America's Secret Weapon to Stop Russia

The first article is from last September but it is not a bad thing to revisit this article:

<blockquote>Led by Lockheed Martin Corp., the biggest U.S. defense companies are trading at record prices as shareholders reap rewards from escalating military conflicts around the world.
.
Investors see rising sales for makers of missiles, drones and other weapons as the U.S. hits Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq, said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Chicago-based BMO Private Bank. </blockquote>

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-25/syria-to-ukraine-wars…

In a multi-factorial world, money is still a good thing to follow....

The following is also of interest to the larger discussion:

<blockquote>The Israeli foreign minister has repeatedly stated that maintenance of good relations with Russia is a priority for the country.
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Israel, home to millions of people from the former Soviet Union, has refused to support the Western sanctions against Russia over the crisis in Ukraine, and the country's authorities have announced that they will continue exporting agricultural products to Russia, not bowing down to EU pressure.</blockquote>

http://sputniknews.com/politics/20150316/1019543878.html#ixzz3Uf1qga6c

Welcome to the 21st Century, where you have to hold 2, 3, 4, 5, whatever, thoughts in your head at the same time.

Always this way, really, but the little stories the American Foreign Policy establishment told itself about the Cold War and the immediate post Cold War period are so simplified as to be dangerous. As we've seen.

Can't be 1985--or 1995--forever.

Compare and contrast. For every action, a reaction. No one tell the WaPo op ed page or its silly op ed PhD toadies:

<blockquote>The top U.S. military officer said for the first time that he supported the possibility of arming Ukraine in that nation’s battle against Russian separatists.</blockquote>

http://www.defenseone.com/politics/2015/03/dempsey-says-its-time-arm-uk…

<blockquote>Russia says it will no longer attend consultations related to a key European arms control treaty, accusing the West of stonewalling its demands.

The move comes as Russia-West relations have plunged to their lowest point since the Cold War times over the Ukrainian crisis.</blockquote>

http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2015/03/10/russia-opts-out-of…

A new Cold War. Could anything be stupider for American interests, European interests, British interest, Eastern European including Ukraininan interests....

How is it that so many Millenials are being fooled? The 'stans and the Mid East are not the best model for understanding this crazy.

And the old Zbig stuff simply never did work. Is the President someone enamored of his stuff? Or Robert Kagan? Or that 'everything's' a target Brennan? How many things have these people got wrong?

If that world island stuff is so important, why push the Russians and Chinese together? Afraid if Russia integrates into Europe they will be another bloc as competition?

Have you looked at a map and looked at our ability to grow food, our population, our control of natural resources and technologies? Mental. All completely mental.

I can't embed links today, sorry:

<blockquote>In the West, most look at the war in Ukraine as simply a battle between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian government. But the truth on the ground is now far more complex, particularly when it comes to the volunteer battalions fighting on the side of Ukraine. Ostensibly state-sanctioned, but not necessarily state-controlled, some have been supported by Ukrainian oligarchs, and others by private citizens. Less talked about, however, is the Dudayev battalion, named after the first president of Chechnya, Dzhokhar Dudayev, and founded by Isa Munayev, a Chechen commander who fought in two wars against Russia.</blockquote>

IN MIDST OF WAR, UKRAINE BECOMES GATEWAY FOR JIHAD
BY MARCIN MAMON

The Intercept (First Look)

What is going on? Just like with Syria, everyone has an agenda and things like this may be overblown, or swept under the rug depending on whose agenda. I love it when people say, "oh, Assad is so happy to support ISIS," well, even without ISIS, it wasn't going to be any good for the US to regime change again in that region so even if that is true, doesn't change the basic situation.

The Germans are unhappy with Breedlove too? I've seen more than one story.

Just what the heck is going on? Talk about multifactorial causation and the high-stakes scrum of international geopolitics layered on top of everything else.

Is there one person that can be trusted in all of this? Just one, LOL?

There is massive propaganda on all sides. I just don't trust anyone that can't admit that.

I thought this article might be of interest. Back to the old Kraemer vs. Drucker debate:

<blockquote>According to Ilves, as soon as Estonia broke free of the collapsing Soviet Union, its government made membership in the military alliance a foundation of its security strategy. The project was tough, but after 15 years, the goal was achieved. Ukraine, by contrast, never bothered to take that road while Russia's military was still weak. "I had some Ukrainians here two weeks ago, and they said, 'You are lucky. You got independent and you just joined NATO'," Ilves says. "We had to work at it. Constant reforms, being constantly inspected, pulled apart, looked at every which way, as it was with the European Union. I was foreign minister for five years and I aged about 10 years during that period."
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Estonia's other barrier against Russian aggression is its relative economic well-being. </blockquote>

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-03-03/estonia-did-its-post-s…

I've mentioned several times that an Estonian commenter in the Council wrote that "we told the Ukrainians to close the border and grab Russian passports," and, I assume, more advice was given over the years on how to integrate difficult troubled regions toward the so-called center which never took place. American advice and money hasn't seemed to help over the years, either, or we all wouldn't be in this mess.

Understandable given the terrible history in that region but that doesn't change the facts on the ground. I had previously posted some comments by T.V. Paul from his book on Pakistan, The Warrior State, and in it he talks about how prioritizing the security state within a Cold War context prevented necessary reforms from taking place.

Those reforms are part and parcel of protecting any nation, as much as arms selling, actually, probably more so.

At any rate, our elites have decided that Ukraine is somehow essential to American security. Everything is these days.

I suppose it keeps us involved in Europe and the Mid East (UAE really going to sell weapons to Ukraine? Broke Ukraine?) and in that sense disorder serves many parties, including arms sellers in both the West and Russia, and those fearing a pivot to the East or the US losing interest in either place.

It's a funny thing. We basically are committing to forever protecting Europe. What is the end state so to speak? When Russia is no longer Russia? From expanding NATO comes changing Russia, which is what we tried to do in the 90s to disastrous effect. This is where some of the fear and paranoia might come in, I'm guessing. We tend to want to change other nations into our image. We in the vaunted West are all nation builders all the time and everywhere.

Why does the suffering of Eastern Europeans move most Americans while the suffering of the Russians seem less important? Unless it is something that places our elites--in conjunction with reformers--at the center of the story?

Is this the psychological profile of the standard foreign policy PhD? What is at the center of wishing to be the star of every story?

Why did we even have an American Revolution? Are we going to take the lead forever and ever, until our collective GDP is swamped by others?

I guess the Army is glad to have Europe back.

I am not as naive as I used to be. For sure, factions in the Army lobby for this and play politics so this discussion belongs here. Shame a big play by various EU factions for economic contracts got turned into this (yes, yes, I am only discussing the factors from the West, add in the Russian factors in this multifactorial process. Unlike some, I'm not going to be bullied into thinking things just because all the fashionable people are afraid to have their own opinions and afraid they won't be with the in-crowd if they don't toe the party line. Weak, weak, weak....)

Let's try this again without links:

Going through old links that I had collected and came across this article:

<blockquote>You may have missed it, but last month two key members of Congress asked the military to move additional U.S. nuclear weapons and dual-capable aircraft into Eastern Europe.</blockquote>

The Wrong Move: Adding Nuclear Weapons to the Russia-Ukraine Conflict
FEBRUARY 9, 2015 BY LT. GEN. ROBERT GARD GREG TERRYN
Defense One

General Dempsey has said that Russia is trying to break NATO, yet he thinks sending weapons to Ukraine (a non-NATO country, btw) will help to strengthen the alliance?

I understand the difficult position he is in and perhaps the best one can say is that troops to train Baltic nations might prevent such dangerous notions as nuclear weapons in Eastern European countries. (Again, which countries are in NATO and which not? It's as if the tenders of alliances have no idea how they are built or run properly).

On strengthening NATO, quite the opposite actually, given the tensions within NATO and the different "camps". Perhaps Washingtonians and NATO generals think that the US aligning itself with the UK/Eastern European camp within NATO will quash any sort of independence by various countries such as Germany and France? Given the combined economic power of the EU, it is more likely to hurt our position but emotion over reason.

It's as if people that are of European heritage (Western or Eastern) think they can't act in the emotional way those horrible Indians and Pakistanis do, I mean, how dare they nuclear saber rattle? I mean, I am continually being told that we in the West are calm and rational and those people--those types of people--well, they need our guidance!

Everyone craves national greatness, at least, purported leaders seem to crave some sense of it. I blame reading too much of silly shallow history books and imagining oneself a great leader, never to be forgotten by time.

Well, I haven't been in the morgue for years, but the experience teaches you a thing or two, and if you think being a national greatness leader (West or East, Russian or American), or arm chair saber rattling, changes how it all looks at the end, then you are a fool. As you come in to the world, so you go out of it....

The human face of war: fear, honor, and interest. Fear of being forgotten, pride as honor, and who knows what interest?

How dangerous this all is. And yet, almost no sense of it in the public, Western reporting, among the increasingly dulled DC glitterati, desperate for foreign policy relevance in an age that requires quietness over bluster.

I had no idea--no idea at all--how much a certain caricatured notion of exceptionalism was important to the psyche of so many people in various prominent positions. Sad.

Anyway, Kingston Reif has articles on the subject of nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe in The National Interest and at WoTR. (Can't embed links today).

How is it that Americans seem not to see the dangers, feel the closeness of this period to other dangerous periods of the Cold War? It's all those super hero movies we watch, I guess, substituting fantasy for reality.

By all means, let's put NATO and US troops right up next to Russia, nuclear armed, without buffer states, and with citizenry on both sides that yell insults at each other. What careful, thoughtful people.

Weak-minded. Who will be the man or woman to, well, be this man this time around?

<blockquote>"I'm not going to start Third World War for you," General Jackson told the US commander, according to Newsweek. In the hours that followed General Clark's order, both men sought political backing for their position, but only General Jackson received it.</blockquote>

The Guardian, 1999, <em>"I'm not going to start Third World War for you," Jackson told Clark</em>

How have we gotten here?

Who is stupid enough to think this is simply a reprise of the 80s without the key difference that the tripwires weren't so close? Well, a great majority it seems.

PS: Relax, I'm just venting. I'm not calling any one particular person out. But this little venture is only going to make things worse in the long term in terms of NATO. And when we need our strengths in the face of other challenges, once again, we will be sorry that we put a conflict about economics into this nuclear saber rattling realm.

Governance and borders, borders and governance. Brennan "everything's a target" never did understand this stuff, in AfPak or Ukraine.

PPS: Is Disenchantment with a capital D the only realistic endpoint for any honest person when looking at all of this.

I am sorry for the morale issues in the military, I really am. When this stuff really gets to me, I go all nerd and read more calm things and focus on what is possible, what is reality, I am nobody with no power, but I can educate myself, vote in a particular way, pay attention to daily duties, refrain from adding to the hysteria. I don't know. I never know. I just know that Disenchantment with a capital D is the only realistic endpoint for a generally honest person when looking at all of this.

I posted the following on a different thread (this is a part of the comment):

"Recently, I listened to a talk by Hew Strahan on YouTube (Europe, Geopolitics and Strategy) and he makes fantastic points about the increasing divergence of geopolitics and ideology within the western foreign policy community, such as it is.
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The most recent hysteria about Russia and Nemetsov underscores this tension (and he makes mention of Ukraine).
The two camps are not even speaking the same language. Such overt hysteria. Worrying. A perfect situation for introducing missiles and more nuclear weapons....(uh, extreme sarcasm), NOT a good situation)."

Discussions of the expansion of NATO and its outcome are hampered by this divergence between ideology and geopolitics. NATO has many different meanings and for some critics of NATO expansion, the language is one of geopolitics and NOT necessarily spheres of influence but of basic military alliance building and game theory. The bigger it is, the hard to control and focus.

Yet if NATO is an ideology, than its expansion is on moral terms and the argument takes a different tenor. But I would argue that even on moral terms it is problematic because it is problematic to promise things and then break promises, and that adding to disorder doesn't help people on the ground.

Yes, it's time to consider something more formal in terms of my own online study, but, unlike many foreign policy and military strategists, I do prioritize and a chronic illness always requires strict daily prioritization. Only so much time for this, and no more....

Would be strategists, please note.

As I said to MF, all my comments here are entirely pertinent to the main discussion of this article. No mention of weapons should be made without understanding the larger strategic context, or the various reasons for promoting weapons giving and selling:

<blockquote>The U.S.-Ukraine Foundation, in cooperation with the Embassy of Ukraine in the U.S., hosted Ukraine in Washington 2012, its second annual Conference and Gala Awards Dinner, on November 30th and December 1st.
BREAK
<strong>Financial Support</strong>
The U.S.-Ukraine Foundation is deeply appreciative of the generosity provided in support of Ukraine in Washington 2012 by individuals, non-profit organizations, governments and commercial companies. We extend a special expression of gratitude to Ambassador Motsyk and staff from the Embassy of Ukraine in the United States.
The sponsors and partners for Ukraine in Washington 2012 included Bingham, <strong>Clinton School of Public Service – University of Arkansas</strong>, Coca-Cola, National Projects Agency – Invest Ukraine, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, IRASET Group LLC , McConnell & Associates, Monsanto, Natalie Shear & Associates, Open World Leadership Center, Orbital Sciences Corporation, <strong>Raytheon</strong>, Self-Reliance NY – Federal Credit Union, System Capital Management, <strong>The Bush School of Government and Public Service</strong>, The Heritage Foundation of 1st Security Savings Bank, The Livingston Group, Ukrainian American Coordinating Council and UkrAutoProm.</blockquote>

http://www.usukraine.org/gala/ukrainian-stars-shine-in-washington-dc

There was no reset within the Clinton State Department, only fund raising and creating connections for a future presidential run.

It's awfully nice of Raytheon to be so concerned about democracy and the pro-West orientation of Ukraine.

I'm sorry that complicated and layered thinking is required. It's just too darn bad, I guess.

Continue on with fantasy discussion of which weapons or how many boots will magically wish away all other considerations.

My dear MF:

Everything I have posted here is pertinent to the main discussion of the article because no discussion of arming any nation should take place without understanding the larger strategic picture:

FYI, did you know that Russia has a lot of nuclear weapons? And accidents 'care' nothing about ideology or who is right, and who is wrong.

As 9-11 showed, catastrophic system errors within the American system never occur. All defenses are perfect and the unimaginable can never, ever happen.

I prefer to deal with reality, not the military fantasizing.

Ukraine is not actually in NATO--also FYI--although General Breedlove said in a recent article that we had been working with the Ukrainians for some time and we know what they need.

An ersatz NATO, indeed. It's terrible of the Russians to surround our clients with their country. They should pick up and move.

(No one is defending Putin here. But expanding NATO only weakened it, as many argued in the 90s and onward. The non-expansionists preferred a different framework to protect such fragile, troubled nations. Not all were dreaded appeasers, they simply understood the strange mixed up nature of an expanding EU as a trade union and NATO as an expression of national power would not work as a strict military alliance. Those critics have been entirely vindicated.)

The reason the Cold War was fought around the "periphery" (terrible way to dehumanize entire peoples, that language, the post modernists aren't always wrong) is because of this very fact. Despite the hot rhetoric of even the most hawkish Cold War president, direct engagement was viewed with great alarm because of the fact that the US and the Soviet Union had so many nuclear weapons. Many here are fondly remembering only the rhetoric, and not the actions.

And Ukraine is broke. Really, really, really broke. The economy just imploded. Weapons thrown into that will only make the Ukrainians suffer more, in addition to potentially bringing the world to a dangerous showdown between Russian and the United States. This behavior is harming our credibility. No, not our refusing to engage, but that we look so irresponsible in the way that we engage. We no longer know how to conduct diplomacy and rely mostly on threats. In many ways, many peoples are looking to firm themselves up from our system because they are freaked out by our erratic behavior.

Another in a line of multifactorial pieces, from Politico:

<blockquote>Yet even if the fondest dreams of these slumbering Western politicians had come true and they had encountered a Nice Putin—a hypothetically more friendly Russian leader—they would still have gotten him wrong. Russia will, one hopes, eventually change its leadership, but it is not going to be able to change its geographic location, or its historic associations, or its longstanding wish to keep the West—which hasn’t always crossed the border bearing flowers—at bay. And that holds many lessons for the future.
.
Let me be clear: The actual Putin is not at all nice.</blockquote>

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/nice-putin-russia-115431…

That can in no way be read as an apologist piece, not with what it has to say about Putin. But the problem with a Putin-centric (the one true COG!) analysis is that it doesn't allow a deeper analysis to take place.

The same happens with Iraq, when we focus only on ISIS (although obviously a key thing), or when we reduced the complex situation in Afghanistan to a Pashtun insurgency, however important or central.

Well, a point of discussion at any rate.

I'm glad Fabius Maximus (the blogger) linked the following article on his twitter feed because I read it before but I forgot to save the link. Glad to see it again:

I like multifactorial analysis as opposed to "what's the one key thing I need to know" executive summary stuff which makes sense given my background.

Previously, in comments here I talked about what I thought were some factors contributing to the current Ukraine crisis:

1. Global power (state) politics.
2. Regional state-to-state politics and economic motivations.
3. Internal fault lines within Ukraine.

This article does a nice job looking at the DC "scrum" and some of the manufactured hysteria around the issue.

(You can get a sense of this if you look at the issue of missile defense and how it has played out in terms of public op ads from the 90s onwards....)

Meet The Forces That Are Pushing Obama Towards A New Cold War, @ChristianStork

<blockquote>Moscow’s national-security interests are clear. Washington’s are as well, albeit unrelated to the security of the nation in any meaningful sense. Given the stakes, the hard line being pushed against Russia can’t solely be attributed to “Great Game” strategy — the long-running chess battle to control global energy flows.

Different players have different motives. At times they overlap; elsewhere they diverge.

As for those in the K Street elite pushing Uncle Sam to confront the bear, it isn’t hard to see what they have to gain: Just take a look at the history behind their Beltway-bandit benefactors.</blockquote>

(from @christian stork, medium. When I include the link, my comment won't appear).

Remember, I used the world "multifactorial." I don't think any of that is the whole issue but it sure is very, very important.

There is also the ideological feeling of many in Washington that have an inherent institutional Russophobia and miss the Cold War. Well, look at our relations with Cuba? Stuff sticks around a long time because it becomes second nature to people.

You only need look at the behavior of our elite classes toward the "Sunni" axis post Abbottabad and compare to this to see that there is really no "there" there, just scrambled up interests, to include those that have a genesis abroad.

Everyone has seen this story by now:

<blockquote>It's not clear what Inhofe's independent verification process involved, but it didn't work. Several national security experts on Twitter immediately set about determining the provenance of the images and found that some of them were from as far back as 2008, and a few were traceable to the conflict in Georgia and Ossetia, rather than the current war in Ukraine.</blockquote>

http://fortressamerica.gawker.com/senator-duped-into-using-old-photos-t…

I'm surprised that anyone trusts any of the reporting on any sort of hot-button foreign policy issue in the US. From all sides, it's just propaganda passed on through favored channels, whatever side of a conflict.

An ersatz NATO, indeed. How do you keep the Americans "in", whatever conflict?

Aw, I don't trust the reporting on ANY side, so no one get all hot and bothered by me linking this post.

A Republic indeed. DC seems to attract the strangest people, the oddest psychology.

PS: If one were worried about the US 'pivoting' away, or about the US showing less interest in Europe, how might you go about keeping Americans interested.

The story of the cultivation of Americans within the context of "South Asia" remains of interest, especially because even some non-interventionists got duped in that little thicket of crazy, too....

@ Rant

I'm sorry, I misunderstood what you were trying to say, completely misunderstood. Apologies.

Yes, there is something very strange about the politics of all of this, especially in relation to Kiev. There are levels of maneuvering going on I just don't understand. I think there are several parties trying to draw in the US for their own purposes.

You know who has become 'radicalized'? <em>Me</em>, it seems, with my steady descent into non-interventionism and skepticism of the Washington Consensus.

I really did go back and read several 90s era op-eds about NATO expansion and they all predicted the situation today. Many of those authors also correctly predicted the outcome in Iraq and with the surge in Afghanistan. So, naturally, I am inclined to listen to them when they argue against arming Ukraine.

BTW, did you read Peter Tomsen's book <em>The Wars of Afghanistan</em>? If so, what did you think?

Dear Rant,

Ukraine is a sovereign country but it is broke.

You know what an invasion looks like. This is not Afghanistan in 1985, although that seems to be the primary conflict through which the American security establishment looks at the current conflict.

This is an emotional and not rational lens with which to view the situation.

The conflict is some form of an insurgency by disaffected populations that has been militarized within a proxy conflict with Russia (egging on the disaffection), also within a backdrop of global power competition between the US, UK, Europe and Russia.

If simply supplying weapons solved situations, Assad would be removed, Syria peaceful, Iraq stable, and the Taliban would be beaten back in Afghanistan. I know the answer from the military is always, "then let's send more," but the track record post WWII hasn't been good on that front.

A commenter that used to call himself 'Stan from Estonia' in the council mentioned, very early on, that "we told them to close the borders and grab Russian passports." The implication is that they didn't take good advice and couldn't get their act together. They don't deserve to have land taken for that, but outsiders can only do so much.

Well, things have moved on, but there are many aspects to this conflict, just as with the Kashmir and Punjab insurgencies, and with Afghanistan today.

1. Global power politics including nuclear weapons and an uncertain escalation cascade. Enemy focused military may ignore these things, but responsible civilians cannot be so cavalier.

2. Regional power politics including Eastern European nations. Everyone has been meddling in Ukraine, and for ages. This tends to destabilize governance.

Also, NATO nations do, after all, trade with a wide variety of people across borders, including Russia, and of course there are gas sales.

3. Internal politics of Ukraine including issues of corruption, conscription and border management.

Ukraine was a net arms exporter but it's military was starved of weapons, pay, and training so arms are not the only issue, even sophistication of arm.s

Weapons by themselves do not solve the governance issues which are being manipulated by outside proxies.

This episode is also putting huge strain on the Western alliance and NATO, no matter what any one says. The Eurozone is restive, and so are populations within it.

Weapons will also bleed the Ukrainians. During the 80s, the Afghans were stuck between the Soviet invaders and a Western alliance, so to speak, that wanted to bleed the Soviets as much as they wanted to help the Afghans.

So the Afghans bled. The most radical elements were mobilized, and that process is occurring in Ukraine today.

This is not the 80s and I wouldn't dismiss the potential for error in the nuclear realm as alarmism. Ukraine is not Afghanistan and is not perceived in the same way.

Proxy conflict require subtlety. There is no plausible deniability in this era, in this situation. Everyone knows what the stakes are, and they are viewed as existential by the Russian leader, by the Ukrainians, but not really by anyone else, no matter what anyone says.

This will not help the Ukrainians. They require time to regroup and knit their forces back together, as well as their society.

Putin can invade anytime he wants, and no one can stop him if he really wanted to do that. NATO is not going to risk any kind of accident with nuclear weapons, however remote that possibility may seem, and NATO is not going to put its entire future as an alliance on the line, or to restart a global Cold War, for Ukraine. No Cold War president would have done such a thing.

Civilians have a larger responsibility beyond simply throwing weapons around, they have to think how to solve situations in whatever combination of diplomacy and military means are feasible.

But we won't agree on this. It's a shame. They will suffer terribly, the ordinary Ukrainians because our desire to punish Putin outweighs our concern for the fate of ordinary people.

I am serious when I say the Ukrainians should look to someone else for how to think about the situation. American military tend to give the same kinds of advice over and over again, with the results we see today.

I am so sorry to put it that way. My admiration is real but that is what I really think.

In terms of whether there really is an insurgency versus a proxy affair in Ukraine (probably both), Anne Applebaum had a column where she stated that there really wasn't Russian-speaking disaffection in those populations before the feelings were stirred up.

The Indians often same the same about the Valley and its Muslim population, that disaffection there may have been, but proxy support manipulated it.

The fates are cruel. The very insurgency that might help in terms of study is one that the Cold Warriors of old are not interested in because it never mattered to them that others were used to contain Russia. That other populations suffered at the hands of the anti-Soviet allies never mattered.

There are no true idealists when we deal with 'off the page on the ground' reality.

The Ukrainians should have looked to the Pakistanis for how to cultivate the West properly and conduct a low key military affair, and to the Indians and Israelis for how to think about the mess of borders, proxies and insurgencies. Okay, I don't really mean that, I am making a rhetorical point.

The old DC Cold Warriors didn't even study this issue in that way for AfPak, it seems....

I think it is helpful (for my own education, hopefully for others) to look at the attitudes of some of those arguing for military aid in Ukraine versus their advice in "AfPak", or, at least, the differences in strategic argumentation:

<blockquote>Flournoy Urges Boosting U.S. Military Support to Pakistan

By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, April 29, 2009 – With a deteriorating situation in Pakistan, now is the time to strengthen the U.S.-Pakistan military partnership to help Pakistan in its counterinsurgency efforts, the undersecretary of defense for policy told Congress today.
“We believe that right now it is more important than ever to strengthen our military partnership with Pakistan,” Michele Flournoy told the House Armed Services Committee.
The partnership is a vital component of the Obama administration’s Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy, she said.
“We have a vital interest in defeating al-Qaida and its extremist allies in the border region,” she said. “We must deny them safe havens from which to launch attacks against the United States and our allies.”</blockquote>

It's interesting, isn't it? Individual sanctions were never considered, while the unstable nature of the situation and nuclear weapons are always used as an example for why aid is so important, and why we shouldn't pressure people. This despite the knowledge that the Taliban was being supported by our allies as our troops were over the border facing Taliban.

Yet, in the case of a nuclear armed Russia, the same people that urge caution want sanctions and pressure on a nuclear state.

Well, pressure on a nuclear state is bad in either case, but it is instructive to look at the Washington Consensus and its attitudes.

It's as if there is no "there" there to any of it, just a host of attitudes of forever enemies and forever allies.

(None of this suggests I want to treat AfPak as some are treating the Ukraine situation. Most of what you can do in a proxy affair is pay attention to governance, and from that place, look at borders and other means of non-military pressure on proxy supporters, IMO. Long term training within that context, too. Well, it's worth a discussion, anyway.)

http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=54135

<blockquote>Today, U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) announced the launch of the Senate Ukraine Caucus. The goal of the Caucus will be to strengthen the political, military, economic, and cultural relationship between the United States and Ukraine.</blockquote>

In some states, there are important Eastern European constituencies and voters in key districts. This happened during the 90s too, during the domestic argument of expansion. Democracies and diasporas. Happens for everything.

American domestic needs often clash with what might be optimal. And, sometimes people grand stand and don't mean it, if you see what I mean.

ttp://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=b14a2d78-0f30…

I wonder how many are reading Peter J Munson's "An American cramped by defensiveness" the wrong way? I see it trending from time to time. Or, at least, how I perceive it to be the wrong way?

It's not about will when it comes to aid. This period, this moment, this situation, is not the Marshall Plan after WWII. Even the Marshall Plan is not the mythical idealized thing that DC and the Pentagon make it out to be.

Sometimes, I think the reason some people talk about WWII and Marshall Plans and will is because they lack creativity. They have no idea how to make things up suited to this era, as previous Americans made things up to suit their era.

I can't include the WaPo link, this site won't take a comment with that link, but Ukraine's currency lost about half of its worth and Ukraine is broke.

This is why the early cold war was so hard on some developing nations. When they should have been focusing on governance (even with ceasefires and loss of land), they were being built up as security states by outsiders.

There isn't the money for enough aid too, or George Soros, the billionaire, would have made headway in getting it to Ukraine.

Rich man foreign policy has no feedback loops, you can give money, even for very good reasons, but it's not the billionaire that has to pay up if things go awry. Bad incentive system. The opposite of democracy and self-governance.

No one has to talk about claims of coups to see the problem. The aid givers dilemma.

PS: While I am at it, go read some of Victorial Nuland's work on a Task Force for NATO enlargement. It's from 1997 I believe and on Google books.

Just graze it, as I did. It's a very confused document. It makes no sense, it is filled with non-sequitors, strange branching sentences. It's the sort of thing that you wonder, "why did no one edit this?"

It may be in the 'Crimea Twofer' thread where I posted a link to a 1997 NATO document explaining the various arguments for NATO expansion, including the interest of the UK in expansion.

NATO expansion is viewed not just as a defense alliance, but as a test of UK and American leadership. The article amusingly notes that the UK got over having an empire and Russia should to without noting that both the UK/US and Russia are talking about spheres of influence in Eastern Europe.

This matters because instead of viewing the issue as one of local defense, it becomes mixed up in emotional attachments, unavoidable for human affairs.

I bring this up not to say we shouldn't help, but we have to understand the motivations of those that want to expand or give arms. And Germany has its own notion, as do the Poles, others in the region, of what their sphere of influence should be and how.

Military affairs are never simply military affairs.

Mearsheimer in the NYT:

<blockquote>This coercive strategy is also unlikely to work, no matter how much punishment the West inflicts. What advocates of arming Ukraine fail to understand is that Russian leaders believe their country’s core strategic interests are at stake in Ukraine; they are unlikely to give ground, even if it means absorbing huge costs.

Great powers react harshly when distant rivals project military power into their neighborhood, much less attempt to make a country on their border an ally. This is why the United States has the Monroe Doctrine, and today no American leader would ever tolerate Canada or Mexico joining a military alliance headed by another great power.</blockquote>

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/opinion/dont-arm-ukraine.html?_r=2

People are continually telling me that I am ignoring this factor in Afghanistan regarding regional parties, and, it's true, I do focus on the unconventional warfare aspect versus governance, but I've often said that despite walking a different path, I end up in the same place as those that prioritize the insurgency and governance. Most of what we can do is non-military in terms of the proxy conflict.

And Merkel visiting DC (?) shows just how much the US and UK (which cut its defense budget by the way) pushing on this point is going to press on already difficult European fault lines.

Once again, Drucker would like a word with Kraemer.

Washington (and other nations) has a strange notion of sovereignty and this is contributing to what, admittedly, are complex multifactorial problems with local foundations. One only read Anne-Marie Slaughters free form self associated string-terms-together glitter in the form of books to see what I mean....

A comment I left at zenpundit. For discussion. I don't know.

<blockquote>The smart thing to do with Ukraine is to facilitate them buying arms from the international market so they have effective counterpressure, not to arm and train them directly or give them weapons that moves the fight up the escalation ladder.</blockquote> (<em>from comment by Zen</em>)
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Interesting. Aid? How much? This polls badly, especially when it is in support of the Ukrainian arms industry vice outside supply.
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Of course, this gets into larger strategic questions, including divisions within NATO, the EU and the Western “alliance” per se, and whether aid is tenable for a variety of reasons. 90s critics of NATO expansion were in multiple camps including those that wanted it to expand but didn’t like the nature of the expansion. They critiqued the actual nature of expansion and its idea of NATO as a market creator and democratizing force. The tensions in the ideas put forth are evident today. If you don’t know how to think adequately about a thing, you can’t get to the correct action. But this requires reading those back and forth arguments to understand what I am saying, I believe.
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I think this episode will put severe strain on the very concept of NATO itself within the minds of Germans and French and the long term consequences are hard to see.
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“Ukraine to Develop Defense Industry Without Russia,” Eurasia Daily Monitor is a good article on the Ukrainians supplying themselves versus outsiders.