Isaac Chotiner steps in with a timely intervention in my debate on Somalia with James Kirchick, correctly pointing out that a lot of military might be "justified" in the sense that if you could pull them off in a reasonably non-fiascoish manner they seem like reasonable things to do, "but this is leaps and bounds away from saying that armed reprisal is the right or proper course of action." Indeed. What's more, it's traditionally been recognized that this sort of pragmatic calculus isn't merely a pragmatic issue, but is actually constitutive of engaging in a just use of force -- you can't inflict the suffering and death and destruction that war always causes on a whim, or even out of justified pique, you need to have some decent prospects of success.
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What He Said
02 Aug 2007 08:19 am
Comments (9)
(from my minimal knowledge, I'd say that in all three cases I have cited, "armed reprisal" failed badly).
Well, at least Chotiner acknowledges his lack of knowledge. Because it is clear that the Ethiopian invasion has been quite successful. The war between the ICU and the TFG is over; the UN- and AU-backed government of Somalia, which is friendly to Ethiopia, is back in charge of the country; and the ICU is no longer blatantly launching terrorist attacks on Ethiopia from Somalia. The war in Somalia has been downgraded from an out-and-out civil war to an insurgency.
Now, from those like Matthew who seems to think that history began in Somalia when Ethiopia invaded, you'll hear "hey, there's an insurgency, so the invasion must have failed". Which is precisely wrong, since an insurgency is an improvement from the civil war, and war between the ICU and Ethiopia, that existed before.
I see your and Isaac's point, and you're right, at the macro-level. My problem with this outlook, however, is that in the case of the Middle East / East Africa, it would seem to preclude the use of ANY military force--not just a full-scale invasion--if such an action did not have "decent prospects of success." Well, how do you define success in such a region? If by success you mean that the problems posed by the country in question are totally solved, or that the Muslim world is happy (or indifferent) to the US action, it will never happen.
I'm not a neocon. I hate Bush and the disaster he has unleashed in Iraq. The Iraq campaign and its drain on the armed forces has done more to take the military option off the table than any anti-war doctrine. But that won't always be true, and I don't want to see the reaction ("if we never attack, we'll have no more Iraqs") to the current situation compound our problems down the road.
Ethiopian invasion has been quite successful
Only if you don't care about dead civilians, human rights or longterm strategy.
I'm disappointed to click through and find that Isaac's "intervention" doesn't involve removing Kirchick's head from Marty Peretz's ass.
but there is still a wide gulf here in terms of defining whether military action is worth it.
matt seems to be saying that unless we can do it without kicking up an insurgency, it shouldn't be done.
even if we are responding to a direct attack!
Personally, I'd estimate that failure to respond to a direct attack is a guarantee of failure. you can't end a threat you won't deal with.
"Only if you don't care about dead civilians, human rights or longterm strategy."
You need to compare the current situation to the previous civil war, as Al points out, not some fantasy alternate history where Somalia was Switzerland before Ethiopia invaded. Just because the current situation is more positive for U.S. interests than the previous situation, doesn't reflexively mean that the current situation is morally worse.
Somalia is probably an example of a measured success.
The general schema of this kind of operation is as follows: there are several groups of ruthless bloody bastards operating in an area, and we detest them all for ample of reasons, but one group is positively hostile to us. So we support the competition, and if the latter wins, good.
In case of Ethiopia and Somalia, some low level bloody strife occurs at the best of times (which, as you can see, are rather mediocre in absolute terms), so isolated, and even fairly regular attacks of the government troops and Ethiopians are not a proof of failure.
Yet the situation drips with irony. About 15 years ago we still had a preference for theocratic nuts over bloodthirsty Communists (not ALL Communists are bloodthirsty, but Ethiopian government qualifies). Ethiopian government used the period of "close anti-al-Qaeda cooperation with USA" to finish a mass trial of political opponents in which prosecution demanded to hang ca. 50 (or 100?) people, but they all got relatively merciful life sentences. A country as dependent of foreign aid as Ethiopia tends to time its atrocities with care.
From geo-political point of view, when we tilted our hand toward Ethiopia, we alienated Eritrea, and it is possible that whatever support Islamist lost in Somalia, they gained in Erithrea. So the score seems to be:
Islamists, minus, temporarily and on points
USA, plus, temporarily and on points,
Ethiopia, plus (government, normal folks, minus).
Eritrea, no difference really.
Somalis, normal folks: ????? the relative position of the local bloodthirsty bastards are definitely altered, but what does it translate for in the life of the rest of the people, hard to tell. Some say that ICU was better on law-and-order than the warlords, but Taliban-style government has its minuses too.
The good name of American policy of spreading democracy and hope: you know I am kidding, you cannot loose an asset you do not have.
There is a disturbing big picture, in which we consistently support dictators against Islamists, and we do not have any new democracy to show for our efforts. To the contrary, we are associated with various repressive measures in Pakistan, Ethiopia, Egypt etc, It is really hard to tell what to do. Perhaps -- knowing more about the respective countries than labels applied from across the oceans could help? Plus some intelligence and good will? Perhaps there is a better way...
Clausewitz called it the 3 Ps. Passion, politics and probabilty. It is a way to measure the success of the military instrument. Passion = will of the people. Politics = desired political endstate. Probability = the chance your military can attain the desired endstate through use of force.
Comments closed August 16, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
well sure, great, but how do you know in advance, how do you define success and who decides?
Posted by novakant | August 2, 2007 9:48 AM