What I'm really not clear on is what seems to be a apples-and-oranges comparison going on in the strategic community regarding the potential threat posed by China.
China - as it is - is not a military threat. Sure, it poses an economic threat, but this is largely of our own making, both in terms of debt burden (self-inflicted, and in extremis something that offers them leverage only as long as we accept it), currency (again, self-inflicted by world monetary authorities who refuse to hold China to 1st-world currency standards), etc.
But while China is clearly a dominant power, one might even say a regional superpower, they utterly lack any ability to project this power outside their immediate region short of lobbing ICBMs. THIS is the defining point of a global superpower (and we discovered the limits of such all-or-nothing leverage from about 1950-1980). Granted, they have a billion-man army. They may even be 'unassailable' in conventional terms, and may able to impose their will militarily on any regional actor like Korea or Japan - that doesn't mean they're a threat to the US.
In short, people seem to be comparing China's 'turtled' strengths with the US's (over?)extended might, and concluding that logical extrapolation of the former means the two will be equivalent in a couple of decades.
Hardly. The threat of China as a 'global superpower' that can contend with the US worldwide, posited for 2035, 2050, 2025 depending on who you're talking to and what his agenda is, would HAVE to include projection capability...which itself introduces orders of magnitude of vulnerability and exposure. To suggest that the US has anything to actually fear from Chinese force-projection on THAT playground assumes an almost fanciful level of Chinese buildup (akin to late-1930's Germany) along with American inattention for a double-handful of decades at least.
No, we have to understand the Chinese buildup for what it is today: an expansion of capabilities certainly, an increased lethality in the neighboring seas which has the bargain double-purpose utility to China of both being useful against other regional entities as well as useful in denying US its (soon-to-be-former) ability to operate with impunity on the water, wherever it chose to. Did we really believe that was an eternal franchise anyway? Maintaining it (if even possible) would require colossal and nonsensical budgetary investments. But their denial of our ability to rummage through their front-pockets at will is hardly a threat to anyone outside of their arms' reach.
Certainly, our commitments to our regional partners require that we expend some effort to maintain our ability to operate in their behalf - to passively accept that certain seas are no-go zones would be foolish. But let's not confuse interests-at-one-remove with any actual denigration of our ability to defend ourselves, even if it seems convenient in an era of shrinking budgets to paint it so.
Ultimately, China won't be the only regional power whose capabilities circumscribe our operational capabilities near their shores, merely the first. We need a robust strategy to face these actors over the next century, and it cannot be by simply building more ships, planes, and subs - that's a dead-end strategy and vulnerable to technological breakthroughs that obsolete our massive investments in bulk (ala the cell-phone networks in the 3rd world vs. hardline phone systems in the 1st). I personally believe that the answer to this is going to be found in orbital capabilities, taking away the 'flatland' operational assumptions that inform a boundary-defining strategy anyway. But that's another subject, for another time.
Finally, the US Navy's assertions that we need to desperately fear the untested, nearly operationally useless* anti-ship ballistic systems despite their lack of actual testing is more likely to be a politically- or budgetarily-relevant assessment; it's hardly credible as a military one.
*the utility of a ballistic-missile-based antiship system is simply nil. Short of global thermonuclear war (where all gloves are off), the idea of a system with the relatively puny goal of sinking a single ship (even a really important one) appearing to all expected sensor systems as a potential ICBM is crazy. That would be as useful as making people think your switchblade is an assault rifle - simply bringing it out will immediately & grossly overescalate a confrontation to the point that your actual ability to inflict damage is made meaningless by the response you've inspired. It's politically useless. Thus the environment in which it could be deployed would already presuppose a complete all-out nuclear war in which case it would probably be more useful to actually HAVE a MiRV'd nuke warhead on that missile, rather than a single shipkiller ANYWAY. It just doesn't make sense, and the fact of China's pushing ahead with it suggests that either its a Potemkin challenge (unlikely they could pull that off for long) or a desperate dice-roll of a strategy being ironically validated by the US naval defense community's overreaction.
28 December, 2010
Enough already about "the cops are bad"
For the people whinging about the 'culture of corruption' and brutality of the police, I have a couple of points:
1) so far I have only seen utterly unsupported assertions - anecdotal evidence quoted as "a trend" or some stoner complaining that "all the cops are" (whatever). Further, any statistics that are shown tend to prove the opposite, that increasing allegations against police are NOT leading to more substantiated cases, are claimed to be "proof" that the cops "control" the system and protect their own from prosecution. Kind of like Global Warming, it's convenient when you posit something that all evidence can be twisted to support.
2) *nobody* making these claims can possibly know anything about the history of police departments and police work, particularly in urban areas. Compare
a) police departments and systems of ombudsmen and recourse for - not to mention media and public sympathy for - people (particularly minorities, immigrants, etc.) who believe they've been mistreated today to say, the 1970s? The 1950s? The 1920s? The 1890s? Read about the police system in New York 1895-1897 when Teddy Roosevelt was NYC Police Commissioner.
b) levels of procedure, both in terms of breadth and depth, applicable to police actions in dealing with the public today vs. the same dates. These procedures are almost universally meant to protect officers AND THE PUBLIC.
c) oversight and supervision of the 'beat cop' (or 'patrol officer' today) vs. the same dates.
d) the general level of violence used against suspects vs. the same dates. PARTICULARLY in terms of (admittedly subjective) the likelihood of lethal force being used against cops vs. the use of lethal force BY police, same timeframes.
e) corruption in law enforcement, same timeframes.
You might assert that today's police have attitude issues, are domineering, brutal, resort too quickly to brutal force and are just generally a-holes. I'd assert that a certain personality type has ALWAYS been drawn to police work, and that while police officers exhibit generally the SAME bell-curve of saints/sinners as any general population I'd concede that there probably is a little 'bubble' of personalities in the domineering/controlling area. HOWEVER, I'd simultaneously assert that this has absolutely not changed over time, while the systems emplaced over the last hundred years (and particularly in the last 20-30 years) *greatly* increase the ability of police departments to 'weed out' the outliers, psychotics, and general bad apples far better than they used to. (In fact, one could argue that for a long time, early police departments didn't really want to weed these guys out, except for the real crazies.)
In short, I think anyone who believes that police officers/departments are worse than before is either arguing from a position of complete ignorance of what "before" was like, and/or simply someone bearing a grudge against police for some slight or injustice (perceived or real, cops are of course not perfect) done to them.
This entirely disregards that I think you'd be hard-pressed to argue that police officers jobs have gotten less stressful and less dangerous over time. This is a whole other issue that would sound too much like a defensive justification, so I haven't even gone into it here.
1) so far I have only seen utterly unsupported assertions - anecdotal evidence quoted as "a trend" or some stoner complaining that "all the cops are" (whatever). Further, any statistics that are shown tend to prove the opposite, that increasing allegations against police are NOT leading to more substantiated cases, are claimed to be "proof" that the cops "control" the system and protect their own from prosecution. Kind of like Global Warming, it's convenient when you posit something that all evidence can be twisted to support.
2) *nobody* making these claims can possibly know anything about the history of police departments and police work, particularly in urban areas. Compare
a) police departments and systems of ombudsmen and recourse for - not to mention media and public sympathy for - people (particularly minorities, immigrants, etc.) who believe they've been mistreated today to say, the 1970s? The 1950s? The 1920s? The 1890s? Read about the police system in New York 1895-1897 when Teddy Roosevelt was NYC Police Commissioner.
b) levels of procedure, both in terms of breadth and depth, applicable to police actions in dealing with the public today vs. the same dates. These procedures are almost universally meant to protect officers AND THE PUBLIC.
c) oversight and supervision of the 'beat cop' (or 'patrol officer' today) vs. the same dates.
d) the general level of violence used against suspects vs. the same dates. PARTICULARLY in terms of (admittedly subjective) the likelihood of lethal force being used against cops vs. the use of lethal force BY police, same timeframes.
e) corruption in law enforcement, same timeframes.
You might assert that today's police have attitude issues, are domineering, brutal, resort too quickly to brutal force and are just generally a-holes. I'd assert that a certain personality type has ALWAYS been drawn to police work, and that while police officers exhibit generally the SAME bell-curve of saints/sinners as any general population I'd concede that there probably is a little 'bubble' of personalities in the domineering/controlling area. HOWEVER, I'd simultaneously assert that this has absolutely not changed over time, while the systems emplaced over the last hundred years (and particularly in the last 20-30 years) *greatly* increase the ability of police departments to 'weed out' the outliers, psychotics, and general bad apples far better than they used to. (In fact, one could argue that for a long time, early police departments didn't really want to weed these guys out, except for the real crazies.)
In short, I think anyone who believes that police officers/departments are worse than before is either arguing from a position of complete ignorance of what "before" was like, and/or simply someone bearing a grudge against police for some slight or injustice (perceived or real, cops are of course not perfect) done to them.
This entirely disregards that I think you'd be hard-pressed to argue that police officers jobs have gotten less stressful and less dangerous over time. This is a whole other issue that would sound too much like a defensive justification, so I haven't even gone into it here.
14 December, 2010
The new attack on Obama: LOL
OK, I'm not fond of Obama, but this latest one is hilarious.
http://www.truth-out.org/sai-v-obama-et-al-hawaiis-legal-case-against-united-states65850
In short, Hawaii's not actually part of the US.
Seriously?
It may shock some people (particularly the Left), but ultimately, there's NOTHING behind the existence of (as far as I'm willing to spend the time thinking about exceptions) any modern state except consensus. There's no document that says "hey, here's the borders Germany's entitled to", or "here's the limits of China" - except insofar as such boundaries were IMPOSED by outside actors strong enough to enforce their limits, and conformed to by the state itself out of a broader sense of what's in its interests.
Look, country A conquers country B. Or, in the case of Hawaii, country B has an "indigneous" (hahahahaha) group 'seize power' and then cede themselves to country A. There's no title, no property document that says "A owns country B" now. If there is, there's ALWAYS some way to impugn it.
There is no such thing as international law. None. What we call international LAW are simply norms of behavior where states have agreed to cooperate in ways that MIMIC the actions of law across borders, but the simple fact is that there is no supra-national organization that has the ability to enforce anything - it's all voluntary.
Everything in the relationships of states - whether they are currently sovereign, independent states, or subject formerly sovereign states such as Hawaii, Scotland, the Navaho, or Bavaria - has to do with POWER. In many cases, the initial absorption of the subject state is a simple question of military force. Ultimately the absorbed state can either stay rebellious, or reconciles itself with its subject status. Eventually (2 generations? 3?) control becomes the norm, and no longer needs to be actively mandated.
Note that in such cases, absorption is not always resisted nor even always negative. States too follow enlightened self-interest. Often the subject can or does rationalize the advantages of being a smaller part of a larger state as a more secure, economically advantageous situation. Independence as a theory is nice, but in practical terms geopolitics is a world red in tooth and claw, and the small or young are often the first preyed upon.
My point is, what happened, happened. Queen Liliuokalani's protests and American concessions notwithstanding, if the US took down the Hawaiian flag and raised their own flag, the fact that it stands uncontested in practical terms makes it reality. Objecting to the legal formalities (the Congressional act of annexation can't have been legal, according to Dr. Sai, because US laws don't apply internationally) doesn't make the ownership of Hawaii any less real. That just makes it arguably an act of conquest instead of legality. Big deal.
The Grotian view of international norms, and legal bases for actions, has been demonstrably false for CENTURIES. Countries conform to norms that they agree with, and ignore ones that they don't, and won't agree unless compelled. Thus any sort of legal basis for the annexation of territory will ALWAYS be contestable later by some hedge-lawyer because SOMEONE will always object, and always have some rationalized basis for their objections...and unless & until that person has an army available to change the current reality, they will remain as irrelevant as ever.
The second point is that as a scholar, Dr. Sai's intellectual credibility is doubtful:
1) he contends that he "...step(s) aside from politics and power and look at Hawaii not through an ethnic or cultural lens, but through the rule of law..." - bull****. Dr. Sai is Hawaiian. To suggest that he's not taking his stance for ethnic (& political) reasons is complete nonsense. Whether his primary motivation is Hawaiian independence, or against Obama, and one goal simply dovetails conveniently with the other, his denial is disingenuous. This isn't to say that his point is de facto wrong, but to obviously perjure himself immediately doesn't add to the value of his conclusions.
2) anyone that is trying to make an academic or legal point and then likens himself to Morpheus in The Matrix isn't really doing anything to incline the rest of us take him seriously.
http://www.truth-out.org/sai-v-obama-et-al-hawaiis-legal-case-against-united-states65850
In short, Hawaii's not actually part of the US.
Seriously?
It may shock some people (particularly the Left), but ultimately, there's NOTHING behind the existence of (as far as I'm willing to spend the time thinking about exceptions) any modern state except consensus. There's no document that says "hey, here's the borders Germany's entitled to", or "here's the limits of China" - except insofar as such boundaries were IMPOSED by outside actors strong enough to enforce their limits, and conformed to by the state itself out of a broader sense of what's in its interests.
Look, country A conquers country B. Or, in the case of Hawaii, country B has an "indigneous" (hahahahaha) group 'seize power' and then cede themselves to country A. There's no title, no property document that says "A owns country B" now. If there is, there's ALWAYS some way to impugn it.
There is no such thing as international law. None. What we call international LAW are simply norms of behavior where states have agreed to cooperate in ways that MIMIC the actions of law across borders, but the simple fact is that there is no supra-national organization that has the ability to enforce anything - it's all voluntary.
Everything in the relationships of states - whether they are currently sovereign, independent states, or subject formerly sovereign states such as Hawaii, Scotland, the Navaho, or Bavaria - has to do with POWER. In many cases, the initial absorption of the subject state is a simple question of military force. Ultimately the absorbed state can either stay rebellious, or reconciles itself with its subject status. Eventually (2 generations? 3?) control becomes the norm, and no longer needs to be actively mandated.
Note that in such cases, absorption is not always resisted nor even always negative. States too follow enlightened self-interest. Often the subject can or does rationalize the advantages of being a smaller part of a larger state as a more secure, economically advantageous situation. Independence as a theory is nice, but in practical terms geopolitics is a world red in tooth and claw, and the small or young are often the first preyed upon.
My point is, what happened, happened. Queen Liliuokalani's protests and American concessions notwithstanding, if the US took down the Hawaiian flag and raised their own flag, the fact that it stands uncontested in practical terms makes it reality. Objecting to the legal formalities (the Congressional act of annexation can't have been legal, according to Dr. Sai, because US laws don't apply internationally) doesn't make the ownership of Hawaii any less real. That just makes it arguably an act of conquest instead of legality. Big deal.
The Grotian view of international norms, and legal bases for actions, has been demonstrably false for CENTURIES. Countries conform to norms that they agree with, and ignore ones that they don't, and won't agree unless compelled. Thus any sort of legal basis for the annexation of territory will ALWAYS be contestable later by some hedge-lawyer because SOMEONE will always object, and always have some rationalized basis for their objections...and unless & until that person has an army available to change the current reality, they will remain as irrelevant as ever.
The second point is that as a scholar, Dr. Sai's intellectual credibility is doubtful:
1) he contends that he "...step(s) aside from politics and power and look at Hawaii not through an ethnic or cultural lens, but through the rule of law..." - bull****. Dr. Sai is Hawaiian. To suggest that he's not taking his stance for ethnic (& political) reasons is complete nonsense. Whether his primary motivation is Hawaiian independence, or against Obama, and one goal simply dovetails conveniently with the other, his denial is disingenuous. This isn't to say that his point is de facto wrong, but to obviously perjure himself immediately doesn't add to the value of his conclusions.
2) anyone that is trying to make an academic or legal point and then likens himself to Morpheus in The Matrix isn't really doing anything to incline the rest of us take him seriously.
11 December, 2010
MN GOP are stupid.
http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/eve...cle/id/185541/
"The Minnesota GOP is punishing two former governors and a former U.S. senator for backing the Independence Party candidate in the governor’s race, according to Minnesota Public Radio.
MPR reports that delegates to the party’s state central committee meeting voted 59-55 Saturday to bar 18 Republicans from party activities for two years, including the 2012 Republican National Convention."
I hate my state. The majority of the people in MN are either card-carrying communists, bleeding hearts, or white-guilt limousine liberals. The Republicans have gone from a centrist party to a cabal of right-wing zealots whose entire political platform starts and ends with abortion.
I can understand the party's anger with Carlson. I thought he was a decent governor who was a little too socially liberal for me but a great administrator and conciliator, particularly when faced with MN's traditional Democratic perma-lock on the house and senate. Unfortunately, he seems to have some sort of personal baggage over Pawlenty, and (seemingly and mistakenly) blamed him for the rightward swing of the GOP.
Because of this personal issue with Pawlenty, Carlson has let himself be used by the Left in this state starting with MPR as their 'cat's paw' Republican, trotting him out to publicly criticize just about everything Pawlenty has done. That's sad, but the humiliation of playing such an obvious role is its own punishment.
But Quie? Really? I met the guy right after his governorship and he always seemed to be a warm, likable person as well as centrist politically. In MN to win the governorship you COULDN'T be far-right wing. This is a blue state, sorry, but that's a fact.
The GOP nationally has always been a minority party, and thus has always been a little better at marching together even if we disagree on minor issues...we've simply had to, to be successful at all. This repudiation of a couple of Republican icons in the state is just stupid, and shows how disconnected the MN GOP is.
I've regretted my vote for Ventura for years, and I'm generally a "party" voter, but this act by the GOP has made me accept that I need to seriously consider the next IP candidate regardless of winnability. Nice job, morons.
"The Minnesota GOP is punishing two former governors and a former U.S. senator for backing the Independence Party candidate in the governor’s race, according to Minnesota Public Radio.
MPR reports that delegates to the party’s state central committee meeting voted 59-55 Saturday to bar 18 Republicans from party activities for two years, including the 2012 Republican National Convention."
I hate my state. The majority of the people in MN are either card-carrying communists, bleeding hearts, or white-guilt limousine liberals. The Republicans have gone from a centrist party to a cabal of right-wing zealots whose entire political platform starts and ends with abortion.
I can understand the party's anger with Carlson. I thought he was a decent governor who was a little too socially liberal for me but a great administrator and conciliator, particularly when faced with MN's traditional Democratic perma-lock on the house and senate. Unfortunately, he seems to have some sort of personal baggage over Pawlenty, and (seemingly and mistakenly) blamed him for the rightward swing of the GOP.
Because of this personal issue with Pawlenty, Carlson has let himself be used by the Left in this state starting with MPR as their 'cat's paw' Republican, trotting him out to publicly criticize just about everything Pawlenty has done. That's sad, but the humiliation of playing such an obvious role is its own punishment.
But Quie? Really? I met the guy right after his governorship and he always seemed to be a warm, likable person as well as centrist politically. In MN to win the governorship you COULDN'T be far-right wing. This is a blue state, sorry, but that's a fact.
The GOP nationally has always been a minority party, and thus has always been a little better at marching together even if we disagree on minor issues...we've simply had to, to be successful at all. This repudiation of a couple of Republican icons in the state is just stupid, and shows how disconnected the MN GOP is.
I've regretted my vote for Ventura for years, and I'm generally a "party" voter, but this act by the GOP has made me accept that I need to seriously consider the next IP candidate regardless of winnability. Nice job, morons.
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