DONALD TRUMP'S TEMPERAMENT AND THE DANGER OF WAR IN THE KOREAN PENINSULAR

The escalating situation on the Korean peninsular should be a matter of concern to most rationally minded persons especially as this is coming on the heels of the coming to office of America's most intemperate President ever. When the Republican party presented Donald Trump as its candidate for President in the 2016 Presidential elections it was gambling the hope that Donald Trump's particular and peculiar approach to making America great again will resonate with voters and win them the White House even in the face of the obvious fact that his temperament made him peculiarly unsuitable for the White House. The Republican gamble succeeded in not only winning the party the White House but it brought them complete control of both Houses of Congress.

The fact however remains that the President of the United States however is also Commander in Chief of the world's largest military and controls the world's second largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. At about the same time a young man by the name of Kim Jong Un became the leader of North Korea after the death of his father Kim Il Sung. The new North Korean leader has shown himself to be similarly highly temperamental, unpredictable, mean and utterly ruthless with an ego to match or outmatch Trump's impulsiveness. With two out of control leaders in Pyongyang and Washington, North Korea succeeded in launching an ICBM that has range over all of the Continental USA and at the same succeeded in testing a nuclear weapon suspected to be a hydrogen bomb because of its unmatched destructive power .

President Trump meanwhile had promised or threatened that he will never allow North Korea while he is in office to build an ICBM that can threaten the continental USA. Within the first year of his administration all his fears concerning North Korea are realised as they actually launch missiles which are seen as capable of reaching Washington. The only doubt remains as to whether North Korea has perfected the technology for a successful re-entry of the warhead into the earth's atmosphere without being burnt up while trying to re-enter the atmospheric realm from outer space. At this point Donald Trump is genuinely concerned that he is failing to keep his long and oft-repeated campaign promise not to allow that happen including his threat to unleash a fire and fury on North Korea of an unprecedented scale in the world

With his multiple threats and promises unfulfilled, Trump is now obliged as far as his ego or strategic thinking is concerned to do something to show he is not a whimp nor is he bluffing where his threats are concerned even though his military leaders who are far more experienced and rational try to warn him that there are no good options available when it comes to a military strike on North Korea. All options presage bloodshed on a scale deemed unacceptable in the circumstances including subtle moves by the new North Korean born South Korean President that the South is not willing to sacrifice the lives of its citizens in other to appease Trump's fears concerning North Korea's intentions  
The two Koreas have even gone a step further to defuse tensions between them by organising joint Korean team participations in the winter Olympics coming up in South Korea. All these no doubt are subtle signals by the two Koreas the chief protagonists in any ensuing conflict that they are not willing to sacrifice the lives of their citizens on the altar of Donald Trump's ego trip. The peace moves coming from even the willy North Korean leader has rather infuriated the American leader who rather sees it as an attempt by North Korea to drive a wedge between the US and South Korea and also buy time to enable him complete the development of his missile program.

There is no doubt that Donald Trump believes he has a genuine mandate to protect the American mainland from a North Korean Nuclear attack, but the North's leader has repeated many times that the North's weapons program is designed as an insurance against any attempted US attack on the regime in Pyongyang and that he has no intention of ever initiating an attack on the US unless he is actually attacked or threatened. What is therefore unfolding to befuddled spectators is a dangerous chess game between two unpredictable leaders with outsized egos who both feel they have a point to prove and none is ready to back down.

In this context however the North Korean leader is outwitting Donald Trump by making peace moves with the South howbeit in very cautious terms. He is labouring assiduously to present himself as the more rational and pragmatic leader and trying subtly to paint Trump as the protagonist who is bent on setting fire to the Korean Peninsular. Unfortunately for Trump he is winning this war of attirition especially in the light of the divisions among the Trump senior officials over the move to give the North Korean leader a bloody nose by launching a limited strike aimed at what i do not understand strategy of showing Kim that Donald Trump means business.

Considering Donald Trump's limited military experience, coupled with his outsize ego he does not appear to understand the danger of trying to bloody the nose of a man who is not even willing to be threatened or outmanouvered in the first place. Kim has shown that he is not willing to lose even a shouting match talk more of a shooting war no matter how limited Donald Trump may consider his objectives to be. A man that is as quick on the draw even in a verbal exchange as Kim has shown he can be is not the kind of man you can pull a trigger on, without expecting a corresponding barrage whose eventual consequences no man can foresee.

That fate has destined that Donald Trump's sparring partner on the global stage is Kim Jong Un is a reminder that fate and providence can deal you a cruel hand when you least expect many times. The sobering fact US planners must consider right now with the tension building up on the Korean Peninsular including its Asiatic neighbours and Russia inclusive is that anyone drawing his gun right now from his holster is calling for a new full fledged Korean war with all the devastating consequences predicted by all analysts in the build up to this highly preventable narratory and ultimately trajectory.

 No US planner or military leader should be deceived by Donald Trump or Nikky Haley or any other hawk in Washington into thinking  that you can initiate military action incrementally without unleashing the much feared and much talked about Second Korean war which even the US with all its military might is not guaranteed to win inspite of the millions of lives that will be at stake and the horrendous damages and casualties that will ensue in the event of a war. It is the responsibility of all in Washington to ensure that proper adult supervision is given in overseeing the conduct of Donald Trump's foreign policy on the Korean Peninsular in a way that does not endanger the Republic that the constitution has entrusted him to protect.    

The Global need for strategic patience in resolving the crises on the Korean Peninsular

The on-going confrontation between the United States and North Korea which dates back to June 25, 1950 when the North Korean army crossed the 38th parallel, the artificial border and demarcation between the US and Russian occupation zones of the newly liberated Korean Republic after the defeat of Japan in WW2 is more of a product of  what i describe as the  unfinished business of WW2 in the Far East where the Korean Peninsular is still simmering with crises and in the Northern Japanese Islands of Sakhalin still held by Russia nearly 72 years after the Pacific war.

These two spots in Asia are areas of conflict still lingering because The US and Russia the victors of the war in the Pacific ended the war as adversaries rather than as Allies. In April 1945 as the European war was coming to an end, the victorious allies, Great Britain, the USA,and the USSR held two great summit meetings both in Yalta in the Soviet Union in February 1945 and in Potsdam a suburb of Berlin in July 1945 to iron out issues relating to the end of the war in Europe and also to fine tune agreements towards the final settlements in the far East after the expected collapse of Japan.

While the issues in Europe were ironed out in ways that definitive peace settlements ultimately ensued, ultimately bringing peace to the continent that has endured till date, the settlements in the far East were far more complex and acrimonious especially as it related to the future of the Japanese held territories of Korea where the Truman administration had seemed to give the Soviet leader a free hand to deal freely until the US realised that wherever the Red army set its foot, communist rule and idealogy also followed.

The United States bore the greater burden for the defeat of Japan but were forced to share a disproportionate price for the administration of Japanese held Korea because in July 1945 during the Potsdam conference, the US and British leaders fearing a prolonged conflict in the Pacific invited Stalin to deal Japan a blow that could play a decisive role in Japan's collapse. Whether Japan could have surrendered without Russia's involvement is a matter for historian's to ponder upon, but Russia's involvement in a campaign that lasted precisely for about ten days and resulted in the Russian occupation of Manchuria, the northern half of Korea and the occupation of the Japanese northern territories in the Pacific has left two unresolved disputes 72 years after the war itself ended.

The Korean Peninsular remains bitterly divided till date and the Russians have remained in occupation of Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands precluding Japan from concluding a peace treaty with Russia till date. Because force of arms were involved in these acquisitions in a time of a wider conflict, their resolution cannot be divorced from the sentiments generated by the wider conflict. For all the parties involved, the cost of the war itself has to be looked into, in any attempt to discuss a resolution of these disputes especially when it has to involve giving up territories or conquest acquired in the course of the fighting and bloodshed.

That remains the primary reason why the US is still tied to its interests in Korea and Japan till date. The same goes for Russia in the Kuril Islands and for China in North Korea. Because of the historical sentiments these conflicts echo, it would be hard to ask any of  the parties to back down today without a resumption of  armed conflict as a means of effecting any territorial changes. The only other option is to allow time heal the wounds inflicted by the war and allow other issues bothering on economic, demographics and a new political consciousness play its role in shaping thinking and sentiments in resolving these protracted disputes which though appearing simple and mundane yet carry deep sentiments and huge historical significance.

 WW2 was the greatest conflict and bloodletting ever seen on earth and the greatest need of this generation should be to allow WW2 truly be the war to end all wars and i think that is what the nuclear age is a spectacular reminder of, that World wars are no longer feasible and realistic for the remainder of man's habitation of the Planet earth as a means of resolving territorial disputes on a global scale . Any thinking by the US military Planners or the political leaders that the crises in the Korean Peninsular can be resolved by the force of arms is only an invitation for WW2 albeit WW3 to resume in the Pacific. Any military action by the US with Japanese support against North Korea no matter how insignificant would be an open sesame for the resumption of hostilities in the Pacific involving China and Russia.

The only plausible solution for the resolution of the Korean crises is the element of time as it happened in the peaceful resolution of the Cold war. It would be foolhardy for any party to think that seventy two years after WW2 the boundaries and demarcations created by that conflict can be altered by the force of arms without a resumption of open hostilities by the belligerents as happened during the first Korean War in 1950-53.

WW2 may be seventy two years gone by but the memories it provokes are still fresh and the antagonism has not yet fully abated particularly in the brutal Pacific war and all the nations involved are still on edge and many including China and Russia have not yet fully mourned their dead nor fully mentally recovered from the losses and war trauma and so it is in the best interest of President Trump and the US military leaders to let sleeping dogs lie and ignore the provocations of the young North Korean leader whose main instincts remain the urge for self preservation even with his nuclear arsenal.

 There are some kinds of provocations that are best ignored for the sake of peace, because the passage of time in itself is a great facilitator for resolutions of issues that border on good and evil and i believe that is the course the world must pursue in resolving the crises on the Korean Peninsular, because time is not only a great healer but a great resolver of complex and acrimonious issues.      

North Korea - US confrontation, the unfinished business of WW2

To many young people today and the uninformed, the root crises of the confrontation between North Korea and the United States government remains a source of mystery. Not many however are aware that the causal belle of the crises dates back to behind the scenes deals the US made with Joseph Stalin of the USSR to enable the Allies gain quick victory over Japan in WW2 and bring the war to a close. As the  Pacific war drew to its climax in February 1945 and President Roosevelt of the USA and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the UK deliberated on how to shorten the Pacific war in the face of the imminent collapse of Germany and the specter of victory in Europe, war weariness had begun to set in in the US and the political leadership wanted to fast track the efforts in the Pacific to bring about quick victory over Japan and bring WW2 to an end in the summer of 1945.  

Haste, impatience and war weariness after four years of fighting the increasingly bitter campaign against Japan led to the fateful decision to invite Joseph Stalin to launch an attack on Japan in Manchuria and Korea to enable the Allies deliver the Coup-De grace that was meant to kick Japan out of the war. Roosevelt and Churchill were already aware of Stalin's designs and efforts to impose communist rule on Eastern Europe as the Red Army spread its presence over those countries. Why it did not occur to the Western Allies that a Red army intervention in the far East paticularly over the Japanese occupied provinces of Manchuria and Korea would leave a lingering crises in the post war settlement in the far East still remains a source of mystery.

The thought that Stalin would hand over the Russian liberated territories to the Western Allies would have been a work of poor judgement. It took strong pressure from the Truman administration to stop the Red army from conquering the whole Korean peninsular and when the Soviets left they left behind a strong communist administration superintended by the Kim family who have remained at the helm of affairs in North Korea till date. The carving out of the US zone of occupation into the present day South Korea was a belated effort by the Truman administration in the aftermath of the war to halt the spread of communism in the war liberated territories in East Asia. That lack of foresight and strategic planning by the US is also the reason China fell under communist rule.

The subsequent effort of the Kim dynasty to conquer the South had to be resisted by force by the US and her allies and it led to the Korean war which has still not resolved the fate of the peninsular till date as neither party is willing to budge even in the face of a nuclear confrontation.  The US inadvertently set the pace for the crises today by virtue of the hasty decision to involve the Soviet Union in the war in the East. The price Stalin demanded is what the US is paying till date, the need to accomodate a communist and nuclear armed North Korea and allow her be. To conquer North Korea would require a continuation of WW2 albeit in the form of WW3  and a willingness by the US to confront both Russia and China major stake holders in the Korean peninsular.
Whether the decision by the Truman administration to invite Russia in to the war in the far east was justifiable is left to this generation of Americans to determine but it would be worth while for President Donald Trump to do a bit of the study of history before coming to any rash conclusion or decision.      

Russia versus the United States in the season of Donald Trump

The Presidency that Donald J Trump assumed on January 20, 2017 and the circumstances of his winning the 2016 election under the cloud and suspicion of collaborating with the Kremlin to swing the election in his favour and the attendant probe by both the FBI and House committee is beginning to impact on decisions taken by key officials of the Trump administration in the arena of foreign policy and defense. The notion that the Russian government meddled in the US Presidential election in favour of Republican candidate Donald Trump, while it began in the twilight days of the Barak Obama administration has with the appointment of Robert Mueller the former FBI director appointed as special counsel by deputy Attorney general Roseintein assumed a life of its own and it is beginning to weigh down on the Trump administration.

The fact that Trump is being investigated for having close ties with the Kremlin effectively ties the hands of the President in taking decisions seen as favorable to Russia, this effectively ties down the hands of the President in taking any decision seen as pro-Moscow. The reverse side of the equation which is the subject of this write-up is that each time Trump or his officials take a hard line on Russia, he is seen as vindicated of any prior ties with the Russians. This state of affairs is definitely not healthy for the US or the Trump administration who now have to be hawkish in their approach to Moscow in order to obtain a reprieve from American public opinion.

This trend is obviously noticeable in the decision by the Pentagon in shooting down a Russian built, Syrian owned SU-22 plane which was seen as attacking pro-US rebels fighting the Islamic state in Syria, The decision by the Americans to shoot down the Syrian jet was obviously taken not only to protect the US-led Syrian rebels but obviously to show that Trump is not a whimp where fighting the Pro-Russian forces are concerned. The danger is that the Russians are now viewing themselves as pawns in the chess game between rival and opposing groups in Washington. That no doubt informs Russia's hard line in threatening to target and attack coalition aircraft west of the Euphrates River seen as threatening Russian/ Syrian air operations.

The sum game is that because of this pre-conceived notion of Trump and the need to vindicate himself, US policy on Russia is automatically on a default setting which is dangerous and unhealthy for world peace. That President Trump can no longer follow his convictions but know-tow towards a hardline on the Kremlin is the fallout of this investigation into the President's alleged ties with Putin. Whether this state of affairs will benefit or be healthy to the US on the long-run is still to be known, but any course of events that puts the President in a strait-jacket is not only unhealthy but unsafe for America on the long-run.

Donald Trump's America, exploring the frontier between freedom and tyranny

The United States of America, the world's oldest and boldest experiment in democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights is after two centuries and a half century of existence beginning to tolerate in its body polity and embrace extremist views that would have been deemed wholly incomprehensible about fifty years ago. The great arsenal of democracy according to Franklin Delano Roosevelt has after fighting two world wars to defend human rights, the rule of law and check totalitarianism is itself beginning to be fatigued with the norms of the liberal democratic order and beginning a romance with extremist ideas in the guise of rejuvenating the American dream.

Nobody who lived through the Cold war and saw the determination with which the USA fought for the dignity of man , the rule of law and democratic norms would believe that he will live see a day when the American president will make it obviously clear that the non-native born immigrant or the vibrant American press with all its failings would be declared to be the enemy of the American dream or ideal.

That Donald Trump with the kinds of extremist views, falsehoods and deceptions he embodied in the course of his campaigns could receive the support of 62 million American voters and win the White House goes to show how much the respect for the liberal political climate has dimmed with the mainstream American voter. Donald Trump cannot and should not be held responsible for the shift in the liberal thinking of the average American today.The man is a business man, deal maker and an opportunist who could clearly see the moral breach opening up in the psyche of the average American voter and decided to explore it to win the White House.

The ideals of the founding fathers of the USA are clearly blurred and lost in the consciousness of many main stream Americans today. The huge price paid in blood and bounty to secure the democratic freedoms enshrined in the nation's polity are clearly eroded and degraded in the national consciousness today.

I make bold to say that there is not much difference between the political climate in the USA today and the the Italy of 1922 and the Weimar Germany of 1931 when the fascists in Italy under Benito Mussolini and the national socialists under Adolf Hitler began to make great gains and strides in the political order, coming out of the fringes of main stream political thinking and beginning to dominate the national consciousness.  The idea was that these were strongmen able to bend the institutions of state to achieve their political aims and advance the national agenda rather than men driven by the lust for power who had no clearly defined political direction and were simply megalomaniacs who were egocentric and driven by the desire to be in the middle of the limelight and the national discourse.

That Donald Trump has no clearly defined political agenda or economic program is still not clearly discernible to his most rabbid supporters who are blinded by prejudice and sentiments. It will take a little while for many  to realise that Trump has no real program, but the desire to win the White House and trounce his political enemies, paticularly Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton. Running for the White House was meant to be the latest in his string of accomplishments as a born winner.  Fulfilling his many campaign promises would be an after thought. For now it will suffice him to blame the American press and his many political enemies for his present failings.

 When the American people chose to freely elect a man that despises the free press, disparages immigrants, has contempt for intelligence briefings, mocks the judiciary and denigrates judges, threatens to seize the oilfields of an independent nation, mocks the concept of NATO and the EU, has contempt for free trade agreements and sees climate change as a hoax, i knew the American dream was in for a rough ride in the hands of Donald J Trump.  250 years of democracy,freedom and the rule of law can sometimes be taken for granted and i daresay that the 62 million Americans who chose the Trump ride truly decided to take democracy for granted.

DONALD TRUMP'S INAUGURATION IS USHERING IN A NEW WORLD ORDER

DONALD TRUMP'S INAUGURATION IS USHERING IN A NEW WORLD ORDER

 Come January 20, 2017 a new world order is set to begin with the inauguration of Donald J Trump as the 45th President of the United States of America.  The last time a new world order was created in 1991,came with the demise of the Soviet Union and the liberation of the East European nations from the yoke of communism and Soviet rule. Over a quarter of another century, the phenomenon is about to repeat itself. Each time a new world order comes on stage, it comes with its own reverberations and upheavals with the consequential domino effect and the toppling of ideologies, alignments and a shake-up of the world political order as we are about to witness again.

It is expected that the beginning of a new re-alignment of political forces and Geo-political realities always comes with its own teething pains and birth pangs. For those of us who have canvassed for the last few years that the the United States needed to reinvent itself to maintain relevance and leadership at the global level with the emergence of a new world economic order championed with the rise of China as a global economic super power able to compete,rival and even challenge the United States for global economic supremacy, the present trend of events does not come as a surprise. The Barak Obama administration spent the last eight years fighting to uphold a status quo globally that could no longer hold in the face of newly emerging facts and trends.

When Mikhail Gorbachev emerged in 1985 as the General Secretary and leader of the Soviet Union he came with his reforms of Glasnost {openness} and Perestroika {restructuring} purposely for the purpose of saving the Soviet economic and political system in a struggle that was doomed to failure. What his reforms succeeded in accomplishing was the quick demise of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the present world order that catapulted the United States to the position of a Super Power in a unipolar world, a position she has enjoyed for another quarter of a century until the emergence of China as first an economic Super power as she is now for all practical purposes and reality except, for the most deluded minds finding it difficult to grapple with reality.

The revival of Russia as a global military power and the ascendancy of India as a rising economic and military power alongside with the emergence of Germany as the dominant nation in the European Union have all weakened in no small measure the Anglo- American political/economic hegemony that has kept the US at the helm of world affairs since the end of the Second world war in 1945. 

While the US remains a major player in the affairs of the globe, her ability to unilaterally fashion and dictate the pace of world affairs is what is sadly coming to and end in this new emerging world order of which Donald Trump is the percuss-or and champion. The angst,rage and hostility being directed at Donald Trump's policies and even Presidency is coming from those who naturally resent this tide of change and direction of global affairs and who feel they will be losing out as the status quo is giving way. How this new world order will ultimately shapen out is still at best a matter of conjecture, but a re-approachment that will ease tensions between the United States and Russia and lead to the elimination of nuclear weapons while fashioning out increased co-operation between the leading nuclear states will definitely help to make for a better world and a safer planet for all.

The Warsaw Pact collapsed in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the present world order, it is yet to be known what the fate of NATO and the European Union will be in the face of the re-rapprochements and realignments that will be taking place globally once Donald H Trump is sworn into office on the 20th of January.

2016 ELECTIONS, AMERICA AT A CROSSROADS, THE RISE OF INSURGENT POLITICS

After over a hundred and twenty years of being the nation referred to as God's own country , the dream land, the land of the brave and the free, the rainbow coalition, the land of limitless opportunity, the United States of America is facing an unparalleled identity crises as it heads into the 21st century and confronts the the reality that a bipolar world that in the early 21st century yielded way to a unipolar world is now giving way again to a multipolar world . There is nothing truer of the 21st century than the fact that constant change and willingness to adapt has become the reality of the hour and not just the day.  It is a fact that a lot of Americans particularly the baby boomer generation are fighting hard to come to terms with the fact that the cultural and racial mix that had been the bedrock of US society for over a hundred years is now giving way to a coalition of a type not necessarily ascribed to the Rainbow that they have come to recognise.

America is confronting change in ways and dimensions that many are finding very hard to bear especially as it is affecting their political and economic well being. It is just natural and very human for folks to resist any form of change that touches on their wellbeing and diminishes their leverage in life and society. Urbanisation, globalisation and the world wide web and associated innovations have radically changed the face of the earth not just the United States. The information age and economic innovations of the last quarter century are simply saying to all to change or perish. For the poor and deprived, it comes as good news but for the rich and privileged for whom the prospect of change comes with the threat of a loss of privilege and benefits the prospect of change becomes daunting.

No group of people are feeling the scare more than the white privileged members of society for whom retaining the existing social order is a task that must be done. The fact is that the information age is creating a more egalitarian world where opportunities are opening up across a global spectrum to all who are willing and ready to participate.  Information technology has reduced the world to a truly global village where skills and expertise are being freely traded just as easily as goods and services . Geography and boundaries are no longer able to insulate any society from the effects of globalisation. Donald Trump's dream wall may succeed in keeping out immigrant Mexicans but it will not succeed in keeping out cheaper and more competitive goods and services from streaming across the border and threatening American jobs.

Many times to regain competitiveness you have to remove the safety nets you have built around yourself that is denying you a capacity for honest self appraisal. If the generation of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders' insurgent supporters have ever sat down to honestly ask themselves as to how best to permanently adapt to the reality of an ever changing world they will soon come to realise that enduring change will not come through a political revolution that is only designed to obscure your view of stark reality but one that honestly helps you to make the fundamental changes that will enable you to regain competitiveness once more on a global level. Americans must never forget that the US came out of a Great Depression in the 1930's that wiped out close to a quarter of GDP in a space of five years to a period of growth and expansion albeit in wartime that saw the US economic expansion occupy close to 50% of global output by 1950.


That is the kind of mindset that the nation needs to galvanise and not a destructive set of values that undermines the very basic principle of American economic prosperity which is rooted in  innovation, hard work and capacity to adapt to change in whatever shape or form that it is required in order to keep productivity on an upbeat level.  Finally it must be remembered that the global wind of change that is straddling even the United States is not going to wait for any nation or society that is not ready to make the compromises needed to gain the headwinds. The recurring decimals remains that change and compromise remains the mantra for growth and relevance today in this fast evolving world. A Roman senator once appealed to his colleagues in ancient Rome 'we have succeeded in changing the world can we not change ourselves' ?

Managing the unfolding tragedy in the Middle East , the unraveling of Syria

  The ongoing conflict in Syria is a great tragedy involving the lives of millions of people being killed and rendered homeless and stateless because certain groups of nations have taken sides and are engaged in score settling while a human tragedy is unfolding on a monumental scale.

When the Arab spring started in 2010 and governments and ruling houses were collapsing in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and eventually Yemen and Syria it was hailed by many as the dawn of a democratic transition sweeping through the Middle East by many Western governments and generally encouraged or tolerated even when legitimate governments and regimes were being undermined.

 It took the descent of Libya into chaos for the global community to realise that every time a legitimate government is overthrown through violence it creates an opportunity for other elements albeit undesirable to fill the vacuum.

History has always shown and revealed that the violent overthrow of a legitimate government no matter how oppressive its policies may be has hardly ever led to the establishment of a just and humane society.

Violence always tends to breed violence and any form of reform rooted in violence will only spur another cycle of violence to alter it. Those who come to power by the sword always invariably fall by the sword. The Western democracies have always tended to look the other way when a repressive regime is being displaced by a violent uprising except when the regime in question is in their good books.

The universal fact still remains that government to be just and equitable ought to be borne out of a negotiated settlement and a out of a shared consensus. The idea of forcing a regime change at the barrel of a gun ought to be condemned and discountenanced by the civilized world no matter how abhorrent the regime in question maybe.

 In Africa for instance none of the regimes that were borne out of a guerilla or bush insurrection has ever given birth to a stable and dependable democracy. Such governments have tended to imbibe the stay put mentality and are themselves always needed to be forced out of office.  It was pretty obvious to the West that a regime as oppressive as that in place in Syria could only be 'forced' out but at what cost ?  

Can the human tragedy unfolding in Syria justify the arming of guerilla groups to overthrow a legitimate government ? This is a question the great Powers must answer, if not the Syrian scenario can easily repeat itself again. All the major powers looked askance as Syria descended into chaos and only began to be concerned as the chaos translated into the greatest exodus and migration of men across boundaries since the end of WW2.

 As Europe is now inundated with a refugee crises of unimaginable proportion, the evil of unsettling a legitimate government has begun to seep into the consciousness of policy makers worldwide.

The world must come to realise that governance is a serious business that must be addressed squarely and legitimately through consensus and dialogue and not by force or coercion if not the kind of tragedy we are seeing in the Middle East today will remain common place.

The notion of regime change that is being bandied in certain diplomatic circles in the West must give way to a notion of a legitimate democratic and constitutional transition no matter how painstaking the process may be.

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.

WW2: BATTLE OF THE BULGE, 70 YEARS BEYOND AND LESSONS LEARNED AND STILL APPLICABLE TODAY.

 

December 16^th 2014 marks 70 years since the German Ardennes offensive also known as the battle of the Bulge was launched by Adolf Hitler the German Dictator in a last ditch effort to stop the advancing Allied armies from overrunning Germany in the late autumn and winter of 1944 as the Allies were hoping to bring the war in Europe to a close in early 1945.

Beginning with the D-Day invasion over six Allied Armies had landed on both the northwest and south coast of France and had linked up and were pushing their way across France towards the Low Countries and ultimately Germany.

 

The Allied landing on D-Day had been the culmination of American policy upon its entry into the War based on a meeting between US President Franklin D Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston S Churchill as far back as on 9th August 1941 when they met on the Atlantic Ocean near Newfoundland, Canada on the US Navy's heavy Cruiser The USS Augusta and eventually issued the Atlantic Charter on the 14th of August 1941 which came to articulate the war aims of the Western Allies and their view of a post war world.

The two leaders had agreed among other things that should the US enter the war, Europe was to receive priority attention in terms of manpower and material resources in prosecuting the war. It became known as the Europe- first policy and it was to guide American policy makers in the planning and prosecution of WW2. The policy was the brain child of Roosevelt who differed to the request of Winston Churchill on the need to come to the rescue of the United Kingdom which was bearing the brunt of the European war as it then was before the Pacific war erupted on December 7, 1941.

President Roosevelt with the firm support of General George C Marshall then Army Chief of Staff therefore set about ensuring that the defeat of Germany was going to be the chief pre-occupation of the American military, while offering enough resources for a containment of Japan in the Pacific front until the fighting in Europe was brought to a successful end. In the aftermath by late 1944 more than ninety percent of the American army was committed to France where over six armies had been deployed to the frontlines by November 1944.

Amongst the Armies on the field was the US First Army whose heroics had been detailed in my earlier writing on the “US First Army the forgotten heroes of WW2’’ under the command of Lieutenant General Omar N Bradley who later passed on Command to Lieutenant General Courtney C Hodges, when he was promoted to the command of the US Twelfth Army Group comprising the First and Third Army under the command of Lieutenant General George S Patton. Thereafter the US Ninth Army was also activated under Lieutenant General William H Simpson.

After the commencement of the Allied landing on the south coast of France in the Marseilles region in August 1944 the US Seventh Army under the command of Lieutenant General Alexander Patch also became operational and all these armies had by November 1944 been deployed along a front in western Europe stretching from Belgium and Luxembourg to the south coast of France bordering Switzerland as the Allies pressed towards Germany on a broad front. The US Seventh and French First Army were to become part of the 6^th Army Group under the command of General Jacob L Devers

 On the British side, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery commanded the British 21^st Army Group comprising the British Second Army under General Miles Dempsey and the Canadian First Army under the command of General Henry Crerar which was deployed along the Belgian-Dutch borders to a point linking with the US Ninth Army in Luxembourg which eventually together with the US First Army came under the command of Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery in the heat of the battle.

Following the Allied landing in Normandy and the advance inland into France, it had become clear to all observers that the American Army and resources were becoming predominant in the field in Western Europe. Out of the seven armies on the field including the newly activated French First Army, four were American by November 1944 and even then the only French army was fully equipped and supplied with American materials. Following Operation Cobra and the breakout from St Lo into Brittany and the activation of George Patton’s Third Army, the Americans had become the dominant players on the field in Europe employing a bravado spirit on the battlefield that baffled the German Army.

Patton’s awesome armored strikes and breakthroughs led to the belief among the German Generals that the Americans had become the more dangerous foe and desperately needed to be stopped in a massive counter offensive employing the strategy of Blitzkrieg that had served the Germans so well in their earlier campaigns in the war. Hitler reasoned that he could break the American fighting spirit if subjected to a full blown German Blitzkrieg attack led by the awesome Tiger and Panther tanks.

By early December 1944 as the Allied armies had become bogged down by supply problems and the fatigue caused by a long and whirlwind advance of over 500 miles from the Seine River to Luxembourg, Belgium and in some places the German border. They had paused to regroup and rest in the cold and deep winter of 1944 which made motorIsed warfare difficult. As the Allied advance ground to a halt, Hitler felt he now had a good opportunity to launch his much vaunted counter offensive.

 For this, he had amassed three armies totaling over 24 Divisions, six hundred thousand men in all and over 1500 tanks and tank destroyers aimed at the line held by the US First Army in its weakest sector where tired and fresh troops were being refitted in the hilly Ardennes forest between Monschau (southwest of Aachen) and Echternach (northwest of Trier).

 

The German 5^th Army under the experienced Russian front veteran General Hasso Manteuffel was to launch a drive on the Meuse River at Namur cross it and head to Brussels, while SS Sepp Dietrich’s 6^th Panzer army was to lead an armored drive to the important supply city of Antwerp with a view to splitting the British-Canadian 21^st Army Group from the American First Army and subsequently crush them. He believed that at the end of the operation, the defeated Allies would be willing to accept a negotiated settlement of the war.

 

It was an ambitious plan that was meant to be accomplished within the four days of 16^th -20^th of December 1944 when complete weather overcast was predicted to preclude the Allies from employing their vast air power. With eight armored divisions in the lead the Germans achieved a penetration of the Allied lines 65 miles deep and some units of the 6^th Panzer Army came within sight of the Meuse River before the offensive ran out of steam as the skies opened up on Christmas eve and Allied fighters began to interdict the German lines and destroy the supply convoys.

The Germans ran into resistance stiffer than expected from the GI’s who gave a good account of the American fighting spirit as they denied the Germans vital gains by mounting road blocks, destroying bridges, fuel dumps and everything that could be of significant help to the Germans.

 The American resistance was particularly crucial at Bastogne and St Vith where the American 101^st and 82^nd Airborne Divisions respectively held the two vital junction towns that forced the German armor and supply convoys to the use of secondary roads that considerably slowed and hampered the advance.

By Christmas day in 1944 when the clouds fully cleared and Allied air power was in full swing, General Patton’s Third Army had sent in a relief column that had relieved the beleaguered city of Bastogne which never fell into German hands even though encircled for close to a week.

 With sufficient reinforcement pouring into the American lines, the German advance was soon brought to a halt in some of the heaviest fighting of the Second World War on the European front. With the Allies in early January threatening a counter encirclement of the German bulge in the Allied lines, the Germans had no choice but to withdraw their forces lest they be encircled in the resulting Allied pincer move.

 

By the middle of January the battle had shifted in favor of the Allies who had immediately launched a counter attack that threw the Germans into a full blown retreat back into Germany where the Allies subsequently began the great pursuit that led to the end of the war in May 1945.

The Battle of the Bulge was Nazi Germany’s last great offensive in WW2 and it resulted in the squandering of Germany’s last military reserves that was needed to stave off the Soviet Union’s great offensive launched on the 12^th of January 1945 in Poland that brought the Soviet armies to the door steps of Berlin.