Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Military Page 15 of 16

Why I’m Against Current Wars—and Most Foreseeable Wars, Too

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On January 12, 2011

87 Comments

No, I’m not against all wars.  But I’m against the Afghan war, the “secret” war in Yemen, the occupation of Iraq, and any war with Iran under any circumstances I can imagine.

Why? Because:

  1. They are moronic (in the sense that they cannot be “won” and I oppose unwinnable wars);
  2. The US is in steep decline in an economic/industrial sense and needs to spend its money on other things.

As noted, I’m not opposed to all wars.  Hell I even supported the Afghan war up to the point where it became clear that it was destabilizing Pakistan, polls of Afghans indicated they wanted us out, and it become obvious it couldn’t be “won” in any meaningful sense.

Anyone who supports the current wars is not someone I have much time for, I’m afraid.  I regard them as fundamentally stupid wars and significantly immoral to boot, plus on pragmatic terms I believe they are doing more harm than good to the US, not just economically, but in terms of real security and in terms of the erosion of civil liberties.  States at permanent war cannot and do not maintain their liberties.  Permanent occupations are particularly corrupting and badly damage the real war fighting capacity of the armies doing them (see Army, Israeli).

Anyone who’s in favour of imperial wars and permanent war can’t really be on the left in any meaningful fashion, because the cost of permanent war is:

  • every domestic priority that left wingers claim to care about
  • plus the gutting of civil liberties in the core.

To a liberal, military spending is a necessary evil, and as such you do only as much as is necessary to:

  • actually defend the country. (I.e., hardly any.  Who is going to invade the US?)
  • hold open necessary trade lanes. (I.e., the navy would be smaller than it is now and differently organized, but it would be the primary US military arm.)

And that’s about it.  Every dollar spent on the military is not spent on actual economically productive activity. Yes, there are some exceptions, but there are other ways to do R&D spending, and more and more military R&D is not applicable to civilian matters.

(I’m sure Vladimir Putin laughs himself sick every night that the US pays him off to help America stay in Afghanistan.  The irony must be one of the great joys of his life.)

In terms of dependence on foreign commodities, the progressive solution is to move the energy basis of the US economy off of oil and onto a basis which is much more domestically available (and built).  That way you don’t need to be able to knock around middle eastern nations.

While many lefties wouldn’t agree with me, I would also move to mandatory service, everyone serving 2 to 4 years.  Most wouldn’t serve in the military, but every male and any woman who wants it would get military training. A militarily trained population tends to concentrate the minds of politicians and other elites and I also believe that the military should be much more representative of the population as a whole, for a variety of reasons.

What do you do with all those people in national service?  Rebuild the country: teach them skills and put them to work on broadband, infrastructure of various kinds, refitting all buildings for energy efficiency, etc…  Why?  Well, because that makes the country more secure and safer by reducing dependence on foreign oil, etc… (Well, that’s one reason.)

In my opinion anyone who’s for the current war is delusional or attached to the military industrial complex and willing to betray their country’s real interests for money.  The US cannot afford war.  Period. To be for war right now is to be for the ruin of America.

China’s entire military budget about equal to US spy spending

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On October 28, 2010

6 Comments

China’s 2010 military budget? About 78 billion.

US’s 2010 spy budget?  About 80 billion.

Both China and the US are on unsustainable trajectories, but the Chinese are betting the US hits the wall first.  I’m betting they’re right.

War on Iran?

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On July 16, 2010

19 Comments

Pat Lang seems to think so. This may be a case of cry wolf.  No one believes it anymore, because it hasn’t happened despite warnings yet.

But remember, when the boy cried wolf the second time there was a wolf.

We’ll see.

UNIFIL presence in Lebanon will increase civilian casualties

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On July 7, 2010

Intentional, or a side effect?

In the last war, much of the fighting took place on open scrubland, Merli said. But the deployment of United Nations forces in southern Lebanon had forced Hezbollah into built up areas where troops from the international UNIFIL force have no authority.

Not good.  Note that Hezbollah fought outside built up areas for military reasons: they felt they were more effective there, because outside of population centers they were also away from informants.  UNIFIL’s mission means the next war will be fought in population centers.

Somehow that does not seem to be something a UN peacekeeping operation should be ensuring.

American War Economics 101

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On July 4, 2010

25 Comments

I recently wrote that Obama has chosen to stay in Afghanistan because war spending is one of the only reliable forms of stimulus he has. I am baffled by many of the responses to that article. What do readers think would happen to the US economy if all that spending stopped and wasn’t replaced by anything?

Communist Dictatorship China Reaffirms It Will Never Do a Nuclear First Strike, Unlike US

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On April 24, 2010

6 Comments

Who are the bad guys, again?

Retired People’s Liberation Army Major General Xu Guangyu said in the newspaper commentary that China wanted a minimal nuclear deterrent and would avoid any arms race. “China resolutely adheres to a defensive nuclear strategy, and has always adhered to a policy that it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances,” wrote Xu

Meanwhile, the US…

The Barack Obama administration’s declaration in its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that it is reserving the right to use nuclear weapons against Iran represents a new element in a strategy of persuading Tehran that an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites is a serious possibility if Iran does not bow to the demand that it cease uranium enrichment.

Although administration officials have carefully refrained from drawing any direct connection between the new nuclear option and the Israeli threat, the NPR broadens the range of contingencies in which nuclear weapons might play a role so as to include an Iranian military response to an Israeli attack.

A war involving Iran that begins with an Israeli attack is the only plausible scenario that would fit the category of contingencies in the document.

The NPR describes the role of U.S. nuclear weapons in those contingencies as a “deterrent”. A strategy of exploiting the Israeli threat to attack Iran would seek to deter an Iranian response to such an attack and thus make it more plausible.

In other words, if Israel attacks Iran, the US says it might nuke Iran if Iran strikes back after an Israeli attacks.

Say what?  Oh, I see “You’re going to let my friend Israel beat the shit out of you, or I’m going to pull the trigger of this gun I have pointed at your head.  Because you’re a bad country, and Israel and the US are the good guys.”

Gee, the idea of those crazy Iranians getting nukes seems so much scarier than the US having them, doesn’t it?

Meanwhile, in other news, the US locks up more of its own people than China, despite having a population which is one quarter of China’s.

A force for peace, and the home of the free, indeed.

Enough BS About “I can’t judge because I’ve never been a soldier”

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On April 7, 2010

23 Comments

Seriously, Sean-Paul’s my friend, but this sort of thing (which is hardly unique to him) in reference to the video of the killing of reporters and other civilians is waffling of the highest order:

As for the actions of the soldiers? At first, I wasn’t sure how to feel, but I know enough about war to know I know nothing of war, so I reserve judgment. Alas, I can’t help but to think that the rules of engagement were violated here in some fashion. But again, I cannot say with any certainty and so withhold judgment.

Waffle irons have nothing on this.

No, the fact that you haven’t been to war doesn’t mean you can’t judge, and especially the fact that you aren’t a civilian doesn’t mean you can’t judge.   This constant mantra of “oh, the troops aren’t to blame” excuses acts of barbarity.

And as a civilian, it’s in your best interest to not brush aside acts of barbarity by militaries.

Somehow the argument “I don’t understand” never gets applied in reverse.  It gets applied to American soldiers, but not to say, Taliban or al-Qaeda fighters.  They commit atrocities and we have no hesitation in condemning them.

Imagine you did understand.  What possible reason could these soldiers have for their actions which would excuse them?  That they’re under pressure?  So what?  That may make it understandable, it doesn’t make it excusable.  Any more than if I think I understand why some terrorist kills a bunch of civilians, that understanding makes it acceptable.

The knee-jerk “support the troops! Never say anything bad about our boys” stuff is noxious.  A proper functioning military in a civilized society court-martials people who do things like this.

And this is not an isolated incident.  As Siun notes:

At the time the New York Times reported that “the military has paid more than $32 million to Iraqi and Afghan civilians for noncombat-related killings, injuries and property damage, an Army spokeswoman said. That figure does not include condolence payments made at a unit commander’s discretion.” And given that the average payment for a dead adult civilian was $3,000, you begin to get some sense of the scale of devastation we have brought to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.

You do the math…  And that’s just deaths where they felt they had to pay someone off, where payments are on the record.

This is military policy.  The reason it was covered up is that it’s not an aberation, it’s policy.  As Greenwald notes, this is what the US military does. The rot goes all the way to the top.

And no, “following orders” is not an excuse.

Enough waffling.  What happened in that video was wrong.  What’s even worse is that there’s no reason to believe it was an isolated incident.

The Modern American Way

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On February 22, 2010

12 Comments

Let’s talk about the American way in the context of the assassination strategy used against the Taliban, for the last 8 years.

First, a simple fact: this strategy hasn’t worked worth a damn against the Taliban. They’re winning, the US is losing.

The argument for it would be that killing leaders messes up the Taliban. This is marginally true at best.  Loss of a leader may cause a slight delay and occasional fights within the Taliban, but it doesn’t stop them from getting stronger and continuing to win.

Americans think that good leaders are hard to come by because modern America produces bad leaders regularly, and rarely produces even marginally competent leaders.

Or, to be more accurate, average leaders are not sufficient to make anything in America work because America is set up to force people to do the wrong thing and people who care about doing the right thing are systematically kept out and forced out if they make it in.

The Taliban doesn’t need brilliant leaders, all it needs is leaders able to execute its strategy, and its’ strategy is simple enough that your average leader can implement it, whereas the US strategy couldn’t be executed by a Napoleon.

Killing leaders at the cost of bombing weddings and funerals and killing civilians does not work in the context of counter-insurgency unless your strategy is scorched earth, which the US’s is not. There is also an opportunity cost to anys treategy.

This is the same strategy the Israelis have used for decades against the Palestinians and Hezbollah

You’ll notice that the problem has not gone away.

Americans think leaders matter far more than they actually do. In the context of an actual ideological movement with substantial popular support, there’s always another one. And, in fact, he’s somewhat more likely to be competent than whoever he replaced.

Take a look at the evolution of Hezbollah’s leadership to see how this works. The leadership keeps getting more competent, not less competent, as does the organization. The Israelis act as a nice Darwinian force, making sure the most able wind up on top and that strategies which don’t work end, because the people executing them die. Likewise the Taliban is more deadly now than it was 2 years ago, 2 years ago it was more deadly than 2 years before that, and so forth.

The war should have ended years ago, and the assassination strategy is not producing results.

But by all means, keep trying a strategy which hasn’t worked for 8 years. It’s the American way, if at first, second, third, fourth, tenth a strategy doesn’t work—do it harder. Doesn’t matter whether it’s taxes, warmaking, healthcare or anything else: the easy stupid way is always the right way, even after it hasn’t worked, over and over again.

Wonderful.

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