Stop The Spirit Of Zossen

The Imperial City And The World

You are here: Home / Archives for Foreign Policy

McCain And The IRI: It’s All About Relationships, Baybee (slight update)

By 4 Comments

What to say, what to say? How odd to see the NY Times write up McCain and the International Republican Institute (IRI). Not that McCain isn’t riding IRI as a presidential platform. When he arrived at IRI and began his purge many of us at the time believed that was the whole point. A signal about his ambitions.

Another strobe light flashing his leaning over car windows working the posh but more discrete street corners of Vice City. Great mental imagery. And on top Charlie Black et al.

The netroots focused a while ago on his use of IRI for ‘soft’ participation in the Imperial City money machine. A universe away from blatant influence peddling or coercive punishment ala the Hammer. But in politics, you know what they say, when you are explaining you are losing.

Still, festooning medals on the corporate dime? Informational discourse only in the most debased QVC-esque universe. Which is what D.C. is. *Our* kvetch is the NYT ignores or obscures the reality of our political economy. Lobbying and suborning virginal governance via influence are not so simple. Or always the same.

The Times’ justified reply? ‘Hey, Stiftung, it’s not our job to make every article a precis for political science 405.’ So let’s skip all that. And just drill down to the fun stuff.

[Read more…]

Fears Of The Withdrawal Method, Performance Anxiety: The New Age Of Levitra Foreign Policy

By 2 Comments

________________________

Un homme: Est-ce que nous sommes fou?

Autre homme: Oh, mais la philosophie de Condi est plus intéressante que la philosophie existentialiste Obama et les 300! Ils veulent défaite! Nous serons là pour mille ans! Maliki est comme une jeune vierge attendant d’être séduit . . . Tu es d’accord, n’est-ce pas?

Homme: Quel crétin! Retourne à tes jeux fantastique . . .

Autre Homme: Hey, you sound French !

Birds Of A Different Feather . . .

By 9 Comments

Not to belabor the earlier NRO item, but U.S. News fleshes out U.S. vulnerability/over-reliance on overhead constellations. That China or any Rising/Non-Status Quo power (including now Russia) sees U.S. over-dependence here as a weakness for exploiting in an asymmetrical, cost-effective way is a no brainer.

It’s somewhat disappointing that senior people in OSD understood this years ago. They wanted to counter the vulnerability by moving the U.S. away from a few big, super expensive satellites to smaller, cheaper micro or even pico satellites. They can be spared and replaced by cheap and expendable launch vehicles. Long story short, that didn’t happen as envisioned. One direct report to Rummy told the Stiftung (who was not an AgitProp agent/Neocon/Cheney stooge) the simple ugly truth — the U.S. industrial base largely has forgotten how to build the requisite rockets well and economically. Moreover, the industry itself has little incentive to innovate and create smaller, cheaper satellites — the big birds make alot of money for them when they go up.

__________

We’re not sure what we can contribute to the NIE summary meme bubble at this point. The NIE summary is no longer actually a real res (thing), nor is the NIE process and history of the least consequence. The posturing and talking points are the only thing real now. We just repeat again our profound unease that McConnell and Kerr have opted to insert themselves directly into the political process. Precedents matter.

Anyone who has read this blog/its predecessor at STSOZ 1.0 know our passionate alarm and disdain for the EOVP (Executive Office of the Vice President) and Necons’ assault on the Agency. (For decades we have argued that the Agency was nonetheless in need of non-ideological reform). The fact that Cheney et al. waged a ruthless and ideological war against the Community for policy reasons does not in the Stiftung’s view excuse the Community to encroach on policy making turf themselves. Intelligence is NOT policy. And should NOT be so regardless of which regime is in charge.

Congress has dropped that ball re playing their Constitutional role and enabled and abetted the Warlord and Cheney. Nor is it clear that Rockefeller in particular in the Senate Intel Committee (SSCI) has the proper Will and sense of equality to be effective. The solution to the Warlord and Cheney is not to mimic them but to restore the proper function of government that they suborned.

A long way of saying that unless something significant — which is certainly not impossible — emerges, we do not anticipate offering much here again on the NIE brouhaha. We just can’t summon the energy to care what Cliff May or any of them spout.

(We’re still mulling the comments here earlier about the undeniable American mass embrace of super heroes, sorcery/magic and the hyper mythic. It’s certainly an interesting divergence from the post-Vietnam gritty realism of the then new generation of directors).

Popular (updated)

By 48 Comments

Why is Putinism so popular (over there and with Pat Buchanan)? Sergei Kovalev tries to explain and offers 5 possible reasons.

We also didn’t anticipate the high level of corruption in Yeltsin’s government from top to bottom, or the merging of organized crime and business in both the state and private sectors. Nor did anyone anticipate the degree to which the government would engage in criminal behavior; nor the “delays” for months at a time in paying salaries and pensions. Nor so much else! We could not imagine that some six to eight years later the words “democracy,” “pluralism,” “multiparty system,” and “human rights” would be used as obscenities by Russians.

In August 1991, who could have foreseen that by December 31, 1999, a broken, prematurely decrepit Yeltsin would say farewell and ask his country’s forgiveness in his New Year’s address and that his office would soon be occupied by a product of the very secret services that Yeltsin and the other “victors” of August 21, 1991, saw as the symbol and the center of absolute evil? And that the entire country, except for a handful of intellectuals and democratic politicians, would applaud this turn of events?

It’s interesting that he makes little mention of the vast inflow of wealth into Russia via oil revenues; the Warlord’s saber rattling only serves to make the Russians richer. Moscow, as you may know, Dear Reader, has supplanted Tokyo as the world’s most expensive city. A stunning development when one considers what the city was like even in the late 1990s. In fact, the grim old Intourist hotel just a couple of blocks from the Kremlin that served as a familiar coral for foreign visitors (and a convenient place to monitor them, etc.) is now becoming the most expensive and decadently luxury hotel in the world as well.

We are also struck at how little mention is given to U.S. actions — from the halting and inept ‘advisory role’ in the privatization scams that allowed massive corruption to create overnight billionaires to overt (ill-advised) U.S. efforts at geopolitical encirclement in the ex-Soviet Union ‘near abroad’ in Ukraine, the ‘Stans and Georgia. In the latter case, such efforts, no matter how papered-over by claims of being by so-called ‘velvet revolutions’ would only fuel what used to be called Great Russian Chauvanism or even Revanchism. Americans may also not understand how the average Russian feels so little sympathy for those instant billionaires — and why Putin’s campaign against them has essentially a populist vibe to it on the ‘street.’

We could go on at some length about Kovalev’s five points. Perhaps its better to see what you think.
(The BBC notes that the only viable electoral opposition to Putin isn’t viable.)

Amphibian Amnesia

By 43 Comments

Geopolitical realities continue inexorably regardless of this regime’s defiant ignorance. The disconnect between those realities and American preparations continues to widen at an alarming rate. William Lind at least corrects Robert Kaplan’s navalist hyperbole in November’s Atlantic Monthly. Lind observes:

Sure, but can it perform brown water missions that we need?

We do not need naval supremacy because, as Kaplan writes, “’Regular wars’ between major states could be as frequent in the 21st century as they were in the 20th.” If states are so foolish as to fight “regular wars,” they will find most are won by non-state, Fourth Generation elements as defeated (and sometimes victorious) states disintegrate.

Rather, we need naval supremacy because in a world where the state is weakening, water, and transport by water, grow in importance. People today think of land uniting and water dividing, but that became true only recently, with the rise of the state and the development of railways (which can only function in the safety and order created by states). From the dawn of river and sea-faring until the mid-19th century, water united and land divided. It was easier, safer, cheaper and faster to move goods and people by water than by land.

So it will be again in a 21st century dominated by Fourth Generation war and declining or disappearing states. Already, in places such as the Congo, the only way to move is on the rivers. A country that can control waterways anywhere in the world will have a great strategic advantage. Given our maritime geography and our long and proud naval tradition, that country should be the United States.

Unfortunately, we are not developing the naval capabilities we need to do that. The reason shows once again the importance of military theory. The U.S. Navy has to choose between two naval theorists, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan and Sir Julian Corbett, and it has chosen wrongly.

[Read more…]