Posted on 03/29/2011 2:44:41 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
I'm a believer in the McDonald's / Golden Arches theory. There is a reason why Europe has enjoyed it's longest and greatest era of prosperity and peace. Some Muslim nations “have” proven that it is possible to have a more liberal Arab/Muslim (In the traditional sense of the word, not the American perverted meaning) society, i.e. Qatar.
There is no stuffing the genie back into the bottle. They are here, their population is growing, all these issues are intertwined and interconnected even though some try to compartmentalize these issues so they can pretend like as in the Cold War some did that Grenada, Vietnam, Korea, Central African Republic, Afghanistan, Cuba, Honduras, the Lit Path in Peru.... are all separate events in time and space. They weren't, obviously.
In a post Cold War era you have less physical restrictions to movement, we live in the day of the cell phone and Internet, global trade and economic dependencies like never before. Our societies are becoming more heterogeneous, technology is always getting cheaper and more available...... Capabilities only available to a hand full years ago today are being mastered by Iran, Pakistan, Libya was a while back making chem weapons and long range missiles........
What you talk about is disengagement, and that's not a feasible alternative. The moochers and side line bystanders who ride under our wings do that, but it's not really an option. It's only an option for them because someone else if forced to take action.
We failed to fight our communist enemy in China after World War II and the result was Korea and Viet Nam. Ronald Reagan didn't make the same mistake.
I wouldn't call standing aside and watching two adversaries* tear each other to pieces disengagement. I would call it entertainment. Having a 1% military budget and the smallest military among the great powers prior to WWII - that was disengagement. Spending more money on defense than all our allies and adversaries put together is the polar opposite of disengagement.
* It's one thing to aid the Islamists - as Reagan did - and say that we didn't know better. Two World Trade Center bombings later (the first in 1993), I don't see how any can deny that Islamists - and perhaps the Muslim masses who provide manpower and material aid to them - are our mortal enemy.
China is complicated. Much as I'd like to think a China under Chiang would have been a friend of these United States, the more I learn about China and the Chinese, the more skeptical I am. Perhaps it was to our (and Asia ex-China's) benefit that the Chinese imposed on themselves the modern religion of Marxism-Leninism and the mass famines of the 50's and 60's. Beyond the challenge of Islamism is the challenge of traditional cultures with traditional territorial ambitions.
China's have languished only because it has been relatively weak for 200 years. (Even then, it added almost half of China's current territory - Xinjiang and Tibet - right at the boundary of that 200-year point). During this period of weakness, China has lashed out - in border clashes killing thousands - over territorial claims against proudly socialist states like Vietnam, India and the Soviet Union, despite all the claims of international socialist solidarity. I think communist fellow travelers are starting to discover that international socialist solidarity was a nice slogan, but traditional ethnic and historical ambitions have always been the foundation stones of the foreign policies of ostensibly fraternal socialist states.
If Chiang had taken over post-war China, the Chinese would already have overtaken the American economy, severely complicating American security calculations in the Western Pacific, given the Chinese Nationalist (on Taiwan) claim to even bigger chunks of East Asia not currently under Chinese rule than the Chinese Communists. A key Roman strategic precept (mirrored in Sun Tzu's Art of War) was to attempt to set one barbarian against another. From an American perspective, it would be best if we could stand back and watch motley combinations of our adversaries slug it out.
To me entertainment is when America successfully pits two gangs of muslims against each other and then swoops in to scoop up the spoils.
Are there any communists who aren't our friends?
Actually, I would back al Qaeda against the Chinese, on the precept that it is generally better to back the weak against the strong.
The reason I back Gaddafi against al Qaeda should be obvious - Gaddafi has dismantled his nukes and made peace with us. Al Qaeda hasn't. The way Larry (Sarkozy), Moe (Cameron) and Curly (Obama) are playing the Libyan situation sends the following message (and I quote org.whodat): to all third world powers, you are only safe with your finger on a nuclear weapon and a dead man firing switch. It is a brave new world.
China, as a unitary state with a long history of territorial aggrandizement at the expense of its neighbors, not to mention atrocities that put Japan's WWII misbehavior in the shade, poses a much bigger threat than al Qaeda or the Muslim world will ever manage. Do not mistake China's relative quiescence for long-term acquiescence to the current distribution of territory. The following internet commentator summarizes my feelings vis-a-vis China to a T:
As one of my best Chinese friends put it: “If any Chinese ever tells you we are a peace-loving nation, don’t believe them. We have just had enough time to first – eliminate and/or intimidate, then – incorporate all our former enemies.” There is nothing true than his words.
I think there's a need to distinguish between friends and allies. Friends would be countries with which we share either ethnic, religious or philosophical ties. Since WWI, France and Britain - with which we share all three ties - have always been friends, although not always allies (as in the Suez Incident in 1956). Allies are countries with which we cooperate on matters of common interest. Regimes like China's and Pakistan's can probably never be our friends, although they can - in select cases - be our allies.
I agree that we should back whomever is the weaker side. That's why we should back the rebels. I don't believe for a single second that Kadhafi really dismantled his WMD programs any more than North Korea abandoned their nuclear program in exchange for us supplying them nuclear fuel. Both policies were naive. I'm supposed to believe UN inspectors like Scott Ritter or Mohammed el-Baradei of the IAEA when they tell me Kadhafi is good? Appeasement does not work on islamofascists any more than it works on Stalinists.
Do you think they would keep being our friends if we did that?
Non-intervention and alliance are different things. I think we shouldn't get involved in Gaddafi's crushing of the rebels. Our friendship with Britain and France would survive our non-intervention. Eisenhower threatened* to destroy Britain's and France's economies if they did not withdraw from the Suez Canal in 1956, thereby forcing their withdrawal. We are still friends. Britain and France opposed our intervention in Vietnam. We are still friends. We'll get involved in slanging matches every so often, but the ties of ethnicity, religion and philosophy are simply too deep for any animosity to endure.
* That was probably one of Eisenhower's biggest policy mistakes.
Just because they love al-Qaeda so much?
I've not ever stated that al Qaeda was a greater threat than the Soviet Union. My contention was that al Qaeda's boast that the Soviet-Afghan War brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union is wrong. We did not need to be involved in that war for the Soviet Union to collapse. In fact, the Soviet Union would have collapsed faster if it had taken on more Stone Age client states.
Nope, it wasn’t al-Qaida who beat the Soviet Union. It was Ronald Reagan. If he didin’t, the Soviet Union might not only still exist but would have naval bases on the Indian Ocean and would control an energy corridor between the middle east and the far east. Instead, we control it and that’s the way I like it. We won’t let either Russia or China dominate Central Asia.
Never assume that just because a government does something, that they've taken into account all the available information and all the possible negative consequences. (Do you really think Obama has taken into account the potential for financial insolvency that could result from Obamacare)? I suspect that both Cameron and Sarkozy are hoping to accomplish some combination of the following: (1) appeal to the Muslim constituencies in their home countries (who despise the Communist Gaddafi), (2) ward off floods of Islamist refugees* if Gaddafi wins and (3) doing the fashionable thing by intervening in a conflict with no possible tangible benefit for either country (thereby following in Clinton's footsteps).
* I'd personally do the manly thing and send the refugees back instead of wasting fuel and ordnance.
Utter nonsense. Britain and France and protecting their own strategic interests and it is in the USA’s strategic interest to stand by our Allies and help them secure energy sources besides Neo-Soviet Russia’s state-run energy monopoly. Those countries which oppose intervention, such as Germany are the ones most beholden to Russia. Gerhard Schroder himself is working for the Russian state-run gas monopoly which is building a pipeline directly from Russia to Germany. In addition the islamist Turks oppose French leadership in the coalition because France is standing against Turkish EU membership.
Yup, that's how it's done when we have grownups in charge.
However, Obama is our CIC and I don't trust his CIA to sort out the bad rebels. Perhaps the Brits and Sarkozy will get it right.
I don't see what this has to do with their strategic interests. Oil is completely fungible. Producers sell to the highest bidder. Libya has no monopoly on oil. Besides, BP and Total are among the biggest players in Libya. Neither country had any reason to curry favor with the rebels to get a foot in the door. In fact, the tendency among victorious rebel movements is to renegotiate contracts in their own favor so as to make the sacrifices in blood necessary to win seem worthwhile. Even in Iraq, the terms of exploration agreements got so onerous - after we toppled Saddam - that some Chinese companies (traditional bottomfeeders) took a pass.
One addition I’d like to make to your excellent post is, the critical step in turning Afghanistan into the Soviet Vietnam was that they invaded it in the first place. The role the US played was (under Carter, and criticized in places like Harper’s at the time) was to sell them truck engine blocks which gave them the logistical capability; during the Prague Spring in ‘68, Breszhnev (sp?) had to commandeer city buses in Moscow to move the needed troops into Czechoslovakia in time.
The voters’ rejection of Carter didn’t hurt. But the USSR had to make its move into Afghanistan, and that was a gift to us.
Unfortunately, this is more a case of the blind leading the blind. Larry (Sarkozy), Moe (Cameron) and Curly (Obama) are telling the world's dictators that the best way to stay in power is to acquire nukes and oppose the West's interests at every turn.
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