Back in America, Back in Iraq

Today the Washington Post printed an opinion piece by an American officer in charge of interrogations in Iraq.

Matthew Alexander (a nom-de-plume for this homme-de-guerre) has conducted more than 300 and overseen more than 1,000 interrogations. His experience says: Abide by the U.S. Army Field Manual and the spirit of American freedom. Do not torture. We found Abu Musab al-Zarqawi this way, it works.

But his experience is falling on deaf ears and obstructive bureaucracy. Top brass at the Pentagon and in Baghdad is not in the mood for ’soft’ interrogation.

Why? Because they are neo-conservative Bush Doctrine supporters? I suppose we will find out once the Obama administration takes the reins. Because they have existed in and propagate a culture based on aggression and the ability to dole out violence? Perhaps, but Mr. Alexander  exists in the same culture and is not so bent on using torture. While we debate the morality and motivations for torture, we are losing ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sir Janus previously addressed Victor Davis Hanson’s opinion that the Western war machine works because democracy is responsive to the public. But now we see the inevitable discord between ideal and reality: we espouse freedom, we bring torture.  Should we despise and denegrate our nation and our ideals because we can not live up to them?

I think not. Our ideals are still intact. We will probably never fully live up to them. We probably never have. Of course, we have our beautiful and ugly aspects. The liberty of the Constitution, the inhumanity of the Three-Fifths Compromise. The success of western expansion, the blood of native Americans and Mexicans. The triumph of the Second World War, the black mark of Japanese detention camps.

But neither should the knowledge that we will always fail our highest principles lull us into complacency. Are our leaders, in Congress, in the Supreme Court, in the White House, in the Pentagon – are they responsive to cries for justice? Will they stop torture, not only because it is ineffective but because it is wrong? Can we culturally and ideologically triumph over terrorism if we indulge in barbaric and anti-American practices? This antithesis between American freedom and American torture can only co-exist for so long before it mars our memory of this war, and more immediately hinders our ability to defeat Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

The Bush Legacy

Anytime a President is about to do something you do not like, but you are not going to stop him from doing it, all you have to do is say that “history will regard him as the worst president ever.” Let us lay aside the fact that when people say this, they usually mean “public opinion” and not “history.” And by “public opinion” they mean their opinion, which is usually the only one that they care about anyway.

And we have repeated this process enough times from, say, John Adams onwards that the moniker has stuck at least once. To tell you the truth about it, I like the idea that history will take revenge on someone’s reputation after they have shed this mortal coil. But I am not naive enough to think that history always gets it right, or that it even matters who reigns supreme in the kingdom of worst presidents.

Yet, as we hurtle shakily towards the 20th of January, we may find ourselves with boiling blood and steam pumping out of our ears when we think about the past eight years of Bush administration. I need not remind you, faithful Dino-Readers, of our recent history in the Middle East, in New Orleans, in sub-prime mortgage regulation. Many of us feel secure, now, in the notion that finally the title will stick and Mr. Bush will become the worst president in all of history.

When lo and behold, rearing its ugly head into our airspace, comes this opinion piece by Prof. Stanley Fish, currently Professor of Humanities and Professor of Law at Florida International University, as well as Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Disregarding Prof. Fish’s critical lack of adherence to any logical system of thought in his postmodernist scholarship, could he be right that George W. Bush will wiggle his way into our hearts when we no longer feel obligated to hold him responsible (for the many things in which we were complicit)?

Unfortunately, I think the answer is yes. Consider it a reversal of what happened to Harry S. Truman and Winston Churchill. They, along with Franklin D. Roosevelt, are the greatest war-time politicians of the 20th century (and perhaps of all time – only being rivaled by Abraham Lincoln, at least on this side of the Atlantic). They enjoyed supreme unity amongst their fellow-citizens during the war, but once there was peace they quickly found themselves out of jobs. Come to think of it, the same thing happened to old Themistokles – he rose to prominence on his naval construction program platform, and after the navy won the Persian War he quickly fell from favor and eventually resettled in Persia itself (imagine if the old Bulldog bought a condo in Stalingrad!). They were good wartime leaders, and once their nations had used them for that, they were out the door before you could muster a “blood, sweat, and tears” speech.

Now George Bush will leave office in the wake of strong criticism during the entrenched battle that was his administration. Without any responsibility, and therefore no reason to blame him for anything, we may yet embrace him as that funny sounding Texan with the boyish swagger. Maybe Prof. Fish will be proven wrong and our disgust for Mr. Bush will remain. But the cogs of history are slow to work, slow to judge: the machinations of the courtroom of history click and whistle and belch up hot air for much time before a verdict, if ever, is handed down from the ivory tower jury.

1914 –> 2008

I am surely not the first to compare the recent conflict in Georgia to the Balkans in 1914, where two bullets from Gavrilo Princip’s revolver started the First World War. Mr. Putin clearly has dreams of a new Russian Empire dancing in his head. If he does not, his strongly nationalist attitudes, couched in nineteenth-century concepts, and the tsar-esque executive powers he has arrogated to himself certainly give a reasonable facsimile. Georgia has its own strongly nationalist president, Mr. Mikheil Saakashvili, who is intent on seeing the whole of Georgia – including breakaway provinces South Ossetia and Abkhazia – under Georgian control.

In order to reassert Georgian control of the de facto independent region, Mr. Saakashvili ordered Georgian troops into South Ossetia after midnight, 8 August. The Russian Federation moved to protect pro-Russian South Ossetia, whose official languages include Russian and whose currency is the Russian Ruble.

On 25 July 1914, Russia became the first nation to mobilize in what would become the First World War. Tsar Nicholas II moved to protect his sphere of influence in the Balkans, which he believed was strengthened by an ethnic bond between South Slavs (Yugo-Slavs) in Serbia and Slavs in Russia, after Austria-Hungary demanded that Serbia severely punish the conspirators of the 28 June assassination of the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and suppress all nationalist elements of its government.

The analogy becomes more acute when it is considered how much worse the situation could have been. Georgia has been campaigning for NATO membership for some time. If that had been granted before recent hostilities, the United States would have been legally obligated to give military aid to Georgia. However, a Georgian farmer seems to grasp with relative clarity the moral and political obligation that the United States already has to Georgia.

Spheres of influence and complex alliances formed several automatic systems of defense in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe. Russian defeat at the hands of the Japanese in 1905 forced Russia to allow Japanese influence in southern Manchuria and China, and to grant Britain (Japan’s supporter) expansion of its sphere of influence in Afghanistan, in order to maintain its own influence over northern Manchuria and parts of Mongolia. This also fostered anti-American feeling in Russia, whose Far Eastern foreign policy aimed at minimizing the number of other nations with a foothold in China. With Russian potency in the Far East somewhat neutralized, Russia renewed interest in the Balkans, becoming the patron state of Serbia and nurturing Slavic nationalist sentiments. Austria-Hungary similarly supported Bulgaria. Meanwhile, in order to check Austro-Hungarian aggression from the other direction, the Triple Entente powers of Great Britain, France, and Russia signed a secret alliance with Italy in September 1914, when Italy was still formally and openly allied to Germany and Austria-Hungary. Tripping any of the wires criss-crossing Europe and their spheres of influence could set in motion prearranged contingency plans for military action.

Russia has also mobilized its Black Sea Fleet for action against Georgia; the Fleet is bilaterally commanded by Russia and Ukraine. Kjiv has already warned that the Fleet will not be allowed to return to its station at Sevastopol in the Ukrainian Crimea. Both Russia and South Ossetia have accused Ukraine of supplying Georgia with arms.

Western Europe has been relatively ambivalent: a French official called Mr. Saakashvili mad for invading South Ossetia while French President Nicolas Sarkozy flew to Moskva and Tbilisi to broker a cease-fire. After all, Russia controls most of the petroleum supply into Europe. For nations like Germany, almost one-quarter of their petroleum and forty percent of their natural gas needs are provided by Russia. In the past, the Kremlin has not shied away from using this power. Ukraine’s vocal support of Georgia and apparent readiness to help their brother former Soviet republic is even more surprising, and perhaps brave, considering three major flare-ups in an ongoing petrol trade war between Kjiv and Moskva in January 2006, October 2007, and January 2008.

But, should we really be surprised that we engage in complex political and economic relations, and that the webs we weave often bring us to unpleasant choices? Should we renounce these complex foreign alliances, to follow the advice of George Washington? The Peace of Westphalia (1648), the Treaty of Paris (1783), the Congress of Vienna (1815), the Peace of Paris (1919), and the Potsdam Agreement (1945) all stand in a long line of European peace accords that set the standard for diplomatic theory and strategy: peace was instituted, and supposedly guaranteed, by territorial transfers, political quid-pro-quo, and economic provisions with the ultimate goal of enabling a balance of power. Today we have the United Nations – has it changed the rules of the balance of power game, or has it just applied the same strategies to the whole world?

So what are the options on the table for the United States and Europe? Several strategies have been suggested in an attempt to slap Russia’s wrist hard enough without souring relations further. These include denying Russia entrance into the G7, and/or speeding up Georgian and Ukrainian bids for NATO membership. But Western Europe has shown itself reluctant to do the latter, precisely because of the obligations demanded if there are future hostilities between Georgia and Russia. The United States has shown willingness to enter the fray with limited military assistance to Georgia (ferrying its troops in Iraq back home), and a promised humanitarian aid campaign. President Bush delivered some sharp words this morning, saying that Russia has “tended to view the expansion of freedom and democracy as a threat to its interests.” But the tightrope walk for America is made that much thinner by Russia’s support of Iran, which could be aggravated and increased by American action in Georgia – much to the detriment of troops in Iraq and civilians in Israel. The UN has been rendered useless by Russia’s veto power.

Mr. Putin’s strongly centralizing power and foreign policy initiatives are is couched in terms that belong to the nineteenth century or the Cold War: nationalism, spheres of influence, and satellite states. But in order to prevent the Georgian conflict, or any future conflicts propagated by Russia (or other aggressive nations: North Korea, Iran, China), from becoming the spark to the powder keg, there needs to be twenty-first century diplomatic innovation that combines a versatility to deal with complicated economic, military, and political relationships with a strength to solve these problems without allowing compromise to undermine the outcome.

The United States and Europe have the bear by the ears. Europe cannot let go, for fear of an energy crisis. America cannot let go, for fear of Russia’s enduring political clout in areas of the world that have become vital to American interests. But neither can they hold onto it for much longer, for the bear has them too and it has claws.

Re: Iran

Dear Kingremi,

When you mention the Melian dialogue and its relevancy to Iran, I am reminded of another episode from ancient history.

After the death of Alexander the Great, Macedonia was largely unable to maintain an important part in the politics of the Hellenistic world. Meanwhile, the Seleucids in Palestinia and the Ptolemies in Egypt dominated the Greek East. In the latter half of the third and into the second century BC, Philip V of Macedonia attempted to expand his holdings in the Aegean Sea. By both armed conflict and diplomatic overtures he tried to bring Macedonia back to the primacy it once held. He made an alliance with the Carthaginians to stave off the threat of Rome. He made a pact with Antiochos III of the Seleucid Empire to seize Egyptian holdings in the Aegean Sea.

But Philip overplayed his hand. The Carthaginians could not defeat the Romans, who now had an excuse to march into Macedonia. Antiochos III did not dare come to Macedonia’s aid (at least not openly) because he recognized that it was Rome, not Macedonia, against whom he was struggling in a cold war for control over the Aegean. Macedonia was just a second class state who should have picked a superpower to support instead of trying to grab power for itself. Philip failed because he tried to exert influence when he did not have the political or military clout to do it. As a result, Rome invaded Macedonia and Greece – on behalf of the “independence” of the Greek cities, a novel reason to invade a foreign state indeed – and forced Philip to disarm and become its ally. Philip’s son Perseus was the last king of Macedonia, dependent on Rome to sustain his figurehead status.

The historian Ernst Badian once said that history needs to be rewritten for every generation. He studied the diplomatic and military maneuvering of the Roman Republic against Hellenistic empires in order to understand the Cold War politics of seizing influence over the second and third worlds. Should these histories be rewritten for us today, and who will rewrite them? Is Iran a Macedonia that should just lay down its arms in the face of powers with which its resources simply can not cope? Are we Rome?

Forcing the hand of any state by means of threat is not typically a good idea. And more war is usually the last thing anybody could do with, not least of all us. If history is going to be rewritten at this time, it needs to be done by clear planning and innovative diplomacy.

I think that Iran is fighting – and by fighting I mean clandestinely shipping arms across its borders so other people can die for their agenda – for the same thing for which we are fighting: an ideologically and politically friendly state in the Middle East. Besides this, they are also supporting militant groups against Israel and attempting to make Lebanon its own satellite state. And it is apparent that they have the resources to at least be disruptive, if not actually accomplish anything. But I surmise, or perhaps I hope, that Iran’s cold war/hot war pseudo-imperialist actions will exhaust itself before it can bring about any more destruction and death.

Go-go gadget history,

Aristeides