dagblog - Comments for "The Valkyries' Lament"

A huge difference between

Verified Atheist — Sun, 29 Jun 2014 23:17:51 +0000

A huge difference between Iraq and the Germany/Korea/Japan example is that we are not losing numerous soldiers in Germany/Korea/Japan. We are there with the approval of their government, and with very little risk to our soldiers.

If Lurker is right that we

Aaron Carine — Sun, 29 Jun 2014 23:02:52 +0000

In reply to The Valkyries' Lament

If Lurker is right that we can't know if wars have been deterred, that calls deterrence into question. A theory that can't be proved isn't much use.

That is almost my point. I

Michael Wolraich — Sun, 29 Jun 2014 21:49:00 +0000

In reply to I have not included Iran's

That is almost my point. I would say more specifically that the threat of American intervention with conventional weapons rarely deters foreign military action. The "big stick" maxim makes a nice cartoon, but in practice, it just hasn't worked in most cases. I would not call it common sense to ignore experience that contradicts one's assumptions.

PS The US did not threaten North Korea or China with nukes during the Korean War, so it's not a counter example to nuclear deterrence. We did threaten them with conventional weapons, yet our overwhelming military superiority did not dissuade them from attacking.

I have not included Iran's

Lurker — Sun, 29 Jun 2014 17:52:08 +0000

In reply to "There's no way of knowing

I have not included Iran's abandonment of its nuclear program because Iran has not abandoned it.

They did, or at least put it on hold, according to the CIA.

But you seem to be making the point that conventional weapons never deter wars, or almost never. That's a very odd position to take, and contrary to common sense. What's the point of "Speak softly and carry a big stick" if nobody's scared of your stick?

In 1950 China and North Korea did not have The Bomb; America did. But that did not deter them from starting the Korean War. By your reasoning, that's proof that nuclear weapons also never deter.

It's a good question. I

Lurker — Sun, 29 Jun 2014 15:07:33 +0000

In reply to I think the civil war in

It's a good question. I mentioned in another posting that the US has left troops in Germany, Korea and Japan for over 60 years. What would happen if it withdrew?

My guesses: in Germany: nothing at all. Korea: immediate restart of the Korean War, this time with nuclear weapons. Japan: very complicated... immediate and huge investment in rearmament, which would kick their economy out of the doldrums and boost the US economy (mainly in munitions) for a short time, followed, after or instead of a war, by some sort of non-aggression pact with China which would divide up the Pacific between them, leaving the US as an Atlantic power....

When Britain withdrew from its colonies after WW2 the result was often war, civil war, or bloody dictatorship. 60 years later, there are a few bright spots (Singapore, Israel, India) but only after much bloodshed. Many others have descended into hells (Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Sudan).

In short: I don't know.

"There's no way of knowing

Michael Wolraich — Sun, 29 Jun 2014 14:57:08 +0000

In reply to By "Libya" I didn't mean

"There's no way of knowing how many wars were deterred by US policy"

Well that's a convenient foundation for spending trillions dollars and destroying tens of thousands of lives. How naive of me to ask for evidence to support an unfalsifiable assertion? (In fact, I would and do pose the same "foolish question" about the death penalty.)

Barring all those counterfactual would-be wars, I suggest that we can obtain at least some evidence by looking at cases in which the US, directly or via UN and Nato, explicitly threatened an enemy with conventional weapons:

Koreas: UN Security Council Resolution 83 (Deterrence failed)
Vietnam: Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (Deterrence failed)
Gulf War: UN Security Council Resolution 678 (Deterrence failed)
Afghanistan: G.W. Bush and Tony Blair demand that Taliban turn over Bin Laden (Deterrence failed)
Iraq War: Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of USs Armed Forces Against Iraq (Deterrence failed)
Libyan airstrikes: UN Security Council Resolution 1973 (Deterrence failed)
Syrian civil war: Obama's "red line" (Deterrence failed, then succeeded)

I have not included Libya's abandonment of its nuclear program in 2003 because there were no military threats against Libya at that time, only sanctions. Libya didn't even make it into W's Axis of Evil. I have not included Iran's abandonment of its nuclear program because Iran has not abandoned it.

In short, we have numerous examples in which deterrence failed--at very high cost in dollars and lives--and hardly any evidence of deterrence with conventional weapons succeeding. The counter-evidence is distributed across numerous eras and presidencies, but two of the most spectacular failures (Taliban and Saddam) occurred during the presidency of G. W. Bush, who was supposed to be so war-crazed that the bad guys were pissing themselves.

Now if you're intellectually committed to the idea that deterrence works, I will never change your mind. You can just keep on inventing counterfactuals that are impossible to falsify. My only hope is that you will take a moment to challenge your own assumptions by asking yourself why, in the absence of evidence, you believe them.

Thank you for those

Lurker — Sun, 29 Jun 2014 14:39:16 +0000

In reply to Another factor you might

Thank you for those thoughtful remarks.

Another factor you might

moat — Sat, 28 Jun 2014 23:20:14 +0000

In reply to Not guilty: I don't watch

Another factor you might consider in your analysis is the demise of the Baath regime in Iraq by U.S. forces. The Syrian regime developed from the same intersection of ideology and circumstance as did the Hussein regime in Iraq. The allies the Syrians used to have in the Arab League have long since fled. Syria absorbed many people from Iraq after the U.S. invasion on the basis of their shared past formation with Iraq. The regime there may well have many reasons to regret that act of charity. This is not a game of Risk but generations of people trying to figure out what they can do with the hand that is given them. The intervention of the U.S. gave to some and took away from others. Sorting out the result is complicated.

It is all very well to note the pattern of what happens when the U.S. does or does not do something. But such observations are meaningless without tying those actions to the people who actually live in the places we operate amongst. ISIS is as much a product of the U.S. "surge" financing of the Sunni groups in the Iraq war as it is involved in anything "we" did or did not do afterwards. That is not to say the surge was the wrong thing to do when our forces were in the shit. But tactical responses have a strange way of becoming strategic decisions.

I think the civil war in

Anonymous — Sat, 28 Jun 2014 23:11:27 +0000

In reply to Not guilty: I don't watch

I think the civil war in Syria was "serious" from the beginning. Assad wasn't afraid to kill his subjects before the we withdrew from Iraq.

Anyway, how much longer would you have stayed in the Iraq quagmire? Forever?

Well then, it should be easy

ocean-kat — Sat, 28 Jun 2014 23:04:56 +0000

In reply to Disagree. His thinking seems

Well then, it should be easy to destroy his arguments with better, more convincing, modern arguments.