On the great flaw in the Bush Doctrine:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And I am not referring here to how George W. Bush was the best thing that happened to the Ayatollah's regime since the 1980 invasion.

The Bush Doctrine's saddled the United States with the concept of the pre-emptive war. Leaving aside that can of worms for a later post, the Bush Doctrine consisted in practice of invading Iraq for fear that it might at a future point have WMDs that would be very lethal and in all probability have been used on US soldiers. This invasion was of course insofar as the war of armies very successful indeed (though to be blunt if the US Army had lost that war in 2003 everyone over the rank of 1st Lieutenant should have been busted to private). However this invasion in turn creates a catch-22.

World dictators who observed this noted the *other* side of the Bush Doctrine, namely that the USA, when it discovered that North Korea, a regime that is militarily a bit of a joke, to its own people Hell on Earth, and real-life's Airstrip One, had developed nuclear weapons. The USA not only did not invade North Korea but North Korea continues what is essentially kleptocracy, using the collected arsenal of decades trained on Seoul as its bargaining chip. Now, consider this again: a regime that did not have or at least did not use what it did have (and given how little scruples it had in 1980-8 when it was against the wall I highly doubt if it did have them that it would not have used them, so any argument it simply got rid of them fails on that alone) was invaded, a regime that developed WMDs gets to keep on being the International Scarface.

From this point of view, where is the irrational motivation on the part of regimes that do not have WMD arsenals, particularly nuclear weapons, as far as developing them? Why necessarily would this mean an offensive mentality as opposed simply to permanently warding of war with the United States? To me in this regard this pair of decisions by George Bush may be the most idiotic to come out of his entire Administration, as it guaranteed that the dictators who don't want to be invaded have damn good reasons to want weapons, to prevent a Libya-style overthrow or a Ba'ath Iraq-style invasion. Instead of making the USA safer, those twin decisions in my own opinion have only guaranteed a world that ensures when dictators want weapons that make their countries formidable and dangerous by merely having them, they see it as a perfectly rational thing to do and they're precisely right to do this. Meaning again that not only does this in the long term endanger the United States, it endangers the entire human race.

The United States should not be seeing quests of people for these weapons, assuming they are building them, as necessarily meaning hostile intent, but the practical result all the same will be a more dangerous world with that danger built on a rational basis. Even if the group or generation that builds them is thinking defensively, this is no guarantee what comes after them will, nor are certain regimes having these weapons necessarily good things in themselves even when this is a rational defensive calculation. I am not advocating here removal of nuclear weapons, or total global nuclear disarmament. I in fact believe nuclear weapons ensure that another great, total war won't be the cause of human extinction. What I do, however, believe is that this and pre-emptive war, which I will give a post of its own later are the two most disastrous legacies to have come out of Bush's Administration.

Your thoughts?

Comments

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

There is no joke in the North Korean military. Invading NK means 80,000+ dead, not mention 600,000+ wounded, not mention 2 million+ civilian casualties.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I was referring to the reality that North Korea's military would depend on fanaticism and has even more obsolete weaponry than the PLA does, so that was a reference to it from the perspective of logistics/weaponry. You're right that an actual war would be the biggest humanitarian disaster since the Second Congo War and possibly the biggest since WWII. Which is another reason North Korea can be the international Scarface successfully as the USA and South Korea for understandable reasons want no part of that.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Yeah, fighting the yellow menace is a helluva lot different than fighting the Ay-rabs. Arab militaries are hamstrung by social class, where officers distrust their men, and the enlisted ranks have no reason to succeed. At least with the godless commies, they have a chance to be heroes and gain social rank through military exploits.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Eh, some Arab armies are actually very, very good. The Iraqi army was never very good, if it had been it would have done much better than it did in the Iran-Iraq War, when it had both superpowers arming it and was against an unpopular and rather bitterly internally divided pariah state. Against a superpower army like the US Army it had as much chance as a yellow snowball in Hell.

North Korean soldiers would probably consider death a greater mercy than continuing to live in the ghastly Hellhole that is North Korea, so.....

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Well, Arab nations split between Islamism and Arab nationalism have the burden of protecting the regime from the Army itself- which is why it is standard to have shitty standing Armies and elite "republican guards" to protect the dictator from the Army. As an organizational and strategic picture, the Arab military is designed to fight itself, which is why they don't get much accomplished.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

And to be blunt, the "elite" republican guards are about as scary and elite as the National Guard.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of a bill hicks skit.

“It depressed everyone, it’s so scary watching the news, how they built it all out of proportion, like Iraq was ever, or could ever possibly, under any stretch of the imagination be a threat to us-wwwwhatsoever. But-watching the news, you never would have got that idea. Remember how it started, they kept talking about ‘the Elite Republican Guard’ in these hushed tones like these guys were the bogeymen or something. Yeah, we’re doing well now, but we have yet to face-THE ELITE REPUBLICAN GUARD. Like these guys were twelve feet tall, desert warriors. KRRASH. NEVER LOST A BATTLE! KRRASH. WE SHIT BULLETS! Yeah, well, after two months of continuous carpet bombings and not one reaction at all from them, they became simply, ‘the Republican Guard.’ Not nearly as elite as we may have led you to believe. And after another month of bombing, they went from ‘the Elite Republican Guard’ to ‘the Republican Guard’ to ‘the Republicans made this shit up about there being guards out there’. We hope you enjoyed your fireworks show. It was so pretty, and it took our mind off of domestic issues! The Persian Gulf distraction.”

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Then again, I'm biased, since I know that pound-for-pound, an Asian Marine is a better fighter than an American Marine... they just don't have as many gadgets as we do.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Maybe as many gadgets per pound!

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

Imagine what they could do with Sumo Marines!

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

I just got an idea for a new anime series....

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

This would only be true if they could instantly have WMD's without going through the period where they're developing them, which is the time when they would be invaded, according to your theory. It would also require a dictator to not realize that there is more than one factor involved in the U.S.'s actions and if they're that stupid, they wouldn't have become dictator (or stayed that way very long).

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

They could, you know, just buy the damn things covertly. Given the more than occasionally abysmal results of US Intelligence "predictions" I daresay them doing so successfully is not demanding the Moon. Claiming that it's impossible that this could happen and US Intelligence not know it requires a great deal of evidence to support it.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Having one vial or truck or whatever they can buy unnoticed doesn't do a hell of a lot of good without an infrastructure to make more and some way to deliver it, so there's plenty of opportunity to notice what's going on before it's "too late to invade".

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

North Korea tested its first nuke in 2006... and it was kind of a dud. Before that, they had a nuclear program, probably not a nuclear weapon, and probably not one that could sit on top of a missile. They did have a bunch of conventional artillery aimed at Seoul. This, not the WMDs, was their real deterrent.

I guess you can say that this instructed countries that having an effective deterrent is a way of avoiding an invasion by a hostile foreign power, but this doesn't seem that new.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

It's the ones they don't test we gotta worry about.

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

Depends. A secret nuclear program isn't that effective as a deterrent. If Canada sectetly has nukes, for example, you aren't gaining much from them.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

I thought the same damned thing years ago, but you left out one salient example: The "axis of evil" speech, which named the evils. Everyone in the world saw one axis invaded, another treated with kid gloves 'cause of the nukes it already had, and the third learn its lesson fast and rush to get nuke program rolling before Georgie comes calling.

(Iran was probably kicking itself that it was too damned Shi'a for Khan in Pakistan to simply sell them some spares.)

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

Is this pre-emptive strike thing over now that Bush has been gone for some years now? Is Iran safe from USA?

I mean the chatter I've been reading is that "We gotta be doing sumthin bout dem dere Ira-toll-yahs buildin dem nuclear bombs!"

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

The Obama doctrine is to pick people off with drones and to send in the black helicopters, even into "friendly" countries, to take out the people on his hit list.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

That's the US doctrine actually.