Twenty-five years ago, on “9/11”—November 9th in European date-notation—the Berlin Wall opened and, it seemed, everything changed. Freedom was no longer just an aspiration across much of Europe but a rising reality. The transformation was so profound that it is now hard to remember the bad old days of communist oppression and Soviet dominance, when peoples all across Central Europe lacked hope for the future and feared the secret police.
A quarter century beyond the settlement of the 75-year European civil war (1914-89), what is the balance of achievement following that remarkable overturning of European history and of much of global politics and economics? There is much good, but also some bad, and history did not “come to an end.”
The Soviet empires—internal and external—are both gone, and so is the Cold War, which was the most dangerous time in all of history, when the planet was at risk of being destroyed. The world escaped, although as the Duke of Wellington said about the Battle of Waterloo: It was a damn close-run thing.
Other good things happened, notably a definitive answer to the 120-year-old question: “What do we do about Germany?” It became unified, was anchored to the West, and, with the wisdom of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, it surrounded itself with NATO and the EU and sank the Deutschmark in the Euro. Thus Germany is again becoming economically the top nation in Central Europe, but there is no valid basis for fearing a German national menace.
Meanwhile, President George H.W. Bush led in working to create a “Europe whole and free” and at peace. The US stayed in Europe, NATO was not wrapped up but has continued to keep European history pacified. Central Europe was taken off the geopolitical chessboard with the Partnership for Peace Program and, for many countries, NATO and EU membership. Ukraine was encouraged in its Western, democratic vocation, but without first being pulled into a Western alliance system that could be perceived as a challenge to Russian Federation. (The fact that a succession of Ukrainian governments largely funked the task is another matter).
The first President Bush, followed by Bill Clinton, also tried to prevent the growth of revanchism in Russia, to avoid what happened with the Treaty of Versailles, whose punitive features against Germany helped produce Hitler. This effort, too, went awry, as leaders in the G. W. Bush and then Barack Obama administrations forgot this central lesson and heaped fuel on the fire of Russian nationalism that was set alight by Vladimir Putin. Maybe the result (in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine) would have been the same, under Putin or any other Russian leader who appealed to his people’s sense of lost position and prestige, but the US failure to take account of legitimate Russian concerns certainly did not help.
There have been other negatives, unintended byproducts of success following the Berlin Wall’s opening. Many West European countries wisely shifted limited security resources from military spending not needed after the Cold War to economic support for Central Europe—beginning with the Federal Republic of Germany’s investment of trillions of Euros in the old East Germany. But the US did not. Today in the United States, non-military instruments are starved while it maintains the mightiest military in history at a time where there is no “peer competitor.” Thus, while priding itself on being the “indispensable nation,” the US was caught short by the Ebola epidemic and has done so much less in other countries compared to the good it could do and the security it could promote in the broadest sense of that term.
The US did not totally ignore Will Roger’s warning: “When you get into trouble 5,000 miles from home, you’ve got to have been looking for it.” But after our “9/11,” the US did overdo Afghanistan by trying to get its political and social cultures to leapfrog centuries of development; and the US then committed one of the worse follies in American history, by invading Iraq for no good reason. The results have been more than 5,000 US servicemen and women dead, thousands more wounded, little promise in either Afghanistan or Iraq, and more than 3 trillion dollars of treasure wasted when it could have been used to refurbish the American homeland and create a more solid and lasting basis for US power and influence.
It is doubtful that either excess—in Afghanistan or Iraq—would have been possible during the Cold War, when the United States had to be worried about a superpower competitor, prepared to promote its own, contending interests. The lesson for today has to be that, just because it is possible to do something, it is not necessarily wise or prudent to do it.
So chto delat? As Lenin asked, “What is to be done?” Here are some ideas, mostly for America:
- Reassess what we do in the outside world. What is needed for our security and that of friends and allies, and what can be “given a pass” or handed off to others (including our European friends)? Where is it wiser, in our own interests, to stand apart rather than to become engaged?
- Recruit a first-class team of people in the Obama administration who know how to “think strategically.” This essential quality began to decline near the end of the Cold War and continues on a steep downward trajectory. With the collapse of the Cold War’s organizing principle, it seemed that less strategic thinking was needed. Yet it has been just the reverse, when so much is in play, there are so many variables, the US cannot “do it all,” it cannot count on the American people to support all foreign ventures, and it thus faces a greater need to set priorities and to make choices than it did when the Soviet threat could justify a wide range of courses of action and involvement. At the same time, press the think-tank community to do the same, instead of continuing to serve largely as means of building political consensus to implement an agreed foreign policy—when there is no clarity of strategy purpose and methodology around which to build a consensus to meet America’s future needs.
- Put more money into USAID, change the balance of funding between military and non-military instruments from the current 13:1 to a ratio that will better enable us to promote our interests and values, and recreate the United States Information Agency, one of our best “unsecret weapons” that was foolishly scrapped.
- Recommit the US to being a European power. Washington’s interest in NATO dropped to an all-time low before Mr. Putin stirred up interest by his misbehavior in Ukraine. Now that interest is sinking again, and the number of people in Washington fully engaged in European security or in other aspects of US engagement in Europe is declining radically. The Pentagon, meanwhile, is charged with implementing decisions of last September’s NATO summit in Wales, in part to reassure Central European allies wary of Russia, but it is doling out only peanuts for people in and out of government to think through what has to be done.
- Challenge the Europeans allies to do even more for security on the continent and in selected places beyond—not through increased defense spending in each allied country to at least 2% of GDP, an American obsession left over from the Cold War. Most of that 2% should go to non-military political and economic instruments to help integrate Central Europe more fully in Europe, to do more in Africa, and to get on with the critical work of building a solid Ukrainian economy. Also tell the Ukrainians to dismantle their kleptocracy and tell Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, either to restore his country’s democracy or both NATO and the EU will send it packing.
- Start work on a long-term security structure for the Persian Gulf and other parts of the Middle East. End the illusion that getting rid of the Assad regime in Syria is the answer to anything—it would likely only produce more regional chaos and a Shi’a bloodbath. Meanwhile, put the Saudis and others who have turned a blind eye to the export of terrorism and the fostering of al-Qaeda and Islamic State, to stop immediately the flow from their countries of Islamist ideas, money, and arms, as the price of continued good relations with the US.
More needs to be done to deal effectively with the requirements of a world newly created in the wake of the end of the Cold War’s certainties, a product of the Berlin wall’s opening, but this is enough to be getting on with. It befits America’s role as a great power, a champion of freedom, a protector of those most in need of protecting, a beacon of hope. It is what we expect in terms of leadership by our president and Congress. It would be a fitting commemoration of what a lot of courageous people did across Central Europe a quarter century ago. Can we be less committed and far-sighted than they were?
]]>by Henry Precht
They used to say during the Cold War that the Pentagon was prepared to fight two and a half wars at the same time. Actually, I can’t think of such a fraught moment in post-World War II history. Vietnam came along after Korea; Reagan took on Grenada and Panama [...]]]>
by Henry Precht
They used to say during the Cold War that the Pentagon was prepared to fight two and a half wars at the same time. Actually, I can’t think of such a fraught moment in post-World War II history. Vietnam came along after Korea; Reagan took on Grenada and Panama after ducking out of Lebanon. Only when George W. Bush pushed troops into Afghanistan and Iraq did we come close to the theoretical limit of our force projection capabilities.
It wasn’t the same with diplomacy: One crisis at a time has been the cap on American Great Power role-playing. The classic case was President Jimmy Carter’s taking a pass on the budding Iranian revolution while at the same time nudging Egypt and Israel into a peace settlement. A 500 percent batting average isn’t too bad, however.
If the one crisis at a time rule still applies, let us extend a bit of sympathy to the Obama White House. I count four major, on-going crises, five pretty big ones holding a serious potential to get worse plus a host of seedlings that should be brought under control. The biggies are:
- The clash with Russia over Ukraine;
- The Syrian civil war;
- The Iranian nuclear program;
- The Israel-Palestine peace negotiations.
You can make your own list of the slightly lesser dangers by throwing darts at a map. Let’s limit ourselves to examining the four major threats:
- China’s assertiveness in the Pacific;
- Pakistan under threat of Islamic extremists;
- Egypt’s move to strong-man rule;
- Venezuela’s internal strife;
- Europe’s fragile economy.
Plainly, the Ukrainian trouble harbors the widest and most severe long-term threat: A renewed Cold War, higher energy costs, ruined economies around the globe and the unrest that will provoke, distortion of domestic priorities — the list goes on and on. Domestic politics and distaste for Russian President Vladimir Putin afflict American diplomacy; domestic sentiments, history and Putin’s pride bear upon Russia’s. The way out is fairly clear: both sides have to switch off their rhetoric and hostile gestures, walk their positions back and prove stronger than their Ukrainian clients. The elements of a settlement can objectively be foreseen: a freeze by all on moves towards Crimea; a new regime in Kiev displacing right-wing elements; free, supervised elections later this year; and generous financial help from both East and West.
Once Ukraine is headed in that direction, work must be resumed on Syria to stop the killing. To do that Russia’s help will be essential as will that of Saudi Arabia (for dealing with the rebels) and Iran (for dealing with Assad). Moscow’s influence will be important with the latter; Washington’s crucial with the former. Assad, having killed so many of his people, must accept early retirement to be replaced by eminent Syrians acceptable to both sides who will in some months oversee national elections. Reconstruction will be the priority task and Saudi money the only possible supplier for that. Again, Washington will have to find the time and means to be persuasive with its royal client.
The same talents in Washington will have to be applied to persuade Riyadh that its interests will be protected when a nuclear deal with Iran is completed — which must happen if the US is to get Iran on board for a Syrian settlement.
And what of Israel? Will Jerusalem twiddle thumbs as the world weaves new alignments? Hardly. No Israeli leaders — or friend in Congress — will sit quietly while Obama offers an olive branch to Tehran while throwing a punch at Israel’s presence on the West Bank. Something will have to give and, as has happened in the past, that will mean peace talks must be slowed down and US pressure quietly eased. Perhaps the Saudis can be persuaded to appease the Palestinians, especially if we agree not to take the side of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt — which we certainly weren’t going to do in any event.
Can all or any of this be accomplished by a one-crisis-at-a-time administration, especially in a very difficult election year with a crowed domestic agenda before a rebellious Congress? No one knows, but if the usual crisis management limitation governs, a potentially explosive Ukraine must obviously receive the highest priority.
The administration’s diplomatic skills should be sufficient to put together a solution — given the time to nurture the necessary connections in Western and Eastern Europe. A measure of luck will, as always, be essential. But the largest lacuna may lie in the requirement for political bravery. The time will have to be found to muster up courage not profiled in Washington in many, many years.
Photo: President Barack Obama convenes a National Security Council meeting in the Situation Room of the White House to discuss the situation in Ukraine, March 3, 2014. Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza
]]>by Wayne White
Most historic parallels are far from perfect. Yet regarding what transpired in Ukraine leading up to the current crisis, an episode from World War II does seem instructive about the risks associated with shifting from accommodation to defiance in dangerous neighborhoods. It is not, however, the tiresome Munich analogy [...]]]>
by Wayne White
Most historic parallels are far from perfect. Yet regarding what transpired in Ukraine leading up to the current crisis, an episode from World War II does seem instructive about the risks associated with shifting from accommodation to defiance in dangerous neighborhoods. It is not, however, the tiresome Munich analogy already being trotted out by some observers.
During 1939-1941, Yugoslavian Regent Prince Paul did whatever he could to avoid a Yugoslavian confrontation with its increasingly dominant Axis neighbors. But when he thought he had cut a deal buying lots of valuable time for Yugoslavia, he was overthrown by the Yugoslav Army supported by Serbian nationalist and other anti-Axis elements. The result was the swift Axis invasion of Yugoslavia — just the beginning of a ghastly wartime ordeal for that nation.
Ironically, Prince Paul’s sympathies were with the Allies, having close ties to England, but he was realistic. By 1940 Germany, Italy and Axis Hungary adjoined nearly every Yugoslav border. Yugoslavia also harbored German, Italian and Hungarian minorities left over from the carving up of Europe after World War I. Paul feared that with its domestic Serbo-Croatian rivalry (that would later tear the country apart under Axis occupation and again in the 1990s), Yugoslavia might not be able to fight a war against the Axis as a united country. Worse still, there was no possibility of meaningful near-term help from a beleaguered Great Britain or any other outside powers (despite repeated appeals by Paul to England, France — before its defeat — and the United States).
So, under intense pressure from the Axis for greater accommodation and in order to insure Yugoslavia’s survival, Prince Paul signed the Axis Pact on March 27, 1941. He did, however, insist on important reservations. Yugoslavia’s sovereignty was to be observed fully, the Yugoslav military would take no part in the war, and no Axis troops could transit or be based in Yugoslavia. As a result, on the eve of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Paul thought he had spared his country from catastrophe until the time came when Yugoslavia might be in a position to take a stand.
A furious Winston Churchill, however, encouraged a coup against Paul by anti-Axis elements in the army and among the country’s politicians, replacing him with the youthful King Peter II. Upon hearing of the successful overthrow of Paul, Churchill announced: “Yugoslavia had finally found its soul.”
Catastrophic consequences were not long in coming. An angry Adolf Hitler, perceiving Yugoslavia now as potentially hostile and possibly aligned with England, ordered that it be occupied. A German blitzkrieg was unleashed on April 6, with military assistance from both Italy and Hungary. The hopelessly outclassed Yugoslavian Army surrendered unconditionally less than two weeks later, on April 17.
Yugoslavia was subsequently carved up among the Axis victors, along the creation of a new pro-Axis Croatian state. Between the excesses of Croatia, a civil war between Communist and anti-Communist partisans (won by Josip Broz Tito), Tito’s campaign against Axis occupying forces, and the extension of the Holocaust into Yugoslavia, the country suffered terribly. For example, of its roughly 80,000 Jews (several thousand of whom came to Yugoslavia from countries occupied earlier) nearly 80% perished.
For quite some time history treated Prince Paul, who fled abroad, as a traitorous scoundrel who sold out his country. The British kept him under house arrest in Kenya until 1945. Tito’s Post-war Yugoslavia declared him an enemy of the state. Only much later did Churchill acknowledge that his treatment of Paul had been unfair and overly harsh. It also took decades after Paul’s death in 1976 before was he rehabilitated by Serbia.
This historical backgrounder is not intended to brand, by extension, the deeply flawed Victor Yanukovych as a Prince Paul or Russia’s Vladimir Putin as an Adolf Hitler. Nor is it meant to cast Western leaders today in the mold of the Winston Churchill whose dangerous 1941 gambles in Yugoslavia (and Greece) turned both into Axis-occupied countries in short order.
But all this does show that under certain circumstances, as with the Ukrainian opposition of today, substituting hope and defiance for reality based caution can prove very dangerous. Putin’s aggressive reaction to Yanukovych’s overthrow was unjustified. Nonetheless, there was reason to fear, drawing upon historic scenarios like that of 1941 Yugoslavia, that the anti-Russian tone of the Ukrainian opposition (and the Westward-leaning first statements by the new leadership in Kiev), would likely bring some sort of grief to the Ukraine. And amidst the ongoing crisis, considerable caution is warranted regarding Moscow on the part of the new leadership in Kiev — as well as the West — if Ukraine is to extract itself from its face-off with Russia with a minimum of adverse consequences.
]]>by Marsha B. Cohen
Last week marked the 68th anniversary of the WWII destruction of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (Aug. 6) and Nagasaki (Aug. 9) — the first and only deployment of nuclear weapons in human history. Within moments of the nuclear explosions that destroyed these cities, at least 200,000 people [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
Last week marked the 68th anniversary of the WWII destruction of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (Aug. 6) and Nagasaki (Aug. 9) — the first and only deployment of nuclear weapons in human history. Within moments of the nuclear explosions that destroyed these cities, at least 200,000 people lost their lives. Tens of thousands subsequently died from radiation poisoning within the next two weeks. The effects linger to this day.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has implied that this would the be fate of Israel if Iran was allowed to obtain nuclear weapon-making capabilities, including the ability to enrich high-grade uranium. To prevent this from happening, the economy of Iran must be crippled by sanctions and the fourth largest oil reserves in the world must be barred from global markets, as the oil fields in which they are situated deteriorate. Israel — the only state in the region that actually possesses nuclear weapons and has blocked all efforts to create a Middle East Nuclear Weapon Free Zone – should thus be armed with cutting-edge American weaponry. Finally, the US must not only stand behind its sole reliable Middle East ally, which could strike Iran at will, it should ideally also lead — not merely condone — a military assault against Iranian nuclear facilities.
Netanyahu invariably frames the threat posed by Iranian nuclear capability (a term that blurs distinctions between civilian and potential military applications of nuclear technology) as “Auschwitz” rather than “Hiroshima and Nagasaki”, even though the latter might be a more apt analogy. The potential for another Auschwitz is predicated on the image of an Israel that is unable — or unwilling to — defend itself, resulting in six million Jews going “like sheep to the slaughter.” But if Israel and/or the US were to attack Iran instead of the other way around, “Hiroshima and Nagasaki” would be the analogy to apply to Iran.
A country dropping bombs on any country that has not attacked first is an act of war, as the US was quick to point out when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor — and this includes so-called “surgical strikes”. In a July 19 letter about US options in Syria, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reminded the Senate Armed Services Committee that “…the decision to use force is not one that any of us takes lightly. It is no less than an act of war” [emphasis added].
If the use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during wartime remains morally and militarily questionable, one might think that there would be even less justification for a military strike on Iran, with whom neither Israel nor the US is at war. Of course, there are those who disagree: the US is engaged in a war on terror, Iran has been designated by the US as the chief state sponsor of terrorism since 1984 and so on. Therefore, the US is, or should be, at war with Iran.
“All options are on the table” is the operative mantra with regard to the US halting Iran’s acquirement of a nuclear weapon. But if bombs start dropping on Iran, what kind will they be? In fact, the 30,000 lb. Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) that could be employed against Iranian nuclear facilities are nuclear weapons, since they derive their capability of penetrating 200 feet of concrete in the earth from depleted uranium. Furthermore, some Israelis have darkly hinted that, were Israel to confront Iran alone, it would be more likely to reach into its unacknowledged nuclear armoury if that meant the difference between victory and defeat.
Given all this, comparing the damage that would be done by bombing Iran with the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not farfetched. It also reveals some troubling parallels. In the years prior to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in response to what the US regarded as Japanese expansionism, imposed economic sanctions on Japan in 1937. Just before the US entered the war, an embargo was placed on US exports of oil to Japan, upon which Japan was utterly dependent.
In 1945, it was already clear that Japan was preparing to surrender and that the outstanding issue at hand was the status of its emperor. There was neither a military nor political need to use atomic weapons to bring an end to the war. Numerous justifications for dropping atomic bombs on Japan were invoked, but nearly all of them were challenged or discredited within a few years after the war ended. Three are particularly noteworthy today, as we continue to face the prospect of war with Iran.
Saving lives: US Secretary of War Henry Stimson justified the decision to use atomic weapons as “the least abhorrent choice” since it would not only would save the lives of up to a million American soldiers who might perish in a ground assault on Japan, it would also spare the lives of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians who were being killed in fire bombings. President Harry Truman also claimed that “thousands of lives would be saved” and “a quarter of a million of the flower of our young manhood was worth a couple of Japanese cities.” But as Andrew Dilks points out, “None of these statements were based on any evidence.”
Speaking in Warsaw, Poland on June 12 — two days before the Iranian election that he declared would “change nothing” with regard to Iran’s alleged quest to develop nuclear weaponry — Netanyahu used the opening of an Auschwitz memorial to make his case. “This is a regime that is building nuclear weapons with the expressed purpose to annihilate Israel’s six million Jews,” he said. “We will not allow this to happen. We will never allow another Holocaust.” About the Iranians who would perish after an Israeli attack, Netanyahu said nothing.
Justifying expenditures: The total estimated cost of the Manhattan Project, which developed the bombs dropped on Japan, was nearly $2 billion in 1945, the equivalent of slightly more than $30 billion today. Secretary of State James Byrnes pointed out to President Harry Truman, who was up for re-election in 1948, that he could expect to be berated by Republicans for spending such a large amount on weapons that were never used, according to MIT’s John Dower.
A recent report by the Congressional Research Service shows that Israel is the single largest recipient of US aid, receiving a cumulative $118 billion, most of it military aid. The Bush administration and the Israeli government had agreed to a 10-year, $30 billion military aid package in 2007, which assured Israel of funding through 2018. During his March 2013 visit to Israel, President Barack Obama, who had been criticized by the US pro-Israel lobby for being less concerned than previous American presidents about Israel’s well being and survival, pledged that the United States would continue to provide Israel with multi-year commitments of military aid subject to the approval of Congress. Not to be outdone, the otherwise tightfisted Congress not only approved the added assistance Obama had promised, it also increased it. An Iran that is not depicted as dangerous would jeopardize the generous military assistance Israel receives. What better way to demonstrate how badly needed those US taxpayer dollars are than to show them in action?
Technological research and development: One of the most puzzling questions about the decision to use nuclear weaponry against Japan is why, three days after the utter devastation wreaked on Hiroshima, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. It was unnecessary from a militarily perspective. Perhaps the answer exists in the fact that the Manhattan Project had produced different types of atomic bombs: the destructive power of the “Little Boy”, which fell on Hiroshima, came from uranium; the power of “Fat Man”, which exploded over Nagasaki, came from plutonium. What better way to “scientifically” compare their effectiveness at annihilation than by using both?
The award winning Israeli documentary, The Lab, which opens in the US this month, reveals that Israel has used Lebanon and Gaza as a testing ground for advances in weaponry. Jonathan Cook writes, “Attacks such as Operation Cast Lead of winter 2008-09 or last year’s Operation Pillar of Defence, the film argues, serve as little more than laboratory-style experiments to evaluate and refine the effectiveness of new military approaches, both strategies and weaponry.” Israeli military leaders have strongly hinted that in conducting air strikes against Syria, the Israeli Air Force is rehearsing for an attack on Iran, including the use of bunker-buster bombs.
The Pentagon, which reportedly has invested $500 million in developing and revamping MOP “bunker busters”, recently spent millions building a replica of Iran’s Fordow nuclear research facility in order to demonstrate to the Israelis that Iranian nuclear facilities can be destroyed when the time is right.
Gen. Dempsey arrived in Israel on Monday to meet with Israel’s Chief of Staff Benny Gantz and Israel’s political leaders. Members of Congress from both political parties are also visiting — Democrats last week, Republicans this week — on an AIPAC-sponsored “fact-finding” mission. No doubt they will hear yet again from Israeli leaders that the world cannot allow another Auschwitz.
The world cannot allow another Hiroshima and Nagasaki either.
by James A. Russell
With the disappearance of war between developed states in the post-World War II era, policing intra-state violence on land and trying to punish so-called rogue states constitutes the main security problems facing the international community.
As the world’s sole military power capable of global power projection, many [...]]]>
by James A. Russell
With the disappearance of war between developed states in the post-World War II era, policing intra-state violence on land and trying to punish so-called rogue states constitutes the main security problems facing the international community.
As the world’s sole military power capable of global power projection, many of these problems invariably end up in America’s Inbox. The United States receives calls from various quarters for military intervention around the world in Syria, Iran, Mali and other global hotspots. These calls aren’t going away any time soon, despite this country’s exhaustion after a decade of war. But the world’s problems won’t wait while we lick our wounds and try to take a breather.
Intervention advocates invariably propose that we establish no-fly zones and/or launch our missile-armed drones over their areas of focus. They argue that policing people on the ground from 15,000 feet presents a low-cost, pain-free (at least for us) alternative to putting boots on the ground.
The western intervention in Libya is held up as an example of the benefits of this approach. However, as recent events there indicate, it’s clear that the struggle for political power in Libya has only just begun. The future direction of the country is at best uncertain.
The idea that the United States and its allies can police the world’s ruffians from above is dangerously misguided. It stems from repackaged failed ideas that have been repeatedly and unsuccessfully tried over the last century.
America’s love affair with shooting at the enemy from the sky above and the associated belief that the resulting destruction can somehow control politics on the ground goes back to the early 20th century, when strategists considered the potential benefits offered by airplanes as an instrument of war.
Western armies had fought to a bloody and protracted stalemate in World War I that slaughtered a generation on the fields of France, just as the airplane arrived to survey the carnage below. Shortly thereafter, Italian General Guilio Douhet offered his theories of airpower that cast the airplane as a revolutionary weapon that could destroy enemies on the ground invulnerable from attack. He believed the advent of airpower offered the prospect that armies might not have to close with one another in their bloody and awful embrace to achieve victory.
Douhet’s theories found favor with many, including General Hap Arnold, who then helped mastermind the allied strategic bombing campaign in World War II. Arnold spearheaded efforts to create the United States Air Force as a separate military service drawing upon Douhet’s concepts and adopting the broader mission of long-range strike warfare that, at the time, primarily involved dropping nuclear bombs on the Soviet Union.
But the proponents of bombing from above had several problems. The first was the accuracy of the bombs. As revealed in the Strategic Bombing Survey after World War II, it turned out that our bombers missed most of the military targets they were aiming at, belying one of the promises of airpower advocates. With a few exceptions, most of the military targets actually hit by allied bombers did little to impede Germany’s overall war effort.
Second, airpower advocates greatly miscalculated the political impact of the bombing raids on the enemy. Instead of undermining the enemy’s will to fight, bombing raids on civilian populations had the opposite effect. Hitler’s bombing of London strengthened England’s resolve. The allied campaign against German cities had a similar effect. Twenty years later, the United States unsuccessfully attempted to undermine North Vietnam’s commitment to conquer South Vietnam despite blasting away at the North with more bombs than had been dropped in all of World War II.
These broader lessons, however, were lost on American airpower strategists who were intent on cementing the institutional power of the Air Force and its budgets, and on building the “global strike” warfare complex that today is a centerpiece of the American military.
In the 1990s, advocates of the revolution in military affairs like Andy Marshall, the Pentagon’s long-time director of Net Assessments, argued that the digitization of the battlefield along with a new generation of stand-off weapons (including drones) had solved the accuracy problem, making it possible for us to destroy enemy targets with impunity from above while also minimizing the collateral damage and killing of innocent civilians. Like the airpower theorists of an earlier generation, they argued that the selective destruction of enemy targets from above meant that we didn’t have to close with our enemies on the ground in protracted and costly wars.
The United States unleashed the full force of its strike warfare complex in Afghanistan and Iraq to deadly effect. But the strike complex and its precision targeting from above did not end these wars quickly, and we discovered the hard way that there was no substitute for combat outposts manned by soldiers and marines in the countless and obscure nooks and crannies of these countries.
Moreover, despite the promise of these more accurate weapons, we still killed plenty of innocent civilians. Thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians were inadvertently killed in the crossfire between the United States and its enemies on the battlefield. As shown by McClatchey, drone strikes authorized by President Obama in Afghanistan and Pakistan have resulted in the deaths of scores of innocent people that had nothing to do with al-Qaeda.
Trying to deal with instability on the ground by flying around above it and/or firing down upon it is like pounding a square peg into a round hole. Civil wars are political disputes between parties that either can’t or won’t settle their differences peacefully. This is as true in Mali as it is Syria or anywhere else.
Those arguing for interventions in these disputes must in parallel decide which side to back. Who would we rather have in control in Syria? A Hezbollah/Iran-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad, or another militant version of the Muslim Brotherhood that might lay waste to Syria’s diverse ethnic and religious communities.
Intervention in these local disputes means picking a side and living with the consequences. It also means intervening on the ground with the Marines and/or the Army if we hope to shape the outcome of the struggle.
Our recent record in picking worthy winners in these wars is not great. The United States backed Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq — a choice that has had mixed results for American interests. We’ve backed Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan — a leader that has stolen millions of taxpayers dollars over the last decade and not attracted the political allegiance of Afghans despite our best efforts. What makes us think we’ll have any better luck picking a winner in Syria or anywhere else?
Policing recalcitrant states like Iran by shooting at it from above is a similarly hopeless endeavor. Repeated calls for what amounts to a protracted bombing campaign against Iran to delay its nuclear program are misguided and would only strengthen Iran’s resolve to build its own nuclear weapon. Alternatively, imposing our will on Iran by invasion and occupation is simply not worth the costs and out of the question politically.
These are the unfortunate realities of our 21st century security problems that cannot be answered by the theories of Douhet or the revolution in military affairs. Effective policing means ground intervention with enough force to impose our will on either the warring parties or on the recalcitrant state(s) and being prepared to accept the human, monetary, and strategic costs (as well as potential benefits!) of that action.
]]>by Wayne White
A major obstacle in the way of sorting through to an internationally acceptable definition of terrorism — largely intentional violence against civilians — was the incredibly broad definition that effectively evolved as acceptable, or necessary, among quite a few prominent governments involved in the course of the titanic [...]]]>
by Wayne White
A major obstacle in the way of sorting through to an internationally acceptable definition of terrorism — largely intentional violence against civilians — was the incredibly broad definition that effectively evolved as acceptable, or necessary, among quite a few prominent governments involved in the course of the titanic hostilities of WWII (which included war against broad civilian urban population centers).
Early on, the US tried to avoid involvement in what Germany, Japan and Great Britain especially had been doing: mass area bombings of enemy urban areas (later to be joined by widespread vengeful Soviet brutality administered more directly against civilians on the ground once the Red Army reached German territory). Given the failings of the American Norden bombsight in actual combat as well as powerful cross-winds encountered over Japan that disrupted bombing from high altitude, even such more focused bombing killed large numbers of civilian “collateral” casualties or proved ineffective against the intended militarily strategic targets. So, late in the war in Europe and over Japan, the US also resorted to mass area bombing, culminating in the atomic attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
One difference between many potential post-WWII parallels and so many of the ones with which we grapple today is that during 1939-1945 these acts of what might as well be called mass terror against civilians were carried out in the context of formally declared wars in an era in which the concept of “total war” had been recognized — and expanded — by combatants on both sides as needed to “break” both modern industrial and pre-modern societies. And then during the Cold War, worse still, the concept of Mutually Assured (Near Total) Destruction (MAD) that excepted no one from a theoretical nuclear exchange was accepted, albeit a bit reluctantly, by the US, USSR and many of their allies as a way of war (once again on the part of recognized governments).
Since 1945 there have been relatively few declarations of war, and some that are declared continue for long periods in a militarily somewhat surreal state (in which decades can pass without significant state-on-state hostilities). Instead, they often become mainly sort of glaring contests punctuated, in many cases, by either occasional brief outbreaks of limited hostilities or violence through non-state surrogates (typically countered by conventional military firepower).
One problem (among others) that has bedeviled perceptions of “who is a terrorist” in the course of many decades of non-State actors carrying out violence against civilians is the tendency on the part of many (which I believe is misplaced) to fall into the one-dimensional stereotype of considering mayhem committed against civilians actually or believed to be co-located with so-called non-state “terrorists” or “terrorist elements” (or simply in the wrong place at the wrong time when the latter are targeted mistakenly) on the part of an uniformed military operating strike aircraft, artillery, drones, or whatever genre of professional weaponry, as not also being terrorism (often because those passing judgment sympathize with the nation state fielding that military and its particular definition of terrorism in specific cases). Many of them also involve resistance to occupation, oppression, or both in one context or another.
An example of the US government wrestling with a country-specific definition of terrorism vs. legitimate resistance was that of the military arm of the Algerian FIS waging guerrilla war against an authoritarian regime that had illegally canceled a final round of parliamentary elections specifically to prevent the FIS from legitimately winning a hefty plurality in the early 1990′s. For years until the emergence of and then dominance of what all considered terrorist groups (the GIA & GSPC), with the Intelligence Community and the State Department in the lead, the USG shunned the brutish Algerian Pouvoir (or junta), considering FIS attacks against military columns, installations & patrols as well as the national police as legitimate resistance to tyranny (a position at variance with that of France at the time).
Since then, of course, there have been many more of these agonizing quandaries since 9/11 especially (and most largely unresolved to anything like near universal satisfaction). And so it goes with no reasonably common definition of “terrorism” and vast numbers of civilians inevitably caught in the middle.
Photo: A B-29 over Osaka on 1 June 1945.
]]>By William J. Astore
via Tom Dispatch
Few things have characterized the post-9/11 American world more than our worshipful embrace of our generals. They’ve become our heroes, our sports stars, and our celebrities all rolled into one. We can’t [...]]]>
By William J. Astore
via Tom Dispatch
Few things have characterized the post-9/11 American world more than our worshipful embrace of our generals. They’ve become our heroes, our sports stars, and our celebrities all rolled into one. We can’t stop gushing about them. Even after his recent fall from grace, General David Petraeus was still being celebrated by CNN as the best American general since Dwight D. Eisenhower (and let’s not forget that Ike commanded the largest amphibious invasion in history and held a fractious coalition together in a total war against Nazi Germany). Before his fall from grace, Afghan War Commander General Stanley McChrystal was similarly lauded as one tough customer, a sort of superman-saint.
Petraeus and McChrystal crashed and burned for the same underlying reason: hubris. McChrystal became cocky and his staff contemptuous of civilian authority; Petraeus came to think he really could have it all, the super-secret job and the super-sexy mistress. An ideal of selfless service devolved into self-indulgent preening in a wider American culture all-too-eager to raise its star generals into the pantheon of Caesars and Napoleons, and its troops into the halls of Valhalla.
The English used to say of American troops in World War II that they were “overpaid, over-sexed, and over here.” Now we’re overhyped, oversold, and over there, wherever “there” might happen to be in a constantly shifting, perpetual war on terror.
In our particular drama, generals may well be the actors who strut and fret their hour upon the stage, but their directors are the national security complex and associated politicians, their producers the military-industrial complex’s corporate handlers, and their agents a war-junky media. And we, the audience in the cheap seats, must take some responsibility as well. Even when our military adventures spiral down after a promising opening week, the enthusiastic applause the American public has offered to our celebrity military adventurers and the lack of pressure on the politicians who choose to fund them only serve to keep bullets flying and troops dying.
It’s Not That Generals Suck, It’s That We Suck Up to Them
Recent scandals involving some of our top brass have one virtue: they’ve encouraged a smidgeon of debate on things military. The main problem isn’t that our generals suck, though one might indeed come to that conclusion after reading two recent high-profile articles. In the New York Times, Lucian Truscott IV dismissed General Petraeus and similar “strutting military peacocks” as phony heroes in phony wars. What we need, he suggested, is not “imitation generals” like Petraeus, but ruthless nail-spitters like his grandfather, General Lucian K. Truscott Jr., of World War II fame.
Tom Ricks, formerly the Washington Post’s chief military columnist and himself a fan of Petraeus, was more circumspect if no less critical. In a probing article in theAtlantic, based on his new book, The Generals, he argued that the U.S. military has failed to reward virtuosity and punish deficiency. Combine an undiscriminating command structure that gives every general a gold star with their constant rotation in and out of command billets and you have a recipe for “a shocking degree of mediocrity” among the Army’s top leaders.
Such criticism comes as welcome relief after nearly a decade worth of hagiography that marched into our lives alongside Petraeus (once known sardonically among some Army colleagues as “King David” or in the media as the one man who could “save” Iraq) and McChrystal (a “one of a kind,” “battle-hardened” Spartan ascetic, according to a glowing 60 Minutesprofile in September 2009). But it doesn’t go nearly far enough.
Generals behaving badly aren’t the heart of the problem, only a symptom of the rot. The recent peccadilloes of Petraeus et al. are a reminder that these men never were the unbesmirched “heroes” so many imagined them to be. They were always the product of a military-industrial complex deeply invested in war, abetted by a media as in bed with them as Paula Broadwell, and a cheerleading citizenry that came to worship all things military even as it went about its otherwise unwarlike business.
Pruning a few bad apples from the upper branches of the military tree is going to do little enough when the rot extends to root and branch. Required is more radical surgery if America is to avoid ongoing debilitating conflicts and the disintegration of our democracy.
Too Many Generals Spoil the Democracy
A simple first step toward radical surgery would certainly involve cutting the number of generals and admirals at least in half.
America’s military is astonishingly top heavy, with 945 generals and admirals on active duty as of March 2012. That’s one flag-rank officer for every 1,500 officers and enlisted personnel. With one general for every 1,000 airmen, the Air Force is the worst offender, but the Navy and Army aren’t far behind. For example, the Army has 10 active-duty divisions — and 109 major generals to command them. Between September 2001 and April 2011, the military actually added another 93 generals and admirals to its ranks (including 37 of the three- or four-star variety). The glut extends to the ranks of full colonel (or, in the Navy, captain). The Air Force has roughly 100 active-duty combat wings — and 3,712 colonels to command them. The Navy has 285 ships — and 3,335 captains to command them. Indeed, today’s Navy has nearly as many admirals (245 as of March 2012) as ships.
Any high-ranking officer worth his or her salt wants to command, but this glut has contributed to their rapid rotation in and out of command — five Afghan war commanders in five years, for instance — disrupting any hopes for command continuity. The situation also breeds cutthroat competition for prestige slots and allows patterns of me-first careerism to flourish.
Such a dynamic leads to mediocrity rather than excellence. Yet one area in which the brass does excel is fighting to preserve their bloated slots, despite regular efforts by civilian secretaries of defense to trim them.
Still, such pruning isn’t faintly enough. A 50% cut may seem unkind, but don’t spend your time worrying about demobbed generals queuing up for unemployment checks. Clutching their six-figure pensions, most of them would undoubtedly speed through the Pentagon’s golden revolving door onto the corporate boards of, or into consultancies with, various armaments manufacturers and influence peddlers, as 70% of three- and four-star retirees have in fact done in recent years.
Even a 50% cut would still leave approximately 470 active-duty generals and admirals to cheer on. Perhaps they should be formed into their own beribboned battalion and sent to war. Heck, the Spartans held the Persians off at Thermopylae with a mere 300 fighters. Nearly 500 pissed-off generals and admirals might just be the shock troops needed to “surge” again in Afghanistan.
Of Proconsuls, Imperators, and the End of Democracy
In Roman times, a proconsul was a military ruler of imperial territories, a man with privileges as sweeping as his powers. Today’s four-star generals and admirals — there are 38 of them — often have equivalent powers, and the perksto go with them. Executive jets on call. Large retinues. Personal servants. Private chefs.
Such power and privilege corrupts. It leads to General Petraeus, then head of Central Command, being escorted to a private party in Florida by a 28-cop motorcade. It leads to General William Ward, the head of U.S. Africa Command, spending lavishly and so abusing his position that he was demoted and forced into retirement. It leads to generals being so disconnected from their troops that they think nothing of sending a trove of flirtatious emails to a starry-eyed socialite.
Disturbing as their personal behavior may be, the real problem is that America’s four-star proconsuls are far more powerful than our civilian ambassadors and foreign service members. Whether in Afghanistan, Africa, or Washington, the military controls the lion’s share of the money and resources. That, in turn, means its proconsuls end up dictating foreign policy based on a timeless golden rule: “he who has the gold makes the rules.”
Think of those proconsuls as the prodigal sons of a sprawling American empire. In their fiefdoms, vast sums of money can be squandered or simply go missing, as can vast quantities of weapons. Recall those pallets of hundred dollar bills that magically disappeared in Iraq (to the tune of $18 billion). Or the magical disappearance of 190,000 AK-47s and pistols in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, representing 30% of the weapons the U.S. provided to Iraqi security forces. Or the tens of thousands of assault rifles, machine guns, and rocket launchers provided to Afghan security forces that magically disappeared in 2009 and 2010.
Such scandals in U.S. war zones should surprise no one. After all, noting that the Pentagon couldn’t account for $2.3 trillion (yes — that’s trillion) in spending, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared a war on waste. Good intentions, bad timing. The declaration came on September 10, 2001. A global war on terror followed, further engorging the military-industrial-homeland-security-intelligence complex with nearly a trillion dollars a year for the next decade, while it morphed into the blob that ate Washington.
Whether in money, personnel, or the prestige and power it commands, the Pentagon simply blows away the State Department and similar government agencies. Sheltered within cocoons of compliance (due to the constant stoking of America’s fears) and adulation (due to the widespread militarization of American culture), our proconsuls go unchallenged unless they behave very badly indeed.
Put simply, Americans need to stop genuflecting to our paper Caesars before we actually produce a real one, a man ruthless enough to cross the Rubicon (or the Potomac) and parlay total military adulation into the five stars of absolute political authority.
Unless we wish to salute our very own Imperator, we need to regain a healthy dose of skepticism, shared famously by our Founders, when it comes to evaluating our generals and our wars. Such skepticism may not stop generals and admirals from behaving badly, but it just might help us radically downsize an ever more militarized global mission and hew more closely to our democratic ideals.
William J. Astore is a TomDispatch regular. A retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), he welcomes reader comments at wjastore@gmail.com.
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Copyright 2012 William J. Astore
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