Militarist Is As Militarist Does

By Steve Hynd

On the back of news that the US is sending and selling lots of new weaponry to Gulf states, including speeding deployment of US-built missile defense systems, Gregg Carlstrom writes that there doesn't seem to be a clear U.S. strategy other than "making tough" involved.

Blustery rhetoric or not, Iran has not started any wars in a long time -- certainly not since 1979 -- and it's almost unfathomable that the Iranian regime, which has shown itself largely concerned with self-preservation, would start a hugely destabilizing regional war. If Iran's nuclear facilities are attacked, Tehran is far more likely to respond through proxies like Hizballah than by launching missiles and bombers across the Persian Gulf.

So these U.S. deployments are intended more for symbolic than military significance.

They're aimed at two audiences, one of which is Arab countries in the Gulf. But those countries are probably not existentially concerned about an Iranian attack, either: Their governments have spent many, many billions of dollars on U.S. weapons in the last few years, to the point where even small Gulf states can credibly challenge the Iranian military. Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, said in December that the UAE's air force "could take out the entire Iranian air force."

...The other audience is the Iranian regime itself: It's no coincidence that the White House leaked this news right as it ramps up its push for international sanctions against Iran.

...I understand the motivation here on the part of the White House, but I have to wonder: What's the desired outcome? Obama can't expect a missile defense system will impel the Iranian regime to change its behavior. This seems like pointless saber-rattling -- another item from the "make ourselves feel like we're getting tough" playbook (see also: gasoline sanctions).

The strategy is dumb, but it's not opaque. These moves are part of an over-arching policy of what might be termed "strategic ambiguity" towards Iran which is exactly the same one that the Bush administration pursued, and every administration before that back to 1979. The idea is simple - - deliberately muddying the waters about Israeli and American intentions so as to pressure Iran in its negotiations with the West by ensuring it fears an attack if it doesn't play ball.

The Clintonista wing of the current administration bought into that concept wholeheartedly and, as the Leveretts note, have won any battles with those in the White House who might feel differently. Its a dumb strategy, with negative fall-out for the whole region as the Leveretts point out, which only serves to entrench nationalist Itanian sentiment behind regime hardliners.

But it's a strategy entirely in keeping with the militarist necessities of Villager "accepted wisdom", as Daniel Larison writes in an excellent piece cited by the Leveretts.

Obama has followed his predecessors in continuing U.S. foreign policy much as it has been carried out since the end of the Cold War, but he is faced with a world that neither wants nor has to put up with it as often as it once did.  The best approach for a real, sustained engagement policy begins with recognition of the way the world is now.  There are multiple centers of power, their interests will sometimes diverge from ours, and the issues that we have declared to be global issues in which all states have common interests often do not matter to other major powers or these conflict with their interests in a significant way.  In the future, other powers will become even more capable of advancing their interests and ignoring our demands. This means that Washington has to begin reassessing which interests are genuinely vital to U.S. security and prosperity, and which are extraneous or left over from the Cold War and the last twenty years of activist policy�

Too many Americans in and outside the political class remain wedded to a model of global order in which Washington proposes and the rest of the world is supposed to fall in line.  Anything other than this is viewed as capitulation, weakness or appeasement.  Eventually, Washington will be unable to ignore that the world does not work this way, but that may not be before our government plunges into yet another disastrous conflict or embarks on dead-end policies that will continue to strengthen all the �rogue states� it is trying to punish.

In post-Imperial Britain we'd call them "Colonel Blimps", unable to let go of the gunboat-diplomacy glory days of Empire, where wogs began at Calais and did what they were bloody told.

But that attitude is why we get "serious people" like Judah Grunstein or Tom Barnett seriously entertaining the annexation of Haiti, Cuba or Mexico without being drowned in derision.

It's why "serious people" like Ron Moreau cannot get their heads around the simple fact that Hamid Karzai isn't suggesting negotiations with the Taliban as underdogs, but as at least equals. Karzai's suggesting peace talks, not surrender talks. Moreau, like many in the White House and elsewhere, entirely missed the point of Karzai's proposal, which wasn't to throw bribe money so much as an appeal to the Taliban to powershare, saying "We Afghans have died enough for foreigners, but let me and mine hold on to some power and we can call this whole thing off". He's apparently relying on the Taliban being Afghan first and Islamist second, which is by all indications exactly what they are, and of them being willing to cut ties with AQ (which isn't).

And it is why sabre-rattling with Iran will continue until someone makes a mistake - we've come close enough already - and the real shooting starts.

Militarist is as militarist does.