SOL SANDERS: TESTING, TESTING TESTING
Testing, testing, testing
The horror of 298 innocents, oblivious to the warfare 33,000 feet below them, blown out of the sky by criminally negligent fanatics supported by Russian Vladimir Putin, forebodes greater catastrophes.
The incident is a part of a worldwide scene wherein Pres. Barack Hussein Obamas strategy of withdrawal from what he — and a large part of the apolitical war-weary American people sees as overreaching worldwide projection of U.S. power.
But Obamas clumsy retreat has led to a continuing welter of probes by opponents and even allies — of Pax Americana. Whatever the merit of arguments about a declining U.S., its power and influence on the rest of the contemporary world remains enormous. Obamas withdrawal creates an international and regional power vacuum, setting up the kind of ambiguities that throughout history has led to misperceptions, and, often, major wars.
The classic example, often cited if by simplistic interpretation of a very complex episode, is Dean Achesons speech to the National Press Club on January 12, 1950. In what was considered a seminal statement, the secretary of state did not include the KoreanPeninsula in a statement of the all-important United States “defense perimeter”. Its omission was widely interpreted as a signal that Washington would not defend South Korea, a product of the division of the Peninsular at the 38th parallel at the end of a 50-year-Japanese Occupation on Tokyos World War II surrender.
With concentration on the postwar Soviet takeover of Eastern and Central Europe, the U.S. had absent-mindedly occupied the Peninsular with only a vague understanding of its potential threat to highly industrialized if decimated Japan. Into that vacuum, the Soviet Unions Josef Stalin, riding the full thrust of the developing Cold War, instigated his puppets, the well disciplined army led by Kim Il Sung, a former Soviet officer, to attack the South with the intention of reunifying the country as another Moscow satellite. The U.S. responded, if lamely in the beginning, but in force, and initially was victorious in threatening a complete reversal of the two superpowers goals.
But Mao Tse-tung, frightened by the prospect of a reunited Korea, an American ally on Communist Chinas most important northeastern land frontier, hurled tens of thousands of former surrendered Nationalist troops as cannon fodder into the combat. Pres. Harry Truman, engaged on other European and Middle Eastern fronts, denied Gen. Douglas Macarthur his all-out strategy for a military victory even were it to bring on possible direct and perhaps nuclear conflict with Beijing, and the war ended in stalemate. The Forgotten War cost five million lives including almost 40,000 U.S. soldiers — devastated the Peninsular, and left a festering international problem.
Today, looking around the world, there are too many places where just such complex unsolved geopolitical nodules present the same sort of potential.
In Europe, Obama cancelled anti-missile defense in Poland and Czechoslovakia.aimed at Tehran and Pyongyangs potential for Intercontinental Ballistic warfare. The annulment as a concession to Moscow of an onerously arranged reinforcement of the Europeans spine only fed Putins growing fantasy of restoring the Tsarist/Soviet Empire. It also put into question effective American leadership of the always tenuous trans-Atlantic alliance.
Not even Russias partial dismemberment of pro-Western Georgia in 1958 brought an American response. Six years later, a hot mike revealed an obsequious American president trying to appease the all-but Russian dictator. Putins snatch of the disputed Crimea from Ukraine has been followed by a cat-and-mouse game to muscle Ukraines 50 millions back into the Russian orbit. Sec. of State John Kerrys participation in trilateral talks aimed at deciding the future of the unstable Kyiv regime has inched toward just that sort of outcome. Other former Soviet appendages are next if Putins bluff posturing because of his fragile economic and limited conventional forces despite his nuclear and ICBM armory were accommodated again.
But were Moscow to move, for example, on the Baltic States with their accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, no American administration could remain aloof and conciliatory. That would be the case despite Obamas habitual drawing of porous red lines. Such a thrust would have to be met, probably even moving the pampered and feckless Europeans.
In Asia, despite Sec. of State Hillary Clintons pivot to Asia, Obama Administration policies have produced similar results. Bending to American business by refusing to name China as a currency manipulator albeit a policy relic of the Bush Administration Beijings grasp for regional and Pacific power led by a subsidized economic campaign has run amuck. Increasing bellicosity of Chinese military in public statements, matched in private conversations, is wished away with U.S. offers of military exchanges. Dangerous Chinese forays over their home islands air space forces incessant Japanese fighterplane scrambles. Exaggerated claims on East China Sea atolls with their possible subterranean oil and gas reserves — and even more outrageous South China Sea map aggression establishes a Chinese pattern. All have been met with little more than U.S. diplomaticese and as yet largely unfulfilled promises of security collaboration with the frightened Southeast Asians
Washingtons cool relations with Japans Prime Minister Shinto Abe in his efforts to restore normality to Japan as the worlds third economy and a potentially powerful military player have deepened suspicions in Tokyo. In riposte, Abes effort to diffuse the issue of North Korean kidnapping of Japanese citizens in the 70s and 80s with concessions to Pyongyangs desperate need for economic aid is fracturing the effort to contain North Koreas pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. But Abe may not ignore the one foreign policy issue that has aroused domestic concern now that the American alliance has become acceptable even to Japans leftwing cliques and media. But at some point, Tokyo may question the reliability of its American shield and join its neighbors in a nuclear arms race.
A similar pattern has developed in the Mideast where the Obama Administrations relations with Israel, its only dependable regional ally, are fraught with personal antagonism to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israels acceptance at face value of Tehrans threats of annihilation is endemic to Jewish history. That threat is enhanced by Tehrans network of Shia allies in Damascus, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and even Sunni Hamas on Israels southern border. It is leading to a major war of preemption by the Israelis.
In Iraq the Obama Administrations abandonment of the always difficult negotiations for a status of forces agreement to protect a residual American military on the U.S. withdrawal has led to disaster. Tehran has more influence with a rump Baghdad regime than Washington. With the country literally falling apart, an additional threat of international Sunni fundamentalist terrorists redoubt and sanctuary out of Syrias civil war has arisen in the strategic center of the Arab world.
Abandoning partial sanctions in all but name, the Obama Administration seems dedicated to a continued pause at best in Tehrans pursuit of nuclear weapons with a four-month extension of negotiations and handing Iran some $4.6 billion in frozen assets.. Furthermore, there is a growing suspicion that the Obama Administration would settle for nuclear threshold, that is, the ability of Tehran to produce nuclear weapons but a self-imposed restraint to be policed by a UN organization that for 17 years did not know the Persian were in the enriched nuclear business. Removing the threat despite table-thumping declarations to the contrary of U.S./Israeli military strikes to destroy its nuclear capacities, creates the kind of climate that could only encourage a fanatical theocratic regime to nibble further toward its goal of regional hegemony.
In its own always neglected Western Hemisphere, the Obama Administrations flirtation with a Communist regime in Cuba now on the ropes mobilizes its followers for a lifting of the economic embargo. Whether Putins just concluded Habana visit really represents an attempt to renew the Soviet-Cuban Cold War alliance [given the Russian economys crippled state] remains to be seen.[It could mean at least swaps again of Russian for Mexican oil as the Cubans recent bankroller in Venezuela collapses.] Moscow has denied leaks from Russian security echelons it intends to restore the massive Lourdes monitoring of American domestic communications, perhaps not even at this stage technically necessary. Meanwhile, a North Korean merchant ship much like one the Panamanians recently captured carrying arms skulks around the Caribbean, and, theoretically, could even be carrying short-range missiles.
The assault on the southern border by an avalanche of Central American youths no small number of whom are late teenagers with gang and drug cartel connections is met only with humanitarian consideration. Never mind that even Administration surveys show the motivation was not as the kept media contends chaotic conditions in the region but the widespread belief that illegals would be welcomed. Overarching is the Mexican collaboration in facilitating the thousand mile journey over its territory. Turning away from the violence incurred by the fight against and between the drug cartels, Mexican Pres. Enrique Peña Nieto is invited by U.S. Attorney-General Eric Holder to join in the federal governments constitutional challenge of Arizonas more stringent laws against illegal entrants as amicus juris, friend of the court, an historic precedent.
Any of these probes could, of course, become another dramatic incident further unsettling the world scene. But it is in their totality they suggest the amateurishness of the Obama Administrations statecraft, its ideological weakness and its incompetence even judged from its own pronouncements and political self interest.
Already in a dangerous and volatile period, these continuing largely unmet tests of American resolve add to world insecurity and could be leading to new general war.
sws-07-19-14
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