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CAUGHT IN THE GRIP OF TINY TYRANNY

Further posting will have to be delayed until the evening as I am headed to a Chuck E. Cheese birthday party for the Firstborn of Zenpundit to which a horde of kindergarten and pre-K age barbarians have been invited. Contemplating the use of earplugs for several hours of high-decibel shrieking.

“Let them eat cake”.

PNM THEORY: REVIEWING THE DELETED SCENE ON THE RULE-SET SHIFT PART II.

Continuing the review of the deleted scene on the Rule-set shift after the Cold War, usual format prevails with Dr. Barnett’s text in bold:

“A fourth rule-set change concerns how we define the major divisions in the international security environment. During the Cold War, it was the West versus the East. In the nineties, most assumed the dividing line would lie between the North (rich) and the South (poor), with the first Persian Gulf War signaling the beginning of resource-focused conflicts between advanced states which lacked key raw materials and developing economies that possessed them in abundance. But as globalization grows more pronounced and visible, the new rule set becomes the division between the connected or globalizing economies of the world (Core) and those which are largely disconnected from the global economy (Gap). In the past we asked, “Are you with us or against us?” From now on, the question becomes, “Are you in or are you out?”

This was a key observation by Dr. Barnett because our bipartisan foreign policy elite was caught in some kind of bizarre doublethink during much of the 1990’s. On one level – primarily rhetorical- they recognized that the Soviet collapse, globalization, China’s liberalization and the advent of the information economy was an epochal change on part with the rise of the Postwar-ColdWar world after the Second World War. On the substantive political and bureaucratic level the elite resisted tooth and nail the need to internalize that insight and make the real and strategic changes in our national security, defense, intelligence and foreign policies that the United States was making in economic policy.

It was a very weird disconnect, or so it appeared to me, to have these very bright folks in the Bush I. and Clinton administrations assuming structures like NATO would just cruise along undisturbed or with minor tweaking when the fundamental reason for the alliance’s existence had disappeared. The Pentagon complemented this unrealism about the diverging self-interests of our allies by continuing a defense posture designed to stop the disbanded Warsaw Pact in the Fulda Gap.

The The good news is, from perusing the recent issues of Foreign Affairs, it seems that this group is starting to get it. 9/11 had something to do with the change, though the obvious lessons there have been resisted as well. Bush’s re-election has also helped inculcate the idea that the old world of the elite is not going to return but I am also confident that The Pentagon’s New Map has made a difference. Dr. Barnett’s book is being read in the power bureaucracies and the think tanks and by the opinion-makers of the old media and in the blogosphere. And slowly – one might say, glacially – favored but outmoded conceits about how the world really works are starting to be dropped. It’s a cultural shift in the governmental class to a new idealistic realism.

“A fifth rule set shift involves the difference in defining strategic success. In the Cold War, strategic success could be simply paraphrased as “hold that line.” So long as the Soviet bloc was not expanding, we were winning, because it was our contention that the socialist states would weaken and collapse over time. The mistake assumption we made over the 1990s was to assume that the “bad stuff,” or conflicts of the international security environment could be safely kept “outside, over there.” That was, in fact, the unstated motto of …From the Sea: we wanted to “keep it over there” and — by doing so — keep America safe. After 9/11, we know how self-deluding that sort of security strategy really is. Because if there is enough pain “over there,” eventually we will be made to feel it “over here.” Therefore, “holding the line” between globalization’s Core and Gap is not even an option. We cannot wait for the Gap to weaken and collapse; that is already happening and the major reason why security issues there abound. Now the status quo is our enemy and our motto becomes, “shrink the Gap.”



Soviet Communism was, in the main, an enemy that represented a centripetal force in world affairs for America. Borders between the Soviet bloc and the West were as stark as the phrase ” Iron Curtain” that described them and as menacing as North Korea’s disconnected Stalinist regime remains today. The self-imposed isolation of the Soviets inadvertantly helped America’s ” hold that line” strategy succeed. The end of the USSR and Communism was a great triumph but the high tension of the nuclear stalemate of the Cold War also had acted as a a terrific extrinsic pressure on the behavior of all other states. Actions were measured in terms of the likelihood of a superpower response and the potential dangers of an escalation to nuclear war.



It is no accident that when the Soviets were on their last legs in 1990 Saddam felt safe enough to launch a war of conquest. Minor powers could now, freed from superpower tutelage, become players in their own right again. The collapse of Commnism had reversed the strategic paradigm – the world was now buffeted by centrifugal forces of nationalism and terrorism that caused multinational states to discorporate even as globalization began to re-connect the pieces along economic lines. Many states that had recently been dismissed as autocratic” developing countries” but had adapted early to the reset Rule-set of Globalization suddenly were revealed to be liberalizing ” tigers “. The world had been turned upside down.

End Part II.

WILL SOLDIERING HEAD BACK TO THE FUTURE[ Updated] ?

” Kinshasa, CONGO (Reuters) Combat troops from the 2nd Mitsubishi Mobile Infantry arrived today to join those of the Northrup AirCav division fighting under contract with the UN alongside NATO, EU and American forces struggling to crush the New Lord’s Resistance Army rebels responsible for an unprecedented genocide in the Congo basin. President Condi Rice welcomed the move today at the White House, declaring that the new troops ” Demonstrated the UN’s new commitment to action rather than words…”



A fantasy ? Perhaps. Nevertheless the rise of non-state actors, the decline of fully-functional sovereign nation-states and the anarchic conditions of the Gap are all helping revive the age-old tradition of private military service. Even someone as well-connected as the son of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has gotten involved in mercenary activity. In Iraq and Afghanistan the United States already relies heavily upon Private Military Companies to do everything from logistical supply work to actual combat-related security. What conditions will exist a quarter of a century from now ?



The grisly pictures we saw from Fallujah of the burned bodies of American contractors being strung up from a bridge by a frenzied Iraqi mob not only shocked much of the world but drew public attention to the increasingly important role played by private military companies (PMC) in the occupation of Iraq. Once an obscure and shadowy fringe associated with Soldier of Fortune reading amateurs and colorful 1970’s thugs like ” Mad Mike ” Hoare and French supported mercenary Colonel Bob Denard, PMCs have graduated to the ranks of big business. PMCs like Blackwater, Dyncorp, Kroll, Sandline, Erinys, Global Risk, Meteoric Tactical Services and others followed the trail blazed by South Africa’s defunct Executive Outcomes, offering professional military services and advanced training by contract to legitimate governments. The increasing prominence of PMCs in Colombia, Bosnia, Haiti and Iraq has not gone entirely unnoticed on the political Left. Peter W. Singer of Brookings (author of Corporate Warriors) and left-wing Congresswoman Jan Schakowski (D-Ill.) have called for greater regulation of PMCs and executive accountability for their use . ( go here for Singer’s views) To the influential blogger KOS, the PMC employees killed in Fallujah were simply “mercs” with all the sinister implications that the term ” mercenary ” implies.



Despite sporadic attempts to outlaw private military activities by convention or UN fiat, most of what would be commonly regarded as ” mercenary ” activity is not illegal or even well-defined under American or international law. Numerous loopholes written into the legal definition in Protocol I. to the Geneva Convention permit governments to legitimize the use of mercenaries on the flimsiest of pretexts. The specific and convoluted definition of mercenary activity is as follows:

“Article 47.-Mercenaries



1. A mercenary shall not have the right to be a combatant or a prisoner of war.

2. A mercenary is any person who:



(a) Is specially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict; (b) Does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities;

(c) Is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party;

(d) Is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;

(e) Is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and

(f) Has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces”

The definition can be easily skirted by state-actors by any number of ways and by individuals who can attest or demonstrate motivations other than financial gain such as ideology. As one scholar noted, it would only be ” stupid mercenaries ” who would be prosecuted under these terms. The world’s most famous mercenary unit, the French Foreign Legion, for example, are legally considered ” regulars”. Military historian John Keegan by contrast, defined mercenaries as “…those who sell military services for money – though also for such inducements as grants of land, admission to citizenship…or preferential treatment” and regulars as “Mercenaries who already enjoy citizenship…but choose military service as a means of subsistence” .

Warfare has historically produced armies organized on one of the following models – Popular, Caste and Professional – each having particular advantages and weaknesses. Popular armies are those which Americans are most familiar due to our recent history of large armies of draftees that dominated battlefields from the Civil War to the war in Vietnam. Popular armies are relatively egalitarian in nature and reflect a broad swath of their society where military service is either obligatory for citizens under conscription or highly esteemed. Machiavelli thought the popular basis of military service to be so sound that much of his Discourses on Livy is a paean to the allegedly virtuous legions of the Roman Republic, where command and glory was a prerequisite for political advancement.

Where ambition or patriotism failed, a popular army could be assembled through conscription that provided a steady and enduring base of the great military powers of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, as De Tocqueville predicted, such mass armies of a popular character have proven to result in savage warfare. Total War and War of Attrition became tempting strategies for generals and statesmen who see mass armies as the key to the enemy’s unconditional surrender. Such strategies are becoming ill-suited to a globalized, interconnected world because of the ” blowback” in terms of economic damage that results and the political uproar such tactics tend to cause in parts of the Core, notably Europe.

We need more precise trigger-pullers these days – hence the emphasis Donald Rumsfeld has given to SOCOM troops and strategy in the GWOT. This environment also is causing the rise in PMC’s by placing an economic premium on professional military talents. Instead of trying to hold back the sea, the United States should try to incorporate PMC’s into the fabric of accepted international norms so that the emphasis is more upon setting uniform standards of behavior and accountability for all fighters on a battlefield, rather than attempting to suppress what nations faced with insecurity will do through the backdoor.

UPDATE: The Pentagon decides to pay top dollar to SOCOM’s most valuable soldiers.

SOME RECOMMENDED READING

First, John Lewis Gaddis in Foreign Affairs on Grand strategy in a Second Term. I find remarkably little to disagree with in this essay ( which usually indicates that I should be reading more critically) which often parallels what I wrote about the Bush administration for HNN – minus my direct references to PNM Theory, though Gaddis has better prose and more gravitas.

Critt Jarvis, the proprietor of Systemperturbations and technical wizard of NRSP on Mosul. Critt it turns out, also has a background in military intelligence and his son is stationed in Mosul.

A World Without Israel in Foreign Policy by Josef Joffe. Joffe often writes for The National Interest but publishes Die Zeit.

A reflective post with a link by JB at riting on the wall on history’s forgotten genocide.

Colin Powell says goodbye. ( Hat tip New Sisyphus )

And to lighten the mood, from CNN, an amusing story that makes a good argument for reforming the jury system.

That’s it.

A LITTLE TOO QUIET

I have not yet commented upon the Hersh piece regarding Iran *yet because I am coincidentally finishing The Persian Puzzle by Kenneth Pollack and I’m digesting what he has to say and how he said it. My preliminary compliment is that I learned some things I was not aware of previously and that Pollock does an excellent job, former NSC staffer that he is, in terms of laying out the pros and cons of various policy options with Iran. Here’s an interesting quote to juxtapose with the recent news:

“…as part of the Third Track[ Pollack’s diplomatic strategy], the United States should make a major intelligence effort-akin to the increase in our efforts against al Qa’eda after 9/11- to gather information regarding Iran’s nuclear program in the hope of developing a viable counterproliferation strike option”



* Hersh, incidentally, does not understand his history if he believes the Bush II administration even remotely approaches the iron-clad and centralized control over the IC and ability to execute genuinely covert operations exercised by Eisenhower.