Taliesin

Non-proliferation versus abolition

In recent months I have been reading extensively on Thermonuclear War Strategy after Bernard Brodie and Herman Kahn who worked for RAND in the late fifties to mid 60s. I am struck at the detail of response and attack plans as well as civil defence after a nuclear strike. So much detail that it's quite confusing because it's information noverkill on the subnject of Deterrence as policy. In other words, they designed these strategies knowing full well that they were never be used - and that's the whole idea! a no-use policy for nuclear weapons actually being used. Such a waste of creativity. Callous, cruel rationalism to disguise their moral ambiguity? I believe so. We only need to remember 'Big Ivan' the 50megaton bomb tested in Russia, on 30 October 1961. 49 years later, I wonder if it is possible for a zero treaty banning the design, production of nuclear weapons-the total abolition of nuclear weapons. If William Wilberforce was able to spearhead the campaign to abolish racial slavery, then I am more than convinced we can rally to abolish nuclear weapons forever. Because if we don't, then the inheritors of The Bomb, that is, biological and chemical weapons will be in to replace a thinking that is out of tune with world opinion that these weapons are an unacceptable risk to mankind.

Non-proliferation is a start but does not address abolition.

North Korea versus the World

Strange behaviour always draws attention and NK is no exception. One month Kim is off to China in his train and then the next month someone authourizes a torpedo assault on a South Korean Navy boat. And this month there's the expulsion of SK diplomats from NK.

The curious thing here is China - they are stuck between a rock and a hard place - while in recent times have supported NK- they must now decide the consequences of that deal, while not offending global players whom they must be wary of, because China wants to move on ahead. Their new foreign policy of active engagement will be sorely tested in coming days (not weeks as events change almost overnight now).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/26/north-korea-border-south-relations-worsen

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/25/likely-war-south-north-korea

North Korea versus the World

Strange behaviour always draws attention and NK is no exception. One month Kim is off to China in his train and then the next month someone authourizes a torpedo assault on a South Korean Navy boat. And this month there's the expulsion of SK diplomats from NK.

The curious thing here is China - they are stuck between a rock and a hard place - while in recent times have supported NK- they must now decide the consequences of that deal, while not offending global players whom they must be wary of, because China wants to move on ahead. Their new foreign policy of active engagement will be sorely tested in coming days (not weeks as events change almost overnight now).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/26/north-korea-border-south-relations-worsen

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/25/likely-war-south-north-korea

I may have mentioned I am reading Daniel Goldhagen's latest title: 'Worse than War' (2009). About Exterminationism and Eliminationism. It is a powerful theory of what some nations do in order to achieve their Utopian dreams. I reckon there are three indicators that reveal a tyranny is at work (or that a "democratic" state, for that matter) First, a Utopian dream, then elimination starts to rid "undesirables" (Mugabe is classic contemporary study here), then extermination (Nazi Germany) and the displacing of Human Security. It's this bottom line, Human Security that appears first because if that's destabilized... you surely know the rest.

It may not become apparent what is actually happening until this destablilizing takes place. However, the Utopian spin is all over the Internet, TV, News medias etc.

Is this the new face of "Nation-building"?

Is War Emergency Politics?

Why do we go to war is an old question that has for thousands of years baffled many and there have been many who have written about this question, fathoming deeper meanings behind our perpetual love for war. Herodotus for instance called hubris a thing that leads man to war; Thucydides went on to explain war and peace. Contemporary writers, thinkers, explain war as a yardstick for growth yet not maturity.

Going through the online bookstore Fishpond, I noticed a pattern of thinking – war may be a good thing in the longer term and that emergency politics in war spread, is actually a centre stage mechanism that drives war to completion. It seeks a political, economic, ecological finesse. World War II is a classic example I believe.

What are your thoughts?

Hitler and War: looking for closure

World War II has fascinated me since I was nine years old. After the BBC series A World at War, I found it difficult, even at a young age, to distance myself from the tragedy and drama that unfolded in the 1930s through to 1945.

Many have, in recent years, explored this ‘obsession’ with Hitler and that little moustache, his wild behaviour and sexual deprivations. We have learnt also, that the war dead may actually amount to over 50 million individuals - by war, starvation or execution. That figure would be a closer and tighter reasoning - but the margin of error would be likely in the avenue of minus 3 million to plus 4 million even ten, given what the study of the executed Jews in Europe has achieved in the last ten years of scholarly research.

One online bookstore has over 2000 titles on “Hitler” alone. Many deal with his personality and military, political leadership. There are very little titles dealing with the Grand Strategy aspects of Hitler’s dream of a “Thousand Year Reich”, and the lengths he went to getting that dream achieved. Operation Barbarossa put a long stop on the realization of a pure race of Germans living in Germania, the renamed Germany, whereby many would benefit from lebensraum (living space) in which the slaved would serve the Aryan population.

It is now 2010, seventy-seven years since Hitler was made Chancellor of Germany. He combined the old Presidency with the Chancellor office and the term Fuhrer, (from German Führer ‘leader,’ part of the title Führer und Reichskanzler ‘Leader and Chancellor of the Empire’) was used instead.

I am fifty years old. In the last ten years I have wondered again why I hold to this part of history and Hitler in particular, as an unfinished lesson in history. Have we completed what we all need to learn about this man and the Nazi history? Perhaps it is a personal thing with me - that I have not completed the study – but I am not convinced there is a real sense of closure to the question of Hitler and Nazi history either way. Why? What else do we need to learn?

This is my dialectical journey to discover the depth of what could be a final closure – for me or perhaps for everyone. Dialectical in that I am going to investigate the truth of opinions of WWII and Hitler’s grand strategy of a “Thousand Year Reich”. A Marxist Theory suggests the use of Dialectical Materialism as a means of measurement – which political and historical events result from the conflict of social forces and are interpreted as a series of contradictions and their solutions, the conflict is believed to be caused by material needs. A start indeed when World War One created mass unemployment and hunger in Germany.

Risk Aversion: have we learnt the lesson yet?

Aversion |ə’vər zh ən|

Noun

1. A strong dislike or disinclination: he had a deep-seated aversion to most forms of exercise. 2. Someone or something that arouses such feelings.

 In today’s century, there is a subconscious aversion.  It is based on the premise that human creativity cannot tolerate a reality that must question risk. How will one’s vision play out? What risk is involved in implementing that vision? The human species has always dreamt. And dreamt larger than what reality can achieve. A goal to see a vision concreted in reality has brought much pain and suffering over the many centuries that have seen the same aversion. Perhaps it is not subconscious? Therefore, the hope for realization of a dream is a powerful mechanism that has laid waste to vast civilizations on continents as it can be said to have given the opposite - a truly wonderful outcome. The European Union is the result of a dream that is seeing benefits what was previously thought impossible.

Then on the other hand, it took Hitler a long while to see his vision, mad and unrealistic, of conquering the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa (1940-1943)  - as part of his dream for a “Thousand Year Reich” – a long time to see the invasion as failing, because he did not see the risks that involve such a massive operation or the risks of eventual occupation of such a large land mass. For one thing, slavery is not cheap. He did not see ‘retreat and regroup’ as part of a war strategy necessary for success. ‘Stand and Die’ was a strategy Hitler demanded of his generals; that cost the lives of millions, German and Soviet.

 In today’s century, the risk aversion of ‘Regime Change’ is effectual, in that it has succeeded in exposing horrific miscalculations. Reconstruction efforts are not a task for the military. To invade and subjugate a nation into a political system foreign in all respects is a serious miscalculation that will, even perhaps already has, cost lives and reputations. The neo-con dream of invading Iraq was a serious flaw in thinking, in hoping for a ‘democracy’ reborn there. A serious flaw in not understanding that after thirty years of infrastructural neglect would result in an expensive reconstruction process. War damage was minimal, yet after seeing what infrastructure Iraq had surprised many, as well as the acrimony of sects that had its lid firmly shut tight for decades. The latter was a risk not fully anticipated.

 The vision of regime change, based on moral and biblical language, is a fantasy that has no basis in reality. Except for the argument of a regime changing of tyranny to ‘democracy reborn’.  Constitutional and international law equations factor heavily, motives are questioned, stringent to an acceptable perimeter that, as of this date February 2010, has not yet fully concluded. Regime change is a dangerous game not for the faint hearted. There are limitations of acceptability and the weighing of risk not fully appreciated.

 In today’s century, risk aversion is a ‘utopian construct’ that fails to consider implications. Utopian construct because, when all is considered in dreaming, many would be negated in their pursuit of a grand vision - many have failed to take into consideration implications that impend a noble idea, even if the goal is morally ambiguous.

 The lack of reality check is often what fails a dream. This is what I call ‘risk aversion’. One war historian did make the observation that Hitler had an aversion to this kind of reality because of his narrow vision for a longer-term objective. Hitler’s countermanding his own orders reduced success in taking Stalingrad in 1942 – before autumn, is the clearest example in recent history that risk aversion highlights for us. 

 Risk aversion is the number one problem for 21^st century strategists and politicians. Hubris is its wellspring from which they draw their blood lust for regime change. Always of course “for the ‘national security’ of our country”, they opine. But in actual reality of facts, done in the name of self-interest. Synonymous terms fit this picture of deceit, like the term regime change is ‘security’, ‘potential WMD’, ‘freedom to be a democracy’. Another would be ‘War Corporatism’ as it is the market shifter for rich corporations that are looking to expand ‘globally’. For example, securing of production and trade of oil in the Middle East and Central Asian countries.  Nothing there about politics.

 Foreign policy strategy can no longer avoid risk assessment in the realm of theology, ideological propaganda and/or economic manipulating of global markets to self-interest. Risk aversion is at best a moral ambiguity that must not avoid scrutiny. Much can be said for example, the dangerously loaded term ‘regime change’. And these two are a mutually agreeable, hubristic partnership that can only lead to self-destruction. A destructiveness, which ultimately will pull down many with them. What risks are there in ‘regime change’?

 Risk aversion is a reminder that we fail as a species. And where we fail is, to recognize this serious flaw in time, in order that the good and noble to advance successfully for posterity. There must be a certainty in the statement that we become blind from the glare of our own ambitions. Conceited motives and attitudes are a danger zone mix. Risk aversion is denial of reality in politics and social change. The averting of attention away from a reality about invasion of a country like Iraq for example should render some sense into us. I do wonder if we have all learnt the lesson?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just War or just war?

I recently commented in reply to the notion of the Iraq war 2003 as Just War. (theory that holds certain conditions make a case for response to a attack as being "Just War' response):

The UN Resolution 1441 was to pressure Saddam into compliance to weapons inspectors. It didn't work because of one clause that wasn't there - the UN authority for regime change. The eventual invasion was in breach of International Law. This is the modus operandi of a policy of self-interest. Actualizing regime change may be a good thing but the legality of it has to stack up with two perimeters: Just War Theory and Humanitarian concerns. Both did not meet the criteria for invasion. On the note about humanitarian concerns, the issue is vague at best in comparison to other countries or regions such as Darfur.

There may have been a deep concern about the "eventual risk" if Saddam stayed in power - true - the WMD paradigmatic for regime shift was based on loose Intel (strange after 12 years of watching Saddam- I don't get that) and so the hype about his "intent" (quoting Blair and Jack Straw) was used to pressure an international community agreement to take Saddam "out" by the US for US self-interest.

Like I said - after watching the interviews at the Iraq Inquiry - I have become quite sure that the self-interest mode was in full operating position.

Just War in case of Iraq in 2003 did not meet Just War criteria therefore.

The Iraq Inquiry: The Blair Interview

Benefits versus implications was something that struck me as I watched all 7 hours of the Blair interview yesterday (Sunday). The "Risk Assessment" was thorough but there was a lack of foresight into an impossibility becoming a reality: that Iran and AQ joined their bones together to strike at Iraq and the Alliance of UK and US. Blair admitted that lack.

The weighing in on a decision to invade was already set in Blair's mind as early as mid to late 2001, before 9/11. With the meeting in April 2002 on Bush's Crawford farm in Texas, the fate was sealed then, I believe. The Americans had already moved into position. Blair had till March 19, 2003 to convince the UN Security Council. He failed and well, the rest is history.

There are two sides to to this argument: one says (correctly) that Saddam needs to go- whatever the cost. The other is the need for legitimacy of an action against a known dictator. This was what was sort but in my mind, Blair had already made up his mind as early as January 2002 - a full year before the invasion. The argument for him was not that Saddam had WMD but that he had intent - on restarting the WMD program once he was able to get rid of the Weapons Inspectors. The war in Iraq was based on the premise of intent to restart a program that would see Saddam using lethal force at his will and bidding. Not on an actuality, because the UK and Un and US had ten years of putting up with Saddam's crap and so this was the only option-attack and attack. They had had enough. 

I suspect Blair may have already known that Saddam had no WMD left.

As Blair repeatedly said in the Inquiry interview - his decision was based on intent. Therefore not an actuality and this is where I believe that the UN could not authorize invasion because it could not see actuality clear enough. Although Resolution 1441 could have added an attack clause but for some reason the vague language, and lack of legal insight prevented this and so Blair tried for a second resolution before March 2003 and that failed.

I learnt a lot from watching this interview. Decisions making, leadership, PR spin, Intelligence manipulating and also their somtimes accurancy and getting a number of people onto "the same page" (Blair quote).

Finally, this was a war that went horribly wrong. Should there have been an invasion? Yes and no. Was it legal? No. Was Saddam's intent real? Yes and no. Did Blair get it right? Yes and no. Was Blair under pressure from Bush? Yes. Was there a way out for Blair? No. It would have meant that the relationship with the US would sour for a long time after. Could the US had done it on their own? No. The unknown factor revealed itself later in 2004-2005 with the advent of Iran and AQ stirring the pot.

Here is Part Two of Kawau Summer 2010. A detailed look at where I was staying.