America’s Secret Weapon to Stop Russia
America's Secret Weapon to Stop Russia by Robert Spalding III, The National Interest
… Many have already said that there are no military options in the Ukraine crisis. While Western Europe and the United States do not desire conflict with Russia, the lack of action supporting Ukraine is actually a provocative gesture that invites escalation by the Russians. Fritz Kraemer, a little-known but highly influential strategist in the Pentagon best known for his many years as advisor to numerous secretaries of defense, believed that there were two ways to be provocative. One way was to be threatening, and in so doing provoke an enemy to action. The other way was to appear weak, and thus to provoke an adversary into a similar risky misadventure.
Before the United States Air Force began pounding Saddam’s forces in what would be a prelude to a one-hundred-hour ground campaign, it provided a much more subtle service to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. When considering the first Iraq war, most people think about the offensive campaign that pushed Saddam’s forces out of Kuwait. Few remember the deterrence provided by airpower before allied aircraft began the offensive that would be known as “Desert Storm.” …
Very interesting idea, using F-22s as sort of a terrestrial equivalent to an aircraft carries deployment.
Eminently sensible. Very doable. There would be something tangible that we could point at and the front line NATO states and Ukraine could look at when we say we will back them. It would also make the Russians howl which is the best way to know that it has some meaning to them. It isn’t laughable like our sending MREs.
EF-18s to go with F-22s would be good I think but I’m sure a guy like Mr. Spalding thought of that, just didn’t say it.
This is not a new idea, and all of the meat has been left out. Where do you station them? In England, Germany, Poland? Any of those are NATO states that probably have the facilities already that could house them. Ukraine? Probably not since that would be seen as provocative and cause the Russians to react by say, cutting off Natural Gas to Europe.
How long does it take a Wing with all of the maintenance and ordinance to become operational in Europe? If it is going to take 30 days do we really want to advertise that and potentially ignite a “spoiling maneuver” by the Russians to take the Ukraine first. Would it not be smarter to position these assets and, only once they are operational, announce that we have agreed to protect Ukrainian sovereignty.
And finally, why the US? Don’t other NATO countries closer to the fight have similar weapons capabilities? Why must it be the US? To make us feel good? To pound our chest? What advantage is there to this rather than simply having the Ukraine agree to accept NATO protection? I am not saying we don’t have a strategic interest in limiting Russia’s regional ambitions. What I am saying is: are we really helping the situation or are we simply doing something to make us feel better about ourselves, or even worse, justify a large defense budget at the expense of the Ukrainians?
It’s an excellant plan! America is an Airpower when we are at our best and Putin would know that. If America wants to remain a superpower we will have to use American
Airpower and let the supported country provide their boots for the ground.
From the article behind the link: “Crimea is most likely permanently lost until there is a change in government in Russia. To buy time for Ukraine and to allow time for diplomatic measures to be effective, a military solution is called for. A purely defensive deployment of F-22 fighters (along with supporting aircraft) is just one possible solution. To be diplomatically effective these forces would have to come with an American promise to defend Ukrainian skies from attack.”
Carl, like the article, your reasoning makes sense to me; place those F-22s in Western Ukraine and send Special Forces to start training up the Ukrainian military gutted by President Yanukovich, a latter-day Seyss-Inquart — this time, duly deposed. While I grew up during the Viet Nam era and lost faith in military power (before I realized that it was a mis-applied analogy that led to the tragedy for American troops and Vietnamese), let’s think of the 20th century without an America in it.
It makes me shudder. American exceptionalism (a/k/a why us?) is duly questioned these days. In a letter to my family, I argue that such exceptionalism exists but has been abused and misused to over-extend power or to shrink from confrontation. That essay basically argues that America can ‘take exception’ to the prevailing wisdom (in this case, accepting aggression as acceptable, if not ideal, in a sphere of influence) by following the ideal on which our Republic was established against all odds and that we can do better (not better than others but better than ourselves). Besides, if we do nothing now, we may very well need a whole lot of boots on the ground later on.
http://nedmcdletters.blogspot.com/2014/03/letter-96-is-american-exceptionalism.html
Here is the principal argument articulated in Congress supportive of Russia Following the link is a critique of this three minute speech, unfortunately shut-down rather arbitrarily, placed to friends in F.B.
http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4488507/reasoned-case-sympathetic-russia
Making available the basic pro-Russian argument among a few brave Congressmen willing to buck the consensus. You all know my views on the Crimea — views that very few people admittedly hold; my stubbornness persists in the face of an uncomplicated, perhaps compelling, argument emerging as a bottom-up dissent against the political leadership. The basic concerns I have with this argument by Representative Rohrbacher (R-CA) are three-fold:
1. Russia is not going to stop with Crimea. Right now, the Putinista has gained very little geopolitically because the Crimea is largely cut off from Russia by Eastern Ukraine. Russia already has Sevastopol for her navy; taking Crimea may change the status of that base from leasing to a disturbing ownership. The costs for grabbing Crimea alone are too high. But as a first step, not so high, if Russia achieves a more rational aim of taking Eastern Ukraine.
2. Even if Moldova permits Transnistria to secede and join Russia (as that spindly region had tried to do under the auspices of the crumbling U.S.S.R.) the micro-region of half a million people would remain completely alienated from the mother country by a large chunk of Southern and Eastern Ukraine. Annexing the rest of Eastern Ukraine will consolidate Russia’s territorial hold over Transnistria.
3. There is the question raised against comparing the current response to Russia as similar to the appeasement of Germany in the 1930s: President Putin is not Hitler; he is not bent on world conquest. Well, neither was Hitler.
Outside of rubbing the face of the grimacing Gauls in the dirt in 1940, Hitler basically wanted western Russia and Ukraine as in-continent colonies to relieve over-crowding in Germany and to grab Europe’s bread-basket. Ukraine exports a large part of its yearly crop. The U.S.S.R. had to import massive amounts of U.S.-cultivated wheat in the 1970s. One can infer that the domestic production within the U.S.S.R. of foodstuffs outside of Ukraine was insufficient.
Hitler got ‘blitzed’ from his early wins over weaker states and over-played his hand confusing his Generals’ brilliance and moral cowardice with his delusions of demi-godliness. Had he not been a blood-drunk bully, Hitler may well have retained his core objectives. So might Putin, if given a green light afforded by a severe calcium deficiency in the lower back.
While this article talks about military power as the secret weapon—how about one that is even more potent, does not require military confrontation and has probably been tested in the recent sell of 5M barrels and the WH knows it’s true strength to bring Putin in line on the Crimea. By the way the crude sold was sour—the same type as sold by Russia out of the Urals.
The only question is—is the WH willing to use it as part of their “soft power” approach as it is truly the nail in the coffin.
The world’s most powerful weapon: Oil
For several years, the United States’ Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or SPR, has rarely garnered any attention, mostly because it is used so sparingly. Since 1977, when it was implemented, there have been only a handful of times that it has tapped, the last being in 2011, when President Obama authorized the release of 60 million barrels in response to the crisis in Libya.
That is what makes the recent “test sale” of 5 million barrels of oil so intriguing. This is the first time since 1990 that there has been a test sale from the SPR, which just happens so coincide with the time there was concern that Iraq could invade Saudi Arabia. While correlation does not always mean causation, the release of those 5 million barrels coincided with a 2.7% drop in crude oil prices.
Hit ’em where it hurts — their wallet
It’s no secret that Russia is one of the world’s leading exporters of oil and gas. It exports about 8.5 million barrels per day of crude oil and refined petroleum products, as well as 19.3% of the worlds natural gas exports. What is less known is Russia’s nearly crippling dependence on oil and gas revenues to pay the bills. The $662.3 billion petroleum industry in Russia represents 26.5% of GDP, and over 50% of the federal government’s revenue comes from royalties. Unfortunately for Russia, its oil doesn’t come cheap. Even with oil at $100 per barrel and current production levels, the country projects only 1.8% GDP growth, and if oil were to fall any lower it would force massive federal budget cuts.
So what exactly would releasing oil from there do? Let’s say U.S. production and imports from Canada and Mexico were to hold place. The U.S. would need to release about 950,000 barrels per day to meet all of the United States’ current demand. Based on the SPR’s 727 million barrels in storage, we could do this for well over two years and drive down global prices significantly. Surprisingly, though, we don’t even need to go to that extreme. According to economist Phillip Verleger in a recent Quartz article, if the U.S. were to release only 500,000 barrels per day from the SPR, it would lead to a $10 drop in oil prices and would cost Russia $40 billion in sales. At this pace, we could maintain this pace for more than four years and could potentially cause Russia’s GDP to drop by 4%.
We’ve done it before, but it will be harder this time
There are two ways to describe the collapse of the Soviet Union: The storybook version is about the arms race that eventually bankrupted the USSR and led to its evenutal collapse. The one that doesn’t get told as much, though, is the other half of what caused the bankruptcy: cheap oil. In a coordinated effort with Saudi Arabia to increase global crude production, inflation-adjusted oil prices fell 69% between 1981 and 1988. This resulted in massive revenue shortfalls for the USSR and became a critical piece that eventually led to its downfall.
Taken from the Quartz article:
The idea has history behind it. In 1985, Saudi Arabia decided to pump a lot more oil and increase its share of global oil sales. As a result, oil prices plunged by more than half, at one point in 1986 reaching $13 a barrel. The primary, unintended victim was the Soviet Union. “The Soviet Union lost approximately $20 billion per year, money without which the country simply could not survive,” wrote former Russian prime minister Yegor Gaidar. The economy went into a tailspin, as then did the politics, and in 1991, the Soviet Union was no more.
NOTE: Info concerning the 5M barrel crude sale
SPR oil put up for sale on the day Ukraine’s new chief is in town
By John Kingston | March 12, 2014 04:27 PM
One trader speaking to a Platts reporter had this to say about the decision by the Department of Energy today to sell 5 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
“The Gulf Coast market has plenty of barrels,” he said. “They should have done it a few weeks ago when the Gulf Coast was tight due to all the weather delays.”
A few weeks ago, however, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk wasn’t in Washington. He’s the interim President of Ukraine, and he’s in DC today.
It almost defies logic to think there isn’t a link. (And White House press secretary Jay Carney said there isn’t one, when asked about it at the daily White House press briefing.)
But there is no reason to sell oil now. The reason given by the Department of Energy — a test sale to evaluate its ability to distribute oil in the event of an emergency — sounds very formal and entirely believable. But such a test hasn’t been done since 1990. Why now?
The “energy weapon” that has been discussed so vehemently since the Ukraine crisis began — using US LNG and crude oil exports to weaken world prices and steal Russia’s energy customers — always had a few flaws in it. First of all, even for the terminals where LNG exports have been approved, they aren’t ready to go. Second, US crude exports are still banned, despite lots of talk of changing that.
But selling oil out of the SPR, and specifying that it’s sour crude that’s for sale — the same type as Urals, Russia’s crude grade — can be done now. Next month, in fact, 5 million barrels of oil over 30 days, for an average of just over 165,000 b/d.
How many of you brave souls are ready to die for a massively corrupt and incompetent regime in Kiev? And as far as F-22’s are concerned with such a forward basing as many of you suggest the Russians have the means to be able to destroy them on the ground. And on the ground most of them would be since the F-22 has approximately 30 hours of maintenance for every hour in the sky.
Is Robert Spalding a Military Fellow at Council on Foreign Affairs? There is confusion in this piece, IMO, between offense and defense and in using correct examples.
NATO was about Western Europe. Ukraine is not Germany. And nuclear weapons change things so that the other examples seem a bit odd to me.
But what I really wanted to say is that the Council on Foreign Affairs seems to have this long time confusion between NATO as a defensive military alliance and the EU as a long term project to create a zone of peaceful activity and a collective or community.
The Ukraine as part of a US defense security perimeter within NATO confuses the various missions and mixes up defense with offense and democratization and markets with the nature of security perimeters and where the lines are drawn. Too close, and it is permanently unstable.
An example is a 1950’s book from Ben Tillman Moore, I believe, on the future of NATO. He speaks of a creating a community and this mixed-up nature of thought continues to the conversation today. I believe some of the California universities have this book on file in an open source format that can be accessed via internet.
I often talk about democracy and diasporas in the comments section and Small Wars Journal has more than one article on the subject.
In this case, one interesting domestic factor to consider is the way in which NATO expansion has been presented to domestic constituencies such as Polish Americans from the 90s onwards. Some live in states like Illinois and Ohio and are swing voters in key areas. As Sec. State, Hillary Clinton spoke of the future of NATO as one of expansion and she did it in Chicago which has large Eastern European diasporas. The choice of venue and the talks given definitely fall into the nature of what some constituencies–immigrant and otherwise–have long been working toward. Couple this with Robert Kagan as a part her then Foreign Policy Council (I believe it was called this) and you have an example of an intellectual community embedding itself within institutions; in this case, the State Department.
This is what I meant in another comment. Power, ideology, immigrant diasporas, political blocs–these matter because events have a multifactorial basis. Faceless Bureaucrat at Kings of War has a brilliant post on multifactorality. There is a lot of propaganda out there from ALL sides. Fascinating.
And not a little scary given how things got in Kosovo when various militaries came up against each other.
We have spent so much on our fighters that no other nation can afford to match them. Think about your typical $10 billion threat defense budget and calculate how many $100 million to $800 million stealth fighters and bombers those threats can afford per year let alone the operating costs per flight hour.
We already spend a vast amount on nuclear weapons to deter the two nations that do have more threat aircraft. $355 billion over the next 10 years is planned to be spent on nuclear weapons that never will be used…and we complain about similar amounts spent on the F-35. Neither side expects to actually use nukes despite public proclamations, so conventional missiles and air defenses claimed to see them are the poor nation’s response to our stealth fleet. There is no contradiction. We will achieve air supremacy in a matter of weeks against Russia or China and in days to hours against any other threats. No adversary aircraft will be attacking our ground forces that are still en route or dug-in or in dispersed armored vehicles.
If we are smart, we don’t need to build one super-hardened aircraft shelter per F-35 and F-22 in the Pacific first island chain, Europe next to Ukraine, or Middle East near Iran. We have lots of aerial refuelers that enable a degree of aircraft parking stand-off. For the aircraft shelters more closely located that we do need, I would suggest that they be designed for the F-35 and Apache…the two aircraft that actually can address Russian armor or Chinese amphibious elements. I will now offer an unconventional idea for how to build such shelters.
On the academic subject of Democracies, Diasporas and nation building attempts via international elite institutions and connections:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/13/us/politics/trade-dispute-centers-on-ukrainian-executive-with-ties-to-clintons.html?_r=0
– Peace, Art and … Special Operations by Brian S. Petit
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/peace-art-and-%E2%80%A6-special-operations
If one were to take unconventional warfare doctrine and look at in two ways (Russian toward Ukraine, and the US/EU toward Ukraine), what would one find and how could various narratives be developed, regardless of whether you support one or the other?
The military doesn’t control policy but I am intrigued by the “First, Do Harm” attitudes of our foreign policy and how it affects military activity. It’s the strangest thing. It’s also strangely destabilizing and dangerous business and it seems our Western and American traditional bureacracies are making a messy, multipolar situation worse, IMO. The creation of chaos and disorder in reality; nation building and stability on paper. Very Council on Foreign Relations.
– Lord Risby, Chairman of The British Ukrainian Society
http://www.britishukrainiansociety.org/en/
The loans held by the Ukranian government are held by a lot of Western banks? So, what happens with the IMF aid that the US or others in the West are giving? It goes to pay that debt/banks? I know I’m taking this discussion far afield but I still feel like I’m not getting the whole story and it’s disinformation from the Russians, the EU/US, the Ukranian leadership, everyone.
Was their ever any real strategy behind enlarging NATO or was it just this haphazard thing that was enlarged for a whole host of reasons?
1. Domestic pandering by various politicians from various countries.
2. Economic competition; national, international, and by individuals seeking influence via NATO and related organizations.
3. Genuine worries about security.
4. Vague theories from the Foreign Policy elite and its ideas of internationalism?
5. Keeping the Americans in so that we pay?
6. Americans afraid of losing their hegemony in Europe?
And so on….
What exactly was the strategy behind it all? Even if you view it as an important defensive alliance, it still has to fit into a strategy. The US can’t just pick up weak and troubled clients because it’s no help to those poor souls either if it’s not thought through properly.
How is it that the economic competition and the NATO action plans all became mixed up? There is no discipline to our unruly system. The people’s fault, I suppose; everyday people like me have trouble telling what is real and what isn’t.
That’s why this piece confuses me.
PS: Why does the Gene Sharp/Michael McFaul democracy promotion so infatuate some in the military? Is it because you idealize it, whereas I look at it as a way for some to meddle in systems for their own reasons, quite aside from the will of the people.
Perhaps Drucker, not Kraemer, should have been the secret weapon:
– The Forty Years War (The Rise and Fall of the Neocons, from Nixon to Obama), Len Colodny and Tom Shachtman
But maybe there is another way to look at Kraemer in this instance. The EU, US and NATO ‘bloc’ was involved in economic warfare with Russia and using various nations as their proxy, all while telling those nations it was about strengthening their democratic system and protecting them from Russian aggression.
WIthout understanding this background, any attempt to counteract this supposedly new Russian warfare (really, what were you all doing in Afghanistan for the past thirteen years that you cannot see it is the same proxy stuff you were dealing with, and which can be nicely paralleled historically with Kashmir and Punjab within the context of the Cold War) will backfire. Once again, it is a focus on an enemy without context.
As an ironic sidenote, one reason the US doesn’t have as much economic power in the region is that I wager there are DC “Atlanticist” lobbies that attempted to prevent greater US economic investment in Russia out of fears of the US changing its basic calculus and thus being less useful.
The Indispensable Nation conceit is a perfect argument to cultivate an American mark. (I had to correct dispensable to indispensable, lol).
The sad thing is, our machinations didn’t help these nations firm themselves up against outside attack. Of course, bad governance and poor choices were the real problem to begin with, as usual. If your leaders leach off state assets, and a revolution to change that government excludes people in the process while not recognizing how you were used by outside powers, then you may become hostage to that tussle instead of protecting your own nation. There is more than one scholar at a Ukrainian think tank I’ve found that says the same thing. Sound voices drowned out in the heat of the moment.
For more on the “tussles”, see the link above to the Pundita blog. But I’ve posted some books and articles that deal with this subject too, around here, and will try and find them again.
You don’t have to buy all of this from Pundita blog (Washington and the Ukraine Crisis) to see that Americans have some serious thinking to do, which likely won’t happen until a new generation rises within military and foreign policy circles:
http://pundita.blogspot.com/2014/05/washington-and-ukraine-crisis-and.html#links
It amuses me that this piece uses the phrase “lack of action.” Ukraine has received billions of dollars in aid. Aid is fungible. If they lack the resources to war on their own people in the East sufficiently (or fight proxies), then I reckon its mismanagement of resources by its governing classes.
Washington’s democracy promoters don’t tend to do a very good job, do they? Their students rarely learn but do develop healthy personal bank accounts.
I cannot believe the careless attitude displayed in this article. OTOH, at this point, I should get ready to believe anything. At one time I went through and tracked back funding for this think tank. Nothing major, superficial searching. And I believe people believe what they write, no accusations here. It’s just that group think is toxic.
What a world, that town of DC. No wonder so many are looking for a plan B to Washington. It’s because of too much interference, too, not too little.
Tilting at windmills online, my speciality.
There is something a bit vapid about this; why can’t a weak party appear threatening and so provoke an adversary? For instance, Al Q and 9-11 or falling into traps in the way the Georgians did under Saakashvili?
No wonder many people with intellectual roots in the neoconservative movement get so many things wrong, it’s the sort of thinking that appears to be more deep and intellectual than it really is, it’s the appearance of deep thought, so satisfying to world filled with those who want to be given permission to do what they wanted to anyway.
Forget COIN vs. COINTRA, just plain old hard thinking might do the trick….
Interesting use of language, as in defensive versus offensive:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/02/world/us-taking-a-fresh-look-at-arming-kiev-forces.html?_r=0
Earlier in the thread, I had written:
And
But I screwed up, didn’t I? For this to work in a purely defensive way, as we understood it during the Cold War, the system itself has to be stable. This is the bedrock, the first principle? Even the former East and West Germany don’t fit into this paradigm given the problems within the Ukrainian system itself.
So, if the Ukrainians themselves were more united, then, well this concept of defensive might work but if they were more united then the situation itself would be different. How much of our democracy promotion (and the intelligence activities of other outside parties, including the Russians and other European nations) helped to destabilize all of this? Like Assad and Syria and all the outside parties meddling which, when added to the organic on the ground events including Assad’s repression, spun off in a direction we still don’t entirely understand?
Interesting language.
A primarily military solution is not to be had.
Michele Fluornoy wants a Ukraine surge, essentially? Did I read that somewhere? Fond of surges, because that is the pattern here again. We surge because we don’t know what else to do. I’m sure I read that somewhere else….
Many outside factions wanted to destabilize everything, didn’t they? The poor Ukrainians. They thought outsiders wanted to help, and some factions did, some didn’t, and they misjudged it because it was all a hall of mirrors?
Human beings aren’t chess pieces on a chess board. This is very wrong.
From @JustinLogan:
https://twitter.com/JustinTLogan/status/563008654165942272
“On offensiveness/defensiveness, there is, fortunately, literature:….”
The linked pdf names a lot of big names and makes reference to a large body of literature. Naturally, I would think I could solve a huge area of controversy with a few bad mannered comments. Typical.
So, it’s an area of controversy, then? Seems like a cause for caution but the current reporting makes me think I know where this is going.
We need a new narrative in the MidEast and Jordan is ready to take the gloves off and we will support the anti-ISIS coalition partners, including a newly moderately run Saudi Arabia.
Putin has Asperger’s and thus we should play nuclear chicken with his “regime.”
Scanning headlines is always a good way to see how the leaks are going to favored journalists and how the line will be played out to the general public.
The big study about Putin and Asperger’s from the Yodas at the Office of Net Assessment? 2008? Interesting year, 2008, in terms of American opens in WaPo and other bits of information doled out.
PS:http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/02/04/putin-aspergers-syndrome-study-pentagon/22855927/
And the ‘meddling’ ope ed was 2004, but, of course, all the ‘Georgia’ op ads 2008? Well, to be fair to me, you’ve all made me borderline nuts.
PPS:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15131-2004Dec20.html
Stop me, oh, oh-o, stop me
Stop me if you think
That you’ve heard this one before
The Smiths – Stop Me If You Think You’Ve Heard This One Before
Well, what else is a Gen Xer going to post then?
Many interested in this topic may have seen the following article or similar articles:
http://news.yahoo.com/top-nato-general-warns-russian-reaction-arming-ukraine-125036466–politics.html
I was so horrible about General Breedlove earlier on in this thread. Move Forward tried to get me to shut up and be more careful, to his credit.
I have limited ability to understand what is going on from my vantage point, don’t I? It’s all moving too quickly and there are too many parties involved.
Going Big by Getting Small: The Application of Operational Art by Special Operations in Phase Zero, Brian S. Petit (Introduction)
But this always happens in DC, whether there is a grand strategy or not? The Cold War in the States was a massive domestic argument and “competing Darwinian forum.”
The intellectual back-and-forth going on at Brookings is part of this, isn’t it? Are people asking for more arms for Ukraine positioning themselves for a future Clinton presidency, or is it the bureaucratic deep state stirring itself because a new focus on NATO would mean a return to prominence?
But the predictive track record is not good for some of these people wanting a Ukrainian surge of weapons. without training or improvements in the Ukrainian military itself and the larger internal political situation, the weapons could just end up doing nothing much, fueling conflict, or, given corruption and ‘switching sides’, end up where they shouldn’t be.
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2015/02/03-why-arming-ukrainians-is-a-bad-idea-shapiro
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1582795/Hillary-Clintons-Bosnia-sniper-story-exposed.html
#GRAVITAS
Play acting and political positioning in the background of nuclear weapons. Well, wasn’t it Andrew Marshall that was fascinated with the use of tactical nuclear weapons? No wonder so many American military members of a certain age and generation weren’t much bothered by Pakistani development of certain nuclear doctrines, how different was our system at the intellectual level?
Well, whatever you all do, just don’t blow up the world. The military is in a tight spot, I don’t think the frustration of the past decade or so is going to go away, the system is confused and so the policy guidance will be confused and you will be asked to do many strange things.
#HumanDomainInsane
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” Sun Tzu
As I look at this, The West does not have a war fighting problem with Russia, what we have is a failure of deterrence.
A favorite mantra among US Army leadership these days is that “War is a contest of wills.” The implication of Army leadership is that our current civilian leadership is communicating a lack of will to commit the nation to war, and that aggressive state actors are taking advantage of that lack of will to act. Perhaps. But do we really think it is wise, do we really think it is the “supreme art of war” to engage in major nuclear or conventional war every time some state seeks to adjust their sovereign parameters to ones more appropriate for the facts of today (rather than the facts of when those parameters were established decades ago)?
But clearly we must do something to address the erosion of Western deterrence. We can spend billions on upgrades to our nuclear force. We can spend billions in upgrading, upsizing and sustaining a warfighting ground force in times of peace – but neither of those vast expenditures address the reality that our opponents wisely avoid tripping the clear triggers to generate the political will to employ such extreme counters. Basic math: Any number, regardless how large, multiplied by zero equals zero. If will equals zero, no size or type of force is adequate. We need to find a counter that we have the will to employ, an approach that does not require such a clear breach of sovereign protocol as to generate the degree of political will necessary for nuclear or conventional war. The answer is an unconventional one.
I don’t believe that unconventional warfare is much more marketable than attempting to sell nuclear warfare. But while we do not promote nuclear warfare, rely heavily on nuclear deterrence. The credible threat of nuclear warfare to keep those who would conduct sovereign encroachments in check. Perhaps it is time that we rethink deterrence. Perhaps it is time that rethink unconventional warfare. I believe what we need to cause major state actors such as Russia, or China or Iran to pause where they currently press, is the credible threat of unconventional warfare – Unconventional Deterrence.
Unconventional Deterrence shores up the gaps in our current approaches to deterrence (supplementing, not supplanting), and requires a much lower threshold of political will to employ. Unconventional Deterrence also give the West an asymmetric advantage we are increasingly losing in our nuclear and conventional capacities. For all of our flaws and faults, the US has a population-based form of governance that makes us fundamentally stable where other socieites are entering the modern age of empowered populations with systems that are inadequate, rigid and often quite brittle. Certainly Russia, China and Iran are far more concerned about the growing instability of their own internal societies than they are about external challenges. Unconventional deterrence targets those vulnerable populations and plays upon those governmental fears.
Adding a credible threat of unconventional warfare to our current program of deterrence is an idea that is low cost and has the potential to be highly effective. It may even serve to coerce those stubborn regimes into actually taking the concerns of those populations serious and begin working to make the changes necessary to improve their own internal instability. Far more productive than engaging in another contest of building competing nuclear or conventional forces.
It is time to put a bit more art into our approaches, and then perhaps we may indeed “subdue the enemy without fighting.” But if they want to fight, we will also be prepared to bring them a fight they cannot handle, leveraging their own weakness against them, rather than hammering at them with our strength.
A comment I left at zenpundit. For discussion. I don’t know.
(from comment by Zen)
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Interesting. Aid? How much? This polls badly, especially when it is in support of the Ukrainian arms industry vice outside supply.
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Of course, this gets into larger strategic questions, including divisions within NATO, the EU and the Western “alliance” per se, and whether aid is tenable for a variety of reasons. 90s critics of NATO expansion were in multiple camps including those that wanted it to expand but didn’t like the nature of the expansion. They critiqued the actual nature of expansion and its idea of NATO as a market creator and democratizing force. The tensions in the ideas put forth are evident today. If you don’t know how to think adequately about a thing, you can’t get to the correct action. But this requires reading those back and forth arguments to understand what I am saying, I believe.
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I think this episode will put severe strain on the very concept of NATO itself within the minds of Germans and French and the long term consequences are hard to see.
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“Ukraine to Develop Defense Industry Without Russia,” Eurasia Daily Monitor is a good article on the Ukrainians supplying themselves versus outsiders.
Mearsheimer in the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/opinion/dont-arm-ukraine.html?_r=2
People are continually telling me that I am ignoring this factor in Afghanistan regarding regional parties, and, it’s true, I do focus on the unconventional warfare aspect versus governance, but I’ve often said that despite walking a different path, I end up in the same place as those that prioritize the insurgency and governance. Most of what we can do is non-military in terms of the proxy conflict.
And Merkel visiting DC (?) shows just how much the US and UK (which cut its defense budget by the way) pushing on this point is going to press on already difficult European fault lines.
Once again, Drucker would like a word with Kraemer.
Washington (and other nations) has a strange notion of sovereignty and this is contributing to what, admittedly, are complex multifactorial problems with local foundations. One only read Anne-Marie Slaughters free form self associated string-terms-together glitter in the form of books to see what I mean….
It may be in the ‘Crimea Twofer’ thread where I posted a link to a 1997 NATO document explaining the various arguments for NATO expansion, including the interest of the UK in expansion.
NATO expansion is viewed not just as a defense alliance, but as a test of UK and American leadership. The article amusingly notes that the UK got over having an empire and Russia should to without noting that both the UK/US and Russia are talking about spheres of influence in Eastern Europe.
This matters because instead of viewing the issue as one of local defense, it becomes mixed up in emotional attachments, unavoidable for human affairs.
I bring this up not to say we shouldn’t help, but we have to understand the motivations of those that want to expand or give arms. And Germany has its own notion, as do the Poles, others in the region, of what their sphere of influence should be and how.
Military affairs are never simply military affairs.
I can’t include the WaPo link, this site won’t take a comment with that link, but Ukraine’s currency lost about half of its worth and Ukraine is broke.
This is why the early cold war was so hard on some developing nations. When they should have been focusing on governance (even with ceasefires and loss of land), they were being built up as security states by outsiders.
There isn’t the money for enough aid too, or George Soros, the billionaire, would have made headway in getting it to Ukraine.
Rich man foreign policy has no feedback loops, you can give money, even for very good reasons, but it’s not the billionaire that has to pay up if things go awry. Bad incentive system. The opposite of democracy and self-governance.
No one has to talk about claims of coups to see the problem. The aid givers dilemma.
PS: While I am at it, go read some of Victorial Nuland’s work on a Task Force for NATO enlargement. It’s from 1997 I believe and on Google books.
Just graze it, as I did. It’s a very confused document. It makes no sense, it is filled with non-sequitors, strange branching sentences. It’s the sort of thing that you wonder, “why did no one edit this?”
I wonder how many are reading Peter J Munson’s “An American cramped by defensiveness” the wrong way? I see it trending from time to time. Or, at least, how I perceive it to be the wrong way?
It’s not about will when it comes to aid. This period, this moment, this situation, is not the Marshall Plan after WWII. Even the Marshall Plan is not the mythical idealized thing that DC and the Pentagon make it out to be.
Sometimes, I think the reason some people talk about WWII and Marshall Plans and will is because they lack creativity. They have no idea how to make things up suited to this era, as previous Americans made things up to suit their era.
In some states, there are important Eastern European constituencies and voters in key districts. This happened during the 90s too, during the domestic argument of expansion. Democracies and diasporas. Happens for everything.
American domestic needs often clash with what might be optimal. And, sometimes people grand stand and don’t mean it, if you see what I mean.
ttp://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=b14a2d78-0f30-4cf6-903e-344c10a215c6
I think it is helpful (for my own education, hopefully for others) to look at the attitudes of some of those arguing for military aid in Ukraine versus their advice in “AfPak”, or, at least, the differences in strategic argumentation:
It’s interesting, isn’t it? Individual sanctions were never considered, while the unstable nature of the situation and nuclear weapons are always used as an example for why aid is so important, and why we shouldn’t pressure people. This despite the knowledge that the Taliban was being supported by our allies as our troops were over the border facing Taliban.
Yet, in the case of a nuclear armed Russia, the same people that urge caution want sanctions and pressure on a nuclear state.
Well, pressure on a nuclear state is bad in either case, but it is instructive to look at the Washington Consensus and its attitudes.
It’s as if there is no “there” there to any of it, just a host of attitudes of forever enemies and forever allies.
(None of this suggests I want to treat AfPak as some are treating the Ukraine situation. Most of what you can do in a proxy affair is pay attention to governance, and from that place, look at borders and other means of non-military pressure on proxy supporters, IMO. Long term training within that context, too. Well, it’s worth a discussion, anyway.)
http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=54135
In terms of whether there really is an insurgency versus a proxy affair in Ukraine (probably both), Anne Applebaum had a column where she stated that there really wasn’t Russian-speaking disaffection in those populations before the feelings were stirred up.
The Indians often same the same about the Valley and its Muslim population, that disaffection there may have been, but proxy support manipulated it.
The fates are cruel. The very insurgency that might help in terms of study is one that the Cold Warriors of old are not interested in because it never mattered to them that others were used to contain Russia. That other populations suffered at the hands of the anti-Soviet allies never mattered.
There are no true idealists when we deal with ‘off the page on the ground’ reality.
The Ukrainians should have looked to the Pakistanis for how to cultivate the West properly and conduct a low key military affair, and to the Indians and Israelis for how to think about the mess of borders, proxies and insurgencies. Okay, I don’t really mean that, I am making a rhetorical point.
The old DC Cold Warriors didn’t even study this issue in that way for AfPak, it seems….
Dear Rant,
Ukraine is a sovereign country but it is broke.
You know what an invasion looks like. This is not Afghanistan in 1985, although that seems to be the primary conflict through which the American security establishment looks at the current conflict.
This is an emotional and not rational lens with which to view the situation.
The conflict is some form of an insurgency by disaffected populations that has been militarized within a proxy conflict with Russia (egging on the disaffection), also within a backdrop of global power competition between the US, UK, Europe and Russia.
If simply supplying weapons solved situations, Assad would be removed, Syria peaceful, Iraq stable, and the Taliban would be beaten back in Afghanistan. I know the answer from the military is always, “then let’s send more,” but the track record post WWII hasn’t been good on that front.
A commenter that used to call himself ‘Stan from Estonia’ in the council mentioned, very early on, that “we told them to close the borders and grab Russian passports.” The implication is that they didn’t take good advice and couldn’t get their act together. They don’t deserve to have land taken for that, but outsiders can only do so much.
Well, things have moved on, but there are many aspects to this conflict, just as with the Kashmir and Punjab insurgencies, and with Afghanistan today.
1. Global power politics including nuclear weapons and an uncertain escalation cascade. Enemy focused military may ignore these things, but responsible civilians cannot be so cavalier.
2. Regional power politics including Eastern European nations. Everyone has been meddling in Ukraine, and for ages. This tends to destabilize governance.
Also, NATO nations do, after all, trade with a wide variety of people across borders, including Russia, and of course there are gas sales.
3. Internal politics of Ukraine including issues of corruption, conscription and border management.
Ukraine was a net arms exporter but it’s military was starved of weapons, pay, and training so arms are not the only issue, even sophistication of arm.s
Weapons by themselves do not solve the governance issues which are being manipulated by outside proxies.
This episode is also putting huge strain on the Western alliance and NATO, no matter what any one says. The Eurozone is restive, and so are populations within it.
Weapons will also bleed the Ukrainians. During the 80s, the Afghans were stuck between the Soviet invaders and a Western alliance, so to speak, that wanted to bleed the Soviets as much as they wanted to help the Afghans.
So the Afghans bled. The most radical elements were mobilized, and that process is occurring in Ukraine today.
This is not the 80s and I wouldn’t dismiss the potential for error in the nuclear realm as alarmism. Ukraine is not Afghanistan and is not perceived in the same way.
Proxy conflict require subtlety. There is no plausible deniability in this era, in this situation. Everyone knows what the stakes are, and they are viewed as existential by the Russian leader, by the Ukrainians, but not really by anyone else, no matter what anyone says.
This will not help the Ukrainians. They require time to regroup and knit their forces back together, as well as their society.
Putin can invade anytime he wants, and no one can stop him if he really wanted to do that. NATO is not going to risk any kind of accident with nuclear weapons, however remote that possibility may seem, and NATO is not going to put its entire future as an alliance on the line, or to restart a global Cold War, for Ukraine. No Cold War president would have done such a thing.
Civilians have a larger responsibility beyond simply throwing weapons around, they have to think how to solve situations in whatever combination of diplomacy and military means are feasible.
But we won’t agree on this. It’s a shame. They will suffer terribly, the ordinary Ukrainians because our desire to punish Putin outweighs our concern for the fate of ordinary people.
I am serious when I say the Ukrainians should look to someone else for how to think about the situation. American military tend to give the same kinds of advice over and over again, with the results we see today.
I am so sorry to put it that way. My admiration is real but that is what I really think.
@ Rant
I’m sorry, I misunderstood what you were trying to say, completely misunderstood. Apologies.
Yes, there is something very strange about the politics of all of this, especially in relation to Kiev. There are levels of maneuvering going on I just don’t understand. I think there are several parties trying to draw in the US for their own purposes.
You know who has become ‘radicalized’? Me, it seems, with my steady descent into non-interventionism and skepticism of the Washington Consensus.
I really did go back and read several 90s era op-eds about NATO expansion and they all predicted the situation today. Many of those authors also correctly predicted the outcome in Iraq and with the surge in Afghanistan. So, naturally, I am inclined to listen to them when they argue against arming Ukraine.
BTW, did you read Peter Tomsen’s book The Wars of Afghanistan? If so, what did you think?
Everyone has seen this story by now:
http://fortressamerica.gawker.com/senator-duped-into-using-old-photos-to-promote-new-wa-1685511541
I’m surprised that anyone trusts any of the reporting on any sort of hot-button foreign policy issue in the US. From all sides, it’s just propaganda passed on through favored channels, whatever side of a conflict.
An ersatz NATO, indeed. How do you keep the Americans “in”, whatever conflict?
Aw, I don’t trust the reporting on ANY side, so no one get all hot and bothered by me linking this post.
A Republic indeed. DC seems to attract the strangest people, the oddest psychology.
PS: If one were worried about the US ‘pivoting’ away, or about the US showing less interest in Europe, how might you go about keeping Americans interested.
The story of the cultivation of Americans within the context of “South Asia” remains of interest, especially because even some non-interventionists got duped in that little thicket of crazy, too….
I’m glad Fabius Maximus (the blogger) linked the following article on his twitter feed because I read it before but I forgot to save the link. Glad to see it again:
I like multifactorial analysis as opposed to “what’s the one key thing I need to know” executive summary stuff which makes sense given my background.
Previously, in comments here I talked about what I thought were some factors contributing to the current Ukraine crisis:
1. Global power (state) politics.
2. Regional state-to-state politics and economic motivations.
3. Internal fault lines within Ukraine.
This article does a nice job looking at the DC “scrum” and some of the manufactured hysteria around the issue.
(You can get a sense of this if you look at the issue of missile defense and how it has played out in terms of public op ads from the 90s onwards….)
Meet The Forces That Are Pushing Obama Towards A New Cold War, @ChristianStork
(from @christian stork, medium. When I include the link, my comment won’t appear).
Remember, I used the world “multifactorial.” I don’t think any of that is the whole issue but it sure is very, very important.
There is also the ideological feeling of many in Washington that have an inherent institutional Russophobia and miss the Cold War. Well, look at our relations with Cuba? Stuff sticks around a long time because it becomes second nature to people.
You only need look at the behavior of our elite classes toward the “Sunni” axis post Abbottabad and compare to this to see that there is really no “there” there, just scrambled up interests, to include those that have a genesis abroad.
Another in a line of multifactorial pieces, from Politico:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/nice-putin-russia-115431.html#ixzz3SsChtdzW
That can in no way be read as an apologist piece, not with what it has to say about Putin. But the problem with a Putin-centric (the one true COG!) analysis is that it doesn’t allow a deeper analysis to take place.
The same happens with Iraq, when we focus only on ISIS (although obviously a key thing), or when we reduced the complex situation in Afghanistan to a Pashtun insurgency, however important or central.
Well, a point of discussion at any rate.
Returning to the article’s primary content, Carl and myself discussed Small Diameter Bomb II and F-35s within these comments. The following defensetech.org article talks more about it:
http://defensetech.org/2015/02/25/small-diameter-bomb-ii-completes-live-fire-test-destroying-t-72-tank/#more-24601
So given that we can keep Putin from destroying Ukraine, the Baltics, and Poland over the next few years until lots of these and the F-35 are fielded (and President Obama is out of office), methinks Putin would think twice before getting too aggressive with NATO. Offset Strategy? We don’t require swarms of vulnerable, airspace nightmare, high-cost loitering munitions when large manned aircraft a few years away can launch multiple 208 pound bombs from a distance with 100+ pound warheads.
Picture stealthy F-35s launching from 40 nm away at medium altitude. Four plus minutes later, lots of Russian tanks start blowing up. Try that with an A-10 and you have a downed crew requiring rescue due to Russian air defenses.
My dear MF:
Everything I have posted here is pertinent to the main discussion of the article because no discussion of arming any nation should take place without understanding the larger strategic picture:
FYI, did you know that Russia has a lot of nuclear weapons? And accidents ‘care’ nothing about ideology or who is right, and who is wrong.
As 9-11 showed, catastrophic system errors within the American system never occur. All defenses are perfect and the unimaginable can never, ever happen.
I prefer to deal with reality, not the military fantasizing.
Ukraine is not actually in NATO–also FYI–although General Breedlove said in a recent article that we had been working with the Ukrainians for some time and we know what they need.
An ersatz NATO, indeed. It’s terrible of the Russians to surround our clients with their country. They should pick up and move.
(No one is defending Putin here. But expanding NATO only weakened it, as many argued in the 90s and onward. The non-expansionists preferred a different framework to protect such fragile, troubled nations. Not all were dreaded appeasers, they simply understood the strange mixed up nature of an expanding EU as a trade union and NATO as an expression of national power would not work as a strict military alliance. Those critics have been entirely vindicated.)
The reason the Cold War was fought around the “periphery” (terrible way to dehumanize entire peoples, that language, the post modernists aren’t always wrong) is because of this very fact. Despite the hot rhetoric of even the most hawkish Cold War president, direct engagement was viewed with great alarm because of the fact that the US and the Soviet Union had so many nuclear weapons. Many here are fondly remembering only the rhetoric, and not the actions.
And Ukraine is broke. Really, really, really broke. The economy just imploded. Weapons thrown into that will only make the Ukrainians suffer more, in addition to potentially bringing the world to a dangerous showdown between Russian and the United States. This behavior is harming our credibility. No, not our refusing to engage, but that we look so irresponsible in the way that we engage. We no longer know how to conduct diplomacy and rely mostly on threats. In many ways, many peoples are looking to firm themselves up from our system because they are freaked out by our erratic behavior.
As I said to MF, all my comments here are entirely pertinent to the main discussion of this article. No mention of weapons should be made without understanding the larger strategic context, or the various reasons for promoting weapons giving and selling:
http://www.usukraine.org/gala/ukrainian-stars-shine-in-washington-dc
There was no reset within the Clinton State Department, only fund raising and creating connections for a future presidential run.
It’s awfully nice of Raytheon to be so concerned about democracy and the pro-West orientation of Ukraine.
I’m sorry that complicated and layered thinking is required. It’s just too darn bad, I guess.
Continue on with fantasy discussion of which weapons or how many boots will magically wish away all other considerations.
I posted the following on a different thread (this is a part of the comment):
“Recently, I listened to a talk by Hew Strahan on YouTube (Europe, Geopolitics and Strategy) and he makes fantastic points about the increasing divergence of geopolitics and ideology within the western foreign policy community, such as it is.
.
The most recent hysteria about Russia and Nemetsov underscores this tension (and he makes mention of Ukraine).
The two camps are not even speaking the same language. Such overt hysteria. Worrying. A perfect situation for introducing missiles and more nuclear weapons….(uh, extreme sarcasm), NOT a good situation).”
Discussions of the expansion of NATO and its outcome are hampered by this divergence between ideology and geopolitics. NATO has many different meanings and for some critics of NATO expansion, the language is one of geopolitics and NOT necessarily spheres of influence but of basic military alliance building and game theory. The bigger it is, the hard to control and focus.
Yet if NATO is an ideology, than its expansion is on moral terms and the argument takes a different tenor. But I would argue that even on moral terms it is problematic because it is problematic to promise things and then break promises, and that adding to disorder doesn’t help people on the ground.
Yes, it’s time to consider something more formal in terms of my own online study, but, unlike many foreign policy and military strategists, I do prioritize and a chronic illness always requires strict daily prioritization. Only so much time for this, and no more….
Would be strategists, please note.
Let’s try this again without links:
Going through old links that I had collected and came across this article:
The Wrong Move: Adding Nuclear Weapons to the Russia-Ukraine Conflict
FEBRUARY 9, 2015 BY LT. GEN. ROBERT GARD GREG TERRYN
Defense One
General Dempsey has said that Russia is trying to break NATO, yet he thinks sending weapons to Ukraine (a non-NATO country, btw) will help to strengthen the alliance?
I understand the difficult position he is in and perhaps the best one can say is that troops to train Baltic nations might prevent such dangerous notions as nuclear weapons in Eastern European countries. (Again, which countries are in NATO and which not? It’s as if the tenders of alliances have no idea how they are built or run properly).
On strengthening NATO, quite the opposite actually, given the tensions within NATO and the different “camps”. Perhaps Washingtonians and NATO generals think that the US aligning itself with the UK/Eastern European camp within NATO will quash any sort of independence by various countries such as Germany and France? Given the combined economic power of the EU, it is more likely to hurt our position but emotion over reason.
It’s as if people that are of European heritage (Western or Eastern) think they can’t act in the emotional way those horrible Indians and Pakistanis do, I mean, how dare they nuclear saber rattle? I mean, I am continually being told that we in the West are calm and rational and those people–those types of people–well, they need our guidance!
Everyone craves national greatness, at least, purported leaders seem to crave some sense of it. I blame reading too much of silly shallow history books and imagining oneself a great leader, never to be forgotten by time.
Well, I haven’t been in the morgue for years, but the experience teaches you a thing or two, and if you think being a national greatness leader (West or East, Russian or American), or arm chair saber rattling, changes how it all looks at the end, then you are a fool. As you come in to the world, so you go out of it….
The human face of war: fear, honor, and interest. Fear of being forgotten, pride as honor, and who knows what interest?
How dangerous this all is. And yet, almost no sense of it in the public, Western reporting, among the increasingly dulled DC glitterati, desperate for foreign policy relevance in an age that requires quietness over bluster.
I had no idea–no idea at all–how much a certain caricatured notion of exceptionalism was important to the psyche of so many people in various prominent positions. Sad.
Anyway, Kingston Reif has articles on the subject of nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe in The National Interest and at WoTR. (Can’t embed links today).
How is it that Americans seem not to see the dangers, feel the closeness of this period to other dangerous periods of the Cold War? It’s all those super hero movies we watch, I guess, substituting fantasy for reality.
By all means, let’s put NATO and US troops right up next to Russia, nuclear armed, without buffer states, and with citizenry on both sides that yell insults at each other. What careful, thoughtful people.
Weak-minded. Who will be the man or woman to, well, be this man this time around?
The Guardian, 1999, “I’m not going to start Third World War for you,” Jackson told Clark
How have we gotten here?
Who is stupid enough to think this is simply a reprise of the 80s without the key difference that the tripwires weren’t so close? Well, a great majority it seems.
PS: Relax, I’m just venting. I’m not calling any one particular person out. But this little venture is only going to make things worse in the long term in terms of NATO. And when we need our strengths in the face of other challenges, once again, we will be sorry that we put a conflict about economics into this nuclear saber rattling realm.
Governance and borders, borders and governance. Brennan “everything’s a target” never did understand this stuff, in AfPak or Ukraine.
PPS: Is Disenchantment with a capital D the only realistic endpoint for any honest person when looking at all of this.
I am sorry for the morale issues in the military, I really am. When this stuff really gets to me, I go all nerd and read more calm things and focus on what is possible, what is reality, I am nobody with no power, but I can educate myself, vote in a particular way, pay attention to daily duties, refrain from adding to the hysteria. I don’t know. I never know. I just know that Disenchantment with a capital D is the only realistic endpoint for a generally honest person when looking at all of this.
I thought this article might be of interest. Back to the old Kraemer vs. Drucker debate:
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-03-03/estonia-did-its-post-soviet-homework
I’ve mentioned several times that an Estonian commenter in the Council wrote that “we told the Ukrainians to close the border and grab Russian passports,” and, I assume, more advice was given over the years on how to integrate difficult troubled regions toward the so-called center which never took place. American advice and money hasn’t seemed to help over the years, either, or we all wouldn’t be in this mess.
Understandable given the terrible history in that region but that doesn’t change the facts on the ground. I had previously posted some comments by T.V. Paul from his book on Pakistan, The Warrior State, and in it he talks about how prioritizing the security state within a Cold War context prevented necessary reforms from taking place.
Those reforms are part and parcel of protecting any nation, as much as arms selling, actually, probably more so.
At any rate, our elites have decided that Ukraine is somehow essential to American security. Everything is these days.
I suppose it keeps us involved in Europe and the Mid East (UAE really going to sell weapons to Ukraine? Broke Ukraine?) and in that sense disorder serves many parties, including arms sellers in both the West and Russia, and those fearing a pivot to the East or the US losing interest in either place.
It’s a funny thing. We basically are committing to forever protecting Europe. What is the end state so to speak? When Russia is no longer Russia? From expanding NATO comes changing Russia, which is what we tried to do in the 90s to disastrous effect. This is where some of the fear and paranoia might come in, I’m guessing. We tend to want to change other nations into our image. We in the vaunted West are all nation builders all the time and everywhere.
Why does the suffering of Eastern Europeans move most Americans while the suffering of the Russians seem less important? Unless it is something that places our elites–in conjunction with reformers–at the center of the story?
Is this the psychological profile of the standard foreign policy PhD? What is at the center of wishing to be the star of every story?
Why did we even have an American Revolution? Are we going to take the lead forever and ever, until our collective GDP is swamped by others?
I guess the Army is glad to have Europe back.
I am not as naive as I used to be. For sure, factions in the Army lobby for this and play politics so this discussion belongs here. Shame a big play by various EU factions for economic contracts got turned into this (yes, yes, I am only discussing the factors from the West, add in the Russian factors in this multifactorial process. Unlike some, I’m not going to be bullied into thinking things just because all the fashionable people are afraid to have their own opinions and afraid they won’t be with the in-crowd if they don’t toe the party line. Weak, weak, weak….)
I can’t embed links today, sorry:
IN MIDST OF WAR, UKRAINE BECOMES GATEWAY FOR JIHAD
BY MARCIN MAMON
The Intercept (First Look)
What is going on? Just like with Syria, everyone has an agenda and things like this may be overblown, or swept under the rug depending on whose agenda. I love it when people say, “oh, Assad is so happy to support ISIS,” well, even without ISIS, it wasn’t going to be any good for the US to regime change again in that region so even if that is true, doesn’t change the basic situation.
The Germans are unhappy with Breedlove too? I’ve seen more than one story.
Just what the heck is going on? Talk about multifactorial causation and the high-stakes scrum of international geopolitics layered on top of everything else.
Is there one person that can be trusted in all of this? Just one, LOL?
There is massive propaganda on all sides. I just don’t trust anyone that can’t admit that.
Compare and contrast. For every action, a reaction. No one tell the WaPo op ed page or its silly op ed PhD toadies:
http://www.defenseone.com/politics/2015/03/dempsey-says-its-time-arm-ukraine/106614/
http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2015/03/10/russia-opts-out-of-european-arms-control-treaty
A new Cold War. Could anything be stupider for American interests, European interests, British interest, Eastern European including Ukraininan interests….
How is it that so many Millenials are being fooled? The ‘stans and the Mid East are not the best model for understanding this crazy.
And the old Zbig stuff simply never did work. Is the President someone enamored of his stuff? Or Robert Kagan? Or that ‘everything’s’ a target Brennan? How many things have these people got wrong?
If that world island stuff is so important, why push the Russians and Chinese together? Afraid if Russia integrates into Europe they will be another bloc as competition?
Have you looked at a map and looked at our ability to grow food, our population, our control of natural resources and technologies? Mental. All completely mental.
The first article is from last September but it is not a bad thing to revisit this article:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-25/syria-to-ukraine-wars-send-u-s-defense-stocks-to-records
In a multi-factorial world, money is still a good thing to follow….
The following is also of interest to the larger discussion:
http://sputniknews.com/politics/20150316/1019543878.html#ixzz3Uf1qga6c
Welcome to the 21st Century, where you have to hold 2, 3, 4, 5, whatever, thoughts in your head at the same time.
Always this way, really, but the little stories the American Foreign Policy establishment told itself about the Cold War and the immediate post Cold War period are so simplified as to be dangerous. As we’ve seen.
Can’t be 1985–or 1995–forever.