain America, and even if you walk into it with eyes open, it's still a trap - you can only gain the appearance of twisting it to your advantage - or I should say to the advantage of a reasonable and well founded American foreign policy - which, having now read the speech, clearly seems to have been Obama's intention].

What to make of this deadline that's not a deadline? In the week since Obama announced his Afghan plan all the recognizable 'hawks' involved [Gates, Clinton, Petraeus] have been studiously walking back the idea of a firm deadline, walked it back so far that it now seems less an established boundary and more a vague smudge so ambiguously etched into the sand that its intent is lost - and yet the deleterious effect of it persists. In COIN you don't want a deadline, it sends the wrong message and is not in keeping with the internal logic of the strategy. Regardless, if political necessity forces a deadline upon you then it can't appear arbitrary, detached from a coherent and practical rationale, and for the very same reasons you don't want one in the first place: it sends the wrong message to the target population, props up the sense of inevitability that a revolutionary zeal feeds off of and is fundamentally at odds with the logical assumptions made in support of COIN.

And so, what to make of this deadline that's not a deadline? Yet more evidence of the Obama administration playing politics with the Afghan problem? A mistake, either in conception or presentation [the speech], that inexplicably only appeared egregious after the fact? Candy tossed at the uber left in hopes of mollifying them? Obama going rogue? The manifestation of a doctrinal split in the cabinet muddling policy? No one knows - people are left to draw their own conclusions - which is bad, because the conclusions Afghans and the Taliban and AQ are going to draw work against your long term interests if your goal is to beat down extremism and stabilize the region.

"... you reference Obama's desire to speed up the deployment and don't mention that the purpose of that may well be to better suit the elections cycle? How the putative beginning of the end of the surge conveniently falls right between the midterm and presidential elections? Your own Robert Haddick has asked in these very pages how does it make sense to plan to begin drawing down troops in the middle of the Taliban's fighting season? It makes sense if your main concern is politics. This whole thing has been orchestrated to suit a political schedule and political imperatives - the plan he has settled on could easily have been settled on months ago - many 'experts' I read fearfully believed and predicted months ago that this is exactly what he'd do, choose some compromised middle ground that would offer the fewest political downsides.

The only logical explanations for the plan and its long gestation period are: that Obama really didn't want to go down this road and had to be dragged here by Gates and Clinton and the Generals and thus the odd time line and bet hedging; or it's all part of a political calculation - Obama knew he couldn't just walk away and so the question became how to do this while incurring the least amount of political damage.

This process and resulting plan were not the result of laudable intellectualism or Rumsfeldian micromanaging: they're either a reflection of fear and doubt or of politics at its most cynical. This attempt by some to recast what has happened here as a noble if not heroic effort by Obama to subdue the Afghan beast by means of his lofty and unyielding intellect is vain and delusional at best, sycophantic at worst..."

Well - seems the problem that caused such a long delay in the rendering of Obama's Afghan decision was not the decision itself but rather how to construct a speech about it that would give to some the impression he was rising to meet the challenge and to others the conceit 'I don't really wanna do this, but the only way I can step back is by taking a few steps forward' - because the plan he's announced is exactly what most in the know figured it would be: a Goldilocks solution, a middling compromise, a commitment that's not really a commitment, a message that says to the generals essentially 'I'm gonna give you just enough tools to do something while constricting your ability to blame me should you fail to do that something - in other words, give it the old college try, because when I eventually blame Bush for all this I won't be taken seriously unless it looks like I sincerely tried to fix it - oh, and you've only got a year to do it - but that's enough, right? since the only goal here really is to make me look credible...'

From what I can tell the central problem of Obama's strategy is that it's built around a debilitating contradiction: in essence, as regards COIN the fewer troops you send the more flexible your timeline has to be - and yet Obama has imposed a fixed, limited, and probably in the end unreasonable timeline upon an incongruously modest troop deployment - this works against the logic of COIN as Petraeus and McChrystal understand it and have defined it.

All of which suggests to me that this is will amount to a token effort, the result of either Obama being reluctantly dragged towards action by Clinton and Gates or he and his team figuring the only worthwhile victory to be wrought from this bitter harvest will be a political one for the Obamai.

Robert Haddick over at the esteemed Small Wars Journal seems to agree with me:

The most controversial feature is his decision to begin withdrawing U.S. forces from the country in July 2011. This feature (no doubt aligned with his re-election plans – why else withdraw troops at the start of the Afghan summer fighting season?) is a fatal flaw and makes it very likely that little will go right for his Afghan strategy. Indeed, it negates the point of hastily adding over 30,000 U.S. and European soldiers in 2010.

Over the past three months President Obama and his team have analyzed the Afghanistan problem from first principles. Yet in spite of this effort, their solution is not likely to make the problem go away. Regrettably, the next few years are likely to reveal that America still lacks a winning strategy for modern irregular conflict.

I'm confused - I keep reading from 'experts' that China and Russia can still be convinced to join in a serious rebuke of Iran - just read another article about China being amenable etc etc - but I don't see that at all - the question I pose is: if they're open to joining forces with us, then why haven't they? Obviously they want something, either in return for their cooperation, or as a consequence of drawing out the process with no intention of ultimately cooperating - which suggests they're not so much concerned with Iran getting the bomb as they are with how they can manipulate the situation to improve their position in the world relative to the US. So, again, what are these experts talking about when they speak in positive terms about Russia and China's intentions viz Iran? All I'm seeing are calculations being made that will either result in Iran going nuclear or Israel interceding to forestall such a thing - and I believe both China and Russia imagine that in either case advantages accrue to them, both as concerns the price of oil, which will suit Russia just fine, and the prospect of increased influence in the region, directly and through proxies, and at America's expense, which I take to be China's true objective here.