A 'Chinese approach' to the War on Terror: a historical analysis

[Steve Blair]

So, going back to this example, if a president decided to make take a different path on Somalia, do you think he could be could sell it to the public and get reelected? Especially supposing it were a major component of the WOT? I think it might be possible for a candidate with other strengths, but they wouldn't be running on foreign policy or the WOT. ...Or, I don't know, maybe Obama disproves me. But, even though he was gearing up for a big fight on foreign policy, the election was really won on the economy. It's an open question.

It's important to remember that, on the whole, the electorate in this country tends to vote more on domestic issues than they do foreign policy (especially in the last 40 years or so). That's a generalization to be sure, but one that I think has a great deal of truth to it. It takes something really major for foreign policy to figure in the minds of most voters, although the pundits love to ramble on about it.

[Ken White]

I would agree that current American culture certainly isn't geared for COIN, although I would posit that it's more the official culture (as in politicians and other "decision makers") than the rest of us.

I should have made that clear. My error.

The old Reconnaissance simile is an example. We don't do reconnaissance at all well, not because we can't learn and practice the techniques and / or the patience required but because senior Commanders -- actually and far more importantly, their Staffs -- are not willing to allow the time to properly conduct a thorough recon.

Same thing occurs with Congress, given any event, they will rush to pass stupid, meaningless and often unenforceable laws to "...show the American people we're on the job." Idiots. The Patriot Act (not as bad as it's depicted but still a poor law), airport screening, DHS, Assault Weapons Ban -- there are hundreds of examples, one of which is the 94th Congress's perfidy.

Long way of agreeing. The Troops, with proper training can and will do what's required; the American people as a body are patient -- we put up with the idiocy in DC, after all -- but the Political classes have this need to show how great they are and how quickly they can get things done. This causes 'us' to do things poorly and stop before a job's completed.

[Hacksaw]

Fair assessment of our legislative branch...

I literally watch the evening news then tune to Jon Stewart to ease the discomfort, and I'm continually struck by the fact that they rarely have to embellish to paint a clownish picture of our elected representatives.

I've literally considered running for an office to get started, just lack the patience to put in my dues... hey that has something to do with the earlier posts

Live Well, Row, and remember this too shall pass

[Ken White]

...and remember this too shall pass

So let it be written.

[orange dave]

It's important to remember that, on the whole, the electorate in this country tends to vote more on domestic issues than they do foreign policy (especially in the last 40 years or so). That's a generalization to be sure, but one that I think has a great deal of truth to it. It takes something really major for foreign policy to figure in the minds of most voters, although the pundits love to ramble on about it.

While that's true, foreign policy also has the potential to be one of those wild card issues that could inspire single-issue voters. Remember how Vietnam became an issue in the 2004 election, for example. So I think in the long term this discourages politicians from taking risks, even if this sort of thing doesn't show up in every election cycle.

On the other hand, I suppose this sort of phenomenon really is just manufactured by pundits, rather than coming from actual populist sentiment. So maybe your point about the elite vs. the populace still stands.

[Valin]

Muslims, on the other hand, were not happy that problems originating from Europe resulted in the creation of Israel. So in both cases it was external influences that disrupted the balance of power, reigniting rifts between closely related cultures - the most dangerous kinds of rifts.

Goes back much farther than 1948, as Dr. Bernard Lewis points out (see What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East or The Middle East: A brief history of the last 2000 years). Napoleon's invasion and conquest of Egypt and his defeat by the British would be where I would start. The creation of the state of Israel was just one more blow to their pride. By this I don't mean to downplay the creation of the state of Israel in their psyche, only to point out it didn't start in 1948.

[Valin]

It's important to remember that, on the whole, the electorate in this country tends to vote more on domestic issues than they do foreign policy (especially in the last 40 years or so). That's a generalization to be sure, but one that I think has a great deal of truth to it. It takes something really major for foreign policy to figure in the minds of most voters, although the pundits love to ramble on about it.

Recall that until the fall of the USSR/Warsaw Pact one of the worst things a politician (particularly one with national ambitions) was to be called "Soft on Communism".

[orange dave]

I'm not sure if this is totally on topic for this thread, and it may even contradict things I've said earlier, but it's something I've been thinking about. Obama's big denouncement of Holocaust denial in his recent speech to the Muslim world apparently didn't go over as well in Israel as well as one (well, I) would have thought. From the New York Times:

...Mr. Obama seems to have confused American Jews with Israelis. We are close emotionally and politically, but we are different. We speak Hebrew and not English, we live in the Middle East and have separate historical narratives. Mr. Obama’s stop at Buchenwald and his strong rejection of Holocaust denial, immediately after his Cairo speech, appealed to American Jews but fell flat in Israel. Here we are taught that Zionist determination and struggle — not guilt over the Holocaust — brought Jews a homeland. Mr. Obama’s speech, which linked Israel’s existence to the Jewish tragedy, infuriated many Israelis who sensed its closeness to the narrative of enemies like Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

I'm wondering whether this issue might require some careful diplomacy between the US and Israel, so that the two powers at least have a straight story. The US might want to insist, ever so subtly, that it is right, Europe created them out of sympathy, and that that was justified. Perhaps pushing them to cede that issue to the Arabists will force Israel to hone their arguments on to the points that will be the most credible - like comparing current Islamists to past Nazis. It may also force a more serious debate within Israel about its future. It could also possibly be the beginnings of a public wedge between the US and Israel, whereby the US stops being blamed for Israel's shortcomings - which would be in America's interests.

More broadly, it would be a destabilizing factor with the potential to get the Middle East out of its current rut - basically forcing Israel to sink or swim so that the current low-level rumblings can't continue for perpetuity. The US always seems to operate by knocking political systems off their perch. It did that in Europe with the two World Wars, defeating Europe's balance of power system, and in the process elevating its own national standing. The Cold War too was largely feeling around until victory was an arms race away. And here too, establishing control over the situation will have to be a first step, so then hopefully the next move will become apparent later. My feeling is that the Middle East is so complicated that no useful knowledge will be attained without active manipulation. Some of this is a matter of skill, not intelligence - something that needs to be practiced, not studied. This small but significant historical point can represent an route for the US to manipulate the Middle East, while leaving a relatively small footprint.

[Dayuhan]

First, the argument that Israel wasn't real reason for Muslims' discontent. From my (Asian) perspective, my reaction would be that WWII isn't the real reason China hates Japan either. When you press Chinese people on different aspects of the Japan situation, for instance why they don't hate Germany as well, they don't always give the answers that one would expect. They don't really understand that Germany has repented for their crimes, while Japan hasn't nearly as much. Also, I think their hatred of Japan actually predated WWII or the Japanese occupation. So actually I think this point still supports the historical analogy.

Of course the Chinese would hate the Japanese and not the Germans, and repentance wouldn't have anything to do with it. The Germans were far far away killing people the Chinese were completely unfamiliar with, the Japanese were in their country, killing them. Big difference there.

I'm actually not sure what analogy you're trying to draw here. Is Muslim animosity toward the west being compared with Chinese animosity toward Japan? If so, what conclusion is being reached? What would a "Chinese approach to the war on terror" be?

Some comparisons can be drawn between Muslim and Chinese civilization: both had periods of great power and influence in the past, both saw dramatic declines, both were kicked around a bit by others, including Western powers. There are also substantial points of difference: for starters, China is a nation and Islam is a religion. Again, I'm not sure what analogy is drawn and what conclusion is being reached from it.

I think one of the most effective uses for this historical analogy could be harnessing the fear many people have towards China's rise in a productive capacity. If you overstate China's capabilities, most people will believe it, and then by extension they will be more willing to defer to authority on issues related to Muslim relations.

I'm sorry, but this one kind of lost me, perhaps you could clarify... who exactly do we want to "defer to authority on issues related to Muslim relations", and to what authority do we want them to defer?

[Tukhachevskii]

Sorry about the rather disparate nature of this reply but I'd like to make a few quick comments on some of the issues being raised.

Firstly, I think it is detrimental to our current war effort to adhere to that old ethnocentric distinction between a religion and a nation (or whatever). Islam's conception of itself, according to its central texts and practices, is that Islam is NOT a religion (only) but rather din wa dawla (religion and state in Qutb's modernist reformulation). Muslims owe their primary allegeince to the Islamic Ummah and not their spatial location. Ironically globalisation is actually unleashing the universalistic aspects of the system. Whereas previously, in the pre-networked world, the expansion of Islam further and further away from its point of oriign resulted in local adaptations with the core tenets becomming ever more diluted and "mythical" the farther away Islam spread (hence the maintenance of matriarchical systems in Indonesia). Now, with a global surviellance society all the aspects of Islam that had become locally "corrupted" can now be recalibrated by a global Ulema. Where as at the periphery Muslims often felt more attached to their former parent communties they now become enmeshed in a vast totalitarian system which regulates them and allows them to partake in a global community. They can now "virtually" participate in Islam so now the isolated individual is no longer isolated but connected with everyone else. In china we see this aspect with respect to the Muslims of Xinkiang who are divided into two groups the Hui ("ethnically" Chinese) and the Uighur ("ethnically" Turkic). The Hui have never turned against their Han cousins simply because their version of Islam is more Confucion than properly "Islamic" whereas the Uighur, as "visible" outsiders almost always formed the outgroup. Cont. below...

[Tukhachevskii]

The Uighur were often used as proxies by the Soviets during the early years of the Sino-Soviet split and became steadily more radicalised in an analogy with Afghanistan and now the ETIM (East Tuirkistan Islamic Movement) has formed transnational contacts with AQ and others 9indeed, a majority, I think a third of Guantanamo interneees were ETIM). The Hui on the other ahnd whose culture us so heavily "diluted" with confuscianism are often the targets of ETIM as much as are the Han Chinese.

As regards to the MENA lets not forget that Hitler entertained 'der GrossMufti' of Jerusalem in the late 1930s, that most Arab nationalists were not actually Muslims but Christians (one thinks here of Michel Aflaqq the founder of the Ba'ath and its subsequent Syrian offshoot the Syrian Socialst Nationalist Party). These men were hard pressed to find "nationalist" solutions to the ethnic mosaic of the ME and struck upon linguistic and racial unity as opposed to "faith" alone which alienated Muslims who did not believe that faith and politics were or could be separated). These early ideologues often read Nazi publications, travelled or were taught there or generally hated the French and British. And who was, at the time, beating their arses to a pulp? Nazi Germany. Apologies for the rather kak handed reply but I'm on someones elses computer (mine has crashed)! Naughty me.