America the Aggrieved Departs Center Stage

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It was always going to be the case that America would eventually want/have to renegotiate its relationship with the world and the many great powers whose rise we encouraged and accommodated.  Eight years ago I published an entire book (Great Powers) that laid out a host of accommodations, deals, renegotiations, compromises, etc. that we'd have to pursue to re-rationalize our relationship with the world and globalization itself - the most obvious being we'd have to get along with, and forge new, more realistic and equitable relationships with New Core powers like China, Russia, Turkey, Iran, and so on. As I have maintained for a couple of decades now, globalization comes with rules - but not a ruler.

President Obama did a lot of good things while in office, most notably symmetricizing the war on terror (our SOF/drones against their badasses). But he also engaged in the ill-conceived and poorly executed "Asian pivot," created a serious great-power leadership vacuum in SW Asia (into which strode Russia and Iran), and abandoned all pretense of responsible nation-building (logically adhering to the pottery barn rule - yes, but doing it by sharing both the burden and the decision-making with all those far-more-local-and-incentivized New Core powers named above). By doing these things, Obama encouraged the "G-Zero" atmosphere that President Trump now exploits to complete his very dark take on the state of America and the world - a take that allows him to regurgitate the "America First" vision of pre-superpower America.

That vision is arguably the greatest threat that our democracy faced in the 20th century, and, to my deep dismay, we toy with it again in the 21st.

Do I think it will succeed as a lasting grand strategy?  No.

Do I think this administration will be allowed to pursue it sufficiently to inflict great damage on the global economy (and us by rebound)?  Also no, but I will admit to worrying greatly about that possibility. American-hatched-and-nurtured globalization is here to stay. We simply were too successful in spreading it, creating vast and deep constituencies for its survival in a host of rising economies - most notably in the BRICS (whom I have identified for a dozen-or-more years now as our natural allies of this century).

Do I think there's a better and right way to do this?  Sure.

Much of what President Trump said today contained grains of truth - very important grains of truth:

• America did seek to encourage the rise of other powers - at its own expense.
• America did seek to spread liberal trade - at its own expense.
• America has provided more security to the world than the world did in return.

And you know what? Our efforts fueled the greatest advance in human development, peace, prosperity, and freedom that the world has ever witnessed.

Simplest numbers: 

• In 1950, 55% of the world's population was living in extreme poverty. Today that number is just under 10%.
• In 1950, only 23% of the world's population could be described as middle-class. Today that number is 58%. 

All that happened as the world ballooned from a 1950 population of 2.5B to 7.3B today.

That means that, in absolute terms, the number of people living in extreme povery decreased from 1.4B in 1950 to 650m today, while the middle class skyrocketed from 575m to 4.2B! So, we cut extreme poverty in half - in absolute terms, and increase the global middle class over seven-fold. 

Amazing stuff.

That's what American "empire," "hegemony," "militarism," "imperialism," etc. actually wrought. 

Did we stress the planet?  Yes.

Was it worth it? Most definitely. Nobody living in extreme poverty gives a rat's ass about the environment - nor should they. You want environmentalists? Get yourself a big middle class.

Does our role in enabling the globalization of the international liberal trade order (based on the model of these United States) these past seven-plus decades mark us as the world's greatest nation? Absolutely.

Were we slated to play this pre-eminent role forever? Hardly.

Did the time come, in the Great Recession, for America to begin re-calibrating its role in the world. Yea, and I wrote a whole book on that.

So am I surprised or dismayed by Trump's ascendancy? No to the first, yes to the second.  You give me Mike Bloomberg in exactly the same role, and I'm loving it.

The correction is long overdue, and it's driven by what I (in Blueprint for Action) once dubbed any country's "caboose" - namely, its conservative, rural, interior poor. What I said back then (2005) is what I still say: The train's engine can travel no faster than its caboose.

That's true of globalization itself and it's true of every nation in the global economy - including ours. Because, if you go too fast, you end up like Iran after the Shah's White Revolution - in a reactionary backlash that can f*#k you up for a very long time.

How much is Obama to be blamed for not doing more to address America's "caboose" these past 8 years? No more than the GOP House and Senate membership. As I have stated for many years now, the Boomers have been a complete disaster as a generation of political leaders (and the Gen Xers pulled in their wake haven't been much better up to now). [Note: I remain supremely optimistic about the Millennials for many reasons long and often noted in past writings and speeches.]

In the end, America was going to flirt with economic nationalism. We went overboard on security after 9/11 (forcing the Obama retrenchment), and it was inevitable that the Great Recession would eventually push us to experiment with the self-destruction that is trade protectionism, wall-building, economic nationalism, and the mercantilist dream of winner-takes-all. In short, when we want change, we tend to freak out. That's the hidden opportunity cost of democracy. We don't do incremental change very well. That's why the Founding Fathers built in so many checks and balances - all of which I expect to function well across the Trump administration.

The pity is, America can and should renegotiate a more self-preserving economic relationship with the global economy. I truly believe the world knows it's time and it's the fair thing to do. And frankly, with China so "risen," the world economy no longer needs to rely on the US consumer so much, meaning we have it within our power to genuinely self-correct greatly while demanding appropriate "gives" from the rest of the world for whom we did so much to fuel globalization's successful rise and continuing durability.

But, again, we're not like that. When we freak out in any direction, it's all the way. That's what generations and generations of A-type personalities interbreeding gets you - and Trump is the perfect embodiment of that self-centered ambition and aggression.

My best positive spin on Trump is that he's crazy like a fox and will exploit all his over-the-top rhetoric and threats to achieve the much-needed recalibration between America and the world.

But I will readily admit that I fear he's an overboard character elevated by America's typically overboard political impulses, and that we'll learn many hard lessons over the next four years.

Either way, I've often said in speeches that America gets the president we need - and deserve, even as the course corrections pursued are often way too much.

But that's just who we are.

I will say, though, that I don't much care for this America the aggrieved persona. It strikes me as too full of self-loathing and far too fearful. I prefer the "better angels" and "shining city on a hill" stuff.

Because that's actually more of who we are.

But, rest assured, the Great Recalibration that I spent chapter upon chapter detailing in "Great Powers" is most definitely in full swing now. Obama got it rolling but it's moving into high gear with Trump. It could be done right and I expect it to be done mostly wrong by this raucous crew, but the effect is the same. [Much like Bush with the Big Bang strategy: If he does Iraq right, he scares the crap out of the region and triggers tumultuous change. And if he does Iraq badly, same outcome.]

America is headed toward a future of diminished global leadership: this is - and always has been - the price of our fantastic success in spreading American-style globalization.

Yes, the world is full of idiots who will proclaim America's relative "decline" in zero-sum terms. But don't let them bother you. What we did for humanity is the greatest single achievement ever accomplished by a nation-state - in addition to being the most Christian display of generosity and sacrifice by a country.

Point being: America has never been greater than it is now.

Remember that in the weeks and months and four years ahead. 

The Ultimate Enemy Of Resilience – And Democracy – Is Fear Of The Future

THE POOR WANT PROTECTION FROM THEIR CIRCUMSTANCES WHILE THE RICH WANT PROTECTION FROM THE POOR, BUT THE MIDDLE CLASS WANTS PROTECTION FROM THE FUTURE. They've achieved something both modest in scope but profound in political implications - a good life that they seek to protect. And when that middle class no longer feels sanguine about the future? Then their fears become the political system's driving dynamics.

As noted previously, this is where things now stand in America and throughout much of the West. Globalization has clearly created the world's first majority middle class, but that development has set off competitive dynamics (the West's middle class v. the East/South's "cheap labor" middle class) that have undeniably put a squeeze on this nation's resilience-defining socio-economic middle.

Remember back to when Europe and America, thanks to the Second Industrial Revolution of the late 1800s, saw their middle classes balloon. Two reactions arose in tumultuous-but-still-monarchy-bound Europe: a radical impulse from the Left to prevent the rise of the bourgeoise (Marxism-Leninism) and a reactionary impulse from the Right to protect the shopkeepers from radicalized Labor (Fascism). In combination, these twin movements sparked unprecedented bloodshed across the great Europe-Asia landmass.

America, meanwhile, lucked out with the two Roosevelts, Teddy and Franklin, signaling this country's tremendous DNA-debt to the Dutch, who both spawned that famous political dynasty and impregnated us with that free-wheeling socio-economic mindset once known as New Amsterdam and now known as New York City - where the Roosevelts long reigned as political patriarchs. Our great good fortune was to see the American Middle come to rule itself, versus succumbing to either the Bolshevik Left or the Fascist Right. That political reality has defined America's national resilience ever since.

But clearly that stabilizing dynamics is under great duress right now. The Middle Class' fear of the future is what elected Barack Obama to the presidency, and thus it is no surprise that he spent much of his swan-song State of the Union address noting his enduring failure in eradicating that fear - despite guiding us rather ably through the Subprime Crisis and the Great Recession.

President Obama nailed his description of this deep angst when he noted:

We live in a time of extraordinary change -- change that's reshaping the way we live, the way we work, our planet, our place in the world. It's change that promises amazing medical breakthroughs, but also economic disruptions that strain working families.

It promises education for girls in the most remote villages, but also connects terrorists, plotting an ocean away. It's change that can broaden opportunity, or widen inequality. And whether we like it or not, the pace of this change will only accelerate.

Well said. But he should have used the modifier "revolutionary" versus "extraordinary."

Globalization is a revolutionary force in its aggressive connectivity. That promise of education for village girls is what drives a great deal of blowback anger among radical fundamentalist groups. Recall how the Taliban treats girls education in Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan (attacking schools and shooting - in the head - the [subsequently] Nobel Peace Prize-winning teenage girl who champions female education), or what ISIS does to women (sex slaves) within its territory. Remember also the nickname local Nigerians gave to their northern radical Islamic insurgency - Boko Haram (Western education is forbidden), and how that group brazenly kidnapped a couple hundred young females (later forced into marriages with their soldiers and combat roles) to demonstrate their control and instill fear among the citizenry.

President Obama cites that "change" in a distant, abstract manner (as he cites so many things), when, in truth, these revolutionary dynamics are greatly of America's making ... and spreading (since World War II) ... and defending (since the Cold War's end). He distances America from that "change" because he does not see - as others do (including myself) - that historical lineage and the national responsibilities it creates.  In Obama's perspective, this is not so much a world of our creating but one of our enduring.

Over the long haul, President Obama will be more right than wrong. While I would argue that globalization is a world - first and foremost - of America's creating, our great success in doing so does eventually diminishes our standing as superpower-without-parallel (a status he reflexively asserts at the end of his address, so as not to appear un-American).

He shouldn't have to - of course. The only way America could remain the sole superpower would have been to deny the opportunities for others to rise, which would have been profoundly un-American. After WWII we championed the resurrections of Italy, Germany, and Japan, and after the Cold War we did our level best with Russia and hit the jackpot with China. We could have done otherwise, but we did not. And now we "suffer" a more competitive world that's also beget the first majority middle class in human history and seen those living in deep poverty reduced to less than 10% of world population - also unprecedented.  

Oh, and by the way, the world of today features fewer, shorter and less deadly wars than at any previous time in human history - the threat of catastrophic/everyday terrorism being stipulated. The world is also more democratic than ever before.

You add that all up and it is clear that the world advanced magnificently under America's alleged global "hegemony" - without a doubt surpassing all the previous efforts by European and Asian empires throughout history.

So what I'm saying here is that these are the best problems that America and the world have ever faced, even as they propel us collectively into new and uncertain situations where fear about the future will be difficult to tame.

And here is where President Obama's address also gets it supremely correct:

America has been through big changes before -- wars and depression, the influx of new immigrants, workers fighting for a fair deal, movements to expand civil rights.

Each time, there have been those who told us to fear the future, who claimed we could slam the brakes on change, who promised to restore past glory if we just got some group or idea that was threatening America under control. And each time, we overcame those fears.

We did not, in the words of Lincoln, adhere to the dogmas of the quiet past. Instead we thought anew and acted anew.

We made change work for us, always extending America's promise outward, to the next frontier, to more people. And because we did, because we saw opportunity where others saw peril, we emerged stronger and better than before.

What was true then can be true now. Our unique strengths as a nation -- our optimism and work ethic, our spirit of discovery, our diversity, our commitment to rule of law -- these things give us everything we need to ensure prosperity and security for generations to come.

In fact, it's in that spirit that we have made the progress these past seven years. That's how we recovered from the worst economic crisis in generations.

Brilliantly stated - except for that last claim. No one outside the Obama Administration would swallow the notion that America's "spirit" has been restored these past 7 years. We got a breather alright, and Obama deserves great credit there (then again, that's why we elected him twice - to give us a breather from Bush's exhausting presidency), but America has also taken a sort of strategic vacation from managing the world, a situation that's invited other great powers (Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia - to name the most prominent) to step in and try their own hands - a development that America instinctively mistrusts - with some good reason - no matter how much we implicitly beg the Rest to rid us of this infernal global policeman burden!

President Obama ended his speech with four questions, which, if answered, presumably end our nation's growing fears about the future:

First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy?

Second, how do we make technology work for us, and not against us, especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change?

Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman?

And finally, how can we make our politics reflect what's best in us, and not what's worst?

Not a bad list, but they can all be better summed up with: How do we make America the most resilient country in the world?  Less brittle, less reactive, and more flexible in our adaptations to this brave new world?

Yes, that is a looking-out-for-numero-uno approach at first glance, but can you name a better country to pioneer a redefinition of national resilience moving ahead? One more likely to share that learning curve with others?

Kerry not a fan of Asian "pivot"? I smell a plot!

WAPO story:  China is happy with John Kerry because it thinks he'll drop the 'pivot to Asia'

Obviously, you can be a strategic thinker and disagree with the transparency of the Obama administration's containment strategy on China.  You can also believe there's just as much - or more - work to be done right now in the Middle East (Spring, Iran's nukes, Palestine, Syria).

But this is a weird piece, because I don't think the Chinese are dumb enough to believe that Kerry can "drop" the pivot if he so chooses.

But the positive Chinese press pours in, apparently.

From the piece:

Kerry himself sort of predicted this when he said of the pivot during his confirmation hearings, “You know, the Chinese take a look at that and say, what’s the United States doing? They trying to circle us? What’s going on?”

The author Max Fisher's judgment is a bit simplistic:  if Kerry is just trying to make nice with China, then fine, but if he's serious and actually focuses on the Middle East, then China benefits!

Sounds to me like WAPO is trying to "out" Kerry on China in this sophomoric piece.  People on that paper have too much time on their hands and too little non-inside-the-Beltway stuff to cover.  WAPO is truly a small-town newspaper.  Always has been, always will.

Vali Nasr blasts Obama foreign policy (and team) in new book

Cohen talks about it in a recent NYT column.  Pretty brutal depiction.

Nasr, as you may know, is respected expert on Iran and he spent two years working for State.

“IT is not going too far to say that American foreign policy has become completely subservient to tactical domestic political considerations.”

This stern verdict comes from Vali Nasr, who spent two years working for the Obama administration before becoming dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. In a book called “The Dispensable Nation,” to be published in April, Nasr delivers a devastating portrait of a first-term foreign policy that shunned the tough choices of real diplomacy, often descended into pettiness, and was controlled “by a small cabal of relatively inexperienced White House advisers.”

I have little doubt in the verdict, but frankly, this is what the American people voted for in both 2008 and 2012: focus on the economy and temporize on foreign affairs.

Cohen agrees:

Nasr was led to the reluctant conclusion that the principal aim of Obama’s policies “is not to make strategic decisions but to satisfy public opinion.”

In this sense the first-term Obama foreign policy was successful: He was re-elected. Americans wanted extrication from the big wars and a smaller global footprint: Obama, with some back and forth, delivered. But the price was high and opportunities lost.

Lots of material on how Nasr's boss Holbrooke was dissed and marginalized - material sure to elicit a yawn.

Real point is not the realignment.  Again, the public wanted that and Obama delivered.

Real point is total lack of care regarding how it went down.  Doesn't really cost anything to make a decent effort but it was not made, to the point of marginalizing Clinton as SECSTATE whenever possible.

You get the feeling that Obama is big on control and having himself recognized constantly as the guy in charge and the smartest guy by far, so if foreign policy doesn't matter (after all, he got a Nobel for just being sworn in the first time), then he prefers non-action to any action that isn't attributed solely to his genius.

Cohen uses the word "petty" a lot, which is a sad commentary on Obama.

But the larger truth remains:  as long as people feel bad or weak on the economy (and most still do), there's no thought given to foreign policy and Obama knows that.

A heal-the-force national security team

Obama selecting Chuck Hagel as SECDEF and John Kerry as SECSTATE could not send a stronger signal: two Viet war vets with intimate knowledge of the hollowed-out force phenomenon of the later 1970s.

Look for both to do their best, now that Iraq is done for the US and Afghanistan is slated for closure next year, to avoid sending US forces anywhere if possible.

This will be portrayed as an "abandonment" of the world, but it's chickens coming home to roost.  Bush burned out the force, so Obama is tasked with "healing" it.  "Heal the force" is a Pentagon term of art.  It carries great meaning and is emotionally charged when it comes to the subject of actual servicemen and women and their families.  It is a different definition of patriotism, and, quite frankly, it fits the times.  America is on the verge of significant renewal (if the politicians could only get out of the way), and it needs to husband key resources.

China's future captured in perfect lead paragraph/sentence

Here it is from a WSJ piece:

China's latest evidence of sputtering growth underlnes a dilemma for its incoming leaders: They can shore up the economy by doubling down on an exhausted growth model, or take a risky political bet on reforms that could worsen the slowdown in the short term.

That not only captures where China is today (as in, this quarter), it basically captures where China is for the next decade or so.  I mean, what happens to a "communist" party when the progressive era necessarily arrives?

Well, the first instinct is to try and run it yourself, maintaining single-party rule, but that's basically impossible. The pain meted out will create blowbacks, no matter whether you direct it at the "gilded age" elite or the increasingly demanding middle class or the decidedly put-upon working class.  Worse, in the end, you'll need to disappoint them all on some level, which is where that throw-the-bums-out dynamic comes in handy:  a party wins and does what is necessary, outlives its welcome, and then gets tossed.  But in a sustainable progressive era, the opposition party that then comes in also does its bit, just tackling a different segment until its welcome is worn out.  And so on.

That's how the US did it 1890 onward.  When the Dems or GOP won, they won big and ruled big and changed big, and we got a much better country for it. 

China lacks that ability due to the stultifying nature of single-party rule, which, contrary to our green-eyed fantasies, is NOT more agile or adept or bold or visionary in its leadership.  Instead, it is self-preserving in the extreme.  It's bread-and-circuses.  It rules by fear and in fear of its own public.  

The WSJ piece is all about giving more money to consumers and the "dangers" inherent to that process.  It's a proxy description of the coming democratization of China, because giving money to consumers is giving decision-making power to the average citizen, versus hoarding it within the elite.  It's the economic prelude to the democratic denouement.

China has already reached the democratizing point.  I still believe it will muddle along with years before taking the plunge, in part because of that stultifying nature of single-party rule.  If we're lucky, Xi Jinping will be a real leader, but even if he is, we'll most likely have to wait a good 5-7 years to see that turn out.  That's how long it will take him to consolidate power as the evidence for the needed change piles up all around him.

And yes, those two dynamics are deeply intertwinned.

America's job?  Don't provide any stupid excuses for Beijing to avoid facing their own realities.

The "strategic pivot" is just such an excuse, which tells me Obama and Co. don't really understand China.

Sad to say, Romney's answers are beyond stupid and have no chance of being implemented (thank God).

Some common sense on S. China Sea dispute, where US China hawks are losing all perspective

I've known Doug Paal for many years now (going back to my early Naval War College days), and he's an eminently sensible fellow with a huge background in Chinese affairs.

Some key bits from a Diplomat piece just published:

The South China Sea presents complicated issues of evolving international law, historic but ill-defined claims, a rush to grab declining fish stocks, and competition to tap oil and gas reserves. Beijing’s much discussed “nine-dashed line,” that purports to give China a claim on about 80 percent of the South China Sea and its territories, used to be an eleven-dashed line. Two dashes separating Chinese and Vietnamese claims were resolved through bilateral negotiations years ago. This suggests that the remaining nine dashes are equally negotiable. But China rigidly refuses to clarify the basis for its claims, whether they are based on the accepted international law of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) or the less widely accepted historical assertions. Beijing’s refusal to choose suggests it wants to maximize its legal and political leverage, even as the growth of its military and maritime assets gains physical leverage over its weaker neighbors.

Beijing is not alone. Hanoi has leased oil exploration blocks in contested waters, and Manila is trying the same. Their colonial occupations left a discontinuous record of historic claims, inclining them to rely more on UNCLOS to manage disputed resources. They eagerly encourage American weight thrown onto their side of the competition with China for free.

This is where the United States needs to move with caution and only after thinking many steps ahead . . . 

Point being, while China is clearly strong-arming and pushing its claims even more so than others, it is not the only country rattling sabers and pushing boundaries.  

Now, by singling Beijing out for criticism, but not the others, Chinese observers believe the United States has taken sides against China. This has undermined the U.S. assertions of a principled approach based on international law by appearing not to be impartial.

U.S. direct interests in the South China Sea are not unlimited . . .

The Obama Administration has clearly decided to champion this cause as a means of "standing up" to China, thus raising the "losing of face" dynamics, which means, instead of our usual approach of trying to cool things down, we've decided to purposefully heat things up.  Why?  A lot of Washington political and budgetary interests are served by this choice - just like in Beijing.

Today, the South China Sea is not at the “Sudetenland” moment of the twenty-first century, which calls for standing up to aggression and the rejection of appeasement. China has not militarized its foreign policy and does not appear equipped to do so for a long time. Its neighbors are not supine, and they show on occasion, when needed, that they are able to coalesce against Chinese actions that they judge as going too far. At the same time, China and those neighbors have more going constructively in trade, investment, and other relations with each other than is at risk in this dispute.

This suggests the makings of a manageable situation, even if it remains impossible to resolve for years to come. Different Asian societies are quite accustomed to living with unresolved disputes, often for centuries.

No kidding.  There are numerous missing peace treaties in Asia, which is part of this problem of ill-defined territorial boundaries, but leapfrogging from that reality to a rerun of WWII is hyperbole of the worst (meaning unthinking) sort. Frankly, you know your counterparty in any argument has run out of ammo whenever they pull out Hitler.

A very sensible piece worth reading.  Might just keep you off the budgetary gravy train that is AirSea Battle Concept.

Fascinating achievement of US foreign policy: Iraq outcranks Iran on oil

You have to credit Bush the Elder on the northern NFZ after Desert Storm because that set in motion the KRG we know today.  You also credit Bush on the surge and Obama on the latest sanctions strategy, because it's collectively a significant restructuring of the correlation of forces in the region - a dynamic obviously driven by the ability to export oil (FT says Iran's exports = 1/2 gov revenue and 80% of total export value).  Iraq hasn't outproduced Iran since their mutual war in the late 1980s.

Iraq dreams of 12mb by 2017, but the industry pegs 4.5mb as more realistic, according to the article.

By December, analysts say, iraq will have earned more selling its oil than Iran for the first time since Saddam Huessein invaded Kuwait in 1990.

All this is to remind of Zhou Enlai's response to a question concerning his opinion of the French Revolution: "Too early to say."

First openly gay US flag officer - a big move for all involved

Obviously a calculated gesture that had to have been cleared with a lot of people beforehand, but a very nice move by the US Army, Defense Department and the Obama Administration.  My hat off to all of them - especially the flag officer (newly promoted to BGEN) and her spouse.

An Army officer being promoted to brigadier general openly acknowledged her homosexuality on Friday by having her wife pin her star to her uniform, thus becoming the first openly gay officer of flag rank in the United States military.

Everyone knows we've had gays and lesbians in the military forever.  The only question left hanging all these years was: would we allow them their identity - openly - in exchange for their service?  Too much to ask?  Hardly.

It's a tough job and a hard life, and everybody deserves to be able to acknowledge their fundamental sexual identity while serving their country.

I can tell you exactly when the whole subject jumped the shark for me:  There was this study done sometime (I believe) in the 1990s.  An inside job where some trusted Pentagon contractor went back over the personnel records of the entire force throughout the entire Cold War, looking for instances in which homosexuality led to somebody being successfully blackmailed by the enemy.  Their finding?  Not a single case.  

Despite all those Allen Drury novels saying otherwise, nobody gay (uniform or civilian) ever had their secret used successfully against them in a security-breach manner.

It was at that point that I knew it was just a matter of time - and the right administration.

So my thanks to Obama on that score.

I have to admit that when I saw the headline in the NYT, I thought it was a gag.  I mean, I don't think there are any publicly acknowledged enlisted personnel, so how did somebody get all the way up to being a general, I thought (rather stupidly, I realize).  But then it struck me: the DoD wanted somebody prominent as the first to step forward in this manner, and somebody going from officer to flag is the perfect tipping point in a career to hold up as an example.  

Very smart.

Time's Battleland: NATIONAL SECURITY AirSea Battle: The Military-Industrial Complex’s Self-Serving Fantasy

China's Great Wall: an ancient AirLand Battle plan

NOTE: My post from Saturday, expanded a bit and reposted at Time's Battleland at that blog's request.

Nice Washington Post piece (by Greg Jaffe, of course) on the great COIN counterattack that is the Pentagon’s AirSea Battle.

As scenario work goes, what the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis has done in its war-games has to rank right up there with the most egregiously implausible efforts ever made to justify arms build-ups.

Read the entire post at Time's Battleland blog.

Syria: When US inaction accelerates a radicalizing dynamic

Nice op-ed by Joe Lieberman, John McCain and Lindsey Graham in WAPO.

The core argument:

We are hopeful the rebels will ultimately prevail, but it remains a deeply unfair and brutal fight, and the speed and manner by which it is won matter enormously. All evidence suggests that, rather than peacefully surrendering power, Assad and his allies will fight to the bitter end, tearing apart the country in the process.

America’s disengagement from this conflict carries growing costs — for the Syrian people and for U.S. interests.

Because we have refused to provide the rebels the assistance that would tip the military balance decisively against Assad, the United States is increasingly seen across the Middle East as acquiescing to the continued slaughter of Arab and Muslim civilians. This reluctance to lead will, we fear — like our failure to stop the slaughter of the Kurds and Shiites under Saddam Hussein in Iraq or of the Tutsis in Rwanda — haunt our nation for years to come.

Our lack of active involvement on the ground in Syria also means that, when the Assad regime finally does fall, the Syrian people are likely to feel little goodwill toward the United States — in contrast to Libya, where profound gratitude for America’s help in the war against Moammar Gaddafi has laid the foundation for a bright new chapter in relations between our two countries.

We are being left behind by events.  When Al-Qaida makes this a bigger cause celebre than America does, we lose by definition - by our abscence.

We keep trying to wind ourselves up over the chem weapons depots, but we should be more concerned with registering the anti-Iranian win in a way that benefits Israel - if we're serious about wanting to avoid war with Iran.  That's the bigger fish here, not the lowest common threat inflator of chemical arms.

There are plenty of ways to ramp up our involvement without boots on the ground.  WAPO ran an editorial recently calling for the always handy no-fly-zone.

We have entered the R2P space (right to protect), and what we need to protect most here is our credibility and the region from outcomes that make it less stable over the Arab Spring's continued unfolding.

I have, in the past, noted that the Arab Spring has been kind enough to us to offer the one-damn-thing-after-another dynamic.  Well, now's the time when we seriously deal with the one damn thing called Syria.

The Syrian PM just defected.  What are we waiting for?

The self-serving Military Industrial Complex fantasy that is AirSea Battle

This post was removed in deference to its reposting at Time's Battleland blog on 7 August 2012.

(WPR Feature) Skipping Out on the Bill: Obama's Cost-Free Drone Wars

Thanks to the Obama administration’s aggressive use of classified leaks to the press, we are encouraged to believe that President Barack Obama has engineered a revolutionary shift in both America’s geopolitical priorities and our military means of pursuing those ends. As re-election sales jobs go, it presses lukewarm-button issues, but it does so ably. But since foreign policy has never been the president’s focus, we should in turn recognize these maneuvers for what they truly are: an accommodation with inescapable domestic realities, one that at best postpones and at worst sabotages America’s needed geostrategic adjustment to a world co-managed with China and India.

Read the entire article at World Politics Review.

Chart of the Day: the oil sanctions are working on Iran

Arguably the primary reason why Israel holds off attacking - that and its modest satisfaction with the success of the combination strategy of cyber warfare attacks and assassinations of technical personnel.

You can see that the sanctions have taken about a million barrels a day - or about 40% of daily production denied in terms of sales.

That is significant - and a genuine success for Obama.

The hottest subject in oil deals today involves anybody who has been a regular buyer of Iran.  All of these states are looking to replace - now.

And no, they don't all go running to the Saudis.

This chart is a month old.  More recent news says roughly 50% drop in May-June alone.  Not sure I buy that. Lots of desperate deals happening out there involving Iran.  But clearly, the trend is downward and steep.

I honestly do believe that the Arab Spring is helping plenty.  With Syria on the ropes, the anti-Iran long knives are out.

Time's Battleland: (CYBER) Cyber Warfare Treaty: DOA, Thanks to President and Pentagon

Misha Glenny making a smart case in the New York Times for a cyber arms control treaty, but it won’t happen.

Why?

For the same reason why the U.S. has refused – for many years now – to engage other great powers on a treaty banning space weaponry: our Pentagon wants to dominate that imagine conflict space like any other. This fantasy lives on despite the great private-sector forays into space transport and travel.

Read the entire post at Time's Battleland blog.

Time's Battleland: CYBER U.S. Admits to Waging War Against Iran

Check out this New York Times story about President Obama speeding up waves of cyber attacks against Iran.  I personally have no problem with this, and prefer it to Israel’s imagined missile strikes.

But just remember this when next you hear about other countries’ “unprecedented offensive cyber attacks against the U.S.”

Read the entire post at Time's Battleland blog.

Time's Battleland: SYRIA When Military Intervention Makes Sense

Gideon Rachman at the Financial Times says that “diplomacy is still better than bombs” and that “moral outrage is just the starting point for a decision to intervene.”  He then goes through all the major powers in his piece Tuesday and cites reasons why each one is either holding back or holding things up. It’s one of those great ass-covering op-eds that’s supposed to make you look smart when the intervention does comes and it — gasp! — leads to more death and destruction.

Let me tell you why great powers intervene:  they don’t care about moral outrage and they don’t care about stopping the killing.  Moral outrage is a headline and nothing more, while the killing is either made faster or slower but never really “prevented.”

Great powers intervene when they can.  It’s as simple as that.  Good and bad don’t play into it.

Read the entire post at Time's Battleland blog.

Time's Battleland: SYRIA Obama Cleverly Leading from Behind — Again

The quiet coalition has come together to reverse the decline of the opposition rebel forces in Syria, according to this nice front-pager in Wednesday’s Washington Post.  Much like in the case of Libya, the Obama Administration is hanging back and letting the local “market” determine his military response.  He simply refuses to take the strategic lead, which is frustrating to many and yet decidedly clever on his part.

To me, this is the Obama Doctrine: respond to local demand for U.S. crisis-response services rather than — in typical American fashion — pushing our way to the front of the line, bossing everyone, and then finding ourselves alone on the postwar backside.

 Read the entire post at Time's Battleland blog.

WPR's The New Rules: Hubris Drives Mistrust in U.S.-China Relations

Writing in Foreign Affairs this month, Henry Kissinger opined that, when it comes to the future of Sino-American relations, “conflict is a choice, not a necessity.” Those are some serious words from one of history’s all-time realists, but more important than his analysis is the fact that he even felt the need to issue that public statement regarding these two ultimately codependent superpowers. A trusted part-time adviser to President Barack Obama, Kissinger knows he has the president’s ear on China, the target of this administration’s recently announced strategic military “pivot” toward East Asia.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Wikistrat post @ CNN-GPS: Millennials shaping foreign policy with Kony 2012?

Editor’s Note: The following piece, exclusive to GPS, comes from Wikistrat, the world's first massively multiplayer online consultancy.  It leverages a global network of subject-matter experts via a crowd-sourcing methodology to provide unique insights.

The Kony2012 Youtube sensation has triggered a secondary op-ed explosion, as “real experts” sound off - mostly negatively - about having their sacred analytic turf encroached upon by celebrity endorsers and ADHD-addled “slackivists” who’ve merely clicked a couple of buttons (Like! Donate!) before moving on to the next viral sensation.

There’s nothing more disturbing to the national security intelligentsia than having American foreign policy crowd-sourced, especially when those allegedly apathetic Millennials are preemptively arguing for aU.S.military intervention.

Doesn’t America’s biggest-ever generational cohort realize that the country is tired of performing global police work?

This week’s Wikistrat crowd-sourced drill looks at the Kony2012 video phenomenon, offering several reasons why it signals something new and important in U.S. foreign policy debates – and not.

Read the entire post at CNN's GPS blog.