Left Flank

It's inexplicable!

Why wasn't this Kaplan trainwreck replaced with this trite, yet respectful, Beijing Olympics editorial?

I understand Kaplan wants the US to engage Beijing as a competitor, and wants to reduce tensions and any chance of friction by just removing any chance of any bad words ever passing between embassies. But, Britain? Perhaps, they can serve tea and opium, too!

And, talk about patronizing! First, Americans ruined a race, and now it's a token for a belated moral awakening motivated by a corporate sports spectacle and hydrocarbon struggles. Please, just keep killing losers the old-fashioned way-with booze, disease, and religion! It's unseemly and disrespectful for a great power to grovel. If America wants to beat China, it needs to devise a strategy and execute it, not graft a serpent's tongue onto a peevish moron, calling it diplomacy.

The Olympics are a circus, but Beijing deserves smiling grace, just as every other host-including Hitler-before now has received. Enduring dumb, unbearably uncomfortable diplomatic ceremonies is what we elect presidents for, and what citizens around the world expect their prima donna athlete to do with their precious tax money. Just do it, for the sake of everything everyone wants-with Beijing's help. Ditch the privileged attitude, and suck!

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Robert Farley says it more succinctly, but invading Myanmar to help it "...a terrible idea." Mark Leon Goldberg concurs, calling intervention "...a distraction and counterproductive to first imperative of helping those in danger." The comments section on the first blog is excellent, too, and I won't waste time pasting my comments on both here.

Some color commentary:

There's no excuse for the behavior of Burma's leaders, but history offers an explanation that goes beyond sheer autocratic barbarism. As friendly as the Burmese can be to Western tourists, they have reason to be suspicious about their neighbors and outside powers -- they have been sandwiched between empires in India and China; subjugated and exploited by Great Britain; devastated by Japan (and the Allies) during World War II; and vulnerable in the second half of the 20th century to meddling by Thailand, rogue Chinese nationalists, and other factions and interests. Hand in hand with that xenophobia goes a fierce pride: For much of their history they've been not just survivors, but builders of a Burmese empire that, at its zenith in the mid-11th century, controlled a large chunk of mainland Southeast Asia.

Finally, I don't know what to make of Robert D, Kaplan's NYT op-ed. After plugging intervention, he seems to undermine his case at the end.

It seems like a simple moral decision: help the survivors of the cyclone. But liberating Iraq from an Arab Stalin also seemed simple and moral. (And it might have been, had we planned for the aftermath.) Sending in marines and sailors is the easy part; but make no mistake, the very act of our invasion could land us with the responsibility for fixing Burma afterward.

I didn't think we (is that the imperial pronoun?) were trying to fix Myanmar, just help it. Are we so deluded that we believe we can just use force with a smile?

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«Why did fate have to throw me into the peaceful lives of honest smugglers Like a stone hurled into the placid surface of a pond I had disturbed their tranquility, and like a stone had nearly gone to the bottom myself!»i Like Mikhail Lermontov's fictional account of Pechorin's encounter with smugglers in «Taman» in A Hero of Our Time, I am not certain if one could legitimately label Robert D. Kaplan in Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus, or any number of politicians, border guards, and professors he interviews, a victim. In Lermontov's «Taman», the seducer, Pechorin, unwittingly becomes the pawn and victim of a «supple», singing smuggler, and then a boy thief steals his saber and dagger. Kaplan might lose a little cash obtaining a visa on his running interview from Hungary to Armenia, but his interviewees always steal an opportunity to tell their respective tales. I would like to believe Kaplan orchestrated his interviews as cunningly as he organized his itinerary from one storied city to another, but like Lermontov, whose realistic portrait of the depraved Pechorin is nearly lost among his sordidly colorful characters and the enchanting Caucasus itself, Kaplan reveals a cramped world full of crooks and despots.

Pechorin's Ghost: A Critique of Kaplan's Eastward To Tartary - Get more documents

Yes, that's right! Pirates. The US Navy can do a job and entertain.

Lost Nomad's Gar recounts the thrilling tale of how the USS James E. Williams helped North Koreans to retake their ship. But, the dastardly pirates are winning, it seems.

The U.S. Navy said on Tuesday coalition naval forces belonging to Combined Task Force 150 had pursued the pirates into Somali waters and opened fire, destroying speedboats the seized vessel had in tow that were used in the raid.

«CTF-150 responded to a distress call from the tanker Golden Nory, warning shots were fired and the skiffs in tow were engaged and sunk,» a spokesman for the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet said by telephone from Bahrain.

There were no reports of any casualties. He said coalition forces had opened fire in the Gulf of Aden.

«The operation is ongoing (to recover the ship) and there are indications a number of pirates are still on board,» the spokesman said, adding that a number of battleships were in the area.

Mwangura said the Golden Nory was carrying the inflammable and toxic chemical, benzene, and was being held off the northern Somali province of Puntland.

Still, for my tax money, in a debate about how the US should spend its defense dollars, I'd take Robert D. Kaplan's argument.

A great navy is like oxygen: You notice it only when it is gone. But the strength of a nation’s sea presence, more than any other indicator, has throughout history often been the best barometer of that nation’s power and prospects. â€ūThose far-distant storm-beaten ships upon which [Napoleon’s] Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the dominion of the world,â€? Mahan wrote, describing how the British Royal Navy had checked Napoleon’s ambitions. In our day, carrier strike groups, floating in international waters only a few miles off enemy territory, require no visas or exit strategies. Despite the quagmire of Iraq, we remain the greatest outside power in the Middle East because of our ability to project destructive fire from warships in the Indian Ocean and its tributary waters such as the Persian Gulf. Our sea power allows us to lose a limited war on land without catastrophic consequences. The Navy, together with the Air Force, constitutes our insurance policy. The Navy also plays a crucial role as the bus driver for most of the Army’s equipment, whenever the Army deploys overseas.

Army units can’t forward-deploy anywhere in significant numbers without a national debate. Not so the Navy. Forget the cliché about the essence of the Navy being tradition; I’ve spent enough time with junior officers and enlisted sailors on Pacific deployments to know that the essence of our Navy is operations: disaster relief, tracking Chinese subs, guarding sea-lanes, and so forth. American sailors don’t care what the mission is, as long as there is one, and the farther forward the better. The seminal event for the U.S. Navy was John Paul Jones’s interdiction of the British during the Revolutionary War—which occurred off Yorkshire, on the other side of the Atlantic. During the quasi-war that President John Adams waged against France from 1798 to 1800, U.S. warships protected American merchant vessels off what is today Indonesia. American warships operated off North Africa in the First Barbary War of 1801 to 1805. The War of 1812 found the Navy as far down the globe as the coast of Brazil and as far up as the North Cape of Scandinavia. Peter Swartz, an expert at the Center for Naval Analyses, observes that because operating thousands of miles from home ports is so ingrained in U.S. naval tradition, no one thinks it odd that even the Coast Guard has ships in service from Greenland to South America.

Great navies help preserve international stability. When the British navy began to decline, the vacuum it left behind helped engender the competition among major powers that led to World War I. After the U.S. Navy was forced to depart Subic Bay in the Philippines in 1992, piracy quintupled in the Southeast Asian archipelago—which includes one of the world’s busiest waterways, the Strait of Malacca. In an age when 90 percent of global commerce travels by sea, and 95 percent of our imports and exports from outside North America do the same (even as that trade volume is set to double by 2020), and when 75 percent of the world’s population is clustered within 200 miles of the sea, the relative decline of our Navy is a big, dangerous fact to which our elites appear blind.

Norman Polmar points out an alternative to producing 12 of the new Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers.

While aircraft carriers have proved to be invaluable for U.S. military operations, from the Korean War through the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, today many of their traditional missions can be carried out as effectively and possibly more so in some scenarios by other «systems.» These mission areas include strike, reconnaissance, and anti-submarine warfare.

At the same time that the cost of carriers is increasing and the carrier force is below the authorized level of 12 ships, Navy shipbuilding programs are coming under increased congressional and executive branch scrutiny as the littoral combat ship (LCS), new amphibious ships (LPD), and some other ships are suffering massive cost overruns. It is unlikely that - with an average shipbuilding budget of $11 billion planned for the foreseeable future - the Navy will be able to afford building to the current goal of 313 ships. The Navy now operates about 279 ships.

The world situation for the foreseeable future will see a need for additional «carriers» to support U.S. political-military interests.

An alternative to constructing «the next» large CVN-type ship is to procure additional LHA/LHD-type amphibious ships. These VSTOL/helicopter carriers, which can operate the new F-35B Joint Strike Fighter, could carry out some mission that traditionally required a large-deck ship. The LHA/LHD-type ships, of some 40,000 tons full-load displacement, can carry some 1,700 troops for sustained periods as well as operating about 40 VSTOLs and helicopters. These «amphibs» - currently in production - cost about $2.5 billion per ship.

Large-deck carriers are important, but it is unlikely that the U.S. Navy will be able to afford the planned 12 ships or even maintain the current 11 carriers. Alternatives must be considered.

The Navy should get the money. At least it knows how to entertain Americans, assist diplomacy, and not pour dollars and blood into the sand.