Stardate 20020906.1707

(Captain's log): Andy writes:

Whenever I hear about the "international coalition" that's been assembled to fight the war on terror I wonder what that really means. Some countries did contribute militarily of course, but the only other real cooperation I can think of is that the intelligence services of each "ally" works with our intelligence services to make arrests and seize funds to disrupt and destroy al-Qaeda. So if the coming war with Iraq shatters the "international coalition against terror" as some doomsdayers are saying, what exactly would that mean?

It means "Stop all this fucking American unilateralism and start asking permission from your betters before doing anything."

There is not and never was an international coalition assembled to fight the war on terror. Such a thing existed for the Gulf War, but not this time. The US put together a series of bilateral cooperative agreements with certain nations in order to fight in Afghanistan, but the nations involved are not the ones usually thought of as part of the mythical international coalition. We worked with nations like Tajikistan and Pakistan and Oman, and to some extent with Russia. Except for the UK, Europe wasn't involved to any important extent during the period when the issue was in doubt.

Talk about the "international coalition" is one of many different rhetorical devices being used by various parties to try to convince the government and people of the US that we cannot and should not make decisions on war by our lonesomes.

There's really only one good argument in favor of that position, but it's not one that gets made very often, because it isn't very strong: What we do will affect others, and as a result they want to be involved in the decision because they may bear some of the consequences. That's at least a defensible point of view, but it discounts the fact that we may decide to put our own interests ahead of theirs, just as they want us to put their interests ahead of ours. The argument is weak because it explains why they want to be involved, but not why we would want them to be involved. The situation is symmetric; they're looking out for their own self interest, and so are we.

Unfortunately, since they can only get what they want by influencing us, whereas we can get what we want no matter what they do, a symmetric position isn't good enough for them. They need an edge. They need to convince us that we have an obligation to them. Rhetoric about coalitions and alliances have emerged as the most popular ways of trying to convince us that we owe them the ability to control what we do. You also see claims about requirements for UN approval.

The argument that we owe it to them to let them be involved in the decision has surfaced in a wide variety of ways over the course of the last year. Another way it manifested was in the truly bizarre result of the invocation of Article V of the NATO charter. What that says is that "an attack against one is to be considered an attack against all." When that was originally written, what it was assumed to mean was that if any member nation was attacked, all member nations would then respond militarily, to fight at the side of the nation which was attacked. By thus presenting an immense military threat to would-be aggressors, it was hoped that this would deter attacks and prevent anyone in NATO from actually having to fight at all.

This was, after all, a military mutual defense pact. The whole point of it was to describe how each nation was making a commitment to fight on behalf of the other nations in the alliance so that any potential aggressor would know that he was going to be fighting against the power of the entire alliance. If, once the time came that a treaty member actually was attacked, if it didn't actually result in military mobilization alliance-wide then it made the whole thing useless; a big empty bluff.

But it wasn't a bluff. In practice, what it really meant was that America promised to fight on behalf of all the other members. The treaty was stated in equal terms, but it was always expected that the attack would happen in Europe, most probably in West Germany, and that America would cross the big pond yet again to bail the Europeans out. What no one expected was that the first actual attack against a member of NATO would be against the United States.

The actual text of Article V is a little bit vague.

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Notice that part about "such action as it deems necessary"? That's where the joker in the deck was hidden. America always expected that military action would be deemed necessary. But when the time finally came, we discovered that the only other member who agreed was the UK.

After more than fifty years, a member of NATO finally was attacked, and Article V was invoked, and then a funny thing happened on the way to Brussels. Instead of all the NATO allies mobilizing their military might to fight along side their ally which had been brutally attacked without warning, suffering thousands of deaths, the NATO allies decided that the fact that it was now "an attack against all" meant that everyone had to agree on any retaliation. What they deemed necessary was not to commit their troops, but rather to try to talk the US out of fighting back, and they tried to use the moral authority from the invocation of Article V to force America to let them do so. Article V made them "allies", "partners in the war", and the US wasn't supposed to ignore allies and partners.

Thus a treaty proposition which was originally supposed to cause all members of NATO to go to war in response to an attack against any member instead became a way for the other members of NATO to restrain the one member which had been attacked. "All of us were attacked; it says so right there in Article V, which we were kind enough to invoke. Aren't you grateful to us for invoking Article V? We're all in this together now. But we don't think we should be fighting in Afghanistan, or in Iraq, or in fact anywhere at all. We should increase aid to the poor, and consider root causes, and try to decide why they hate us, and try to change our behavior so that they won't feel any need to attack us again."

The American diplomatic response was, more or less, "Who's this 'we', white man?" And it dawned on the Europeans (minus the UK) that the US had no intention of letting them prevent us from fighting, at which the public condemnations by European leaders began to rise in volume and frequency and antagonism.

And the Bush administration put up with months of bitching and moaning about how we weren't acting like allies, because allies actually consult one another. (With them defining "consult" to mean something other than "talk it over".)

Arguments about the "international coalition" are cut from the same cloth, only it's an even weaker argument. In the case of NATO, there was at least a real treaty in question, something to which the US had been dedicated for decades. The "international coalition" was every nation in the world, powerful or otherwise, who felt that they might be affected by any war we might fight and wanted a say in whether we'd do so. (So they could use their say to say "no".) They all decided they were in a coalition with us, not bothering to ask us whether we thought we were in a coalition with them, because like the NATO allies they needed to convince us that they were on our side so that we had an obligation to listen to them and do what they said. Once it had become evident that we weren't listening to their opinions then you started hearing about how the international coalition was being shattered by our unilateralism.

What was never really explained was where the coalition came from in the first place, or why we should give a damn that it had been shattered, because the explanation wouldn't stand the light of day.

There has been some international cooperation, especially in the way of intelligence sharing with the nations of Europe. There's been some cooperation in trying to find and arrest terror cells. There's been some cooperation in finding and seizing money belonging to al Qaeda and stopping the flow of money through European banks. Those things have been helpful, though I'm not so sure that all of it has been quite as enthusiastic or wholehearted as we once thought. Most of it has been motivated by rational self interest.

There's also been non-trivial amounts of obstruction and unhelpful criticism, and general attempts to impede us in nearly every way. There have been cases where European governments had information we needed and publicly refused to turn it over to us. The EU and several major governments in Europe have loudly condemned any attempts by the US to respond militarily anywhere for nearly any reason. (They don't outright put it that way. They instead demand proof, but set the bar for the proof so high that they know we could never reach it.)

And other nations elsewhere, self-claimed members of the coalition such as Saudi Arabia, have actively lied, deliberately suppressed information, actively impeded our efforts, and directly helped our enemies.

With respect to NATO, some forces from continental Europe finally did get involved in Afghanistan, sort of, in the combat. After it had become blatantly obvious that we were in the process of winning a totally unexpected overwhelming victory there and that there was going to be no quagmire, France's lone aircraft carrier finally limped into the Arabian Sea and joined our fleet. If their carrier-based jets ever flew an actual combat mission, I never heard of it.

A handful of French fighter-bombers moved into the region, and France told the American military commanders that they would perform bombing missions under American orders. And when given orders to bomb during a military operation there, they refused those orders in the heat of battle, something for which I will never forgive the nation of France.

France felt it had to get involved militarily because it would be too embarrassing to not be once it was clear we were winning. If it had been going badly for us, as they'd been warning it would for weeks (and, I think, secretly hoping it would be), they'd have been nowhere nearby. They didn't show up because they were allies; they showed up because they were mortified that we were doing so well without their help.

All of this rhetoric about alliances and coalitions ultimately flows from a simple fact: short of a threat of nuclear war, no one in the world has the military ability to prevent us from starting a war anywhere we choose to fight one. The imbalance of military power in the world right now is historically unprecedented. There has never in history been a single nation whose military power was as much greater than all the others as ours is now. We're not infinitely powerful, but the degree of our actual power is giving nearly everyone in the world hives.

Afghanistan only made that worse. Before we went in, Afghanistan was thought to be almost the perfect example of a place where we would fail. When we won what ultimately looked like a really easy victory there, it made it clear that our power was even greater than had previously been thought.

If a war we decide to fight in a given place might cause trouble for some other nation, then the only way they could conceivably prevent it is by talking us out of fighting there even if we have what we think is a legitimate reason for it, and the only practical way of doing that is to somehow convince us that we owe them the ability to learn about our plans and, best case, to veto them. Thus the discussions about coalitions and alliances and how we have an obligation to "consult". They're lecturing us, with rising levels of hysteria, because they have no other way of influencing the course of events.

Andy continues:

I keep hearing that Bush has to "make the case" to the American people and our allies(though I'm not sure anymore if we have any real allies). Though when I think about the "case" of the people opposing the coming war with Iraq, I'm not exactly sure what it is. Saying that Bush must consult with Congress, the American people, and our allies to build a coalition seems to be a popular theme, but it's not actually an argument against going to war, it's simply saying to be patient and don't go it alone. Then there's the "destabilization" of the region that might happen, which isn't a bad point but I've yet to see a single person elaborate on what that actually could mean. Will a separate war break out because of an attack on Iraq, or will a government fall because of it, please explain who, where, why when, how. Again a reason to be cautious and worried but without a little detail to back the "destabilization" argument up, not exactly a convincing reason not to go to war when weighed against the possibility of a nuke taking out one of our cities. I could go on all day like this. The anti-war arguments are often so sketchy that I'm not even sure if they are really arguments against a war, but just a knee-jerk reaction by someone who deep down knows that a war with Saddam is inevitable, and necessary, and so that person is left to making an incoherent, baseless argument using every possible cliche and scare tactic

Actually we do still have allies, but there aren't very many. It's a very short list. We've got the UK, and Canada, and Australia. That's the lot. There are other nations which are cooperating with us, for the moment, out of self interest (e.g. Kuwait), or because we made them an offer they couldn't refuse (e.g. Pakistan).

What we've mostly got, though, is a lot of other nations who are calling themselves allies and trying to use that relationship against us, for their benefit, to our detriment. They refer to themselves as allies, and in one sense I suppose they are, since one definition of an "ally" is someone with whom you have a diplomatic agreement for alliance.

They loudly proclaim their friendship for us. Or rather, they loudly proclaim our friendship for them, and then talk about how we are betraying their friendship by our actions and how if we were really their friends we wouldn't do what we're doing, and how our current course of action imperils their friendship and how it would be our fault if that happens, which we can only avoid by doing what they say. Of course, such behavior only bears the slightest resemblance to true friendship.

Your use of the term ally, and the way I also mean it, goes much deeper. An ally is a true friend, and true friends prove their friendship in time of crisis by standing beside you, and by acting in ways that make you glad that they are your friends.

One way in particular that allies distinguish themselves from those who only pretend is by looking forward rather than backward. Pseudo-allies lecture you about why your past policies brought this down you your own head. Real allies say, "Well, we've got ourselves a situation, don't we? What are we going to do about it going forward, and what do you need from us?"

Real allies sacrifice for you, take risks for you. Real allies give and help, they don't demand and impede.

Yes, we have allies. But France and Germany aren't among them. I don't think France ever will be a real ally, but then the history of the relationship between France and the US since WWII suggests that they never really were. We've cooperated with France off and on ever since the battle of Yorktown, but it's not clear that anything France has ever done for the US was motivated by true feelings of friendship. (Louis XVI was convinced by Ben Franklin to commit the French fleet to Yorktown not so much to help us as to take advantage of an opportunity to spite the British.) And it is perhaps arguable from the point of view of the French that we've never really helped them without having an ulterior motive. There's never really been any feeling of friendship in that relationship.

But the situation with Germany is more troubling. Although we were part of the coalition which bombed them into the stone age and defeated them on the ground in WWII and helped to kill millions of them, after the war we were certainly there for Germany and acted in ways well beyond our own narrow self interest. Our post-war military occupation was definitely much more benign than that of the USSR. We gave them aid to rebuild. We were the largest part of the Berlin AirLift. And we definitely put our own safety on the line during the Cold War to prevent an invasion of West Germany by the USSR. As such things go, no defeated enemy could have asked for better treatment from a conqueror. The US wasn't responsible for Germany being an enemy, and after the war it didn't treat Germany as if it still was one.

But I guess we haven't done anything for them lately. For the moment, the current government there (specifically Chancellor Schröder and his odious foreign minister Fischer) finds it politically more expedient to stand up to us than to stand beside us. But if we're lucky the SPD will lose this election (or at least not be able to form a government afterward) and maybe we'll be able to do better with Stoiber. It's hard to see how we could do a lot worse.

It doesn't really matter much; for historical and constitutional reasons Germany never really had the ability to offer us much in the way of military assistance. But a Stoiber government might be more cooperative in other ways, and at least they'd shut up. Stoiber says that he also opposes an operation in Iraq, but at least he wouldn't be posturing all the time so as to pander to German leftists.

The arguments about destabilization are a mix of a priori belief that "stability is good, ferment is bad" along with the natural belief that in times of ferment it's difficult to know what's coming. It amounts to "better the devil we know". Ralph Peters is one of the most clear-sighted political and military analysts I've encountered. He makes a convincing case that destabilization of the region is the best thing that could happen to the US. (And that it would be really bad for a lot of other people.)

Part of why none of these arguments end up making much sense (to us) is that there really isn't a good case to be made against this war by anyone rational, except by adopting pollyannish assumptions about the situation. (I.e. "we don't need to attack Iraq because Iraq isn't a threat to us." Not yet, anyway.) All the rational arguments are about how our attack on Iraq would cause other people problems. None of them have been able to make a convincing case that it's more likely than not that the war would be bad for us ourselves.

And part of why many of those advocating these points of view are so unconvincing doing so is that the arguments they're making are not the reasons they oppose the war. They really oppose it because they fear its consequences for themselves.

Christopher Lansdown writes:

I was thinking about the root causes argument, and noticed that nearly everyone who argues with it argues that the identified root causes are not really root causes. But what about the following:

What is the root cause of lung cancer (in most cases)? Answer: smoking. If you smoke, get lung cancer, and stop smoking, does your lung cancer go away?

Am I missing something? How does the "root causes" argument, even if one granted that it properly identified the root causes, work against an attack on Iraq?

And when you're in the hospital with that cancer, your true friends don't lecture you about how you brought it on yourself through your own smoking. True friends know that it's long since too late for that, and that what you need is help and support to get through the treatment and maybe survive it all.

What are they really thinking?

Let's start from the basics, OK? First principles: War is bad. It would be a mighty fine thing if there were no wars. We together on this so far?

Wars happen when nations fight one another. (That's obvious, isn't it?) From that it follows that if no one is fighting, you don't have any wars, and then you get peace. Peace is good. That's what all right-minded people should be working for.

QED: You get peace by preventing wars. You prevent wars by making sure no one starts any.

Add in another first principle (or cliché): think globally, act locally. If everyone who opposes war works within their own nation to prevent their own nation from fighting wars, and if they all succeed, then no nation will fight, we won't have any war, we get peace, and it will be a good thing.

Thus it is the duty of all to oppose their own nation's efforts to get involved in any war, no matter what the circumstances are. The goal is to not fight; it has nothing to do with whether any given war is or is not justified. No war can ever be justified, because if we accept that sometimes wars are justified then we won't have abolished warfare.

So we oppose the war in Iraq because we oppose any attempt by our nation to start any war anywhere at any time.

Root causes have nothing to do with it. None of the above argument for opposing war has anything specifically to do with root causes, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, or a smoking hole in the ground in New York City. It has nothing to do with any specific aspect of this particular war; it has to do with a total opposition to war in general.

But if we can somehow convince Americans that they had it coming, and that their own sins in the past strongly contributed to the attack against them, then maybe we can sap them of their will and convince them to not fight in future. What's happened in the past doesn't matter; who attacked who doesn't matter; who died doesn't matter. The goal is to work from here on forward so as to not have any more fighting. The only way to get peace is to not attack anywhere, and since it seems to be the US which is planning all the attacks (at least publicly) then that's the obvious place to work to try to end this war. At the very least, the war can't end until the US does stop planning attacks.

Thus the US is the object of the protests. Within the context of t