Statesmen and Great Captains think big and simple,
not small and complex.
CDRSalamander posts twice, so far, regarding this revelation of White House occupants’ small and complex thinking regarding the Indo-Pacific region, first here, then here.
At his second post, I commented as follows:
I think when we mention keeping open the global commons in the Indo-Pacific region we mean holding CCP’s hegemonic ambitions in check if not removing their source — CCP themselves — from circulation. CCP — and Mullahs-Jihadis — are the only forces wanting to control the global commons. Well, arguably WEF-type guys do as well, but their focus is more Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas. Plus, they lack intrinsic military spirit. Their weapon is deceit.
In the Indo-Pacific region we are looking, then, almost exclusively — for now anyhow — at CCP and their ambitions as the salient threat to keeping open the global commons. So, what forces are available in strength sufficient, at least potentially, in principle, to check CCP’s ambitions or remove CCP? There are three kinds of force for doing that, diplomatics, finance, and war-fighting.
There is one kind of entity which has those forces at hand to use, at least potentially, in principle, the nation state. With respect to the land-water mix comprising the Indo-Pacific region, there are five nation states owning diplomatic, financial, and war-fighting force levels sufficient to compel CCP to heel or leave town, USA, Russia, Japan, Australia, and India.
So, the strategic problem of the Indo-Pacific region — namely, CCP and their ambitions — is solvable by agreement among those five nations. That is doable. Has any good idea fairy thought of that one yet?
At his first post I commented as follows:
Without a National Security Strategy, there is no National Defense Strategy, and without a National Defense Strategy, there is no National Military Strategy. There is at present no National Security Strategy. There isn’t going to be one from this CIA-NSC crew.
This COCOM intellectual mush has been in the more or less public works for awhile, pretty much a known known all that time. It’s boilerplate first year Johns Hopkins or Kennedy School international relations speak. A few phrases from Georgetown here, a line or two from Harvard there, add some crotchets from Princeton, spices from the World Economic Forum and CFR, visions and projections from Rand, Brookings, AEI, Heritage, and CCP’s China Institutes, affix a write-off by USINDOPACOM staff and it’s all good to go. The “stakeholders” are content, especially CCP. They produced something which is nothing and paid themselves well to do it. Of course they release it late on a Friday, the approved time to put out the trash. The statement carries neither power nor meaning. It would make handy kindling in the fire circle to cook supper during an overnight on the Blue Ridge, though.
If “the world’s center of gravity” means the same as “the pivot of history” (Mackinder), or even close to the same, then I should think it incumbent on one who argues the Indo-Pacific as being that to explain why their estimate supersedes Mackinder’s long-revered wisdom in that regard.
The military reality of this Indo-Pacific strategy paper is removal of the US Army from the Pacific and the US western defense line east from the Asian littoral to Oahu if not San Francisco or Chicago, turning most or all of the Pacific over to CCP, who are buying up farmlands and food properties between San Francisco and Chicago.
I think this CIA-NSC crew really don’t want to think at all about the US as a sovereign nation state. They see themselves as having “a higher calling.”
A decade or more ago, an acquaintance, then a senior O3 or junior O4 and in uniform, happened upon a mid-day public presentation at Brookings by a panel of D.C. luminaries on the subject of post-nation-state global (as they put it) affairs. It was all, she said, very nebulous, aspirational, imaginative, but touchy-feely in tone, very daring or as they say today, “transgressive.” When time came for Q&A with the audience, most of whom seemed to imbibe the notion advocated by the panel’s big wigs, my acquaintance asked how they would protect themselves when national sovereignties ceased to exist, how they would keep the electricity flowing, the rivers clean, and the birds happy. The luminaries had no answers to that question, but lots of scowls were thrown at my acquaintance, as if she were a boorish, unintelligent, simple-minded, totally addled knuckle dragger.
Such luminaries and hordes of their proteges today staff senior sectors — and many junior ones — of the Three Branches of USG. It is not their intention to raise a navy or any other armed force to protect Americans and America. Maybe to protect themselves, but even about that their mentation is unconnected to their actual condition, their sitz im leben. Reimagine [reality] is their ultimate concern. This presentation used to be regarded as a sign of mental illness.
FWIW, I tried to join the Navy Chaplain Corps in 1973. The Navy wanted me, the denomination (UCC) did not. Navy is in my extended family and in my heart. Acerbic as I am on what I feel is weak sight and mind regarding military affairs, that is because I want our national Penta-Force — Space, Air, Cyber, Sea, Land — strongly present, filled out, and positioned for actual need — far more for the first two and far less for the third than is currently extant — and synergizing heroically to “fright the souls of fearful adversaries.”
Principle I
Principle II
Principle III
By Artists M and F Graham
At Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh, India
