Political analyst Glenn Greenwald points to a recent US accusation against an Iraqi who attacked US military forces in Iraq.  The US has accused the person of being a terrorist. Greenwald is critical of this:

Is that not exactly the mindset that more or less anyone in the world would have: if a foreign army invades your country and proceeds to brutally occupy it for the next eight years, then it’s your solemn duty to fight them?  Indeed, isn’t that exactly the mentality that caused some young Americans to enlist after the 9/11 attack and be hailed as heroes: they attacked us on our soil, and so now I want to fight them?

Yet when it’s the U.S. that is doing the invading and attacking, then we’re all supposed to look upon this very common reaction with mockery, horror, and disgust– look at these primitive religious fanatic Terrorists who have no regard for human life — because the only healthy, normal, civilized reaction someone should have to the U.S. invading, occupying, and destroying their country is gratitude, or at least passive acquiescence. Anything else, by definition, makes you a Terrorist. ...

Few things better illustrate the utter meaninglessness of the word Terrorism than applying it to a citizen of an invaded country for fighting back against the invading army and aiming at purely military targets

Read the entire piece.  Think about the discussions we've had about terrorism.  How does Greenwald's argument fit into the theories of terrorism we've discussed? Is any use of force against US military an act of terrorism? Why is the US prosecuting this person for "terrorism" if civilians were not the target?

As we discussed earlier in the semester, one of the main assumptions that drives military strategies is what the nature of the threat is.  But how can states determine what that threat will be? In the era of large armies and traditional warfare, frameworks like realism (answer: anyone with lots of military power is a potential threat) and liberalism (any nondemocracy with a lot of military power is a potential threat) might have done the job. But today?

The Pentagon has responded to this challenge:

Instead of planning for failure, they’ve been stocking up on polish for their crystal balls. Not only has the military spent $125 million in the last three years alone on computer software to predict political unrest, they’re also funding a ton of initiatives, from Internet mining to network science, to upgrade their forecasting.

But as Dr. Richard Danzig, the former Navy Secretary and current chair of the Center For a New American Security (CNAS), notes,

“I accept that the inclination to predict is deeply embedded in U.S. institutions and in human nature,” Danzig writes. “[But] long-term national security planning…will inevitably be conducted in conditions that planners describe as ‘deep’ or ‘high’ uncertainty, and in these conditions, foresight will repeatedly fail.”

Read this article in Wired.com, "Defense Whiz to Pentagon: Your Predictions Are Destined to Fail", and think about the various strategies we've discussed and how the assumptions on which they are based were arrived at.

Below is a link to an article by Fred Kaplan on what the author sees as the future of US warfare.  

The future face of American warfare is very likely on display now in Africa. Libya, the coast off Somalia, and now the borderlands of Uganda—it’s a fair bet that these theaters of conflict, far more than Iraq or Afghanistan, foretell the shape of our military adventures. What this suggests is a return to the “advise and assist” missions of the Cold War, with international terrorists (or, on occasion, particularly hideous thugs) replacing international Communism as the predominant threat.

As you read it think about how this vision contrasts with RMA (military transformation) and with COIN (counterinsurgency).  Think also about what has changed and why since the proponents of both RMA and COIN were sure that their way of war was the real future of warfare.

The New Interventionism: How Obama is changing the way the United States wages war

One of the differences that we've discussed between unilateral and multilateral liberals is how to best ensure the spread of democracy.

In a speech today, President Obama stated, about the recent events in Egypt:

What we didn't do was pretend that we could dictate the outcome in Egypt -- because we can't. So we were very mindful that it was important for this to remain an Egyptian event, that the United States did not become the issue ...

Compare this statement, and US actions before and during the Egypt demonstrations, to the statements of the Bush administration before and during the invasion of Iraq, as well as Bush statements in the various documents cited in the Rhodes article.  This difference is one of the things that divides the unilateralist liberals from the multilateralist liberals.

Do you agree that the spread of democracy is good for international peace and security? If so, what do you think is the most effective way to spread democracy?

The US is pursuing an RMA-like strategy of robotic warfare, relying on unmanned drones, in Pakistan:

Imagine if, an hour from now, a robot-plane swooped over your house and blasted it to pieces. The plane has no pilot. It is controlled with a joystick from 7,000 miles away, sent by the Pakistani military to kill you. It blows up all the houses in your street, and so barbecues your family and your neighbours until there is nothing left to bury but a few charred slops. Why? They refuse to comment. They don't even admit the robot-planes belong to them. But they tell the Pakistani newspapers back home it is because one of you was planning to attack Pakistan. How do they know? Somebody told them. Who? You don't know, and there are no appeals against the robot.

Now imagine it doesn't end there: these attacks are happening every week somewhere in your country. They blow up funerals and family dinners and children. The number of robot-planes in the sky is increasing every week. You discover they are named "Predators", or "Reapers" – after the Grim Reaper. No matter how much you plead, no matter how much you make it clear you are a peaceful civilian getting on with your life, it won't stop. What do you do? If there was a group arguing that Pakistan was an evil nation that deserved to be violently attacked, would you now start to listen?

In fact, this is what is happening, and it's one of the factors behind the rise in anti-US sentiment and violence. "Even the 2004 report commissioned by Donald Rumsfeld said that 'American direct intervention in the Muslim world'  was the primary reason for jihadism."

For more details, see Johann Hari's article "Obama's robot wars endanger us all" in The Independent (UK)