Maritime Supremacy As Strategy

 A Review

Libertarian Internationalism:

A Look At War Policy

How Exactly Does A

Flat World Look?

Net Neutrality Debate:

What is at Stake

Volume 1

Number 4

Copyright © 2007 The Cepia Club

Table of Contents

P. 3–Strategos Procurator

Separating Business from Service

P. 4–Society

Net Neutrality and Liberty

by

Charles M. Barnard

P. 5–Politics

Libertarian Internationalism:

Fixing the Core Problem of U.S. Strategy

P. 15–Review

Review of: Padfield, Peter. Maritime Supremacy and the Opening of the Western Mind. New York: The Overlook Press. 1999.

P. 19–Review

Review of: Friedman, Thomas L. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, Updated and Expanded. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006.

Strategos Procurator

Separating Business from Service

T he Cepia Club operates on a principle of self-support. We are not a charity or a non-profit. We do not accept donations. We believe in our vision: To help make a better world for everyone. Our Commitments can be summed up as follows: Help others help themselves, and help everyone else by doing so. The Cepia Club believes in free-minds and the free-markets. We do not beg for money. We earn our living and use some portion of our profits to help humanity.

Our Club is organized in two parts. On the one hand, we have a business. Our focus enterprises in that business are Publications, Broadcasting, Public and Media Relations (PMR), and CepiaNet. We generate revenue by offering a mix of services and products in these enterprises that are informative, creative, promotional, or (the general) “other” categories. When we earn more money through work, we have more money to use to do public service. It is that basic a proposition. As a business, we operate according to our needs, drawing from our public, customers, clients, and participants.

The other part of The Cepia Club is where the participants come into their own. We do not have members; we do not collect dues or charge fees. But the participants, both official and unofficial, have a large say in how the participation part forms, what it does, and where it will go. The Cepia Club, by that I mean the business part, reserves to itself all decision-making power concerning our business affairs and how those affairs affect the official CepiaNet enterprise. But the participation part is where we moderate the exchange of ideas and activities of those wishing to build better lives for themselves and others. With the participation of people, we fight ignorance and apathy by educating people and motivating them to be leaders in the world. Here is where we build communities and contribute to peace on earth. Here is where we apply some of the profits helping the world as a whole.

If people want to help The Cepia Club spread our vision and fulfill the Four Commitments (both found at www.cepiaclub.com), then people can spread the ideals. If people want to support our business and our service work, then perhaps they should consider buying something we sell or barter. We believe we are responsible agents for positive change. We have a new way of doing things. We want to enlighten everyone and develop their potential. A little commerce to us contributes to making us more able to help others. Being a successful business is how we will be successful in our service. We are in a free market. People are free to decide how they want to help, or not. The ideals have become our life’s work. We shall do our best with what we have. We ask no more of others than freely decide and act. It is that basic a proposition.

In This Issue

This issue holds some radical changes. The staff made the “no-dah” decision that since S.G. is mostly emailed in .pdf and on-line versions, in both .pdf and .htm formats, we will henceforth present the front page, most of the ads, and other features in color. The color has been chosen to print well in black and white, which is how S.G. has been physically distributed for issues #1, #3, and now #4. The title header on page 1 is an experiment. Let us know what you think of the new cover template. Due to software issues, we separated paragraphs in the main articles with a full blank line, instead of defining paragraphs with erratic indentations. This measure is also an experiment. Comments on our experiments can be sent to hq@cepiaclub.com .

Society

Net Neutrality and Liberty

by Charles M. Barnard

Contributing Editor

H istorically, there have been two main ways of looking at data traffic: the telephone model, and the broadcast/cable model.

Under the telephone model, the carriers (people actually moving the signal) cannot treat any signal differently than any other signal. All conversations are equal.

Under the broadcast/cable model, transmissions are expressions (i.e. public works) and the carrier has discretion about how they handle the signal—including the right to censor.

The argument is about whether Internet data streams are subject to telephone common carrier rules or broadcast/cable discretionary rules.

Because of the blurring of the differences between the two systems on a hardware and business level, it is not certain how such signals should be handled legally.

Service providers want to be able to use discretion, not so much to filter, as to permit them to provide differing levels of service based on content and payment. This effectually would permit carriers to block content that they wished, preventing ‘free speech’ over the Net.

This is similar to the situation in the early days of telephone modem use, when a modem connection in, say Germany, cost several hundred times what a voice connection cost.

Obviously, if the carrier(s) can determine what content they transmit, your liberty to transmit the data you wish is severely limited, at least in theory. But in liberty that does not harm others, can there ever be compromises and still call it liberty?

Politics

Libertarian Internationalism:

Fixing the Core Problem in

U.S. Grand Strategy

T he Iraq Study Group made its recommendations in December of 2006. The Bush Administration appointed new commanders for the Middle East and for Iraq. The President’s plan for Iraq announced on January 10, 2007 will send 21,500 more U.S. troops to Iraq. Both the ISG and the Administration have focused on military solutions in the war in Iraq, everything from embedded advisors to redeployment. The ISG also recommended some political steps which included bringing Syria and Iran in the political process of stabilizing Iraq. This call has been rejected by the Administration. The new Administration plan for Iraq and the Middle East will not suffice as it starts in error. After four years of continuous failure to solve the problems in U.S. policy in the “long war” against terrorists, an entirely new approach to U.S. foreign policy is necessary.

The question needs to be asked bluntly: Why is a policy revision needed in the world-wide war against Islamists terrorists? The first and most simple answer is to look at the consequences of failure in the war against the Islamist radicals. The Islamist are not mainstream Muslims. They are a fanatical political movement using the darker side of human nature--oppression, hate, intolerance and violence–against those “heretics and infidels” who differ from their beliefs. The use of political violence to advance their agenda is the core of “pure” strategy . The true enemy in this war is the belief that men and women have no natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness given by God. Therefore, we must begin this discussion by acknowledging the nature of the war.

It is not America’s war to wage alone, in the Middle East or anywhere else. A debate needs to admit the true enemy and the consequences failure. The world’s enemy is a violent, mentally unstable, selfish, idea-driven extremist minority within the Muslim religion seeking to impose a dark shroud of ignorance, tyranny, oppression, and violence on others. The Islamists, are a radical sect within Islam. They aim to do nothing less than steal the future away from liberty, prosperity, peace, and fellowship from all people, especially those who think, act, and live differently from their beliefs. The enemy’s prime goal, in general terms, is nothing less than to steal the rights of liberty, freedom, safety, and truth from all people who fall prey to them.

Islamists use terrorism as a weapon, a tool or action or tactic to achieve their political goals. They have adopted a strategy of “insurgency” to align and their resources. In an operational context, they have adopted asymmetric warfare as their method in using the tactics of their strategy. Asymmetric warfare is the bridge between strategy and tactics that targets the advantages of their organization, its personnel and its weapons at the weak parts of their enemy.

Above this “military matrix” of the Islamist, their grand strategy is to build their strength, recruit their members, and develop their capabilities and resources using a political policy “fighting their Christian crusading enemies.” This is a powerful public and political relations approach based on both history and manipulation. The terrorists have branded the Christian West as infidels who have oppressed the Muslim peoples for centuries, exploited their resources, murdered and raped them, and destroyed their culture for the benefit of Western empires.

Battling the Islamist ideology, in effect, denying them political legitimacy, countering their strategy, disabling their tactics, and disconnecting their operational methods, require more than violence in kind by America. Defeating Islamists menace first of all demands that the U.S. defines realistic conditions for the eventual peace; and then formulating a political policy in order to unify the effort. The U.S. goals in this war should be to establish new political frameworks for the world following the war. The political policy should be the direction of national and international effort and the use of all resources, capabilities, and opportunities to achieve these goals. Using only military means to destroy the enemy, the current non-“strategy” will not achieve decisive victory for liberty. Unity of effort is important. America is the only nation with the moral capacity and material resources to lead the challenge to liberty and freedom posed by radical Islamists. America’s assets, energy, and time are limited, despite the traditional delusion that they are without end. If the allied coalition can find no positive leadership in this war from America, then the forces of liberty will be defeated by the sheer numbers, simple goals, and ruthless tactics of the Islamists .

If America fails to act in a more realistic manner to solve the political shortcomings in its effort, the modern world will collapse. The new world arising from an Islamist victory would be one of oppression, tyranny, dictatorship, poverty, genocide, disease and unending war in the Muslim countries. That problem will without question spill over into the other parts of the world, into the Western and Northern Hemispheres. The social institutions and practices that have given the world stability and justice would be discredited and lose the ability to address problems before any problems grew overwhelming. What we know as society, in America, in the West, and in developed Asia, would lose the independence, opportunities, safety, and unity of the present. Progress in the future for a better world for everyone will be almost impossible. Because Islam at war with the rest of world means no peace and better living for anyone.

If the U.S. and its allies simply left Islamists alone to dominate their civilization, it would only strengthen the dark side of human nature, particularly religious fanaticism. The Islamists would not stop until defeated. In 732 A.D. the Muslims who had conquered southwest Asia, North Africa and Spain at the height of their power were only stopped from overrunning the rest of Europe by their decisive defeat at the Battle of Tours (Poitiers) near Paris. It took almost 800 years to drive them out of Spain. In 1577, Muslim Ottoman Turks were stopped from advancing into the Central Mediterranean at the naval battle of Lepanto, off the coast of Greece, by an allied Christian fleet. In the 1600s, the Ottoman Turks twice got as far as Vienna in Austria. A Polish king saved Vienna and Europe from being overrun. The Turks continued to oppress and murder Christians in southeastern Europe into the 20^th Century. The battle against the politics of fear and jealousy practiced by the Islamist is for the very future of individual liberty. History is the guide. Let all who question the true nature of this war learn from past.

The only comparable historical example to losing this “long war” against the Islamists rule by fear and jealousy would be the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5^th Century A.D. When Rome was overwhelmed in the horde orgy of murder, rape, and wholesale destruction by its nomadic enemies from the steppes of Asia, progress in the world essentially ceased for a millennia. In many instances, knowledge regressed or died. (Ironically, much of the knowledge forgotten about the ancient world only resurfaced because Muslim scholars saved it from extinction). In what we term the Dark Ages, people lived under totalitarian rule in a system governed by the elite holders of land and monetary power. Political power came from the tip of a sword or lance, even religious authority. The freedom of the mind was prosecuted as heresy. Non-conformist and dissenters to the brutal rule of nobles and clergy were tortured and executed. Starvation, plague, and poverty were the lot of the common people in Europe.

A similar Dark Age is probable if the Islamists win this war. A downfall of western civilization might not be as abrupt as that of Rome, but the consequences of letting the terrorists build their power, expand their control, and create capabilities, which include capacity to build mass destructive weapons, would inevitably cause the collapse of progress. It may take decades to unfold, but that would be the eventual result.

An American military defeat in the Middle East will lead to Western subjugation to the Islamists will because of fear for life and limb. In truth, there is something equally dangerous. A military victory without a stable political order following it would the same effect on the liberties and freedoms of Americans. The alternative to political stalemate, even despite limited military success, is to continue the war after temporary pauses. Continuing the war without a political victory would require a total military effort by America. In such a case, the new political reality in America would be the same as outright military defeat. America transformed into a militarized society to fight an unending war means the surrender of liberty to dictatorship for temporary safety.

In U.S. strategy today, a Christian-extremist political is the admitted viewpoint guiding policy. The known beliefs and statements of President Bush, his Administration, and the neo-conservative base of the party have made this very clear This form of extremism in the name of Judeo-Christian evangelism is just as unreasonable, intolerant, bigoted, hateful, violent and dangerous as the Islamists. It has been driving the U.S. into its current policy in this war. Just as Islamists will not quite until defeated, U.S. policy has pursued the goal of eliminating “terrorism,” which amounts to exterminating Muslims. The Bush Administration and all those who unquestionably support have driven America into a political policy that will continue the war and lead to a militarized dictatorship in America to fight it.

Defeat in the “long war” or even an escalation to total war undermines the values of modern civilization. Under attack abroad by those killing in the name of religion, undermined at home by partisan politicians of both parties, the values that make life liveable, comfortable, safe, and fulfilling are the tools that America should use as policy in this conflict. Religious extremism of any faith, even the form of Christian extremism driving U.S. non -“strategy,” wields lies, falsehoods, and just plain evil thinking as a club to force submission to that willpower. The values of today’s civilization, the beliefs if not practice of values, are liberty for every body, prosperity for all, safety every where, and friendly communities. These values ensure personal freedoms, help the needy, protect the vulnerable, and solve problems. These values are universal, as they indeed come from a power of Creation as “natural law,” no matter how one believes in nature.

The values stated here–liberty, prosperity, safety, and community–are desired by people around the world. Not every country is a democracy for democracy is only a form of government, not a way of life. Imposing “democratic” values does not make a strategy. Self-government, by individuals and by nations, is a natural desire. Election polls are not instinctive to people. One major problem with the Bush Administrations overall war goal of “spreading democracy” is that democracy cannot be forced on others. What is forced is usually suspect or despised for very good reasons, be they cultural norms, unique social systems, or special economic circumstances. Grand strategy is the level of decision-making that sets the overall political priorities for ideas and action, not necessarily in a military sense. “Democratic transformation” is not a political policy or an achievable goal. It is a propaganda sound-bite of no other value than it sounds good to uninformed people. As a grand strategy, enforcing democratic values on people unprepared or unwilling to accept it was a justification for unprovoked war against Iraq. It has become a rationalization for war in Afghanistan and the entire war on the terrorists. Now, in 2007, the American public is being set-up by the use of “democracy in the Middle East” as a reason for possible impending action against Iran and Syria.

War as conflict is first and most importantly a struggle for political dominance. Fighting a war is to recognize the policy objectives: A new reality of political order forcing a new relationship on an enemy. Fighting war to kill other people is irrational. The only reason for this type of total war is the use of violence to obliterate the beliefs of other people by killing all of them. An example would be killing all hostile Muslims so the rest believe in law by elections. War, in its base purpose, is to change or modify the behavior of the enemy; to either make him or her more submissive to one’s will power; thus removing a threat. In this distinction, goals, or objectives, or aims of war can be limited to certain desirable outcomes or comprehensive ones. War should have little to do with changing beliefs by violence, or eradicating others for bloodlust. The aim of war, to be far less than genocide with some ending point, needs to have clear, achievable, and reasonable goals. Peace is not only the end of violence; it is a new reality governing relationships between nations. The most enduring peace after a conflict comes with removing the causes of war. If armed conflict, either conventional war, nuclear war, or “wars of liberation” do not have these limits, then war becomes the enemy to liberty itself. For there to be peace free of resentment or military preparations, the outcomes pursued by the winning side must incorporate a positive and constructive framework of resolving differences.

The political shortcoming of the United States in this war against the Islamist movement rests in not having either a rational goal or a political framework to achieve a real end to the war. The United States is in dire drift, finding the need to expand the war, at home and abroad, because the end stated, “to spread democracy,” is not feasible. If the United States can find a reasonable goal toward which it can lead the world, politically in domestic affairs, diplomatically with allies and neutral nations, and militarily regarding the battlefield, then there would be “light” at the end of that long, dark tunnel. Without a political grand strategy guiding the military strategy and policy in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, no amount of troops or weapons or money will make for a final victory or a lasting peace.

The new military approach announced on January 10, 2007 by the Bush Administration mainly relies upon an increase of troops, weapons, and money. This use of American lives and treasure to fight the war on behalf of Iraq’s government has conditions attached to them. These conditions on al-Maliki’s government have been framed mostly without consequences for Iraqi failure. As the insurgency has shown great capacity to grow in numbers and effectiveness, these conditions more or less make up blackmail on Iraq’s government. Unless President Bush chooses to gamble by letting Iraq go its own way, Iraq’s government will be completely dependent on the shrinking international coalition for its survival for decades. This means continued fighting in Iraq by America’s strained military. This current scenario is similar to the co-dependence of South Vietnam in the 1960s and early 1970s. Instead of helping Iraq’s government mature and strengthen its civil institutions, social capacity, and military capability, the Bush Administration has managed to create the possibility for the biggest and most dangerous state failure in modern times.

The limits of Iraq policy make clear several things under analysis: 1) Iraq will eventually need to have a stable, legitimate government able to exercise control over its own territory, resources and its people.

2) The U.S. military cannot maintain an indefinite war against insurgents in Iraq or elsewhere. America’s armed forces are not designed, manned or equipped to carry out an unending low-intensity conflict that has its price in the long-term effectiveness of America’s military.

3) America has global security commitments to friends and allies. Focusing all of the limited personnel and resources in a single military campaign in Iraq lowers deterrence and response against threats elsewhere. U.S. forces that would be needed for contingencies, say against a North Korean attack on South Korea or Japan or state failure in Mexico or Columbia, would not be available in sufficient size, adequate capability, nor duly prompt to prevent serious problems from getting out of control.

4) The American public will not sustain unlimited deaths and injuries to its soldiers or pay outrageous defense appropriations to support Iraq and Afghanistan.

5) Political mistakes since 2002 concerning all aspects of the Iraq war–preparation, invasion, occupation, and counter-insurgency operations–have complicated the difficulties of dealing with an already hostile and formidable Islamist political movement. The situation in Iraq and elsewhere in Muslim countries is not past redemption, but action for wholesale policy changes are needed now.

6) The United States’ approach to Middle East policy has not only entrenched its Islamist political foes, but have alienated and angered Muslim civilization in general. The absence of a workable political grand strategy has shaken the faith of U.S. allies. A once large international coalition fighting alongside American soldiers in Iraq has constantly dwindled since 2003. Allies and partners have and will feel increasingly reluctant to share the burden in lives and money to sustain a failing policy in Iraq.

These hard facts leave few viable alternatives for American policy in Iraq. Any military options, like those outlined by the Bush Administration, have two immediate restrictions: First, military solutions must use far fewer troops, even considering that troop levels during the occupation and counter-insurgency operations were never high enough to do an adequate mission. Second, the time limit is shrinking on using different military approaches to solve the insurgency problem and still have an independent and friendly Iraq.

We are left, in the end, with fixing the political shortcomings of American war policy in order to keep the situation in Iraq from becoming uncontrollable. Without it there is no hope for decisive victory and enduring stability in the Middle East. Fortunately, solving the political contradictions in U.S. policy leaves open the possibility of overwhelming success for everyone in this war and a stable peace following it.

Goals in war are separate from political and military policy. Goals are the desired objective results for which a nation engages in war. A goal in war cannot be “Complete domination over any situation, country, group, or belief system.” A goal cannot be stated that way because there is no objective criteria by which such a state of political reality can be measured. If it is not measurable, it cannot be pursued by any means, militarily or diplomatically. Furthermore, the reasons for fighting a war cannot simply be the complete physical destruction of the enemy. Completely wiping out an enemy and the population that supports it is morally wrong. The only way to achieve such an end state would be through continuous, unlimited “total war.” Such a conflict would be fought for the sake of violence in an extermination campaign of the enemy. It is at that point that all reason leaves the actions of men and women and war becomes the enemy itself, not a tool of policy.

The U.S. goal in the war in terrorism has been loosely defined as eliminating the terrorist threat and transforming the entire Muslim civilization into a Western-style democratic system.. This has already received consideration above. Would freeing civilization from a dark future be enough of a goal to frame policy? Not really. Prevention is in essence a negative aim. A war aim should have a positive result. Positive goals grow understanding, commerce, tolerance, and connectivity between former enemies. Negative aims as goals are merely truces and cease-fires until a new round of even more destructive violence can be pursued; the “war is the real enemy” paradox of “total war.” (Not even World War I or World War II can be defined as “pure total war;” the world has never experienced one. Nuclear holocaust would be the ultimate expression of such a paradox).

A goal that would determine an end to the current conflict, and that would solidify the stable, peaceful relations between nations, requires four primary conditions. All of these conditions should be voluntary decisions by all concerned. They create a paradigm, or world-view, for a new international system. The paradigm is what one could call “Libertarian Internationalism.”

The primary components of this new system for governing international relations by the free choice of governments and their peoples are the following:

1) Peoples and their nations must be largely left free to determine their own form of government, economic, community, and institutional systems, for example the judicial, law enforcement, family, religious, and support systems. 2) That the real causes of conflict must be recognized, addressed and resolved to the best extent possible, and that there is a peaceful mechanism for resolution to the persistent and pressing issues. 3) That a balance of power must be established, monitored, and maintained between opposing groups, enemies, blocs, and alliances. 4) That all individuals, nations, international groups, and communities at the grass roots be connected to each other, be tolerant of one another, accept differences without violent reactions, and all be guaranteed equal opportunity to advancement, work, health, safety, worship, speak, think, and act in ways that do not injure anyone else or violate the rights of other nations and/or their people to those same rights. Within these broader outlines, specific political policies leading to a successful end to the present war can be set.

In short, these war goals would guide all of the political and military action taken. Political policy–grand strategy–is not designed to fit the military “pure” strategy. Military policies are set to achieve the aims and carry out political policy by winning on the ground, in the air, at sea, above the planet, within the nano-world, and against human psychology. “Pure” military strategy, which is largely the alignment and general direction of men, weapons and resources (logistics) must complement political policy, not work against it. War is still about killing people. Victory is about breaking the enemy’s moral capacity to resist further. The moral element is weakened by two tools of policy–consent (political persuasion) and coercion (military force). Peace is the result of using these two tools–one side wins in varying degrees or the there is an indecisive end. But without a vision toward which political and military policy can move, the result is only a temporary pause.

The political policy driving America in this war could be the following:

First, the part of the world that is “globalized” and connected with one another must establish clear access for the unconnected Muslim governments and citizens, at their own free choice, to all the ideas, advantages, institutions, and systems available in the world. Such things cannot be forced upon unwilling people. The U.S. must stop living in the denial that knowledge, wealth, security, and development are already available to the people living in poorer nations in the African and Asian nations surrounding the Indian Ocean Area. The advantages are just not available to the average people in poorer nations. Making such access available does not result simply in wealth transfer from the rich to the poor nations. These gifts of modern humanity create stability and empowerment, improve individual and public health, lead to individual fulfillment, and contribute to material and emotional security from fear and want. These building blocks of peace in diverse communities are best encouraged and enabled from the grass roots. Like wheat, like rice, like beans, they grow strong from the roots up, filling out in the sunshine of honest effort and effective leadership. The traditional model of development, that is by enriching the power brokers and oppressors of such nations with guns, diamonds, or oil revenues, has enabled oppression and mass poverty. This model stunted the growth of freedom and the building of peaceful order. A new approach to development involving individual enterprise and community-wide self-investment in infrastructure is necessary to plant deep-buried structures for political, economic, cultural and social systems that live in peace.

Second, the reasons for a war throughout history might be reduced to two defects of humanity: Jealousy and Fear. The jealousy nations and groups, even neighbors within a community, have for their competitors is envy for the material possessions held by others, the greed to have more physical property, and the desire to dominate inferiors. Jealousy is a natural instinct, something base in the human mind and heart. Fear, an even more basic instinct for survival, has been the cause of countless wars of prevention, preemption, aggression, or revenge. Eliminating these human characteristics from political relationships are key to either ending ongoing conflict or preventing future conflict from occurring or reoccurring. Be it war or peace, the Jealousy and Fear defects of humanity carry with them the seeds of violence and hate, conflict and oppression.

Eliminating these causes of war from the current struggle with radical Islam cannot be done with surgery on human brains, the imprisonment of whole societies, or the destruction brought by war. Jealousy and Fear between nations, like the instinctual reactions of individuals, can be reformed through societies choosing to be different and acting in a more enlightened way. The process of change is hard, for people and for nations. The Germans reformed their militaristic and imperial policies following World War II. Such cultural behavior for them was centuries old. It took decades of reform after military defeat and Allied occupation, but the process worked to end four hundred years of “civil war” in Western Europe. Germany could not change everything on its own. France and Great Britain had to change as well. However, once these three most powerful nations in Europe (west of Russia) began changing, new values were learned and put into action. The new values transformed deep and staunch enemies into a “union of single purpose” in Europe–the purpose of peace and plenty.

How can the U.S.-led coalition and radical Muslims remove the cause of their war? There are two immediate suggestions: The Western, globalized world must acknowledge that it cannot oppress the rest of the world for the benefit of access, wealth, security, and superiority for the richer people of the world. Second, Islamic civilization has to admit that the problems with its failing countries–disease, poverty, insecurity, and disconnectedness–are largely ones of its own inward and backward looking societies. The U.S. and its allies around the world must recognize that other people and their nations have equal rights to all the benefits of the modern age and deserve none of the drawbacks. Islam must stop blaming other people and begin to work on its own solutions before it slips into disenfranchised youth, jobless economies, revolution, and chaos. Once these realities–one for each side–are faced and addressed, the other causes of Jealousy and Fear can be fixed. The key for both sides in dealing with this reality is that all countries concerned, basically all countries in the world, must cooperate.

Concerning the third goal suggested above, a balance of power is necessary in the Indian Oceans Area. Such a balance of political and military interests has to be an enduring acceptance among the entire world that the region from the Atlantic coast of Africa, up through the Aegean Sea, across southern Russia, to the wastelands of western China and down Southeast Asia to the reaches of New Zealand are of vital strategic importance to all humanity. This importance has to do primarily with oil in the present economic reality, but it also has to do with political danger in the Indian Ocean Area. This part of the globe has been the hottest zone of conflict since World War II. Every one of the conflicts has involved in some way the great powers external to this area, often the United States. The Indian Ocean Area is a genocide machine of millions of lives.

If the political causes of war can really be reduced to combinations of Jealousy or Fear, the tools of war that empower aggression have to be addressed. Countries, often sorely poor, have no second doubts about spending vast amounts of limited wealth and masses of human fodder on warfare. How can this be changed? Simple arms limitations agreements between one nation and another are not feasible. In those cases, there is always another unfriendly nation or alliance of them that needs to be deterred or defended against. If Jealousy and Fear are instinctive traits, could a balance of power in all its forms–political (and military), economic, social and cultural–be approached from measures, understandings, agreements, and institutions that foster confidence, equality, security, and understanding? One problem with international organizations like the United Nations has always been the unequal distribution of power, between the most powerful in the form of deeds, and between the free and unfree countries by ideas (in reference to the arrangements of the Security Council and the General Assembly–one doing what the minority unanimously agrees upon, the other causing mischief for lack of legitimate representation).

The final political plank on this victory platform is to further the process of removing Jealousy and Fear from the equation. To achieve a stable balance of power and interests, an American political initiative is needed: An Indian Ocean Area Security and Cooperation Conference. Regardless of political status, all nations affected by the instability of the area should receive an invitation to attend on their own free will, especially Israel and Palestinian officials. An agreement to meet and communicate may suffice as the only requirement for a seat at the table. If countries exclude themselves, they lose out. Enough Arab countries would find the opportunity so enticing that they would attend in spite of Israel, leaving the holdouts behind the march of history. Israel would attend solely for the opportunity of recognition as an equal in the forum, achieving a long-sought diplomatic goal.

 

The permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Germany, Brazil, and Japan should also receive invitations. The powers could attend as observers or even to guarantee the desired multi-national agreements.

The first item on the agenda would be a system of annual conferences for heads of government and ministers. An Indians Ocean Area Security and Cooperation Conference would have more focus at the lower level of intra-regional affairs, in the details of providing security for every country’s needs.

The conference needs to establish a freely-entered treaty system among all participants recognizing the sovereignty and borders of others. Ideally, such a collective defense “one invaded, all invaded” provision like that found in the North Atlantic Treaty would go far to removing the Fear of invasion in the region. Once this principle is firmly set in place, the details for collective defense (not collective security necessarily) can be established

Beyond the security from aggression, the countries of the greater-Indian Ocean Area have a mutual self-interest in connecting to each other, and a moral need to help one another provide a better life for their people. This would help the problem of Jealousy as a cause of conflict. Facing a youth-heavy demographic explosion and always under the threat of dictatorship, the nations of the Indian Ocean Area would do well to provide the prosperity, opportunity and freedom of choices to their populations, all within their own unique cultural and social systems. Freedom and prosperity have universal appeal. Helping nations help themselves in obtaining them together just may tip the balance away from the radicals who use fear, anger, poverty, and oppression to advance their political agenda. The people of these nations, if not the governments, would tip away from supporting a radical philosophy that promises nothing but hell on earth. All countries cooperating in a free-market to help everyone at the same time, from the grass roots up, is a reason for peace.

The connection of nations and their peoples to the rights, potentials, responsibilities, and service of stable communities is the core principle in the international spread of liberty. This is what is meant by Libertarian Internationalism: the sowing and harvesting of liberty as a way of life. Whereas opening Muslim countries to the advantages of modern thought, systems, tools, and institutions is the most fundamental political solution to the West-vs.-Islam conflict, such a foundation is the hardest to establish. The proposed Indian Oceans Area Conference on Security and Cooperation can begin action to further the establishment and growth of liberty.

Such measures could include, by agreement, not coercion:

•                                                                                                     An treaty between all conference members that guarantees individual rights to freedom of speech without punishment. Concerning worship, there would be a promise to respect, tolerate, accept, and leave alone the Muslim religion within its domain by the rest of the world and a similar promise by Muslim governments to do the same for other religions. Radical Islamists in al-Qaeda would not like such an arrangement. But Muslim national governments could see reason to agree and to enforce the agreement for the sake of peace and their own survival in some reformed fashion.

•                                                                                                     A treaty to work together to establish freedom from want as the right of every inhabitant. This would not so much mean the transfer of wealth or a socialized system, but establishing the principle of a free-market of opportunity open to all entrepreneurs. The free-market is the surest and most direct path to national prosperity and individual fulfillment.

•                                                                                                     An understanding that individual liberty to the highest extent is the first step of preventing conflict.

If the United States sees the goals in the “long war” as a vision for understanding and service to the cause of peace, then a political program can be established along the lines suggested here. It is the first requirement for any following military policy to shape the final result. If the U.S. follows a political grand strategy of liberty for individuals, empowering them with possibilities, protecting the balance of power and interests, and leading the effort toward creating grass-root libertarian thinking in communities, the course of this present “war without end” may turn. But it is important to frame political, economic, cultural and social goals for determining victory

This entire paradigm of Libertarian Internationalism furthers America’s eventual victory and long-term security. There is a key assumption in the victory over Islamist terrorists that links it all together. The link is that governments, Western or Eastern, Northern or Southern, must voluntarily accede to this new paradigm. Accepting the vision and applying the principles of Libertarian Internationalism means that the governments most in danger of overthrow by the Islamists would actively reform their societies. This reform solidifies their people’s allegiance to the new world-view and would decline to support the terrorists, their infrastructure, and their political program. As Mao Zedong prophesied about insurgent strategies of warfare, the guerilla/terrorist depends on the people to support and protect it–they are the sea and the insurgent is the fish living among them. Dry up the sea of support by implementing the Libertarian Internationalist program, then the terrorists organization dies and with them also dies their philosophy–and their threat.

In the end, liberty is the highest goal of all people: The liberty to live their own lives, make their own economic future, be secure from violence and war, and to live in communities that serve everyone, not the people serving government. Libertarian Internationalism as a policy is one way of harnessing this personal desire, instilling freedom of mind and markets by example and design, and allowing it to transform the world.

Grand strategy in the form of political policy is the first order: To create a lasting, stable, consensual new political reality. But from grand strategy, statesmen formulate the military policy, the “pure” strategy (largely logistics), to fight the war. From that “pure” strategy followings specific actions (tactics) and the principle guiding their use (operations). The military policies used by nations in war are the use of resources, tools, and ultimately people, to attain the political aims.. Both political and military policy are the domain of the highest policy-makers. In the war against radical Islamists, people live and die by the futility of violence that does not have an idea guiding it.

Until and unless the United States and its people demand smarter, better leadership not deluded by partisan lies and falsehoods, the war is unwinnable, unending, and catastrophic in the end. Islamists are like Republicans and Democrats, hungered by their Jealousy and motivated by their Fear. Fighting on these lines must end. The American national interest and the future of liberty in the United States and around the world demand a way out of the aimless policy. Libertarian Internationalism is a good way forward. Building the future of liberty, freedom, safety and community is the solution. Let everyone seize the moment before the possibility passes to end the war in a new political reality.

Review

Review of: Padfield, Peter. Maritime Supremacy and the Opening of the Western Mind. New York: The Overlook Press. 1999.

T he book Maritime Supremacy and the Opening of the Western Mind presents a thesis that sea power, sea-borne commerce, and the use of these assets in war and peace, has had a decisive influence on modern history. Author Peter Padfield states no less than that maritime supremacy in its broadest political (which includes the military), economic, cultural, and social contexts has been the key reason for the birth of the liberal democracy and the superior wealth these types of nations produced.

 

Padfield begins his narrative with some explanations on what he means by “maritime supremacy” and its difference with traditional concepts of sea power. Padfield uses introductory material on his thesis by quickly describing the role of the Mediterranean city-state of Venice; how Venice controlled Europe’s access to Eastern knowledge and trade goods; the role Venice played in the “rebirth” of modern society from the Middle Ages through its trade and commerce; the key role of bankers that Venitians developed to finance Europe’s awakening into modern arts, literature, industry and capital formation; and how Venice used its vast wealth to build and lead a coalition navy that stopped the conquest of the Muslim Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Lepanto in 1577.

Venice is the early modern template for a successful maritime supremacy, which the author says is not merely warships and battle fleets, sea lines of communication (SLOCs) or defeat of the enemy at sea. Sea power in the more limited sense, was first popularized in the 1880s by U.S. Navy Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan. Sea power is part of Padfield’s maritime thesis. But even more, maritime tradition and its use in diplomacy, trade, banking, and war is a culture’s commitment to the sea as a source of livelihood and wealth. It is a nation’s tradition, the determination of geography, demography, and resources that points seaward for both security and prosperity.

             

Maritime supremacy is the mobilization of sea power, sea-borne trade, and the financial resources from commercial profits. It is the indoctrination of a whole society toward an effort to not only dominate the seas in war and peace, but to use that dominance in a strategic and effective way to fight enemies or establish dominance over them. It is a lesson of history that when the vital SLOC of Europe’s trade shifted from the Mediterranean, Venice declined in wealth, power and importance. The shift of global sea lanes of communication moved from the Near East to the seaboards of Europe. Wheat, shipping timber, tar and pitch (the latter three strategic ship-building materials) shifted to the Baltic routes. Spices and exotic foods, textiles, paper, and gems shifted to the southern Atlantic coming from the Indian Ocean, bypassing the slow, dangerous route across the mainland of Asia. And gold and silver, slaves, fish, woolens, animals, dyes, sugars, and tobacco--staple products for thriving Europe–shifted further into lanes of the North Atlantic as they shipped

from the America’s. With the shift of the means and ways of commerce, so did the shift in power move to unexpected places, one being the water-logged, resource-deprived land of the United Provinces: Holland and its neighbors.

 

According to Padfield, the United Provinces are the first true modern maritime power. Tiny Holland and her sister republics fought a revolution using sea-going pirates to gain independence from Hapsburg Spain. They fought England to a draw in numerous wars of massed fleets. In fact, a daring Dutch Admiral forced England to sue for peace with his bold raid up the Thames and the Medway estuaries to cripple the Royal Navy at its safest base at Chatham.

 

Padfield also says that the Dutch rise to control over the commerce of northern Europe, becoming the profitable middlemen in trade, gave rise to an Enlightened society in the United Provinces. The Dutch were known for sharp and clean dress and homes, for sumptuous tastes and diets. But the Dutch also allowed the freest minds to express the freest, most radical ideas of any thinkers up to that time in history. Philosophers like Descartes and Spinoza shared their revolutionary ideas on humanity, god, and government, which were considered heresy punishable by torture and death elsewhere in Christian Europe. Padfield says that the Dutch censored themselves where necessary to keep piety in place and chaos away. He goes on to say that the formation of the Dutch government into a self-governing organization of non-noble, non-royal assemblies of merchants ensured the rule of popular government. The merchant and financial class gave credit to build warships and finance war through debt subscription. The republican government of the country was regulated by the self-interest of these merchants and bankers who had the most to lose from bad government decisions. They governed their country for their own benefit.

 

The pattern of the Dutch was followed by the English after the 1688 “Glorious Revolution.” The English Revolution, which saw the only successful invasion of the British Isles since 1066, placed the Dutch Captain- and Admiral-General William of Orange and his wife, the daughter of the deposed king, on the throne of England. Protestant William and Mary became monarchs under a guarantee of constitutional rule, and they established a bill of rights in English law, ensuring the dominance of the elected parliament over the treasury of the English government. Before William and Mary, the Catholic kings of the House of Stuart and their insatiable appetite for arbitrary taxes and forced loans to fight expensive wars caused the merchants in England to favor revolution. The post-revolutionary form of parliamentary government exists in Great Britain to this day.

 

During the 1700s, English commitment to maritime supremacy created a truly global British Empire. Britain dedicated herself to creating and securing trade, which in turn created and serviced a national debt to finance the construction of warships. The debt was used to buy allies in Europe during endless wars with France. From Louis XIV in 1688 and his War of the League of Augsburg to the end of Napoleon in 1815 at Waterloo, England used maritime supremacy to stymy the “Continental Strategy” of France. Relying on more and more massive armies, eventually conscripts, French strategy pursued costly and bloody campaigns on the European mainland to challenge England’s coalition on sea and land. Drained in treasure and men from wars of attrition, in every war but one France had to abandon its battle line fleets of superior-built ships. France conceded the wealth and strategic choices to Great Britain’s maritime supremacy. Behind the Royal Navy, Britannia ruled the world by ruling the waves.

 

In the one exception where France forgot her land-centered strategy and did not abandon her navy, it gained a local, temporary superiority in North America in 1781. As a result, the British army under Lord Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. Britain’s government then fell, and the United States survived its own war for independence because of an allied victory at sea.

 

In the 21^st Century, maritime supremacy is still a relevant issue in world politics. The United States Navy has dominated the oceans effectively since 1921. The nation it serves has won hot and cold wars and gained unparalleled wealth behind a strategy of maritime supremacy to protect itself and preserve peaceful commerce around the globe. In essence, maritime supremacy is different from a maritime strategy of fighting a war. In Padfield’s description, supremacy is about controlling the sea in war, and pursuing and building wealth through the use of the sea in peace. A maritime strategy in war is the application of all maritime power, in short, to control the politics on land. For modern times, maritime supremacy is about using the sea as a way to access areas, to land and sustain expeditionary land campaigns striking from the sea; to defeat enemies wherever they are using the sea as a base; and to protect national interest and friendly nations in far parts of the globe with the maritime capability as a shield. 

One of the most troubling aspects of China’s continuing rise as a great power is its building of true sea power in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. It would only follow that China’s sophisticated leaders understand that maritime power is the future key to ensuring its security and access to the markets and resources it needs to be an eventual superpower. For the United States in reacting to this challenge by China, the answer is not a retreat from the challenge. The answer can only be a superior maritime ability, and pursuit, in war and peace, of the equipment, finances, trade, and skill–indeed living the very tradition–of maritime supremacy.

Closely related to maritime supremacy as a tool of national power is space supremacy. Many of the purely military utilities of sea power–sea shield, sea strike, sea base, and expeditionary access–have a future context in space. The main points of strategy in space may very well come from the military strategies behind maritime supremacy. Superpower status in the future depends on adapting maritime strategies to space. America’s oldest rival for space dominance, the former Soviet Union in the present form of Russia, is still a major player in space. As long as Russia maintains such an active and ambitious program in space capabilities, it has a claim to be an almost-superpower. It might very well be its policy to recapture such status by skipping over rebuilding its global sea power abilities by one day capturing the heavens above the Earth.

Most disturbing about this area of world power politics is, without surprise, China. China has made great leaps in the space race that it could never do on land under Mao Zedong. Not only has it succeeded in manned space flight on its own, joining only the U.S. and Russia in this very high club, but on January 10-11, 2007, China successfully tested an anti-satellite weapon. Again, it joins an exclusive U.S./Russia club in that achievement. The entire U.S. military depends on space for its core doctrine of warfare on earth–including war on, below, above and from the seas. China’s test is a direct prophecy of the type of war it would wage on the U.S. in a future conflict. It has long been recognized by philosophers and strategist that “he who controls space wins the world in the end.” A new arms race has been declared. As it was on the sea, national survival for some countries will ultimately depend on space supremacy. It is a battle for the future that America could no more afford to lose above the earth than it could or can afford to lose on the seas of the globe.

Review

Review of: Friedman, Thomas L. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, Updated and Expanded. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006.

T homas Friedman thinks the world is flat! Didn’t Magellan prove it was round almost five hundred years ago? Well, Friedman knows the geographic world is flat, but psychologically and institutionally, he describes how the world becomes flatter and flatter everyday. It flattens in terms of politics, economics, cultural and society. How does Friedman successfully accomplish his geo-legerdemain?

Friedman writes about foreign affairs for the New York Times. In fact, Friedman may be the most nationally recognized foreign affairs columnist in the country, now known for his advocacy of the “green economy,” an environmentally sustainable economic system. Friedman published the first edition of The World Is Flat in early 2005. A little over a year later, in spring 2006, so much about what he wrote changed so fast that he had to do the updated and expanded edition.

 

In the book, Friedman describes the Flat World as a fusion of technology and enterprise, the systems created by those two “fusors,” and the transformation of business that has exploded. Each year since 1989 and the introduction of the Microsoft Windows operating system, the momentum and inertia building the wave of the new age economy propels more people, more societies, and the entire world toward more equal access to opportunity. The result of this sweeping away of old thinking, old structures, old behaviors, is a new world opening information, capital, standards (in law and tools), and connections to anyone smart or hard working enough to put those assets to work for them. What is being created by the “flatteners” Friedman identifies is the possibility of individual empowerment for previously deprived peoples, in the First World and everywhere else. The consequences of this flattening world will bring tremendous, as yet undetermined, changes in how we live, work, communicate, and commune.

 

The creation of this flattening world has ten principles that Friedman illustrates. Their impact on the emerging equality of opportunity for rich, poor and everyone in between depends on technology. The productivity tools and the methods the technology makes possible reform the concept of entrepreneurship and change everything about how people work.

 

Friedman’s revolutionary flatteners begin with the breakdown of the wall built during the Cold War between capitalist and communist countries. In the author’s mind, the date November 9, (11/9) 1989, the day the wall fell, is complemented by the introduction of the Windows operating system. Suddenly, a productivity level heretofore isolated to a privileged few opened to wide and popular use. The introduction of the web browser and the increasing connection of the world constitute the next flattener. Software and its basic code make everyone’s machine more efficient and compatible with other computers. Work relocates to where labor can access markets through these technology mediums. In addition to remote services, manufacturing moves to where labor cost make things cheaper, thus giving jobs to people who can buy more American and European products. Cheaper products and services save consumers in America money to spend on more diverse needs and wants, driving growth. Technology leads to the maximum ideal of timing inventory flow–to the just-in-time method, saving businesses on overhead. Volume services provided by specialized companies help businesses increase profits even more. Computer applications make access to needed information and collaborative work easier and more efficient. Personal mobile access frees individuals in space and time. Tools are used immediately and to better advantage.

The Flat World creates opportunities for a better way of supplying needs and wants, and it affects how countries connected through these pathways of interdependence address political concerns, internally and externally. The theme of Friedman’s Flat World is cutting expenses, raising capital, increasing profits. In sum it is about attaining maximum benefit and best outcomes from the opportunities offered. This creates social mobility. It is a realization of high-quality creation, mass production, global marketing and accessible distribution of products and services. In a way, the strategic realignment of world economics allows whole countries to benefit from what Americans have taken for granted: Comfortable living. However, (there always seem to be “howevers”), these new tools of productivity and their profitable outcomes displace people not prepared for this New Way (“What’s this I hear about a New Way?”). More distressing, the Flat World tends to isolate people even more in home-based offices and bedroom communities (sleeping one place, living life in another). The forces which form the new epoch could produce ever more estrangement within communities, fostering more unfamiliarity between neighbors.

 

These challenges of the Flat World do not take away from the opportunities. To succeed in this new age, people must take their own initiative to educate and train themselves for the competitive “global” labor market. They must increase their knowledge and skills, on their own initiative. They

need to acquire aptitudes for leadership, teamwork and teaching. People have to be able to orchestrate multiple projects, and be able to specialize in something that cannot be easily done elsewhere. The new ideal is to become the “General Specialist.” Doing so will allow them to prosper and survive in the Flat World. Everyone must evolve or fall behind.