Republicans & Conservatives Archives

By European terms, the US did more to create instability in their region than even the future of China portends.

Bush’s snubbing of Europe on genetically modified crops, invading Iraq, endorsing Geneva Convention violations, etc. have a price. And your article exemplifies just one of the many costs the Bush Administration has incurred for the American people.

J,
“European leaders like to lecture us about the morality of our foreign policy. It is easy not to sin when you don’t have the opportunity. Let’s see how these guys respond when they have the choice between doing what is right and doing what is profitable.”

If you(we)separate these countries and not think of them as a whole - EU - it is easy to guess which will go after the profit.
Each country thinks of itself first.
We we also find out how strong the EU is and if it can be thought of as a single entity in more ways than currency.

David

Saying that the Euros would drop the arms embargo in retaliation for how Bush treated them makes them sound even more craven and shortsighted than I would believe. At least if they are doing it for the money, politicians can claim that they had to balance their moral goals with the needs of their industries. That is not a great excuse, but it goes down better than “the Americans annoyed me, so I betrayed human rights in China and endangered the peace of Asia.”

I don’t think even Chirac is so craven.

It is a matter of priorities, Jack. If the Euro’s loved America and respected immensely its leadership role in international relations, they would hold our objections up as a higher priority. Given the Euro’s loss of faith in America’s leadership role in international affairs, they will predictably be more inclined to look out for their own economic welfare over US objections to China’s growing military.

All nations are guilty of human rights violations, most recently the US and Great Britain. Neither the US nor Great Britian could even remotely begin to propose a plan for maintaining Chinese national integrity, their immense population numbers and diverse regional concerns, their poverty and hunger problems in remote regions, all the while insuring an A+ on a human rights report card. The fact that China is not disintegrating nationally, the fact that their economy has been growing at 3 and 4 times the rate of the US’s, and the fact that they are effectively halting their population explosion which was the greatest threat to the Chinese people’s well being and ability to sustain themselves says to me, the Chinese government is succeeding in managing its population’s greatest problems with a large degree of success.

Given the decline of America’s greatest nation status on a number of fronts, my guess is the Euro’s look at China and the US and say the future is China’s and that is a bridge that should not be burned.

I don’t know, keeping the arms embargo in place doesn’t cast a chill, and there are other ways to reach out to China that doesn’t involve arms. I agree, it’s irresponsible of Europe to drop the embargo.

I also think Nixon was extremely prescient (sp?) when he opened up trade with China. Shanghai and Beijing have transformed. I disagree with J that human rights have not improved much in China, they have improved by leaps and bounds in the cities. Why? Wealth. China continues to give its businessmen and city citizens more leeway because it recognizes them as the engines running the economy.

Europe would do better to invest in business projects in China, than to make a profit off selling arms. The sooner that China’s power rests on the minds of its people, the sooner that China will respect its people (all of them).

Russia and Germany and France’s passion for arms sales is just as destructive as our passion for war.

Julai

I’m not really sure the US can claim moral outrage here. The fact is, we, like every country, act in our self interest. We’ve consistently looked the other way as Pakistan develops and distributes nuclear and missile technology to North Korea, Iran and whos know who else. We created the first nuclear power in the Middle East by arming Israel. We encouraged Russia to leave the non-proliferation agreement. We spent about a decade and a half supporting and training death squads in Central America.

It’s popular right now to cast Western Europe as some sort of greedy, anti-American, pro-terrorist monster, but facts are facts. And the fact is, if we had the interest, finacial or political, we’d lift the arms embargo on China our selves. You can deny it, but 30 years of American foreign policy says its so.

If you want to discuss the correctness of ligting the ban, thats fine. But lets leave the moral outrage at the door.

David and Justin

It is always surprising how we can find ways to blame America even for things we oppose.

Justin - we have financial interest in lifting the embargo. The Chinese would be delighted to have the option of American arms, which are exactly what they want versus Euro arms, which are almost what they want.

The reason I mention the moral outrage is because that is what has been the coin of the realm concerning American policy.

David – you are right about the Euros wanting to build ties with China. I don’t deny it is a valid goal. But to imply that it is because the U.S. has somehow failed the Euro test doesn’t make sense. If the Euros had such a test, they wouldn’t be embracing China.

Let me hasten to add that embracing China and welcoming that country into the community of nations is something we all should favor. The progress China had made has been breathtaking. But that doesn’t meet you have to accede to every desire. It is just that dropping the arms embargo while talking about the need to maintain stability and control the arms trade is very much the MO of the lead countries involved. If you applied the even half as stringent criteria to these guys as you do to George Bush, you wouldn’t be making excuses for them.

Not believing that it is “my country right or wrong” doesn’t mean that it our country is always wrong either.

Jack:

‘..we have financial interest in lifting the embargo…’

I’m sure we do, but clearly our intrest in maintaining it is greater. For whatever reason.

‘If you applied the even half as stringent criteria to these guys as you do to George Bush, you wouldn’t be making excuses for them.’

Im not making excuses for any one. I would most likly be clasified as a pacifist by todays standards, so I’m not going to support arms sales by any one. My point was simply that we can discuss these things without acting like the US wouldn’t do the exact same thing is we wanted to. To act like the US does anything other than act in its own self interest is just not bared out by the facts. We’re not, not lifting the embargo because of some higher moral cause, we’re not doing it because it doesn’t benefit us.

Also, I do hold Bush to higher standard. I think we should always hold the US to highest standard. I don’t think thats a bad thing.

I am glad you admit to holding Bush to a higher standard.

The reductionism argument that nobody does anything that is not in their interests is unassailable logically, but not the whole story. Some interests are better than others.

The U.S. has an interest in democracy. Our role in E. Europe, Ukraine, Georgia and working in places in Central Asia has been positive and in our interests. You could say that we are today reaping the rewards for our earlier work in E. Europe (the part of Europe where a U.S. president can still find cheering crowds and policy support). But the policy was objectively a good thing for the people involved. That is why it was in their interests to support it. A win/win.

Similarly the arms embargo against China is a good thing. It is in the U.S. interest not to destabilize Asia and encourage human rights in China. Opponents of the ban don’t think these are bad things, but in their interests the value of potential sales outweighs them. Devils and angels both act out of interests, but sometimes you should not remain neutral.

Concerniing trade with China.
The average wage per hour for a factory worker is 7c. If commercial trade is such a good deal, then pass the savings on to the American consumer when we go down to buy all those electronic items. This also frees up the Chinese economy to put more effort into their militariy complex. So what we do is trade with the enemy so that he can build the bombs to kill us with. This is insanity in the purest form.
Tom

Tom, no more insane than M.A.D. (mutually assured destruction).

I often laugh when reading right wing comments in this column. The reason is a question that pops into my mind when following right wing Christian logic, and then asking myself what Christ would do. Would Christ up the budget for war and military and reduce the budget for Medicaid, environment, and education? It really is hilarious at times.

But Jack, Bush’s treatment of the EU was wrong, according to Europeans. Sometimes the facts just plain say, America was wrong, and now Bush and America are paying a price in terms of our allies not exterting any effort to appease our requests. At least from the perspective of those who have had the displeasure of dealing with the consequences of American endeavors like Iraq, or the vindication of not siding with us in the first place.

Jack:

‘The U.S. has an interest in democracy.’

I don’t this is bared out by the facts. We have an interest in control. While I do believe that Bush, like any of our presidents would like to think of himself as a bringer of democracy, it’s hard to escape the fact that when it benefits our political goals, we will support any one. We support Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Uzbekistan to name a few, all with no interest in any sort of democratic or human rights reform.

I’m not bringing this up to give Bush a black eye. He is far from the first to implement this sort of double think in foreign policy. But I do think it’s dishonest to pretend that the US acts altruistically in any way. At best, we’ve simply mastered the art of the proxy war to keep our hands and our conscious that much more clean.

David

Take a look at the Euro press. Their sense of vindication has been melting away every since the Iraqi elections. They had a lot more effect in Europe than in the U.S. Consider this from Der Spiegel. The author talked about how when Reagan spoke in Berlin, everyone laughed at him. He goes on to say:

“Yet three years later, East Germany had disappeared from the map… And maybe history can repeat itself. Maybe the people of Syria, Iran, or Jordan will get the idea in their heads to free themselves from their oppressive regimes just as the East Germans did. When the voter turnout in Iraq recently exceeded that of many Western nations, the chorus of critique from Iraq alarmists was, at least for a couple of days, quieted. Just as quiet as the chorus of Germany experts on the night of November 9, 1989, when the wall fell.

“Just a thought for Old Europe to chew on: Bush might be right, just like Reagan was then.”

Besides, the governments of most members of the EU sided with the U.S. in Iraq. France, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium would like you to think they are the whole EU, but they are not. That issue just is not related to the arms embargo.

Re What would Jesus do? Jesus said to render onto Caesar that which is Caesars and render onto God that which is Gods. He wouldn’t be involved with the budget on military or on education or anything else. He wasn’t interested in the kingdoms on this earth.

“He wouldn?t be involved with the budget on military or on education or anything else. He wasn’t interested in the kingdoms on this earth.”

But he was interested in the well being of the people of this earth.

Jack,

Face it, America cannot expect the whole world to work toward our self interests, and to say that American self interests are what’s best for the world is extremely myopic if not pompus.
All recent negotiations to the contrary we cut off our nose to spite our face when we demanded that the world back us in the war in Iraq.

Jack, he also said, turn the other cheek. Killing is wrong. Iraq did not attack our nation and had nothing to do with 9/11, so self defense was not even an issue.

But, since our nation now regularly upholds cops versions of shootings of unarmed civilians where the cop says, “Well, I thought he had a weapon”, it is understandable so many Americans are willing to give Bush a pass on Iraq. Killing in error is OK in America, if you have authority.

What I’m really concerned about is that when these other countries are as well (or better) armed as we are, they might take it upon themselves to decide whether they like our government or not and attack and invade us if they decide it should be replaced. They might do it without any worldwide agreement or backing and we won’t have any place to argue our case. I hate when that happens.

In the world we have fashioned (or reverted to) by alienating many of our friends and scaring our enemies into making and acquiring more powerful weapons, our only hope is to make sure we keep a few steps ahead of everyone else. Try to outspend them on arms. I’m just afraid that the Soviet Union’s economy tanked from them trying to do this (over and above their rather rigid state control). As China’s economic might grows, I fear we won’t be able to keep up in an arms race.

Mental Whimp, that is one of the most astute comments and pieces of original thinking I have seen on this site in awhile. Our following the path of the former USSR in spending on military could well make paupers of most of us.

Jack,

Before the 5 Power Treaty of 1922, Britian was worried about an arms race with America, and the possibility of a future war with us.

David,
“Iraq did not attack our nation and had nothing to do with 9/11, so self defense was not even an issue.”

Ever think to look at that in a different way? The toppling of Saddam had a lot more to do with changing the whole region.
That is not in self defense?
I’d say it is.
Getting rid of leaders such as Hussein and the Taliban and showing all the rest that they can have a free and democratic society (and getting them to fight for it themselves) is most certainly in our own self defense. Not to mention the defense of all the other ‘western’ countries.

bugcrazy,

You can hypothesize all you like, but the American people were not told the truth about our adventure into Iraq. If Mr. Bush had deigned to tell us the truth before embarking on this adventure, I would suggest that there would not have been so much resistance to the war.
He then compounded the problem by telling the world that they didn’t know what they were talking about and he did, and then saying “you’re either with us or against us”, well, sorry, that made the resistance even that much greater.

Turn it around bugcrazy and see how the shoe fits. Let’s say in 2015, China decides democracies in the world are antithetical to efficient management of life sustaining earth resources, and begins invading democracies which have high numbers of poverty stricken citizens, and high incarceration rates due to the lack of discipline and management of population resources and freedoms. How does that shoe fit, bugcrazy? Should what they believe entitle them invade preemptively all nations that threaten the earths environmental sustenance?

“Turn it around bugcrazy ….”

Well. If that isn’t the answer to it all.

“Let’s say in 2015, China decides democracies in the world are antithetical to efficient management of life sustaining earth resources,….”
China??
I think you should have picked a different scenario.

Go ahead and continue to put the blame on the ‘big bad U.S’. Don’t even try and bring yourself to admitting we are not the ONLY ones who cause problems and it is NOT always OUR responsibility to fix them.

Jack:

The Europeans are just being polite. The vast number of them abhor BushCo. If the Secret Service hadn’t locked down entire Towns during Bush’s visit, you would have seen it. As for China, Money talks. Did the US hesitate arming the South American Death Squads? Did the US hesitate arming the Israelis?

All this Moral Talk is more Rightwing Hypocrisy.

It was in their interests to do so, but during the 19th Century we enjoyed the de-facto protection of the Royal Navy. This made it possible of us to develop our economy with a military expenditure smaller than even inconsequential European powers. Informed Americans knew this. It didn’t stop them from resenting the Brits and blaming them for the world’s trouble. It is a lot like a teenage son, who can easily find fault with his father, but doesn’t really intend to leave home.

The U.S. inherited stewardship of the world system, but on a grander scale. We have the same types of problems. The U.S. has been the predominant power since the end of World War II. It has been a burden, privilege and advantage all at the same time. The U.S. has used its power generously compared with any other power or coalition of powers that has enjoyed similar dominance.

I am very proud of my country. I have been studying history for nearly a half century and I have never found a country in a dominant position that was so generous. The British came close. We used to have the counter example of the Soviet Dominated world. Some leftists convinced themselves that represented the future. They were wrong.

That doesn’t mean everything was always perfect in the U.S. sphere, but compared with everything that went before, it is an excellent record.

Power corrupts and the U.S. has been at times corrupted by power, but then so have the most peaceful and enlightened people of the world. Consider the Dutch in Indonesia or the Belgians in the Congo.

You guys can continue to carp and criticize. I expect no less. But I would be interested in a real world example of a country that exercised the sort of power the U.S. has as wisely as long as generously and as successfully. Let’s agree to limit ourselves to facts in evidence. I know the predictions of the imminent collapse of the system the U.S. has created. I have heard the stories my whole life. I used to believe them.

Jack, that ‘I have heard ‘wolf’ cried all my life’ statement has a moral. When demise comes, no one will believe it until it is too late.

Thank you for the perfect example of why the US will pass right on by the point of no economic return with only a few acknowledging it for what it is. The GOP has been pushing us toward a 900 Billion dollar annual service or interest on our national debt. If Bush gets his way, it will become a reality.

The real dreamers are the ones who believe we can grow the economy out of a 10 + trillion national debt with a 900 billion annual interest rate coming out of taxpayer pockets and have everything come up roses.

Bugscrazy,
“China??
I think you should have picked a different scenario.”
David,
“Let’s say in 2015, China decides democracies in the world are antithetical to efficient management of life sustaining earth resources, and begins invading democracies which have high numbers of poverty stricken citizens, and high incarceration rates due to the lack of discipline and management of population resources and freedoms. How does that shoe fit, bugcrazy? Should what they believe entitle them invade preemptively all nations that threaten the earths environmental sustenance?”

David’s argument was extremely valid in regards to unprovoked justification for war. I am disappointed Bugscrazy that you couldn’t distinguish the difference or dodged the question completely for the simple fact that you know deep down that you are in the wrong. David, I love your debating skills.

It is really silly to imply that only now that the U.S. has shown the way will countries behave aggressively and/or claim to be acting preemptively against other countries. The only reason it would be hard to counter that argument is that your fingers would get tired typing in all the examples. Off hand, I can recall four times since World War II when China did it before we showed them how. You can still blame America. You just have to assume that they did this in anticipation that the U.S. would some day develop a doctrine of preemption.

We can use the same logic for all the acts of preemption and aggression that occurred before the U.S. was a country. For example, I hear that Alexander the Great felt it necessary to preemptively attack and conquer the Persian Empire because he knew that an unnamed country on a yet undiscovered continent would develop the justification a couple of thousand years later.

The discounting the crying wolf is just my experience so far. Predicting failure is an old tradition. Eventually the predictions are right, but whole generations can pass before that happens. I grew up with this stuff. We all did. Everybody did. Predicting the end of life as we know it is a tradition older than human history, but it is true that predicting the collapse specifically of the United States has only been going on since 1776. So when somebody predicts a market collapse, war or end of civilization, I just say, “Yes, I am sure you are right. Can you give me a reasonable estimate of when?”

The market will begin failing by 2019, and we’ll have a major depression before 2030. (That’s my bet).

Also, we didn’t wage a “pre-emptive” war. We waged a preventative war. Saddam wasn’t about to strike us. We thought he might do it some time in the future. That’s prevention. Pre-emption is when you see a guy walk into the bar with a gun and look around for you, so you take him out. Prevention is when your neighbor keeps making aggressive threats so you go over and beat the crap out of him. (or something like that…)

Any nation can at any time they want to invade, attack or whatever you want to want to call the aggresion, for whatever they want to justify their purpose and reasoning. History is replete with examples. As far as the US is concerned, we should always be strong enough to make the option costly for anyone who dares to challenge us.

“As far as the US is concerned, we should always be strong enough to make the option costly for anyone who dares to challenge us.”

But at the same time, we reserve the right to go kick ass somewhere else?

Sometime in the future, Amercia will learn, that the way to peace isn’t through intimidation.

Incidentally, the reasoning behind my timeline is: the whole world is facing a problem with taking care of their aging population, and the costs all hit around the same time (2018). At the rate of growth of China and India, the resulting squeeze on the energy market will have reached a pretty high peak around 2018. So, incidentally, I am pulling all of my money out of the stock market in 2016. I am thinking I will invest in something in Sweden. They have a great economy, despite the fact that their country is shrinking. I would move there, but I’m too lazy to learn a new language. Plus, I like my parents to come visit. Also, I hate cold weather.

So, in my personal opinion our priorities should be:

1) Alternative and sustainable sources of energy.
2) A workable health care system
3) A workable retirement system
4) a balanced budget that begins to pay off the debt now.

Which really should entail spending less on the military, but… like that will ever happen.

Jack, I think the U.S. has about matched Britian on it’s handling of power. We have good intentions, but we have problems with arms proliferation, with dividing native populations against each other, with torture, etc. etc.

But I completely agree with you that Europe should be ashamed of dropping the arms embargo. And I disagree with the views here that America should be responsible for the Europeans bad decisions.

But I do personally hold the U.S. to a higher standard than other countries. Mainly because I live here, and feel like it should represent me. I am apalled by the corruption in the French and Russian governments, and their arms proliferation issues, but I put more pressure on the U.S. when they do it (And I’m more shocked when the U.S. does it).

I feel like you have to fix your own house first. And the U.S. has done some pretty evil stuff that it needs to make amends for.

Like selling millions of tons of landmines and arming Osama bin Ladin, and ousting the democratically elected leaders of Iran and Iraq, and the CIA covertly supporting Saddam, and the Iran-Contra affair, and the propping up of dictatorships in South and Central America, etc. etc.

Julia

Leon,

Because I didn’t accept David’s scenario you claim I dodged the question?
If Bush would have said “We are going to go into Iraq to take out Hussein.” I would have been okay with it. If he had said it was to help free the people of Iraq from his rule * I would have been okay with that.
If he had said he was hoping it would help change the nations of the Middle East and get them all out from under tyrannical dictatorships * I would have thought he was nuts BUT did I know for sure things could not get better in that region? No.
I was one of the first around me to say * ‘He just better be right.’(about WMD’s) Turns out that he * and a whole lot of other people got it wrong. Bush gets most of the blame BUT not ALL of it.

PREVENTION -
Changing the course of things. Something should have been done years before. Not only there BUT here.
We should have been working our way towards freedom from Mideast oil.
Why didn’t we do this? It may have caused those governments and countries to collapse financially? Instead of paying for their welfare programs through oil money we would have had to send aid?
It may have been the better way to go. Starving them instead of shooting them.

Actually, the French have a long history of selling arms to China, going back to at least the 1970’s. Super Frelon helicopters were sold to the Navy and have since been produced locally, along with a version of the Dauphine. I believe they also provided China with the 100mm naval gun,as well as for technology for the CJ601 SSM, a version of the Exocet.

The “merchants of death” issue is an old saw, but wars are caused by political decisions and not weapons. It is true that Europe’s defense industries need orders rather more desperately than the US, but the root cause of the disagreement is the worsened US-EU relations, and the consistently anti-US position (on any issue) of Europe’s leftist politicians and EU bureaucrats.

After 1989, an arms embargo was imposed by both the US and the EU. Since then, both have gradually improved relations with China. It may be worth recalling, that since 1989, China has become a genuine industrial power, with a $80 Bn trade surplus with the US, in spite of the arms embargo.

The US objection to lifting the arms embargo is the fear that modern technology in China’s hands will increase US casualties in case we have to help defend Taiwan. The upside of this is that if the Europeans sell technology and weapons,we will at least know what the Chinese have, and the European technology is not all that good. Furthermore, the weapons may be used against Russia rather than the US, since the two countries are a long term threat to each other, at least until they realise that 19th Century imperialism is not just passe, but dysfunctional.

I think its wise to keep the embargo in place. I’m not going to dispute you on that, Jack. What I will say is all this moral indignation is about as useless as pigeonwings on an elephants back. I mean, what did we expect would happen when we sacrificed relations with Europe for this damned war we’re in?

European countries have served their own interests the way we have served our own. By cutting them lose, we’ve essentially liberated them to move in ways that might offend us, because there is no longer such a penalty for that offense, and they’re tired of taking orders from us anyways.

I agree its a bad situation, but it’s the way things rebalance themselves when you take America’s weight of the scale of politics in the region. I mean, what interest do they have in the Far East, after all this? We’re the ones who have to worry about that now, and they’re happy to let us deal with the burdens of empire.

Have you been to china lately?
China Surpasses U.S. in Commodity Consumption
China and India are in a mad dash for oil, gas, iron ore, scrap metal, and more. Japan is smashing its cars to ship steel to China. Countries like Brazil and Chile are shipping more to China in one day than they used to in one year.
The skyline in Shanghaiis being changed constantly. I counted six new skyscrapers going up within eyesight, But that’s merely a small slice of this 2,400 or so square miles city
China’s retail sales in December, the latest stats we’ve got, were 14% ahead of last year’s.
FOURTEEN percent! Here retailers would be jumping for joy get a forth of that.
I visited Nanjing Road in the center of Shanghai.
Its sales rival New York’s Fifth Avenue and Palm Beach’s Worth Avenue combined. Gucci, Versace, Cartier, Rolls Royce, BMW, Rolex, Louis Vitton, and dozens more high-end retailers line the street. None of them lack for customers.
Foreign investment climbed 10.7% in January. Over 3,500 foreign companies built stores and or factories in China in January of 2005. One month.

Commodities
Among the four most basic commodities — grains and meat, coal and steel — consumption in China has now eclipsed consumption in the United States.
GRAINS. China’s consumption hit 382 million tons in 2004. U.S. — 278 million tons.
MEATS. China bought 64 million tons of it in 2004. (Not clear if this is consumption or imports)
STEEL. China’s usage is now MORE than double ours …
OIL. China’s imports up 34% …in 04.
COAL. China’s consumption soared to 800 million tons. Easily exceeds the 574 million tons burned in U.S. China has lost control of coal prices. Their power producers just agreed to pay as much as 25% more for coal this year.

This should be a warning to any politician who thinks we can just raise taxes for social security or any thing else.
China is about to eat our lunch.
The Europeans could care less about security or human rights, they care about the almighty Euro.

George

You are right – obviously.

I don’t want to stray from topic too much, but your mention of China’s fantastic growth supports a point in an earlier part of this thread. Kyoto. China doesn’t have any obligations. Consumption of almost everything in China will dwarf else we do. Pollution in China is already horrendous. No solution to a world environmental problem is worth a bucket of spit if it leaves out China, India and Brazil.

Jack-
You’re right. But how much better is it, if it excludes us?

The issue of China is profound. China population is over 5 billion. That is more than 18 times our population. That means that the products for normal usage like vegetables, meat, oil, and on and on are to imported. The reason is they are far more lacking in ability to fulfill their citizens needs. They must import to just meet the basic needs. In the meantime, we prop up their economy with a very open trade policy which allows the Chinese government to re-allocate resources for their vast military build up. This is lunacy.

Much better to be outside something that is defective than inside. At best Kyoto gives us a false sense of progress and makes us believe that Al Gore type solutions will solve our problem. The world ostensibly cheers; our problems remain the same and it costs a lot. The first thing is not worth the paying the other two. Especially since the world never cheers anything the U.S. does for more than a week or two.

China’s population is around 1.3 billion, or around 4 times the size of ours. As far as China’s military build up, they haven’t really ramped it up that much. North Korea, with NO money, now there’s a ramp up.

Regardless of Kyoto, if something is unsustainable then, at some point, it will collapse. Using fossil fuels is unsustainble. We need to ramp up our search for sustainable alternative sources of energy that don’t have disposal problems. We need to ramp up funding of proven solution branches of the government like
http://www.ars.usda.gov/main/main.htm (Which is an AMAZING group of people). The ARS people are the kind that makes our nation mighty.

Just a couple of comments if I may, on the postings since 1 March:

1. China is doing very well, but the same was true of Japan until around 1990. Less than 20 years ago, lots of people were saying that Japan would own the world, the end was near for everyone else etc. For a variety of reasons it did not happen, and historically, China has faltered more often than Japan.

2. China is modernising its Armed Forces quite seriously. Although manpower is being reduced, there is a steady introduction of new equipment and technology, hence the Phalcon deal with Israel, the push for the cancellation of the arms embargo, and the purchases of ships and aircraft from Russia.

3. North Korea’s military structure, apart from the construction of missiles and nuclear weapons, has been almost static in the last few years. They have an enornmous army and a relatively large air force, but almost all of their equipment is obsolete.

4. Fossil fuels are probably sustainable for a very long time, the question is at what cost and what are the alternatives. There is a lot of politics and emotion to this issue - maybe it should be a separate topic.

Yes, the fossil fuel issue should be a seperate topic, I hope someone writes something about it.

As far as the China arms ramp-up. Yes, it is occuring, but relative to China’s growth, it’s not on the level of, say, the old soviet union. China is aggressively pursuing economic activities across the spectrum, and that is good news. Rather than fear-monger about China, this is the perfect opportunity to have a little faith, and encourage them to continue competing with us on the economic front, rather than getting too wrapped up in the arms race issue. (again, though, it’s poor policy for the Europeans to drop the arms embargo. Just as it is poor policy for the United States to continue supporting arms suppliers to the degree that we do, with the result of people like Osama)

As far as North Korea, I brought it up more to illustrate that we can worry about giving China wealth, but it hardly matters when an economic black hole like North Korea can support such a military.

The bottom line is that stable economies based on the skills of its citizens don’t war on each other. If we want peace, the world needs to be educated. The world does not get educated through arms sales and fighting.

“China is modernising its Armed Forces quite seriously. Although manpower is being reduced, there is a steady introduction of new equipment and technology, hence the Phalcon deal with Israel, the push for the cancellation of the arms embargo, and the purchases of ships and aircraft from Russia.”

Jack and Charles,

I don’t think that you will agree, but I think that China will bury the U.S.. Not with arms, but with goods on the open market.

With the resources and the potential cheap labor pool that is modern China, how long do you think it will take them to bring us to our knees with free trade?

Julie,

Don’t know what US support for arms suppliers has to do with people such as bin Laden. His case is probably more a case of parental neglect, too much money too soon, and falling into bad company early in his life. There are lots of people like that in the Middle East, unfortunately, this one was more effective than most. As for the rest,China is neither a stable economy nor a democracy. It does have a rapidly growing economy,but there are massive internal weaknesses as well (especially its banking system) and they may use Taiwan or some other issue to divert attention from internal problems.

Rocky, time will tell whether you are right, but many people said the same thing about Japan and even Germany in the 1980’s. They were wrong. We still import a lot of goods from these countries and have a trade deficit with them, but without any noticeably adverse impact on our economy: US unemployment is the same as Japan’s and half as much as Germany’s in percentage terms.

Charles,

Neither of those countries had the population base of China. They also needed to import most of their raw materials, China does not.

Charles,

I just heard on Bill Bennet, that China is buying up all of the world’s scrap steel.

I wonder what they might want to use that for.

Rocky,

You are perfectly right, China has a much larger population than any other country, but that does not mean all that much in a modern economy. As a practical matter, much of China’s population is still living at the subsistence level, while a relatively small proportion is in the modern cities. In fact, people need gov’t permission to move to the cities, and this is not easily given, so they have internal illegal immigration from the countryside to the cities. Meanwhile, Germany with a population that’s 5% of China’s has a larger GDP than China.

As for scrapmetal, they are buying it to make steel. China is a major steel producer. In the 1920’s and 1930’s, Japan was a major buyer of American scrapmetal. Some of the Chinese steel will be used for military purposes, partly because nobody builds battleships and heavy cruisers any more, but mainly because they need steel for civilian uses.

Great article out by Friedman:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/opinion/06friedman.html?hp

As usual, I agree with his points.

Charles, in reference to Osama, I’m referring to us training and arming him in order to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda’s original founders were all members of that team. As far as I know, Osama still uses the contacts he got from those days in order to get arms for his group. We invested 2 billion dollars in arms in Afghanistan. These arms were used in the civil war that followed.

A couple of legilators back then spoke up and said they thought it might be a bad idea to arm these guys (Specifically, they didn’t like us giving them Stingers). But the hawks won out.

As for Europe, I wholeheartedly agree with Friedman’s statement “If Europe wants to go pacifist, that’s fine. But there is nothing worse than a pacifist that sells arms.”

If the red side wants to join in with me and condemn arm sales, I’m glad to have them on my side.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_trade
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,756495,00.html

And a fairly technical article outlining U.S. arms sales and it’s role in worldwide politics, including the cases where American servicemen fight those who were supplied by American arms manufacturers. (contains info on Afghanistan.)

http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/wawrep.html#transfers

Julia

Julia,

You’re quite right about the US arming the Afghans against the USSR. It was a good policy, the Afghans deserved self-determination as much as any other people, and it worked. Once they received portable SAM’s (and these were a critical variable), they fought the Soviets to a stand still, and then Gorbachev realized that it was time to go.

I don’t know whether bin-Laden was among those trained by the US, and I am not sure if it matters. I do remember, however, seeing ads in Saudi papers as early as 1981, asking people to donate money to help the fighters in Afghanistan.

After the Russians withdrew, they tried to keep a puppet government in place, but it was later overthrown, and Afghanistan reverted to its usual state: i.e. a country in name only, awash with arms, and with a central government that had only a tenuous control (if any) over the provinces. The next attempt at consolidation was by the Taliban, but that was only partly successful, and they were easily overthrown once their opponents began to receive support from the US.

As any war. the end of the war against the Soviets left lots of well trained veterans with nothing to do, and many of them showed up later in the Balkans, Lebanon, Iraq, etc. Unfortunately, this lot was contaminated by a radical version of Islam. This could not be foreseen in the 1980’s, but even so, the USSR was arguably a bigger threat than Islamic fundamentalism, the Iranian version of which appeared to be manageable at the time.

Re Friedman: his comment is pretty funny, but Europe will go ahead and sell all the same.

Here’s the quotes from the article (written pre 9/11, incidentally):

Beginning during the late 1970s under the Carter Administration and accelerating during the 1980s under the Reagan Administration, the United States supplied rebel factions in Afghanistan with an estimated $2 billion in covert military assistance.[39] This effort has been widely cited as one of the great success stories of the Reagan Doctrine of arming anticommunist rebels, and there is no question that U.S. weapons supplies contributed to the ability of Afghan guerrilla fighters to drive Soviet forces out of their country. Unfortunately, the longer term consequences of U.S. arms supplies to Afghan forces have been far more problematic. Since Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan in February 1989, U.S. weapons have helped to sustain a vicious civil war amongst competing rebel organizations inside Afghanistan. In addition, systems supplied to the Afghan factions for purposes of fighting off Soviet forces are now being resold on the international market, turning up in conflicts where they were never intended to be used.

As Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute has noted, “[e]ven before they ousted the Soviet-backed government from power in April 1992 feuding mujahadin guerrilla units spent almost as much time battling each other as they did fighting the communists.” Far from setting the stage for a period of peaceful reconstruction and reconciliation, the fighting inside Afghanistan actually intensified after the Soviet-supported regime was overthrown — 2,000 people were killed in one three week period in August of 1992, and by the spring of 1994 600,000 people had been displaced from the capital city of Kabul. Much of the equipment used on each side of the Afghan civil war comes from stocks supplied to the various rebel factions by the CIA during the 1980s.[40]

The violence sparked by U.S. weapons and training to the Afghan rebel movements extends far beyond Afghanistan. An Algerian government official has described the existence of a “floating army” of Islamic fundamentalist fighters who received weapons and training in Afghanistan starting in the 1980s, and are now mounting terrorist attacks on U.S.-backed governments in Algeria, Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.[41] This international network of armed Islamic fundamentalists that the CIA helped to create has struck in the United States as well: two of the men convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center had received weapons and explosives training from CIA-backed rebels in Afghanistan prior to their attack in New York. And these two men may not be the only examples of U.S. covert aid backfiring. According to David Whipple, the former head of counterterrorism at the CIA, “some of the people who are actual or potential terrorists in this country are former guerrilla fighters in Afghanistan.” And it now appears that the suspects in the recent murders of several U.S. embassy employees in Karachi, Pakistan are also suspected of having ties to the CIA’s Afghan weapons pipeline.[42]

One of the most dangerous lingering side effects of the CIA’s Afghan weapons trafficking has been the proliferation of U.S.-built Stinger missiles. The Stinger, a shoulder-fired antiaircraft missile that can be used to shoot down anything from a fighter plane to a civilian airliner, has been described by Senator Dennis DeConcini as “the ultimate terrorist weapon.”[43] Afghan rebel commanders have been putting their U.S.-supplied Stingers up for sale to the highest bidder in the international arms bazaar, and there have been reports that some of the weapons have now turned up in such unlikely places as Iran, Libya, Qatar, and North Korea.[44] The CIA was so disturbed by these reports that they put up $65 million for a Stinger “buyback” plan; so far the program has only succeeded in driving up the price that Afghan forces can get for the missiles to two to three times their original price, while recovering very few of the missiles.[45] The shortsighted attitudes of U.S. policymakers involved in creating the Afghan weapons pipeline were summarized by Edward Juchniewicz, the CIA’s associate director for covert operations during the Reagan Administration:

“The Iranians have already captured or otherwise obtained some Stingers and continue to accumulate them. I can understand why people are exercised. I wouldn’t want one to hit the airplane I’m on …[but] one makes the assumption when one goes to battle that one’s equipment will be captured by the enemy. So unfortunately, we lost some Stingers, and now our enemy has one of our best weapons.”[46]
What Juchniewicz fails to acknowledge is that the Stingers that were transferred to Iran were not captured by an enemy in battle; they were provided to Iran by Afghan rebel forces that had been considered friends of the United States.

While the spread of U.S.-supplied Stinger missiles poses an ongoing threat because of their possible role in augmenting the capabilities of terrorist organizations, the tens of thousands of tons of light weaponry that the CIA funneled to Afghan factions through its contacts in Pakistani intelligence services may pose an even more serious risk to the stability of South Asia. Analysts of the Afghan conflict have reported that during the 1980s the United States purchased literally hundreds of thousands of combat rifles from such diverse sources as China, Turkey, Egypt, and Israel and passed them on to Afghan rebel groups.[47] However, as British researcher Chris Smith has noted, many of these weapons were siphoned off along the way, because the Afghan pipeline was “extremely badly organized and poorly thought out,” to the point that it “leaked profusely and virtually ruptured.” As a result, the Northwest Frontier area of Pakistan is dotted with a series of open air weapons marts that are doing a brisk business reselling weapons that were originally intended to go to Afghan rebel forces. Pakistani intelligence officials have been running guns to Islamic fundamentalist forces in the Indian province of Kashmir, increasing the level of violence of that conflict and undermining efforts to encourage India and Pakistan to come to a diplomatic resolution of the Kashmir issue. Sikh militants fighting in the Punjab region of India have large quantities of Chinese Type 56 assault rifles of the kind that were supplied in large numbers by the CIA to the Afghan war, indicating a likely spillover of the Afghan pipeline into this conflict as well. U.S.-supplied weapons have also been utilized by Islamic fundamentalist fighters engaged in a civil war against Russian-backed government in the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan.[48]

While I appreciate the fact that you state that we did right by Afghanistan by arming them to defeat the Soviets… the result was factional violence that killed more people, and destroyed more of the country than rule under the soviets did. Give me freedom… so that women can be raped, murdered, the country can be pillaged, and no one is safe? So that Osama bin Ladin could strike the World Trade Center? So the violence in Kashmir could be escalted?

If evil organizations in charge of Afghanistan is so bad, then why did we leave the Taliban alone? Small dictators are none of are business, but big dictators are? Where’s the moral high ground there?

I really see no positive developments from the Afghanis winning their “freedom” from the Soviets. In fact, since Afghanistan is not a very wealthy country, the economic suction it would have placed on the USSR might have made the USSR fold sooner.

I know it is anethema to say that communism (or dictatorship) is preferable to decades of anarchy… however, I think it probably is preferable. Stable democracy is even more preferable, of course.

As an example, would you have rather lived under the King of England in the 700’s or, in the lawless hinterlands of Europe at the time? Personally, I’d rather have a king, than be dealing with a bunch of crazy bandits and knights. Just my two cents.

Imagine if we had stabilized Afghanistan back when we helped them “throw off the yoke of Communism.” I guess it’s a good thing we repeated the “freeing the Afghanis” again 30 years later. Hopefully, since we’re actually doing some reconstruction this time around, we might not have to repeat the process again in 2035.

Julia

Screwed up the italics. The quote ends at that [48] bit. the rest is my commentary.
Julia

Julia,

This is getting interesting. My comments are as follows:

1. The Russians invaded Afghanistan in December 1978 or 1979, just before or after the US Ambassador to Afghanistan was murdered by pro-Soviet locals. The Carter administration did not do much for the resistance, not the least because it’s foreign policy was essentially one of appeasement. The real change came with the Reagan Adminstration and even then it was not easy to overcome the resistance of the foreign policy establishment.

2. As your source states, the effect of the US weapons after 1992 was “problematic” but their effect in getting the Soveits out was real and remains undisputed. What happened afterwards comes under the Law of Unintended Consequences; a lot of things happen because of that law.

3. It’s true that the Afghans were feuding before and after the expulsion of the Soviets, but they have been feuding at least ever since Western historians noticed Afghanistan and this is not going to change in the near future. Afghanistan is not a real country by anyone’s definition, but in the XIX Century the tribal leaders realised they had to have someone deal with their neighbors and established a kingdom, but with the king only as a spokesman and with central authority very much limited. If the factions did not have US-supplied weapons, they would be using other weapons, the country has always been awash with light arms. I was in Afghanistan in the early 1970’s and weapons were sold on the streets, in market places, etc. These were mostly British and Russian, but as the Afghans were excellent gunsmiths, you had to look pretty closely to see which rifle was locally made and which was a genuine import. Shops for tourists had pre-1900 rifles and pistols for sale with an incredible variety of types; it was a paradise for gun collectors.

3. I think the Stinger issue is overplayed. Everything you mention is true, but the missiles supplied to the Afghans are now at least 15 years old and they were the early model in any case. Many probably still function, but they are past their shelve life and have not been much of a problem anywhere. There are probably a lot more SA7’s and SA14’s loose, but liberals and Democrats aren’t interested in these.

4. We left the Taliban alone because they came to power during the Clinton administration; need one say more?

5. I think it would have been interesting to try to “stabilize” Afghanistan after 1989, but the US was tied up with Panama, the collapse of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact and then Kuwait, and in 1992, Clinton was elected President and that led to a dysfunctional US foreign policy. My personal opinion is that no foreigner will ever “stabilize” Afghanistan; the Afghans will have to realise sooner or later that tribalism and religious primitivism have their disadvantages and then go on to something better. Meanwhile, as long as they keep their fighting within Afghanistan, they are not doing anyone any harm.

6. I am not sure if I see the point of your analogy re England in 700. The country was split into several kingdoms; we don’t know much about it, but I doubt if it was any worse or better than France (remember Charles Martel?) or Italy at the time, though probably better than Germany. All these countries were Christian though, and this made a big difference in the subsequent centuries.

“The Russians invaded Afghanistan in December 1978 or 1979, just before or after the US Ambassador to Afghanistan was murdered by pro-Soviet locals. The Carter administration did not do much for the resistance, not the least because it’s foreign policy was essentially one of appeasement.”

Charles,

I would submit that Carter was kind of busy at the time. Between the Iran Hostage thing, Running for President (but not actively, rose garden thing), and keeping our athletes out of the Summer Olympics, I’d say his plate was pretty full.

“We left the Taliban alone because they came to power during the Clinton administration; need one say more?”

When the Talliban came to power, I dont think that they openly displayed any threat to America, other than destroying priceless millenia old Buddhist cliff carvings. They also closed down Afghanistan’s opium trade.

I find your point #5 quite interesting as you think that Panama was such a great threat to the American way of life. You’re joking right? I see Panama as just another step in America’s failed drug war, and the taking down of one of our favorite CIA despots. I also think that it was the first strike in America’s strategy of
pre-emption.

Even though we’re off the main board, I hope you two will stick around.

Charles,

1) I don’t disagree that whenever we have tried appeasing despots, we have gotten bad results. But I feel that Reagan demonstrated in the Phillipinnes that you don’t necesarrily have to go to the other extreme and engage yourself in battle. I think we have a long history of going from one side to the other. Reagan often appeased dictators to his detriment, and Carter had the same problem. I agree that you have to be consistent about not doing anything that props up bad people.

In re 2: I don’t think we can call it a law of unintended consequences. If you look over our experience with throwing out dictators (or the experience of Britian or France), there are always certain things that happen afterwards. I haven’t done enough research to see what is cheaper: An Afghanistan rebellion, A China economic invasion, or a Cold War, or a German invastion with a Marshall plan (which I feel like are the basic four options in a nutshell) I lean towards the model of the Chinese economic war, because it feels easier and cheaper to me (and less dangerous). I absolutely, however, think that the most expensive, and most damaging thing we can do, is to help overthrow a government and then take off (i.e. Afghanistan). I think the 9/11 strikes should be counted as a cost of the Afghanistan soviet conflict. Even if “unintended” it’s a result of our actions there, and given the historical record, it’s typical that arming a rebellion breeds terrorism. If we don’t think in the long term, then we will continue fighting the same battles over and over again. And we do.

3. I would be interested in them, if I knew what they were. We are shaped by what is reported. I don’t think legislators do much investigating, and journalists are only so smart. A lot of stuff gets lost because people don’t know any better. (including me) In any case, my highest munition concern these days is the caches in Iraq. I’m still miffed that no one saw fit to investigate the Pentagon’s “top 50 sites to secure list” to see what was secured and what wasn’t. I think the majority were’nt secured. In any case, 500 tons of munitions just lying around in the desert? That’s just a problem waiting to happen. Their doing what they can to blow up as much as they can…. but still, what a nightmare. (as an aside: I would like to be more knowledgeable about shelf life issues. Specifically nuclear weapon shelf life issues. I think I’d be calmer if I understood it better.)

4.) I agree with Rocky. We didn’t bother with the Taliban because they weren’t a national threat, and they weren’t as overtly bad as old Slobodan. And Clinton nearly had a military coup on his hand with the Bosnian conflict as it was, because his military men thought that going into conflicts that didn’t directly threaten american interests was immoral. They felt the same way about Somalia. So it’s not that Clinton is spineless, it’s that the Joint Chiefs do not like putting their men at risk unless there is a percieved threat to U.S. interests. Hence… why Bush isn’t doing much about Sudan.

5. I think that the army reconstruction campaign in the Zayun province (capital Qalat) is doing a good job. I think that the local reaction force there after the initial invasion showed signs of promise. We spend more money on arming third world countries than we do on aiding those countries. We have plans to invade every country, plans that we spend 3 years creating, but we don’t have long term plans for infrastructure stabilization. The Special Forces can be launched within a week in order to kill someone at any area of the world. Do we have a Special reconstruction force? No. It takes months (and years) to get individuals out in order to do stabilizing operations. The War College has complained about it for years. They’ve been saying that we need to organize ourselves, and plan for what we do after the conflict is over, b/c invariably the army “ends up holding the sack of shit” (their words). So. That’s my thoughts.

6. Basically, the European hinterlands were like Afghanistan. No rule of law, just random people wandering around and mugging you, and knights raping your daughters. If you happened to live on a fiefdom, life was more stable, but you had to deal with the whims of a dictator.

As an addendum, even though Afghanistan had seen conflict for thousands of years, it had never before seen the physical property destruction, and economic damage that occured after the fall of the Soviets. Truly, the last 20 years for Afghanistan have been on the level of the desturction it saw under the Kahns.

Julia

Rocky,

I agree that we are going off on all sorts of tangents, glad you find it interesting. About your comments:

1. The Iran hostage thing was of Carter’s own doing, he convinced/forced the Shah not to fight Khomeini’s mob and that turned a secular Moslemn state in the ME into a fundamentalist one ruled by religious primitives with a rabid hatred of the West in general, and the US in particular. Carter then screwed up the hostage liberation attempt by aborting it when it ran into some trouble due to weather. That’s a decision he should have left to the people on the spot who in fact wanted to continue.

2. Keeping the athletes out was his response to Afghanistan and Poland. It’s not the sort of thing that takes a long time. Afghanistan was part of a pattern of Soviet agression starting with Somalia, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, establishing naval bases in the Red Sea, in Vietnam, etc. Meanwhile, US forces were being reduced and the remaining units became “hollowed out” due to the absence of sufficient funds for training and spare parts. The USSR was the primary threat and Carter usually “chickened out” in confrontations. Four more years of that probably would have lost us the Cold War.

3. Panama was not a threat to the American way of life, but it was a danger to free access to the Canal, plus a drug haven, plus close Cuban connections, etc. I think the first preemptive strike was Grenada and not Panama.

Julia,

You again raised a lot of points, so I am afraid I will have to comment at some length:

1. The Philippines was not like the other countries, so suasion/pressure was enough. It’s not always that easy, and the governments that followned, albeit democratic, were not necessarily less corrupt or successful. Mrs. Marcos vs. Mrs Aquino was really a triumph of morality over competence. The Philippines is just now starting to make real progress, but the removal of Mrs Marcos was an unavoidable first step.

2. On appeasing dictators: depends on the situation. In foreign affairs you have to deal with what there is in the pursuit of your foreign policy objectives. Until the end of the Cold War, the policy objective was to contain the USSR and to block its attempts to expand. The Carter Administration failed to do this. In any case, in the Cold War, it was sensible to use dictators if they were useful, just as it was sensible to have the USSR as an ally against Germany in WWII, in spite of the well known crimes against humanity that were committed by the USSR even before 1941. Once the Cold War was over, the US could revert to “messianic” foreign policy objectives, such as the promotion of freedom and democracy, in the process of dealing with the relatively minor, but highly emotional threat of terrorism. It’s working: elections in Iraq, Libya turning over its nucleear weapons project to the US, Lebanon, Egypt,etc.

3. I don’t understand your second point. Britain and France have usually gotten along pretty well with dictators, they threw them out when they overstepped certain lines. However, this was always in their former colonies, and their relationship with these has been quite different from the US’s (with the possible exception of the Philippines).

I don’t have any problems with China exporting to the US and becoming an industrial power. This will tame them more than anything else, and meanwhile US consumers have access to cheaper goods, more competition against Japan, Taiwan, etc. It will be a long time, if ever, until China becomes a real military threat to the US. I think if the US and Europe had followed a different commercial policy towards Japan in the 1920’s and 1930’s, Japan would have developed very differently and we might never have had Pearl Harbor.

I don’t think there is any connection between the expulsion of the USSR from Afghanistan and 9/11. Osama bin Laden was a disturbed young man even when he was living in London. If he had not gone to Afghanistan, he would probably have gone to the Hezbollah in Lebanon or joined some Palestinian fringe group. The results would have been the same, unless he would have been shot in a skirmish.

4. On munitions, 500 tons is not that much, especially in Iraq. The country was full of arms dumps, some concealed, others not. The Australians actually found dozens of modern jet fighters buried in the desert,and if the wind had blown the other way, perhaps they would still be there.

With regards to shelf life, all explosives and nuclear weapons have them, sort of like anti-biotics. Small arms ammo is very stable, you can fire 50 year old rounds usually. Artillery ammo is trickier. With guided weapons the problem is not so much the warhead as the electronics: corrosion, dead batteries causing damage, physical damage during movement etc. These weapons have to be maintained on a regular basis. If they are, and damaged parts are replaced, they can last forever. Nuclear weapons need to be filled up with tritinium in order to remain effective - I have no idea why, but this is not something you can do in a garage. Theri warheads also lose effectivness with time (nuclear half life) but that takes a while. If they don’t function properly, nuclear bombs may not go off at all, or just their explosive components might, in which case you have a nuclear rubbish bomb that is order of magnitude less lethal than the real thing.

5. I don’t think that there was any threat of military coup when the US intervened in Bosnia (with NATO). Bosnia was the failure of Europe and the UN to deal with Milosevich. By the time NATO rolled 300000 civilians had been killed in Bosnia and Croatia. The US military objected to the rules of engagement (they were right) and were still under the effect of Somalia where a US Ranger company was cut to pieces because of the incompetence and turpitude of the UN command,and Clinton’s decision not to allow the US forces to have tanks with them when they went into Somalia. Those tanks would have saved the Ranger company.

6. Special Forces don’t need a week to get going, they can be anywhere in the world in 24 hours or less with full equipment. Reconstruction can be also done quickly: Iraq now has more electricity than it had under Saddam Hussein. The US civil affairs units and the contractors have done a terrific job in a country whose infrastructure was ramshackle even before 2003. The War College complaints are not about hardware but the absence of political direction on how occupied areas should be governed. One model would be occupation of Germany and Italy in WWII where US civil affairs units became the government and did very well. I don’t know whether or not that would have worked in Iraq, but putting the State Department in charge of anything is usually a mistake.

7. Europe in 700 was not like Afghanistan. There were towns at least in Western Europe and there were many small kingdoms; feudalism came later, knights did not exist, although there was usually some kind of an equivalent to local nobility, and in Italy they were adopting the old Roman titles.Law and order was pretty chancy everywhere well into the Middle Ages. Afghanistan has been a violent country of feuds, but these have been highly stylised and it’s likely that Afgahnistan around 700 was a safer place Germany.

I am off on a business trip for the the next three days and probably will not be e-mailing, but I will look forward to continuing over the weekend or next week.

1. And yet, almost the same formula worked in South Korea.

3. Your point about Japan is my precise point. I also think we may have avoided Hitler if we had enacted economic integration and infrastructure repair to Germany after World War I. Sanctions AND targeted boosting of economy through business investment is the long term solution, IMHO.

Osama Bin Ladin may have been disturbed, but he didn’t have connections to arms sellers, and 1st World training in how to defeat a superpower, until we gave it to him.He’s not funding this stuff out of his pocket, his funding this through the organization he built in AFghanistan.

4. You’re right, 500 tons is not a lot. The number is so big, I thought I remembered it wrong, the real figure is 600,000 tons: http://www.mountvernonnews.com/local/092804/iraq.html

5. The Joint Chiefs did not think it was their business to get involved in Bosnia. They certainly did everything they could to make sure we didn’t do anything in Rwanda (see Prudence Bushnell’s reports). And they didn’t want to go into Somalia in the first place. It’s more about fearing a Vietnam all over again: don’t risk American servicemen’s lives unless you have an exit plan, and unless national interests are at stake. Now, about things going awry, you are right, once our armed forces are commited, the JC does everything it can to do it right, and if things go wrong it usually has to do with political machinations.

6. Iraq does not have more electricity than it did under Saddam. There have been a few spikes, but only a few. We’re still behind where the system was in 2002, but we’re catching up. The infrastructure was ramshackle because the U.S. (among others) refused to allow repair projects to be authorized (just read a U.N. report, or a U.S. report for that matter) The State Department was NOT put in charge, the DOD was in charge for the first year. And your point about the War College complaints IS my point. We had highly organized civil affairs units after World War II that we then disbanded. The reason the Special Forces can react so quickly is because we’ve already done the pre-planning so that the process is simple to enact. Hence, the Zayun province had Special Forces out to kill someone within weeks, and then the repair forces came in two years later. (which is TYPICAL). We need to put in place the kind of organization that we have for military action into repair action. The Army CAN do this, and it DOES do this, but the times it has been effective is when the officers in charge engage in independent thinkign, and do it themselves. THat’s not organization. That’s winging it. And that’s why they say “holding the bag of shit.” If we put a little time in preparing for this stuff, the Army could do a great job, I”m sure.

7. Alright, I’m just making a generalized observation that democracy is better than dictatorship is better than anarchy. Anarchy is really dangerous and scary. I wouldn’t participate in a rebellion if I knew all I would get as the prize was anarchy. That was all I was trying to say. Afghanistan got anarchy as its prize for overthrowing the Soviets. For Afghanistan’s situation, this was the ASSURED result. The only reason they didn’t get anarchy or dictatorship (again) this time around, is because we’re there to bring a nominal semblance of stability to the place. (Although there’s some dictatorships going on outside the capital).

Ramping up our agricultural infrastructure projects and waging a shock and awe agricultural campaign in Afghanistan WILL prevent it from turning into a narco-state (2 billion into agriculture in one year should do it). Otherwise, in three years, it’s gonig to be so entrenched it will require armed action to root out.

But we’re going to pull another Columbia it looks like, and it’s a shame, because it’s more expensive to mop it up later, than to nip it in the bud now.

Julia

I think we are starting to repeat our arguements. So, briefly:

1. Germqany did not read reconstruction after WWI, it was not damaged, when the war ended there were no foreign troops on German soil. The problem was reparations, Versailles, and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, Memel, Danzig, tariff barriers. It all would have been much worse without the US Dawes Plan.

2. Korea was mostly an internal show, the US did not have all thât muh to do with it.

Will continue later.

Charles

I am back; just a few more comments:

1. Bin Laden was not trained on how to defeat a world power, he just had some infantry and weapons training, presumably with emphasis on irregular warfare. He could have had that training from many other organisations or countries, or could have hired his own trainer. You are right about his funding sources, but his own money was the seed capital, a poor man could not have done it bin Laden’s way.

2. The Joint Chiefs were right about Bosnia and Somalia and Vietnam, but since in the US the military is always subordinate to civilian power, they executed the political decisions to the best of their ability. The usual objections of the US military is that they need time for a supply buildup (the obsession with logistics goes back to the Civil War) and that they want to know what is the political objective of the war (your exit strategy?) Not an unreasonable desire, if only for planning purposes, but questions like that make politicians uncomfortable, especially those just trying to wing it to the next election on the basis of the latest polls.

3. Of course, winging it is also known as initiative in the military and all good officers and even NCO’s are supposed to be able to exercise it. Civil affairs and actions vary from country to country, village to village, and that’s fine as long as that is being done in the pursuit of a common objective. Incidentally, the Cavil Affairs units were not all disbanded after WWII, but they went in the reserves and NG and that is where most of them still are. They are poart of the special Operations Command, along psywar operation units, and the SF units.

4. In Afghanistan there was always chaos and anarchy by our standards. Stability, if any, has been at the clan/tribal level and the tribes united normally only to fight against a foreign enemy, e.g. the British in the XIX Century. When there were no foreigners to fight, they fight among each other. It’s a different way of life, and change will be slow regadless of the level or source of aid.

1. Osama MIGHT have become an organized terrorist by other methods, but he still actually became one by being trained by us.

2. Agreed.

3. I didn’t know they were incorporated into other units. However, from reading military papers, I get the impression that not a lot of organization goes into “nation building”. They certainly complain about it a lot. Winging it is good policy, but it’s better to have an organized, efficient, planning team, and then wing it when things go wrong. Not start off by winging it. The military branch has an organized war-making infrastructure. There is no equivalent for infrastructure or economic development invasion (for lack of a better term)

4. Afghanistan has fluxed through time. The fact that the flux in the last twenty years destroyed infrastructure that existed for thousands of years exhibits a period of severe increased instability.

as to previous comments:

1. Got it. I think we’re in agreement. Germany devastation was economic in nature. Woodrow didn’t want reparations, if he’d had his way, maybe there wouldn’t have been WWII (that’s what I meant).

2. Reagan reacted to South Korea in much the same way as he did with the Phillippines. It was made clear that there would be no help from us, and was another reason for him to step down and allow democracy in. The Phillipines and South Korea turned democratic primarily by the will of their people. The U.S., by supporting their dictators, was certainly not helping move the process forward, and it is interesting that when the U.S. stated up-front that it would not support dictators, that both stepped down. While secondary in nature, it still had an immediate effect.

It may not always work, but it’s something to pay attention to.

Julia

As Friedman said today:
This “Baghdad spring” will not blossom into sustainable democracy in any of these Arab states without a broader middle class and civil society institutions to support it. For too long, U.S. foreign policy was based on buying stability in the Arab world by supporting dictators, who destroyed all the independent press, political parties, unions, real private sector and civil society in their countries - everything except the mosque. Iraq is the starkest example of this, which is why democratization there will take time.