[BRIEF NOTE] On respecting our betters

In a recent Los Angeles Times article that the paper stands by, United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates managed to trigger a non-trivial diplomatic and public relations crisis when he suggested that the United States' NATO allies in Afghanistan weren't doing a good job.

In the interview, Gates compared the troubled experience of the NATO forces in the south -- primarily troops from the closest U.S. allies, Britain and Canada, as well as the Netherlands -- with progress made by American troops in the eastern part of Afghanistan. He traced the failing in part to a Cold War orientation.

"Most of the European forces, NATO forces, are not trained in counterinsurgency; they were trained for the Fulda Gap," Gates said, referring to the German region where a Soviet invasion of Western Europe was deemed most likely.

Gates said he raised his concerns last month in Scotland at a meeting of NATO countries with troops in southern Afghanistan and suggested additional training.

But he added that his concerns did not appear to be shared by the NATO allies. "No one at the table stood up and said: 'I agree with that.' "

The NATO forces are led by a U.S. commander, Army Gen. Dan McNeill, who has called for greater contributions by NATO countries. Some member nations are reluctant to deepen their involvement.

NATO officials bristled at suggestions that non-U.S. forces have been ineffective in implementing a counterinsurgency campaign. They argued that the south, home to Afghanistan's Pashtun tribal heartland that produced the Taliban movement, has long been the most militarily contested region of the country.

The European NATO official, who is directly involved in Afghan planning, angrily denounced the American claims, saying much of the violence is a result of the small number of U.S. troops who had patrolled the region before NATO's takeover in mid-2006, a strategy that allowed the Taliban to reconstitute in the region.

"The reason there is more fighting now is because we've uncovered a very big rock and lots of things are scurrying out," the NATO official said.

Gates has since been trying to recover. His statements made the Netherlands call in the American ambassador for consultations, and angered Britain. Canadian defense minister Peter Mackay had to play down the remarks, coming so soon after another Canadian casualty. in a press conference after Gates apologized/clarified.

(Funny fact: The Netherlands, Britain, and Canada have contributed relatively more troops to Afghanistan than the United States.)

My first response to these news was a mixture of (I admit it) old-school nationalism mixed with depression at Gates' failure to recognize that, say, Canadians and others might disagree with American methods of counterinsurgency warfare, or that some countries which experience heavy casualties might be inspired to pull out of Afghanistan altogether with unknown consequences for the integrity of the alliance.

That's when I realized I was wrong. I'm trying to make excuses, after all. Gates is the man who controls the single most powerful military in the world. With his words, Gates may have succeeded in helping us Canadians come to face with the difficult reality of our incompetence. Aren't Canadians just embarrassing ourselves if we pretend that we can fight? Seriously.

No, it's best for us Canadians to leave Afghanistan before we embarrass ourselves with something stupid like a NATO intervention in Pakistan, and let Gates and his cohort lead their country to another glorious victory. After all, they've done an unprecedented job already: The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan produced five million refugees out of a total population of something like 12-15 million in the early 1980s, but even the several hundred thousand dead that the studies from The Lancet and elsewhere are tacked on, the United States' invasion produced only four million out of of a pre-invasion population of 25 million Iraqis. Allowing for the uncertainties in Afghanistan's population records, that still means that the American military has been twice as effective in maintaining counter-insurgency war as the Soviets--and, doubtless, their Canadian successors--ever were in Afghanistan.

It's best for us to let them do their job their own way, don't you all think?

[BRIEF NOTE] The Problem with the Bajorans

Tuesday's Deep Space Nine links reminded me of the Bajorans and Star Trek's apparent lack of imagining the consequence of their ancient civilization.

Drawing on a statement made by Captain Picard that might well have been hyperbole, some people claim that Bajoran history might stretch back a half-million years. Perhaps more plausibly, the recent Deep Space Nine relaunch novel series suggests that civilization on Bajor dates back tens of thousands of years, with a unified planetary civilization coming about twenty-five thousand years ago under the rule of the Bajora ethnic group and their Prophets. Since then, the Bajorans appear to have remained at something of a technological plateau--back in Earth's 16th century, the Bajorans had access to faster-than-light travel via tachyonic solar sail ships, though they seem to have neglected the technology for lack of interest. With ancient cities buried tens of thousands of years ago and one episode ("Accession") quoting a Bajoran calendar date of 9174, two hundred years before the show's present, the Bajorans can easily lay claim to a very long history.

Even the smaller figures represent a huge stretch of time. The beginnings of human civilization can be traced to ten thousand years before the present; homo sapiens left Africa forty thousand years ago. Such a long period of sedentary civilization would have to had a significant effect on the evolution of the Bajoran species. As John Hawks observes, the rapid growth in the human population over the past forty thousand years--including ten thousand years of sedentary civilization in some parts of the world--has significantly increased the rate of mutation. Even if Bajor had a unified civilization supporting a large population for "only" twenty-five thousand years and a long history before that, how much could the Bajoran species change?

Consider the Bajoran Prophets. Creators of the wormhole to the Gamma Quadrants, gods to the Bajorans for tens of thousands of years, in the course of Deep Space Nine the Prophets turn out to be pretty indistinguishable from real gods, possessing wide-ranging powers over time and space and with internal conflicts capable of threatening the known universe, if not the Milky Way Galaxy. One consistent statement of the Prophets is that they are "of Bajor." Given the length of the Bajoran species' evolutionary history and the Prophets' long relationship with Bajor, it seems reasonably likely that the Prophets are ultimately Bajoran. Certainly individuals of other species have shown capable of transcending the material plane to become energy beings of power. Why not the Bajorans?

The first implication of this that comes to mind is the Cardassian question. For forty years, Cardassia did subject Bajor to a brutal occupation, in part because Bajor was only a few light-years away from Cardassia Prime. Doing that to the homeworld of any old species might be deplorable, but essentially without significant consequences. Doing that to the homeworld of an ancient species prone to evolve into godhood might trigger a species-wide extinction event. It doesn't help the Cardassians that the Bajorans stopped being peaceful in order to wage an intense and ultimately successful guerrilla war against their species. In the wake of the Dominion War, it would be a very good idea for the Cardassians to not be threatening, at all. Remember the Husnock.

[BRIEF NOTE] Russia's latest immigration problem

Back in 2005, the Russian government announced a plan to attract ethnic Russian (and Russophone?) immigrants from other Soviet successor states with subsidies and sponsorship programs. As Timothy Heleniak at Migration Information wrote, Russia's long-standing history as a region of marked by net emigration to, after 1975, the recipient of increasing intense flows of immigrants from Russia's periphery. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, this flow was intensified by the relatively greater impact of the Soviet Union's dissolution on most of the other Soviet states. Moldova and the Caucasian states were paralyzed by economic collapse and internal ethnic conflict; Belarus and Ukraine were governed by indifferent reformers; the Central Asian states collapsed. Otto Pohl suggested back in 2005 that the end of Soviet subsidies to rural areas in southern Central Asia greater increased the incentive to migrate to Russia from countries like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Confronted with rapid population decline and possible labour shortages, this policy promised to mitigate Russia's demographic issues while reflecting a long-standing official preference for immigrants of Russophone or European background over Chinese immigrants from Muslim populations in the former Soviet Union.

It didn't work. Blame bureaucratic obstacles and a general lack of interest on the part of the targeted populations.

With a few exceptions, job opportunities offered potential newcomers look slim, and most regional administrations have made it clear that they will accept only those applicants whose professional skills match the needs of their respective job markets. Sometimes, authorities have warned that newcomers will be offered only jobs that local residents do not want.

The Russian-based, Central Asian information website ferghana.ru in July reported that job vacancies in Kaliningrad Oblast were mostly in the farming and shipbuilding industries, whereas the majority of those potential repatriates who had expressed an interest in moving to the region were seeking employment in the oil sector, or the service industries.

Repatriates may not only find it difficult to obtain suitable jobs -- they are also likely to experience housing problems. "Vremya novostei" reported that most of those ethnic Russians who settled in Kaliningrad Oblast immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union still live in precarious conditions, sometimes in remote rural areas.

If local authorities are free to select applicants according to their professional skills, they also decide where to accommodate the newcomers.

Most of those would-be migrants who are considering resettling in Kaliningrad Oblast have reportedly expressed a desire to live either in the exclave's main city, or on the Baltic Sea coast. But local administration officials have warned that at least two-thirds of the repatriates would be sent to the region's easternmost areas, where they say the demand for skilled workers is the highest.

Russian analysts agree that there are relatively few potential repatriates left in the world. Most of those ethnic Russians who wanted to settle in Russia have done so on their own a long time ago, while those who could afford it have moved to economically more prosperous countries. As for those who still live in former Soviet republics, their life is not so bad that they would consider abandoning it for an uncertain future.

In his recent interview with "Vremya novostei," State Duma Deputy Gustov admitted that the vast majority of potential repatriates fear they might be abandoned to themselves once they agree to resettle in Russia.

"No matter how cheap the train 'tickets' to Russia are, they've come very late," political analyst Valery Byzhytovich commented last week in "Rossiiskaya gazeta." "For many of those who were dreaming of returning to their historical homeland during the first years that followed the collapse of the USSR, the train has already gone."