Cheney and the GOP criticizing Obama over Crimea

http://news.yahoo.com/cheney-putin-obama-ukraine-171405306.html

I find it ironic (but typical) that Cheney and others in the GOP (except for the Paul family libertarians) would bash Obama for being "weak" in the face of Putin's aggression in Crimea. Politicians have short memories, but I seem to recall that Bush did jack squat against Russia's overt invasion of Georgia in 2008 (and in that war, >700 people died whereas in Crimea one guy got a concussion so far). Diplomacy, not threats or military buildup, eventually led to a Russian withdrawal and UN peacekeeping mission.

Obama said that the US would issue travel restrictions and asset freezes of Russian nationals tied to the Crimea situation (that is already more than Bush did in 2008). We are giving $1B in aid to Ukraine's bankrupt transition gov't. Obama is pulling out of a future G8 summit in Sochi and will likely cut some planned joint military activities. But that's about all he can do for now. If we can't pressure Assad to change course, what do you think we can do against a top energy producer and nuclear arsenal? It remains to be seen if the EU will implement these sanctions too in order to make them more effective, but of course they have more to lose being closer proximity and dependent on Russia for gas and trade.

Previously, I was against Bush's plans to build a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe (ostensibly to counter Iran, but we know who it was meant for). I thought it was provocative to Russia, ineffective, and a handout to Lockheed. Our defense budget is tighter now, but I am reconsidering whether the missile shield would be useful as a strategic deterrent (albeit a pricey one). Russia should abandon their plans to reclaim former Soviet republics, as the West is not going to stand for it as long as the peoples of Eastern Europe are choosing Western values over Putinism.

After the Georgia War:

The [2008 EU] Report claimed that Russian citizenship, conferred to the vast part of Abkhaz and Ossetians may not be considered legally binding under international law. As a result, the interests of these people may not be used as a reason for starting military actions, in defense of Russian citizens living abroad.

National security news

1) Obama scrapping Bush's Eastern Europe missile defense shield.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090917/ap_on_re_eu/eu_eastern_europe_missile_defense

Way to go, Big O. Now hopefully Russia will reciprocate and increase cooperation on anti-terrorism, curbing weapons proliferation, energy, and dealing with states that are not so friendly with us. If our 2 nations can show a united front against Iran's nuclear activities, then maybe there will be enough leverage to get them to change course. Hopefully this will reduce tensions in the former Soviet nations. Well not everyone is happy. The anti-Russian nationalists in Czech and Poland are miffed, but oh well. Go find some oil in your country and then we'll talk.

2) Is the assumption that a pullout in Afghanistan would create/resume a "terrorist safe haven" for Al Qaeda to plot new, deadlier attacks against the West even valid?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/15/AR2009091502977.html

After all, most of the preparations for 9/11 took place semi-autonomously in Europe and the US, not in some cave in Afghanistan. Currently, the 2001-era Qaeda leadership (what's left of it) is contained in Pakistan and mostly serving a propaganda/ideological inspiration function, not actually plotting or capable of harming against us again. In this modern electronic age, a physical base is not as crucial to international terrorists. So even if we invest the huge resources needed to stabilize Afghanistan, incur the political/moral costs of increased bloodshed and propping up a corrupt government, and are lucky/smart enough to pull it off halfway decently, how much will that even increase our security vs. Qaeda-symathetic cells that are already in the West? Plus, it's not like a "stable" Afghanistan still won't have terrorists lurking. Terrorists exist in highly secure nations like the US and UK as we speak.

And what about new havens in Somalia, tribal belt Pakistan, Iraq, Algeria, and such? If the hawks say havens are so crucial, why just send troops to Afghanistan? Don't we need to clear out those other places too? "Better fight them over there than at home." Or maybe while we're exhausting ourselves trying to fight an elusive enemy (or the wrong enemy, such as the Taelban or Ba'athists) overseas, while the terrorists who are the real threats to attack the US are still out there. Just imagine if we invested half the war resources of Iraq/Afghanistan to actual homeland DEFENSE, intel, and surgical counter-terrorism, maybe we wouldn't need the color threat level or "harsh interrogations" anymore.
Who's Afraid of A Terrorist Haven?
By Paul R. Pillar
Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Rationales for maintaining the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan are varied and complex, but they all center on one key tenet: that Afghanistan must not be allowed to again become a haven for terrorist groups, especially al-Qaeda. Debate about Afghanistan has raised reasons to question that tenet, one of which is that the top al-Qaeda leadership is not even in Afghanistan, having decamped to Pakistan years ago. Another is that terrorists intent on establishing a haven can choose among several unstable countries besides Afghanistan, and U.S. forces cannot secure them all.

The debate has largely overlooked a more basic question: How important to terrorist groups is any physical haven? More to the point: How much does a haven affect the danger of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests, especially the U.S. homeland? The answer to the second question is: not nearly as much as unstated assumptions underlying the current debate seem to suppose. When a group has a haven, it will use it for such purposes as basic training of recruits. But the operations most important to future terrorist attacks do not need such a home, and few recruits are required for even very deadly terrorism. Consider: The preparations most important to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks took place not in training camps in Afghanistan but, rather, in apartments in Germany, hotel rooms in Spain and flight schools in the United States.

In the past couple of decades, international terrorist groups have thrived by exploiting globalization and information technology, which has lessened their dependence on physical havens.

By utilizing networks such as the Internet, terrorists' organizations have become more network-like, not beholden to any one headquarters. A significant jihadist terrorist threat to the United States persists, but that does not mean it will consist of attacks instigated and commanded from a South Asian haven, or that it will require a haven at all. Al-Qaeda's role in that threat is now less one of commander than of ideological lodestar, and for that role a haven is almost meaningless.

These trends have been familiar to counterterrorist cognoscenti for years but have gone mostly unmentioned in discussion of Afghanistan. This is probably because the intervention there in late 2001 was unquestionably a response to Sept. 11 -- the "good war," in contrast with the misguided expedition to Iraq, where the only connection to the 2001 attacks was in the Bush administration's contorted selling of that invasion. The U.S. entry into the Afghan civil war succeeded in ousting the Taliban from power and rousting its al-Qaeda allies, and the intervention would have occurred regardless of whether the occupant of the White House was named Bush or Gore.

The issue today does not concern what was worth disrupting eight years ago. And it is not whether a haven in Afghanistan would be of any use to a terrorist group -- it would.

Instead, the issue is whether preventing such a haven would reduce the terrorist threat to the United States enough from what it otherwise would be to offset the required expenditure of blood and treasure and the barriers to success in Afghanistan, including an ineffective regime and sagging support from the population. Thwarting the creation of a physical haven also would have to offset any boost to anti-U.S. terrorism stemming from perceptions that the United States had become an occupier rather than a defender of Afghanistan.

Among the many parallels being offered between Afghanistan and the Vietnam War, one of the most disturbing concerns inadequate examination of core assumptions. The Johnson administration was just as meticulous as the Obama administration is being in examining counterinsurgent strategies and the forces required to execute them. But most American discourse about Vietnam in the early and mid-1960s took for granted the key -- and flawed -- assumptions underlying the whole effort: that a loss of Vietnam would mean that other Asian countries would fall like dominoes to communism, and that a retreat from the commitment to Vietnam would gravely harm U.S. credibility.

The Obama administration and other participants in the debate about expanding the counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan can still avoid comparable error. But this would require not merely invoking Sept. 11 and taking for granted that a haven in Afghanistan would mean the difference between repeating and not repeating that horror. It would instead mean presenting a convincing case about how such a haven would significantly increase the terrorist danger to the United States. That case has not yet been made.

The writer was deputy chief of the counterterrorist center at the CIA from 1997 to 1999. He is director of graduate studies at Georgetown University's Security Studies Program.

Problems with NATO and Russia in a post-Cold War world

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7571109.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7571096.stm

This is not about an expansionist [Russia] with an ideology bent on world domination, but a major power eager to establish a sphere of interest in its own backyard and jealously guarding what it sees as the approaches towards its own frontiers - what Russians have traditionally called the "near abroad."

- Jonathan Marcus, BBC

History can really help us understand this recent Russia-Georgia conflict, but we should try to avoid false comparisons. Russia has changed a lot since its Soviet days, and their invasion of Georgia is not like Czechoslovakia, despite what some politicians and journalists claim. However, post-Cold War NATO hasn't changed much - obviously it's goal is still to contain/defeat Russia. If NATO really cared about Western stability and security, of which Russia is a key element, they would have tried to bring her into the fold rather than exclude her. As Secretary of Defense Gates said, it is not in America's or Russia's interests to have our relationship sour, yet why does each nation continue to jeopardize the fragile partnership with provocations and poor diplomacy? We have cooperated on nuclear disarmament and security, but not much else (and each side still has plenty of warheads to destroy the world 5 times over). Now that the War on Terror and oil money have empowered Putin's people to roll back freedoms and assume a more aggressive defense strategy, how will we respond? We did nothing over their "disproportionate use of force" and atrocities in Chechnya, and I bet NATO would rather see the Georgia situation swept under the rug (even at high cost to the Georgians) than be forced to take a hard line with Russia over a poor, obscure country that most Americans couldn't locate on a map.

But we should remember cause and effect. Typical of the greedy West: After the Soviet collapse, we were licking our chops to snatch up as many former Iron Curtain nations as possible. But we shouldn't provoke a wounded beast, especially when that beast still has very sharp teeth (the #2 military in the world). After the shame of the Soviet defeat and the virtual collapse of their economic and military systems, Moscow probably wasn't too thrilled about opportunistic Western "meddling" in their former satellite states. Especially after the "Orange and Rose Revolutions" in Ukraine and Georgia, where Western-backed shady leaders replaced the old Russia-backed shady leaders, Russia is seeing its former sphere of influence rapidly contracting. Clearly it is wrong for Moscow to censor/imprison/murder dissidents and journalists, centralize power, and meddle in the politics of neighboring sovereign nations, but world events have almost compelled them to take a more hardline approach to domestic security and foreign policy, especially during the Bush years. We claim that our forces in Asia are there to keep the peace and fight Islamic terrorism, but how can Russia be sure? Venezuela and China recently went on spending sprees for more modern military hardware, such as fighter planes and missiles. Is it for defense or aggression? It's impossible for outsiders to know, and plenty of right wing Americans are concerned. So from Russia's point of view, they almost have no choice but to assert themselves more forcefully in Central Asia. They already lost Eastern Europe to the West. Stalin was apathetic or in denial about the German forces massing on Russia's border in 1941, and it almost cost him Moscow. I am sure Putin and Medvedev (who are corrupt but definitely not in Stalin's league), will be a lot more proactive concerning the buildup of American forces, aircraft, and missiles around them.

Maybe NATO would have tried to tighten the stranglehold on a weakened Russia even more, if not for the fact that they are a top 5 oil producer and supply 25% of Europe's energy. And they will use that as leverage if they need to, as was the case in 2006 when they cut off westbound natural gas exports over a price dispute with pro-West, anti-Moscow Ukraine. Unfortunately Europe's gas is fed through pipelines crossing Ukraine, so they were caught in the fracas and had to plead with both sides to compromise and turn the spigots back on. So fortunately or not, the energy situation provides a good stability check between Russia, Europe, and the US. The more we need each other, the less likely we will try to scam and threaten each other. Though Europe needs Russia a whole lot more than vice versa (especially with the rise of Asian and Middle Eastern trading alternatives for Russia), and our economic fate is clearly tied to Europe's.

As Noam Chomsky said - America has to choose between hegemony or survival. We can't have both, so either we treat nations fairly and keep the peace, or we try to dominate the globe and risk catastrophic war. It's not enough for us to have won the Cold War, but now we seek to fill the Soviet power vacuum in the region too? Let's also remember the lessons of Versailles: it will come back to haunt us if we overly punish and shame a defeated empire. Many Russians are not happy with their homeland's loss of prestige, and some have even become nostalgic for the Soviet days when they commanded fear and respect. Even younger Russians tend to think positively about the USSR. The last thing we need is a nationalistic Russia with a chip on its shoulder and reverting to Soviet ways. I know that Moscow controls its media and people, but the vast majority of Russians are supporting Moscow over the Georgia war. They feel that President Mikhail Saakashvili brought the invasion onto Georgia by his incursion into South Ossetia and violating the fragile balance. After some small clashes on August 7, Saakashvili asked the Ossetian paramilitaries to cease hostilities and "give peace and dialogue a chance", but just 5 hours later Georgian forces fired artillery and started to send troops into the region, killing some civilians.

And unlike McCain and his former Georgia lobbyist staffers, I don't think the Tiblisi regime is worth defending at the cost of angering Russia further. Their leader Saakashvili is progressive but no saint. He's not a Moscow stooge or a kleptocrat (though he is building a lavish new presidential palace for a very poor nation), but he's not George Washington either. He is a Western-educated lawyer, and only came to power by betraying his political mentor and convincing him to step down amidst scandal. Since he took office in 2003, Saakashvili has modernized the economy somewhat and increased foreign investment, but critics say he sold the country on the cheap to outside interests. He also curbed some freedoms and violently cracked down on protests against him just this winter. As a PR damage control stunt, he offered to hold snap elections against opposition party rivals to see if the people really wanted him out. He won the vote to stay in power (52% vs. his nearest competitor at 25%). Some international monitors concluded that the election was more or less fair, but others faulted them for accepting things at face value and not investigating the many allegations of fraud. But in the words of LBJ, it's clear that Saakashvili is "our SOB" and we want him to stay, despite the fact that half of the nation disapproves of him. Maybe there's no one better in Georgia, but that's why it's Georgia. I hope we would learn the lessons of Saddam and Musharraf, and be wary of allying ourselves with questionable characters just for modest strategic gains.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7174343.stm

For Saakashvili and Ukraine's Victor Yuschenko to be elected to power was a big slap in the face to Moscow, though maybe they had it coming (and still that's no excuse to poison Yuschenko). But it's the equivalent of an anti-immigrant extremist (some might say racist) like Tom Tancredo winning the US presidency - so how would Mexico react to that? Saakashvili was elected on a platform of defiance against Russia, increased relations with the West (for democratic and economic modernization), and reclaiming the Ossetia and Abkhazia breakaway regions, so I guess he thought he was carrying out the will of his people. But that is in violation of a 1992 agreement between Russia, Georgia, and South Ossetia to preserve peace and semi-autonomy in the region. Parts of Central Asia are very multi-ethnic and plagued by similar problems as the Balkans. Georgia has clashed with its minorities for over 100 years. Order was maintained under the Soviets, but old habits returned with an independent Georgia, and over 1,000 people died during fighting in 1992 and 2004. Under threat by Tiblisi and treated as second-class citizens due to their ethnicity, of course the Ossetians and Abkhazians would turn to Russia for aid, as Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro did during the Cold War, when menaced by what they saw as Western imperialism. And Moscow seems more than happy to help and make life difficult for Tiblisi, though they officially deny providing any military support to the rebels.

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

So in a sense, Georgia provoked this excessive Russian meddling in their affairs. I do not think that Moscow would have felt so threatend by a gradual Georgian re-alignment with the West, while still maintaining some basic relations with Russia. But simply dismissing Russia and pledging to join NATO can only invite a hostile reaction from Moscow. Russia is an important historical patron and partner in the region, so her presence can't simply be ignored (or replaced by America/NATO), despite her sometimes negative influence throughout history. It's clear that former Warsaw Pact nations have not fully forgotten or forgiven past Russian tyranny, which may complicate relations today. As nations like Poland, Czech Republic, and Hungary make plans for their futures, it's no surprise that they now prefer to look west instead of east. Russia could have done a much better job addressing its harsh treatment of her satellite states and healing old wounds, so it shouldn't surprise them when their former subjects are seeking partnerships with Russia's competitors. France and Britain have done well to rehabilitate and improve relations with many of their former colonies, and despite some lingering distrust and injustice, both former colonizer and colonized now profit from robust trade, travel, and other exchanges. Therefore, both Georgia and Russia could learn a lot from history and save themselves some future headaches. Russia is notorious for poor diplomatic tact and sensitivity (example: Khruschev slamming his shoe at the UN and proclaiming "We will bury you!"), but they really dropped the ball on reaching out and mending fences with the former Warsaw Pact. Georgia has every right to strengthen ties with the West and lobby for NATO admission, but the manner in which they do so can either reassure or provoke Russia. They are a small country that can't afford to have such powerful enemies on their doorstep. Russia has already crippled their weak economy with trade sanctions, and now this current incursion has decimated their meager military infrastructure and compromised their ability to govern.

Both sides screwed up, and now they find themselves in quite a mess. What America can do about it is another mess, which I can't really address here without writing 3 more pages. But Russia had the propaganda advantage last week, and they pissed it away with poor communication and excessive violence. There is strong evidence to show that Georgia violated the treaty, attacked Ossetia not as last resort, and civilians were killed. But Russia didn't lobby the international community and allow media access in Ossetia to validate its case for intervention. Many Georgians were actually quite angry at their leader for inviting this Russian retaliation. This was a totally asymmetrical war, even worse than Israel-Hizbullah, and Georgia's defense couldn't hold for even an afternoon. Russia's excessive destruction of a weakling foe (plus some atrocities in all likelihood) was probably meant to send a message that they still run things in these parts, and chop the defiant Saakashvili down to size. But the horrible manner in which they did it actually galvanized support for politically compromised Saakashvili from shocked foreigners and nationalistic Georgians outraged at the razing of their homeland. Of course it wasn't like Ivan the Terrible beheadding every Georgian he could find, but enough damage was done to make global opinion label Georgia as the victim and Russia the aggressor. Medvedev's faux cease-fire was also a bad blow to their credibility and PR campaign. Georgia was not, and will never be, a military or political threat to Moscow. Russia could have halted its advance after it retook Ossetia and surrounding areas, delivered humanitarian aid to gain local support, and hooked up with opposition leaders in Tiblisi to attempt to overthrow Saakashvili. Then they could have made a legitimate case that they were just responding defensively, while also turning the Georgians against their controversial leader. Now Georgia can lobby the UN and NATO that they might require Western peacekeepers in their territory, to balance the Russian troops in Ossetia and deter future aggression. I am sure that Washington would be more than happy to set up more bases in Central Asia, but probably won't since it will only escalate tensions with Moscow. But Russia screwed up royally as usual, and now they are the goats. Like the Israelis in Lebanon, you can't bomb bridges and hospitals, and then claim that you're trying to keep the peace.

But try telling Russians on the street that they are to blame for all this, and you might end up in the hospital. They heavily support their government in this conflict, so obviously something is getting lost in translation. In conflicts like this, there is rarely a "good guy", but Russia is not 100% to blame. The Russians do have a point that they did not fire first, and they have a right to enforce the 1992 agreement to defend Russian citizens and defenseless Ossetians under attack by Georgian forces. And their meddling in the separatist regions is just supporting independence for oppressed minority groups, as Bush did for Kosovo (despite Russian protest). But we know that the truth is not, and can never be, so plain and innocent.

THE MISSILE SHIELD

Of course we want to help former Soviet nations like Georgia modernize, democratize, and open up their markets to us (the US, France, and Russia are bitter rivals for arms sales), but most importantly their real estate on Russia's front yard is so precious. Do you really think we give a crap about Poland and Bulgaria because they're nice people? Like Turkey, Ceaucescu Romania, and Pakistan during the Cold War, we allied ourselves with unstable yahoos because of their strategic locations. Under the auspices of the War on Terror, we've planted troops and airbases in at least 3 former-Soviet central Asian 'Stans in addition to many Middle Eastern nations. For petty cash and propping up a few dictators, we can protect our energy investments and keep an eye on the Muslims and Russians simultaneously; it's a good deal.

The biggest afront to Russia is the missile defense shield. The USSR went bankrupt trying to have its bloated, in most cases delapidated, military keep pace with American advancements, and some argue that Reagan's selling of the Star Wars program helped convince the Kremlin that the show was over. All Russia had left was her nuclear deterrent, and if America could neutralize that asset (even though our billion-dollar system couldn't shoot down a seagull), then they had no choice but to accept defeat peacefully, or end human history with nuclear war. Thank goodness they chose the former. No matter what BS comes out of Washington, we can't fool anyone that the proposed missile interceptors in Eastern Europe are for defense against Iran. No way. There are only two nations in the world with nukes on hair-trigger alert: Russia and the US. Not even China or Pakistan, and North Korea can't even miniaturize its primitive bomb for missile delivery anyway. So only Russia and the US have the arrogant temerity to believe that we deserve the ability to destroy cities (or whole countries) immediately and without provocation, and that will somehow keep the peace. Yes that is a scary reality, but amazingly it's something that humanity has lived with for 50 years. Of course other nuclear nations don't profess to want or need first-strike capability, and prefer to keep their arsenals as passive deterrence.

The Czechs have already committed to the missile shield with us, but Poland has been more hesitant. Nothing has materialized from years of negotiations, maybe over concerns that their neighbor Russia might be offended, and the costs may outweigh the meager benefits. We claim that the shield is intended for rogue states (namely Iran) and definitely not Russia, but less than a week after the Russian invasion of Georgia, panicked Polish leaders are signing on the dotted line with Condi Rice. So I guess it's just coincidence that they suddenly had a change of heart? Give me a break. If other nations like China and Iran want to fire missiles at neighbors, they need time to prep their missiles and go through the appropriate protocols. It's possible that our satellites and other intel can detect that activity in time to mount a preventive response. Then there is no need for an interceptor shield. And I hate to break it to the Czechs and Poles, but NATO and the missile shield won't protect them from Iran or Russia anyway. The shield is obviously meant to neutralize missiles before they reach more high-valued targets in Western Europe and North America. The shorter the missile flight, the harder it is to shoot it down. If Iran (or Russia) were stupid enough to waste their first-strike on insignificant Krakow or Prague (and then suffer nuclear anihilation by NATO in response), then in all likelihood our interceptors won't be able to stop them. Plus many nuclear warheads are built to detonate above a city for maximum damage (like Hiroshima), not to actually strike the ground. What if the bombs detonate before the interceptor reaches them? And even in the Pentagon's best test-runs, the shield was only able to stop 50% of bogeys, so in practice it will probably drop to 20% at most (but you only need one missile to get through for the whole shield to fail its purpose). Plus the shield will do nothing if Russia ever invades "the old-fashioned way" with armored columns and attack aircraft, as they did in Georgia.

So we're sorry Poland and Czech, but really we're just using you for your real estate, to protect the "real Europeans" we care about. What's sad is that some Poles interviewed on the street say that they're happy to hear the news and they'll feel safer against Russia now (no mention of Iran of course). But I guess in times of crisis, some humans prefer to take comfort in illusions. Other Poles echoed my view that this shield is a bad idea, because for whatever possible defensive advantage it may give them, it's not worth the provocation to Russia. Moscow knows that this missile shield is designed with them in mind, so their hostility is understandable and not irrational/aggressive. Actually we are the aggressors, trying to force this down Eastern Europe's throats or bribe/scare them into agreement. It's not like it was their idea, and they were screaming for years to protect them against evil Iran or Russia. Many of those nations buy oil and gas from Iran and Russia! Why would they attack their best customers outside of Asia? And if the tables were turned, how would we feel if Russia builds a big base for attack submarines in Cuba, and claims that it's meant to stop drug smuggling in the Caribbean? No one likes to be played for a fool, especially the Bear.

I know some politicians have offered to placate Russia by offering to base some of the missile shield installations within her borders. But that does no good at all. Russia isn't worried about Iranian missiles aimed at them, and they have their own defenses. If we really wanted to reassure Russia and offer parity, then we would permit them to place their bases and interceptor missiles in North America. You have to balance the playing field if you want a clean, fair game. Honestly, the best defense against a nuclear attack is a good line of communication, not a military response, as we saw during the Cuban Missile Crisis. If America really cared about protecting Europe from Iranian missiles, Russian missiles, or whatever, then they would expand dialogue with hostile nations instead of encircling, namecalling, and stonewalling them. If America really cared to prevent nuclear war, then we would take our missiles off hair-trigger alert, dismantle some of our huge arsenal, and convince Russia to do the same. Can anyone in the Pentagon explain to us why it is better for global stability that we are able to destroy any target on Earth at the flip of a switch?

IS NATO STILL RELEVANT?

So what is the NATO security alliance really worth? I can almost guarantee that the Western powers will not stick their necks out for the recently accepted Eastern European members, risking nuclear war with Russia if she somehow decides to become belligerent with her neighbors. The developed nations did not come to Poland or Czech's aid when Hitler and Stalin annexed them, and the stakes were a lot lower then in a pre-nuclear world. Nor did they come to their aid during their Cold War uprisings. The West has been petrified of confronting Russia directly militarily, and now their oil leverage complicates matters. I know that in theory, an attack on one NATO member is considered an attack on all, but can you imagine a US or UK leader trying to persuade the voters that they have a duty to fight Russia just because she invaded Estonia?

What has NATO really done for us since the fall of the USSR? They have presided over botched peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s, and were ultimately unable to stop former Yugoslavians from slaughtering 100,000s of each other. In fact, the NATO bombing campaign over Serbia actually accelerated ethnic cleansing for a while until Milosevic capitulated. In the NATO charter, they have the "right" to engage in military operations without the approval of the UN Security Council. After 9/11, as we all know NATO forces went to Afghanistan to topple the Taliban and apprehend/destroy Al Qaeda leadership. But since then, few NATO allies have stepped to the plate and really committed to counterinsurgency and anti-Taleban operations. The US, UK, and Canada have borne the brunt of costs and casualties (notwithstanding the French who lost 10 soldiers this week). If the other nations don't want to leave their bunkers to help stabilize one of the 5 poorest nations on Earth, then how can we count on them to come to our aid in a more serious security crisis?

Can someone give me an honest, rational explanation why America's collective security should involve Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania, who were admitted to NATO in 2004, after Poland, Hungary, and Czech in 1999? Croatia and Albania are slated to join soon, and an "offer" has been made to Ukraine and the now-famous Georgia. But basically Russia pulls the strings for Georgia's membership, because they are inelligible to join NATO as long as they have unresolved territorial disputes within their borders, such as the South Ossetia situation. I know that most of the recently added nations are semi-functional democracies and eager trade partners, but why should we have to devote American blood and money to defend them? We have very little in common, and half of those states are borderline Third World. Actually if anything, Eastern Europe and Central Asia should forge more economic pacts with the West (which will naturally help stability and development), not military ones. But if the EU is not rushing to admit nations that aren't quite ready yet, why is NATO in such a hurry? Europe today is the most cooperating and peaceful its ever been since the invention of the sword, but new problems and hard feelings from past tensions still exist. It's quite possible that even NATO allies may have serious tensions with each other in the future, as the competition for resources intensifies and other problems worsen (immigration, terrorism, climate change, etc.). Then what is America supposed to do? If we expand NATO to 20-30 members (it stands at 26 now), that is too many for America to stick its neck out every time there is trouble.

It is a pain in the ass to be the world's policeman, especially when we don't really know what we're doing and may not even be able to stop some of the "crooks". We have our hands full with Iraq, we couldn't stop North Korea and Iran from maturing their nuclear programs, and we can't (or don't care to) intervene in the humanitarian crises in Sudan, Myanmar, and Zimbabwe. And even when we put boots on the ground to "keep the peace", we failed miserably in Southeast Asia in the 1970s, Lebanon/Iran in the 1980s, and Rwanda in the 1990s. So how the hell are we supposed to stop Russia, China, and other powers from menacing their neighbors? Stuck in Iraq and having lost so much international credibility because of it, everyone knows our condemnations and threats are hollow. It's a lose-lose proposition. I am not saying that isolationism is the answer, but we can't keep wading knee-deep in other people's messes. We have to clean up our own house first. I know in this globalized world we are all interconnected, and regional conflicts can cause massive socioeconomic disruptions overseas, but I would hope that we could adopt a more preventative, inclusive foreign policy rather than the current costly, divisive, and reactive one. For sure, the answer is not dividing up the world into spheres of influence, resuming arms races, and forming pacts to obtain strategic advantages, which happened in the years leading up to WWI and during the Cold War. When will we ever learn?

Russia and Georgia made quite a mess of things last week, and we have become centrally involved because of our alliance with Georgia and our insistence on installing an inflammatory missile shield in Eastern Europe. Either we will intervene and make things worse, or our credibility as "world's policeman" will suffer worse because we were too impotent or undiplomatic to convince Russia to change her behavior. Or maybe in some feat of diplomatic genius, we will improve our dialogue with Moscow and come to an equitable compromise, but I doubt it. "Compromise" is often not in Washington's vocabulary. But before we sink deeper into the NATO and Russia pit, we should remember how we got here. If America wasn't so insanely greedy to expand our presence in Russia's backyard, and admit many former Soviet nations into our club to take advantage of their territory, maybe Russia wouldn't feel so cornered and forced to respond to crises so harshly. If we value our security and the security of our NATO partners, then we must also value the security of Russia, Iran, and other competing interests. When our opponents feel safe and trust us, then there is no reason for them to endanger us. If we don't want Russia to keep bullying its neighbors, then we need to stop bullying in that region too. We can't keep trying to create a world where we hold all the cards, and the "left out" countries just have to accept their lot. Based on these arguments, maybe a good first step towards that goal of achieving a fairer, safer world is to cancel the missile shield and disband NATO.

This is what Ron Paul had to say about the matter on the House floor this spring:
Ron Paul: Disband NATO
April 1, 2008 in News by Eric Garris | 44 comments

This is Ron Paul's statement before the US House of Representatives on House Resolution 997, "expressing the strong support of the House of Representatives for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to enter into a Membership Action Plan with Georgia and Ukraine."

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this resolution calling for the further expansion of NATO to the borders of Russia. NATO is an organization whose purpose ended with the end of its Warsaw Pact adversary. When NATO struggled to define its future after the Cold War, it settled on attacking a sovereign state, Yugoslavia, which had neither invaded nor threatened any NATO member state. This current round of NATO expansion is a political reward to governments in Georgia and Ukraine that came to power as a result of US-supported revolutions, the so-called Orange Revolution and Rose Revolution. The governments that arose from these street protests were eager to please their US sponsor and the US, in turn, turned a blind eye to the numerous political and human rights abuses that took place under the new regimes. Thus the US policy of "exporting democracy" has only succeeding in exporting more misery to the countries it has targeted.

NATO expansion only benefits the US military industrial complex, which stands to profit from expanded arms sales to new NATO members. The "modernization" of former Soviet militaries in Ukraine and Georgia will mean tens of millions in sales to US and European military contractors. The US taxpayer will be left holding the bill, as the US government will subsidize most of the transactions. Providing US military guarantees to Ukraine and Georgia can only further strain our military. This NATO expansion may well involve the US military in conflicts as unrelated to our national interest as the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia. The idea that American troops might be forced to fight and die to prevent a small section of Georgia from seceding is absurd and disturbing.

Mr. Speaker, NATO should be disbanded, not expanded.

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http://www.forbes.com/2000/11/02/1102atg.html

This is an interesting piece in Forbes from 2000, when W was running against Gore for the White House.

With an estimated annual budget of $1.56 billion, the U.S. shouldered about 29% of NATO's operating budget in 1999, or about $452 million. Each of the member nations pays into NATO based on its gross domestic product, making the U.S. the biggest single contributor. That fund pays for NATO's basic day-to-day operations like staffing and communications, and will presumably pay for NATO's new headquarters, a 557,000-square-foot complex in Brussels. But when an American plane drops a bomb under NATO auspices, its cost is borne by American taxpayers out of the defense budget, not by NATO.

Especially now that the Iraq War has strained our military so much, it doesn't make sense for the US to be NATO's chief financial and military contributor. We are the de facto primary intercessor if an ally needs help, and the more backwards Eastern European nations we admit into NATO, the more we will have to cover their asses if trouble happens. Actually if we want to reform NATO, the US and UK should pay zero, and actually the small, defenseless, minimally-contributing members to the east should pay the most into the system, like "protection money" to the mob! They're the ones on the front lines, they need our expertise and technology to modernize their armies, and they'll cry to us for help in times of crisis, so why should they pay the least yet get the most benefits/protection? It's not like Lithuania is helping make America safer or catching Osama.

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http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Opinions/Columns/13-Aug-2008/Disband-NATO

Granted that this op-ed came from Pakistan, but at least that country has the courage and conviction to impeach a corrupt leader who doesn't respect the constitution, unlike Americans.

Parallels between Cuba and Iraq

Why we have failed to learn the national security lessons from the Cuban Missile Crisis in our current War on Terror

From some stuff I read recently about the similarities with the 2003 Iraq
invasion and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis:

Of course living in the West, we take most of the credit for averting nuclear
holocaust, but the more we learn – the less realistic that conclusion
becomes. Yes, even for a JFK fan, it’s easy to admit. At the 40th
anniversary, National Security Archives representative Thomas Blanton states
that Soviet sub officer Vasili Arkhipov basically saved the world on 10/27/62
by disobeying the order to fire nuclear torpedoes in response to depth charge
attacks by overzealous US destroyers exceeding the naval quarantine of Cuba.

Apparently, after the botched Bay of Pigs and the ever-escalating Operation
Mongoose (terror/insurgency ops conducted by the CIA and Cuban exiles against
the Castro regime, but mostly hurt the populace and economic infrastructure),
a larger aggressive action against Cuba was planned for late 1962 … until
the U2 photographed the missiles.

Of course war was averted when diplomatic back channels arranged for JFK and
Khruschev to agree to dismantle the Jupiter nuke missiles in East Turkey and
make a tacit promise to never invade Cuba (the strength of this agreement is
unclear), in exchange for the USSR missile pullout on Cuba. The Russians held
up their part of the bargain, but of course the USA replaced the Jupiter nukes
with even more lethal and elusive sub-based Polaris missiles lurking just
outside Soviet waters. And some reports suggest that JFK approved resuming and
even intensifying anti-Cuban clandestine ops just weeks after CMC. It got
worse under Republican presidents, regime change was the official State Dept
stance with Castro, and Cuba was officially regarded as a rogue/terror state
for decades.

I do not know why it’s “OK” for the USA in 1961-2 to threateningly place
WMDs at the Soviet’s doorstep in plain sight of everyone except the US
public (thanks, mass media), but when the Reds try to even the score with
Cuba-based missiles to fulfill the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine, we
have a shit fit. What would you do if you were Khruschev? We CANNOT justify
the Turkish nukes as defensive measures to improve the security of the USA and
her allies. Nor can we expect other nations (minus Israel and Japan maybe) to
remain calm as our nukes (strategically placed in their backyards) are only
meant to keep the peace. We can understand why Koreans, Filipinos, and others
protest to get US troops the heck off their land. Turkey and Central Asia were
never even on the drawing board for Soviet aggression until the Afghan
invasion, so there was no need for deterrence (plus Israel probably had nukes
by ’62 and covered the Middle East region for us). Of course when we flex our
muscles, the world is supposed to trust us that our intentions are good, but
if our opponents do the same, it’s a war crime.

Sure, it’s quite possible that the USSR was planning to install Cuban nukes
irrespective of what we did in Turkey – but a lot of countries come up with
a lot of zany ideas, though that does not constitute a direct security threat.
Saddam was “trying” to acquire WMD and who knows what he wanted to use
them for, even though his direct neighbors (and bitter enemies like Israel,
Kuwait, Saudi & Iran) were not on high alert at all – until we invaded. When
we attempt to justify preventative/pre-emptive war based on our shoddy intel
and Bush-like psychic gut feeling, we run into dangerous hypocrisy. Ever since
the Castro-led revolution, the USA has made no attempt to disguise its
intentions for Cuba. For Castro to follow American doctrine, it would be
perfectly fine to seek protection from other powers like China and Russia. In
fact, once nukes could be operational – it also follows the Bush paradigm to
wipe out DC, even if it means cataclysmic American reprisal attacks. As
depicted in “The Fog of War”, when Castro and McNamara met years after
CMC, Castro told him that he would have recommended the Soviets launch the
nukes, if they were operational once the Yanks found out – even if it meant
Armageddon for his people. McNamara said that was crazy, but Castro told him
that JFK would do the same thing in his shoes. McNamara agreed; if you’re
facing certain destruction anyway (and all indicators suggested that was
America’s goal for Castro, just like Saddam today), you need to strike first
if you can. That is the end result of the Bush doctrine, and that is why it
can’t be tolerated. Supposedly Al Qaeda types will never rest until all
Westerners are dead or worshipping Allah, so we have to get them before they
get us. But that is the “logical illogicality” of such a conflict (the
phrase was coined by the US War Dept in ’45 during the budding Cold War).
Defense becomes attack and vice versa. To save ourselves we must destroy
external threats, but picking fights everywhere only increases our chances of
annihilation (a la CMC). To defeat int’l communism or terrorism, we need to
deprive them of resources, manpower, and friendly regimes – so following the
Neoconservative dogma, we set up “democratic” puppet states run by “our SOBs”
all over the place (even if it means violating int’l laws/treaties and
committing war crimes & atrocities, or condoning such measures by our allies).
But that nonsense seems logical if we believe that the enemy will take those
exact measures if we don’t, and no superpower wants to miss the boat.

Since the ‘50s, an aggressive neighboring enemy that harbored
terrorists (I’ll expand on this later but trust me for now), was guilty of
multiple unpunished war crimes, and had fearsome WMD threatened Cuba. The US has claimed
repeatedly that their goal is regime change, military if necessary. By
contemporary thinking, Castro had the right, if not the obligation, to arm
himself with Soviet WMD and strike the US before it was too late. Sounds
ridiculous, right? But this is the world according to Bush types, and I’m
sure we don’t want anything to do with it. As I said before, the Neoconservative
doctrine and preventative war policy would be almost valid if the USA was an
infallibly just, wise, and moral nation – though our foreign policy in the
last 100 years would suggest otherwise. I know perfection is impossible, but
the major problem with the Bush line of thinking is one unlucky slip-up and
you get a major costly scare (like CMC) if not outright nuclear war.

Say Iraq went splendidly (and it possibly could have, with only a handful of
different decisions), and Bush is riding high and getting a big head. So his
cabinet targets Iran next. The students are fighting for more democracy, their
leaders are repressive and hate America (and sponsor int'l terror), they have
a shit load of oil, and their WMD program is indeterminate, so it seems like a
reasonable candidate for Neoconservative-style regime change by force. So we bomb and
invade, but it turns out Tehran does have nukes, and launches them at Tel
Aviv. Hamas, Hezbollah, Qaeda, and others retaliate by attacking every
American installation in the Middle East. Israel responds by nuking Damascus,
Beirut, Cairo, plus Riyadh for good measure. Saudi/Iraqi oil production is
stifled, and what’s left of the Iranian military cuts off the Strait of
Hormuz so no Gulf oil reaches the West for weeks. China and the EU (minus UK)
cut off all economic and diplomatic ties with the rogue USA to avoid Islamist
backlash. After we seize Venezuelan oil wells, still gas-starved and
infuriated Americans demand that Russia divert its European and Chinese bound
oil to the USA or face bitter consequences. Hardliners overthrow Putin or
convince him to nuke America to “save Russia”. Endgame. It is fairly
preposterous, but also frighteningly plausible if cooler heads don’t prevail
(and “coolheaded” is not one of the first qualities that come to mind
about the current Admin).

We saw how “doves” like JFK barely avoided nuclear war in 1962, with so
many things going wrong as fear and aggression boiled over (overzealous
blockaders, ill-timed nuclear testing and saber-rattling troop exercises on
the Gulf Coast, the USAF increasing DEFCON status without White House
approval, a possible foiled coup in Moscow, a U2 getting shot down). It would
have been doom had Arkhipov followed his orders from Stavka. Now consider that
Bush is far from dovish and makes no qualms about overt aggression in the
logically illogical cause of security. 9/11 was bad enough and caused such
panic/paranoia/belligerence, but one CMC-esque slip-up and no telling what his
trigger-happy war cabinet will do. America cannot be defeated by any foreign
foe, but we have seen how easy it would be for us to destroy ourselves
(ironically in the name of our own preservation).

McNamara also said that JFK asked his staff to prepare a Cuban invasion months
before CMC, and the plan was ready to execute in a week’s notice (from The
Kennedy Tapes, Harvard). He said, “Cuba was justified in fearing an
attack.” The CIA managed bombing and incendiary raids by Cuban exile pilots
since 1959. In response, Cuba went to the UN Security Council in 1960 with
rock solid documentation of 20 attacks, but to no avail. US Ambassador Lodge
promised that America had no aggressive purpose against Cuba; all the while
Bay of Pigs was being planned. Castro understandably prepared to defend
himself, but CIA chief Dulles asked Britain and other Euro allies to deny him
arms shipments – to deliberately push Cuba towards the Soviets. Cuba armed
with Soviet weapons would provide an excellent pretext for escalation if not
invasion, as was the case with Guatemala (stop the spread of int'l bolshevism
and all that jazz, heck even selectively invoke Monroe Doctrine while you're
at it). In a memorandum to JFK in ’61, Arthur Schlesinger warned Kennedy of
a major diplomatic fallout from a proxy army invasion of Cuba (a la Bay of
Pigs, which did in fact happen). So it would be better to bait Castro into
sending troops to a neighbor like Haiti (as the CIA helped bait the USSR into
invading Afghan), trying to encourage more communism revolts and morally
justifying American intervention. The Joint Chiefs had similar thoughts, and
provided McNamara with even more extreme & devious plans in Feb ’62. Some
ideas were staging the destruction of a navy vessel in Guantanámo to repeat
“Remember the Maine” fervor, shooting down a drone plane near Cuban
airspace that was supposedly transporting US college students on spring break,
or using Soviet incendiaries to bomb crops on Cuba’s neighbors to frame them
for aggression.

By Aug ’62 anti-Cuban hostilities increased, such as strafing of a beach
hotel where Soviet contractors were known to be staying, and destroying sugar
exports. All this was done by exiled Cuban paramilitaries given safe haven in
the States. Is it any wonder why Castro asked for help and CMC ensued 2 months
later? Supposedly JFK and Khruschev agreed on 10/30 to abort sabotage
operations, but some continued in secret. Just before his murder, JFK approved
a CIA plan for proxy forces to destroy major shipping and production
facilities (Garthoff, “Reflections”). They obviously didn’t learn
anything from CMC. Plans to kill Castro were prolific, and sadly the exploding
cigar ploy was real. One of Nixon’s first measures as president was to
increase covert ops in Cuba, and anti-Cuban terror peaked under his Admin.
Bombings and raids persisted into the ‘90s, with Miami based fronts like
Cuban-American National Foundation distributing CIA funding. Known south
American criminals like Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch organized raids
and bombings on DC's behalf, the worst being the downing of a Cubana passenger
airliner. The FBI had documented over 30 counts of terrorism against Bosch,
but in ’89 Bush I gave him a presidential pardon at the behest of
Governor Jeb and South Florida Cuban expatriates. So it’s a bit hypocritical for
Bush II to accuse the Taleban of harboring Osama and other terrorists while we
did the same thing (even though Bosch probably is responsible for fewer
murders than OBL, and both were CIA-trained anticommunists). Under kind
Clinton’s leadership, the Cuban threat was downgraded to “negligible” in
’98, but economic sanctions persisted. Now Bush II is resuming anti-Cuban
animosity.

Sorry I’ve gone on so long, but it’s an interesting story – and of
course this is only the tip of the iceberg. I’ll end with this quote from
the Mexican ambassador in ‘61 to JFK when he was trying to rally support in
the Americas for anti-Cuba action, “if we publicly declare that Cuba is a
threat to our security, 40 million Mexicans will die laughing.” (Leacock,
“Requiem for Revolution”) This is especially fitting, considering the
USA’s aggressive history with Cuba and the fact that no Cuban attack has
taken place on US soil as far as we know (unless you buy into the JFK
assassination Cuba connection – which was more likely perpetrated by
anticommunist Cuban exiles than Castro’s actual agents). So we can
understand if most of the world finds it sadly humorous that we disguise our
imperialist aggression as defensive precautions.

Similar to the buildup to the Iraq invasion, Europe was not consulted by the
USA during the CMC. The US NATO commander put our air forces on high alert
without discussing the consequences with other treaty nations. I know we have
the "right" to protect ourselves without passing the "international test"
(vintage 2004 campaign rhetoric), but what is the point of an alliance that
you don't utilize? JFK’s NSA McGeorge Bundy suggested that Euros “feel
that they are a part of it … that they know,” but basically limit their
involvement to observers (even though Europe’s destruction during CMC was as
imminent as ours). But JFK’s ExComm was concerned that Europe’s pleas for
calm would undermine potential aggression against Cuba. America’s hysteria
over Cuba seem a bit foolish, considering the fact that Europe
had lived peacefully for over a decade (without freaking out) under the very
real and closer threat of Soviet nuclear missiles. JFK even said that any dissent or vetoes of US
actions during CMC were unacceptable, sadly akin to W’s treatment of our
noncommittal allies prior to Iraq. So I guess the take home message is:
nuclear holocaust almost took place, and its origins can be traced to sloppy,
unlawful efforts for regime change of an unfriendly but basically
harmless/insignificant nation. Things can spiral out of control very easily in
geopolitics. Obviously we would like to think we are more educated, civil, and
secure these days, being the last superpower left. Devious secrets are harder
to keep with more high tech communication and a widespread press (that may or
may not report responsibly, even if they uncovered something juicy). Our
current trade deficit and foreign energy addiction are sources of concern -
they could be manipulated to motivate horrendous actions, just like the Cold
War land grab policy to counter the Reds. But again, W has sought regime
change in Afghan and Iraq, even though such nations posed “negligible” (at
best) threat to the USA and our security/economic interests in the Middle East
(apart from their oil reserves or proximity to oil). We narrowly avoided
disaster once, and these days the Kremlin can no longer keep us in check, and there may not be an Arkhipov to bail us out at the critical moment. Who knows where this clumsy, misguided, and sadly all-too-familiar effort will ultimately take us?

The realities of a nuclear North Korea

A failure in diplomatic and economic engagement with a reclusive yet amenable regime

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6038490.stm
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061011/ap_on_re_as/koreas_nuclear_208
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/crs/IB91141.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_party_talks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_nuclear_program
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_reunification
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/10/opinion/ednkor.php
http://www.iht.com/bin/challenge.php?URI=http://iht.nytimes.com/protected/art...

First off, enjoy this quote from the recent Bush press conference. Referring to the added negotiation leverage gained if the Six-Party Talks nations achieve consensus on North Korea, he said, "One has a stronger hand when there's more people playing your same cards." I hope he wages war and conducts diplomacy better than he knows poker.

In addition to the quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington has adopted a policy of alienation and latent hostility towards "rogue states" such as Iran, Syria, Cuba, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, and North Korea. Some of those nations are important regional powers, whether we care to acknowledge the fact or not. We have more to gain though increased contact rather than marginalizing them into desperate measures (such as nuclear armament), but certain special interests and narrow ideologies prevent this from happening. Isolating and refraining from open dialogue/trade/relations with those countries are not only impacting our foreign policy interests, but making the North a poorer, more dangerous nation (I'll expand on this idea in my conclusion). I know that North Korea is a frustrating, often irrational negotiating partner who has broken off negotiations in the past, but that is no excuse for our poor effort in return. It makes no sense to refuse to acknowledge the North until they adhere to previous obligations, when we fully know that they won't heed those agreements without new dialogue with us.

RECENT HISTORY

In the 1990's, Pyongyang admitted to conducting secret uranium/plutonium enrichment programs, but the involved nations drafted an "Agreed Framework" in 1994 to keep the Korean Peninsula nuclear weapons-free and move towards normalized relations. The North would receive energy supplies, be removed from the list of terrorist nations, and be permitted to run foreign-built nuclear power plants under NPT protocols. The US would offer security guarantees and economic aid if the North refrained from weapons research and permitted full inspection of its facilities. Then Bush included the North in the "Axis of Evil" in 2001, and things went further south in 2002. The US suspended oil shipments to the North and misinterpreted a North Korean statement declaring their "right" to nuclear weapons as an admission of possessing them. Both sides accused the other of scrapping the 1994 agreements. Pyongyang claimed it had no choice but to restart its reactors after the US compromised its energy supply.

The Iraq war began, US and South Korean forces increased military exercises, the North went on high alert, and everyone was on edge. In response to North Korea's withdrawal from the NPT in 2003 and ambiguity over nuclear weapons, the Bush Administration decided to cease direct negotiations, push for international sanctions, and keep the threat of force "on the table" until the North disarms, opens its doors to IAEA inspectors, and lives up to "prior obligations to the international community." The Six-Party Talks began in 2004 to resume and expand on the 1994 agreements, with some positive results. But the North postponed negotiations indefinitely in late 2005 after the US froze North Korean assets in Macau. They offered to return to the bargaining table if the US gave the money back, but to no avail. Instead, the North fired missiles into the Sea of Japan and supposedly conducted a nuclear test. It's been a sad deterioration from building trust during the Clinton Administration to mutual treachery/provocation during the Bush Administration. So I believe that it's purely election year BS for McCain to blame Clinton for the recent developments in Korea.

NUCLEAR POLICY PROS AND CONS

Every nation with nuclear aspirations knows it will have fewer friends after obtaining the bomb, but sometimes a bomb is more useful than allies. With the exception of the US, every nuclear power has pursued such weapons in order to address grave threats to their existence, not with the premeditated desire to implement them offensively. The North is no exception, and issued a "no first-strike" clause in its nuclear strategy, preferring the weapons as deterrent only.

The USSR stole nuclear information to counter US exclusivity, and an unprecedented arms race ensued. But with our assistance, America's NATO allies went nuclear to stymie the Soviet presence menacing Western Europe. Israel probably went nuclear after the costly Yom Kippur War to prepare for the next pan-Arab invasion. Traditional enemies India and Pakistan went nuclear in the 1990's, despite our chastisement and economic punishment, and cross-border hostilities in that region have decreased. We can learn two valuable lessons from the South Asia example. First, sanctions against nations that have recently gone nuclear will not compel them to disarm. And second, nuclear weapons (or the fear of annihilation from them) can be wielded responsibly as an effective deterrent against foreign aggression. Pyongyang can't help but examine recent history to justify its controversial course of action. Therefore, it's quite hypocritical for Indian PM Singh to proclaim, "We do not support the emergence of another nuclear weapons state." Indians should know better than anyone that it doesn't matter what the world thinks, but there comes a point when a nation feels that it has to build a bomb. Some nations would like to remain ambiguous concerning their arms capabilities, to befuddle potential enemies and make them think twice about initiating hostilities (Saddam, Israel). Other nations have the know-how to rapidly construct an arsenal if the need arises, such as Brazil, Japan, South Korea, Argentina, and South Africa (also probably Taiwan, Canada, Australia, and some European nations). Most of those states are not under immediate threat, which is of course the key to convincing them that nuclear weapons would be too problematic to acquire.

So North Korea is in a bind, some of which is self-inflicted. The conceited, insular Kim government is tired of being bullied by the US and wants recognition. Sometimes force confers respect in geopolitics. This may become a very reckless publicity stunt, and will hurt the Korean people. But they hear our strong language and take the threat of American aggression very seriously. If we mellowed our tone, Kim's desire for nuclear weapons would appear all the more ridiculous and unacceptable in the world's eyes. But the Bush Administration has helped Pyongyang into a position to somewhat justify a nuclear deterrent. Can Bush explain to North Korea why pro-America nations get to hoard thousands of megaton hydrogen bombs, while they can't even test a few meager fission devices?

Maybe that's the paradox of the nuclear age. Countries seek nuclear weapons purely out of self-interest, even if the global response will be crippling. Powerful countries want nukes, but refuse to allow others the same privilege. They think they have the right or need for such weapons, even if the rest of the world thinks its lunacy. America toots the horn of nonproliferation, but refuses to show good faith and engage in serious disarmament, and this contributes to our failing nuclear policies according to Asian affairs expert Gordon Chang. To make matters worse, Bush cancelled the Test Ban Treaty and other accords, and approved funding through Congress for new weapons development. The Test Ban Treaty kept Chinese nukes frozen in 1970's technology, and now the floodgates are loosed for a potential 21st century arms race. They shouldn't complain about the "Chinese menace" if they contribute to the problem. Speaking of China, America faced a dilemma when the People's Republic went nuclear during the 1960's. The US seriously considered a first strike on their facilities, but fortunately responsible leaders nixed that plan which would have ultimately led to World War III. We let China go nuclear, and the sky didn't fall. A nuclear North Korea and/or Iran is not the end of the world, but does force us to adapt and rethink our strategies.

What does North Korea want? Maybe they just desire respect and fair treatment. I know that they probably don't plan to nuke anyone unless as last resort. Unlike the doomsday scenarios and exaggerated, paranoid claims from the government/mass media, North Korea is not much of a threat to us. Unlike Al Qaeda, North Korea has not sworn to destroy America or our allies. Gross civil and human rights abuses take place regularly, and this must be addressed. Kim is disrespectful to our government and clearly a bad leader, but not a maniac. Even the "madman" Saddam didn't have the audacity to use WMD on Coalition forces during Desert Storm, because he knew we would reduce Iraq to rubble in retaliation. Most dictators realize that it's folly to commit national hara-kiri, because who would be left to boss around? Hitler, Nero, and the Khmer Rouge were the few exceptions. Even though the North has broken agreements in the past, their no first-strike policy is an important sign. I just don't think Kim would walk the path to oblivion and foolishly employ his nukes just to spite America, but he will respond to perceived aggression on our part, including excessive sanctions. Korea's neighbors have reason for concern, and may well match or surpass Pyongyang's arsenal in a new Asian arms race. Surely the North profits from arms sales to questionable parties, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to Western defense companies. There is scant evidence to suggest that Pyongyang has ever engaged in WMD proliferation or dealt with international Islamist groups, even less than the case against Saddam. Noam Chomsky claims that Bush added North Korea to the "Axis of Evil" in 2001 simply because it was too controversial for the Axis to be exclusively comprised of Muslim nations. North Korea is a dysfunctional, impoverished, idiosyncratic hermit state with a mediocre military (significant manpower but obsolete weaponry) and primitive nukes at best. We shouldn't let our guard down, but we don't need to freak out either. Freaking out after 9/11 got us into the Afghanistan/Iraq mess, so I hope we can learn to avoid repeated mistakes.

INTERNATIONAL SANCTIONS?

I disagree with some of the NYT editorial above calling for stiff sanctions and punishment. Unlike Iran, North Korea has no oil leverage and few strong allies/foreign investors apart from China. So compared to Iran, it will be easier for the international community to come to a consensus on imposing punishment. Beijing lost face when North Korea tested their device in defiance of their warnings, but they hesitate to cripple their close ally. They realize that the international response should not be to merely punish the North, but instead seek to convince (or bribe) them abandon nuclear activities for their own good. If China agrees to withhold their veto and cut aid/oil to North Korea (doubtful), it may very well bring Pyongyang to its knees. But arrogant centralized governments don't like to beg on their knees, and might prefer extremism instead. Take the case of pre-WWII Imperial Japan. That nation was obviously militaristic and aggressive, seeking to become a respected world power and regional leader. After Japan invaded and conquered French Indochina and some of the Dutch East Indies, the US (then Japan's chief oil supplier) imposed an oil embargo to cut the lifeblood to the Japanese military. Instead of shamefully bargaining for a resolution with the West, Japan decided to sneak attack Pearl Harbor instead, and the rest is history. So we shouldn't implement excessive external pressure that may provoke Pyongyang into using its military/nuclear resources in desperation.

If we learned anything from our economic embargoes in the 20th century, external pressure does not weaken enemy regimes and foster democratic reforms. In fact, it only serves to strengthen our enemies at the expense of their suffering people (whom we supposedly care about and wish to liberate). The people may come to resent their corrupt leaders more, but our economic strangulation weakens their ability to resist. As a result, they probably blame the West more than their own leaders for the hardships. Castro has outlasted 9 (soon to be 10) US presidents, and the Ayatollahs still run Iran, despite our decades of economic and diplomatic estrangement. The secretive Kim regime enjoys its privileged, demigod status and prefers to spend its meager capital on nuclear/military expenditures while the society languishes and falls further behind. Like Iran, this nation is generally immune to trade sanctions. The government seems content to cut off ties with the outside world even as their people starve, and yet the deceived populace still has great love for the two Kim leaders. The North won't back down in the face of terrible hardships. Are we ready to take responsibility for another ruined, suffering nation? By all means we should attempt to block the North's acquisition of new military/nuclear technology, but general economic sanctions will do more harm than good. One punishment the Bush Administration seeks to impose on the North is a mandatory search of all inbound and outbound cargo. This technically constitutes a naval blockade, which the North would rightfully interpret as an act of war (according to international law). Events may escalate out of control from there.

Military aggression obviously makes matters worse. As observed in Iraq, democracy can't function through violence, and our hostility only increases support for undesirable, unstable strongmen. Yet America expects the grateful recipients of our sanctions and bombs to spontaneously overthrow their own leaders and do the West's bidding instead? Especially after we stifled democratic movements (that were too leftist for comfort) in Africa/Latin America, hung the anti-Saddam resistance out to dry after 1991, and utterly failed in Vietnam/Bay of Pigs, maybe reformers don't quite trust us to reliably assist them in their struggles for positive change.

IMPROVING OUR DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS

The NYT's columnist Nicholas Kristof says we need to start talking to "monsters" from hostile regimes, instead of taking the Republicans' juvenile cold shoulder approach. Sometimes talking prevents fighting, and we should have tried it long ago with Cuba, Iran, the Iraqi insurgents, Islamist groups, and even Osama. Bush rules out direct talks with the North because he believes Six-Party negotiations give us more diplomatic advantage. While that may be true, completely refusing to engage them directly is setting us back, especially when the North has been requesting bilateral talks! UN Secretary General Anan has said as much. They claim to pursue nuclear arms as a deterrent against US aggression. It might all be a smokescreen, but it appears that their gripe is with us. So why don't we talk with them, put their fears to rest, and convince them to disarm in a more effective, equitable manner? What do we have to lose by talking? But Bush and the GOP have to remain on message and stay the course. Staying the wrong course is hurting us in Iraq, and staying the wrong course is costing us with North Korea. Sadly, this nuclear standoff will probably help the fear-mongering, security-driven Republicans in the November election.

I am not Korean, but please permit me to make a few inferences. Certainly Southerners are dismayed with the nuclear test. They feel betrayed that these years of increased openness, cooperation, and generosity were squandered. Seoul's "Sunshine" policy of engagement has been making progress for the last decade, and unfortunately the North's recent nuclear brinkmanship has infuriated many South Koreans and increased criticism of the engagement strategy. The Korean people want peaceful coexistence, reconciliation, and eventual reunification. They want it so badly that many of them are willing to bury decades of hostility and mistrust to work for a better future. The South gives millions in socioeconomic assistance each year, and the North graciously accepts. Young people in the South want American troops off the Korean Peninsula for good. Koreans are tired of being Cold War pawns for China and America. Unlike Israel and Hamas, the South and North have become more reliable, respectful negotiating partners since the Clinton Era. Surely it's impossible to bury all the hate, war scars, and communists-capitalists ideological animosity. We still have a long way to go, but at least the loudspeakers on the DMZ have silenced, leaders have met and shook hands, Korea has a joint Olympic team, and some lucky families have reunited.

Civil wars are some of the most tragic conflicts, and we Americans should know. We've suffered through a civil war and instigated a few in other countries too. The US interference exacerbated tensions in Vietnam. Rather than allowing the Vietnamese to negotiate their differences and become a unified, sovereign nation (as opposed to a Western or Soviet puppet), the USSR and US decided to impose its wishes and force a path to war instead. America did not start the Korean War, but our government has impeded progress to peace because of narrow self-interest and persistent Cold War ideology. However, a better future is possible through intelligent discussion, concession, reconciliation, and trust (look at Germany and South Africa). The Koreans are closer to peaceful coexistence than many other global hot spots, and unfortunately this is an issue that America takes umbrage. As demonstrated in the recent summit between South Korean and American leaders this fall, the two nations do not see eye-to-eye regarding relations with the North. The Bush Administration continues to adopt the antiquated, fruitless policy of estrangement that has yet to succeed in Cuba, Iran, and elsewhere. Seoul adopts a more elevated, civilized strategy. Of course the North has sometime failed to live up to expectations as a reasonable negotiating partner, but they are not solely to blame for this shameful diplomatic failure.

CONCLUSION: GIVE PEACE (AND TRADE) A CHANCE

So what is the solution? Like Iraq, the situation is complex, precarious, and too difficult for the US to resolve with force. Globalization is overwhelming a net force for good, and political freedom must be coupled to economic prosperity. As great economists have observed, no democracy ever had a famine, and free trade is correlated with standard of living and honest government. So obviously sanctions, embargoes, and tariffs won't help improve life and encourage reforms in North Korea. And a poor, desperate, unstable North Korea is not good for anyone. So as we all know, democracy + prosperity = no fighting. Unfortunately, some governments in Europe and the Middle East haven't figured this out yet, and continue to marginalize and abandon angry, desperate Muslims to the manipulations of religious extremists. We have to open up to North Korea, Iran, and others if we desire peaceful social reform there, but conservatives, special interests, and ideologues profit from the regrettable status quo and routinely block détente. North Korean agricultural exports suffer from protectionist policies and subsidies of richer Asian neighbors. Some people can't overcome antiquated Cold War thinking and resist change. Kim thrives on his nation's isolation to maintain power, and our diplomatic hostility/trade sanctions are working in his favor.

Maybe we fear that more money bound for North Korea will only funnel to the corrupt regime and military. But Saddam didn't snatch every last cent of the wayward Oil For Food Program, didn't use his profits to build WMD, and much of the proceeds did help the struggling Iraqi people. Pyongyang can't hoard all the wealth, and ordinary citizens will benefit from increased commerce, which leads to demand for education, government reform, and civil liberties. Plus increased cultural exchange with the West and North Korea's Asian neighbors will reduce the mutual mistrust, prejudice, and tension. When people wield more information, wealth, and influence, it's harder for leaders to unilaterally execute deleterious policies. And as I previously mentioned, economic and diplomatic seclusion only serves to weaken the populace and strengthen tyrants. Increased trade with China and the South have helped tremendously, so the North needs more, not less, socioeconomic and diplomatic contact with the rest of the world to become a responsible, trustworthy member of the world community. It's better for the unfortunate Korean people and better for global security, but unfortunately conflicts with the interests of narrow-minded, self-serving leaders like Kim and Bush. Surely the process won't be quick or easy (trust and relations among enemies takes time), money won't fix everything, and we must remain diligent. Maybe "appeasing" and "bribing" North Korea will set a poor example for other nuclear hopefuls, so we must hold the North to account as well. If they want nukes, they can't have other benefits. The choice is theirs, but we need to offer them something more substantial than condemnations and threats. Nixon and Mao took major political risks to commence relations, and it paid off for both nations decades later. We can sew the seeds of cooperation now and work/hope for a better future, or we can resign ourselves to the continuing failure of Bush-like policies.

North Korea has gone nuclear whether we like it or not, and we can't turn back the clock. If we can't get the genie back into the bottle, at least we can reduce its preeminence. A cooperative nuclear partner is still safer than an estranged enemy with a knife. So the world has a simple choice: do we prefer to punish nuclear North Korea and render that nation more isolated, impoverished, angry, and desperate? Or do we desire to work for peaceful coexistence, normalized relations, disarmament/nonproliferation, social reforms, and prosperity instead?

"The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend."
- Abraham Lincoln, Republican and war president.

Missile defense BS

Bush and Rummy have spent over $30B and counting in tax dollars on a missile defense shield since taking office. I wonder how many armored Humvees and Kevlar vests that would have bought for our troops, or even shelter for Katrina victims and meals/healthcare for poor people. Basically, the premise of the defense shield is a network of radar installations on America’s flanks that can track threatening ballistic missiles in mid-flight or descent, then launch interceptor missiles to destroy the inbound bogeys before they reach their intended targets. I won’t get into to much detail here, but do read the interesting links if you’re curious. Basically my two-pronged criticism is this: missile defense is an expensive response to a low-probability threat (and therefore you may argue that it’s unnecessary), and the system in its current form performs so poorly nearly to point of nil protection anyway.

So why even build it? Of course it makes defense contractors like Lockheed and TRW a ton of money, assuages some ridiculous fears whipped up by conservative Chicken Littles, and might even make American hawks feel invincible against the Axis of Evil’s meager weaponry. Have we even progressed out of the Middle Ages? All this sounds like an alchemist at the carnival who exploits your ignorance/ego to sell an immortality potion for two gold pieces. To make a crude analogy – why would you need to buy $100 condoms if you and your spouse are disease-free and monogamous? Furthermore, would you spend $100 on a condom that fails over 30% of the time? If not, then don’t endorse Bush’s missile shield. So the taxpayers and our allies need to know the limitations of our capabilities, so we don’t sell them a lemon and find out the hard way if an enemy missile is ever launched. You trust that your vehicle airbag will work when you need it at the critical moment. Would you trust this administration on missile defense (an administration that has scorned science since day one and has very little competence on military strategy), when they previously made such predictions as “The jury is still out on global warming” and “Iraqis will welcome us with flowers and candy”?

Bush and company are concerned that terrorists and “rogue states” will launch ballistic missiles against US or allied targets. Since we all know that Al Qaeda will never possess a missile silo, that leaves only North Korea and Iran with the military technology and potential ill will to ever attempt such an attack. In recent history, we’ve seen that North Korea’s medium range missiles can’t reach the US west coast, and test launches often fail miserably. Their recent underground nuclear test yielded an explosion so wimpy that many analysts doubted it was even a fission reaction. Plus they don’t have the know-how to miniaturize a bomb so it fits on a missile tip. So North Korea is years off from pea shooters at best. Unfortunately no missile defense system can protect our Asian allies in South Korea/Japan from a short range Korean warhead, since the flight time and trajectory are too short. Even if their missiles were 100% accurate and could be equipped with a nuke, why would they bomb low-value targets like the Aleutian Islands or Kaui when everyone knows America’s reprisal attack will blow them off the map? Do we really think other nations are that stupid and suicidal? Just because a nation can do a thing doesn’t mean they will or must do that thing. America has the resources and know-how to eradicate many major diseases and reduce global poverty practically overnight, but do we? So why should we expect the Axis of Evil to attack us the first chance they get? Ever heard of deterrence measures? When the USSR got the bomb after WWII, did they immediately send bombers to Berlin or Washington? People need to chill out and get a grip. Not ignore the threat, but meter our responses in proportion to the risk.

Tensions with Iran are more heated and with stronger consequences. They have decent rockets and more critical NATO targets closer to its borders, but is behind on the nuclear technology. Although some EU nations have endorsed sanctions against Iran as punishment for their nuclear research, many European countries are trade partners with Iran, especially in fuels. Why would Iran want to nuke its richest customers outside of Japan? As former French president Chirac said, the Iran threat is way overblown because only a suicidal regime in Tehran would ever be so imprudent to fire off a few missiles against the West before getting obliterated by our counterattack. Now I am not insinuating that Tehran is somehow immune to foolish action, but many political safeguards would have to fall apart for their regime to ever consider authorizing missile attacks. They would have to feel so backed into a corner, like a desperate suicide bomber, that they might as well take a few infidels down with them if their doom was assured anyway. So that is where DIPLOMACY comes into play. If we stop saber-rattling and freaking them out, then maybe they would have no incentive to attack us. If he got the green light, Bush’s missile shield wouldn’t be fully operational in Western Europe until 2011 or so, and Iran might not even have a bomb and delivery technology by then. Plus the missile shield does nothing to address the threat of nukes delivered by short-range methods such as aircraft, torpedo, land vehicle, or smuggling.

Now I am not making light of the nuclear threat. Even a small device can cause much death and destruction. The carnage at Hiroshima was caused by a puny bomb compared to our modern Apocalyptic warheads. But Ebola is also a scary and real danger. But why worry about it if your lifestyle and geography protects you from most forms of transmission, especially when the likelihood of outbreak is so low? There are plenty of scary things in this world to be worried about. Some are more pressing than others. If we invested $30B on fighting global warming a decade ago, maybe Bangladesh won’t be underwater in 50 years. Now to the second thrust of my argument: functionality. The missile shield doesn’t even work well! In test runs where the interceptor system pursued mock targets equipped with HOMING BEACONS on them (and last time I checked North Korea doesn’t do us such favors), it failed in 3 of 8 attempts. Results have even been doctored to make the system appear more effective than it actually can be in real-world practice. Does that make you feel safer from attack? The system is also terribly vulnerable to simple countermeasures, or dummy objects deployed by the enemy missile to confuse our interceptors. Conceivably, an inbound rocket would merely need to eject metallic objects of similar temperature, shape, and speed (to have a similar infrared signature, which our interceptors use to identify targets in pursuit), and our interceptors may hit the harmless debris and let the dangerous warhead pass. This is a low-tech countermeasure that our enemies could easily outfit on their missiles, which would render our $30B defense fairly impotent. Also equipping a missile with a radar-absorbing coating or internal cooling system (like our stealth aircraft) would reduce our interceptors’ ability to locate it.

So we’ve made strong arguments to establish that the missile system is unnecessary and ineffective. Furthermore, it also causes POLITICAL problems, as we’ve seen from Putin’s anger preceding the G8 summit in Germany. First Bush pulled America out of decades-long anti-proliferation treaties, and now he’s digging around in the former Iron Curtain. While it is comforting to some Americans to be the mightiest, unchallenged bully on the block (even if we are a benevolent, freedom-spreading bully), sometimes tranquility and harmony are better preserved by a balance of power rather than hegemony. We survived the Cold War just fine without a missile shield, and the Soviets were much deadlier than the Axis of Evil could ever hope for. Just like Iraq, an ostensibly defensive action can be misconstrued by others as overt aggression. A plan intended to make us safer could actually provoke a wider conflict. Placing US “defense installations” in Eastern Europe is another sign that can be construed as America’s desire for global military domination, and the hardliners in Moscow might consider risking escalation rather than sitting idly by while the US military encircles them in their own backyard.

Some leaders in Eastern European governments are happy to cooperate with Bush, but many of the citizens under the proposed shield are concerned if not furious. Right now the Bulgarian prime minister is kissing Bush’s ass on a state visit to include his country in the missile shield – but why the hell does Bulgaria think they need protection from Middle Eastern missiles? And this is another consequence of Bush’s PR campaign for missile defense: other nations form unrealistic expectations and unfounded paranoia over missile attack. The world is a more dangerous place if everyone is fearful and reacting irrationally to ghost threats.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6720153.stm

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/missile/etc/postol.html

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=000A45A2-E044...

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/31/opinion/edmissile.php

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2864145&C=america

http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/missile-defense/history/biden_mis...

http://science.howstuffworks.com/missile-defense.htm

http://slate.msn.com/?id=115350

http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2001/02/00_krieger_missile-defense-magino...

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Your thoughts bring a question to mind - has Bush been successful in
furthering military interests?

I remember not too long ago military bases were being closed in Ronald
Reagan's California and pundits were writing off an infantry force as an
antiquated 20th-century notion of warfare. Given that media coverage
(both traditional and "new") over the last 6 years has been dominated by
talk of terrorism, Afghanistan, and Iraq does the American public have a
different take on the relevance of the US military in 21st-century?
This morning I heard a piece on voters in Iowa and the few sound-bytes
which were included (all Republicans) indicated an exhaustion with the
war and impatience with the lack of results. Would it be fair to take
the results of this year's election as an answer to the question or will
military budgets in the first few years of the next administration be
the real indication of Bush's impact on US military interests?

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Yeah, I mean as far as I know defense spending scaled down under Clinton (due to world events and national priorities), but has ballooned under Bush, much under the premise of the War on Terror post-9/11. Our wars cost something like $30B a month? Maintaining big bases in Germany, Central Asia, the Gulf, and Korea ain't cheap either. Our Navy also costs a ton and doesn't provide as much value as it did during the Cold War (well, we do have to safeguard Americans against arrr Cap'n Jack Sparrow). Maintaining our bloated nuclear arsenal costs billions a year too. Health care for military personnel is very pricy, and still we get crap like Walter Reed rats. And all this doesn't even include defense research and all those pork projects that make Boeing rich and give us nothing useful in the end. But the money doesn't come out of thin air. Of course Bush has slashed budgets of "civilian" government offices and even closed down some domestic military bases (much to the chagrin of the local Congressmen).

So yeah, defense spending is a joke, but that's nothing new. I think the US spends more than Russia, China, UK, and France combined. We also are the #1-2 arms exporter (depending on how you count it), fueling small wars and conflicts all over the place. We're one of the few nations that opposes the prohibition of landmines, cluster bombs, and space weapons - guess why? We signed pacts outlawing chemical and bioweapons research but actively engage in it (so do other nations though).

So in terms of allocating resources for the military, definitely Bush has been successful, but much of that is due to 9/11 and Iraq (who in Congress dares vote no to a supplemental appropriations bill and not support the troops?). But in terms of "strengthening" the military, I would say he has done the opposite. As my previous emails have described, his Iraq campaign is totally draining our ground forces. Tens of thousands wounded, and tens of thousands more exhausted after repeated tours of duty. Morale is quite low. The Middle East climate is very hard on our men, vehicles, and equipment too. The only good thing coming out of our Mideast wars is our troops and commanders are gaining a lot of experience dealing with Muslim cultures, fighting in desert/urban areas, counterinsurgency, and such. Probably they're not learning much considering the poor rate of progress (but more the fault of DC rather than the troops). They will be better trained to handle the next Mideast conflict whenever and wherever that may be. But in general, Iraq has become a major black hole that retards our efforts to address flashpoints in the rest of the world (Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon, Pakistan, Colombia, former Soviet republics, etc.).

I guess under Clinton we were kind of disassembling the Army because we probably weren't ever going to fight a protracted conventional ground war like Korea ever again. The Rumsfeld plan was to evolve into a sleeker, more agile and high-tech military. But all that went to pot with Iraq, when we once again became bogged down in a drawn-out war of occupation, except this time the enemy uses sucide tactics, we don't have a draft, and we fomented a civil war. The worst part was Rummy thought he could have it both ways: slim down the Army and win in Iraq. He failed in both, and didn't make many friends butting heads with the uniformed men.

There was also this NPR piece about only yes-men being promoted in the military under Bush. During the buildup to Iraq, Gen Shinseki vociferously opposed the Rumsfeld plans and called for at least 200,000 troops to manage the postwar occupation properly (history shows he was right). Rummy dissed him, assured us Iraq would be a piece of cake, and Shinseki had to step down somehow. The other generals too notice and many fell in line. Only yes-men who think like Bush got promoted, which is scary because it narrows the vision of the Pentagon and risks it becoming a partisan wing of the White House like the Justice Department under Gonzales.

So some have benefitted under Bush, but probably more like defense contractors like KBR, Blackwater, and Lockheed than the average US grunt. Death peddlers get their research budgets expanded, while the National Institutes of Health are scrapping by to try to cure cancer and AIDS. And before Iraq, I think our military was generally respected in much of the world outside of the Muslim World. Now most nations associate the US soldier with occupying oppressor. The shames of Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Haditha, and others have scarred the military's reputation. So apart from the physical pains the military has endured under Bush, they are now more despised and not trusted around the world. They will need a major PR enema after the election.