In case it’s hard for you to understand why our foreign-policy apparatus is so just plain awful at dealing with large transitions – like the one we’re seeing in the Middle East right now, here’s John Gaddis, talking about the Cold War in his book of the same title The Cold War: A New History
A kind of moral anesthesia settled in, leaving the stability of the Soviet-American relationship to be valued over its fairness because the alternative was too frightening to contemplate. Once it became clear that everybody was in the same lifeboat, hardly anyone wanted to rock it.
The moral ambivalence was not moral equivalence. the United States never found it necessary to violate human rights on the scale that the Soviet Union, its Eastern European allies, and the Chinese under Mao Zedong had done. But Washington officials had long since convinced themselves that the only way they could prevent those violations was to go to war, a prospect that could only make things much worse.
“If you want to change that, the only answer is war” is something I’ve heard – approvingly from some on the right and disapprovingly from some on the left – in talking about the stuckness of the situation of the people in the Middle East. Everyone is afraid, and not unreasonably – lots and lots can go very very wrong.
Why we’re not planning to see what we can do to help it go right is the $64,000 question, and the flatfootedness with which we’re acting (and have acted under lots of prior Administrations) is definitely facepalm territory.
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So the suggestion is that there should be a U.S. plan, either specific or general, to ‘help it go right’ for each and every foreign populace deemed politically incorrect. Helping it go right of course means democratization, but there is little to support the idea that this can be a ‘top down’ or ‘outside in’ process. Instead, a simple recognition that democracy evolves as the system of governance best serving the interests of an educated middle class, suggests in turn that the plan most likely to work is little more than educate, educate, educate. Ensuring that it is properly applied at home would be a good place to start; and when that’s properly taken care of, think export.
Nixon complained once that the CIA was just a bunch of guys sitting around reading newspapers. He was lucky to have those guys. Our intelligence chiefs get their intelligence from watching television, and they don’t even comprehend that.
The guy who briefs the president on intelligence matters has got the Muslim Brotherhood mixed up with the United Way Foundation. When the shit hits and the Tomahawk missiles start flying, the United Way should be very concerned about that.
The only way to win the game is not to play. The proper “plan” for the US government is to get out of the business of supporting other governments, especially terribly unfree ones.
We have not done that for so long now that, even though everyone seems to recognize that’s the right policy, reasonable folks are afraid to jump off the speeding freight train that is “regional stability” and rent-seeking constituencies are out and out for staying on the train..
I understand that, but perpetuating idea we have a plan and some sort of vested interest (measurable against the people who actually live in Egypt!) is just going to continue the status quo. We need to time our jump and change policies away from one that’s gotten black eye after black eye.
Unfortunately, not playing isn’t a viable option. Nobody wants to be the world’s policeman, but nobody wants to live in a world without cops either. The game is a lot like thermodynamics- you can’t win, you can’t break even, and you can’t stop playing.
I think expectations are our problem. We’ve had this conundrum playing out in slow motion for decades (in Egypt and elsewhere), why should we expect that a optimal solution exists just because now its a crisis? For one thing, its not ours to ‘fix’. We can certainly do many things to make things worse (from our point of view), and we should work hard to identify and avoid them, but chances are we are going to end up with a new status quo that is equally or even more of a compromise of ideals than we started (one way or another). We have a certain arrogance that if things end up a certain way, we are at fault or could have prevented it somehow. Generally not, these trends are longstanding and powerful. We do best when we hold true to our ideals (promoting democracy AND promoting just governments) and roll with the punches.
Call me a racist if you like, but it seems to me that when you have a primitive, violent honor/shame culture and on top of that a violent, fanatical religion that maintains that everyone who doesn’t belong or won’t convert to it should be killed or enslaved and that substituting the will of the people for the will of God as expressed in Sharia is blasphemous and on top of _that_ a millenia-long tradition of corrupt, violent, nepotistic, and oppressive politics, you don’t have an environment terribly conducive to democracy and the rule of law. I’ll put my money where my mouth is and make a prediction. Within a year, maybe two, we will see a Muslim Brotherhood-led Sunni theocracy in Egypt that will be anti-American, anti-Israel and will support, arm, and finance jihadist terrorists. This will happen regardless of who is in the White House because no American president will be willing to support the brutality that would be needed to prevent it.
Explain why not playing is not an option. Obviously I don’t mean “not playing” in a deterministic sense. I mean, I literally see no benefit to any course of active support or aid we could provide to any party in the dispute.
Nothing definitively suggests favoring one faction over the other, but there are definitive costs to getting involved in this fashion. So don’t.
Mubarak resigned.
Gonna have to retool this thread 😉
I think that’s not the question to ask, because it’s not at all clear how much we influence outcomes in the first place, and what the true costs are.
But yes, I really do mean that I can live with most any outcome without stepping back in.
First, the odds of the really bad outcomes outcomes you describe are both low and only marginally affected by our actions. They’re unlikely with our continued involvement, and maybe only slightly more likely with our disengagement. That there’s any chance at all is at least partly due to our past engagement, however.
Frankly, I think there’s a strong case to be made that our continued involvement makes the really bad outcomes more likely and not less.
Second, your question seems like a moral and practical dead end. Is it better for Egyptians to be ruled by an American supported local tyrant or an Iranian tyrant in Tehran? I think it’s clearly better for Americans to not support tyrants. It’s a push for the Egyptians themselves.
Likewise, it’s pretty wrong to fundamentally say to a people “you’re too stupid and likely to blow each other up, so we’re going to impose a tyrant on you”. Continued tyranny is what leads people to stupid and dangerous decisions, like launching wars.
And I think it’s clearly in everyone’s interest to continue to trade. Whomever owns the canal and the oil fields will want to make use of them, and should have every right to. We don’t have any fundamental right to tell other people how they should use their stuff.
Mark B:_Unfortunately, not playing isn’t a viable option. Nobody wants to be the world’s policeman, but nobody wants to live in a world without cops either._
Yes, but what’s the point of cops if they’re part of the racket?
In some ways, we’ve acted like the cops in LA confidential. Sure, we’ve cleaned up some scum and talked and the talk… but when it came between doing the right thing and doing the comfortable thing, we’ve chose the comfortable thing nearly every time. Even if it made the streets dirtier in the process.
Fred:_This will happen regardless of who is in the White House because no American president will be willing to support the brutality that would be needed to prevent it._
Exactly my point. This is the talk of men who think they are cops, but are actually thugs. Since when did we have the right to brutally protest against democracy? Isn’t that anathema to everything the founding fathers believed in?
Now the streets are cleaning themselves, but we don’t like the guys who are we doing it. Well tough, we should have considered that 20 years ago. We had influence, and wasted it on the assumption that it would last forever. It reminds me of Faust…
The problem is that we’re not just the cops.
We’ve got certain interests in the Middle East, mostly based on their natural resource extraction industry. It’s nice to think “we could just let everything to go hell,” but we don’t actually have that option; the prosperity of the world, and not incidentally our own prosperity, rely on the continued flow of oil.
We’re not necessarily justified in any action that we might desire to undertake, purely because “it might affect the flow of oil”. But at the same time, we have to understand that there is a point at which our interest in that oil (not to use ourselves, necessarily, just that it be sold into the world market) would require us to use force. Should the Middle East unite under a single government, and that government decide to deny oil sales to all Western powers, there’s no doubt that we would go to war to change that policy.
More realistically, if one country decided to act in such a way to interrupt the flow… Iran could do this by shooting at tankers in the Persian Gulf; Egypt could do this by closing the canal. But in either case, that would go beyond what we are prepared to tolerate, and we’d use force to stop it.
But if we have interests in the region that we’d use force to guarantee, then we’ve got at least some moral obligation to pay attention to the region, and try to prevent the scenarios which would result in us being forced to go to war. And sometimes we’re going to be impelled to do things that we might not otherwise wish to do, because the alternative might be a terrible risk of war.
Furthermore, merely being willing to do such things reduces the total risk. If we’re seen as unwilling to act, of having too fine a moral scruple, then that will be used against us by those who do not want peace or prosperity. Surely Iran is playing a dangerous game against the calculus of what we might be willing to put up with…
Even worse is the prospect of an unfriendly country in the Middle East obtaining nuclear weapons. Then, our options narrow down, and transition very sharply from “put up with whatever they want to do” to “murder an entire nation in a single strike”. We already face this in North Korea, but happily the Norks are too poor to pose a strategic threat; the only thing they could do to provoke us would be to set off a nuke themselves, in which case we hardly need worry about the moral issues.
But a nuclear-armed Iran which decided to start blowing up oil tankers, which has announced that any action taken to stop it will result in Tel Aviv being turned into a fireball? What can you do, except kill it so savagely that it has no chance to carry out its threat?
That’s the kind of stakes we have to play for. We’re fortunate enough that the threat of mutually assured destruction has passed, for the most part – but that doesn’t mean that we might not be forced to deal out the destruction without the “mutual” part. So there’s no prospect of being able to take our ball and go home… we have the power to do so, certainly, but surely we can’t argue that it’s morally right for us to do so.
Look, today we ought to celebrate with and for the Egyptian people…they pushed the door open, and the leadership they despised was wise and good enough not to kill to stay in power.
We can face tomorrow with hope and worry mixed together…
Marc
A.L. is right that we ought to be happy for Egypt, and celebrate one less Mubarak in the world.
At the same we can recognize the fact that we were inexcusably blind-sided by events in Egypt, and that our mishandling of Mubarak made us look feckless, not principled. Not surprising, given that our leader is in no way principled, in spite of his born-again Reaganite pretensions. He has done his best to advance the worst possible party in this dispute, and if he recognizes his mistake now – as it seems he might – it doesn’t excuse it.
We can only hope now that people like Ralph Peters are right when they say the MB has no chance in Egypt.
As for the moral autopsy on Mubarak’s regime, we can’t win that game. If we ever advocate strong measures against dictators, we are war-mongers – even if nothing close to “war” is being suggested. If we tolerate the dictator, then we are held morally responsible for everything that he does, by the very same people who call us war-mongers. You can’t argue with the left’s facile logic.
Indeed, a good call, AL. This is certainly going better than I’d have bet on previously.
I’m sorry, but I don’t get the “let’s all stop debating and be happy Mubarak is gone” concept.
As best I can tell, Mubarak was a military man who started wearing civilian clothes after a while, but retained power through what was basically military support.
So all that’s happened is the military dictatorship with civilian pretentions has been replaced with a naked military dictatorship.
There’s no change of regime here, just a change of figureheads. I don’t see how that’s cause for celebration.
Also, what’s with the Obamaesque “the time for debate is over” proclamation? Everyone cheering for a change in figureheads and then walking away seems exactly the sort of “lack of planning” that the original post called into question.
First of all, I’m glad Avatar called off the cop motif. IT doesn’t work, and sorry I dragged another post into it.
Glen
_If we ever advocate strong measures against dictators, we are war-mongers – even if nothing close to “war” is being suggested._
I’m having trouble thinking of any situation in my lifetime where at least one major political group DIDN’T suggest war immediately:Iraq, Iran, China, N.Korea, Lebanon, Yemen, Somalia. Can you give an example?
I’m not saying war to bring down dictators is necessarily bad, just not the only solution. And sometimes, a very flawed solution.
Now, I was not against Iraq (per se). I just thought we should slow down a bit and make sure we’re ready for the aftermath. I also thought two fronts was a bad idea. No matter what you think of Iraq, you have to admit we were not prepared for the next 3 years.
_If we tolerate the dictator, then we are held morally responsible for everything that he does, by the very same people who call us war-mongers._
What we’ve done is more than just ‘tolerate’ dictators like Saddam or Mubarek. We gave them power that supported their dictatorship. We gave them weapons that were certainly used in their reign of terror. Now, in all likelihood, it would have happened anyway. But if you know that it’s going to happen, isn’t it morally bankrupt to continue giving?
Although Glen seems to blame Obama for having no game plan, it’s clear to me that NONE of the last 8 presidents had a game plan. And Mubarek used that to get resources from them. How will that effect the future government, there’s no way to know.
MikeDC:
_There’s no change of regime here, just a change of figureheads. I don’t see how that’s cause for celebration_
For the first time, the people know they have power. That’s major. They also believe that the military will not condone mass murder to keep the peace. That allows protesters the courage to speak their mind, and that freedom can be infectious.
NO matter what you think of tomorrow, this is a beautiful day for freedom. When you see people saying things like “For the first time, I’m not afraid to say what’s on my mind!”, how can you not get choked up? And the fact that this has been largely non-violent is incredible.
This could change. But it would require a pretty massive military response to repress these feelings. And the military doesn’t seem to want that.
On a positive note, much of Egypt’s economy comes from tourism. They know they need a relationship with America and Europe, and that certainly makes the worst-case scenario a little less likely.
Fred (#5). Please, add to the equation satellite dishes: they can see how we live in Europe because they are using the “same satellites”:http://www.eutelsat.com/satellites/13ehb6_popd.html we do.
I think that if there is an alternative, they would not choose the Muslim Brotherhood.
alchemist –
First of all, our support of Egypt.
For 30 years we’ve been paying off Egypt to be our friends, and to be peaceful with Israel. I’m not big on Realpolitik, but one has to admit this has worked, which is why no subsequent administration has screwed with it. We went almost to the brink of nuclear with the Soviets during the 1973 war, so the situation that the 1979 treaty defused was a serious one.
I’ve heard lots of people complain about this support over the last few years, usually because of the anti-Semitic and anti-American bile that poured out of Egyptian state-run media. Haven’t heard the left complain about it though. They complain all the time about support for Israel, but Egypt … not so much. Likewise we hear all the time about Gaza and the West Bank and the Palestinian olive trees. But the plight of the Egyptians? Not so much.
Reign of terror? Saddam had a regular one, but did Egyptian repression rise to “reign of terror” standards? Not one country in the Arab League was a democracy to begin with – we hope Iraq will be the exception – and none of them lack ruthless policing. I would count Egypt in the more moderate half, not that this is saying so much. It was certainly no less repressive before we befriended it.
But because they have been our friends and received our money, now we “own” their sins, right? Thank you for making my point.
This isn’t a direct response to any particular message, here, just my perspective on things that addresses some of the prior points made.
I also question how much celebration is appropriate in the wake of Mubarak’s retirement– I’m also of the opinion that Mubarak’s retirement was regime preservation. Mubarak was trying to convert government by military, through the NDP apparatus, into hereditary rule. Mubarak failed, he military (so far) won. I’m inclined to think rule by a class as better than rule by a family. I’m inclined to think it’s a lot worse than mature, stable self-rule.
But it’s hard for me to compare rule by one class (the military) against rule by another class (the religious). I’m inclined to vote for the military, here, if only because they’ve mostly minded our interests and because we have a slightly shorter leash… but the vote makes me feel dirty. It’s not what we’re supposed to be about.
On the other hand, I’m deeply unimpressed by the neo-isolationist notion of letting the mullahs set fire to the region and letting God sort them all out. We’re not supposed to be about that, either, and while we can’t stop every slaughter everywhere on the planet, we can at least try to stop some.
(As a parting shot, I don’t think the neo-isolationists have fully thought through the consequences of letting the insane fringes of the region run rampant– not only in terms of human lives, but in more grubby concerns suh as the price of oil, the price of fuel, and the effects on the economy of the west.)
So we’re left with trying to do the least bad thing, which in turn brings us to the question and the quality of our intelligence. Ours, to be blunt, sucks. It sucked in the run up to the Iraq War. It sucked prior to 9/11. It sucked India and Pakistan both cooking off nukes– we got to be surprised both times, on that one! Just like we got to be surprised both times on Egypt! (“What? There’s a revolution? Where?!” And then a few days later, “What, Mubarak is still there? We thought he resigned!”) I could go on, and on, and on– it probably took those idiots in the CIA three days just to hear about the fall of the Berlin Wall.
If I were Obama, I’d think seriously about disbanding the entire CIA and starting from scratch. But failing that, and more realistically, he should do (but probably won’t) what Bush should have done (but definitely didn’t) in the wake of 9/11. Which is to say, fire a whole bunch of senior leadership people in all the major intelligence agencies, and tell their replacements that this sort of bumbling incompetence is no longer acceptable.
Until then, we’re left with muddling through, the best we can. I actually don’t think we’ve done all that bad.
Saying that the military didn’t see it as cheaper to displace its figurehead than fire on the mob is hardly reason to cheer. That calculus could very easily change, and I detect, from the US’s rhetoric on down, a distinct message of, “go home and get back to business”, which the protesters who are still filling Tahir square don’t seem to be acknowledging.
Regarding the insane fringes and the mullahs setting fire to the planet, etc., I think it should be incumbent on those making the argument that the only way to prevent it is to install and support a bunch of thugs to oppress people to prove their point, and not me.
When this sort of argument is made in domestic politics, we generally think it’s full of shit. “Vote or me or the right wing extremists will outlaw vaginas” or “Vote for me or the crypto-commies will take over and outlaw elections” or “Vote green or global warming will destroy us”.
I’m no supporter of President Obama, for example, but I find it laughable that he (or President Bush before him) would stage a coup and prevent an election. Which seems to be a legitimate fear for some folks.
When it comes to foreign policy, however, in large part because we are so very ignorant of the societies we wish to influence, we treat all sorts of unlikely scenarios as likely scenarios.
A second, and related problem, is that our attempts to chart the “least bad course” frequently seem to increase the actual likelihood that we have a worst case scenario on our hands.
Generally speaking insane fringes don’t long survive contact with reality. The major reasons they exist (as major problems) is because reasonable political discourse becomes dangerous or impossible. That’s exactly the sort of situation we’ve helped create in Egypt.
Still, I think it’s unfair to estimate the probability of a religious fanatic takeover and ensuing nuclear war as extremely small. Even where religious nuts have taken over, Hamas, Hezballah, Iran, they seem remarkably concerned- just as much as the rest of us do- about self-preservation. There’s actually quite a strong track record here. Despite the rhetoric, there’s a whole lot of evidence to support the notion they will behave pretty much like any other dictators, and aim to preserve themselves.
Moreover, there are significant elements in all of these societies that make a takeover by religious nuts bent on war very unlikely. In Egypt, there’s a large secular tourism trade, a “professional” military, and a lot of history that tends to argue against it. Likewise, the chance of Shia Iran overrunning and actually governing the Sunni populations of the rest of the ME seems pretty obviously unlikely if you think about it for more than 15 seconds. The Iranian thugs appear to have to direct most of their resources to oppressing their own populations, so the ability to take over a bunch of other countries seems extremely far fetched.
Finally, I don’t think the neo-policemen have fully thought out the extremely grubby concerns of those who wield power in the Middle East. The effects of a trade war on the West would be extremely serious. Things would get more expensive, and people would be very upset. The effects of a trade war on the nations of the Middle East would be starvation and death. In relatively short order, and this is not something the leadership of those nations is ignorant of.
I think there is plenty of ground between backing dictators to the hilt and washing our hands of entire regions. I don’t dislike how Obama has handled Egypt, and he should up his game for Iran which we clearly have no interests to worry about alienating the ruling oligarchs.
As for the suggestion that rationality will win the day, the history of international affairs strongly disagrees, and you can’t find a better example than the middle east. If enlightened self interest or rationality were certain, Lebanon wouldn’t be a vipers nest, Iraq wouldn’t have torn itself to pieces (or fought a terrible and pointless war against Iran), and lets not get started on Afghanistan/Pakistan. By what rational mindset did the Taliban harbor and enable Al Qaeda to attack the US?
Counting on true-believer religious zealots especially to behave rationally is a dangerous game. It works until it stops working… at which point now could involve nuclear weapons.
Glen:
_I’m not big on Realpolitik, but one has to admit this has worked, which is why no subsequent administration has screwed with it._
Like all things, it works until it doesn’t. And these administrations made the calculus that the system was so broken that even checking the oil could cause catastrophe.
Of course, any trouble led to immediate failure. A more gradual fix could have allowed incremental changes, that slowly moved into a more stable democracy (and avoided a power vacuum) But that’s all theory now. Changes, for better or worse, will come quickly (or not at all).
_They complain all the time about support for Israel, but Egypt … not so much_
Israel gets more publicity, but if you look at groups like Human Rights watch, they focus on everyone.
And that’s always been my viewpoint. I don’t care who you are or where you’re from, humanity deserves equal rights. I tend to be in favor of socio/political encouragement of incremental reform, but any day a population becomes free is a good day.
MikeDC
_I don’t think the neo-isolationists have fully thought through the consequences of letting the insane fringes of the region run rampant_
Again, I definitely agree that realpolitik makes sense on some level. Freedom can have some rather negative consequences.
But under dictatorships, extreme prosecution pushes dissidents to become extreme themselves(or be extinguished). The russian mob is a good non-islamic example. When a dictator fails, the vacuum favors the most extreme dissidents. And that’s the worst case scenario.
Glen:
Did Egyptian repression rise to “reign of terror” standards?
For what I can tell, Mubarek didn’t commit genocide, but he was systematically torturing “political dissidents”:http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/egypts-torture-victims-describe-beatings-electroshock-rape-threats/story?id=12821831
This is not surprising. It’s one of the reasons why we sent terror suspects there on rendition.
_But because they have been our friends and received our money, now we “own” their sins, right?_
Not exactly. I’m accusing foreign policy not of torture, but of giving aid to torture. In US law, it’s called “accessory after the fact”:http://definitions.uslegal.com/a/accessory-after-the-fact/ Generally, it’s a much weaker punishment, to distinguish the fact that while they’re breaking the law, they didn’t do an equal crime.
(of course, since we were paying Egypt to torture people for us, it gets more complicated).
If we helped Egypt while pushing them towards reforms, I’d be a lot less upset. Then at least we could say we were using the best available option while dealing with the worst possible people.
_”A more gradual fix could have allowed incremental changes, that slowly moved into a more stable democracy”_
Or it could have allowed the regime to shore up its power base and disappear its leading dissenters. I’m not entirely disagreeing, but we’ve seen it happen both ways (look at Russia). Maybe there just isn’t an optimal answer and certainly not one we can reliably goose.
Given the circumstances, I don’t have too much to say about Obama’s efforts on Egypt. Although frankly, part of that is because I, and no one else, seems very clear on what he’s actually done. I do no that we continue to prop up the Egyptian military regime, and that people continue to no like it very much.
Note that I’m not arguing religious nuts or anyone else are purely rational. Just that they’re self-interested. Enough at least, that we shouldn’t have much dog in any of their fights.
Yes, Lebanon is a screwed up place. Did we gain anything by our intervention there?
Saddam was certainly self-interested. Would he have started the Iran-Iraq War (and triggered all that followed) if he hadn’t gotten a veritable green light and been confident in future support from us? Suppose the US envoys that met him in 1979 said “you’re on your own, pal.”
More to the point, what US interest was served in getting involved selling arms to both sides in that war?
I don’t have any problem with the US acting to keep the sea lanes open, a la 1987-1988, which seems to have been very effective in satisfying the grubby concern of keeping the oil flowing.
On the other hand, I don’t think, looking back on the Gulf War, we did all that much to benefit ourselves. Would Saddam have not continued to sell us oil? I think he would. If that’s our interest, I don’t see how we needed to go to war over it. Perhaps I’m missing all the good that’s come out of that intervention…
_I’m not entirely disagreeing, but we’ve seen it happen both ways_
In fairness, I did use a rather big COULD in that sentence. Still, I’d rather err on the side of freedom than on the side dictatorships. (It’s like betting the under on the Superbowl…. it’s not fun).
_”More to the point, what US interest was served in getting involved selling arms to both sides in that war?”_
One or the other controlling a third of the worlds oil production with tanks a few miles from most of the rest? That’s always been the ultimate interest. We went to war in Kuwait to prevent exactly that, but maybe if we’d been more proactive in other ways that wouldn’t have been necessary.
1. you stick with someone you can influence as long as he can hold on to it, then you align yourself with the next group that takes power.
2 Nothing is worse than power vacuums.
3. I do not understand the ecstasy attached with spreading democracy in places like the Middle East. But more so, I do not understand how anyone can see this as anything more than a delusion.
4. Just because people come out into the streets and get rid of a creaky old autocrat, we are supposed to expect Democracy to spread throughout Egypt and the Middle East?
5. the Power structure in the region will not change, unless it comes about through a really nasty takeover like the one in Iran.
6. Unfortunately, bribes make the world go round and representative governments grow very slowly from pre-democratic institutions as it did in Europe and America. Or, force as it did in Japan. What y would anyone expect democracy there or that we would have any influence over installing it?
Low probability? The odds of any nation that gains control over a significant amount of the worlds oil using that power to advance their agenda is about 1 to 1. That agenda is not certain (or even likely) to be making as much money as possible, if it were religious fanatics wouldn’t be running Iran and lunatic communist relics running Venezuela. Ideology is not some outdated term, and power is FAR more alluring than even money.
Working to ensure our enemies cant control vital resources is just reality. The isolationist game has never worked and will never work. Even an isolationist like Jefferson had to quickly compromise his principles and build a navy to smack down some pirates half the world away. That’s reality. The longer you dither and let somebody else grow stronger the more expensive the bill will be in the end.