WaPost blogging on Russia

OK, I understand if you think Russia was unjustified in its attack on Georgian troops in South Ossetia. I respect that opinion, although I disagree with it.

But the national security blogger at the Washington Post is writing as if Russia unilaterally invaded Georgia without any provocation. The moderator's post DOESN'T EVEN MENTION THE WORDS "South Ossetia" or "Abkhazia". I was absolutely dumbfounded.

Anyway - feel free to tear them a new one. This is ridiculous.

Even people I have had disagreements with - such as my brother, who has posted on this blog - have an understanding that this has been a protracted conflict with a history of violence between Georgia and separatistist regions with strong ties to Russia. Not sure what the disconnect is at the Washington Post.

More on South Ossetia

I'm really starting to worry about this situation.

Recent reports suggest that Russian troops are pushing beyond South Ossetia, into central Georgia - perhaps towards the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. I think it's notable that the first city to be seiged outside of South Ossetia is Gori, which lies between Ossetia and Tbilisi - not Ossetia and Abkhazia - Georgia's other breakaway republic.

It seems like Medvedev is preparing to defend against an assault from or prepare for an attack on Tbilisi, rather than solidify his advances into the separatist regions. That's disconcerting for two reasons -

1. It would mean that this really is an invasion of Georgia, rather than a crackdown on Georgian interference in the breakaway republics, and

2. The U.S. is currently transporting Georgian troops from Iraq to Georgia to fight the Russians.

So Russia is invading Georgia proper, and the U.S. military is going to be in Georgia too... bringing Georgian troops so that they can fight Russian troops. Is it just me, or is this a recipe for disaster??? Why the hell are we getting involved in this??? What if there's a stray bomb that kills American troops helping the Georgians out? How many options is Bush really going to have to respond to something like that? And even if it doesn't come to that, what will Medvedev and Putin think? How are they going to interpret us transporting Georgian troops to the battlefield?

I don't know if this will mean war with Russia. Even I have enough faith in Bush and Medvedev and Putin to think that this is probably a slim possibility. But why are we toying with it? Why can't the Georgians transport their own damned troops. I know they've provided a bunch of troops in Iraq, but who cares! We're the United States of America - we're not obligated to play chauffeur to a Central Asian republic that sent 2,000 soldiers to Iraq. I applaud their enthusiasm, but I hardly think it qualifies them to ask anything of us.

I don't know for sure if the Russian move on South Ossetia is justified or not. My impression is that there is substantial justification for what Russia is doing in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. That does not justify an invasion of Georgia. The United States needs to think straight on this conflict and not treat Russia like another Hitler in the Sudetenland - we need to treat them like the Greaet Power that they are. And maybe they overstepped their bounds here, but we can't just blunder our way into this war - we need to proceed cautiously.

We also need to remember that Russia has something in South Ossetia that we never had in Iraq - an actual smoking gun. Whoever started it several iterations back, the fact is Georgia moved troops against South Ossetia on August 7th. I know this was disputed at first, but it seems to be reported universally now. I don't want to see Saakashvili fall, and I don't want to see a Russian occupation of Georgia. But tell me - how the hell is that different from what we did in Iraq? It's different for one reason - in Georgia, Saakashvili made the first move and Russia responded. In Iraq we made the first move and Saddam responded. I would rather watch Russia take Georgia than get the U.S. into a direct conflict with Russia over a standard of international relations that we can't even hold ourselves to. If we try to do that, we're going to have egg on our face - I guarantee.

Russia in South Ossetia

So Russia has tanks on the roads and boots on the ground in South Ossetia, Georgia's northern breakaway province. My wife, a Russia expert, alerted me to this. She also points out that the Russian stock market is not taking the news well . Oil prices have also been dropping, which can't make the Russians happy either - but their dollar reserves are doing better.

A frequent poster on my blog who has his own blog about security issues seems to be writing about this as well.

I don't know the background of this conflict, so I can't really support or scold Russia... I just know I really don't want another armed conflict in Central Asia. Feel free to share your thoughts - having talked about this with my wife, I've been familiar with the issue - but I still don't feel like I know enough to have any firm thoughts on it.

Empire and Liberty

So I'm reading a book called "The Pentagon's New Map" by a guy that's worked in the Center for Naval Analysis and the Office of the Secretary of Defense... it's a very poorly written book but it has an interesting thesis that both intrigues and infuriates me. Basically, the author argues that the world is divided between "the Core" and "the Gap" - and that the primary difference between these two worlds is that acceptance of a certain "rule set". Most of the rule sets he talks about are security rule sets - rules of war and peace, etc. - but economic rule sets ultimately play a role as well. "The Gap" includes all the usual suspects - the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia excluding India and China, South America excluding Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Brazil, etc. The author advocates an active and preemptive military policy in "the Gap" with the explicit goal of bringing them into the Core's rule set on security, the economy, good governance, etc. At times, he seems to advocate a loosely confederated global empire operating on the same basic principles. He makes this very explicit in one point, where he suggests that the U.N. operates very much like the world's legislative branch, and the United States federal government operates like it's executive branch. We use our military to execute the law of the land (in this case, the law of the planet), and put bad guys away.

At first glance, that's obviously scary - and it seems like a blank check for the military. But at some point, we will have a global polity - I'm convinced of that as well. We've seen tribes and city states organize from bands of hunters. These far flung groups have organized into clans and then nations, and now we're starting to see national confederacies emerge. I don't think its unreasonable to assume that we will have a single, sovereign, planetary government in fifty years or so. It may not happen - but its certainly conceivable. And if it did - how would that work? Probably in a way that's very similar to how "The Pentagon's New Map" is laying it out - with international bodies like the WTO, the ICC, and the UN laying out the rules of the game and the U.S. bringing belligerents into the fold.

With that in mind I'm going to offer two quotes from a Founding Father:

In 1780: "We shall divert through our own Country a branch of commerce which the European States have thought worthy of the most important struggles and sacrifices, and in the event of peace on terms which have been contemplated by some powers we shall form to the American union a barrier against the dangerous extension of the British Province of Canada and add to the Empire of liberty an extensive and fertile Country thereby converting dangerous Enemies into valuable friends."

And lest you think that was a slip of the tongue, in 1809 the same founding father repeated: "We should then have only to include the north [Canada] in our Confederacy, which would be of course in the first war, and we should have such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation"... this was after his excitement about the prospect of obtaining Cuba for the United States.

Who was it? None other than the libertine Thomas Jefferson! The first was in a letter to George Rogers Clark, and the second in a letter to President Madison. This sounds pretty close to Hamilton (Jefferson's political rival) who advocated taking Spanish posessions in Mexico.

It seems so counterintuitive, but now that we're really forced to deal with the idea of empire we should think hard about what it means to be an "empire of liberty" and whether that even makes sense conceptually. Certainly we didn't have an issue with it throughout hour history, but since the closing of the frontier we've pretended that empire and America are antithetical. Are they? I don't know. Our founders consistently compared us to Rome, and at some point Rome made the leap from Republic to Empire. Interestingly enough, Rome's acquisiton of territory was not what made it an "empire" in the eyes of historians - I think we should take note of this. Rome became and empire when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon - when he entered the captiol and took power from the Senate.

These are dangerous times and we have an obligation to use our strength for the good. But we need to think hard about what we're doing. Where is our Rubicon? Who is our Caesar? What does the "American Empire" mean. Can we polinate the world with our "rule sets" and set the stage for a lasting, unified, powerful planet - or would this very act rob us of what makes us so unique? I don't know - and I don't think these choices will be made in the near future. But make no mistake - with the Soviets gone our generation is the first in American history to be confronted with Empire - and we're going to need to think about it and deal with it. Moreover - our generation is the first in the history of the species that is confronted with a Planetary Empire. What in the world do we do with that?

The Terrorist Threat

I don't have much to say about this Post article now, but it's an interesting assessment of how threatening global terrorism really is. The author argues that it's not really as bad as a lot of people think. Al Qaeda is the only organization that is truly global and is interested in and capable of attacking the U.S. on it's own soil - and that capability is severely weakened. Most other groups we (rightly) label as "jihadists" have regional focuses and wouldn't think twice about striking our interests where they find them - but don't really pose a threat to U.S. soil.

I'd challenge the author on two points - first, while the threat of a nuclear attack by Al Qaeda using "loose nukes" from one of the former Soviet republics may be small, it would be so devastating that we can't dismiss it as easily as he does. I don't even mean devastating in terms of the loss of life or the cost - it would most likely be a "dirty bomb" attack that wouldn't have too catastrophic a casualty roster - I mean devastating in terms of what it would do to the American psyche. So I think he could have elaborated more about how serious a threat that really is.

I also wish he would take the next step... these terrorists don't just come out of nowhere. Although I hate the "blame America first" style rhetoric, I can still acknowledge that our actions sometimes contribute to the problem. For example - more Middle Eastern muslims can probably be legitimately labeled "terrorists" today because the U.S. invaded Iraq. In other words - the terrorist threat would be smaller today if we had not invaded Iraq. The same threat is looming for us if we invade Iran. We aren't responsible for terrorism or anything - that's not what I'm saying. These jihadists bear full responsibility for what they're doing. But we have to understand what makes sense strategically and how our actions influence the conditions that give rise to terrorism.

Still - it's refreshing for someone to say this. And I think the comparison the author makes to 19th century anarchists is apt. Terrorism is a real threat - the biggest security threat in the world right now. But long-term it will eventually be erradicated. We may have one failed state turn theocratic over the ordeal, and we'll have some bad national scars that will take a long time to heal - but terrorism will be erradicated. The trick is not to create more problems as we work to erradicate it over the next couple decades.

In other security news, this Union for the Mediterranean announced in Paris this weekend sounds interesting. It would be a shame, though, if the EU came out on top diplomatically in the Middle East because of it's willingness to be... well... more diplomatic than us.

A real oil crisis...

Not to imply that what we're currently experiencing isn't an oil crisis... but the recent bellicosity of Iran got me worried about a real oil crisis that could hit us. If military conflict starts with Iran, they will in all likelihood seal off the Strait of Hormuz from all traffic - particularly oil tankers. Granted, Iran survives based on it's oil exports, but I'm sure they could manage to sell some to China, and my understanding is they already have a pipeline going north to Tehran, and that winds around the Caspian Sea, west to Europe. So the point is, Iran could seal off the Strait of Hormuz from Iraqi and Saudi oil, and as much oil as they could afford to withhold - and then sell what they need to to the West to keep themselves afloat. The Washington Post Express reported today that 40% of the world's oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz... 40%!!!!! If 40% of the world's oil were taken off the market immediately, it would set off a global depression. Granted, our military would probably be well-fueled from refineries in Iraq that don't have to pass through the Strait.


That would also mean that we would be at war in the territory stretching from Iraq, through the Iraqi border with western Iran, into central Iran and the Tehran region, to the eastern border between Iran and Afghanistan, and into Afghanistan and the Pakistani border region. That span of the globe is around 2000 miles across... roughly the distance from Washington, D.C. to Salt Lake City, Utah would be a war zone.

People - this is how empires fall. We cannot go to war with Iran - I'm more and more worried that we absolutely would not recover from it. And maybe we'd by mired in a dogfight for a decade or two before China or the EU reestablished global stability, but the more I think about this, the more terrible of an idea it sounds like. And honestly, it's not just John McCain's off color jokes that I'm worried about. Who cares about those? I'm more worried that Israel is going to fire off a few rockets at Iranian nuclear facilities like they did to Iraq a couple years back.

The startling thing about this scenario that I've laid out is that nuclear weapons don't feature in it at all. Granted, nuclear weapons would make this hypothetical conflict significantly worse (although if we were to use ours, it might bring it all to a swifter conclusion), but even if there were no nukes, or if ther were nukes and we eliminated the program it doesn't matter -the cost we would pay would be enormous.

OK - this post started as a musing on what an Iranian war would do to the price of oil - but its grown a little beyond that. The American people think they are invincible, but they're not. We can fall just like anyone else. People need to understand how starting a military conflict with Iran would tear this nation apart - the economic crisis would probably rival the great depression, we would be fighting a war against both Sunnis and Shias, inflation would sky-rocket, and the food crisis would only grow worse because of fuel shortages, and you can bet that terrorism would be stepped up as a result. Not to mention what it would do to global confidence that the U.S. could pay off it's debts - and if that confidence slips, countries like China and Russia will want us to make good on our Treasury bonds (which we won't be able to afford). Granted - I'm very much setting out a worst-case scenario, but if we get engaged in this there is no way we'll get out with the same power and prestige that we've enjoyed for the last fifty years. I don't mind sitting in Iraq for a little while longer until things cool down... but we need to move out of the region and show some basic respect for state sovereignty there - even if we don't like the sovereign. If this Iran thing gets pushed any further the risk will be too great, and there cannot be a compromise any more - we would need an Obama administration. As much as I respect McCain, it would be too big of a risk.

Military Action in Iran

Dan Froomkin suggests that Dick Cheney may be trying to pick a fight with Iran before the Bush administration leaves office. I hope not, but it wouldn't surprise me either. I'm very happy to hear Defense Secretary Gates's reaction to this (at least his reaction communicated through a Democratic senator, off the record). Gates is quoted describing the consequences of military action in Iran during a luncheon with Democratic members of Congress:

'We'll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.'

How terrifying is that? I'm glad Gates seems to have his head screwed on straight - and apparently there are a lot of people over at the Pentagon that are adamantly opposed to the kind of covert provocation that Cheney is apparently encouraging. It got me thinking - if Obama won it would be great for him to hold onto Gates for a little while. I really like the guy - he's probably more supportive of the Iraq war than Obama or the electorate is, but since he's been in office he's probably the right person to manage any kind of withdraw - and that sort of consistency with the previous administration will probably help reassure people. It would be an affirmation of a non-"cut and run", non "Bush" defense policy. Not that Gates would have to stay on that long - clearly Obama should put his own man (or woman) in. But I really have a lot of respect for Gates.

Anyways - I didn't read Froomkin's whole article, but this one statement by Gates made me shiver.

The Militarization of Space

Interesting article from the Washington Times on the militarization of space. I'm baffled by people who oppose missle defense and other space militarization efforts. Burying our heads in the sand and pretending the space will not become militarized won't make it so. And on the subject of missle defense especially - since when does protecting oneself get construed as an aggressive action. If military engineers think it's not a technically feasible program right now, that's one thing - I can understand holding off for those reasons. But if it is technically feasible, what the hell are we waiting for?

On the issue of space militarization more broadly, the world certainly isn't waiting for us. It would be suicide to sit on the sidelines here. I'm honestly a little disappointed in the Obama campaign's position, as stated in this article. Obama seems so rational and pragmatic in his approach to Iraq and terrorism - I'm not sure what the disconnect is on space. Granted, Obama will probably move forward on this regardless of what he says on the campaign trail. The question is - how central will it be to his defense policy?

I'm all for demilitarization, cutting nuclear arsenals, etc. We need to come back from the brink of mutually assured destruction, and we need to cultivate diplomatic relations that will obviate the need for war. But that doesn't mean we leave new frontiers undefended or leave the back door wide open at a time when aggressive powers (::cough::CHINA::cough::) are on the rise.

You also need to keep in mind the potential threat of near earth objects. I would rather have a Pentagon that is very comfortable operating in space when these things come whizzing by the Earth, rather than a Pentagon that decided to sit this one out.

As George Washington said: "Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession"... if only that worked for you in western Pennsylvania, George... nevertheless - good advice