Sep

8

Should we be worried about Malaysia?

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Map of Peninsular Malaysia and East Malaysia (...Image via Wikipedia

There seems to be a pattern of troubling connections between Anwar Ibrahim, the rising politician who is seeking to unseat the ruling party, and terrorists.  The World Assembly of Muslim Youth and the International Institute of Islamic Thought are just two examples.  And then there is the prospect of Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS) as a defining part of a Malaysian ruling coalition.

One of the first things that Anwar did after being released from prison in 2005 was attend meetings in Turkey with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his advisor Ahmet Davatoglu at the behest of their Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or AKP). Anwar’s pro-Malay, Islamacist rhetoric has been previously covered here, but relationships with like-minded individuals must be noted as well. Only a month ago, Erdogan and the AKP vary narrowly avoided dissolution in a split-vote constitutional court ruling that found that Turkish secularist principles had not been violated.

But secularists within Turkey remain unconvinced.

In spite of Turkey’s strides towards westernization and the possibility of EU membership, the AKP is a protagonist of ethnic and religious derision. Erogan’s advisor, Ahmet Davutoglu provides a basis for this concern as a concept of governance. Davutglu writes: “The world is composed of cultural blocs, and Turkey falls into the ‘Muslim bloc.’”

From the US perspective, Turkey under Erdogan has proven to be a difficult strategic partner in the war on terror. Does the condition of the US relationship with Turkey foreshadow a decline in the US-Malaysia relationship under Anwar?

We already know that Anwar perceives Malaysia to fall within the “Muslim bloc.”  And so, in the context of the war on terror, the US must question what ground will be lost as Anwar pushes Malaysia closer to Sharia and farther from the West.

So I ask: should we be worried?

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May

17

Where Are The Realists?

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Quote worth thinking about from Ross Douthat:

The vacuum that Paul [Congressman and Presidential candidate Ron Paul] currently occupies is supposed to be filled by an internationally-minded realism. Indeed, it’s precisely the coexistence of realism and idealism in Republican foreign policy, the fruitful tension between the two strains of thought, that has long made the GOP the party to be trusted in international relations - because the idealists elevate the realists, and the realists keep the idealists grounded. When the pendulum swings too far in one direction or another, this tension has usually produced a correction, of the kind that, say, the original neocons and then Reagan provided to the cynical machtpolitik of Kissinger. But there’s no sign of a realist corrective in the current GOP field: There were ten candidates on that stage besides Ron Paul yesterday night, and not one of them was willing to call the Iraq War a mistake, which seems to me like the place that a serious realist critique of his Presidency’s foreign policy needs to begin.

I am not sure I agree with the last sentence, but I think he is spot on when it comes to the tension between realism and idealism in American foreign policy. The party that seems to capture the right mix is the one that captures the country’s imagination.

Jul

14

War and Rumors of War

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***More politics. Book content coming as well. Cross posted to RedState.***

To partially borrow a facile and silly phrase from a bumper sticker, if recent events in the Middle East don’t make you nervous you’re not paying attention.

Who among us feels comfortable with the possibility of a regional war in the Middle East? Who doesn’t worry that it might spill out or cascade into something different? We are talking about the potential use of nuclear and chemical weapons. Do the leaders of Syria and Iran strike you as reasonable?

There will be, and already have been, a lot of calls for nuance, moderation, restraint, and every other kind of diplo-speak. As a a student of foreign policy and international relations I understand and can, in some cases, respect this response.

And I know there are people with legitimate concerns about the impact of Israel’s actions on the development of democracy in Lebanon and the wider War on Terror.

But let me just say this: I support Israel. Period. Full stop. End of story.

For more, see below.

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Dec

6

Noble Cause

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Great article over at TNR on Lincoln and the war in Iraq. The author compares the aims and outcomes of the Civil War and the war in Iraq. Well worth a read. Here is the conclusion:

Two-and-a-half years ago, our armed forces set out to fight a small war with a small objective. Today we find ourselves in a larger war with a larger and vastly better purpose. It would be one of history’s sadder ironies were we to turn away because that better purpose is not the one we set out to achieve. Either we fight the fight our enemies have chosen until they are defeated or (better still) dead, or millions of Muslim men and women may lose their “last, best hope”–and we may face a mushroom cloud over Manhattan, the work of one of the many Mohamed Attas that Middle Eastern autocracies have bred over the last generation. The choice belongs not to the president alone, but to all of us. Here’s hoping we choose as wisely as Lincoln’s generation did.

Jun

29

Why I supported the War in Iraq in a nutshell

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From the NRO Media Blog:

Osama bin Laden hated the United States because of the presence of our military in Saudi Arabia — a presence necessitated by the brutal, expansionist nature of the dictator next door. Military bases in Saudi Arabia, economic sanctions against Iraq and enforcement of the no-fly zones were all part of an Iraq policy that failed us on September 11. After 9/11, we had two choices to remedy that failed policy: disengage from Iraq and leave Saddam free to develop weapons, massacre the Kurds and the Shiites, and attack his neighbors; or undertake efforts to change the regime, a goal of U.S. policy since the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act.

Oct

28

Questions for Kerry

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Great article over at The New Republic by editor-in-chief Martin Peretz entitled QUESTIONS FOR JOHN KERRY. Us and Them. Please read the whole thing but here are a few choice quotes:

How would John Kerry have dealt with Saddam? He has told us Saddam needed to be “confronted.” But the word itself–which implies that the United States could have overthrown Saddam without using military force–tells us what we need to know. Had the United States and our allies not embarked on this war, the Iraqi mass murderer would still be in power. And, were international sanctions gone, as they soon would have been thanks to Russia and France, he would have been on his way back to having and deploying weapons of mass destruction. And the senator from Massachusetts would not have raised his voice.
[ . . .]

When I listen to John Kerry speak about the United Nations, I recall myself in a grade-school classroom in New York 55 years ago. At the front was hung a banner with a map of the Earth on a pale blue cloth–the organization’s flag. The legend underneath reads, the world’s last best hope. This would now be a macabre joke. The United Nations is bloated and corrupt, and its putrescence extends to the secretary-general’s very family and his inner office. Were its headquarters located in Lagos or Beijing, it would disappear because no one would come.

John Kerry speaks, not unfairly, of George W. Bush’s habits of denial. But Kerry himself is in denial. He is in denial about the United Nations. He is in denial about the Australian election that returned to office for an unprecedented fourth term its prime minister who has been, with his country, a pillar of the Iraq coalition. He is in denial about Japan, whose government, unlike Germany’s and France’s, does not carp at the United States. He is in denial about Afghanistan, where, for the first time in history, men and women, riding on donkeys and walking barefoot across great distances, have exercised the right to choose those who govern them. He is in denial about Iraq itself. The Jordanian daily Al Ra’i recently called Moqtada Al Sadr’s apparent retreat from armed struggle “a farewell to arms” that is as politically significant as the establishment of the provisional authority. Has Kerry come close to recognizing this? Has he acknowledged that the Bush administration has negotiated with NATO a plan to send, starting in November, up to 3,000 soldiers to train Iraqi troops? These soldiers will be under the command of General David Petraeus, who is mustering the military might and political will to retake much of the Sunni triangle. Many Iraqis now have second thoughts about opposing the coalition. Even the BBC has said as much. But Kerry hasn’t.

Oct

20

Plans to Win the Peace or The Endgame Game

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One of the more pointed criticisms of the war in Iraq has been that the administration didn’t have a plan to “win the peace.” I don’t want to get into all of the technical and tactical issues involved in this critique, as there are arguable issues to be debated. I don’t feel like I have the requisite knowledge to sort many of them out, but smarter people than me remain convinced that there were things that should have been done that would have resulted in us being in a better strategic position than we are now. I am not so sure any of these amounts to more than regrettable tactical errors but I will leave that to the experts.

What I want to point out is that many of the critics of our action in Iraq who use this line had no plan to bring peace to the region in the first place. There are hosts of people who loudly proclaim that the result of toppling Saddam has been chaos and insurgency but who never mention the fact that the status quo was untenable in the long term. The New York Times, John Kerry, and the anti-war folks are constantly harping on how sanctions were working, that Saddam was in a box, there were no WMDs, etc. The problem is that sanctions and “containment” were simply not a long-term solution unless you could trust Saddam to reform.

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Oct

18

The International Global Truth Standard Test?

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Long time readers of this blog will know that William Saletan often infuriates me with his shrill attacks on the President. What bugs me is not that he disagrees with me or with President Bush but his tendency towards sophism and emotional diatribes. He is constantly building constructs that show Bush is not only wrong but dangerously and delusionally wrong. Out of this comes a righteous indignation and petulance that just gets under my nerves.

Well, he is up to it once again. This time it centers on the issue of the so called Global Test. When Kerry made the Global Test remark initially Saletan argued that it wasn’t so much giving a veto to foreign governments, which Kerry explicitly denied, but rather a simply standard of evidence for Americans and others to judge our actions. Saletan also critiqued Bush for using the terms “the President” and “the Oval Office” claiming that Bush is refusing to be held accountable by American citizens. In this way the Global Test simply means that Kerry will lay out his evidence and reasoning to the public in a convincing manner before taking military action.

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Apr

7

Iraq as Vietnam

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With all this Iraq as Vietnam discussion stirred up by Ted Kennedy, shouldn’t someone mention that Ted’s brother and his successor (both Democrats) started the debacle in question? Was big bad Lyndon Johnson - the man, BTW, who pushed the biggest chunk of civil rights legislation through congress - the only one doing the deceiving here, or did the immortal JFK (not the current presidential candidate) deceive the American public too? When exactly did that quagmire start? Do the D’s ever admit they botched Vietnam? How about a little honesty, and some historical perspective Ted?

Just askin . . .

Mar

18

Allies Uber Alles?

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The presidential campaign has heated up of late despite the fact the election is almost eight months away. See this Washington Post article on the back and forth between Senator Kerry and Vice President Cheney for some juicy examples.

But since I seem to be on a Iraq theme this week, let me make a point about something that baffles me. Why does Kerry and other D’s keep harping on this issue of allies? I understand they think it is a useful tool for partisan advantage - although I think its vagueness dulls the point - but I fail to see the strategic point. Here is a quote from Kerry:

If we had built a true coalition, those troops would not have to fight almost alone, and Americans would not have to bear, almost alone, all of the costs in Iraq.

What really bugs me is the assumption that Kerry could somehow bring these countries on board. But he never explains exactly how he is going to do this. I recommend that everyone go out and buy a copy of Robert Kagan’s excellent Of Paradise and Power. This book clearly lays out how American and Europe have totally different worldviews when it comes to Foreign Policy. It outlines how our different histories, different cultures, and different levels of power lead us to clash when it comes to international relations.

I have yet to see a refutation of Kagan’s thesis and I think any intelligent discussion of our relations with Europe need to take his ideas into account. Furthermore, it seems to me that the Democrats belief in the possibility of building a coalition that includes France and Germany is built on a false belief that the relative unity of the Cold War can continue. France and Germany were unequivocally opposed to military action in Iraq. Heck, they were working to undermine the sanctions regime that was supposedly containing Saddam. So how exactly does Kerry think he is going to convince these countries that are diametrically opposed to our policies to join us in carrying out those policies?

This is part and parcel of Kerry’s rhetoric. He wants it both ways. He wants to appear tough on terrorism and a viable commander in chief and yet he is unwilling to back that up with clear commitments. He wants to attack Bush on Iraq but he can’t communicate a viable alternative. At least those flat out against the war had a clear and consistent position. Kerry jumps around trying to decry the way Bush carried out the war and yet still support the result if it turns out well.

Because of this, Cheney’s criticisms are dead on. Kerry’s votes don’t make any sense unless they come from a politician trying to straddle the fence. Cheney nails Kerry for a lack of clarity:

Cheney cited Kerry’s vote against authorizing President George H.W. Bush to start the Persian Gulf War of 1991, which ended Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait, but later referred to the countries that joined the United States as a “strong coalition.” Kerry voted for the 2002 resolution authorizing the second Iraq war, but against an $87 billion funding request for operations there and in Afghanistan. Cheney also ridiculed Kerry’s statement Tuesday in West Virginia, when Kerry said, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion, before I voted against it.” The vice president said, “Whatever the explanation, whatever nuances he might fault us for neglecting, it is not an impressive record for someone who aspires to become commander in chief in this time of testing for our country.”

The bald fact of the matter is that Kerry has no clear foreign policy ideas - other than a comittment to more allies - and he has shown a compete lack of consistency when it comes to taking action. The VP is right, we simply can’t afford to have Kerry at the helm in these difficult times.

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