Crimea Twofer
Crimea, Credibility, and Intervention by Paul Pillar, The National Interest
The Crimean crisis has energized those who wallow in a conventional wisdom that, as Fareed Zakaria noted last week, had already become a familiar theme on the opinion pages. This is the theme that the United States is in retreat, that it is insufficiently assertive, and that this lack of assertiveness is having awful consequences around the world. The crisis is tailor-made to encourage such wallowing, involving as it does a use of armed forces by the successor to the old Cold War adversary. So no time has been wasted by those who complain that soft U.S. policies have brought things in Ukraine to this juncture and who cry for more U.S. assertiveness in response, including saber-rattling with U.S. armed forces.
The conventional wisdom prospers, despite empirically mistaken aspects of it that Zakaria points out, partly because of the difference between punditry and incumbency and the related difference between posturing and policy-making. Pundits can do grand hand-wringing about supposed decline without the hard labor of thinking through which specific alternative options really exist with regard to specific problems and what their specific results are likely to be. It prospers also because of conceptual sloppiness that, as Paul Saunders notes, tends to equate leadership with the use of military force…
Crimea: Russia is Harvesting the Seeds Sown in the 1990s by Jeremy Kotkin, The Bridge
This week the Russian Federation, for all intents and purposes, invaded a sovereign country. As difficult as interpretations of the Budapest Memorandum, OSCE convention, and other aspects of international law and norm can be to define, there can be no mistake; Ukraine’s territorial integrity was unilaterally violated and there must be a response. Figuring out the suitable, feasible, and acceptable response must occur and it must occur quickly if it is to have the intended effect. But the decision making process in Washington, Brussels, Kiev, and Strasbourg must be tempered and not reactionary. It must not give in to the calls to conflate, unknowingly or intently, the Budapest Memorandum with NATO’s Article 5. It must not, as ADM(ret) Stavridis or current sitting members of the Obama administration would have it, lash out with punitive and largely unproductive measures or worse yet, counterproductive to longer term strategic interests. Primarily however, rational strategy, both diplomatic and military if need be, must understand history, both recent and older. We must understand what has brought us to the precipice again in Europe and what we can yet still do about it…
I am not sure this conflict shy US decision maker even understands just what the long term strategic interests really are as there has been no real strategy for the European area from this administration since it came into into power other than just marking time and underestimating Putin in order to pivot to Asia. Was it not Bush who stated he had looked into the eyes of Putin and saw what?
“It must not, as ADM(ret) Stavridis or current sitting members of the Obama administration would have it, lash out with punitive and largely unproductive measures or worse yet, counterproductive to longer term strategic interests. Primarily however, rational strategy, both diplomatic and military if need be, must understand history, both recent and older. We must understand what has brought us to the precipice again in Europe and what we can yet still do about it…”
It is my belief that Europe with Germany at its core will not wholly track American leadership in meeting the Ukraine crisis as it evolves. America has no material interest in the Ukraine. Our trade and financial stakes in Ukraine are immeasurably small as to be irrelevant.
This lack of a stake in Ukraine also means that American (and the semi-European British) rhetoric from the media commentariat to the political class will likely be more unguarded, blustering and irresponsible. Adm. Stavridis recent clumsy foray into this affair probably has done more to wedge Europe away from America than the reverse.
Hence, the EU under largely German leadership will become the key players in deciding the future direction of relations with both Russia and the Ukraine. The EU’s financial crisis in 2008 was likely a necessary primer in its development of a more independent stance from its traditional deference to American leadership. Since the EU’s GNP is about the size of the US and Canada it is probably time for them shape a more distinct European foreign policy.
Europeans may welcome this opportunity, as they have been less than enthusiastic about the quality of that American leadership on a host of issues. The past decade’s ill-fated misadventures of America’s heavily militarize foreign policy and invasive spying has left Europe less than impressed with Washington’s judgment.
Ukraine could be the beginning of a Europe finally emerging from its Cold War political dependency upon America. A Europe forging a little more independent path in managing its relations with states with whom it shares borders and considerable trade relations.
Perhaps we are witnessing a new Europe forged after World War Two finally reaching adulthood and leaving home to make it’s way in the world? And that is not a bad thing for Europe or for America.
Outlaw 09, yours is a very sensible analysis in my view. About Russia being on a downward trajectory as many think that remains to be seen.
I happen to hold a view that in the future natural resources will become a major competitive focus of industrialized nations even more so than now. Certainly, China thinks that and already and has invested heavily in developing relationships in Africa.
Russia has a vast resource capability and those resources could command premium prices and influence in the future. If so, even though Russia is not in the vanguard of industrial nations and innovative technology they could certainly become a key, perhaps the key source for critical raw materials.
The Europeans very well may decide to impose some strict measures upon Russia in response to the Ukrainian situation. But also it would not be surprising to find that those measures are rapidly lifted as the political situation in Ukraine settles down.
In fact, Russia by repatriating Crimea from the Ukraine may in fact have remove a thorn in Kiev’s paw that makes it easier to construct a new government without pro-Russian Crimean elements. A referendum on this question would be likely perhaps this year?
I suspect that Putin is far more concerned with Europe’s views than with American. And there is a chance he has calculated correctly that Europe will eventually come around since they want to resume business.
I am from Czech republic.
Can you me explain American indecision?
You have 2313 US KIA and 447 UK KIA in Afghanistan.Annual Costs of the War in Afghanistan is 100 billion dollars.
The Afghanistan is DUST HOLE with NIL strategic value.
The Ukraine is the largest wholly European country and the second largest country in Europe,44.6 million people.
It is bumper between NATO and Russia.
You do nothing,NOTHING!
Duplicate post.
Dishonesty had an additional comment here and one over at the March 4 roundup. Now I can’t find them. What happened?
From Mandarin: The Diaries of An Ambassador (Nicholas Henderson):
10 February, Washington, 1980:
Zbig: We will build an arc of containment upon an arc of crisis! There is no flaw in this plan!
As for the Persian Gulf, so for the expansion of NATO. An arc of containment on an arc of crisis.
Uh, I think I see a flaw in the plan….
I’m going to have to make do with a Thomas Friedman column (!) from 2008 or so because I can’t find the Washington Post letter to the editor that basically calls out Robert Kagan in 2008 and says that crossing certain red-lines will bring a response.
– Thomas Friedman, New York Times (2008)
– Robert Kagan wiki
. The New Republic, Jan 11, 2012
Ideologies Rude Return, Robert Kagan, Friday May 2, 2008
So, a President with little foreign policy experience because of his background in domestic politics listens to the same failed liberal interventionist/neocon blather that got us into trouble in Iraq, Afghanistan (surge), almost in Syria, and so on.
The essay on the myth of American decline is seductive, no doubt, but it mixes apples and oranges and conflates many things. Kagan has often written about the bumpy nature of American hegemony and the mistakes made, yet never pauses to consider in his essay whether what he counts as successes are really failures, or potential trouble spots.
How does this foreign policy deep state continue its intellectual seductions, president after president, year after year, failed policy and intervention after failed policy and intervention?
Oh. I’m sorry. Continue on with the discussion that is most comfortable to some in the American military and foreign policy world, where the world is a univariate world and the only variable that matters is the US and leaders showing “strongness!” Cold War nostalgia, in the US, Europe and Russia. What a waste.
Oh, by the way, the poison pill in Kagan’s work is the same old, same old: Democratization and regime change. That’s what others hear. Because that is what he is really saying, until we democratize everyone, the US can’t be safe. And we need to use every hook or crook in the book to do it. I am surprised the President missed that point in the essay.
For those that think the Crimean move by Putin was all about “spheres of influence” needed to hear the actual Russian being spoken by Putin especially when he in Russian stated that he will use his power to defend all Russians (voice emphasis– “on all Russians”) from “mistreatment of their language and culture”.
If one does not fully understand that it is actually all about the reestablishment of the former SU first in Georgia, then Moldavia and now Crimea—should rethink and restudy the old Cold War concept of “spheres of influence”. Heck even Mexico could make an argument to protect San Antonio TX.
In effect he argued a double standard approach going forward—he was highly agitated about NATO coming in the Ukraine “threatening Russia”, but did not utter a word about Hungary, Poland and the Baltics who are in NATO and on his borders and have Russian ethnic minorities “who when he wants to declare” “mistreated Russian minorities needed defending” he in theory can openly now move into those countries.
The not to subtle threat is now in the open—the rebuilding of the former SU in it’s old boundaries.
This is effect now a fully established Doctrine going forward.
The soft power diplomatic approach is now fully dead and the only response can in effect be an economic war since the military potion is off the table.
The only thing that will get his attention is Germany fully going to the economic card which there are now voices demanding inside Germany.
This is what happens when soft power discards the future use of a military power projection as part of diplomacy which virtually disappeared in Europe 10 years ago as US leadership “assumed” there was “peace” in Europe.
Who would have believed in the 21st century boundaries will be redrawn based now on culture/ethnicity/languages—welcome to the next 365 hot spots in the world as Putin has now shown the way forward for other countries to follow in his footsteps.
To add to the previous comment—if one also listened intently to the Russina he used he in effect displayed arrogance and disdain towards the West and especially the US–this was a dying superpower once again trying to reassert itself onto center stage.
The serious question that the WH has to answer and they know the answer—can one go forward with Russia on the Syrian adventure or the Iranian adventure—my answer based on Putin’s own words is a no and that seriously changes the entire complexity of those two issues.
Next question would be in the face of the US/UK and their inability to ensure that a security treaty signed between them and Russia over the Ukraine is not being honored and then the inability of those two countries to enforce that treaty–brings Israel into an interesting place.
Do they trust their security to the US and the international community or for that matter do they trust Palestinians to honor the agreements who have had Russian support in the past?
Really do no think so.
This goes to not really understanding who we are dealing with—this was a translation headline carried by the WP just a few minutes ago;
“Putin says Russia won’t take more of Ukraine”
Yes that was buried in his speech —but then he did a qualifier statement about three minutes later in the speech which in fact declared that he had the moral right/ability to protect all Russians leaving it open ended as to where, when, and how many Russians he needed to defend–when news agencies report on speeches they need to inherently understand the tone, use of the foreign language, and target audiences.
This letter to the editor from 2008 (in The Washington Post) is interesting in light of Jeremy Kotkin’s article in War On The Rocks:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05
I’ve been digging through Congressional testimony, op-eds, letters to the editors and so on from the 90′s to the present. The number of warnings is amazing. Everyone from Phyllis Schafly to the late Senator Wellstone.
Note, recognizing the complicated multifactorial nature of the current Ukraine crisis is not the same as being an apologist. We have a form of unconventional warfare being practiced on the Ukraine by Russia; and we have a complicated form of political warfare being practiced in the Ukraine by the US, UK, EU and so on. The whole-of-it matters for understanding.
I don’t buy the Gene Sharp/USIP/Helvey/NED line. Even if well-meaning, it is picking and choosing politicians within a system which is not democracy promotion. It is violating sovereignty. If done incorrectly, it can add to instability.
I am struck by the one-factor nature of much of the analysis here, the one factor being the presence or absence of the American military. It’s too simplistic a formulation and yet is trotted out every time on many a milblog, etc.
Let me try this again:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1995/sep/21/should-nato-growa-dissent/
European and Transatlantic power politics are sublimated within NATO and the EU, so that I wonder if the US is always aware of how our quest for European hegemony is being hollowed out by alliances trying to confuse us with threats, when, really, they are using the US to pursue other goals within the alliance; money politics, jockeying for position, etc.
This piece, “British Views on NATO Enlargement” (from 1997, I believe) can be read along with Jill Russell’s latest posts at Kings of War:
http://www.nato.int/acad/conf/enlarg97/sharp.htm
http://kingsofwar.org.uk/2014/06/what-does-a-committed-strategic-relationship-look-like/
As uncomfortable as this subject is–that of NATO and the “special relationship” and how it needs to adjust itself for this century–we have to think about it.
But Stephen Walt has written about this, yes? The fact that we are moving away from each other, Europe and the US.
The long term trends are this way, although in the short term the 90’s era nostalgia of a Hillary Clinton will continue to hold onto these relationships in a 20th century way, should she become president.
Shame really, we need to readjust–not end–these relationships.
If I haven’t been spending as much time on milblogs lately, it’s because I have become more interested in the larger context which I think matters more in the long run.
(Yes, yes, I have tried to write something but other things take precedence over my self-education on this subject, Dave 🙂 Who knows? Maybe it will be something more tailored in its way for a medical journal. That would be more to my liking…. 🙂 )
What could go wrong with sending more arms or money into this, whether from the Russian side or the American/NATO/EU side:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-24/ukraine-coalition-government-collapses-as-2-parties-quit.html
Good job with the billions in democracy promotion, Freedom House and USIP and Dept. State and whatever else. Everything you touch turns to gold, Ms. Nuland! Why didn’t I skip med school and get a BA from Brown and move to DC and play policy wonk for hire!
NATO is just the best, we Americans should totally and forever be subservient to Brussels when we aren’t busy trying to be a hegemony through NATO all while pissing everyone else off. Let’s keep paying for all of it even when the EU gobbles up more and more trade.
Say, it isn’t China that is our main trade competition in Africa, Africom! That would be good ole Europe.
Aw, I know there is nothing I can do and DC has got its favorite postings back, the Middle East and Asia are a drag but telling Europeans in nice European nations what to do is such a nicer way to make a living than actually doing real work.
And gee whiz, it’s nice to have the Cold War back, isn’t it American Army generals! It’s like Christmas. No more worrying about winning wars, just ceremonial money spending!
I remain perplexed by the conversation (missiles in Poland! A revived NATO! Sanctions!) when the following is the case:
http://news.yahoo.com/russias-border-ukraine-fighters-military-gear-move-freely-052550936–sector.html
Why is Kiev so uninterested in Border control if this is an unconventional fight, an unconventional proxy affair?
I have a hard time taking anything seriously by any of the grandstanders of NATO or otherwise. What game is being played on the American people this time?
But borders and their nature are never a strong suit of the American Foreign Policy Apparatus, whether Syria or AFPak or our own.
I still don’t get it. Does everything the NATO proxies within the EU touch turn into dust?
All this time and effort and money, and, yet….
Must I turn into a mini-intelligence agent for everything because as an American citizen I can’t rely on anything in the media or government?
http://eeas.europa.eu/csdp/missions-and-operations/moldova-and-ukraine-border-mission/index_en.htm
Yes, who wouldn’t be thrilled with this kind of activity on their border with an economic bloc that plays hardball? NATO or its proxies can’t fight their way out of a paper bag but they sure are expansive, greedy and never leave anyone alone, EVER.
Meshing ourselves with Brussels forever-and-ever is such a big strategic mistake for Americans….not making an isolationist argument, either, but simply saying there are other ways to relate to Europe. If staying in supposedly prevents conflict, how come we cause so many?
What is Gen. Breedlove smoking? What happened to all that awesome border training and money the Ukrainians have been getting for the past decade or more?
Unbelievable. NATO is such a disaster, in Afghanistan and in Europe. Completely incompetent. They are going to start a hot war between the US and Russia, if the geniuses aren’t careful.
And for what?
http://news.yahoo.com/nato-respond-militarily-crimea-style-infiltration-general-153724901.html
That’s it. Someone with MS shouldn’t read about these things, and I can’t take it anymore. What a waste, every time I spend any time reading about our alliance structure and the Generals meant to manage them, I just end up in a bad mood. (Not really, because why worry about something over which you have no control?) Go for a run, Madhu, run away from the Borg….
If Russia is such a dire threat that it requires the stationing of missiles and NATO to redouble its efforts, then why the desire to sell them products?
http://euobserver.com/news/125295
I am sorry, but the rhetoric versus the reality does not instill confidence. Germans are chided for their desire to trade, but this is okay?
Wow. The poor Ukrainians. They really are being “Kashmir-ized” –in a sense– and many internal and external parties are contributing to this phenomenon: Russia, NATO, European/Eastern European nations aspiring to be local or European hegemons, various internal parties.
Every time the US wants more sanctions, the news of an invasion hits the American papers. It’s an obvious enough pattern, except that most people don’t really pay attention, or allow their passions to carry them away, so the patterning works in its imprinting on the American people.
Brennan and acolytes really can’t do anything but ‘offensive operations’ and targeting in terms of visualizing strategy and transmitting this to allies.
Or perhaps they can. Budgeting follows threats, except, if anyone was really interested in territorial sovereignty, this would be one of the first places to pay attention.
http://www.lobelog.com/ukraine-kharkiv-volunteers-shore-up-border-morale/
I wonder if the Ukrainians can escape the traps being set for them? I sincerely hope so.
War on The Rocks has the following in its weekly roundup:
http://warontherocks.com/2014/11/weekend-reading-november-14-16/
I think the very rhetoric that Ioffe and others have used has contributed to this process. It’s not so much boredom as wariness and that is what happens when over-the-top rhetoric and the desire for crusades as an activist overtake quality analysis. Russian actions are a concern, there is clearly a complicated proxy conflict going on, yet in describing everything in the most simplistic and hyperbolic ways, Ioffe and others undercut their own credibility. Activists are rarely good analysts, diplomatic, planners, etc., of any kind.
Ever read a young person’s CV these days, for any job really? Our educational system and our larger culture so valorizes activism that we’ve forgotten other people are important too in maintaining a healthy society.
I posted the following in another thread but it belongs here too, because the parallels in some sense are quite striking when examining the Western attitudes toward crisis and crisis states (I’ve edited a bit from the other comments section):
I hear a lot about Putin-the-KGB-snake here but then I wonder how much is it that people care about Poles or Ukrainians or Georgian or Lithuanians and how much is the desire to punish that will only hurt the very people caught up in the process. In order to protect their own sovereignty, the Ukrainians have many internal reforms to make and instead of improving the situation for the military or the Border Forces, they are caught in a certain kind of targeting strategy that is hurting their own people in the East too, and then one wonders what this is all really about, the egos of men (or women), or actually providing help to people that need it.
This is also the problem with the “but if NATO hadn’t expanded, it would have been harder for border states,” because it shows me that people haven’t done their homework. There were many other plans for defense of these states discussed during the 90’s, quite robust plans too.
There is an interview in The National Interest that might be of interest:
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/tni-interview-the-legacy-mikheil-saakashvili-11678
In it, he makes the point that a sort of bait or trap was set and the Georgians under Saakashvili unfortunately took the military bait and attacked. What interests me is how we Americans likely reinforced certain Georgian attitudes that only helped further wandering into a trap, just as I am afraid we are doing the same with Ukraine today.
So the point isn’t that it is the fault of the Americans for expanding NATO or that Russia is hell-bent on domination, instead it is about good governance and the role security policy takes within good governance, it is informed by the larger whole if it is good policy and governance.
It’s so strange, often the very people in DC that would most like to help a certain region or country end up harming it, it’s as if the very emotion that causes the interest prevents a calm assessment of the situation.
Let me try this without the link and see if it works:
Moscow Times
On the one hand, I understand the desire to cut off funds for an insurgency, on the other hand, this is a bit like when all those security service people were fired and then what were they going to do in the East, for jobs I mean?
Security without development doesn’t make sense but this is different from third party COIN because this is about internal governance and not an outside party.
A shorter comment since I seem to confuse people:
If we rush to make Eastern European states (NATO and non-NATO alike) into front-line states in a security competition with Russia, we may end up doing to them what happened to Pakistan during the early Cold War, reforms and changes in governance that need to take place may not take place because the impetus for changing how one thinks about the world just isn’t there. Someone will push you into a corner, or you will think that you can always get bailed out by the IMF or whatever.
Think hard, friends in Ukraine and elsewhere. Look at the history of developmentally weak states in the early part of the last Cold War security competition and ask yourself if this is the place you want to put yourself. Fault is not the correct word, I think, instead, what multiple factors brought us to a crisis state and how can it be reversed?
The following article shows a proxy war on the ground. The powerless always suffer:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/20/world/europe/ukraine-donetsk-residents-struggle/index.html?hpt=wo_c1
I talk a lot about cross border support to the Kashmir and Punjab insurgencies (and Afghanistan) around here, but there would be little situation to support initially had local issues not festered, and even if you don’t buy that a more competent government might field a more competent military.
I’m always being told that the best research shows proxy wars and insurgencies have to do with internal governance first, and sanctuary or cross-border support second. But that never seems to be the conversation with Eastern Ukraine. Why are we so eager to turn that region into Afghanistan circa 1980s?
Do we want to help these fragile nations, or bleed and box in the Russians? Or are we afraid if we can’t have an expanded NATO, that is a sign of American decline and loss of global leadership?
Look at a map, look at our size, look at our population, look at our hemispheric dominance, and look at our Pacific coast. That is dated NATOist thinking but I guess too many Americans are emotionally attached to the idea of being a European power.
I do not understand the border situation at all, and I mean the non-rebel held areas. I just don’t get it.
Karzai has this interview on a Polish radio station, is it? Polish soldiers served in Afghanistan and watched a complicated proxy conflict on the ground. What do those young soldiers think, how do they think NATO got it or didn’t get it on the ground there (understanding the situations are different in important ways and situations are contingent).
For discussion because emotional ties and habits of mind are complicated things. It’s funny, how some people are told to carefully police their emotions toward certain lands of origin when considering American interests, while others are rarely given that advice (and here I mean general categories of immigrants or religions, not any one specific person):
Secretary Pritzkers Emotional Ties to Ukraine
http://fortune.com/2014/10/06/secretary-pritzker-kiev/
During the Cold War, the immigrant group in the West that seemed most pro-Western always had the only legitimacy in any complicated ground conflict according the the Western narrative. Not just the Cold War, obviously. Is it the territorial integrity of Ukraine and European stability that matter most, or are there other emotions involved, in that complicated way even well-meaning people can’t always understand? Emotions are one thing, analysis and the sort of analysis that can help a country like Ukraine is a different animal, it needs emotion too, but that emotion should involve something larger than picking one group, and one group only, to love.
Ukrainians of all types should be careful. A certain type of American destroys that which he or she loves the most….Not just Americans fall prey to this, obviously….
To be in an immigrant group that is on the outside of the magic circle is to be ignored, even when the information provided could have helped, really helped, for thirteen, going on fourteen, long years….
You don’t have to approve of Putin to see how the seeds have been sown (in many places, Russia and the US, among others) for a new Cold War and how the desire for leadership often means power struggles at the periphery, however periphery is designated (Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, the Pacific “seams”):
Washington’s style for overseas regime change is a bit cramped if someone pushes back, yes? And that someone then becomes the devil, even as we work closely with other devils, so to speak.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jun/30/comment.russia
This Cold War helps no one, certainly not those in periphery nations. Cheney has very interesting attitudes and relations with the Saudis and I’m not talking the oil connections, there is something a little weird there, isn’t there?
In proxy conflicts and insurgencies, I am told two things matter: governance and sanctuary, often cross-border sanctuary.
Reports in Western papers are always talking about trucks crossing borders, and supply chains for rebels, and then we get stories of shelling urban populated areas and the cutting off of pensions. Pensions are a big topic, and have been for years in Ukraine, especially with the IMF.
I tried embedding this link and excerpt earlier but it didn’t work so I will try it without the link:
-Ukraine’s ‘Lost’ Cigarettes Flood Europe
Big Tobacco’s Overproduction Fuels $2 Billion Black Market
By Vlad Lavrov, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project
I would have no idea what is correct and what is not, but there is something very strange about the way borders are talked about in the West, specifically, American reporting.
Or is this my Rorshach test, where I have to see patterns where none exist? Sometimes a thing just IS?
What’s the real deal with the leaky borders?
I’ll try again without the link:
-Ukraine retakes border crossing from rebels as Poroshenko goes on attack, The Guardian (from July)
Better border control might upset a variety of licit and illicit business interests on both sides of the border? Something is messed up:
Ukraine: Kharkiv Volunteers Shore Up Border, Morale, Lobelog
It’s not that I want smaller nations bullied by larger nations but the rhetoric surrounding this conflict seems more about pumping up various causes (arms sales, NATO revival, domestic Russian factors, money-making schemes, Eastern European and French and UK and German politics, etc.) than it does about protecting people or protecting national sovereignty.
Even though I know what I am doing won’t change anything, I don’t like giving up on a topic.
From a book review on The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain by J.H. Gleason.
I have not read the book and don’t know the author (for all I know, there might be a, uh, backstory) but am more interested in the “American diplomat’s” assessment, more accurate than anything you all had to back you up intellectually in Afghanistan during our latest campaign:
The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain by J. H. Gleason
Christopher Hill
Science & Society
Vol. 16, No. 3 (Summer, 1952), pp. 281-283
Evocative phrases. Even generally sensible milbloggers and others that I have followed over the years have reacted in a way that seems very emotionally programmed, as if there is a kind of Pavlovian response. Very curious.
The point here is not to debate the nature of Russia or Russians, or the affect of British thinking on American elites, but to understand that within our own history we had judgements quite at odds with the fashionable post-war thinking that so dominates our Washington Consensus, a consensus peopled by an erratically and strangely educated yet hugely ambitious elite with almost no real understanding of why they might react to events.
Those are the more innocent. The less innocent are those who think only in terms of a certain kind of forever enemies of great power politics, and were quite willing to sacrifice anything for it. Anything.
From ‘we have a company line on Ukraine’ War on the Rocks ( I like you people A LOT, but I’m not stupid):
THE U.S. NEEDS A MORE TAILORED & DISCRIMINATE DETERRENCE REGIME, Jerry Meyerle (can’t embed links today for some reason).
Well, you only have to be wrong once on the whole nuke thing….
I think the most intelligent thing the human race has ever done (the various jostling factions in the EU, Russia, UK, US, the whole messy #HumanDomain of it), and I mean ever, is to draw a tight national security perimeter line right up to the border of Russia, between a nuclear armed US and NATO and a nuclear armed Russia.
That is without doubt the most intelligent strategery that has ever happened since the dawn of time.
Some of the fashionable DC crowd–“journalists”, think tankers and assorted hangers on trained like dogs to bark at the baddie of the moment–seem to be rethinking a few things as the rouble crisis continues.
Not for long, I’m sure. Careers and money are not made by thinking things through. Crisis often result from the bad decisions of many parties, not just one.
The stagnation of certain middle class incomes in America post 1990, manufacturing, feelings of middle class insecurity despite a not unreasonable current economy, the increased likelihood of conflict in the Mid East if there are no other brokers….yes, thinking things through is not the strong suit of the fashionably PhD’ed. Or, given the money making schemes for certain factions, things HAVE been thought through, just not what is best for the average American or Western European, or Eastern European even. If you need to sell, who shall you sell things to and who will get the contracts?
Does anyone worry about the following patterns being created in decision makers and the nuclear escalation cascade in terms of NATO abutting a nuclear armed Russia? A mistake has nothing to do with ideology and who has the correct view of the world:
“The neuropathology of smart phone use is damn scary,” Pundita blog
If the Indians and Pakistanis start trading insults, we worry about their nuclear escalation, but our own leaders don’t stop to think how this strange reactive behavior over the internet might work and what we our training our leaders to be, to do, to think….
From Consortium News:
And
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/01/30/group-thinking-the-world-into-a-new-war/
Yes, I’ve noticed. People I’d read for years and had grown to trust now seem afraid to step out on their own. Or perhaps are so caught up in the group fever that they have convinced themselves.
I was much the same in the rush up to the Iraq War, my ignorance and fear and falling into the wrong crowd online all affected how I thought about the world. I believed many stupid things.
I’ve stopped reading old friends except to occasionally scan an article. On a personal level, I wish all well.
It is sad, though. Not everyone I’ve read is some newbie without savings looking for a job. There are quite a lot of settled people that might be kicked out of the fashionable crowd but can feed themselves and their families.
Yet….
OTOH, am I saying much about medicine online? When it comes to my profession, I’m pretty quiet, eh?
Can’t start a war from my work, though.
Whose stupid idea was it to bring two nuclear powers with a troubled history up so close to one another in a tight security perimeter?
That is the exact language used by some in the “military intellectual” field too, the action intellectuals who have never gotten anything correct.
There is no need for the dreaded appeasement either; proxy wars are countered by good governance and intelligent border work.
When was the last time you saw a really good report on the border? OSCE only puts out bits and pieces and there are many with the technology to map the whole darn thing in Ukraine, you know?
It’s very important for nuclear powers to use sensible language, India and Pakistan. John Kerry would like you to keep the language civil (well, not NATO and Russia, just you two):
Vladimir Putin is a thug and liar, says top British envoy (The Telegraph, from some time back).
Add to this the off-and-on bizarro rhetoric of President Obama and Putin, one ridiculing an entire country’s economy, the other nuclear saber rattling while NATO shows off in Eastern Europe.
I know, I know, lurking friend, if you are lurking, it is fairly ridiculous for me to comment on old blog posts, comment after comment, but I am essentially lazy on these subjects and it’s easy for me to add a link here instead of creating my own site or writing some small article for a website. For some reason, it amuses me. And, anyway, I always sort of hope some student is reading and somehow gets an idea for a paper or something.
I don’t think inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds anymore, I think given the nature of this current moment we sort of can’t be, “do as we say, not as we do.” It just won’t work anymore, if it every worked.
The Chinese even told us to hold the megaphone diplomacy down, although, they had their own reasons. Not a bad counsel, though.
Once again, without the links:
What are we doing? Re-creating some of the same emotional dynamics of Able Archer 83, in a kind of loop?
NATO Allies Preparing to Put Four Battalions at Eastern Border With Russia
U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense says buildup is response to Moscow’s military activity near the Baltics –
Wall Street Journal
Secretary Carter comes from that whole Fritz Ermarth (Casey and Gates, etc.) world of Star Wars with its proven wrong assessments of the then Soviet Union? They got everything wrong and yet the foreign party establishment bows to the conventional wisdom created by the residua of that foreign party apparatus embedded within Washington.
The-Able-Archer-War-Scare-Declassified-PFIAB-Report (GWU national archives)
Heaven help us.
Without links:
See what I mean by my previous comment in this thread? Recreating the dynamics of Able Archer 83:
– War on the Rocks
THE CASE FOR NUCLEAR CONSULTATION WITH NATO
ANDREAS LUTSCH
The Pakistani military talks about tactical nuclear weapons and we label them lunatic nutbags. But this is supposed to be sane.
The Washington Consensus and its European/British transatlantic counterpart is a cult. A dangerous cult.
War on the Rocks as a platform for discussion is too dominated by its CNAS-Richard Fontaine-John McCain-British academic NATOist milieu.
Psychotic:
“To deny adversaries this leverage, or at least reduce it, the Pentagon must studiously think through how the o set strategy can be shaped and imple- mented to deter, discourage and, if need be, control for and respond to adversary nuclear employment. e o set strategy, in simpler terms, must show U.S. adversaries that using nuclear weapons against the United States or its allies would be distinctly unwise and that the United States has ways and means to defeat (at least in limited terms) and deny the objectives of these opponents even if nuclear weapons have been used. …”
What of Third Offset Nuclear Weapons? Elbridge Colby, CNAS. (John Batchelor Show blurb)
Third Offset = give us more money
CNAS is a toxic influence. We are so screwed.
https://audioboom.com/boos/4597489-what-of-third-offset-nuclear-weapons-elbridge-colby-cnas
A Schengen zone for NATO:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2016-06-06/schengen-zone-nato
Tactical nuclear weapons, pushing aside shared decision making, promoting American NATO generals as a kind independent decision maker on troop movements.
Democracy promotion.
This makes the Line of Control between India and Pakistan look like the most stable place in the world.
How can such behavior be seen as responsible? What madness infects man from time to time?
And we Gen Xers have not done our job. We never really explained what it was like to grow up under this sort of thing, how frightening, how many really worried about war between the US and the former Soviet Union. It polluted many an 80s childhood. Tornado sirens would freak kids out, sometimes, right?
Forgotten. Forgotten history.
I know others my age and generation had the same thoughts as children, but we never shared it with younger folk, or, we seemed to forget about it in the heady days of the 90s and our prosperous early adulthood. Now there simply isn’t the “emotional memory” for many to understand how dangerous this is.
Another example of our idiocracy, worse than Trump. Or related.
Our artists can’t help us this time around, either. They are lost in their super hero movie world.
What cowardice affects the Washington Consensus and its denizens. Why be afraid? Apart from a few lone voices, it’s business as usual.