Friday, May 04, 2007

A Jacksonian on Luttwak

Luttwak makes the common mistake of assuming that once the oil slows from the ME, the power will wane. Terrorism now uses multiple sources for funding: narcotrafficking, bank fraud, grey market goods sales, theft, kidnap for ransom, and the ever popular murder for hire.

Petrodollars make it worse, yes, but the present idea that free markets and cheap goods are making things safer and the world freer is misguided and no place more so than the Middle East. Trade does not get freedom. International insitutions do not get freedom.

If either of those were true then after 90 years of having it go on in the Middle East, it should be the freest place on the planet.

I do not see that for some very strange reason.This is primarily not a money flow question as that area has been a haven for tyrants, thugs and Empires for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Of freedom and liberty based upon the rights of man, there has been scant evidence of it.
In fact the drying up of money will make things more restive, more tense and those new sources, like Canada with the tar sands and the US with its oil shales, even more hated for 'taking such riches away'. That is, of course, irrational. Perhaps Mr. Luttwak has not noticed the lack of rational actors in the region?

Mussolini still managed to get a lot of folks killed, threaten the vital supply link of the Suez and had an outside chance, with Germany, of cutting off Gibraltar if Germany had held to its original War Plan. Thankfully that was not done.

This enemy has no Nation and wishes all Nations overturned. It can get cheap arms anywhere because we do not do a thing about going after trade with our enemies. There are a number of vital supply and transport links that can be targeted with some ease and if any non-conventional weapon is used possibly removed from the global economy on a long-term basis. I suggest that the economic argument is trivial compared to the long-term survival argument. If we do not put an end to terrorism and dreams of Empire we and our children *will live* to regret our effete attitudes towards civilization and how to hold it.

The fighting would have been bad, but manageable in 1917 and given basis for the US to help bring about more Nations aligned with their Peoples. We did not do that.

The US could have done a bit more after WW II beyond mere anti-colonial support and put in some actual help to the region in the way of schools and building a good base for decent jobs. We did not do that, either.

We could have stopped supporting tyrants or actually overthrown those not in the direct control of the USSR. We did not do that.

Now we pay for the inaction of parents and grand-parents who could have helped other Peoples find a route to freedom by expending blood and money to fight a hard, nasty war that had no good end because it was not fought to completion anywhere. That is still left undone in the Balkans and Middle East. And the price of that is held by a butcher that has decided we need to pay with our lives and freedom.

Time to put fancy ideas of economic reality away and start to deal with this other, actual, real sort of reality, where there are non-rational actors in the world.

Because if we do not put an end to them, then they shall do so to us.

A Jacksonian is brilliant, as always. I would also add a few lines from a recent interview with Amir Taheri by the JP:


There are three ways of dealing with this: You can surrender to Iran - by saying, "We'll give you the Middle East and then we'll go away." (Some Americans want to do this, because they don't have the stomach for anything else.) Or you can make a deal with it, like Clinton wanted to, by giving some zones of influence to Iran, and some zones of influence to the United States and then wait until Allah decides what happens (Highly likely that this is what we will get if the Democrats win the presidency in 2008) - like a mini-Cold War. Or you can resist it - by saying, "You want to create Khamenei's Middle East; we want to create Bush's Middle East" -



And NO, that doesn't mean War with Iran. Michael Rubin explains exactly how I feel:


The idea that there is a preventive war strategy to change the regime is at best a straw-man argument and at worst a conspiracy theory.Criticism regarding carrier group dispatch is misplaced. First, it is important that Arab states in the Persian Gulf recognize that the United States is going to defend its interests and protect our allies. Second, while Washington assumes events revolve around our decisions, the danger is Iranian overconfidence. Decision-makers in Iran, those in the office of the Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary Guard, may confuse democratic debate with weakness and inadvertently cross a red line. We know from their statements that they do not take U.S. diplomatic demarches seriously. That the United States is willing to demonstrate red lines aids transparency and reduces the risk of accidental conflict.

With regard to engagement, we need to abandon the notion that long-term strategies to encourage the accountability of the Iranian government to its citizenry and short-term diplomacy are mutually exclusive. Providing moral support for the Vahed transportation workers’ ongoing attempts to form the Islamic Republic’s first independent trade union will not bring instant change. That does not mean it is wise to ignore them or to collude with the regime that seeks to crush them.

Even as Iran’s nuclear program has developed, the Bush administration has lacked a cohesive policy toward Tehran. An artificial dichotomy between engagement and regime change has polarized debate. Too often, proponents of engagement construct a straw-man argument about regime change to equate it with military action.

No serious policymaker seeks military action against Iran. Iranians are nationalistic. Any military strike would enable the regime to rally Iranians around the flag. Nor would even targeted strikes against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities end its program; at best, military strikes would only delay it. Nothing would be more irresponsible than the White House using the military to buy time because policymakers have not had the discipline to formulate a strategy.

This does not mean unrestrained engagement is a better option. Between 2000 and 2005, the apex of both European engagement and the Khatami presidency, EU trade with Tehran almost tripled. During that same period, Iranian leaders pumped hard currency into their weapons program and, at the time, still-covert nuclear program. Either Khatami’s rhetoric was insincere or he, like the many diplomats under him, had no insight into or control over the actions of other power centers.

If engagement is to be successful, it must include the sincere involvement of the people who control those aspects of regime behavior which Washington finds most objectionable—this means the Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary Guards. This is an unlikely prospect.

Everyone who has been to Iran is aware of the sophistication of Iranian intellectuals and much of the public. Many Iranians resent the corruption and adventurism of their leadership. The reformers are largely discredited. They are new paint on a rotten house. No Iranian inside Iran wants regime change from abroad, but they do embrace the ideas of popular sovereignty and democracy. Here, interests converge. Should the Iranian leadership become more accountable to its citizenry, then they will emphasize what most Iranians want—better schools, medical care, and employment prospects rather than expensive adventurism.

What policymakers should support are Iranian efforts to democratize and force accountability upon their leadership. This is what independent unions inside Iran struggle for. Democracy is just peaceful regime change. I agree with Robert that we should rely on internal forces as the agents of change. Unfortunately, regime engagement will both undercut those forces and enable the Iranian leadership to run down the clock on its nuclear program.

4 comments:

A Jacksonian said...

The major thing overlooked by most analysts on Iran is that the regime and leadership is, essentially, one-deep. They have had problems finding reliable individuals both tempramentally and ideologically to fill their shoes, and so have no long-term follow-on. A major military action truly is not needed in Iran and something I usually call a 'razzle-dazzle' of military operations that effectively only removes the few nasty pieces of military hardware (mostly subs and minelayers, although AA equipment also fits) and uses the lovely electronics shorting material we haven't seen since the Kosovo conflict (those lovely bomblets that put fibers across electrical contacts to short out equipment) could neutralize the infrastructure almost completely with doing, essentially, zero damage to it. The sudden loss of electricity, water and sewage treatment, plus the incapacitation of power generation systems and sub-stations, renders all but the most protected infrastructure useless for a short period of time. A special ops team or two that removes a handful of key leadership positions at the same time... basically chaos. The IRGC having the only depth of structure that could remain around would be the problem. They, I suspect, would have their hands full trying to place blame against the US and its stealth aircraft and special ops, while having to deal with some level of civil unrest plus the loss of leaderhship and clear line of succession.

The biggest, #1 question mark in Iran is what would the regular Army do? With no sign of invasion they could mobilize, but against *what*? They will not attack their own population, as commanders have made clear... and if they gave such orders the Army itself would do like the Russian Army did in 1917: melt into the population and really raise hell against the powers that be. And if any major uprising are being put down in a bloody fashion... well, their commanders would have to look inside themselves and ask if they really *do* mean to protect the Nation.

One small, regional command could do the trick there: protect the population and turn on the IRGC. Then the other commanders are faced with either supporting their Regular Army comrades or siding with the brutal IRGC against the population.

Bringing down a Nation that has already violated your Nation's territory, killed your Nation's soldiers, and had civilians from your Nation kidnapped does not require a formal declaration of war: hostilities have already been declared and the right of response is left up to the victim. There is no statute of limitations on that.

There would be *costs* to such a thing, but if discovered and even properly attributed, the US can point to 1979, 1983, 1984... and onwards through Khobar to present day funding and supplying 'insurgents'. As the terrorists have shown: attacking infrastructure is a low exposure proposition and raises hell. The actual numbers that the US needs dead to get things rolling so that internal changes cannot be controlled by the regime is in the double handfuls category. No need to involve civilians or even the regular Army. And as the responder we get to choose how, when and where the response will be. Cleaning fibers out of circuitry, repairing holes in pipelines and such is very easy to do.

Unless you are a fanatical regime that believes in fantastical things and don't keep the infrastructure up too well. Then you have a *real* problem on your hands. A simple, direct and pointed way of letting the regime know they are in the cross-hairs and not the People of Iran. I think that message would get through loud and clear: no invading Armies, no real damage that is beyond repair, and just some very, very directed assassinations at the top. A bit of border enforcement with some help of the neighbors, to shut off traffic for a few weeks and make sure that *none* of the leadership escapes. Not a real *war*.

But then I am a Jacksonian, and a delayed counter-attack is *still* justice for what has been done. Even if it isn't in the way anyone expects it to be done... the US can fight dirty and sneaky. Plus it is low cost and low overhead, to boot! The real damage to Iran has already been done and it damned well needs to recover from that. It is pushed to the edge, is the regime there... just a few, well directed *taps* and the fall happens. Then comes the hard job of helping a People recover from tyranny.

And our asking for forgiveness for letting them suffer for so long when this could have been done while things were hot and the justice obvious.

Anonymous said...

A Jacksonian: Informative and refreshing as always.

I'm almost Certain If we elect a Democratic President, or if the multilateral realists like Condi Rice get their way, the IR will be granted the Grand Bargain (i.e. security guarantees) it covets plus a great deal more in exchange for stopping their nuclear weapon ambition and perhaps sponsoring terrorism around the world.

President Clinton offered the mullahs a "partnershiP" of sort in the Middle East,giving some zones of influence to Iran, and some zones of influence to the United States and then wait until Allah decides what happens - like a mini-Cold War. However, my questions are as follows: Given Khomeini's manifest destiny doctrine, which the Islamic Republic was mainly established to achieve(all tangible signs indicate that agenda) what are the long-term consequences of making a deal with such an ideological-religious "Cause" and not a 'nation'? Can America's realist diplomats who are bent on engaging--i.e. appeasing --Islamism in a attempt to divide and defeat the Nazi-like movement succeed? Has anything like this been ever done in history? What are the ramifications of giving IR security guarantees if they do not honor their promises? Why should we trust them?

Anonymous said...

"No serious policymaker seeks military action against Iran. Iranians are nationalistic. Any military strike would enable the regime to rally Iranians around the flag."

I recognize this. I'm not sure the White House does, or a McCain White House would.

"Nor would even targeted strikes against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities end its program; at best, military strikes would only delay it."

I agree with this too, but I wonder about the prospect of the U.S. going preemptive again in support of Israel.

A Jacksonian said...

Serendip - Pres. Clinton does have a short memory-span, as this is the *exact* thing he did with North Korea and it did not work out. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Internal overthrow of the IR must be the basis of the future of Iran, just how to organize and effect it is the problem. The IRGC and Basij, along with various special/secret police and hired thugs from the 'stans, especially in Western and Northern Iran, make it a difficult proposition. A part of the 'civil' forces starting the job and asking for *help* is one way. That is, basically, what the sort of intervention I look at on the military side is meant to do: shake the Army and civil police free from the regime via sudden chaos in the power structure. The communities most likely for that are those that have felt it ethnically: Kurds, Azeris and Baluchs. What is damned encouraging is the movement of labor unions, womens organizations, students and journalists holding street rallies that, just last year, would have been ruthlessly quashed. Those appear to be the first cracks in the entire regime, and if they start to coalesce the regime, itself, will find only the forces held close to them to be only semi-reliable. Calling out the civil police or Army is a non-starter as that threatens to put a highly organized, very sympathetic force into the fray which could pull the 1917 bit and change sides. As the Russian Army backed Revolution, so would the Iranian regular Army back its people, not the regime.

In a fight between the IR Army and IRGC there will be only one winner. And the IRGC has spent most of its money outside of Iran on Hezbollah and other group stand-ups. The Army is underequipped and trained, but dedicated. The IRGC is thinner, radically dedicated, and ill-trained. And there is no air force to speak of... if the Army comes to ask for help in that, it would be 'taking sides in a Civil War' but also addressing the wrongs done by the regime to the US and others. And the IRGC knows what Thunderbolts and Apaches can do... and what they have to stop them, which is basically nothing. The US demonstrated that a small, but coherent force backed by the US Air Forces can do amazing things as seen in Afghanistan.

But this idea of appeasement must go. It doesn't work and only emboldens tyrants and gets folks killed.