Professor Kilcullen said we might may be dealing with adversaries who have a much broader definition of war than we do. Conflict resolution expert and mediator Lawrence Susskind encapsulated it thus: when two sides are locked into an apparently intractable conflict, “you must engage the constructive middle. He studied counterinsurgency as a cadet at Royal Military College in Duntroon, the Australian Army's officer training establishment. All this means that — after 18 years in which everybody wanted to end the war, but everybody also wanted some other objective even more and was willing to continue the war rather than risk that other goal — things might finally be changing for Afghanistan. Local governments weaponised police to kill or expel political opponents. For coalition partners, and allies including Australia, the aim has been to demonstrate commitment, strengthen ties to Washington and thereby increase access to the political, economic and security benefits these ties offer. It also implies holding military power back, over the horizon or outside the region, rather than establishing permanent bases. and a cavalcade of well cast, well-written and original characters. Membership surged after the 2008 financial crisis, then accelerated as thugs from both political extremes fought each other with baseball bats, ­bicycle chains and pepper spray in the streets of Washington, DC, Seattle, Portland and Detroit. If interference does occur, US armed groups probably would not know it. And under those circumstances, winning the war was desirable but continuing it was mandatory, since it was the war that guaranteed international engagement. They follow a decentralised command-and-­control philosophy known as “leaderless resistance” that was pioneered by far-right groups in the 1980s but has since been taken up by terrorists across the political spectrum, including jihadists. But its reach has extended to the streets of Western Europe – dominating headlines and filling social media with colourful profile pictures and “I am (insert latest outrage)” slogans. All this put Trump’s punitive strike in the political mainstream, making him look positively, well, Clintonian. Indeed, In fact, the proportion of the country under the full control of the elected, American-backed government is humiliatingly small. At the same time, statements by Saudi Arabia and the UAE indicate that the Sunni monarchies and their Gulf allies would consider participating in an Arab stabilisation force in Syria. “On the one hand they can be engaging in what they consider to be absolute war and we are blithely unaware of that - so that by the time we realise we … In the dark times, will there also be singing? He was executed a few months ­before 9/11. Since rebuilding Afghanistan was always recognized as a multi-decade project (akin to the US presence in South Korea, Japan and Germany), Washington was effectively telegraphing an intent to never leave — US forces are still present, after all, in all three of those countries more than 75 years after occupying them. The key to understanding the strike, though, lies in a question that’s been somewhat overlooked: why did Bashar al-Assad’s regime need to use the nerve agent in the first place? This is not the first time that talks have been mooted, it’s not the first time the stars have seemed to align for peace, and it’s clear that the Taliban is both far from defeated and incapable of winning outright. Australia has suffered 41 fatalities, with more than half killed in 2010 and 2011 at the peak of our commitment. Negotiations for the divorce settlement stutter on, gridlocked by the humongous cost, the fate of Europeans in Britain and Brits abroad, and the matter of the Irish border, which portends a return to “the troubles” – that quintessentially Irish term for the communal bloodletting that dominated the latter half of the last century. For a President who spoke blithely on the campaign trail about Japan and South Korea acquiring their own nuclear weapons to deal with Pyongyang, this represents a big step forward. From race-relations to healthcare to tax reform to The Middle East, South Asia and North Korea, we view his bizarro administration with a mix of amusement and trepidation. Young people, from east and west Africa flee poverty, unemployment, and civil war, to wind up in Calais or in pop-up slave markets in free but failed Libya. An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier. His newest book takes us away from the remote, rural guerrilla warfare of Afghanistan, and into the marginalized slums and complex security threats of the world's coastal cities. In the west, a separate rural militia movement had already coalesced around “sovereign citizen” groups that rejected federal authority. Ahead of time, McVeigh’s attack was far harder to foresee and its specifics impossible to predict. The husband of one leader posted a Facebook video this week expressing his readiness to take up arms against the government to prevent a “new world order” being imposed through lockdowns. Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion, Red lines and red herrings and Syria’s enduring torment, The Ricochet of Trump’s Counterrevolution, A Brief History of the Rise and Fall of the West, Freedom at Midnight (1) – the birth of India and Pakistan, Freedom at Midnight (2) – the legacy of partition, The Bard in the Badlands – Hell is empty and the devils are here, Why we’ve never stopped loving the Beatles, The Shock of the Old – the Glory Days of Prog Rock, A Middle East Miscellany قصص الشرق الأوسط, A Short History Of The Rise And Fall Of The West, Better read than dead – books and reading, Down Under – Australian history and politics, Foggy ruins of time – from history’s pages, Losing Earth – Tarkeeth and other matters environmental, My country, ’tis of thee – on matters American, Land of the fearful – home of the heavily armed, Race riots spread after death of unarmed black man. That was the year that was – a year of living dangerously. In In That Howling Infinite, read also: The Devil Drives, and  One Two Three what are we fighting for? He served for 22 years in the Australian Army, suggesting he was commissioned in circa 1983. This might be why, during the tentative talks in 2009-10 that I mentioned earlier, Pakistani intelligence officers arrested a key Taliban figure — Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, brother-in-law to Taliban founder Mullah Omar, a former deputy defense minister and a highly respected combat leader who had expressed willingness to talk with the coalition. A week later demonstrators, some carrying AK-47 rifles, swarmed into the state ­capital in Lansing, Michigan, to confront politicians. When the going gets tough, the mild get going. Against this background, last week’s strike seems almost laughably symbolic: 60-odd Tomahawk cruise missiles, launched from two US navy ships in the Mediterranean, with allied aircraft kept away from Syrian air defences, and the Russians (and thus, presumably, their Syrian proteges) given plenty of warning to get out of the way. And heavily armed ­actors across the spectrum are poised to exploit them’. David Kilcullen, The Australian, 30th May 2020. Kosovo 1999 it was not. By Thursday, militarised police were on the streets firing tear gas and rubber bullets against vociferous opposition. Fred Kaplan of Slate penned a piece that was typical of the mainstream media reaction, arguing that Trump withdrew “because of spite, ignorance, or both”. There is also the not-so-minor matter of the sovereign independent government of Afghanistan, which strongly resents being cut out of negotiations, has defense and interior ministries led by highly competent hard-line adversaries of the Taliban, and is highly unlikely to acquiesce in its own abandonment. Likewise, I have heard these demands from many Taliban-aligned elders in Afghanistan over the years, and Taliban representatives proposed the identical quid pro quo during talks with the Obama administration in 2011-14. This brings us back to our original question: what’s different now? The strategy’s other key benefit is its low cost and ability to preserve (or, in this case, restore) strategic freedom of action. Dr. David Kilcullen has a piece at Small Wars Journal that you should read. In his recent State of the Union address he repeatedly emphasized the need for a political solution in Afghanistan. Alongside an Arab coalition, ­Israel seems ready to step into any gap created by US withdrawal, while cheering Trump’s decision to exit the Iran deal. European politicians condemned the decision and began working on ways to keep Iran in the deal, while in the US former secretary of state John Kerry engaged in last-minute direct negotiations with Iranian leaders. This matters to Pakistan because, if the key factor driving Islamabad’s behaviour has been fear of encirclement by India, then one solution is for a major Pakistani ally, China, to play an important role in Afghanistan and thereby counterbalance Indian influence. As I write, there are 1.7 million coronavirus cases in the US and more than 100,000 deaths. If anything, Israel’s willingness to directly engage Iranian and Iranian-backed forces in Syria has only increased after since Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal. Unsurprisingly, doing exactly that has become a major priority for Assad. Co-operation between Saudi and Israeli forces (even tacit) would be highly controversial within Saudi Arabia and could prompt sharply increased internal unrest. Already confronted with the Russian ascendency in the east, and the prospects of the Ukrainian – Donetsk conflict firing up in the near future, the EU’s next big challenge is likely to be reacquainting itself with its original raisin d’etre – the European Project that sought to put an end to a century of European wars – and addressing the potential expulsion of parvenu, opportunistic member states who fail to uphold the union’s democratic values. In the Middle East the carnage continues. Protesters, some heavily armed, are out in force to demand reopening of the economy. Poetry offerings included the reblog of Liverpudlian Gerry Cordon’s selection of poetry on the theme of “undefeated despair”: In the dark times, will there also be singing? The final new factor is that Pakistan seems to have finally decided its interests are best served by peace in Afghanistan — hence the release of Baradar and the willingness to support talks. More importantly, the move of the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier battle group toward Korean waters to deter further missile launches, and the deployment of US air defence systems and special operators in South Korea, showed this was not just talk. Last November, we welcomed Donald Trump to the White House with bated breath and gritted teeth, and his first year as POTUS did not disappoint. David Kilcullen is a former lieutenant-colonel in the Australian Army and was a senior adviser to US general David Petraeus in 2007-08, when he helped to design the Iraq war coalition troop surge. A war which has caused over 31,000 civilian deaths due to war-related violence and 29,900 wounded (over 111,000 Afghans, including civilians, soldiers and militants, are estimated to have been killed) has staggered to a bloody stalemate. Kilcullen is a three piece rock band from New York City. The failure to act after Ghouta so appalled some members of Obama’s cabinet that Democratic “Syria hawks” (including former secretary of state John Kerry) came out in support of last week’s Shayrat strike. To think that, under these circumstances, mere words — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s frosty visit to Moscow, Trump’s call for Vladimir Putin to stop covering for Assad, or ambassador Nikki Haley’s fiery confrontation with Russian diplomats at the UN — will force Putin to back away from a critical strategic relationship going back to the 1960s, or force Assad to stop throwing everything at an attack that threatens his survival, is fantasy. Kilcullen writes: “One reason for the overemphasis on right-wing extremism  is that analysts often characterized armed actors as “hate groups”. There was indeed a huge rise in militia ­activity. But while he seems entirely serious about settling (as he calls it) with the Taliban, his attitude is sharply at odds with that of the US foreign policy establishment, the Defense Department (where secretary James Mattis resigned in protest over the Afghan and Syrian withdrawals), the Democratic opposition, and even his own Republican Party in congress, which passed a bipartisan resolution calling on him to maintain forces in Afghanistan and Syria. Knocking out Khan Sheikhoun from the air would immediately collapse the rebel salient, letting the regime stabilise the front line. When you lose the constructive middle, extremists on all sides are empowered” (from 51 Days at Waco, Paul Hemphill September 2003 – see below ). The conservatives’ much-touted “silent majority” was not their “moral majority” after all. Whether it spreads will depend on level-headed political leadership – and today’s hyper-partisan coronavirus debate offers little hope of that. And fear of the coronavirus, alongside the demonstrable inability of government to keep people safe, is driving today’s growth in armed militancy. Pakistani decision-makers have long been extraordinarily open about this. Second to its health impact, the economic crisis wrought by ­government-imposed lockdowns has grabbed the most attention: 40 million Americans were forced on to the dole in the past 10 weeks. And the act And Afghanistan, at war with itself for 40 years, would be condemned to continuing conflict and carnage. Trump doesn’t seem to care much about the first issue, and his answer to the second is that if an attack took place, he would order massive retaliation. At play in the fields of his Lord, VP Pence declared to US troops in December that victory was nigh, the Taliban and IS continue to make advances in poor, benighted Afghanistan. And this is one of the safe places, positively benign compared with hot spots such as New York or New Jersey with deaths in the tens of thousands. I mentioned that two key assumptions have underpinned the enduring international presence, namely the fear of a Taliban takeover if we withdraw, leaving a weak Afghan government behind, and the expectation that such a takeover would result in terrorist attacks from Afghanistan. This inspired our last post for the year: The Bard in the Badlands – Hell is empty and the devils are here, the title referencing a line from The Tempest. It also highlights the comfort of many progressive interventionists (including Kerry, but also Hillary Clinton) with unilateral American use of force — provided it is sanctified by humanitarian principles such as “responsibility to protect”. All we can conclude from the available evidence is that the risk is real and growing. David Kilcullen, Self: Unmanned: America's Drone Wars. While I am not as cynical about this as my hypothetical observer, I am very sceptical about the prospects for peace anytime soon. It’s worth remembering that almost three million Americans served in Iraq and Afghanistan, coming home familiar with urban and rural guerrilla warfare to a country where 41 per cent of people own a gun or live with someone who does. Check them out. Seeking ­Egyptian support for the overemphasis on right-wing extremism, I would not approved. Could be written on the Marxist left and right-wing militants overlap — we can expect something much more ”. 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