Bringing India into Australia's nuclear family

When Tony Abbott arrived in India's booming financial megalopolis of Mumbai on Thursday, his two-day visit coincided with two minor milestones.

There is his own one-year anniversary that formally ticks over on Sunday and the first 100 days of India's new government, led by the conservative-nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi.

Both markers have brought a welter of commentary as leaders are assessed against that cruellest of benchmarks, the expectations they themselves created. And what a contrast they reveal.

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On Wednesday, an opinion poll showed Modi is doing somewhat better early on than his Australian counterpart. The 14-city survey by Network 18 and Today's Chanakya found people surveyed were  onside with government plans to reshape and modernise India's vast yet stultifyingly bureaucratic economy.

In fact,a third of voters said they wanted the new government to be bolder still and nearly two thirds approved of the new government's performance.

Half of those surveyed thought the government would improve its position if an election were held now, whereas just one in five disapproved.

The Economic Times said the poll "showed Modi has been successful in building a direct rapport with the people".

The contrast in the respective political fortunes of Abbott and Modi, is starkest in the goodwill being extended by Indian voters to the Modi program as against the trust problem for the coalition in Australia.

Yes, the two milestones are different. Governments with just three months on the clock have hardly had time to get things wrong and usually there is a post-election honeymoon. So Modi could yet go backwards in his first year.

But even by the 100-day mark, Abbott was behind the freshly ousted opposition according to both the Fairfax-Nielsen and Newspoll surveys. Mostly it was issues of management – or a lack of it.

First there was the entitlements furore for MPs that dominated the early weeks, with no decisive management by the new prime minister. There was also the Indonesian spying allegations – not Abbott's fault but his to manage;  the vetoed GrainCorp takeover that was politically tricky; a curious and self-inflicted education funding wobble;  and both Qantas and Holden faced crises that engulfed the government for a time. Since then, the problems have been mostly  associated with the budget.

Of necessity, Modi's reform agenda is ambitious, yet his popularity remains high. He has been helped in this regard by the timidity of previous governments, meaning there are some obvious levers to pull and a pent up mood for change in the electorate.

Dismantling centrally planned agricultural policy directing what food is grown, and how it is priced and distributed, is an example of change that is long overdue. Indian voters have so far embraced the promise of greater economic efficiency and lower prices. Ditto for transport reform.

Modi's recent boast that India is open for foreign business having replaced red tape with red carpet seemed almost Abbott-esque.

Energy policy is another great challenge, which brings us back to Abbott's visit. The tangible - yet officially unconfirmed - mission here is commercial - to sign an inter-country safe-guards agreement removing the last impediments to Australian uranium sales to India. Insiders say it could also to facilitate direct Indian investment in what might otherwise be marginal uranium mines in Australia.

The trade is something John Howard wanted and Julia Gillard got moving on decisively in 2012. And it is a circle the pro-nuclear Abbott is more than happy to square notwithstanding India's refusal to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

For Abbott and Modi, whose popularity is also tied up in nationalism, the uranium agreement fits a broader narrative. Modi just returned from a five-day visit to Japan for talks with Abbott's close ally, Shinzo Abe.

Just as Abe is leading a revival in national morale in Japan allied to a sweeping reform program, Modi is asserting a new Indian pride based on modernisation. Both want the strength and national confidence to stare down China. Stitching up the uranium deal with Australia ticks all of those boxes being both economic and strategic.

After building his own close ties with Abe, Abbott is building another alliance with Modi. It is consistent with his refrain that he wants to strengthen all regional friendships. Beijing is watching this process closely.

While Washington strenuously denies its so-called Asia-Pacific "pivot" is part of a China containment strategy, Abbott's foreign policy activism suggests he has no compunction in overtly encouraging economic development, self-reliance, free trade, and muscular independence in the countries with whom Australia feels most comfortable.

When he nominated Japan as Australia's best friend in Asia, it was on the basis of its westernised liberal-democratic values – the contradistinction with China was left unsaid.

One imagines the same logic is underpinning the new bilateral relationship Abbott wants to forge with India. And that's the other milestone in this Indian foray. Abbott's state visit to New Delhi on Friday will be Modi's first as host.

Mark Kenny is Fairfax Media's chief political correspondent.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/bringing-india-into-australias-nuclear-family-20140904-10c655.html#ixzz3COAJ2fZs

War, yuan way or another

BEIJING - The recent friction between China and the United States over flights of surveillance planes along China's coasts and Beijing's allegations of foreign meddling in the issue of the Hong Kong's elections - a thinly veiled denunciation against the US - show apparent strain in China's trust of Washington. In some ways, then bilateral ties are at a new low, possibly similar to the time in April 2001 when a Chinese plane crashed into a US EP-3 surveillance plane and the EP-3 made an emergency landing on Hainan, an island in southeast China and the country's most important submarine base.

Yet before looking at the particular situation, we may want to take a broader approach to some of the issues of power and power management, starting from something dear to the hearts and minds of many, West and East: money.

Napoleon said that for war you need three things: money, money, and money. For this reason, he was clear that the battle against his main enemy, London, had to be fought on the money front, before even fielding an army. In 1806, he issued the Berlin Decrees, which brought into effect the Continental System. It was a policy aimed at eliminating the threat of the United Kingdom by closing French-controlled territory, ie de facto all of continental Europe, to its trade. Europe was the steam engine of the global economy, and if the UK was cut off from this engine, it was bound to dwindle and perish, reasoned the inventor of modern warfare and his followers.

However, it did not work like that.

The UK had the greatest industrial capacity in Europe, had a better financial system than France and the continent, and its mastery of the seas allowed it to build up considerable economic strength through trade to its possessions in its rapidly expanding colonial empire. All these elements actually helped London turn the tables on Napoleon. The UK war effort was willingly supported by crowds of investors and taxpayers, despite the higher taxes on land and a new income tax.

By contrast, the French financial system was inadequate and Napoleon's forces had to rely in part on requisitions from conquered lands, [1] something that riled conquered peoples against the officially universalist call of the French revolution. The UK paid for Russia and Austria and kept them hostile to France. This eventually undermined Napoleon and his system.

France then was the China of its times. With a population almost three times as large as that of Britain, very efficient agriculture (then the main engine of production and wealth), growing modern industry and science, and a culture that dominated Europe, where all elites spoke French and had read the philosophes. Yet France, with little intercontinental trade, without the best modern industry and finance, financed its war efforts by selling acquired land, as it did with Louisiana to the US, and it failed. Napoleon, as he clearly saw it, didn't have the money for war.

Money in fact is not simply hoards of cash; it is an expression of credit, transferable trust, and responsibility, as is beautifully described by Felix Martin. He says, "In essence, money comprises three things: a concept of universally applicable economic value; a system of account-keeping whereby the value can be measured and recorded; and the principle of decentralized transfer, whereby that value can be transferred from one person to another." [2]

This, in turn needs also a system of shared, common broader values allowing the free circulation of credit and trust in a society. In fact, even in highly monetized societies some services and goods can be repaid in kind, in exchange in favors of various kinds, can be given for free (meaning the giver and the receiver expect to obtain from the exchange other than cash, a reward from the neighbor or from God) and not in cash.

This capability for money used to be limited to within one country, and was dominated first by the necessities of the sovereign then expanded to include the new growing requirements of credit of banks to industries and investors in societies which have grown ever more complex and out of the simple reach of the sovereign. Credit comes from the Italian credito, to be believed, to be trusted. That is, money can be issued when there is transferable trust based on the three points made by Martin.

This ability has been expanded to a global dimension with the necessities of the globalized economy and the system of Bretton Woods, established 70 years ago after World War II with the US dollar underpinning it. International trade is still based on these elements and the credit/trust of one country, the United States, has been extended to the whole international system creating an almost seamless body between the US, international trade, industry and finance, and the global necessities. The US, with its dollar, so far, has been the only country able to provide all the necessary "infrastructure" and possess all the necessary trust for international trade and exchanges.

In order for the Chinese yuan (or renminbi) to become an international currency, many steps need to take place. It should become fully convertible, and it should run an import surplus for a few years, to get out enough currency to allow foreign countries to operate with it. Furthermore, China should learn the subtleties of a global economy where China's and foreign interests are aligned. All these elements and more are present with the US dollar, which has been running as a national currency but also as guidance to the international monetary system for the past 70 years.

The current rise of the yuan is one of convenience and expedience. China is a large trade power, and it is becoming easier to trade with China accounting in Chinese currency. Besides the yuan, there are the euro and dollar, which have weaknesses of their own that aided the strengthening of the Chinese money.

The euro, although it has an international market, is a currency without a country or a government, and thus it has limited responsibilities and can be trusted only in a limited way - it is not and it will not be in the foreseeable future a real challenger to the dollar's international role.

The US in recent times has occasionally looked irresponsible. It has been running huge trade deficits for many years, possibly out of proportion for its present economic size; in 2008, it started an international financial crisis that almost melted down the global economic system; it is embroiled in what is now its 14th year of continuous war and turmoil in the Middle East and central Asia - something that it started or abetted.

To top it off, the US has jumped into a growing stand-off with Russia, which might have been just too keen to use the American difficulties in the Middle East to its own advantage. These troubles have to be gauged carefully. All these problems would have wiped out any country, but for the US, they just dented its international political and financial role.

In the 19th century, the strong role of the British pound sterling was based on its widespread intercontinental empire and on its virtual monopoly on global trade, something that Germany never had, although it dominated continental Europe for almost half a century, the heart of the economic and political system at the time. German industry under Chancellor Otto Bismarck quickly caught up with the British, German culture and science became the hallmark of modernity, and the deutschmark was certainly reliable - yet it never became quite as reliable as the British pound.

The Chinese yuan is still a long way from Napoleon or Bismarck's currency. Its recent expansion in usage does not hide the fact that so far it is only a one-way street. The yuan is not used in trading between countries only marginally dealing with China. And if it were to become used in these exchanges, would the Chinese monetary authorities have the technical and political know-how to deal with the underlying complexities? Or would it soon spin out of control?

In fact, the yuan is still very hooked on the US by two fetters: it has a crawling peg with the US dollar that limits its fluctuations, and most of its burgeoning reserves are in US Treasury bonds. To shake off either would not come easy or cheap in the present situation.

The issue should be: if money is transferable trust, how can China gain international trust? In that case, the path should be the following: get the trust, then get the money, and then get sound allies to advance the common cause, and eventually, if necessary, fight with the allies in an indispensable war.

Isn't China in this position now? China is not poor - it has the largest reserves on Earth, at almost USUS$4 trillion and counting. But to better assess the situation, we must look at how China gained its present wealth.

Basically, it happened in two steps, as the US has lent its own global trust to China for the past 30-odd years. In the early 1980s, America allowed a transfer of technology to China and an initial flow on investments there; a second step occurred in the late 1990s, when the US allowed China into the international trade organization (first called the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, now named the World Trade Organization). These two steps made China the beachhead and the forefront of the globalization process that was largely led and engineered by the US.

The Chinese contribution to US-led world trade has been massive - so much so that it would be hard to undo it. It would be hard now for the US to unplug China and expel it from this system, also because China has gained a solid niche for its own products. Chinese goods have a very good price-to-quality ratio that makes them an essential part of the whole economic system; plus the promise of its internal market consumption as a future engine of growth underscores its international role. With these important contributions, China has been gaining some trust on its own.

However, this trust/credit is a far cry from gaining a real international trust. What has been happening in US-China relations since 2009-2010 is that the US has been withdrawing the blank check of trust it had given to China before. This plus some forceful moves China took with its neighbors are elements denting China's hard-gained international trust.

However, it is not a clear path to weakness for China either, because there have been several American mistakes. With the Ukrainian crisis, the US has been throwing Russia into China's arms, something that might open the possibility of the US being cut off from the Eurasian continent, reversing decades of US global strategy (see also Eurasia needs a Sino-German axis, Asia Times Online, August 1, 2014).

As we saw for the past 30-odd years of development bolstered by American trust, China has saved enormous amounts of cash, and it could take some time to use it up. However, despite this cash, China is not gaining more trust on its own. International business circles often complain about harsh Chinese practices. Chinese businessmen are blamed for thinking short-term, eager to reap maximized profits only for themselves without taking into account business partners and crushing anything and anybody before them.

Surely, these are not exclusive Chinese characteristics. There is nothing new under the sun - these are early capitalist customs. Yet, this is not the 19th century, it is not even the 20th century, and businesses are expected to have broader, more comprehensive cultural sensitivities - otherwise money could vanish or turn into dust. The question should be: how might a country transform its cash stockpiles into real money, globally transferable trust?

Moreover, there is a bigger issue in how to look at the world order that is underlying the trust needed for the monetary system. Incidentally, this issue has been also broached by the research of Chinese philosopher Zhao Tingyang.

The Chinese traditional view was to oppose zhi (set order) and luan (chaos). [3] That is, the traditional Chinese view was to bring order to chaotic situations - chaos had to be defeated, eradicated.

Both characters have to do with water. Zhi is clearly the ideogram of water held in check with an embankment. Luan (according to the Kanxi dictionary quoting the ancient Erya dictionary [4]) is when a river stops to correct course, overflows, and floods the land - something that ancient Chinese learned to keep in check through a system of embankments directing and harnessing the force of the waters. The failure of the right flow of water caused not simply inundation but the deep disruption of an orderly and safe life.

However, the present capitalist system was born and thrives on the idea that chaos should not be eradicated and set in order. Chaos, the chaotic search to maximize one's profits, is what will give birth to new developments and growth, according to Mandeville's seminal analysis that inspired the research of Adam Smith. Chaos has to be carefully and cautiously managed, but not eliminated.

This is a further cultural challenge for China, and yet one can simply look at the booming economic activities in China now to see that the lessons from Adam Smith have been de facto fully accepted. However, it is extremely difficult to translate the system granting individuals the right to maximize their profits into a cultural and political structure guaranteeing the international economy. The Anglo-Americans took over two centuries to get where they are now, and there are still many problems.

Notes:
1. Roger Knight, Britain Against Napoleon: The Organisation of Victory, 1793–1815 (2013)
2. Felix Martin, Money, The Unauthorized Biography (2014), pp 263-264.
3. See my Another China, (2001) chapter 1
4. See here


Francesco Sisci is a Senior Researcher associated with the Center for European Studies at the People's University in Beijing.

Rise of the False Reformers (incl: Indonesia)

Over the past year leadership changes in many of the world’s biggest emerging markets, such as China, India, Indonesia, and Thailand, have created hopes of dramatic economic liberalization among citizens of those countries and foreign investors. Media reports cast the new men in charge of the two most populous countries—Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping—as once-in-a-generation reformers who could streamline their lumbering economies by slashing state enterprises and reducing waste.

These hopes are likely to be dashed. Modi, Xi, and every other supposedly visionary new leader across the developing world won’t dislodge state capitalism or seriously liberalize their economies. Instead, Leviathan will stay in control of the economy, eventually depressing growth and undermining the entire world’s chance to boom.

Although emerging markets have posted impressive growth rates over the past decade, weathering the global slowdown of the late 2000s better than most developed nations, high-growth nations such as Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and Thailand have rarely adhered to a strict free-market script. They all maintain extensive state control of many parts of their economies. In China, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) make up almost all of the 20 biggest companies by valuation; in Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Thailand, the government still controls or has vast influence over many of the largest companies.

In the past decade state companies in many of these nations have become more entrenched and have learned how to lobby powerful officials—a relatively new phenomenon in places like China or Indonesia. For example, as Xi began his transition to leadership in 2012 and early 2013 and made clear he wanted to pursue economic reforms, state-owned enterprises, such as China Mobile (CHL), pushed back hard, pressing their case heavily with government officials, according to several Chinese academics. Some SOE bosses argued that their companies, though propped up with loans, were even more profitable than they had been a decade ago; in the first half of 2013 the largest state companies saw profits increase more than 18 percent from the year before, a very impressive figure. Other executives stressed that in a region where China faces increasingly hostile neighbors, state companies were critical to maintaining government dominance of important resources and of industries essential to national security.

Xi, meanwhile, has trumpeted his commitment to maintaining state capitalism. At one session of the National People’s Congress, he told attendees: “The strength of the state-owned enterprises cannot be trimmed. Instead, they need to be strengthened.” In the year following the announcement of reforms in 2013, Chinese banks continued to approve loans to highly indebted state companies. Private companies bidding on energy and construction projects in China complain that SOEs still monopolize the bidding process.

Xi’s ultimate goal is to keep the Communist Party in control, and state companies are a powerful instrument for control. In many other developing nations, state capitalism is also a tool too strong for leaders to discard, no matter how reformist they claim to be. In Thailand, for instance, many of the first generation of elected leaders, such as former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who ruled from 2001 to 2006, had little actual interest in democracy. They deepened state control of the economy as they were chewing up democratic institutions. Thaksin and later his sister, Yingluck, who was prime minister from 2011 until a coup in May, used state capitalism to favor political allies and destroy opposing politicians. The army, which has even less interest in democracy than Yingluck and Thaksin, claimed the coup would allow for serious political and economic reforms. Instead, the coup leaders simply evicted Shinawatra allies from the top Thai state companies and replaced them with military cronies or military men themselves, leaving Thai-style state capitalism in place.

Even in freer developing nations, it will prove extremely tough for leaders such as India’s Modi or Indonesia’s new president, Joko Widodo, to roll back state economics. Democratically elected leaders who don’t respond to public opinion usually wind up without publics to lead, and statism remains popular with many segments of the population. India and Indonesia, like other developing nations, were born with statist economics as part of their identity. The statism of Mohandas Gandhi and Sukarno still has some appeal, even if it’s proven woefully ineffective in fostering long-term growth.

Complicating reformers’ jobs is that state capitalism works, up to a point. In some developing nations, governments have used statist strategies to make some industries globally competitive, cut poverty, and create jobs. In Brazil, the government of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva boosted state influence over the economy by increasing the power of the state’s development bank and taking greater control of major companies in oil, gas, mining, and other industries. At the same time he presided over growth, job creation, and a dramatic reduction in the number of poor, winning over millions of Brazilians. Lula’s brand of state intervention, however, couldn’t be sustained; since 2010, Brazil’s gross domestic product growth rate has trended worrisomely downward.

Still, the recent and deep economic slumps in Europe, Japan, and the U.S. haven’t impressed the developing world, leaving many people there skeptical of market-oriented reforms and economic liberalization. In Indonesia, both candidates in the recent presidential race highlighted their commitments to state capitalism throughout their campaigns. Widodo’s opponent in the presidential campaign, former General Prabowo Subianto, vowed that his administration would nationalize investments in natural resources, invest $75 billion in new, state-funded megaprojects similar to China’s giant infrastructure projects, and impose tough regulations on foreign investors who invest in the country. Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, promised he would reassert state control of some natural resources, launch state plans to make Indonesia self-sufficient in staple foods, and help his compatriots escape the “market forces” that, he said, had trapped Indonesia into dependence on foreign capital.

In India, the appeal of state intervention and worry about Western-style economics also remain significant, despite Modi’s free-market-oriented success running Gujarat state. Indeed, bowing to public concern that he might push painful liberalizations and cut state outlays, Modi hasn’t enacted the major reforms many investors expected when he was elected. Instead, the prime minister has used his mandate to tinker at the edges of India’s economy. Modi’s first budget contained only minor changes from previous governments’ economic policies, keeping in place some $43 billion in state subsidies that are enormously popular among poorer Indians. Story: The Hostage Situation That Keeps Turkey From Going After Islamic State

The staying power of state capitalism should be a source of concern for Western policymakers. Economic liberalization in the giant emerging markets matters not only for Indians and Chinese and Brazilians but also for the entire world. These huge nations will be the biggest engines of expansion over the next three decades. Standard Chartered (STAN:LN) bank estimates that about 70 percent of global growth until 2030 will come from emerging markets. Breaking free of the shackles of statism would allow them to grow even faster, to the benefit of the entire world economy, including the U.S.

The growing middle classes in these countries are, after all, increasingly the leading consumers of Western products and will be essential to the continued success of companies in Europe, Japan, and the U.S. as populations in much of the developed world shrink. If these emerging giants slow down drastically, with the state hindering entrepreneurship and running up debt, Western companies—and the world—could face a prolonged slump that would make the last few years look like a mild blip.

Kurlantzick is Senior Fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Democracy in Retreat: The Revolt of the Middle Class and the Worldwide Decline of Representative Government.

 

Why Japan’s collective self-defence is so politicised

On 1 July, the Abe Cabinet issued a reinterpretation of Japan’s longstanding self-imposed ban on the right of collective self-defence. It was justified as a minimalist countermeasure to the increasingly severe security environment posed by a rising China and an unpredictable, nuclearised North Korea. But the reinterpretation fell well short of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s long-cherished goal of formally amending the constitution and eradicating what he and others criticise as the Japan’s over-reliance on US security guarantees as well as its collective naiveté ‘about the minimum necessary measures for our self-defence’.

Japan, Abe argues, must prepare to share security burdens commensurate with that of a ‘responsible’ global and regional power.

 

From this perspective, the reinterpretation represented little more than a logical next step in a long sequence of prior security changes, including: expanding the defence perimeter of the Maritime Self-Defense Forces; deploying the Self-Defense Forces abroad to support United Nations peacekeeping operations and US military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq; boosting the status of the Defense Agency to that of a full-fledged ministry; and enhancing trilateral military cooperation between the US, Australia and Japan.

But there has been widespread public criticism of the reinterpretation of Article 9 — thousands demonstrated, one man self-immolated at Shinjuku Station and the Abe cabinet’s approval rating fell to its lowest level since taking office at 45.2 per cent. In contrast, the US Defense Department was quick to welcome the historic decision to enhance US-Japan alliance security cooperation in the Asia Pacific. While security analysts will differ on the inherent merits of collective self-defence per se, the decision raises two interwoven problems that are particularly worrisome.

First, the decision was made in a context of rapidly diminishing checks on executive authority. In past decades, the combination of a vigorous political left, internal Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) factionalism and electoral sensitivity provided partial checks on executive branch autonomy. Yet the 1994 electoral reforms, the Abe-led triumph in the 2012 elections and a distant electoral horizon stretching into 2016 have combined to eviscerate all three.

The Cabinet Legislative Bureau (CLB) had previously been a stalwart voice declaring that Article 9 prohibited collective self-defence. But its new chairman, Abe-appointed acolyte Ichiro Komatsu, quickly telegraphed his conviction that the cabinet, not the CLB, should decide matters of constitutionality, declaring: ‘It is not correct for the Cabinet Legislation Bureau unilaterally to decide “left” when the cabinet is thinking “right”’. Japan’s public broadcaster, NHK — which is rarely the most independent of voices, but is legally obliged to be non-partisan — was further muzzled by four right-leaning Abe appointees who explicitly committed NHK to toeing the government line.

Also, a sweeping 2013 state secrecy law now gags government whistle-blowers. And the once fulsome opposition to collective self-defence reinterpretation by the LDP’s coalition partner, New Komeito, evaporated once the party faced the choice between its peace-oriented principles and bringing down the Abe government.

None of this is to suggest that Japan remains anything less than a vibrant democracy, but executive power — in the absence of meaningful checks — risks evolving into an ‘unguarded guardian’.

Second, and equally troubling, are the nationalistic trappings surrounding collective self-defence. Frictions following the decision might have been eased if Abe had focused the bulk of his policy efforts on his key election promise: restructuring the national economy. Collective self-defence could then have been packaged as just one small piece of a multifaceted effort to resuscitate Japanese leadership across a range of issues.

But, before and after taking office, Abe has repeatedly challenged Article 9, dismissing the constitution as a sovereignty-eviscerating manifestation of ‘victor’s justice’. Equally vociferous are his claims that Japan’s pre-war history has been unfairly castigated. Abe’s scepticism about the merits of prior apologies for the Japanese government’s wartime behaviour, including its role in providing sex slaves for the Japanese military, has also been divisive.

Abe has justified politically provocative visits to Yasukuni Shrine by senior politicians, including his own in December 2013, as no more than manifestations of personal spiritual ‘beliefs’. And Taro Aso, the deputy prime minister and finance minister, was caught in a gaffe where he suggested that Japan could learn from the Nazis’ stealth in revising a democratic constitution. In such a climate it is impossible to evaluate security-based arguments concerning collective self-defence solely on their merits. Instead, they are tabled as no more than appetisers whetting the palate for a larger entrée of revisionist nationalism.

Collective self-defence in itself is likely to have minimal short-to-medium term impact on Japan’s grand security strategy. Yet, in the context of sweeping historical revisionism and executive overreach, the constitutional reinterpretation provides an easy-to-wallop piñata for nationalistic South Korean and Chinese leaders anxious to bolster their own domestic support. In addition to poisoning a once blossoming trilateral cooperation among China, Japan and South Korea, recent Abe-led actions have also stymied trilateral security cooperation among erstwhile allies Japan, South Korea and the US. The end result will likely be a more regionally isolated and less tolerant Japan.

T J Pempel is Jack M. Forcey Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley.

 

First thing we do, let's kill all the myths. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is nothing but the Security Council of the Empire of Chaos.

You don't need to be a neo-Foucault hooked on Orwellian/Panopticon practices to admire the hyper-democratic "ring of steel" crossing average roads, parks and even ringing castle walls to "protect" dozens of NATO heads of state and ministers, 10,000 supporting characters and 2,000 journalists from the real world in Newport, Wales - and beyond.

NATO's summit in Wales also provides outgoing secretary-general Anders "Fogh of War" Rasmussen the chance to display his full attack dog repertoire. It's as if he's auditioning for a starring role in a remake of Tim Burton's epic Mars Attacks!

Fogh of War is all over the place, talking "pre-positioning of supplies, equipment" - euphemism for weapons; boosting bases and headquarters in host countries; and touting a 10,000-strong, rapid reaction "spearhead" force to respond to Russian "aggression" and deployable in a maximum of five days.

Meanwhile, in a bad cop-bad cop routine, outgoing president of the European Commission, outstanding mediocrity Jose Manuel Barroso, leaked that Russian President Vladimir Putin told him over the phone later last week he could take Kiev in a fortnight if he wanted.

Well, Putin could. If he wanted. But he doesn't want it. What matters is what he told Rossiya state TV; that Kiev should promote inclusive talks about the future statute of Eastern Ukraine. Once again, the Western spin was that he was advocating the birth of a Novorossiya state. Here, The Saker analyzes in detail the implications of what Russia really wants, and what the Novorossiya forces really want.

With Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite predictably spinning that Russia is "at war with Europe", and British Prime Minister David Cameron evoking - what else - Munich 1938 (Chamberlain appeasing Hitler), Fogh of War has had all the ammo he needs to sell his Einsatzgruppen. Cynics are excused to believe NATO's spearhead force is actually The Caliph's IS goons raising hell in "Syraq".

Warmongering, though, is not an easy sell in a crisis-hit EU these days. Not only Germany, but also France, Italy, Spain, Romania, Hungary and even Poland have expressed "reluctance" one way or another to back NATO's strategy of a more "robust" presence in Eastern Europe and the Baltic. Moreover, the Empire of Chaos and its Brit junior partner in the "special relationship" want everyone to shell out more cash (a minimum of 2% of GDP). Even as the EU is facing no less than its third recession in five years.

The bottom line is there will be no more rotation on NATO's Eastern front. Legally, the set up cannot be defined as "permanent", because it will go against a 1997 NATO-Russia pact. But it will be permanent. That applies to Szczecin, in Poland, near the Baltic, and the so-called multinational Corps Northeast - land, air and sea. Estonia and Latvia for all practical purposes are being touted as "Putin's next targets". And defending them from "Russian aggression" is NATO's new red line.

Additionally, Finland and Sweden may sign NATO Host Nation agreements. This implies NATO forces may use Swedish and Finnish territory in the future on the way to what's hazily referred to as "operations". At least deployment of foreign troops still needs parliamentary approval - and Swedes and Finns are bound to raise eyebrows.

No R2P for you, buddy
Even with all this Mars Attacks! hysteria, NATO in thesis won't discuss Ukraine in depth in Wales - or an imminent R2P ("responsibility to protect") Ukraine from the remixed "Evil Empire" (copyright Ronnie Reagan). But there will be "military consultations" and a bit of cash shelled out to the Kiev military - who are having their (bankrupt) collective behind solemnly kicked by the federalist/separatist forces in Eastern Ukraine as much as NATO had theirs kicked by a bunch of Pashtuns with Kalashnikovs in Afghanistan.

By the way, the latest US$1.4 billion the International Monetary Fund shelled out to Ukraine - the Mobster-style interest will hit much later - will be used by an already bankrupt Kiev mostly to pay for a bunch of T-72 tanks it bought from Hungary. Money for nothing, tanks for free.

Ukraine, it must be stressed, is not a NATO member. Technically, every NATO bureaucrat in Brussels admits that a candidate country must request membership. And countries with regions mired in an international dispute are not accepted. So Ukraine would only be considered if Kiev gave up Crimea. It's not going to happen.

Still, Washington's obsessive play to annex Ukraine to NATO will keep marching on (in the matter of accession, by the way, the European Union would issue a firm "no"). Outgoing Prime Minister Arseniy “Yats” Yatsenyuk as well as President Poroshenko, are desperate for a NATO intervention, or at least Ukraine being accepted as some form of privileged ally. Yats expects "monumental decisions from our Western partners at the summit". In vain.

NATO somehow is already in Ukraine. A NATO cyber center group has been in Kiev since March, operating in the building of the Council of National Security and Defense. So it is a bunch of NATO bureaucrats who actually determine the news agenda in Ukraine - and the non-stop demonization of all things Russia.

Ukraine is all about Germany now. Berlin wants a political solution. Fast. Berlin wants Russian gas flowing via Ukraine again. Fast. Berlin does not want US missile defense in Eastern Europe - no matter what the Baltic states scream. That's why Poroshenko's latest "Invasion! Invasion! Invasion!" craze is nothing but pure desperation by a lowly, bankrupt vassal of the Empire of Chaos. Of course that does not prevent Fogh of War - who got the NATO job because he was an enthusiastic cheerleader of the rape of Iraq - to keep crying "Invasion!" till all Danish retrievers come home.

Real deal
And then there's NATO's recent record. An ignominious defeat in Afghanistan. A "humanitarian" bombing that reduced once-stable Libya to a miserable failed state immersed in total anarchy and ravaged by rabid militias. Not exactly fabulous PR for NATO's future as a coalition assembly line with global "vocation", capable of pulling off expeditionary wars all around the world by creating the appearance of a military and political consensus unified by - what else - an Empire of Chaos doctrine: NATO's "strategic concept" approved at the 2010 Lisbon summit. (See US a kid in a NATO candy store, Asia Times Online, November 25, 2010.)

Since those go-go "Bubba" Clinton years; through the "pre-emptive" Dubya era; and now under the R2P dementia of Obama's warring Medusas (Rice, Power, Hillary), the Pentagon dreams of NATO as global Robocop, dominating all the roles embodied by the UN and the EU in terms of security. This has absolutely nothing to do with the original collective defense of NATO signatories against possible territorial attacks. Oh, sorry; we forgot the attacks by those (non-existent) nuclear missiles deployed by evil Iran.

The Ukraine battleground at least has the merit of showing the alliance is naked. For the Full Spectrum Dominance Pentagon, what really matters above all is something that's been actually happening since the fall of the Soviet Union; unlimited NATO expansion to the westernmost borders of Russia.

The real deal this September is not NATO. It's the SCO's summit. Expect the proverbial tectonic shifts of geopolitical plaques in the upcoming meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization - a shift as far-reaching as when the Ottoman empire failed at the gates of Vienna in 1683. On the initiative of Russia and China, at the SCO summit, India, Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia will be invited to become permanent members. Once again, the battle lines are drawn. NATO vs SCO. NATO vs BRICS. NATO vs Global South. Therefore, NATO attacks!

Pepe Escobar

Obama's 'stupid stuff' legacy

But whether people see what's happening in Ukraine, and Russia's aggression towards its neighbors in the manner in which it's financing and arming separatists; to what's happened in Syria - the devastation that [President Bashar al-]Assad has wrought on his own people; to the failure in Iraq for Sunni and Shia and Kurd to compromise - although we're trying to see if we can put together a government that actually can function; to ongoing terrorist threats; to what's happening in Israel and Gaza - part of peoples' concern is just the sense that around the world the old order isn't holding and we're not quite yet to where we need to be in terms of a new order that's based on a set of different principles, that's based on a sense of common humanity, that's based on economies that work for all people. - President Barack Obama

Looks like US President Barack Obama made a royal mess of what his mentor Dr Zbigniew "Grand Chessboard" Brzezinski taught him.

Dr Zbig always quotes Sir Halford John Mackinder's three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy; to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals; to keep tributaries pliant and protected; and to keep the barbarians from coming together.

After dabbling briefly with "leading from behind" - a non-starter - Obama finally went Mackinderesque with his stellar "Don't Do Stupid Stuff" foreign policy doctrine.

Nevertheless, an always alert former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said "Don't do Stupid Stuff" isn't a "foreign policy organizing principle". Yet "Stupid Stuff" is all that the Obama foreign policy team knows how to do.

Starting with Obama treating Russia under President Vladimir Putin the way Hillary's husband treated Russia under vodka container Boris Yeltsin. Then came the decision - without any public debate - to start bombing Iraq all over again. And soon Syria. Bombs Away in Syraq!

So "protect" Yazidis, yes. Protect Gazans, no. "Protect" Kiev's bunch of neo-Nazis, fascists and shady oligarchs, yes. Protect Russophones in Eastern Ukraine, no.

It all started with protecting Irbil - already protected by Sumerian goddess Ishtar for millennia. Then protecting Irbil and Baghdad. Then protecting all "strategic" sites in Iraq.

Retired General Carter Ham of AFRICOM/"We came, we saw, he died" fame, was adamant that it will be "very difficult" to pull off so much protecting with only a few fighter jets. So drones will be needed. And troops on the ground.

From protecting ExxonMobil and Chevron to double bombing in Syraq. No wonder the Return of the Living (Neo-Con) Dead are so excited. It's the Greater Middle East all over again. And guess who will be part of the coalition of the willing to fight the Caliph? Britain, Australia, Turkey, Jordan and Gulf Cooperation Council stalwarts Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Almost the same bunch (five among seven) that enabled the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the first place, from "Assad must go" to "good" and "bad" jihadis, and finally to ISIS (now the Islamic State) configured as the sprawling abode - complete with flush private army - of Caliph Ibrahim.

And no, there's no strategy. Hee haw!

Bye bye petrodollar
Now let's see the dividends of "Don't Do Stupid Stuff" as applied to Ukraine.

Back to the Mackinderesque Dr Zbig. Some vassals - the usual NATO/GCC suspects, but not all of them - may still believe they profit from "security dependence", while others remain nervously pliant and, in theory, feel "protected" by the Empire of Chaos.

But then the Empire of Chaos "encouraged" a de facto coup. And gave the green light for the new Kiev mob to do in Eastern Ukraine roughly what Israel does in Gaza. The idea in Ukraine was to bog down Russia in its western borderlands and cut off the economic/trade link between Russia and Germany. Cut Eurasia in half.

But then Obama launched a Cold War 2.0 that could easily turn hot. He destroyed the relationship with chancellor Angela Merkel and Germany and amplified the strategic embrace between the Bear and the Dragon, with the result that Beijing started paying less attention to the "pivoting to Asia" because now it enjoys even more backing from Moscow. Meanwhile, Moscow further stalls Washington's advances in Central Asia.

Sanctions on Russia not only reinforce its internal market but also boost its foreign trade - way beyond European shores. Yet still it was not enough to totally sell out to Wall Street and totally wreck US foreign policy. With aides/advisors like National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Deputy National Security Advisor Benjamin Rhodes, US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who needs enemies?

Obama's sanctions hysteria is leading the way to the progressive end of the US dollar as reserve currency, and the end of the petrodollar.

Witness this - the most important news of these last few months after the Russia-China "gas deal of the century".

Obama is accelerating the now uncontrolled collapse of the Empire of Chaos. The new axis of the future - Beijing, Moscow, Berlin - is slowly but surely coming together. There's nothing "barbarian" about them. And the bulk of the Global South supports them.

"The old order isn't holding" - indeed. "The Caliph is evil. So I'm applying more sanctions on Russia." How's that for Empire management? Good boy. Now pivot. With yourself. And with no strategy.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009

How Washington Made the Islamic State

Whatever your politics, you're not likely to feel great about America right now. After all, there's Ferguson (the whole world was watching!), an increasingly unpopular president, a Congress whose approval ratings make the president look like a rock star, rising poverty, weakening wages, and a growing inequality gap just to start what could be a long list. Abroad, from Libya and Ukraine to Iraq and the South China Sea, nothing has been coming up roses for the US. Polls reflect a general American gloom, with 71% of the public claiming the country is "on the wrong track". We have the look of a superpower down on our luck.

What Americans have needed is a little pick-me-up to make us feel better, to make us, in fact, feel distinctly good. Certainly, what official Washington has needed in tough times is a bona fide enemy so darn evil, so brutal, so barbaric, so inhuman that, by contrast, we might know just how exceptional, how truly necessary to this planet we really are.

In the nick of time, riding to the rescue comes something new under the sun: the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), recently renamed Islamic State (IS). It's a group so extreme that even al-Qaeda rejected it, so brutal that it's brought back crucifixion, beheading, waterboarding, and amputation, so fanatical that it's ready to persecute any religious group within range of its weapons, so grimly beyond morality that it's made the beheading of an innocent American a global propaganda phenomenon. If you've got a label that's really, really bad like genocide or ethnic cleansing, you can probably apply it to ISIS's actions.

It has also proven so effective that its relatively modest band of warrior jihadis has routed the Syrian and Iraqi armies, as well as the Kurdish pesh merga militia, taking control of a territory larger than Great Britain in the heart of the Middle East. Today, it rules over at least four million people, controls its own functioning oil fields and refineries (and so their revenues as well as infusions of money from looted banks, kidnapping ransoms, and Gulf state patrons). Despite opposition, it still seems to be expanding and claims it has established a caliphate.

A force so evil you've got to do something

Facing such pure evil, you may feel a chill of fear, even if you're a top military or national security official, but in a way you've gotta feel good, too. It's not everyday that you have an enemy your president can term a "cancer"; that your secretary of state can call the "face" of "ugly, savage, inexplicable, nihilistic, and valueless evil" which "must be destroyed"; that your secretary of defense can denounce as "barbaric" and lacking a "standard of decency, of responsible human behavior... an imminent threat to every interest we have, whether it's in Iraq or anywhere else"; that your chairman of the joint chiefs of staff can describe as "an organization that has an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision and which will eventually have to be defeated"; and that a retired general and former commander of US forces in Afghanistan can brand a "scourge ... beyond the pale of humanity [that] ... must be eradicated."

Talk about a feel-good feel-bad situation for the leadership of a superpower that's seen better days! Such threatening evil calls for only one thing, of course: for the United States to step in. It calls for the Obama administration to dispatch the bombers and drones in a slowly expanding air war in Iraq and, sooner or later, possibly Syria. It falls on Washington's shoulders to organize a new "coalition of the willing" from among various backers and opponents of the Assad regime in Syria, from among those who have armed and funded the extremist rebels in that country, from the ethnic/religious factions in the former Iraq, and from various NATO countries. It calls for Washington to transform Iraq's leadership (a process no longer termed "regime change") and elevate a new man capable of reuniting the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds, now at each other's throats, into one nation capable of turning back the extremist tide. If not American "boots on the ground," it calls for proxy ones of various sorts that the US military will naturally have a hand in training, arming, funding, and advising. Facing such evil, what other options could there be?

If all of this sounds strangely familiar, it should. Minus a couple of invasions, the steps being considered or already in effect to deal with "the threat of ISIS" are a reasonable summary of the last 13 years of what was once called the Global War on Terror and now has no name at all. New as ISIS may be, a little history is in order, since that group is, at least in part, America's legacy in the Middle East.

Give Osama bin Laden some credit. After all, he helped set us on the path to ISIS. He and his ragged band had no way of creating the caliphate they dreamed of or much of anything else. But he did grasp that goading Washington into something that looked like a crusader's war with the Muslim world might be an effective way of heading in that direction.

In other words, before Washington brings its military power fully to bear on the new "caliphate," a modest review of the post-9/11 years might be appropriate. Let's start at the moment when those towers in New York had just come down, thanks to a small group of mostly Saudi hijackers, and almost 3,000 people were dead in the rubble. At that time, it wasn't hard to convince Americans that there could be nothing worse, in terms of pure evil, than Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Establishing an American Caliphate

Facing such unmatchable evil, the United States officially went to war as it might have against an enemy military power. Under the rubric of the Global War on Terror, the Bush administration launched the unmatchable power of the US military and its paramilitarized intelligence agencies against... well, what? Despite those dramatic videos of al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, that organization had no military force worth the name, and despite what you've seen on "Homeland," no sleeper cells in the US either; nor did it have the ability to mount follow-up operations any time soon.

In other words, while the Bush administration talked about "draining the swamp" of terror groups in up to 60 countries, the US military was dispatched against what were essentially will-o'-the-wisps, largely representing Washington's own conjured fears and fantasies. It was, that is, initially sent against bands of largely inconsequential Islamic extremists, scattered in tiny numbers in the tribal backlands of Afghanistan or Pakistan and, of course, the rudimentary armies of the Taliban.

It was, to use a word that George W. Bush let slip only once, something like a "crusade," something close to a religious war, if not against Islam itself - American officials piously and repeatedly made that clear - then against the idea of a Muslim enemy, as well as against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and later Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. In each case, Washington mustered a coalition of the willing, ranging from Arab and South or Central Asian states to European ones, sent in air power followed twice by full-scale invasions and occupations, mustered local politicians of our choice in major "nation-building" operations amid much self-promotional talk about democracy, and built up vast new military and security apparatuses, supplying them with billions of dollars in training and arms.

Looking back, it's hard not to think of all of this as a kind of American jihadism, as well as an attempt to establish what might have been considered an American caliphate in the region (though Washington had far kinder descriptive terms for it). In the process, the US effectively dismantled and destroyed state power in each of the three main countries in which it intervened, while ensuring the destabilization of neighboring countries and finally the region itself.

In that largely Muslim part of the world, the US left a grim record that we in this country generally tend to discount or forget when we decry the barbarism of others. We are now focused in horror on ISIS's video of the murder of journalist James Foley, a propaganda document clearly designed to drive Washington over the edge and into more active opposition to that group.

We, however, ignore the virtual library of videos and other imagery the US generated, images widely viewed (or heard about and discussed) with no less horror in the Muslim world than ISIS's imagery is in ours. As a start, there were the infamous "screen saver" images straight out of the Marquis de Sade from Abu Ghraib prison. There, Americans tortured and abused Iraqi prisoners, while creating their own iconic version of crucifixion imagery. Then there were the videos that no one (other than insiders) saw, but that everyone heard about. These, the CIA took of the repeated torture and abuse of al-Qaeda suspects in its "black sites." In 2005, they were destroyed by an official of that agency, lest they be screened in an American court someday. There was also the Apache helicopter video released by WikiLeaks in which American pilots gunned down Iraqi civilians on the streets of Baghdad (including two Reuters correspondents), while on the sound track the crew are heard wisecracking.

There was the video of US troops urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. There were the trophy photos of body parts brought home by US soldiers. There were the snuff films of the victims of Washington's drone assassination campaigns in the tribal backlands of the planet (or "bug splat," as the drone pilots came to call the dead from those attacks) and similar footage from helicopter gunships. There was the bin Laden snuff film video from the raid on Abbottabad, Pakistan, of which President Obama reportedly watched a live feed. And that's only to begin to account for some of the imagery produced by the US since September 2001 from its various adventures in the Greater Middle East.

All in all, the invasions, the occupations, the drone campaigns in several lands, the deaths that ran into the hundreds of thousands, the uprooting of millions of people sent into external or internal exile, the expending of trillions of dollars added up to a bin Laden dreamscape. They would prove jihadist recruitment tools par excellence.

When the US was done, when it had set off the process that led to insurgencies, civil wars, the growth of extremist militias, and the collapse of state structures, it had also guaranteed the rise of something new on Planet Earth: ISIS - as well as of other extremist outfits ranging from the Pakistani Taliban, now challenging the state in certain areas of that country, to Ansar al-Sharia in Libya and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen.

Though the militants of ISIS would undoubtedly be horrified to think so, they are the spawn of Washington. Thirteen years of regional war, occupation, and intervention played a major role in clearing the ground for them. They may be our worst nightmare (thus far), but they are also our legacy - and not just because so many of their leaders came from the Iraqi army we disbanded, had their beliefs and skills honed in the prisons we set up (Camp Bucca seems to have been the West Point of Iraqi extremism), and gained experience facing US counter-terror operations in the "surge" years of the occupation. In fact, just about everything done in the war on terror has facilitated their rise. After all, we dismantled the Iraqi army and rebuilt one that would flee at the first signs of ISIS's fighters, abandoning vast stores of Washington's weaponry to them. We essentially destroyed the Iraqi state, while fostering a Shia leader who would oppress enough Sunnis in enough ways to create a situation in which ISIS would be welcomed or tolerated throughout significant areas of the country.

The escalation follies

When you think about it, from the moment the first bombs began falling on Afghanistan in October 2001 to the present, not a single US military intervention has had anything like its intended effect. Each one has, in time, proven a disaster in its own special way, providing breeding grounds for extremism and producing yet another set of recruitment posters for yet another set of jihadist movements. Looked at in a clear-eyed way, this is what any American military intervention seems to offer such extremist outfits - and ISIS knows it.

Don't consider its taunting video of James Foley's execution the irrational act of madmen blindly calling down the destructive force of the planet's last superpower on themselves. Quite the opposite. Behind it lay rational calculation. ISIS's leaders surely understood that American air power would hurt them, but they knew as well that, as in an Asian martial art in which the force of an assailant is used against him, Washington's full-scale involvement would also infuse their movement with greater power. (This was Osama bin Laden's most original insight.)

It would give ISIS the ultimate enemy, which means the ultimate street cred in its world. It would bring with it the memories of all those past interventions, all those snuff videos and horrifying images. It would help inflame and so attract more members and fighters. It would give the ultimate raison d'etre to a minority religious movement that might otherwise prove less than cohesive and, in the long run, quite vulnerable. It would give that movement global bragging rights into the distant future.

ISIS's urge was undoubtedly to bait the Obama administration into a significant intervention. And in that, it may prove successful. We are now, after all, watching a familiar version of the escalation follies at work in Washington. Obama and his top officials are clearly on the up escalator. In the Oval Office is a visibly reluctant president, who undoubtedly desires neither to intervene in a major way in Iraq (from which he proudly withdrew American troops in 2011 with their "heads held high"), nor in Syria (a place where he avoided sending in the bombers and missiles back in 2013).

Unlike the previous president and his top officials, who were all confidence and overarching plans for creating a Pax Americana across the Greater Middle East, this one and his foreign policy team came into office intent on managing an inherited global situation. President Obama's only plan, such as it was, was to get out of the Iraq War (along lines already established by the Bush administration). It was perhaps a telltale sign then that, in order to do so, he felt he had to "surge" American troops into Afghanistan. Five and a half years later, he and his key officials still seem essentially plan-less, a set of now-desperate managers engaged in a seat-of-the-pants struggle over a destabilizing Greater Middle East (and increasingly Africa and the borderlands of Europe as well).

Five and a half years later, the president is once again under pressure and being criticized by assorted neocons, McCainites, and this time, it seems, the military high command evidently eager to be set loose yet one more time to take out barbarism globally - that is, to up the ante on a losing hand. As in 2009, so today, he's slowly but surely giving ground. By now, the process of "mission creep" - a term strongly rejected by the Obama administration - is well underway.

It started slowly with the collapse of the US-trained and US-supplied Iraqi army in Mosul and other northern Iraqi cities in the face of attacks by ISIS. In mid-June, the aircraft carrier USS H W Bush with more than 100 planes was dispatched to the Persian Gulf and the president sent in hundreds of troops, including Special Forces advisers (though officially no "boots" were to be "on the ground"). He also agreed to drone and other air surveillance of the regions ISIS had taken, clearly preparation for future bombing campaigns. All of this was happening before the fate of the Yazidis - a small religious sect whose communities in northern Iraq were brutally destroyed by ISIS fighters - officially triggered the commencement of a limited bombing campaign suitable to a "humanitarian crisis."

When ISIS, bolstered by US heavy weaponry captured from the Iraqi military, began to crush the Kurdish pesh merga militia, threatening the capital of the Kurdish region of Iraq and taking the enormous Mosul Dam, the bombing widened. More troops and advisers were sent in, and weaponry began to flow to the Kurds, with promises of all of the above further south once a new unity government was formed in Baghdad. The president explained this bombing expansion by citing the threat of ISIS blowing up the Mosul Dam and flooding downriver communities, thus supposedly endangering the US Embassy in distant Baghdad. (This was a lame cover story because ISIS would have had to flood parts of its own "caliphate" in the process.)

The beheading video then provided the pretext for the possible bombing of Syria to be put on the agenda. And once again a reluctant president, slowly giving way, has authorized drone surveillance flights over parts of Syria in preparation for possible bombing strikes that may not be long in coming.

The incrementalism of the reluctant

Consider this the incrementalism of the reluctant under the usual pressures of a militarized Washington eager to let loose the dogs of war. One place all of this is heading is into a morass of bizarre contradictions involving Syrian politics. Any bombing of that country will necessarily involve implicit, if not explicit, support for the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad, as well as for the barely existing "moderate" rebels who oppose his regime and to whom Washington may now ship more arms. This, in turn, could mean indirectly delivering yet more weaponry to ISIS. Add everything up and at the moment Washington seems to be on the path that ISIS has laid out for it.

Americans prefer to believe that all problems have solutions. There may, however, be no obvious or at least immediate solution when it comes to ISIS, an organization based on exclusivity and divisiveness in a region that couldn't be more divided. On the other hand, as a minority movement that has already alienated so many in the region, left to itself it might with time simply burn out or implode. We don't know. We can't know. But we do have reasonable evidence from the past 13 years of what an escalating American military intervention is likely to do: not whatever it is that Washington wants it to do.

And keep one thing in mind: if the US were truly capable of destroying or crushing ISIS, as our secretary of state and others are urging, that might prove to be anything but a boon. After all, it was easy enough to think, as Americans did after 9/11, that al-Qaeda was the worst the world of Islamic extremism had to offer. Osama bin Laden's killing was presented to us as an ultimate triumph over Islamic terror. But ISIS lives and breathes and grows, and across the Greater Middle East Islamic extremist organizations are gaining membership and traction in ways that should illuminate just what the war on terror has really delivered. The fact that we can't now imagine what might be worse than ISIS means nothing, given that no one in our world could imagine ISIS before it sprang into being.

The American record in these last 13 years is a shameful one. Do it again should not be an option.

Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. He runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, to be published in October, is Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single Superpower World (Haymarket Books).