Greg R. Lawson's Blog

Defending Western Civilization

2010-03-13T17:43:00Z

Another long article I stumbled on last night, but this concerns the conservative case for defending what is commonly known as the "West." From Spengler and Toynbee to Fukuyama, this is a great primer on defending what is generically called the "West" though the concept itself has a multitude of potential interpretati...ons and well springs. Athens, Jerusalem, Rome, and Gothic, Germanic forests, all are elements in our "Western" tapestry that is largely Judeo-Christian, with a major dose of Greek philosophy.

The question now is, are we losing that distinction amidst an airy cosmopolitanism that may degrade other cultures as much as one could argue it is degrading ours?

Can the "West" be defended? Should it be defended? Did it survive the near European suicide of the World Wars and the global contest with Communism only to fade away into obsolescence at the apparent peak of seeming triumph? Tough questions, but here is as good a place to begin pondering as any you're likely to find...

Security in the Age of Nukes

2010-03-13T17:37:00Z

As a follow up to my comment train with Thomas P.M. Barnett the other day, he responded to my final comment with the below which was then highlighted in this seperate blog entry. Barnett's response first, then mine.

" Barnett:

Nuke proliferation has remained far slower than the experts have predicted for more than half a century now. Ever since I am a kid I have been told we are just years from 20-30 powers, and yet Iran will make only ten. If Turkey and the Saudis followed suit, that would be 12. There is simply no prospect of even two dozen on the horizon.

Among the established nuke powers, there is no sign of irrationality overcoming precedent, so we are left, as always, with newcomers and nonstate actors. Does anybody posit massive nuclear exchanges on this basis? No. Do we wrap our entire grand strategy around the axle around the singular event? Some would have that.

I would not.

Iran and Israel exchange nukes and nothing much would change. Indeed, the rule set would likely be overwhelmingly strengthened.

We cannot stop every act of irrationality on the planet, nor should we fear it. We should simply take it in stride and stick with our own calculations of interest.

As for bringing up 1914, pre-nuclear examples of world war don't work in a post-nuclear world. You can't roll back the clock. You can't get rid of the crystal ball effect provided by nukes. You can't un-invent them.

And it's deeply misleading to cast colonial empires as the equivalent of today's globalization. Comparing the two casually is like comparing apples and handcuffs. The uncompetitive movement of resources from colonies to home countries does not compare to globally integrated production. Enslaved populations do not compare to a global middle class. Telegraphs controlled by governments don't compare to 3-billion and growing cellphones held by individuals.

Colonial empires were zero-sum developments, both in terms of the enslaved and in terms of competing with each other. No surprise the empires eventually turned on each other, and good riddance.

But what should I live in fear over that outcome in today's world?

We just lived through a financial crash very similar to the one that triggered the Great Depression. The difference in global outcomes was profound, was it not?

Me:

As my comment elicited Mr. Barnett's response referred to in this post, I would just state that while I believe he is laregly correct thus far in his assement of contemporary global events and interdependence; to assume this will remain inevitably so seems too optimistic.

Nuclear weapons have historically kept a lid on "Great Power" conflict since the end of World War II, at least in the sense of "Hot Wars." However, we have never had a world of numerous nuclear powers, much less a world of nuclear powers of various stability and security capabilities. As proliferation takes place, more rapidly now than over previous decades, we can not be sure what might happen afterwards.

Mr. Barnett states:

"Iran and Israel exchange nukes and nothing much would change. Indeed, the rule set would likely be overwhelmingly strengthened."

Why would the rules be strengthened rather than weakened as the long-standing taboo is broken? Because the world would get another demonstration of nuclear weapons terrible effects? Or will we see more people looking to amplify their ability to counter so they are not unwittingly on the end of an exchange?

We just can't tell how it would turn out. That is why we must prepare for the worst, even if it seems unlikely.

I sense an element of triumphalism in Mr. Barnett's comments- that all we have to worry about is small ball and integrating those currently not in the full blown "Core." He seems to think the belief in possible Great Power conflict is naively outmoded and that nuclear terrorism will not be all that big a deal as the world will pretty much go on as it always has the day after such an event.

I think hyperventilation over these potential threats is not necessary, nor strategic. However, I also think failing to consider their full implication could leave us ill prepared to handle the fall out should they actually transpire.

We don't live in 1914. That was never my point. My point was to simply illustrate that assumptions made one day can change dramatically and diametrically based upon a single discontinuity."

The Naturalness of Empire

2010-03-10T12:01:00Z

A quote from Henry Kissinger's Diplomacy elicits a good blog posting at the Coming Anarchy,

"Theorists of the balance of power often leave the impression that it is the natural form of international relations. In fact, balance-of-power systems have existed only rarely in human history. The Western Hemisphere has never known one, nor as the territory of contemporary China since the end of the period of warring states, over 2,000 years ago. For the greatest part of humanity and the longest periods of history, empire has been the typical mode of government. Empires have no interest in operating within an international system; they aspire to be the international system. Empires have no need for a balance of power. That is how the United States has conducted its foreign policy in the Americas, and China through most of its history in Asia."

For what its worth my comments below,

"I concur with Kissinger. A balance of power is an artistic creation designed by statesmen. It is not natural. What is natural is Will to Power. Everything else is an effort to constrain that natural desire within a framework that is acceptable to the largest number of people because what is natural, is also very dangerous."

Regarding the Coming "Clash" With China

2010-03-10T11:58:00Z

The below is a train of comments between myself and Thomas P.M. Barnett regarding the possibility of conflict with China. Note, I do not believe this is in any way preordained. I just believe it is possible while, despite his protestations, I do not think Mr. Barnett sees that as realistic.

"Me: Though I know we disagree on the long-term potential for serious major power conflict (I see it as quite possible, though not inevitable and you seem to see it as close to impossible), I agree that the China as competing Superpower that will overtake America meme is overwrought. It is possible to envision a serious, long-term cooperative relationship.

You rightly point out that China has many internal challenges and insecurities that most in the West do not pay much attention to along the path to their assumptions regarding inevitable conflict.

Of course, to be prepared for conflict even if unlikely remains a necessity and, in my estimation, should not be trivialized as reckless alarmism, but, rather, should be seen as prudential statesmanship.

Mr. Barnett: Greg, I don't define anything as impossible. I simply don't see any sea change in the larger realities that have kept a firm moratorium on great power war since 1945. China rising doesn't change the nuclear warfare equations, and those still sit on top of any conflict scenario. So if those held during the Cold War, then I'm supposed to think everything's more iffy now that markets have spread and all our major competitors are getting richer? If nukes + a declining opponent with an anti-capitalism worldwide revolution dream + all manner of rivalry in third power situations doesn't get me a great-power war over 45 years, then somehow I should be more unsettled by nukes + marketization and rising incomes and a deep embrace of capitalism + no real rivalry in a military sense anywhere in third power situations?

All you can say about me is that I find these assumptions and scenarios about inevitable great-power wars with China to all be rather underwhelming and unimaginative in their unwillingness to get beyond traditional pol-mil thinking and genuinely understand the larger economic and financial interdependency that ain't theory but actual, here-and-now fact.

But what do businessmen know? They control so little of real-world events while governments run EVERYTHING!

Me: Mr. Barnett:

I understand your point. I also think you are mostly spot on in analyzing the current trends in global politics and economics.

My concern is about the discontinuities. Surprising events that no one foresees that throw conventional wisdom out the window.

I think the current conventional wisdom, at least among policy elites (though not necessarily military strategists), is that conflict with China is not inevitable and would be devasting as part of "Mutually Assured Economic Destruction." I think the policy elite envision a world where trade and economic competition not war will be the prime conflicts. Your views are particularly shrewd and helpful in conceptualizing this perspective and coming up with reasonable ways of managing international relations within this milieu.

Indeed, I tend to agree with you that this is the most plausible situation and that China will continue a slow integration into global governance institutions which will slowly alter as it achieves and pushes for greater responsibility. Meanwhile, integrating "Gap" countries into the "Core" will be the main issue over the next several decades.

However, "globalization's" earlier vintage before 1914 also brought similar perceptions among the business class.

Though the underyling structure of global politics may have been more propitious for conflict then than now, a single spark ignited a conflagration that fundamentally reordered the world. This took place not because everyone acted rationally in their economic interest. That psychological component of human nature is still with us and drives behavior more than economists often think.

Consequently, I think this is the lesson of history- one should never be surprised no matter how seemingly counterintuitive a given event may be.

Nuclear proliferation may the wildcard that upsets the balance."

A Division of Labor for NATO?

2010-03-10T11:57:00Z

A provocative article about the future of NATO spawned a series of comments between myself and a member of the German military. The question from my perspective is, should Europe and the U.S. clealry define different roles within NATO for those actions that are taken outside of Europe like Afghanistan today?

I include only that train of comments below,

"Olaf Theiler: With the statement that "Today, the questions are: defense against what threats and with which tools? Once these tough issues are solved, we then need to decide how to share and sustain the burdens" I think Dr. Jackson Janes made a more than valid point, but at the same time missed two quite important things here.
First, a sequential answer to these important questions will not be sufficient. The question of burden sharing refers to two very much related issues. In the first place there is the issue of the availability of resources and capabilities and as a follow up issue it refers also to the political will to invest or deploy them. Both issues are critical not only for the burden sharing debate but also for the initial question of what threats and with which tools do defense against. In theory, any kind of capability development would be a clear result of a threat and risk assessment. In the real world instead, this seems not to be that easy since most nations tend so realize threats also in terms of the availability of capabilities. To be more precise, if a nation does not have the capability to influence developments far from its borders, at least some of its politicians will automatically try to play it down or even to ignore it completely. Furthermore, the availability of capabilities is even more influential on any debate about the right tools to fix a problem. A heavily armed nation might be much tempted to address a perceived threat with the use of force while on the other hand an only lightly armed nation would probably prefer diplomatic or economic approaches. Therefore, it will be almost impossible to deal with these questions in sequence. Instead, NATO will have to find solutions here in a parallel approach. A new solution on current burden sharing difficulties will – at least potentially – allow more flexibility in providing consensual answers on which threats to address as an Alliance and vice versa.
This leads to my second point, the fact that NATO desperately needs a new approach on burden sharing. In the center of today’s debates on burden sharing there are only two issues: Troops and military capabilities on the ground (including the costs that come with their deployment and sustainment) on the one hand and the death toll of these troops on the other hand. Also the criticism on the current level of burden sharing is very much limited to these two criteria. At the same time, NATO is debating very different kinds of challenges and on how to tackle them, thereby causing a gap between the discussion of needed means and capabilities on the one hand and the existing criteria for judging the share of burdens on the other. In order to have a realistic and fair burden sharing discussion, NATO therefore needs to include new aspects into its catalogue of judgment. The Alliance has to find a new formula to include assets like civilian and humanitarian aid, development project funding and staffing, civil training and education capabilities, judicial and administrative advisory groups, police training and equipment donations, even efforts and investments in and through other institutions or mechanisms than NATO – in short: all kinds of contributions to a comprehensive approach.
To sum it up, the new strategic concept of NATO needs to be much more forward looking and much more innovative than this Alliance has ever been if it wants to provide sufficient answers to the new security environment and its growing complexity.

Me: I have often argued here at the Atlantic Community that NATO is a solid security alliance for European issues, not so much as it relates to other regions in the world.

Is it possible as Mr. Theiler commented above that if NATO included

"assets like civilian and humanitarian aid, development project funding and staffing, civil training and education capabilities, judicial and administrative advisory groups, police training and equipment donations, even efforts and investments in and through other institutions or mechanisms than NATO – in short: all kinds of contributions to a comprehensive approach"

that it would be more useful? Perhaps, but that is a fundamental change in NATO's mission. It began as a military alliance to defend against potential Soviet expansionism. To morph into something that is all things for all people, it will inevitably be diluted from its initial purpose.

Perhaps, this diluted alliance would be better than none for issues external to Europe, but it will need to be examined through realistic lenses, not rose colored ones. If this is considered a plausible vision for NATO's future, then what of the military aspect? Does this not essentially mean that the US will remain the main utilizer of force in global affairs with NATO coming in later to "pick up the pieces?"

Again, this may be a reasonable and useful vision, but if it is to be so, both sides of the Atlantic need to begin drawing meaningful lines illustrating who has authority for the different types of actions that will need to be undertaken (ie, military altercations vs. policing vs. infrastructure development, vs. edcation, etc).

Mr. Theiler: @ Greg Randolph Lawson

Dear Mr. Lawson, please don't quote me out of context. My argument was that NATO internal debates about fair and equal burden sharing needs to include all kinds of contributions by member states to a comprehensive approach exercised in one of its missions. This does not mean however, that NATO needs to develop capabilities on all these fields as part of its institutional structure.
In order to avoid any misunderstandings, here are some examples (not at all exhaustive) about the possible range of a more flexible approach to burden sharing:

1) If one NATO nation has a ship active in the EU counter-piracy operation Atalanta, this could be seen as much as a burden in this task as a ship provided to NATO's counter-piracy Operation Ocean Shield by some other NATO member.

2) If one NATO nations provides Police Trainers through the EU to Afghanistan, this could be seen as an additional part of its burdens to make the ISAF mission a success.

3) If one NATO nation spends money on bilateral programs on economic development in Afghanistan, this could also be accounted as contribution to the over burdens carried by NATO in Afghanistan.

So far, there is no clear formula to compare a fair and equal burden sharing in the Alliance existing. There is even a slight chance that a more flexible approach to burden-sharing accountability might encourage more contributions. My point was that in light of a comprehensive approach the burden sharing debate needs to be broadened, not the range of actual capabilities or responsibilities of NATO as an institution. The latter is a highly sensitive issue to be discussed and decided by the North Atlantic Council whenever they will decide to do so.

Nevertheless, you got a point here by arguing that "If this is considered a plausible vision for NATO's future, then what of the military aspect? Does this not essentially mean that the US will remain the main utilizer of force in global affairs with NATO coming in later to "pick up the pieces?"
A broadened debate about equal burden sharing should not become an excuse for European nations not to contribute on the military side or the hard part of the job. At the same time, the "boots on the ground -" and "body-bags counting" as the only source of comparisson for burdens to be shared in NATO seem to me as outdated due to the adoption of the highly praised comprehensive approach.

Me: @ Olaf Theiler

Thank you for the clarification. I did not intend to quote of context. I am also glad to see your comment regarding Europe not using a broadened debate as an excuse to avoid military contributions.

I fear, however, such a debate may well result in just that. Yet even so, I am begininning to wonder if a broader conception of burden sharing may be what is needed to revitalize the NATO mission. By no means have I reached a firm conclusion in my own mind, but I would be interested in exploring how NATO members can contribute to out of Europe missions with something other than pure military force.

Dometically, it will be difficult for America to support this as the American public will have expectations regarding what they see as "fair" burden sharing and I am not sure the more comprehensive vision will be palatable to those outside of the intellectual and policy elite.

That said, I do think this may be a more realistic avenue to explore than perpetual exhortations for more troops from American leaders to their European counterparts.

Maybe the right division, roughly put, is to embrace Robert Kagan's thesis about Americans being from Mars and Europeans from Venus, but to do so without the negative connotations. In other words, Europeans should accept that the U.S. will be the leading edge of the proverbial spear, but Europe will be the diplomatic, soother and facilitator for reconstruction.

In a sense this seems the most logical division of labor. Rather than America trying to engage in activities it is unsuited for and vice versa. Additionally, it will allow both sides to more easily converge on issues of mutual interest while being able to walk away from those that do not rise to the level of perceived national interest.

Mr. Theiler: @ Greg Randolph Lawson

To be blunt: No way. Not only because it will not happen, but rather because it should not happen.
Three short thoughts on that:

1. You rightfully highlight the problems this would cause for the American domestic support. In addition to this, it might also become problematic for the European public. Will we always agree on doing the dishes for the U.S.? The old and sad joke that the U.S. does the fighting, the UN the feeding and the EU the funding will not go well as an officially adopted policy, not even in Germany. In the end, the Americans might find themselves isolated and without international support even in cases where their efforts would be more than justified and welcome, simply because it is the U.S. that takes action.

2. Should Europe – and here I mean all the European nations in NATO as well as in the EU – really confine itself to something like a Switzerland on a global stage? I would argue against such an idea because to leave all the fighting – including the choice of place and time for that – to the U.S. would ultimately result in a world without any kind of European influence. We still live in a kind of Hobbesian world as Kagan argued. Disrespectable if we feel more like Kantians or not, most nations in this world tend to judge their neighbors, partners and competitors by the power they have. Power here means the chance to influence events on the ground whatever means are necessary. Military power will remain a very important currency in the global power games that nations tend to play. I thought that Europe had learned that lesson very painful in the Balkans, when we paid and mediated for a peace that never came since no one on the ground really cared until the U.S. (and NATO) came in with force. The whole idea of the ESDP was the acceptance of a need at least to be able to fight if you want others to stop doing that.

3. The final solution would not be a division of labor in the terms of Mars and Venus but a combination of tools and capabilities so that both sides can influence the decisions to be made, the strategies to be developed and implemented and the price to be paid on an equal manner. We don’t need to copy the US military strength and they don’t have to copy all that Europe can do, but both sides will need at least some parts of all the tools. First to be able to act alone if necessary, second to better understand each others concepts and mindsets (civ-mil cooperation is sometimes harder than a discussion between two groups with different religions) and cooperate effectively if we agree to do it together."

The Looming Arctic Scramble

2010-03-10T11:56:00Z

The Atlantic Community is beginning a series on the geopolitical implications of shrinking arctic ice. THis is not about Global Warming per se, but about the potential struggles over natural resources that may happen due to facilitated access.

My comments to the first piece,

"Militarizing the Arctic might be regressive, but it also quite likely.

While there is no question that all five coastal states will seek peaceful ways of securing access to the new resources being made available by receding ice, each will have to look at "hard power" mechanisms as well. Pieces of paper are nice and can carry moral weight, but guns (and in this case ice breakers) carry strategic weight.

Already, other nations are making some rumbles about their desire for access to the area.

For example, China has already begun staking a claim rhetorically. The below is from the Diplomat blog (http://the-diplomat.com/2010/03/09/china%e2%80%99s-arctic-play/)

" ‘The Arctic belongs to all the people around the world as no nation has sovereignty over it.’ So said Chinese Rear Admiral Yin Zhuo, in comments relayed by the official China News Service on March 5 that essentially staked Beijing’s claim to the North Pole."

Each of the coastal states are going to have to be very careful in determining just what territory they are claiming. Indeed, they need to come to agreement amongst themselves and then work in a concerted effort to explain themselves to the world at large. Even so, there will be a lot of unhappiness in state capitals of nation's that aren't geographically proximate to the Arctic."

Turkey, Armenia, the US and Parochial Politics vs. Strategic Thinking

2010-03-10T11:54:00Z

The recent U.S. House passed resolution condeming the Armenian Genocide from the early 1900s is an act of moral sermonizing that also complicates contemporary geopolitics.

This is a good story from the Atlantic Council blog with my comments below,

"Parochialism and interest group politics reign in the U.S. Congress.

It certainly should be hoped that no serious damage is done to US-Turkish relations. Fortunately, despite the histrionics, I doubt this resolution will cause any long-term damage. Any long-term damage will be the result of other, larger, more systemic issues that are much more substantive in contemporary terms such as natural gas politics, Turkish geopolitical ambitions in the Middle East and the seeming conflict between Islamism and secular ideology within Turkey as seen through the Ergenekon prism.

That said, this resolution is a classic case of Congressional meddling in foreign policy in ways it should not.

I think most people find the Armenian Genocide to be a terribly obvious crime. However, nothing good can come from a Congressional resolution picking at these scabs. Statemanship requires the ability to think strategically. Clearly, that is not something Congress is all that capable of doing in this instance."

On the New Public Diplomacy

2010-03-10T11:50:00Z

An article over at the Atlantic Community from the famous IR scholar Joseph Nye regarding "hard", "soft" and "smart" power with my commets below,

"Joseph Nye coined the term "soft power" and it has useful applications. Nothing he states in his article is untrue. I am glad he is modifying the concept some by referring to "smart power"

This is something of a recognition that the dictum of Machiavelli remains true:

"It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both."

Nations should take care they do not prostrate themselves before the altar of fickle public opinion when vital or existential issues are at stake. After all, as Mr. Theiler artfully describes above "the results of years of investment, engagement and sacrifices by the International Community can be almost negated by a single but highly reported strike of terrorists. "

There is only so much a nation can do. Occassionally mistakes will be made. We can't entirely prevent this, nor should we wring our hands in agitation over every mistake, lest paralysis of decision making will snuff out initiative and yield to those that wish to manipulate a public that is often quite easy to manipulate.

It is all a very careful balancing act where decisions must be calibrated with a recognition that the unexpected can lay to waste the best intentioned plans."

Transhuman Morality

2010-03-04T08:31:00Z

I have yet to have written much on the topic of transhumanism, but this is an important topic we need to concern ourselves with as the capabilities of technology may be growing too fast for our ethics to keep up with.

Essentially, tanshumanism is the notion that man can eclipse himself through any number of different ways whether through bioengineering or cyberengineering, etc. It posits that humans can and will be surpassed in intelligence and other capabilities and, for the most part, this is a good thing.

However, this obviously raises potentially terrifying ethical conundrums. Probably, one of the greatest is the question as to how humans should be treated if something as far advanced beyond us as we are to other animals should emerge. How should such "Supermen" treat us mere mortals that are way down on the so-called evolutionary chain?

This piece is part of a good blog hosted by the technology journal, the New Atlantis (named after the famous book of the same name by Francis Bacon). It is part of a longer chain of blogs that is describing a debate among "tranhumanist" thinkers as to what a future morality should look like. I was struck by the conclusion of the blog,

"It is surely true that there is an irreducible element of Enlightenment thinking in transhumanism, but it has little to do with transhumanist politics and morality per se, and is to be found rather in the topic of another of Prof. Hughes’s posts: scientific and technical progressivism. For the most part, though, transhumanism seems to rely on thinkers who reacted against Enlightenment liberal universalism, as is the case of Mill, whose utilitarian libertarianism explicitly eschews any rights foundation. Indeed, the éminence grise behind transhumanism may well be that great anti-liberal and anti-Enlightenment thinker Nietzsche. Too few transhumanists, if any, have fully come to grips with the significance of a crucial point of agreement with Nietzsche: that mankind is nothing other than a rope over an abyss, a rope leading to the Superman."

This dovetails with a recurring themehere at my own blog. I even left the below comment to make the point there.

"It should be noted that without some transcendant entity of some kind capable of standing outside of what is rationally observable and making judgements, there is no way to erect a moral framework that is not parochial and utilitarian.

Universalism is impossible without transcendentalism.

Nietzsche understood that and understood the moral quandaries posed by this. Indeed, many travel down the road he did, few can match his ability to look the consequences in the eye... or the abyss as the case may well be."

Essentially, without God there can be no meaningful morality, none that can ever really be judged by any standard that exceeds the extreme finitude of our ability to experience and reason from that experience. Yes, we may be able to "construct" some ethical system without a transcendant God, but it would ultimately be absurd because it would have no ultimate purpose. it would be a temporary construction waiting to be torn down so a new morality could take its place.

We might as well be Nietzschean.

Redefining the Iranian Problem?

2010-03-04T08:13:00Z

Stratfor once again has a great piece on what a poossible deal between the US and Iran might look like. It is provocative, but definitely not outside the bounds of reason.

Contrary to what some say, the US can deal with regimes it disapproves of. This doesn't mean I subscribe to the turn the other cheek mentality that has thus far been the hallmarks of the Obama Administration, however, if, as Stratfor outlines, FDR could deal with Stalin to defeat Hitler and Nixon (of all people, one of the staunchest anti-communists) could deal with Mao, then it would seem a current American President might be able to deal with Khameini or his selected figurehead, whether Ahmadinejad or otherwise.

Food for thought below from the full piece.

"Iraq, not nuclear weapons, is the fundamental issue between Iran and the United States. Iran wants to see a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq so Iran can assume its place as the dominant military power in the Persian Gulf. The United States wants to withdraw from Iraq because it faces challenges in Afghanistan — where it will also need Iranian cooperation — and elsewhere. Committing forces to Iraq for an extended period of time while fighting in Afghanistan leaves the United States exposed globally. Events involving China or Russia — such as the 2008 war in Georgia — would see the United States without a counter. The alternative would be a withdrawal from Afghanistan or a massive increase in U.S. armed forces. The former is not going to happen any time soon, and the latter is an economic impossibility.

Therefore, the United States must find a way to counterbalance Iran without an open-ended deployment in Iraq and without expecting the re-emergence of Iraqi power, because Iran is not going to allow the latter to happen. The nuclear issue is simply an element of this broader geopolitical problem, as it adds another element to the Iranian tool kit. It is not a stand-alone issue.

The United States has an interesting strategy in redefining problems that involves creating extraordinarily alliances with mortal ideological and geopolitical enemies to achieve strategic U.S. goals. First consider Franklin Roosevelt’s alliance with Stalinist Russia to block Nazi Germany. He pursued this alliance despite massive political outrage not only from isolationists but also from institutions like the Roman Catholic Church that regarded the Soviets as the epitome of evil.

Now consider Richard Nixon’s decision to align with China at a time when the Chinese were supplying weapons to North Vietnam that were killing American troops. Moreover, Mao — who had said he did not fear nuclear war as China could absorb a few hundred million deaths — was considered, with reason, quite mad. Nevertheless, Nixon, as anti-Communist and anti-Chinese a figure as existed in American politics, understood that an alliance (and despite the lack of a formal treaty, alliance it was) with China was essential to counterbalance the Soviet Union at a time when American power was still being sapped in Vietnam.

Roosevelt and Nixon both faced impossible strategic situations unless they were prepared to redefine the strategic equation dramatically and accept the need for alliance with countries that had previously been regarded as strategic and moral threats. American history is filled with opportunistic alliances designed to solve impossible strategic dilemmas. The Stalin and Mao cases represent stunning alliances with prior enemies designed to block a third power seen as more dangerous.

It is said that Ahmadinejad is crazy. It was also said that Mao and Stalin were crazy, in both cases with much justification. Ahmadinejad has said many strange things and issued numerous threats. But when Roosevelt ignored what Stalin said and Nixon ignored what Mao said, they each discovered that Stalin’s and Mao’s actions were far more rational and predictable than their rhetoric. Similarly, what the Iranians say and what they do are quite different...

Consider the American interest. First, it must maintain the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. The United States cannot tolerate interruptions, and that limits the risks it can take. Second, it must try to keep any one power from controlling all of the oil in the Persian Gulf, as that would give such a country too much long-term power within the global system. Third, while the United States is involved in a war with elements of the Sunni Muslim world, it must reduce the forces devoted to that war. Fourth, it must deal with the Iranian problem directly. Europe will go as far as sanctions but no further, while the Russians and Chinese won’t even go that far yet. Fifth, it must prevent an Israeli strike on Iran for the same reasons it must avoid a strike itself, as the day after any Israeli strike will be left to the United States to manage.

Now consider the Iranian interest. First, it must guarantee regime survival. It sees the United States as dangerous and unpredictable. In less than 10 years, it has found itself with American troops on both its eastern and western borders. Second, it must guarantee that Iraq will never again be a threat to Iran. Third, it must increase its authority within the Muslim world against Sunni Muslims, whom it regards as rivals and sometimes as threats.

Now consider the overlaps. The United States is in a war against some (not all) Sunnis. These are Iran’s enemies, too. Iran does not want U.S. troops along its eastern and western borders. In point of fact, the United States does not want this either. The United States does not want any interruption of oil flow through Hormuz. Iran much prefers profiting from those flows to interrupting them. Finally, the Iranians understand that it is the United States alone that is Iran’s existential threat. If Iran can solve the American problem its regime survival is assured. The United States understands, or should, that resurrecting the Iraqi counterweight to Iran is not an option: It is either U.S. forces in Iraq or accepting Iran’s unconstrained role...

The strategic problem is, of course, Iranian power in the Persian Gulf. The Chinese model is worth considering here. China issued bellicose rhetoric before and after Nixon’s and Kissinger’s visits. But whatever it did internally, it was not a major risk-taker in its foreign policy. China’s relationship with the United States was of critical importance to China. Beijing fully understood the value of this relationship, and while it might continue to rail about imperialism, it was exceedingly careful not to undermine this core interest.

The major risk of the third strategy is that Iran will overstep its bounds and seek to occupy the oil-producing countries of the Persian Gulf. Certainly, this would be tempting, but it would bring a rapid American intervention. The United States would not block indirect Iranian influence, however, from financial participation in regional projects to more significant roles for the Shia in Arabian states. Washington’s limits for Iranian power are readily defined and enforced when exceeded.

The great losers in the third strategy, of course, would be the Sunnis in the Arabian Peninsula. But Iraq aside, they are incapable of defending themselves, and the United States has no long-term interest in their economic and political relations. So long as the oil flows, and no single power directly controls the entire region, the United States does not have a stake in this issue."

The Slow Demise of NATO as a Global Actor

2010-03-03T07:09:00Z

The recent news that the Dutch government fell due to its desire to maintain a contingent of troops in Afghanistan under the NATO banner should be quite concerning for advocates that NATO will be able to act as security alliance outside the confines of Europe itself. Even Lord George Robertson, a former NATO Secretary General expressed serious concerns in this piece.

This Atlantic Community piece prompted my below comments which I think dovetail quite a bit with what Lord Robertson states.

"It will be interesting if some other NATO member steps up to the plate and offers additional forces to make up for the pending loss of the Dutch. I suspect someone will, but it will be very limited in size and probably limited in terms of what their rules of engagement might be.

Overall, this is not that significant an event on its face, however, it may be a portent of things to come. To me, this is just a single example of why I am skeptical of the utility of transnational institutions on many issues. Absent an "existential" issue that unifies many different (and often competing nations), it is difficult to maintain a stable front when confronting challenges that require long-term committments, but are also subterranean or diffuse.

While I question whether Afghanistan can be put together in the way many in the West seem to want, and have argued this in article I previously wrote for the Atlantic Community, the Dutch case is indicative of a large problem for NATO that it may not be able to fundamentally resolve. Without the Soviet empire looming to the east, NATO has simply been unable to find and embrace a broad based, yet coherent strategic concept that gives it the impetus to continue being the "greatest alliance" in world history. By contrast, it seems more of a regional security mechanism that is trying to show itself capable of more than its infrastructure can actually bear.

NATO will always have a usefulness for intra-European issues like the Kosovo situation in the late 90s, but it will not be able to punch at its expected weight in external situations unless it has to to confront a threat of large proportion.

This isn't meant to denigrate NATO or suggest it be ignored. It is merely a call that policymakers begin adapting their plans to reflect an underlying reality as opposed to continuing to foist unrealistic objectives upon it.

Dealing with Afghanistan will require working with regional partners who have more at stake than the Europeans."

Follow Up With The Liberty Pen

2010-03-03T06:55:00Z

The Liberty Pen blog was kind enough to do a follow up debate with me. Here is the link to its views on foreign policy and interventionism and mine. I fully anticipate future debates on a variety of topics.

Below are my comments on my general foreign policy vision, however, I encourage all to read the Liberty Pen's response as well as I think it is extremely well thought through and eloquent.

"I consider myself largely a "realist." I find myself drawn to the timeless insights of Thucydides as well as modern scholars of international relations such as Hans Morgenthau and Henry Kissinger.
However, while I would say I definitely lean in that direction, I find it difficult to completely accept the framework of balance of power that is implicit within classical and even neo-realism. While this concept is considered nearly sacrosanct for many, I think it is depressing. To believe that man must always live under the shadow cast by transitory alignments of power does not seem to me to be all that enobling, and I believe that nobility is something that all true statesman should aspire to.

While I believe the below quote from Kissinger's doctoral thesis encapsulates my overall vision of what a good statesman should be, I reserve the right to hope for something less ephemeral than what we have seen in previous eras dominated by these so-called balances of power.

"But the claims of the prophet are sometimes as dissolving as those of the conqueror. For the claims of the prophet are a counsel of perfection, and perfection implies uniformity. Utopias are not achieved except by a process of leveling and dislocation which must erode all patterns of obligation. These are the two great symbols of the attacks on the legitimate order: the Conqueror and the Prophet, the quest for universality and for eternity, for the peace of impotence and the peace of bliss.

But the statesman must remain forever suspicious of these efforts, not because he enjoys the pettiness of manipulation, but because he must be prepared for the worst contingency."

As for being isolationist, I am not. I believe that a desire to return to some idyllic image of the past borders on being a type of utopianism. The world has grown too interconnected with both opportunities, and more importantly, threats. When one lives in a world where a handful of men with access to the right technology can kill the number of people that used to take a full-scale army, we cannot be sanguine and wait to react after the fact. To this extent, I am not an opponent of the concept of preemption. While I believe one must be prudent in the deploying of force, as frivolous uses of military power undeniably degrade its potential, neither do I think we can afford to always wait until definitive proof is available.

As for the neoconservatives, I feel they largely attempted a noble project in Iraq, but they failed due to an inability to recognize the limitations of attemtpting to impose radical changes within a cultural milieu that they largely did not understand. To that end, they, not entirely unlike Marxists, became enraptured by utopianism. If a neoconservative was, as Irving Kristol famously asserted, a "liberal mugged by reality", I would have to say that I am something of a neoconservative mugged by reality as it relates to international relations. I do not hold onto their illusions and realize the eternal validity of much of what classical realism offers. However, I have to aspire and hope for others to aspire as well, to something higher than sacrificing upon the altar of power which seems so much of what realism passes for."

Demography as Destiny?

2010-02-26T21:19:00Z

While it often may seem I am pessimistic about the future, I found a great article that highlights one way in which America might be able to continue living up to its global responsibilities. It is essentially a review of an interesting book, The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. It contains the kernal of a controversial idea to be sure, but I think it has much validity- we need more immigration, not less.

This may seem counterintuitive to many, but if one looks at the demography of the US as well as other major (or currently major) powers, one will see that population declines and aging are deeply problematic for Europe, Japan, maybe Russia and maybe China. The U.S. more than any other one of those powers (though we should probably consider India and Brazil as well), has the potential to maintain a reasonable demographic profile that could allow for economic growth vs. sclerotic social spending on older generations. In other words, as the need to spend more on retirees increases, the U.S. is better positoned than many other contemporary industrial (or newly post-industrial) powerhouses to afford it by being welcoming to new immigrants.

Here are a few key quotes below ,

"Predictions are rarely correct, but Mr Kotkin’s focus on demography provides a useful gauge of the vitality of nations. The Russians, the rump of the former superpower, are in intensive care. Every year Russia has some 800,000 fewer schoolchildren. In 1997 there were 26 million children and teenagers at school. When the new school year begins next September, there will be only 15 million, a barely believable fall of 43 per cent. Its vibrancy as a society is under threat due to lack of young people.

Japan is not much better. It has a shrinking workforce and rapidly ageing population. These factors, combined with bureaucratic government, have conspired to ensure that Japan has yet to recover fully from the crash of 1991.

The position of China is more complex: it has no shortage of young and ambitious citizens at the moment, but the one-child policy imposed by the Communist Party has skewed the country’s demographic profile. In a generation or so, China may find itself short of young people. It is in a race to grow rich before it grows old.

The extra million Americans will not all spring from the wombs of American mothers. The US will have to attract the brightest and most entrepreneurial young people from around the world, as will other greying states, provoking ever sharper competition to suck in new blood.

“No western-derived country produces enough children of European descent to prevent them from becoming granny nation-states by 2050,” Mr Kotkin has written. “In the next decades the fate of western countries may well depend on their ability to make social and economic room for people whose origins lay outside Europe.”

Now, the major question associated with this is- what becomes of "American culture" as new immigrants enter America? Many of my fellow conservatives would be deeply wary of the cultural impact. Indeed, this is a major consideration. However, as Teddy Roosevelt made clear a century ago, immigrants who pledge real loyalty to the US should be considered Americans. Essentially, we must make assimilation the cost of offering better opportunity for well being to those born outside our geopgraphic borders. If we retain the bizarre "multi-cultural" stew many elites promote, all we will do is create the conditions for a slow moving balkanization of the country.

The irony is that immigration policy is a key to America's future, but not in the way many think. It offers, perhaps, the only chance to deal with the demographic strangulation of American primacy, but it also has the potential to blow apart the ties that bind if done recklessly.

The Decade Ahead: A Long Hard Slog

2010-02-24T06:43:00Z

I do not think the economy is going to get better anytime soon. I do not think that President Obama will do anything that is really helpful.

I think he will make things much worse, though to be fair, not all of America's economic woes can be placed on his doorstep. The strucutral flaws in our economy have been a longtime coming and finally broke out into the open.

We need to change our taxation structure from penalizing savings (and investment, the cornerstone of business growth), export more, and change much of our social habits to reembrace having families as opposed to living solely for creature comforts and mere individual gains.

For America to be great again rather than live on the fumes of past accomplishment, we have to collectively change much of our outlook and definitely change the outlook of Washington D.C.

As always, Spengler from First Things shows us a myriad of reasons why the next decade may well be, and as things stand today will be, a long hard slog absent dramatic shifts in attitudes and policy.

"And my Top 10 Reasons to fade the recovery appeared yesterday on my “Inner Workings” blog at Asia Times:

10) There is no recovery at all in Europe. European growth ground to a halt during the fourth quarter and German busines confidence unexpectedly fell in February.

9) China won’t collapse, but government efforts to stop overheatingby raising reserve requirements make clear that the world’s second-largest economy can’t be the locomotive for world growth.

8. Greece and its prospective rescuers in the European Community are at loggerheads over conditions for EC help. “Greece faces several important challenges in the coming days, including an expected bond auction, a planned general strike on Wednesday, and a visit from European Union officials that began Monday, aimed at pushing the country to take tougher steps to rein in its budget deficit,” WSJ reported today.

7. State fiscal crises continue to worsen. “Doomsday is here for the state of Illinois,” California’s last set of cosmetic measures do little to address a $20 billion deficit, Baltimore has no idea how to close a $120 billion deficit. On top of this year’s $200 billion deficit, states face a trillion-dollar shortfall in pension funds.

6) Commercial real estate is nowhere near bottom, with some sectors (e.g. hotels) at delinquency rates of nearly 10%. Credit Suisse says that delinquencies could reach $60 billion.

5) Regional banks continue to drop like flies, with 702 banks holding assets of $403 billion on the danger list.

4) Bank credit continues to shrink. Total bank credit is still falling at a 5% annual rate, an unprecedented decline

3) What bank credit is available is funding the US Treasury deficit in the mother of all crowdings-out, replacing commercial loans on banks’ balance sheets

2) Industrial production has bounced of the bottom, but manufacturing is only 15% of US employment

1) Employment won’t come back. Today’s consumer confidence number is one more nail in the coffin of exaggerated hopes for a cyclical recovery"

America's Place in the World

2010-02-24T06:30:00Z

I find Thomas P.M. Barnett an interesting writer full of many good insights. He is also a true cheerleader of globalization. I think that he he is more nuanced than Thomas Friedman and acknowledges challenges. However, I also think he is too positive about the future. He is very dismissive that anything can radically alter the direction of globalization which he defines as integrating "non-functioning" states and regions that form a "gap" into the functioning "Core" of states like the U.S., Europe and now places like China and India.

He seems unwilling to acknowledge the possibility that all of our recent advances could well be temporary.

After one of his latest blogs on America's place in the world, I responded with comments and he obliged me with a response back to me.

"Me: I think that your overall thesis as advanced in your works such as the Pentagon's New Map is both sophisticated and very useful in terms of gameplanning US geostrategy. However, though I may be somewhat of a contrarian, how can you be so sure these rule sets will become permanently ensconced in international relations?

Contemporary trends may favor your overall argument, but discontinuities throughout history have taken place, usually because something unanticipated happened.

Niall Ferguson has a fascinating new piece in the current Foreign Affairs (March/April 2010) about how stunningly quickly collapses in order (including imperial orders) can transpire. In a sense, this piece is the anti-Gibbon, Spengler and Toynbee. Rather than long-term trends of decline that become obvious in retrospect, he raises the prospect that relatively small disturbances within systems can destroy the balance of those system and yield chaos.

Obviously, redundancy in any system can ameliorate this, but how do we really know what the impact of a nuclear or biological attack on a major American city be? What will that do to international trade? What will it do to America's already ballooning deficits?

Will a future generation of Chinese leaders feeling more confident be less pragmatic and see "Western" weakness as an opportunity to be exploited as opposed to a challenge to be overcome?

I do not think it is histrionic to be concerned with these possibilities. No order in the history of the world has yet proven itself permanent. Why is the order of this era any different?

If Rome could collapse, the empire of Qin Shi Huangdi collapse and the Sun set on the British, how can we be so sure we have found the "solution?"

I ask this in all earnestness and not to be controversial. Given your reputation, I would be most interested in your response.

Barnett: Greg,

Echoing David Stewart, the major difference--and it's gargantuan, is that ours is the first "empire" (if you must use that term) that's empowered and enriched masses of individuals instead of merely elites. As such, its spread is achieved as a demand function, not a supply function, so it expands, it needs us less and not more.

Are we yet used to this reality? No. But growing up is a constant process.

As for why ours is the oldest continuous constitutional democracy in the world?

Same reason."

Check out the full blog and other comments for a full airing on some of these issues.

David Brooks on the Power Elite

2010-02-20T18:57:00Z

David Brooks, one of the few quasi-conservative columnists at the New York Ties has written a thoughtful and counter-intuitive op-ed that raises what must be considered uncomfortable questions about America's current governing classes.

Brooks asks a simple question- is our contemporary and relatively meritocratic way of selecting leaders today in both business and government better than the past era of WASP ascendancy?

On the surface, the answer would appear to be yes. That is certainly the politically correct notion. Brooks seems, on the other hand, to be inclined to disagree. By contrast he seems to think some of these changes hhave led to a certain degree of dysfunction in or current government and other institutions.

Here are some interesting sections,

"The promise of the meritocracy has not been fulfilled. The talent level is higher, but the reputation is lower.

Why has this happened? I can think of a few contributing factors.

First, the meritocracy is based on an overly narrow definition of talent. Our system rewards those who can amass technical knowledge. But this skill is only marginally related to the skill of being sensitive to context. It is not related at all to skills like empathy. Over the past years, we’ve seen very smart people make mistakes because they didn’t understand the context in which they were operating.

Second, this new system has created new social chasms. In the old days, there were obviously big differences between people whose lives were defined by “The Philadelphia Story” and those who were defined by “The Grapes of Wrath.” But if you ran the largest bank in Murfreesboro, Tenn., you probably lived in Murfreesboro. Now you live in Charlotte or New York City. You might have married a secretary. Now you marry another banker. You would have had similar lifestyle habits as other people in town. Now the lifestyle patterns of the college-educated are very different from the patterns in other classes. Social attitudes are very different, too.

It could be that Americans actually feel less connected to their leadership class now than they did then, with good reason.

Third, leadership-class solidarity is weaker. The Protestant Establishment was inbred. On the other hand, those social connections placed informal limits on strife. Personal scandals were hushed up. Now members of the leadership class are engaged in a perpetual state of war. Each side seeks daily advantage in ways that poison the long-term reputations of everybody involved.

Fourth, time horizons have shrunk. If you were an old blue blood, you traced your lineage back centuries, and there was a decent chance that you’d hand your company down to members of your clan. That subtly encouraged long-term thinking.

Now people respond to ever-faster performance criteria — daily stock prices or tracking polls. This perversely encourages reckless behavior. To leave a mark in a fast, competitive world, leaders seek to hit grandiose home runs. Clinton tried to transform health care. Bush tried to transform the Middle East. Obama has tried to transform health care, energy and much more.

There’s less emphasis on steady, gradual change and more emphasis on the big swing. This produces more spectacular failures and more uncertainty. Many Americans, not caught up on the romance of this sort of heroism, are terrified.

Fifth, society is too transparent. Since Watergate, we have tried to make government as open as possible. But as William Galston of the Brookings Institution jokes, government should sometimes be shrouded for the same reason that middle-aged people should be clothed. This isn’t Galston’s point, but I’d observe that the more government has become transparent, the less people are inclined to trust it."

In some ways I think Brooks is correct. Long-term accomplishments, not momentary gains, are the historical criteria for success. However, our age is an age that demands instantaneous responses, even if they are ill advised and poorly considered. Additionally, I do think that while technical knowledge is important, it is also very narrow, just as Brooks outlines. This leads to an inability to always see the connections between what may at first glance seem disparate events.

Leadership must be executed within context and by one who can see both the past and a plausible vision of the future. Today, implausible visions of the future seem to be the rage and historical knowledge appears to be seen as anachronistic as the past is not seen to necessarily be prologue to the future.

As we now face such challenges as health care reform being rammed down the collective American throat, deficits as far as the eye can see, rising international powers, proliferating WMDs and general international anarchy, it would be nice to have leadership that really gets the connections between the past and the future, as opposed to idealistic mirages as so many in our leadership class have, if they have any vision whatsoever.

The QDR and American Allies

2010-02-20T18:51:00Z

An interesting article from the Atlantic Community on how the new Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) represents a move towards shifting international security burdens to allies. My initial thoughts below,

"Prudential statesmanship means being able to look to the future and correct course without throwing away lessons of the past.

Clearly, the United States cannot act alone when confronting the myriad of complex problems it faces in the security arena. Building up domestic capacity in other states is prudent. To this extent the QDR represents real sobriety.

However, there must be some concern as to whether or not, given the U.S.' precarious domestic spending and deficit problem, this strategy could be perceived as indicative of a slow mechanism for retrenchment while attempting to bolster paper (as opposed to meaningful) cooperation.

While dealing with counterinsurgencies and terrorists requires a globally interdependent mindset of cooperation on intelligence and training, the specter of Great Power conflict has not altogether been eliminated. Though it may seem more unlikely than at any other point in history, to be unprepared for such a contingency is folly. In order to balance this, the U.S. will still require much of its current infrastructure in R&D, production and, perhaps, even further expansions of military personnel. This goes far beyond our current engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So the real battle should not be "new" vs. "old" paradigms for dealing with security, but an embrace of both "new" and "old" in order to adequately deal with the vagaries of history and the twists of fortune.

Of course, this is a difficult position to hold when much of the current security literature seems obsessively focused on counterinsurgency, terrorism and cyberwarfare. Again, all of these are clearly very relevant and should be dealt with, but we should not be sanguine about the prospects of more traditional types of conflict.

We should take care not to divorce ourselves from the reality that the U.S. cannot outsource security policy to those unable or unwilling to help and still be prepared for the unanticipated. Of course, allies are absolutely pivotal. However, alliances should be thought of less as institutionalized instrumentalities that can address a wide range of responsibilities, but as mutually beneficial instruments that can be deployed on a case by case basis when interests converge sufficiently to warrant or necessitate meaningful cooperation.

The overall point here is that the world is more complex than any single analyst or policymaker can appreciate. We must deal with new challenges brought about by technology every day and allies will play a role in dealing with this. But fears of the past should not be dismissed as purely anachronistic and thus relegated to irrelevance in favor of what may turn out to be momentary exigencies."

Alexander Haig, RIP

2010-02-20T18:47:00Z

I just got the word that former White House Chief of Staff (under Nixon and Ford), NATO Supreme Commander, and Secretary of State (under Reagan), Alexander Haig has passed away.

It certainly seems we are now losing some of the titans of America's foreign policy tradition. Last year, we lost McNamara and now Haig. It is always a bit sad as these losses put a definitive end to an era. Of course, we still have Brent Scowcroft and Henry Kissinger, but the titans are falling.

The Washington Post has a good retrospective of Haig's career.

A Modern Day Greek Tragedy

2010-02-11T10:31:00Z

Spengler with yet another insightful blog about the looming economic catastrophe in Greece. It is very interesting as well as ironic that Greece, the cradle of Western civilization, is about to showcase exactly what America has to look forward to absent some amazing staetsmanship and a willingness for the public to take responsibility.

"Greece, sadly, suffers from an extreme case of Euro-sclerosis. Its fertility is in the 1.3 to 1.4 range, which means that its elderly dependency ratio will rise from 27% at present to 64% in 2050. Unlike most of its EC partners, Greece has no industry of importance. Due to declining family size and emigration, the average Greek family has acquired several properties by inheritance, and the country rode a real estate boom in vacation properties. Taxi drivers took three-month seaside vacations.

Problems that seemed postponable for a couple of decades have leapt into the present as a result of the Great Recession, and Greeks have the choice of becoming noticeably poorer, or catastrophically poorer while taking down a good part of the financial world with them. The old game is over, and the national tantrum might take Greece over the edge."

What sober observer of America would be unable to envision a similar situation at some point in our own future? If you can't, you're not looking very hard and if you can, no one is probably listening. So what is today a Greek tragedy could well be a portent of things to come including an American tragedy in the not so distant future...

Of course, as I always say, this is not preordained. No true Sibyl has yet spoken oracularly and seen the definitive future. There is time for a different path to be taken.

EU-Russian Cooperation? Don't Count On It

2010-02-11T10:28:00Z

Below is my response to this essay at the Atlantic Community concerning possible cooperation between Russia and the EU going forward.

"While cooperation between Europe and Russia is no doubt something to be desired, there are no simple solutions for establishing a relationship that is anything but laregly cold and punctuated by occassion outbursts of diplomatic indignation.

The interests of Europe and Russia only somewhat converge and on perceived "existential
issues, they actually diverge rather dramatically. Russia needs to make money off of its natural resources. This will always mean energy competition as Europe seeks diversification of supplies and move away from over reliance on Russia. While, at the same time, Russia does need more foreign investment, much of which could come from Europe, it will never allow that to become a paramount concern.

Russia wants strategic depth. It always has since the Mongol invasions before there was a unified Russian state. Given its experiences at the hands of Napoleon and Hitler, it also still wants a western buffer zone that includes places like Ukraine and Georgia. Afterall, it continues to have a not altogether illegitimate fear of westward expansion, not only physically, but philosophically.

That fear of "westernization" is an existential fear that is deep and informs part of the Russian worldview. Yes, there are modernizers and those in Russia that want to embrace much of what Europe has to offer, however, cultural divides matter and cannot be easily papered over.

As for the Medvedev proposal for a "new European security architecture", what sober analysts think it is anything other than a shrewd gambit to split Europe and the US?

One can't blame Russia for their perspective. Their history is filled with so much tragedy, it would be hard not to be empathetic. However, retaining a realistic assesment of intentions still is needed.

While Europe (and America) need not be wantonly provocative towards Russia, they also should not become overly accomodative in the pursuit of illusory partnerships."