George Rebane
[This post is really a focused continuation of topics raised by James Currier in the comments to ‘Obama, you gotta love him!’. For now I will simply characterize James as an educated, left-leaning, successful capitalist, although he may correct me as he has in the past ;-) His views are important to those of us on the conservative cum libertarian side, because they represent what has emerged as the dominant mindset of the intellectual left and also many of those whom our President-elect is appointing to high office in his upcoming administration. To understand these perspectives may help us anticipate and understand what Barack Obama intends for us in the coming months and years. And to those of us predisposed and already anointed as critics-in-waiting of everything from inside the Beltway, we should prepare ourselves with this knowledge so that our future tirades may contain more light than their inevitable heat.]
Regarding world changes: Here it seems to me we may be confusing prediction of change with the actual change or the ‘change event’. I disagree wholeheartedly with the notion that the Berlin Wall’s fall and 9/11 did not embody a ‘world change’. Yes, many people predicted the fall of communism, as did many predict the conflict between the US and Japan. (In 1935 Will Durant predicted the inevitability of that conflict in his first volume of Story of Civilization.) But when 7 Dec 1941 arrived, the world did indeed change with the US entry into both theaters of WW2, and we are living with the strong echoes of that entry to this day. Things would have been different had we not unequivocally thrown our weight on the side of the Allies.
With regard to the “common knowledge that they (USSR) were done” in 1980, nothing could be further from the truth. The cold war had two crisis periods where the likelihood of WW3 peaked. The first was very public and occurred when Krushcev tested Kennedy and Johnson in the early 1960s (lasting longer than the Cuban missile crisis). Overshadowed in the public eye by the oil crises, the second occurred during the latter part of the Carter presidency in the late 1970s. Many reputable analysts and historians persuasively argue that the second crisis was the more dangerous of the two, precisely because the USSR was economically weaker and saw a weak American president as fortunate coincidence during which to roll the tanks through Fulda Gap. (I was in a position to witness both of these crises from the ‘inside’.) Most educated people on the right had known for decades that the USSR would end either ‘hard’ (WW3 with civilization in tatters), or ‘soft’ with its economy in tatters and an internal putsch. It was always their call during which time we wanted to present them with the MAD outcome for the ‘hard’ alternative, while waiting for the inevitable ‘soft’ resolution to realize. This strategy was common knowledge in the educated world.
But the surprising ineptness of Jimmy Carter suddenly gave the Soviets a third alternative – that they could take western Europe without American interference. We would simply execute the first 72 hour NATO defense plan, pull back, and then negotiate instead of initiating a nuclear response and the planned massive military airlift from the US. The world quietly stood on this precipice through the departure of Brezchnev and into Andropov’s reign, who finally took the measure of Reagan and began the stand-down. The advent and husbanding of Gorbachev (‘glasnost’ and ‘perestroika’) finally set the course for 1989. But again, no one, not even the Russians (as opposed to other USSR ethnicities) could predict the events of 1989. About 500 million people (including my native Estonian brethren) will tell you that world did change in 1989, no matter the vagaries and various predictions that preceded it.
Finally, 9/11 also caused a ‘world change’ that will reverberate, and most likely amplify, into the coming decades. We have agreed for a long time that the Islamic push into Europe was only interrupted by Vienna 1683. But the onslaught is now in full force, and the turning point will be seen as 9/11 and the ensuing Gulf2, not its preamble nationalistic perturbations and terrorist acts, or even Gulf1. It is 9/11 and its aftermath that fully identified the combatant civilizations. One can now go anywhere on the Arab Street and ask the common people what their strategy is toward western civilization, and they will tell you without hesitation – it is the inevitable conquest by Islam. Before 9/11 it was securing national sovereignty, the final solution to Zion, and defending the honor of Islam. Sober European observers confirm this weekly in outlets like the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, The Economist, and others while apprehensively watching Muslim settlers (sic) populate their cities.
All this is independent of what one thinks of the American response (now blamed entirely on Bush) to 9/11 and its awkward execution in the mid-east. I agree with the Right’s assessment that the Left confuses the international reaction to this response with the world’s confused desire to geo-politically “cut America down to size”. The latter goal has existed since the Cold War days supported by left politics in our ‘allies’. Gulf2 and its aftermath has only become the current lightning rod for those sentiments. And to think that the Islamic onslaught will end or be eclipsed in another decade stretches my imagination beyond its limits. I believe the demographics dictate that in the next 20 or so years it will end with Islamic victory in Europe (not necessarily the Caliphate, but more like Turkey), or Islamic re-isolation as Arab oil supplies wane, and alternative/additional energy sources come to the fore.
In the meantime Russia will be busy with its own ‘near abroad’ and Islamic problems, and the eternal threat of China’s conquest of resource rich eastern Siberia. Russia’s demographics (currently 1.2 births per fertile woman) will allow little beyond continuing to mine (with diminishing efficiency) its natural resources for wealth, and its centuries-old struggle with autocracy. I see no long-term strategic alliances between any Islamic nation and Orthodox Russia – their centuries-old distrust of each other is one of the world’s geo-political pillars.
Finally China. As written in previous posts, I too believe that China is on the ascendant and that this will likely be the Chinese century. China understands the investments it must make educationally, commercially, and militarily – and it is well on the way to re-structuring itself to productively proceed in all three areas. In light of our intense desire to continue our economic suicide, I believe that they are smart enough to bring their dollar reserves to a ‘soft landing’ while keeping us as a customer and expanding into the rest of the world. (Today I’m most interested to see how they explode into the automotive and pharmaceutical markets, and develop their seaborne force.) China enjoys a good territorial and cultural buffer with Islam, and will become their supplier of everything from tennis shoes to tactical fighters. In short, China will play Islam like a violin against western interests wherever and whenever it wants.
South America and Africa will continue to be unstable and exploited resource suppliers into the indefinite future.
It will be hard to make real world policies if you have no idea what is happening in the real world. I am concerned that the Obama administration is going to tie our policy hands and blind us by gutting the CIA and restrict our intelligence agencies from listening to the terrorist. I fear that Panetta is being sent to gut the agency, to please the nervous left. When he was Clinton's Chief of Staff, Panetta advised cutting CIA Funding, looking for a cold war Peace Dividend. Panetta could be a replay of Carter Administration when CIA Chief Turner turned the agency way from collecting human intelligence, from which the Agency never recovered. Our lack of good humint in Iraq led to some of the confusion over WMDs. If we cannot collect information from captured terrorist, and extend our human intelligence gathering in islamic countries, then we will be blinded, unable to be effective in protecting the nation from those small cells of dedicated terrorists using modern technology to disrupt our economy and destroy our ability to project strength and leadership around the globe. To make effective domestic and foreign policy we must have information and insight into what is happening in the real world, not just what is happening inside the DC beltway.
Posted by: Russ | 07 January 2009 at 09:58 PM