Various and Sundry

Was I being overly pessimistic about the future of NATO?  Charles Kupchan also isn't very optimistic: The ugly American Salon.com 06/02/04.  Bush flies to Europe this week.  It will be interesting to see how he is received.  Kupchan's article is a good brief summary of the troubles of the NATO alliance, which he says "has been stretched to the breaking point."  He also says that the European democracies have "no intention whatsoever of bailing [Bush] out of the quagmire in Iraq."  (To toot my own horn a bit, this will not be a total surprise to regular readers of Old Hickory's Weblog.) 

The "neoconservatives" have gotten quite a bit of attention lately.  Justifiably so, since their vision of American unilateralism has dominated this Bush administration.  One of my favorites on them is The -Ism That Failed by John Patrick Diggins American Prospect Dec 2003.  Diggins focuses on how the neocons took an oversimplified, highly ideological view of the Cold War, which led them to uncritically embrace the jihadists in Afghanistan with little practical consideration of the longer-term consequences.  He also challenges the one-sided emphasis among the neocons on the role of the Reagan-era arms race in bringing about the fall of the USSR:

The neoconservatives would have us believe that the fall of communism was a result of realpolitik and that America emerged victorious because it had the wealth with which to develop sophisticated weapons, especially "Star Wars." But why should that program have made a difference when Reagan assured Gorbachev again and again that it had no offensive capacity? According to Anatoly Dobrynin in his memoir, In Confidence, U.S. military spending was far less crucial than Reagan's coming to realize the importance of establishing good relations with Russia, a move that enabled Gorbachev to embark upon "new thinking" (novoe mishleniye) and launch his reforms. Reagan himself, in his autobiography, An American Life, writes of changing his mind about the "evil empire" upon visiting Moscow for a summit in May 1988. The Soviet citizens, he wrote, were "indistinguishable from people I had seen all my life on the countless streets in America." While Reagan was changing his mind, that of the neoconservative intellectual remained as fixed as an irrefutable error. As late as 1990, the historian Richard Pipes told Commentary's readers that the Soviet Union may not be breaking up but cracking down. Reagan's willingness to negotiate with Russia, meanwhile, sounds pretty much like what liberals had been advocating all along.

Gen. Wesley Clark explors the implications of this misreading of recent history by the neocons in Broken Engagement Washington Monthly May 2004.  He lists several faults of the favorite neocon ideological version of the end of the USSR.  He reminds us that US policy toward the Soviet Union was based on containment, and that "we never directly invaded any nation under Soviet control."  Cultural engagement with people in the Soviet bloc, including economic relations, was always an important part of containment.  Clark writes, "it would be the demand of native people, not military intervention from the West, that would extend democrcy's reach eastward."

Rising Soviet defense spending aimed at competing with the United States may have hastened the economic decline in the Soviet Union, helped convince the Russian generals that they couldn't compete with U.S. military technology, and strengthened Gorbachev's hand as he pushed for glasnost. But this end-game challenge of Reagan's would have been ineffective had 40 years of patient Western containment and engagement not helped undermine the legitimacy of the Communist regime in the eyes of its subjects. It was popular discontent with economic, social, and political progress, and people's recognition of an appealing alternative system, that finished off the repressive regimes of Eastern Europe, and eventually the whole Soviet Union. No Western threat of force or military occupation forced their collapse. Indeed, subsequent examination by Germany's Bundeswehr has shown that the East German military remained a disciplined conscript organization that could have effectively responded to Western intervention. But these governments were unable to resist focused, strongly-articulated popular will.

Clark uses this lessons to caution that the kind of predominantly military response to threats from the Muslim world favored by neoconservative ideologues will not be adequate.

Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay (Shooting First AmericanProgress.org 05/30/04) think that "the doctrine of preemption [preventive war] has fallen on hard times. Far from demonstrating the principle's effectiveness, the Iraq war and its aftermath have ultimately underscored its limits."

Philip Kennicott reminds us that torture in the gulag is not winning sympathy for America or admirers of the US version of democracy and world order: A Wretched New Picture of America Washington Post 05/05/04.

Helen Cobban argues for Zero-tolerance on torture: How hard is that? Christian Science Monitor 06/02/04.  At here Weblog, she also uses the term "gulag" to describe the string of detention centers the Bush administration has established where extralegal measure can be applied.

Jessica Stern, one of the leading US authorities on terrorism, has some useful thoughts on the flexibility of even a highly religious, fanatically devout group like al-Qaeda:  The Protean Enemy Foreign Affairs July/Aug 2003.  It refreshing but sobering to read about the actual terrorist threat.  For instance, she notes that the "triborder region of South America has become the world's new Libya, a place where torrists with widely disparate ideologies - Marxist Colombian rebels, American white supremacists, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other - meet to swap tradecraft.  Authorities now worry that the more sophisticated groups will invite the American radical to help them."  And she observes:

Al Qaeda seems to have learned that in order to evade detection in the West, it must adopt some of the qualities of a "virtual network": a style of organization used by American right-wing extremists for operating in environments (such as the United States) that have effective law enforcement agencies. American antigovernment groups refer to this style as "leaderless resistance." The idea was popularized by Louis Beam, the self-described ambassador-at-large, staff propagandist, and "computer terrorist to the Chosen" for Aryan Nations, an American neo-Nazi group.

She notes that Islamic radicals also managed to team up with an Indian gangster and his mob.  She mentions that Jamaat ul-Fuqra is thought to be recruiting in US prisons.  "The groups functions much like a cult in the United States; members live in poverty in compounds, some of which are heavily armed."  The late journalist Daniel Pearl was trying to interview the leader of Jamaat ul-Fuqra in Pakistan when he was kidnapped and murdered.

Her article emphasizes several important aspect of the jihadist movement.  Despite its rigid fanaticism, jihadists can be very flexible in building links across religious and ethnic lines.  They are willing to cooperate with violent white supremacists, black and Latino radicals, and organized criminals. 

The stab-in-the-back theory of why the Iraq War has turned out to be such a disaster is already flourishing.  Matt Yglesias analyzes it: The Return of the 'Stab in the Back' AmericanProgress.org 05/27/04.  Tom Tomorrow spoofs it: The Blame Game WorkingforChange.com 06/01/04.

Atrios has some choice words for the stab-in-the-back whiners: Cut Their Mics 04/04/04.

Jules Witcover is a respected journalist.  But I don't think he rates as a Big Pundit.  The quality of his work is just too high for that.  I would like to think the future of journalism and professional political commentary would look like his work.  I'm not optimistic.  Unlike the barons of Big Punditry, he actually points out what everyone who isn't addicted to Fox News or Oxycontin can see, that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Rummy have been totall irresponsible about the Iraq War: The new Teflon Don Baltimore Sun 05/12/04.

Witcover is just good.  Check out these other recent columns form the Baltimore Sun: Bush's decisiveness leaves no room for doubt (05/17/04) on our legitimate President's bullheaded unwillingness to recognize mistakes, even disastrous ones; Kerry's on-again address (05/28/04) which is most notable for his shot at Ted Koppel for being a swallow twit; More echoes of Vietnam (05/19/04) on the Iraq disaster; Losing the public relations war in Iraq (05/05/04) on the same; U.N. shows Bush why it's relevant (04/26/04) on the failure of Bush-and-Rummy unilateralistm.  Witcover is good.

You've heard about the Winter Soldier investigation in which John Kerry participated in 1971?  You can read testimony from it online.

I was particularly struck by this comment of Juan Cole's in early April on a relief convoy bringing food to the beseiged city of Fallujah: Fighting Rages in Fallujah... 04/01/04.  He gives Rummy credit where credit is due.

The relief convoy was a joint SunniShiite operation, and protesters carried posters of assassinated Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Muqtada al-Sadr. It seems to me from reading between the lines in the press reporting that some US troops let some of the food and supplies into the city as an act of insubordination toward Donald Rumsfeld, refusing to fire on unarmed civilians to stop them from entering the city with food. Pan-Islam and Sunni-Shiite unity in the face of encroaching Western powers have been a political dream since the time of Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani in the 19th century, but have usually proven futile. Donald Rumsfeld has finally made al-Afghani's dream come true.

For those who believe in the Tooth Fairy and the Liberal Media, Bush's press slaves by Philip Trounstine (Salon.com 03/29/04) would be good reading.

Seymour Hersh reports on The Other War in Afghanistan, New Yorker 04/05/04.

Sid Blumenthal reports that this article is popular reading among US military strategists today: The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012 by Charles J. Dunlap, Jr. Parameters Winter 1992-93 (*.pdf file).  The article in quite as sinister as that may sound.  It's a plea for the Weinberger/Powell Doctrine, which says that the US shouldn't go to war unless there's a compelling national interest, overwhelming public support, international support, overwhelming force available to apply against the enemy, and a clear exit strategy.

This speech by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fisher is well worth reading: Europe and the Future of the Transatlantic Relations 11/19/03.

The West won the Cold War by combining strategic power and a positive alternative system, by using "hard power" and "soft power". The alternative system, however, was the decisive factor. ...

The U.S. is a world power. The EU, on the other hand, is still a power in the making. Granted, there is already a single market which will soon have 450 million people and which has a common currency, the euro. But Europe's weak growth rates, its demographic problem, its political fragmentation and its military weakness cannot be denied.

We can only have stable transatlantic relations if the two pillars of this bridge across the North Atlantic are able to bear more or less the same burden. Europeans know that they must correct their shortcomings as quickly as possible and, let me add, they will do so. ...

Against this background, the significance of the transatlantic alliance mustbe re-evaluated. Skeptical voices are getting louder. Can the close partnership between Europe and America deliver the right answer to the new international situation? Has it outlived its usefulness altogether? ...

A common European foreign and security policy played an especially important role in the European Convention. The draft European constitution contains groundbreaking proposals on improving theEU's effectiveness in the field of foreign policy. The post of European foreign minister and a European foreign service are to be established. This would considerably improve the EU's effectiveness at international level.

This intensive debate within Europe about security issues is being observed very closely by Americans. Distrust is often evident. Some voices within and outside Europe fear that the increasing institutionalization of the European Security and Defense Policy will lead to duplication, and will even weaken NATO. ...

America and Europe can master the challenges of the 21st century, but only if they act together.

In doing so, we must take into consideration three fundamental elements on both sides of the Atlantic. They are crucial if we are to stand firm against and successfully counter the dangers of the 21st century.

The first element is the unconditional commitment of the Western democracies to their own fundamental values - freedom, human rights, tolerance, democracy, the rule of law and the social market economy.

The second element is the commitment to and respect for an international order based on shared values, the law, consent, cooperation and participation. Not an order based on force. But an order enabling the greatest possible number of states and their citizens to participate politically, economically, socially and culturally in the shaping of the globalized world.

And the third element is the political determination and military strength to avert new dangers. Both components are necessary to destroy once and for all totalitarian networks and ideologies built on hatred.