Sitzkrieg’s End
By Cicero | Related entries in General Politics, The War On Terrorism, The World, War
When I was a boy, I grew up next to a Navy base. It was the Cold War.
In the 1970s, I knew the stakes of the war. I understood that a massive nuclear exchange was the nature of a conflict with the Soviets. I was properly briefed in school as to its full meaning. The 1970s was the period of the Cold War when, unlike the 1950s, everyone knew that duck-and-cover was pointless. We would all die. There was no surviving a massive nuclear exchange.
I remember thinking as a boy how lucky I was to live within a mile of a Navy base. But not because I thought I would be better protected. Not at all. I felt an inner peace living near the base because I knew it was a Soviet target. At ground zero, I would go out like a light. Without realization, I would painlessly vaporize.
I think it has been vexing for generations of the nuclear age to mature with the idea of total devastation. It’s a leap of faith to sidle global apocalypse up to patriotism, religiosity or morality. Such core identities seem dwarfed by giant mushroom clouds. For all their foibles, this impossible moral dilemma is what made sense about the nuclear freeze movement of my youth. Mutually Assured Destruction really was insane, if it were to be realized.
Of course, M.A.D. also made strategic sense, and quite probably prevented Hieronymus Bosch’s visions of Hell from materializing on Earth. But that was not a fact in my boyhood. M.A.D. could easily have gone awry, and quite nearly did.
It is easy to be at odds with modernity’s ribaldries while luxuriating in its charms. Modern life offers a knot of man-made contradictions magnified to global proportions. Modernity is not just convenient garage doors that automatically open or ten thousand copyrighted tunes shrunk into one’s shirt pocket. Accelerating hyper-novelty exacts reciprocity; it takes its revenge. Modernity gave my generation a childhood that was deeply cognizant of immaculate annihilation. That was a cultural reality that represented sheer nullity, where morality peeled down only so far until it hit a blinding, apocalyptic core. ‘Mutually assured immorality’ might explain the West’s current Achilles heel better than anything else.
Now it is thirty years hence, and the nuclear genie seems to have gotten the keys to the Lear jet.
In the past few weeks there has been a lot of buzz about an imminent nuclear attack inside of the United States. The theories range but are fairly consistent, suggesting that al Qaeda has nuclear weapons deployed within the country with sleeper operatives at the ready. Take it with a grain of salt, I suppose. Like most theories, some assembly is required.
It is true that this particular warning seems limited to the fringe press, which strains credibility. AmbivaBlog looks at the rogue nukes story with some healthy skepticism. Add to the nuclear terror story China’s recent nuke rattling, Iran’s obvious intent at becoming a nuclear power, North Korea’s games, and Pakistan’s cagey relationship with the Taliban, and clearly it appears as though we’re entering a new phase in nuclear history.
The rules of M.A.D. — all or nothing — gave us a false sense of safety during the Cold War. In an all-or-nothing world mired in a vast global political struggle, each side could attain relative normalcy. Normal life was disproportionate to the high stakes of the nuclear standoff — and we got used to it. All those layers of morality we built over that blinding apocalyptic core of immaculate annihilation could work a lot of miracles, providing that the promise of destruction was mutual, and total.
It turns out the Cold War amounted to an entire half century of having it all, creating nominal safety. The nothing part of M.A.D. — Armageddon — never came to pass. And so we did indeed create a playground of prosperity: Shopping malls, freeways, cheap global travel, and the Internet; the plethora of things, rock-n-roll, the rise of socialism and multiculturalism; baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet. We got very used to that. Three generations grew up in the soil of transparent global war.
M.A.D. conditioned us to have our cake and eat it too. But today’s WMD perils are unlike the days of M.A.D. In the Cold War, we could depend on the rationality of our adversaries, the Soviets. We could mutually agree on something, heinous as it was. M.A.D. created a sense of certainty out of nucler parity. That certainty was: if it happens, everyone dies. That’s it. No debate necessary. If you were alive, it meant everything was normal. If you were dead, well…
Weapons of mass destruction in the 9/11 era no longer represent the end of everything. The threshold to this brave new terror-nuke world is far lower than the threshold to M.A.D. Parity is no longer apparent. That makes catastrophe with a small ‘c’ far more likely to happen. The forces that might unleash such destructive power appear to be gathering.
Two recent stories coming out of England illustrate that conflict is brewing:
Intelligence chiefs warn Blair of home-grown ‘insurgency’
Intelligence chiefs are warning Tony Blair that Britain faces a full-blown Islamist insurgency, sustained by thousands of young Muslim men with military training now resident in this country.
As police and the security services work to prevent another cell murdering civilians, attention is focusing on the pool of migrants to this country from the Horn of Africa and central Asia. MI5 is working to an estimate that more than 10,000 young men from these regions have had at least basic training in light weapons and military explosives.
A well-connected source said there were more than 100,000 people in Britain from “completely militarisedâ€Â? regions, including Somalia and its neighbours in the Horn of Africa, and Afghanistan and territories bordering the country. “Every one of them knows how to use an AK-47,â€Â? said the source. “About 10 per cent can strip and reassemble such a weapon blindfolded, and probably a similar proportion have some knowledge of how to use military explosives. That adds up to tens of thousands of men.”
Islamic radicals warn of city riots
A radical Islamic group declared yesterday it would resist all attempts by Tony Blair to ban the organisation. Officials of Hizb ut-Tahrir warned that the government’s proposals would be interpreted by the Muslim community as part of an ‘anti-Islamic’ agenda and could trigger civil unrest.
‘The move is a perilous route that is harming community relations and could lead to civil unrest comparable to that which affected the black community,’ said Imran Waheed, spokesman for Hizb ut-Tahrir. He also rejected calls for the Muslim community to root out extremism and dismissed claims that the organisation was harbouring terrorists as ‘ludicrous’.
However, experts believe that Hizb ut-Tahrir’s extreme views may have helped to radicalise young British Muslims. The National Union of Students banned Hizb ut-Tahrir from campuses in 1995 after its speeches, leafleting and methods in a number of universities caused worry and distress. Leaflets called for Muslims to ‘exterminate’ the Jewish authorities in Israel.
Donklephant seeks to define a new, broad centrism. If possible, the West needs to get its act together to face the onrush of noise that threatens to overtake us. I laud the effort. Centrism is based on moderate politics. To be effective it needs to be accepted by the majority.
The ‘majority’ is like a big spotlight. It roves a restless and dark landscape, searching for a consensus of comfort in a roiling, dangerous world. If the climate of fear and desperation is acute, the spotlight might settle on what we now see as radical. We are still fortunate to be on the outside of that world, here in the quietude of Sitzkrieg.
There are times in history when the populist spotlight illuminates politics that were previously considered extremist. If we enter a new age of mega-terror — with indigenous insurgencies or WMDs of some type — people will not feel safe, to put it mildly. If people lose faith in their government’s protection, demagogues might fill the power vacuum. A centrist majority relies on politics that accompany the safety of a reliable monopoly of power, and the wealth it creates. If that is threatened, damaged or eliminated, the spotlight might move away from the center to radical ground.
Terrorists disrupting entire cities might create a new reactionary populism, moving away from centrism. A coordinated, prolonged Islamic insurgency of 100,000 armed Islamofascists in England might radicalize the majority of Britishers. The Muslims would lose. In that context, the center would likely give in to war policies directed against foreigners and other perceived threats. Nuclear terrorism would challenge centrist moderation.
Since 9/11 we have enjoyed the seemingly endless dawn of Sitzkrieg — a period of declared emergency, but undeclared war. Our malls remain open, and gasoline flows freely. The housing market is hot. Mobilization for war is something we read about. But now there are multiple indications that terrorist nukes are either here, or coming, or in the making. Perhaps this is a long way off; perhaps it’s hearsay; perhaps it is close at hand. But if we want a meaningful definition of centrism, it should be something that can withstand the shocks of catastrophic terror. Discussing mega-terror should be on the centrist’s table, since 9/11 changed the rules. What are 9/11’s rules? That catastrophe can happen anytime, anyplace, to anyone, with no warning or apparent reason. On an unthinkable scale.
A robust political center must be a commons — a place where we can frame a future that isn’t just an amalgamation of established party lines and prejudices. It must be a place that is not simply abstracted perfection. It must work with the realities of our time, even if they’re cataclysmic.
Sitzkrieg will end. When that day comes, the Donklephant mascot might not emerge in one piece. It might be that history, and not our best efforts at principled moderation decides what happens to the center. Until that time, we should consider how to forge common ground in a world that will be vastly different than the one we live in today.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 10th, 2005 and is filed under General Politics, The War On Terrorism, The World, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 10th, 2005 at 11:59 am
I agree, and sadly the Democratic Party lags far behind the Reps in discussing the post-9/11 world. Much of the Party believes that if it can JUST get rid of Bush, dump Israel and run away from Iraq, the world will go back to 1996. Stupid but there you go. Escalation is part and parcel of the new, distributed threats we face from Islam that simply cannot accomodate Modern society. The Discovery Space shuttle was piloted by the woman commander, yet women in Saudi Arabia cannot even drive and have to live inside tents. In a shrinking world through the internet and satellite TV, jet travel this is a recipe for confrontation.
One or more of our cities WILL get nuked, if you believe Sam Nunn and http://www.nti.org. The question is, what will be the response? I believe the Dems must act NOW to articulate a framework for nuclear response, otherwise the reaction will be escalation on the part of the US beyond what people can conceive. “Solving” the problem by simply destroying the Muslim World, largely.
We do NOT face destruction of the entire World. Muslim extremists/terrorists can destroy three or four of our cities (likely with an Iranian, Pakistani, or North Korean set of nukes), but not the entire country. WE certainly can kill everyone in Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt if we wished. No one could or would stop us if we lost, say, San Diego and Dallas. Three to nine million dead Americans through nuclear terror would certainly provoke a demand for 300-400 million dead “enemies” on the part of the American people.
Far better IMHO to publicly articulate our response on this level to the Muslim World at large, warning Pakistan, Iran, and other troublemakers that a nuclear attack on the US would bring such an overwhelming response that there simply would cease to exist a Muslim world. Simply change the deterrence from the Soviet Union to the Muslim world. Not PC but likely effective. Reminding Iran say of our capablities by conducting a ballistic missile test in the Gulf. Vegetitus said if you wish peace, prepare for War. Charles Atlas didn’t get sand kicked in his face at the beach. Simply being so visibly strong deters attacks, un-PC as it is.
However, Dem and Dem-like parties such as the UK’s Labor, are unable to let go of PC and this has led to Muslim Parties like Hizb to feel free to threaten outright civil war when it makes no sense. That didn’t happen overnight, decades of appeasement and abject fear on the part of Liberal politicians (afraid of being accused of racism or discrimination) fed this sense of entitlement and the ability to threaten. Throughout Europe you’ll see the same dynamic: politicians condemning reasonable measures (such as adherence to Western values such as no gay-bashing), appeasement, some terrorist atrocity by Muslims, and then a sharp swing of the pendulum when the public demands action. I am not optimistic.
August 10th, 2005 at 1:22 pm
Extremely provocative stuff Cicero, and I’m happy to have it on our site.
Quite a few see centrists as wishy-washy or can’t make up their minds, etc. I don’t see that as the case in the least.
Donklephant is merely a forum to exchange ideas free from the fringey rhetoric that defines and drives so many other blogs out there. However, I think most everybody who defines themselves as a “moderate” or a “centrist” agrees that Islamic extremists must be eliminated or marginalized to a non-threat status. Granted, it’s a nearly impossible task, but it’s worth fighting for and I haven’t heard anything to contrary from anybody on this site.
From my point of view, when the WOT first started myself and many of my fellow Democrats fully supported the US going into Afghanistan, but didn’t see the need to go into Iraq. Honestly, a lot of us felt it was a distraction from the overall WOT. A distraction from rounding up stray nukes, if you will.
Now, I find myself today surrounded on all sides by some very smart people who agreed with taking out a genocidal maniac and his regime. It’s hard to disagree with that. But have we gained an ally in the ME or created more strife? Not one of us can say for sure, because the true outcome is at least 10 years down the road, and few on the right want to seem to admit that. All we can reasonably agree on is that Iraq is going to try and make democracy work, and that’s a positive step.
However, I feel it’s vital that the WOT be prosecuted in a much smarter way. Simplistic language like “You’re either with us, or against us” and “Bring it on” hasn’t helped our cause. We should demand more from our leadership and we haven’t gotten it. I agree that the time for appeasment is over, but so is the time for rhetoric. Rhetoric is their weapon. Let them drown themselves in it.
And I, for one, am very optimistic that a vital center is being created in response to the overreaching of both sides. And mark my words, a centrist approach will respond in a way that will make much more sense to all parties involved, and will make us safer as a result.
To prove this point and bring it all back around to a main crux of the essay, let me pose a few questions to everybody reading this: Do you think a centrist would have been focused on Iraq or all the stray nukes out there? Do you think a centrist would have been focused on taking out Saddam or securing our borders and cargo containers?
Frankly, I think a centrist would be much more focused of the latter, instead of trying to spread democracy and possibly stabilizing the ME.
Don’t get me wrong, I still think that the neo-cons approach represents a noble ideal. The politics of these countries only serve to further breed the hate that could destroy us. However, I think that the majority of Americans, if given the choice, would rather have our government’s focus on the issue you bring up in the essay. A nuke would plunge our country into a type of chaos that few could understand and every sane person in this country understands that. All our lawmakers get that, but I believe if we have a centrist in the WH, he/she will make that their main focus, and leave the nation-building to the people within the nation.
Again, I will state that I think it’s great Iraq has its democracy. But I’m sure I’m not alone on this site when I say I would never EVER trade protecting our country from a rogue nuclear attack for democracy in Iraq, especially if it means that we’ve let our eye off the football.
Let’s hope that’s not the case.
August 10th, 2005 at 1:51 pm
“Far better IMHO to publicly articulate our response on this level to the Muslim World at large, … Simply change the deterrence from the Soviet Union to the Muslim world. Not PC but likely effective.”
I believe this is already a pervasive attitude, as demonstrated by people who (wrongly, IMHO) agree with people like Tancredo that Islamic religious sites should be destroyed and (rightly, IMHO) support Michael Graham for pointing out the source of the problem: the corruptible elements of Islam and moderate Muslims’ collective incompetence in dealing with the global violence emanating from their retarded middle eastern cultures as a result.
But I don’t think this articulation – whether de facto or a public policy – will be effective either. The “justification” cited by fanatics like OBL for murder is that they are defending themselves against attack by the West. Such fantasy aside, in this context any threat that the Muslim world *would be* attacked as a whole would simply stir up additional, defensive resentment and constitute, in the twisted rhetoric of the islamist fanatics, additional “justification” for even greater violence.
History, I think, demonstrates that centrism – if it demands moderation, appeasement or “measured” response – can not withstand the shocks of catastrophic terror. It never has. Moderation is soundly defeated by an enemy not so constrained. Appeasement ultimately begets only greater demands. And one only needs review the history of U.S. involvement in Viet Nam to see the results of a “measured” response in the context of a lethal struggle. Any culture that labels its own self-defense with lethal force as “extremist” is doomed as long as it has enemies that are not similarly self-constrained.
Yet that is the situation in which the West presently finds itself. While we struggle to come to grips with the fact that war has been declared on us, our children and our way of life, our media, intellectuals, academics and half of our politicians consistently hammer out a message that lethal self-defense is “extremism” because, after all, ‘we brought the wrath of the “insurgents” and “freedom fighters” on ourselves’. If anything, that is the attitude that an authentic centrism – one representative of the high school English teacher in Des Moines, who’s never directly or indirectly threatened another culture in any way – will need to obviate and replace with something rational and viable.
August 10th, 2005 at 2:18 pm
Justin, in responding to your questions, let me rephrase them slightly:
“Do you think a rational person would have been focused on Iraq or all the stray nukes out there?”
To begin with, this is a false choice. These two are not mutually exclusive. Criticizing anyone for addressing *both* issues would, among other things, require the critic to point out specifically where the “stray nukes” reside or, alternately, show that insufficient efforts have been exerted to prove they exist, locat and secure them. Since such efforts are no doubt classified (leaked NYT propaganda notwithstanding), this would be an impossible task. The rational thing to do is to take action that maximizes the possibility of a positive effect, given the facts and resources on hand at that time.
“Do you think a rational person would have been focused on taking out Saddam or securing our borders and cargo containers?”
Again, another false choice, since these aren’t mutually exclusive either. All three are/were completely rational in the context of a variety of U.S. national interests – no less so without the “no WMDs just lies” canard.
I would submit that the current administration’s actions are, in fact, centrist. They have not declared martial law. They have not nuked Mecca, Tehran or Damascus. They have not placed all Muslims in internment camps even though we are no less at war with a *minority* of militant Muslims today than were were at war with a *minority* of militant Japanese in 1942. They have not tried for treason and executed those in the U.S. who – in a time of war – have publicly called for the death of U.S. troops and defeat of the United States by terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the list goes on…
What’s more, they have not taken some of the actions that many *would* consider extremist, like completely closing off our borders, much as that might be the right thing to do.
Finally, I found this statement interesting: “the true outcome is at least 10 years down the road, and few on the right want to seem to admit that.”
I would submit that it’s those on the right who’ve been proclaiming this very fact – since the President’s first speech on the subject.
August 10th, 2005 at 2:24 pm
For the record I’ve been saying since before the invasion in 2003 that it will be 20 years before we know if this was a good idea or not. I’ll see your 10 and raise you 10.
August 10th, 2005 at 3:43 pm
I should add, by the way, that this is a worthy essay. It resonates with me personally. I suspect I’m a bit older than you, but for me, too, the Civil Defense films of children taking cover under school desks and the “Fallout Shelter” signs on the sides of big buildings were historical artifacts. By the time I started kindergarten in 1965, we were all nuke-fodder. And all through the ’70s and ’80s I was aware, wherever I lived of the nearby spots that likely were programmed into some computer in the Urals as ICBM targets. It was knowledge you carried around without quite trying to, like you knew where the icy spots in the road were in winter.
It was MADness, we thought. But we expected at some point in our lives the world was going to end. It didn’t happen. It was all a grand gamble on the essential conservatism of the West and the Soviet Union, that they would not push one another too far. It’s not an experiment I’d care to repeat.
In one sense, I’m delighted my son can grow up now without having that awareness or that expectation. I remember the literal sense of relief and joy in 1989 when we realized it was all, finally, over. It was like the end of “Lord of the Rings,” in some faint way, what Tolkien called a “eucatastrophe.”
Yet most of those warheads that I counted, in my youth, as being targeted on the local army depot or war college, are still out there somewhere.
As for being a center, I still wonder if I’m too obstreperous to be here. My idea of a center is not something that shifts itself to always be equidistant from the extremes. Yet that would be a statistical or geographic center. My idea of where I want to stand is something that casts a cold eye on the ground realities, and rigorously considers the options with an eye to what is rational, decent, honorable, and practical.
It is not a passive place. It’s as dynamic as Odysseus guiding his ship between the clashing rocks. And like Odysseus, it sometimes has to whack heads, and it sometimes has to consult the dead, and it sometimes has to make heartbreaking sacrifices along the way.
August 10th, 2005 at 5:22 pm
Indeed you have Callimachus and I applaud you for it.
goy, If you think that not carrying acts like this out makes our administration “centrist” then we’re just going to have to disagree once again. And even though those actions have a historical context, the prevailing opinion about them make them straw men at best. That’s not our country anymore, and we’re better because of it.
Also, I said “few” on the right have talked about the real timetable, instead of none as your comment suggested I said. I think this is probably because I disagree that the administration has been truly upfront about this fact. They say they’re going to stay until the job is done, and yet they draw up plans to pull out. They say they can’t set a timetable for withdrawal, and yet they make timetables. It’s this inconsistency that I have a problem with because it really feels like the administration wants to wash their hands of Iraq. And given things that are happening on the ground right now, like the story about the mayor of Baghadad being ousted, I can understand why. But I don’t think they’re giving the situation a fair shake. And they certainly didn’t push this message before the war.
Essentially, from my perspective, the Iraq war was sold on the basis that Saddam was developing WMDs and we had to stop him from giving them to terrorists. Many in my camp saw this and were genuinely scared, but as more information started coming out, we became skeptical because the pieces didn’t seem to fit. I’ll be the first one to admit that quite a few loud voices on the left probably didn’t want to them to fit, but you’re not talking to one of them here. I realized that a nuke would have disastrous effects, but as the weapons inspectors found nothing, and the intelligence was slowly being pulled apart, the focus then shifted to creating a free and democratic Iraq to stabilize the ME. To me, and many around me, this felt like a clear shift in focus. We wanted to make sure the US was actually going after the nukes. We didn’t really care about nation-building. The nukes should be where our focus was, and Kerry outlined this in the debates.
That’s also why Kerry was in such an amazingly difficult position as the Dem presidential candidate. Here you have people saying “Don’t you think a free and democratic Iraq would help stabilize the Middle East?” Of course Kerry knew it would, but I’m sure he felt, as I did, that this was the wrong question we should be asking. The more important question was, “Where in the hell are those stray nukes?”
Also, I recognize that the two are not mutually exclusive, but i’m saying IF we suffer a cataclysmic nuclear strike from Al Qaeda, I guarantee you that many will question why we tried to spread democracy in the Middle East instead of putting more of effort towards protecting our borders and cargo containers and trying to round up the stray nukes. And you can’t tell me that with thousands of illegal aliens streaming through our borders, they’re undertaking some sort of classified endeavor.
Again, this is where I thought the focus of the WOT should be in the first place: on the WMDs.
As far as rephrasing my question, I understand why you did it goy, but I think it changes it in a non-trivial way. I think Bush is a reasonable man who, given his ideology, made a decision he thought was just. I reject the notion that he would simply do this for oil or as a vendetta for his father. I just think there were more important things to consider at the time and I think somebody who would have seen where the danger lie in a more clear, non-partisan view, would have come to a different decision. Perhaps not, but it’s a theory I’ll definitely propose. It certainly doesn’t sound unreasonable to me.
How many of you can tell me that Iraq hasn’t distracted us from the issues I’ve talked about in this comment? I’ll say it again, who here can say our borders are well guarded when thousands of illegal aliens pour through the border each night? If we’re really concerned about Al Qaeda slipping into this country undetected and striking with a nuclear weapon, why isn’t our focus on problems like these and our cargo containers? Nobody, either on this blog or elsewhere, has answered that question for me and I’m beginning to wonder why…
In any event, fantastic post again Cicero. I think we can see how vital these discussions are to the blogosphere’s growth. Very rarely do I see these types of discussions on other blogs, and it’s exciting to see that this is starting to become the standard around here.
August 10th, 2005 at 7:02 pm
Justin – you have an interesting way of reading things into things. ;-)
“…instead of none as your comment suggested I said.”
My comment neither suggested nor implied a “none”. It was a reaction to “few”. In fact, most folks supportive of the war (the “right”, if you will) acknowledge that it’s going to be a long haul – and have done so, as I said, since the President’s first public warnings along these lines. If anything, it’s the left who’ve begun to claim ‘it’s over and we lost’.
“I think this is probably because I disagree that the administration has been truly upfront about this fact.”
Well, part of my response to this comes later, but for now let me say that I’m not sure how much clearer one could be than to say “This campaign may not be finished on our watch — yet it must be and it will be waged on our watch.” I don’t get from that the notion that everything will be over next month – or next year.
Not sure how to react in a non-confrontational way to the rest of your response except to say that, IMHO, your viewpoint is colored in large part by the bias you’ve been fed by the media, specifically outlets like the NYT, AP, et al. In particular, your assessment of the administration’s focus with regard to Iraq is actually a description of the *media’s* and *Democrats’* focus with regard to their carping about Iraq – especially since losing big in last year’s election. The U.S. government has been at war with, talking about war with, and/or planning to attack Iraq since 1991 – and that includes all of Clinton’s administration. Iraq is not a “distraction”, it is and has always been a clear and present and very large part of the problem. 9/11 was a wake up call that made us realize we needed to get serious about that problem – it was not merely an excuse to chase down a few hundred terrorists in Afghanistan.
The party line that Afghanistan was “justifiable” but Iraq was a “distraction” completely misses the goal of military action in the middle east – at least with respect to the national interests of the U.S. (and like you, I’m not talking about oil either). It is not sufficient to “track down and bring to justice those responsible” because those responsible are a symptom of a much, much larger problem. Dealing with one and not the other would have been pointless – as the current situation in Iraq plainly shows.
Also, despite the media focus and political rhetoric, I think the answer to your question about cargo containers is that it’s either not as big an issue as it’s been blown up to be or there are security people quietly and patiently dealing with the issue in the most effective way practical: OUTSIDE the realm of public discourse (i.e., the press). I do agree with you, however about the border thing, and am getting really tired of the press and the President chiding organizations like the Minutemen for doing what the federal government – or minimally the *state* governments! – should be doing.
Justin, in the very best of faith I’d like to make a recommendation to you as a fellow seeker of peace and rational discourse: read some military history.
We are at war, like it or not. In war, one does not have the luxury of broadcasting to the enemy all the precautions one is taking or publicly providing a schedule by which things will be happening during the course of the conflict. In war, one does not have the luxury of being completely open and honest with all concerned because that means being open and honest with the enemy as well – and this is especially true in a war where the battle lines are not drawn on any map. Inconsistency – especially with regard to military occupation, troop movements, etc. – is exactly what you want to feed your enemy. Read Sun Tzu. Is it also frustrating to the public? Yes it can be, if they don’t “get” the fact that we are at war – or if they want to pretend we’re not at war and use the conflict for partisan or sensational purposes, the way much of the media does. Does it present potential for abuse? Historically, yes. Does our culture and our form of government have the best chance of avoiding the abuse while at the same time maximizing the confusion and casualties we need to inflict in order to neutralize our enemy? Again, historically, the answer is yes.
Whether or not that remains true, IMHO, will depend completely on how thoroughly that culture and form of government have been corrupted over the past 50 years. Will mistakes be made? Of course. Is that any reason not to take action – or to delay action until you’re absolutely certain beyond a shadow of any doubt that your chosen action is the correct one? In a word: no. Will I blindly trust? No. But neither will I assume, generalize and play Monday Morning Quarterback.
Rather than focusing 20/20 hindsight on the events of 2002-4, we should be focusing that hindsight on the events of 1938-41, and learning from history. I believe our President and his adminstration – for all their real warts and the ones the media have imagined – have done this. That’s why I support them. And that’s why I think we need to quit carping about cargo containers, grousing over wartime minutiae like Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, second-guessing military decisions without all the facts and whining on a daily basis about the lowest casualty rate in any significant armed conflict of this or any other century. Call me a flagwaver if you like, but you don’t win a war by opening your every strategy and tactic to close public scrutiny. And if you insist on that, I submit that you’re going to be a very frustrated wartime spectator.
August 10th, 2005 at 7:05 pm
Justin — my problem with the Democratic alternative to Bush is that it is even less responsive to the threat than Bush is. You are indeed correct that the borders are unguarded, cargo unchecked, and this is a great threat to the United States.
However, Dems only point out the problem, my Party is unwilling to face the logical conclusions:
1. Illegal immigration must be stopped, by a secure border that deters all but a few, with whatever means necessary to stop immigration, including employer sanctions, ICE sweeps, and an Israeli-style Wall. Economic dislocation caused by the end of cheap, exploitable labor and the political cost of ethnic lobbies is obviously less than a nuclear device or three detonating in the US.
2. Immigration to the US must be severely limited, and those entering from Muslim countries or those who are Muslim must be subject to severe restrictions and rigorous background checks. This has a cost in international relations but less than losing a city or three.
3. Racial/ethnic/religious profiling is appropriate and needed in various vulnerable areas to terrorism, not limited to airplanes and searching passengers in mass transit. It makes no sense to search Al Gore and ignore three Muslim men of Pakistani descent, all of whom are getting on the same plane. This has a political cost as it is not PC but is indeed effective, more so than our incoherent and useless system in place now.
4. Rigorous inspections of all cargo at ports, and shipments across the border. This means personally searching each Tecate beer truck for example, crossing into the US, despite Mexico’s protests. It means rigorous screening of cargo at ports and swarms of expensive security people in and around ports checking into everything.
5. Unleashing the FBI, and Military Intelligence (the CIA has proved a total failure and should be abolished and replaced) on Muslim terror groups, and summary detention for suspected extremists. Summary deportation of those even peripherally involved in terror who are not citizens, or are naturalized (as France is doing).
6. Use of current “intimidation” tactics at Gitmo on captured terrorists. If the stakes are millions of our people’s lives, what’s some A/C, Christina Aguilera music, fake “menstrual blood,” or chaining a guy to the floor for two days compared to a nuclear attack on say, San Diego?
NONE of these things are associated with Iraq, and all of them are domestic. The likelihood of the Democratic Party endorsing them is zero. Dick Durbin calls the troops Nazis or Pol Pots, and compares Gitmo to a gulag, echoed by Kennedy, Kerry, and of course Amnesty International. Profiling is considered worse than people being incinerated or jumping off the WTC to splat on the sidewalk, and the Party has rather explicitly said it will trade lives for being “pure” on the question of profiling, supported by the ACLU. The Patriot Act and any monitoring much less prosecution of Muslim Extremists is derided by Democrats, who view the FBI not Muslim terrorists as the major threat to the American people. Inconveniencing Mexico or our other trading partners, sealing the border, deporting illegal immigrants, are all areas where the Democratic Party is opposed. Can you actually imagine the Democratic Party being FOR ending illegal immigration and securing the border? Arnold Schwarzenegger was derided for making just that comment by Democrats in California.
There simply isn’t any willingness to endorse “moderate” and common-sense matters to make it much more difficult to smuggle nuclear weapons into our cities. Dems limit themselves to (correctly IMHO) criticizing the Administration for failing in it’s duties there, but won’t go to the logical conclusions of remedial action. It is pure partisan gamesmanship because the Party has largely abandoned the Center (quick name ONE Democrat not named Wes Clark who has expertise on military affairs) for the Kossack/Moveon crowd.
August 10th, 2005 at 7:56 pm
“On an unthinkable scale.”
To a thinking man, there is no such thing as “unthinkable.” Avoiding thought about unpleasant possibilities is a bad habit.
August 10th, 2005 at 7:57 pm
Jim Rockford,
Destroy 3 or 4 of our cities and you destroy this country. The damage to the infrastructure and economy would be too great a blow to bounce back from.
You are also under the mistaken impression that you can reason with Islamofascists. You can’t. They see things such as the “warnings” you advocate as a sign of weakness. You seem to have forgotten that the Euros and the UN have been “warning” them for decades and they laugh in their face. The only two things these people understand is violence and overwhelming use of force.
That is why they will leave China for last for they see China as being strong and the west being weak. You know what they do to anyone who attempts to pull any of the crap the Islamofascists pull in the west? They take them to their home town, round up all their family, march the perp into the town square where the townfolks are required to attend, put a bullet through the perp’s head, then they pry it out of his brain and give it to his family as a reminder of what will happen if any more of them decide to follow the Islamofascist path.
August 10th, 2005 at 8:01 pm
I think we need to think in more than one ply, as it were. I support the strategic goals of freeing Iraq. And I know it might be futile. And I also know things are wide open here at home. It’s not an either-or scenario. We fought Japan *and* Germany. There was no other option.
Truthfully, if a nuke were to go off in this country, I think the regime could fall. It might not be the ascribed transfer of power that the Constitution provides, either. But along with the regime would be the whole PC edifice, and the layers of plaster we call culture that really have no use to a world of nuclear terrorism.
I don’t know if we have evolved into a system that can handle the true nature of 21st century threats. To that end, I’m not partial with crediting the administration for too much, or blaming it for too little. They’re there, swinging at the balls they can see.
Sometimes in history — in fact, almost all the time — ungovernable forces, having gone unnoticed, suddenly appear and change the landscape, like acts of nature. Great historical events are rarely predicted.
In the end, I have to put my faith in our culture’s ability to overcome its narcissism and nihilism, its decadence and its vices. I think those are layers that still rest on a bedrock of free values, fired by innovation. Faced with catastrophic events, we can improvise and build. We do it well. It’s simply where I will place my bet — that we can stay sane through the worst of it. I might be wrong.
But should I place my bet on our cultural suicide? Why bother?
What if all problems we face don’t have solutions? What if the solution is worse than the problem? Nobody knows who’s gonna fold — it could be us, Islam, the Chinese, Europe. It could be someone I least suspect, who’s some kind of lynchpin that, once pulled, creates a historical avalanche.
There’s an assumption that conflict is wasteful, and never necessary. Saying that statement sparks a response repertoire in most people. Much goes unsaid, because the bulk of the argument is accepted. Often, this is what passes for discussion and thinking. It’s our embedded assumptions that we need to question in this war. We need to do the same about our entire cultural direction.
Anyway, thanks for the comments.
August 10th, 2005 at 8:25 pm
I’m not sure exactly what centrism means in this debate, except to exclude people with alliterative names like George Galloway or Tom Tancredo.
While Islamofascists are the immediate threat, the inherent human cussedness from which they spring is not going away. We have a limited amount of time to figure out by what strategies Modern Civilization can survive when the march of technology is enabling ever smaller groups to wreak ever larger destruction. If MC does survive I suspect it will be a combination of tactics – dispersal of assets, reduced civil liberties, and pre-emptive war against external threats – which are necessary. From this vantage point we have no idea whether even all that will save us from a new dark ages.
We might well be willing to kill 400 million of the “enemy” in response to the destruction of a city, but so what? Ruthlessness is not a strategy.
I wonder how WWII might have unfolded if the Sitzkrieg had lasted for a decade rather than 7 months.
August 10th, 2005 at 8:46 pm
We’re in more danger now that the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union is over? Ya think?
That was pretty obvious to anyone with a thinking brain in 1989 when the Wall came down. The world suddenly became destabilized because the two powers that kept it all in equilibrium were suddenly unbalanced by the disappearance of one. I was glad to see the end of the Soviet Union, but I didn’t dance around, all giddy that “we won”. I more or less took a knee and waited for whatever would emerge from the resultant power struggle. The Africans have always been basically helpless, the Europeans love their comfort, and the Chinese love money. No big surprise that the Next Big Danger proved to be Islamic (Arab) fundamentalism.
August 10th, 2005 at 8:50 pm
Centrism?
Huge ass indeed.
August 10th, 2005 at 9:32 pm
Great post.
I think the US could stand 1 or 2 nukes going off, especially if we caught the people that did it, allowing us to track down the whole chain of command and eliminate them, instead of mass destruction.
However, 4-5 going off all at once, approaches the level where the US public would DEMAND that we, in the words of a popular T-shirt, “Nuke their ass and take the gas!!” At once. As someone above said, the US could not be stopped from killing 200+ million people.
August 10th, 2005 at 9:53 pm
That prognosis is absolutely true. MAD worked, not because it was inevitable, but because good fortune developed due to very specific circumstances. The first 20+ years were extraordinarilly dangerous. After that things settled down into a rythem, and it became apparent that any armed conflict of any kind would devolve into either bloody stalemate or nuclear war.
We have a completely new problem. If you dont know who attacked you, who’s destruction do you mutually assure?
Here is a partial answer: We need to make it public policy, in the spirit of the Monroe or Truman doctrines, that if we or an ally is hit with a nuclear weapon whos origin is not immediately derterminable, we will consider every rogure nuclear nation (Iran and NK) equally culpable, and hence will without hesitation or consultation make an immediate full force strike against.
This will deter rogue nations in two ways. First, it will make it deadly clear that NK cant sell nukes indescriminately and Iran cant hand them off to terrorist buddies. Secondly, and more importantly, NK has to determine if they want their fate tied to Iran and vice versa. Its one thing to develop nukes assuming your fate is then in your own hands, its entirely another to be at the mercy of a different rogue regime, half way around the world, of whom you have no influence or ties, and who you probably consider pretty crazy in their own right.
August 10th, 2005 at 10:21 pm
After seeing what destroying one building complex did to the economy, I have to agree that a nuke in New York or LA would do much much more damage.
But it would not destroy our military, and it won’t take us long to route around the damage.
What Tancredo said has been called foolish and dangerous speculation by a lot of people. But if & when a nuke goes off, I think that it will turn out to be prophecy.
Read a little history. We Americans were once a ruthless people, and I think there are enough of us left who still can be. All it will take is one nuke. When that happens, I think that we will mobilize in ways that will be aimed at the destruction of Islam. Tancredo’s comment was a metaphor for that.
In the meantime, the only thing we can do is back the government, hope that they know what they are doing, and pray that a nuke doesn’t short circuit the attempt to teach Islam to control itself.
I think that the next administration, whether Democrat or Republican, will do pretty much what the Bush administration is doing now – even those things which the public doesn’t know much about.
August 10th, 2005 at 10:34 pm
First, this is an excellent post and discussion. My thanks in advance.
Disclosure up front: I accept a substantial part of the neo-con argument. I voted for Mr. Bush twice. I’ve been reading and writing about the concerns we have about the WoT. After reading Cicero’s essay, I’m wondering about our country’s response in the event that nuclear devices obliterate three or four of our cities. While I agree that the remaining citizens will be screaming for bloody revenge at a scale never before seen, will we be able to accomplish this? And what happens to us in response?
Can we indeed launch a full nuclear response on the Muslim world? The Muslim world is 1.5 billion people, four continents, dozens of cities. Not all those cities are filled with America-haters. Which ones do we destroy?
First, will our military be capable of doing it? Technically yes, even if Washington was a terrorist target. The Cold War apparatus that allowed our military chain of command the needed survivability to vaporize the USSR in a second strike is still there. So someone will be able to give the order, and hands at the silos will push the buttons. But will our military be able to take the pre-approved list of 100 Muslim cities and say, “those Islamic bastards nuked Baltimore, San Diego and Little Rock. Here’s the launch sequence, green board, let’s go”?
After all, one of the defining characteristics of a modern, Western military is a conscience.
And suppose we do this: we destroy to 50 to 100 Muslim cities. What happens to us then? I’ll ignore for the moment the enormous changes to the environment, yadda-yadda. But our own people have a conscience, and after some period of time we’re going to wonder whether killing 300 million people in response to losing Baltimore, San Diego and Little Rock at the hands of some terrorist group was the right thing to do. That’s going to have a profound effect on our country, even as we try to right our country economically, etc. from such a devestating attack.
And suppose we destroy 50 to 100 Muslim cities: what friends stand by us? I don’t count the Russians, Chinese or French as friends, and so I suspect that the first two will react warily while the French reaction simply won’t matter. But what about the Brits, Aussies, Canadians, etc? Are we sure that our best friends in the world will stand by us? I’m not sure that they will. Would I miss them? I’m not sure that I would.
I appreciate the ideas some have suggested, like Mark Buehner, to promulgate a policy that puts current rogue nuclear states on notice as to what will happen to them if a terrorist group uses a nuke against us. I suspect, if one gamed these out in a rigorous way, that such strategies would fail — the Pakistanis will be happy to sacrifice the North Koreans if they think they can get away with something, and vice versa. And al-Qaeda might be happy to sacrifice them both.
I grew up with ‘duck and cover’. I agree with Cicero that there was a certain, disquieting comfort to it. I don’t have a solution to the current problem, except to hope that Mr. Bush and the neo-cons are right in the end, such that confronting terrorism and spreading democracy will remove the threat to us.
August 10th, 2005 at 11:07 pm
I swore to myself after last night that I wasn’t going to post anymore, as there is no satisfaction in it. Still….
There is a problem with any nuclear strategy so far discussed. Should we nuke 1 or 2 or 5 or 100 Muslim cities, there will be consequnces. Someone above mentioned that three or four of our cities getting vaporized would finish us. I doubt that, but it would be crippling to our economy, and hence to the world economy.
However, if we start nuking Muslim cities, particularly Arab cities, we’re basically destroying the world economy.
Many people keep wondering why we haven’t put “pressure” on the Saudis. Well, the Saudis have a bigger bomb than we do. They don’t need atomic weapons. If the Saudis destroy their oil fields, the world economy will be demolished. We would be facing another Great Depression, only this time a lot more people will die from privation, as the world’s civilization is far more dependent on oil now than it was in the 1930s. As long as the Saudi princes keep the oil flowing, they’re immune to anything we could otherwise do to them.
And if we start demolishing Muslim countries (despite the talk about the N Korea, we’re really discussing our Muslim problem) there will be tremendous pressure from the radical and not so radical populace of the Arabian penisula to destroy the oil fields. They’ve got us by the fuel supply.
Side note: The Administration has been increasing the strategic oil reserve, and has not even considered releasing any of it, even as the price of oil continues to climb. And unless I missed it, the Dems aren’t even making any noise about releasing any of the supply. I wonder why no one is trying to score realatively easy points at this point….
August 10th, 2005 at 11:11 pm
I’m still on vacation (well, sort of), so this comment is brief.
What strikes me about these mostly thoughtful responses is that they fail to address the consequences of our not responding to a nuclear attack on our cities with a nuclear attack of our own. Would that not encourage additional megaterrorism? IMO, we would be committing civilizational suicide.
August 10th, 2005 at 11:30 pm
Well goy, at least we can agree on one thing. ;-)
August 11th, 2005 at 12:19 am
Golly, sounds like a load of pretentious drivel. You know, having had it cross your mind that maybe the MADmen were kinda sort on to something 50 years ago — that the assurity of mutual annihiliation did not only allow relative peace between the superpowers but also allow the US and Europe, behind its nuclear umbrella, to build a society almost free of the tiresome concerns of military strength and domestic security that have absorbed social energies for millenia, so much so that we have even forgotten the habit of accurately measuring external threats — I say, having had this occur to you, one would think that you might apply the same insight to the present. To wit, if the conventional “striped-pants boys” wisdom (to quote Truman) that nuclear deterrence was madness distilled was deeply flawed in the 1970s, then, gee, maybe the conventional “striped-pants boys” wisdom that (say) terrorism is some emotional cancer that strips its employers of all rationality is equally flawed in the 2000s.
You largely elide the fact that during the Cold War it was routine for folks to suggest Soviet motives and methods were quite different from ours (the left tended to say they were more unselfish, long-sighted, et cetera, the right tended to say they were more fanatic, robotic, et cetera). The idea that it made sense to base national policy around the shocking proposition that the bulk of our enemies — and certainly their leadership — was rational was an idea that had to fight to make itself hear.
Gee, maybe it deserves a quicker hearing today? Maybe we should stop assuming Islamic terrorism (for example) happens because large groups of people are (a) gripped by overwhelming emotional angst stemming from their terrible povery and the humiliation of Ferdinand and Isabella tossing the Moors out of Spain in 1492, so much so that they can’t think straight, or (b) gripped by fanatical religious mania to conquer the world, burn all its books, and enslave all women, so much so that they can’t et cetera.
Maybe they’re just mostly rational actors, like us. Maybe they respond to the carrot and stick much as we do. Hmm, what a concept.
August 11th, 2005 at 12:25 am
If the USSR had remained up, would our situation be worse today?
The positive:
Hopefully the USSR would be engaged in bloody wars with Muslims in Chechnya and Afghanistan such that the combination of America and the USSR would keep Islamic extremism from becoming a major problem. I can’t really see China helping Muslim extremists, given its stance towards religion in general and the Uighur people. India is basically at war with the extremists over Kashmir. So all of the major powers in the world would be united against radical Islam (except Europeans and Brazil, which would be happy to sit this fight out).
However, it was the Soviet war in Afghanistan that gave Islamic extremists a place to congregate. So if there were many Muslim-Infidel conflicts around the world, that would mean Muslims everywhere would be pressured to radicalize and there would be many opportunities to network and train for jihad.
The Negative:
MAD without Islamic Terrorists might be preferrable to Islamic Terrorists without MAD, but both are better than Islamic Terrorists and MAD.
What if Muslim extremists exploited MAD? One nuclear explosion could start a nuclear war. With a nuclear bomb in place, they could fake a missile strike:
Fire an empty missile at the site where the nuke is already located so the American military would shoot down the missile; when the nuclear explosion happened anyway we would think it must have been a multiple-warhead missile or something likewise very advanced to survive an anti-missile. We would think only the Soviets were capable of that.
Then the terrorists could launch a few more empty missiles and we would think a full-on nuclear barrage was incoming. It wouldn’t take many missiles to pull off. Would we wait for those missiles to impact before we launched our counter-attack?
(of course they could target the USSR just as easily as they could target us with that scheme)
A nuclear exchange between America and the USSR would be great for Islamic extremists. They would be working very hard to make it happen. They would surprise us with their savage creativity, like they did on 9/11 and at Beslan.
August 11th, 2005 at 12:32 am
“A coordinated, prolonged Islamic insurgency of 100,000 armed Islamofascists in England might radicalize the majority of Britishers. The Muslims would lose….”
Yes of course which is why they won’t do that. Fitful aggression followed by denial, just as now, is more likely to continue, even when the nuke theshold is passed, like Bart Simpson ‘We didn’t do it!’.
A superb thoughtful but scary essay. Well done.
August 11th, 2005 at 1:26 am
Many strategic scenarios similar to the current international nuclear landscape, that of unstable multilateral nuclear powers, have been ‘gamed’ in many science fiction novels and games. The one that strikes me as the most stable, sane and survivable is the ‘Great Convention’ of Frank Herbert’s Dune universe.
It’s roughly as follows (with the names of entities and weapons changed for the current reality :-)
-Any state may become a legally declared nuclear power by signing the Convention and submitting sample weapons to international inspection.
-Any state that uses nuclear or other mega-death weapons (lethal gas or communicable biologicals) is subject to nuclear retaliation, up to the point of extiction, by all other signatories.
-All civilian and military nuclear reactors and fuel production facilities of signatories shall have unique mixes (and hence identifiable signatures) of isotopes in their waste and fuel products, to trace and discourage any transfers to rouge powers.
The effective amnesty of the first of the above points provides a legitimizing incentive for currently rouge or undeclared nuclear powers to come clean, and for everyone else to normalize relations with them after they do. The last provision helps make sure everyone continues to stay a nice, safe, above ground member of the nuclear club.
If the Iranians, North Koreans, Pakistanis and Israelis were all out in the open with what they were doing, they would be much more likely to be viewed (and to behave) as rational actors. Nuclear Pluralism.
August 11th, 2005 at 1:39 am
Great post and comments BTW.
I too grew up in the shadow of the Cold War, graduating high school in 1989.
Don’t forget, the Cold War didn’t really end, especially if you listen to the madness coming out of certain Chinese general’s mouths in the last few months, and MAD is still official US policy in the event of attack by a known state actor.
August 11th, 2005 at 2:12 am
Good essay, but what’s the definition of ‘center’? If one excludes the far right and far left that leaves the vast majority as being ‘centrists’. Or are you defining it more narrowly than that?
August 11th, 2005 at 5:15 am
[...] The grim possibility that the two London attacks were not simply a sporadic terror campaign is being discussed at the highest levels in Whitehall. Fears of a third strike remain high this weekend, based on concrete evidence supplied by an intercepted text message and the interrogation of a terror suspect being held outside Britain, say US reports. Already the British crackdown on Islamic militants is impinging on free speech rights. The consequences of a full blown insurgency by unassimilated Islamic radicals who reside in Britain would be catastrophic for life if tolerated and liberty if forcibly put down, which of coure it would be. (For more thoughts on this item read this excellent blog post- hat tip Instapundit guestblogger Michael Totten.) [...]
August 11th, 2005 at 5:47 am
Jim Rockford wrote: “I believe the Dems must act NOW to articulate a framework for nuclear response, otherwise the reaction will be escalation on the part of the US beyond what people can conceive. “Solvingâ€Â? the problem by simply destroying the Muslim World, largely.”
I call this the hard or soft option. Bush is attempting the soft option by trying to bring the Muslim world into the 19th century with consensual government. I’ve been telling my antiwar friends, that if they really are antiwar, they ought to be backing Bush 1000%, because if the soft option fails, that won’t mean the war ends, we pack up and come home. No, that’ll mean the terrorists win a huge victory, make huge gains in capability and commit even deadlier attacks against Americans.
This, as you say, will then cause a huge escalation, which I believe will lead to the deaths of tens of millions of Muslims. I try to tell Muslims, that America will not lose this war. The only question is, how many Muslims will die in order to win it. Since 9/11, America has gone out of its way to avoid killing people. That could change in an instant.
If Muslims succeed in convincing Americans, that Muslims cannot live peacefully with the West, it will be a catastrophe for the Muslim world. America might get hurt and hurt badly, but I believe we won’t be destroyed. Muslims cannot say the same.
August 11th, 2005 at 5:51 am
“First, will our military be capable of doing it? Technically yes, even if Washington was a terrorist target. The Cold War apparatus that allowed our military chain of command the needed survivability to vaporize the USSR in a second strike is still there. So someone will be able to give the order, and hands at the silos will push the buttons. But will our military be able to take the pre-approved list of 100 Muslim cities and say, “those Islamic bastards nuked Baltimore, San Diego and Little Rock. Here’s the launch sequence, green board, let’s goâ€Â??”
Well, by the time it gets to the silos, they will. As I understand it, their training drills are indistinguishable from the real thing until the keys are turned. (No doubt, this leads to heavy Maalox usage by missile crews…)
August 11th, 2005 at 7:48 am
Wow. Sounds like the Cold War was groovy. I wish my uncles had survived Vietnam to realize how much better it was back then…
August 11th, 2005 at 10:04 am
“Maybe they’re just mostly rational actors, like us. Maybe they respond to the carrot and stick much as we do. Hmm, what a concept.”
I’d like to hear how the several hundred individuals that have strapped bombs to their bodies in the last couple years are rational actors, and deterable. Have you forgotten that little equation?
As far as destroying Arab cities crippling the world economy, I think not. 4 US cities going up would do incalcuably more harm. Oil fields are not near cities, and Arab cities quite honestly add almost zero to world commerce. Furthermore, not to be too callous but if a major part of the US economy was vaporized the resulting decline in oil demand would more than offset whatever was lost in the Arab world.
As far as deterrance and our allies responses: that is why we need a doctrine of immediate reprisal against Iran and NK, and probably Syria. If we sit around for days squawking and mourning we either wont do it, will get preempted, or will do it and be seen as premeditated murders all the more. If our response is instant the enemy wont have time to respond, our allies will simply have to decide if they can live with what happened, and after all they were warned.
August 11th, 2005 at 10:53 am
Terrorists disrupting entire cities might create a new reactionary populism, moving away from centrism. A coordinated, prolonged Islamic insurgency of 100,000 armed Islamofascists in England might radicalize the majority of Britishers. The Muslims would lose. In that context, the center would likely give in to war policies directed against foreigners and other perceived threats. Nuclear terrorism would challenge centrist moderation.
I totally agree with this assessment. In fact, in the case of America I would take it a step or two further. If reactionary populism were to become the “new center” in American politics and culture, the results would not be pretty – and not just for our perceived enemies themselves (i.e. the Muslim world and/or the American Muslim population). Indeed, I’d imagine the backlash might fall even harder upon America’s own leftist/PC types in the elite MSM, college campuses etc. who have provided rhetorical cover and succor to those perceived enemies over the years. It wouldn’t be much of a leap for a reactionary populist public to demand that the PC left be purged from America’s cultural institutions once and for all – by any means necessary. It goes without saying that this purge – and the likely leftist backlash – is likely to be accompanied by not a small amount of bloodshed.
August 11th, 2005 at 10:56 am
Secure Borders?
I see a lot of talk about vunerable we are because illegal aliens are crossing our borders. But I think it is important to make a distinction between Christian Mexicans comming across seeking a better way of life: better pay, which leads to opening bank accounts, driver’s liscenses and applying for mortgages for homes and Muslim terrorists trying to cross the border to blow us up.
Immigration reform is essential… with so many people crossing the border, it just makes sense to streamline legal immigration for those just looking to make a decent living. With immigration reform, less people will cross the border, making securing the border that much easier (without having to build a “berlin wall”).
August 11th, 2005 at 10:56 am
Secure Borders?
I see a lot of talk about vunerable we are because illegal aliens are crossing our borders. But I think it is important to make a distinction between Christian Mexicans comming across seeking a better way of life: better pay, which leads to opening bank accounts, driver’s liscenses and applying for mortgages for homes and Muslim terrorists trying to cross the border to blow us up.
Immigration reform is essential… with so many people crossing the border, it just makes sense to streamline legal immigration for those just looking to make a decent living. With immigration reform, less people will cross the border, making securing the border that much easier (without having to build a “berlin wall”).
August 11th, 2005 at 10:56 am
Secure Borders?
I see a lot of talk about how vunerable we are because illegal aliens are crossing our borders. But I think it is important to make a distinction between Christian Mexicans comming across seeking a better way of life: better pay, which leads to opening bank accounts, driver’s liscenses and applying for mortgages for homes and Muslim terrorists trying to cross the border to blow us up.
Immigration reform is essential… with so many people crossing the border, it just makes sense to streamline legal immigration for those just looking to make a decent living. With immigration reform, less people will cross the border illegally, making securing the border that much easier (without having to build a “berlin wall”).
August 11th, 2005 at 10:59 am
Sorry for the tripple post, the internet was a bit laggy and I hit submit more than once thinking it wasn’t working.
August 11th, 2005 at 12:51 pm
Gringo: That’s happened to me more than once myself (including when I tried to submit my original comment above). It only seems to happen on Donklephant, though. An issue with this site, maybe?
August 11th, 2005 at 5:13 pm
We were very, very fortunate to get out of the Cold War era without a nuclear catastrophere. In addition to bipolarity, there were other factors, including:
1)The Soviets, as dielectical materialists, believed in an inevitable historical process, so could afford to take their time.
2)And also, as atheists, they didn’t believe in a future life, so were disincentivized to blow the world up.
3)The development of relatively secure launch systems (especially submarines), which reduce reliance on hair-trigger responses.
Even with all this, there were several close calls.
It’s very dangerous for people to conclude that because “deterrence” worked during the Cold War era it will necessarily work today, for example with Iran.
August 11th, 2005 at 5:40 pm
I haven’t run into this problem yet, but if I see more posts about it, I’ll take a look. We’re going to do some site improvements in the next month or so that should alleviate any “slow-loading” problems like this. Hopefully…
To launch is human. To optimize, divine. :-)
August 11th, 2005 at 8:07 pm
Wow, frightening stuff.
Really, the Islamofascism is only one problem we face. The heart of the matter is the exponential increase in technical savy and its global diffusion. In some ways Islamists are an easier problem, since they are supported by fairly well-known states and other financial / religious institutions that can be hit with a counter-strike. I doubt even the Mullahs are mad enough to slip Al Qaeda a nuke, since they will likely get nuked back even if the evidence linking them to a specific nuclear terrorism is tenuous or missing (as many commentators noted, we can also nuke other countries just to be sure we hit the state sponsors).
Anyway, the longer term problem is that actors will soon no longer need state sponsorship to do incredible harm. What about a few Gaia worshipers who conclude humanity is a cancer and they cooks up a well-designed and deadly virus? All it takes is a few PhD’s and run-of-the-mill equipment to inflict violence on billions, especially if the weapon self-replicates.
I really don’t see a way out that does not involve the creation of a “panopticon” society of universal surveilance (with AI systems doing the monitoring?). Really, if we and our societies survive then next hundred years in any recognizable form, I’ll be very surprised!
Here’s a cool link:
http://www.garreau.com/main.cfm?action=book&id=2
August 11th, 2005 at 8:15 pm
David Mercer, 1:26am:
Americans (in general) tend to forget our extensive geography. A nuke in Sacramento would render that city, and a perimeter of ____ miles uninhabitable for ___ years, and kill _____ people. Would Baltimore be affected by fallout/radiation? No, it’s 3000 miles away. Most of the US population would never know the difference. However, most other countries are much smaller and/or densely populated.
All signatories would have to understand that even with the best efforts, they can’t be guaranteed no damage if they find themselves next door to a target. Taking out Pakistan would likely do damage to Indian nationals / territory / infrastructure. Can you imagine the Indian government, let alone the 1B+ people in India, approving that? Would the US abide by the treaty if we discover that AQ launched from Nogales?
That’s why Israel’s “Sansom option” works; 1 nuke with “Damascus” or “Cairo” on the side takes out essentially the entire country, and may just roach-bomb a few other nasties.
I’m not passing judgement on the morality of your proposal, this is a question of practical implementation. The mushroom cloud won’t respect lines on a map.
August 11th, 2005 at 10:46 pm
Yeah TIna, there are problems with the scenario I posited. The tight radii of desired effect of nuclear weapons is what led to the development of the Neutron Bomb and related low yield devices. The Israelis and Americans are widely believed to still maintain such devices. The US version was motivated by the high population density in the Fulda Gap in Germany: we wanted to be able to stop Soviet tank columns decisively without grave damage to surrounding German towns and cities. Low fallout local effect weapons, largely retired/banned in most places because of their ‘usability’.
But such weapons would be essential to any internation order in the future like the one I layed out above, precisely because of the geographic restraints you outlined and similar ones around the world.
August 11th, 2005 at 11:43 pm
Just some observations:
1. it does not follow that the response we would have to someone nuking one of our cities is necessarily nuking Islamic cities. It seems to me that we don’t need nukes to destroy the Middle East if that’s what we want to do.
2. it might make sense to destroy the Middle East oil fields ourselves, & perhaps we ought to let the Arabs know that this is what we will be doing if one of our cities get nuked by anyone.
3. Narmer’s observation seems to point to the need to accelerate decentralizing our economy NOW. Once one city gets nuked, how long will it be before cities disappear? Much as I love living in the great city of Chicago, cities might be over with.