PRESIDENT OBAMA PLEASE PROVIDE GLOBAL LEADERSHIP NOW !

 PRESIDENT OBAMA PLEASE PROVIDE GLOBAL LEADERSHIP NOW!

The world we are living in today is beginning to be reminiscent of Europe in 1938 when Nazi Germany was clearly in ascendancy and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier were clearly fantasising the dream of 'peace in our time' which did not match with on-going reality. The same mind set was also replicated in Washington where Republican hawks made it clear to President Franklin Roosevelt that on-going events in Europe had no bearing with the destiny and fortune of the United States and that the United States did not owe the World an obligation to bring its weight to bear on the events unfolding in Europe.

The situation in Syria today is towing the same line with all the world powers committed to an ill-defined campaign to end the reign of terror unleashed globally by ISIS and its Jihadist partners like Al Qaeda, El Shabaab and Boko Haram. The campaign is ill-defined and bound to generate its own problems among the alliance partners or may i say accomplices because the United States the only power strong enough to set parameters and give leadership to the global war on terror is shirking its responsibilities fifteen years after declaring war on global terror and inviting the global community to join in the campaign  against organised terror in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorits attack on New York and Washington.

I was not resident in the United States then, but the trauma of the events of that day is still clearly etched in my mind and cannot be erased in a lifetime. The surprising thing however is that fifteen years down the line in the campaign to eliminate global terror, we have an American leadership that is clearly tired and demotivated in providing global leadership in the sustained campaign to eliminate global terror. The offspring of that fading commitment is the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Nature we are told abhors a vacumn and the vacumn created by the premature and hasty withdrawal of American forces from Iraq clearly gave rise to the Islamic State

The Holy Scriptures tells us that whatever is WORTH DOING IS WORTH DOING WELL. President George W Bush may have deposed Sadam Hussein under questionable motives but the fact remained that the pacification of  a post Sadam Hussein Iraq was America's responsibility no matter how expensive it may have turned out. I cannot conceive of any battle that you can win by shying away or running from the battlefield. It was American ground forces or what you may call 'boots on the ground' that deposed Sadam Hussein and it will take American ground forces whether we accept it or not to depose the Islamic State.

The emergence of the Islamic State was the bye product of the War in Iraq and ultimately on terror and its defeat in combat is a necessary pre-requisite to the logical conclusion of the war on terror as far as the Middle East is concerned. By 1944, the Second World War had become prohibitively expensive mostly to the UK and to some extent to the United States but both President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill did not shirk from committing another five billion dollars to the opening of a second front in Europe in the invasion of France on June 6, 1944.  By 1944, there were no Republican or Democratic politicians that made any suggestions about the necessity of curbing spending or borrowing to get the war over with. The liberty bonds were joyfully advertised and cheerfully bought throughout the US because folks knew that this war had to be won.

One of the reason the West was resolutely commited to victory in WW2 was because leadership was in place that sold to the people the absolute necessity to defeat the twin evils of Nazism and Fascism.
Without that kind of resolution of spirit i dont see how any form of evil can be defeated on this Earth, The WAR ON TERROR cannot be fought with any less determination than the Second World War was fought if lasting results were to be obtained on the long-run. We have seen from the realm of medical science that a half-hearted treatment of any disease will only strenghten and harden the virus or germs, necessitating the production of even more expensive treatment or vaccines in dealing with a situation that could have been dealt a fatal blow if the necessary commitment was shown in the first inastance.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can see today that the United States was not really safe as long as the Nazis were running riot in Munich, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1936-39 any more than the AVERAGE AMERICAN can think he is immune to events in Paris , Syria, Egypt or the Lake Chad Basin today. The chickens of the late 1930's ultimately came home to roost and the terrorist chickens we see playing havoc today will definitely come home to roost if we choose to bury our heads in the sands and play the Ostritch.

SOUND ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT AS AN IMPORTANT COMPONENT OF A PRUDENT DEFENSE POLICY.

SOUND ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT AS AN IMPORTANT COMPONENT OF A PRUDENT DEFENSE POLICY.

The defense policy of a nation cannot in practical terms be separated from the economic policies of the nation. There is an intrinsic link between a healthy economic state in a nation and its ability to defend itself on the long run both from internal and external enemies. The soundness of one’s defense infrastructure cannot ultimately be separated from the financial policies and health of the nation enunciating those policies.

The 20^th century revealed in no small measure the link between the depth of your pocket and your ability to win in any conflict particularly when it is protracted as modern conflicts amongst major powers are tending to be. Using the two major conflicts of the 20^th century as a case study, it is obvious that the nations that had the capacity to maintain a staying power in a protracted conflict tend to come out the winners.

Chinese communist leader Mao Tse Tsung once enthused that ‘God is on the side of the bigger battalion’ in any conflict; but the nations that were soundly defeated in both WW1 and WW2 started the wars with the Bigger Battalion mentality and were roundly defeated by the nations with deeper pockets and ultimately staying power. The goal and key is not the quantity of the  outlay to start with but the power and ability to not only sustain your outlay no matter how small it may appear to start with, but the ability to grow the outlay on an exponential basis as the conflict becomes protracted.   

If your ability to sustain and grow your outlay on an exponential basis is compromised by your present posturing, then defeat is around the corner in the long-run as the conflict becomes protracted and ultimately is decided in the theater of attrition. Better a small that becomes big on the long-run than a big that becomes small on the long-run.   No country enunciated this principle better than the US in her outings in the two conflicts of the first half of the 20^th century.

 None of the countries that engaged the US in the First and Second World War would have welcomed the US as an adversary had they known the true strength of America’s production capacity. Both Germany and Japan were first defeated psychologically before their battle field defeats simply because they found themselves tangoing with an adversary that seemed to have unlimited resources.

By 1944 it had become obvious to both Germany and Japan in WW2 that they had made a wrong choice in picking adversaries by betting against the United States of America. President Franklin Roosevelt knew during the Depression years that America’s great security lay not in the protection offered by the two great oceans but in the unlimited capacity of the American nation and workman. When he announced in 1941 his plans to build 100,000 aircraft for the US Army air force and 80,000 tanks for the army, his adversaries thought he was bluffing. Well time showed he was not bluffing.

President Roosevelt is my personal role model for a leader who knew how to balance the security of a nation in terms of the relationship between the bread basket and the arsenal. In the second half of the 20^th century, it seemed the Great Powers except for Great Britain had learnt the lessons of the immediate past in the reverse. Both the US and the Soviet Union went on an arsenal building spree that did not necessarily accrue to great victories as observed in the Vietnam War for the US and in Afghanistan for the Soviet Union.

All it succeeded in doing was to put America into a cycle of indebtedness which seems to be on the upswing, and to take the Soviet Union into the drain pipe. In this first half of the 21^st century, the same cycle is about to repeat itself as the bigger battalion mentality has engulfed the Great Powers once more, resulting in the committing of Billions of Dollars into Defense procurements that may never be used in reality while the nation in reality is sinking into a deeper debt sinkhole that ultimately limits your capacity and flexibility for exponential growth in defense capability when you sincerely need it.

Great Britain, Germany and France are the only major powers today that are pursuing a pragmatic policy in defense spending and plans that wisely put butter before guns.  Because common sense will tell you that if the economic capacity of a nation is well harnessed its productive powers will be released when truly needed.

THE PARADOX OF UKRAINE : DATELINE YALTA 1945, THE CHALLENGE TO AMERICA'S GLOBAL HEGEMONY

THE PARADOX OF UKRAINE: THE CHALLENGE TO AMERICA’S GLOBAL HEGEMONY.

DATELINE:  YALTA CONFERENCE, FEBRUARY 1945.

The battle for global hegemony among the Great Powers which is really the bone of contention in Ukraine has a throwback to events that went as far back as to the Yalta conference in the closing days of World War 2. At Yalta the shape and face of the post- 1945 world was basically determined by the political and military horse-trading that ensued between President Franklin Roosevelt of the US, Joseph Stalin of the USSR, and Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain.

 Although the Axis partners in World War 2 did not expressly declare their war aims, it was pretty obvious watching their political and military strategy that the destruction of the pre- 1939 world order and the re-establishment of a new world order was their primary war aim. The Axis powers Germany, Italy and Japan were obviously determined to end the global primacy of Great Britain and France and re chart a new world order. 

Though the Axis partners emerged losers in the war, they however succeeded in orchestrating events that led to the dethronement of Great Britain and France from Global hegemony in 1945 and replacing them with the duo of the United States and the USSR as the world’s two Super Powers that dominated global politics for another half a century before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the emergence of the Russian Federation as the successor state to a USSR legacy that was measured more in terms of liabilities than  assets, except of course for the nuclear stockpile which was then the world’s largest.

Perhaps both President Bush and Clinton were disarmed by the post cold war friendly posture and disposition of Russian Federation’s President Boris Yeltsin who in any case in the political chaos and economic collapse of the aftermath of the Soviet Union and the chaotic end of the ill-fated Common wealth of Independent States had little choice but to embrace whatever support the West had to offer.

The interesting development was that the United States insisted that independent Ukraine surrender its nuclear stockpile inherited from the erstwhile Soviet Union to Russia as a pre-condition for guaranteeing Ukraine’s Independence and friendship. That was a grave mistake by American policy makers who did not take time to reflect on the fact that the USSR’s claim to Super Power status rested mainly on that arsenal.

 Had the US offered its friendship and strengthened Ukraine’s power as a nuclear but friendly power, the present crises would not only have been prevented but the world would have been racing to a global nuclear arms disarmament program by now.

Russia’s greatest incentive for nuclear disarmament would have been a passionate desire not to share a common border with a nuclear armed Ukraine. The West in 1992 did not see Ukraine then in that light. In an agreement that smacked of Czechoslovakia in 1938, also known as the Munich agreement, independent Ukraine was compelled by the Great Powers to unilaterally hand over its only buffer against future Russian aggression to Russia under Boris Yeltsin.

 American policy makers of the post World War 2 era and even till date unfortunately have a tradition of making policies that are basically designed to satisfy short term rather than long term interests and many times to satisfy a domestic political audience without considering the long term implication.

I believe it all started in Yalta in February 1945 when President Franklin  Roosevelt anxious to get the European phase of the war over with and confront Japan resolutely began an appeasement policy towards the USSR that succeeded in handing over Eastern Europe over to the Russian leader over and above the objection of Winston Churchill who could clearly see even then the future negative consequences of Roosevelt’s appeasement policies towards Stalin.

 Yalta and ultimately Potsdam conference concessions by the West sold to the Russians the idea that Eastern Europe was their preserved sphere of influence where the ideas of democracy and human rights were solely in the preserve of the Russian state to define as it saw pleasing to its leaders. 

The Russians bought onto the idea that while Western Europe was the preserve of the United States and Great Britain, Eastern Europe particularly the nations  Russian forces had helped to liberate in WW2 were going to be  theater of Russian politics and domination until somebody could abolish that world order. The price that President Roosevelt was willing to pay to Stalin to get Soviet support in the defeat of Japan in 1945 is the main reason why Eastern Europe is still feeling insecure till date and the Korean conflict continues to fester.

It was pretty obvious that the United States did not anticipate nor prepare for global leadership in 1945. The Russians were obviously better prepared to benefit from the spoils of war and the victory of 1945.Churchill a politically shrewd man who could read Stalin’s intentions better was overruled many times by his stronger American partner whose devotion to the ending of British imperial rule globally, clouded his judgement regarding Churchill’s anxieties. 

Sadly as the Yalta conference came to an end it was pretty obvious that Roosevelt had come to trust Stalin and his submissions more than that of Churchill. America’s experience as a former colony of Great Britain did not help matters when it came to assessing Great Britain in matters of national independence and nations rights to freedom and choice in 1945, particularly with Great Britain’s brutal suppression of India’s independence aspirations in the years leading to WW2.

The only person who came out of Yalta with a smug smile on his face was Stalin. Harry S Truman feeling a need to defend the legacy of his great predecessor and benefactor was quick to uphold all concessions the visibly ill Roosevelt made at Yalta during the Potsdam conference, where he was more concerned with the defeat of Japan than the fate of Eastern Europe and its people.

 Russia therefore came out of World War 2 feeling that Eastern Europe is its allotted backyard where it holds sway and dominates issues. After over half a century of playing that role unchallenged by any power it is going to take time for the Russian people to come to see things differently and that is what the West must come to understand.

No matter amount of sanctions will make Russia give up its position overnight. It will take time, a lot of dialogue and peaceful posturing by the West to get Russia to accept the concept of a sincerely independent Ukraine. The concessions that created the perception were made by the Western leaders of 1945 and after over a half century of enjoying that impunity it will surely take time for Russia to peacefully let go of its past ‘conquests’.

 Trying to fastrack the process through a regime of sanctions will not change Russia’s position any faster than the League of Nations sanctions on Japan in 1931. All the League succeeded in doing then was to fastrack its own demise as NATO also seems to be doing now. It took time to get to where we are and it will take time to get to where we ought to be.