The Mound of Sound

This week’s murder of three international aid workers by the Taliban outside Kabul may make some wonder why the insurgents would resort to such grisly tactics? Surely killing innocents will alienate the Afghan public, right? This should all be a fatal error in the guerrilla’s struggle for the “hearts and minds” of Afghanis.

Would that were so but it’s not. These murderous attacks actually accomplish a lot for the insurgents. They make the locals fearful – and hence, respectful even complaint – of the Taliban. But that’s not the real objective. The main prize is to break down public confidence and respect for the government side, the side that’s pledged to protect the people.

In the Toronto Star, a Canadian advisor to Afghan president Hamid Karzai, retired Colonel Mike Capstick, says the Taliban tactics are succeeding:

The switch by Taliban insurgents to spectacular attacks, including the daylight murders of international aid workers that left two Canadians among the dead, has shattered Afghans’ confidence in the international community and the Afghan government’s ability to provide basic security, says a top Canadian adviser to President Hamid Karzai.

“It’s a pretty bad year – not only for aid workers – it’s a bad year for Afghan national police, international military forces, Afghan national army and tragically, Afghan civilians,” said Capstick.

Capstick, who led the first Canadian strategic advisory team to Karzai’s government in 2005-06, said “strategically, in the rest of the country” the picture is troubling as insurgents move “towards a tactic of doing the spectacular attacks.”

Citing an attempted assassination of Karzai in April at a military parade, the Kandahar prison break in June, the July bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul that killed more than 50 people, and a rash of “attacks on internationals like this,” Capstick said the Taliban tactics are “working.”

Assaults on unarmed humanitarian workers, on food aid convoys, and bombings that slaughter Afghan civilians have not triggered a backlash against the insurgents as might be expected.

Instead, he said, “it’s causing people to become more fearful and for them to lose confidence.”
“The Afghan people have lost any confidence that they had in the international community’s and the Afghan government’s ability to provide basic security.”

Almas Bawar Zakhilwal, director in Canada for the Senlis Council think-tank, also sees conditions worsening. “The insurgency was confined to the south before, now we see it in the east and all around Kabul … It looks like they’re closing their circle on Kabul.”

The only thing surprising in any of this is that anyone should find this even slightly surprising. This is Guerrilla Warfare 101. These are tactics that have been proven over centuries from Africa to Asia, Central and South America to Europe.

The only way to win the hearts and minds of the public is to give them 24/7 security from the insurgents and that takes huge numbers of troops. Time is not on our side. Time is entirely on the side of the bad guys. We’ve already had seven years of wasted, screwing around, and we’ve been steadily losing ground year by year.

America’s General Petraeus himself has said the cardinal rule of counter-insurgency is “Go big or go home.” Well we certainly haven’t gone big, have we? In fact, we’re wallowing so far behind the power curve that the other side is steadily nearing a critical mass where they’ll become unstoppable. Can’t believe that can happen? Suit yourself.

No amount of hypocrisy will stop Bush’s main White House shill, Condoleeza Rice from throwing out one ridiculous statement after another.

This is the woman who, after all, gave us the “mushroom cloud” gimmick about Iraq and, like the rest of these mutts, she’s shown herself a compulsive liar time and again. Yes, that’s right, Condoleeza Rice is an inveterate liar, a wilful prevaricator, unrepentant fabricator, shady dissembler, an unscrupulous tale bearer, rapacious charlatan, cheap hustler, low swindler, devious rapscallion and tawdry, sideshow mountebank. What she says is so unreliable, so wilfully and hopelessly tainted, as to be meaningless, farcical even.

Today Condysleaza laid into Russia for the Georgia fiasco. With a straight face, ‘Sleaza warned that the time is past when one nation can invade another, occupy it and overthrow a government. Apparently the deadline for that neat trick lapsed in Baghdad in 2003.

From the Balkans to the Caucusus there are many scores just waiting to be settled. We saw that when Yugoslavia fell apart leading to massacres in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. Then Georgia beset Abkhazia and South Ossetia which eventually led to Saakashvili’s pathetic assault on South Ossetia which inevitably backfired, sending the Georgians reeling for cover.

We don’t need governments led by the likes of Saakashvili in NATO. They’re much too unpredictable and unreliable to be trusted with NATO membership. Saakashvili revealed as much in his remarks today. They show a guy who is out of touch with reality and who thought he could bring the weight of the West into his showdown with Moscow. From the New York Times:

No, the ludicrous thing is that NATO entertained admitting a country headed by this screwball into the Alliance. It’s becoming plain that he thought he’d pick a fight that the West would have to come in and finish for him. Imagine having to send our soldiers to fight the Russians for this joker. No thanks.

Despite all the outrage spewing from our leaders, we’d do well to keep a clear head as to just what really happened in the Caucusus. Check out this opinion piece from Seumas Milne published in The Guardian:

The crisis over South Ossetia is no laughing matter. It’s believed that thousands have died in South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Georgia at the hands of the Georgian and Russian armies.

There is some wry humour, however, in the way the right-wing pundits have been flailing about, spinning furiously, before landing in a spent heap. They’re incensed at Vlad Putin and damn well want something done about it but, when it comes to that certain “something,” they keep coming up empty.

I’m sure the White House wishes it had some leverage over Moscow but it doesn’t. American influence is at an all-time low. It’s skint. It’s worse even than the aftermath of Vietnam.

That may just be the real Bush legacy, the idea that global power is a weapon that works best when it’s unused and that, above all else, even a mighty nation needs to pick its fights carefully.

WWJMD? Yes, indeed, What Would John McCain Do in this situation? Judging by his addled rhetoric of recent months, Johnny boy would probably find some means of unilateral action, some way to give Putin one upside along the head. Oh he’d sure as hell demand that Russia be kicked out of the G8 and he might even get his way. He’d certainly keep Russia out of the WTO. He might even try to reinstate the Cold War.

In other words, John McCain might damage America more than he could ever damage Russia. Why? McCain’s gunslinger views aren’t shared outside America (of course there’s always Harper). The Euros aren’t interested in playing McCain’s game. They need Russian energy and, almost as importantly, access to Russian markets. So, if McCain can’t swing Europe, maybe he could get the Asians to bite? Sorry, no. NATO? Not a chance (see Europe ante). Maybe a “coalition of the broke and needy” might rope in a few eastern European states but, no, they’re all too familiar with the Bear on their doorstep.

Put simply, John McCain might just be the guy to isolate his own country in a weird sort of rebound containment. And an isolated America might find it a lot tougher dealing with its international creditors, particularly China.

George w. Bush has done a pretty effective job of hammering America on the anvil of his delusions. Maybe McCain will finish the job.

If John McCain becomes the next US president, he promises to show Russia some tough love.

McCain has long championed booting Russia out of the G8 and he might even get his way before the G8’s relevance turns really wobbly. Now he wants NATO to get Georgia into the alliance ASAP.

Georgia? Some key NATO members have their doubts on that one. After all, had they allowed themselves to be steamrollered by Washington’s earlier demands on Georgia, they might be facing an Article 5 call to take up arms against Russia right now triggered by some guy named Saakashvili. How long do you think the alliance would last in that situation? A week? Two?

Some critics say John McCain wants to refight the Vietnam War to redeem America’s honour. It seems he might want to revisit the Cold War also, maybe even turn it from cold to hot.

John McCain is delusional.

He overstates his own nation’s powers and underestimates his opponent’s. He sees America and Russia in a simplistic, two-dimensional way. Old John doesn’t seem to understand that, among the nations of the world who wish harm on the USA, Russia is well down the list.

America’s chief rival in the coming decades will be China. What possible good can come to the United States by goading Russia into embracing China even more closely? This is not the time for empty American sabre-rattling. It doesn’t work with a guy like Putin and it can even scare off your friends.

By the way, if a McCain White House did decide to reinstate the Cold War, who would fund that enormously expensive venture? Given that American can only do these things on borrowed money, would that come from the Chinese or the Europeans?

Who will negotiate with Russian strongman Vlad Putin? It won’t be Georgia’s Saakashvili. He’s finished. It will probably take some sort of intermediary, a stand-in for Georgia, and that would be?

The Russia-Georgia conflict cries out for statesmen but, sadly, all we’ve got right now are ideologues and it shows. Ideologues are at their very worst in situations like this. They have little credibility and less persuasiveness. They’re often one-trick ponies. When they run up against a nation that’s not vulnerable to their coercion, we usually find that ideologues revert to angry denunciation and hollow gestures – tantrums, foot-stamping.

Unfortunately for our side, Vlad Putin is a hard case. When it comes to negotiators that pretty much rules out the Bushies or the Brownies. The Guardian suggests our intermediary might be Sarkozy.

What’s unclear is just what is to be negotiated. Here we may run into considerable asymmetry. What Russia is after may be a far more expansive than what Georgia wants or what Europe wants.

From Moscow’s perspective, Georgia may be a metaphor for its greater struggle against a steadily encroaching NATO. If the Russians can’t roll back recent NATO expansion into the Balkan and Caucasus regions, it may still serve Russian interests to sow doubts about the alliance and the security it truly offers among NATO’s new, eastern members.

Would NATO truly defend Romania against Russia? What do you think? Of course what I think and what you think doesn’t matter. What’s important to Putin is the impression left in the minds of those in places like Sofia and Bucharest, Kiev and Riga.

Georgia’s Saakashvili was playing a bluff when he attacked South Ossetia. He’s not stupid. He must have expected a different outcome than what he’s facing just a week later. What’s not clear is why. It will be fascinating when, months from now, Saakashvili spills the beans about why he pulled the trigger without noticing the gun was pointed at his own head.

A disastrous military adventure leading to the permanent loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia will surely spell the end of Saakashvili’s political future. It will also at least somewhat destabilize eastern Europe. America, after all, is in no position to reinstate Cold War-style militarization through this region.

What we probably won’t see anytime soon are the ripples now being felt by the NATO alliance. Whether Washington or Brussels wish to acknowledge it, NATO has suffered strains and at least hairline fractures over Afghanistan. There were some members who were uncomfortable with Bush’s stampede to expand the alliance into eastern Europe. The Georgia debacle will do nothing to ease those concerns and doubts.

Russia now says it will halt its blitz into Georgia short of Tbilisi. It’s also said it won’t recognize Saakashvili. Probably everybody agrees on that one. Imagine Saakashvili sitting at the table and signing off on South Ossetia and Abkhazia. He’d be hanging from a light post within weeks.

So an outsider will do the negotiating for Georgia and, by implication, for the rest of Europe and (to some extent) NATO itself. Sarkozy? Perhaps but he too is an ideologue, not a statesman. The risk to that is that ideologues will probably see this as a simple question of Georgia and a couple of autonomous regions to be stripped from the loser. That’s an approach that would thrill Putin if only because it leaves all of the greater issues and his future options unmentioned and wide open.

We’d do well not to let the ramifications of this fiasco escape us. This isn’t an isolated matter. To Putin and the Kremlin it’s a couple of moves that may have a telling effect later in this chess game.

Western nations are keen to find some tangible role in unwinding the conflict between Russia and Georgia. One right-winger writing in The Times advocated giving Georgia quick admission into NATO. Another pundit, writing in The Guardian, suggests threatening to pull Russia’s seat at the G8 – a tactic already endorsed by John McCain.

What to do, what to do? Here’s a suggestion (and you knew I’d have one). How about we start by realizing that we’ve overplayed our hand? We (that is to say our Leader of the Free World, George w. Bush) decided to ram NATO’s borders right up to Russia’s doorstep. The logic behind that was always pretty fuzzy as was the actual committment behind it. Putting anti-missile missiles and radar systems on Russia’s doorstep while pretending they were intended to defend against rogue missiles from Iran was another silly, red-meat provocation.

You have to work extremely hard to ignore the history of warfare over the past two centuries enough not to realize that certain actions tend to have quite predictable and proven results. One of these actions is to encircle and contain a major power. By turns, this sort of thing has sparked wars in Europe and elsewhere. A major player, seeing itself being hemmed in, turns paranoid and lashes out. Call it human nature if you like.

And that’s exactly what Bush has been attempting – the encirclement of both Russia and China. Driving the world’s paramount military alliance headed by the world’s sole superpower right up to Red Square is an act of provocation and nothing but. Enlisting India to flank and contain China and threaten her oil routes to the Middle East is another blatant act of provocation. Maybe if the United States was looking at another half-century as the dominant industrial economy on the planet these options might be somewhat more viable. But America is in decline while the BRIC nations are in ascendancy.

Then there’s the rationale for NATO. Did we really need Slovakia or Romania in NATO? What on earth for? Are they rushing to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with us in Afghanistan? Of course not. They get let into NATO, NATO issues an urgent plea for help from its member states, and they say “forget it.” Huh?

My guess is that the eastern European states will be as reliable as NATO members as they were as members of the Warsaw Pact. Worse yet, this Georgian stunt demonstrates that they can do some rash, even dangerously stupid things that could have serious repercussions for a mutual-defence alliance like NATO.

We’ve overplayed our hand and the Russians have seen our bet and called.

Sometimes there are no miracle solutions. This is one of those times.

Washington accuses Russia of trying to force regime change on Georgia. Memo to Washington – that’s not such a bad idea. The increasingly authoritarian Saakashvili blew it. It’s not just the Russians who can never trust him again. On the trust issue, we’re in the same boat. We need to send a clear message to the Georgians and to the leaders of the newly-minted NATO membership that there’s no room within the alliance for adventurism (except, of course, the American type).

As for Moscow, well there’s not a lot we can do. Sending forces into Georgia is so stupid even Cheney won’t go there. Forget about the Security Council. Sanctions? It turns out the West needs Russia more than they need us. The last thing we need to do is to drive Russia away from the West and more closely into economic, political and military co-operation with the Chinese.

No, the outcome of the Georgian-Russian conflict won’t be of our making. Nor will it resolve our provocations of Moscow or Russia’s suspicion of Western intentions. Worse yet, America still has the Frat Boy while Russia sends Putin to the chess table.

If there are any lessons to be learned from this debacle, any gain to be had, maybe it’s to understand the urgent need to defuse tensions between Russia and the West, even if that means backing down a notch.