Debating Myself

Now I know I’m a little late to the whole Olympic Tibet controversy game, but I hope what I have to say is still worth saying.

What sparked me to write this post initially is this article by Yahoo! Sports’ own Dan Wetzel about the Beijing Olympics. Now I will be the first to admit that I am not a fan of Wetzel–he is too preachy and too political for a sports columnist. If you want to make a political statement in a sports column then do it without a) insulting your readers’ intelligence and b) try to be classy about it. Wetzel should look at Sports Illustrated’s premier NFL analyst Peter King for a career full of examples of this.

But I think I took offense to Wetzel’s column less for its preachy tone (though that remains in abundance) and more for its blatant misrepresentation of the facts and crude assumptions. Wetzel is clearly pandering to his audience based on the assumption that they share some latent xenophobic feelings.

If Wetzel wrote this article for a high school newspaper his editor could have told him that his first paragraph makes one of the (unfortunately) most overused historical comparisons of the 20th and 21st century.

As the news pours out of China about the latest round of murdered monks and slaughtered nuns, as crowds around the world protest the Olympic torch, the prevailing wisdom now is that the Beijing Olympics are looking like, if we’re lucky, merely a redo of the 1936 Berlin Games. And that’s only in the unlikely event the bloodshed ends.

Does Wetzel really want to compare the internal strife in Tibet to the systematic destruction of an entire race, the complete destruction of an entire continent, and the near extermination of an entire of generation of men?

I would like to say that Wetzel is just using this paragraph as a hook to discuss the issue of Tibet more rationally, but unlike Wetzel I am compelled to be accurate and fair in my writing (unless I state otherwise). Wetzel’s article really degrades into anti-Chinese tirade and a rant against those corporate lapdogs the International Olympic Committee.

Wetzel makes a number of specious claims I won’t bother attacking here, what I want to respond to is his general thesis that the IOC “sold out” to the promise of making billions in China. Seriously,

No, this was a straight sellout, not a gamble. The IOC willingly purchased the unholy bill of goods China was peddling so its sponsoring corporations could, in turn, sell stuff to the Chinese people.

Wetzel is sadly short of history. I need only a mention a few Olympic games here to remind him that the Olympics has often been used to exactly the aim Wetzel doubts: “caus[ing] China to reverse course on human rights, democracy, freedom and the environment.” [For the better.]

Indeed, the 1988 games in Seoul, South Korea marked a turning point to that country, which now possesses the 12th largest economy in the world and is a fountain of stability and democracy in east Asia. Those 1988 games were boycotted by several nations and occurred although South Korea was (and still is) officially at war with North Korea.

Wetzel would probably had criticized those games too. After all, the games were probably enabled by “workers they then cheated out of wages and health care to build substandard Olympic facilities lacking small items like emergency exits and fire sprinklers.”

Hmm. Perhaps Wetzel should peek back at the history of the United States. The US hosted the Olympics three times before African-Americans even began to fully feel the benefits of citizenship in this country (1904, 1932 summer and winter, and 1960). No doubt American workers in 1904 faced perhaps worse labor standards than their Chinese compatriots today (there was, back then, no American consumer complete with hang-ups about sweatshop labor to try to please). From 1920-1940 it is estimated that up to 1,000 African Americans may have been lynched in the United States as the direct result of racism, hatred and bigotry. So clearly the United States had its fair share of violent internal strife and oppressed ethnic groups going on while it was permitted to host the games as well.

While Wetzel decries the death of “between 30 and 148″ people in Tibet he turns a blind eye to his own country’s history of prejudice and bigotry? Moreover, Wetzel pretends to understand the complexity of Chinese-Tibetan relations to suggest that Tibet should in fact be free. Would Wetzel welcome Chinese scrutiny, then, about the United States’ continuing treatment of Native-Americans and the reservation system that traps some tribes into a cycle of abject poverty and dependence on government handouts? Would Wetzel listen to Chinese commentators’ suggestions that perhaps we should grant the Native American’s full autonomy and statehood as reparations for the near extermination of an entire people?

Maybe it is unfair to make this comparison, but it is fair to say that he is overly critical of a situation that is much more complex than anyone with only one side (the Western side) of the story could fairly judge.

Wetzel does not really care about the plight of those in Tibet. Make no mistake, this is a rant against the corporatization of the games. The last sentence of his column makes this position strikingly clear:

What do a hundred dead monks matter anyway when there are so many Big Macs to move?

Wetzel sees the strife as occurring solely for the sale of corporate goods, but this is a false assumption and a terrible generalization to make. The idea harkens back to the example of South Korea I gave earlier–bringing world attention to Beijing will bring about a change in China by welcoming it to the world community, bringing international attention, and forcing it to consider the international consequences of its actions.

Besides is it fair for Wetzel, who will probably see his income spike from columns discussing a myriad of aspects of the Olympic games ad nauseum, to really criticize the games being corporatized? Isn’t that how he gets paid? Put your money where your mouth is and boycott the games yourself–don’t watch, don’t write about it, and don’t support it.

But of course that won’t happen. Wetzel doesn’t really believe, or if he does, he doesn’t care enough to do more than complain about it in a public forum using a dangerously xenophobic conception of China as his background.

I have a great fear that these games will be hijacked by an anti-Chinese political sentiment that has been growing in the United States for awhile now. Instead of focusing on the positive aspects of international attention in China, Wetzel panders to the latent anti-Chinese sentiment that is largely fueled by fear, ignorance and the lack of exposure to Chinese people and culture.

Sure, China has its problems, but so has every great nation that underwent the kind of dramatic industrial revolution currently occurring in China. Only by moving past the rhetoric of fear, ignorance and xenophobia can we ever hope to make a positive out of the strife currently occurring in Tibet. Resorting to yellow journalism to scare up readership will never be part of the solution and can only serve to perpetuate stereotypes and ideas that preclude meaningful engagement and peaceful resolutions in China.

China is hoping for the opposite–a kind of positive media attention that will change people’s minds about China. It will be interesting to see what prevails.

UPDATE: Here is a great letter from a Chinese-American to Mr. Wetzel.

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.

Parliament finally convened on Monday after an election on February 18

So the more I read about this missile strike in Pakistan, the less sense it makes to me. It seems completely ill-timed and appears to have been carried out with little regard at all to the political situation in Pakistan post-election. According to the Financial Times, this is the latest guess about what has happened:

At least fourteen people were killed in a remote Pakistani region along the Afghan border in a missile strike on Sunday believed to have been carried out by a pilotless drone operated by the CIA… “The target was a cluster of homes where Arabs and their Pakistani friends had assembled” said one Pakistani official.

Witnesses said a drone dropped seven missiles on the sprawling, mud-brick compound about three miles outside Wana, the main town in South Waziristan.

The timing seems a bit off though, considering Parliament was set to convene the next day (and did so):

Pakistan’s Parliament meets today [the day after the missile strike] for the first time since three opposition parties agreed to form a coalition government after defeating supporters of President Pervez Musharraf in general elections a month ago. Lawmakers will be sworn in and will choose a speaker and deputy speaker for the 342-member National Assembly, the official Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

But, more importantly, the fact that previous such missile strikes have caused a bit of instability on their own (again from the Financial Times):

In the past, Islamist militants linked to al-Qaeda and the Taliban have responded to drone attacks with suicide bombings across the country.

This new threat to instability, in the form of a retaliatory terror campaign conducted after the airstrikes, comes on the heels of violent campaign season, some of which it seems is clear the CIA was responding to (AP):

Just Saturday, a bomb exploded at an Islamabad restaurant popular with foreigners, killing a Turkish woman and wounding 12 people, including four FBI personnel… Saturday’s attack was the first in Pakistan’s quiet capital in several months, and the first targeting foreigners here in more than a year.

Public sentiment in Pakistan for such retaliation by the US military is thin at best:

Pakistanis have also expressed anger over U.S. attacks on militants in the country’s lawless tribal regions along the Afghan border, which often have tacit approval from Musharraf’s government.

So why anger the Pakistanis more? The Pakistani election should be seen as a victory for democratic reform in the region having resulted in the relatively peaceful ousting of a military dictator from the government–hopefully:

The PPP, the party led by Benazir Bhutto before her assassination in December, is forming a coalition with the Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz, the party led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and the Awami National Party. Sharif has vowed to challenge Musharraf’s rule while Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto’s widower and the PPP leader, hasn’t ruled out working with the president.

Of course the US has long been close allies with Musharraf and perhaps the new coalition government will be more anti-American and less supportive of US-led efforts in the war on terror in the region. Yet it is hard to see how peppering the Pakistani countryside with seven missiles from a CIA drone could do anything to increase support from the fledgling Pakistani government, and it seems really clear that it is going to spur further anti-American sentiment in the country.

I’m all for fighting the real war on terror and striking at terrorist camps wherever they may be. I may even be receptive to the idea that state sovereignty is largely mythical along borders in the Middle East and pursuing potential terrorist operatives trumps concerns about violating state sovereignty. I even believe it in the best interest of the Pakistanis to let the US fight the brunt of this battle for them, after all it was pro-Taliban elements who struck on Monday (the day of Parliament’s first session):

A bomb blast at a police building in northwestern Pakistan Monday killed three officers and wounded five, state media reported. Several wounded people were rushed to hospital after the attack near the main town of Mingora in the volatile Swat valley where Pakistan’s military has been fighting pro-Taliban militants, police officer Karamat Shah said.

So the question is: why mess with the volatile situation right now? Were the targets such a high priority that the larger political concerns were put aside? Or was this just a revenge operation? I sympathize deeply with the loss of FBI agents killed in the line of duty–they were serving their country in one of the most important ways–but the timing of justice here may wind up getting more Americans and Pakistanis killed in the long-run and threatening the peaceful transition of power in Pakistan.

The strike occurred in northwest Pakistan. Image courtesy of http://www.wordtravels.com/

Many say that we are fighting the war in Iraq at the cost of fighting the “real war on terror” in Afghanistan. If that is true, then what do we make out of the US war on terror being conducted in… Pakistan?

That’s right, apparently the US has launched air strikes in Pakistan–including a strike today killing 18 in a tribal village.

Is it really a good idea to mess with the sovereignty of an already highly unstable and tenuous regional ally?

More on this as it develops.

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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A major diplomatic breakdown is occurring right now in South America.

Chavez (left) hugs Uribe. Shouldn't Uribe have been worried here?

This story has been relegated to the back burner behind the upcoming Democratic primary on Tuesday, among other stories, but it merits some attention here. I will just list some bullet point facts from various sources to give a sense of what is going on, then we’ll move into some brief, and some [being honest] premature analysis, of the situation:

• Colombia’s military ventured one mile into Ecuadoran territory on Saturday to kill a top FARC rebel commander, Raul Reyes.
• Thousands of Ecuadoran and Venezuelan troops have been ordered to Colombia’s border to show outrage at this incursion.
• Hugo Chavez has expelled the Colombian diplomatic mission from Venezuela.

Is this really a region on the brink of war? No, and several well researched news stories point out the following reasons the conflict is unlikely to escalate militarily:

• Trade—Colombian trade with Venezuela is worth $5 billion a year. Trade to Ecuador tops $2 billion a year, including vital foodstuffs. Colombia also supplies 10 percent of Ecuador’s electricity needs. (Follow the link for some great analysis of economic implications from Bloomberg News)
• Legitimacy of the Raid—Colombia did not raid Ecuador for resources, but to capture (or kill) a top rebel commander. What they found, contained in three encrypted computer discs, was worth well over its weight in gold.
  • “One document, apparently written in February, suggests Venezuela recently gave the rebels $300 million, while another suggests the rebels were shopping for 50 kilos of uranium…”
• Political concerns—This article from Time Magazine does a good job of going through the political implications of any border conflict among the three nations. Most importantly:
  • Colombia can’t afford another front in its perpetual battle against the FARC rebels
  • Chavez can’t afford an unpopular war when he is seeking a constitutional referendum
    • Venezuelan oil industry couldn’t handle the uncertainty a conflict would bring
  • International pressure on both Uribe and Chavez to be civilized
  • The perceived, and perhaps real, military superiority of the veteran Colombian army that has been engaged and active for the past several years against the FARC rebels

So why should we care about a little sabre rattling in South America? For one thing it is of particular interest to the US for a several reasons.

• US dependency on oil—Venezuela crude oil supplies remain important to US energy policy
• Colombia as a key US ally in Latin America
• The US role in training and assisting the Colombian military in its fight against FARC rebels and wider role in the “War on Drugs”
• The role of US intelligence services in the raid into Ecuador
• The longstanding clash between Hugo Chavez and the United States, particularly US President Bush

Chavez holds up his battle plans.

Any conflict, even a minor border skirmish, would pit a major US ally in the region (Colombia) against the fledgling alliance of a major US agitator (Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela). For now the evidence seems to be clearly pointing toward another case of Chavez’s showcase brinkmanship, and in all likelihood tensions should be reduced and relations normalized within the next couple of weeks. However, the taste of this clash may linger (especially the cutting of diplomatic ties, even if only briefly).

The divide between the US friendly Latin American countries and Chavez friendly Latin American countries may have just grown deeper still. The effects of this will be felt for awhile, and is something to monitor considering the persistent US interests in the region outlined above.

North Korea has baffled American diplomats and politicians consistently for at least the last twenty years. Now a nuclear state, the question of Korea is even more important for the next President to provide some real solutions on. Hawks want to topple the regime and see a reunification of North and South Korea as the best solution for stability and security in East Asia. Doves want to use international pressure (particularly the 6-party talks) to coerce (convince, persuade?) North Korea into giving up its nuclear program and perhaps even opening a meaningful dialog with the West. Unfortunately, these competing tensions in US foreign policy have led to a 3 steps forward, 2 steps back development in US relations with Korea.

A little less lonely these days?

A few major events have taken place on the peninsula in the past month that indicate a need for Korea to be put on the national radar again. First, the issue that doesn’t involve Gershwin, classical music, or a cultural exchange—a perceived liberalization in Korean economic policy (which may in fact be music to the sound of capitalist reformers outside of Korea, and those hiding themselves within). North Korea, long known to hold major reserves of coal and precious metals, has begun selling its reserves to other countries—drastically increasing its meager foreign trade in a response to looming economic crisis. First let me throw some numbers at you from this excellent Washington Post article on the subject (incidentally, buried on page A19):

• $1.4 billion—total North Korean exports in 2006
• $11 billion—value of recent trade projects undertaken jointly between North and South Korea
• $2 trillion—estimated value of North Korean mineral reserves

Why are these figures significant? Well, not only is North Korea exporting goods and engaging in foreign trade, but also this:

They say that Kim’s government is increasingly willing to lease mines to outside companies and to negotiate joint ventures with foreign governments.

If talking is the first step toward warmer relations between two countries (or a single country and the entire world… and it is) then here is that big first step. The fact that Kim Jong Il’s brutal dictatorship (and make no mistake it is brutal—starving millions of its own people in the early 1990s) is increasingly engaging in trade dialog with neighbor states and allowing foreign countries to lease mines means that slowly the Western, or perhaps just capitalist, culture and way of doing business are going to creep in. A brutal dictatorship may be able to control every aspect of the daily lives of its people, but even Kim Jong Il’s regime can’t force its citizens to unlearn what they have already learned. The trickle of information exchange that these economic efforts bring with them is a start toward an irreversible path of liberalization.

Or is it? In the same article Andrei Lankov, an expert on the North and occasional visitor, states:

More important are Kim’s conflicted feelings about mining, said Lankov… “He sees the money now,” Lankov said. “But he believes that by reforming, he would be committing suicide. So he wants mining done under strict control of North Korean managers.”

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