Category Archives: Wars of the Middle East

Where we are with Iran.

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            The radioactive isotope U-235 can be “enriched” to higher levels of purity by the use of special centrifuges.[1] Enriched to low levels (3.67 percent), U-235 can be used as fuel for nuclear power plants.  Enriched to very high levels (90 percent), U-235 can become the basis for a nuclear weapon.  Enrichment is a slow business in the early stages, but each successive step becomes much faster from higher levels of purity.  According to one expert, it might take a month to enrich U-235 from 20 percent to 60 percent, then a week to go from 60 percent to 90 percent.  However, more centrifuges are required to achieve each higher level of purity.[2] 

            The development of nuclear material is one step.  The development of the technology of making an actual weapon, and the development of ballistic missiles are additional steps.  There is nothing to say that these steps have to be done sequentially, rather than in parallel.    

            Iran had developed a large infrastructure of uranium-enriching centrifuges, along with other elements of nuclear weapons development.  Alarmed, the international community imposed increasingly severe economic sanctions on Iran.  Eventually, the Iranian government agreed to negotiate. 

            The 2015 international agreement limited Iran to possessing 660 pounds of U-235 enriched to 3.67 percent and required the shut-down of many of its centrifuges.  In return, Iran won removal of some—but not all—of the international economic sanctions.  Many other issues regarding Iran’s foreign and military policy were set aside for further negotiations.  Many economic sanctions were retained as leverage for these proposed future talks. 

            President Donald Trump soon abandoned the 2015 agreement and plastered Iran with sanctions.  Iran then began moving away from compliance with the 2015 agreement.[3]  Iran increased its supply of U-235 that had been enriched to 3.67 percent; enriched some of its U-235 to 20 percent; restarted some its centrifuges; and blocked international inspectors from some of their agreed work.  According to a February 2021 report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran now possesses ten times the amount of enriched U-235 allowed under the agreement.  If processed into weapons-grade material, that would be enough for three nuclear weapons.  In addition, Iran has “largely ignored” an agreement on missiles and has allowed an agreement to expire that permits the security cameras to view Iran’s nuclear fuel.[4] 

            There are several ways of interpreting the series of measures taken by Iran.  One way is to see it as slicing the salami, seeing exactly what it can get away with without provoking an attack.  Another way is to see it as a slow ratcheting up of pressure to both force a revival of the 2015 agreement and to improve Iran’s position in negotiations. 

            In the nature of the production process, holding down both the amount of enriched U-235 and the number of centrifuges are key.  In mid-April 2021, Israel caused a major “mishap” at the centrifuge facility at Natanz.  Perhaps several thousand centrifuges were destroyed. 

[1] Rick Gladstone, William J. Broad, and Michael Crowley, “Iran Says It Won’t Make Bombs, But It May Be Inching Closer,” NYT, 18 April 2021. 

[2] Thus it would take 500 centrifuges to move from 20 percent enrichment to 60 percent enrichment, and 600 centrifuges to move from 60 percent to 90 percent enrichment. 

[3] As American bombing in Vietnam showed, this latter strategy doesn’t always work.

[4] David E. Sanger, “On Iran, Biden Walks a Tightrope Between Force and Diplomacy,” NYT, 29 June 2021. 

The Iran Problem.

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            For decades, Shi’ite Iran pursued nuclear weapons, developed ballistic missiles, and supported terrorists around the Middle East as proxies in its war with Sunni Muslims.  With the American people clearly wary of any new war in the Middle East, President Barack Obama’s administration negotiated a multi-national agreement with Iran on part of these issues.  In return for relief from some of the painful international economic sanctions, Iran agreed to limits on its nuclear weapons development program for a limited time.[1]  President Donald Trump unilaterally abandoned the agreement.[2]  Both Iran and the Democrats bitterly criticized Trump’s action.  The election of President Joe Biden, then, seemed to promise a ready return to the agreement by both parties.  Nevertheless, difficulties arose in completing this restoration.[3] 

            For one thing, Iran’s government now wants more than it got from the Obama administration.  It wants more sanctions relief to allow it access to international financial services.  It wants to keep the nuclear-fuel production capacity it built up after President Trump abandoned the agreement.  To increase pressure on the Americans, it announced that it would raise the cap on enriching uranium from 3.67 percent to 60 percent, cutting the time needed to produce nuclear weapons if talks broke down. 

            For another thing, the United States government now wants more than it got from the Obama administration.  It wants immediate agreement to limits on Iran’s ballistic missiles and its support for proxy terrorism.  Furthermore, the United States wants to push out the duration of the agreement to prevent Iran from building a weapon for much longer than the original agreement.[4] 

            For yet another thing, Israel sees Iran’s government as a deadly enemy.  It sees the nuclear weapons program, the ballistic missiles, and the regime’s constant denunciations of Israel as warnings of a new Holocaust.  Israel has done everything it can—short of a bombing campaign conducted in co-operation with a nearly-as-skittish Saudi Arabia—to slow down Iran’s weapons programs.  Israeli intelligence purports to believe that Iran is much closer to making a weapon than do Americans.  The Israelis disliked the original deal, will really dislike any softer deal, and may see a no-deal as lighting a fuse. 

            The Iranian regime that negotiated the agreement with the Obama administration[5] has passed its sell-by date.  The Biden administration’s negotiations  took place under the shadow of a looming Iranian election likely to be won by “hard-liners”[6] who had criticized the original agreement.  In fact, this is what happened.  In contrast, the recent Israeli elections changed nothing except the prime minister. 

[1] I supported the agreement then and support it now.  That doesn’t mean that the critics of the agreement didn’t have valid points.  It’s just a case of “half a loaf is better than none” when the alternative is to start bombing. 

[2] His administration either re-imposed or created new sanctions for a total of 1,500. 

[3] Steven Erlanger and David E. Sanger, “Two Nations Divided By a Common Goal,” NYT, 10 May 2021. 

[4] Since these seem to have been the major Republican complaints about the original agreement, it would appear that we are actually experiencing Donald Trump’s second term, just without the egregious personal behavior.  See also: China policy, North Korea policy, Afghanistan policy, illegal immigration policy. 

[5] President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. 

[6] “Hard liners” is a term from the Soviet-American Cold War.  American observers often conjectured that a struggle took place within the Kremlin between “hard-liners” and “soft-liners” or “moderates.”  For a time, British diplomats applied the same sort of analysis to understanding the pre-war Nazi regime.  At least in the latter case, the distinction between “hard-liners” and “moderates” was purely wishful thinking.  Probably an example of projection. 

Cosmopolitanism and the Nation State 1.

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            Nationalism is the idea that all people who share a common language and a common culture should be organized in independent, self-governing states.  Once upon a time, this posed a revolutionary threat to established boundaries.[1]  “Germany” and “Italy” were geographical expressions equivalent to saying “the Mid-West.”  History had fractured each into multiple independent states.  At the same time, the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire were multi-lingual, multi-religious, and multi-cultural conglomerations.  In many places, different “national” groups were mingled together.  Beginning in the later 19th Century, Nationalism spread into all of these areas, leaving havoc and nation-states in its wake. 

            During the First World War, Britain and France agreed on how to partition the Ottoman Empire after victory had been won.[2]  After the war, the peacemakers in Paris tried to craft national boundaries that would gather as large a share of any national groups as possible into a coherent state.  The best will in the world could not disentangle all of the groups, so national minorities grumbled in many parts of Europe.[3] 

            Between the two world wars, predatory states fed on the grievances of national minorities, their own or those of others that created hostilities that could be exploited.  So German minorities in Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland; the lands across the Adriatic that had been promised to Italy, but given to the Artist Formerly Known as Yugoslavia; Hungarians in Rumania; Poles in Czechoslovakia; Croatians and Slovenians in Yugoslavia; and all the lands lost by Russia in 1918.  After the Second World War, the peacemakers drew the lines on maps, then shoved people where they wanted them.  The problem of national minorities was solved. 

            The peacemakers also tried to freeze their lines in place for all coming time.  In 1945 the newly-created United Nations outlawed “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”[4]  In essence, countries that existed had a right to continue existing in their original boundaries.[5]  The break-up of the Western colonial empires soon added many new nations to the world and to the rolls of those who accepted the United Nations’ prior decisions as their price of admission. 

            Now changed flows of power erode the established order.  Vladimir Putin decided not to wait on plebiscites that the United States would never allow.  He took back the Crimea and staged a limited invasion of two predominantly Russian “oblasts” of Ukraine.  He has claimed that Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia “are one people.”  Xi Jinping’s flouting of China’s agreement on the status of Hong Kong may be a preface to retaking Taiwan.  In 2020, Chinese publications sent up trial balloons referring to parts of Tajikistan and Kazakhstan as once part of Imperial China’s domains.  Water runs downhill, so lesser powers may soon start dusting off their claims. 

            Should this be stopped?  Can this be stopped?  Will this be stopped? 

[1] The American Revolution can easily be portrayed as the first war of national liberation.  The Dutch will object. 

[2] The Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916) gave France Syria and Lebanon; while Britain got Iraq, Trans-Jordan, and Palestine.  The British made a number of other commitments that did not accord well with reality, notably promising much of Turkey to Italy and Greece, an Arab state to the rulers of the Hejaz, and a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. 

[3] “Sub-Carpatho Ukraine, land that we love.”  I stole that from Alan Furst, Kingdom of Shadows (2000). 

[4] Quoted in Yaroslav Trofimov, “The Dangers in A New Era of Territorial Grabs,” WSJ, 19-20 September 2020. 

[5] This amounted to a return to an established principle of 18th and early 19th Century diplomacy. 

My Weekly Reader 14 June 2021.

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            “We had won” Winston Churchill later wrote of American entry into full belligerency after Pearl Harbor in December 1941.  A “long and hard road” still had to be travelled to victory.  By August 1942, the Japanese had conquered the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, British Malaya and Burma, and were on the frontiers of India.  By the same point, German armies were advancing on Stalingrad in Russia and on Alexandria in Egypt. 

            The war in the Mediterranean linked the two greater Theaters of Operations.  Gibraltar controlled the western entrance to the sea, while also serving as a key naval base protecting Atlantic Ocean convoys.  Suez controlled the eastern entrance, while also anchoring the British position in the Middle East.  In 1942, the Germans and Italians mounted a deadly threat to Suez from the Italian colony of Libya.  The Afrika Korps joined with the Italian army to advance deep into Egypt.  In one sense, holding onto the British position in the Middle East came down to a question of merchant shipping.  The Italian army in North Africa and the Afrika Korps had to be supplied by the short sea route from Sicily to the Libyan port of Benghazi.  The British in the Middle East had to be supplied by the long sea route around the Cape of Good Hope.  Under these unequal circumstances, the British fought hard to disrupt the Axis supply line. 

            In this effort, the little island of Malta played an over-sized role.  Located at the choke point between the western and eastern parts of the Mediterranean, it also stood astride the Sicily-Libya supply route.  Initially judging Malta to be indefensible in modern war, the Royal Navy had largely withdrawn to the Egyptian port of Alexandria at the outbreak of war.  However, the war in North Africa made it essential to hold Malta as a base for submarine attacks on the Italian supply line.  Holding Malta meant running convoys through Italian and German air and naval attacks without much British air cover. 

            In 1940 and 1941, the Royal Navy generally got the better of the Italian “Regia Marina.”[1]  The situation changed dramatically in 1942.  In December 1941, Italian frogmen disabled two British battleships in Alexandria Harbor.  The Japanese assault required the dispatch of other ships to the Indian Ocean.  The German “Luftwaffe” also began to play a larger role.  Britain lost naval supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean.  Three convoys in March and June 1942 suffered heavy losses or were turned back entirely.[2]  Yet Malta had to be held.  Courage and skill would have to make good the deficiency in ships. 

            In August 1942, the British sent off a do-or-die convoy code-named “Pedestal.”[3]  Running eastward past Gibraltar under heavy escort, the convoy came under sustained naval and air attack.  Three days of pure Hell followed. The British lost a carrier, two light cruisers, a destroyer, and nine merchant ships to bombs and torpedoes.  Yet the essential supplies—including a tanker full of fuel oil for submarines and aviation gasoline—got through.  Malta not only hung-on, attacks on the Axis supply line revived. 

            By the end of 1942, the tide of battle had turned against the Axis.  Tobruk, Guadalcanal, and Stalingrad are well-remembered milestones.  So, too, should be “Pedestal.” 

[1] Look up the Battle of Cape Matapan and the attack on the Italian fleet anchorage at Taranto. 

[2] A fictionalized and propagandistic account of the experience of one British cruiser, HMS “Artemis,” on one of these convoys is given by C.S. Forester, The Ship (1943).  Fine stuff. 

[3] Max Hastings, Operation Pedestal (2021), reviewed by Jonathan W. Jordan, WSJ, 12-13 June 2021. 

Look After You Leap.

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            After the 11 September 2001 attacks, American military forces invaded Afghanistan in pursuit of Osama bin Laden’s head.  This required toppling the Taliban government of Afghanistan, which had sheltered the Arab jihadi.  The Taliban fell and its survivors withdrew into Pakistan, but American and Afghan forces failed to capture Bin Laden.[1] 

            The American government then set about transforming Afghanistan.  Partly, this meant providing military security.  American forces remained in Afghanistan, although the numbers diminished after the attack on Iraq in Spring 2003.  Partly this meant economic and social modernization.  Roads and bridges were built to connect the countryside with the few big cities.  Schools and hospitals rose up.  Women saw many opportunities open before them.  Partly, it meant fostering democracy.  A parliament and a president re-emerged; there were elections. 

            Much went wrong in a pretty public way.  The “government” served as a device for corruption, much of it at the expense of American taxpayers.[2]  From their safe-haven in Pakistan’s border areas, the Taliban rebuilt its military power, then began attacks inside Afghanistan.  They targeted the government’s shoddy security forces.  They also attacked American outposts in the Northeastern part of the country.  These attacks couldn’t be called Taliban victories, but they did give the Americans a sense of the nature of their opponent.[3] 

            President Barack Obama inherited this mess, then tried to extricate America from Afghanistan.  First, he “surged” almost 100,000 American forces into Afghanistan in time for the Summer 2010 “fighting season.”  This did little to back-down the Taliban.  American generals began to express their belief that the war needed a diplomatic solution.  In May 2011, Special Forces finally killed Bin Laden in his Pakistan refuge.  In June 2011, President Obama announced that American forces would transition to a training and support mission. 

            President Donald Trump inherited this mess, then tried to extricate American forces from Afghanistan.  In 2018 it began negotiations with the Taliban, but without the Afghan government.  These negotiations concluded successfully from the point of view of the Americans and the Taliban.  In February 2020, an American-Taliban deal agreed that all American forces would be gone from Afghanistan by 1 May 2021.  Meanwhile, the Taliban agreed to cut ties with Islamic radical organizations, dial back its attacks on Afghan government forces, and negotiate with that government. 

            Relations between the Americans and the Afghan government went further down-hill after this deal.  The Taliban, which knew that they had won, proved unbending with the government, which knew that it had lost.  Nor did the Taliban check the violence very much.  Taliban forces have evicted government forces from much of the country and are taking control of local government and the roads 

            American security experts predict that the country will be under Taliban rule within two to three years after American forces depart.  President Biden then set the final departure date for 11 September 2021.  This is how endless wars end.  Better to ask how they start. 

[1] David Zucchino, “America’s War in Afghanistan: How It Started and How It Is Ending,” NYT, 23 April 2021. 

[2] OK, not actually taxpayers.  The US put the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on the credit card. 

[3] See, for example, https://mwi.usma.edu/podcast-the-spear-combat-in-the-kunar-river-valley/ 

Israel and America.

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            The long-standing orthodoxy: the tiny, embattled democracy of Israel is encircled by hostile dictatorships; American support for Israel allows the country to survive, while giving the United States the influence to prevent Israel acting within safe bounds.[1] 

            The context for the orthodoxy: the Soviet-American Cold War made the Middle East, with its oil and important place in communications, a key area for American security; the Arab Cold War between revolutionary and monarchical dictatorships made for de-stabilizing meddling; Arab military incompetence allowed Israel to expand its borders, so a solution to the Palestinian problem would reduce the dangers of war in the entire region; and Middle Eastern oil underpinned a prosperous world economy. 

            The new heresy: The Cold War has ended, so Americans can view international affairs in a different way; Israel has made peace with most of its neighbors; Israel never intended to accept a Palestinian state, and the Arab states have abandoned the Palestinians to their fate; the great division in the Middle East runs between Shi’ites and Sunni; a nuclear-armed Israel is a valuable ally against an Iran striving for nuclear weapons of its own. 

The trigger for Israel’s drive for greater autonomy may have come during the First Gulf War.  The Americans couldn’t prevent Saddam Hussain’s Iraq from launching Scud missiles at Israel in an effort to broaden the war and undermine Arab support.  President George H. W. Bush did arm-twist Israel into not responding.  This may have suggested that post-Cold War Americans had begun to think of Israel as just another chess piece.  Israel began preparing against the day. 

            The Israelis have managed to reconfigure their “occupation” of the West Bank into something that they—and the world—find tolerable.  To accept a Palestinian state would be to endow their worst enemy with the benefits of sovereign statehood.  That state would much more easily provide a base from which Hamas or the next version of the Islamic State could rain down death on the heart of Israel.  Intervention and defensive response would both be much more difficult.  Moreover, security barriers and check points have hived-off Israelis from Palestinians.  The Israeli : Palestinian death toll has fallen from three-to-one to twenty-to-one.  Palestinians may be miserable, humiliated, and enraged, but they are largely forgotten by the world. 

            The fear of Iran and of other forms of Islamic radicalism is bringing about a diplomatic realignment.  Relationships have been “normalized” with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and Morocco.  All this will be crowned—sooner or later—with warm relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.  Moreover, Israel is in search of new friends.  It’s hard to claim that your country is a democracy when it is holding several million Palestinians in a colonial status.  Illiberal democracies like Hungary and India seem to be targets of Israel’s diplomacy. 

            Benjamin Netanyahu, at least, has been demonstrating his contempt for the United States since the Obama administration.  Fair enough.  Some future historians will write a book about our recent and current politics and diplomacy called America in a Dark Hour.  But the United States has been through bad patches before and recovered.  Betting on permanent decline seems like a game for the overly-clever. 

[1] Inspired by Max Fisher, “Israel Grows Less Reliant on U.S. Aid,” NYT, 25 May 2021. 

Foreign Legions 13 January 2020.

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A bunch of historical examples can be offered of peoples hiring foreigners to do their fighting for them.  The Roman Empire came to rely upon foreigners to fill up the ranks of the army once citizenship became de-linked from soldiering.  The Arabs recruited large numbers of Turks driven off the steppe by the Mongols.  The little Crusader states in the Holy Land depended upon the military religious orders to aggregate individual European Christian volunteers into formidable props to their survival.  The Englishmen John Smith and Guy Fawkes fought for foreign rulers.  The French and Spanish armies included regiments of Irish Catholic refugees from English Protestant oppression.  In the 19th Century both France and Spain created “Foreign Legions,” while Britain came to prize the Gurkhas.  During the Spanish Civil War, the Comintern created the “International Brigades” to fight against the Nationalists.  Muslims from many countries fought against the Soviet in Afghanistan.  Most recently, the Islamic State marshalled thousands of foreign volunteers under its black flag.[1]

The death of Qassim Suleimani brought some peripheral notice of his reliance upon “foreign legions” to fight as Iranian proxies.[2]  Suleimani adroitly used both Shi’ite and—less frequently–Sunni militias on behalf of his government’s long-term effort to expand Iran’s influence in the Middle East.  Suleimani deployed these militias in the civil wars in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, while Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza are closely linked to Iran.  This policy brought so much success that Iran is unlikely to abandon it just because its original architect is dead.

Foreign volunteers have reasons for signing-up.  Some come for adventure; some are inspired by religious or ideological commitment; some are veteran soldier seeking something that civilian life can’t provide.  The motives for governments that recruit foreign volunteers are less varied.  Where military service has become socially undesirable or where the native population possesses skills too great to be wasted on the battlefield, foreign troops allow a country to punch above its weight.  Foreign soldiers cost only money.  No one cares if they die.

Only about one percent of Americans do military service.  Most of those who do serve come from the South and from military families living close to bases scattered through the South and West.[3]  Over three-quarters (79 percent) of Army enlistees have a family member who has served in the military; almost a third (30 percent) have a parent who has served.  Inevitably, that means that casualties are similarly distributed.  This trend has been developing ever since the military became All Volunteer in 1973.  There’s a political element to this as well.  Politically liberal areas often resist military recruiters in the schools and universities, while liberal parents rarely have done military service.  Young people have few models of military service.

Is this one reason for the “forever wars”?

No, I’ve never been a soldier.

[1] See: https://waroftheworldblog.com/2015/02/24/the-islamic-brigades-1/; https://waroftheworldblog.com/2015/05/08/the-islamic-brigades-ii/; and https://waroftheworldblog.com/2016/06/17/the-islamic-brigades-iii/

[2] Karim Sadjadpour, “The Sinister Genius of Soleimani,” WSJ, 11-12 January 2020; Dion Nissenbaum and Isabel Coles, “Iraqi Militias Remain a Wild Card,” WSJ, 10 January 2020.

[3] David Philipps and Tim Arango, “The Call to Serve Is Being Unevenly Embraced,” NYT, 11 January 2020.

The War with Iran 10 January 2020.

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The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 created both opportunities and dangers for Iran.  On the one hand, it toppled an enemy leader (Saddam Hussein) and liberated the fellow Shi’ites of Iraq to dominate a “democratic” government.  On the other hand, it put the powerful military of Iran’s American enemy right on the country’s door-step.[1]

An important role in developing the opportunities and confronting the dangers fell to General Qassim Suleimani.  Suleimani occupied a powerful position in Iran’s government.  The New York Times has described him as “an American vice president, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and C.I.A. director rolled into one.”[2]  Suleimani worked to increase the power of Iraq’s Shi’ite majority, extend Iranian influence over Iraq and into Syria, and push the Americans to pull out.  Some Americans and a good many Iraqis died in the ensuing violence.  Both the Bush II and Obama administrations had thought about killing him.  Both seem to have decided that killing Suleimani would not advance American strategic interests at those particular times.  Clearly, President Trump and his closest advisors made a different decision.  On 3 January 2020, an American drone fired two missiles that killed Suleimani and some of his myrmidons.

It is impossible at this early date to foresee the long-term consequences.  Still, it is possible to suggest some factors that will influence events.  First, the killing of Suleimani is unlikely to deepen the existing abyssal hostility between the two nations.[3]

Second, domestic factors will push Iran to retaliate for the assassination.  General Suleimani in the front rank of Iran’s leaders.  Trying to deter the United States from weeding-out other leaders could push Iran’s hardliners toward action.  The same is true of maintaining the regime’s legitimacy in the eyes of the public.  You can’t get out big crowds every year to chant “Death to America!” in the streets and then go “Never mind” when you get slapped in public.

Third, there is a huge imbalance of power between the United States and Iran.  American superiority in conventional weapons would probably preclude a real Iranian conventional attack on American forces.  The recent missile strike in Iraq both hit a remote facility with few Americans present and was telegraphed hours in advance to allow the Americans to take cover.  At the same time, President Trump claims to want to end the “endless wars” launched by the Bush II Administration.  That desire should bar any attack on Iran by American ground forces.

This reality could shape the behavior of both sides.  Iran can pursue an “asymmetrical” response.  Iran could use allies like Lebanon’s Hezbollah or Iraqi Shi’ites to attack American forces or American interests.  Those would not have to be limited to the Persian Gulf or even to the Middle East.  One key factor might be how robust are American defense and intelligence resources for dealing with such “asymmetrical” threats.

On the other hand, American air power is there and ready to be used.  For example, Iran firing missiles at American ships in or around the Persian Gulf would trigger air strikes.  Those strikes might not be very restricted.  They would inflict still greater public humiliation on the regime.

So, future headlines may be full of car bombs and “smart” bombs.

[1] At the same time, the Americans were occupying Afghanistan on Iran’s eastern border.  You can see how Iranian leaders might get a little skittish.

[2] Max Fisher, “Is There a Chance Of a Wider War?” New York Times, 4 January 2020; Amanda Taub, “Will Strike Deter Attacks, Or Lead to Even More?” NYT, 5 January 2020.

[3] It is now impossible to know if the policy pursued by the Obama administration would have led to an actual improvement of Iranian-American relations or merely postponed the current confrontation.

The Attack on Iran 9 January 2020.

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“Trump did it, so it must be the wrong thing.”  Fair rule of thumb/heuristic device.  However, seen in a historical perspective, some further thought may be in order.

First, the military historian John Keegan dissected the liberal mindset with regard to international order on the eve of the Second Iraq War in 2003.  He called this mindset “Olympianism.”  According to Keegan, it “seeks to influence and eventually control the behavior of states not by the traditional means of resorting to force as a last resort but by supplanting force by rational procedures, exercised through a supranational bureaucracy and supranational legal systems and institutions.” Keegan regarded this view as delusional, but widespread.  He describes the “Olympian ethic” as “opposition to any form of international action lying outside the now commonly approved limits of legal disapproval and treaty condemnation.”[1]

European states weren’t the only ones touched by “Olympianism.”  The Report of the 9/11 Commission tells readers that the US Government struggled to respond to the early attacks by Al Qaeda.  These early attacks included the bombing of two embassies in East Africa, and the attack on the USS “Cole” during a port call in Yemen.  The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency doubted he had the authority to kill some foreign terrorist just because the terrorist was trying to kill Americans.  Much thought went into how to capture Osama bin Laden.  Many Republicans, but also Democrats, belabored President Bill Clinton over the missile attack on a suspected Al Qaeda site in Khartoum, Sudan.  The evidence in the 9/11 Report suggests that the Clinton administration then slow-walked the investigation of the “Cole” bombing so that it wouldn’t be forced to do something that would lead to a further tide of abuse.  Attempts to kill Bin Laden in Afghanistan with cruise missiles failed because the diplomatic proprieties required the US Government to inform the government of Pakistan that the US would be flying cruise missiles across its territory.  This in spite of the fact that Pakistani intelligence had close ties to the Taliban government that was sheltering Bin Laden.

The response to the killing of Qassim Soleimani suggests that “Olympianism” has taken hold elsewhere.

Second, the war correspondent-turned historian Thomas Ricks has sought to explain the poor performance of the US Army in recent wars.  In his explanation, during the Second World War, Chief of Staff George Marshall and ruthless subordinates like Dwight Eisenhower and Omar Bradley, transformed a sleepy, gerontocratic peacetime army into a devastatingly effective instrument of war.  They did so, in part, by getting rid of any commander who didn’t cut the mustard.  After George Marshall and his followers had passed on, the Army reverted to a cautious, self-protective rather than self-critical, bureaucracy.[2]  Generals don’t get fired, except for egregious personal misconduct—when it comes to public attention.

If Ricks is correct in his analysis, how should we understand the apparent lack of enthusiasm in the Pentagon for the strike at an Iranian leader who has been asserting his country’s influence throughout the Middle East at the expense of the United States?

Third, it seems unlikely that President Trump’s order to kill General Soleimani is going to have a worse outcome than the decision by the Bush II administration to invade Iraq or the decision by the Obama administration to overthrow the government of Libya.

[1] John Keegan, The Iraq War (2005), pp. 109, 115.

[2] Thomas E. Ricks, The Generals: American Military Command From World War II to Today (2012).  See also: https://waroftheworldblog.com/2015/08/10/command-crisis/

The Kurdish Crisis-of-the-Moment 16 October 2019.

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The Kurdish crisis requires some explanation. First, the idea of Nationalism[1] began in Western Europe, then spread to other areas, slowly.  Eventually it reached the Middle East during the last stage of the Ottoman Empire. It penetrated the Greeks of Ionia, the Armenians, the Kurds, and the Arabs.

Just as the body’s immune system generates resistance to dangers, so did Nationalism among the subject peoples of the Ottoman Empire generate Nationalism among the Turks. Horrific things followed. In brief compass, the Ottoman Turks drove out the Armenians during the First World War, and the revolutionary Turkish Republic slaughtered large numbers of Greek Christians. Regardless of whether these were acts of “genocide,” a ton of Greeks and Armenians died as a result of Turkish government action. (Certainly, lots of Greek soldiers deserved to die for their actions in Turkey, but most of them got away to ships for home, while the civilian population was abandoned to the revenge-minded Turks.[2])  However, many Kurds remained within the boundaries of modern Turkey.

Second, when the George W. Bush administration decided to attack Iraq in 2003 for no good reason, one effect was to fracture the country into its component parts.  A Shi’a Arab majority in the east opposed a Sunni Arab minority in the west and the Kurds in the northern part of the country. Us liking it or not, the Iraqi Kurds saw their self-governing territory as the core of a united Kurdistan. The projected Kurdistan would include Turkish Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan, Syrian Kurdistan, and even Iranian Kurdistan. So, Kurdistan has many enemies and few friends.  OTOH, “neither are they afflicted by the disease of indecision.”[3]

Third, when ISIS attacked out of eastern Syria and over-ran much of Iraq, the armies of Iraq and Syria were rotted by corruption and civil war. The US faced a choice: leave it to Turkey, Iran, and–needs be–Israel to solve the ISIS problem OR thrust ourselves back into regional affairs. The Obama administration chose a partial re-engagement.  Send Special Forces troops as trainers and target-spotters and send US air power. The real heavy lifting would be done by an “Arab” army of mostly Kurds, with an icing-on-the-cake of “moderate” Arabs.

Fourth, basically this worked OK.  Not perfect, but OK. Now we’re faced with the question of how to get out of the “Forever War.” What do we owe to the Kurds, who have been fighting for their own nationalist interests? What do we owe to Turkey, a NATO ally with a large and restive Kurdish population? What do we owe to ourselves, to our self-image?  “You dance with the girl you brung,” my Dad always said.[4]

Fifth, Russia gets Syria? So what? The place is a ruin. The Russians already have alliances with Iran, the Shi’ites in Iraq, and the Alewites of Syria.  All formed under the Obama Administration. Turkey has already bolted on NATO. Much of that seems to be on the watch of the Obama administration. Focus on the essentials of American interests: oil from Saudi Arabia; and–more importantly–the Far East.

[1] I’ll leave aside all the BS that has been talked about of late about Patriotism as “the love of one’s own country” versus Nationalism as “the hatred of other countries.”

[2] See: Smyrna.

[3] See: “”In Harm’s Way.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXzNQHNsQHk

[4] See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcBplbfXgSY