My essay on the future of Australian conservatism was recently published by Meanjin magazine, which is a journal of the University of Melbourne.
I have only recently written, at all, on Australian politics, so it was an honour to be offered the opportunity to be published by Meanjin, which I first read as an Arts student at the University of Sydney in the 1990s. To be offered the chance to be published in the same pages as once appeared Geoffrey Serle, whose John Monash: A Biography is one of the best biographies ever written, was something I could not pass up.
In my Meanjin piece, I examine the history and future of Australian conservatism, especially given the brief Abbott prime ministership that, in my view, was both un-conservative and harmful to the conservative cause.
To my surprise, however, I received no arguments from readers as to my view that political conservatism's trident has 3 prongs: (1) the maintenance of traditional values, based on Judeo-Christian principles, (2) the maintenance of national solvency, and (3) the maintenance of national security. This Tridentine Conservatism™ may be summarised as "God, gold and guns" or, because politics sound all the more weighty in German, "Gott, geld & krieg".
There are, it is true, innate tensions among those whose major concern is only one of these three objectives. For example, economic conservatives may be socially liberal, aka 'free traders for gay marriage' and especially permissive on drug legalisation, often owing to their own extensive personal use. Some national security conservatives may, in Reaganesque fashion, care less for balanced budgets than for rebuilding an arsenal and for the sort of moral, patriotic society that would support and populate a national security state. Some social conservatives may favour Government encouraging families by having subsidies paid, directly or indirectly, to families with young children so one parent can stay at home, which is a policy that will send some fiscal conservatives into apoplexy.
Nonetheless, these periodic internal squabbles to one side, the incredible electoral success of right-of-centre parties since the advent of universal suffrage in the English-speaking world shows that if conservative groupings coalesce and hold together, then Tridentine conservatives should always win elections or at least come very close. Certainly the relative rarity of right of centre parties losing landslide elections in the last century throughout the English speaking world - in the manner that left of centre parties so often have - is reflective of the Right's capacity to develop sound, sensible if unexciting policies that mostly resonate with most voters, most of the time.
Since the piece was published, I have been asked by a number of readers why, given the electoral success of Australian conservatism, there are in fact few Australian 'public' conservatives (or, to use the argot of our times, "out conservatives"). Conservatism is, from what I gather, the Australian political cause that dare not speak its name. As I explore in my essay there are reasons for this, not least of which is conservatism's own culture, which emphasises prudence and sobriety, and which also frowns upon "inspiring personal stories" and any phrase with the word "journey" in it. For an Australian political culture and media that leans Left, is intensely conformist and seems addicted to raising endless grievances in a country that refugees literally die trying to get to, it is hard also for conservatives to see engaging with the hyperbolic and overly emotional as worthwhile.
However, all this said, I would concede that, compared to local proponents of social democracy, Greenism or even socialism, the conservative cause in Australia suffers from a lack of public voices. Those who argue publicly for positions that are on what is the political Right here, tend to be economic conservatives, supportive of (if not always well informed on) national security matters, but otherwise social liberals/libertarians. There are few actual Tridentine conservatives. The locally dominant Right of centre thinking is economically 'dry' / socially 'wet' - what was once called "moist", and thus Australia's visible Right is populated by those whose prime concern is a 'government out of my wallet and out of my bedroom'. While superficially attractive as a means of extracting oneself from messy debates on abortion, gay marriage, euthansia, divorce, the sexualisation of pretty much everything etc, the "moist" view of politics ultimately reduces rather than enhances the broad Right's capacity to offer a competing vision of the 'good society' given the Left has no qualms about promoting a more permissive approach on both social and economic issues. It is a form of argumentative disarmament to try and explain the virtues of financial prudence and individual liberty without any resort to a moral language. It also fails to account about what should be done for those who are sick, disabled or have other miseries of life heaped upon them, and how and why we, as a society with limited resources, choose who we help and, especially, who we do not.
Moreover, as the Left's historic position is that whatever happens in the bedroom should also be paid for out of all of our wallets as a matter of 'social justice', the separation of private and public moralities is very difficult to sustain in a polity where the poor life choices of an increasing minority will be paid for by the revenues extracted from the ever increasingly taxed and sensible many. The Victorians understood that a wealthy and free society could not sustain itself without a public morality that emphasised duties rather than rights, obligations instead of liberties, an unapologetically judgemental and sensible order of things, not an ethics of DIY: "In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes." (Judges 21:25) The problems inherent in the "moist" approach, which predominates the Right here, are obvious for all but those required by the nature of their employment to espouse the latest manifesto of the WEIRD culture.
Nonetheless, in an Australia where the 11th commandment remains, as one Christian minister put it when I was at university, "thou shalt not judge me nor shalt thou make me feel the consequences of my misguided actions", conservatism will always have to make the unfashionable case that it has always made, whereby, "we each have duties, we each have responsibilities and just because you can, does not mean you should." If there is, however, to be a (re)birth of a true conservatism, whether in Australia or elsewhere, it can only occur by accepting that the moral, social and economic domains are all interconnected. While I am not one to quote Lenin, he was right to (apparently) say "everything is connected with everything else". It is.
Friday, April 8, 2016
Friday, November 6, 2015
Star Wars: The Realist Case for the Empire
Last month, I provided a brief Twitter argument, in the context of the Star Wars universe, for the merits of the Empire in relation to its ongoing struggle with the Rebel Alliance. Herewith I amplify these arguments.
If as true realists maintain, the real struggles in and between states are not between tyranny and freedom but between order and chaos, there has always been an overwhelming argument for the Empire. That George Lucas never dealt with these arguments, perhaps because of his desire to sell a certain "narrative" of the struggle (or some 1970s bearded weirdo's ideal of a pre-modern society populated by furry creatures) need not detain us here.
Firstly, the Empire as portrayed in Star Wars "A New Hope" was, on sensible reflection, far from the simplistic brutopia portrayed and which would justify any sort of rebellion. Luke Skywalker is seen first as the archetypal enthusiastic and helpful Tatooine youth, growing up on a distant planet in a low emissions environment, in his adopted parents' simple dwelling - the sort of dwelling that any public television lifestyle show would readily celebrate. One can surmise that, here on Tatooine, the Empire incentivised Owen Lars, and his wife, Beru, to live simply, 'so that others may simply live', with their emissions taxed appropriately. In a similarly progressive way, the Empire allowed the Sand People to carry on the entreprenurial activity of their ancestors, while the Jawas practice an ideal form of "lifter not leaner" empowerment by recycling under-employed droids for after-sale in the marketplace. Again, the Jawas can be seen as operating a Tatooine version of Ebay, which, again, is made possible by the Empire's facilitation of a common currency, functioning markets and property rights. Finally, Obi-Wan Kenobi, an alleged enemy of this brutal Empire, lives peacefully in retirement like some pensioned (if more hygienic) version of a former Greens' senator, and he is disturbed not by cruel stormtroopers violating his property rights, but by Luke's youthful if tiresome and frivolous antics. What is there not to like here in the lot of imperial Tatooine? To be sure, the Empire has Beru and Owen Lars killed and their property destroyed on suspicion of harbouring rogue droids, but the Empire is hardly the first government to redistribute property from traitors to loyal supporters.
Secondly, moving on to Mos Eisley space port, far from being the "wretched hive of scum and villainy" of Obi-Wan agit-prop, Mos Eisley is in fact the sort of multicultural melting pot that would see SBS send George Megalogenis out to do a 3 part series on. Mos Eisley's authenticity as an entertainment precinct cannot be denied: it is grossly unclean, has terrible music worthy of an inner city street fair, has a full beverage service unhindered by nanny-state lock-out laws, and there is the easy mixing of all manners of species and life-forms. On a practical level, the Empire's stormtroopers simply ensure that Mos Eisley is kept open and secure to operate as a trading post for dealers in transportation and all manner of goods and services, as a Tatooine version of Rotterdam, Singapore or Hong Kong. Best of all, the patrons of Mos Eisley do not burden courts with ambit claims over debts and breaches of contract, but instead practice alternative dispute resolution, leaving parties to, say, enter loan agreements with Jabba the Hutt, while also disputing and settling debts and contracts in the efficient and final manner of Han Solo and Greedo. Frankly, if Mos Eisley was in Australia, the Institute for Public Affairs would, rightly, laud it as a model of libertarian self-governance.
Thirdly, we turn now to the Empire's most visible symbols: its stormtroopers, its star destroyers and its death stars. I concede that to a certain type of reader, any Empire that has to employ these such means to ensure confidence and loyalty is one they cannot support. To them I say your view is woefully impractical and naive. No empire in history was secured otherwise than by, ultimately, a readiness to use force. The fate of the rebellious planet Alderaan was no different to that of any number of rebellious provinces throughout history that had chosen to bite the mailed fist that fed and ordered them.
By all accounts, though, imperial stormtroopers were well paid and looked after by the Empire. In the battle on the Planet Hoth, who would you rather have been: some idealistic Rebel freezing in an icy trench awaiting your certain end OR some well kitted out stormtrooper bussed to the frontlines in a warm and cozy AT-AT? Meanwhile, the imperial star destroyer is, on any view, a mobile, agile, disruptive invention of the sort the Australian government should be examining (instead of auditioning rentseekers at these imbecilic 'policy hacks'). The star destroyer fleet created not just an entirely unspontaneous and necessary order in the galaxy - but the fleet's design, construction and crewing employed tens of thousands of people in productive work. Building fleets of imperial star destroyers and other imperial warships served to ensure that the Empire had a real working partnership between universities, industries and the Imperial Navy - a partnership that Australia's own future submarine program can only hope to replicate. Meanwhile the Death Star, while perhaps given an unnecessarily ominous name, was an entirely legitimate manifestation of the Empire's right to defend itself and to ensure good order among its subjects. Any effort to undermine or attack the Death Star was an attack on the Empire's order and thus an attack on the freedoms of us all.
Finally, we examine the Empire's leadership and its most visible leader, Darth Vader. While Vader is portrayed as a merciless, cruel, hybrid machine man, that is not the full story. Vader's interventions are those of a narrow and focused magistrate - he appears seeking after the droids containing the stolen plans to the Death Star, which is hardly some roving commission of tyranny, and questions "Princess" Leia over her patently false claims to be on a diplomatic mission. Surely such zeal and attention to detail is commendable in a leader? Moreover, when the Empire's campaign against the Rebels is hampered repeatedly by incompetent commanders such as Admiral Ozzel, it is Vader who enforces an admittedly fatal accountability from his senior officers for their failure to ensure the Empire's campaign is prosecuted with surprise, speed and overwhelming force. What of the Western governments which, in the past 15 years of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, have conspicuously failed to hold even one incompetent commander remotely responsible?
What then should be said of the Rebellion?
From Star Wars' beginning, all one sees is a small pirate ship recklessly trying to escape the lawful jurisdiction asserted by an imperial star destroyer. Darth Vader may not have expressly promised the Empire that he would "stop the boats" but he did earn his legitimacy by replacing the decrepit republic's indulgence of recalcitrance with a very heavy fist. We then see a short battle, in which the Empire is victorious, followed by "Princess" Leia insouciantly refusing to help Darth Vader locate the plans for the Death Star, showing a complete contempt for the security of the very Empire that, however unwisely, had allowed her some position.
Princess Leia is, herself, a strange hero for the social justice warriors to whom George Lucas' bias is inevitably intended. Since when did all the 'equality' people, seeking liberation from oppressions real and imagined, bow down before some self-styled 'princess'? What were Leia's real leadership credentials, other than her selfish, indulgent and unchecked aptitude for planning disastrous operation resulting in her support crews being successively imprisoned, strangled, destroyed and/or frozen? The invincible ignorance of Leia, and her high-handed dismissal of anyone who does not share her self-evidently delusional aspirations for an anarchic galaxy, would make her the ideal ensemble guest for the ABC's Q+A, the BBC's Question Time and whatever is running now in place of Jon Stewart. One glosses over Leia's disastrous taste in men, which includes the intergalactic criminal Han Solo and, admittedly unknowingly, her brother Luke, whereby Leia makes even the most desperate Bachelorette contestant look like Grace Kelly.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Rebels are the usual band of freaks and desperados that populate any fringe movement, armed, as with Leia, by an ignorant, nihilistic destructiveness worthy of the bolsheviks and/or the neoconservatives.
There is Luke Skywalker, who, after some brief exposure to the poor man's yogi Obi-Wan, considers himself anointed to right the galaxy's wrongs by destroying the very Empire that has provided so much peace and prosperity to so many. Luke's grandiose notions are a longway from Tatooine and his annual 'heartliege' in failing to apply to the Imperial Naval Academy. Like Castro destroying Jesuit schools, Luke wants to destroy the Imperial Navy that he never had the fortitude and "right stuff" to enlist in. Moreover, apart from some silly mind-trickery worthy of John Edward, all Luke Skywalker does is show up at convenient times for some light-saber play while others do the heavy lifting. All that is missing from Luke Skywalker's performance is some "Mission Accomplished" banner in the background, albeit of little comfort to the simplistic Rebels falling around him, who has just been storm-troopered into Alderaan-style oblivion. If there is one common trait of Leia & Luke, it is not just a simplistic politics but, also, a neocon-like need to instigate pointless fights that others will die in. One can see Leia & Luke being the preferred sci-fi heroes of the wider Tony Blair and Dick Cheney families.
Then there is Han Solo, an Ahmed Chalabi figure, who when he is not escaping creditors and warrants for his arrest, is also making stable and serious governance his enemy. How could any rational observer support a Rebel movement, however well intended, that has to enlist the support of Han Solo, deadbeat debtor and bounder? And Han Solo's corruption of Chewbacca, a very honourable and decent wookie of the old school, whose life is put repeatedly at risk by Solo's criminality, is the sort of exploitative employment practice that ought to have unionists and SJWs marching in the streets, instead of wondering whether the Millenium Falcon ran on renewable energy that was installed and is maintained by unionised labour. For all its faults, the paternalistic Empire maintained a strict law of master-and-servant that did not always benefit one to the expense of the other. Instead, Solo was allowed to require a Dickensian personal service from "Chewie", one that no employer should be allowed to ask of his employee and/or chap.
I have only just begun to put the overwhelming case for the Empire. For all the fashionable demonisation of Darth Vader and what he and the Empire represent, the imperial system was the status quo and the onus was on those proposing change to the galaxy's governing arrangements to make their case. As Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, said when confronted with equally silly military reform ideas in the 19th century, "if there is no need to change, there is a need not to change." The Rebels never did this hard work of proposing change, of persuasion and argument, instead opting for violence and rebellion. The Rebels were little more than the far ago galaxy's version of the Weather Underground, attention-seeking, indulged poseurs, addicted to violent and often lethal attacks on lawful authority. The dissolution of the Empire and its replacement by a pre-modern anarchy of hippy Ewoks dancing around the ruins of the imperial project, was never voted for by any imperial subject. For all of Leia, Luke, Han and the other ne'er-do-wells bravado and talk of "Freedom", they never trusted 'the People' they so loudly claimed to represent. The Rebels were, instead, at their most happy when they were murdering those charged with keeping the Empire safe, ordered and well-governed. The Rebels were geopolitical criminals of a kind not seen since Woodrow Wilson.
The case for Empire is clear. The preference for order over chaos is always right. No conservative should ever shrink from speaking up for the Empire, however unfashionable it may be. May we always stand athwart the galaxy and, with an entire fleet of Star Destroyers at our back, be prepared to say, "we find your lack of imperial faith disturbing".
If as true realists maintain, the real struggles in and between states are not between tyranny and freedom but between order and chaos, there has always been an overwhelming argument for the Empire. That George Lucas never dealt with these arguments, perhaps because of his desire to sell a certain "narrative" of the struggle (or some 1970s bearded weirdo's ideal of a pre-modern society populated by furry creatures) need not detain us here.
Firstly, the Empire as portrayed in Star Wars "A New Hope" was, on sensible reflection, far from the simplistic brutopia portrayed and which would justify any sort of rebellion. Luke Skywalker is seen first as the archetypal enthusiastic and helpful Tatooine youth, growing up on a distant planet in a low emissions environment, in his adopted parents' simple dwelling - the sort of dwelling that any public television lifestyle show would readily celebrate. One can surmise that, here on Tatooine, the Empire incentivised Owen Lars, and his wife, Beru, to live simply, 'so that others may simply live', with their emissions taxed appropriately. In a similarly progressive way, the Empire allowed the Sand People to carry on the entreprenurial activity of their ancestors, while the Jawas practice an ideal form of "lifter not leaner" empowerment by recycling under-employed droids for after-sale in the marketplace. Again, the Jawas can be seen as operating a Tatooine version of Ebay, which, again, is made possible by the Empire's facilitation of a common currency, functioning markets and property rights. Finally, Obi-Wan Kenobi, an alleged enemy of this brutal Empire, lives peacefully in retirement like some pensioned (if more hygienic) version of a former Greens' senator, and he is disturbed not by cruel stormtroopers violating his property rights, but by Luke's youthful if tiresome and frivolous antics. What is there not to like here in the lot of imperial Tatooine? To be sure, the Empire has Beru and Owen Lars killed and their property destroyed on suspicion of harbouring rogue droids, but the Empire is hardly the first government to redistribute property from traitors to loyal supporters.
Secondly, moving on to Mos Eisley space port, far from being the "wretched hive of scum and villainy" of Obi-Wan agit-prop, Mos Eisley is in fact the sort of multicultural melting pot that would see SBS send George Megalogenis out to do a 3 part series on. Mos Eisley's authenticity as an entertainment precinct cannot be denied: it is grossly unclean, has terrible music worthy of an inner city street fair, has a full beverage service unhindered by nanny-state lock-out laws, and there is the easy mixing of all manners of species and life-forms. On a practical level, the Empire's stormtroopers simply ensure that Mos Eisley is kept open and secure to operate as a trading post for dealers in transportation and all manner of goods and services, as a Tatooine version of Rotterdam, Singapore or Hong Kong. Best of all, the patrons of Mos Eisley do not burden courts with ambit claims over debts and breaches of contract, but instead practice alternative dispute resolution, leaving parties to, say, enter loan agreements with Jabba the Hutt, while also disputing and settling debts and contracts in the efficient and final manner of Han Solo and Greedo. Frankly, if Mos Eisley was in Australia, the Institute for Public Affairs would, rightly, laud it as a model of libertarian self-governance.
Thirdly, we turn now to the Empire's most visible symbols: its stormtroopers, its star destroyers and its death stars. I concede that to a certain type of reader, any Empire that has to employ these such means to ensure confidence and loyalty is one they cannot support. To them I say your view is woefully impractical and naive. No empire in history was secured otherwise than by, ultimately, a readiness to use force. The fate of the rebellious planet Alderaan was no different to that of any number of rebellious provinces throughout history that had chosen to bite the mailed fist that fed and ordered them.
By all accounts, though, imperial stormtroopers were well paid and looked after by the Empire. In the battle on the Planet Hoth, who would you rather have been: some idealistic Rebel freezing in an icy trench awaiting your certain end OR some well kitted out stormtrooper bussed to the frontlines in a warm and cozy AT-AT? Meanwhile, the imperial star destroyer is, on any view, a mobile, agile, disruptive invention of the sort the Australian government should be examining (instead of auditioning rentseekers at these imbecilic 'policy hacks'). The star destroyer fleet created not just an entirely unspontaneous and necessary order in the galaxy - but the fleet's design, construction and crewing employed tens of thousands of people in productive work. Building fleets of imperial star destroyers and other imperial warships served to ensure that the Empire had a real working partnership between universities, industries and the Imperial Navy - a partnership that Australia's own future submarine program can only hope to replicate. Meanwhile the Death Star, while perhaps given an unnecessarily ominous name, was an entirely legitimate manifestation of the Empire's right to defend itself and to ensure good order among its subjects. Any effort to undermine or attack the Death Star was an attack on the Empire's order and thus an attack on the freedoms of us all.
Finally, we examine the Empire's leadership and its most visible leader, Darth Vader. While Vader is portrayed as a merciless, cruel, hybrid machine man, that is not the full story. Vader's interventions are those of a narrow and focused magistrate - he appears seeking after the droids containing the stolen plans to the Death Star, which is hardly some roving commission of tyranny, and questions "Princess" Leia over her patently false claims to be on a diplomatic mission. Surely such zeal and attention to detail is commendable in a leader? Moreover, when the Empire's campaign against the Rebels is hampered repeatedly by incompetent commanders such as Admiral Ozzel, it is Vader who enforces an admittedly fatal accountability from his senior officers for their failure to ensure the Empire's campaign is prosecuted with surprise, speed and overwhelming force. What of the Western governments which, in the past 15 years of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, have conspicuously failed to hold even one incompetent commander remotely responsible?
What then should be said of the Rebellion?
From Star Wars' beginning, all one sees is a small pirate ship recklessly trying to escape the lawful jurisdiction asserted by an imperial star destroyer. Darth Vader may not have expressly promised the Empire that he would "stop the boats" but he did earn his legitimacy by replacing the decrepit republic's indulgence of recalcitrance with a very heavy fist. We then see a short battle, in which the Empire is victorious, followed by "Princess" Leia insouciantly refusing to help Darth Vader locate the plans for the Death Star, showing a complete contempt for the security of the very Empire that, however unwisely, had allowed her some position.
Princess Leia is, herself, a strange hero for the social justice warriors to whom George Lucas' bias is inevitably intended. Since when did all the 'equality' people, seeking liberation from oppressions real and imagined, bow down before some self-styled 'princess'? What were Leia's real leadership credentials, other than her selfish, indulgent and unchecked aptitude for planning disastrous operation resulting in her support crews being successively imprisoned, strangled, destroyed and/or frozen? The invincible ignorance of Leia, and her high-handed dismissal of anyone who does not share her self-evidently delusional aspirations for an anarchic galaxy, would make her the ideal ensemble guest for the ABC's Q+A, the BBC's Question Time and whatever is running now in place of Jon Stewart. One glosses over Leia's disastrous taste in men, which includes the intergalactic criminal Han Solo and, admittedly unknowingly, her brother Luke, whereby Leia makes even the most desperate Bachelorette contestant look like Grace Kelly.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Rebels are the usual band of freaks and desperados that populate any fringe movement, armed, as with Leia, by an ignorant, nihilistic destructiveness worthy of the bolsheviks and/or the neoconservatives.
There is Luke Skywalker, who, after some brief exposure to the poor man's yogi Obi-Wan, considers himself anointed to right the galaxy's wrongs by destroying the very Empire that has provided so much peace and prosperity to so many. Luke's grandiose notions are a longway from Tatooine and his annual 'heartliege' in failing to apply to the Imperial Naval Academy. Like Castro destroying Jesuit schools, Luke wants to destroy the Imperial Navy that he never had the fortitude and "right stuff" to enlist in. Moreover, apart from some silly mind-trickery worthy of John Edward, all Luke Skywalker does is show up at convenient times for some light-saber play while others do the heavy lifting. All that is missing from Luke Skywalker's performance is some "Mission Accomplished" banner in the background, albeit of little comfort to the simplistic Rebels falling around him, who has just been storm-troopered into Alderaan-style oblivion. If there is one common trait of Leia & Luke, it is not just a simplistic politics but, also, a neocon-like need to instigate pointless fights that others will die in. One can see Leia & Luke being the preferred sci-fi heroes of the wider Tony Blair and Dick Cheney families.
Then there is Han Solo, an Ahmed Chalabi figure, who when he is not escaping creditors and warrants for his arrest, is also making stable and serious governance his enemy. How could any rational observer support a Rebel movement, however well intended, that has to enlist the support of Han Solo, deadbeat debtor and bounder? And Han Solo's corruption of Chewbacca, a very honourable and decent wookie of the old school, whose life is put repeatedly at risk by Solo's criminality, is the sort of exploitative employment practice that ought to have unionists and SJWs marching in the streets, instead of wondering whether the Millenium Falcon ran on renewable energy that was installed and is maintained by unionised labour. For all its faults, the paternalistic Empire maintained a strict law of master-and-servant that did not always benefit one to the expense of the other. Instead, Solo was allowed to require a Dickensian personal service from "Chewie", one that no employer should be allowed to ask of his employee and/or chap.
I have only just begun to put the overwhelming case for the Empire. For all the fashionable demonisation of Darth Vader and what he and the Empire represent, the imperial system was the status quo and the onus was on those proposing change to the galaxy's governing arrangements to make their case. As Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, said when confronted with equally silly military reform ideas in the 19th century, "if there is no need to change, there is a need not to change." The Rebels never did this hard work of proposing change, of persuasion and argument, instead opting for violence and rebellion. The Rebels were little more than the far ago galaxy's version of the Weather Underground, attention-seeking, indulged poseurs, addicted to violent and often lethal attacks on lawful authority. The dissolution of the Empire and its replacement by a pre-modern anarchy of hippy Ewoks dancing around the ruins of the imperial project, was never voted for by any imperial subject. For all of Leia, Luke, Han and the other ne'er-do-wells bravado and talk of "Freedom", they never trusted 'the People' they so loudly claimed to represent. The Rebels were, instead, at their most happy when they were murdering those charged with keeping the Empire safe, ordered and well-governed. The Rebels were geopolitical criminals of a kind not seen since Woodrow Wilson.
The case for Empire is clear. The preference for order over chaos is always right. No conservative should ever shrink from speaking up for the Empire, however unfashionable it may be. May we always stand athwart the galaxy and, with an entire fleet of Star Destroyers at our back, be prepared to say, "we find your lack of imperial faith disturbing".
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Hannah Arendt and Hans Morgenthau
This piece from The National Interest on the relationship between Hannah Arendt and Hans Morgenthau is compelling reading.
As a History undergraduate in the 1990s, I read a good deal of Hans Morgenthau's work, especially his classic Politics Among Nations (1948) and In Defense of the National Interest (1951). It was hard then (and still now) to imagine Morgenthau, the realist scold for cold war America, as a man inclined to matters of the heart, even if the need for love and companionship can afflict even the most hard-hearted among us. Despite reading all I could find as a student on not just Hans Morgenthau but Henry Kissinger and Walter Lippman, also, I was not previously aware of the Arendt-Morgenthau relationship and had not seen it mentioned in biographies, letters or recollections of those difficult times.
This TNI piece not only explores that but that Morgenthau's one-time love interest, if not muse, was, of all people, Hannah Arendt. They were people forged by the Depression, World War Two and the Holocaust, which, for some, was a cause for a deeper exploration of life's meaning while, for others, it was a lesson that life is transient and that the here and now may be all we have. These biographical details were lived experiences, often lived with fear and trepidation in Arendt's case as she sought to escape Nazi-occupied Europe, but which ensured that the haunting experiences of war, death and persecution informed both their work, and ensured it was never polluted by the cheap cynicism and snark of this time.
As a History undergraduate in the 1990s, I read a good deal of Hans Morgenthau's work, especially his classic Politics Among Nations (1948) and In Defense of the National Interest (1951). It was hard then (and still now) to imagine Morgenthau, the realist scold for cold war America, as a man inclined to matters of the heart, even if the need for love and companionship can afflict even the most hard-hearted among us. Despite reading all I could find as a student on not just Hans Morgenthau but Henry Kissinger and Walter Lippman, also, I was not previously aware of the Arendt-Morgenthau relationship and had not seen it mentioned in biographies, letters or recollections of those difficult times.
This TNI piece not only explores that but that Morgenthau's one-time love interest, if not muse, was, of all people, Hannah Arendt. They were people forged by the Depression, World War Two and the Holocaust, which, for some, was a cause for a deeper exploration of life's meaning while, for others, it was a lesson that life is transient and that the here and now may be all we have. These biographical details were lived experiences, often lived with fear and trepidation in Arendt's case as she sought to escape Nazi-occupied Europe, but which ensured that the haunting experiences of war, death and persecution informed both their work, and ensured it was never polluted by the cheap cynicism and snark of this time.
Thursday, February 19, 2015
My piece for The Age on Prime Minister Tony Abbott and the state of Australian conservatism
I had this opinion piece published in Melbourne's The Age newspaper last week.
I have not blogged or tweeted all that much on Australian domestic politics until the last year. This is mainly because, as an Australian, anything you say about your own country's domestic politics is seen through the prism of our very partisan political culture, when I am someone who despises all forms of hackery and partisanship. It is also because Australian domestic politics has been, for some time now, terribly provincial and dispiriting. One issue I have raised, repetitively, is that we simply do not have the quality of parliamentarian we need at the national level given the challenges Australia faces, especially when one considers that whatever actual parliamentary talent we do have in Canberra is divided, stupidly, by rigid party disciplines that cannot comprehend sensible people working together or, gasp, compromising for the national good. And this is merely the domestic political culture, entirely separate from our media culture of 24/7 news cycles, Twitter and an instant focus on whoever may "lose" from any reform proposal. As I said, it is quite depressing, ever optimistic though I am for Australia.
In this most recent article, I do mention a politics of "prudent, realistic and improving conservatism", a theme I will return to on another day. I have appreciated the feedback from many readers on the right of Australian politics with whom this concept has resonated, and have been quite heartened by it. Unfortunately, again, we have our share of the political class that seems afraid of thinking through what a properly conservative politics would be like and what it would offer and, more importantly, what it would not offer and would, instead, say a firm "No" to, as well as what demands it would make of the citizenry. It is a debate Australian conservatives, and people of goodwill broadly on the right of politics, should have. Not only would it do all of us a power of good, more importantly it would be a service to the Australia we all live in, care for and wish to defend and prosper.
GC
I have not blogged or tweeted all that much on Australian domestic politics until the last year. This is mainly because, as an Australian, anything you say about your own country's domestic politics is seen through the prism of our very partisan political culture, when I am someone who despises all forms of hackery and partisanship. It is also because Australian domestic politics has been, for some time now, terribly provincial and dispiriting. One issue I have raised, repetitively, is that we simply do not have the quality of parliamentarian we need at the national level given the challenges Australia faces, especially when one considers that whatever actual parliamentary talent we do have in Canberra is divided, stupidly, by rigid party disciplines that cannot comprehend sensible people working together or, gasp, compromising for the national good. And this is merely the domestic political culture, entirely separate from our media culture of 24/7 news cycles, Twitter and an instant focus on whoever may "lose" from any reform proposal. As I said, it is quite depressing, ever optimistic though I am for Australia.
In this most recent article, I do mention a politics of "prudent, realistic and improving conservatism", a theme I will return to on another day. I have appreciated the feedback from many readers on the right of Australian politics with whom this concept has resonated, and have been quite heartened by it. Unfortunately, again, we have our share of the political class that seems afraid of thinking through what a properly conservative politics would be like and what it would offer and, more importantly, what it would not offer and would, instead, say a firm "No" to, as well as what demands it would make of the citizenry. It is a debate Australian conservatives, and people of goodwill broadly on the right of politics, should have. Not only would it do all of us a power of good, more importantly it would be a service to the Australia we all live in, care for and wish to defend and prosper.
GC
Saturday, December 20, 2014
Sydney's Lindt Cafe siege and the death of Chivalry
Sydney's Lindt Cafe siege began last Monday morning and concluded, tragically, in the early hours of Tuesday, with the deaths of barrister Katrina Dawson and the cafe's manager Tori Johnson.
There is so much information we do not know at present.
First, Australians have, literally, no comprehension how the Islamist criminal Man Haron Monis was ever in the country, let alone granted refugee status and then citizenship, and a host of welfare benefits.
Second, Australians also have no comprehension of how a man with Monis' criminal past could ever have been allowed out on bail. The laxity of New South Wales' bail laws, in either form or application, will inevitably be a political issue and, in that light, the NSW Bar Association's opposition in August of this year to the bail laws' tightening looks unspeakably tragic in retrospect, given Monis' murder of one of its own members, as well as Mr Johnson.
Third, there will be an inquiry into events leading to, and the Police conduct of, the Lindt Cafe siege. That inquiry will identify what was operationally effective, what was not, and it will hopefully answer in detail in an unclassified form, the public's questions as to whether, for example, any aspects of Martin Place and the building's physical environment could have been used better, or why the sniper teams deployed were not used once the perpetrator was identified as a single gunman. There are many questions being asked by the Australian people who, rightly, consider two dead hostages to be a sub-optimal outcome. This is not to, in anyway, criticise the Police or second-guess their efforts but, in an Israeli way, to instead approach this tragedy's investigation in an atmosphere of open questions, honest answers and a determination to learn from any errors and do better next time.
However, there is one incident during Monday afternoon of the siege that, in the aftermath, has deeply troubled me. It occurred at approximately 3.45pm in the afternoon when 2 men - the 82-year-old retired tennis player John O'Brien and the young barrister Stefan Balafoutis – became the first hostages to escape the Lindt Cafe siege. There is a full report here by the Sydney Morning Herald. This was O'Brien's account to the paper:
O'Brien glanced up at Stefan Balafoutis, a lawyer, who was standing, as ordered, with his hands against the window. The younger man had his eyes closed.
"I said to the barrister, look, this is not going to end well, this guy will never get out of here alive, and he's going to take everyone with him," O'Brien said in the first detailed account from a hostage who was held inside the cafe.
He whispered his plan to Balafoutis. The lawyer replied: "Good idea."
The two men then, in simple terms, got to a position in the cafe where they could quietly use the out of hours exit (the green button) to quickly escape the cafe. They were followed by another man, Lindt worker Paolo Vassallo. These three men escaped and left the other hostages behind, which included two pregnant women, as well as other women and men, with the Islamist gunman Monis. The Lindt Cafe manager, Tori Johnson, stayed until the end until he lost his life, dying so that others may yet live. The contrast is an unavoidably stark one.
The conduct of the men raises an interesting question about Australia in 2014, which is what, if any, is the duty imposed on men, especially younger, fit men - and men having lived a full life and who are still fit enough to play tennis - to ensure that, in a Lindt Cafe or like scenario, the priority for any safe escape from danger is always first the women, especially pregnant women, children, and the vulnerable? Are women and children still made safe first?
I have been troubled by the sparse and morally sterile reporting of this small incident, in which men made a plan for their escape, which left pregnant women and other women and men behind at the mercy of Monis the Islamist gunman. To my knowledge no one in the media has raised any questions about the men's conduct, despite the fact that, compared with standards of one hundred years ago, such behaviour would have been considered at best selfish, if not cowardly. The idea of men escaping with the certain knowledge that women, especially pregnant women, were left behind, is one that offends every principle of Biblical and natural law, and the chivalrous virtues that not only once permeated the West's Judeo-Christian civilisation but were, literally, a moral basis of its defence in wartime and in times of crisis. As part of the West's progressive secularisation, we have made mute and invisible our traditional Judeo-Christian virtues that a man's duty is to protect the vulnerable and to do his duty to help others live even if exposing himself to the gravest of risks. In this centenary year of the outbreak of the First World War, in which those virtues were daily practised, it is a bitter irony that in the same Martin Place precinct in which the Sydney Cenotaph commemorates our courageous war dead is placed, this question has been raised anew by tragic events in the nearby Lindt Cafe.
I could not help, as the details of the men's escape filtered out, but think of the Birkenhead drill and the Titanic's sinking and the prioritisation of "women and children first" for the lifeboats. While there are conflicting stories of what actually happened, our society's proudly moral understanding was that the ship's officers stood on Titanic's deck at the railings as the boats were lowered, with orders to prevent, if necessary by lethal force, any man from leaving the doomed ship and thereby taking a woman or child's space. As a result of this ethic, in the case of Titanic, 74% of women survived, 52% of children survived, but only 20% of men survived. Additionally, there was an expectation that the leading classes would lead by self-sacrifice, which meant that the survival of the Chairman of the White Star Line's J. Bruce Ismay meant he would spend the rest of his life as a socially radioactive pariah in British society.
One may, admittedly, consider my views harsh, perhaps hopelessly Edwardian and reactionary, and inappropriate to apply to ordinary civilian men in 2014, who have to be careful to observe all of the canons of our times in relation to equality of the sexes, even when in physical terms such equality is transparently idiotic and, when practised in an emergency, positively dangerous.
After all, it could be said, Western societies are now equal societies, and many women in the contemporary armed forces deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan and have suffered horrendous deaths, maimings and mental traumas as have many of the men who served in those wars. Women serve in the Police and other emergency services, and are no less courageous or resourceful than are the men they serve with. So surely we are all equal now? Has chivalry died? Do we need it anymore?
(In saying this, I pass over, for example, the consistent failure of the equality boosters to interest any significant number of female servicemen in life as an infantry soldier. I pass over, also, the discussions held by men recently in harm's way as to their real fears for what would happen if one of our female troops fell into the Islamist enemy's hands, and their determination to prevent it any cost.)
Here in Sydney, the nagging question, in my view, arises as to whether a civilisation can survive when men feel it is morally acceptable – and the press' silence suggests it is – for men to look after themselves and abandon women (especially pregnant women) who are in the direst of situations? Is this ever right? Do we, as a society, expect more of men in a crisis? Do we dare to? But do we dare not? Do women, especially, want to live in an Australia where the traditionally protective instincts of men are now a form of predation that allows men to put their strength, speed and skills into ensuring a man's safety first?
I may be the only person who feels this disquiet at men deserting their duty and, as a lifelong holder of generally conservative views, I am more than happy to be the only one who feels this way.
However, I cannot believe I am the only Australian, especially the only man, who feels that a basic rule of our Judeo-Christian civilisation was breached on Monday afternoon when men took it upon themselves to plot their way out and, in so doing, at that time left the vulnerable, especially pregnant women, to fend for themselves against an Islamist gunman. I cannot believe this is right and, as I said, I do not care if I am the only one who is of this opinion. There is no scripture whereby our Lord says that a man's greatest act of love is to lay down his fellow hostages in order to save himself. To even consider such a proposition is a moral blasphemy.
Almost two decades ago, Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States concluded his dissent in the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) case by noting that the institute had "The Code of a Gentleman" which it expected all its military staff and cadets to follow. Its terms were
"Without a strict observance of the fundamental Code of Honor, no man, no matter how `polished,' can be considered a gentleman. The honor of a gentleman demands the inviolability of his word, and the incorruptibility of his principles. He is the descendant of the knight, the crusader; he is the defender of the defenseless and the champion of justice ... or he is not a Gentleman."
Scalia concluded by saying
"I do not know whether the men of VMI lived by this Code; perhaps not....I do not think any of us, women included, will be better off for its destruction."
I would add only my agreement and, moreover, express my strongest doubt that any society which accepts the moral fiction that a suicidal equality demands the equal vulnerability of both men and women to grave danger can long survive.
Australia crossed a civilisational Rubicon on Monday afternoon and perhaps the worst part of it is that almost no one has seemingly noticed or cared.
There is so much information we do not know at present.
First, Australians have, literally, no comprehension how the Islamist criminal Man Haron Monis was ever in the country, let alone granted refugee status and then citizenship, and a host of welfare benefits.
Second, Australians also have no comprehension of how a man with Monis' criminal past could ever have been allowed out on bail. The laxity of New South Wales' bail laws, in either form or application, will inevitably be a political issue and, in that light, the NSW Bar Association's opposition in August of this year to the bail laws' tightening looks unspeakably tragic in retrospect, given Monis' murder of one of its own members, as well as Mr Johnson.
Third, there will be an inquiry into events leading to, and the Police conduct of, the Lindt Cafe siege. That inquiry will identify what was operationally effective, what was not, and it will hopefully answer in detail in an unclassified form, the public's questions as to whether, for example, any aspects of Martin Place and the building's physical environment could have been used better, or why the sniper teams deployed were not used once the perpetrator was identified as a single gunman. There are many questions being asked by the Australian people who, rightly, consider two dead hostages to be a sub-optimal outcome. This is not to, in anyway, criticise the Police or second-guess their efforts but, in an Israeli way, to instead approach this tragedy's investigation in an atmosphere of open questions, honest answers and a determination to learn from any errors and do better next time.
However, there is one incident during Monday afternoon of the siege that, in the aftermath, has deeply troubled me. It occurred at approximately 3.45pm in the afternoon when 2 men - the 82-year-old retired tennis player John O'Brien and the young barrister Stefan Balafoutis – became the first hostages to escape the Lindt Cafe siege. There is a full report here by the Sydney Morning Herald. This was O'Brien's account to the paper:
O'Brien glanced up at Stefan Balafoutis, a lawyer, who was standing, as ordered, with his hands against the window. The younger man had his eyes closed.
"I said to the barrister, look, this is not going to end well, this guy will never get out of here alive, and he's going to take everyone with him," O'Brien said in the first detailed account from a hostage who was held inside the cafe.
He whispered his plan to Balafoutis. The lawyer replied: "Good idea."
The two men then, in simple terms, got to a position in the cafe where they could quietly use the out of hours exit (the green button) to quickly escape the cafe. They were followed by another man, Lindt worker Paolo Vassallo. These three men escaped and left the other hostages behind, which included two pregnant women, as well as other women and men, with the Islamist gunman Monis. The Lindt Cafe manager, Tori Johnson, stayed until the end until he lost his life, dying so that others may yet live. The contrast is an unavoidably stark one.
The conduct of the men raises an interesting question about Australia in 2014, which is what, if any, is the duty imposed on men, especially younger, fit men - and men having lived a full life and who are still fit enough to play tennis - to ensure that, in a Lindt Cafe or like scenario, the priority for any safe escape from danger is always first the women, especially pregnant women, children, and the vulnerable? Are women and children still made safe first?
I have been troubled by the sparse and morally sterile reporting of this small incident, in which men made a plan for their escape, which left pregnant women and other women and men behind at the mercy of Monis the Islamist gunman. To my knowledge no one in the media has raised any questions about the men's conduct, despite the fact that, compared with standards of one hundred years ago, such behaviour would have been considered at best selfish, if not cowardly. The idea of men escaping with the certain knowledge that women, especially pregnant women, were left behind, is one that offends every principle of Biblical and natural law, and the chivalrous virtues that not only once permeated the West's Judeo-Christian civilisation but were, literally, a moral basis of its defence in wartime and in times of crisis. As part of the West's progressive secularisation, we have made mute and invisible our traditional Judeo-Christian virtues that a man's duty is to protect the vulnerable and to do his duty to help others live even if exposing himself to the gravest of risks. In this centenary year of the outbreak of the First World War, in which those virtues were daily practised, it is a bitter irony that in the same Martin Place precinct in which the Sydney Cenotaph commemorates our courageous war dead is placed, this question has been raised anew by tragic events in the nearby Lindt Cafe.
I could not help, as the details of the men's escape filtered out, but think of the Birkenhead drill and the Titanic's sinking and the prioritisation of "women and children first" for the lifeboats. While there are conflicting stories of what actually happened, our society's proudly moral understanding was that the ship's officers stood on Titanic's deck at the railings as the boats were lowered, with orders to prevent, if necessary by lethal force, any man from leaving the doomed ship and thereby taking a woman or child's space. As a result of this ethic, in the case of Titanic, 74% of women survived, 52% of children survived, but only 20% of men survived. Additionally, there was an expectation that the leading classes would lead by self-sacrifice, which meant that the survival of the Chairman of the White Star Line's J. Bruce Ismay meant he would spend the rest of his life as a socially radioactive pariah in British society.
One may, admittedly, consider my views harsh, perhaps hopelessly Edwardian and reactionary, and inappropriate to apply to ordinary civilian men in 2014, who have to be careful to observe all of the canons of our times in relation to equality of the sexes, even when in physical terms such equality is transparently idiotic and, when practised in an emergency, positively dangerous.
After all, it could be said, Western societies are now equal societies, and many women in the contemporary armed forces deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan and have suffered horrendous deaths, maimings and mental traumas as have many of the men who served in those wars. Women serve in the Police and other emergency services, and are no less courageous or resourceful than are the men they serve with. So surely we are all equal now? Has chivalry died? Do we need it anymore?
(In saying this, I pass over, for example, the consistent failure of the equality boosters to interest any significant number of female servicemen in life as an infantry soldier. I pass over, also, the discussions held by men recently in harm's way as to their real fears for what would happen if one of our female troops fell into the Islamist enemy's hands, and their determination to prevent it any cost.)
Here in Sydney, the nagging question, in my view, arises as to whether a civilisation can survive when men feel it is morally acceptable – and the press' silence suggests it is – for men to look after themselves and abandon women (especially pregnant women) who are in the direst of situations? Is this ever right? Do we, as a society, expect more of men in a crisis? Do we dare to? But do we dare not? Do women, especially, want to live in an Australia where the traditionally protective instincts of men are now a form of predation that allows men to put their strength, speed and skills into ensuring a man's safety first?
I may be the only person who feels this disquiet at men deserting their duty and, as a lifelong holder of generally conservative views, I am more than happy to be the only one who feels this way.
However, I cannot believe I am the only Australian, especially the only man, who feels that a basic rule of our Judeo-Christian civilisation was breached on Monday afternoon when men took it upon themselves to plot their way out and, in so doing, at that time left the vulnerable, especially pregnant women, to fend for themselves against an Islamist gunman. I cannot believe this is right and, as I said, I do not care if I am the only one who is of this opinion. There is no scripture whereby our Lord says that a man's greatest act of love is to lay down his fellow hostages in order to save himself. To even consider such a proposition is a moral blasphemy.
Almost two decades ago, Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States concluded his dissent in the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) case by noting that the institute had "The Code of a Gentleman" which it expected all its military staff and cadets to follow. Its terms were
"Without a strict observance of the fundamental Code of Honor, no man, no matter how `polished,' can be considered a gentleman. The honor of a gentleman demands the inviolability of his word, and the incorruptibility of his principles. He is the descendant of the knight, the crusader; he is the defender of the defenseless and the champion of justice ... or he is not a Gentleman."
Scalia concluded by saying
"I do not know whether the men of VMI lived by this Code; perhaps not....I do not think any of us, women included, will be better off for its destruction."
I would add only my agreement and, moreover, express my strongest doubt that any society which accepts the moral fiction that a suicidal equality demands the equal vulnerability of both men and women to grave danger can long survive.
Australia crossed a civilisational Rubicon on Monday afternoon and perhaps the worst part of it is that almost no one has seemingly noticed or cared.
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Af-Raq ~ Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria: How We Got Here & Why Australia Fights
The Australian Defence Force (ADF) spent almost 13 years deployed in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, for the official purposes of defeating Islamist terrorists and assisting local Afghani and Iraqi efforts at democratic state building, which included training their military and security forces.
Since 2001, Australia's armed forces have fought wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (what I term "Af-raq Wars") alongside its closest allies and friends, the United States, Britain, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, as well as various NATO partners.
In these numerically small, if at times intense, conflicts, Australia lost over 40 killed and over 260 wounded, while spending billions of dollars, in wars that lasted from 2001 until very recently.
Now, Australia is deploying a task group to Iraq.
Iraq, Syria & How We Got Here
On the 18th of December 2011, the last US troops left Iraq. Australia had progressively withdrawn its ADF elements from Iraq in the years prior, as had the British and other allies. That was supposed to be "it" for allied expeditionary warfare in the Middle East. As former US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said in 2011, the proponent of any future deployment of land forces to Asia or the Middle East or Africa should “have his head examined”.
Yet here we are in 2014, with a renewed deployment of Australian forces to Iraq in support of an Iraqi Government that Australia had spent years assisting with not just our own armed forces but with Australian trainers of Iraq's armed and security forces.
The "why" for the ADF's current Iraq deployment is, prima facie, the rise of the Islamic State (IS) insurgency through Syria and now into Iraq. The Sunni jihadi IS movement occupies an ever larger part of Syria and now Iraq with every passing day, as it seeks to establish its "caliphate" and to kill or at least expel any Kurds, Shia, Christians, Yazidis or less zealous Sunnis that it finds in its way. (IS' fighting strength now also includes a large but imprecise number of nominal Australian citizens whose post-war residential intentions occupy the thoughts of Australia's security services). Despite the decade-plus efforts of the allied coalition in Iraq, what remains of that country now resembles a cross between the former Ottoman vilayets and a 'Mad Max' world albeit augmented by digital technologies. Some Sunni Arabs - who had historically lost most to the Ottomans' brutalisation and who had never had a protector of the sort the Shia had in the Shah's Iran – now flock to IS for protection, as well as to create a "caliphate" that would realise the salafist dream.
For most of 2014, while Syria fell further apart, the US, still recovering from the Iraq war it ended in 2011, hedged its position on what, if anything, was to be done about the Syrian civil war and the IS insurgency that it has given rise to.
The US – and much of the West – did not approve of what Syria's President Assad (an Iranian proxy, like his father before him) was doing in Syria. However insofar as Assad was fighting a Sunni insurgency with more than a layer of salafist jihadism, Syria was not a fight that readily offered a team for the West to back. Moreover, no one wanted another Iraq-style intervention, least of all President Obama who had campaigned on his early opposition to the Iraq War and his promise to never allow such a war to occur while he was in office. Intervention in Syria by the Western powers, led by the US, offered only possible downsides and, indeed, potential 'blowback'.
The "Free Syria Army" proffered by many concerned onlookers (and a host of Sunni Arab states) as a middle way for respectable Western assistance to ensure a favourable outcome in Syria by backing a non-Assad party, was, as Obama put it, a "fantasy" which had no real hope of toppling Assad. (While Obama's position has changed dramatically on the FSA, it is unclear why a militia that was a fantasy in August is now a valued ally in September. As Obama observed of the FSA "There’s not as much capacity as you would hope." Given that the US and coalition partners like Australia and the UK spent the better part of a decade training the Iraqi Army, only to see it melt away, one must wonder what realistic hope there is for the FSA's fighting efficiency.)
Given the rise of IS, it was incomprehensible that someone usually as deliberate as President Obama could say "we don't have a strategy yet" in early September about an IS threat arising from the Syrian civil war that had been the subject of enormous news and presumably internal government discussions for many years. Obama was also being unfair to himself – he did have a strategy. Obama's strategy was a classic Western one of "offshore balancing": the US would keep a watching brief on Syria but otherwise leave IS to Iran, the regional hegemon, and Iran's local proxies in the form of the Assad regime (supported by Iranian-backed Hezbollah) and the Iraqi Government (also supported and advised by Iran).
The Obama strategy for Syria was, therefore, classic realpolitik of a kind instantly recognisable to generations past: the West would live with, indeed support, an Iranian "Shiastan" that at least contained IS. Therefore, the West's strategy was effectively in the hands of the Iranian regime and more particularly in the hands of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander Qasem Soleimani, who had been running Iran's 'advisory' missions in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. That Syria strategy, workable until now, foundered upon the failure of the Iraqi Army to halt the spread of ISIS' advance through Iraq and to Baghdad's approaches.
Fast forward to today, President Obama, now apprised of the real threat of IS, and clearly lacking confidence in Iran's capacity to bolster the Iraqi Government to deal with IS, has decided to provide decisive US military assistance to Iraqi and Kurdish governments. The Obama administration's response was slow but, as events moved quickly, so too did the Obama team, which has now responded in force, for which it should be given some credit, and now allied airstrikes are being made on IS targets.
So far as Australia is concerned, the Abbott Government remains, in public at least, determined to mount new operations in the Iraq theatre only, which already include Australian aircraft transporting arms and supplies to the Kurds fighting IS. The Australian contribution of Special Forces and Super Hornets is for striking targets in Iraq only (while perhaps Syria though this mission is only conjecture at this stage). The Labor opposition has been supportive of an Australian contribution at least so far as Iraq's security needs are concerned.
Nonetheless, the original sin of the 2003 Iraq war looms large over the war against IS, not least because IS' support base is among the very Sunnis who lost most from the toppling of Saddam Hussein, and whose fears of loss drive many Sunnis to support IS. It is difficult to see how IS could have arisen in an Iraq ruled by Saddam, not merely because Saddam's regime gave a certain preference to Sunnis but, also, Saddam did not tolerate theocrats of any kind, especially those purporting to challenge the Baathist regime.
[At the same time, the toppling of Saddam has offered the US and its allies the opportunity to help create an independent Kurdish state, which would likely be another Israel, albeit one abutting Iran, Iraq, Turkey and just south of Russia and its near abroad. Given the few real benefits from the fall of Saddam, the opportunity presented by Kurdistan should not be ignored. But that is a subject for another time.]
None of the current events in Iraq and Syria can be discussed, especially from an Australian perspective, without some reflection on the post-2001 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, aka the Af-raq Wars.
The Lessons of Recent Not So Splendid Little Wars
The profound lack of allied success in Afghanistan would, ordinarily, deter any further interventions in the Islamic world. Indeed, the Afghanistan war, despite the superficialities of Karzai's departure, seems destined to end in a kind of slow failure that has no Kurdish silver lining. It is difficult to imagine a scenario where most of Afghanistan does not, in the medium term, again return to Taliban control, with only perhaps Kabul (and perhaps Herat and its surrounds) to remain, as they did under Soviet puppet Najibullah regime, the last remaining bastions of foreign occupiers and their proxies. As was the case in 2001, the least worst Afghan future is an Afghanistan that has a Pashtu plurality kept at bay by a Western and Iranian-sponsored 'coalition of the others'.
It is tempting for Australians, especially given current events in Iraq and Syria, as well as the ongoing problems of Afghanistan, to see the Af-raq Wars as utter folly, poorly executed and almost immoral debacles. It is also tempting for some Australians, especially those of a Green and/or Left perspective, to think that a new military effort in Iraq is at best unwise, or more accurately a refusal by Australia to repent of the sins of the last decade, and to embrace a foreign policy that is more 'lawfare' than warfare.
On one view, many Australians would conclude that our 13 years of fighting the "Af-raq Wars" was, in short, a tragic waste of Australian lives and money. On any view, these wars achieved none of their stated results to any extent that could be termed "victory". Given that the US and its allies fought the Af-raq wars without clear objectives, without any real planning and forethought, without sufficient resourcing of the war effort, and, in particular, without anything like the drive and resolution necessary, such a conclusion would otherwise be justified. Such a paltry return on a decade's military investment would usually weigh against Australia ever deploying again in expeditionary wars and, instead, would augur a return to securing only our own island continent, a "Fortress Australia".
Further, the last 13 years' wars were fought in a manner heretical to what may be called, in shorthand, the "Western Way of War": whereby advanced polities use the full weight of their power to destroy - promptly and decisively - an adversary. This way of war involves mobilising the nation's resources for the war effort and directing them speedily and in overwhelming force to compel an enemy's capitulation.
It is no accident that the last wars Australia (and our Anglophone) allies unmistakably won were the two World Wars, the Falklands War and the 1991 Gulf War. In these wars – both total and limited - the respective allied leaderships accepted that these conflicts required the decisive use of force to attain clearly defined objectives, which in turn necessitated the practice of the Western Way of War: deliberate planning, the proper resourcing of the war effort, the building of military coalitions, and, most importantly, the speedy and relentless use of overwhelming force at decisive places and times. To risk descending into military jargon, these wars were notable for their selection and maintenance of aims, as well as their relentless retention of the initiative. Effecting these successful wars was a democratic political class who, put simply, could think strategically and "got" war, either from their deep intellectual training and long professional experience or, more simply, because of the personal vicissitudes of a real life lived in interesting times (... worldviews not formed by years of lobbying, political staffing or base electioneering.)
Instead of Western nations playing to their strengths and pursuing war-making in accordance with proven experience, Australia and her allies instead spent 13 years in bloody but meandering and ultimately hopeless Afghan and Iraq wars. When the Western coalition was faced with a strategic choice between (1) either a minimalist "offshore balancing" strategy of supporting chosen allies/proxies and occasionally intervening to support them (aka backing a hegemon) or (2) following the Western Way of War and using its own overwhelming force, the Western allies chose, disastrously, a third option of making war indecisively in very distant Islamic territories, where local and foreign insurgents and their allies would always retain both the more zealous interest and the strategic patience to wait out - if not exhaust - polities like ours.
The half-hearted war effort of Australia and her allies was made worse by possibly the least wise and least experienced political leaders of the West's recent history, as well as an allied military leadership that failed across coalition nations to advise their national political leaders, with required candours, that their goals and dreams were patently unrealistic.
The degree of Australian and allied confusion of what to do in the Af-raq theatres of war was best reflected by Western militaries' fostering the growth of, and then accepting, the very fashionable "Counter-Insurgency" (COIN) doctrine. While superficially attractive as a 21st century form of Lawrence Arabia's native romanticism, COIN was the very form of intra-societal warfare to which 21st century, affluent, English-speaking societies were - and are - least adept at engaging in. As a war-fighting doctrine for a democratic and technologically obsessed first world country like Australia, COIN has about as much practical application as Maoist people's war or Putin 'special war'.
Why Australia (nonetheless) Fights
However, despite the almost breathtakingly incompetent prosecution of the Af-raq wars, and while Australia has suffered deaths, wounded and expended large amounts of money fighting them, it would be wrong to see these wars only as military disasters, when Australia has derived some real benefits from its recent wars. Yes, these disastrous post-2001 conflicts yielded good results. And these recent wars explain also, why Australia (nonetheless) fights in coalition wars and why Australia will, in future, again ally itself with the US in similar contingencies to the current Iraq deployment.
First, Australia, by virtue of its geopolitical realities, needs strong allies and as a result of the Af-raq wars, Australia's military alliances with the US and its other allies have never been closer than they are now. It must be recalled that Australia's involvement in the "Af-raq" wars was never - ever - only about killing jihadists, destroying their bases of terrorist support, finding WMD or bringing the blessings of liberal democracy to huddled masses yearning to be free. To be sure, these were Australian Government objectives, pursued sincerely even if most unwisely. However, at the same time, each of the Howard, Rudd, Gillard and Abbott governments affirmed that Australian forces were deployed to support key allies (especially the US), and to prop up NATO (aka "No Action Talk Only"). In essence, Australians fought in far off places to ensure the vitality of alliances that matter to the security of Australia's own neighbourhood. Australia has always done this and Australia will always do this.
As anyone familiar with Australian military history knows, our armed forces have been used since colonial times to support, first, the Pax Britannica and, now, the Pax Americana, both of which superpower hegemonies are demonstrably in Australia's interests. Hegemony maintenance, like any maintenance, involves expense, risk, and, regrettably, it costs blood and treasure. However, as geopolitics and fallen human nature will always produce hegemons and hegemonic alliances, it is in Australia's interest as a sovereign constitutional democracy to ally ourselves with 'great and powerful friends' like the UK and the US that share Australia's interests and our values. Alliances, like any friendship, require work, especially messy and costly work like wars.
Moreover, Australia is an enormous island continent of only 23 million people located in a perpetually troubled region. As the famous British strategist Sir Eyre Crowe said in 1907 of British policy applies also to Australia in 2014: the "immutable conditions of [our] geographical situation" determine our national strategy. The very facts of our massive island, our wealthy but still small population, and our turbulent neighbourhood demand not just a potent ADF but also that Australia has the closest possible military relationship with the dominant friendly sea and air powers.
Those who question, naively, the morality of Australia supporting a continued American military primacy should be made to nominate their preferred alternative hegemon. China or Russia anyone?
Second, while the "Af-raq" wars were, as noted, plagued by strategic and operational flaws, these wars provided the ADF with invaluable war experience. Let there be no misunderstanding: the ADF is raised, equipped and maintained for war. Preparing for and fighting wars is the ADF's raison d'être. The ADF is composed entirely of volunteers, each of who knows he or she may be sent in harm’s way. War is a deadly trade - but like any trade, a skilled unpractised is a skill that will soon atrophy.
The Af-raq Wars have been excellent experience for the ADF, even if political correctness prevents this from ever being acknowledged openly by the service chiefs. The recent wars have been valuable experience which would have otherwise been denied to a provincial, stay-at-home ADF. One need not dwell for long on the history of, say, Rome, Spain and Britain – or indeed the modern United States - to see that regular war experience maintained the fighting skills, efficiencies and resilience of their fleets and armies. One need not dwell, either, on the fragile state of the ADF in the run-up to the East Timor intervention in 1999, where the bitter fruits of post-Vietnam military isolationism was an ADF reliant on improvisation and foreign assistance to conduct an operation only 700km from Darwin. If, as the conquistador Hernan Cortes warned, "valour loves not idleness", neither do less romantic but vital necessities like strategic depth and operational readiness appreciate decades of parsimonious Defence budgets, inadequate training and a denuding of the very Reserves that are drawn on in wartime. Indeed, the ADF's shallow bench meant that both regular and reserve personnel often had multiple Afghan and Iraq deployments in harm's way, the baneful results of which are only now becoming clear in the large numbers of veterans with wounds not just physical but mental as well.
Stating that Af-raq wars were good experience does not, in any way, ignore the moral requirement for satisfying “Just War” criteria. Nor does it ignore or explain away the very real cost to Australia of the deaths and wounds inflicted on our brave troops. However, one’s just war criteria is rather narrow if the killing and capturing of jihadists (whether of the Al Qaeda, Taliban or IS variety), sworn to destroy 'infidels' such as Australians, is considered illicit. The only real question arising from Af-raq is whether, in fact, Australia could have done more as part of the allied coalition, especially when compared to the enormous effort made by Canada in Afghanistan.
On a more human level, the last 13 years’ continuous operations has ensured the ADF now has many battle-hardened junior and middle-ranking leaders who will be tomorrow's senior commanders and NCOs. More importantly, on a cultural level, the last 13 years' continuous operations have trained these leaders to be impatient with red-tape, inertia and mediocrity. As the Israeli legend General Moshe Dayan said of military leadership, in words that should be engraved in large, bold type at all military headquarters, "We must prepare ourselves morally and physically to endure a protracted struggle, not to draw up a timetable for the achievement of 'rest and peace'". Indeed.
In sum, while the Af-raq wars were on one view "Operation Infinite Cluster", there were significant benefits for Australia and its armed forces from what may, at this time, only be seen as not just stupid but immoral wars. Reasonable Australians aware of our true strategic position should acknowledge not just the Af-raq wars' blunders and conceits, but, also, the benefits that have also accrued to Australia from our military perseverance. We have developed even more intimate alliances with the US and other allies, as well as exposed our armed forces to the realities of modern warfare and our service members to war experiences that, while inevitably hazardous, will only benefit the Australian profession of arms. Given the neighbourhood in which Australia lives, these are strategic gains of significant importance.
Australia's Renewed Iraq War
At root of Australia's involvement in the Af-raq wars - and now the renewed Iraq war against IS - is that, put succinctly, what was true of Thucydides' Athenians is also true of 21st century Australians: we are motivated by self-interest, security and honour in our statecraft. All three motives drive us to have armed forces and security alliances that can preserve our national sovereignty and freedom.
The world 'as it is' will always impose contrary and sometimes hostile disciplines upon us.
The world "as it is" will always have greater, medium and lesser powers with differing and conflicting interests.
The combustible interplay of Australia's inescapable realities will always result in rivalries, conflicts, upheavals, wars and insurgencies, which Australia cannot wish away but must be prepared to deal with, if necessarily forcefully.
Accordingly, the real nature of our strategic position means that Australia will always require military alliances with great and friendly powers, and we will always require an ADF that is prepared and ready for modern war to defend Australia and its interests. And if our participation in the disastrous Af-raq wars has paradoxically made Australia more secure by virtue of ever closer great power alliances and by ensuring an ADF that is even more experienced and potent, then, no matter how well camouflaged these blessings conferred on us by the Af-raq wars are, we should not just note them but, indeed, be thankful for them.
These realities of our strategic position and our military requirements are why we now, also, contribute to a renewed US-led expeditionary war against IS in Iraq (and perhaps Syria). No nation, even an island continent like Australia, is really an island. And in the great game of realpolitik, there is no benefit to Australia in seeing the Middle East's fragile arrangements come asunder because of IS' march and there is no harm done by – and indeed many benefits arise from – Australia supporting our US ally in stopping IS. Additionally, and not unimportantly, using military force to defeat IS is the right and responsible thing to do.
Finally, Australia is a very rich and strong nation but we live in a neighbourhood where we need our great and powerful friends. We are also a nation that honours its word and which stands by its friends. And when push comes to shove, real friends help their friends, whether in Afghanistan or in Iraq... or in places closer to home. It has been ever thus and will be ever thus.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Robert Kaplan's "In Defense of Empire"
This piece by Stratfor's Robert Kaplan is well worth your reading and makes many valid points, especially on what a 21st US hegemony will looks like. A key takeaway is here:
Ancient empires such as Rome, Achaemenid Persia, Mauryan India, and Han China may have been cruel beyond measure, but they were less cruel and delivered more predictability for the average person than did anything beyond their borders. Who says imperialism is necessarily reactionary? Athens, Rome, Venice, and Great Britain were the most enlightened regimes of their day. True, imperialism has often been driven by the pursuit of riches, but that pursuit has in many cases resulted in a hard-earned cosmopolitanism. The early modern empires of Hapsburg Austria and Ottoman Turkey were well known for their relative tolerance and protection of minorities, including the Jews. Precisely because the Hapsburg imperialists governed a mélange of ethnic and religious groups stretching from the edge of the Swiss Alps to central Romania, and from the Polish Carpathians to the Adriatic Sea, they abjured ethnic nationalism and sought a universalism almost postmodern in its design. What followed the Hapsburgs were mono-ethnic states and quasi-democracies that persecuted minorities and helped ease the path of Nazism.
The main problem with empire is not just, as Kaplan points out, that empire is seen as undemocratic, coercive and suppressive of local aspirations, but that, in some respects much worse, great powers in 2014 are just not interested, even if they were otherwise capable, in being foreign administrators and foreign legionaries. It is not any lack of power holding back the desire to conquer, annex or otherwise direct the affairs of others but, rather, a disinterest in making others burdens one's own. The rebirth of prudence and consciousness of limits is to be contrasted with some of the more exuberant rhetoric that accompanied the US and Western ambitions for Afghanistan and Iraq.
The lack of great power interest in oppressing and exploiting people in weak, failed but valuable places is in some ways reflected more benignly by the lack of great power interest in even trying to help those in failed states such as, for example, Syria and Iraq. This is not to underestimate the effect of "War Fatigue" on western polities, especially in respect of any supposed humanitarian crises in the Arab world which seems to know nothing but humanitarian disasters that protagonists are only to keen to make problems for outside problems.
In any event, this salient lack of great power interest in empire, imperialism and formal annexations is augmented by the unsuitability of modern great powers, especially the United States, in supplying a governing class. This was a problem with the whole US-led occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Where the Romans, the Spanish, the Ottomans, the Habsburgs, the British, the French and even the Dutch had classes of imperial administrator, the whole concept now is impossible to conceive of, as contra the spirit of our times. Who in the modern civil societies of any NATO power could be looked to or relied on to bring order to and then rule over a disparate territory in a largely fair and non-corrupt manner? The US and its NATO allies are, culturally and temperamentally, unlikely to now produce such proconsuls, pro-praetors and garrisons. In more simple terms, young Westerners do not aspire to rule the world as their forebears may once have done.
Saying all this may reflect 'progress' in the Whig sense but what then of those parts of the world persistently stuck in conflict, without hope of peace or prosperity, in the absence of some foreign, largely benevolent, outside power? As Kaplan says:
Rome, Parthia, and Hapsburg Austria were great precisely because they gave significant parts of the world a modicum of imperial order that they would not otherwise have enjoyed.
Who or what power is to undertake this still relevant task today? A good question, posed regularly by horrific events over the last two decades, to which no satisfactory answer has been provided.
Ancient empires such as Rome, Achaemenid Persia, Mauryan India, and Han China may have been cruel beyond measure, but they were less cruel and delivered more predictability for the average person than did anything beyond their borders. Who says imperialism is necessarily reactionary? Athens, Rome, Venice, and Great Britain were the most enlightened regimes of their day. True, imperialism has often been driven by the pursuit of riches, but that pursuit has in many cases resulted in a hard-earned cosmopolitanism. The early modern empires of Hapsburg Austria and Ottoman Turkey were well known for their relative tolerance and protection of minorities, including the Jews. Precisely because the Hapsburg imperialists governed a mélange of ethnic and religious groups stretching from the edge of the Swiss Alps to central Romania, and from the Polish Carpathians to the Adriatic Sea, they abjured ethnic nationalism and sought a universalism almost postmodern in its design. What followed the Hapsburgs were mono-ethnic states and quasi-democracies that persecuted minorities and helped ease the path of Nazism.
The main problem with empire is not just, as Kaplan points out, that empire is seen as undemocratic, coercive and suppressive of local aspirations, but that, in some respects much worse, great powers in 2014 are just not interested, even if they were otherwise capable, in being foreign administrators and foreign legionaries. It is not any lack of power holding back the desire to conquer, annex or otherwise direct the affairs of others but, rather, a disinterest in making others burdens one's own. The rebirth of prudence and consciousness of limits is to be contrasted with some of the more exuberant rhetoric that accompanied the US and Western ambitions for Afghanistan and Iraq.
The lack of great power interest in oppressing and exploiting people in weak, failed but valuable places is in some ways reflected more benignly by the lack of great power interest in even trying to help those in failed states such as, for example, Syria and Iraq. This is not to underestimate the effect of "War Fatigue" on western polities, especially in respect of any supposed humanitarian crises in the Arab world which seems to know nothing but humanitarian disasters that protagonists are only to keen to make problems for outside problems.
In any event, this salient lack of great power interest in empire, imperialism and formal annexations is augmented by the unsuitability of modern great powers, especially the United States, in supplying a governing class. This was a problem with the whole US-led occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Where the Romans, the Spanish, the Ottomans, the Habsburgs, the British, the French and even the Dutch had classes of imperial administrator, the whole concept now is impossible to conceive of, as contra the spirit of our times. Who in the modern civil societies of any NATO power could be looked to or relied on to bring order to and then rule over a disparate territory in a largely fair and non-corrupt manner? The US and its NATO allies are, culturally and temperamentally, unlikely to now produce such proconsuls, pro-praetors and garrisons. In more simple terms, young Westerners do not aspire to rule the world as their forebears may once have done.
Saying all this may reflect 'progress' in the Whig sense but what then of those parts of the world persistently stuck in conflict, without hope of peace or prosperity, in the absence of some foreign, largely benevolent, outside power? As Kaplan says:
Rome, Parthia, and Hapsburg Austria were great precisely because they gave significant parts of the world a modicum of imperial order that they would not otherwise have enjoyed.
Who or what power is to undertake this still relevant task today? A good question, posed regularly by horrific events over the last two decades, to which no satisfactory answer has been provided.
Blogging Indolence
I have been busy with my daily trade but look to return to blogging with more regularity as soon as I can.
I have a Twitter account at which you can follow me: @GrayConnolly
At my Twitter account, you can receive your fix of "Daily Gray" on all matters of war, peace, religion, geopolitics, history, upheavals, rebellions, insurgencies, repressions and reaction. I hope I have captured some of the colour and movement of my tweeting.
I have a Twitter account at which you can follow me: @GrayConnolly
At my Twitter account, you can receive your fix of "Daily Gray" on all matters of war, peace, religion, geopolitics, history, upheavals, rebellions, insurgencies, repressions and reaction. I hope I have captured some of the colour and movement of my tweeting.
My conservative apologia pro Malcolm Turnbull
One of my rare forays into Australian domestic politics here, where I consider the position of Malcolm Turnbull, the former Liberal leader. I was surprised by the positive response I received from many fellow conservatives. Australian politics is in a curious position at present.
Monday, August 26, 2013
The Syrian Mess
Edward Luttwak has an, as usual, persuasive article in the New York Times warning President Obama about the hazards of involving the United States and its allies in the Syrian mess. Luttwak's contrarian article comes at a time when there is renewed debate on whether Syria's civil war is now worthy of Western intervention because of the use of a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD). On 21 August, a WMD was used in an attack on a Damascus suburb, killing at least 100 people. Certainly, at time of writing, it seems undisputed that there was use in Syria of a chemical weapon - what one Obama aide said was "very little doubt". The question posed by recent events is the perennial one where an event occurs for which previous policy was not designed: so what?
The "so what?" of Syria is the so what of the intractable, sectarian civil war between the Assad Regime (backed by Russia and Iran and assisted by Shia Iraq) and the Rebels (backed by the Saudis and the Gulf states ... and probably elements of local Al Qaeda). In short, it is a war between Syria's Alawites and their great power patrons, and the Sunni majority and their Sunni sponsors fearful of the Sunni position after defeats in Iraq, Lebanon and now possibly Syria. While the Rebels are backed by Sunnis usually found on the US side, there are enough unsavoury jihadi elements on the Sunni side to make all but the most feverish neo-conservative reluctant to intervene. However, now WMD have been used and many are screaming "something must be done".
It has long been the case, well before President Obama, that use of WMD was indeed a red line for the United States. At the time of the First Gulf War in 1990-1991, the US Secretary of State James A. Baker III warned Saddam's Iraq that any use by Saddam of WMD would invite a response of "vengeance" by the United States. It was certainly the case that WMD proliferation at the end of the Cold War was an issue that occupied the minds of all Western governments of all persuasions and at the highest levels. During the 1990s and 2000s major efforts were made to counter the proliferation of WMD and by the time of the Iraq War in 2003, stopping proliferation was a stated war aim despite the catastrophic failure to find any WMD in Iraq. The creation of the Proliferation Security Initiative in 2003 reflected the long-standing concerns of not just the United States but of many of its closest allies that WMDs be the subject of aggressive counter-proliferation efforts, particularly given the efforts of Iran and North Korea to expand the number of countries with access to WMD. Given this history and the recent rhetoric of President Obama, one would expect that something would be done. It may be that, in the next few days, through sea and air launched strikes on Syrian targets, that some of Syria's WMD stocks and facilities will be destroyed and the capacity to repeat such horrific attacks eliminated or at least reduced. There is much merit to such a series of strikes against whatever Syrian WMD targets there are that can be destroyed or damaged and it is President Obama's duty to ensure such strikes are launched swiftly, especially as intelligence on targets is likely to be perishable. However such strikes will leave Assad's regime in place and, having survived NATO strikes, it is likely that Assad will claim some propaganda victory from the rubble of whatever is destroyed in his part of Syria.
Yet, for President Obama, who won election in 2008 on ending the Iraq War and re-election in 2012 on ending the Afghan war, he can have no appetite for further adventures in the Middle East. This is especially so in terms of the humanitarian intervention being urged upon President Obama by liberals and neoconservatives such as John McCain which do not call for "boots on the ground" but do disingenuously call for a Western training of Syria's Rebel armies. Given the way that many foreign interventions start with military training teams and advisors, this should give President Obama pause for thought. For all of the rhetoric of "something must be done", Barack Obama knows full well that all of the current liberal and neo-conservative enthusiasm for intervention will count for nothing when the first NATO soldier is killed by an IED or the first NATO armoured vehicle is destroyed by an Iranian EFP. After almost 12 years of constant war in Afghanistan and Iraq, an intervention in Syria - where Iranian and Russian forces would be assisting the Assad regime to survive - would be costly in Western blood and treasure, especially given the Alawites would be fighting for their very survival against the Sunni majority Rebels. And for what objective would such an intervention be for? There is no evidence that any intervention currently contemplated would serve a serious counter-proliferation objective. All that would occur is that Western forces would, again, be hostages to fortune and, especially, to being caught in a conflict between Iranian and Saudi ambitions in the Middle East. One would have thought that one Iraq War debacle is enough without starting a sequel 10 years later.
Finally, there is the Russians. Russia has long had a port facility at Tartus on the Mediterranean coast of Syria. Russia intends to keep this facility. There may be a necessity to soon seek to check Russian ambitions but Syria is not the place and now is not the time. Russia does not agonise over events in Syria. In the last 25 years, Russia has gone from a superpower to a Weimar republic to a now resurgent continental power. Russia's facility at Tartus is not new and does not alter the balance of power. Yet any fall of Assad would call into question the status of Tartus. For Russia this may be reason enough to continue to prop up Assad. In any case, Russia's long standing patronage of Syria cannot be ignored and Russia's facilities and military personnel in Syria must be taken into account in any decision by NATO to intervene there.
In short, Syria is a mess. A sectarian mess fueled also by regional power rivalries. It is a mess best avoided unless it is absolutely necessary to get involved in. The case for NATO involvements has not been made and, given the unavoidable and unpleasant facts of the Syrian mess, no case for western intervention can realistically be made, at least not at this time. Syria is a mess. But it is not our mess.
The "so what?" of Syria is the so what of the intractable, sectarian civil war between the Assad Regime (backed by Russia and Iran and assisted by Shia Iraq) and the Rebels (backed by the Saudis and the Gulf states ... and probably elements of local Al Qaeda). In short, it is a war between Syria's Alawites and their great power patrons, and the Sunni majority and their Sunni sponsors fearful of the Sunni position after defeats in Iraq, Lebanon and now possibly Syria. While the Rebels are backed by Sunnis usually found on the US side, there are enough unsavoury jihadi elements on the Sunni side to make all but the most feverish neo-conservative reluctant to intervene. However, now WMD have been used and many are screaming "something must be done".
It has long been the case, well before President Obama, that use of WMD was indeed a red line for the United States. At the time of the First Gulf War in 1990-1991, the US Secretary of State James A. Baker III warned Saddam's Iraq that any use by Saddam of WMD would invite a response of "vengeance" by the United States. It was certainly the case that WMD proliferation at the end of the Cold War was an issue that occupied the minds of all Western governments of all persuasions and at the highest levels. During the 1990s and 2000s major efforts were made to counter the proliferation of WMD and by the time of the Iraq War in 2003, stopping proliferation was a stated war aim despite the catastrophic failure to find any WMD in Iraq. The creation of the Proliferation Security Initiative in 2003 reflected the long-standing concerns of not just the United States but of many of its closest allies that WMDs be the subject of aggressive counter-proliferation efforts, particularly given the efforts of Iran and North Korea to expand the number of countries with access to WMD. Given this history and the recent rhetoric of President Obama, one would expect that something would be done. It may be that, in the next few days, through sea and air launched strikes on Syrian targets, that some of Syria's WMD stocks and facilities will be destroyed and the capacity to repeat such horrific attacks eliminated or at least reduced. There is much merit to such a series of strikes against whatever Syrian WMD targets there are that can be destroyed or damaged and it is President Obama's duty to ensure such strikes are launched swiftly, especially as intelligence on targets is likely to be perishable. However such strikes will leave Assad's regime in place and, having survived NATO strikes, it is likely that Assad will claim some propaganda victory from the rubble of whatever is destroyed in his part of Syria.
Yet, for President Obama, who won election in 2008 on ending the Iraq War and re-election in 2012 on ending the Afghan war, he can have no appetite for further adventures in the Middle East. This is especially so in terms of the humanitarian intervention being urged upon President Obama by liberals and neoconservatives such as John McCain which do not call for "boots on the ground" but do disingenuously call for a Western training of Syria's Rebel armies. Given the way that many foreign interventions start with military training teams and advisors, this should give President Obama pause for thought. For all of the rhetoric of "something must be done", Barack Obama knows full well that all of the current liberal and neo-conservative enthusiasm for intervention will count for nothing when the first NATO soldier is killed by an IED or the first NATO armoured vehicle is destroyed by an Iranian EFP. After almost 12 years of constant war in Afghanistan and Iraq, an intervention in Syria - where Iranian and Russian forces would be assisting the Assad regime to survive - would be costly in Western blood and treasure, especially given the Alawites would be fighting for their very survival against the Sunni majority Rebels. And for what objective would such an intervention be for? There is no evidence that any intervention currently contemplated would serve a serious counter-proliferation objective. All that would occur is that Western forces would, again, be hostages to fortune and, especially, to being caught in a conflict between Iranian and Saudi ambitions in the Middle East. One would have thought that one Iraq War debacle is enough without starting a sequel 10 years later.
Finally, there is the Russians. Russia has long had a port facility at Tartus on the Mediterranean coast of Syria. Russia intends to keep this facility. There may be a necessity to soon seek to check Russian ambitions but Syria is not the place and now is not the time. Russia does not agonise over events in Syria. In the last 25 years, Russia has gone from a superpower to a Weimar republic to a now resurgent continental power. Russia's facility at Tartus is not new and does not alter the balance of power. Yet any fall of Assad would call into question the status of Tartus. For Russia this may be reason enough to continue to prop up Assad. In any case, Russia's long standing patronage of Syria cannot be ignored and Russia's facilities and military personnel in Syria must be taken into account in any decision by NATO to intervene there.
In short, Syria is a mess. A sectarian mess fueled also by regional power rivalries. It is a mess best avoided unless it is absolutely necessary to get involved in. The case for NATO involvements has not been made and, given the unavoidable and unpleasant facts of the Syrian mess, no case for western intervention can realistically be made, at least not at this time. Syria is a mess. But it is not our mess.
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