Month: July 2011

Stephen Walt at Foreign Policy has just written a piece on nationalism, which he calls the most important political force in the world. It’s a nice read, but focuses too little on the central theme of my recent piece on nationalism. That is, nationalism as an essential force for war. There is one point of overlap though:

[M]odern states also have a powerful incentive to promote national unity — in other words, to foster nationalism — because having a loyal and united population that is willing to sacrifice (and in extreme cases, to fight and die) for the state increases its power and thus its ability to deal with external threats.

And here’s something I wholeheartedly agree with:

Unless we fully appreciate the power of nationalism, in short, we are going to get a lot of things wrong about the contemporary political life. It is the most powerful political force in the world, and we ignore it at our peril.

Check out both Walt’s and my article!

There is popular and political resistance in Iraq to an extension of U.S. troop presence. However, some of the leadership, including Prime Minister Maliki, is vying for military and security “trainers” to stay beyond 2012. These people are undoubtedly the ones feeling most of the pressure from U.S. officials to “request” a continued troop presence, but even this isn’t popular among the rest. Indeed, in order to make that request official, Maliki would have to ignore parliament.

The difference between troops and trainers, usually former soldiers and police contracted to the U.S. government, may be critical for Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki as he deals with squabbling politicians and tries to appease constituents who want the Americans out.

[…] To avoid angering allies and fuelling sectarian tension, Maliki, who is also acting defense and interior minister, may opt to bypass parliament and have his ministries sign agreements with Washington for 2,000-3,000 U.S. trainers, sources said.

[…] The lawmaker, who is close to Maliki, said the 3,000 U.S. trainers would need security, technical and logistic support which could raise the contractors’ total to around 5,000.

From this we can get an idea of the political climate in Iraq on this issue. But we should note what it is here at home. Is Congress even involved in this decision? The answer is essentially no. Status of Forces Agreements are an executive decision and Obama and his national security minions have full responsibilities in this regard, while the impotent and lackadaisical Congress simply sits back. Even still, the spectrum of debate is terribly narrow. On the far right we have McCain, who wants to keep 13,000 troops there pretty much indefinitely. Obama and the military have “offered” to keep 10,000. Other than that, Democrats have been utterly silent. Therefore, the spectrum of views is essentially a difference of 3,000 soldiers.

It is pity that this has to keep being reiterated, but it does. The Iraq war was waged under false pretenses, which is a pretty way of saying lies and distortions, against a non-threatening state. This makes it a war of aggression, which is actually a war crime under international law. It was fought at really unimaginable human and financial costs. None of this, of course, makes our current presence there any more legitimate. Our current presence there has about as much legitimacy as Obama’s military intervention in Libya. That is to say, it has no legitimacy. Zero. If there were any semblance of free and open debate in this country, these facts would be front and center. Obama would hear it loud and clear that the only legitimate choice would be to withdraw every last soldier from Iraq, not next year, not next week, but yesterday.

Decorated CIA operative with extensive contacts in the Middle East, Robert Baer, declares:

There is almost “near certainty” that Netanyahu is “planning an attack [on Iran] … and it will probably be in September before the vote on a Palestinian state. And he’s also hoping to draw the United States into the conflict”, Baer explained.

It makes sense, from a strategic standpoint, that Israel would want to attack Iran before the Palestinian statehood vote. This would provide Israel with a huge distraction and more time to delay the crucial vote. Additionally, there is the whole transition period between Gates and Panetta as Secretary of Defense. Now that Gates has left his post as Secretary of Defense, some are worried that his influence of steering Obama and Bush away from attacking Iran could evaporate:

Masters asked Baer why the US military is not mobilising to stop this war from happening. Baer responded that the military is opposed, as is former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who used his influence to thwart an Israeli attack during the Bush and Obama administrations. But he’s gone now and “there is a warning order inside the Pentagon” to prepare for war.

What’s even more frightening is that Baer sees the influential Iranian Revolutionary Guard as welcoming an attack by Israel and the United States in order to divert Iranian’s attention away from domestic problems:

It should be noted that the Iranian regime is quite capable of triggering a war with the United States through some combination of colossal stupidity and sheer hatred. In fact, as Baer explained, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard would welcome a war. They are “paranoid”. They are “worried about … what’s happening to their country economically, in terms of the oil embargo and other sanctions”. And they are worried about a population that increasingly despises the regime.

They need an external enemy. Because we are leaving Iraq, it’s Israel. But in order to make this threat believable, they would love an attack on their nuclear facilities, love to go to war in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and Iraq and hit us where they could. Their defense is asymmetrical. We can take out all of their armored units. It’s of little difference to them, same with their surface-to-air missile sites. It would make little difference because they would use terrorism. They would do serious damage to our fleet in the Gulf. The frightening and enlightening article can be read in full here.

George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan (of the blog Econlog, author of the wonderful book The Myth of the Rational Voter) and his colleague in the Mason Law department Ilya Somin (of the Volokh conspiracy blog) debated pacifism and libertarian foreign policy this week.

Neither of these two professors focus in foreign policy, but it is nonetheless an interesting discussion relevant to Antiwar.com readers. My opinion is that the discussion centered too much on hypotheticals and thought experiments instead of the history of U.S. foreign policy, which would have added much weight and illustration to the arguments expressed. Further, Somin is a strange kind of libertarian, one that views the overall record of American imperialism over the last century as “pretty good.” I don’t see that as libertarian at all, so at points it makes for some difficult listening, but worth it nonetheless. The audio of the debate as well as the slides both of them used can be found here. Here is a collection of Caplan’s views on the subject.

Enjoy!

The Pentagon reiterated today what we’ve known for some time now: the freedom of the internet, and that freedom which we are afforded by it, is a threat to the government. That’s why they released their “cybersecurity plan” which designated the internet an “operational domain” for war. Nothing paves the way for unchallenged increases in government control like characterizing its endeavors as war.

The reports are decidedly mundane in describing what this actually amounts to:

The Pentagon plans to focus heavily on three areas under the new strategy: The theft or exploitation of data, attempts to deny or disrupt access to U.S. military networks, and any attempts to “destroy or degrade networks or connected systems.”

But we know from previous Pentagon reports, like the one our news editor Jason Ditz directs us to, that this substantially includes offensive operations over the internet:

Enhanced IO [information operations] capabilities for the warfighter, including: … A robust offensive suite of capabilities to include full-range electronic and computer network attack…

DoD’s “Defense in Depth” strategy should operate on the premise that the Department will “fight the net” as it would a weapons system.

Activist and journalist Rebecca MacKinnon explained in the New Yorker what kind of offensive capabilities might be in the bag:

Another camp believes that obstacles to free speech on the Internet go far beyond Internet filtering or blocking of Web sites—which is the only problem that circumvention tools solve. These obstacles include aggressive cyber-attacks that bring down Web sites of activists, N.G.O.s and small media organizations; spyware that causes Internet users’ computers to be compromised so that their activities can be easily monitored; hacking of influential Internet users’ social-media accounts; deletion of sensitive content, deactivation of accounts and tracking of user behavior by Internet companies at government behest; and so forth.

The logic used to justify government controls on the internet became easier post-9/11. In a CIA memorandum released by Wikileaks last year it was explained in a section with the title “American Freedoms Facilitate Terrorist Recruitment an Operations.”

Undoubtedly Al-Qa’ida and other terrorist groups recognize that Americans can be great assets in terrorist operations overseas because they carry US passports, don’t fit the typical Arab-Muslim profile, and can easily communicate with radical leaders through their unfettered access to the internet and other modes of communication.

[…] The ubiquity of internet services around the world and the widespread use of English on popular websites such as YouTube, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and various blogs enable radical clerics and terrorist recruiters to bypass America’s physical borders and influence US citizens.

On the whole, the internet has been a force for enlightenment, liberation, and peaceful interaction. The U.S. government, and especially those within the national security state, regard those forces as threatening to their own domination and control. If the CIA regards “American Freedoms”  and the openness of the internet as prime facilitators of anti government sentiment or even terrorism, we can pretty well deduct what their preferences are regarding those two elements. That is, scale back American freedoms and restrict and the internet. The authoritarian Chinese government had very similar rationales for blocking citizen access to Twitter and Flickr in the lead up to the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre and again imposing internet restrictions once Mubarak fell, hoping to stave off any domestic uprising. The internet provides avenues to communicate free speech and dissent which would be enlightening and liberating for Chinese citizens, but would undermine the state.

The newest and boldest manifestation of this threat of openness and freedom of the internet has come from Wikileaks. They and their collaborators who leak the information to them have committed the ultimate crime: introducing transparency in government. This is a step beyond the accumulating effects of the general freedom to dissent that the internet provides, and Washington knows it. If governments can no longer hide their activities from citizens, they lose the ability to maintain support from a preponderance of ignorance.

What is troublesome is that there isn’t much opportunity to prevent the government from stifling the enlightening and liberating power of the internet. If the national security state wants to do it (and they do: Bradley Manning said “approximately 85-90% of global transmissions are sifted through by NSA”) they simply will. This is especially the case if they continue to couch their justifications in national security rhetoric. What is encouraging is that the internet is so open, decentralized, and adaptive that it may always be evolving far ahead of government attempts to circumvent it.

“If you want to liberate a society just give them the internet.” –Wael Ghonim

“We need a broader and more sustained internet freedom movement.” –Rebecca MacKinnon

Update: One effort the Pentagon engages in vis-a-vis the internet that I did not mention: propaganda.

Glenn Greenwald yet again dismantles the lies and smears that were used against Bradley Manning by Adrian Lamo and Wired magazine. This must read piece really questions the journalistic integrity of Wired as well as the honesty of Lamo, both of which are being used to phonily solidify a case against Manning:

Yesterday — more than a full year after it first released selected portions of purported chat logsbetween Bradley Manning and government informant Adrian Lamo (representing roughly 25% of the logs) —Wired finally publishedthe full logs (with a few redactions).  From the start, Wired had the full chat logs and was under no constraints from its source (Lamo) about what it could publish; it was free to publish all of it but chose on its own to withhold most of what it received.

Last June — roughly a week after Wired‘s publication of the handpicked portions — I reviewed the long and complex history between Lamo and WiredEditor Kevin Poulsen, documented the multiple, serious inconsistencies in Lamo’s public claims (including ones in a lengthyinterview with me), and argued that Wired should “either publish all of the chat logs, or be far more diligent about withholding only those parts which truly pertain only to Manning’s private and personal matters and/or which would reveal national security secrets.”  Six months later, in December, I documented that numerous media reports about Manning and WikiLeaks were based on Lamo’s claims about what Manning told him in these chats — claims that could not be verified or disputed because Wired continued to conceal the relevant parts of the chat logs — and again called for “as much pressure as possible be applied to Wired to release those chat logs or, at the very least, to release the portions about which Lamo is making public claims or, in the alternative, confirm that they do not exist.”

Read the full piece here.

While you’re at it, do your part to free Bradley Manning.