ISIS and the National Interest

What is a “national interest”? The definition I found in Merriam-Webster says this [as attributed to one Hans J.Morgenthau]: the interest of a nation as a whole held to be an independent entity separate from the interests of subordinate areas or groups and also of other nations or supranational groups.

Practically speaking, an American “national interest” is whatever the occupant of the White House says it is. When I was a grad student at the Joint Military Intelligence College over 20 years ago, I took a course that was about strategic decision-making. Our textbook was written by a guy named Donald Nuechterlein. He’s a political scientist who developed a National Interest Matrix in 1979 that identifies four basic interests that could apply to any state:

1. Defense of homeland [the physical protection of sovereign territory];
2. Economic well-being [efforts to create favorable economic circumstance for a state];
3. Favorable world order [efforts by a state to establish abroad a world order favorable to its interests];
4. Promotion of values [the extension of national ideology into international politics as far as possible].

He further broke out the intensity of a nation’s interests:

1. Survival [Critical];
2. Vital [Dangerous];
3. Major [Serious];
4. Peripheral [Bothersome].

Last week the Obama Administration released its National Security Strategy for 2015. This strategy lists the following as our top national interests for the coming year:

1. The security of the United States, its citizens, and U.S. allies and partners;
2. A strong, innovative, and growing U.S. economy in an open international economic system that promotes opportunity and prosperity;
3. Respect for universal values at home and around the world; and
4. A rules-based international order advanced by U.S. leadership that promotes peace, security, and opportunity through stronger cooperation to meet global challenges.

Since I left DC in 1992, I hadn’t given Nuechterlein much thought. But when I heard that President Obama wants the US Congress to authorize the use of military force against ISIS, I wondered where, given the president’s priorities above, does the fight against ISIS fall on Nuechterlein’s matrix of national interests.

Basic Interest	Survival [Critical]	Vital [Dangerous]	Major [Serious]	Peripheral [Bothersome]
Defense of the homeland
Economic well-being
Favorable world order
Promotion of values

By asking Nuechterlein’s questions, here’s what I came up with:

1. Does survival of our homeland depend on whether we fight ISIS? No. ISIS is not an existential threat to us. It may be to Iraq, and probably is to those who aren’t Sunni Muslims, but not to our country.

2. Does ISIS threaten our economic well-being? In my view, no. Thanks to fracking, the US has become the world’s biggest oil producer. While we still import oil from Saudi Arabia, we don’t import as much as we once did. But we aren’t totally rid of Saudi oil. Our oil supply isn’t in danger – yet. ISIS doesn’t like Saudi Arabia. If ISIS threatens Saudi Arabia, the answer to this question could turn into a “yes.”

3. Is ISIS a threat to a world order favorable to us? Yes. One of the current administration’s priorities is to “seek stability and peace in the Middle East and North Africa.” Having an organization such as ISIS running amok in the Middle East is quite detrimental to stability. We tend to see “Middle East peace” through the prism of “Israel vs. the Arab World,” but oddly enough, Israel isn’t part of the calculus as far as ISIS is concerned. Sure, they want to get rid of the Israelis, but that isn’t their focus now. The way I see it, this is more of a product of the Sunni-Shi’ite schism in Islam. They’re fighting other Muslims who don’t agree with them, and if Christians get in the way [like the Yezidis], killing or converting them to Islam is a bonus. Perhaps this isn’t “ethnic cleansing” as we saw in the former Yugoslavia, but it is “religious cleansing.” To some this would be a distinction without a difference. You be the judge.

4. Does ISIS violate our sense of fairness, do they treat people who disagree with them disrespectfully? Yes. They are using Mao’s maxim that political power comes from the barrel of a gun, or in their case the point of a sword. And let’s face it, ISIS are probably the only guys who get off on images of decapitations and burning people alive. Such images offend Western sensibilities, but not these guys.

So in using Nuechterlein’s matrix, the interests at stake here fall into the “Major” and “Peripheral” category. Where does Nuechterlein draw the line over the question of whether to commit US forces to defeat these or any other bad guys? I don't know.

Joseph S. Nye, Jr. is an esteemed political scientist who used to be the Dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He often writes articles for Foreign Affairs, and currently serves on the Foreign Affairs Policy Board. His pet rock is “soft power,” which in his own words is “the ability to attract through cultural and ideological appeal.” As such, he advocates we should only use “hard power” [the military and economic ability to buy and coerce] when “our humanitarian interests are reinforced by the existence of other strong national interests.” In Nye’s eyes, is the ISIS problem more than just a “Major” or “peripheral” interest? Is the humanitarian interest reinforced by the interest to defend the homeland and/or the interest of our economic well-being? I would argue the answer to that question is “no.”

Is the ISIS problem a case for the use of “hard power” or “soft power?” The Obama Administration has “split the baby” in advocating the use of some “hard power” [military air power, supplying of small lethal arms to ISIS opponents] while leaving other “hard power” [namely ground troops] on the sidelines. I haven't seen any attempt to use any "soft power." But in fairness, is "soft power" useful against guys who burn people alive?

Tony’s take: I don't see this as an American problem to solve. This is a Middle East problem best solved by those who live there. Leave us out of it. Others may disagree, and they probably will.

Ivan’s War: Life & Death in the Red Army, 1939-45

Originally posted in Tony's Music and Screening Room, April 25, 2011...

Thousands of books have been written about World War II. I should know – a bunch of them reside in by bookshelves, much to Carol’s annoyance. But there haven’t been that many that have been written about life in the Soviet Red Army. What was it like for the Soviet soldier? We have been treated to what it was like for GI Joe, the British Tommies, or even the German Fritz. But what about the Soviet Ivan? Catherine Merridale writes an excellent piece of scholarship of the Soviet soldier, who it can be safely said had to endure much more than soldiers from other nations that fought in the Second World War.

Thirty million Ivans served in the Red Army during World War II. Eight million of these Ivans were killed, far more than American GIs or British Tommies. British historian Catherine Merridale applied to teach some history in Russian schools. She asked her students what it was they wanted to learn. She said that without hesitation, they all said they wanted to learn about the Second World War. During Soviet times there was the “official” version of The Great Patriotic War. At the center of the official version was the Soviet Hero myth. You can find it carved into stone on many a Soviet wartime memorial. It is described in countless wartime songs, in paintings and in epic poetry. The Soviet hero was an ideal everyman. He is simple, healthy, strong and kind, far-sighted, selfless, and unafraid of death. There was no hint of panic, failure, soldiers’ fear, self-mutilation, cowardice, or rape. Soviet accounts mention little of trauma, battle stress, or even depression. So rigid was the adherence to the official Soviet history of the Great Patriotic War that it was not a topic for scholarly research.

It is not surprising to me that tales of individual heroism in the Soviet Red Army are few and far between. Soviet society, and the dictatorship of the proletariat that ruled it, placed more emphasis on the success on the collective rather than the heroic exploits of the individual. If heroism was depicted, it was only in the guise of “this is what OUR state produced.” Genuine stories of death and struggle had been turned into patriotic myth. But in the 20 years since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, people are free to ask new questions. University students of today were not alive are too young to remember the state parades commemorating the victory over Germany. They haven’t had the myths of the Great Patriotic War continually crammed down their throats like their Soviet contemporaries. They’re free to ask new questions, and they’re asking them now.

By the time the war started for the Soviet Union in 1941, the generation that fought the Great Patriotic War had endured violence on an unimaginable scale. There was World War I between 1914-18. A three-year civil war that immediately followed the war brought shortages of everything from heating oil to bread and blankets, epidemic disease, and a new thing Lenin called “class war.” Famine followed in 1921, then Stalin, then an even more cruel famine that claimed seven million victims. Soviet society tore itself apart with many five-year plans for economic growth, peasants uprooted from lands and herded into collective farms. These folks endured a lot. Because of these events that preceded the Second World War, these are but some of the many things that contributed to the citizens’ antipathy toward the Soviet regime when the bombs started dropping on June 22, 1941.

For the first two summers of the war, the Wermacht looked invincible. Their tanks and horses raced eastward over sun-baked ground, encircling entire Soviet divisions at a time while instilling panic in the rest. There was a complete lack of preparedness by the Red Army. To what does Catherine Merridale attribute this lack of preparation? Politics, and the emphasis on it above all else, including the training of an army to do what it was meant to do. In a look at a typical training schedule, Merridale uncovers one of many hours of lecture on politics, followed by working in the fields in order to feed the troops. If there was time left over, recruits trained with wooden rifles and cardboard tanks. Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail Tukachevsky had a plan. His plan was a defense in depth of the Soviet Union. Stalin got rid of Tukachevsky and many who thought like him during the purges in 1937. Tukachevsky’s defense doctrine was replaced with one emphasizing the offensive. This emphasis on the offensive had the effect of feeding Soviet troops into a German meat grinder. In Stalin’s mind, the giving up even an inch of ground to be able to construct a decent defensive position was treasonous. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops would be captured, sometimes within hours. For instance, in the fight for Kiev, the Soviets lost 750,000 men killed, wounded, or captured. Two and a half million soldiers were captured by the Germans in the first five months of the war. The Germans captured so many prisoners they didn’t know what to do with them. By the end of the war, the Soviet Red Army was destroyed and completely rebuilt three times. We Americans have no concept of how such a thing could happen.

When war started for the Soviet Union in 1941, Soviet troops were poorly trained, poorly armed, and poorly fed. If one has ever seen the movie “The Enemy at the Gates” [about the Battle of Stalingrad], the scene where troops are being forced into battle without rifles is an accurate one. These men were told there was an arms shortage, and if they wanted a weapon, they would have to get one from a dead comrade who fell before them. The Soviet regime imagined how the general population would react to stories of official incompetence, of total disregard for human life, and for not giving their sons [and a lot of times their daughters too] the means to fight their invaders. They were hungry, subsisting on a diet of soup, kasha, bread and tea. Rampant pilfering of army warehouses and supply trucks diverted more desirable food, as well as other war material, to the black market. Soldiers, lacking spades, dug trenches with their helmets, the same helmets in which they boiled potatoes. It’s no wonder that they wanted to keep such stories from the public. Imagine if such things happened in this country – imagine the outrage that would take hold in a free society. It was in the Soviet regime’s best interests to keep such things secret and to build up the Stalin personality cult, with Stalin as the sole architect of victory in the Great Patriotic War.

After the collapse of Soviet communism, scholars were given access to millions of documents that the Soviets had kept classified. In these records the author found bundles of soldiers’ letters the reports of the military and secret police, the army’s own notes about troop morale. Soldiers had been forbidden to keep diaries, but many did anyway. The author traveled to battle sites, to Kursk, to Sevastopol, Kerch, Kiev, Smolensk and in each place, she tried to find out who had fought, what they did, what the local people saw. She interviewed over two hundred veterans. She was able to look at archives that until then were kept secret from the public. She looked at the forbidden diaries and field reports. Theses soldiers came to understand what happened to their loved ones at the hands of the Germans in occupied territory. Until 1944, most of the Great Patriotic War was fought on Soviet soil. She describes an army fueled by rage and vodka, whipped into a frenzy by its political officers. In practice, this meant rape, pillage and plunder on a scale that has yet to be recognized. The Red Army, Ms. Merridale writes, embarked "on an orgy of war crimes." Yet in none of the interviewers, none of the Soviet veterans cop to taking part in any such activity.

At war’s end, Ivan didn’t reap any of the benefits like a GI Bill, no postwar prosperity. To relive such memories [besides the ones the state created for them], the shock and distress they witnessed in combat, were too painful for them. Their wartime experiences manifested themselves in the postwar period in the forms of heart disease, hypertension, and gastric disorders. Ms. Merridale describes this as part of the hidden story of the Great Patriotic War. They came home to a country that needed rebuilding. They also came home to a county still controlled by a paranoid madman who imagined there were enemies everywhere. As Merridale writes, “the motherland was never conquered, but it enslaved itself.”

Ukraine Today

Things are going from bad to worse in what used to be the Soviet Union.  In July 2014, “separatist” forces shot down a Malaysian jumbo jet in the Donetsk Oblast.  The initial reaction was one of shock, horror, much finger-pointing between Russia and Ukraine, and much gnashing of teeth, but in the months since this event it has receded into the background noise of other events happening in the region.  The European Union and the United States have imposed several rounds of sanctions on Russia over its annexation of the Crimea and support for the separatists.  The ruble tanked, the bottom fell out of oil prices and the Russian economy contracted.  There are some in the West who believe that because of these events, Vladimir Putin would hesitate to take any action in Ukraine to further Russian interests.  What Western decision-makers don’t understand is that Vladimir Putin doesn’t care.  Those developments are mere speed bumps on the way to Vlad’s vision of the way things ought to be.  That vision is to keep Ukraine as a “non-aligned” nation.  That means no partnership with the EU, and definitely no NATO membership.  Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said “only a nonaligned Ukraine may escape further territorial disintegration.” Apparently, Ukraine didn’t get the memo. 

In June 2014, newly-elected Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko took office and began to implement promises he made during his presidential campaign, mainly those about getting closer to Western Europe.  Later that same month he signed free trade and association agreements with the European Union.  This allows Ukraine to sell their goods to the EU duty-free.  Mr. Poroshenko sees complete integration with the EU to be a ten-fifteen year process.  In December 2014, the Ukrainian parliament passed, and Poroshenko signed, a new law that abandons Ukraine’s non-aligned status.  Poroshenko indicated that when Ukraine is able to meet NATO standards [his estimation: five-six years from now], there will be a referendum to decide whether to join NATO.  It is not a coincidence that fighting between Ukrainian regulars and “separatists” in Donetsk has resumed since the new Ukrainian law took effect.  Not only has fighting resumed in Donetsk [it never really stopped, but it has escalated], but now the “separatists” are aiming for Mariupol.  Mariupol sits on the coast of the Sea of Azov.  Taking it would be one step toward establishing a “land bridge” between Russia and Crimea.  It would also deny another port to Ukraine, further strengthening Russia’s hand in the Black Sea.

In September 2014, Russia, Ukraine, the Russia-backed “separatists” and the OSCE signed the Minsk Protocol.  This agreement was supposed to stop the fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine [Donetsk and Luhansk], and create some kind of demilitarized zone from which both sides would withdraw their heavy weapons.   The cease fire really didn’t take – Ukraine didn’t withdraw its heavy weapons, and Russia continued to supply the “separatists” with munitions, heavy weapons and “volunteers.”  Russia is engaging in a “hybrid war,” were commandos without insignia are slipping across the border to engage Ukrainian troops, and Russian military equipment and material are appearing in eastern Ukraine where none had been there before.  The Ukrainian “separatists” are on the offensive, but Ukrainian defenders refuse to go away.  The front has stabilized, but the separatists are not content with controlling only 40 percent of the Donbas region.  And so the war of attrition continues.

For the foreseeable future, expect Vladimir Putin to continue to support the Ukrainian “separatists.”  In the “no brainer” category, the Russians will continue to give material support to the “people’s republics” either with arms and/or “volunteers.”   Russia will continue to deny any involvement, and the West will continue to think economic sanctions with alter Russian behavior.  The Ukrainians aren’t strong enough to kick these “separatists” out of Ukraine, and the “people’s republics” aren’t strong enough to defeat Ukraine without Russian help.  Ukraine will remain weak and divided.  For the longer term, I would expect Russia to act in Ukraine as they are now acting in Abkhazia.  Russia and Abkhazia have entered into a joint forces agreement, which integrates the foreign policy and the military command structure with Russia.  The Russians now consider an attack on Abkhazia as an attack on Russia.  This arrangement keeps Georgia divided and weak, and more importantly, out of NATO.  Since I don’t expect that Ukraine will be victorious over the “separatists,” I would expect the “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk to enter a similar arrangement with Russia that it now enjoys with Abkhazia.  

1 Feb 15 Update -
Here's an excellent depiction of the current situation in Donetsk and Luhansk that I found on Radio Free Europe's page:

This one is a little more detailed.  How many Ukrainian regulars are in that pocket?

The Spirit of Attack - by Bruce Gordon & Friends

About ten years ago I received a book in the mail.  It was unexpected because I hadn’t ordered any books from the usual suspects [Amazon, Barnes & Noble], and it arrived by post rather than by UPS or FedEx.  So I opened it and saw the title:  The Spirit of Attack – Flying Stories from Bruce Gordon & Friends.  Bruce Gordon is a retired US Air Force fighter pilot.  He is also the dad of my best friend from my childhood days in Fairborn, Brian Gordon.   When I had an Air Force career, I didn’t like fighter pilots.  They were just so much better than the rest of us who didn’t fly – just ask them how great they are and they will tell you.  Hell, they might even tell you without asking.  But I digress…  So having received an unsolicited book from a retired fighter jock gave me pause – should I toss it in the garbage, or should I read it?  Then I looked at the inside of the cover, and there reads a little blurb about this book being a limited edition, printed at home one at a time.  So I thought “ok, he went to the trouble to print one for me, and he is Brian’s dad, so I’ll read it.”

What is "the spirit of attack?”  The words “the spirit of attack” comes from Adolf Galland’s memoir The First and the Last.  He was a Luftwaffe ace during World War II who flew 750 combat missions and was credited with 104 air-to-air kills.  He later commanded all Luftwaffe fighters.  There is a quote from him that states “only the spirit of attack borne in a brave heart will bring success to any fighter aircraft no matter how highly developed the aircraft may be.”  To me that says aircraft limitations aren’t a barrier to those with the killer instinct.  I could be wrong since I’m not a flier.  Bruce Gordon’s squadron at Elmendorf AFB, Alaska had this quote on a sign above the entrance.

Why did he want to fly?  Everybody has their reasons for wanting to fly.  Adolf Galland’s interest in flying began when a group of air enthusiasts brought a glider club to the region where he lived.  Neil Armstrong’s desire to fly kindled when his father used to take him to the Cleveland Air Races.  Bruce Gordon’s reason:  he was interested in global airpower when he was in school.  He doesn’t say in as many words, but I’m guessing he thought the best way to study the applications of airpower was to join the best air force in the world and see for himself first-hand.

What did Bruce Gordon fly?  T-28, T-33, T-34, T-37 [the fearless Tweet], F-100, F-102, F-106.  He says he flew the O-1, the F-4, and even got some time in a B-25.  It would have been nice to read about his time in the B-25, but alas there was nothing to be found here.  The big takeaway I got from this was that he loved his F-106 for its high maneuverability.

Where did he fly?  Washington, Alaska [where he chased Russian Bears], Michigan, Korea, and Vietnam. With the exception of his combat tour in Vietnam, Bruce Gordon’s role was as an air-to-air interceptor.  He flew Close Air Support missions in Vietnam.  When his tip-of-the-spear flying days came to a close, he became an aircraft maintenance office at Wright Patterson AFB, OH.  It was there I met the Gordon family in 1973.

My favorite Bruce Gordon story – Of all the stories in the book [and there are a lot of them], my favorite Bruce story occurred in Korea.  He was part of a four-ship that was flying CAPs over the Sea of Japan [“East Sea” if you’re Korean].  They were flying top cover for an RC-121 ELINT collector [forerunner of the RC-135 Rivet Joint] flying in international waters.  He was in the middle of a six-month deployment to my old stomping grounds, Osan AB.  In the not-too-distant past prior to his deployment, the DANKs [“Dumb Ass North Koreans” if you’re wondering] captured the USS Pueblo.  Just before his deployment, the DANKs shot down an RC-121 in international waters, killing all aboard.  The only thing you need to know about recce birds, it’s that they are “alone, unarmed and unafraid” [or as we used to say in SAC “alone, unarmed and scared shitless”].  Soon after this incident the Air Force decided these unarmed recce birds needed some protection in this rough neighborhood.  One time while they were on

patrol, some 20 MiGs from Wonsan reacted to an RC-121 while he and his flight were tanking up.  Once they were refueled Bruce and Company returned to where they could protect the RC-121.  In the process, these four US fighters scared off 20 North Korean MiGs without firing a shot.  That’ll show the DANKs…

Combat – Bruce saw combat in Vietnam.  He flew 132 combat missions.  Did he get any air-to-air kills?  No, but air-to-air wasn’t his job.  He flew F-100s in an air-to-mud role – breaking things and killing people, the Air Force’s two core competencies.  He did this while the bad guys were shooting at him.  Oftentimes he would fly interdiction mission along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and Cambodia.  Other times saw him supporting Troops in Contact, which he considered their most dangerous mission.  Here you are flying under the envelope of most SAMs [except perhaps MANPADs], but you are within range of small arms fire.  Killing bad guys is easy – killing them and NOT killing your own guys who are close by is a lot harder.  Close Air Support is a tough business.  They would carry Cluster Bomb Units [CBUs] and napalm, and once they dropped their ordnance they strafed the enemy with their 20mm cannons, all at about 50 feet off the deck.  When I was stationed in Cyprus, I often got to watch RAF Tornados practice their low-level passes at that height.  It’s closer to the ground than you would think.  For one engagement to support Troops in Contact, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.  For the uninitiated, that’s a pretty big deal.

Are there any tidbits in the book that don’t involve personal “there I was” stories?  Yes, there are.  There are thumbnail sketches of a few basic air combat maneuvers.  They go by the names “high-speed yo-yo,” “low-speed yo-yo,” “scissors,” and the “barrel roll attack.”  While professing not to be a book about air tactics, these thumbnail sketches of some basic air tactics serve to illustrate that knowledge of how to use an aircraft’s energy can influence a successful outcome in air-to-air combat.  As a non-flier, I found this bit fascinating.  As he was writing this book he might have dumbed it down for readers like me, but one doesn’t get the impression.  I understood what he had to say without my intelligence being insulted.  

Eddie Rickenbacker - he met Eddie Rickenbacker!  How cool is that?  Eddie Rickenbacker a genuine hero [American World War I “ace of aces” (26 kills) and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient], but he is also world-renowned.  The two pilots have a shared heritage.  Both flew for the 94^th Fighter Squadron, the famed “Hat in the Ring” squadron.

There are quite a few “there I was” kind of non-combat related stories peppered throughout the book.  One story that sticks out is one when his aircraft lost power, and it illustrates how not to panic when all seems lost.  There were some stories that interested me personally.  One such story involves a picture of Bruce being carried away from his jet on the shoulders of his crew chiefs.  I had seen the picture a long time ago.  It was taken on the occasion of him shooting down a BOMARC surface-to-air missile over the Gulf of Mexico.  He had been the first pilot to do so.  There are other personal stories – some that I had heard before, others that I hadn’t.  Those that I hadn’t heard before helped me fill in some blanks in the Gordon family story.

To flesh out the rest of the book, there are stories from some of Bruce's fighter pilot comrades, many of which take place in Alaska.  One of his comrades has quite a few Korean War stories to tell, all of which are a good read.  The most interesting of all of these stories are at the back of the book.  Told from the point of view of both American and Romanian pilots, they tell of what happened over the skies of Ploesti, Romania in 1943.

Recommendation:  If I didn’t already own a copy, I would buy it.  I would do so not because his son is my best friend, but because I like the stories of those who have had enemies shoot at them and live to tell the tale.

The Romanian Revolution 25 Years Later - Nicolae Ceauşescu Is Still Dead

There I was - a brand new 1Lt at Beale AFB.  I joined the Air Force because of those damn Communists, and then something happened. Freedom was breaking out everywhere in Eastern Europe.  1989 was the beginning of the end for Communism in Eastern Europe.  In June of that year, Poland held open elections, resulting in its first non-Communist government in 40 years.  In October, Hungary made many changes.  It ceased to be a “people’s republic,” and passed legislation that guaranteed human and civil rights, made provisions for free, fair and multi-party elections, and established separate executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.  On November 9^th the Berlin Wall fell, effectively ending the German Democratic Republic.  A week later the Velvet Revolution commenced in Czechoslovakia.  Vaclav Havel became the first non-Communist president of Czechoslovakia since 1948 in December.  In Bulgaria, longtime Communist leader Todor Zhivkov was replaced by a more liberal Communist government.  The new government repealed restrictions on free speech and assembly.  In December the Bulgarian Communists renounced their monopoly on power, which led to free and fair elections in 1990.  All of these events were relatively peaceful.  The exception to this non-violence was Romania.

It started in a place called Timoşoara.  There was a Hungarian Reformed church pastor named László Tőkés.  He was at the center of a protest movement against Romania’s Systemization policy.  In short, this was a policy of rural resettlement.  Villages were to become urban industrial centers, the result of which was the demolition of small villages, churches and many older buildings which would be replaced with “modern” apartment buildings.  People were evicted from their homes and relocated to these apartment buildings.  The peasant way of life disappeared under concrete.  To say the least, the huddled masses weren’t pleased.  Tőkés made his critiques about the systemization policy on Hungarian TV.  This got the attention of Romania’s secret state police, the Securitate.  The Securitate tried to evict Tőkés from his home, but his parishioners wouldn’t have it.  On December 16, 1989 they intervened to stop the Securitate from executing Tőkés’ eviction.  As the day wore on, more protesters against the Securitate gathered, and soon the protest against Tőkés’ eviction became an anti-Communist protest.  The Securitate tear gassed the protesters, and they used water cannons to disperse them.  The next day the protests resumed, but this day the protesters broke into the local Party headquarters and ransacked the place.  They tried to burn the place down, but the military stopped them.  The unrest in Timoşoara continued for five days.  According to the Library of Congress Federal Research Division, Nicolae Ceauşescu ordered the minister of national defense to fire on the crowd in order to end the demonstrations. Gunfire by the Securitate killed and wounded scores of demonstrators.

What caused this discontent in Romania?  For most of the 1980s Romania was living under an austerity program.  Wanting to be free of foreign debt, Nicolae Ceauşescu decided to ration practically everything – food, gas, heating – in order to export everything else to pay down the debt.  Wages were low, and there were massive shortages of everything.  The infant mortality rate in Romania was the highest in Europe.  The Romanian standard of living for the great unwashed was low.  The Securitate and its huge network of informants was everywhere, enabling Ceauşescu to rule Romania with an iron fist.  Widespread poverty made Ceauşescu and the Communist party unpopular.  Ceauşescu and his cronies lived in palatial mansions while the huddled masses suffered.  On top of all of this was the aforementioned systemization program.

On December 20th, Ceauşescu returned from a trip to Iran.  Events were spinning out of control, so Ceauşescu decided to give a nationally-televised speech to a mass meeting staged in Bucharest.  It started out as an ordinary speech, with Ceauşescu bloviating the usual Communist bilge about his regime’s accomplishments.  The hired party hacks were up front.  They clapped and cheered at his every pronouncement.  But after about eight minutes things changed drastically.  The crowd started to chant "Ti-mi-șoa-ra! Ti-mi-șoa-ra!"  Ceauşescu froze – he didn’t know what to do.  Twenty years of a cult of personality left Ceauşescu without a clue how to deal with masses of people who disagreed with him.  He was dumbfounded, and even worse, was seen by many to be dumbfounded.  The people were no longer afraid of him.  Then there was what sounded like fireworks and gunshots, and word spread that the Securitate was firing on the crowd.  The crowds began to storm the building from which he gave his speech.  The army kept them out.  Ceauşescu was hustled inside, as rioting continued throughout the night.  The following day the army withdrew their support from Ceauşescu and went over to the other side.  Ceauşescu and his wife fled Bucharest by helicopter.

They first flew to his villa at Snagov, where Ceauşescu tried to contact local party leaders [he failed].  They found themselves in Boteni, near a military base.  The helicopter pilot told Ceauşescu that they’d been spotted on radar and would be blown out of the sky at any minute.  After landing they hijacked a car at gunpoint to try to get away.  He told the scared driver that there was a coup in Bucharest, and that he intended to organize resistance at Tȃrgovişte.  The driver took Ceauşescu to a cooperative farm.  It was here that the police finally caught up with the Ceauşescus, three hours after they fled Bucharest.  They were driven around in an armored car until a decision about their future was made.  As long as the Ceauşescus were alive, his supporters would continue the fighting and killing.  A short trial was arranged, during which Ceauşescu refused to recognize the court’s authority.  It didn’t take long before the court reached its pre-determined decision – execution.  After the Ceauşescus’ sentence was pronounced [even their defense “lawyer” asked for the death penalty], they suddenly realized their sentences were going to be carried out immediately.  They were taken outside and shot.  For every bullet the hit Nicolae Ceauşescu, ten hit his wife Elena.  She was even more-hated than he was.  The execution was on Christmas Day.  They were buried in simple graves in different parts of a Bucharest cemetery.

And there was much rejoicing...

November 9th - a date in German History

Wow.  It’s been 25 years since the Berlin Wall came down.  Where has the time gone?  I was still a 2Lt at Beale AFB, CA, getting ready to turn 27 the next day.  It was just another day for Carol and I and our two dogs.  As is my wont I was channel surfing on TV when I saw this strange image on CNN.  There were people standing on top of the Berlin Wall.  Ever since I could remember, I knew that whoever came close to the Wall from the East German side usually ended up dead, and yet here were all these people standing on it.  What the hell happened?

In the summer of 1989, Hungary [still a Warsaw Pact country at the time] pretty much dismantled their armed border with Austria.  East Germans vacationing in Hungary found this out and began to flee to Austria by the thousands.  After a while the Hungarians refused to let more East Germans cross into Austria.  Instead of returning to East Germany, these Germans flooded the West German embassy in Budapest.  The same thing happened in Czechoslovakia.  East Germans flooded the West German embassy in Prague and refused to leave.  This situation gained international attention.  Ultimately, Erich Honecker allowed these “refugees” to go to the West, but only by sealed trains via East Germany. 

While many East Germans squatted in the West German embassies, many East Germans in Leipzig began peaceful protests after each Monday’s “prayer for peace.”  Their demands were to be given the freedom to travel anywhere and the right to elect a democratic government.  The backdrop of all these activities was Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost [“openness”] and perestroika [“restructuring”]. The peaceful protests from Leipzig spread across the country that culminated in the Alexanderplatz demonstration in Berlin on November 4^th.  Prior to the Alexanderplatz demonstration, Erich Honecker [who built the Wall in 1961 and who had ruled the East German Communists since 1971] “resigned” on October 18^th.  He had dispatched troops to deal with the protests spreading across the country, but local Communist party bosses prevented them from firing on their own people.  The situation was getting out of hand, and Honecker was also very ill at the time.  So on October 18^th, the East German Politburo removed Honecker [saying he “requested to be released” from his posts] and replaced him with Egon Krenz.  Apparently these actions were taken with Mikhail Gorbachev’s blessing. 

As wave of East Germans leaving their country by whatever means increased, Egon Krenz decided on November 9^th to allow East Germans to go to the West directly through East German-West German checkpoints, including Berlin.  The word got out and spread quickly.  So many East Berliners descended upon the Wall that the guards were overwhelmed- they didn’t know what to do.  They couldn’t find anybody to take responsibility for using lethal force against those who wished to go west.  As East Berliners came pouring through the Wall with no guards to stop them, West Berliners started to jump on top of the Wall.  They were soon joined by many of their East Berlin brethren.  It was all so surreal and seemed to happen so quickly.  I had the sense that Cold Warriors everywhere would have the same question that Wiley E. Coyote had when he finally caught the Roadrunner – now what?

There must be something weird in Germany that allows strange, albeit historic events to happen on November 9^th.  In October 1918, World War I was still raging, but the writing was on the wall [no pun intended] as to the outcome.  The German High Seas Fleet had been inactive in port since the Battle of Jutland in 1916.  But the Naval High Command decided it would launch one last “glory ride” against the Royal Navy.  Sailors in Wilhelmshaven and Kiel saw this as a suicide mission and mutinied, thus sparking the November Revolution.  The sailors began to elect worker and soldier councils like the Soviets from the Bolshevik Revolution.  These councils took over military and civil powers in many cities, including Munich.  Rebellion spread across Germany which led to the proclamation of a republic on November 9^th.  On that date, German Chancellor Prince Max of Baden announced Kaiser Wilhelm II’s abdication from the German and Prussian thrones. He handed the German government over to Freidrich Ebert, thus beginning Germany’s road to become a democratic nation.

In November 1923, a group of approximately 2,000 men marched in the streets of Munich to seize power in that city.  Once secure in Munich, this band of brawlers planned to march on the Weimar Republic [inspired by Mussolini’s March on Rome].  Their grievance –these nationalists claimed the German army of World War I was undefeated on the battlefield, only to be “stabbed in the back” by Marxists on the home front.  They dubbed the people who did the stabbing as the November Criminals.  Between 1920 and 1923, the Bürgerbräukeller [one of the largest beer halls in Munich] served as a meeting place for a small group called the German Workers Party, later to be known as the National Socialist German Workers Party – Nazis for short.  Their leader was an ex-corporal from the German Army named Adolf Hitler.  Hitler saw an opportunity to seize power when the Bavarian State Commissioner was giving a speech at the Bürgerbräukeller on November 8^th.  The state commissioner [Gustav von Kahr], head of the Bavarian State Police [Hans Ritter von Seisser] and a Reichswehr general [Otto von Lossow] ruled Bavaria under a state of emergency.  They were all present at the Bürgerbräukeller on November 8^th.  Hitler’s men surrounded the Bürgerbräukeller, rounded up the three men and “persuaded” them to support what became the Beer Hall Putsch.  Hitler made a mistake, though.  He left the beer hall to attend to another matter, and while he was away Erich Ludendorff released Kahr and the others.  When Hitler realized his crass mistake, he and his men marched on the Bavarian Defense Ministry on November 9^th, but the putsch was easily put down in a hail of gunfire.  Hitler was arrested for treason and sent to jail, where he decided he would use legal means to gain power.

Fifteen years later in 1938, another historic event occurred on November 9^th.  This occasion is remembered as Kristallnacht – the Night of Broken Glass.  On November 7^th, a German diplomat in Paris named Ernst vom Rath was shot by a Polish Jew named Herschel Grynszpan.  His grievance was the deportation of Polish Jews from Germany back to Poland.  No one knows why Grynszpan picked vom Rath as his target, but vom Rath died from his injuries on November 9^th.  The Nazis used this as a pretext to organize a pogrom against Germany’s Jews.  On that evening, troops from both the SA and the SS [wearing civilian clothes] went about destroying Jewish property, to include stores, businesses, homes, cemeteries and synagogues.  Jews were rounded up – some thrown into jails, others sent to concentration camps.  Others were murdered.  Police all over Germany let it happen.  Kristallnacht has been cited by some as the beginning of the Holocaust.

November 9^th has brought many things to Germany – the end of the German Empire, the rise to prominence of the Nazi Party, the beginning of the Holocaust, and the beginning of the end of the Cold War.  That’s a lot of history packed into a single date, but there it is.

Iraq and the Objective Principle

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. It allows armchair strategists to second-guess those who make decisions that set the course of history. It isn't predictive, doesn't require a lot of insight, and there are no consequences if your second-guessing is wrong. With that said, allow me sit in my own easy chair, safely out of range to use my own hindsight to look at how we got to the sad state of affairs that is Iraq.

Harry Summers was an instructor at the Army War College. During his tenure there, he wrote critical analyses of two conflicts: Vietnam and the Gulf War. In each book, he used Clausewitz's tenets of war to analyze where decision-makers in each conflict got things right, and where they got them wrong. In both of works, Summers put the principle of the Objective ahead of all others. His reasoning was that if one doesn't have a clear objective (why are we here and what is our goal), and then all the other principles don't matter. The objective is a clear, decisive and attainable target. The objective also must be based on a larger political goal that may be tough to define.

In looking back at the current situation in Iraq, we need to go back to the not so distant past - the Gulf War. In this conflict, the objective was a simple one - the liberation of Kuwait from Iraq. To put a finer point on it, Colin Powell said we were going to do two things to Saddam Hussein's army - "we're going to cut it off, then we're going to kill it." That very brief statement is great in its simplicity. The objective was crystal clear, and it gave both the troops in 'the sandbox' and the American people a benchmark, something to tell us whether we won or lost. It gave all of us an endpoint, not an amorphous, open ended commitment. Once the Iraqis were out of Kuwait, our job was done. This last point is especially important. Once we cut off and killed Saddam's army, the road to Baghdad was open. Iraq was ours for the taking if we wanted it. As tempting as that thought was, George Bush didn't go for it. His advisors (Brent Scowcroft chief among them) advised against it, for they saw that if we took Baghdad, we'd have to occupy it for years. The occupation of Baghdad (and the rest of Iraq) was something George Bush didn't want to do, so he didn't. Then it was better to keep Saddam Hussein in box, all the better to keep an eye on him and to maintain some stability in the Middle East. To summarize, the objective was brief, clear and concise – get the Iraqis out of Kuwait. Once the objective was achieved, we went no further.

Fast forward twelve years to 2003, when the war drums started to beat again. The US and a “coalition if the willing” went to war with Saddam Hussein. What was the objective in the war? I found eight objectives that, if we satisfied them, we could declare victory and leave. The objectives as laid out by Donald Rumsfeld:

1. Regime change;
2. Eliminate Weapons of Mass Destruction;
3. Capture or drive out terrorists;
4. Collect intelligence on terrorist networks;
5. Collect intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction activity;
6. Secure Iraq's oil fields;
7. Deliver humanitarian relief and end sanctions;
8. Help Iraq achieve representative self-government and insure its territorial integrity.

Whatever happened to the KISS [“Keep It Simple, Stupid”] principle? To complicate matters, in 2007 Congress weighed in with a set of “benchmarks” contained in the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans’ Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act:

1. Forming a Constitutional Review Committee and then completing the constitutional review.
2. Enacting and implementing legislation on de-Ba’athification.
3. Enacting and implementing legislation to ensure the equitable distribution of hydrocarbon resources of the people of Iraq without regard to the sect or ethnicity of recipients, and enacting and implementing legislation to ensure that the energy resources of Iraq benefit Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs, Kurds, and other Iraqi citizens in an equitable manner.
4. Enacting and implementing legislation on procedures to form semi-autonomous regions.
5. Enacting and implementing legislation establishing an Independent High Electoral Commission, provincial elections law, provincial council authorities, and a date for provincial elections.
6. Enacting and implementing legislation addressing amnesty.
7. Enacting and implementing legislation establishing strong militia disarmament program to ensure that such security forces are accountable only to the central government and loyal to the Constitution of Iraq.
8. Establishing supporting political, media, economic, and services committees in support of the Baghdad security plan.
9. Providing three trained and ready Iraqi brigades to support Baghdad operations.
10. Providing Iraqi commanders with all authorities to execute this plan and to make tactical and operational decisions, in consultation with U.S. commanders, without political intervention, to include the authority to pursue all extremists, including Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias.
11. Ensuring that the Iraqi security forces are providing even-handed enforcement of the law.
12. Ensuring that, according to President Bush, Prime Minister Maliki said ‘‘the Baghdad security plan will not provide a safe haven for any outlaws, regardless of [their] sectarian or political affiliation.”
13. Reducing the level of sectarian violence in Iraq and eliminating militia control of local security.
14. Establishing all of the planned joint security stations in neighborhoods across Baghdad.
15. Increasing the number of Iraqi security forces’ units capable of operating independently.
16. Ensuring that the rights of minority political parties in the Iraqi legislature are protected.
17. Allocating and spending $10 billion in Iraqi revenues for reconstruction projects, including delivery of essential services, on an equitable basis.
18. Ensuring that Iraq’s political authorities are not undermining or making false accusations against members of the Iraqi security forces.

Whew! Did you get all that? In my 51 years, I’ve noted there are two things that our armed forces do well – break things and kill people. They’re not so good at “nation building,” which is what I see in this laundry list. I also see “requirements creep.” Did we have clear, concise objectives in Iraq? Were the objectives achievable?

You have to ask yourself a question – how well did we do? Regime change was the easy part. Saddam took the eternal celestial dirt nap in December 2006. His sons preceded him in July 2003. What about the other objectives? That is a mixed bag at best. We didn’t find any WMDs, and the terrorists we were supposed to eliminate weren’t a player in Iraq until we got there, but now that we’ve departed the scene they are there in abundance. We secured the oil fields, delivered humanitarian aid and ended sanctions. How about that “territorial integrity” thing? Given that the Syrian civil war has spilled over into Iraq and Sunnis have taken roughly 1/3 of the country away from Maliki’s control, I wouldn’t put that into the “mission accomplished” column. Iraq governs itself now, but how representative is that government? The Kurds in the north of Iraq have their act together, but the Sunni-Shiite schism that has existed since the passing of The Prophet is alive and well. Will Joe Biden’s solution of a three-way partition of Iraq become reality? To give the devil his due, it just might.

Our president is considering his options on what to do next. He and his advisors have to ask themselves this – what is the political objective? Once that political objective is defined, should there even be a military objective? Can the political objective be achieved by some means other than by military means? Will the objective be clear, concise, and achievable? Do we choose sides in the present conflict? Do we side with Maliki, who is very cozy with Iran? Do we side with a nation [Iran] that once provided the technical means to those people whose IEDs killed our own troops? Is there a “do nothing” option for us? I think there is. One thing I know is I don’t want to get involved in that Sunni-Shiite schism mess.