Year one of the Donald Trump presidency reveals startling reversals of US priorities abroad, from Iranian domestic disruption to the arrival of a avyorth American petrol powerhouse displacing Saudi Arabia as a premier exporter of oil.
But these favorables don’t weigh against a new frontier emerging. The Indo-Pacific is ground zero for the long war. This confirms insights from previous geographers like Halford McKinder’s concept of ‘the Heartland’, the ominous region of Eurasia that juts southward toward the northwest frontier in the subcontinent. This region remains anathema even to American power. But team Trump needs to find a way to tame tribal Sunni Islamists in “the Heartland,” if only to soften Islamabad’s hold on proxies that serve archaic domestic policy.
The nature of the threat isn’t ideological but strategic and technological. The entire Sunni Eurasian continent requires what America doesn’t have: the primacy of light infantry. American defense posture heavily weighs air support over every other factor in war. The Iranians continue to demonstrate where the future lies. And it lies with light infantry.
Absent political center confounds enduring peace
Examining the fractured social base of the entire Indo-Pacific reveals a frightening theatre of war that the Americans wish to directly avoid. Because light infantry commands resources on the ground, it must reckon with determinants that often preclude political solutions that war envisions for the West. If Clausewitz saw war as “merely the continuation of policy by other means,” the Americans will find no political center from which to coalesce an enduring victory in Eurasia or the subcontinent.
Pakistan perfectly embodies the limits of conflict the Americans wish to avoid. Having multiple ethnicities subjugated to Punjabi rule from Islamabad makes regional sense, but no Western power wishes to elevate a distinct ethnic group to govern others. The Indo-Pacific is writ large by governing foundations whose source is ethnicity.
For Eurasia and the rest of the Indo-Pacific the social and political constituents of state formation remain to be addressed.
Strengthening the social components of state rule is the first requirement, but this isn’t a function of US war policy. For Eurasia and the rest of the Indo-Pacific the social and political constituents of state formation remain to be addressed. This is partly explained by the impact the Cold War had upon regional governing institutions as well as local history.
Witnessing Bangladeshi leadership address criminal components of a genocidal conflict that ended decades ago is evidence of just how difficult it remains for heterogenous composite societies to gain state formation in geographically fractured regions.
Historically, war remained the most powerful source coalescing state formation, but this isn’t viable policy given the range of contemporary warcraft. For the Indo-Pacific to open itself toward comity, it needs functioning, governing institutions and connectivity.
As team Trump pivots to address Iran, North Korea and failing multi- regional institutions like the UN, it must demonstrate diplomatic leadership driving weak nation-states toward reform in opening markets. Functioning economies alleviate social grievances. They also form the backbone of civil society, the very requirement needed for the West to succeed in its engagement with Islamism.
Civil society restores fragmented communities
The ethos of empire can indeed fortify the West as it engages fractured communities throughout the Indo-Pacific, but empire cannot be the fulcrum, for empires exhaust themselves. The fulcrum embodying the West’s best efforts abroad is civil society.
The Indo-Pacific is the new ground zero for the long war. And this isn’t Mesopotamia with its neatly organized regional estates of ethnicities coalescing near major tributaries for connectivity. Eurasia, the subcontinent, and weak-state formation require our best efforts to fuse US war policy, diplomacy and foreign aid toward emerging civil societies.
Team Trump should begin by seeking normative diplomatic relations between Islamabad and New Delhi, and the framework harnessed should be East Africa’s Swahili contingent upon the Mughal from Kabul to Mumbai.
If the Mughal emperors could connect East Africa to India, then American efforts should seek identical aims in state formation throughout the Indo-Pacific, for civil society remains the last bulwark against the vicious wiles of Islamism.
It is easy to arrange a stop in hostilities with Islam. just stop destroying their countries, slaughtering their citizens and buy their oil rather than taking it by military force. Ergo. Peace in our time.
In the emerging world order shaped by BRI/New Silk Road that will unite Europe, Asia, Africa into one land-based market with over 5/6 of mankind, faraway US, UK, Japan, Australia are distant islands.
And totally irrelevant to human history.
Even in 1950s, long before the …….. Viet-Nam rout, 9/11, fake WMD, Iraq quagmire, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, AF-Pak debacle, rise of BRICS, Arab spring, Jihad challenge, irrelevance of EU and Israel, loss of Iran and Pakistan as assets and allies, financial meltdown, debt, depression, despair, choice of liar Clinton vs bigot Trump hell bent on replacing baseball with pussy-grabbing as national sport ………… Mao the Wise advised his people to ignore America the Paper Tiger.
Even if the events of last 50 years were not glaring enough for the writer, Trump should have finally proven Mao right.
But diehards die hard. Just like in Germany and Japan, only a miscalculation leading to a war and sound military defeat will convince the US neocons that the party is over.
"Coalitions of the willing." If communities/states, on balance, do not share values, or benefits in trade, or political power, let them disasociate without violence. Internally, if California wishes to split from the U.S., let them. The same applies to North and Southern California. Let each unit control their security arrangements, and physical jurisdiction over their laws and resources. The bust up, and potential reassembly of relations based on real resident interests, would further the distillation, and implementation of shared values. If we are to blue sky the future, let us begin by responding to local interests benefiting from agreed objectives, and/or tolerance of differences..
Islam is not the question, the question is a cult of destruction, falsely calling itself Islam.
Jihaadist fanatics hide being the banner of Islam and proclaim attrocities to incite low ability, low insight people to commit attrocities in their name.
China will have its own version of this that will emerge very soon.
The enemy of cultists is the fact that no one needs to fight religious battles.
Sir, You forget to realiize why Iraq was invaded by US on the false pretext of WMDs? Why economic embargos were imposed on Iran for developing its peaceful nuclear programme whereas Israel, arch rival of Iran has hundreds of nuclear warheads and continued threatening Iran to attack it. Israel had also attacked Iraqi Nuclear Reacter in the past. Who dropped Atomic Bombs on Hero Shima and Nagasaki? Again on whome behest Isreal is killing innocent Palestinians especially children? Do not you see the Millions of Muslims in Syria, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere? Shame on you for your biased approach.
Beautiful Sir.