Lack of strategic imagination has muted the Big Bang
Friday, July 14, 2006 at 1:34PM Tom got this email:
You highlight successes of the big bang on occasion. The Washington Post's Dionne really nails it as a failure in today's edition: Big Bang Theory In Ruins. Is he looking only at short term issues, where you look farther down the road, or is there more to the differences you both seem to see? Hope the visit to Westfields went well yesterday. Meant to make that, but duty called at the Pentagon. Thanks!
Tom's reply:
Good and fair assessment by Dionne, one that speaks to the major tactical errors in this strategy: not doing well enough in postwar Iraq (enough said) and not being more imaginative on Iran, which would have gotten us better control remotely in Syria and Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Palestine (Hamas) WRT Israel.Blaming the current Israel situation on Bush and the BB is a bit much though. There is the dream that the Arab-Israeli thing can get fixed directly, when Arab regimes plus Tehran have always used the Palestinians for their own trouble-making reasons at home (averting popular attention from much-needed reforms), in the region (stirring the pot) or complicating things for the Americans. So it's just naive to think you will ever "fix" this conflict short of fixing the regional security issue, and that's where the current Bush track on Iran lacks all strategic imagination.
When you pursue the BB, you lock in wins along the way, and Bush failed to do that in postwar Iraq and with an Iran we just made strategically ecstatic by removing threats both east (Taliban) and west (Saddam). Instead, Bush ignored and still ignores the soft-kill option on Iran (its nuke run should trigger our leadership with other Core powers on a comprehensive regional, CSCE-like agenda) and instead he's rerun the WMD drama (as if the screw-up on that subject never happened in Iraq!).
Shortest reply to all those post-Saddam-toppling mistakes?
Kerry should have won in 2004. We needed a dealmaker with strategic imagination. Carp all you like on Kerry's behavior since (he ain't prez but an opposition senator, so DUH!), but he would have been a huge and likely successful opportunity for smarter choices on pushing the BB to better fruition.
He and his certainly would have done no worse than what we've had with Bush and Rice and Hadley running our foreign policy.
These people are just tapped. As I've said many times before, they know how and when to say "no," they just don't know how or when to say "yes."
If I could give a short critique of their mindset (still very neocon, in my mind, just neocon tamed by the Iraq tie-down), that would be it. After that one bold stroke with Saddam, no strategic imagination.
In that sense, the Big Bang is a big over-reach for this crowd.
But yes, I still support the decision to go. The alternative of stasis still sucked.
Better the tumult over there, not here. Better the killing and terror over there, not here. And better professionals wage (and fight and die) in this war than U.S. citizens on our shores.
This fight was preordained in the Middle East by globalization's rapid expansion. Somehow, some way, the Middle East will be forced by history to rejoin the larger world. You can't have 3 billion new capitalists and all their needs and desires and pretend the Islamic Middle East will somehow continue in its queer disconnectedness or immoral civilizational apartheid and gender repression.
Osama picked the timing of this fight (9/11) and Bush picked the venues (Afghanistan and Iraq), but never entertain the delusion that we can "just make it all go away" with isolationism or pull-outs or hydrogen cars. Problems postponed are not problems solved, they're just problems passed on.
And on that note, Dionne is equally correct.
Reader Comments (4)
Kerry should have won in 2004.
Ah, gee, Tom. I know you gots to keep your Dem street creds and God know we will need somebody like you to provide adult supervision if a Democrat wins the Presidency in 2008 but John Kerry has never done anything but recite the conventional platitudes of the fashionable folks that he grew up with.
Kerry would have bought the story about the Afghan winter and the Taliban would still be hosting Osama bin Laden in Iraq today while President Kerry issued stern but reasonable warnings. No Big Bang, just the end of the sanctions on Iraq and the division of the oil resources between the two local powers. I figure Iraq would get KSA and the Gulf while Iran would get the Caspian and maybe some of the Emirates. Who gets Nigeria and Indonesia TBD.
Or maybe I'm just biased because as a lad serving my country back in the early 1970s the sound of John Kerry comparing me to Jenjis Kahn is seared -- seared in my memory.
You're missing the point, Mark. You argue like I called for Kerry in 2000. That subject was never up for debate. The point I make here is that we've lost way too much with a second Bush term. He did fine to start the Big Bang, but he was not the guy to carry it through.
That was America's mistaken call in 2004. Politically, we should have recognized that what needed to come next was simply beyond Bush and his people. When you can't lock-in wins, you simply piss away victories.
And please, man, you have to come up with something better than whining about the 1970s. Rerunning Vietnam stuff doesn't answer any mail. Put that one to bed. If holding onto that emotion beats doing what needs to be done today, then we never had a chance to begin with, because we're being led by a damaged generation of leaders.
i'm just jumping in from DefenseTech. pardon me for asking what you've probably addressed before.
looking at the Iraq and Afghanistan today, the U.S. has failed to provide security to foster economic and political growth. it has failed against people with less than a hundredth or a thousandth of the resources we are putting into it. it has made iraq less capable economically than before the war, and has legitimized terrorists in the hearts of those countries and others. the "Big Bang" strategy sucks, to me.
Big Bang is a symbolic strategy, not a pragmatic one. It is hurting the Middle East, and they know that.
I'm here attending Sommerhochschule in Austria. Talked to some Europeans about Bush and US foreign policy. None of them can grasp the idea of unilateral US military action in the gap's worst neighborhoods.
I guess I need them to read the PNM and BFA. The fact of the matter I guess is that no one likes Bush here, perhaps one or two Europeans, but no more than that. I guess to garner support for this 2nd half of the BB we needed more multi-lateral support and Bush just couldn't do it as well as some Democrats could. I think they could also sell our unilateral actions much better than the "tough crap" approach I've seen from our administration.
My only problem is that when it comes to electing officials I look as much at the domestic as much as the foreign policies. Makes for a real bitch of deciding who to elect.
I'll more than likely go for a Democrat if the Republicans continue on their path now. Although there are some Republicans who look like they may be able to handle the issues better. We'll see!