12 posts from November 2009

The stuff of political campaigns

Yesterday
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MSNBC Interviews Clueless Sarah Palin Supporters At Book Signing

66% trust generals...

Yesterday
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A poll of independent voters found that 66% responded that they trust the generals over obama.

Independent voters opinion is perhaps growingly important as the two camps red and blue are becoming more entrenched while the margin in the middle occupied by other parties is widening slighlty.

I think there are some misconceptions on that statistic. The response from the public is not very telling because the question can mean different things depending on its context and responders can mean different things or are sometimes not exactly sure what they mean.

This example of questionable utility of polls for some questions is frequent and can also lead sometimes to the de-routing of statistical interpretations down the road.

Let's clarify what they could be saying, or what they are trying to say.

The generals should be trusted when they tell you if something can or cannot be done, they should be trusted they need such and such if we are to accomplish such and such. But, the war aims are to be determined by the civilian executive and are subject to change throughout a conflict.

More on McCrystal and 40,000 troops. McCrystal is a superhuman soldier and his personal recommendations are to be headed when corroborated by other generals over what he needs to execute the desired strategy. The desired strategy was to move in and control more territory in souther afghanistan as of the last strategic review dating back to june 2009.

Today, half a year later and facing a crossroad, Obama needs a long term strategy and also a plan of action for the next 6 months.

(Which is: Over the long term: hand over control of regions to Afghani Cent Gov to disengage from the local conflict and get them to fight the insurgency; establish and lockdown the border in 100% partnership with Pakistan; remain opportunistic to destroy in direct operations identified enemy forces - preferably fundamentalists who have a national agenda against A or P, or an international one against us only; support, enhance and train the Cent Gov army whenever and wherever; and finally, protect our troops. The short term strategy is to seek for opportunities with the current Pakistani military efforts on their side of the border. Perhaps this will give rise to changes on our side of the border and we must be ready to meet them. This could be such a good opportunity that the Taliban could stand to be defeated rather swiftly having no territory to remain on in any kind of numbers.)

The military is always subordinated to the civilian. The good carrying of a war depends on the coordination and the clear communication of aims and means.

Specifically

2 days ago
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Long term strategy and end game

Recognize that you must send signal that you are committed for the long term to all parties - afghani, pakistani, all the other countries. More presence by NATO and other international partners is always welcome and would send a strong message of solidarity. No more combat effort should be demanded of them; their sole presence inside the country and interaction with central government forces is enough. But of course, combat role is a bonus and should be expected to a limited extent.

Start making voluntary retreats from certain post and outposts and hand over control to the Afghani police and military at an active and bold rate.

Position your troops in outside of towns where they are easy to defend at the periphery. Reorganize your strategy for in and out operations. Try to limit your number of sorties.

Counterpoint

So basically you are completely reversing General Petraeus' counterinsurgency strategy reformation? He said to establish your base inside the villages, to increase links and rapports with local leaders and to do lots of foot patrols to see and be seen by the local villagers.

My reply is the following. Petraeus changed how we keep security of an area. He said that when you are fighting a counter insurgency, building a rapport with local people, and making deals with them to stop fighting instead of trying to defeat or eliminate them one by one is better.

What I am saying is that we shouldn't be doing this in places we are doing it in Afghanistan right now. Iraq is a much bigger country and defeating the Iraqi sunnis in the center of the country was a much bigger tasks. So scale matters and the heart of Iraq desperatly needed security forces. But more than anything, it's the power relationship between the indigenous factions of Iraq and Afghanistan that differed and made the difference between why fighting a counterinsurgency in Baghdad was a good idea and fighting a counter insurgency in no where land in afghanistan is a bad idea.

So the question is a why instead of a how. Petraeus changed the way the US military fought counterinsurgencies. He is actually one person I admire most. I'm just saying we are creating more problems than otherwise by interposing ourselves between two warring factions. We must substract ourselves from the local conflict as it belongs to obligations that are not ours and do not proportionally or critically affect our national security. The role of fighting the counterinsurgency should be filled, but not by the americans. There needs to be a balance between the two partners (the central gov and the US).

The roles the US should adopt in AFghanistan

Rather, the US can help. They can embed smaller teams on patrols and visits to different villages where the Central Gov has won control over. Mainly, the US must remain and carry operations where heavy artillery is needed. Also, as I have discussed before, border security should be an endgame goal of the Pakistanis and the Americans. The US should further act as the guarant of a certain level of stability in Afghanistan seen as vital to the country. Finally, it should develop and seek to establish institutional links in the intelligence services of both country, afghanistan and pakistan.

By removing US forces and putting them into bigger bases. By deploying smaller teams less often and supporting rather than protecting the Central Gov army. By using your air resources more conjointly but less often. By handing over control to local authorities. This changes risk fragmenting the control and land of the country for Karzai. One warlord could take over and do his own thing, or, more significantly, the Taliban could establish a regional authority. This danger is exactly what we need as a threat for Karzai or somebody else, to fight for their country.

One thing that factors in this decision is also that the security of our forces is very important and should matter in all decisions that a country goes to war. If only for the US because the military medical bill increases the costs significantly long after the war is over, but also for more important reasons such as how it affects the type of violent interactions on the ground and the results and perceptions from both sides.

But what about now? What should Obama do?

Obama has a hard decision to make (if only because the problem is compounded by problems of presentation, rhetoric and polemic which are not touched upon here). Strategically, the above is the strategy he should adopt for the long term, and make haste slowly on the matter. However, he is currently given a tremendous opportunity with the Pakistani assault on Taliban land and elements throughout their country. This is an excellent chance to wipe out the Taliban and hope of doing so should not be abandoned. This opens a window of maybe a year to two years, perhaps less to put a crushing blow on them. Any current troop increase, or surge, should be to pursue this end, rather than a wide ranging counter insurgency to the south in as far as these two do not recoup themselves.

Therefore, during that window of opportunity, Obama should amend the above described rationale and freeze major troop deployment or major shifts in strategy in areas that have the potential to see their operational effectiveness disrupted. He should even seek to increase the pressure in areas of Taliban recuperation.

Here, he should listen to his general on a recommendation but of course that assumes the general and the president are following the same strategy. I am of course not talking of the 40000 troop recommendation two months ago now almost. That was in the mind frame of a counter insurgency plan for the whole southern region of afghanistan which, as I have spent discussing above and at even lenghtier lenght in a previous post, is not the thing to do. Rather, the new recommendation should be about how many more troops - or do you need anymore troops, to take the unique opportunity that the pakistani offensive is presenting us with? In actual numbers, it could be very few or nil since he can already start the process of re locating resources as described in the main strategy above in areas that aren't as hot.

So I'm not co-in or CT guy; over the long term, nobody should. There will be occasions where one approach works better and conversely. Problems are complex.

The picture bigger than Afghanistan or Pakistan

As to the question of why even do the above? why even stay in afghanistan and pakistan and involve so much of our political thinking budget,material wealth and blood on a area is so small in importance compared to the bigger picture.The question should be how do we want our experience in Afghanistan to influence the bigger picture. The bigger picture is mainly the relationship with China and the current slow shift in international power polarity that is going on. Does the US want to be stuck with legacies and commitments of occupations, nation buildings and interference going forward? Isn't that going to create international resentment and mistrust accross the world and create legacy costs as well? Is this continuing to distract from the main international issues which are what? trade, china, nuclear proliferation, asian partnerships, etc? Well I think that all those questions are pretty lofty and you must keep your eyes as close to the present when you are making decisions. The fact is america's embroilment in the gulf and south asia in the past 8 years is probably something we won't see repeated in the next few decades, but something none the less that we cannot ignore or neglect.

A post about China

3 days ago
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Mercantilism of China

China doesn't care about anything in the world right now but it's own economic growth. They disregard most other concerns and seek to acquire access to resources and secure it as best they could.

They do not wish to involve themselves in any international political dialogue and only do it because sometimes it has to. They are some advantages it wishes to conserve granted by it's adherence to the international community such as WTO membership and Security Council spot.

In contrast, the US is heavily embroiled in many conflicts and situations around the world which often times go against their commercial interest. They do it for other concerns such as national security and policing the world.

America incumbered the policing of the world and the pacific while China has grown inside state of affairs. While america has armies it can export all over the world, China has large but interior/defensive oriented army.

These differences explains China's lack of cooperation on the question of nuclear proliferation in Iran and other international issues that the US would like to see more chinese cooperation.

China's internal situation

The only have one superior concern to this one, and that is their watch to survive internally. Their main concerns here are 1) the possibility of ethnic and regional groups demanding larger autonomy and secession in some cases, 2) the dissatisfaction and possible revolt of their peasant class, 3) the overthrow of their regime by anti communism forces.

The 1st one is an ongoing conflict with Tibet and Taiwan at the forefront but also a multitude of other independent cases within China's diverse ethnic and linguistic country. The 2nd one is also a pressing and ongoing concern as more peasant revolts and labor disputes take place every year. Both of those can be succesfully kept in check and managed in a happy progression as the country moves forward. While both of those are avoidable, the third one isn't but is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Here, the communist leaders of China must keep two things in mind. First, they will have to change their ways. Second, revolutions usually occur when you start giving a little to your political opponents, and then the little turns into big things until momentum takes you over and the gates are opened and it's irreversible. This is what happened in Russia in the 1980's or France in 1789 both famously. Then again, many other countries went through processes of social and political change without going through a revolution. How will China's communism - a system that now dates back to the Mao days and doesn't have anything to do with the distribution of Wealth in China today amongst other things, how will it fare in the next century? Most interestingly, how close will it move to the now only international ideology - liberal democracy? In the cold war, you had two international ideologies: commusim and liberal democracy, but now we are in a uni polar world. Will China be able to propose a different style of government to the west?

An alternative political system to the West

You could argue that my analysis is overblown in the last paragraph. How is liberal democracy so preponderant as you say while so many regimes exist and persist without adhering to the principals of liberal democracy. Ok, but their ideologies are no exportable to the levels of liberal democracy. They are either only country wide, region wide or sometimes, as is the case of muslim fundamentalism, accross a religious congregation. More often than not, their political opposition in those countries will often be a liberal democratic proponent.

It would be very interesting if China could evolve into an alternative political system over the next century. Something I personally hope for as I do not believe the illusion that liberal democracy is the be all end all of all systems. This is something that often people believe in unconsciously or consciously. There are philosophers who defend that liberal democracy is the end game and that everything else in human affairs as they continue to evolve can and should be assessed through liberal principles. There was a book called the end of history after the cold war for example, or see political philosopher Hayek I believe.

Instead, as I have said elsewhere on this blog, I believe that we are in a transitory state, that we confond certain basic ideas to characterize more our political systems while the words are too general, innacruate and therefore false.

An impediment to the resolution of the political conflict in Afghanistan

3 days ago
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The central Afghani government does not want anything to do with the Taliban. They do not want to talk to them, deal with them or make any kind of concessions to them. Why? Again, because they are protected and don't have to deal with them if they don't want to.

The resolution of political conflicts such that exists within Afghanistan and within the Pashtuns can procede through different venues. When the two opponents are too strong and one side cannot fully exhaust the other to impose his will, concessions and negotiations must take place. The Taliban has a chance of being completely defeated in the next 2 years if Pakistan achieves a complete capture and hold of the areas it need to control; the american or a conjonction of american and other forces - hopefully Afghani in as large a part as possible, and a full control of the border.

The border is important because if you control the border you essentially split the Taliban forces up and you further put a check on travelling in larger groups and accomplishing anything. If you have a full and commited counterinsurgency effort on each side of the border, then you may defeat the Taliban.

Still, I think that more traction can be brought to the cause. In fact, there is a level of involvement in the military side of the conflict in Afghanistan by the central afghan government that is critical to a faster resolution. We can't see a resolution as anything black and white in this case, a full resolution may take decades - and still it never is fully resolved as long as it stays within the historical conscience of some people on the planet.

That doesn't mean the us military involvment should stay forever at 100,000 troops and more for any significant period of time.

They should keep the same level of troops there for as long as the widow of opportunity to fully defeat the Taliban is there and look at every opportunity to draw it down. But you must make haste slowly.

Perhaps a troop increase could be a good thing momentarily now, but it must be done following either of two opportunities: either they can attack an area and clear it where they know the Taliban has retreated/converged with their own troops because not yet enough afghani are available, or either you bring more troops to support an afghani effort and troop increase to conjointly tackle a problem together. Mostly it will be the second sort since the first sort usually comes in a format with a short time scale which cannot be addressed by increasing the ground troops fast enough. Instead, forward forces need to move back.

There are two ennemies: lawless taliban local leaders, and organized "national" taliban.

The thing is, you must see the taliban/not taliban as the dividing ideology between the west in the form of the american presence and the religious ideologies in all muslim countries. In the Napoleonian wars, the catalysing ideologies were liberatarian and monarchism. In the cold war it was communism which had taken hold of a country, Russia, and the liberal democracies of the west. In the Athenian war, it was democracy vs the -cracies. In a conflict, sometimes more as effect than cause, opponents are polarized by either of two ideologies, and this becomes their flag when fighting the other side. Ideologies very much act as unifiers common causers.

How important is reducing corruption levels in Afghanistan?

4 days ago
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First, how important is it to whom? Let's consider the US since that's the one I'm most familiar with.

In the streets, the elimination of corruption is not as important. The administration of public services at the local level as well as part of the local economy revolves around de facto mechanisms to exact taxes and carry trade. The central government will, overtime, slowly gain territory down the chain and eliminate this "corruption" to get a cut on the transactions. This is not an area of concern for the US and neither is it something that they can do much about.

The kind of corruption that matters most is the one with high level officials skimming off the top of american and international aide. This type of corruption is different because it only benefits a limited group of individuals in a non economic fashion and because the money given by the US or the international community always carries a purpose. This purpose originates with the giver and systematic attrition and loss of foreign money destroys the foreign aims of why the money was given in the first place.

The move to establish an anti corruption commission in Afghanistan and putting an independent, disinterested agent at it's hem (a eunuch would have been good) is a very good move by Obama and must be pursued to it's ends. Having an independent auditory body can influence the creation of more permanent such bodies and also has a positive influence on the independence of law which is necessary to have in order to have a treaty abiding ally in the future.

Let Pakistan play a bigger role in the security of his neighbour

4 days ago
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The Pakistani must continue to defeat their fundamentalist elements. They will have to endure more violence. Once they have finished claiming from the taliban the lands of waziristan and other similar places, they must move forward with a border security plan working in partnership with the USA. The US needs to rerout resources for the border security plan having rapid intervent teams that can go in, do the control and go out. The US with his troop mobility and helicopters, his air power, drones and satellites is well equipped to do that, but they need stronger presence and control from the Pakistani side.

Right now, the border is key to stabilizing the two countries and defeating the Taliban. If the Afghani central government moves in to hold and control lands in the south, progressively but rapidly, if the Pakistani establishes border security on their side like they have never done before in their history, and if the US patrols and surveils the border, then the Taliban will have no where to go and it will be much more difficult for them to operate, or to move in numbers to organize.

Up till now, the Taliban has been free to move in and out of the border freely and have been allowed to reconstitute in their Pakistani havens. Defeat the Taliban again, interdict them constantly at the border, and they will not be allowed to survive.

On the nature of civil wars

Civil wars are numerous and sometimes it can be hard to keep any form of standard. There is the American civil war where the internal causes were very preponderant. Then there are a multitude of civil wars caused by an invading power as the later seeks allies. Then, there are roman civil wars where the civil wars took place not between two peoples within a country, or two regions, or two ideologies, but two armies confronting each other at the command of their law giving generals - be he a consul, or later, a regional upstart. The years 1914-1945 have also been called the years of the european civil war.

Descartes, modern platonism, aristotle's 5th cause

Nov 15, 2009

I sustain that Descartes big idea of systematic doubt was something that we have been thinking about privately at some point in our life (sometimes at a surprisingly young age*) for a long time before Descartes put it into words in his famous writings. There is numerous cases where our curiosity has taken you places you have already been, and the author hopefully furthers our reflection, ie takes us other places. In the case of Descartes, the places he took were horribly wrong but satisfied a lot of us until postmodernism - or however our period is going to be remembered as. Namely, the recognition of god seems like an awfully teleological or Aristotle's 5th cause. He wanted to recreate god in his intellectual reality and he got there. What we can be grateful for however from old Descartes is that he put the question out there in public. For some he created a "dit" in the public sphere which helped the rest of the thinkers, for generations, advance in their own thoughts on the matter, further leveraging the rest of the thinking masses by publishing in their turn.

I reject that truth is a guiding light that guide you through a feeling of having been there or being right. Today, we dropped the notion of reminiscence as archaic but we have other motivations to think something is right, or something is true. We can be seen as truth machines if you will, only with a complex makeup. Dennett doesn't find the idea particularly noticeable that in moral things like in our rational thinking, we have a sense of truth detection. He wouldn't be so bold as to think that it isn't but he wouldn't neglect the fact either that eventually at a certain level, we can all agree upon some basic things that this is what actually makes us get along so well. The societal annimal, once communication reaches different speres of sophistication - phonetic alphabet, information technologies or industrical age, etc.

Where are we the most platonistic in our daily lives? Ironically, I believe it is in our [rules of practice, not of rational theories, the ones that make us act constitutive vs dictee? [linguistic] ] as witnessed in our interactions with others.

*I do believe that as we come to know and discover the world around us when we are little children and our brains are developing, that we come accros some elementary questions about our world that represent some deep philosophical challenges if one is to pursue them rationally.

Questions

Nov 10, 2009
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Political opinion is sometimes rendered by the public. And, namesakeingly almost (ie it can almost pass as "analytical" in the modernist way), the public often have a dumb view, a shallow train of thought. But it has other good sides. One thing it has going for is it sometimes or always produces an answer different in composition than an individual thought process would. Sometimes, Still, we could arguably qualify public opinion as less than optimal/desirable/rational. This is of course what opponents of the forum-preponderant type of polity have been saying for a long time. But the discourse must perhaps pass by that and consider more mature consequences and meaning of choosing a political system. Churchill recently said that liberal democracy is the best of worst choices, as he was witnessing the change from constitutional monarchy to a modern western democratic state.

Defn

Absolute monarcy decayed over the 19th century and died in ww1. Absolute monarchy was still rule based tho; the monarch could not do anything. He was ruled by palace style relationships where personal relationships entertained by ruling family members over their own different kingdom-state.
A ruler who can do anything and everything - and has the ability to remain in place for any significant amount of time, I call a despot.
State: that's the name we seem to give to western style democratic states as subsequently described in the last 500 year or so treaties and by the evolution of european political organization both internally and externally between them, and that has since conquered almost the entire land of the globe. (Note: sometimes the state system doesn't take well everythere. Today, there are problem areas that suffer terribly by this new statedom. As is the case of
nations suddenly seperated by frontiers. Sedentarism goes in hand with secularism. There are conceptual (analytical) similarities between the two which are non obvious. That's on the conceptual side. Conceptual side means the meaning world and it's absraction from the moving, living world. So one can ask what does this conceptual similarities between the word secularism and sedentarism tell us about the living, historical world? Certainly something but that is not Those are analytical quesitons. Questions of philosohpy are analytical in nature. There can be done by sitting on a chair and deducing different logical truths according to our situation in the world (in some cases in any situation ie "in all possible worlds")
Hence, similarly, the conceptual similarities between secularism and sedentarism must have been somehow expressed in the historical world, or a better word could be translated. In this case, the living occurences comes in the form best described with a darwinian approach, where contest, sustainability are important in subsequent iterations [iterations allowing modification], but also with variable strenght historical accidents.

This figment of an article raises many questions that need be answered. While I started with a precise assessment of the contemporary political situations, I quickly descended into definitions and then tangential issues brought up by the writing of the definitions, etc.

Writing a book that's analytical needs to just keep asking and answering those questions over and over, growing a circle of light on his knowledge canvas.

Philosophical aspects of contemporary world politics

Nov 10, 2009

Political opinion is sometimes rendered by the public. And, namesakeingly almost (ie it can almost pass as "analytical" in the modernist way), the public often have a dumb view, a shallow train of thought. But it has other good sides. One thing it has going for is it however sometimes or always produces an answer that is different in composition than an individual thought process on the matter. That answer can sometimes look to be a positive in the form of a wiser decision, as numerous experiments of social psychology demonstrate where one actor gets the right answer as it becomes crystallized by one person in the group who found the "good" answer. Society get more coherence as the amount of good answers they can agree upon increases. Still, we could often argue that public opinion often lays upon an idea that is simply and blatantly sub less than optimal/desirable/rational. Sometimes, the coming together of so many different point of view, and the depth of misunderstandings and division that appears between the two parties, can produce the worst results. This is of course what opponents of the forum-preponderant type of polity have been saying for a long time.

But the discourse must perhaps pass by that and consider more mature consequences and meaning of choosing a political system. Churchill recently said that liberal democracy is the best of worst choices, as he was witnessing the change from constitutional monarchy to a modern western democratic state.

Defn

- Absolute monarcy decayed over the 19th century and died in ww1. Absolute monarchy was still rule based tho; the monarch could not do anything. He was ruled by palace style relationships where personal relationships entertained by ruling family members over their own different kingdom-state.

- Despot. A ruler who can do anything and everything - and has the ability to remain in place for any significant amount of time, I call a despot.

- State (long): that's the name we seem to give to western style democratic states as subsequently described in the last 500 year or so treaties and by the evolution of european political organization both internally and externally between them, and that has since conquered almost the entire land of the globe. (Note: sometimes the state system doesn't take well everythere. Today, there are problem areas that suffer terribly by this new statedom. As is the case of

nations suddenly seperated by frontiers. Sedentarism goes in hand with secularism. There are conceptual (analytical) similarities between the two which are non obvious. That's on the conceptual side. Conceptual side means the meaning world and it's absraction from the moving, living world. So one can ask what does this conceptual similarities between the word secularism and sedentarism tell us about the living, historical world? Certainly something but that is not Those are analytical quesitons. Questions of philosohpy are analytical in nature. There can be done by sitting on a chair and deducing different logical truths according to our situation in the world (in some cases in any situation ie "in all possible worlds")

Hence, similarly, the conceptual similarities between secularism and sedentarism must have been somehow expressed in the historical world, or a better word could be translated. In this case, the living occurences comes in the form best described with a darwinian approach, where contest, sustainability are important in subsequent iterations [iterations allowing modification], but also with variable strenght historical accidents.