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Lexington Green sent this extended profile/interview with Charles Hill by Emily Esfahani Smith. The tone of the article is somewhat hagiographic because Hill is a fellow at the Hoover Institution and….well…. this is in Hoover’s journal 😉  If you can get past that, it is a worthwhile read about a deep thinker and scholar of grand strategy.

Profile in Strategy: Charles Hill

….In diplomacy, literature is relied upon because, as he writes in “Grand Strategies,” “The international world of states and their modern system is a literary realm; it is where the greatest issues of the human condition are played out.” That is why Alexander the Great carried the Iliad with him on his conquests, and why Queen Elizabeth studied Cicero in the evenings. It is why Abraham Lincoln read, and was profoundly influenced by, Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” and why Paul Nitze paged through Shakespeare on his flights to Moscow as America’s chief arms negotiator.

Hill, for his part, has always kept the “History of the Peloponnesian War” in his mind as the “manual of statecraft.”

Why Thucydides? He explains: “When you read the Peloponnesian War, you realize that Thucydides is moving from one set of problems to another, and you have to deal with them all-rhetorical problems, material problems, and moral problems. That’s the closest literary work related to statecraft that I can imagine.”

To understand world order-and those who manipulate it for their own aims-requires a literary education, the kind students were once able to find at such places as Yale, where Hill now teaches the humanities to freshman undergraduates.

This is a departure from his days at the State Department, where he helped orchestrate monumental events in the grand strategy of the Cold War. One of his first memories as a diplomat was of being seated behind Adlai Stevenson at the UN during the Cuban missile crisis, characteristically scribbling notes-in grand strategy, no detail can be lost. Later, Hill was a “China watcher” during that country’s Cultural Revolution. And when the Iran-Contra scandal nearly brought down the Reagan administration, Hill’s meticulous notes played an influential role in the Congressional investigations by shedding light on the chronology of then-Secretary of State George Shultz’s knowledge of the arms sale. Over the years, Hill has also served as confidante to Secretaries of State. For Henry Kissinger, Hill was speechwriter and policy analyst. For Shultz, Hill was an executive aide and trusted ally.

These days, Hill embodies grand strategy in a different way. After a long and distinguished career as a diplomat, Hill is now a heralded figure in academia. Beyond his appointment as a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, he is the Brady-Johnson Distinguished Fellow in Grand Strategy, a Senior Lecturer in Humanities, and a Senior Lecturer in International Studies at Yale. Alongside historians John Gaddis and John Kennedy [ sic] , he teaches one of Yale’s most legendary courses to a select group of elite students-future statesmen-the Grand Strategies course.

And yet, Hill tells me stoically, “There is no grand strategy in our time.” Turning his attention to the turmoil in the Middle East, Hill provides an example. “America’s lack of strategic outlook responding to the Arab Spring is really distressing.”

Hill retains the diplomat’s gift for understatement.

Read the rest here.

ADDENDUM:

Book Review: Grand Strategies by Charles Hill 

Trial of a Thousand Years, by Charles Hill-a review

Here is something for the learned readership to chew on.

As you are probably all aware, in the hard sciences it is common for research papers to be the product of large, multidiciplinary, teams with, for example, biochemists working with physicists, geneticists, bioinformatics experts, mathematicians and so on. In the social sciences and humanities, not so much. Traditional disciplinary boundaries and methodological conservatism often prevail or are even frequently the subject of heated disputes when someone begins to test the limits of academic culture

I’m not sure why this has to be so for any of us not punching the clock in an ivory tower.

The organizer of the Boyd & Beyond II Conference, Stan Coerr, a GS-15 Marine Corps, Colonel Marine Corps Reserve and Iraq combat veteran, several years ago, developed a very intriguing analytical outline of thirty years of Afghan War, which I recommend that you take a look at:

The Eagle and the Bear: First World Armies in Fourth World Insurgencies by Stan Coerr

the-eagle-and-the-bear-11.pdf

There are many potential verges for collaboration in this outline – by my count, useful insights can be drawn by from the following fields:

Military History
Strategic Studies
Security Studies
COIN Theory
Operational Design
Diplomatic History
Soviet Studies
Intelligence History
International Relations
Anthropology
Ethnography
Area Studies
Islamic Studies
Economics
Geopolitics
Military Geography
Network Theory

I’m sure that I have missed a few.

It would be interesting to crowdsource this doc a little and get a discussion started. Before I go off on a riff about our unlamented Soviet friends, take a look and opine on any section or the whole in the comments section.

[ by Charles Cameron — futurism, prediction, Christian and Islamic apocalyptic traditions, fiction ]
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Two new thrillers.  And what caught my eye — fascinated as I am by the whole business of prophecy and prediction, scenario planning and science fiction — was Wolf Blitzer‘s pronouncement about Tom Clancy on his CNN blog today:

Sometimes nonfiction seems to follow fiction, especially, it seems, in the case of Tom Clancy and his spy novels.

Here’s Blitzer’s supporting evidence:

In 1994, he wrote a thriller called “Debt of Honor.” Long before the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Clancy had a character fly a Boeing 747 into the U.S. Capitol. Clancy’s “The Teeth of the Tiger,” published in 2003, features a man named Mohammed who has a network of Colombian drug cartel thugs who plot evil deeds against the U.S. His newest book is entitled “Against All Enemies.” A major plot line has Taliban terrorists joining hands with Mexican drug cartel killers to launch attacks in the United States. A friend who’s read all the Clancy books alerted me to this when he heard of the Obama administration’s accusations that Iran plotted to have members of a Mexican drug cartel kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir. “Seems like terrorists are big Clancy fans,” my friend suggested…

Not so fast, Wolf and Wolf’s friend. They might equally well have been reading Joel Rosenberg (also, or instead).

Clancy does this sort of stuff because he’s a scenario planner turned novelist — Rosenberg does it because he’s a student of prophecy turned novelist.  Come to that, I rather like the idea that prophecy and scenario planning might be related.

Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia’s current article about Rosenberg:

Nine months before the September 11th attacks, Rosenberg wrote a novel with a kamikaze plane attack on an American city. Five months before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he wrote a novel about war with Saddam Hussein, the death of Yasser Arafat eight months before it occurred, a story with Russia, Iran, and Libya forming a military alliance against Israel occurring the date of publishing, the rebuilding of the city of Babylon, Iran vowing to have Israel “wiped off the face of the map forever” five months before Iranian President Ahmadinejad used similar language, and the discovery of huge amounts of oil and natural gas in Israel (a major gas discovery occurred in January 2009).

Neat, hunh?

Or of course, they could just all be playing Steve Jackson‘s 1995 Illuminati card game…

I suppose we should add role-playing and card-reading to our list of prognostic activities…

*

In any case…

I enjoy Joel Rosenberg’s books.  His thrillers are full of Christian and Islamic apocalyptic elements, of course, which are of continuing interest to me — especially when they cross over into each others’ territories.  I’ve been meaning to write up my review of the first book in his current series for months now — my copy must have a hundred or so little colored flags in it, marking passage of interest, plot points and so on.

And there are things Rosenberg gets seriously wrong that are important. It’s dangerous when someone who influences thousands through his Epicenter conferences and his appearances with Glenn Beck is unable to distinguish the Hojjatiyeh Society (a small group that may not even exist at this point) from Twelver (ie orthodox Shi’ite) Islam.

But it’s because I think:

• that Islamic apocalyptic is important and all too often overlooked,
• that he thinks so, too,
• that his tying it in with policy proposals carries some weight,
• that the brisk pace of his novels reaches readers who have not much other access to ideas about the Mullahs, the Twelfth Imam or Mahdi, and the issue of the Iranian nuclear program, and
• that there are scholars in a position to clarify and correct some of his mistakes and misconceptions,

that I still hope to review the first book in the current series, The Twelfth Imam, and his new book, The Tehran Initiative, right alongside it.

Heck, I’d be more than happy to review the new Clancy, too.

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.

Nice catch by Bruce Kesler who goes en fuego on the weirdly discordant note Anne-Marie Slaughter strikes in her latest New York Times op-ed:

Majority Rule Over Minorities: Ironic R2P Hypocrisy

The extremism of R2P’s leading proponent is exhibited in Anne-Marie Slaughter’s op-ed in today’s New York Times. Slaughter likens the Wall Street protesters to those demonstrating against oppressive regimes in the Middle East and recommends removal of the US system of checks and balances that protect minority views and avoid poorly developed political stampedes. (Slaughter doesn’t mention or give credence to the more numerous, mature citizenry participating in or supporting the Tea Parties more peaceful protests for more limited government intrusions into Americans’ private lives and earnings.)

R2P’s leading proponent, Anne-Marie Slaughter of Harvard, believes that US foreign policies and military interventions should prioritize the Right To Protect severely repressed peoples through US obeisance to liberal internationalist elites’ sentiments in favor of some they like regardless of the US Constitution or laws or national or security interests.

In today’s New York Times, Slaughter takes her R2P home to the US, advocating that majorities rule regardless of the formal and informal checks and balances of our political system and overriding the rights of political minorities. Again, it is the majorities that liberals like who should be given more powers.

Without any sense of proportionality or of core differences between the US and Middle East satrapies, Slaughter says, “Indeed, the twin drivers of America’s nascent protest movement against the financial sector are injustice and invisibility, the very grievances that drove the Arab Spring.” Slaughter then concludes, “The only effective response is a political response, of a nature and magnitude that convinces protesters on the streets that they can in fact secure the change they seek within, rather than outside, the system.”

Slaughter’s system, however, would reduce the ability of permanent or transitory political minorities to protect their interests. They would, also, further factionalize the US and make compromises more difficult as the power of centrists is reduced….

Read the rest here.

Good grief. Anne Marie Slaughter opining on the need for greater democracy and accountability to the people is somewhat akin to Ayn Rand calling for more welfare programs.

My suspicion here, since this rhetoric runs counter to Slaughter’s most influential ideas, is that Slaughter is just carrying water as part of the current Democratic political strategy of trying to co-opt the Occupy Wall Street movement. Perhaps the Axelrods and Podestas see that open-source protest movement to potentially be “their tea party”. Whatever. I will take her op-ed more seriously when she is marching against the Hedge fundies and Wall Streeters who are top donors to her Party, her administration and her university.

You can put a three corned hat on a Princeton theorist of global governance by transnational “governmental networks” but even if you adjust the hat at a suitably jaunty angle for maximum populist effect, the agenda underneath is still neither democratic nor popular.