"if I shoot you I'm famous, if you shoot me you're brainless"

By Hootsbuddy



"if I shoot you I'm famous, if you shoot me you're brainless."  That line from the world of rap music sums up in a nutshell the challenge that the US faces in today's "unipolar" world of foreign policy. International relations and music have both been among my interests but it never occurred to me that the two might intersect in the same way that Mark Lynch observed in a FP column last week.

I saw the column when it appeared and scanned it briefly, but dismissed it at once as some odd behavior on the Aardvark's part aimed at being cute. (Lynch is the professional behind the truly excellent Abu Aardvark blog which for years was a primary source of expert commentary on diplomatic issues in the Levant.) After all, we all have those days when serious issues are so dry that even the most avid nerds need to take a break and switch to The Onion or SNL.

My musical tastes were poisoned decades ago by two years at the college level that made me into a snob and poisoned my enjoyment of popular music so badly it took me years to recover. Had it not been for the civil rights movement with its folk and gospel roots I might never have been liberated in time for Woodstock. Since then my musical interests have become almost universal. I say "universal" but admit to showing my age because rap and hip-hop have yet to capture my imagination. In the same way that the baggy clothing of prison morphed into a grotesque fashion statement for the urban ghetto,  rap music with its misogynistic, street violence vocabulary turned me off in a big way as soon as it appeared.

In recent years I am aware that what started as an inflammatory social statement has captured a mainstream audience, taking a more positive direction, shedding those early images and messages. But as when I see tattoos and body piercing tracks on a young person, I find myself working hard to remember that I am a modern, open-minded, unprejudiced person striving to see character rather than external appearances. Content over form, you know. But I digress.

At some level Mark Lynch is serious. Unlike me, he is interested in rap music. He follows and understands the vocabulary and from it is able to draw parallels with his world, the world of diplomacy and international relations. Rather than try to explain it myself, I refer the reader to a story that aired this morning on NPR's Morning Edition. At this writing the audio is not available, but the following descriptive snip is already online.

The Rapper Feud



The conflict in question is between established rapper Jay-Z and and up-and-comer known as The Game. Jay-Z has been attacking other rappers for using Auto-Tune software, which corrects pitch while singers record. Auto-Tune is widely used in the industry, but Jay-Z is making a call for authenticity.



"He's saying 'these are the rules of the international system. If you want to be a civilized member of our international society, you have to not pursue nuclear weapons,''' Lynch says.



The Game is using the opportunity to tag Jay-Z as old and irrelevant.



There's a history of this in the rap world: 50 Cent rose to power by destroying the career of Ja Rule. Jay-Z did that to a number of people while he was a rising power.



"If you go back to, like, 19th century bounce-power politics, this is how rising powers would make it," Lynch says, citing conflicts between Japan and Russian as well as among rising powers in Europe. "If they wanted to get somewhere, they had to take someone out."



Relevance On The National Political Scene



The difference today is that we're in a uni-polar world with the United States on top. In the rap world, Jay-Z is that guy.



The Game is the erratic wildcard.



"He's North Korea; he's Iran," Lynch says. "He might not win, but he can hurt you if he drags you down into this extended occupation, this extended counterinsurgency campaign."



Why is he doing this? After Jay-Z released "D.O.A. ('Death of Auto-Tune')" The Game saw an opportunity to peel off Jay-Z's key alliance partners to form a coalition and undermine Jay-Z's hegemony. Even if he loses the fight with Jay-Z, The Game's stock goes up because he's "in" with the big guy. All The Game has to do, Lynch says, is survive.



Lynch says that, like the United States, a hegemon like Jay-Z can't afford to get into little battles all the time.



"So Jay-Z, like the United States after the war in Iraq, has got a tough decision to make," he says. "Do you ignore these provocations? But then they might spread � then people might think that you're weak. Do you hit down really hard? You could maybe destroy The Game, but you're going to be exhausted in the process."



It's like the United States having to fight counterinsurgency campaigns worldwide. The more powerful you are, Lynch says, the more limits there are on your ability to use that power.

When I think of the Afghanistan Adventure and this story together I come away with the inescapable conclusion that the US is getting into yet another quagmire in Afghanistan and Pakistan very much like the Iraq war. And the unintended consequences multiply daily.

I am by temperament a seeker of non-violent conflict resolution. I know there are people in the world who cannot be reached by non-violent principles and that sometimes those people must die before their ideas die as well. But I also know that killing off bad ideas and bad people simultaneously is not possible without "collateral damage." Innocent people who do not share those ideas will be killed as well. And when that happens, for every survivor -- friends, neighbors, family members of the innocent victims -- the truth of the death of that innocent person gives energy, not defeat, to the idea for which they were sacrificed.

The agent causing the death of an innocent person is despised more than the intended individual or group targeted. That's why the Taliban is becoming more famous while the misguided US effort to defeat them is brainless.