Category Archives: United States

Give McChrystal a Chance in Afghanistan

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In the last week, Steve Walt, George Will and Charles Hagel have all come out to say that Afghanistan is a losing effort and that we should get out or retrench in one way or the other.

Isn’t this jumping the gun a bit? Obama has only been in there 8 months, and McChrystal for less than 2. I know we all think it could become like Vietnam or the Red Army when they were in Afghanistan 25 years ago. But not necessarily. Presumably US planners can read history and learn from previous mistakes. Heavy and indiscriminate use of firepower was the big civil relations problems faced by both the US in Vietnam and the USSR in Afghanistan. But we seem to have learned not to do that (although the Russians haven’t – look at Chechnya). Predators and local airstrikes, for all their errors, are not like Arclight in South Vietnam or, worse, the Soviet scorched earth policy in Afghanistan.

It is true that large bureaucracies learn slowly, and the the US Army seems particularly insistent on fighting war in only one way. However, the Army did learn counterinsurgency after 4 years in Iraq, and it did, sort of, turn things around there.

I am also not so sure that if we leave AfPak, it wouldn’t cause so much trouble that we’d have to go back in again later. Walt is correct that the ‘safe haven for al Qaeda’ argument for staying in South Asia is weak, but it does hold some water, and there are other reasons for staying.

1. Without a US commitment, Afghanistan will melt-down, and that will increase the chances of the same thing happening in Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons, and a lot more people, conventional weapons, and jihadis.

2. Without the US in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence will almost certainly go back to its old tricks there. It will make trouble so that Pakistan can semi-control Afghanistan and gain greater ‘strategic depth’ against India. (This was the Pakistani strategy before 9/11.)

3. India will flip out if we cut out of South Asia. It will certainly feel less secure, and so be more likely to build more nukes, not compromise on Kashmir, and strike a much harder line on Pakistan and terrorism. Do we really want India to feel isolated and hence pressed to use military force next time they are targeted by terrorists with Pakistani connections? India is an emerging US ally, and if we leave South Asia just like that, we will lose them.

4. If we can get some kind of stable government in Afghanistan and more or less defeat/repress the Taliban, we might then be able to interrupt the huge flow of opium out Afghanistan. Even if you believe in light drug liberalization (I do), it is hard to be comfortable with legalizing opium, which is the base of heroin.

5. Just like in Vietnam, US credibility is at stake. The biggest problem we have in counterinsurgency is that the Afghan locals don’t think we’ll stay, so they won’t rat out the Taliban. If we bail, the Afghans will never trust us again, and we’ll have trouble convincing other similar populations (Muslim, tribalized) should we have to fight somewhere else (like Somalia or Yemen). So yes, we may have to give up later, but let’s at least give it a try before we burn our bridges so badly in South Asia. It will be a lot harder to fight there later if we give up now.

I realize that saying we have to fight for credibility can be a black hole. If you have to defend every domino to defend anyone of them, then you have to fight everywhere. That’s what happened in the Cold War and lead to Vietnam. But we are nowhere near that point in the GWoT. The Cold War pulled us all over the world, but the GWoT is mostly limited to the Middle East and South Asia. We have only just begun to divert resources to Afghanistan from Iraq. As the cost of the latter goes down and the former goes up, hopefully we won’t have to pay any new costs. Yes, I realize the GWoT has already been a budget-breaker, but our Afghanistan venture will likely be less expensive than Iraq. Our costs should begin to decline.

In short, there are costs to giving up in Afghanistan, and benefits if we win. In Vietnam, we learned after Tet, that the benefits of victory no longer outweighed the costs of the effort. In other words, by 1969 it was cheaper to lose in Vietnam. But we are not near that point in Afghanistan yet. Bush basically ignored the place as Iraq took over his presidency. Obama has only just begun the effort that should have taken place in 2002. So let’s give him and McChrystal a chance. Deployments and wars are not forever. If the costs balloon, and benefits recede and become ever more ethereal (as happened in Vietnam), we can always leave. This is not the end of the discussion. But for right now, let’s give Obama a chance, as we gave W his hail mary pass with the surge.

TV Review: “24” Season 1 – If “24” is even Close to Accurate, then We are Deservedly Losing the GWoT

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I have been teaching terrorism for about 5 years, but I am not a big fan of serial television. So I had never actually seen an episode of “24.” But my students always reference it in class, and ‘Jack Bauer’ has become synonymous with a no-holds-barred approach to the GWoT. GOP officials occasionally refer to the show, usually in praiseworthy or pseudomethodological terms – as in, ‘we need try to the Jack Bauer-approach to counterterrorism,’ or ‘Jack Bauer wouldn’t let politics stand in the way.’ (It always amazes me how congressmen, who we think have greater access to good or secret government information, nonetheless draw ‘knowledge’ from the same media flim-flam as the rest of us do. Please don’t tell me Congress gets its sense of counterterrorism from movies and TV!) My sense was that such Jack Bauer references meant we need to bend the rules, torture, and otherwise wander into Cheney’s famed ‘dark side.’ And so it was when I watched the show for the first time. I watched season 1 on DVD over the summer, and I was genuinely disturbed and depressed.

1. It is entertaining TV. It watches like a page-turner novel reads. Lots of twists and turns, and plots and counterplots. But this is the first error compared to real life intelligence. If the CIA, FBI, NCTC, etc, had as many moles, rogues, and traitors as the 24’s ‘Counterterrorism Unit’ (CTU) then the agency would be closed and cleansed, and lots of people would wind up in jail.

2. The plot, at least of season 1, bears little resemblance to the actuality of contemporary US counterterrorism (CT). Most of the work of intelligence is bland trolling through information, trying to piece together something useful for policymakers, and providing good, hopefully somewhat predictive analysis – i.e., a lot of reading and writing at a desk. And the cases are far less grandiose and exciting. Actual US CT is a lot more like busting those losers who were supposedly going to blow up the Sears Tower and those Lodi Muslims who were probably entrapped. The show depicts extremely well organized, well-funded, and elaborate plots. Planes blow up, cops get shot with abandon, traitors abound. This unhelpfully feeds the American paranoia of sleeper cells and incipient plots; I see now why the left disliked the show so much during the Bush presidency. It reinforced exactly the kind of hysteria that Bush stoked to get reelected. But actually, it is increasingly likely that 9/11 was an exception and that the domestic terrorist threat is quite minimal.

3. The Bauer character pulls straight from the disturbing Bush, do-whatever-it-takes playbook. So in one episode Bauer says both ‘forget the warrant,’ and ‘ignore the chain of command’ (!). In the real world this should get him disciplined and fired. In another, he shoots a superior with a tranquilizer gun. In the conclusion, he shoots the bad guy terrorist multiple times after he has emptied his gun and raised his hands. All this stuff may feel emotionally fulfilling, but of course, going out of bounds so regularly is exactly what lead to Abu Ghraib and torture. It may look necessary and heroic on TV, but in practice, breaking the rules around violence creates snowball effects, ambiguity, and bad precedents. If US CT staff is acting like Bauer does, with all the gunfighting, hyperventilating, and rule-bending, then our institutions are corroding because of the GWoT, not in order to win it.

4. Somehow the show’s CTU can get whatever doorcodes, email passwords, or other electronic access necessary. Again, this is terribly unhelpful. It suggests that your private life is unsafe before easy and unscrutinized government intrusion (PATRIOT Act, NSA illegal wiretaps). It feeds the paranoia.

5. The office staff seems to acquire and collate huge amounts of information quite quickly. Here is another slip with reality. As the Iraq intel debate showed us, most US intelligence agencies have little hard and secret information, and they struggle a lot to put it together properly. Most of what they use is the same ‘open source’ stuff that the rest of us see. (A friend at the CIA once told me that 95% of what they look at is open-source). The show wildly exaggerates the amount of good and covert information; the staff’s ability to sort it out from all the other noise and chatter that the intel agencies monitor; and perhaps most important of all – as the pre-9/11 investigation of the hijackers showed – how hard it is to connect all and only those dots. In short, the show wildly overrates the effectiveness of intelligence services.

So yes, it does channel the zeitgeist of the Bush-era GWoT well. As a trip down memory lane to the bad old days of torture and intel snafus, it is ‘enjoyable.’ As a teaching device, I suppose it is useful as the illustration of one manner of CT (do-whatever-it-takes), and the one the US (unfortunately) looked the other way on in the wake of 9/11. The show’s violence and law-breaking method feels to me like what Cheney had in mind when he said we must go ‘over to the dark side’ to fight terrorism. All-in-all I was pretty disturbed. If ‘24’ is our approach, then we deserve to lose.

Korean Political Science Association 2009 Biannual Meeting: “American Dual Containment in Asia”

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The KPSA had its biannual meeting from August 20 to 22. Unlike the APSA, the KPSA meets only every two years, because of its size. It was a pretty good conference, but the papers generally feel short of APSA standards. This is the first one I attended. A few thoughts:

1. Just about all the attendees – Korean and foreign – got their PhD in the US. The elite universities in Korea are filled with people who got their PhDs in the US. I rarely meet people who attended those schools, only people who work at them. This speaks volumes about the very high quality of US education vis-a-vis the rest of the world. It also suggests graduate education is a major export sector of the US economy, but no one ever seems to conceptualize it that way.

2. Most of the papers were heavily focused on policy analysis and the day-to-day of Korean and regional politics. In this way, it didn’t feel like political science often to me, but like public policy. I guess this is ok, but it allows a lot of room for sheer opinionating and bloviating. But then again, many have complained that US political science is so theoretical and methodological that regular people can’t access it, it has become irrelevant to politics, and it is just another academic world unto itself. That’s true too. My feelings on this are mixed.

3. IR was vastly overrepresented among the political science subfields (theory, comparative, domestic [Korean], IR). At APSA, US politics’ seminars outweigh all the other sections combined. Not here. I think IR was a majority of the panels. I bet this reflects, 1. the general stasis of Korean domestic politics (interrupted by outbursts of violence on the streets or in the National Assembly), and 2. the immense international pressures on a small country like Korea, especially one surrounded by such large powers. It is a luxury of US politics that our internal politics feels so autonomous. As a superpower with good geography, we don’t have to pay attention to foreign opinion much. (Obama’s use of external anti-Americanism as a campaign tool was quite extraordinary.) Korea does not have that luxury, and the PS reflects that.

4. The geographic focus was solely on NE Asia. I didn’t see a single paper about another area. I find this a growing and disturbing trend here, especially when the state slogans are Global Korea, Dynamic Korea, Korea Rising, etc. I almost never meet anyone who knows anything about the ME, Africa, Latin America, or South Asia. In the context of topics like terrorism, religion, or development, one would need some exposure to these areas. But then again, I almost never see work by Korean academics on topics that are not immediately germane to NE Asia. I suppose this East Asiacentrism is forgivable given how small Korea is, but it speaks poorly of Korea and Korean political science that it seems so disinterested in the rest of the world (US excepted). I have met Korean IR political scientists who didn’t know the capital of Canada or that Iran is Shiite. Yikes!

5. About 40% of the participants were foreign – mostly Chinese and Americans, plus a few Japanese and Europeans. This tells me two things. One, there just aren’t that many political scientists in Korea. Two, they believe in recruiting foreign participation, even if the work proffered is pretty poor, because it serves the larger goal of Korea promotion.

6. The Biannual Meeting was used as another venue to, well, propagandize the Korean miracle. Speaker after speaker, both in the panels and in the general sessions like the dinner speakers, told us again and again how Korea grew from nothing to become the world’s 13th largest economy and a global ‘player.’ (I am so sick of hearing that last word.) There were a few government officials invited to speak as well, and they too went through this. It almost feels like a requirement from any serious personage in Korea, particularly when they speak to foreigners. The English language press here is filled with this story too. This incessant Koreaphoria suggests two things to me. a) They are nervous that their gains are tenuous, because they were so rapid. So perhaps telling the tale again and again, and telling foreigners too, and then expecting the foreigners to echo back the same story (and we are expected to repeat this party line), psychologically reinforces the solidity of the miracle on the Han. b) Koreans are extreme nationalists. Such constant self-celebration eventual begins to suggest arrogance and egomania. I try to be tolerant and simply smile as I hear the story told a million different ways. I try to understand why the story is so often repeated (because it feels so unreal, especially after the first 3/4 of the 20th C was so hard on Korea). But at some point, you just have to give in and say it is an example of the intense nationalism so many scholars have noted to exist outside the West. I am unaccustomed to this. My own feelings about the US hardly mirror the intensity of Korean feelings for Korea. It makes me uncomfortable.

7. The panels were far too short and too crowded. I am not sure how to interpret this. A very cynical friend said the answer is the image-consciousness of Korea. It is more important to list the panel and be able to mention it on your CV or in an TV interview, than to actually have it be a substantive process. So you cram as many people into as many panels as possible. Inevitably the panels are too short (75 minutes) and too crowded (1 panel leader, 4 presenters, 2 discussants). This is certainly what happened to my panel. A 20 minute presentation was chopped in half, and I got no meaningful feedback or discussion.

8. My presentation, what there was of it, argued that the US will ally with India in the near future. India is the only country that is also facing China and Islamism, and is democratic too. Here is my abstract, and the relevant graph on US alliance picks:

US grand strategy after 9/11 has turned from post-containment drift to preemption. But the costs are high – suspicion of American power, hedging by traditional allies, expensive, go-it-alone ventures like Iraq. Tried-and-true containment better reflects American values. While forward in the world, containment is also defensive. It reassures skittish partners and reflects liberal, anti-imperial US preferences. In Asia, containment could hold the line against radical Islam and Chinese nationalism without encouraging a global backlash. Democratic India shares these same two challengers with the US; it is the likely pivot in a US-backed neo-containment architecture in Asia.

Thoughts on Miguk-land after 1 Year

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I went back to the US this summer to see my family. The culture shock was, predictably, deeper than when I returned to the US while I lived in Europe in the 1990s. The cultural gap between Korea and the US is deeper than that between Europe and the US. So I feel like I noticed more this time. So here are a couple of thoughts.

1. Americans are really fat. I struggle with junk food as much as anyone, but my fellows citizens seem to be just giving up. Koreans are the slimmest people in the OECD (or at least, that’s what they tell me, and they look it), and the difference with Americans is really apparent. My girlfriend came home with me, and she was routinely shocked by the sheer girth of so many of us. We both picked up on it almost immediately as we entered the airport. A news report I saw said that 40% of Americans are obese now, not just overweight. A doctor friend said this is evolving into a ticking time bomb. In about 30 years, when all these people hit 60, the public health burden will be staggering – on top of all the other entitlement/health care problems already. The IR scholar in my can’t help but think this is bad in the long term for US power. As hegemons age they are supposed to become more sluggish and complacent, and they US population is certainly showing that. How can you lead when half your people struggle to get off the sofa? My only consolation is that Europeans and Asians especially smoke a lot. That is their own public health drain. Is it macabre to suggest that US tobacco exports to China aid long-term US power?

2. Fox News and the American Right is even more insane now than I have read about. I made a point to watch Glenn Beck, O’Reilly and Hannity while I have was home. One of the most important consequences of the GOP’s defeat last year is the opportunity for a post-Bush reconstruction. When parties suffer from major defeats like the GOP in 2006 and 2008, or the Labour Party from 1979 to 1997, it calls for a serious philosophical rethink. Labor did this and successfully modernized itself (i.e., dropped socialism after Thatcher and the end of the Cold War) under Blair. But the GOP seems to want to drive itself further and further into the wilderness. The lesson the GOP has drawn from the defeat of Bushism is that it was not pure and conservative enough. Instead of tracking to the center, the GOP is vearing even further to the right to purify itself. Instead of coming to terms with the major social changes brought on by Obama, his postracial challenge, and the Great Recession, the GOP would rather recite dated, toxic bromides. So Glenn Beck is saying Obama is a racist; Palin calls ObamaCare ‘evil’ and says it includes ‘Death Panels’ (i.e., end-of-life consultations); and the bloggers are claiming he is not a US citizen. Are you serious? This is the state of conservative commentary at a time of massive government expansion? Even the WSJ’s op-ed page is staggeringly uncreative. If this persists, serious middle class professional people will abandon the GOP. These kind of people voted for for Bush because they thought Clinton was sleazy and then to fight the GWoT. But if the GOP becomes regularly indentified with managerial ineptitude in government (Iraq, Katrina, ‘evil’ healthcare), then serious professionals will vote for Democrats. I consider myself in this group. I voted and worked consistently for Republicans in the 90s, since W’s election, I have drifted further and further. And if Fox News and talk radio become the ideological organs of the post-Bush right, then I will never go back.

3. The Great Recession is far more noticeable in the US than Korea. First, it is in the news a lot more at home. Second, people talk about it a lot more in the US. My parents and friends at home made regular reference to it in conversation, but friends and colleagues here rarely do. Third, one can see all those ‘house for sale’ signs all over the place. The real estate market in Korea does not work this way, so this very obvious and public marker of the GR is not evident. Koreans mostly live in high-rises, as I do. In general the GR has been lighter and shorter out here than at home. No one talks about 10% unemployment here; they’d be rioting in the streets (be sure to look at the picture).

4. American food is not that bad after all. Food is an important part of Korean identity, and Koreans occasionally cite as healthier and tastier than US food when they need something to throwback at an American in a conversation. And indeed, the American food in Korea is awful; its almost universally junk food chains like Burger King. So I had forgotten how good some American food is – deli sandwiches, microbrews, summer BBQ chicken. Korean food is certainly healthier on average than US food. I accept that, and I don’t care much. (Koreans do; they are nationalist about food, along with almost everything else). Unfortunately the American food that is exported is almost always the worst fast food, like KFC or McDonald’s. My sister laughed out loud when I told her that even Popeye’s Chicken is in Korea. This is unfortunate, because it gives the impression that most US cuisine is that sort of greasy, salty junk. But my family, friends, and colleagues in the US rarely ate fast food; most Americans seem to be aware of how bad it is for you; and there are a lot of non-fast food restaurants in the US. So the Cheesecake Factory, e.g., is unfortunately not in Korea, and I have never seen a proper (Jewish) deli here either. I always thought one could make a fortune in Korea if one opened a good western restaurant.

Movie Review: Transfomers 2 – Michael Bay Misses the Cold War

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A traditional review of this film is redundant. By now you already now how ridiculous it is. (If you don’t, read this laugh-out-loud link.) It includes racist, gansta rapper robots reminiscent of Jar-Jar Binks. The women in the film are either idiots (the mother) or supermodels shamelessly exploited by the camera. Its treatment of college life is moronic, even by the standards of a film this bad. And the story is such a convoluted mess, its hard to know what is going on. Instead I want to focus on the politics of the film, especially its outdated understanding of military conflict. If this sounds unnecessary, its worth noting that Bay has better relations with the US military than any other director working. His films frequently showcase US hardware and show its use in ways flattering to, and approved by, the US military. Particularly, his relationship with the Air Force is strong, so you always know his films will treat you to kinetic displays of our coolest tools.

1. Bay fetishizes military hardware, and he has been rewarded with unparalleled access. Transformers 1 was the first movie in which the F-22 Raptor and the Predator drone were shown in a film. The second has even more real-life hardware on loan, including the M1 tank, B-1, F-22, F-117, and Predators. Across Bay’s ouevre (Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, T1 & T2), he has stressed big airforce hardware in such a glorifying way, that they feel like commercials for the military-industrial complex.

2. Bay’s particular interest in the airforce is comic given the slow erosion of the airforce’ actual role in America’s combat operations. Specifically, no power in the world is really ready to take on the US, and in the air least of all. The macho, fighter pilot cult of the airforce makes for cool movies like Top Gun and Stealth, but this does not actually fit what the airforce has done in US conflicts since Korea (the last air war with frequent, serious dogfights). The airforce is a victim of its own success. US air dominance is greater than on the ground or the seas, so the actual use of US airpower against other airpower is minimal. Instead, the US uses the airforce as a part of combined arms for ground support. This irks the AF brass, so Bay’s films are a nice chance to pitch the US public on the continued, but bogus, need for fighter jets. On the actual role of the US airforce in combat try here; compare that with the image you see in film.

3. Another obvious clash between the film and reality is the straightforward, good guy-bad guy action of the film, vs. the reality of US counterinsurgency & third world operations since Vietnam. This is another way in which Bay channels the military’s preferred view of itself. In Bayworld, the airforce is the dominant branch of the military. Also, the bad guys are easy to identify, so difficult questions surrounding the use of American force for the last two generations don’t exist. The Decepticons are just evil so the Autobots can, yes, behead them, and it is ok. There is no sorting between VietCong and local farmers, no accidental killings, no torture, no intercultural misunderstandings.

4. The final delusion of military conflict in Bayworld is the requirement of massive firepower. This is another US preoccupation. Part of the traditional American way of war is to use overwhelming force. The Decepticons are large, metal, hardened, military-only targets – exactly the sort of Cold War-era targets the airforce prefers to attack and which scarcely exist anymore. But the reality of US micro-operations in mixed, combatant/civilian third world environments is quite the opposite. The Decepticons are the Soviets or the Chinese. The Americans need to use all their super-cool advanced firepower to bring them down. This is the way the US military wants to fight wars. But the reality is different, and has been since Korea. We scarcely use huge, indiscriminant firepower anymore (that failed terribly, with awful civilian consequences, under Westmoreland in Vietnam). Instead everything today is geared around micro-bursts of extreme precision – the Kosovo air campaign of 1999 or the Predator strikes in Pakistan since 2008. Our most recent Iraqi dalliance with the Michael Bay, ‘blow-‘em-all-to-hell,’ approach to conflicts ended in a ‘fiasco.’

5. The film includes a cheap shot at the Obama administration. His national security advisor tries to kick the Autobots off earth, and after the Decepticon attack, Obama goes into hiding. I guess this means that Bay is a Republican. I wonder if he believes he is channeling US military discontent about Obama as C-in-C. Either way this was poor taste.

Bay’s film is silly but it tells us some important things nonetheless, as bad US action movies usually do.

A. Bay is clearly the foremost advertising vehicle of the US airforce and the US military in general. When people complain about the socially corrosive effects of the military-industrial compex, movies like this are exactly what they mean. Bay channels the US flirtation with militarism and celebrates jingoism. I find it a pleasing irony, that for all Bay’s military technology porn (long, loving shots of military metal), SecDef Robert Gates recently ended the wasteful and unnecessary F-22. Outside of Bayworld delusions of asteroids and robots from space, real US military needs are far more mundane – more soldiers, more cultural experts, better veterans care, better body armor, etc.

B. Bay also reflects the way the US military wants to fight wars and the way it wants to be perceived by the public. He avoids the messy reality of the small wars that have characterized US military conflict since Korea. The bulk of these costs are carried by the army; they involve small operations and targeted force; they require cultural sensitivity and good intelligence; there is rarely ‘moral clarity.’ Instead Bay presents simplistic good/bad moral clarity and super-sleek airshows. Awful.

Movie Review: Terminator Salvation, or What John Connor Learned in Iraq

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This is how franchises die. What a let down. In my review of T3, I said you would pumped for T4. I was wrong. This beast is heading into the sequelitis of the Matrix, Robocop or (old) Star Trek. What a shame. For a run-down of the ‘plot,’ try here. You don’t really need to see T1-3, as this one doesn’t use the backstory too much. Its basically an action movie, with none of the heart or interesting themes of the earlier ones.

I have always been a fan of the Terminator series as action movies. The first one was pretty clever. It had an offbeat time-travel idea (not the usual Star Trek time-travel silliness, once again on display this summer), and it smartly capitalized on the angst of the 80s about computers and war (Wargames), and postapolcalyptic life (Mad Max). The second one is probably the most intelligent action movie ever (granted, that’s not saying a lot), and continues to be the base of the popularity that eventually catapulted Schwarzenegger to the governorship of California. Even the third one was pretty good. Unfortunately this one walks away from most of the nifty and fun stuff of the series; its basically a mish-mash of every war war movie you’ve seen and videogame you played. A few thoughts:

1. On the up side, the action is pretty intense and serious. There is a grit and edginess to the shoot-outs that feels more battle-realistic than the first trilogy. It was also a nice touch that Linda Hamilton returned at least to provide the voice of John’s mother. I was always disappointed at how lamely her cool character was dispensed with in T3. I also thought the idea of putting the resistance HQ in a sub was a pretty intelligent move that flowed well from the narrative, but it prompts the obvious question (discussed below) about how the resistance to machines was able to get and maintain such fancy equipment when the whole planet was nuked. Finally, I didn’t mind that the film was set in the Skynet future. At some point the franchise had to catch up with that conflict, so I didn’t miss the time-travelling terminators that were becoming pretty repetitive by T3.

2. The acting is passable, and the sets are solid. Nothing looks ‘stagey.’ Thankfully too the CGI is good, although the Blu-ray release will be the real test of that. But wth has happened to C Bale? He was fantastic in American Psycho. The scene were has almost has a heart attack over another yuppie’s superior business card is hysterical. In T4, he basically yells all the time. And what’s up with a bald H B Carter showing up in a Terminator movie? That just didn’t work for me at all.

3. But the bad is, well, pretty bad.

a. the action scenes are so loud (as is the ear-splitting soundtrack) that they overwhelm the narrative. The story of T1 and T2 particularly were pretty compelling, and the action flowed from pretty well from narrative demand. That’s not the case here.

b. The movie pulls from all sorts of war films and video games. So, it doesn’t feel too original, and you aren’t really surprised much. The postwar future looks like – well you already know – Mad Max. The Road Warrior is a great film, and its influence just rolls on and on, even 30 years later. Battle scenes with Huey helicopters are straight from Vietnam pictures. The machines created slithery ‘hydrobots’ ripped straight from, of all possible sources, the videogame Resistance 2. The tall robot that attacks the resistance at the gas station could be a transformer. The penetration of Skynet central at the end feels like a videogame ending when you have to go after the big boss character to end the story.

c. I found the level of sophisticated military hardware and deployment wholly unconvincing after the awfulness of a nuclear exchange. The combat scenes frequently felt like a video game version of the Iraq war. So much of the hardware is taken directly from the contemporary US military that we see regularly on TV in Iraq: body armor, grenade launchers, M-60s, M-16s, A-10s, radar, rocket launchers, humvees. In the first film, the resistance is running around in basements with funky ray-guns. In this one, they have enormous above-ground installations that can support helicopters, subs, and aircraft. So its pretty much the US military versus the machines, and we’ve seen that already in Transformers. Wouldn’t the machines go after such facilities? And how could you possibly maintain such elaborate hardware in the postnuclear future? Where does the fuel come from, the spare parts, the dozens of mechanics necessary to keep the hi-tech, logistics-heavy US military in the field? And someone should tell the director that last Huey was built in 1976 and the last A-10 in 1986. It is unlikely these aging platforms would survive into 2018, through a nuclear war, and still be serviceable.

d. maybe I am too hard about the sophisticated technology, so here is some miscellaneous silliness:

i. The hot fighter pilot babe (how come they’re always super hot, btw?) falls in love with a cyborg after about 2 days. Nobody but reality TV show contestants fall in love in 2 days, and wth falls in love with a robot?! To quote the greatest line from the underappreciated comedy of Robocop 2: ‘ I don’t know anyone who wants to be a robot.’

ii. Two nuclear explosions occur in the film which the main character survives. In both, helicopters are close enough to feel the blast wave. Depending on the yield of course, you might survive the blast, but then there’s fallout too. Too unrealistic.

iii. At the end, John Connor gets a heart transplant in open air from that cyborg. Even more ridiculous, Connor had recently restarted that cyborg heart with – I am not lying – jumper cables. Hah! I am sure its ready for transplant.

iv. Why does Skynet have offices and hallways if it is a robot AI?

e. Finally, the director succumbed the easy patriotism of US action movies. In first two, the resistance was planet-wide and looked futuristic. In the third film, Schwarzenegger needed to get elected to the CA governorship, so suddenly the US military was at the heart of the resistance. And in this fourth installment, its basically the US military versus the Transformers. US military hardware now dominates the resistance; gone are the ray-guns. The resistance leaders are all Americans and the action all takes place in CA. The difference is subtle but clear. James Cameron (the director of the first two) was never a nationalist, but I guess now, after 6 years of the Iraq war, T4 had to look this way for an American audience. Too bad.

Did Wolfowitz really just say that?!

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In a WSJ op-ed, Paul Wolfowitz wrote, that when Obama speaks in Cairo, “the president should make clear that the U.S. does not believe that democracy can be imposed by force.”

I find this stunning. Wolfowitz is the primary intellectual architect of George Bush’s endorsement of “regime change” through “pre-emption.” He has argued since a famous leaked memo in 1992 that the US should actively try to maintain unipolar dominance as a foreign policy goal.

This is a remarkable turnabout, and once again Wolfowitz reminds us of SecDef McNamara. After the Vietnam War, McNamara sought penance through the presidency of the World Bank, and lately now by advocating the total abolition of nuclear weapons. And Wolfowitz seems to sliding along the same way. He too was prez of the Bank, and now seems to also be be turning against the use of state power. Post-Iraq, he seems chastened – abandoning tough-minded neo-conservatism to say we should not impose democracy by force after all.

Is this a real conversion? Has he really drawn the lesson, presumably from Iraq, that democracy cannot be imposed by force? He would not be the first neoconservative or hawkish liberal internationalist (basically the same thing) to turn away from the war. Fukuyama’s apologia is the most eloquent of these so far.

Beyond astonishment at Wolfowitz’ volte face, I must say I am little disappointed. Wolfowitz was the best thinker, within the government, behind the neoconservative critique of the Middle East that, despite Iraq, I continue to find persuasive. The intellectual architecture behind the Iraq war was not an oil grab, US imperialism, or the workings of the military-industrial complex. Instead, the neo-con idea was that politics in the Middle East was frozen in time (1967), locked into a toxic, self-reinforcing cycle of easy, corrupting oil money, islamist and arabist ideology, predatory elites, corporatist economic stagnation, and dictatorship. This is essentially correct. Hence the Iraq war was necessary to break this immobilism. Only an external lightning or hammer strike could crack this terrorism- and jihadism-spawning stasis.

The disastrous course of the Iraq war does not invalidate this logic. Yes, the Bushies clearly underestimated how much work regime change would require. But that is a process argument. We badly prosecuted the necessary external strike. But process failure does not undermine the logic of the neo-con argument. To this day, I still find it persuasive, hence my deep ambivalence about the Iraq war, even as it was flying off the rails. That Wolfowitz would surrender this persuasive argument is disappointing; I would like to see a coherent, contrasting ‘liberal realist’ analysis of the Middle East’s problems. We are all chastened by Iraq, but the toxic, interlocking pathologies that brought the ME to this point were well analyzed by the neo-cons. We have to give them that.

Off to Miguk-Land for a Vacation!

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I won’t be blogging too much. I am off to see my family and lie on the beach and drink cocktails for awhile. I will comment perhaps once a week until I return in the middle of August.

As always, thanks for reading.

REK

Tragicomedy of US Soft Power: Exporting Banality to Korea (2)

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For part 1, click here. SK is a great case for the study of the soft power,and also a sad example of the cultural banality that is frequently the outcome of Americanization. Conservatives never seem to acknowledge this, but spreading McDonalds, boy bands, action movies, Madonna, etc. not only breeds cultural blowback, it also breeds an embarrassing banality and cultural shallowness in its targets. It is, quite honestly, rather shameful as an American living in Korea to see the arrival of American habits like consumerism and obesity, or insipid American products like soap operas or music-machine pop-music. So from a US foreign policy perspective this is good (Koreans are more like us), but from a high, or even middle-brow, culture perspective, its pretty disturbing to see (how come they seem to pick up the worst of what we have to offer?). When Koreans tell me their country is too Americanized, it is hard not to agree.

Why SK is a good case for a study of soft power’s success/failure:

1. It has been heavily penetrated by the United States for over 60 years. It has been subject to the full weight of Americanization – deep political ties, reinforced by a constant military presence, nested in a large cultural influx.

2. Korea is (was?) very culturally distinct. (Canada or Britain, by contrast, would be weaker examples of cultural shift, because of pre-existing values congruence.) Its history is all but unknown to Americans. Its traditional food, dress, language, and music are quite distant. Its alphabet is not roman and includes sounds that translate poorly. Most importantly, its religious-philosophical traditions – Confucianism, Buddhism, plus some shamanism – are very different. Liberalism and democracy are ideological transplants. Monotheism, and fury it creates in the West and Middle East, are foreign here (although the charismatic evangelicals here are unfortunately bringing it with them.)

How Korea is Americanized:

1. The country is obsessed with learning English. I have been to lots of other countries where learning English was a priority for survival in the global economy, but Korea is exceptional. Koreans will drop out of school for a year to take private lessons just to learn English – not junior years abroad that count as credit. There is a huge public fight over which Koreans can attend US DoD schools here, and there are private ‘international’ schools with an English-only curriculum. (Ironically, they are filled with Koreans, because expats can’t afford their usual $20k/year price-tag.) They will send their grammar school children to after-school extra schooling (hagwons), that have downright brutal teaching regimens with 10 year old students staying until, I’m not lying, 11 pm every weeknight. The bookstores here are filled with books and gimmicks for learning English to pass the TOEFL. There is even an urban legend about surgery to get your tongue cut to supposedly make it easier to speak English. Good English speaking has huge social prestige and will help you land a serious job in Seoul, the center of the universe. 

2. Korean TV is filled with American TV shows and films, frequently the most silly or violent. And Koreans have also patterned their own television partially on the US models, frequently the most insipid. Soap operas here are quite similar to the US – ridiculous adultery plots with pretty women and prettier men wildly overacting, all with great hair and sportscars, living in large American-style homes with driveways and lawns that almost no one here actually can afford (Koreans live in apartment high-rises because of extreme population density). Korean action movies are similar, with exorbitant CGI and quick-cut editing. Forensic police shows are popular too. My students have learned more about America from CSI than from me.

3. Korean popular music too reflects repetitive, self-serving US pop. K-pop is filled with rap and boy/girl bands with all the accoutrements of such groups in the US: silly self-congratulatory videos, inane love lyrics, hairspray & fashion model outfits, bling and conspicuous consumption.

4. US junk food is ubiquitous: Burger King, McDo, KFC. Obesity is a growing problem among Korean youth.

5. Perhaps most disturbing is rapid influx of US versions of Christianity. Protestant evangelicalism is spreading quickly. It is easy conquest, as 50% of Koreans are agnostic or areligious. Blood (yes, as in the spiritual “Power in the Blood” you heard in There Will be Blood) red neon crosses fill the nightskylines of major Korean cities.

6. The US has a major diplomatic and military presence here, and just about every American here seems to know someone in it or otherwise be connected to it. (Me included.)

Of course, deep Korean cultural attributes – food, deference/bowing, Korean traditional music – survive and contest this Americanization. No society is monolithic, and the social contest ebbs, flows, and hybridizes. Last year America was a big problem because of (supposed) mad cow-infected beef; this year, the US isn’t so bad, because NK suddenly seems so dangerous.

My concern is the sheer banality of the cultural influx. Indeed, I think this whenever I travel. I remember seeing Star Trek on TV in Athens with Klingons speaking Greek! Why is it that the silliest, most unhealthy, most ridiculous elements of US social life are exported? Presumably in a market economy, there is local demand, so blame goes both ways. Koreans clearly like McDonalds and the Transporter (its on TV at least once a month here). But it is discomforting to see Koreans made fatter and sillier by US cultural import. And it is easy to imagine what Khomeini notoriously called ‘westoxification’ creating a cultural-nationalist backlash. In the ME of course, that extends to liberalism and democracy, so Khomeini was no defender of the culture – he was a vicious theocrat. But it is still easy to conceive a cultural, sliding into political, backlash against the influx of so much trashy American mediocrity (Project Runway translated into Korean). In fact, Asia is where Chalmers Johnson, the best theorist of political blowback to cultural Americanization, expected something like 9/11 to originate, not the Middle East. And it should embarrass Americans too. A soft power remaking of Korea may be good for us, but don’t we feel a little ashamed about what we export? Are we really pleased to remake others to be shallow, celebrity-obsessed, obese, or insipid (like the Americans foreigners see on TV)? How come Frontline or Mark Twain are not our exports?

Obama-Lee Summit: Good Enough

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Amidst all the Iran hubub, the US and Korea had their first head of state summit this week. Here are my thoughts on what needed to be said. It seems to have been a wash, which is good enough.

The Good:

Obama affirmed a US nuclear commitment to SK. That is probably the biggest gain for the South. Given NK behavior in the last year, this was necessary. It also helps delay a possible nuclearization by SK. The SK conservative press is edging closer to this position.

Lee also seems to have gotten Obama to declare publicly that NK flim-flams in negotiations – obfuscating, demanding favors, giving little and then backtracking later. Everyone already knows this, but it is a blow for Obama who has stressed negotiations with US opponents. On the other hand, it reflects Obama’s realism. The reality of NK is that deals are, at least at the moment, not on the regime’s mind. It seems to want to prove to the world that it is a nuclear power and get acceptance of that.

Finally, Obama agreed to a upgrade of the US-ROK alliance to a “comprehensive strategic alliance.” Who knows what that means, but it is a good signal against the reality of a weakening US defense commitment.

No-so-Good

Obama seems cool to idea of shutting down the six party talks. Lee wants five party talks (i.e., without NK). NK has said it won’t return to the six party talks, and they seem to have done little but buy time for its nuclear program, and given China and Russia an opportunity for international grandstanding. So, sure, let Obama try more. Maybe his Cairo magic will work here, but I doubt it.

Nothing was said about Japan, and little about a united democratic front (SK, US, Japan) toward NK. Instead the idea seems to be building a 5 party front toward NK; “then the four nations will give the U.S. ‘bargaining rights’ after working out a joint plan what price the North should pay unless it abandons its nuclear weapons.” This would be ideal, but Russia and the PRC will almost certainly hedge and obfuscate and can hardly be expected to cede negotiating rights (like power of attorney or something) to the US. The democracies really shouldn’t be held hostage to Russian and Chinese opinion on NK.

Lee’s major concession seems to be that the US may directly negotiate with NK. The wisdom of this is hard to judge. NK desperately wants this – for prestige purposes and hopefully to hang onto its nukes. And NK will certainly push for a deal over SK’s head and to its disadvantage. This is risky, as the SK right will flip out if it looks like the US is unilaterally seeking a separate peace at SK’s expense.

As for the trade deal, nothing much happened – more arguments about beef and cars. Silly.

So all in all, it was a wash. Not much new was said. Nothing that really changes the game. But given how dangerous NK is, that is probably wise. All these talks are driven significantly by NK’s unpredictable behavior. The next big flap that will certainly throw all this into confusion again is NK’s upcoming ICBM launch, over which the US in turn will flip out.

Bonus NK lunacy: a WaPo story on how NK defrauds insurance, sells drugs, and counterfeits dollars. NK’s government is so uniformly awful, they seem like the bad guy out of comic book movie.