you can look forward to celebrating your non success again in a decade.
I am sure you were cheering the last great victory when you “won” by the hard power in 2003, in 2006…
The famous King of Epirus, he would be proud of your analysis, so found he was of your approach and so famous for it.
So what’s the ‘soft power’ solution to ISIS?
Why not give us your hard-nosed and realistic solution so that we may compare it?
This is a small bit of it, in action. Basically, kill the people who fly black flags and slit people’s throats. In this particular example, the ones holed up in and around the Grand al-Nuri Mosque.
Yes, I am sure I completely wasted time.
Not having DAESH to begin with, King of Epirus.
For the Iraq, itis not continuing to repeat the idiotic errors of the americans since 2003 of reliance on the hard power and removing the long term reasons the DAESH attracted the domestic Iraqi foot soldiers to begin with.
So you can celebrate your spending of billions for the great successes you have had since 2003… you can play King of Epirus at repetition, again and again “winning” the same battle again and again like the autistic child hitting his head against the wall, sure he will win his way.
(of course the idea that it is a black and white choice between the hard power and the soft power is a childish approach to the issue and is in fact completely wrong)
Except for this
That’s right, and did America achieve that all by itself? No, it had to secure airspace, had to borrow runways, had to create supply lines, had to get ports of call, and had to have diplomatic channels so that we wouldn’t get thrown out of these countries when trying to preserve the peace.
The United States won the Cold War. How? Hint: it wasn’t by winning hot wars because as it was already pointed out to you, we’ve won very few wars outright since 1945. No, it was by convincing the rest of the world that our economic and political model was a better one than what the USSR had to offer. Some were less sold on our political model than on capitalism, but our presence was still felt and ultimately a force for good I’d say.
Without a doubt, the projection of power, the appearance of power and making the consequences of an all-out unrestrained war with the United States certainly made it obvious that an all-out war with the United States would be disastrous. But guess what? The Soviet Union made it clear that any all-out confrontation with them would be just as disastrous for us. So therein lies the boundary of ‘hard power’.
Our best hand to play, therefore, was exactly what others have pointed out to you: soft power. The United States helped create a successful stable liberal democratic and a vibrant center of economic activity in Europe, which was in stark contrast to the model over the fence in Eastern Europe. I submit that this is what qualifies as an example of soft power’s success. Soft power alone cannot repel the likes of a territorial thirsty empire but it can when used in conjunction with hard power.
There is no question that Europe needs hard power to back up its soft power against threats to the East. We can laugh about it now and call them pvssies if we want to beat our chest and brag about how we’re pissing away resources that could be used to fund our crumbling infrastructure and educational system on a military monstrosity that can’t even win a fucking hot war anymore. We can snicker if we want, but if Europe cannot rely on the United States for support, then it will have to build up its own military forces, which will have its own consequences. It could easily ignite another wave of Continental nationalism, and believe me: nobody does nationalism like Europe. They are the World Cup champions in that category. It would almost surely touch off another arms race. I know Trump supporters probably don’t care what happens beyond their own state borders, but the U.S. is too big and its population of 320 million too dependent on international trade not to get drawn into international conflict. As I said, our lazy-boy recliner team 6 is going to end up getting a lot of young American men and women needlessly killed in the future.
Indeed, in the 1950s the W. Europeans like the French and the Italians did not go Communist not due to a fear of the American armies, indeed resentment of the bullying behaviors probably made the hard Left more popular, but due to the soft power attraction, the positive side of the model.
That is not an answer. It’s a fantasy.
I’m not asking you what we should have done differently 15 years ago (and for the record, America has - at least partially - relied on hard power since way before 2003). I’m asking you what we ought to do tomorrow / next week / next year.
What do you see as “the long term reasons the DAESH attracted the domestic Iraqi foot soldiers to begin with” and what can America do to remove them?
There’s a similar dynamic at play on the Korean Peninsula that I think does a good job illustrating the boundary of soft power too. We did basically the same thing: “helped create a successful stable liberal democratic and a vibrant center of economic activity” in South Korea (after a fairly thorough application of hard power). Despite being just a few miles away, that shiny example of freedom and prosperity seems to have been utterly incapable of coaxing the North Koreans into abandoning their war-mongering and adopting Western values.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, I guess. Kind of like blowing shit up.
I’m not sure if this was meant as a jab at Navy SEALs, but if it was, it was totally not cool.
You can’t just ask about tomorrow – you have to acknowledge the fact that the hard power solution to Saddam’s Iraq created a power vacuum that destabilized an entire region. More importantly, it caused us to waste precious resources and lose focus on conflicts that were, at one time, possibly winnable, small victories being what they are. That was his point.
It was not a jab at Navy Seals – it was a jab at people who promote the use of military force while sitting in front of a computer keyboard. I’ll stick to ‘armchair warriors’ from now on.
no it is not fantasy, it is a pure historical reality - you are simply ignorant then of the history.
The DAESH spins out directly from the Americans errors of 2003, the collapse of the seucrity at the collapse of the Baath regime, the escape of the Salafist prisoners, as well as the radicalization of the Sunni in the huge error of the “debaathification” that was used by the Shia power grabbers and the Shia radicals to oppress in reverse the Sunni- in making the Versailles kind of internal peace while clumsily selling to the naive and gullible Americans in the language of the WWII their excusionary policies.
The vast radicalization of the Sunni population created the fertile ground for the emergence of the the al Qaeda salafist movement as a resistance against both the clumsy and blind americans and the Shia supremacists…
the very model of what the Maoists called the guerilla fish swimming in the sea of the resentful population.
There is ZERO fantasy in the avoidance of the emergence of the Al Qaeda in Iraq that became then the DAESH - these emerged as the strong organizations after the specific fuck ups of the Americans and their exclusive reliance on their army and the complete failure of the post war planning. There was no structured organization of that before these specific errors.
What you are doing is playing the partisans american word games.
you asked for the examples of the soft power and showed in the response you have no idea about the concept and have confused it with the crisis management. It is like the drunk driver who has crashed shouting about how useless the defensive driving is…
(and I do not need any lesson about the american history of the usage of power, I showed some examples of when the americans did not be stupid and just try to rely on the bullying arrogance)
You americans have already broken the vase, it is not about you - but the retaking of Mosul is not either about you. It is about the Iraqis.
What the Iraqi govrernment can do is to address the legitimate grievances of the Sunni population and reduce the influence of the Shia radical, to reinstate the reconcilatory approach that was briefly in place when the original al Qaeda in Iraq organization - that the DAESH leadership came from directly - was actually defeated by the Sunni tribes. but those promises were betrayed. The Iraqi government can adopt a soft power and build inclusion of the Sunni (and the Kurdish sunni too) or they can continue the cycle of repeated failure in the american fashion, relying on the security forces alone, the hard power, the suppression until it blows up yet again…
But you continue to completely not undrestand the idea of the soft power - and continue to think it the crisis management. It is the avoidance of the crisis to begin with, as has been the successful policy inside of the European theater.
Do you believe the Iraqis could accomplish the retaking of Mosul without a significant contribution from American hard power?
Are you saying that Europe manages to avoid all crises now? When did this delightful pattern begin, in your estimation?
Why do you not tell me what your ground order of battle is and then you can compare it to the Iraqi forces who are on the ground fighting the house by the house as some kinds of americans take the credit for others blood spilled.
Of course this is just the silly straw man.
Are you trying to think of huge new StrawMen and similar goal post moving distractions to hide your ignorance of the history of the Iraqi situation or of the developments of the Europe?
If not, you can read about the various kinds of the poor thinking that is behind the logical fallacy which you have blundered into in the shoddy construction of this straw man.
LOL. You’re waxing poetic about straw men while constructing one of your own. I never made any claim about a “ground order of battle” or tried to “take the credit for others blood spilled”. Go back and read my post #116 again, and try answering the first question I asked. It’s a relatively simple one.
I read it fine, it is a straw man.
air power does not retake cities.
Could the Iraqi ground forces retake the city of Mosul without american bombs, probably yes. Air power does not retake cities.
Does the american air power make things easier, yes, but that does not remove the initial observation - the reptiation of the Battle of Pyrrhus does not solve the origin of the problem, the repittion of the battles of Pyrrhus that comes from the failure of the building of the sustinable situation, the failure of the americans to use a soft power and their blundering that created the Iraqi instability.
the repitition of hte failure to understand that the soft power is the avoidance of the future crisis, not the crisis management after your past hard power fialures does not change the conversation taht remains that of the angry drunken driver asking about why the defensive driving did not save him from the drunk driving accident
And so
(1) the soft power like the defensive driving does not eliminate the accidents (the crisis) or the needs for a airbag (the hard power) it reduces the accidents and can reduce the damage when they happen
(2) the fact that a drunk driver has gotten himself into a situation where no longer does the defensive driving make any sense as it is too late and he is drunk is not the refutation of the defensive driving utility, it is only the indictment of the clumsiness and the inattention of that drunk driver.