SWJ Small Wars Survey 2012

[AmericanPride]

2. We (Americans) should stop trying to counter colonial insurgencies and start trying to understand revolution as a process not an event.

Revolutionary conflict is a byproduct of the relentless advance of globalizing capital, which erodes traditional political and cultural boundaries. This is driven by the raw and limitless desire for "prosperity", which translates directly into unending resource consumption. Dorronsoro's analysis of the Afghan conflict in Revolution Unending implies that interventions to support globalist-compliant regimes will be a mainstay of future policies. Afghanistan has at least $1 trillion in raw materials and transit access to the Caspian basin's energy resources for resource hungry Pakistan and India, bypassing, China, Iran, and Russia. The Taliban government was an anomaly in the international system; isolated from the modernizing force of globalism due in part to ideology, regional political circumstances, and Afghanistan's civil war. As global consumption increases, the competition will only become more bitter.

[MikeF]

Revolutionary conflict is a byproduct of the relentless advance of globalizing capital, which erodes traditional political and cultural boundaries. This is driven by the raw and limitless desire for "prosperity", which translates directly into unending resource consumption. Dorronsoro's analysis of the Afghan conflict in Revolution Unending implies that interventions to support globalist-compliant regimes will be a mainstay of future policies. Afghanistan has at least $1 trillion in raw materials and transit access to the Caspian basin's energy resources for resource hungry Pakistan and India, bypassing, China, Iran, and Russia. The Taliban government was an anomaly in the international system; isolated from the modernizing force of globalism due in part to ideology, regional political circumstances, and Afghanistan's civil war. As global consumption increases, the competition will only become more bitter.

You don't wrestle with a pig in the mud b/c the pig likes to get dirty

There are better ways

[Stan]

On the other hand, Mike...

If you accept the fact that you will wrestle with a pig and know you are going to get dirty, you are less likely to be surprised.

But, because we naively think we can go to the wrestling match with our rules we are doomed to fail and get really dirty.

Jungle rules apply

You don't wrestle with a pig in the mud b/c the pig likes to get dirty

There are better ways

[MikeF]

On the other hand, Mike...

If you accept the fact that you will wrestle with a pig and know you are going to get dirty, you are less likely to be surprised.

But, because we naively think we can go to the wrestling match with our rules we are doomed to fail and get really dirty.

Jungle rules apply

I think a wise old man quotes this one,

There are very few problems, which cannot be solved by the suitable application of High Explosives

[MikeF]

A preview to my forthcoming contribution to Foreign Policy Magazine next month, 17. True or false: Americans are safer today than when Obama took office.

True, but this is a false choice. Worrying about being safe is simply fear and insecurity. It is time to stop pondering safety and security and start dreaming about living again. When my daughter goes to sleep at night, I don’t ask her what she fears most. I ask her to imagine what she will be doing in twenty years. Will she be the first woman to land on Mars? Will she travel deep into the heart of the Congo researching some undiscovered plant that will provide a cure for cancer? Will she write the next great American novel? This is the type of thinking that we desperately need. These are the type of questions that we must ask our children. It is time for us to overcome the fear and the hurt and the pain from 9/11 and move on with life.

[Fuchs]

It takes posts such as yours to remind me again that people re still under the after-effects of an event which happened a decade ago and killed 1/100,000th of the population. That is, less than all annual flu waves!

[Dayuhan]

Revolutionary conflict is a byproduct of the relentless advance of globalizing capital, which erodes traditional political and cultural boundaries.

That's an absolute statement and completely unjustifiable. Revolutions emerge for lots of reasons, and people are as likely to revolt because they feel government is keeping them out of the global economy as they are because the government is pushing them into it. Each revolution has to be understood for what it is, and blanket statements about a global cause for revolution are pointless.

It's become fashionable in certain circles to see "revolution" generically as a conservative backlash against imposed change, but historically revolution has more often been a tool people use to achieve change and modernization when governments obstruct it.

[AmericanPride]

Revolutions emerge for lots of reasons

Sure they do. But we're not talking about the liberal/nationalist revolutions of the 19th century or the national wars of liberation in the 20th. We're focused on contemporary revolutionary conflicts for the next, say, 10 - 30 years, and really only those that interest the United States, which narrows the field further. Right now there exists a global regime governed by the "laws" of capitalist relations and dominated by the West who are challenged by the leaders of the developing world. These relationships are largely determined by Western institutions; i.e. the United Nations, World Bank Group, IMF, and so on which augment the West's political, economic, and military power. Islamism is one of the few half-way viable alternatives, though its political and economic foundations are weak because it does not have appeal in any of the great or secondary powers. As a political organizing principle, it challenges the Western conception of power directly, rearranging (or destroying) the relationships established by the West. That is the definition of revolution, whatever concrete event triggers it. You say such a universal understanding of revolution is "pointless". On the contrary, it provides just the context needed for understanding the security implications of global political economy: revolutionary conflict is inevitable and the US must be prepared to engage in it on one side (i.e. anti-Mubarak forces in Egypt) or the other (preserving the status quo in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Kingdoms).

[Fuchs]

I got a comment on my blog; it had this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGpXHYtkOS8


Seriously, what's wrong there? How can warmongering, on other occasions also executions and the like, be cheered for? Isn't it about time to reign in here and stop this insanity?
There gotta be some levers for civil society to reign in against such inhuman extremism.

I could make some really, really shameful comparisons to really, really bad governments / political cultures who never managed to produce such a warmongering crowd response in absence of a world war.
This crowd even decided to go pro-warmongering AGAINST the speaker!


In my book, the U.S. should immediately forget (what little it knows) about the rest of the world and clean up the domestic mess ASAP. It really needs a dozens of Baceviches as national pundits RIGHT NOW.

[jmm99]

Herra Majuri Karhu; wait till it gets really partisan ! It's all part of our Quadrennial Freak Show. Surely, you've watched American politics before.

And then we have the leadoff comment to the video:

Half the crowd probably belong to the KKK or decedents from them

Yup, that's the new threat posed to the US by Fox - half live KKK; and half KKK zombies. Three fingers pointing down; one head pointed up.

Thanks for the unintentional humor.

Mike

[Ken White]

Seriously, what's wrong there? How can warmongering, on other occasions also executions and the like, be cheered for? Isn't it about time to reign in here and stop this insanity? There gotta be some levers for civil society to reign in against such inhuman extremism.

Nope, we're Americans, evil to the core...

In my book, the U.S. should immediately forget (what little it knows) about the rest of the world...

You're right about the little but we can agree on the forgetting a lot of that...

and clean up the domestic mess ASAP. It really needs a dozens of Baceviches as national pundits RIGHT NOW.

While I agree on the domestic clean up, for the rest, sheesh, what a thought. Scary, that. Haven't you noticed that part of our problem is that we have way, way too many pundits, people who have no responsibilities but a lot of abstruse opinions...

Fortunately, we're diverse enough that while there's probably someone that listens to each of them, we tend to collectively ignore most of them. As we should because, in the end, they express merely a generally ill informed opinion, nothing more...

To paraphrase the old saying, Europe is Europe and America is America and never the twain shall meet...

Speaking of pundits and twains, old 'uneducated' Mark Twain was a better pundit than most of today's, smarter than most including Doctor Colonel Professor Bacevich...

[Dayuhan]

In my book, the U.S. should immediately forget (what little it knows) about the rest of the world and clean up the domestic mess ASAP.

That's a piece of advice that might be given to Europe as well.

[AmericanPride]

Unless somebody here has crystal balls, any assessment of what revolutions will be like or which revolutions the US will be concerned with for the next 10-30 years is purely speculative.

That's why it's called predictive analysis...

I don't see the capitalist system being challenged by the developing world at all. I see most of the developing world trying to push into the tent and get a piece of the action.

That's part of it, but that's mostly driven by Brazil, China, India, etc. But none of them are no more committed to maintaining the Western capitalist system any more than the US was committed to maintaining the European colonial system. How that transfer of power will proceed remains to be seen, if it ever comes to pass.

Islamism may have revolutionary aspirations, but there's no current evidence to suggest that it can transform those aspirations into significant political action.

Rewording what I said and using it as a reply is not productive communication.

I'll correct myself and say that attempting to deduce a "universal understanding of revolution" is not just pointless, it's downright counterproductive. Once we assume a "universal understanding", we try to shove events into that box whether or not they fit there, and that can lead to dangerous misinterpretations. Revolutions aren't universal, they are specific, and each has its own causes. The revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, and the current struggle in Syria, had and have nothing to do with global capitalism; they were and are reactions to specific local governance conditions. Future revolutions are likely - though in no way certain - to be the same.

And those "specific local governance conditions" exist within a larger and specific international context of global capitalism. The Middle East is not experiencing any pan-Arab nationalist revolution as was seen in the final decades of European imperialism or a religious revolution like in Iran or Afghanistan. The revolutions are attributable to exposed elites vulnerable to the political, economic, and cultural forces of globalism. This does not imply that some magical hand is flying around the world tipping over tin-pot dictatorships -- the people are harnessing the ideas, technologies, and material powers to enact revolution. This is a direct consequence of the global regime in place.

[Dayuhan]

That's why it's called predictive analysis...

Another word for speculation.

That's part of it, but that's mostly driven by Brazil, China, India, etc. But none of them are no more committed to maintaining the Western capitalist system any more than the US was committed to maintaining the European colonial system. How that transfer of power will proceed remains to be seen, if it ever comes to pass.

They're committed to joining and profiting from the global economy. Many others in the developing world are doing the same with equal or greater success, though being smaller they get less attention. I see nothing revolutionary about that... evolution perhaps, but not revolution.

The revolutions are attributable to exposed elites vulnerable to the political, economic, and cultural forces of globalism. This does not imply that some magical hand is flying around the world tipping over tin-pot dictatorships -- the people are harnessing the ideas, technologies, and material powers to enact revolution. This is a direct consequence of the global regime in place.

The revolutions are attributable to to exposed elites hung on their own corruption, ineptness, and ossified social structures, and to increasingly frustrated populaces who want more. The Tunisian, Egyptian, and Libyan elites didn't inspire revolt because they were exposed to the forces of "global capitalism", they inspired revolt because they sucked at governing. That's nothing unusual: dictatorships tend to lose their mojo over time, and eventually the rot goes terminal and the people take to the streets. Not all that different from Paris in 1789 when you get right down to it. The hypothetical connection to "global capitalism" seems strained well beyond the breaking point.

[Steve Blair]

that's a piece of advice that might be given to europe as well.

+1

[Dayuhan]

Sure they do. But we're not talking about the liberal/nationalist revolutions of the 19th century or the national wars of liberation in the 20th. We're focused on contemporary revolutionary conflicts for the next, say, 10 - 30 years, and really only those that interest the United States, which narrows the field further.

Unless somebody here has crystal balls, any assessment of what revolutions will be like or which revolutions the US will be concerned with for the next 10-30 years is purely speculative.

Right now there exists a global regime governed by the "laws" of capitalist relations and dominated by the West who are challenged by the leaders of the developing world.

I don't see the capitalist system being challenged by the developing world at all. I see most of the developing world trying to push into the tent and get a piece of the action.

Islamism is one of the few half-way viable alternatives, though its political and economic foundations are weak because it does not have appeal in any of the great or secondary powers. As a political organizing principle, it challenges the Western conception of power directly, rearranging (or destroying) the relationships established by the West. That is the definition of revolution, whatever concrete event triggers it.

Islamism may have revolutionary aspirations, but there's no current evidence to suggest that it can transform those aspirations into significant political action. I wouldn't assume that Islamism will be a dominant cause of revolution or even a dominant US antagonist in the future.

You say such a universal understanding of revolution is "pointless". On the contrary, it provides just the context needed for understanding the security implications of global political economy: revolutionary conflict is inevitable and the US must be prepared to engage in it on one side (i.e. anti-Mubarak forces in Egypt) or the other (preserving the status quo in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Kingdoms).

I'll correct myself and say that attempting to deduce a "universal understanding of revolution" is not just pointless, it's downright counterproductive. Once we assume a "universal understanding", we try to shove events into that box whether or not they fit there, and that can lead to dangerous misinterpretations. Revolutions aren't universal, they are specific, and each has its own causes. The revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, and the current struggle in Syria, had and have nothing to do with global capitalism; they were and are reactions to specific local governance conditions. Future revolutions are likely - though in no way certain - to be the same.

The fewer preconceived notions we have when approaching and attempting to understand a revolution or revolutionary aspirations, the better. Understand it for what it is, based on local knowledge, don't try to cram it into some preconceived box of "universal understanding".

[Ken White]

Unless somebody here has crystal balls, any assessment of what revolutions will be like or which revolutions the US will be concerned with for the next 10-30 years is purely speculative.

Not that, that's totally correct even if many seem to have difficulty grasping the point -- OTOH this:

The fewer preconceived notions we have when approaching and attempting to understand a revolution or revolutionary aspirations, the better. Understand it for what it is, based on local knowledge, don't try to cram it into some preconceived box of "universal understanding".

is too hard for too many; better in their view to have a straitjacket to put on problems so they all look alike and to have a one size fits all hat for a 'problem solver' ..