Thirtieth August Two Thousand Nine

Item 1: "The Picture Awaits: The Birth of Modern Counterinsurgency" by Ann Marlowe

- Larrabee reserved the “Recommended” designation for the highly specialized 1956 volume Guerrilla Communism in Malaya, by Lucian Pye, a prolific Sinologist and advisor to President Kennedy.
- “We faced not a real army, but the population itself.” - Alexis de Tocqueville
- “The pirate is a plant which grows only on certain grounds. The most efficient method is to render the ground unsuitable to him. . . . There are no pirates in completely organized countries.” - General Francois-Jacques-Andres
- "Many people think it impossible for guerrillas to exist for long in the enemy’s rear. Such a belief reveals lack of comprehension of the relationship that should exist between the people and the troops. The former may be likened to water the latter to the fish who inhabit it." - Mao Zedong
- Why did these wise men not apply its tenets in the war that was soon to engulf them? At the simplest level, the explanation is fairly straightforward: they chose not to.
- "One thing about which fish know exactly nothing is water, since they have no anti-environment which would enable them to perceive the environment they live in . . . What fish are able to see bears a close analogy to that degree of awareness which all people have in relation to any new environment created by a new technology—just about zero." - McLuhan


Item 2: "Think Again: Realism" by Paul Wolfowitz

- In the words of one leading realist, the principal purpose of U.S. foreign policy should be "to manage relations between states" rather than "alter the nature of states."
- Whether the Iraq war was right or wrong, it was not about imposing democracy, and the decision to establish a representative government afterward was the most realistic option, compared with the alternatives of installing another dictator or prolonging the U.S. occupation
- Critics of realism, like myself, do not think that a businesslike management of the "relations between states" should lead us to neglect issues regarding the "nature of states."
- n the 1970s, the great controversy was over the policy of détente, which called for ignoring the inherent brutality of the Soviet regime in an effort to reach accommodation with it.
- Critics of détente, such as President Ronald Reagan and Sen. Henry Jackson, did not oppose negotiations with the Soviets. But they argued that negotiations needed to be on much stiffer terms and accompanied by pressure for internal change.
- Hans Morgenthau was among the first to put realism -- a philosophy that puts national interests ahead of moral concerns --at the heart of U.S. foreign policy


Item 3: "Just Because He Walks Like a Realist" by Stephen M. Walt

- Realists:
i. see international politics as an inherently competitive realm where states compete for advantage and where security is sometimes precarious - keep a keen eye on the balance of power
ii. other states will defend their interests vigorously, that successful diplomacy requires give-and-take, and that advancing U.S. interests sometimes requires us to do business with regimes whose values we find objectionable - nationalism is a powerful force and that most societies bristle, and ultimately rebel, when outsiders try to tell them how to run their own affairs
iii. not indifferent to moral concerns, including the virtues of democratic government and the value of basic human rights