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Showing posts with label Bush. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bush. Show all posts

Thursday, June 1, 2023

The New World (Dis)order: PART II: The Misunderstanding of Vladimir Putin


(Image: Wallpaperflare dotcom)

NOTE: This is the second in a five part series.

PART I: American Adventurism, Non-Interventionism, Trumpism and Afghan Chaos
PART II: The Misunderstanding of Vladimir Putin
PART III: China Awakens Under Xi Jinping
PART IV: Crony Capitalism and the West’s Achilles Heel
PART V (
November): The New World (Dis)order


PART II: The Misunderstanding of Vladimir Putin


To anyone who would consider interfering from the outside: If you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history. All relevant decisions have been taken. I hope you hear me.”

-Vladimir Putin, 24th February 2022


In February, 2014 after three months of violent and sustained demonstrations in Ukraine, their Russian-leaning President Victor Yanukovych fled Kyiv. The Ukrainian parliament appointed an acting president and prime minister who immediately announced they wanted to bring the country closer to Europe and further away from Russia.


Fearing the Arab Spring could arrive at Moscow’s doorstep and banking on Mr. Obama’s non-interventionism, Mr. Putin invaded Crimea, days after Mr. Yanukovych fled. There is an argument to be made that his decision to annex Crimea was driven less by a desire to rewrite history and more as a strategic maneuver to ensure Russia’s Black Sea Fleet would not get evicted from its base in Sevastopol, as Ukraine drew closer to Europe.


However, regardless of his motivations, what is laughable is Mr. Putin’s claims that Crimea has always been a part of Russia, and that he was liberating its ethnic Russian population. Records in Russian government archives show that Crimea was transferred to Ukraine in 1954, under Stalin, and in 1991 Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly in favour of independence from the Soviet Union.


At the time Mr. Obama condemned the Russian aggression in Crimea but insisted that the country was a "regional power” and said that Mr. Putin’s actions were a sign of weakness, not strength. He said the US remained committed to defending NATO allies but non-members, like Ukraine, could only count on non-military pressure and sanctions to dissuade Russia from making further territorial encroachments.


Again, Obama rejected the recommendations of his national security advisors and overruled Congress when they tried to send lethal military aid to Ukraine. A senior Obama administration official said that they did not want to “provoke Russia”. 


Unlike after Putin’s invasion of Georgia, this time the international community did impose economic sanctions and target members of Putin’s inner circle. Vice-president Biden vowed the sanctions would leave Russia standing "naked before the world”.


There is no question that the sanctions that were imposed after Putin’s invasion of Crimea hurt Russia’s economy. However, it is hard to pinpoint the direct impact they had because Russia retaliated by issuing a ban on food imports from Western nations, which contributed to rising food prices and inflation at home. Also, a drop in oil prices that occurred around the same time, put downward pressure on the Rouble. The combined effect of sanctions and these events helped exacerbate underlying weaknesses in the Russian economy.


The more important thing that happened is that Mr. Putin took on the post-Crimea sanctions as a challenge and decided to enact measures that would make the Russian economy less reliant on the West and sanction-proof in the future. 


Russia grew its foreign currency reserves to $631 billion, the fourth largest in the world. They adopted a new fiscal policy, cutting expenses to enable greater financial stability and withstand future volatility. They created their own payment system, in the event the West blocked them from SWIFT. They invested in homegrown food production to become self-reliant and far less dependent on imports from the West. 


All these measures should have been a clear indication to the West that Mr. Putin’s territorial ambitions were far from satiated. Also, Mr. Putin believed he held the ultimate trump card - he supplied 40% of Europe’s energy and the Georgian and Crimean invasions had not deterred Europe’s thirst for Russian oil.


From Putin’s perspective, it was a victory. The post-Crimea sanctions caused pain, but they did not cripple Russia or leave her standing "naked before the world”. If we reviewed his tally sheet, we would see that he achieved his goals in Georgia, annexed Crimea without a shot being fired and occupied the Donbas with scant resistance and with no consequences from NATO or the US. In addition, his popularity soared back home with the majority of Russians supporting the annexation of Crimea.


On the heels of his annexation and illegal occupation of Crimea, confident the U.S. would again not intervene militarily, an emboldened Putin sent Russian troops to Syria in 2015. It was Russia's intervention that made the difference and helped turned the tide in favour of Assad’s regime. 


Obama’s non-intervention in Syria had given Mr. Putin an opportunity to get a foothold in the Middle East. This was something Russia had wanted since the end of the Cold War, and now they were able to do it while sidelining America.


The fact is that every post-Cold War US President has underestimated Mr. Putin and failed to understand his motivations. A fundamental miscalculation of successive administrations is that unlike in democracies, where we think in four or five year terms, autocrats play the long game and plan their moves over decades, not over election cycles.

 

In 2001, Bush famously said that he had looked in Putin’s eyes and had,“seen his soul” and found him to be “very straightforward and trustworthy”. Bush was partly right because in 2008, Putin told Bush in a straightforward way during a one-on-one meeting that Ukraine was not a real country, a comment the US President laughed off.


President Obama, like his predecessor, believed he could tame Mr. Putin and declared the infamous Russia ‘reset,’ after taking office in 2009. This foreign policy reboot was launched with much fanfare when Hillary Clinton presented Sergei Lavrov with a cartoonish “reset” button which misspelled the word in Russian. 


Mr. Obama scrapped plans to deploy a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. The administration claimed it was due to a reduced threat from Iran and technological challenges, but it was widely seen as a move to appease Mr. Putin in order to win Russian support for a vote in the UN Security Council. The vote would support tougher sanctions on Iran and bring them to the negotiating table for the deal Mr Obama sought.


Obama’s most memorable quip, reinforcing his naivety about Russia, came in the form of his response to Mitt Romney during the 2012 Presidential debate. After candidate Romney stated that Russia remained one of America’s greatest national security threats, Obama retorted, “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War's been over for 20 years”.


To understand Mr. Putin, we have to go back to the days before the fall of the Soviet Union. His worldview was formed during this time, while he was in the KGB. In 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, he was stationed in Dresden, Germany. He witnessed first-hand how leaders and systems could be toppled when citizens grew too powerful. While Putin acknowledged that the Soviet Union had been in decline, he believed it was ailing due to paralysis of power and the frailty of political elites.


He wrote in his autobiography that after his office was surrounded by protestors threatening to storm the building, he called the Red Army’s German tank unit, stationed nearby, and asked them for protection. They said they could not do anything without orders from Moscow. They had reached out but no orders came. The words “Moscow is silent” are said to have haunted Putin his whole life, and shaped his worldview. 


Putin watched helplessly as everything he spent years building collapsed in the blink of an eye. First, East Germany disappeared when it was reintegrated into the West, and then the mighty Soviet Union disintegrated. In his mind, this was a direct result of the weakness of its current leadership.

 

Mr. Putin’s ambition has always been to rebuild the Russian Empire and unite all the people displaced after its collapse. He has publicly stated these aims many times. In a 2005 address to the Russian Duma, he said ”…the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory.”


In a 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference he started by asking the audience not to get angry, or turn on the red light because his remarks might seem “polemical, pointed or inexact”. Then he launched into a tirade about United States “unipolar” global domination after the Cold War and how America’s “Unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any problems” but created more conflict and human tragedy. 


Alluding to the US invasion of Iraq he said “We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law” and added that  “… the United States has overstepped its national borders in every way.” “This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?”


He expressed concerns about NATO’s expansion, saying it had less to do with “modernization” or “ensuring security” and was a “serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust.” He spoke of a new world order that would upend the current one. 


He pointed to the fact that the combined GDP of India and China was greater than the U.S. and that the BRICs - Brazil, Russia, India and China - cumulative GDP surpassed that of the EU. He warned that the “economic potential” of these new centers of power would soon translate into political influence”.


Mr. Putin is convinced that the West actively works to undermine Russia, inflicting their woke, weak and morally bankrupt ideology to foment and finance colour revolutions across former Soviet republics. We saw this paranoia on display when Mr. Putin rapidly deployed “peacekeeping” troops as part of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) to quell growing unrest in Kazakhstan last year.


In March 2014, Mr. Putin made a speech to both houses of parliament about the annexation of Crimea. He claimed, after holding an illegal referendum, that 96% of people had voted in favour of reuniting with Russia. In the same speech, he put the West on notice that Russia would be staking further territorial claims. 


Then in July, 2021 he laid out his mission in a 5,000 word essay entitled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” in which he argued that Belarusians, Russians, and Ukrainians are all descendants from Ancient Rus. That they are still bound by a common language and faith. According to his version of history, Ukraine has never been a sovereign nation, except for a few times when it tried and failed to become an independent state.


He accused the West of using Ukraine to undermine Russia and made false claims about Zelensky’s government actively supporting “Neo-Nazi’s” and burning people alive in Odessa. He concluded that the sovereignty of Ukraine was only possible in partnership with Russia and declared “we are one people.”


Mr. Putin has never hidden his ambitions to restore Russian greatness which he is convinced was robbed by the West, making it hard to believe that he will stop at Ukraine, even though his invasion had not gone according to plan. 


He has made it amply clear that until every former Soviet republic is fully subservient or part of Russia, Russia's very existence is threatened. Along the way he seeks to diminish US influence in Europe, degrade NATO and form a new anti-US global alliance.


There is no question that Mr. Putin’s and his generals badly miscalculated the Ukrainian invasion on every front. They underestimated the level of resistance from a disciplined and well-trained Ukrainian army, while overestimating the capability of their own forces. The biggest surprise , which nobody saw coming, was President Zelensky’s Churchillian rise and his ability to rally not just his fellow countrywomen, but the U.S. and Europe. 


With Putin’s invasion of Ukraine not going according to plan, some observers believe it might dissuade him from achieving his goals and lead him to look for an off-ramp. I disagree. 


Despite the Russian army’s battlefield humiliation, Mr. Putin remains in a strong position to finance his war because the Russian economy, while it did wobble, is far from hobbled. In fact, it weathered the sanction storm better than anyone predicted. 


Russian economic output contracted a mere 2.1% in 2022, surprising some economists who had expected a catastrophic meltdown. Meanwhile, the war has damaged billions of dollars of infrastructure and caused the Ukrainian economy to shrink by more than 30% in 2022.


An independent poll taken immediately after the invasion found that 58% of Russians approved of Putin’s military action, while 23% opposed it. Most people expected support to drop as the average Russian began to feel the day-to-day pain of Western sanctions and losses on the battlefield mounted, but the opposite has transpired with support for the war hardening and less than one fifth of Russians now opposing it. 


But Russian support must be taken with a bag of salt because Mr. Putin has unleashed a wave of repression with new laws that punish people who spread misinformation. Sharing “false information" includes using the word ‘war’, for which people can face up to 15 years in prison. 


Public works deemed critical of the war have resulted in exhibits being torn down and replaced with state propaganda. Actors, writers and artists have been hounded and forced out of jobs. Curricula in schools and universities have been changed, and students are being taught to report teachers who talk of peace, and Russians are encouraged to snitch on anyone who opposes the war.


A single father was recently sentenced to three years in prison for social media posts that came to light after his daughter made a drawing for a school project with the words “No to War” under the picture. The thirteen year old girl has been placed in a state orphanage, after her father fled arrest.


In addition, the Russian government is doling out cash payments in the country’s most impoverished regions to buy public support, and brainwashing the population. Every media outlet that countered the false state narrative has been shut down and replaced by propaganda that paints the war as “far away,” while highlighting Mr. Putin’s “economic successes, new welfare benefits and renovated clinics”.


It is true that Mr. Putin believed that European support for Ukraine would crumble fast because of their reliance on Russian energy. However, while Europe has managed to miraculously cut their reliance on Russian gas by almost half, India and China have massively increased their oil purchases, which has eased part of the hole it might have caused in Mr. Putin’s coffers, and thus his ability to continue financing his war.


To further hurt Mr. Putin’s ability to finance his war, last December the EU added a ban on sea borne Russian oil into the Europe, and prohibited European insurance and shipping services from transporting it anywhere in the world. At the same time G7 nations put a price cap on Russian oil of $60 per barrel, hoping it would deliver the fatal blow to Russia’s war chest.

 

Earlier this year, research by Columbia University found that the ban and price cap have not had the intended effect on the flow of Russian oil, and that Russia has been commanding prices ranging from $74 - $82 per barrel from China, India and other countries. A New York Times investigation used publicly available shipping data to track the movement of some of these shadow oil tankers. However, more recently there is new evidence that the price cap is starting to work and oil revenues have declined substantially, but it is still not to anywhere near a level that would bankrupt Russia, or prevent Mr. Putin from continuing to fund his war.


So, Mr. Putin has no reason either to acquiesce to peace talks or to agree to terms that would amount to a humiliating loss of pride and his political clout. For Mr. Putin to admit he wants an off-ramp, one that would result in a territorial retreat, would be a fate worse than death. For the time being we are at an impasse, with neither side willing to negotiate anything short of complete victory.


Prior to the war the NATO alliance looked fragile and fractured, with President Macron publicly declaring it “brain-dead”. NATO’s weakness is something Mr. Putin likely factored into his calculations, but unfortunately for him Russia’s invasion had the opposite effect, not only jolting NATO back to life but also bolstering European unity. 


Mr. Putin has claimed that his invasion of Ukraine was partly intended to stop NATO expansion by sending a message to other countries that border Russia not to join NATO. This too has not worked out for Mr. Putin, as the previously neutral nordic countries of Sweden and Finland overwhelmingly voted in favor of joining NATO.


Europe also got lucky with an unusually warm winter, which helped avert an energy crisis. Also, they were helped with the US boosting natural gas deliveries and brokering deals with countries like Qatar to fill the gaps. However, these are not long-term solutions and the jury is still out on whether Europe can survive a harsh winter next year.


So, where do we go from here?


Mr. Putin has made it clear that he is digging in for a long, drawn out war of attrition. This is a man who has no respect for life, so he will keep throwing ill-equipped, poorly trained Russian troops as cannon fodder onto the battlefield. While the Ukrainians have shown tremendous courage, resolve and tactical military superiority, they are reliant on the US and NATO for aid, equipment, munitions and weapons. 


To break the stalemate on the battlefield, President Zelensky is pushing for delivery of heavy weaponry like armored vehicles, tanks and fighter jets, and has grown increasingly frustrated at the pace at which they are being supplied. It was this request for heavy weapons which showed the first cracks in the Western alliance. 


Germany pushed back on sending tanks and only reluctantly agreed to send them after US prodding. Germany is also dragging its feet on doubling its defense budget, something Chancellor Schultz had publicly announced he would do three days after Russia invaded.


There are other cracks within the NATO alliance too. Hungary continues to play both sides because it is reliant on Russia for its energy needs. They even secured an exemption on the EU oil ban, along with the Czech Republic and Slovakia. 


Turkey has refused to impose sanctions while significantly increasing trade with Russia, and continues to buy lots of oil. Both President Erdogan and Hungary spent months dragging their feet on approving Finland’s accession to NATO and continue to block approval for Sweden’s. 


While the US remains a staunch ally, President Biden now has to contend with a less Ukraine-friendly Republican Congress. If a Republican were to win the White House in the next election, Ukraine would most likely lose their blank cheque and without US support, they would not be able to stand up to Russia for long.


So it is in Mr. Putin’s interest to drag out this war. The longer it goes, the better the cards he will hold and President Zelensky knows that time is not on his side. He is acutely aware that only a decisive Ukrainian victory on the battlefield, sooner rather than later, will shift the calculus decisively in their favour, and force Russia to the negotiating table.


Read next installment in series:

PART III: China Awakens Under Xi Jinping

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Why You Need To See American Sniper

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." 
Dwight D. Eisenhower 

Image source: www.sofrep.com

I am struggling to understand the small but vocal backlash against Clint Eastwood’s movie, American Sniper. This movie, like many before it, is based on the real life story of Chris Kyle. He was a Navy Seal credited with the most sniper kills in US history. I have no problem with people disliking the film, or disagreeing with Eastwood’s vision but what bothers me is the unfair politicisation, seeming hypocrisy and the often one-sided arguments of many of these critics.

One critical review I read was written by Peter Maass at The Intercept (“HowClint Eastwood Ignores History in ‘American Sniper’). In this piece he chastises his fellow reviewers from the Los Angeles and New York Times as people “who spend too much time in screening rooms” because in Mr. Maass’s estimation they “are falling over themselves in praise of it.” To begin with I find his criticism rather disingenuous. He is part of the same media establishment that completely abdicated its responsibility in the lead up to the US invasion of Iraq. The American media failed to challenge the veracity of every hasty, unproven claim and the numerous unverified assertions of the Bush administration for months before the invasion. I believe it amounted to the greatest failing of media in modern times.

So it seems ironic when Mr. Maass says “We got Iraq wrong in the real world. It would be nice to get it right at the multiplex,” considering he was part of the establishment that failed to question Cheney and Bush before they invaded a sovereign nation; without provocation, justification or any real or imminent threat to America. It seems convenient for Mr. Mass to again abdicate his responsibility; this time by chastising a Hollywood movie. It would seem that he wants to cleanse his conscience of all the innocent Iraqi blood on American media hands. If Mr. Maass were serious about righting the wrongs of America’s invasion, he would stop picking on soldiers who served their country and Hollywood, and work on persuading the International Court to summon Messrs. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Blair and every other architect of this illegal invasion before a war crimes tribunal.

Before I tackle some of the other criticisms that I have read in other media reviews and people’s Facebook posts, I want to clarify that it is a Hollywood film. It never claims to be a documentary, or a historically and factually accurate account of the Iraq war. Furthermore, the filmmakers have gone out of their way to say that they were not trying to make a war movie, much less present a critique of the mess America made in Iraq. Besides, the last time I checked movies are still made to entertain (and make money) by suspending reality with larger than life characters, salacious storylines and over-the-top dramatisations of actual events; even when they are based on biographies. If you want accuracy, analysis and facts, watch a PBS documentary.

Additionally, I think we can agree that no matter how brilliant a movie, nothing from Hollywood must be upheld for its historical accuracy or a realistic and honest portrayal of real-life events. That would just make for boring film. This is entertainment pure and simple; I doubt people would pay money to watch the very monotony they came to escape. So, for people to suddenly hold this movie to such a high standard would be the equivalent of saying that they get their world news from Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert. Then decide to take these men to task for factual inaccuracies, lack of objectivity, presenting one-sided views and for dramatising and making light of serious events. Ava DuVerney, the director of Selma, after being criticized for historical inaccuracies in her film, pointed out that we will become a very sad and dangerous society if we expect our kids to learn history through our movies.

Another major criticism that people have is that Kyle, as he states in his autobiography, seems to have relished killing and referred to Iraqis as savages. It is likely he enjoyed killing, but Kyle is hardly alone in this. It is said that we must be passionate about what we do to truly excel. So why does it not hold true for soldiers, who are trained killers? I am not saying that every soldier enjoys pulling the trigger and taking a human life, but how can we discount that a small percentage of the men we train to be cold blooded killers will get addicted to and enjoy killing? To this point, I think Kyle’s character in the movie forces us to accept that war is not pretty. It is not politically correct, it is not fair and it is always senseless. The actions taken by soldiers on the battlefield will never fit into neat our little moral codes or Geneva Conventions that make us feel warm and fuzzy in the safety of our homes. War forces good and honourable men to sometimes do both evil and dishonorable things. Soldiers see what human beings were never meant to witness, and war changes everyone. Even those who make it back lose a large part of their humanity. I don’t believe our souls can ever un-see what our eyes have seen. That is the real cost of war, beyond physical injuries. Just like Taya Kyle tells her husband Chris, there are thousands of veterans who came back physically but are yet to make it back emotionally and mentally to their families. This movie does a good job of reminding us of this very real and hidden cost to our soldiers and their families. Have you ever wondered why the largest percentages of homeless are veterans? In, 2013 alone the VA served more than 249,000 Veterans who were homeless or at risk of becoming homeless (Source: US Department of Veterans Affairs).

Another criticism that has been leveled at the filmmakers is that they chose to show only one side of Kyle’s character, leaving out the evil blood lust and racist overtones that come through in his book. I would argue that this holds true for every movie with a flawed hero, from a Gordon Gekko to Abe Lincoln to MLK to JFK. An essential part of great film making is to get an audience to feel empathy with its hero - to a point where we are able to forgive even their worst trespasses because all men have flaws. This may not be the reality, but it is what all brilliant directors and successful films do. I would even argue that Kyle's killing of a young Iraqi boy, barely ten years old, in the opening moments of the film is a big character flaw that creates a likeability deficit, which the rest of the film needs to work hard to overcome, in order to win back the audience’s empathy for its hero. I have never read his book, but I don’t see Kyle as a hero. I see him as another unfortunate victim of an unnecessary war.

To this point I would also add that movies, video games and other forms of entertainment cannot ever become our yardstick for reality, values, principles, and history or life lessons. Those still need to be taught in our homes and schools, so that when we consume various forms of entertainment we are able to differentiate between good, bad, fiction and reality and never the other way around. I also disagree that the film fails to show the general disillusionment with the Iraq war, and the lack of clarity of mission. In the movie there is a very powerful scene where Kyle meets his brother, who is returning home from Iraq, as Kyle arrives for another tour. His brother’s utter disenchantment and disillusionment with America’s purpose in Iraq is juxtaposed beautifully as it clashes with Kyle’s blind patriotism and unquestioning, brainwashed, jingoistic sense of duty.

Also, I think it is very easy for us to forget how one-sided and “sanitized” the Iraq war reporting was in the American media. It felt more clean and censored than daytime soap operas, so much so that the vast majority of us barely remembered there were men and women dying and being maimed daily. This, as we blissfully continued to drive to the mall and impatiently wait in line at Starbucks, while checking our smartphones for the latest Kardashian gossip. Again this alternate reality is something the movie delves into. We see Bradley Cooper’s character struggle and have a hard time processing this total lack of care and awareness among American people, the same people he had gone to die for.

Veteran care or lack thereof is another ignored aspect of war of which American Sniper raises awareness, in a very powerful way. Benjamin Franklin said that "Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later." It is this real and ongoing human cost of war we continue to underestimate, that American Sniper delves into masterfully. None of us have to deal with the long-term effect it has on children and family members of servicemen. We all saw Obama declare an end to the war in Iraq, but consider that among those who made it back there are now a million Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans with permanent and life redefining disabilities. They include veterans with lost limbs, traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress (PTSD), depression, hearing loss, breathing disorders, diseases, and other long-term health problems (Source: Cost of War, Brown University). In fact, medical experts say that many of Kyle’s unsubstantiated claims, like punching Jesse Ventura and killing looters during Hurricane Katrina, are consistent with patients with severe PTSD. Let’s not forget that Chris Kyle served four tours; he witnessed the horror of war for close to a decade.

It is easy to politicise and be critical of everything, as we take for granted the very freedoms that the Chris Kyle’s were told they were fighting to protect. The point is not whether you see Chris Kyle as a hero or villain. This movie is worth seeing because it is ultimately an anti-war movie. One that forces us to recognise the human cost of war, through the eyes of a soldier who has an over-simplistic moral code, which actually makes him the ideal soldier. However, even he cannot escape what Eisenhower and Franklin understood - the ugliness and inhumanity of war; scars all veterans and their families bear forever.

If we understand this, then we might understand why everyone who witnesses war first hand says that there are no winners. Even the victors lose. This realization alone will ensure that we begin to hold our leaders more accountable and question any decisions to go to war the next time they try to pull the wool over our eyes and rush in. We must never forget that even though war is sometimes necessary, it should always be the last resort.

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Obama’s Global War on Terror

“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.” 
Rabindranath Tagore 

There is much about Obama’s leadership or lack thereof that I remain critical of; by no means am I a fan. In fact, in my eyes he has thus far failed the test of leadership, feeling more like an erudite college professor and less like leader of the Western world. Given his predecessor's shoot from the hip mentality and the unmitigated disasters that followed, it was clear when Obama took office that America’s moral high ground, diplomatic clout and financial muscle were all in shreds. It was not so much that America was no longer a global superpower, but that the world had changed dramatically while America seemed to have moved backwards. America seemed to have lost its way with two messy long wars and the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression. She felt rudderless, leaderless and isolated on the world stage. By this time it was also clear that the overthrow of Saddam had no relevance in fighting the war on terrorism and had made the world a less safe place. However, one thing Bush was right about is that there was a global war on terrorism; and every nation needed to get involved. But Bush was incapable of leading the world and bringing them on board to fight this common threat, instead choosing to distract and further divide the world with an unnecessary war and with his 'my way or the highway' attitude.

Obama has been called an apologist because after he was elected he chose to show a softer and more cerebral side of American foreign policy. Being the only President who has actually lived abroad, perhaps he uniquely understood that the need of the hour was to apologize for America’s many misguided foreign policy endeavors, especially in the Muslim world. However, what he did not seem to grasp is that apologies alone would not rid us of the real evil we are facing. In trying to contrast his legacy from his war-mongering predecessor, he also went too far in the other direction, choosing to lead from the back. He failed to understand that America still needs to lead, and that pushing allies to take the lead is not the same thing. It has taken him a while to understand that you cannot right the wrongs of the past; you can only chart a course for the future that avoids the same failed policies and pitfalls. So instead of a wiser, nobler and morally stronger America he has until now offered an awkward, embarrassed and trepidatious America. Syria is a case in point where, while right to not intervene at the outset and not unilaterally, he should have acted once Assad crossed his own “red line.” America setting an ultimatum and then failing to act sets a very dangerous precedent.

It is the rapid rise of ISIL that has finally woken Obama up to the fact that war, while still a last resort, is going to be necessary. I believe he will not make the same mistakes that Bush did in America’s last global war on terror. Obama understands two things that his predecessor was unable to grasp. First, in the 21st century America is no longer the unequivocal superpower with the economic might it once had, to go it alone, and expect the rest of the world to fall in line based on diplomatic pressure or threats to cut US aid. Today there are many nations who can play benefactor and use their own cheque books to help countries resist US will. Second, he understands that no country can bestow democracy upon another, and especially not through a military invasion. The people of that country must be willing to fight and die for their freedom, much like they did in India, South Africa and will in Tunisia and Egypt in the years to come. All American military intervention can achieve, like it did in Iraq, is to put a temporary Band-Aid on a dangerous power vacuum that it leaves behind. To this end, he is aware that almost all the countries in the Middle East are run by dictators (many supported, armed and propped up by America). These countries have no civil institutions, public infrastructure or independent judiciaries that are the necessary bedrocks of democracy and take generations to build.

Even today Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are the largest financiers (some state funded but mostly by private individuals and religious institutions) and potent breeding ground for terrorists. The fact is that all these countries have brutal and oppressive regimes with no press, religious or personal freedoms. In all three countries, successive US administrations have supported dictators, giving them carte blanche and billions in military aid. So it is not hard to imagine why the average person on the street does not feel thankful to the American people for their generosity – and is it any wonder that they produce the largest number of terrorist recruits? Obama is acutely aware that this type of US intervention, particularly in the Arab and Muslim world, has failed miserably. So instead of choosing to apply the definition of insanity, he decided to stay on the sidelines in Egypt, Syria and most of the other North African internal conflicts. If Obama attacked Syria with the aim of removing Assad (not the same as punishing him for crossing the red line) we would likely have ended up with a messier Iraq, with the same sectarian strife, or at best an American puppet administration which would have been more hated than Assad.

Obama’s strategy to use US military support as a bargaining tool to get rid of Nouri Al-Maliki, and replace him with a unity government in Iraq, was absolutely correct. Whether this new government will succeed or not is hard to say, but it certainly has a much greater chance based purely on the proportional representation it now has from all three sects. More importantly, by doing this Obama took away the most potent recruiting tool ISIS had - discontent Iraqi Sunnis.  Al-Maliki had been systematically removing Sunni’s and replacing them with incompetent cronies in an effort to create a Shiite dominated Iraq. Now, with US air and military support, the new unity government has actually re-enlisted the same disillusioned army men who ran at the first sign of trouble from Sunni dominated Mosul, and a strong Kurd army is fighting to save a unified Iraq and not just defending Kurdish territory.

So while there is no doubt Obama badly fumbled and delayed in leading this fight, now that he is in it, he has also shown a shrewd understanding of the region by getting support of the most important allies he needs to fight this war. The US-led coalition launched with active participation from the militaries of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE and Bahrain, as well as publicly stated support from the governments in Oman, Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon and Qatar. So far the United Kingdom, France, Netherlands and Belgium have also contributed fighter jets and other allies are lining up to offer everything from training to equipment. In contrast, when Bush and Cheney rushed into Iraq there was a sum total of four countries in their collation that had active military involvement. The US with 148,000 and the UK with 45,000 troops provided the lion’s share. Australia contributed 2,000 and Poland 194 soldiers (Source: Wikipedia). Not a single Arab nation sent troops and no other major European or Asian power was involved. In fact, America's oldest allies like France, Germany, and New Zealand were strongly opposed to the Iraq invasion.

This is the fundamental difference in Obama’s global war on terror. Obama understands not only that America must lead this fight, but also that unless America can get the Arab and Muslim world to recognise the threat posed by this cancer and actively participate in it we cannot win this war. The only question that remains is whether Obama will have the resolve to send in US and Arab ground troops that will no doubt be needed to finally defeat this enemy and finish the military aspect of this war.

NOTE:  This article was updated on 9th October, 2014.

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Bush and Cheney’s Iraq Legacy

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” 
Proverbs 29:18 

Bush and Cheney spent more than $870 billion of our tax dollars to fund their Iraq War; the stated objective of which was to make America safer by toppling an evil dictator with a massive arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, and one who was harboring and providing material support to Al-Qaeda. Of the total spent, about $41 billion was spent on reconstruction and foreign aid, and a staggering $28 billion on local security (source: “The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11” prepared by the Congressional Research Service). Also, consider that in addition countless American lives were lost training and equipping the very same Iraqi army that recently ran with its tail tucked between its legs at the first sign of trouble.

If the latest developments in Iraq were not so worrying and potentially dangerous, within an already volatile region, we could laugh at the irony that neither Al-Qaeda nor any other terrorist organisation had operated or been given safe haven inside Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s regime. In fact, it was not until a year and a half after the US invasion that Al-Qaeda officially formed in Iraq. Even so, Bush and Cheney had told us on numerous occasions in the lead-up to their invasion that their primary objective was to break the very dangerous nexus between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda before he gave them access to weapons of mass destruction. The truth is that the sectarian chaos and power vacuum created by the overthrow of Saddam gave Al-Qaeda the perfect breeding ground for recruitment and for establishing their very first base of operations in Iraq. The Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham (ISIS), the terrorist group that has overrun major cities and now controls large swaths of the country, was formerly known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq. 

“We know that Iraq and Al-Qaeda have had high level contacts that go back a decade…We've learned that Iraq has trained Al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gasses."  
-President Bush, Speech in Cincinnati, 7th October, 2002* 

“We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and Al-Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the 90’s, that it involved training, for example, on BW and CW, that Al-Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on systems that are involved.” 
-Dick Cheney, Meet the Press, 14th September, 2003* 

(*source: United States Congressional Serial Set, Serial No. 14876, Senate Report No 301). 

As for Cheney and Bush’s smoking gun, independent reviews of the millions of documents seized from across Iraq all reached the same conclusion: “The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency had by 2006 translated 34 million pages of documents from Hussein's Iraq and found there was nothing to substantiate a "partnership" between Hussein and Al-Qaeda (source: “Bush's toxic legacy in Iraq” CNN). In fact, the same report stated that there was “no ‘smoking gun’ (i.e. direct connection) and that “the predominant targets of Iraqi state sponsored terror were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside Iraq.” [source: Institute for Defense Analyses – ‘Iraqi Perspectives Project. Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents’, Volume 1 (Redacted)].

While we can sit here and argue about the justification for the US invasion of Iraq and never agree on it, what cannot be refuted is that the US never established a single credible link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda or produced a shred of evidence that Saddam possessed any weapons of mass destruction; and Al-Qaeda did not exist in Iraq before the invasion. Another dangerous unintended consequence has been that Iran is now the most dominant power in the region with Iraq no longer being able to serve as strong counter-balance. So in sum total, not only did Cheney and Bush’s war make the region less safe than it was in 2003, but it has also spawned a totally new and deadly terrorist organisation called ISIS; one that Al-Qaeda officially broke ties with, for being too brutal.

Conveniently, the Republicans are now trying to blame Obama for the mess Cheney and Bush are responsible for creating. If one were to examine the facts, we should start with the much maligned Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). It is the document which dictated the timing for full US military withdrawal from Iraq. SOFA was negotiated and signed by George W. Bush in 2008 and not Barrack Obama, as many Republicans will have us believe. Bush agreed to all of Nouri al-Maliki demands, which included getting all US forces out of Iraq by December 31, 2011, and leaving no permanent military presence or bases in the country. Turns out that Bush’s ‘liberating’ forces were so unpopular that no Iraqi leader was willing to risk having them stay on with “… several rounds of upcoming elections and an intensely strong popular Iraqi hostility to the U.S. occupation under any name.” (source: ‘Bush's finest moment on Iraq: SOFA, not the surge’ – Foreign Policy). Republicans are now blaming him for not trying hard enough to re-negotiate the terms Bush agreed to; the same Republicans who - at the time it was signed - were proclaiming victory in Iraq.

The truth is that Iraq has been and remains a big mess ever since the illegal US invasion, which left both a major power vacuum in the center and a government without civil institutions or strong leadership. Another lie that Republicans are good at spreading has to do with General Petraeus’ surge; which was responsible for preventing the total disintegration of Iraq, and cleaning up Rumsfeld and Cheney’s unmitigated disaster and a lack of plan for Iraq, post invasion. Listening to Republicans, one would believe that it was the additional boots on the ground that led to the success of the surge. This is totally untrue, as Petraeus himself has repeatedly made clear. The cornerstone of Petraeus’ success and surge strategy was based on facilitating peace between the Sunni and Shia factions, which in turn led to a disarming of the powerful Shiite militia. It was this peace he helped broker that was also responsible for removing Al-Qaeda’s key weapon: fanning sectarian flames in Iraq. In addition, Petraeus forced the government to focus on developing local institutions, employment programs and on improving the daily life of Iraqi citizens. The final part of his strategy involved a dramatic surge in the boots on the ground, deployed to the most troubled parts of the country in order to dramatically enhance the presence and perception of security. So it is totally disingenuous to say that if Obama had tried harder to find a way to re-negotiate Bush’s SOFA, which never included immunity from prosecution for troops, and left behind a few hundred US troops, that this would have prevented the rise of ISIS in Iraq.

There are many things I am critical of when it comes to Barack Obama’s leadership, but his stance on Iraq it absolutely right. Obama understands what Bush and Cheney never will: that democracy is a grass roots movement that must be started by the people, who must also be willing to fight and die for their freedom. It is always bloody and it is always messy, and the hard work always begins once the freedom has been won. It takes a few generations for democratic values and institutions to take root; the country needs to build civil institutions, infrastructure, write laws, agree on a constitution, etc. Where there are long-running sectarian divides, blood will be spilled before wounds can be healed and a country unite. Inevitably, the early leaders are also corrupt and tyrannical, from having grown up without the benefit of ever experiencing liberty or democratic freedoms themselves. The current crisis is not something that has happened overnight;. it is a direct result of the sectarian Pandora’s Box opened by the illegal US invasion. One that left no power structure in the center and a weak and divided nation that is open to manipulation by its various Sunni and Shiite neighbours that include Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran.

This crisis also has a lot to do with Nouri al-Maliki wanting to consolidate his corrupt hold on power by creating a Shiite-dominated government and country. He has been slowly and systematically replacing the competent army generals, commanders and police officers (trained by the US), as well as other government officials and filling these posts with incompetent Shiite cronies who would never threaten him. He has made no effort to form a unity government that is inclusive of the Sunni minority or the Kurds, which was central to how Petraeus won the peace. Instead, Al-Maliki has helped re-ignite the old sectarian divides, and as a result allowed ISIS to slowly and systematically re-build their presence and base in Iraq by recruiting from within an excluded and disenfranchised Sunni community. 

So while there is no question that the Bush and Cheney invasion is single-handedly responsible for creating the massive void that will leave a weak Iraq in turmoil for many decades to come, it is equally true that the only path out is for Iraqis to figure out how to get along, by pursuing the true tenets of democracy; which are reconciliation and inclusiveness. No amount of US intervention on the ground or from the air can help fix this fundamental problem; and I doubt US taxpayers have the appetite for yet another misguided and fruitless effort at nation building. So even though America created this mess, only Iraq has the ability to fix it. Until Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds come together and realise that their real enemies are the terrorists, the world will have to wait and remain a much less safe place. This is Bush's and Cheney’s Iraq legacy.