5.8.10
4.8.10
3.8.10
2.8.10
Yay computers.
This'll be a discussion of the case for interventionism once one of my computers works well enough to get it up.
30.7.10
29.7.10
28.7.10
Transforming is change that people can believe in.
The latest round of Pentagon leaks has gotten me thinking more and more about American politics. Pretty much everybody, liberal, conservative, and defense commentator, agrees that these new documents don’t reveal anything that we didn’t already know about the war, and it’s true. Much is being made of them because apparently they depict the situation on the ground as worse than the administration has been suggesting; let's be frank, the White House probably made a mistake by going with the opening line “these are all representative of the situation before the President mandated his recent policy changes,” because even though it’s true, it sounds like an admission of guilt. Along with the recent successes of conservative obstructionists in the House, this has caused commentators to begin suggesting that Obama’s hope for a second term is slim (I personally have my doubts about that, but that’s a discussion for another time). With that in mind, I’ve been considering the question of who the next Democratic presidential candidate should be, and I’ve come to a conclusion that should have been obvious: Optimus Prime.
As a leader, Optimus Prime is a product of the waning days of the Golden Age of Cybertron, about 9 million years ago. Created (Born? Built? There’s always been kind of a question mark hanging over Cybertronian reproductive biology.) Orion Pax, the robot who would become Optimus Prime started life as a cargo handler at a facility that stored energy produced at a plant up-river. Young Orion Pax was a somewhat naïve political idealist, and when a new group of Cybertronians, leant legitimacy by their ability to fly in robot mode, began to promulgate a philosophy of interstellar interventionalism to protect and establish the interests of Cybertron, Orion Pax found himself awestruck.
In the meantime, the Cybertronian political edifice was entering a state of terminal decline. With the advent of the Decepticons as a political entity, long-standing divisions between the expansionist philosophies of the military equipment and the pacifist multilateral approach to foreign policy of civil machinery reintroduced the idea, long abandoned after two civil wars, that Cybertronians might wish to identify themselves as anything other than Autobots. The Autobots still controlled the planetary government, however, and frustrated with political deadlock, the Decepticons turned to violence to achieve their ends. This was to have long-lasting consequences, however, when during one such raid to gather supplies, the pliant Orion Pax was shot in the chest by the very leader he'd gushingly supported, Megatron.
Orion Pax was brought to Alpha Trion, a well-respected elder statesman figure on Cybertron, who had managed to keep himself above the fighting to that point. Gravely concerned by the Decepticons’ continued willingness to employ violence to affect the Cybertronian political process, Alpha Trion rebuilt Orion Pax as Optimus Prime, a leader meant to spearhead a new design movement within the Autobots to oppose the Decepticons. This was not a moment too soon, as the situation on Cybertron finally degenerated fully into civil war. Over the next 5 million years, Optimus Prime was able to oppose the Decepticons militarily, even as they grew in strength. Even as the war ravaged Cybertron’s natural energy resources, the Autobots managed to prevent the Decepticons from opening fronts on other worlds. During an exploratory mission meant to discover new sources of unclaimed energy, Optimus Prime’s expedition was shot down over Earth, their ship remaining dormant, embedded in a mountain in the present-day state of Washington for the next 4 million years.
Awakened in 1984 by the eruption of what turned out to be the volcano their ship was buried in, the Autobots immediately engaged in a campaign of military intervention designed to prevent the Decepticons from seizing Earth’s energy resources. The initial thrust defeated, Optimus Prime made the decision to remain on Earth to defend the human nations from Decepticon predation until such time as they were able to manage their own defense concerns. Over the course of the next two decades, the Autobots fought an incredibly successful campaign to defend the Earth, but at the cost of their remaining possessions on Cybertron, the Decepticons having pacified the entire planet by 2005. That year the Decepticons staged an attack on the capital-in-exile, Autobot City, killing Optimus Prime, who’s heroic sacrifice at the climax of the battle ultimately led to the Autobots retaking the strategic initiative, and ultimately the reconquest of Cybertron. Two years later, Optimus Prime was again rebuilt, and in the intervening time has managed to shift the focus of the conflict with the Decepticons from Earth to Decepticon strongholds through the galaxy.
Fundamentally, I think that Optimus Prime’s record as a leader recommends him to the Democrats as a presidential candidate. His origins as a working-class everyman guarantee grassroots support, while his backing throughout the last two and a half decades by prominent members of the political old boy’s club such as Ronald Reagan, Ted Kennedy, and Alpha Trion will rally support from the political elite of America. Further, his record as an incredibly successful general could likely be leveraged to inspire confidence in an American public which remains unsure about the rise of China as a world power, international terrorism and extremism, and the ever-popular paranoia regarding Russia.
I’d like to take a moment, actually, to discuss Prime’s approach to foreign and defense policy, which I suspect would enjoy widespread appeal. The fundamental tendency in Optimus Prime’s political philosophy is summed up by his most famous quote: “Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.” This alone is perfect as a vague but appealing American slogan. While Prime opposes expansionist, imperialist, and militarist political agendas, he has proven that he is willing to engage in military intervention against rogue states.
His record of intervention in the Middle East and South America suggests that his energy policies would have broad appeal as well. On the one hand, he has a history of deploying military assets to protect vital strategic energy supplies, domestically and overseas, while on the other his leadership during Cybertron’s civil war gave him experience managing economies in transition between major sources of energy, and his fighting on Earth demonstrates fairly clearly his stance on environmental damage; the fact that protecting the Earth's resources was the main objective of the campaign aside, when Autobot City was built as the new Autobot headquarters on Earth, it was built using completely sustainable and green technologies.
Ultimately, Optimus Prime’s major advantage over a potential Republican candidate is that while his opposition to the Decepticon ideology necessarily puts him in conflict with the Tea Party and affiliates, he is not obligated to court these elements. The Decepticons and the far-Right share a political philosophy of unilateral military intervention, strong preference for small government, and a strong undercurrent of nationalism, characteristics that many suspect are driving more moderate conservatives away from the Republican party, as they force candidates to conservativize to gain their critical vote. Admittedly this is an advantage that many liberal politicians enjoy over their conservative counterparts, but Optimus Prime combines it with the fact of maintaining defense policies that visibly appeal to moderates and conservatives, including strong use of the military to deter attacks on strategic assets, international interventionalism, and a strong preference for local political autonomy.
His politics aside, his biography is right for him to illicit the support of moderate conservatives. He started out as a working-class joe, and supported the conservative politics of his world. He made the switch to liberal ideologies when his support of the party led to him being shot, a shift that many moderates will be able to identify with, themselves having been stung by the rapid ultra-conservativization of their party. Besides, there can be none of the Birther nonsense that accompanied the election of Barrack Obama when the candidate has resided in the US for 4 million years.
As a leader, Optimus Prime is a product of the waning days of the Golden Age of Cybertron, about 9 million years ago. Created (Born? Built? There’s always been kind of a question mark hanging over Cybertronian reproductive biology.) Orion Pax, the robot who would become Optimus Prime started life as a cargo handler at a facility that stored energy produced at a plant up-river. Young Orion Pax was a somewhat naïve political idealist, and when a new group of Cybertronians, leant legitimacy by their ability to fly in robot mode, began to promulgate a philosophy of interstellar interventionalism to protect and establish the interests of Cybertron, Orion Pax found himself awestruck.
In the meantime, the Cybertronian political edifice was entering a state of terminal decline. With the advent of the Decepticons as a political entity, long-standing divisions between the expansionist philosophies of the military equipment and the pacifist multilateral approach to foreign policy of civil machinery reintroduced the idea, long abandoned after two civil wars, that Cybertronians might wish to identify themselves as anything other than Autobots. The Autobots still controlled the planetary government, however, and frustrated with political deadlock, the Decepticons turned to violence to achieve their ends. This was to have long-lasting consequences, however, when during one such raid to gather supplies, the pliant Orion Pax was shot in the chest by the very leader he'd gushingly supported, Megatron.
Orion Pax was brought to Alpha Trion, a well-respected elder statesman figure on Cybertron, who had managed to keep himself above the fighting to that point. Gravely concerned by the Decepticons’ continued willingness to employ violence to affect the Cybertronian political process, Alpha Trion rebuilt Orion Pax as Optimus Prime, a leader meant to spearhead a new design movement within the Autobots to oppose the Decepticons. This was not a moment too soon, as the situation on Cybertron finally degenerated fully into civil war. Over the next 5 million years, Optimus Prime was able to oppose the Decepticons militarily, even as they grew in strength. Even as the war ravaged Cybertron’s natural energy resources, the Autobots managed to prevent the Decepticons from opening fronts on other worlds. During an exploratory mission meant to discover new sources of unclaimed energy, Optimus Prime’s expedition was shot down over Earth, their ship remaining dormant, embedded in a mountain in the present-day state of Washington for the next 4 million years.
Awakened in 1984 by the eruption of what turned out to be the volcano their ship was buried in, the Autobots immediately engaged in a campaign of military intervention designed to prevent the Decepticons from seizing Earth’s energy resources. The initial thrust defeated, Optimus Prime made the decision to remain on Earth to defend the human nations from Decepticon predation until such time as they were able to manage their own defense concerns. Over the course of the next two decades, the Autobots fought an incredibly successful campaign to defend the Earth, but at the cost of their remaining possessions on Cybertron, the Decepticons having pacified the entire planet by 2005. That year the Decepticons staged an attack on the capital-in-exile, Autobot City, killing Optimus Prime, who’s heroic sacrifice at the climax of the battle ultimately led to the Autobots retaking the strategic initiative, and ultimately the reconquest of Cybertron. Two years later, Optimus Prime was again rebuilt, and in the intervening time has managed to shift the focus of the conflict with the Decepticons from Earth to Decepticon strongholds through the galaxy.
Fundamentally, I think that Optimus Prime’s record as a leader recommends him to the Democrats as a presidential candidate. His origins as a working-class everyman guarantee grassroots support, while his backing throughout the last two and a half decades by prominent members of the political old boy’s club such as Ronald Reagan, Ted Kennedy, and Alpha Trion will rally support from the political elite of America. Further, his record as an incredibly successful general could likely be leveraged to inspire confidence in an American public which remains unsure about the rise of China as a world power, international terrorism and extremism, and the ever-popular paranoia regarding Russia.
I’d like to take a moment, actually, to discuss Prime’s approach to foreign and defense policy, which I suspect would enjoy widespread appeal. The fundamental tendency in Optimus Prime’s political philosophy is summed up by his most famous quote: “Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.” This alone is perfect as a vague but appealing American slogan. While Prime opposes expansionist, imperialist, and militarist political agendas, he has proven that he is willing to engage in military intervention against rogue states.
His record of intervention in the Middle East and South America suggests that his energy policies would have broad appeal as well. On the one hand, he has a history of deploying military assets to protect vital strategic energy supplies, domestically and overseas, while on the other his leadership during Cybertron’s civil war gave him experience managing economies in transition between major sources of energy, and his fighting on Earth demonstrates fairly clearly his stance on environmental damage; the fact that protecting the Earth's resources was the main objective of the campaign aside, when Autobot City was built as the new Autobot headquarters on Earth, it was built using completely sustainable and green technologies.
Ultimately, Optimus Prime’s major advantage over a potential Republican candidate is that while his opposition to the Decepticon ideology necessarily puts him in conflict with the Tea Party and affiliates, he is not obligated to court these elements. The Decepticons and the far-Right share a political philosophy of unilateral military intervention, strong preference for small government, and a strong undercurrent of nationalism, characteristics that many suspect are driving more moderate conservatives away from the Republican party, as they force candidates to conservativize to gain their critical vote. Admittedly this is an advantage that many liberal politicians enjoy over their conservative counterparts, but Optimus Prime combines it with the fact of maintaining defense policies that visibly appeal to moderates and conservatives, including strong use of the military to deter attacks on strategic assets, international interventionalism, and a strong preference for local political autonomy.
His politics aside, his biography is right for him to illicit the support of moderate conservatives. He started out as a working-class joe, and supported the conservative politics of his world. He made the switch to liberal ideologies when his support of the party led to him being shot, a shift that many moderates will be able to identify with, themselves having been stung by the rapid ultra-conservativization of their party. Besides, there can be none of the Birther nonsense that accompanied the election of Barrack Obama when the candidate has resided in the US for 4 million years.
27.7.10
In preparation for writing this, I watched an animated version of Goodnight, Moon.
It’s really not anything new to make fun of the United Nations. We do it because we love them; it’s adorable, like watching children play at being adults, except that it’s diplomats playing at being a world government. Nations that insist on being enemies with one another, most notably anybody who considers themselves an enemy of the West, regularly fail to listen to UN resolutions, feeling persecuted by an organization that they can’t help but notice draws 22% of it’s funding from the United States. The United States, on the other hand, feels as though the UN is ineffective, and had recently been thinking of once again withholding dues as a measure to demand improved UN effectiveness, and as an activity to partner with the constant complaining about bias against the US and Israel. On top of that, everybody with a permanent seat on the Security Council relentlessly abuses their power of veto, making serious action on the part of the UN impossible in most cases. You’ve probably figured it out by now, but today’s topic is UN reform.
The United Nations has its roots in the period immediately following the First World War. Power bloc politics had failed to be the instrument for peace that many had hoped, resulting as it had in the most horrifying war in human history. As a result, as the Treaty of Versailles was drafted, a fundamentally new approach to creating lasting peace was tried: the League of Nations. Formed in 1919, the League was at the height of it’s power and effectiveness in the years leading up to 1935, having grown to encompass 58 member states and resolved several territorial disputes generated in the aftermath of the Great War successfully. A string of failures to check the aggression of Axis powers in the 30s, however, ultimately resulted in the Second World War and the demise of the League, though it officially remained in operation until its final meeting in 1946.
Established in 1945, the United Nations was meant by the dying League of Nation’s most prominent members to be its successor. First discussed in 1944, it was decided at the Yalta Conference that initial membership would be open to any nation that joined the Allies by March of 1945, netting the new world organization 51 members buy the time its charter was ratified in October of that year. In the intervening 65 years, the United Nations first presided over the Cold War, during which tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union sometimes seemed destined to tear the UN apart, and then the new age of interventionalist peacekeeping in the wake of the breakup of the Soviet Union. Today, the UN is made up of 192 member states, and faces both significant criticism and the growth of an assumed mandate to intervene in some of the most difficult-to-resolve conflicts on the planet without adequate means, political or material.
The tenure of Kofi Annan as Secretary General created a new hope for the UN as an effective organization, free of the criticism that the five permanent members of the Security Council had undue influence because a Secretary General with vigor and aplomb was in office. I’m not sure why, but I’ll get to that in a minute. Depending on who you listen to, Ban Ki Moon has been a force for regression in an age where the legitimacy leant by the United Nations has become increasingly important. Both of these views ignore the fact that the UN’s problems are almost entirely structural or economic in nature.
It’s been suggested before that significant reform of the United Nations would be required in order to increase its effectiveness in any role other than that of aid organization. This is largely correct, I think, but as a practical solution it has several problems. The most obvious reform to make is increasing the membership of the Security Council, as well as reforming the veto powers of the permanent members. Several candidates have been suggested for new permanent membership, including Germany, Japan, Brazil, or India, alongside proposals to admit an African nation, the serious contenders usually being listed as Egypt, Nigeria, or South Africa. There are serious problems with this as a solution to the UN’s ills, however. The opposition of the permanent members to reform is typically cited as the main obstacle to an effective UN, but this is disingenuous.
At its root, the problem with this as a solution is that no matter how many members you add, the retention of veto powers by any member of the Security Council necessarily means that the strategic concerns of those nations are unduly represented. Ostensibly the adoption of the Uniting for Peace resolution in 1950 meant vetoing members have no power to stop the General Assembly from doing as it sees fit, but the sad fact is that this isn’t true. Quite apart from the fact that the tremendous diplomatic, military, and economic power of P5 gives them undue influence over the proceedings of the UN, power of veto gives the nations that have it the ability to exert undue influence over the text of Security Council resolutions with the threat “do something more to our liking if you want to get anything done at all”.
You know what, though? The UN’s real problem, as I suggested above, is economic, both in terms of literal cash-flow, and in terms of general material ability. It’s obvious that the UN’s aid organizations, arguably their most effective arm, could use more money, because they always do. As an organization for intervention on behalf of the international community, however, more money could really increase the credibility of the UN; according to RAND, the UN enjoys a ratio of seven successes for every one failure in its nation building endeavors, while the US clocks in an at embarrassing two for one.
The idea that the UN could increase its legitimacy and influence over foreign affairs through increasing funding to its effective branches is beguiling, and suggests a potentially problematic, but somehow appealing solution to the General Assembly’s lack of authority. Is the inability to get member states to contribute troops getting you down? Pay them. Make it contingent on behavior that won’t make the General Assembly regret paying these troops to be peacekeepers. Think about this in the context of regional intervention: you know what would probably increase the number of African Union peacekeepers in Somalia? Not only that, but the increase in authority over regional events would likely create new power structures within the General Assembly, ultimately balancing the undue influence that’s held by the P5 regardless of the veto.
This has some obvious problems, not the least of which are the potential for abuse of this system by already powerful member states, ethical concerns over what could easily be characterized as hiring mercenaries, the practical concerns of creating mercenary economies in the third world (if you thought that Somalia’s pirate economy was bad, just wait), and the potential for the use of such a system to compel troops from nations by withholding aid. It’s just an example of what the UN might be able to do to increase its autonomy from P5 nations if it had more than the usual $2.5ish billion that usually comprises its biannual(!) operating budget. The simple fact is that a significant increase to the General Assembly’s spending power alone might be enough to begin a trend of increased independence from the influence of the Security Council veto and the nations that hold it.
Not that this is easy either. It’s facile to point out that the US could cut annual defense spending but just about one sixth of one percent and double the UN’s operating budget. This is true, but the fact is that UN dues are already determined by ability to pay; the United States does not pay higher dues because they have reached the contribution cap, which is set at 22% of the UN’s budget. If you reread that last sentence carefully, you should come to the correct conclusion: the cap is set as a percentage of the UN’s budget rather than a percentage of the member’s GDP because the cap exists to prevent undue influence over UN proceedings, rather than to protect the most powerful members from disproportionate dues. The US negotiating the reduction in the cap from 25% to 22% just before the turn of the millenium, for those that might be about to bring it up, was definitely to give the appearance that the UN was conceding something, not because the US is worried about the money.
The United States could increase the budget of the UN by a factor of ten without breaking a sweat, but how much credibility would the UN hold once it had become an outgrowth of US defense spending? This problem is, however, what makes me sort of hopeful for the future of the United Nations. Just as developing nations across Africa and Asia are beginning to become trans-regional powers, their stake in the UN, both financial, and as a result political, is growing. As more nations become developed countries, the P5s influence in the General Assembly will shrink, and the increased material ability could make the General Assembly strong enough to actually enforce the idea that the P5 veto can’t stop effective action. Maybe it will be a while before these new power blocs are able to balance out the current elite, but maybe not.
The United Nations has its roots in the period immediately following the First World War. Power bloc politics had failed to be the instrument for peace that many had hoped, resulting as it had in the most horrifying war in human history. As a result, as the Treaty of Versailles was drafted, a fundamentally new approach to creating lasting peace was tried: the League of Nations. Formed in 1919, the League was at the height of it’s power and effectiveness in the years leading up to 1935, having grown to encompass 58 member states and resolved several territorial disputes generated in the aftermath of the Great War successfully. A string of failures to check the aggression of Axis powers in the 30s, however, ultimately resulted in the Second World War and the demise of the League, though it officially remained in operation until its final meeting in 1946.
Established in 1945, the United Nations was meant by the dying League of Nation’s most prominent members to be its successor. First discussed in 1944, it was decided at the Yalta Conference that initial membership would be open to any nation that joined the Allies by March of 1945, netting the new world organization 51 members buy the time its charter was ratified in October of that year. In the intervening 65 years, the United Nations first presided over the Cold War, during which tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union sometimes seemed destined to tear the UN apart, and then the new age of interventionalist peacekeeping in the wake of the breakup of the Soviet Union. Today, the UN is made up of 192 member states, and faces both significant criticism and the growth of an assumed mandate to intervene in some of the most difficult-to-resolve conflicts on the planet without adequate means, political or material.
The tenure of Kofi Annan as Secretary General created a new hope for the UN as an effective organization, free of the criticism that the five permanent members of the Security Council had undue influence because a Secretary General with vigor and aplomb was in office. I’m not sure why, but I’ll get to that in a minute. Depending on who you listen to, Ban Ki Moon has been a force for regression in an age where the legitimacy leant by the United Nations has become increasingly important. Both of these views ignore the fact that the UN’s problems are almost entirely structural or economic in nature.
It’s been suggested before that significant reform of the United Nations would be required in order to increase its effectiveness in any role other than that of aid organization. This is largely correct, I think, but as a practical solution it has several problems. The most obvious reform to make is increasing the membership of the Security Council, as well as reforming the veto powers of the permanent members. Several candidates have been suggested for new permanent membership, including Germany, Japan, Brazil, or India, alongside proposals to admit an African nation, the serious contenders usually being listed as Egypt, Nigeria, or South Africa. There are serious problems with this as a solution to the UN’s ills, however. The opposition of the permanent members to reform is typically cited as the main obstacle to an effective UN, but this is disingenuous.
At its root, the problem with this as a solution is that no matter how many members you add, the retention of veto powers by any member of the Security Council necessarily means that the strategic concerns of those nations are unduly represented. Ostensibly the adoption of the Uniting for Peace resolution in 1950 meant vetoing members have no power to stop the General Assembly from doing as it sees fit, but the sad fact is that this isn’t true. Quite apart from the fact that the tremendous diplomatic, military, and economic power of P5 gives them undue influence over the proceedings of the UN, power of veto gives the nations that have it the ability to exert undue influence over the text of Security Council resolutions with the threat “do something more to our liking if you want to get anything done at all”.
You know what, though? The UN’s real problem, as I suggested above, is economic, both in terms of literal cash-flow, and in terms of general material ability. It’s obvious that the UN’s aid organizations, arguably their most effective arm, could use more money, because they always do. As an organization for intervention on behalf of the international community, however, more money could really increase the credibility of the UN; according to RAND, the UN enjoys a ratio of seven successes for every one failure in its nation building endeavors, while the US clocks in an at embarrassing two for one.
The idea that the UN could increase its legitimacy and influence over foreign affairs through increasing funding to its effective branches is beguiling, and suggests a potentially problematic, but somehow appealing solution to the General Assembly’s lack of authority. Is the inability to get member states to contribute troops getting you down? Pay them. Make it contingent on behavior that won’t make the General Assembly regret paying these troops to be peacekeepers. Think about this in the context of regional intervention: you know what would probably increase the number of African Union peacekeepers in Somalia? Not only that, but the increase in authority over regional events would likely create new power structures within the General Assembly, ultimately balancing the undue influence that’s held by the P5 regardless of the veto.
This has some obvious problems, not the least of which are the potential for abuse of this system by already powerful member states, ethical concerns over what could easily be characterized as hiring mercenaries, the practical concerns of creating mercenary economies in the third world (if you thought that Somalia’s pirate economy was bad, just wait), and the potential for the use of such a system to compel troops from nations by withholding aid. It’s just an example of what the UN might be able to do to increase its autonomy from P5 nations if it had more than the usual $2.5ish billion that usually comprises its biannual(!) operating budget. The simple fact is that a significant increase to the General Assembly’s spending power alone might be enough to begin a trend of increased independence from the influence of the Security Council veto and the nations that hold it.
Not that this is easy either. It’s facile to point out that the US could cut annual defense spending but just about one sixth of one percent and double the UN’s operating budget. This is true, but the fact is that UN dues are already determined by ability to pay; the United States does not pay higher dues because they have reached the contribution cap, which is set at 22% of the UN’s budget. If you reread that last sentence carefully, you should come to the correct conclusion: the cap is set as a percentage of the UN’s budget rather than a percentage of the member’s GDP because the cap exists to prevent undue influence over UN proceedings, rather than to protect the most powerful members from disproportionate dues. The US negotiating the reduction in the cap from 25% to 22% just before the turn of the millenium, for those that might be about to bring it up, was definitely to give the appearance that the UN was conceding something, not because the US is worried about the money.
The United States could increase the budget of the UN by a factor of ten without breaking a sweat, but how much credibility would the UN hold once it had become an outgrowth of US defense spending? This problem is, however, what makes me sort of hopeful for the future of the United Nations. Just as developing nations across Africa and Asia are beginning to become trans-regional powers, their stake in the UN, both financial, and as a result political, is growing. As more nations become developed countries, the P5s influence in the General Assembly will shrink, and the increased material ability could make the General Assembly strong enough to actually enforce the idea that the P5 veto can’t stop effective action. Maybe it will be a while before these new power blocs are able to balance out the current elite, but maybe not.
26.7.10
Actually, 21st century Africa seems like it might end up being a pretty exciting place in general. And I'm not even saying that to be morbid.
Well, we’re not at war with North Korea, and I don’t really have anything productive to say about the Pentagon’s continued incontinence (aside from my complete lack of surprise at anything that’s come out of the latest Wikileaks controversy), so let’s talk about Somalia. We’ve all heard about the ongoing problem of unchecked piracy, and it seems like the US official position that Somalia is a potential breeding ground for extremism has gained a good deal of traction with the press recently. It’s probably not a surprise, then, that Somalia is once again at the top of Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace’s Failed States Index. For all of the worry regarding the future of Somalia, I find myself feeling strangely calm. Recent events, to do both with Somalia specifically, and the ongoing conflict between the nation-state and non-nation structures in general, suggest that a new pattern for dealing with insurgency and state failure may be emerging from the ongoing conflict between the Somali Transitional Federal Government and Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen.
The roots of today's Somalia lie in the early modern period. From about AD 1150, Somalia existed as a Muslim nation, benefiting from positive relationships with neighboring countries as well as a superior position from which to establish a minor trade empire. Over the following centuries, Somalia was a part of or ally to the various African Islamic empires that held control over North Africa. By the early 19th century, successor states to these empires had been established, and were fairly prosperous. The Scramble for Africa in the late 19th century saw vigorous resistance from the Dervish leader Muhammad Abdullah Hassan, who was so successful militarily that he was able to establish a Dervish state lasting until the British finally managed to pacify the area with a campaign of aerial bombardment in the 1920s.
After the Second World War, Britain retained control of its Somali possessions and gained control of Italian Somaliland as a protectorate. Under British rule, the Somali territory Ogaden and the area called the Northern Frontier District were ceded to Ethiopia and Kenya respectively, and a referendum in French Somaliland resulted in the territory becoming the nation of Djbouti in 1958, divisions which set the stage for later violence. By 1960 Italian and British Somaliland became the Somali Republic, and adopted a constitution by popular referendum the following year, though rivalry between traditional groups continued.
This government was destined to last less than a decade, as a military government assumed control of the country following the assassination of the Somali president in 1969. Despite successful campaigns of urban works and literacy programs, resistance continued to this government until the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party was formed in 1976, which many sources characterize as the real beginning of the Somali dictatorship. After the initially successful Ogaden War against Ethiopia ended when the Soviet Union began providing aid to their opponents, the Somali military government became increasingly repressive, a trend which, along with economic mismanagement, caused the outbreak of the Somali Civil War.
The Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party was overthrown by a coalition of tribal and resistance groups in 1991. Ali Mahdi Muhammad was selected as interim president, but several key groups, most notably the United Somali Congress, Somali National Movement, and the Somali Patriotic Movement, refused to recognize Mahdi. Forces still loyal to the former president occupied the southern Somalia until 1992, exacerbating the violence. In December of that year, the United Nations created a peace-keeping force, United Nations Operations in Somalia (or UNOSOM) which was largely ignored by the combatant groups. The United States soon organized international efforts to create a region within Somalia that was secure enough for humanitarian work to proceed unimpeded, which was largely successful.
With the withdrawal of US troops in 1993, and the establishment of UNOSOM II, the leader of the Somali National Alliance, Mohamed Farrah Aidid began to view the international forces as a threat to the system of tribal powers that had grown up, and in which Aidid was a prominent leader. Staging attacks first on Pakistani troops, the resulting violence culminated in the First Battle of Mogadishu, made famous for the story of a downed Blackhawk helicopter, and ultimately in the withdrawal of UN forces.
Somalia’s current notional government, the Transitional Federal Government, was formed in 2004 by the four major clan groups, and later expanded to encompass representatives of the Islamist opposition, as well as other groups (this is kind of a curt explanation of what happened, but it’s more or less accurate). This government held several elections, and began to expand its influence until 2006, when the Islamic Courts Union gained control over much of southern Somalia, and established Sharia law there. Declaring itself the rightful government of Somalia, it prosecuted a successful military campaign against the TFG, occupying Mogadishu. It was defeated by an international group, with most of the heavy lifting on the ground accomplished by Ethiopian troops. The ICU shattered under this defeat, its most notable successor organization, al-Shabaab forcing the Ethiopian troops from the country in early 2009.
It seems like the last round of interventionalist action in Somalia went really well, right? The defeat of the Islamic Courts Union, who, despite alleged ties to al Quaeda, came off as a pretty reasonable bunch, often seen trying to mediate the excesses of al Shabaab, who were their youth wing and military arm at the time. There are certainly those who think so. Personally, I’m not sure that I’m inclined to agree with Bruton’s rough handling of the reaction to the ICU for a while variety of reasons.
First and foremost, I’m not sure that the ICU was ever going to provide a stable government for Somalia. Even before they became a distinct organization, al Shabaab was a difficult element for the ICU to control, harassing citizens, abducting journalists, and murdering wounded JVA troops in a hospital, all of which the ICU felt compelled to apologize for. By the time of the Ethiopian campaign, the jurisdictions of various Islamic courts varied wildly from hardline extremist enforcement to far more moderate policies. Why don’t I think that extremist elements would have been satisfied with moderate Islamic rule? Ask Hamas. Or Hezbollah.
The notion of treating with more moderate elements of al Shabaab and other ICU successor organizations has two substantial problems. The first is that the notion that these groups continue to remain capable of replacing attrition losses because they present a viable-seeming alternative to the Transitional Federal Government. I rather assumed that this view of al Shabaab was based on sources that I'd been unaware of, but I honestly can’t find any report that characterize al Shabaab as anything other than the radical former military arm of a defunct organization which receives non-trivial aid from foreign sources. As true as this may be, the fighting will have to end some day, and reconciliation with militants, in groups or by the individual, will have to come. This brings me neatly to the other problem with the notion of negotiating to bring al Shabaab moderates into the fold: the moderate ICU successors are already starting to join up. Which I guess isn't really a "problem" with the idea, per se, but it does make the complaint seem rather petulant.
The situation is indeed different than it was in 2007. Alongside the African Union peacekeepers and Somali military are not only reconciled ICU groups, but troops from autonomous areas of Somalia which had previous considered the fighting over Mogadishu to fall squarely into the category of “somebody else’s problem.” I admit that the situation doesn’t seem to be improving rapidly, as violence intensifies, and I’ll even concede that the rate at which the African Union peacekeepeing forces are growing is inadequate. But the addition of Guinea, a Muslim nation itself, is signaling a potential shift in the way that insurgency is combated. Guinea is hardly the first nation in the region to express discomfort with the spread of extremism in nations with which they share significant demographics, nor is Uganda the only nation working toward greater involvement.
There appears to be a growing sense that failed states are not simply areas that are dangerous because of their tendency to breed extremism and insurgency, but present a significant risk to the development and stability of their neighbors. This isn’t really news, but the fact that it’s an idea that appears to be gaining widespread traction suggests that a new paradigm of local interventionalism. A combination of the object lessons of failed and failing states which supported extremist elements, the emerging threat they pose to their neighbors, as well as the emergence of local governments that are capable of supporting their own security concerns has the potential to shift the focus of international military aid onto local forces, and the supposition is that they'll be better equipped to deal with the usual problems.
Shortness of supply lines, troops trained to fight in local climates and cultures, cultural and historical commonalities, and the likelihood of greater domestic support in the face of a much closer and more palpable threat make it seem like counter-insurgency efforts by regional power groups should be more successful than those by the high-handed West. Shorter supplies of supplies, troops who lack modern equipment and training, cultural and historical rivalries, and the likelihood that intervening nations face non-trivial problems of their own make the prospects seem kind of dim. Either way, with the continuing development of these nations into trans-regional powers, I’m kind of excited to see what happens.
The roots of today's Somalia lie in the early modern period. From about AD 1150, Somalia existed as a Muslim nation, benefiting from positive relationships with neighboring countries as well as a superior position from which to establish a minor trade empire. Over the following centuries, Somalia was a part of or ally to the various African Islamic empires that held control over North Africa. By the early 19th century, successor states to these empires had been established, and were fairly prosperous. The Scramble for Africa in the late 19th century saw vigorous resistance from the Dervish leader Muhammad Abdullah Hassan, who was so successful militarily that he was able to establish a Dervish state lasting until the British finally managed to pacify the area with a campaign of aerial bombardment in the 1920s.
After the Second World War, Britain retained control of its Somali possessions and gained control of Italian Somaliland as a protectorate. Under British rule, the Somali territory Ogaden and the area called the Northern Frontier District were ceded to Ethiopia and Kenya respectively, and a referendum in French Somaliland resulted in the territory becoming the nation of Djbouti in 1958, divisions which set the stage for later violence. By 1960 Italian and British Somaliland became the Somali Republic, and adopted a constitution by popular referendum the following year, though rivalry between traditional groups continued.
This government was destined to last less than a decade, as a military government assumed control of the country following the assassination of the Somali president in 1969. Despite successful campaigns of urban works and literacy programs, resistance continued to this government until the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party was formed in 1976, which many sources characterize as the real beginning of the Somali dictatorship. After the initially successful Ogaden War against Ethiopia ended when the Soviet Union began providing aid to their opponents, the Somali military government became increasingly repressive, a trend which, along with economic mismanagement, caused the outbreak of the Somali Civil War.
The Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party was overthrown by a coalition of tribal and resistance groups in 1991. Ali Mahdi Muhammad was selected as interim president, but several key groups, most notably the United Somali Congress, Somali National Movement, and the Somali Patriotic Movement, refused to recognize Mahdi. Forces still loyal to the former president occupied the southern Somalia until 1992, exacerbating the violence. In December of that year, the United Nations created a peace-keeping force, United Nations Operations in Somalia (or UNOSOM) which was largely ignored by the combatant groups. The United States soon organized international efforts to create a region within Somalia that was secure enough for humanitarian work to proceed unimpeded, which was largely successful.
With the withdrawal of US troops in 1993, and the establishment of UNOSOM II, the leader of the Somali National Alliance, Mohamed Farrah Aidid began to view the international forces as a threat to the system of tribal powers that had grown up, and in which Aidid was a prominent leader. Staging attacks first on Pakistani troops, the resulting violence culminated in the First Battle of Mogadishu, made famous for the story of a downed Blackhawk helicopter, and ultimately in the withdrawal of UN forces.
Somalia’s current notional government, the Transitional Federal Government, was formed in 2004 by the four major clan groups, and later expanded to encompass representatives of the Islamist opposition, as well as other groups (this is kind of a curt explanation of what happened, but it’s more or less accurate). This government held several elections, and began to expand its influence until 2006, when the Islamic Courts Union gained control over much of southern Somalia, and established Sharia law there. Declaring itself the rightful government of Somalia, it prosecuted a successful military campaign against the TFG, occupying Mogadishu. It was defeated by an international group, with most of the heavy lifting on the ground accomplished by Ethiopian troops. The ICU shattered under this defeat, its most notable successor organization, al-Shabaab forcing the Ethiopian troops from the country in early 2009.
It seems like the last round of interventionalist action in Somalia went really well, right? The defeat of the Islamic Courts Union, who, despite alleged ties to al Quaeda, came off as a pretty reasonable bunch, often seen trying to mediate the excesses of al Shabaab, who were their youth wing and military arm at the time. There are certainly those who think so. Personally, I’m not sure that I’m inclined to agree with Bruton’s rough handling of the reaction to the ICU for a while variety of reasons.
First and foremost, I’m not sure that the ICU was ever going to provide a stable government for Somalia. Even before they became a distinct organization, al Shabaab was a difficult element for the ICU to control, harassing citizens, abducting journalists, and murdering wounded JVA troops in a hospital, all of which the ICU felt compelled to apologize for. By the time of the Ethiopian campaign, the jurisdictions of various Islamic courts varied wildly from hardline extremist enforcement to far more moderate policies. Why don’t I think that extremist elements would have been satisfied with moderate Islamic rule? Ask Hamas. Or Hezbollah.
The notion of treating with more moderate elements of al Shabaab and other ICU successor organizations has two substantial problems. The first is that the notion that these groups continue to remain capable of replacing attrition losses because they present a viable-seeming alternative to the Transitional Federal Government. I rather assumed that this view of al Shabaab was based on sources that I'd been unaware of, but I honestly can’t find any report that characterize al Shabaab as anything other than the radical former military arm of a defunct organization which receives non-trivial aid from foreign sources. As true as this may be, the fighting will have to end some day, and reconciliation with militants, in groups or by the individual, will have to come. This brings me neatly to the other problem with the notion of negotiating to bring al Shabaab moderates into the fold: the moderate ICU successors are already starting to join up. Which I guess isn't really a "problem" with the idea, per se, but it does make the complaint seem rather petulant.
The situation is indeed different than it was in 2007. Alongside the African Union peacekeepers and Somali military are not only reconciled ICU groups, but troops from autonomous areas of Somalia which had previous considered the fighting over Mogadishu to fall squarely into the category of “somebody else’s problem.” I admit that the situation doesn’t seem to be improving rapidly, as violence intensifies, and I’ll even concede that the rate at which the African Union peacekeepeing forces are growing is inadequate. But the addition of Guinea, a Muslim nation itself, is signaling a potential shift in the way that insurgency is combated. Guinea is hardly the first nation in the region to express discomfort with the spread of extremism in nations with which they share significant demographics, nor is Uganda the only nation working toward greater involvement.
There appears to be a growing sense that failed states are not simply areas that are dangerous because of their tendency to breed extremism and insurgency, but present a significant risk to the development and stability of their neighbors. This isn’t really news, but the fact that it’s an idea that appears to be gaining widespread traction suggests that a new paradigm of local interventionalism. A combination of the object lessons of failed and failing states which supported extremist elements, the emerging threat they pose to their neighbors, as well as the emergence of local governments that are capable of supporting their own security concerns has the potential to shift the focus of international military aid onto local forces, and the supposition is that they'll be better equipped to deal with the usual problems.
Shortness of supply lines, troops trained to fight in local climates and cultures, cultural and historical commonalities, and the likelihood of greater domestic support in the face of a much closer and more palpable threat make it seem like counter-insurgency efforts by regional power groups should be more successful than those by the high-handed West. Shorter supplies of supplies, troops who lack modern equipment and training, cultural and historical rivalries, and the likelihood that intervening nations face non-trivial problems of their own make the prospects seem kind of dim. Either way, with the continuing development of these nations into trans-regional powers, I’m kind of excited to see what happens.
23.7.10
I'm not saying it's funny, but... no, I'm saying it's funny.
In addition to being a week of outrage in US politics, it’s also been a week for separatists in post-Ottoman nations. Evidently the International Court of Justice has ruled that Kosovo’s secession in 2008, along with its de facto independence since 1999, was within the bounds of international law. The first impulse is to make a snide comment about how much international law usually means, all things considered, and it even seems to be justified. After all, Serbia still claims Kosovo as its sovereign territory, Kosovo is still pretty much an independent entity, and nobody recognizes their independence who didn’t before. This is probably a bit unfair, as the question of separatist groups is no small one for many countries. More interesting, though, is the potential impact on the future of the interventionalist policies adopted by NATO and Russia in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
Like many of the eventual Ottoman territories, Kosovo has something of a confused history. Conquered by Rome in the 160s BC, the region experienced a period of autonomy after the fall of the Roman Empire until its conquest in the middle of the 9th century by the Bulgarian Empire. Unsurprisingly, therefor, this brought it into the center of the attentions of Basil II of Cosntantinople (also called Basil the Bulgar Slayer). As an area central to Slavic opposition to the Byzantine Empire, the area changed hands fairly frequently until the Serbs finally managed to assert sole control at the end of that century. During the 13th and 14th centuries these principalities increased in power, culminating in the 1346 formation of the Serbian Empire, which was promptly conquered by the Ottoman Turks four decades later.
Considering their history of resistance to Byzantine rule, it’s no great shock that the Serbs struggled vigorously against Ottoman occupation. The severity of this fighting produced the most notable impact of this period on the region, a non-trivial demographic shift. The constant warfare, and its attendant devastation, led to a constant stream of Serbs living in Kosovo leaving for other parts of Europe. The temporary conquest of the region by Austria during the Habsburg-Ottoman War led to as many as 40,000 Serbs leaving Kosovo for Austria in 1690, which in turn triggered further mass-migrations of Christians throughout the next century.
In the meantime, the initially ferocious Albanian resistance to Ottoman rule had come to an end. The conversion of the Albanian chiefs to Islam led to a general improvement in the status of Albanians throughout the Ottoman Empire. In addition to the accession of many Albanians to prominent government positions, the Albanian tribes expanded into the now-depopulated Kosovo. With first stirrings of nationalism in the late 19th century, the Albanian population of Kosovo briefly pushed for Albanian autonomy and cultural rights, but ultimately supported the continued existence of the Ottoman Empire. This new ethnic nationalism did, however, begin to entrench tensions between Muslim Albanians and Christian Serbs, setting the stage for the events of the 20th century.
The 1912 ouster of Sultan Abdul Hamid II by the Young Turks triggered violence in the Albanian portions of the Ottoman Empire. A crushing defeat at the hands of the Albanians was exacerbated by a wave of desertions among Albanian troops in the Ottoman army; not long after the Ottomans were driven from the majority of their European possessions by an alliance of Balkan forces, leaving Kosovo in the hands of the Serbs. During the First World War, Kosovo was occupied by Austria-Hungary and her allies. After the Central Powers were ejected in 1918, the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenians considered Albanian Kosovars a minority, and began a campaign of land reform and colonization to drive the Albanian populace from Kosovo, at the same time as restricting Albanian-language education.
With the outbreak of World War Two, Kosovo was invaded by the Axis powers along with the rest of Yugoslavia, and made a part of Italian Albania. According to some sources the wartime Albanian government, a fascist satellite regime of Italy, engaged in a massive campaign of deportation against the Serbs of Kosovo, while other sources report as many as 10,000 deaths. Despite calls by leadership for Kosovo to become part of Albania after the war, it was eventually made a part of the Democratic Republic of Yugoslavia.
The Yugoslav government faced significant opposition from Albanian Kosovars, largely as a consequence of pursuing a policy of marginalization. With the fall of communist regime in 1966, this trend began to reverse until the 1980s, when significant backlash against continued protests saw the Albanian population in Kosovo suppressed by Yugoslav authorites. The failure of the Yugoslav government to grant Kosovo equal status triggered ongoing sporadic violence, culminating in Kosovo declaring itself independent in 1990. By 1996 the Kosovo Liberation Army had begun to offer genuine military resistance to the government of Slobodan Milosevic, which responded with increasing violence, leading to the Racak Massacre. In 1999, after the rejection by Yugoslavia of a draft of peace accords, NATO intervened, ultimately forcing their capitulation.
For most of the last decade Kosovo was administered to by a UN mission as an autonomous part of first the Republic of Yugoslavia, and thereafter by its successor state, the Republic of Serbia. In 2008, the Assembly of Kosovo passed a measure declaring Kosovo to be independent. Since that time 69 states have recognized the independence of Kosovo, including the United States and many European nations. In addition to the obvious distaste of the Serbian government, notably absent from the list of nations supporting the independence of Kosovo has been Russia, Spain, and China.
It’s hardly any wonder that countries with their own separatist problems, such as Spain and China, are uncomfortable with the independence of Kosovo, but I suspect that the ruling on the part of the International Court of Justice will likely have little bearing on the situation of many nations facing secessionist elements. The major difference between most of these nations and the Republic of Serbia is that they actually control their separatist regions; Spain is in administrative control of, and provides government services to, the Basque region, for instance. In situations where they emphatically don’t, like China with Taiwan, the International Court’s ruling couldn’t matter less. Maybe the more nebulous situations around the globe are less clear, but Turkey should stop worrying at least. I bet you any amount of money that the PKK has violated international law. The ICJ’s ruling fundamentally only really represents an acknowledgement of the existing situation.
More interesting, however, is the reaction of Russia, which still considers the secession of Kosovo to be illegal. Not so long ago, after all, Russia staged an invasion of Georgia with the stated intent of supporting ethnic minorities who had adopted Russian citizenship in the Ossetian and Abkhaz Autonomous Regions. Russia’s dispute with Ukraine over gas prices not long after suggested that Russia’s motivations were less than altruistic. Russia’s refusal to provide military aid in Kyrgyzstan in response to the ethnic violence there, despite an explicit request from the Kyrgyz government, carried undertones rich with crocodile tears over the international response to both of Russia’s recent confrontations in Eastern Europe. The material benefit to Russia in these cases was consolidated influence over strategically important pipelines in both countries. Little wonder then, that Russia should show no interest in either aid to Kyrgyzstan, nor in recognizing Kosovo as independent. This, however, does not represent the totality of the situation.
The notion that Russia’s invasion of Georgia, coming during Georgia’s bid for admission to NATO, was designed to remind NATO of who wears the pants in Eastern Europe isn’t too difficult to accept, especially in light of their publicly announced foreign policy principles. And they really do provide a concise context for the Ukraine gas crisis. As I suggested earlier, the refusal to commit troops to Kyrgyzstan fits into this story as the chastised reaction to international outcry at their previous adventures, and most to the point, had nothing to do with the fact that the airbase that they maintain there is a second or third-tier strategic asset. The continued reticence regarding the independence of Kosovo seems to be a disinclination to legitimize NATO intervention in what Russia regards as their sphere of influence. Which is ironic, really, since the NATO campaign in Kosovo was unsanctioned by the UN, who actually went to the trouble to call NATO out on it, and arguably set the modern precedent for interventionalism in the middle regions of Europe.
I promise not to say anything about separatists or post-Ottoman states for a while after this.
Like many of the eventual Ottoman territories, Kosovo has something of a confused history. Conquered by Rome in the 160s BC, the region experienced a period of autonomy after the fall of the Roman Empire until its conquest in the middle of the 9th century by the Bulgarian Empire. Unsurprisingly, therefor, this brought it into the center of the attentions of Basil II of Cosntantinople (also called Basil the Bulgar Slayer). As an area central to Slavic opposition to the Byzantine Empire, the area changed hands fairly frequently until the Serbs finally managed to assert sole control at the end of that century. During the 13th and 14th centuries these principalities increased in power, culminating in the 1346 formation of the Serbian Empire, which was promptly conquered by the Ottoman Turks four decades later.
Considering their history of resistance to Byzantine rule, it’s no great shock that the Serbs struggled vigorously against Ottoman occupation. The severity of this fighting produced the most notable impact of this period on the region, a non-trivial demographic shift. The constant warfare, and its attendant devastation, led to a constant stream of Serbs living in Kosovo leaving for other parts of Europe. The temporary conquest of the region by Austria during the Habsburg-Ottoman War led to as many as 40,000 Serbs leaving Kosovo for Austria in 1690, which in turn triggered further mass-migrations of Christians throughout the next century.
In the meantime, the initially ferocious Albanian resistance to Ottoman rule had come to an end. The conversion of the Albanian chiefs to Islam led to a general improvement in the status of Albanians throughout the Ottoman Empire. In addition to the accession of many Albanians to prominent government positions, the Albanian tribes expanded into the now-depopulated Kosovo. With first stirrings of nationalism in the late 19th century, the Albanian population of Kosovo briefly pushed for Albanian autonomy and cultural rights, but ultimately supported the continued existence of the Ottoman Empire. This new ethnic nationalism did, however, begin to entrench tensions between Muslim Albanians and Christian Serbs, setting the stage for the events of the 20th century.
The 1912 ouster of Sultan Abdul Hamid II by the Young Turks triggered violence in the Albanian portions of the Ottoman Empire. A crushing defeat at the hands of the Albanians was exacerbated by a wave of desertions among Albanian troops in the Ottoman army; not long after the Ottomans were driven from the majority of their European possessions by an alliance of Balkan forces, leaving Kosovo in the hands of the Serbs. During the First World War, Kosovo was occupied by Austria-Hungary and her allies. After the Central Powers were ejected in 1918, the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenians considered Albanian Kosovars a minority, and began a campaign of land reform and colonization to drive the Albanian populace from Kosovo, at the same time as restricting Albanian-language education.
With the outbreak of World War Two, Kosovo was invaded by the Axis powers along with the rest of Yugoslavia, and made a part of Italian Albania. According to some sources the wartime Albanian government, a fascist satellite regime of Italy, engaged in a massive campaign of deportation against the Serbs of Kosovo, while other sources report as many as 10,000 deaths. Despite calls by leadership for Kosovo to become part of Albania after the war, it was eventually made a part of the Democratic Republic of Yugoslavia.
The Yugoslav government faced significant opposition from Albanian Kosovars, largely as a consequence of pursuing a policy of marginalization. With the fall of communist regime in 1966, this trend began to reverse until the 1980s, when significant backlash against continued protests saw the Albanian population in Kosovo suppressed by Yugoslav authorites. The failure of the Yugoslav government to grant Kosovo equal status triggered ongoing sporadic violence, culminating in Kosovo declaring itself independent in 1990. By 1996 the Kosovo Liberation Army had begun to offer genuine military resistance to the government of Slobodan Milosevic, which responded with increasing violence, leading to the Racak Massacre. In 1999, after the rejection by Yugoslavia of a draft of peace accords, NATO intervened, ultimately forcing their capitulation.
For most of the last decade Kosovo was administered to by a UN mission as an autonomous part of first the Republic of Yugoslavia, and thereafter by its successor state, the Republic of Serbia. In 2008, the Assembly of Kosovo passed a measure declaring Kosovo to be independent. Since that time 69 states have recognized the independence of Kosovo, including the United States and many European nations. In addition to the obvious distaste of the Serbian government, notably absent from the list of nations supporting the independence of Kosovo has been Russia, Spain, and China.
It’s hardly any wonder that countries with their own separatist problems, such as Spain and China, are uncomfortable with the independence of Kosovo, but I suspect that the ruling on the part of the International Court of Justice will likely have little bearing on the situation of many nations facing secessionist elements. The major difference between most of these nations and the Republic of Serbia is that they actually control their separatist regions; Spain is in administrative control of, and provides government services to, the Basque region, for instance. In situations where they emphatically don’t, like China with Taiwan, the International Court’s ruling couldn’t matter less. Maybe the more nebulous situations around the globe are less clear, but Turkey should stop worrying at least. I bet you any amount of money that the PKK has violated international law. The ICJ’s ruling fundamentally only really represents an acknowledgement of the existing situation.
More interesting, however, is the reaction of Russia, which still considers the secession of Kosovo to be illegal. Not so long ago, after all, Russia staged an invasion of Georgia with the stated intent of supporting ethnic minorities who had adopted Russian citizenship in the Ossetian and Abkhaz Autonomous Regions. Russia’s dispute with Ukraine over gas prices not long after suggested that Russia’s motivations were less than altruistic. Russia’s refusal to provide military aid in Kyrgyzstan in response to the ethnic violence there, despite an explicit request from the Kyrgyz government, carried undertones rich with crocodile tears over the international response to both of Russia’s recent confrontations in Eastern Europe. The material benefit to Russia in these cases was consolidated influence over strategically important pipelines in both countries. Little wonder then, that Russia should show no interest in either aid to Kyrgyzstan, nor in recognizing Kosovo as independent. This, however, does not represent the totality of the situation.
The notion that Russia’s invasion of Georgia, coming during Georgia’s bid for admission to NATO, was designed to remind NATO of who wears the pants in Eastern Europe isn’t too difficult to accept, especially in light of their publicly announced foreign policy principles. And they really do provide a concise context for the Ukraine gas crisis. As I suggested earlier, the refusal to commit troops to Kyrgyzstan fits into this story as the chastised reaction to international outcry at their previous adventures, and most to the point, had nothing to do with the fact that the airbase that they maintain there is a second or third-tier strategic asset. The continued reticence regarding the independence of Kosovo seems to be a disinclination to legitimize NATO intervention in what Russia regards as their sphere of influence. Which is ironic, really, since the NATO campaign in Kosovo was unsanctioned by the UN, who actually went to the trouble to call NATO out on it, and arguably set the modern precedent for interventionalism in the middle regions of Europe.
I promise not to say anything about separatists or post-Ottoman states for a while after this.
22.7.10
For bonus points, think about how China must feel about North Korea being a nuclear power.
There’s nothing like waking up to news of North Korea’s continued inscrutable behavior. Not that Pyongyang’s discomfort over US-South Korean joint exercises is particularly strange; even China is squirming at the idea of the George Washington hanging around in the Yellow Sea casting meaningful glances at shore. What is strange, though, is the rest of the situation. The torpedoing of the Cheonan was strange enough, but Ri Tong-Il’s comment that these exercises represent a danger to the security of not just North Korea, but the entire region, sounds kind of like a threat. The facile explanation of this strange behavior is that this is standard behavior for totalitarian regimes; with the continuing illness of Kim Jong-Il, and the ongoing discussion of succession, it’s possible that the North Korean government felt that they needed to manufacture a victory to sell domestically. This continued belligerence on the international stage, however, suggests that the answer is somewhat more complicated.
The North Korean government has it roots in the period immediately following the Second World War. Having been occupied by Japan during the war, Korea was first divided by the simple fact of US-Soviet tensions in the wake of peace, and then officially by the United Nations. Like most second-generation totalitarian leaders, Kim Il-Sung was installed to reinforce the local interests of his beneficiaries, the Soviet Union, and went about establishing a military. The agreement dividing North Korea along the 38th parallel had originally included provisions for a general Korean election in 1948, but this was blocked by Soviet refusal to allow UN officials north of the border. The result was the establishment of the Republic of Korea in the South, and soon thereafter the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in response.
By 1949, US military backing had made it clear that any continued hoping that Korea could be reunified by Stalinist revolution was in vain, and Kim Sung-Il had begun to seek support from his allies for an invasion of the South. Fighting had been on-going along the border for the better part of a year, but Joseph Stalin had been reluctant to bring the Soviet Union into direct conflict with the United States. By January of 1950, however, both the Soviet development of nuclear weapons and the promised support of Mao Zedong, Stalin changed his tune. Still refusing to commit troops in direct aid of the invasion, he did authorize further aid in the form of equipment and training along with his approval of the invasion.
Despite a chain of extreme reversals and counter-reversals for both sides, the November 1950 entry of Chinese forces into the war resulted in two years of stalemate, with the front stabilizing along the eventual border by 1953. The armistice ended the fighting, though peace was never officially declared, and the Korean Demilitarized Zone was established. Kim Il-Sung was able to use the war to great effect in his bid to solidify his control of North Korean politics. Backed by the army and respected for both his role in the war and his previous record of resisting the Japanese during the occupation, he began a series of show trials followed by executions, purging sources of potential opposition.
The next two decades saw expansion of North Korea’s economy, lasting until the 1970s. Rising oil prices, a series of bad decisions involving military spending and mining industrialization, and a policy of isolationism and self-sufficiency damaged the North Korean economy to an extent that would eventually prove to be beyond repair. The decision to borrow foreign capital, which was then invested in military industry in an attempt to reduce dependence on China and the Soviet Union led to a policy of increased sales of mineral resources. The fall in prices of these materials left the DPRK unable to pay its foreign debts, and thusly unable to acquire new sources of capital to finance its badly overstretched command economy. Kim Il-Sung’s decision to maintain ideological purity rather than institute limited market economy reforms further damaged the country’s economy, a trend that continued under Kim Jong-Il, culminating in the three-year-long famine starting in 1996 that killed nearly a million North Korean citizens. Today the country is dependent upon foreign food-aid to feed its population, and is unable to maintain a reasonable standard of living outside of the capital, with severe shortages of food, medicine, a level of technology well below that of the early 20th century, and a population increasingly disinclined to fear the government.
The end of the Korean War suggests some answers to the questions raised by North Korea’s recent actions. The most obvious potential answer is that this resembles the run-up to the Korean War, in terms of North Korea’s attempts to maneuver her allies into supporting military action. With the recent economic troubles the country has experienced, this whole business with the succession, and the fact that the economic and social success of South Korea has been undermining the legitimacy of the North Korean regime for several decades, this scenario is lent a certain degree of credibility, painting a picture of an attempt to repeat Kim Il-Sung’s success in consolidating power after the armistice. The flaw with this idea, however, is that as a matter of course we’re supposed to think of nation-states as rational actors, and the likelihood of the North Korean government surviving a war of any outcome is low. Even so, the North Korean government’s historical lack of regard for its polity could indicate that this is seen as a viable strategy.
More plausible, though, is a scenario in which North Korea feels threatened by improving relations between Beijing and Washington. China’s recent stance of soft power and diplomacy, along with the Obama administrations shift away from the balance-of-power-politics practiced during the Bush years, could be seen by North Korea as a threat to one of their few remaining ties to the outside world. The aim of the exercise, therefore, would be to put North Korea in a position of conflict with the US that would force China to strongly back one side or the other.
Let’s talk about China, actually. China’s support of the often erratic Pyongyang regime is typically characterized as support for one of the other remaining communist nations on the planet, or as a matter of power politics and opposition to US regional power. Frankly, I think that this view is facile, confrontational, and betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of China’s stake in regional events. The majority of China’s recent international disputes have centered around either economics (oil in the South China Sea, currency valuation, trade relations &c.), or perceived interference in internal affairs (which is to say, Taiwan), indicating that China has more than minor worries about maintaining stability. In short, China can neither afford to go to war, nor even to appear as a belligerent on the international stage, as any economic disruption that brings their economic growth rate below something like 7% will bring their population growth rate into conflict with a Malthusian limit; people will start starving, and the government will face a domestic crisis of confidence.
So what’s with China’s continued reticence regarding denuclearization, chastising North Korea for sinking the Cheonan, and the recent yelling about these joint exercises? Well, it looks like North Korea’s strategy is working, but not for the reasons that they’d hoped. It seems that China agrees with the notion that the North Korean government would not survive a war, and North Korea seems determined to start one. Whether or not they feel they wish to come to North Korea’s aid for ideological reasons, China seems bound to prop up the North Korean regime for at least the near future. Why? To paraphrase a friend of mine, the biggest open secret in East Asia is that nuclear weapons barely mean anything. The real question is what’s going to happen when North Korea collapses, and millions of refugees begin pouring into Manchuria.
The North Korean government has it roots in the period immediately following the Second World War. Having been occupied by Japan during the war, Korea was first divided by the simple fact of US-Soviet tensions in the wake of peace, and then officially by the United Nations. Like most second-generation totalitarian leaders, Kim Il-Sung was installed to reinforce the local interests of his beneficiaries, the Soviet Union, and went about establishing a military. The agreement dividing North Korea along the 38th parallel had originally included provisions for a general Korean election in 1948, but this was blocked by Soviet refusal to allow UN officials north of the border. The result was the establishment of the Republic of Korea in the South, and soon thereafter the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in response.
By 1949, US military backing had made it clear that any continued hoping that Korea could be reunified by Stalinist revolution was in vain, and Kim Sung-Il had begun to seek support from his allies for an invasion of the South. Fighting had been on-going along the border for the better part of a year, but Joseph Stalin had been reluctant to bring the Soviet Union into direct conflict with the United States. By January of 1950, however, both the Soviet development of nuclear weapons and the promised support of Mao Zedong, Stalin changed his tune. Still refusing to commit troops in direct aid of the invasion, he did authorize further aid in the form of equipment and training along with his approval of the invasion.
Despite a chain of extreme reversals and counter-reversals for both sides, the November 1950 entry of Chinese forces into the war resulted in two years of stalemate, with the front stabilizing along the eventual border by 1953. The armistice ended the fighting, though peace was never officially declared, and the Korean Demilitarized Zone was established. Kim Il-Sung was able to use the war to great effect in his bid to solidify his control of North Korean politics. Backed by the army and respected for both his role in the war and his previous record of resisting the Japanese during the occupation, he began a series of show trials followed by executions, purging sources of potential opposition.
The next two decades saw expansion of North Korea’s economy, lasting until the 1970s. Rising oil prices, a series of bad decisions involving military spending and mining industrialization, and a policy of isolationism and self-sufficiency damaged the North Korean economy to an extent that would eventually prove to be beyond repair. The decision to borrow foreign capital, which was then invested in military industry in an attempt to reduce dependence on China and the Soviet Union led to a policy of increased sales of mineral resources. The fall in prices of these materials left the DPRK unable to pay its foreign debts, and thusly unable to acquire new sources of capital to finance its badly overstretched command economy. Kim Il-Sung’s decision to maintain ideological purity rather than institute limited market economy reforms further damaged the country’s economy, a trend that continued under Kim Jong-Il, culminating in the three-year-long famine starting in 1996 that killed nearly a million North Korean citizens. Today the country is dependent upon foreign food-aid to feed its population, and is unable to maintain a reasonable standard of living outside of the capital, with severe shortages of food, medicine, a level of technology well below that of the early 20th century, and a population increasingly disinclined to fear the government.
The end of the Korean War suggests some answers to the questions raised by North Korea’s recent actions. The most obvious potential answer is that this resembles the run-up to the Korean War, in terms of North Korea’s attempts to maneuver her allies into supporting military action. With the recent economic troubles the country has experienced, this whole business with the succession, and the fact that the economic and social success of South Korea has been undermining the legitimacy of the North Korean regime for several decades, this scenario is lent a certain degree of credibility, painting a picture of an attempt to repeat Kim Il-Sung’s success in consolidating power after the armistice. The flaw with this idea, however, is that as a matter of course we’re supposed to think of nation-states as rational actors, and the likelihood of the North Korean government surviving a war of any outcome is low. Even so, the North Korean government’s historical lack of regard for its polity could indicate that this is seen as a viable strategy.
More plausible, though, is a scenario in which North Korea feels threatened by improving relations between Beijing and Washington. China’s recent stance of soft power and diplomacy, along with the Obama administrations shift away from the balance-of-power-politics practiced during the Bush years, could be seen by North Korea as a threat to one of their few remaining ties to the outside world. The aim of the exercise, therefore, would be to put North Korea in a position of conflict with the US that would force China to strongly back one side or the other.
Let’s talk about China, actually. China’s support of the often erratic Pyongyang regime is typically characterized as support for one of the other remaining communist nations on the planet, or as a matter of power politics and opposition to US regional power. Frankly, I think that this view is facile, confrontational, and betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of China’s stake in regional events. The majority of China’s recent international disputes have centered around either economics (oil in the South China Sea, currency valuation, trade relations &c.), or perceived interference in internal affairs (which is to say, Taiwan), indicating that China has more than minor worries about maintaining stability. In short, China can neither afford to go to war, nor even to appear as a belligerent on the international stage, as any economic disruption that brings their economic growth rate below something like 7% will bring their population growth rate into conflict with a Malthusian limit; people will start starving, and the government will face a domestic crisis of confidence.
So what’s with China’s continued reticence regarding denuclearization, chastising North Korea for sinking the Cheonan, and the recent yelling about these joint exercises? Well, it looks like North Korea’s strategy is working, but not for the reasons that they’d hoped. It seems that China agrees with the notion that the North Korean government would not survive a war, and North Korea seems determined to start one. Whether or not they feel they wish to come to North Korea’s aid for ideological reasons, China seems bound to prop up the North Korean regime for at least the near future. Why? To paraphrase a friend of mine, the biggest open secret in East Asia is that nuclear weapons barely mean anything. The real question is what’s going to happen when North Korea collapses, and millions of refugees begin pouring into Manchuria.
21.7.10
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can end in a knife-fight.
Some time ago, a friend of mine and I decided that “someone who will not cooperate under any circumstances” wasn’t a bad functional definition of the word barbarian. After all, it’s the perfect mix of practical and pejorative; it places the word in opposition to one of the main features of civilization, and if you’re going to call someone a rude name, refusing to cooperate isn’t a bad thing to criticize. This reminded me of that conversation, and I started thinking about how what we call one another is important. The old yarn that the term “terrorist” doesn’t actually mean anything simply isn’t true anymore, and recent demonstrations of this have also shown the possibility that we need to reconsider the public language of enmity.
The history of the Kurds in Turkey in many ways began in 1514, with the victory of Selim I at Chaldiran, the result of which was the annexation of Kurdistan and Armenia. The 16th century antecedent to our modern conflict was a strangely calm event. The Mongols had rolled through Kurdistan, with the 14th century invasion of Timur being particularly devastating; even with the 15th century aid of the Kara Koyunlu, the Kurdish resurgence did not last long, with their defeat at the hands of the Ak Koyunlu and the subsequent persecution of Kurds. By comparison, the Ottoman Turks were surprisingly polite, dividing Kurdistan into districts and promoting existing Kurdish leaders to the governorships.
This didn’t last, as it wasn’t long before Selim the Grim (or “the Brave,” depending on who you ask) was displacing Kurdish tribes as a security measure, possibly taking a cue from the bloody actions of his Safavid neighbors. The period of Ottoman rule saw several conflicts between the Empire and various Kurdish groups, though the first one to make explicit demands as an ethnicity for nationhood occurred in the late 19th century. Kurdish nationalism did not truly emerge, however, until after the First World War.
The wartime tactic of co-opting Kurdish opposition into highly visible positions within the government was effective enough to see the Ottoman Empire through to its end. With its breakup, however, Kurdish nationalism began to become more prominent, largely in response to secularization, and the centralization of government and new Turkish nationalism of the Turkish Republic. Not to be discounted, of course, is the Turkish displacement of Kurds during the war by the Young Turks, involving dispersement within Turkey and deportation. The large-scale rebellions of the 1920s and 30s did little for the relationship between the Turkish government and the Kurds.
The Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, or Kurdistan Workers’ Party, was founded in the late 1970s on the principles of socialism and Kurdish nationalism. Engaging in intense fighting with other radical groups, the PKK also staged several attacks against targets that they perceived as oppressing the proletariat or collaborating with the Turks. The 1980s coup d’état in Turkey forced many members of the movement to flee to Syria, where they began to militarize. The collapse of the Soviet Union saw the PKK abandon its socialist philosophies in the absence of Soviet support, and focus more on Kurdish nationalism and Islamic beliefs.
The Turkish government calls the PKK a terrorist organization, as does the United States and the European Union. The use of conventional and suicide bombing to achieve its aims, as well as assassinations abroad, militant activity in Iraq, and fighting with Coalition troops suggests that this label is maybe not a hundred percent inappropriate. But the historical resistance of the groups the PKK claims descent from suggest that we might need to entertain the notion that the PKK represents a legitimate resistance group. Similarly, political support within the Turkish parliament as well as the tacit (and not… as tacit) support of many European nations and Russia at various times does suggest some questions about what the difference between terrorists and separatists or rebels.
The real and practical difference? You can negotiate and begin a process of rapprochement with separatists and rebels, but it’s important to “not be in the habit of commenting on statements made by terrorists.” Clearly the issues of Kurdish rights isn’t so contentious that the Turkish government won’t give; they’ve been slowly relaxing since before the turn of the millennium, starting with the lifting of the Kurdish language ban in 1991, and accelerating in 1999 with the capture of the PKK’s leader, Öcalan. The peace between the PKK and Turkey during that time was unilateral, however, as it would be again in 2006.
Let’s be fair, both the peace initiative from the PKK in 1999 and that in 2006 ended abruptly with the radical wings of the PKK retaking control of the group. Fundamentally, however, it seems like it has to do with what the term terrorist has come to mean in the modern age. The Turkish government has been pursuing a policy of supporting and engendering negative feeling toward the PKK for 25 years, and things like this certainly aren’t helping the Turkish public view the organization as a group to be negotiated with.
The real problem, however, is the international community. Changes in the way we fight terrorism and the way we think about fighting terrorism, including the notion of a unified international response, mean that to treat with terrorists is to endanger your relationship with your allies, or possible military action. Turkey probably isn’t worried about a U.S.-led invasion, but they might be worried about what it would mean to begin talking to a group which the European Union, of which they are an aspiring member, has declared to be a terrorist organization. In the modern age, declaring a group to be terrorists is effectively declaring a fight to the death, which is, admittedly, pretty much what Turkey has already publicly done.
Not to be rude, but you know who else could probably have benefited from this lesson? That’s right, the United States. It’s not hard to recall the speeches of our last President, and the profligate use of the word terrorist, and how in this period we operated with a strategy apparently consisting of hating those guys, and being prepared to fight them to the bitter end. It turns out, after nearly a decade of fighting, that maybe we don’t have the moxie necessary to murder on the scale required to stamp out an insurgency through force, and having discovered that our notional allies are maybe not a hundred percent reliable, we’ve adopted a more cosmopolitan approach to counterinsurgency, and decided that we might have to negotiate. It shouldn’t be surprising that during that time our language became more sophisticated, going from referring to those we fought in Afghanistan as terrorists, to calling them the Taliban, to calling them insurgent groups, rebels, and even separatists and militias, terms for which some notable demographics in the US have historically had significant sympathy.
The US benefits from an absence of some of the complications faced by Turkey in potential talks to end terrorist threats. Not only is the US influential enough of the world stage to engender cooperation from its allies, but it might possess the guile to make this look like a reversal of previously brutish foreign and military policies. Ultimately, however, the US’s primary advantage in rebranding its conflict in Afghanistan away from the marketing used to start the War on Terror is that both the American public and Coalition allies are increasingly asking the question “can we be done, please?” The question of whether we really can back out of the zero-tolerance conflict against "terrorism" we've started remains to be seen. Then again, who knows, it’s possible that we’ve got other aims in mind.
The history of the Kurds in Turkey in many ways began in 1514, with the victory of Selim I at Chaldiran, the result of which was the annexation of Kurdistan and Armenia. The 16th century antecedent to our modern conflict was a strangely calm event. The Mongols had rolled through Kurdistan, with the 14th century invasion of Timur being particularly devastating; even with the 15th century aid of the Kara Koyunlu, the Kurdish resurgence did not last long, with their defeat at the hands of the Ak Koyunlu and the subsequent persecution of Kurds. By comparison, the Ottoman Turks were surprisingly polite, dividing Kurdistan into districts and promoting existing Kurdish leaders to the governorships.
This didn’t last, as it wasn’t long before Selim the Grim (or “the Brave,” depending on who you ask) was displacing Kurdish tribes as a security measure, possibly taking a cue from the bloody actions of his Safavid neighbors. The period of Ottoman rule saw several conflicts between the Empire and various Kurdish groups, though the first one to make explicit demands as an ethnicity for nationhood occurred in the late 19th century. Kurdish nationalism did not truly emerge, however, until after the First World War.
The wartime tactic of co-opting Kurdish opposition into highly visible positions within the government was effective enough to see the Ottoman Empire through to its end. With its breakup, however, Kurdish nationalism began to become more prominent, largely in response to secularization, and the centralization of government and new Turkish nationalism of the Turkish Republic. Not to be discounted, of course, is the Turkish displacement of Kurds during the war by the Young Turks, involving dispersement within Turkey and deportation. The large-scale rebellions of the 1920s and 30s did little for the relationship between the Turkish government and the Kurds.
The Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, or Kurdistan Workers’ Party, was founded in the late 1970s on the principles of socialism and Kurdish nationalism. Engaging in intense fighting with other radical groups, the PKK also staged several attacks against targets that they perceived as oppressing the proletariat or collaborating with the Turks. The 1980s coup d’état in Turkey forced many members of the movement to flee to Syria, where they began to militarize. The collapse of the Soviet Union saw the PKK abandon its socialist philosophies in the absence of Soviet support, and focus more on Kurdish nationalism and Islamic beliefs.
The Turkish government calls the PKK a terrorist organization, as does the United States and the European Union. The use of conventional and suicide bombing to achieve its aims, as well as assassinations abroad, militant activity in Iraq, and fighting with Coalition troops suggests that this label is maybe not a hundred percent inappropriate. But the historical resistance of the groups the PKK claims descent from suggest that we might need to entertain the notion that the PKK represents a legitimate resistance group. Similarly, political support within the Turkish parliament as well as the tacit (and not… as tacit) support of many European nations and Russia at various times does suggest some questions about what the difference between terrorists and separatists or rebels.
The real and practical difference? You can negotiate and begin a process of rapprochement with separatists and rebels, but it’s important to “not be in the habit of commenting on statements made by terrorists.” Clearly the issues of Kurdish rights isn’t so contentious that the Turkish government won’t give; they’ve been slowly relaxing since before the turn of the millennium, starting with the lifting of the Kurdish language ban in 1991, and accelerating in 1999 with the capture of the PKK’s leader, Öcalan. The peace between the PKK and Turkey during that time was unilateral, however, as it would be again in 2006.
Let’s be fair, both the peace initiative from the PKK in 1999 and that in 2006 ended abruptly with the radical wings of the PKK retaking control of the group. Fundamentally, however, it seems like it has to do with what the term terrorist has come to mean in the modern age. The Turkish government has been pursuing a policy of supporting and engendering negative feeling toward the PKK for 25 years, and things like this certainly aren’t helping the Turkish public view the organization as a group to be negotiated with.
The real problem, however, is the international community. Changes in the way we fight terrorism and the way we think about fighting terrorism, including the notion of a unified international response, mean that to treat with terrorists is to endanger your relationship with your allies, or possible military action. Turkey probably isn’t worried about a U.S.-led invasion, but they might be worried about what it would mean to begin talking to a group which the European Union, of which they are an aspiring member, has declared to be a terrorist organization. In the modern age, declaring a group to be terrorists is effectively declaring a fight to the death, which is, admittedly, pretty much what Turkey has already publicly done.
Not to be rude, but you know who else could probably have benefited from this lesson? That’s right, the United States. It’s not hard to recall the speeches of our last President, and the profligate use of the word terrorist, and how in this period we operated with a strategy apparently consisting of hating those guys, and being prepared to fight them to the bitter end. It turns out, after nearly a decade of fighting, that maybe we don’t have the moxie necessary to murder on the scale required to stamp out an insurgency through force, and having discovered that our notional allies are maybe not a hundred percent reliable, we’ve adopted a more cosmopolitan approach to counterinsurgency, and decided that we might have to negotiate. It shouldn’t be surprising that during that time our language became more sophisticated, going from referring to those we fought in Afghanistan as terrorists, to calling them the Taliban, to calling them insurgent groups, rebels, and even separatists and militias, terms for which some notable demographics in the US have historically had significant sympathy.
The US benefits from an absence of some of the complications faced by Turkey in potential talks to end terrorist threats. Not only is the US influential enough of the world stage to engender cooperation from its allies, but it might possess the guile to make this look like a reversal of previously brutish foreign and military policies. Ultimately, however, the US’s primary advantage in rebranding its conflict in Afghanistan away from the marketing used to start the War on Terror is that both the American public and Coalition allies are increasingly asking the question “can we be done, please?” The question of whether we really can back out of the zero-tolerance conflict against "terrorism" we've started remains to be seen. Then again, who knows, it’s possible that we’ve got other aims in mind.
20.7.10
The CIA is not your mom.
This came to my attention when I heard an interview with William Arkin today, and it got me thinking about the relationship between the American press and operational security, and what a poor bastard the Director of National Intelligence is. Obviously we all remember Geraldo’s heroic blow for freedom of the press while embedded with the 101st Airborne Division in 2003, but foolishness aside, the intelligence and military authorities are in many ways placed in philosophical opposition to the press by the very nature of their professions. Adlai Stevenson told us that “the free press is the mother of all our liberties,” but in the eyes of some the interference of the press can represent a threat to the national security of the United States. This seems patently ridiculous to those with even a basic attachment to civil liberties, but it may be true in unexpected ways. The role of the press as the mother of all our liberties has perhaps created a fundamental misunderstanding in the mind of the American public as to the nature of intelligence organizations, and may be behind the introduction of organizational measures which fail to address the fundamental problems of the American intelligence community.
The modern relationship between the intelligence community and the press stems from two periods in American history. The American press had existed for nearly a century before information gathering had become an issue. The historical experience of the press, both for American journalists and their British antecedents, as well as the political climate centered on limiting government excess in the new order, would play a role in shaping America’s attitude toward its clandestine services. At the same time, Washington and his confederates had operated a wide-ranging network of covert operatives during the Revolutionary War which had made a significant contribution to the eventual withdrawal of the British. This was clearly no small consideration for early American policy, as within two years of it being proposed in Washington’s first State of the Union address, the “secret services fund” had grown to comprise fully 10% of the federal budget.
Intelligence gathering at this time was limited largely to intercepting and decoding battlefield communications, seizing and examining personal correspondence of enemy soldiers, and interrogating prisoners. The relatively short valuable life of this intelligence meant that the American public regarded it largely as an activity of war, and that the press had little interest in publishing the information gathered. The American Civil War did provide a glimpse of the future of this relationship, however, as news papers from the opposing side became a valuable intelligence source for both the Union and the Confederacy.
The groundwork for the establishment of modern intelligence agencies had been laid with this prevailing view, lasting well into the 20th century, as America was obviously sufficiently competent at gathering intelligence to win the Second World War. The notion that there was a peacetime use for intelligence brought with it the McCarthy era’s view of intelligence gathering, which was that each failure of a significant event to occur was the fruit of the government’s increased vigilance. This was to lead, ultimately, to the American press shaping an entirely new view of the intelligence community toward the end of the Cold War.
The press’s critical role in exposing the abuse of CIA authority both for unethical actions within their mandate, and illegal use of the organization on US soil, lead not only to congressional oversight of US intelligence agencies, but to an new current in the American attitude toward government information gathering practices. Whereas they had formerly played the role of omnicompetent protector which thwarted threats every day, the unfavorable press gave the American public a glimpse of the intelligence community as a dangerous group that lacked sufficient oversight.
The events of September of 2001, however, proved that our child-like expectation that the intelligence community could and does know about and protect us from every threat hadn’t evaporated in a puff of government misconduct during the 1970s, as the fear of the other once again led us to believe that every day without an attack represented an active success on the part of a vigilant government. As time passed and word of misconduct on the part of American authorities began to spread, it also proved once again that the press is the sword and shield of the public against the tendency of government to abrogate rights in times of perceived crisis. While the protective nature of the press was once again established, a new outgrowth of our naïve, paternalistic attitude toward the intelligence community began to make itself felt; while we were faced with too stark a reality to believe that the government could protect us universally, the very public nature of this failure lead us to believe that the government should be able to protect us universally. In the ancient way of our people, we began to search for someone to blame.
The Fourth Estate played its traditional role of protector of the republic, which should dismiss any questions about free reporting representing a threat to national security. Its role in the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence should cause us to wonder, however, what the press’s role is in politicizing the running of our national intelligence services has been.
The Director of National Intelligence was the highly publicized position created to unify and direct America’s intelligence services, preventing the lapses in inter-departmental communication that investigations characterized as one of the primary domestic causes of the September 11th attacks. As numerous sources have been quick to point out, however, it is a position with little genuine power, and in that light it might cause the cynical to suggest that the position was created specifically to parade before the press, and to provide someone to fire instead of addressing fundamental problems.
This is something of a harsh characterization, as the institution of the Director of National Intelligence is not necessarily doomed to failure. Redefining the position in order to maximize the actual utility of the concept, which is as a public face of our clandestine activities, could work to make the position wildly successful. As stated, however, the Director of National Intelligence is in the position of not only having to affect politically viable change, but of being responsible for fixing the fundamental issue that even when information is shared between departments, some facts are not recognizable as relevant without the benefit of hindsight. The very public discussion among the press and pundits may mean, however, that the President must use the position of DNI as it stands for reasons of politics, perhaps dooming at least the next person to hold the position.
In this light, then, what would James Clapper, the presumed successor to the unfortunate Dennis Blair, require to make his tenure a success? The facile answer is “greater powers.” This is uninteresting, though. Casting about for concrete changes that General Clapper could put forward to both improve cooperation between intelligence services in a meaningful way, I was reminded of an interesting series of articles by John Robb, who looks suspiciously like Conan O’Brien.
Briefly, Robb introduces us to the idea that insurgency has come to work on a principle of emergent behavior, which is that disparate or unaligned groups are capable of actions of a complexity far greater than that suggested by the sum of their parts. The basic principle is that successful techniques and strategies, and fundamentally information, propagate through unassociated groups though the openness of the forum in which insurgent attacks are conducted.
The intelligence community has the advantage of being an aligned group of actors in this scenario, which is to say that even simple, open forum information sharing is made more effective by the common goals and motivations of the agencies in question. The problem, of course, is that creating this sort of open source intelligence (not to be confused with this use) development environment is that making this information widely available between legitimate parties also introduces necessary issues of security. The point, however, is not to solve the problems of the American intelligence community in a thousand words on the internet. The point is to suggest that the American press can be asking more germaine questions than “who is accountable?” when intelligence failures do occur.
The modern relationship between the intelligence community and the press stems from two periods in American history. The American press had existed for nearly a century before information gathering had become an issue. The historical experience of the press, both for American journalists and their British antecedents, as well as the political climate centered on limiting government excess in the new order, would play a role in shaping America’s attitude toward its clandestine services. At the same time, Washington and his confederates had operated a wide-ranging network of covert operatives during the Revolutionary War which had made a significant contribution to the eventual withdrawal of the British. This was clearly no small consideration for early American policy, as within two years of it being proposed in Washington’s first State of the Union address, the “secret services fund” had grown to comprise fully 10% of the federal budget.
Intelligence gathering at this time was limited largely to intercepting and decoding battlefield communications, seizing and examining personal correspondence of enemy soldiers, and interrogating prisoners. The relatively short valuable life of this intelligence meant that the American public regarded it largely as an activity of war, and that the press had little interest in publishing the information gathered. The American Civil War did provide a glimpse of the future of this relationship, however, as news papers from the opposing side became a valuable intelligence source for both the Union and the Confederacy.
The groundwork for the establishment of modern intelligence agencies had been laid with this prevailing view, lasting well into the 20th century, as America was obviously sufficiently competent at gathering intelligence to win the Second World War. The notion that there was a peacetime use for intelligence brought with it the McCarthy era’s view of intelligence gathering, which was that each failure of a significant event to occur was the fruit of the government’s increased vigilance. This was to lead, ultimately, to the American press shaping an entirely new view of the intelligence community toward the end of the Cold War.
The press’s critical role in exposing the abuse of CIA authority both for unethical actions within their mandate, and illegal use of the organization on US soil, lead not only to congressional oversight of US intelligence agencies, but to an new current in the American attitude toward government information gathering practices. Whereas they had formerly played the role of omnicompetent protector which thwarted threats every day, the unfavorable press gave the American public a glimpse of the intelligence community as a dangerous group that lacked sufficient oversight.
The events of September of 2001, however, proved that our child-like expectation that the intelligence community could and does know about and protect us from every threat hadn’t evaporated in a puff of government misconduct during the 1970s, as the fear of the other once again led us to believe that every day without an attack represented an active success on the part of a vigilant government. As time passed and word of misconduct on the part of American authorities began to spread, it also proved once again that the press is the sword and shield of the public against the tendency of government to abrogate rights in times of perceived crisis. While the protective nature of the press was once again established, a new outgrowth of our naïve, paternalistic attitude toward the intelligence community began to make itself felt; while we were faced with too stark a reality to believe that the government could protect us universally, the very public nature of this failure lead us to believe that the government should be able to protect us universally. In the ancient way of our people, we began to search for someone to blame.
The Fourth Estate played its traditional role of protector of the republic, which should dismiss any questions about free reporting representing a threat to national security. Its role in the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence should cause us to wonder, however, what the press’s role is in politicizing the running of our national intelligence services has been.
The Director of National Intelligence was the highly publicized position created to unify and direct America’s intelligence services, preventing the lapses in inter-departmental communication that investigations characterized as one of the primary domestic causes of the September 11th attacks. As numerous sources have been quick to point out, however, it is a position with little genuine power, and in that light it might cause the cynical to suggest that the position was created specifically to parade before the press, and to provide someone to fire instead of addressing fundamental problems.
This is something of a harsh characterization, as the institution of the Director of National Intelligence is not necessarily doomed to failure. Redefining the position in order to maximize the actual utility of the concept, which is as a public face of our clandestine activities, could work to make the position wildly successful. As stated, however, the Director of National Intelligence is in the position of not only having to affect politically viable change, but of being responsible for fixing the fundamental issue that even when information is shared between departments, some facts are not recognizable as relevant without the benefit of hindsight. The very public discussion among the press and pundits may mean, however, that the President must use the position of DNI as it stands for reasons of politics, perhaps dooming at least the next person to hold the position.
In this light, then, what would James Clapper, the presumed successor to the unfortunate Dennis Blair, require to make his tenure a success? The facile answer is “greater powers.” This is uninteresting, though. Casting about for concrete changes that General Clapper could put forward to both improve cooperation between intelligence services in a meaningful way, I was reminded of an interesting series of articles by John Robb, who looks suspiciously like Conan O’Brien.
Briefly, Robb introduces us to the idea that insurgency has come to work on a principle of emergent behavior, which is that disparate or unaligned groups are capable of actions of a complexity far greater than that suggested by the sum of their parts. The basic principle is that successful techniques and strategies, and fundamentally information, propagate through unassociated groups though the openness of the forum in which insurgent attacks are conducted.
The intelligence community has the advantage of being an aligned group of actors in this scenario, which is to say that even simple, open forum information sharing is made more effective by the common goals and motivations of the agencies in question. The problem, of course, is that creating this sort of open source intelligence (not to be confused with this use) development environment is that making this information widely available between legitimate parties also introduces necessary issues of security. The point, however, is not to solve the problems of the American intelligence community in a thousand words on the internet. The point is to suggest that the American press can be asking more germaine questions than “who is accountable?” when intelligence failures do occur.
19.7.10
Alcuin is also why I don't read the "Comments" section on YouTube.
I was listening to Radio Times this morning and, as usual, I was forced to turn it off when it came time for the segment in which callers register their opinions. As I set out on my usual course of feeling mildly ashamed of myself for being an elitist prick, I began to think about the vox pop, and I’ve concluded that my snobbishness isn’t the only reason that I don’t have any real desire to listen to the opinions of my fellow citizens.
Fundamentally it represents another case of the old telepathy problem; along with the benefits of learning to read minds, the mind-reader acquires a serious distaste for his peers. In the same way that already having a voice to express our thoughts makes telepathy repellant, the American public has, in the 21st century, a voice that can speak in ten-thousand decibel blasts, and it’s deforming the landscape of what else we wish to hear. I have, however, gotten ahead of myself.
The predecessor to the broadcast media’s darling, the vox pop, was of course the letter to the editor, which has existed more or less since the foundation of American print journalism. During the early 18th century, these letters represented a non-trivial fraction of a newspaper’s content, as well as being the primary vehicle for a national discourse on politics and government, falling out of favor with the professionalization of journalism.
When broadcast journalism adopted the technique in the form of the vox pop, it gradually gained a new relevance, having passed through an awkward pubescence in the 1930s during which it represented a platform for radio quizzes and prize give-aways. Through the periods of social upheaval in the United States in the 20th century it proved to be a significant social force, representing, ostensibly, the voice of the American people.
But let’s talk about that. The suggestion that the internet is the new platform for the American public voice is hardly controversial, which seems like an almost rude thing to say in the shadow of the mouldering edifice that was once the proud institution of American print journalism. The obsolescence of the broadcast vox pop isn’t simply the truism of the technically inclined sneering at the practices of their elders, though.
The representative nature of the vox pop has always been somewhat disingenuous. Putting aside practical constraints such as content standards and time limitations, however, the results of these interviews are highly unpredictable, and are often tightly edited. It falls to the professional standards and ethics of the journalistic community to maintain an even and representative cross-section.
To tie my comments so far together, let’s go back to my off-hand remark about the decline of print media journalism. The advent of free, high-quality content on the internet has seriously damaged the previously impervious newspaper industry. The content that can still be successfully monetized is professionally written reporting delivered at a faster pace than printed papers can keep up with; it is no longer profitable to print letters to the editor in large quantities because they are freely available on the internet in abundance. The role of the vox populi in print reporting has dwindled because the vox dei aspect of it has shifted to even faster-paced environs such as Twitter.
The reason that broadcast news industry hasn’t experienced such a sharp decline is certainly, in part, structural; the ability of broadcast media to produce and distribute content at a faster pace has certainly helped staunch the bleeding. The broadcast media has also drawn a different lesson from the history of journalism than that followed by print journalism.
In the past it was a happy coincidence that the duty of the journalist to provide access to the public consciousness was so closely aligned with the ravenous desire of the public to hear its own voice. Print journalism held the diminution of editorials and letters to the editor close to its heart, and was unprepared for the threat of the internet to their monopoly on viable content. This is hardly some mark of noble spirit; the new representatives of the vox populi (Twitter et al.) have simply continued the work of television in pushing the newspapers out of the market for published public opinion. Meanwhile, the historical lesson drawn by the broadcast news media is that while the average American consumer is too arrogant to be interested in the opinions of the hayseed halfwits that live in other states, we’re thrilled to hear the opinion of members of our own demographic.
This is obnoxious, but hardly sinister in the environment of local news, where the average viewer will in some way identify with at least one of the subjects of a genuine vox pop, allowing the distinction of journalist and public to be maintained. The national broadcast news industry, however, has realized that while no-one is interested in the opinion of their fellow citizens, professionalizing members of popular demographics has had the appeal of a vox pop and the credibility of actual journalism. Now would be an appropriate time to snicker at the history of the vox pop as an entertainment segment.
This is, however, what I meant when I suggested that the vox pop is dangerously obsolete. The broadcast industry’s ability to monetize its product is being taxed by the increasing ability of the general public to produce high production-value content, and the response has been to put what they can sell on the air, while print news is being killed by these same market forces. Together these trends create the problem that the ungainly thrashing of broadcast news organizations, desperate not to follow the path of printed news, seems destined to destroy not only the notion of journalistic integrity, but also the idea that journalists have any place in producing the news content that we consume at all. After all, Glenn Beck proves daily that Alcuin was right; “And those people should not be listening to those who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.”
Fundamentally it represents another case of the old telepathy problem; along with the benefits of learning to read minds, the mind-reader acquires a serious distaste for his peers. In the same way that already having a voice to express our thoughts makes telepathy repellant, the American public has, in the 21st century, a voice that can speak in ten-thousand decibel blasts, and it’s deforming the landscape of what else we wish to hear. I have, however, gotten ahead of myself.
The predecessor to the broadcast media’s darling, the vox pop, was of course the letter to the editor, which has existed more or less since the foundation of American print journalism. During the early 18th century, these letters represented a non-trivial fraction of a newspaper’s content, as well as being the primary vehicle for a national discourse on politics and government, falling out of favor with the professionalization of journalism.
When broadcast journalism adopted the technique in the form of the vox pop, it gradually gained a new relevance, having passed through an awkward pubescence in the 1930s during which it represented a platform for radio quizzes and prize give-aways. Through the periods of social upheaval in the United States in the 20th century it proved to be a significant social force, representing, ostensibly, the voice of the American people.
But let’s talk about that. The suggestion that the internet is the new platform for the American public voice is hardly controversial, which seems like an almost rude thing to say in the shadow of the mouldering edifice that was once the proud institution of American print journalism. The obsolescence of the broadcast vox pop isn’t simply the truism of the technically inclined sneering at the practices of their elders, though.
The representative nature of the vox pop has always been somewhat disingenuous. Putting aside practical constraints such as content standards and time limitations, however, the results of these interviews are highly unpredictable, and are often tightly edited. It falls to the professional standards and ethics of the journalistic community to maintain an even and representative cross-section.
To tie my comments so far together, let’s go back to my off-hand remark about the decline of print media journalism. The advent of free, high-quality content on the internet has seriously damaged the previously impervious newspaper industry. The content that can still be successfully monetized is professionally written reporting delivered at a faster pace than printed papers can keep up with; it is no longer profitable to print letters to the editor in large quantities because they are freely available on the internet in abundance. The role of the vox populi in print reporting has dwindled because the vox dei aspect of it has shifted to even faster-paced environs such as Twitter.
The reason that broadcast news industry hasn’t experienced such a sharp decline is certainly, in part, structural; the ability of broadcast media to produce and distribute content at a faster pace has certainly helped staunch the bleeding. The broadcast media has also drawn a different lesson from the history of journalism than that followed by print journalism.
In the past it was a happy coincidence that the duty of the journalist to provide access to the public consciousness was so closely aligned with the ravenous desire of the public to hear its own voice. Print journalism held the diminution of editorials and letters to the editor close to its heart, and was unprepared for the threat of the internet to their monopoly on viable content. This is hardly some mark of noble spirit; the new representatives of the vox populi (Twitter et al.) have simply continued the work of television in pushing the newspapers out of the market for published public opinion. Meanwhile, the historical lesson drawn by the broadcast news media is that while the average American consumer is too arrogant to be interested in the opinions of the hayseed halfwits that live in other states, we’re thrilled to hear the opinion of members of our own demographic.
This is obnoxious, but hardly sinister in the environment of local news, where the average viewer will in some way identify with at least one of the subjects of a genuine vox pop, allowing the distinction of journalist and public to be maintained. The national broadcast news industry, however, has realized that while no-one is interested in the opinion of their fellow citizens, professionalizing members of popular demographics has had the appeal of a vox pop and the credibility of actual journalism. Now would be an appropriate time to snicker at the history of the vox pop as an entertainment segment.
This is, however, what I meant when I suggested that the vox pop is dangerously obsolete. The broadcast industry’s ability to monetize its product is being taxed by the increasing ability of the general public to produce high production-value content, and the response has been to put what they can sell on the air, while print news is being killed by these same market forces. Together these trends create the problem that the ungainly thrashing of broadcast news organizations, desperate not to follow the path of printed news, seems destined to destroy not only the notion of journalistic integrity, but also the idea that journalists have any place in producing the news content that we consume at all. After all, Glenn Beck proves daily that Alcuin was right; “And those people should not be listening to those who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.”
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