If you haven't read Hugh Hewitt's interview with military strategist and author Thomas P.M. Barnett (the first of ten!), then you ought to. Whether or not you agree with everything Barnett says and/or recommends, there's no denying he's a smart guy who has studied military, geopolitical, cultural and historical issues extensively, and who brings a lot of useful ideas to the table.
This portion made me sit up and take notice:
TB: Well, you know, they’ve been bumping up against the reality ever since the end of the Cold War, that it’s not just enough to win the war anymore. If you don’t follow through on the peace, then heck, you might as well just schedule the next decapitation regime-toppling visit seven, eight years hence. I mean, we went to Iraq, we went back to Iraq. We went to Haiti, we’ve been back to Haiti already. We went to Somalia, and we are sort of back in Somalia through our support with Ethiopia there.
HH: And the AC-130’s.
TB: Unless you fix the aftermath, and connect the country, leave it more connected than you found it, the problems and the lack of stability that led rise to the initial conflict just repeats itself time and time again.
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HH: Dr. Barnett, when we went to break, you were saying it’s not enough to decapitate an enemy regime. If you leave it there without connecting it to the core, that group of economically developed, globalized countries, it will in fact revert into perhaps at least as bad a situation. Does that argue for a prolonged commitment of American men and material to Iraq this time?
TB: It does, I mean, because we’ve known for years now, from looking at countries post-conflict, post-disaster, post-civil strife, but the recovery process typically extends as much as ten or twelve years. That corresponds, by the way, to most estimations of what it takes to defeat a stubborn insurgency. It’s a long term process of nation building, which is a controversial subject. We’re very snake-bitten on it, because of our effort in Vietnam.
But the key thing I’d like to note in terms of differences between Iraq and Vietnam is with Vietnam, we had superpowers funding the other side, and we really don’t have that here. We have a much less powerful opponent, in terms of the radical Salafi jihadist movement, which in many ways is really a parasite that tends to come into conflict situations, so that if we abandon Iraq to that kind of sectarian violence, we’re really, in many ways, turning it over to become an outpost what will inevitably draw us back in this long war against radical extremists.
Will we hear any presidential candidate really address this problem in depth? It sounds like dealing with potential threats in the future – be it a country that protects terrorists, like Taliban-era Afghanistan, or a country that cannot control its territory, and thus is a haven for terrorists, like Somalia – we have to not only go in and kill the bad guys, but we need a way of establishing a local order that will empower good guys, and persuade the locals to be good guys. The to-hell-with-them hawk “rubble don’t make trouble” slogan is inaccurate; after a few years, rubble does make trouble.
Americans hate nation-building. The Pentagon doesn’t really like nation-building. Politicians hate nation-building. But if we don’t do it successfully, most of our military actions turn out to be temporary band-aid solutions. We need to either figure out how to nation-build a lot faster, or condition the American people to be a lot more patient with this sort of thing.
I’d love to hear our potential commanders-in-chief talk about this subject at length – but I have a bad feeling all we’re going to get are vague pledges to “build a 21st Century military capable of adapting to a world of emerging threats”, etc.
Meanwhile, if you want to see a train wreck of an interview with the same host, check out Hugh’s chat with Congressman Dennis Kucinich, aspiring president.
HH: Well, Congressman, what happens if the troops withdrew quickly? Wouldn't Iraq descend into just chaos and violence even far beyond what we see there now?
DK: Well, I'm not talking about that scenario. What I'm offering is a process, and the Kucinich plan involves the United States, first of all, of letting the international community know that we are going to end the occupation, close our bases, withdraw our troops, let the Iraqi people have control over their own oil assets, and then we get the international community engaged, so we can put together a peacekeeping and security force as we transit out. At that point, a process of reconciliation, reconstruction, reparations, and other things I set in motion. I mean, we can't stay there. Occupation is fueling the insurgency. More troops are only going to mean more troop casualties and more civilian deaths.
HH: So you wouldn't pull them out until there was an international force there to replace them?
DK: Yeah, you have to have a process. But you know what? You can't start the process as long as we're occupying it. No one's going to help the United States if we just say we're going to stay there, and we're going to stay there until we understand that the American people are ready for a new direction, and for that matter, the world's ready for a new direction. And I think Iraq is, too.
Basically, we can’t leave until there is an international force to take our place, but no international force will take our place until we leave, so we will leave, and hope one appears to take our place.
To say nothing of "More troops are only going to mean more troop casualties and more civilian deaths." Apparently killing any insurgents, al-Qaeda, and affiliated thugs and terrorists is absolutely impossible.
