[…] If you believe some pundits, California, New York and Washington, D.C. represent progress due to the enlightened social and environmental rhetoric espoused by the media, academics and politicians based in these regions,writes Joel Kotkin for http://www.newgeography.com in an essay titled A Most Undemocratic Recovery
Caption: Welcome to the new unity of party, state, and civil society Read More »
The administration’s performance before the U.S. Congress on the Egypt question is beneath comment—except to point out that this is further evidence of a U.S. administration thoroughly befuddled by rapidly developing events. You can read Gerstein’s full account here.
U.S. President Barack Obama this very day abandoned the podium that bears the Presidential Seal to another figure. What could possibly inspire behaviour like this would be my question. This, I would like to propose, is another artifact of our beloved President’s tendency to defer to others the initiative that properly, or at least historically, belongs to him, and to his office, and today’s performance in the White House would be but an instance, in the form of a gesture, that epitomizes visually the operational basis of this Presidency.
About the mid-90s, about the same time that Walter Laqueur, Roger Eatwell et al. issued their reassessments of the fascist movements on the European peninsula through the first half of the last century, centre-right policy journals speculated about the relations that obtain between (a) the then generation-old U.S. professional military combined with the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), and the rise of highly-trained, technically-adept special operations and unconventional warfare formations, and (b) a civil society fragmenting culturally, and disaggregating administratively, into a post-Western, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic matrix-state—or something like that.
Caption: On wounds, self-inflicted or otherwise.
If I remember correctly the authors conjectured about how the U.S. officer-corps, supported by service academies, war colleges, veterans organizations, and professional societies, had begun to perceive itself as a guardian not just of the nation and its Constitution, but of certain kinds of national values no longer current, and to set itself in opposition to the loss of those values in the larger, civil world—to put it another way, the authors worried about an estranged and increasingly alien military sub-culture giving rise to a U.S. Praetorian Guard, or something akin to the French-Algerian General’s Putsch, although probably not in our generation. This line of reasoning passed away quickly. We had so much to think about in the 90s. I just can’t remember what most of it was.
I was reminded of all this when I learned of General McChrystal’s revelations to Michael Hastings of The Rolling Stone, titled, aptly, The Runaway General, a baffling account of an openly insubordinate U.S. Marine flag officer and theatre commander, and his “Team America” entourage. General McChrystal’s up-until-this-moment outstanding career is point-for-point a product of military reforms that began in the late-Vietnam to post-Vietnam era to culminate during the Reagan military build-up with its emphasis on maneuver warfare, using the coherence and efficiency gains of information processing technologies and techniques as force-multipliers, and an emphasis on small and special unit operations. The logic of the policy-innovations of the Reagan-era rearmament would eventually result in the use of precision guided fire-weapons at even the squad level as evidenced by the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) or the HARM missile. The personnel recruited into these newly organized or newly enlarged special forces and special operations units are the best of the best, and they know it; they enjoy a level of privilege and prestige beyond those of their brothers and sisters who serve in line units.
(Personal note: At the time I applauded all of these developments. I still do, mainly because I am a backward and regressive knee-jerk reactionary, but also because these developments helped the West in its twilight struggle against the peaceful fraternity of socialist nations formerly known as the Warsaw Pact. But I also understand that these developments entailed, and continue to entail, great social costs—the greatest of which being the alienation of our military personnel and its institutions from the larger civil order. We can now conduct 2 wars in 2 theatres with forces so vanishingly small relative to the high-industrial era of mass, conscript armies, that no one really notices until some general shoots off his mouth at the expense of his superiors, no one except for the soldiers and the families whose lives are directly invested in the conflict. Another cost is simply the cost: these forms of warfare are hugely expensive—does anyone remember how Reagan financed his rearmament?)
Caption: Obama in the Rose Garden exchanges generals and stands firm on Afghanistan.
By way of contrast, the leadership of the G20 has risen up from its slumbers in a remarkable show of unity, leadership, and coordinated action, and not because of, but in spite of, the U.S.’s own Timothy Geithner:
[...] “Finance ministers of the world’s leading economies have been so spooked by the sovereign debt crisis that they have decided they can no longer wait until economies are growing strongly before they remove fiscal stimulus,” write Chris Giles and Christian Oliver from a marine observation station in Busan for the Financial Times in a story titled G20 drops support for fiscal stimulus, which means the G20 told Timothy Geithner and his Keynesian witchcraft to go straight to hell.
Caption: The Wheel of Fortune. U.S. leadership has fallen to the bottom of it. Or is this the tortures of the damned and the U.S. is paying for its fiscal sins? Either way, it fits.
[...] [Prof. Michael Hogan's goals for the study of public address are indeed noble.] But they leave unaddressed the primary dilemma of civil society in our era: the decline of secularism and the organization of what Habermas would call a post-secular society. I do not endorse Habermas’ solution or even the term “post-secularism.” But so far as I know he’s the only major voice that has even posed the right questions. Others insist that Traditions cede their claims, their exclusivity, or their historical projects, because e.g. history is over and the model of liberal democracy is now the only model. Still others announce a “clash of civilizations.” Until we develop a positive program the clashers have it right. Or at least brute fact supports their view. Recent examples include Mumbai and Gaza [...]
Here would be yet another solution as set forth by Thomas P.M. Barnett in his Great Powers, to be published by G. P. Putnam’s on February 5, 2009. It falls under the rubric of STRATEGIC SOCIAL ISSUES
[...] “Finally, on the most personal questions of identity: If you can find your way to allowing freedom of religion in your country, we will do our best to reciprocate regarding any demands you may have for cultural separatism. While we don’t believe that such separatism is good or healthy, because it tends to prejudge the talents and ambitions of those we fear are trapped within its walls, we believe in voluntary associations–even those that won’t have us as members. But we know this: Humanity’s paths to happiness are as varied as the human condition. While some of us may applaud your achievement of a strict social rule set in this regard, none of us will countenance your unreasonable desire to impose those strict rules unwillingly on others. If you can accept that while your definition of God’s law may be forever, humanity’s need for rule of law is persistent, then we’re willing to let you carve out an enclave within our global society.
America doesn’t pretend to have all the answers regarding this historical integration process we now call globalization. We do, however, want you to recognize that we inhabit the longest-running experiment of states and nationalities and religions uniting in the common cause of individual freedom, collective security, and economic prosperity. We understand that our model does not constitute the universe of possibilities even as we seek to universalize those possibilities.” (pp. 414-415) [...]
Barnett proposes that the U.S. State Department trade some form of freedom of religion in return for respecting claims of exclusivity (cultural separatism). Similarly in the Detente era the U.S. bartered recognition of Soviet claims for the limited political freedoms of its Jews, other oppressed ethnic and national groups, and its more celebrated political dissenters. So Barnett’s bargain can also be read as a Detente redux because it discovers its logical basis in the same Cold War accommodation.
Barnett’s bargain conveniently codifies current practice and reflects point for point the West’s inconsistency on this issue. For example, how would Barnett rule on the U.K.’s official sharia courts? So—at least it would seem—Barnett’s bargain reduces to foreign policy void of respect for domestic or civil concern. A so-called grand strategy—and Barnett’s concern is to produce a U.S., post-Bush era grand strategy—would necessarily comprehend both the foreign and the domestic. At the level of the grand strategy the distinction between foreign and domestic no longer holds. How a polity understands those within its jurisdiction who hold to a tradition that does not admit of the claims of a civil society is the decisive question of our era. It was the decisive question when the nation-state system began to consolidate itself—it often took the form of the Jewish Question or various critiques of colonialism or imperialism—and now as the nation-state system begins its long decline and disaggregation, the question is raised anew with new actors, new social forms, and new material conditions. Barnett—alas—offers us no guidance.
Or am I missing something? Does Barnett have an answer to this question that he shares elsewhere?
yours &c.
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lege mea Vates cantu, normaque leguntur –Albertino Mussato
My name: g.v. wilkes iv, phd
My location: Victoria, BC, Canada
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This be a vanity blog, my brothers and sisters. Vanity, all is vanity. And a lot of combat, criticism, and commentary.
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The views I express here are my own, only my own, solely my own, and I represent no person, no group, and no institution, other than myself, and even then only partially and inconsistently, as my actions, and my intentions, are seldom in perfect accord, and they are subject to constant revision, review, clarification, and correction.
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