Thursday, November 22, 2012

Shall we pivot? A dance of giants


In the Malaysian press.  Author: Devadas Krishnadas is the director of Future-Moves, a foresight consultancy based in Singapore. He is a Fulbright scholar.

Some critical commentary highlighted by the subheadings:
MERELY REINTERPRETED
CHINA: THE NEW “OTHER”
ARMED CONFLICT BY 2020s?
THE CRITICAL UNCERTAINTY: US LEADERSHIP
But this is a very interesting assessment:
The second is the notion of a global war on terrorism (GWOT). As conceptualised under the Bush doctrine, the idea was a perversion of the Kennedy commitment to support freedom at any price.

V/R
Dave

Shall we pivot? A dance of giants — Devadas Krishnadas

November 23, 2012


NOV 23 — It has become routine for American presidents to visit key allies after an election to affirm relations.

Hitherto this has meant travel to the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Japan. It is a matter of significance that President Barack Obama has chosen to make his very first international trip following his re-election to Asia. Much has been made of what this could signify. The fashionable descriptive word is “pivot”.

Pivot connotes a shifting of concentration of mind and will to Asia. This would suggest a shifting away from something else. What is this something else, and is there really a shift taking place?
This somewhere else could be said to be a composite of two ideas.

The first is historical, which is America’s focus on Europe. After a near century of engagement with and in Europe in hot and cold wars, it is taking the view that the power balance is more counter-weighted by an ascendant Asia than by a stagnating Europe.

The second is the notion of a global war on terrorism (GWOT). As conceptualised under the Bush doctrine, the idea was a perversion of the Kennedy commitment to support freedom at any price.
But rather than be in support of an ideal, it had the goal of defending the homeland by perpetrating violence on perceived threats from non-state actors anywhere in the world.

It could be argued that the GWOT was consistent with the Kennedy doctrine of supporting freedom, save that it limited itself to an exclusive concern over the freedom of Americans.

MERELY REINTERPRETED

On closer inspection, neither of the above truly constitutes shift.

America is not going to disengage from Europe. Its historical ties are profound and bathed in blood both literally and figuratively — the former through two world wars and the latter by virtue of the bitter contest of political ideas during a half-century Cold War.

Its relationship with Europe has also become intertwined with GWOT. Over the past 10 years, the notion has been seated that terrorism perpetrated by Islamic extremists has, as its general target, the West within which the United States is merely the most prominent target.

The attacks in London and Madrid are only the most obvious manifestation of this conception. Less obviously are the many terrorist operations which have been disrupted by intelligence and police services in Europe, often (though not always) as a result of intelligence sharing with US agencies.

In so far as American involvement is concerned, the war in Iraq is effectively over while that in Afghanistan will soon be too. However, this does not mean that America’s commitment to disrupt and, where possible, destroy terrorist groups which target it or its European allies will be diminished.
What it does mean is that these interdictions will henceforth more likely take the form of covert action than all-out warfare.

So, there is no lessening of commitment to America’s interest in Europe as a strategic geo-political geography and nor a reduction in focus on the threat from terrorism. Both are merely being reinterpreted, and not for the first or last time.

(Continued at the link above)

1 comment:

  1. In support of your argument, a shift is the opening of a gap between two forces. There are two ways across the gap. one is through revolution, a simple jump from one side of the gap to the other, and evolution, the negotiation of the environment inside the gap (capacitance).

    A pivot is the movement of force at a distance, or torque. There is no gap. Torque distributes itself from where it was to where it is able, without force. Torque by definition is energy, but if there is nowhere for it to distribute its mass to or from, there is no movement of energy, i.e. power.

    A pivot to the South China Sea represents a change in the USA's distribution of energy in the rate of energy per second (radians?), not necessarily in magnitude nor direction.

    As all force in a pivot is towards the pivot point, a pivot doesn't mean necessarily a change in force ether, just the amount of energy distributed.

    So you are right. The pivot doesn't represent a change in policy, only how much energy we are going to distribute, i.e. it will be less in the Middle East and more in the South China Sea.

    ReplyDelete

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