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ON THE POLITICS OF NATIONAL SECURITY, “IT IS WHAT IT IS”

Courtesy of Michael Tanji of Haft of the Spear, a piece of Congressional semantic idiocy that is symbolic of a larger problem:

“The House Armed Services Committee is banishing the global war on terror from the 2008 defense budget.

Committee staff members are told in the memo to use specific references to specific operations instead of the Bush administration’s catch phrases. The memo, written by Staff Director Erin Conaton, provides examples of acceptable phrases, such as “the war in Iraq,” the “war in Afghanistan, “operations in the Horn of Africa” or “ongoing military operations throughout the world.”

Because of course, prohibiting discussion of the strategic context of current military operations against Islamist terror networks itching to topple regional governments or kill thousands of Americans in 9/11 style attacks will make that threat go away. Political correctness for terrorism analysis!

Well, not really. What it is intended to do, I infer, is allow the new House majority to deprioritize, over time, the importance of fighting al Qaida type groups so as to make it politically easier to allocate legistative time and resources to those domestic issues that excite the liberal activist base. If you are a House chairman or Democratic presidential candidate, looking toward 2008, ideological spin is fun, substantive foreign policy, by contrast, is a major headache. Being the most hawkish Democrat on al Qaida is about as about as rewarding, in terms of winning influence within the party, as heading the Republicans for Choice Caucus would be within the GOP. It won’t kill you politically, per se but being out of step with your party is more anchor than sail.

Now, I realize there are many Democrats and liberals who are passionate about America having sound and strong defense, foreign and national security policies. A number of them are on my blogroll because I respect and read their views. At the end of the day, however, a Democratic majority will reflect not their minority views or priorities but those of the Boomer activist Left whose formative experience was the Vietnam antiwar movement, the radicalized phase of Civil Rights protest and the Women’s movement. It is they who dominate the Democratic Party, not the DLC or the “liberal hawks”. Except when you have an overriding political concern from the public, or a Democratic president of Clintonian influence who can temporarily pull his party toward the center, you can expect the Democrats to govern like Democrats, not like Republicans Lite.

The same goes for the Republicans. Callimachus had an excellent essay about the nature of the Bush administration:

“Let’s say it up front: GWB and co. are a bad lot; arrogant and embodying the most resistant strains of cultural conservatism and capitalism in American society. Blame it on Texas, if you need an explanation, as the historical magnet for the most exaggerated and aggressive characters of the old South.

None of which is illegal. None of which is cheating. It’s football; it’s courtroom, it’s stock exchange, it’s boardroom, all the places all these people came from. If you expect your federal government to be collegial, more concerned with process than results, don’t elect these guys. And if you do elect them, expect the game to change. A chess match can degenerate into a brawl, but a chess match never breaks out during a brawl. “

George W. Bush and his administration are not liberals or bipartisan figures. They are not Jack Kemp style free-marketeers, Reaganesque small government types or even old Right, neo-isolationist paleocons like Pat Buchanan. Instead, they are basically the last Nixonians – centralizing, more partisan than conservative, hierarchical, national security oriented, big government Republicans, who aligned themselves primarily with moderate big business, the religious right and neoconservative intellectuals. Seldom have they reached beyond this base and, if anything, the Bush White House has retreated to ever more narrowly circled political wagons. They will govern from this precarious perch until their last days in office.

We are in a long war against a global insurgency of Islamist fanatics whether our generals are permitted to say that or not. The country needs a stronger, more vocal, middle ground…at least when we look beyond the edge of our shores.

UNABLE TO GET EVEN SIMPLE THINGS RIGHT

I have to hand it to the Bush administration; their determined incompetence in handling war criminals on legal, political, diplomatic and military grounds knows few bounds. Who else could manage to take the onus off of a monster like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who masterminded the deaths of thousands of innocent people, and make American judicial procedure the issue instead?

Anthony D’Amato, a professor at Northwestern University Law School and a well regarded expert in International Law, has just excoriated the Bush administration in JURIST. Just for the record, Dr. D’Amato is no softheaded transnationalist or dovish liberal. Quite the contrary, when Israel bombed Saddam’s nuclear reactor at Osirak back in 1982, it was Professor D’Amato, virtually alone among IL experts, who went before Congress and testified in favor of the legality of Israel’s attack.

“True Confessions? The Amazing Tale of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed“

“Students of the Stalinist purges of the 1930s will recall the astounding confessions made in open court by the accused persons. They had been severely tortured over weeks and months. But they showed up in court without external marks of torture. With all apparent voluntariness, they admitted subverting the Five-Year Plans that would have provided the Soviet people with necessary food items. They sabotaged factories, making sure the production lines were inefficient. They managed to import inferior metals so that Soviet tanks and automobiles would fall apart after a few months’ use. They infiltrated the Soviet Army and through dint of their persuasiveness, convinced the foot soldier that it was absurd to risk his life defending a dictatorial government. In short these accused persons, briefly in court on their way to the firing squad, took responsibility for everything that had gone wrong for the past two decades in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

So why is it today that no one draws the connection between the Soviet purge trials and the confession of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed? Mohammed said that he had been tortured by his American captors. No one contradicted his assertion. Then he went on, with a straight and sincere face, to take responsibility for a long list of crimes recently perpetrated”

KSM should have been tried within shouting distance of 9/11 for violating the laws of war and upon conviction, hanged. Simple enough. The standards of justice there are crystal clear.

Truman did not shrink from executing Tojo or Goring. Eisenhower refused to spare the Rosenbergs despite the noxious clamor of an organized campaign by fellow travellers. Democracies once had the moral self-confidence to try and condemn their deadliest enemies for their crimes and were proud to do so swiftly and openly.

No longer.

ON PUTIN AND HIS IMAGE ABROAD: THE RUSSIAN GEORGE W. BUSH ?

President Vladimir Putin of Russia is under increasingly critical western scrutiny these days. Drum roll please….:

“Post-Putin” By Steven Lee Myers –NYT Magazine

“The Putin Era in Historical Perspective” (PDF) –National Intelligence Council report

“Kremlin Inc. Why are Vladimir Putin’s opponents dying?” – Michael Specter, The New Yorker

“Who’s killing Putin’s enemies? -Part I” and “Part II” – Michael Specter, The Guardian Observer Magazine

“Seven Questions: Russia’s Cloaks and Daggers ” –Foreign Policy

“Europe wary after Putin tirade” – The Daily Telegraph

“Russia’s Managed Democracy” by Perry Anderson – London Review of Books

The Russians have expressed some concern on how Putin’s recent speech in Munich has been portrayed:

“One Cold War Was Enough” – Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov –Washington Post

They should be concerned.

Russia’s siloviki political system is a carrot and stick machine for quiet, minimalist, authoritarianism that seeks to keep the masses of the Russian public complacently supportive while neutralizing intelligentsia critics (unpopular with the masses anyway), neutering the free press and preventing the emergence of any serious (or semi-serious) power blocs or public figures who might challenge the interests of the regime.

Normally, Russian hamfisted behavior at home and abroad raises more hackles than this but at the moment, much of the world’s intellectuals and political literati are obssessed with George W. Bush. The Bush administration soaks up a great deal of negative rhetoric and political energy both here at home and overseas. But as Bush’s term wears on and certainly by the time he leaves office, this enormous global resentment and capacity for selective outrage will begin casting about for new “villains”. This is not to say Putin’s regime is a good one or that Russia can be regarded as a democracy; it can’t. These are real issues to be addressed and not swept under the rug. But if you become highly exercised over Vladimir Putin, while being conspicuously silent over Robert Mugabe or Dar Fur, your moral calculus is in disarray

Putin will clearly be in that bulls-eye at that time and there will be a media stampede to push the already poor state of U.S.-Russian and EU-Russian relations over a cliff.

Hat tips to Dr. Diane Labrosse of H-Diplo and Stan Reber of the SWC

NORTH KOREAN NUKE DEAL

Hard to say that the Bush administration’s recently negotiated deal with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program isn’t a positive step. Cautious optimism and use of the agreement as a platform on which to build toward removing nuclear materials and technology from North Korea is about the best we can hope for, short of launching a major war for regime change ( which we are not placed to do and no one would support, short of some reckless military action by Pyongyang). A few seeds placed in the working groups section of the agreement from which a larger, regional, security structure, perhaps an ” East Asian NATO”, can grow.

A good round-up of links by CKR of Whirledview and sensible commentary by Dave Schuler of The Glittering Eye. Nice pre-deal analysis by Dr. Barnett.

FISKING VLADIMIR PUTIN

Russian President Vladimir Putin rattled the diplomatic set with a pugnacious and critical speech about American foreign policy that was a clever mixture of blunt realpolitik, obvious gestures for domestic consumption, a play for the sympathy of the anti-American Left in Europe and the anti-Bush Left in America. It was also a not so subtle form of pressure on the Bush administration to treat Russia as a great power partner in world affairs, especially the Middle East.

Russia of course, while not an enemy of the United States, would like all of the goodies that come with being an American strategic partner without having to ante up anything of substantive import in return. While not much praise can be given to the unimaginative, backburner, American policy toward Russia since the Soviet collapse in 1991, the Bush administration has at least been smart enough to not reward empty talk from the Kremlin until Putin puts something concrete on the table. Something the Russian leader has steadfastly refused to do on Iraq, Iran or much of anything else.

Addressing Putin’s specific remarks:

“The United States has overstepped its national borders in every way,” he said in an address at an annual international security conference here. “Nobody feels secure anymore, because nobody can take safety behind the stone wall of international law.”

I have also read this statement more literally translated as ” hide behind international law”, which to my reading of Putin, is more in tune with his ex-KGB cynical realism and “Great Russia” nationalism. The statement above reads more like the Foreign Ministry approved text.

On one level, Putin speaks for many foreign leaders who are unhappy with American intervention in Iraq and other places overseas even as American power hems in their own regional ambitions. The Bush administration has failed to use diplomacy, particularly public diplomacy, well or offer realistic carrots to win over the mercurial fence-sitters who do not give a fig for Iraq of Islamist terrorism but care deeply about other subjects. Using hard power successfully requires making the connections beforehand that minimize counterbalancing “blowback” and this chore the Bush administration has been unwilling or unable to do.

On another, deeper, level this is a very illuminating and an honest realpolitik assessment, while being cleverly worded to appeal to Bush critics and International Law professor types who believe that the world actually turns on the moral implications of their abstruse interpretations of treaty conventions. What Putin is really acknowledging is that the previous, Cold War era, ability to carry out policies that were serious threats to the vital interests of other states, especially America, because of ” plausible deniability” created by fig leaf nods to international law, is now much riskier.

The plausible deniability for which Putin longs, served a critical purpose -to avoid escalating a minor regional conflict into a superpower confrontation, so the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were forced to look the other way on many instances of terrorism, subversion, espionage and nuclear proliferation involving each other’s clients. We had to grin and bear it or strike back at the Soviet bloc with equal indirection, sometimes in a wholly unrelated sphere. This dynamic suited the Soviets well which is why they also fiercely resisted Nixon-Kissinger “linkage” at the bargaining table. Lacking the nuclear tripwire, the need for Washington to pretend hostile actions are anything but hostile was going to fade regardless of who was president, but 9/11 and Bush administration ideological convictions vastly accelerated the process.

“we don’t want Iran to feel cornered.”

Translation: “We need Iranian cash. We can’t afford to be seen backing down to Washington and continue to be regarded as a viable alternative arms supllier to the United States. We are against you attacking Iran, even though, frankly, we Russians don’t like Iranians or Ahmadinejad very much but find Iran useful as a counterweight to American power in the region, and this overrides longer term concerns.”

“It is a world of one master, one sovereign … it has nothing to do with democracy,” he said. “This is nourishing the wish of countries to get nuclear weapons.”

This is laughable to anyone with rudimentary knowledge of the history of nuclear weapons but it is good propaganda for justifying Russia’s assistance to Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Nor does possession of a small nuclear arsenal help much against the United States, if Pervez Musharraf is to be believed. It will help you against your neighbors in your own nation-state weight class though.

How serious is Putin ? Recall that politically, Putin takes the wind out of extremist parties, Right or Left, by preventing them from waving the flags of Nationalism and Neo-Sovietism by doing so himself ” responsibly”. His governing class, the Siloviki, were entirely insincire Communists in Soviet times, KGB pragmatists who saw the world from the prism of power, carrots, sticks and dirty tricks. The Siloviki hold all the power in Russia and political opposition is effectively neutered and could, if they had chosen to do so, enact far more aggressive anti-Western policies. They and Putin have not because it isn’t in their personal interest or Russia’s to get into serious conflicts with the U.S. or the E.U.

ADDENDUM:

First, thank you to Real Clear Politics for linking to this post. Much appreciated!

A few Putin links:

Thomas P.M. Barnett

RedState