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Thursday, May 15, 2008 The Big Picture on the Long WarAmidst the signs of progress in Iraq, two cautionary notes: despite the Maliki government's solidification of its hold on power by military means, very few of the major political challenges to national reconciliation have been addressed, let alone solved; and the security gains of the past year have now exerted a "push me-pull you" pressure on Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons to return to their homes, which have either been appropriated or walled off behind sectarian lines. In other words, having returned the security situation to what resembles a frozen civil war (or a tenuous and sporadically violated ceasefire), we're now confronted with the difficult, costly and lengthy challenges of nation-building. Which brings us to Andrew Bacevich's LA Times op-ed (via AM's Dr. iRack), which calls into question the broader context of the "Long War." In essence, Bacevich argues that in setting out to change the world, we've run the risk of destroying ourselves from within. It's a convincing argument, if only for the fact that we're better at national renewal than we are at international transformation. And it's one worth considering, given that somehow the Iraq War seems to have had little impact on the instinctive reflex in some circles to reach for American military power when faced with a thorny problem, whether it be Iran's nuclear program or humanitarian crises in Burma and Darfur. Add to that the fact that the U.S. Army is retooling in the image of a counterinsurgency force adapted to stabilization and reconstruction operations, and Bacevich's assessment becomes pretty dire. In the aftermath of 9/11, America understandably confused a security threat with a national security threat; a threat to Americans was mistaken for a threat to America. But it also confused the calculus of the terrorist threat for a zero sum game. The impact of the Iraq War (which having been wrongly folded into the "Long War" narrative must now be included in its assessment) has demonstrated that America can both weaken al-Qaida and itself at the same time. That is, in the War on Terrorism, both we and the terrorists can lose. That Iraq also demonstrates the limits of America's ability to mold societies in our own image is even more reason for a sober reassessment of the interventionist urge. The way things are shaping up around the world, there will be plenty of situations where we'll be tempted (perhaps even required) to apply the military lessons we've learned in Iraq in other countries, under other circumstances. But unless we integrate the political lessons we've learned in Iraq first, we're likely to meet with the same frustrating results. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Wednesday, May 14, 2008 No Trade-offs, Good DealApparently, House Committee on Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman didn't get the memo that U.S.-Russia relations are no longer based on trade-offs. More seriously, as the Richard Weitz article I flagged yesterday points out, nuclear cooperation with the U.S. provides Russia with lucrative alternatives to its relatively modest (and at times unpaid) commerce with Iran. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Wednesday, May 14, 2008 Saving BurmaThose suggesting we should conduct a "coercive humanitarian intervention" in Burma would do well to consider this, from a WaPo article that otherwise describes the junta's efforts to mask the country's underlying dysfunction:
The moral arguments for intervening in Burma are irrefutable. And in a world where decisions were made free of any practical considerations, they'd suffice. So while I can't really say I object to the idea of a "coercive humanitarian intervention," I do object to the way in which it's being proposed. We've already seen what happens when you remove a violent, repressive regime that holds an ethnically volatile population together. Even if the kind of militarized relief efforts being proposed don't trigger a war whose outcome would spell the end of the Burmese regime, there is the non-negligible possibility that they would destabilize it to the point that the country slides into anarchy. In other words, the argument that needs to be supported is not whether to provide relief to the victims of Cyclone Nargis, but whether to declare Burma an international protectorate, and engage in the nation-building operations that will necessitate. With the added condition that the entire operation will have to take place outside the auspices of the UN, with no help and probably a good deal of hostility from the part of Pekin. Given the moral calculus involved, that's still an argument that can be legitimately defended. But we should be clear about the task we're taking on, and just how we intend to accomplish it. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Tuesday, May 13, 2008 U.S.-Russian Nuclear AgreementRichard Weitz' roundup of the nuclear agreement signed last week between the U.S. and Russia is the most thorough I've read so far. I'd been under the impression that the agreement threatened efforts to reduce Russia's stock of weapons grade uranium. But Weitz points out all the other ways that the agreement opens up areas of cooperative counterproliferation. Among the most convincing is that by offering Russia access to both the American domestic nuclear market and, via cooperative mechanisms, various foreign markets, the agreement provides a lucrative alternative to Russia's nuclear cooperation with Iran. Ironically, that's the very sticking point around which Congressional opposition seems to be gathering. Weitz offers the caveat of requiring Russia to dedicate some of the potential windfall towards nonproliferation efforts. But unlike the India 123 Agreement, where there were legitimate NPT concerns, the Russian agreement seems like a pretty good step towards improving cooperation in an increasingly strategic sector, with very little downside. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Thursday, May 8, 2008 Dept. of Shameless PlugsI've got a rundown of Nicolas Sarkozy's one-year anniversary as president of France up on the front page over at World Politics Review. Here's the lede:
Feel free to leave comments here. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Wednesday, May 7, 2008 Obama and Soft PowerWe've got an interesting discussion of Barack Obama's foreign policy agenda over at the World Politics Review blog. Hampton kicked it off with a critique of Obama's embrace of transformative soft power, to which Matthew Yglesias responded, drawing a response from both Hampton and myself. It's worth a read, because I think everyone raised some valid points. Also, for anyone who's discovered Headline Junky recently, I do most of my posting weekdays at the WPR blog. So make sure to drop by. And while you're there, check out the rest of the site. The contributors are high-powered, and the range of subject matter is pretty incredible. And to get up on my soapbox a bit, it offers an outlet for writers who happen to work the lower-profile beats, as well as smart coverage for readers interested in parts of the world that get overlooked elsewhere. I know that there's something of an information glut out there, but that only means that smart sites like WPR should be rewarded. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Tuesday, May 6, 2008 Al-Sadr Flips a COINIt's not often you get to read a full, English-language interview with Moqtada al-Sadr's official spokesman, which is why I'm linking to this one, even if it is a week old. Sure, it's with PressTV, the Iranian version of Fox News, but hey, the Bush administration has got Michael Gordon to push its talking points, so what the heck. The two things that stand out to me from Sheikh Salah Obeidi's version of events (major caveat there) are the lengths to which the Sadrists have gone, and are going, to try to walk the intra-Shiite power struggle back from a shooting war. From calling a ceasefire at the outset of the Surge, to holding their fire in the face of Maliki provocations after the Basra truce, to meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani last week, the Sadrists have made it clear that while they won't turn over their weapons (whether Iranian-furnished or not), they're willing to put them on ice. The second was Obeidi's explanation for the Basra assault. The American press has primarily linked the attempt to crush the Sadrists to October's municipal elections.Obeidi does, too, but also mentions the fact that among Iraqi political parties, the Sadrists are the most likely to oppose the status of forces agreement currently being negotiated by the Iraqi government with the Bush administration. Which adds more urgency to getting them out of the way now. The recent emphasis on crushing the Sadrists seems odd, though, given the Army's new COIN tactics. Al-Sadr is one of the few figures in Iraq who lead not just a constituency or a militia, but a movement. It might not be a movement that serves our interests, but according to Gen. Petraeus' very own COIN manual, that's not something that you crush, especially when, as Spencer Ackerman points out, al-Sadr is filling more governmental roles for his followers than the Iraqi government is able to. Saddam Hussein, using far more brutal methods, never managed to, and that was before the Sadrists had a militia to defend themselves. So I don't see how the Iraqi Security Forces are going to, even with our help. What's more, we're going after the one Iraqi Shiite whose legitimacy doesn't depend on our, or the Iranians', support. The logic of counterinsurgency, though, assumes that the counterinsurgents are defending a legitimate government in the face of an illegitimate armed challenge. Otherwise what you have is puppet theater. And as all failed counterinsurgents eventually find out, puppets don't hold up very well in a warzone. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Tuesday, May 6, 2008 Business Never PersonalA few weeks back, I wrote that the real danger of Gen. Petraeus being promoted to CENTCOM is not so much that his regional strategy might be weighted towards Iraq to the detriment of Afghanistan, although that's certainly a risk. The real problem is that Gen. Petraeus' view of the Iranians is colored by the fact that he's been engaged in a low-level proxy war with them for the past year and a half. But as this Dr. iRack post over at Abu Muqawama demonstrates, Petraeus isn't alone. Here's the good doctor discussing one possible reason why American policy-makers dismissed Iranian overtures for broad, regional negotiations following the recent fighting in Basra:
This, of course, is why it's not a good idea to put people who have been deeply engaged in-theater in broader regional policy positions. Again, the point is not that the Iranians are angels, or that their overture was necessarily credible. The point is that sometimes negotiating with the bad guys gets you a better result than fighting them, and personal animosities have a way of interfering with the judgment necessarily to make that sort of call. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Tuesday, May 6, 2008 The Not-So-Ugly AmericanTwo very interesting posts over at the Lowy Interpreter on how Americans present themselves to and are perceived by non-Americans (in this case, Aussies). The first discusses Americans' tendency towards self-deprecation and auto-criticism (particularly, but not exclusively, in terms of foreign policy); the second suggests that this is both a cover for "an unwavering belief in [our] pre-eminence" and a poker-playing culture's technique for eliciting information based on the listener's reaction. Significantly, the first is based on American officials encountered in Australia, whereas the second is based on American private citizens encountered in America, which might explain for the different readings. To this American who has spent time both travelling and living abroad, both posts seem to hit close to the mark. I'm pretty critical of American foreign policy, but I tend to get a bit tight-lipped if I sense that I'm feeding someone's accumulated hostility towards the United States. That meant a few years here in France of agreeing with thoughtful criticism of American policy (often accompanied by an affectionate regard towards America itself), while rattling off the list of France's post-colonial record (torture in Algeria, the Rainbow Warrior, nuclear tests in the Pacific) in response to virulent anti-Americanism. France being France, those discussions were sometimes initiated before I'd put out the initial feelers mentioned at the Interpreter, but I did sometimes use them, if not consciously, both to signal my own position and to determine who I had in front of me. On the other hand, to see how much America really is loved, sometimes in spite of ourselves, has been one of the recurring rewards of living abroad. The mere thought of the Star Spangled Banner being played at Elysée Palace following Sept. 11 is enough to get me choked up, and I'll never forget my surprise, on interviewing a noted French foreign policy figure, to see black and white photos of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin strolling the Vegas Strip on the wall behind his desk. We often lose sight of how much goodwill capital we have accumulated around the world. It takes an effort on our part to undo it, but I'm convinced that even when we do manage to, it's only a temporary setback. People really do want to root for America, as long as they feel like we're on their side. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Friday, May 2, 2008 Cuba LibreLast Friday the not-so-Lil' Feller had his seventh birthday. Which meant that, as promised many months ago, today was his first weekly allowance. Five euros a week, with a savings plan that we'd already agreed on: two in his pocket for comics and candy, and three in the kit for a larger purchase in a few months time. Trouble was, we didn't have the "kit" to put his savings in, so we headed around the corner to the "Tabac", a combination newstand-cigar shop. The two white-haired, very Parisian ladies who run the place already know us, since we stop in regularly and pass by on the way to school every day, and because I tend to strike up conversations with shopkeepers whose stores I frequent. (You can take the kid out of Brooklyn, but you can't take the Brooklyn out of the kid.) They also love my son, because he's really well-behaved, very polite, and a natural-born charmer. When I asked them if they had a spare cigar box lying around, they looked apologetic and explained that they either sell the boxes with the cigars, or throw the empty ones away. So I asked them if they could hold on to one for us, and with a very serious tone of voice and a wink of my eye (hidden from my son), explained what we needed it for. At which the whiter-haired of the two rummaged through the shelf under the counter, and finally came up with a tallish cigar box, white with yellow trim, that made my son's eyes go as round as saucers. I can't be certain his smile made their day, but I'd lay pretty long odds it did. It was only after we left and were headed back home that I noticed that my son's allowance, his very first exposure to the bourgeois virtues of thrift and economy, would be gathered and collected in an empty Cuban cigar box. Hasta la victoria siempre. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Friday, May 2, 2008 Middle Power MojoI got some pushback via email on this post about Turkey, and the idea of formulating American foreign policy to take advantage of the leverage offered by regional "Middle Powers." In particular, the question was raised whether having the same policy as Turkey vis à vis Iran is more important than preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and more generally whether harmonizing policy with our regional allies should trump our own policy goals. The short answer is no. The longer answer is that the Turkey-Iran example is complicated by the fact that I think we're trying to impose a flawed tactic (sanctions), in order to achieve an unrealistic strategic goal (containment). And the result is that countries like Turkey, India, and Pakistan, to say nothing about China and Russia, are lukewarm at best. Now, I'm not at all naive about the Iranian regime, and I think that it would be a strategic disaster if it acquired a nuclear weapons capacity. Not for any existential threat it posed to Israel, and much less to us (because I think that Tehran is susceptible to strategic deterrence), but for the destabilizing impact it would have on regional and global non-proliferation. More importantly, it's a safe bet that the Turks have no burning desire to see a nuclear-armed Iran. For that matter, neither do the Russians. So, to walk the whole thing back a bit, I'm suggesting two things. First, and this was the central argument of my post, we should focus on enlisting the key regional leverage points, which I called the "Middle Powers," to do the heavy lifting for us in terms of regional policy, because for a whole host of reasons, the lighter our footprint right now, the better. Second, to do that, we need to start by finding the common policy goals with our regional allies, and use that as the starting point for formulating policy. In the case of Iran, that would be preventing the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, but not necessarily containment. America is no longer in a position where it can impose unpopular policies on its regional allies, so we need to find ways to achieve our goals through generating consensus, not twisting arms. A third point, but one that is more difficult to standardize, involves identifying regional players who have got their mojo (for lack of a better word) working and piggy back on their momentum. Turkey, for instance, has demonstrated a very impressive ability to achieve its foreign policy goals over the past several years. France under Sarkozy has shown a knack for picking winners. It would be foolish to let pride keep us from taking advantage of our friends' lucky streaks. It goes against years of instinct and habit, but until we restore both our soft and hard power, American influence might be best applied by enlisting savvy and sympathetic Middle Powers, and then following their lead. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Thursday, May 1, 2008 The Moqtada ParadoxFor the past month, the Bush administration has been furiously rolling out the Iran-Sadr connection. Now Moqtada al-Sadr has begun to push back with the Iran-America connection:
That strikes me as a pretty smart play on al-Sadr's part, since it's looking more and more like he's the odd man out in Baghdad, Washington and Tehran. It also strikes me as the most accurate reading of what's going on, since at this point that's the only scenario that could possibly result in a stable Iraq. Al-Sadr always seems to be most dangerous (or perhaps most agile) when everyone's busy counting him out, and something tells me this time's no different. Because if he's the odd man out, he's got no choice but to fight or strike a deal. And the idea that he's going to somehow settle for a deal with Maliki and SCII seems farfetched, since he already tried that and it didn't pan out so well for him. The irony is that al-Sadr's vision for Iraq is by far the most compatible with our own, and in some alternate reality where we were watching this conflict from the sidelines or where we were not so heavily invested in taking him out, we would almost certainly be taking his side right now. In fact the only thing that kept us from doing so in the first place was our pipedream of a secular Iraqi democracy, and his mildly irritating habit of calling on his followers to drive out the infidel occupier, by which, curiously enough, he meant us. We've obviously gotten over the Jeffersonian democracy kick, and in the case of the Sunnis we've managed to make nice with guys who initially weren't too keen on us sticking around. So I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't end up recognizing some of Moqtada's more lovable qualities before this whole thing is over. The question, though, is whether he'll learn to love us back. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Thursday, May 1, 2008 Wright's Politics, and Obama'sI think Ezra Klein's right here, in that the essential problem posed by Jeremiah Wright is the political content of his remarks, and not the racial content. In fact, outside of the AIDS conspiracy theory, there isn't really that much racial content. But as I argued here when the sermon clips were first circulated, the political content of Wright's remarks grows out of the black American experience, one that has nurtured a dual identity, equal parts affirmation and ambivalence towards a country that is at once home and bitter exile. Ezra correctly traces the moral outrage over Wright's remarks to their Chomsky-ite quality, but it's no coincidence that, outside of the anti-globalization movement and far-left academia, black America is probably the most sympathetic echo chamber for Chomsky's analysis. Ezra's thought experiment of a white candidate's white preacher espousing the same political views does support his argument that this is not a political issue simply because Obama and Wright are black. But it overlooks the ways in which Wright's views mean something essentially different in the context of the black narrative of the American experience, where they are inseparable from the struggle to move from object to subject in the larger national narrative, and from which they form a bridge between that national narrative and the global narrative beyond. The result is not a rejection of American history, so much as a correction to it, one that resonates all the more powerfully for coming from the ranks of the oppressed and not of the oppressor. But the underlying ambivalence that comes from condemning America on the one hand, and fighting for one's rightful place in it on the other, means that a black politician like Obama can immerse himself in Wright's Chomsky-ite worldview without necessarily rejecting the broader socio-economic structure of American society. Within the black narrative, it is a radical perspective, but not a leftist perspective, anti-colonial, but not anti-capitalist. (Although Trinity UCC's philosophy does disavow "middle classness.") The equivalent scenario for a white politician would have much broader implications, since they would suggest no ambivalence, but only a political orientation largely incompatible with mainstream American politics. Not only would this still be a story were Obama and Wright white, as Ezra argues, it would probably be a more politically damaging one. It would also be a very different story, as Ezra also argues, and that's very much due to the fact that Obama and Wright are black. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Thursday, May 1, 2008 Obsolete Trade-offsMatthew Yglesias flags this remark by Randy Scheunemann, John McCain's top foreign policy aide, in the context of an interview on Georgia and U.S.-Russia relations:
Yglesias then responds with a pretty heavy dose of snark:
Now, I'm not a big fan of John McCain's foreign policy proposals, in particular as regards Russia, so I'm probably closer to the broader lines of Yglesias' vision than those of Scheunemann. But I think Scheunemann might be right here, and Yglesias wrong, but for reasons that neither seem to recognize. The Bush administration's stance on trade-offs that Scheunemann cites is based on the misguided notion that each dossier can somehow be approached "objectively," and decided on the merits, independently of other dossiers. From this perspective, trading off concessions on one dossier (e.g. Kosovo) against advantages on another (e.g. NATO expansion) is unnecessary, because each individual conflict will be resolved based on a universal (and universally accessible) standard of fairness and justice. That turns a willfully blind eye to the fact that interests often determine values, or at least the perception of values, and that no nation will willingly sacrifice its interests, much less its advantages, based on notions of right and wrong with which it either disagrees or believes are not equally applied. Nevertheless (and this gets back to the point I made here about America being a necessary but no longer a sufficient power), as the potential configurations for sufficient multilateral coalitions multiply, each individual crisis will increasingly determine the particular coalition necessary to reach a tipping point for its resolution, independently of other crises. The proliferation of regional multilateral institutions to confer legitimacy on a coalition-based intervention, for instance, will increasingly dilute the veto-power of the permanent Security Council nations. Obviously, there will still be overlap; Russia's stance on Georgia can only be understood as a reaction to Kosovo's declaration of independence. But the opportunities for blocking diplomatic progress that make trade-offs necessary and possible will become increasingly rare as the available detours around them become more accessible. This kind of strategic environment almost demands that trade-offs be replaced by short memories and the ability to compartmentalize both crisis interventions and conflict resolutions, in order to resist the inherently destabilizing effect such a fluidity of tactical alliances might have. The alternatives, whether to impose a declining American hegemony or to resist the emergence of alternate avenues of consensus, are simply no longer possible. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Tuesday, April 29, 2008 The PRT's OverBy all accounts, the Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan and Iraq are pretty popular. Everyone -- be it military and civil service team members on the ground, Washington policy-makers on the Hill and in the Executive branch, or the media -- just loves them. In a conference call with PRT members a few months back, President Bush even went so far as to suggest that he envied them for what he, like many, perceived as the exotic adventure they're experiencing in the farflung corners of Iraq and Afghanistan. And for good reason. After years of disheartening news in both theaters of operations, the PRT's seemed to capture the public's imagination with their combination of American ingenuity, resolve and industriousness, but also with their frontier-style independence. To be sure, they operate in dangerous theaters at great personal risk. But they're also such a novelty that, for the most part, they function as a sort of free electron in the military hierarchy's periodic chart. Often financed by discretionary Commander's Emergency Response Program (CERP) funds as improvised responses to conditions on the ground, the PRT's resemble a post-9/11 expression of the pre-Vietnam Peace Corps ethic, with a touch of 90's NGO euphoria thrown in for good measure: rogue units taking advantage of the chaos of a war to wage peace. But all that's likely to change soon, since the freewheeling nature of the PRT's that makes them such a popular feelgood story also makes them a nightmare to government oversight committees. The House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight, in particular, just published its first report on the PRT's, and not surprisingly focused on the need for clearly defined missions, doctrine, operating procedures, goals, and metrics to measure their success. In other words, all the institutionalized standardization that will almost certainly make PRT's more "effective" while sucking all of the life out of them. The PRT's are a significant and innovative part of the Army's new approach to counterinsurgency, which with its emphasis on a "human-culture-society" approach to COIN resembles an art as much as a military doctrine. With the promotion of Gen. Petraeus to CENTCOM commander and the apparent ascendancy of the Army's COIN faction, that approach has now assumed the position of the "dominant narrative" within the culture of the Army. Which means that in its own way, it too will be increasingly institutionalized and formatted as it moves further from its origins as an improvised response to conditions on the ground and closer to a law of science, frozen in a textbook and captured in the vacuum of certainty. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Friday, April 25, 2008 Playing the Petraeus CardIt looks like I'm the only one who's underwhelmed by the Petraeus appointment to CENTCOM commander, but what the heck. In for a penny, in for pound. So here's another thorny question that I've yet to see directly addressed. (Hampton, make sure you've had your morning cup of Joe before reading any further.) I mentioned that by using his direct lines of communication with the Oval Office to leapfrog Adm. Fallon, Petraeus had already been serving as de facto CENTCOM commander. But in thinking about it, the leapfrog actually went much further than that, because President Bush made it clear that he would follow Petraeus' lead in Iraq, and not the other way around. Now, if you're a cynic like me, you might think that was a political ploy to use the persuasive authority of the Iraq theater commander to implement military tactics in Baghdad that serve Bush's political purposes in Washington. (All the better if they've been responsible for the improved security situation, but the causal connection remains disputable, and subject to developments on the ground.) But if you're not, it means that Petraeus was exercising a command that far exceeded the bailiwick of MNF-I or CENTCOM, for that matter. Petraeus was calling the shots for the Commander-in-Chief, and not the other way around. Of course, so long as Petraeus' strategic vision is consistent with President Bush's political agenda, there's little reason to believe the relationship will suffer from his assumption of CENTCOM duties. But what happens when Petreaus decides that Bush's political line jeopardizes our regional strategic position? Well, it turns out we have a recent example of what happens to a CENTCOM commander who isn't in lockstep with the Bush administration's Middle East policy. It's called early retirement. Now call me cynical, call me cranky, call me contrarian (just, please, don't call me punctilious). But to my eyes this looks like the latest installment of the Bush administration's politicization of the officer corps, and I suspect that anyone who expects Petraeus to suddenly start thinking differently about the big regional picture than he did about the Iraq theater is in for a disappointment. Petraeus will ask Bush for what Bush wants to give him, and Bush will then give it to him under the pretense that it's what his military commander asked for. And if Petraeus upsets the apple cart between now and January 20, 2009, he'll be joining Fox Fallon on the motivational speaking tour. The problem isn't that the President calls the shots in time of war. That's how it should be. The problem is that the Petraeus-Bush relationship is a closed feedback loop, hermetically impervious to disproof and driven by a political agenda whose ideological foundation Bush has pragmatically sidelined but never explicitly renounced. And it's about to go regional. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Thursday, April 24, 2008 The Big ThreeIf it weren't for all hell breaking loose in the Middle East, the tectonic shifts going on in South Asia would probably be the decade's storyline. As it is, they still might be. In addition to China's rise and India's emergence, there's also all sorts of movement towards warmer relations between the region's traditional rivals that could smooth the way for further growth. Pakistan-India relations, while still prickly and marked by tit-for-tat missile tests, are more cordial than they've ever been. Same goes for China-India relations. As for China-Pakistan relations, a couple of articles (one here at Asia Times Online, and another here at Jamestown Foundation) discuss how the tensions both countries have historically experienced with India make for a natural tactical alliance between them. Toss in the unstable nature of their recent relations with America and the logic is even more pronounced. Nevertheless, the Asia Times article suggests China is exercising more caution towards Islamabad of late, in part due to Pekin's warming relations with Delhi, and in part due to its concerns about Muslim Uighur separatists on the Pakistani border with Xianjing province. And this Defense News article about India reinforcing and modernizing its military presence on its Chinese frontier shows that the old Reagan axiom, Trust but verify, is still the order of the day. The takeaway is that the tensions and faultlines, both internal (Tibet, Xianjing, the Pakistani FATA) and external (Kashmir, Afghanistan, Taiwan), that run deep under the surface will continue to undermine these regional powers in their quest for global influence. With all the factors pointing to its eventual relative decline, that's still an advantage the U.S. enjoys over them, although we've mitigated that advantage by "Americanizing" the costs of the ethno-sectarian conflicts in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Wednesday, April 23, 2008 The Petraeus PrincipleWhat's clear so far about the Petraeus CENTCOM announcement is that all anyone can do right now is speculate on what impact this will all have. But while answers will only come with time, the fundamental questions are shaping up pretty quickly. According to Abu Muqawama they boil down to how Gen. Petraeus' experiences in Iraq are going to influence his regional vision in general, his approach to Iran in particular, and his ability to make detached decisions about how to distribute scarce resources between the two theaters of war now under his command. Tom Barnett, on the other hand, flips the formulation a bit and wonders how the added regional perspective will impact Gen. Petraeus' approach to Iraq and Iran, although he worries about the fact that the DoD is now pretty much all "bad cop," up and down the line, when it comes to Iran. One thing that's implied in AM's remarks about Petraeus' regional vision being shaped by the prism of Iraq, but that I'd draw out even more explicitly, is that his vision of the Iranians has been shaped by the prism of what amounts to a proxy war there. So whatever broader regional approach to Tehran he adopts can't help but be conditioned by the fact that he has already been engaged in low-intensity warfare with them for the past year and a half. To use the language of Petraeus' own COIN manual, his Iran narrative has begun as a war story. So either he's capable of making a very significant pivot, or else the plotline is about to be expanded to a regional level (which, as Tom Barnett points out, does not necessarily mean a decisive attack on Iran but logically suggests one). Meanwhile, some questions are being raised (Phil Carter here and Charlie from AM here) about Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno's fit as commander of MNF-I. But I'm surprised that, so far, no one's had the temerity to point out that compared to his CENTCOM predecessors, Gen. Petraeus' credentials are underwhelming for such a strategically vital regional command. Admiral Fallon's prior regional command experience was too deep to count. Gen. Abizaid did prior staff tours in the Office of the Army Chief of Staff, the Southern European Task Force, and the U.S. Army Europe HQ. Gen. Franks commanded the 3rd Army for three years prior to taking over CENTCOM, and Gen. Zinni was CENTCOM Deputy C-i-C for nine months before assuming the top spot. The bulk of Petraeus' experience, meanwhile, has been in operations and training (which is what you'd expect for someone who has demonstrated such tactical brilliance). Challenging as it is, Commander MNF-I is his broadest command to date. Now it could be that Petraeus is, in addition to being a tactical genius, a strategic genius as well. But a case could be made for the argument that, in leapfrogging Adm. Fallon through his personal relationship with President Bush, Petraeus has essentially served as de facto Commander of CENTCOM for the past year and a half. And in that time he has put the Iraq theater ahead of our broader regional interests, and according to many, ahead of the health of the Army. Again, only time will tell. But so far, the only real qualification Petraeus seems to have for the job is to have offered President Bush a fortuitous tactical approach that coincided perfectly with Bush's political needs. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Tuesday, April 22, 2008 The Limits of Military PowerThere's a discussion this week over at TPMCafe of Matthew Yglesias' imminently available book, Heads in the Sand. It focuses on Yglesias' vision of a "liberal internationalism," by which he means the forward leaning diplomatic engagement, under the auspices of a multi-lateral system of institutions and laws, that characterized American foreign policy throughout the Cold War. Specifically, on his blog, Yglesias has targeted the use of pre-emptive war as an effective non-proliferation strategy. I call attention to it not only because it's an interesting discussion, but also because it folds in nicely with this short monograph (.pdf) by Carl Connetta, which I found on the Projects on Defense Alternatives website, and which serves as something of a backstory to Yglesias' argument. Connetta points out that, starting with the First Gulf War, America has become seduced by the image of a surgical, omnipotent military capacity.
This is the image that Donald Rumsfeld tried to impose not only on the invasion of Iraq, but on the Army in general. And I think possibly before the ideological and strategic explanations that Yglesias offers for recent American interventionism, but at the very least in addition to them, this tempting image of military power as a clean and efficient policy tool accounts for a great deal of the temptation to use it as a panacea to what otherwise would be considered problems in need of a political solution. I've discussed the growing militarization of stabilization and humanitarian operations before. Connetta points out that pre-emptive threat prevention, too, used to be the diplomats' bailiwick:
The outcomes in both Afghanistan and Iraq have demonstrated that military power remains a blunt instrument, with unpredictable and costly consequences. Even given the narrowest and most clearly defined missions, it rarely achieves unassailable outcomes (consider that the Iraq War has been in part explained by the failure to topple Saddam Hussein in the First Gulf War). But not only have we expanded the mission set considerably, it's also become commonplace in policy discussions to concede the need to grow the military. The perverse logic, as Connetta points out, consists of demanding a greater capacity without questioning what it ought to be used for:
Both Yglesias and Connetta demonstrate the way in which the American foreign policy discourse has been overtly militarized. Part of that has to do with the domestic political residue of the Vietnam War and the rise in the 1990's of the liberal hawk movement as a response (one of Yglesias' central theses), part of it has to do with the Pentagon's bureaucratic imperative to grow, and part of it has to do with the very real trauma of the attacks of 9/11. The key point is that the military has done everything we've asked it to do, in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem is not so much that we haven't given it what it needs to accomplish the task, although that is certainly the case, but that we've asked it to do too much to begin with. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Sunday, April 20, 2008 The War That Never WasThe NY Times story detailing how the Pentagon used "military analysts" to spread administration talking points on the Iraq War is sure to dominate the news cycle, and rightly so. The story reveals the fundamental role Information Operations (IO) play in the Pentagon's strategic vision, as I noted here, and as confirmed by this October 2003 report (.pdf) titled Information Operations Roadmap, personally approved by Donald Rumsfeld and kept secret until January 2006, when the National Security Archive at George Washington University obtained it through a FOIA request. While far from a smoking gun, the report makes for interesting reading, especially the passages that recognize the difficulty of maintaining boundaries between foreign and domestic audiences in the contemporary media landscape. A lot of discussion of the story's revelations is almost certain to center around the Smith-Mundt Act, but significantly, nothing that took place violated its prohibitions, which are on the domestic dissemination of public diplomacy "propaganda" targeting foreign media markets. The same talking points echoed by the "analysts" were being distributed for domestic consumption by official DoD and White House spokespeople. The fact that the "analysts," who were under no direct orders, were not identified as official Pentagon mouthpieces is a matter of personal integrity (or lack thereof) and their network employers' lack of rigor in vetting them. That's not to say that the operation isn't alarming and repugnant, both from the point of view of the Pentagon and the "analysts." It is. But it's also not very surprising, and falls short, in its flagrant contempt of press objectivity, of this administration's other abuses, mentioned in passing in the article. The major systemic failure, to my mind, was not in the "analysts," who were led astray by human nature and misplaced institutional loyalty, or in the Pentagon, which was faithful to its institutional nature, but in the media which, by failing to vet the "analysts" for independence of viewpoint, betrayed one of its central functions. To the extent that the operation was successful, it illustrates the Pentagon's savvy appreciation of contemporary media. The "analysts" were "paid by the hit" by the networks, which meant that, like Debka and Drudge, their privileged media positions were dependent on access to their sources more than veracity of their information. The identification of "analysts," as opposed to reporters, as key opinion shapers also demonstrates an understanding that in an age of media saturation, those who frame narratives are more important than those who gather facts. But insomuch as the information they were peddling was demonstrably false, the operation reveals the extent to which the DoD has failed to integrate the lessons of Vietnam, which it has identified as the media filter slanting public opinion, as opposed to the dissonance between the Department's official line and the reality on the ground. It also leaves the Pentagon wide open to what amounts to a devastating counter-op targeting the very assets (the "analysts" themselves) it would normally deploy to defend itself. As such, the Times story should probably be understood as part of an internal DoD battle for control of the Iraq War "narrative," and the cameo appearances by Gen. Petraeus, in this context, are hardly surprising. The demonstrable falsehood of the talking points will also ultimately determine whether the DoD crossed whatever statutory lines might apply, since it is forbidden from domestic use of Psychological Operations (Psy Ops) both by executive order and department regulation. For an in-depth treatment of some of the ways IO and Psy Ops have already been employed during the Iraq War, as well as how the lines between foreign and domestic consumption have been blurred and/or exploited, Daniel Schulman's Columbia Journalism Review piece from back in March 2006 is must reading. Ultimately, the story really drives home the degree to which the Iraq War has existed mainly as a battle between competing narratives, whose defining feature is the fading centrality of fact, and whose defining historical figure may end up being neither George W. Bush nor Saddam Hussein, but Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the Iraqi Minister of Information who declared America's military defeat even as U.S. forces occupied Baghdad. Launched in response to an imaginary threat, planned to facilitate an imaginary liberation, waged to secure an imaginary peace, and now extended to achieve imaginary outcomes, the administration's version of the Iraq War has from start to finish replaced reality with denial, analysis with wishful thinking, and factual assessments with fairy tales. Indeed, were it not for the deaths of 4,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis that make such an idea obscene, you could almost say that the Iraq War has never really existed at all. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Tuesday, April 15, 2008 The Failure of the Al-Qaida ModelFunny how for months we've been picking apart the Anbar Awakening from a tactical point of view, all the while failing to take into account its single most significant strategic implication. Namely, that al-Qaida's blueprint for Islamic revolution does not work. The Military Review article I wrote up in an earlier post offered more evidence of what's become the consensus explanation for the turning of the Sunni tribes: their disgust with al-Qaida Iraq's murderous tactics and their resentment at the AQI "foreigners" trying to impose an internationalist jihadi ideology on what was essentially a nationalist insurgency. But al-Qaida, as a globalized, multi-national suicide bombing outfit, has no other operational doctrine and no native land to call its own. Which means its experience in Iraq is almost certain to be reproduced everywhere it goes. Think about that for a second. At a time when eighty percent of the Arab world views America unfavorably, and in a war that a majority of Americans (let alone Iraqis) disapprove of, al-Qaida failed to establish a sustainable bridgehead. That's not the mark of an organization that represents a strategic, existential threat to the United States. By their nature, Al-Qaida in particular and terrorism in general pose very real threats to the lives and safety of American civilians, threats that need to be addressed firmly, resolutely and effectively. But anyone claiming they are anything more than that has not been paying close enough attention to the evidence of the Iraq War, of which they are usually the most vocal supporters. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Tuesday, April 15, 2008 A West Bank Appliance RunThis short essay by Gershom Gorenberg speaks more eloquently than anything else I've read recently to all that's most awful about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also to the ways in which all that's most hopeful about it just might still prevail. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Tuesday, April 15, 2008 COIN and Combat ToursWhen President Bush announced that Iraq and Afghanistan combat tours would be cut back to twelve months from their current fifteen, Phil Carter and Kevin Drum had an interesting back and forth and back about tour lengths and counterinsurgency best practices. The upshot of the exchange was that even though counterinsurgency demands familiarity with the area of operations, there's a point of diminishing returns beyond which the human toll of longer tours interferes with units' ability to be effective. Here's Carter:
Today the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Dan K. McNeill, weighed in from "his heavily fortified headquarters" in Kabul. McNeill argued that the fifteen month tours ". . .are critical to making progress in the war against Afghanistan's Taliban and other insurgents. . ." and that ". . .the greatest gains in the war have come from Soldiers serving the long tours." He did, however, recognize that they are not feasible:
This does seem to be a wrinkle that needs to be ironed out. Basing a significant operational component of Army doctrine on a tactical approach that is based on a fundamentally irreconciliable dilemma presents obvious problems. Carter suggested using the Marine Corps model of seven-month tours combined with rotating units back into previous areas of operation, thereby providing needed rest along with continuity. Hopefully this will be addressed whenever Gen. Petraeus' highly praised COIN manual comes up for a revision. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Tuesday, April 15, 2008 The Real McCainSo is the problem that McCain wasn't paying attention at last week's Petraeus hearings? Or is it that he doesn't understand the difference between a theater commander, a regional commander, and the commander-in-chief? Matthew Yglesias and Kevin Drum are correct in saying that it will be tough to convince the public that the perception of McCain as a national security icon is a mistaken one. But he certainly is generous about providing the proof necessary to make the case. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Monday, April 14, 2008 Torture as Permanent ExileI'd been mulling over a couple points that I've yet to see mentioned in the debate about the use of physical coercion in terrorist interrogations, trying to figure out just how to illustrate them, when along comes The Moor Next Door with a post about Yal Menfi, a song about an Algerian rebel taken prisoner and beaten by the French colonial authorities. Literally "the Exile", Yal Menfi was written in the aftermath of the Algerian insurrection of 1871, then reprised in the 1950's in the context of the Algerian War of Independence. It has since been recorded by contemporary artists, including Cheb Mami, an Algerian-born rai singer who has enjoyed crossover success with Sting and Nile Rodgers among others (ie. hardly a hardcore radical), demonstrating how more than a hundred and thirty years after its composition, the song and the mistreatment it describes still haunts the collective consciousness of Algerians and resonates with their experience to this day. The song illustrates in a poignant way something I'd noticed while going through Karim Sadjadpour's Carnegie Institution report, Reading Khamenei, namely that Khamenei, like Hashemi Rafsanjani and a good deal of the Iranian leadership from the time of the revolution to now, was tortured by the Shah's secret police. Similarly, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's strategic mastermind, was tortured in Egypt. And the list goes on. The point isn't that torture inevitably creates extremists or terrorists, so much as that torture has a longterm indelible impact not only on individuals but on societies at large. This longterm, multi-generational resentment is rarely included by proponents of physical coercion in the calculation of its usefulness. Then there is the question of legality, which is what President Bush resorted to in defending the Principles' meetings at which the coercive techniques were discussed. What the legalistic defense ignores is that no regime that ever practiced physical coercion or torture was careless enough to leave it a crime. What's more, governments rarely engage in illegal behavior when they have the ability to render it legal without the consent of the people. The more abhorrent the behavior, the more that rule applies. What's shocking is that this administration has now joined their ranks, not only in its behavior, but also in its recourse to effectively changing the law without the knowledge or consent of the governed. Which makes the last point so alarming. The use of cruel punishment for a convicted criminal flies in the face of the principles of American jurisprudence. And to the best of my knowledge, no one has yet suggested that terrorists, once they have revealed whatever information of value they might possess and have been convicted in a court of law, be subjected to cruel treatment as punishment for their crimes. Which only makes the use of cruel treatment in the fact-gathering phase of the investigation, before any proof of guilt has been established, even more of an aberration. Anyone who wavers over the utilitarian defense of coercion (the ticking timebomb scenario) would do well to consider whether they would be willing to authorize these practices in the context of the American justice system. Because there are any number of reasonable scenarios whereby an American citizen, unassociated with any international terrorist organization and not motivated by any radical ideology, might be in possession of knowledge that could spare thousands of innocent lives. The ticking timebomb scenario, in other words, respects no borders, and has little regard for passports or citizenship. Which means that once it is invoked, it is essentially enshrined. And under this administration, that can happen whether we know about it or consent. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg |
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