SAMUEL HUNTINGTON (1927-2008): Ideas have Consequences by James Kurth
American political science has not produced very many great ideas, and what ideas it has produced have not been very consequential. In part this is because most American political scientists have very much adhered to the liberal or progressive tradition in American politics (one of the principal founders of the American Political Science Association was Woodrow Wilson), and they have tended to merely reflect that tradition rather than to reflect upon it, and thus to reiterate it rather than to reinvent it. The only real discipline in this peculiar academic discipline has been the discipline imposed by a pervasive progressive ideology.
However, there has been one American political scientist who did produce great ideas, and even a succession of them. He was also very conscious that ideas have consequences, and some of his own ideas had consequences that are still reverberating around the world today. That political scientist was Samuel P. Huntington, whose exemplary scholarly life came to an end this past Christmas Eve. One of the reasons that his ideas are both great and consequential is that he did not adhere to the conventional liberal and progressive ones. Rather, Huntington sought to create a distinctive kind of American conservatism, one that would recognize the energy and even the value of traditional American liberalism and self-advancement, but would guide that energy into paths of realism and self-restraint. In this way, American conservatism could enable American liberalism to conserve itself. Most consequentially, given the great international challenges the United States has faced in the past century, it could help America to conserve itself in a world filled with non-liberal and even anti- liberal ideas and powers.
Samuel Huntington spent most of his life and did most of his work in places where conservatives are rarely found and where conservatives rarely look. Indeed, those places--New England, Harvard University, the American Political Science Association (APSA), and the Democratic Party--have been centers of liberalism and progressivism for most of the past century. Yet it was by being in this liberal world, while not really being of it, that Huntington developed a kind of American conservatism that was particularly tempered and resilient, strong and solid, and consistent and enduring. Throughout his scholarly life, he was an inspiring model of intellectual courage.
Huntington's career began in the early 1950s with a number of innovative and definitive articles on American politics, including a seminal piece on American conservatism. Then, for half a century from the publication of The Soldier and the State (Harvard University Press, 1956) to the publication of Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity (Simon and Schuster, 2004), he produced a series of great books (in this essay, we will discuss six), roughly one in every decade. Each developed a distinctive conservative position on an important political challenge and policy issue of its time, but also of today. Each was met with a chorus of liberal criticism, but each became the center of the intellectual debate on its topic, a lion in the path that every other serious scholar had to confront. Huntington's professional colleagues in APSA continuously criticized his arguments, but they nevertheless recognized his greatness, not only by selecting him to be the Association's president but also by repeatedly identifying him in their polls as the most distinguished member of their profession.
Huntington's intellectual perspective was shaped very much by the political conflicts that issued from the legacies of the New Deal and the Second World War and by the challenges of the Cold War. On the one side, there was the liberalism of the Democratic Party, which had been exemplified by the internationalism of Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and which was still prominent within the party in the 1950s. On the other side, there was the putative conservatism of the Republican Party (which European conservatives saw as just another kind of liberalism), one version being the defensive isolationism of Senator Robert Taft and the other being the assertive nationalism of General Douglas MacArthur. Each of these Democratic and Republican approaches had led to some kind of American debacle in the course of the previous two decades.
These policies were criticized by a new kind of American conservative, exemplified by George Kennan and Reinhold Niebuhr. Such thinking was also enriched by the contributions of European immigrants to America, such as Hans Morgenthau and FPRI's founder, Robert Strausz-Hup‚. These conservatives sought to construct more solid and successful American policies upon a basis of central and enduring American national interests, with these interests in turn representing central and enduring American national traditions which went back to the balanced and realistic conceptions of the founding generation of America statesmen, for example, Washington, Madison, and Hamilton. The result was a distinctive kind of American conservatism dedicated to conserving fundamental American interests and traditions in a world of hostile powers and ideologies such as the Soviet Union and communism, and in an America which all too often had lurched from one unrealistic ideology and reckless policy--indeed adolescent and self-indulgent mentality--to another. Huntington came of intellectual age in this milieu.
THE SOLDIER AND THE STATE
In his first book, The Soldier and the State, Huntington developed just such a balanced, realistic, and conservative conception with respect to the challenging issue of civil- military relations, i.e., the proper relationship between elected political leaders and professional military officers, particularly that within a liberal democracy and constitutional order. Prominent in the 1950s (President Truman's firing of General MacArthur during the Korean War had occurred only recently), this issue has reappeared in every decade since, right down to the Iraq War. We can be sure that it will reappear again in the wars that the United States undertakes in the future.
Huntington argued that elected officials of course had to be the ones who set the nation's policies, but that these officials also had to recognize and respect the distinctive perspective and knowledge of the military profession in setting realistic limitations as to how these policies could be implemented. Huntington's position was thus very much like that of Carl von Clausewitz, but with the right civil- military balance being even more difficult--but just as necessary--to achieve in democratic America than it had been in monarchical Prussia. The Huntington conception is conservative in its recognition that the best political order is a proportioned balance--i.e., a mixed regime or constitutional order--composed of separate institutions with distinctive perspectives, but coming together around shared values and a common objective. This kind of conservatism was represented by Aristotle in classical political philosophy, by Burke in British political thought, and by Madison in American constitutional theory, and it has an enduring validity. There has always been a need for such a political order and particularly for civil-military relations, and there always will be. This was true in the 1950s, it was true in the 2000s during the Bush administration, and it will be true in the 2010s during the Obama administration. Huntington's The Soldier and the State therefore remains an excellent guide for steering us through the civil-military challenges of today and in the future.
THE COMMON DEFENSE
It soon became evident to Huntington that the U.S. military was characterized by a certain kind of proportioned balance within itself, one that was also composed of separate institutions with distinctive perspectives, in this case the separate military services. This condition resulted in the purported problem of inter-service rivalry, something that often perplexed and troubled American civilians. They had expected a unified American military, especially after the supposed unification of the services within a single Department of Defense in 1947.
Huntington examined this inter-service rivalry in The Common Defense: Strategic Programs in American Politics (Columbia University Press, 1961). He demonstrated that the most important U.S. strategic programs were the product not of some rational deduction from a central strategic concept, but instead were the product of political negotiations between the different military services. Within the executive branch of the U.S. government, there was really a log-rolling process similar to that which had always occurred within the Congressional branch; Huntington called this process "executive legislation." In his extensive analysis of the U.S. defense policies of the 1950s, he showed that executive legislation--this proportioned balance between the military services--had actually produced strategic programs which were better overall for U.S. national security than simple executive direction would have done. He concluded that inter-service rivalry was not so much a problem for America as it was a solution, a solution very much in keeping with the traditional and successful ways in which Americans had normally addressed challenges. Here, too, Huntington's work has enduring value. The existence of separate U.S. military services with different perspectives--and the problems or solutions which are the result--are realities that have shaped U.S. defense policies ever since Huntington wrote about them, and they will continue to do so as long as the United States has any defense policy at all.
POLITICAL ORDER IN CHANGING SOCIETIES
By the mid-1960s, the United States was confronting the challenges posed by the collapse of the European empires, the onset of political anarchy, and the threat of communist revolutions in the new Third World. Huntington directly addressed these challenges in his Political Order and Changing Societies (Yale University Press, 1968), which instantly became the major work in the field of political development. He acknowledged that liberal democracy was certainly a desirable political system, but he argued that our American version was the product of a distinctive American history and British legacy, going back to Tudor times. It was unlikely to be successfully exported to other countries with other traditions. Rather, the best political system for any country would have to be the product of its own particular history and legacy, with these being embodied in strong and stable political institutions. Only these could bring about the political order which was the necessary condition for any civilized society.
As Huntington saw it, the problem in many countries was that the new political mobilization of the population was outpacing and overwhelming their existing political structures. What was needed was new (or renewed), strong, and stable political institutions. The United States' role in political development should be to assist countries in establishing such institutions. Huntington thus followed Hobbes in his emphasis on political order, but he also followed Burke in his emphasis on cultural conditions, and, again, his work has an enduring validity. Huntington's Political Order in Changing Societies therefore remains an excellent guide for Americans in addressing the challenges of "failed states" and "nation-building," today and in the future.
AMERICAN POLITICS: THE PROMISE OF DISHARMONY
At the very moment that Huntington published his analysis of political mobilization and the need for political institutions abroad, however, political mobilization was overwhelming political institutions within the United States itself. By the late 1960s, newly-mobilized movements--such as civil rights and student protests--were surging into American politics, while long-established institutions such as the Democratic Party, the federal government, and the military services were losing their political legitimacy. This destabilizing conjunction of ideological demands and institutional illegitimacy continued throughout the 1970s.
It was in these circumstances that Huntington wrote American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (Harvard University Press, 1981). He showed that there had been earlier periods in American history that were similar to the 1960s-1970s. At the core of the American national identity was the American Creed, a deeply rooted and well-articulated set of distinctively American ideas and ideals. These ideals were so abstract and exalted that they often bore little relationship to reality. Conversely, at the foundation of the American political order was a set of distinctive American political interests and institutions. These institutions often maintained and preserved reality, even if that reality seemed to be unjust. This permanent gap between ideals and institutions (which Huntington called the IvI gap) gave rise to a permanent tension in American politics, and at times this tension was transformed into a full-blown ideological passion for radical change, by which the ideals would supplant the institutions and bring about a whole new political world. These radical hopes were, of course, always disappointed, and so American politics would then return to some version of the old equilibrium between ideals and institutions, at least until the next era of ideological passion arrived.
Of course, Huntington's analysis of these successive phases of American politics turned out to be exactly correct. The ideological and radical passions of the 1960s-1970s were followed by the institutional and conservative stability of the 1980s-1990s. And now, as America passes from the sour political frustrations associated with the Bush administration to the exalted political hopes attached to the Obama administration, we may be entering once again into a new era of passionate ideas and ideals.
THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS AND THE REMAKING OF WORLD ORDER
By the 1990s, the United States had been dramatically successful in overcoming the challenges posed by communist revolutions and even by the Soviet Union itself. But in their place there were now new problems posed by rising powers, such as China, and by reviving religions, such as Islam. Huntington directly addressed these new issues in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Simon and Schuster, 1996). This quickly became his most famous book, one translated into numerous languages. Indeed, his thesis became so well known, and in such high places, that his critics often said that his ideas about clashes between civilizations had actually had the consequences of aggravating those clashes, that his argument had become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Huntington proposed that the conflicts of the new era would emanate not from national states or political ideologies, as they had for much of the twentieth century and in the two world wars and the Cold War, but from distinct civilizations that were grounded in distinct religious traditions. He deeply believed in the traditions and values of our own Western civilization and of its leading state, the United States, and he sought the best way to preserve it in a world that was experiencing intensifying clashes deriving from religion and culture. Analogous to his approach in his previous works, he argued that Western civilization was the product of a distinctive Western history and Christian legacy and that its traditions and values were unlikely to be successfully exported to others with their own distinctive traditions.
Huntington was concerned that, in the aftermath of the victory of the United States and the West in the Cold War, Americans were prone to think that their particular ideas and ideals of liberal democracy, free markets, open societies, and individual human rights had such universal validity and popularity that they could and should be widely promoted and even imposed abroad. Globalization, in particular, was an ideology that stressed the inevitability of these American ideas being adopted around the globe, whatever had been the different traditions and ideas inherited from other, and now presumably past, civilizations.
Huntington thought that this belief in the universalism and globalization of particular American ideas would greatly aggravate clashes between the West and others. He saw some degree of conflict as being inevitable, but he argued that the clashes between the West and the rest could be kept manageable and limited, so long as the United States and the West recognized the distinctive nature and the limited applicability of their traditions and ideas. Western civilization should focus upon strengthening its own traditions and identity, while expecting that other civilizations would do much the same. The U.S. role within the West should be to encourage this strengthening, and within the world to facilitate mutual recognition and accommodation between the different civilizations. Huntington thus sought to conserve Western traditions and values which reach back more than two millennia, within the closest approximation to a world order as we are likely to get in the contemporary era.
Today, more than a dozen years after Huntington advanced his famous and controversial thesis, it is useful to see how it fits some of the current realities about different civilizations. On the one hand, the proponents of the universalism and globalization thesis can point to the greatly increased integration of China, and of Sinic and Confucian civilization more generally, into the global economy, along with growing business and professional classes which are adopting some version of Western ideas (albeit with Chinese characteristics). Similar developments are going on in India or the Hindu civilization. On the other hand, proponents of the clash-of-civilizations thesis can point to the greatly increased conflict between America, and the West more generally, and the Islamic civilization, with the United States engaged in wars against Islamist insurgents in both Iraq and Afghanistan and against Islamist terrorist networks around the world, and with new wars against other Islamists doubtless still to come. Given the continuing dismal and destructive conflicts between the West and the Islamic world, Huntington's work once again has an enduring validity, and The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order remains an excellent guide for steering us through such conflicts today and in the future.
WHO ARE WE? THE CHALLENGES TO AMERICA'S NATIONAL IDENTITY
By the 2000s, however, it was evident that Western civilization and even the United States were seriously divided within themselves about what their identity should be. Very few people in the West identified any longer with Western civilization, and many Americans, particularly among cultural and business elites, no longer identified with American traditions. Huntington directly addressed this phenomenon in Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity (Simon and Schuster, 2004). He argued that at the core of American identity was a distinctive culture, which was the product of British traditions and the Protestant religion and which he termed Anglo-Protestant culture. Huntington made clear that this Anglo-Protestant culture and American identity was defined by traditions, values, and ideas and decidedly not by any particular ethnic origin. Generations of Americans from virtually all ethnic backgrounds had willingly adopted this culture and identity, and this had led to their own success and to the success of America as a whole.
In recent decades, however, this distinctive and successful American identity has been threatened by some elites who have developed ideologies of multiculturalism and globalization and who have effected a multicultural or global identity, rather than an American one. The American identity has also been threatened by new immigration patterns in which the rate of arrival of people from different cultures has exceeded the rate of assimilation into the traditional American culture. Huntington urged all Americans to recognize the reality and worth of their own traditions and identity, i.e., to conserve America and therefore conserve themselves. There can hardly be a more authentic kind of American conservatism than this.
It is historically fitting that Samuel Huntington called upon Americans to conserve America. In the seventeenth century, the first Huntingtons arrived in America, as Puritans and as founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In the eighteenth century, Samuel Huntington of Connecticut was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. In the nineteenth century, Collis P. Huntington was a builder of the transcontinental railroad. In the twentieth century, Samuel P. Huntington was for half a century the most consistently brilliant and creative political scientist in the United States. Huntingtons had been present at the creation for most of the great events of American history, and Samuel Huntington knew intimately and believed intensely in what America was all about. His ideas about America and its role in the world were simultaneously original, conservative, and consequential. He was a splendid exemplar of American creative intelligence and intellectual courage.
James Kurth is the Claude Smith Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College and an FPRI Senior Fellow. Parts of this memorial essay were published in First Principles: ISI Web Journal (January 13, 2009).
Copyright Foreign Policy Research Institute (http://www.fpri.org/). You may forward this essay as you like provided that it is sent in its entirety and attributed to FPRI. provided that you send it in its entirety. Contact FPRI for permission to repost it at another website.
Every so often a guy on the ground tries to be cute and tell his air support how much they love em. In this case ... it all went wrong. But fortunately these gun bunny's took it in stride.
Whether you know anything about economics or not, it doesn't matter. What is happening around us will happen no matter what some government official promises. It will happen no matter whether your education is in economics or engineering or completely OJT. It will happen no matter what Congress does or does not. It's payback time. One can argue that it was George Bush, others can point with some credibility that it was what followed Bush. But it really doesn't matter any longer who caused it. It will happen. The only question is whether the coming economic meltdown accelerates this coming year or the next or the one after.
You see, the "laws" of economics have no politics and no political bias no matter what the two parties want you to believe. It is why when you look at all the "isms" that have influenced mankind throughout history, only Capitalism improved the lot of all mankind. All the others created generations of horror, misery and degredations of humankind. But again it doesn't matter much. Politicians since Truman have worked to get us where we are today and it is doubtful that what lies ahead can really be avoided.
If there has been one consistent truth, it is simply that if you want to break something beyond repair, let the government "fix" it. That axiom is why the joke of "government provided health care" is such a giggle. The real humor is that when you look closely at health care in America you discover fairly fast that the rising costs are not because of greedy corporations but an ever increasing cost imposed by government directed and unfunded mandates upon the health care industry. Now, to fix that rising cost problem ... what does government plan to do to "fix it?" Well, there are going to write some legislation, impose new requirements and no doubt establish price controls and profitability margins. It will drive health care professionals away and destroy the medical system we now all can access.
But that is not really the major problem we face in the coming three years. It's the "crunch" we have to prepare for. It will be characterized by rampant inflation and sky rocketing costs driven by massive debt, cap n' trade mandates, and all the other bizarre legislation coming out of a Congress who has lost it's mind in the sense it no longer follows the US Constitution. It will start slowly, like many avalanches and will happen on many fronts.
For instance, the Chinese and other huge US debt owners will dump their US bonds and bills and flee to a more stable and safe currency. Energy will skyrocket in costs. Your utility bill will increase 300-500%, brown-outs will begin, air, road, train and transportation systems will fall apart, communications will unravel as well. No phones, no radio, no television, no Internet and no "snail mail" will survive. People will slowly begin to no longer show up at work if they still have jobs. Instead they will migrate to their safe place they and others like them have agreed to go to when it happens.
The few who still have jobs, will be paid in commodities, since the greenback's true worth will be zilch. Those who own gold will have a problem too, it will be so valuable that no one will be able to give change. My prediction is that liquor, bullets, non-perishable foods, coffee, and old real silver coins will be the barter items of choice.
As this happens, keep in mind what you will do to protect your family and your lives when the impending "crunch" hits home with a vengeance. We saw it in a microcosm in New Orleans after the dikes gave way after Katrina. Imagine that same effect from coast to coast ... of every continent. Are you ready?
Do you have a plan? Where will you go when the society we have depended on is no longer there? Have you made plans with a group of friends who also believe in preparation and mutual protection? Do you and your family have a "bug-out" plan, a rally point, provisions put away? Do you have the means of repelling brigands and looters. Have you and your fellow "planners" trained to do it?
Once talk like this was for the survivalists and other "end of worlders" who were sure some comet was going to snatch them into space, or religious zealots who were convinced their evil God would smite all the evil doers and whisk the "good ones" off to join the evil God. But that is no longer the case. Economic meltdown is almost a given. Listen to the elected officials for only a moment and you soon realize they are completely clueless. Even worse, what they propose, as FDR proved during The Great Depression, will just increase the depth and severity of the meltdown that they are working so hard to make sure it really happens.
It's ironic that following the Bush Administration's corporatism, that an ignorant electorate put a guy in office that advocates pretty much what Benito Mussolini advocated beginning in the 1920's. Then, it was called Fascism, mostly to put a new face on the same old tired socialistic ideas that were so popular during that time. Now we call it more gentle and misleading names like "altruism" or some otherNineteen Eighty-FourNewspeak that would make George Orwell proud. Yet, it is simply a remake of what Mussolini called "The Third Way."
As has often been observed ... one can put lipstick on a pig ... oh, never mind. But whatever one does ... be prepared to live in a world unlike we in America have never experienced. Time is growing shorter ... be a Boy Scout ... be prepared.
Ending the Doubt About the President's Birthplace!
13 July 2009
OK, it's been found! See! Now, can all you right-wing nut-tards get off the "he ain't natural born" whine and let him get on with "not wasting a crisis?" We just need to leave the guy alone so he can remake this country to make it something we never imagined it ever could become, right?
Enjoy the lyrics. This was the song that made me a Red Hot Chili Peppers fan.
I first saw this term in Oregon. It was a on a bumper sticker that said, "Don't Californicate Oregon." If you have been back to Oregon lately, you know that bumper sticker didn't work. Abutting California, Oregon ended up badly "Californicated" as the residents of California fled the statism and collectivism and emigrated to Oregon. After a while, it all started again. Oregon, fully infected became another left wing liberal bastion of altruism. Some residents of Oregon fled north to flee the philosophical infection that the new residents had hidden away, but soon left again and fled east as it was not long before Washington state too had fallen into the trap of liberal altruism.
Sady though, even after the statists infected Oregon and Washington with those cancers of altruism and collectivism, one finds little difference at the state level between any of the three states on the left coast of the US. Even sadder is that it just might not matter anymore. As we are seeing at the Federal level, the nation too is undergoing "Californication."
You ask, "Were the RHC Peppers prescient?" Nope ... just lucky that they called it right so many years ago. Of course no one at the time that song was written could have foreseen what we would do to our nation.
Of course they won't be called "brown shirts." That is pejorative after all. Instead they will be wrapped up in something like this. Stay aware, stay alert ... their idea of "making the world a better place" often begins with getting rid of undesirables ... you know ... like those who do not buy into the jingoism and changes they want to impose on those who don't think like they do .
The article, "Obama wants court pick to have 'empathy'," is a reminder of just how far we have yet to go to truly reach a society free of prejudice and discrimination.
The story lays it out clearly. The nominee the President seeks is not going to be the most qualified jurist. Instead, it will be the best female, black or Hispanic he can find. I hear Jesse Jackson is irritated as hell about those prerequisites! He wanted the job so bad!
Nevertheless, the path ahead is clear. We will get a nominee who passes all the "litmus" tests of the liberal left, has no penis, and enough skin coloration to not be considered a white person. (I wonder if that means Perez Hilton has fallen off the list??)
So this is change we can believe in, eh ... a return to the dark days of racial preferences and gender discrimination. How nice.
The Geopolitics of Pandemics (STRATFOR) By George Friedman
Word began to flow out of Mexico the weekend before last of well over 150 deaths suspected to have been caused by a new strain of influenza commonly referred to as swine flu. Scientists who examined the flu announced that this was a new strain of Influenza A (H1N1) derived partly from swine flu, partly from human flu and partly from avian flu strains (although there is some question as to whether this remains true). The two bits of information released in succession created a global panic.
This panic had three elements. The first related to the global nature of this disease, given that flus spread easily and modern transportation flows mean containment is impossible. Second, there were concerns (including our own) that this flu would have a high mortality rate. And third, the panic centered on the mere fact that this disease was the flu.
News of this new strain triggered memories of the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, sparking fears that the “Spanish flu” that struck at the end of World War I would be repeated. In addition, the scare over avian flu created a sense of foreboding about influenza — a sense that a catastrophic outbreak was imminent.
By midweek, the disease was being reported around the world. It became clear that the disease was spreading, and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a Phase 5 pandemic alert. A Phase 5 alert (the last step before a pandemic is actually, officially declared, a step that may be taken within the next couple of days) means that a global pandemic is imminent, and that the virus has proved capable of sustained human-to-human transmission and infecting geographically disparate populations. But this is not a measure of lethality, only communicability, and pandemics are not limited to the deadliest diseases.
‘Pandemic,’ not ‘Duck and Cover’
To the medical mind, the word “pandemic” denotes a disease occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population. The term in no way addresses the underlying seriousness of the disease in the sense of its wider impact on society. The problem is that most people are not physicians. When the WHO convenes a press conference carried by every network in the world, the declaration of a level 5 pandemic connotes global calamity, even as statements from experts — and governments around the world — attempt to walk the line between calming public fears and preparing for the worst.
The reason to prepare for the worst was because this was a pandemic with an extremely unclear prognosis, and about which reliable information was in short supply. Indeed, the new strain could mutate into a more lethal form and re-emerge in the fall for the 2009-2010 flu season. There are also concerns about how its victims disproportionately are healthy young adults under 45 years of age — which was reported in the initial information out of Mexico, and has been reported as an observed factor in the cases that have popped up in the United States. This was part of the 1918 flu pandemic pattern as well. (In contrast, seasonal influenza is most deadly among the elderly and young children with weaker immune systems.)
But as the days wore on last week, the swine flu began to look like little more than ordinary flu. Toward the end of the week, a startling fact began to emerge: While there were more than a hundred deaths in Mexico suspected of being caused by the new strain, only about 20 (a number that has increased slightly after being revised downward earlier last week) have been confirmed as being linked to the new virus. And there has not been a single death from the disease reported anywhere else in the world, save that of a Mexican child transported to the United States for better care. Indeed, even in Mexico, the country’s health minister declared the disease to be past its peak May 3. STRATFOR sources involved in examining the strain have also suggested that the initial analysis of the swine flu was in fact in error, and that the swine flu may have originated during a 1998 outbreak in a pig farm in North Carolina. This information reopens the question of what killed the individuals whose deaths were attributed to swine flu.
While little is understood about the specifics of this new strain, influenza in general has a definitive pattern. It is a virus that affects the respiratory system, and particularly the lungs. At its deadliest it can cause secondary infections — typically bacterial rather than viral — leading to pneumonia. In the most virulent forms of influenza, it is the speed with which complications strike that drives death rates higher. Additionally, substantively new strains (as swine flu is suspected of being) can be distinct enough from other strains of flu that pre-existing immunity gained from flus of years past does not help fend off the latest variation.
Influenza is not a disease that lingers and then kills people — save the sick, old and very young, whose immune systems are more easily compromised. Roughly half a million people (largely from these groups) die annually worldwide from more common strains of influenza, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) pegging average American deaths at roughly 36,000 per year.
Swine flu deaths have not risen as would be expected at this point for a highly contagious and lethal new strain of influenza. In most cases, victims have experienced little more than a bad cold, from which they are recovering. And infections outside Mexico so far have not been severe. This distinction of clear cases of death in Mexico and none elsewhere (again, save the one U.S. case) is stark.
Much of what has occurred in the last week regarding the new virus reminds us of the bird flu scare of 2005. Then as now, the commonly held belief was that a deadly strain was about to be let loose on humanity. Then as now, many governments were heightening concerns rather than quelling them. Then as now, STRATFOR saw only a very small chance of the situation becoming problematic.
Ultimately, by the end of last week it had become clear to the global public that “pandemic” could refer to bad colds as well as to plagues wiping out millions.
A Real Crisis
The recent swine flu experience raises the question of how one would attempt to grapple with a genuine high-mortality pandemic with major consequences. The answer divides into two parts: how to control the spread, and how to deploy treatments.
Communicability
The flu virus is widely present in two species other than humans, namely, birds and pigs. The history of the disease is the history of its transmission within and across these three species. It is comparatively easy for the disease to transmit from swine to birds and from swine to humans; the bird-to-human barrier is the most difficult to cross.
Cross-species influenza is of particular concern. In the simplest terms, viruses are able to recombine (e.g., human flu and avian flu can merge into a hybrid flu strain). What comes out can be a flu transmissible to humans, but with a physical form that is distinctly avian — meaning it fails to alert human immune systems to the intrusion. This can rob the human immune system of the ability to quickly recognize the disease and put up a fight.
New humanly transmissible influenza strains often have been found to originate in places where humans, pigs and/or fowl live in close proximity to each other — particularly in agricultural areas where animal and human habitation is shared or in which constant, close physical contact takes place.
Agricultural areas of Asia with dense populations, relatively small farms and therefore frequent and prolonged contact between species traditionally have been the areas in which influenza strains have transferred from animals to humans and then mutated into diseases transmissible by casual human contact. Indeed, these areas have been the focus of concern over a potential outbreak of bird flu. This time around, the outbreak began in Mexico (though it is not yet clear where the virus itself originated).
And this is key to understanding this flu. Because it appears relatively mild, it might well have been around for quite awhile — giving people mild influenza, but not standing out as a new variety until it hit Mexico. The simultaneous discovery of the strain amid a series of deaths (and what may now be in hindsight inflated concerns about its lethality) led to the recent crisis footing.
Any time such threats are recognized, they already are beyond containment. Given travel patterns in the world today, viruses move easily to new locations well before they are identified in the first place they strike. The current virus is a case in point. It appears, although it is far from certain, that it originated in the Veracruz area of Mexico. Within two days of the Mexican government having issued a health alert, it already had spread as far afield as New Zealand. One week on, cases completely unrelated to Mexico have already been confirmed on five continents.
In all probability, this “spread” was less the discovery of new areas of infection than the random discovery of areas that might have been infected for weeks or even months (though the obvious first people to test were those who had recently returned from Mexico with flu symptoms). Given the apparent mildness of the infection, most people would not go to the doctor. And if they did, the doctor would call it generic flu and not even concern himself with its type. What happened last week appears to have been less the spread of a new influenza virus than the “discovery” of places to which it had spread awhile ago.
The problem with the new variety was not that it was so deadly; had it actually been as uniquely deadly as it first appeared to be, there would have been no mistaking its arrival, because hospitals would be overflowing. It was precisely its mildness that sparked the search. But because of expectations established in the wake of the Mexico deaths, the discovery of new cases was disassociated from its impact. Its presence alone caused panic, with schools closing and border closings discussed.
The virus traveled faster than news of the virus. When the news of the virus finally caught up with the virus, the global perception was shaped by a series of deaths suddenly recognized in Mexico (as mentioned, deaths so far not seen elsewhere). But even as the Mexican Health Ministry begins to consider the virus beyond its peak, the potential for mutation and a more virulent strain in the next flu season looms.
Mortality
As mentioned, viruses that spread through casual human contact can be globally established before anyone knows of it. The first sign of a really significant influenza pandemic will not come from the medical community or the WHO; it will come from the fact that people are catching influenza and dying, and are doing so all over the world at the same time. The system established for detecting spreading diseases is hardwired to be behind the curve. This is not because it is inefficient, but because no matter how efficient, it cannot block casual contact — which, given modern air transportation, spreads diseases globally in a matter of days or even hours.
Therefore, the problem is not the detection of deadly pandemics, simply because they cannot be missed. Rather, the problem is reacting medically to deadly pandemics. One danger is overreacting to every pandemic and thereby breaking the system. (As of this writing, the CDC remained deeply concerned about swine flu, though calm seems to be returning.)
The other danger is not reacting rapidly enough. In the case of influenza, medical steps can be taken. First, there are anti-viral medicines found to be effective against the new strain, and if sufficient stockpiles exist — which is hardly universally the case, especially in the developing world — and those stockpiles can be administered early enough, the course of the disease can be mitigated. Second, since most people die from secondary infection in the lungs, antibiotics can be administered. Unlike with the 1918 pandemic, the mortality rate can be dramatically reduced.
The problem here is logistical: The distribution and effective administration of medications is a challenge. Producing enough of the medication is one problem; it takes months to craft, grow and produce a new vaccine, and the flu vaccine is tailored every year to deal with the three most dangerous strains of flu. Another problem is moving the medication to areas where it is needed in an environment that maintains its effectiveness. Equally important is the existence of infrastructure and medical staff capable of diagnosing, administering and supporting patients — and doing so on a scale never before attempted.
These things will not be done effectively on a global basis. That is inevitable. But influenza, even at the highest death rates ever recorded for the disease, does not threaten human existence as we know it. At its worst, flu will kill a lot of people, but the human race and the international order will survive.
The true threat to humanity, if it ever comes, will not come from influenza. Rather, it will come from a disease spread through casual human contact, but with a higher mortality rate than flu and no clear treatment. While HIV/AIDS boasts an extraordinarily high mortality rate and no cure exists, it at least does not spread through casual contact as influenza does, and so the pace at which it can spread is limited.
Humanity will survive the worst that influenza can throw at it even without intervention. With modern intervention, its effect declines dramatically. But the key problem of pandemics was revealed in this case: The virus spread well before information on it spread. Detection and communication lagged. That did not matter in this case, and it did not matter in the case of HIV/AIDS, because the latter was a disease that did not spread through casual contact. However, should a disease arise that is as deadly as HIV, that spreads through casual contact, about which there is little knowledge and for which there is no cure, the medical capabilities of humanity would be virtually useless.
There are problems to which there are no solutions. Fortunately, these problems may not arise. But if they do, no amount of helpful public service announcements from the CDC and the WHO will make the slightest bit of difference.
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Having been a soldier for many years, I watch this video and likely respond differently from the majority of people in America. You see, our soldiers and warriors are our most precious treasure. For too long, well meaning politicians piss them away for reasons that have nothing to do with the defense of our country or our national interest.
There is nothing as awesome as an American warrior fighting in defense of their country. You see, unlike most nations an American warrior fights and risks all because he chooses freely to do so on behalf of his nation, not because he has no choice. It is an alien concept to the altruistic mentalities that are so common on the rest of this planet where the state compels the individual to serve and sacrifice in their name.
If you have been though one of the week or more SERE "experiences" there is a good likelihood you got to experience this technique presented here in a video by left leaning liberal Playboy magazine.
Is it torture? It is something that the left loves to whine about. Is there a resistance process one can use when exposed to the technique? All things you walk out of SERE knowing.
But, is it torture? If knowing what is coming and how you are going to react is torture, then yes it is. But if that is the case, then I suggest our liberal whiny weenies take a look at the use of a CS gas chamber, Navy or Ft. Rucker's dunker training and USAF altitude chamber. Is that training torture?
After a while it gets silly doesn't it? You see, all those "experiences" like the ones in SERE, teach you what to expect, what to recognize when you respond, and what you can realistically expect when it all happens. It's all unpleasant training and amazingly all vital to your survival when it happens for real.
That is one reason that our politicians have done us all a great disservice by wringing their hands and thumping their liberal breasts about "waterboarding." Do you think our enemies have not begun their own versions of SERE? You're a rube if you think otherwise.
When the next terrorist attack leaves thousands of Americans dead, think about how the Pelosi politicians, MSNBC media and DailyKos nut-job types helped the terrorists out. May the cries and the tears of those that will suffer from the next one never leave the collective consciousness of those who hate this country so much they align with the goals of those who seek us harm.
A Chilling Effect on U.S. Counterterrorism (STRATFOR) By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
Over the past couple of weeks, we have been carefully watching the fallout from the Obama administration’s decision to release four classified memos from former President George W. Bush’s administration that authorized “enhanced interrogation techniques.” In a visit to CIA headquarters last week, President Barack Obama promised not to prosecute agency personnel who carried out such interrogations, since they were following lawful orders. Critics of the techniques, such as Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., have called for the formation of a “truth commission” to investigate the matter, and Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., has called on Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to launch a criminal inquiry into the matter.
Realistically, those most likely to face investigation and prosecution are those who wrote the memos, rather than the low-level field personnel who acted in good faith based upon the guidance the memos provided. Despite this fact and Obama’s reassurances, our contacts in the intelligence community report that the release of the memos has had a discernible “chilling effect” on those in the clandestine service who work on counterterrorism issues.
In some ways, the debate over the morality of such interrogation techniques — something we do not take a position on and will not be discussing here — has distracted many observers from examining the impact that the release of these memos is having on the ability of the U.S. government to fulfill its counterterrorism mission. And this impact has little to do with the ability to use torture to interrogate terrorist suspects.
Politics and moral arguments aside, the end effect of the memos’ release is that people who have put their lives on the line in U.S. counterterrorism efforts are now uncertain of whether they should be making that sacrifice. Many of these people are now questioning whether the administration that happens to be in power at any given time will recognize the fact that they were carrying out lawful orders under a previous administration. It is hard to retain officers and attract quality recruits in this kind of environment. It has become safer to work in programs other than counterterrorism.
The memos’ release will not have a catastrophic effect on U.S. counterterrorism efforts. Indeed, most of the information in the memos was leaked to the press years ago and has long been public knowledge. However, when the release of the memos is examined in a wider context, and combined with a few other dynamics, it appears that the U.S. counterterrorism community is quietly slipping back into an atmosphere of risk-aversion and malaise — an atmosphere not dissimilar to that described by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9/11 Commission) as a contributing factor to the intelligence failures that led to the 9/11 attacks.
Cycles Within Cycles
In March we wrote about the cycle of counterterrorism funding and discussed indications that the United States is entering a period of reduced counterterrorism funding. This decrease in funding not only will affect defensive counterterrorism initiatives like embassy security and countersurveillance programs, but also will impact offensive programs such as the number of CIA personnel dedicated to the counterterrorism role.
Beyond funding, however, there is another historical cycle of booms and busts that can be seen in the conduct of American clandestine intelligence activities. There are clearly discernible periods when clandestine activities are deemed very important and are widely employed. These periods are inevitably followed by a time of investigations, reductions in clandestine activities and a tightening of control and oversight over such activities.
After the widespread employment of clandestine activities in the Vietnam War era, the Church Committee was convened in 1975 to review (and ultimately restrict) such operations. Former President Ronald Reagan’s appointment of Bill Casey as director of the CIA ushered in a new era of growth as the United States became heavily engaged in clandestine activities in Afghanistan and Central America. Then, the revelation of the Iran-Contra affair in 1986 led to a period of hearings and controls.
There was a slight uptick in clandestine activities under the presidency of George H.W. Bush, but the fall of the Soviet Union led to another bust cycle for the intelligence community. By the mid-1990s, the number of CIA stations and bases was dramatically reduced (and virtually eliminated in much of Africa) for budgetary considerations. Then there was the case of Jennifer Harbury, a Harvard-educated lawyer who used little-known provisions in Texas common law to marry a dead Guatemalan guerrilla commander and gain legal standing as his widow. After it was uncovered that a CIA source was involved in the guerrilla commander’s execution, CIA stations in Latin America were gutted for political reasons. The Harbury case also led to the Torricelli Amendment, a law that made recruiting unsavory people, such as those with ties to death squads and terrorist groups, illegal without special approval. This bust cycle was well documented by both the Crowe Commission, which investigated the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings, and the 9/11 Commission.
After the 9/11 attacks, the pendulum swung radically to the permissive side and clandestine activity was rapidly and dramatically increased as the U.S. sought to close the intelligence gap and quickly develop intelligence on al Qaeda’s capability and plans. Developments over the past two years clearly indicate that the United States is once again entering an intelligence bust cycle, a period that will be marked by hearings, increased controls and a general decrease in clandestine activity.
Institutional Culture
It is also very important to realize that the counterterrorism community is just one small part of the larger intelligence community that is affected by this ebb and flow of covert activity. In fact, as noted above, the counterterrorism component of intelligence efforts has its own boom-and-bust cycle that is based on major attacks. Soon after a major attack, interest in counterterrorism spikes dramatically, but as time passes without a major attack, interest lags. Other than during the peak times of this cycle, counterterrorism is considered an ancillary program that is sometimes seen as an interesting side tour of duty, but more widely seen as being outside the mainstream career path — risky and not particularly career-enhancing. This assessment is reinforced by such events as the recent release of the memos.
At the CIA, being a counterterrorism specialist in the clandestine service means that you will most likely spend much of your life in places line Sanaa, Islamabad and Kabul instead of Vienna, Paris or London. This means that, in addition to hurting your chances for career advancement, your job also is quite dangerous, provides relatively poor living conditions for your family and offers the possibility of contracting serious diseases.
While being declared persona non grata and getting kicked out of a country as part of an intelligence spat is considered almost a badge of honor at the CIA, the threat of being arrested and indicted for participating in the rendition of a terrorist suspect from an allied country like Italy is not. Equally unappealing is being sued in civil court by a terrorist suspect or facing the possibility of prosecution after a change of government in the United States. Over the past few years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of CIA case officers who are choosing to carry personal liability insurance because they do not trust the agency and the U.S. government to look out for their best interests.
Now, there are officers who are willing to endure hardship and who do not really care much about career advancement, but for those officers there is another hazard — frustration. Aggressive officers dedicated to the counterterrorism mission quickly learn that many of the people in the food chain above them are concerned about their careers, and these superiors often take measures to rein in their less-mainstream subordinates. Additionally, due to the restrictions brought about by laws and regulations like the Torricelli Amendment, case officers working counterterrorism are often tightly bound by myriad legal restrictions.
Unlike in television shows like “24,” it is not uncommon in the real world for a meeting called to plan a counterterrorism operation to feature more CIA lawyers than case officers or analysts. These staff lawyers are intricately involved in the operational decisions made at headquarters, and legal issues often trump operational considerations. The need to obtain legal approval often delays decisions long enough for a critical window of operational opportunity to be slammed shut. This restrictive legal environment goes back many years in the CIA and is not a new fixture brought in by the Obama administration. There was a sense of urgency that served to trump the lawyers to some extent after 9/11, but the lawyers never went away and have reasserted themselves firmly over the past several years.
Of course, the CIA is not the only agency with a culture that is less than supportive of the counterterrorism mission. Although the prevention of terrorist attacks in the United States is currently the FBI’s No. 1 priority on paper, the counterterrorism mission remains the bureau’s redheaded stepchild. The FBI is struggling to find agents willing to serve in the counterterrorism sections of field offices, resident agencies (smaller offices that report to a field office) and joint terrorism task forces.
While the CIA was very much built on the legacy of Wild Bill Donovan’s Office of Strategic Services, the FBI was founded by J. Edgar Hoover, a conservative and risk-averse administrator who served as FBI director from 1935-1972. Even today, Hoover’s influence is clearly evident in the FBI’s bureaucratic nature. FBI special agents are unable to do much at all, such as open an investigation, without a supervisor’s approval, and supervisors are reluctant to approve anything too adventurous because of the impact it might have on their chance for promotion. Unlike many other law enforcement agencies, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the FBI rarely uses its own special agents in an undercover capacity to penetrate criminal organizations. That practice is seen as being too risky; they prefer to use confidential informants rather than undercover operatives.
The FBI is also strongly tied to its roots in law enforcement and criminal investigation, and special agents who work major theft, public corruption or white-collar crime cases tend to receive more recognition — and advance more quickly — than their counterterrorism counterparts.
FBI special agents also see a considerable downside to working counterterrorism cases because of the potential for such cases to blow up in their faces if they make a mistake — such as in the New York field office’s highly publicized mishandling of the informant whom they had inserted into the group that later conducted the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. It is much safer, and far more rewarding from a career perspective, to work bank robberies or serve in the FBI’s Inspection Division.
After the 9/11 attacks — and the corresponding spike in the importance of counterterrorism operations — many of the resources of the CIA and FBI were focused on al Qaeda and terrorism, to the detriment of programs such as foreign counterintelligence. However, the more time that has passed since 9/11 without another major attack, the more the organizational culture of the U.S government has returned to normal. Once again, counterterrorism efforts are seen as being ancillary duties rather than the organizations’ driving mission. (The clash between organizational culture and the counterterrorism mission is by no means confined to the CIA and FBI. Fred’s book “Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent” provides a detailed examination of some of the bureaucratic and cultural challenges we faced while serving in the Counterterrorism Investigations Division of the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service.)
Liaison Services
One of the least well known, and perhaps most important, sources of intelligence in the counterterrorism field is the information that is obtained as a result of close relationships with allied intelligence agencies — often referred to as information obtained through “liaison channels.”
Like FBI agents, most CIA officers are well-educated, middle-aged white guys. This means they are better suited to use the cover of an American businessmen or diplomat than to pretend to be a young Muslim trying to join al Qaeda or Hezbollah. Like their counterparts in the FBI, CIA officers have far more success using informants than they do working undercover inside terrorist groups.
Services like the Jordanian General Intelligence Department, the Saudi Mabahith or the Yemeni National Security Agency not only can recruit sources, but also are far more successful in using young Muslim officers to penetrate terrorist groups. In addition to their source networks and penetration operations, many of these liaison services are not at all squeamish about using extremely enhanced interrogation techniques — this is the reason many of the terrorism suspects who were the subject of rendition operations ended up in such locations. Obviously, whenever the CIA is dealing with a liaison service, the political interests and objectives of the service must be considered — as should the possibility that the liaison service is fabricating the intelligence in question for whatever reason. Still, in the end, the CIA historically has received a significant amount of important intelligence (perhaps even most of its intelligence) via liaison channels.
Another concern that arises from the call for a truth commission is the impact a commission investigation could have on the liaison services that have helped the United States in its counterterrorism efforts since 9/11. Countries that hosted CIA detention facilities or were involved in the rendition or interrogation of terrorist suspects may find themselves exposed publicly or even held up for some sort of sanction by the U.S. Congress. Such activities could have a real impact on the amount of cooperation and information the CIA receives from these intelligence services. Conclusion
As we’ve previously noted, it was a lack of intelligence that helped fuel the fear that led the Bush administration to authorize enhanced interrogation techniques. Ironically, the current investigation into those techniques and other practices (such as renditions) may very well lead to significant gaps in terrorism-related intelligence from both internal and liaison sources — again, not primarily because of the prohibition of torture, but because of larger implications.
When these implications are combined with the long-standing institutional aversion of U.S. government agencies toward counterterrorism, and with the difficulty of finding and retaining good people willing to serve in counterterrorism roles, the U.S. counterterrorism community may soon be facing challenges even more daunting than those posed by its already difficult mission.
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