April 17, 2018--Fallout

I have been hearing from angry friends all morning. They are angry with me, actually most are furious with me for agreeing with the likes of Ann Coulter, criticizing the weekend missile strike in Syria.

One said, "So it's OK with you to let Assad get away with using poison gas to kill his people? Did you see those videos of children, babies gasping for their last breath as they vomited and soon died? I can't believe you wouldn't agree with using a targeted missile strike against his chemical weapons facilitates."

"The strike appeared to turn out well." I agreed, "We seem to have managed to avoid killing any Russians. If we had, who knows where this would have led."

"You're avoiding the issue," my friend pressed on, "Even in warfare there are rules and conventions. Combatants agree not to torture prisoners, engage in ethnic cleansing, or, in this case, not use chemical or biological weapons. There is the Geneva Convention that spells out a lot of this. I can't believe you would have not done anything. What Assad did was barbaric."

"I agree with that too," I tried to say. "I even agree with Trump that Assad is a monster. The last I read, he presided over the slaughter of about 600,000 of his own people. Hundreds of thousands more have been crippled and millions have become refugees."

"And, so, if it was up to you you'd stand back and watch this happen?"

"Though I wouldn't put it quite this way, I must admit I probably would. I would not get involved in what's happening on the ground in Syria, that godforsaken place, any more than I was in favor of invading Iraq or, for that matter, getting involved in Vietnam. Where more than 58,000 of our young people were killed, hundreds of thousands more wounded, and at the end of the day we lost the war. Haven't we learned anything from behaving like the world's policeman?"

"But a tyrant deploying poison gas on his own people is not only against the rules of war--what a concept, war having rules--but monstrous."

"I don't know how to put this," I said, "but what's the difference between using gas to kill babies and blowing them up with conventional weapons? Hideous barrel bombs full of shrapnel is seemingly the weapon of choice in Syria for Assad's air force. This is monstrous too so why not, using your logic, go after his air force and the factories where barrel bombs are assembled?"

"I can't believe your lack of anger or passion about this," my friend said.

"Maybe I've gotten to be too old and seen too much evil in my lifetime. That could be what has made me appear to be inured to barbaric behavior of this kind. About that, guilty as charged. But, still, I am not insensitive to this nor am I seeing your distinctions between poison gas and fragmentation bombs, and I am not convinced it's a good idea for us to try to chase down all the Assads of the world. Sadly, there are too many of them and I don't think it's our role to go after all of them."

"There's a point to what you're saying, but complete hands off when there are holocasts going is also not acceptable. I don't know how to determine where to get involved and when to ignore evil behavior, but a version of America First, or anything that smacks of that is not acceptable to me and shouldn't be to you. I know you were a young boy during the Second World War and were aware even then of Hitler's regime--including how some in your family died in concentration camps--and in later years you knew about other atrocities, but you're opting out now is not attractive or, to me, acceptable."

"I love you a lot," I said, "And respect you. I'll have to do some more thinking about this. One thing I won't concede though--all of this is very complicated and can lead to a lot of hypocritical talk and behavior."

April 13, 2017--Bromance Kaput

The New York Times lead story on Wednesday said it all--"Trump's Sudden Shift on Russia Leaves Heads Spinning."

It referred to the White House's accusation Tuesday that Russia is engaged in a cover-up of the Syrian government's deployment of Sarin gas on its civilian population. This accusation was based on an alleged declassified National Security Council report on the attack which also included a rebuttal of Moscow's assertion that insurgents were responsible for the use of chemical weapons. Trump's people claimed that the Syrians and Russians released "false narratives" to mislead the world community about their own complicitous involvement.

What happened to all the flattering references to Vladimir Putin? What happened to the possibility of a new partnership if Donald Trump were elected? Why does it feel as if the Cold War has been resumed? What are all the accusations and saber rattling about?

As in the past I am looking for the simplest explanation that answers the most seemingly-puzzling questions.

Mainly, what's in it for Putin to allow or encourage its Syrian ally to use poison gas and why is Trump so suddenly accusing Putin of being an international war criminal? What happened to the bromance?

To answer these questions requires us to explore each of their likely motives.

For Trump it is to try once more to deflect and overwhelm the on-going investigations about Russia's hacking the 2016 presidential election to undermine Hillary Clinton's campaign in an attempt to help Trump emerge victorious.

Trump's pinprick bombing of a Syrian airfield, his movements on the world stage, especially the recent meeting with the Chinese president Xi and Secretary of State Tillerson's Moscow visit did in fact for a day or two deflect attention from the Trump campaign team's possible collaboration with the Russian hackers.

But Xi is back in China and the focus has shifted again to what did or did not happen during the campaign. Ominous for Trump is the new story that one of his senior foreign policy advisors, Carter Page, with FISA authorization, is being investigated by the F.B.I. to see if he was or is a covert Russian operative. With former NSC director Michael Flynn seeking immunity, the Page investigation is a potential bombshell and it is thus understandable that Trump would want to change the subject. The best way at the moment to change it is to demonologize Putin.

Putin has a much more complex agenda. He is seeking nothing less than the destabilization of the Western world and the resulting return of Russia to its prior Soviet glory. This process is greatly assisted by direct Russian interference in democratic elections from France to Germany to of course the United States.

This process of Sovietization is also facilitated by helping to bring about chaos in Western societies. So it should be no surprise that Putin's Russia would ally itself directly and indirectly with murderous dictators such as Bashar al-Assad, rogue states such as Iran, and terrorist groups including Hezbollah.

Trump wants to survive; Putin wants to dominate. Their tangled relationship serves both of their purposes--Putin having the goods on Trump effectively neutralizes him and Trump as intentional disruptor thrives in a roiled world.

Here, though, is what to worry about--

We do not want to see either of them become desperate. In addition to historical forces we are talking about two very fragile people. Individuals with fragile egos can be particularly dangerous if they have powerful tools or wield catastrophic weapon systems. Obviously, both Putin and Trump do.

Which brings me again to North Korea--

If Trump's survival strategy, his desperate and increasing need to deflect the search for the truth about his possible involvement with the hackers, if that strategy includes looking for opportunities to have the tail wag the dog, the most  fearsome example of that is not more targeted raids on Syria but a nuclear encounter with North Korea. If that were to occur, and I fear we may be headed in that direction, who any longer would be asking what Paul Manafort knew-and-when-did-he-know-it or on which Russia payroll Michael Flynn or Carter Page are to be found.

We would have our eyes on other matters. Mushroom clouds, for example.

September 5, 2013--Smart Piece From a Good Friend

I asked a good friend what he would do about Syria if he were commander-in-chief. As always with him, I got much more than I asked for. And, as usual, it was very smart--

I'm a little light on answers here. I think it is much more complicated now by Obama's red line that it was before. I'm also trying to sort out how to approach this. 

If you look at it from where we are right now, where we have a lot of involvement in the Middle East behind us, even with a lot of shaky results, the choices -- bomb or not -- look one way, within that framework. But if you think that such a level of involvement is too much or otherwise ineffective or ill advised, then you get different questions. What exactly should the US be doing outside its borders, anyway? As far into Middle Eastern affairs as we are now, it is harder to take a step back, much harder than it would have been even 10 years ago. I think Obama has produced a situation surrounding Syria with no really good options. 

My own preferences have long been running toward a much more modest role for the US in world affairs, and I'm very skeptical whether an attack has any real strategic effect in this environment. Chemical weapons are horrible, but I think more and more that we're better served leaving other countries to their own devices and horrors, rather than trying to intervene in conflicts where we can't even identify the players and issues. It's hard to watch a government kill its civilians -- this all started with peaceful, Cairo-style Arab Spring demonstrations -- but I don't feel comfortable with an intervention. Obama hasn't made a strong case for the strategic benefits of intervening or even that it would change anything in Syria. 

Another part of this whole development over many decades of involvement via the Executive branch is the terrible effect this has had on democracy in America. The Executive has seized a lot of power over a long period, and Congress has given away its prerogatives to the Executive with both hands. It can't seem to surrender its powers fast enough, even as many there rattle on and on about the sacred and perfect Constitution we are supposed to have. 

We seem to have built a national security state of huge proportions, capable of wiping out any and all parts of the Bill of Rights without even a challenge, taking us into wars on its own motion. The security/terrorism threat -- back to the Middle East -- has been the basis for changing how this country really works. Start adding some of the developments coming from corporate influence in politics and elsewhere into the mix, and the country starts to look way different from what we want to think. 

The security state has been bankrupting us, hurting the economy, damaging political freedom at home, and now has us trying to figure out whether another Middle East intervention is essential or not. Less empire, more focus on international trade and investment systems, standards issues, resolution of conflict, a better model for social justice at home -- that all seems more productive to me.

September 4, 2013--Cброс (Reset)

As President Obama departs for St. Petersburg for the G-20 summit, the New York Times ran a long piece about the fractious state of U.S.-Russian relations.

As evidence of this, though Obama will be in Russia, there will be no on-on-one with Vladimir Putin because Obama petulantly canceled their meeting after Russia granted temporary asylum to NSA leaker Edward Snowdon.

Talk about diplomatic bumbling.

Early in Obama's first term, with Putin constitutionally not allowed to run for a third consecutive term, he turned the presidency over to the malleable Dmitri Medvedev. To anyone paying even a little attention (and that included me), it was obvious that Putin would be the power behind the presidency during Medvedev's four years, essentially telling him what to say and do.

Obama, probably happy not to have to deal directly with Putin all that much--former KGB operative and unrepentant grumpy cold warrior that he is--thought there was an opportunity to reset the big-powers' relationship through a friendship with Medvedev. They were both lawyers, they were of a post-Cold War generation, and Obama thought that if they managed to hit it off personally they could get a few disarmament agreements signed and the U.S.-Russian relationship, which had cooled down during Putin's first presidency would be reset (in Russian, cброс).

Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was skeptical about things getting better as the result of a warm relationship between Obama and Medvedev, was dispatched to Russia to meet with Medvedev and Putin. To make note of the reseting agenda, she brought along buttons for the two Russian leaders with "reset" embossed on them, except that she didn't get the Russian quite right--there was a typo. I think it read Coрос But, in any case, all things being equal, it was a fun idea.

But all things were not equal. With Putin returned to the presidency there was no avoiding him, and from their first presidential  encounters things went from bad to worse.

Putin was obsessed with the Arab Spring and his feeling that it was all a plot promulgated by the United States to see long-standing dictators such as Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi toppled and even killed with new governments installed that would replicate Western democracies. All of this chaos, Putin perceived, right on Russia's doorsteps, in their one remaining geopolitical sphere of influence.

No one in the Obama administration seemed to realize that from Putin's perspective there was a lot to be upset about. In the North Caucuses Putin and Russia have their own problems with Muslim fundamentalists. Chechnya, for example, has for decades been in violent rebellion. Ever since the break up of the Soviet Union.

Additionally Putin himself was under attack by many from the new Russian technocratic middle class. There were unprecedented street demonstrations in Moscow and elsewhere of a size and force not seen in Russia since the last days of the Czar.

And, closer to the point, czar-like Putin himself was undoubtedly feeling threatened. Perhaps, he claimed, with U.S encouragement (and he blamed America and somehow specifically Hillary Clinton for the street demonstrations) Russia would have it own version of the Arab Spring and Putin would wind up in prison like Hosni Mubarak.

So should it have been any wonder to Barak Obama that Putin would be more interested in potentially saving his own skin than agreeing to another nuclear weapons treaty?

Is it, should it have been a surprise to Obama and his foreign policy team that Putin would ask every time he met with a U.S. official, including the secretary of state and the president himself, that he would insist on asking when America was going to bomb Syria?

U.S officials assured him that we wouldn't be doing that. That with our reset Russian friends we had no intention of getting involved militarily with their ally, Syria.

Oh really.

So we're back to a version of the Cold War and according to wise heads such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, things in Syria are looking ominously like Eastern Europe in 1914.

Zbig may be right; he may be overreacting. But I know that if he were a member of the Obama team (and it's too bad he isn't) we wouldn't be conducting foreign policy with Cброс buttons.