The Mound of Sound

The United States has been ranting lately about the very future of the NATO alliance hinging on the willingness of its European members to send more troops to fight America’s castoff war in Afghanistan.

Washington may have been trying to shake up the European states but it’s a policy that carries potential risks to the US that may be even more threatening.

America posits itself as “Leader of the Free World,” a fairly grandiose but shallow, even tenuous claim. What is the Free World if not the Western world?

Since the end of WWII, America’s prestige has been framed as the leader of the developed world. It was Washington’s ability to lead Europe and harness their combined industrial engines and military might that elevated it to leadership globally.

Without a NATO to lead, America is reduced to a powerhouse dependent on ad hoc coalitions of states that typically need to be bribed or cajoled into joining and that flit in and out as it suits their interests. Bush, himself, on trying to gather a meaningful alliance to legitimize his conquest of Iraq spoke of the future as one to be shaped by “coalitions of the willing.”

These coalitions, however convenient, lack precisely what America needs most – permanence and constancy. They’re “one off” affairs that can rapidly turn into embarrassments as once true blue underlings get bored or are driven out in elections at home. That ain’t no way to lead the world.

Without NATO, what remains save for the United Nations, a body increasingly hostile and suspicious of the United States? The UN is also the place where America cannot avoid looking into the faces of its future economic rivals – China and India, Russia and Brazil – and their demands for recognition and power sharing.

The European Union itself has emerged to rival the United States in population and combined GDP but NATO isn’t structured as a US/EU partnership. Within NATO, America remains very much first among notional equals. Within NATO America can still leverage its considerable strengths.

It is no fluke that the United States appears much more worried about the potential demise of NATO than its European partners. Their 21st century reality is much different than the past, more divergent from America’s.

In America’s heyday, Europe was delineated by a concrete wall and barbed wire. To the East lay nothing but threats. The Soviet Union and its vast thousands of tanks stood poised to smash through the Fulga Gap and swallow the West. The wall is finally gone and the barbed wire and tanks are gone too. Europe has swelled to Russia itself and now has become dependent upon Russia for essentials such as natural gas.

Europe sees itself today more connected to Russia than at any time since the First World War and Old Europe finds itself increasingly at odds with New Europe and the United States over how it will deal with Russia. Washington is intent on driving NATO straight to the Russian borders by inducting Georgia and the Ukraine even as it negotiates to plant anti-missile batteries in Poland and the Czech Republic, virtually on Russia’s doorstep.

American belligerence is fueling an arms race with Russia that is directly contrary, even harmful to Europe’s interests. European leaders are more or less playing nice at the moment, hoping that November will bring a level of maturity and vision to the White House not seen since 2000.

NATO still has an important role to play in the futures of both the US and Europe but the next American president will have some real fence-mending to do. That’ll mean toning down American unilateralism and exceptionalism, giving Europe a greater say in the leadership of the Alliance and no longer treating NATO as America’s Foreign Legion.

The stresses that threaten the Alliance are more American than European. And, if NATO does fall apart, America stands to lose more than anyone else.

The New York Times has published this photo of a Canadian patrol attacked in Kandahar city on Wednesday. I think the picture of the lead vehicle and soldiers milling about speaks for itself.

David Brooks is a conservative columnist with the New York Times. Perhaps it is his lofty perch and ideological leanings that have left him able to offer these insights into the fall of Eliot Spitzer and those like him:

“…these people succeed and enjoy their success. When Bigness descends upon them, they dominate every room they enter and graciously share their company with those who are thrilled to meet them.

But then, gradually, some cruel cosmic joke gets played on them. They realize in middle age that their grandeur is not enough and that they are lonely. The ordinariness of their intimate lives is made more painful by the exhilaration of their public success. If they were used to limits in public life, maybe it would be easier to accept the everydayness of middle-aged passion. But, of course, they are not.

And so the crisis comes. Perhaps alpha male gorillas don’t wake up in the middle of the night feeling sorry for themselves because “nobody knows the real me.” But those of us in the business of covering the great and the powerful know that human leaders have an almost limitless capacity for self-pity.

They seek to heal the hurt. Maybe they frequent prostitutes because transactional relationships are something they understand. But in other cases, they just act like complete idiots.

I don’t know if you’ve seen a successful politician or business tycoon get drunk and make a pass at a woman. It’s like watching a St. Bernard try to French kiss. It’s all overbearing, slobbering, desperate wanting. There’s no self-control, no dignity.

These Type A men are just not equipped to have normal relationships. All their lives they’ve been a walking Asperger’s Convention, the kings of the emotionally avoidant. Because of disuse, their sensitivity synapses are still performing at preschool levels.

So when they decide that they do in fact have an inner soul and it’s time to take it out for a romp … . Well, let’s just say they’ve just bought a ticket on the self-immolation express. Some desperate lunge toward intimacy is sure to follow, some sad attempt at bonding. Welcome to the land of the wide stance.

…they are completely unprepared. And in the middle of some perfectly enjoyable dinner party, a woman will suddenly find a tongue in her ear.”

Tony wants to be loved. He wants to be valued and respected and hoisted up on some sort of international pedestal.

When he finally got his marching papers from No. 10 Downing Street, Blair fashioned himself into some “super envoy” who would do what none had done before him, make peace between the Palestinians and Israel.

That hasn’t exactly worked out, has it?

Then he was casting about for support to become the President of the European Union. A lot of major EU states are wary about Tony’s breathtaking submission to the Washington dominatrix. No, sorry Tony, that looks like a non-starter.

Now Tony wants to save the planet. That’s better than Palestine, right? Better even that the whole EU, right? Yes, the planet. There’s something fitting to a man of Tony’s experience and accomplishments. Just the ticket.

According to The Guardian, “Tony Blair.. ..plans to publish a report over the next year that could form the basis for what he described as a proper global deal to combat the biggest threat facing the world.

Explaining his thinking, Blair said: “Essentially what everyone has agreed is that it is a serious problem, it is man-made, we require a global deal that there should be a substantial cut in emissions at the heart of it, and this global deal should involve everyone, including in particular America on the one hand and China on the other, so it is the developed and developing world.

“The question is: what is the framework that gets everyone in the deal that has obligations all around, even if they are different obligations, and results therefore in a chance of reaching that substantial cut in emissions? So the task is both to specify finally what we mean by a substantial cut in emissions to get a clear global deal, but also to set out the framework.

“The problem is that you could work out what you are going do, and what the Europeans are going to do, but it seems far more difficult to see how you put the whole thing together, so that you have a true and proper global deal.”

He said that the initiative “arose out of my experience in office. We got a long way from 2005 to the 2007 G8 summit in Germany, when people – including the Americans – finally agreed there had to be a new global deal, and everyone had to be part of it, and there had to be a substantial global cut in emissions.

“But we have not decided the target, or the means by which we are going to give effect to those common but differentiated obligations. There will be an insistence that everyone has to be part of the deal.”

“I can give this some realistic political guidance, and I am not going to come up with something that I myself would have rejected when I was sitting round the table. There is no point producing something that is not politically doable. It may be politically challenging but that is a different thing.”

Can Blair really make the difference he believes he can? I hope so but I think he left his credibility to drain away into the sands of Iraq. He sure hasn’t made a difference in the Middle East and a lot of Europeans don’t think much of George Bush’s sock puppet. He’s an enthusiastic little shit though, isn’t he? Annoying, but enthusiastic. You have to give him that much.

The US Army’s newest overseas command, AfriCom, is getting a rough reception from most African leaders. In fact, only Liberia has offered to host American military installations on that continent.

When the Pentagon first began scouting for basing privileges in host nations, it assured them that AfriCom – make that AfriKom – would have a humanitarian, not a military focus. They expressly assured all and sundry they wouldn’t be using AfriKom to hunt down Islamists in those lands.

What sharp teeth you have, Grandma!

The United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs, in a move destined to set the Pentagon and White House wolves howling, has come right out and said that AfriKom’s focus is military, not humanitarian:

In a key briefing to Congress on 13 March, General William “Kip” Ward, head of the US Command for Africa, AFRICOM, devoted only 15 seconds of his four-and-a-half minute opening remarks to a possible humanitarian role.

Focusing instead on military training, security and counter-terrorism, his remarks came in sharp contrast to a year ago when officials announced that the command would concentrate on humanitarian assistance, alarming many aid agencies, which were concerned that US military involvement in humanitarian aid would undermine their neutrality.

The UN is concerned about AfriKom stepping on the toes of humanitarian NGOs operating in Africa. Many African leaders, however, are more worried about AfriKom stepping on their necks.

Now that the US is relying on Africa for an increasing share of its imported oil and with the recent appearance of China in competition for African resources, the Dark Continent has come in for much more attention from Washington. Given what they’ve seen happen elsewhere in the world, that has a lot of African leaders openly questioning why they need, or would want, the US Army there anyway?

Precipitation fluctuations – drought & flood or “feast or famine” if you will – are one of the hallmark effects of global warming driven climate change. This past year alone we’ve witnessed massive inundations in places like England, central Europe, Mexico and across Asia.

We think of drought as a powerful cause of crop failure but flooding can be just as bad. That’s what’s underway right now in Namibia as you can see in the picture above. The floods are expected to severely curtail the cereal grain crop in much of that country.

Meanwhile, here in the land of the affluent we’ve developed a fondness for burning food to make SUV juice.

And it’s not just the disruption of Namibia’s food supply. The floods have also overwhelmed the country’s primitive, pit toilet system contaminating the water these people have to drink. 74-cases of cholera have already been recorded and you can bet there’ll be plenty more to come.

But, of course, every cloud has a silver lining, even rain clouds. Namibia’s torrential rains have been a positive boon for army worms. There’s been a huge outbreak of army worms, nasty little creatures that breed fast and consume anything green in their path – green as in pastureland, green as in food.