Modern Conservatism, perpetual war

Neil Clark wrote last summer about how the modern Conservative party have been wholly captured by the neo-conservative hawks. I knew about Gove, Hague and Fox, but it turns out that all the key figures in the cabinet have similar views. Neil Clark also touches on how the Cameron campaign was orchestrated by special interests.

So what a Modern Conservative election victory would bring us is more confrontation with Russia, support for sanctions against Iran for what is an entirely legitimate nuclear programme, an escalation of the war in Afghanistan and forays into Somalia (justified by gloopy humanitarianism). And this is a time of austerity, when the middle classes will have to take the hit on welfare benefits and tax rises.

The Eastern Europe watch blog noted how apathetic the poles are about involvement in Afghanistan, a war opposed by the majority there. It also points out the blindingly obvious but politically incorrect observation that there is less muslim immigration in Poland, and therefore less danger of home-grown terrorism. Eight years after 9/11, immigration to Britain continues unabated. The British people are sceptical about the benefits of mass immigration and they are also sceptical about defending Britain by fighting wars on the other side of the world. The ordinary member of the Conservative party to a large extent will reflect the population as a whole.

But Modern Conservatism means you take the power of decision from the rank and file, who are too reactionary and stupid to make the correct decisions and leave them to an enlightened, progressive clique. Who needs democracy? William Hague has said that a conservative goverment would need to turn around public opposition to the Afghanistan war.

It is also noteworthy that the Immigration Advisory Service (IAS) had a presence at the Conservative party conference. At time of writing, there are two postings on the IAS home page. One from Modern Conservative Immigration spokesman, Damien Green, tells the IAS in-crowd that a future government should not follow public opinion. Here Green also talks about Europe-wide solutions. The second posting on the IAS site has an IAS person saying joined up thinking and curbing human rights abuses across the world is the way to fight immigration. Those caring people in the IAS are dispensing a presciption for perpetual interventions and wars across the world in the name of "human rights". Tightening our own border controls and asylum regulations is not the kind of change approved of by Modern Conservatism and its allies. "Joined up thinking": where did we hear that before? Is that Blairism? or Blameronism?

There is a link between immigration and modern utopian wars. The globalist elites, which includes the modern conservative and republican party elites, have given up on controlling their own borders; and in order to make immigration safer, they try to control large tracts of the rest of the world, which are the source for migrant invasions. In order "to make the world safe for globalism democracy".

The fact that Al-Queda and the Taliban hate Shia Islam as much as they hate West should make these War-on-Terror fanatics think that Iran and the West have common cause. The nebulous concept of "global security" means that all local conflicts are seen through the simplistic prism of Free-world vs Islamic extremists; "global security" necessitates that the vaguest of threats demands a military response from an economically bankrupt and war-weary US and UK. As Ron Paul said, sanctions are an act of war. A vote for Cameron is a vote for the McCain-Cheney axis. George W. Bush was a realist compared to these.

Geography and demographics: relations with Muslim countries in the future

With all the warmongering talk about Iran as a threat to the West (for a more sceptical view see here), we forget which Muslim states in the decades to come are likely to pose a threat to the independence, if not the very existence, of some western countries, specifically in Southern and South Eastern Europe.

The population of North Africa is increasing fast, while that of Europe ages and declines, so changing the balance of power in the Mediterranean. Mass immigration from the Maghreb into Spain, France and Italy is likely to increase the political influence of Algeria and Morocco in Southern Europe, with more than merely cultural effects. A country like Morocco might be tempted to intervene in Spain if any religious tensions should flare up; or a nuclear-armed (with Pakistani help) Algeria might feel impelled to support Muslim groups in ethno-religious conflicts inside French territory. This conflict could be in the form of rioting or simply non-violent agitation by Muslims for more civil rights, special privileges or concessions to Islamic culture. Ethnic tensions in Europe will as likely to worsen relations between Europe and the Maghreb rather than bring cultures and countries together.

In the Balkans, a populous, industrialised Turkey is likely to extend its influence over weak and sparsely populated Balkan states. The Turkish government seems moderate, but quite understandably it will pursue Turkish self-interest. The old dictum, powers will be powers, applies. A Bulgarian think-tank predicts how Turkish accession will lead to unrestricted turkish immigration overwhelming ethnic Bulgarians; and the Turks will extend their influence in Europe. The US Government, the British Conservatives (in thrall to US foreign policy objectives) as well most neo-conservatives and liberals believe that Turkey can become a bulwark against the supposed main threats to the East, which are geographically more distant from Europe. Even without EU Accession, it has to be said, Turkish influence can only increase; but polite containment of Turkey rather than integration with it will be more attractive to central and Eastern Europeans.

Iran is a long way from Europe. In the days of the Ottoman Empire, Persia acted as a second front for the Ottoman Empire, forcing the Turks to divert resources away from Europe and perhaps saving central Europe from conquest. This dynamic may reassert itself. Iran is likely to be contained by Sunni countries in the Middle East and won't be in a position to pose an existential threat to Israel. The main threat to the Israeli state is demographic - from the Palestinian Arabs in a greater Israel; or even in a 1948-borders Israel.

Iran also has militarised, Sunni Pakistan as a neighbour and relations between the two countries remain strained, according to the neo-conservative Middle East Quarterly. Asia Times reports that Border tensions continue. As a result, Iran is likely to maintain good relations with India in order to contain the Pakistani threat, which includes the spectre of the Sunni bomb. India's rivalry with China will mean that India will be friendly to the West; Pakistan's rivalry with India will mean that it relies more on China, although a Uighur insurgency might distract Pakistan from its strategic interest. Iran again will have interests in common with Europe and America, suggesting a cold alliance. Shia Islam is not likely to be a destabilising ideology for the West in the way that Saudi Wahabiism is.

Afghanistan: how western aid is repeating Russian mistakes

An article on how Russian development policy in 1980's Afghanistan looks a lot like what the West is doing now, written Paul Robinson, an academic working on International affairs at the University of Ottawa.

See the American Conservative website .

It is not just that the West is giving aid money to a corrupt government; but that the top-down aid approach increases corruption, makes the government unaccountable, and the development isn't matched to the economic or social conditions in Afghanistan.

More British deaths in Afghanistan

Eight more soldiers died today, part of an offensive operation with the Americans. The consequence of the increase in casualties is that politicians can't ignore this far-away war any longer. The Media are now covering the story and the parties have to declare their position, beyond these formulaic declarations of sorrow.

Everyone I talk to thinks it a disgrace that soldiers should be sent to war without being properly resourced. The whole country sees it as a scandal, and whether people believe the war is justified or not, they want the troops to be protected. What is also scandalous is how the politicians had contrived not to discuss the issue until last week.

It is especially scandalous that the Conservatives have been quiet because their leadership is very much in favour of intervention. But Cameron stayed quiet. It took the Anti-war Liberal Democrat party to break the silence. If the Conservatives are supposed to competing on the same ground in the next election, then Clegg wins on this. Clegg calls himself a liberal interventionist, which seems to be a break from the previous leadership.

In many ways, Afghanistan is a liberal war: people like Harman are understandably horrified by the way the Taliban coerce women. But, I don't see how we can supplant an entire culture, without coercion; we are meant to be on the side of the people, not against them. Liberals don't like solutions based around ethnic differences, but Afghanistan itself is so fragmented that a weak central state with iranian, pakistani/pashtun, uzbecki spheres of influence, all based on ethnic ties, would probably be the most stable solution. This would be more effective than top-down economic development (which is likely to be misdirected anyway).

This war is not like the cold war, where scepticism was confined to left-wingers. Ordinary, strongly patriotic people will say that the soldiers shouldn't be there in the first place. The government say candidly that the soldiers are in Afghanistan to protect us from Terrorism, Gordon Brown today and Harriet Harman in Prime Minister's questions on Wednesday. But beyond the assertion that Afghanistan is the cradle of terrorism, it is never explained how terrorists can bomb British cities from thousands of miles away or how you can stop someone from Britain who hasn't been to Afghanistan from committing a terrorist act. Our presence there is just as likely to provoke a terrorist attack as stope one.

Those thinkers who believe the war is a good thing are talking about a long war. This is in spite of our indebtedness and general economic weakness. This under-resourced, politically naive war is leading to the deaths of British soliders, with no end in sight.

The London Times and Israeli disinformation

According to the former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, The Times story of Saudi Arabia colluding in an Israeli strike is a false story, planted by Mossad.

His comments are here on the American Conservative blog.

Giraldi is well-connected enough to know. In 2005 Giraldi broke the story that Dick Cheney ordered plans to attack Iran in response to a large-scale terrorist attack, irrespective of whether Iran was involved.

Based also on Biden's comments that the US won't stand in Israel's way, he draws the conclusion also that the US administration are ratcheting up the pressure on Iran.

To be fair to the Times, the wider reflection to make here is that a large proportion of "News" stories in the papers are the result of a PR, leaks or other agendas. Most news is propaganda and all of the newspapers are conduits for misinformation.

Where the right is still going wrong

Read on article on The National Interest website against the strategic idiocy of preventative war and the obsession with biffing on the head every bad guy who pops up and says "boo".

The present reliance on warfare to defend the free world is counter-productive, but it is eroding civil liberties and sucking out its economic lifeblood. Not that the US has much of an economy left.

To neo-conservatives jacobins and those swayed by them, torture is OK, many right-of-centre people go along with it. They vote for corporate republicans and fake conservatives.

The Republicans deserve to lose in 2012 if they continue to be dominated by the war-party. If they don't change, what is the point of the Rebublicans? They don't defend conservatism or liberty; the Obama administration is as interventionist as Bush. So Americans may as well vote Democrat if they want to bomb civilians and trash the freedoms they inherited as their birthright.

Pakistan nuclear threat exaggerated

Reading about the Pakistan war, you are likely to be pretty scared: Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state is about to be taken over or become a failed state; the Taliban 60 miles from Islamabad. Potentially Apocalyptic. Even if you're sceptical, there is no way of arguing against it without access to another perspective, not provided by the MSM.

It reached absurdly shrill levels with the “two weeks to survive” warning, reported dutifully by Fox, who seemed to have been the first media organisation to hear about it (i.e., they were given it). The Telegraph report is obviously based on the Fox story, even to the extent that both finish with the coda that US officials don't know what the objective of the Taliban is – to take over Pakistan or establish an area of operations in NW Pakistan. This shows how journalists depend on one source only for a big story, often a government.source.

The Guardian coverage incidentally is a lot better than the neo-con leaning Telegraph. They are more willing to question it.

There is an article by Anatol Lieven – Pakistan's passing grade on the National Interest website, which deflates this conventional analysis (conventional, partly because it is the analysis that the media uncritically accept), making it look like alarmism or downright scaremongering. Lieven pours cold water on the idea that the state is endangered, although it is troubled by terrorism; he suggests that ethnic conflict between Pashtuns and other Pakistani groups is the main driver, not the War on Terror; he points out that the 60 miles between Swat and Islamabad happens to be occupied by a high mountain range, which absurdly doesn't get mentioned in the papers, at least not the right-wing papers.

Now getting involved in Pakistan is a big step; Pakistan is a serious geo-political player; it means potentially violating another country's sovereignty, a country much more populous than Afghanistan or Iraq, with the danger of escalating the war we are already fighting. In spite of this, there is no proper media debate or analysis. What seems clear is that the existence of Taliban havens in North-West Pakistan make the war in Afghanistan more difficult, possibly unwinnable. But getting involved in Pakistan has its own consequences: we make the leaders look like Western stooges, we could make the Taliban look like heroes. We may help destabilse Pakistan, by de-legitimising the Government, even the Army. We could make the people hate us as a result of civilian casualties. The exaggeration of the perilousness of the situation in Pakistan pre-empts any such debate, the western population goes along with it.

The wider moral I draw is this: we see this situation through the prism of the the free world vs War on Terror, world policing vs rogue states. Because the model we apply does not fit the reality, the situation is not as malleable as we expect. Lieven is saying that other, local factors will influence, even dominate why the local actors act as they do. We saw how the utopian scheme of democratising Iraq while destroying Terror and Tyranny initially floundered on ethnic and religious divides (not on a lack of UN resolutions), and contributed to a large-scale insurgency. They still dominate Iraqi politics in a democracy established only by a protracted and bloody war, the economic cost of which has contributed to US (and UK) dependence on Chinese credit. We deplete our resources for marginal gains, if they are gains at all.

Looked at from the local perspective, the Pakistanis will not want to defeat the Taliban because they see Afghanistan as their back yard, and fear encirclement by Hindu India. Their tardiness in fighting the global War on Terror, demanded by the West, has a rational basis.

neo-conservative dreams at conservative home?

There is a piece by Andrew Mitchell at Conservative home about how we must intervene in Somalia - in order to stop the scourge of pirates on the high-seas. The keywords are "intervention", "free world", "renegade", "state failure", "state building", "export terrorism", "humanitarian crisis". So it looks like they have another war or foreign adventure in the pipeline.

Like so much from the Conservative party these days, the article seems to be coded, packed with euphemism, so that the position of the writer/speaker is difficult to pinpoint, the intention being presumably to mean different things to different people, and to provide as narrow a target as possible to opponents in relation to the amount of information given about the writer's real views.

As for "over-fishing and toxic dumping have contributed to the economic collapse" being the reason for the pirates's activities, this may be true to an extent; but some of us with use of a memory, when looking for why there is a breakdown in political order (and there won't be much economic activity in a war zone), might just blame the Bush administration's help to Ethiopia in overthrowing the what look like now relatively moderate Islamic courts; all in the name of the War on Terror of course, fighting rogue states renegades.

The key paragraph is:

"The piracy we are seeing is a direct consequence of prolonged state failure and instability in Somalia, which has the potential to destabilise the whole region and export terrorism and disease to our own shores – as well as deepening the already appalling humanitarian crisis."

It looks like the usual tactic: lots of bad things will happen unless we get involved, and getting involved is the best, if not only, way to stop bad things happening; and if that sounds too self-interested let's also talk "humanitarianism" so as to create a moral duty to intervene. Interesting that one of the comments mentioned "bleeding-heart liberal" - this person no doubt heard a liberal interventionist talking; I heard a neo-conservative using liberal rhetoric as an afterthought. This is the dog-whistle rhetoric people talk about, except with people reactign negatively.

I suppose you could say the damage is done: Somalia is in a state of near-anarchy - so what better place for western intervention? The only thing is, I don't know of a western intervention that has created a stable political or social structure since the War on Terror began. The comments are pretty skeptical too.

There are more jaundiced views about intervention from the US-based anti-war.com site, where the pro-interventionists are recorded as speaking somewhat more directly. Military intervention is being mooted seriously. US foreign policy website, The National Interest advises caution, partly for economic reasons. Cameron's new-found fiscal conservatism, if nothing else, might also favour non-intervention, I would like to think.

Ron Paul suggests allowing merchant vessels to arm themselves. Sensible, proportionate, and the taxpayer doesn't pay (for once). But Andrew Mitchell won't get his heroic intervention.

If it's on Conservative home, does that mean it is favoured by the Conservative top brass? Cameron is a neo-conservative, we hear; Michael Gove is a self-confessed neo-con; the fact that the Cheney-McCain-following Liam Fox is Defence Secretary probably signals that Cameron is as interventionist as Blair and Bush. Mitchell is shadow international development secretary, so he must be speaking with authority.