Tag Archives: war

War and Peace and Obama

Here is Jeffrey Sachs on Obama’s war and peace legacy:

Viewed through the lens of history, the main job of US presidents is to be mature and wise enough to stand up to the permanent war machine. Kennedy tried; his successor, Lyndon Johnson, did not, and the debacle of Vietnam ensued. Jimmy Carter tried; Reagan did not (his CIA helped to unleash death and mayhem in Central America throughout the 1980s). Clinton mostly tried (except in the Balkans); George W. Bush did not, and generated new wars and turmoil.

On the whole, Obama has tried to restrain the warmongers, yet he has given in to them frequently – not only by relying on weaponized drones, but also by waging covert wars in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere. Nor did he truly end the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; he replaced troops on the ground with US drones, air strikes, and “private” contractors.

Iran is surely his finest moment, a historic milestone that demands full-throated approval. The political difficulty of making peace with Iran is similar to that of JFK’s peacemaking with the Soviet Union in 1963.

Obama

Somehow Obama came and went within a block of my office today and I never noticed. Now I know why they call it the “Secret” Service. Anyway, while he was here he made a case for reducing the prison population and providing free college, among other things. Free college – it sounds like a utopian goal, right? I found one article that estimates how much that would cost the federal government – about $63 billion dollars a year, on top of what state and local governments are already spending. That sounds like a lot, except that according to this article the government is currently spending about $69 billion on higher education grants, work-study programs, and tax breaks. This is pretty astonishing if true – we might be able to spend less and get more. The only losers would be private and for-profit colleges. The obvious beneficiaries would be a more educated, skilled, and hopefully creative and innovative work force that we need for the coming decades and beyond.

Which left me thinking about Obama’s legacy. I think history may judge him kindly for many reasons, although there have also been some really bad things that have happened on his watch. Part of how history judges him will depend on whether the really bad things get worse from here, whether or not that is beyond his control.

First, the good stuff:

  • The economy did not fall apart completely after the financial crisis. I think history will eventually judge that he made some tough decisions that seemed unfair and unpopular at the time, but ultimately quelled the panic that could have otherwise threatened the viability of the system itself.
  • He got better financial regulation and limits on irresponsible risk taking in place compared to what we had before the crisis. As long as there isn’t another major crisis in the near future, I think history will say he made progress against tough odds and did the most he could possibly do politically. If there is another severe crisis, history will rightly point out that the reforms weren’t enough, and they were on his watch.
  • He helped us take a big step toward universal health care. Advanced, industrialized, civilized countries have universal health care. We do not, but now we are closer. It was a huge fight against incredible odds, and I think history will judge it kindly as finally breaking a decades-old deadlock and putting us on the right path.
  • He ended, at least kinda sorta more or less, major American involvement in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These were bloody, expensive, unpopular, and achieving nothing. I think history will judge this kindly.
  • I’ll put killing Osama bin Laden in the win column. It was justice. Although I found the euphoric response to his death a little sad.
  • Incredibly, he has defused both the Cuba situation and the Iran situation, two decades-old Cold War conflicts that have persisted until now for no obvious reason. History will tell us whether the Iran deal is a momentary pause in the Middle Eastern nuclear arms race, or the beginning of the end of it.
  • He’s taken some steps toward climate change regulation, nothing even close to sufficient but probably the most that was possible politically.

The bad stuff:

  • Riots in metro St. Louis and Baltimore.
  • The greater Middle East has turned into a massive blood bath, from North Africa to Afghanistan and Pakistan. History will tell us whether these conflicts spread, spawn international terrorism, or even go nuclear.
  • Relations with Russia and China have both soured considerably, to the point where a major war, or even a nuclear war, seems possible where it would have been almost unthinkable eight years ago.

The riots are just a little embarrassing, but you can probably say that racial and inequality issues in the U.S. were more on the surface and openly talked about during Obama’s presidency than during the previous couple decades, and you need to acknowledge and define problems before you can solve them. I don’t think history will blame him for creating these problems or making them worse.

The potential for serious geopolitical conflict and even nuclear war is a horrifying development that doesn’t bode well for our civilization, especially when we need to be coming together to deal with serious global emergencies like pollution, food, and climate change. Can we blame Obama for his response to any of this? I’ll admit he hasn’t been as good as his predecessors at brinksmanship. Leaders from Kennedy to Reagan to Bush were willing to play a massive game of chicken, convincing potential enemies that we would not hesitate to go to war at the smallest provocation, and that we were willing to accept the consequences however dire. You can argue they gambled recklessly and were lucky enough to win. Our enemies were generally terrified and backed down. Obama was less of a cowboy, and never even played one on TV. He has been more risk averse, weighing the consequences of military conflict vs. diplomatic and economic measures, and generally choosing the latter. These are tough decisions that take courage either way. Here again, I think his legacy depends on whether things calm down, or whether there are serious conflicts down the road with roots that can be traced back to decisions he made.

My summary: If there is not a major financial crisis or war in the next 10-20 years, I think we will look back at him as a good president who avoided those things and made a major course correction in the health care system. If major crises or wars happen, they will overshadow his accomplishments and he may ultimately get a share of the blame. It was a tough moment in history to be president, and I for one think he was a courageous and mature leader who did the most anyone could do within our constraining political system.

The Cold War Resumes?

I for one have really been enjoying the thaw in the Cold War over the last 25 years. From NPR:

Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., speaking at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, said: “Russia presents the greatest threat to our national security. … If you look at their behavior, it’s nothing short of alarming.”

Dunford, 59, said it would be “reasonable” to send lethal weapons to Ukraine to help it battle Russian-backed rebels. “Frankly, without that kind of support, they are not going to be able to defend themselves against Russian aggression,” he said.

“[If] you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I’d have to point to Russia,” he told senators.

June 2015 in Review

Negative stories:

Positive stories:

evil empires

Part of my light, uplifting summer reading program. The 80s were my grade school years. I certainly remember the Cold War being a big deal. But knowing that by 1989 it was pretty much over, and knowing about what went down in the 60s, I just always assumed that things were winding down by the 80s. This book has changed that perspective. By the 80s, the arsenals were  at an all time high, and communication was at an all-time low. What is really chilling is the picture painted about the Soviet paranoia in the early 80s – the leaders really were terrified that a U.S. nuclear first strike could come at any moment. The book describes how Reagan gradually came to realize this, that the Soviets could actually see the U.S. as the bad guys, and at that point he dropped the “evil empire” rhetoric and started talking with them. So although you can argue that he was recklessly belligerent early on, you have to give him some credit for at least partially defusing the situation. Then when Gorbachev comes along, he gets the rest of the credit. Another interesting sub-story here is how the KGB just completely got the best of the U.S. intelligence. And ultimately, that played a role in the U.S. being in the dark and misreading Soviet intentions throughout much of the period.

Even if there are no clear good or bad guys in this story, the Soviets are certainly not the good guys when it comes to biological weapons. They pursued them secretly, vigorously, and cynically for decades. It is truly chilling to think some of these weapons are still out there. Luckily, genetic engineering technology hadn’t really come into its own yet, so all they had to play around with was garden variety germs like smallpox and plague. Today of course, the technology is here and much more accessible to the average Joe Dictator or madman than back then. Even if there are no “evil empires” out there.

U.S. vs. China War?

Here’s an article called How to Avoid a Sino-American War. I think this is a great idea because I have a sense that the world just can’t afford a major war. Global economic progress has never really recovered from the 2008 financial crisis. Maybe it just takes time, or maybe progress is fighting headwinds of food, energy, and water constraints brought on by climate change and natural capital depletion. If the latter is true, perhaps a major war would be the last straw that we just can’t recover from.

Some people thing such a war is a distinct possibility:

In 2001, when an American EP-3 spy aircraft operating over the South China Sea collided with a Chinese air force interceptor jet near Hainan Island, Chinese and US leaders managed to defuse the situation and avoid a military confrontation. Today, such an incident in the South China Sea, where China and several southeast Asian countries have competing territorial claims, would almost certainly lead to an armed clash – one that could quickly escalate into open war.

Last month, at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue security conference, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong conveyed the deep apprehension of the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations about the potential for an armed conflict between China and the United States.

So does this article tell us how to avoid a war. You be the judge, but these words don’t mean much to me:

By activating top-level diplomacy, building strong crisis-management mechanisms, and enriching the rules of engagement in the South China Sea, a war between the US and China can be avoided. Given the vast damage that such a conflict could cause, this approach is less an option than a necessity.

Seymour Hersh

Seymour Hersh claims that almost everything we were told about the Bin Laden raid was a lie. I don’t want to believe it, but Seymour Hersh usually turns out to be right. Also, his story just kind of adds up. It’s long but this paragraph kind of sums it up:

This spring I contacted Durrani and told him in detail what I had learned about the bin Laden assault from American sources: that bin Laden had been a prisoner of the ISI at the Abbottabad compound since 2006; that Kayani and Pasha knew of the raid in advance and had made sure that the two helicopters delivering the Seals to Abbottabad could cross Pakistani airspace without triggering any alarms; that the CIA did not learn of bin Laden’s whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US, and that, while Obama did order the raid and the Seal team did carry it out, many other aspects of the administration’s account were false.

 

April 2015 in Review

Negative stories:

Positive stories:

  • Mr. Money Mustache brought us a nice post on home energy efficiency projects. This was a very popular post.
  • Biotechnology may soon bring us the tools to seriously monkey with photosynthesis. (This is one of those stories where I struggle between the positive and negative columns, but clearly there is a potential upside when we will have so many mouths to feed.)
  • Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking, is retiring. That might sound bad, but his ground-breaking ideas are continuing on and actually seem to be going mainstream.
  • Lee Kuan Yew, who took Singapore “from third world to first” in one generation, passed away (in March, but I wrote about it in April. Let me be clear – I am an admirer and it is his life I am putting in the positive column, not his death.)
  • Donella Meadows explained how your bathtub is a dynamic system.
  • Robert Gordon offers a clear policy prescription for the U.S. to support continued economic growth.
  • I explain how a cap-and-trade program for stormwater and pollution producing pavement could work.
  • Joel Mokyr talks about advances in information technology, materials science and biotechnology.
  • Some U.S. cities are fairly serious about planting trees.
  • Edmonton has set a target of zero solid waste.
  • Saving water also saves energy. It’s highly logical, but if you are the skeptical type then here are some numbers. Also, urban agriculture reduces carbon emissions.
  • Peter Thiel thinks we can live forever. (positive, but do see my earlier comment about mouths to feed…)
  • A paper in Ecological Economics tries to unify the ecological footprint and planetary boundary concepts.
  • Philadelphia finally has bike share.

“tactical” nuclear weapons

This is disturbing. Members of the elected legislature of a democratic country are openly advocating the use of nuclear weapons. This is happening in the only country in the world that has ever used nuclear weapons before. This is from 2013:

Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr., R-Calif., appearing on C-SPAN, encouraged Washington to get ready for war, arguing that “if you have to hit Iran … you do it with tactical nuclear devices and you set them back a decade or two or three. I think that’s the way to do it, with a massive aerial bombardment campaign.” …

Play out Hunter’s proposal and one quickly sees how devastating it would be. While Hunter doesn’t specify what type of “tactical nuclear device” he would propose for such an attack, the Federation of American Scientists notes that launching the least powerful of such weapons would cause nuclear blasts that would “blow out a huge crater of radioactive material, creating a lethal gamma-radiation field over a large area.

“Suppose Hunter would opt for something more lethal. If the United States were to use a more powerful tactical nuclear weapon, like the B-61, it could unleash an explosion many times more powerful than Little Boy, the atomic weapon the United States dropped on Hiroshima. Any such nuclear attack would incinerate untold numbers of Iranian civilians, including those working in Iran’s nuclear power facilities, and those in nearby urban centers.

We’re lucky in this country that the grownups are in charge most of the time. But there are moments when they are not, so while they are they should do whatever they can to idiot-proof the place before our next Lord of the Flies moment arrives.

Cold War III will be fought with sticks and stones…

Germany and Russia again? Seriously?

I feel like Ukraine is not front and center in the U.S. headlines like it was late last year, but I don’t think that means things are any better. It’s just that events in the Middle East are grabbing the headlines. This BBC article is from February:

Nato is to bolster the alliance’s military presence in Eastern Europe in response to increased fighting in eastern Ukraine between government forces and pro-Russia rebels…

The six bases are being set up in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria.

France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and Britain are taking the lead in establishing the new rapid reaction “spearhead” force, with its lead units able to deploy at two days’ notice.