President Barack Obama

President Barack Obama has expressed his oppositon to the coup d’etat by the Honduras army that deposed that contry’s elected President. Obama made the comment to journalists while meeting with the President of Columbia at the White House.

Central America has a history of the military overthrowing civillian governments. The coup in Honduras is a test for the Obama administration. One issue is the stong affinity between the deposed head of state of Honduras and the controversial President of Venuzuela, Hugo Chavez. While supporting the restoration of the deposed President of Honduras, Barack Obama may be hesitant at being seen on the same political side as Chavez. The Obama administration will need to handle this issue carefully.

Message from Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States, to his supporters, on the upcoming battle on health care:

Last year, millions of Americans came together for a great purpose.

Folks like you assembled a grassroots movement that shocked the political establishment and changed the course of our nation. When Washington insiders counted us out, we put it all on the line and changed our democracy from the bottom up. But that’s not why we did it.

The pundits told us it was impossible — that the donations working people could afford and the hours volunteers could give would never loosen the vise grip of big money and powerful special interests. We proved them wrong. But as important as that was, that’s not why we did it.

Today, spiraling health care costs are pushing our families and businesses to the brink of ruin, while millions of Americans go without the care they desperately need. Fixing this broken system will be enormously difficult. But we can succeed. The chance to make fundamental change like this in people’s daily lives — that is why we did it.

The campaign to pass real health care reform in 2009 is the biggest test of our movement since the election. Once again, victory is far from certain. Our opposition will be fierce, and they have been down this road before. To prevail, we must once more build a coast-to-coast operation ready to knock on doors, deploy volunteers, get out the facts, and show the world how real change happens in America.

And just like before, I cannot do it without your support.

So I’m asking you to remember all that you gave over the last two years to get us here — all the time, resources, and faith you invested as a down payment to earn us our place at this crossroads in history. All that you’ve done has led up to this — and whether or not our country takes the next crucial step depends on what you do right now.

Thank you, so much, for getting us this far. And thank you for standing up once again to take us the rest of the way.

Sincerely,

President Barack Obama

Ironically, even after 9/11, the Bush administration still considered Afghanistan somewhat of a backwater theatre of operations, choosing to mount its major military effort in Iraq, a country that did not attack America. For most of the last 8 years, the battle against a resurgent Taliban has been fought by a small contingent of U.S. troops, reinforced by a dozen or more NATO allies involving a multitude of microscopic deployments, each with its own unique rules of engagement. The opposition to the Islamist forces in Afghanistan can best be described as a multi-headed hydra mounted on a small body. Military specialists, especially those with expertise on counterinsurgency and partisan warfare, would not be surprised at the current negative character of the war in Afghanistan, which has spilled over into Pakistan, in the process destabilizing that nuclear-armed state.

President Barack Obama has long been opposed to the military adventure in Iraq, on the grounds that it had dangerously distracted the United States from focusing on crushing Al-Qaeda and its allies in Afghanistan. History has already validated Obama’s assessment on what the correct priority should have been for the U.S. armed forces. The question now facing Obama and his administration is what strategy to pursue in Afghanistan. The fragments that have emerged so far seem to indicate two trends; modestly reinforce the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan, while linking the Taliban and Al-Qaeda presence in neighboring Pakistan to the overall theater of operations.

Will President Obama’s approach on Afghanistan prove more efficacious than that of George W. Bush? The lessons of history raise doubts that deserve serious reflection. The United States has not had a stellar record in winning wars against determined insurgents fighting a fierce guerrilla war. Vietnam is a conspicuous reminder that even hundreds of thousands of American troops, backed by massive technical means and a powerful airforce, cannot guarantee victory.

There is a voice from the distant past who has something to say that is highly relevant to the military challenges facing the U.S. military in Afghanistan. The Swiss military theoretician, Antoine Henri Jomini, served as a senior staff officer in Napoleon’s army during the Peninsular War. This brutal, conflict, fought on the Iberian Peninsula, began with the occupation of Spain by the French army. The population revolted, leading to a savage conflict that gave rise to the term “guerrilla war.” The British sent a small but well disciplined professional army to aid the Spanish insurgents, under the command of the Duke of Wellington. In five years the combined army of Spanish guerrillas and British regular troops utterly defeated the French. Napoleon’s defeat in the Peninsular War, combined with his forced retreat from Russia, brought about his ultimate downfall.

When writing his seminal work, “Art of War,” Jomini applied the lessons he had learned during the Peninsular War to form general principals and doctrine on guerrilla and insurgent conflicts. The principals he laid down align with the American experience in Afghanistan with chilling relevance.

“When the people are supported by a considerable nucleus of disciplined troops, the difficulties are particularly great,” wrote Jomini. “The invader has only an army, whereas his adversaries have both an army and a people in arms, making means of resistance out of everything and with each individual conspiring against the common enemy.”

With centuries of virtually uninterrupted warfare, including a brutal Soviet occupation that the Afghans successfully resisted, a large component of the country’s male population is well trained in small arms tactics, making expert use of their land’s barren and mountainous terrain. Just as Wellington’s troops added stiffening to the ranks of the Spanish guerrilla fighters, there exists a large corps of veteran fighters, including commanders, that multiplies the effectiveness of the younger insurgents joining the ranks of the Taliban in sufficient numbers to extend the conflict indefinitely.

Jomini provides a description of what he learned about insurgencies in the Peninsular War, lessons that are applicable two centuries later in the mountains of Afghanistan:

“These obstacles become almost insurmountable when the country is difficult. Each armed inhabitant knows the smallest paths and their connections; he finds everywhere a relative or friend who aids him. The commanders also know the country and, learning immediately the slightest movement on the part of the invader, can adopt the best measures to defeat his projects. The enemy, without information of their movements and not in a condition to reconnoiter, having no resource but in his bayonets and certain of safety only in the concentration of his columns, is like a blind man. His combinations are failures. When, after the most carefully concerted movements and the most rapid and fatiguing marches he thinks he is about to accomplish his aim and deal a terrible blow, he finds no signs of the enemy but his campfires. So while, like Don Quixote, he is attacking windmills, his adversary is on his line of communications, destroys the detachments left to guard it, surprises his convoys and his depots, and carries on a war so disastrous for the invader that he must inevitably yield after a time.”

Unless President Barack Obama restores the military draft, raises an army of several hundred thousand soldiers to occupy and guard every vital installation in Afghanistan, and convinces the American people that they must sustain such a massive occupation for possibly decades, and accept substantial casualties and massively increased military expenditures, he will lack the means to challenge the insurgency in a decisive manner. As commander in chief, therefore, Obama is faced with two choices. He either maintains the status quo with slightly more troops, which will mean only prolonged stalemate. Or he can refocus U.S. objectives on the limited goal of ensuring Afghanistan never again allows its territory to be used as a base to attack the United States.

The first choice only promises a higher list of dead and maimed Americans, and frightful expenditures at a time of profound economic and financial crisis. The latter choice opens up the possibility of a negotiated resolution of the conflict, leading to the attainment of U.S. national security objectives without the permanent occupation of a land historically hostile to all foreign armies.

The latest nuclear escapade by North Korea is being interpreted as continuity with its longstanding policy of using its possession of weapons of mass destruction as a means to creatively employ economic blackmail. However, the North Korean political economy is so dysfunctional, I think there may be a much more radical calculation emanating from Pyongyang.

There are few countries on the planet that have economies as shattered as North Korea’s. Officially a Marxist-Communist state, its reality is in fact much different. Peculiar for a nation supposedly based on Marxism, North Korea is ruled by a family dynasty. The founder of North Korea, Kim Il-Sung, is worshipped as a God, and his lifeless corpse is constitutionally still the president-for-life of the DPRK. The son of Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-il, is the current ruler of North Korea and it is rumored that one of his sons is also being groomed for political succession. Like his father, Kim Jong-il is also deified, and referred to in every proclamation as “the Great Leader.” However, despite his exalted status, his people have endured repeated famines that have snuffed out the lives of millions, according to international relief organizations. Furthermore, with the demise of the Soviet Union and the termination of its subsidies to North Korea, the nation’s industrial infrastructure has essentially collapsed. Men still show up for work in the factories, but nothing is produced, for the most part, and the pay is a pittance. It is the women who actually run the economy of North Korea, largely through the black market. Though theoretically illegal, this otherwise draconian police state largely tolerates the female-dominated black market, estimated by some observers to represent 80% of the DPRK’s meager economic output. The women of North Korea are the breadwinners in that society, having rediscovered entrepreneurial skills and are engaged in craft production and trading goods smuggled into the DPRK from China.

Having a national economy largely based on the black market is actually in conformity with other aspects of North Korea’s unique political culture. Another example is how its communist-indoctrinated diplomats are expected to engage in profitable capitalism while posted abroad, so as not to bother Pyongyang with inconsequential and mundane matters, such as paying the rent on their embassies. For that reason, numerous North Korean diplomats have been expelled by their foreign hosts for engaging in activity “incompatible with their status.” That term usually means espionage; in the case of the DPRK, the diplomats were expelled for engaging in narcotics trafficking.

In this basket-case of an economy, North Korea has had only one export commodity that has consistently been a strong earner of foreign exchange; armaments. In the past, ballistic missiles have been a hot export commodity for the rulers in Pyongyang. However, many of North Korea’s traditional missile buyers, including Iran, now manufacture their own rockets. With demand for its medium range missiles potentially drying up, North Korea must look at new products that will stimulate demand. Long range ballistic missiles that can strike targets in the United States are one example of product diversification that may explain the DPRK’s recent test of a supposed satellite launch. However, the crown jewel in North Korea’s product portfolio is its nuclear weapons capability.

Though most analysts believe that the recent detonation of a nuclear device by North Korea was just its traditional blackmail-driven saber rattling, I think there may be a far more dangerous motive behind the atomic weapons test. North Korea’s first nuclear test in 2006 is widely viewed as being a dude. While the basic concept of creating a nuclear blast is relatively simple-bringing together a critical mass of fissile materials-the means of achieving full yield requires sophisticated physics and engineering. The small yield of the blast in 2006 revealed that the DPRK had not yet mastered the technique of “extending the generation,” meaning prolonging the natural onset of a nuclear explosion by a ten millionth of a second. What seems like an insignificant time factor makes all the difference between an explosion that is in the same category as a large conventional bomb, and a blast on par with the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. Until the DPRK had demonstrated its ability to “extend the generation,” potential foreign buyers of nuclear weapons would have little faith in North Korean nuclear weapons technology.

The May 25 nuclear test by the DPRK was, by all accounts, successful. The Russians estimate that the device detonated by the DPRK had a yield of between 10 and 20 kilotons, on par with the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Potential customers, including both rogue nations and non-state actors such as Al-Qaeda, have now received a “product demonstration” that is convincing.

While my theory that North Korea’s recent actions are based on a policy decision to begin surreptitiously marketing nuclear weapons technology, and possibly fully assembled nuclear weapons to the highest bidder, may seem far-fetched, there are signs that key decision-makers in the U.S. national security establishment have adopted a similar viewpoint. Recently, the Department of Homeland Security has abandoned plans to place radiation detectors in most ports of entry to the United States. This decision was based on the conclusion that technology does not exists that would reliably detect a well-planned attempt to smuggle a nuclear weapon or its components into the United States. However, there is another area that the Department of Energy, in particular, is aggressively moving forward on. A new field has been invented, called “nuclear forensics.” It is based on the belief that a nuclear detonation is so unique, post-blast analysis can reveal the origin of the fissile materials that were used in the weapon. This seems to be the new deterrent doctrine; if a country such as North Korea sells a nuclear weapon to a terrorist organization that then used it to destroy an American city, the U.S. will be able to scientifically determine the point of origin of the nuclear device, and launch a retaliatory response against the offending nation. The Obama administration considers North Korea a major nuclear proliferation threat

As if the Global Economic Crisis was not enough to worry about, we now may be witnessing the emergence of nuclear proliferation as an export-based strategy for capital formation. It makes one hope that nuclear blackmail is all that North Korea is truly interested in. President Obama will have many sleepless nights worrying about North Korea.