European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - July 27, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse Wednesday july 27, 1994 commentary the stars and stripes Page 15 must Harry g. Summers a the world wants the United states to. Act As a great Power a wrote Edward Lutwak in the june 25, 1994, Washington Post a but americans decline the Honor a they Are not willing to pay the Price in with great Britain in its Imperial 19th-Century heyday As his obvious Model Lutwak a graduate of the London school of economics notes a there a so i was a tacit pre condition to great Power status a readiness to use Force whenever it was advantageous to do so accepting the resulting combat casualties with equanimity. To lose a Young family member for any reason was always tragic no doubt yet his death in combat was not the extraordinary and fundamentally unacceptable event that it has this he apparently writes with his own children not in mind. Having successfully avoided military service himself in any of the several countries in which he has resided Lutwak has no patience with Quot parents and relatives who commonly approve when their children decide to join the armed forces thereby choosing a career dedicated to combat and its preparation a but who then a View their wounding or death As an outrageous scandal rather than As an occupational for All his Book knowledge about War and strategy Lutwak like Many foreign born theorists does not begin to understand the american character or the american Way of War. Decades before Karl von Clausewitz penned his famous treatise emphasizing that War was a matter for the a remarkable Trinity of the people the government and the army the framers of the Constitution of the United slates had written the requirement for such a trinitarian approach to War into Law. The imperialist great Powers that Lutwak holds up for such admiration had what von Clausewitz would have called an �?o18th-century�?� military where a War was still an affair for governments alone and the people s role that of an As the Duke of Wellington said of his army at Waterloo they were the Dregs of the Earth enlisted for drink. With that Aristo cratic View of the great unwashed in the ranks a View shared by Many of Lutt Wake a elitist contemporaries who cared if the troops were killed on a foreign Battlefield in Pursuit of a nebulous Mission a a to lose a few Hundred soldiers in some minor probing operation to lose some thousands in an expeditionary venture were routine events for the great Powers of history a Lutwak writes admiringly. But americans never bought the idea that their sons and daughters were Mere if they were to die they would die for something More than a passing whim. Significantly that a exactly what von Clausewitz said More than 160 years ago. War is controlled by its political object he said and a the value of this object must determine the sacrifices to be made for it in magnitude and also in in world War ii the political objective was survival of the nation and its value was so High we paid More than a million casualties in Pursuit of it. A it suffices to mention the Somalia de bade precipitated by the loss of 18 . Soldiers. To expose the unreality of the great Power concept in our Day a Lutt Wak writes. But it does not suffice at All. What does suffice is a very simple equation. The Cost must be in relation to the value. Where in world War ii the value of the objective was deemed Worth the Cost of a million casualties in Mogadishu the Cost of 18 soldiers was too High for a value that has yet to be established. It is not As Lutwak. Claims that a societies Are so allergic to casualties that they Are effectively de Bellici Zed it is that the value of military intervention in Bosnia Somalia Haiti and North Korea has not been established. And because the value has not been established the Cost in terms of casualties is prohibitive on the face of it. Can such a value be established As Lutwak himself admits although he misses the significance of his own observation George Bush was Able to do it in the Case of the persian Gulf War. The american people supported that War even though forecasts of the casualties resulting from assaults on iraqi fortifications that both Lutwak and i made were thank god astronomically higher than the actual toll. But president Clinton has not even attempted to make the Case for intervention in Bosnia for Haiti or. Even for North Korea. A if we can find no remedy for the passing of the great Power a Lutwak con eludes a we will have to learn not to see hear or feel much that would otherwise offend our moral it obviously does not offend his own month sensitivities to see american soldiers killed in Pursuit of what he once called his a cockamamie but it sure offends the hell out of me and i suspect most other americans As Well. C los angles times a. Invasion As president Clinton we Are told has not made a decision about going to War in Haiti. Maybe he Hasni to. But with american service personnel engaged in Haiti like Maneu vers with 2,000 marines already deployed off Haiti and with . Warplanes broadcasting speeches in which the ousted president Jean Ber Trand Aristide vows to return to the Island it certainly looks As if the president has made a decision. Sen. John Warner r-va., said that he senses a almost a War fever in Washington adding that he questioned the appropriateness of an invasion. Walter e. Fauntroy used to. The former congressman from the District of. Columbia and chairman for 15 years of a bipartisan congressional task Force on Haiti said Over the weekend that the Clinton administration has pretty much run out of options. A a we re Down to two choices a he told me in an interview. A either we go in or we walk the Liberal Democrat Baptist minister and consultant on International finance and Trade said his reluctant Choice is go in. Its a position he does no to like being in. He has been pushing for a negotiated settlement of Haiti a governmental crisis since the beginning refusing even to join the bandwagon for economic sanctions. He still thinks he was right. He believes that the reason Clinton a and president Bush before him a find a Way out of the haitian mess is that they did no to know enough. A knowledge is Power a he said. A if they had had More knowledge about Haiti its people and us history they would have had the Power to resolve the situation with out resorting to did Fauntroy have that knowledge. A i knew that an embargo was wrong because the sick would get sicker and the poor poorer a he told me. A the last person to go wanting for food or Medicine would be the one with the gun. I knew that an embargo would frustrate what our task Force had been doing a seeking to at no Idu William Raspberry tract labor intensive Industry to the Island As a Way of dealing with the energetic but largely illiterate population. It was predictable that an embargo would drive those businesses into the eager arms of places such As the dominican Republic and Honduras and Costa Rica. A we spent a lot of years trying to help Haiti recover from a French led land scheme that had pretty much deforested the place. We launched a reforestation program to keep the soil from washing into the sea. Well the first result of the embargo was an Oil shortage which meant that people began cutting Down the Trees to make were subtler things though that a greater . Knowledge of Haiti might have accomplished Fauntroy believes. The earlier ouster of Jean Claude a baby Doc Duvalier involved not just pressure of the sort the Clinton administration is applying to the military leaders but also the deliberate nurturing of a centrist political faction capable of crafting the Constitution that would be the basis of democracy. A by promoting the centrists we were Able to isolate the extremes a both those on the right with their penchant for violence and those on the left who wanted nothingness than the Complete leveling of the society. It also split the military so that centrist military leaders could come to the fore and help put together a Constitution with checks and balances a a Sharp break with Haiti a history.�?�. The last Chance for a resumption of that policy was scuttled a year ago when Aristide refused to abide by a Resolution reached by a multiparty conference in Miami Fauntroy believes. Now he said the choices Are a go in or walk going in would give the invaders control but it would also Saddle them with the responsibility of running Haiti for a decade or longer a not merely to maintain the peace but to resume the very efforts Fauntroy a task Force started years ago. As Fauntroy put it a Conquest is easy. Occupation is 1 but if we done to go in he says the thugs will remain in charge of what would surely be an outlaw territory and a transshipment Point for .-bound narcotics. And worse the immigration problem that has driven the Clinton administration to the Brink would Only grow a it a in our National interest to Stop this outflow a he concludes. A a we be got to go c Washington Post a
