Reuters:  Iran vessel ‘harasses,’ sails close to U.S. Navy ship in Gulf: U.S. officials, the fourth incident in a month.

The most obvious association is with the increased U.S. ground presence in Iraq, and the pending near-term expulsion or  severe diminution  of ISIS in Iraq. But this observation doesn’t nail down the purpose. Some candidates:

• To intimidate the U.S. to the extent that a continued presence on the current scale would be thought too risky.
•  To provoke an incident, such as the sinking  of an Iranian speedboat. This would be used to motivate and excuse actions by Iranian forces and Shiite militia against the U.S. presence.
•  To set a confrontational example, with two purposes: A: In order to block potential co-opting of Shiite politics by the U.S. B: To motivate Shiite insurgency against the U.S. presence.

As a bare list, these are undecidable. But let’s consider further. The speedboats are operated by the navy of the Republican Guard, which is separate from Iran’s other navy. In recent years, the Republican Guard has emerged as a power center distinct from the theologians of Qom. But it is still infused with religious fervor, and retains legitimacy conferred by the  conservative faction of the Qom clerics. Of note, Qom has recently tilted in the conservative direction, the latest of several perturbations within the past five years.

The speedboat activity probably derives from the conservative clerics. The only other candidate for instigation is the Guard itself. Regardless of whose idea it is, it would not occur without the approval of the conservative clerical faction.

This allows consideration of a process unknown to western thought. Unlike Sunni Islam, which has no interpreters officially distinguished by the religion, Shia Islam requires that every follower choose a teacher, who is himself schooled in jurisprudence of Islamic law. The teachers are arrayed in a complex hierarchy of accomplishment. The most accomplished  are referred to as marja-e taqlid, meaning “source of emulation, or marjaʿ taqlīdī, “source to imitate.”

This permeates Iranian society with something akin to the therapy prescribed by behavioral psychology. The Western behavioral analogy is, “obtain the correct behavior and the thoughts will take care of themselves.” It explains the extreme contrast in Iran between behavior behind the closed doors of private residences, which is rarely interfered with, and public display of the like.

Since the speedboat activity originates in the minds of religious thinkers, it is likely intended for imitation. This thought process is alien to Western diplomats, except, possibly, those who have gone native.

Of the list of motives, the last one, “to set a confrontational example”, option B, is most congruent with marjaʿ taqlīdī.

The  Reuters headline, “Turkish army thrusts deeper into Syria, monitor says 35 villagers killed”, makes it possibly interesting to review a post from October 2014, Turkey & the New Ottoman Empire. It hypothesizes a future that, at this moment,  does not exist. Yet such is the fluidity of the situation that territorial expansion of Turkey,  either de facto or de jure,  still reflects a possible outcome.

An  interesting flip  would be concomitant Kurdish expansion. It could be fostered by Turkey as a part of a solution to their unwinnable war. This is the kind of event that limits extrapolation as a predictive technique. A scenario characterized by ground-creep suddenly morphs into something markedly different.

Relative to the other players, Turkey and “the Kurds”, or the five or so groups of them,  are unique to this region in the degrees of their Western cultural affinities.  Cultural affinity is not of great significance to the diplomatic mindset, which is typically occupied with statecraft, geopolitics and, for us, the universal rights of man.

But neglected though it is,  cultural affinity  may figure importantly in what solutions embody inherent stability. Perhaps the map of the Middle East should be redrawn one more time.

A review of the ISIS/Iraq/Syria theater is forthcoming.

A CNBC article, Kremlin Shakeup Raises Questions About Putin’s Motives, conveniently lists most of the possible reasons. The BBC article is strictly factual. But it has excellent links beneath, under “More on this story.”

The CNBC article presents all the possibilities except one: that anxious to get out of the way of a train wreck, Ivanov actually resigned. Russia’s Reserve Fund is projected to deplete this year. A 2015 estimate suggests that Russia needed an oil price of $105/barrel to balance the budget. Take a look at this debt-to-GNP chart. As John Mitchell famously said, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.“

The explanation of the Moscow Times article relies on personal preferences and petty irritations. The complete absence of reference to the impending train wreck is in itself highly synthetic. By way of dramatic illustration, imagine the headline, “Turkish Coup Caused by Boredom, Petty Jealousies.”

The Ukrainians have their own, hopeful-for-them slant in the Euromaidanpress.com article, “Top Russian economist: Moscow can’t maintain current levels of military spending for much longer.” Ignoring their hope of what this means for Russia’s Ukraine grab, the quote of economist Sergei_Guriev is one of the better references:

The Russian government’s original budget for 2015 was based on the assumption that oil would be US $100 a barrel, that Russia’s GDP would grow two percent, and that inflation would not exceed five percent, he notes. None of those things has proven to be the case; and the government has cut overall spending by approximately eight percent.

“Nevertheless,” he continues, that has not prevented the government deficit from ballooning from 0.5 percent of GDP to 3.7 percent, “a serious problem” even though Russia’s sovereign debt forms “only 13 percent of GDP” because the Ukrainian war has increased spending and Western sanctions have made it harder to borrow.

As a result, Moscow has been forced to dip into its reserve fund. That fund currently amounts to six percent of GDP. Consequently, if the deficit continues at 3.7 percent, the Russian government will run out of money in about two years, forcing it either to withdraw from Ukraine in order to end the sanctions regime or change its budgets in fundamental ways.

Both steps would entail “major political risks for Putin,” Guriev says.

Particularly for the outsider, stability is in part a self-fostering illusion. What does Putin himself think? A glimpse is provided in the aftermath of the assassination of Boris Nemetsov, which occurred on 27 February 2015, within sight of the Kremlin walls. On March 5, Putin vanished from view.  With reports he had the flu, his whereabouts became unknown, except for reference to his residence in Lake Valdai, Novogorod. In the interest of not succumbing to conspiratorial thinking, perhaps he had the flu. But Lake Valdai also put Moscow between him and Chechnya, home of the ethnic Chechen assassin(s).

This background is of great use to open source analysis. The assumption of a stable political background can be as much in error as the prediction of inevitable breakdown. The mind tends to be captured by details, which in this case, are the formal trappings of government. It helps to take a step back, defocus a little, and recall that between 1985 and 2000, when Putin assumed power, Russia was constantly, visibly unstable.

To what extent has Putin consolidated power? Our vision is chronically obscured by the notion that personal consolidation is actually possible. The BBC article, Who runs Russia with Putin?, illuminates:

At the same time, the Russian administrative system – the so-called vertical of power – does not function well: policy instructions are often implemented tardily and sometimes not at all, so others have important roles helping develop and implement projects.

The count of power groups is up to four, plus one accessory:

• The Kremlin and security apparatus.
• The Oligarchs.
• Organized Crime.
• An obdurate bureaucracy.
• Subject to the manipulation of the above, the “Masses.”

These groups invisibly incorporate the conflict so visible in our political system. Borrowing a term of biology, the relationship is currently homeostatic, somewhat analogous to Henry Kissinger’s use of the word “equilibrium” for the international realm. It means that for every push, there is a push-back. But something is missing from the table, the weights and measures that, in combination with the four groups, result in homeostasis at this moment.

Sometime around the exhaustion of the Reserve Fund, these things will occur:

• The Russians diet will consist increasingly of potatoes.
• The Oligarch empires will become insolvent.
• Putin’s “emergency lighting system” will switch on, using organized crime to move more money than it already does, for essential activities.
• The obdurate bureaucracy will become more buyable than they already are.

This trajectory is the partly a consequence of the idea that a Russian version of Anschluss would be a good thing. There are contributions from Saudi use of the oil weapon, and from fracking. It is the ultimately result of a grand design to make Russia a great world power, when it should have tried to be a great economic power. A Scottish poet said it best: “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

But the question in our minds is how Putin will handle, or not handle this eventuality. Will he

• Use the “war cure” for instability, going  hot in Crimea?
• Hunker  down, choosing to destroy the oligarchs before they depose him, the rest of Russia following him into a new ice age?
• Attempt to blackmail the West into lifting the sanctions? Weapons at his disposal include gas exports and incursions elsewhere in Europe.
• Be himself deposed, and replaced by a thoroughly corrupt and practical group drawn from the oligarchs?
• Change his “type”, from the inflexibility of “never backs down” to a more versatile shadow boxer who could more effectively motivate Germany’s natural affection for Russia?
• Vacate the Ukraine in a bargain to keep Crimea?

The last two options are the ones most available to a facile political manipulator whose is not a psychopath. As a profession, “head of state” is most akin to “CEO”, which tops the professions with psychopathic traits. But Vladimir Putin’s demeanor, as far as it can be observed, seems remarkably free of this.

Edit: Since Putin is a Harley fan, it’s possible that Sergei Ivanov is a Country and Western fan.  So here’s a Johnny Paycheck song for Sergei to hum in his new job.

Reuters: Japan urges China not to escalate East China Sea tension.

If the China Sea conflict goes hot, the Japan/China dispute over the Senkaku Islands has the greatest chance of being the  flashpoint. The reasoning is very simple.

• China is actively challenging Japan’s claims.
• At present, Japan has naval superiority over China.
• Japan is close enough to the disputed islands to efficiently project force.
• From a previous position of almost national pacifism, Japan has moved towards wider doctrinal use of military force.
• Vietnam, the only other country in the area with a strong military and a temperament to match, shares a land border with China. This means that China can easily project force to Vietnam. This last occurred in 1979. Some have remarked that the poor performance  of the Chinese military in that war would cause China to hesitate.  But adequacy  of force would not be significant to the decision, or to the deterrence.
• With falling population, Japan’s time horizon is limited.

The Atlantic article notes that Article 9 of the constitution of Japan,  drafted under the supervision of General Douglas MacArthur, remains on the books, if not in force. Nor does the new law actually increase the legality of defending the Senkakus, already permitted by Article 9. The importance of the new law is as  a trend of thought.  Supporters might question the point of it if the Senkakus were not defended.

In China’s history, declarations of dominance over a vassal have tended to have a symbolic nature. China’s leaders have reason to believe that over time, with the collapse of Japan’s population and the growth of China’s military, the balance of power will shift in their direction. Although militarist sentiment is growing, there still remains some attachment to the cautious counsel of the departed elders. This internal conflict will grow.

But Japan’s hourglass is emptying. Once before, we have seen Japan strike with massive force, and the motive was desperation.  This time, if the event occurs, it will hardly be massive. But it would shock China by contradiction of the Nine Dotted Line with a “fact on the ground.”

Both China and Japan support their claims with  legal fictions. If one realizes their fiction concretely,  the other faces the terrible compulsions of nationalism and patriotism. A China economic collapse, severe enough to stoke political instability, could motivate Chinese seizure of the islands.

After easy money has been tried, a  “patriotic struggle” is the traditional band-aid for political instability.

This is the assertion of former Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell’s NY Times op-ed. If the paywall blocks, read Reuters.

I agree.  But so much has been written about Trump’s character and businesses, what more is there to say? Perhaps his supreme self confidence is noteworthy. On ABC, Former secretary of defense Robert Gates said of Trump, “He believes that he has all the answers, that he’s the smartest man in the room.” (Gates is nonpartisan with this observation; on Morning Joe, he third-person quotes Obama (7:15) in similar context.)

In America, part of the generally helpful myth we create for ourselves is that supreme self confidence promotes risk-taking, which enables entrepreneurial success. But part of the process is a Darwinian winnowing of talent. Out of ten supremely self confident entrepreneurs, perhaps one will be that great success. The rest crash, hopefully do not burn too badly, and pick themselves up to try again.

Trump’s TV show, The Apprentice, is a microcosm of this. Contestants compete in the arenas of property management, marketing, and hospitality. His TV demeanor, combined with the impressions of the campaign trail, are of a person specialized to Darwinian success in these niches of capitalism. Nota bene: Trump is always the smartest guy in the room. This is a form of narcissism, an exploitable trait.

This is the basis of Morell’s concern,  not that Trump can be recruited as a spy, but that he can be manipulated. Although “spy” catches our fancy, a head of state who can be manipulated is perhaps the ultimate prize. The narcissistic head of state  might  be unaware that he was the lab rat of an entire laboratory of behavioral scientists working in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR.

The concern is further justified by the aspect of Trump’s narcissism that sees himself as the “smartest guy.” A collegial style of decision making can moderate  individual defects. But the smartest guy delusion releases the narcissist to full flight of fancy, which could be a really, really bad decision.

How could a guy as tough as Trump be manipulated by the Russians?  Henry Kissinger’s remarks  in White House Years are suggestive. He observed that the Soviets had a tendency to sacrifice good will for marginal advantages and barely extant opportunities. Kissinger cites several cases where the personal contact involved in negotiating SALT, and a couple of other issues, resulted in a personal situation that might be described as good will or camaraderie (friendship never applied, except with the possible exception of ambassador Anatoly  Dobrynin.) The good will was then sacrificed gratuitously, as with a completely unacceptable, last minute clause insertion, the radio jamming of Kissinger’s communications with Washington, or the combination “safe” in Kissinger’s working area that seemed designed to convey documents down to the basement.

To put it bluntly, there was a Soviet tendency to work around the margins, to be a little sneaky, to honor an agreement somewhere between faithfully and “in the breach.” We see echoes of this in the Ukraine and Syria.

With this, we can sketch a  plausible example of  manipulation. A  camaraderie develops between Trump and Putin, and conceivably, a bunch of “buddies” supervised by the SVR to stroke Trump in just the right way.  Supreme in confidence of his people skills, Trump decides to trust. They negotiate a Syria military partnership with Russia.  It includes some reputational safeguards for the Trump Administration. “Reputational” is used  instead of “human rights” as significant to his business experience. The Russians work around the edges, bombing maternity hospitals that might also contain rebels of unknown allegiances. They manage to fuzz who did this.

There ensues a dialog of conflict with the Russians, carefully designed by them to elicit a desirable reaction, which could be:

• Silence.
• Bombast.
• Disengagement with the moderate opposition.
• Committal of ground troops, symmetrizing the American role with the Russian. With all the disadvantages the Russians currently enjoy.

Secretary of State John Kerry is currently attempting this negotiation. But there is a difference. Whatever he comes up will be vetted by some very skeptical people, experts in their fields, people who know more.

But even if chagrin puts Trump’s narcissism into temporary suspension, the effects cannot be reversed. It might be possible to play Trump like a punch-drunk fighter.

These eventualities are mentioned without mechanism, all indirectly the results of a character flaw:

• Russia peels Greece away from NATO.
• The Baltic states are neutralized.
• Russia annexes eastern Ukraine.
• The Philippines fall into the China orbit

Has supreme self confidence been our undoing before? Harry Dexter White was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in 1946, U.S. representative to the Bretton Woods conference, and co-creator of the International Monetary Fund. He had numerous contacts with Soviet Intelligence that has lead to the somewhat debated conclusion that he was a Soviet spy. Robert Skidelsky writes,

“A combination of naivety, superficiality and supreme confidence in his own judgment -together with his background – explains the course of action White took. There is no question of treachery, in the accepted sense of betraying one’s country’s secrets to an enemy. But there can be no doubt that, in passing classified information to the Soviets, White knew he was betraying his trust, even if he did not thereby think he was betraying his country.”

Was Harry Dexter White also a narcissist?

Peter van Buren’s commentary in Reuters, The real reason Washington calls Putin a thug, purports to explain why the current term of demonization is “thug.” The word “thug” has historical significance, referring to an Indian criminal gang, experts at strangling travelers, extant till about 1830 when they were extirpated by the British.  Since then, the word, like words such as “hero”, has become devalued. It  apparently reached rock-bottom by inclusion in the political lexicon.

I agree with one of  Van Buren’s  points. Putin is not a thug. One of the purposes of this blog is a war on sloppy thinking. Today, classifying Putin as a common criminal may be of no consequence. Tomorrow, it may lead to an importantly wrong decision of foreign policy.

It might seem a strange mission to defend a head of state whose administration has seen numerous assassinations, both domestic and foreign,  is implicated in hacking the DNC, and is associated with very careless bombings in Syria which some have called war crimes. So this is no defense. The problem with the label “thug” is that it imputes to the person motives of a very simple character, related to personal greed and profit. In the domain of foreign policy, decisions lethal to the innocent are frequently made from a personally selfless perspective. The best example available to us is  LBJ, who, despite all his detractors, expanded the Vietnam War not for personal gain, but for apparently selfless reasons. We might extend compassion to  LBJ, who followed the proverbial “road to hell paved with good intentions.”

LBJ’s error occurred in the midst of the Cold War, a competition between the Free World, and a complex of Marxist states. “The end justifies the means” became associated with Marxism with the endorsement of violent revolution. In competition with this ruthless ethic, our own ethics became subverted. This is past. We recovered and emerged morally strengthened. Our adversaries did not.

So Vladimir Putin could conceivably be a personally selfless individual who nevertheless, acting out of patriotism for things Russian, is complicit in Syria atrocities.  Vladimir Putin’s ethics could be ours, 54 years in the past. The principle difference with LBJ’s error is that Vladimir Putin is not on our side, because he willingly takes actions that hurt us. And yet two distinction must be made. He is not on our side, but there is a significant commonality of interest. Second, our wounds are not serious. Simplicity overlooks this.

Van Buren writes with the rage of the apostate. He was part of the failed attempt to reconstruct Iraq according to the vision of the neoconservatives. Regardless of whatever else he is, the honesty of his accounting ranks him in the top one percent of humanity. But this kind of self-implication carries with it the chance of unbearable guilt. The sufferer continues to rail against the System long after his personal expiation should be complete. And the System is an easy target, because it’s always going awry, like an airplane with a bad rudder, constantly requiring minor heroes of the moment to bring it back on course.

Van Buren writes, “While throwing the term at Putin is tied to the weak public evidence supposedly linking Russian government hacker(s) to the Democratic National Committee computer breach, there may be larger issues in the background.” Perhaps as a result of his past experience working for the Bush Administration, Van Buren questions the evidence based upon what is publicly known. Implicit in the wording is the desirability  of release of the non-public evidence accumulated by U.S. intelligence services, which has now reached a strong consensus (NY Times) that it was a Russian hack.

We could go back to the Pentagon Papers as an example of deliberate withholding  that was more damaging to democracy than release. More recently, the fabrications of the Bush Administration that justified the invasion of Iraq afflicted Peter Van Buren with a stain of complicity that he just can’t wash away. Heightened suspicion, which is a form of prejudice, is a natural, though not logical, consequence of his experience.

We have a phrase for the antidote, “case-by-case.” It implies thinking about the current problem, with reference to what precedes, but with full consideration of the particulars:

• The stakes are too small. The hack does not compare to the revelations of Edward Snowden. It illuminates the influence of money in politics, but we weren’t so naive beforehand. Our system will survive it. My political opinions are implied by a previous post, Why Russia Hacked the DNC; In Defense of Liberty.
• The small stakes, without the requirement of “retaliation”, lower the bar for evidence. Nuclear retaliation requires a very high standard of evidence. Where to set the bar to call Putin a bad name is  entertaining, preferably with a cold beer.
• The Russian origin of the hack is supported by non-public evidence. The mathematics of NSA technology is too secret to divulge. It was very costly to develop, and would become useless if made public, required by any explanation. NSA technology is guarded like the A-bomb, and with good reasaon.

Secrecy can be supported by the history of a current weapon system. The F-35 fighter has an approximate fly-away cost of $85 million. For years, the F-35 design team grit their teeth and bit their tongues at the onslaught of Dr. Karlo Kopp, an independent defense analyst whose website is Air Power Australia. I’m a good guesser at technical issues, so I shared in the tooth grinding. Dr. Kopp is the principle source of technical information on stealth for critics of the F-35. Apparently working from photographs, Kopp managed to construct a 3-D model of the airplane that enabled him to derive an estimate of radar reflectivity, described as equivalent target size, from any aspect. His analysis concluded that the airplane was less stealthy at most aspects than the F-22 which preceded it.

In a 2014 Aviation Week interview, Air Force general Mike Hostage clarified: The F-35′s cross section is much smaller than the F-22′s. “The F-35 doesn’t have the altitude, doesn’t have the speed [of the F-22], but it can beat the F-22 in stealth.”

This was received doubtfully by the aviation press, not because they knew better, but because they didn’t know enough. Thankfully, they still don’t. To at least some extent, the revelation devalued taxpayer dollars.  If the F-35 program were not so controversial, Hostage probably would not have divulged the information.

These arguments are sufficient to defuse the idea of an ulterior motive for blaming the Russians for the DNC hack. The issue is too small. For a larger issue, think again. Case-by-case.

Most saddening is Van Buren’s dire suspicion. Quoting,

“But why Putin, and why now? Perhaps what we’re seeing is preparation for the next iteration of America’s perpetual state of war.”

It is natural that Van Buren would suspect this, since he was employed in the aftermath of a war based on manufactured circumstances. He continues  to write,

“Ahead of the next administration, Washington really needs an arch enemy, a poster-child kind of guy who looks like a James Bond villain. And preferably one with nuclear weapons he’ll brandish but never use.”

So we call Putin a bad name? The population of Earth is currently about 7.5 billion, of whom 3.25 billion are already bastards. What’s one more?

The reason is quite the opposite. Flinging epithets is the all-purpose political tool:

• It we happen to be doing nothing in response to provocation, it defuses the accusation of being too easy on those thuggy Russians.
• If we happen to be doing something, such as cooperating on the Syria problem,  it indicates we are on our guard with those thuggy Russians.

Someone should send Putin a nice washcloth and a bar of scented soap. Mr. Putin, get that mud off your face!

Reuters:  “Turkey’s Erdogan says U.S.-based cleric a pawn backed by a ‘mastermind'”  The following may be of use to those not familiar with the oratory and posturings of  Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Turkish citizens, perhaps even more so among those who dislike Erdoğan, remark on his remarkable powers of oration. They cannot find any other public figure of comparable power of speech. Perhaps only Adolph Hitler was as great a spellbinder. This is noted without any suggestion that their ideologies are comparable. Turkey, after all, is a country where hidden agendas are commonplace.

It is also a place of both imagined and real conspiracies. If the ratio of imaginary to real were 1000:1, the reality of some conspiracies juices the imagination for the rest. In the midst of this, Erdoğan has a characteristic shared to some extent by the most forceful of leaders, but particularly, of demagogues. The science fiction writer L Sprague de Camp, whose interests included extreme beliefs, described a personality trait he denoted as the “Right Man” hypothesis.

Quite simply, the right man is always right, never wrong. This delusion promotes accession to power. Since one is always right, one never anticipates in one’s self the “Peter Principle.” Hence, the higher the better, at whatever the cost to the body politic. Because, the right man can never be wrong. It takes a lot of chutzpah to think of one’s self as the best choice for head of state. A properly functioning democracy attempts to harness the drive in a productive way, with statutory limits on the rightness of the Right Man. The Turkey of today lacks this.

The “mastermind” theme was most notoriously used by Erdoğan and the AKP on March 18, 2015, when an AKP propaganda outlet broadcast an “expose” that revived the myth of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”.  AL-Monitor ran an excellent article, “Unraveling the AKP’s ‘Mastermind’ Conspiracy Theory”. It perceptively notes that the antisemitism appeared to be a drop-in conspiracy theory, while the real target was Gulen.

Combined with overall vagueness, this indicates a desire to fabricate conspiracy theories that can be devoured by the public, while ignoring odd tastes, by appealing to their prejudices. This bears directly on Erdoğan’s current problem. Fethullah Gülen may be responsible for the coup, but it is unprovable, and likely to stay that way. How can Erdoğan fashion a response to root out the conspirators, and perhaps sympathizers, considering that considerable numbers of innocents are likely to be victimized in the process? Turkish propagandists have a sophisticated strategy, to fabricate a conspiracy (meaning different from the real one of the coup) that will both agitate the masses, and make them tolerant of oppression.

The coup had leadership, which has yet to be named. They may be named and punished, or simply punished. Not naming permits creation of a new propaganda myth, or augmentation of the one of the 6/18/2015 broadcast, a permanent imagined threat to Turkey.

Reliance on this elaborate propaganda to sustain Erdoğan’s power base is a likely strategy. We may then hear more  of a caliphate in Turkey.

Most readers probably have an intuitive sense why the Russians hacked the DNC email, to favor the Republican candidate. Donald Trump has advocated cooperation with the Russians on security, and a general pullback from commitments that don’t pay for themselves. But a formal explanation of Russian thought might help. It would, of course, be a fiction. Leaders go with their guts. But formality works in tandem with intuition to help us remember how we feel. It’s a kind of mental shorthand, helping us pick up where we left off.

Hidden behind the NY Times paywall is Vladimir Putin’s op-ed of September 13, 2013. The Washington Post has an annotated version. If you get too worked up about it, read Peggy Noonan’s antidote in the Wall Street Journal. Let’s not get otherwise distracted by judgment of the ingenuous, disingenuous, or cynical nature of the piece. It was obviously an attempt to keep the U.S. out of Syria, antedating Russia’s own involvement.

A statement towards the end received considerable scrutiny at the time:

“And I would rather disagree with a case he [Obama] made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.”

American Exceptionalism is both a myth and a reality. The myth was first voiced by a tired and ill man, with an active case of smallpox, noted for a high and squeaky voice, without amplification, to an audience of perhaps 15,000. His brief address closed with these words:

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Like science and technology, the myth as a concept is morally neutral. It is a powerful enabler of human beings for good, evil, and various combinations of the two. Myths can be used to promote racial equality, discrimination, war, peace, slavery, and liberty. American exceptionalism has empowered Americans to exceptional efforts. The results spanned  magnificent,  horrible, and ambiguous.

Abolishing  the myth replaces  moral calculus with pay-as-you-go defense of liberty. But although foreign policy has always had a complex morality, American Exceptionalism offers a higher purpose. Perhaps our purpose is not always realistic. Perhaps some want to live free or die, while others just want to live. But regardless of the truth of the myth, the Declaration of Independence is the most parroted document in history. Even in the lie of insincere appropriation, it is the most subversive document ever written. The myth of American Exceptionalism is, for Americans, something to live up to. For many, it is something to aspire to. The Statue of Liberty is merely a material representation of the myth, the true beacon of hope.

Vladimir Putin’s objection to it has a certain symmetry to our objection to the former menace of communism. To the true believer of American Exceptionalism, a government that is not truly democratic is not completely legitimate. To such governments, the message of the myth is subversive.

We compromise by working with these governments, and ignoring their deficiency of democracy. But the various forms of persuasion for positive change, which encompass all forms of open media, and aid  with attached messages, are regarded with the suspicion we have of large and powerful religious cults.  Russia under Vladimir Putin could at best be described as a vestigial democracy. It is sensitive to public opinion, and still permits polling of it, while manipulating opinion by state control of the media. Yet there really is no alternative to Putin. In his absence, the centrifugal forces of nationalism, ethnocentrism, political immaturity and organized crime, would eat the country from the inside out.

Since there is no challenge to Putin’s legitimacy, his affront at American Exceptionalism may have a personal element. As a doctrine, it is a challenge to quality and legitimacy of government, which, by our standards of democracy, has deteriorated, even while the quality of services has improved. Putin rescued a state in chaos, in danger of collapse. Perhaps impressed by the China miracle, he felt democracy to be an unaffordable luxury. If he continues his search for the model of future Russia, he should give it a another look. The “conservative Russia” he espouses will fossilize, fracture, or crumble. But it cannot empower future generations.

The myth empowers what some call “America the World Policeman”, and which Putin calls “American hegemony.” We don’t like the cost,  but the cost is separate from the badge. The myth awards the badge. If the myth is abolished, the badge goes with it. The Russian hack is a favor to the Republican candidate who would abolish it.

The exceptional always bear a burden. But American Exceptionalism  empowers the bearer. It, not prosperity, made America great. Shedding the myth will not make America great again. On the contrary, it would make America ordinary.

We’ve done great things with it, and things of which we are ashamed. With all the good, the myth has empowered harm that cannot be discounted. Even in belief, moral calculus is not simple. It is expensive, perhaps unreasonably so. But it might be as vital to our own existence as the air we breathe.

Don’t gamble with it.

The Pentagon Papers, completed in 1969, identified China as an expansionist power. Although Noam Chomsky may be polarizing to some, his summary of this  as expressed in the Papers, along with citations from previous studies, is objective, provided his personal bias about Cold War strategies is subtracted.

This may have been an accurate identification of a fleeting phenomena. The Korean War was a strong positive sign. Yet after the Korean War, China seemed self-absorbed. China’s involvement in Vietnam was mostly as a transit route for Soviet war materials. Henry Kissinger’s early  diplomacy revealed that China’s energies were consumed by fear of annihilation by the Soviet Union. If this had not been the case, would expansionist tendencies have been manifest? If this were a tendentious article, I’d be tempted to assert “yes.” But even if it was, it was tied to the Communist Manifesto. There seems to be something different about expansionism that is so powered, and others, such as Manifest Destiny. It runs up against the internal weakness of the revolutionary society, and exhausts itself. Expansionism with an economic energy source has different limits, relating to a loss of economic coherence and advantages of scale.

Kissinger’s voluminous memoirs evidence that, while conducting the affairs of a nation in formal settings, he was an astute observer of individuals and societies. With this as justification, here’s a quote from Years of Renewal, (page 880, hardcover):

“To Beijing, Taiwan is not a foreign country; its claim to independence is perceived as a challenge to national cohesion by legitimizing national aspirations in other geographically remote provinces close to predatory powers. China will go to war rather than give up this principle.”

The technical term for this is revanchism. The whole of Outer Manchuria, which includes Vladivostok, was originally part of China, ceded to Russia in the several of the “unequal treaties”, of 1858 and 1860. Sakhalin Island has a three-way claim: Russia, Japan, and China.  Chinese revanchism is currently quiet. This could change. Russia take note.

Another motivation is economic opportunity. It seems a little overrated. According to the U.S. Energy Administration (Wikipedia), proven oil reserves in 2013 were 11 billion barrels, with a possible total of 28 billion. By contrast, Venezuela’s proven reserves (2012), were 296.50 billion. Even Brazil, #17 on the list, has more proven reserves than this sea. This is bad news for the analysis. It would be reassuring if the South China sea had the reserves of Venezuela. The expansionist impulse could be explained by greed, for which opportunities are limited. Sadly, this is not the case.

Thirteen billion barrels can’t pay for decades of conflict. So what is powering China’s angst? Perhaps it is the status as the world’s most populous country, the majority of whom are very poor, yet alive in the domain of a reasonably well governed state. Perhaps it is imagined lebensraum , dredged out of the muck. What a lousy way to live. Dry land would be better (Russia take note.) But German lebensraum was based in agrarianism, a philosophy that assigned an immutable value to agricultural land. It makes no sense now, unless you, personally, want to be a farmer.

So far, we have cataloged:

• The Communist Manifesto, obsolete as a motive.
• Revanchism, which is inherently illogical.
• Economic opportunity, which doesn’t satisfy cost/benefit analysis.
• Lebensraum, which is obsolete, and had disastrous consequences for European history when it figured.

None of these make sense, which suggests the possibility, despite admiration for China’s brainpower, that there is no rational reason.  China may have a geographic inferiority complex. This frustrates policy gurus, who may be seeking the unifying principles of a mental health client.

Expansionism and colonialism have an etymological resonance that suggests similarity. But the manifestations have been different. Colonialism is characterized by relatively small movements of people, partial political integration, and a predominant economic motive. Expansionism, involving contiguous territory, has been characterized by large population movements, and near total political integration. The motive tends to be cloaked in romance, with murky economics that may or may not pan out. Both have had moral issues, ranging between mild and genocidal, but let’s not get sidetracked.

• The British Empire. Colonialism. Economic preeminence, with supple political manipulation.
• The Italian, Belgian, and German colonies. Smaller, less successful colonial ventures.
• U.S. Manifest Destiny. Expansionism. Powered by economics, it had a strong romantic tinge.
• Russia’s 19th century expansion, consolidated by the Bolsheviks. Although economically viable today, it was originally an entirely romantic notion. The Unequal Treaties  are one of the seeds of China’s current revanchism.
• Japan, between 1894 and 1945. Expansionism mixed with colonialism. Motivated by economics, it combined genocide with policies that resembled a blend of political manipulation with assimilation.
• Germany. Expansionism. The settlement of World War I created a German revanchism that, combined with the adjuvant of lebensraum, converted to a powerful expansionist impulse, given voice by Hitler. Uniquely, sympathetic ethnic German populations were present in the states of the early victims. This is the preeminent example of a compulsive military/political strategy.

China’s annexation of the South China Sea has these expansionist characteristics:

• Claims on territory contiguous with the existing state.
• Weak, or imagined economic benefit.
• Irredentist justification, meaning, “It has always been ours.”

So China is expansionist, with one unique feature. As the territory in dispute is virtually uninhabited, no internal political strategy is required. Perhaps this is an operational distinction that will spare Russia, for a while.

Next: The foundation of equilibrium.

Reuters: Freedom of navigation patrols may end ‘in disaster’: Chinese admiral. Quoting, “‘This kind of military freedom of navigation is damaging to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, and it could even play out in a disastrous way,’ he added, without elaborating.” Googling “South China Sea” brings up pages of links on the various contentions. Any list of reasonable length would be too selective. Readers may wish to review the series, “Pivot to Asia” series.

The visible part of U.S. strategy,  force projection,  has elements of risk absent from previous initiatives. This is discussed in Pivot To Asia; Force Projection, Part 3. A sample of the tone of official analysis is the pdf titled ADIZ Update: Enforcement in the East China Sea, Prospects for the South China Sea, and Implications for the United States. Another sample in the same vein is China’s Potential for Economic Coercion in the South China Sea Disputes: A Comparative Study of the Philippines and Vietnam, published by the Journal of Southeast Asian Affairs.  These are excellent, analytic compilations, but they are not projective. This has been a failing of U.S. analysis for decades.

To project, it’s useful to analogize with the  behaviors and strategies of individuals and organizations that plan and execute well. Some conflicts, occurring within an established framework of conflict, have results with outcomes that are known to high certainty.

• Domestic law provides a conflict framework. Operating within this framework, the F.B.I. almost never brings a case to prosecution they cannot win.
• Unlike militaries of the Third World, those of the First World win their wars, and since Vietnam, they don’t start wars they cannot win. The conflict framework is established by the First World power as a prerequisite to military action.

Others are examples of conflict-within-a-framework that have uncertain results.

• Patent litigation frequently ends in failure or a draw.
• Governmental paralysis is frequent in democracies.

But a framework cannot be assumed. A symmetric military conflict need not have one. Nor does international law provide one, unless the parties to conflict consent to international methods of adjudication.

China is the current case of note. But the  South China and East China seas are both hostage to myriad conflicting claims. Some of these, except for smaller scope, are almost as outrageous as China’s. Is this symptomatic of a broader breakdown in “world order?” In the aptly titled World Order, Henry Kissinger writes (p21), “Today the Westphalian order is in systemic crisis. Its principles are being challenged, though an agreed alternative has yet to emerge.” Noninterference in the domestic affairs of other states has been abandoned  in favor of a concept of universal humanitarian intervention or universal jurisdiction…”

The development of international law precedes the above, though the background of flux may contribute to the general unease. But the China  signatory to the Hague Conventions was the Qing dynasty. Post-imperial China has not signed the convention that establishes the scope of the Permanent Court of Arbitration decision.

One could theorize that the regional confusion is due to the breakdown of international law. But it’s always been an ephemeral thing. To some, the extension of law to the international domain is the foundation of decency. Another viewpoint has it honored mainly in the breach. International law was forged mainly in the West, by states with recent memories of regrettable conflicts. A nation without those memories, full of the hubris of “new”, might not have the collective memory that gives body to the ephemerality.

China is a newborn nation. When the  last of the revolutionary leaders of China passed from the scene,  the Eight Elders, of whom Deng Xiaoping was paramount, the collective memory was erased. It was erased not from the historical record, but as a habit of thought.

The current situation has one similarity with the precursors of total war. It lacks a framework to constrain, shape, and limit conflict. Perhaps this is why some of the  media flaunt the  “war-question-mark” headline so indiscriminately on their websites. But  the Asia defense agreements  are not written with the interlocking doom of those that caused World War I. Compared to   the strict mutual defense obligations of NATO, the wording of the Asian treaties is a step less. Quoting from the State Department synopsis of the U.S. – Japan treaty, “…declares that it would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional provisions and processes. “

The current status of the U.S. – China relationship could be described as a zero-intensity conflict. Next: Is China expansionist, and if so, why?