Debating Myself

It was a big week for NATO this week. First, President Bush put pressure on the organization to set a timetable for Ukrainian and Georgian membership. Though Ukraine has made clear its desire to join NATO, which is seen as a first step along a path to EU membership, the timing of the announcement comes amidst much saber rattling by Russia–and a change of power, at least officially, from Vladmir Putin to Dimitriy Medvedev.

Further, membership invitations were extended to Albania and Croatia, and membership talks were intensified for Bosnia and Montenegro. Interestingly, Serbia, the site of recent riots and the burning of a US Embassy, was encouraged to apply for membership.

There was more going on in Bucharest at the NATO summit than just talks of expansion. A historic agreement was reached on the controversial deployment of US missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic as well. After years of negotiations an advanced radar facility will be built in the Czech Republic and ten anti-ballistic missile missiles will be deployed in Poland.

Significantly it appears Russia played a key role in shaping the outcome of the summit. Not only did the NATO press release concerning the agreement on the ABM systems specifically urge Russia to drop its objections, but some argue that the rejection of an invitation to Georgia and Ukraine may be the key to achieving Russian consent on the issue.

What does all of this mean? Well, the aggressive expansion of NATO could precede an expansion in EU membership–though it appears the EU is a bit worn out from expansion. Another factor that NATO expansion has is a larger pool of troops to draw on while fighting the war in Afghanistan. Indeed, the summit did conclude with a larger commitment of troops to Afghanistan.

Most importantly, however, is the increasing tension between Russia and NATO. Russia’s implicit veto of membership talks with Georgia and the Ukraine are significant.

While the United States, Canada and nine Eastern European nations supported putting Ukraine and Georgia on the path to membership, Germany, France, Italy and other Western European nations resisted, arguing that the two were still too unstable and expressing concern about poking Russia in the eye.

That West European countries are acting out of fear of some form of Russian retaliation, perhaps through a rationing of gas supply, signals the weakness of Europe’s “core” in dealing with nation-states outside of the liberal democratic consensus. While the EU has been wildly successful at enticing nations who have an interest in the liberal market and other benefits of EU membership, the Union has been just as unsuccessful at adequately coping with those that wish to stay outside of that consensus (for example, Iran, North Korea and Russia).

The EU’s continued lack of both a cohesive foreign policy and a sizable military force is beginning to spillover into NATO and cause tensions within the defense community. The EU, according to the Economist this week, has already shown its commitment to the fight in Afghanistan to be half-hearted at best (with the exception of the Brits, of course).

The current weakness of NATO only emphasizes the need for a stronger and more unified EU to help build a stable bloc to offset rising Russian power, and continue the fight and rebuilding in Afghanistan.

David Isenberg over at the Partnership for Secure America has written a great post critiquing the media for making a big deal of the supposed “milestone” 4,000th American casualty in Iraq. He puts it much more thoroughly and eloquently than I can.

Having had a family member serve in both Afghanistan (3x) and Iraq, the artificial ways we use to count the costs of this war are ever more infuriating. Why don’t the wounded, whose lives will be forever marred by the war and who will rely on the unreliable support of taxpayers for care the rest of their lives, count at all? Isenberg has a good point here:

And as Mideast Stars and Stripes reported yesterday the number of wounded coming to the 435th Contingency Aeromedical Staging Facility at Ramstein Air Base Germany is nearing 44,000 patients from Operation Iraqi Freedom and is close to reaching 7,000 from Operation Enduring Freedom, according to Air Force statistics compiled this month. Nearly 11,000 of those patients — or 22 percent — are considered battle injuries. While American commanders and soldiers have pointed to signs that the troop “surge” in Iraq is working, the facility has not seen a dramatic drop in the number of overall patients.

I can’t say enough about the article. Read it. The true cost of war is much deeper than the tragic loss of 4,000 lives.

Even if you support the war you should be interested in a more comprehensive look at the costs of the war. How can you propose solutions if many of the problems remain obscured behind weak reporting and skewed facts? We need to be open and honest about the real costs so we know where best to allocate the meager resources we have for the fight.

And, if being open and honest means that no one wants to allocate those resources? Then I guess it is time to come home.

The first real post on this blog covered a seemingly innocuous, but entertaining, news story pertaining to the US military’s success in shooting down an ailing and falling satellite.

Is this the future of warfare?

At the time I thought the story was amusing, but not very significant. Now it looks like I might be wrong.

The Pentagon has issued a new report [pdf] detailing the increasing concern in the military about China’s space and cyberwarfare capabilities. The New York Times reports:

The report places increased emphasis on concern about China’s space programs and potential for space warfare. It also said China was improving its own satellite capability, including construction of a new satellite launching complex on Hainan Island.

So is the US falling behind? It is tough to say, but the US is probably quite interested in sending the Chinese military a message.

The word mercenary has a long tradition and carries with it a whole host of connotations—corruption, greed, wanton violence and more. More recently the issue has become important due to the US reliance on military contractors in Iraq to continue to fight a war with very low levels of deployed troops. With the recent vote in Senate on this matter, it is clear the use of privately contracted out personnel in a war zone is something that is increasingly weighing in on the collective conscience of Americans.

P.W. Singer's excellent book on the subject is a must read...

Enter Michael Walzer, one of the leading (if not the leading) scholars on the issue. He recently wrote a piece in the National Journal more or less (we’ll get to that) calling for an end to the use of military contractors. Unfortunately, Mr. Walzer is very much of the old-guard, and seems to be clinging to a vision of the international order that is neither realistic, nor desirable to maintain in the 21st Century. Let’s take a look. (Thanks to INTELDUMP for the tip-off…)

Walzer’s first problem with “mercenaries”—known from here on out by their more neutral title PMCs or Private Military Corporations—is, perhaps, his weakest. He says (referring to the use of a PMC in Croatia to turn back the Serbian army):

Might it not have been better in the long run–better at deterring future Serb attacks, better at preparing the American people for just interventions (and making unjust interventions harder)–if President Clinton had gone to Congress and laid out the argument for helping the Croats? Using private soldiers makes policy invisible and so reduces (or eliminates entirely) its political costs. But it is a crucial feature of democratic decision-making that politicians should pay the costs of the decisions they make.

Walzer makes quite a leap here—that somehow a public debate would have to occur for troops to be deployed. With all due respect to Mr. Walzer, this is a patently false claim—American troops are deployed on missions the scale of this mission to Yugoslavia (carried out by a PMC instead) without real meaningful public debate. Nicaragua, Guam, Somalia… that is just off the top of my head. It happens more frequently than it should, and the only time debate occurs is after the deployment fails or succeeds. Yet do the costs of that deployment really carry over from one presidency to the next? Probably not, but even if those costs did carry over politically, it is not clear that those political costs are an inherently good thing (more on that later).

Walzer next points out that national armies are subject to accountability standards that PMCs are able to avoid. Walzer again:

And soldiers who get out of hand are accountable in ways that mercenaries are not. At least in the best cases, soldiers are trained to fight in accordance with a code of conduct enforced by military courts, which in turn are overseen by civilian courts. By contrast, though a voluntary code of conduct has been accepted by many of the security companies operating in Iraq, the code doesn’t provide any enforcement mechanism.

Again, Walzer’s argument is lacking in two fundamental ways.

First, his evidence on this is shaky (go read the article). How often are US soldiers prosecuted for war-time transgressions? The answer: not very. Abu-Ghraib brought a minimal amount of punishment for those involved. The culture of the military is one of handling discipline problems “in-house”—i.e. not through courts. The fact that soldiers are wearing a US flag doesn’t change the fact that they are soldiers, and as such there is a unity and group culture that develops, and is necessary, to protect the entire unit. Ask a veteran of Afghanistan or Iraq if their unit adhered to the letter of the law regarding the conduct of soldiers? Or even if their commanders understood the letter of the law? They try, but wartime situations are just not conducive to some rigid code of conduct—generations of soldiers can attest to this.

Why hold PMCs to a higher standard? Just because the Army has the trappings of accountability, does not mean that it is effectively accountable. (How accountable it should be is a subject for another debate… or a post in the comments…)

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The first ever crash of a B-2 bomber occurred in Guam today. Both pilots, thankfully, are alive and in stable condition aside from severely bruised egos.

Does this steal the thunder of the successful missile launch earlier this week?