China’s government is doing its best to silence the internal victims of the melamine-tainted milk scandal, most notably by putting serious pressure on lawyers representing the families whose children have died from ingesting it to resign from the case. Even though I am no fan of China, Jack Huang implored me to take a more objective look at the country and here is what I found.

China’s government is not cracking down on the victims of this scandal because it is evil. It is cracking down on them because this could turn into the perfect storm that sweeps the Communist Party from power. It is the same reason that they channeled nationalism into a strong, fervent force to assist those adversely impacted in the Sichuan earthquake. Any catastrophe that happens in this day and age could morph into a whirlwind in Chinese society that causes an uproar of dissent that the government cannot control and could dethrone it.
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Originally posted over at birdbrain.

In 1936, a country under a totalitarian government hosted the summer Olympics. The regime successfully projected an image during these Olympics that convinced a great number of people that the regime was benign and good. This regime, of course, was the Nazis, who later went on to kill twelve million civilians and start a world war in which even more people died.

In 2008, another country under a totalitarian regime is hosting the summer Olympics. This country, Communist China, has a horrible record on human rights. They censor their internet and imprison dissidents. Yet they won the bid to host these games back in 2001 because they promised to make the 2008 Olympics “green”. In the years leading up to the 2008 Olympics, China employed the services of internationally known architects and urban planners to completely redesign their city. They are putting up a face of Communism for the world to see, a face intended to deceive us. They would have us believe that Communism works, yet nothing could be further from the truth.

We all know the saying: “Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.” Letting countries like Communist China or Nazi Germany host the Olympics just is not a good idea. By doing this, we (as in the free world) enable them with an excellent propaganda opportunity that can only serve to undermine us.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or, put more pithily, people never learn.

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There is little doubt that the notion most Americans have in their heads of neoconservatism has been at least temporarily skewed due to the perceived failures in Iraq. Regardless of the fact that things are actually improving on the ground finally, the bad taste left in many proverbial mouths when uttering the term “neocon” is more than apparent.

Of course, the fact is what the vast majority of people associate with neoconservatism is, in fact, a complete misconception of what it actually means to be a neoconservative. Even Kristol’s article may be only one aspect, one perspective on what it means to be a neocon. Indeed, a whole new generation of neoconservative thinkers is sprouting up, both here in the US and overseas.  Why?  Irving Kristol says it well,

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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.

In Burma there is a joke that Orwell wrote not just one novel about the country, but three: a trilogy comprised of Burmese Days, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Indeed, George Orwell’s rather prescient novel 1984 is often read as a warning against Stalinism and its totalitarian consequences, but it is Myanmar–formerly Burma–that is closest to Orwell’s dystopian vision of a state-run tyranny whose control reaches even into the very details of every day life. The military junta that brutally suppresses the Burmese people, and has so for decades, is the very sort of totalitarian state that Orwell predicted would seep into the West should we lower our guard and allow the State too much control over our lives.

Of course, in Burma the military is anything but Stalinist. There is none of the Marxist ideology present in its rulers, not that Soviet Russia held to the ideals of the Communists–the Burmese leaders, however, are unabashedly despotic, and hold to no outside ideology. Nor will they accept outside aide, which has been the subject of much debate recently–at least in the days preceding the earthquake in China’s Sichuan province. The death toll there is also rising, though the differences in the Chinese approach and the Burmese approach to their respective national tragedies is telling.

After all, the Chinese government is hardly known for its human rights scruples, or for its respect for human life and dignity. China runs more like a machine than a nation in many ways, and its treatment of the individual would be abhorrent to any Westerner. However, the Chinese government responded to the earthquake by sending troops and rescue workers from all across the nation, and allowed foreign aide and foreign reporters to come to the scenes of destruction. The Bamboo Curtain is not what it used to be….

The Generals

If you want to find a really bad guy, forget Ahmadinejad; General Than Shwe is the real deal in the genocide department.

Well, not in China. In Myanmar the situation is quite different. The Burmese have neither received the same level of aide or media attention as the Chinese have. The junta, under Senior General Than Shwe, has not allowed more than a small trickle of aide to reach its suffering citizenry, and there has been very little media coverage of the horrors the cyclone has left in its wake. Perhaps this explains the total drop-off in coverage following the very newsworthy earthquake in China. Journalists prefer covering a story they’re allowed to actually cover, and so Myanmar slips into the backseat, and China takes the wheel.

The question, however, remains: What can the civilized world do to prevent a human catastrophe on the scale of possibly hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths? Tens of thousands of Burmese were killed by the cyclone, and no one could save them. These were the inevitable deaths. Nothing could have been done to save them short of a new regime in Myanmar that would have had to not only have taken the reigns of government years ago, but would have had to somehow reinvigorate that country so much so that the people would have had some warning of the devastation. This, of course, did not happen, and is not likely to happen any time soon, so long as the junta remains in power.

Still, there has been a clamoring of support for the notion of humanitarian invasion from both the Left and the Right, and while much of this has been from American thinkers and writers, there is a growing worldwide sentiment that at times, invasion can be necessary.

Romesh Ratnesar of Time magazine writes:

The cold truth is that states rarely undertake military action unless their national interests are at stake; and the world has yet to reach a consensus about when, and under what circumstances, coercive interventions in the name of averting humanitarian disasters are permissible.

And indeed, this is a tricky question, especially given the divisiveness present in the current Iraq War, which was started with humanitarian intentions. Would the invasion of Myanmar, regardless of its intentions, be perceived in the same light?

A Neoconservative Perspective

Time Magazine is not known for hawkishness, but Ratnesar’s article takes a very different tone, lamenting at its close that “we still haven’t figured out when to give war a chance.” This, in my mind, is the very heart of practical neoconservatism. It is essential that America and her allies, hopefully someday united in a League of Democracies, will approach interventionist policy in situations that do not benefit us with natural resources. In countries such as the Sudan and Myanmar, America has a chance to show that we are concerned more with humanity and justice than oil and treasure. Iraq has stained the image and ideals of neoconservatism, and successful humanitarian missions in places such as this may restore the true meaning and perceptions of neoconservatives. The spread of freedom and democracy, after all, is equatable to the spread of world peace. Democracies simply do not wage war on other democracies.

Robert Kaplan of the New York Times–another less-than-hawkish-publication–writes:

American armed forces are now gathered in large numbers in Thailand for the annual multinational military exercise known as Cobra Gold. This means that Navy warships could pass from the Gulf of Thailand through the Strait of Malacca and north up the Bay of Bengal to the Irrawaddy Delta.

Because oceans are vast and even warships travel comparatively slowly, one should not underestimate the advantage that fate has once again handed us. For example, a carrier strike group, or even a smaller Marine-dominated expeditionary strike group headed by an amphibious ship, could get close to shore and ferry troops and supplies to the most devastated areas on land.

The magic of this is that an enormous amount of assistance can be provided while maintaining a small footprint on shore, greatly reducing the chances of a clash with the Burmese armed forces while nevertheless dealing a hard political blow to the junta. Concomitantly, drops can be made from directly overhead by the Air Force without the need to militarily occupy any Burmese airports.

And there you have a quick illustration of how our military could act swiftly and effectively to save lives, rather than simply take them. Air drops and sea-based Marine incursions, aided by the Fates themselves could lead not only to the salvation of countless Burmese cyclone victims, but could also lend a damaging blow to Myanmar’s military leadership, shaking the very foundation they stand on.

Kaplan’s piece is provocative and compelling, and his case for invasion is clear and concise and persuasive. He warns, however, that:

It seems like a simple moral decision: help the survivors of the cyclone. But liberating Iraq from an Arab Stalin also seemed simple and moral. (And it might have been, had we planned for the aftermath.) Sending in marines and sailors is the easy part; but make no mistake, the very act of our invasion could land us with the responsibility for fixing Burma afterward.

If we do invade, we need to avoid the mistakes we made in Iraq and prepare for the ensuing fall-out in a land already torn apart by chaos and devastation. The main difference between the Iraq war and any action against Myanmar is that in the lead-up to Iraq there was plenty of time for planning. Saddam Hussein had already ruled over that nation for decades, and while he was a brutal, fascist dictator who committed acts of terror against his own people, the country itself was not in chaos. Hundreds of thousands were not in imminent danger.

In Burma, hundreds of thousands of lives do hang on the balance, and every day we spend talking about military intervention and humanitarian aide and not acting is another day that thousands of people who don’t have to, will die. In other words, the moral impetus is harried by time, and our ability to plan for a possible collapse of the junta is hampered by the necessity of swift, effective action.

The notion that the Burmese leadership may cave completely when faced with foreign invasion is not terribly unlikely, either. George Packard of the New Yorker writes:

Forcing the regime to let the rest of the world save its people would have a devastating effect on morale. Burma’s leaders are so isolated and irrational that they actually believe their own propaganda about being the only group that can hold the country together. It’s possible that the junta would collapse out of sheer humiliation.

Can a regime collapse out of sheer humiliation? Perhaps not, but maybe the flood of outside influence, combined with the military chutzpah of the Western powers would lead to the junta’s removal. A CIA backed popular uprising would not be at all unlikely, especially if US forces were on the ground already.

The Huffington Post’s Blake Fleetwood claims that:

CIA commandos have already mapped out invasion scenarios with the support of oppressed ethinic tribes. A quick strike in this misbegotten country would not be difficult.

And Lisa Sheffren, writing for that polar-opposite publication the National Review agrees:

This would be an excellent moment for the CIA to begin co-ordinating the internal dissidents and rebels on the Thai-Burmese border who would like to overthrow the junta. (Oh, no one’s organized that? Pity, because when a million people lie dead for entirely preventable reasons, governments should fall without much help.)

So it seems there are unusual alliances of thought lining up behind the notion of either invading Burma with humanitarian aide, and/or overthrowing the military government of that country. I believe the one would and should lead to the other (whichever way you look at it!) We can’t forget the hundreds of thousands of dying and dead that scatter the Burmese landscape. Can we give war a chance? Well, the idea was first brought up by the French, so there is hope for humanity left, I believe–if only a little.

Andrew Sullivan sums it up best:

In its demonstration of humanity, it is also a great way for the US to enhance its soft power in the developing world. People remember who saved them. And sometimes, a bottle of water can mean a lifetime of gratitude.

~crossposted at The New Centrist Times

Tibet has a history dating back over 2,000 years. A good starting point in analyzing the country’s status is the period referred to as Tibet’s “imperial age”, when the entire country was first united under one ruler. There is no serious dispute over the existence of Tibet as an independent state during this period. Even China’s own historical records and the treaties Tibet and China concluded during that period refer to Tibet as a strong state with whom China was forced to deal on a footing of equality.

At what point in history, then, did Tibet cease to exist as a state to become an integral part of China? Tibet’s history is not unlike that of other states. At times, Tibet extended its influence over neighboring countries and peoples and, in other periods, came itself under the influence of powerful foreign rulers - the Mongol Khans, the Gorkhas of Nepal, the Manchu emperors and the British rulers of India. (more…)

The Wired Blog has an interesting article about new Chinese weapons that could seriously aid insurgents against traditional security forces–something that both the United States and Israel should be worried about, since China has very low standards about who they supply with munitions and technology.

Wired writes:

Portable rocket launchers like the RPG-7 are some of the deadliest, and most common, weapons in the guerrilla arsenal.  The Chinese are now producing a new warheads that’ll make the weapons even more lethal — capable of knocking down a three-story building from 200 meters away.

One of the real dangers of these thermobaric warheads, which explode “in a cloud” rather than from “a point” is that they’re not really a new weapon, just new ammo.  Your old hand-me-down RPG will work just fine.  Simply replace older, less powerful rockets with these new Chinese ones, and you’re good to go.

The WPF 2004 is made by Xinshidai Company, a Chinese arms manufacturer.  The article goes on to say:

In 2006, China was singled out by Amnesty International for being . one of the world’s most secretive and irresponsible arms exporters.   The group claimed that Chinese weapons fueled conflict in a number of countries including the the Sudan and Burma.  And, of course, they have supplied a heap of arms to Iran.

Jane’s Magazine reports that:

Operational experience has shown that traditional RPG-7 anti-armour rockets are not optimised for urban or counter insurgency-type missions and, therefore, an increasing number of countries are now fielding thermobaric (fuel air explosive) weapons of various types.

It hardly seems likely that the Chinese are unaware of the damage this will cause, leading me to assume that their sole purpose in allowing these arms to be sold is to increase instability across the globe–and especially in places where America is heavily involved, or our allies.  Of course, even in places where America shamefully has not gone, like the Darfur, China has their hands dirty.  Undoubtedly these missiles will end up in the hands of various Islamic terrorist groups around the globe–perhaps through Iranian intermediaries or other governments such as Syria or Sudan.

Just something else to look forward to in the ongoing war on terror, which in so many ways proves to be just more strategic maneuvering against the governments of China and Russia.

In the Korean War, we weren’t fighting the Koreans. Not really. We were fighting the Chinese, but we didn’t call it the Chinese War in Korea. Everybody knew that this was happening, that the Chinese were heavily involved in the war, and that without their influence, we probably would have stopped the North Koreans–but it was easier to continue calling it the Korean War. Could stronger diplomacy with China have changed the course of events?

Iraq is the same. We’re not really fighting Iraqi insurgents. Now that we’ve chased many of the major al-Qaeda elements out of the country, we’re not really fighting them either.

We’re in a proxy War with Iran.

Iran has sponsored illegal militias since the formation of the Maliki government in 2006. The Qods Force, Iran’s premier terrorist training team and exporter of its revolution, provided between $750,000 and $3 million-worth of equipment and funding to Iraq’s militias monthly in the first half of 2007, according to U.S. Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner.

More information about the Qods Force and the Iranian “Special Groups” who are the puppet-masters behind the Sadr militia and many other Shiite militias in Iran can be found here.

Ms. Kagan writes a very informative article about the depth of Iranian funding and training of “insurgents” in Iraq. For an even more detailed look at the Iranian smuggling of arms and general support to their Iraqi counterparts, visit this site.

It’s apparent that what’s happening in Iraq is not so much about the welfare of the Iraqi people, but as an attempt to undermine America’s influence in the region. Essentially, Iran is exporting, in a violent fashion, their “Revolution” to Iraq. Both are Shiite countries, and while one is Persian and the other Arab, the Shiite bond is strong. Iraqi Sunis aren’t too fond of the idea, and while they helped US forces drive the Suni terrorists organization al Qaeda out of Iraq, the Shiites have done nothing to halt the flow of Iranian influence in their country.

Indeed, this war has no hope of every ending so long as US and Iraqi forces can’t stop the Iranian presence. This will probably not be won through military means alone, although the recent show of strength from the Iraqi government is a sign of progress, even if the execution was not entirely successful.

People worry that we might invade Iran, or strike them militarily. I propose that it is too late to avoid war with Iran, as we are already caught up in it. It is not, however, too late to broker a peace. The moment Iran decides to stop intervening against the Iraqi government is the moment peace will return to the Iraqi people. al-Qaeda alone is no more than an organization of thugs, but Iran is a rich, influential, and powerful nation. It’s time they realized that peace in the region will lead to greater stability for everyone involved. If they do not, we may need to take greater lengths to disable their actions in Iraq.