Amerika

Conflict management requires intervention before the crisis erupts. One of the more powerful tools of statecraft, military diplomacy, empowers political and governmental executives to manage the potential for conflict through the threat of force.

We might ask how education accommodates this field of important interest, officially called Defense Diplomacy in our neverending quest for euphemisms to hide the failure that is modernity:

Defence diplomacy, also known as military diplomacy, is the non-violent use of military forces, adapting public diplomacy, through activities like officer exchanges, combined training programmes, cultural exchanges, and ship visits, etc., to further a country’s diplomatic ties and promoting its International agenda.

Defense studies focus on power projection in the sense of sociology, history, politics, and philosophy and such training falls under the purview of a Department of Defence Studies. Apart from exposure to military strategy, aspects such as maritime law and international diplomacy could also be included.

It is therefore also clear that this pursuit of knowledge must be difficult/extensive to consume and that the likelihood of Western politicians internalizing such ability is very low, which leaves the opportunity to benefit from such expertise to think tanks and Pentagon unelected type organizations, all of whom having very close relationships with the White House, the Director of Intelligence, and their choice of mainstream media outlet players.

This expertise is therefore independent of American election cycles, but of course highly influenced by it to the point where the real strategy becomes internal (how do we get rid of Trump) rather than external (how do we get rid of Putin).  One could say that external strategy is the headline, while internal strategy is in the detail and that the two versions are opposites of each other.

However, due to recent activities undertaken by the American Department of State, it appears that it, on its own, drives a military version of diplomacy which some would be tempted to describe as aggressive i.e., causing conflict rather than avoiding it. This leads to the result that countries are starting to avoid America rather than to engage i.e., the abused avoiding the bully.

This extreme militarized version of diplomacy is not the norm but apparently it is prescribed by think tanks such as the Rand Corporation and the Council of Foreign Relations (some investigating journalist such as Seymour Hersh might be tempted to investigate this). It must also be observed that historically this version of extreme military diplomacy also happened during the Roman period where Julius Caesar had his own bodyguard organization apart from the general Roman Army (salaries were also different), that had a marked effect on Roman policy as well, which in hindsight may be interpreted as negative.

The difference between American and Roman leadership at that stage, is that Julius Caesar was a general while American Presidents are intentionally not, due to the American idea of civilian oversight of its military. In modern narratives, a Joe Biden may easily describe Julius Caesar as an authoritarian leader instead of the feminised democratic leader nations should want in his opinion.

This merely means that Joe Biden himself has become the authority in making that claim which is the opposite of the truth of regime-change diplomacy i.e., defence diplomacy has become defensive diplomacy, which identifies the West as a massive Dark Organization not interested in arguing for anything. They just want what they want to perpetuate, which is exactly what happened to Rome.

But America and its acolytes are not the only nations practising military diplomacy (it is generally adopted in other countries too). I was involved in such endeavours to improve the image of South Africa where the Mandela government wanted to reward its original benefactors such as Britain and Sweden by purchasing weapons from them valued at roughly $3 billion. It is not much but it demonstrated gratitude to the West. Despite using Russian weaponry during all its terror campaigns in South Africa, Mandela decided not to reward Russia as a matter of fact, and the only reason is that Russia never gave money, while Mandela’s gratitude was reserved only for those giving money (which is an indication of what is really important).

The shrewd Mandela government realised that apart from commissions payable to itself, the procurement contract should/could include what was called a counter-trade agreement where the armaments suppliers had to procure subsystems from South African manufacturers to transfer partial technical know-how to allow at least some form of maintenance capability. What therefore happened was that subsystem suppliers in South Africa were selected based on affirmative action employee statistics resulting in the eventual failure of such maintenance.

Despite this, military diplomacy was successful in normalizing relations between Europe and South Africa which included normalized relations with America and Cuba. During this exercise I met Israelis who recounted stories to me of how they have permanent (military diplomacy) relationships with America where employee exchanges take place on a regular basis as well as weapons development and testing. As far as the Russians are concerned military diplomacy between South Africa and Russia included a South African missile fitment on to a Russian military helicopter, an investigation to replace the South African fighter aircraft engine with a MIG-29 engine (which was not completed) and of course the recent Naval exercise in Cape Town.

But African countries (without having think tanks like Washington DC available down the street) appeared to have developed their own style of military diplomacy. Britain appears quite content to send their illegal aliens to Rwanda.

The British government is hoping to send thousands of migrants more than 4,000 miles away to the East African country as part of a 120 million pound ($148 million) deal to deter asylum seekers crossing the English Channel from France in small boats.

The Kigali government saw how much money Uganda makes from accommodating almost a million refugees, so they adopted this type of diplomacy too. Uganda has now even taken a next step by using their military not only for road construction in the DRC-Congo, but also for flooded rural road repairs and fixing potholes in the capital city of Kampala. Whereas the militaries in Africa were fairly blunt in the past, they appear to have become more accommodative (for some reason) of not only external populations, but also internally.

That does not mean violent conflict is on the decline, on the contrary, it is escalating. But before you say – yes, but, as I have written on conflict before, in Africa life is more about tribes, and if one looks a little deeper, then revenge and retaliation is an ongoing problem (as it is with Leftism, generally). However, if one analyses the last year’s Congolese conflict, it will seem that commerce, or the (existential) ability to do business affects/causes conflict as well. And as can be seen from the above South Africa example, all is forgiven if the money is right and remain right.

To solve the almost eternal ongoing Congolese blood-mineral trade driven conflict, exacerbated by betrayal and revenge, the problem has been kicked upstairs to the East African Community and the Southern African Development Community, both of whom have sent military forces to the Congo in a sort of peacekeeping role. The United Nations already have a large peacekeeping force in Kinshasa, but the conflict continued despite them being on the ground, so the African leaders decided to step in themselves, because it has become apparent that the UN only protects extractive practices instead of preventing it.

But the crux of solving Congo, as it were, is not with actual military, but with military diplomacy, because once the intent to solve the issue was demonstrated, the President of Congo was finally willing to sit down at the table where he was given the financial solution to his problem – connection to the oil pipeline between Uganda and Tanzania. Everything else will flow from there, including mining rights to all those militant groups protecting their manual mining in the bushes.

Maybe the West can learn from this – there is a very big difference between perpetuating and existential problems, for example, America will perpetuate even if they let Putin go in peace. Ukraine is not an existential threat to them, and never was, and civilians should not condone aggressive military diplomacy, because they simply don’t need it.

They need business, to be honest. That is the real and only benefit of proper military diplomacy.

Tags: Globalism, military diplomacy