http://www.theamericanconservative.c...
The American Conservative wrote:
In ways that have eluded Washington pundits and policymakers, President Barack Obama is deploying a subtle geopolitical strategy that, if successful, might give Washington a fighting chance to extend its global hegemony deep into the 21st century. After six years of silent, sometimes secret preparations, the Obama White House has recently unveiled some bold diplomatic initiatives whose sum is nothing less than a tri-continental strategy to check Beijing’s rise. As these moves unfold, Obama is revealing himself as one of those rare grandmasters who appear every generation or two with an ability to go beyond mere foreign policy and play that ruthless global game called geopolitics.
That's an interesting read. Thanks, Paleo.
Taken together, I dunno if these actions should result in the label "genius" here so much as "realist", though. It doesn't take much vision to realize how the economic power in the world is shifting to that area, nor how much all the various stupidities in the Middle East have cost us - both in blunders there but also opportunity costs of taking actual worthwhile action anywhere else. Hell, even the article seems to point out (without exactly saying it) a lot of what Obama has been doing should have been pretty obvious, but more recently the GOP (and historically, most American politicians) seem like a goddamned dog with a bone when it comes to the Middle East and pissing off Asia in general.
This is good stuff to keep in mind, and it makes me a little sad that most voters probably won't see articles like this. The President doesn't have a lot of unilateral power to just "get stuff done" without interference, but diplomacy and these sorts of moves are on that short list. The only real thing I like about Hillary is I'm certain she would be just fine continuing the "Don't Be a Dick to Everyone Just Because We Can" Doctrine, where any given GOP candidate will be happy to continue the "If You Don't Like Us, Screw You, We're Sending Guns to Your Region" Doctrine.
"Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense."
I think the "genius" label isn't just about economic power shifting to that area, I think it's about recognizing that it's not enough to just compete with a rival like China. It's about preventing that economic power shift from solidifying in a way that locks America out and defaults all that power to turn towards China. Not just falling behind in competition, but the end of meaningful competition itself.
Don't know if that's a "genius" level distinction (or if his execution of his vision could be called 'genius'), but it's more than just 'this area is important'. It's 'this area will become so important other areas will become a backwater, and we could wind up locked out of it.' The idea that if there's to be a Post Western Hegemony, the world will look a lot like it did Before European Hegemony.
edit:
Maybe Obama is a genius because he keeps letting Russia 'win'? Like, wasn't the Soviet Union a giant cockblock to the rise of the World Island as an integrated whole? The Soviets never had the capability of building an empire, not in a post-WWII world where empires were commercial, not military. Yet they were too large to be left out of any World Island.
Maybe that's Obama's genius move: recognizing that if we can't have a Westernized Russia, that a fascist, locally powerful Russia is the biggest stumbling block he can put in the way of the formation of the World Island/China as the capital of it?
This administration's choices with Russia over the last few years do make me wonder if it's intentional handling of Russia or just another instance of the overall "be less aggressive than Bush" tone. If they're intentionally letting Russia slide somewhat specifically to keep that area in check, I'd say that's a pretty smart (politically speaking) move. Like a lot of overreaching foreign policy efforts, though, sometimes it's hard to discern if the results are intentional or incidental.
"Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense."
Well, there was also that rumor that the Russian UN ambassador approached the US about pushing Assad out and we blew him off. So they could just be making up for that.
The article has really weird takes on aggressive interventionism, at times decrying it's ability to cast a negative light on US FP and at times praising its immediate results (support of Mujahideen in Afghanistan) while avoiding dealing with the longer term consequences of using groups steeped in revolutionary ideologies to achieved foreign policy goals.
oh my god boooooog
*Legion* wrote:boogle was raised in one, he knows a barn when he sees one.
I think the article has a weird take on it because it's a very amoral, very long-term idea of 'success'. The policy goal is to prevent the World Island from ever forming. The only negative light the US should worry about is one that makes states on the periphery of the World Island turn away from us and towards that World Island. So in somewhere like Afghanistan, the more disorder, the better?
It's like the Silk Road vs. Yankee Clipper Ships. If the World Island is missing the Pacific Rim, the EU, and places like Burma and Iran, it's not the World Island yet. It doesn't have the critical mass to ignore the US.
I think what's confusing is he's praising Brzezinski, who seemed to be trying to build the World Island but have the US in control. That's in conflict with the idea that the US is trying to stop the World Island from being built by keeping enough of its coastline in the Western Naval Empire(?) and out of the World Island Silk Road(?).
I would say its view of long term success neglects the fact that any power structure relying on the role of revolutionary ideologies is fundamentally flawed in that said reliance will force the structure to shift, sometimes to the detriment of the US.
Like even for being amoral and long term, paper is taking a weird look at things.
oh my god boooooog
*Legion* wrote:boogle was raised in one, he knows a barn when he sees one.
I think it's that it doesn't rely on those revolutionary ideologies. The key is picking off enough countries around the edges and bringing/keeping them in our orbit so that the World Island never gathers enough steam. Keeping the interior in disarray helps/a functioning interior hurts, but I didn't read that as critical. I think the key line is that the strategy boils down to "splitting that land mass along its axial divisions via trans-oceanic trade.
I think that's why it praises support of Mujahideen in Afghanistan, because it wasn't the immediate results that are being praised. It was how it resulted in breaking Eastern Europe away from the Soviets, and how that's an accomplishment with the long-term effect of keeping the EU as part of the Atlantic and not as part of Eurasia.
Although that is the weakest/most confusing part of it--there's this idea that Eastern Europe -> Heartland -> World Island, and I don't know about that. Maybe that's about the Soviet Union being capable back then of building the World Island? I guess one's opinion on that determines what one thinks of unleashing those revolutionary ideologies. Even if they're replaced with something detrimental to the US, the real game is making sure no one can build the World Island, and if they can't, then they don't matter.
This is a pretty bold assertion. What support does the author offer for this hypothesis?
Let's review what actually happened. President Obama sent more troops to Afghanistan, in a "surge" that lasted two years longer than planned and failed to achieve any significant results. The last American troops were withdrawn just this year.
President Obama did pull troops out of Iraq, saying that he was leaving behind a strong and stable Iraq ... only to send thousands back in as ISIS conquered the western third of the country. American aircraft are currently engaging ISIS troops, and the President continues to escalate the situation, despite an almost complete lack of progress.
President Obama bombed Libya in 2011 and assisted with deposing the Quaddafi regime, which caused Libya to descend into a state of chaos and enabled ISIS to expand into that country and link up with other African extremists.
President Obama pseudo-secretly supported anti-Syrian rebels, until they collapsed in 2014. This debacle, along with the collapse of the Iraqi Army during the ISIS offensive, left the United States in the exquisitely embarrassing position of launching airstrikes to destroy captured American vehicles and equipment.
There was no pulling back or amelioration of Bush-era policies. President Obama continued those policies well into his second term, and seemed determined to add to them with additional involvement in Libya and Syria. In addition to being aggressively militant, his policies have been largely ineffective or counterproductive (unless we assume his goal was to create an international, brutal, and aggressive Islamic State movement with significant resources, which I do not). Pretty much the only positive aspect of his policy is that he indeed resisted Republican calls to be more aggressive, which is a dubious distinction at best.
And how's that working out in Burma/Myanmar?
With Cuba, Obama only started talking to them in December 2014, seven years after first being elected, and then only because Fidel finally bowed out of the picture. Admitting that a 54-year-old policy was a complete and total failure is a step forward, but it's hardly part of a cohesive strategy - especially when Cuba really has nothing to do with the World Island theory, and re-establishing diplomatic relations and trade will not put Cuba "in the U.S. orbit" for decades, at least.
And finally, Iran. Another six decades of failed policy, and a crusade against a nuclear weapons program that doesn't exist. The only reason Obama negotiated this deal was pressure from Republicans to attack Iran - he had to do something, and thus the effort on this deal. Unfortunately for the author, work on this deal only started this year - three years into his second term. It's definitely a positive that this deal ends the aggressive economic sanctions, but it doesn't really put Iran "in the U.S. orbit" - it seems hardly part of a cohesive strategy, since none of the other players in the region have received significant attention or unusual diplomatic efforts.
The TPP was actually started in 2008 by the Bush administration, so this is a continuation of a Bush policy. The agreement does not "carefully exclude China from membership", as the author asserts, any more than it carefully excludes South Korea or Taiwan. And even if implemented, it would do little to "draw these highly productive nations away from China and into America's orbit", because the most productive nations in the Pacific Rim are already in America's orbit - South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan.
This is essentially Brzezinski inflating his own importance. The Soviets had been intervening in Afghanistan since 1947, and Soviet military advisers were present in Afghanistan from the 50's onward. The agreement that let the Afghan goverment call in Soviet forces was made in December 1978, and the first combat troops arrived in April 1979 - even before Brzezinski claims to have been sending aid to the rebels. Most of the country was in open rebellion in 1978, and things had been brewing for much longer - arguably, the rebellion started in 1975 with the Jamiat Islami coup attempt. Brzezinski later modified his story to indicate that it was actually previous American failures to contain Soviet influence that led to the invasion, but in reality it would have happened with or without the tiny amount of American influence present in the region.
American aid wasn't even a majority percentage of the support received by the Afghan rebels, peaking at only $630 million per year, which was matched by the Saudis and doesn't include support from numerous other countries, including China.
Further, radical Islam was never driven from Afghanistan into anywhere. In fact, the radical jihadi elements were a minor force in the Soviet-Afghan war, primarily credited with committing atrocities that supplied the morale boost necessary to prolong the existence of the Afghan government for a couple years after the Soviet withdrawal.
Finally, the idea that the "World Island" even exists today is obsolete. We ship millions of tons of goods everywhere around the globe every day. Global trade networks are so pervasive and advanced that shipping is one of the least important production costs; this reality is reflected in the flood of cheap electronics from factories in China to the United States. In fact, in the current global environment, it's far easier to ship something from China to the United States - over 10,000 kilometers - than it is to ship something anywhere in the "geographical pivot area", which contains some of the roughest terrain in the world and a paucity of stable countries and well-developed road networks.
In short, while President Obama has accomplished some good in foreign policy during his terms, it's heavily outweighed by the short-term and long-term damage he's done by continuing the aggressively militaristic policies of the Bush administration. The idea that he should be considered a genius for a few minor positive actions taken near the end of his second term is, quite frankly, absurd.
The True Remedy for the Fugitive Slave Bill is a good revolver, a steady hand, and a determination to shoot down any man attempting to kidnap. - Frederick Douglass
I agree the genius label is absurd and I can't help but feel that this article was written from 50 years in the future when all turns out well*. It completely writes off the Middle East, which is refreshing, but unrealistic.
How did I live before digital distribution of old, cheap games?
MilkmanDanimal wrote:You did live before digital distribution of old, cheap games. Now you just play games.