19 Aug 2008

Self-Determination or Territorial Integrity?

Posted by Mr. Roach under Georgia, International Law, Ossetia, Russia, kosovo
[5] Comments 

Mark Ames has a balanced account of the various issues and sources of conflict in Georgia and South Ossetia.  He notes that the Western Media have largely ignored the Ossetians, their beefs with the Georgians, their treatment in Georgia’s initial campaign of bombardment, and their mutually exclusive appeals to justice that are in direct conflict with those of the Georgians.  The following passage is particularly insightful:

At the root of this conflict is a clash of two twentieth-century guiding principles in international relations. Georgia, backed by the West, is claiming its right as a sovereign nation to control the territory within its borders, a guiding principle since World War II. The Ossetians are claiming their right to self-determination, a guiding principle since World War I.

These two guiding concepts for international relations–national sovereignty and the right to self-determination–are locked in a zero-sum battle in Georgia. Sometimes, the West takes the side of national sovereignty, as it is in the current war; other times, it sides with self-determination and redrawing of national borders, such as with Kosovo.

 

16 Aug 2008

Some Thoughts on The Georgian War

Posted by Mr. Roach under Georgia, Ossetia, Russia, Russian Army, foreign policy
[3] Comments 

These are just a few random observations about the current conflict in Georgia.

Americans are ill suited to being a global power. The great majority of Americans are mostly bored by conflicts involving strange, foreign lands. If we’re not bored, we’re easily misled by the media into assuming we know enough to have an opinion, which usually takes the form of a Wilsonian-idealist-interventionist set of principles that do not do much to clarify what are our legitimate interests. For the most part, foreign policy is the play thing of a smallish clique on the East Coast wedded to outdated ideas of the U.S. being the “sole superpower.” Most everyone else is basically nationalist and isolationist. Americans only take notice when things have gone very wrong long after the trend lines have been established.

Putin’s Russia is becoming Franco’s Spain for anti-modern traditionalist conservatives. His ethnonationalist concept of Russia, his subordination of business interests to the state, and his rejection of the liberal internationalist order all have a certain appeal. The mainstream media and mainstream conservative institutions diverge from a significant voice that sees in Iraq and crusades for democracy the seeds of disaster. This group, seeing in Russia a Christian nation undergoing a renaissance of power that is often in conflict with a common enemy in the form of militant Islam, strikes some of us at least as a natural ally with certain admirable qualities.

Along these lines, the Russia people today parallel the US view of ourselves and our applications of military force. Russia selectively rejects international institutions and international norms, including subordination to the UN, when such norms simply restrain its power without benefit. The average American’s view of its actions in Panama and Kosovo were much the same. Russia too has a rather romantic view of its soldiers and the beneficence of its power projection. It’s more than a little humorous to see Russia simply mimicking the western formulae of “stopping the genocide in Ossetia.”

Russia’s army itself, judging from photos, is a bit rough and ready, though apparently quite capable of taking on the poorly equipped and outnumbered Georgian forces. In various photos, we see a hodge podge of uniforms, old T-62 tanks, and irregular Ossetian and Chechen forces on display. Together, they show that the modern fores on display in the recent Victory Day Parade conceal the uneven pace of military modernization and the persistent ill discipline that still plagues the Russian army.

Finally, the geography of the Cauceses matter quite a bit for US power projection and shows how things that cannot be easily changed–like mountain ranges and the Asia Minor peninsula–limit our power. The Black Sea can be easily closed off by Turkey. None of the countries in the Caucuses can be reached without some cooperation from Ukraine, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, or some other neighboring land. Almost all of the significant US actions since WWII–Korea, Lebanon, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, Kosovo, Iraq–occurred in lands close to a large body of water, where supplies can be easily brought on shore and where power can be projected directly without the consent of countries bordering land-locked battlefields. Afghanistan was and is the exception and could not have occurred without Pakistani, Uzbek, and other nations’ cooperation. Even now, the indifferent state of that cooperation hinders operations.

 

15 Aug 2008

How Russians See Things

Posted by Mr. Roach under Cartoons, Georgia, Ossetia, Russia
[11] Comments 

 

 

14 Aug 2008

Empty Promises

Posted by Mr. Roach under Caucuses, Georgia, Russia, foreign policy
1 Comment 

Stratfor has a very persuasive analysis of the entire situation in Georgia, in particular how it is not the beginning of a new balance of power but rather the manifestation of an already-changed one.  It shows that the predictable US response is likely to do little to help Georgia, while hurting US credibility:

By invading Georgia as Russia did (competently if not brilliantly), Putin re-established the credibility of the Russian army. But far more importantly, by doing this Putin revealed an open secret: While the United States is tied down in the Middle East, American guarantees have no value. This lesson is not for American consumption. It is something that, from the Russian point of view, the Ukrainians, the Balts and the Central Asians need to digest. Indeed, it is a lesson Putin wants to transmit to Poland and the Czech Republic as well. The United States wants to place ballistic missile defense installations in those countries, and the Russians want them to understand that allowing this to happen increases their risk, not their security.

The Russians knew the United States would denounce their attack. This actually plays into Russian hands. The more vocal senior leaders are, the greater the contrast with their inaction, and the Russians wanted to drive home the idea that American guarantees are empty talk.

 

11 Aug 2008

Regional Powers and Global Threats

Posted by Mr. Roach under Georgia, Medvedev, Putin, Russia, Saakashvili, Spheres of Influence, Unipolar, foreign policy
[10] Comments 

Tom Piatak makes an important observation about the historical context forgotten by those who see in today’s Russia the same kind of threat that existed in the former Soviet Union:

The border dispute between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia has inspired much breathless commentary, including Andrew McCarthy at NRO proclaiming this the “Soviets’ rebirth.”

Before hyperventilating, McCarthy would be well advised to read some back issues of National Review. As that magazine long argued, what made the Soviet Union such a dangerous threat was the Communist ideology the Soviet Union embodied, an ideology that gave the Soviets many Western admirers and allies and also propelled the Soviets toward confrontation with the West. Soviet Communism is dead, and what is going on in South Ossetia is an old-fashioned border squabble of the type that the United States has wisely stayed out of for most of our history.

This is exactly right. No one ever expected Russia before or after the Soviet Era to be indifferent to the safety of its own people, the actions of nearby enemies, and the behavior of neighboring nations in general. The problem for the United States and the West during the Cold War was not so much that the Soviet Union concerned itself with the Caucuses or the Baltics, but rather that it also concerned itself with Vietnam, Nicaragua, Angola, Libya, Syria, and everywhere else on the globe.  Its unifying Communist ideology was an uncompromising and aggressive set of principles that did not acknowledge any geographical or other limits. A nationalist and powerful Russia, by contrast, can always be expected to have a certain influence over its neighbors. This is not a problem for the United States, and those neighbors ultimately must reach a modus vivendi with Russia that the U.S. can do little to fashion.

The natural power of Russia over its near-abroad–particularly the Caucuses–is why the expansion of NATO to Russia’s front door and NATO’s embrace new of missions such as the Kosovo Campaign are so foolish. These detours turn a defensive alliance, once necessary to contain an aggressive and ideological regime, into an offensive conspiracy that would foment the very aggresion that it ostensibly exists to deter.

Any useful concept of post-Cold-War relations must be founded on some realistic consideration of spheres of influence. The Caucuses are a legitimate concern for Russia, not least because they include parts of Russia and, in the case of Georgia, a nation that borders Russia. Just as Europe should respect American influence over the Western Hemisphere, it is natural and predictable that nations like Russia will be substantially more touchy in affairs taking place in their own backyard.

Even if some strategic relationship with nations like Armenia and Georgia makes sense to the U.S., it is particularly unwise that cooperation extends the NATO defensive military alliance. Far from “avoiding another Munich,” such commitments would instead hurt the intended beneficiaries, and likely hurt the U.S. as well.  Such commitments could hurt both parties directly by dragging us into wars based on the actions of our uncontrolable treaty partners or indirectly by creating commitment that the U.S. would ultimately abjure and thereby devalue our national honor. It is especially a bad idea to get into bed with a provocative and irresponsible–if fawningly pro-American–leader like Saakashvili. After 1989, and especially now after witnessing the indifferent assistance of our NATO allies in Afghanistan, the U.S. should scale back our NATO commitments to informal relationships with the handful of NATO nations that can actually do something useful for us like Italy, Great Britain, and Turkey.

Our continued cultivation of NATO is an extension of a self-defeating U.S. strategy undertaken during the 1990s: the impossible goal of maintaining “unipolarity.” In foreign affairs, this quest to remain the “sole superpower” makes everything everywhere our business, sets us up for manipulation by cynical power brokers like Hasim Thaci and Saakashvili, and is in the end a recipe for high cost and little reward, as our power will become resented and opposed by inevitable regional powers like Indian, Russia, and China. Just as anti-war conservatives should acknowledge that the strong defense posture of the Cold War was addressed to a singularly dangerous threat, pro-war conservatives today should remember the same in reverse. Very few threats match those of Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia. It is time to restore some sense of proportion in foreign policy, based on the sturdy foundations of preserving our own safety and our own national independence in a world where the reality of power politics is the most important factor.

Of course, such a world would not always be a perfectly just one. I don’t mean to imply the evils suffered in this war, particularly by the civilians of Georgia, are not real and unfortunate. But politics, above all, requires some translation of abstract justice into the human realm, refracted as it is by memory, power, history, and geography. A foreign policy that aimed to rid the world of all evil, all competition, all war, and all strife in the name of “commitment to doing the right thing” would destroy the country that pursued it, no matter how sincerely. If the Soviet Union’s doomed history teaches us anything, it should be this.

 

10 Aug 2008

The Hamdan Verdict

Posted by Mr. Roach under Hamdan, Law of War, Military Law, Military Tribunals, al qaeda, gitmo
No Comments 

I followed closely and also defended most of the administration’s actions on military tribunals and detention of unlawful enemy combatants. The victory of the administration in convicting Osama bin Laden’s drive, Salim Hamden, has proven a Phyrrhic one. The military tribunals process has been drawn out and subject to repeated smack downs by the judiciary. This end result contradicts their initial purpose which was to be swift, harsh, and devoid of intelligence leaks that would occur in a civilian trial. It has simply taken too long for this process to get underway. Further, the administration’s public relations have been as hackneyed as usual, insofar as most of the GITMO detentions are preventative rather than punitive in nature, and the initial characerization of GITMO’s denziens as the “worst of the worst” has been shown to be a gross exagerration.

The biggest obstacle to the administration’s designs has been a predictable but hitherto overlooked one: the culture of the American military combined with their role in sentencing. Military men the world over have often found war crimes trials unseemly, overly political, and arbitrary in who is punished, released, or overlooked altogether. Ideologically charged civilians in the DOJ would likely be more harsh and consistent in their dispatch of al Qaeda’s foot-soldiers on the familiar RICO theory of “enterprise liability” coupled with the military offense of belonging to an irregular and illegal organization. Under the UCMJ, the court martial panel decides on the sentence for the accused, in contrast to judicial sentencing in civilian courts. It is strange that mandatory sentences and the application of sentencing by a civilian judge has not been imported into the tribunals regime, as in this particular the military practice is decidedly more pro-defendant.

The old “law of war” rules that lawful combatants must be in uniform, bearing arms openly, and attached to a state actor has been undermined by a century of irregular wars of national liberation. From Vietnam to Somalia, our military is quite simply used to fighting such “irregulars” and does not find that behavior, without more, to be a serious offense. Americans in general are also unlikely to subject individuals to group liability for the actions of others. It appears the military panel here distinguished pure terrorists from mere fellow travellers. The al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, in contrast to the 9-11 hijackers, were primarily involved in a conventional war with the Northern Alliance and were in the country by voluntary arrangement with the Taliban regime. It is natural that being executed or punished harshly for this offense and little more would be anathema to the average American soldier, who is unusually willing to look sympathetically on a man “fighting for his country” or, in this case, a sincerely acknowledged cause. The rhetoric of critics who predicted summary convictions in kangaroo courts should be revisited too, as Hamdan’s sentence was only 5 and half years.

The military’s light punishment of Hamdan has undermined the strategic purpose of the military tribunals. If that strategic purpose of swift and harsh punishment for mere membership in al Qaeda is truly worth pursuing (and I think it is), the administration should not allow misplaced sympathies based on the prejudices of professional soldiers to get in its way. For starters, sentencing should be made more regular and put in the hands of judges restricted by some reasonable guidelines or statutory minimums. As it stands, the worst of both worlds has been achieved by the administration’s military tribunal process: the light punishments of a civilian justice system coupled with unorthodox procedural protections that have drawn sustained criticism from all over the world.

 

8 Aug 2008

A War for Georgia?

Posted by Mr. Roach under Abkhazia, Caucuses, Georgia, Ossetia, Russia, Separatists, foreign policy
[7] Comments 

America is reaping the whirlwind after its policies in Kosovo and the Caucuses. In the quest of certain factions to reinstitute the certainties of the Cold War, we seem to have forgotten that Russia is rightly concerned more with its neighbors and Russian co-ethnics in neighboring states than we ever would be. Bush continued the Clinton policy of confronting Russia, supporting nationalist regimes on its borders, and generally disrespecting Russia’s right to have influence on its neighbors. Today Russia said, “Enough.”

It’s certainly not the case Russia’s motives in Georgia are pure. It’s hard to believe Russians care a heck of a lot about the non-Russian Ossetian people. But neither are Saakashvili’s motives so idealistic. He is a nationalist in the same mold as Putin or Medvedev. But, unlike the Russian leaders, he controls a weak nation. Further, he aims to enlist the US in its provocations, extending to his suicidal push to become a NATO nation. As Richard Spencer observes, treaties and military alliances have consequences. And the worst of all possible worlds is a series of provocations coupled with American bad faith when the natural consequences come around This is exactly what NATO expansion into the non-European Caucuses would mean. It’s unlikely America would go to bat for Poland or Lithuania. But Georgia? Let’s just say that Tblisi doesn’t exactly roll off the American tongue.

It’s time to stop the madness. Russia and Georgia are engaged in a petty border dispute of no consequence to the US. We have nothing in common with the people of Georgia or Chechnya or Dagestan or anywhere else in the region. It’s their problem. It’s appropriate Georgia is in the orbit of Russia. It is needlessly provocative for the US to forge such close ties to Georgia when it is run by a provocative leader willing to gamble on a major war. It’s bad enough to be in this position, but now we have the double problem of scaling back our commitment after having stupidly extended it. This unfortunately is the price we must bear for our own independence and our own safety. It’s a lesser price than continued conflict with Russia. There’s no reason to continue our present course and jump in the shark-infested waters having gone so far out on this plank.

Too many Americans, particularly conservatives, will fall into a Pavlovian response after seeing Russian tanks on the offensive. A friend suggested it was like Czechoslovakia in 1968. It is no such thing. It’s more like Kosovo in 1999 or, rather, 2008. No principled basis exists for Russia not to outright annex South Ossetia under the principles the U.S. has endorsed in Kosovo, i.e., allowing independence bids after brokered autonomy under multilateral peacekeepers becomes part of everyone’s general consciousness.

South Ossetia has been de facto independent since the early 1990s. It contains a cooperative force of Russian, Georgian, and Ossetian peacekeepers. An increasingly confident Georgia–not Russia–decided to initiate the provocative attack earlier this week that injured Russian peacekeepers. Georgia’s learning to its chagrin that Russia does not observe the suicidal principle of absolute proportionality in such matters.

 

7 Aug 2008

Paleoconservatives Are Losing It

Posted by Mr. Roach under Bilingualism, Chronicles, Paleoconservative, Pat Buchanan, Politics, Spanish, Taki, Tom Fleming
[10] Comments 

In their alienation from reality and other conservatives, the extremism of the far right is now reaching comic proportions.  I knew some people had come off the rails when someone over at Takimag.com called the founding fathers “neoconservatives.”  Now the paleoconservative flagship publication, Chronicles, is publishing in Spanish as some kind of outreach measure.

I was attracted to paleoconservatism around 1992 because of the small government, nationalist campaign of Pat Buchanan against George H. W. Bush.  Buchanan emphasized national independence, limited government, preserving our historical identity, a more restrained foreign policy, cultural and race realism, and an economic approach that empahsized preserving our strategic position and the good of the country as a whole, including our working class. His thinking was devoid of the shallow idealistic formulae of conventional conservatives and libertartarians, and it remains so.

Now, out of frustration with the Iraq War, too many on the far right are losing their marbles, disdaining the coalition-building that they must participate in to achieve anything practical along with disdaining the other requirements of realism in matters political, such as some respect for the necessity of a measured pace.  I may have to change my blog’s subtitle lest I be confused with these crazy, unpatriotic losers.

 

31 Jul 2008

Do “Robberies Go Wrong”?

Posted by Mr. Roach under Antigua, Crime, Media Bias
[5] Comments 

Lawrence Auster describes the way the media obscures moral agency in criminal behavior, particularly when minorities are involved:

 But the Times lowers its own credibility by referring to the event as a “robbery gone wrong.” There should be zero tolerance for this nihilistic phrase which has the effect of removing the quality of moral judgment from both the robbery and the murder. “Robbery gone wrong” is meant to suggest that the criminals intended an armed robbery, not a murder, and that an armed robbery is not so bad, but that somehow the event got out of hand and they ended up, against their own intention, killing people. It just happened, don’t you know. It’s just one of those unfortunate things that just keep happening to people, especially to black people who never had a break. But of course when criminals commit armed robbery they are prepared to kill their victims. That’s why they’re armed. The readiness to murder, and the likeliness of murder, are even more evident when the criminals break into their victims’ residence and hold them at gun point.

 

31 Jul 2008

What is a Community Organizer?

Posted by Mr. Roach under Campaign, Election, Politics, Saul Alinsky, obama
1 Comment 

Good piece on Obama’s dubious career as a community organizer.  A friend jokingly said he was a “party planner,” but it’s actually similar to a union organizer for the Wobblies:

Community organizing is old-fashioned, bare-knuckle politics for the little guy.

Were you picturing Obama in a soup kitchen instead?  It is not your fault. When Obama talks about his time as a community organizer, he does not go beyond a vague and benign description of how he worked with unemployed steelworkers and their families to fight for change. Media coverage of Obama’s days as a community organizer has not been much better. Most journalists tend either to repeat stories that Obama has told in his books, or merely interview people who worked with him at the time without giving you a clear idea of what community organizing entails.

The words “community organizing” themselves probably present the biggest problem.

Hearing the touchy-feely sound of “community,” you may assume organizing has something to do with community service, like working at a homeless shelter.

But there is nothing touchy or feely about community organizing. It has more in common with the brutal contact sport of Chicago politics than it does with any kind of charitable act, such as serving food to homeless people. And like the neon-green relish that garnishes a Gold Coast dog, community organizing is pure Chicago.

 

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