A messed-up international disorder

 

So, looking at the mess in Ukraine, what's my take?

The upside: Putin is apparently not the type for strategic surprise attacks. This calms my fears for NATO, as Russia could only hope to succeed with an aggression in the Baltic if it attacks by surprise. I am very pleasantly surprised about this.

Why did Western policy fail in Ukraine? In short; it was half-assed. No great power signed and ratified a bilateral alliance treaty with Ukraine to cover it until a much longer (and more overt from the beginning) NATO accession process could be concluded. Either draw Ukraine into the West or don't, half-assed measures are prone to disappoint.

So what did Russia do? The Russian Federation with Putin as de facto dictator (voting him out of office is not really an option for Russians) violated international law (Charter of the United Nations and more) by becoming aggressive against Ukraine in 2014 and occupying parts of its territory. It's thus an aggressor and occupier comparable to Iraq 90/91, Israel since 1967, Turkey since 1974 (a NATO member and I don't see any sanctions), Morocco since 1975, the U.S., UK and Poland in 2003 for a difficult to determine duration.

As you might have spotted, only one country on that list was beaten up (repeatedly) for the offence. All others officially got away, typically due to protection courtesy by the UNSC veto feature.

This is the problem: The West routinely expects non-Western countries (especially governments it doesn't like) to adhere to international law and paints them as evil when they don't (and often does so even only because there are expectations such as Iran never having violated the NPT, but still being assailed constantly). Yet International Law doesn't seem to feel all that binding and imperative to Western great power policy, or even only to its proxies.

Do as I say, not as I do.

A great attempt was made to build a world based on international law and order in 1944 with the founding of the United Nations. The 1991 war to hand back Kuwait to its kleptocrat-tyrant was widely perceived as a most promising effort to enforce such a rule of international law in the post-Cold War era. 

Yet the Americans did not scale back their (since the trigger-happiness of Reagan in the 1980's) habitual aggressions; they bombed Afghanistan, Bosnian Serbs (with Brits and Frenchmen), Sudan and Iraq (repeatedly, but with little munitions) in the short 1992-1998 time frame. None of this was legal under international law, and there wasn't even the slightest hint of fig leaf legality in the bombing of the Bosnian Serbs around Sarajevo.

Meanwhile, the NATO bureaucrats and allied politicians worked hard to keep NATO "relevant" after its original purpose became obsolete; a defensive alliance was re-worked into an intervention/war adventure club.

Then came the 1999 Kosovo Air War, preceded by a multinational campaign of lies. There was no genocide, period. The Kosovars' intent to become independent was legitimate, but the Serbs-run governments' police, paramilitary and military actions against the violent independence movement were legal under international law and an ordinary response. The conflict happened in the context of the earlier genocidal massacre committed by Serbs at Srebrenica in Bosnia and thus the Western public was fairly easily convinced and swayed by the lie of an alleged ethnic cleansing/genocide in Kosovo (I was fooled back then as well, and never again since).

Almost all Western powers of note participated in this aggression against Yugoslavia, which was blatantly against international law. The recognition of Kosovo's independence years later and ongoing Western troops presence to keep it that way provided blueprints that were later used by Russia.

West Germany/Reunited Germany had its original sin with this Kosovo affair and our federal constitutional court threw officers under the bus who had correctly and valiantly refused orders to participate in this aggression.

Afghanistan was invaded in 2001. It was no a clean self-defence by a long shot, as the Taleban were never killing anyone outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but most if not all countries kinda understood and tolerated the American rage.

Once more, NATO was brought into the conflict for absolutely no need, and very contrary to the North Atlantic Treaty, but by this point nobody seemed to care about the treaty any more. The idea of what NATO is or should be had been warped beyond recognition. The craze about the Taleban who had merely granted hospitality to UBL who helped them in their civil war lasted for two decades and very recently the U.S. government stole billions of dollars owned by the Afghan government. It appears as if they are bound to multi-generational anger about Afghanistan comparable to how they still hate Iran's government for the 1979 embassy crisis.

The Kosovo Air War blueprint of massive campaign of lies, deception and vilification was replayed by the Neocons to lie the U.S. (and the UK under the fool Blair, plus Poland) into a completely unjustified war of aggression against Iraq in 2003 (this time I didn't fall for it at all). Again, they got away with it in the UNSC, but this time the Iraqis made it very expensive for them. The American wars in the Mid East including Afghanistan total exceeds USD 6.5 trillion expenses including long-term costs.

The lying moron did "cruise missile diplomacy" (an aggression) against Syria, and most Americans seem to think he was a peacenik who abstained from aggressions. That's how badly their perception of what constitutes aggression was warped.

Now let's skip the South Ossetia War of 2008 (the Russian Federation was and is an aggressor in both South Ossetia and Abchasia, similar to what the West did in Kosovo), and look at the Russia-Ukraine conflict:

By international law, Ukraine is a sovereign country, including Donezk, Lugansk, Crimea. Its government is legal and legitimate, but that's not even of importance. Even dictatorships are sovereign countries and shall not be attacked under international law.

By international law, Russia is waging a (most of the time limited, as for example no air power was used until 2022) war of aggression against Ukraine.

The outrage is huge in the West.

How could Russia do this? Russia is evil! 

 

Sure, it's evil, but so are we Westerners.  

The problem is that the West did not only fail to bolster International law, it systematically disregarded it and preferred "might makes right" for itself.

The U.S. and UK are just as evil as Russia.*

Other European countries stood by, supported or tolerated or sometimes called for the aggressions of the U.S. and UK. Most of "the West" is guilty by association, as much as Germany was involved in starting the First World War by giving the aggressive Austria-Hungary a "blank cheque" that it'll support it in the summer 1914 crisis. Austria-Hungary's behaviour in summer of 1914 was accurately replayed by the Neocons in 2002/2003. All those politicians who like to give speeches about learning from history are cherry pickers.

Now we live in a world where Westerners understand that they aren't the only ones who can exploit such international lawlessness and play "might makes right".

This is a failure of Western foreign policy, and a well-deserved disgrace on the Western world. Putin would have had much more to fear if he ruled Russia in a world that had become accustomed to international law being followed by great powers for three decades. Now instead, he can rest assured that Western hypocrisy has dulled the blade of international law and his aggression will be tolerated by most of the world just as were Western aggressions.

Maybe we can push back the warmongers and launch another push for international law (for real), but it will be too late for Ukraine. Russia will at the very least (in my opinion) keep parts of Ukraine occupied and an open wound that very much prevents its accession into NATO, similar to what it does to Georgia.

It's much more likely that the warmongers who in large part got us into this messy, lawless world will feel an updraft and there will be more interventions and more military spending.

I hate warmongers and defense with an "s" hawks.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: France is a trickier case, and I dismiss Poland's participation in the war of aggression against Iraq as a one-off.

Krugman: Blinkers and Lies

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"Blinkers and Lies"

"(...) the crucial thing to understand is that the invasion wasn’t a mistake, it was a crime. We were lied into war. And we shouldn’t let that ugly truth be forgotten."

 Paul Krugman

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John Stewart interview with Judith Miller about Iraq War prelude

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Comments:
Ignoring her person, the bad bias in this case was
1) Preferring to err on the side of the pro-confrontation side.
2) Pretending that 'we' rely on intelligence services for information about other countries.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Joseph Stiglitz - Iraq Opportunity Costs

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"Chaos in Iraq"

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A Bill Moyers interview with Andrew Bacevich, June 20

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A second interpretation of international sanctions

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You may or may not have followed the developments about the Iran / nukes / USA story over the last year of so, thus for the purpose of this blog post my summary:

An agreement was reached that Iran stops or reverses some of his civilian nuclear industry activities (there's no evidence for ongoing military nuclear activities) and ongoing negotiations are meant to eventually resolve the conflict peacefully* within the next months.

The price paid for this progress? No new sanctions on Iran.

So basically what happened a while ago was what the existing sanctions were purportedly meant to achieve: Iran becoming cooperative and seeking a diplomatic solution, with the prospect that it doesn't turn into a nuclear power.

Yet something strange happened; some politicians who were very much proponents of sanctions (supposedly to coerce Iran) are now calling for more, even adding them into federal U.S. legislation efforts that otherwise aren't really about Iran at all (such as a veterans benefits bill). They're obviously trying to sabotage the negotiations process, even though sanctions were supposedly meant to coerce Iran into doing what it's actually doing now.

The majority interpretation appears to be that this is merely a symptom of the usually idiotic domestic two-party system politics between the two overtly hostile political parties in the United States: It's being assumed that the sabotage is meant to keep the president from scoring a foreign policy success by solving a chronic issue which the other party's president didn't solve.

I disagree, albeit I admit blaming idiotic politics is not implausible.

My interpretation is rather that the masquerade did end. 

The sanctions were never meant to coerce Iran into negotiations, at least not to some of their influential proponents. The sanctions were rather meant to foster a climate of hostility towards Iran, laying the groundwork for "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran".

It was the same with the IAEA inspections in Iraq post-1996. The smarter Neocons probably understood that Iraq had been thoroughly disarmed in part by warfare and in part by the 1991-1996 disarmament campaign. The dumber ones like Wolfowitz likely didn't, but the smarter ones likely did (at least subconsciously). Ongoing inspections were not meant to disarm; they were meant to keep the 'problem' (which wasn't) alive and to maintain the image of Iraq as a hostile, threatening power. It was about fostering hostility, not about seeking a peaceful solution to an actual problem.

Only a few days ago there were calls for sanctions against the Ukraine (or its government). It didn't sound to me as if someone had thoroughly thought about what sanctions, how they could help - it rather sounded like an attempt to escalate the Western position in the domestic Ukrainian conflict towards open hostility towards the Ukrainian regime.

Maybe I'm right on this, maybe I'm not. Just keep it in mind when the next time someone is demanding sanctions against some country.  Is the person (and the represented institution) likely sincere in the quest for a peaceful solution? Are the proposed sanctions better suited to coerce others into a peaceful solution or better suited to foster hostility against a foreign government?

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: That's what the United States, UK and others are obliged to seek in case of a political conflict anyway; a civilian solution. The obligations stem from the Charter of the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty.

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Hubris: Selling the Iraq War

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This is a new documentary about the warmongering that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq (about 45 minutes overall).

It's narrated by a host of a show on a left-leaning* TV network in the U.S., and this will no doubt lead to about half of the readers from the U.S. rejecting it as all kinds of crap. Well, the really far left of the U.S. is already nitpicking even in this documentary, and I suppose the other seven point something billion people of this planet are really more relevant than those Americans who still think the Iraq War was no racket.I also suppose they're on average more capable of learning, too.

 

 

 

 

 

The intro was a good one; the 2003 example may have been an especially disrespectful, brazen example, but it wasn't exactly unusual in its deception. Large-scale wars are rackets whenever the population is wise enough to remember the horrors and utter wastefulness of warfare. Warmongers need to deceive in order to overcome resistance. They hype up an external enemy, create fear, create hatred, mobilise special interests which would benefit from war and they use the proven method of overcoming rationality by repeating brazen lies over and over again till they kind of sound like conventional wisdom and then they fabricate some more or misrepresent some event to get a trigger pull.

Large and militarily relevant societies have the responsibility to ward against warmongers, for otherwise they may do great harm to themselves and to others.

The Neocons in 2003 were no better than Saddam in '90. I strongly believe they should only be allowed to breathe filtered air.

S O

P.S.: Background music and the choice of Maddow are questionable and details will no doubt be fact-checked in the next weeks. Yet, this would still be useful if it was fiction.

*: By American standards. About centre by German standards.

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Article about the militarization of foreign policy

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Delusions of Grandeur: On the Creeping Militarization of U.S. Foreign Policy

Christopher J. Coyne

George Mason University - Department of Economics

January 7, 2011

This paper analyzes the political economy of the creeping militarization of U.S. foreign policy. The core argument is that in integrating the “3Ds” – defense, development, and diplomacy – policymakers have assigned responsibilities to military personnel which go well beyond their comparative advantage, requiring them to become social engineers tasked with constructing entire societies. Evidence from The U.S. Army Stability Operations Field Manual is presented to illustrate these excessive ambitions, and the tools of political economy are used to analyze some of the implications.

This can also be applied to ISAF participants in general.

S O

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"Iraq inquiry: Ex-MI5 boss says war raised terror threat"

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This article is a few weeks old, but I want to show it because it wasn't widely cited in the security policy blogosphere.

Baroness Manningham-Buller said she had advised officials a year before the war that the threat posed by Iraq to the UK was "very limited", and she believed that assessment had "turned out to be the right judgement".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/...

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"Hostility between British and American military leaders revealed"

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http://donvandergriff.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/
hostility-between-british-and-american-military-leaders-revealed/

This is simply a must read.

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Pat Lang on the wars in Iraq (and Afghanistan)

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The US generals do not seem to understand yet that their presence and the presence of our forces are not desired in Iraq. And this from the Shia dominated government that we "purple fingered" into existence and defended against the Sunni Arab insurgents that we later brought over to our side and are now gradually abandoning.

Let's see---

They don't want our forces in the country. They don't want to be "allied" to us an any meaningful way.

They still loathe the Israelis and would never, NEVER accept the idea of the US cooperating with Israel against Iran in any way that invloves their territory or facilities.

They pursue their age old pursuit of private gain at public expense. Reform? Sure, "why not?" they would say.

The OIL? We can buy it at market prices like everyone else.

What did we gain in Iraq? Tell me. I am reminded of all the clever, self-serving people who told me six months or a year into this fiasco that whatever had been the narrative leading to the Iraq War, we were "in it now." All you geniuses who said that, how do you feel about the narrative in Afghanistan?

Source: Sic Semper Tyrannis

It sounds like an old theme of mine: Most wars are simply a failure; their gains are often not worth their costs.

That doesn't keep everyone from promoting them nevertheless. And frequent readers of this blog know how I think about those who do that.

Sven Ortmann
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Matthew Yglesias on the Iraq war

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Matthew Yglesias on the Iraq war:

The harsh reality is that this was not a noble undertaking done for good reasons. It was a criminal enterprise launched by madmen cheered on by a chorus of fools and cowards. And it’s seen as such by virtually everyone all around the world — including but by no means limited to the Arab world. But it’s impolitic to point this out in the United States, and it’s clear that even a president-elect who had the wisdom not to be suckered in by the War Fever of 2002 has no intention of really acting to marginalize the bad actors. Which, I think, makes sense for his political objectives. But if Americans want to play a constructive role in world affairs, it’s vitally important for us to get in touch with the reality of what the past eight years of US foreign policy have been and how they’re seen and understood by people who aren’t stirred by the shibboleths of American patriotism.

It's true, but I'm a bit puzzled why this is still a story.
He only wrote about what was a pretty standard opinion on the Iraq War in Germany even before the war began.

Sorry, this time no #1 for "U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!".

The time for painful insights will come for most who became emotionally engaged pro-war since 2002, and I bet that many will try to use painkillers like a "stab-in-the-back" theory. It's already in the making since 2006 by people like Rove, Rice and Feith.

Sven Ortmann

P.S.: ETA. for the first 'impolite' comment is 2000.

Gates, NATO and the Europeans who don't want to fight at the end of the world

The U.S. SecDef Gates exerts pressure on European nations to contribute more troops for the Afghanistan trap.
People begin to talk in public about whether the NATO is still a good idea (they do so on both sides of the Atlantic, for different reasons).

Well, I'm tired of the mainstream American opinion on this. To occupy Afghanistan and support a puppet regime there is a bad idea.

An Ally who
1. is under attack,
2. receives support by his allies,
3. counterattacks,
4. establishes a stupid strategy,
5. launches a completely unrelated and unnecessary war of aggression elsewhere,
6. focuses his military power on that wrong area and then
7. considers his allies' efforts in the previous theater as insufficient is
RIDICULOUS, ARROGANT and INCOMPETENT. THAT is the poor ally, not the other ones.

Well, the story of poor decisions in this entire so-called GWOT is quite long, even when I only include the military-related and publicly known stuff.

I suggest that you read this article (originally from here).
It shows very well how ill-advised the efforts of Mr. Gates are in this case. It covers the conflict all-round, with most relevant aspects.

Sven Ortmann

Iraq War developments

Probably the only benefit that I had when I changed from an analogous satellite to digital terrestrial TV receiver some weeks ago is that I can now see CNN International. I'd prefer BBC World, but well. CNN International has the hilarious Daily Show with John Stewart, and I'm a fan of this satirical humour since I saw it in youtube.
Recently I continued to see the Late Edition or how that political show is called, and a Republican Senator highlighted a story about Shi'ites in Iraq turning against the Mahdi army (Al Sadr's militia). This and what happened previously in the Al Anbar province where Iraqi tribes (including an influential smuggler tribe) turned against AQ was presented as signs for a positive development in Iraq.

Well, I understand the principle of divide et impera, but splitting an inhomogenous nation into even more opposing factions does not look to me like a winning strategy. It increases the intensity of the conflict, even if away from the occupying/foreign forces in Iraq.

I pointed out much earlier that in my opinion the Iraq conflict is a defeat for the U.S. anyways, but even if the costs of the conflict were ignored, those developments barely qualify as breaks. What do people like this Senator expect those Iraqi factions to do?
- continue eternal conflict. No success, just fuel in a civil war fire.
- both become peaceful after showing their different strengths. Right, and I'm the pope.
- one overwhelms another, is strengthened by the success and turns on other forces, probably foreign ones. Not nice.
- one overwhelms the other and does not use the newly-gained power for anything. Sounds like some people would believe this.

In the case of the Mahdi army the citizen themselves got annoyed by criminal militiamen and probably not a tribe or other militia. But if the Mahdi army loses territory and followers, other powers which are so far probably not influential at all will replace it.

The only success for the foreign forces in Iraq could be the creation of a true Iraqi state as William S. Lind, a respected national security analyst in the USA, points out in his blog. A state that successfully claims the monopoly of force.
Such a state is not in sight as the state's servants appear to be usually more loyal to their faction than to the central state. Further dividing the Iraqi society into even more opposing groups might weaken unfriendly groups, but it does not promote the creation of a properly functioning Iraqi state, powerful enough and with loyal personnel to end the civil war.

The recent actions against Blackwater are probably a well-orchestrated move to give the Iraqi government more popular support, legitimacy and authority in Iraq as well as a move to discipline out-of-control para-military contractors.
This might be part of a strategy aimed at strengthening the central state. This strategy might involve weakening only opposing militias instead of overpowering all militias. The increasing diplomacy between U.S. officers and tribal representatives in Iraq hints at this.

In this case we could forget about the creation of an Iraqi state to Western standards and instead expect that it will become something that resembles rather Lebanon before the Lebanese state was doomed by the Israeli invasion of 1982.
I don't see any long-term advantages in an unstable, Lebanon-like Iraq. It's too sad that this is quite the most promising scenario for Iraq today. Maybe the warmongers will wish sometime in the future that Saddam returns and rules Iraq with an iron fist in isolation as he did before 2003.

Sven Ortmann