Other Problems, Other Places

Would that all we had to worry about were trivial matters like the financial meltdown, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran—or Detroit and a nearly bankrupt California. Alas, President-elect Obama is going to have more on his plate than that. He is probably going to wind up feeling like a clipped Boxer trying to chase its own tail.
India just had what some there are calling “our 911”. Survivors kept pointing out on the news that the perpetrators went to great lengths to identify Americans. Also, it is noted, that the shootings took place in bars and hotels that catered to Westerners, especially Americans.
Among the groups intelligence folk feel are well enough funded and staffed to pull something this well organized off are Al Quida and a Muslim group peevish over the fact that Kashmir isn’t part of Pakistan yet. (And, of course, both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons.)
Here’s a major center, where a lot of American business gets done, prone to violent attack. One commentator suggested that outside of Afghanistan and Iraq, India may suffer the most terrorist attacks in the world. Whether we like it or not, this involves significant American interests.
Then there was the picture on the front page of Investor’s Business Daily this week that showed a Russian warship receiving a 21 gun salute from Venezuela as it entered a harbor there. The Russian Navy is holding its first war games off South American shores since the Cold War.
Venezuela’s Chavez assures us this is not in any way meant as a provocation. (No more than I intended a provocation when I punched a kid in the mouth back in the Eighth Grade.) No immediate threat here; just a reminder that lots of places aren’t friendly toward us—right at our back door.
You really cannot blame these two things on George Bush. Kashmir has been a simmering problem since I was in Third Grade. I remember my Sixth Grade history book talking about it. Latin America has a long list of perceived or real grievances against us.
Mexico lost half of its territory to us in 1948 and has never entirely forgotten that California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and so forth are really part of Mexico. (They have a mantra in Mexico: “Poor Mexico, so far from God; so close to the United States.” Poland may have something like that about Russia and Germany. Who knows?)
I suspect a lot of Columbians are fully aware that it was an American gunboat that forced Columbia to give up Panama and its canal rights to effective American control in 1903. Argentina has to feel a bit of resentment over the fact that we ignored the Monroe Doctrine in 1982 and backed Britain over the Falklands.
Speaking of the Monroe Doctrine—how many of you have ever studied what Secretary of State John Q. Adams actually said in that communication? Back in those days the only way to transport cargo from the Midwest to the East Coast was by ship through the Florida straits.
In 1803 we bought Louisiana over top of Spain’s “first right of refusal.” In 1810 we grabbed Mobile from Spain. In 1819 we invaded Florida and took it from Spain. Britain knew that the two remaining threats to our Florida straits sea route were Cuba and Texas—and that it was only a matter of time before we moved on them.
So Britain—the planet’s mightiest super power-- sent us (with all the military muscle of Lichtenstein today) a communiqué offering to go halvsies on those two territories. With all the nerve in the world, Adam’s wrote back that we would take either or both territories as soon as we could, unilaterally.
We have Texas today and we still have a naval base in Cuba, protecting the Florida straits. Mr. Adam’s “Monroe Doctrine” still follows the rubric laid out by Franklin in 1755, “We shall be an empire of liberty from pole to pole and sea to sea”. Latin America is very aware of this imperial attitude.
They haven’t called us the “Colossus of the North” over the past century for nothing. Back in the 1890s, Cuban poet and revolutionary (against Spain that time) Jose Marti put it more starkly. Someone asked him if he’d been in the US. “I have lived in the belly of the Beast,” he replied. It took Castro (who repealed the American imposed Platt Amendment) finally to free Cuba from American control. He has his disciples—like Chavez.
In 1945, the Soviets demanded three votes in the United Nations. Why? “To make up for the twenty you control in Latin America.” (True at the time.) But now, Latin America is our powder keg. We haven’t even talked about narcotics!
Then there are pirates off the east coast of Africa –taking down whole oil tankers. (If that continues, do you have any idea what piracy will do to the price of your gas!?! It will drive insurance rates out of sight.) There are Chinese and Russian hackers draining space and military secrets out of NASA like water out of leaky tub. (Business Week, Dec.1)
The French have listening posts all over the world tapping into our industrial and military computers. The Chinese aren’t upgrading their military out of fear they will be attacked by any of their Asian neighbors! They see the Western Pacific as validly a Chinese sphere of influence as we see the Caribbean. They plan to have the muscle to make it so.
What would we do if Israel really did launch a strike at Iran? What if the corrupt Saudi government (where so much of our oil comes from) collapsed and a completely unfriendly regime took over? What if terrorist attacks in Europe made several governments there feel that it was unsafe to allow American bases to remain? (As improbable, no doubt, as someone daring to blow up the World Trade Center.)
What if—what if—what if? The world felt a lot more predictable and reliable when I was growing up. All we had to worry about was Russian bombs, and that was essentially a stalemate. The “What ifs” of today have so many uncontrollable variables.
Good on you,Mr. Obama, good on you.