I am far from being an expert on foreign policy but I have read and seen enough to form an opinion or two. This entry is motivated by the Michael Barone’s article published by The Examiner this Sunday 20 and by the last debate between Pat Buchanan and Lawrence O’Donnell in Hardball this Monday.
In short, Barone advocates for a defense policy spending that can make Lockheed Martin happy even if it is useless to deter North Korea and Iran, the convenient bogeymen of the Republican Right’s approach. On the other hand, Buchanan explains us why Central Americans should be grateful for us supporting their strongmen and for us making them feel the hardness of our foot, leaving them between two insufferable options: populist socialists or ultraconservative alliances between traditional rich families and the military to exclude the low-born.
First, Barone (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...) popped out this Sunday with an article about Obama’s foreign policy. I immediately posted an answer in The Examiner’s Web page in the following terms:
"Mr. Barone. Today is not April's fool. Every serious national security analyst recommends talking to Russia to secure the nuclear heads of the former Soviet Union from ending up in out of control rogue hands not linked to any particular country; North Korea and Iran has no real capability of reaching the United States and, beyond the theatrics, they know what would happen to them if they could and dared; majestic anti-missile systems could better secure Lockheed Martin’s cash inflow than protect America against real threats, especially in a time when, due to the flaws of the previous administration, a particularly difficult recession has coincided with financial and structural challenges ahead, like our dependency on oil to secure energy; Obama has given the defense budget a profile adjusted to the real kind of threats we will face, unconventional war, without falling in paranoid and unrealistic scenarios; Obama’s policy in favor of a Palestinian state, despite Netanyahu’s expected hard position, is a step in the right direction to take this flag from the hands of Middle East extremists; the ban against Mexican trucks is a violation of Nafta as old as Nafta itself; the free-trade agreement with Colombia, different from the free-trade agreement with Peru, was temporarily opposed by Obama due to objections to the way the Colombian government had dealt with the assassination of Colombian union leaders; the Cuba affair is a step in the right direction if you compare what economic development has made for former socialist political systems like Vietnam but to reduce Obama’s approach to Latin America to Cuba is unfair as the President is conscious of China’s intentions to close relations with that part of the continent for the same reasons it sided with Sudan in Africa: raw materials; it may be also unfair to criticize the tariff on Brazilian sugar ethanol without arguments rooted in a sound alternative energy policy."
I didn’t mention, though, one important issue, Pakistan, even though Barone stated that Barone was continuing Bush’s policy. Holbrooke answers to Fareed Zakaria’s smart questions [http://www.cnn.com/.... Nowadays, actually Zakaria’s is the only one show in CNN I would recommend] indicate something very different: helping Pakistan release resources from its Eastern border with India, to which the Pakistani military considers the main threat to its country, and counterinsurgency training. That’s not enough but is a beginning. Anyway, even though it is still too early to see effects, I expect Obama do not continue Bush’s policies of neglecting attacks like the one in Tora Bora when bin Laden still was there just for rushing to liberate the Iraqi oil fields for American companies (a.k.a. "liberating Iraq"), then short-sighting the Afghan problem into strictly military terms, and finally giving blank checks to the Pakistani military in exchange of periodically humiliating Pervez Mucharraf before American television, and then turning a blind eye to everything else, including the Pakistani intelligence service ties to the Taliban and the Taliban’s penetration in the Pakistani Western tribes is something I wouldn’t like Obama to repeat.
Then, visiting Zacaria’s Web page in CNN, I happened to post an answer to his weekly question, which this time was whether I considered the Pakistani situation required "dramatic action" from our side. The following is the question I posted in his Web page:
"Dear Fareed:
My answer to the question is yes but, of course, it depends on what kind of "dramatic action" we have in mind. In your interview with Holbrooke two important ways of taking action were mentioned: sending a hopefully international force to cushion between Pakistan and India so helping the Pakistani army to divert resources to the Western areas, where the Taliban has spread (into the Valley of Swat and the Punjab), and counterinsurgency training. In the short term you can score tactical victories against insurgencies with good intelligence and Special Forces but without a political solution, the strategic victory of the insurgency is just a matter of time.
We have to understand that insurgencies are not any more like the one in the Philippines during the McKinley administration. That’s why there is not even one case in the whole XX Century in which regular armies have defeated insurgencies doing what regular armies do. The British army used unconventional tactics during the Malayan Emergency; the Peruvians beat the Shining Path with an excellent work of intelligence after correcting the mistakes of the military that had alienated the Andean population for almost a decade. On the other hand, the military approach only destroyed the political system of the post-colonial Africa and consolidated the ultraconservative ruling class that also destroyed the hopes of democracy in most of those countries, not matter the condescending opinions of Buchanan and Barone with respect to those countries.
Thus, in the long-run, in Pakistan like in those other countries, the political solutions pass through admitting our mistakes, like in the case of Mossadeq, helping them develop markets and improve education, and admitting that there’s not one kind of democracy for "them", made of purple fingers, typical dishes, typical dances and strongmen and other for us, made of markets, debates, education and institutions.
Fareed, great program.
Alfredo M. Bravo de Rueda E.
Gaithersburg, Maryland"
Then I saw that the case of Iran should have required a few more words, the case in which our short-sighting led to a coup against Mossadeq, leaving the path free for Khomeini. Anyway, for a short answer with respect to the case of Iran, let me put a link to an old entry: "Nelson Marans’s wisdom made me burn my books:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
About counterinsurgency, you can see "Ambrose’s war on knowledge or applying to be The Onion’s first columnist" (http://www.dailykos.com/...), parts I. III and VI, especially part III.
Then on Monday I could see Pat Buchanan debating Lawrence O’Donnell in Hardball (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...). Buchanan decried Obama’s approach to Castro and Chavez without assuming a bully attitude ("not defending his country" in his words), to which O’Donnell reminded him that Nixon, of whose administration Buchanan was part of, gave Brezhnev a car despite him invading Czechoslovakia, not to mention his brilliant approach to China (tarnished though by his poor approach to South America). Then, when Buchanan tried to use the childish attack of the handshake with Chavez, of which he later blame Ortega, O’Donnell reminded him the warm photos of Bush and Saddam and stated the enormous differences between Saddam and Chavez. As I mentioned before, it is not only important to get closer to Latin America before China does, as it has done in African countries like Sudan, but it is also important to admit that the embargos have not worked. Markets and development made for Vietnam more than any embargo could have done and those same factors will, sooner or later, unleash democratic demands in China. Then, Buchanan spoke about what a free and promising Cuba was before Fidel Castro, to which, O’Donnell reminded Buchanan how wonderful Cuba was during the Batista administration for the honor or having our organized crime, bordellos and casinos. At that point, Buchanan blamed Cubans for not getting rid of Batista.
Finally, Pat Buchanan tried to defend the indefensible Reagan’s policy in Central America of supporting military strongmen and feudal economies led by traditional rich families, proud of living as far as possible from a disenfranchised population excluded from modern education and markets. Those ungrateful Central Americans, not thanking us for Rios Montt, Trujillo, Somoza and other alumni of the School of the Americas. At that point Buchanan just could have said that Uzbekistan was democratic because it was part of the Coalition of the Willing. Of course, in other occasions Buchanan has also defended using torture, under other names or not, in the firm belief that the most effective way to bring peace to the international scenario of the Third World is to make terrorists fear our military and the population fear our boot, and then making them dance traditional dances for our amusement before sending them to get their fingers purpled in that ceremony called "democracy" despite not counting with the markets and educational minimum standards that could make of elections something different from a parody of democracy. How well has it worked for us so far?