From: Greg Burch (gregburch@gregburch.net)
Date: Thu Jan 23 2003 - 07:05:47 MST
For the first time in weeks, I've been able to scan almost every message
from the List that's come in over the last day, and see that the
discussion of the possible war in Iraq is dominating the bandwidth and
that the expression of opinions is as unfriendly as any I've seen before
here -- matching the small list of topics that have previously caused
such furor. I perceive a deep division that the most vocal advocates on
each side see as emblematic of ideological differences that span many
issues; not just the possibility of war in Iraq. Given the furor, I
thought I'd throw out my own thoughts and feelings on the subject.
First, I've asked myself the question of whether the subject of the Iraq
war has a sufficiently transhumanist or extropian component to warrant
such a huge portion of the bandwidth here. In many ways, the subject is
skew to extropians interests, since the potential combatants on both
sides have so little sympathy for extropian ideas and ideals. But,
ultimately I suppose there is sufficient relevance to the reason for
this List's existence to tolerate such a large volume of discussion: To
name just three, questions of war and peace on such a scale can effect
that march of progress toward a transhuman world, the evolution of
methods of warfare will be relevant to our interests, and the
geopolitical alignment of the large interest groups in the world over
the next few decades will certainly have an impact on our goals.
Second, for the record, I'll say that I'm deeply ambivalent about the
prospect of war in Iraq. I have no sympathy for Saddam Hussein or the
culture that allows such people to hold power. I find that culture to
be so pathologically corrupt that there is little or no chance that the
Iraqi people will ever throw off the rule of Saddam on their own, and
that there is every likelihood that he will be replaced by someone just
as bad or worse when he finally dies. On the other hand, as of today, I
think the Bush administration has done a poor job of justifying
immediate, large-scale war to unseat Saddam.
The shape of current events seems to me to be sculpted by the logic of
military logistics more than anything else: It takes about six months
for the current U.S. military machine to mobilize and reposition itself
to fight a war of the scale that is contemplated, and the entire pace of
the current crisis seems to be dictated by that fact. The U.S. military
will be in position to launch a campaign in Iraq in February, and it
will be politically difficult and very expensive to hold the forces in
readiness for much longer beyond that; therefore, the timing of the
deadline for Saddam's compliance has to be aligned with the fairly
narrow window of time in which an optimal force-readiness profile can be
maintained. This has stripped U.S. diplomacy of the ability to be
flexible, and has forced U.S. policymakers into a narrow range of
possible positions and responses to the opinion of allies and the
diplomatic maneuvers of U.S. opponents. The diplomatic dialogue takes
place over a time span of 12- and 24-hour news cycles; the military
situation evolves much more slowly and with much less flexibility.
On this last point, I've been doing quite a bit of reading in the area
of military policy lately, and the subject of "force transformation" (as
it is known in the jargon) is paramount in the literature. Military
policy wonks realize that the long time periods it takes to reposition
and reconfigure meaningful amounts of military force create an extreme
limit on the flexibility of diplomatic capabilities. Basically, the
idea is that the Cold War, with its objectives fixed over a half
century, allowed U.S. forces to evolve into heavy, lumbering,
overly-complex monstrosities whose clumsiness place an extreme limit on
policy options. The First Gulf War was a wake-up call, but the
transformation it heralded takes a LONG time. Unfortunately, the
current Iraq conflict is being played out when "force transformation"
has barely begun. The pace and texture of a similar conflict will look
very different in ten years: A U.S. president will have more options and
will be able to be both strong and flexible, something that isn't really
possible now. In fact, one can see the foreign policy contrast between
the Clinton and Bush II years as being characterized as two different
choices in a binary dilemma: strong OR flexible. Clinton chose the
latter, Bush II seems to be choosing the former.
Seen in this light, the extreme division of opinion on the List over the
Iraq conflict can be seen as a choice forced by the lack of flexibility
of U.S. military forces. Perhaps we can say that the "doves" counsel a
Clintonian approach: If you can't be flexible, then you must be patient
and wait to deal with problems such as a dangerous person like Saddam
until you have the flexibility to take a more morally nuanced approach.
The "hawks" seem to say, using the phrase I learned from one of my
engineer clients, "do the best you can with what you got."
Unfortunately, I've used up all the time I had for writing this morning,
so I'll have to leave the topic at this.
Greg Burch
Vice-President, Extropy Institute
http://www.gregburch.net
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