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Wednesday, August 18, 2004
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MORE FUN WITH SHORTSIGHTED PRESIDENTS - A BORING GEOPOLITICAL TRESTISE
On Monday President Bush made a big spectacular announcement that he was pulling large numbers of US forces out of Central Europe, South Korea and Japan. The speech, all 29 minutes of it can be supported in its totality here.
Even though I support this president for re-election, I only do so by default. There is much to this president's agenda with which I disagree heartily. The only worse option to a second Bush term is a President Kerry, who appears to have spent much of his life disagreeing heartily with himself. While I support the president, I take no particular joy in it. If it were up to me, they would both lose. I suppose it's a good thing that I don't get to vote in the United States.
Domestic affairs are one thing. Quite frankly, it's your country and you can do whatever you want with it. Although it more directly affects my life, I feel the same way about economics...your economy, your call. Foreign policy is decidedly different. Foreign policy deals with everybody's life, often litterally.
Let's start with North Asia. Japan is a logical place from which to draw down forces. With the dissoloution of the Soviet Union, there is no immediate threat to Japan. There is the problem of their militaristic pasts, but that could probably be taken care of with an extension of the American "nuclear umbrella" to Japan. I can't imagine a circumstance where Russia or the People's Republic of China would threaten Japan in the face of immediate American nuclear retaliation.
Quite aside from that, outside of geostrategic considerations, I've always had moral qualms about the total (and generous) defense of Japan. The people who hate Japan, almost without exception, have very, very good reasons to do so. One need only read The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang to understand the unbearable barbarity that the Japanese people are capable of. They are guilty of crimes that even the most depraved memebers of Germany's Nazi regime would never even have dreamed of, let alone seriously considered. Worse still, the Japanese people do not only not apologize for their crimes against humanity, they refuse to even acknowledge them.
Withdrawing ANY forces from South Korea is worse than insane, it's stupid. Kim Jong Il is serious. Seriously crazy. And the smart money says that he already has nuclear weapons. He most assuredly has chemical and biological weapons, he tests them on his own political prisoners.
Foreign policy, as complicated as it may seem, isn't much different from childhood. If your childhood was anything like mine, you know something about bullies. If walk down a certain street every morning and a bully beats the shit out of you and takes your lunch money, what do you do? If you walk down another street, the bully will just find out what street you switched to and repeat the process. If, however, you stand up, kick him in the solar plexus and bite his cheek off he might very well think twice about taking your milk money again. Or anybody else's. Way back when conservatives were actually conservative, this was referred to the doctrine of peace through superior firepower. Most of the gun nuts in the Republican Party are familiar with this phrase in defending the Second Amendment in an election year. The striped pants crowd referred to it as Mutually Assured Destruction and it worked just fine against scarier folks than Dear Leader.
But if the United States decides to reduce an already miniscule force of 37,000 in what is tied for the most dangerous place (with Kasmir) in the world, what message do you suppose that that sends to Kim? I should think that it would tell him that you have more important things to worry about. Korea is even more important than the war on terror. 9/11 was probably the most spectacular strike al-Qaeda will ever be capable of pulling off. 3,000 people died that day. But if Kim decides he wants you to have a bad day, he can single handedly kill the 8 MILLION people of Los Angeles. If he can't do it tomorrow, most analysts believe that he will be able to in 5 years.
So if the US pulls its forces, they had sure as hell better be prepared that they'll be willing to lose, say San Francisco to defend Seoul. And they are going to have to mean it, too. One should also be reminded of a specific number. That number is 33,651. That is the number of American boys killed securing Korea the first time. Chances are that number will be much higher the next time. In 1990 dollars, that three year war cost 264 billion dollars. What do you think that it will cost the next time?
Then there's Europe. Until I read this post at Hog On Ice, I was actually thinking that this wasn't too dumb of an idea. Steve, although he takes the reverse position, convinced me otherwise.
From the tone of Steve's post pretty much confirmed my feelings of the Bush admiistration's real motives here. That is that America is acting like a spurned girlfriend. This administration fely that it really, really had to go to war with Iraq (which I feel complelled to keep pointing out that I supported.) Most of Europe, notably excluding the United Kingdom, begged to differ.
Whatever the reasons were that France, Germany and Russia decided to piss on America's Iraq parade (and I suspect that those are less that humanitarian), they decided that it wasn't in their strategic national interest to go to war with Iraq. I hate to break this to some of my readers, but nations do not commit their blood and treasure to the invasion of foreign lands if they are merely asked nicely. It must usually be in their specific national interest to do so.
The reaction of this administration appears to be to take their ball and go home.
Will it make abunch of people in Atlanta and Pittsburg feel good? Probably. But like any number of administration proposals, it will likely bite the country in the long run.
Hopefully, this won't insult my miniscule readership too much, but here's a short lesson in European history. Europeans are swine. They were born to murder one another. Let's not forget that these are the very people who invented genocide. They have a long history of going to war with one another for little, if any, reason. Before 1945, the longest Europe could go without a war was approximately 15 minutes.
European nations have a specific talent for smelling a power vacuum. They then rush to fill that vacuum. The problem is that Europe is very small and consists of worthless real estate. Imperial powers survive much like viruses, by expansion. Once they no longer expand, they die. The places that European powers have traditionally expanded their influence has been North Africa and the Middle East. Both areas hate Europe with a passion that exceeds only their loathing for the United States. As is the case for Japan and Asia, there are very good reasons for this.
But several countries in the North Africa, and particularly the Middle East, either have WMD or the capability to produce them. Remember those? They were sort of the reason for invading Iraq in the first place. How long do you honestly think that the United States could stay out of a European inspired war in the Middle East, particularly if WMD are involved. I'd be willing to bet that it would be not long, if only to keep the Israelis out of it.
Let's assume for a moment that Europe keeps their nasty little historical habits at home. This doesn't ensure that American boys and girls get to enjoy the Fourth of July in places like Coral Gables, Tulsa or Nantuckett either. Europe's nasty habit of eating its own tends to eventually drag Americans in, too. Historically speaking, it takes time, but it does happen.
And it gets uglier. Given immigration and birth rates, it can be reasonably expected that both Germany and France will have majority Muslim populations in the next fifty years. This could very well turn out to be the most important generation in human history for the west to make friends with. Today. If there is a "hearts and minds" battle to be fought, it shouldn't be in the streets of Baghdad.....it should be in Paris. Could a radical Islamic state of Iraq someday have nuclear weapons? Sure. But it should be remembered that France has had them since the mid-sixties, and it could very well be a radical Islamic state someday.
To reiterate, I'm not saying these things are likely to happen tomorrow. But it's entirely possible that they'll happen someday. It is the better part of prudence to be prepared for them.
Should any of my conservative friends disagree with my analysis, I'll post a dictionary defination to make my point.
con·ser·va·tive ( P ) Pronunciation Key (kn-sûrv-tv)
adj.
1. Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change.
2. Traditional or restrained in style: a conservative dark suit.
3. Moderate; cautious: a conservative estimate.
Does anything about this plan sound conservative? Can any honest conservative look in the mirror and say that there's much about the administration that's conservative?
Probably not. These are polarized times. But there are a few more numbers that I'd like my conservative friends to remember.
-116,708. That's the number of American lives lost in World War I.
-$196.5 Billion dollars. That's what World War I cost on 1990 money.
-388,316. That is the total number of lives lost in World War II.
-$2,091.3 Billion dollars. That's what World War II cost in 1990 money.
Add those numbers up. Then ask yourself that, if a repeat of those numbers could be "conservative." This is to say nothing of "compassionate."
Just the loss of life equals a grand total of 491, 681 people. People whose lives would be wasted to see America withdraw those forces only to see a massive invasion ever be necessary again.
To this I ask, what's so conservative about that?
Fatality, casuality and economic numbers obtained here.
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