The War Against ISIS III (and Russia?): Is Obama Too Cautious?
Posted on September 2, 2014 by chinatripper
Introduction: Both Democrats and Republicans are now saying that Obama is reacting too slowly to the challenges posed by ISIS in Iraq/Syria and by Russia in the Ukraine. No doubt the most critical remark came on August 31, when “Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate intelligence committee, told NBC: “I think I’ve learned one thing about this president, and that is he’s very cautious. Maybe in this instance, too cautious.”(From: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/31/obama-urged-tough-russia-isis-syria) While it is very tempting to dismiss this as basically another attempt from Hillary’s camp–“Hil Yes! We will go!”–to ooze around Obama on the right in preparation for the next election, without actually having to discuss issues of party loyalty, etc., other Dems also weighed in.
The GOP predictably went viral, by taking out of context O’s remarks that “We do not yet have a strategy.” Here is the original transcript taken from the Washington Post:
QUESTION: Do you need Congress’s approval to go into Syria?
OBAMA: You know, I have consulted with Congress throughout this process. I am confident that as commander in chief I have the authorities to engage in the acts that we are conducting currently. As our strategy develops, we will continue to consult with Congress, and I do think that it’ll be important for Congress to weigh in and we’re — that our consultations with Congress continue to develop so that the American people are part of the debate.
But I don’t want to put the cart before the horse. We don’t have a strategy yet. (The damning phrase) I think what I’ve seen in some of the news reports suggests that folks are getting a little further ahead of where we’re at than we currently are. And I think that’s not just my assessment, but the assessment of our military, as well. We need to make sure that we’ve got clear plans, that we’re developing them. At that point, I will consult with Congress and make sure that their voices are heard.
The full text as taken from the Washington Post reads:
“I don’t want to put the cart before the horse,” he said. The suggestion that “we’re about to go full scale on an elaborate strategy for defeating ISIL . . . that we’ll start moving forward imminently and somehow Congress, still out of town, is going to be left in the dark, that’s not what’s going to happen.” (ISIL is one of several acronyms referring to the Islamic State.)
Instead, the president said in a White House news conference, he has asked the Pentagon to prepare options while he puts together a broad, long-term plan including military, political, economic and diplomatic aspects and continues recruiting partner countries in the region and beyond to help carry it out.” (From: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-us-doesnt-have-a-strategy-yet-to-comprehensively-respond-to-islamic-state/2014/08/28/25513d94-2ed5-11e4-994d-202962a9150c_story.html )
Obama’s apparent plan: Obama’s “lack of strategy” then, is in fact a carefully calibrated plan to draw in all possible allies, and particularly the pusillanimous Saudis, who have a great deal to answer for and should be made to step up…
If the administration responds to pressure to increase military actions, bombing on a larger scale, spewing weapons deliveries from the skies of both Syria and Iraq, what then is the need for other countries to come forward? This would recreate a very comfortable status quo for other actors in the region, like those prior to our attempt to disengage from Iraq: “The Yanks are back, not to worry. Too bad about their budget and the chaos in their political system, but we’re all right!”
And the Saudi princes will grin knowingly, satisfied that their policy of more than 25 years is still working nicely: “…sell the Americans the oil they need to protect us! Even better than mercenaries, they pay us to do our dirty business! And be sure that part of that income goes to the Sunni nutjobs, just to be sure we have a hand in that, too!” (An imagined but not impossible conversation…)
So far I have not read specific suggestions for stepping things up, just criticism, which tells you something. Nobody wants to be tied to a real strategy other than the old favorites: more bombing raids, more weapons, more victory, something, anything–other than careful planning–and do it now!
The Needs of the Ukraine: And now, we have another pressing need: The Ukraine. Shades of Munich! (For an article reworking the Munich theme by a Russian Human Rights spokesman, now comfortably located in the U.S., see: http://time.com/44618/garry-kasparov-on-ukraine-obamas-munich-moment/ )
Here the call is a bit more specific. Given the nature of the Ukrainian government and its culture, which historically includes every sort of corruption and political opportunism, even perpetrating war crimes against its own civilian populations in the current conflict, (See: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/30/world/europe/ukraine-toll.html?_r=0) few are ready to call for direct confrontation with Russia, which would seem to have every military advantage in this particular situation.
Will NATO Help? NATO, which deserves some credit for letting this particular genie out of the bottle, began in 1997 to discuss eventual full membership for The Ukraine, periodically restated since. (See NATO explanation of NATO-Ukrainian relations at: (http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_37750.htm?) But on September 2, 2014, a senior NATO official reportedly said: “It’s not actually Nato’s job to be the police officer of Europe. Nato is not the first responder on this,” the diplomat said. “Nato’s planning is all about how to defend allies, not partners like Ukraine.” (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/02/putin-russian-forces-could-conquer-ukraine-capital-kiev-fortnight).
This would seem to be cowardly at best: the various NATO agreements with The Ukraine clearly alarmed the Russians and were a clear path to the current war, and now, NATO bails. This will, of course, properly terrify the several other countries on the same membership-but-not-there-yet path. (See an excellent piece from World Politics on this and related issues at (http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/14023/managing-partnerships-not-enlargement-is-nato-s-real-challenge)
Better Weapons for the Ukraine? So far the outcry from the hawks has been to give the Ukraine “better” weapons with which to face the Russians. Given that Russian weapons are not themselves all that advanced, and that the Ukraine has been armed in the past by Russia, one has to wonder what the heck is going on.
Of course, the notion of allies being defeated because we refused them “better weapons” is an old bromide. Certainly it was often used during the McCarthy era to blame the Democrats for the “loss of China.” There was utterly no truth to it. Our supposed ally, the KMT government of Chiang K’ai-shek (Jiang Jieshr) in the more modern Pinyin Romanization) had been much better armed than the Communists for more than twenty years of civil war, and it never made any difference.
The argument that our allies lost a war because of a lack of our support–caused of course, because of perfidious American Leftists and fellow travelers– surfaced again in the Vietnam War. The North opened a new offensive in the Vietnamese highlands on March 10, 1975. When the Saigon government tried to “shorten their defense lines”–another term for bugging-out–their forces broke in the highlands and raced to the sea-coast and commandeered boats so as to be evacuated to Saigon, or better yet, to American ships offshore. We know that they still had plenty of weaponry because they used those guns to force their way aboard the coastal boats. But by April 30, Saigon had collapsed and the war was over. Later conservative revisionists attempted to cast this as the result of diminished American military support for the Saigon regime. Again, there was no truth in this assertion. As in China earlier, another government composed largely of thieves and opportunists simply collapsed.
After the war was over, I led a television crew from Portland and Seattle back into Vietnam and we traveled through most of the country. It was an interesting lesson in post-war economics. The U.S. air bases at Danang, for example, once the world’s busiest, were simply gone. The Japanese had come in and first, purchased all the substantial scrap metal–aircraft hulks, tanks, Quonset huts, construction machinery, metal ramps, etc. These were then, the Vietnamese laughed, re-exported to the U.S. as Japanese autos. Then the Japanese bought even the asphalt runways and roads at former U.S. air bases, Danang included. I suppose these were rendered back into petroleum products.
But all along the route of the highlands to coast bug-out, there were still discarded light weapons almost every place you looked. Many of these had been collected for later sale to the Japanese and so were piled up in entrepreneurs’ front yards, but again no shortage of them was evident.
Who Pays for Better Weapons for the Ukraine? But let’s remember, not only is the ‘lack of weapons’ trope a good excuse for poor policy on our part–not to mention setting up another attack on Obama–it is also a winner for another reason: weapons are invariably supplied through American “loans,” which will never be repaid. But the public funds used to buy them come from our taxes, and lo and behold, immediately become profits for armaments industries, part of which, in turn become re-election campaign funds for our hard-working congress people and senators! More than a twofer! Who could be opposed to this?
It is true that such spending is inherently inflationary as it produces no goods to sop up the excess cash pumped into the system, but that can be managed by holding wages down, because, of course, of the danger of inflation! What a beautiful system, and all in the name of supporting our courageous allies.
But even the seemingly safe demand for better weapons to be given to the Ukraine raises a number of questions:
1) Given that the Ukrainians were trained and armed by the Russians, shouldn’t any new weapons be Russian? There is, if nothing else, the matter of spare parts, upkeep, and the calibers of various weapons. And “better” would seem to mean more high-tech. Tank killing helicopters will surely be high on the list, given the nature of the war so far. Will we provide both the machinery and the training? Or perhaps even the crews, as the Russians themselves have apparently done for their puppet forces.
If we were to do the sensible thing and provide funds for purchases of former Soviet bloc arms, perhaps from the Polish, Czech or Slovak arsenals, this would be much cheaper and would presumably strengthen the defenses of other nations perhaps to be threatened later by the Russians.
2) But, if we supply “better” American weapons, who will provide the training and the resupply if not us? Will we train them in The Ukraine itself? Pull them out while under fire and hand them unfamiliar equipment? These may seem to be niggling questions, better left to generals, but if we rush into this, will anybody ask those questions?
3) And, finally, THE BIG QUESTION: Where is the evidence that better weapons will turn the tide in a battle in which “our side” is hopelessly outmatched? Are the Ukrainians in fact clearly committed to a long-drawn out struggle in the first place? Evidence suggests that so far the Ukrainians have lost 12-24 planes shot down and more than 50 captured on the ground. (See a continually updated and well-documented site at: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ukrainian_aircraft_losses_during_the_2014_pro-Russian_unrest_in_Ukraine)
I suspect, however, that this issue is basically closed. Russia will probably be happy to settle for their current gains for a while, then reopen the military campaign later should that even be necessary. As NATO has in effect declared its lack of responsibility, there is little that can now be done militarily.
Ukrainian Immigration: But our engagement could have many positive results, I admit. We will certainly get a large group–at least tens of thousands–of Ukrainian immigrants. These are unlikely to blend in with existing Russian enclaves given recent history. Many urban Russian communities are dominated, it is often said, by criminal gangs a la Brighton Beach, etc. So the Ukrainians will have to develop their own gangs, or perhaps just recognize existing elites who will certainly arrive with lots and lots of shrink-wrapped greenbacks with which to begin their investment programs. Hopefully the congressmen and senators wishing to get further involved in the Ukraine will step up and facilitate immigration tickets for the collateral damage of the war.
Conclusion: When teaching the Vietnam War, I often informed my students that many experts said that the saddest part of the U.S. involvement was that the war was over before we got engaged. The North had succeeded in casting the conflict as a nationalist war against foreign colonialism, the South had lost the ability to raise taxes or to draft military forces, and the rest was just a sad grinding out to the inevitable tragic end. It seems to me that the Ukrainian war is a much less likely candidate for a theater in which to win a proxy military victory.
If none of the above sounds attractive, perhaps we could support the President, try to get Congress to cooperate, at least with their own parties, and trust that other allies will come forward in Syria and Iraq, and that diplomacy can mitigate the inevitable damage to come in the Ukraine. For his part the President needs, as he has suggested he will do, to get Congress fully involved in the decision making, and to make clear what the long-term plans are. But only after they are carefully and methodically developed, taking into account all the local geopolitical factors and actors.
Chinatripper 