The New Warfare

I shouldn't make light of it since lives have been lost, but the most significant development in international affairs this millennium is China's decision to send a squad of martial artists to deal with its border dispute with India. All wars henceforth should be hand to hand combat.

I know the military industrial complex is finding this covidious interlude frustrating, what with a mere virus taking over their Grim Reaper duties. Needless to say, this pandemic kind of thing is bad for business. What more the spectre of hand to hand combat to settle international disputes? Diplomacy is being thoroughly disrupted.

Bruce Lee already wrote the script in Enter the Dragon, so we could line up all the actors in this political theatre. Hollywood and Madison Avenue are currently idled, and are itching to spring back into action. This could be the most effective way to revive The Grand Reopening of Texas in this silly season. Mister Trump has even appeared in wrestling bouts in his earlier youthful indiscretions, surely, this is something he could get behind, especially as the attempt to inaugurate a Space Force was too little too late. No, hand to hand combat is just the Grand Guignol spectacle to relieve our lockdown ennui. Bill it as the Game of Death, the Game of Thrones was so last year's must see TV.

Sure, it would be a transfer of wealth from Raytheon and company to Comcast and the Disney contingent, but let's face it, it's the same oligarchs ultimately behind the scenes, and it would be more entertaining than what warfare has been for the human race throughout history. The surplus to society of bread and circuses instead of the constant saber rattling and brandishing of missile systems, nuclear weapons and the like would be immense. The betting industry would love nothing better than taking wagers on India versus China in the global ring. Why have expensive nuclear weapon programs when what is really required is some Shaolin monks bent on revenge? Moreover, the shadow economy is in dire need of a stimulus package. Let the dollar circulate, Secretary Mnuchin, pitch it to your boss. The possibilities are endless.

Mind you, there is no guarantee that China would come out top in the contest. Bollywood already has counters to Chinese expertise. The catapult scene from Bahubali 2 stands up in extravagance to almost any action movie I've seen. Albeit Pakistan might welcome the depletion of Indian resources and send some commandos to Kashmir. In any case, I would venture that Hong Kong's elite martial artists might boycott the fight and perhaps Beijing might reconsider imposing their national security law.

Ghana will happily take on Cote d'Ivoire with a squad of Bukom bombers. Ike "Bazooka" Quartey and The Professor himself Azumah Nelson, even in retirement, will deal promptly with anything our western brothers can come up with. The offshore oil is ours my friends.

Senegal and Nigeria can send competing squads of wrestlers to finally settle the issue of Ecowas's common currency, although I suppose Anthony Joshua can be a substitute boxer on the Nigerian side (divided loyalties Your Majesty), but I think Senegal will have the upper hand. Aminatta Sow Fall did write L’Appel des arènes after all, and who can compete with the strength of her African letters. Also: better jollof.

South and North Korea will duke it out in Taekwondo across the line of control, it goes without saying. The North's cashflow problems would be resolved based on gambling receipts alone. No need for starvation wages for the populace, North Korean consulates the world over would breath easier. No more counterfeiting for one.

Russia's judo squad can jawbone with Turkish oil wrestlers instead of the malign standoff we currently have between Emperors Putin and Erdogan disrupting countries all the way from Syria to Libya in The Great Game.

Egypt and Ethiopia will settle this business about the new dam on the Nile river instead of engaging in nation-state sponsored cyber attacks. The female Arbegnoch fighters of yore can certainly joust with the best Egyptian UFC fighters, not to mention they are very pleasing on the eye. I might give the Ethiopians the edge, their president just won the Nobel prize while no one will be motivated to fight for General Sisi, who must be the most garden variety of garden variety dictators - he doesn't even try, no personality cult, come on Sisi.

With a hotspot like Nagorno-Karabakh heating up and starred generals perishing after 3 days of fighting on the borders, Azerbaijan and Armenia would do well to look towards their neigbour, Mongolia's Nadaam festival - such 'manly games' would fit the bill, in what is "traditionally seen as a celebration of its three 'men's games' of wrestling, horse-racing and archery". The archers wore masks and the usual crowds were missing this year, but now that everyone in the world has a mobile phone they were still a success even with social distancing.

Companies like my employer, instead of designing newfangled infantry squad vehicles for quarter billion dollar contracts, might get to apply their supply chain expertise to more essential pursuits. The public relation rewards and goodwill that accrue are priceless.

My vision of the new warfare is no less improbable than the infectious sounds and scenario of Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney fighting over a girl in The Girl is Mine. Now who could resist that piece of pop magic? Everyone goes for the obvious hits when it comes decoding the success of Thriller, but it is the one-two punch of Baby Be Mine and The Girl is Mine that is the unappreciated genius stroke of the album.

"Michael, we're not going to fight"
"Paul, I think I told you, I'm a lover not a fighter."

Even if you think or thought that it was syrupy or that he'd lost his mind, you couldn't resist imagining the spectacle let alone the music (remember there was no video for the track). The song disarmed you with its ingenousness and burrowed its way through your ears into global consciousness.

And finally, Osama bin Laden could have saved all of us so much heartache by simply pitting his team of assassins against the 2001 US contingent: Bernard Hopkins, Roy Jones Jr, Floyd Mayweather Jr, Arturo Gatti, Oscar de la Hoya, Shane Mosely, and Evander Holyfield. True, de la Hoya was the weak link of that lineup (conflicted loyalties again). Instead we are stuck with asymetrical warfare and the attendant security theater of Recent Non-Specific General Threats.

Here's awaiting your suggestions for potential matchups in the new warfare, Dear Reader. There's plenty of room for innovation here. What? You've really got something better to do than engage in mindless speculation in these covidious times? Come on... I've left you an opening, the floor is yours...

A closing quote

Diplomacy means the art of nearly deceiving all your friends, but not quite deceiving all your enemies.

— Kofi Abrefa Busia

The New Warfare, a playlist

As usual, a soundtrack for this note (also on Spotify, albeit less complete, who owns the rights to The Electric Spanking of War Babies these days?).

• War Hero by Antibalas
• I Declare War by Kool G Rap & DJ Polo
• War by The Temptations
• Back from the War by Fried
• War of the Hearts by Sade
• Stop War Make Love by Omar
  The original version has a more pointed title and the purest falsetto when he sings the lyric

  How many people have to die?

• Let The Dollar Circulate by Billy Paul
• Warrior by Jose James
• War by Bob Marley
• Bells of War by Wu-Tang Clan
• War by Mos Def
• I Declare War by Ghostface Killah & Adriane Younge
• War by Outkast (Big Boi)
• I Declare War by Ghostface Killah & Masta Killa
• Electric Spanking of War Babies by Funkadelic
• Cold War by Janelle Monae
• The Girl is Mine by Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney
  

  "The doggone girl is mine"

• F*ck war make love by Omar
  I truly appreciate the various live versions that we've been graced with over the years, Omar throws down whenever he performs and this song is always a celebration.

File under: absurd, war, weapons arms, diplomacy, politics, humour, satire, culture, observation, perception, strategy, Great Game, Observers are worried, toli

Handling Rogues

One of the most interesting issues in diplomacy is how to handle prickly characters. One thing that has always impressed me is the frequency with which a skillful and determined negotiator can arrive at a neutralizing accommodation. Often one's gruesome interlocutor can be induced, cajoled, bribed or coerced. In rare cases, there can even be genuine conversions and, by sheer argument, you may lead someone to their Road of Damascus.

It's a mostly thankless task though, requiring patience, perceptiveness, a keen understanding of history, human foibles and an ever-optimistic outlook. There are exceptions of course that can cause even the most wizened diplomat to turn to drink. Sometimes, as say with the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, or the irascible clan warlords in Somalia, you're simply wasting your time. They never had any intention of settling and were just humouring you, if they were even persuaded to make it to the negotiating table. The prototypical case in the last decade was Milosevic.

I recall people telling me in the 90s that having Charles Taylor of Liberia wearing suits and sipping champagne in hotels was better than anything. "Maybe he'll get used to it, calm down and stop causing trouble". Wishful thinking of course. In the end, Taylor held Liberia hostage, won a "free and fair" election - his campaign slogan: "you killed my mother, you killed my father but I will vote for you", and proceeded to loot at an impressive and unprecedented scale, a more savage Tony Soprano as it were. The timber forest and diamond mines in the sub-region will never be the same.

The same was said about the Sierra Leonean lot, and here choice expletives need to be thrown at Reverend Jesse Jackson who intervened to force a disastrous settlement without making warring groups disarm. How the Country Preacher ever came to be seen as an expert and, more worryingly, as someone who could shape Clinton's foreign policy is still beyond me. Surely there should be more than racial affinity to make someone an authority? Or maybe, like those appointed to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, it was a case of who you knew. If you don't know what you're talking about, don't bring yourself: people's lives are at stake here. In the event, the Sierra Leonean catastrophe was a close-run thing and it took all of the efforts of ECOMOG, the West African peacekeeping mission, and a judicious deployment of a battalion of British paratroopers to staunch the bleeding.

In any case, the story of the almost incestuous relationship between otherwise notable African-Americans like Leon Russell and Louis Farrakhan and miscreant African leaders deserves a fuller exposition at a later point. A brief sketch though: there's a two-way back-scratching that is at work here. On the one hand, there's the glamour of proximity to presidents that tickles the inflated ego ("Look here: a photo of me with President so-and-so. Did you know, he took the whole day off to chat with me!). And on the other hand, there's a aura of legitimacy that the African counterparts craves by association with this distinguished American ("Running a country is so easy, why not get some face-time with this guy, we can drink some fine wines"). Some have speculated there has been an element of monetary lubrication in these affairs whether it's plots of land, mining concessions or the ever-propitious perennial: flashy jewelry (blood diamonds anyone?). I'm not so sure that these shabby interchanges need much prompting since it's a perfect quid-pro-quo. The populace of these countries will show up for these affairs dressed in finery, sing and dance to puff up your sense of importance. They lay it all out for you. There's a power imbalance of course but when you're poor, you'll take any entertainment you can. Once you've stuffed your suitcases with loot and finally returned to DC or Atlanta, you should know, however, that your contempt is fully reciprocated.

What is interesting about the current situation in Congo is that many in the media are willing to go for go for the jugular to stiffen the spine of the 'international community' in how it deals with rogues and warlords. Take this recent piece from The Economist, The UN gets tougher:

"In January, Congo's transitional government invited five of Ituri's militia bosses to become generals in the still-chaotic national army, in the hope that they would encourage their troops to disarm. The new generals all say they are looking forward to serving their country, but some appear to be carrying on as before, snapping orders into mobile telephones from their air-conditioned rooms at the Grand Hotel in Kinshasa, the capital.

Little in the militia bosses' history inspires confidence. Your correspondent was once the unwilling guest of one of them, Jerome Kakwavu, a former traffic warden whose men control the town of Aru, on the border between Ituri and Uganda. During the course of a week, Mr Kakwavu publicly executed three of his own men, nearly flogged a ten-year-old soldier to death and kidnapped two Ukrainian pilots. He was hospitable to your correspondent, however, offering him the use of his sex slaves and the companionship of his pet baby chimpanzee."

And I quite agree, I'm all for quiet negotiation, entreatments and face-saving accommodations, but that should be for the diplomats. The commenting class, and I am a proud, keyboard-wielding member, often has the strength of the moral high ground. Let's simply call a spade a spade and shame these bastards.

File under: Africa, Congo, politics, media, journalism, diplomacy, outrage, rogues, culture, observation, strategy, perception, black, african-american, toli

A Neighbour's House On Fire

"It is only a fool who does not worry when his neighbour's house is on fire".

Back in 2002 at the start of the current Ivory Coast conflict, Ghana's President John Kufuor recounted this old proverb to explain why he was spending valuable time and political capital trying to mediate. He's a ponderous man, a lawyer who, like the Thabo Mbeki-types running South Africa, would gladly spend hours discussing constitutional dispensations. Ghana had just emerged from 18 years of military adventurism and cronyism, all it was looking for was a few years of quiet to put things back on track. Instead of newly-nominated ECOWAS secretary general, Ibn-Chambas, spending his time on things like economic harmonization, a single currency, or shared investment in infrastructure like a West African railroad, all the best minds of the region were having to arrange cease-fires and negotiations with temperamental and easily-aggrieved parties. As the events of the last month have shown, it is clear that all that effort (two years worth) has been wasted.

Throughout they were treated with the irresponsible and inflammatory rhetoric of Ivory Coast's accidental president Laurent Gbagbo and his enforcers such as Blé Goudé. Some recent examples: Colonial Tensions Reemerge in Ivory Coast and In Ivory Coast, Agitator Rallies 'Young Patriots' Against French.

All this is essentially a failure of political will. Ivory Coast has its own set of irascible politicians ala Milosevic and they are reverting to type. They are quick to blame everyone except themselves and to do anything except negotiate. Especially egregious are the short-sighted appeals to nationalism; the concept is so-called ivoirité i.e. a means to disenfranchise half the population. Also on hand, are appeals to religion and, if all that fails, to tribalism or that old standby, the privately-funded militia.

Gbagbo and company have a keen sense of theatric and are fully conversant with the lingo of CNN, thus they inveigh against imperialism, or say that France wants "regime change" and wants to reimpose colonialism. Now there's a grain of truth about that, but barely so and it misses the point. True, the French in Africa aren't choirboys, but they never left Ivory Coast. One of the surprising things of the past 2 years is that, by and large, the Ivory Coast economy continued to function and cocoa production has not suffered much. Ghanaians know this because there is still cross-border smuggling of cocoa to Ivory Coast. Economic stability under the circumstances is due to the Ivorian business class and, especially, the French investors have ignored the politicians and kept their businesses going. All that is about to end.

After being targeted, and having their women raped, the French will now be as plainly unsentimental as is their wont. They are on their way out, the only question is whether they will leave the light bulbs or dismantle them like they did when they left Sekou Touré's Guinea when he had the temerity to ask for independence. As for the 40 percent of the country that don't agree with Gbagbo, they know that those violent mobs will be turned on them once the white or Lebanese foreigners are no longer around to be scapegoated.

This is what Laurent Gbagbo will be remembered for: breaking a peace, bombing the people you're supposed to negotiate with, bombing the peacekeepers who have come at considerable expense from the region, resorting to preemption and military measures because of impatience with diplomacy and ultimately ruining a country.

So we'll have 3 failed states in Ghana's neighbourhood, two that are now making baby steps trying to recover from untold grimness, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and now one that is threatening to descend into that same hellhole. See these kinds of images to get a flavour of how bad it is going to get.

The signs are plainly evident of a country walking into a disaster. There are death squads and grotesque Lady Macbeth types: Gbagbo's wife runs a particularly nasty private militia squad that murders any political opposition.

Now we're going to have more refugees, quietly we'll take them in uncomplaining in the best African tradition, as the bulk will be far away from the cameras. It was only this year, 15 years after the worst of Liberian madness that the Liberian refugees who escaped to Ghana have begun trickling home. Ironically, now people are fleeing Ivory Coast for Liberia. 20,000 refugees and counting now in a region that can ill-afford it.

I suspect when I head home for Christmas I'll be hearing lots of French around Accra. Watching the news, the look in the faces of the refugees says it all, a lot of Ivorians have left for good. Sadness all round and worry too: will the flames spill over the border?

File under: Africa, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Cote D'Ivoire, politics, war, refugees, crisis, France, rogues, diplomacy, waste, toli