Grand Strategy for a Divided America

[Edward Campbell]

Now I know what's wrong!

Before one can consider US foreign policy, says Micah Zenko, the Douglas Dillon fellow with the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations, you need to have a handy-dandy pocket translator which he, very kindly, provides in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from Foreign Policy:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/09/04/a_translation_guide_to_foreign_policy_gibberish

A Translation Guide to Foreign Policy Gibberish
Wondering what is meant by 'all options are on the table'? A spokesperson will 'look into that' for you.

BY MICAH ZENKO

SEPTEMBER 4, 2013

Evaluating U.S. foreign policy starts with the tricky task of understanding what U.S. foreign policy actually is. Analysts endowed with great forbearance can listen to the question-and-answer sessions with spokespersons from the White House, the State Department, or the Pentagon. These folks have the unenviable task of putting forward the best case for administration policies, while providing as little newsworthy information as possible.

This is accomplished by using words or phrases that are consistently positive, action-oriented, and ambiguous enough to maintain maximum flexibility as more information becomes available and goals and interests shift. To help the uninitiated better understand what government flacks really mean, please keep this foreign policy translator handy the next time you are watching C-SPAN.

"We're evaluating the situation": We still haven't done anything.

"Events on the ground are fluid": If I articulate an official position on what's happening, somebody could get upset with my word choice.

"All options are on the table": Bombs.

"We can't rule anything out": We retain the right to do anything and everything.

"Our position has been very clear": Let me re-read some nonspecific generalizations from the briefing book that don't address your question.

"We welcome this debate": After harnessing the federal government's resources to hide the issue, we're going to dilute it with adjectives, already-public information, and selective leaking.

"We have serious concerns": The harshest possible condemnation of an American ally.

"Intolerable": Tolerable -- obviously, since we're still only talking about it.

"Policy X is not aimed at any one country": Policy X is aimed at China or Iran.

"We're in close consultation with X": We're going through the pretense of listening to others in an effort to spread the blame and burden.

"I would refer you to..." (version one): See the earlier comments by a senior official that do not address your question.

"I would refer you to..." (version two): See the spokesperson at another agency who also will not answer your question.

"I haven't read that report yet": We all read and discussed the report first thing this morning, but it raises uncomfortable questions that I won't address. 

"Person X is free to speak their mind": Person X still doesn't fully appreciate our very clear position; such people are often characterized as having "an agenda."

"I think you're reading too much into this": Any news item conflicting with White House policy.

"I'm not in a position to comment here": An anonymous "official" can fill you in via a well-placed leak momentarily.

"I don't have anything for you on that": That is a particularly uncomfortable question that of course I will not answer.

"I'm not going to prejudge the outcome": Deferring the articulation of any comments to describe an upcoming event.

"That's an excellent question": The opening response to every non-answer.

"I will look into that": I probably won't look into that, but feel free to ask again at tomorrow's press briefing.

The above is, quite possibly, the most useful thing I've posted all week / month / year / in my lifetime (delete which not applicable).

 

[pbi]

The above is, quite possibly, the most useful thing I've posted all week / month / year / in my lifetime (delete which not applicable).

Yes. And very applicable not just to foreign affairs types but also to most of our domestic politicians, their staffs and spokespersons, corporate leaders and their spokespersons, and sometimes an uncomfortably high percentage of military leaders (sometimes...not always). In short, any public figure or their representatives at one of those moments when people seem to think that the truth should be rationed.

The issue of US domestic politics' effect on its foreign policy, and the rise and fall of consensus, either domestic or international seems to me to be really a cyclic thing rather than some unique and unheard-of development. This isn't the first time that the US has been deeply and bitterly divided over foreign policy issues. I recently read Olson's Those Angry Days (covers the US isolationism vs intervention debate under Roosevelt) and McCullough's Truman: both these show that the divisions in US society and politics over going to war were quite deep and bitter.

Although the party roles were reversed from what received wisdom today would lead us to think (GOP was bitterly antiwar (with the notable exception of their Presidential candidate Wilkie), while Dems were generally (but not universally) pro-intervention in Europe), the period featured all the same sorts of nasty name-calling, attack politics, biased media (in one direction or the other) protests and pronouncements by various groups (university students, "Mothers for Peace", etc) that we have come to associate with Vietnam and since.

It revealed a split that generally showed the Northeast US heavily in favour of war or alignment against Germany, with the South and the Midwest generally favouring isolationism. (That faultline is still there...) The "Greatest Generation"-type of rosy memory about those days seems to have obscured this period in US history, and we are left with a false idea of a unified country.

In the longer view, the world changes, and no great power lasts forever. There are no "Thousand Year Reichs". Just ask the Dutch, Spanish, French, British and Germans. The US will not last forever as the world's most powerful nation, although it may take a long time to lose that status. Claims that it will be eternal, or that it "must" be, sound kind of shrill and desperate.

The good thing about Western society, especially in the "Anglosphere", is that it has an inherent ability to adapt, change and evolve to contain many points of view, without dissolving into a bloody trainwreck. America will survive this, too.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Ian Bremmer of Eurasia Group has written a provactive little books called Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World in which he argues (caution: gross oversimplification follows) that voters in developed countries such as the United States, China (where they don't vote much), India, Britain, Germany, Canada and Japan expect their elected leaders to focus on domestic challenges rather than problems abroad. The result is a lack of global leadership, one that has developed just as growing numbers of transnational problems from Middle East turmoil, through intensified territorial disputes in Asia, climate change and conflicts in cyberspace, to poorly regulated cross-border financial flows, are gathering momentum. We may have a G-20 and a G-8 but, when it comes to taking responsibility and acting authoritatively, it is G-0 world.

Today Prof Bremmer argues that the Syrian situation, and President Obama's dithering about it, amply proves his point. I agree.

 

[a_majoor]

Sounds like another book for the reading list.

The idea that political leaders are almost exclusively focused on domestic politics is almost a truism (Syrians can't vote for any of our politicians, after all), and looking at the flip flopping of the US Administration it is pretty clear that all these contortions are designed around the singular purpose of gaining domestic support, positioning for the 2014 mid terms and punishing the political opposition rather than actually having anything to do with Syria (the window on that problem closed two years ago).

 

[Edward Campbell]

Conrad Black offers a good summary of American strategy since Eisenhower (and Europe's since Thatcher) ~ a litany of failures in other words ~ in this column which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the National Post. Caution: his penultimate paragraph, regarding what Canada might do, is arrant nonsense:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/09/07/conrad-black-syrian-slapstick/

Syrian slapstick

Conrad Black

13/09/07

Not since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, and prior to that the fall of France in 1940, has there been so swift an erosion of the world influence of a Great Power as we are witnessing with the United States.

The Soviet Union crumbled jurisdictionally: In 1990-1991, one country became the 16 formerly constituent republics of that country, and except perhaps for Belarus, none of them show much disposition to return to the Russian fold into which they had been gathered, almost always by brute force, over the previous 300 years.

The cataclysmic decline of France, of course, was the result of being overrun by Nazi Germany in 1940. And while it took until the return of de Gaulle in 1958 and the establishment of the Fifth Republic with durable governments and a serious currency, and the end of the Algerian War in 1962, and the addition of some other cubits to France’s stature, the largest step in its resurrection was accomplished by the Allied armies sweeping the Germans out of France in 1944.

What we are witnessing now in the United States, by contrast, is just the backwash of inept policy-making in Washington, and nothing that could not eventually be put right.

But for this administration to redeem its credibility now would require a change of direction and method so radical it would be the national equivalent of the comeback of Lazarus: a miraculous revolution in the condition of an individual (President Barack Obama), and a comparable metamorphosis (or a comprehensive replacement) of the astonishingly implausible claque around him.

Until recently, it would have been unimaginable to conceive of John Kerry as the strongman of the National Security Council. This is the man who attended political catechism classes from the North Vietnamese to memorize and repeat their accusations against his country of war crimes in Indochina, and, inter alia, ran for president in 2004 asserting that while he had voted to invade Iraq in 2003, he was not implicated in that decision because he did not vote to fund the invasion once underway. (Perhaps Thomas E. Dewey would have been an upset presidential winner in 1944 if he had proclaimed his support for the D-Day landings but advocated an immediate cut-off of funds for General Eisenhower’s armies of liberation.)

As has been touched upon here before, the desire to avoid America in another foreign conflict is understandable. But if that is the policy, the president of the United States should not state that presidents of countries in upheaval (e.g., Bashar Assad) “must go,” should not draw “red lines” and ignore them, should not devise plans to punish rogue leaders but not actually damage their war-making ability, should not promise action and send forces to carry out the action, and then have, in current parlance, a public “conversation” with himself about whether to do anything, and should not thereby abdicate his great office in all respects except the salary and perquisites.

A Senate committee has voted President Obama the authority to attack Syria. But he is the commander-in-chief. He has that authority already, and what he is doing is implicitly making the exercise of that power dependent on Congressional approval. How does that square with the presidential oath, which requires of the inductee that he “faithfully execute the office” and that he “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution”?

President Truman famously said, “The buck stops here,” and he was right. The American public despises Congress, with good reason. Most of the members are venal, politically cowardly, and incompetent; the idea of those 535 log-rolling gas-bags sharing the command of the U.S. armed forces does not bear thinking about. And if the United States is effectively blasé about countries using chemical weapons on their people, as it apparently is about the formerly “unacceptable” development of nuclear weapons by Iran, this depressing news should be imparted to the world explicitly by the administration and not left to be surmised from the waffling of the Congress.

What is more worrisome than the fact that the United States has an inadequate president, is that the public still accords the incumbent a significant degree of support. If the American people, who have responded to intelligent leadership so often within living memory, has become so morally obtuse that it buys into this flimflam, the problem is more profound than I imagined.

What American will need in 2016 is a new president who enunciates a clear policy: foreign intervention only to prevent genocide, to avenge extreme provocations, or to preserve world peace, and in accord with constitutional and international law. That policy would have cut post-Korea war-making to evicting Saddam from Kuwait, the Taliban from Afghanistan, modestly assisting the opponents of Gaddafi and Assad, (as leaders who had monstrously provoked the West), and would have spared everyone the chimerical extravagance of nation-building in hopeless places. Vietnam and the second Iraq War would have been sidestepped altogether.

The Americans show no sign of wanting their country to be regarded as absurd in the world, and they are so America-centric, and so suffused with the heroic mythos of America, that they seem unable to grasp the possibility that it is.

There is a contagion that makes the condition less startling: The United Kingdom suddenly has begun to appear ridiculous, too. The British replaced leaders who did not conduct wars effectively, during the Seven Years’, American Revolutionary, Napoleonic, Crimean, and both World Wars. But never in their history until last week have they had a prime minister who summoned Parliament to seek authority to make war and then was denied that authority. The Grand Alliance of Churchill and Roosevelt, the Special Relationship of Thatcher and Reagan, is reduced to slap-stick, farce.

The country that could pick up the slack and lead is Germany, but it is psychologically incapable. A third of its voters are communists, eco-extremists or cyber-nihilists calling themselves “pirates.” They are still in attrition-therapy over the after-effects of Nazi and communist rule. And the European power that can’t take the lead, because it is almost bankrupt, over-centralized, suffocating in pettifogging regulations and governed by idiots, is France (though it yet has the superb, often misplaced, feline confidence of a Great Power, and admittedly has been magnificent on Libya, Mali and Syria).

Canada could play a role — but first it must acquire an aircraft carrier and the other equipment necessary to project power. For starters, we should buy one of these splendid aircraft carriers the United States is retiring because of the gridlock-fed deficit and the idiocy of sequestration, rename it H.M.C.S. Canada, recruit the 6,000 people necessary for the crew and partner with other countries in the aviation industry that can help provide it with the aircraft it would carry, and show the aid and defence flag in the world. Nearly 70 years ago, recall, we had two — admittedly much smaller — aircraft carriers despite having a population of just 11.5-million. At the least we could get a helicopter carrier.

The United States is a hard-working, patriotic country with a talented work force and a political system that can generate policy and govern and lead effectively. Unless the environmentalist extremists who predicted that by now Manhattan would be underwater, the average temperature in Toronto in February would be 20C, and that we would all be gasping for oxygen, find richer electoral sugar daddies than the oil industry and get political control of that country (almost impossible), the United States will be self-sufficient in energy in a few years. This will end the suicidal U.S. balance-of-payments deficit, cut the worst terrorist-supporting, oil-producing regimes in the world off at the ankles financially, and drastically reduce the federal government budget deficit.

National Post

cbletters@gmail.com

I think Conrad Black's strategic tour d'horizon is pretty accurate. When he steps into military operations ~ as with his recommendation that Canada acquire a used USN aircraft carrier ~ he slips and falls, but ...

America will get a new president in 2016; I really doubt (s)he will one who "enunciates a clear policy: foreign intervention only to ..." (I don't agree with all of Conrad Black's list, either.) I think (fear) America will select someone, anyone, who is not Barack Obama, just as they picked Obama because he was the antithesis of George W Bush.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Ian Bremmer of Eurasia Group has written a provactive little books called Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World in which he argues (caution: gross oversimplification follows) that voters in developed countries such as the United States, China (where they don't vote much), India, Britain, Germany, Canada and Japan expect their elected leaders to focus on domestic challenges rather than problems abroad. The result is a lack of global leadership, one that has developed just as growing numbers of transnational problems from Middle East turmoil, through intensified territorial disputes in Asia, climate change and conflicts in cyberspace, to poorly regulated cross-border financial flows, are gathering momentum. We may have a G-20 and a G-8 but, when it comes to taking responsibility and acting authoritatively, it is G-0 world.

Today Prof Bremmer argues that the Syrian situation, and President Obama's dithering about it, amply proves his point. I agree.

More, this time wrong, in my opinion about the approach of G-Zero in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Financial Times:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/39507c3a-1408-11e3-9289-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz2eIlZM5y9

The west is accelerating its strategic decline
The trend is towards political limits on force, writes François Heisbourg

By François Heisbourg

September 4, 2013

The notion that the relative power of the west is receding as emerging economies gain political and strategic heft is not novel. It is clear, too, from the Syrian crisis, that the new great powers, including a reinvigorated Russia, are deeply averse to interference in what they see as inalienable sovereign rights – an attitude explained in many instances by their former colonial or dependent status. Moscow, unreconciled with the loss of empire, takes a particularly harsh stance. This positioning leads in turn to reluctance to give multilateral cover to armed intervention, as demonstrated by the wrangling in the UN Security Council since the beginning of the Syrian insurrection in 2011.

In light of these developments, the west was inevitably going to lose some of its ability to set the global agenda and to conduct foreign military operations. This process has been accelerated by the west’s economic slowdown since 2007.

Some of the manifestations of this trend are mechanical: when defence budgets shrink, the ability to intervene is diminished correspondingly. This explains in part why any military strike against Syria was never going to involve more than a handful of countries: only six Nato members field the sort of cruise missiles needed for a brutal and effective one-day operation without having to demolish air defences beforehand in a campaign lasting weeks.

By contrast, the Kosovo air war in 1999 involved more than 20 countries in combat roles. This trend is accelerating. Europe’s defence spending is plunging (by 15 per cent since the beginning of the economic crisis), with no end in sight. The US defence budget is hammered by across-the-board cuts under sequestration, while China’s military expenditure at a pace roughly equal with gross domestic product growth of 7 per cent or more, a trend emulated by most of the emerging powers.

The west’s strategic decline has also been hastened by its own divisions, even when there has been agreement in the Security Council to authorise the use of force. During the 2011 Libyan air campaign, fully half of Nato’s members, and the same proportion of the EU, refused to have anything to do with it. Among those that supported it, not all flew combat missions. America’s otherwise apposite decision to shift its strategic focus towards the Asia-Pacific region has compounded the material effect of these divisions by imposing a greater burden on a limited set of allies with shrinking defence assets. A fellow analyst, Camille Grand, styles the strategic outcome as the “coalition of the unable and the unwilling”.

The Syrian crisis introduces an additional, self-inflicted twist to this situation. The west’s military power may be in relative decline but as the example of cruise missiles demonstrates, countries such as the US, the UK and France continue to have capabilities second to none. The will to act may be weak in most of the west but it is not universally so. The new factor is the sudden decision of the executive branch in the UK and the US to shift war powers to the legislative branch. This is what UK Prime Minister David Cameron did, with parliament’s vote against military action on August 29. President Barack Obama is now seeking not merely Congress’s support or approval for an intervention, but its authorisation. This is understandable in view of the conditions under which those two countries embarked on the catastrophic invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The precedent established by these decisions could have been mitigated if – as soon as Syria in all probability crossed Mr Obama’s “red line” last month with the use of chemical weapons – Washington, London and possibly Paris had stated that the issue would be put to an exceptional show of legislators’ hands, given the inevitable absence of a Security Council go-ahead. This was not done. Process in London, and then in Washington, was helter-skelter.

In the US, it was worsened by Mr Obama’s strange argument that a strike was not time-sensitive. Punishment and/or the restoration of deterrence are by definition urgent in strategic affairs: if you are not ready and able to re-establish deterrence quickly, your ability to do so effectively diminishes rapidly.

The French situation is undecided. Public opinion is increasingly unenthusiastic, given the country’s isolation and the unpleasant prospect of suspending a proud country’s action on the say-so of US Congress. However, the executive did not lose the trust of voters during the Iraq misadventure, and an eventual US decision to strike could still involve substantial French participation. But whatever France does, the basic trend is one of a west that is limiting its own political ability to use force, above and beyond its internal divisions and the changing balance of military power.

The events in western legislatures of the past few days have made the world a safer place for those who use chemical weapons to kill their own populations, and for those powers that aid and support them.

The writer is a special adviser at the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, a Paris-based think-tank

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013

Ultimately even grand strategy is political and subject to the "people's" approval.

I doubt that Prime Minister Cameron intended to lose his vote in Parliament but I also doubt that he is overly upset. He authorized a vote because his political instincts told him that the British people wanted that level of consultation ~ he could have made an executive decision, that's what the Constitution authorizes, but he understood that constitutional niceties are, always, trumped by political imperatives. Presidents Hollande and Obama are facing the same dilemma.

But, the headline is correct: our, the American led West's, strategic decline is real and it is accelerating. M. Heisbourg gets one of the issues right: declining defence budgets reduce our capacity toact. But, declining defence budgets are also a political imperative ~ in America's case driven by fiscal irresponsibility, in Canada's, for example, by public "will." The Canadian people do not like, have never liked, spending on their defence and they are willing, even happy, to not "get involved" in too many military adventures. Strategy is, or should be, driven, in large part, by a cold, hard headed appreciation of the national interest but it is, always, subservient to politics.

 

[pbi]

Conrad Black offers a good summary of American strategy since Eisenhower (and Europe's since Thatcher) ~ a litany of failures in other words ~ in this column which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the National Post. Caution: his penultimate paragraph, regarding what Canada might do, is arrant nonsense:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/09/07/conrad-black-syrian-slapstick/

I think Conrad Black's strategic tour d'horizon is pretty accurate. When he steps into military operations ~ as with his recommendation that Canada acquire a used USN aircraft carrier ~ he slips and falls, but ...

America will get a new president in 2016; I really doubt (s)he will one who "enunciates a clear policy: foreign intervention only to ..." (I don't agree with all of Conrad Black's list, either.) I think (fear) America will select someone, anyone, who is not Barack Obama, just as they picked Obama because he was the antithesis of George W Bush.

I tend to take most of what Black says with a grain of salt: he enjoys the sound of his own bombastic pontification.

Is Obama really "dithering"?. Is there another way of looking at his approach? Maybe he isn't "dithering" but being prudent:

-he must have been very leery of being sucked into another "WMD trap" as happened with Iraq. That reasonable fear no doubt imposed some delay on the decision process. No administration would want to repeat that schmozzle;

-seeing the decline in US popular support for foreign military entanglement (as normally happens in the US after every major war...), was he perhaps wise NOT to act unilaterally, but to wait and try and build an evidence-based case to convince a bitter, skeptical and divided public?;

-aware of the impasse that has set in in the Legislative bodies on just about any important issue you might care to name, was Obama wrong to seek Congressional support first, as opposed to acting under Presidential authority alone. After all, who knows where this all might lead? If it goes bad (this IS the Middle East, remember...), it seems wise to me to have Congress on board first. Otherwise, the GOP would have him for breakfast (again); and

-in the end, what is so wrong about letting the people and their elected representatives having a say in the use of force on their behalf by the govt they elected? After all, whose sons and daughters are going to be put in harm's way?

 

[Edward Campbell]

I tend to take most of what Black says with a grain of salt: he enjoys the sound of his own bombastic pontification.

Is Obama really "dithering"?. Is there another way of looking at his approach? Maybe he isn't "dithering" but being prudent:

-he must have been very leery of being sucked into another "WMD trap" as happened with Iraq. That reasonable fear no doubt imposed some delay on the decision process. No administration would want to repeat that schmozzle;

-seeing the decline in US popular support for foreign military entanglement (as normally happens in the US after every major war...), was he perhaps wise NOT to act unilaterally, but to wait and try and build an evidence-based case to convince a bitter, skeptical and divided public?;

-aware of the impasse that has set in in the Legislative bodies on just about any important issue you might care to name, was Obama wrong to seek Congressional support first, as opposed to acting under Presidential authority alone. After all, who knows where this all might lead? If it goes bad (this IS the Middle East, remember...), it seems wise to me to have Congress on board first. Otherwise, the GOP would have him for breakfast (again); and

-in the end, what is so wrong about letting the people and their elected representatives having a say in the use of force on their behalf by the govt they elected? After all, whose sons and daughters are going to be put in harm's way?

If President Obama is just being prudent, just testing the political waters then why, in the name of all that's holy, did he invest so much political capital in it?

I'm sorry, but if it walks like a duck, etc ... dithering is the right word. He painted himself into this corner when he thought (if thought is what really happened, maybe reacted is a better word) it would come to nothing. He appears to have used the "red line" as a throw away, maybe as a distraction to divert attention from Benjamin Netanyahu's far more serious red line.

This red line could signal a nuclear war in the Middle East


There is, in fact, nothing wrong with letting the people decide - in fact, in many respects it has become a political imperative. But that's not what President Obama said a week ago, is it? He was organizing a coalition of the willing on a "go it alone" basis until the British parliament pulled the rug out from under that. Then he did a pirouette and decided to consult the US Congress, risking even more political capital for himself and future presidents.

President Obama, not former Prime Minister Martin, has earned the title of Mr. Dithers.

 

[Journeyman]

Maybe he isn't "dithering" but being prudent

I don't believe it's dithering or prudence; it's simply a matter of having waved his arm forward while shouting "follow me boys," and after two steps turning to see absolutely no one behind him. 

He had his "oh f*ck" moment, and is now clutching at any straw to salvage credibility -- his and the US'

:2c:

 

[George Wallace]

.....And the Israelis have a larger threat when they use the term "Red Line" in the "Samson Option".  It is not in the interests of the US to use any similar option in a situation as this.

 

[observor 69]

Obama is smart, educated, pragmatic and to all appearances a sensible individual but without any military background, like most members of Congress.
In spite of all the advice and intelligence provided how are any of today's politician going to have the ability, experience? to deal with such global problems?
Putting myself in his situation I am afraid my pragmatic nature would lead to me being called "Mr.Dithers."

My thoughts perhaps influenced by Historian Margaret MacMillan on what the ‘war to end wars’ can teach us.

 

[Jed]

I don't believe it's dithering or prudence; it's simply a matter of having waved his arm forward while shouting "follow me boys," and after two steps turning to see absolutely no one behind him. 

He had his "oh f*ck" moment, and is now clutching at any straw to salvage credibility -- his and the US'

:2c:

I have to agree with that assessment.

 

[pbi]

Obama is smart, educated, pragmatic and to all appearances a sensible individual but without any military background, like most members of Congress.
In spite of all the advice and intelligence provided how are any of today's politician going to have the ability, experience? to deal with such global problems?
Putting myself in his situation I am afraid my pragmatic nature would lead to me being called "Mr.Dithers."

My thoughts perhaps influenced by Historian Margaret MacMillan on what the ‘war to end wars’ can teach us.

With a very few exceptions such as Eisenhower, I don't recall too many US Presidents since 1900  who have had military experience other than at a very tactical level.  None (except Ike) had much (or any...) exposure to the level where strategic understanding is needed. But, really, so what?  That's what military advisors are for.

If President Obama is just being prudent, just testing the political waters then why, in the name of all that's holy, did he invest so much political capital in it?

I agree that this was a huge mistake. Never, ever, make threats. Just make promises, or keep quiet.

 

[tomahawk6]

Teddy Roosevelt used to say: Speak softly but carry a big stick. I really don't think Obama wants to take any action.If he wanted to he could have struck Syria without Congressional approval.

 

[pbi]

Teddy Roosevelt used to say: Speak softly but carry a big stick. I really don't think Obama wants to take any action.If he wanted to he could have struck Syria without Congressional approval.

I tend to agree with you. Viewing it as an outsider (albeit one with a great interest in US political culture) I think Obama felt he needed a "tough guy" moment to offset the impression that he is really just an effete intellectual  who wants to turn the US into a socialist workers' paradise. I don't believe this action really conforms to his political nature, or at least not to how he interprets what it means to be a Democrat. IMHO his nature is more likely to seek consensus for an act he doesn't feel comfortable with, but it is not turning out well for him. I don't really see a good outcome no matter how this turns out.

That said, isn't it true that Democrat Presidents have initiated most of America's wars and major military interventions in the last century or so?

 

[Edward Campbell]

I don't believe it's dithering or prudence; it's simply a matter of having waved his arm forward while shouting "follow me boys," and after two steps turning to see absolutely no one behind him. 

He had his "oh f*ck" moment, and is now clutching at any straw to salvage credibility -- his and the US'

:2c:

I'm going to go out on a limb and, probably, off on a tangent here (have I missed any useful metaphors?) by suggesting that there is a social aspect to this.

Some analysts and members here, especially Thucydides, have commented on the quite vital role that institutions make in developing the sort of liberal, democratic, capitalist/entrepreneurial society we enjoy ~ not just the “big” institutions like courts of law and universities, but, even more, smaller, local institutions like the public library and the service club. They are, in fact, what make us communities, and that is something we have celebrated, politically, since 1341 when the House of Commons began to deliberate, separately, from the Lords. We, here in Canada, pay better tribute to that history than do others who use the same term because we call it, in French, la Chambre des communes, the “house of communities,” which is what Edward III had in mind when he summoned the knights of the shires and burgesses to sit, in  their own right, to represent their communities.

So, our society is, in my opinion, a collection of communities – each having both a geographic and a social nature. And communities, I also think, are established and maintained by people gathering in place and time and in institutions: in local churches, clubs and groups – harvests, barn raisings and winter quilting circles – schools, and even the local, community bank and post office which represented the bigger, broader outside world.

Where and when the institutions were strong communities grew, prospered and survived, even when their original raison d'être ceased to matter. When the institutions were or are weak the community withers and dies and even though people may still live together in place and time they no longer work together, for the common good and they, de facto, cease to be a community. That's why there was, and still is a perceived need for someone like Barack Obama to have been a “community organizer.” The people in a place had lost their “community” status.

(I am fairly confident in saying why I believe communities take root and grow; I am less sure about why they wither and die; but I am sure that both happen and I think that when too many communities die then the broader society is in trouble.)

I also believe that communities are the base of political power in the modern world. Political parties are nothing more than communities, united around a legislative platform or manifesto. We can, fairly easily track the rises and falls of Whigs, Tories, Federalists, Liberals, Conservatives, Social Democrats, Liberal Democrats, Christian Democrats, Labourites, Fascists, National Socialists, Communists, New Democrats and Greens and, and, and, almost ad infintum. Some things, some causes united people in each party and, perhaps more importantly, divided them from all the others. Even though, over time, some parties pretty much totally exchanged positions with other parties, some core ideas still united some people in various political movements.

The 20th century was tough on communities. Societies became mobile and the “ties than bind” became harder and harder to maintain. In the 1930s and '40s, in America, we saw huge migrations that changed the “face” of many cities and, in the 1950s, created new suburbs ... but neither big cities nor new suburbs were, necessarily, strong communities.

In the 1970s and '80s, in America, the political communities also began to unravel. The phenomenon of the Reagan Democrats (in 1980 and '84) fundamentally reshaped American politics. Both the Democratic and Republic Party bases shifted, radically, away from the centre and towards their respective fringes. American political culture, indeed American culture in general, is so attractive, it spreads so easily, thanks to mass media, that what transpires in America soon infected Australia and Belgium, Canada and Denmark and so on down through to Yemen and Zambia.

I believe that what are called the culture wars in America, and which are also being waged more or less globally – represent the decline of social communities and the shifting of political communities away from the traditional centre. Remember what Yeats said: “The falcon cannot hear the falconer; things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”

(Parkinson and Brannen suggest, in their analysis of Yeats poetry, that in earlier drafts of The Second Coming he included the lines: "And there's no Burke to cry aloud no Pitt," and "The good are wavering, while the worst prevail." I suppose that's a bit like me crying out that there is no Stimson, no Truman or Eisenhower, no Margaret Thatcher.)

I wonder if President Obama sees that the American centre is almost vacant in political terms, that it cries out for a leader who will drag one or the other of the parties back towards it? Or are he and his political team simply intent upon the next political goals: the 2014 mid-term elections and the 2016 general elections? The unnamed official cited in the Los Angeles Times as saying that President Obama's policy goal is “not to be mocked” suggests to me that this is ALL, 100% about domestic, partisan politics, about holding on to a majority in the US Senate, about regaining control of the House of Representatives, about electing another Democrat as president in 2016 ~ all, in other words, about Barack Obama's political legacy.

To tie back: I believe the US response to the Syrian civil war is framed, totally, in terms of US partisan politics. I believe, further that the US political process is badly damaged dues to the ongoing culture wars which, I believe again, are rooted in the decline of the “civil centre” which is caused by the weakening of  the institutions that hold “communities” together.

 

[pbi]

I'm going to go out on a limb and, probably, off on a tangent here (have I missed any useful metaphors?) by suggesting that there is a social aspect to this....The 20th century was tough on communities. Societies became mobile and the “ties than bind” became harder and harder to maintain. In the 1930s and '40s, in America, we saw huge migrations that changed the “face” of many cities and, in the 1950s, created new suburbs ... but neither big cities nor new suburbs were, necessarily, strong communities...To tie back: I believe the US response to the Syrian civil war is framed, totally, in terms of US partisan politics. I believe, further that the US political process is badly damaged dues to the ongoing culture wars which, I believe again, are rooted in the decline of the “civil centre” which is caused by the weakening of  the institutions that hold “communities” together.

As usual E.R, your post is well thought out, convincingly researched and a bit daunting to try to follow.

I agree with you (and Truman...) that ultimately almost everything that a democratic (not "Democrat") government does in the world will be rooted in domestic politics. How the world is viewed, whether or not it is worth committing national resources overseas as opposed to at home, and what constitutes "bad behaviour" that demads intervention, are all filtered very heavily through what the government of the day understands (or thinks it understands...) about the political culture on the home front.

You could almost argue that "national interests" are really only what "interests the nation" (ie: the electorate), but this might be too much of a simplification, even for me. Still, if this did not have at least some degree of truth in it, I doubt that governments would invest so much time and effort into trying to influence public opinion on the one hand, while trying to gauge it on the other.

I disagree that the US has ever had much of a real consensus in its domestic politics (for other than short moments), and only for brief periods in foreign policy. Going as far back as the War of 1812, there was deep division in the US. Some New England states, for example, wanted nothing to do with the war and did not contribute troops, continuing to trade happily with the British throughout. This lack of total consensus obviously hasn't been a terribly bad thing, as far as the development of the US as a world power has gone. Up until recently, it was probably a healthy dynamic.

That seems, IMHO, to have changed. A few years ago, a Canadian friend who lived and worked in D.C. told me that if somebody brought up politics at a cocktail party, the room quickly split in half and the air became thick. I think I see the same thing in public discourse in the US: issues seem not to be judged on any kind of pragmatic basis, but instead as a polemical screaming match between Right and Left, between "left-wing latte-sipping liberal elites who hate America" and "fascist-militarist book-burning tools of corporate Amerika". The slanging match over the issue of a public health care system is, I think, a case in point. Exaggerations and venom were spewed on both sides.

Supplementing (or aggravating...) this division is the gradual regression of mass media back to the days of the 18th century newspapers that were published to uphold a particular narrow political or social viewpoint, and usually closely identified with one political party or another. People mock "mainstream media", but without it, where is the voice of the pragmatic, moderate centre? On Twitter? How useful is it if all we ever hear or read is preaching to the choir?

Ironic, isn't it, that both the Left and the Right shriek endlessly that they are the victims of a hostile media controlled by their enemies.

Finally, what is bothering me more and more is the creep of tis type of divisive, stupid, unproductive viciousness into Canadan politics. Suggesting that people who might question a pipeline development are "foreign-funded eco-terrorists" or that you must support an Internet surveillance bill wholeheartedly or else you "support child pornographers" are, IMHO, examples of this kind of black and white, my way or the highway, approach to issues. This, in my view, will get us nowhere.

 

[Edward Campbell]

...
Finally, what is bothering me more and more is the creep of this type of divisive, stupid, unproductive viciousness into Canadan politics. Suggesting that people who might question a pipeline development are "foreign-funded eco-terrorists" or that you must support an Internet surveillance bill wholeheartedly or else you "support child pornographers" are, IMHO, examples of this kind of black and white, my way or the highway, approach to issues. This, in my view, will get us nowhere.

And you have zeroed in on what frightens me. But it's not because it "will get us nowhere," my fear is that it will get us into a political "place" that will be bad for our country.

 

[Edward Campbell]

...
Supplementing (or aggravating...) this division is the gradual regression of mass media back to the days of the 18th century newspapers that were published to uphold a particular narrow political or social viewpoint, and usually closely identified with one political party or another. People mock "mainstream media", but without it, where is the voice of the pragmatic, moderate centre? On Twitter? How useful is it if all we ever hear or read is preaching to the choir?
...

I have said, several times, that I'm not dismayed by biased media. In fact I don't think I ever expect unbiased reporting. The trick, it seems to me, is to:

    1. Have Use several different media sources for information ~ this is something that we have been able to do since about the 1930s, when radio, later TV, and later still the internet were able to compete with the print media; and

    2. Accept, even welcome the biases because policy is, as you mention, a fundamentally political thing and the diverse media, with all its political biases, helps us to see the issues more clearly.

Our big advantage, over, say, China, is that the Toronto Star does compete, in the marketplace of ideas, with Sun News Network and for every Toronto Sun we have Foreign Affairs, and the Cato Institute is balanced by the Institute for Policy Studies.

 

[pbi]

I have said, several times, that I'm not dismayed by biased media. In fact I don't think I ever expect unbiased reporting. The trick, it seems to me, is to:

    1. Have Use several different media sources for information ~ this is something that we have been able to do since about the 1930s, when radio, later TV, and later still the internet were able to compete with the print media; and

    2. Accept, even welcome the biases because policy is, as you mention, a fundamentally political thing and the diverse media, with all its political biases, helps us to see the issues more clearly.

Our big advantage, over, say, China, is that the Toronto Star does compete, in the marketplace of ideas, with Sun News Network and for every Toronto Sun we have Foreign Affairs, and the Cato Institute is balanced by the Institute for Policy Studies.

I suppose that you're right, to the extent that people actually do make the effort to read or listen to an opposing viewpoint. But how often does that happen? I once had a US Army Col tell me that "No US Army officer would ever be caught dead listening to National Public Radio". By the same token, some people on the Left would ditch anybody who watches FoxMedia. Today, I think, it has become very easy to surround ourselves with  a media blanket that says only what we want to hear, and either never presents opposing viewpoints at all, or mocks and distorts them beyond recognition.