MWI Podcast: On Resistance

2 Comments

1. 

   B.C. on 11.03.21 at 3:39 pm

   Let's consider the "resistance" argument from a different point of view; this being, from the point of view of those individuals and groups (in the U.S./the West and elsewhere) who believe that:

   a. The political, economic, social and/or value changes,

   b. Which were and are part of the U.S./the West's post-Cold War efforts to advance such things as capitalism, globalization and the global economy throughout the world,

   c. That these such political, economic, social and/or value changes (a) clearly threaten conservative/tradition ways of life, ways of governance, values, etc., — both here at home and there abroad — and, thus, (b) become the basis for "resistance" efforts — both here at home and there abroad — that we are witnessing throughout the world today.

   In this regard, let's start with (from 1993) National Security Advisor Anthony Lake’s “From Containment to Enlargement" document; which served as a precursor/an introduction to President Bill Clinton’s signature “Engagement and Enlargement” national security strategy. (Herein, note our grand "revolutionary"/"change" initiative.)

   “Throughout the Cold War, we contained a global threat to market democracies; now we should seek to enlarge their reach, particularly in places of special significance to us. The successor to a doctrine of containment must be a strategy of enlargement — enlargement of the world’s free community of market democracies. During the Cold War, even children understood America’s security mission; as they looked at those maps on their schoolroom walls, they knew we were trying to contain the creeping expansion of that big, red blob. Today, at great risk of oversimplification, we might visualize our security mission as promoting the enlargement of the ‘blue areas’ of market democracies. The difference, of course, is that we do not seek to expand the reach of our institutions by force, subversion or repression.”

   (As all know now, after 9/11, these "use of force," etc., gloves would come off.)

   Next — regarding the threat that this such "revolutionary"/"change" initiative provides to such things as traditional values, etc., — let's look at these items from (a) Robert Gilpin's book “The Challenge of the Global Capitalism: The World Economy in the 21st Century;” therein, see the Introduction chapter and (b) Jerry Muller's book: "The Mind and The Market: Capitalism in Western Thought; therein, see the chapter on Friedrich Hayek:

   Gilpin:

   “Capitalism is the most successful wealth-creating economic system that the world has ever known; no other system, as the distinguished economist Joseph Schumpeter pointed out, has benefited ‘the common people’ as much. Capitalism, he observed, creates wealth through advancing continuously to every higher levels of productivity and technological sophistication; this process requires that the ‘old’ be destroyed before the ‘new’ can take over. … This process of ‘creative destruction,’ to use Schumpeter’s term, produces many winners but also many losers, at least in the short term, and poses a serious threat to traditional social values, beliefs, and institutions.”

   Muller:

   "All in all, the 1980s and 1990s were a Hayekian moment, when his once untimely liberalism came to be seen as timely. The intensification of market competition, internally and within each nation, created a more innovative and dynamic brand of capitalism. That in turn gave rise to a new chorus of laments that, as we have seen, have recurred since the eighteenth century: Community was breaking down; traditional ways of life were being destroyed; identities were thrown into question; solidarity was being undermined; egoism unleashed; wealth made conspicuous amid new inequality; philistinism was triumphant.”

   Last, let's compare (a) the "resistance to change" argument of Walter Russell Mead below (see his essay in "Foreign Affairs" — the Mar-Apr 2017 edition — entitled “The Jacksonian Revolt: American Populism and the Liberal Order);” this, with (b) David Kilcullen "resistance to change" argument in his "Counterinsurgency Redux:"

   Mead:

   “In this new world disorder, the power of identity politics can no longer be denied. Western elites believed that in the twenty-first century, cosmopolitanism and globalism would triumph over atavism and tribal loyalties. They failed to understand the deep roots of identity politics in the human psyche and the necessity for those roots to find political expression in both foreign and domestic policy arenas. And they failed to understand that the very forces of economic and social development that cosmopolitanism and globalization fostered would generate turbulence and eventually resistance, as ‘Gemeinschaft’ (community) fought back against the onrushing ‘Gesellschaft’ (market society), in the classic terms sociologists favored a century ago.”

   Kilcullen:

   "Similarly, in classical theory, the insurgent initiates. Thus, Galula asserts that ‘whereas in conventional war, either side can initiate the conflict, only one – the insurgent – can initiate a revolutionary war, for counter-insurgency is only an effect of insurgency’. Classical theorists therefore emphasise the problem of recognising insurgency early. Thompson observes that ‘at the first signs of an incipient insurgency … no one likes to admit that anything is going wrong. This automatically leads to a situation where government countermeasures are too little and too late.’ But, in several modern campaigns – Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Chechnya, for example – the government or invading coalition forces initiated the campaign, whereas insurgents are strategically reactive (as in ‘resistance warfare’). Such patterns are readily recognisable in historical examples of resistance warfare, but less so in classical counter-insurgency theory.

   Politically, in many cases today, the counter-insurgent represents revolutionary change, while the insurgent fights to preserve the status quo of ungoverned spaces, or to repel an occupier – a political relationship opposite to that envisaged in classical counter-insurgency. Pakistan's campaign in Waziristan since 2003 exemplifies this. The enemy includes al-Qaeda-linked extremists and Taliban, but also local tribesmen fighting to preserve their traditional culture against twenty-first-century encroachment. The problem of weaning these fighters away from extremist sponsors, while simultaneously supporting modernisation, does somewhat resemble pacification in traditional counter-insurgency. But it also echoes colonial campaigns, and includes entirely new elements arising from the effects of globalisation."

   From the information that I have provided above, it becomes clear that:

   a. If you are the parties doing "resistance" today, then, you are the parties whose traditional and preferred ways of life, traditional and preferred ways of governance, traditional and preferred values, etc., are (a) under attack and/or (b) have already been changed. This, by:

   b. The parties who is doing "revolutionary" expansion today – both in their own home countries and indeed elsewhere throughout the world.

   In this regard, consider this exact realization from Dr. Robert Egnell below:

   "Robert Egnell: Analysts like to talk about 'indirect approaches' or 'limited interventions', but the question is 'approaches to what?' What are we trying to achieve? What is our understanding of the end-state? In a recent article published in Joint Forces Quarterly, I sought to challenge the contemporary understanding of counterinsurgency by arguing that the term itself may lead us to faulty assumptions about nature of the problem, what it is we are trying to do, and how best to achieve it. When we label something a counterinsurgency campaign, it introduces certain assumptions from the past and from the contemporary era about the nature of the conflict. One problem is that counterinsurgency is by its nature conservative, or status-quo oriented – it is about preserving existing political systems, law and order. And that is not what we have been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, we have been the revolutionary actors, the ones instigating revolutionary societal changes. Can we still call it counterinsurgency, when we are pushing for so much change?

   Dhofar, El Savador and the Philippines are all campaigns driven by fundamentally conservative concerns. When we are looking to Syria right now, it is not just about maintaining order or even the regime, but about larger political change. In Afghanistan and Iraq too, we represented revolutionary change. So, perhaps we should read Mao and Che Guevara instead of Thompson in order to find the appropriate lessons of how to achieve large-scale societal change through limited means? That is what we are after, in the end. And in this coming era, where we are pivoting away from large-scale interventions and state-building projects, but not from our fairly grand political ambitions, it may be worth exploring how insurgents do more with little; how they approach irregular warfare, and reach their objectives indirectly."

   (See the Small Wars Journal article "Learning From Today’s Crisis of Counterinsurgency" — an interview by Octavian Manea of Dr. David H. Ucko and Dr. Robert Egnell.)

   Bottom Line Thought — Based on the Above:

   Thus, as per Anthony Lake, Robert Gilpin, Jerry Muller, Walter Russell Mead, David Kilcullen and Robert Egnell above, the question becomes:

   a. NOT how do countries "resist" revolutionary change but, rather,

   b. How do they continue their "revolutions" (in the name of such things as democracy, capitalism, globalization and the global economy); this, in the face of "resistance" forces — whose allegiance is to traditional values, etc., — and whose goal is the end such revolutions — and to reverse the gains made in same?

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   • 

     B.C. on 11.04.21 at 11:25 am

     Given that Vladimir Putin's primary purpose seems to be to "resist" the political, economic, social and/or value "changes" (more along modern western lines) that the U.S./the West seeks to achieve throughout the world, one would expect to see:

     a. Putin championing conservative/traditional forces and causes at home — this, in his (Putin's) grand "resistance" endeavor and, likewise,

     b. Attempting to champion and "co-opt" conservative/tradition forces and causes in the U.S./the West — and, indeed, elsewhere throughout the world.

     And guess what? This is exactly what we DO see:

     “In his annual appeal to the Federal Assembly in December 2013, Putin formulated this ‘independent path’ ideology by contrasting Russia’s ‘traditional values’ with the liberal values of the West. He said: ‘We know that there are more and more people in the world who support our position on defending traditional values that have made up the spiritual and moral foundation of civilization in every nation for thousands of years: the values of traditional families, real human life, including religious life, not just material existence but also spirituality, the values of humanism and global diversity.’ He proclaimed that Russia would defend and advance these traditional values in order to ‘prevent movement backward and downward, into chaotic darkness and a return to a primitive state.’

     In Putin’s view, the fight over values is not far removed from geopolitical competition. ‘[Liberals] cannot simply dictate anything to anyone just like they have been attempting to do over the recent decades,’ he said in an interview with the Financial Times in 2019. ‘There is also the so-called liberal idea, which has outlived its purpose. Our Western partners have admitted that some elements of the liberal idea, such as multiculturalism, are no longer tenable,’ he added. …

     As Putin passes his 20th year as Russia’s president, his domestic and foreign policy appears intended to contrast his country’s ‘independent path’ with the liberal and decadent regimes in the West. The invented battle of Western values versus Russia’s ‘traditional values’ is part of a Kremlin effort to justify its broader actions in the eyes of Russian citizens, placing them in the context of a global struggle in which Russia is the target of aggression. Ignoring and violating the provisions of international organizations to which it is a party thus becomes a demonstration of defending its conservative values from European liberalism. … ”

     (See the Wilson Center publication “Kennan Cable No. 53” and, therein, the article “Russia’s Traditional Values and Domestic Violence,” by Olimpiada Usanova, dated 1 June 2020.)

     "Liberal democratic societies have, in the past few decades, undergone a series of revolutionary changes in their social and political life, which are not to the taste of all their citizens. For many of those, who might be called social conservatives, Russia has become a more agreeable society, at least in principle, than those they live in. Communist Westerners used to speak of the Soviet Union as the pioneer society of a brighter future for all. Now, the rightwing nationalists of Europe and North America admire Russia and its leader for cleaving to the past."

     (See "The American Interest" article "The Reality of Russian Soft Power" by John Lloyd and Daria Litinova.)

     “Compounding it all, Russia’s dictator has achieved all of this while creating sympathy in elements of the Right that mirrors the sympathy the Soviet Union achieved in elements of the Left. In other words, Putin is expanding Russian power and influence while mounting a cultural critique that resonates with some American audiences, casting himself as a defender of Christian civilization against Islam and the godless, decadent West.”

     (See the “National Review” item entitled: “How Russia Wins” by David French.)

     "During the Cold War, the USSR was perceived by American conservatives as an 'evil empire,' as a source of destructive cultural influences, while the United States was perceived as a force that was preventing the world from the triumph of godless communism and anarchy. The USSR, by contrast, positioned itself as a vanguard of emancipation, as a fighter for the progressive transformation of humanity (away from religion and toward atheism), and against the reactionary forces of the West. Today positions have changed dramatically; it is the United States or the ruling liberal establishment that in the conservative narrative has become the new or neo-USSR, spreading subversive ideas about family or the nature of authority around the world, while Russia has become almost a beacon of hope, 'the last bastion of Christian values' that helps keep the world from sliding into a liberal dystopia. Russia’s self-identity has changed accordingly; now it is Russia who actively resists destructive, revolutionary experiments with fundamental human institutions, experiments inspired by new revolutionary neo-communists from the United States. Hence the cautious hopes that the U.S. Christian right have for contemporary Russia: They are projecting on Russia their fantasies of another West that has not been infected by the virus of cultural liberalism."

     (See the December 18, 2019, Georgetown University, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs article "Global Culture Wars from the Perspective of Russian and American Actors: Some Preliminary Conclusions," by Dmitry Uzlaner. Look to the paragraph beginning with "Russia and the United States as screens for each other’s projections.")

     Bottom Line Thought — Based on the Above:

     Given that "resistance" today is clearly:

     a. Dominated by elements within states and societies (to include such elements in the U.S./the West) who do not wish to see their countries "transformed" — this, so as to better provide for such things as capitalism, globalization and the global economy — and

     b. Dominated by regimes (for example, those in Russia and in China) who likewise feel threatened by our such grand "change" initiatives,

     Given these such matters, how can the word "resistance" be used to address, for example,

     a. How the Baltic nations might

     b. "Resist" the "resistance" efforts of rulers such as Vladimir Putin?

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