zenpundit.com

[ previous version deleted for tech reasons, now reposted — pls comment if you were unable to do so before ]

[ by Charles Cameron — importance of suiting language to intended audience, importance of graphics, Tajikistan, Yemen, importance of poetry in conflict and conflict resolution ]

.

Et voila! Two publications issued this month by the Centers for Disease Control.

I’ve already stated the two lessons that I think we can draw from these, in the parenthetical header where I try to warn ZP readers of the approximate through-line and likely detours of each of my posts:

• graphics, graphics, graphics!
• talk the talk your intended audience can hear!

But why?

Of course I’m mildly amused at the CDC using zombies — just like Daniel Drezner — to get a serious point across. And I like the play between the seriousness of the Morbidity Report and the morbid fascination of the undead…

But I am going somewhere with all this, and on this occasion the CDC’s sense of presentation is the detour, and my through-line leads to the importance of poetry in conflict resolution.

*

I want to borrow a story from the keynote speech delivered by John Paul Lederach at the Association for Conflict Resolution’s 2004 Conference, as told to him by a Tajik professor named Abdul:

“I was tasked by the government to approach and convince one of warlords, a key Mullah-Commander located in the mountains to enter negotiations,” Abdul begins. “This was difficult if not impossible, because this Commander was considered a notorious criminal, and worse, he had killed one of my close friends.” Abdul stops while the translation conveys the personal side of his challenge.

When I first got to his camp the Commander said I had arrived late and it was time for prayers. So we went together and prayed. When we had finished, he said to me, How can a communist pray?

I am not a communist, my father was, I responded.

Then he asked what I taught in the University. We soon discovered we were both interested in Philosophy and Sufism. We started talking Sufi poetry. Our meeting went from twenty minutes to two and half hours. In this part of the world you have to circle into Truth through stories.” In the hallway Abdul’s gold capped teeth sparkle with a smile as he relays his message: “You see in Sufism there is an idea that discussion has no end.”

His point well conveyed, the Professor picks up the story again.

“I kept going to visit him. We mostly talked poetry and philosophy. Little by little I asked him about ending the war. I wanted to persuade him to take the chance on putting down his weapons. After months of visits we finally had enough trust to speak truths and it all boiled down to one concern.”

“The Commander said to me, ‘If I put down my weapons and go to Dushanbe with you, can you guarantee my safety and life?'” The Tajik storyteller pauses with the full sense of the moment. “My difficulty was that I could not guarantee his safety.”

He waits for the translator to finish making sure I have understood the weight of his peacemaking dilemma and then concludes.

“So I told my philosopher warlord friend the truth, ‘I cannot guarantee your safety.'” In the hallway Professor Abdul swings his arm under mine and comes to stand fully by my side to emphasize the answer he then gave the Commander.

“But I can guarantee this. I will go with you, side by side. And if you die I will die.’ The hallway is totally quiet.

“That day the Commander agreed to meet the Government. Some weeks later we came down together from the mountains. When he first met with the Commission he told them, ‘I have not come because of your Government. I have come for honor and respect of this Professor.’ “You see, my young American friend,” Abdul taps my arm lightly, “this is Tajik mediation.”

Think about it. Think about the Yemen.

Consider that Steven C. Caton of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard suggests:

Every day in the Middle Eastern country of Yemen, battles are being waged that don’t involve bombs, guns or even a raised fist. Rather in Yemen, where physical violence is considered an inferior form of honor-conflict, poetry is one of the preferred weapons of choice.

If Yemen is important to you — or conflict resolution — I have a question for you:

Are you fluent in poetry?

*

Your copy of the Zombie Pandemic awaits you here. For those more interested in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly, here’s the report.

Hat-tip to Tony Judge for his paper, Poetic Engagement with Afghanistan, Caucasus and Iran: an unexplored strategic opportunity?

The US Attorney General Eric Holder, supported diplomatically by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, charged the Iranian government earlier today with a plot to enlist a Mexican narco-cartel to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States. SECSTATE Hillary Clinton, the FBI Director and President Barack Obama have all weighed in on this issue with strong public statements:

U.S. authorities said they had broken up a plot by two men linked to Iran’s security agencies to assassinate Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir. One was arrested last month while the other was believed to be in Iran.

Iran denied the charges. But President Barack Obama called the plot a “flagrant violation of U.S. and international law” and Saudi Arabia said it was “despicable.” Revelation of the alleged plot, and the apparent direct ties to the Tehran government, had the potential to further inflame tensions in the Middle East, and the United States said Tehran must be held top account.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a Reuters interview, expressed hope that countries that have hesitated to enforce existing sanctions on Iran would now “go the extra mile.” At a news conference, FBI Director Robert Mueller said the convoluted plot, involving monitored international calls, Mexican drug money and an attempt to blow up the ambassador in a Washington restaurant, could have been straight from a Hollywood movie.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder alleged that the plot was the work of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is the guardian of Iran’s 32-year-old revolution, and the Quds force, its covert, operational arm. “High-up officials in those (Iranian) agencies, which is an integral part of the Iranian government, were responsible for this plot,” Holder told the news conference.

“I think one has to be concerned about the chilling nature of what the Iranian government attempted to do here,” he said….

I confess that I am not quite sure what to make of this story. 

If accurate – the case originated with a DEA confidential informant in Mexico – it would amount to a new stage of reckless boldness by Iran’s hardline Pasdaran clique of security and intelligence agencies run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and their retired leadership that have a semi-hegemony over the Iranian regime. It also points to the danger to American national security of a long, basically open, border with a failing state Mexico that is deeply embattled in a polycentric counterinsurgency war with the rapidly morphing narco-cartels (that said, I do not expect the administration to move a policy inch to repair the latter). Why would Iran do this – and in such a harebrained manner?

Some possible motives:

* Internal factionalism – Iran recently released imprisoned American hikers, albeit after a substantial ransom payment. Potentially, this could be viewed in the topsy-turvy world of Iranian Islamist politics as a “goodwill gesture” toward the United States. Historically, such gestures provoke rival factions in Iran to initiate anti-American actions, including acts of terrorism, usually via proxies. If an intel operation was “factional” rather than blessed by a wide elite consensus, it might very well be a marginal idea carried out on a shoe-string.

* Counterpressue – Indirect Iranian skirmishing against the US which is drawing down in Iraq and is pressuring Iran’s ally Syria. Also against the Saudis who brutally suppressed a predominantly Shia “Arab Spring” rising in Bahrain which, if it had succeeded in toppling the regime, would have added Bahrain to the regional “Shia Revival”.

* Opportunism – The Pasdaran leadership may have  believed the stories of American decline, assessed our extensive military commitments and budgetary problems and taken the Obama administration’s temperature and concluded that the benefits of carrying out the assassination outweighed the remote risk direct  of US military retaliation.

Some points to consider:

* Proximity – Iran could more easily, with less risk and with far greater likelihood of success, carry out acts of anti-American terrorism closer to home in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan the Gulf States, even in Saudi Arabia or Egypt.  Acts of terrorism in the American homeland risk a massive overreaction by Washington ( the US only needs the Navy to deal out severe consequences to Iran) which might welcome a legitimate pretext to bomb all of Iran’s suspected nuclear facilities and national security sites.

* Self-Preservation by the Mexican narco-cartels make such cooperation with Iran less likely, having the example of their Colombian predecessors in the 1980’s before them when they raised the ire of the USG sufficiently. The narcos have their hands full fighting the Mexican Army and one another without adding the CIA, Global Predator drones or the SEALs to their plate.

* Friends of MeK – By some miraculous deus ex machina, the cultish, 1970’s era Iranian Marxoid terrorist group, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MeK) have spent a wealth of funds to buy the lobbying services of a glittering array of former top US national security officials and general officers – despite being on the State Department’s official terrorist list.

….Among the new faces: former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton (D), who once chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and who served as vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission; Ambassador Dell Dailey, who was the State Department’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism from July 2007 to April 2009; General Michael Hayden, director of the CIA from 2006 to 2009; and not one, but two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Walter Slocombe and ex-Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-NJ) also spoke.

In what should be a national scandal, those names are not even a comprehensive list of the very influential former politicians, K Street lobbyists and Beltway law firms accepting payments to whisper in the ears of current officials in the national security community, regarding Iran, on behalf of the MeK. Not sure how it is legal to do so either, since aiding a group on the State Department’s list by providing services normally can get you hauled into Federal  court pronto, if you are an ordinary American citizen. A most curious situation….

I have no brief for Iran, the regime is a dedicated enemy of the United States, but a group of exiled Iranian Marxist-terrorists who used to work for Saddam Hussein hardly have our best interests at heart.

It will be interesting to watch this case unfold, but in the meantime, opinions are welcome in the comments, particularly on the Mexican narco-cartel angle.

Hat tip to James Bennett.

Bruce Reidl makes the case for the al-Saud as a decaying gerontocracy:

Brezhnev in the Hejaz

….The biggest unknown is how the Kingdom’s youth will act. They have watched the drama in Tahrir Square, Benghazi, Sanaa and Dara’a on Al Jazeera just like everyone else. And the Kingdom has the same demographics as its Arab brothers: a large youth bulge that is chasing too few jobs. With 80 percent of Saudis under thirty years of age and 47 percent under eighteen, unemployment is officially at 10 percent but could be as high as 25 percent (only men are counted since few women seek jobs outside the home). The underemployed young Saudi man may have more money in his pocket than his Egyptian counterpart, but he too is frustrated by a system that is completely opaque and closed to the nonelite.

While the Kingdom can and does appease many of their demands-Abdullah announced over $100 billion in new bonuses, mosque building and other payoffs-it offers them little or nothing in the way of political change. Absolute monarchies are not usually accommodating to transparency and devolution of authority; by definition absolutists do not compromise with nonroyals.

….In fact the Hejaz, with its young, urbane, religiously varied population, has never fully accommodated to Saudi and Wahhabi rule. It has always seen itself as more cosmopolitan than the Nejd, looking across the Red Sea to Egypt and north to Syria rather than to the harsh interior. For centuries it was part of the broader Islamic world, a part of the great empires of Islam from the Umayyads to the Ottomans. The Nejd, in contrast-remote and barren as it is-stayed outside of those empires. Moreover, the Hejaz is home to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, the center for the hajj every year, visited by Muslims from all corners of the ummah, thus exposing Hejazis to views and peoples of all caste and creed. Many of them are critical of the ugly remodeling of the holy cities to allow for plush apartment blocks and designer stores, and a few even long for the return of the Hashemites.

Color me skeptical that there is any deep longing among Saudis of any region to have the great-great- grandson of the Sherif of Mecca “return” as the lord of the Hejaz.

The Profession by Steven Pressfield

We should begin this review with “Full Disclosure“:

I just finished reading The Profession by Steven Pressfield, which I enjoyed a great deal. Steve sent me an earlier draft doc of the book and I consider Steve a friend. Furthermore, in an extremely gracious gesture, Steve granted me (or at least zenpundit.com) the novelist’s equivalent to a walk-on cameo appearance in his book. Therefore, if you the reader believe that I cannot review this book objectively…well….you are right. It’s not possible 🙂 . Here are some other reviews by Shlok Vaidya, Greyhawk of Mudville Gazette and Kirkus if you want greater impartiality.

Nor am I going to delve into the mechanics of the plot structure and action sequence in The Profession. For one, I think too much of the story in a review of a work of fiction spoils the enjoyment for the group of readers who would be most interested. And you can get the blow by blow elsewhere.

Instead, I would like to draw your attention to how Pressfield has written this novel differently. And why that matters.

There is plenty of action in The Profession and the book really moves. It is violent, but not at a Blood Meridian level of cruelty and the murky political intrigue that surrounds the hero, the mercenary’s mercenary and “pure warrior” Gilbert “Gent” Gentilhomme, is a nice counterpoint to physical combat and technical military details. Many people will enjoy the novel on this level and The Profession would make for an exciting action film. Or perhaps a series of films along the lines of The Bourne Identity or those Tom Clancy movies with Harrison Ford. All well and good. But that is not why The Profession is worth reading – that’s merely why it is fun to read.

What surprised me initially about The Profession was how unlike Killing Rommel it was. Killing Rommel also had war and adventure, but it was a deep study in the character development of Chap, the protagonist, who had enough of a textural, cultural, authenticity as a young gentry class British officer of the WWII period as to make Killing Rommel seem semi-biographical. As a reader, I didn’t much care if Chap and his men succeeded in killing Rommel, only that I would be able to continue to see the story unfold from Chap’s perspective. Many artists believe characters and character interaction are the most important element in a story, from Saul Bellow to Quentin Tarantino. Their stories are captivating even though their narratives are not always particularly logical or centered on a grand conflict.

The Profession is not like that at all. In my view, Pressfield turned his creative energies, his knowledge for military affairs and his formidible ear for history away from character development and toward theme. This difference may or may not explain his own reports of difficulty in wrestling with this novel.

Reaching back to the lessons learned from late Republican Rome, Thucydides, Xenophon and seasoning it liberally with Machiavelli, Pressfield’s 2032 near-future is also jarringly allegorical with America of 2012. Like Rome of the 1st century BC or Athens after it’s defeat in the Peloponnesian War, America in The Profession is strategically paralyzed, politically polarized and teetering on the precipice of decay and decline. These historical inspirations have been mashed up with a dystopian 4GW world, filled with mercenary PMCs like Force Insertion and The Legion, terrorists, drones, tribes, criminal corporations and and a devious and cowardly global financial elite. A future more evenly distributed from the present.

The antagonist against whom the plot is structured is not the story’s nominal villain terrorist, but Gent’s Homeric father-figure, former Lieutenant General James Salter, USMC,  “the crawling man” who was martyred, disgraced, exiled and redeemed as the new master of Force Insertion’s Mideast deployed “armatures” (combined arms divisions) and the book’s geopolitical apex predator, who boasted:

” I was obeying a more ancient law” 

This marks a drastic shift in Pressfield’s use of characters from people existing in themselves with humanistic nuances to their use as philosophical archetypes to better express the theme, more like the technique of Fyodor Dostoyevskii, Victor Hugo or Ayn Rand.

The interplay between the kinetic Gent and the increasingly totemic Salter elucidates a theme that is creating tectonic political shifts in America and the world; a theme which is expressed explicitly to Gent at one point by the ex-Secretary of State, Juan-Estebaun Echevarria. The ex-Secretary plays Cicero to Salter’s Caesar, but Gent is ultimately cast in the role of a very different Roman by the manipulative Salter. Pressfield, in honing the various characters, including AD, Maggie Cole, El-Masri and others, is also drawing on Alcibiades, Critias, Livy, Homer, Robert Graves, Joseph Conrad and the pattern of mythic epics. Salter is at once a pagan chieftain and a philosopher-king, a civilized Kurtz or a barbaric John Galt, who after continuous dissembling, in a brutally honest speech, gives his followers, his enemies, Gent and even himself, no opportunity to morally evade what he has become or his reasons for what he proposes to do. A speech that resonates with the negative trends we see today.

The Profession is a cautionary tale outfitted in kevlar.

Eminent and controversial military historian, Martin van Creveld, analyzes the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War in the latest issue of Infinity Journal. Some Excerpts:

The Second Lebanon War: A Re-assessment

….Though the decision to retaliate in force was inevitable, it also meant that the Israel Defense Force (IDF) was taken by surprise and did not have time to prepare properly. Of the entire vast order of battle, only five regular brigades were immediately available. Moreover, these brigades had spent years doing little but carrying out counter-insurgency operations in the Occupied Territories. As a result, they had almost forgotten how to fight a real enemy; he who fights the weak will end up by becoming weak. Some of the burden fell on the Israeli Navy which shelled Lebanon’s coast, imposed a blockade, and cut the country off from the world. In doing so, one of its modern ships was hit by an Iranian-built surface to sea missile, suffering damage and taking some casualties. Since this was the first time in thirty-nine years anything of the kind had happened, it was a considerable propaganda victory for Hezbollah. At the same time it proved how much the crew had underestimated the enemy, since they (perhaps acting on their superiors’ orders) had not even switched on the vessel’s electronic defenses.

….”Stark raving mad” (majnun, in Arabic) was, in fact, the way many people in Lebanon and the rest of the Arab world reacted to the Israeli attack. As the statements of several of Hezbollah’s top leaders indicated, they too were surprised by the strength of the Israeli reaction. None of the organization’s original objectives were achieved. Its fighters remain in prison; the Israeli “occupation” of Shaba Farm continues; and Jerusalem, which it set itself as its ultimate objective to liberate, remains as firmly in Israeli hands as it has been during the last forty-four years. What the war did do was to show that, in case of war, neither Syria nor Iran would necessarily come to Lebanon’s rescue. The country’s infrastructure was left in ruins. Thirty thousand dwellings were destroyed or damaged, and dozens of bridges, underpasses, and gas stations demolished. Hundred of thousands of people were forced to flee, and as many as 2,000 killed.

Free registration required to read the article.

This piece is heavily IDF-centric in the analysis, perhaps reflecting van Creveld’s established authority on command and logistics and his recent work on air power, but I was surprised by the lack of space devoted to Hezbollah’s operations, given the author’s deep influence on 4GW theory and the study of postmodern irregular and asymmetric warfare. That may reflect, in part, the thrust of Infinity as a publication or the need for brevity but there’s an almost Clausewitzian subtext in the conclusion.