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Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...
Personally, I feel the term "global cop" referencing the US and it's role as sole superpower is about as overused as the word "terrorist".
I think of the US's role as enforcer.
Enforcer of its own interests.....and by "its" I don't mean the citizenry of the US, I mean the special interests with the influence and control.
I'm having a real hard time guessing what the intent and desired end state of US foreign policy for the region is.
All I know is that the volatility in currencies and commodities in recent years seems to be matched in the volatility of foreign policy(NOT just US, but also UK and France).
Qaddafi wore a black hat up thru post 9/11....until he did a deal renouncing WMDs, paid a fine for his past and well evidenced state backed terrorism, partnered with western intelligence efforts against AQ franchisees, and did deals with western oil companies leading to Tony Blair's visiting Tripoli, kissing his ass and annointing him a white hat good guy.
The French offered to sell their shiniest and most expensive pieces of military kit with the US taking a more muted response but was largely onboard with the switch to "good guy" for Qaddafi.
Fast forward a few years, pro western ME dictatorships fall like dominos, and UK/France supported by the US(since their conventional military force projection capability has been largely self-neutered) stab Qaddafi in the back.
Inconsistent, erratic, volatile.
Is western leadership THAT terribly inept?
Is the goal maybe disruption/dislocation itself?
Or is it maybe as simple as "no plan survives first contact with the enemy"?
In the military(and on corporate civvie street) there is a concept called the OODA loop....Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.
Getting inside an opponent's OODA loop forces a reboot of their decision cycle.
Think and act faster than your opponent can think and act.
Could a hybrid overt/covert intervention in Libya represent an early battle in a war EJ fears is on the horizon, but may have already begun, as well as an effort to get inside an opponent's(or is it opponents'?) strategic OODA loop?
Disrupt non-Western European/US efforts to ring-fence Libya?
Send a message to other oil states that leaving a US/Western European sphere of influence/dollar hegemony by attacking as easier to disrupt oil state has potentially very serious consequences.
Even with the Balkanization risk/mess(including Balkan sized long-term arms accumulation for an eternal civil war), Libya represents an "easy"(relatively speaking) battlespace from a NATO perspective . Location relative to European NATO infrastructure, location relative to friendly/amenable militaries(Egypt for US, Chad for France), location relative to any nations/opposition capable of effective disruption/interdiction, terrain(bar urban/built up areas that might be choked and disrupted without costly urban fighting by western forces) consists of mostly open country/desert which is the easiest terrain to influence/control/dominate at the lowest "cost".
From my perspective, I see a whole lot of layers to this rotten onion:
Domino effect of both western backed and western opposed dictatorships in the region(Syria appears to be sacking Hama again like back in 1982)
Libyan Intervention
Arab World centre of gravity Egypt reboot/force quit
Saudi intervention in Bahrain(as well as it's FAR less successful interdiction of Yemen based insurgents in recent years).....Saudis/Arabs are widely regarded as being militarily inept at the state level(with substantial evidence to support these arguments...as proven in Yemen by Saudi failures.....but their intervention in Bahrain is interesting..to me, I see it as a break towards a self-directed regional foreign policy. I see it as maybe the Saudis are beginning to view the US as an unreliable partner.
Growing Russian energy leverage over Western Europe(successfully opposed under the Reagan Administration during the Cold War).
Persian Iran's quest for nuclear "poison pill" and it's cascading ramifications for Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, and Iraq....it's not just Israel.
Pakistan's growing instability and movement towards nuclear armed failed state status.
I'm sure there's heaps of others to add to the pile.......the number of moving parts in this large cluster of crisis is substantial.
The only thing I know for sure is that I haven't got a clue as to where things are accurately heading for the region, but trying to keep up with where things are(and speculating a bit).
I've had a fair bit of success in promoting this forum to friends and peers both in and out of the military and on/offline.
While I would agree that this forum represents a great perspective on this topic(as stated before I find GRG55's commentary quite enlightening) I would encourage folks to broaden their search a bit to possibly include the Small Wars Journal forum.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/
http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/index.php
I do NOT have a stake in the outcome of promoting it....I'm just a forum member there(promoting iTulip) and here.....but growing frustrated by the lack of cross pollination between the increasingly intertwined subjects of finance/economics and defense/security.
If war/conflict is on the horizon as EJ and others here predict surely it would make sense to try and effectively merge the two disciplines with at least a wee bit of cross pollination as I'm not aware of any individual or community in open source that has managed to do so. That community has their versions of EJ, Bart, GRG55, and Finster.
I've brought this topic up a few times as I think it's quite important....but I think this will be my last effort.
Having blatantly stolen EJ's reference to China's place in the global economy I'll state again my feeling that this global mess feels like the "1930's with 21st century characteristics".
What I'm having a hard time trying to reconcile(and where my feelings may be falling short) is the alignment of nations on "sides" as our risk of conflict(in some form or other be it conventional, nuclear, unconventional, assymmetric, economic, or ?? ) increases. I suspect things might be a lot more fluid and less rigid moving forward.
As the velocity of conflict has increased...I suspect maybe my feeling might be a bit invalid in respect to who's on what side.
A good number of nations chose decisively between mostly two sides during WWII. I'm wondering if we are likely to see a lot more than two sides to the conflict coin...as we inevitably switch from a unipolar to multipolar world again...as well as even more nations choosing to reside in the grey until the dust settles.
Personally, I feel the term "global cop" referencing the US and it's role as sole superpower is about as overused as the word "terrorist".
I think of the US's role as enforcer.
Enforcer of its own interests.....and by "its" I don't mean the citizenry of the US, I mean the special interests with the influence and control.
I'm having a real hard time guessing what the intent and desired end state of US foreign policy for the region is.
All I know is that the volatility in currencies and commodities in recent years seems to be matched in the volatility of foreign policy(NOT just US, but also UK and France).
Qaddafi wore a black hat up thru post 9/11....until he did a deal renouncing WMDs, paid a fine for his past and well evidenced state backed terrorism, partnered with western intelligence efforts against AQ franchisees, and did deals with western oil companies leading to Tony Blair's visiting Tripoli, kissing his ass and annointing him a white hat good guy.
The French offered to sell their shiniest and most expensive pieces of military kit with the US taking a more muted response but was largely onboard with the switch to "good guy" for Qaddafi.
Fast forward a few years, pro western ME dictatorships fall like dominos, and UK/France supported by the US(since their conventional military force projection capability has been largely self-neutered) stab Qaddafi in the back.
Inconsistent, erratic, volatile.
Is western leadership THAT terribly inept?
Is the goal maybe disruption/dislocation itself?
Or is it maybe as simple as "no plan survives first contact with the enemy"?
In the military(and on corporate civvie street) there is a concept called the OODA loop....Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.
Getting inside an opponent's OODA loop forces a reboot of their decision cycle.
Think and act faster than your opponent can think and act.
Could a hybrid overt/covert intervention in Libya represent an early battle in a war EJ fears is on the horizon, but may have already begun, as well as an effort to get inside an opponent's(or is it opponents'?) strategic OODA loop?
Disrupt non-Western European/US efforts to ring-fence Libya?
Send a message to other oil states that leaving a US/Western European sphere of influence/dollar hegemony by attacking as easier to disrupt oil state has potentially very serious consequences.
Even with the Balkanization risk/mess(including Balkan sized long-term arms accumulation for an eternal civil war), Libya represents an "easy"(relatively speaking) battlespace from a NATO perspective . Location relative to European NATO infrastructure, location relative to friendly/amenable militaries(Egypt for US, Chad for France), location relative to any nations/opposition capable of effective disruption/interdiction, terrain(bar urban/built up areas that might be choked and disrupted without costly urban fighting by western forces) consists of mostly open country/desert which is the easiest terrain to influence/control/dominate at the lowest "cost".
From my perspective, I see a whole lot of layers to this rotten onion:
Domino effect of both western backed and western opposed dictatorships in the region(Syria appears to be sacking Hama again like back in 1982)
Libyan Intervention
Arab World centre of gravity Egypt reboot/force quit
Saudi intervention in Bahrain(as well as it's FAR less successful interdiction of Yemen based insurgents in recent years).....Saudis/Arabs are widely regarded as being militarily inept at the state level(with substantial evidence to support these arguments...as proven in Yemen by Saudi failures.....but their intervention in Bahrain is interesting..to me, I see it as a break towards a self-directed regional foreign policy. I see it as maybe the Saudis are beginning to view the US as an unreliable partner.
Growing Russian energy leverage over Western Europe(successfully opposed under the Reagan Administration during the Cold War).
Persian Iran's quest for nuclear "poison pill" and it's cascading ramifications for Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, and Iraq....it's not just Israel.
Pakistan's growing instability and movement towards nuclear armed failed state status.
I'm sure there's heaps of others to add to the pile.......the number of moving parts in this large cluster of crisis is substantial.
The only thing I know for sure is that I haven't got a clue as to where things are accurately heading for the region, but trying to keep up with where things are(and speculating a bit).
I've had a fair bit of success in promoting this forum to friends and peers both in and out of the military and on/offline.
While I would agree that this forum represents a great perspective on this topic(as stated before I find GRG55's commentary quite enlightening) I would encourage folks to broaden their search a bit to possibly include the Small Wars Journal forum.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/
http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/index.php
I do NOT have a stake in the outcome of promoting it....I'm just a forum member there(promoting iTulip) and here.....but growing frustrated by the lack of cross pollination between the increasingly intertwined subjects of finance/economics and defense/security.
If war/conflict is on the horizon as EJ and others here predict surely it would make sense to try and effectively merge the two disciplines with at least a wee bit of cross pollination as I'm not aware of any individual or community in open source that has managed to do so. That community has their versions of EJ, Bart, GRG55, and Finster.
I've brought this topic up a few times as I think it's quite important....but I think this will be my last effort.
Having blatantly stolen EJ's reference to China's place in the global economy I'll state again my feeling that this global mess feels like the "1930's with 21st century characteristics".
What I'm having a hard time trying to reconcile(and where my feelings may be falling short) is the alignment of nations on "sides" as our risk of conflict(in some form or other be it conventional, nuclear, unconventional, assymmetric, economic, or ?? ) increases. I suspect things might be a lot more fluid and less rigid moving forward.
As the velocity of conflict has increased...I suspect maybe my feeling might be a bit invalid in respect to who's on what side.
A good number of nations chose decisively between mostly two sides during WWII. I'm wondering if we are likely to see a lot more than two sides to the conflict coin...as we inevitably switch from a unipolar to multipolar world again...as well as even more nations choosing to reside in the grey until the dust settles.
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