Photo: Department of Defense

The notion of asymmetric power–referring generally to the danger of lesser powers resorting to unconventional weaponry and tactics as an answer to the United States’ immense conventional military superiority–has been in vogue among American defense analysts since the first Gulf War; Gulf War II and its aftermath, with the devastating appearance of the Improvised Explosive Device (IED), gave the idea more credence than ever. So it’s important to be clear about the root of that asymmetry. It’s a result not primarily of other countries’ weakness but of the wildly over-built U.S. military and the country’s stubborn belief that it’s still its job to be the world’s policeman.

Despite the end of the Cold War, the irrelevance of a global conflict between capitalism and communism, and the unthinkability of armed conflict between what once were called the world’s two superpowers, U.S. defense spending has increased more than 50 percent since 2000. Although the United States is arguably only the world’s second largest economic power (strictly speaking the European Union is the biggest), the United States spends more on its bloated military complex that the next 10 countries combined.

President Obama made just that point in yesterday’s slightly peculiar Pentagon press briefing, which appears to have been staged to get the top brass used to the idea that defense spending cuts are ahead–and to send a message that team players will be expected to act the part of team players. But the president was not suggesting that U.S. defense spending should now be cut 50 percent and then some, which would be the logical thing to do now that the neo-imperialist fantasies of former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and former Vice President Dick Cheney have been discredited and repudiated. No, what the president was evidently doing was positioning the military to accept the $450 billion in defense cuts already mandated by the budget supercommittee, and the additional cuts of $500 billion that will have to be made if congressional Republicans and Democrats are unable to agree on alternative spending cuts. Together, those cuts would equate to about 15 percent of the U.S. military budget, as the highly respected defense analyst Lawrence Korb pointed out in an interesting exchange published in the Sunday New York Times’s Review section on Nov. 13 last year.

Korb argued that the United States could easily go further than that, for example by reducing the number of its nuclear warheads from 5,000 to 311, “as recommended by some Air Force strategists” (as he said); reducing the number of aircraft careers and Air Force fighters by 25 percent; and cutting ground forces by 100,000 to pre-9/11 levels.

Readers reacting to Korb pointed out that the United States could in fact go even further than that, for example by ending its quixotic attempt to develop a leak-proof missile defense system, retiring 50 naval ships and scrapping plans to build up to a fleet of 300 ships, dumping plans to replace the current fleet of nuclear missile submarines, and sharply curtailing the “modernization” of U.S. nuclear weapons. (In that connection, here’s another idea not mentioned by those readers: Shutter one of the country’s two nuclear weapons laboratories, either Lawrence Livermore or Los Alamos, and reduce the other’s budget by 75 percent.)

Responding to those readers, Korb said, interestingly, that he basically agreed with them. So what are the prospects of cuts going even further than those resulting from the supercommittee’s mandate? Regrettably, not good.

On the positive side of the ledger, there now seems to be a bipartisan consensus, as The New York Times has pointed out, that defense spending needs to be cut; indeed, the supercommitte’s mandate was an implicit acknowledgement of that consensus. In a poll of its readers the Times published earlier last year, when they were asked where they would most prefer to see U.S. spending reduced, defense spending ranked at the very top. Though some of the Republican presidential candidates have made intemperate remarks about taking military action against Iran, Ron Paul appears to have got considerable traction with his neo-isolationist argument that the U.S. president should first and foremost keep the country out of unnecessary armed conflicts. Whoever the Republican presidential candidate turns out to be, Obama will surely be able to prevail with a position that avoiding new military entanglements will have equal place with preparedness in his second administration.

But on the negative side, there’s no indication that the president is ready or ever will be to confront head-on the country’s military and intelligence establishments, by far the country’s biggest and more fearsome vested interest. It’s hard to imagine that any president will ever have the guts and skill to face that challenge. But until one does, American military asymmetry will continue to provoke other countries to seek an equalizer, whether it’s an old-fashioned nuke or some much more fearsome biological or chemical device.

Georgia

2011 was the year when former Parliament Speaker Nino Burjanadze put the finishing touches on her long campaign to discredit former Parliament Speaker Nino Burjanadze.

Nino Burjanadze (geotimes.ge)

Ms. Burjanadze began her re-branding effort from responsible, clear-headed opposition leader to uncompromising radical after forming her own political party in 2008. The disastrous Russo-Georgian War in the same year fueled her embrace of confrontational rhetoric and what appeared to be acquiescence to occasional violent tactics by her allies at demonstrations.

The arrest of a number of her inner circle on weapons charges in 2009, which Burjanadze referred to as a government “campaign of terror” against her was a blow to her image, as were her visits to Moscow last year in attempt to look statesmanlike.

2011 was probably the final chapter for Burjanadze in her role as opposition leader. Beginning early this year, she called for another round in an endless series of demonstrations against President Saakashvili, whom she has begun to refer to as “a dictator” and a leader who is “terrorizing the people.”

Thus like Armenia (and to a lesser extent, Azerbaijan), Georgia experienced a number of demonstrations in the spring. But the character of the rallies in Georgia was of an altogether different nature, consisting of a hodgepodge of fringe political groups hankering for a fight, which is precisely what they got.

The tragedy at the tail end of the rallies was the random death of two men—a policeman and a bystander—on the evening of 26 May, when they were run down by someone in Burjanadze’s motorcade as it sped away, east on Rustavelli Avenue, at the conclusion of a violent demonstration.

The arrest and conviction of Burjandze’s husband Badri Bitsadze on charges stemming from the violent demonstrations that month probably closes the book on Nino’s political future. Badri, who went into hiding, was convicted in absentia, and his last reported whereabouts were Vienna, where he was spotted by journalists in September.

With Nino excluded as a major political actor, there are now two or three figures poised to lead any unified opposition that may eventually emerge. One is Levan Gachechiladze, who was trounced by President Saakashvili in the special presidential election in 2008. A more serious contender is former Georgian ambassador to the United Nations Irakli Alasania, although he too was easily brushed aside when he ran for mayor of Tbilsi in 2010.

That leaves us with Bidzina Ivanishvili, the “reclusive” (which seems to be the operative term for Ivanishvili these days) billionaire who in November announced his plans to enter politics.

Ivanishvili will be the man to watch in Georgia’s near-term future. Stripped of his (lapsed) Georgian citizenship by the authorities due to his dual Russian-French nationality, Ivanishvili has said that he intends to renounce his dual citizenship and appeal to the president. (That’s a mildly ironic tactic, since Ivanishvili is reported to have blamed Saakashvili for starting the 2008 war with Russia.)

Saakashvili’s allies have attacked Ivanishvili as a tool of Moscow, where he made his fortune, and the police have not at all coincidentally launched a money laundering investigation of the Cartu Bank, owned by Ivanishvili.

His new political movement, still in incubation, is called “Georgian Dream,” which he will use to spearhead his effort to wrest power from the ruling party in the 2012 parliamentary elections.

Ivanishvili’s platform is still a little unclear beyond the ritual denunciations of the president, of whom he said, “In my view, reality today is such that even his own mother would not vote for Saakashvili.”

His personal web site is here.

Armenia

The biggest story for Armenia was probably the rallies in February through April staged by the Armenian National Congress (HAK) and its leader, former president Levon Ter-Petrossian (often referred to in shorthand as “LTP”).

Levon Ter-Petrossian (photo: Onnik Krikorian)

The demonstrations were designed to force a number of concessions from the government, including the release of detainees held since Armenia’s 2008 civil unrest, the resignation of President Sargsyan, and early elections. The rhetoric borrowed, somewhat superficially, from the Arab Spring template, with LTP speaking of a “Mubarakization” process underway in Armenia.

The rallies never attracted more than 30,000 or so participants, although HAK claimed a turnout of 50,000 at one demonstration in early March.

As of early April, Ter-Petrossian had climbed down somewhat, telling supporters at a rally that he was now demanding merely that President Sargsyan free all “political prisoners,” agree to an inquiry into the 2008 political unrest, and guarantee access to Freedom Square in downtown Yerevan for further demonstrations.

By May, the government had released many HAK supporters who had languished in prison since the violence of 2008, and agreed to establishing the commission that Ter-Petrossian had demanded. While these were two key premises behind the rallies, it was clear then—and after the more recent demonstrations in October—that the president would not resign and that new elections were not in the offing.

To many observers, the rallies constituted a trial balloon for LTP’s efforts to retool himself and become a political force once again. I would tend to agree, and in my view this strategy has failed.

Ter-Petrossian has intimated recently that he hasn’t abandoned the cycle of demonstrations, but some observers believe that his day in the sun is over. Intriguingly, a Wikileaks cable released this year cast the former president in a rather unflattering light.

The cable, written in late 2008 and released this year, details a wide-ranging conversation in Yerevan between LTP and then-US ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, and reveals a sometimes exasperated Yovanovitch expressing her astonishment at charges Ter-Petrossian had leveled against the United States at a rally two weeks earlier:

“[The ambassador] took strong exception…to LTP’s
October 17 speech in which he had argued in the most
provocative terms the exact opposite of what he was now
saying to the Ambassador privately, and had called the
United States “doubly immoral” for allegedly taking unfair
advantage of Serzh Sargsian,s supposed political weakness
to push for a deal counter to Armenia’s national interests.”

Defending himself, Ter-Petrosian told the ambassador that his polarizing comments were meant only to placate his more radical cadres:

“…LTP assured the Ambassador that his rhetoric was meant only
to mollify the radical elements in his opposition movement — to
provide them with a viable explanation for his decision to suspend
protest activities.

“LTP said he “had no other way to get people off the streets
and back in their homes.”

But Yovanovitch wasn’t quite buying it:

“The Ambassador replied that the problem with such
rhetoric — even if it is meant to satisfy LTP’s constituents –
is that the U.S. has no way of knowing what LTP truly thinks, and
that painting the United States in an immoral light on resolving NK
is intellectually dishonest no matter the motive.”

The cable then summed up with a cold, hard look at Ter-Petrossian’s tactics:

“LTP saw support for public rallies dwindling with each passing month,
and was desperate to find a face-saving tactic. Empty-handed after
months of a stridently rejectionist strategy, LTP chose to cloak himself
in nationalism and concoct a conspiracy theory of great power
machinations to cover his political retreat.”

Ter-Petrossian isn’t exactly President Sargsyan’s biggest worry, because it looks like Robert Kocharian, Sargyan’s former ally, is maneuvering for a comeback. And Sargsyan is taking the threat seriously.

Robert Kocharian (mediamax.am)

The dominant theory explaining the recent sackings and resignations of key government personnel, including the mayor of Yerevan, is that the president is engaging in a pre-emptive move to weaken Kocharian’s power base. That may be true, but I’ll leave you with the waggish analysis of Kocharian and Sargsyan from the New Times party leader, who last month dismissed the notion that there is any substantive difference between the two men:

“They are Siamese twins,” he said.

In a society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught; in a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. That, some would say, sums up the world in which Husain Haqqani lost his job as Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States.

The swift action to replace Haqqani with Sherry Rehman will probably limit the fallout in Islamabad. But the brouhaha about Haqqani’s alleged guilt should not obscure the compulsory introspection about Pakistan’s relations with the outside world and with itself – both of which are clearly not working.

In the last week as the memo scandal has raged and obsessed the press in Pakistan, the US has been conspicuous only by its silence. “I have nothing to say on this specific issue,” said the state department spokesperson. After Haqqani’s resignation, the deputy spokesman also refused to comment, saying it was Haqqani’s personal issue with Pakistan’s sitting leadership that had appointed him and the US had nothing to do with it. Most recently, US ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, also made it clear that Pakistan was on its own: “We just leave it to the Pakistani authorities…Whatever [the] solution…that’s for Pakistan to decide.”

For a country that has so often been characterised as the world’s policeman; that has used the bully pulpit of ‘democracy promotion’ to palaver, browbeat and sometimes even to cheat; that has changed the very definition of “foreign policy leadership” from being about leading the American people in the formation and execution of national policy to the US leading other nations in the international arena, is this sudden, convenient ‘it’s not my tail to wag’ attitude believable?

Washington has through the decades ‘led’ people around the world by helping them remove their ‘inauthentic’ leaders, the so-called enemies of freedom even when the people chose them. In a similar vein, it has also helped protect those it has valued for whatever reason. Was Haqqani, then, as precious to the Americans as he imagined? By extension, should president Zardari, the most important ally in the war against terror, be worried?

For an administration that doesn’t give a toss about anything but cutting a deal in Afghanistan and which has a short timeframe to get this done, what’s a Haqqani? What’s a Zardari?

Not to overstate the point, but that is perhaps the most awkward aspect of the Memogate controversy: that a two-term chairman joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, considered the braggadocio of a unlaundered loudmouth, Mansoor Ijaz, worthy first of a denial and then a confirmation – followed by not a squeak out of anyone in the US administration as the noose was tightened around Haqqani’s neck. Let’s not forget this is the same guy the US has hailed as being a relentless pro-democracy activist, the man who had “an answer to everything,” the only ambassador with the authority to stand in place for his sovereigns.

But in the words, again, of Ambassador Munter: Pak-US relations are stronger than any memo. Which is just another way of saying Pak-US relations are stronger than Husain Haqqani. Which probably comes as a surprise to the former ambassador who was his own one-man PR machine for being the last of few trusted go-betweens in a relationship reduced to bruising political sparring in recent times. And yet, there he was, left holding the bag, abandoned to the storm by his friends in high places. The hardest-working man in Washington left jobless, just like that.

A wise man cured of ambition by ambition itself; or a wise man who wasn’t wise enough to realise he was being set up at multiple levels?

And while we’re on the question of being set up: why did Mansoor Ijaz out a process that, by his own admission, was highly confidential, for which he and the ambassador used fictitious email addresses and code to communicate with each other and about which he has publically admitted to understanding “God forbid this information gets public…”

But there’s more: one conversation with Ijaz and it becomes clear how much premium he purportedly puts on friendship. “When an old friend comes to me and says I got a problem, I go and make sure that problem gets solved.” That’s the kind of great friend Ijaz says he is. The kind who understands that outing the memo would mean outing everyone involved in the chain of delivery, including ‘one of my closest friends,’ General Jim Jones.

So did Ijaz break the one thing fundamental to any friendship – trust – by outing the memo and with it his friends, in passing, in an op-ed? Or did he tell his friends what he was going to do and they gave him the go-ahead, with a full understanding of the implications not just for Haqqani and civilian ascendency in Pakistan but also for the US administration that would inevitably get dragged into the mess, given that Mullen’s fingerprints were all over it?

These are questions better dealt with penseroso than allegro. For now, all we know is that after the Memogate scandal, we are left with an already cuckolded civilian leadership further weakened, the defences of an army unwilling to brook criticism further buttressed – and the ultimate question: has the US abandoned its Pakistani dogs to the storm?

If diplomacy is the art of saying ‘nice doggie’ until you find a rock, has the US found its rock?

(From The News, Pakistan)

Related articles

• Haqqani leaves for Pakistan over secret memo (nation.com.pk)
• ‘Memogate’ Fallout: Pakistani Ambassador to U.S. Resigns (abcnews.go.com)
• What’s behind the furor in Pakistan? (cnn.com)
• Haqqani wants Ijaz’s records probed (thehindu.com)
• Pakistani Ambassador to U.S., Husain Haqqani, Is Forced Out (nytimes.com)

© 2011, Mehreen Zahra-Malik. This article may not be reproduced in any form without providing an active attribution link/ reference to The Pakistan Forum. All attribution links within the article must also be retained.

ALWAYS take the elevator instead of the stairs. Stairwells are horrible places to be alone and the perfect crime spot. This is especially true at NIGHT!

1. If the predator has a gun and you are not under his control, ALWAYS RUN! The predator will only hit you (a running target) 4 in 100 times; and even then, it most likely WILL NOT be a vital organ… RUN, Preferably in a zig-zag pattern!

2. As women, we are always trying to be sympathetic: STOP It may get you raped, or killed. Ted Bundy, the serial killer, was a good-looking, well educated man, who ALWAYS played on the sympathies of unsuspecting women. He walked with a cane, or a limp, and often asked ‘for help’ into his vehicle or with his vehicle, which is when he abducted his next victim.

3. Another Safety Point: Someone just told me that her friend heard a crying baby on her porch the night before last, and she called the police because it was late and she thought it was weird.. The police told her ‘Whatever you do, DO NOT open the door’ The lady then said that it sounded like the baby had crawled near a window, and she was worried that it would crawl to the street and get run over. The policeman said, ‘We already have a unit on the way, whatever you do, DO NOT open the door.’ He told her that they think a serial killer has a baby’s cry recorded and uses it to coax women out of their homes thinking that someone dropped off a baby… He said they have not verified it, but have had several calls by women saying that they hear baby’s cries outside their doors when they’re home alone at night.

4. Water scam! If you wake up in the middle of the night to hear all your taps outside running or what you think is a burst pipe, DO NOT GO OUT TO INVESTIGATE! These people turn on all your outside taps full ball so that you will go out to investigate and then attack.

Stay alert, keep safe, and look out for your neighbours!