re: Blueprint for Victory:
Thanks for your response.
<1. 10% Force; 90% persuasion (instead of the other way around). Economic leverage, HeartsAndMinds campaign.>
That's a general principle, not something to be rigidly applied with mathematical precision to every situation. For instance: with 10 problems, solving 9 using 100% persuasion, and 1 using 100% Force would be acceptable.
Desert Storm might qualify as one of those rare 100%-Force solutions. Or not. We could have sent 50,000 troops to Saudi Arabia. That, with our air power, would have been enough to stop further aggression by Iraq. Then, we could have organized an airtight embargo, or used our airpower to close the frontiers of Iraq to all oil exports, and all imports of any kind. Then, wait. Eventually, Iraq would have had to give back Kuwait. While waiting for the embargo to work, we organize a Kuwait government in exile, a republic with elections, universal suffrage (including women and "guest workers"), and a free press.
The main problem with this method, is that it requires two qualities sorely lacking in my fellow Americans: patience, and self-sacrifice. Would you have been willing to do a year or two of embargoes, to do what we did so spectacularly in 96 hours of ground combat? Would I have been willing to drive my Expedition less? This summer, my SUV hauled our camper-trailer all over Alaska, so we could hike and bike all day, and then have soft beds and hot water at night. Ask me, ask Americans in general, to give up the life-style associated with cheap gas and big SUVs, and we'll answer.......what?
The Korean War, like Iraq1, was another clear case of aggression, for which Strict Reciprocity means evicting the aggressor. It would probably have been a much shorter war, though, if Truman had been quicker to fire the megalomaniac American General who kept talking about nuking Manchuria.
<2. Multilateralism. Alone, we lose.>
France could have guaranteed themselves some of those oil contracts they were "drooling over", by joining our Coalition Of The Billing. They chose not to. The issues of Iraqi debt, and oil contracts, are not core. The core issue isn't even Iraq. It's U.S. Hegemony and Unilateralism. The whole world doesn't like any one nation having as much power as the U.S. has today. They can reduce that power, by refusing to cooperate, and that is the consistent policy of France.
The only way the world will allow us to exercise that much power, is if we use it sparingly, responsibly, with respect for the opinions of the other 96% of the world's people. We aren't doing that, so they are sitting on the sidelines, watching us struggle with Afghan and Iraqi Tar Babies. They figure we'll get desperate enough to see their point of view sooner or later.
<3. Strict Reciprocity>
Again, a general policy, not an absurdly exact tit-for-tat copying of everything They do.
<When N. Korea threatens to build nuclear weapons, should Seoul reciprocate?>
N. Korea is threatened, not by S. Korea, but by us. S. Korea's non-threatening Sunshine policy isn't why N. Korea needs nukes. They feel the need for nukes, to deter the U.S. from "doing an Iraq" on them.
The U.S. has soldiers in S. Korea, and we have a defense treaty with them, and we have more chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, and more means to deliver them, than N. Korea. By several orders of magnitude. It is not Strict Reciprocity, for a nation that used nuclear weapons as soon as we got them (for dubious reasons), and that is currently developing NewAndImproved "useable" tactical nukes, to try to force our opponents to give up nuclear weapons development programs. The only way we will get N. Korea and Iran (and then Hezbollah and the Badr Brigade) to give up these Equalizers, is to give them up ourselves.
You may not know this, but the U.S. has already signed a treaty, committing us to do exactly that. That's what we agreed to, to get non-nuclear nations to give up their programs. As is so often the case, our memory of past promises, and enforcement of treaty obligations, is very selective. We want everyone else to Toe The Line, while we claim total freedom of action for ourselves. And we want to unilaterally define where the Line is. |
