The Obama UN speeches and appearances last week have caused some comment among conservatives along the lines of President Obama simply wanting the US to be ‘one among the guys’ of nations. Andrew Ferguson picks up this notion in his Weekly Standard commentary this week, and it’s been around other places, too, including Richard Fernandez and other commentators. I think it’s basically right, and is one of the basic motivations behind Obama administration proclamations of of “multilateralism.” Multilateralism – well, I suspect a number of the world’s leaders (even if not their peoples so far), both our enemies and our friends, are drawing the correct conclusion that, to the Obama administration, it means … to lay down the burdens, mouth the same words as everyone else, and quit having to bear the costs of providing the essentials of the global security system. Go along, get along. Iran might force a change of direction, but quite possibly not.
I’ve been talking about this for quite a while, in alas unread academic papers that languish in backwaters of the internet (SSRN, I mean), so you’ll just have to forgive me for quoting myself. Note to everyone: As with all my prose, the full papers are well worth reading. Also a review-essay on the history of the United Nations that appeared in an excellent literary review, La Revista de Libros which, while very well circulated and the publisher of some of the finest literary prose in the contemporary Spanish language, does, however, publish out of Madrid and in Spanish:
Be wary, O Europe, above all, of liberal internationalist Americans bearing gifts of multilateralism. An America that does not assert, rudely and brusquely, its own interests and views first through Nato and elsewhere, an America that sings sweet songs of multilateral interdependence is, surely, a superpower that has decided to simply go along with what everyone else does, which is another way of saying it has tired of supporting the free riders, which is another way of saying that it, too, says one thing but might do another, and what it might do is not show up when the big battalions are finally needed.
Prudent Europeans fear and do not trust, above all, an America that does not put its own interests first and carry the rest along in train. Re-read Raymond Aron. Europe will soon enough face an Iranian nuclear weapon along with its massive dependence upon Russian natural gas, even as its military strength declines yearly – hourly – and in important respects it is today at least arguably more dependent on the American security guarantee, not less, than at any time since 1990.
The broader point being that for all the talk about UN collective security, the reason anyone even talks about it is that it is, for much of the world, a fifth wheel on a broad, US security guarantee. If you are European states, you can talk about UN collective security because you don’t need it and it isn’t truly your security guarantor.
The truest description of the international security situation since 1990 is that it is a conjoined and parallel UN-US security system. It is best described as two parallel, interlinked security systems – a weak one, the UN collective security apparatus, and a strong one, the US security guarantee. Understood this way, the US is not merely a, or even the, dominant and most powerful actor. Rather, the US offers a genuinely alternative system of international peace and security. And the dominant actor’s willingness to extend a security guarantee to a sizable portion of the planet, explicitly and implicitly, alters the meaning, necessity, and quality of collective security at the UN itself. They are two different game-theory scenarios – a dominant actor within a UN collective security-defection international relations “game”; versus an actor that offers its own security package alongside that of the UN in a parallel collective security “game.” In a diplomatic system characterized (in game theory terms) by insincere public promises, easy defection, moral hazard, and free-riding, the fig leaf is assiduously maintained that the UN constitutes, or anyway offers, a collective security system. Whereas in fact, most leading players in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, and even the Middle East, are unwilling to test the strength of that system: insincere lip service to the UN system while actually relying on the United States.
A realist might say, in other words, that for all the extant elite complaining and populist anti-Americanism, a remarkable number of countries have counted the costs of adherence to the US security promise and found it rather better than their own, and better than the UN’s, and better than anything else on offer, as to both benefits and costs. After all, the US does not even particularly care when those under its security hegemony (which extends far beyond its allies or clients to provide, perversely, significant stability benefits even to America’s acknowledged enemies) heap abuse on it (justified or not) because, in the grand scheme of things, it understands (however inchoately and inconstantly) that the system incorporates (often heartfelt but, in the final policy result, insincere) public rejection and protest by the system’s beneficiaries. The US is not imperial in a way that would cause it much to care. Part of accepting US security hegemony by its beneficiaries includes their rational desire to displace security costs onto another party, even if that providing party thereby has equally rational reasons to look to its own interests first, since it so overwhelmingly pays the costs.
Acceptance also includes realistic appraisal of the alternatives: would Europe (let alone Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, India, the Philippines, New Zealand, or Australia, or even Russia) prefer, for example, Chinese hegemony to the US? The crisis in Georgia forced a little bit of discussion – less than the current newspaper headlines suggest, however – on the mission and role of Nato. On the one hand, Europe is in strategic disarray with the reassertion of regional Russian imperial will; the interests of those close to it are different from those far away and at some point even the United States will wonder, as a matter of budget and defense plans, what Nato is worth: how long does a hegemon support its free riders?
But then there is a question, how is it that NATO avoids all the problems of collective action that would undermine UN collective security if even there were a “collective” with a shared interest to secure? Well, NATO doesn’t have to worry about collective action problems because it isn’t truly a collective security system. On the contrary, it is an extension to a very special top-tier crowd of the full benefits of the US security guarantee. Our allies trust it because it is not a collective security system; it is a US security guarantee in which the allies provide some legitimacy and the US supplies everything else. It’s a friends-with-benefits kind of arrangement. They trust it because they fundamentally trust two non-collective-action propositions:
- First, the US will put it interests sufficiently first that it will not engage in free-riding behavior – even though, for the sake of some measure of gained legitimacy, it will not worry when others do.
- Second, the broad security interests of the United States are sufficiently close to theirs, on a costs and benefits basis, that they will be willing to go along with the overall US security plan, even as they seek to alter it to meet their interests by the effect of talking, complaining, maintaining an illusion of collective security, and so on.
The question is whether President Obama is genuinely signaling a new paradigm. Multilateralism as a signal of the Tired Superpower that wants to refocus inwards and let the rest of the world deal with its own problems? Or what every first term American president always does – try to focus on the domestic issues that got him elected? One can’t say with certainty at this point – what the President would like to do is clear; not clear whether political events will let him.
Nuclear weapon in Iran? We’ll sing kumbayah at the Security Council and be presented with the remarkable spectacle of an openly incredulous French president reminding an American president that, tacitly, that as he speaks the Iranians knit together the pieces of their nuclear weapons. It’s quite an exchange, and not one that initially even penetrated the warm syrup of the NYT or other American mainstream media, presumably because it didn’t fit many existing narratives, about the United States, about France, about many things.
But at the same time, American conservatives wonder why on earth, if there were no Israel to worry about, they should worry overmuch about a nuclear Iran aimed at Europe, when the Europeans have themselves been so relaxed about it. If, in an alternate universe, the Middle East contained no Israel and never had, would America have much reason to care about nukes pointed at Europe? When the Europeans have themselves been so unconcerned about it? Not our world, of course, and we do worry correctly about both Tel Aviv and Paris, but that’s because – let’s be clear – we’re not multilateralists in things that truly count. But then, what I have always admired about every senior intellectual I’ve known in France is that they are not multilateralists, either, not truly, and whether of left or right, whether they want to be or not, they are pour la France, Gaullists down to their toenails.
If you doubt it for a moment, watch closely the two YouTube videos of Sarkozy and Royal singing La Marsillease the night Sarkozy won. They both mean it, more so, I’m afraid, than Obama, husband or wife, or any of my academic friends in the administration, for whom something as embarrassing as the national anthem is to be strictly limited to ball games, and God forbid anyone be preserved on a FB photo putting a hand over one’s heart. It’s Gaullist because it is finally not about justice or morality or any of the stuff that tends to move Americans and which, to be sure, moves me – it’s about honor. They’re not finally multilateralists, either, not when it comes to “France-of-Caverns,” to cite Rene Char: and therefore let us be more French.
The United States has done the inward-turning before, and notably following military defeat, in the post-Vietnam 1970s. It appears, at this juncture, that the United States is moving to accept “soft” defeat – finally do what James Fallows, for example, has always wanted to do, simply declare victory and come home – both in Afghanistan and Iraq. Enable the Obama administration to focus on achieving two fond dreams at once – domestic social democracy and, by reason of the domestic cost of that burden, ensure that the United States cannot play the role of ultimate security guarantor in the world over the longer term.
Declinism as a thesis about the United States is an intellectuals’ game that sporadically flares up. Paul Kennedy, in the late 1980s, or Jimmy Carter, and Fareed Zakaria, Niall Ferguson, and many others today. In today’s version, it is a consequence of the loss of US dominance over the global financial system, loss of dominance of the dollar, and so on finally extending to undercut the economic basis of the US empire. Michael Lind, whose intellect I greatly respect even when I find his ideas not at all right, has a recent essay linking multipolarity to the end of US security hegemony. I’ve written quite skeptically about all this, in yet another unread academic article on the relationship between UN collective security, the Security Council, and the US security guarantee.
However, I confess that I find these declinist theories deeply attractive aesthetically, beguiling even, even when I don’t find them intellectually warranted. At bottom I would like to be a deterministic historical materialist. I was once an undergraduate research assistant to the distinguished Marxist historian Robert Brenner – I wasn’t very helpful because I knew almost nothing about the subject of history and nothing about economics, and my only useful function was in cataloging the fifteen years of overdue library books lost in his office.
I love nothing so much as reading the utterly exquisite Marxist prose of Perry Anderson, for example, on early modern Europe. If I could write as he does I would be pretty darn happy. The problem is, when I look and see what he has written over the years in the same exquisite style about The Crisis, referring to the contemporary period and not, say, the Enclosure Movement, over in the pages of New Left Review, I can’t say that any of it seems to turn out as argued. And after enough times when it doesn’t, even I start to wonder if maybe it isn’t quite the right way to think about early modern Europe, either.
One of these days decline will turn out to be true; it just seems to me that the academics should not try to beat each other to the punch every couple of years and announce that it is so. However, if American decline were to turn out to be true in this current epicycle of the world, it would be not so much on account of movements outside the United States as inside. If you make enough social democratic promises, and combine that with the singularity of an aging population with many needs, sure, you can make decline come true.
It is always possible for a society to eat its seed corn, and that seems to me an apt description of what the administration and Congress are proposing for American society domestically. A long-term collateral effect, in other words, and not unwelcomed by parts of the administration, as far as I can tell, of debt-financing domestic social democracy is to starve the US security guarantee to the point that it can no longer even guarantee the freedom of the high seas.
Don’t get all schadenfreudey too soon, however. What most of the academics I know believe is that American decline is a zero sum condition of the rise of liberal internationalism – the eventual triumph of international law and institutions can come only with the decline of sovereignty and most particularly the great sovereigns, of which currently the most powerful remains the United States. Collective security will gradually consolidate itself as the UN consolidates itself, as institutions of international law consolidate themselves, but this necessarily requires a diminution of American power, even if we politikly call it a “new form of sovereignty,” new and better.
What I’ve suggested above, however, runs quite the other direction. The dream of global governance through international institutions and law is a lovely dream that supervenes, like oil floating upon water, alas, upon the fact of the American hegemonic security guarantee. A genuinely multipolar world is not only a more insecure one (as the ever bleak but always incisive David Rieff has pointed out); it is also a more unjust one. Be careful what you wish for. Your dreams of liberal internationalism were never on so firm a foundation as upon the US’s clumsy and imperfect security hegemony.
And finally, as has also been remarked upon, and on which I am now writing in my little book-essay on US-UN relations, what President Obama might well, and quite deliberately, have presaged is the end of the era of human rights. Oh sure, the language will be there, the bureaucracies will grow, the NGOs will continue to institutionalize. But they might well do so in the way that the rest of the institutional UN acts – marching, marching, marching, but always in place.
Trapped in the cul-de-sac of internationalization and global institutionalization. The genuine power of human rights, which, contrary to liberal internationalist theory, has always been (as much as anything truly “transnational”) the power of nation states to force their way onto the agendas of other nation states in the name of universal values. But now it risks finding itself trapped, as though in a magnetic bottle, hedged and hemmed from all sides, by its own international rules, regulations, norms, institutions, and governance structures, which in an age of multipolarity largely ensure, HRC-style, that no state shall criticize another. Wasn’t that the take-away of what President Obama said in the Security Council? Except, of course, that everyone can criticize the United States and Israel.
The point is that after decades of human rights emerging as the language of value at the United Nations and international community, it turns out that we are tired of it as our values-language. It’s so un-multilateral, this unseemly criticism of individual countries that are not the US or Israel. Let’s talk different kinds of language of values – climate change, poverty, lots of things that don’t require singling anyone out for, say, genocide. It’s weird to see that after decades of evolving away from the now antiquated language of “world peace” of the UN of the 1960s, to the flowering of human rights as the new apex language of global values, President Obama might well have put the capstone on human rights as the apex language, and signalled a return to a more multipolar world in which the apex language of values is, once again, world peace.
(The Olympic silliness raises another set of issues; another time.)
Martinned says:
I have many questions, but one in particular jumps out: Who talks about a UN collective security regime? AFAIK, the collective security aspect of the UN was dead before the ink was even dry, and I haven’t heard anyone mention it since. In Europe, the choice is (perceived as being) between relying on NATO or relying on second pillar policies. How many EU member states choose the former can be illustrated neatly with yet another quote from this week’s Charlemagne column:
In other words, the war in Afghanistan may be pointless (I don’t agree, but never mind), but it’s worth sending soldiers in order to please our American friends. That is why the Dutch have soldiers in Uruzgan, and why they had soldiers in Iraq: They’ve always been eager to say thank you to the Americans whenever appropriate.
October 3, 2009, 3:45 pmArkady says:
About those burdens. I’ll very soon be 70, and in every decade my life, my country has been at war some place in the world. In some miserable shithole where young men, and now young men and young women, have gone off and are going off to die. In my youth, I was a Marine and fully prepared to go off to the shithole du jour. Fortunately for me, I was in during one of the short interregnums: between Korea and Vietnam. Not so fortunate were some of my friends who did off to Vietnam and didn’t come back. Now maybe you’re right, maybe there is the fact of the, as you put it, American hegemonic security guarantee. But at times, I am weary, very weary, of the blood and treasure expended. And even though I’ll be beyond caring, I find myself saddened at the thought of another 70 years of the same.
October 3, 2009, 3:47 pmSG says:
Who talks about a UN collective security regime?
Every single person who insisted that Operation Iraqi Freedom was illegal under international law because it had not received UN approval? It was my understanding of that all-too-common argument as expressing a belief that the UN provided some sort of meaningful collective security function that the US and its allies (which as you point out included the Netherlands) were somehow thwarting.
October 3, 2009, 4:01 pmMartinned says:
@SG: My understanding has always been that the closed system of ius ad bellum, which says that war is illegal unless it is authorised by the Security Council or self-defence under art. 51 UN Charter is unrelated to the UN collective security regime. Maybe the language is still there, where the UNSC are asked to find that there is a “threat to the peace”, but given the still birth of the UN collective security regime, that is simply part of the formula that authorises an agressive war that would otherwise be illegal. It’s the difference between authorising security and providing it.
October 3, 2009, 4:16 pmblargh says:
As China and India become more wealthy and powerful, isn’t what the U.S. says about itself with regard to its international clout less and less relevant? After all we could be declining as a relative matter (because China/India are outpacing us) even if we are not declining as an absolute matter.
October 3, 2009, 5:07 pmTruePath says:
I think the post commits a fallacy by tacitly assuming that we can treat the world as some kind of fixed stage on which the international actors play out their roles. For instance consider the implicit claim that a decline in the US security guarantee must either be counterbalanced by a stronger security guarantee from international institutions or an increased risk of war and conflict. This makes perfect sense as a short term (say somewhere under a decade) approximation. If during the next three years the US were to decomission half of it’s aircraft carriers it’s safe to assume that this would decrease the security of our friends and allies.
However, the ‘decline’ of the US referenced in the article is not really a true decline but rather a relative decline of US power and dominance as other countries modernize and grow rich enough to afford large defense budgets. So in this context when we consider the loss of US hegemony we can’t assume it happens against a static background. Rather we need to remember that it’s the result of increased prosperity which itself is driven by the adoption of a certain level of western style capitalism, legal predictability, and individual freedom (China may not be free but it’s a lot more free now than it was before).
It’s my view that the changes that will lead to the anticipated loss of US hegemony will themselves eliminate the need for US hegemony. During the first half of this century we had two horrific wars between the major european powers yet the risk of another war between UK and Germany is so small as to be laughable. The prosperity created by industrialization and the increased ties created by trade and travel enabled by wealth reduced the appetite for warfare in the prosperous nations so much that the Europeans are now almost a single country. It’s just not reasonable to assume that once most Chinese grow up drinking coke, surfing the web on macbooks and watching hollywood TV they will pose the same kind of security threat as they are now. Indeed, the reason the US is likely to lose it’s hegemonic status is the existence of more nations whose security interests align with our own. As a countries citizens become richer they become more risk averse and even in non-democratic societies like China they will start to weigh the benefits of trade with rogue nations against the risks they pose differently.
October 3, 2009, 5:19 pmMartinned says:
@TruePath: I hope that’s true. Let’s see what the real realists say. Somehow, realism always seems to amount to predicting more war. I wonder if it’s possible to apply realism and reach a different outcome.
October 3, 2009, 5:27 pmBill Quick says:
Really? Which countries are those? Certainly not the western socialist democracies, facing both demographic and economic crises. Russia? Russia is, well, collapsing.
India and China? India may eventually reach a stage of development where it can afford to raise and project significant power, but almost the entire focus of Chinese militarism is focused on the military aspects of a takeover of Taiwan.
The United States is the one nation in the world annually creates enough wealth to afford a true global military reach. How many true American-style carrier battle groups does the rest of the world possess? That’s right, none.
That situation in unlikely to change in the foreseeable future – unless, of course, Japan decides to resume militarism. But their demographics and economic problems militate against that as well.
October 3, 2009, 5:40 pmBob from Ohio says:
India and China have too large of a poverty level to really claim first rank and project power on a US scale.
Even if one fully believes the growth stats in China, the GDP per capita is what, a third of the US. To raise the 500 million people in poverty to western standards of living is impossible, you would have to achieve levels of growth that no country has ever achieved in the history of the world. Not even the Frick/Morgan/Carnegie era or the post WW II era in the US has even reached half the level of growth needed.
October 3, 2009, 6:06 pmMartinned says:
Andrew Sullivan had this chart today. (The main chart is per capita, but the one on the right gives the ranking in absolute numbers.)
BTW, I’m not sure how much use those carrier battle groups will be in the 21st century, except for a few possible problems that have a clear naval component, like Taiwan.
October 3, 2009, 6:08 pmMartinned says:
@Bob from Ohio: For military spending, GDP per capita isn’t what matters. All that’s important there is GDP generally.
October 3, 2009, 6:09 pmCornellian says:
Multilateralism – well, I suspect a number of the world’s leaders (even if not their peoples so far), both our enemies and our friends, are drawing the correct conclusion that, to the Obama administration, it means … to lay down the burdens, mouth the same words as everyone else, and quit having to bear the costs of providing the essentials of the global security system.
The sooner the better. We should bear the costs of our own security and let other countries bear the cost of their own security.
October 3, 2009, 6:26 pmCornellian says:
Really? Which countries are those? Certainly not the western socialist democracies, facing both demographic and economic crises. Russia? Russia is, well, collapsing.
Western Europe certainly has demographic issues to address, but their economies are hardly in crisis, at least not any worse than ours. Canada’s public finances are far better off than ours and their economy hasn’t had a sub-prime mortgage bust either. Nor are they in the same demographic situation as Europe.
October 3, 2009, 6:29 pmKieth Nissen says:
I don’t think that the projection of American military power starting with the first Iraq war (about 1989) and extending to the present wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is sustainable either economically or spiritually. Even if we had another George Bush along with another Dick Cheney in the office of President and Vice President we would be obliged to reduce our efforts. What Arkady says above is true; we cannot keep this up. The more we do the less other stable and capable governments will do to help themselves. I do not admire Obama but his foreign policy is probably the only one this country can afford (again, economically and spiritually). Yes, we will likely have a nuclear armed Iran. We will live with it.
October 3, 2009, 6:34 pmSG says:
It’s the difference between authorising security and providing it.
I’m not sure I understand the distinction you’re attempting to draw, nor do I think that all, or even many, of the people advancing the argument about the “necessity” of UN resolutions were making such a distinction. I do think there are a fair number of people who believe the UN provides a collective security regime.
October 3, 2009, 6:40 pmMartinned says:
@SG: In a collective security regime, each participant is required by treaty to come to the aid of whoever is attacked. The Security Council is not required to come to anyone’s aid. They’re not even required to pass a resolution. This is what the UN Charter says:
The key word being: may.
This is art. 5 of the NATO Treaty:
The latter is a collective security regime, or at least much closer to one. (It still says that each member should take whatever action “it deems necessary”, but OK.)
October 3, 2009, 6:51 pmCareless says:
Per capita income is irrelevant. Luxembourg cannot afford a powerful military. China can pay its soldiers peanuts and will have a large enough economy to be able to afford a very powerful military.
October 3, 2009, 8:10 pmjcm says:
Western Europe certainly has demographic issues to address, but their economies are hardly in crisis, at least not any worse than ours.
IMF numbers (growth for 2010):USA 1,5%, Germany 0,3%, France and UK: 0,9%
2009: USA – 2,7%, Germany -5,3% UK:- 4,4%
Unemployment: USA : 9.8. Germany: 7.7% . France : 9.2 % ( projected 10% by the end of the year). UK: 7.9%. The USA rate will go down . The European level wont go down ,ever.
October 3, 2009, 8:10 pmPeteP says:
( the US will …. )”quit having to bear the costs of providing the essentials of the global security system. ”
Here you miss the goal of the left, and Obama. They are perfectly willing to let the USA PAY for it, as long as the UN CONTROLS it.
October 3, 2009, 8:57 pmWill Tiny Israel Save the World? » The Anchoress | A First Things Blog says:
[...] WaPo: The Coming Failure in Iran Kenneth Anderson: They made a multi-lateralism and called it peace Giggling Al Franken: laughing the Patriot Act out of effectiveness? FBI Director: AlQ linked [...]
October 3, 2009, 9:23 pmChrisTS says:
I do not know which/what ‘left’ you mean.
From Vietnam onwards, the Left has mostly been against U.S military adventurism – possibly excepting humanitarian intervention.
This is NOT a left/right issue. The question is to what extent – of lives and money – are citizens of this country willing to police the world? As far as I can tell, people from all over the political spectrum think we should be more careful – both of our citizens’ lives and our national pocketbook.
I do find it odd that some folks who have mocked other nations for failing to step up now scold our own nation for being less willing to do so in others’ stead.
October 3, 2009, 9:44 pmPatHMV says:
This is actually the one thing which leads me to not be entirely fed up with the President’s weak and accommodating foreign policy. For far too long, the Europeans have largely had it pretty easy, security wise. While most of them have some very fine individual soldiers and military units, on the whole they lack significant military might. They have been happy to have us carry the military burden, while also enjoying the freedom to criticize us as we do so. If the sudden appearance of an appeasement-oriented American foreign policy can force them to confront the real world, and the lack of respect that actual rogue regimes have for diplomatic communiques, however sternly worded, then that’s all to the good.
We know that our long term freedom depends in part on a free Europe, but I’m not sure that Europe as a whole recognizes the biggest risks to its freedoms. Maybe a bit of fear (be it of Iranian nukes or whatever else) will make them see some more light.
October 3, 2009, 10:57 pmJohn Moore says:
I think you miss an important point. With the exception of China, the other countries have so much of their economy dedicated to their social-democratic entitlements that they are not rich enough to contribute. Furthermore, they lack the will and there is no evidence they will re-acquire it.
China is hardly a good replacement for US security guarantees. The country is historically isolationist (and they have a LONG history). They are ruled by an illegitimate autocracy with an uncertain future – no succession systems and no history of peaceful transitions. Their people are not interested in foreign adventures (except, perhaps, on their immediate periphery), and this is consistent with their history.
There simply is no substitute likely to emerge for the US unipolar security regime. A multipolar regime would end up looking a lot like Europe before WW-I, except spread across wider geography – alliances of convenience and lots of nasty weapons.
As the article accurately points out, much of the world free-rides on US power. Hopefully, Obama won’t have the ability to destroy that power, even if he desires to (and it isn’t clear he has that as a goal).
The threats have changed, but humanity remains fractious with its usual supply of predators and dangerous ideologues, some of whom control countries.
Today, the biggest military threat comes from technology – allowing pip-squeak Iran and moribund North Korea to none-the-less present dangerous challenges to the world including the US (admittedly, suicidal, but mistakes can happen in Korea, and suicide may be a goal in Iran). Technological advances increase the possibilities of truly devastating asymmetric warfare.
Although this rarely makes the news, one real example is a single relatively small nuke (fission = simple will do it), in low earth orbit. This is enough to devastate the US or Europe through Nuclear EMP effect – causing far more damage than a nuclear exchange with dozens of weapons. Iran will have that capability quite soon, and North Korea might. Such a threat also has zero warning time – the satellite flies over, and on one of it’s orbits, detonates.
Another asymmetric threat, being sought by Al Qaeda and probably already possesed by North Korea and maybe Iran, is biological warfare. A contagious agent, especially one genetically engineered for unique intigenic characteristics and increased virulence, could kill of a significant percentage of the worlds’ population.
Power is required to counter these sorts of threats, something Obama needs to learn.
October 3, 2009, 11:16 pmblargh says:
( the US will …. )”quit having to bear the costs of providing the essentials of the global security system. ”
Here you miss the goal of the left, and Obama. They are perfectly willing to let the USA PAY for it, as long as the UN CONTROLS it.
Heck yeah! Just the other day me and the rest of the Left were sipping sherry and peering over our monocles while discussing the best strategies for achieving exactly that! Alas, now that our secret is out, we are undone.
October 4, 2009, 6:18 amMark says:
One morning soon, we will awake to the news that Israel has bombed Iran. That day is nearing. I suspect w/in 3 months. Israel has to strike first, and fast. That is how small, strong, nimble fighters attack. Israel rolls the dice and hopes for a strong US response. What’s Israels option? Wait for the mullahs to nuke them? Talking is pointless I’m afraid. From DC to Paris, London, and Jerusalem, the gigs up, everyone knows it…
October 4, 2009, 6:33 amrrr says:
I don’t know. I read at the outset about someone quoting their own papers and urging us that his own papers were well-worth reading and I just couldn’t manage to even bother with the rest. Such hubris, generally, doesn’t make interesting reading. Most would simply restate and summarize their papers rather than try a backhanded attempt to get noticed.
October 4, 2009, 6:49 amSoronel Haetir says:
I’ve seen reasonable statements indicating that the Israelis don’t actually have the ability. Basically that their reach is limited to about the middle of Iraq. What then?
October 4, 2009, 7:06 amoLD gUY says:
John Moore: This is enough to devastate the US or Europe through Nuclear EMP effect – causing far more damage than a nuclear exchange with dozens of weapons.
The major thrust of your post is insightful, but I need to point out that the above statement is really not operative. It was true throughout the 70s and early 80s, but not today. First off, since EMP effect drops off as the square of the distance, a pulse from a small fission source above the atmosphere would have minimal effect on the ground. Second, most of the economically important satellites are in geostationary orbit over the US and would have the entire planet acting as a shield versus an explosion above Asia or Europe and Iran does not have ICBM capability. Third, most military satellites operate from a much higher orbit than could be reached by a ballistic shot from a true ICBM, much less from a missile such as the Sahab-3. Finally and most importantly, most critical infrastructure in LEO and on earth (satellites, electrical grids and such) have been EMP hardened for a couple of decades now.
October 4, 2009, 7:35 amViacalx says:
A multi-polar world suits the elites just fine. More crisis, more need for “government intervention.” All the intellectual discussion is fine, but if you don’t go to the heart of America’s current problem it’s just wasted server space. Our current elites want life and liberty scrubbed out of the American ideal (“pursuit of happiness” has never been taught in the public schools and its meaning is completely foreign to most) and an oppressive bureaucracy is just the trick. With the elites at the top, of course.
I’ll go out on a limb, however, and posit that the unwashed masses in America understand inalienable (unalienable) rights better than the Beltway/University crowd – and will reclaim them. During the US turmoil the free-riders overseas will awaken to their danger, perhaps a few bombs go off or threats thereof. Should be humerous to hear their elites beseeching US to save them. Again.
October 4, 2009, 7:39 amMark says:
>>I’ve seen reasonable statements indicating that the Israelis don’t actually have the ability. Basically that their reach is limited to about the middle of Iraq. What then?<<
Soronel,
I've read that too. Israel would need a mid air refuel from the US over Iraq. I've heard the Saudi's were in talks w/Israel for use of airspace en-route…The Turks border Iran. Israel has a long history w/the Turks. Mid east politics. Who knows? 2 weeks ago Netanyahu was in Moscow delivering names of suspected Russian nuclear scientists in Iran. Moscow shrugs…BN gives a surreal speech at UN reminding the attendees that the Holocaust did happen. Obama kicks the proverbial diplomatic can down the road buying time for I'm not sure who…Israel to prepare, Iran to comply, Obama to…talk? Israel looks at their next move as survival. They will find a way to attack those facilities.
October 4, 2009, 8:10 ampep says:
@ ChrisTS
From Vietnam onwards, the Left has mostly been against U.S military adventurism – possibly excepting humanitarian intervention.
That sort of argument by predefinition is a major part of the problem. Obama running for office says that Agfhanistan is the absolutely critical theater, and Bush is a bad and foolish man for taking his eye off the ball to try and please his father in Iraq.
Obama the president: never mind.
The left simply defines whatever war they want to avoid as cowboy adventurism, in the same way as is done by the European they wish to be. Problem is that, just like eating seed corn, if we are all Euros, then noone actually does the dirty work and it can only continue for awhile. Sooner or later, the system doesn’t work, with dire but predictable consequences.
@blargh
Just the other day me and the rest of the Left were sipping sherry and peering over our monocles while discussing the best strategies for achieving exactly that!
Amusing, but eerily believable.
October 4, 2009, 9:04 amMark says:
Israel doesn’t have many options to be sure. Indeed they would need a mid-air refuel over Iraq to make the trip. The Saudi’s have been rumored to be open to Israel using their airspace. The Turks have had a relationship w/Israel for years, and share a border w/Iran. Mid east politics…who knows? Netanyahu was in Moscow a few weeks back delivering names of suspected Russian nuclear contractors who are assisting Iran. BN had to make a surreal speech to the UN reminding them indeed their was a Holocaust. US diplomacy seems to be kick the can and gain some time…for who? Iran to re-think? Israel to prepare? Obama to talk? Regardless, they are going to attack these facilities. For the Israelis it’s survival. Iran it’s a race to complete. There are only two serious players. We aren’t one of them…yet.
October 4, 2009, 9:18 amFurrin’ Affair’in » Cold Fury says:
[...] getting good at this whole “diplomacy”-thing, huh? And so is Prof. Anderson: An America that does not assert, rudely and brusquely, its own interests and views first through [...]
October 4, 2009, 9:48 amKeith says:
One trap we don’t want to get ourselves into: going full-on multilateralist while maintaining our security guarantees. That would be a loose-loose situation, giving up our influence on foreign events while maintaining all the risk.
If we drop out, we do it all the way.
October 4, 2009, 11:10 amblargh says:
@blargh
Just the other day me and the rest of the Left were sipping sherry and peering over our monocles while discussing the best strategies for achieving exactly that!
Amusing, but eerily believable.
Sad, but ultimately self-parody.
October 4, 2009, 11:54 amChrisTS says:
Pep:
October 4, 2009, 12:14 pmI was not attaching as much import to ‘adventurism’ as you do.
As for the current administration and Afghanistan, I think Obama is changing or has changed his mind about continuing to pour ourselves into it. Certainly, he has gotten pushback from some Dems and has heard the claims that a shift in approach, rather than more troops, is what is needed.
None of this is inconsistent with thinking that Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a screw up, especially in light of the failure to seize the moment in Afghanistan. It certainly is not inconsistent with thinking we should have done more in Afghanistan. Unfortunately,* the President seems to think we cannot succeed at this point.
*’Unfortunately’ from the perspective of those who think we can and should give it our all. I don’t know, myself.
ChrisTS says:
And a fine sherry, it was. See you and all the rest of us lefties next week?
October 4, 2009, 12:15 pmSG says:
None of this is inconsistent with thinking that Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a screw up, especially in light of the failure to seize the moment in Afghanistan.
While I agree that, especially in hindsight, invading Iraq was a screw up, the fact that Iraq diverted attention from Afghanistan was not part of that mistake. In fact, that may have been the most useful part of Iraq.
Afghanistan is an exceptionally lousy place to draw a line in the sand. The culture, the logistics, the international coalition – are there worse circumstance for the US to have staked its reputation? Iraq was “winnable” (for some definition of winnable), but I don’t see how Afghanistan ever could be. The Afghan campaign always should have been presented as a punitive response to 9/11. It was foolish for Bush to have made democratization a victory condition there and it was doubly (or triply) foolish for Obama to have campaigned on the importance of the Afghan war.
October 4, 2009, 1:28 pmPintler says:
There’s an interesting book called ‘The Rise and Fall of Great Powers’ by Paul Kennedy. His basic thesis is that great powers, from the Dutch and Portuguese through the British Empire, first became economic powers, then spent that wealth becoming military superpowers. If you spend an extra couple of percent of your GDP on the military, compounded over a century, you spend yourself into the poorhouse and lose power relative to other nations who have been reinvesting that couple of percent in industry. They then repeat the cycle. Comparing his estimates of the defense spending of the successive great powers with our own since WWII paints an thought provoking picture.
October 4, 2009, 3:00 pmBob from Ohio says:
Do you think those 500 million people in poverty are going to stay content while China goes on a huge arms buildup?
October 4, 2009, 3:12 pmLarryA says:
I saw the same response during the Cold War. “The people of the USSR don’t want conflict with the West.” This has the same problem. The Chinese kids drinking Coke and surfing don’t run the country, the Communist leaders do. Any liberating influence over their people directly threatens them.
October 4, 2009, 3:21 pmIf those leaders see their power slipping away due to “Western influences” over their population they may well decide that the solution is to attack the source of those influences, directly or through surrogates. The death-throes of an empire often make for violent spectacle.
SG says:
The death-throes of an empire often make for violent spectacle.
Does this observation have any implications for the future of the US over the next 20 years or so?
October 4, 2009, 3:28 pmtioedong says:
China has already bribed it’s way to control the Spratlys gas fields, and if NATO and Obama remove soldiers from Afghanistan, they control the trans asian pipeline, which means India will have to depend on them for energy.
China will undoubtably increase help to Maoists in India and the Philippines to destablize these countries.
And Japan? They’ll probably make their own nukes to protect themselves from China and North Korea.
October 4, 2009, 4:25 pmKirk Parker says:
Truepath,
I wasn’t around at the time, but I hear that’s exactly what the Edwardians were saying not too many years before the outbreak of WWI.
October 4, 2009, 7:20 pmJohn Moore says:
Yeah, I used to believe that too. I’m an electrical engineer with some experience hardening circuits against ESD and lightning, and have worked on hardening mountaintop radio sites.
But, then I read the reports. By far the worst devastation is not to satellites, but to electronic and electrical systems on earth. One of the reports is here.
First, EMP does not drop off as the square of the distance in nearly as simple a manner as one might expect. The effect is caused by a rapid charge separation in the upper atmosphere, over an area of thousands of miles in diameter. Between that and the earth beneath is all near-field – the area beneath is effectively inside a big capacitor that has the charge on it dramatically increased in a few nanoseconds. There is zero drop-off with distance within that “capacitor.” Of course, the distance from the blast determines the initial level of effect in the upper atmosphere at a 1/r^2 rule. But, effectively a large area has roughly the same high field transients (obviously there are variations, including those caused by the earth’s magnetic field – see the report).
Second, the rapid rise time of the pulse means that normal hardening and shielding is far less effective. When you have enormous electric field transients with large GHZ-range energies present, the energy ignores normal bypass capacitors (they look like inductors) and other hardening measures, and can get through small defects in shielding. Hence true EMP hardening involves serious copper Farady cages, and impressive inlet/outlet protection, which is not exactly common. Lightning protection is a breeze compared to EMP.
I too believed that a small fission weapon would not be that significant, since the early test was with a megaton-range weapon (I was monitoring the ionospheri noise during that one, btw). Unfortunately and counter-intuitivelhy, fission weapons are better than fusion weapons at creating EMP. A surprisingly small weapon can do a huge amount of damage. There are a heck of a lot of Joules, let loose in a few nanoseconds, in a 20kt nuke. Again, see the report.
As for satellites, their distance doesn’t save them. The high energy beta radiation (electrons) from the explosion gets trapped in the magnetic flux lines and remains for months to years. It extends out a long ways. This trapped beta is enough to kill the inhabitants of the ISS in a few hours, even if they are shielded by the earth from the prompt radiation.
Hence ALL LEO satellites and MEO satellites that are not very expensively hardened (with added mass) will be destroyed. I believe that geosynchronous ones will be taken out also, but I’m not sure – again, see the reports. LEO and MEO includes GPS, recon, and some commo systems.
As for critical infrastructure being EMP hardened, unforuntely I believe you are wrong (please prove otherwise – I really do not like what I think is the current situaiton!). Some critical military infrastructure is hardened. However, a lot of military EMP hardening is for nearby blast EMP, for fighting in a nuclear war environment, and that’s a different story. A lot of military infrastructure is not hardened. For example, most or all computers in the Pentagon would be disabled (except maybe a few isolated ones in highly protected areas). Virtually every computer server in the affected radius would be destroyed, even if powered off. Maybe some laptops would be save – it would depend on the antenna characteristics of the internal wiring, but I’d guess a lot of those would be toast also.
The control systems of many if not all modern vehicles (with perhaps some military exceptions) will be instnatly disabled to the point of requiring replacement parts. There would be few remaining cars, trucks, and trains, etc. That’s getting pretty serious in our just-in-time inventory world – that alone would cause tens to hundreds of thousands of deaths – and maybe many millions.
The electrical grid is definitely not hardened. It will die, and likely many parts that are rare, custom made and critical (such as very large transformers) will need replacing – and we don’t have spares or the capacity to make them. The power generation systems are not EMP hardened, so they too will lose critical components, from generators to control systems. And, of course, there’s no telling what the damage would be at power plants (and industrial plants, refineries, etc) when all the control systems are suddenly fried.
I paint an apocalyptic picture. Unfortunately, as far as I can ascertain, it is real.
All it would take is an LEO nuke, or even an IRBM or smaller launched form a cargo ship.
Oh, and an HEU nuke in orbit would probably be very hard to detect (who knows what classified systems are out there). The radiation from an HEU weapon is so low you could hardly detect it a few feet away! A PU weapon has more radiation, but again, I doubt it could be detected in a satellite unless a “sniffer” bird was put up next to it.
October 4, 2009, 10:10 pmJoshK says:
This is a great essay, well done.
October 5, 2009, 6:06 amJMA says:
RRR: I think you can get a funny bone on Ebay for pretty cheap.
October 5, 2009, 7:06 amMartinned says:
So what would you have us “free riders overseas” do? Create a stronger CFSP? Encourage, and if necessary subsidise, the British and French nuclear programmes?
I suppose that depends on where the war would come from? From Russia, finally storming through the Fulda gap? Somehow I don’t think so. Russia will be a pain in the neck for decades to come, but it doesn’t have the Cash or the domestic stability to wage (conventional) war beyond its borders. (Re Cash: the Andrew Sullivan chart I linked to before has Russia spending less than either France or Britain, and only a little more than Germany.)
The EU has land borders with Norway, Switzerland, Russia, Belarus, the Ukraine, Moldova, Turkey, Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, and Croatia. (Not counting the mini-states, and the Moroccan border with Ceuta and Melilla.) If not Russia, who would invade? And if the problem isn’t the threat of invasion, then what?
Clearly nothing justifies military spending like the threat of invasion. If there is a reasonable threat that a neighbouring country might launch a military attack, that has to receive the government’s highest priority. But if the purpose of the military is to project power beyond one’s borders, for example in Iraq or Afghanistan, it makes sense to assign it a somewhat lower priority. That’s not free riding, that’s just common sense.
Once Iran has a nuclear capability, it can only be stopped with deterrence or with some star wars-type shield that no one (yet) knows how to build. And even those don’t protect against covert (terrorist) attacks.
As far as I can tell, the bulk of US defence spending post Cold War is aimed at diplomatic benefits, not military ones. Neither the US nor its allies are under threat of military attack. Rather, being the worlds only remaining military superpower allows the US to be the main diplomatic superpower as well. Whether that is money well spent I don’t know, but I do know that it hardly counts as evidence that Europe is underspending.
October 5, 2009, 8:43 amKirk Parker says:
martinned,
Ever hear of the U.S. Navy?
October 5, 2009, 9:02 amMartinned says:
Yes. What about it?
October 5, 2009, 9:10 amKirk Parker says:
martinned, you’d think that a resident of a former maritime power like the Netherlands would understand that the global benefits of Pax Americana extend far beyond a little diplomacy. The fact that we aren’t currently doing enough around the Horn of Africa or the Strait of Malacca is hardly an argument that we should do less.
October 5, 2009, 11:11 amMartinned says:
Actually, a Dutch navy officer is currently in command of the EU mission off the coast of Somalia. (And yes, it’s a disgrace how over the last few decades the government seems to have preferred to spend their money on cool air force toys rather than good ships.)
It’s not that I don’t understand the value of navy operations. It’s just that the navy can’t stop the Russians invading Europe, or the Iranians nuking us. Given that I distinguished between using the military to defend against invasion and using the military as “diplomacy with other means”, the navy can only do the former if the invading army would have to come over sea, like in Taiwan.
The purpose of the naval operations off the coast of Somalia is to facilitate maritime transport through the Suez canal. This is certainly important, but it is also something that one could put a reasonable dollar amount on. (Without navy involvement, we expect X ships grabbed every month, at a damage of Y dollars per ship.) Such navy operations can be made subject of a cost/benefit analysis. In fact, the Somalia operation is the result of exactly that: since Europe is on the other end of the Suez canal, they have been unusually active in going after these pirates.
Being nuked or otherwise shot to pieces or invaded is something that has to be avoided at all costs. Everything else you can do with armed forces, like bombing Kosovo, invading Iraq, stopping Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan or protecting civilian ships off the coast of Somalia, is a matter of costs and benefits.
Of course, that doesn’t mean there isn’t any free riding. But in that context, the only way to make a case for Europe free riding off US defence expenditures is to argue that there is somewhere on earth where the Europeans would send (more) soldiers or other military might but for the fact that the US have already done so. And where would that be?
If evidence of EU free riding on the “diplomacy by other means” aspect of national defence is not forthcoming, we’re back to wondering whether the Russians would invade Europe if NATO were disbanded and the Americans left. (Or, in the alternative, whether EU countries would increase their defence spending in that scenario.)
October 5, 2009, 11:53 amKirk Parker says:
martinned, regarding the Russians the question isn’t whether they’d invade Germany, but rather what would they do with Poland (in terms of either actual action or just enhanced bullying) if they thought they would only receive Georgia-class resistance.
October 5, 2009, 12:07 pmMartinned says:
What I wrote above was about Russia invading the EU, including Poland and the Baltic states. The assumption is that – even in the absence of NATO – CFSP makes the EU one state for these purposes.
October 5, 2009, 12:16 pmWeekly Web Watch 09/28/09 – 10/4/09 « EXECUTIVE WATCH says:
[...] Kenneth Anderson has one of the most well-developed critiques, arguing that the administration is more concerned with multilateralism than with peace. Meanwhile, Sen. Richard Lugar offered his thoughts on the future of NATO, the senator called for [...]
October 5, 2009, 12:27 pmMartinned says:
On the contrary. This is how we take over the world…
October 6, 2009, 5:09 amWatch Expendables says:
Woah amazing. I really adore viewing these posts
August 15, 2010, 3:03 pm