What we support and defend

[Sigaba]

Good input, but I find your own interpretations of history to be as off base as you believe mine to be.

Okay, then the next question to ask is: What are your sources and how do they fit in the ongoing historiographical debates?

As an example, the interpretation that slavery was "intentionally not debated, or even discussed" during the constitutional convention of 1787 has withered in the face of recent research by David Waldstreicher and George William Van Cleve (among others) who have demonstrated that, as ratified, the U.S. Constitution was a document that protected slave holders' interests. (FWIW, I never debate history with a QP without a few dozen bankers' boxes of books nearby and Google Desktop Search pointed at the 31k or so history-related files on my HDD. Sometimes, being an egghead has its advantages.)

As to peacetime armies, do you really think we needed a large army to impose our will on the people of the South?

It depends upon which people of the South matter. Those who wished to live by the rule of law or those who wished to supplant the rule of law with economic dominance, political exclusion, extralegal violence, and terror to advance notions of white supremacy. (Counterfactually speaking, where might America be today if the federal army had been used better during Reconstruction and the freedmen and their descendants had been allowed to integrate politically, economically, and legally into the mainstream of American society before the turn of the century? Would the First and Second Great Migrations have occurred? Would black Americans have left the Republican party? Would America have fought two world wars with segregated armies? Would Americans still be as focused on the politics of race and racial identity as they were during the 2008 national election cycle?)

As to wars, it is not who wins the first battles that matters, it is who wins the final battles. The American approach has served that end well without subjecting our populace to excessive burden of the wars of others.

I respectfully disagree with you on both of these points. For example, Central and Eastern Europe was a slaughterhouse in the last years of the Second World War in no small part because the Germans sought a racial war of annihilation.

As for your second point, the absence of a large enough standing professional army has proven remarkably disruptive to the way of life you want America to practice. The mobilization of American society for modern warfare and widespread use of propaganda stemmed from the need to raise, to equip, and to train an army of citizen soldiers during World War I.

Also I believe you confuse "Principles" and "Values." Principles are enduring and fundamental, but values evolve over time. We espoused principles, such as "all men are created equal" while clearly our values at the time were hardly equal, and certainly not fair. But they were in synch with the culture of the populace at that time.

I will accept your correction on the differentiation between principles and values. However, I respectfully reject your interpretation of the "culture of the populace at that time." That view is sustainable ONLY if one disregards significant cohorts who were systematically denied the opportunity to voice their views.

Much of our success is that we created a principle-based framework that allowed our values to evolve along with our cultural. But now [emphasis added] we seek to deny other cultures that same opportunity by pushing values designed for us upon cultures that are in a very different place in their own evolutionary journeys.

How is now any different from then?

I simply suggest that we are better served by holding ourselves to our espoused values better than we currently do, and save our evangelical efforts to simply promoting the much more universal principles we demanded for ourselves. Other cultures need time to evolve as well, and such evolution can not be forced by outsiders, but we can provide a better example (true leadership), and perhaps help hold off those who would work to prevent such evolution from being able to occur. In short, to help others to be more like themselves, rather than working to make them more like us.

I think a core difference between our viewpoints is that you see present day America's conduct in international affairs as markedly different from the best practices of a fixed interval in the past. By contrast, I am of the view that we're just living through another episode in an established narrative. That is, America has always struggled to balance its ideas with interests and has left a lot to be desired when it comes to matching ends to means.

I also think that debates over policy preferences should not be situated in historical interpretations of the early Republic. Saying we should adhere to our values is different than saying we should adhere to our values like we used to. That is, a 'more perfect union' lies in our future, not in our past.

[Bill Moore]

Posted by Fuchs

NATO boasts more than 600 million population and whatever AQ can do isn't even a real scratch on our surface.
It's at most a microscopic and temporary scratch on the surface, next to real cratches and even deep cuts.

While I don't disagree with your recommendation to not over react, yet I very much disagree with your quote above. Case in point, the attacks on 9/11 created the political conditions that led to two wars. The attack in Madrid determined the outcome of a national election, and the attacks in London on 7/7 were more than a scratch. These groups and individuals over time will acquire new technologies and innovate in ways that enhances their lethality, so the threat will likely increase over time. That doesn't mean the answer is to invade other nations in the naive pursuit of eliminating safe havens, but it doesn't mean ignoring the threat is the best option. I think it will require constant effort from law enforcement, intelligence and special operations to protect "our" people, but this can largely be done in the shadows. Our last administration used the war on terror for political gain instead of keeping it in the shadows, and it has only gotten worse with this administration. Of course after the 9/11 attacks we were obligated to show the American people something was being done and the attack was being revenged, not sure we needed to keep it in the press for 10 plus years.

[Bill Moore]

Posted by Bob's World,

Just type a simple Google search of "Containment, Pacific, China" and see what comes up. We've been applying some form of containment (or regime change to spice it up a bit) to virtually every problem since 1947. We have come to see the lesser forms of it as just doing business as usual and not being containment at all, but as I said, our perception is not the one that matters most.

It is 2012 and there are hundreds of blogs, along with hundreds of think tanks and their associated websites, and individuals who post on these sites, so typing containment and China into Google is hardly an indicator of what our policy or strategy is.

How do we shed the inertia of decades of containing China as part of the Cold War, to a future of working with China as the primary security and trading partner to keep the future of that region vibrant? I don't know. Just as old allies in the Middle East keep us spun up about Iran, old allies in the Pacific keep us spun up about China. Time for the US to reach out to both on our many shared interests, rather than simply fixating on the 2-3 issues we will agree to disagree about.

I think the USG is reaching out to and working well with China on a number of issues, but of course only the sexy issues get the headlines. I think you would be hard pressed to make a case that we were focused on containing China during the Cold War because China wasn't interested in expanding, it was too busy killing its own people by the millions. China has only recently (at least in the past three centuries) aggressively expanded its influence beyond its borders.

If the US is the global leader we claim to be, we should be taking lead on diplomatic solutions to the sharing of duties and rights in the South China Sea; or the timeline for peaceful reintegration of China-Taiwan. Ramping up a light version of containment seems to me to be more of an obstacle than a help in getting at resolution of such points of friction and potential conflict.

Beyond Google, where is the containment effort? If you find it, it will only be figment of Google's imagination.

China is the trading partner of choice in the region. That will not change.

The US is the security partner of choice in the region. That will not change either.

Both comments are true currently, but there is no reason why this will not change, everything changes over time.

[Bob's World]

Bill, I am talking perception, not express intent. The very fact that you see our Cold War activities as not actively working to contain China in that era demonstrates how much such activities have become part of the American fabric for how we approach the world in general.

The widely held perception is that we were working to contain China before, and that we have just initiated a major effort to increase that program. Agree or disagree with that perception, fine. But to simply ignore it because the official policy is that we are not doing that is very dangerous. We only delude ourselves if that is the case, and self-delusion rarely leads to a good result.

Sigaba, my sources are many, some directly on point and many other merely indirectly reinforcing. Perhaps one of the best ones on the formation of our Constitution is David Stewart's "The Summer of 1787" for those who only have the time or inclination to read a single book to explore that fascinating time and event. But I recognize we all study history through the lens of our background, training, experience, and purpose for study. Most of my study in recent years has been in pursuit of greater understanding of insurgency, and what makes some societies inherently stable, while others remain inherently unstable. As a nation we make as many mistakes as any in our execution of policy, but we got the foundation right, and that sustains us.

But, please, save me from examples of suffering in Eastern Europe in the trailing years of WWII as an example for why the US should have a warfighting army on the books at all times. How was sustaining the capacity of somehow deterring such events from happening possibly in the vital interests of a United States struggling to get through the hard economic years of the great depression? Bad things happen in the world. The purpose of the American Army is to fight and win America's wars on terms so that those bad things don't happen to us

Reconstruction is not the brightest chapter in American history, but in the big scheme of things compared to other such conflicts around the world over time, it went amazingly well. In that same era we implemented a campaign of genocide to remove the native Americans from the West, another dark chapter that we prefer to ignore, but that ultimately served to consolidate the US as a continental nation. We have done hard things to good people, we have made mistakes, in short, we are in many respects just like everyone else. But we also have some unique differences and we put ourselves at unnecessary risk when we ignore our unique strengths or weaknesses either one.

Our foundation of governance and our geography are strengths. Our belief that our actions are inherently benign is a weakness. Ignoring both puts us at risk.

One thing that does not change (at a rate that matters) is geography. We are blessed with global key terrain. We piss away that advantage when we act like we are a landlocked nation trapped between powerful competitors. We have the luxury of time and space. Certainly with space and cyber enabled weapons the factor of "time" is greatly reduced, but those types of attacks are not attacks deterred or defeated by a large army.

[Entropy]

Bob,

The widely held perception is that we were working to contain China before, and that we have just initiated a major effort to increase that program. Agree or disagree with that perception, fine. But to simply ignore it because the official policy is that we are not doing that is very dangerous. We only delude ourselves if that is the case, and self-delusion rarely leads to a good result.

What are we containing China from exactly? How exactly has that effort supposedly increased?

[Bob's World]

Bob,



What are we containing China from exactly? How exactly has that effort supposedly increased?

Better yet, you tell me how we haven't. I don't have time to lay out the post WWII history of US policy in the Pacific, nor to explain the latest defense strategic guidance to you line by line. But I am happy to discuss any aspect of it you have questions about.

But just a single tangible, why do you suppose we are shifting our fleet distribution from 50/50 to 60/40 weighted toward the Pacific? How is India a better security partner in the Pacific than China? Why not both?

Again, call it what you want, it is what it is, and perceptions are what they are. As to the many senior leaders coming on record to say we are NOT containing China in response to many reasonable queries, I "think they doth protest too much" in their defense.

[Entropy]

I don't have time to lay out the post WWII history of US policy in the Pacific, nor to explain the latest defense strategic guidance to you line by line.

It's a simple question, I'm not asking for regional history nor a monograph. Here's the DSG:

Over the long term, China’’s emergence as a regional power will have the potential to affect the U.S. economy and our security in a variety of ways. Our two countries have a strong stake in peace and stability in East Asia and an interest in building a cooperative bilateral relationship. However, the growth of China’’s military power must be accompanied by greater clarity of its strategic intentions in order to avoid causing friction in the region. The United States will continue to make the necessary investments to ensure that we maintain regional access and the ability to operate freely in keeping with our treaty obligations and with international law. Working closely with our network of allies and partners, we will continue to promote a rules-based international order that ensures underlying stability and encourages the peaceful rise of new powers, economic dynamism, and constructive defense cooperation.

The containment strategy for the USSR was designed to limit the spread of communism. The underpinning assumption behind Soviet containment was the belief that the USSR was an expansionist power. As Kennan said about the Soviets:

Its political action is a fluid stream which moves constantly, wherever it is permitted to move, toward a given goal. Its main concern is to make sure that it has filled every nook and cranny available to it in the basin of world power."

Containment was:

...designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counter-force at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world.

And here's how you've described containment of China:

The recent shift to the Pacific may not be a physical containment in name, but it is certainly being approached as a defacto physical containment by the US and China alike.

and

Any US strategy in the Pacific that is designed to work against China rather than with China is a form of containment, in fact if not in name.

I think the question of containment hinges on whether or not China is an expansionist power. I don't think it is, not like the Soviets were.

Additionally, our East Asia strategy contains two main themes:

1. Maintain our alliances in the Pacific.
2. Ensure freedom of the seas.

With an expansionist China these policy options will be a de facto policy of containment, but as I said, I don't subscribe to that view. I subscribe to the alternative of peaceful coexistence with a non-expansionist China. In that case there is no containment.

[Sigaba]

Bill, I am talking perception, not express intent. The very fact that you see our Cold War activities as not actively working to contain China in that era demonstrates how much such activities have become part of the American fabric for how we approach the world in general.

The widely held perception is that we were working to contain China before, and that we have just initiated a major effort to increase that program. Agree or disagree with that perception, fine. But to simply ignore it because the official policy is that we are not doing that is very dangerous. We only delude ourselves if that is the case, and self-delusion rarely leads to a good result.

Sigaba, my sources are many, some directly on point and many other merely indirectly reinforcing. Perhaps one of the best ones on the formation of our Constitution is David Stewart's "The Summer of 1787" for those who only have the time or inclination to read a single book to explore that fascinating time and event. But I recognize we all study history through the lens of our background, training, experience, and purpose for study. Most of my study in recent years has been in pursuit of greater understanding of insurgency, and what makes some societies inherently stable, while others remain inherently unstable. As a nation we make as many mistakes as any in our execution of policy, but we got the foundation right, and that sustains us.

I agree with you on the different approaches to history. Because of these different approaches, I don't think that using history to "prove" why one contemporaneous policy preference should be supported over another is politically or intellectually sustainable.

Here's why. Those, such as yourself, who study history for utilitarian purposes (that is, for the "lessons" of history) are likely to have a drastically different approach to the past than those who study history largely for its own sake. For example, professional academic historians are driven by a different set of sensibilities. These sensibilities allow for the reinterpretation of historical events over time as more primary source materials come available and as questions and answers are debated.

In contrast, those who take a "lessons of history" based approach to the past do not have the same flexibility because they're basing their policy preferences upon the "lessons" of the past. If the "lessons" end up being unsustainable, then the intellectual foundation of the preference is compromised.

This current thread provides two good examples of this dynamic in action. While you and carl are on different sides of the issue you've raised, you both use of anachronistic (and/or ahistoric) interpretations of the past to support your positions. A moderately-well trained historian could play serve and volley to raise enough doubts about the "lessons" you two have presented and to raise doubts on your respective views on contemporaneous military policy.

But, please, save me from examples of suffering in Eastern Europe in the trailing years of WWII as an example for why the US should have a warfighting army on the books at all times. How was sustaining the capacity of somehow deterring such events from happening possibly in the vital interests of a United States struggling to get through the hard economic years of the great depression?

With respect, I believe you're misreading my posts. I offering any totalizing generalizations about what the United States should do "at all times." I'm merely taking issue with your use of history to support your central argument, not with your central argument.

In regards to the Second World War, I believe that you're conflating two separate counterpoints to two points that you made.

As to wars, it is not who wins the first battles that matters, it is who wins the final battles. The American approach has served that end well without subjecting our populace to excessive burden of the wars of others.

By my reading, you offered a historical interpretation of military history and a historical interpretation of American military history. In my reply, the use of the Eastern front was in reply to your first interpretation to provide an example of how the shape and tone of a war's initial battles does matter even if the victor in those initial engagements ends up losing the war.

Neither that point and the historiographically sustainable interpretation that the U.S.'s military effectiveness was undermined in World War II because it did not maintain a large (enough) standing army during the 1930s do not mean that there's a "lesson" to be learned for the present and near future. The two points simply mean that you're using interpretations of the past to support your policy preferences, that these interpretations are historiographically controversial, and that by using such controversial interpretations, you shift the focal point of debate from the present to the past. And by making this shift, you weaken unnecessarily an otherwise eloquent argument.

Another, and perhaps more problematic, example of your use of historical interpretations is your discussion of "containment." In a number of posts, you characterize American policy towards the PRC of "containment" without differentiating among different interpretations of that word. (For example, George Kennan's vision of containment was strikingly different than John Foster Dulles's.) Nor do you square your interpretation "containment" with America's pre-existing (and continuing) support for the Open Door, or America's post World War II aim of maintaining a "preponderance of power" that predated the Cold War against the USSR and re-emerged after the Soviet Union's collapse.

Consequently, when you say:

Again, call it what you want, it is what it is, and perceptions are what they are. As to the many senior leaders coming on record to say we are NOT containing China in response to many reasonable queries, I "think they doth protest too much" in their defense.

You raise as many questions about your perception of what "it is" as you do of the "many senior leaders."

Our foundation of governance and our geography are strengths. Our belief that our actions are inherently benign is a weakness. Ignoring both puts us at risk.

MOO, these points--not a collection of highly controversial interpretations of the past-- should be the foundation of your argument.

My $0.02

[Bob's World]

Sigaba,

There is nothing "controversial" about my interpretation of history, as I change no facts, I just highlight certain aspects that are important for better understanding how the events of those times relate to events of our times based upon my trained, education and experience. You can find value in that or not as you chose as you interpret these insights from your own training, education and experience. I don't expect everyone to agree with me, but nor does your disagreement with me make me wrong.

I'm comfortable with my assessment, and refine it constantly as new, helpful ideas and information are presented. So far you haven't helped me refine it much.

Containment is an effect, and end. It has gone through multiple official variations and certainly has been interpreted uniquely by literally billions of people over the past 65 years. What we do currently in the Pacific is layered upon what we have historically in the Pacific post 1949 to contain China. China (and many other observers around the world) perceive recently announced US strategy and actions as an escalation of US-led containment of China. Those are facts. What everyone perceive or intends? That is another thing altogether.

I don't think working to contain China is unconstitutional, I just think it is unwise and unnecessary. I do think that thinking about and resourcing the Navy and the Army equally is unconstitutional as well as unwise and unnecessary. We are caught up in a great inertia of foreign policy that is driving us in a form designed for a short, anomaly of time known as the Cold War into a bold new era of empowered populaces and non-state actors and a greater balancing of regional power among a dozen states. How we thought about ourselves and how we engaged the world prior to WWII is more appropriate for this emerging world than how we came to think about ourselves and how we engaged the world during the Cold War and post Cold War era. Problem is we have short memories and have a hard time differentiating between the two.

[Fuchs]

Dunno if talk about "non-state actors" really makes sense. The 60's and 70's were full of them, too. See all those counter-imperialist uprisings in Africa.

And yes, they were regularly called "terrorists".

[Bob's World]

Others look at these things from their own perspectives as well.

From the former Pakistan Ambassador to the UN:
http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2012...ment-of-china/

A Russian perspective:
http://www.defimedia.info/news-sunda...-of-china.html

A variety of perspectives:
http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_06_15/78229791/

A Turkish perspective
http://www.turkishweekly.net/news/13...china-sea.html

Just few of many

[Ulenspiegel]

Posted by Fuchs



While I don't disagree with your recommendation to not over react, yet I very much disagree with your quote above. Case in point, the attacks on 9/11 created the political conditions that led to two wars. The attack in Madrid determined the outcome of a national election, and the attacks in London on 7/7 were more than a scratch. These groups and individuals over time will acquire new technologies and innovate in ways that enhances their lethality, so the threat will likely increase over time. That doesn't mean the answer is to invade other nations in the naive pursuit of eliminating safe havens, but it doesn't mean ignoring the threat is the best option. I think it will require constant effort from law enforcement, intelligence and special operations to protect "our" people, but this can largely be done in the shadows. Our last administration used the war on terror for political gain instead of keeping it in the shadows, and it has only gotten worse with this administration. Of course after the 9/11 attacks we were obligated to show the American people something was being done and the attack was being revenged, not sure we needed to keep it in the press for 10 plus years.

Or 9/11 created conditions a US government needed to start two wars, of which at least one was in reality totally disconnected to 9/11.
BTW the coversion of the first war into a large soccial experiment - instead of retreating after two years- was neither connected to 9/11.

AQ had a success because of the disproportional reaction the USA, not because of AQs clever long-term strategy. One side effect was that most of the US soft power became useless.

Therefore, I agree that AQ should be seen and prosecuted as criminals, not more. Let us not give them a political stage that converts them into a political power.

[MikeF]

I've long thought that we needed a Serenity Prayer for our Foreign Policy. As it turns out, the author of that prayer was one of the moral forces/grandfather to 20th century thoughts to include containment.

Y'all might find this of interest.

Finding Niebuhr

The Serenity Prayer was penned by Reinhold Niebuhr, the most influential American theologian of the 20th Century. Originally a German-American socialist and pacifist who spent his youth striving for social justice for factory workers of Detroit’s auto plants, Niebuhr in his middle years became a liberal interventionist.

He advocated armed American intervention to defeat the evil of Nazi Germany. In his silver years, he also provided the philosophical and moral bedrock of America’s containment policy against the Soviet Union. As such, the Calvinist evangelical preacher helped to articulate the meaning of our nation’s new-found political, economic, and social power in the mid-20th Century.

For a generation of Cold Warriors, Niebuhr became a trusted counsel, explaining to them just war theory, the meaning of freedom and the need for social justice, both here and abroad.

A key architect of the Truman Doctrine, American diplomat George Kennan rightly proclaimed Niebuhr “the Father of us all.” The Rev. Martin Luther King wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail that Niebuhr’s gift to us was the terse reminder that ultimately “groups are more immoral than individuals.”