The United States Appears to Be Starting Dangerous Conflagrations wherever It Can — Does this Make Strategic Sense?

09 March 2015

The United States seems to be provoking a major war in Ukraine and also with Iran

This on top of the major fires that it started and keeps fanning in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen.

A thoughtful patriot would recognize that we are already beyond our military and economic capabilities.

Consider the following statement from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

What he said is illuminating — either for its astounding ignorance of history and realpolitik or for its apparently intentional manipulation of American public opinion:

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey argued during a Senate hearing on Tuesday [03 March 2015] that the allegedly Russian-backed rebellion threatens to undo more than six decades of peace in Europe and could potentially splinter the NATO alliance.

“I think we should absolutely consider lethal aid and it ought to be in the context of NATO allies because Putin’s ultimate objective is to fracture NATO,” Dempsey told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

In reasonably interpreted fact, Russia has not been trying to fracture NATO. Except insofar as NATO insists on marching right up to the Federation’s exposed borders.

Russian actions have been so clearly patterned on its historical hegemony in Ukraine and elsewhere — influence of the kind that the United States consistently acts upon in the Western Hemisphere and beyond — that I find it almost inconceivable that General Dempsey actually believes what he said. This capable man must be up to something else. Perhaps he is acting upon guidance from the Commander in Chief.

General Dempsey’s (perhaps pretended aggressiveness) is not unique

Visible strategic restraint also appears to be lacking in the American Supreme Allied Commander Europe (General Philip Breedlove) and his civilian State Department sidekick (Victoria Nuland).

General Breedlove reportedly has Germany’s military and civilian leadership gravely concerned with what they consider to be his allegedly repeated misstatements of fact and his reportedly unwarranted beating of the War Drum:

For months, Breedlove has been commenting on Russian activities in eastern Ukraine, speaking of troop advances on the border, the amassing of munitions and alleged columns of Russian tanks.

Over and over again, Breedlove's numbers have been significantly higher than those in the possession of America's NATO allies in Europe.

The German government is alarmed.

Are the Americans trying to thwart European efforts at mediation led by Chancellor Angela Merkel? Sources in the Chancellery have referred to Breedlove's comments as "dangerous propaganda."

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier even found it necessary recently to bring up Breedlove's comments with NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg.

Europeans have also begun to see others as hindrances in their search for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict. First and foremost among them is Victoria Nuland, head of European affairs at the US State Department. She and others would like to see Washington deliver arms to Ukraine and are supported by Congressional Republicans as well as many powerful Democrats.

At the beginning of the crisis, General Breedlove announced that the Russians had assembled 40,000 troops on the Ukrainian border and warned that an invasion could take place at any moment. The situation, he said, was "incredibly concerning."

But intelligence officials from NATO member states had already excluded the possibility of a Russian invasion. They believed that neither the composition nor the equipment of the troops was consistent with an imminent invasion.

The experts contradicted Breedlove's view in almost every respect. There weren't 40,000 soldiers on the border, they believed, rather there were much less than 30,000 and perhaps even fewer than 20,000. Furthermore, most of the military equipment had not been brought to the border for a possible invasion, but had already been there prior to the beginning of the conflict. Furthermore, there was no evidence of logistical preparation for an invasion, such as a field headquarters.

If Generals Dempsey and Breedlove are playing a game — perhaps at President Obama’s behest — they are playing one that grossly underestimates the Russian Federation and its historically granted interests in Ukraine. Sun Tzu would not be proud.

As the United States should have learned after Iraq, there is no legitimate point to destabilizing an entire region of the world. Doing more of the same in Ukraine is (literally) insane.

It gets worse — add the chest-thumping Gorilla Wannabes in Congress

Congress, that most useless of modern American institutions, cannot seem to prevent itself from high-climbing the stupidity scale.

Incredibly — from the perspective of Constitutional and historical protocol — the Republican portion of the Senate went behind the President’s back and tried to sabotage the Executive Branch’s nuclear talks with Iran.

Joining these Illustrious Clown Folk were Republican presidential hopefuls — Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio — who are (apparently) too shortsighted to consider how they would react, if they became President and the same thing happened to them:

A group of 47 Republican senators has written an open letter to Iran's leaders warning them that any nuclear deal they sign with President Barack Obama's administration won’t last after Obama leaves office.

Organized by freshman Senator Tom Cotton and signed by the chamber's entire party leadership as well as potential 2016 presidential contenders Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, the letter is meant not just to discourage the Iranian regime from signing a deal but also to pressure the White House into giving Congress some authority over the process.

“It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system … Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement,” the senators wrote. “The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”

The upshot of this Senatorial nincompoopery parallels our intemperate contribution to intentionally escalating tensions in Europe.

America’s “testes” are inflated with too much hubristic hot air

One of the problems with testosterone poisoning is that it persuades people subject to it that they can take anyone on, no matter the strategic or tactical situation.

Some of our military leaders and most of Congress misperceive the actual situations in Ukraine and Iran. The measures they propose are going to aggravate the dangers they profess to fear. This process is like the domino effect of accumulated American stupidities that got us into both Vietnam and Iraq.

The Russian Federation is not going to tolerate American and NATO influence being extended into Ukraine, any more than we would the reverse in Canada or Mexico. Infiltrating American arms and advisors will just provoke heightened conflict. Expanded war will ultimately claim an excess of Ukrainian and other lives, without advancing the United States’ announced goals of peace and security one bit.

For its part, Iran is not going to let a historically hostile and imperialistic United States dictate the terms of its future. Threatening the Persians with military attack is exactly the kind of thing that will turn that (admirably stable nation) into a competent, motivated and implacable foe.

These strategic realities mean that American leadership is carelessly plotting a course toward starting two more major wars

Neither of which we can win.

Russia is a nuclear superpower. And Iran is the dominant political and Shia force in the Middle East.

Tackling both nations on essentially their home turf is the kind of idiocy that even an Art of War novice would be embarrassed to make.

We are teetering on the edge of a potential disaster

If we keep going this way, the Military Industrial Complex’s greedy manipulations will bury America’s real national interests. Nihilistically inspired catastrophe may be the end result.

On a practical level, if Americans (and some of their military leaders) were not so forgetful, we might remember how taxed our volunteer armed forces became in trying to win even the Iraq War.

With our self-created Middle Eastern conflagration already in play before us today, do we really think that we can manage the addition of Ukraine and Iran to it?

The moral? — Competent leadership requires significantly more than flaunting frothy man juice

At present, the United States is arguably the world’s most destabilizing nation. Our nonstop warmongering looks likely to take us into an even more morally and strategically indefensible position.

An inflated sense of righteousness, combined with a ludicrously conceited sense that we can take on the whole world, is rapidly creating an explosive situation. Its outcome could dwarf the geopolitical idiocies that we have been creating, since the beginning of the Vietnam War.

Sure — the Military Industrial Complex will make money from this process. And its denizens will advance in power and prestige. But no one else will. They will just be dead, maimed, or further impoverished. Cannon fodder to no civilizational purpose.

Note

Professor/Colonel Andrew Bacevich is evidently so pissed off about this lunatic post-Vietnam trend that he recently wrote an essay contemptuous of Washington DC’s purportedly “intellectual” warmongers.

He suggested that the chattering class take a prolonged leave of absence, presumably so that the nation can recover its common sense bearings.

PeteFree.com

The United States Appears to Be Starting Dangerous Conflagrations wherever It Can — Does this Make Strategic Sense?