Esquire's Politics Blog: Battle: The Real Obama Doctrine Emerges

In 2008, Barack Obama ran against the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive, unilateralist war. His presidency, he assured us, would be different. And once he took office, it certainly was. One "apology tour" and Nobel Peace Prize later, the Obama Doctrine, such as it was, consisted of telling everyone and anyone that America was winding up its wars, pulling down its military tents, and going home — where it was going to be "renewed," "rebuilt" and so on. His National Security Strategy said it all: "Building at home, shaping abroad." Spot the focus; spot the window dressing. "Shaping" is a military term of art referring to anything other than actual warfare.

It was awfully darn close to Barack Obama promising never to do another Iraq, another Afghanistan — another anything.

And now we're bombing Libya.

So what happened?

Read the entire post at Esquire's The Politics Blog.

France engages, Qaddafi plows on

Sarkozy just on CNN confirming that French jets are engaged over Libya as Qaddafi's forces enter Benghazi.

This mustering seems to come just in time or just too late, as clearly now, Qaddafi's "cease-fire" was a time-gaining ploy. 

Sarkozy's statement left open the possibility that Qaddafi can negotiate his departure (turning the clock back a bit), but one assumes the colonel ain't interested at this point, thinking he can finish the job and then go into Saddam-like lockdown (a decent bet on his part).

Actually, his ploy on the cease-fire helps a bit.  Moves things along at a time when additional foot-dragging was possible.

Obama: no American SysAdmin boots on the ground! (amended)

So he tells congressional leaders in Situation Room meeting, according to CNN just now.  Of course, sometimes certain US types show up very quietly on-site and nobody counts their boots, but we get the basic point.

Still, you have to wonder, why Mr.-All-Options-on-the-Table needs to flinch, pre-emptively, in such an obvious manner before even starting operations. Why signal that lack of intent up front? What does that buy you exactly from your opponent? Especially when it so clearly marks you as afraid of your own public?  It really makes you wonder about the quality of advice President Obama receives. It just comes off as so . . . I dunno . . . European, when Europe (at least parts of it) are acting more like America used to (making you wonder if Obama's purposefully suppression of US leadership really changes anything or just shifts the leadership impulse back to Europe's France--the one country there with an ambition to lead).

This is fine and dandy and I generally approve of the division of labor.  The more the "international community" picks up the SysAdmin work, the easier for the US Leviathan to works its magic.

Think back to the Balkans:  we did it mostly through the air and put forth only a small fraction of the eventual boots. But this time, given our current load and recent history, perfectly appropriate to line up others for the follow-through.  An excellent solution.  The Leviathan intervention will happen time and again, but Iraq-the-US-hogs-the-SysAdmin-show phenom never needs repeating.

But make no mistake, really no Leviathan action without us and our willingness to participate, and that's real leadership worth maintaining, because the entire system benefits whenever we can collectively muster norm enforcement.

No, we won't get it everywhere (across Gap) and we certainly don't need it everywhere (i.e., Core).  But when the opportunity is there, and the demand is there, and you are a difference maker on supply provision, you have to step up enough to enable the response.

Already we get a sense that Qaddafi's "cease fire" will be selective, but at least now we've entered into a serious negotiating stance.  This is all very positive.

Libya declares cease-fire within hours of UN resolution on No-Fly-Zone

Shows you what a little flash of the Leviathan can do. [Later found not to be enough, but at least the conversation started for real.]

“We decided on an immediate cease-fire and on an immediate stop to all military operations,” Libyan foreign Minister Musa Kusa told reporters in the capital. He said Libya “takes great interest in protecting all civilians and protecting human rights,” adding that the government would also protect foreigners and foreign assets in the country.

Libya “accepts that it is obliged to accept the U.N. resolution,” Kusa said in explaining the decision to declare a cease-fire.

Yeah, right.  Libya simply knows what the US Leviathan is capable of. This isn't about WWIII, so no Hitler comparisons please; this is about managing the system and taking advantage of opportunities when they stare you in the face.  It's also about responding to an Arab League, and frankly the entire UNSC, that realizes they want this nut gone--finally.  And when you have all that demand in the system and do nothing about it, you look weak--not Hitler 1938 weak, because this is not a hysteric conversation, thank you.  Just weak. Leadership is an asset to be maintained, not a responsibility to run away from.  It has value.  We like to use it when it's appropriate.  It must be kept up.  Allies in Asia do want us to seem credible vis-a-vis China, and the majority of Arabs do prefer pax Americana to G-Zero. 

Slate says Hillary was the decider who convinced a recalcitrant Obama by going around his too cautious advisers/bodyguards/whatever.  He picked them because they reflect his thinking.  Thank God he also picked her.

I voted for Hillary in 2008, and would gladly do so again.

Tossing in the towel on Libya

Asked recent by a commenter what I would imagine a decent effort in Libya would entail, I now turn to Max Boot's piece yesterday in the WSJ entitled, "It's not too late to save libya."

The guts of the military explanation:

The Pentagon, from Defense Secretary Robert Gates on down, has reacted as if this would be a military operation on the order of D-Day. In reality, it would not be hard to ground Gadhafi's decrepit air force.

The job could probably be performed with just one American ship—the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, now in the Red Sea, which has 34 F/A-18F Super Hornets and 10 F/A-18C Hornets along with a full complement of electronic-warfare aircraft. The Enterprise strike group could also unleash a devastating array of Tomahawk cruise missiles.

And the Enterprise would not have to fight alone. It could easily be joined by numerous American, British and French aircraft flying out of Aviano and other NATO bases in Italy. A forward operations base could be established at the Gamal Abdul el-Nasser airfield, one of Libya's major air force bases (built by the British), which is located south of Tobruk and has already been captured by the rebels.

As the enforcement of no-fly zones over Bosnia and Iraq should have proved, the risks of such an operation are minimal—especially if we first neutralize Gadhafi's air defenses.

By itself, a no-fly zone might not be enough to topple Gadhafi. At the very least, however, it would dishearten Gadhafi's supporters and buy time for the rebels. We could further tilt the balance in their favor by bombing Gadhafi's installations and troops.

It may also be necessary to send arms and Special Forces trainers to support the rebels. Without committing any combat troops of our own, we could deliver the same kind of potent combined-arms punch that drove the Serbs out of Kosovo when NATO aircraft supported ground operations by the Kosovo Liberation Army.

That's pretty much what I was thinking of.  I just don't know enough operationally to express as well as Boot does here.

Per the WSJ editorial on the preceding page, we are seeing how much "Arabs love the pax Americana."  I remember during Abu Ghraib and everything else hearing about how America's standing in the region would take "decades" to resurrect.  You knew that was bulls@&t then.  When the right circumstances hit the right fan, the Arab League wants our no-fly-zone, even if Turkey's Erdogan is being too egotistical to admit it.

But of course, we now bow to the "international community," Obama's pet phrase decoded as, "I'm with chickens@$t!"  Just some leadership here would be nice.

Niall Ferguson, in Newsweek, quotes some senior WH aide as saying, "[The President] keeps reminding us that the best revolutions are completely organic."

Ferguson thereupon blows that idiotic reading of history out of the water.  Good God, take a peak at the American Revolution, why don't you?

It scares me to think Obama really views history that naively.  Ferguson goes on to make a truly sophisticated argument on the Helsinki Accords killing the Soviet Union (whip communism . . . eventually, Jerry!).  Great point.  Revolutions that succeed without outside help are rare.

But hey, now Washington seems to have bought into the Beijing Consensus when it comes to non-interference.  I'm sure the view on this new world order is great from Benghazi.

Chart of the day: The heartbeat of the global economy

Instability in the Middle East tracks very tightly to global oil price shocks (displayed here as percentage changes over the years), and the "past five global recessions have all followed sharp jumps in the oil price," according to the FT, from whence this chart comes.

It almost looks like a heartbeat, does it not (?), the odd thing being how it always seems to settle back into a stable pattern of relatively small price changes.

But I think that ends with the sustained demand growth in the East.  I think the upward pressure only grows and we thus get a new normal of consistently rising prices once this current instability settles out.

Truth of the situation:  The world pays one way or the other.  It either pays by intervening or it sits back and pays because the instability plays out longer.  But the world pays.

[Apologies for the sloppy wording in the first draft (pointed out by a commenter who needs to offer up a better fake name if he wants to be posted).  I am working monster hours right now and so I tend to shortchange the blog a bit, dashing through posts. But, with 8 mouths to feed, I am happy to be working so much.]

WPR's The New Rules: Obama Abdicating U.S. Leadership in Libya

If President Barack Obama's handling of the events in Libya exemplifies his own definition of a "post-American world," then we have moved past a G-Zero reality, which is how Nouriel Roubini and Ian Bremmer described a G-20 that can't agree on how to rebalance global power, and into what I would describe as the "G-Less-Than-Zero" world, where America purposefully abdicates its global leadership role.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Realizing our hand in Libya

Austin Bay on Strategy Page (by way of Craig Nordin) a couple days back talking about covert action.

I don't know Bay personally, but he always impresses with his just-aggressive-enough logic that you always want him in the discussion, and I believe his thinking here is especially welcome.

Everybody keeps saying, No-Fly-Zone equals act of war, but that's a red herring.  It is a clear abrogation of sovereignty in this age, but it does not signal a classic state-on-state war dynamic, where the "act of war" logic is appropriate.  No one thought we were at war with Saddam across the 1990s when we NFZ'd both north and south, and this is an entirely feasible route for us to go here, one that's short of serious intervention (and all that entails) and beyond just sitting on our hands or taking in refugees.

But here's Bay's point that really struck me, because it's why I'm writing my WPR column for Monday on having exactly the same feeling in my own head these past few days:  We are letting a winning hand go to waste here.

Bay:

Here's a clue: 2011 finds America representing history's winners at the strategic, long-term level. The demands for freedom in the streets of Tunis and Cairo echo the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Ironically, 2011 also finds an American government that is tactically alienated from these energized democratic forces because it is convinced of America's past agency in what its left-wing academic gurus call imperialism, racism, reactionary-ism, et cetera. For these toffs, the hint of U.S. involvement in an event taints its historical purity, or some equivalent balderdash.

But the world isn't a faculty lounge. In Libya, as President Obama mulls, Gadhafi's air force mauls.

We only get so many opportunities to lead, and this is one of them.  So this is where Obama has to decide if he really is, as the Right contends, born and bred for a "post-American world" or whether his definition of renewal allows for a reversal of that perception.  I find the whole PAW concept (less Zakaria's actual book but how the notion is employed) to be the most insidious form of self-defeatism, and entirely inappropriate for the age we're in.  Even the "risers," when you examine where they're at and what they need, don't really welcome this notion in reality--just in anticipation.  Unless Obama can start articulating something post-"post-American world," I would have to argue that we'd be better off with somebody else come 2012, just like I did with Bush in 2004 (and yes, I am concluding that, in this era, we cannot afford 2-term presidents).  I just don't think the world can afford 4 more years of such non-leadership.  We need something short of Bush but above what Obama is mustering right now.

Esquire's Politics Blog: Battle: Libya? How the Pentagon Cured America's War Itch

Before and after President Obama decided to be "very unambiguous" about why Muammar Qaddafi should step down, a lot of people were reading way too much into his defense secretary's comments above, made at West Point as part of a legacy tour that just happened to fall in the middle of a civil war. Was this some pre-emptive kind of door-slamming on the prospect of U.S. military intervention in Libya and whatever follow-on "Facebook revolutions" are to come? Not really. As MacArthur himself — a serious headcase if there ever was one — discovered with Truman, only the commander-in-chief makes those calls. The rest of us are just advisers, onlookers, and ne'er-do-wells.

And don't read too much into Hillary Clinton's own Libya whopper on Tuesday — "this doesn't come from some Western power or some Gulf country saying this is what you should do, this is how you should live" — because there's a lot more going on here than no-fly zones. As the world awaits our next move in the Middle East's power struggle, an intense battle is unfolding within the national-security establishment back home: The "future of the force," as insiders here in Washington and around the Pentagon like to call it, hangs in the balance. And Robert Gates, having already advertised that the United States of America had reached its limits and now poised for his final power play, knows how to counter better than anyone in the president's ear.

Can we interpret the Gates comments — made on his way out the door and protecting his tenuous small-war legacy every step of the way — as a repudiation of Bush and Cheney's long-war logic? Again, not really. (And please take note that almost all of the proposals out there for "surgical" this-and-that in Libya comes closer to Rumsfeld's vilified light-and-fast mentality than anything approaching a mass land force occupation.)

Does the Defense Department suddenly want to walk away from this "era of persistent conflict," as Gates likes to call it? No. (He's fully supports Obama's our-badassess-versus-their-badasses approach to counter-terrorism, swapping out Bush's bring-'em-on bravado for remorseless killing drones).

Is the U.S. military, as Gates said in the West Point speech, an "institution transformed by war" to the point of tamping down any possible major land war in Asia? Only insofar as we're keeping counterinsurgency alive and the troops safe. (Remember the last time we ditched that plan?)

But in staring down the Obama administration's wave of withdrawal from the world — the "post-American world" vibe that has we'll-be-number-one-again pundits like Tom Friedman and Fareed Zakaria headed straight for Qadaffi's bookshelf — Bob Gates swims against it. While managing two wars, he got fed up with trading future combat casualties in imaginary wars with China against today's very real ones, so you'll have to excuse him for sounding such somber notes. And God bless him for that, because it took a while to get here.

Read the entire post at Esquire's The Politics Blog.

WPR's The New Rules: Leadership Fatigue Puts U.S., and Globalization, at Crossroads

Events in Libya are a further reminder for Americans that we stand at a crossroads in our continuing evolution as the world's sole full-service superpower. Unfortunately, we are increasingly seeking change without cost, and shirking from risk because we are tired of the responsibility. We don't know who we are anymore, and our president is a big part of that problem. Instead of leading us, he explains to us. Barack Obama would have us believe that he is practicing strategic patience. But many experts and ordinary citizens alike have concluded that he is actually beset by strategic incoherence -- in effect, a man overmatched by the job. 

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Quoted in Reuters piece on Qaddafi

Ever get the feeling that, if Hugh Hefner was a Middle Eastern dictator, he'd be Qaddafi?  Right down to his hundreds of buxom young babe bodyguards?

Piece by Peter Apps entitled, "Could Libya war crimes talk just entrench Gaddafi?"

My bit near end:

  Others say that -- like the threat of economic sanctions or military action -- at the end of the day the prosecution threat may simply become another diplomatic bargaining chip.  

   "A war crimes indictment demonstrates the resolve of the international community," said Thomas Barnett, chief analyst of political risk consultancy Wikistrat. "To the extent that it pushes an embattled leader into a corner, it can likewise be retracted as part of the collective bargaining for an acceptable exit scenario for the leader, his family and top associates." 

Covered this subject, naturally, in this week's CoreGap Bulletin.

Libya: rebels consider asking for some Leviathan

The dream date is, of course, the UN.  But Russia has already dismissed the notion of UN airstrikes, arguing that they're superfluous.  Not true, unfortunately.

Centcom boss James Mattis on the Hill yesterday tried hard to spell out just what would be involved, but the bottom line is we'd be at war with another Muslim country, once again doing regime change.

I know, I know.  We're NEVER going to do this because this is all in our heads and there's not actually any demand signal out there that draws us in!

But this is the gist of why I wrote "Pentagon's New Map": globalization continues to advance, and stuff like this will continue to happen.  We can be involved or on the sidelines, but these instabilities are going to happen - time and again.  To pretend otherwise is to bury your head in the sand.

But this is nonetheless a serious Rubicon to cross.  Once you start bombing, you are committed to following through on other things.  Plus, you really do make it that much harder to bargain Qaddafi out of power (here's some of your money back, and we were just kidding on war crimes charges), and there is good to be found in that path - if you can pull it off.  

So, once in, you really commit yourself to the finishing.

Still, what a target this guy presents:  stuck basically in the capital city.

Of course, if you do him, why not Gbagbo in Ivory Coast, etc.?

But here's where the lack of explicit rules and understanding with the Russians and Chinese haunts us.  We want our free hand and so we don't limit ourselves in these things, and that creates the fear that prompts Moscow and Beijing to worry that the precedent can be used against them.  If we were explicit on this subject, we might get somewhere, but we choose to keep it loose - largely for our own freedom of action - and now it comes back to complicate these events.

And that's too bad, because it's clear to everybody now that Qaddafi must go.  We just don't have that explicit A-to-Z rule set for processing politically bankrupt states.

WPR's The New Rules: America Need Not Fear Connectivity Revolutions

A lot of international relations theories are being stress-tested by events in the Arab world right now, with some emerging better than others. Two in particular that are worth mentioning are Ian Bremmer's 2006 book, "The J Curve," which predicts a dangerous dip into instability when closed, authoritarian states attempt to open up to the world; and Evgeny Morozov's new book, "The Net Delusion," which critiques the notion that Internet connectivity is inherently democratizing. (In the interests of transparency, I work as a consultant for Bremmer's political risk consultancy, Eurasia Group, and penned a pre-publication blurb for Morozov's book.)

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

A scenario for Libya

Map from The Guardian.

Based on what I'm reading, here's how I might gin up the desired exit glidepath:

• By most accounts, Qaddafi is down to Tripoli and a couple other chunks of the country.
• We fear he'll go out Gotterdammerung-style with chem weapons.  He also has some air capacity to bring significant pain to rebel-held territories (how very Saddam-like, yes?).
• So you establish the no-fly-zone (NATO, preferably, but mostly USN in practical terms, although one assumes flying across the Med is no big deal logistically speaking) and lock up the Tripoli and Sidra with naval blockades, committing no troops for now.  You do let the people flow (outbound) proceed, especially whenever it's countries like Turkey trying to get workers out.
• You also lock down Qaddafi's financial network (I assume this has proceeded apace already) and essentially starve him out, taking the hit on higher oil prices in the meantime. 
• They guy survives primarily on a praetorian guard dynamic, so . . . You do your best to signal inward to his forces that there is only one ending and it would be nice if somebody took care of the meddlesome colonel.  Or maybe the rebels simply finish the job with acceptable civilian losses.
• If Qaddafi does go to chem, well then, there's your more vigorous intervention made to order, the justification shifting to humanitarian protection and inevitable roundup of the ICC-indicted war criminals.

To me, this is an ideal sort of SysAdmin intervention opportunity: keep it small and proportional and elevate in response to events. Big point:  not pre-emptive but responsive.  You want to ride with globalization's natural tide as much as possible, letting the "new map" tell you where to apply pressure next, thus making local demand your primary guide.

Naturally, the fearful and paranoid will see the usual Western plot to grab oilfields, but denying the bottom-up nature on this one reduces them to sheer lying.

Me? I see a beautiful, globalization-driven process at work here. Let it roll!  Because I like our longer-term odds versus those of the Iranians, al-Qaeda and the Wahhabist Saudis.  Then again, victory was never in doubt--just timing and cost.

The weird rush to anoint Iran as "victor" in 2.0 Revolutions

Tour d'horizon piece by always solid Michael Slackman that editors at NYT need to hook with title, and so they decided that Saudis are losing and Iranians are winning.

I find that teaser a bit much and awfully premature.  Simplistic and deceiving are other words.

These are not Islamic revolutions.  The protestors are not saying, "What's wrong is the lack of Islam!"  Nor are they saying, "Stick it to the West!"

What they are saying is that they want a future, with jobs and opportunity.  Again, this is an expectations revolution:  these young have gotten just enough education and just enough connectivity with the outside world to know they're screwed, that the oligarchic capitalism they're being offered is totally slanted against them, and that these situations will not improve with time--meaning no jobs and no dowries and no wives and no families for them.

What is there in the Iranian model that says they know how to raise a middle class and keep it happy? Nothing.  Their middle class is miserable.  We're talking a stunning brain drain (worst in world, according to international organizations) and an even more stunning birth dearth, meaning people are so profoundly unhappy in Iran that they're refusing to have babies--the ultimate vote.  Iran's economy is magnificently controlled--mafia-style--by the Revolutionary Guard, oligarchic capitalism at its best.

Granted, compared to "revolutionary" Iran, the Saudis seem equally trapped in some nutty past (and an equally oligarchic, mafia-run economy), but at least there you're talking some serious money to be thrown at the problem and at the region, something Iran doesn't have to anywhere near the same degree. 

But, in the end, both peddle loser ideologies that do not attract investment or business or jobs.  They are both all about holding off the future and, in Iran's case, settling past scores.  Yes, to the degree they open up, they and others like them may buy time with Chinese investment, but that's all they're buying--time.  The same expectations revolution comes for their heads--eventually.

The one country that can be cast as default winner in the region is the government that knows how to raise a middle class and keep it happy--Erdogan's AKP in Turkey.  There's a country with a future and its people know it.

Once all the dust settles, the winners will be countries and extra-regional powers who make the economic connectivity happen.  In those loser situations where that does not happen, radical ideologies will hold sway, but what else is new? The Saudis and Iranian can fight over those bones, but how that constitutes winning is beyond me.  Winning is picking up strong allies, not more mouths to feed.

Globalization, meanwhile, marches on.

Esquire's Politics Blog: Seven Reasons Why Qaddafi Would Be the Best Domino Yet

Please, spare me any dread over this goofy dictator's hopefully looming and well-earned demise. Muammar Qaddafi has had over four decades to do right by his country and he ranks right up there with old-man Castro as one of the worst leaders ever to keep a people down. Team Obama should have zero qualms on this one, no matter what any of our alleged allies in the region may say, because if they're worried about the Qaddafi family's influence powering on, they know damn well what needs to be done (or not done). Here's why you, Mr. and Mrs. American, should cheer on this revolution along with your careful president.

Read the entire post at Esquires' The Politics Blog.

WPR's The New Rules: Ten Assumptions About Egypt Worth Discarding

There's a lot of trepidation mixed in with the joy of seeing one of the Arab world's great dictators finally step down. With Americans being so down on themselves these days, many see more to fear than to celebrate. But on the whole, there's no good reason for the pessimism on display, which is based on a lot of specious assumptions that need to be discarded. Here's my Top 10 list.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

CIA wrong . . . by almost entire day! Mubarak steps down

This train keeps rolling!

Elvis, we are now told, has truly "left the building," as Mubarak has handed power to the senior military council.

So the journey along Wikistrat's 1-2-3-4 scenarios is complete:  explosive rip of initial protests shakes everything up but triggers no Tunisia-like fall, then the steady drip of protests, strikes, defections, etc, pushes Mubarak into a number of "slips", none of which placate the mob.  Eventually, the military steps in (apparently Leon Panetta's prediction was dead-on and just a few hours off) and takes the Turkish path (assuming temporary rule but promising the much-desired free elections).

The table has been run.

We've been saying for a while that this was our preferred exit glidepath:  Mubarak stops being useful the minute the military decides it can assume the same role - that of the stabilizer that will safeguard the necessary transition.  My only concern, all along, has been that the elections come no faster than planned (and there are some on the democracy side who are already arguing that more time is needed), so, if the military sticks with that clear marker, that's a decent stretch, maybe not enough for everybody to compete to their full capacity, but long enough for it to work.  Since the Egyptian military is coming through this so nicely, I think it's clear that they have the political capital to slow things down (once the celebrations cease), convene the talks necessary for some sort of interim government (hopefully not so inclusive that the infighting starts prematurely, because it would be better for that to await the campaign), and work with that government to set the rules for the election.  One way to prevent any dangerous struggle would be to rule out anybody from the unity cabinet (or whatever it's called) from running for president.

Anyway, nice ending to a utilitarian stretch of unrest (not too violent, deaths in hundreds, but gets the job done with just enough time lapsed so it doesn't dissolve into chaotic-like conditions), and you have to wonder if the opposition movement in Iran doesn't get jacked back up in response.

Now the quasi-negotiating dynamic is between mob and military (which should be a lot more relaxed, one hopes, given the latter's standing), so we see if the army is smart enough to lift the emergency rule ASAP as a signal that things are going to be different and that they are committed to the implied path of democratization. With enough of an immediate freedom agenda, it's possible that the elections could be set for a year from now, which would probably make everybody happy enough - again, if the political climate was immediately altered and altered profoundly in the direction of liberated activity, freedom of the press and assembly, self-organization and the like.  Across that year, then, you'd see all manner of economic aid, along with political support from the usual array of ambitious characters, so giving everybody that length of time to adjust could work well.  The trick, in my mind, is not letting anybody who sits at the big interim table to simultaneously run for president.  One hopes there's enough solid personages to cover both dynamics (interim and campaign).

But again, very positive stuff for the West at a time when we really needed some good news and are surprised to get it (Tunisia, Egypt - so far) from the Middle East/North Africa.

WPR's The New Rules: "Guiding Egypt into the Axis of Good"

While there remains a ton of things that can go wrong with the unfolding revolution in Egypt, there's a strong case to be made that America, despite its low popular standing there, has been handed a gift horse whose mouth, as the axiom puts it, is best left unexamined.  Because most of America's concerns center on security issues, I'll frame the argument for why this is the case in tactical, operational and strategic terms, and then finish on the most relevant grand strategic note -- namely, the new Axis of Good that may result. 

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Mubarak's call: for cooler heads - and better downstream outcomes, the best possible path for Egypt (updated)

[EXTENSION OF ARGUMENT AT BOTTOM; VARIOUS UPDATES BOLDED THROUGHOUT]

Mubarak's just-announced decision not to stand for re-election in the slated September poll is obviously a good one, but so is his vow to remain in office until a successor is installed.

Why?

I just like how the paired decision allows the relevant authorities (i.e., the military) to slow things down, while demonstrating it's largely in charge without having to really step out there and harm any numbers (thus decredentializing itself).  The breather also gives all the relevant outside parties time to influence events to their - sometimes yes and sometimes no - reasonable liking.  It also gives the military time to interact with outside powers in a manner that should be reassuring.

We're talking a leaderless revolt that's driven by an underlying socio-economic revolution long in the making but weak in the developing of suitable political leadership.  Carpetbagging Mohamed ElBaradei [who must now dump on the US every chance he gets to prove he's really Egyptian and not just a lifelong UN bureaucrat, otherwise known as electioneering] actually needs time in-situ to develop a real following, for example.  And the Muslim Brotherhood's intentions and capabilities are more easily gauged/managed by the Powers That Remain in the run-up to the election than if something was slapped together, unity government-wise, in the immediate aftermath of Mubarak high-tailing it to Saudi Arabia.

As much as the romance of that image attracts ("See!  We scared the old bastard out of office!"), the subsequent dynamics are rarely so good.  This is a political system that's purposefully been retarded in its development for decades now, so giving it 8 months to find its feet will be a good thing.

Yes, much depends on how Mubarak behaves in the next few days and months (and seeing the social network sites back up is a VERY good sign), because the right moves will placate and soothe and the wrong ones will only inflame.  People on the street need to be satisfied that they've triggered something huge and permanent and that a new political era has already dawned.  Once that shock is over, then the real bottom-up networking and organizing can proceed apace, the key thing being that the police and Interior Ministry stay out of the picture.

That's not to say that I wouldn't expect the military to sanction some serious repression of the Brotherhood if they proceeded to scare people, but in general, it would be best if everybody had their chance to prove themselves under the new conditions without anybody being declared off-limits.  A truly free election where the Brotherhood does okay but somebody far more stabilizing wins the presidency would be a huge victory for democrats everywhere and a severe blow to Iran, al-Qaeda, radical Islam in general, and even the vaunted China model and its alleged transferability to places like Egypt.

Plus, given America' leadership-from-behind to date, the interregnum gives the Obama administration some time to make amends. [Now, Obama, in catch-up mode, demands Mubarak leave right now, and if the military can live with the interim choice, so can I.   But I'm against the general vibe of accelerating the pace out of fear of the mob, as I imagine the Army is - for good reason.  I think that if you fear the Iran 1979 scenario, you want this to be as calm and orderly as possible, so you exploit Mubarak's decision the best you can, in consultation with the military, and you don't just pile on now for the sake of cleaning up your johnny-come-lately mistakes.].  The lag likewise makes possible the international mediation process, if that's welcomed and usefully applied in this instance (and I think it could be).

Done well, this becomes another Big Bang-like notch in our belts, proving that regime-change doesn't have to come at the barrel of the foreign gun but can be opportunistically achieved in concert with globalization's natural advance.  Also done right, the flow of money to remake the Egyptian economy isn't in the form of official developmental aid but foreign direct investment - from all sides in a true collaboration-of-civilizations mode.  

The best outcome of the election is a new president able and willing to make the right investment climate happen (so think legal and security  and social tolerance in addition to economic and political stability) so globalization can flood in far faster and provide the jobs and opportunities and brighter future these protesters truly desire.

In short, I think this whole thing has gone amazing well.  It should be embraced by a down-in-the-mouth West and United States in particular, because this is very much our side winning. This is globalization's connectivity fomenting revolution and leading to even more connectivity and self-empowerment.  Overall, a huge positive that should be celebrated and nurtured for the profound demonstration effect.

Imagine:  just 8 short years after we go into Iraq we face the prospect of that country and Egypt presenting the world with democratically-elected governments.  I know everybody wants everything by Tuesday, but to me, looking at it strategically from a longer-term perspective, I can't believe how well things are turning out in this globalization-versus-radical-Islamic-fundamentalism struggle - or how quickly.

[per the comment on the Big Bang reference--see below, understanding that I'm taking on the notion here, not the commenter per se]

You don't argue that Iraq directly caused Tunisia and Egypt. That's silly, but so is Wilkerson's hatred of all things Bush. The guy went round the bend years ago. Saying there's a direct causality is like saying we descended from modern apes. I'm citing a larger phenomenon that begets both, one that presents us with different challenges, if we so choose to recognize them.

You argue that they're all part of the same process of opening up the Middle East to globalization. Sometimes it makes sense to force the issue, and sometimes it's better to act opportunistically.

["Really? I thought one size supposedly fit all!"]

Iraq was kinetic because Saddam was a big-time disconnector who required an enemy-world image to justify his amazingly cruel rule.  No such effort is required with either Tunisia or Egypt because there, you're not talking a totalitarian ambition (Saddam failed), nor a required world-enemy justification for militarism and constantly threatening behavior to others.  Simply put, not enough boxes were checked, and in Mubarak's defense, he did plenty to help out US interests in keeping the region stable, so even some boxes that could have been checked were left unmarked (and yes, we call that "realism," boo hoo!). 

Where we do draw parallel lines between the two is this:  by taking down Saddam, we triggered a larger tumult in the region.  We triggered all manner of accelerated connectivity, in part because we told the world we'd be responsible for regional stability by taking down its worst, most destabilizing actor and standing up to #2 in Iran (which we've done consistently, and thankfully haven't invaded given our tie-down elsewhere and the related arguments I've long made that Iran is a soft-kill option staring us in the face).  We saw the rippling tumult in 2005, when the Saudis held local elections for the first time in 70 years, Lebanon broke somewhat free of Syria in the Cedar Revolution, Mubarak felt the need to conduct a somewhat freer election, etc. Governments across the board felt some need to either firewall or prove their reform credentials, and Iraq helped fuel that by saying, Change is coming one way or the other.

[And then we got unduly obsessed with Iran's nuclear pursuit, which I have also criticized ad nauseum.  And Obama has persisted in this painfully myopic view of the world and globalization.]

Of course, and I've made these arguments ad nauseum, we could have done Iraq better, but the realist in me concerning the Pentagon and the US military says that the small-wars mindset wasn't going to emerge until we failed using the old "lesser includeds" techniques (big war force pretends to have small-wars skills).  Bush held off on that shift for way too long (until the people spoke in 2006) and now big Blue (Air Force, Navy) are dying to revive it all vis-a-vis China, which I think is nuts.  But evolutions such as these are non-stop fights, and so those of us who believe in them continue that struggle.  But that's a side issue to this argument.

And that larger argument remains:  globalization is impinging on a part of the world that is not ready for it and will experience tremendous social, economic, political and security tumult as it absorbs its impact.  That penetration process is not some elite conspiracy in the West; it's a demand-pull primarily by youth and middle class and students - and oppressed women - locally. When it's impeded enough by evil elites, and those elites constitute security threats in addition, the US calculus will always broach the question of kinetically removing them to facilitate the process ("global capitalist domination" to the neo-Marxist bullshit artists, liberation of an emerging global middle class to me).  Sometimes the threshold is met, but most times it is not.  Why?  We're too busy with other things.  We're feeling down on ourselves.  We're experiencing crisis.  Or it's just not enough of a me-versus-him feeling to justify whipping ourselves into action, which is just how democracies are (and God love them for that). 

But does that mean we don't intervene?  Of course we intervene.  Just get your head out of your butt and realize that interventions aren't all the same.  Some are kinetic and some are very subtle. We're intervening right now plenty in Egypt via our contacts with the military, a very broadband connection spanning decades and thousands of officers (and a process I know well, having been involved with it on many levels for two decades--see PNM for my description vis-a-vis India/Pakistan).  That is an unknown but huge power of the Leviathan force:  we train people all over the world.  And so, when stuff goes down, we have influence.  

Will this influence somehow get us everything we want?  When we want it?  With praise ringing in our ears?  Again, let's stay out of fairyland.  Lumps will be coming, as will brick bats.  Only question for us is, 8-10 years later, do we like the outcome?  Did our side win?

In Iraq, come 2013, we're looking at a very good situation.  A democracy with a handful of free elections by then.  Iranian influence, but not much more than Turkey's (and it's the economics where both matter, not the politics).  A rising oil power that shifts the balance in OPEC away from Iran to a country that has cooperative investment deals with basically every continent in the world--connectivity!  In the end, we still could have done it vastly better, like simply giving the Chinese the entire rebuild contract on day 1 instead of our supremely bad fumbling effort (Check out China preparing to dump $10B into Zimbabwe).  We could have gone COIN from day one instead of 3-4 years in, wasting the vast bulk of our lives and the vast bulk of the Iraqi lives.  And yes, we hold Bush-Cheney accountable for such decisions, but the mistakes were throughout the system, products of decades of assumptions and thinking that many of us still battle to this day.  But, in the end, the Iraq that stands there in 2013 is something entirely different from what the pessimists have long predicted.  It is a force that makes globalization move more broadly and deeply in the region, and that means we win.

My hopes for Egypt are that, by 2020-2022, we're looking at a Turkey-like player with a broad and relatively happy middle class.  It's got a military that's respected and still a very solid friend of the US and the US's friends in the region.  It is Islamist in flavor, because that's the people's heritage and it must be respected, just like a Christian-Judeo one is in the US.  But it's not unduly dominant or nasty to other faiths, because that's bad for globalization and business.  It becomes a conduit for the Horn and North Africa and the PG - connecting in all directions.  

And sooner than you think, it becomes the justification for similarly successful unrest elsewhere.

But yeah, we're now in the business of nation-building in Egypt, and fortunately for us, this time the US won't be in charge.  I hope we learn how much better that can be, and how many more players we can and should help tap right from the start, encouraging the Egyptians to self-empowering connectivity in all directions, so long as they create and sustain the rule sets necessary to make that work.

So to sum up:  my argument here is not to wash away Bush-Cheney's many mistakes.  I'm on record and in books and articles and columns and speeches and posts galore listing all the things they did that I disagreed with.  My point here is to remind us of the larger connections with history - a history we purposefully sought to create and continue to try and shape.  

And to remind you that our side is globalization, and globalization is winning - big time.

So wake up, Austin Powers*, and realize the world has shifted - yet again - in our favor, just when we needed a lift.

And then keep your chin up through all the name-calling to follow. Stick to the long-term perspective, because the dumbasses will be freaking out, bemoaning yet again how "America lost and THEY won!"  It's just our self-critical and Type A nature, which is good much of the time and just plain silly at various stretches of perceived and real crisis.

Simma down, nah!

Basil Exposition: Austin, the Cold War is over!

Austin Powers: Finally those capitalist pigs will pay for their crimes, eh? Eh comrades? Eh?

Exposition: Austin... we won.

Powers: Oh, smashing, groovy, yay capitalism!