Our ‘Reassured’ Allies
Justin Logan beat me to the punch, but Robert Kagan and Dan Blumenthal’s op-ed in the Washington Post warrants more than just one comment. Kagan and Blumenthal fret that the Obama administration’s policy of “strategic reassurance” is sure to fail. Aimed at encouraging Russia and China, especially, to cooperate with the United States in dealing with a number of common threats, the two predict that the policy will succeed only in making “American allies nervous.”
Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Not that we should go around making our allies nervous just for the heck of it, but I worry that our allies have grown, well, too comfortable with the current state of affairs in which American taxpayers and American troops bear a disproportionate share of the costs of securing global peace and prosperity.
And who can blame them? From the perspective of our allies in East Asia (chiefly the Japanese and the South Koreans), and for the Europeans tucked safely within NATO, getting the Americans to pay the costs, and assume the risks, associated with policing the world is a pretty good gig.
The same Robert Kagan made this point explicitly, if somewhat crudely, in his book Of Paradise and Power, when he cast the United States in the heroic role as sheriff, while our wealthy allies were portrayed as cowardly, sniveling townspeople, or, worse, saloon keepers who benefited from the protection of the Americans while selling booze to the bad guys.
For at least two decades, we have adopted a strategy designed to comfort our allies. Our goal has been to discourage them from taking prudent steps to defend themselves. Many Americans are beginning to appreciate just how short-sighted this policy was, and is. Such military capabilities might have proved useful in Afghanistan, for example, and they might ultimately serve a purpose in checking Russian and Chinese ambitions, which would be particularly important if these two countries prove as aggressive as Kagan and Blumenthal claim.
Instead, we have a group of militarily weak and comfortable allies who spend a fraction of what Americans spend on defense, and who can muster political will with respect to foreign policy only when it entails criticizing the United States for not doing enough. In other words, we are reaping what we sowed.
Bagram, Habeas, and the Rule of Law
Andrew C. McCarthy has an article up at National Review criticizing a recent decision by Obama administration officials to improve the detention procedures in Bagram, Afghanistan.
McCarthy calls the decision an example of pandering to a “despotic” judiciary that is imposing its will on a war that should be run by the political branches. McCarthy’s essay is factually misleading, ignores the history of wartime detention in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, and encourages the President to ignore national security decisions coming out of the federal courts.
More details after the jump.
The End of the World War I Generation
Harry Patch died a little over a week ago. At 111 he was the last British veteran of World War I. No French or German participants in that horrid war survive. Only one American participant still lives–Frances Buckles, age 108, who drove an ambulance during the war.
World War I is largely ignored in America, but it seared Europe in particular, as well as other participants, such as Australia and New Zealand, onetime British colonies which sent off soldiers to die for their parent nation. Although less bloody than World War II, the first conflict set the stage for the second, far more murderous contest, as well as the Cold War that followed.
World War I, once called the war to end war, was foolish and stupid for all participants. Nothing was at stake that warranted a death toll which approached 20 million. On top were even more injured and maimed, economic collapse, and political chaos, leading to the rise of fascism, Nazism, and communism.
Harry Patch understood that he had been deployed in a mistaken crusade. Reports the Washington Times:
Mr. Patch did not speak about his war experiences until he was 100. Once he did, he was adamant that the slaughter he witnessed had not been justified.
“I met someone from the German side, and we both shared the same opinion: We fought, we finished and we were friends,” he said in 2007.
“It wasn’t worth it.”
War sometimes is necessary. But as Robert E. Lee intoned while looking down on the impressive military tableau at the battle of Fredericksburg, “It is well that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it.”
Harry Patch certainly understood. According to the Times:
His most vivid memory of the war was of encountering a comrade whose torso had been ripped open by shrapnel. “Shoot me,” Mr. Patch recalled the soldier pleading.
The man died before Patch could draw his revolver.
“I was with him for the last 60 seconds of his life. He gasped one word – ‘Mother.’ That one word has run through my brain for 88 years. I will never forget it.”
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