31 Comments

1. Panday:

Is the world becoming a better place (YouTube link to Barack Obama’s defense policy)? Or have only the dead seen the end of history.

While studying history, I was taught not in the school of memorizing facts and dates, but in the school of looking at long threads of continuity in human affairs. That being said, I would never, ever count out the real, not the remote, but the real possibility of war.

This is taken from the introduction of the series “Trenches: Battleground WWI”:
**************************

“For the average man and woman in the street in the early years of the Twentieth Century, nothing would have seemed further away from the world than war.

In those years, men who dreamed of battlefield adventure would have been hard pressed to find a war in which to participate. In the year 1901, and in the 13 years that followed, the peoples of western Europe and the English speaking Americas were becoming consumers, rather than warriors. There were motorcars and motorcycles, airships, electric trains and submarines novelties with which to whittle away the increasing leisure time.

An emerging middle class looked forward to more and more years and more and more progress, more prosperity, and more peace. There had been no war among the Great Powers for nearly half a century. And globalization of the world economy suggested that war had become a thing of the past. Middle and upper class Britons in particular saw themselves as living in an idyllic world in which economic realities would keep the European Great Powers from waging war on one another.

For those with a comfortable income, the world in their time was more free than it is today. Until 1914, a sensible, law-abiding Englishman would pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state. One could live anywhere one liked, as one liked. One could go practically anywhere in the world without anyone’s permission. For the most part, one needed no passport, and many people had none. It was a time of free capital flow and free movement of goods. There was more globalization before 1914 than there is now.

Much of the final quarter of the 20th century was spent merely recovering ground lost in the previous 75 years. Economic and financial intermingling and interdependence were among the powerful trends that made it seem that warfare among the major European powers had become impractical and, indeed, obsolete.

Aug 10, 2008 - 12:55 am 2. Doug:

This site:
Eurasia Daily Monitor
Linked by Lugh Lampfhota was doing a heck of a job of keeping readers informed.
I posted a couple of examples on the previous thread.

Aug 10, 2008 - 2:41 am 3. Doug:

It’s comforting to know Obama gained an intimate appreciation for War and Strife, having grown up down the street from Pearl Harbor.

Obama – One Bomb Hit Pearl Harbor – Video
(He also warns of the “threat of environmental degradation” no doubt a subtle reminder that he will bring about a receding of the waters)
Obama:

“Throughout our history, America’s confronted constantly evolving danger, from the oppression of an empire, to the lawlessness of the frontier, from the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor, to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Americans have adapted to the threats posed by an ever-changing world.”

Aaah yes – “the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor.” Who can forget that? It was the big one, the one that took out all those boats. I guess Obama’s political correctness prevents him from noting someone actually dropped “the bomb” and it didn’t just fall.

This is a surprising error for a Hawaii native (via the great Kansas heartland) to make. Perhaps Obama was merely confused, as he and his surrogates so often accuse John McCain of being.

– Dean Barnett

Aug 10, 2008 - 3:31 am 4. Doug:

Deuce has a link to a video of the Pre-Hawk Obama, promising to get us out of Iraq, cut wasteful military spending, and eliminating “unproven missile defense.”

“Georgia, Annihilation of a Democracy. What Would Obama Do?”

Aug 10, 2008 - 3:41 am 5. wretchard:

We’ve had our End of History party, when all we had to worry about was Y2K. Or as some people think today, all that we have to worry about is our carbon footprint. A BBC report from Tbilisi says that people everywhere are silent. There’s none of the usual boisterous laughter. We’re not there yet. But we will be.

Aug 10, 2008 - 3:54 am 6. Cannoneer No. 4:

Silent Georgians.

You have to know some Georgians to understand how ominous that sounds.

Aug 10, 2008 - 4:36 am 7. wretchard:

It’s a mistake to think that somehow people will wake up after this. All through the Cold War, despite everything, the wire, the Gulags, the invasions, the enslavement of millions, there was never a shortage of people in the West who were willing to offer up their throats to the knife. Through Korea, Vietnam, through it all, there guys who just couldn’t wait to spit on those who kept the thugs away. Even after 9/11 there were many who said, “what’s the problem”? Well we don’t know by now, nobody can tell us.

Aug 10, 2008 - 4:48 am 8. Jay:

I am finishing reading a small economic history book on the Wiemar Republic. The lead up to their hyper inflation is ominously like the economic policy of the Fed now with the exception that Western economies after WW1 were not levered much and they had a gold standard. The business and economic press in the US is looking backward. Same holds for the big government types.
The California legislature passed a law outlawing outdoor smoking. That should solve all their problems. Read the replies to the article about this in pajamasmedia.com.
With respect to the run up to WW1 there was a lot of enthusiasm for what many thought would be a fine short war.

Aug 10, 2008 - 5:03 am 9. Zim:

Liberals are always calling for an end to history so that they can defund the military and use the money to fight for more practical causes like global warming and renovating their mistresses’ bathrooms.

Aug 10, 2008 - 5:30 am 10. James:

Someone wrote at the beginning of WW1:”The lights are darkening one by one. We shall not see them again in our time.” WW1 brought the end of what people saw as an orderly balance of power, and we still live with its effects. Our current war with Islamo terrorists is one gift from that time.

Aug 10, 2008 - 5:46 am 11. Mike Sylwester:

I am one of those few people who have an opinion about Francis Fukuyama’s book “The End of History and the Last Man” and have also actually read the book. The book is a superb philosophical work, and I think it is correct.

Wikipedia has an excellent article summarizing the book and its related controversy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man

Mostly, Fukuyama’s book is a reflection on the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s ideas about how to understand major historical developments. Since Karl Marx made much use of Hegel’s ideas, many people imagine mistakenly that Hegel was some kind of pre-Marxist and have dismissed him. Fukuyama has re-established Hegel into Hegel’s proper place in the history of philosophy.

Many people imagine mistakenly also that Fukuyama argues that because Communism has collapsed, there will be no more military conflicts and no more intellectual challenges to liberal democracy. In fact, however, he does not make that argument.

Rather, he argues that liberal democracy (with the word “liberal” understood in the sense of tolerating free communication) is an inevitable mature stage of political development. Some societies already have reached that stage, and some societies are still far away and perhaps even moving in a different direction right now. For many reasons, liberal democracy is the most humanly reasonable kind of society, and so eventually all human societies will make their ways to that destination.

I think that an excellent current example of Fukuyama’s thesis being realized is the country of Iraq, which is moving slowly but surely toward liberal democracy, because the Iraqi people as a whole recognize that it is the most reasonable and effective path toward social progress. Now that the US military intervention has opened that path, the Iraq people will seize its opportunity and move as far forward in that direction as it can in its circumstances.

Aug 10, 2008 - 5:58 am 12. Cannoneer No. 4:

Travels in the Former Soviet Union

From Slate last May. Describes Tskhinvali, before it got rubbled.

H/T: Michael J. Totten, who is inbound to Baku.

Aug 10, 2008 - 6:11 am 13. lc:

In geopolitical considerations, are deals made – is there a “if you help us with Iran you can have Georgia (if you can take her)” (although what kind of a deal can be successfully made with Fascists?). The US is engaged in a war already and seen a significant commitment of combat troops for a number of years, always a challenge for a democracy to sustain. If Afghanistan is difficult for the US logistically, how much more so would Georgia be? However, the US will never ever turn its back on defending Europe (a bit of an amorphous concept) and the Russian rape of Georgia carries an implicit threat to (an expanding) Europe.
George Bush has been called here a lame duck, unwilling to act, etc. He has also bee considered here to be looked upon well in future historical narratives. Who knows what he already knows (no jokes please), has already decided, or will yet decide? He does not strike me as one so seriously frivolous as he seems to be at the Olympics. (Those volleyball players have legs from the ground all the way up!)
regards
lensatic compass

Aug 10, 2008 - 6:14 am 14. wretchard:

I disagree with the assertion that Russia is climbing through an open window left by Iraq for two reasons: first, a direct confrontation between US and Russian troops is to all practical purposes ruled out. Second, in the unlikely event that US forces were used to aid Georgia they would be air and naval forces above all. Those forces are not engaged in Iraq. Actually, they’ve been liberated from their former tasks of maintaining a naval blockade on the Saddam and enforcing a no-fly zone. Lastly, look at the map and measure the distance between the Iraqi air bases the US now has through Turkey to Georgia. There’s a direct air corridor now between the Gulf straight through Turkey that wasn’t there before, when old Saddam was in power.

But that’s beside the point, because direct confrontations are ruled out under Cold War Rule Number One. Cold War Rule Number Two says that proxy warfare is OK. Therefore the only options open to the US in Georgia are to help them with political support, information warfare, intel and materiel. This was exactly what the US did for the Afghans when Russia invaded them and didn’t work out so badly.

The Russians, unlike the US, are unlikely to conquer the Georgians (if they decide to do it) and then let them elect their own government. They will have to garrison it, occupy it and suppress it. Does Putin really want to do this? Maybe he’s counting on the fact that there isn’t a Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher in view. At best we have John McCain, but it’s better than even odds we’ll have Barack Obama, who only the other day was addressing a crowd in Berlin saying all you had to do was reach out.

So the first order of business is for the West to make up its mind about whether or not it is willing to stand up to Putin. All else follows.

Aug 10, 2008 - 6:29 am 15. E. Nigma:

Liberal Democracy?
Iraq may be on its way to a some kind of consensual government and the rule of law, surely better than fascist Baathist Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, but “liberal” democracy? The Islamic Republic of Iraq?

Is the EU going to be a “liberal democracy”? That may be the marketing plan, but from here it looks to be about to become an oligarchy, led and governed by a relatively small circle
of elites, with strongly mercantile tendencies.
India, with it’s elitism and caste system, a liberal democracy? Perhaps among the Brahmins, but what of the Untouchables? The Indians are good people trying to govern a very populous and poor country fairly, but liberal democracy?
And looking at the demographics of many of the so-called liberal democracies (the G8 and the rest), the larger question is:
Can they survive?
Is the Western Liberal Democracy model…a death wish?

Francis Fukyama is undoubtedly a very smart man, but I think he has written about the world he perceives as a member of the Trans-national prgressives. It’s not the real world where people still have dark dreams, and “monsters from the Id” still wander in the night.

Aug 10, 2008 - 6:29 am 16. Mike Sylwester:

The period before World War One included much social progress, but the equilibrium was upset by national minorities rebelling against multi-national empires, especially the Hapsburg, Russian and Ottoman Empires.

World War One was a major struggle in a long effort to reorganize the geo-political arrangements so that governing states are defined largely by language groups. Almost 100 years have passed since WWI began, and much has been accomplished through that struggle. With some major exceptions (e.g. Africa, South Asia), most people live in a country where their native language is their government language. This is an important condition enabling and fostering the development of individual confidence, social solidarity and democratic self-government.

The current crisis in Georgia is a residual development of this century-long struggle. There has been a Northern Ossetia, still belonging to Russia, and a Southern Ossetia, still belonging to Georgia. Many people are perceiving this crisis to be a series of intrigues, manipulations and conflicts between Russian and Georgia. Fundamentally, however, the Ossetians themselves have been driving events under the surface of our own observations. We are talking too much about Russian and Georgian petroleum pipelines and not enough about the movement of Ossetian ethnic communications, activities, relationships and aspirations between their divided nationality.

Aug 10, 2008 - 6:33 am 17. Mike Sylwester:

History is an intellectual effort to understand and describe human trends and events. If I say that mankind is gradually toward liberal democracy, that statement is not contradicted by saying, for example: “Oh, but India still has a caste system.”

Aug 10, 2008 - 6:42 am 18. lc:

I agree the likely US response will be as Wretchard states: “…help them with political support, information warfare, intel, and materiel.” I will be interesting to see who the proxys will be and what they can do and how far they will go. The Turks are tough….the Russians have their hands full.

I think Obama is a clueless proto-fascist, bad news.

Aug 10, 2008 - 7:27 am 19. hdgreene:

You can get more with a kind word and a gun then you can with just a kind word. And in case there is any doubt about the gun…

The competing concept to the End of History was the clash of civilizations. Maybe the Russians want to resurrect an “orthodox” civilizational empire to face the Islamic one they see emerging to their south. Their support for Serbia fits. If they have Georgia under their thumb, they have pretty much flanked the Ukraine. Once their borders with Islam are secure, they can even cooperate with Islam against Europe, India and China — playing all against the other.

They probably worry most about China. They had a pretty nasty border war in Mao’s day, I seem to recall. Also, China and India had a border war with China grabbing part of what India claimed (The PLA got pounded by Viet Nam, ten years later, though). What developed was a Russia-India axis vs. a China-Pakistan axis. The US tilted toward China-Pakistan at the time.

I guess the US will be the wild card in such a world. The Chirac – Schroeder policy of antagonizing those Americans most inclined to help Europe defend itself will make a US drift into free agency more likely.

Aug 10, 2008 - 7:32 am 20. wretchard:

Three terrible things have happened to Europe in the last ten years. First, a demographic collapse began to get under way threatening runaway budgets; second, European competitiveness was challenged by the emerging powers and its energy dependence on Russia; third, the era of free security and guaranteed protection by the United States may be at an end, further straining budgets.

Will Europe face these huge challenges? Or will it retreat into fantasy, into a world of green shopping bags and carbon trading, like demented old aunt? This may be “it”, one way or the other; make or break.

Aug 10, 2008 - 7:39 am 21. Al_Batross:

Ref Mike Sylwester’s comment above about Fukuyama’s “The End of History and the Last Man”, I have not read the book either.
However, I have read Fukuyama’s “Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity”, and found it very good and thought-provoking.
The crisis of trust has perhaps been the post-9/11 Jihad’s greatest victory, but that does not invalidate Fukuyama’s work.
Rather, it has highlighted the vital part trust plays in lubricating societies, something which many of us previously took for granted, and can only now fully appreciate in the dark light of a new age of suspicion.
Similarly, the true value of Liberal democracy is something which can perhaps only be fully appreciated by those who have lost it.

Aug 10, 2008 - 8:00 am 22. E. Nigma:

There is a notion that cultural or social anthropologists sometimes struggle against in the writing for their science.
Teleology.
It can be a false notion to think that all societies and cultures are gradually moving in the same direction with the same general end. This is Fukuyama’s great conceit, in my opinion. Huntington’s “Clash of Civilization”, while not without it’s flaws and glib generalizations, at least recognizes the reality that people are different, and they WANT to be different.
For example, to dismantle the caste system in India would also mean a direct assault on Hinduism. Which is more breakable; Hinduism or the democratic idea, in India? I don’t know the answer, but it might be a clue as to the limits of “liberal democracy”.
I, frankly would prefer progress toward “constitutional republic”, and a strict definition of that. Isn’t there a country called “The Democratic Republic of Congo”, which, in reality, is none of that?

Aug 10, 2008 - 8:34 am 23. fred:

Thirty years ago when I was in college and becoming infatuated with Marxism, I was intrigued by Hegel and his theories about human history. And from a naive standpoint, it is hard to refute the observed general trends away from barbarism towards more advanced cultures and states. But, three decades later and having absorbed MORE of the details of history, past and current, I am not sure about Hegel anymore. Liberal democracy, however advanced and successful (and desirable from my standpoint) does not always win the day. It can be argued that the score is roughly even, between liberal democracy and thuggery/barbarism/totalitarianism. As a Catholic Christian I am supposed to be optimistic about the victory of the Alpha and the Omega, but sometimes during times like these what I observe of human stupidity, evil, and sloth makes me wonder…

We cannot carry this burden alone. Great as our nation is, there are just too many threats. What has definitely emerged is an Axis of Moscow-Tehran-Beijing that would appear to have some degree of coordination. And clearly, the Russians and the Chinese believe that Iran and the Islamic world are manageable, directing the Ummah’s violent aggression against the United States and the West.

The E.U. seems to be some version of the old Soviet Politiburo, and so their sympathies are not generally inclined in our direction. But, we will see how Europe reacts now that Russia has shown its fangs.

Aug 10, 2008 - 8:51 am 24. cjm:

the muslim immigrants in europe are converting to chritianity in substantial numbers. once the conversion process is completed, there will not be any muslims left in, or allowed into, europe. the current native populations are on the etruscan express, and good bye to them.

russia has the worst demographic collapse of all. they are toast and no one will help them when china comes calling. maybe russia shouldn’t have armed the prc.

islam will not survive contact with modern communications.

in at least one SOTU speech bush made ellipitcal references to revolutionary changes in energy production — is there some new technology nearing fruition?

Aug 10, 2008 - 10:16 am 25. Mike Sylwester:

E. Nigma:
“For example, to dismantle the caste system in India would also mean a direct assault on Hinduism. Which is more breakable; Hinduism or the democratic idea, in India? I don’t know the answer, but it might be a clue as to the limits of “liberal democracy”.”
————-

Traditional religious teaching is one impediment that liberal democracy has had to overcome. In order to dismantle the rule of kings in Europe, Europeans had to reform or overcome Christian teachings that upheld the divine rights of kings. In retrospect we look back at European history and recognize that the political victory of liberal democracy over the divine right of kings was historically inevitable because of many social factors, not that Europeans were “different” and eternally committed to rule by kings because they were ruled by kings for many centuries.

What is the historical trend in India? Is it the historical trend that the caste system is being reinforced and appears to be the wave of the future? Or it is the historical trend that the caste system is being eliminated and that liberal democracy is the wave of the future?

Aug 10, 2008 - 11:06 am 26. whiskey:

It’s important to recognize what’s Putin’s motive.

Putin is in power because he runs a patronage network of thugs. To stay in power, like Saddam or Ahmadinejad, he needs to deliver lots of cash to the thugs. Simple as that.

For the cash to keep flowing, the world price of oil has to be north of $140 a barrel. None of these thug states can produce oil profitably at low(er) prices because it would require suppressing the thug network that keeps these Big Men in power.

Which means, broadly speaking, there will be war between Russia and Iran on the one hand, with their need to jack up world oil prices and keep their thugs paid, and the US, China, and other powers on the other hand, who need cheaper oil to keep THEIR economies going.

China needs cheap oil to keep their manufacturing base going and prevent a gigantic revolution from spreading all over their country. Already I’ll note that Uighur and Hui Muslim terrorism is spreading all over the country. The US needs cheap oil to keep the Welfare State going, keep payments to corporate and social-ethnic-racial groups that keep the peace.

This pretty much guarantees war in some form or another.

And Obama? He’s like Carter reacting to the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan. His Berlin speech looks like the stupidest bet ever, in the aftermath of what is sure to be Russian invasion and occupation, a brutal one at that, of Georgia.

Russia has to occupy and control Georgia, to keep the pipeline dead. They can’t afford cheap gas and oil going to Europe outside their control. They must keep their thugs paid after all to keep Putin in power.

Aug 10, 2008 - 1:27 pm 27. Charles:

imho russia’s current problems in the caucasus are a cautionary tale of what can happen to the USA in not a few decades if the current american elites persist in thinking of themselves as world citizens rather than american citizens.

there are real policy consequences when the most powerful constituencies in a republic no longer believe in the republic.

the foolishness of obama in saying that he was a world citizen in berlin was only that he said it.

many american political and monetary elites in the USA think of themselves as world citizens but they are not such fools as to say so.

Aug 10, 2008 - 3:31 pm 28. Dave:

whiskey: I’ll drink to that—pun intended.

Done Been Pooten is sitting on top of a kleptocracy. He thinks he is the big, tough s.o.b. in charge. But in truth he is running short of ways and means to provide the
instant gratification his gang requires.

His internal position is flaky, that is why he has embarked on a foreign gamble. If somebody will fight a way to hand him his head on a platter, both he and the kleptocracy will collapse.

Aug 10, 2008 - 7:17 pm 29. Joshua:

Things are moving too quickly on too many fronts – military, diplomatic, geopolitical, economic, technological, cultural, demographic – for us to have anything more than a very faint idea of what the next chapter of world history will look like. Very faint, as in “it probably won’t be very pleasant”.

Aug 10, 2008 - 7:40 pm 30. neolex:

Why are the Georgian threads closed? Database issues?

Aug 12, 2008 - 3:36 pm 31. neo:

*
“is the world becoming a better place?”

i guess it depends on who you’re talking to.

*

Aug 13, 2008 - 10:51 am

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