The latest dust up between eventual general election opponents Barack Obama and John McCain came today in which John McCain characterized remarks made by Obama. I will recount them here to set the stage for my analysis:
Obama said on Sunday in Pendleton, Oregon:
“Iran, Cuba, Venezuela — these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, `We’re going to wipe you off the planet.’”
John McCain characterized what Obama said like this on Monday in Chicago:
“Such a statement betrays the depth of Senator Obama’s inexperience and reckless judgment. These are very serious deficiencies for an American president to possess,”
McCain further said of Iran regarding its threat to America vis-a-vis Obama’s comparison to the Soviet Union:
McCain listed the dangers he sees from Iran: It provides deadly explosive devices used to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq, sponsors terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East and is committed to Israel’s destruction.
John McCain’s attempt to show Barack Obama as a naife because Obama does not see Iran and the Soviet Union as equal threats falls on its face from the start. Iran is not a world superpower. Iran does not have a military that is within the same tier as the United States military. Iran does not have missile silos with nuclear ICBMs targeting American cities simply awaiting the word to level them. In short, Iran is not an opponent capable of making war with the United States symmetrically and this is the distinction that John McCain fails to make.
On balance, most of the conflicts of the 21st century will not resemble those of the 20th century. They will differ just as the set piece battles and Napoleonic tactics of the 19th century advanced into the apex of 20th century war theory: maneuver warfare as opposed to static battle lines. That apex is reflected by the United States military today in its armor that carries great firepower while being able to move fast enough to outflank an opponent and a paratrooper force that is the envy of all nations, able to deploy anywhere in the world in a few dozen hours. The great majority of conflicts in this century will be of the asymmetrical kind. Barack Obama understands this and John McCain, it seems, does not.
It is apropos that this message be delivered in a place like Newsvine because the Internet is the primary driving force behind the change in how wars are fought just as the internal combustion engine was the primary driving force in changing how wars were fought in the 20th century. Enemies like Iran learned late last century after observing the United States fight wars that decentralization was its best option when confronting America. It was not a large army that drove the American Marines out of Beirut, it was a single suicidal member of Hezbollah.
Iran is likely our most troublesome enemy in the short term, but it is not because they resemble the Soviet Union in the least. It is because they have cultivated amorphous armies and terrorist cells across the world that it can call on to act or that are preset to act if Iran is attacked. The Iraq War only extended Iran’s reach, putting a Shiite government into power in Iraq which has allowed several powerful Shiite militias to spring into existence, two of which are al-Sadr’s group and the Badr militia. Destroying Iran is not an exercise which would be difficult if America were so disposed, dealing with the aftermath of the terrorist minefield that Iran laid to protect itself would be. Therefore, more is to be gained through diplomacy than through a standoff because diplomacy is a much craftier answer to asymmetrical warfare than brute force and it appears that McCain favors brute force while Obama favors diplomacy and, failing that, brute force.
Also fundamentally misunderstood by McCain and better understood by Obama is the threat that China presents in the long term. I believe this is a result of the generational gap between the two candidates. China is, without a doubt, the greatest asymmetrical threat that the United States will face this century. It has proved this over and over again through its satellite destroyer test that demonstrated its capability to wipe out the system that the United States military relies on (the Global Positioning System) to guide its bombs, its soldiers and its warships.
It proved that it could jam a powerful commercial computer network when Chinese hackers attacked CNN’s network because it did not like the coverage CNN gave regarding the Free Tibet protesters and the Olympic flame. China has official (black hat) hackers and unofficial (gray hat) hackers that both take direction from the Chinese government that could mobilize China’s computing power and sheer population volume to bombard and possibly take down essential defense networks that are used to relay orders to American military units. China is also the leader when it comes to espionage (corporate and military) against the United States government and American companies. This network was put on display recently when China chose to (unwisely in my opinion) use their embassies and registered college student organizations for Chinese students to organize pro-China rallies to counter the Free Tibet protesters in San Francisco.
These student organizations have been an engine for both corporate and military espionage as the students make contact with the Chinese government through the organizations and then, after graduation, go on to be employed by American defense contractors or other companies that have valuable technological developments that the Chinese government wants to obtain and disseminate to the People’s Liberation Army (which is then incorporated into Chinese arms manufacturing) or to one of China’s many industries who seek to compete on the global market with American companies in terms of quality. This is, admittedly, a cloud that is on the horizon but it is a cloud that is gathering and, in approximately 20 years, will settle over our country and will need to be weathered.
Whether it be on Iran’s asymmetrical terrorist warfare or China’s asymmetrical computer warfare and corporate & military espionage, I firmly believe that Barack Obama’s mindset and advisers far outclass John McCain’s mindset and advisers. To maintain our advantage over our direct enemies and current competitors that could turn into direct enemies in the future, we have to have a forward-looking view. McCain, to use a term from military history, wants to fight the last war. Obama’s newness is to our advantage because it gives him a view that is conducive to innovation and spurs him to envision the next war and be prepared to fight it.
I'm a freelance writer from Hamilton, Ohio whose interests lie in history, military science, investing, and politics among other things.
on May 20th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Great article, Scott, even if I disagree with your position. I’m not ravenously anti-Obama as many conservatives are, but I don’t think he’d be better than McCain. I’m no McCainiac either, but I think he’s got better ideas and more experience. He’s also a good judge of character, and will undoubtedly surround himself with wise advisers. Obama….I don’t know.
on May 25th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Great post. It is very well laid out and your points are well made. I agree with you that America’s biggest threat comes from China and that we need to readjust to a new century which will hinge very much on reviving diplomacy.
John McCain it seems is a leader from a bygone era. He is a leader from the Vietnam years and we have learned many lessons since then and many lessons from Iraq that I for one do not wish to repeat with Iran.