The Powell Doctrine (overwhelming force combined with the full support of the homefront) has been talked up in recent days as the woulda, coulda, shoulda panacea for this rapidly congealing quagmire. At least then, when the Iraqis stubbornly fought, we'd be in a position to squash them, so the thinking goes. Or maybe the Iraqis would have really realized that fighting was hopeless. Well, something like one of those. I guarantee you will see many more invocations before this war is done.
But I find myself thinking more and more on the Bush/Baker Doctrine, the doctrine of overwhelming diplomatic force. The Gulf War was won before a shot was fired or a soldier committed to battle because Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was declared to be and understood to be illegitimate by the international community. Clinton used the doctrine as well to great effect in Kosovo and Bosnia, also forging diplomatic consensus for military action and delegitimizing the aggression of unsavory regimes.
The Powell Doctrine, whatever its merits or flaws, has in fact never been tried apart from a solid grounding in international agreement.
Let me repeat and emphasize: In all the places where the application of military force has been successful in the past decade, it has been firmly rooted in a diplomatic consensus that has delegitimized the opposition's regime.
That is the twenty-first century way of war; that is the lesson in all of this. All the second-guessing about field strategy is mere professional territorial pissing between the military and the civilians. Grand strategy, the application of the national interest to the nation's interactions in the world, is where you really win - and lose.
If the knives aren't out quite yet, they certainly seem to be being sharpened in anticipation of some sort of bloodletting (you can hear the skritch-skritch-skritch quite clearly at Talking Points Memo).
With every last, little detail (except for any sort of context or explanation of grand strategy) scrolling up one screen and splashing 24/7 on the other, we have entered all crisis all the time. As a result, every caveat and option, every alternative analysis and discarded plan is being leaked, tweaked, caught up and written up, and blasted through our screens, onto our eyeballs, and into us. It seems that everyone had reservations - though one week ago, confidence was the rage.
And all this because the Iraqis in the South did not make life perfectly easy for the invading forces. Either the military units could have surrendered or the populace could have risen up in insurrection, and all our glorious plans would have come to immediate fruition. Now we hear that such an expectation was always folly, that of course the Iraqis - even the brutally oppressed Southern Shi'a - would consider an invasion, any invasion, an assault on them and their homes and their country.
All of this sound and fury, the dashed delirious hopes on the one hand and the stubborn worst-case realism on the other, still fails to grapple with the complicated reality, still tries to reduce the Iraqi people to an either/or. The two assumptions - first, that, given the chance, Iraqis would pick up their guns and shoot at their oppressors; and, second, when that did not happen, given an invasion, Iraqis will shoot at invaders - both create an imaginary, wholly reactive Iraqi.
I wonder if anyone has stopped to think that both could be true? The rosy intelligence reports on which the initial invasion plan was based did not come out of nowhere. There are, no doubt, Iraqis who would be delighted to surrender or to take up arms against Saddam and his minions - if circumstances encouraged that behavior. And, of course, peoples do tend to resist invasion - if the circumstances encourage them to do so. And still others will try to avoid the conflict; or try to make a profit; or sink into black depression; or, even, just go on trying to live their lives in as ordinary a fashion as they can. There isn't just one type of Iraqi: gun-toting and predisposed to violence, who is just going to start shooting at something once the war starts (though the gun-toting ones do seem to carry a lot of authority when there is shooting going on...).
Every one of those options resides in the breast of every Iraqi. Their responses were not pre-ordained. Nothing is inevitable.
The question that needs to be asked is not, "how could we have gotten our information wrong?", or even, "how could we have gotten the President to listen to other voices?" Those are questions you can ask in Washington. Those are questions which cover asses here and now and don't save American lives in the future.
The question, the important strategic question that changes things on the killing ground, is: "How could we have done things differently to increase the chances of a favorable reaction by the Iraqi people?"
I'll tell you one thing you don't do if you want people to welcome you to their proud and ancient land: You don't announce that the country will be ruled by an American proconsul - who will operate without a concrete plan or a timeline for either physical or political reconstruction.
Dave Trowbridge's Redwood Dragon has a HOT new look designed by Rachel Cunliffe of crea8d.
Go. Look. Marvel. Desire.
While there may be a reason for our armchair analysts to offer an analogy of Russia defending against the Nazis or Napoleon - because that is history they still teach in American schools, more or less - the land of the Tigris and the Euphrates has its own apt history.
The Persian way of war, the way they dealt with every western invader after Alexander was to "defend in depth" (usually the scorched earth variant). Let the invader march in, extending their supply lines across the desert. Let them march to gates of Babylon, Ctesiphon, or Baghdad before offering a serious battle. And if Persia lost a battle there (and they did from time-to-time), then retreat into the highlands, drawing the invader after. And all the while, whittle away at the enemy's supply. And the Romans, mightiest military force in their world, never did conquer Persia.
Article today in the Ideas Section of The Boston Globe about the rise and growth of web-based funnies (and serioususususses . . . not quite sure how to stop spelling that).
The article fails to mention my buddy Kevin Moore's comics on his BlargBlog (and it fails to mention just about every other comic artist I read). But it's a good article anyway, comics fans.
Wolfgang is a dear friend, one of my best. He was kidnapped a week ago in Manipur in north-east India. The group who kidnapped him (the Kuki Liberation Army) have asked for a 10 million Rupee ransom (about $210,000). That may not seem like very much, but NGOs really don't have that kind of cash lying around. They have let Wolfgang use a walkie-talkie to speak to his colleagues there, so we do know he is all right - so far.
I just learned about it this morning and have been informing our mutual friends.
Now comes the hardest part for both him and us: we have to sit and wait.
Here is a story about the situation. Wolfgang works for a German NGO, the Church Development Service (acronymed auf Deutsch "EED").
In 480 B.C.E., Xerxes, King of Kings and master of the mightiest empire the world had yet seen, set out with his Grand Army to punish the Athenians, finally, for a grave insult to his father and one to Persia *, for the fluke of Marathon, and to add the rest of backwater Greece to the Persian Empire. The invasion force was immense, gathering together troops from all across the vast expanse of his territory. The Greek city states could not, all together, field an army with as many men as the Persians brought across the Hellespont.
Xerxes was confident that such an army would cow the Greeks into surrender with a minimum of resistance. Why, they might not even have to fight at all! Xerxes knew that the Greeks were weak, thinking only of their personal safety and gain, and that they were treacherous with one another, always looking for an opening to stab another Greek or Greek city in the back. He knew this about Greeks through all of the Greek exiles at his court in Persepolis: the overthrown tyrants and disgraced generals and impoverished oligarchs, all planning and scheming to regain their positions or to bring down their rivals by hook or by crook - or by providing intelligence to the King of Kings. And back then, as right now, the way to catch a King's fancy is to tell him exactly what he wants to hear.
. . .
" Officials have said top Pentagon policy makers were strongly influenced in their belief that the Baghdad government was brittle by accounts from Iraqi dissident leaders who said they expected relatively little opposition to the invasion. " - The New York Times, March 28, 2003
* In 507, in order to gain support against an invasion by Sparta, a diplomatic delegation from Athens participated in a ritual of surrender to Persia, ruled at that time by Xerxes' father, Darius. The diplomats were eventually repudiated and Athens chose not to honor commitments made by a mission that, it was decided, did not have the authority to offer what they had offered. When, in 499, Athens sent ships to support a revolt against Persian power in Ionia, Darius, needless to say, was irked. From his perspective, the Athenians had reneged on a sacred agreement. He sent troops to conquer Athens in 490. The Battle of Marathon ensued. Athens surprised everyone, including themselves, by winning. The ground was thereby prepared for Xerxes' disaster and Greek triumph.
This whole drama is among the most important contributing to the shape of our world and the consequences of what began as a small diplomatic dust-up continue to reverberate two-thousand-five-hundred years later.
You've been going to The Agonist for war news, but for news about the people reporting the war you have to go to First Draft.
Tim Porter is keeping track of the paper press, both on the ground on Iraq and their bosses back here. He also continues to cover his main focus: newspaper quality. He believes (and I agree) that newspapers are not irrelevant - yet; but they will be unless we fight for them.
There are serious humanitarian issues arising in Iraq. Being prepared to meet them is crucial.
The Humanitarian Information Center for Iraq, run by Reliefweb (part of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) ), is collecting data in order to assist agencies going into Iraq.
Coordination is a perennial issue for assistance agencies. Developing good tools to help that aspect of our work is an ongoing - and frustrating - process. Aid workers are a prickly bunch and don't take coordination across agency lines very well. Efforts such as the HIC, if successful, can go a long way toward breaking down the barriers that keep us from doing our work as effectively as we could.
So, if you have suggestions on how to improve the usefulness of the site, don't be shy, even if you aren't a humanitarian professional.
There" that fills my "officialese" rhetoric quotient for the next week.
" The problem between Uganda and Rwanda is mistrust and mutual suspicion. The level of mutual mistrust is so high that whatever is done in Kampala is viewed with a very high degree of suspicion in Kigali and vice versa. It is this suspicion that has driven the Rwanda government to have 'contingent plans' tied in with what they call a counter-defensive strategy against any threat (perceived or real) from Uganda. " [ full story ]
We have heard the first rumblings of bad news. Our colleagues in the region have been growing anxious in the past couple of weeks. Troops have been moving - Rwandan, Ugandan, and Burundian.
From The Agonist:
" 9:33 EST A report that Syria will open its borders to Syrians who wish to fight alongside Iraqi forces comes on the same day that Syria's highest religious authority, Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro, called on Muslims to conduct suicide missions against Western forces in the region.The Syrian government to this point had tried to dissuade volunteers from carrying out attacks and had closed the border with Iraq, though there were reports that some people were sneaking across or bribing border guards. This latest report indicates the government has made the decision to open the border. "
Odd. Twisted, even. I can't imagine that Syria wants to get involved in this at all. One false, official move and Israel will be in the war. And then things will get crazy.
" Recognizing the public need for fasting and prayer in order to secure the blessings and protection of Providence for the people of the United States and our Armed Forces during the conflict in Iraq and under the threat of terrorism at home. "
Because this is the fucking United States of America, I'm sure that we'll all be encouraged to fast and pray in our fucking way. I plan on sacrificing a goat and gorging myself then and there with the beast's hot, raw flesh. That always strengthens my resolve. I'll pour the blood I cannot drink out of my apartment's window onto the heads of the nice missionary Mormon boys who walk endlessly up and down my block. I will surely recognize my faults and shortcomings then.
Or maybe I'll just invite my wife to join me at Dali. If everyone else is fasting, we'll actually be able to get a table.
Of course, if our legislators were actually legislating, they'd only be fucking things up even worse.
Incautious readers might construe from my recent posts on the subject that I think the war is proceeding poorly. In fact, this is not the case. I was never an optimist, thinking that the war would be over in just a week's time. But neither am I a pessimist, imagining among the Iraqis a level of strategic and tactical command that could overwhelm - even in one place, even for more than a few hours - the coalition forces. The war will be won by the US forces and the coalition, even if the battles grow yet more difficult than they have thus far proved.
War itself is never a "best case scenario", and no war ever proceeds along such lines.
However, I am not at all sure that the peace will go even as well as the worst of the military snafus. At what cost will this victory be achieved? At the very least, there will be blood between America and Iraq and it remains to be seen if we can negotiate a satisfactory wergeld. I do not have high hopes.
And, of course, there is still the rest of the world to consider.
I missed it by a couple of days, but March 22nd was "World Water Day". And 2003 is the "International Year of Freshwater". Bet you didn't know that.
Access to water is vital. You knew that, but you've never been without, so you don't really think about it much. And even if you did think about it, you'd have a hard time imagining what being without water is really like. You'd find it nearly impossible to imagine what two million people without water is like.
UPDATE: " ICRC technicians have reached the Wafa-Al-Quaid water plant north of Basra that provides most of the city's water. The ICRC hopes that as soon as possible, preferably today, it will be able to carry out the necessary repairs to ensure that the plant can produce water again. However, for the network to become operational there needs to be sufficient pressure in the system, and this can take a while. "
. . .
'ICRC' stands for 'International Committee of the Red Cross', not to be confused with the 'IFRC' which stands for 'International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies'.
Shortly (much too shortly), the IFRC coordinates between national Red Cross Societies, while the ICRC handles conflicts (because national Red Cross Societies may be unable or unwilling to work across the battle lines).
There are certain things that we just do not have to take. When a Supreme Court Justice says:
"The Constitution just sets minimums. Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires."
any and every American should rise up and shout:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The Agonist is the first place to get your war news. Where you go next is up to you, but you almost need to see Sean-Paul Kelley to know your next step. And if you know something he doesn't, contribute!
And much love to SPK's wife, Tatiana, who is supporting him in his provision of this service.
This is the Net we've all imagined.
Promises of a short war, sweet as the breath of liberty and barely bitter, are now being disclaimed. Promises of an army's capitulation, as though a maiden at last surrendering to a suitor, have not been fulfilled. Promises that resistance would be swiftly overcome, that this combat would be painless, that a quick thrust would open up Iraq to a newfound freedom have been revealed as the sly whispers, the sweet nothings of a engorged arrogance.
We were promised a short war. Now we are told the struggle will take time.
We were promised mass surrenders. We have been met by continued opposition.
We were promised the cheers of liberated crowds. We have been greeted by sullen demands for assistance, belligerent questioning of our motives, and no flowers.
Our policy makers made speeches and gave interviews about the brave future. Our press and our media repeated the daring assurances of surgical precision and explosive speed as though the words were graven images, weighty, solid, deserving of worshipful respect. The world listened to the bold predictions. Some listened with the fear that the audacious would be right, that this war could be fought with little cost, promoting an expanding mandate to reshape the world and encouraging a hubris that might in fact unmake it. Some listened with fear that the forecast was false, that the assurances of easy invasion would turn into a scrap for every bloody mile. And some listened with hate, absorbing every overconfident nuance, twisting prediction of success into prophecy of failure.
Now, less than one week into the fire, our commanders and their fools speak of lowered expectations and "quagmires". They speak of time needed, where yesterday they spoke of perfect timetables and instant success. They speak now of effort, where they once spoke of ease. They finally talk of blood and misery, where they had avoided such topics before.
This backpedaling can only serve to encourage those who question America's strength. They can use our own words against us: first, our own overbold insistence on our power and knowledge, and now our own disclaimers of total control and our admissions of ignorance. Every day the war continues, every eruption where pacification was assured, every capture of an American, every report of resistance stauncher than expected, every delay in the grand plan encourages those that fight us. See, they can say, the Americans are not so powerful as they claimed - even the Yankees admit that now; the Americans can be fought.
. . .
Some might fail to take my point in the above. It is simply this: Don't make promises you cannot keep. You will look untrustworthy on the one hand, and you will look weak on the other. That some things are outside of your control should lead you to caution or qualification, not to certainties whose collapse can be blamed on the other actors not knowing their lines.
Or fewer than expected, at any rate. I wonder how many more surrenders we might have seen had there been a resounding resolution by the Security Council, a broader coalition on the ground, an actual alliance repudiating Saddam and his obstructions and his odious regime?
It always a surprise to those who have not travelled in poor or oppressed countries just how much information is actually available to ordinary people. The people of Iraq know what has happened at the UN, and they know what the spokesmen and politicians of the US or other powers have said. When there was no vote in the Security Council for another resolution against Saddam's government, Iraqis know what that meant.
The world does not stand with the US and so the Iraqi army stands its ground.
. . .
An ugly further thought:
Because the world does not stand with the US on the invasion of Iraq, will the Iraqis make the assumption that the world will overlook atrocities committed against Americans? Has a unilateral approach to the diplomatic issues made the use of chemical or biological weapons in this war more likely? I truly hope that nothing comes to pass that raises these questions from the hypothetical to ones demanding answers.
French Week actually got started here, on the 13th. But when talking about the French and their lovely land, there is too much material to draw any time limit. So scroll up and collect 'em all.
Even though the God of War seems to be otherwise occupied, we can still dream. Oliver Morton renews the call to go to Mars, calling for "a place program instead of a space program".
Yes.
No nation ever "liberates" another. A free people will always and everywhere have been the instrument of its own liberation.
- " Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
" But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. "
Whose duty?
Those blasted, crazy, weird, stupid left-wingers (bah, academics and intellectuals, bah) are always coming to the defense of the downtrodden and oppressed too early. Why, they were even concerned for the Kurds all the way back in 1975! No right thinking person even knew where Kurdistan was in the seventies, being far more concerned and occupied with the crises taking place in south-east Asia, the charged atmosphere surrounding Israel and its neighbors, or the momentous and surprising events in China.
If only they'd ignore the oppression of marginal peoples until the rest of us get around to paying attention, then we wouldn't have to feel so defensive about how our morality is wholly contingent upon our interests. This whole taking the Rights of Man and assorted impassioned Declarations seriously all the time sure is annoying.
Watched, very briefly, some news (Channel 7) last night to see the pictures of the anti-war marches in Cambridge and Boston.
The one person interviewed during the story about the protest, the one person with his name splashed on the bottom of the screen, the one person given a face and a voice was . . . and why am I surprised? . . . pro-war.
UPDATE: Adrianne Truett (Rants and Thoughts) points out that Channel 7 couldn't tell their ass from their elbow. I might add that the report I watched did not show the footage from Harvard, but only showed events in Cambridge from the air.
When your decent opinions war within your breast so that - to another - you appear to lack all conviction, do you hold onto a turning center by saying to yourself, "well then, I must be among the best"? Or do you instead, like myself, drink until all internal contradictions are drowned in the rough tides of bestial pleasure, until the ape rises in the man and I can forget for a little while the problems to which men are heir?
Last night, at least two people turned off the twenty-first century and did their level best to return briefly to the garden, secure - if also perhaps unhappy - in the knowledge that the world would very likely still be there in the morning.
Or, to put it another way, sometimes you just have to get drunk
I had coffee this morning with an old friend who stopped by to see our new office. His office, since he "retired" from his academic position, it turns out, is right around the corner. We agreed that next week he hosts the coffeeklatsch.
He's an historian (primarily of Soviet and Russian science and technology) and has the occupational disease of looking backward at all events, even - perhaps especially - the present. He is inclined to think that the future will look at 9/11 and the 'war on terror' as a tempest in a teapot - much as contemporary historians view some crucial aspects of, say, the Cold War as having been essentially pointless.
He certainly doesn't mean that this decade or its events will fade, insignificant. After all, he's living through these mad and interesting times too and he feels their profundity as powerfully as you or I do - just as he lived through, and made a specialty of, most of the turbulent twentieth. He knows though, professionally and personally, that this feeling of our own importance is almost always an illusion. He suggested that it will take all of the future historian's art and hindsight to make sense of the aughts and to answer the pressing question that only distance can adequately answer: "what the fuck were they thinking?"
I got home at a reasonable hour this evening, building a drink before starting dinner and letting it soothe me as I watched some news and surfed the net for the rest of the story. Mrs Martial, part-time graduate student, got home a bit later as she stopped off at the library after her work-day. She finally stomped in and I got her a drink of her own. She joined me on the couch as I turned the tube off.
"So, what's going on in the world today?" she asked.
"We're heading to hell in a handbasket," I said, getting prepared to begin ranting about, oh, everything.
She looked off, out the window at our perfect view of Boston's pretty skyline. Turning back to me after a long moment, she said, "Well, at least it's a slow way to travel."
I see that among the nations standing firmly behind the US in the current troubles are Eritrea and Ethiopia.
First, getting those two nations - given their recent, unfortunate, and all too bloody history - to stand facing in the same direction is an accomplishment worthy of note, but perhaps not of much else.
Second, they both have standing armies too large for their economies to reasonably support. Why not offer them each a few dollars to send some of their battle-hardened troops to the dusty fields of Iraq? Such might have a certain symbolic impact.
And perhaps a fine understanding of the many and subtle layers of symbolism involved in and around this conflict is precisely why the governments of these two nations do not offer their soldiers.
(Via The Rittenhouse Review)
- " And there is another task. If America is to achieve these ambitious and worthy goals, it is going to need help. Plainly, it does not need military help ... But it will need help with much else: sanctions, financial controls, diplomatic persuasion, the enforcement of anti-proliferation measures, police work, intelligence. However fine its values and just its cause, it will need to nurture the support of others. That support is more fragile than it should be, but also America seems less conscious than it needs to be of the importance of maintaining it. To fight an axis of evil, even a superpower needs an axis of its own. "
In moving our office this week, I came across a pile of old issues of The Economist. The above is from their lead editorial from February 2, 2002 - concluding their review of the "Axis of Evil" speech. I guess the White House didn't have a subscription.
And, still, when you get to the end of the piece, the point is perfectly clear. Bravo, Jeanne.
What if "forty-eight hours" is a lie? What if the US attacks . . . early?
Thomas Friedman has finally alerted us to the crucial piece of the puzzle:
" Our strongest ally for war in Iraq is Bulgaria ... a country that's been on the losing side of every war in the last 100 years. "
I shared a class once with a student from Russia who, every week, went off on how bad Bulgarian strategy was now, had been in the past, and how it would remain awful into the far future. I figured, hey, in the wake of the Cold War, he's got to think Russia is better than somebody, anybody. Everybody rolled their eyes when this guy would start to talk, but I see now that he was warning us!
- " In a surprise announcement, President Bush said yesterday he would issue a proposal for a 'road map' for peace between Israelis and Palestinians ...
" Bush's announcement yesterday stunned diplomats at the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, which has coordinated Middle East peace efforts. Minutes before Bush's 10 a.m. declaration, diplomats were asking each other if anyone knew the subject of the president's address. 'We had no idea whatsoever it was coming,' said one diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "
The very people who will be on the front lines, so to speak (jostling for the good seats around the conference tables), do not know what they are supposed to do. The folks at State are supposed to be developing a map of some sort. But the policy makers have yet to tell them what (or where) the territory is that they are supposed to be mapping.
You can't draw a map unless you know the lay of the land.
"We used to be better people than this."
Yeah, we did. Most of us used to know that the fight against Nazism was a struggle fought by all free men and women. And that the French paid a price far, far beyond what we did.
The US liberated France? Not so. She was never defeated.
My office is moving across town Monday. We've been going through the twenty years worth of collected detritus: mail, project reports, financial records, flip-charts from some workshop a decade ago. You know, the usual.
We're moving because we've found a building where the elevator doesn't occasionally capture you for four hours, the AC doesn't come on in the winter, and the heat doesn't come on in the summer (we had to open the windows the week it was 90 outside to try to cool the office; I am not kidding), that doesn't have mice - and squirrels - and birds, the stairwell doesn't leak - and the resulting puddles wouldn't freeze if it did, where the super will come when we call. Oh, I could go on.
But mostly we're moving because the new building is cheaper. With all the dot-com bankruptcies in and around Boston, the cost of office space fell off the side of a cliff. So, if you're looking for office space . . .
Housing is still outrageous, though.
Part I: Introduction
Part II: Entering the Context of Conflict
Part III: The Two "Realities" of Conflict
Part IV: You Have an Impact on All Factors
Part V: The Things You Bring
Part VI: How You Do Your Work Matters as Much as What You Do
Part VII: The Devil is in the Details
Part VIII: There Are Always Options
Part III: The Two "Realities" of Conflict
"Disaggregate, disaggregate, disaggregate!" *
Analysis is the art and science of taking things apart until you understand the pieces and how they fit together. Too often, far too often, people begin by putting unconsidered, or ill-understood things together until a pattern emerges. Such patterns may be seductive, but they are almost always false.
Begin with what you know, begin with facts. Gather them, lay out your facts, but do not interpret them, not yet. Substantiate your facts. How do you know this? What makes you think this is true? When discussing human actions, it is always best to begin and end with what people themselves are doing. So, what the hell are they doing? Do not accept abstractions; pull abstractions apart until you arrive at people.
Never assume. If you do not in fact know something, score that point with a question mark. What questions need to be answered before you can satisfy yourself that you understand enough here, at this point, to go on? Note them. Never make assumptions. Make the implicit explicit. Uncover your presuppositions and turn them into questions. Do the facts bear out you assumptions? I daresay that if they do, you are not trying very hard.
Now that you have some facts, look at them. What patterns emerge? How are the facts related to one another? Now you can offer interpretations, but back them up with evidence. Where evidence is lacking you might choose to offer choices and their consequences, but you need to be honest about the speculative nature of these interpretations. Once again, discard abstractions and focus on people and what they are doing.
Do not be afraid of incomplete information. You never have complete information!
. . .
Lesson #2: Every context of conflict consists of two factors, dividers and connectors.
You cannot analyze a conflict if you do not know why people are in conflict. When people are fighting, it is pretty clear that there are things that divide them from one another. Many of these reasons, the dividers, are obvious; after all, the participants will tell you - at length - why they are fighting.
However, while participants in a conflict can likely offer most of the motivations for fighting, there may be other factors that require a deeper effort to discern. The issues around which a conflict coalesces change with time. A historical understanding of the conflict can offer important insights, though you should never lose sight of what people say are the most important factors right now. Additionally, most conflicts have a regional component, with other states playing a role that is not always obvious to those embroiled in the conflict. Finally, some issues might be of supreme importance among a narrow section of the participants, while others might be factors for broad swaths of the participating groups.
No matter what the full picture of the conflict is, several of these factors that divide the participants will dominate almost all observation and, therefore, discussion of the conflict. Conflicts often seem to be all dividers.
But there is another "reality" in contexts of conflict. More people are not involved in the fighting than are. Simply put, the vast majority of people in conflict situations do not directly engage in the conflict. So, what are they doing? Life goes on, as it always does. People gather food and water, they try to raise their children as best they can, they try to make some money, etc.
There is a powerful web of connections that surrounds and entangles people. In peacetime, these are like water to fish, transparent and taken for granted. But in a conflict situation, it is clear that these connectors have broken down. This is especially poignant in civil conflict, where the connectors were part of the fabric of everyday life for everybody. Clearly, if they had been strong enough to keep the peace, they would have done so. However, many connectors will still exist, even in conflicts, and can be used by people as a basis upon which to establish their future peace.
Ironically, conflicts themselves can create new connectors (as well as new dividers, unfortunately), as when people on both sides become exhausted by violence and so begin to reach out to the other.
Awareness of these connecting factors is vital to understanding a context of conflict. Conflicts are characterized as much by the breakdown in connectors as they are by the heightening of divisions. By concentrating solely upon the dividers, people often perceive conflicts as intractable. The divisions seem insurmountable and people can suffer a tendency toward paralyzing cynicism. They will fail to see opportunities for breaking cycles of violence through reasserting normalcy, through recapturing the connectors.
Contexts of conflict, and in fact all societies, are characterized by two realities, dividers and connectors. Overlooking either set of factors is naive and irresponsible.
* This is the mantra - and constant admonishment to others - of a good colleague of mine (we've trained together quite a bit; he's also involved in policy creation for a large European NGO).
Part I: Introduction
Part II: Entering the Context of Conflict
Part III: The Two "Realities" of Conflict
Part IV: You Have an Impact on All Factors
Part V: The Things You Bring
Part VI: How You Do Your Work Matters as Much as What You Do
Part VII: The Devil is in the Details
Part VIII: There Are Always Options
Part II: Entering the Context of Conflict
Before I continue, I'd like to offer an explanation of the word "conflict" as I use it in what follows. I generally use "conflict" to mean the violent, destructive type, but I may draw upon examples from current diplomatic events to illustrate how the analytical concepts I am citing have broad applicability to many types of conflict.
Conflict, as such, is not inherently bad. Without conflict there is no change. Incessant, onrushing change is one integral element of modernity and conflict is among its engines and its outcomes.
Destructive, violent conflict, however, can leave a legacy behind that takes lifetimes to repair. It is true that sometimes it seems as though violence is the only answer and war does indeed decide some issues. But there are other options, there are always other options. People can disagree about whether the compromises necessary to implement those options are worthwhile or not. We see these disagreements in many places around the world. We also find people who use violence to promote limited and limiting agendas for their own personal gratification. And some wars have failed to settle anything, dragging on for decades as communities and whole societies shatter.
Not all conflict is violent. If violent means of addressing grievances can be overcome and democratic systems reintroduced or put in place, people can build societies that are free and inclusive. Change need not consume its children in the fires of war and hatred, but can be a choice. Whatever we can do to promote change in peaceful ways should be considered and attempted.
Furthermore, I do not hold with that strange ideology of "stability" sometimes espoused by people in a position of privilege. The changing world is admittedly complicated and confusing, and calling for stability is an attempt to reduce and manage this complexity. But too often, this attempt to manage the pace of change seems to me to be an excuse of the powerful to defer the dreams of the poor and marginalized. The desire to live a better, deeper, richer life should not need to be put on hold so the complicated world will be just a little simpler and easier for elites to understand - and to run. Modernity and the drives that we call by that name run counter to stability. The flux of modern life cannot be held back by Canute or by you.
. . .
Lesson #1: When you enter a context of conflict, you become a part of that context.
Neutrality is a goal espoused by many organizations entering into conflict situations. Indeed, it is one of the seven principles of the Red Cross Movement. We don't take sides, we work with whomever we need to work, wherever we need to work.
But neutrality is slippery in the complex circumstances surrounding conflict. If you can only put a refugee camp - or an oil well - behind the lines of one side, your actions will not be seen as neutral by at least one side in the conflict. If you help the "most vulnerable" or only hire the "qualified" in situations where the standard definition of those categories falls along a cleavage in that society, then your actions will not be seen as neutral. This is not to say that you should abandon your categories, but you should understand that your sure knowledge of your neutrality is often not apparent to the parties involved in the conflict.
Think for a moment about one of the phrases in common usage: "countries act in their own interest". Whether this is true or not (and I have an important quibble), it collapses all the nuance and contradiction of a 'nation' into vague and usually ill-defined 'interests'. These interests are then found to have some relationship to the conflict situation, and the nation is now involved in the conflict because others perceive it as having interests that involve it. It is possible that countries feel that they have to take sides because no one will believe an attitude of self-interested neutrality.
If you are in a context of conflict, all the other actors will see you as an actor too.
"Because we're the fucking United States of America!"
Rhetoric is an art not to be dismissed. It can move mountains thought securely rooted, it can light fires best left unkindled, and it can stir up souls thought long dead. The very best rhetoric speaks the honest truth and speaks it in a way that truth passes through the ears and into the heart, moving men and women at their core and then moving them in the world. This can be accomplished through grand oratory and honeyed words, apt analogies and mellifluous metaphors. And sometimes it is best accomplished through plain speaking and straight talk.
When Jim Henley profanely reminds us all why we should not condone torture, he largely won an argument whose positions were flailing wildly past one another. Certainly, a group of hard heads, "realists" as they would have it, will continue to complain that extreme times demand extreme measures, forgetting that the present is always at the extreme of history, and that their glorious future - after just this one crisis is over - will extend into an eternity of pain.
The rest of us now have a simple and inarguable answer for them. Just look around, cock your ear and listen and you will hear the voices speaking a simple and honest truth. We will not march into that suffering future or lend it our support, because we're the fucking United States of America!
All that is best in us, as American citizens, is unleashed in our unabashed love affair with our country. American patriotism is a strange, chimeric beast, never seen in this world before. Always wandering, always searching, never fixed to a piece of ground, but eyes always gazing at the starry heavens, fixed on an idea. Remind Americans of the idea, call us back to the journey, speak the truth of what we always knew we were, speak it hard and straight, and that love will overflow.
. . .
Mr Henley has gone on to acknowledge a broader reason to oppose torture (via Cold Fury), "because we're fucking human beings", which is also true, but as an argument it does not, alas, carry all the weight of his earlier formulation. Humanity is a flag that some will gladly follow, but it is too abstract, too afloat in time and space, too broad and too shallow. Sure, I am and you are human beings, sharing so much, but so are the killers, the murderers, the bombers, the shooters, the genocidaires - and the torturers. Humanity weeps. At least, at the very, fucking, merciful least, here in the United States of America, we are not the torturers.
Fight for it.
For the most part, I've left my work out of De Spectaculis. I do this for pleasure, not as a labor, and I like the opportunity to cover territory that is at least somewhat removed from conflicts and wars. Generally, when I start to write about conflict, I feel as though I should just go ahead and write a paper for work, and why should I spend my free time doing that?
A large part of what I do is conflict impact analysis. I work with organizations of all types (NGOs both international and local, donors both government and foundation, businesses and corporations both local and multinational) operating in conflict zones or potential conflict zones. They need to know about the context, of course. They also need to know about the impacts of their decisions and their operations on the conflict.
Every organization knows that they have to perform a risk assessment. But this is carried out almost exclusively from a perspective that a conflict will have impacts on the organization and its operations. People make the assumption that they, and their organizations, are neutral - because they don't explicitly take sides. But no one in a conflict situation is perceived as neutral by the participants, and actions taken in a context of conflict can have serious negative consequences. If people and organizations don't understand the interactions between what they are doing and the conflict systems, it is very easy to heighten the tensions where they are working.
What follows is an outline of one of the simpler frameworks for understanding impacts on a conflict. I spend a fair amount of time teaching people how to use it and how to apply it to their current situations. While simple, this framework is not simplistic, and it has proven to be a powerful tool for analyzing past mistakes, current problems, and directing future programming. It is presented in the form of lessons because each element was in fact learned during a five-year research/collaborative learning project begun in 1994 and about which I may (which is to say, "probably") have more to say at some point.
First lesson, when you enter a context of conflict, you become a part of the context. While this might seem obvious to any bloke who has mastered pop Heisenberg, most people don't think it actually applies to them. As I mentioned above, most people think neutrality is simply a matter of declaration and then all actions taken in that spirit will themselves be neutral. You know what your intentions are; how could anyone else misconstrue them? Alas, in a conflict, you cannot remain separate from the factors involved.
Second lesson, every conflict is broadly characterized by two sets of factors. There are factors that divide people and are pulling them apart, and there are factors that connect people and bring them together. Again, this might seem obvious. However, in a conflict situation, the first set of factors, the dividers, are much more obvious and so tend to dominate all discussion about the conflict. The second set of factors, the connectors, are still there though.
Third lesson, when you enter a context of conflict, you will have an impact on both sets of factors, on both dividers and connectors. This impact can be negative, heightening dividers and/or reducing connectors, or it can be positive, lessening dividers and/or increasing connectors.
The fourth and fifth lessons are concerned with how you impact a conflict situation. Your impact comes from what you bring into the conflict.
Fourth lesson, when you enter a conflict you bring resources (money, equipment, people, etc.). These resources will change the local dynamic. They will have an impact on the economy, an impact on the local authority/government, and an impact on intergroup relationships.
Fifth lesson, you also bring your attitude. The way you do your work in a conflict situation is just as important as what you do. Some ways of working signal an acceptance of conflict and encourage violent competition. Some signal ways of working together and engagement in decision making.
Sixth lesson, the devil is in the details. Your organization or its actions do not have an all or nothing impact. Different elements of your operations may be having an impact on different factors in the conflict.
Seventh lesson, there are always options. You can always find a different way to accomplish your goals, a way that at the very least reduces your negative impact. And a corollary to this lesson is that it is never too late. You can always change what you are doing. You just have to look at your options.
Over the next few days, I will address each lesson in more depth. Questions, as well as comments, are welcome.
Part I: Introduction
Part II: Entering the Context of Conflict
Part III: The Two "Realities" of Conflict
Part IV: You Have an Impact on All Factors
Part V: The Things You Bring
Part VI: How You Do Your Work Matters as Much as What You Do
Part VII: The Devil is in the Details
Part VIII: There Are Always Options
" People aren't obsessed with continuously finding information," he said. "People want to leave the digital world behind them sometimes. "
Not that I advocate this, you understand.
- " Based on our experience in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan some projections can be made about our ability to deal with the problems we will face over the medium term. "
Robert Barry, a man who has as much experience with nation-building as anybody else in the world (he coordinated US assistance to Eastern Europe in the wake of Communism and was the head of the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina), has placed yet another wake-up call to the Bush Administration. Their deep slumber, and what appears to be a nearly complete lack of concrete planning, is "Why we are not prepared to win the peace in Iraq".
He begins with the following outline and then goes on to give the really bad news: the peace is winnable with planning, but we're not planning to win. The section on "Governance" is of particular interest.
- " The increasingly ambitious agenda for post-Saddam Iraq now includes disarmament, regime change, democracy in Iraq and a safer world for all. What is missing is any realistic discussion of the sacrifices that will be required to produce this kind of rosy scenario. President Bush and Prime Minister Blair seem determined to avoid discussing the costs and burdens of defeating Saddam Hussein and rebuilding the country afterwards until after a decision to go to war has been made. This creates a serious risk that our publics and parliaments will decline to shoulder the burdens of victory. Losing the peace in Iraq may carry greater risks than attempting to contain Saddam Hussein. We need to look carefully at plans for peace before the die is cast for war.
" The usual argument for not being drawn into a discussion about what will be needed to win the peace is that the future is too difficult to predict. Yet the Pentagon is quite capable of juggling multiple sets of war plans, and the major outlines of challenges presented by an occupation of Iraq are clear. Initially at least it may require as many troops to secure Iraq as to defeat Saddam. Some occupation forces may have to remain for five to ten years.
" Responsibility for the civil administration of Iraq will fall largely on the US at first, and there may have to be an international civil presence there for a decade. The creation of a ‘democratic Iraq within its current borders’ is a long-range goal, not an instant product of victory over Saddam.
There will be a major humanitarian crisis that we are not yet well prepared to deal with." Iraqi oil revenues will first go to providing food and humanitarian aid, and what is left over will not pay for Iraqi reconstruction. Getting others to help pay to clean up after a war they have opposed is going to be harder than has been acknowledged. "
The emphasis in the first paragraph is mine and is the issue that will haunt all future American dreams of glory as the Third Punic War haunted republican Rome's.
I've been wondering when I'd see an editorial reference to our looming appointment in Samarra.
Meanwhile, in a national backwater, a court heard a case of nearly transcendent import, a case that might very well shake the nation. Some say that nation would be shaken loose from its sacred ground and lose all its roots, while others would say that a nation conceived in and watered by liberty from time to time needs to have old prejudices shaken down from its branches.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has just heard a suit about same sex marriage. In a few months, the SJC will return with a ruling. It is possible that they will declare Massachusetts constitutionally bound to allow people of the same sex to marry. And then the deluge. Every other state will forced to recognize marriages performed in Massachusetts. The mind fairly boggles.
Among the many memorable exchanges between lawyers and judges was this one:
- " Justice John Greaney asked Assistant Attorney General Judith Yogman whether she saw the same paradox he did in allowing same-sex couples to adopt children, but not to marry each other. 'Are those ideas somewhat at odds?' he asked.
" 'Not at all, your honor,' Yogman said. 'Adoption is one thing. Marriage has many other responsibilities and benefits associated with it other than child-rearing.' "
Perhaps marriage does have "many other responsibilities and benefits"1, but the main thrust from those thoughtful conservatives arguing against same sex marriages is that child-rearing is the crucial component.
James Q. Wilson wrote not so long ago that, " What is distinctive about marriage is that it is an institution created to sustain child-rearing. ... The role of raising children is entrusted in principle to married heterosexual couples because after much experimentation--several thousand years, more or less--we have found nothing else that works as well. "
Did I say "thoughtful"? It seems to me that, after several thousand years, people continue to have and raise children in all sorts of arrangements - including, but not limited to, "married heterosexual couples". In fact, we are here today, having this discussion, because our ancestors - one-hundred-thousand years or so of Homo Sapiens and a few million more of primate social structures - somehow managed to raise children to procreative adulthood. I'm not sure what other measure of success we should apply to child-rearing in and of itself.
The arguments against same-sex marriage revolve around precisely this point: child-rearing is important. Which is not in question. All societies, like any institution, are concerned with perpetuating themselves. The crucial aspect of carrying a society forward to the future involves the structures surrounding making, having, and raising babies. Change those and you change the society. None of this is in argument.
But then the intellectual (or aristocratic) conservative argument has always been: I like the society that allows me to be the person that I am, the very crown of creation, therefore, preserving unchanged the devil I know intimately is to be considered the greatest possible good.
If marriage needs to maintained in a form that is more or less familiar to conservatives, then let us take them at their word. Marriage is about raising children. Therefore, marriage should be reserved to those who will raise children. Why should we let couples of any orientation freeload upon all those benefits that marriage confers unless they agree to perpetuate the society that offers those benefits?
1 I now have pretty good insurance - which was the entire impetus for getting married after eight years of co-habitation. That's the benefit. If we were a little richer or a little poorer or had a child we might save on taxes, so there's another possibility. But what else do I get? What else do I owe?
We all like quizzes that purport to tell us who we are and where we stand in relation to others. I've voiced a weary dissatisfaction with simple questions that map along a single axis. That, however, does not prevent me from plugging my way through such so as to see, well, where I stand in relation to others - even if that other is just the quiz's writer.
The Political Compass is a two axis quiz, an economic axis and a political one. I scored 0.12 on left/right and -6.84 on authoritarian/libertarian. I seem to be a centrist-libertarian in inclination.
I find this very interesting and also in need of a little explanation, because I think this designation suits me quite well.
The basic political unit, the atom in which all rights inhere, is the individual. Full stop, finished thought. All right, continue...
Politics, as I see it, is the individual in relationship to others. No individual exists in isolation and there are no politics without interaction, negotiation, or compromise. My rights end where they bump up against yours - otherwise anarchy (the nasty, brutish, and short kind). One simply does not get much meaningful life, liberty, or happiness without a government securing those rights.
Governments are good, but only in as much as they help provide the space in which we citizens have maximum exercise of our rights. Governments are bad in as much as they restrict our exercise. I'm seldom inclined to acknowledge that governments are meeting their responsibilities as well as they should. Let me summarize: individuals have rights; governments have responsibilities.
Likewise, I believe strongly in free markets - right up to the point at which the entities participating in those markets begin to infringe on my freedom. You see, the "freedom" in free markets is a metaphor. As stated above, rights inhere in the individual and nowhere else. For many good social reasons we can pretend that market entities such as corporations are like people, but we should never forget that they aren't, that they simply and completely do not matter one iota as much as any person. Let me summarize: individuals have rights; businesses provide goods and services in markets.
Humanity, that crooked timber, and every individual which makes up that great and eccentric family, is what matters. Everything else is a tool.
I've been meaning to say something about Germans and their fascination with cowboys. I was thinking of saying one or two psychologically trite things about about how a socially restricitve and regimented society fanatsizes about individual freedom, or about how a people at the center of a crowded Europe need to dream of open spaces and endless frontiers.
There's an article in the Ideas section of today's Boston Globe which reports on the phenomenon. I think I'll let it speak to the facts of the matter and put off the lazy theorizing until some evening I can't help myself.
On a visit this past year to one of the far outposts of the Empire, on the near bank of the Rhine, I had an enlightening exchange with one of the natives. The late summer sun was low and golden, ripening the fields of honey-colored grain, lending a drop of its fire to the cool, sweet Kolsch we were drinking. We might have been talking about everything under the moon and stars, but inevitably we were talking about US foreign policy.
My Gothic friend was holding forth, fulminating, terrible in his Teutonic ire about the impending invasion of Iraq. "What happens after the invasion? What are you going to do? You can't just indoctrinate people and make them democrats!" he shouted.
"It worked on the Germans," I remarked.
. . .
I admit that that was fun. My interlocutor for that exchange is one of my best friends and this has become a ongoing joke between us. But there is much more to this issue, much more - about which I am trying to organize some thoughts.