[Dean's World] Rudy Rummel: The Ignored Iron Triangle Of Power

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Posted by Rudy Rummel:
The Ignored Iron Triangle Of Power
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1144109002.shtml


   It was a prime strategic concept during the Cold War and helped carry
   us to victory. Once America was fully engaged in the Vietnam War, it
   became the prime justification for fighting to win. It is at the heart
   of peacekeeping. And it was ignored during the senior Bush and Clinton
   Administrations, with the predictable result that we ended up in a war
   against Iraq. Now, opponents of this war and democratization are
   destroying it, with dire consequences for the future.

   It is one of the elements in an Iron Triangle of Power and is so
   important in itself as to be enshrined within a strategic principle of
   action.

   It is well revealed in Saddam Hussein's official documents. Consider
   this revelation from Saddam's official documents (see [1]here):

     Saddam never believed such war with the U.S. would ever occur=E2he
     believed that the United States was casualty-averse to an
     absolutely incredible degree. Saddam based that on several factors:
     the fact that he received only a diplomatic note after Iraqi Mirage
     fighters fired on the USS Stark in 1987, that the United States
     left Somalia after losing 19 troops, and its failure to commit
     ground troops early on in Kosovo.

   And also there are the revelations of Georges Sada, one of Saddam's
   top generals and insiders (see [2]here):

     In 1990, Saddam ordered a poison gas and chemical attack on Israel
     with 98 of Iraq's best fighters. No warning would be given, nor
     would permission be requested to use Syrian and Jordanian airspace.
     He could not be dissuaded from this even when Georges argued that
     all 98 would be shot down before reaching Israel. Saddam was
     willing to gamble that at least 10 aircraft would be able to drop
     their bombs. He also ordered a similar attack on the capital of
     Saudi Arabia. The launching of the Gulf War by the United States
     caused him to cancel these plans.

     As to what the U.S. would do if Israel were so attacked, "everyone"
     thought the U.S. would rattle its papers and do nothing. This
     estimate was based on Clinton's weak response to attacks on
     American ships, bases, and citizens. Saddam believe that the
     Americans were afraid to fight.

     The invasion of Kuwait was predicated on the belief that American
     Ambassador April Glaspie had given Saddam a free hand regarding
     Kuwait, or to do whatever else he planned. So, after Saddam invaded
     Kuwait, they thought the American military buildup in Saudi Arabia
     and threats were for show.

   Then there is the [3]interview with Bin Laden:

     BIN LADEN: =E2=A6.We believe that the defeat of America is possible,
     with the help of God, and is even easier for us, God permitting,
     than the defeat of the Soviet Union [in Afghanistan] was before. Q:
     How can you explain that? BIN LADEN: We experienced the Americans
     through our brothers who went into combat against them in Somalia,
     for example. We found they had no power worthy of mention. There
     was a huge aura over America -- the United States -- that terrified
     people even before they entered combat. Our brothers who were here
     in Afghanistan tested them, and together with some of the
     mujahedeen in Somalia, God granted them victory. America exited
     dragging its tails in failure, defeat, and ruin, caring for
     nothing.

   President Bush and his top people understand the principle involved
   and have followed it. But, now, its incredible and strategically
   stupid violation by the American demagogic and "realist" opponents of
   the Iraq War and Bush's Forward Strategy of Freedom are reaping the
   expected cost. The best gauge of this is what Amir Taheri wrote in his
   The Wall Street Journal article, "The Last Helicopter:

     : Hassan Abbasi=E2=A6,"The Dr. Kissinger of Islam," =E2=A6is "professo=
r of
     strategy" at the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guard Corps
     University and, according to Tehran sources, the principal foreign
     policy voice in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's new radical
     administration. For the past several weeks Mr. Abbasi has been
     addressing crowds of Guard and Baseej Mustadafin (Mobilization of
     the Dispossessed) officers in Tehran with a simple theme: The U.S.
     does not have the stomach for a long conflict and will soon revert
     to its traditional policy of "running away," leaving Afghanistan
     and Iraq, indeed the whole of the Middle East, to be reshaped by
     Iran and its regional allies.

     To hear Mr. Abbasi tell it the entire recent history of the U.S.
     could be narrated with the help of the image of "the last
     helicopter." It was that image in Saigon that concluded the Vietnam
     War under Gerald Ford. Jimmy Carter had five helicopters fleeing
     from the Iranian desert, leaving behind the charred corpses of
     eight American soldiers. Under Ronald Reagan the helicopters
     carried the corpses of 241 Marines murdered in their sleep in a
     Hezbollah suicide attack. Under the first President Bush, the
     helicopter flew from Safwan, in southern Iraq, with Gen. Norman
     Schwarzkopf aboard, leaving behind Saddam Hussein's generals, who
     could not believe why they had been allowed live to fight their
     domestic foes, and America, another day. Bill Clinton's helicopter
     was a Black Hawk, downed in Mogadishu and delivering 16 American
     soldiers into the hands of a murderous crowd.

     According to this theory, President George W. Bush is an
     "aberration," a leader out of sync with his nation's character and
     no more than a brief nightmare for those who oppose the creation of
     an "American Middle East." Messrs. Abbasi and Ahmadinejad have
     concluded that there will be no helicopter as long as George W.
     Bush is in the White House. But they believe that whoever succeeds
     him, Democrat or Republican, will revive the helicopter image to
     extricate the U.S. from a complex situation that few Americans
     appear to understand. Mr. Ahmadinejad's defiant rhetoric is based
     on a strategy known in Middle Eastern capitals as "waiting Bush
     out." =E2=A6.

     He used that message to convince Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
     to adopt a defiant position vis-=C3 -vis the U.N. investigation of
     the murder of Rafiq Hariri, a former prime minister of
     Lebanon=E2=A6.According to sources in Tehran and Damascus, Mr. Assad
     had pondered the option of "doing a Gadhafi" by toning down his
     regime's anti-American posture. Since last February, however, he
     has revived Syria's militant rhetoric and dismissed those who
     advocated a rapprochement with Washington=E2=A6.

     In recent visits to several regional capitals, this writer was
     struck by the popularity of this new game from Islamabad to Rabat.
     The general assumption is that Mr. Bush's plan to help democratize
     the heartland of Islam is fading under an avalanche of partisan
     attacks inside the U.S. The effect of this assumption can be
     witnessed everywhere.

     In Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf has shelved his plan, forged under
     pressure from Washington, to foster a popular front to fight
     terrorism by lifting restrictions against the country's major
     political parties and allowing their exiled leaders to return=E2=A6. In
     Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, arguably the most pro-American leader in
     the region, is cautiously shaping his post-Bush strategy by
     courting Tehran and playing the Pushtun ethnic card against his
     rivals.

     In Turkey, the "moderate" Islamist government of Recep Tayyip
     Erdogan is slowly but surely putting the democratization process
     into reverse gear=E2=A6.

     Even in Iraq the sentiment that the U.S. will not remain as
     committed as it has been under Mr. Bush is producing strange
     results. While Shiite politicians are rushing to Tehran to seek a
     reinsurance policy, some Sunni leaders are having second thoughts
     about their decision to join the democratization process. "What
     happens after Bush?" demands Salih al-Mutlak, a rising star of
     Iraqi Sunni leaders. The Iraqi Kurds have clearly decided to slow
     down all measures that would bind them closer to the Iraqi state.
     Again, they claim that they have to "take precautions in case the
     Americans run away."

     =E2=A6.Saudi Arabia has put its national dialogue program on hold and
     has decided to focus on economic rather than political reform. In
     Bahrain, too, the political reform machine has been put into
     rear-gear, while in Qatar all talk of a new democratic constitution
     to set up a constitutional monarchy has subsided. In Jordan the
     security services are making a spectacular comeback, putting an end
     to a brief moment of hopes for reform. As for Egypt, Hosni Mubarak
     has decided to indefinitely postpone local elections, a clear sign
     that the Bush-inspired scenario is in trouble. Tunisia and Morocco,
     too, have joined the game by stopping much-advertised reform
     projects while Islamist radicals are regrouping and testing the
     waters at all levels.

     =E2=A6.Running away from Saigon, the Iranian desert, Beirut, Safwan and
     Mogadishu was not hard to sell to the average American, because he
     was sure that the story would end there; the enemies left behind
     would not pursue their campaign within the U.S. itself. The enemies
     that America is now facing in the jihadist archipelago, however,
     are dedicated to the destruction of the U.S. as the world knows it
     today. Those who have based their strategy on waiting Mr. Bush out
     may find to their cost that they have, once again, misread not only
     American politics but the realities of a world far more complex
     than it was even a decade ago. Mr. Bush may be a uniquely decisive,
     some might say reckless, leader. But a visitor to the U.S. soon
     finds out that he represents the American mood much more than the
     polls suggest.

   What is most important about this is the misreading of a post-Bush
   American foreign and defense policy, is the risk for more wars that
   entails. Need I mention Iran, North Korea, and China over Taiwan?

   The principle that opponents of Bush have not only ignored, but
   shredded in a time of war, is this:

             Maintain or enhance one's credibility for action.

   Maintaining American commitment to defense alliances and containment
   was what powered strategic support for the Vietnam War. Maintaining
   the credibility that we would respond in kind against a Soviet nuclear
   first strike against the United States was the strategic core of
   American Cold War defense policy. Now, in Iraq, Bush has signaled in
   many ways that the U.S. is committed to staying the course, to the
   defeat of terrorism, and to a democratic Iraq. He has bolstered the
   credibility of this by putting the lives of American soldiers at risk,
   spending billions of dollars on this war and the democratization of
   Iraq, and displaying his dedication through speech after speech.

   But, his political opponents and those of the war have shown in many
   ways that if they gain power over Congress and the presidency, which
   our enemies who are unsophisticated in American politics, see as
   likely, they will not only force a last-helicopter-out-of-Vietnam
   defeat, but weaken the war on terror (or turn it over to the UN, which
   is the same thing) and return to a "realist" emphasis on supporting
   the thugs that promise political stability at the cost of democracy.

   Credibility is part of the peacekeeping triangle of power: capability
   for action, interests, and will (or credibility/resolution).
   Capability is not only military, but also involves the people' morale,
   the type of political system, leadership qualities, and so on). The
   interests of the leadership and public is equally important. If one
   losses or does not have interest in certain action, then this affect's
   one's power to do something about it, such as the lack of interest in
   stopping the Rwandan genocide, or the current one in Sudan. Then there
   is will power, or the will to use one's capabilities when one's
   interests are threatened. It is that will that confers credibility,
   the most important element of this triangle.

   To sum all this up by a political equation:

                   Power =3D capabilities X interest X will

   If any of the elements on the right are zero, power is zero, no matter
   how strong the other elements. If interest and capabilities to defeat
   an enemy are great, but will appears weak, then so is power.

      [BAR.RED.BLACK.GIF] This post is based on my peacekeeping post,
    [4]"How To Keep The Peace=E2Understand Power", the background to which
   are the chapters of my interactive book blog, [5]Freedom's Principles.

References

   1. http://freedomspeace.blogspot.com/2006/03/inside-saddams-head-and-reg=
ime.html
   2. http://freedomspeace.blogspot.com/2006/02/what-saddam-was-going-to-do=
-that.html
   3. http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/02/05/binladen.trans=
cript/index.html
   4. http://freedomspeace.blogspot.com/2006/04/how-to-keep-peaceunderstand=
-power.html
   5. http://freedomism.blogspot.com/