Strategy and violence

[posttrainwreck]

That's something that really grabs my attention. Strategy. It doesn't matter if you agree with the goal of a strategy, it's still interesting to examine and discuss how that goal is being achieved. And strategy is easier to look at objectively, because even if you don't like a particular "team," you can still appreciate the effectiveness of their

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pineapples

[posttrainwreck]

2. Conventional war is one thing, like when you have two states that agree to a general code of conduct. Then, when a people is conquered they can be brought to see the errors of their ways because they were just following orders, like the Allies defeating the Axis in WWII. When the situation is a clash of military industrial power, then you can only hope to prevent the situation (like caring for the German people after WWI instead of demanding reparations and brewing the conditions for another war) or hit them first and hit them hardest.

In guerrilla war you only have a scattered network of weapons caches and some rogues willing to die for your cause but you're up against an extremely powerful military. So you use their strength against them. I'm not trying to say that anyone is right or wrong, I just think that Israel is falling into a trap where the harder they fight, the deeper they will sink. Just as the only military solution to the Vietnam war could only have been to flatten the entire country (instead of just some of it), so to will Israel find that the only military solution to their problem is unthinkable and impossible.

Vietnam is a good example of the long term problems that unnecessary violence causes for another reason. At the end of WWII, the Vietnamese had successfully fought off the Japanese after decades of colonial French rule and Chinese rule for centuries before that. But after some time, the French tried to retake Vietnam. When the U.S. refused to help because we believed Vietnam belonged rightfully to the French and not the Vietnamese, they turned to China for help. It's possible that if we had made a clear and consistent statement that countries have the right to rule themselves, then we wouldn't have to wonder if we should have hit them harder, and a huge amount of suffering would be avoided. Instead we did the opposite, we helped France as much as we could, and when even they had given up, we pushed on. All of our Agent Orange, helicopters, fighter jets, spy planes, artillery, and gun boats were no match for their tactics of aggravating disproportionate responses in order to increase membership and wear us out. If we had kept trying to hit them harder, we only would have had more problems like the Soviets had with Afghanistan.

As for other conflicts in the world, there are more effective ways to get at the roots. Ending the prohibition on Alcohol in the U.S. removed the biggest source of profit for our most legendary criminals, and so would ending the prohibition on drugs slash the income of Latin American drug cartels. Military peace actions have had some success and there are clearly occasions where these are merited, like Darfur. But cutting off Mugabe's corporate funding and allowing the results of a free election to be respected would be far more effective than any military action in Zimbabwe. In Burma, we should lift all our sanctions since they are useless as long as China gives them aid: we can have more of an effect on them as a trading partner than an enemy. You don't fight a fire with more fire, you use water.

1. I found your blog by following the Explore LJ - news and politics link, and I appreciated your interest and opinions on the world, though I don't always agree

Re: pineapples

[spikeyapples]

i respect what you say, but a) mugabe and the likes do not seem to mind in the least, when their corporate profits are cut(he, lukashenko, and others maybe take little sighs time to time, due to being unable to visit Paris or London, but they still opress their people with gusto), b) prohibition was itself a forceful measure, and in that sense i'd precisely compare it to removal of Saddam and other such actions, c)i am to a point surprised actually, how well did the 'surge' in Iraq go, because we somehow managed to kick the terrorists' butts there, while still wearing kidgloves, which shows that even such a vicious and smart enemy CAN be defeated; d) I believe Vietnamese communists had killed way more people both before and after our invasion, and unlike our actions, directed at particular places presumed to harbor enemy, they carried out planned policies of elimination of whole social strata, especially of intellectuals, in particular school teachers, and affluent and mid-leve farmers-- that is, engaged in open genocide, not unlike that of nazis and commies. and let's not forget that Vietnamese people had chance to govern themselves, for the entity we sided with was Republic of Vietnam, which at least was more legitimate than North communist regime, which by the way, was also a Soviet puppet. honestly, even though i cringe when people attack the pacifist hippie culture, and consider myself a sort of latent hippie:), but the peace-movement of the 60-70s came at the most inopportune historical time. their songs of protest should've been rather directed at what the enmy was doing, than our military-- but what happened, happened. this is precisely what we're standing for: people's right to diagree, dissent, even protest, and what we're trying to defend and spread around the world.
speaking of Darfur, it doesn't seem to me much has been achieved there. I am all hands for UN peacekeeping, but experience shows exactly that moving in UN, EU, AU and other such forces works only AFTER full military action-- take South Lebanon(ISraeli pounding and subsequent agreement with italo-french force being stationed there), Bosnia and Kosovo, some African countries..
as for China, i believe it was a mistake for Nixon&Kissinger to normalize relations with'em. had we held out for a few more years, communist regime might fall and we'd have a much friendlier, richer, economically yet more astute, politically democratic and internationally respectable China-- instead, we threw another enemy a lifeline, endorsed and empowered it, and have to deal with it today. yes, sanctions may not always work, or take too long to work, but their removal and endorsement of such regimes is even worse: i can;t think of one case when the West was conciliatory to a regime like that, and true change, reform and democratixation came as a result of it. if all sanctions are lifted from Burma, all it will do is leave the generals more in power, and the people in total despair more decades more. you can believe me, as i grew up in USSR: people there respected Reagan and Thatcher types much more, than Carter or other 'dovish' western leaders. because when you're essentially a hostage of an opressive regime, seeing someone take on it at least makes you feel like the world minds your plight; while seeing people 'befriend' yopur oppressors is disheartening. if tough stance worked with USSR, why couldn't it work with China or Burma? the alternative, meanwhile, is just a waist of time. imho :)

Re: pineapples

[posttrainwreck]

Mugabe: Billionair Nicholas Van Hoogstraten, the largest landowner in Zimbabwe, has been personally propping up the Mugabe regime for quite a while. As economic pressures are already putting the endurance of his reign into question, coupled with epidemics and starvation, I would bet that he will not last another 5 years. If a benevolent world policeman were to skillfully use military force to eject him now, there's no telling what would happen to fill the void left by chaos. But of course, every case is different.

Look at Cuba. They had just finished a very long war of independence from the Spanish, but because Hearst and the newspapers decided it was a mine that sunk the USS Main instead of merely a bad boiler, we also went to war with Spain and felt entitled to have a say in Cuba's future. Popular opinion was that they were not capable of self rule, so we installed a brutish dictator. Since his overthrow we have maintained a hostile and absolute embargo, but this constant presence of the U.S. as an easily identifiable enemy has given Castro's permanent revolution strength and resilience. On the other hand, in Vietnam, we normalized relations, traded with them, allowed them exposure to our cultural products, and eventually have become the ally that we couldn't buy with 100,000 French deaths and 60,000 U.S. deaths. I think this shows how a tough stance, like our longstanding position in regards to Cuba and our original method of dealing with Vietnam, does not work.

Not to say that "carrying a big stick" and being willing to use it when necessary is never the best option, but the carrot is costly in lives, treasure and unforeseen consequences. In regards to the USSR, it was not the accelerated arms race or Star Wars that caused the implosion (since they could just claim to have built more weapons) as much as it was the inherent inefficiency of their system and inability to handle the shocks of Chernobyl and their decade-long war in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is another example of a "tough stance" causing more trouble than it starts. When Carter began covert funding of Afghan rebels to give the Soviets "their own Vietnam," (yes, Carter; I credit him with "winning" the Cold War - all Reagan did was say "tear down this wall!") we essentially built the very terrorist networks that we're now fighting. Just like when we decided we should take a tough stance against Iran by empowering Saddam by giving him the weapons he then used to try and wipe out the Kurds. I'll grant that removing Saddam COULD have worked if we had adequate post-war planning and that we should have provided material support of the anti-Baathist uprising that Bush Sr. called for, but Saddam wouldn't have even been a problem in the first place if we had rejected interventionist and colonialist/imperialist attitudes and encouraged a people's right to self rule.

I believe it is the inconsistency of our message in this regard that makes it difficult for the world community to apply meaningful pressure on countries like China for human rights violations and their treatment of Tibet. If we treated international courts with respect and held ourselves to the same standards we expect of other nations, then terrible one-sided conflicts like Chechnya and Tibet would be impossible. Anyway, we don't have the population or the resources to "play tough" with China, and it's more likely that capitalism will democratize them, as is already happening in many ways. We "won" the Cold War with the USSR because they collapsed under their own weight of corruption and unpaid veterans, but now it's more likely that we would do the same if we tried to enter in a new cold war with China, which is much more efficient and durable of a country.

Re: pineapples

[spikeyapples]

well, i respectfully disagree with just about all you said:) Zimbabwe-- why wait 5 years, and who knows if they won;t keep this already half-corpse artificially alive for another 50, isntead, make hin a Zombie president or something-- if he can be removed sooner, and by the way, none other than Bishop Tutu has called on the wrold to do that? 5 more years of Mugabe, and the whole nation will die of AIDS, cholera and starvation. Cuba? the sanctions have many holes; conservatives claim that JFK, far from being truly committed to helping anti-Castro insurgents, essentially betrayed them; all other countries of New World, and Europe too, cave in to crazes of Fidel, rather than stand up to him, together with the US, in which case he'd feel that the free world is united in its moral opposition to him, and hence-- the refugee crises(remember when some folks used to hide in Spanish and other embasies i Cuba, and ulitmately they were handed over back to Castro regime?)-- so one might say again, that the problem's not sanctions, but lack thereof. Vietnam? i don't see much political reform there, and without political liberalization, i't very easy to roll economic reforms back-- just look at the Soviet NEP of 1920s. same with China, which by the way, may see weakening of the commie regime just this year, precisely due to world economic slump. see, I think economic freedom without political one is frail and revwersible, and that's not good for anybody, in the end. So we might possibly see at least some 'evening of the playfield' in the US-China relations. as for Afghanistan, again had Russians not invaded, we wouldn't have to back or create 'terror network'. let me assure you, that under Soviet rule, things in that country would be even horribler than they turned out under Taliban, or even under current US-NATO occupation. do difficulties of doing the right thing and standing up to tyrants mean that we should abandon it at all, and leave nation after nation up to murderers? i don't think so. it's ultimately in our own interest, to support push for freedom, which surely exists out there, in all parts of world, and the sooner we do that in each particular case, the easier it will be. but in any case, better late than never. yes, the West has been inconsistent in sharing it's democratic 'know-how' with many nations, but only because of totally reasonable fear of islamists, commies and other thugs taking advantage of democratic procedures. yet, look at what just happened in Iraq-- peaceful elections, reportedly secular-leaning outcome, in the very place that was just a couple years ago pompously called 'fiasco of American foreing policy"! 'violence' has worked there, as it has in Serbia, as it has in WW2 germany, Italy and Japan. better late than never, my friend. and better early than late.
yes, US does things like Abu-Ghraib or Guantanamo, but it investigates and punishes the guilty on its own side, and the fact is, it voluntarily operates under extremely thorough supervision. for my money, we accord too much, not too little respect to international opinion and institutions. had Germany, France and Turkey been on board with us in the Iraq war, the would've never even been such dire turn of events like 3-4 years ago, in the first place. maybe its 'the world' that needs to get better what America's doing, and give it more respect, and not vice versa?
on people's right to self-rule, it seems to me we did exactly that in Iraq, removing a bloody thug and letting them choose their own leaders. we did exactly that in Kosovo, in Bosnia, in Somalia. even in Cuba, we left when they asked, and didn't keep Fidel originally from taking power, moreover that as I understand, he didn't proclaim his anti-americanism until after revolution. even in Vietnam, who do you think the Viets had better chances of having true self-rule under: US-backed South regime, or the Communist, USSR-puppeted North? by the way, I believe US had suggested France to allow Vietnam independece back in 1940s, they didn't listen. ah, those French: well-intended, but misguided and often plain screwd-up. we wound up taking the brunt of their mistakes' consequences there.

Re: pineapples

[spikeyapples]

as for who won cold war, I think even if one might say that USSR's own flaws did it in, without challenging that system to show its true strength and colors, it wouldn do itself in so soon. its agony would've lasted longer, possibly taking more lives along the way, and almost certainly keeping me from even entering this country in mid-90s. for that alone, i rather credit Ronnie and not Jimmy :) although, admittedly, how much benefit has America reaped from personally my arrival, is of much debate :)) sprry for such a lengthy reply, that didn't even fit into one post. i am not the most laconic speaker, and besides, conversing with you is a pleasure that begs being prolonged as much as possible:)