Weirdly, I've lately acquired a number of books that seem as though they'd make some fascinating compare and contrasts. Some are books on the same subject from divergent views; others, books in the same subject separated by a hundred and fifty years or so. Rather than reviewing each independently, it seemed both expedient and illuminating to synchronize some of these books.
In this case, the question at hand is the evolution of modern war, as told by John Robb's Brave New War and Micheal Horowitz's The Diffusion of Military Power. Nominally, the two books are looking at the evolution of modern warfare, but from radically different paradigms. Whereas Robb is concerned with 4th or 5th generation warfare (4GW/5GW; depending on which theorist you're reading) and thus focuses his attention on non-state actors, Horowitz goes in almost the opposite direction, looking at the adoption of the most expensive and organizationally complex military innovations available.
Horowitz posits what he terms the "adaption-capacity model" to conceptualize how military innovations diffuse throughout the world and across the international power structure. He essentially grants the desire to acquire an innovation, be in aircraft carriers, tanks, or information technology and questions what governs why not everyone has everything. To that end, he posits that the likelihood of an innovation spread is a function of (a) the available financial capital and (b) the available organizational capital. The financial capital speaks for itself, while the organizational capital is considerably more nebulous. At it's most general, organizational capital represents the intangible capacity of a state to reorganize itself to use an innovation. Yet it can refer to the racial and ethnic cleavages of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire as a hindrance to Imperial adoption of levee en masse or to doctrinal rigidity within the Soviet Navy as as powerful obstacle to deploying aircraft carriers. While the fuzziness of the second criteria is at times frustrating, it provides a welcome counterpoint to the objective realist models that posit things like strategic necessity as a sole determinant of acquisition.
However, while Horowitz tries to use his model to explain how the acquisition of major weapons systems revamps the international balance of power, the smallest level of analysis he uses is state-versus-non-state, and from the perspective of the state. Three of the four case studies he uses are almost exclusively oriented towards state-on-state (battleship fleet doctrine, aircraft carriers, and the nuke). These three case studies all have their respective issues, but they all serve to highlight how the capacity of a state for change influences their global power. He chose each case study based on his typology (high financial/low organizational, etc), but what made these case studies interesting to me was how these particular innovations defined global power, perhaps erroneously.
The classic arms race is the adoption of dreadnoughts at the turn of the century. The points Horowitz makes about how British naval doctrine was shaped the rapid shifts in technology and capability are the most compelling arguments he makes for how diffusion of a technology shapes the international political situation. The development of the two-fleet doctrine, the tonnage comparisons, the races with Germany shaping the Entente-versus-Alliance system, largely as a function of the radical alterations to naval power posed by dreadnought-class ships. Yet, interestingly, their sole demonstration was the Battle of Toshima. Jutland was a waste, and the decisive naval weapons system ending up being the submarine. That paradox, between the calculation of military power based on the apparent largest ships afloat (or the most tanks or troops) and the actual capabilities of the states involved is one that permeates both the sections on the carriers and the nuke, and underscores the current schizophrenia between hailing America as the world's greatest military power and its struggles in low-intensity conflicts.
The carrier section captures that paradox exquisitely. An aircraft carrier represents power projection capabilities unrivaled by any other platform. Yet, as a naval instrument, it hasn't been used significantly since WWII. Instead, it has been used as a mobile airfield, and perhaps not even a necessary one. Carrier-based strike packages were flown in Vietnam, yet the majority of sorties were flown from Thailand and Rolling Thunder B-52s were based in Diego Garcia. I've written how carriers represent that global authority unrivaled by any other country, but even our Secretary of Defense wonders about their utility and whether risking a $20 billion carrier to missiles costing "mere" hundreds of thousands or less represents responsible strategic logic.
So carriers represent the dichotomy because even while the Soviet Union was incapable of procuring and deploying carrier fleets, the Soviet Union was hailed as the global rival to the US, it's peer competitor, despite it's "deficiency". Instead of multi-billion dollar, high tech equipment, the Soviet Union funded wars of national liberation, starting brushfires across the world. Horowitz is so focused on evaluating whether or not a state adopts innovations that he gives short shrift to alternative strategies if a state cannot adopt. Rather than adopting a technology of exceedingly high entry barriers, the Soviet Union changed the calculations of strategic calculus and sought to redefine the norms; likewise with the Chinese emphasis on area denial and anti-carrier ballistic missiles. Horowitz's model can help predict when or how a country will adopt an innovation, but it implicitly assumes the innovation is something worth acquiring and is thus deficient regarding alternatives to adoption.
This is where the fourth case study enters the picture. Moving away from innovations so expensive only a nation state could purchase them, Horowitz applies his model to suicide bombings. Instead of being prohibitively expensive for material that, in all likelihood will never be used, suicide bombing represents some of the most cost-effective tactics currently available. The cost of a single vest can be as little as $150, and a car perhaps $1,500 once modified. With an almost non-existent cost barrier, Horowitz asks why this isn't a universally adopted tactic. His answer is that the longer a group has been in exist, i.e. the longer a particular group's MO has had a chance to ossify, the less likely it is to adopt new tactics. Conversely, the groups identification as Islamic strongly increased it's propensity to adopt suicide bombings.
On face value, those seem like explanations that accords with common wisdom. However, it neglects important facets of insurgency theory, and doesn't adjust for group's training and social milieu. Horowitz uses the Tamil Tigers, Al Qaeda, and the Provisional Irish Republican Army as his focused examples, attempting to span both secular and religious adoption, and a notable group that refused to adopt the tactic. The Tigers perpetrated almost 50% of the suicide bombings globally between 1981 and 2003, but what makes their usage unique is it's intent focus on "hard" targets. These were targets of immediate military value and strongly defended. In contrast, the soft targets of Hamas or Hizbullah were population centers, people, markets. Brutal though the Tigers were to the population in general, their focus for suicide bombings were within the generally accepted boundaries of legitimate targets. Accordingly, on the spectrum of Maoist three-phase insurgency, the Tigers were heavily weighted towards the third conventional phase. This suggests adoption on largely military logics.
In contrast, the PIRA never adopted the tactic, despite using car bombs, assassinations, and other terrorist activities. Horowitz believes this to be because the PIRA had habituated MOs by the advent of suicide bombs, and because the PIRA consciously attempted to minimize civilian casualties. On the Maoist spectrum, the PIRA never really moved out of phase I. While both the Tigers and PIRA targeted hard targets, the PIRA never moved far enough along the spectrum to capitalize appropriately if they had used suicide bombs as a military tactic. Instead, they were operating as primarily political agents, sowing dissension and demonstrating the inefficacies of the government. With those goals in mind, suicide bombs couldn't accomplish anything regular bombs couldn't. Their adoption was unnecessary, given the environment in which they operated, their largely secular veneration of the heroic sacrifice (not glorious martyrdom), and their goals.
Meanwhile, Robb represents one of the modern intellectuals convinced in the obsolescence of the modern state, and the existential threats posed by non-state actors. In this vein, he is of the same cut as Kaplan's Coming Anarachy, though the difference of a decade and the data of the Iraqi sandbox provide additional granularity unavailable to Kaplan. Kaplan saw a world coming apart at the seems, as chaos in the periphery tore apart societies and countries. But a world apart at the seams still leaves broad swathes of cloth intact; the core might be balkanized, but it would still retain its essential edge and productivity.
For Robb, the coming anarchy is differentiation between how groups choose to challenge state sovereignty. Rather than assuming a monolithic entity in full command of all the resources traditionally accorded to a Westphalian state, Robb begins by noting the steady peripheral erosion of state authority. Globalization is eating away at a state's ability to provide services and goods at superior efficiencies than private actors; he cites WalMart serving as a distribution for fresh water after Katrina opposing FEMA's incompetence. He notes that groups like Hamas and Hizbullah have been providing services within their sectors of influence that makes them proto-states.
But most tellingly, globalization has democratized violence. Robb notes that for approximately $200,000, 9/11 produced economic damages and losses in excess of $80 billion. Example after example of oil sabotage notes that tactics costing mere hundreds or thousands of dollars produce loses in the millions to tens of millions. Specific nodes, what Robb calls systemspunkt, produce systemic ripples that topple electricity systems or ruin financial markets.
Just as the aircraft carrier is hailed as the pinnacle of modern conventional military might, suicide bombs are regarded as the undefeatable insurgent tactic, yet both miss the essential point that the metrics demonstrating their superiority are outdated. Both are absolutely deadly inventions, capable of producing targeted destruction of enormous effect, but assessing them against a military metric doesn't capture their true cost and benefits. Whereas Horowitz wanted to know why a group like the PIRA never adopted suicide bombing, we would be better served asking why the FARC or the Mexican cartels haven't adopted the tactic. Horowitz framed the question of why groups pass over tactics with demonstrated military utility. Robb suggests that it's because modern insurgencies have moved beyond military metrics.
The Mexican cartels aren't waging an insurgency, in the classic sense. The insurgencies Robb is talking about want to topple governments, but they have no desire to supplant the state. They're libertarian, and radically empowered to cause ruinous devastation. The ground rules Horowitz is using to predicate his model are changing. Massive financial barriers preclude states from acquiring carriers, and outdated insurgent groups aren't changing their paradigms fast enough to employ modern tactics. Yet when we're reaching the point where cells of five to nine men can shut down cities, or bleed economies dry, I'm not terribly concerned with whether China will field a blue water fleet in 25 years, let alone a credible great power threat. Superempowered individuals, target critical nodes, can produce damages modern states can only dream about.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Friday, September 24, 2010
Presidential automony
Insofar as Obama has a coherent foreign policy, it's been largely derided (/praised) as a continuation of Bush's policies. Drones strikes, increased footprint in Afghanistan (notwithstanding the purported disagreements Woodward cites), and drawdowns in Iraq are all continuation policies. This recent FP article about Obama's GA speech notes that:
They polish policies developed by deputies. They provide guidance and direction, yet ultimately, those policies are created by others, credited to them as both a courtesy and acknowledgment that sufficient granularity is impossible. We say that Obama sets the time table for withdraw from Iraq or Afghanistan, yet those timetables are guided by objective constrains. The number of flights available, the personnel that need evacuation, the tonnage of equipment requiring transport. We say Obama delivered on his campaign promise of leaving Iraq, yet 50,000 troops remain, and enormous quantities of equipment remain in Iraq, relics of a by-gone era.
So my question is: absent an event like 9/11, absent a paradigm shift comparable to the initiation of the Cold War, how free are Presidents to shape the destinies of this country?
"As powerful as the presidency is, it is still in the service of events. George W. Bush did not set out to be a wartime president until September 11th; Harry Truman did not assume office intending to be America's first Cold War president. The challenge a president faces is to read events and respond by seizing the initiative, to steer history's tides rather than merely be swept along."The President of the United States is accorded respect as the leader of the most powerful nation of the world, yet they are subject to the whims of the Liliputians, trapped in the legacies of their predecessors and the sheer inertia of the world's largest bureaucracies. All of which makes me wonder: how free are Presidents to create, genuinely create, substantive change?
They polish policies developed by deputies. They provide guidance and direction, yet ultimately, those policies are created by others, credited to them as both a courtesy and acknowledgment that sufficient granularity is impossible. We say that Obama sets the time table for withdraw from Iraq or Afghanistan, yet those timetables are guided by objective constrains. The number of flights available, the personnel that need evacuation, the tonnage of equipment requiring transport. We say Obama delivered on his campaign promise of leaving Iraq, yet 50,000 troops remain, and enormous quantities of equipment remain in Iraq, relics of a by-gone era.
So my question is: absent an event like 9/11, absent a paradigm shift comparable to the initiation of the Cold War, how free are Presidents to shape the destinies of this country?
Saturday, September 11, 2010
"Game Change" Review
I'd been meaning to read this book for a long time (hell, I got it from the library three months ago and... just never quite got around to it). And it's a fascinating read. I have no experience in a campaign from which to form a frame of reference, so it's hard to leverage the book as commentary on the strategy of a campaign or infer lessons, so the "lessons learned" is sadly underdeveloped. Still, it provides ample fodder for reference points in discussing a number of broader issues.
The first was simply comparing my own experiences observing the campaigns with the narratives of such intimately involved operators. At this time, I was reading the news for something like four hours a day, and consider the time my most well-informed period yet. I remember showing up in DC for my new job, within days promptly shipping down to Colonial Williamsburg for a product conference and being excited that I had a hotel room to myself where I could watch the YouTube debate in peace. I remember finding the most enjoyable part of using my apartment's fitness center to train up for the Army to be watching the primary results while I ran on the treadmill (it was February and around 20, even my hatred of treadmills wasn't enough to overcome those obstacles). I remember exactly where in the North Carolina woods I was on election night, and I remember exactly what other part of the woods I was in when Obama was sworn in (by exactly, I can give you an MGRS 8-digit grid to both).
Yet in reading through the book, I was continually reminded of how much had passed over my head unknown and unnoticed. The Drexel debate in Philadelphia had somehow passed completely past my radar. I remember vaguely the stories about Clinton's confused mess of a debate and how all the candidates had piled on her, but in terms of my personal relation to the candidates or preferences, that debate wouldn't have even been a footnote. At the time, I wrote about what undercut Clinton as an attractive candidate for me, and the twin events bookend the Drexel debate by a few months. Likewise with the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner held to be so pivotal in Iowa. Halperin and Heilemann hail the dinner as a crucial event in cementing Obama's potential as a candidate, yet I couldn't have even told you what party organized the dinner, let alone who attended or cared.
Even paying attention, I missed an enormous amount, and I considered myself an informed voter. Of course, missing the day-to-day tactical maneuverings is different than understanding a candidates position on issues and making informed choices, but it makes me wonder the gradient of the informed voter pyramid, and if it wasn't closer to a steeple.
Which brings up point two. Halperin and Heilemann make a point in not talking about the comparative issues in the campaigns as at all determinative. Instead, what shaped the narratives of influential events were the styles and tactics of the candidates. They make a point in noting that Obama campaign had been vapid, and contrasted that to Clinton's cool command of policy, yet the dominant factors weren't Clinton's ability to detail new plans, but her perception of being informed and experienced; people responded to her image, not her policies. Likewise, despite the deliberate choice by the Obama campaign to stay out of the minutia, people responded. Curiously, the two events described haiographically are Obama's speech on race, and his performance during the McCain stunt over the economic meltdown. In both cases, quotes are replete describing Obama's cool authority and command in periods of crisis.
Third observation: Obama's campaign was never overwhelmed by a third-party, like those that crippled his competition. Rudy and Edwards had their wives running their campaigns. Clinton had Clinton. McCain had Palin. Her cult of celebrity developed at such a pace that I remember it turning into a choice between Obama and Palin, and the topics of the chapters on closing days of the McCain candidacy are spent talking about Palin, not McCain. The McCain candidacy was so overwhelming that she swamped the campaign; she became to top of the ticket. Which is all the more ironic considering how incompetent she was exposed to be, and the disaster of crisis control the McCain candidacy exercised in her defense. The years since have only confirmed the sheer irresponsibility of letting her near power.
But it does provide a good counterpoint to the Clinton/Clinton campaign. That the first serious woman candidate should also be the spouse to a former President raises a huge host of questions. True enough, her tenure as First Lady gave her the name recognition that her Senate career or private career probably could never have granted her, to the extent I wonder if her candidacy would have been possible without her tenure as First Lady. It's purely speculative, but I'm curious how instrumental her marriage was to her candidacy, despite her independent qualifications. It gave her an In to the Democratic establishment and her husband's resources and connections were likely invaluable. Yet, that same tenure was also what made her negatives so stratospheric and confirmed her unsuitability as the Democratic candidate for many.
But her campaign was constantly under threat of being overwhelmed by Bill, and nearly got swamped multiple times. It was explicitly cited by Obama as a disqualification for a VP slot. Nevertheless, Bill's instincts and actions provided some of the most potent assets to the campaign. He brought enormous baggage, yet he remained a preternaturally gifted politician, and remained loved by a good sector of the Democratic vote. Voters seemed to respond to him in ways Hillary could only envy.
Ultimately, however, it never seemed like a fully comfortable narrative was developed to encompass Bill, both internally and externally. The Clinton campaign never seemed comfortable in how far forward they wanted to push Bill, if he should play the typical role of the candidate's spouse, if they should leverage his favorables among Democrats as a shadow candidate, if he should be a campaign architect, or if he should disappear for fear of overshadowing Hillary. Given his tendency to do his own thing, trying to pigeon hole him would likely have been unproductive, but without that frame, she never ran a truly solo campaign (although, given the love of Bill in the fourth estate, he wasn't allowed to leave stage right, even when he tried).
Which brings up the last observation, that of suppressed narratives. I remember how intimately issues of race and gender were tied into almost everything throughout the campaigns, yet both Obama and Clinton seemed to try to whitewash and neuter themselves, respectively. Insofar as I remember accusations and counter-accusations flying, I remember it was from their supporters. Halperin and Heilemann make the point of noting that both candidates actually suppressed proxies from raising those issues or trying to quiet fires others started on their behalf. Obama's speech on race and Wright aimed to be post-racial.
To be honest, I'm not really sure what that would look like. It's one thing to talk about an America which doesn't pay attention to race, that accepts someone simply as who they are and not from what group they hail. Given recent screeds like Dinesh D'Souza's inane "Kenyan 'anti-colonialism' ", longing for an era that transcends such simplistic explanations is fairly attractive.
Yet I can't help but feeling like a post-racial campaign is a campaign designed to be unthreatening to white voters. When a post-racial campaign looks and sounds suspiciously like a main-stream, old-money campaign, avoiding issues of race sounds more like smoothing one's self out than transcend complicated narratives.
Which was why I found his Wright speech so riveting. If I had to pick any particular influence for my vote, that was it. Once I left for Basic, I had almost no time to keep up on the vicissitudes of the campaigns or to research the issues, yet I felt confident in my vote almost single-handedly because of that speech.
So it serves as a good proxy to counterpoint my experiences of the campaign with Game Change. To Halperin and Heilemann, this speech was a just yet another moment as campaign drama, the resolution to the drama of Reverend Wright and the looming threat he posed. It was yet another moment of drama, an episodes that merited less page space than a discussion of Edward's trysts or Palin's... idiosyncracies.
Halperin and Heilemann aren't writing a treatise on the comparative merits of the candidates, nor do they pretend such at all. But the absence of commentary on substance ends up regulating observations about the competence of the candidates to the results of focus groups or the plaudits of the commentariat. So, while the book is a fascinating look into the private side of the candidates lives that wasn't shown for public consumption, it's disinclinations to involve higher order observations on the conduct of campaigns, relative strategies, or even just personal analysis ends up making the book feel more gossipy than substantial. High-end, quality gossip on power-brokers, to be sure, but gossip all the same. I'm armed for that proverbial beer. I'm just not sure I'm a more informed voter or campaign watcher.
The first was simply comparing my own experiences observing the campaigns with the narratives of such intimately involved operators. At this time, I was reading the news for something like four hours a day, and consider the time my most well-informed period yet. I remember showing up in DC for my new job, within days promptly shipping down to Colonial Williamsburg for a product conference and being excited that I had a hotel room to myself where I could watch the YouTube debate in peace. I remember finding the most enjoyable part of using my apartment's fitness center to train up for the Army to be watching the primary results while I ran on the treadmill (it was February and around 20, even my hatred of treadmills wasn't enough to overcome those obstacles). I remember exactly where in the North Carolina woods I was on election night, and I remember exactly what other part of the woods I was in when Obama was sworn in (by exactly, I can give you an MGRS 8-digit grid to both).
Yet in reading through the book, I was continually reminded of how much had passed over my head unknown and unnoticed. The Drexel debate in Philadelphia had somehow passed completely past my radar. I remember vaguely the stories about Clinton's confused mess of a debate and how all the candidates had piled on her, but in terms of my personal relation to the candidates or preferences, that debate wouldn't have even been a footnote. At the time, I wrote about what undercut Clinton as an attractive candidate for me, and the twin events bookend the Drexel debate by a few months. Likewise with the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner held to be so pivotal in Iowa. Halperin and Heilemann hail the dinner as a crucial event in cementing Obama's potential as a candidate, yet I couldn't have even told you what party organized the dinner, let alone who attended or cared.
Even paying attention, I missed an enormous amount, and I considered myself an informed voter. Of course, missing the day-to-day tactical maneuverings is different than understanding a candidates position on issues and making informed choices, but it makes me wonder the gradient of the informed voter pyramid, and if it wasn't closer to a steeple.
Which brings up point two. Halperin and Heilemann make a point in not talking about the comparative issues in the campaigns as at all determinative. Instead, what shaped the narratives of influential events were the styles and tactics of the candidates. They make a point in noting that Obama campaign had been vapid, and contrasted that to Clinton's cool command of policy, yet the dominant factors weren't Clinton's ability to detail new plans, but her perception of being informed and experienced; people responded to her image, not her policies. Likewise, despite the deliberate choice by the Obama campaign to stay out of the minutia, people responded. Curiously, the two events described haiographically are Obama's speech on race, and his performance during the McCain stunt over the economic meltdown. In both cases, quotes are replete describing Obama's cool authority and command in periods of crisis.
Third observation: Obama's campaign was never overwhelmed by a third-party, like those that crippled his competition. Rudy and Edwards had their wives running their campaigns. Clinton had Clinton. McCain had Palin. Her cult of celebrity developed at such a pace that I remember it turning into a choice between Obama and Palin, and the topics of the chapters on closing days of the McCain candidacy are spent talking about Palin, not McCain. The McCain candidacy was so overwhelming that she swamped the campaign; she became to top of the ticket. Which is all the more ironic considering how incompetent she was exposed to be, and the disaster of crisis control the McCain candidacy exercised in her defense. The years since have only confirmed the sheer irresponsibility of letting her near power.
But it does provide a good counterpoint to the Clinton/Clinton campaign. That the first serious woman candidate should also be the spouse to a former President raises a huge host of questions. True enough, her tenure as First Lady gave her the name recognition that her Senate career or private career probably could never have granted her, to the extent I wonder if her candidacy would have been possible without her tenure as First Lady. It's purely speculative, but I'm curious how instrumental her marriage was to her candidacy, despite her independent qualifications. It gave her an In to the Democratic establishment and her husband's resources and connections were likely invaluable. Yet, that same tenure was also what made her negatives so stratospheric and confirmed her unsuitability as the Democratic candidate for many.
But her campaign was constantly under threat of being overwhelmed by Bill, and nearly got swamped multiple times. It was explicitly cited by Obama as a disqualification for a VP slot. Nevertheless, Bill's instincts and actions provided some of the most potent assets to the campaign. He brought enormous baggage, yet he remained a preternaturally gifted politician, and remained loved by a good sector of the Democratic vote. Voters seemed to respond to him in ways Hillary could only envy.
Ultimately, however, it never seemed like a fully comfortable narrative was developed to encompass Bill, both internally and externally. The Clinton campaign never seemed comfortable in how far forward they wanted to push Bill, if he should play the typical role of the candidate's spouse, if they should leverage his favorables among Democrats as a shadow candidate, if he should be a campaign architect, or if he should disappear for fear of overshadowing Hillary. Given his tendency to do his own thing, trying to pigeon hole him would likely have been unproductive, but without that frame, she never ran a truly solo campaign (although, given the love of Bill in the fourth estate, he wasn't allowed to leave stage right, even when he tried).
Which brings up the last observation, that of suppressed narratives. I remember how intimately issues of race and gender were tied into almost everything throughout the campaigns, yet both Obama and Clinton seemed to try to whitewash and neuter themselves, respectively. Insofar as I remember accusations and counter-accusations flying, I remember it was from their supporters. Halperin and Heilemann make the point of noting that both candidates actually suppressed proxies from raising those issues or trying to quiet fires others started on their behalf. Obama's speech on race and Wright aimed to be post-racial.
To be honest, I'm not really sure what that would look like. It's one thing to talk about an America which doesn't pay attention to race, that accepts someone simply as who they are and not from what group they hail. Given recent screeds like Dinesh D'Souza's inane "Kenyan 'anti-colonialism' ", longing for an era that transcends such simplistic explanations is fairly attractive.
Yet I can't help but feeling like a post-racial campaign is a campaign designed to be unthreatening to white voters. When a post-racial campaign looks and sounds suspiciously like a main-stream, old-money campaign, avoiding issues of race sounds more like smoothing one's self out than transcend complicated narratives.
Which was why I found his Wright speech so riveting. If I had to pick any particular influence for my vote, that was it. Once I left for Basic, I had almost no time to keep up on the vicissitudes of the campaigns or to research the issues, yet I felt confident in my vote almost single-handedly because of that speech.
So it serves as a good proxy to counterpoint my experiences of the campaign with Game Change. To Halperin and Heilemann, this speech was a just yet another moment as campaign drama, the resolution to the drama of Reverend Wright and the looming threat he posed. It was yet another moment of drama, an episodes that merited less page space than a discussion of Edward's trysts or Palin's... idiosyncracies.
Halperin and Heilemann aren't writing a treatise on the comparative merits of the candidates, nor do they pretend such at all. But the absence of commentary on substance ends up regulating observations about the competence of the candidates to the results of focus groups or the plaudits of the commentariat. So, while the book is a fascinating look into the private side of the candidates lives that wasn't shown for public consumption, it's disinclinations to involve higher order observations on the conduct of campaigns, relative strategies, or even just personal analysis ends up making the book feel more gossipy than substantial. High-end, quality gossip on power-brokers, to be sure, but gossip all the same. I'm armed for that proverbial beer. I'm just not sure I'm a more informed voter or campaign watcher.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
The End of Combat Operations in----Eh
I've written on this meme before, but I just don't buy the meme that Iraq has defined this/my generation, indelibly imprinting lessons and cautions and scars upon millions of burgeoning Americans. This last week saw FP publish two articles directly addressing this topic, and both are fascinating conversations pieces, if ultimately wrong.
The first, and more interesting (especially the comments), is a quick hypothesis by Dan Drezner. Inspired by the combination of the NYT's 8,000 words on the lifestyles twentysomethings and The Icarus Syndrome, an analysis of three US foreign policy "blunders" as a function of the formative foreign policy experiences of the actors, Drezner posits that the formative policy views of millennials is a function of the events of the 2000s. I've asked the exact question of what has shaped the foreign policy views of my generation before, so this is a topic near and dear to my heart.
For Drezner, it's a function of a youth of prosperity, an adolescence during conflict and coming-of-age with an implosion of the economy. From these, he "...would have to conclude that this generation should be anti-interventionist to the point of isolationism". Really broadly speaking, the comments support that view. They speak to the hubris of American power, the need to embrace multilateralism and accepting the narrative that there are impossible tasks, insurmountable hatreds, and a need to tend to our own house first. They speak to the discredit of the Freedom Agenda and, despite the recent furor over TIME's cover, don't speak of human rights. It was responsibility and setting suns.
Picking up the thread was Elizabeth Dickensons's My Life, Under the Iraq War. She states unequivicably in her intro that: "Our generation has lived its entire adult life under the Iraq war. And everything -- from the way that we see global affairs, multilateral cooperation, conflict, and politics -- has been shaped by that conflict". She draws four lessons from this coming-of-age, and while I have particular issue with each point, my broader issue is with the basic skein that Iraq was a formative experience for the generation.
First, I simply doubt the thesis that concurrence begets formative experience. True enough, the defining foreign policy events that Drezner outlines are likely the most significant, yet how does the existence of those events translate into personal learning experience? Merely being alive when something significant happened doesn't make the even formative. When I asked this question in my earlier post, it was in the context of how Vietnam specifically had shaped the foreign policies of the 1990s NSC. Anthony Lake had personally served as an FSO in Saigon, and had resigned in protest. Even in dodging the draft, Bill Clinton was forced to confront the conflict and weave it into both his personal ambitions and his eventual political narrative. Those were events of personal impact.
Compare that to our current generation of political operatives. How many have served? If they were FSOs, were they in Iraq, or defending American policies in Riyadah or Beijing or Bogata? At what distance does the Iraq or Afghanistan transition from an issue of immediate concern to simply yet another American foreign policy, like support for carbon credits? This begs the question of what exactly qualifies as a formative experience, as spending a tour in Brussels amidst the NATO maneuvering is it's own brand of personal experience that could be as formative as being in a convey that comes under fire. But the basic point here is that, especially after this duration, Iraq and Afghanistan are just one of many competing priorities on the American agenda. A young CIA operative in Beijing is more concerned about a rival hegemon than about Beijing's policy towards radical Islamists.
Though I can't rigidly support the observation, it strikes me that the people most interested in this meme aren't necessarily the people proximately involved in either Iraq or Afghanistan. I was struck in reading through the comments to Drezner's post that almost none of them mentioned any kind of service, governmental or NGO, in either country. Instead, they were future wonks, academics and commentariats. Dickinson's biography fits that profile as well, as best I can tell. She's sharp and insightful, but not a player.
Which brings up the second caveat. This meme is discussed almost exclusively (in my experience) within the cloistered world of foreign policy and security studies nerds. In that world, asking this question is both perfectly natural and informative. Drezner is a professsor at Tufts; curiosity about the future generation makes sense, as does contextualizing it against his own experiences. So if asking the question about Iraq defining the current generation of foreign policy wonks, then yeah, it's a much more insightful question. But that it needs to be caveated that severely limits its descriptive power about my generation as a whole (think of Drezner's inspiration talking about the full twentysomething generation).
Between the general lack of political participation, declining readership of news publications across the board, and the increasing strain placed on the Army, I just can't connect the impact of Iraq to the entire generation, let alone even the internationally inclined. Even among the politically motivated at CU, that translated into planting little flags and yelling. Sure, broadly speaking, those are formative experiences (the flags presaging Dickinson's comment about sensitivity to civilian casualties), but those people moved on to other issues or kept their involvement limited to symbolic actions. My peers in the international affairs program weren't enraptured with Iraq. They wanted to study development or post-colonial studies or the International Criminal Court; all subjects worth extensive study and passion, and all subjects that weren't Iraq. Iraq is just one more niche area of study.
Maybe I'm just too cynical about my generation. But Dickinson's parting line, "But like the generation that grew up in Vietnam, we will be the Iraq generation", simply rings hollow to me. Vietnam is a catch phrase summing up the 1960s in general, a period of profound social change that upended the established order and touched almost everyone in America somehow. Vietnam was fought by draftees, Iraq by volunteers. Today, the most determinative factor that someone will join the military is if they have family who served; it's becoming a cloistered world. Even among the foreign policy saavy, Iraq is just one issue, and one whose impact is being learned more from primary documents than primary experiences.
The first, and more interesting (especially the comments), is a quick hypothesis by Dan Drezner. Inspired by the combination of the NYT's 8,000 words on the lifestyles twentysomethings and The Icarus Syndrome, an analysis of three US foreign policy "blunders" as a function of the formative foreign policy experiences of the actors, Drezner posits that the formative policy views of millennials is a function of the events of the 2000s. I've asked the exact question of what has shaped the foreign policy views of my generation before, so this is a topic near and dear to my heart.
For Drezner, it's a function of a youth of prosperity, an adolescence during conflict and coming-of-age with an implosion of the economy. From these, he "...would have to conclude that this generation should be anti-interventionist to the point of isolationism". Really broadly speaking, the comments support that view. They speak to the hubris of American power, the need to embrace multilateralism and accepting the narrative that there are impossible tasks, insurmountable hatreds, and a need to tend to our own house first. They speak to the discredit of the Freedom Agenda and, despite the recent furor over TIME's cover, don't speak of human rights. It was responsibility and setting suns.
Picking up the thread was Elizabeth Dickensons's My Life, Under the Iraq War. She states unequivicably in her intro that: "Our generation has lived its entire adult life under the Iraq war. And everything -- from the way that we see global affairs, multilateral cooperation, conflict, and politics -- has been shaped by that conflict". She draws four lessons from this coming-of-age, and while I have particular issue with each point, my broader issue is with the basic skein that Iraq was a formative experience for the generation.
First, I simply doubt the thesis that concurrence begets formative experience. True enough, the defining foreign policy events that Drezner outlines are likely the most significant, yet how does the existence of those events translate into personal learning experience? Merely being alive when something significant happened doesn't make the even formative. When I asked this question in my earlier post, it was in the context of how Vietnam specifically had shaped the foreign policies of the 1990s NSC. Anthony Lake had personally served as an FSO in Saigon, and had resigned in protest. Even in dodging the draft, Bill Clinton was forced to confront the conflict and weave it into both his personal ambitions and his eventual political narrative. Those were events of personal impact.
Compare that to our current generation of political operatives. How many have served? If they were FSOs, were they in Iraq, or defending American policies in Riyadah or Beijing or Bogata? At what distance does the Iraq or Afghanistan transition from an issue of immediate concern to simply yet another American foreign policy, like support for carbon credits? This begs the question of what exactly qualifies as a formative experience, as spending a tour in Brussels amidst the NATO maneuvering is it's own brand of personal experience that could be as formative as being in a convey that comes under fire. But the basic point here is that, especially after this duration, Iraq and Afghanistan are just one of many competing priorities on the American agenda. A young CIA operative in Beijing is more concerned about a rival hegemon than about Beijing's policy towards radical Islamists.
Though I can't rigidly support the observation, it strikes me that the people most interested in this meme aren't necessarily the people proximately involved in either Iraq or Afghanistan. I was struck in reading through the comments to Drezner's post that almost none of them mentioned any kind of service, governmental or NGO, in either country. Instead, they were future wonks, academics and commentariats. Dickinson's biography fits that profile as well, as best I can tell. She's sharp and insightful, but not a player.
Which brings up the second caveat. This meme is discussed almost exclusively (in my experience) within the cloistered world of foreign policy and security studies nerds. In that world, asking this question is both perfectly natural and informative. Drezner is a professsor at Tufts; curiosity about the future generation makes sense, as does contextualizing it against his own experiences. So if asking the question about Iraq defining the current generation of foreign policy wonks, then yeah, it's a much more insightful question. But that it needs to be caveated that severely limits its descriptive power about my generation as a whole (think of Drezner's inspiration talking about the full twentysomething generation).
Between the general lack of political participation, declining readership of news publications across the board, and the increasing strain placed on the Army, I just can't connect the impact of Iraq to the entire generation, let alone even the internationally inclined. Even among the politically motivated at CU, that translated into planting little flags and yelling. Sure, broadly speaking, those are formative experiences (the flags presaging Dickinson's comment about sensitivity to civilian casualties), but those people moved on to other issues or kept their involvement limited to symbolic actions. My peers in the international affairs program weren't enraptured with Iraq. They wanted to study development or post-colonial studies or the International Criminal Court; all subjects worth extensive study and passion, and all subjects that weren't Iraq. Iraq is just one more niche area of study.
Maybe I'm just too cynical about my generation. But Dickinson's parting line, "But like the generation that grew up in Vietnam, we will be the Iraq generation", simply rings hollow to me. Vietnam is a catch phrase summing up the 1960s in general, a period of profound social change that upended the established order and touched almost everyone in America somehow. Vietnam was fought by draftees, Iraq by volunteers. Today, the most determinative factor that someone will join the military is if they have family who served; it's becoming a cloistered world. Even among the foreign policy saavy, Iraq is just one issue, and one whose impact is being learned more from primary documents than primary experiences.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)