Hotline to History
An AFP article covers efforts by leaders of China and Japan to set up a hotline between their leaders in the wake of naval incidents between the two countries. “The premiers of China and Japan agreed Monday to set up a hotline following a series of tense naval incidents, and to resume formal talks on jointly exploring offshore gas and oil fields.” The incidents occurred when “Chinese naval helicopters twice buzzed Japanese destroyers, and a Chinese marine survey ship pursued a Japanese coastguard vessel.” Another AFP story described the incidents which took place on April 8 and 21 near the island of Okinawa. A Japanese destroyer was monitoring a Chinese flotilla of 2 submarines and 8 surface vessels. The story is a reminder that international conflicts are part of the long history of regions and nations. Although it may be hard to believe, Washington, D.C., is not the exclusive source of the world’s problems.
According to Japan’s defence ministry, the sea-borne helicopter approached the Japanese destroyer Asayuki some 500 kilometres (300 miles) south of the main Okinawan island in the latest incident.
The helicopter flew at an altitude as low as 50 metres (165 feet) and twice flew around the destroyer, approaching as close as 90 metres (295 feet).
Between April 7 and 9, the Chinese fleet conducted drills in the East China Sea near Okinawa and then moved to the Pacific Ocean on April 10, Kyodo news agency said, quoting Japanese government officials.
Mainichi described a second, more recent event. “A Chinese marine research vessel chased a Japan Coast Guard (JCG) survey vessel in Japan’s exclusive economic zone in the East China Sea on Monday, JCG officials said.”
The latest incident occurred on Monday afternoon in the East China Sea, about 320 kilometers northwest of Amami Oshima Island, Kagoshima Prefecture.
A crewmember of the Chinese ship, the 1,690-ton Haijian 51, demanded by radio that the JCG’s 3,000-ton Shoyo discontinue its marine survey, claiming that Chinese rules apply to the area.
The Haijian pursued the Shoyo for about three hours from around 2 p.m. and came as close as one kilometer to the Japanese vessel at one point, forcing the JCG to discontinue its survey mission.
This is the first time that a Chinese vessel has approached a Japanese survey ship and asked it to discontinue a marine survey.
There may be more firsts as China feels its oats. But they are not really firsts. The historical rivalries and differences are reasserting themselves and the Chinese and Japanese leaders were setting up an infrastructure to manage them. Max Boot argues that recent events have thrown cold water on naive notions that the Age of Aquarius was descending on northeast Asia. Despite its economic dynamism, the region remains a rough neighborhood. Even relatively left-wing governments are rediscovering that the Chinese dragon, while sleek, still breathes fire — and the North Korean Hermit Kingdom harbors a crazy man and not a sage. Boot writes:
What of America’s two most important allies in Northeast Asia — South Korea and Japan? Not long ago, relations with Seoul were frosty because it was pursuing a “sunshine policy” of outreach to North Korea that the George W. Bush administration (rightly) viewed as one of the world’s most dangerous rogue states. More recently, relations with Japan became strained after the election of the Liberal Democratic Party in 2009 on a platform of cozying up to China, rethinking the 50-year-old alliance between the U.S. and Japan, and moving U.S. bases out of Okinawa. Now Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has had to undertake an embarrassing U-turn by agreeing to an earlier plan that would move a U.S. Marine Corps air base from one part of Okinawa to another but keep it on the island.
In justifying his reversal, Hatoyama said that “we cannot afford to reduce the U.S. military deterrence” because of “political uncertainties remaining in East Asia.” There is no shortage of such uncertainties with the Chinese navy becoming increasingly assertive in moving into Japanese waters and with North Korea, which has missiles that can easily hit Japan, sinking a South Korean naval ship with the loss of 46 sailors.
The latter incident naturally has focused attention in Seoul and served to accelerate the reaffirmation of close American-Korean ties that had already begun with the election of the more conservative President Lee Myung-bak in 2008. The anti-Americanism that had been prevalent in South Korea only a few years ago has all but disappeared, and it is not only (or even mainly) because of President Obama’s vaunted charm. It is largely because South Korea has tried detente and found that it did nothing to moderate the aggressive behavior of the North Korean regime.
The most important presence in the arena, and indeed in the rest of the world, is the referee: the third man in the ring. And that is the United States of America. Boot argues there is still no substitute for American leadership. The global economic woes have afflicted everyone. So in relative power terms the United States will for the foreseeable future continue to play a lead role. The security map of the world is still divided into the following regions: EUCOM, CENTCOM, PACOM, AFRICACOM, SOUTHCOM and NORTHCOM. “The very fact that the entire world is divided up into American military commands is significant. There is no French, Indian or Brazilian equivalent — not yet even a Chinese counterpart. It is simply assumed without much comment that American soldiers will be central players in the affairs of the entire world. It is also taken for granted that a vast network of American bases will stretch from Germany to Japan — more than 700 in all, depending on how you count. They constitute a virtual American empire of Wal-Mart-style PXs, fast-food restaurants, golf courses and gyms. … They may resent us, but they fear their neighbors, and that’s the ultimate buttress of our status as the world’s sole superpower.”
But this power has to be used intelligently. The power of the referee rests in great part on his predictability. Everybody should know what he will call a foul. When Washington triangulates in the wrong way or relies on a Rube Goldberg scheme full of unknown variables to achieve its ends, a policy disaster may ensue. Imagine what would happen if America tried to re-architecture its Northeast Asian alliances in the middle of crisis. That would be to court disaster. Yet that’s exactly what may be happening in the Middle East. The Wall Street Journal says President Barack Obama’s “dream of knitting together a kind of loose American-Arab-Israeli front to stand up to Iran and its nuclear program” was in a shambles.
In a few violent minutes at sea Monday, that all went out the window. … All this began unfolding before the sun had even risen over Mr. Obama’s Chicago home, where he was spending the Memorial Day weekend. Israeli commandos stormed a convoy of ships headed for the Gaza Strip to deliver humanitarian supplies to Palestinians there in defiance of an Israeli naval blockade of Hamas-run Gaza. …
Worse for the administration, this twist complicates its Iran strategy. The United Nations Security Council has been moving toward a resolution imposing new economic sanctions on Iran, but that’s now in danger of being slowed or sidetracked by the inevitable clamoring to condemn Israel.
It was a complex undertaking, replete with feints and bilateral talks. It had more moving parts than a Swiss watch. Then “nuance” met Murphy in the Clausewitzian “fog of war” and Murphy won. The Gaza flotilla upset the calculations and now the question is whether it can all be glued back together again. Simplicity has its virtues. The purpose of the Japanese-Chinese “hotline” was to simplify tense situations, to cut through the ambiguity of events, to make everything clear to everybody just as the cards are placed on the top of poker table. Then things can be settled within a well-known and accepted strategic framework. Japan and South Korea can call upon its ally, and America, if it does not want to muddle the situation, must act the ally in turn. All that clarity may have gone out the window in the Middle East in efforts to execute a complicated minuet. The WSJ described the steps of that intricate dance. Obama would pretend to beat up on Netanyahu, then at a precisely the right moment, he would reverse course. Brilliant, no?
Their feuding actually has had an element of theatrics—with the theatrics suiting both men’s interests. President Obama’s strategy has been as much about Iran, his paramount security concern, as Israel or the Palestinians. He calculated at the outset of his term that he needed to get tough with Mr. Netanyahu to push him into peace talks with the Palestinians.
Forcing talks, Mr. Obama figured, was crucial to his dream of knitting together a kind of loose American-Arab-Israeli front to stand up to Iran and its nuclear program. Without movement on the Palestinian question to ease Arab public opinion, the president calculated, moderate Arab leaders would be less willing to cooperate on Iran.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is so weak he needs all the help he can get. If that meant getting tough with Mr. Netanyahu, it was a price worth paying.
From Mr. Netanyahu’s point of view, standing up to a new, young American president trying to enhance American relations with the Arab and Islamic worlds wasn’t all bad either. Doubts about Mr. Obama (whose approval in Israel has plunged) only strengthened Mr. Netanyahu’s hand in standing up to him.
But for both men, this feuding had reached the point of diminishing returns, and they’ve been trying to turn things around. Israel apologized for embarrassing Vice President Joe Biden by announcing more East Jerusalem construction just as Mr. Biden was visiting.
The Obama administration has been talking up security ties to Israel. Two weeks ago, the president met with 37 Jewish Democrats in Congress and told them that he had spent more time one-on-one with Mr. Netanyahu than any other world leader, and that ties were solid.
But like a traffic light showing green in all four directions of an intersection, a foreign policy based on complicated signaling and on theater was bound to become an accident waiting to happen. It is possible that as Washington surveys the wreckage of its efforts the terrible words of Napoleon to keep things simple will come to mind. “Give your orders so that they cannot be disobeyed,” the Great Corsican said. So too would be his adage to rely on your allies and not on your enemies. “A general in the power of the enemy has no orders to give. Whoever obeys him is a criminal.” That way you know which way to face, a problem which sometimes afflicts diplomats. And above all the foreign policy wonks might have remembered that old saw familiar to everyone in military history: “order, counterorder, disorder.” In the world as it happens everything is potentially once step away from a Chinese Fire Drill. And that may be where Washington finds itself.
The raid particularly complicates dealing with Turkey. The Turks once were Israel’s best friend in the Islamic world. They’ve been drifting away, though, and essentially sponsored the Palestinian relief flotilla that Israeli forces confronted Monday.
As it happens, Turkey also occupies one of the rotating seats on the Security Council right now, and has been maneuvering to help Iran escape more economic sanctions. The U.S. is trying to dissuade the Turks from giving aid and comfort to Iran. Monday’s tragedy at sea won’t make those conversations with Turkey any easier, proving anew that the law of unintended consequences is always in effect in the Middle East.
Back to the drawing board.
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
“The U.S. is trying to dissuade the Turks from giving aid and comfort to Iran.”
The more effective dissuasion would be aimed at Iran. But such a strategy seems an order of magnitude above the current Administration’s capability to perceive, much less execute.
Let me point out that this flotilla has been publicly in the works for months, and presumably the US state department knew about it – and could have acted to prevent it from sailing in the first place, but nooooo. Of course the US knows about the nuclear nonproliferation meeting – I suppose since we’re hosting we’re sponsoring – that is an equally large threat to Israel.
Obama – Hillary – meet history.
As for China vs. Japan – thank you China for taking the opportunity of antagonizing Japan.
While the parallels are crude and imprecise they are still so numerous as to unnerve me.
Long established powers in decline. Rising powers feeling their oats. Economic and cultural globalization stressing and competing with tradtional societies. An ideological and radical movement nominally independent of any specific government but with tacit support from many countries who share their outlook or seek to benefit from the instability. A belief by established powers that we are at the end of history. New powers unwilling to accept the geopolitical position assigned them. Elites unable or unwilling to perceive threats out of view of their political and philosophical blinders. Ancient prejudices expanding behind a veneer of intellectual justification.
Whether it’s today’s incident or some near future event I fear we may stumble upon another Sarajevo, 1914. This time fought with 2010 weapons.
Obama is like a juggler with one too many knives in the air, confident in his abilities, with a hornet buzzing around. Oops!
DonB71inWA, not to worry. We have hotlines now. And the UN.
On a more serious note, Sarajevo, 1914 was just the excuse given for Kaiser Wilhelm’s putting into motion a surefire plan that had been formulated long before. That brings up another perhaps crude and imprecise parallel.
The ruling mullahs in Iran have a plan, have a plan. Three guesses what it is.
I too was struck by the phrase “trying to dissuade the Turks from giving aid and comfort to Iran”
Turkey’s current government is anti-Israeli/American/Western, time to accept that reality.
US policy towards Islamic nations must eventually reflect the Marine’s motto; “No worse enemy, no better friend”…that’s what’s needed to impress upon the Turks just what the stakes are in the ‘game’ they’re buying into.
“Do or do not… there is no ‘try’” yoda
Geoffrey Britain, us impress upon the Turks? Us?
Sounds kinda imperialistic to me.
Won’t happen under the current regime. The One might wheedle, whine, beg, bow, submit or cajole. But he isn’t about to “impress” anyone.
Watching Obama conduct foreign policy reminds me of Twain’s comment about the feeling you get when the baby picks up a hammer.
9 Gordon: I’ve had that feeling for awhile now.
Geoffrey Britain (#7) is absolutely correct. Now that we’re reducing our presence in Iraq, it’s a good time to let the Turks take a glance in the crystal ball. We’ve put up with their crud because we needed them since 2003 but that reliance is fading. We can always establish air bases, etc. in Kurdistan. The crystal ball shows the rise of Islam in Turkey threatening your membership in NATO. Pull a course correction or we’re pulling out.
The WSJ described the steps of that intricate dance. Obama would pretend to beat up on Netanyahu, then at a precisely the right moment, he would reverse course. Brilliant, no?
Geez, pretty much everybody in the world was trying to figure out what they were doing. So that was it, huh? These over achievers were being too clever by 99.9999 percent and it was all part of a plan. Well, they pretty much had everyone fooled. And I thought they just had a very bad quarter fund raising and came up with a twisty cover story and a few post dated memos.
Personally, I think the entire situation calls for the massive application of Hokum’s Lather. Not only does it work when applied to the middle east, it also works on oil spills. And much else besides! David Axelrod must be going through vats of the stuff.
“Free Constantinople!”
abc news Officials: Al Qaeda No. 3 Killed
Charles @ 14: So how did he die, bad clams? Article doesn’t say!
Kaiser Wilhlem had a plan. I’m confident Ahmadinejad has a plan. I’m hearing one of the plans the Israelis have is called the Samson option. Review Judges 16:28-30 for the inspiration.
The “peace activists” and their supporters are dancing on the edge of the cliff. Should the Israelis feel they are facing a second Holocaust, this time they may choose to have company.
“The premiers of China and Japan agreed Monday to set up a hotline….”
Ya wanna bet that those conversations will be in English? Less chance of giving offense and of misinterpretation. When the USSR gave Migs to third world countries they labeled the controls in English.
For nine years now we have endured lectures from the smug and half educated about how the bitter rivalry between Sunni and Shia meant that there was plenty of room to sit back and let master chess players spin competing alliances. It was always balderdash. Not that they don’t hate each other, they do, but that means nothing since we cannot trust any of them in any such engagement. This internal dispute has been going on for over 1200 years. The Sunni would be happy to see Israel bloody Iran and they would be happy to see Iran exterminate Jews. If they can gain power versus Iran cheaply they would be happy but if they have to endure a temporary Iranian ascendancy they would do that, and then betray it at the first opportunity, rather than actually exert themselves or assist in Israel becoming a permanent fixture with allies who are freed of dependence on imported energy.
Compare the fruitless cobbling together of fantasy alliances to control the Iranians now with those of Nixon/Kissinger 40 years ago. Now we dance around the Iranian regime while refusing to acknowledge the organizing principle they base their entire program on and which they repeatedly shout in our faces while our suave sophisticated pundits stick fingers in ears and go “I can’t hear you.” The efforts of the Tricky Dick and Henry K, who still produce a foaming two minute hate when mentioned to one of the bien pessants, were by comparison successful and would have endured if not tossed away by Wee Jimmy Carter. That is because Nixon/Kissinger recognized that the Pahlevi Shah’s regime was not based on the quicksand of religion but on nationalism. That is a firmer basis for negotiating lasting agreements. Nations have interests, citizens or subjects, and assets that they can build on and be held to agreements based on reciprocity.
Religions only have followers who are tools that can be picked up or dropped as convenient and they can always back out of an agreement after citing a new instruction from a Higher Authority. This is especially true with regard to Islam whose founder routinely, whether on destroying irrigation and date trees, having sex with a nine year old, executing prisoners after a truce, or sending assassins under cover of friendship, would violate what had been his own traditional moral code to suit his purpose. It has proven difficult to negotiate agreements for any but the most narrow and specific alliances with the Arabs because most of them are still not real nation-states. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 dragged that country back from the Shah’s efforts to modernize it through nationalism. Similarly the Islamists in Turkey are unraveling the efforts of Mustafa Kemal, which had for four generations partly transformed the former seat of the Caliphate.
The post nationalist tranzis like the Yurps think that is wonderful, since their experience of nationalism has included unhappy events like the two World Wars. They are confusing the primitivism of prenationalism, either religious or tribal, with the post-nationalist administration of communities already transformed by capitalism and socialism. They have proven wrong on every count. The Europeans are proving to be still stubbornly best organized in national units. Failure to do so only stimulates regression to more tribal identifiers and criminal pre-capitalist social behavior. In Weberian terms they regress from a state of Organic to Mechanical Solidarity. The non-Europeans who were never transformed by capitalism and nationalism and will only respond to immediate external pressure for short time goals.
The Japanese are a modern capitalist society who like the Europeans could move into post nationalist relations, if they had different neighbors. As it is they are emerging from the shadow of American power and will have to negotiate how to safely restore themselves as national, and nationalist, actors. Potentially Korea, Taiwan and the non-Islamic nations of South East Asia could all emerge as normal nation-states.
China is attempting to conduct itself as a rational national actor, as opposed to being motivated by some ideology, but they have two handicaps;
1. their capitalist revolution is imperfect and the rule of law is poorly instituted,
2. because of their size and history they have imperfect demarcations between local loyalties and national pretensions. China is really very fragile as both an economy and a polity.
15. Josh
According to this LA Times article he was killed in a predator strike in the Paki tribal areas. Here’s a list of articles on the subject.
larsen at #13—-heh, i needed that….
Charles @ 19: Thanks, I sort of thought so, but it was still glaringly absent from the current article.
OK back on the original topic of China, if they want to be warlike, why don’t they join with the US and occupy the oil territories of Iran and Saudi Arabia? Which we will jointly administer for the peace and brotherhood of all involved? And maybe pick up some real estate in Somalia for the same benevolent purposes? That they don’t, make me wonder at the real rationality available to the Chinese rulers.
Honor the fallen dead. God Bless the USA.
Our brave troops live in dire conditions everyday. Obama cancels his speech because of rain, what a faggit. I know it’s off topic y’all, sorry.
Whether it’s today’s incident or some near future event I fear we may stumble upon another Sarajevo, 1914. This time fought with 2010 weapons.
And with an empty suit in the White House. That’s what worries me most of all.
#13 buddy larsen
“Free Constantinople!”
You don’t think our politics is (are?) sufficiently Byzantine?
Viet Nam is very leery of China. VN made an announcement recently that they were buying Russian nuclear power plants.
Speculation from a friend with nuclear contacts and business in VN is that the deal is tied to arms sales, maybe conventional, maybe not.
#12 Mr. HD Greene,
I commented with that same speculation in the last post. On reflection, it strikes me as too clever by half, much like the fleet battle plans of the Japanese in WWII.
Byzantine?
How about this?
Contrary to earlier reports, the full, unabridged transcripts of the contents of black boxes recovered from the TU 154 which crashed in Smolensk on April 10 will not be made public, after Russia blocked the move.
Published here
Jerusalem Post
US urges Israel probe flotilla incident, not int’l inquiry
US deputy ambassador to the UN Alejandro Wolff did not support the Turkish and Arab demand for an independent international probe at the special UN Security Council session Monday overnight, saying: “We expect a credible and transparent investigation and strongly urge the Israeli government to investigate the incident fully.”
1. Free Constantinople!
2. Restore Yathrib!
3. Don’t mess with the Jews. Not all of us are pussycats. Obama is an idiot for not supporting Israel. It further proves that he is a stupid stupid man.
Charles/26; read the third-from-last paragraph of the current Nyquist –
Promethea/28; the History channel is just now running a show about the Ten Commandments. One of those great shows made up mostly of snappy interviews with scholars worldwide holding forth on meanings. I was just thinking before reading your post that the people who got such a deeply sophisticated design into print lo those thousands of years ago, are not going to go gently into whatever good night the netherworld has apparently got planned for them.
This piece from the Canada Free Press does an interesting critique of the Israeli operation imho and the information war being waged against the Israelis–and their current inability to understand it.
Ending Israel’s losing streak
Although it may be hard to believe, Washington DC is not the exclusive source of the world’s problems.
The creation of a China-Japan hotline also illustrates the increasing irrelevance of Washington DC in international affairs. Obama’s apology tour, complete with bowing to foreign leaders, is effectively marginalizing the United States as a serious world power.
Not only are America’s enemies treating Obama with contempt, but America’s allies are increasingly ignoring his existence. We need to consider the possibility that, at least for the duration of the Obama presidency, the United States of America may no longer be a superpower in any meaningful sense.
The Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore is apparently a premier center for strategic thinking in Singapore. Its S.T. Lee Project on Global Governance states as its intellectual framework on its web site:
The intellectual content of the project is framed by two central themes:
First is the need to address the breakdown of the liberal order established under US leadership after World War Two. That order, which depended on US dominance and intellectual leadership, can no longer depend so heavily on either, and must become politically and intellectually inclusive of the dramatic rise of the “emerging market” countries, particularly in Asia.
Second is the need to manage the governance gaps created by a rapidly globalising world. This involves developing effective means of handling issues never adequately addressed by the current order, from global-scale environmental despoliation and unchecked financial turmoil to the potential for global pandemics.
Put into plain English, Singapore’s strategists have finally decided that the United States is no longer a superpower in any meaningful sense. Singapore is now adjusting its diplomacy accordingly. Although Singapore is only one among many nations, I think its written comments about American power ought to be seen as a weathervane for what foreign diplomatic corps think but don’t necessarily advertise publicly.
29. buddy larsen
Yeah I’ve seen that guy’s predictions before. I disagree. But there are rough waters ahead–whose end is hard to predict.
That said, I think the dems are disestablishmentarians–but for mostly the same reason as Solomon’s son: bad character. The obama’s policy on Arizona is to anathematize it internationally as the communists/moslems are doing to israel.
But in both cases imho we’re talking smoke and mirrors. The only danger is if Americans and/or Israelis lose their nerve. Or in the mortal words of FDR “You have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Actually, I hate that line for reasons that have since become obscure to me.
I’m seeing a growing number of articles that suggest that shale gas deposits in Eastern and Western Europe will reverse the trends from the 1980′s.
Here’s one from the Wall St. Journal
Shale Gas Will Rock the World
charles/33; my thoiught was that if someone is in need of a catalyst, any funny business with those black boxes from Katyn might do nicely.
The Turkish government has been a hindrance, if not enemy of the U.S. since the AK Party took control in 2002/2003. Never forget, that the Turkish government denied U.S. forces to transit through Turkey to invade N. Iraq. The Turkish government was also a pain when trying to establish logistics support to the SF and airborne troops that we did use in N. Iraq. There have been numerous “almosts” with U.S. troops along the Turkish/N.Iraq border.
Until the AK Party goes, Turkey cannot be trusted. Attaturk is rolling in his grave at what is happening to his country.
I sincerely wish the U.S. would have recognized Kurdistan. I think we will regret not doing that in the not so distant future. At the very least, maybe the U.S. should stop sharing intelligence on PKK to the Turks. But that won’t happen either under the Messiah.
“It was a complex undertaking, replete with feints and bilateral talks. It had more moving parts than a Swiss watch. Then “nuance” met Murphy in the Clausewitzian “fog of war” and Murphy won. The Gaza flotilla upset the calculations and now the question is whether it can all be glued back together again.”
Murphy’s Law suggests random chaos gumming up the works. Recent events seem more orchestrated to me.
The US is trying to build international pressure on Iran to stop their nuke development, even from other Mid East powers. As bumbling as it may be, their may be some chance of progress because many of those powers fear Iran already, and a nuke armed one is a nightmare.
Iran, having managed to gain oodles of time already through various tactics like negotiations that go nowhere, now need a new distraction from themselves to occupy the world’s attention and fracture any coalition building against them.
Suddenly we have this new international crisis resulting from a flotilla trying to break a blockade to Gaza, casting Israel as the evil mini-empire in the region, complete with stormtroopers. The vessel on which this drama plays out was Turkish, it was organized by a Turkish charity, and there were Turks on board.
Who was working on a nuclear deal with Iran recently?
Oh, that’s right, Turkey.
We’re being played all around the globe, and we are unwilling to call it for what it is.
34. buddy larsen
I don’t think so. The poles are cut off and the russians know it. that’s what the unilateral walk back of anti missles in Czechoslovakia told them. if they wanted to be totally totalitarian cruel to the poles they could be.
What happened? I don’t know. This is just speculation.
“The WSJ described the steps of that intricate dance….”. Good example that ties to your next post “The Consolations of Philosophy”.
9. Gordon “Watching Obama conduct foreign policy reminds me of Twain’s comment about the feeling you get when the baby picks up a hammer.”
More like giving a twelve year old boy a bottle of whiskey and a loaded automatic.
The sheer fecklessness of the Obama Administration is terrifying.
Sirius:
Kaiser Wilhem flinched near the end but von Moltke told him that the train had already left the station. (in quite the literal sense the troop trains were leaving for the front every three minutes and the movement could not be stopped) The plan was on auto-pilot once the Austrians and Russians decided to go at it.
The entire analysis—the author’s and WSJ’s—is
based on an unwarranted and evidentiarilly unsupported assumption: that Obama et al WANT to act as referees rather than conquerors of sorts. This latter seem to be MORE supported by evidence. And
of course, the cause of such assumptions, even in the face of a mountain of evidence to the contrary, is simply that fact that we americans have been just too happy and affluent. Our culture is molded on the belief that most people would want to do the right thing, the decent thing, most of the times, and any behavioral departure from that is due to ineptitude or ignorance or some such otherwise benign cause. The history of the world is replete with evidence showing the exact opposite. Most people, and nations, would do whatever the hell they want, including, but limited to, taking over power over other people and/or nations. The oldest madman’s dream, comically depicted in Bond movies, that of ‘taking over the world’ is also the most prevalent, and most potent in terms of its consequences—mostly negative consequences. The players and professed ideologies keep changing, but essentially it is indeed a Manichean struggle of those who want to stay free and do their thing, and those who want to crush and enslave, pillage, murder etc, the free, or those seeking freedom.
In past two millenia, the biggest two such movements of the people of the first kind, i.e., the tyrants, power-grabbing kind, who are now dominating the global scene are Muslims and the international Left. It is a characterstic of these two, essentially religiously fanatic movements that they act through total deciet and total ruthlessness.
Obama and his leftist cabal within the democratic party, stand at the spearhead of of the last stands of BOTH these movements. I believe he is more of
a communist than a muslim, although both ideologies, in their professed form, stand exactly opposite to each other, fanatics have been known to be ruled by contradictions. However, i think the international Left is merely using the muslim Ummah (the world muslim community considered as a nation) to further their dream of taking over the world. Obama and his colleagues are merely the strongest foothold they have ever had on the neck of the other kind of people—the free and the freedom seekers.
The Obama administration is neither interested in standing up against looney Iran, nor against looney Hamas, nor has he any interest in establishing the ludicrous, “arab-american-israeli” alliance. Right now, he is busy BREAKING apart whatever has been not broken, because each of the latter kind is a strength AGAINST his agenda. “No crisis should go to waste” is elevated to, “we are in a position of creating the biggest crisis the world has ever seen, so why not create it and then not let it go to waste?”
Of course, respected, and mainly inconsequential, scholars, be they rightleaning or left or ‘independant’, are just too engrained with unrealistic and usupported dogmas that have become their lives. It is not surprising that they are still blabbering away as if the balance of sanity and evil will always stay checked if they simply ignore the historical precedents and not pay attention to the actions of the latter. So we get analyses of this kind—where the surface of a lake is described and analysed until the cows come home, leaving the events happening just beneath the surface, almost in plain sight of observers on the surface.
And THAT is an accident waiting to happen. Neither Obama’s policy, nor their results, current and future, are accidents born of ineptitude or ignorance and such. They are, rather, exactly what the leader of a tyrranical internation death cult (the Left, in this case), would and SHOULD do in order to further his/their dream. And i must say that the guy is succeeding spectacularly despite his obvious lack some spectacular brilliance, cerebrally speaking. The situation is very similar to how Hitler, a half-baked street-thug-cum-intellect, through sheer power of will and total unscrupulousness, aided by his own version of the leftist fanaticism, almost took over the world. Of course, he, not unlike Obama, pretended to be an intellectual genius, and a profound thinker, and other such oddities that hardly ever is the lot of tyrants and usurpers. I think Obama and his cabal are succeeding precisely because the most brilliant of the scholars and thinkers are interpreting him under patently wrong assumptions.
These loonies want to take over the world, and crush and rule it—not manage it in any positive way. Heck, they can’t even manage a 7-11 even if their life depended on it. (And they know it.)
29. I couldn’t bring myself to watch it after seeing the trailer, which was just plain wrong. Moses did receive 613 Commandments from God, but none of them are missing; they’re all readily available in any copy of the Old Testament.
American Eagle/41; i for one can find no fault nor any loose logic or weak exposition, in your post.
Charles/30
Excellent article.
Chinese saber rattling explains why the Japanese PM is resigning and the 3rd Marine Division is staying on Okinawa (sparing Guam the risk of capsizing).
our daily reminder that nothing stays the same.