The Essential Question
“How many wars can we fight at once without finishing even one?”
Update: As I indicated in the last comment on this post, the answer to the question is three. We are now in an undeclared war with Pakistan over attempts at striking the Taliban in the NWFP:
At least two American helicopters were fired on after crossing the Pakistani frontier near Angoor Adda in South Waziristan, Geo TV reported. “The U.S. choppers came into Pakistan by just 100 to 150 meters at Angor Adda. Even then our troops did not spare them, opened fire on them and they turned away,” an anonymous security official told Reuters.
Not sure why Friedman discounts the value of observational learning of states to nothing.
His response to an attack on the Southern Energy Corridor — let it burn while we find a high-tech replacement, is reckless with near-term consequences. It’s very good to focus on long-term solutions, but not at the cost of empowering our enemies and ignoring near- and medium- term consequences.
Not sure that he’s discounting observational learning, but lamenting the ADD-like quality of our foriegn policy prioritizing. We can’t settle on a single primary objective or a grand strategy (although Barnett provides it) so we lash out at every threat without coordination. The problem is we don’t learn from out observations: we never connect our actions to the perception of threats they create in the eyes of Russians and Iranians.
His response to Georgia isn’t to let it burn, but to keep our response in check depending on the perceptions of the Russians. Anyway, wars for oil are so 20th Century. Further, the Russians know that if they threaten the pipeline, they only induce more drastic anti-oil policies for the US and Europe, and in the long run that’s even worse for their bottom line.
Thomas L. Friedman is not much of a foreign-policy thinker, nor much of a thinker in general.* I’m dumbfounded to learn that someone would think that a question Friedman writes in a hack editorial, printed in a neo-liberal tabloid is “the essential question.”
* See, for instance, the website maintained by Mark Rupert, an award-wining political science professor at Syracuse University: http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/merupert/merindex.htm
Friedman has his good and bad moments. (I’m thinking of Friedman units in particular [1]) But the question is still essential, and it points to incomplete policy making and implementation, which usually ends in failure.
[1] Friedman Unit. Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_(unit)
Fine, Mr. Pampinella, I will follow your argument. How would you answer Mr. Friedman’s essential question? I look forward to reading your response.
Be damned if Friedman doesn’t get more shrill and nonsensical each book he puts out. He’s conflating apples (America’s education system) with oranges (international “competitiveness” as though Russia is even a player) and pears; to push back Putin (a short term oligarch who reins in the same fashion as Hugo Chavez; on the back of inflated oil prices) via increased education initiatives; as though Putin will see increased American innovation, shudder a bit and then fold up shop, retiring to a bait shop in southern Russia.
This article would have been better served directed at the rise of either China, or better yet, India.
Ortho,
It’s actually a difficult question to answer, but I would think three turning into two. It is ironic though, because it represents the open violation of the Bush Doctrine, which treats states that harbor terrorists as terrorists. The Pakistanis are actively protesting our strikes and raids in the NWFP, and retaliated by closing off a NATO border crossing.[1]
Jay,
Or instead, it could be used to illustrate how our social capital (to steal that term from Putnam[2]) is our best weapon in a fight in which the adversary has none.
[1] http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/09/pakistan_reopens_vit.php
[2] http://www.amazon.com/Making-Democracy-Work-Traditions-Modern/dp/0691037388/ref=pd_bbs_sr_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221432502&sr=8-4