Fragilecologies

Tag: war

  • “How about starting an Afghan Peace Process Today?” Mickey Glantz. 14 September 2010

    “How about starting an Afghan Peace Process Today?” Mickey Glantz. 14 September 2010

    Mickey Glantz
    14 September 2010

    “The Middle East Peace Process is alive, if not well”

    In the introduction of his book Peace Process, William B. Quandt wrote, “Sometime in the mid-1970s the term peace process began to be widely used to describe the American-led efforts to bring about a negotiated peace between Israel and its neighbors. The phrase stuck, and ever since it has been synonymous with the gradual, step-by-step approach to resolving one of the world’s most difficult conflicts. In the years since 1967 the emphasis in Washington has shifted from the spelling out of the ingredients of ‘peace’ to the ‘process’ of getting there.” [from Wikipedia: Peace process: American diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1967. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution and University of California Press].

    Once again since the mid-1960s, newspapers and TV channels are filled with facts and subjective commentaries about the Middle East Peace Process and the prospects for peace. We’ve heard about this process for decades with some successes but a lot more of “marking time or major setbacks.” Many blame a failure of the parties to communicate. The “failure to communicate,” though, is not the problem.

    The various factions involved in or concerned about bringing peace to the region know well what the other protagonists want. The problem is that no one really wants to give in to what the others want, because it would impinge on what they strategically want to achieve from the peace negotiation process. This process has been going on for decades and now there are institutions and their leaders who actually benefit not from peace success but from stalemating the peace process. Nevertheless, each US President tries to broker a peace agreement in the volatile Middle East and each time the process ends with assassinations, conflict and stalemate.

    In the meantime, a few thousand miles away, the US military is engaged one way or another in wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan. US combat operations have allegedly come to a recent halt (though about 50,000 troops remain in the country and we do have an unusually huge embassy complex there). As for the war in Afghanistan, it is heating up and US troops are increasingly in harms way, as the weekly fatality count shows.

    This map speaks for itself

    So, my question is this: if successive US political administrations, both Democrat and Republican (liberal and conservative), agree on fostering peace negotiations in the Middle East and view negotiation among enemies as a good thing, why is a peace process not viewed as a useful path toward bringing peace to southwest Asia and especially to Afghanistan?

    If we feel so committed and confident that we can bring about peace is such a troubled region as the Middle East, why not show that very same level of commitment to our own peace process to get US troops out of Afghanistan? As the adage goes, “what is good for the goose should also be good for the gander,” no?

  • ”Dreaming the Impossible Dream: Swords into Plowshares (and other economic development tools).” DAY 6 thoughts at COP 15. Mickey Glantz December 17, 2009

    {NOTE to the Reader to avoid misinterpretation: The Following editorial is about money and military expenditures for maintaining armies and for fighting wars or staying in power. The US started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and have put at least $1 trillion into the effort. Could those funds have been used for development purposes both in the USA and in the developing world? If there were no wars and the militaries around the globe could reduce their budgets because of a reduction in conflict (at present terrorism is seen as the major threat to government; also dictators maintain their military establishments to stay in power [the list of these is long and we all know who they are!]), governments worldwide could turn attention and funds to economic development activities with substantial funds available to do so. That is the spirit in which the following is written}.

    On the way to COP 15 at the Bella Convention Center in Copenhagen one morning, I got to thinking about both the COP 15 official UN-sponsored conference and the KlimaForum09, the public’s climate change conference. That led me to wonder about a missing element in the conferences: There was no hint anywhere of the United Nations’ basic unofficial slogan and underlying theme “Beating swords into plowshares.” Yet everyone these days is referring to climate change as a security issue.

    Just about every country in the world provides a relatively large portion of its national budgets to its military establishment. Worldwide military expenditures have been estimated at $1.1 trillion around 2005. An estimated $500 billion was from the rest of the world while the US expenditure was about $600 billion. That is just the cost to maintain the military establishments. It does not include the cost of a hot war (for example, the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to the United States has been estimated to date at more than $1 trillion).

    We have learned from previous war efforts that there seldom is a “peace dividend”, that is, when a war ends, the funds used for the war are never available for peace-building activities.

    Developing countries demand that industrialized countries (e.g., the rich countries) pay hundreds of billions of dollars annually into the future to cope with a changing climate due to the emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases since the mid-1700s. The demands are based on the claim that the developing countries are the victims. The demands are made in the midst of a major financial worldwide meltdown.

    The US has already spent (officially) $1 trillion on its Central Asian wars; the costs will surely rise. What if those wars were to be brought to an abrupt end and the equivalent amount of the war funds could be diverted to help developing countries successfully prepare for and cope with climate change?

    However, the fact is the US and other countries are currently besieged by terrorism. For national security they –build (or create) super-sized military establishments compared to the size of their national budgets. In the absence of threats, military establishments could in theory at least be reduced and development activities increased. So, how about considering the following scenario to fund developing country programs and projects in the face of a changing climate: Governments that support terrorist groups (morally, politically or financially) must stop terrorists from operating within their borders. If this were done funds could be transferred from the anti-terrorist hot conflicts to activities that develop their countries economically. This would constitute a “peace dividend”.

    Because governments continue to support terrorist groups, funding from rich countries will continue to flow to fight terrorists and not to development. It is ludicrous that several governments that are members of the “Group of 77 + China” (this is the largest group of developing states in the United Nations. There are now 130 members) demand large sums of financial support to cope with climate change causes and consequences, while at the same time some of these countries are supporting terrorist groups whose hostile activities requires large sums of money to combat. For example, the Sudanese representative speaking for the “Group of 77 and China” to the COP 15 climate negotiations demands $200 billion for developing countries while his government supports terrorism. Sudanese representative to the Group of 77 Lumumba Dia-ping stated the demand in the following way: “You approve billions of dollars in defense budgets. Can’t you approve 200 billion dollars to save the world?”

    Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe addressed COP 15, challenging the industrialized “North” to provide more climate change related funds to developing countries. Is he the best spokesperson for more funds, because his human rights record in his country in abyssmal.

    Governments must begin to consider scenarios centered on “beating swords in to plowshares” as a way to provide the community of nations with a tangible peace dividend. Not only should they pursue equity among states in the international community but should pursue equity within their own borders as well. Not to work toward a ‘peace dividend’ scenario means business as usual, that is, hot wars, large military establishments worldwide, not to mention a thriving international arms trade. Does the slogan “Give Peace a Chance” ring a bell?
    John Lennon singing \”Give Peace a Chance\”

  • A Note to President OBAMA (and NATO) from the ghost of Ogden Nash: get troops out of Afghanistan NOW. Why wait?

    America honored Nash. Obama should listen to his brevity to make a point.
    America honored Nash. Obama should listen to his brevity to make a point.
    Decades ago American humorist, Ogden Nash, once wrote the shortest poem ever, “Fleas”. It read like this:
    “Adam had ’em.”

    The picture he painted was quite clear, and in only three words plus a title. To be sure he could have written a much longer poem to make his point on the topic of fleas but he “cut to the quick”, as they say.

    So, inspired by Nash, I want to see if I can do the same, that is, cut to the quick about a military conflict and policy in a region that history has shown for a millennium or two cannot succeed, the war in Afghanistan. All of the pro and con arguments we listen to each day about how to win this war, does little to save the life of one soldier or of one non-combattant life (the military dismisses being killed by ‘friendly fire’ by accident as colateral damage) on the ground.

    So, my essay is in the tradition of Ogden Nash’s work (with apologies to him) is as follows:

    Advice to President Obama on the Afghanistan Situation:

    “When the military cure is more damaging that the illness, end the cure.” Alternatively, a poem might read as,

    “As there are many roads to Rome,
    I propose you bring the troops back home
    and seek yet another way
    for you to have your say.”

    Do not continue the follies of the Bush era. What you are now doing isn’t working. And besides, we are generating more enemies than we are finding. Give withdrawal a chance”.

  • “End Run Wars” are not only for the weak, OR Know your enemies before you act!

    Mickey Glantz in Tokyo

    22 May 2009

    “End Run Wars” are not only for the weak, OR Know your enemies before you act!

    When I was in graduate school back in the second half of the 1960s, the heart of the Cold War rivalry between the USA and the USSR, I took several classes on conflict. The conflicts that captured my attention were hot conflicts, wars particularly, and especially revolutionary wars. Such wars at that time were being carried out by political, cultural or ideological groups wanting to gain independence from the control of a larger hegemon whom they felt did not care for the well being of the people they claimed to represent.

    At that time certain books were fairly prominent, but at least to a graduate student the writings of his or her professor took on an added value (such as higher grades for citing their works in an essay exam in addition to the value of the usable information within the books). One title that I recall that had a lasting influence on me apparently was a book by Dr. Robert Strausz-Hupe entitled “Protracted Conflict”. I recently perused the book in order to see if more than the title was still relevant to an enhanced understanding of today’s post Cold War conflicts. Many of the writings before 2000 seem to be lost among young researchers today as they were written “in the last century” and there is a feeling (I suffer from it too) that if the publication was not done after the turn of the millennium than there must be better, more current and more relevant stuff written today. Of course this is a dumb assumption, given that by now we are likely to be reading the latest book’s summaries of summaries of original works. In other words, as a result of this process we are highly likely to be losing information, as each summarizer is like a filter that sifts out what he or she feels is relevant for access by future readers.

    The truth is that I did not re-read “Protracted Conflict” closely but I felt it did not really have a lot of direct relevance to an improved understanding of today’s conflicts, like the ones in Iraq and in Afghanistan. So, I went to the Internet to search for a definition of a concept I heard somewhere in those Dark Ages of graduate school. The concept — an end run war — has been popping into my mind of late, and I am not sure why. So today, in a Tokyo Starbuck’s I could not find commentary on end run wars. So, now I have to wing it (lest I be forced, oh no!!! to go to a gasp, real library and do old-fashioned search).

    As I recall the concept of an end run war, it was a war started by a weaker power who perceived that the stronger power was involved in some sort of quagmire — political, financial, military — and that it would be a good time to attack in order to gain some long sought after gain. That is what I recall as being an end run war. While perhaps successful at the outset, over time the weaker power tends to show up as just that, weaker, and the early gains on the battlefield are reversed as the major power regains its focus and rallies to pushback, if not overrun, the weaker power that attacked it.

    Fast forward now to the present: Looking back at the origins of the Bush invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the attempt to topple Saddam Hussein from power, one could argue that the US-Iraq war was an end run war precipitated by a strong power in the belief that the weaker power would collapse. All signs looked that way as US troops (or the troops of the so-called “coalition of the willing”) made their way so quickly to Baghdad with little military opposition. It appeared and was presented to the public that Hussein’s army had collapsed in short order. Of course, that led to the premature disastrous and embarrassing ‘photo-opportunity’ by President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” staged event on a US carrier. And then the real war began. The infusion of foreign fighters joining Al-Queda, local dissidents, abandoned army and police members, rivaling ethnic groups caused a military backlash against the allies that converted what seemed like a quick-victory end run war and into a 6-year nightmare for the US President, his administration, the Republican Party (and fellow-traveling Democrats) and the American and Iraqi people.

    Now we have a new president, He has inherited the falling out of the worst outcomes of what was to have been a successful end run war. While the war effort in Iraq winds down and the US government tries to put a happy face on it as it prepares to leave in the next couple years, that smiley face will begin to frown as the US troops are not sent home to American soil but into harm’s way in Afghanistan to fight the growing number of Taliban who in the last few months have spilled into neighboring parts of Pakistan. The region is in turmoil with Iran emerging as a regional superpower, Iraq unstable and a war in Afghanistan that is increasingly intractable.

    It seems that end run wars regardless of whether weak attack strong or strong attacks weak, victory is not so assured for the perpetrators. Wars as we now are reminded are often easier to start than to finish. The escalating engagement in Afghanistan will be no different.

  • “End Run Wars” are not only for the weak, OR Know your enemies before you act!

    Mickey Glantz in Tokyo

    22 May 2009

    “End Run Wars” are not only for the weak, OR Know your enemies before you act!

    When I was in graduate school back in the second half of the 1960s, the heart of the Cold War rivalry between the USA and the USSR, I took several classes on conflict. The conflicts that captured my attention were hot conflicts, wars particularly, and especially revolutionary wars. Such wars at that time were being carried out by political, cultural or ideological groups wanting to gain independence from the control of a larger hegemon whom they felt did not care for the well being of the people they claimed to represent.

    At that time certain books were fairly prominent, but at least to a graduate student the writings of his or her professor took on an added value (such as higher grades for citing their works in an essay exam in addition to the value of the usable information within the books). One title that I recall that had a lasting influence on me apparently was a book by Dr. Robert Strausz-Hupe entitled “Protracted Conflict”. I recently perused the book in order to see if more than the title was still relevant to an enhanced understanding of today’s post Cold War conflicts. Many of the writings before 2000 seem to be lost among young researchers today as they were written “in the last century” and there is a feeling (I suffer from it too) that if the publication was not done after the turn of the millennium than there must be better, more current and more relevant stuff written today. Of course this is a dumb assumption, given that by now we are likely to be reading the latest book’s summaries of summaries of original works. In other words, as a result of this process we are highly likely to be losing information, as each summarizer is like a filter that sifts out what he or she feels is relevant for access by future readers.

    The truth is that I did not re-read “Protracted Conflict” closely but I felt it did not really have a lot of direct relevance to an improved understanding of today’s conflicts, like the ones in Iraq and in Afghanistan. So, I went to the Internet to search for a definition of a concept I heard somewhere in those Dark Ages of graduate school. The concept — an end run war — has been popping into my mind of late, and I am not sure why. So today, in a Tokyo Starbuck’s I could not find commentary on end run wars. So, now I have to wing it (lest I be forced, oh no!!! to go to a gasp, real library and do old-fashioned search).

    As I recall the concept of an end run war, it was a war started by a weaker power who perceived that the stronger power was involved in some sort of quagmire — political, financial, military — and that it would be a good time to attack in order to gain some long sought after gain. That is what I recall as being an end run war. While perhaps successful at the outset, over time the weaker power tends to show up as just that, weaker, and the early gains on the battlefield are reversed as the major power regains its focus and rallies to pushback, if not overrun, the weaker power that attacked it.

    Fast forward now to the present: Looking back at the origins of the Bush invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the attempt to topple Saddam Hussein from power, one could argue that the US-Iraq war was an end run war precipitated by a strong power in the belief that the weaker power would collapse. All signs looked that way as US troops (or the troops of the so-called “coalition of the willing”) made their way so quickly to Baghdad with little military opposition. It appeared and was presented to the public that Hussein’s army had collapsed in short order. Of course, that led to the premature disastrous and embarrassing ‘photo-opportunity’ by President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” staged event on a US carrier. And then the real war began. The infusion of foreign fighters joining Al-Queda, local dissidents, abandoned army and police members, rivaling ethnic groups caused a military backlash against the allies that converted what seemed like a quick-victory end run war and into a 6-year nightmare for the US President, his administration, the Republican Party (and fellow-traveling Democrats) and the American and Iraqi people.

    Now we have a new president, He has inherited the falling out of the worst outcomes of what was to have been a successful end run war. While the war effort in Iraq winds down and the US government tries to put a happy face on it as it prepares to leave in the next couple years, that smiley face will begin to frown as the US troops are not sent home to American soil but into harm’s way in Afghanistan to fight the growing number of Taliban who in the last few months have spilled into neighboring parts of Pakistan. The region is in turmoil with Iran emerging as a regional superpower, Iraq unstable and a war in Afghanistan that is increasingly intractable.

    It seems that end run wars regardless of whether weak attack strong or strong attacks weak, victory is not so assured for the perpetrators. Wars as we now are reminded are often easier to start than to finish. The escalating engagement in Afghanistan will be no different.