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I have been under the weather the past few days, but I decided to lumber off my sickbed and tend to the blog.

The American Conservative (Kelly Vlahos) – Carl Prine’s Line of Departure 

Vlahos pens a touching tribute to Carl Prine, whose heath is suffering from the effects of his service in combat. All of us here at zenpundit.com wish Carl a speedy recovery and return.

A few days after military writer and critic Carl Prine — whom I did not know at the time — decided to skewer me on his popular new blog, “Line of Departure,” I got a call from an Army friend stationed in Germany. He saw it, and asked “are you alright?” It was that bad.

A little over a year later, I find myself emailing Prine, several times in the last few weeks, writing, “are you alright?”

It’s pretty bad.

….I don’t think I ever told him this, but Prine’s single broadside at my work helped to sharpen my writing. I was pretty stung at the time, mostly because he couldn’t be dismissed as a fool. To my mind, he was a self-serving heel, but it was clear he was well-read and a good writer, which made it worse.

I never responded online, but over the course of the next several months we came to a friendly reckoning and rather smooth path towards mutual respect and encouragement.He’s apologized too many times, and given my column at Antiwar.com a lot of props that I don’t think I necessarily deserve but secretly love because LoD is not the typical Antiwar.com audience and it’s nice when we feel we’re getting something across to the people we write about.

Plus, it feels good to be defended by someone who shows no quarter to the hucksters and court scribes who helped deliver us into these wars and continue to this day to downplay the failed counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan and the pathetically tepid, mostly wrongheaded state of U.S. foreign policy everywhere else. Our burgeoning collegiality aside, Prine became over the course of his time at LoD one of the good guys, a veteran who obviously loves the military for what it could be and loathes it for what it has been used for, and ultimately for what it has become….

American Security Project (Ashley Boyle) –The US and its UAVs: Addressing Legality and Overblown Scenarios 

This piece was endorsed by the killer of egregious drone-nonsense, Dan Trombly. I have to agree. Boyle, unlike about 99% of the folks writing internet hysterics about drones, manages to get international law right before starting her analysis.

 

While the international community has the right to demand that the US provide a legal foundation for drone strikes, it should be understood that the US has a strategic interest in not providing any such justification. Similarly, the argument that US drone strikes are establishing a dangerous precedent is reasonable. However, extrapolating this assertion to a scenario of global drone warfare is not only alarmist and distracting, but has no factual basis at present.

The matter of legal justification for US drone strikes is straightforward. Critics have long claimed that US drone strikes violate laws on interstate force and sovereignty in that strikes are conducted extraterritorially in non-combat zones.

While laws governing the use of interstate force bar the use of force in another nation’s territory at times of peace, under Article 51of the United Nations Charter, a nation has “the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence [sic]” until the UN Security Council takes action. Article 51 applies if either the targeted state agrees to the use of force in its territory by another nation or the targeted state, or a group operating within its territory, was responsible for an act of aggression against the targeting state.

These conditions are mutually exclusive; only one must be satisfied to justify a unilateral extraterritorial use of force by a UN Member. In the cases of Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, both conditions are satisfied: all three countries have consented, explicitly or otherwise, to the US operating drones within their territories, and all three are “safe havens” for groups that have launched violent attacks against the US and US interests.

If the US is well within its right to conduct drone strikes within these nations, why, then, does it not simply invoke Article 51 as a means of justification and end the legality debate?

David Brooks –Why Our Elites Stink 

Brooks gets some of this wrong and drastically underestimates active vice passive corruption eating away at the system bit he gets one critical point right:

….As a result, today’s elite lacks the self-conscious leadership ethos that the racist, sexist and anti-Semitic old boys’ network did possess. If you went to Groton a century ago, you knew you were privileged. You were taught how morally precarious privilege was and how much responsibility it entailed. You were housed in a spartan 6-foot-by-9-foot cubicle to prepare you for the rigors of leadership.

The best of the WASP elites had a stewardship mentality, that they were temporary caretakers of institutions that would span generations. They cruelly ostracized people who did not live up to their codes of gentlemanly conduct and scrupulosity. They were insular and struggled with intimacy, but they did believe in restraint, reticence and service.

Today’s elite is more talented and open but lacks a self-conscious leadership code. The language of meritocracy (how to succeed) has eclipsed the language of morality (how to be virtuous). Wall Street firms, for example, now hire on the basis of youth and brains, not experience and character. Most of their problems can be traced to this.

If you read the e-mails from the Libor scandal you get the same sensation you get from reading the e-mails in so many recent scandals: these people are brats; they have no sense that they are guardians for an institution the world depends on; they have no consciousness of their larger social role. 

That’s exactly correct. An elite with no ethical guidance system are not merely prone to personal vice and policy disaster, they are dangerous to democracy.

ADDENDUM:

Peter J. Munson, USMC Major, SWJ editor and…author!

Advanced Praise for War, Welfare, and Democracy

War, Welfare & Democracy: Rethinking America’s quest for the End of History by Peter J. Munson

 

[ by Charles Cameron — numbers as analytic categories, two, the duel and the duet ]
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Charles Darwin once said of his fellow species biologists:

Those who make many species are the “splitters,” and those who make few are the “lumpers”.

**

The diagram above represents a card-game I’ve played on occasion in my mind, asking myself the question: what is the opposite of one?

Two is the usual answer — and it’s interesting, you can get there from one two ways: by adding, or by dividing.

**

The human mind very often thinks in binaries, we talk about us and them, friend and foe, the Allies and the Axis Powers, and even an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth – our ideas of warfare, contest and justice alike are predicated on the number two.

As I said in my intro post, one is a single data point, perhaps an anomaly: two is a duel or a duet, an opposition or a trend.

So we don’t always have to think of us and them — we could also think about me and mine, you and yours, two heads are better than one…

And what if you can “turn” your enemy? Then the duel turns into a duet.

**

The duel is all about two competing, contending, fighting, agonizing to see who shall be the one. It is arguably the most basic form of combat, the simplest, and possibly the most profound. It can be close to symmetric — “they were perfectly matched” — or the very essence of asymmetric — David and Goliath.

The duet is about two collaborating, counterpointing, harmonizing — seeing how, together, they are one…

War-fighting and music-making, war and peace, regiment and free form, the march and the dance…

*****

I am eager to know what sorts of insights you can derive from or find echoed in this series of posts.

[ by Charles Cameron — numbers as analytic categories, one, self-reference ]
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Is that a self-eating watermelon?

Not exactly. It’s the ourobouros, the serpent in many mythologies which eats its own tail…

**

The thing about one is that it’s itself: as the song says, One is one and all alone, and ever more shall be so.

One is itself, it is self-contained, sufficient — it refers only to itself.

And so it is that all things self-referential have a special quality to them. Douglas Hofstadter recognized this specialness of the self-referential, and made it a feature of his book Godel Escher Bach. And my point in writing this post is simply to say that whenever I as an analyst recognize a self-reference, I pay special attention.

And I am almost always rewarded, either by an aha!, a sigh, or a laugh…

**

So for the last two months, I’ve been quietly noting down every self-referential structure in my twitter-stream. Insights, jokes, regrets, they’re all here:

@BryanAlexander, 120508: The trick is to have 3d printers printing 3d printers
@BryanAlexander, 120508: 3d printers all the way down

@tejucole, 120508: Perfectly sane except for persistent paranoia about being sent to an asylum, Miron, 20, of Elizabeth, N.J., was sent to an asylum.

@GEsfandiari, 120509: Kafkaesque Iran where Khamenei’s Fatwa on Antifiltering is Filtered http://www.rferl.org/content/iran_filters_khamenei_fatwa_on_antifiltering_internet/24575143.html

@emptywheel, 120514: MEK, about to be rewarded for its assassination of Iranian scientists, AKA terrorism, by being delisted as terrorists. http://goo.gl/4833u

@carlacasilli, 120515: “By default, Brackets shows its own source code (MIND BLOWN).” How’s that for recursive?

@imothanaYemen, 120529: Paradoxically, I can’t watch @frontlinepbs on Al-Qaeda in Yemen live because I am in Yemen :). Trying to do something about that!

@shephardm, 120612: Think someone has new chapter…Man hitchhiking across US writing “The Kindness of America” hurt in a drive-by shooting

@JimmySky, 120615: #ff @DaveedGR, one of the world’s foremost authorities on foremost authorities.

@DaveedGR, 120707: Ironically, the Brown Lloyd James firm is now in need of its own Brown Lloyd James firm.

@holysmoke, 120709: I wish sarcastic Tweeters would stay classy and STOP SAYING ‘STAY CLASSY’.

@rwhe, 120712: Attention, comedians! How’s “How’s that workin’ out for ya?” workin’ out for ya?

**

Each of those very bright fellows noticed a self-reference and thought it noteworthy, worth tweeting on to their various followers. It was the shape they noticed, the form, the way what they were tweeting about turned back on itself, like that proverbial serpent eating its own tail.

And the same shape crops up in scripture and poetry:

Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. Ephesians 4:8, KJV — the Vulgate has captivam duxit captivitatem.

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die! — John Donne, Holy Sonnets, X.

**

Self-reference is an important analytic signal: pay special attention. It doesn’t tell you what kind of attention, or why it might be important, just that there’s something worth looking at. A data point, possibly an anomaly.

That’s the number one thing to note.

*****

I am eager to know what sorts of insights you can derive from or find echoed in this series of posts.

[ by Charles Cameron — numbers as analytic categories, introducing a series of posts ]
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This is the first post in a series, suggesting that we think in numbers — among other analytic categories — with a great deal of our thinking revolving specifically around binaries: war and peace, friend and foe, good and (axis of) evil and so forth. At times this serves us well, at times it leads us to overly simplistic, misleading, false, dangerous conclusions.

One is a single data point, perhaps an anomaly.
Two is a duel or a duet, an opposition or a trend, competition or collaboration.
Three is enough to permit shifting alliances.
Four tends to square off into two pair … and so forth.

So let me put it this way: numbers are analytic categories, categories of thought, categories worth thinking about.

In this series, we’ll start with the earliest positive integers, and see where we go from there.

**

Umpteen is a delightful number. The umpteen ways book, should you be interested, is about a New Orleans poet, Everette Maddox. I don’t know his work, perhaps we should get acquainted.

*****

I am eager to know what sorts of insights you can derive from or find echoed in this series of posts.

Russian President Vladimir Putin made a foreign policy speech to Russia’s ambassadors and Foreign Ministry officials that is very much worth reading in context of his dispatch to Syria of a fleet of warships, including a battleship, to the modest Russian naval base in Tartus. Under Putin’s hand, Russian support for the bloody regime of Bashar Assad has consistently been more about safeguarding and expanding Russia’s strategic place in world than about Syria:

….We are forced to admit that no reliable solution for overcoming the global economic crisis has been found yet. Indeed, the prospects are looking more and more worrying. The debt problems in the Eurozone and its slide towards recession are just the tip of the iceberg as far as the global economy’s unresolved structural problems go. The traditional powerhouses of global development – the USA, the EU, and Japan – are seeing their leadership erode, but the absence of new development models is putting a brake on global growth. There is increasing competition for access to resources, and this provokes abnormal fluctuations on the raw materials and energy markets. The traditional Western economic powers are being weakened by the crisis, which has exacerbated social and economic problems in the developed economies, and by the multi-vector nature of global development today. We can already see this for a fact now. 

Colleagues, this is no cause for joy. We should not take delight in this turn of events, and much less feel malicious glee. On the contrary, we cannot but worry over these developments, because the consequences of these tectonic shifts in the global economy are not yet clear, nor are the inevitable shifts in the international balance of power and in global policy that will follow. 

We are all the more worried when we see attempts by some actors in international relations to maintain their traditional influence, often by resorting to unilateral action that runs counter to the principles of international law. We see evidence of this in so-called ‘humanitarian operations’, the export of bomb and missile diplomacy, and intervention in internal conflicts.

We see how contradictory and unbalanced the reform process is in North Africa and the Middle East, and I am sure that many of you still have the tragic events in Libya before your eyes. We cannot allow a repeat of such scenarios in other countries, in Syria, for example. I believe that we must do everything possible to press the parties in this conflict into negotiating a peaceful political solution to all issues of dispute. We must do all we can to facilitate such a dialogue. Of course this is a more complex and subtle undertaking than intervention using brute force from outside, but only this process can guarantee a lasting settlement and future stable development in the region, and in Syria’s case, in the country itself….

It would be harder for Putin to have been more clear about what his priorities were, or that for Russia, R2P as a doctrine has no standing whatsoever in international law [ incidentally, he’s correct on that point] and Syria is not going to be allowed to go the way of Libya, if the Kremlin can prevent it.

Generally, the media reported this speech, highly misleadingly, as Putin’s prediction of “Western decline” when the message was Russia’s opposition to Western military intervention in Syria to remove Assad from power. Putin neither overestimates the means at Russia’s disposal to accomplish his limited objective (blocking intervention) nor inflates his objective to an unrealizable, vaguely defined, abstraction.

Contrast, with the speech on Syria made recently by SECSTATE Hillary Clinton. Here is a snippet that gives the tenor of her remarks:

….What was accomplished in Geneva by the action group was, for the very first time, to enlist not only all five permanent members of the Security Council including Russia and China, but also important leaders in the region and in the Arab League in support of such a transition. The issue now is to determine how best to put into action what was accomplished there and is continuing here. And I really hope everyone reads the communique from Geneva, because for example, one of the earlier speakers from Syria expressed concern there was nothing about political prisoners. Well, indeed there is. And a call for the release from detention. So it would be very helpful to get everybody on the same page if we’re going to work together about what we have already done and what we need to be doing as we move forward.

Under the Geneva communique, the opposition is for the first time put on an even basis with the government. They are given equal power in constituting the transition governing entity that will have, as we just heard, full executive authority. That could not have been imagined three months ago, let alone a year ago.

So although none of us here is satisfied or comfortable with what is still going on inside of Syria, because it is against every norm of international law and human decency for a government to be murdering its own people, there has been in the last several months, starting in Tunisia, a steady, inexorable march toward ending this regime. What we need to do is to follow through on what each of us can contribute to the end of the Assad regime and the beginning of a new day for Syria. 

….Now what can every nation and group represented here do? I ask you to reach out to Russia and China and to not only urge, but demand that they get off the sidelines and begin to support the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people. It is frankly not enough just to come to the Friends of the Syrian People, because I will tell you very frankly, I don’t think Russia and China believe they are paying any price at all – nothing at all – for standing up on behalf of the Assad regime. The only way that will change is if every nation represented here directly and urgently makes it clear that Russia and China will pay a price, because they are holding up progress – blockading it – that is no longer tolerable. 

First of all, the Secretary of State needs a more effective speechwriter. Period.

Secondly, there is a substantive problem here with an obsession with the minutia of process, possibly because the legal principle behind American policy on Syria is a novelty of intellectuals and is not accepted by two veto-wielding great powers that sit on the UN Security Council. Moreover this focus on minutia of process obstructs clear thinking in regard to the larger geopolitical picture and the ways to get to the end in mind – the removal of Assad’s regime – or the consequences for opposing American policy. Russia and China are told their continued support for the Assad regime, which they see as being in their own interests, is “intolerable” – an outburst of unseemly frustration as we have no stick and strangely offer no carrots for these states to change their positions. Instead we choose to moralize  in public, a diplomatic technique with a long pedigree of failure.

The comparison of statecraft between Russia and the United States is unflattering. Russia has vastly fewer cards to play, but because  Putin has grounded his policy in a siloviki assessment the realities of power, has limited his objectives to those within Russia’s means and related those to the larger diplomatic context that would appeal to other powers, he has played those cards well. Moreover, Putin has positioned Russia to be an indispensable party in a peaceful resolution of the conflict in Syria at very little cost, as Secretary Clinton herself has admitted and capped it off with a naval show of force in the eastern Mediterranean.

We, who have a wealth of resources to employ, have squandered them ineffectively and navigate the ship of state with our heads in the clouds. We forced a vote in the UNSC on Syria, ignoring all signals that the end result would be failure. Syria shoots down a Turkish warplane intruding in it’s airspace (likely at our request) and we had no plan to capitalize on the incident. We gratuitously leak information or disinformation about covert operations that serves more to make us look amateurish than to intimidate our opponents. We do not even appear to be well-informed about the Syrian opposition we are aiding inside Syria, as opposed to expatriate organizations. Some of the fighters in the opposition are as morally objectionable as Assad’s militia thugs and secret police killers.

We play at tactical geopolitics while the Russians do strategy.