Going through the French press coverage (Le Monde here, Le Figaro here) of yesterday's summit in Damascus attended by the heads of state of France, Qatar and Syria as well as the Turkish prime minister, I'm struck by the way in which it illustrates in microcosm the macro models being proposed for the emerging global order. Most of the analysis has been about what the summit, and the processes that preceded it, represent for the influence of the individual countries involved. And while it's obvious that France and Turkey are both advancing very ambitious agendas for their respective roles in the region and further afield, that's often been portrayed in zero sum terms, in particular with regard to American influence.

But if you take a look at the summit's official agenda combined with its symbollic significance -- Israel-Syrian peace negotiations, Syrian-Lebanese relations, the Iranian nuclear program, an Israel-Hamas mediation attempt (the soldier being held prisoner in Gaza is actually Franco-Israeli), France/EU-Turkey relations -- what emerges is a converging web of influence more than a zero sum game.

And if you look at the three countries that descended on Damascus, it's striking to note that they've all been articulating a foreign policy based on engagement rather than confrontation. Qatar is known for its "friend to all" approach, Turkey has articulated a "zero problems" policy with regard to its neighbors, and France under Sarkozy has been pursuing a foreign policy whose only coherence is its pragmatism. The approaches are all aimed at putting the respective countries at the heart of efforts to mediate conflicts on the regional and/or global level. It's a savvy approach that recognizes that in the current geopolitical climate, being able to resolve conflicts is as much a measure of influence as being able to win them.

Certainly there's an element of commercial self-interest involved. But there's also the elements of an effective approach to complicated regional issues that demand not just the imprimatur of American power and influence, but also the agility and broad support of smaller players, something I've previously referred to as Middle Power Mojo. America is still ultimately necessary to the process, but no longer sufficient. Instead of obstructing these Middle Powers in an increasingly anachronistic effort to isolate pariah countries, we should instead try to take advantage of their dynamic potential by integrating their influence into a coherent American foreign policy. At best, it would be a way to expand our access by more agile proxies. At worst, it would provide the supporting cast we'd need to take a "good cop, bad cop" approach to the difficult negotiations ahead.

The current issue of Military Review (.pdf, via Small Wars Journal) contains a quiet but significant article by Christopher Housenick titled "Winning Battles but Losing Wars" (p. 91). The overlap with French Gen. Vincent Desportes' analysis -- synopsis here (.pdf), interview here (.pdf) -- is pretty striking, especially with regards to the ways in which attacks on state infrastructure in the initial destructive phase of an intervention will inevitably hamper reconstruction efforts in the stabilization phase. According to Desportes, the challenge before Western militaries isn't to ". . .conduct a 'better war'. . .[but to] aim for a 'better peace.'"

The question underscores the need for a doctrinal evolution in American military strategy. So far, that's been limited to the still hotly contested COIN vs. conventional capacity debate. (Col. Gian Gentile, a WPR contributor here and here, has a recent CSM op-ed, also via SWJ, on the subject.)

I've been developing the argument this week that the debate should be broadened to include our global conception of the military instrument. So long as war is conceived of from a strategic and doctrinal perspective as an all or nothing proposition (that's to say total, with an objective of regime change and unconditional surrounder), the American military will be extremely constrained in its possible deployments. That, in turn, has an impact on American foreign policy.

Now, I'm not advocating for a banalization of military interventions or an embrace of limited war. What I'm suggesting is that American strategic doctrine is poorly adapted to the current geopolitical landscape of rapidly emerging, diffuse centers of influence. And so long as that doctrine hasn't been re-examined, we'll be susceptible to the same kind of strategic miscalculations that led us to underestimate the length and cost of our engagement in Iraq.

American power, both hard and soft, took its current shape in the global conditions of the post-WWII/Cold War era. Overwhelming and decisive force in the conduct of a total war was a sound approach to those conditions. But in many ways, those conditions were a strategic parenthesis, as was the post-Cold War unipolar moment. Now, both the geopolitical and military contexts have changed, and we need to adapt the ways in which we conceive of and apply our influence and power as a function of those changes.

That means finding a balance between America's historic traditions of isolationism on the one hand and global crusader on the other. The conflicts to come might not rise to the level of a crusade, but neither will we be able to comfortably ignore them. There will be no shortage of time- and resource-consuming stabilization and reconstruction operations to choose from, but there's also a growing risk of limited conventional conflicts, whether between regional rivals or larger powers and their weaker neighbors. We are no longer the world's reluctant policeman, neither in the eyes of the world, nor in our own. But we have yet to identify what role we will play, across the spectrum of hard and soft power. We'd better do so before events catch us offguard.

Hampton directed my attention to these two Francis Fukuyama pieces, one in the WaPo, the other in the FT. I agree with Fukuyama's two main points from the WaPo, namely that efforts to generalize some sort of autocratic era are pointless, and that the varied autocratic states that do exist are in many ways bound by the globalized system in ways that the ideological autocracies of the 20th century weren't. They can only go so far, as the headline puts it, although Fukuyama offers the caveat of resource scarcity as a potential driver of conflict.

I wonder, though, if his optimism isn't undercut by the argument he makes in the FT piece, namely that the Russian invasion of Georgia, in the context of America's recent posture towards Russia, demonstrates that America must learn to limit its global ambitions:

I don't think the threat is necessarily a Russian resurgence so much as a gathering recognition, in the aftermath of the Georgian invasion, that the emperor has no clothes: in the absence of U.S. power serving as guarantor for the multilateral system, military force, if used in a limited way for limited goals, can be successfully applied. Of course, not every country enjoys the kind of immunity (a UN veto and energy revenues to render sanctions meaningless, and a nuclear deterrent to render military reprisal unlikely) that Russia does. But if countering American and/or EU ambitions becomes a widespread priority, the global governance system can be pretty easily frustrated.

On a side note, Fukuyama mentions the Polish-based missile defense system in his FT piece, which gives me an excuse to mention a thought that's occurred to me a few times recently. The American response to Russia's concerns was in part that the system, which consists of only ten missiles, could be easily overwhelmed by a massive Russian launch. But the logical flaw of that argument is that it removes any sort of graduated deterrence from a Russian strategic calculation. There's a difference between launching one, three or five ICBM's and launching a couple hundred, and as horrific as the thought is, that doesn't keep military strategists from considering it. Whatever role Kosovo and the ABM system actually played in Russia's return to bellicosity, they strike me as a very shortsighted bargains.

The Leslie Gelb op-ed piece that I flagged yesterday also contained this brief passage that's been buzzing around in my head ever since:

Regardless of whether you agree or not with Gelb's take on surgical strikes vs. nation building, his point about humanitarian interventions being the central challenge to the use of American military force would be right on target if we were engaging in that debate in 1999. Two events since then have changed the nature of that debate, however, and I suspect that they will serve as bookends to the interegnum period following America's unipolar moment: the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Russian invasion of Georgia.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq because, while the logic of national security and the breach of UNSC resolutions were used to justify it, it amounted to a unilateral military action in defiance of significant global opposition. In launching the invasion, the U.S. ignored Russian and Chinese concerns and signalled that it would no longer submit itself to the multilateral restrictions that characterized the post-Cold War period.

The Russian invasion of Georgia because, while the logic of self-determination and UN peacekeeping mandates were used to justify it, it amounted to a limited military action to advance political and strategic objectives. It could be that Russia would have opted for tension and crisis to reclaim its sphere of influence regardless of American policy over the past five years. But the invasion of Iraq, independence of Kosovo and encroachment of our military presence in Eastern Europe, combined with our weakened posture due to an overstretched military, certainly did nothing to discourage the Russian calculation.

It could also just be self-serving rationalization or a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the Russians have been saying for a while that American unilateralism would legitimize the use of force to resolve diplomatic crises, and the invasion of Georgia might be the opening bell to just such an era of low-level, limited wars that only ten years ago would have seemed like a throwback to the 19th century. You can be sure, for instance, that Hugo Chavez has been paying attention to the lack of serious consequences for Russia in the aftermath of the invasion, and I'm sure he's not the only one.

The problem being that neither the American military instrument nor American public opinion is well-adapted to such conflicts. So while the question of humanitarian interventions that Gelb identifies has not disappeared, I've got a suspicion it will no longer be the central one with regard to the deployment of American hard power in the near future. It's admittedly a pessimistic view that may or may not be borne out by events. But it's hard to see how to get this cat back into the bag.

I've read some convincing arguments about how Russia's invasion of Georgia was a strategic blunder. I find them most compelling with regards to the impact it will have on Russian relations with China, as well as with other countries that have a lingering problem with breakaway provinces. But the problem with these instant analyses (my own included) is that the impact of this kind of event takes time to play out, and depends as much on the conduct afterwards as on the actual event.I'm reminded of something a jazzman (I think it was Joe Henderson) said about "blue notes": they're not mistakes if you find the right note to play afterwords. And by every indication, Russia is hitting the right notes afterwords.

I mentioned yesterday that, having accomplished everything that a show of force might accomplish, the Russians now had an interest in demonstrating their willingness to cooperate with the EU in order to head off longterm costs. I also mentioned that, based mainly on a sense of Vladimir Putin's strategic instinct, I had a hunch that Russia would probably do so. The fact that it would at the same time hand a diplomatic triumph to Nicolas Sarkozy, who has demonstrated a willingness to work pragmatically with Moscow, only reinforced my suspicion.

So it didn't surprise me to learn via Nicolas Gros-Verheyde's Bruxelles 2 blog that Russia had already promised to withdraw to its pre-invasion lines by the end of this week before the EU's declaration freezing the EU-Russia strategic partnership negotiations until it did so. In other words, it was a mutually convenient pre-arranged "ultimatum." Also via Gros-Verheyde, on the same day that the EU heads of state were meeting, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev signed the formal order, agreed upon last April, deploying 200 Russian soldiers and four badly needed military transport helicopters to the EU's peacekeeping operation in Chad. Medvedev also declared in an interview yesterday that Russia would honor all energy contracts with EU member states.

In other words, in the Clausewitzian politics-war continuum, Russia is very clearly signalling its intention to segue smoothly back into politics. But it is also very cleverly putting the ball back in the EU's court as to how wide the frost will spread on EU-Russia relations. The order for the EU Chad deployment, for instance, still needs to be formally signed off on by all EU member states. And while France and Germany might be willing to accept the changes on the ground in South Ossetia and Abkhazia in return for a return to cordial relations with Moscow, it's not so certain that England and Poland are.

So while I'm not at all endorsing Russia's actions from a "values" perspective, from a realpolitik angle I remain unconvinced that they've blundered.