From: slider@anashram.com

The three revisionist powers have aggressively gained ground in recent
years. How do we thwart their ambitions?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/russia-china-iran-american-foreign-policy-challenges/

We should not be blind to the one thing that does tie the three
revisionist powers together: ambition. None of the three states has been satisfied with an American-led international order, but their ambitions to challenge that order, at least regionally, were initially constrained by
their relative lack of economic and military strength, compared to that of
the United States and key allies. With the end of the Cold War, that
dominance was unprecedented. America and its treaty-bound partners
accounted for more than 70 percent of both worldwide military spending and total global gross domestic product (GDP).

Faced with such dominance, China’s strategy was “hide our capabilities and bide our time.” Similarly, Russia, humiliated by the loss of its
superpower status, had to wait until the spike in oil and gas prices
unleashed a flood of new revenue to begin to try to reverse the various “capitulations” Yeltsin and Gorbachev had made to Washington and the West out of Soviet, and then Russian, weakness. And while Iran has never
concealed its willingness to challenge the United States, its recent assertiveness is undoubtedly tied to the disarray in American Middle East policy, brought about by its multi-year fumbling in Iraq, half-hearted commitment in Afghanistan, and indecision over Syria and the chaos
resulting from the Arab Spring. With the combined decline of American and allied economic and military power in recent years, and a general
reluctance to use that power assertively, all three states have seized the opportunity to push their revisionist agenda forward.

Policies designed to satiate each of the three countries have not worked.
In the cases of Russia and China, American administrations of both
political stripes have tried to reset relations and have invited them to
join various world forums (such as the World Trade Organization and G20)
and generally to recognize their place in the international system. The
results have at best been underwhelming. Although some common interests
have emerged that have allowed for some cooperation, broader diverging interests and agendas have undermined any real progress toward either
Russia or China accepting the responsibilities of having a seat at the
table. They have been willing to take advantage of the international order
— especially economically — but unwilling to support that order.

China, Iran, and Russia have each been willing participants in the global trading system. But expectations that such participation might help
generate internal reforms or at least moderate behavior internationally
have gone unmet. If America faces the problem of its own allies’ free
riding in military affairs, it faces an even greater problem of
revisionist states’ free riding by using the open global economic order to generate revenues to fuel their strategic plans.

Until the sanction regime was tightened appreciably during the Bush and
Obama years, Iran not only benefited from the open global economic order
but also used the massive amount of traffic generated by that order to
hide its clandestine efforts to acquire needed elements for its weapons program. President Barack Obama hoped that Tehran — freed from sanctions
and with its nuclear prospects supposedly postponed for a decade by the
Join Comprehensive Plan of Action — might use the intervening period of lessened tensions to establish a modus vivendi with Saudi Arabia in the
region and to reestablish normal trading ties with the rest of the world. Although it is too early to pass final judgment on Obama’s strategy, it appears that with sanctions removed, Iran’s leadership has accelerated its plans for the region.

The question that needs to be asked is: Do the ambitions of the
revisionist powers have recognizable limits? That is, are there
concessions to be made, spheres of influence to be accepted, or strategies
of appeasement or policies of retrenchment to be adopted that might result
in a peaceful status quo? History suggests not. Every gain by a rising
power results in a new set of uncertainties within the region and new
security interests to be taken into account. As has been noted, Rome
conquered the known world with one “defensive” war after another. Success typically opens the door to greater ambition, not less. Building on gains
is what rising powers do.

The first and most obvious problem is that the revisionist powers are
there. From a geostrategic perspective, the historical advantage of being separated from Eurasia by two large oceans becomes an obstacle to the U.S.
when it comes to creating credible deterrents.

Although the U.S. might for some short time concede greater sway in a
region to a revisionist power, the immediate neighbors are not likely to
take this advance with equanimity. Either they will take their turn at appeasement, stoking the revisionist power’s own views of what it can get away with, or those who can will build up their own military capabilities
in response. With Russia and China having nuclear arsenals and Iran
potentially on its way to joining them, it is not hard to imagine any
number of countries countering with their own weapons programs — programs
and capabilities over which the U.S. will have little or no say. A proliferating nuclear-arms race is not a recipe for stability.

When a regime’s character is factored in, tensions appear virtually inevitable. China, Iran, and Russia all assert a civilizational challenge
to the Western liberal-democratic order. It is difficult to know how
deeply the three countries’ general populations hold their leaders’ views, but for the leadership in each, ideology is certainly an important source
of legitimacy for their non-liberal rule at home.

Coexistence with prosperous, relatively powerful democratic neighbors,
whose own relations are largely based on the trust and norms that come
from similarity of rule, is a circle hard to square. Even Iran, whose neighborhood is hardly filled with liberal-democratic states, must
continually strive to keep Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria in a state of chaos,
lest a more liberal, majoritarian Shi’ite state emerge and threaten the Islamic Republic’s claims to be the only legitimate form of rule for its sect. And the notion that a nation carries a special civilizational role becomes even more important for the leadership to sustain when their
ability to meet domestic needs and expectations appears to come up short —
a problem Russia, Iran, and, increasingly, China have had.

Of course, the question is: Why should we care? None of the three states directly threatens the United States. Indeed, arguably, if relations are
tense, it is largely because Washington has pushed back against
revisionist efforts — often about matters far from our shores and at times over issues on which we have no formal opinion (for example, about who has sovereignty over this or that islet in the South China Sea), no treaty obligation (as with Georgia or Ukraine), or no historical tie (as in
Syria).

The answer is that, since World War II’s end, Washington has understood
that, strategically, Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East are the three
most important theaters to the United States and that general peace and
global prosperity depend on deterring non-liberal, would-be hegemons from disrupting those regions’ stability. If history is any guide, the lesson learned has been that ignoring trouble on those fronts only postpones the difficulty and raises the cost of eventually dealing with it.

Arguably, the Middle East is less important today for the United States,
given changing oil and gas markets in the United States. But even so, instability in the region can affect the global energy picture (and hence
the world economy), provide openings for terrorism directed at the West, threaten Israel, generate a massive refugee crisis, and produce an arms
race that may end with more states attempting to acquire nuclear weapons. American administrations have at various times and for various reasons
tried to disentangle the U.S. from the Middle East, but absent U.S.
engagement, the region inevitably becomes more anarchic, not less, and generates problems from which Washington has not been able to walk away.

That said, the U.S. faces two major problems in addressing the three revisionist powers in these three key theaters.

The first and most obvious problem is that the revisionist powers are
there. From a geostrategic perspective, the historical advantage of being separated from Eurasia by two large oceans becomes an obstacle to the U.S.
when it comes to creating credible deterrents.

But rather than worry about sustaining a costly forward presence,
strategists have offered “offshore balancing” as an alternative. Under
this strategy the U.S. will intervene only when one or more powers
threaten to gain a hegemonic advantage in a region.

But deciding when to intervene is never easy, since it almost always comes
with the prospect of conflict. As a result, democracies in particular are
apt to delay intervention until the circumstances are even less
advantageous. Moreover, effective and decisive intervention from offshore
still requires a military force second to none.

The second major issue is that the costs of deterring another power are
clear and felt upfront, but the benefits are unclear and delayed.
Arguments in favor of deterrence speculate about what might happen if the
U.S. steps back from its forward presence, but until something untoward happens, it remains conjecture. When the public has fresh memories of
failing to stop an ambitious power and the country has had to pay for that failure with a costly conflict, it is easier to convince that same public
and its representatives that forward-leaning deterrence is the right
course. But successful deterrence can also breed complacency — the feeling that the peace and prosperity brought about by that strategy is the
natural order of things, not a result of policy decisions made and
sustained.

In short, if the U.S. and its allies wanted to do more to contest these revisionist powers in the realm of hard military power, they could. It is really a matter of policy choices and priorities.

Moreover, it can be difficult to maintain a credible deterrent when the
issue at stake — be it territory or some aspect of international law — is important to regional stability but is, at first glance, of only secondary interest to the United States. Such efforts can look even more speculative
and costly to the public when, as has been the case in recent years, they
have been poorly conducted or inadequately thought through.

Undoubtedly, the Great Recession of 2008 and the costly, indecisive wars
in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya have soured large segments of the American public and their representatives on adopting a forward-leaning American strategic posture. With economic problems at home following the recession
of 2008, the benefits of such efforts have appeared less than satisfactory.

But this invites two questions: What would the regional and geopolitical situations have been if Washington had not acted? And, as noted already,
were the indecisive results a product of strategic overreach, flawed implementation, a lack of sustained commitment to the task at hand, or
some combination of these? The point is not that a forward-leaning posture
can prevent costly policy mistakes but rather that one should not simply
assume that the larger strategy is to blame for those mistakes.

Nor should we assume that we cannot afford a forward-leaning strategy for Eurasia. Although its primacy is more contested today than in the
aftermath of the Cold War, the United States remains the world’s only superpower. And while the West — the U.S. and its democratic allies — has seen its overwhelming share of global economic and military power shrink
in recent years, it still accounts for some 60 percent of the world’s
wealth and military spending. Moreover, although the contesting,
revisionist powers have the advantage of operating in their own
neighborhoods — meaning that the U.S. has the more complex and diverse
task of responding to challenges far from home — the U.S. has significant, close allies in each region that have begun to spend more on their
militaries in the face of the threats posed by China, Iran, and Russia.

Nor have the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan bankrupted the U.S. At the
height of the campaigns, total defense spending (personnel, procurement, operations, etc.) as a percentage of GDP never rose above 5 percent, well
below Cold War levels. Today, the base defense budget hovers at 3 percent
or less.

In short, if the U.S. and its allies wanted to do more to contest these revisionist powers in the realm of hard military power, they could. It is really a matter of policy choices and priorities.

To take the revisionist challenge seriously requires the American body
politic to relearn the value of American leadership in defending the
liberal order it largely created after World War II. It requires political leaders to make the case for the benefits that leadership and primacy
bring to America. Like an understanding and appreciation of American
government itself, this is something that every generation of Americans
must (re)learn. Left untaught, it — and the historical memory of its
import — will fade.

If there is any “good news” here, it is that recent administrations’ decisions to pull back from America’s traditional leadership role, to retrench, and to lead from behind have not resulted in a less problematic world. To the contrary, China, Iran, and Russia have all read Washington’s reluctance as an opportunity to advance their own plans and have done so
in a manner that the American public has noticed. Even absent a major confrontation, American politicians may sense greater instability and
greater prospects for conflict. This may lead them to argue the case for reversing course and, with the help of our allies, obtaining the benefits
of deterring and containing the revisionist powers. To paraphrase
Tocqueville, when it comes to American statecraft, Americans need to
relearn the merits of acting on “self-interest rightly understood” — that is, not simply looking to one’s immediate interest, but understanding that today’s sacrifice may produce a longer-term and more substantial advantage.

But the task at hand is even more complex. China, Iran, and Russia are political models that, at their core, challenge the idea of liberal
democracy. Each in its own way sees itself in civilizational opposition to
the liberal West, of which the United States is the most prominent

[continued in next message]

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)

From: thangolossus@gmail.com

On Tue, 01 May 2018 12:31:19 +0100, slider <slider@anashram.com>
wrote:

The three revisionist powers have aggressively gained ground in recent
years. How do we thwart their ambitions?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/russia-china-iran-american-foreign-policy-challenges/

We should not be blind to the one thing that does tie the three
revisionist powers together: ambition. None of the three states has been >satisfied with an American-led international order, but their ambitions to >challenge that order, at least regionally, were initially constrained by >their relative lack of economic and military strength, compared to that of >the United States and key allies. With the end of the Cold War, that >dominance was unprecedented. America and its treaty-bound partners
accounted for more than 70 percent of both worldwide military spending and >total global gross domestic product (GDP).

Faced with such dominance, China’s strategy was “hide our capabilities and >bide our time.” Similarly, Russia, humiliated by the loss of its
superpower status, had to wait until the spike in oil and gas prices >unleashed a flood of new revenue to begin to try to reverse the various >“capitulations” Yeltsin and Gorbachev had made to Washington and the West >out of Soviet, and then Russian, weakness. And while Iran has never
concealed its willingness to challenge the United States, its recent >assertiveness is undoubtedly tied to the disarray in American Middle East >policy, brought about by its multi-year fumbling in Iraq, half-hearted >commitment in Afghanistan, and indecision over Syria and the chaos
resulting from the Arab Spring. With the combined decline of American and >allied economic and military power in recent years, and a general
reluctance to use that power assertively, all three states have seized the >opportunity to push their revisionist agenda forward.

Policies designed to satiate each of the three countries have not worked.
In the cases of Russia and China, American administrations of both
political stripes have tried to reset relations and have invited them to
join various world forums (such as the World Trade Organization and G20)
and generally to recognize their place in the international system. The >results have at best been underwhelming. Although some common interests
have emerged that have allowed for some cooperation, broader diverging >interests and agendas have undermined any real progress toward either
Russia or China accepting the responsibilities of having a seat at the
table. They have been willing to take advantage of the international order >— especially economically — but unwilling to support that order.

China, Iran, and Russia have each been willing participants in the global >trading system. But expectations that such participation might help
generate internal reforms or at least moderate behavior internationally
have gone unmet. If America faces the problem of its own allies’ free >riding in military affairs, it faces an even greater problem of
revisionist states’ free riding by using the open global economic order to >generate revenues to fuel their strategic plans.

Until the sanction regime was tightened appreciably during the Bush and
Obama years, Iran not only benefited from the open global economic order
but also used the massive amount of traffic generated by that order to
hide its clandestine efforts to acquire needed elements for its weapons >program. President Barack Obama hoped that Tehran — freed from sanctions >and with its nuclear prospects supposedly postponed for a decade by the
Join Comprehensive Plan of Action — might use the intervening period of >lessened tensions to establish a modus vivendi with Saudi Arabia in the >region and to reestablish normal trading ties with the rest of the world. >Although it is too early to pass final judgment on Obama’s strategy, it >appears that with sanctions removed, Iran’s leadership has accelerated its >plans for the region.

The question that needs to be asked is: Do the ambitions of the
revisionist powers have recognizable limits? That is, are there
concessions to be made, spheres of influence to be accepted, or strategies
of appeasement or policies of retrenchment to be adopted that might result
in a peaceful status quo? History suggests not. Every gain by a rising
power results in a new set of uncertainties within the region and new >security interests to be taken into account. As has been noted, Rome >conquered the known world with one “defensive” war after another. Success >typically opens the door to greater ambition, not less. Building on gains
is what rising powers do.

The first and most obvious problem is that the revisionist powers are
there. From a geostrategic perspective, the historical advantage of being >separated from Eurasia by two large oceans becomes an obstacle to the U.S. >when it comes to creating credible deterrents.

Although the U.S. might for some short time concede greater sway in a
region to a revisionist power, the immediate neighbors are not likely to
take this advance with equanimity. Either they will take their turn at >appeasement, stoking the revisionist power’s own views of what it can get >away with, or those who can will build up their own military capabilities
in response. With Russia and China having nuclear arsenals and Iran >potentially on its way to joining them, it is not hard to imagine any
number of countries countering with their own weapons programs — programs >and capabilities over which the U.S. will have little or no say. A >proliferating nuclear-arms race is not a recipe for stability.

When a regime’s character is factored in, tensions appear virtually >inevitable. China, Iran, and Russia all assert a civilizational challenge
to the Western liberal-democratic order. It is difficult to know how
deeply the three countries’ general populations hold their leaders’ views, >but for the leadership in each, ideology is certainly an important source
of legitimacy for their non-liberal rule at home.

Coexistence with prosperous, relatively powerful democratic neighbors,
whose own relations are largely based on the trust and norms that come
from similarity of rule, is a circle hard to square. Even Iran, whose
neighborhood is hardly filled with liberal-democratic states, must >continually strive to keep Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria in a state of chaos,
lest a more liberal, majoritarian Shi’ite state emerge and threaten the >Islamic Republic’s claims to be the only legitimate form of rule for its >sect. And the notion that a nation carries a special civilizational role >becomes even more important for the leadership to sustain when their
ability to meet domestic needs and expectations appears to come up short — >a problem Russia, Iran, and, increasingly, China have had.

Of course, the question is: Why should we care? None of the three states >directly threatens the United States. Indeed, arguably, if relations are >tense, it is largely because Washington has pushed back against
revisionist efforts — often about matters far from our shores and at times >over issues on which we have no formal opinion (for example, about who has >sovereignty over this or that islet in the South China Sea), no treaty >obligation (as with Georgia or Ukraine), or no historical tie (as in
Syria).

The answer is that, since World War II’s end, Washington has understood >that, strategically, Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East are the three >most important theaters to the United States and that general peace and >global prosperity depend on deterring non-liberal, would-be hegemons from >disrupting those regions’ stability. If history is any guide, the lesson >learned has been that ignoring trouble on those fronts only postpones the >difficulty and raises the cost of eventually dealing with it.

Arguably, the Middle East is less important today for the United States, >given changing oil and gas markets in the United States. But even so, >instability in the region can affect the global energy picture (and hence
the world economy), provide openings for terrorism directed at the West, >threaten Israel, generate a massive refugee crisis, and produce an arms
race that may end with more states attempting to acquire nuclear weapons. >American administrations have at various times and for various reasons
tried to disentangle the U.S. from the Middle East, but absent U.S. >engagement, the region inevitably becomes more anarchic, not less, and >generates problems from which Washington has not been able to walk away.

That said, the U.S. faces two major problems in addressing the three >revisionist powers in these three key theaters.

The first and most obvious problem is that the revisionist powers are
there. From a geostrategic perspective, the historical advantage of being >separated from Eurasia by two large oceans becomes an obstacle to the U.S. >when it comes to creating credible deterrents.

But rather than worry about sustaining a costly forward presence,
strategists have offered “offshore balancing” as an alternative. Under >this strategy the U.S. will intervene only when one or more powers
threaten to gain a hegemonic advantage in a region.

But deciding when to intervene is never easy, since it almost always comes >with the prospect of conflict. As a result, democracies in particular are
apt to delay intervention until the circumstances are even less
advantageous. Moreover, effective and decisive intervention from offshore >still requires a military force second to none.

The second major issue is that the costs of deterring another power are
clear and felt upfront, but the benefits are unclear and delayed.
Arguments in favor of deterrence speculate about what might happen if the >U.S. steps back from its forward presence, but until something untoward >happens, it remains conjecture. When the public has fresh memories of
failing to stop an ambitious power and the country has had to pay for that >failure with a costly conflict, it is easier to convince that same public
and its representatives that forward-leaning deterrence is the right
course. But successful deterrence can also breed complacency — the feeling >that the peace and prosperity brought about by that strategy is the
natural order of things, not a result of policy decisions made and
sustained.

In short, if the U.S. and its allies wanted to do more to contest these >revisionist powers in the realm of hard military power, they could. It is >really a matter of policy choices and priorities.

Moreover, it can be difficult to maintain a credible deterrent when the
issue at stake — be it territory or some aspect of international law — is >important to regional stability but is, at first glance, of only secondary >interest to the United States. Such efforts can look even more speculative >and costly to the public when, as has been the case in recent years, they >have been poorly conducted or inadequately thought through.

Undoubtedly, the Great Recession of 2008 and the costly, indecisive wars
in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya have soured large segments of the American >public and their representatives on adopting a forward-leaning American >strategic posture. With economic problems at home following the recession
of 2008, the benefits of such efforts have appeared less than satisfactory.

But this invites two questions: What would the regional and geopolitical >situations have been if Washington had not acted? And, as noted already,
were the indecisive results a product of strategic overreach, flawed >implementation, a lack of sustained commitment to the task at hand, or
some combination of these? The point is not that a forward-leaning posture >can prevent costly policy mistakes but rather that one should not simply >assume that the larger strategy is to blame for those mistakes.

Nor should we assume that we cannot afford a forward-leaning strategy for >Eurasia. Although its primacy is more contested today than in the
aftermath of the Cold War, the United States remains the world’s only >superpower. And while the West — the U.S. and its democratic allies — has >seen its overwhelming share of global economic and military power shrink
in recent years, it still accounts for some 60 percent of the world’s >wealth and military spending. Moreover, although the contesting,
revisionist powers have the advantage of operating in their own
neighborhoods — meaning that the U.S. has the more complex and diverse
task of responding to challenges far from home — the U.S. has significant, >close allies in each region that have begun to spend more on their
militaries in the face of the threats posed by China, Iran, and Russia.

Nor have the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan bankrupted the U.S. At the
height of the campaigns, total defense spending (personnel, procurement, >operations, etc.) as a percentage of GDP never rose above 5 percent, well >below Cold War levels. Today, the base defense budget hovers at 3 percent
or less.

In short, if the U.S. and its allies wanted to do more to contest these >revisionist powers in the realm of hard military power, they could. It is >really a matter of policy choices and priorities.

To take the revisionist challenge seriously requires the American body >politic to relearn the value of American leadership in defending the
liberal order it largely created after World War II. It requires political >leaders to make the case for the benefits that leadership and primacy
bring to America. Like an understanding and appreciation of American >government itself, this is something that every generation of Americans
must (re)learn. Left untaught, it — and the historical memory of its
import — will fade.

If there is any “good news” here, it is that recent administrations’ >decisions to pull back from America’s traditional leadership role, to >retrench, and to lead from behind have not resulted in a less problematic >world. To the contrary, China, Iran, and Russia have all read Washington’s >reluctance as an opportunity to advance their own plans and have done so
in a manner that the American public has noticed. Even absent a major >confrontation, American politicians may sense greater instability and
greater prospects for conflict. This may lead them to argue the case for >reversing course and, with the help of our allies, obtaining the benefits
of deterring and containing the revisionist powers. To paraphrase >Tocqueville, when it comes to American statecraft, Americans need to
relearn the merits of acting on “self-interest rightly understood” — that
is, not simply looking to one’s immediate interest, but understanding that

[continued in next message]

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)

From: slider@anashram.com

On Mon, 07 May 2018 02:30:32 +0100, thang ornerythinchus <thangolossus@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, 01 May 2018 12:31:19 +0100, slider <slider@anashram.com>
wrote:

The three revisionist powers have aggressively gained ground in recent
years. How do we thwart their ambitions?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/russia-china-iran-american-foreign-policy-challenges/

We should not be blind to the one thing that does tie the three
revisionist powers together: ambition. None of the three states has been
satisfied with an American-led international order, but their ambitions
to
challenge that order, at least regionally, were initially constrained by
their relative lack of economic and military strength, compared to that
of
the United States and key allies. With the end of the Cold War, that
dominance was unprecedented. America and its treaty-bound partners
accounted for more than 70 percent of both worldwide military spending
and
total global gross domestic product (GDP).

Faced with such dominance, China’s strategy was “hide our capabilities >> and
bide our time.” Similarly, Russia, humiliated by the loss of its
superpower status, had to wait until the spike in oil and gas prices
unleashed a flood of new revenue to begin to try to reverse the various
“capitulations” Yeltsin and Gorbachev had made to Washington and the
West
out of Soviet, and then Russian, weakness. And while Iran has never
concealed its willingness to challenge the United States, its recent
assertiveness is undoubtedly tied to the disarray in American Middle
East
policy, brought about by its multi-year fumbling in Iraq, half-hearted
commitment in Afghanistan, and indecision over Syria and the chaos
resulting from the Arab Spring. With the combined decline of American
and
allied economic and military power in recent years, and a general
reluctance to use that power assertively, all three states have seized
the
opportunity to push their revisionist agenda forward.

Policies designed to satiate each of the three countries have not
worked.
In the cases of Russia and China, American administrations of both
political stripes have tried to reset relations and have invited them to
join various world forums (such as the World Trade Organization and G20)
and generally to recognize their place in the international system. The
results have at best been underwhelming. Although some common interests
have emerged that have allowed for some cooperation, broader diverging
interests and agendas have undermined any real progress toward either
Russia or China accepting the responsibilities of having a seat at the
table. They have been willing to take advantage of the international
order
— especially economically — but unwilling to support that order.

China, Iran, and Russia have each been willing participants in the
global
trading system. But expectations that such participation might help
generate internal reforms or at least moderate behavior internationally
have gone unmet. If America faces the problem of its own allies’ free
riding in military affairs, it faces an even greater problem of
revisionist states’ free riding by using the open global economic order
to
generate revenues to fuel their strategic plans.

Until the sanction regime was tightened appreciably during the Bush and
Obama years, Iran not only benefited from the open global economic order
but also used the massive amount of traffic generated by that order to
hide its clandestine efforts to acquire needed elements for its weapons
program. President Barack Obama hoped that Tehran — freed from sanctions >> and with its nuclear prospects supposedly postponed for a decade by the
Join Comprehensive Plan of Action — might use the intervening period of
lessened tensions to establish a modus vivendi with Saudi Arabia in the
region and to reestablish normal trading ties with the rest of the
world.
Although it is too early to pass final judgment on Obama’s strategy, it
appears that with sanctions removed, Iran’s leadership has accelerated
its
plans for the region.

The question that needs to be asked is: Do the ambitions of the
revisionist powers have recognizable limits? That is, are there
concessions to be made, spheres of influence to be accepted, or
strategies
of appeasement or policies of retrenchment to be adopted that might
result
in a peaceful status quo? History suggests not. Every gain by a rising
power results in a new set of uncertainties within the region and new
security interests to be taken into account. As has been noted, Rome
conquered the known world with one “defensive” war after another.
Success
typically opens the door to greater ambition, not less. Building on
gains
is what rising powers do.

The first and most obvious problem is that the revisionist powers are
there. From a geostrategic perspective, the historical advantage of
being
separated from Eurasia by two large oceans becomes an obstacle to the
U.S.
when it comes to creating credible deterrents.

Although the U.S. might for some short time concede greater sway in a
region to a revisionist power, the immediate neighbors are not likely to
take this advance with equanimity. Either they will take their turn at
appeasement, stoking the revisionist power’s own views of what it can
get
away with, or those who can will build up their own military
capabilities
in response. With Russia and China having nuclear arsenals and Iran
potentially on its way to joining them, it is not hard to imagine any
number of countries countering with their own weapons programs —
programs
and capabilities over which the U.S. will have little or no say. A
proliferating nuclear-arms race is not a recipe for stability.

When a regime’s character is factored in, tensions appear virtually
inevitable. China, Iran, and Russia all assert a civilizational
challenge
to the Western liberal-democratic order. It is difficult to know how
deeply the three countries’ general populations hold their leaders’
views,
but for the leadership in each, ideology is certainly an important
source
of legitimacy for their non-liberal rule at home.

Coexistence with prosperous, relatively powerful democratic neighbors,
whose own relations are largely based on the trust and norms that come
from similarity of rule, is a circle hard to square. Even Iran, whose
neighborhood is hardly filled with liberal-democratic states, must
continually strive to keep Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria in a state of chaos,
lest a more liberal, majoritarian Shi’ite state emerge and threaten the
Islamic Republic’s claims to be the only legitimate form of rule for its >> sect. And the notion that a nation carries a special civilizational role
becomes even more important for the leadership to sustain when their
ability to meet domestic needs and expectations appears to come up
short —
a problem Russia, Iran, and, increasingly, China have had.

Of course, the question is: Why should we care? None of the three states
directly threatens the United States. Indeed, arguably, if relations are
tense, it is largely because Washington has pushed back against
revisionist efforts — often about matters far from our shores and at
times
over issues on which we have no formal opinion (for example, about who
has
sovereignty over this or that islet in the South China Sea), no treaty
obligation (as with Georgia or Ukraine), or no historical tie (as in
Syria).

The answer is that, since World War II’s end, Washington has understood
that, strategically, Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East are the
three
most important theaters to the United States and that general peace and
global prosperity depend on deterring non-liberal, would-be hegemons
from
disrupting those regions’ stability. If history is any guide, the lesson >> learned has been that ignoring trouble on those fronts only postpones
the
difficulty and raises the cost of eventually dealing with it.

Arguably, the Middle East is less important today for the United States,
given changing oil and gas markets in the United States. But even so,
instability in the region can affect the global energy picture (and
hence
the world economy), provide openings for terrorism directed at the West,
threaten Israel, generate a massive refugee crisis, and produce an arms
race that may end with more states attempting to acquire nuclear
weapons.
American administrations have at various times and for various reasons
tried to disentangle the U.S. from the Middle East, but absent U.S.
engagement, the region inevitably becomes more anarchic, not less, and
generates problems from which Washington has not been able to walk away.

That said, the U.S. faces two major problems in addressing the three
revisionist powers in these three key theaters.

The first and most obvious problem is that the revisionist powers are
there. From a geostrategic perspective, the historical advantage of
being
separated from Eurasia by two large oceans becomes an obstacle to the
U.S.
when it comes to creating credible deterrents.

But rather than worry about sustaining a costly forward presence,
strategists have offered “offshore balancing” as an alternative. Under >> this strategy the U.S. will intervene only when one or more powers
threaten to gain a hegemonic advantage in a region.

But deciding when to intervene is never easy, since it almost always
comes
with the prospect of conflict. As a result, democracies in particular
are
apt to delay intervention until the circumstances are even less
advantageous. Moreover, effective and decisive intervention from
offshore
still requires a military force second to none.

The second major issue is that the costs of deterring another power are
clear and felt upfront, but the benefits are unclear and delayed.
Arguments in favor of deterrence speculate about what might happen if
the
U.S. steps back from its forward presence, but until something untoward
happens, it remains conjecture. When the public has fresh memories of
failing to stop an ambitious power and the country has had to pay for
that
failure with a costly conflict, it is easier to convince that same
public
and its representatives that forward-leaning deterrence is the right
course. But successful deterrence can also breed complacency — the
feeling
that the peace and prosperity brought about by that strategy is the
natural order of things, not a result of policy decisions made and
sustained.

In short, if the U.S. and its allies wanted to do more to contest these
revisionist powers in the realm of hard military power, they could. It
is
really a matter of policy choices and priorities.

Moreover, it can be difficult to maintain a credible deterrent when the
issue at stake — be it territory or some aspect of international law — >> is
important to regional stability but is, at first glance, of only
secondary
interest to the United States. Such efforts can look even more
speculative
and costly to the public when, as has been the case in recent years,
they
have been poorly conducted or inadequately thought through.

Undoubtedly, the Great Recession of 2008 and the costly, indecisive wars
in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya have soured large segments of the
American
public and their representatives on adopting a forward-leaning American
strategic posture. With economic problems at home following the
recession
of 2008, the benefits of such efforts have appeared less than
satisfactory.

But this invites two questions: What would the regional and geopolitical
situations have been if Washington had not acted? And, as noted already,
were the indecisive results a product of strategic overreach, flawed
implementation, a lack of sustained commitment to the task at hand, or
some combination of these? The point is not that a forward-leaning
posture
can prevent costly policy mistakes but rather that one should not simply
assume that the larger strategy is to blame for those mistakes.

Nor should we assume that we cannot afford a forward-leaning strategy
for
Eurasia. Although its primacy is more contested today than in the
aftermath of the Cold War, the United States remains the world’s only
superpower. And while the West — the U.S. and its democratic allies —
has
seen its overwhelming share of global economic and military power shrink
in recent years, it still accounts for some 60 percent of the world’s
wealth and military spending. Moreover, although the contesting,
revisionist powers have the advantage of operating in their own
neighborhoods — meaning that the U.S. has the more complex and diverse
task of responding to challenges far from home — the U.S. has
significant,
close allies in each region that have begun to spend more on their
militaries in the face of the threats posed by China, Iran, and Russia.

Nor have the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan bankrupted the U.S. At the
height of the campaigns, total defense spending (personnel, procurement,
operations, etc.) as a percentage of GDP never rose above 5 percent,
well
below Cold War levels. Today, the base defense budget hovers at 3
percent
or less.

In short, if the U.S. and its allies wanted to do more to contest these
revisionist powers in the realm of hard military power, they could. It
is
really a matter of policy choices and priorities.

To take the revisionist challenge seriously requires the American body
politic to relearn the value of American leadership in defending the
liberal order it largely created after World War II. It requires
political
leaders to make the case for the benefits that leadership and primacy
bring to America. Like an understanding and appreciation of American
government itself, this is something that every generation of Americans
must (re)learn. Left untaught, it — and the historical memory of its
import — will fade.

If there is any “good news” here, it is that recent administrations’ >> decisions to pull back from America’s traditional leadership role, to
retrench, and to lead from behind have not resulted in a less
problematic
world. To the contrary, China, Iran, and Russia have all read
Washington’s

[continued in next message]

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)

From: thangolossus@gmail.com

On Mon, 07 May 2018 12:10:07 +0100, slider <slider@anashram.com>
wrote:

On Mon, 07 May 2018 02:30:32 +0100, thang ornerythinchus ><thangolossus@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, 01 May 2018 12:31:19 +0100, slider <slider@anashram.com>
wrote:

The three revisionist powers have aggressively gained ground in recent
years. How do we thwart their ambitions?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/russia-china-iran-american-foreign-policy-challenges/

We should not be blind to the one thing that does tie the three
revisionist powers together: ambition. None of the three states has been >>> satisfied with an American-led international order, but their ambitions
to
challenge that order, at least regionally, were initially constrained by >>> their relative lack of economic and military strength, compared to that
of
the United States and key allies. With the end of the Cold War, that
dominance was unprecedented. America and its treaty-bound partners
accounted for more than 70 percent of both worldwide military spending
and
total global gross domestic product (GDP).

Faced with such dominance, China’s strategy was “hide our capabilities >>> and
bide our time.” Similarly, Russia, humiliated by the loss of its
superpower status, had to wait until the spike in oil and gas prices
unleashed a flood of new revenue to begin to try to reverse the various
“capitulations” Yeltsin and Gorbachev had made to Washington and the >>> West
out of Soviet, and then Russian, weakness. And while Iran has never
concealed its willingness to challenge the United States, its recent
assertiveness is undoubtedly tied to the disarray in American Middle
East
policy, brought about by its multi-year fumbling in Iraq, half-hearted
commitment in Afghanistan, and indecision over Syria and the chaos
resulting from the Arab Spring. With the combined decline of American
and
allied economic and military power in recent years, and a general
reluctance to use that power assertively, all three states have seized
the
opportunity to push their revisionist agenda forward.

Policies designed to satiate each of the three countries have not
worked.
In the cases of Russia and China, American administrations of both
political stripes have tried to reset relations and have invited them to >>> join various world forums (such as the World Trade Organization and G20) >>> and generally to recognize their place in the international system. The
results have at best been underwhelming. Although some common interests
have emerged that have allowed for some cooperation, broader diverging
interests and agendas have undermined any real progress toward either
Russia or China accepting the responsibilities of having a seat at the
table. They have been willing to take advantage of the international
order
— especially economically — but unwilling to support that order.

China, Iran, and Russia have each been willing participants in the
global
trading system. But expectations that such participation might help
generate internal reforms or at least moderate behavior internationally
have gone unmet. If America faces the problem of its own allies’ free
riding in military affairs, it faces an even greater problem of
revisionist states’ free riding by using the open global economic order >>> to
generate revenues to fuel their strategic plans.

Until the sanction regime was tightened appreciably during the Bush and
Obama years, Iran not only benefited from the open global economic order >>> but also used the massive amount of traffic generated by that order to
hide its clandestine efforts to acquire needed elements for its weapons
program. President Barack Obama hoped that Tehran — freed from sanctions >>> and with its nuclear prospects supposedly postponed for a decade by the
Join Comprehensive Plan of Action — might use the intervening period of >>> lessened tensions to establish a modus vivendi with Saudi Arabia in the
region and to reestablish normal trading ties with the rest of the
world.
Although it is too early to pass final judgment on Obama’s strategy, it >>> appears that with sanctions removed, Iran’s leadership has accelerated >>> its
plans for the region.

The question that needs to be asked is: Do the ambitions of the
revisionist powers have recognizable limits? That is, are there
concessions to be made, spheres of influence to be accepted, or
strategies
of appeasement or policies of retrenchment to be adopted that might
result
in a peaceful status quo? History suggests not. Every gain by a rising
power results in a new set of uncertainties within the region and new
security interests to be taken into account. As has been noted, Rome
conquered the known world with one “defensive” war after another.
Success
typically opens the door to greater ambition, not less. Building on
gains
is what rising powers do.

The first and most obvious problem is that the revisionist powers are
there. From a geostrategic perspective, the historical advantage of
being
separated from Eurasia by two large oceans becomes an obstacle to the
U.S.
when it comes to creating credible deterrents.

Although the U.S. might for some short time concede greater sway in a
region to a revisionist power, the immediate neighbors are not likely to >>> take this advance with equanimity. Either they will take their turn at
appeasement, stoking the revisionist power’s own views of what it can
get
away with, or those who can will build up their own military
capabilities
in response. With Russia and China having nuclear arsenals and Iran
potentially on its way to joining them, it is not hard to imagine any
number of countries countering with their own weapons programs —
programs
and capabilities over which the U.S. will have little or no say. A
proliferating nuclear-arms race is not a recipe for stability.

When a regime’s character is factored in, tensions appear virtually
inevitable. China, Iran, and Russia all assert a civilizational
challenge
to the Western liberal-democratic order. It is difficult to know how
deeply the three countries’ general populations hold their leaders’
views,
but for the leadership in each, ideology is certainly an important
source
of legitimacy for their non-liberal rule at home.

Coexistence with prosperous, relatively powerful democratic neighbors,
whose own relations are largely based on the trust and norms that come
from similarity of rule, is a circle hard to square. Even Iran, whose
neighborhood is hardly filled with liberal-democratic states, must
continually strive to keep Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria in a state of chaos, >>> lest a more liberal, majoritarian Shi’ite state emerge and threaten the >>> Islamic Republic’s claims to be the only legitimate form of rule for its >>> sect. And the notion that a nation carries a special civilizational role >>> becomes even more important for the leadership to sustain when their
ability to meet domestic needs and expectations appears to come up
short —
a problem Russia, Iran, and, increasingly, China have had.

Of course, the question is: Why should we care? None of the three states >>> directly threatens the United States. Indeed, arguably, if relations are >>> tense, it is largely because Washington has pushed back against
revisionist efforts — often about matters far from our shores and at
times
over issues on which we have no formal opinion (for example, about who
has
sovereignty over this or that islet in the South China Sea), no treaty
obligation (as with Georgia or Ukraine), or no historical tie (as in
Syria).

The answer is that, since World War II’s end, Washington has understood >>> that, strategically, Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East are the
three
most important theaters to the United States and that general peace and
global prosperity depend on deterring non-liberal, would-be hegemons
from
disrupting those regions’ stability. If history is any guide, the lesson >>> learned has been that ignoring trouble on those fronts only postpones
the
difficulty and raises the cost of eventually dealing with it.

Arguably, the Middle East is less important today for the United States, >>> given changing oil and gas markets in the United States. But even so,
instability in the region can affect the global energy picture (and
hence
the world economy), provide openings for terrorism directed at the West, >>> threaten Israel, generate a massive refugee crisis, and produce an arms
race that may end with more states attempting to acquire nuclear
weapons.
American administrations have at various times and for various reasons
tried to disentangle the U.S. from the Middle East, but absent U.S.
engagement, the region inevitably becomes more anarchic, not less, and
generates problems from which Washington has not been able to walk away. >>>
That said, the U.S. faces two major problems in addressing the three
revisionist powers in these three key theaters.

The first and most obvious problem is that the revisionist powers are
there. From a geostrategic perspective, the historical advantage of
being
separated from Eurasia by two large oceans becomes an obstacle to the
U.S.
when it comes to creating credible deterrents.

But rather than worry about sustaining a costly forward presence,
strategists have offered “offshore balancing” as an alternative. Under >>> this strategy the U.S. will intervene only when one or more powers
threaten to gain a hegemonic advantage in a region.

But deciding when to intervene is never easy, since it almost always
comes
with the prospect of conflict. As a result, democracies in particular
are
apt to delay intervention until the circumstances are even less
advantageous. Moreover, effective and decisive intervention from
offshore
still requires a military force second to none.

The second major issue is that the costs of deterring another power are
clear and felt upfront, but the benefits are unclear and delayed.
Arguments in favor of deterrence speculate about what might happen if
the
U.S. steps back from its forward presence, but until something untoward
happens, it remains conjecture. When the public has fresh memories of
failing to stop an ambitious power and the country has had to pay for
that
failure with a costly conflict, it is easier to convince that same
public
and its representatives that forward-leaning deterrence is the right
course. But successful deterrence can also breed complacency — the
feeling
that the peace and prosperity brought about by that strategy is the
natural order of things, not a result of policy decisions made and
sustained.

In short, if the U.S. and its allies wanted to do more to contest these
revisionist powers in the realm of hard military power, they could. It
is
really a matter of policy choices and priorities.

Moreover, it can be difficult to maintain a credible deterrent when the
issue at stake — be it territory or some aspect of international law — >>> is
important to regional stability but is, at first glance, of only
secondary
interest to the United States. Such efforts can look even more
speculative
and costly to the public when, as has been the case in recent years,
they
have been poorly conducted or inadequately thought through.

Undoubtedly, the Great Recession of 2008 and the costly, indecisive wars >>> in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya have soured large segments of the
American
public and their representatives on adopting a forward-leaning American
strategic posture. With economic problems at home following the
recession
of 2008, the benefits of such efforts have appeared less than
satisfactory.

But this invites two questions: What would the regional and geopolitical >>> situations have been if Washington had not acted? And, as noted already, >>> were the indecisive results a product of strategic overreach, flawed
implementation, a lack of sustained commitment to the task at hand, or
some combination of these? The point is not that a forward-leaning
posture
can prevent costly policy mistakes but rather that one should not simply >>> assume that the larger strategy is to blame for those mistakes.

Nor should we assume that we cannot afford a forward-leaning strategy
for
Eurasia. Although its primacy is more contested today than in the
aftermath of the Cold War, the United States remains the world’s only
superpower. And while the West — the U.S. and its democratic allies — >>> has
seen its overwhelming share of global economic and military power shrink >>> in recent years, it still accounts for some 60 percent of the world’s
wealth and military spending. Moreover, although the contesting,
revisionist powers have the advantage of operating in their own
neighborhoods — meaning that the U.S. has the more complex and diverse >>> task of responding to challenges far from home — the U.S. has
significant,
close allies in each region that have begun to spend more on their
militaries in the face of the threats posed by China, Iran, and Russia.

Nor have the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan bankrupted the U.S. At the
height of the campaigns, total defense spending (personnel, procurement, >>> operations, etc.) as a percentage of GDP never rose above 5 percent,
well
below Cold War levels. Today, the base defense budget hovers at 3
percent
or less.

In short, if the U.S. and its allies wanted to do more to contest these
revisionist powers in the realm of hard military power, they could. It
is
really a matter of policy choices and priorities.

To take the revisionist challenge seriously requires the American body
politic to relearn the value of American leadership in defending the
liberal order it largely created after World War II. It requires
political
leaders to make the case for the benefits that leadership and primacy
bring to America. Like an understanding and appreciation of American
government itself, this is something that every generation of Americans
must (re)learn. Left untaught, it — and the historical memory of its

[continued in next message]

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)

From: slider@anashram.com

On Mon, 14 May 2018 05:52:08 +0100, thang ornerythinchus <thangolossus@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, 07 May 2018 12:10:07 +0100, slider <slider@anashram.com>
wrote:

On Mon, 07 May 2018 02:30:32 +0100, thang ornerythinchus
<thangolossus@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, 01 May 2018 12:31:19 +0100, slider <slider@anashram.com>
wrote:

The three revisionist powers have aggressively gained ground in recent >>>> years. How do we thwart their ambitions?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/russia-china-iran-american-foreign-policy-challenges/

We should not be blind to the one thing that does tie the three
revisionist powers together: ambition. None of the three states has
been
satisfied with an American-led international order, but their
ambitions
to
challenge that order, at least regionally, were initially constrained
by
their relative lack of economic and military strength, compared to
that
of
the United States and key allies. With the end of the Cold War, that
dominance was unprecedented. America and its treaty-bound partners
accounted for more than 70 percent of both worldwide military spending >>>> and
total global gross domestic product (GDP).

Faced with such dominance, China’s strategy was “hide our capabilities >>>> and
bide our time.” Similarly, Russia, humiliated by the loss of its
superpower status, had to wait until the spike in oil and gas prices
unleashed a flood of new revenue to begin to try to reverse the
various
“capitulations” Yeltsin and Gorbachev had made to Washington and the >>>> West
out of Soviet, and then Russian, weakness. And while Iran has never
concealed its willingness to challenge the United States, its recent
assertiveness is undoubtedly tied to the disarray in American Middle
East
policy, brought about by its multi-year fumbling in Iraq, half-hearted >>>> commitment in Afghanistan, and indecision over Syria and the chaos
resulting from the Arab Spring. With the combined decline of American
and
allied economic and military power in recent years, and a general
reluctance to use that power assertively, all three states have seized >>>> the
opportunity to push their revisionist agenda forward.

Policies designed to satiate each of the three countries have not
worked.
In the cases of Russia and China, American administrations of both
political stripes have tried to reset relations and have invited them
to
join various world forums (such as the World Trade Organization and
G20)
and generally to recognize their place in the international system.
The
results have at best been underwhelming. Although some common
interests
have emerged that have allowed for some cooperation, broader diverging >>>> interests and agendas have undermined any real progress toward either
Russia or China accepting the responsibilities of having a seat at the >>>> table. They have been willing to take advantage of the international
order
— especially economically — but unwilling to support that order.

China, Iran, and Russia have each been willing participants in the
global
trading system. But expectations that such participation might help
generate internal reforms or at least moderate behavior
internationally
have gone unmet. If America faces the problem of its own allies’ free >>>> riding in military affairs, it faces an even greater problem of
revisionist states’ free riding by using the open global economic
order
to
generate revenues to fuel their strategic plans.

Until the sanction regime was tightened appreciably during the Bush
and
Obama years, Iran not only benefited from the open global economic
order
but also used the massive amount of traffic generated by that order to >>>> hide its clandestine efforts to acquire needed elements for its
weapons
program. President Barack Obama hoped that Tehran — freed from
sanctions
and with its nuclear prospects supposedly postponed for a decade by
the
Join Comprehensive Plan of Action — might use the intervening period >>>> of
lessened tensions to establish a modus vivendi with Saudi Arabia in
the
region and to reestablish normal trading ties with the rest of the
world.
Although it is too early to pass final judgment on Obama’s strategy, >>>> it
appears that with sanctions removed, Iran’s leadership has accelerated >>>> its
plans for the region.

The question that needs to be asked is: Do the ambitions of the
revisionist powers have recognizable limits? That is, are there
concessions to be made, spheres of influence to be accepted, or
strategies
of appeasement or policies of retrenchment to be adopted that might
result
in a peaceful status quo? History suggests not. Every gain by a rising >>>> power results in a new set of uncertainties within the region and new
security interests to be taken into account. As has been noted, Rome
conquered the known world with one “defensive” war after another.
Success
typically opens the door to greater ambition, not less. Building on
gains
is what rising powers do.

The first and most obvious problem is that the revisionist powers are
there. From a geostrategic perspective, the historical advantage of
being
separated from Eurasia by two large oceans becomes an obstacle to the
U.S.
when it comes to creating credible deterrents.

Although the U.S. might for some short time concede greater sway in a
region to a revisionist power, the immediate neighbors are not likely
to
take this advance with equanimity. Either they will take their turn at >>>> appeasement, stoking the revisionist power’s own views of what it can >>>> get
away with, or those who can will build up their own military
capabilities
in response. With Russia and China having nuclear arsenals and Iran
potentially on its way to joining them, it is not hard to imagine any
number of countries countering with their own weapons programs —
programs
and capabilities over which the U.S. will have little or no say. A
proliferating nuclear-arms race is not a recipe for stability.

When a regime’s character is factored in, tensions appear virtually
inevitable. China, Iran, and Russia all assert a civilizational
challenge
to the Western liberal-democratic order. It is difficult to know how
deeply the three countries’ general populations hold their leaders’ >>>> views,
but for the leadership in each, ideology is certainly an important
source
of legitimacy for their non-liberal rule at home.

Coexistence with prosperous, relatively powerful democratic neighbors, >>>> whose own relations are largely based on the trust and norms that come >>>> from similarity of rule, is a circle hard to square. Even Iran, whose
neighborhood is hardly filled with liberal-democratic states, must
continually strive to keep Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria in a state of
chaos,
lest a more liberal, majoritarian Shi’ite state emerge and threaten
the
Islamic Republic’s claims to be the only legitimate form of rule for >>>> its
sect. And the notion that a nation carries a special civilizational
role
becomes even more important for the leadership to sustain when their
ability to meet domestic needs and expectations appears to come up
short —
a problem Russia, Iran, and, increasingly, China have had.

Of course, the question is: Why should we care? None of the three
states
directly threatens the United States. Indeed, arguably, if relations
are
tense, it is largely because Washington has pushed back against
revisionist efforts — often about matters far from our shores and at >>>> times
over issues on which we have no formal opinion (for example, about who >>>> has
sovereignty over this or that islet in the South China Sea), no treaty >>>> obligation (as with Georgia or Ukraine), or no historical tie (as in
Syria).

The answer is that, since World War II’s end, Washington has
understood
that, strategically, Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East are the
three
most important theaters to the United States and that general peace
and
global prosperity depend on deterring non-liberal, would-be hegemons
from
disrupting those regions’ stability. If history is any guide, the
lesson
learned has been that ignoring trouble on those fronts only postpones
the
difficulty and raises the cost of eventually dealing with it.

Arguably, the Middle East is less important today for the United
States,
given changing oil and gas markets in the United States. But even so,
instability in the region can affect the global energy picture (and
hence
the world economy), provide openings for terrorism directed at the
West,
threaten Israel, generate a massive refugee crisis, and produce an
arms
race that may end with more states attempting to acquire nuclear
weapons.
American administrations have at various times and for various reasons >>>> tried to disentangle the U.S. from the Middle East, but absent U.S.
engagement, the region inevitably becomes more anarchic, not less, and >>>> generates problems from which Washington has not been able to walk
away.

That said, the U.S. faces two major problems in addressing the three
revisionist powers in these three key theaters.

The first and most obvious problem is that the revisionist powers are
there. From a geostrategic perspective, the historical advantage of
being
separated from Eurasia by two large oceans becomes an obstacle to the
U.S.
when it comes to creating credible deterrents.

But rather than worry about sustaining a costly forward presence,
strategists have offered “offshore balancing” as an alternative. Under >>>> this strategy the U.S. will intervene only when one or more powers
threaten to gain a hegemonic advantage in a region.

But deciding when to intervene is never easy, since it almost always
comes
with the prospect of conflict. As a result, democracies in particular
are
apt to delay intervention until the circumstances are even less
advantageous. Moreover, effective and decisive intervention from
offshore
still requires a military force second to none.

The second major issue is that the costs of deterring another power
are
clear and felt upfront, but the benefits are unclear and delayed.
Arguments in favor of deterrence speculate about what might happen if
the
U.S. steps back from its forward presence, but until something
untoward
happens, it remains conjecture. When the public has fresh memories of
failing to stop an ambitious power and the country has had to pay for
that
failure with a costly conflict, it is easier to convince that same
public
and its representatives that forward-leaning deterrence is the right
course. But successful deterrence can also breed complacency — the
feeling
that the peace and prosperity brought about by that strategy is the
natural order of things, not a result of policy decisions made and
sustained.

In short, if the U.S. and its allies wanted to do more to contest
these
revisionist powers in the realm of hard military power, they could. It >>>> is
really a matter of policy choices and priorities.

Moreover, it can be difficult to maintain a credible deterrent when
the
issue at stake — be it territory or some aspect of international law — >>>> is
important to regional stability but is, at first glance, of only
secondary
interest to the United States. Such efforts can look even more
speculative
and costly to the public when, as has been the case in recent years,
they
have been poorly conducted or inadequately thought through.

Undoubtedly, the Great Recession of 2008 and the costly, indecisive
wars
in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya have soured large segments of the
American
public and their representatives on adopting a forward-leaning
American
strategic posture. With economic problems at home following the
recession
of 2008, the benefits of such efforts have appeared less than
satisfactory.

But this invites two questions: What would the regional and
geopolitical
situations have been if Washington had not acted? And, as noted
already,
were the indecisive results a product of strategic overreach, flawed
implementation, a lack of sustained commitment to the task at hand, or >>>> some combination of these? The point is not that a forward-leaning
posture
can prevent costly policy mistakes but rather that one should not
simply
assume that the larger strategy is to blame for those mistakes.

Nor should we assume that we cannot afford a forward-leaning strategy
for
Eurasia. Although its primacy is more contested today than in the
aftermath of the Cold War, the United States remains the world’s only >>>> superpower. And while the West — the U.S. and its democratic allies — >>>> has
seen its overwhelming share of global economic and military power
shrink
in recent years, it still accounts for some 60 percent of the world’s >>>> wealth and military spending. Moreover, although the contesting,
revisionist powers have the advantage of operating in their own
neighborhoods — meaning that the U.S. has the more complex and diverse >>>> task of responding to challenges far from home — the U.S. has
significant,
close allies in each region that have begun to spend more on their
militaries in the face of the threats posed by China, Iran, and
Russia.

Nor have the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan bankrupted the U.S. At the
height of the campaigns, total defense spending (personnel,
procurement,
operations, etc.) as a percentage of GDP never rose above 5 percent,
well
below Cold War levels. Today, the base defense budget hovers at 3
percent
or less.

In short, if the U.S. and its allies wanted to do more to contest
these
revisionist powers in the realm of hard military power, they could. It >>>> is

[continued in next message]

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From: thangolossus@gmail.com

On Mon, 14 May 2018 12:37:32 +0100, slider <slider@anashram.com>
wrote:

On Mon, 14 May 2018 05:52:08 +0100, thang ornerythinchus ><thangolossus@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, 07 May 2018 12:10:07 +0100, slider <slider@anashram.com>
wrote:

On Mon, 07 May 2018 02:30:32 +0100, thang ornerythinchus
<thangolossus@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, 01 May 2018 12:31:19 +0100, slider <slider@anashram.com>
wrote:

The three revisionist powers have aggressively gained ground in recent >>>>> years. How do we thwart their ambitions?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/russia-china-iran-american-foreign-policy-challenges/

We should not be blind to the one thing that does tie the three
revisionist powers together: ambition. None of the three states has
been
satisfied with an American-led international order, but their
ambitions
to
challenge that order, at least regionally, were initially constrained >>>>> by
their relative lack of economic and military strength, compared to
that
of
the United States and key allies. With the end of the Cold War, that >>>>> dominance was unprecedented. America and its treaty-bound partners
accounted for more than 70 percent of both worldwide military spending >>>>> and
total global gross domestic product (GDP).

Faced with such dominance, China’s strategy was “hide our capabilities
and
bide our time.” Similarly, Russia, humiliated by the loss of its
superpower status, had to wait until the spike in oil and gas prices >>>>> unleashed a flood of new revenue to begin to try to reverse the
various
“capitulations” Yeltsin and Gorbachev had made to Washington and the >>>>> West
out of Soviet, and then Russian, weakness. And while Iran has never
concealed its willingness to challenge the United States, its recent >>>>> assertiveness is undoubtedly tied to the disarray in American Middle >>>>> East
policy, brought about by its multi-year fumbling in Iraq, half-hearted >>>>> commitment in Afghanistan, and indecision over Syria and the chaos
resulting from the Arab Spring. With the combined decline of American >>>>> and
allied economic and military power in recent years, and a general
reluctance to use that power assertively, all three states have seized >>>>> the
opportunity to push their revisionist agenda forward.

Policies designed to satiate each of the three countries have not
worked.
In the cases of Russia and China, American administrations of both
political stripes have tried to reset relations and have invited them >>>>> to
join various world forums (such as the World Trade Organization and
G20)
and generally to recognize their place in the international system.
The
results have at best been underwhelming. Although some common
interests
have emerged that have allowed for some cooperation, broader diverging >>>>> interests and agendas have undermined any real progress toward either >>>>> Russia or China accepting the responsibilities of having a seat at the >>>>> table. They have been willing to take advantage of the international >>>>> order
— especially economically — but unwilling to support that order. >>>>>
China, Iran, and Russia have each been willing participants in the
global
trading system. But expectations that such participation might help
generate internal reforms or at least moderate behavior
internationally
have gone unmet. If America faces the problem of its own allies’ free >>>>> riding in military affairs, it faces an even greater problem of
revisionist states’ free riding by using the open global economic
order
to
generate revenues to fuel their strategic plans.

Until the sanction regime was tightened appreciably during the Bush
and
Obama years, Iran not only benefited from the open global economic
order
but also used the massive amount of traffic generated by that order to >>>>> hide its clandestine efforts to acquire needed elements for its
weapons
program. President Barack Obama hoped that Tehran — freed from
sanctions
and with its nuclear prospects supposedly postponed for a decade by
the
Join Comprehensive Plan of Action — might use the intervening period >>>>> of
lessened tensions to establish a modus vivendi with Saudi Arabia in
the
region and to reestablish normal trading ties with the rest of the
world.
Although it is too early to pass final judgment on Obama’s strategy, >>>>> it
appears that with sanctions removed, Iran’s leadership has accelerated >>>>> its
plans for the region.

The question that needs to be asked is: Do the ambitions of the
revisionist powers have recognizable limits? That is, are there
concessions to be made, spheres of influence to be accepted, or
strategies
of appeasement or policies of retrenchment to be adopted that might
result
in a peaceful status quo? History suggests not. Every gain by a rising >>>>> power results in a new set of uncertainties within the region and new >>>>> security interests to be taken into account. As has been noted, Rome >>>>> conquered the known world with one “defensive” war after another. >>>>> Success
typically opens the door to greater ambition, not less. Building on
gains
is what rising powers do.

The first and most obvious problem is that the revisionist powers are >>>>> there. From a geostrategic perspective, the historical advantage of
being
separated from Eurasia by two large oceans becomes an obstacle to the >>>>> U.S.
when it comes to creating credible deterrents.

Although the U.S. might for some short time concede greater sway in a >>>>> region to a revisionist power, the immediate neighbors are not likely >>>>> to
take this advance with equanimity. Either they will take their turn at >>>>> appeasement, stoking the revisionist power’s own views of what it can >>>>> get
away with, or those who can will build up their own military
capabilities
in response. With Russia and China having nuclear arsenals and Iran
potentially on its way to joining them, it is not hard to imagine any >>>>> number of countries countering with their own weapons programs —
programs
and capabilities over which the U.S. will have little or no say. A
proliferating nuclear-arms race is not a recipe for stability.

When a regime’s character is factored in, tensions appear virtually >>>>> inevitable. China, Iran, and Russia all assert a civilizational
challenge
to the Western liberal-democratic order. It is difficult to know how >>>>> deeply the three countries’ general populations hold their leaders’ >>>>> views,
but for the leadership in each, ideology is certainly an important
source
of legitimacy for their non-liberal rule at home.

Coexistence with prosperous, relatively powerful democratic neighbors, >>>>> whose own relations are largely based on the trust and norms that come >>>>> from similarity of rule, is a circle hard to square. Even Iran, whose >>>>> neighborhood is hardly filled with liberal-democratic states, must
continually strive to keep Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria in a state of
chaos,
lest a more liberal, majoritarian Shi’ite state emerge and threaten >>>>> the
Islamic Republic’s claims to be the only legitimate form of rule for >>>>> its
sect. And the notion that a nation carries a special civilizational
role
becomes even more important for the leadership to sustain when their >>>>> ability to meet domestic needs and expectations appears to come up
short —
a problem Russia, Iran, and, increasingly, China have had.

Of course, the question is: Why should we care? None of the three
states
directly threatens the United States. Indeed, arguably, if relations >>>>> are
tense, it is largely because Washington has pushed back against
revisionist efforts — often about matters far from our shores and at >>>>> times
over issues on which we have no formal opinion (for example, about who >>>>> has
sovereignty over this or that islet in the South China Sea), no treaty >>>>> obligation (as with Georgia or Ukraine), or no historical tie (as in >>>>> Syria).

The answer is that, since World War II’s end, Washington has
understood
that, strategically, Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East are the
three
most important theaters to the United States and that general peace
and
global prosperity depend on deterring non-liberal, would-be hegemons >>>>> from
disrupting those regions’ stability. If history is any guide, the
lesson
learned has been that ignoring trouble on those fronts only postpones >>>>> the
difficulty and raises the cost of eventually dealing with it.

Arguably, the Middle East is less important today for the United
States,
given changing oil and gas markets in the United States. But even so, >>>>> instability in the region can affect the global energy picture (and
hence
the world economy), provide openings for terrorism directed at the
West,
threaten Israel, generate a massive refugee crisis, and produce an
arms
race that may end with more states attempting to acquire nuclear
weapons.
American administrations have at various times and for various reasons >>>>> tried to disentangle the U.S. from the Middle East, but absent U.S.
engagement, the region inevitably becomes more anarchic, not less, and >>>>> generates problems from which Washington has not been able to walk
away.

That said, the U.S. faces two major problems in addressing the three >>>>> revisionist powers in these three key theaters.

The first and most obvious problem is that the revisionist powers are >>>>> there. From a geostrategic perspective, the historical advantage of
being
separated from Eurasia by two large oceans becomes an obstacle to the >>>>> U.S.
when it comes to creating credible deterrents.

But rather than worry about sustaining a costly forward presence,
strategists have offered “offshore balancing” as an alternative. Under
this strategy the U.S. will intervene only when one or more powers
threaten to gain a hegemonic advantage in a region.

But deciding when to intervene is never easy, since it almost always >>>>> comes
with the prospect of conflict. As a result, democracies in particular >>>>> are
apt to delay intervention until the circumstances are even less
advantageous. Moreover, effective and decisive intervention from
offshore
still requires a military force second to none.

The second major issue is that the costs of deterring another power
are
clear and felt upfront, but the benefits are unclear and delayed.
Arguments in favor of deterrence speculate about what might happen if >>>>> the
U.S. steps back from its forward presence, but until something
untoward
happens, it remains conjecture. When the public has fresh memories of >>>>> failing to stop an ambitious power and the country has had to pay for >>>>> that
failure with a costly conflict, it is easier to convince that same
public
and its representatives that forward-leaning deterrence is the right >>>>> course. But successful deterrence can also breed complacency — the >>>>> feeling
that the peace and prosperity brought about by that strategy is the
natural order of things, not a result of policy decisions made and
sustained.

In short, if the U.S. and its allies wanted to do more to contest
these
revisionist powers in the realm of hard military power, they could. It >>>>> is
really a matter of policy choices and priorities.

Moreover, it can be difficult to maintain a credible deterrent when
the
issue at stake — be it territory or some aspect of international law —
is
important to regional stability but is, at first glance, of only
secondary
interest to the United States. Such efforts can look even more
speculative
and costly to the public when, as has been the case in recent years, >>>>> they
have been poorly conducted or inadequately thought through.

Undoubtedly, the Great Recession of 2008 and the costly, indecisive
wars
in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya have soured large segments of the
American
public and their representatives on adopting a forward-leaning
American
strategic posture. With economic problems at home following the
recession
of 2008, the benefits of such efforts have appeared less than
satisfactory.

But this invites two questions: What would the regional and
geopolitical
situations have been if Washington had not acted? And, as noted
already,
were the indecisive results a product of strategic overreach, flawed >>>>> implementation, a lack of sustained commitment to the task at hand, or >>>>> some combination of these? The point is not that a forward-leaning
posture
can prevent costly policy mistakes but rather that one should not
simply
assume that the larger strategy is to blame for those mistakes.

Nor should we assume that we cannot afford a forward-leaning strategy >>>>> for
Eurasia. Although its primacy is more contested today than in the
aftermath of the Cold War, the United States remains the world’s only >>>>> superpower. And while the West — the U.S. and its democratic allies — >>>>> has
seen its overwhelming share of global economic and military power
shrink
in recent years, it still accounts for some 60 percent of the world’s >>>>> wealth and military spending. Moreover, although the contesting,
revisionist powers have the advantage of operating in their own
neighborhoods — meaning that the U.S. has the more complex and diverse >>>>> task of responding to challenges far from home — the U.S. has
significant,
close allies in each region that have begun to spend more on their
militaries in the face of the threats posed by China, Iran, and
Russia.

Nor have the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan bankrupted the U.S. At the

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