About Foreign Policy 2010 - Foreign Policy Initiative

About Foreign Policy 2010
As we seek to educate leaders and policymakers about how to meet the global challenges and
opportunities of the 21st century, the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) conducts briefings for
candidates of both political parties, as well as sitting members of Congress and their staff of both
political parties.
FPI briefings bring the experience and expertise of Washington‘s leading foreign policy thinkers
to current and aspiring members of Congress. The sessions, which can range from an hour to a
half-day, are personally tailored to the interests of those being briefed. FPI will make available
experts on the major foreign policy challenges facing the United States including topics such as
Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, China, and Russia, among other issues. We are prepared to brief
candidates and members of Congress on critical issues ranging from the War on Terror to
transatlantic relations and from the defense budget to democracy and human rights.
In conjunction with our briefings, we have developed Foreign Policy 2010, a briefing book
available on the FPI website at www.foreignpolicyi.org. This document pulls together articles
and op-eds from leading thinkers in each of the key foreign policy issue areas. FPI will be
updating the briefing book on a regular basis in 2010. To suggest additional articles or content
for the briefing book, please email [email protected].
To schedule a briefing, please contact Rachel Hoff at [email protected] or (202) 2963322.
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About The Foreign Policy Initiative
In 2010 the United States--and its democratic allies--face many foreign policy challenges. They come
from rising and resurgent powers, including China and Russia. They come from other autocracies that
violate the rights of their citizens. They come from rogue states that work with each other in ways
inimical to our interests and principles, and that sponsor terrorism and pursue weapons of mass
destruction. They come from Al Qaeda and its affiliates who continue to plot attacks against the United
States and our allies. They come from failed states that serve as havens for terrorists and criminals and
spread instability to their neighbors.
The United States faces these challenges while engaged in military operations across the globe, including
in Iraq and Afghanistan. The sacrifice of American lives and significant economic expenditure in these
conflicts has led to warnings of U.S. strategic overreach, and calls for American retrenchment. There are
those who hope we can just return to normalcy--to pre-9/11 levels of defense spending and pre-9/11
tactics. They argue for a retreat from America‘s global commitments and a renewed focus on problems at
home, an understandable if mistaken response to these difficult economic times.
In fact, strategic overreach is not the problem and retrenchment is not the solution. The United States
cannot afford to turn its back on its international commitments and allies--the allies that helped us defeat
fascism and communism in the 20th century, and the alliances we have forged more recently, including
with the newly liberated citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan. Our economic difficulties will not be solved by
retreat from the international arena. They will be made worse.
In this new era, the consequences of failure and the risks of retreat would be even greater than before. The
challenges we face require 21st century strategies and tactics based on a renewed commitment to
American leadership. The United States remains the world‘s indispensable nation -- indispensable to
international peace, security, and stability, and indispensable to safe-guarding and advancing the ideals
and principles we hold dear.
The Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) is a non-profit, non-partisan tax-exempt organization under Section
501(c)(3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code that promotes:
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continued U.S. engagement--diplomatic, economic, and military—in the world and rejection of
policies that would lead us down the path to isolationism;
robust support for America‘s democratic allies and opposition to rogue regimes that threaten
American interests;
the human rights of those oppressed by their governments, and U.S. leadership in working to
spread political and economic freedom;
a strong military with the defense budget needed to ensure that America is ready to confront the
threats of the 21st century;
international economic engagement as a key element of U.S. foreign policy in this time of great
economic dislocation.
FPI looks forward to working with all who share these objectives, irrespective of political party, so that
the United States successfully confronts its challenges and make progress toward a freer and more secure
future.
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Contents
Ideas ........................................................................................................................................... 9
FPI Analysis: President Obama's Foreign Policy, Year One, The Foreign Policy Initiative
Understanding America‘s Contested Primacy, Eric Edelman, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments
A Symposium: What is Moderate Islam? The Wall Street Journal
Obama's Year One: Contra, Robert Kagan, World Affairs Journal
The Obama Doctrine, Gary Schmitt and Tom Donnelly, The Weekly Standard
Decline Is a Choice, Charles Krauthammer, The Weekly Standard
*The Perils of Wishful Thinking, Robert Kagan, The American Interest
*Idealism Isn‘t Dead, Robert Kagan, Newsweek
The War on Terror ................................................................................................................. 48
Afghanistan/Pakistan........................................................................................................... 48
FPI Fact Sheet: The case for a fully resourced counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan, The Foreign
Policy Initiative
New Reasons For Hope In Afghanistan, Michael O‘Hanlon, Politico
Too Few Good Men, Gary Schmitt, The Weekly Standard
Afghanistan - The Case For Optimism, Max Boot, Commentary Magazine
Staying Power, Michael O‘Hanlon, Foreign Affairs
A Winnable War, Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan, The Weekly Standard
Obama‘s Choice, William Kristol, The Weekly Standard
Why Negotiate With the Taliban? Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan, The Wall Street Journal
Beradar, Pakistan, and the Afghan Taliban: What Gives? Ashley J. Tellis, Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace
Afghanistan Is Not 'Obama's War,' Dan Senor and Peter Wehner, The Wall Street Journal
Iraq ..................................................................................................................................... 97
Iraq's Postwar Stability Is Crucial, Jamie M. Fly and John O. Noonan, Politico
Inside The Beltway: Was Iraq Worth It? Jamie Fly, Henry Jackson Society
The Way of the Kurds, Max Boot, The Weekly Standard
How We'll Know When We've Won, Frederick W. Kagan, The Weekly Standard
Yemen ............................................................................................................................... 114
How to Apply 'Smart Power' in Yemen, Frederick W. Kagan and Christopher Harnisch, The Wall Street
Journal
On the Knife‘s Edge: Yemen‘s Instability and the Threat to American Interests, Andrew M. Exum and
Richard Fontaine, Center for a New American Security
Intelligence/Homeland Security ......................................................................................... 121
*Full text of article not included in this briefing book; text available from original publication source.
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Letter by Former CIA Directors to President Obama, Michael Hayden, Porter Goss, George Tenet, John
Deutch, R. James Woolsey, William Webster, and James R. Schlesinger, Fox News
An "Intelligent" FBI, Gary Schmitt, The Weekly Standard
*Obama administration takes several wrong paths in dealing with terrorism, Michael V. Hayden,
Washington Post
Middle East ........................................................................................................................... 126
Middle East ....................................................................................................................... 126
Free at Last? Bernard Lewis, Foreign Affairs
*The False Religion of Mideast Peace, Aaron David Miller, Foreign Policy
Iran ................................................................................................................................... 134
Fact Sheet: The Future of Iran‘s Green Movement, The Foreign Policy Initiative
The Future Of American Power In The Middle East, Senator Joe Lieberman, Council On Foreign Relations
Beyond Sanctions, Juan C. Zarate, National Review
Should Israel Bomb Iran? Reuel Marc Gerecht, The Weekly Standard
Iran Cannot Be Contained, Bret Stephens, Commentary Magazine
A Period of Consequences, Jamie Fly and William Kristol, The Weekly Standard
Iran and the Costs of Containment, Michael Anton, National Review
Iran: The Case for ―Regime Change,‖ Michael Rubin, Commentary Magazine
Iran Reveals its Real Intentions, Jamie M. Fly, The Weekly Standard
Five Ways Obama Could Promote Freedom in Iran, Dan Senor and Christian Whiton, The Wall Street
Journal
*The Other Existential Threat, Daniel Gordis, Commentary Magazine
*Last Chance for Iran, Daniel R. Coats, Charles S. Robb and Charles F. Wald, The Washington Post
Egypt ................................................................................................................................. 200
Turning A Blind Eye To Egypt, Richard S. Williamson, The American
A Letter to Secretary Clinton From the Working Group on Egypt, Various Authors, Carnegie Endowment
For International Peace
A Second Letter to Clinton from the Working Group on Egypt, Various Authors, Carnegie Endowment For
International Peace
Exodus from Dictatorship, Ellen Bork, The Weekly Standard
Why Obama needs to revamp his Egypt strategy, Jamie M. Fly, Foreign Policy
Israel ................................................................................................................................. 214
A Turkey of a Policy, Elliott Abrams, The Weekly Standard
Seven Existential Threats, Michael B. Oren, Commentary Magazine
The Path of Realism or the Path of Failure, Elliott Abrams, The Weekly Standard
*Obama‘s Jerusalem Stonewall, Mortimer Zuckerman, The Wall Street Journal
*Full text of article not included in this briefing book; text available from original publication source.
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Syria.................................................................................................................................. 231
How to React to a Reactor, Andrew J. Tabler, Foreign Affairs
Obama Talks, Syria Mocks, Elliott Abrams, The Weekly Standard
The Syria Temptation—and Why Obama Must Resist It, Bret Stephens, Commentary Magazine
China/East Asia ..................................................................................................................... 252
China ................................................................................................................................ 252
Keeping The Pacific Pacific, Seth Cropsey, Foreign Affairs
Obama's Timidity on Tibet, Ellen Bork, The Wall Street Journal
Prospects for Democracy in Hong Kong: Assessing China's International Commitments, Ellen Bork,
Congressional Executive Commission On China
Obama‘s Rights Retreat, Ellen Bork, The Wall Street Journal
Deadlines and Delays: Chinese Revaluation Will Still Not Bring American Jobs, Derek Scissors, The
Heritage Foundation
China: Still an Intelligence Priority, Gary Schmitt, American Enterprise Institute
Our One-China Cowardice, Gary J. Schmitt, The Wall Street Journal
The Realist Case for Tibetan Autonomy, Paula J. Dobriansky, The Wall Street Journal
Bearing Witness to Chinese Persecution, Dick Thornburgh, Real Clear World
'Bearing Witness' Isn't Enough, Ellen Bork, The Weekly Standard
Deng Undone, Derek Scissors, Foreign Affairs
'Strategic reassurance' that isn't, Robert Kagan and Dan Blumenthal, The Washington Post
Let a Hundred Flowers Be Crushed, Ellen Bork, The Weekly Standard
*The Right Way to Help the Uighurs, Ellen Bork, The Washington Post
*China's Space Capabilities and Their Impact on U.S. National Security, Ashley J. Tellis, Carnegie
Endowment
* Beijing's Heavy Hand In Hong Kong, Ellen Bork, Forbes
North Korea ...................................................................................................................... 290
It's Time for a Political War on Pyongyang, Christian Whiton, The Wall Street Journal Asia
Pressuring Pyongyang, Carolyn Leddy, Christian Whiton and Jamie Fly, The Weekly Standard
Burma ............................................................................................................................... 295
Burma: The Next Nuclear Rogue? Dana Rohrbacher, National Review
Burma Wild Cards, Kelley Currie, The Wall Street Journal
*Where Impunity Reigns, Benedict Rogers, The New York Times
*Reaching Out to Burma, Bertil Lintner, The Wall Street Journal
India/South Asia .................................................................................................................... 300
Diplomatic Negligence, Daniel Twining, The Weekly Standard
Center Stage for the 21st Century, Robert D. Kaplan, Foreign Affairs
The Importance of India, Duncan Currie, The Weekly Standard
*Full text of article not included in this briefing book; text available from original publication source.
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*More than just symbols, Ashley J. Tellis, Indian Express
*Not just in our backyard, Ashley J. Tellis, Indian Express
Central Asia…………………………………………………………………..………………..321
Could Kyrgyzstan Be The Democracy In Afghanistan‘s Back Yard? Tom Daschle, The Washington Post
*Dispatch From The Knife‘s Edge, Jamie Kirchik, The New Republic
Russia/Europe ....................................................................................................................... 323
Russia ............................................................................................................................... 323
Open Letter to President Obama on Russian Human Rights Abuses, Various Authors, The Foreign Policy
Initiative
FPI Analysis: Evaluating the U.S.-Russian ―Reset‖, The Foreign Policy Initiative
Open Letter to President Obama on Central Europe, Multiple Authors, The Foreign Policy Initiative
Open Letter to President Obama on Democracy and Human Rights in Russia, Multiple Authors, The
Foreign Policy Initiative
Obama Is Making Bush‘s Big Mistake on Russia, Jamie M. Fly and Gary Schmitt, Foreign Policy
The Kremlin Kowtow, Lilia Shevtsova, Foreign Policy
Punishing Allies. . . Tod Lindberg, The Weekly Standard
A Stab in the Back, Jamie M. Fly, The Weekly Standard
*Resetting U.S.-Russian Relations: It Takes Two, David J. Kramer, The Washington Quarterly
*The west must not abandon Georgia again, Ronald Asmus, Financial Times
*Obama and Russia, David Satter, Forbes
Europe/Turkey ................................................................................................................... 345
Ukrainian Blues, Alexander Motyl, Foreign Affairs
Turkey, From Ally To Enemy, Michael Rubin, Commentary Magazine
A Special Relationship in Jeopary, Eric Edelman, The American Interest
Twilight of the Arabs, Hillel Fradkin and Lewis Libby, The Weekly Standard
NATO at 60, Rafael L. Bardaj, The Weekly Standard
Latin America ....................................................................................................................... 380
A Bad Neighbor Policy? Jaime Daremblum, The Weekly Standard
The Colombian Miracle, Max Boot and Richard Bennet, The Weekly Standard
Cuban Hopes, Otto J. Reich & Orlando Gutierrez, National Review
Mexico‘s Cartel Wars, Mario Loyola, National Review
Africa ..................................................................................................................................... 400
Pirates, Then and Now, Max Boot, Foreign Affairs
How Tyranny Came to Zimbabwe, James Kirchick, The Weekly Standard
*Full text of article not included in this briefing book; text available from original publication source.
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*Obama shouldn't repeat Clinton's Somalia mistakes, Fred Kagan, Washington Examiner
Defense ................................................................................................................................... 420
Peace Doesn't Keep Itself, Arthur C. Brooks, Edwin J. Feulner And William Kristol, The Wall Street Journal
Defending Defense: Setting the Record Straight on US Military Spending Requirements, American Enterprise
Institute, Foreign Policy Initiative, and The Heritage Foundation
Standing At The Precipice: Nuclear Proliferation In The Age Of Khan And Iran, Jamie Fly, House Foreign
Affairs Committee
New START: What‘s The Hurry? Robert Joseph and Eric Edelman, National Review
Ebb Tide, Seth Cropsey, The American Interest
The Re-Hollowing Of The Military, Arthur Herman, Commentary Magazine
The Perilous Future Of US Strategic Forces, Bradley Thayer and Thomas Skypek, JINSA
The Big Squeeze, Gary Schmitt and Thomas Donnelly, The Weekly Standard
New Nukes! John Noonan, The Weekly Standard
U.S. Defence Spending: The Mismatch Between Plans and Resources, Mackenzie Eaglen, The Heritage
Foundation
A Treaty for Utopia, John R. Bolton, National Review
Debunking the Administration‘s Nuke Myths, Jamie M. Fly and John Noonan, The Weekly Standard
Obama and Gates Gut the Military, Thomas Donnelly and Gary Schmitt, The Wall Street Journal
*Here's How to Make a Real Stimulus Take Flight, Tom Donnelly and Gary Schmitt, The Washington Post
Democracy and Human Rights ............................................................................................. 500
They Still Blame America First, Jennifer Rubin, The Weekly Standard
What Do Dissidents Want? Ellen Bork, The Weekly Standard
The Abandonment of Democracy, Joshua Muravchik, Commentary Magazine
10/26/10 Edition
*Full text of article not included in this briefing book; text available from original publication source.
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Ideas
FPI Analysis: President Obama's Foreign Policy, Year
One
The Foreign Policy Initiative
January 20, 2010
During his first year in office, President Obama made several consequential decisions on a wide
range of national security issues. Key among those were his decisions, bucking many in his
party, to extend the timeline for withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq and to send tens of
thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan to defeat al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Despite these courageous decisions, President Obama initiated several startling changes in
American foreign policy during his first year as president. Some were stylistic or cosmetic. But
as the year wore on, President Obama launched numerous efforts that signaled a new
interpretation of America‘s role in the world.
In this regard, President Obama‘s words and deeds have aimed to successfully manage what
some see as America‘s inevitable decline relative to rising powers in Asia, notably China. This
has necessitated, on the part of the administration, a deliberate attempt to downplay traditional
understandings of American might (two ongoing wars notwithstanding), American alliances
(most importantly with other democracies), and American ideals (namely the cause of
democracy promotion and human rights). Any prediction about the direction of the Obama
administration‘s foreign policy hinges on the degree to which it will continue on this
unprecedented course or, alternately, come to terms with, and build upon, a tradition that accepts
America‘s role as the world‘s indispensible nation.
Whatever the president‘s intentions, the results of his actions have been controversial. Obama‘s
detractors blame, among other things, his belief in a newly humble America; his supporters note
the severe challenges the administration faced upon coming into power. What follows is a review
of President Obama‘s first year in foreign policy, using the words of several outside observers.
Concerning President Obama‘s decision to keep troops in Iraq through 2011, FPI‘s Jamie Fly
and Abe Greenwald wrote in Forbes, "Originally a surge skeptic, President Barack Obama
demonstrated bravery and leadership in revising the drawdown schedule he had touted during his
campaign so as not to risk the dangers of a premature exit.‖ On President Obama‘s decision to
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send 30,000 additional soldiers to Afghanistan, William Kristol and Fred Kagan wrote the
following in The Weekly Standard:
"When all the rhetorical and other problems are stripped away, the fact remains that Obama
has, in his first year in office, committed to doubling our forces in Afghanistan and embraced our
mission there. Indeed, the plan the president announced [at West Point] features a commendably
rapid deployment of reinforcements to the theater, with most of the surge forces arriving over the
course of this winter, allowing them to be in position before the enemy's traditional fighting
season begins."
Apart from the decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan, President Obama‘s foreign policy breaks
sharply with that of his predecessor.
In the Wall Street Journal, Eliot Cohen recently said of Obama‘s first year: ―It began with
apologies to the Muslim world that went nowhere…‖ Indeed, President Obama gave his first
formal interview to the Dubai-based Al Arabiya network. In that interview, the president said of
Middle East tensions, ―all too often the United States starts by dictating -- in the past on some of
these issues -- and we don't always know all the factors that are involved. So let's listen.‖ Obama
went on to say, ―my job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is
filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live
better lives. My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your
enemy. We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect.‖ The President closed his
interview with a defining vow: ―if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will
find an extended hand from us.‖
Obama built on this sentiment with a videotaped Persian new year (Nowruz) greeting in which
he pledged to cease American ―threats‖ toward Iran‘s leadership, and replace them a policy of
―respect‖ for the regime. In Ankara, he announced to the Turkish Parliament that America is not,
and will never be, at war with Islam. In Cairo, he struck a contrite note while becoming the first
sitting American president to apologize for the U.S. involvement in the 1953 coup to depose
Iranian president Mohammed Mosaddeq . Also, in his Cairo speech, Obama lent gratuitous
support to Muslims who believe that women should cover up un public.
If Iranian cooperation on nuclear disarmament and an opening for resumed Israel-Palestinian
peace talks were the strategic goals of Obama‘s apologetics, Cohen‘s assessment of an approach
that ―went nowhere‖ is correct. As Charles Krauthammer noted,
―Unilateral American concessions and offers of unconditional engagement have moved neither
Iran nor [other antagonistic countries] to accommodate us. Nor have the Arab states--or even
the powerless Palestinian Authority--offered so much as a gesture of accommodation in response
to heavy and gratuitous American pressure on Israel.‖
When Iran‘s fraudulent June election resulted in a preposterous victory for Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, Obama doubled down on his goodwill gamble. While Iranian protesters took to
the streets, the American president vowed to impotently ―bear witness‖ as the regime in Tehran
enacted a program of brutality against its citizens. This resulted not merely in a lack of regime
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cooperation, but a loss of American popularity among Iran‘s democrats. As Robert Kagan wrote
in World Affairs, ―Obama‘s strategy toward Iran has placed the United States objectively on the
side of the government‘s efforts to return to normalcy as quickly as possible, rather than in
league with the opposition‘s efforts to prolong the crisis. Engagement with Tehran has meant a
studious disengagement from the regime‘s opponents.‖
In the Wall Street Journal, Akbar Atri and Mariam Memarsadeghi wrote, ―Many Iran experts
have warned that displays of Western solidarity could taint Iran's democrats. Nonsense. Iranian
cyberspace is brimming with anger at what the Green Movement sees as betrayal by the West.
From legendary filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi's
representative in Europe, to Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi, Iranian democrats are expressing
disappointment at what they see as the trading of their democratic aspirations for dubious
progress toward the goal of preventing a nuclear Iran.‖
As for the Middle East peace part of the gambit, Elliott Abrams wrote in The Weekly Standard,
―[The Obama administration‘s] initial goals have all been missed. Israelis, Palestinians, and Arab
governments have lost confidence in American leadership.‖ Abrams goes on, ―In Arab capitals
the failure of the United States to stop Iran‘s nuclear program is understood as American
weakness in the struggle for dominance in the Middle East, making additional cooperation from
Arab leaders on Israeli-Palestinian issues even less likely.‖
In another Weekly Standard piece, Abrams had this to say of Obama‘s dealings with human
rights abusers:
"Under a policy of promoting human rights and democracy, the United States should be focusing
its policies toward such countries on what goes on within them, on supporting democracy
activists and promoting the expansion of freedom, on opposing repressive regimes and working
when we can to undermine them. But the approach Obama is taking is the almost inevitable
product of elevating multilateral diplomacy, for you don't conduct diplomacy with demonstrators
and bloggers, much less with political prisoners. You conduct it with the guy across the table,
behind the placard that reads "Iran" or 'Myanmar' or 'Egypt.‘"
A similar problem can be discerned in President Obama‘s policy toward China. In November,
the president made his first visit to this rising power. The trip was most notable for the various
ways in which Beijing got the better of Washington. Obama was not only unable to forge any
significant trade or environmental initiatives, but was also so stage-managed by the communist
party that he failed to present a robust American case for human rights in the autocratic country.
At National Review‘s blog, The Corner, Gordon Chang wrote,
"What the president does not understand is that American values are American interests.
American diplomats tend to separate the two and sometimes think that promoting the former can
undermine the latter. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton obviously subscribes to this view. After
all, this February she famously said that the issue of Chinese human rights cannot be permitted
to ―interfere‖ with important topics of discussion with Beijing. The president, for his part, broke
the precedent of the last three administrations and refused to see the Dalai Lama during His
Holiness‘s trip to Washington early last month. The administration indicated Obama did not
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want to rile the Chinese before his visit.
What Obama and Clinton fail to comprehend is that America derives its security because of its
values. Peoples around the world support our policies precisely because they share our beliefs.
And with the Chinese there is another dimension: Beijing‘s ruthlessly pragmatic leaders see our
failure to press human rights as a sign that we think we are weak. And if they think we are weak,
they see little reason to cooperate. So promoting human rights is protecting American security."
While President Obama could have been more assertive with China, his first year saw a slight
but discernable cooling of relations with China‘s democratic neighbor India. For, as Robert
Kagan explained in World Affairs,
"This accommodation [of rising countries like China] in turn has required a certain distancing
from the post–World War II allies. Increasing cooperation with the two great powers would be
difficult if not impossible if the United States remained committed to the old alliances which
were, after all, originally designed to contain them—NATO in the case of Russia, and, in the
case of China, the bilateral alliances with Japan, Australia, South Korea, the Philippines, and
the new strategic partnership with India."
At first, the Asian military dictatorship of Burma saw signs of improved relations with the U.S.
under Barack Obama. There was talk of lifting sanctions on the brutal regime of Senior General
Than Shwe. However, in October the administration dashed this plan. Benedict Rogers and
Joseph Loconte wrote in The Weekly Standard:
"The Obama administration recently announced the results of its long-awaited Burma policy
review. On the face of it the outcome is sound. The United States will maintain existing sanctions
on Burma's brutal regime, while attempting a dialogue with the generals. The combination of
engagement plus pressure is precisely the package long advocated by Burma's democracy
movement and its jailed leader, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi."
Among the more brazen examples of the administration‘s muted response to human rights
violators one can include the words and actions of special envoy to Sudan, retired Air Force Maj.
Gen. Scott Gration. Taking a startlingly soft approach to the genocidal regime of Omar al Bashir,
Gration said of offering Bashir incentives, "We've got to think about giving out cookies. Kids,
countries, they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement." On
The Weekly Standard‘s blog, Michael Goldfarb wrote,
"This from the man who took it upon himself to declare the genocide in Darfur over -- mere
'remnants of genocide' remain he told reporters in June -- at a time when even our push-over
Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, was still accusing the Sudanese regime of that
precise crime. (Gration would later try and make amends by telling the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee that 'Susan Rice is one of my dear friends. There are few women in the world that I
would say, 'I love you' to, and Susan is one of them. I love Susan Rice.') Only three months
before Gration issued his summary judgment that the genocide in Darfur had come to an end,
Sudanese President Omar al Bashir was indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal
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Court. Gration is pushing the administration to normalize relations with this indicted war
criminal."
The administration‘s initial impulse to disregard democratic principles affected policy toward
countries in America‘s own hemisphere. In the Wall Street Journal, Mary Anastasia O‘Grady
wrote,
"[T]he administration took off the gloves and sent a message that it would use everything it has
to break the neck of the Honduran democracy. Its bullying might work. But it will never be able
to brag about what it has done…To recap, the Honduran military in June executed a Supreme
Court arrest warrant against Mr. Zelaya for trying to hold a referendum on whether he should
be able to run for a second term. Article 239 of the Honduran constitution states that any
president who tries for a second term automatically loses the privilege of his office. By insisting
that Mr. Zelaya be returned to power, the U.S. is trying to force Honduras to violate its own
constitution."
O‘Grady was objecting specifically to the Obama administration‘s announcement ―that visa
services for Hondurans are suspended indefinitely, and that some $135 million in bilateral aid
might be cut. that visa services for Hondurans are suspended indefinitely, and that some $135
million in bilateral aid might be cut‖ if Zelaya was not reinstated. O‘Grady noted:
"By insisting that Mr. Zelaya be returned to power, the U.S. is trying to force Honduras to
violate its own constitution.
It is also asking Hondurans to risk the fate of Venezuela. They know how Venezuela's Hugo
Chávez went from being democratically elected the first time, in 1998, to making himself dictator
for life. He did it by destroying his country's institutional checks and balances."
After a succession of diplomatic impasses, President Obama backed away from his initial antidemocratic policy and eventually helped the Honduran government handle Zelaya in accordance
with its own constitution.
U.S. allies in Europe suffered as well because of the Obama administration‘s much vaunted
―Reset‖ of U.S.-Russia relations. After much speculation, the administration made a dramatic
departure from America‘s previous missile defense policy in Europe. FPI's Jamie Fly wrote, in
The Weekly Standard,
"President Obama's decision to cancel plans for U.S. missile defense sites in Poland and the
Czech Republic is a knife in the back for those countries. The implications for U.S. security and
the transatlantic relationship are profound. Critics rightly note that the sudden announcement
Thursday sends a dangerous message to allies, both in Europe and elsewhere, who rely on U.S.
security guarantees."
In addition to the now-familiar anti-democracy flavor of the move, the switch in policy had
practical challenges. Fly went on to note that, ―The problem for defenders of Obama's decision is
that the system they now support is exactly what they accused the Bush system of being-13
unproven.‖ While the administration vows to house aspects of that future system on Polish and
Czech soil, both the efficacy of the proposed technology and the likelihood of Congress‘s
compliance leave the matter an open question.
It was the administration‘s hope that Russia would become more positively disposed toward
American policy, if we removed defense assets from what Moscow believes is its rightful
―sphere of influence.‖ Charles Krauthammer wrote the following, in the Washington Post:
"Surely we got something in return for selling out our friends. Some brilliant secret trade-off to
get strong Russian support for stopping Iran from going nuclear before it's too late? Just wait
and see, said administration officials, who then gleefully played up an oblique statement by
President Dmitry Medvedev a week later as vindication of the missile defense betrayal.
The Russian statement was so equivocal that such a claim seemed a ridiculous stretch at the
time. Well, Clinton went to Moscow this week to nail down the deal. What did she get?
'Russia Not Budging On Iran Sanctions: Clinton Unable to Sway Counterpart.' Such was The
Washington Post headline's succinct summary of the debacle.
Note how thoroughly Clinton was rebuffed. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared
that 'threats, sanctions and threats of pressure' are 'counterproductive.' Note: It's not just
sanctions that are worse than useless, but even the threat of mere pressure.
It gets worse. Having failed to get any movement from the Russians, Clinton herself moved -- to
accommodate the Russian position! Sanctions? What sanctions? 'We are not at that point yet,'
she averred."
It is also worth noting that the President has thus far failed to achieve a follow-on to the Strategic
Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Moscow, as promised in July.
As President Obama focused much of his first year in office (and the bulk of the U.S.-Russian
relationship) on the issue of global disarmament, at home, the administration proposed in its first
budget, a long-term vision for the U.S. defense budget worthy of a second rate European power.
Thomas Donnelly and Gary Schmitt listed the problematic cuts:
"The termination of the F-22 Raptor program at just 187 aircraft inevitably will call U.S. air
supremacy -- the salient feature, since World War II, of the American way of war -- into
question… The U.S. Navy will continue to shrink below the fleet size of 313 ships it set only a few
years ago… Mr. Gates has promised to 'restructure' the Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS)
program, arguing that the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan have called into question the need for
new ground combat vehicles… The proposed cuts in space and missile defense programs reflect
a retreat in emerging environments that are increasingly critical in modern warfare."
Donnelly and Schmidt argued that the recommended cuts ―are the opening bid in what, if the
Obama administration has its way, will be a future U.S. military that is smaller and packs less
wallop.‖
14
During Obama‘s first year in the White House, the President has repeatedly sought to strike out
on a new, more humble course for American foreign policy. As we see in the examples above,
such efforts have been rebuffed at virtually every turn. Charles Krauthammer wrote that ―decline
is a choice.‖ While Barack Obama has, so far, chosen to steward an American decline, he did
envision a manageable descent. But looking at the evidence of the past year, the President seems
to have spurred something closer to a mini-freefall.
When faced with the reality of American commitments to fledgling democracies in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the President chose to give his commanders on the ground the resources required
for victory. The unfortunate realities of international politics will present him with similar
dilemmas in the years ahead. It remains unclear whether the fortitude he has shown on Iraq and
Afghanistan will be replicated in addressing other issues. The choice between accepting
American decline and embracing America‘s global responsibilities is still his to make.
October 2010
Understanding America‘s Contested Primacy
Dr. Eric S. Edelman
Center for Strategicand Budgetary Assessments
In November 2008, the National Intelligence Council released Global Trends 2025 which argued
that ―the international system — as constructed following the Second World War — will be
almost unrecognizable by 2025 owing to the rise of emerging powers, a globalizing economy, a
historic transfer of relative wealth and economic power from West to East, and the growing
influence of non-state actors. By 2025 the international system will be a global multipolar one
with gaps in national power continuing to narrow between developed and developing countries‖
[emphasis in original].‖ This conclusion represented a striking departure from the NIC‘s
conclusion four years earlier in Mapping the Global Future 2020 that unipolarity was likely to
remain a persistent condition of the international system.
Between the two reports America‘s zeitgeist had clearly shifted under the impact of persistent
difficulty in the counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and increased questioning of
United States global leadership (at home and abroad), the seemingly inexorable rise of the newly
emerging economies (suggestively labeled as the BRICs by Goldman Sachs analysts), and the
global economic downturn and recession in the United States. The overall impact was the
creation of a new conventional wisdom that foresees continued decline of the United States, an
end to the unipolar world order that marked the post-Cold War world and a potential departure
from the pursuit of US primacy that marked the foreign policies of the three presidential
administrations that followed the end of the Cold War.
15
The debate over unipolarity and continued US primacy is not merely an academic debate.
Perceptions of US power will guide both American policymakers and other nations as they
consider their policy options. Primacy has underpinned US grand strategy since the end of the
Cold War because no other nation was able to provide the collective public goods that have
upheld the security of the international system and enabled a period of dramatically increased
global economic activity and prosperity. Both the United States and the global system have
benefitted from that circumstance.
The arguments for US decline are not new but before they harden into an unchallenged
orthodoxy it would be good to carefully examine many of the key assumptions that undergird the
emerging conventional wisdom. Will the undeniable relative decline of the United States, in fact,
lead to the end of unipolarity? Do the BRIC countries really represent a bloc? What would
multipolarity look like? How does one measure national power anyhow, and how can one
measure the change in the power distribution globally? Is the rise of global competitors
inevitable? What are some of the weaknesses that might hamper the would-be competitors from
staying on their current favorable economic and political trajectory? Does the United States
possess some underappreciated strengths that might serve as the basis for continued primacy in
the international system and, if so, what steps would a prudent government take to extend that
primacy into the future?
The history of straight-line projections of economic growth and the rise of challengers to the
dominance of the United States has not been kind to those who have previously predicted US
decline. It is not necessarily the case that the United States will be caught between the end of the
―unipolar moment‖ of post-Cold War predominance and a global multipolar world. The
emerging international environment is likely to be different than either of the futures forecast by
the NIC in Mapping the Global Future in 2004 or Global Trends 2025 in 2008. It would seem
more likely that the relative decline of American power will still leave the United States as the
most powerful actor in the international system. But the economic rise of other nations and the
spread of nuclear weapons in some key regions are likely to confront the US with difficult new
challenges.
The revived notion of America‘s decline has once again brought to the fore a question about the
purposes of United States power and the value of US international primacy. Seeking to maintain
America‘s advantage as the prime player in the international system imposes costs on the US
budget and taxpayer. It is certainly fair to ask what the United States gets from exerting the effort
to remain number one. It is also worth considering what the world would look like if the United
States was just one power among many, and how such perceptions might affect the strategic and
policy choices national security decision-makers will face over the next twenty-odd years.
Primacy both allows the state to advance its own specific policy objectives and gives it greater
freedom of action in the pursuit of those ends. Throughout most of the twentieth century
American presidents have considered it to be in the US interest to seek a ―liberal world order‖
comprised of an international economic system characterized by openness, free trade and free
flows of investment, and an international political arrangement characterized by a growing
number of liberal democratic states. The theory behind the continued adherence to a strategy of
maintaining primacy has been that only the security provided by a strong power or group of
16
powers can underpin the liberal economic and political order that is conducive to economic
growth, representative government and international peace and prosperity. Since the end of the
Cold War this view has had consistent bipartisan support.
Although the point remains controversial it seems apparent that America, while clearly creating
some resentments with its policies, continues to be seen (particularly by governments) as
relatively benign in its interactions with other powers. America shares a fundamental view of the
world rooted in the neo-liberal orthodoxy of free markets, open societies, and democratic
institutions that emerged as a consensus prescription for peace and prosperity after the collapse
of communism. This ―transnational liberalism‖ inclines national elites to see a broad confluence
of interest with the United States and reduces their tendency to try and counterbalance American
power. As the guarantor of the international world economy and a provider of security and
stability because of its alliance system, the United States provides global public goods which
others cannot provide. Accepting the new conventional wisdom of decline and an end of US
primacy could well lead to an alteration of the strategic underpinnings of American global policy
and could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A rigorous assessment should consider the strengths and weaknesses of the United States‘
putative competitors on the global scene as well as the enduring strengths and sources of
resilience that have enabled America to extend its primacy and maintain a stabilizing, global
hegemonic role against all expectations. There is a need for a framework to inform how US
policymakers might think about the problem of developing strategies and policies to extend that
role yet again, since it is at least an arguable proposition that rather than a multipolar world, the
global system, after the current Great Recession passes, will continue to be unipolar but with
some additional challenges for US leadership.
The 2008 NIC report reflected a wave of ―declinism‖ — the belief that American power is on the
wane, that other powers are rising, particularly the so-called BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and
China) and that the United States needs to adjust its international ambitions and eschew
continued primacy in favor of accommodating the rising powers in the interest of greater global
governance. Ideas about American decline can cut two ways. They can predispose policymakers
to pursue policies that actually accelerate decline or they can spark leaders to pursue courses of
action that renew American economic vitality in order to reverse decline.
Understanding that declinism is a persuasion can help one assess the arguments that are adduced
to support the proposition that the United States is in decline. The debate over primacy is not a
partisan issue. Both Republicans and Democrats have been divided over the issue of whether and
how to maintain America‘s primacy in the international system. As the country contends with a
rising China, the increased economic clout of the other so-called BRIC countries, and the
prospect of a multipolar world these debates will undoubtedly continue. One factor that will
shape the debate is the willingness of the American people to support the policy and pay the
attendant costs of continued predominance. Some believe that the American public, exhausted by
eight years of military exertion in Iraq and Afghanistan, and focused by the Great Recession on
job creation and health care, may be willing to accommodate US policy to other rising powers
and forego a policy of global primacy. There is no doubt that these factors have shaped the recent
public perception of America‘s role in the world. Poll data has long shown that, when asked for
17
their view, Americans will express a preference for acting in concert with other nations in the
international arena. There has also, however, been consistent public support for US leadership in
global affairs. It seems likely that when faced with choices about decline Americans are likely to
opt for continued leadership. That certainly is the lesson of the post-Cold War period.
An anti-declinist literature also emerged in the late 1980s and is now reappearing in the wake of
the Global Trends 2025 report. The anti-declinists undoubtedly feel strengthened in their
convictions because the declinists have been consistently wrong in the past. But simply because
the declinists have heretofore been wrong does not mean that they are not correct in their
prognosis this time. Their arguments need to be taken seriously. America‘s ability to adapt
should not be underestimated, but America‘s enduring primacy and the length of the unipolar
moment are clearly going to be a matter of intensified debate in the next few years. A proper
evaluation will depend on how we attempt to measure the power of those countries that might
become additional poles in a multipolar world, and how we evaluate America‘s enduring
strength and capacity for revival.
American decline and the longevity of a unipolar world order will not be determined purely by
economic gains or losses. The future shape of the international system will depend on broader
measures of national power than the percentage of global production that a given state controls.
Measuring national power, however, is notoriously difficult. In an unprecedented situation of
unipolarity, with little historical precedent to guide analysts, the measurement of relative power
shifts is perhaps harder still.
The main metrics tend to include GDP, population, defense spending, and then a variety of other
factors. There are differences among the various methods as to how one might quantify or
otherwise measure many of the factors. But since all agree that these kinds of measurements are
inherently subjective it is not surprising that slightly different factors and different weights to
different factors can lead to differing results. It is not clear how much these models can account
for discontinuities and dynamic changes as opposed to straight-line projections and relative shifts
in power. Nor is it clear that the models can really measure the all-important question of how
world leaders perceive shifts in relative national strength and power. The key factor would seem
to be getting at the ability of countries to convert resources into usable power combining both
hard power and soft power.
At the end of the day, at least as important as the objective measures of national power are the
subjective assessments of international statesmen and military leaders about the international
distribution of power. Those judgments are inevitably affected by a range of cultural,
psychological, bureaucratic and political factors. The debate over American decline and whether
or not we are entering a multipolar, as opposed to unipolar, world in and of itself will inevitably
have an impact on those subjective judgments.
Our assessment of putative powers, however, will cover the traditional contenders, Europe and
Japan, and include the so-called BRICs as well.
18
Europe
Many of the declinist predictions of the late 1990s, as well as the most recent wave, have taken
as a point of departure that a united Europe will comprise a key component of a prospective
multipolar world. Even before the economic crisis began to take the wind out of European sails,
the EU was not effectively translating its economic potential into power on the international
stage. The persistence of national differences (and sensitivities) on foreign affairs have
contributed to the failure to develop a ―common strategic culture.‖
Continued dependence on the United States security guarantee has allowed Europeans to spend
less for their own security. These considerations have forced even Euro-triumphalists (who
otherwise believe that America is in decline, the United States must adjust its policies, and
Europe must become part of the ―post-American world‖) to admit that Europe maintains a set of
shared interests with the US, relies on US security guarantees and a series of ―special
relationships‖ to maintain stability.
Europe‘s biggest challenge is demographic. It is a challenge that has the potential to exacerbate
both economic and social problems in Europe and renders even more unlikely the notion that
Europe will increase its military power or be willing to wield it outside of Europe. Even if
Europe were able to surmount these demographic trends, the political challenges of deeper and
more extensive European integration remain. As Global Trends 2025 suggests the EU could well
become a ―hobbled giant distracted by internal bickering and competing national agendas, and
less able to translate its economic clout into global influence.‖
Japan
In the 1970s and 1980s it was widely assumed that Japan would join Europe in becoming one of
the new powers in an emerging multipolar world. Rather than scaling the heights of global
economic dominance, Japan suddenly entered a decade of deep recession, economic stagnation,
income loss, high levels of unemployment and political drift as its ―asset bubble‖ burst. The
failure to systematically attack the weaknesses in the banking sector exposed by the financial
crisis, an overbearing bureaucracy, the intrinsic difficulty of government picking business
winners and losers, a highly regulated economy and inflexible business techniques appear to
have been the main causes of Japan‘s woes. Today, Japan barely figures in the discussions of an
emerging, multipolar world for two reasons: 1) the ―lost decade‖ of stagnation, compounded by
the Great Recession; and 2) Japan‘s daunting demographics. It faces a wave of aging that is not
only larger than that of any other developed country, but that is also approaching much faster.
Brazil
After many years of anticipation it may well be that Brazil is finally ―getting it together.‖ With a
growth rate of five percent and additional oil resources coming on line, Brazil has no domestic
security issues or hostile neighbors and is hospitable to FDI. Nonetheless, Brazil still has
longstanding economic and social limitations. On the regional level, Brazil has already played a
19
leading role in managing hemispheric security issues like the crises in Haiti and more recently in
Honduras; however, as the NIC suggests a more global role would appear to be a bit of a stretch,
particularly given the economic vulnerabilities mentioned above. If anything, Brazil looks like a
prime candidate for a stronger relationship with the United States in order to serve as a modelexample of successful integration into the global economy and an alternative to the populist,
anti-globalization agenda promoted by Venezuela‘s Hugo Chavez, as well as to help manage
security problems in the hemisphere (much as India may emerge as a US partner in Asia).
Russia
The Global Trends 2025 prognosis for Russia‘s future is of two minds. ―Russia has the potential
to be richer, more powerful, and more self-assured in 2025 if it invests in human capital, expands
and diversifies its economy, and integrates with global markets.‖ Whether the more benign
Russia mooted by Global Trends 2025 emerges will, to a large degree, depend on whether
Russia under President Medvedev returns to the agenda of structural reform that was largely
abandoned under Putin‘s presidency. Some believe this may be happening and see incipient
policy differences between Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev. Others are not so
sure. Even if Medvedev were to aggressively promote the reform agenda, however, he would
find Russia‘s catastrophic demographic situation a powerful limitation Given the large energy
and mineral resources present in the Far East it is hard to imagine that the demographic
imbalance along the border will not give rise to serious political tensions between the Russian
Federation and China.
Nicholas Eberstadt has described Russia‘s contemporary demographic disaster as only the most
recent episode of population decline in the past one hundred years, albeit the first not resulting
from revolution, forced collectivization or war but rather the peaceful collapse of the Soviet
Union Global Trends 2025 acknowledges Russia‘s demographic predicaments in more muted
terms, noting blandly that ―Russia‘s fertility and mortality problems are likely to persist through
2025, Russia‘s economy … will have to support the large proportion of dependents.‖ The
demographic and health limits on military manpower are likely to compel Russia into a longterm continued reliance on nuclear weapons as the only conceivable counter-balance to others‘
military power. Its general-purpose conventional forces, while posing a limited threat to former
parts of the Soviet empire, like Ukraine or Georgia, will be a decreasing concern at the global
level.
India
In 2004 the NIC‘s Mapping the Global Future report identified India as a rising power along
with China. At current rates of growth, India will surpass China, sometime after 2025, as the
country with the world‘s largest population. India has been averaging about 5 percent growth per
year for the last decade. Forecasts for future growth are bright. Economic success in India is also
generating increased military capability. India, however, is also beset by an array of
demographic, economic, social, political and security problems that are daunting to say the least.
Even if the most bullish projections for India do not come to pass it is clearly a country on an
upward trajectory. Given its historical association with the Soviet Union during the Cold War
and its ―non-aligned movement‖ outlook on international institutions one might see India as a
20
likely candidate to balance or seek to counteract US power. Nevertheless, that has not been the
case. Both countries share democratic values and, at least among the elite in India, the English
language. India and the United States also share the same strategic preoccupations: both are
worried about the activities of Islamist extremists and the rise of China. The development of a
US-Indian strategic partnership will not come easily or quickly. Like Brazil, India has naturally
identified with the developing world in the North-South disputes that persisted through the Cold
War and beyond. Indian negotiating behavior in international fora has been difficult and
obstructive. Because of its colonial background, national sovereignty issues are particularly
sensitive. Exactly what kind of ―great power‖ India will become is still a matter of some debate
in India. The nature of Indian identity has been contested for some time and it would only stand
to reason that the uncertainties about what India is would be reflected in any discussion of what
role it wants to play as it increases its weight in world affairs
China
The rise of China has attracted more attention than any of the other of the socalled BRICs.
According to the Global Trends 2025 report, ―if current trends persist, by 2025 China will have
the world‘s second-largest economy and will be a leading military power.‖ The global recession
has barely put a dent in China‘s ascent. Chinese officials have been at pains to assure one and all
that they have no aspirations of hegemony or dominion over other countries. This ―charm
offensive,‖ beginning in Southeast Asia but rapidly expanding to Africa and Latin America, has
demonstrated China‘s ability to wield soft power. But China‘s intentions and aims may become
more expansive as its power increases. The strong hold of the state on the economy and the
patronage relationships that link the party and state to major industries have generated massive
waste and inefficiencies in the economy. Rising income inequality and arbitrary abuses of
authority have created a combustible mix of socio-economic tension and unrest. Rising levels of
social protest have become an everyday occurrence in China. China‘s demography, however,
may present the country‘s leaders with the most intractable issues of all. In the next decade-anda-half China‘s population will stop growing and begin to decline. The proportion of elderly to
working-age individuals will also shift, giving China a so-called ―4-2-1‖ population structure in
which one child will have to support two parents and four grandparents. China‘s approaching
demographic shifts will also intersect with a growing gender imbalance in the younger age
cohorts of its population. The potential for a perfect storm of economic, demographic, and social
unrest has led some observers to conjecture that China, far from being a rising power, is actually
on the verge of collapse. For the moment, however, the focus remains on a strong China, in
particular because its economic advance has enabled it to amass significant and growing military
capabilities. Even if China experiences more obstacles to growth than described in Global
Trends 2025, it is clear that China will continue to be assertive, but it is hard to know exactly
what form that new assertiveness will take. Some suggest that China‘s increasing economic and
military strength will drive a contest for power in the region and a long-term strategic
competition with the United States. Others believe China‘s increased interaction with multilateral
institutions will help it integrate peacefully into the international system as a responsible
stakeholder. Much will depend on the ideas that China‘s leadership develops about its global
role. The increasing discussion of the ―decline‖ of the United States, and the West more broadly,
could have an impact on the attitudes of Chinese leaders and the methods they will employ in
accomplishing China‘s international objectives.
21
All the countries we have considered have strengths and the potential to increase their power, but
all of them are also certain to face serious problems. The period of unipolarity has been based on
a singular fact: the United States is the first leading state in modern international history with
decisive preponderance in all the underlying components of power: economic, military,
technological and geopolitical. With the possible exception of Brazil, all the other powers face
serious internal and external security challenges. Japan, with its economic and demographic
challenges, must deal with a de facto nuclear-armed, failing state (the DPRK) nearby and must
also cast an uneasy glance at a rising China. India has domestic violence, insurgencies in
bordering countries (Nepal and Bangladesh) and a persistent security dilemma with respect to
China. The demographic challenges will be particularly acute for Europe, Japan, and Russia in
the areas of military manpower and economic growth. The results will either diminish overall
military strength or, in the case of Russia, impose a greater reliance on nuclear weapons.
With all of the problems and uncertainties that the emerging economies face and the enormous
challenges that bedevil the developed world in Europe and Japan, only one thing seems certain:
events will drive international economics and politics in directions that no one now anticipates
and the certainties about rising and falling powers are likely to be knocked askew by a fickle and
unpredictable fate.
As global wealth and power flow to Asia, even if it does not occur as quickly and completely as
some boosters maintain, America‘s margin of superiority will decline to some degree. Whether
the international system moves toward a multipolar world, as forecast by Global Trends 2025,
however, will depend to a large degree on how people perceive the relative shifts in power and
how they choose to act on those perceptions.
America‘s geographic position is fixed and has been a persistent source of strength.
As Samuel Huntington has noted, US power ―flows from its structural position in world politics
... geographically distant from most major areas of world conflict‖ as well as from ―being
involved in a historically uniquely diversified network of alliances.‖ Natural resources are
another area of enduring advantage for the United States. America‘s farmers and producers have
never been more efficient or productive than they are today. Agriculture has been ―a bastion of
American competitiveness.‖ Energy resources are another advantage. The media have lavished a
great deal of attention on the United States‘ dependency on imported oil, a true strategic liability,
but they have neglected coal and gas resources. In fact, the United States (combined with
Canada) trails only the Middle East in the wealth of its energy resources. Industrial capacity is an
area where the decline of the US manufacturing sector has been seen as a surrogate for broader
US decline. The United States‘ transition to a post-industrial, information-technologyoriented
and heavily financialized economy was an important part of avoiding the predictions of
―imperial overstretch‖ in the 1990s. In the wake of the Great Recession the post-industrial
transition is seen as perhaps an Achilles‘ heel of the US economy. These views probably
underestimate a few factors that should help the United States navigate the current transition
from the first unipolar era to whatever follows it.
Openness to innovation can play an important role in extending the United States‘ leading role in
the world. Some scholars believe that innovation is the key to countries emerging as system
22
leaders in sectors that power long waves of economic activity and growth. Failure to maintain
system leadership in these sectors is a key cause of decline. Another factor that may propel the
United States to a more rapid recovery is the so-called ―American creed,‖ which includes a very
heavy dose of hostility to the role of the state in the economy. A larger private sector may well
continue to provide entrepreneurs and innovators the scope to prolong America‘s eading sector
primacy in the international economy.
An additional, and extremely important, long-term factor underpinning likely continued US
global economic leadership is demographics. The US fertility rates are among the highest in the
developed world and are virtually at replacement. With a growing population that will be more
youthful than other developed countries (or China) the United States would appear to be in a
favorable position. One could also add to the long list of US advantages the political and social
stability that has made it the safe haven for global investors. None of these advantages, however,
including the United States‘ military power, mean that the United States is destined to remain the
preponderant power or that unipolarity will continue to characterize the international system
indefinitely. Bad policy decisions in a number of areas could negate or squander US advantages.
In addition the United States faces many of its own challenges. Despite its demographic health
the United States will have to meet the unfunded pension liabilities represented by the aging of
the baby boom generation. The nation‘s standing has also suffered from the mismanagement of
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Without a concerted effort by the United States, the
international system could move in the direction of nonpolarity or apolarity with no nation
clearly playing a leading role in trying to organize the international system. The result would be
a vacuum of leadership unable to manage the plethora of contemporary problems besetting the
world like terrorism, nuclear proliferation, ethnic and sectarians wars, humanitarian disasters,
crime, narcotics trafficking, pandemic disease and global climate change to name just a few.
If the United States accepts the diagnosis of ―decline‖ and seeks to accommodate itself to rising
powers, it will likely hasten the timing of that decline and the passing of American primacy. If
US leaders choose to continue the path that earlier generations of leaders have blazed in seeking
to preserve the US position as the preponderant power, they will have to build on the advantages
described above to bolster and extend US predominance.
One measure of the relative standing of nations is to consider the question: ―Whose problems
would you rather have?‖ After the survey above, a reasonable person might conclude that, as
great as the challenges are for the United States, the other potential powers face even more
difficult and intractable problems. Notwithstanding the prediction of Global Trends 2025 that the
world is moving toward multipolarity, it seems likely that US predominance could continue in a
unipolar system, albeit one where US hegemony is less clear than it was in the 1990s. In this
iteration, however, American primacy will be more constrained by US domestic and
international economic limitations and more contested by regional powers. China will pose the
biggest challenge in Asia, but potential new nuclear powers like Iran and North Korea will also
create difficult questions about US extended deterrence in Northeast Asia and Southwest Asia.
Other troublesome challengers may arise, including Venezuela in the Western Hemisphere
(particularly if it aligns with a nuclear-armed Iran).
23
The overwhelming focus on the BRICs in the declinist literature has tended to divert attention
from the fact that the proliferation of nuclear weapons has the greatest potential to pose an early
challenge to continued US primacy. As Charles Krauthammer has written, ―decline is a choice,‖
and can be avoided if the United States government takes some basic steps. The first is to get
America‘s house in order. Second, the United States will need to meet the reputational
challenges it faces head on. The United States must be prepared to continue to defend the
commons. Perhaps most important, the decline in the margin of US dominance and the
emergence of challengers at the regional level will make US alliances and alliance management
central concerns for US policymakers in a way that they have not been since the end of the Cold
War.
Beyond improvements in the management of our traditional treaty-based and informal alliances,
the United States needs to look seriously at the shape of its alliance portfolio with an eye to
developing relationships with countries that might contribute greater capability and utility than
the traditional allies. We have seen that India is perhaps the single most important candidate for
partnership or alliance with the United States. In the Western Hemisphere, Brazil may also be
able to play a valuable regional stabilizing role in collaboration with the United States. The
possibility of avoiding multipolarity or non-polarity clearly exists. It requires resolve to maintain
the United States‘ role as the ―indispensable nation‖ and a strategy for doing so. At the dawn of
the first unipolar era there was an effort at the Pentagon to think explicitly about a strategy for
extending US predominance in the international system. Although the document that resulted,
the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance, became the subject of much misplaced criticism and
controversy, its main outline became the de facto bipartisan strategy that underpinned the
unipolar ―moment‖ that, against most expectations, stretched into an era. If the United States is
going to successfully manage the challenges of contested primacy, the moment to begin the
debate on the strategy that will carry US power forward in the twenty-first century is now.
© 2010 Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. All rights reserved.
24
The Wall Street Journal
A Symposium: What Is Moderate Islam?
The controversy over a proposed mosque in lower Manhattan has spurred a wider
debate about the nature of Islam. We asked six leading thinkers—Anwar Ibrahim,
Bernard Lewis, Ed Husain, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Tawfik Hamid and Akbar
Ahmed—to weigh in.
Editor's Note: The controversy over a proposed mosque in lower Manhattan has spurred a wider
debate about the nature of Islam. We asked six leading thinkers to answer the question: What is
moderate Islam?
September 1, 2010
•Anwar Ibrahim: The Ball Is in Our Court
•Bernard Lewis: A History of Tolerance
•Ed Husain: Don't Call Me Moderate, Call Me Normal
•Reuel Marc Gerecht: Putting Up With Infidels Like Me
•Tawfik Hamid: Don't Gloss Over The Violent Texts
•Akbar Ahmed: Mystics, Modernists and Literalists
The Ball Is in Our Court
By Anwar Ibrahim
Skeptics and cynics alike have said that the quest for the moderate Muslim in the 21st century is
akin to the search for the Holy Grail. It's not hard to understand why. Terrorist attacks, suicide
bombings and the jihadist call for Muslims "to rise up against the oppression of the West" are
widespread.
The radical fringe carrying out such actions has sought to dominate the discourse between Islam
and the West. In order to do so, they've set out to foment anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism.
They've also advocated indiscriminate violence as a political strategy. To cap their victory, this
abysmal lot uses the cataclysm of 9/11 as a lesson for the so-called enemies of Islam.
These dastardly acts have not only been tragedies of untold proportions for those who have
suffered or perished. They have also delivered a calamitous blow to followers of the Muslim
faith.
25
These are the Muslims who go about their lives like ordinary people—earning their livings,
raising their families, celebrating reunions and praying for security and peace. These are the
Muslims who have never carried a pocketknife, let alone explosives intended to destroy
buildings. These Muslims are there for us to see, if only we can lift the veil cast on them by the
shadowy figures in bomb-laden jackets hell-bent on destruction.
These are mainstream Muslims—no different from the moderate Christians, Jews and those of
other faiths—whose identities have been drowned by events beyond their control. The upshot is
a composite picture of Muslims as inherently intolerant, antidemocratic, inward-looking and
simply unable to coexist with other communities in the modern world. Some say there is only
one solution: Discard your beliefs and your tradition, and embrace pluralism and modernity.
This prescription is deeply flawed. The vast majority of Muslims already see themselves as part
of a civilization that is heir to a noble tradition of science, philosophy and spirituality that places
paramount importance on the sanctity of human life. Holding fast to the principles of democracy,
freedom and human rights, these hundreds of millions of Muslims fervently reject fanaticism in
all its varied guises.
Yet Muslims must do more than just talk about their great intellectual and cultural heritage. We
must be at the forefront of those who reject violence and terrorism. And our activism must not
end there. The tyrants and oppressive regimes that have been the real impediment to peace and
progress in the Muslim world must hear our unanimous condemnation. The ball is in our court.
Mr. Ibrahim is Malaysia's opposition leader.
A History of Tolerance
By Bernard Lewis
A form of moderation has been a central part of Islam from the very beginning. True, Muslims
are nowhere commanded to love their neighbors, as in the Old Testament, still less their enemies,
as in the New Testament. But they are commanded to accept diversity, and this commandment
was usually obeyed. The Prophet Muhammad's statement that "difference within my community
is part of God's mercy" expressed one of Islam's central ideas, and it is enshrined both in law and
usage from the earliest times.
This principle created a level of tolerance among Muslims and coexistence between Muslims and
others that was unknown in Christendom until after the triumph of secularism. Diversity was
legitimate and accepted. Different juristic schools coexisted, often with significant divergences.
Sectarian differences arose, and sometimes led to conflicts, but these were minor compared with
the ferocious wars and persecutions of Christendom. Some events that were commonplace in
medieval Europe— like the massacre and expulsion of Jews—were almost unknown in the
Muslim world. That is, until modern times.
26
Occasionally more radical, more violent versions of Islam arose, but their impact was mostly
limited. They did not become really important until the modern period when, thanks to a
combination of circumstances, such versions of Islamic teachings obtained a massive following
among both governments and peoples.
From the start, Muslims have always had a strong sense of their identity and history. Thanks to
modern communication, they have become painfully aware of their present state. Some speak of
defeat, some of failure. It is the latter who offer the best hope for change.
For the moment, there does not seem to be much prospect of a moderate Islam in the Muslim
world. This is partly because in the prevailing atmosphere the expression of moderate ideas can
be dangerous—even life-threatening. Radical groups like al Qaeda and the Taliban, the likes of
which in earlier times were at most minor and marginal, have acquired a powerful and even a
dominant position.
But for Muslims who seek it, the roots are there, both in the theory and practice of their faith and
in their early sacred history.
Mr. Lewis, professor emeritus at Princeton, is the author of "From Babel to Dragomans:
Interpreting the Middle East" (Oxford University Press, 2004).
Don't Call Me Moderate, Call Me Normal
By Ed Husain
I am a moderate Muslim, yet I don't like being termed a "moderate"—it somehow implies that I
am less of a Muslim.
We use the designation "moderate Islam" to differentiate it from "radical Islam." But in so doing,
we insinuate that while Islam in moderation is tolerable, real Islam—often perceived as radical
Islam—is intolerable. This simplistic, flawed thinking hands our extremist enemies a propaganda
victory: They are genuine Muslims. In this rubric, the majority, non-radical Muslim populace has
somehow compromised Islam to become moderate.
What is moderate Christianity? Or moderate Judaism? Is Pastor Terry Jones's commitment to
burning the Quran authentic Christianity, by virtue of the fanaticism of his action? Or, is Rabbi
Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual head of the Shas Party in Israel, more Jewish because he calls on
Jews to rain missiles on the Arabs and "annihilate them"?
The pastor and the rabbi can, no doubt, find abstruse scriptural justifications for their angry
actions. And so it is with Islam's fringe: Our radicals find religious excuses for their political
anger. But Muslim fanatics cannot be allowed to define Islam.
The Prophet Muhammad warned us against ghuluw, or extremism, in religion. The Quran
reinforces the need for qist, or balance. For me, Islam at its essence is the middle way in all
matters. This is normative Islam, adhered to by a billion normal Muslims across the globe.
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Normative Islam is inherently pluralist. It is supported by 1,000 years of Muslim history in
which religious freedom was cherished. The claim, made today by the governments of Iran and
Saudi Arabia, that they represent God's will expressed through their version of oppressive
Shariah law is a modern innovation.
The classical thinking within Islam was to let a thousand flowers bloom. Ours is not a centralized
tradition, and Islam's rich diversity is a legacy of our pluralist past.
Normative Islam, from its early history to the present, is defined by its commitment to protecting
religion, life, progeny, wealth and the human mind. In the religious language of Muslim scholars,
this is known as maqasid, or aims. This is the heart of Islam.
I am fully Muslim and fully Western. Don't call me moderate—call me a normal Muslim.
Mr. Husain is author of "The Islamist" (Penguin, 2007) and co-founder of the Quilliam
Foundation, a counterextremist think tank.
Putting Up With Infidels Like Me
By Reuel Marc Gerecht
Moderate Islam is the faith practiced by the parents of my Pakistani British roommate at the
University of Edinburgh—and, no doubt, by the great majority of Muslim immigrants to Europe
and the United States.
Khalid's mother and father were devout Muslims. His dad prayed five times a day and his mom,
who hadn't yet learned decent English after almost 20 years in the industrial towns of West
Yorkshire, gladly gave me the impression that the only book she'd ever read was the Quran.
I was always welcome in their home. Khalid's mother regularly stuffed me with curry, peppering
me with questions about how a non-Muslim who'd crossed the Atlantic to study Islam could
resist the pull of the one true faith.
Determined to keep their children Muslim in a sea of aggressive, alcohol-laden, sex-soaked
disbelief, they happily practiced and preached peaceful coexistence—even with an infidel who
was obviously leading their son down an unrighteous path.
That is the essence of moderation in any faith: the willingness to exist peacefully, if not
exuberantly, alongside nonbelievers who hold repellant views on many sacred subjects.
It is a dispensation that comes fairly easily to ordinary Muslims who have left their homelands to
live among nonbelievers in Western democracies. It is harder for Muslims surrounded by their
own kind, unaccustomed by politics and culture to giving up too much ground.
Tolerance among traditional Muslims is defined as Christian Europe first defined the idea: A
superior creed agrees not to harass an inferior creed, so long as the practitioners of the latter don't
28
become too uppity. Tolerance emphatically does not mean equality of belief, as it now does in
the West.
Even in Turkey, where authoritarian secularism has changed the Muslim identity more
profoundly than anywhere else in the Old World, a totally secularized Muslim would never call a
non-Muslim citizen of the state a Turk. There is a certain pride of place that cannot be shared
with a nonbeliever. Wounded pride also does the Devil's work on ecumenicalism. Adjusting to
modernity, with its intellectually open borders and inevitable moral chaos, is brutally hard for
monotheisms, especially for those accustomed to rule. But it happens.
When I told Khalid's father that his children—especially his daughters—would not worship the
faith as he and his wife had done, he told me: "They are living a better life than we have lived.
That is enough."
Mr. Gerecht, a former CIA operative, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies.
Don't Gloss Over The Violent Texts
By Tawfik Hamid
In regards to Islam, the words "moderate'" and "radical" are relative terms. Without defining
them it is virtually impossible to defeat the latter or support the former.
Radical Islam is not limited to the act of terrorism; it also includes the embrace of teachings
within the religion that promote hatred and ultimately breed terrorism. Those who limit the
definition of radical Islam to terrorism are ignoring—and indirectly approving of—the Shariah
teachings that permit killing apostates, violence against women and gays, and anti-Semitism.
Moderate Islam should be defined as a form of Islam that rejects these violent and discriminatory
edicts. Furthermore, it must provide a strong theological refutation for the mainstream Islamic
teaching that the Muslim umma (nation) must declare wars against non-Muslim nations,
spreading the religion and giving non-Muslims the following options: convert, pay a humiliating
tax, or be killed. This violent concept fuels jihadists, who take the teaching literally and accept
responsibility for applying it to the modern world.
Moderate Islam must not be passive. It needs to actively reinterpret the violent parts of the
religious text rather than simply cherry-picking the peaceful ones. Ignoring, rather than
confronting or contextualizing, the violent texts leaves young Muslims vulnerable to such
teachings at a later stage in their lives.
Finally, moderate Islam must powerfully reject the barbaric practices of jihadists. Ideally, this
would mean Muslims demonstrating en masse all over the world against the violence carried out
in the name of their religion.
29
Moderate Islam must be honest enough to admit that Islam has been used in a violent manner at
several stages in history to seek domination over others. Insisting that all acts in Islamic history
and all current Shariah teachings are peaceful is a form of deception that makes things worse by
failing to acknowledge the existence of the problem.
Mr. Hamid, a former member of the Islamic radical group Jamma Islamiya, is an Islamic
reformer and a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.
Mystics, Modernists and Literalists
By Akbar Ahmed
In the intense discussion about Muslims today, non-Muslims often say to me: "You are a
moderate, but are there others like you?"
Clearly, the use of the term moderate here is meant as a compliment. But the application of the
term creates more problems than it solves. The term is heavy with value judgment, smacking of
"good guy" versus "bad guy" categories. And it implies that while a minority of Muslims are
moderate, the rest are not.
Having studied the practices of Muslims around the world today, I've come up with three broad
categories: mystic, modernist and literalist. Of course, I must add the caveat that these are
analytic models and aren't watertight.
Muslims in the mystic category reflect universal humanism, believing in "peace with all." The
13th-century Sufi poet Rumi exemplifies this category. In his verses, he glorifies worshipping
the same God in the synagogue, the church and the mosque.
The second category is the modernist Muslim who believes in trying to balance tradition and
modernity. The modernist is proud of Islam and yet able to live comfortably in, and contribute
to, Western society.
Most Muslim leaders who led nationalist movements in the first half of the 20th century were
modernists—from Sultan Mohammed V, the first king of independent Morocco, to M.A. Jinnah,
who founded Pakistan in 1947. But as modernists failed over time, becoming increasingly
incompetent and corrupt, the literalists stepped into the breach.
The literalists believe that Muslim behavior must approximate that of the Prophet in seventhcentury Arabia. Their belief that Islam is under attack forces many of them to adopt a defensive
posture. And while not all literalists advocate violence, many do. Movements like the Muslim
Brotherhood, Hamas, and the Taliban belong to this category.
In the Muslim world the divisions between the three categories I have delineated are real. The
outcome of their struggle will define Islam's fate.
30
The West can help by understanding Muslim society in a more nuanced and sophisticated way in
order to interact with it wisely and for mutual benefit. The first step is to categorize Muslims
accurately.
Mr. Ahmed, the former Pakistani ambassador to Britain, is the chair of Islamic studies at
American University and author of "Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam" (Brookings,
2010).
Reprinted from The Wall Street Journal © 2010 Dow Jones & Company. All rights
reserved.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2010
Obama's Year One: Contra
Robert Kagan
World Affairs
President Obama‘s policies toward Afghanistan and Iran—or lack thereof—have received more attention
than any other issues during his first year in office. And with good reason. An American defeat in
Afghanistan would throw an already dangerous region further into turmoil and severely damage
America‘s reputation for reliability around the world. Iran‘s acquisition of nuclear weapons would bring
about a substantial shift in the regional power balance against the United States and its allies, spark a new
round of global proliferation, provide a significant boost to the forces of Islamic radicalism, and bring the
United States that much further under the shadow of nuclear terrorism. If Obama‘s policies were to
produce a geopolitical doubleheader—defeat in Afghanistan and a nuclear-armed Iran—his historical
legacy could wind up being a good deal worse than that of his predecessor. If he manages to make
progress in Afghanistan and finds some way to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, he will be
remembered for saving the world from a dire situation.
Less noticed amidst these crises, however, has been a broader shift in American foreign policy that could
have equally great and possibly longer-lasting implications. The Obama presidency may mark the
beginning of a new era in American foreign policy and be seen as the moment when the United States
finally turned away from the grand strategy it adopted after World War II and assumed a different
31
relationship to the rest of the world.
The old strategy, which survived for six decades, rested on three pillars: military and economic primacy,
what Truman-era strategists called a ―preponderance of power,‖ especially in Europe and East Asia; a
global network of formal military and political alliances, mostly though not exclusively with fellow
democracies; and an open trading and financial system. The idea, as Averell Harriman explained back in
1947, was to create ―a balance of power preponderantly in favor of the free countries.‖ Nations outside
the liberal order were to be checked and, in time, transformed, as George F. Kennan suggested in his
Long Telegram and as Paul Nitze‘s famous strategy document, NSC-68, reiterated. The goal, expressed
by Harry Truman in 1947, was first to strengthen ―freedom-loving nations‖ and then to ―create the
conditions that will lead eventually to personal freedom and happiness for all mankind.‖
It is often said that Bill Clinton was the first post–Cold War president, but in many ways the Clinton
presidency was devoted to completing the mission as set out by the architects of America‘s post–World
War II strategy. The National Security Strategy Document of 1996, as Derek Chollet and James
Goldgeier observe in America Between the Wars, used the words ―democracy‖ or ―democratic‖ more than
130 times. As Clinton‘s term ended, American foreign policy rested on the same three pillars as in the
days of Truman and Acheson: the primacy of America, now cast as the ―indispensable nation‖; an
expanding alliance of democratic nations; and an open economic order operating in line with the
―Washington consensus.‖
Obama and his foreign policy team have apparently rejected two of the main pillars of this post–World
War II strategy. Instead of attempting to perpetuate American primacy, they are seeking to manage what
they regard as America‘s unavoidable decline relative to other great powers. They see themselves as the
architects of the ―post-American‖ world. Although they will not say so publicly, in private they are fairly
open about their policy of managed decline. In dealings with China, especially, administration officials
believe they are playing from a hopelessly weak hand. Instead of trying to reverse the decline of
American power, however, they are reorienting American foreign policy to adjust to it.
The new strategy requires, in their view, accommodating the world‘s rising powers, principally China and
Russia, rather than attempting to contain the ambitions of those powers. Their accommodation consists in
granting China and Russia what rising powers always want: greater respect for their political systems at
home and greater hegemony within their respective regions.
This accommodation in turn has required a certain distancing from the post–World War II allies.
Increasing cooperation with the two great powers would be difficult if not impossible if the United States
remained committed to the old alliances which were, after all, originally designed to contain them—
NATO in the case of Russia, and, in the case of China, the bilateral alliances with Japan, Australia, South
32
Korea, the Philippines, and the new strategic partnership with India. Despite paying lip service to
―multilateralism,‖ the Obama administration does not intend to build its foreign policy around these
alliances, which some officials regard as relics of the Cold War. The administration seeks instead to
create a new ―international architecture‖ with a global consortium of powers—the G-20 world.
This might seem like realism to some, because accommodating allegedly stronger powers is a hallmark of
realist foreign policy. Henry Kissinger practiced it in the years of Vietnam and détente, when the United
States seemed weak and the Soviet Union strong. But there is also in this approach a remarkable idealism
about the way the world works that Kissinger would never have endorsed. The Obama administration‘s
core assumption, oft-repeated by the president and his advisers, is that the great powers today share
common interests. Relations among them need ―no longer be seen as a zero sum game,‖ Obama has
argued. The Obama Doctrine is about ―win-win‖ and ―getting to ‗yes.‘‖ The new ―mission‖ of the United
States, according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is to be the great convener of nations, gathering the
powers to further common interests and seek common solutions to the world‘s problems. It is on this
basis that the administration has sought to ―reset‖ relations with Russia, embark on a new policy of
―strategic reassurance‖ with China, and in general seek what Clinton has called a ―new era of engagement
based on common interests, shared values, and mutual respect.‖ Administration officials play down the
idea that great powers have clashing interests that might hamper cooperation. This extends to the question
of ideology, where the administration either denies or makes light of the possibility that autocratic powers
may have fundamentally different perceptions of their interests than democracies.
The new American posture they propose is increasingly one of neutrality. In order to be the world‘s
―convener,‖ after all, the United States cannot play favorites, either between allies and adversaries, or
between democrats and tyrants. A common feature of the administration‘s first year, not surprisingly, has
been the slighting of traditional allies in an effort to seek better ties and cooperation with erstwhile and
future competitors or adversaries. In Europe, American relations with Poland and the Czech Republic,
and by extension other Eastern European nations, suffered when the administration canceled a missile
defense deployment in deference to Russian demands. In the Middle East, relations with Israel have
suffered as a result of the Obama administration‘s pressure on the question of settlements, which was
aimed at gaining better cooperation from the Palestinians and their Arab supporters. In Asia, relations
with India, Japan, and Taiwan have suffered as a result of the administration‘s accommodating policy of
―strategic reassurance‖ to China. In Latin America, Obama‘s apparent desire to improve relations with
Hugo Chávez‘s Venezuela and Raúl Castro‘s Cuba have created insecurity among close allies like
Colombia and anti-Chávez forces in Honduras and elsewhere.
The problem is that while the administration may not believe great- power relations need to be ―zerosum,‖ the reality is that throughout the world‘s contested regions, an American tilt toward former
adversaries unavoidably comes at the expense of friends. If an aggrieved Russia demands that the West
respect a sphere of influence in its old imperial domain, there is no ―win-win‖ solution. Either Russian
33
influence grows, and the ability of neighboring powers to resist it weakens. Or Russian ambitions for a
sphere of special interest are checked, and Russia is unhappy. In Asia, the United States is either going to
continue playing the role of balancer against Chinese power, or it is not. And if it is not, then American
alliances in the region must suffer.
For a United States bent on ―problem solving‖ with Russia and China, the easiest solution may be to
accede to their desires, compelling those in their presumed spheres of influence to accede as well. This
cannot help but alter America‘s relations with its allies.
As it happens, the vast majority of those allies happen to be democracies, while the great powers being
accommodated happen to be autocracies. The Obama administration‘s apparent eschewing of the
democracy agenda is not just a matter of abandoning the allegedly idealistic notion of democracy
promotion in failed or transition states. It is not choosing not to promote democracy in Egypt or Pakistan
or Afghanistan. And it is not just about whether to continue to press Russia and China for reform—which
was part of the old post–World War II strategy, continued under post–Cold War administrations. The
Obama administration‘s new approach raises the question of whether the United States will continue to
favor democracies, including allied democracies, in their disputes with the great-power autocracies, or
whether the United States will now begin to adopt a more neutral posture in an effort to get to ―yes‖ with
the great autocratic powers. In this new mode, the United States may be unhinging itself from the alliance
structures it had erected in the post–World War II strategy.
In fact, as part of its recalibration of American strategy, the Obama administration has inevitably deemphasized the importance of democracy in the hierarchy of American interests. Most have assumed this
is a reaction to George W. Bush‘s rhetorical support for democracy promotion, allegedly discredited by
the Iraq War. This may be part of the explanation. But the Obama administration‘s de-emphasis of
democracy should also be understood as the direct consequence of its new geopolitical strategy—a sign of
America‘s new international neutrality.
As part of what the Obama administration calls the ―new era of engagement,‖ the United States has also
moved toward a more disinterested posture in the struggle between autocratic governments and their
political opponents. This has certainly been the case in Iran, where the Obama administration has gone
out of its way to avoid doing anything that could be construed as sympathizing with the Iranian
opposition against the autocratic clerical regime. Indeed, Obama‘s strategy toward Iran has placed the
United States objectively on the side of the government‘s efforts to return to normalcy as quickly as
possible, rather than in league with the opposition‘s efforts to prolong the crisis. Engagement with Tehran
has meant a studious disengagement from the regime‘s opponents. The same has been true in its dealings
with China. Only in the case of Russia has the administration continued to voice some support for civil
opposition figures. But increasingly autocratic trends in Russia have not been allowed to get in the way of
the ―reset.‖
34
A ll of this might seem to have the flavor of a new realism in American foreign policy. But, again,
Obama‘s approach derives from an idealistic premise: that the United States can approach the world as a
disinterested promoter of the common good, that its interests do not clash with those of the other great
powers, and that better relations can be had if the United States demonstrates its good intentions to other
powers. During the Cold War, Obama officials argue, the United States used its power to take sides. Now
the Obama administration seeks to be a friend to all. Obama‘s foreign policy increasingly seems to rest on
the supposition that other nations will act on the basis of what they perceive to be the goodwill, good
intentions, moral purity, and disinterestedness of the United States. If other nations have refused to
cooperate with the United States, it is because they perceive the United States as somehow against them,
which, of course, it was. Obama is working to change that perception. From the outreach to Iran and the
Muslim world, to the call for the elimination of all nuclear weapons, to the desire for a ―reset‖ in relations
with Russia, the central point of Obama‘s diplomacy is that America is now different. It is better. It is no
longer choosing sides. And, therefore, it is time for other nations to cooperate.
Obama believes that his own story is a powerful foreign policy tool in this regard, that drawing attention
to what makes him different, not only from Bush but from all past American presidents, will lead the
world to take a fresh look at America and its policies and make new diplomatic settlements possible. He
hopes that by displaying earnestness to change American practices, he can build an image of greater
moral purity, and that this in turn will produce diplomatic triumphs that have hitherto eluded us.
The last president who sincerely pursued this approach was Woodrow Wilson. He, too, believed that the
display of evident goodwill and desire for peace, uncorrupted by the base motives of national interest or
ambition, gave him the special moral authority to sway other nations. His gifts to persuade, however,
proved ephemeral. Not only the nations of Europe but his own United States proved more self-interested
and less amenable to moral appeals. We will see whether Obama fares better. But, so far, the signs are not
promising.
Indeed, as one watches the Obama administration launch its ―new era of engagement,‖ one wonders
whether the Obama team can ever acknowledge that it has failed. And if it does acknowledge it, what
then? Will the administration then realize that the world cannot so easily be made anew, that the old
challenges remain, and that the best strategy may be closer to that which was pursued by so many
presidents of different political inclinations since World War II: America as the world‘s ―indispensable
nation‖? The question then will be not how to manage American decline, but how to prevent it.
This article appeared originally in the January/February 2010 issue of World Affairs, a bi-monthly international
affairs journal that argues the big ideas behind U.S. foreign policy. WorldAffairsDaily.org features aggregated
news and opinion from around the world, updated three times daily, as well as essays and blogs from leading
commentators.
35
The Obama Doctrine
BY Gary Schmitt and Tom Donnelly
December 18, 2009
The Weekly Standard
You could probably count on one hand the number of conservatives who expected President
Obama to give the address he did in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. After all, up until then, his
major speeches had been built around such themes as nuclear disarmament, Muslim-American
relations, multilateralism, and the occasional criticism of America's role in the world before he
was elected to office. What he had not talked about in any serious way were his views regarding
the use of military force. With his speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, the president filled in
that gap.
Whether it was having just decided to escalate the military effort in Afghanistan, the dangers still
posed by al Qaeda, the growing crisis with Iran, or simply the maturation of his own views since
coming to office, the president felt it necessary to spell out, in a manner he had not previously,
the utility and justice of employing American military might. "There will be times when nations-acting individually or in concert--will find the use of force not only necessary but morally
justified."
In tone, this was a world away from his "World That Stands as One" speech in Berlin in July
2008. In Berlin, Obama spoke as an emerging global president; in Oslo he spoke as an American
commander-in-chief.
We cannot know how the process that resulted in the Afghanistan surge has altered Obama's
thinking. But by asserting that the American military had "helped underwrite global security for
more than six decades," he has forthrightly admitted that, while international and multilateral
institutions may be helpful, they are far from being sufficient. Without a power to enforce,
international law remains hortatory at best.
This anchors Obama to the broad tradition of American strategy from the Truman Doctrine
through the Bush Doctrine. Gandhi-like principles of non-violence are not adequate for handling
the world's most ambitious or brutal powers. As the president rightly concluded, it would not
have stopped Hitler nor will it "convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms."
Nevertheless, the questions remain: Will the reality match the rhetoric? Was Afghanistan an
36
exception or, as some commentators are now suggesting, the expression of an Obama doctrine?
The jury is still out. In the struggle for the greater Middle East, the "Long War" is far from over.
The prospects for a nuclear Iran within the span of even a single Obama term are pretty high. As
the focus of American effort shifts to South Asia--and to Pakistan, in particular--the prospects for
more terrorism will grow. China's economy may be intertwined with ours, but its geopolitical
ambitions continue to grow. Both friend and foe wonder about American decline.
Beyond dealing with immediate crises and conflicts, a commander-in-chief also has obligations
to ensure that U.S. armed forces are prepared to win the wars we're in and deter the wars we wish
to prevent. Here the questions about Obama's purpose grow larger.
One of his first acts as president was to outline a long-term budget plan that would reduce
military spending to a 50-year low while dramatically expanding social entitlements and national
debt. By the end of a second Obama term, defense budgets would drop below 3 percent of GDP
while entitlements and debt service would rise to 22 percent, making it virtually impossible to
reverse course. This is a formula for making the U.S. defense profile more in line with the
countries of Europe; it is not a formula for sustaining global security.
Thanks to some creative accounting, the White House argued, and the press has largely accepted,
the claim that the administration increased the Pentagon budget last year. But, in fact, when one
sorted through the monies shifted between defense supplementals and the annual Pentagon
budget, the total was a cut. And it was a real cut in terms of programs, as well, with the past year
seeing the termination of the Air Force's F-22 fighter program, the Army's Future Combat
System, and billions of dollars of other weaponry. The forthcoming Quadrennial Defense
Review is likely to add to that list, with reports that it will argue for mothballing two aircraft
carrier battle-groups and eliminating one or more wings of fighters.
There has been a growing gap between American strategic ends and military means ever since
the post-Cold War "drawdown" of the 1990s. George W. Bush fought two wars but did little to
fix the underlying gap; only with the Iraq surge did he belatedly acknowledge the need for larger
forces. If President Obama sticks to current budget plans, this gap will widen dramatically.
However, if the president is serious about the view he set forth in Oslo, then it needs to be
backed by a change in the military's budget. Defense dollars will be the real test of whether there
is an Obama doctrine that is more than just words.
37
Decline Is a Choice
The New Liberalism and the end of American ascendancy.
By Charles Krauthammer
The Weekly Standard
October 19, 2009, Vol. 15, No. 05
The weathervanes of conventional wisdom are engaged in another round of angst about America
in decline. New theories, old slogans: Imperial overstretch. The Asian awakening. The postAmerican world. Inexorable forces beyond our control bringing the inevitable humbling of the
world hegemon.
On the other side of this debate are a few--notably Josef Joffe in a recent essay in Foreign
Affairs--who resist the current fashion and insist that America remains the indispensable power.
They note that declinist predictions are cyclical, that the rise of China (and perhaps India) are
just the current version of the Japan panic of the late 1980s or of the earlier pessimism best
captured by Jean-François Revel's How Democracies Perish.
The anti-declinists point out, for example, that the fear of China is overblown. It's based on the
implausible assumption of indefinite, uninterrupted growth; ignores accumulating externalities
like pollution (which can be ignored when growth starts from a very low baseline, but ends up
making growth increasingly, chokingly difficult); and overlooks the unavoidable consequences
of the one-child policy, which guarantees that China will get old before it gets rich.
And just as the rise of China is a straight-line projection of current economic trends, American
decline is a straight-line projection of the fearful, pessimistic mood of a country war-weary and
in the grip of a severe recession.
Among these crosscurrents, my thesis is simple: The question of whether America is in decline
cannot be answered yes or no. There is no yes or no. Both answers are wrong, because the
assumption that somehow there exists some predetermined inevitable trajectory, the result of
uncontrollable external forces, is wrong. Nothing is inevitable. Nothing is written. For America
today, decline is not a condition. Decline is a choice. Two decades into the unipolar world that
came about with the fall of the Soviet Union, America is in the position of deciding whether to
abdicate or retain its dominance. Decline--or continued ascendancy--is in our hands.
Not that decline is always a choice. Britain's decline after World War II was foretold, as indeed
was that of Europe, which had been the dominant global force of the preceding centuries. The
38
civilizational suicide that was the two world wars, and the consequent physical and
psychological exhaustion, made continued dominance impossible and decline inevitable.
The corollary to unchosen European collapse was unchosen American ascendancy. We--whom
Lincoln once called God's "almost chosen people"--did not save Europe twice in order to emerge
from the ashes as the world's co-hegemon. We went in to defend ourselves and save civilization.
Our dominance after World War II was not sought. Nor was the even more remarkable
dominance after the Soviet collapse. We are the rarest of geopolitical phenomena: the accidental
hegemon and, given our history of isolationism and lack of instinctive imperial ambition, the
reluctant hegemon--and now, after a near-decade of strenuous post-9/11 exertion, more reluctant
than ever.
Which leads to my second proposition: Facing the choice of whether to maintain our dominance
or to gradually, deliberately, willingly, and indeed relievedly give it up, we are currently on a
course towards the latter. The current liberal ascendancy in the United States--controlling the
executive and both houses of Congress, dominating the media and elite culture--has set us on a
course for decline. And this is true for both foreign and domestic policies. Indeed, they work
synergistically to ensure that outcome.
The current foreign policy of the United States is an exercise in contraction. It begins with the
demolition of the moral foundation of American dominance. In Strasbourg, President Obama
was asked about American exceptionalism. His answer? "I believe in American exceptionalism,
just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek
exceptionalism." Interesting response. Because if everyone is exceptional, no one is.
Indeed, as he made his hajj from Strasbourg to Prague to Ankara to Istanbul to Cairo and finally
to the U.N. General Assembly, Obama drew the picture of an America quite exceptional-exceptional in moral culpability and heavy-handedness, exceptional in guilt for its treatment of
other nations and peoples. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his
own country for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness (toward Europe), for
maltreatment of natives, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantánamo, for unilateralism, and for
insufficient respect for the Muslim world.
Quite an indictment, the fundamental consequence of which is to effectively undermine any
moral claim that America might have to world leadership, as well as the moral confidence that
any nation needs to have in order to justify to itself and to others its position of leadership.
According to the new dispensation, having forfeited the mandate of heaven--if it ever had one--a
newly humbled America now seeks a more modest place among the nations, not above them.
But that leads to the question: How does this new world govern itself? How is the international
system to function?
Henry Kissinger once said that the only way to achieve peace is through hegemony or balance of
power. Well, hegemony is out. As Obama said in his General Assembly address, "No one nation
can or should try to dominate another nation." (The "can" in that declaration is priceless.) And if
hegemony is out, so is balance of power: "No balance of power among nations will hold."
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The president then denounced the idea of elevating any group of nations above others--which
takes care, I suppose, of the Security Council, the G-20, and the Western alliance. And just to
make the point unmistakable, he denounced "alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a
long-gone Cold War" as making "no sense in an interconnected world." What does that say about
NATO? Of our alliances with Japan and South Korea? Or even of the European Union?
This is nonsense. But it is not harmless nonsense. It's nonsense with a point. It reflects a
fundamental view that the only legitimate authority in the international system is that which
emanates from "the community of nations" as a whole. Which means, I suppose, acting through
its most universal organs such as, again I suppose, the U.N. and its various agencies. Which is
why when Obama said that those who doubt "the character and cause" of his own country should
see what this new America--the America of the liberal ascendancy--had done in the last nine
months, he listed among these restorative and relegitimizing initiatives paying up U.N. dues,
renewing actions on various wholly vacuous universalist declarations and agreements, and
joining such Orwellian U.N. bodies as the Human Rights Council.
These gestures have not gone unnoticed abroad. The Nobel Committee effused about Obama's
radical reorientation of U.S. foreign policy. Its citation awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize
lauded him for having "created a new climate" in international relations in which "multilateral
diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and
other institutions can play."
Of course, the idea of the "international community" acting through the U.N.--a fiction and a
farce respectively--to enforce norms and maintain stability is absurd. So absurd that I suspect it's
really just a metaphor for a world run by a kind of multipolar arrangement not of nation-states
but of groups of states acting through multilateral bodies, whether institutional (like the
International Atomic Energy Agency) or ad hoc (like the P5+1 Iran negotiators).
But whatever bizarre form of multilateral or universal structures is envisioned for keeping world
order, certainly hegemony--and specifically American hegemony--is to be retired.
This renunciation of primacy is not entirely new. Liberal internationalism as practiced by the
center-left Clinton administrations of the 1990s--the beginning of the unipolar era--was
somewhat ambivalent about American hegemony, although it did allow America to be
characterized as "the indispensable nation," to use Madeleine Albright's phrase. Clintonian
center-left liberal internationalism did seek to restrain American power by tying Gulliver down
with a myriad of treaties and agreements and international conventions. That conscious
constraining of America within international bureaucratic and normative structures was rooted in
the notion that power corrupts and that external restraints would curb arrogance and
overreaching and break a willful America to the role of good international citizen.
But the liberal internationalism of today is different. It is not center-left, but left-liberal. And the
new left-liberal internationalism goes far beyond its earlier Clintonian incarnation in its distrust
of and distaste for American dominance. For what might be called the New Liberalism, the
renunciation of power is rooted not in the fear that we are essentially good but subject to the
corruptions of power--the old Clintonian view--but rooted in the conviction that America is so
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intrinsically flawed, so inherently and congenitally sinful that it cannot be trusted with, and does
not merit, the possession of overarching world power.
For the New Liberalism, it is not just that power corrupts. It is that America itself is corrupt--in
the sense of being deeply flawed, and with the history to prove it. An imperfect union, the theme
of Obama's famous Philadelphia race speech, has been carried to and amplified in his every
major foreign-policy address, particularly those delivered on foreign soil. (Not surprisingly, since
it earns greater applause over there.)
And because we remain so imperfect a nation, we are in no position to dictate our professed
values to others around the world. Demonstrators are shot in the streets of Tehran seeking
nothing but freedom, but our president holds his tongue because, he says openly, of our own
alleged transgressions towards Iran (presumably involvement in the 1953 coup). Our
shortcomings are so grave, and our offenses both domestic and international so serious, that we
lack the moral ground on which to justify hegemony.
These fundamental tenets of the New Liberalism are not just theory. They have strategic
consequences. If we have been illegitimately playing the role of world hegemon, then for us to
regain a legitimate place in the international system we must regain our moral authority. And
recovering moral space means renouncing ill-gotten or ill-conceived strategic space.
Operationally, this manifests itself in various kinds of strategic retreat, most particularly in
reversing policies stained by even the hint of American unilateralism or exceptionalism. Thus,
for example, there is no more "Global War on Terror." It's not just that the term has been
abolished or that the secretary of homeland security refers to terrorism as "man-caused
disasters." It is that the very idea of our nation and civilization being engaged in a global mortal
struggle with jihadism has been retired as well.
The operational consequences of that new view are already manifest. In our reversion to pre-9/11
normalcy--the pretense of pre-9/11 normalcy--antiterrorism has reverted from war fighting to
law enforcement. High-level al Qaeda prisoners, for example, will henceforth be interrogated not
by the CIA but by the FBI, just as our response to the attack on the USS Cole pre-9/11--an act of
war--was to send FBI agents to Yemen.
The operational consequences of voluntary contraction are already evident:
* Unilateral abrogation of our missile-defense arrangements with Poland and the Czech
Republic--a retreat being felt all through Eastern Europe to Ukraine and Georgia as a signal of
U.S. concession of strategic space to Russia in its old sphere of influence.
* Indecision on Afghanistan--a widely expressed ambivalence about the mission and a serious
contemplation of minimalist strategies that our commanders on the ground have reported to the
president have no chance of success. In short, a serious contemplation of strategic retreat in
Afghanistan (only two months ago it was declared by the president to be a "war of necessity")
with possibly catastrophic consequences for Pakistan.
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* In Iraq, a determination to end the war according to rigid timetables, with almost no interest in
garnering the fruits of a very costly and very bloody success--namely, using our Strategic
Framework Agreement to turn the new Iraq into a strategic partner and anchor for U.S. influence
in the most volatile area of the world. Iraq is a prize--we can debate endlessly whether it was
worth the cost--of great strategic significance that the administration seems to have no intention
of exploiting in its determination to execute a full and final exit.
* In Honduras, where again because of our allegedly sinful imperial history, we back a Chávista
caudillo seeking illegal extension of his presidency who was removed from power by the
legitimate organs of state--from the supreme court to the national congress--for grave
constitutional violations.
The New Liberalism will protest that despite its rhetoric, it is not engaging in moral reparations,
but seeking real strategic advantage for the United States on the assumption that the reason we
have not gotten cooperation from, say, the Russians, Iranians, North Koreans, or even our
European allies on various urgent agendas is American arrogance, unilateralism, and
dismissiveness. And therefore, if we constrict and rebrand and diminish ourselves deliberately-try to make ourselves equal partners with obviously unequal powers abroad--we will gain the
moral high ground and rally the world to our causes.
Well, being a strategic argument, the hypothesis is testable. Let's tally up the empirical evidence
of what nine months of self-abasement has brought.
With all the bowing and scraping and apologizing and renouncing, we couldn't even sway the
International Olympic Committee. Given the humiliation incurred there in pursuit of a trinket, it
is no surprise how little our new international posture has yielded in the coin of real strategic
goods. Unilateral American concessions and offers of unconditional engagement have moved
neither Iran nor Russia nor North Korea to accommodate us. Nor have the Arab states--or even
the powerless Palestinian Authority--offered so much as a gesture of accommodation in response
to heavy and gratuitous American pressure on Israel. Nor have even our European allies
responded: They have anted up essentially nothing in response to our pleas for more assistance in
Afghanistan.
The very expectation that these concessions would yield results is puzzling. Thus, for example,
the president is proposing radical reductions in nuclear weapons and presided over a Security
Council meeting passing a resolution whose goal is universal nuclear disarmament, on the theory
that unless the existing nuclear powers reduce their weaponry, they can never have the moral
standing to demand that other states not go nuclear.
But whatever the merits of unilateral or even bilateral U.S.-Russian disarmament, the notion that
it will lead to reciprocal gestures from the likes of Iran and North Korea is simply childish. They
are seeking the bomb for reasons of power, prestige, intimidation, blackmail, and regime
preservation. They don't give a whit about the level of nuclear arms among the great powers.
Indeed, both Iran and North Korea launched their nuclear weapons ambitions in the 1980s and
the 1990s--precisely when the United States and Russia were radically reducing their arsenals.
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This deliberate choice of strategic retreats to engender good feeling is based on the naïve hope of
exchanges of reciprocal goodwill with rogue states. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the
theory--as policy--has demonstrably produced no strategic advances. But that will not deter the
New Liberalism because the ultimate purpose of its foreign policy is to make America less
hegemonic, less arrogant, less dominant.
In a word, it is a foreign policy designed to produce American decline--to make America
essentially one nation among many. And for that purpose, its domestic policies are perfectly
complementary.
Domestic policy, of course, is not designed to curb our power abroad. But what it lacks in intent,
it makes up in effect. Decline will be an unintended, but powerful, side effect of the New
Liberalism's ambition of moving America from its traditional dynamic individualism to the more
equitable but static model of European social democracy.
This is not the place to debate the intrinsic merits of the social democratic versus the AngloSaxon model of capitalism. There's much to be said for the decency and relative equity of social
democracy. But it comes at a cost: diminished social mobility, higher unemployment, less
innovation, less dynamism and creative destruction, less overall economic growth.
This affects the ability to project power. Growth provides the sinews of dominance--the ability to
maintain a large military establishment capable of projecting power to all corners of the earth.
The Europeans, rich and developed, have almost no such capacity. They made the choice long
ago to devote their resources to a vast welfare state. Their expenditures on defense are minimal,
as are their consequent military capacities. They rely on the U.S. Navy for open seas and on the
U.S. Air Force for airlift. It's the U.S. Marines who go ashore, not just in battle, but for such
global social services as tsunami relief. The United States can do all of this because we spend
infinitely more on defense--more than the next nine countries combined.
Those are the conditions today. But they are not static or permanent. They require constant
renewal. The express agenda of the New Liberalism is a vast expansion of social services-massive intervention and expenditures in energy, health care, and education--that will
necessarily, as in Europe, take away from defense spending.
This shift in resources is not hypothetical. It has already begun. At a time when hundreds of
billions of dollars are being lavished on stimulus and other appropriations in an endless array of
domestic programs, the defense budget is practically frozen. Almost every other department is
expanding, and the Defense Department is singled out for making "hard choices"--forced to look
everywhere for cuts, to abandon highly advanced weapons systems, to choose between readiness
and research, between today's urgencies and tomorrow's looming threats.
Take, for example, missile defense, in which the United States has a great technological edge and
one perfectly designed to maintain American preeminence in a century that will be dominated by
the ballistic missile. Missile defense is actually being cut. The number of interceptors in Alaska
to defend against a North Korean attack has been reduced, and the airborne laser program (the
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most promising technology for a boost-phase antiballistic missile) has been cut back--at the same
time that the federal education budget has been increased 100 percent in one year.
This preference for social goods over security needs is not just evident in budgetary allocations
and priorities. It is seen, for example, in the liberal preference for environmental goods. By
prohibiting the drilling of offshore and Arctic deposits, the United States is voluntarily denying
itself access to vast amounts of oil that would relieve dependency on--and help curb the wealth
and power of--various petro-dollar challengers, from Iran to Venezuela to Russia. Again, we can
argue whether the environment versus security trade-off is warranted. But there is no denying
that there is a trade-off.
Nor are these the only trade-offs. Primacy in space--a galvanizing symbol of American
greatness, so deeply understood and openly championed by John Kennedy--is gradually being
relinquished. In the current reconsideration of all things Bush, the idea of returning to the moon
in the next decade is being jettisoned. After next September, the space shuttle will never fly
again, and its replacement is being reconsidered and delayed. That will leave the United States
totally incapable of returning even to near-Earth orbit, let alone to the moon. Instead, for years to
come, we shall be entirely dependent on the Russians, or perhaps eventually even the Chinese.
Of symbolic but also more concrete importance is the status of the dollar. The social democratic
vision necessarily involves huge increases in domestic expenditures, most immediately for
expanded health care. The plans currently under consideration will cost in the range of $1
trillion. And once the budget gimmicks are discounted (such as promises of $500 billion cuts in
Medicare which will never eventuate), that means hundreds of billions of dollars added to the
monstrous budgetary deficits that the Congressional Budget Office projects conservatively at $7
trillion over the next decade.
The effect on the dollar is already being felt and could ultimately lead to a catastrophic collapse
and/or hyperinflation. Having control of the world's reserve currency is an irreplaceable national
asset. Yet with every new and growing estimate of the explosion of the national debt, there are
more voices calling for replacement of the dollar as the world currency--not just adversaries like
Russia and China, Iran and Venezuela, which one would expect, but just last month the head of
the World Bank.
There is no free lunch. Social democracy and its attendant goods may be highly desirable, but
they have their price--a price that will be exacted on the dollar, on our primacy in space, on
missile defense, on energy security, and on our military capacities and future power projection.
But, of course, if one's foreign policy is to reject the very notion of international primacy in the
first place, a domestic agenda that takes away the resources to maintain such primacy is perfectly
complementary. Indeed, the two are synergistic. Renunciation of primacy abroad provides the
added resources for more social goods at home. To put it in the language of the 1990s, the
expanded domestic agenda is fed by a peace dividend--except that in the absence of peace, it is a
retreat dividend.
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And there's the rub. For the Europeans there really is a peace dividend, because we provide the
peace. They can afford social democracy without the capacity to defend themselves because they
can always depend on the United States.
So why not us as well? Because what for Europe is decadence--decline, in both comfort and
relative safety--is for us mere denial. Europe can eat, drink, and be merry for America protects
her. But for America it's different. If we choose the life of ease, who stands guard for us?
The temptation to abdicate has always been strong in America. Our interventionist tradition is
recent. Our isolationist tradition goes far deeper. Nor is it restricted to the American left.
Historically, of course, it was championed by the American right until the Vandenberg
conversion. And it remains a bipartisan instinct.
When the era of maximum dominance began 20 years ago--when to general surprise a unipolar
world emerged rather than a post-Cold War multipolar one--there was hesitation about accepting
the mantle. And it wasn't just among liberals. In the fall of 1990, Jeane Kirkpatrick, -heroine in
the struggle to defeat the Soviet Union, argued that, after a half-century of exertion fighting
fascism, Nazism, and communism, "it is time to give up the dubious benefits of superpower
status," time to give up the "unusual burdens" of the past and "return to 'normal' times." No more
balancing power in Europe or in Asia. We should aspire instead to be "a normal country in a
normal time."
That call to retreat was rejected by most of American conservatism (as Pat Buchanan has amply
demonstrated by his very marginality). But it did find some resonance in mainstream liberalism.
At first, however, only some resonance. As noted earlier, the liberal internationalism of the
1990s, the center-left Clintonian version, was reluctant to fully embrace American hegemony
and did try to rein it in by creating external restraints. Nonetheless, in practice, it did boldly
intervene in the Balkan wars (without the sanction of the Security Council, mind you) and openly
accepted a kind of intermediate status as "the indispensable nation."
Not today. The ascendant New Liberalism goes much further, actively seeking to subsume
America within the international community--inter pares, not even primus--and to enact a
domestic social agenda to suit.
So why not? Why not choose ease and bask in the adulation of the world as we serially renounce,
withdraw, and concede?
Because, while globalization has produced in some the illusion that human nature has changed, it
has not. The international arena remains a Hobbesian state of nature in which countries naturally
strive for power. If we voluntarily renounce much of ours, others will not follow suit. They will
fill the vacuum. Inevitably, an inversion of power relations will occur.
Do we really want to live under unknown, untested, shifting multipolarity? Or even worse, under
the gauzy internationalism of the New Liberalism with its magically self-enforcing norms? This
is sometimes passed off as "realism." In fact, it is the worst of utopianisms, a fiction that can lead
45
only to chaos. Indeed, in an age on the threshold of hyper-proliferation, it is a prescription for
catastrophe.
Heavy are the burdens of the hegemon. After the blood and treasure expended in the post-9/11
wars, America is quite ready to ease its burden with a gentle descent into abdication and decline.
Decline is a choice. More than a choice, a temptation. How to resist it?
First, accept our role as hegemon. And reject those who deny its essential benignity. There is a
reason that we are the only hegemon in modern history to have not immediately catalyzed the
creation of a massive counter-hegemonic alliance--as occurred, for example, against Napoleonic
France and Nazi Germany. There is a reason so many countries of the Pacific Rim and the
Middle East and Eastern Europe and Latin America welcome our presence as balancer of power
and guarantor of their freedom.
And that reason is simple: We are as benign a hegemon as the world has ever seen.
So, resistance to decline begins with moral self-confidence and will. But maintaining dominance
is a matter not just of will but of wallet. We are not inherently in economic decline. We have the
most dynamic, innovative, technologically advanced economy in the world. We enjoy the
highest productivity. It is true that in the natural and often painful global division of labor
wrought by globalization, less skilled endeavors like factory work migrate abroad, but America
more than compensates by pioneering the newer technologies and industries of the information
age.
There are, of course, major threats to the American economy. But there is nothing inevitable and
inexorable about them. Take, for example, the threat to the dollar (as the world's reserve
currency) that comes from our massive trade deficits. Here again, the China threat is vastly
exaggerated. In fact, fully two-thirds of our trade imbalance comes from imported oil. This is not
a fixed fact of life. We have a choice. We have it in our power, for example, to reverse the
absurd de facto 30-year ban on new nuclear power plants. We have it in our power to release
huge domestic petroleum reserves by dropping the ban on offshore and Arctic drilling. We have
it in our power to institute a serious gasoline tax (refunded immediately through a payroll tax
reduction) to curb consumption and induce conservation.
Nothing is written. Nothing is predetermined. We can reverse the slide, we can undo dependence
if we will it.
The other looming threat to our economy--and to the dollar--comes from our fiscal deficits. They
are not out of our control. There is no reason we should be structurally perpetuating the massive
deficits incurred as temporary crisis measures during the financial panic of 2008. A crisis is a
terrible thing to exploit when it is taken by the New Liberalism as a mandate for massive
expansion of the state and of national debt--threatening the dollar, the entire economy, and
consequently our superpower status abroad.
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There are things to be done. Resist retreat as a matter of strategy and principle. And provide the
means to continue our dominant role in the world by keeping our economic house in order. And
finally, we can follow the advice of Demosthenes when asked what was to be done about the
decline of Athens. His reply? "I will give what I believe is the fairest and truest answer: Don't do
what you are doing now."
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The War On Terror
Afghanistan / Pakistan
FPI Fact Sheet: The case for a fully resourced
counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan
November 19, 2009
The Foreign Policy Initiative
During the time that President Obama has been mulling the way forward in Afghanistan, a
number of politicians, advisors, and analysts have put forth various arguments against a
significant increase in troop strength and a counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy. The arguments,
when closely considered, expose a default resistance to completing the mission, not a thoughtful
dismantling of the pro ―surge‖ case. Below you‘ll find a list of the most popular critiques of
General Stanley McChrystal‘s COIN strategy and resource request, each followed by clear
refutations from relevant experts.
Charge: The illegitimate election of Hamid Karzai means failure for any stepped up effort in
Afghanistan.
Response: ―[C]onsider the analogous case of Iraq over the last three years,‖ write Richard
Fontaine and John Nagl in the Los Angeles Times. ―At the time [of the surge of forces to Iraq],
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's Shiite-led government was widely viewed as weak and
sectarian. An overwhelming number of Sunni Arabs -- who formed the center of gravity of the
insurgency -- rejected its legitimacy and had boycotted the December 2005 elections that brought
it to power. The Maliki government had done little to allay these feelings; on the contrary,
elements of its security forces participated in sectarian violence against Sunnis through 2006.‖
Yet Gen. David H. Petraeus' counterinsurgency strategy was able to protect populations, restore
order, and make room for the political reconciliation that would not have otherwise been
possible. ―Prospects for such an outcome in Afghanistan actually look better now than they did
in Iraq in early 2007,‖ write Fontaine and Nagl, ―unlike Iraq -- where success hinged on
persuading a critical mass of the Sunni Arab community to accept the bitter reality of a Shiite-led
government -- no deep existential issue drives Afghans (primarily Pashtuns) into the arms of the
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insurgents.‖ In fact, all polls and other data indicate that ―the national government in Afghanistan
almost certainly retains greater legitimacy among the people than did the Iraqi government
before things began to turn for the better there.‖ -- Los Angeles Times
Charge: Afghanistan is too ―naturally‖ tribal and backward for a COIN strategy to work.
Response: In reality, Afghanistan ―has been a state since the 18th century (longer than Germany
and Italy) and has been governed by strong rulers such as Dost Mohammad, who ruled from
1826 to 1863,‖ writes Max Boot, in Commentary. ―Afghanistan made considerable social,
political, and economic progress during the equally long reign of Mohammad Zahir Shah from
1933 to 1973. The country was actually relatively peaceful and prosperous before a Marxist coup
in 1978, followed by a Soviet invasion the next year, triggered turmoil that still has not subsided.
. . . Afghanistan has not always been as unstable and violent as it is today. . . it is hard to know
why Afghanistan would be uniquely resistant to methods and tactics that have worked in
countries as disparate as Malaya, El Salvador, and Iraq.‖ -- Commentary
Charge: Al Qaeda is our real enemy. COIN focuses unnecessarily on defeating the Taliban and
other related groups.
Response: ―Al Qaeda does not exist in a vacuum like the -SPECTRE of James Bond movies. It
has always operated in close coordination with allies,‖ write Frederick and Kimberly Kagan in
The Weekly Standard. ―The anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s was the crucible in which al Qaeda
leaders first bonded with the partners who would shelter them in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden
met Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose network is now fighting U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan, as
both were raising support in Saudi Arabia for the mujahedeen in the 1980s. They then fought the
Soviets together. . . Bin Laden and al Qaeda could not have functioned as they did in the 1990s
without the active support of Mullah Omar and Haqqani. The Taliban and Haqqani fighters
protected bin Laden, fed him and his troops, facilitated the movement of al Qaeda leaders and
fighters, and generated recruits. They also provided a socio-religious human network that
strengthened the personal resilience and organizational reach of bin Laden and his team. Islamist
revolution has always been an activity of groups nested within communities, not an undertaking
of isolated individuals. . . There is no reason whatever to believe that Mullah Omar or the
Haqqanis--whose religious and political views remain closely aligned with al Qaeda's--would fail
to offer renewed hospitality to their friend and ally of 20 years, bin Laden. Al Qaeda‘s allies
―provide them with shelter and food, with warning of impending attacks, with the means to move
rapidly. Their allies provide communications services--runners and the use of their own more
modern systems to help al Qaeda's senior leaders avoid creating electronic footprints that our
forces could use to track and target them. Their allies provide means of moving money and other
strategic resources around, as well as the means of imparting critical knowledge (like expertise in
explosives) to cadres. Their allies provide media support, helping to get the al Qaeda message
out and then serving as an echo chamber to magnify it via their own media resources.‖ -- Weekly
Standard
Charge: We can defeat our enemy in Afghanistan with a more limited counterterrorism strategy,
using drones and increased intelligence gathering.
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Response: ―If the United States should adopt a small-footprint counterterrorism strategy,
Afghanistan would descend again into civil war,‖ Frederick Kagan testified before the House
Armed Services Committee. ―The Taliban group headed by Mullah Omar and operating in
southern Afghanistan (including especially Helmand, Kandahar, and Oruzgan Provinces) is well
positioned to take control of that area upon the withdrawal of American and allied combat forces.
The remaining Afghan security forces would be unable to resist a Taliban offensive. They would
be defeated and would disintegrate. The fear of renewed Taliban assaults would mobilize the
Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras in northern and central Afghanistan. The Taliban itself would
certainly drive on Herat and Kabul, leading to war with northern militias. This conflict would
collapse the Afghan state, mobilize the Afghan population, and cause many Afghans to flee into
Pakistan and Iran. Within Pakistan, the U.S. reversion to a counterterrorism strategy (from the
counterinsurgency strategy for which Obama reaffirmed his support as recently as August)
would disrupt the delicate balance that has made possible recent Pakistani progress against
internal foes and al Qaeda.‖ -- House Armed Services Committee
In Commentary, Max Boot notes, ―it is hard to point to any place where pure [counterterrorism]
has defeated a determined terrorist or guerrilla group. This is the strategy that Israel has used
against Hamas and Hezbollah. The result is that Hamas controls Gaza, and Hezbollah controls
southern Lebanon. It is the strategy that the U.S. has employed in Somalia since our forces
pulled out in 1994. The result is that the country is utterly chaotic and lawless, and an Islamic
fundamentalist group called the Shabab, which has close links to al-Qaeda, is gaining strength.
Most pertinently, it is also the strategy the U.S. has used for years in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The result is that the Taliban control the tribal areas of Pakistan and are extending their influence
across large swathes of Afghanistan.‖ -- Commentary
Charge: Our army is already stretched too thin. A troops surge in Afghanistan is unsustainable.
Response: ―This fear, heard often about Iraq in 2004-06, is no truer now than it was then,‖
writes Tom Cotton in the Weekly Standard. ―At the 2007 peak, the United States had 200,000
troops deployed to Iraq (170,000) and Afghanistan (30,000). Currently, there are 110,000 troops
in Iraq and 68,000 in Afghanistan, well below that peak. And 60,000 troops are expected to leave
Iraq by next August as more troops flow into Afghanistan. Thus, overall deployed troop levels in
2010 will remain the same or fall. The Army has also grown to accommodate repeated
deployments. It expanded over the last two years from 512,000 to 547,000 soldiers and now
plans to add another 22,000 troops by 2012. Further, it just exceeded its annual recruitment and
retention goals, hardly the stuff of a broken Army.‖ -- Weekly Standard
Charge: The American public believes we have no need to stay in Afghanistan after eight years
of fighting.
Response: ―Barack Obama has yet to talk about America or its ideals as being worth the fight.
It's no wonder public support for our commitment in Afghanistan is lower today than at any
point during the Bush administration,‖ writes Foreign Policy Initiative Policy Advisor Abe
Greenwald at the American Spectator. ―The disconnect between rhetoric and mission is stark.
Since taking office, President Obama has continuously spoken of the United States as a country
that ‗all too often…starts by dictating,‘ a place that ‗has shown arrogance and been dismissive,
50
even derisive‘ toward allies, where ‗our government made decisions based on fear rather than
foresight, [and] all too often our government trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological
predispositions.‘ America, in Mr. Obama's words, ‗is still working through some of our own
darker periods in our history.‘ What kind of dupe would rally behind that place? To make
matters worse, while the situation deteriorated in Afghanistan and loose speculation abounded
the president went silent on matters of war. . . If the president wants to boost morale on
Afghanistan, he is going to have to drink from the well of American exceptionalism.‖ -American Spectator
Charge: Dealing with the problems in Pakistan is more important than finishing the fight in
Afghanistan.
Response: ―The debate over whether to commit the resources necessary to succeed in
Afghanistan must recognize the extreme danger that a withdrawal or failure in Afghanistan
would pose to the stability of Pakistan,‖ writes Frederick Kagan in the Wall Street Journal. the
fight against the Taliban must be pursued on both sides of the border. Pakistan's successes have
been assisted by the deployment of American conventional forces along the Afghanistan border
opposite the areas in which Pakistani forces were operating, particularly in Konar and Khowst
Provinces. Those forces have not so much interdicted the border crossings (almost impossible in
such terrain) as they have created conditions unfavorable to the free movement of insurgents.
They have conducted effective counterinsurgency operations in areas that might otherwise
provide sanctuary to insurgents fleeing Pakistani operations (Nangarhar and Paktia provinces
especially, in addition to Konar and Khowst). Without those operations, Pakistan's insurgents
would likely have found new safe havens in those provinces, rendering the painful progress
made by Pakistan's military irrelevant. Pakistan's stability cannot be secured solely within its
borders any more than can Afghanistan's.‖ -- Wall Street Journal
Charge: Afghans view coalition forces as ―occupiers‖ and want us to leave.
Response: ―In fact repeated polls have shown that majority of Afghans want the U.S. and NATO
there,‖ writes Brian Glyn Williams in Foreign Policy. ―As they watch Indian soap operas on
televisions the Taliban once smashed, send their girls to school, and drive on newly paved roads,
millions of Afghans are experiencing the direct benefits of the U.S. presence in their country.
This is the work we could have been doing in 1991 and, for all its obvious flaws, it is a tentative
sign of progress in the long journey to rebuild civil society in this long suffering land. In other
words, compassionate, global-minded Democrats who supported President Bill Clinton's
humanitarian interventions in places like Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti and Somalia owe it to the
Afghan people to be patient and do the same for Afghanistan.‖ -- Foreign Policy
Charge: Afghanistan is the ―graveyard of empires.‖
Response: ―This refrain belongs, as they say now in the military, in the graveyard of analogies,‖
writes Tom Cotton in the Weekly Standard. ―The Soviets, in particular, teach us how not to win
in Afghanistan. A heavily mechanized force, the Red Army was ill-suited for Afghanistan's
treacherous terrain, and it was dependent on long, vulnerable supply lines. It also discouraged
innovative junior leadership, which is critical against an insurgency. To compensate, the Soviets
51
employed vicious, massively destructive tactics that inflamed the Afghan people and still scar the
country with depopulated valleys and adult amputees maimed as children by toy-shaped mines.
Our present way of war couldn't be more different. We deploy light and wheeled infantry to
Afghanistan, making our tactics more flexible, our supply lines shorter, and our soldiers more
engaged with the locals. We also radically decentralize decision-making authority to our junior
soldiers and leaders, who increasingly can draw on years of combat experience. In short,
America has a counter-insurgency strategy, whereas the Soviet Union had a genocide strategy.
Afghans I spoke with always recognized the difference, reviled the Russians, and respected our
troops.‖ -- Weekly Standard
Max Boot makes a similar point in Commentary, ―The two most commonly cited examples in
support of this proposition are the British in the 19th century and the Russians in the 1980s. This
selective history conveniently omits the military success enjoyed by earlier conquerors, from
Alexander the Great in the 4th century b.c.e. to Babur (founder of the Mughal Empire) in the
16th century. In any case, neither the British nor the Russians ever employed proper
counterinsurgency tactics. The British briefly occupied Kabul on two occasions (1839 and 1879)
and then pulled out, turning Afghanistan into a buffer zone between the Russian Empire and their
own. In the 1980s, the Russians employed scorched-earth tactics, killing large numbers of
civilians and turning much of the country against them. Neither empire had popular support on
its side, as foreign forces do today.‖ -- Commentary
Charge: We can manage Afghanistan by focusing on the training of Afghans.
Response: ―The Afghan Army is reasonably effective. It is too small, with roughly 90,000 total
soldiers,‖ writes Michael O‘Hanlon in the Wall Street Journal. ―But by most accounts, the
Afghan Army is fighting well, and cooperating well with NATO forces. Gen. McChrystal's new
approach to training Afghan troops will greatly strengthen and deepen this cooperation.‖ Here is
the key point as it relates to a troop build-up. ―Not only will NATO finally field enough
personnel to embed with each Afghan unit in mentoring teams, but its combat units will partner
with Afghans at every level on every major operation – living, planning, operating, and fighting
with each other in one-to-one formal partnerships.‖ In order for that partnering to be fully
implemented, a large troop surge is required. -- Wall Street Journal
Charge: There is no rush to get all of the requested resources to Afghanistan.
Response: ―We face both a short and long-term fight,‖ wrote Gen. Stanley McChrystal in his
comprehensive assessment of the war. The long-term fight will require patience and
commitment, but I believe the short-term fight will be decisive. Failure to gain the initiative and
reverse insurgent momentum in the near term (next 12 months) – while Afghan security capacity
matures –risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.‖
Many Americans are understandably resistant to the amplification of war after eight years of
combat in Afghanistan and other taxing military deployments. But distaste for combat cannot
supersede obligations of national security. Those who seek to sidestep those obligations must be
challenged head-on, so that the illogical bases for their claims can be exposed and America can
get about the business of winning a war and bringing our soldiers home in victory.
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New reasons for hope in Afghanistan
By Michael O'Hanlon
September 28, 2010
Politico
The outcome of the Afghanistan conflict is still up for grabs.
But after meetings there with NATO officers, Afghan officials and U.S. Embassy officials on a
recent trip, I saw more basis for hope than recent perceptions in the United States would allow.
There was at least some positive news on the election. Four million in turnout is not bad for a
midterm election in a troubled, war-torn country.
To be sure, there was a fair amount of violence during the Sept. 18 parliamentary elections.
Turnout was mediocre overall, even poor in places. But as I saw there with the International
Republican Institute‘s election observation — IRI was ecumenical enough to include a Democrat
like me — these problems were at least partly balanced by the remarkable resolve of many
Afghans, including election workers and security forces.
Insurgents had months to prepare for attacks on Election Day. While any loss of life is
regrettable, the 20 to 25 deaths that day were far fewer than anticipated. Yes, there were
irregularities, as the U.S. media have been reporting. But these stories often lack perspective on
realistic expectations for a young democracy. Moreover, Afghan agencies have already been
charged with investigating the election — a hopeful sign.
Major challenges remain in Afghanistan that, if not addressed, may still cause the U.S. to fail
there. It is far too early to give up on the current strategy and fall back on a Plan B. But it is not
too soon to consider some dramatic new efforts — starting with a bold proposal to Pakistan.
First, though, here‘s a review of the situation as it looked to me over my 10-day trip.
The problems in Afghanistan are legion and serious — and well-known. But a few points merit
emphasis. The estimated size of the insurgency, particularly the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani
networks, continues to grow. Despite a major increase in lethal attacks by U.S. Special Forces
and other coalition assets, the resistance remains resilient.
Violence in Afghanistan has grown even faster than the uptick in coalition forces, suggesting that
it is not just our increased tempo of operations that drives the fighting. Though the number of
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roadside bomb attacks has stabilized relative to last year (and declined in the east), we are still
losing too many coalition and Afghan troops and police to these horrible weapons. And directfire attacks from small-arms fire are way up.
Needless to say, failures to address corruption — much of it in President Hamid Karzai‘s inner
circle, some of it a result of traditional Afghan social customs, lots of it exacerbated by the U.S.
way of doing business there — create a sense of anger and disenfranchisement among many
Afghan citizens.
This should be no surprise. History shows that strong presidencies in weak states that benefit
from easy sources of cash (in this case, foreign aid and the foreign military presence) are prone
to corruption problems. But these are no less serious because they are expected.
Balancing these huge challenges, the United States and its partners in Afghanistan have major
assets working in their favor.
First are the Afghan population‘s hardiness, optimism and generally pro-Western views.
Whatever Karzai‘s limitations, there are a number of impressive reformers within his Cabinet
and an improving slate of provincial governors; 18 of 34 were replaced over the past year, and
most look like improvements.
Westerners were upset by Karzai‘s firing of reform-minded Interior Minister Hanif Atmar last
spring. But his successor, Bismillah Mohammadi, seems every bit as good. He reportedly takes
taxis to visit his police forces on duty without warning — both to keep them on their toes and to
gauge what training and equipment they require. He recently replaced 27 police chiefs,
appointing successors who, on balance, seem stronger choices.
In addition, Karzai finally approved an Afghan local police program that could organize some
community defense forces under NATO instruction and Interior Ministry supervision. This is to
provide intermediate, if stopgap, security in some secondary areas.
The goal is to organize 10,000 Afghans, with the potential for substantially more later if the
Afghan government approves. This effort may be complemented with stronger local
reconciliation efforts — not a grand bargain with the Taliban, most probably, but communitybased peace plans that Gen. David Petraeus is promoting. Some in the International Security
Assistance Force believe this could quickly reduce the size of the insurgency by 10 percent to 20
percent.
The best news may be about the Afghan security forces. About half of all Afghan army units are
now assessed at 3 or better on a 5-point scale of effectiveness. The evaluation system has been
toughened up and measures quality of leadership as well as troops‘ dependability and loyalty.
Sectarian tensions within units are now generally not severe. In addition, new efforts are under
way to recruit more southern Pashtuns, who have been severely underrepresented, though
Pashtuns from the center and north are present in good numbers.
54
Most important, nearly all Afghan army units are now partnered with NATO/ISAF forces,
meaning they collaborate frequently and often patrol together. This intensive apprenticeship is
helping reform and improve not only the army but also the police.
The Afghan government‘s civilian departments remain weak. But efforts like the National
Solidarity Program, which disburses modest cash grants to communities that form informal
development councils under government and ISAF supervision, help compensate.
In addition, H.R. McMaster, acknowledged as one of the U.S. Army‘s leading one-star generals,
is now running a new task force to reform ISAF contracting practices — which enrich some
Afghans while enraging others. McMaster probably can‘t solve this problem, but if he mitigates
it and allows financial benefits to reach a wider array of tribes and communities, the insurgency
is likely to have fewer Afghan recruits.
Where does this leave us? One can hope that the positive trends outweigh the negative. But it is a
close call and too soon to be optimistic. We need further improvements in our strategy, beyond
McMaster‘s task force and other new efforts.
The biggest opportunity may lie in Pakistan. Earlier this year, Pakistani forces moved into tribal
regions to go after their own Taliban and arrested some of the Afghan Taliban as well. But
progress has slowed or even reversed. The terrible floods diverted the army‘s attention, and
Pakistan now appears to be tolerating, if not actively supporting, greater activities by Afghan
insurgents on its territory.
It is time for reinvigorated high-level diplomacy with Pakistan and perhaps a new bargain with
Islamabad. Even if Pakistan cannot yet be persuaded to eliminate its terrorist sanctuaries,
viewing them as a hedge against a rapid U.S. departure, Pakistani leaders might be induced to
insist that these insurgent networks cool their activities.
This would give us a chance to build a stable Afghanistan, which would surely serve Pakistan‘s
long-term interests more than a lawless western frontier. In addition to increased aid,
Washington might even propose a new bilateral alliance, formalized once the war in Afghanistan
turns the corner.
This would be a conditional offer — contingent on improved assistance from Pakistan. It could
be tied to a nuclear energy deal similar to that recently approved with India. Then Pakistan
would have solid relations with both China and the United States, perhaps reducing its leaders‘
desires to seek a sphere of influence or of ―strategic depth‖ within Afghanistan.
Afghanistan remains a tough fight, but at least three-quarters of the country — starting with
bustling Kabul, extending into most of the north and west and including parts of the east — is
either in reasonably promising shape or improving.
So we should remain hopeful for now. The current strategy could well produce significant and
convincing progress within a few months.
55
Michael O‘Hanlon is co-author, with Hassina Sherjan, of ―Toughing It Out in Afghanistan‖ and
co-author of the Afghanistan Index.
© 2010 Capitol News Company, LLC
Too Few Good Men
We could use more troops in Afghanistan.
By Gary Schmitt
September 27, 2010, Vol. 16, No. 02
The Weekly Standard
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Michael Mullen, famously said in 2007 that ―in
Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must.‖ That strategic view was
supposed to change when Barack Obama was elected president. It was candidate Obama, after
all, who argued that the war in Iraq was the wrong war to be fighting, and a significant
distraction from the far more important conflict in Afghanistan.
Accordingly, the new president announced in March 2009 that he would add to the 30,000
American forces already in theater another 21,000 troops, and then, rejecting Vice President
Biden‘s advice to scale back the war effort, decided last December to add 30,000 more. The only
real criticism from war supporters at the time focused on the president‘s scheduled July 2011
troop drawdown.
But there is also the equally important issue of whether the number of troops to be deployed is in
fact enough to wage a successful counterinsurgency. And just as the commander of the
International Security Assistance Force, as the troops fighting in Afghanistan are known, General
David Petraeus, has suggested that next July‘s drawdown date might not be set in stone, it would
also be useful to revisit the number of American troops committed to Afghanistan. After all, the
30,000 additional troops the president called for last December were less than the 40,000
recommended by Petraeus‘s predecessor, General Stanley McChrystal.
At the time, the president‘s team argued that our allies would make up the deficit. In December
2009, however, the number of non-American troops stood at 38,370, and as of June, the figure
was up by less than 3,000. Even this limited increase, moreover, included few forces ready for
frontline counter-insurgency duty. And since then, 1,500 Dutch combat soldiers have left
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Afghanistan, another 2,800 Canadian forces will be leaving in 2011, and the new government in
London is already talking about beginning a drawdown as early as next year. The increased
allied contribution—both in real numbers and actual combat capacity—is largely illusory.
Of course, just having enough ―boots on the ground‖ does not guarantee a successful
counterinsurgency. As the French discovered in Algeria and the Russians in Chechnya, troop
levels alone are not enough to win an irregular war. But numbers matter. While it is important to
have a sophisticated understanding of the ―human terrain‖ of local customs, relations, and
personalities, counterinsurgency campaigns require sufficient forces to clear and hold, and to do
so for an extended period of time.
Exactly how many troops are needed to conduct an effective counterinsurgency campaign has
been the subject of a considerable amount of research over the last several years. Some studies
focus on the ratio of counterinsurgent forces to insurgents, but since the center of gravity of a
successful counterinsurgency campaign is in winning the hearts and minds of the civilian
population, most research looks at force-to-civilian ratios. The number usually given is one
counterinsurgent per 50 civilians, or 20 per 1,000—a ratio supported by recent history.
For peacekeeping and stabilization efforts in Bosnia and Kosovo, the force to population ratio
was 19:1,000. More pertinently, the summer following President Bush‘s January 2007 decision
to surge troops in Iraq, the ratio of combined security forces in Iraq (182,000 coalition forces,
278,000 Iraqi security forces and tens of thousands of the Sons of Iraq) to a population of 27.5
million was virtually dead on the 20:1,000 mark. By April 2009, the numbers were closer to
29:1,000.
In comparison, the ratio for Afghanistan at the end of 2009 was only 9:1,000. By the fall of 2010,
American force levels will be just shy of 100,000. Combined with allied and partner-nation
contributions of some 45,000 troops (many of which are noncombat), 134,000 Afghan soldiers
and 109,000 Afghan national policemen (both still on a steep learning curve), the total number of
security forces will be less than 390,000, or 280,000 troops short of meeting that 1:20 ratio for an
Afghan population of about 33 million.
Afghanistan is a big place: approximately one and half times the size of Iraq with a population
roughly the same size as Iraq‘s, but more dispersed. Accordingly, the game plan had been to
narrow counterinsurgency efforts to a limited number of population centers and commercial
routes, predominantly in the southern part of the country, accepting various levels of risk in
adjacent areas and other regions. And narrow it is. For example, in the April report to Congress
on the Afghan campaign, the Pentagon noted that ISAF had identified 80 ―key terrain‖ districts,
along with 41 other ―area of interest‖ districts—out of nearly 400 total districts in the country.
But, the ―ISAF Joint Command (IJC) assessed that, out of the 121 districts, it had the resources
to conduct operations in 48.‖ And, as Michael O‘Hanlon has recently written in Foreign Affairs,
while the number of districts with ―satisfactory‖ security has improved modestly over the past
nine months, ―ISAF currently estimates that only 35 percent of the priority districts have ‗good‘
security or better.‖
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That‘s a problem, even as it has been argued that the war against the Taliban is not a countrywide campaign, but is principally focused on the Pashtun belt in southern and eastern
Afghanistan. Two recent incidents, however, suggest that the insurgency is not so easily
contained. First was the slaughter of a Christian medical team in Badakhshan Province in the
ostensibly quiet sector of northern Afghanistan, and then there was the public torture and murder
of a pregnant widow in Badghis in northwestern Afghanistan. As Bill Roggio notes, ―Just a few
years ago, Badghis province wasn‘t considered a security problem. But over the past three years,
the Taliban have slowly taken control of districts in Badghis and have implemented their brutal
version of sharia.‖ Although the strength of the Taliban and its allies still lies principally in the
south and the east, their footprint, as General Petraeus acknowledges, has expanded outside those
areas. Since 2005, the Taliban has tripled the number of its shadow governors, which gives the
insurgents a presence in virtually every province. According to NATO‘s own data, by late 2009
the Taliban was a constant or periodic hostile presence in about half the country, with some
capability in the remaining 40 percent.
There‘s also this: Obama has deployed fewer actual counterinsurgents in Afghanistan than Bush
did in Iraq. Bush‘s surge included 21,500 soldiers and Marines ready for combat; the remaining
additional forces consisted mainly of support elements, aviation units, and military police. In
contrast, of Obama‘s 30,000 just over 15,000 are dedicated, ground-pounding counterinsurgents,
with a higher percentage going to support and training. This problem isn‘t entirely of Obama‘s
own making. By the time Bush ordered a troop increase, the supporting military infrastructure in
Iraq had been well established, and there was less need to add more ―tail‖ to support combat
operations. This has not been so in Afghanistan, where the country‘s mountainous and varied
geography and its isolated location demand more supporting elements in aviation and logistics.
Nor does this account for the bumps in the road that mark most military campaigns, such as last
February‘s clearing operation in Marjah, a onetime Taliban stronghold in Helmand Province.
With the Pentagon no doubt pressed to show results quickly and also not to tie down Marines
who could be used in other clearing operations, it declared the town effectively cleared of the
Taliban after two short weeks. But attempts to turn the town‘s security over to Afghan forces and
special police in the weeks that followed only resulted in the resurgence of Taliban activity,
whipsawing the townspeople in a way that means it will take even longer to assure them that
they should bet on their long-term security resting with the Afghan government. Securing
Helmand and Kandahar is probably going to require more time and more resources than the
optimistic plans set out by General McChrystal. This awareness is reflected in General Petraeus‘s
new guidelines specifying that ISAF forces will gradually step back from areas that have been
pacified instead of trying to hand off the task to the still maturing Afghan forces all at once.
The shortage of trainers for the Afghan Army and the Afghan police complicates matters further,
as does President Karzai‘s insistence on the reduction of private contractors performing security
missions throughout the country. Add Pakistan‘s reluctance to deal decisively with the insurgent
safe havens on its side of the border, and it is hard to escape the conclusion that more combatready troops are needed if we are to succeed in the Afghan mission.
In his Foreign Affairs article, O‘Hanlon describes President Obama‘s decision last December to
send additional troops to Afghanistan as his ―attempt to have his cake and eat it, too.‖ ―Obama
58
tried to be muscular enough to create a chance to win the war while at the same time keeping the
war‘s critics acquiescent.‖ But being too clever by half is no way to run a war. And the addition
of a July 2011 timeline for the start of a drawdown only compounds the error. In the absence of
some compelling necessity—which in this case does not exist—it is absurd to fix either hard
deadlines or troop levels.
No one wants an open-ended commitment to Afghanistan. But from 2001 until now, both the
United States and its allies have taken an economy of force approach. There were enough troops
to topple the Taliban and then just enough to keep Afghanistan from reverting to Taliban control.
There have never been enough forces, however, to defeat them and to stabilize the country. With
the addition of 30,000 American troops, there will undoubtedly be progress. But it would be a
strategic roll of the dice to expect to win this war by hoping we have ―just enough‖ forces to
carry out the campaign successfully.
It is difficult to say with precision what the number of additional troops should be. That would
require familiarity with in-theater intelligence about the enemy as well as a realistic assessment
of the rate at which Afghan troops and police will become self-sufficient. But as a start, we
might revisit General McChrystal‘s assessment that 40,000 more troops were needed—not the
30,000 that were sent and have only just fully arrived. Adding three Army combat brigades,
some 10,000 troops, would give commanders more flexibility to act with the kind of resoluteness
that marked the surge in Iraq in 2007 and that allowed it to succeed.
Gary Schmitt is director of the Program on Advanced Strategic Studies at the American
Enterprise Institute.
Afghanistan: The Case for Optimism
Max Boot From issue: September 2010
For General David Petraeus, the summer of 2010 must evoke eerie and unwelcome parallels to
the summer of 2007. Once again he is presiding over a ―surge‖ in a war that is increasingly seen
back home as a lost cause. Once again the troops under his command are expending blood,
sweat, and intellect to salvage a decent outcome on the ground while legions of critics offer
―Plan B‘s‖ that will supposedly safeguard our vital interests at a much lower cost.
There is even a plan on the table to partition the country where our troops are fighting. Last time
around, then-Senator Joseph Biden was proposing to divide Iraq into three parts. This time,
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Robert Blackwill, a former U.S. ambassador to India, proposes to break up Afghanistan into two
parts, with the Taliban being given control of the Pashtun-majority region in the south.
Few would go as far as Blackwill, just as few backed Biden‘s partition scheme in Iraq. But many
have suggested downsizing our commitment and relying on negotiations with the Taliban,
leading to the formation of some kind of ―unity‖ government. There are also voices calling for
NATO to give up the supposedly foolhardy project of trying to build democratic governance in
Afghanistan and instead to strike deals with local leaders who will pledge to fight the Taliban on
our behalf. And naturally, once again we hear much talk of a ―regional diplomatic framework‖
that will somehow short-circuit the hard fighting that is normally required to prevail against a
tenacious foe.
The assumption that underlies all these ideas is that the strategy currently being implemented
has already failed. But is that really the case? Having spent the first half of July in Afghanistan
along with other scholars at Petraeus‘s invitation, I am struck by how premature such judgments
are—and how reminiscent of attempts to write off the surge in Iraq as a failure when it had
barely begun. What I found is a strategy that is only beginning to be implemented, and one that
has a good chance of working—provided more attention is paid to ameliorating Afghanistan‘s
crippling governance woes. That will not be easy to do, but it offers a greater likelihood of an
acceptable outcome than any realistic alternative.
_____________
Although U.S. and allied forces have been in Afghanistan for nine years as part of NATO‘s
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), it is only in the past year that they have begun to
wage war in earnest. As recently as 2008, there were only 30,000 American troops in the
country. By the end of August, there will be close to 100,000—a much greater increase in
percentage terms than during the Iraq surge, when U.S. troop levels went from 130,000 to
160,000.
General Stanley McChrystal spent much of his year in charge (June 2009-June 2010) simply
building up the infrastructure to command and support these forces—a formidable undertaking
that involved everything from expanding bases and runways to creating an operational
headquarters to manage the war on a daily basis. New command structures were needed to
manage detentions and the training and equipping of Afghan security forces, as well as the
buildup of top-tier Special Operations Forces such as the SEALs and Delta Force.
By the time he was fired in June, McChrystal had just begun to use this nascent infrastructure to
carry out a concerted counterinsurgency campaign in key districts around the country. It is still
too soon to draw any conclusions about these efforts, which will undergo inevitable adjustment
and fine-tuning by Petraeus, because the full complement of surge forces is only now arriving.
But early indications are relatively promising. Certainly, the initial operations are not the failure
they have often been made out to be.
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McChrystal‘s first major focus was in Marjah, a district in central Helmand Province that I
visited in early July. Prior to the Marine-led assault that began in February, Marjah had been
completely outside the control of the Afghan government and the international military force.
The Taliban had been in charge, and they had used it as a staging ground for attacks elsewhere in
southern Afghanistan. Marjah was also a center of the global opium trade, which helps fund the
insurgency. Coalition aircraft had even been told not to fly over it because it was too dangerous.
Today, six months into Operation Moshtarak, the Marines and their Afghan partners are solidly
established in the heart of Marjah and are gradually expanding their control outward. Marines
continue to be attacked, but they have already managed to deny the Taliban the use of Marjah as
a base. Attacks in neighboring districts, as a result, are down sharply.
The operation appears to be a bust only because of the exaggerated expectations of immediate
success raised by commanders early on. McChrystal touted what he called ―government-in-a
box,‖ which was supposed to come in and instantly displace the Taliban, who had long
dominated the area. The box, alas, proved mainly empty. Kabul failed to send enough ministry
representatives; the district governor‘s job went to an illiterate official who had a criminal record
in Germany and scant managerial experience; and the Afghan National Civil Order Police,
brought in to provide law and order, fell short in discipline, armaments, and training.
These highly publicized setbacks created a lasting impression of failure that ignores the strides
made since February—including the recent replacement of the first district governor, Haji Zahir,
with a candidate who appears, at least on paper, to be better qualified. The Marines with whom I
spoke believe that Marjah is on a positive trajectory but that it will require 18 months to become
truly stable. That is hardly out of the norm for counterinsurgency operations, which always take
time.
_____________
To see where Marjah may be heading, one needs to look at other districts in central Helmand that
the Marines had entered earlier. I visited one such area, Nawa. It had been a virtual ghost town
before the Marines arrived last summer. Now the district center is bustling and secure enough
that it‘s possible to walk around without body armor. Other towns in central Helmand such as
Garmsir and the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, are also fairly peaceful. That‘s quite an
achievement in a province that has long been the country‘s most dangerous.
Progress has been made possible not only by American and Afghan troops, who are able to beat
the Taliban in any firefight, but also by Afghan officials, who, with considerable coalition help,
have proved they can exceed the low expectations of the population. Nawa‘s district governor,
Haji Abdul Manaf, gets high marks for being hard-working and responsive to the needs of the
people. Helmand as a whole is governed by Gulab Mangal, who is rated by international officials
as one of the most effective and honest provincial governors in the country. In 2008 he replaced
a governor whose basement had been found to contain nine tons of opium and heroin. The
British, who at the time provided the only substantial foreign military presence in Helmand,
threatened to withdraw from Afghanistan unless that governor, Sher Mohammad Akhundzada,
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was fired by President Hamid Karzai. He was, and this has made progress possible in Helmand:
halting and slow progress, admittedly, but progress nonetheless.
Much has been written about Afghanistan‘s governance problems. Its government is said to be
weak, ineffective, corrupt, predatory, and resistant to all attempts at improvement. The
Washington Post has reported that the attorney general, Mohammed Ishaq Aloko, has impeded
attempts to prosecute politically connected malefactors. That is true, but Helmand‘s recent
history shows that reform is possible even without legal action provided that the coalition applies
sufficient political will and military muscle.
Kandahar Province, next door to Helmand, is the logical next focus of such action. Its capital,
Kandahar, is not only one of Afghanistan‘s largest cities but also the traditional heart of the
Taliban movement. I drove through Kandahar in an armored car and found it to be fairly
peaceful; there are not many terrorist attacks within city limits. But the outward normality hides
the widespread intimidation of the population—not only by the Taliban but also by the
government.
Kandahar is dominated by Ahmed Wali Karzai, President Hamid Karzai‘s half brother. Like a
big-city political boss of old, Ahmed Wali Karzai sits atop a powerful network of patronage
posts and private companies linked to the state. He is generally believed to be complicit in the
opium trade, land grabs, extortion, and other rackets. One of the major sources of his power is
his relationship with the United States, Canada, and other Western countries.
American and Canadian troops have already been deployed to take control of Kandahar‘s
outskirts away from the Taliban. McChrystal‘s plan within the city itself had been to avoid an
all-out assault such as the one in Marjah. Instead he planned to increase the number of American
military police, who are partnered with local police, from one company to five companies—a
large jump in percentage terms but still fewer than 1,000 soldiers in a city of more than 500,000
people. This probably will not be sufficient to reduce Ahmed Wali‘s all-pervasive power,
considering that the local police are widely believed to be in his pocket. More troops may have to
be dispatched—and thanks to the surge, more troops should be available. Coalition forces must
try to reduce Ahmed Wali‘s power and funding and, if possible, to remove him from office
altogether as a way to build confidence among the people in their government. He may look
unassailable today, but so did Sher Mohammad Akhundzada before his ouster.
_____________
If they are to succeed in stabilizing Afghanistan, international forces will have to do more than
simply spread out across the countryside. They will also have to be more careful about how they
employ their resources to prevent their own largess from inadvertently fueling the insurgency. As
General Petraeus said in his recently released Counterinsurgency Guidance: ―Money is
ammunition; don‘t put it in the wrong hands.‖
Foreign aid is Afghanistan‘s chief source of revenue, amounting to an estimated $14 billion a
year (out of a total GDP of $23 billion). But so much is currently being stolen and misspent that
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according to the Washington Post, more than $1 billion a year in cash is leaving Afghanistan via
flights to Dubai. It may be impossible to stop the graft altogether, but it can certainly be reduced
to less catastrophic proportions through simple steps such as building more accountability into
Western contracts for logistics, construction, and other tasks.
These lucrative jobs are handed out to prime contractors who are able to navigate a Byzantine
legal process and then hire shady subcontractor firms that give kickbacks to Afghan power
brokers. This process has led to the proliferation of private security firms, which deploy veritable
armies of gunmen to safeguard trucks carrying Western supplies. As noted in a June report from
the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, ―A typical convoy of 300 supply
trucks going from Kabul to Kandahar, for example, will travel with 400 to 500 guards in dozens
of trucks armed with heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).‖
Often the contractors will attack people traveling on the highways or living around them to
ensure safe passage of their goods. When the contractors can‘t fight their way through, they
simply pay off the Taliban en route. The U.S. is happy not to deploy scarce soldiers for such
assignments, but the cost is steep. This process, the House report noted, ―fuels warlordism,
extortion, and corruption, and it may be a significant source of funding for insurgents ...
undercut[ting] efforts to establish popular confidence in a credible and sustainable Afghan
government.‖
As things stand, contractors provide precious little information about where their money goes.
Before his dismissal, McChrystal set out to change this unacceptable situation by establishing
two task forces to monitor coalition contracts and the local trucking firms that supply them.
Petraeus is putting even more emphasis on this area by appointing Brigadier General H.R.
McMaster—a brilliant and forceful officer who is famous for writing a popular book about
Vietnam and for his success in pacifying Tal Afar, Iraq in 2005-2006—to take charge of anticorruption efforts. He has only recently arrived but if given time and resources—and cooperation
from civilian agencies—he should be able to reduce the funds flowing to malign power brokers
and to the Taliban, who have a symbiotic relationship with them. It may also be necessary to
redirect some American and Afghan troops to increase security on major roads so as to decrease
reliance on private security contractors—something President Karzai has said he would support.
Nobody should be under any illusions that such efforts will transform Afghanistan into
Switzerland. But that isn‘t the goal. Afghans, like residents of Illinois and New Jersey, will
tolerate a certain degree of corruption. What they won‘t accept is the brazen, unconstrained
thievery practiced by all too many government officials today, who demand a bribe to perform
the simplest service, whether allowing a motorist to pass a checkpoint or a farmer to file a legal
grievance against an interloper who has stolen his land. Bribes are also necessary to secure many
government jobs—which in turn necessitates that officials collect more bribes to pay for the cost
of office. A recent survey of 6,500 Afghans by the international group Integrity Watch
Afghanistan found that 70 percent perceive corruption as a problem and that 50 percent
―consider that corruption fosters the expansion of the Taliban.‖ The figures are even higher in
Kandahar and other areas where, no coincidence, the Taliban have displayed the most strength.
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If coalition forces, working with honest Afghans (yes, they do exist), can reduce the overall level
of corruption, they can do much to reduce the insurgency‘s appeal. As things stand, the Taliban
posture, rather hypocritically, as the incorruptible guardians of Islamic virtue fighting against the
crooks who dominate the current government and against the foreign soldiers who are seen as
their enablers. Reduce the level of corruption and popular anger will be directed where it
belongs—against the Taliban, with their unpopular, antediluvian ideology and history of brutal,
horrifying violence.
That is a difficult task, but it is no longer as unthinkable as it was when NATO had only 50,000
troops in the country. With 140,000 foreign troops—and 130,000 soldiers in the Afghan National
Army, which is widely viewed as relatively clean—ISAF has newfound leverage to take on not
only the Taliban but also the abusive practices that enhance their appeal. And in David Petraeus,
ISAF has a commander uniquely skilled in the delicate art of fighting alongside a local
government while working to reform it.
That is precisely what he did in Iraq, where the enemies were not only al-Qaeda and other Sunni
insurgent groups but also Shiite death squads that operated from inside the Iraqi Security Forces.
Senior officials in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki‘s government, such as former Interior
Minister Bayan Jabr, were implicated in the worst Shiite excesses. In 2007, Petraeus worked
closely with U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker to pressure Maliki to act against Shiite extremists,
notwithstanding their connections to the highest levels of his own government. These efforts
were so successful that in 2008 Maliki, on his own initiative, launched a successful military
operation against the Shiite extremist stranglehold on Basra, Iraq‘s second-largest city. Many of
the erstwhile Shiite extremists remain on the scene today (indeed, Bayan Jabr himself is finance
minister), but they are no longer engaged in murderous attacks, because the overall situation has
become much more stable and peaceful.
There is no reason, in principle, why it shouldn‘t be possible to produce a similar transformation
in Hamid Karzai‘s Afghanistan. Admittedly, Afghanistan is less developed than Iraq; literacy
levels, for instance, are much lower. But there are plenty of Afghan technocrats, many of whom
have lived abroad for long stretches and who would eagerly join the government if they could do
so without becoming part of a culture of corruption. In some ways, the odds of success are
actually better than they were in Iraq because the level of violence is so much lower.
(Afghanistan experienced a record level of civilian casualties in 2010, but it was still 15 times
less violent than Iraq in the pre-surge year of 2006.)
In fact, the greatest obstacle to victory in Afghanistan may not be the conduct of Afghanis but
rather the perception that the Obama administration is headed out the door and that it won‘t take
the time to carry out difficult, lengthy tasks such as governance reform.
This concern ignores the fact that three times since taking office—during his initial policy review
in early 2009, then in the more prolonged review in the fall, and finally this June, when he
appointed Petraeus to replace McChrystal—President Obama has affirmed his support for an
ambitious war effort. Barring some catastrophic failure, it seems unlikely that he will pull the rug
out from under his newly appointed four-star commander. Even Vice President Biden, the most
vociferous advocate within the administration of a ―small footprint‖ approach, now says that in
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July 2011, there will be a ―transition‖ but not necessarily a massive withdrawal of forces—―It
could be as few as a couple thousand troops,‖ he told one interviewer.
In all likelihood, then, Petraeus will have the time and political backing necessary to tackle the
Taliban and the sources of their appeal in a serious, concerted way. That doesn‘t mean he will
necessarily succeed, but his strategy offers a much greater likelihood of progress than any
conceivable alternative.
_____________
The idea that we can strike an acceptable deal with the Taliban—one of the most popular Plan
B‘s under discussion—is especially far-fetched. While talks are evidently going on between
representatives of President Hamid Karzai and elements of the Taliban leadership, there is scant
cause to think that the insurgents are willing to give up their arms or to become a peaceful
opposition party. As CIA director Leon Panetta said on June 28: ―We have seen no evidence that
they are truly interested in reconciliation where they would surrender their arms, where they
would denounce al-Qaeda, where they would really try to become part -of that society.‖
And why should they? Since being chased out of power in the fall of 2001 by a combination of
Northern Alliance foot soldiers and American bombs, the Taliban (along with associated groups
such as the Haqqani network and the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin) have staged an impressive
resurgence with Pakistan‘s help. Although the tripling of NATO forces in the past year
represents a serious impediment to their ultimate prospects for victory, they can take heart from
evidence that the will of the foreign forces is weakening. The Dutch have already pulled out; the
Canadians say they will follow suit next year; the Poles in 2012; the British by 2015. Under such
circumstances, what incentive is there for the Taliban to compromise? As they like to say, you
have the watches, but we have the time.
Getting a significant portion of the Taliban to give up their arms will require inflicting more
military defeats on them. As one ISAF officer said to me, ―First you have to knock them on their
backs, then you can give them a hand up.‖ If the Taliban can be convinced that they have no
prospect of winning, they might actually crumble with surprising speed, as they did in the fall of
2001. The only kind of deal the Taliban might accept while they are still standing strong would
cede them dictatorial power across much of southern and eastern Afghanistan. They would then
use this power base, as they did in the 1990s, to pursue what they view as Allah‘s will by
mounting an assault on other parts of the country, starting with Kabul.
Some rural Pashtuns might see a return of the Taliban as an acceptable alternative to the kind of
predatory misrule they suffer from today. But such a deal would be significantly less appealing
for the vast majority of Afghans who take for granted freedoms that the Taliban would quickly
quash—freedoms like flying kites, listening to music, and educating their daughters. The Taliban
have no appreciable support among the 58 percent of Afghans who are not Pashtuns. Major
ethnic groups such as the Tajiks, Hazara, and Uzbeks regard a return to Taliban rule much as
Jews would regard a return to Nazism. They will not stand for it, and they will fight to stop it.
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Thus, making a deal with a still-undefeated Taliban is a recipe not for peace in our time but for a
resurgence of the terrible civil war that tore the country apart in the 1990s.
Some imagine that the consequences of allowing the Taliban back into power could be mitigated
by a small number of American Special Operations troops backed up by precision airpower. But
air strikes did not prevent Afghanistan from becoming a terrorist sanctuary prior to 9/11. Nor
have they prevented the frontier regions of Pakistan or large swaths of Somalia from becoming a
terrorist sanctuaries today. Special Operations raids are an integral part of a comprehensive
counterinsurgency strategy (they are occurring every night in Afghanistan), but they are not a
substitute for one.
In a chaotic environment that will likely resemble 1980s Lebanon on opium, how could
American Special Forces gather the intelligence they need to strike effectively? And what targets
would they hit anyway? The Taliban lack fixed assets such as tanks or factories and have a
seemingly inexhaustible supply of leaders to replace those who are killed or captured. No one
has offered a compelling explanation of how long a long-range, precision-strike option could
credibly deter the Taliban from actions detrimental to American interests.
What about, alternatively, the idea of striking deals with local leaders—meaning, effectively,
power brokers, drug dealers, and warlords—to fight the Taliban on our behalf? This strategy is
superficially more attractive. It is, after all, a course of action we have followed before, starting
with the decision by the Bush administration after 9/11 to make common cause with the
Northern Alliance. This was seen as the height of pragmatism, allowing us to deploy relatively
few troops to Afghanistan. But this approach failed before and it will fail again. Local strongmen
do not have the same interest we have in creating a safe, secure Afghanistan that will be resistant
to Taliban advances. They seek to loot as much money and accumulate as much power in their
local fiefdoms as quickly as possible, the interests of the rest of the country (and of the West) be
damned.
Supporting these men would be like paying off a mafia protection racket: it may deliver shortterm results but only at the cost of making the situation worse in the long run. Nothing is more
likely to cause another Taliban takeover than an American strategy that cedes even more power
and authority to these widely despised power brokers.
There is nothing inevitable about such a dire outcome. Victory is still eminently achievable with
a strategy that focuses not only on defeating the Taliban but also on reducing the abuses that fuel
their movement. Such a strategy may appear to be overly ambitious, but it is the only way to
keep the Taliban from returning to power—an eventuality that would make a mockery of
Obama‘s commitment ―to disrupt, dismantle, and to defeat al-Qaeda.‖ The Taliban and al-Qaeda
are bound together tighter than ever. Only by defeating the former can Petraeus ensure that
Afghanistan does not again become a safe haven for the latter.
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September/October 2010
Staying Power: The U.S. Mission in
Afghanistan Beyond 2011
Michael E. O'Hanlon
Nine years ago, the United States worked with Afghanistan's Northern Alliance to overthrow the
Taliban government in Kabul. The world was united, the cause for war was clear, and U.S.
President George W. Bush enjoyed the support of roughly 90 percent of Americans. That was a
long time ago.
Today, the war in Afghanistan is a controversial conflict: fewer than half of Americans support
the ongoing effort, even as roughly 100,000 U.S. troops are in harm's way. Troops from more
than 40 countries still make up the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), but fewer
than ten of those countries take substantial risks with their forces in the turbulent south and east
of the country. And as the Netherlands prepares to depart Afghanistan this year and Canada
remains committed to doing so in 2011, two of these coalition partners will likely soon be gone.
Meanwhile, support for the coalition among Afghans has declined to less than 50 percent from
highs of 80-90 percent early in the decade.
Over the years, the U.S. mission has lost much of its clarity of purpose. Although voters and
policymakers in the United States and elsewhere remain dedicated to denying al Qaeda safe
haven in Afghanistan, they have begun debating whether a Taliban takeover would necessarily
mean al Qaeda's return; whether al Qaeda really still seeks an Afghan sanctuary, as it did a
decade ago; and whether U.S. forces could contain any future al Qaeda presence through the
kinds of drone strikes now commonly employed in Pakistan. The most pressing question is
whether the current strategy can work -- in particular, whether a NATO-led military presence of
nearly 150,000 troops is consistent with Afghan mores and whether the government of President
Hamid Karzai is up to the challenge of governing and keeping order in such a diverse, fractious
land.
Such doubts would matter less if U.S. President Barack Obama did not seem to share them.
Obama has more than doubled the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan since taking office, and
his administration's protracted decision-making process last fall -- which resulted in the
president's authorizing 30,000 additional troops for the Afghan mission -- was deliberate,
serious, and intense. But to some in Washington, Kabul, and elsewhere, the length of that review
signaled fundamental uncertainty on the part of the president himself. Contributing to this
impression were leaks to the media that revealed major disagreements among top administration
advisers.
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Most important, in announcing his decision last December, Obama pledged to begin removing
U.S. forces from Afghanistan by July 2011. By itself, the plan to make the military buildup
temporary was not misguided or surprising; the Bush administration did much the same thing
with the surge in Iraq. But Obama seemed to be promising a fairly rapid end to the war. Indeed,
that appeared to be the message he wanted to highlight most for the U.S. Congress and the U.S.
electorate. Aware of the nation's war fatigue, Obama tried to be muscular enough to create a
chance to win the war while at the same time keeping the war's critics acquiescent.
Obama's attempt to have his cake and eat it, too, has had its downsides. To Afghans, Obama's
words signaled that U.S. forces might depart before they had sufficiently built the Afghan
security forces or achieved other key goals. Such a message may motivate some Afghans to
accelerate reforms, as the Obama administration hopes, but it will also make many of them
hedge their bets, unsure of what will come next. Obama's speech has had a similar effect in
Pakistan, where the country's traditional support for the Afghan Taliban has diminished more
slowly than it might otherwise have. Some Pakistani military leaders still consider the Afghan
Taliban to be their best defense against the potential consequences of a premature U.S. departure:
either chaos or too much Indian influence in the country. That many of these fears are
exaggerated or incorrect does not make them any less important.
In fact, the Obama administration's statements about July 2011 and realistic projections of how
long the mission will take suggest that no sudden withdrawal will occur. Given the nature of the
Afghan insurgency's dramatic recovery since 2005 and the reasons Obama agreed to a major
troop increase in the first place, the drawdown will likely be gradual, with at least 50,000 U.S.
troops still in Afghanistan through 2012.
TALIBAN RESURGENCE, U.S. RESPONSE
In 2005, the Taliban and other insurgent groups began one of the most impressive comebacks
against a U.S.-led military coalition in history. By the time Obama came into office, the United
States had to develop a new strategy for a largely new war -- and one it was losing.
Such was the context for the Obama administration's fall 2009 policy review. Those in the
administration who opposed sending more troops to Afghanistan -- apparently including Vice
President Joe Biden, National Security Adviser James Jones, and Karl Eikenberry, U.S.
ambassador to Afghanistan -- did so because of reasonable skepticism. After all, Washington had
sent more than 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in early 2009, and just a few months later
the military was asking for tens of thousands more. The skeptics also believed that Afghanistan,
with its tribal society and weak traditions of loyalty to the state, was not a promising place for a
classic counterinsurgency operation. They argued that the twin goals of such an operation -protecting the population and guiding the Afghan security forces toward self-sufficiency -- were
inconsistent with Afghanistan's history, culture, and society.
In the end, however, the president decided that the skeptics did not offer a viable alternative
strategy. The Bush administration had already tried a light-footprint approach in Afghanistan,
and it had resulted in the Taliban's comeback -- including at least a fivefold increase in violence
since 2005.
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Since 2005, the Taliban and other insurgent groups -- such as the Haqqani network, another
extremist Pashtun movement straddling central parts of the Afghan-Pakistani border -- had
substantially improved their battlefield tactics. Several years ago, insurgents would sometimes
mass a large number of fighters for battle only to lose quickly to Afghan security forces or to
NATO reinforcements once they arrived. In the summer of 2006, for example, Taliban fighters
sought to establish control over a large swath of southern Afghanistan but were defeated by a
combination of Afghan, Canadian, and other NATO forces. By the end of 2009, however, the
Taliban were typically launching large-scale coordinated operations against small, vulnerable
NATO outposts, as in the city of Wanat in 2008 and in the Kamdesh District of Nuristan
Province in 2009. More commonly, in smaller-scale attacks, insurgents adopted the practice of
detonating roadside bombs to create initial injury and panic and then firing small arms against
any incapacitated vehicles and Afghan and NATO security forces.
The Taliban had become, in many ways, a smarter insurgent force. They rarely targeted civilians
with the sort of widespread and brutal bombings that al Qaeda in Iraq once commonly
perpetrated. Indeed, compared to many war-torn lands and even to high-crime countries, such as
Colombia, Mexico, Nigeria, or South Africa, Afghanistan remained a safer place for normal
citizens in per capita terms. But the Taliban and other insurgents made life very dangerous for
NATO soldiers, Afghan security forces, and Afghan government officials. In 2009, the NATOled coalition lost 500 soldiers, about half the total from the previous seven years combined, and
the Afghan security forces lost 1,000 personnel (mostly police). Meanwhile, assassinations of
political, business, civic, and tribal leaders increased, too.
The Taliban also developed a shadow government that allowed it to provide an alternative (if
crude) judicial system in southern Afghanistan, especially in rural areas. And it did so in a
manner often considered fairer than the government's corrupt and plodding ways. The Taliban
had learned to present a kinder, gentler face, so to speak, than it had when it ruled Afghanistan
from the mid-1990s until 2001. The group remained widely disliked -- with 90-95 percent
viewing it unfavorably in most polls -- but it had softened the population's anger. At the same
time, in classic Mafia style, it continued to carry out just enough violence to be feared.
By late 2009, NATO intelligence estimated that the Taliban included at least 25,000 dedicated
fighters, nearly as many as they had before 9/11 and far more than they had in 2005. The Taliban
also had substantial influence in most key districts of Afghanistan -- keeping government
officials away, requiring compliance with their edicts on property disputes and other legal
matters, and sometimes taxing the population. These factors -- coupled with the fact that the
Taliban and the Haqqani network remained fundamentally opposed to the Afghan constitution
and believed they were winning the war -- led the Obama administration to conclude that the
prospects were not good for high-level reconciliation with Afghan insurgents.
Against this backdrop, the administration decided it had little choice but to try a classic
counterinsurgency approach. A light footprint could not arrest the Taliban's momentum, change
the atmosphere of intimidation that the insurgency had created among Afghans, or protect the
human intelligence networks needed to carry out even a limited counterterrorism strategy. Nor,
the administration calculated, could it give the United States the leverage necessary to reform
and strengthen the Afghan government. The best approach, then, was to carry out a limited state69
building mission aimed at developing Afghan security forces that could dependably control their
own territory and civilian governance institutions that could provide some degree of law and
order and gradual economic progress. The Obama administration rightly considered this the
likeliest way to achieve its narrow goal of stopping the Taliban from retaking power and, in turn,
of preventing al Qaeda and related groups from regaining substantial sanctuaries on Afghan soil.
BATTLEFIELD UPDATE
The U.S. approach -- originally crafted by General Stanley McChrystal, now being implemented
by General David Petraeus, and supported by such civilians as U.S. Ambassador Eikenberry;
Mark Sedwill, NATO's senior civilian representative in Afghanistan; and Staffan de Mistura, the
UN special representative in Afghanistan -- focuses on the south and east of the country, where
insurgent activity has been greatest and where local populations have been most inclined to
support or tolerate the insurgency. The approach is discriminating: of nearly 400 districts
nationwide, U.S. forces are placing primary emphasis (in terms of military and civilian
resources) on 81 and secondary emphasis on 41. The initial goal is to establish a contiguous zone
of safety throughout the south and the east in which the population can feel relatively secure,
Afghan institutions can take root, and transportation and commerce can develop.
There have already been major pockets of success, especially in southwestern Afghanistan's
Helmand Province. To be sure, progress in the town of Marja, where the U.S. military launched a
high-profile operation in February, remains slow. But that operation was overemphasized, both
as a barometer of the war's momentum and as a model for future operations, because Marja had
been a Taliban stronghold without any government presence; most major towns and cities feature
a less visible insurgent presence combined with some degree of government capacity. As a
whole, Helmand Province is improving, with most major population centers now opening
schools and markets, farmers moving away from poppy as their preferred crop, and overall levels
of violence dropping. (NATO and the Obama administration should better measure and
document this progress; as it is now, observers must rely too much on anecdotal information and
conversations with military and civilian officials, such as those I had when I visited Afghanistan
in May.)
Such promising trends are not present, however, in Kandahar, the region that includes southern
Afghanistan's largest city and that the Taliban consider their spiritual and historic capital. The
number of assassinations of political leaders and tribal elders in Kandahar is up severalfold over
the last few years, to at least one or two a week. Overall, rates of violence in the region have
roughly tripled since 2006, according to ISAF figures.
Neither has the tide of battle turned against the insurgency on a national scale. From 2009 to
2010, overall levels of violence rose by 25-50 percent (depending on the metric used), and the
Taliban showed increasing willingness to target civilians. ISAF currently estimates that only 35
percent of the priority districts have "good" security or better, a figure unchanged from late 2009;
the number of such districts with "satisfactory" security has improved modestly, from 40 percent
in late 2009 to 46 percent in the spring of 2010. Although the situation is not worsening, many
priority districts still have only mediocre levels of security.
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But it should not be surprising that the level of violence is still rising. The reduction of violence
is a lagging, not a leading, indicator of success; in Iraq, for example, troop casualty levels
increased through the first six months of the surge, as additional U.S. troops entered the country.
Also, as its forces have tripled in size over the last two years, ISAF has been initiating far more
contact with the enemy than before. And although U.S. commanders do not emphasize this point
because enemy body counts are not a highly reliable measure of success, they acknowledge that
the coalition is now far more effective when it comes to arresting and killing key insurgent
leaders than it was just last year. Crucially, while making these adjustments, the coalition has
kept civilian casualties low. McChrystal's directives on reducing the use of force around civilians
have apparently reduced the proportion of ISAF-caused civilian casualties from 40 percent in
2008 to 25 percent in 2009 and less than 20 percent in 2010.
Yet such statistics hardly capture the full state of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. Two other
factors get to the heart of what is involved in strengthening and legitimating the Afghan state: the
development of the Afghan security forces and the fight to curb endemic corruption. The first is
generally a good news story, at least with regard to the Afghan army; the second remains grim
and calls for some new ideas from ISAF, the international community, and Afghans themselves.
TRAINING AND MENTORING
In the war's early years, the processes for recruiting, training, equipping, and fielding the Afghan
security forces were quite poor. U.S. commanders told me last year, for example, that through
2008, only 25 percent of Afghan police officers received any professional training at all. Those
who did receive training got too little and then almost no follow-up once deployed. Members of
the security forces often reported to incompetent or corrupt leaders in the field and received pay
that was too low to constitute a living wage. This dearth of resources was the result of
Afghanistan's poverty and the economy-of-force philosophy that was guiding foreign actors.
NATO and Afghan officials have dramatically improved the situation. Since late 2009 -- when
U.S. Lieutenant General William Caldwell, commander of the NATO training mission in
Afghanistan, began working with troops from Canada and the United Kingdom to direct the
initial training, equipping, and fielding of the Afghan security forces -- the number of personnel
completing basic training and unit training each year has more than doubled. The quality of
training is up, too, largely because teacher-to-student ratios have more than doubled (despite
ongoing shortages of trainers). In the Afghan army, the better of the main security institutions,
20,000 recruits are in training at all times, and the force is on pace to reach its interim goal of
134,000 soldiers by this fall. This is partly because the army has increased soldiers' base pay,
their pay for deployment to dangerous parts of the country, and other compensation. The rate at
which new recruits are joining the force is now twice the rate at which soldiers are leaving.
Afghan enlistees who are illiterate -- the vast majority of them -- now receive mandatory literacy
training. To train noncommissioned officers -- those who really make good militaries work at the
ground level -- NATO has set up impressive new courses that focus on technical skills and on
how to lead small units. And at the national military academy, which trains officers, enrollment
and graduation rates have doubled in the last year. IASF has also convinced the Afghan
government to improve the procedures for selecting officers and assigning them to duty after
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graduation. As a result, according to NATO officers involved in the training, nepotism and
favoritism have declined. In addition, almost every officer from this year's graduating class is
headed out to the field, unlike in years past, when political pressures kept graduates within
Kabul. These innovations have begun to yield results in combat, with increasingly positive
reports of the performance of Afghan army formations against insurgents in the south and east of
the country.
The approach devised by McChrystal emphasizes long-term partnering between ISAF and
Afghan units, which now (for the first time) train, plan, deploy, patrol, and fight together. As of
early summer 2010, about 85 percent of all Afghan army units were engaged in such partnering,
which allows Afghans to be mentored and to build confidence, since they know that, if
ambushed, they will have some of the world's best soldiers fighting alongside them. It also gives
NATO forces a direct view of the corruption within the Afghan ranks. Thus, ISAF officials can
suggest that the Afghan minister of defense take remedial or disciplinary action regarding certain
commanders in the field.
The mission to train the Afghan security forces still has difficulties, especially with regard to the
police. On average, the police remain less competent and more corrupt than the army. ISAF's
approach to training the police remains weaker than its approach to the army: ISAF relies largely
on private contractors as trainers because soldiers are considered suboptimal for the task and
because there are not enough Italian carabinieri or other NATO police officers in Afghanistan to
handle the job. Even counting contractors, the training mission has roughly 1,000 fewer trainers
than it needs. There are also too few police personnel available to partner with those Afghan
police who have completed their initial training. To address such shortfalls, the U.S. government
could ask for more help from NATO allies, such as Canada, France, and Italy. Additionally, it
could create a program to allow police officers from the United States to take "sabbaticals" to
work for a year in Afghanistan.
Overall, the Afghan security forces are making strong progress. Indeed, their improvement is
likely to be constrained less by the limited capacity of foreign trainers than by the corruption and
institutional weakness throughout Afghan society. Curbing that corruption and weakness is the
crux of the United States' challenge.
CORRUPTION, CONTRACTING, AND KANDAHAR
The Afghan government has limited reach across its territory because it is hampered by a lack of
human capital and an excess of corruption. Of the 122 Afghan districts receiving special
emphasis from ISAF, only about ten will have representatives from the Afghan government by
the end of 2010, and only ten more are expected to receive representatives in 2011. To mitigate
the problem, international personnel and Afghan leaders are trying to use the traditional shura
(council) consultation process to give all tribes and communities a voice in setting development
priorities. The National Solidarity Program, an initiative of the Afghan Ministry of Rural
Rehabilitation and Development, can then provide cash grants to the communities represented by
shuras (or by the related bodies known as community development councils). NATO military
commanders and civilian personnel can often disperse funds in a similar fashion. Thus, there are
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a number of bodies promoting local order and development that are imperfect but much better
than nothing.
The Afghan government is one of the most corrupt in the world. Piles of cash from Afghanistan
make their way to Dubai every day, often taken from foreign aid budgets intended for
development projects. Positions in government are routinely sold to the highest bidder, who then
sells subordinate positions -- and the process ends with Afghan citizens having to pay bribes for
virtually all government services.
The Afghan government's Major Crimes Task Force has undertaken at least one prominent
prosecution, of a former minister of mines, Muhammad Ibrahim Adel, but the case is proceeding
very slowly. More than a dozen other officials are under indictment or investigation for
wrongdoing. These proceedings constitute a promising but still modest trend.
The corruption problem is particularly acute in Kandahar, where a mix of Afghan politics and
NATO logistical needs is actually reinforcing the very corruption that fuels the insurgency. As a
U.S. congressional report highlighted in June, ISAF relies on a system of private companies and
security firms -- militias -- to transport supplies, construct roads and buildings, and protect vital
supply lines and military bases. In so doing, the coalition not only tolerates but also strengthens a
corrupt local order led by the syndicates of Gul Agha Sherzai (a former governor of Kandahar
who is now governor of Nangarhar, in eastern Afghanistan, but whose family remains powerful
in Kandahar) and Ahmed Wali Karzai (the head of Kandahar's provincial council and a half
brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai). These syndicates are far more powerful than the
offices of the provincial governor or the mayor of Kandahar, both of whom are appointed by the
president. Like the Mafia, the Sherzai and Karzai families control economic and political favors
throughout the province. They continue to earn money from ISAF -- and especially from the
United States -- because U.S. procurement and contracting laws require any company winning
U.S. contracts to fill out onerous paperwork and comply with other red tape. The Sherzai and
Wali Karzai families are often corrupt, but only they have the personnel to fill out such forms,
maintain contracting requirements, and produce rapid results on the ground. (Sometimes they
pay off insurgents not to attack convoys; this achieves the immediate goal of getting supplies
through, of course, but strengthens the insurgency in the process.)
Most NATO officials are aware of this paradoxical problem but have not produced a cogent
strategy for addressing it. And although NATO forces in the area have good plans for how to
strengthen the ability of the governor and the mayor to serve their constituents, that process will
take time that the coalition may not have. Thus, U.S. forces risk destroying Kandahar as they try
to save it. After all, corruption contributes to the insurgency as much as the Taliban's fanatical
ideology does; the insurgency's strength in and around Kandahar is largely the result of certain
tribes' becoming angry because they do not share in the region's wealth and choosing therefore to
provide recruits to insurgent forces.
The U.S. military's recently formed Task Force 2010 has begun to provide oversight aimed at
reducing abuses among Afghan contractors and subcontractors. In addition, the U.S. Congress
could allow more flexibility in the application of U.S. contracting procedures in war zones, so
that the military could reduce its complete dependence on groups such as the Sherzai and Karzai
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syndicates. Existing Afghan power brokers may object to ISAF efforts to work with a wider
array of local actors, but ISAF need not cut off the former to improve the situation. The
imperative is to spread the wealth more effectively -- to ensure that more tribes and powerful
leaders have a stake in the current strategy and are therefore less likely to support the insurgency
as a form of protest. This approach would require explaining to the existing power brokers that
any violence they perpetrate against local competitors will jeopardize their ability to win
business in the future. And now is the time to act, since local resistance to such changes will be
easier to control while U.S. forces are still increasing their spending; it is easier to implement a
new approach when the contracting pie is growing rather than shrinking.
WHAT IT TAKES
NATO's two-part mission in Afghanistan -- to protect the population while gradually training
Afghan forces to assume that responsibility on their own -- can be set to an approximate
schedule.
Counterinsurgency doctrine suggests that a security force of 600,000 is needed to ensure robust
security throughout a country of 30 million people, such as Afghanistan. But any doctrine is only
approximate. In the case of Afghanistan, the ratio of 20 security personnel for every 1,000
civilians probably needs to be applied only in those parts of the country where Pashtuns
predominate, since only there is the insurgency intense. Among the rest of the population -approximately 55 percent -- a ratio of fewer than 10 security personnel for every 1,000 citizens
would likely suffice. This implies that security in Afghanistan could be maintained by a
competent force of roughly 400,000 troops.
By the end of 2010, ISAF will have nearly 150,000 troops in Afghanistan. The Afghan security
forces will number about 250,000, with perhaps 150,000 of those in decent shape or in strong
partnership arrangements with NATO troops. That means that there will be roughly 300,000
competent security personnel in place, half foreign and half indigenous -- about 100,000 forces
shy of the overall requirement of 400,000. Given that shortfall, some parts of the country will
have to be left relatively unguarded into 2011. According to current ISAF projections, it will take
until late 2011 for Afghan security personnel to number 300,000. Making the force 350,000
strong would take most of 2012, and reaching 400,000 would take until 2013.
As the Afghan security forces build toward 400,000 competent personnel, ISAF forces will be
needed for two main reasons: to make up the difference between the available Afghan forces and
the goal of 400,000 troops and to train and mentor those Afghan forces. How many forces are
needed for the second mission? Afghan-ISAF partnering needs to be intense for roughly one full
year after a unit is formed, and the current partnering approach requires ISAF units to team up
with Afghan units of similar size or perhaps larger ones that are better trained. Thus, for
example, a NATO battalion of 1,000 soldiers might pair with a relatively weak Afghan battalion
of 1,000 or a relatively strong Afghan brigade of 3,000. Recognizing that such details will be
worked out on a case-by-case basis and that all projections are therefore approximate, one can
estimate that to add 75,000 Afghan personnel to the security forces, NATO would need to
provide roughly 35,000 trainers, mentors, and partners for them. (Even if it required 50,000
trainers or only 25,000, the U.S. mission would be lengthened or shortened by only a few
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months.) In addition to the trainers, NATO would also need to deploy additional forces to boost
the aggregate (Afghan and foreign) security personnel to reach the 400,000 goal.
Consider where the U.S. mission will be in mid-2012, when Obama will likely be running for
reelection. According to ISAF projections, by then the Afghan security forces will have about
300,000 troops formed into units (plus some tens of thousands more in training but not yet
deployable). If ISAF deploys 35,000 troops to train, mentor, and partner with Afghan units, that
would make for a total security force of 335,000 in the country. For the total to reach 400,000,
another 65,000 ISAF troops would be needed. There would then be 100,000 ISAF soldiers in
total, and given likely allied contributions by that point, roughly 65,000 of those would be
American. The bottom line, then, is that Obama would be asking voters to reelect him when
there were still well over 50,000 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
According to current projections, the Afghan security forces could reach 400,000 by mid-2013.
But even then, 75,000 Afghan soldiers would still require the help of an ISAF mentoring force of
approximately 35,000 troops -- two-thirds, or more than 20,000, of whom would likely be U.S.
troops.
To be sure, these are optimistic estimates. Troop requirements would increase if parts of
Afghanistan besides the south and the east proved more dangerous than expected or if the
planned ISAF approach proved deficient. And there is also the matter of how U.S. policy may
evolve, especially regarding the vague July 2011 deadline that Obama has set.
DECIPHERING A DEADLINE
Thankfully, it appears unlikely that the United States will rapidly depart from Afghanistan
starting in July 2011. For one, the campaign plan drafted by McChrystal and Eikenberry last
summer envisioned having at least three years to fight the Taliban and train the Afghan security
forces. By the summer of 2011, the Afghan security forces will still be well short of their
necessary size and competence.
In light of such practical considerations, there are major strategic and political reasons why
Obama is unlikely to reduce the U.S. commitment dramatically. Since his presidential campaign
began, he has declared the Afghan-Pakistani theater his top national security priority. Because he
has gained full ownership of this war by now, to accelerate the U.S. departure prematurely -before the insurgency was weakened and Afghan forces adequately improved -- would risk being
seen as conceding defeat in a war that he chose and led. And although an anxious Congress may
push him to withdraw, the fear of seeming weak on national security will probably pull at least as
firmly in the other direction.
To discern the likely significance of July 2011, it is perhaps most instructive to look at the words
of key administration officials and military leaders. In announcing the so-called Afghan surge
last December, Obama said, "These additional American and international troops will allow us to
accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our
forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011. Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this
transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground." He added, "It must be clear
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that Afghans will have to take responsibility for their security. . . . That is why our troop
commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended -- because the nation that I am most interested
in building is our own."
Several high-ranking officials spoke about the July 2011 date in the days after Obama's
announcement. "While there are no guarantees in war, I expect that we will make significant
headway in the next 18-24 months. I also believe that we could begin to thin our combat forces
in about the same time frame," said Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, meanwhile, testified to Congress that "beginning to transfer
security responsibility to the Afghans in summer 2011 is critical -- and, in my view, achievable.
This transfer will occur district by district, province by province, depending on conditions on the
ground. . . . The United States will continue to support [Afghans'] development as an important
partner for the long haul. We will not repeat the mistakes of 1989, when we abandoned the
country only to see it descend into chaos and into Taliban hands."
Months later, in May, at a press conference with Karzai, Obama elaborated on the deadline:
"Beginning in 2011, July we will start bringing those troops down and turning over more and
more responsibility to Afghan security forces that we are building up. But we are not suddenly,
as of July 2011, finished with Afghanistan." The next month, in June, General Petraeus quoted
Obama in emphasizing to Congress that the United States would not be "switching off the lights"
in Afghanistan in July 2011.
These comments suggest a plan to withdraw U.S. troops gradually over several years, not
precipitously in July 2011. To be sure, some officials have characterized that month as a major
turning point. In perhaps the administration's most emphatic utterance, Biden reportedly told the
journalist Jonathan Alter, "In July of 2011 you're going to see a whole lot of people moving out.
Bet on it." And indeed, Obama is preserving some wiggle room so that if he judges next year that
the war is clearly being lost, the United States could accelerate its drawdown and cut its losses,
effectively acknowledging the failure of the current strategy. But that is not the existing plan, and
nearly all public statements have emphasized that the troop reductions will be responsible, based
on conditions on the ground, and gradual over a period of years.
The notion that the ISAF mission will be completed by July 2011 is not consistent with the
conditions in Afghanistan, the U.S. campaign plan, or public utterances on the subject by
administration officials. Indeed, it is likely that Obama will run for reelection with more than
50,000 U.S. troops still in Afghanistan, and with no realistic prospect of bringing them all home
early in what would be his second term. He will have doubled U.S. expenditures on the war
during his first term, and he may well also have presided over a doubling of U.S. casualties. The
price for success will be high. But the United States and its partners can likely achieve a
significant level of success -- represented by an Afghan state that is able to control most of its
territory and gradually improve the lives of its citizens -- if ISAF and other key actors contain
Afghan corruption and demonstrate several more years of resolve in what is already the United
States' longest war.
Reprinted by permission of FOREIGN AFFAIRS, (September/October 2010). Copyright
(2010) by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
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A Winnable War
With a new commander and a renewed commitment from the commander in chief,
we will make military progress in Afghanistan.
BY Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan
July 5 - July 12, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 40
The Weekly Standard
Success in Afghanistan is possible. The policy that President Obama announced in December
and firmly reiterated last week is sound. So is the strategy that General Stanley McChrystal
devised last summer and has been implementing this year. There have been setbacks and
disappointments during this campaign, and adjustments will likely be necessary. These are
inescapable in war. Success is not by any means inevitable. Enemies adapt and spoilers spoil.
But both panic and despair are premature. The coalition has made significant military progress
against the Taliban, and will make more progress as the last surge forces arrive in August.
Although military progress is insufficient by itself to resolve the conflict, it is a vital
precondition. As the New York Times editors recently noted, ―Until the insurgents are genuinely
bloodied, they will keep insisting on a full restoration of their repressive power.‖ General David
Petraeus knows how to bloody insurgents—and he also knows how to support and encourage
political development and conflict resolution. He takes over the mission with the renewed
support of the White House.
Neither the recent setbacks nor the manner of McChrystal‘s departure should be allowed to
obscure the enormous progress he has made in setting conditions for successful campaigns over
the next two years. The internal, structural changes he made have revolutionized the ability of
the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to conduct counterinsurgency operations. He
oversaw the establishment of a three-star NATO training command that has accelerated both the
expansion and the qualitative improvement of the Afghan National Security Forces in less than a
year. He introduced a program of partnering ISAF units and headquarters with Afghan forces
that had worked wonders in Iraq—and he improved on it. He oversaw the introduction of a threestar operational headquarters to develop and coordinate countrywide campaign plans. He has
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managed the massive planning and logistical burden of receiving the influx of surge forces and
putting them immediately to use in a country with little infrastructure.
While undertaking these enormous tasks of internal reorganization, he has also taken the fight to
the enemy. The controversies about his restrictions on the operations of Special Forces and rules
of engagement that limit the use of destructive force in inhabited areas have obscured the fact
that both Special Forces and conventional forces have been fighting harder than ever before and
disrupting and seriously damaging enemy networks and strongholds. Targeted operations against
Taliban networks have increased significantly during McChrystal‘s tenure, and the Taliban‘s
ability to operate comfortably in Afghanistan has been greatly reduced. ISAF forces have killed,
captured, or driven off numerous Taliban shadow governors and military commanders. They
have pushed into areas the Taliban had controlled and eliminated safe-havens.
The story of Marjah is particularly illustrative. Before this year, Marjah was a Taliban sanctuary,
command-and-control node, and staging area. Taliban fighters based there had been able to
support operations against ISAF and coalition forces throughout Helmand Province. Lasting
progress in Helmand was simply not possible without clearing Marjah. McChrystal cleared it.
The Taliban naturally are trying to regain control of it. ISAF and the ANSF are trying to prevent
them.
The attempt to import ―governance‖ rapidly into the area is faltering, which is not surprising
considering the haste with which the operation was conducted (driven at least partly by the
perceived pressure of the president‘s July 2011 timeline). The attempt was also ill-conceived.
Governance plans for Marjah emphasized extending the influence of the central government to
an area that supported insurgents precisely because it saw the central government as threatening
and predatory. Although ISAF persuaded President Hamid Karzai to remove the most notorious
malign actor in the area from power, Karzai allowed him to remain in the background, stoking
fears among the people that he would inevitably return. The incapacity of the Afghan
government to deliver either justice or basic services to its people naturally led to disappointment
as well, partly because ISAF‘s own rhetoric had raised expectations to unrealistic levels.
The biggest problem with the Marjah operation, however, is that it was justified and explained
on the wrong basis. Marjah is not a vitally important area in principle, even in Helmand. It is
important because of its role as a Taliban base camp. It was so thoroughly controlled by the
insurgents that the prospects for the rapid reestablishment of governance were always dim. It was
fundamentally a military objective rather than a political one, and McChrystal made a mistake by
offering Marjah as a test case of ISAF‘s ability to improve Afghan governance. What matters
about Marjah is that the enemy can no longer use it as a sanctuary and headquarters. ISAF‘s
military success there has allowed the coalition to launch subsequent operations in the Upper
Helmand River Valley, particularly the more strategically important contested area around
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Sangin. The Marjah operation has so far succeeded in what it should have been intended to do.
The aspects that are faltering should not have been priorities in that location.
Kandahar differs from Marjah in almost all respects. Kandahar City is not now a Taliban
stronghold, although the Taliban are present in some force in its western districts and can stage
attacks throughout the city. The Taliban had controlled the vital neighboring district of
Arghandab until newly arrived American forces began contesting it in September 2009. The
insurgents remain very strong in Zhari, Panjwayi, and Maiwand Districts to the west and south of
Kandahar City, but they do not control any of those areas as completely as they controlled
Marjah.
An even greater difference is that Kandahar City and the surrounding districts are strategically
important terrain. It is much too strong to say ―as Kandahar goes, so goes Afghanistan‖—the
coalition could succeed in Kandahar and still lose the war. But it is very hard to imagine winning
the war without winning in Kandahar. It is the most populous city in Afghanistan‘s Pashtun belt,
the historical base of the Pashtun dynasties that formed and ruled Afghanistan for most of the last
250 years, and the birthplace of the Taliban itself, as well as the home of the Karzai family. It is
also geographically important as the major city at the southwestern tip of the Hindu Kush and the
junction of the roads from Herat, Kabul, and Quetta (in Pakistan). For all of these reasons,
enduring stability in Kandahar underwritten by acceptable and effective governance is an
essential precondition for success in Afghanistan in a way that stability in Marjah simply is not.
The Marjah operation nevertheless offers important lessons about how to approach Kandahar.
McChrystal had already rightly abandoned the idea of parachuting government officials into
cleared areas around Kandahar before his departure. He was focusing instead on trying to get the
government officials already in place to build local support for the operation. That effort,
manifested by several jirgas and shuras (gatherings of officials and elders) over the past few
months, has been faltering. McChrystal had recognized the problem before his departure, which
is one reason he had announced a delay in the planned clearing operations around Kandahar.
Petraeus now has the opportunity to revisit this approach to building local support for the
operation and correct it.
It is too soon to say which of the various alternative approaches Petraeus will adopt or whether it
will succeed. Learning, adapting, and trying different approaches are not the same as failing or
losing. On the contrary, these are an essential part of success. American forces in Iraq
experimented with a variety of approaches over years throughout the country before hitting on
the right set of solutions. Under McChrystal‘s command, ISAF was moving through similar
phases in Afghanistan much more rapidly. Since Petraeus has already shown his ability to
explore alternatives until he finds one that works, there is reason to have some confidence that he
will do so in Kandahar and in Afghanistan more generally.
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Recent news reports have exposed what those who know Kandahar have long understood—that
the predominance of Ahmad Wali Karzai, the president‘s half-brother, alienates a significant
portion of the population and is itself a major driver of instability and insurgency. Excellent
reporting by Dexter Filkins of the New York Times and others has revealed the degree to which
U.S. and ISAF contracting practices have reinforced this predominance and thus contributed to
the problem. Does Ahmad Wali‘s kinship with the president make this problem intractable—thus
rendering the entire effort hopeless? Here the example of Iraq may be illuminating.
Between 2003 and 2005 it appeared that the largest problem in Iraq was the Sunni insurgency
and the al Qaeda organization with which it interacted symbiotically. In 2006 it became apparent
that the problem was larger than that. Shiite militias had been systematically cleansing Baghdad
and other mixed areas of their Sunni populations, fueling the insurgency and deepening the hold
of al Qaeda, which seemed to offer the Sunni communities under assault their most reliable
protection. Individuals within the Iraqi government actively supported the Shiite militias. The
deputy health minister allowed them to use ambulances to drive death squads around Baghdad.
The Iraqi National Police were badly infiltrated and committed horrendous atrocities at the
orders of officials within the government. The minister of finance had brought into the National
Police the infamous Wolf Brigade of the Badr Corps that set the standard for sectarian brutality.
Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki tolerated this behavior and protected some of those who were
engaged in it.
Maliki is still prime minister (for now). The sectarian deputy health minister (who escaped trial
by intimidating the judges) has been elected to the new parliament. The Badr Corps finance
minister remained in position, as did many others engaged in sectarian activities that were
fuelling the insurgencies. But the Shiite death squads have stopped cleansing. The National
Police are now welcomed in Sunni districts they once terrorized. Maliki himself led military
operations against the strongholds of the most dangerous Shiite militias, in Basra and Sadr City,
in 2008. Some of the worst offenders were removed from power, but many were not. What is
both remarkable and promising is that even those who remained were persuaded to stop engaging
in the activities that were driving Iraq toward unlimited sectarian civil war by the end of 2006.
The cessation of malign behaviors can be as important as the removal of malign actors, in
Afghanistan as well as in Iraq.
Iraqi sectarian actors did not suddenly see the light and embrace diversity. They changed their
behavior in response to a wide array of pressures brought on them and their patrons by the entire
American team, from General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker down to soldiers in the
streets. Petraeus and Crocker in particular adopted a highly nuanced approach to the problem.
When they had strong information (not necessarily legal evidence) that particular leaders were
behaving badly, they confronted the prime minister with that information as a policy matter
rather than a legal one. Lower level commanders did the same thing with their counterparts
within the Iraqi Security Forces. In some cases, American units simply partnered with
misbehaving Iraqi units so closely that the Iraqis could not engage in malign behavior.
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As these efforts were going on, Petraeus and Crocker inserted American forces into contested
neighborhoods and effectively took control of the ground. Their presence changed the
equation—local people reported on the misbehavior of Iraqi officials; American forces took
notice and, when appropriate, took action. By simultaneously taking the fight into the safehavens and strongholds of the Sunni insurgents and Al Qaeda in Iraq, U.S. forces reduced the
capability of those terrorists and began to bring down the violence. As the overall level fell,
Shiite militia violence, which had been to some extent concealed by the spectacular attacks of al
Qaeda, became more prominent, reinforcing the pressure on malign Shiite actors to take a knee.
The fact that American forces then remained in the neighborhoods for a couple of years
permitted the emergence of a political process based on new calculations and facilitated the
restoration of the most basic confidence among Sunnis that the government was not committed
to their annihilation.
The problem in Afghanistan is similar. Power-brokers are not engaged so much in tribal
cleansing or death squads, but they do use their own private security companies to enforce order,
sometimes at the expense of marginalized groups who fuel the insurgency. Ahmad Wali Karzai
is the most prominent example of such a powerbroker, but he is far from unique. A sound ISAF
strategy would attempt to remove malign actors where necessary and possible, but also work to
shape them and the environment in which they operate in ways that persuade or prevent them
from engaging in the malign behavior that is fueling the insurgency and preventing stable
governance from taking hold. Improving the way ISAF contracts with local companies—a
process that has already begun—is part of the solution, but only part. ISAF will have to refocus
its efforts at every level away from a binary choice between removing and empowering the
malign actors, and toward the kind of nuanced approach that was successful in Iraq,
appropriately modified.
There are never any guarantees in war. But the fact that efforts now will be led by General David
Petraeus, with his record of judgment and creativity, is grounds for confidence that we can
succeed.
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Obama's Choice
He did the right thing, picking Petraeus and committing to success.
BY William Kristol
July 5 - July 12, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 40
The Weekly Standard
Let us now praise Barack Obama.
Someone should. The left, weary of the effort in Afghanistan, is uneasy about the appointment of
General David Petraeus to replace General Stanley McChrystal—sensing that this was not the
action of a president laying the groundwork for getting out. Conservatives, deeply (and correctly)
suspicious of much of the rest of Obama‘s foreign policy, can‘t quite bring themselves to believe
that the president may actually be doing the right thing.
But he is. Petraeus would not have taken the extraordinary step down the chain of command to
take direct control in Afghanistan if he weren‘t convinced that the mission, appropriately
managed and resourced, can be accomplished—and that the president is committed to success.
Petraeus doesn‘t intend to supervise a holding action for a decent interval until retreat and defeat.
So Petraeus will modify the campaign plan, review the rules of engagement (or at least their
implementation), and generally upgrade the military counterinsurgency effort. Will the president
for his part move to make the needed changes on the civilian side to complement Petraeus‘s
actions? For now, Obama seems willing only to hint that he‘s unhappy with the pathetic anklebiting and turf wars that characterize the tenures of Afghanistan-Pakistan special envoy Richard
Holbrooke and ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry. The president will replace them,
sooner rather than later.
Can we be confident that Obama is really going for victory? I think so. Consider his speech
Wednesday, when he announced the replacement of McChrystal with Petraeus. After referring to
our ―vital mission‖ in Afghanistan, to doing ―whatever is necessary to succeed in Afghanistan,
and in our broader effort to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda,‖ he urged us ―to remember
what this is all about. Our nation is at war. We face a very tough fight in Afghanistan. But
Americans don‘t flinch in the face of difficult truths or difficult tasks. We persist and we
persevere.‖
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Obama didn‘t say we persist and we persevere—but only until July 2011. Indeed, Obama never
mentioned that date, and he never mentioned withdrawal.
The next day, at a press conference with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, Obama was asked
whether the change in command in Afghanistan altered his ―timetable for withdrawal.‖ In
response, he reiterated that, above all,
we had to be very clear on our mission. Our mission, first and foremost, is to dismantle and
destroy al Qaeda and its affiliates so that they can‘t attack the United States. . . . In order to
achieve that, we have to make sure that we have a stable Afghan government, and we also have
to make sure that we‘ve got a Pakistani government that is working effectively with us to
dismantle these networks.
He went on to explain that he had ordered additional troops to Afghanistan ―to provide the time
and the space for the Afghan government to build up its security capacities, to clear and hold
population centers that are critical, to drive back the Taliban, to break their momentum.‖ And
that ―next year we would begin a transition phase in which the Afghan government is taking
more and more responsibility for its own security.‖
So there‘s still an intention—as there also was during Bush‘s surge in Iraq—ultimately to hand
over more responsibility to the locals. But Obama hastened to add:
We did not say that starting July 2011, suddenly there would be no troops from the United States
or allied countries in Afghanistan. We didn‘t say we‘d be switching off the lights and closing the
door behind us. What we said is we‘d begin a transition phase in which the Afghan government
is taking on more and more responsibility.
The only thing Obama could have done to more dramatically minimize the significance of the
July 2011 date would have been explicitly to repudiate it. He should do that, and in a few months
he may.
Compare Obama to his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, speaking just a few days earlier on ABC‘s
This Week. Emanuel stressed that July 2011 is
a firm date. . . . What will be determined at that date or going into that date will be the scale and
scope of that reduction. . . . The July 2011 date, as stated by the president, that‘s not moving.
That‘s not changing. . . . And the goal is to take this opportunity, focus on what needs to get
done, and then on July 2011, begin the reduction of troops.
Emanuel‘s comments now seem, post-McChrystal, no longer operative. And with the timetable
mostly de-fanged, with July 2011 as the beginning of a ―transition phase,‖ with Petraeus in
charge and more changes to come—Emanuel and the antiwar forces within the administration
have lost. As a result, Afghanistan can now be won.
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The Wall Street Journal
Why Negotiate With the Taliban?
Military progress is being made in Afghanistan. There's no reason to alienate moderate
Pashtuns.
By FREDERICK W. K AGAN A ND K IMBERLY K AGAN
March 16, 2010
The Wall Street Journal
Do America and its allies seek enduring stability in Afghanistan or a temporary resolution of the
conflict? The current pressure for an Afghan government-led "reconciliation" process with the
Taliban is much more likely to lead to the latter.
While such reconciliation talks may provide a "decent interval" for the withdrawal of
international forces, they are unlikely to achieve the long-term strategic objective of denying
sanctuary to violent Islamist groups. At worst, this approach could result in renewed civil war.
Reconciliation with the Taliban is only one part of a lasting settlement to this conflict, and it
must be combined with an effort to redress the grievances of local Pashtun communities.
Yet the international community has already defined the major outlines of a reconciliation plan.
It did so in the communique that came out of a major conference in London this past January.
First, negotiations must be "Afghan-led." This means that the current Afghan government has the
power to make all the key decisions about who to negotiate with and what deals to make.
Second, the talks should focus exclusively on the Taliban, rather than on the broader Pashtun
community.
The presumed need to negotiate with Taliban senior leadership requires giving Pakistan a major
voice in the internal Afghan negotiations. The international community has offered a billion
dollars to support this effort, creating a significant new source of patronage for Afghan President
Hamid Karzai and his associates.
Any reconciliation must satisfy the most important Afghan constituencies, and this certainly
includes the government. But the interests of America and its allies diverge from those of the
current Afghan government. President Karzai is primarily interested in consolidating his hold on
power. American interests require creating conditions that will prevent the recurrence of
insurgency and the consequent re-emergence of terrorist safe-havens. These goals do not
necessarily align.
More specifically, the current reconciliation process empowers the Taliban while denying a
voice to the much larger population of alienated Pashtuns who do not identify with the Taliban.
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Who speaks for disaffected Pashtuns? Mr. Karzai does not. Many Pashtuns see the Karzai
government as unjust. Grievances against the government include its corruption and the
imposition of sometimes predatory government officials on communities. These grievances fuel
passive support for the insurgency and sometimes direct action against the government and the
foreign forces supporting it. Such complaints must be identified and redressed as part of any
enduring peace process. As of now, the international community is ignoring the issue by
empowering the Taliban as the only interlocutor for these Pashtuns.
Worse still, the current process encourages Pakistan to continue to see the Taliban as its principal
leverage to achieve its objectives in Afghanistan. The emphasis on negotiating with senior
Taliban leaders whom Pakistan funds, equips and protects means that these individuals will
continue to be Islamabad's most important strategic assets in the negotiation process. The
international community should instead be working to marginalize Taliban senior leaders and
persuade Pakistan to abandon its support of these proxies.
Giving Mr. Karzai and his associates another billion dollars with which to control this process
only increases the grievances of non-Taliban Pashtuns who resent the patronage networks that
exclude them. It also encourages every aggrieved Pashtun to identify himself as a Talib in order
to get a share of the loot. Finally, it undermines leverage the international community might have
had to push Mr. Karzai to renegotiate the power-sharing arrangements that are now driving
violence in Afghanistan.
Fortunately, another approach is starting to emerge on the ground in Afghanistan. The new
strategy and the surge of forces to support it have begun to turn the tide on the battlefield by
moving into enemy strongholds, partnering with Afghan Security Forces, and expanding
operations across the country.
The Taliban and its allies, who seemed to have the initiative when Gen. Stanley McChrystal took
command in June 2009, are now on the defensive. A few Pashtun tribes, sensing a possible
change in the wind, have begun to reach out to coalition forces. In January, for example, elders
of the Shinwari Tribe in Southern Nangarhar Province submitted a written declaration to U.S.
forces of their determination to fight against the Taliban. Tribes in Lowgar Province and
elsewhere in Eastern Afghanistan have made similar approaches.
The Afghan government has shown discomfort with these approaches. Nangarhar Governor Gul
Agha Sherzai has opposed what he calls "cash payments" to the tribes. Of course he does:
Agreements between local tribes, coalition forces, and even Afghan National Army forces
circumvent local power-brokers and undermine their ability to control.
We should not expect an "Anbar Awakening" in Afghanistan that mirrors the tribal rejection of
al Qaeda in Iraq in 2007. Conflict resolution in each tribal area and village will be unique. And
we must resist the temptation to try to develop a national program to bypass these local
initiatives in search of some elusive "grand bargain."
Enduring stability can result only from the redress of local grievances. International forces can
and must play a mediating role between local communities and the Afghan government.
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Military progress is steadily improving dynamics on the ground. The U.S. and its allies are wellplaced to help Mr. Karzai in constructive ways, as long as we abandon the search for a magic
bullet and work instead to achieve an enduring peace.
Reprinted from The Wall Street Journal © 2010 Dow Jones & Company. All rights
reserved.
Beradar, Pakistan, and the Afghan Taliban: What
Gives?
Ashley J. Tellis
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
March 2010
Summary
The recent arrests of several high profile Afghan Taliban leaders by Pakistan have raised
expectations that Islamabad‘s longstanding support for the ―Quetta shura‖ may at last be waning.
The arrests have prompted the view that Pakistan has indeed changed its traditional strategy of
protecting the Afghan Taliban leadership. Unfortunately, the realities are less encouraging. A
closer look at the recent arrests suggests that:



The seizure of Mullah Beradar and some others was prompted by U.S. intelligence
initiatives, was entirely fortuitous, and certainly not part of any premeditated detention
plan by Pakistan.
Although several other arrests have taken place entirely on Pakistani initiative, some of
these detentions involve low-level al-Qaeda associates, whose arrests are consistent with
Islamabad‘s standing policy of aiding the United States.
Of the remaining Afghan Taliban leaders arrested independently by Islamabad, many are
either not particularly significant or represent a housecleaning by Pakistan‘s military
intelligence.

As a result, the Afghan Taliban‘s leadership in Pakistan is certainly not decimated. Nor do
Pakistan‘s actions constitute the ―sea change‖ in its behavior, as some observers have argued.
Instead, they represent a recalibration of Pakistan‘s evolving policy: rather than supporting the
declared U.S. goal of defeating the Taliban, the recent arrests exemplify a Pakistani effort to
seize control over the process of negotiations and reconciliation that its military leaders believe is
both imminent and inevitable in the Afghan conflict. And it is emphatically motivated by the
conviction that India, not the Afghan Taliban, is the main enemy to be neutralized in the Afghan
endgame.
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Introduction
Over a month ago, the New York Times broke the dramatic news that Mullah Abdul Ghani
Beradar Akhund, the Afghan Taliban‘s second-in-command and the head of its military
committee, was apprehended in Karachi in a secret joint operation by Pakistani and U.S.
intelligence operatives. Initial reports about the arrest were confusing, but the news was certainly
welcome: the arrest was the first detention of a rahbari shura (leadership council) member since
the arrest of Mullah Obaidullah Akhund in 2007, and this operation was apparently led by
Pakistan‘s military intelligence agency, the Directorate, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The ISI
traditionally played a key role in protecting the fugitive Afghan Taliban leadership in Pakistan
and for this reason, its role in this operation raised questions about whether Islamabad‘s
longstanding strategies toward New Delhi and Kabul were at last changing. Beradar‘s surprise
arrest was quickly followed by a wave of other detentions: Maulavi Abdul Kabir, the former
Taliban governor of Nangarhar and the eastern provinces and also a member of the rahbari
shura, was picked up a few weeks later, and within a month the Christian Science Monitor was
reporting that ―nearly half of the Afghanistan Taliban‘s leadership‖ had been arrested by the ISI,
―dealing what could be a crucial blow to the insurgent movement.‖
Pakistan‘s sudden cooperation in targeting the Afghan Taliban‘s core leadership—after almost a
decade of feigning ignorance about the shura‘s presence within the country—surprised many and
raised expectations in Washington that Islamabad‘s decision signaled a quiet but decisive shift in
Pakistan‘s geostrategic policy. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Senator John
Kerry argued that the Beradar operation represented ―a new level of cooperation‖3 between
Pakistan and the United States. Bruce Reidel, the convener of President Barack Obama‘s task
force on Afghanistan and Pakistan, was more expansive: speaking to the New York Times, he
asserted that Islamabad‘s action regarding Beradar constituted a ―sea change in Pakistani
behavior,‖ also claiming subsequently that it ―was not a one off or an accident, but a turning
point in Pakistan‘s policy towards the Taliban.‖ David Ignatius, writing in the Washington Post,
reported that many White House officials held similar views, some even maintaining that
Pakistan‘s latest decisions constituted a ―strategic recalibration‖ of the U.S.–Pakistan
relationship to include renewed cooperation on counterterrorism. And White House press
secretary Robert Gibbs even offered a reason why when he declared that Islamabad‘s newly
rejuvenated effort against the Afghan Taliban shura is rooted in ―the recognition on the Pakistani
military side that extremists in their country posed not simply a threat to us, but an existential
threat to them.‖
Making Sense of the Arrests
Were the above claims true, it would be great news indeed, not only for the United States and
Afghanistan, but also for Pakistan‘s long-term political prospects. But is it? And does Pakistan‘s
recent targeting of the Afghan Taliban truly represent a ―turning point‖ in how it views the value
of this insurgency? The answers to these questions are vital, particularly as the United States
commits to sustained military operations in Afghanistan. If Islamabad has in fact changed course
and put an end to the state-supported sanctuary that had benefited the Taliban, the impediments
to the insurgency‘s success increase considerably.
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Unfortunately, the realities are less encouraging—at least on the issue of whether Pakistan is in
fact changing course strategically with regard to the Afghan Taliban. First, one must evaluate the
facts surrounding the arrests. Although the arrest of Mullah Beradar was in fact a joint operation
conducted by the ISI and U.S. intelligence, there is little doubt now that Beradar‘s Pakistani
captors had no idea that he was among the individuals apprehended at the Karachi madrassa at
the time of his capture. Although the operation itself was initiated in response to a U.S. tip, it is
as yet unclear whether even U.S. intelligence officials knew for a fact that Beradar would be
present at this location when the operation began. That the ISI partnered in the operation and
physically made the arrest itself is not surprising, given that the United States has no legal
authority to apprehend, detain, or interrogate anyone in Pakistan. In fact, joint ISI-CIA seizures
of terrorism targets in Pakistan invariably take this form: U.S. sources provide critical data about
the suspect and the ISI directorates that liaise with U.S. intelligence then collaborate to complete
the arrest.
Weeks after the event, enough information has now surfaced to suggest that the Pakistanis held
Beradar for some time before even realizing his identity. Because U.S. intelligence assets were
deeply involved throughout in this operation, albeit in ways respectful of Pakistani sensitivities,
it would have been difficult for the ISI to simply release Beradar after he was discovered. (This
has occurred in several other instances when individuals too embarrassing to detain have simply
been released quietly by their ISI captors.) The news leaks of his capture soon after he was
identified in custody made it even more difficult for the ISI (and its more shadowy directorates)
to simply ―lose‖ him surreptitiously.
Whatever else may be at issue, Beradar‘s arrest was certainly not part of any premeditated
detention plan by the ISI—and as such cannot be counted as evidence of any dramatic change of
course by Pakistan, or at least one that involves conclusively turning its back on the rahbari
shura. As if to make this point plain, the ISI did two other things even as Beradar‘s detention in
Pakistani custody was underway. First, it continued to release other Taliban leaders who
managed to get inadvertently caught in other counterterrorism dragnets elsewhere in Pakistan.
And, second, it began to warn key Taliban protectees about the enhanced counterterrorism
sweeps underway, pushing some operatives even further underground while warning others to
exercise better operational security, given the mishaps that had just befallen Beradar through his
(and his cohort‘s) careless communications.
Key Arrests in Pakistan in 2010
1. Mullah Abdul Ghani Beradar - Second-in-command of the Afghan Taliban
2. Maulavi Abdul Kabir - Commander of Taliban fighters in eastern Afghanistan and
former Taliban governor of Nangarhar province
3. Mullah Abdul Qayoum Zakir - Former Guantanamo Bay detainee
4. Mullah Muhammad Hassan - Former Taliban minister
5. Mullah Ahmed Jan Akhunzada - Former Taliban governor of Zabul
6. Mullah Abdul Raouf - Taliban leader in northeastern Afghanistan
7. Agha Jan Mohtasim - Former Taliban finance minister
8. Mullah Abdul Salam - Taliban ‗shadow governor‘ of Kunduz
9. Mullah Mir Mohammed - Taliban ‗shadow governor‘ of Baghlan
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10. Mullah Muhammad Younis (a.k.a. Akhunzada Popalzai) – Former Taliban police
chief in Kabul
11. Ameer Muawiya - Osama bin Laden associate in charge of foreign al-Qaeda militants in
Pakistan‘s border areas
12. Abu Hamza - Former Afghan army commander in Helmand province during Taliban
rule
13. Abu Riyad al Zarqawi - Liaison with Chechen and Tajik militants in Pakistan‘s border
area
14. Abdolmalek Rigi - Jundallah leader
15. Chota Usman (aka Iliyas) - Taliban commander accused of operating a Taliban court in
the Mohmand Agency
16. Umar Abdul Rehman - Taliban operative
17. Abu Yahya Mujahdeen al-Adam – al-Qaeda operative
But don‘t these actions run counter to all the other arrests of Afghan Taliban leaders by the ISI?
Indeed they do—and therein lies a tale. To be sure, the Pakistani intelligence services
apprehended several other individuals in the aftermath of Beradar‘s seizure, although some of
these arrests have yet to be confirmed independently. The earliest such detentions, however,
including the two Afghan Taliban ―shadow governors,‖ were not products of any Pakistani
initiative. Rather, they resulted from information secured through Beradar‘s interrogation, which
was kept secret for as long as possible because, as one news report put it, ―American officials …
were determined to roll up as much of the Taliban‘s leadership as they could.‖ This questioning,
initially conducted by the ISI, was closely monitored by the United States, and even though U.S.
intelligence was denied physical access to him at the very beginning, grilling Beradar
nonetheless yielded fruit because, odd as it may seem at first sight, some ISI directorates are
actually more cooperative with their U.S. counterparts on counterterrorism matters than some
others.
Several subsequent arrests, however, took place entirely on Pakistani initiative, but there may be
less here than meets the eye. For example, although the international press has widely trumpeted
the notion that half of the Taliban‘s ―top‖ leadership is now behind bars, these claims are
grounded largely on either Pakistani claims or poor information about the composition of the
rahbari shura and the structure of its relationships with the four regional shuras and their
subordinate formations. Even a cursory survey of those Taliban leaders detained by Pakistan
since mid-February shows that besides Mullah Abdul Ghani Beradar Akhund and Maulavi Abdul
Kabir, none of the other captives are likely members of the rahbari shura. Two of the individuals
arrested, Mullah Abdul Salam and Mullah Mohammad, are Taliban ―shadow governors‖ who,
however impressive these titles sound, are neither involved in formulating Taliban strategy or
directing its military operations against coalition forces in Afghanistan. Shadow governors in the
Taliban structure are essentially ―enforcers.‖ They are responsible principally for meting out the
harsh justice that is the Taliban trademark in the areas under its control, rather than making
strategic decisions or planning military activities against the coalition. Thus the arrest of the two
shadow governors is less significant from a political and an operational point of view than it
appears.
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Of the remaining fifteen-odd detainees, the most interesting captures are those who might be
problematic for Pakistan‘s evolving national strategy toward Afghanistan. At least two of the
individuals arrested, Mullah Abdul Rauf Aliza and Mullah Ahmed Jan Akhundzada, are Durrani
Pashtuns who, besides being members of the same tribal confederation as President Hamid
Karzai, arguably were potential threats to the Gilzai Pashtun leadership of the ISI‘s key protégé,
the Afghan Taliban‘s emir Mullah Mohammed Omar. These men also are among the more
moderate voices within the Taliban and reputedly have been supporters of Mullah Beradar‘s
efforts to explore Karzai‘s overtures at reconciliation. As Thomas Johnson and Chris Mason
have acidly concluded, these particular arrests do not signify particularly transformative actions
on the part of Pakistan. Rather, as they put it, ―the Quetta Shura has used the ISI, its loyal and
steadfast patron, to take out its trash. Those few mullahs suspected of being amenable to
discussions with the infidel enemy and thus ideologically impure have now been removed from
the jihad. This is not cooperation against the Taliban by an allied state; it is collusion with the
Taliban by an enemy state.‖ The remaining detainees are low-level al-Qaeda associates whose
arrest by the Pakistanis is quite consistent with Islamabad‘s longstanding policy of aiding the
United States to target al-Qaeda in the settled areas of Pakistan, even as it protects the senior
shura of the Afghan Taliban simultaneously.
On balance, therefore, the recent arrests in Pakistan do not signify Islamabad‘s turn against the
Afghan Taliban leadership writ large, only a turn against some of its members, as it has done
intermittently before. In the most important cases, the arrests now touted as evidence of a ―sea
change‖ in Pakistani behavior happen to be fundamentally accidental and, in some instances,
unavoidable consequences of initially fortuitous events. The seizures that seem to have been
entirely a product of Islamabad‘s initiative appear to be either self-serving or the continued
targeting of acknowledged adversaries such as al-Qaeda. The purported shift in Pakistan‘s
approach to the Afghan Taliban, then, turns out to be less a change in its national strategy than a
recalibration—and certainly not of the kind that some American officials imagine or hope for.
The fact that the most significant captures in Pakistan were inadvertent and the less noteworthy
ones intended to clean house while simultaneously signaling Islamabad‘s continuing centrality
for success in Afghanistan suggests that the reorientation is not intended to bring Pakistan closer
to the declared U.S. goal of defeating the Taliban but, rather, to better reposition Islamabad in
what it believes is now the endgame in Afghanistan. As Carlotta Gall and Souad Mekhennet
summarized succinctly, ―Pakistan‘s arrest of the top Taliban military commander may be a
tactical victory for the United States, but it is also potentially a strategic coup for Pakistan….
Pakistan has removed a key Taliban commander, enhanced cooperation with the United States,
and ensured a place for itself when parties explore a negotiated end to the Afghan war.‖
Pakistan‘s Policy Calculus
A genuine transformation in Pakistan‘s strategy toward the Afghan Taliban would involve two
components: first, an acceptance of the notion that the Taliban, and not India, represents the
biggest threat to success in Afghanistan; second, and flowing from that foundational principle, a
willingness to sacrifice the rahbari shura in order to help defeat the insurgency so that the
current U.S. stabilization effort in Afghanistan might succeed. Nothing in Pakistan‘s current
actions suggests an acceptance of these two elements. To the contrary, the recent captures seem
little more than a Pakistani response to the belief that because an early American exit from
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Afghanistan is inevitable, Islamabad must do everything within its power to inject itself ever
more vigorously into the strategic direction of the insurgency. The urgency for such forceful
intervention is driven by the conviction that if a ―reconciliation‖ with the Taliban is to define the
termination of the Afghan conflict, Pakistan must not find itself, as its officials now tell Western
interlocutors, ―standing in the wrong corner‖ when the music finally stops.
This concern has in fact become central to Islamabad‘s calculations since President Obama‘s
December 1, 2009, speech on U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. Prior to that address, Pakistani
defense and intelligence officials were coming around to the possibility that the United States
would remain militarily involved in Afghanistan over the long term. Obama‘s December speech,
however, with its formal enunciation of a July 2011 deadline for beginning the drawdown of
American forces, put paid to those expectations. All of a sudden, Pakistani security managers
had to reckon with the possibility that the United States would once again precipitously depart
Afghanistan, leaving their hated rival, India, in an established position of privileged access in
Kabul. All taken together, New Delhi‘s substantial reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, the
consistently high support among Afghans for India‘s development contributions, and the warm
relationship India enjoys with the Karzai regime unnerve Islamabad and arouse fears that a
withdrawing United States will leave behind a hostile Indian presence on its western borders and
increased threats in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and in Balochistan. Further, the
emerging certainty in Islamabad that the Afghan conflict will end not through a political-military
victory that brings the Taliban to the negotiating table on coalition terms but through a
―reconciliation‖ process has only strengthened the Pakistani conviction that it cannot afford to
lose out in Afghanistan at the tail end, when it had done a remarkably good job thus far of
protecting its interests by keeping the Afghan Taliban‘s shura more or less safe and in line
during the last decade of intense conflict.
The January 2010 London conference was, in many ways, the turning point in this regard. As a
result of conspicuously absent American leadership, the meeting‘s British hosts were able to
position political reconciliation with the shura as the centerpiece of the Afghan endgame. This
approach differs considerably from the current U.S. stance, which views any reconciliation—if it
can be consummated at all—as either the culmination of political-military success in the
contested areas or contingent on key conditions that the Taliban has rejected historically:
renunciation of all ties with al-Qaeda; acceptance of the Afghan constitution; laying down of
arms and the cessation of rebellion; and agreement to the Afghan government‘s oversight of the
reconciliation process. Because this American position was eclipsed at London by the British
drumbeat for early negotiations with the shura itself, the perception that the Afghan conflict was
rapidly turning in the direction of reconciliation with the Taliban leadership—in order to
facilitate a speedy coalition military exit from the country—began to deepen in Islamabad. This
view is undoubtedly far removed from official U.S. expectations of how the Afghan conflict is
likely to evolve. Most American policy makers expect energetic counterinsurgency operations
for some time to come, a U.S. military presence in Afghanistan that lasts many years, enhanced
efforts at reintegrating the Taliban‘s rank and file (vice negotiating with the shura on the latter‘s
terms), and a progressive strengthening of the Afghan state to ensure a relatively uneventful exit
of coalition forces eventually.
91
This is categorically not the expectation in Islamabad. Policy makers there imagine that an
American departure is far more imminent than advertised and that Washington, consequently, is
looking to smoothen that exit by attempting negotiations directly with the shura itself. Given
these perceptions, the recent Pakistani arrests of some Taliban leaders represent an adjustment
that is intended to serve two objectives simultaneously. First, it signals the United States that
Islamabad can reach the Taliban leadership as and when required, despite years of denying any
knowledge of its whereabouts. No other inference is yielded by the fact that Islamabad could
rapidly roll up half a dozen wanted fugitives—individuals who ostensibly could not be found for
the better part of the decade—within two weeks once it put its mind to the task. By apprehending
them so rapidly, Islamabad seeks to highlight its centrality to the future of American success in
Afghanistan even as it subtly reinforces the importance of Washington accepting General Ashfaq
Kayani‘s offer of the ISI as the principal mediating conduit for all discussions on reconciliation
with the shura. Islamabad believes that any reconciliation would require that Pakistan‘s primary
clients, the Ghilzai Pashtuns represented by Mullah Omar, be given a formal share of power in
Kabul. This integration at the highest levels of the Afghan state would occur as part of a complex
bargain wherein the Taliban promise to renounce al-Qaeda and give up their armed struggle in
exchange for the exit of all coalition forces from the country. Whether these assurances can be
enforced once NATO departs Afghanistan is another matter, but the attractiveness of such a deal
from Islamabad‘s point of view is obvious: by placing its clients in the seat of power in Kabul,
an ISI-brokered reconciliation allows Pakistan to acquire a key role in shaping Afghanistan‘s
strategic direction, which above all would be conditioned by the exigencies of Pakistan‘s
ongoing struggle with India.
General Kayani candidly spelled out Islamabad‘s aims in a rare press briefing recently by stating,
―We want a strategic depth in Afghanistan.‖ Elaborating further, he noted that ―‗strategic depth‘
does not imply controlling Afghanistan,‖ but ―if Afghanistan is peaceful, stable and friendly, we
have our strategic depth because our western border is secure…. [Then,] you‘re not looking both
ways.‖ This fervid struggle for strategic depth has characterized Pakistan‘s policies toward
Kabul since at least the time of the Soviet Union‘s departure in 1989. It drove Pakistan‘s efforts
to support the Taliban throughout the 1990s and it has undergirded the ISI‘s decision to protect
Mullah Omar and his cohort since their ejection from power in December 2001. Today, as the
departure of the United States from Afghanistan looms large in Islamabad‘s perception, the
Pakistani military anxiously seeks to control the transition in order to secure the three elements
essential to strategic depth: a friendly government in Kabul (one that preferably includes
Pakistan‘s clients in its inner sanctum); the ejection of India from Afghanistan or, failing this, a
sharply reduced Indian presence and influence; and, finally, the acquisition of preponderant
influence, if not a formal veto, over Afghanistan‘s strategic choices and geopolitical direction.
These goals, which are important enough for Pakistan to warrant the country‘s protection of the
Afghan Taliban leadership for years, are still vital enough to justify the arrest of a few Taliban
leaders, if such actions promise to bestow on Islamabad increased influence in shaping the final
outcome in Afghanistan to its advantage.
Second, seizing some Taliban officials who do not serve Pakistan‘s current purposes is a signal
to the Afghan Taliban‘s rahbari shura that all discussions about reconciliation with Karzai (and
with the coalition more generally) must occur solely through Pakistani interlocutors and in a
manner that is mindful of Pakistani interests. Such a reminder, even to the senior shura, which
92
has long been protected by the ISI, is essential from Islamabad‘s point of view because this
group has on many occasions declined to blindly follow Pakistan‘s directives or pursue
Islamabad‘s aims when these conflicted with its own interests. Throughout the years when the
Taliban have been both in and out of power, they have often behaved as unruly agents pursuing
goals not favored by their principals in the ISI and the Pakistani military. Whether these
pertained to the surrender of Osama bin Laden, the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, the
strict implementation of sharia in Afghanistan, or the regressive attitude toward women‘s
education, the leadership of the Afghan Taliban frequently pursued autonomous policies that
undermined and caused much embarrassment to their Pakistani sponsors. Preventing a recurrence
of such behavior on the issues that matter—when Islamabad judges the endgame to be underway
in Afghanistan—is critical to Pakistani strategy because it could impact Pakistani efforts to limit
the spread of Indian influence in Afghanistan. It will also determine whether Islamabad can
resolve its own outstanding disputes with Kabul on favorable terms.
From Pakistan‘s point of view, the stakes are simply too high. And given their significance,
focusing the shura‘s attention on its vulnerabilities through a few pointed arrests would be
certainly worth the sacrifice if it elicits a stronger Taliban commitment to Islamabad‘s interests
in Afghanistan. Playing hardball in this way is not new to the ISI. But under the present
circumstances it also reflects a dramatic upsurge in confidence in Islamabad. Most Western
observers, engrossed by Pakistan‘s increasing economic woes and its unstable internal
circumstances, appear to have overlooked the self-assurance that has characterized Pakistan‘s
strategy since the London Conference―an event that conclusively highlighted India‘s
international isolation on the key issues of defeating the insurgency and negotiating with the
Taliban. This vindication of Pakistan‘s advocacy of integrating the Taliban into Afghan
governance structures occurred at a time when the Pakistani military too feels increasingly
confident that it has, thanks to American assistance, put its most dangerous internal threat, the
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, on the defensive. Its successful military operations in the troubled
Federally Administered Tribal Areas now unambiguously reinforce, in Pakistan‘s view,
Islamabad‘s standing as a credible ally on counterterrorism. This belief has empowered Pakistani
leaders not only to demand—as Pakistan‘s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi phrased
it—that the United States ―do more‖ to help Pakistan since the latter has ―already done too
much,‖ but also to require of their Afghan Taliban clients greater concord with Islamabad‘s own
interests.
Not surprisingly, the most recent round of Pakistani arrests appears to be accompanied by earnest
internal negotiations between the movement‘s representatives and the ISI. Even if Islamabad‘s
maneuverings eventually result in a formal Taliban presence within the Afghan government,
there is of course no guarantee that this regime would become a puppet of the Pakistani state.
Based of past events, it is likely that such an authority would, despite being beholden to
Islamabad, retain sufficient freedom of maneuver. As a further example, even the Taliban
government that held power in Kabul from 1996–2001 refused to accept the legitimacy of the
Durand Line, much to the chagrin of its protectors in Pakistan. Pakistan‘s relations with the
Afghan Taliban are therefore delicate, to say the least. Yet in spite of the group‘s obduracy and
its antediluvian worldview, Islamabad will continue to support it because that remains the best of
all available options today—while concurrently attempting to discipline it in order to shape its
political choices and bring it more firmly in line with Pakistan‘s own strategic interests. An
93
occasional seizure of a few Taliban leaders may be just the thing to concentrate the shura‘s
attention.
Conclusion
The dramatic captures of some Taliban officials by Pakistan during the last several weeks have
turned out to be less significant than they first appeared. Far from presaging surrender, or the
demise, of the Taliban‘s senior shura, these arrests—at least those that were not accidental—
represent an effort by Islamabad to exert control over the process of negotiation and
reconciliation that all Pakistani military leaders believe is both imminent and inevitable in the
Afghan conflict. And it is emphatically motivated by the conviction that India, not the Afghan
Taliban, represents the main enemy to be neutralized in the Afghan endgame. Given these
complex impulses, the recent seizures of a few Taliban leaders by Pakistan isn‘t much of a
turning point in Islamabad‘s traditional strategy after all.
The Wall Street Journal
SEPTEMBER 3, 2009, 7:34 P.M. ET
Afghanistan Is Not 'Obama's War'
Republicans should never do to President Obama what many Democrats did to
President Bush.
By DAN SENOR AND PETER WEHNER
Wall Street Journal
In his column for the Washington Post on Tuesday, the influential conservative George Will
provided intellectual fodder for the campaign among some Republicans to hang the Afghanistan
war around the Obama administration's neck. Washington, he wrote, should "keep faith" with our
fighting men and women by "rapidly reversing the trajectory of America's involvement in
Afghanistan." "Obama's war," a locution one is now beginning to hear from other conservatives,
is an expression of discontent that has been smoldering beneath the surface for several months.
The weakening public support for continuing the counterinsurgency campaign is not surprising.
In the midst of an economic crisis people are tempted to draw inward. Add to that a general war
weariness in the U.S. and the fact that the Afghanistan war is not going well right now—violence
in Afghanistan is already far worse this year than last—and you have the makings of an
unpopular conflict.
But the case of conservative opposition to the war in Afghanistan—as well as increasingly in
Iraq—is symptomatic of something larger: the long history of political parties out of power
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advancing a neo-isolationist outlook. For example, Democrats were vocal opponents of President
Reagan's support for the Nicaraguan contras and the democratic government in El Salvador, the
U.S. invasion of Grenada, the deployment of cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe, and the
forceful stand against the Soviet Union generally.
Many Democrats were also uneasy with or outright hostile to the policies of President George
H.W. Bush. That included strong criticisms of the U.S. liberation of Panama and widespread
Democratic opposition to the first Gulf War, which only 10 Senate Democrats voted to authorize.
The tables were turned in the 1990s: Then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay called Kosovo
"Clinton's war" and a majority of Senate Republicans voted against a bombing campaign, even
after the Serbs had created half-a-million refugees in Kosovo and were on a path to destabilizing
southern Europe. And, unlike today, this was not at a time of economic insecurity at home. Nor
were we shouldering the military burden alone (18 other nations fought alongside us in the
Balkans). Conservatives also argued that President Clinton's strikes against Saddam Hussein's
Iraq in 1998 were meant to distract the nation's attention from the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In
2000, in a sharp rebuke of the Clinton administration's nation-building, Condoleezza Rice—then
a top adviser to presidential candidate George W. Bush—said that the 82nd Airborne should not
be walking kids to school.
In this decade, Democrats were fierce opponents of President Bush's Iraq policy, going so far as
to declare the war lost and doing everything in their power to stop the surge—which turned out
to be enormously successful—from going forward.
Our concern is that this tendency for the party out of (executive) power to pull back from
America's international role and to undermine a president of the opposing party will gain
strength when it comes to President Obama's policy on Afghanistan.
The president deserves credit for his commitment earlier this year to order an additional 17,000
troops for Afghanistan, as well as his decision to act on the recommendation of Gen. David
Petraeus and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to replace the U.S. commander in Afghanistan with
Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
These were tough and courageous decisions. The president's actions have clearly unsettled some
members of his own party, who hoped he would begin to unwind America's commitment in
Afghanistan. Mr. Obama not only ignored their counsel; he doubled down his commitment.
There should therefore be no stronger advocates for Mr. Obama's Afghanistan strategy than the
GOP.
The war in Afghanistan is a crucial part of America's broader struggle against militant Islam. If
we were to fail in Afghanistan, it would have calamitous consequences for both Pakistan and
American credibility. It would consign the people of Afghanistan to misery and hopelessness.
And Afghanistan would once again become home to a lethal mix of terrorists and insurgents and
a launching point for attacks against Western and U.S. interests. Neighboring governments—
especially Pakistan's with its nuclear weapons—could quickly be destabilized and collapse.
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Progress and eventual success in Afghanistan—which is difficult but doable—would, when
combined with a similar outcome in Iraq, constitute a devastating blow against jihadists and help
stabilize a vital and volatile region.
We also believe supporting the president's Afghanistan policy is politically smart for
Republicans. For one thing, isolationist tendencies don't do well in American politics. Even in a
war as unpopular as Vietnam, George McGovern's "Come Home, America" cry backfired badly.
So has every attempt since then. There is no compelling evidence that the congressional GOP
was politically well served in the 1990s by opposing intervention in the Balkans.
In addition, indifference or outright opposition to the war would smack of hypocrisy, given the
Republican Party's strong (and we believe admirable) support for President Bush's post-9/11
policies, its robust support for America's democratic allies, and its opposition to rogue regimes
that threaten American interests. Republicans should stand for engagement with, rather than
isolation from, the world. Strongly supporting the president on Afghanistan would also be a sign
of grace on the part of Republicans. We know all too well how damaging it was to American
foreign policy to face an opposition that was driven by partisan fury against our commander in
chief. Republicans should never do to President Obama what many Democrats did to President
Bush.
Mr. Obama's policies shouldn't be immune from criticism; far from it. Responsible criticism is a
necessary part of self-government. And we are particularly concerned about reports that retired
Marine Gen. James Jones, Mr. Obama's national security adviser, told Gen. McChrystal earlier
this summer not to ask for more troops and that the Obama White House is wary to offer what
Gen. McChrystal says he will need to succeed.
We do believe, however, that Republicans should resist the reflex that all opposition parties
have, which is to oppose the stands of a president of the other party because he is a member of
the other party. In this instance, President Obama has acted in a way that advances America's
national security interests and its deepest values. Republicans should say so. As things become
even more difficult in Central Asia, it's important to keep bad political patterns we have seen
before from re-emerging.
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Iraq
Iraq's postwar stability is crucial
Jamie M. Fly and John O. Noonan
October 6, 2010
Politico
Heading out on the election trail, the Senate left behind a critical piece of business that could
affect national security and U.S. interests in the Middle East for decades to come.
In August, the last U.S. combat forces left Iraq, leaving behind a liberated nation. A few months
before the final elements of the U.S. Army‘s 4th Stryker Brigade were crossing the Kuwait
border, the Senate Armed Services Committee rejected the Obama administration‘s request for
$1 billion to fund the Iraqi security forces. This denial was on top of a $550 million cut from the
supplemental to cover State Department funding for the sustainment of a strong U.S. diplomatic
presence there.
The Senate will have a chance to restore funding for Iraqi security forces if the defense
authorization act is brought back for consideration during the lame-duck session after the
elections.
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) justified his decision to halve our investment in Iraq‘s security by
pointing to figures — recently confirmed by the Government Accountability Office — reflecting
a surplus in Baghdad‘s budget. What he failed to mention is that those funds are already
committed to paying off Iraq‘s national debt.
Helping Iraq pay its bills during a period of U.S. economic turmoil may seem unnecessary. But it
is useful to remember that this is a modest investment in the health of a fragile ally, in the center
of a volatile region, whose stability is critical to U.S. interests.
The United States has expended considerable blood and treasure in Iraq. Though impressive
economic, political and military gains have been made in recent years, the Baghdad government
remains weak. It still relies on the United States for a broad spectrum of critical support tasks,
without which years of progress would unravel. Iraq has nearly a half-million security forces but
still cannot protect its own borders, control its airspace or adequately protect crucial economic
nodes like oil pipelines and ports.
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Iraq is likely to require years of training and force modernization to wean its army and police off
U.S. logistical and intelligence support, years more for those units to stand unassisted against
foreign and domestic threats. Given Iraq‘s difficult region, it is likely to require a well-trained,
well-equipped military to defend Baghdad‘s territorial integrity and afford its citizens the
opportunity to prosper.
To shortchange this effort risks unraveling the hard-won gains created by the U.S. troop surge. It
might even mean that Iraq could revert to the internecine conflict that plagued the country in the
years after the U.S. invasion in 2003.
While Baghdad‘s political system has made important gains since 2008, this progress is not
irreversible — even with last Friday‘s news that Iraq‘s Shiite bloc is prepared to press ahead in
forming a national government.
Democracy is still a new concept in the Middle East. Building a sturdy political infrastructure,
educating the public on how a parliamentary system works, restoring faith in the courts and
police and protecting those institutions from internal and external threats are likely to require
time and patience. Studies have demonstrated that post-conflict nations are particularly
susceptible to relapse into civil war — especially in states with precious resources like oil.
Iraq, as a weakened state, is particularly vulnerable to foreign involvement. While Washington
stood back in the aftermath of March‘s parliamentary elections, other countries in the region
have been pushing their agendas. Crafting strong political and security institutions is critical to
prevent the influence of countries like Syria and Iran from gaining sway.
This outcome can be avoided and the integrity of Iraq‘s institutions preserved, but only with
proper resourcing, training and logistical support. Given Iran and Syria‘s track record of
proliferation of violence and instability throughout the wider Middle East, the United States
cannot afford to sit on the sidelines as these dangerous regimes undermine our fledgling ally.
Washington must forge strong diplomatic, economic and military ties with Iraq. That means
funding security forces that were disbanded and decimated by U.S. forces in 2003, pledging our
commitment to stand by our Iraqi friends and guarding the stability that was achieved on the
shoulders of American courage and bravery.
Despite tough economic times here at home, providing Iraq with lasting stability is a mission too
important to be nickel-and-dimed. Preventing civil war and anarchy in such a volatile region is as
imperative today as it was before the surge in 2007.
The consequences of underfunding Iraq‘s march toward stability and prosperity would be dire.
But the benefit for the United States in having a strong, prosperous ally in the heart of the Middle
East is likely to be bountiful and lasting.
Despite campaigning on a platform to end the war in Iraq, President Barack Obama has
courageously bucked many in his party and overseen a protracted withdrawal. After some initial
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unwillingness to engage in the rough-and-tumble of Iraqi coalition formation, the administration
now appears to be helping to broker a moderate coalition that could lead the country.
―Because of our troops and civilians, and because of the resilience of the Iraqi people,‖ Obama
said in his Aug. 31 Oval Office address, ―Iraq has the opportunity to embrace a new destiny,
even though many challenges remain.‖
It is in U.S. interests to help Iraq embrace this new destiny. We have won the war in Iraq. Now it
is time to win the peace.
James M. Fly, executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative, served in national security
positions in the Bush administration. John Noonan is a policy adviser at the Foreign Policy
Initiative.
© 2010 Capitol News Company, LLC
Inside the Beltway: Was Iraq Worth It?
Jamie Fly
September 13, 2010
Henry Jackson Society
With the withdrawal of the last U.S. combat forces from Iraq, the debate over the Iraq War
returned to Washington in early September. In an Oval Office address, President Obama,
desperate to pacify a leftwing base that has already abandoned him on Afghanistan, touted his
fulfillment of a campaign promise to end the war, while noting his skepticism about the war from
the outset.
Many conservatives, while supportive of President Obama‘s willingness last year to modify his
campaign timeline for withdrawal from Iraq from sixteen to nineteen months, warned that the
road ahead in Iraq was still uncertain and required a sustained American commitment. House
Republican Leader John Boehner noted that ―The hard truth is that Iraq will continue to remain a
target for those who hope to destroy freedom and democracy‖ and called on President Obama to
outline ―what America is prepared to do if the cause for which our troops sacrificed their lives in
Iraq is threatened.‖
Recent weeks have brought scenes of touching reunions between veterans and their loved ones,
as they return home to bases across the United States. However, with low-level violence
continuing to plague Iraq, and Iraqi politicians unable to agree on the outlines of a new
governing coalition more than five months after what appeared to be a successful parliamentary
election, some critics assert that the meager fruits of seven years of war were not worth the lives
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of more than 4,400 American men and women, the tens of thousands of injured American
soldiers, and countless killed Iraqis.
The Obama administration, which was swept into office in part on the frustration of Americans
with a protracted war, has primarily focused on the ending of the war rather than its justification.
This, combined with rhetoric about Iraqis controlling their own destiny, has led to Iraqi concerns
that, despite its public optimism about Iraq‘s future, a U.S. administration focused on
Afghanistan and numerous pressing domestic issues, will not be willing to revisit the 2008 Status
of Forces Agreement that calls for the withdrawal of U.S. forces by the end of 2011.
Despite its attempt to score political points on the war‘s end, the Obama administration does not
appear to be interested in rehashing the past, whether it is the rationale for the war, or the lack of
support by many leading members of the administration for President Bush‘s 2007 surge of
forces that created the very success they today trumpet.
With polls showing that a majority of the American people now believe that the Iraq War was
not worth it, the country thus appears to lack an appreciation for the very real gains that have
been achieved in Iraq. Describing the mood in America as the Vietnam War came to an end,
Henry Kissinger wrote in the Foreword to his book Ending the Vietnam War of ―the brash
confidence in the universal applicability of America‘s prescriptions with which it all began and
the progressive disillusionment with which it ended; the initial unity of purpose and the ultimate
divisive trauma.‖ While the end of combat operations in Iraq resulted in triumphant scenes
played out in the desert landscape of the Iraqi border with Kuwait, there is a danger that for
many Americans, the purported lessons of Iraq will be no less formative than their parents‘ views
of the legacy of Vietnam.
Most of the analysis of the war that has appeared as the troops return has concluded that this was
a war that is ending on an optimistic note, but was a war that should have never been fought. In
an editorial on August 28th, The New York Times, calling Iraq ―a war that should never have
been fought,‖ summed it up thusly:
―The overthrow of Saddam Hussein‘s murderous rule and the stirrings of democratic politics are
all positive outcomes. But they are overshadowed by overwhelming negatives. President George
W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 looking for weapons of mass destruction, and defended that
rationale long after it was clear that those weapons were not there. America‘s credibility has
still not recovered. The war cost the lives of more than 4,400 Americans, as well as those of an
estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians, and hundreds of billions of dollars. The Iraq war also,
disastrously, shifted attention and resources away from the far more important fight in
Afghanistan. The Taliban — routed by the United States and Afghan forces after 9/11 — quickly
regained the battlefield momentum after the Pentagon and White House lost interest. The two
wars have grievously overtaxed American forces.‖
From the original stated goal of President Bush when he announced the invasion on March 19,
2003, ―to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger,‖ U.S.
motives have been picked apart perhaps more than was the case for any other conflict. Missing in
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all of this was the realization that the Iraq War was at its heart an American reaction to the new
security environment it faced after the greatest attack on the U.S. homeland since Pearl Harbor.
Although the United States faces a continued threat from terrorism, which is being combated in
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere, the U.S. victory in Iraq has sent a strong
message to prospective state sponsors of terror, who have now been put on notice that in the
post-9/11 environment, the United States will not continue business as usual. Libya gave up its
weapons of mass destruction programs in December 2003 and Iran appears to have halted its
nuclear weapons program, albeit momentarily, the same year. In both cases, it does not require a
leap of faith to assume that the quick U.S. dismantlement of Saddam‘s regime caused Tripoli and
Tehran to weigh their actions carefully.
Despite these early successes of Iraq, the chaos that followed the initial invasion and the lack of
adequate U.S. preparation for the insurgency that developed, gave rise to years of death and
destruction that could have been avoided. It is thus worth examining whether these gains were
worth the significant U.S. effort in Iraq. To do this, one must examine three aspects – the threat
posed by Saddam, the implications of a democratic Iraq for the Middle East, and the moral case
for removing Saddam. Despite the tenuous state of progress in Iraq today, viewed in
combination, the record presents a convincing case for the Iraq War despite the significant blood
and treasure invested by coalition forces in Iraq since March 2003.
Saddam Threatened the West
Much as some are now beginning to argue that Iran poses no direct threat to the United States
and its allies or that a nuclear Iran could be contained, the notion that the Iraq of 2002-2003 was
a harmless regime run by a weakened despot has become popular fiction.
The fact is that the United Nations sanctions in place against Iraq were falling apart, with some
of America‘s closest allies ready to abandon them. Iraq was not contained – it was on the cusp of
being allowed to again threaten its own people and its neighbors. Although after the invasion, it
was concluded that Saddam had actually destroyed his stockpiles of chemical and biological
weapons after the Gulf War, the 2004 Duelfer Report concluded that Saddam‘s regime still
possessed the elements of WMD programs that could have been easily reconstituted. Given
Saddam‘s apparent concern about regional perceptions of his true capabilities, it does not require
a leap in faith to assume that a Saddam unchecked by international sanctions and facing
neighbors such as Iran and Syria with active nuclear programs would likely have resumed his
own quest for a nuclear weapon.
Seven years later, people also forget that Iraq was not some sort of peaceful version of Saudi
Arabia or Egypt, where brutal regimes hold sway, but with which the United States enjoys
uneasy but good relations. Saddam was an avowed enemy of the United States, especially since
U.S. forces drove Iraq out of Kuwait during the first Gulf War. U.S. and British planes patrolled
no-fly zones in the north and south of Iraq on a daily basis and were routinely fired upon by Iraqi
forces. Iraq was essentially unfinished business from a suspended war. The status quo was
unsustainable.
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Even given this, some opponents of the Iraq war continue to argue that there were alternatives;
that new sanctions or other arrangements to pressure Saddam should have been pursued. The
problem is that the horrific events of September 11, 2001 led U.S. and British policymakers to
believe that time was not on their side. As Tony Blair writes in his newly released memoirs:
―After 11 September, the thinking was this: if these terrorist groups could acquire WMD
capability, would they use it? On the evidence of 11 September, yes. So how do we shut the trade
down? How do we send a sufficiently clear and vivid signal to nations that are developing, or
might develop, such capability to desist? How do we make it indisputable that continued
defiance of the will of the international community will no longer be tolerated?‖
In the post-9/11 world, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair rightly deemed it unacceptable
that an avowed enemy of their countries that had used weapons of mass destruction against his
own people, that was thought by the leading intelligence agencies of the world to possess such
weapons, that had connections to terrorists (regardless of whether or not these connections
included links to al Qaeda), would be allowed to potentially provide such weapons to terrorists
for use against the United States or its allies.
Based on the information U.S. policymakers possessed at the time, Saddam Hussein was an
enemy of the United States whose continued leadership of Iraq threatened the security of the
United States and its allies.
The Implications of a Democratic Iraq
After the failure of coalition forces to find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, much of
the Bush administration‘s rhetoric about the justifications for the war turned to the benefits of a
democratic Iraq. In his memoirs, former Defense Department official Doug Feith wrote:
―After coalition forces overthrew Saddam and failed to find WMD stockpiles, however, the
President changed his rhetoric. In the second period – September 2003 to September 2004 – he
chose to talk virtually not at all about the Baathist regime‘s history or the danger Saddam
represented. Instead, President Bush focused on the current situation – in particular, that Iraq had
become a battleground on which we were fighting terrorist insurgents – and he stressed that in
Iraq we now had an opportunity to bring democracy to the Arab and Muslim worlds.‖
Feith notes that this failure to enunciate the strategic case for the war after weapons of mass
destruction were not found created an opening for critics. But Bush‘s late embrace of the
democratic argument does not mean that it was not a component of the case prior to the war. For
many Americans, September 11, 2001 brought a realization that for decades, successive U.S.
administrations of both political parties had propped up and rewarded illegitimate and repressive
regimes, resulting in breeding grounds for the very hatred and extremism that evidenced itself in
the attacks on New York, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon.
It made sense that if a vibrant democracy developed in Iraq, it would be a powerful symbol to the
people of its repressive neighbors such as Syria and Iran and even send a message to U.S. allies
in the Gulf as well as further afield in Egypt. Although President Bush‘s clearest enunciation of
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this argument for ―ending tyranny,‖ as he described it, came during his second inaugural address
nearly two years after the invasion of Iraq, it was not a theory arrived at only because of the
failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Despite the chaos and violence that plagued Iraq in the years that followed the invasion, we did
see developments in the region that appeared to be due, at least in part, to developments in that
country. Several Gulf States began to take small steps toward more openness and as Iraqis
routinely went to the polls, even amidst the threat of violence, it sent a powerful message to
opposition forces in statist Middle Eastern regimes that they too might one day possess the same
rights now possessed by Iraqis.
The progress that has been made thus far, despite a dysfunctional political process in Baghdad, is
amazing, and has real potential for future regional developments, especially given what has
happened in Iran in the wake of last year‘s fraudulent presidential elections.
The Moral Case for the War
Even if the concerns about Saddam‘s potential as a threat to the United States or the implications
of a democratic Iraq for the Middle East fail to convince, the moral case for the war should. This
argument was doubly persuasive in the case of Iraq because of the utter brutality of Saddam‘s
regime. Saddam murdered his own family members, imprisoned and tortured political opponents,
and killed his own citizens on a mass scale on multiple occasions. The international community
intervened in the 1990s in Bosnia and Kosovo to halt ethnic cleansing that occurred on a smaller
scale than the acts perpetrated by Saddam‘s regime. But, because of the perceived cost, it had
failed to act for moral reasons to remove Saddam after removing Iraqi forces from Kuwait in
1991.
The moral case for the 2003 Iraq war was routinely outlined by members of both political
parties, but many politicians who originally supported the war ended up conveniently forgetting
their pre-war statements, later advancing tenuous claims about being misled solely by politicized
intelligence, implying that if it weren‘t for weapons of mass destruction, they would have left
Saddam in power to continue his reign of terror.
The United States or even the international community writ large cannot respond to every
atrocity committed in the world on a regular basis, but recent decades have seen an evolution of a
so-called Responsibility to Protect. The slow pace of progress in Iraq runs the risk of convincing
future Presidents that taking action is not worth the effort or the cost. Much as Norman
Podhoretz described the impact of Vietnam on U.S. foreign policy, as the sense that ―we lacked
the power, the will, and the wisdom to carry out a more ambitious strategy with any hope of
success,‖ we now run the risk that future U.S. Presidents will be overly cautious when it comes
to intervening in the future.
This view may be tempered by the post-September 11th security environment currently faced by
the United States and ongoing commitments in Afghanistan and the war on terror, but there is the
potential that some U.S. polity will turn inward, rejecting adventures abroad not strictly tied to
security threats to the homeland. The Obama administration runs the risk of contributing to this
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trend. For example, the President‘s address on August 31 drew a connection between the current
sad state of the American economy and the cost of the war in Iraq, decrying the record deficits
that supposedly resulted.
Conclusion
For those of us who did not wear the uniform of the U.S. or a coalition military and serve in Iraq,
the question of the war‘s worth obviously cannot be viewed as intimately and personally as those
who gave years of their lives, and in many cases, left comrades in arms behind. But a review of
the main rationale for war shows that the United States is better off today than it would have
been had Saddam remained in power. It should be celebrated that the Iraqis are now ready for
this new phase in their relations with America, but it is also incumbent upon this administration
and those that follow to ensure that American and coalition blood and treasure were not invested
unnecessarily.
For me personally, as someone who supported the war well before it was waged, but doubted
even my own position at some of the war‘s lowest points, a trip that took me to the Kurdistan
Region of Iraq earlier this year swept away any lingering doubts. On our penultimate day in
Kurdistan, our group visited Halabja, a small town surrounded on three sides by Iran, where
thousands of Iraqi Kurds were gassed by Saddam‘s regime in 1988. We followed up this visit to
the moving memorial at Halabja with a dinner under the stars with the region‘s Prime Minister,
Barham Salih. Salih is an impressive figure, rumored as a possible Parliamentary speaker in the
next Iraqi government. As Salih recently told The Wall Street Journal, some Iraqi officials have
squandered the opportunity they‘ve been given by the United States, but there is still hope that
people like Salih represent a new face of the Middle East – a Middle East that is in America‘s
interest.
Iraq was a war that was not waged perfectly. Mistakes were made, but it was a war waged for the
right reasons, not those put forth by conspiracy theorists. The years to come will provide the final
answer to the question about whether Iraq was worth it, but as the combat phase ends, the early
results indicate it was.
The Way of the Kurds
One part of Iraq is working better than the other.
BY Max Boot
May 24, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 34
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The Weekly Standard
Iraq has improved immeasurably since the dark days of 2006 when hundreds were being killed
every day by al Qaeda bombs and Sadrist death squads in Baghdad. But terrorist bombs continue
to go off intermittently, and lingering instability and ineptitude still block economic
development. Indeed, the political situation has recently taken a turn for the worse, with Iraq‘s
political parties at a stalemate in their quest to form a new government more than two months
after parliamentary elections were held.
Driving down Baghdad‘s dingy streets, as I did recently as part of a delegation from the Council
on Foreign Relations, one is sometimes tempted to despair. What chance is there, the visitor may
reasonably wonder, that the capital of this oil-rich country will ever be truly peaceful, not to
mention as luxurious as Doha, Dubai, or other boomtowns to the south on the Persian Gulf?
A short trip north to the Kurdish region, where 4.5 million of Iraq‘s 30 million people live, offers
a different, more hopeful perspective. Known as the Kurdish Regional Government, or KRG,
this area feels as safe as it gets in the Middle East. Terrorist attacks aren‘t a concern. Americans
can wander around without body armor or bodyguards—even if they‘re in uniform. Don‘t try it
in Baghdad. That‘s a tribute to the effectiveness of the Kurdish intelligence service, the Asayesh,
and to their peshmerga troops (―those who face death‖). It also has something to do with Kurdish
attitudes toward the United States. There is none of the lingering resentment that is still prevalent
in the rest of Iraq; Kurds are among the most pro-American people on the planet. They regularly
and profusely thank American visitors for liberating them from Saddam Hussein‘s murderous
regime—not something one often hears from Iraqi Arabs.
There are also many sights in Erbil that you don‘t see in the rest of Iraq. They include a spanking
new airport that puts dinosaurs like New York‘s Kennedy Airport to shame, and new shopping
malls, banks, stores, homes, and hotels that would not be out of place in Europe. Erbil, the
capital of the KRG, seems a world away from the rest of Iraq even though it is located only 50
miles from Mosul, the most violent city in the entire country and the only one where Al Qaeda in
Iraq remains a major threat. Almost all of the development has occurred in the last few years,
filling once-empty fields with modern buildings.
The Kurdish region‘s prosperity is fueled by oil. The KRG actually has considerably less oil than
the rest of Iraq. It is entitled to just 17 percent of Iraqi oil revenues. So why is the KRG so much
richer today? The difference is that the KRG government has gotten its act together and is much
further along in attracting foreign investment, exploiting its natural wealth, and spending the
proceeds.
There was nothing inevitable about this. Kurdish politics in the past have been as violent and
divisive and dysfunctional as in the rest of Iraq. As recently as the 1990s, the two major Kurdish
factions—Massoud Barzani‘s Democratic Party of Kurdistan and Jalal Talabani‘s Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan—were fighting one another. Barzani even sought help from Saddam
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Hussein, while Talabani turned for assistance to Iran. But eventually these two old adversaries
realized they could do better by joining hands and splitting the spoils of an ever-growing
economy. In 1998 they signed an American-brokered peace treaty in Washington. In 2002, just
prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, they created a joint parliament in Erbil uniting the Barzanicontrolled areas (Dohuk and Erbil) with Talabani‘s preserve (Sulaymaniyah). The Kurdish
compact, which has deepened over the years, allows Barzani predominance in the KRG while
Talabani represents Kurdish interests in Baghdad as president of Iraq. This is a rare instance of
veteran guerrilla fighters hanging up their guns and concentrating on peaceful development,
making the kind of leap that Yasser Arafat never could.
Taking advantage of their newfound autonomy, the Kurds have instituted pro-growth policies
that encourage outside investment, something that is still viewed with great suspicion in the rest
of Iraq, where the socialist legacy of the Baathist state lingers even among the most strident antiBaathists.
Kurdish leaders have also shown geopolitical wisdom by not seeking independence as demanded
by most of their people. They realize that, surrounded by hostile states, an independent Kurdistan
could not flourish. Instead of confronting its neighbors, the Kurdish Regional Government is
working with them. Its most notable success has come with Turkey, which in 2007 was
threatening to invade the KRG to root out rebels from Turkey‘s own Kurdish community, the
PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party). Today the KRG and Turkey have flourishing trade ties and
expanding diplomatic links. The Turkish government has even invited Massoud Barzani to visit
in his capacity as president of the Kurdish Regional Government, whose very existence the
Turks only recently recognized.
Another sign of the Kurds‘ sagacity is their attitude toward Israel. In Iraq proper, visiting the
―Zionist entity‖ is still considered a death-defying feat to be undertaken only by the extremely
brave or foolish. (Mithal al Alusi, a member of parliament who has visited Israel, was charged
with visiting an ―enemy state,‖ and his sons were killed in a terrorist attack.) But the Kurds, who
are secular Sunni Muslims, are notably pro-Israeli in their attitudes. If it would not risk a major
rift with the rest of Iraq, they would be happy to establish formal ties with the Jewish state. As it
is, they maintain informal links. The Barzanis, the first family of the KRG, have a branch in
Israel with whom they keep in contact. ―It would be good for Iraq to have good relations with
Israel,‖ a senior Kurdish politician told me.
The record is hardly perfect. Heavy-handed Kurdish attempts to extend their influence across
northern Iraq have caused a backlash among Arabs and created an opening for extremist groups.
In some areas they have been guilty of anti-Arab ethnic cleansing in an attempt to make up for
anti-Kurdish campaigns under Saddam Hussein. Also, although an opposition party called
Gorran (―Change‖) is growing in influence after its members split from Talabani‘s camp,
political intimidation—even, on occasion, violent intimidation—still occurs. Recently, for
instance, journalists accused Kurdish security forces of killing a young writer who was critical of
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the Barzanis and other powerful clans. Deplorable as they are, such events are also rare—
certainly less prevalent in the KRG than in the rest of Iraq.
So too with corruption, which remains a problem in the KRG (its leading politicians are
fabulously wealthy), but far less so than in the rest of Iraq. One old Iraq hand suggested to me
that payoffs to politicians in the KRG run only 20 percent of a contract as opposed to 50 percent
or more in the rest of the country. More important, Kurdish politicians deliver results; they don‘t
just pocket the proceeds and leave their constituents without basic services. The KRG might be
seen as a monument to the kind of ―honest graft‖ that built America‘s major cities, as opposed to
the kleptocratic practice too often evident among Iraqi Arab politicians.
The Kurdish model suggests what Iraq can become in a few years—but only if it continues to
improve in fighting crime and terrorism, reducing corruption, and developing the rule of law.
Much of this is outside American control, but we can have a major impact on the security
situation. A key component of Kurdish success, after all, has been American protection, offered
in one form or another since 1991, when the George H.W. Bush administration proclaimed a ―no
fly‖ zone to keep Saddam‘s aircraft from bombing the Kurds. American planes were still
patrolling the no-fly zone at the time of the U.S. invasion in 2003. Some kind of long-term
protection will be necessary in the rest of Iraq, which must deal in the future with hostile
neighbors and suspicious sectarian factions. As it stands, however, the last American troops are
supposed to withdraw on December 31, 2011.
That is a worrisome prospect because Iraqi political disputes can still engender violence.
Nowhere is the danger greater than along the Green Line separating the KRG from the rest of
Iraq. The boundary remains disputed, with the Kurds keen to assert their sovereignty over the
oil-rich city of Kirkuk and other parts of northern Iraq. The Kurdish peshmerga and Iraqi troops
have been on the verge of gunfire numerous times, pulling back only as a result of American
mediation. Today U.S. troops patrol the Green Line in cooperation with the peshmerga and Iraqi
forces.
If U.S. troops are withdrawn before land disputes between the KRG and Iraq proper are resolved,
Kurdish politicians warn that the result could be war. That is an especially worrisome possibility
because the United States has agreed to sell the Iraqi armed forces M-1 tanks and F-16 fighters.
We have a moral and strategic obligation to ensure that this high-tech hardware is never used
against our Kurdish friends. That argues for keeping a small U.S. force in Iraq after 2011,
perhaps 10,000 to 15,000 troops and trainers. The Kurds, for one, would love to host a U.S.
military base. The Obama administration should push for that once a new government takes
power in Baghdad and negotiations begin on a new Iraqi-American strategic accord to take the
place of the one negotiated by President Bush and Nouri al Maliki in 2008.
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How We'll Know When We've Won
A definition of success in Iraq.
BY Frederick W. Kagan
May 5, 2008, Vol. 13, No. 32
The Weekly Standard
The president's nomination of generals David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno to take command
of U.S. Central Command and Multinational Force-Iraq, respectively, was obviously the right
decision. By experience and temperament and demonstrated success, both men are perfectly
suited to these jobs. Given the political climate in Washington, however, their nominations are
likely to be attacked with the same tired arguments war critics used to try to drown out reports of
progress in Iraq during the recent Petraeus-Crocker hearings. So before the shouting begins
again, let us consider in detail one of the most important of these arguments: that no one has
offered any clear definition of success in Iraq.
Virtually everyone who wants to win this war agrees: Success will have been achieved when Iraq
is a stable, representative state that controls its own territory, is oriented toward the West, and is
an ally in the struggle against militant Islamism, whether Sunni or Shia. This has been said over
and over. Why won't war critics hear it? Is it because they reject the notion that such success is
achievable and therefore see the definition as dishonest or delusional? Is it because George Bush
has used versions of it and thus discredited it in the eyes of those who hate him? Or is it because
it does not offer easily verifiable benchmarks to tell us whether or not we are succeeding? There
could be other reasons--perhaps critics fear that even thinking about success or failure in Iraq
will weaken their demand for an immediate "end to the war." Whatever the explanation for this
tiresome deafness, here is one more attempt to flesh out what success in Iraq means and how we
can evaluate progress toward it.
SUCCESS DEFINED
A stable state. An unstable Iraq is a recipe for continued violence throughout the Middle East.
Iraq's internal conflicts could spread to its neighbors or lure them into meddling in its struggles.
An unstable Iraq would continue to generate large refugee flows, destabilizing vulnerable nearby
states. An unstable Iraq would enormously complicate efforts by the United States or any other
state to combat terrorists on Iraqi soil. An unstable Iraq would invite the intervention of
opportunist neighbors. The Middle East being an area of vital importance to the United States
and its allies, all these developments would harm America's interests.
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A representative state. Some war critics (and even some supporters) argue that the goal of
"democratizing" Iraq is overoptimistic, even hopeless. So what are the alternatives? Either Iraq
can be ruled by a strongman, as it was in the past, or it can be partitioned into several more
homogeneous territories, each ruled according to its own desires. Before settling for either of
these, we should note that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis continue to manifest their desire
for representative government, as evidenced by the 8 million who voted in the last elections, the
90 percent of Sunni Arab Iraqis who tell pollsters they will vote in the upcoming provincial
elections, and the sense on the streets that anyone who tries to eliminate representative
government will do so at his peril. Beyond that, we must note that neither of the two suggested
alternatives is compatible with stability. Nevertheless, let us examine them.
A strongman. Iraq is a multiethnic, multisectarian state just emerging from a sectarian civil war.
How could a strongman rule it other than by oppression and violence? Any strongman would
have to come from one or another of the ethno-sectarian groups, and he would almost certainly
repress the others. Although he might, in time, establish a secure authoritarian regime, the history
of such regimes suggests that Iraq would remain violent and unstable for years, perhaps decades,
before all opposition was crushed. This option would not sit well with American consciences.
Partition. Partitioning Iraq would generate enormous instability for the foreseeable future. Again,
virtually no Arab Iraqis want to see the country partitioned; the Sunni, in particular, are bitterly
opposed. But their desires aside, could a partitioned Iraq be stable? The Kurds, after all, already
have their region. What would happen if the Shia got all nine provinces south of Baghdad, and
the Sunni got Anbar, Salah-ad-Din, and whatever part of Ninewa the Kurds chose to give them?
Well, there would be the problem of Baghdad and Diyala, the two mixed provinces, containing
mixed cities. Despite the prevailing mythology, Baghdad has not been "cleansed" so as to
produce stable sectarian borders. The largely Sunni west contains the Khadimiyah shrine, which
the Shia will never abandon, while the largely Shia east contains the stubborn Sunni enclave in
Adhamiya. The Sunni in Adhamiya have just gone through many months of hell to hang on to
their traditional ground. And there are other enclaves on both sides of the river. Any "cleansing"
of them would involve the death or forced migration of tens or possibly hundreds of thousands.
Attempts to divide Diyala and even Ninewa would produce similar results. If ethno-sectarian
conflict restarted in Iraq on a large scale, cleansing might make this solution more feasible, but at
enormous human cost. In the current context, even to seriously propose it threatens Iraq's
stability.
A state that controls its territory. We already have an example of a sovereign, quasi-stable state
confronting terrorist foes that is theoretically allied to the United States but has no American
troops and does not control all of its own territory. It is Pakistan, whose ungoverned territories in
the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the Northwest Frontier Province have become safe
havens for the leaders of the global al Qaeda network. If the United States abandoned Iraq before
Iraq could control all of its territory with its own forces, we might make way for similar safe
havens in the heart of the Middle East. It is clearly not in America's interests to create a Pakistan
on the Euphrates.
A state oriented toward the West. It is also clearly against America's interests for Iraq to become
an Iranian puppet. Some in the United States, however, see that development as inevitable; they
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point to geography and religious ties. Some even say that the United States should not only
acquiesce in the inevitable but embrace it, reaching out to the Iranians for their assistance in
smoothing our withdrawal as they establish their domination. But why? Iran has not dominated
Iraq in centuries. True, the Sunni-Shia divide is profound, but so is the Arab-Persian divide.
Iraq's Shia, remember, enthusiastically supported Saddam Hussein's war against their Iranian coreligionists in the 1980s--a sectarian "betrayal" for which the Iranians have never forgiven them.
Again, American troops and civilians who live day to day with Iraqis throughout the country
report a dramatic rise in anti-Persian sentiment, coincident with a rise in Iraqi Arab nationalism.
But back in the United States, the debate over Iraq is scarcely tethered to reality on the ground.
In the simple terms suitable to that debate, then, suffice it to say that neither shared Shia faith nor
a shared border has historically led to Iranian domination of Iraq. There is no reason to assume it
will do so now.
An ally in the struggle against militant Islamism. Whatever Saddam Hussein's ties were to al
Qaeda before the invasion, the reality today is that an important al Qaeda franchise has
established itself in Iraq. It initially had the support of a significant portion of Iraq's Sunni Arab
community, but that community--with critical American support--has rejected al Qaeda and
united with Iraq's Shia and Kurds to fight it.
As a result, there is no state in the world that is more committed than Iraq to defeating al Qaeda.
None has mobilized more troops to fight al Qaeda or suffered more civilian casualties at the
hands of al Qaeda--or, for that matter, taken more police and military casualties. Iraq is already
America's best ally in the struggle against al Qaeda. Moreover, the recent decision of Iraq's
government to go after illegal, Iranian-backed Shia militias and terror groups shows that even a
Shia government in Baghdad can be a good partner in the struggle against Shia extremism as
well.
Much has been made of the inadequacy of the Iraqi Security Forces' performance in Basra. If the
Pakistani army had performed half as well in its efforts to clear al Qaeda out of the tribal areas,
we would be cheering. Instead, Pakistani soldiers surrendered to al Qaeda by the hundreds, and
Islamabad shut the operation down; it is now apparently on the verge of a deal with the terrorist
leader who killed Benazir Bhutto. Iraqi Security Forces who underperformed were fired and
replaced, and operations in Basra and elsewhere continue. The United States has given Pakistan
billions in aid since 9/11 so that it could fight al Qaeda in the tribal areas. To be sure, it has spent
far more billions on the Iraq war. Still, one may wonder which money has produced real success
in the war on terror, and which has been wasted.
PROGRESS MEASURED
Stability. Violence is the most obvious indicator of instability and the easiest to measure. The
fact that violence has fallen dramatically in Iraq since the end of 2006 is evidence of improving
stability. But critics are right to point out that areas tend to be peaceful both when government
forces control them completely and when insurgents control them completely. Violence can drop
either because the government is winning or because insurgents are consolidating their gains. So
in addition to counting casualties and attacks, it is necessary to evaluate whether government
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control has been expanding or contracting. In fact, it has expanded dramatically over the past 15
months.
At the end of 2006, Sunni Arab insurgents controlled most of Anbar province, large areas of
Salah-ad-Din and Diyala, southern Baghdad and northern Babil provinces (the "triangle of
death"), and large areas of Baghdad itself including the Ameriya, Adhamiya, Ghazaliya, and
Dora neighborhoods, which were fortified al Qaeda bastions. Shia militias controlled Sadr City
almost completely--American forces could not even enter the area, and virtually no Iraqi forces
in Sadr City operated independently of the militias; the militias also controlled the nearby
districts of Shaab and Ur, from whence they staged raids on Sunni neighborhoods; they operated
out of bases in Khadimiyah and Shula in western Baghdad; they owned large swaths of terrain in
Diyala province, where they were engaged in an intense war against al Qaeda; they fought each
other in Basra and controlled large areas of the Shia south.
Today, al Qaeda has been driven out of Dora, Ameriya, Ghazaliya, and Adhamiya; out of Anbar
almost entirely; out of the "southern belt" including the former triangle of death; out of much of
Diyala; and out of most of Salah-ad-Din. Iraqi and coalition operations are underway to drive al
Qaeda out of its last urban bastion in Mosul. Remaining al Qaeda groups, although still able to
generate periodic spectacular attacks, are largely fragmented and their communications partially
disrupted. Iraqi Security Forces have been on the offensive against Shia militias in the "five
cities" area (Najaf, Karbala, Diwaniya, Hilla, and Kut) and have severely degraded militia
capabilities and eliminated militia control from significant parts of this area; the attack in Basra
resulted in a reduction of the militia-controlled area, including the recapture of Basra's lucrative
ports by government forces; tribal movements in Basra and Nasiriya are helping the government
advance and consolidate its gains against the militias; and Iraqi Security Forces, with Coalition
support, are moving through parts of Sadr City house by house and taking it back from the
militias.
The fall in violence in Iraq, therefore, reflects success and not failure. Enemy control of territory
has been significantly reduced, and further efforts to eliminate enemy control of any territory are
underway. Spikes in violence surrounding the Basra operation reflect efforts by the government
to retake insurgent-held areas and are, therefore, positive (if sober) indicators.
As for the argument that this stability is based solely on the increased presence of U.S. forces,
which will shortly end, or that it is merely a truce between the Sunni and the Shia as they wait
for us to leave--we shall soon see. Reductions of U.S. forces by 25 percent are well underway.
The commanding general has recommended that after we complete those reductions in July, we
evaluate the durability of the current stability, and President Bush has accepted his
recommendation.
Representative government. The Iraqi government is the product of two elections. The Sunni
Arabs boycotted the first, with the result that Iraq's provincial councils and governors do not
reflect its ethno-sectarian make-up. The second saw a large Sunni Arab turnout and the seating of
a multiethnic, multisectarian government in Baghdad. The Iraqi government recently passed a
law calling for provincial elections later this year, and the United Nations special envoy to Iraq,
Steffan de Mistura, has been consulting with Baghdad about the details of the election, including
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efforts to ensure that the various committees overseeing it are not unduly influenced by militias
or political parties. Surveys show that the Iraqis are nearly unanimous in their desire to vote,
particularly in Sunni areas. The Anbar Awakening has turned into a political movement,
introducing political pluralism into Sunni Arab politics for the first time. Similar movements,
including the splintering of Moktada al-Sadr's "Sadrist Trend," are underway more haltingly
among the Shia.
Each of Iraq's elections has been more inclusive than the last. Each has seen more enthusiasm for
voting among all groups. Political pluralism is increasing within both sects. Whatever the
popularity of the present government of Iraq, the overwhelming majority of Iraqis see elections
as the correct way to choose their leaders, believe that their votes will count, and want to
participate. The provincial elections this fall--and the national legislative elections next year-will be important indicators of the health of representative government in Iraq, and we should
watch them closely. So far, all indications in this area are positive.
Control of territory. The restoration of large urban and rural areas formerly held by insurgents
and militias to government control is a key indicator of Iraqi progress. And there are others: the
Maliki government's determination to clear Basra and Sadr City of militia influence; Iraqi
operations to clear Mosul of al Qaeda fighters; the dramatic growth of the Iraqi Security Forces
in 2007 and the further growth underway in 2008. There is anecdotal confirmation of this
progress, such as the dramatic decline in the number of illegal militia-controlled checkpoints,
most of them set up in and around Baghdad in 2006 for purposes of control, extortion, and
murder. Although some war critics claim that the Anbar Awakening has simply put the province
into the hands of a new militia, the truth is that the first stage of the movement saw more than
10,000 Anbaris volunteer for the Iraqi Security Forces. Two divisions of the Iraqi army remain in
Anbar, and they are mixed Sunni-Shia formations. The Iraqi police force in Anbar, paid for,
vetted, and controlled by the Iraqi government, has also grown dramatically. The "Sons of Iraq,"
who are the security component of the awakening movement, are auxiliaries to these government
forces, supplemented by the presence of American troops. In Baghdad's neighborhoods, Sons of
Iraq are dwarfed in number by the two Iraqi army divisions stationed in the city (in addition to
the mechanized division based just to the north in Taji) and the numerous police and national
police formations, all supported by American combat brigades. The Iraqi government is steadily
extending its control of its own territory, and has demonstrated a determination to retake
insurgent-held areas even from Shia militias.
Orientation toward the West. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Iraq in March
2008 and was warmly received, prompting concern in the United States that the Iraqi
government was tilting toward Tehran. War critics, attempting to spin the Iraqi government's
offensive against Shia militias in Basra, argued that Iran "supports" both the militias and the
principal Shia parties fighting them--the entire operation, they claimed, was simply "Shia
infighting" among groups already devoted to Tehran.
A closer examination shows this to be false. While it is true that Iran "supports" both ISCI and
Dawa, the two leading Shia parties in the government, with money, and it provides the Sadrist
militia not only with money, but with lethal weapons, training, trainers, and advisers inside Iraq
to support the militia's fight against the United States and the Iraqi government--nevertheless,
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Iran does not provide such support to the government of Iraq or to the Iraqi Security Forces,
which the United States and its allies have worked hard to develop into effective fighting forces,
at the behest of the United Nations and the request of the legitimate government of Iraq. This is
not simply "Shia infighting" in which the United States has no stake.
More to the point, we might ask what the Iraqi government itself has done to show its
preferences. It has asked the United Nations to endorse the Multinational Force mission
supporting it, a mission that includes American forces--but not Iranian ones. It has requested a
bilateral security agreement with the United States--and not with Iran. It has determined to
purchase American weapons and equipment for its armed forces, to replace the Warsaw Pact
gear it had been using--and has not requested equipment from Iran or its principal international
suppliers, Russia and China. Baghdad is organizing, training, and equipping its military and
police forces to be completely interoperable with the United States--and not with Iran. For a
government accused of being in Tehran's thrall, the current Iraqi government appears to have
demonstrated repeatedly a commitment to stand with the United States, at least as long as the
United States stands with Iraq.
An ally in the war on terror. Al Qaeda has killed many more Iraqis than Americans. Iraq has
eight army divisions--around 80,000 troops--now in the fight against al Qaeda, and another
three--around 45,000 troops--in the fight against Shia extremists. Tens of thousands of Iraqi
police and National Police are also in the fight. Thus, there are far more Iraqis fighting al Qaeda
and Shia militias in Iraq than there are American troops there. Easily ten times as many Iraqi as
Pakistani troops are fighting our common enemies. At least three times as many Iraqi soldiers
and police as Afghan soldiers and police are in the fight. And many times more Iraqi troops are
engaged in the war on terror than those of any other American ally. In terms of manpower
engaged, and sacrifice of life and limb, Iraq is already by far America's best ally in the war on
terror.
These facts will surely not put to rest the debate over definitions and measures of success in Iraq.
Certainly, the American people have a right to insist that our government operate with a clear
vision of success and that it develop a clear plan for evaluating whether we are moving in the
right direction, even if no tidy numerical metrics can meaningfully size up so complex a human
endeavor. As shown here, supporters of the current strategy do indeed have a clear definition of
success, and those working to implement it are already evaluating American progress against that
definition every day. It is on the basis of their evaluation that we say the surge is working.
The question Americans should ask themselves next is: Have the opponents of this strategy
offered a clear definition of their own goals, along with reasonable criteria for evaluating
progress toward them? Or are they simply projecting onto those who have a clear vision with
which they disagree their own vagueness and confusion?
Here is a gauntlet thrown down: Let those who claim that the current strategy has failed and must
be replaced lay out their own strategy, along with their definition of success, criteria for
evaluating success, and the evidentiary basis for their evaluations. Then, perhaps, we can have a
real national debate on this most important issue.
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Yemen
The Wall Street Journal
How to Apply 'Smart Power' in Yemen
The Salah government will side with us against al Qaeda if we side with it against
insurgents.
By FREDERICK W. KAGAN AND CHRISTOPHER HARNISCH
The Wall Street Journal
President Barack Obama has made it clear that he does not intend to send American ground
forces into Yemen, and rightly so. But American policy toward Yemen, even after the Christmas
terrorist attempt, remains focused on limited counterterrorist approaches that failed in
Afghanistan in the 1990s and have created tension in Pakistan since 2001.
Yemen faces enormous challenges. Its 24 million people are divided into three antagonistic
groups: a Zaydi Shiite minority now fighting against the central government (the Houthi
rebellion); the inhabitants of the former Yemen Arab Republic (in the north); and the inhabitants
of the former Peoples Democratic Republic of Yemen (in the south), many of whom are engaged
in a secessionist rebellion. Its government is corrupt, its security forces have limited capabilities,
and a large swath of its population is addicted to a drug called qat.
The World Bank estimates that Yemen will stop earning a profit on its oil production by 2017
(oil now accounts for more than half of the country's export income). Only 46% of rural Yemenis
have access to adequate water (40% of the country's water goes to growing qat), and some
estimates suggest Yemen will run out of water for its people within a decade.
American policy in Yemen has focused heavily on fighting al Qaeda, but it has failed to address
the conditions that make the country a terrorist safe haven. Targeted strikes in 2002 killed key al
Qaeda leaders in Yemen, and the group went relatively quiet for several years. The U.S. military
has been working to build up the Yemeni Coast Guard (to prevent attacks similar to the one on
the USS Cole in 2000) and to improve the counterterrorist capabilities of the Yemeni military in
general.
But the U.S. has resisted supporting President Ali Abdallah Salah's efforts to defeat the Houthi
insurgency, generating understandable friction with our would-be partner. As we have found
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repeatedly in similar situations around the world (particularly in Pakistan), local governments
will not focus on terrorist groups that primarily threaten the U.S. or their neighbors at the
expense of security challenges that threaten them directly. A strategy that attempts to pressure or
bribe them to go after our enemies is likely to fail.
Mr. Salah is an unpalatable partner, and we don't want to be drawn into Yemen's internal
conflicts more than necessary. But he is the only partner we have in Yemen. If we want him to
take our side in the fight against al Qaeda, we have to take his side in the fight against the
Houthis.
The U.S. must also develop a coherent approach that will help Yemen's government improve
itself, address its looming economic and social catastrophes, and improve the ability of its
military, intelligence and police organs to establish security throughout the country. The U.S.
now maintains an earnest but understaffed and under-resourced USAID mission in the American
embassy in Sana, the country's capital. But because of security concerns, U.S. officials are
largely restricted to Sana and therefore cannot directly oversee the limited programs they
support, let alone help address systemic governance failures.
Yemen received $150 million in USAID funds in 2009—one-tenth the amount dispensed in
Afghanistan; less than one-fifth the amount provided to Gaza and the West Bank; and roughly
half of what Nigeria received. The Pentagon recently said it would like to double the roughly $70
million Yemen received in security assistance. But the total pool from which that money would
come from in 2010 is only $350 million, according to Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, and
there are other pressing demands for those funds.
The problems in Yemen will not be solved simply by throwing American money at them. But
dollars are the soldiers of the smart power approach. Having a lot of them does not guarantee
success, but having too few does guarantee failure.
Developing a coherent strategy focused on the right objectives is important, and hard to do. The
country team in any normal American embassy (like the one in Sana) does not have the staff,
resources or experience to do so. The limited American military presence in Yemen does not
either. Despite years of talk about the need to develop this kind of capability in the State
Department or elsewhere in Washington, it does not exist. It must be built now, and quickly.
The president could do that by instructing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to form a Joint
Interagency Task Force on Yemen. Its mission would be to develop and implement a strategy to
improve the effectiveness of the Yemeni government and security forces, re-establish civil order,
and eliminate the al Qaeda safe haven. Its personnel should include the Yemen country team,
headed by the ambassador, and experts from other relevant U.S. agencies as well as sufficient
staff to develop and execute programs. An immediate priority must be to provide security to
American officials in Yemen that will enable them to travel around, even though there will not
be American forces on the ground to protect them.
This strategy will require helping Yemen defeat the Houthi insurgency and resolve the southern
secessionist tensions without creating a full-blown insurgency in the south. It will also require a
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nuanced strategy to help the Yemeni government disentangle al Qaeda from the southern tribes
that now support or tolerate it.
One of the key errors the Bush administration made in Afghanistan and Iraq was to focus
excessively on solving immediate security problems without preparing for the aftermath. Too
narrow a focus on improving counterterrorist strikes in Yemen without addressing the larger
context of the terrorist threat growing in that country may well lead to similar results. If the
Obama administration wants to avoid sending troops to Yemen, it must act boldly now.
On the Knife‘s Edge: Yemen‘s Instability and the
Threat to American Interests
November 2009
By Andrew M. Exum and Richard Fontaine
Center for a New American Security
Facing an active insurgency in the north, a separatist movement in the south, and a domestic al-Qaeda
presence, Yemen rests today on the knife‘s edge. The consequences of instability in Yemen reach far
beyond this troubled land, and pose serious challenges to vital U.S. interests. A destabilized Arabian
Peninsula would shatter regional security, disrupt trade routes, and obstruct access to fossil fuels. With
Saudi Arabia already at war in northern Yemen and the country increasingly at risk of becoming a haven
for transnational terrorists, the United States must actively work to avoid the potentially dire
consequences of a failing state there.
Americans will not welcome this news. Eight years after the September 11 attacks, and weary of stabilization efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans have little appetite for devoting more resources or
attention to emerging threats in faraway lands. Yet the deteriorating situation in Yemen demands
immediate U.S. attention. Such attention should not, however, take the form of large scale military
operations as in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rather, the United States should implement a comprehensive
strategy that marries counterterrorism support, development assistance, diplomatic pressure, and efforts at
political reconciliation.
Yemen Today
Since 2001, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have absorbed both the attention of the world and the
resources of the United States. In the meantime, Yemen has been hurtling toward the kind of disaster that
could dramatically harm the interests of both the United States and its regional allies and partners.
In the coming decades, Yemen will suffer three negative trends – one economic, one demographic, and
one environmental. Economically, Yemen depends heavily on oil production. Yet analysts predict that its
petroleum output, already down from 460,000 barrels a day in 2002 to between 300,000 and 350,000
barrels in 2007 and down 12 percent in 2007 alone, will fall to zero by 2017. The government, which
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receives the vast majority of its revenue from taxes on oil production, has conducted virtually no planning
for its post-oil future. Demographically, Yemen‘s population – already the poorest on the Arabian
Peninsula with an unemployment rate of 40 percent – is expected to double by 2035. An incredible 45
percent of Yemen‘s population is under the age of 15.2. Environmentally, this large population will soon
exhaust Yemen‘s ground water resources. Given that a full 90 percent of Yemen‘s water is used in highly
inefficient agricultural projects, this trend portends disaster.
This confluence of political, ideological, economic, and environmental forces will render Yemen a fertile
ground for the training and recruitment of Islamist militant groups for the foreseeable future. Already,
more than 100 Yemenis have been incarcerated in Guantanamo since 2002, and Yemen‘s own foreign
minister suggests that Yemen hosts over 1,000 al-Qaeda-affiliated militants. Though this number has not
been independently verified, other governments in the region and beyond express alarm at the presence of
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
Between 2001 and 2003, the United States and its allies in the Yemeni government waged a largely
successful counter-terror campaign against groups that now fall under the AQAP umbrella, culminating in
the November 2002 assassination of AQAP leader ‗Ali Qa‘id al-Harithi and the November 2003 capture
of Muhammed Hamdi al-Ahdal, al-Harithi‘s replacement. Between 2006 and 2008, however, a revitalized
AQAP changed tactics and began to challenge both foreign interests and the regime in Sana‘a. Along with
a new round of aggressive attacks on foreigners, oil infrastructure, and the state, AQAP now employs a
sophisticated information operations campaign that includes the production of an online journal, Sada alMalahim (The Echo of Battles), which outlines AQAP‘s new strategy and publicizes its exploits.
Recent attacks demonstrate the boldness and capabilities of AQAP. A suicide bombing attack carried out
in March 2009 against South Korean tourists, and a subsequent attack on the South Korean delegation
sent to investigate the bombing, demonstrated AQAP‘s capacity to launch spectacular attacks within
Yemen. AQAP‘s growing information operations capability suggests a rising degree of sophistication,
and its rhetoric – which no longer limits itself to ambitions within Yemen itself – suggests it will become
an increasing threat to the United States and its interests in the Arabian Peninsula. And while Americans
may pay little attention to Yemen, al-Qaeda leadership devotes much more: Internet message boards
linked to al-Qaeda are encouraging fighters from across the Islamic world to flock to Yemen.
The threat to U.S. interests is two-fold. First, Yemen‘s role as a safe haven for transnational terror groups
with global reach could grow. President Obama has stated that the tribal areas of Afghanistan and
Pakistan must not be allowed to become or remain safe havens for terror groups such as al-Qaeda to plan
attacks against the United States and its allies. Given the al-Qaeda threat present in Yemen today, this
policy suggests the need for increased U.S. attention and resources. Second, the United States has clear
national interests in stability on the oil-rich Arabian Peninsula, and in avoiding the export of instability
(via terrorist attacks, a national breakup, or in some other form) from Yemen northward into Saudi
Arabia. Recent Saudi aerial bombings of insurgent positions in northern Yemen, together with a Saudi
naval blockade of the Yemeni coast, demonstrate the real possibility of instability in the country radiating
outward. American policy should aim to contain any such instability and ensure that it does not engulf the
rest of the peninsula.
Though the United States should not respond to these threats with large-scale military intervention, many
of the lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan will apply to Yemen as well. As in Iraq and Afghanistan,
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the United States must work with a Yemeni host nation government whose interests and policy
preferences do not always align with those of the United States. And like Afghanistan, Yemen does not
control all of its territory. In such circumstances, the United States cannot rely merely on force, but must
marshal an array of instruments, including diplomacy, development assistance, and the effective use of
political and economic leverage. The United States must also work with willing partners – particularly
those in the Yemeni government – to dampen the threats present there today.
A Way Ahead
The best scenario is for Yemen to emerge as a stable, functioning state – unlikely to break up in ways that
threaten regional security – that presents no sanctuary for transnational terrorist groups. Yet this is an
ideal; American policy alone cannot bring about such an outcome.
The objective of U.S. policy should therefore be more modest and aimed at helping to bring Yemen back
from the brink by increasing its domestic stability. This task will not be achieved easily, quickly, or
inexpensively. In light of the manifold challenges that plague Yemen, American policy should attempt to
mitigate the direct threats that instability and lack of governance pose. At a minimum, the United States
should develop an approach that includes the following elements:
Broaden the focus. Since 2001, U.S. policy toward Yemen has focused mostly – and, at times,
overwhelmingly – on counterterrorism. This is understandable, but problematic. When the perceived
terrorist threat in Yemen retreated in 2003, U.S. policymakers lost interest, abandoning or curtailing
development projects in the country. Given the threat posed not just by terrorism in Yemen, but also by
the potential for nationwide instability, U.S. policy should move toward a broader and more sustainable
relationship, with a strong focus on development. Such a relationship would include a counterterrorism
component, but not be defined by counterterrorism alone. American officials should make clear, both
publicly and privately, that the United States seeks an enduring relationship with the people of Yemen. In
so doing, they should note that the United States does not merely view Yemen as a counterterrorism
problem, but rather as a country with which it seeks a multifaceted and enduring relationship that includes
economic development, improved government, and domestic stability.
Engage the international community. Numerous international players, including the European Union, the
Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia in particular), Jordan, and Japan all play key roles in Yemen.
Yet international approaches to Yemen tend to be ad hoc and uncoordinated. The United States should
make a major effort to build a united and coordinated international coalition that aims to improve the
situation in Yemen. This might start with a new international donor‘s conference that would include a
―contract with Yemen.‖ Such a pact would provide aid in response to tangible steps by the government to
address issues of corruption and human rights. A donors‘ conference in 2006 took place, but to date less
than 20 percent of the pledged aid has been delivered. Now, building on international alarm about Yemen,
there may well be more willingness to follow through with pledges. By proceeding with a contract with
Yemen, international partners could both generate leverage over the Yemeni government and achieve
greater buy-in from donor countries.
Increase financial, counterterrorism, and technical assistance. No amount of foreign assistance will cure
Yemen‘s deeply entrenched economic, social, and political problems. And while projected assistance for
this year represents a significant increase over past amounts, in light of the compelling American national
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interest in avoiding a failed state in Yemen, the United States should devote even greater resources to the
effort. Dollars spent on bolstering the Yemeni government‘s reach and improving its effectiveness now
are likely to prevent the imposition of much greater costs for the United States should such preventive
measures fail.
Any increased assistance should target several specific priorities. The United States should increase socalled ―Section 1206‖ counterterrorism assistance that enables the Department of Defense to train and
equip foreign military forces. Such funding should focus on further bolstering border security and
building the capacity of the Yemeni military, including the Coast Guard, to carry out counterterrorism and
anti-piracy operations. The United States should expand counterinsurgency advice to the government of
Yemen, which has not conducted the kind of population-centric counterinsurgency that has demonstrated
success elsewhere. USAID programs should focus in particular on improving basic governance, for
instance by providing additional technical assistance to the anti-corruption commission.
Use diplomatic leverage. Since the Yemeni government looks to the United States to confirm its political
legitimacy on the international stage, the United States should use this diplomatic leverage to influence
the Sana‘a government‘s behavior. At present, the Yemeni government displays insufficient will to
combat al-Qaeda elements other than those perceived as a direct threat to regime survival. It also displays
deficiencies in governance, human rights, and economic management, resulting in the promotion of
widespread disaffection, despair, and extremism. President Saleh enjoyed a relatively close relationship
with President Bush, visiting the White House on several occasions. The current U.S. administration has
wisely held back on a similar presidential-level meeting until it is clear that the government is prepared to
take concrete action on several issues of pressing concern.
Explore mediation. The government‘s repeated battles against Houthis in the north – into which Saudi
Arabia has now been drawn – distract from security operations that might otherwise be directed at alQaeda elements and harden anti-government sentiment among the people of Sa‘dah. Sana‘a‘s lack of
governance in this region, combined with the government‘s blunt approach to counterinsurgency, make
separatist problems worse. An easing of tensions between the government and Houthi separatists would
free the government to take more seriously the threat posed by transnational terrorists present on Yemeni
soil. It is thus worth exploring whether a political settlement to the conflict is achievable. Toward this
end, the United States should explore the possibility of external mediation. While regional governments
may face distrust by one side or the other, the United States should encourage a more disinterested party –
such as the European Union or one of its members – to serve as an honest broker. Such an approach
should include quiet, but active American participation.
Get the narrative right. The United States should also seek to influence how the Yemeni population views
both the United States and the U.S. relationship with the Sana‘a government. Getting this narrative right
will first require avoiding sins of commission. For example, the United States should seek to make the
counterterrorism partnership easier, not harder, by recognizing political realities in Yemen. After the
Pentagon publicized a November 2002 drone attack against suspected al-Qaeda members, for example,
President Saleh and his government paid a heavy price domestically; this event was in part responsible for
undermining the government‘s subsequent willingness to take on other al-Qaeda elements. U.S.
policymakers should publicly stress the broader relationship they seek with that country, one that includes
development and improved governance – and not focus exclusively on counterterrorism.
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Establish a regional assistance program focused on Yemeni prisons. The United States should press the
government of Yemen to treat its prison problem with the deadly seriousness it deserves. Two
consecutive U.S. administrations have refused to transfer home the nearly 100 Yemeni prisoners at
Guantanamo Bay for fear that insufficient political will and a lack of security would enable those
prisoners to return to the fight. Yet the problem of Yemeni prisons goes well beyond the need to transfer
Guantanamo detainees; the country‘s prisons are poorly-secured breeding grounds for jihadist ideology.
The United States should work with the Yemeni government and other countries in the region to improve
the penal system. Such a program should draw on the successful application of principles applied in Saudi
Arabia, Singapore, and in U.S.-run detention facilities in Iraq. These programs separate hard-core jihadis
from other criminals; harden facilities to prevent attack or escape; improve conditions within the prisons
to reduce the intensity of prisoner grievances; and establish a thorough rehabilitation program for terrorist
detainees.
Conclusion
The United States has a national interest in preventing the further deterioration of conditions inside
Yemen. Numerous intelligence assessments point to Yemen and neighboring Somalia as the likeliest
destination for al-Qaeda fighters should they be evicted from their current location along the PakistanAfghanistan border. In light of ongoing insurgencies, the country‘s enormous economic, natural resource,
and population challenges, and the government‘s legitimacy problems, Yemen today is on the knife‘s
edge. While the United States cannot possibly solve all Yemen‘s many problems, American policymakers
have the capacity to help move Yemen off that edge. For the sake of American and global security, they
should take decisive steps to do so.
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Intelligence/Homeland
Security
Letter by Former CIA Directors to President Obama
Fox News
Seven former heads of the CIA wrote President Obama on Friday to ask him to end an
investigation launched by former Attorney General Eric Holder into the actions of CIA
interrogators who used "enhanced" techniques to question terror detainees.
September 18, 2009
The President
The White House
Washington, D.C.
Dear Mr. President:
We have served as directors of Central Intelligence or directors of the CIA for presidents
reaching back over 35 years. We respectfully urge you to exercise your authority to reverse
Attorney General Holder's August 24 decision to re-open the criminal investigation of CIA
interrogations that took place following the attacks of September 11.
Our reasons for making this recommendation are as follows.
The post-September 11 interrogations for which the attorney general is opening an inquiry were
investigated four years ago by career prosecutors. The CIA, at its own initiative, forwarded fewer
than 20 instances where agency officers appeared to have acted beyond their existing legal
authorities.
Career prosecutors under the supervision of the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia
determined that one prosecution (of a CIA contractor) was warranted. A conviction was later
obtained. They determined that prosecutions were not warranted in the other cases. In a number
of these cases the CIA subsequently took administrative disciplinary steps against the individuals
involved.
Attorney General Holder's decision to re-open the criminal investigation creates an atmosphere
of continuous jeopardy for those whose cases the Department of Justice had previously declined
to prosecute. Moreover, there is no reason to expect that the re-opened criminal investigation will
remain narrowly focused.
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If criminal investigations closed by career prosecutors during one administration can so easily be
reopened at the direction of political appointees in the next, declinations of prosecution will be
rendered meaningless. Those men and women who undertake difficult intelligence assignments
in the aftermath of an attack such as September 11 must believe there is permanence in the legal
rules that govern their actions.
They must be free, as the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Senator
Lieberman, has put it: "to do their dangerous and critical jobs without worrying that years from
now a future attorney general will authorize a criminal investigation of them for behavior that a
previous attorney general concluded was authorized and legal." Similar deference needs to be
shown to fact-based decisions made by career prosecutors years ago.
Not only will some members of the intelligence community be subjected to costly financial and
other burdens from what amounts to endless criminal investigations, but this approach will
seriously damage the willingness of many other intelligence officers to take risks to protect the
country. In our judgment such risk-taking is vital to success in the long and difficult fight against
the terrorists who continue to threaten us.
Success in intelligence often depends on surprise and deception and on creating uncertainty in
the mind of an enemy. As president you have the authority to make decisions restricting
substantive interrogation or any other intelligence collection method, based on legal analyses and
policy recommendations.
But, the administration must be mindful that public disclosure about past intelligence operations
can only help Al Qaeda elude U.S. intelligence and plan future operations. Disclosures about
CIA collection operations have and will continue to make it harder for intelligence officers to
maintain the momentum of operations that have saved lives and helped protect America from
further attacks.
Finally, another certain result of these reopened investigations is the serious damage done to our
intelligence community's ability to obtain the cooperation of foreign intelligence agencies.
Foreign services are already greatly concerned about the United States' inability to maintain any
secrets. They rightly fear that, through these additional investigations and the court proceedings
that could follow, terrorists may learn how other countries came to our assistance in a time of
peril.
The United States promised these foreign countries that their cooperation would never be
disclosed. As a result of the zeal on the part of some to uncover every action taken in the post9/11 period, many countries may decide that they can no longer safely share intelligence or
cooperate with us on future counter-terrorist operations. They simply cannot rely on our
promises of secrecy.
We support your stated commitment, Mr. President, to look to the future regarding these
important issues. In our judgment the only way that is possible is if the criminal investigation of
these interrogations that Attorney General Holder has re-opened is now re-closed.
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Sincerely,
Michael Hayden
Porter Goss
George Tenet
John Deutch
R. James Woolsey
William Webster
James R. Schlesinger
An "Intelligent" FBI
BY Gary Schmitt
October 10, 2008 4:10 PM
The Weekly Standard
On Friday, October 3, all eyes were on Washington, as the House passed the $700 billion bailout
bill designed to head off an economic 9/11. Lost in the news that day was the Bush
administration's decision to release a new set of attorney general guidelines for the FBI's
domestic operations. This will almost certainly be the administration's last major post-9/11
policy initiative before it leaves office.
The AG Guidelines, contained in a publicly-available document, are intended to govern how the
Bureau goes about its business here in the United States. It sets out the Bureau's responsibilities
under existing laws and executive orders and spells out how its analytic, investigative, and
intelligence activities are to be carried out to meet those tasks. Although Congress can certainly
step in and legislate changes in how the FBI works, the guidelines themselves do not require
congressional approval and will go into effect on December 1.
The new set of guidelines replaces five separate and overlapping sets of previous guidelines. For
example, in the past, there were separate guidelines (some public, some not) governing criminal,
national security, and foreign intelligence investigations. The implicit point in consolidating the
operational rules is of course to address the pre-9/11 problem in which intelligence and criminal
investigations were largely seen as distinct spheres, resulting in a set of bureaucratic rules that
overly compartmentalized what each could share with the other.
What's also new is the underlying point that domestic intelligence collection isn't simply about
catching someone breaking a law; prior to 9/11, the general thrust of previous guidelines was that
the predicate for collecting information would rest on the Bureau having in hand some prior
evidence that someone was engaged in law-breaking activities. The danger posed by
international terrorism (New York and Washington, 9/11/01; Madrid, 3/11/04; London, 7/7/05)
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and domestic terrorism (Oklahoma City, 4/19/95) is simply too grave to rest on what amounts to
a reactive model. The goal has to be early detection and prevention.
While a change from the past, the new guideline's willingness to put forward the idea that there
might be a need for intelligence collection and analysis outside of putting someone in jail is in
some respects a throwback to how domestic intelligence efforts were thought about before the
reforms of the 1970s. Precisely because subversion and terrorism typically involve tight-knit
conspiracies, it was understood that leads often come from sources and activities that are
nominally law-abiding and legal. It is not illegal, to take the now classic examples, for someone
to take jet pilot training; it is not illegal to buy fertilizer; it is not illegal travel to and from
Pakistan; it is not illegal to buy and use multiple cell phones. Nevertheless, when seen in
connection with other actions, knowledge of each of these activities may be precisely the kind of
information that the Bureau will need in order to head off a potential plot. Nor is this type of
information to be hoarded by the FBI: It is also the Bureau's "responsibility to provide
information as consistently and fully as possible to agencies with relevant responsiblities to
protect the United States and its people from terrorism and other threats to national security." As
the fact sheet accompanying the release of the guidelines bluntly notes: the guidelines "reflect
the FBI's status as a full-fledged intelligence agency and member of the U.S. intelligence
community."
The new guidelines' emphasis on intelligence collection and the seamless sharing of information
within the Bureau and with other relevant law-enforcement and intelligence agencies will not
lead, as the American Civil Liberties Union claims, to unfettered "political witch hunts" and
"unwarranted investigations of political enemies and peace groups." Can there be abuses? Sure.
Anyone familiar with power and bureaucracies in general and the Bureau's own sometimes
sloppy internal workings in particular can reliably predict that investigations will take place that
shouldn't. But we also now know what the costs are for devising a system in which there is
absolutely no tolerance for such mistakes.
Moreover, 2008 is not 1968. Unlike then, there exists today a whole range of congressional and
executive branch entities whose job it is to oversee the implementation of these guidelines. And,
per the new guidelines, as the seriousness of an investigation rises, so too the need to sustain it
with higher approvals and factual evidentiary support. The closer an individual comes to being
charged with a crime and, hence, to seeing his or her life or liberty put at risk, the higher the bar
is set for the investigation proceeding. In short, the idea that the Bureau could engage in a
politically inspired witch hunt for any sustained period seems highly improbable.
When one compares the American domestic intelligence system with that of our two closest
democratic allies in the fight against terrorism--Great Britain and France--the need to prevent
attacks has driven all three in recent years to revise the how law-enforcement and intelligence
communities work together. And, indeed, there are a number of aspects to the British and French
approach--such as monitoring speech, electronic surveillance and preemptive detentions of
suspects--that are more aggressive than anything being put forward here in the United States.
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From this one shouldn't conclude that those are measures we, in turn, should adopt. But it does
suggest that the new guidelines are well within the norms of other liberal democracies and
consonant with the threat we all now face.
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Middle East
Middle East
Free at Last?
The Arab World in the Twenty-first Century
March/April 2009
Bernard Lewis
Foreign Affairs
As the twentieth century drew to an end, it became clear that a major change was taking place in
the countries of the Arab world. For almost 200 years, those lands had been ruled and dominated
by European powers and before that by non-Arab Muslim regimes -- chiefly the Ottoman
Empire. After the departure of the last imperial rulers, the Arab world became a political
battleground between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. That, too,
ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Arab governments and Arab dynasties
(royal or presidential) began taking over. Arab governments and, to a limited but growing extent,
the Arab peoples were at last able to confront their own problems and compelled to accept
responsibility for dealing with them.
Europe, long the primary source of interference and domination, no longer plays any significant
role in the affairs of the Arab world. Given the enormous oil wealth enjoyed by some Arab rulers
and the large and growing Arab and Muslim population in Europe, the key question today is,
what role will Arabs play in European affairs? With the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia
ceased to be a major factor in the Arab world. But because of its proximity, its resources, and its
large Muslim population, Russia cannot afford to disregard the Middle East. Nor can the Middle
East afford to disregard Russia.
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The United States, unlike Europe, has continued to play a central role in the Arab world. During
the Cold War, the United States' interest in the region lay chiefly in countering the growing
Soviet influence, such as in Egypt and Syria. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. troops have
appeared occasionally in the region, either as part of joint peace missions (as in Lebanon in
1982-83) or to rescue or protect Arab governments from their neighboring enemies (as in Kuwait
and Saudi Arabia in 1990-91). But many in the Arab world -- and in the broader Islamic world -have seen these activities as blatant U.S. imperialism. According to this perception, the United
States is simply the successor to the now-defunct French, British, and Soviet empires and their
various Christian predecessors, carrying out yet another infidel effort to dominate the Islamic
world.
Increasing U.S. involvement in the Middle East led to a series of attacks on U.S. government
installations during the 1980s and 1990s. At first, Washington's response to the attacks was to
withdraw. After the attacks on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 and on the U.S.
component of a United Nations mission in Mogadishu in 1993, Washington pulled out its troops,
made angry but vague declarations, and then launched missiles into remote and uninhabited
places. Even the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, in New York City, brought no serious
rejoinder. These responses were seen by many as an expression of fear and weakness rather than
moderation, and they encouraged hope among Islamist militants that they would eventually
triumph. It was not until 9/11 that Washington felt compelled to respond with force, first in
Afghanistan and then in Iraq, which were perceived as the sources of these attacks.
Other powers, both external and within the region, are playing increasingly active roles. Two
neighboring non-Arab but predominantly Muslim countries, Iran and Turkey, have a long history
of involvement in Arab affairs. Although the Turks, no doubt because of their past experience,
have remained cautious and defensive, mainly concerned with a possible threat from Kurdish
northern Iraq, the Iranians have become more active, especially since Iran's Islamic Revolution
entered a new militant and expansionist phase. The broader Islamic world, free from outside
control for the first time in centuries, is also naturally interested in events in the heartland of
Islam. China and India, which will share or compete for primacy in Asia and elsewhere in the
twenty-first century are also taking an interest in the region.
THE CHALLENGE OF PEACE
The political landscape within the Arab world has also changed dramatically since the end of the
Cold War. Pan-Arabism, which once played a central role in the region, has effectively come to
an end. Of the many attempts to unite different Arab countries, all but one -- the unification of
North and South Yemen after they were briefly separated by an imperial intrusion -- have failed.
Since the death of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, in 1970, no Arab leader has enjoyed
much support outside his own country. Nor has any Arab head of state dared to submit his
attainment or retention of power to the genuinely free choice of his own people.
At the same time, issues of national identity are becoming more significant. Non-Arab ethnic
minorities -- such as the Kurds in Iran, Iraq, and Turkey and the Berbers in North Africa -historically posed no major threat to central governments, and relations were generally good
between Arabs and their non-Arab Muslim compatriots. But a new situation arose after the
defeat of Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf War. The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 1991 had a
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strictly limited purpose: to liberate Kuwait. When this was accomplished, U.S. forces withdrew,
leaving Saddam in control of his armed forces and free to massacre those of his subjects, notably
Kurds and Shiites, who had responded to the United States' appeal for rebellion. Saddam was left
in power, but his control did not extend to a significant part of northern Iraq, where a local
Kurdish regime in effect became an autonomous government.
This region was largely, although not entirely, Kurdish and included most of the Kurdish regions
of Iraq. For the first time in modern history, there was a Kurdish country with a Kurdish
government -- at least in practice, if not in theory. This posed problems not only for the
government of Iraq but also for those of some neighboring countries with significant Kurdish
populations, notably Turkey. (Because of the strong opposition of these neighbors, the creation
of an independent Kurdish state in the future seems unlikely. But a Kurdish component of a
federal Iraq is a serious possibility.)
Another major problem for the region is the Palestinian issue. The current situation is the direct
result of the policy, endorsed by the League of Nations and later by the United Nations, to create
a Jewish national home in Palestine. With rare exceptions, the Arabs of Palestine and the leading
Arab regimes resisted this policy from the start. A succession of offers for a Palestinian state in
Palestine were made -- by the British mandate government in 1937, by the United Nations in
1947 -- but each time Palestinian leaders and Arab regimes refused the offer because it would
have meant recognizing the existence of a Jewish state next door. The struggle between the new
state of Israel and the Palestinians has continued for over six decades, sometimes in the form of
battles between armies (as in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973) and more recently between Israeli
citizens and groups that are variously described as freedom fighters or terrorists.
The modern peace process began when President Anwar al-Sadat, of Egypt, fearing that the
growing Soviet presence in the region was a greater threat to Arab independence than Israel
could ever constitute, made peace with Israel in 1979. He was followed in 1994 by King Hussein
of Jordan and, less formally, by other Arab states that developed some commercial and quasidiplomatic contacts with Israel. Dialogue between Israel and the Palestine Liberation
Organization led to some measure of formal mutual recognition and, more significant, to a
withdrawal of Israeli forces from parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and the
establishment of more or less autonomous Palestinian authorities in these places.
But the conflict continues. Important sections of the Palestinian movement have refused to
recognize the negotiations or any agreements and are continuing the armed struggle. Even some
of those who have signed agreements -- notably Yasir Arafat -- have later shown a curious
ambivalence toward their implementation. From the international discourse in English and other
European languages, it would seem that most of the Arab states and some members of the
Palestinian leadership have resigned themselves to accepting Israel as a state. But the discourse
in Arabic -- in broadcasts, sermons, speeches, and school textbooks -- is far less conciliatory,
portraying Israel as an illegitimate invader that must be destroyed. If the conflict is about the size
of Israel, then long and difficult negotiations can eventually resolve the problem. But if the
conflict is about the existence of Israel, then serious negotiation is impossible. There is no
compromise position between existence and nonexistence.
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RUNNING ON EMPTY
The state of the region's economy, and the resulting social and political situation, is a source of
increasing concern in the Arab world. For the time being, oil continues to provide enormous
wealth, directly to some countries in the region and indirectly to others. But these vast sums of
money are creating problems as well as benefits. For one thing, oil wealth has strengthened
autocratic governments and inhibited democratic development. Oil-rich rulers have no need to
levy taxes and therefore no need to satisfy elected representatives. (In the Arab world, the
converse of a familiar dictum is true: No representation without taxation.)
In addition to strengthening autocracy, oil wealth has also inhibited economic development.
Sooner or later, oil will be either exhausted or replaced as an energy source, and the wealth and
power that it provides will come to an end. Some more farsighted Arab governments, aware of
this eventuality, have begun to encourage and foster other kinds of economic development. Some
of the Persian Gulf states are showing impressive expansion, especially in tourism and
international finance. But the returns accruing from these sectors are still limited compared to the
enormous wealth derived from oil.
Oil wealth has also led to the neglect or abandonment of other forms of gainful economic
activity. From 2002 to 2006, a committee of Arab intellectuals, working under the auspices of
the United Nations, produced a series of reports on human development in the Arab world. With
devastating frankness, they reviewed the economic, social, and cultural conditions in the Arab
world and compared them with those of other regions. Some of these comparisons -- reinforced
by data from other international sources -- revealed an appalling pattern of neglect and
underdevelopment.
Over the last quarter of a century, real GDP per capita has fallen throughout the Arab world. In
1999, the GDP of all the Arab countries combined stood at $531.2 billion, less than that of Spain.
Today, the total non-oil exports of the entire Arab world (which has a population of
approximately 300 million people) amount to less than those of Finland (a country of only five
million inhabitants). Throughout the 1990s, exports from the region, 70 percent of which are oil
or oil-related products, grew at a rate of 1.5 percent, far below the average global rate of six
percent. The number of books translated every year into Arabic in the entire Arab world is onefifth the number translated into Greek in Greece. And the number of books, both those in their
original language and those translated, published per million people in the Arab world is very
low compared with the figures for other regions. (Sub-Saharan Africa has a lower figure, but just
barely.)
The situation regarding science and technology is as bad or worse. A striking example is the
number of patents registered in the United States between 1980 and 2000: from Saudi Arabia,
there were 171; from Egypt, 77; from Kuwait, 52; from the United Arab Emirates, 32; from
Syria, 20; and from Jordan, 15 -- compared with 16,328 from South Korea and 7,652 from Israel.
Out of six world regions, that comprising the Middle East and North Africa received the lowest
freedom rating from Freedom House. The Arab countries also have the highest illiteracy rates
and one of the lowest numbers of active research scientists with frequently cited articles. Only
sub-Saharan Africa has a lower average standard of living.
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Another shock came with the 2003 publication in China of a list of the 500 best universities in
the world. The list did not include a single one of the more than 200 universities in the Arab
countries. Since then, new rankings have appeared every year. The Arab universities remain
absent, even from the relatively short list for the Asia-Pacific region. In an era of total and
untrammeled independence for the Arab world, these failings can no longer be attributed to
imperial oppressors or other foreign malefactors.
One of the most important social problems in the Arab world, as elsewhere in the Islamic world,
is the condition of women.
Women constitute slightly more than half the population, but in most Arab countries they have
no political power. Some Muslim observers have seen in the depressed and downtrodden status
of the female Arab population one of the main reasons for the underdevelopment of their society
as compared with the advanced West and the rapidly developing East. Modern communications
and travel are making these contrasts ever more visible. Some countries, such as Iraq and
Tunisia, have made significant progress toward the emancipation of women by increasing
opportunities for them. In Iraq, women have gained access to higher education and,
consequently, to an ever-widening range of professions. In Tunisia, equal rights for women were
guaranteed in the 1959 constitution. The results have been almost universal education for women
and a significant number of women among the ranks of doctors, journalists, lawyers, magistrates,
and teachers, as well as in the worlds of business and politics. This is perhaps the most hopeful
single factor for the future of freedom and progress in these countries.
Another social problem is immigrant communities in the Arab world, which have received far
less attention than Arab immigrant communities in Europe. These immigrants are attracted by oil
wealth and the opportunities that it provides, and they undertake tasks that local people are either
unwilling or unable to perform. This is giving rise to new and growing alien communities in
several Arab countries, such as South Asians in the United Arab Emirates. The assimilation of
immigrants from one Arab country into another has often proved difficult, and the acceptance of
non-Arab and non-Muslim immigrants from remoter lands poses a more serious problem.
All these problems are aggravated by the communications revolution, which is having an
enormous impact on the Arab population across all social classes. Even in premodern times,
government control of news and ideas in the Islamic countries was limited -- the mosque, the
pulpit, and, above all, the pilgrimage provided opportunities for the circulation of both
information and ideas without parallel in the Western world. To some extent, modern Middle
Eastern governments had learned how to manipulate information, but that control is rapidly
diminishing as modern communications technology, such as satellite television and the Internet,
has made people in the Arab countries, as elsewhere, keenly aware of the contrasts between
different groups in their own countries and, more important, of the striking differences between
the situations in their countries and those in other parts of the world. This has led to a great deal
of anger and resentment, often directed against the West, as well as a countercurrent striving for
democratic reform.
THE RISE OF THE RADICALS
Most Westerners saw the defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union as a victory in the Cold War.
For many Muslims, it was nothing of the sort. In some parts of the Islamic world, the collapse of
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the Soviet Union represented the devastating loss of a patron that was difficult or impossible to
replace. In others, it symbolized the defeat of an enemy and a victory for the Muslim warriors
who forced the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan. As this latter group saw it, the millennial
struggle between the true believers and the unbelievers had gone through many phases, during
which the Muslims were led by various lines of caliphs and the unbelievers by various infidel
empires. During the Cold War, the leadership of the unbelievers was contested between two rival
superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Since they -- the Muslim holy warriors in
Afghanistan -- had disposed of the larger, fiercer, and more dangerous of the two in the 1980s,
dealing with the other, they believed, would be comparatively easy.
That task was given a new urgency by the two U.S. interventions in Iraq: that during the brief
Persian Gulf War of 1990-91 and the 2003 invasion that resulted in the overthrow of Saddam and
the attempt to create a new and more democratic political and social order. Opinions differ on the
measure of the United States' achievements so far, but even its limited success has been
sufficient to cause serious alarm, both to regimes with a vested interest in the survival of the
existing order and, more important, to groups with their own radical plans for overthrowing it.
In the eyes of Islamist radicals, both of these wars have constituted humiliating defeats for Islam
at the hands of the surviving infidel superpower. This point has been made with particular
emphasis by Osama bin Laden, a Saudi who played a significant role in the war against the
Soviets in Afghanistan and subsequently emerged as a very articulate leader in the Islamic world
and as the head of al Qaeda, a new Islamist radical group. He has repeatedly made his case
against the United States, most notably in his declaration of jihad of February 1998, in which he
elaborated three grievances against the infidel enemies of Islam. The first was the presence of
U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, the holy land of Islam. The second was the use of Saudi bases for an
attack on Iraq, the seat of the longest and most glorious period of classical Islamic history. The
third was U.S. support for the seizure of Jerusalem by what he contemptuously called "the
statelet" of the Jews.
Another claimant for the mantle of Islamic leadership is the Islamic Republic of Iran. The 1979
Iranian Revolution constituted a major shift in power, with a major ideological basis, and had a
profound impact across the Muslim world. Its influence was by no means limited to Shiite
communities. It was also very extensive and powerful in countries where there is little or no
Shiite presence and where Sunni-Shiite differences therefore have little political or emotional
significance. The impact of the Iranian Revolution in the Arab countries was somewhat delayed
because of the long and bitter Iran-Iraq War (1980-88), but from the end of the war onward,
Iran's influence began to grow, particularly among Shiites in neighboring Arab countries. These
populations, even in those places where they are numerous, had for centuries lived under what
might be described as a Sunni ascendancy. The Iranian Revolution, followed by the regime
change in Iraq in 2003, gave them new hope; the Shiite struggle has once again, for the first time
in centuries, become a major theme of Arab politics. This struggle is very important where
Shiites constitute a majority of the population (as in Iraq) or a significant proportion of the
population (as in Lebanon, Syria, and parts of the eastern and southern Arabian Peninsula). For
some time now, the eastern Arab world has seen the odd spectacle of Sunni and Shiite extremists
occasionally cooperating in the struggle against the infidels while continuing their internal
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struggle against one another. (One example of this is Iran's support for both the strongly Sunni
Hamas in Gaza and the strongly Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon.)
The increasing involvement of Iran in the affairs of the Arab world has brought about major
changes. First, Iran has developed into a major regional power, its influence extending to
Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. Second, although the rift between the Sunnis and the
Shiites is significant, Iran's involvement has rendered it less important than the divide between
both of them and their non-Arab, non-Muslim enemies. Third, just as the perceived Soviet threat
induced Sadat to make peace with Israel in 1979, today some Arab leaders see the threat from
Iran as more dangerous than that posed by Israel and therefore are quietly seeking
accommodation with the Jewish state. During the 2006 war between Israeli forces and
Hezbollah, the usual pan-Arab support for the Arab side was replaced by a cautious, even
expectant, neutrality. This realignment may raise some hope for Arab-Israeli peace.
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE FUTURE
For much of the twentieth century, two imported Western ideologies dominated in the Arab
world: socialism and nationalism. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, these worldviews
had become discredited. Both had, in effect, accomplished the reverse of their declared aims.
Socialist plans and projects were put in place, but they did not bring prosperity. National
independence was achieved, but it did not bring freedom; rather, it allowed foreign overlords to
be replaced with domestic tyrants, who were less inhibited and more intimate in their tyranny.
Another imported European model, the one-party ideological dictatorship, brought neither
prosperity nor dignity -- only tyranny sustained by indoctrination and repression.
Today, most Arab regimes belong to one of two categories: those that depend on the people's
loyalty and those that depend on their obedience. Loyalty may be ethnic, tribal, regional, or some
combination of these; the most obvious examples of systems that rely on loyalty are the older
monarchies, such as those of Morocco and the Arabian Peninsula. The regimes that depend on
obedience are European-style dictatorships that use techniques of control and enforcement
derived from the fascist and communist models. These regimes have little or no claim to the
loyalty of their people and depend for survival on diversion and repression: directing the anger of
their people toward some external enemy -- such as Israel, whose misdeeds are a universally
sanctioned public grievance -- and suppressing discontent with ruthless police methods. In those
Arab countries where the government depends on force rather than loyalty, there is clear
evidence of deep and widespread discontent, directed primarily against the regime and then
inevitably against those who are seen to support it. This leads to a paradox -- namely, that
countries with pro-Western regimes usually have anti-Western populations, whereas the
populations of countries with anti-Western regimes tend to look to the West for liberation.
Both of these models are becoming less effective; there are groups, increasing in number and
importance, that seek a new form of government based not primarily on loyalty, and still less on
repression, but on consent and participation. These groups are still small and, of necessity, quiet,
but the fact that they have appeared at all is a remarkable development. Some Arab states have
even begun to experiment, cautiously, with elected assemblies formed after authentically
contested elections, notably Iraq after its 2005 election.
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In some countries, democratic opposition forces are growing, but they are often vehemently antiWestern. The recent successes of Hamas and Hezbollah demonstrate that opposition parties can
fare very well when their critiques are cast in religious, rather than political, terms. The religious
opposition parties have several obvious advantages. They express both their critiques and their
aspirations in terms that are culturally familiar and easily accepted, unlike those of Western-style
democrats. In the mosques, they have access to a communications network -- and therefore tools
to disseminate propaganda -- unparalleled in any other sector of the community. They are
relatively free from corruption and have a record of helping the suffering urban masses. A further
advantage, compared with secular democratic opposition groups, is that whereas the latter are
required by their own ideologies to tolerate the propaganda of their opponents, the religious
parties have no such obligation. Rather, it is their sacred duty to suppress and crush what they
see as antireligious, anti-Islamic movements. Defenders of the existing regimes argue, not
implausibly, that loosening the reins of authority would lead to a takeover by radical Islamist
forces.
Lebanon is the one country in the entire region with a significant experience of democratic
political life. It has suffered not for its faults but for its merits -- the freedom and openness that
others have exploited with devastating effect. More recently, there have been some hopeful signs
that the outside exploitation and manipulation of Lebanon might at last be diminishing. The
Palestinian leadership has been gone for decades; Syria was finally induced to withdraw its
forces in 2005, leaving the Lebanese, for the first time in decades, relatively free to conduct their
own affairs. Indeed, the Cedar Revolution of 2005 was seen as the beginning of a new era for
Lebanon. But Lebanese democracy is far from secure. Syria retains a strong interest in the
country, and Hezbollah -- trained, armed, and financed by Iran -- has become increasingly
powerful. There have been some signs of a restoration of Lebanese stability and democracy, but
the battle is not yet over, nor will it be, until the struggle for democracy spreads beyond the
borders of Lebanon.
Today, there are two competing diagnoses of the ills of the region, each with its own appropriate
prescription. According to one, the trouble is all due to infidels and their local dupes and
imitators. The remedy is to resume the millennial struggle against the infidels in the West and
return to God-given laws and traditions. According to the other diagnosis, it is the old ways, now
degenerate and corrupt, that are crippling the Arab world. The cure is openness and freedom in
the economy, society, and the state -- in a word, genuine democracy. But the road to democracy - and to freedom -- is long and difficult, with many obstacles along the way. It is there, however,
and there are some visionary leaders who are trying to follow it. At the moment, both Islamic
theocracy and liberal democracy are represented in the region. The future place of the Arab
world in history will depend, in no small measure, on the outcome of the struggle between them.
Copyright © 2002-2009 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
All rights reserved.
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Iran
FPI Fact Sheet: The Future of Iran‘s Green Movement
April 1, 2010
The Foreign Policy Initiative
Over the last year, the Iranian people have suffered through the fraudulent reelection of
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and months of protests and recriminations by hard-line regime elements
intent on preserving their grip on power. In his 2010 Nowruz message, President Obama noted
that despite his repeated attempts to engage Iran, ―Iran‘s leaders have shown only a clenched
fist.‖
This clenched fist has been directed not only at the United States and the international
community, but also at the Iranian people. On February 11th, the 31st anniversary of the Islamic
Revolution in Iran, many Iranians took to the streets to protest, but their efforts on that day were
suppressed by pro-regime counterdemonstrations, the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and
the Basij militias, and were overshadowed by President Ahmadinejad‘s bellicose announcement
about Iran‘s nuclear program.
The ability of the regime to clamp down on the Green Movement in recent months has caused
some outside observers to argue that Iran‘s opposition movement has fizzled out roughly nine
months after an election that brought thousands of protesters into the streets. In the wake of
February 11th, many questions have been raised regarding the ability of the opposition to succeed
against the regime‘s brutal tactics.
Below are some of the key arguments put forward by those who believe that the opposition has
been effectively silenced by the regime with responses outlining why these charges are incorrect.
Charge: The opposition was broken by the regime on February 11.
Response: As Reuel Gerecht writes, Khamenei had a ―good day‖ on February 11, proving his
ability to mobilize security forces and maintain his grip on the apparatus of power, but the Green
Movement, nevertheless, had a ―decent day. They survived.‖ Joshua Muravchik adds, ―the
Greens don‘t count the day as a clear defeat. Protests were successfully mounted in a handful of
other cities and even in pockets of Tehran, where, for the most part, protesters repaired to the
rooftops to shout ‗Allahu akbar.‘‖ In a larger sense, the Green Movement achieves an important
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measure of success as long as it maintains popular adherence to its basic goals. As long as the
opposition can hold together, they ―will let Iranians know that the regime isn‘t omnipotent. And
it will keep alive the possibility that the country‘s collective embitterment about the failure of the
Islamic revolution to provide prosperity and happiness could explode.‖
There is no question that the regime treats the opposition as a serious threat to its authority and
has used every tactic at its disposal—from waging cyber warfare against the Green Movement to
authorizing Revolutionary Guard and Basij units to kill protesters. But, as AEI‘s Ali Alfoneh
points out, ―none of these tactics have proved efficient and the Islamic Republic has not managed
to terrorize the public into submission. The Green Movement still manages to mobilize the
public and, 31 years after the revolution, the situation in Tehran resembles the political crisis that
led to the collapse of the Shah's regime.‖
Moreover, the brutal tactics the regime employed to contain the protests on February 11 will not
necessarily be effective in the future. As Gerecht notes, ―The regime will have to keep an
enormous reserve of riot-control forces ready for deployment in Tehran. This will probably leave
other cities lightly covered….The opposition will have some idea of when these forces come and
go. They will increasingly have a better idea of where the regime has let down its guard.‖ In
addition, as the regime increases its monitoring of electronic communication and new media
such as Twitter, the Green Movement can go ―low tech,‖ using the same ―night letters‖ and other
techniques used against the Shah.
Charge: The opposition faces dwindling support because it does not have widespread
appeal and is primarily composed of secular middle and upper class urban professionals
and highly educated youth.
Response: It is in fact the regime that faces dwindling support. Khamenei and Ahmadinejad are
under attack from several key factions, and, more and more, the regime relies only upon the
repressive power of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and security services. Mehdi Khalaji
contends that Khamenei‘s ―religious authority is contested by the clerical establishment. The
only power base he has is within the military and security community of the country. Khamenei
has lost much of his political and religious legitimacy, and without the military and especially the
IRGC, he would have no real power.‖ The increasingly dictatorial actions of Khamenei and
Ahmadinejad have, moreover, served to energize a broad population beyond the Green
Movement‘s liberal urban base. Reza Aslan describes the opposition as, ―an ever-widening
coalition of young people, liberal political and religious leaders, merchants fed up with the state
of the economy, and conservative politicians frightened by the expanding role of the
Revolutionary Guards in Iranian politics.‖
Observers should also not assume that Iran‘s poor unanimously support the regime, even if the
Green Movement has so far been less successful at mobilizing these groups. It is impossible for
us to know whether these segments of the population genuinely support the regime or are simply
more susceptible to its thuggish intimidation. Gerecht argues, ―Odds are the opposition has an
army of fans among the poor—the so-called mostazafan, ‗the oppressed,‘ whom the regime has
always counted on. And when their intelligent sons and daughters go to school, they too often
become democratic dissidents.‖
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Charge: Even if the Green Movement has a future, the U.S. must deal with the current
regime on the nuclear issue, which remains the primary security priority.
Response: Attempts to separate Iran‘s foreign policy from its internal politics ignore the reality
of the situation. The regime‘s level of confidence in its survival affects its positions on the
nuclear program. Khalaji argues that ―Iran‘s leaders link their domestic self-confidence with
their nuclear negotiating tactics. It seems less likely now [after February 11] that the regime will
feel an urgent necessity to resolve the nuclear dispute. In fact, it might adopt a tougher stand on
the issue, with hardliners believing they need not endorse compromise with either the
international community or the domestic opposition.‖
Furthermore, there is little reason to believe that any attempts to reach a compromise with the
current regime will be successful. As Richard Haass writes, ―The nuclear talks are going
nowhere. The Iranians appear intent on developing the means to produce a nuclear weapon; there
is no other explanation for the secret uranium-enrichment facility discovered near the holy city of
Qum.… Instead we should be focusing on another fact: Iran may be closer to profound political
change than at any time since the revolution that ousted the shah 30 years ago…. The United
States, European governments, and others should shift their Iran policy toward increasing the
prospects for political change.‖
FPI Executive Director Jamie Fly notes the best way to tackle the nuclear issue is to support the
opposition, ―It is difficult to imagine a reformist government making [the nuclear weapons
program] a top priority. Instead, Iran‘s new leaders will likely want to remove the yoke of
international sanctions against Iran, restoring Iran‘s banking and financial ties with the rest of the
world. They will thus be more open to negotiations on the nuclear issue than the current regime
has shown itself to be…‖
Charge: It is best if the United States not take overt actions to support the Green
Movement and regardless, the U.S. ability to do so is limited.
Response: Argues Muravchik, ―True, we are helpless to prevent the arrests and beatings or the
mobilization of the regime‘s automatons, but we have it within our power to counteract its
technological warfare against the Green Movement. We can put up a communications satellite
dedicated to the needs of the Greens to facilitate Internet and other electronic communications
despite government interference. Contrary to the NSC‘s knee-jerk appeasement, we should
protest loudly any jamming of our broadcasts—and we should find ways to retaliate. And we can
launch TV Farda, a complement to Radio Farda, the Farsi surrogate broadcast service operated
by Radio Free Europe. Currently, VOA TV‘s Farsi broadcasts reach millions but are constrained
because VOA speaks for the U.S. government. In contrast, a ―surrogate‖ service like Radio Farda
or TV Marti (to Cuba) speaks for the indigenous people who are excluded from power. A
surrogate Farsi TV station would give the Greens a powerful weapon with which to counteract
the regime‘s vicious machinations.‖
Khalaji adds, ―Putting cracks in the wall of this prison -- opening Iran to the world -- would be a
great help to the democratic movement in Iran. The United States has made many efforts in this
regard but still could do more. The major internet companies in the West could work with
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activists to find ways to bypass Iran's internet censors. Companies that provide Iran with the
technology of surveillance and suppression should be named and shamed; consumers should shy
away from these companies' products, and governments should urge these companies to
reconsider their practices. Iran should not be able to use modern technology for fundamentalist
and totalitarian purposes.‖
Finally, in the words of J. Scott Carpenter, ―it is time for the Obama administration to launch a
nuanced, if comprehensive, offensive to challenge the regime on human rights grounds,
confident that it is following, not leading, the Iranian people who are risking their lives to create
a new future in Iran.‖ Carpenter lists several specific suggestions in his testimony before
Congress here. While the U.S. must remain sensitive to any impressions of inappropriate
―meddling‖ in Iranian affairs, arguments that the opposition does not want U.S. support or that
any foreign support will only harm the Green Movement are misguided and play into the
regime‘s hands. As Carpenter writes, ―Demonstrators in November chanted, ‗Obama, are you
with us or are you with them?‘ We would be foolish to think they were asking this rhetorically.
As several Iranian Americans have noted, the goal of protestors holding signs in English was not
simply to show off linguistic ability….‖
The insideIran.org project at The Century Foundation and the National Security Network have
released a list of recommended actions that the Executive and Legislative Branches of the U.S.
government could take to ―combat the coercive actions of the Iranian government while also
making it easier for Iranians to connect to the outside world through the Internet and satellite
television.‖ The Heritage Foundation has outlined ―Ten Steps to a Free Iran.‖ James K.
Glassman and Michael Doran argue for a ―soft power‖ solution to undermine the regime in
Tehran. The State Department should also restore funding to international democracy and civil
society NGOs, as Bari Weiss and David Feith have argued.
Charge: Sanctions or even military action are more likely to prevent a nuclear Iran than
overt U.S. support for regime change.
Response: U.S. strategy toward Iran should be multifaceted and use all available leverage
including sanctions, a clear willingness to keep the military option on the table, and robust
support for the Green Movement. But we should have no illusions that sanctions alone will
cause Iran to reconsider its drive towards a nuclear weapons capability.
Danielle Pletka argues, ―Sanctions increasingly appear to be a fading hope. Thus we are left with
a stark alternative: Either Iran gets a nuclear weapon and we manage the risk, or someone acts to
eliminate the threat.‖ In the latest issue of Commentary, Michael Rubin writes that ―Regime
change is the only strategy, short of military strikes, that will deny Iran a nuclear bomb, and it is
the only strategy that can end altogether the threat of a nuclear program under the control of
radicals in the employ of the Islamic Republic. Regime change…if conducted simultaneously
with a campaign to isolate and fracture the Revolutionary Guards, could end with Iran taking its
place among nations as a moderate, productive republic, immunized against the virus of Islamist
populism, at peace with itself and its neighbors.‖
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FPI Director William Kristol notes, ―Perhaps embracing the concept of "regime change" spooks
the Obama administration. It's awfully reminiscent of George W. Bush. But one great failure of
the Bush administration was its second-term fecklessness with respect to Iran. Bush kicked the
Iran can down the road. Does Obama want an achievement that eluded Bush?‖ FPI Director
Robert Kagan writes, ―The president needs to realize that this is his "tear down this wall"
moment. And that it is fleeting…Were the Iranian regime to fall on Obama's watch…and were
he to play some visible role in helping, his place in history as a transformational world leader
would be secure.‖
Sen. Lieberman: The Future Of American
Power In The Middle East
September 29, 2010
Council on Foreign Relations
SENATOR JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN (ID-CT): Thanks, Jon. Thank you, Jon. Thanks to
everybody. And I can't resist -- anytime anybody says I'm somebody who doesn't need an
introduction, I'm reminded of being in a room with Henry Kissinger a few years ago here in
Washington when the person got up and said, "If there's anybody in the world that doesn't need
an introduction, it's Henry Kissinger. So I give you Dr. Henry Kissinger."
And Henry got up and said, "You know, I suppose it's true. I don't need an introduction, but I
like a good introduction." (Laughter.) So I thank you for that introduction.
It's a pleasure to be back at the Council on Foreign Relations to talk about the future of American
power in the Middle East.
As I was preparing my remarks today, I was reminded of a story about the pre-history of the
CFR. The council, as some of you may know, grew out of a project begun by President
Woodrow Wilson shortly after the United States entered World War I. President Wilson's idea
was to assemble some of the best and brightest minds from academia to advise him about what
the shape of the postwar order would be and what role America should play in it.
This initiative included a working group on precisely the subject I would like to discuss this
afternoon -- the future of the Middle East. The group's composition was unique: Ten
distinguished academics, including an historian of the Crusades, two professors of ancient
Persian literature and a specialist on Native American tribes. What the group did not include,
however, was anyone who knew anything about the contemporary Middle East at that time.
(Laughter.)
According to one account of the initiative's work, and I quote: "Many of the researchers did no
more than summarize the information they found in an encyclopedia about the Middle East.
Many delved into questions of literature and architecture and few of the reports had any bearing
on the question of American national interests." End of quote.
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So with this history in mind, I want to preface my remarks this afternoon by assuring all of you
that you will not be subjected to any attempts at literary criticism on my part. No encyclopedias - not even, in this case, Wikipedia! -- were consulted in the preparation of this speech.
I will say, though, in fairness to your predecessors at the council, and mine, it is also
significantly easier today than it was in Woodrow Wilson's time to identify America's national
interests in the Middle East. In fact, it's hard to miss them.
The U.S. has never been more engaged and invested across the Middle East than we are right
now e from the Straits of Hormuz to the wilds of Yemen; from proliferation to the peace process.
Indeed, it is hard to imagine a day in the life of an American President in which the Middle East
does not figure prominently, probably.
This did not happen overnight. Rather, it reflects a set of real American interests and critical
American commitments in the Middle East that have developed in recent decades under both
Democratic and Republican administrations. This has happened because successive American
presidents have recognized that developments in the Middle East have a direct impact on the
physical safety and economic security of our country and our citizenry.
And yet paradoxically, despite this unprecedented engagement in the Middle East today, I have
been struck, when I've traveled in the region in recent months, by what seems to me to be a
heightened uneasiness about the future of American power there. Behind closed doors, one hears
an unmistakable uncertainty about our resolve and staying power -- notwithstanding the fact that,
in my opinion, we're more engaged in the region today than we ever have been before.
I want to suggest four possible reasons for this paradox and these concerns. First: It may actually
reflect just how indispensable and integral American leadership has become in the Middle East.
Despite the frustrations and resentments in different groups in the region that America seems to
provoke, we are also looked to and counted on as a partner and guarantor for security; as an
honest broker in diplomacy and politics; and as a voice for human rights and democratic change.
Second: The global financial crisis and our national fiscal deficits have aroused fears in the
Middle East, as they have elsewhere in the world, that America might be tempted to turn inward
-- unwilling or unable to sustain our global commitments.
Third: The anxieties in the region about America's staying power also undoubtedly reflect some
of the setbacks we have encountered in pursuit of our goals in the Middle East -- from the
mismanagement of the early years in postwar Iraq to the inability of successive administrations
to secure the comprehensive regional peace that we have repeatedly tried to achieve.
But fourth -- and I think, ultimately, most important today -- the major geopolitical driver for the
heightened anxiety about America's staying power in the Middle East is the Islamic Republic of
Iran -- more specifically, its determined push to become the dominant power in the region and
tilt the balance of governance there towards Islamist extremism -- and whether the United States
has the will to stop that push.
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The Iranian regime's pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability cannot be separated from its longterm campaign of unconventional warfare, stretching back decades now, to destabilize the region
and remake it in its own Islamist extremist image. So we have a power here that is both extreme
and expansionist and that's a dangerous combination.
Through use of the IRGC Quds Force and its terrorist proxies, the Iranian regime has sought to
neutralize the conventional military advantage of the United States and our allies and overturn
the balance of power in the Middle East. It's also, of course, responsible for the murder of
hundreds of Americans -- mostly in Iraq. The same strategic logic, I think, is driving its pursuit
of a nuclear capability.
If Iran succeeds in acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, it would severely destabilize the
Middle East -- a region whose stability has been an important long-term American national and
economic security priority.
It will also damage America's ability to sustain the commitments we have made in the Middle
East: our commitment dating back to Presidents Carter and Reagan to prevent the domination of
the Persian Gulf by a revisionist or extremist power; our commitment to secure lasting peace and
security between Israel and its neighbors; and our commitment, more recently, to deter, disrupt
and defeat state-sponsored Islamist extremist groups, who would suddenly be able to wage
attacks from under the protection of Iran's nuclear umbrella. So this would be a transformational
event for the worst.
It goes without saying that Iran's illicit nuclear activities implicate broader global interests of the
U.S. -- not just regional, but global interests as well -- foremost, the international nuclear
nonproliferation regime. As President Obama has repeatedly warned, a nuclear Iran could drive
other states in the region to seek to acquire their own atomic arsenals. And have no doubt: The
more nuclear-proliferated the Middle East becomes, the greater the odds that nuclear weapons
will fall into the hands of terrorists who will try to use them against the U.S. and our allies
around the world.
That is why I believe that the single most important test of American power in the Middle East
today is whether we succeed or fail in stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability.
How we do on that test will significantly affect our standing in the rest of the world.
I've been a strong supporter of the Obama administration's dual-track approach of engagement
and pressure in response to the Iranian challenge -- including the effort to orchestrate a new set
of sanctions, in the hope that these measures will push the leadership in Tehran to suspend its
illicit nuclear activities and reconcile with the international community. The White House has
pursued this strategy with discipline and determination.
The result has been a cascade of new measures since this summer -- beginning at the U.N.
Security Council, then continuing in Congress and then going to responsible countries and
companies worldwide from the EU to Australia, Japan and South Korea. It has been faster,
broader and more intensive than I expected -- but much more important, than the Iranian
leadership anticipated.
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There is no question that the regime in Tehran is under heightened pressure today, both at home
and abroad. In addition to the new sanctions, the Green Movement, and the regime's oppression
of that movement, has robbed the Islamic Republic of whatever pretense of legitimacy it ever
possessed -- proving once and for all that the regime in Tehran today has become neither
"Islamic" nor a "republic," but a crude military dictatorship. In the region, meanwhile, the heart
of that military dictatorship, the IRGC's, has the dream of replicating -- excuse me -- the IRGC's
dream of replicating the Hezbollah model in southern Iraq was rolled back by the Iraqi and
American forces, while the revival of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process -- with all it's current
fits and starts --has put the Iranian regime on the defensive, particularly since the legitimate
leadership of the Palestinian Authority told Tehran earlier this month to stop interfering in their
internal affairs.
Yet at the same time, the harsh fact is that Iran's nuclear efforts are continuing forward. Despite
some apparent technical difficulties, Iran's centrifuges keep spinning, and its stockpile of fissile
material continues to grow.
Sanctions of course are important, but sanctions are a means to an end, not an end unto
themselves. The true measure of success will not ultimately be how many Iranian banks we
designate or how many foreign companies cut economic ties to Iran, but whether these actions
motivate meaningful behavior change on the part of the Iranian regime -- in other words, to stop
its illicit nuclear activities. As of yet, the obvious fact is that they have not. And until they do so,
we must not only maintain the pressure but keep ratcheting it up.
That means aggressive and creative enforcement of existing sanctions against Iran. It means
American penalties against companies that continue to invest in Iran's energy sector or supply or
sell refined petroleum to Iran. And it means that the administration should make use of the
powerful new authority granted to it by the congressional sanctions legislation, to cut off from
the U.S. financial system any foreign bank that continues to do business with the IRGC, its front
companies, or other illicit Iranian actors.
There have been suggestions recently that the Iranian regime may be prepared to resume talks
about the nuclear matter with the P-5 plus one. President Ahmadinejad suggested this when he
was in New York last week at the U.N. At the same time, he made his outrageous and insane
accusation that the U.S. government was responsible for 9/11. I must say, that combination of
statements by Ahmadinejad last week at the United Nations reminded me of an old Connecticut
politician's warning: "Don't spit in my face and then tell me it's raining." In his speech at the
United Nations, Ahmadinejad once again rejected President Obama's outstretched hand and
instead, slapped the U.S. and the rest of humanity in the face.
Certainly, the door to the negotiating table should remain open to the Iranians e but it is equally
certain to me that the Iranians must not be rewarded simply for showing up at the table. The test
whether the Iranian regime is talking -- the test is not whether the Iranian regime is at the table
talking; the test is what the regime is doing. As long as centrifuges are spinning and uranium is
being enriched, the pressure from sanctions on Iran must keep growing.
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My personal concern is that the current leaders -- the fanatical leadership of Iran today e
particularly the IRGC hardliners, who have consolidated power in the wake of last year's election
e are incapable of compromise on the nuclear program, no matter how much pressure is put on
them, because opposition to America and the West is so integral to their identity -- the identity of
-- the essence of their power. If this is indeed the case, it may be that our best hope to resolve this
confrontation is not for the regime in Tehran to change its behavior, but for the regime itself to
be changed. I am not naive about how difficult this may be, but supporting such a change -- such
popular opposition -- is surely the policy our fundamental national values require and the one
that the people of Iran deserve.
And remember: More than once in our lifetimes, we have been surprised to see seemingly
impregnable regimes collapse under pressure for freedom from their own citizens. What is
likewise clear is that the current leaders of Iran spend a lot of time and a lot of energy and a lot of
resources worrying about the internal opposition to their government. They certainly take the
threat from the opposition seriously and so should we.
Our sanctions effort should therefore increasingly aim, I believe, not just to add pressure on the
existing regime, but to target the fissures that already seem to exist within the Iranian regime
itself and between the regime and Iranian society.
This should include much more robust engagement and support for opposition forces inside Iran,
both by the United States and like-minded democratic nations across the world. The Obama
administration, I fear, missed an important opportunity in the wake of last year's election in Iran.
But it is certainly not too late to give strong support to the people in Iran who are courageously
standing up against their repressive government. And there's very good and encouraging news on
this front to report to you now.
In the comprehensive sanctions bill passed by Congress this summer, Senator McCain and I led a
bipartisan effort to include a provision that requires the administration to impose targeted
sanctions against individuals in the Iranian government who committed human rights abuses
after the June 12 election. I'm pleased to report to you -- if you have not already heard -- that
Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of the Treasury Geithner are right now announcing the
first of these human rights designations of individuals who we have good reason to believe were
complicit in denying the human rights of the citizens of Iran. I cannot adequately applaud and
thank the Obama administration for taking this important action today.
I'll just add this: While the president has extremely capable point people responsible for
negotiations with Iran and sanctions against the regime there, there is still no one in the Obama
administration e as far as I can tell e who wakes up every day "owning" the mission of helping
the people of Iran overcome their government's electronic monitoring and censorship, to secure
the universal human rights with which all of us have been endowed by our creator. The president
needs to find his "Stuart Levey" for the Green Movement.
We have now come to the moment in this long struggle when the Iranian regime must understand
that we will not wait indefinitely for sanctions to work. As my colleague in the House of
Representatives, Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman, warned last week, we are talking
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about months, not years. I therefore hope that President Obama will conduct an assessment at the
end of this year e just as he did last year e to determine if the current strategy towards Iran is
working. If it has not produced meaningful change in Iran's nuclear weapons policy by then, we
will need to begin a national conversation about what steps should come next.
This inevitably will involve consideration of military options. I agree with President Obama that
the use of military force is not the "ideal way" to stop the Iranian nuclear program. But nothing is
more corrosive to the prospect of resolving this confrontation peacefully than the suspicion e
among our friends and enemies in the Middle East e that in the end, the United States we will
acquiesce to Iran's acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability. If a nuclear Iran is as
unacceptable as we say it is, we must be prepared to do whatever is necessary to prevent the
unacceptable.
It is time for us to take steps that make clear that if diplomatic and economic strategies continue
to fail to change Iran's nuclear policies, a military strike is not just a remote possibility in the
abstract, but a real and credible alternative policy that we and our allies are ready to exercise if
necessary.
It's time to retire our ambiguous mantra about all options remaining on the table. It's time for our
message to our friends and enemies in the region to become clearer: Namely, that we will
prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability period -- by peaceful means if we
possibly can, but with military force if we absolutely must. A military strike against Iran's
nuclear facilities entails risks and costs -- I know that -- but I am convinced that the risks and
costs of allowing Iran to obtain a nuclear weapons capability are far greater.
Some have suggested that we should simply learn to live with a nuclear Iran and pledge to
contain it. In my judgment, that would be a grave mistake. As one Arab leader I recently spoke
with pointed out, how could anyone count on the United States to go to war to defend them
against a nuclear-armed Iran, if we were unwilling to go to war to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran
in the first place? Having tried and failed to stop Iran's nuclear breakout, our country would be a
poor position to contain its consequences.
I want to add that I also believe it would be a failure of U.S. leadership if this situation reaches
the point where the Israel government decides to attempt a unilateral strike on Iran. If military
action is absolutely necessary to stop Iran from gaining nuclear weapons capacity, then the
United States is clearly in the strongest position to confront Iran and manage the regional
consequences. This is not a responsibility we should outsource. We can and should, of course,
coordinate with our many allies who share our interest in stopping a nuclear Iran, but we cannot
delegate our global responsibilities to anyone else.
Iran presents us with daunting and difficult challenges -- as we all know. By now, I suspect,
some of you may be getting wistful for the days of Woodrow Wilson when discussions about
American policy in the Middle East could focus some on Persian poetry. But before you get too
wistful, also remember that those were the days when the principal strategic challenge
confronting the president of the United States was a great power conflict in the heart of Europe
between Germany and her neighbors e a conflict of nationalistic hatreds, of extremist ideologies,
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of geopolitical rivalries that twice ignited into world war and claimed the lives of tens of millions
of people, including several hundred thousand Americans.
Today, by comparison -- we take it often for granted -- but it's possible to walk from Portugal to
Poland without encountering a militarized border, or changing the currency in your wallet -much less stumbling into an active conflict. A part of the world that a century ago was a strategic
sinkhole for American blood and treasure, hopelessly entrenched in war, is today an unbroken
field of democratic allies and a bulwark for peace and stability e so much so that we too often
take for granted just how difficult and improbable a journey to this time has been.
So yes, American power clearly faces great challenges and dangerous enemies -- including,
particularly, the Islamic Republic of Iran -- today. But we must also remember that American
power is capable of achieving great things e sometimes seemingly impossible things.
This is the alternative future I believe we must also summon the imagination to envision, and the
political will to help bring into being: A vision of a Middle East in which a democratic Iran
assumes its rightful place as a regional power and as the modern heir of one of the world's great
civilizations e an engine of prosperity and innovation that benefits its own people and the entire
world; a vision of a Middle East in which Islamist extremism no longer inspires violence, let
alone loyalty, but joins other failed and inhumane ideologies on the ash heap of history.
And a vision of a Middle East in which Israel and its Arab and Persian neighbors live in peace
with each other as fellow democracies that respect the human rights of their citizens e and in a
region where the notion of going to war against each other becomes as unthinkable and absurd as
it seems today to teenagers living in France and Germany.
Thank you very much.
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Beyond Sanctions
Juan C. Zarate
September 20, 2010 4:00 A.M.
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE
The U.S.-led financial-sanctions campaign currently under way against Iran is biting, but it isn‘t
enough. To change the Iranian regime‘s nuclear calculus, the administration and the international
community need to act urgently to pressure Tehran along multiple lines.
To be sure, the latest escalation of sanctions and financial isolation is hurting the regime.
Legitimate banks, insurance and shipping companies, and energy firms are abandoning business
with Iran for fear of sanctions and risk to their reputations. The most recent round of sanctions —
those set in motion by the United States, along with the European Union‘s most severe measures
against Iran since the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1929 — increased the
pressure on Iran‘s economy by targeting its dependence on refined-petroleum imports and
closing correspondent relationships between Iranian banks and those in other countries. And
more nations are adding their voices to this chorus. Significantly, Japan and South Korea, two of
Iran‘s largest trading partners, just announced that they would impose harsh sanctions and target
designated Iranian entities.
The U.S. Congress recently passed the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and
Divestment Act, which has created fear of secondary sanctions against non-American companies
still doing business with Iran. Lloyd‘s of London has announced it will stop insuring or
reinsuring refined-petroleum shipments into Iran. European insurance giants Allianz, Munich Re,
and Hannover Re have committed to ending business ties with Iran. Multinational firms
including Total, Repsol, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Eni, Petronas, Reliance, Glencore, Trafigura,
and Vitol have all ended their refined-petroleum trade or energy investments in Iran. In July,
Iran‘s gasoline imports were down 50 percent from May, according to the International Energy
Agency, and according to Reuters they were down 90 percent in August from the previous year.
The State Department estimates that $50 to $60 billion in upstream energy-development projects
(i.e., exploration and production) have been terminated or put on hold over the last several years.
These sanctions work because they are triggered by Iranian activity, which is growing less
transparent and more suspicious, thus causing further reluctance by the private sector to do
business with Iran. As Iran‘s financial isolation grows, Iranian ventures — especially those
controlled directly by the regime — will seek to hide their activities in order to evade scrutiny
and sanctions, causing the private sector to worry further about business with Iranian entities. In
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June, the Treasury Department issued a financial advisory for precisely this reason.
Another factor is the growing and visible role of the harsh and repressive Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps (IRGC) in Iran‘s economy. The sanctions target IRGC leaders and front companies,
which may account for the withdrawal from the South Pars gas-field development (the world‘s
largest, and shared between Iran and Qatar) of Khatam al-Anbia, the IRGC‘s engineering
company. All this fuels the suspicion of the legitimate financial and commercial worlds and is
amplified by the Iranian regime‘s electoral illegitimacy and human-rights violations, along with
the growing evidence of duplicity regarding its nuclear program. This pressure will increase
stress on an Iranian economy already battered by profound mismanagement, years of growing
isolation, and the global economic downturn. It also appears to be exacerbating tensions within
the regime, which were already serious enough to threaten its stability.
Unfortunately, the sanctions campaign alone won‘t be enough to stop Iran‘s march toward
nuclear-weapons capability. Though Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton have described sanctions as a tool to change the Iranian regime‘s thinking about
its weapons program, CIA director Leon Panetta has admitted that they will not achieve this
goal, and that the emergence of a nuclear-weapons-capable Iran is possible within two years.
Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert from the Carnegie Endowment, has emphasized this point,
noting that Tehran‘s hardliners are hard-wired to oppose the United States and to resist
compromise in the face of direct pressure. Time is running out; the threat of an Israeli strike on
Iranian nuclear facilities is increasing; and the administration is at a loss to decide what‘s next.
It has hamstrung itself by talking about the utility of sanctions in maximalist terms. Secretary
Gates explained that the point of sanctions is to ―persuade the Iranians that they . . . will
undermine their security by pursuit of nuclear weapons, not enhance it.‖ Biting sanctions can
achieve important objectives, though those objectives may sometimes be peripheral to the
Iranian regime‘s nuclear calculus. As stated above, they can exacerbate internal regime fissures
and increase the isolation of the regime; they can also buy time by delaying supplies Iran needs
for its nuclear program, interrupt flows of funds sent to terrorist proxies, and serve as a
diplomatic chip if the regime ever comes to the table. But we need to use this pressure as a
starting point, and use multiple lines of pressure at once against Tehran.
The Obama administration has framed its engagement with Iran as a step-by-step diplomatic
dance, with an ascending scale of confrontation. Sanctions and financial pressure come in the
middle of that dance — after engagement and before other options (presumably military). Aside
from giving Iran more time by dismissing the diplomatic engagement that occurred before
January 2009, this framework constrains the administration‘s ability to think about financial
pressure as one part of a much broader campaign, with multiple approaches pursued
simultaneously, to build leverage against the regime. Such leverage could help at the negotiating
table or could lead to regime change. But the mullahs know the steps to this dance, and their
diplomatic maneuvers (such as making insincere offers of negotiations, with unrealistic
conditions attached, that the administration will have to follow up on) can buy them more time.
The strategic ambiguity of ―all options on the table‖ is undermined by the tactical predictability
of the Obama administration‘s strategy. Most troubling, the administration has seen a potential
dialogue with the regime as a goal in and of itself. This way of thinking has foreclosed
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opportunities to build multiple sources of leverage. A case in point: The administration‘s muted
response to the Green Movement opposing last year‘s fraudulent election. Obama‘s temporizing
made clear that he saw the movement as a complication to be avoided rather than a strategic
opportunity.
We should pursue our Iran policy on three separate tracks simultaneously. Our approach should
attempt to (a) slow the Iranian nuclear clock, (b) create and exacerbate fissures within the Iranian
regime and Iranian society, and (c) build other forms of leverage that could affect the regime‘s
decision-making and enhance our credibility with allies. Here‘s how:
Build on the momentum of our financial-pressure campaign, highlighting Iran‘s deceptive
business practices, and anything the IRGC does to control the Iranian economy, by all available
means, including Treasury advisories suggesting caution when dealing with certain entities,
designations of firms as terrorist-affiliated, public hearings in Congress or other bodies, and
private meetings with commercial actors still doing business with Iran. The Treasury should
threaten and enforce sanctions on any entity doing business with the IRGC or the 16 designated
Iranian banks. This could be followed by the designation of Iran and its central bank as ―primary
money laundering concerns‖ under section 311 of the Patriot Act, signaling to the international
financial community not to trust any Iranian commercial activity. The United States does not
need the U.N. to do this. Indeed, the U.S. Treasury added the German-based European-Iranian
Trade Bank AG to its blacklist just last week. The continued disengagement by international
companies, the growing role of the IRGC in Iran‘s economy, and growing dread of potential
military conflict will feed private-sector flight from Iran. A similar approach was quite effective
in choking off North Korea‘s illicit global business activities in 2005.
Bolster the flagging Green Movement with a full-throated human-rights campaign against the
Iranian regime — ideally led by human-rights NGOs. Such a campaign could be a means to
protect and empower dissidents. Perhaps with breathing space enabled by international scrutiny,
the movement can regain its footing, thus forcing the regime to defend itself on another front.
Promote digital dissidents by providing the technology necessary to circumvent Iran‘s Internet
controls and its attempts to undercut the opposition‘s communications. The Obama
administration has started on this path by allowing general licenses for the export of some
technology to Iran, but the campaign must be more active — a 21st-century Berlin airlift to
facilitate the movement of information in both directions across Iran‘s borders. The United States
should generously fund the Falun Gong‘s Global Internet Freedom Consortium, which has
provided dissidents around the world with technologies to circumvent state controls, and should
creatively enlist the participation of the Iranian-American community. This would give real
meaning to Secretary Clinton‘s Internet-freedom agenda and momentum to the democracy
activists in and outside of Iran.
In concert with interested international partners, threaten the mullahs and the IRGC with an
international hunt for assets owned by regime leaders, as a complement to existing sanctions on
those leaders. The Iranian regime and security establishment have made fortunes off the people
of Iran. A focus on assets held outside of Iran by the regime‘s key leaders, and the accompanying
exposure of corruption and kleptocracy, would threaten both those leaders‘ legitimacy and their
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finances. It could also make certain regime members more willing to cut deals with us and
influence decisions internally in the direction of de-escalation.
Promote international scrutiny on Iran‘s support for terrorist proxies and militias, despite
international disagreement about labeling groups like Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists. The
United States should request that the U.N. committees responsible for dealing with terrorism —
in particular the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1267 al-Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions
Committee — report on Iranian support for the Taliban and explain what the Iranians are doing
with senior al-Qaeda leadership in Iran. Highlighting Iran‘s terrorist sponsorship will make it
harder for the regime to continue that support and will underscore the danger of nuclear terrorism
and proliferation should Iran acquire atomic weapons.
Maintain a credible military option, as the Bipartisan Policy Center has recently
recommended. This will keep the possibility of force in the mind of the Iranian regime and
reassure our allies. Credible demonstrations of U.S. military reach, such as naval exercises,
become important as we push the international community to take more difficult steps — and
perhaps ask the Israelis not to attack Iranian nuclear sites.
Engagement with Iran works only when we are dealing from a position of strength. With the
clock ticking and concerns over an Israeli strike rising, we must deploy a multidimensional
strategy. The financial-pressure campaign is a strong cornerstone for those efforts, but it‘s only a
start. To stop Iran from building nuclear weapons, we must use every weapon at our disposal.
– Juan C. Zarate is a former deputy national-security adviser for combatting terrorism and a
former assistant secretary of the Treasury for terrorist financing and financial crimes. He is now
a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the senior nationalsecurity analyst for CBS News. This article first appeared in NR‗s October 4 issue.
© 2010 By National Review, Inc., 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10016. Reprinted by
permission
Granted by: Katherine Connell
Date: October 5, 2010
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Should Israel Bomb Iran?
Better safe than sorry
By Reuel Marc Gerecht
July 26, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 42
The Weekly Standard
There is only one thing that terrifies Washington‘s foreign policy establishment more than the
prospect of an American airstrike against Iran‘s nuclear-weapons facilities: an Israeli airstrike.
Left, right, and center, ―sensible‖ people view the idea with alarm. Such an attack would, they
say, do great damage to the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Tehran would
counterattack, punishing ―the Great Satan‖ (America) for the sins of ―the Little Satan‖ (Israel).
An Israeli strike could lead to the closing of the world‘s oil passageway, the Strait of Hormuz;
prompt Muslims throughout the world to rise up in outrage; and spark a Middle Eastern war that
might drag in the United States. Barack Obama‘s ―New Beginning‖ with Muslims, such as it is,
would be over the moment Israeli bunker-busting bombs hit.
An Israeli ―preventive‖ attack, we are further told, couldn‘t possibly stop the Islamic Republic
from developing a nuke, and would actually make it more likely that the virulently anti-Zionist
supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, would strike Israel with a nuclear weapon. It would also provoke
Iran‘s Revolutionary Guard Corps to deploy its terrorist assets against Israel and the United
States. Hezbollah, the Islamic Revolution‘s one true Arab child, would unleash all the missiles it
has imported from Tehran and Damascus since 2006, the last time the Party of God and the
Jewish state collided.
An Israeli preemptive strike unauthorized by Washington (and President Barack Obama is
unlikely to authorize one) could also severely damage Israel‘s standing with the American
public, as well as America‘s relations with Europe, since the ―diplomacy first, diplomacy only‖
Europeans would go ballistic, demanding a more severe punishment of Israel than Washington
could countenance. The Jewish state‘s relations with the European Union—Israel‘s major trading
partner—could collapse. And, last but not least, an Israeli strike could fatally compromise the
pro-democracy Green Movement in Iran, which is the only hope the West has for an end to the
nuclear menace by means of regime change. This concern was expressed halfheartedly before the
tumultuous Iranian elections of June 12, 2009, but it is now voiced with urgency by those who
truly care about the Green Movement spawned by those elections and don‘t want any American
or Israeli action to harm it.
These fears are mostly overblown. Some of the alarmist scenarios are the opposite of what would
more likely unfold after an Israeli attack. Although dangerous for Israel, a preventive strike
remains the most effective answer to the possibility of Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards
having nuclear weapons. Provided the Israeli air force is capable of executing it, and assuming
no U.S. military action, an Israeli bombardment remains the only conceivable means of derailing
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or seriously delaying Iran‘s nuclear program and—equally important—traumatizing Tehran.
Since 1999, when the supreme leader quashed student demonstrations and put paid to any chance
that the Islamic Republic would peacefully evolve under the reformist president Mohammad
Khatami, Iran has calcified into an ever-nastier autocracy. An Israeli strike now—after the rise of
the Green Movement and the crackdown on it—is more likely to shake the regime than would
have a massive American attack in 2002, when Tehran‘s clandestine nuclear program was first
revealed. And if anything can jolt the pro-democracy movement forward, contrary to the now
passionately accepted conventional wisdom, an Israeli strike against the nuclear sites is it.
There are many voices out there—―realists‖ in America, Kantians in Europe—who believe this
discussion is unnecessary since Iran doesn‘t really pose an existential threat to Israel, America,
or anyone else, and whatever threat it does pose can be countered with ―strategic patience‖ and
the threat of Israeli nuclear retaliation. Tehran may support anti-Israeli terrorist groups, but there
is no need to overreact: The regime is as scared of Israel‘s military power as Israel is scared of
mullahs with nukes. America‘s preeminent job should therefore be to calm the Israelis down—
or, failing that, arm-twist them into inaction.
Anti-Semitism run amok
One can certainly doubt whether Khamenei would be so rash as to hurl an atomic weapon at
Israel, given Jerusalem‘s undeclared force de frappe. But this is a huge unknown for the Jewish
state. Iran has already embraced terrorism against Israel and the United States. Via Hezbollah in
Lebanon, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas in Gaza, and Fatah on the West Bank, the clerics
have repeatedly backed suicide bombers and helped launch thousands of missiles against Israeli
civilians. Iranian-guided terrorist teams bombed the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and
slaughtered Argentine Jews at a community center there in 1994. And that was when Ali Akbar
Hashemi-Rafsanjani was Iran‘s ―pragmatic‖ president; Rafsanjani‘s once awe-inspiring power
network at home has been nearly gutted by his former protégé, Khamenei, who has always been
more Trotskyite when it comes to exporting the Islamic Revolution.
Iranian violent adventurism abroad diminished after Khatami was elected president in 1997, as
the Islamic Republic‘s domestic agitation heated up and its clandestine nuclear program
accelerated. If Khamenei can suppress the Green Movement and develop a bomb, he might
choose to move beyond suicide bombers and Hezbollah and Hamas rocketry in his assaults on
Israel and ―global Jewry.‖ Who would stop him? It‘s not hard to find Iranian dissidents grieved
by their government‘s love affair with terrorism, but it‘s impossible to find any among the ruling
elite who ruminate about the wrongness of terrorism against Israelis or Jews.
Anti-Zionism has deep roots in Iran‘s left-wing ―red mullah‖ revolutionary ethos. Iran‘s hard
core seems even more retrograde than the many militant Arab fundamentalists who once gave
intellectual support to al Qaeda but have lost some enthusiasm for the organization‘s insatiable
and indiscriminate killing. The Egyptian-born former al Qaeda philosopher Abd al-Qadir bin
Abd al-Aziz, aka ―Dr. Fadl,‖ for instance, has evolved so far as to express reservations about
murdering Israelis and Jews. Even the Saudis, in private, are capable of entertaining such
thoughts. But from Iran‘s power players we hear not a peep about the impropriety of killing
Israeli civilians or Jews in general. This holds for Supreme Leader Khamenei and President
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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; for the president‘s spiritual adviser and the most influential cleric
supporting the dictatorship, Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi; for the head of Iran‘s
legislation-surveilling, candidate-disqualifying Guardian Council, Ahmad Jannati; and for the
bright and more ―pragmatic‖ Ali Larijani, the speaker of parliament who helped orchestrate the
crackdown on the 1999 student rebellion.
Revolutionary Iran hates its main enemies—America, Israel, and the anti-Shiite Wahhabi Saudi
court—with a special, divinely sanctioned intensity dwarfing the class-based hostility that the
vanguard of the proletariat had for capitalists. And the hard core among the regime‘s leaders—
who have squeezed out of power just about anyone who could have worn a ―moderate‖ label—
revile Jews above all. Third World-friendly radical Marxism, which depicts Jews as the most
nefarious members of the Western robber-baron class, provides half the fuel for the Iranian
revolutionary mind. Classical Islamic thought, now given a nasty, modern anti-Semitic twist,
provides the rest.
In the Koran, Jews are depicted as intelligent, well educated, and treasonous. The Prophet
Muhammad‘s slaughter of the Jewish Banu Qurayza tribe, which occasionally caused moral
indigestion and apologias among later Muslim commentators, serves as a leitmotif for
contemporary radical Muslims, who often see Jews, as the Nazis once did, as innately and
irreversibly evil. Modern Islamic fundamentalism has turned a scorching spotlight back on the
faith‘s foundation, when Jews, as the Koran tells us, stood in the way of the prophet and his
divine mission. The tolerant, sometimes even philo-Semitic, attitudes of the Ottoman Empire
have been almost completely forgotten by Islam‘s modern militants. Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini wrote in the foreword to his masterpiece on Islamic government, ―The Islamic
movement was afflicted by the Jews from its very beginnings, when they began their hostile
activity by distorting the reputation of Islam, and by defaming and maligning it. This has
continued to the present day.‖
The disciples of Khomeini grew to intellectual maturity in an age when Western anti-Semitism—
in part thanks to Nazi propaganda in the Middle East during World War II and subsequent
Muslim admirers of Hitler, both secular and fundamentalist—had married anti-Zionism in ways
that might have made the young Khomeini recoil in disgust. In Iran among the hard core, an
Islamist-Marxist-Nazi brew sustains the most vicious anti-Semitic—not just anti-Zionist—
regime ever in the Muslim Middle East. (Saudi Arabia is a close but less threatening second.) In
the Islamic Republic, state-sponsored anti-Semitism, for both popular and highbrow audiences,
has become ubiquitous. Westerners need not know Persian to get an idea of how toxic the
situation has become. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) translates items of
interest from the region‘s press which regularly illustrate the Jew-hatred coming from Tehran.
MEMRI doesn‘t pretend to be comprehensive, but it provides an inkling of how the disease has
metastasized.
It is important to dwell on the matter of anti-Semitism in Iran and the Muslim Middle East since
American and European officials and academics usually refrain from doing so. It is a
complicated and invidious subject. In the decade that I served in the Central Intelligence Agency,
I can recall only a few diplomatic or intelligence cables and reports even mentioning antiSemitism among Muslims. Yet the disease permeated Sunni and Shiite fundamentalist thought,
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and it‘s only gotten worse since I left the agency in 1994. American officials and scholars like to
wall the subject off, reluctantly touching it when discussing the Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio and
suggesting that the issue will evanesce when the Israelis and Palestinians make peace. As the
historian Bernard Lewis pointed out in 1986 in his seminal Semites and Anti-Semites, peace
between the Arabs and the Israelis would surely help diminish the antagonism toward Israel and
the Jews that exists in the Middle East, at least among Muslims who view the Israeli-Palestinian
confrontation more or less as a political and geographical struggle between two peoples. But for
those, like the Iranian hard core, who believe this is a match-up between God and the Devil, a
peace process can ameliorate nothing.
What Lewis observed 25 years ago among the Arabs is truer among the Persians 31 years after
the Islamic Revolution: ―Muslim anti-Semitism is still something that comes from above, from
the leadership, rather than from below, from the society.‖ The average Iranian, including the
average well-educated Iranian, who even under the shah was fairly likely to be obsessed with
Jewish conspiracy, is free of the personal contempt for Jews that marks the classical European or
American anti-Semite. The Green Movement even mocks the regime for its fixation on Israel
and Palestine and Holocaust denial (which really means Holocaust approval). Young Iranians
want to talk about Iran, not Palestine.
The average Iranian, however, controls neither his country‘s nuclear program nor the clandestine
network Tehran has built up to support its ideological proxies. As for the average Israeli, it
matters little to him if someone who is virulently anti-Zionist is not lethally anti-Semitic. The
two are operationally indistinguishable. Either way, the targets are Israelis.
As Bret Stephens pointed out in Commentary, Iran‘s psychological state more closely resembles
the militarist Japanese mindset in the 1930s—―a martyrdom-obsessed, non-Western culture with
global ambitions‖—than it does that of the Soviets of yesteryear, whose worst instincts were
deterred at enormous cost. Japan made a series of gross, hubristic miscalculations—especially
misjudging the United States—that led it into a world war that killed millions of its own people
and destroyed the militarists‘ cherished way of life. But even the Japanese parallel doesn‘t quite
capture revolutionary Iran‘s special animus toward Israel.
Rafsanjani, whom Washington foreign-policy types have usually viewed approvingly, gave a
few speeches in 1983 and 1984 about the Jewish contribution to Western imperialism. He
described the creation of Israel as ―a united conspiracy against Islam‖ which the Jews still lead.
Understanding the aggression and nefariousness of the United States, he said, isn‘t possible
without first understanding the role of Jews within America—their success at capitalism and
their power within the media. The Iran-Iraq war, the most searing near-death experience for the
founding fathers of the Iranian revolution, couldn‘t have happened without Jewish-controlled
America giving the green light to Saddam and his financiers in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The
Jews were thus responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iranians. For Rafsanjani,
Jews have a dark, centripetal eminence. For Khamenei, a man of fewer words, it‘s much simpler
and more explicitly religious. When he describes Israel as an ―enemy of God,‖ he means exactly
that. His Revolutionary Guards continuously rail against nefarious Jewish power.
Khamenei run amok
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A nuclear arsenal would allow Khamenei much greater latitude in finding ways to make Israel
bleed. Iran‘s actions against the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan have been pretty bold
considering America could, if it chose, rain hell down on Iran for its complicity in the killing of
hundreds of American soldiers. We have not done that because we have feared escalation into
direct conflict with another Middle Eastern state. The Israelis, too, have failed so far to take on
the Iranians with much gusto even though the Islamic Republic has done far more damage to the
Jewish state via Iranian allied groups, weapons, and cash than has any Arab nation since 1973.
Imagine what Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard Corps will think of the Americans, and
especially the Israelis, if, after announcing repeatedly that an Iranian nuclear weapon is
―unacceptable,‖ they permit it. Israelis, who must live with the Middle East‘s merciless power
politics, should expect considerable Iranian creativity. Terrorism is never static. Even suicide
bombers, Iranian-made improvised explosive devices, and missiles can become passé. And as
Khamenei and the Guard Corps become savage in suppressing dissent at home, we should expect
them to become more violent abroad. The regime lives in fear of a ―velvet revolution.‖ It sees
foreign powers—the United States, Israel, and some Europeans—as deeply complicit in the
Green Movement (though, regrettably, none is). The odds are high that after the supreme leader
and the Guards acquire a nuclear weapon, they will think of ways to get even. If Khamenei can
kill and torture his way to more self-confidence, we may see a repeat of the 1990s, when the
regime went on an overseas killing spree that culminated in the bombing of the American base at
Khobar, Saudi Arabia, in 1996.
The key to stopping all of this is Khamenei. Like the former shah, he is the weak link in the
regime. Once a relatively broad-based, consensual theocratic dictatorship run by Khomeini‘s
lieutenants, the Islamic Republic today is an autocracy. The supreme leader‘s office has become
a de facto shadow government, with bureaus that mirror the president‘s ministries. In matters of
security and intelligence, Khamenei‘s men reign supreme. His arrogation of power has made the
regime more fragile. Only someone of the supreme leader‘s short-sighted, insecure arrogance
could turn most of the Islamic Republic‘s founding fathers into enemies of the state. Mir Hossein
Mousavi, for instance, now leader of the Green Movement, was a loyal son of the regime who—
if he‘d been left unharassed during the 2009 election, if he‘d not been personally belittled by
Khamenei and told he was not really an acceptable candidate—probably would have proved a
relatively uncontroversial president. Mousavi might even have lost a fair election, given the
status-loving conservatism of many Iranians.
Khamenei has now turned a man with an iron will into his sworn enemy. Worse, he‘s turned him
into a democrat. The supreme leader‘s rash decision to throw the election to Ahmadinejad has
also compromised all future elections. He has permanently destabilized the country. National and
municipal elections—especially in the major cities —will now get postponed, perhaps
indefinitely, or be so grossly controlled that they can no longer be viewed by the regime as a
legitimating force.
And the supreme leader has regularly played musical chairs with the leadership of the
Revolutionary Guards, purging those who rose to fame in the Iran-Iraq war and had respectful
and affectionate connections to others in the republic‘s founding generation. Since June 12,
2009, he‘s alienated even more members of Iran‘s senior clergy, who‘ve never been particularly
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fond of Khamenei, a junior cleric until his elevation to Khomeini‘s office. The use of rape by the
regime to pacify the political opposition in the past year sent shockwaves through Iran‘s clergy,
even though their institutional conservatism and government paychecks have inclined mullahs to
avoid discussing the regime‘s worst abuses.
The Islamic Republic is not without ethics—it‘s not nearly as morally flexible as the Orwellian
states of the former Soviet empire or the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein. Political-religious
legitimacy really does matter in the country, and Khamenei in his paranoid quest to make himself
the ―shadow of God on earth‖ has thrown it away. He has countered his loss of legitimacy by
massively increasing the size of the security forces. The once proud Revolutionary Guard Corps,
whose ethos was built in combat with Baathist Iraq, has become more like a mafia, where senior
members make fortunes and those below try to advance through the gravy train. Greed and envy
are rotting the state‘s over-muscled internal defenses and making guardsmen, like the favorites of
the late shah, the objects of Iran‘s still lively class-based anger. The supreme leader‘s hiring and
firing practices within the corps and the outfit‘s evolving ethos make one question the spiritual
solidity of the organization.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others have described Iran as an emerging ―military
dictatorship‖ where ―the space of decision making for the clerical and political leadership is
shrinking.‖ That might be news to Khamenei, who has allowed the corps to grow and had his
way with its leadership, promoting men who profess unrivaled religious zeal. It is certainly
possible that if Khamenei were to fall, a military dictatorship would follow. But such an
―evolution‖ would place the Guards in ideological opposition to the entire clergy and everything
that is Shiite in the republic‘s identity. If Khamenei‘s rule cracks, the corps, riven with rivalries,
will probably crack with it.
Rock the system
What the Israelis need to do is rock the system. Iran‘s nuclear-weapons program has become the
third pillar of Khamenei‘s theocracy (the other two being anti-Americanism and the veil). If the
Israelis, whom the regime constantly asperses as Zionists ripe for extinction, can badly damage
Iran‘s nuclear program, the regime will lose enormous face. Khamenei and Ahmadinejad have
said repeatedly that the Israelis wouldn‘t dare strike the nation‘s nuclear program; if the Israelis
do dare, it will be a stunning blow. And military defeats can be deadly for dictatorships—
historically, there‘s nothing deadlier.
While there is no guarantee that an Israeli raid would cause sufficient shock to produce a fatal
backlash against Khamenei and the senior leadership of the Guards, there is a chance it would,
and nothing else on the horizon offers Israel better odds. Loyal members of Khamenei‘s
entourage, like Speaker Larijani, publicly counseled Khamenei not to be too aggressive in the
development of the nuclear program for fear of provoking an American military response.
Rafsanjani warned the supreme leader and Ahmadinejad about their aggressiveness even more
explicitly. (Those public admonitions ended, as did President Bush‘s threatening rhetoric, after
the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate asserted, with more confidence than information,
that Tehran had stopped its weaponization program in 2003.) It‘s one thing to have the ―Great
Satan‖ lay waste your program; it‘s another thing entirely to have the ―Little Satan‖ do what the
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senior leadership of the Revolutionary Guards said was impossible. At the very least, the Iranian
left, right, and center would rise in umbrage against any Zionist aggression, and Khamenei‘s foes
and the population as a whole would question the leadership of the men who provoked the
Israelis, then couldn‘t stop them from blowing up the nuclear program that has taken Iran 20
years to construct.
Too much has been made in the West of the Iranian reflex to rally round the flag after an Israeli
(or American) preventive strike. Iranians aren‘t nationalist automatons. Compared with Arabs
and Turks, who lack an ancient cosmopolitan culture reinforcing their modern identity, Iranians
don‘t have a jagged and brittle patriotism. They are an old and sophisticated people quite capable
of holding multiple hatreds simultaneously in their minds. The Green Movement is an upwelling
of 30 years of anger against theocracy. It won‘t go away because Israel bombs Iran‘s nuclear
sites.
Iran‘s defeat in the Iran-Iraq war did not make Iranians rally to the regime. On the contrary, that
defeat by Saddam Hussein helped to unleash an enormous wave of reflection and self-criticism.
Without it, we likely would not have seen the rapid transformation of the Islamic Republic‘s
religious and political culture—a second intellectual revolution, which created the Green
Movement. After that transformation, we have a supreme leader whom millions loathe and even
more distrust. If the Israelis can make Khamenei look pathetic (and Khamenei has a nearly
flawless talent for doing the wrong thing at the wrong time), they can conceivably crack the
regime. Jerusalem needs to put the supreme leader under tremendous pressure and see if he can
hold it together.
Neither the Israelis nor anyone else need fear for the Green Movement. (Always skeptical of
democratic movements among Muslims, most Israelis probably wrote it off as soon as it was
born.) If Khamenei were so foolish as to arrest and kill Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, another
Khomeini loyalist who has become a leader of the Greens, he would create martyrs in a martyrobsessed society. If he left them alone and the Israelis struck, they would rise in eloquent anger
against the Israelis. Khamenei could never publicly try them for treason. Khamenei has been
ordering his goons to rape and murder men and women who‘ve dared to challenge his authority.
Would he target still more Iranians for somehow abetting an Israeli bombing? This would only
make the regime look more reprehensible in the eyes of the common faithful, on whom,
ultimately, the supreme leader‘s power rests. Yet such repression becomes conceivable as
Khamenei‘s exercise of power grows increasingly paranoid and prone to mistakes. In any case,
Iran‘s pro-democracy dissident culture is here to stay. Regardless of what the Israelis do, it will
continue to hunt for fissures in the police state.
And the other concerns about an Israeli bombing are no more persuasive. Hezbollah would
undoubtedly unleash its missiles on Israel after a preventive strike. Its raison d‘être is
inextricably tied to war with Zion. It did not twice send terrorists all the way to South America to
slaughter Jews to deter Israelis from nefarious activities in the Levant. Hezbollah does not train
Hamas, which is pledged to seek Israel‘s destruction, because it is searching for leverage in
negotiations. It did not make contact with al Qaeda because it wanted to improve its image with
Sunni Lebanese. Right now, Israel has to deal with a Hezbollah backed by a nonnuclear Iran.
Once the Islamic Republic goes nuclear, this relationship can‘t get easier. Israel‘s nuclear
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deterrent may hold back the worst that Iran could do—regardless of whether Israel strikes
preemptively—but other horrific terrorist possibilities remain.
Hundreds of Israelis could die from Hezbollah‘s new and improved store of missiles. Israel
might have to invade Lebanon again, which would cost more lives and certainly upset the
―international community.‖ These concerns have tormented a few Israeli prime ministers. But if
nuclear weapons in the hands of Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards are an existential
threat to the Jewish state—and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, like his predecessors, has
said that they are—Jerusalem has little choice. Bombing is the only option that could likely alter
the nuclear equation in Iran before Khamenei produces a weapon. The Obama administration
might fume, but it is hard to imagine the president, given what he has said about the
unacceptability of Iranian nukes, scolding Jerusalem long. He might personally agree with his
one-time counsel, Jimmy Carter‘s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, that Israel has
become a pariah state, but politically this won‘t fly. The left wing of the Democratic party has
been going south on the Jewish state for 30 years, but congressional Democrats, who‘ve been
pushing for new sanctions against Iran more aggressively than the White House, are not that far
gone. By and large, the Republican party would hold behind the Israelis.
The Israelis are well aware of the United States‘ global security interests. The American
presence in Iraq and Afghanistan figures in any Israeli discussion of striking Iran. What should
have been a strategic asset for the United States has become a liability since the Americans made
it clear that our primary interest from the moment we arrived in the region was leaving. The
Iranians aren‘t stupid: If we tell them that we fear for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Revolutionary Guard Corps officers will give us reason to fear.
American fear of Iranian capabilities in Iraq and Afghanistan has been exaggerated. The
Americans are leaving Iraq; within a year, most of our troops are due to be gone. This might not
be the best thing for the long-term health of Iraqi democracy, but President Obama appears more
determined to exit than to ensure that Iraqi governance doesn‘t fall apart. The Shiite Arabs now
lead Iraq. Is the supreme leader of Shiite Iran really going to wage war on the Iraqi Shia?
Khamenei has considerable difficulty with his own clergy. Is he now going to provoke the
Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the preeminent divine of Iraq and the most popular
ayatollah among Iranians? Is he going to upset the Iraqi status quo that has mostly been built by
the blood, sweat, and tears of the country‘s Shiites, on whom Iran depends for influence in Iraq?
If Khamenei is so foolish as to antagonize the Iraqi Shia, by all means let him. Mutatis mutandis,
the same is true in Afghanistan. The Iranians have no reliable proxies there: The Hazara,
although Shiite, have never been close to Persians, the Sunni Tajiks are even less affectionate,
and the Uzbeks carry no one‘s water. Iran could ship more improvised explosive devices to the
Afghan Pashtun Taliban, but eventually anti-Taliban sentiment in Iran and in Afghanistan would
get in their way. If the Iranians tried their mightiest, they could give us only a small headache
compared with the migraine we‘ve already got courtesy of the Pakistanis, who are intimately tied
to Afghanistan‘s Taliban. And the Israelis know the U.S. Navy has no fear of Tehran‘s closing
the Strait of Hormuz. If Khamenei has a death-wish, he‘ll let the Revolutionary Guards mine the
strait, the entrance to the Persian Gulf: It might be the only thing that would push President
Obama to strike Iran militarily. Such an escalation could quickly leave Khamenei with no navy,
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air force, and army. The Israelis have to be praying that the supreme leader will be this addleheaded.
It is entirely possible that Khamenei would use terrorism against the United States after an Israeli
strike. That is one of the supreme leader‘s preferred methods of state action, which is why he
should not be permitted a nuclear weapon. The correct response for the United States is to
credibly threaten vengeance. President Obama might be obliged to make such a threat
immediately after an Israeli surprise attack; whether the Iranians would believe it, given
America‘s record, is more difficult to assess.
The great merit of the Bush and Obama administrations‘ efforts to engage Iran in nuclear
negotiations is that they have transformed the discussion about the Islamic Republic‘s nuclear
program. The West bent over backwards to be nice to Tehran, to extend carrots rather than
sticks. The slow ramping up of Western sanctions has also forced all concerned to be more
explicit about the Iranian menace. Democrats in Congress, who are backing tougher sanctions
than the White House wants, are mentally in a different galaxy than they were under President
Bush. If the Israelis bomb now, American public opinion will probably be with them. Perhaps
decisively so.
The same is true, to a much lesser extent, of opinion in Europe. Starting in 2003, the European
Union made a major effort to negotiate with Tehran. For the French, Germans, and British—the
―EU-3‖—it‘s been an unsatisfying exercise, increasing distaste for the Iranian regime. Since June
12, 2009, the Europeans—more than the Americans—have watched on TV Khamenei‘s attack
on the Green Movement. Human rights in Iran is an issue in Europe, especially Germany, and
especially on the left. Tehran‘s representatives in Europe have also done their part in disturbing
the diplomatic politesse that Europe‘s political elites live and breathe. After Ahmadinejad‘s
election in 2005, Iran‘s ambassadors to Portugal and Poland, for example, publicly ruminated on
the practical impossibilities of the ―Final Solution.‖ In 2006 Warsaw‘s ministry of foreign affairs
had to threaten to declare the Iranian ambassador persona non grata if he followed through on his
publicly expressed wish to visit Auschwitz to measure the ovens so he could prove that genocide
could not have happened there.
European sentiment remains overwhelmingly opposed to the use of force in foreign affairs, and
many Europeans have developed an ugly anti-Israeli reflex. An inclination to excuse or ignore
Arab violence toward Israel while excoriating any lethal (usually labeled ―disproportionate‖)
Israeli response is still there, as witnessed recently with the Turkish-led, pro-Hamas, Gaza-bound
flotilla. But the Europeans also take an increasingly dim view of Iran. Khamenei‘s decision to
tap Ahmadinejad for president in 2009, his post-June 12 crackdown, and the European political
elite‘s long and frustrating experience with the supreme leader‘s minions have dispelled the
sympathy Iran enjoyed under Khatami, when Europeans blamed every setback on George W.
Bush.
No doubt many Europeans will rise in high dudgeon if the Israelis attack. Conceivably, the
Germans will lead a charge to punish the Israelis through EU economic sanctions, though it‘s
doubtful the necessary consensus could be built. Even the Austrians, who‘ve never seen an
Iranian sanction they liked, might balk at imposing sanctions on the Jewish state for militarily
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striking a Holocaust-denying Islamist autocracy. The Israeli left might have to abandon its dream
of being fully accepted in the salons of the Old World, but that is a sacrifice that most members
of the Labor party, which seems only a bit less disposed to bombing Iran than the right-wing
Likud, are probably willing to make.
Too little too late
It is possible the Israelis have waited too long to strike. Military action should make a strategic
difference. If the Israelis (or, better, the Americans under President Bush) had struck Iran‘s
principal nuclear facilities in 2003 and killed many of the scientists and technical support staff,
Khamenei‘s nuclear program likely would have taken years, even decades, to recover. Now, by
contrast, the Iranians may be sufficiently advanced in uranium enrichment, trigger mechanisms,
and warhead design that they could build a device quickly after an Israeli raid, and the attack
would have accomplished little. Khamenei could emerge from the confrontation stronger.
A spate of Iranian defections to the West (including Ali Reza Asgari, a former Revolutionary
Guard commander, in 2007, the somewhat bizarre case of the nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri in
2009, and the country‘s former nuclear negotiator with the EU, Hossein Moussavian, in 2010)
may have allowed the Israelis and other Westerners a clearer picture of how advanced Tehran‘s
nuclear-weapons program is. If we‘re not at the end of the road, then the Israelis probably should
waste no more time. Khamenei is still weak. He‘s more paranoid than he‘s ever been. The odds
of his making uncorrectable mistakes are much better than before. Any Israeli raid that could
knock out a sizable part of Iran‘s nuclear program would change the dynamic inside Iran and
throughout the Middle East. There is a chance that it would spare the Israelis the awful, likely
possibility that other Middle Eastern states—especially the Saudis, Iran‘s arch-religious rival—
would go nuclear in response to a Persian bomb. The Israelis know that many in the Sunni Arab
world would be enormously relieved if the Israelis did what the Americans have declined to take
on. The United Arab Emirates‘ ambassador to the United States recently revealed what is likely a
Sunni Arab consensus: Bombing Iran might be bad; allowing Khamenei to have a nuke would be
worse.
Unless Jerusalem bombs, the Israelis will soon be confronting a situation without historical
parallel. The Islamic Republic currently has 8,528 uranium-enrichment centrifuges installed at
the Natanz facility. Almost 4,000 of these are operational. A 3,000-centrifuge cascade could
produce fuel for one warhead in 271 days. Natanz is designed to hold 50,000 centrifuges, which
could produce enough fuel for one warhead every 16 days. Ignoring the possibility that
Khamenei‘s nuclear experts will transfer Natanz‘s cascading centrifuges to covert facilities once
they figure out how to maintain and array them (hence the urgent need to blow up the facility),
uranium production will soon create a command-and-control nightmare. Envision nuclear
warheads on missiles and on planes, dispersed throughout Iran to ensure that an American or
Israeli first strike couldn‘t take them out. Now focus on the fact that the Revolutionary Guards
Corps will have possession of these weapons. Khamenei isn‘t likely to give command-andcontrol to ―moderate‖ guardsmen; he‘ll likely give it to the folks he trusts most—a nuclear
version of the Quds Force, the expeditionary terrorist-and-assassination unit within the Corps
that does most of the regime‘s really dirty work and has direct access to the supreme leader.
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We‘re not talking about the stolid (but at times dangerously foolish) Pakistani Army controlling
nuclear weapons; we‘re talking about folks who‘ve maintained terrorist liaison relationships with
most of the Middle East‘s radical Muslim groups. It‘s entirely possible that even with Khamenei
in control, an Iranian atomic stockpile could lose nukes to dissenting voices within the Guards
who have their own ideological agendas. Now imagine the ailing Khamenei is dead, the Guard
Corps has several dozen nuclear devices in its ―possession,‖ and the country is in some political
chaos as power centers, within the clergy and the Corps, start competing against each other. The
Green Movement, too, will probably rise in force. The whole political structure could collapse or
the most radical could fight their way to the top—all parties trying to get their hands on the
nukes. Since there is no longer a politburo in Iran to keep control (Khamenei gutted it when he
downed his peers and competitors), this could get messy quickly.
In the best case scenario, if things were just ―normal‖ in Tehran, Israel would likely be
confronting Cuban Missile Crisis-style brinkmanship on a routine basis. Any halfway successful
Israeli raid could transform the Western approach to the Islamic Republic. An Israeli strike could
finally prompt the Western powers to think in concrete terms about what it would mean to allow
the Revolutionary Guard Corps nukes.
Without a raid, if the Iranians get the bomb, Europe‘s appeasement reflex will kick in and the EU
sanctions regime will collapse, leaving the Americans alone to contain the Islamic Republic.
Most of the Gulf Arabs will probably kowtow to Persia, having more fear of Iran than
confidence in the defensive assurances of the United States. And Sunni Arabs who don‘t view an
Iranian bomb as a plus for the Muslim world will, at daunting speed, become much more
interested in ―nuclear energy‖; the Saudis, who likely helped Islamabad go nuclear, will just call
in their chits with the Pakistani military.
So then, does the Israeli air force think it can do it? Historically, Israeli politicians have taken the
assessments of their air force as canonical. If the air command believes it can, will Bibi
Netanyahu and his cabinet proceed with preemption, which has, most Israelis will tell you,
repeatedly saved the Jewish state from terrible situations?
The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg, an acute observer of the Israeli prime minister, holds that
Netanyahu will favor a strike if he has no other serious option. And Israelis—right and left—are
deeply skeptical that a sanctions regime that does not shut down the Iranian oil and gas sector
has any utility whatsoever in halting the nuclear program. The sanctions effort led by Treasury
undersecretary Stuart Levey and congressional Democrats has certainly damaged Iran‘s economy
and slowed down the nuclear program, as Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran‘s Atomic Energy
Organization, in a rare moment of honesty recently confessed. These sanctions are definitely
beginning to sting Iran‘s energy sector. But the Israelis have history on their side when they
express their profound skepticism about the will of the ―international community‖ to use
sanctions decisively against Tehran. Contrary to what Senator Lindsey Graham said recently in
Israel—―there‘s many options still available to us‖ to stop the Iranian nuclear program—there
has always, really, been only one peaceful way: paralyzing sanctions against Iran‘s oil and gas
industry. Neither President Obama, nor most Europeans, seem ready to hit so forcefully the
Islamic Republic.
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For Netanyahu, the Iranian-nuke question touches the core of his own Israeli identity—what he
was taught by his historian father, whose specialty, the Jews of Spain, is a tragic saga of
helplessness, flight, and conversion, and what he learned from the death of his elder brother, the
only commando killed in the Entebbe raid to free Israeli hostages in 1976. Most Washington
foreign-policy commentators just don‘t believe the Jewish state will strike because of the
limitations of Israel‘s airpower. But they are probably underestimating Netanyahu personally and
the Israeli-Jewish reflex to never again be passive in the face of an existential danger.
Israeli hawks may be wrong about what their air force can do, but they express sentiments—
where there is a will, there is a way—that most Israelis probably still share. Which brings us to
the current minister of defense and leader of the Labor party, Ehud Barak. At times he sounds as
hawkish as Netanyahu; at other times, he seems almost willing to live with an Iranian nuclear
weapon. The current coalition government couldn‘t attack Iran without Barak‘s approval. So, the
whole discussion may boil down to this: Will Israel‘s defense minister remain calm and
―strategically patient,‖ putting his faith in Israel‘s atomic arsenal, in the nuclear sobriety of Ali
Khamenei and his Guards, and in the awe that Barack Obama‘s America inspires in the Middle
East? Or will he decide that a military strike is the only sound response to an existential danger?
Reuel Marc Gerecht is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and a senior fellow at the
Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Iran Cannot Be Contained
B ret S t ep he ns From issue: J uly / A ug us t 2 0 1 0
Commentary Magazine
Quietly within the foreign-policy machinery of the Obama administration—and quite openly in
foreign-policy circles outside it—the idea is taking root that a nuclear Iran is probably inevitable
and that the United States and its allies must begin to shift their attention from forestalling the
outcome to preparing for its aftermath. According to this line of argument, the failure of the
administration‘s engagement efforts in 2009, followed by the likely failure of any effective
sanctions efforts this year, allows for no other option but the long-term containment and
deterrence of Iran, along the lines of the West‘s policy toward the Soviet Union throughout the
Cold War. As for the possibility of a U.S. or an Israeli military strike against Iran‘s nuclear
facilities, this is said to be no option at all: at best, say the advocates of containment, such strikes
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would merely delay the regime‘s nuclear programs while giving it an alibi to consolidate its
power at home and cause mayhem abroad.
Whatever else might be said of this analysis, it certainly does not lack for influential proponents.
―Deterrence worked with madmen like Mao, and with thugs like Stalin, and it will work with the
calculating autocrats of Tehran,‖ writes Newsweek‘s Fareed Zakaria. In a Foreign Affairs essay
titled ―After Iran Gets the Bomb,‖ analysts James Lindsay and Ray Takeyh echo that claim,
saying that ―even if Washington fails to prevent Iran from going nuclear, it can contain and
mitigate the consequences.‖ Another believer is Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter‘s national
security adviser, who argues that while Iran ―may be dangerous, assertive and duplicitous... there
is nothing in their history to suggest they are suicidal.‖
As for the Obama administration, it insists, as Vice President Joseph Biden put it in March, that
―the United States is determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, period.‖ But it
sings a different tune in off-the-record settings. ―The administration appears to have all but
eliminated the military option,‖ writes the Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler, while in the New
York Times David Sanger reports that the administration ―is deep in containment now.‖ In
January, Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired off a confidential memo to the White House that,
according to the Times, ―calls for new thinking about how the United States might contain Iran‘s
power if it decided to produce a weapon.‖ If the Times‘s reporting is accurate, it suggests how
little faith the administration has that a fresh round of sanctions will persuade Tehran to alter its
nuclear course.
But how sound, really, is the case for containment, and do its prospective benefits outweigh its
probable risks? The matter deserves closer scrutiny before containment becomes the default
choice of an administration that has foreclosed other options and run out of better ideas.
_____________
Superficially, the case for containment looks remarkably good. The concept has a distinguished
American pedigree; it has room for tactical, diplomatic, and strategic maneuver; it was practiced
over many decades by Republican and Democratic administrations alike; it suggests a counsel of
mature patience against naïve calls for accommodation and impetuous calls for military action.
And, of course, it ultimately delivered the (mostly bloodless) surrender of the Soviet Union in
the Cold War.
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Perhaps the most convincing case put forward in favor of the containment of a nuclear Iran is
that it is the best of a bad set of options. Many of containment‘s current advocates are former
supporters of engagement with Iran. Having invested their hopes in President Obama‘s
―outstretched hand,‖ they now understand that Iran‘s hostility to the United States was not
merely a reaction to the policies of the Bush administration but rather is fundamental to the
regime‘s identity. The Islamic republic, it turns out, really means what it says when it chants
―Death to America.‖ It believes—and not unwisely—that more contacts with the U.S. and more
openness at home will pave the way only to a kind of Iranian glasnost that is as dangerous to the
regime as outright rebellion.
The failure of the administration‘s engagement efforts, however, has by no means done anything
to convince advocates of containment that preemptive military strikes offer a better course. They
entertain grave doubts that a U.S. strike would set Iran‘s programs back very far. That goes
double for an Israeli attack, since Israel may not have the capacity for undertaking a sustained
series of strikes. And any attack, American or Israeli, would be met by some sort of Iranian
reprisal, the nature or severity of which nobody can predict. But several nightmare scenarios are
often trotted out: that Iran mines the Straits of Hormuz or attacks shipping in the Persian Gulf,
perhaps tripling the price of a barrel of oil overnight; that Iran redoubles its efforts to destabilize
Iraq, undermining the gains we have made there, while increasing its support for the Taliban;
that Iran launches ballistic missiles at Israel while seizing control of Lebanon through Hezbollah,
and so on.
A larger worry about the wisdom of military strikes concerns the political consequences within
Iran itself. It is a concern shared by at least some people traditionally identified with the
neoconservative camp, such as historian Bernard Lewis and analyst Michael Ledeen. In this
analysis, any attack would give the regime what Lewis has called ―the gift of Iranian patriotism,‖
a gift they have never really possessed and have only further squandered since last year‘s bloody
post-election fracas. Yet many Iranians who despise the regime, including the most prominent
figures of the Green movement, nonetheless support its nuclear program and would rally behind
the leadership in the event of an attack. That deeply felt if knee-jerk nationalist impulse—
traditionally powerful in Iranian society—could spell the death of the Greens and thus any hope
that regime change could, over time, happen from within.
Advocates of containment also see a positive side to the policy. Containment has a way of
locking in pro-U.S. alliances against a common enemy for the long haul. That was true during
the Cold War—think of NATO, SEATO, and even CENTO, the Central Treaty Organization that
for a few years brought together Britain, the U.S., Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and, briefly, Iraq. In
the case of Iran, advocates of containment believe that the antipathy the Shiite regime elicits
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throughout the region could help smooth relations between Israel and such Sunni powers as
Saudi Arabia, and thus perhaps also bring about more favorable conditions for an IsraeliPalestinian accord. The same goes, arguably, for Iraq in terms of its still-fraught relations with
the rest of the Arab world.
Another alleged virtue of containment is that the policy is relatively stable and predictable. So
long as certain expectations are fulfilled—defense pacts, diplomatic support, credible
expectations of military action in case of war—friends and foes alike know where they stand.
This also supposedly gives parties to a conflict a strong incentive to avoid outright confrontation
and instead seek marginal advantages. At the same time, it allows internal developments to take
their course, which in Iran‘s case is presumed to be the evolution of the Green movement into a
robust and broad-based opposition campaign that might, like Solidarity in Poland, wear the
regime down.
But wouldn‘t a nuclear Iran be able to break out of the containment ―box‖? Not at all, say the
policy‘s proponents. While a nuclear Iran might initially feel emboldened to throw its weight
around its neighborhood, it would, they say, quickly discover that a nuclear arsenal is more of an
insurance policy against foreign attack than it is the strategic equivalent of venture capital.
―Paradoxically, a weapon that was designed to ensure Iran‘s regional preeminence could further
alienate it from its neighbors and prolong indefinitely the presence of U.S. troops on its
periphery,‖ write Lindsay and Takeyh in their Foreign Affairs essay. ―Nuclear empowerment
could well thwart Iran‘s hegemonic ambitions.‖
As for the idea that Iran might actually use its weapons, containment advocates note that nuclear
states—even ones as erratic as Maoist China or present-day North Korea—aren‘t so crazy as to
seek anything but political advantage from their bombs. Nor do the advocates believe that a
nuclear Iran will necessarily set off a wave of nuclear proliferation among Middle Eastern states.
―If Israel‘s estimated arsenal of 200 warheads... has not prompted Egypt to develop its own
nukes,‖ writes Zakaria, ―it‘s not clear that one Iranian bomb would do so.‖
All this makes for a powerful case for containment. Yet it is far from being convincing.
_____________
An Iran with nuclear weapons might behave as other nuclear powers have, but there are reasons
to fear it would not. And the United States and its allies might succeed at containing it. But
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again, there are reasons to suspect they would not. No less important, it‘s an open question
whether even a policy of containment that did succeed—over many years and through various
crises—would not exact a higher price on the U.S., its allies, and its interests than a series of
military strikes that prevent Iran from going nuclear in the first place.
Today there is an odd tendency to think of the Cold War as a period during which containment
served strategically as a stabilizing force abroad and politically as a clarifying one at home. In
fact, containment exacted a staggering strategic, political, and human price. Nearly 100,000
Americans died in the Korean and Vietnam wars, both fought to enforce containment. Hundreds
of thousands of U.S. soldiers stood guard in places like the Korean DMZ, Berlin‘s Checkpoint
Charlie, and West Germany‘s Fulda Gap. Trillions were spent on defense, intelligence, foreign
aid, and prestige projects like the Apollo space program. And the U.S. repeatedly toed the
nuclear brink during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the several crises over Berlin, and the Yom
Kippur War.
Throughout all this, the U.S. was riven by intense domestic debates and public upheavals, not
least during the Vietnam War. Containment was repeatedly attacked for its excessive reliance on
nuclear deterrence and ―brinksmanship‖ and its huge peacetime military expenditures,
sometimes giving way to enfeebling periods of detente. Nor did containment prevent the Soviet
Union from making steady geopolitical encroachments through the acquisition of client states in
Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Western Europe was never entirely safe from Soviet political
encroachments, either, given so-called Euro-Communist parties and a fellow-traveling ―peace‖
movement.
That all this now seems to be largely forgotten is both remarkable and even amusing considering
how often the same neoconservatives who are wary of a containment policy toward Iran are
accused of being wistful for the Cold War. Of course Iran is not the Soviet Union, and the
challenge it poses the U.S. is not on the global scale that was the USSR‘s. But if comparisons
with the Cold War are to be made, those comparisons must acknowledge what a complex, costly,
and close-run thing containing the Soviet Union proved to be.
At the same time, it‘s important to note the ways in which containing Iran would differ from the
Cold War model. For starters, Soviet power was mostly symmetrical with America‘s: ―Regime
change‖ against Stalin was never a serious option, nor did the U.S. have the means to stop Russia
from developing nuclear weapons. Neither is necessarily the case with Iran today, where both
military strikes against Iran‘s nuclear facilities and a broader regime-change policy are feasible
options—at least as long as Iran does not have nuclear weapons.
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Then, too, the Soviet Union threatened the U.S. primarily and directly, a fact that did much to
bolster American political will to persevere in the contest. By contrast, the threat a nuclear Iran
would pose (at least until it acquires an ICBM capability) would be principally to countries other
than the U.S., calling into question American readiness to sustain a containment policy for the
long haul. ―Why die for Danzig?‖ was the question advocates of accommodation with Hitler
were fond of asking in the 1930s. Some Americans may soon be asking the same question about
Doha or Dubai or Tel Aviv.
But the most important difference between the Soviet Union and Iran may be ideological. A
credible case can be made that Communism is no less a faith than Islam and that Iran‘s current
leadership, like Soviet leaders of yore, knows how to temper true belief with pragmatic
considerations. But Communism was also a materialist and (by its own lights) rationalist creed,
with a belief in the inevitability of history but not in the afterlife. Marxist-Leninist regimes may
be unmatched in their record of murderousness, but they were never great believers in the virtues
of martyrdom.
That is not the case with Shiism, which has been decisively shaped by a cult of suffering and
martyrdom dating to the murder of Imam Husayn—the Sayyed al-Shuhada, or Prince of
Martyrs—in Karbala in the seventh century. The emphasis on martyrdom became all the more
pronounced in Iran during its war with Iraq, when Tehran sent waves of child soldiers, some as
young as 10, to clear out Iraqi minefields. As Hooman Majd writes in his book The Ayatollah
Begs to Differ, the boys were often led by a soldier mounted on a white horse in imitation of
Husayn: ―the hero who would lead them into their fateful battle before they met their God.‖ Tens
of thousands of children died this way.
The martyrdom mentality factors into Iran‘s nuclear calculus as well. In December 2001, former
Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani—a man often described as a moderate and a
pragmatist in the Western press—noted in his Qods (Jerusalem) Day speech that ―if one day, the
Islamic world is also equipped with weapons like those that Israel possesses now, then the
imperialists‘ strategy will reach a standstill because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside
Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to
contemplate such an eventuality.‖
Then there is the recent rise within Iran of an ultra-conservative sect that has sprung up around
Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, an ayatollah who numbers Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad among his leading disciples. In 2005, Mesbah-Yazdi published a book openly
calling for the acquisition of nuclear weapons. ―Divine, messianic support has been the
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determining factor in the success of the Iranian regime during various trying periods,‖ he wrote.
―We cannot be broken because of temporary difficulties.‖
A year later, the influential cleric Mohsen Gharavian, another of Mesbah-Yazdi‘s disciples,
reportedly called for Iran not only to acquire but also to use nuclear weapons as a
―countermeasure‖ against the U.S. and Israel. These are, of course, some of the more extreme
voices in Iran, which are not necessarily authoritative. Still, Mesbah-Yazdi‘s call to develop
nuclear weapons is, in fact, precisely what the regime is doing for all its many denials, just as the
increasingly repressive direction of Iranian politics squares with his long-held anti-reformist
views.
All this suggests that a better comparison for Iran than the Soviet Union might be Japan of the
1930s and World War II—another martyrdom-obsessed, non-Western culture with global
ambitions. It should call into question the view that for all its extremist rhetoric, Iran operates
according to an essentially pragmatic estimate of its own interests. Ideology matters, not only on
its terms but also in shaping the parameters within which the regime is prepared to exhibit
flexibility and restraint. Ideology matters, too, in determining the kinds of gambles and sacrifices
it is willing to make to achieve its aims. To suggest that there is some universal standard of
―pragmatism‖ or ―rationality‖ where Iran and the rest of the world can find common ground is a
basic (if depressingly common) intellectual error. What Iran finds pragmatic and rational—
support for militias and terrorist organizations abroad; a posture of unyielding hostility to the
West; a nuclear program that flouts multiple UN resolutions—is rather different from the
thinking that prevails in, say, the Netherlands.
_____________
Put simply, Iran has demonstrated time and again that it is prepared to pay a steep price to realize
its ambitions. The real questions are: What are those ambitions? What does the regime think it
can afford? And how would the acquisition of a nuclear arsenal affect their calculus?
Advocates of containment generally believe that Iran‘s ambitions are limited and regional. As
Lindsay and Takeyh write,
the regime has survived because its rulers have recognized the limits of their power and have
thus mixed revolutionary agitation with pragmatic adjustment. Although it has denounced the
United States as the Great Satan and called for Israel‘s obliteration, Iran has avoided direct
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military confrontation with either state. It has vociferously defended the Palestinians, but it has
stood by as the Russians have slaughtered Chechens and the Chinese have suppressed Muslim
Uighurs. Ideological purity, it seems, has been less important than seeking diplomatic cover from
Russia and commercial activity with China. Despite their Islamist compulsions, the mullahs like
power too much to be martyrs.
As for Iran‘s nuclear bid, this too, Lindsay and Takeyh believe, is intended to serve limited aims:
During the presidencies of Hashemi Rafsanjani and Muhammad Khatami, nuclear weapons were
seen as tools of deterrence against the United States and Saddam Hussein‘s regime, among
others. The more conservative current ruling elite... sees them as a critical means of ensuring
Iran‘s preeminence in the region. ... And this may be all the more the case now that Iran is
engulfed in the worst domestic turmoil it has known in years: these days, the regime seems to be
viewing its quest for nuclear self-sufficiency as a way to revive its own political fortunes.
This analysis, however, omits a few key facts. Iran has been waging war against Israel for
decades via Hezbollah and Hamas. Iran also had a direct operational role in the bombings of the
Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and of the Jewish community center there in 1994. The
man chiefly responsible for the last of those attacks, Ahmad Vahidi, is today Iran‘s defense
minister. Iran has also carried out high--profile assassinations of its enemies on European soil;
taken British sailors hostage; put U.S., Canadian, and French nationals on trial (and in jail) on
patently bogus charges; and, famously, imposed a death sentence on British novelist Salman
Rushdie.
Moreover, Iran‘s seizure of the U.S. Embassy in 1979 was a direct attack on sovereign U.S.
territory and an act of war by any legal standard. Iran almost certainly had a hand in the 1983
bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, in which 241 American servicemen perished, while
the FBI has long believed that Iran was also responsible for the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing
that killed another 19 Americans. Then there was the war in Iraq, during which Iran did little to
disguise the fact that it supplied Shiite militias, and perhaps also Sunni terrorist groups, with
sophisticated, armor-piercing munitions responsible for the deaths of scores, perhaps hundreds,
of U.S. soldiers.
Iran is thus very far from being the pragmatic and mostly circumspect power depicted by
advocates of containment. On the contrary, the regime has stood out since its earliest days for its
willingness to pick fights with powerful enemies, to undertake terrorist strikes at great range, to
court international opprobrium and moral outrage, to test international diplomatic patience, and
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to raise the stakes every time the world seemed ready to come to terms. In short, it has pursued
policies that have seemed almost calculated to enshrine its status as a global pariah.
Why has it done this? Much as containment advocates would discount the fact, Iran‘s leadership
remains faithful to the regime‘s founding principles. ―We do not worship Iran, we worship
Allah,‖ said the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1980. ―For patriotism is another name for paganism. I
say let this land burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam remains triumphant in
the rest of the world.‖ More than a quarter-century later, Ahmadinejad would send a letter to
President Bush that would sound a similar theme. ―Those with insight can already hear the
sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the Liberal democratic system,‖
he wrote. ―We increasingly see that people around the world are flocking towards a main focal
point—that is the Almighty God. ... My question for you is: ‗Do you not want to join them?‘‖
These ideas may sound deranged to us, but it would be foolish not to give them their due. Like
other revolutionary regimes—the Nazis, the Bolsheviks, and, let‘s face it, the Americans—the
Iranian regime makes a philosophical claim, a claim it believes has relevance not only for
Iranians and Muslims but also for all mankind. In this sense Iran, as a country, amounts to little
more than an accident of geography and culture. What matters to this regime, what sustains and
motivates it, is a set of ideas about justice that is bound by neither geography nor culture.
No wonder the Obama administration and its allies in Europe have had such a difficult time
trying to get the regime to see reason; by the regime‘s lights, it is the rest of the world that fails
to see reason, because the rest of the world is adhering to an inequitable and self-serving
international system. No wonder, too, that the regime has pressed forward with its ideas for
reordering that system by whatever means it has at its disposal; in the absence of those ideas, the
revolution would be a failure even if the regime itself managed to survive. To desist from its
efforts to seek Israel‘s destruction, or maintain a confrontational stance toward the West, or build
a bomb is not simply something the regime will not do. Rather, it cannot do it, lest it betray its
deepest purposes.
It is for this reason that the regime has consistently been willing to take apparently reckless risks
for the sake of its objectives—and would most likely take many more such risks if it had a
nuclear arsenal at its disposal. Then again, it also has learned something from a 30-year
experience of watching its enemies routinely back away from confrontation. This was true of the
Carter administration vis-à-vis the embassy hostages, and of the Reagan administration vis-à-vis
the hostages in Lebanon. It was true of Israel‘s failure to deliver the coup de grace against
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Hezbollah in 2006, and of the failure of the Bush administration to avenge the murder of its
soldiers in Iraq or greenlight an Israeli strike on Iran‘s nuclear facilities in 2008.
Above all, it has been true of the West‘s collective failure to stop Iran‘s nuclear programs in their
tracks. As of this writing, the U.S. can point to three UN Security Council resolutions that rebuke
Iran for its nuclear deceptions and impose relatively trivial sanctions. But Iran can also note with
satisfaction that it is mainly the West that has been in retreat, allowing Iran to cross one supposed
red line after another without consequence. As Ahmadinejad noted last December: ―A few years
ago, they [the West] said we had to completely stop all our nuclear activities. Now look where
we are today.‖
_____________
The combination of Iranian aggressiveness and Western diffidence has consequences for how a
containment strategy would play out against a nuclear Iran. Behavior, after all, is largely a
function of experience: why would a nuclear Iran, emboldened after successfully defying years
of Western threats and sanctions, believe that the U.S. was seriously prepared to enforce this or
that red line for the sake of containment? More likely, the U.S. would be at continual pains trying
to restrain its allies, Israel above all, from responding too forcefully against Iranian provocations,
lest they ―destabilize‖ the region.
Consider also the red lines that Lindsay and Takeyh say would be essential for a policy of
containment to work. Washington, they believe, would have to ―publicly pledge to retaliate by
any means it chooses if Iran used nuclear weapons against Israel‖; it would have to tell Tehran
that it ―would strike preemptively, with whatever means it deems necessary, if Iran ever placed
its nuclear forces on alert‖; and it ―should hold Tehran responsible for any nuclear transfer,
whether authorized or not.‖
Merely to list these conditions underscores the risks the U.S. would be required to run to enforce
a containment policy. And given its habits of provocation, Iran would almost certainly be
inclined to test America‘s mettle at the earliest opportunity, probably by finding ambiguous ways
to transgress America‘s red lines. What would the U.S. do, for instance, if Iran found ways to
transfer components of a nuclear program, perhaps of a dual-use variety, to Syria? Would that
suffice as a casus belliagainst a nuclear Iran as far as the Obama administration was concerned?
Or, as so often has been the case in the past, would the administration be content to express
―grave concern‖ and perhaps refer the matter to the International Atomic Energy Agency?
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One might also ask why Iran shouldn‘t consider making wholesale nuclear-technology transfers
to other parties if that suited its needs. After all, there is a precedent here: following North
Korea‘s first nuclear test in 2006, President Bush warned that ―the transfer of nuclear weapons or
material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the
United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable for the consequences of such
action.‖ Yet when Pyongyang was exposed in 2007 as having made precisely that kind of
transfer to Syria, it paid no price (other than the loss, at Israel‘s hands, of its investment). On the
contrary, thanks to a bit of diplomatic gamesmanship, North Korea was soon rewarded by the
Bush administration by being removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Iran is well aware of this history, just as it is aware that the Bush administration had previously
been adamant that a North Korean nuclear test would be ―unacceptable.‖ For too long, every red
line the U.S. has drawn for both Pyongyang and Tehran has been exposed as a bluff. Yet the
essence of any successful containment strategy is that the red lines cannot be bluffs—and, what‘s
more, that the country being contained must be convinced of that. When America‘s containment
of the Soviet Union began in the late 1940s, the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was still
fresh. By contrast, the U.S. would be moving toward a containment policy toward Iran following
years of hollow threats and a perceptibly weakening will to thwart its ambitions. For an
American president to pledge today that the U.S. would bear any burden, meet any hardship, or
support any friend to contain Iran would simply not be taken seriously by the leadership of
Tehran.
Nor would such a pledge carry much weight among America‘s traditional allies in the region,
who are already openly expressing doubts about U.S. seriousness. Speaking at a press conference
alongside Hillary Clinton in February, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal cast doubt on the
administration‘s sanctions efforts and, by implication, the merits of a containment strategy:
―Sanctions are a long-term solution,‖ he said. ―They may work, we can‘t judge. But we see the
issue in the shorter term maybe because we are closer to the threat. ... So we need an immediate
resolution rather than a gradual resolution.‖ Why would Saudi Arabia—or, for that matter,
Egypt, Iraq, the Gulf emirates, or Israel—be more inclined to put its trust in U.S. security
guarantees after America had failed to stop Iran from going nuclear than it is now?
The answer, say the advocates of containment, is that these countries wouldn‘t have much
choice: American power would remain their single best hedge against Iranian encroachments.
But that may not be true, at least in the long term. Sunni states, both Arab and non-Arab, could
also choose to compete with a nuclear Iran. Or they could seek to cooperate with it. Both
possibilities would be ruinous for U.S. interests.
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Competition with Iran would most likely take the form of Arab (or Sunni) states developing
nuclear arsenals of their own. In recent years, Turkey, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, the
United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and even Yemen have all expressed an interest in building
nuclear power plants, ostensibly for civilian reasons, though with other purposes plainly in mind.
Egypt, which has not had full diplomatic ties with Iran since it signed a peace agreement with
Israel in 1979, and which more recently has tangled with the Islamic republic over its support of
Hamas in Sinai and Gaza, has been even less circumspect in advertising its intentions. ―We don‘t
want nuclear arms in the area but we are obligated to defend ourselves,‖ Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak said in 2007. ―We will have to have the appropriate weapons. It is irrational that
we sit and watch from the sidelines when we might be attacked at any moment.‖
Then there is the cooperative approach. Turkey has mended its previously frayed relations with
Iran (as it has with Syria), with the effect that it is now on the point of becoming a de facto
enemy of Israel and a diplomatic thorn in America‘s side (as Michael Rubin explains in his
article, beginning on page 81). The rest of the Muslim states in the region hardly need Iran to
persuade them to hate Israel. But they do need to be persuaded that a nuclear Iran would respect
their sovereignty and that Iran would exercise its newfound regional pre-eminence with a light
hand. Nothing prevents Iran from doing so. Over time, Iran could easily apply some combination
of inducements and pressure to persuade Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain to shut down their U.S.
military bases. Iran could also learn from its mistakes in Iraq—where its brazen and often violent
tactics provoked a popular backlash—to mend relations with its neighbor while promoting the
fortunes of its numerous and influential political sympathizers.
Additional scenarios come to mind, in various combinations. What happens, say, if Egypt
develops an indigenous nuclear arsenal as a counterweight to Iran—and then its regime
collapses, Iranian-style, to a Muslim Brotherhood–led Islamic revolution? What happens, too, if
the Saudi monarchy falls to some of its most radical elements after it has purchased a nuclear
arsenal from Pakistan? Such scenarios may be unlikely, but they are far from implausible—and
there are many of them. And if any of them were to come to pass, they would almost certainly
force America‘s effective withdrawal from much of the Middle East, leaving Israel to fend for
itself.
Still, the most frightening scenario of all would be a nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran.
Most advocates of containment believe the possibility is highly remote, since Iran would not risk
its own annihilation by attacking the Jewish state. But as even Lindsay and Takeyh acknowledge,
―Iran‘s possession of a bomb would create an inherently unstable situation, in which both parties
would have an incentive to strike first: Iran, to avoid losing its arsenal, and Israel, to keep Tehran
from using it.‖ To manage that risk, the authors place great weight on Jerusalem‘s ―assessment
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of the United States‘ willingness and ability to deter Iran.‖ Yet as with its Arab neighbors,
Jerusalem‘s assessment is unlikely to be positive following Washington‘s failure to prevent Iran
from going nuclear in the first place.
And yet the argument persists that for all its dangers and difficulties, containment is our only
realistic option for dealing with the inevitability of a nuclear Iran. Better to start fine-tuning the
concept now, the advocates say, than to try to make it up on the fly later.
In one sense, this analysis is right: should Iran acquire nuclear weapons, the U.S. will have little
choice but to attempt to manage the consequences and contain the fallout. Yet containment
would be a strategy resting on the rubble of a decade‘s worth of failed diplomacy. That unsturdy
foundation alone—a compound of indecision, cravenness, and squandered credibility—is one
reason why the policy would be likely to fail.
Another reason is that the tools the U.S. would have at its disposal to enforce a containment
policy would have to be salvaged from a collapsed edifice. Yes, we would have allies. But they
would be weaker, more hesitant to side with us, and more tempted to accommodate the cunning
and willful regime next door. Yes, we would have our military might. But it would be confronted
by a much more formidable adversary. Yes, Iran would still have all its own internal divisions
and dissensions to deal with. But as Lindsay and Takeyh themselves acknowledge, the
acquisition of a bomb would ―revive [Iran‘s] own political fortunes.‖ Yes, we would have a
compelling national interest to contain Iran. But American leaders would also have to contend
with a perennial political temptation to abandon the field.
Finally, it cannot be stressed enough that a nuclear Iran would be unlike any nuclear power the
world has known. It would be dangerous and unpredictable in moments of strength as well as in
those of weakness. While it could well be that the regime would not consider using its arsenal if
it believed it could get its way through other means, the calculus could change if it felt threatened
from within. Indeed, the closer the regime got to its deathbed, the more tempted it would be to
bring its enemies along with it. The mullahs will not go gentle into that good night.
Thus to the extent that American policymakers indulge the notion that containment is a difficult
but ultimately workable policy option, they also lull themselves into thinking that a failure to
prevent Iran from going nuclear is anything but ―unacceptable.‖ In doing so, of course, they only
further undercut whatever feeble will is left within the administration to confront Iran, now and
in the future.
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This essay deals with policy options and scenarios that still lie over the horizon. But a few final
words ought to be devoted to what is within America‘s power to do now. Iran does not yet have
nuclear weapons. It may yet be prevented from getting them. Recognizing that a nuclear Iran
would be catastrophic to U.S. interests (to say nothing of Israel‘s) is the first step on the road to
prevention. Recognizing that neither diplomacy nor, in all likelihood, sanctions can stop Iran‘s
nuclear bids is the second step. The serious options that remain are military strikes or efforts to
support regime change.
Advocates of the latter strategy often insist that nothing would harm their efforts more than
military strikes. Maybe. But the recent apparent fizzling of the Green movement that arose after
the stolen 2009 election offers little hope that it can mount a successful challenge to the regime
before Iran crosses the nuclear threshold. It took the Solidarity movement in Poland 10 years to
come to power. That is much longer than the world can afford to wait in Iran.
Regime-change advocates must also reckon that while military strikes on Iran could set their
efforts back, so too would the regime‘s acquisition of a nuclear weapon. A regime that has little
to fear by way of external challenges to its power will have even greater scope to repress its own
people. And a regime that can use its nuclear status to burnish its prestige and advance its
interests abroad will also be able to make use of those assets for domestic political purposes.
It is also far from clear that military strikes would be the death knell to the reform movement that
opponents claim. Whatever fits of nationalist, anti-Western fervor such strikes might induce
among Iranians at large, they are likely to be short-lived. Defeat does not ultimately make for
good politics. In 1982, the unpopular and repressive regime of Leopoldo Galtieri in Argentina
also bought itself popular support by invading the Falklands. Yet Galtieri was ousted just days
after the British took Port Stanley. Much the same went on in the Balkans, where Serbian
strongman Slobodan Milosevic profited politically from his brutal policies in Kosovo and his
defiance of NATO. Yet he, too, did not last long in office after losing the battle he had staked so
much on.
As for the argument that military strikes would merely delay Iran‘s nuclear programs, one can
only ask: what‘s wrong with delay? Israel‘s 1981 strike on Iraq‘s Osirak reactor was also, in its
way, a delaying tactic, since Saddam Hussein moved aggressively to reconstitute his program
under deeper cover. Yet had it not been for the raid on Osirak, the Iraq that invaded Kuwait in
1990 might well have been a nuclear power. In that case, no U.S. government would have dared
risk a war with it for the sake of Kuwait‘s liberation. As for Iran, a delay of several years to its
nuclear programs would be no small thing if the regime fell to its internal opponents within that
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period. Far from being the end of the reform movement, military strikes could be their salvation.
One must also ask what would prevent the U.S. from striking again in the event that Iran did
attempt to reconstitute its program.
None of this is to say that strikes on Iran would not have unforeseen, unintended, and unhappy
consequences. All military actions do. But the serious question that confronts policymakers
today is whether the foreseeable consequences of an Iran with nuclear weapons are not
considerably worse. They would be. And because they are foreseeable, they are preventable.
Through action. Not through the inaction that, in this case, goes by the name of containment.
© 2010 Commentary Inc.
A Period of Consequences
Our dangerous Iran policy.
BY Jamie Fly and William Kristol
June 21, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 38
The Weekly Standard
The passage last Wednesday of a fourth U.N. Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on
Iran was the latest act in the tragicomedy that is U.S. policy toward Iran.
Administrations of both parties have pursued the same failed policy for the last several years.
Even while successive rounds of sanctions against Tehran have been threatened and engagement
tried, the Iranian regime has made steady progress towards a nuclear arsenal, supported terrorist
groups, and assisted those fighting American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan—all without serious
repercussion.
Although President Bush spoke during his second term about ―keeping the military option on the
table,‖ it became apparent to Tehran that, distracted by other issues, Washington would not back
up its words with actions. Now the Obama administration has virtually given up even referring to
the use of force—except when administration officials warn of the supposed catastrophic
consequences of any military attack against Iran‘s nuclear facilities. Indeed, the Obama
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administration seems much more taken with the urgency of blocking an Israeli strike against
Iran‘s nuclear program than with stopping Iran‘s nuclear program. And one routinely hears how
very, very dangerous any use of military force against Iran would be.
Would it be so dangerous? That is a debate the country needs to have, publicly and frankly,
before it‘s too late.
Critics of military action against Iran argue that it would open up a third front for American
forces in the Middle East. Our troops would be at risk from Iranian missiles. Iran would block
the Strait of Hormuz (causing oil prices to skyrocket) and use its terrorist proxies Hamas and
Hezbollah to carry out attacks well beyond the Middle East, including perhaps on the U.S.
homeland.
Yet if we carried out a targeted campaign against Iran‘s nuclear facilities, against sites used to
train and equip militants killing American soldiers, and against certain targeted terror-supporting
and nuclear-enabling regime elements, the effects are just as likely to be limited.
It‘s unclear, for example, that Iran would want to risk broadening the conflict and creating the
prospect of regime decapitation. Iran‘s rulers have shown that their preeminent concern is
maintaining their grip on power. If U.S. military action is narrowly targeted, and declared to be
such, why would Iran‘s leaders, already under pressure at home, want to escalate the conflict, as
even one missile attack on a U.S. facility or ally or a blockade of the Strait would obviously do?
Some in Washington seem resigned to letting Israel take action. But a U.S. failure to act in
response to what is perhaps the greatest threat to American interests in decades would be
irresponsible. Israel, moreover, lacks our full capabilities to do the job.
Despite our global commitments and our engagement in two ongoing wars, the U.S. military is
fully able to carry out such a mission. Indeed, the success of President Bush‘s 2007 surge of
forces into Iraq and of President Obama‘s sending additional resources to Afghanistan means we
are on better footing to deal with Iran‘s nuclear program than we were a few years ago.
Obviously, the best alternative in Iran is regime change brought about by domestic opposition.
Unfortunately, President Obama waffled while innocent Iranians were killed by their own
government a year ago after the fraudulent elections. To this day, he has done little to support the
forces of freedom in Iran.
It‘s now increasingly clear that the credible threat of a military strike against Iran‘s nuclear
program is the only action that could convince the regime to curtail its ambitions. But instead of
using the possibility of military action as leverage, the Obama administration has tried to soothe
the mullahs‘ nerves. It‘s time to put Tehran on edge.
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In a speech to the House of Commons in late 1936, Winston Churchill warned, ―The era of
procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its
close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.‖
We, too, are entering such a period. We can act and make the world safer. Or we, and the rest of
the free world, can choose to be the hapless victim of choices made by our enemies. For doing
nothing in the face of danger, wishful procrastinating, and fearful delay are also choices—
dangerous and dishonorable ones.
—Jamie Fly & William Kristol
Iran and the Costs of Containment
Before we say containment is ―the only viable option‖ in dealing with Iran, we need to
calculate its costs.
MICHAEL ANTON
National Review
‗Even as momentum for Iran sanctions grows, containment seems only viable option,‖ reads a
Washington Post headline from April 22. Leaving aside for the moment the dubious character of
the first half of that assertion, is it really true that containment is now the ―only‖ option?
It is certainly true that nearly everyone in Washington — from administration officials to the
permanent civil service to the foreign-policy establishment — believes that, and has believed it
for at least a year, if not longer. The intellectual groundwork was laid long before President
Obama came into office, in part as a way of sketching an alternative to an American or Israeli
military strike, which seemed a much more likely possibility when the president was named
Bush.
In recent days — as one senior administration official after another has either downplayed the
significance of an Iranian nuclear weapon or spoken in nigh-apocalyptic terms about the use of
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military force to prevent one from emerging — it would seem that the triumph of containment as
America‘s chosen Iran strategy is complete.
The working assumption of containment‘s adherents is that it is the low- or lower-cost alternative
to tough sanctions or military action. The former are believed to be either impossible to impose
(because Russia, China, and other nations won‘t go along), undesirable (because sanctions would
harm the Iranian people more than the regime and turn popular anger against us), or ineffective
(because Tehran is determined to ride out even the most crippling sanctions in pursuit of the
bomb). The latter is just dismissed out of hand as the precursor to Armageddon.
But is it really true that containment carries relatively low costs? To answer that, we must first
grasp what those costs are likely to be.
It is instructive to begin with a comparison to the lodestar example cited by containment
advocates: the decades-long American and allied effort to restrain the expansionist impulses of
the Soviet Union. The very term ―containment‖ originated in arguably the most famous foreignpolicy essay of all time, George Kennan‘s ―Sources of Soviet Conduct‖ [registration required].
Published in Foreign Affairs in 1947, the article outlined a policy that would — short of war —
allow America to confront and oppose Soviet aggression.
In order to make containment work, the character of our country had to change in many respects.
In 1945, America began its traditional rapid post-conflict demobilization. Defense spending fell
from nearly 40 percent of GDP during the war years to 3.5 percent by 1948. The number of men
in uniform declined from a high of 11 million to around 1.5 million on the eve of the Korean
War. But as the realities of containment sank in, policymakers realized that a repeat of the post1918 drawdowns and a return to anything like ―splendid isolation‖ would be impossible.
Liberal critics have long fingered the immediate postwar years as the dawn of a sinister
―national-security state‖ in which civil liberties, national resources, and previously cherished
priorities were subordinated to the costs of maintaining a permanent domestic and global
garrison. This critique is in part facile — isn‘t the fundamental question whether what was done
was necessary or not? — and in part overblown. But it is not entirely manufactured. America did
have to maintain a far larger and more expensive peacetime military than we had ever had before
— and with it an unprecedented peacetime draft. Moreover, hundreds of thousands of our troops
had to be stationed far from home, in overseas bases partly, or in some cases entirely, financed
by American taxpayers. Billions were poured into research and development of cutting-edge
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weapons systems, with layers of security and secrecy surrounding the labs and manufacturing
facilities. We designed and built an enormous, potentially civilization-ending thermonuclear
arsenal. For the first time in our history, America established a permanent civilian spy agency.
What did all this cost over the lifetime of the Cold War? The left-wing Center for Defense
Information simply added up U.S. defense budgets for those years and arrived at a figure of
$17.7 trillion in 2009 dollars. Much of that would have been spent anyway. Then again, other
agencies also spent billions of other dollars on Cold War projects. And that is to say nothing of
lives lost, effort expended, and other less tangible costs — costs we would not have borne had
we not deemed them absolutely necessary.
Nor would we have maintained our nuclear arsenal on hair-trigger alert for more than 40 years.
In hindsight it is tempting to look back and see the settled rut that came to be called Mutual
Assured Destruction as a policy success. And it was, in that the assurance of destruction never
exploded into the reality. But let‘s not forget how close we sometimes came — whether from a
real crisis such as Berlin or Cuba, or from a fluke like the 1983 glitch in the Soviet early-warning
system that registered five (phantom) incoming ICBMs. No one who didn‘t have to would
choose for his country such a terrifying, razor‘s-edge day-to-day existence.
Making matters worse, American officials felt obliged to offer nuclear-security guarantees to
foreign countries, in part to keep them in the anti-Soviet alliance, in part to discourage them from
developing nuclear arsenals of their own. What this meant in practice was that America had
pledged to risk — and potentially lose — dozens of American cities and millions of American
lives in order to protect Bonn or Ankara. Such a pledge would have been unthinkable before the
Cold War, and, to the limited extent that the American people really understood it, it was deeply
unpopular.
And while it is true that the Cold War never erupted into a global conflagration, that‘s not to say
that it never, ever went hot. Korea and Vietnam are only the most famous Cold War soils onto
which American servicemen and civilian personnel shed their blood; their brothers and sisters
died in similar or related causes all over the world. And that is to say nothing of the various
brush-fire wars in which both sides strained to keep their own people off the front lines but in
which U.S. officials nonetheless determined that opposing Soviet proxies through proxies of our
own was a necessary pillar of containment. One unforeseen and unintended consequence: deep
divisions in American society over the wisdom of such interventions, which rent the fabric of our
domestic politics.
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Then there were the myriad other ways in which, despite our policy of containment, the Soviets
declined to be contained. It suffices to mention two: constant espionage — up to and including
political violence — and relentless ideological warfare. The former almost got Pope John Paul II
killed in St. Peter‘s Square. The latter inspired wholesale slaughter in nations across the globe
and undermined the West‘s confidence in its beliefs and institutions in ways that reverberate to
this day.
More prosaically, the very logistics of containment often got complicated. The aforementioned
forward deployed military posture required basing arrangements in more than a dozen countries,
each with its own unique interests and a willingness to use its leverage over America because of
our desire for basing rights to further those interests. This problem was primarily technical, but it
points to a larger diplomatic problem. Maintaining the alliances that sustained containment —
not just NATO but also the various bilateral relationships and multilateral arrangements in Asia,
the Middle East, and Latin America — required a constant, cat-herding vigilance that dominated
Washington‘s time and drew its attention away from other issues. Our entire foreign policy had
to be subsumed to the requirements of containment, with opportunity costs that are impossible to
calculate. Many critics of the Bush administration have levied exactly this charge at its conduct
of the War on Terror without realizing (or at least admitting) that it applied in spades to the Cold
War and would to any other example of containment in action.
Diplomatically, containment also swept away the last remnants of George Washington‘s advice
in the Farewell Address to avoid permanent alliances. Containment presumes a boundary. On the
other side of that boundary from the contained were the countries that we were pledged to
protect, or whose help we needed, or both. As liberal critics of containment were and remain
eager to point out, a not inconsiderable number of those countries were ruled by unsavory (or
worse) regimes, with which the United States would otherwise have maintained standoffish
relations or not have treated at all. The moral and political costs of propping up anti-Communist
dictators were also ones that would not have been borne but for the necessity.
Nor did the moral and political costs end there. Containment — remember, its rejected
alternative was rollback — conceded to the Soviets not merely the non-Russian possessions of
the czarist empire, and not just Stalin‘s pre– and post–World War II conquests, but also a large
―sphere of influence‖ in which Washington implicitly allowed Moscow a free hand. Probably
there was not much that we materially could have done for the millions suffering under
Communist tyranny. But at least we recognized the stakes and regretted the limitations imposed
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by necessity.
Applying the above factors to Iran, then, the first difference that comes to mind is that in the
Soviet case, containment was — and was seen as — a necessary evil, not a policy chosen for its
own sake. The alternative evils — a Soviet invasion of Western Europe or another war to end
Soviet tyranny — were so awful as to be unthinkable. Politically, economically, and spiritually
exhausted by war, America and, even more, her allies could not contemplate further military
action to liberate the captive nations of Eastern Europe or the Russian people — though the rank
injustice of the status quo was understood in the West by all but the most blinkered (and of
course outright Soviet partisans). Moreover, we really had no viable course of action to follow
other than containment or war. Sanctions had no hope of fundamentally altering Soviet behavior
— the Russian empire‘s economy was simply too large, the regime‘s tolerance for its people‘s
pain too high, and the people‘s ability to bring the regime to its knees too limited — though
sanctions were imposed anyway, partly on moral grounds. Containment, therefore, was the best
that could be done under the circumstances. But even its most vigorous proponents conceded its
moral, political, and strategic drawbacks.
Can the same be said for Iran? Sanctions — real sanctions, which would make the regime feel
genuine economic and political pain — have yet to be tried. Iran‘s economy is far smaller and far
more fragile than was Cold War–era Russia‘s. There is no shortage of pressure points. That a
country with the world‘s third-largest proven oil reserves cannot refine enough gasoline to run its
transportation fleet or kerosene to heat its homes suggests an opportunity. Yet so far the motley
coalition of countries claiming to oppose a nuclear Iran won‘t consider trying to curtail Iranian
imports of refined fuel (though, to his credit, French president Nicolas Sarkozy suggested as
much in a recent interview). True, Russia and China will never go along — the latter because it
desperately needs Iranian crude oil, the former because it sees propping up Tehran as a way to
increase its leverage in the Middle East and irritate Washington. But this means only that such
sanctions would have to be imposed outside the structure of the United Nations. Is it already time
to resign ourselves to containment before even giving this a shot?
Moreover, in Iran, the West is blessed with two assets that, in the USSR, presented themselves
only toward the very end, when the outcome was already inevitable. First, the Iranian people are
eager for change and have proven themselves willing to risk their lives for it. Second, apart from
hardline elements such as the Revolutionary Guards, the regime seems brittle, exhausted, and
potentially unable to maintain control for much longer. So why not give it a push? Or several?
The U.S. government‘s utter failure to support last summer‘s Green Revolution was not only
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morally obtuse; it was strategically inept. Using various levers to aid the Iranian people‘s desire
for change (as to which levers, see Michael Rubin‘s excellent essay in the April Commentary)
might or might not hasten the end of the Islamic Republic. Similarly, a new regime in Tehran
might or might not end or slow Iran‘s nuclear program. But if we‘re serious about changing
Iranian behavior, shouldn‘t that at least be tried?
Supposing we do, and supposing we fail, then we might find ourselves with no alternative but
containment. What exactly would containment against Iran look like? Proponents of the idea are
quick to play up the similarities with the Soviet case as a way of arguing that containment can
succeed once again. But they are equally quick to play up the differences when discussing costs.
There is little chance of Iran‘s mounting a massive invasion, so an expensive military buildup
won‘t be necessary, we are assured. And besides, America already has some 200,000 troops in
neighboring countries, which should be ample for the purposes of containment.
Well, yes — but. First of all, most of those troops have their hands full fighting two wars.
Second, they are not scheduled to be there for long. Obama-administration timetables call for
substantial drawdowns in Iraq this fall and in Afghanistan next summer. A permanent
containment posture with respect to Iran would require those timetables to be revisited, to say the
least. Do the liberals who have been clamoring to bring the troops home — now! — and who
also advocate containment not see the difficulty? In any case, the American people would
probably tolerate a long-term U.S. force presence in the region — with all its monetary and other
costs — if it truly were a matter of necessity. But they want the troops home, too, and would
prefer us to at least try alternatives that might avoid indeterminate deployments before we resign
ourselves to them.
If the troops were to remain, their purpose would presumably be to discourage Iranian
adventurism. That might entail Cold War–style brush-fire skirmishes, which might lead to direct
engagements with Iranian forces. Are our political leaders prepared for that risk? On the other
hand, if troop levels decreased to the point at which Iran could realize its aspiration to install a
Shia puppet in Baghdad, would containment have to extend to cover not just Iran but Iraq as
well? How readily will Americans accept the awful contingency that so much of our blood and
treasure was spent liberating Iraq only to turn the country into an Iranian satellite? Whatever the
outcome, containment against Iran, no less than against the USSR, would implicitly concede an
enemy ―sphere of influence.‖ The only question is how large.
The nuclear issue is — counterintuitively — far more central to the current Iranian circumstance
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than it was to the Soviet one early in the Cold War. Nukes or not, the Red Army maintained an
iron grip on Eastern Europe and a threatening posture toward the West that NATO was both
unable and unwilling to dislodge. Containment had to be the order of the day with or without the
Soviet bomb. Indeed, the policy was first sketched three years, and the term coined two years,
before the first Soviet nuclear test. The Iranian bomb, however, has the potential to be a strategic
game-changer. It could solidify a weak regime‘s hold on power and extend that power
indefinitely. And it would almost certainly embolden the anti-Semitic, America-hating religious
fanatics who run the regime to become even more brazen in their support for terror, their
hostility to Israel, and their aspirations for regional domination.
This much the proponents of containment understand. But they confidently argue that all of these
likely effects are manageable. (See, above all, James M. Lindsay and Ray Takeyh‘s muchdiscussed piece in the March/April Foreign Affairs, ―After Iran Gets the Bomb.‖)
Really? Let‘s examine for a moment what a still-non-nuclear Iran is doing right now. According
to a little-noticed report submitted by the Defense Department to Capitol Hill in mid-April, Iran
seeks to increase its stature by countering U.S. influence and expanding ties with regional actors
while advocating Islamic solidarity. It also seeks to demonstrate to the world its ―resistance‖ to
the West. Iran is attempting to secure political, economic, and security influence in Iraq and
Afghanistan while undermining U.S. efforts by supporting various political groups, providing
developmental and humanitarian assistance, and furnishing lethal aid to Iraqi Shia militants and
Afghan insurgents.
These activities include (but are not limited to) supplying Iran‘s proxies in Iraq and Afghanistan
— who are killing American soldiers — with ―Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFPs) with
radio-controlled, remote arming and passive infrared detonators,‖ Improvised Explosive Devices
(IEDs), anti-aircraft weapons, mortars, 107- and 122-millimeter rockets, rocket-propelled
grenades and launchers, and other weapons. Do those sound like the actions of a country that
considers itself ―contained‖? How much less contained will Tehran feel once it has the bomb?
The unstated (and probably unrealized) assumption underlying the contain-Iran argument is that,
once Tehran is nuclear, America will have to get tougher. But how likely is that? If we won‘t
confront Iran over the killing of American soldiers now, why would our national spine get any
stiffer in the face of a threat of nuclear retaliation? If we won‘t do anything to stop Iran from
getting the bomb, why should anyone believe that we will suddenly grow bolder once Iran
actually has the bomb?
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The most obvious way for a nuclear Iran to flex its muscles would be to harass shipping in the
Strait of Hormuz and otherwise foment regional instability with the goal of raising the price of
oil. This is win-win for Tehran: more money in its coffers and less in ours. Since the same
calculation applies to Russia, Moscow would be sure to help, or at least look the other way. If
this particular cost ended there, that would be bad enough. But what if it didn‘t? Containment
advocates say that if Iran actually followed through on a nuclear threat, that would spell the end
of the Islamic Republic; hence, the mullahs wouldn‘t dare. Perhaps. Then again, we know from
the Cold War that the potential for disastrous miscalculation can lurk around the most innocuouslooking of corners. For instance, the Soviets interpreted a 1983 NATO military exercise as a ruse
de guerre and possible prelude to an American first strike, and they placed their nuclear forces
on high alert. Fortunately, when the exercise quickly ended, Moscow realized its mistake and did
nothing. But what if the exercise had lasted ten weeks rather than ten days? Also, from the
perspective of an American president, once a mushroom cloud is rising over the Fifth Fleet‘s
base at Bahrain, the fact that you can massively retaliate is small comfort. You‘ve already
suffered a catastrophic blow. The overwhelming imperative will therefore be not to let things get
anywhere close to that point, which means becoming much more accommodating to Iranian
aggression.
The resurgent problem of permanent hair-trigger alert might nonetheless at first glance seem
smaller than it was during the Cold War. Iran is virtually certain never to wield a nuclear arsenal
even a hundredth as large or sophisticated as the USSR‘s. Also, while Iran‘s current arsenal of
missiles could easily strike U.S. forces and allies in the region, it has, for the time being, no
delivery system capable of reaching American soil. (Given Iran‘s aggressive ballistic-missile
program, though, this limitation is not likely to last; hence any containment regimen devised
today would carry an expiration date.) But America and Iran would not be the only players in
this standoff. Israelis would have more to lose than we do — potentially their whole country.
Arms-control treaties — with their tension-lessening talks and verification procedures — would
be impossible for reasons too numerous to list. Begin with the facts that to be party to an armscontrol treaty, Israel would have to explicitly acknowledge its nuclear program (something
Jerusalem will never do), the five recognized nuclear-weapons states under the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty would have to carve out exceptions for Iran and Israel (something at
least three of those five would never do, lest it shred what‘s left of the treaty), and both Tehran
and Jerusalem would have to agree to allow weapons inspectors into their respective military
programs‘ ―holiest of holies‖ (something neither of them will ever do). Mistrust — not to say
paranoia — would permeate the region. Worse, the distance a missile would need to travel would
be so short as to make alert times tiny fractions of what they were during the Cold War. The
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incentive to strike first in a crisis rather than wait out events would be dangerously and
unprecedentedly high. If and when — God forbid — the post-1945 anti-nuclear taboo is ever
broken, who can guess what might happen next and to whom?
One unpleasant certainty of containment is that the United States would once again be called
upon to make pledges of ―extended deterrence‖ — that is, promises to defend non-nuclear allies
with our nuclear weapons. Among other reasons, this would be the only way to stop or at least
slow a nuclear arms race in the world‘s most volatile region. (It‘s worth pausing to note that such
an arms race, while troubling, is hardly the greatest reason to fear an Iranian bomb; far more
troubling than the possibility that Iran‘s rivals might get the bomb is what Tehran might do with
its bomb.) Yet Americans were never that comfortable with the concept of extended deterrence
the first time around. How comfortable are they going to be when the beneficiary of the
guarantee is not pacifist Bonn but duplicitous Riyadh? Meanwhile, our allies understandably
were never quite sure they could trust our guarantee, leading them in some cases to build their
own arsenals or seek what amounted to separate peaces. Why should this time around be any
different or any better?
Containment would also necessitate basing-rights arrangements that would carry complications
of their own. Right now we maintain substantial ground forces in two of Iran‘s neighboring
countries. Assuming we mustered the will to continue those deployments long term — which
cannot be taken for granted — how certain could we be that the host governments would wish to
grant us extended basing rights? If they did, what prices might they exact? Certainly both have
reasons to fear an expansionist, belligerent Iran. But they could just as easily conclude that U.S.
forces on their soil appear to Tehran not as a reliable deterrent but as an intolerable provocation.
Recall how difficult it was to negotiate our Status of Forces agreement in Iraq when that country
was at risk of blowing apart absent an American presence. How hard might it be when Baghdad
fears war with Iran more than civil strife?
Where else might we go? Turkey already limits American usage of its NATO bases; it also is
becoming less friendly to American and Western interests by the week and more publicly
sympathetic to Iran and Islamism. Pakistan is both highly unstable and increasingly standoffish
(and, not incidentally, it provided indispensable aid to the Iranian nuclear program). Russia has
proven itself adept at bullying and manipulating the nations of Central Asia to our detriment, and
it is certain to interpret (whether genuinely or cynically) any intent to establish lasting presences
there as attempts to contain not Iran but Russia.
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That leaves the Sunni Arab states. Unquestionably, containing Iran would draw us closer to
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and other oil-rich monarchies that fear Tehran‘s influence and need
the U.S. security umbrella. Returning American troops to Saudi soil won‘t be acceptable to
Riyadh, however, and even if it were, it would play into the hands of jihadist propaganda. The
other Gulf states routinely impose mission-crippling restrictions on how we can use ―our‖ bases.
Worse, these states also continue to play a double game: assuring Washington of their friendship
and fealty in daylight, supporting and financing radical Islam and terror organizations behind the
veil. Our dependence on Gulf oil already constrains the extent to which we can pressure these
states to stop aiding America‘s enemies. Do we want to make that problem worse? Even to the
extent that these regimes are actually trustworthy, they are hardly examples of the kind of liberaldemocratic polity on whose behalf the American people have shown themselves willing to pay
any price and bear any burden. We may already be in bed with some of them, but climbing
deeper under the covers won‘t be welcomed here at home.
A containment alliance would also necessitate stepped-up sales of advanced U.S. weapons
systems to the Gulf states. To some extent this is already happening. Sales of missile-defense
systems are intended to lessen the usefulness of Iranian ballistic missiles as tools of intimidation.
Full-blown containment would require the sales of other systems, to bring allied militaries more
up to snuff and therefore make them more credible as hedges against Iran. The problem with this,
of course, is that the geopolitical wheel can turn in unexpected ways. The Iranian military that
we would be called upon to contain, for instance, includes some 200 American warplanes, 500
U.S.-built tanks and armored personnel carriers, and nearly 750 American artillery pieces. The
lesson of Pakistan is also instructive. It was a vital ally against the Soviets, and so, in the 1980s,
Islamabad‘s sprouting nuclear program and support for jihad were largely ignored by
Washington, lest inconvenient facts jeopardize the alliance. Today, while hardly an enemy,
neither can Pakistan unqualifiedly be deemed an ally. For more than a decade now, Pakistani
intelligence has actively supported the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other threats to America.
Ominously, given the country‘s instability and saturation with committed jihadists, Pakistan‘s
nuclear arsenal leads (for now) the list of nuclear dangers against American cities.
Nor would whatever ramshackle alliance we might be able to cobble together look anything like
NATO. Our allies will be comparatively weak, scared, and untrustworthy. They will also be
more difficult to coordinate and less able to make a meaningful contribution to collective
security — leaving the bulk of the costs to be borne by the American serviceman and the
American taxpayer.
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These concerns hardly exhaust the costs of containing Iran. The Obama administration has not
shown itself enthusiastic for its predecessor‘s promotion of democracy in the Muslim and Arab
worlds. The exigencies of building an anti-Iran alliance in the Middle East and Central Asia
would force the United States to jettison what little remains of that agenda in order to gain the
cooperation of Iran‘s neighbors, which always opposed President Bush‘s democracy talk and
will seize on any opportunity to kill it off for good. Containing Iran would also lead to
deteriorating relations with Iran‘s powerful friends — chiefly Russia and China, with which we
are forced to parley on an ongoing basis across a range of important issues. Expect those
conversations to become more strained and less productive. The most fair — and therefore most
damaging — criticism that can be leveled against the Bush administration is that the assertion of,
and failure to find, WMDs in Iraq undermined American credibility. The same could be said of
the Bush administration‘s flat assertion that North Korea would not be allowed to go nuclear on
its watch. Our credibility will be further degraded if yet another administration allows yet
another country to achieve nuclear status after swearing to stop it. This points to perhaps the
most unseemly difference between containment past and containment future: At least the last
time we were in the ring with another genuine superpower. Next time will pit the mighty United
States against a Third World upstart. Imagine the dismal signal that sends to friend and foe alike.
And last time there were no other big kids on the block to help the other side. Iran will be able to
count on Russian and Chinese help and mischief-making. To whom could we turn?
Containment advocates tend to cite Iran‘s relative weakness as a feature, not a bug: Unlike the
Soviet Union, they say, Iran is merely a regional power with no global reach or aspirations.
Certainly Iran‘s ability to project power pales in comparison to the USSR‘s. But that does not
stop Tehran from doing what it can. Iran has a history of sponsoring far-flung, ideologically
motivated violence, carried out by the same proxy forces that currently are waging war against
Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. The most famous instance is the 1994 bombing of a Buenos
Aires synagogue.
More recently, Iran has formed a tight and troubling alliance with Venezuela‘s elected dictator
Hugo Chávez. Caracas and Tehran work jointly to jack up the price of oil, undermine the U.S.
dollar, and circumvent American-led banking and travel restrictions. There are also signs that the
two countries cooperate on military — and perhaps even nuclear — matters. More troubling still:
Chávez allows the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist organization to operate openly on Venezuelan
soil. American intelligence officials have long tracked Hezbollah‘s presence within the United
States. Indeed, that presence is sometimes cited by dovish commentators as a reason not to
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―overreact‖ to Iranian provocations. All this is happening now. What more might happen once
Iran is nuclear?
Of course, Iran‘s chief means of projecting global power is its aggressive creation, promotion,
and dissemination of radical Islamist propaganda. One might argue that this problem could
hardly get any worse than it is now. But choosing containment implicitly accepts that as a fact of
life, potentially for decades to come. As the history of Islamist ideology hitherto amply
demonstrates, decades provide more than enough time for viruses to spread, populations to
radicalize, and plots to germinate.
Finally, consider the imponderables. Despite our best efforts over nearly half a century,
American analysts in government, academia, and the private sector never obtained a particularly
clear grasp of the Kremlin‘s inner workings. Surely we know even less about Tehran today. And
what we do know should give us pause. The U.S. State Department officially designates Iran as
the world‘s ―most active state sponsor of terrorism.‖ The 9/11 Commission listed many of Iran‘s
links not just to its known and widely acknowledged subsidiaries Hezbollah and Hamas, but also
to al-Qaeda. Tom Joscelyn‘s excellent monograph Iran‘s Proxy War against America goes into
more detail still. No one familiar with the case denies that Iran was the primary malefactor
behind the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. Less well known, but no less real, is the strong
Iranian hand in the 1998 embassy bombings and Iranian aid to al-Qaeda before and after 9/11.
It is simply taken for granted in the foreign-policy establishment that Iran would never, ever pass
along nuclear weapons or materials to a terrorist group. This may or may not be true. All we can
say with confidence right now is that Tehran doesn‘t yet have the option. If the West resigns
itself to containment and accepts an Iranian bomb, it soon will. And whether Iran will choose to
be contained or will seek a way around containment will be entirely up to the mullahs.
This time, just as during the Cold War, containment may well turn out to be a necessary evil —
the least bad option on a menu of awful choices. We are not yet at that point. Before we get
there, let‘s at least understand containment‘s costs. Only then will we be able to judge whether
they are indeed more bearable than the alternatives that, for the time being, still lie before us.
Permission is granted to reprint the article ―Iran and the Costs of Containment‖ by Michael Anton from National
Review Online, May 3, 2010.
Credit line should read: © 2010 by National Review, Inc., 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10016.
Reprinted by permission
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Granted by: Katherine Connell
Date: May 7, 2010
Iran: The Case for ―Regime Change‖
Michael Rubin From issue: April 2010
Commentary Magazine
What to do about Iran, especially now that the international community can no longer deny the
nuclear ambitions of the theocratic state that has implicitly promised to destroy Israel? It appears
that hopes for a self-generated revolution from below against the Islamic Republic have been
dashed for now: the regime succeeded in containing massive protests planned for February 11,
the anniversary of the 1979 revolution that brought it to power, and is proud of its methods,
which included arresting student leaders and family members of prominent activists, ―texting‖
warnings to the cell phones of Iranian activists, and blocking e-mail and multimedia messaging
in order to prevent opposition coordination or handheld video of paramilitary abuse leaking to
Western media.
What else might be done? Unquestionably, engagement of the kind promised by Barack Obama
during his presidential campaign and attempted during the first year of his presidency has failed
utterly. Not only did Obama reach out to Tehran in his first interview as president, asking the
Iranian leadership to ―unclench their fist,‖ but according to Iranian press accounts, he also sent
two letters to Iran‘s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, seeking dialogue. In a message sent
on Nowruz, the Persian New Year, Obama broke a 30-year diplomatic formula: rather than speak
directly to the Iranian people, he elevated the Islamic Republic to be their rightful representative.
And he remained shamefully silent as the post-election protests in June 2009 rose to a boiling
point. Obama‘s aides also advised him poorly about the reality of the Islamic Republic: it was
embarrassingly naïve for the United States to act on the presumption that Washington‘s silence
would lead Tehran to refrain from accusing the United States and other Western powers had
manipulated protesters. The Islamic Republic‘s leadership has always been xenophobic and has
never accepted accountability for its own failings. Conspiratorial thinking runs deep. Take Neda
Agha-Soltan, the 16-year-old girl whose murder at the hands of a pro-government gunman was
caught on film and became emblematic of the June protests. The state-controlled Iranian press
has reported that Neda‘s murder was actually a British plot, and the Iranian government
subsequently demanded that London extradite Neda‘s true murderers.
The White House no longer has any rational excuse for its failure to perceive the truth about the
perspective of an Iranian leadership that sees diplomacy as an asymmetric warfare strategy
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employed to lull adversaries into complacency. Indeed, while the West may find itself longing
for the supposedly reformist views of former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, who served
from 1997 until 2005, his own aides still brag about how they used the so-called Dialogue of
Civilizations to advance their nuclear acquisitions. On June 14, 2008, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh,
Khatami‘s spokesman, counseled sitting president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to accept the
Khatami approach: ―We should prove to the entire world that we want power plants for
electricity. Afterwards, we can proceed with other activities.‖ What Khatami‘s apologists do not
explain was that he believed he owed his allegiance not to the principles of reform but to velayate faqih, or ―guardianship of the Jurists,‖ the foundational basis of the Islamic Republic. 1
Khatami‘s goal was not to move away from the Islamic Republic but rather to preserve it—and
the same, by the way, could and should be said of Mir Houssein Mousavi, the candidate who had
the election last June stolen from him and in whose name, in part, the ―Green‖ movement arose.
Many Iran-watchers are quick to discount the importance of the regime‘s core ideas. The antisanctions activist Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, argued in his
2007 book, Treacherous Alliance, for example, that the Islamic Republic was a normal state, not
beholden to ideology. This is nonsense. While the frightening messianic rhetoric that pours from
the mouth of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may not be shared by either Iran‘s educated elite or much
of Iran‘s clergy, those in control of government policy continue to embrace the same brand of
Islamic radicalism from which Ahmadinejad‘s noxious ideas flow. It is certainly true that
Iranians are more cosmopolitan than the peoples who surround them. But the professors hanging
around the bookshops across from Tehran University, the families shopping in the trendy shops
around Vanak Square, and the young people flirting in fast-food joints around Tajrish Square in
northern Tehran do not make nuclear policy. Command and control over an Iranian bomb will
rest solidly with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the commissars in the Office of the
Supreme Leader, and these are the most extreme elements in Iranian society. While journalists
write knowingly about reformers, hardliners, and pragmatists in the Iranian cabinet and
parliament, the goings-on among factions within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are
almost entirely unknown to us—and that is the only factionalism that matters. Simply put, if the
Islamic Republic gains nuclear weapons, neither the White House nor the Central Intelligence
Agency can have any confidence that the regime‘s most radical elements will not be in control of
them.
This is why some analysts advocate military strikes against Iran‘s nuclear facilities. Such strikes
can delay the program, albeit at high cost in terms of blood and treasure. They would, however,
also strengthen the regime, as I believe the Iranian people would rally around the flag. There is
precedent for this rallying effect. The Ayatollah Khomeini might never have consolidated the
Islamic Revolution in the first place had the Iraqi army not invaded Iran a year after he took
office; the war was a godsend to him because it provided a nationalist glue that his pan-Islamist
theories could not. The other weakness of air strikes is that if they did not topple the regime, they
would delay but not end Iran‘s nuclear ambitions; after a delay of a few years, the nuclear
program would recover.
The key to resolving the problem, therefore, becomes removal of the Iranian regime itself. Is that
possible? Yes.
History offers lessons in what not to do. Iranians may dislike their government, but they dislike
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foreign invaders even more. Even limited U.S. military action would likely strengthen the regime
even if the initial effect would be to cause it to teeter. This does not mean that military action
might not be necessary; an Islamic Republic with nuclear weapons is the worst possible scenario.
But we should not count on military action providing a death blow to the regime.
Washington might also be tempted to play the ethnic card by encouraging minority uprisings
among the Azeris, Kurds, and Arabs living in Iran. But even though Iran is only half Persian in
its ethnic makeup, the country has a near continuous history going back millennia; its identity as
a unified nation precedes the ethno-nationalism of the 19th and 20th centuries. Indeed, the
regime‘s chief theocrat, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, is himself not Persian but Azeri. Indeed,
many Iranians feel that their nation is not large and multi-ethnic enough. The Great Powers never
formally colonized the country during their governance of the Middle East, but their actions
certainly did restrict the growth of the country that came to be known as Iran in the 1930s;
Iranians believe that had it not been for British and Russian designs, Iran would be twice its
present size. This enduring grievance gives the Islamic regime the convenient ability to recast
any support for particular ethnic groups or federalism as a Western plot to dismantle Iran.
The administration should also be wary of the Iranian diaspora, its political leaders, and their
capacity to return home and help run the country. Most Iranian political figures who live abroad
do so because they already failed either to govern or win change. Not only are Iranian exile
groups fractious but they also do not represent Iranian society. 3 More than a fifth of Iranians are
under 15. Perhaps three-quarters were born or came of age after 1979. They would have no
commonality with Iranians who have lived for more than three decades outside the country‘s
borders. Rather than focus on groups or individuals, the intelligence and policy communities
should instead seek to create a template for change, to take advantage of fortuitous events as they
occur and help enhance their impact. During the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations in
Beijing, for example, it was far more important that a Chinese student stepped forward to block a
row of tanks, and far less important that the CIA knew in advance who that student was.
The U.S. intelligence community has advised Obama that regime change in Iran is risky, and it
is. It is not certain that a democratic or even constitutional order would emerge. Three decades of
Islamist governance have shaped Iranian political culture, and the all-persuasive influence of the
Revolutionary Guards will be hard to shake. Still, the CIA‘s preference—which is to do nothing
and let the chips fall where they may—is poor advice and poorer policy. The Obama
administration instead should gear its interventions to maximize the probability of a democratic,
constitutional, and nonthreatening Iran. This requires concentrating on measures that would
strengthen so-called civil-society efforts and cripple the Revolutionary Guards.
A multifaceted approach can work. First, Obama should impose broad sanctions.- Tar-geted
sanctions of the sort that have already been attempted—calling for the United Nations to
―exercise vigilance‖ over Iranian banks involved in proliferation and banning travel for Iranians
engaged in nuclear trade—are not sufficient. Targeted sanctions may be important symbolically,
but few arms dealers or proliferators fear UN chastisement enough to abandon their activities.
Broader sanctions will have an impact on the general population. For example, Iranians need
gasoline to drive their cars, and many need kerosene to heat their homes, but the Islamic
Republic has to import both. Iran is a large country—four times the size of California—and
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many Iranians would also feel the effect of restrictions against domestic air travel.2 Thus,
restricting gasoline and kerosene importation would sting bitterly and is likely to spark a spirit of
resentment among ordinary Iranians at their own government‘s fecklessness—and thereby help
grassroots opposition. Some lobbying groups like the National Iranian American Council argue
that broad sanctions will enable the Iranian government to deflect resentment onto foreign
powers, but no evidence supports such claims. The Islamic Republic has long tried to blame
Western powers for its economic failings, but the Iranian people consistently hold their own
government to account. Whenever Iranians have experienced fuel shortages, as in the Kordestan
province in February 2005, they have protested publicly against their government and heightened
their criticism of regime corruption. In January 2008, fuel shortages led to a 700 percent increase
in the price of bread across northern Iran, leading the Revolutionary Guards to deploy into the
streets to keep order.
Obama could also paralyze the Islamic Republic‘s economy by declaring Iran‘s Central Bank
guilty of deceptive financial practices, a power granted him under the Patriot Act. Such a finding
would effectively prevent any non-Iranian bank from doing business with the Central Bank,
subservient Iranian banks, or the Iranian government. The resulting economic isolation would be
near total, and investment in Iran would halt. Although oil companies and European
governments oppose sanctions on the grounds that Russia and China would simply fill the
investment gaps left behind when Europeans leave Iran, a White House designation against the
Iranian Central Bank would bypass this problem, since neither Russian nor Chinese concerns
could risk the liability or reputational risk associated with doing business with an Iranian bank
designated as a money-laundering concern.
Of course, the Iranian people must be U.S. allies in the fight against the regime, and it is essential
that Washington empower them, rather than simply encourage grassroots action. Here, a
willingness to fund efforts intended to bolster Iran‘s nongovernmental, nonreligious ―civil
society‖ is crucial. When in 2005 Congress first allocated money for democratization in Iran,
Nicholas Burns, then undersecretary of state for policy, explained that the Bush administration
was taking a page from the playbooks used in Georgia and the Ukraine, where pro-democracy
groups—in part funded by Western sources—led ―people-power‖ revolutions that unseated oldguard dictatorships. But that didn‘t happen with Iran. By 2007, only $66 million was allotted to
the effort by Congress, of which U.S. public diplomacy efforts—funding Voice of America‘s
Persian service and Radio Farda, as well as translating State Department web pages into Farsi—
swallowed 80 percent. By November 2006, the State Department had directed less than $10
million to democracy programs because diplomats feared that financial support might do more
harm than good.
One senior State Department official explained: ―We don‘t have blinders on. We don‘t want to
hurt the people we are trying to help.‖ Such caution is misguided. While the Islamic Republic
has used the existence of the fund to tarnish the reputations of all domestic opposition, the
regime‘s accusations that its opponents are paid by the CIA predate the fund; they were the
subject of forced confessions by student activists after a student uprising in 1999. A logical
inconsistency also pervades U.S. critics of the funding: the Iranian government accuses those
who participate in people-to-people dialogue (like academic exchanges) of similar taint, yet the
academic community and Iran lobbyists continue to support these efforts.
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The State Department‘s only concern should be effectiveness. U.S. diplomats should not secondguess Iranian civil-society activists willing to take risks to undermine the autocratic regime under
which they would otherwise be condemned to live. That such funding irritates the regime is an
indication that it works. The December 2006 arrest of the 66-year-old Iranian-American scholar
Haleh Esfandiari was not the action of a regime confident of its future. Indeed, overreactions
may be all to the good, because they provide opportunities for civil movements to take hold. The
1979 Islamic Revolution was not a single event but rather the result of opposition that led the
Shah to overreact. Unrest began after a January 7, 1978, newspaper article accused Ayatollah
Khomeini, the leading figure in Shia Islam (then living in exile in Iraq), of homosexuality.
Outraged religious students forced their teachers to cancel classes and merchants to shut the
Tehran bazaar. Police confronted the protesters, killing five. The shootings began a cycle of
protests every 40 days, the end of the traditional period of mourning. When protesters rioted in
Tabriz, several more deaths occurred, propelling further cycles of protest that culminated in the
Shah‘s flight. Indeed, U.S. funding would be well spent encouraging protests. At best, the
protesters will succeed; at worst, they will precipitate an overreaction that itself will weaken the
regime.
Funding would also be well spent in supporting the Islamic Republic‘s nascent trade-union
movement. Under Islamic Republic law, the government must control all unions. Iranian
workers‘ chief grievance, however, is the government, which unilaterally withholds wages,
sometimes for months. In December 2005, a Tehran bus driver named Mansour Osanloo called a
strike independent of the official union. His colleagues followed him and, over the course of
several months, during which the bus drivers faced down regime thugs, suffered imprisonment,
and torture, they carved out the Islamic Republic‘s first independent trade union. Its creation was
followed quickly by the establishment of a second independent union in the oil-rich Khuzistan
province. Iranian labor activists say that what they need most are strike funds to provide support
to workers when they go out. During the 1979 revolution, Iranian unions provided funds that
enabled wildcat strikes to spread to key industries such as oil and manufacturing. Investment
here, perhaps channeled through nongovernmental organizations, could grease the wheels of
regime change.
Protest momentum itself will not be enough to topple the regime. Ultimately, there can be no
regime change until the Revolutionary Guard cracks. Dictatorships survive as long as their
Praetorian Guards remain loyal. Thus, U.S. regime-change efforts must be directed at
fragmenting the Guards. Here, a good-cop, bad-cop strategy is the ticket. Washington should
encourage defection, providing relocation and protection for Revolutionary Guardsmen, regime
officials, and nuclear scientists. Such defections would demoralize the regime. Simultaneously,
the Obama administration should have no qualms about assassinating Revolutionary Guardsmen
with American blood on their hands—like the ones engaged in a campaign of murder against
U.S. soldiers and civilian officials in Iraq and Afghanistan. Between January and September
2007, for example, U.S. forces in Iraq captured Iranian commandos in Baghdad, Erbil, and
Sulaimani who were providing armor-penetrating explosively formed projectiles; those
projectiles had been responsible for 70 percent of American casualties in Iraq in the preceding
months. In May 2009, border guards intercepted a shipment of anti-tank mines as it crossed the
Iranian border with Afghanistan. The Revolutionary Guards leadership coordinated these arms
shipments with the mission to kill Americans. There is no reason why the White House should
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not return the favor, especially when targeted retaliation can undercut the Guard‘s moral and
decimate its leadership. The idea that the administration should determine an entity like the
Revolutionary Guards to be terrorists, but then refuse to treat its members as such, is absurd.
Still, more needs to be done than merely neutralize the Revolutionary Guards. Successful
protests require independent communications. During recent uprisings, the Iranian government
constrained Internet and cell-phone services and increasingly seeks to block satellite television.
Iranian passport holders now enjoy visa-free travel to both Turkey and Azerbaijan. If the United
States can distribute satellite phones and satellite receivers in these countries—or even ensure
that they are available on the open market—it will provide the means by which protest leaders
can bypass government restrictions on communications. Conversely, when protests do occur,
there is no reason why Iranian security forces should enjoy unmolested communications. U.S.
authorities can use technologies in their possession to disrupt security forces‘
telecommunications and Internet connections, and jam cell-phone and radio communications.
Cell-phone-suppression kits in the possession of Iranian civil-society organizations would also
help these groups coordinate and, if necessary, overcome security-force quarantine operations.
Here there is also precedent, as Cuba jammed Los Angeles–based Persian television broadcasts
in 2003 at the Islamic Republic‘s behest during pro-democracy protests in Tehran. Again, the
White House should never hesitate to reciprocate.
The last facet of a successful regime-change strategy in Iran would involve media. President
Obama makes headlines when he addresses Iranians, but he does so only on a semiannual basis.
Fluent Persian speakers serving in the U.S. government should address the Iranian people and the
regime daily to provide a counter-narrative to that advanced by Iran‘s state-controlled media.
Here, it is ironic that John Limbert, a fluent Persian speaker whom Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton appointed as her lead Iran man, served as an adviser to a group that threatened to sue
Voice of America and Radio Free Europe for airing regime opponents on their Persian services.
Too often, Voice of America producers seek to prove their independence by broadcasting voices
hostile to the United States (hence the reputation of the service under both Clinton and Bush as
―Radio Khatami‖). It is essential that U.S.-supported Persian-language radio broadcast the truth,
but it must also remain on message.
If Congress provided significant financing for Persian-language media and if the Broadcasting
Board of Governors came to understand that coordinating themes revolving around regime
change is a vital national interest, such media could play a key role in enabling protest. If Iranian
security services shut down cell-phone networks and Internet-service providers, over-the-air
news reports, which cannot be jammed so easily, would become integral methods of helping to
coordinate protests.
In the wake of Khomeini‘s victory, the doyens of Iranian studies, UCLA‘s Nikki Keddie and
Baruch College‘s Ervand Abrahamian, penned influential tomes—still used in universities and
the Foreign Service Institute—in which they depicted the Islamic Revolution as the natural
outgrowth of Iran‘s political evolution. Generations of students have accepted their assumptions.
They were wrong. The Islamic Republic is a historical anomaly, not a stable state. At a closed
2002 meeting, State Department officials discussed polling that showed that almost two-thirds of
Iranians had lost faith in their system of government and sought ―fundamental change.‖ (Richard
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Haass, the State Department‘s policy-planning director at the time, shelved the results; they
undercut his desire to engage.) If two-thirds of Iranians chafed at the Islamic Republic then, we
can be sure the number is far higher today, with Iran‘s economy tanking and political discord
skyrocketing. Countries are ripe for wholesale change when citizens lose their fear and when
time spent in prison becomes a badge of honor rather than a source of shame.
Washington should not remain on the sidelines. Critics may disparage Bush‘s ―Axis of Evil‖
rhetoric, but the fact remains that the willingness of Iranians to take to the streets is proportional
to the willingness of the White House to speak out. Today Iranians chant ―Death to Russia,‖
condemning Moscow for its support of their government, and beseech Obama‘s support in chants
such as ―Obama, you‘re either with us or against us.‖ Iranian intellectuals have pointed out
rightly that Iranian youth hold signs in English during their protests because they want to appeal
to Americans, not because they are proud of their language proficiency. The stakes are as high
for Iranians as they are for U.S. national security.
Regime change is the only strategy, short of military strikes, that will deny Iran a nuclear bomb,
and it is the only strategy that can end altogether the threat of a nuclear program under the
control of radicals in the employ of the Islamic Republic. Military strikes would be effective in
the short term, but would come at a tremendous cost in terms of blood, treasure, and blowback.
Regime change, in contrast, would have few negatives and, if conducted simultaneously with a
campaign to isolate and fracture the Revolutionary Guards, could end with Iran taking its place
among nations as a moderate, productive republic, immunized against the virus of Islamist
populism, at peace with itself and its neighbors.
© 2010 Commentary Inc.
Iran Reveals its Real Intentions
BY Jamie M. Fly
February 19, 2010 9:08 AM
The Weekly Standard
In the days preceding the thirty first anniversary of Iran‘s Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Khamenei
threatened that Iran would deliver a ―punch‖ to the West. Most observers assumed that this meant that
Iran would launch several missiles, perhaps photoshopping in a few more for added effect, and call it a
day. But February 11, 2010 may go down in history as the day Iran made its real intentions for its nuclear
program known publicly, while the rest of the world exerted a collective yawn.
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Speaking to thousands of regime supporters in downtown Tehran, President Ahmadinejad did not mince
words, repeating an assertion that Iran was a ―nuclear state,‖ and stating, "I want to announce with a loud
voice here that the first package of 20 percent fuel was produced and provided to the scientists."
The Obama administration's reaction was oddly defiant. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs called
Ahmadinejad‘s statement ―based on politics, not on phsysics‖ and flatly stated, ―We do not believe they
have the capability to enrich to the degree to which they now say they are enriching.‖ The Washington
Post reported the same day, ―Iran is experiencing surprising setbacks in its efforts to enrich uranium,‖
further strengthening the narrative that Iran was somehow bragging about capabilities that it did not
possess.
All of this happened the same day that the Iranian regime went to great lengths to suppress protests by the
opposition Green movement. The effect: Ahmadinejad‘s announcement masterfully diverted
international attention from the internal turmoil back to the international community‘s primary concern –
Iran‘s growing nuclear capability.
A week later, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released its most recent report on Iran‘s
nuclear activities. It is the first report issued by IAEA director general Yukiya Amano, who replaced
Mohammed El Baradei, always a friend to the Iranians. The report, quickly leaked to the press, is perhaps
the strongest indictment of Iran issued by a normally staid technical agency that is more often accused of
understatement than alarmist rhetoric. The report raises troubling questions about Iran‘s nuclear
intentions and the Obama administration‘s strategy for preventing a nuclear Iran.
Iran currently has thousands of centrifuges used to enrich uranium installed at its Natanz facility. Despite
multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding that Iran halt enrichment, Iran continues
to feed uranium hexafluoride gas into the centrifuges, enriching the gas to roughly 3.5 percent, the level
required to fuel nuclear power plants.
The IAEA report makes clear that although Iran has only one cascade of centrifuges configured to enrich
its small stockpile of LEU up to 20 percent, it successfully enriched a small quantity of uranium
hexafluoride gas to the 20 percent level by the time Ahmadinejad delivered his speech on February 11.
Why, then, did the Obama administration decide to question Ahmadinejad‘s assertions from the White
House briefing room? And why did the administration continue to play down Iran‘s technical capabilities
even after the IAEA report was released?
The answer lies not at the White House or at Foggy Bottom but with the U.S. intelligence community.
Ever since the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran stated, ―We judge with high
confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program,‖ the intelligence community has
faithfully stood by what most observers consider a flawed assessment, even as senior U.S. officials have
come to a different conclusion.
The IAEA report released on February 18 directly contradicts the 2007 NIE, outlining a series of
weapons-applicable work ―which seem to have continued beyond 2003.‖ A report released by the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee in April 2009 warned that some foreign nuclear experts and intelligence
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officials believed that ―Iran has produced a suitable design, manufactured some components and
conducted enough successful explosive tests to put the project on the shelf until it manufactured the fissile
material required for several weapons.‖
If this assessment that Iran completed most of the key work required on weaponization prior to its
supposed halt in 2003 is correct, the key to whether Iran gets a nuke lies at Natanz and other (possibly
unknown) enrichment facilities.
Most analysts have argued that the international community would have plenty of time to prevent a
breakout scenario – where Iran kicks out international inspectors and makes a mad dash to produce fissile
material for a weapon at Natanz or at a covert facility -- because, as a declared facility, IAEA inspectors
visit and monitor the site on a regular basis – indeed, they even witnessed part of Iran‘s enrichment
activities last week.
However, the IAEA report and the White House reaction to Ahmadinejad last week seem to indicate that
Iran‘s actions may have caught the IAEA and the United States off guard, raising serious questions about
our ability to monitor operations at Natanz. If Iran could quickly reconfigure one cascade to enrich to 20
percent, they can certainly reconfigure more, and it appears they can do so in a rather short period of time.
The IAEA report notes that the Iranians have also transferred the bulk of the LEU they have produced to
the facility where they are now enriching up to 20 percent. This is much more LEU than they would
actually need to produce to run the Tehran Research Reactor. This leaves the respected Institute for
Science and International Security to note in their analysis of the IAEA report that ―Natanz could
currently produce enough weapon-grade uranium for a weapon in six months or less.‖
With the Iranian regime still in a precarious position and President Ahmadinejad successfully using
advancements in the nuclear program to divert attention from internal politics, there is a real risk that the
weak U.S. and international response to last week‘s announcement could lead the hardliners now in
control in Tehran – the ―military dictatorship‖ referenced by Secretary Clinton on February 15 -- to feel
that they can take another step toward a nuclear weapon without repercussions. In essence, Iran may be
implementing an incremental breakout strategy as the world watches and does nothing.
The Obama administration only furthers this by stating that it has no intention of taking military action
against Iran. ―We are not planning anything other than going for sanctions,‖ Clinton told Al-Arabiya
television on February 17. The administration is correct to focus on sanctions, but with the president‘s
comment that the ―door is still open‖ to a solution obtained through negotiation, and with anonymous
administration officials hinting that they intend to use sanctions only as a way to force the Iranians back
to negotiations, the regime in Tehran realizes it doesn‘t have much to worry about in the near future, as
long as it can maintain its grip on power.
The last thing the administration should be doing is playing down Iran‘s clearly expanding nuclear
capabilities. If the administration insists on denying the facts about Iran‘s nuclear progress, the Iranians
may compensate by making their intentions all too clear. But by then it will be much too late.
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The Wall Street Journal
JUNE 17, 2009
Five Ways Obama Could Promote Freedom
in Iran
The 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine is a model.
By DAN SENOR and CHRISTIAN WHITON
Wall Street Journal
The reform movement in Iran has clearly hit a new level, but the future is uncertain. The key
issue is whether spontaneous protests crystallize into sustained dissent that involves the middle
class. There are no cracks yet in the Iranian government's domestic security forces -- a common
criterion for successful, bottom-up challenges to totalitarian regimes. But the Obama
administration can take steps right now and in the months ahead to open a "second channel" to
Iran -- this one to its people directly -- and improve the chances of real change.
The election held last Friday was a carefully controlled process that allowed only candidates
approved by religious authorities to seek office. Nonetheless, it seems clear that many and likely
most Iranians cast votes for challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi and against Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Helping the Iranian people change a government they appear increasingly to loathe will not
reduce American standing in the world. To the contrary, President Barack Obama has the chance
now to break the string of slow U.S. government responses to moments of democratic
opportunity and peril. Examples of lackluster responses include those after Tibet's 2008
widespread protests, the run-up to the 2005 Egyptian presidential elections, and the 2008 Russian
invasion of Georgia, to name just a few.
First, Mr. Obama should contact Mr. Mousavi to signal his interest in the situation and Mr.
Mousavi's security. Our own experience with dissidents around the world is that proof of concern
by the U.S. government is helpful and desirable. The administration was wise to send Vice
President Joe Biden to Beirut on the eve of the Lebanese elections, and his presence there helped
galvanize the anti-Hezbollah coalition. Mr. Obama's political capital in the region has only
expanded since his June 4 Cairo address. If Mr. Mousavi deems talking to the American
president not to be politically helpful, then he can refuse the call. But that should be a judgment
for him to make.
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Second, Mr. Obama should deliver another taped message to the Iranian people. Only this time
he should acknowledge the fundamental reality that the regime lacks the consent of its people to
govern, which therefore necessitates a channel to the "other Iran." He should make it clear that
dissidents and their expatriate emissaries should tell us what they most need and want from the
U.S. This could consist of financial resources, congresses of reformers, workshops or diplomatic
gatherings. The key is to let the reformers call the shots and indicate how much and what U.S.
assistance they want. Simply knowing we care, that we are willing to deploy resources and are
watching their backs -- to the extent we can -- often helps reformers.
The 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine is a model. In that case the West joined Ukrainians in
refusing to accept the results of a stolen election. This combined effort helped to force a final
run-off vote that reflected the people's will. In Iran, this would mean not only redoing elections
but also allowing a full field of candidates to run. As with Ukraine and the Soviet Union before,
Mr. Obama could at least make it clear that the U.S. will separate the issues of engagement and
legitimacy. Our engagement of the Soviet Union in arms-control talks did not prevent us from
successfully pressing human-rights issues and seeking an alternative political structure. So it can
be with Iran. Engagement without an effort to talk to the "other Iran" would not only be a
travesty but tactically foolish as well.
Third, the president should direct U.S. ambassadors in Europe and the Gulf to meet with local
Iranian anti-regime expatriates. From London to Dubai there are large Iranian communities
throughout Europe and the Persian Gulf. The symbolism of this would be powerful, but this
should be more than just a photo-op. Expatriates tend to know far more about their countries than
even our intelligence experts -- and they could help guide efforts to aid reform.
Fourth, additional funding should be provided immediately for Radio Farda, an effective Persianlanguage radio, Internet and satellite property of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Farda helps
Iranians get the information and analytical context that is often denied to them by their own
government.
Fifth, the administration should take steps to give Iranian reformers and dissidents a level
playing field with the regime in the battle of ideas. Just as providing photocopiers and fax
machines helped Solidarity dissidents in communist Poland in the 1980s, today's reformers need
access to the Web and other means of communication. Grants should be given to private groups
to develop and field firewall-busting technology.
Money should be appropriated for an NGO-run "open window" platform that enables a wide
variety of indigenous voices to be carried on radio, blogs, video clips and other media. This can
take the form of satellite and terrestrial broadcasting and other information tools to provide
Iranians with anonymous communications and access to Internet, television and radio content
that their government attempts to deny them. The president should also call a White House
meeting of the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, Google and other video-sharing and socialnetworking companies. Entrepreneurially minded high-tech companies can manage this project
better than the government. Many of these CEOs are strong supporters of Mr. Obama; they
should be brought on board to help make his foreign policy succeed. In the meantime, the
president should order the military to make some of its EC-130 "Commando Solo" aircraft,
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which serve as flying television and radio stations, available to enable reformers and protest
leaders to speak directly to the Iranian people.
None of this is tantamount to "imposing democracy." All the U.S. would be doing is signaling to
reformers they can count on our support when they want it and backing up our words with
resources. An approach like this would be consistent with the foreign policies of American
presidents of both parties since Theodore Roosevelt. It is also in line with the message articulated
by Mr. Obama earlier this month in Cairo, when he said that various rights we possess "are not
just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere."
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Egypt
.
Turning a Blind Eye to Egypt
By Ambassador Richard S. Williamson
Thursday, September 30, 2010
The American
Since President Obama‘s Cairo speech, his administration has been disturbingly quiet in word and deed
about the Egyptian government‘s repression of democracy.
For generations, America has been the world‘s shining city on the hill for freedom and human
rights. We have provided light, encouragement, and support for voiceless victims of human
rights abuse and those seeking to join the march of freedom. Sadly, the light has dimmed, the
voice has softened, and the support has shrunk under President Obama. This has not gone
unnoticed.
Cyber dissident Ahed Al-Hendi has said, ―Previously, in Syria, when a single dissident was
arrested … at the very least the White House would condemn it. Under the Obama
administration, nothing.‖
Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of The Voice of Democracy in Malaysia, said, ―Our concern is that
the Obama administration is perceived to be softening on human rights … once you give a
perception that you are softening on human rights, then you are strengthening the hands of
autocrats to punish dissidents throughout the world.‖
U.S. funds to support human rights and democracy promotion in Egypt have significantly decreased.
An important example of the dangerous consequences of America‘s diminished support for
human rights and democracy is in Egypt, an important ally in the Middle East. President Obama
is to be commended for his personal efforts and those of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to
advance the Middle East peace process. It is a devilishly difficult problem. If progress is made it
can benefit the parties, the region, and the world. But if, simultaneously, U.S. policy is
contributing to a weaker and less stable Egypt, any progress in the region will be sorely
undermined.
On June 9, 2009, President Obama gave a much anticipated speech in Cairo. While it avoided
confronting authoritarian governments directly, it did express support for democracy in the
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Middle East. Sadly, since then, in rhetoric and deed, President Obama has failed to clearly
champion these universal values in Egypt or elsewhere in the region.
Elections for Egypt‘s Shoura Council (upper house) held in June 2010 were marred by extremely
low voter turnout and disturbing reports that security forces prevented some voters and Egyptian
domestic monitoring groups from entering polling stations. There also were reports of sporadic
violence, a problem that plagued Egyptian parliamentary elections in 2006.
Elections for Egypt‘s People‘s Assembly (lower house), scheduled for November 2010, will set
the tone for next year‘s presidential election. With President Hosni Mubarak old and ailing, these
elections are pivotal to the country‘s political future.
Egyptian domestic monitoring groups preparing for the November parliamentary elections report
increasing harassment from security services.
Egyptian domestic monitoring groups preparing for the November parliamentary elections report
increasing harassment from security services. The transfer of elections supervision from Egypt‘s
independent judiciary to a ruling-party controlled Supreme Election Commission is of particular
concern for the political opposition. The Egyptian government‘s renewal of the emergency law
allows broad arrest powers and indefinite detention of suspects without charges. This law is
undermining organization and campaign efforts by the opposition and monitors.
It appears that the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) is intent on preventing a repeat of the
2006 parliamentary elections, when candidates associated with the Muslim Brotherhood fared
well. But broad interference by the Egyptian government also means that secular opposition,
such as the Reform and Development Party led by former President Anwar Sadat‘s nephew, has
been denied registration as a political party.
The return to Egypt of former International Atomic Energy Agency Director General
Mohammed ElBaradei and talk of his potential candidacy for president galvanized Egyptian civil
society and political opposition against a de facto passing of the presidency to Mubarak‘s son
Gamal. Earlier this year, ElBaradei established the National Association of Change, a broadbased civil society movement that is seeking three constitutional reforms in order to provide an
environment for free elections. Among other things, they seek a return to judicial supervision of
elections.
Earlier this year, ElBaradei established a broad-based civil society movement that is seeking three
constitutional reforms in order to provide an environment for free elections.
Due to the Egyptian government‘s refusal to address these reforms, ElBaradei is calling for a
boycott of the People‘s Assembly elections to expose the ―sham democracy‖ of the ruling
National Democratic Party.
Early this summer Khaled Said, a 28-year-old blogger who, according to the newspaper Al
Ahram, had ―disseminated mobile video footage showing police officers at Sidi Gaber Police
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Station distributing the profits from a drugs raid among themselves,‖ was beaten to death by two
police officers outside an internet café in Alexandria.
In the face of these serious challenges to a more stable Egypt, the Obama administration has not
followed through on the president‘s Cairo speech. Indeed funds to support human rights and
democracy promotion in Egypt have significantly decreased.
Due to a policy shift by the Obama administration, the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID) will not provide assistance to Egyptian and international organizations
working in Egypt unless they are registered with and approved by the government of Egypt. This
shift undermines democracy and human rights organizations including the National Democratic
Institute and the International Republican Institute, since neither is registered, even though both
organizations applied to the Egyptian government to be registered back in 2006. NDI and IRI
were established, along with the National Endowment for Democracy, by President Ronald
Reagan with the bipartisan support of Congress.
In launching his vision for these democracy promotion institutions, President Reagan had given a
seminal speech on freedom at Westminster Hall, London. He said:
That is precisely our mission today: to preserve freedom as well as peace … Democracy is
not a fragile flower; still it needs cultivating. If the rest of this century is to witness the
gradual growth of freedom and democratic ideals, we must take action to assist the
campaign for democracy … The objective I propose is quite simple to state: To foster the
infrastructure of democracy—the system of a free press, unions, political parties,
universities—which allows a people to choose their own way, to develop their own culture,
to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means.
And with minimal support the march of freedom advanced.
Under President George Bush all democracy and human rights assistance, including that given
by USAID, had been exempted from Egyptian government sign-off. The 2009 Obama policy
change is in conflict with the law set forth in Appropriations Act language which states the
―provision of assistance for democracy, human rights and governance … shall not be subject to
the prior approval by the government of any foreign country.‖
While the Obama administration has said the State Department will continue to provide
assistance to unregistered groups, the fiscal 2009 and fiscal 2010 funding levels are significantly
lower than under President Bush. As a result, America‘s support for freedom in Egypt has been
severely diminished.
Egypt has been a cornerstone for U.S. Middle East policy since the Camp David Accords
facilitated by President Jimmy Carter. With an ailing political leadership and an imminent
transition, the question is: what kind of ally will Egypt be in 5 or 10 years?
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Egypt‘s lack of political freedom has created a situation where opposition to the autocratic
regime is most effectively represented by the extremist Islamic Muslim Brotherhood. This is not
good for the Egyptian people, for long-term stability in the region, or for the United States.
The Middle East peace process and America‘s security relationship with Egypt will continue to
drive short-term policy considerations. But an investment in human rights and democracy is
critical to the long-term welfare of the Egyptian people, to the region‘s stability, and to the
United States. It will define what type of ally Egypt will be for America for future generations.
Since President Obama‘s Cairo speech, his administration has been disturbingly quiet in word
and deed about the Egyptian government‘s repression of democracy.
Egypt‘s human rights defender Saad Eddin Ibrahim has said, ―George W. Bush is missed by
activists in Cairo and elsewhere who, despite possible misgivings about his policies in Iraq and
Afghanistan, benefited from his firm stance of democratic progress. During the time he kept up
pressure on dictators, there were openings for a democratic opposition to flourish. The current
Obama policy seems weak and inconsistent by contrast.‖
Dimming the shining city on the hill dishonors our heritage and the brave men and women who
have sacrificed their lives for the principles, practices, and pledge that make America
exceptional. They are our nation‘s fabric and our promise for a better world for Egyptians and
others throughout the world.
The beacon should be strong and steady, our voice unwavering, and our support generous.
Advancing the march of freedom and supporting human rights reflects our better selves and is
our responsibility. Americans should expect their government to seek such goals—voiceless
victims of human rights abuse and tyranny require it.
Ambassador Richard S. Williamson is a principal at Salisbury Strategies, LLP. He has
served as an ambassador and U.S. representative in several capacities to the United
Nations, as an assistant secretary of State, and as assistant to the president for
intergovernmental affairs in the White House for President Ronald Reagan.
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A Letter to Secretary Clinton From the
Working Group on Egypt
Carnegie Endowment For International Peace
April 7, 2010
Dear Madame Secretary,
We, the undersigned, a bipartisan group representing a broad range of institutions, write today to
urge you to promote democratic reform in Egypt in advance of the upcoming elections. We are
concerned that—unless the United States takes a serious interest—Egypt will hold parliamentary
elections this year and a presidential election in 2011 that will be less free and fair than those
held in 2005. Rather than progressing gradually on a path of desirable reform, Egypt is instead
sliding backwards into increased authoritarianism.
Egypt is at a critical turning point. It faces substantial leadership changes in the near future
without a fair and transparent political process. With three sets of elections coming up over the
next eighteen months, Egypt now has the opportunity to energize a process of political,
economic, and social reform. If the government responds to demands for responsible political
change, Egypt can face the future as a more democratic nation with greater domestic and
international support. If, on the other hand, the opportunity for reform is missed, prospects for
stability and prosperity in Egypt will be in doubt.
This would have serious consequences for the United States, Egypt‘s neighbors, the U.S.–
Egyptian relationship, and regional stability. As a close partner of Egypt and a provider of
substantial military and economic assistance, the United States has a stake in the path Egypt
takes. American support for authoritarian regimes tarnishes U.S. credentials, contributing to what
President Obama has called the ―cycle of suspicion and discord‖ between the United States and
Muslim peoples. Such an association also undermines America‘s credibility as a champion of
universal principles. At a time when the United States is bringing international pressure to bear
on Iran, to ignore the need for political reform in an allied nation such as Egypt would be
inconsistent. If the United States is to advance its interests across the broader Middle East, then
it must uphold its democratic values and urge its allies to hold free and fair elections.
Political reform is also in Egypt‘s best interests. Egypt's growing young population will require
the creation of hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the near future, and the associated
economic, social and political pressures will be some of the Egyptian government's greatest
challenges over the next few years. To fulfill expectations and to prevent the onset of frustration
and radicalism, Egypt must expand citizens' say in how they are governed. Successful reform
would also bolster Egypt‘s leadership in the region, for it will inevitably help shape politics in
the Middle East and the Arab world in beneficial ways.
The choice is not between a stable and predictable but undemocratic Egypt on the one hand, and
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dangerous instability and extremism on the other. There is now an opportunity to support
gradual, responsible democratic reform. But the longer the United States and the world wait to
support democratic institutions and responsible political change in Egypt, the longer the public
voice will be stifled and the harder it will be to reverse a dangerous trend. Already there are signs
that the Egyptian government plans to restrict opposition candidacies and civil society
monitoring of the elections.
Thus, for the upcoming legislative elections in June (upper house of parliament) and November
2010 (lower house), we urge you to consider the following:

Raising with the Egyptian government—privately but at the highest level—the U.S. hope
and expectation that Egypt will hold genuinely competitive elections. Specifically:
o
All candidates, including opposition and independents, should be allowed to
register and campaign freely, with access to the media.
o The government should permit and facilitate monitoring by Egyptian NGOs and
international observers.
o Security forces should keep a distance from polling places and allow voters free
access.

Allocating adequate assistance funds to support domestic and international monitors
directly

Stating publicly that the United States government hopes to see free and fair elections
that allow genuine and open competition
Looking toward the 2011 presidential election, the United States should also urge the Egyptian
government to undertake legal and constitutional reforms to facilitate much broader voter
participation and ease requirements for candidates to get on the ballot. With more than a year to
go, there is ample time for such changes.
Madame Secretary, we urge you to take a leadership role on this issue. We believe a more
democratic Egypt is in the interest of both the United States and Egypt, as such reforms would
contribute to economic development and a safer region. With those goals in mind, we strongly
encourage you to advance this agenda.
In the interest of promoting a broader discussion of these issues, we will be posting this letter on
our website.
Sincerely,
The Working Group on Egypt
Elliott Abrams
Council on Foreign Relations
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Robert Kagan
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Scott Carpenter
Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Amb. Edward Walker
Middle East Institute
Tom Malinowski
Human Rights Watch
Ellen Bork
Foreign Policy Initiative
Thomas Carothers
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Michele Dunne
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Daniel Calingaert
Freedom House
A Second Letter to Clinton from the Working
Group on Egypt
May 12, 2010
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Dear Madame Secretary,
Democracy in Egypt has suffered another blow. This week, the Egyptian government extended
its state of emergency for an additional two years despite President Mubarak‘s promises since
2005 to end it and replace it with a more limited anti-terror law. In light of this disturbing
development, we write to you again to urge you strongly to take an interest in promoting
democratic reform in Egypt.
In renewing the state of emergency, the Egyptian government has attempted to appease critics
with slight changes to the emergency law text; however, these will not alter the fundamentally
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repressive atmosphere the state of emergency creates. Citizens still do not, for example, enjoy
the freedom of assembly. The Egyptian government also has claimed that the emergency law
will only apply to cases of terrorism or narcotics, but it has made such promises in the past and
not abided by them.
Since 1981, the Government of Egypt has maintained the state of emergency continuously,
ostensibly to fight terrorism and protect its citizens and national security. In practice, however,
the emergency law has done precisely the opposite. It has encouraged human rights abuses,
stifled the public voice, and fortified Egypt‘s trend toward authoritarianism. Under the state of
emergency, Egyptian citizens face arrest if they participate in political rallies or peaceful
demonstrations, trial in military tribunals for political offenses, and prolonged administrative
detention without charge. These measures are clearly incompatible with free elections and
democratization, which President Mubarak promised twice since his recent return from surgery
in Germany.
With elections scheduled for the parliament this year and the presidency in 2011, Egypt has a
rare opportunity to reposition itself on the path toward healthy democratic reform. And neither
must it start from scratch; while some changes must be constitutional and legal, others are merely
administrative. It would require no changes in law, for example, to allow free campaigning and
international and domestic election monitoring in this year‘s parliamentary elections, to keep
security forces away from polling places, or to refrain from violence against activists and
protestors.
In our last letter to you, dated April 7, 2010, we outlined the importance of democracy in Egypt
to the region, the United States, and the world in general, and we recommended a set of action
items. In light of the renewal of the state of emergency, we are more convinced than ever of the
importance of U.S. engagement. We urge you to persuade President Mubarak to lift the state of
emergency now, as the critical elections period begins, and to release detainees held under the
emergency law for clearly political offenses, while bringing all cases within a legitimate legal
framework.
Madame Secretary, this is a bipartisan issue, and we strongly encourage you to act quickly and
effectively. The renewal of the state of emergency heightens our concern that the
administration‘s practice of quiet diplomacy is not bearing fruit. As a major aid contributor to
and strategic partner of Egypt, the United States is uniquely positioned to engage the Egyptian
government and civil society and encourage them along a path toward reform. The time to use
that leverage is now.
Sincerely,
The Working Group on Egypt
Thomas Carothers
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Elliott Abrams
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Council on Foreign Relations
Brian Katulis
Center for American Progress
Tom Malinowski
Human Rights Watch
Michele Dunne
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Robert Kagan
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Scott Carpenter
Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Ellen Bork
Foreign Policy Initiative
Daniel Calingaert
Freedom House
Exodus from Dictatorship
Why is Washington such a sucker for Mubarak?
BY Ellen Bork
May 31, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 35
The Weekly Standard
In a café here a few weeks ago, an Egyptian intellectual began our conversation by explaining
how strongly he opposed the use of American power to bring about political change abroad. Just
half a cup of coffee later, he told me that ―this is the moment‖ for the United States to put
pressure on President Hosni Mubarak to undertake democratic reforms.
Other Egyptians I met with—activists, small businessmen, journalists, academics—were
conflicted as well, not about whether Washington should use its influence to push Mubarak
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toward a more democratic system but whether it would. They see the United States as trapped by
its reliance on Mubarak, who uses the threat of Islamic radicalism and the promise of assistance
in the Israeli-Palestinian ―peace process‖ to deflect pressure on his regime to improve its record
on democracy and human rights.
Virtually no one expected President Obama to push Mubarak, whose fifth presidential term ends
in 2011, to allow independent monitoring of elections, end the state of emergency, and remove
barriers to independent candidacies. The impact of Obama‘s Cairo speech last June, making the
case for democracy in Islamic countries, had ―evaporated‖ according to an independent
newspaper editor once jailed for commenting on Mubarak‘s health. Nevertheless, nearly
everyone I‘ve met hopes, some desperately, for action by Washington. ―Even people who hate
the United States want it to do something,‖ a political party activist based outside Cairo told me.
Doing something for democracy in Egypt would require a policy reversal in Washington. U.S.
pressure in 2005 contributed to some improvements, including the first multicandidate
presidential election. Even so, the election was a travesty, and since the end of the Bush
administration and the beginning of the Obama administration, there has been retreat—including
a cut in funding for democracy programs and acquiescence to an Egyptian veto over which
groups may receive U.S. funds. An Egyptian proposal for a U.S.-funded ―endowment‖ for
development projects with little or no emphasis on political reform or congressional oversight
has quietly gained ground. The current American ambassador has a reputation for being weak on
democracy and human rights.
The debate over whether to subordinate democracy to Middle East peace has been around as
long as Mubarak—nearly 30 years—which, as many Egyptian democracy activists point out,
shows how unsuccessful Mubarak has been at delivering it. In fact, the guiding principle of U.S.
policy is ―stability‖ both inside Egypt and in the region. Mubarak‘s stability, however, contains
the seeds of its own destruction—economic stagnation, corruption, and repression. Regardless of
whether the stability Washington clings to is real, it is not sustainable. Mubarak, 82, has been ill,
has no vice president, and has not designated a successor. Since surgery in Germany in March,
he has made few public appearances. The prospect of his son, Gamal, taking over is deeply
unpopular and has helped to stoke the opposition. In the meantime, Mohamed ElBaradei, the
former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, made a dramatic return to Egypt,
attracting a broad—some say unworkably broad—coalition of supporters and enthusiasm from a
normally politically-enervated population. Observers detect signs of Mubarak‘s waning influence
in the region already, such as in the ongoing negotiations with neighboring countries over the
distribution of Nile river water.
Cairo is growing tense. So far, Mubarak shows no sign of ceding ground. On May 11, he
renewed the state of emergency, in place since Sadat‘s assassination in 1981, despite previously
promising that it would be ended. Many people fear a crackdown and the alienation of those
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newly interested in politics. A few weeks ago, a ruling party member of parliament provoked an
uproar by saying it would be justifiable to shoot demonstrators in the street.
As for Egyptian hopes for U.S. action, American officials rarely set about to bring down
authoritarian allies. The recent case of Kyrgyzstan illustrates how reluctant the United States can
be to accept, let alone accelerate, the departure of a strongman on whom it relies: Kurmanbek
Bakiyev used Washington‘s desire to maintain an airbase to resist human rights entreaties.
America‘s acquiescence does not go unnoticed. ―You came to us to help us build democracy,‖
the leader of the post-Bakiyev government has said, ―and then just one day, you put your hands
over your mouth just to have a base.‖
Egyptians regard the United States with a mixture of resentment, confusion, and hope. They are
surprised at American credulousness about Mubarak. Most people I spoke to believe that the
trade-off Mubarak peddles, between authoritarian control and Islamist rule, is bogus. They think
that the threat of Islamist radicals‘ winning a free election is overstated, and that granting
Egyptians political rights would neutralize the threat further. They ask what the Egyptian
government is doing to forestall the appeal of such movements and why the United States is so
hypocritical about democracy in Egypt.
In a bare party headquarters a few hours outside Cairo, I found myself trying to explain the way
America acts to a polite but frustrated group of mainly small businessmen. I told them that in the
past, Washington has sometimes used its influence to help bring about democratic transitions,
withdrawing its support from dictators like Chun Doo Hwan in South Korea and Ferdinand
Marcos in the Philippines. Later I realized that Churchill had said it better: Washington always
does the right thing, after it‘s exhausted all the alternatives.
Ellen Bork is director of democracy and human rights at the Foreign Policy Initiative.
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Why Obama needs to revamp his Egypt strategy
BY JAMIE M. FLY | APRIL 26, 2010
Foreign Policy
As Will points out, U.S. policy toward Egypt is in serious need of an overhaul. An example of
this was a State Department announcement on April 16 that Under Secretary for Democracy and
Global Affairs Maria Otero would be travelling to Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and the West Bank. Her
stop in Egypt attracted some interest from those who follow democracy issues. Was the Obama
administration finally ready to take a stand in favor of democratic reform in Egypt?
Unfortunately, no. According to State's press release, Otero was travelling through the region to
discuss "water issues." The statement noted that Otero would discuss democracy and human
rights along with other global affairs issues in each country, but the message to Egyptian
democracy and human rights activists was clear.
In the weeks that followed, it was reported that U.S. democracy funding for the country was cut
by more than half and that the administration was considering Egypt's proposal to create an
"endowment fund" of out of $50 million of the massive annual assistance package it receives
from the U.S. government. This fund, called the "Mubarak Trust Fund" by some, would have
limited Congressional oversight and as Stephen McInerney notes, send exactly the wrong
message to the Mubarak regime.
This debate over aid is just one piece of a larger problem with the U.S.-Egypt relationship.
Egyptian society has served as a breeding ground for several generations of Islamic extremists.
For decades, U.S. policy toward Egypt has been clouded by U.S. desires to support Egypt's 1978
peace agreement with Israel and more recently, the supposedly key role it plays in the IsraeliPalestinian peace process, all by propping up a dictatorial police state that is unpopular with its
citizenry.
After 9/11, it became clear to many that the U.S. role in supporting repressive regimes like that
in Cairo had something to do with the extremism that was emanating from key U.S. Arab allies.
The Bush administration subsequently attempted to make electoral reform an issue in the
relationship, upsetting Hosni Mubarak, but sending a clear message to activists on the ground
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about U.S. intentions. Progress, however, was minimal and certain arms of the U.S. government,
such as the State Department, never embraced the President's strategy.
Despite President Bush's rhetoric on this issue, many Egyptian activists had high hopes for
President Obama. Many of them were in the audience when he delivered his speech at the
American University of Cairo in June last year. But when I visited Cairo in November for a
conference, I found the men and women fighting for human rights and democracy in Egypt
looking for action, not more rhetoric. They told stories about cuts to their U.S. funding or new
procedures whereby only Egyptian-government approved organizations could receive grants.
One activist told me of a phone call from his intelligence ministry minder joking that if you want
U.S. money this year, let me know because I can help pull some strings.
Despite this benign neglect by the Obama administration, Egypt faces its best chance for reform
because of an unlikely character. Mohamed El Baradei, the former Director General of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), returned to Egypt in February and has since been
feted by opposition groups. It is not clear that El Baradei will run for President in 2011 -- he has
smartly demanded that before he decides, he wants the system to be reformed. This rightly has
caused many Egyptians to question why, under current Egyptian law, a leading international
figure and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize cannot run for President just because he is not a
member of a government-approved political party.
In the waning months of his time at the IAEA, El Baradei reportedly worked closely with the
Obama administration. President Obama even spoke to him on the phone several times as the
United States tried to get Iran to agree to a nuclear fuel swap. Now, however, the administration
has been mum on Mr. El Baradei's potential electoral ambitions.
Outside Egypt, El Baradei has been treated rather poorly. Ilan Berman wrote an article on
Foreign Policy's website criticizing him for meeting with the Muslim Brotherhood and stating
that he might become the "savior of Egypt's Islamist opposition." An article in The Weekly
Standard noted his poor stewardship of the IAEA and his failure to halt Iran's race toward a
nuclear weapon.
The continued popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood is indeed cause for concern but one
meeting should not be construed to imply that the secular El Baradei will somehow save the
Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is a major political force in Egypt, winning 20 percent of
the seats in parliament in 2005. It is also not a monolith and if El Baradei decides to run, he will
have to try to win over some of its moderate elements.
It is true that under El Baradei, especially after the invasion of Iraq and the U.S. failure to find
weapons of mass destruction, the IAEA became increasingly anti-American. El Baradei went out
of his way to go easy on the Iranians despite evidence that Iran continued to flout its
international commitments. However, El Baradei is contemplating a run for the Presidency of
Egypt, not of the United States. His credentials as an independent minded international civil
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servant make it clear that this is not some democratic reformer being foisted on the Egyptian
people by Washington.
These commentators are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. El Baradei represents the
best chance for democratic reform in Egypt that we may see for some time. It is time for the
Obama administration to take a stand on Egypt's upcoming elections and make clear to the
geriatric Mubarak that his departure from the political scene is not cause for the elevation of his
son Gamal to the presidency.
In addition to calling for reform of Egypt's electoral laws, the next time Mr. El Baradei is in
Washington senior administration officials should meet with him to send the message that how
Egypt handles this leadership transition will impact the overall U.S.-Egypt relationship.
Washington should also rein in our ambassador in Cairo who has repeatedly made comments that
have undermined the work of democracy and human rights activists in that country.
President Obama has tried to repair the U.S.-Egypt relationship to further U.S. efforts in the
region, but also spoke about the importance of democracy during his Cairo speech. Now that the
peace process has gone off the rails, perhaps it is time to set aside that short-term concern and the
water issues and focus on achieving real democratic change in Egypt. Egyptians are watching
whether the President's actions will match his rhetoric
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Israel
A Turkey of a Policy
Obama makes the Middle East an even more dangerous place.
BY Elliott Abrams
June 21, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 38
The Weekly Standard
The Gaza flotilla incident is not over. American demands for some ―international role‖ in
investigating Israel‘s conduct (but not, it seems, Turkey‘s) and for a new system of getting
humanitarian aid to Gaza will be imposed on Israel one way or another before the episode will be
behind us. But however they play out, this incident clarified several major trends in the region—
all of which are dangerous for the United States and for our allies in the Middle East.
First, it‘s obvious that our formerly reliable NATO ally Turkey has become a staunch supporter
of the radical camp. In the flotilla incident, it not only sided with but also sought to strengthen
the terrorist group Hamas—a group that is anathema not just to the United States and Israel, but
to the governments of Jordan and Egypt. The recent photo of Turkish prime minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Bashar Assad in Damascus is an emblem of
this change, and Turkey‘s work to undermine U.N. sanctions against Iran shows its substance.
Turkey‘s U.N. Security Council vote against the newest round of sanctions this past week put it
in Iran‘s camp against Europe, the United States, Russia, and China. That‘s quite a realignment
for a NATO ally.
Perhaps even worse is Turkey‘s push to turn the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a religious war.
A column in the leading Istanbul newspaper Hurriyet well described the new Turkey:
As for the images from Turkey that were reflected across the globe following last week‘s
incident, it was a purely Islamic one, with headscarved and turbaned protestors chanting Islamic
slogans under Islamic banners, and invoking the name of Allah for days on end in front of Israeli
missions in this country.
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Turkey‘s solidarity with Hamas is not, of course, based on Arab nationalism, which as a nonArab nation it does not support. It is instead based on a definition of the Mideast conflict as one
between Jews and Muslims, precisely the position of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Needless
to say, if the Arab-Israeli conflict is about interstate disputes and the need to resolve the future of
the West Bank and Gaza, it can be solved; if it is a religious conflict, nothing but violence is
ahead.
Second, the Arabs are once again becoming objects, not actors, in history. The anchors of the
Arab consensus have long been Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and both are now weakened forces in
Arab politics and diplomacy. In part this is a story of old age: While for decades Mubarak was
the key Arab leader, and the Saudis for 35 years counted on their foreign minister, Saud alFaisal, both men are now in a steady decline. Few observers expect Mubarak to live more than
another year or two, and he may not make it to Egypt‘s 2011 presidential elections. Saud suffers
from Parkinson‘s and has repeatedly asked to leave his post. States act in politics through the
medium of men: at best, men who have prestige, persuasive powers, and whom it is thought
dangerous to cross. Twenty years ago Saud and Mubarak were both such men, but that time is
past. Nor can they easily be replaced: Saud has no understudy, unless it is his feckless brother
Turki, who failed so badly as ambassador to Washington that he lasted but 17 months here.
Whoever replaces Mubarak will spend years solidifying (or perhaps failing to solidify) the
regime.
Looking at the broad sweep of history such personnel matters can be deprecated, but that would
be a mistake. Mubarak has been a critical factor at Arab summits for three decades, and
American efforts to resist radical moves (by Qaddafi, the Syrians, and of course Saddam
Hussein) depended substantially on him and his desire to protect Egypt‘s peace treaty with Israel.
Similarly, anyone who has worked with Arab diplomats knows that they almost instinctively ask
―Where are the Saudis on this?‖ and ―Where are the Egyptians?‖ whenever asked to support an
American position. But today Qatar, with 225,000 citizens, has at least as much influence in
Arab councils as Egypt with 80 million or Saudi Arabia with 30 million, and Qatar‘s 51-year-old
foreign minister has clout that would simply have been impossible 10 or 20 years ago. Erdogan
and the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, further demonstrate how much damage
clever, unprincipled, energetic actors can wreak when unopposed by more responsible officials
of equal force.
So the Arab core grows hollow and less and less able to defend its interests against supporters of
Islamism. Worse yet for the Arabs, peripheral powers are coming once again to dominate their
region: The Turks and Persians are rising forces and, with Israel, are now by far the dominant
states in the Middle East. History may someday record that the Arab awakening that began with
the Arab revolt of 1916 against the Ottomans ended about a century later with a whimper.
Third, while it is no secret that the United States is increasingly viewed as a spent force and an
unreliable ally in this region, it is not so much the events of the past 17 months that impress
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Middle Easterners as it is that the Obama administration remains oblivious to the impact of its
policies. Everyone there sees clearly that Obama desires to be out of Iraq more than he desires to
stabilize that country. Since a strong Iraq would be a force of resistance to Iran, this policy
suggests that the rise of Iran will be unchecked by America. So does our policy on Iran‘s nuclear
program, where the fantasy that U.N. sanctions will solve the problem persuades no Arab or
Israeli official. So does our distancing ourselves from Israel, which all understand is a deliberate
policy. If America does not plan to stand up to Iran or help Israel do so, Iran will acquire nuclear
weapons and its desired preeminence will only grow. Those who wish to survive will
accommodate, whatever their private views; they will not stand up to a Turkish-Iranian alliance
without strong, decisive American leadership.
This is not, of course, how the Obama administration sees the region, or the world. From the
Cairo speech to the National Security Strategy, the president has described a very different
international situation: The United States has but one enemy, al Qaeda, and for the rest we must
not be ―defined by our differences.‖ The National Security Strategy that refers to ―21st century
centers of influence—including China, India, and Russia‖ as if these powers were in similar
relationships with the United States is clearly devoid of any sense of the difference between
allies and adversaries. In fact, it is not a ―strategy‖ at all, but merely a listing of desirable
outcomes for the United States.
The Gaza flotilla incident might have been a great setback to the radical camp had the United
States reacted sharply, defending Israel, condemning the jihadists on board and their sponsors in
Turkey, blocking U.N. Security Council action, and refusing to sponsor another international
inquiry that will condemn Israel. And Israel‘s interests were not the only ones at stake: The
blockade of Gaza is a joint Israeli-Egyptian action to weaken Hamas. But the American position
reflects the Obama line: carefully balancing the interests of friend and foe, seeking to avoid
offense to our enemies, or, as Churchill famously described British policy in the 1930s,
―resolved to be irresolute.‖ Middle Eastern states, including Arab regimes traditionally allied
with the United States, view this pose as likely to get them all killed when enemies come
knocking at the door.
Still, whatever the trends and whatever the American errors, nothing is inevitable except the
passing of certain key actors. Turks may tire of Erdogan‘s speeches and return a government that
seeks a true balance between East and West rather than a headlong dive into alliances with Iran
and Syria. Iran‘s nuclear program may be stopped by an Israeli action, or some day by the
collapse of that increasingly despised regime. Israelis and Palestinians may find a way to a better
modus vivendi through pragmatic actions that improve Palestinian life, expand self-rule, and
reduce the Israeli presence in the West Bank. The sad and dangerous thing for all moderates in
the region, from Lebanese who fear growing Syrian influence to Saudis, Kuwaitis, Emiratis, and
Bahrainis who fear Iranian domination of the Gulf to Palestinians who fear Hamas, is that such
desirable outcomes are far less likely now. Ironically, a ―moderate‖ America seeking diplomatic
―engagement‖ and military disengagement, seeking to avoid trouble and to palliate radical
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forces, does not produce moderation in the Middle East; America the fierce and certain ally gives
moderates strength and radicals pause.
The bloody battle on board the Marmara lasted only half an hour, but larger and bloodier battles
lie ahead unless the United States reasserts its role in the region. The vacuum our weakness
creates will be filled by forces hostile to our interests, our allies, and our beliefs. In the end
they‘ll have to be beaten; the only question is the timing—and the cost.
Seven Existential Threats
M i ch ael B. O ren From issue: M ay 2009
Commentary Magazine
Rarely in modern history have nations faced genuine existential threats. Wars are waged to
change regimes, alter borders, acquire resources, and impose ideologies, but almost never to
eliminate another state and its people. This was certainly the case during World War II, in which
the Allies sought to achieve the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan and to oust their
odious leaders, but never to destroy the German and Japanese states or to annihilate their
populations. In the infrequent cases in which modern states were threatened with their survival,
the experience proved to be traumatic in the extreme. Military coups, popular uprisings, and civil
strife are typical by-products of a state‘s encounter with even a single existential threat.
The State of Israel copes not only with one but with at least seven existential threats on a daily
basis. These threats are extraordinary not only for their number but also for their diversity. In
addition to external military dangers from hostile regimes and organizations, the Jewish State is
endangered by domestic opposition, demographic trends, and the erosion of core values. Indeed,
it is difficult if not impossible to find an example of another state in the modern epic that has
faced such a multiplicity and variety of concurrent existential threats.
_____________
The Loss of Jerusalem.
The preservation of Jerusalem as the political and spiritual capital of the Jewish state is vital to
Israel‘s existence. This fact was well understood by David Ben-Gurion, Israel‘s first prime
minister, at the time of the state‘s creation in 1948. Though Israel was attacked simultaneously
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on all fronts by six Arab armies, with large sections of the Galilee and the Negev already lost,
Ben-Gurion devoted the bulk of Israel‘s forces to breaking the siege of Jerusalem. The city, he
knew, represented the raison d‘être of the Jewish state, and without it Israel would be merely
another miniature Mediterranean enclave not worth living in, much less defending.
Ben-Gurion‘s axiom proved correct: For more than 60 years, Jerusalem has formed the nucleus
of Israel‘s national identity and cohesion. But now, for the first time since 1948, Israel is in
danger of losing Jerusalem—not to Arab forces but to a combination of negligence and lack of
interest.
Jerusalem no longer boasts a Zionist majority. Out of a total population of 800,000, there are
272,000 Arabs and 200,000 Haredim--ultra-Orthodox Jews who do not generally identify with
the Zionist state. Recent years have seen the flight of thousands of secular Jews from the city,
especially professionals and young couples. This exodus has severely eroded the city‘s tax base,
making Jerusalem Israel‘s poorest city. Add this to the lack of industry and the prevalence of
terrorist attacks and it is easy to see why Jerusalem is hardly a magnet for young Israelis. Indeed,
virtually half of all Israelis under 18 have never even visited Jerusalem.
If this trend continues, Ben-Gurion‘s nightmare will materialize and Israel will be rendered
soulless, a country in which a great many Jews may not want to live or for which they may not
be willing to give their lives.
_____________
The Arab Demographic Threat.
Estimates of the Arab growth rate, both within Israel and the West Bank and Gaza, vary widely.
A maximalist school holds that the Palestinian population on both sides of the 1949 armistice
lines is expanding far more rapidly than the Jewish sector and will surpass it in less than a
decade. Countering this claim, a minimalist school insists that the Arab birthrate in Israel is
declining and that the population of the territories, because of emigration, is also shrinking.
Even if the minimalist interpretation is largely correct, it cannot alter a situation in which Israeli
Arabs currently constitute one-fifth of the country‘s population—one-quarter of the population
under age 19--and in which the West Bank now contains at least 2 million Arabs.
Israel, the Jewish State, is predicated on a decisive and stable Jewish majority of at least 70
percent. Any lower than that and Israel will have to decide between being a Jewish state and a
democratic state. If it chooses democracy, then Israel as a Jewish state will cease to exist. If it
remains officially Jewish, then the state will face an unprecedented level of international
isolation, including sanctions, that might prove fatal.
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Ideally, the remedy for this dilemma lies in separate states for Jews and Palestinian Arabs. The
basic conditions for such a solution, however, are unrealizable for the foreseeable future. The
creation of Palestinian government, even within the parameters of the deal proposed by President
Clinton in 2000, would require the removal of at least 100,000 Israelis from their West Bank
homes. The evacuation of a mere 8,100 Israelis from Gaza in 2005 required 55,000 IDF troops—
the largest Israeli military operation since the 1973 Yom Kippur War—and was profoundly
traumatic. And unlike the biblical heartland of Judaea and Samaria, which is now called the West
Bank, Gaza has never been universally regarded as part of the historical Land of Israel.
On the Palestinian side there is no single leadership at all, and certainly not one ready to concede
the demand for the repatriation of Palestinian refugees to Israel or to forfeit control of even part
of the Temple Mount (a necessary precondition for a settlement that does not involve the
division of Jerusalem). No Palestinian leader, even the most moderate, has recognized Israel‘s
right to exist as a Jewish state or even the existence of a Jewish people.
In the absence of a realistic two-state paradigm, international pressure will grow to transform
Israel into a binational state. This would spell the end of the Zionist project. Confronted with the
lawlessness and violence endemic to other one-state situations in the Middle East such as
Lebanon and Iraq, multitudes of Israeli Jews will emigrate.
_____________
Delegitimization.
Since the mid-1970s, Israel‘s enemies have waged an increasingly successful campaign of
delegitimizing Israel in world forums, intellectual and academic circles, and the press. The
campaign has sought to depict Israel as a racist, colonialist state that proffers extraordinary rights
to its Jewish citizens and denies fundamental freedoms to the Arabs. These accusations have
found their way into standard textbooks on the Middle East and have become part of the daily
discourse at the United Nations and other influential international organizations. Most recently,
Israel has been depicted as an apartheid state, effectively comparing the Jewish State to South
Africa under its former white supremacist regime. Many of Israel‘s counterterrorism efforts are
branded as war crimes, and Israeli generals are indicted by foreign courts.
Though the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza clearly contributed to the tarnishing of
Israel‘s image, increasingly the delegitimization campaign focuses not on Israel‘s policy in the
territories but on its essence as the Jewish national state.
Such calumny was, in the past, dismissed as harmless rhetoric. But as the delegitimization of
Israel gained prominence, the basis was laid for international measures to isolate Israel and
punish it with sanctions similar to those that brought down the South African regime. The
academic campaigns to boycott Israeli universities and intellectuals are adumbrations of the type
of strictures that could destroy Israel economically and deny it the ability to defend itself against
the existential threats posed by terrorism and Iran.
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_____________
Terrorism.
Since the moment of its birth, Israel has been the target of attacks—bombings, ambushes, rocket
fire—from Arab irregulars committed to its destruction. In the decade between 1957 and 1967,
widely considered the most halcyon in the state‘s history, hundreds of Israelis were killed in such
assaults. Nevertheless, the Israeli security establishment viewed terror as a nuisance that, though
at times tormenting, did not threaten the state‘s survival.
This assessment changed, however, in the fall of 2000, when the Palestinians responded to an
Israeli-American offer of statehood in the West Bank and Gaza with an onslaught of drive-by
shootings and suicide bombings. Tourists and foreign capital fled the country as a result, and
Israelis were literally locked inside their homes. The state was dying.
Israel eventually rallied and, in the spring of 2002, mounted a counteroffensive against terrorist
strongholds in the West Bank and Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) developed innovative
techniques for patrolling Palestinian cities, coordinating special forces and intelligence units, and
targeting terrorist leaders. Israel also built a separation barrier that impeded the ability of
terrorists to infiltrate the state from the east.
These measures succeeded in virtually eliminating suicide bombers and restoring economic and
social stability. Yet no sooner were these historic achievements gained than terrorists alit on a
new tactic no less threatening to Israel‘s existence.
Katyusha rockets fired by Hezbollah into northern Israel and Qassam rockets fired by Hamas in
the south rendered life in large swaths of Israel emotionally untenable. Though Israeli ground
and air operations may have succeeded in temporarily deterring such attacks, Israel has yet to
devise a 21st-century remedy for these mid-20th century threats.
Moreover, Hezbollah‘s and Hamas‘s arsenals now contain rockets capable of hitting every Israeli
city. If fired simultaneously, these rockets could knock out Israel‘s airport, destroy its economy,
spur a mass exodus from the country, and perhaps trigger a chain reaction in which some Israeli
Arabs and several Middle Eastern states join in the assault. Israel‘s attempts to defend itself, for
example by invading Lebanon and Gaza, would be condemned internationally, and serve as
pretext for delegitimizing the state. Israel‘s survival would be threatened.
_____________
A Nuclear-Armed Iran.
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The principal sponsor of Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran is inextricably linked to the terrorist threat.
But when the Islamic Republic achieves nuclear weapons-capability—as early as this year,
according to Israeli intelligence estimates—the threat will amplify manifold.
A nuclear-armed Iran creates not one but several existential threats. The most manifest emanates
from Iran‘s routinely declared desire to ―wipe Israel off the map,‖ and from the fact that cold war
calculi of nuclear deterrence through mutually assured destruction may not apply to Islamist
radicals eager for martyrdom. Some Israeli experts predict that the Iranian leadership would be
willing to sacrifice 50 percent of their countrymen in order to eradicate Israel.
Beyond the perils of an Iranian first-strike attack against Israel, the possibility exists that Iran
will transfer its nuclear capabilities to terrorist groups, which will then unleash them on Israel via
the country‘s porous ports and border crossings.
A nuclear Iran will also deny Israel the ability to respond to terrorist attacks: in response to an
Israeli retaliation against Hezbollah, for example, Iran would go on nuclear alert, causing
widespread panic in Israel and the collapse of its economy. Finally, and most menacing, many
Middle Eastern states have declared their intention to develop nuclear capabilities of their own
once Iran acquires the bomb.
Israel will swiftly find itself in a profoundly unstable nuclear neighborhood prone to violent
revolutions and miscalculations leading to war. As former Labor Party minister Efraim Sneh
says, under such circumstances, all Israelis who can leave the country will.
_____________
The Hemorrhaging of Sovereignty.
Israel does not assert its sovereignty over large sections of its territory and over major sectors of
its population. In East Jerusalem, a few hundred yards from where Israeli building codes are
strictly enforced in West Jerusalem, Arabs have illegally built hundreds of houses, many of them
in historic areas, with impunity. The situation is even worse in the Negev and throughout much
of the Galilee, where vast tracts of land have been seized by illegal construction and squatters.
Taxes are erratically collected in these areas and the police maintain, at best, a symbolic
presence.
Israel fails to apply its laws not only to segments of its Arab population but to significant parts of
its Jewish community as well. Over 100 outposts have been established illegally in the West
Bank, and Jewish settler violence perpetrated against Palestinian civilians and Israeli security
forces is now regarded as a major threat by the IDF.
Israel also balks at enforcing many of its statutes in the burgeoning Haredi community.
(According to a recent report, by the year 2012, Haredim will account for one-third of all the
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Jewish elementary school students in Israel.) Though it is difficult to generalize about Israeli
Haredim, the community overwhelmingly avoids military service and eschews the symbols of
the state.
A significant percentage of Knesset members, Arabs and Jews, do not recognize the validity of
the state they serve. Some actively call for its dissolution. Israel is, quite simply, hemorrhaging
sovereignty and so threatening its continued existence as a state.
_____________
Corruption.
Recent years have witnessed the indictment of major Israeli leaders on charges of embezzlement,
taking bribes, money laundering, sexual harassment, and even rape. Young Israelis shun politics,
which are widely perceived as cutthroat; the Knesset, according to annual surveys, commands
the lowest level of respect of any state institution. Charges of corruption have spread to areas of
Israeli society, such as the army, once considered inviolate.
The breakdown of public morality, in my view, poses the greatest single existential threat to
Israel. It is this threat that undermines Israel‘s ability to cope with other threats; that saps the
willingness of Israelis to fight, to govern themselves, and even to continue living within a
sovereign Jewish state. It emboldens Israel‘s enemies and sullies Israel‘s international reputation.
The fact that Israel is a world leader in drug and human trafficking, in money laundering, and in
illicit weapons sales is not only unconscionable for a Jewish state, it also substantively reduces
that state‘s ability to survive.
Though seemingly overwhelming, the threats to Israel‘s existence are not without solutions,
either partial or complete.
Preserving Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state must become a policy priority for Israel.
Immense resources must be invested in expanding the industrial and social infrastructure of the
city and in encouraging young people to relocate there. Israeli school children must make
biannual visits to Jerusalem; materials on Jerusalem‘s centrality to Jewish history and national
identity must be introduced into school curricula.
Similarly, to maintain Israel‘s demographic integrity, measures must be taken to separate Israel
from the densely populated areas of the West Bank. In the absence of effective Palestinian
interlocutors, Israel may have to draw its eastern border unilaterally. The new borders should
include the maximum number of Jews, of natural and strategic assets, and of Jewish holy places.
There is no absolute solution for terrorism, though terror attacks can be reduced to a manageable
level through combined (air, ground, and intelligence) operations, physical obstacles, and
advanced anti-ballistic systems. It is also essential that Israel adopt a zero-tolerance policy for
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terrorism, in which every rocket or mortar shell fired across its border precipitates an immediate
and punishing response. There must be no immunity for terrorist leaders, military or political.
Israel proved that suicide bombers can be virtually eliminated and that terrorist organizations
such as Hezbollah can be deterred.
Israel cannot allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. Israel should work in close tandem with the
United States, supporting the current administration‘s diplomatic efforts to dissuade the Iranians
from going nuclear but warning American policymakers of the dangers of Iranian prevarication.
Israel must also not allow its hands to be tied—it must remain free to initiate other, covert
measures to impede Iran‘s nuclear program, while continuing to develop the plans and
intelligence necessary for a military operation.
There is no other option, if the state is to survive, than for Israel to assert its sovereignty fully
and equitably over all of its territory and inhabitants. This means forbidding illegal construction
in East Jerusalem, the Negev, and the Galilee. Major investments will have to be made to expand
the security forces necessary for applying Israeli law uniformly throughout the state. In the
specific case of Israeli Arabs, Israel must adopt a two-pronged policy of assuring total equality in
the provision of social services and infrastructure while simultaneously insisting that Israeli
Arabs demonstrate basic loyalty to the state. A system of national service—military and nonmilitary—must be established and made obligatory for all Israelis, ending the destructive
separation of Haredi youth from the responsibilities of citizenship.
Corruption must be addressed on both the institutional and the ideological levels. The first step in
reducing political corruption is the radical reform of the coalition system, in which that
corruption is organic. Young people must be encouraged to enter politics and grassroots
movements dedicated to probity in public affairs fostered.
Most fundamental, though, corruption must be rooted out through a revival of Zionist and Jewish
values. These should be inculcated, first, in the schools, then through the media and popular
culture. The most pressing need is for leadership. Indeed, all of these threats can be surmounted
with courageous, clear-sighted, and morally sound leaders of the caliber of David Ben-Gurion.
Though remedies exist for all of the monumental threats facing Israel, contemplating them can
nevertheless prove dispiriting. A historical context can, however, be helpful. Israel has always
grappled with mortal dangers, many more daunting than those of today, and yet managed to
prevail. In 1948, a population half of the size of that of Washington, D.C., with no economy and
no allies, armed with little more than handguns, held off six Arab armies. It built an economy,
tripled its population in ten years, and developed a vibrant democracy and Hebrew culture.
Nineteen years later, in June 1967, Israel was surrounded by a million Arab soldiers clamoring
for its obliteration. Its economy was collapsing and its only ally, France, switched sides. There
was no assistance from the United States and only hatred from the Soviet bloc countries, China,
and even India.
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And look at Israel today: a nation of 7 million with a robust economy, six of the world‘s leading
universities, a pulsating youth culture, cutting-edge arts, and a military that, in its last two
engagements, was able to mobilize more than 100 percent of its reserves. According to recent
polls, Israelis are the second-most patriotic people in the world, after Americans, and the most
willing to defend their country.
Israel in 2009 has treaties with Jordan and Egypt, excellent relations with Eastern Europe, China,
and India, and a historic alliance with the United States. By virtually all criteria, Israel in 2009 is
in an inestimably better position than at any other time in its 61 years of independence.
Though the severity of the threats jeopardizing Israel‘s existence must never be underestimated,
neither should Israel‘s resilience and national will. That persistence reflects, at least in part, the
success of the Jewish people to surmount similar dangers for well over 3,000 years. Together
with Diaspora Jewry and millions of Israel supporters abroad, Israel can not only survive these
perils but, as in the past, it can thrive.
© Copyright 2010 Commentary. All rights reserved
The Path of Realism or the Path of Failure
Laying a foundation for peace in Palestine.
BY Elliott Abrams
March 2, 2009, Vol. 14, No. 23
The Weekly Standard
Repetition of failed experiments is not a sign of mental health or a path to scientific progress, nor
is it a formula for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Yet that is the road we may again take, unless the
lessons of the Bush years are learned.
As an official of the Bush administration I made three dozen visits to the Middle East in the last
eight years, and in February, as Israelis voted, I made my first visit as a private citizen in nearly a
decade. After lengthy discussions with Israelis and Palestinians, it seems to me obvious that it is
time to face certain facts, facts that President Bush actually saw clearly during his first term: We
are not on the verge of Israeli-Palestinian peace; a Palestinian state cannot come into being in the
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near future; and the focus should be on building the institutions that will allow for real
Palestinian progress in the medium or longer term.
In a historic speech on June 24, 2002, President Bush said, "My vision is two states, living side
by side, in peace and security." How were we to get there? He was specific:
There is simply no way to achieve that peace until all parties fight terror. Peace requires a new
and different Palestinian leadership, so that a Palestinian state can be born. I call on the
Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to
build a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty.
If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support
their efforts. If the Palestinian people meet these goals, they will be able to reach agreement with
Israel and Egypt and Jordan on security and other arrangements for independence. And when the
Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their
neighbors, the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state, whose
borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final
settlement in the Middle East. . . . A Palestinian state will never be created by terror. It will be
built through reform. And reform must be more than cosmetic change or a veiled attempt to
preserve the status quo. True reform will require entirely new political and economic institutions
based on democracy, market economics and action against terrorism.
This was the announcement that the United States was breaking totally with Yasser Arafat--the
single most frequent foreign visitor to the Clinton White House--and would henceforth consider
him a terrorist rather than a negotiating partner. Six months later the "Roadmap," a plan for
progress toward these goals, was drafted. Even its formal name, "A Performance-Based
Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," suggested its
conformity to President Bush's speech. Its preamble stated in part, "A two-state solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict will only be achieved through an end to violence and terrorism, when
the Palestinian people have a leadership acting decisively against terror and willing and able to
build a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty."
The Roadmap did not call for leaping directly from the status quo--the Palestinian Authority, or
PA, established after Oslo--to statehood. Instead it called for an interim phase "focused on the
option of creating an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders and attributes of
sovereignty, based on the new constitution, as a way station to a permanent status settlement."
The text here reiterated the need for Palestinian leaders "acting decisively against terror, willing
and able to build a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty."
After Arafat's death in November 2004, his lieutenant Mahmoud Abbas became president of the
PA, and efforts to achieve some of these required reforms began. But there began as well a
distancing by the United States and the international "Quartet" that had sponsored the Roadmap
(the United States, United Nations, European Union, and Russia) from the tough and clear
standards that had been set out. It is as if those standards were meant to record disgust with
Arafat, but with his passing the familiar insistence on rapid progress--and more Israeli
concessions--returned.
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More and more speeches, including American speeches, called for rapid agreement on a
Palestinian state, for a final status agreement, for elimination altogether of that interim phase.
Worse yet, at the Annapolis Conference, announced in July 2007 and convened that November,
the president announced that the goal was a final status agreement by the end of 2008. This left
only 13 months, which was itself astonishing for a problem as old and complex as the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. It seemed to ignore the June 2007 Hamas takeover of Gaza, and, as the end
of 2008 coincided with the end of the president's own term, it seemed to substitute the American
political calendar for a realistic assessment of facts on the ground, just as the Clinton
administration had done.
And it failed. Those of us within the Bush administration who had protested the Annapolis plan
and the announcement of the 2008 goal were sadly proved right. Historians may puzzle over the
causes of the failure, and perhaps more so over what led the president to turn away from the
tough-minded realism toward this conflict that he showed during his first term. But the lesson for
2009, for the new administration, must be that there are actually only two alternatives: realism
and failure.
Judging by the standards set forth in President Bush's still remarkable 2002 speech, the PA has
made some genuine progress. Under U.S. tutelage, training of Palestinian security forces has
begun largely under the radar, at a training center in Jordan. But it is working: Sixteen hundred
police from the West Bank have gone through the course, and there are plans to double that
number. The newly trained forces are not exactly crack troops, but they are a far cry from the
divided and ineffective gangs created by Yasser Arafat. Their success was visible during the
recent Gaza war, when they acted in parallel, and sometimes in concert, with Israeli forces to
prevent Hamas violence and terrorism in the West Bank. Order was maintained.
Much of the credit goes to PA prime minister Salam Fayyad, a U.S.-trained economist whose
integrity, candor, and effective administration of the PA have made him a favorite of the United
States and all other donors. Fayyad, a former finance minister (who brought order from chaos in
the PA's finances and continues to fight PA corruption), has presided over continuing economic
growth in the West Bank and maintains a working if unfriendly relationship with Israeli officials.
Fayyad is well aware of the history of his sometime partner, sometime foe in Jerusalem, the
government of Israel, and indeed of the history of the entire Zionist enterprise: Institutions were
built over long decades to prepare for Israel's independence despite the uncertainty of when it
would arrive. The Zionists struggled to be ready, hoping thereby also to bring the day closer.
That is Fayyad's task for the Palestinian people, as he appears to see it.
He gets remarkably little help, from either Arab states or the West. The willingness of oil-rich
Arab leaders to supply Palestinians with endless amounts of rhetoric and precious little cash is
not new, though the high oil prices of recent years made it all the more obscene. But Fayyad has
also had less help from the West than one might expect. The shift away from realistic efforts to
build Palestinian institutions and toward international conferences like Annapolis put President
Abbas in the limelight, not the pragmatic work of Fayyad and his ministers. So Abbas traveled
from capital to capital, as he continues to do, safely removed from the difficult work of building
the basis for an independent Palestine. If the West Bank had a factory with a thousand jobs for
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every such trip, for every photo op with a smiling foreign leader, and for every international
conference, the Palestinians there would be thriving.
What are the chances that such meetings will produce a final status agreement in 2009? None.
Despite the pressures for progress after Annapolis, little progress was made in 2008, and if
anything conditions are worse now. In 2008, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were frequent at two
levels: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with President Abbas, and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni
met with Palestinian chief negotiators Ahmed Qurei ("Abu Ala") and Saeb Erekat. I am unaware
of the achievement of any actual agreement on any important issue on either track.
On the toughest issues, such as Jerusalem and refugees, there was, unsurprisingly, no meeting of
the minds. It is unlikely negotiators will do better this year. It has been true for decades that the
most Israel can offer the Palestinians is quite evidently less than any Palestinian politician is
prepared to accept. Those who say "the outlines of an agreement are well known" and thereby
suggest that an agreement is close are precisely wrong: Is it not evident that to the extent that
such outlines are "well known," they are unacceptable to both sides or they would have led to a
deal long ago? In addition, any possible deal would take years to implement: Israel would need
that time to remove settlers from lands that would become part of Palestine, while the
Palestinians would need to win the fight against terrorism. So any deal would be a so-called shelf
agreement, where Palestinian leaders would be compromising on Jerusalem, borders, and refugee
claims in exchange not for a state, but for an Israeli promise of a state at some indeterminate
future date. No Palestinian leader jumped at that in 2007 or 2008, and none will in 2009.
Meanwhile, whatever the strengths and weaknesses of the PA as an institution, Fatah as a party is
moribund. Its reputation for incompetence and corruption remains what it was when Arafat was
alive, for there has been no party reform despite endless promises. At one point in 2008, when
Ahmed Qurei--one of Arafat's closest cronies, famed for permitting corruption, renowned for
opposing the rise of any newer and younger leaders in Fatah--was formally charged with
organizing and implementing party reform, tragedy gave way to farce. But if democracy is
impossible without democratic parties, the collapse of Fatah is no joke; it suggests that a future
independent Palestine would either be run by Hamas and other extremists and terrorists or
become a one-party "republic" on the model of Tunisia or Egypt.
There is more. Prime Minister Olmert, who was intent on trying for an agreement by the end of
President Bush's term, will be gone, and his successor will not be as enthusiastic to make the
concessions Olmert reportedly offered the Palestinians. President Obama has not committed
himself to achieve an agreement in 2009 in the way that President Bush did in 2007 and 2008.
The Palestinian political leadership under President Abbas and his Fatah party is weak, even
increasingly illegitimate as the presidential election date prescribed in the Palestinian law was
ignored and Abbas's term in office extended. And, of course, it is impossible to see how a
comprehensive final status agreement between Israel and the PA can be reached when the PA
itself has now lost control of 40 percent of the Palestinian population, the 1.4 million Palestinians
living in Gaza.
First, there is the question of who can actually negotiate with Israel on behalf of the Palestinian
people. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is still recognized by the Arab League and
227
the United Nations as the "sole legitimate voice of the Palestinian people" though it never won a
free election to attain that status. Israel's past negotiations, in the Oslo Accords of 1993 and ever
since, have all been with the PLO--not formally with the PA, which was created at Oslo to
exercise certain governmental functions in the Palestinian territories. When Israel negotiates with
Abbas, it is in his capacity as chairman of the PLO, not in his role as president of the PA. But
now the PA governs only one part of Palestinian territory. Hamas governs the other part--and
Hamas is not a member of the PLO. In the 2006 elections 44 percent of Palestinians voted for
Hamas, moreover, and it maintains a majority in the Palestinian parliament (a possible
problem should that body ever meet). So, for which Palestinians do Abbas, the PA, and the PLO
actually speak? While Israel rightly refuses to negotiate with a terrorist group like Hamas, or
with the PA or PLO should it include Hamas in its ranks, it remains true that the PA and PLO no
longer have a strong claim to represent all Palestinians and may now lack the ability to enforce
any deal with Israel they sign.
Second, the lesson of Gaza to Israelis is identical to the lesson of south Lebanon, and a
cautionary tale regarding withdrawal from the West Bank: "Land for peace" concessions have
failed and become "land for terrorism." Until there is far better security in the West Bank, few
Israelis would risk withdrawing the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet from operating there.
And third, the terrorist groups Israel is dealing with, such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic
Jihad, used to be local; now those groups have the full backing of Iran, both directly and through
Syria and Hezbollah. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is now part of a broader struggle in the
region over Iranian extremism and power. Israeli withdrawals now risk opening the door not
only to Palestinian terrorists but to Iranian proxies. How could Israelis, or Palestinians for that
matter, take such a risk--especially when the new American administration has not defined its
policy toward Iran, except for some vague and (to Arabs and Israelis alike) worrying phrases
about outreached hands and sitting across negotiating tables, and the U.S. military option is
invisible?
Taken together, these factors suggest that a final status agreement is not now a real-world goal.
What is? A return to the realistic assessments and policies that marked Bush's first term. In
practice, this suggests an intense concentration on building Palestinian institutions in the West
Bank.
There is much to build on, with security force improvements well under way, the economy in
decent shape, and a reliable and trustworthy leader in Prime Minister Fayyad. Neither the United
States nor Israel has done nearly as much as it can to promote progress on the ground, allowing
Palestinians in the West Bank freer movement and helping create more jobs and a better standard
of living. After the Gaza war, Israel appears prepared to do more, and should be asked to do so;
Israel has a strategic interest in the success of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and of
moderate forces in Palestinian society more generally. Arab states should be pressured intensely
to provide the funds needed to meet the PA payroll and undertake sensible investment projects,
for example in housing and agriculture. The United States and the Quartet should take some time
away from endless meetings and speeches and resolutions calling for immediate negotiations
over final status issues, and turn instead to making real life in the West Bank better and more
228
secure. If there is ever to be a Palestinian state, it will be the product of such activities, not of
formulaic pronouncements about the need for Palestinian statehood now.
It is also time to rethink the recent commitment to leaping all at once to full independence for the
Palestinians, and even to break the taboo and rethink that ultimate goal itself. Immediate and
total independence was not the plan when the Roadmap was written in 2002 and released in
2003. Then, it was understood that "an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders
and attributes of sovereignty" was a necessary way-station. Given Hamas control over Gaza,
which makes a united independent Palestine impossible for now anyway, a West Bank-only state
with provisional borders and only some of the attributes of sovereignty makes far more sense as
a medium-term goal. It might also allow postponing compromises on Jerusalem and refugee
claims that no Palestinian politician could now make, for those issues could be left aside for
another day, while the delays are blamed on Hamas and its rebellion in Gaza.
How that episode will end is entirely unclear, given Israel's reluctance to reoccupy and rule
Gaza, and Egypt's reluctance to enforce strict controls on the smuggling of weapons. One Israeli
official told me that Egypt had agreed to stop the smuggling through the tunnels. But will they
really do it? I asked him. Oh, he replied, "now you are asking if we can get an agreement to
implement the agreement. That's different." While Iran is able to sustain the Hamas terrorist
regime in Gaza, negotiations over a full final status agreement are little more than staking
territorial claims to a mirage.
But one is free to wonder as well whether Palestinian "statehood" is the best and most sensible
goal for Palestinians. When I served under Secretary of State George Shultz in the Reagan
administration, we were expressly opposed to that outcome and favored some links to Egypt and
Jordan. On security and economic grounds, such links are no less reasonable now; indeed, given
Hamas control of Gaza and the Iranian threat to moderate Arab states as well as to Israel, they
may be even more compelling. As we've seen, President Bush in 2002 stated that the Palestinians
should "reach agreement with Israel and Egypt and Jordan on security and other arrangements
for independence."
Now, even the mention of Egyptian and Jordanian involvement will evoke loud protests, not
least in Amman and Ramallah, and perhaps U.S. policymakers should think but not speak about
such an outcome. There are many and varied possible relationships between a Palestinian entity
in the West Bank and the Hashemite monarchy, and if none can be embraced today, none should
be discarded either. One Arab statesman told me when I asked him about a Jordanian role that
there "must absolutely be an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank--if only for 15
minutes," and then they could decide on some form of federation or at least a Jordanian security
role for the area. If the greatest Israeli, Jordanian, and Egyptian fears are of terrorism, disorder,
and Iranian inroads in a Palestinian West Bank state, a Jordanian role is a practical means of
addressing those fears.
Israel's next government, which Israel's president has asked Benjamin Netanyahu to form, must
soon take up these matters with the Palestinians, Arab neighbors, the EU, and above all with the
United States. The new Obama administration has not yet worked out a policy toward Iran or
toward the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but that may be a hopeful sign. Thinking is better than
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assuming or reacting or misjudging. As the new team reviews the playing field, it would be well
advised to look not only at what its predecessors did in the second Bush term, but also at what
they did in the first term--when a gritty realism prevailed over visions, dreams, and endless
conferences. For, again, it seems to me there are at present only two paths forward--the path of
realism and the path of failure.
Copyright 2010 Weekly Standard LLC.
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Syria
April 19, 2010
How to React to a Reactor
Using Syria‘s Nuclear Program to Engage Damascus
Andrew J. Tabler
Foreign Affairs
In his confirmation hearing in March, Robert S. Ford, the U.S. ambassador-designate
to Syria, listed five issues that will be at the core of the Obama administration‘s
engagement with Damascus. Four were familiar: the United States wants Syria to
prevent jihadi fighters from entering Iraq, end its support for Hezbollah, return to
peace talks with Israel, and respect human rights at home.
But the fifth issue was a new one: Ford argued that Washington should insist that
Syria end its foot-dragging on the International Atomic Energy Agency‘s
investigation into its nuclear activities. For nearly two years, Syria has refused to
cooperate with the IAEA‘s probe of a suspected nuclear reactor that was destroyed by
Israel in September 2007. Now the IAEA may request a rare ―special inspection‖ of
Syrian sites, making the country‘s nuclear defiance the international community‘s
main point of contention with Damascus -- eclipsing even the investigation into
Syrian officials‘ involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Premier Rafik
Hariri.
Indeed, the international community cannot afford to let Syria‘s proliferation attempts
go unaddressed, since the violations threaten the global nonproliferation regime and
may be evidence of a wider nuclear program. Even more, the IAEA‘s investigation
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could provide Washington much needed leverage in its increasingly trying diplomatic
engagement with Damascus.
The story of Syria‘s nuclear program has been quietly building for more than two and
a half years. On September 6, 2007, Israeli jets took part in Operation Orchard,
bombing a nondescript building at a site in eastern Syria called Al-Kibar, near the city
of Deir ez-Zor. In April 2008, U.S. intelligence authorities released a video showing
that the building had hid construction of a graphite-cooled nuclear reactor similar to
North Korea‘s reactor at Yongbyon, which produces plutonium for the country‘s
nuclear weapons. The video contained satellite photographs of the site, still shots of
the reactor under construction, and a photograph of the directors of North Korea‘s and
Syria‘s nuclear programs standing arm in arm.
In June 2008, Syria allowed the IAEA to access the Al Kibar site, but inspectors were
unable to examine the reactor ruins because Syria had cleared the site of wreckage,
buried what remained, and constructed a new building on top. Nevertheless, they
found particles of chemically processed uranium of a type Syria had not declared to
the IAEA. Satellite photos of the site and the list of parts Syria had procured for its
construction posed additional questions. Syria soon cut off cooperation with the IAEA
investigation, denying further visits to Al Kibar and three associated sites.
Separately, IAEA inspectors found other unexplained uranium particles during a
routine inspection of Syria‘s miniature neutron source reactor, a research reactor
outside Damascus that had been declared to the IAEA. Syrian authorities twice tried
to explain the presence of these particles, but IAEA inspectors found their
explanations inadequate, believing instead that they raised concerns about possible
links to the particles found at Al Kibar. Although Syria allowed IAEA inspectors to
return to the research reactor this month, it continues to spurn IAEA requests to visit
Al Kibar, citing national ―sovereignty.‖ (A report [1] written by Gregory L. Schulte,
who was U.S. Ambassador to the IAEA from 2005 to 2009, lays out the IAEA‘s
investigation, Syria‘s defiance, and the resulting policy recommendations. Schulte
also contributed to this article.)
The IAEA‘s latest report on the Syria investigation was the first released by the new
IAEA director-general, Yukiya Amano, who took office in July 2009. It was blunt and
forthright, clearly restating that the destroyed facility had all the characteristics of a
nuclear reactor and openly questioning whether Syria‘s declarations were correct and
complete.
The Syrian government denies that the Al Kibar facility housed a nuclear reactor. At
first, it claimed that the uranium particles found at the site came from the bombs Israel
had used to destroy it, an explanation the IAEA dismissed as having a ―low
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probability.‖ Then, at a recent IAEA Board of Governors‘ meeting, Syrian
Ambassador Bassam Sabbagh claimed that Israeli planes sprinkled the particles over
the site -- an equally specious explanation that cannot account for the particles found
at the research reactor outside Damascus. Glyn Davies, the current U.S. ambassador to
the IAEA, described Syria‘s latest assertion as ―desperate.‖ Other ambassadors have
shared his disdain: in a three-page statement, the European Union -- Syria‘s largest
Western donor -- said it was ―essential‖ that Syria clarify its response and provide
―access to all locations and documentation.‖
Even though Syria‘s covert reactor no longer exists, there are a number of reasons
why the country‘s nuclear program should remain at the top of the U.S. policy agenda
in Syria. First, a strong IAEA is important at a time when the international community
is confronting the nuclear ambitions of Syria‘s ally, Iran. Allowing Syria to rebuff
IAEA inspectors would undermine the global proliferation regime -- a particularly
dangerous possibility given that Iran‘s nuclear violations risk sparking a nuclear arms
race in the Middle East. By getting to the bottom of Syria‘s clandestine program, the
world‘s nuclear watchdog can show that it has regained its clout.
Second, the particles found at the research reactor, plus Syria‘s refusal to allow the
IAEA access to three other suspect sites, suggest the existence of a larger program.
Particularly troubling is the apparent involvement of North Korea, a notorious nuclear
violator and weapons proliferator. Reports of Iran‘s involvement are equally
worrisome. The IAEA has an obligation to ensure that there are no other undeclared
activities in Syria, and the world has an interest in breaking up further multinational
proliferation ventures, whether they traffic in missiles or nuclear weapons technology.
Third, although the precise motives behind Syria‘s nuclear activities are unknown, a
primary impetus was likely the Assad regime‘s obsession with obtaining a deterrent
against Israel. Syria‘s nuclear program was the capstone of one of the Middle East‘s
most active chemical and biological weapons programs. This program, together with
Syria‘s extensive surface-to-surface missile capabilities, is a major source of potential
contention and conflict between Syria and Israel. Any future U.S.-negotiated peace
treaty between Syria and Israel may need to include a deal -- similar to the one that
convinced Libya to end its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of international
sanctions -- for Syria to divulge its nuclear pursuits. Indeed, only a peace treaty with
Israel may persuade Damascus that coming clean is in its strategic interest.
U.S. engagement with Syria has already been fraught with difficulty. After a February
25 meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Hezbollah leader
Hassan Nasrallah, President Bashar al-Assad mocked the United States‘ goals of
creating tension between Tehran and Damascus -- just days after U.S. Under Secretary
of State William Burns visited Damascus to pursue that agenda. To make matters
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worse, new reports suggest that Syria has been supplying sophisticated weapons -including missiles capable of carrying nuclear and chemical payloads -- to Hezbollah.
And last but not least, U.S. efforts to foster even indirect negotiations between Syria
and Israel have yet to yield results.
Regardless of whether talks between Syria and Israel resume any time soon, if
Damascus were to come clean on its nuclear program, the revelation would be a major
confidence-building measure that would significantly improve strained U.S.-Syrian
relations. The IAEA investigation provides an opportunity for the United States and
its Western and regional allies to gain some leverage in getting Syria to make
concessions on central issues. To date, the engagement strategies of the United States,
France, and the Arab Gulf states have been uncoordinated and conflicting, but all
these countries have an interest in convincing Syria to admit its nuclear activities and
to lure Damascus to the peace table and away from Tehran. Windows of opportunity
to apply pressure -- as well as a way out for Syria -- will arise with every regular
IAEA report.
Realistically, Assad is unlikely to move unless the IAEA orders a special inspection of
Al Kibar and other sites. Syria‘s safeguards agreement with the IAEA, which outlines
the country‘s obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, allows special
inspections ―if the Agency considers that information made available by Syria . . . is
not adequate for the Agency to fulfill its responsibilities.‖ As its latest report
documented, the IAEA has now reached that point. If Syria refuses to allow
inspections, the IAEA Board of Governors can decide that the action is ―essential and
urgent.‖ If Syria refuses again, it can find Syria in noncompliance and report the
country to the UN Security Council.
There is no doubt that Assad wants the IAEA investigation -- like the Hariri tribunal -to fall off the international agenda. If the IAEA refers the matter to the UN Security
Council, it would be an embarrassment that would set back Assad‘s desire for closer
trade and commercial ties with the West. It could even lead to sanctions.
Meanwhile, quiet engagement by the United States, coordinated with permanent
members of the Security Council could show Assad a way out through full
cooperation with the IAEA. Should Syria seize that opportunity, two major benefits
would result: the role of North Korea and any involvement by Iran would be exposed,
and the IAEA would prove that it cannot be stymied by uncooperative countries. If
Syria balks, referring this issue to the Security Council would maintain the integrity of
the nonproliferation regime while providing a source of leverage for the broader
agenda of fostering Syrian-Israeli peace. Whatever the outcome, one thing will be
clear: Syria‘s nuclear aspirations will not go unnoticed.
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Reprinted by permission of FOREIGN AFFAIRS, (issue date). Copyright (year) by the
Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
Obama Talks, Syria Mocks
The wages of appeasement.
BY Elliott Abrams
March 15, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 25
The Weekly Standard
The Obama administration has from the start seen Syria as a leading case for engagement.
Barack Obama said so during his presidential campaign (announcing he would meet Bashar al
Assad without preconditions) and repeated this policy view again last summer:
We‘ve started to see some diplomatic contacts between the United States and Syria. There are
aspects of Syrian behavior that trouble us, and we think that there is a way that Syria can be
much more constructive on a whole host of these issues. But, as you know, I‘m a believer in
engagement and my hope is that we can continue to see progress on that front.
The engagement with Syria continues apace. Here are the key elements.
* High level envoys have been sent to Damascus: Under Secretary of State William Burns
visited Syria in mid-February, the highest ranking U.S. official to set foot there in more than five
years, and Middle East envoy George Mitchell has visited three times. High-ranking Central
Command officers have been sent to Damascus to discuss cooperation against terrorism.
* President Obama has now nominated an ambassador to Damascus, the first since Margaret
Scobey was withdrawn in 2005 after the murder of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri in
Lebanon (which was widely blamed on the Assad regime).
* The president has also removed the American block to Syria‘s attempt to join the World Trade
Organization.
* The United States has eased some export licenses for Syria, mostly in the area of aircraft.
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* Syria‘s deputy foreign minister was invited to Washington in October, the first such visit in
several years.
So there is certainly ―progress on that front,‖ to use the president‘s words. But when does
―engagement‖ become ―appeasement‖? The case of U.S. policy toward Syria suggests that, here
at least, the two approaches may not be far apart.
―Engagement‖ constitutes ―appeasement‖ if it fails to change Syrian conduct, and the failure to
change is overlooked while the ―engagement‖ continues and accelerates. This would not just be
fooling ourselves but condoning, rewarding, and thereby inducing even more bad conduct by the
Assad regime.
Which is precisely what has happened during this year of American engagement.
* Syrian support for terrorism continues. Palestinian terrorist groups like Hamas, the DFLP, and
the PFLP continue to be housed and protected in Damascus. Last August Iraq actually withdrew
its ambassador from Damascus in protest over Syrian involvement in deadly explosions in
Baghdad. Our commanding general in Iraq, Raymond Odierno, stated as recently as November
that Syria continues to facilitate the movement of jihadists and explosives into Iraq.
* Syria continues serving as the route for Iran‘s rearmament of Hezbollah, in violation of U.N.
Security Council resolutions prohibiting such trafficking in weapons into Lebanon. And Syria‘s
activities in Lebanon remain aimed at diminishing that nation‘s sovereignty, even though Syrian
troops were forced to leave Lebanon in 2005.
* Internal repression in Syria remains as vicious as ever. Human Rights Watch reported that
―Syria‘s poor human rights situation deteriorated further in 2009.‖
In fact, however the Obama administration views its overtures to Syria, the best evidence that
these steps now constitute appeasement is found in Syria‘s response. On February 25, Assad
hosted an Axis of Evil party, meeting with Hezbollah‘s Hassan Nasrallah and Iran‘s Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad. The Washington Post reported that ―the presidents of Iran and Syria on Thursday
ridiculed U.S. policy in the region and pledged to create a Middle East ‗without Zionists,‘
combining a slap at recent U.S. overtures and a threat to Israel with an endorsement of one of the
region‘s defining alliances.‖ More striking was the headline the Post put on the story: ―Iran,
Syria Mock U.S. Policy.‖
Assad‘s conduct is surprising only if you view him as a seeker after peace, waiting merely for the
hand of friendship from Washington to reorient his regime toward the West. That appears to
have been the Obama approach. But Assad‘s reaction is entirely predictable if you view him as a
vicious dictator dependent on Iran‘s regime for political, financial, and military support.
Similarly, the notion that American ―engagement‖ is the road to a Syrian-Israeli peace deal over
the Golan Heights is sensible if you believe he needs only a bit of American encouragement to
ditch his alliance with Iran and turn West. But the terrorist trilateral just held in Damascus should
be all the proof anyone needs that George Mitchell may as well stay home: A Golan deal is not
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in the cards. No Israeli prime minister is foolish enough to hand the Golan to a Syria whose main
allies are Israel‘s two most dangerous enemies: Hezbollah and Iran.
What has the engagement of Syria actually produced, besides mockery in Damascus? Depression
in Beirut, where Sunnis, Christians, and Druze only a few years ago defied Syria, but now see an
American policy that appears willing to abandon them. Incredulity in Baghdad, where our
willingness to engage Syria while it helps jihadists blow people up in Iraq must seem
incomprehensible. Resistance in Jerusalem, which only three years ago blew up a North Koreansupplied nuclear reactor Assad was building along the Euphrates and must see our continuing
blindness to Syria‘s actual conduct as stubborn—and dangerous.
What is to be done? First, the United States should acknowledge that engagement has failed and
end it. No more high-level visits, no ambassador, no WTO. If the Obama administration insists
on crawling forward, the Senate should not confirm the nominee for ambassador, and Congress
should by legislation prevent any further weakening of our economic sanctions against Syria.
Second, the United States should loudly and frequently condemn continuing Syrian human rights
violations; there are fish in this barrel and we should start shooting them. Third, we should raise
in the United Nations Syria‘s continuing violations of Security Council resolutions 1559 and
1701 (barring violations of Lebanon‘s sovereignty and arms supplies to Hezbollah).
None of these steps will change Syrian policy; that will only happen if and when the regime in
Iran, Assad‘s mainstay, falls. But they will restore to U.S. policy the element of self-respect and
respect for facts that is now missing. In Damascus in January, George Mitchell said, ―I look
forward to building on the positive relationship we have formed to make tangible progress on our
effort toward peace and on the bilateral relationship between the United States and Syria.‖ At the
very least, let us have no more such statements, whose willful ignorance of Syria‘s actual
conduct—and the victims of that conduct—is embarrassing to American honor and damaging to
American interests and allies.
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The Syria Temptation—and Why Obama Must Resist
It
B ret S t ep h en s From issue: M arch 2009
Commentary Magazine
―Start with Syria.‖ Thus did Aaron David Miller advise the incoming Obama administration on
where its Mideast peacemaking priorities should lie. Miller, a former State Department official
who first made a name for himself as a leading American negotiator in the Arab-Israeli peace
processes of the 1990‘s, had lost his faith that a deal between Israel and the Palestinians was
possible, at least in the near term. But he was more sanguine about the prospects of an IsraeliSyrian deal, and confident about the good that could come of it. As he put it in a Washington
Post op-ed in November 2008:
Here there are two states at the table, rather than one state and a dysfunctional national
movement. A quiet border, courtesy of Henry Kissinger‘s 1974 disengagement diplomacy,
prevails. And there are fewer settlers on the Golan Heights and no megaton issues such as the
status of Jerusalem to blow up the talks. Indeed the issues are straightforward—withdrawal [by
Israel from the Golan Heights], peace, security and water—and the gaps are clear and ready to be
bridged.
For a President looking for a way to buck up America‘s credibility, an Israeli-Syrian agreement
offers a potential bonus. Such a deal would begin to realign the region‘s architecture in a way
that serves broader U.S. interests. The White House would have to be patient. Syria won‘t walk
away from a 30-year relationship with Iran; weaning the Syrians from Iran would have to occur
gradually, requiring a major international effort to marshal economic and political support for
Damascus. Still, an Israeli-Syrian peace treaty would confront Hamas, Hizballah and Iran with
tough choices and reduced options.
In making his case, Miller was putting some distance between himself and erstwhile Clinton
administration colleagues, most of whom seem eager to re-start the Israeli-Palestinian peace
process where it left off eight years ago. But in his enthusiasm for an aggressive new effort by
the new administration to engage Syria diplomatically—both directly and as an intermediary
with Israel—Miller‘s views mesh perfectly with the segment of the U.S. foreign policy
establishment that has the ear of the Obama administration.
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And not just that segment. The ―Syria track‖ has long been advocated by Republicans like
former Secretary of State James Baker, who pushed the concept as part of the 2006 report of the
Iraq Study Group. It was embraced, too, by Condoleezza Rice during her tenure at Foggy
Bottom; she reversed the Bush administration‘s efforts to isolate Bashar al-Assad‘s regime by
inviting it to participate in the November 2007 Annapolis Peace Conference. Even important
voices in Israel agree. In May 2008, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert acknowledged that his
government had been pursuing secret negotiations with Syria under Turkish auspices. ―The
renewal of negotiations with Syria after eight years of freeze is certainly exciting, but beyond
that, it is a national duty that must be exploited,‖ he told a Tel Aviv audience. ―The years that
passed since the [Israeli-Syrian] negotiations were frozen did no good to our security situation on
our northern border, which is the main source of our concern for regional deterioration.‖
_____________
Say what you will about the advisability—either for Israel or the United States—of engaging the
Syrians, the growing consensus on the notion constitutes one of the great surprises of recent
Middle East diplomacy. For when it comes to the Syria track, the U.S. and Israel have walked
down this road before, again and again, almost always with disappointing results. 1 Then, too, it
was just a few years ago that the Assad regime was almost universally in bad odor, not just in
Israel, but on both sides of the political aisle in the U.S., and in much of the Arab world.
Cast your mind back to Ehud Barak‘s landslide victory over Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel‘s
1999 elections. At the time, Israel had been engaged in a diplomatic process with Syria for most
of that decade, beginning with the 1991 Madrid peace conference, which Syria attended only
reluctantly and which it did its utmost to spoil.
Two years later, just weeks before the signing of the September 1993 Oslo Accords, then-Israeli
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin made a secret overture to then-Syrian President Hafez al-Assad,
offering to withdraw Israel fully from the Golan Heights, on terms and in ways roughly similar
to those that had formed the basis of Israel‘s phased withdrawal from the Sinai and its peace with
Egypt in the 1970‘s.2
Assad replied by insisting that he would accept nothing less than Israel‘s rapid withdrawal to the
boundary that existed between the two nations on June 4, 1967, before the start of the Six-Day
war. Those lines had never actually been drawn on any map. But were Israel to have
implemented such a plan, Syrian sovereignty would have expanded by some 66 square
kilometers beyond the now-recognized international border. In return, Assad offered Israel only
minimal assurances on security.
Rabin‘s answer was to agree to the June 4 line, albeit with various conditions and assurances.
This wasn‘t quite enough for Assad. As efforts at negotiation wore on and became increasingly
tortured, Rabin, who had begun his peacemaking efforts with a relatively high opinion of Assad
and a correspondingly low one of Arafat, changed his mind. ―At least Arafat is prepared to do
things that are difficult for him,‖ Rabin told Dennis Ross, the Clinton administration‘s Middle
239
East point man, in the summer of 1995. ―Assad wants everything handed to him and he wants to
do nothing for it.‖
After Rabin‘s assassination that November, Assad pointedly refused to offer condolences to his
widow, Leah, despite U.S. pressure to do so. Still, Rabin‘s successor, Shimon Peres, remained
eager for a deal, and even proposed flying to Damascus as a dramatic demonstration of the
seriousness of his intent. Again, the Syrians demurred. Israeli and Syrian negotiators did meet
extensively, if inconclusively, at the Wye River Plantation in Maryland in early 1996. But the
negotiations were cut short by a string of devastating suicide bombings in Israel, carried out by
Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad, both of which are sponsored by Damascus.
A ―Summit of Peacemakers‖ was held shortly thereafter to help shore up regional support for the
peace process. Assad declined the invitation to attend. Later in the year, Netanyahu became
prime minister and put the Syria track on ice for three years, though he did pursue contacts with
Assad through private channels.
This, then, is where matters stood when Ehud Barak came to power in 1999, eager to pick up
where the talks at Wye River had left off. Here is Ross, in his book The Missing Peace (2004),
describing Barak‘s thinking on the subject, which closely resembles the case Aaron Miller would
make almost a decade later:
Barak was also far more attracted to dealing with Hafez al-Assad than to dealing with Yasser
Arafat. In his eyes, Assad was everything Arafat wasn‘t. He commanded a real state, with a real
army, with thousands of tanks and hundreds of missiles; he was a tough enemy, but one who
kept his word and was respected and feared by other leaders in the region.
Finally, Barak, like Yitzhak Rabin, saw a peace agreement with Syria as the best hedge against
the threats coming down the road from Iran and Iraq. Insulating Israel from these countries,
building a common regional coalition against them in the area, all depended on finding common
cause with Syria.
Yet for all of Barak‘s eagerness to reach out to Syria, the Syrians were considerably less eager to
reciprocate. Indeed, their first ―overtures‖ to Barak consisted of a series of calculated snubs,
beginning with the demand not only that Israel withdraw to the June 4 ―line,‖ but that it
relinquish sovereignty over a portion of Lake Kinneret, the body of water also known as the Sea
of Galilee. The lake, a critical component of Israel‘s fresh-water supply, has always been legally
recognized as sovereign Israeli territory, and the demand is one no Israeli government could
possibly concede.3
Next, Syria insisted that any negotiations at the ―political level‖ be conducted with Barak
himself, not his foreign minister David Levy. Assad, however, would not represent Syria in
person, but sent his foreign minister, Farouq al-Shara, instead. Incredibly, Barak agreed, despite
the implicit insult and despite the disadvantage to which it put him in the negotiations. In
Washington, at the first joint public appearance of Barak and Shara, Barak spoke briefly and to
the point about the ―devotion that will be needed in order to begin this march, together with our
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Syrian partners, to make a different Middle East where nations are living side by side in peaceful
relations and in mutual respect and good neighborliness.‖
With President Bill Clinton looking on, Shara responded to Barak‘s politesse with a lengthy
broadside against Israelis, whose concerns about security he depicted as a kind of psychological
disorder stemming from ―the existence of occupation,‖ and with a lament that the international
media had ―totally ignored‖ Arab suffering. To cap it off, Shara refused publicly to shake
Barak‘s hand. Clinton was aghast.
Predictably, things went downhill from there, when the negotiations moved a few weeks later
from Washington to Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Though much ink has been spilled
(including by Ross) explaining the ways in which Barak‘s diplomatic tactics aggrieved or
offended his Syrian counterparts at those talks, such criticisms seemed to reside in a universe in
which only Syria‘s national pride and domestic political considerations needed to be taken into
account. It is true that Barak was less than completely magnanimous in those negotiations, as
Damascus bitterly complained. But Barak‘s hesitation was due largely to his political need not to
appear to be giving away the store to a regime that had so conspicuously spurned him only two
weeks before.
The Syrians could not have been unaware of the effect that its statements and behavior had on
Israeli public opinion, and how that in turn would constrain Barak‘s room for political maneuver.
Indeed, just weeks after the Shepherdstown failure, Shara delivered a speech to the Arab Writers
Union in which he explained that Syria‘s interest in a negotiated settlement with Israel had
nothing to do with actually coming to terms with Israel‘s right to exist, but rather that the
recovery of the Golan Heights was merely a stage on the road to the destruction of Israel.
Assad‘s government ―believes that regaining the whole of Palestine is a long-term strategic goal
that could not be implemented in one phase,‖ said Shara. ―[Our] doctrine draws a distinction
between the different phases of the struggle for the liberation of Palestine.‖
Still, Barak pressed ahead. Despite growing Israeli skepticism about the wisdom of returning the
Golan, Barak agreed to an offer in which Israel would relinquish the heights entirely, with only a
narrow territorial buffer of about 500 meters to separate the Syrian border from the Sea of
Galilee along its northeastern shore. Against the advice of his own generals, he decreed that
Syrian military forces would not have to remain behind certain lines within Syria, as previous
Israeli negotiating formulas demanded (and as Egypt had agreed to do by keeping its army out of
the Sinai). What Barak asked for was a tiny, temporary presence of an Israeli monitoring team on
Mount Hermon, along with some good-will gestures from Syria. It was enough to persuade
President Clinton that he could sell the deal personally to Assad.
This time, Assad decided not only to reject Barak‘s proposal outright, but also to humiliate an
American President for good measure. According to Ross, Clinton was prepared to spend a week
in Geneva to mediate an Israeli-Syrian deal. Assad, however, would only give him a day. When
informed that Barak was willing to settle on a ―commonly agreed‖ border based on the June 4
line, Assad called that concession ―a problem.‖ As for the width of the proposed Israeli buffer, a
question that had consumed countless hours of debate, deliberation, and creative thinking in
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previous rounds of negotiation, Assad disposed of the matter at once. ―The lake,‖ he told
Clinton, ―has always been our lake; it was never theirs.‖
The assertion of Syrian sovereignty over the Sea of Galilee was intended to derail the
negotiations, and derail them it did. Assad died a few months later, in June 2000.
_____________
In reviewing this sorry history, one must ask: Why, exactly, did it fail so badly? Was the Syria
track cursed by bad luck? Did its failure owe to problems of process and tactics? Or were the
very premises of the negotiation—that Assad had made or would make a strategic choice for
peace, that there was a deal to be reached on terms acceptable to him and to Israel, and that he
and successors would abide by the deal—fundamentally mistaken? Was the peace ―missed,‖ as
the title of Dennis Ross‘s memoir implies, or was there never any hope of one to begin with?
With Ross, one gets the impression he believes it was some kind of combination of bad luck and
poor decision-making. If only Shimon Peres had won rather than narrowly lost the 1996 election,
for example, Ross is sure a deal with Syria could have been reached. Similarly, if only an Israeli
hadn‘t leaked certain details of the Shepherdstown meeting to the press, or if Barak hadn‘t kept a
potential concession or two in his pocket, it might not have caused the mood in Damascus to
sour. And so on.
If anything, though, the Clinton administration had nothing but good luck on its side. It inherited
a uniquely auspicious set of historical circumstances when it came to office: Syria‘s loss of its
Soviet patron; the precedent of the Madrid conference and the meeting there between Israelis and
rejectionist Arabs for the first time in an international forum; the creation of the ―peace process‖
as a mechanism of conciliation; and America‘s unrivaled prestige in the region in the immediate
aftermath of the Gulf war. In Rabin, Peres, and Barak, the administration had three Israeli prime
ministers prepared to give up the Golan very nearly in its entirety, and who demanded far less of
Assad than Israel got from Anwar Sadat in the 1979 Sinai deal. And, in men like Ross, the
administration had dedicated and talented mediators who conducted skillful negotiations and
won the trust of both sides.
No, the real problem lay in Syria, though exactly what that problem was, and is, remains much in
dispute. According to Warren Christopher—another famous victim of a gratuitous insult by
Assad, who in 1996 refused to grant the visiting U.S. Secretary of State an audience—the Syrian
leader was not opposed to a deal per se, but was undone by ―his mistrust and suspicion of what
was being offered.‖ As Christopher told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 1997, Assad
―examined [the Israeli offers] so extensively and exhaustively that he missed an opportunity. If
he had been responsive and done the public things that we urged and also responded
substantively, I think much more progress would have been done.‖
Assuming that had been true, one might have expected the Syrians would have reconsidered their
methods, particularly during the three years when Netanyahu was in power, in order to seize on
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the opportunity presented to them by the 1999 election of Barak. Instead, Syria became even
more inflexible—indicating that what Christopher saw as an excess of caution could as easily be
interpreted as yet another instance in which Assad overplayed his hand.
A more plausible explanation comes from Patrick Seale, Assad‘s sympathetic biographer and a
fierce critic of Israel. In a 1996 article in the Journal of Palestine Studies, he argued that no deal
between Israel and Syria was ever likely to emerge, because each side had a different notion of
what ―peace‖ should achieve. For Israel, Seale believed, peace meant extending its influence
throughout the region through non-military means. For Assad, by contrast, it meant the opposite:
Comprehensive peace is not about normalization…but about holding the line against Israel…to
shrink its influence to more modest and less aggressive proportions, which the Arab players in
the Middle East could accept and live with.
Yet even this is too charitable to the Syrians. As Shara later indicated with his speech to the Arab
Writers Union, Syria‘s long-term goals were not restricted simply to cutting the Jewish state
down to size. Assad understood that Syria was unlikely to defeat Israel militarily. But that was
no reason not to help set the stage for it, if not in his lifetime, then perhaps in his successor‘s.
Assad also understood that his interests did not lie in joining the ranks of international pariahs
such as Libya‘s Muammar Qaddafi or Iraq‘s Saddam Hussein. But that meant only that he was
prepared to make token gestures of cooperation with the West, such as attending the Madrid
conference or bringing Israel and the U.S. along for his version of a ―peace process.‖
On substance, though, his behavior was not so different from Qaddafi‘s or Saddam‘s. Like them,
he sought to dominate his smaller neighbors militarily, as he did in Lebanon from the mid-1970‘s
onward. Like them, he championed a secular version of Arab radicalism. Like them, too, he
turned Damascus into a sponsor and host of various terrorist organizations, each of them at war
with one of Syria‘s neighbors. Vis-à-vis Turkey, it was the Kurdish PKK of Abdullah Ocalan.
Vis-à-vis Israel, it was groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (General
Command), Palestine Islamic Jihad, and Hamas. Vis-à-vis Lebanon, it was a rotating list of
militias, terrorist groups, and assorted guns-for-hire, likely including Elie Hobeika, perpetrator of
the infamous Sabra and Shatila massacres of 1982.
Syria is a dictatorship, and dictatorships typically need external enemies to furnish a gloss of
domestic legitimacy to their rule. As a result, modern Syria has been a scourge of all of its
neighbors, not just Israel but also Turkey, with which it nearly went to war in 1998; Jordan,
which it invaded in 1970; Iraq, against which it supplied troops in the 1991 Gulf war; and
Lebanon, which it has sought to dominate, either directly or indirectly, for many decades.
Assad‘s sense of himself as the anti-Sadat, the natural leader of the ―rejectionist‖ front that
would never come to terms with the legitimacy of Israel‘s existence, cannot be understood
without reference to the peculiarities of Syria‘s domestic politics. His secular, Arabist Baath
Party was naturally in competition with, and threatened by, Syria‘s powerful Muslim
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Brotherhood. Even if Assad had been so inclined, he could hardly allow himself to make
concessions to Israel that the Brotherhood could credibly trumpet as a sellout of both Islamic and
Syrian interests. That consideration was powerfully reinforced by Assad‘s religious identity as an
Alawite, a group that makes up about 12 percent of Syria‘s population, is theologically closer to
Shiism than to the country‘s predominant Sunnism, and is often considered heretical by orthodox
Sunni clerics. Peace with Israel, in this calculus, risked the security not only of Assad‘s regime,
but also, conceivably, of his own sect.
No wonder, then, that when Bashar, Assad‘s son and successor, was asked in March 2003 by a
Lebanese newspaper whether Israel would ever be granted any kind of genuine recognition by
Syria, his answer was categorical. ―It is inconceivable,‖ he said, ―that Israel will become a
legitimate state even if the peace process is implemented.‖
And then he offered this:
It should be known that Israel is based on treachery. This is a point to be considered thoroughly.
We are dealing with treachery and threats, which accompanied the establishment of Israel…. It is
the Israeli nature, and for that Israel was established. 4
_____________
Bashar Assad ascended to power almost immediately upon his father‘s death in June 2000. He
was then not quite 35 years old, a doctor, trained as an ophthalmologist in Britain, with an
attractive British-born wife who had previously worked as an international banker. Surely, it was
said, the younger Assad would seek to modernize his country, liberalize its politics, and reach
out to his neighbors. There were also predictions that he would not last long in office, that he
lacked the toughness and the nerve of his father, and that the ruling establishment was merely
biding its time until it could settle on a more suitable officeholder.
Neither prediction was borne out. In his first year in office, Assad allowed what came to be
known as the ―Damascus Spring.‖ Courageous Syrian intellectuals emerged from obscure
corners to call for political reform and democracy, and Assad himself pushed for the creation of
a private banking system. By the end of 2001, however, many of those intellectuals were in jail,
and today, the economy remains mainly in state hands.
Following these abortive moves toward liberalization, Assad tacked sharply in the opposite
direction, staking out positions and making remarks that even his father might have considered
excessively radical and needlessly provocative. At an appearance with the late Pope John Paul II
in 2001, he accused Jews of trying ―to kill the principle of religions with the same mentality they
betrayed Jesus Christ.‖ He told Colin Powell that Iraq was not exporting oil through a Syrian
pipeline in violation of then-extant UN sanctions—a bald-faced lie to an American Secretary of
State. He alienated Egypt by authorizing demonstrations against its embassy in Damascus and
calling on it to go to war with Israel. He also upgraded his relationship with Hizballah in
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Lebanon by meeting frequently with its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, something Assad‘s father had
never done.5
Then there was the matter of Assad‘s relationships with the members of the ―Axis of Evil,‖ from
which Syria was charitably excluded by President George W. Bush in his 2002 State of the
Union address. With Iraq, Assad abandoned his father‘s longstanding adversarial policy toward
Saddam to call for an ―Arab Defense Agreement‖ in which Arab countries would fight for their
brethren in the event of an invasion. He supplied Saddam‘s retreating army with military
equipment, including night-vision goggles and anti-tank weapons. Following Baghdad‘s
liberation, he called openly for Iraqi ―resistance‖ to the U.S. occupation, and facilitated it by
allowing Syria to become the de-facto headquarters of the Iraqi insurgency, as well as the way
station for foreign jihadists crossing into Iraq.
As for Syria‘s fellow dynastic dictatorship, North Korea, its ties to Damascus are of long
standing: Suspicions that Pyongyang was shipping Scud missiles to Syria date back at least to the
early 1990‘s. What was striking about Bashar Assad‘s approach is that he publicly upgraded his
military ties to Kim Jong-Il after the Bush administration had put the world on notice that it
would punish regimes trafficking in weapons of mass destruction. In July 2002, the BBC
reported that North Korea and Syria had signed ―an agreement on scientific and technological
cooperation.‖ A second agreement, on ―marine transport,‖ was inked in May 2005. The real
nature of these agreements did not go unnoticed: In September 2007, Israeli warplanes destroyed
what is now almost universally acknowledged to have been a nuclear reactor, built on the North
Korean model with North Korean help, in the deserts of eastern Syria. 6
Finally, there is Iran. Among the more common misperceptions feeding the hope of persuading
Bashar Assad to make peace with Israel is the notion that Damascus‘s alliance with Tehran is
primarily one of convenience and inherently unnatural, since one regime is Arab, secular, and
primarily Sunni, while the other is Persian, theocratic, and Shiite. In this reading, Iran and Syria
were first brought together mainly by a mutual loathing of Saddam Hussein, and a joint need to
contain him. Following Iraq‘s liberation, the two countries were again brought together by the
perceived threat from the United States. But, so this line of thinking goes, with America soon to
exit Iraq, the alliance is bound to fray. ―As soon as the United States leaves and all the powers
are trying to figure out who‘s going to rule Iraq, and how, Syria is going to want Sunnis to have
more power, Iran is going to want Shiites to have more power, and they‘re going to fall out over
this,‖ Josh Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma, told National Public Radio in
2007.
The analysis here is incorrect in almost every respect. Yes, Syria and Iran shared an enemy in
Saddam‘s Iraq and later in U.S.-occupied Iraq. But relations between Syria and Iran were frosty
throughout most of the 1970‘s, despite Syria‘s equally frosty relations with Iraq. The elder Assad
only really warmed to Iran after the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, ended the Shah‘s policy
of close ties to the West (including Israel), and put Iran squarely in the anti-American and antiIsrael rejectionist camp.
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Beyond Iraq, Syria and Iran also found common cause in Lebanon, where in the 1980‘s they
joined forces against the U.S. and Israel and later sought to promote the fortunes of Hizballah.
Nor were the ostensible sectarian differences between Iran and Syria any bar to better relations,
either, since the Assad regime is hardly less suspicious of Sunnis than is Tehran.
Indeed, the degree to which the younger Assad has cultivated his ties to Iran goes well beyond
anything his father would likely have countenanced, if only out of innate Arab pride and an
unwillingness completely to subordinate his interests to Tehran‘s. The two countries have signed
dozens of commercial agreements, and Iran provides an estimated $1.5 billion in scarce foreign
direct investment in Syria. Military ties have also deepened; the nuclear reactor destroyed by
Israel is suspected to have been built with some form of Iranian participation. In 2007, Assad
inaugurated an Iranian car factory in Syria with the remark that ―I affirm, on this occasion, that
the relations [between Syria and Iran] would not be shaken for any reason or under any
circumstance.‖
The relationship between Syria and Iran, in other words, is in no danger of fraying. Rather, it has
been deepening, and there is no reason to expect it will not continue to deepen.
_____________
The younger Assad has also deepened his relationship with Lebanon, a country he received as a
de-facto satrapy from his father, and which was crucial to Syria‘s economic well-being, its
position against Israel, and its utility for Iran. The story of the relationship comes in two parts:
First, of how Assad‘s brutality nearly lost him control over Lebanon; and second, of how his
brutality served him to claw control back.
In the summer of 2004, Assad baldly decided to seek an extension of the term of Emile Lahoud,
the nominal president of Lebanon and a Syrian puppet. He then demanded that Rafik Hariri,
Lebanon‘s charismatic and independence-minded prime minister, go along with the decision.
―This extension is to happen or else I will break Lebanon over your head,‖ Assad reportedly told
Hariri. ―So you either do as you are told or we will get you and your family wherever they are.‖
Hariri‘s answer was to resign as prime minister, even as he vowed to deputy Syrian foreign
minister Walid al-Moallem that Lebanon would ―no longer‖ be ruled by Syria. Moallem, in turn,
warned Hariri that he was ―in a corner,‖ and that he should ―not take things lightly.‖ On
February 14, 2005, Hariri and 21 others were killed by a truck bomb carrying 2,200 pounds of
explosives.7
The assassination of Hariri provoked universal revulsion and was instantly blamed on Syria—a
verdict amply confirmed by the preliminary reports of a UN investigation that is still ongoing.
Mass demonstrations in Beirut, along with strong American, Saudi, and French pressure (Hariri
had been a personal friend of then-French President Jacques Chirac), forced the exit of the
15,000 Syrian troops stationed in Lebanon. For a few brief months, Lebanon allowed itself to
believe it was finally free.
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Assad, however, wasn‘t done with Lebanon. Beginning that June, prominent Lebanese critics of
Syria were killed and maimed, usually in their cars, by sophisticated methods. Syria‘s hand in
these murders is also widely suspected. The clear goal of the killings was to paralyze the proWestern government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, and it was achieved. By the following year,
2006, most of Siniora‘s political allies had either fled Lebanon or were living, in fear for their
lives, in a heavily guarded Beirut hotel.
That same year, Damascus vied with Tehran for the honor of serving as Hizballah‘s main
cheerleader in the 2006 summer war with Israel. After the war, Syria distinguished itself by
openly flouting the provisions of the cease-fire agreement (UN Security Council Resolution
1701) that called on governments to prevent the flow of arms to Hizballah. In May 2007, a Sunni
terrorist group called Fatah al-Islam opened fire on the Lebanese army and took refuge in a
Palestinian refugee camp, forcing a months-long military confrontation that ended with a
government victory. Once again, widespread Lebanese belief, backed by a persuasive body of
evidence, points to Syrian sponsorship of the group. 8
Ultimately—and, in hindsight, amazingly—Syria salvaged its position in Lebanon after Hariri‘s
assassination. The 2006 war in Lebanon served to enhance Hizballah‘s prestige throughout much
of the Arab world, and therefore the prestige of its state patrons. Last May, after the Lebanese
government attempted to dismantle a Hizballah telecommunications network at the Beirut
airport, the group sent armed men into the streets to reverse the decision. It succeeded, at a price
of more than 60 lives. Hizballah also gained the right to a veto power over all government
decisions, while helping to install a presidential successor to Emile Lahoud who was acceptable
to Syria. The successor, former Lebanese army commander Michel Suleiman, explicitly called
for closer ties to Syria in his inaugural address, and welcomed visits from Moallem, now Syria‘s
foreign minister, and Manoucher Mottaki, Moallem‘s Iranian counterpart.
Thus it is that Syria, so promising to Aaron David Miller and others as an interlocutor for peace,
has effectively installed one of the groups functioning as part of the existential threat to Israel as
the dominating political force inside Israel‘s neighbor, Lebanon.
_____________
Future historians of the Middle East will no doubt ponder how it was that Assad, inexperienced
and brazen, managed to provoke the U.S., outrage world opinion, lose his stranglehold on
Lebanon, risk war with Israel, have his nuclear ambitions exposed—and then emerge from it all
in a comparatively strong position, with both Israel and the U.S. knocking on his door and
seeking rapprochement. Was it luck or was it skill?
One factor that plainly played a part was the incoherence of U.S. policy. The Bush
administration had the reputation of being tough on Syria, and in some instances it was. In 2004,
it imposed sanctions and engineered the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1559,
demanding the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. After Hariri‘s assassination, the U.S.
withdrew its ambassador from Damascus and later pushed for the creation of an independent UN
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tribunal to try the case. And in October 2008, it ordered a brief cross-border raid into eastern
Syria to kill a leader of al Qaeda in Iraq who had taken refuge just across the border.
Yet the administration‘s bark was always worse than its bite. The sanctions President Bush
imposed were the weakest among the menu of options mandated to him by the Syria
Accountability Act, passed by Congress in the wake of the Iraq war and the discovery of Syria‘s
active harboring of the anti-American insurgency. Indeed, the raid into Syria only happened after
more than five years of collusion. After a strong start, the UN investigation into Hariri‘s murder
has been left to drift; it is an open question whether the case will ever be brought to court. The
U.S. never demanded serious enforcement of Resolution 1701, even when it was clear that Syria
had violated it by helping to replenish Hizballah‘s arsenal to levels exceeding its pre-war
strength. President Bush himself hailed the agreement that consolidated Hizballah‘s grip on the
Lebanese political process.
Underlying these moves was a profound ambivalence in Washington about the desirability of
regime change in Syria, which, it was feared, a more direct confrontation with Damascus might
produce. It didn‘t help that the most high-profile political challenge to the regime—the so-called
National Salvation Front—was organized by a former top lieutenant of the elder Assad and
included the participation of Syria‘s Muslim Brotherhood.
Prominent voices within the administration, particularly Colin Powell‘s, favored diplomatic
démarches over military strikes as a way of altering Syrian behavior. The Central Intelligence
Agency, grateful for whatever morsels of intelligence Syria might be willing to provide, was
only too eager to preserve its relationship with the Assad regime. In 2007, Speaker of the House
Nancy Pelosi paid a visit to Damascus, for which she was sternly criticized by the White House.
Nevertheless, Condoleezza Rice sought to engage Moallem in diplomatic parleys that led up to
the Annapolis conference in 2007.
As for Israel, the notion that Assad can be steered toward a more conciliatory path remains an
article of faith among ranking members of its intelligence community. They, in turn, exert a
powerful influence not only on Israeli policymakers but also their American counterparts. After
all, if Jerusalem feels comfortable making overtures to Damascus, why should Washington
object?
Almost inevitably, then, the rejection of regime change as a policy option has pushed the U.S.
back toward a bias for engagement—the notions of containment or ostracism apparently having
been cast aside by a foreign-policy bureaucracy always hankering for the elusive breakthrough.
Perhaps its most sophisticated proponent is Martin Indyk, a Clinton-era ambassador to Israel,
who last year made the case in testimony to Congress.
To his credit, Indyk was quick to acknowledge that his experience in dealing with Syria ―made
[him] supremely conscious of the likelihood that the Syrian regime seeks a peace ‗process‘ rather
than an end to its conflict with Israel.‖ Nevertheless, he believed that even a process that did not
lead to an agreement could have its advantages. It could, he said, ―spook‖ Iran and ―generate
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tensions and frictions between Damascus and Tehran.‖ It could put Hamas under greater pressure
to moderate its activities, for fear of being abandoned by its Syrian patron. It could give the U.S.
additional leverage over Syria, by which it could help shore up Lebanon‘s interests. And it could
give Palestinians the ―political cover‖ they need in the Arab world at large to resume their own
negotiations with Israel.
Yet even as avid a peace processor as Indyk was forced to concede that the main reason Syria
seemed prepared for negotiations was that ―the Bush administration has managed through its
policy of isolation to get Assad‘s attention.‖ But if isolation were the key to bringing Assad to
the table, how could the U.S. induce him to remain there once he no longer felt isolated? Then,
too, as Indyk acknowledged, Assad‘s record as a negotiator was not a good one:
Just about every leader that has attempted to deal with President Bashar al-Assad has come away
frustrated. The list includes Colin Powell, Tony Blair, Nicolas Sarkozy, Hosni Mubarak and
Saudi Arabia‘s King Abdullah. The cause of their frustration is the disconnect between Assad‘s
reasonableness in personal meetings and his regime‘s inability or unwillingness to follow
through on understandings reached there. It is unclear whether this is because of a lack of will or
a lack of ability to control the levers of power. Either way, it raises questions about the utility of
a policy of engagement.
Despite these wise words of caution, Indyk concluded that engagement was ―an idea worth
testing by the next President.‖ Testing it is precisely what the Obama administration now looks
set to do. But implicit in Indyk‘s sober recommendation is the assumption that while success
would have many upsides, failure would have no downside.
This is a dubious assumption at best.
_____________
Though the Clinton administration‘s Mideast forays are now remembered as a hallowed period
of robust and engaged American diplomacy, their achievements were relatively meager: The
only lasting peace to emerge from the various processes was the one between Israel and Jordan.
And that particular agreement demanded hardly any process at all, but rather was the result of a
strategic decision by King Hussein to which the Rabin government all but instantly acquiesced.
Fundamentally, it was a gentlemen‘s agreement, and its success rested on the personal character
of its leading decision makers.
Elsewhere, diplomacy proved to be an exercise in frustration and diminishing returns, purchased
at a considerable cost to U.S. diplomatic capital and Israeli self-respect. By the time the elder
Assad was through, he had succeeded in showing the back of his hand to an American President,
his secretary of state, and an Israeli prime minister, among others. He did this while pocketing
the Israeli concession of the mythical June 4 line and accustoming Israeli leaders to the idea that
a ―peace‖ with him would involve no real grant of legitimacy to the Jewish state, no hard
guarantees of security, and no dramatic regional realignments of the kind that would make his
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frigid peace worth having. And he did all this while maintaining active and not-so-clandestine
relations with terrorist groups, from Hizballah to Hamas, which he did little to rein in and
occasionally unleashed as part of a self-serving Jekyll-and-Hyde routine. Even Yasir Arafat, who
did occasionally jail members of Hamas, looks somewhat better in comparison.
Put simply, while the peace process expanded Hafez Assad‘s options, the same process reduced
Israel‘s. That goes double for his son, who would enter into a peace process with his father‘s
achievements as a baseline from which to seek further concessions. Indyk may believe that the
mere resumption of a process without a serious expectation of a peace deal is some sort of
achievement, but he fails to consider how it puts Assad in the enviable position of never having
to engage that process with even minimal good faith. Which, in turn, amounts to an inducement
for bad faith. How either the United States or Israel might benefit from this is a mystery.
Some of Indyk‘s other assumptions are also open to question. On Lebanon, it is noteworthy that
he delivered his congressional testimony a few weeks before Hizballah‘s de-facto coup in Beirut.
Any hope, therefore, that the U.S. could extract meaningful concessions regarding Lebanon from
an Israeli-Syrian process has now been rendered moot.
As for Iran, it is by no means clear that Syrian engagement in a process would have any effect on
the Tehran-Damascus alliance. Indeed, if the past five years of international negotiations over
Iran‘s nuclear program are an indication, Tehran has learned that a sham interest in diplomacy is
an excellent way to play for time and reap unreciprocated concessions without actually
conceding on fundamentals. Why shouldn‘t it draw the same conclusion regarding the prospect
of Syrian diplomacy with Israel? Tehran has no dearth of incentives to maintain close ties with
Damascus. Syria is its bridge to the Arab world, particularly its clients in Gaza and Lebanon.
Syria is also its ally against a nascent democracy in Iraq that seems increasingly unlikely to
succumb to the threats of its neighbors.
Of course, there is always the chance that Assad might actually say yes to a deal with Israel that
allows him to recover the Golan Heights. In that case, Israelis might thrill to pictures of a handful
of their diplomats staffing a bunker-like embassy in Damascus, as they do in Cairo and Amman,
and the Obama administration would also surely see it as a diplomatic triumph.
At the same time, however, it is easy to imagine a scenario in which an ostensibly
―demilitarized‖ Golan, under Syrian sovereignty, is infiltrated by Hizballah while Syria uses
demilitarization either as an alibi to do nothing or as a pretext for the re-militarization of the area.
If this seems far-fetched, note that Israel is now prepared to acquiesce to a large Egyptian troop
presence in the Sinai in order to stop Hamas‘s weapons-smuggling into Gaza. By such or similar
means, Syria really could transform a deal with Israel into yet another phase in its proclaimed
―liberation of Palestine.‖
Such considerations all lead to a single conclusion: No ―process‖ between Syria and Israel under
U.S. auspices is currently worth having. The regime in Damascus has offered no indication that it
is prepared to accept Israel‘s right to exist, or respect Lebanon‘s sovereignty, or abandon its links
250
to terrorism or to Iran. Instead, for nearly two decades, Syria has offered only indications to the
contrary, indications that have multiplied since Bashar Assad came to power almost nine years
ago. For Israel to engage in such a process risks its status as a sovereign, self-respecting nation,
one that is nobody‘s fool. And for the United States to do so risks the diminishment of its status
as a serious power and a reliable ally.
© 2010 Commentary Inc.
251
China/East Asia
China
September 27, 2010
Keeping the Pacific Pacific
The Looming U.S.-Chinese Naval Rivalry
Seth Cropsey
SETH CROPSEY is a Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. He served as a
naval officer from 1985 to 2004 and as Deputy Undersecretary of the Navy during the Reagan
and George H. W. Bush administrations.
While visiting Japan in late August, Admiral Robert Willard, the leader of the U.S. Pacific
Command, told journalists that China is almost ready to make operational the world's first antiship ballistic missile (ASBM). Anti-ship cruise missiles already exist in abundance, but they
travel at about one-tenth the speed of a ballistic missile, possess far less kinetic energy, and are
proportionately less lethal. According to recent Pentagon reports, the Chinese ASBM will have a
range of at least 1,000 miles, whereas a long-range cruise missile has a range of about 600 miles.
Chinese military planners expect that the missile's maneuverability will allow it to hit and put out
of action or destroy large-deck aircraft carriers while they are at sea and too distant from the
Chinese mainland, as a result of the fact that even the next generation of naval fighter aircraft
will lack the range to return to their carriers safely if launched further than 600 miles from their
intended target. This unprecedented missile range and accuracy would allow China to finally
achieve its oft-stated goal: denying major U.S. naval forces a significant portion of the Western
Pacific.
Ongoing friction between China and Taiwan poses the most immediate threat to U.S. Navy
operations in the Western Pacific. Such an extension of Chinese firepower would erode the
United States' ability to honor its commitment to defend Taiwan if it were attacked. The U.S.
Navy has no defense against the ASBM, nor does it have one in development. If the United
States cannot counter and overcome the ASBM, U.S. influence in Asia will likely decline,
252
China's implicit claim to regional hegemony will gain traction, and a regional arms competition,
driven by territorial disputes in the South China Sea, may erupt. Indeed, U.S. allies, including
Australia, Japan, and South Korea, may begin to ask themselves fundamental questions about
how to cope without the U.S. Navy's presence, which has helped keep the peace in East Asia for
decades, as exemplified by U.S President Bill Clinton's successful use of aircraft carriers in 1995
and 1996 to quell tensions between China and Taiwan in the Taiwan Straits.
If the U.S. Navy recedes from the Western Pacific over the next generation, its withdrawal may
result in a regional arms buildup as U.S. allies scramble to fill the vacuum. In July, Tokyo
announced that it would enlarge its submarine fleet for the first time in 36 years. In the spring of
2009, Australia announced its largest defense increase since World War II, with plans to double
its submarine fleet and purchase powerful modern surface ships. South Korea is also
modernizing its naval and amphibious forces but faces an additional consideration: What if
China offers to replace receding U.S. influence by providing security to Seoul in exchange for
South Korea expelling U.S. troops currently stationed there?
Until now, most U.S. policymakers and analysts have ignored China's emerging missile
capability, reflecting a general sense that the threat of growing Chinese military power is too
remote to take seriously at present -- a sense born from the United States' focus on fighting land
wars at the expense of preserving the maritime power on which U.S. grand strategy has
historically rested. But China's policy beyond its borders has recently become more assertive -- a
fact not unrelated to its new military and naval capabilities.
Willard's concern about China's ability to target U.S. aircraft carriers follows several months of
aggressive Chinese foreign policy. In March, Beijing announced that the South China Sea is a
"core" interest. An international body of water, the South China Sea stretches from China to the
Philippines, down to the wide expanse of ocean that separates Malaysia and Vietnam, and serves
as the shipping lane through which oil and other critical seaborne trade is transported between
East Asia and the Middle East. Its many islands are the subject of disputed claims between China
and other South Asian nations, such as Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. By
labeling the sea a core interest, Beijing is signaling that it views the international body of water
as an asset to be protected at all costs.
In mid-July, four months after its declaration concerning the South China Sea, China continued
its expansionist maritime policy. Its official news agency, Xinhua, quoted a Chinese military
academic opining that the Yellow Sea -- an international body of water located between the
Korean peninsula and China -- is "pivotal to China's core interests, given that it is related not
only to the extension of the country's maritime rights but also to its maritime security." Itself
strategically important, the Yellow Sea was the site of a collision earlier this month, when
Japanese naval vessels seized a Chinese trawler that had strayed too close to the disputed
Senkaku Islands, under Japanese control but claimed by China as well.
Beijing returned its concern to the South China Sea in August, when it announced that it had
used small manned submarines to plant China's national flag on the sea's floor. The implicit
claim to sovereignty, along with China's earlier diplomatic claim to the South China Sea, is both
provocative and illegal. Recent Chinese rhetoric suggests that Beijing is unwilling to
253
compromise on its new claims of influence. In July, when the Obama administration presented a
proposal to seek a regional consensus on how to settle disputes in the South China Sea, Chinese
Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told a Singaporean diplomat that "China is a big country and other
countries are just small countries, and that's just a fact."
China's path to regional hegemony raises questions about how the country will wield its new
stature. With its military power on the brink of an exponential enlargement that threatens U.S.
influence in East Asia, Beijing's recent actions and rhetoric suggest a darkening future for other
states in the region that prefer the United States' traditional concern for maintaining freedom of
navigation in the region, lack of interest in territorial gain, and policy of preventing the rise of an
Asian hegemon -- in direct contrast to China's apparent interest in becoming one.
The notion that might makes right has precedent in Asia. So does the use of naval power to
support might. In the sixteenth century, Spanish ships seized the Philippines, while England
enjoyed naval superiority in East Asia during its reign of empire in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries.
But to Chinese leaders, the most instructive example of nautical might translating into political
power is that of Japan. Japan's history is an especially prescient warning about the dangers to
Asia of an ambitious, well-armed regional hegemon. After becoming the dominant naval force in
the Western Pacific during the first part of the twentieth century, Japan invaded, subjugated, and
oppressed its neighbors, rapidly expanding its domain of control. Its ability to transport troops
and material through the ocean made it a legitimate threat, from India to Hawaii.
The fact that Japan pursued such aggression does not prove that China would do the same if it
achieves similar regional preeminence. But China's naval buildup, ASBM rocket technology, and
claims to international waters are spurring its neighbors, such as Australia, India, and Vietnam,
to substantially increase their naval fleets. Such developments indicate that the stability and
security long ensured by a strong U.S. presence in the Western Pacific should no longer be taken
for granted.
China's ASBM threat is serious, but the United States has the capacity to respond. Reductions in
the size of U.S. carriers, increases in their number, and changes in aircraft design to expand their
range, as well as other new technology, could neutralize the threat of Chinese missiles. Yet the
growing U.S. deficit makes this unlikely, as does U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates'
skepticism regarding the utility of such large naval forces. For the immediate future, the
administration is right to shore up U.S. alliances in the Western Pacific and continue to pursue a
region-wide agreement on how to resolve territorial disputes in the South China Sea. It should
also increase the level of naval exercises with allies in the region and proceed as scheduled with
joint naval exercises planned with Japan in December on or around the Ryukyu Islands, which
form the eastern perimeter of the East China Sea.
The Obama administration should also lift its seeming gag order on the U.S. Navy's ability to
speak candidly about the dangers posed by China's naval enlargement. Allowing the Navy to
publicly discuss China's naval buildup as strategic justification for a larger naval force and
presence could be useful: it might help build congressional support for reversing the U.S. Navy's
254
virtual self-disarmament. The likely alternative to a more vigorous and robust security and
diplomatic policy in East Asia is that the U.S. will be forced to surrender the benign preeminence
it has exercised in the Pacific to the benefit of our own economic interest as well as the security
of nearly half the world's population. China's anti-ship ballistic missile will not determine the
future of U.S. power; the United States' future actions will.
Copyright © 2002-2010 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Obama's Timidity on Tibet
The Obama administration's silence only encourages China's abuses.
By Ellen Bork
August 19, 2010
The Wall Street Journal Asia
Over the past few years, Beijing's repressive policies have increasingly alienated Tibetans. One
indication was the March 2008 uprising and riots across Tibet. Yet Beijing responded not by
moderating its policies but by intensifying repression—launching a "patriotic education"
campaign and targeting members of the educated elite, many of whom have long gotten along
with, and even flourished within, the communist system. Among these are the writer Tragyal,
long associated with the state publishing house, who awaits trial on charges of "splittism," and
Dorje Tashi, a businessman and hotel owner, who received a life sentence in June for allegedly
collaborating with human-rights groups abroad.
Beijing has taken the same approach to criticism from abroad over its handling of Tibet,
significantly raising the stakes by identifying Tibet as a "core interest." Beijing has given notice
that unless the world adopts a "correct understanding" of Tibet by spurning any view contrary to
the Communist Party line, there will be consequences for bilateral relations and it will be
difficult for China to cooperate on the global economic recovery or other issues.
Washington has bent under the pressure. President Obama refused to schedule a meeting with the
Dalai Lama until after his November 2009 visit to Beijing, although he did speak about Tibet
there. Afterward, U.S. Ambassador to Beijing Jon Huntsman adopted Beijing's line, stating that
the president's meeting with the Dalai Lama, and recent U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, had
"trampled on a couple of China's core interests." These actions have serious implications for U.S.
support for Tibet, for activists for freedom inside China, and the Dalai Lama and his democratic
government in exile.
255
Often, when Chinese officials present their position on Tibet, senior U.S. officials cede ground
by saying nothing publicly. Indeed, the words "Tibet" and "Dalai Lama" have gradually
disappeared from the administration's vocabulary. Washington's official statements about the
April earthquake in Yushu, an area that is 97% Tibetan, did not refer to Tibetans or Tibet.
The silence was even more troubling at the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, major talks the
U.S. and China held in Beijing in May. State Councilor Dai Binguo presented China's view on
Tibet in his remarks at a joint session but Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not respond or
mention Tibet publicly. It was left to Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, to state the U.S.
position.
At a routine press briefing several days later, State Department Spokesman P.J. Crowley
deflected a question about the way Tibet was handled during the talks, saying "It's hard for me
from halfway around the world to describe everything we discussed," despite having just given
remarks on the U.S. positions on Burma and North Korea presented during the S&ED.
The silence of the Obama administration is peculiar since U.S. policy on Tibet is clear. Spelled
out in the Tibet Policy Act, it supports, among other things, talks between the Dalai Lama and
Beijing and respect for Tibetans' human rights and religious, linguistic and cultural heritage.
Past administrations have faithfully carried out this policy. The 2009 annual report on
negotiations between Beijing and the Dalai Lama, required under the Act, recounts extensive
contacts about Tibet between President George W. Bush and General Secretary Hu Jintao as well
as between Chinese interlocutors and other American officials, such as the coordinator for
Tibetan affairs, a position first created by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
The current Tibet coordinator, Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Maria Otero, was not
included in the giant U.S. delegation to the Strategic and Economic Dialogue. Her predecessor in
the post, Paula Dobriansky, traveled to China four times and met with the Dalai Lama 13 times.
The 2010 report, due in March, was only submitted to Congress on Wednesday.
The administration's downplaying of Tibet undermines Chinese liberal intellectuals and activists
who have criticized Beijing's policies on Tibet at great risk to themselves. After the March 2008
uprising, a Chinese think tank called the Open Constitution Initiative issued a report challenging
Beijing's position that the riots were incited by the Dalai Lama and criticizing the crackdown that
followed. This organization was later shut down and its staff harassed.
In addition, 29 intellectuals, lawyers and activists signed an open letter in March 2008 supporting
dialogue with the Dalai Lama and urging and end to official propaganda vilifying him and
Tibetans. One of them, Liu Xiaobo was later prosecuted on subversion charges for his writings
and sentenced to jail for 11 years.
American officials should know by now that nothing is gained by acquiescing to China's
overbearing behavior on Tibet or any other issue. Adapting to Beijing's "correct understanding"
of Tibet undermines not only the Dalai Lama and human rights for Tibetans, but also America's
256
own "core interest" in seeing these respected in Tibet and China as well. To be credible, America
must clearly and publicly pursue a well-established policy on Tibet.
Reprinted from The Wall Street Journal © 2010 Dow Jones & Company. All Rights
Reserved.
Prospects for Democracy in Hong Kong:
Assessing China's International
Commitments
Congressional Executive Commission on China
July 14, 2010
Remarks by Ellen Bork
Director of Democracy and Human Rights
The Foreign Policy Initiative
Hong Kong‘s recent changes to its system of constituting the legislature and picking the chief
executive are a net negative. While the Hong Kong governments, and others, have attempted to
claim a victory for ―progress‖ with the passage of the legislation, in fact, the minor tweaks to the
system reinforce the undemocratic characteristics of the system without a commitment to full
democracy or even agreement on what that really means.
The changes are being presented as a modest expansion of the democratic basis for the
government. However, the change in the people‘s control over their governance is practically
zero. There will be ten new seats, including five democratically elected ones. ―Split voting‖
persists – a clever procedure instituted by Beijing which raises the bar for pro-democracy
proposals in the legislature by forcing the chamber to vote in two halves, one of which is
dominated by pro-Beijing ―functional constituencies‖ representing mainly business and
professional associations. (In other words, undemocratically selected representatives.) The socalled expansion of the franchise for choosing the chief executive is laughable. Now there will
be 1200 electors up from 800, even though Hong Kong has over 3 million registered voters. The
compromise over the seats that enabled legislators of the Democratic Party to sign on does not
indicate a change of heart by the central government. Instead, it represents a further erosion of
the barrier to Beijing‘s involvement in the territory‘s affairs.[1]
A poll showed that opposition to the package among the Hong Kong people grew after the
televised debate between Chief Executive Donald Tsang and Civic Party legislator Audrey Eu.
The public was not reassured by Mr. Tsang‘s performance in which he called opponents of the
package irrational and was vague about how full democracy would be reached. He addressed
criticisms of the legislation by saying ―there are things to be ironed out but we can do so after we
257
pass the package.‖ In fact, virtually every indicator of the public‘s opinion indicates a strong
majority would like to move to full democracy immediately.
The pro-democracy members of the Legco who accepted this argument fell into a trap. In future,
it won‘t matter what tiny changes were made to the functional constituencies or the selection
process for the chief executive. Democrats will have voted for the continuation of functional
constituencies and for a system of a chief executive appointed by Beijing and rubber stamped by
1200 people. It will be exceedingly difficult from here on to move to full democracy. Beijing‘s
role is confirmed, the democratic camp is split and the undemocratic features of the system are
being entrenched.
While the effects of the legislation for expanded democracy are virtually nil, there are other
important, and negative, effects. One is that now those who to move to real democracy and to
have a firm commitment for doing so are being depicted as ―hardliners‖ and ―extremists.‖ This
is the brilliant achievement of Beijing. The system, which is Beijing‘s creation, is engineered to
deny the possibility of real, institutional changes. The democracy camp was criticized for the
―referendum movement‖ in which five pro-democracy members of the legislature resigned their
seats and ran again, in by-elections, in order to get a mandate for democracy. In fact, they got
the mandate. True, the turn-out was low in percentage terms, but 500,000 voters chose the prodemocracy position by returning the pro-democracy candidates in those elections. If the
government had not boycotted the elections, the turn-out would have been more and the tally for
the pro-democracy candidates, and their position, would have been even higher.
The second bad outcome is that the maneuvering over the legislative package and in particular
confidential dealings between the Democratic Party and Beijing representatives has normalized
Beijing‘s role in controlling Hong Kong‘s democratic development. Margaret Ng, a Legislative
Councilor, said it very well in her speech to the legislature on June 23.
―[T]he final deal is closed behind closed doors, and ostensibly between the Democratic Party and
the representatives of the Central Authorities. No one who is not already in the know is allowed
time to digest these developments. By his lack of action, the Chief Executive [Donald Tsang]
has made clear that he no longer represents [the] people of Hong Kong, and ‗one country, two
systems‘ is no longer a sustainable illusion.‖
There was always a high degree of fiction involved in the ―one country, two systems‖
arrangement. We know that the Chinese communist government, for its part, never took it
seriously. As Steve Tsang wrote
―the idea of Hong Kong people administering Hong Kong within the framework of ‗one country,
two systems‘ may imply that after 1997 Hong Kong will be free to run its own domestic affairs
with no interference from Beijing as long as PRC sovereignty is acknowledged. Such an
interpretation is totally unacceptable to Beijing.‖
And on the matter of elections within Hong Kong, it was clear that Beijing never contemplated
real democracy. Before the handover, Deng Xiaoping asked rhetorically, ―those who can be
entrusted to administer Hong Kong must be local residents who love mother China and Hong
258
Kong. Can popular elections ensure the selection of such people?‖ For him, and other
communist leaders, the answer was no, and Beijing set about to control the levers of power in
Hong Kong.
However, Hong Kong‘s people took this promise seriously, and the United Kingdom and the
United States purported to do so as well. Washington made autonomy and the ability of Hong
Kong people to develop full democracy there the cornerstone of U.S. policy.
The ―one country, two systems‖ fiction gave the U.S. and other democracies something to hide
behind. The curtain has now been drawn, and reality can be dealt with. That is the only good
thing to come from this episode. It would have been better, which is to say, principled, for the
U.S., to show that it knows the difference between real and phony democratic reform and to tell
the truth about the defects in the reform package. By approving of last month‘s developments in
the Legco, as Ambassador Jon Huntsman did, Washington acquiesced to Beijing‘s direct
involvement in Hong Kong affairs and its ultimate control, which is to say, obstruction, of
democracy there. It will only become harder to change course, but it is possible and essential not
only for U.S. policy toward Hong Kong, but also the People‘s Republic of China.
[1] A more positive interpretation of one aspect of the package is that the small change in the
way the functional constituencies are constituted could lead to the seating of more prodemocracy representatives in the Legco, that is, in the half of the chamber that usually obstructs
democracy legislation. While that is theoretically possible, it is not likely. It is simply
impossible to imagine that this maneuver – billed as a compromise on the part of Beijing –
represents a sincere effort to expand democracy in Hong Kong.
Obama's Rights Retreat
Rather than assert democracy's superiority, Washington adopts Beijing's moral
equivalence argument.
By Ellen Bork
May 27, 2010
The Wall Street Journal Asia
Up until this month, Washington's engagement with Beijing over human rights was about
China's behavior. True, past administrations suffered defeats and made some craven
compromises. But at least the spotlight remained on political prisoners, torture, religious
persecution, and denial of free speech and labor rights.
No longer. At the most recent round of the U.S.-China Human Rights Dialogue in Washington
earlier this month, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor
259
Michael Posner inadvertently revealed a troubling new agenda. Asked at a May 14 press briefing
whether the dialogue had touched upon the recent Arizona law on immigration that critics charge
is discriminatory, he replied, "We brought it up early and often. It was mentioned in the first
session, and as a troubling trend in our society and an indication that we have to deal with issues
of discrimination or potential discrimination."
Mr. Posner's remarks provoked dismay in the human-rights community and drew a letter May 18
from Senators Jon Kyl and John McCain protesting "moral equivalency in democracy and
human-rights policy." Mr. Posner responded that his remarks were taken out of context.
The human-rights dialogue, initiated in 1990, has never received the political backing it deserves
in Washington. Unable to show results, U.S. officials point to the dialogue's existence as
meaningful in itself, or claim credit for efforts to resume after China has suspended it. They
"raise" human-rights cases, but decline, as Mr. Posner did, to give details, citing the need for
discretion to make progress. When a reporter asked him about criticism that the dialogue should
be open to greater scrutiny, Mr. Posner, a veteran human-rights activist, admitted, "I used to be
one of those people saying that. So I don't know what to say here."
All of this is a substitute for concrete action. Successive administrations have tried to come up
with a rationale for dealing with China that subordinates democracy and human rights to other
interests while simultaneously pretending that improvements will inevitably occur as a result of
"engagement" or because China's communist officials know it is "in their interest."
Chinese officials can be counted on to bring up examples of American society's shortcomings. It
is up to the U.S. side to reject this, argue that China suffers from human-rights failures because
of its communist system, and work toward concrete improvements. The U.S. cannot succeed in
this unless it operates from the premise that it is because the U.S. is a democracy that it can
redress problems and provide the greatest respect for political and civil liberties.
Any account of discussions between U.S. and Chinese officials on this subject ought to reflect
serious U.S. efforts to achieve releases of individual political prisoners, like Liu Xiaobo, Hu Jia
and others, as well as systemic changes on religious persecution, an end to abuses in Tibet and
Xinjiang, as well as persecution of human-rights lawyers. The U.S. should also take the
initiative. The next round of the dialogue, which is scheduled to take place next year in Beijing,
should include China's dissidents and activists, including signers of Charter 08, the blueprint for
political reform released in December 2008.
Mr. Posner's remarks reveal that the Obama administration is not only failing to do this, but is
making the situation worse, effectively acquiescing to Beijing's claim to justify its political
system as a "democracy with Chinese characteristics." He is not the only one deferring
inordinately to the Chinese. Jon Huntsman, the U.S. ambassador to Beijing, this month referred
to President Obama's February meeting with the Dalai Lama, and Washington's sale of arms to
Taiwan for its defense by saying, "We trampled on a couple of China's core interests." What
about America's core interests? The American ambassador ought to positively assert America's
values, which include freedom inside Tibet and security for democratic Taiwan.
260
The problem starts at the top. Since taking office, much of what President Obama has done—or
not done—on human rights suggests he is ambivalent about the superiority of a democratic
system, and wants to make America's flaws an element of his foreign policy. "We, too, are
working to improve our democracy," President Obama reportedly told Nursultan Nazarbayev,
the dictator of Kazakhstan, in April.
The U.S. has lost its nerve at a time when China is confidently asserting its own brand of
Communist Party-led authoritarianism. That is a recipe for failure on human rights. China's
leaders know it. And so do China's dissidents.
Ms. Bork is director of democracy and human rights at the Foreign Policy Initiative.
Reprinted from The Wall Street Journal © 2010 Dow Jones & Company. All Rights
Reserved.
Deadlines and Delays: Chinese Revaluation
Will Still Not Bring American Jobs
Published on April 6, 2010 by Derek Scissors, Ph.D.
The Heritage Foundation
The Department of the Treasury has delayed its decision on whether to label China a currency
manipulator. Prominent Members of Congress attacked this delay, insisting they will seek trade
action against the PRC. At the heart of congressional demands is the idea that a Chinese
revaluation would mean millions of additional American jobs. This idea is almost surely wrong.
The almost is there only because advocates of revaluation are often vague about how large a
change is supposed to manage this feat. Such vagueness should come as little surprise—when
one examines American jobs and the value of the RMB, the thread between the two is very, very
thin. No currency revaluation of any feasible size will create more than a few thousand American
jobs.
261
The reason for the minimal impact is simple: The exchange rate with China is not genuinely
important to the U.S. economy. There are other policies China has adopted, or not adopted, that
are more important. There are policies the U.S. has adopted, or not adopted, that are more
important. The U.S. should focus on these more important policies, such as Chinese subsidies
and the U.S. budget deficit, not an exchange rate shift that will achieve almost nothing.
False Logic
The logic of the exchange rate argument is faulty. The PRC‘s undervalued exchange rate is
supposed to cause the U.S. to run a large bilateral trade deficit, which is supposed to cost many
American jobs. The second part of that claim—a bilateral trade deficit costs jobs—is hard to
disprove but actually makes very little sense. The first part—an undervalued exchange rate
causes the U.S. to run a large bilateral trade deficit—is demonstrably wrong.
From January 1994 to December 1997, the RMB appreciated 5 percent against the dollar. The
annual trade deficit still rose from $23 billion before the appreciation to $57 billion afterward.
From January 1998 through June 2005, the RMB essentially did not move at all against the
dollar. The trade deficit rose to $162 billion for 2004. From July 2005 through July 2008, the
RMB rose 20 percent against the dollar. The trade deficit nonetheless rose to $268 billion for
2008. From July 2008 to the present, the RMB did not move against the dollar. This time the
trade deficit fell to $227 billion for 2009.[1]
Over the past 15 years, when the RMB has been stable against the dollar, the trade deficit has
both fallen and risen. But when the RMB rises against the dollar, the trade deficit rises. This is
the evidence of what actually does happen, not merely what some assume is going to happen.
How can this be? The explanation goes back to the fact that the exchange rate is not important in
the U.S.–China economic relationship. The bilateral trade deficit chiefly expands when
American demand is strong and contracts when, as now, demand is weak. That is sensible
because the U.S. has by far the larger, richer economy, so trends in American demand are
typically more important than what happens in the PRC.
262
Chinese Mercantilism
Moreover, within the set of only Chinese policies, the RMB still does not matter much. China
has a huge arsenal of market intervention tools at its disposal. Exports are encouraged in various
ways—for example, through tax adjustments. These would certainly be used to offset a currency
change, as they have been in the past.[2]
More fundamental are the many and powerful ways that the PRC subsidizes its state enterprises.
Land has become very expensive in many of the coastal cities through which China trades, but
all land is ultimately owned by the state. State firms can be granted land as it suits central or
local government, cutting their costs in sometimes dramatic fashion. Capital subsidies are even
more potent tools. In response to the financial crisis, state banks lent unprecedented sums to state
firms without regard for repayment.[3]
The most pernicious intervention is regulatory protection. Many large state firms are geographic
monopolies—sole providers of goods or services in a large area. When competition is allowed, it
is tightly limited. Sectors that are mandated to be utterly dominated by the state include aviation,
coal, gas, oil, petrochemicals, power, shipping, and telecom. State firms must also lead in autos,
construction, information technology, machinery, and metals.[4] Not legally reserved but
nonetheless entirely dominated by the state are grain distribution, insurance, railways, and,
crucially, banking.
Guaranteed revenue and economies of scale make state firms modestly competitive as exporters
when they would otherwise be uncompetitive. The real harm, however, is to imports of goods
and services from the U.S. The decree of state predominance caps the total share available to all
263
domestic private and foreign companies, leaving American producers in a vicious battle for
permanently minor market segments. This is a far more stringent limitation than an undervalued
currency.
Not the RMB but the Trade Deficit?
Protectionists might ultimately accept these facts and agree that an RMB revaluation will
accomplish nothing. However, they could still hold on to the idea that the trade deficit with
China costs American jobs. The idea of the bilateral deficit costing some jobs cannot be rejected
outright on the basis of the record, but it does not stand up well to scrutiny.
First, there are those inconvenient numbers. The bilateral deficit rises not when the yuan is
falling but when U.S. demand is strong. And strong American demand should mean more
American jobs, not fewer. Second, the claim that imports cost jobs is narrowly based. Imports
also create jobs in transport, retail, and other areas. In addition, the mirror image of a trade
deficit is a capital surplus. And incoming capital creates jobs. Even the aggregate U.S. trade
deficit over all countries may not cost jobs when gains from imports and capital inflow are
counted.[5]
Third, China is just part of the story—action against China will directly involve other countries.
Chinese subsidies do not take jobs from the U.S.; they take jobs from others competing for the
American market. If Congress imposes tariffs on Chinese clothing, toys, furniture, and basic
household appliances, jobs will not move to the U.S. They will go to India, Vietnam, Mexico,
Indonesia, Bangladesh, and other low-cost producers.
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There is precedent for such a migration. The U.S. trade deficit set a record in 1987 and lasted
until the mid-1990s. At that time East Asia accounted for two-thirds of the deficit, led by Japan,
while China was a minor player. Prior to the global crisis, the trade deficit peaked again and at a
much higher level than in 1987. Moreover, China‘s role in this larger deficit grew tremendously.
However, the roles of Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore in the deficit all
declined sharply. East Asia as a whole now contributes less than half the deficit.
One key change was soaring energy imports; another was that East Asian production for export
moved to China in response to early Chinese reform, the Asian financial crisis, and a stagnant
Japan. The U.S. can force that production out of China, but it will simply relocate again
elsewhere in Asia and around the world. U.S. job gains will be trivial.
Recommendations
There are steps that may truly bolster American employment for the long term.
The main step is erasing the budget deficit. Government debt is now the biggest threat to
sustained U.S. prosperity and leadership, by far. This is not a matter of ideological or partisan
debate. In comparative importance, the value of the RMB is a footnote. Also, getting America‘s
own house in order would improve the U.S. position economically and diplomatically prior to
making difficult demands on the PRC, especially since the budget deficit is chief among
Beijing‘s expressed concerns.
Regarding the difficult demands of China, the Obama Administration has multiple options, all of
them challenging. The direct analog to the American budget deficit is Chinese bank lending, both
on-book and off-book.[6] A pledge of verifiable, comprehensive rollbacks of harmful policies by
both is an obvious route.
A superior alternative, because it involves market-oriented reform, is for the U.S. to establish a
schedule of budget deficit reductions and for the PRC to establish a schedule for the opening of
its capital account. This is a stated Chinese goal that was lost in the general abandonment of the
market. It would have the effect of slicing into lending, because money could leave the country
in response to non-commercial behavior by Chinese financials. It would thus make state firms
less unnaturally competitive at home and overseas.
The most valuable, but also most contentious, demand would be explicit limits on the extent of
state dominance in most industries. This would not be a call for an end to state control but for
transparency concerning the extent of such control followed by partial retrenchment in what
Beijing deems the less important sectors. These actions would open the door further for
American goods and services, creating a more open bilateral trade relationship.
Derek Scissors, Ph.D., is Research Fellow in Asia Economic Policy in the Asian Studies Center
at The Heritage Foundation.
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China: Still an Intelligence Priority
Gary Schmitt - Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Reprinted with the permission of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research,
Washington, D.C.
American Enterprise Institute
The Washington Times is reporting that the Obama administration has apparently moved
forward with a decision to ratchet down intelligence collection against China, moving the PRC
from a top-tier priority target for the intelligence community to a second-level collection
concern. Top-tier collection targets include Iran, North Korea and al Qaeda, whereas second-tier
targets typically reflect a host of matters, ranging from tensions between Pakistan and India,
Russian pressures on its neighbors, drug cartels and climate change. The change in priority
ultimately has an impact on how limited collection and analytic intelligence community
resources are parceled out. Again, according to the Times, this change was pushed by the
Obama NSC and over the objections of the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, and
CIA Director, Leon E. Panetta.
This is not the first time such a move has been made. When I worked in the Reagan White
House, a similar effort was made to change how we gauged China as an intelligence priority —
probably for a similar reason. At the time, many in the administration believed that China would
be a necessary asset for balancing against the Soviet Union. The thought was that by changing
the priority given China for intelligence collection we would be signaling them that we no longer
saw them as an adversary. Obviously, today we don‘t need the PRC for countering the Soviet
Union — if we ever did. However, the Obama team seems convinced it needs China‘s assistance
on a host of problems and is in the business of reassuring Beijing that we have no intention of
preventing their rise and, again, wants to signal that change by altering how we see them vis-avis our intelligence effort.
Ironically, the effort made during the 1980s to make this change, made more sense then than
today. China was not really an ally, like many thought; but, on the other hand, it was not a real
competitor either. Today, that no longer can be said and, indeed, Chinese strategists are anything
but shy in making that point themselves. Although there are certainly any number of pressing
problems for the U.S. to face, like Iran‘s nuclear program, over the medium- and long-term, there
is little question that how China develops and what its leadership conceives to be its role on the
world stage to be will be critical to our own position in Asia and, more generally, global peace
and security. Pretending otherwise is short-sighted. It is all the more remarkable given the fact
that the U.S. government is continually surprised by the military advances China is making, how
little we really know about what the inner circle of the PRC is thinking and, according to the
report after report by our own counterintelligence officials, the avalanche of Chinese spying we
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are attempting to deal with. Downgrading the priority given the PRC as a target will certainly not
make those gaps any easier to fill.
The U.S. intelligence community ought to be able to chew gum and walk at the same time, which
means keeping one eye on current threats while, at the same time, keeping an eye out for a rising
and competitive China. And, in turn, the Obama NSC ought to get out of the business of using
intelligence to engage in diplomatic signaling. There are plenty of other tools for it to use to push
a wrong-headed policy. If nothing else, it should be hedging its bets on its new engagement
efforts by trying to find out as much about China‘s real intentions as it can.
Our One-China Cowardice
Celebration in Washington over the January 2008 election results for Taiwan's legislaturewould
be premature.
By Gary J. Schmitt
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Wall Street Journal
Athough no one in the State Department or the White House will publicly admit it, there were
probably a lot of high fives following the election results for Taiwan's legislature this weekend.
The Nationalists (KMT) won a super majority, controlling over two-thirds of the assembly's
seats. Equally significant, President Chen Shui-bian's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was
crushed.
The results are widely read in Washington as a decisive repudiation of Mr. Chen's domestic and
foreign policies. But celebration would be premature.
On the surface, this looks like an especially hopeful sign for the Bush administration. For a
number of years, both President George W. Bush and his most senior advisors have seen Mr.
Chen as unreliable and needlessly pushing the envelope with Beijing. The Bush administration
was continually upset with Mr. Chen's willingness to raise Beijing's ire by asserting Taiwan's
sovereignty.
Of particular concern to the Bush team in recent months is Mr. Chen's decision to hold a nationwide referendum in March, during the presidential election, on Taiwan's membership to the
United Nations. In Washington, virtually everyone from the secretary of state to the country desk
officer for China has called on Taiwan to drop the measure. Nor is there support for the
referendum in London, Paris, Tokyo, Moscow or, of course, Beijing. To the contrary, both the
U.S. and foreign governments have deemed it provocative and dangerous.
Remarkably, the referendum will have no practical impact. Even if it should pass--and there is a
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distinct possibility it will not, given the high threshold set by the law governing referendums in
Taiwan--it will be rejected out of hand by the U.N. and the Security Council. In short, the
measure is going nowhere.
Of course, U.N. membership is supposed to be "open to all . . . peace-loving states which accept
the obligations contained" in the U.N. Charter. And by every traditional measure, the Republic of
China (Taiwan) is a sovereign state: It rules over a defined territory, is diplomatically recognized
by other member states, and is a major global economic power. Moreover, Taiwan has made a
successful transition from being a one-party state to a liberal democracy.
Nor, technically, does Taiwan's desire to join the U.N. in this case vitiate the "one China" policy
adhered to by most countries. As we have seen with the two Yemens, East and West Germany,
and potentially North and South Korea, two seats in the U.N. does not preclude unification down
the road.
The reason for the international fuss is that Mr. Chen's insistence on having a referendum makes
it formal policy to request membership to the U.N. under the name "Taiwan"--and not the
"Republic of China." In coupling the vote on the referendum with his country's next presidential
election in March, Mr. Chen seems to be hoping to generate a larger turnout for his own party.
As polls taken in Taiwan indicate, the majority of the island's citizens take considerable pride in
their own young democracy and are largely indifferent or hostile to unification with China.
Here we get to the heart of the matter. Beijing finds the vote intolerable because it signals that
the question of future unification will only be decided with the explicit consent of the people of
Taiwan. For the leaders of China's Communist Party, whose claim to rule now rests in no small
measure on its ability to assuage popular nationalist ambitions, this means that Taiwan is even
further from its grasp.
No one would tolerate Berlin waking up tomorrow and telling Paris and the world that it wanted
to revisit the issue of Alsace. But somehow the West has come to accept this kind of behavior
from China. Appeasing China will not lessen its ambitions toward Taiwan. If anything, by
suggesting the referendum is a move toward Taiwan independence, Washington and its allies are
unintentionally giving Beijing the very grounds it could use to take a more aggressive approach.
In the best of all worlds, Taiwan's president would not have pushed for the referendum. But he is
unlikely to call it off now. The required number of signatures for putting the matter to a vote has
been collected, and the DPP's losses in the legislative elections make the need to generate a
larger turnout for the presidential election even greater.
The underlying problem reflected in the push to join the U.N. will not be resolved when Mr.
Chen leaves office. Chinese nationalism is on the rise and its primary target remains Taiwan.
Many Taiwanese are frustrated that their economic and political progress over the past decade
has gained them virtually nothing internationally. Taiwan's state of suspended animation is
unlikely to be tenable over the long term.
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The Realist Case for Tibetan Autonomy
Any change in U.S. policy toward the Dalai Lama will encourage bad behavior in Beijing.
By PAULA J. DOBRIANSKY
The Wall Street Journal
When President Obama didn't meet with the Dalai Lama during his October trip to Washington,
it gave many the impression that human-rights promotion was not central to this administration's
foreign policy. This impression needs to be promptly corrected. While the U.S. accepts that Tibet
is part of the People's Republic of China, for decades our country has supported Tibetan
autonomy, especially in culture and religion. If the U.S. were to step back from this position,
increased Chinese repression of Tibetans would likely follow.
Such repression would also have adverse consequences for China. A China that engages in harsh
repression is incapable of ensuring domestic stability. An oppressive China is also unable to
function as a responsible global player—something that the U.S. has long sought to encourage.
The view that repression in Tibet would have negative consequences for China is shared by our
European allies. As British Foreign Minister David Miliband has said: "Like every other EU
member state and the United States, we regard Tibet as part of the People's Republic of China.
Our interest is in long-term stability, which can only be achieved through respect for human
rights and greater autonomy for the Tibetans."
Contrary to the oft-repeated, but erroneous claims to the contrary, the U.S. commitment to
Tibet—which began during the Nixon administration—has not harmed U.S.-Chinese relations.
The overarching principle for both China and America has been stability and consistency. Any
alteration of America's long-standing policy toward Tibet would prompt the opposite result.
It would certainly not earn us any lasting gratitude from Beijing. Any rebalancing of American
policy toward China would most likely cause the Chinese to conclude that the U.S.—beset by an
economic crisis—is retrenching from many of its traditional commitments and can't be counted
on to pursue robust policies across a range of international issues. If China were to reach such a
conclusion, it would be inclined to be less helpful to the U.S. on such issues as Iran, North Korea
or even economic cooperation.
The U.S.-China relationship continues to grow in importance and complexity. This fall,
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner co-chaired a key
bilateral forum—the Strategic and Economic Dialogue—that was established to address at the
senior level a range of key issues, including the economy and the environment.
As progress is being made on all of these matters, the Obama administration should call for
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substantive dialogue between Beijing and the Dalai Lama's envoys. President Obama should
meet with the Dalai Lama when he comes to Washington in February and publicly appeal to
China's leaders to let the Dalai Lama make a pilgrimage to China.
The meeting should also be used as an opportunity to showcase practical ideas that would benefit
all of China's citizens, including Tibetans. One excellent example of such an idea is tackling the
massive environmental degradation in Tibet. Setting up a environmental committee—as has been
urged by the Dalai Lama—would be a good place to start.
While U.S. support for Tibet is usually defended on moral grounds, this an issue where idealism
and realism are aligned. A balanced policy toward China that features continued U.S. support for
the cause of Tibetan autonomy is both doable and necessary. It has been tackled successfully
during the last two administrations, and President Obama should continue to build upon this
record.
Bearing Witness to Chinese Persecution
By Dick Thornburgh
Real Clear World
Last week, Chinese authorities indicted Liu Xiaobo for "incitement of state subversion," citing
his essays and association with Charter 08, a blueprint for democracy, human rights and the rule
of law released in December 2008. That document, inspired by an earlier generation of dissidents
in Czechoslovakia, the Charter '77 movement, was signed by Liu and some 300 other
intellectuals and activists. In the following weeks and months, 11,000 people added their names,
most of them inside China. Charter 08 is the most significant democratic reform movement in
China in a decade. Not surprising, then, that Chinese communist party authorities wish to stop it.
In order to demonstrate support for Mr. Liu and concern over the implications of his case, I seek
to observe Mr. Liu's trial, if there is one. Foreign observers are allowed under Chinese law and
the notion is consistent with international legal norms on the openness and transparency of legal
proceedings.
My purpose is also to demonstrate concern for the rule of law in China. For some time, the West
has placed its hopes for change in China in the rule of law. Since the rule of law is a pillar of
democracy, legal institutions, it was thought, could lead the way toward political reform.
Certainly, in recent years, China's leaders seemed to be tolerating changes in the legal system.
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The number of private lawyers and law firms has grown exponentially. Lawyers and citizens
energetically began pursuing rights in court. A "wei quan," or "rights defense" movement, grew
up around lawyers and activists seeking to use the laws on the books, and the institutions allowed
by law, to assert and defend human rights without challenging the underpinnings of China's
communist system. Such efforts were tolerated at first, and there were even modest signs of
greater professionalism in the communist judicial system.
Unfortunately, initial signs of progress have given way to serious setbacks. Many lawyers who
take on politically-sensitive cases have been subject to a kind of backdoor disbarment, finding it
impossible to renew their licenses. Some lawyers have been the target of surveillance, confined
to house arrest, the victims of physical attacks, raids and confiscation of their property. Law
firms and other groups pursuing law in the public interest have been shut down.
Moreover, there has been an alarming increase in the use of "subversion" or state security
charges leveled against activists. These cases have become a substitute for the old "counterrevolutionary" crimes. Others convicted on such grounds include Hu Jia, the AIDS activist who
also criticized abuses surrounding the staging of the Summer 2008 Olympic Games and Huang
Qi, who posted public information on his website about the government's response to the
Sichuan earthquake.
Liu's prosecution requires a serious response from the United States. Cooperating with China on
other issues like the environment or North Korea does not mean we must silence ourselves when
it comes to the rights and freedoms of China's citizens. Indeed, we are unlikely to get meaningful
cooperation on any issue when we appear weak in defense of our principles, which as President
Obama has said many times -- most recently in his speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize -- are
universal principles.
I hope that Liu is released and the charges against him dropped. Liu is an extraordinary person,
outspoken about freedom and democracy and human rights. In 1989 he joined students at
Tiananmen Square in their protests. Later, he persuaded many to leave before the tanks were sent
in. In recent years, he has been a constant voice for tolerance, urging an end to racist propaganda
against Tibetans and advocating dialogue between Chinese leaders and the Dalai Lama.
Short of Mr. Liu's release, I would like, in President Obama's words, to "bear witness" to Liu's
persecution, by attending the trial. It would be a powerful statement of American concern if
Ambassador Jon M. Huntsman and I were to attend the trial together.
Above all, it is vital that Chinese leaders know that they will lose something in their relations
with the U.S. if Liu is imprisoned. There must be consequences for abuses of human rights, in
this case, the mere expression of ideas. Chinese authorities seek to make a symbol out of Liu
Xiaobo. We must do the same.
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'Bearing Witness' Isn't Enough
BY Ellen Bork
December 15, 2009 11:00 PM
The Weekly Standard
In two recent speeches, the president and the secretary of state have tried to answer criticisms
that Obama administration foreign policy neglects democracy and human rights. Neither
however offered much to suggest a change in the priority given to these objectives, or a hint that
there would be some effort to achieve results. In his Nobel address in Oslo, the president made a
better case for the use of force than for diplomacy, exaggerating the benefits of "engagement"
with dictatorships and dismissing advocates of a tougher line as achieving only the "satisfying
purity of indignation." Then, Monday, at Georgetown University, Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton made a speech intended at least in part to compensate for her earlier statements and
omissions about democracy.
With regard to the most significant Chinese democracy movement in over a decade Clinton
merely said that "those who advocate peacefully for reform within the constitution, such as
Charter 2008 signatories, should not be prosecuted."
In doing so, she glossed over the fact that, Liu Xiao-bo, one of China's most prominent dissidents
and a leading symbol of reform is being prosecuted. Last week, on International Human Rights
Day, and soon after the president raised cases of dissidents with General Secretary Hu Jintao,
communist authorities indicted Liu on charges of "inciting subversion to state power." According
to reports, the case is based on his essays and his signing of Charter 08, a manifesto for a
democratic system based on the rule of law which was released one year ago this month. (An
English translation of Charter 08 by Perry Link can be found here.)
Inspired by the Czech and Slovak dissidents who wrote Charter '77 and went on to end
communist rule in their country, three hundred activists, intellectuals, lawyers and others signed
Charter 08 in early December 2008. In the following weeks and months, 11,000 more added their
names, most of them inside China. According to the group Chinese Human Rights Defenders, at
least one hundred have been detained, interrogated, or subjected to other penalties, their
computers and bank accounts seized, and travel restricted. The law professor He Weifeng of
Beijing University has been sent into internal exile in the remote Xinjiang region. The
authorities have worse in mind for Liu. At the center of dissident intellectual circles, Liu returned
from a visit to New York to join the students protesting at Tiananmen Square in 1989. Later, he
helped convince demonstrators to leave the square to avoid being killed, although many were
killed elsewhere in the city. He went to jail for his participation at Tiananmen, and again for
writing a public letter critical of General Secretary Jiang Zemin.
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In a country where racism and xenophobia are common, Liu has opposed (with many other
Charter 08 signers) vicious propaganda against Tibetans and has called for talks between
Chinese rulers and the Dalai Lama. In 2005 he chastised Chinese who posted racist comments
about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the Internet. He has been the president of the
independent Chinese PEN, an organization supporting free expression, which is a grantee of the
National Endowment for Democracy.
Liu used to meet the police who kept an eye on him at a
teashop because his wife, the artist Liu Xia, took offense at having them in her house. That
delicate balance of defiance and control broke down with the release of the Charter. He has been
detained for the past year and could be tried and sentenced during the Christmas holiday to avoid
attention and intervention from the West. Former U.S. attorney general Dick Thornburgh wants
to observe Liu's trial and is asking the Obama administration's help to arrange it. Public
security officials recommended to prosecutors that Liu be charged with a "major crime." This
suggests a long term for Liu, possibly 15 years. It also sets the stage for a wider crackdown
against other signers of Charter 08. This is an unmistakable sign of the direction Chinese
communist authorities wish to take.
President Obama rejects the "purity of indignation" in response to repression. But the approach
he favors--"bearing witness"--is too passive. If there is a new direction for the administration's
human rights policy, it needs to respond effectively to the persecution of a Chinese dissident who
represents the most significant movement for political reform in a decade.
Copyright 2010 Weekly Standard LLC.
Deng Undone
The Costs of Halting Market Reform in China
May/June 2009
Derek Scissors
Foreign Affairs
The year 2008 marked the 30th anniversary of the beginning of market reforms in China -- and
perhaps the third anniversary of their ending. Since the present Chinese leadership took power,
market-oriented liberalization has been minor. And as such policies have wound down, they have
been supplanted by renewed state intervention: price controls, the reversal of privatization, the
rollback of measures encouraging competition, and new barriers to investment.
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Why would China, with a generation of successful market reform under its belt, move back
toward state control? Because of politics run amok. When the administration of President Hu
Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao assumed control seven years ago, they acted like any new
Chinese regime: they moved to solidify their power through economic stimulus. Only they did
not stop. Soon after they took office, lending by state banks and investment by local and national
state entities soared. Helped temporarily by very loose global monetary conditions, the Chinese
state did well by most economic standards. And success created a constituency in political and
business circles that is obsessed with growth at the expense of all else. This growth today is
explicitly led by the state, fueled by investment by state-owned entities, and accompanied by
powerful regulatory steps meant to ensure the state's dominance of the economy -- all measures
that contrast sharply with prior reforms.
The Chinese Communist Party no longer sees the pursuit of further genuine market-oriented
reform as being in its interest. The burst of growth that the economy exhibited after the initial
state-directed stimulus convinced the CCP that true liberalization is now unnecessary as well as
sometimes painful. Whatever the objectives of the Obama administration, it must realize that it
will be difficult to change Beijing's views quickly. True broad-based market-oriented reform in
China should remain a long-term goal of U.S. economic policy. But for now, the Obama
administration would do better to focus its economic diplomacy on evaluating and responding to
the Chinese government's strategy of aggressively promoting state-led growth. It should not
presume that Beijing will return to market reform anytime soon.
The U.S. government cannot afford to get this wrong. Because of the increasing pressure of the
global economic crisis, some have called for a policy of partial disengagement. But the U.S.Chinese relationship is the most important bilateral economic relationship in the world. Together,
the United States and China accounted for more than 30 percent of the world's GDP in 2007. In
2008, bilateral trade stood at $409 billion -- dwarfing the $206 billion worth of trade between the
United States and Japan -- and Chinese exports to the United States amounted to approximately
7.7 percent of China's GDP. At the end of 2008, Beijing was the largest holder of U.S.
Treasuries, with over $700 billion in reserve.
Even incremental improvement in a relationship of this magnitude would have a large economic
payoff, all the more so given the recent collapse of the global financial system. This crisis arose
in part from imbalances in the U.S.-Chinese economic relationship. (Beginning in late 2002, U.S.
monetary policy stimulated already excessive U.S. demand, which served as an even bigger
outlet for already excessive Chinese supply. Beijing directly contributed to the prevalence of
loose money in the United States by recycling dollars earned from trade into U.S. bonds, a
strategy arising from Beijing's decision to keep China's capital account closed and the yuan not
freely convertible.) At the same time, the situation could get considerably worse if attempts to
rectify those imbalances are made too quickly or using the wrong methods. Washington is
worried about its ability to continue financing public spending at home, and China, because of
the U.S. bonds it holds, is important to that effort; Beijing is worried about maintaining its
exports, growth, and, ultimately, high employment, and the U.S. market is crucial to that. The
financial crisis has only raised the stakes of getting the U.S.-Chinese economic relationship right.
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The question is how best to engage China. Free trade offers opportunities and choices to
businesses and consumers; protectionism limits both. The 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs are an
unforgettable reminder that it would be especially dangerous in the current environment for
President Barack Obama to move away from open trade. And so he must engage China -- only
he must do so while reorienting U.S.-Chinese trade policy in light of Beijing's lack of interest in
discussing issues such as its subsidization of state enterprises and its apparent decision to halt
market-oriented reform. Washington should encourage the Chinese to focus on a narrow range of
feasible measures. Energy, the environment, and bilateral investment are fine topics for bilateral
negotiations, but the agenda should be restructured to emphasize a series of meaningful reforms
designed to, for example, liberalize prices, curb state dominance in corporations, shield U.S.
companies from mercantilist measures, and allow money to move freely in and out of China.
This will be a far more difficult and protracted process than casual calls for the creation of a G-2,
or a high-level, informal forum for discussion, suggest. The first step is to understand the true
state of the Chinese economy and thus what can be expected of it.
THE VISIBLE HAND
State involvement in the Chinese economy is nothing new -- it was a feature even during the
reforms under Deng Xiaoping. In 1998, in the wake of the Asian financial crisis and while China
was making a bid to join the World Trade Organization, President Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu
Rongji understandably sought to boost investment by Chinese state entities. The difference under
Hu and Wen in 2002-8 was that their administration relentlessly advanced the state's role in the
economy despite the absence of an economic slump. But with the concessions needed to accede
to the WTO -- for instance, lower tariffs -- largely implemented by 2005, the state's more recent
advance has effectively forced the market's retreat. It might seem natural under the present crisis
for the Chinese state to extend its reach into the economy, but it has been doing so for years.
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a perennial optimist, wrote in September 2008
that "China's leaders today are committed to reform, at least so long as it improves the country's
political and economic stability." But this is true only if one accepts a very dubious definition of
"reform" and ignores overwhelming evidence that reform has stopped. Price liberalization, the
core of market reform, has been partly undone. Privatization was stalled at first and then
explicitly reversed. Initiatives to increase corporate competition are also being rolled back. The
Chinese state is increasingly encroaching on even the relatively open external sector by
restricting incoming investments and imposing taxes on exports.
The central government has recently reversed the outstanding progress in the liberalization of
prices that China made during the first two decades of reform. The price of labor (wages)
remains largely free from government interference, but that is manifestly not the case with the
price of capital (the interest rate), for which the People's Bank of China sets a compulsory and
narrow range. Government intervention constantly distorts the prices of basic assets, such as
land, often by simply forbidding or promoting transactions. The State Council sets and resets the
prices for all key services: utilities and health care, education and transportation. Although the
exchange rate has been loosened up over the past three years, the People's Bank of China sets the
daily value at which the yuan must be traded against the dollar. And currency fluctuation is still
starkly limited: the daily movement of the yuan against the dollar is not allowed to exceed 0.5
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percent. The market in China has never really determined the sale prices of many ordinary goods
by itself, and the tendency over the past few years has been to further extend price controls for
goods. The state's complete control over grain distribution has distorted wholesale grain prices; a
recent bout of inflation has prompted restrictions on the prices of retail food as well. The energy
sector has always been tightly regulated. The government applied price ceilings for coal and oil
products, such as gasoline, as global crude-oil prices spiked during the first half of 2008 and then
lifted them once prices receded. The newest plan for the energy sector, issued by the State
Council in late 2007, reserves the state's absolute right to set prices.
Likewise, although some Chinese state assets were privatized during the reform era, especially
during the mid-1990s, liberalization has never been extensive, and in the third decade of reform,
it faded. During 2006 alone, the number of individuals who owned businesses fell by 15 percent,
to 26 million -- a pittance given the country's total population of more than 1.3 billion. The latest
official data publicly released show that truly private companies contributed less than ten percent
of national tax revenues during the first nine months of 2007 and that the figure dropped in the
first part of 2008.
Examining what companies are truly private is important because privatization is often confused
with the spreading out of shareholding and the sale of minority stakes. In China, 100 percent
state ownership is often diluted by the division of ownership into shares, some of which are
made available to nonstate actors, such as foreign companies or other private investors. Nearly
two-thirds of the state-owned enterprises and subsidiaries in China have undertaken such
changes, leading some foreign observers to relabel these firms as "nonstate" or even "private."
But this reclassification is incorrect. The sale of stock does nothing by itself to alter state control:
dozens of enterprises are no less state controlled simply because they are listed on foreign stock
exchanges. As a practical matter, three-quarters of the roughly 1,500 companies listed as
domestic stocks are still state owned.
No matter their shareholding structure, all national corporations in the sectors that make up the
core of the Chinese economy are required by law to be owned or controlled by the state. These
sectors include power generation and distribution; oil, coal, petrochemicals, and natural gas;
telecommunications; armaments; aviation and shipping; machinery and automobile production;
information technologies; construction; and the production of iron, steel, and nonferrous metals.
The railroads, grain distribution, and insurance are also dominated by the state, even if no official
edict says so. In addition, state enterprises draw their top executives from the same pool as does
the government. Chinese officials routinely bounce back and forth from corporate to government
posts, each time at the behest of the CCP.
Moreover, the state exercises control over most of the rest of the economy through the financial
system, especially the banks. By the end of 2008, outstanding loans amounted to almost $5
trillion, and annual loan growth was almost 19 percent and accelerating; lending, in other words,
is probably China's principal economic force. The Chinese state owns all the large financial
institutions, the People's Bank of China assigns them loan quotas every year, and lending is
directed according to the state's priorities.
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This system frustrates private borrowers. They might try to raise funds by selling bonds or
stocks, but these sales are dominated by the state, too. The volume of bonds issued by the
government is more than a dozen times that of bonds issued by corporations; private firms are
crowded out. There was a wild bull run on domestic shares in 2006 and 2007 after the
government decided to boost the stagnant stock market. But its means of doing so left a huge
number of state-owned shares temporarily untradable. With those trading lockups expiring over
the course of 2008, a flood of state shares again loomed large over the market, and prices crashed
back down to earth. A stock-market rally in early 2009 seemed driven largely by high liquidity;
it left the Shanghai Composite Index in late February 66 percent below its peak of October 2007.
REFORM ROLLBACK
One reason the rollback of reform has been overlooked by Washington is that China is officially
engaged in a process of restructuring its economy. But this effort has none of the characteristics
of market reform. It is aimed at shrinking the number of participants in many industries and
expanding the size of the remaining enterprises; through both measures, it will reduce
competition. This is not a strategy unique to China: Japan and South Korea have also created socalled national champions, supporting large corporate groups with the idea that their size will
make them competitive on the global market. An unspoken corollary of this policy is that private
domestic and foreign firms often are prevented from competing with these privileged firms.
China has been enamored of the concept of national champions for at least a decade, but even
more so since the ascent of Hu and Wen.
The results of this restructuring have been striking. Since the highly publicized contraction of the
telecommunications industry from four firms to three, there are now only 17 national enterprises
in the oil and petrochemicals, gas, coal, electric power, telecommunications, and tobacco sectors
combined. First Aviation Industry and Second Aviation Industry merged; apparently, two firms
in that sector was one too many. From cement to retail, all areas are consolidating. Rather than
permitting competition to drive down the windfall profits from crude oil and drive out inefficient
oil-product suppliers, for example, the National Development and Reform Commission raised
taxes on crude for the three state oil giants -- which together constitute the entire crude industry - while subsidizing them in the refining sector, where they face small competitors. The state now
plays a central role in all oil-related activities in the country.
Economic freedom has also been curtailed by mounting barriers to foreign direct investment
(FDI), which began to be erected in late 2005. New FDI transactions began to dry up in 2006
and, save for a few monthly blips, were scarce even before the current economic crisis. Happy
official results are distortions. According to government figures, FDI in China rose by more than
13 percent in 2007. The European Union, however, reports that its investment in China plunged
from about $7.9 billion in 2006 to about $1.5 billion in 2007. The official FDI figures were
driven by funds repatriated by domestic enterprises through Hong Kong and offshore capital
centers. And that money was not very productive. The Ministry of Commerce estimated that
during the first five months of 2008, total FDI was 55 percent higher than during the same period
in the previous year, but investment in fixed assets, where spending has a visible effect, fell four
percent over the same period. The increases in FDI in 2008 were largely the result of financial
speculation rather than an effort to develop new technologies or create desirable jobs.
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This lack of genuine FDI is no accident: Beijing deliberately decided to restrict market access. Its
mercantilist tendencies intensified sharply in the fall of 2005, as reflected in the discussion of the
sale of minority shares in state banks at the plenary meeting of the CCP's Central Committee.
Then, the pathbreaking acquisition in October 2005 of the state-owned Xuzhou Construction
Machinery Group by the Carlyle Group, a U.S. private equity firm, was reversed. Several sales
that had previously been approved were vetoed at the March 2006 meeting of the National
People's Congress. Additional industries were designated as "strategic" and thus made off-limits
to foreign investors. During the CCP's plenary meeting in the fall of 2006, this limitation
morphed into an outright ban on any type of FDI that threatened "economic security" -- a
concept that was never defined.
Prior to the March 2007 meeting of the National People's Congress, the Ministry of Commerce
formalized the requirements for foreign acquisitions, which allowed the ministry to ban any
proposed purchase that allegedly harmed either China's economic security or its state assets. The
first criterion has the effect of walling off entire sectors of the economy from foreign buyers; the
second allows many offers to be rejected as unacceptable. In times when stock prices were
soaring, Chinese regulators have said that foreign bids were undervaluing state firms compared
to the market. But when share prices have been low, the government has blocked deals on the
grounds that the market price was undervaluing state firms. No famous domestic brand can be
acquired, and it is the Ministry of Commerce that decides what makes a brand famous -- and
usually after the offer to buy it has been made. The list of sectors that are regulated in this
fashion is even longer than that of sectors the state insists on controlling.
Two recent laws that have been touted as market reforms will in fact place yet more limitations
on the activities of foreign companies in China. The new labor law, aimed at enhancing workers'
rights, is being implemented by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, a xenophobic organ
of the CCP that has uniformly ignored abusive behavior by state firms while periodically
assailing foreign firms for comparatively minor violations. Despite its nominal purpose, the new
antimonopoly law will not promote competition either. Designed to protect "the public interest"
and promote "the healthy development of the socialist market economy," it forbids firms with
dominant market shares from buying or selling goods and services at "unreasonable" prices, but
it neither defines a market nor offers any method for identifying what is unreasonable. Most
telling, the antimonopoly law contains exceptions for all industries controlled by the state and all
industries deemed important to national security. It further requires that proposed acquisitions by
foreign investors be subjected to both a review on national security grounds and an antitrust
probe. Such screenings exist in many countries, but with the CCP's exceptionally broad
definition of "national security," these are exceptionally sweeping. Also distressing, regulators
can suspend or limit intellectual property rights if they deem these to have been abused in the
service of creating a monopoly. The Chinese state has long considered many patents unfair, but
now it has the legal means to act against them. The government can wield the antimonopoly law
against foreign companies or governments that seek to protect intellectual property, as did the
U.S. government before the WTO in 2007 and the French company Danone against the China
Patent and Trademark Office in 2008.
TRADING FACES
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The problems regarding trade are less subtle. If China's export trade remains largely open and
competitive, its import trade still faces some nontariff barriers intended to protect state
prerogatives or shelter vital industries, such as energy and agriculture. And then there is the main
point of contention in U.S.-Chinese trade relations -- in fact, in the entire economic relationship - the exchange rate. The reason for the issue's contentiousness is its visibility: persistently large
trade surpluses for China should push the value of the yuan higher, but this has not occurred
because the People's Bank of China fixes the price of the currency. A broad restarting of
financial reform in China would have enormous benefits for the United States -- one of which
would be a looser hold on the exchange rate by Beijing. Merely liberalizing the exchange rate by
itself, however, would not necessarily benefit the United States.
After a 2.1 percent revaluation in July 2005, the yuan climbed by 16 percent against the dollar,
peaking almost exactly three years later. But over the same period, it fell six percent against the
euro. While the yuan stagnated against the dollar during the second half of 2008, it soared
against the euro, at one point climbing 14 percent in just a few weeks of October. In other words,
the yuan may be undervalued against other major currencies even more so than it is against the
dollar. Thus, it is not clear that allowing a wider daily trading band and calibrating the yuan
against a trade-weighted basket of currencies -- two stated U.S. goals -- would lead to a shortterm appreciation of the yuan against the dollar.
An apparent alternative would be for Washington to demand a much larger one-time revaluation
to increase the value of the yuan either across the board or against the dollar alone. But this
would probably only sidetrack negotiations -- and for little benefit. During the first six months of
2005, when the exchange rate was still entirely fixed, the United States ran a $90 billion trade
deficit with China. But then, during the first half of 2008, when the yuan neared its peak value
against the dollar, the trade deficit exceeded $115 billion. In other words, a more expensive yuan
did not prevent the trade imbalance from widening. Although a freer exchange rate is in the
United States' interest in the long term because it would dampen trade imbalances, the Obama
administration should be careful what it wishes for now.
A more promising approach to U.S.-Chinese trade issues would be to encourage Beijing to
liberalize its capital account, which would allow money to move freely in and out of China.
(Together with the current account -- the balance of exports and imports of goods and services -the capital account makes up most of a country's balance of payments.) It was once assumed that
the difficult process of liberalizing China's capital account would occur naturally as the country
started complying with the conditions for its accession to the WTO; an open capital account was
to be ratified no later than during the 2007 Communist Party Congress. But there has been no
progress, and perhaps even a regression, under the Hu-Wen regime. Beijing has showed little
interest in allowing multinationals, much less Chinese citizens, to freely send earnings or savings
out of the country.
Because capital-account liberalization would allow for the unfettered repatriation of profits, the
U.S. business community has long advocated it. But it also offers a less obvious and more
important benefit: by forcing financial policy to respond to market behavior, it could
considerably reduce state intervention in the Chinese economy. An open capital account would
permit capital to exit China, which would constrain the behavior of Chinese banks by draining
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off some of the guaranteed deposits they now enjoy. That, in turn, would inhibit the type of statedirected lending that has effectively been blocking privatization and subverting competition.
Although such liberalization is still far in the future, it is worth pushing for it now.
GROW, GROW, GROW
Market reform has died out in China in part because the country's leaders have pursued GDP
growth at the expense of all else. This decision has had its upsides: were it not for China's
remarkable economic performance over the past three decades, and especially between 2002 and
2008, the country would not be treated as a major economic player. Although export weakness
has been the subject of much gnashing of teeth in Beijing, the trade surplus was at $295 billion
for 2008 -- another annual record on the tail of consecutive monthly surplus records from August
through November of that year. According to the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics, between
June 2002 and June 2008, China's GDP more than tripled and its exports more than quadrupled.
(The nine percent increase in GDP for the whole of 2008 was considered dangerously slow in
comparison.) This rapid GDP growth has created jobs: by the end of June 2008, the
unemployment rate among registered urban voters was a mere four percent -- even lower than
the government's ambitious target of 4.5 percent. That figure may understate true joblessness by
ignoring rural and unregistered urban employment, but it accurately reflects trends in the broader
job situation. So many migrant workers from rural areas were absorbed into the urban labor force
that the 20 million such workers reported to have lost their jobs in late 2008 still left well over
100 million rural migrants with jobs in cities. Urban wages have climbed significantly, by 18
percent between 2007 and 2008 (unadjusted for inflation) according to official data. The payoff
of the wage increase was a 21 percent growth in retail sales (also unadjusted for inflation) during
that period.
Of course, there were some drawbacks to six years of furious expansion. Most visible were food
and energy inflation. According to official figures, food inflation peaked at 21 percent in April
2008 and energy inflation at a frightening 30 percent in August 2008. Moreover, these official
results understated the effects of inflation because price controls on energy have always been in
place and were extended to food. Yet even as GDP growth reached and stayed in double digits,
job creation surpassed its target, and inflation spiked, fiscal and monetary policies remained
intensely expansionist. At the peak of growth, in 2007, monetary policy became increasingly
loose, and when GDP growth moderated in 2008, the government rushed to provide fiscal
stimulus.
In 2007, inflation-adjusted "real" interest rates began to turn negative -- the ultimate sign of a
perverse monetary policy -- and then became more starkly negative during the first quarter of
2008. The benchmark one-year interest rates set by the People's Bank of China for borrowing
and saving remained fixed despite considerable inflation. At the end of June 2008, official
consumer price inflation and producer price inflation were both close to eight percent, whereas
the return on a one-year deposit was barely four percent. The January 2008 interbank bond yield
was 2.81 percent, and after six months of purported monetary contraction, the July 2008
interbank bond yield was 2.76 percent. Before the financial shock, while the growth rate was still
in double digits and the rate of inflation was climbing toward double digits, Beijing was trying to
stimulate the economy further.
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As consumer inflation began to ebb due to the crisis, real interest rates became less distorted. But
this happened while the government was further opening the fiscal tap. China's urban fixed
investment accelerated sharply, rising by 28 percent in the first three quarters of 2008. Its gain
for the year as a whole ended up at 26 percent due to much weaker real estate investment at the
end of year. Beijing has been determined to move investment growth higher. "We need to
actively boost domestic demand, to maintain steady economic growth," said the economist Wang
Tongsan, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in August 2008. "Investment is an
indispensable part of boosting domestic demand." This would have been a reasonable position if
the baseline from which domestic demand were to be boosted had not been a GDP growth rate
above ten percent and if the means of such boosting had not been urban investment growth,
which was already at more than 25 percent.
These features suggest that U.S.-Chinese cooperation on energy and environmental concerns
may be much more difficult than commonly thought. China wants to protect its environment and
shift to cleaner energy sources. But the terrible distortion of its financial system and its excessive
investment growth maintain production at levels that consume massive amounts of energy and
deplete the environment. And the Chinese leadership is eager to push GDP growth back up to
double-digit rates for the sake of creating jobs. In 2007, China began reporting modest increases
in energy efficiency and slower rates of degradation in select air- and water-pollution measures.
But these have been, and will continue to be, overtaken by economic growth. For example,
Beijing has spent lavishly on nuclear, gas, and wind power in an attempt to diversify the
country's energy sources and move away from coal, and it has tried to close small coal mines.
Yet coal production jumped from 525 million tons in 2002 to a staggering 1.26 billion tons in
2008. And in August 2008, the State Council emphasized the need for greater annual coal output
to support greater industrial production.
GETTING TO YES
With China's economic policy largely beyond Washington's reach, the most the Obama
administration can control is how to engage the Chinese government. Fortunately, an effective
framework for doing this already exists: the Strategic Economic Dialogue (SED), which was
created by executive orders by George W. Bush and Hu in September 2006 to complement an
increasingly ungainly clutter of high-level bilateral institutions. These include the Joint
Commission on Commerce and Trade, which involves the U.S. Department of Commerce, the
U.S. trade representative, and China's vice premier for trade; the Joint Commission Meeting on
Science and Technology, which involves the director of the U.S. Office of Science and
Technology Policy and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology; and the Global Issues
Forum, led by the U.S. State Department and the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
With the world's two largest economies facing so many common and clashing interests on so
many issues -- trade, investment, energy, the environment, health, and scientific research -- such
an institutional jumble is only natural. Discussions on traditional economic matters alone require
the involvement of the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, the Joint Economic
Committee, and the Economic Development and Reform Dialogue. This means, on the U.S. side,
the involvement of the Departments of Commerce, State, and the Treasury and the trade
representative and, on the Chinese side, the involvement of a delegation headed by a vice
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premier and representatives from the Ministries of Commerce and Finance and the National
Development and Reform Commission. Any one issue involves input from several departments:
the question of capital-account liberalization, for example, concerns the U.S. Departments of
Commerce and the Treasury and the U.S. trade representative as well as the Chinese Ministry of
Commerce, the People's Bank of China, and the National Development and Reform
Commission.
It is important that the objectives of different departments be coordinated and that a higher
authority be able to negotiate across issues that, if taken individually, might seem intractable.
This is the proper role of the SED. Even if Obama favors a more direct and aggressive approach
toward China than is currently possible with the SED's tangled and ponderous ways, it would be
advantageous to be able to raise the stakes of, say, a dialogue on energy policy by holding it
within the SED or another institution at a similar level. The SED should be maintained or an
equivalent body created.
On the other hand, the U.S. Department of the Treasury should no longer play a leading role in
the institution; this undercuts the SED's principal benefits by limiting its reach to that of one
cabinet official. The counterpart of a U.S. cabinet secretary is a Chinese cabinet minister, a
relatively low position in the CCP hierarchy. Thanks to U.S. efforts, a Chinese vice premier has
already become involved in the SED. It would be ideal if the Chinese premier, who heads the
State Council and thus all of the relevant bureaucracies, would take the lead in representing
China in such discussions. Likewise, the U.S. vice president should be granted real authority to
negotiate on behalf of the United States. Short of that, an especially powerful cabinet secretary -from the Treasury, the Commerce, or the State Department -- should be given an additional title
pertaining to economic policy or China. That would encourage the Chinese government to
empower a vice premier to make difficult concessions. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is
an ideal choice: she is considered by the Chinese not only to hold a relevant position but also to
be more than just a cabinet secretary. In contrast, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner does
not have with Beijing even the clout that former Treasury Secretary Paulson did, who was
considered to be a devotee of the U.S.-Chinese relationship.
SED talks should focus on obtaining from the Chinese leadership an explicit long-term
commitment to liberalizing interest rates, exchange rates, and energy prices. This would go some
way toward addressing China's underlying economic distortions rather than just a few of their
manifestations. Instead of asking an unreceptive audience for sweeping privatization, the Obama
administration should pursue more pragmatic and manageable improvements. And it should be
forceful in going about this. For example, it should threaten to file complaints with the WTO
over the pernicious effects of the Chinese state's dominant role in the economy if the central
government does not make transparent its support for state-owned enterprises, especially larger
ones.
The Obama administration should also seek from Beijing a formal commitment that it will open
state-dominated companies to foreign investors, even if Beijing insists on some limits.
Washington should switch its emphasis from getting Beijing to liberalize its exchange rate to
convincing it to liberalize its capital account, and Washington should ask Beijing for a full
schedule of steps it will take to open its capital account. The U.S. government should also
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emphasize that the discriminatory application of China's new labor and antimonopoly laws
against foreign companies is unacceptable. Only after satisfactory results in these areas are
achieved can there be progress toward a bilateral investment treaty.
Some current U.S. objectives fly in the face of Beijing's state-dominated model of development,
which the Chinese government has deemed to be very successful. Only modest progress can
therefore reasonably be expected for now -- or until the flaws of China's model become more
apparent to its devotees. The economic crisis might provide convincing enough evidence, but
only if it turns out that China's recovery lags behind or depends on that of the United States. In
any event, true market-oriented reform in China must remain the United States' ultimate goal,
and so the Obama administration must continue to push for the greater liberalization of China's
economy. This will be like pulling teeth in the short term but will greatly speed up the process if
and when Beijing is again open to market-oriented reform. Protectionism is not the answer. It
would harm the United States too much, even if it harmed China more, and it would be a retreat
from leadership. The U.S. government must demonstrate its continued leadership by displaying
the confidence that it can thrive in competitive environments at home, on the global market, and
in China itself.
Copyright © 2002-2009 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
All rights reserved.
'Strategic reassurance' that isn't
By Robert Kagan and Dan Blumenthal
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Washington Post
The Obama administration's worldview is still emerging, but its policies toward Russia and
China are already revealing. Its Russia policy consists of trying to accommodate Moscow's sense
of global entitlement. So far that has meant ignoring the continued presence of Russian forces on
Georgian territory, negotiating arms-control agreements that Moscow needs more than
Washington does and acquiescing to Russian objections to new NATO installations -- such as
missile interceptors -- in former Warsaw Pact countries. An aggrieved Russia demands that the
West respect a sphere of influence in its old imperial domain. The Obama administration
rhetorically rejects the legitimacy of any such sphere, but its actions raise doubts for those who
live in Russia's shadow.
The administration has announced a similar accommodating approach to China. Dubbed
"strategic reassurance," the policy aims to convince the Chinese that the United States has no
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intention of containing their rising power. Details remain to be seen, but as with the Russia
"reset," it is bound to make American allies nervous.
Administration officials seem to believe that the era of great-power competition is over. The
pursuit of power, President Obama declared during a July speech about China, "must no longer
be seen as a zero-sum game."
Unfortunately, that is not the reality in Asia. Contrary to optimistic predictions just a decade ago,
China is behaving exactly as one would expect a great power to behave. As it has grown richer,
China has used its wealth to build a stronger and more capable military. As its military power has
grown, so have its ambitions.
This is especially true of its naval ambitions. Not so long ago, our China experts believed it was
absurd for China to aspire to a "blue-water" navy capable of operating far from its shores.
Yet the new head of the U.S. Pacific Command, Adm. Robert Willard, noted last month that "in
the past decade or so, China has exceeded most of our intelligence estimates of their military
capability. . . . They've grown at an unprecedented rate." Defense Secretary Robert Gates
recently warned that China's military modernization program could undermine U.S. military
power in the Pacific.
It is hardly surprising that China wants to supplant U.S. power in the region. To the Chinese, the
reign of "the middle kingdom" is the natural state of affairs and the past 200 years of Western
dominance an aberration. Nor is it surprising that China wants to reshape international security
arrangements that the United States established after World War II, when China was too weak to
have a say.
What is surprising is the Obama administration's apparent willingness to accommodate these
ambitions. This worries U.S. allies from New Delhi to Seoul.
Those nations are under no illusion about great-power competition. India is engaged in strategic
competition with China, especially in the Indian Ocean, which both see as their sphere of
influence. Japan's government wants to improve relations with Beijing, but many in Japan fear
an increasingly hegemonic China. The nations of Southeast Asia do business with China but look
to the United States for strategic support against their giant neighbor.
For decades, U.S. strategy toward China has had two complementary elements. The first was to
bring China into the "family of nations" through engagement. The second was to make sure
China did not become too dominant, through balancing. The Clinton administration pushed for
China's accession to the World Trade Organization and normalized trade but also strengthened
the U.S. military alliance with Japan. The Bush administration fostered close economic ties and
improved strategic cooperation with China. But the United States also forged a strategic
partnership with India and enhanced its relations with Japan, Singapore and Vietnam. The
strategy has been to give China a greater stake in peace, while maintaining a balance of power in
the region favorable to democratic allies and American interests.
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"Strategic reassurance" seems to chart a different course. Senior officials liken the policy to the
British accommodation of a rising United States at the end of the 19th century, which entailed
ceding the Western Hemisphere to American hegemony. Lingering behind this concept is an
assumption of America's inevitable decline.
Yet nothing would do more to hasten decline than to follow this path. The British
accommodation of America's rise was based on close ideological kinship. British leaders
recognized the United States as a strategic ally in a dangerous world -- as proved true throughout
the 20th century. No serious person would imagine a similar grand alliance and "special
relationship" between an autocratic China and a democratic United States. For the Chinese -- true
realists -- the competition with the United States in East Asia is very much a zero-sum game.
For that reason, "strategic reassurance" is likely to fail. The Obama administration cannot back
out of the region any time soon; Obama's trip this week, in fact, seems designed to demonstrate
American staying power. Nor is China likely to end or slow its efforts to militarily and
economically dominate the region. So it will quickly become obvious that no one on either side
feels reassured.
Unfortunately, the only result will be to make American allies nervous. For an administration
that has announced "we are back" after years of alleged Bush administration neglect in Asia, this
is not an auspicious beginning.
Let a Hundred Flowers Be Crushed
The precarious lives of China's dissidents.
BY Ellen Bork
December 31 - January 7, 2008, Vol. 13, No. 16
The Weekly Standard
I arrived in Hangzhou on a plane from Beijing one Saturday in August. Wen picked me up at the
airport. We had met once, years before, at an international gathering in Jakarta. Back then, at
dinner one night, the Americans around the table had argued over China policy. Afterward, I'd
given Wen my card, telling him, a bit apprehensively, that I was pretty tough on his government.
"Please continue," he'd said. I had often remembered that encounter but never expected to see
him again. It was a surprise to find he would be my guide for the second leg of a trip friends had
helped arrange so that I could meet Chinese dissidents in Beijing and Hangzhou.
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The week before I arrived, some 40 intellectuals, journalists, lawyers, and human rights activists
had released a letter decrying the condition of human rights, particularly at a time when Chinese
leaders were using the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, to be held in Beijing, to enhance China's
international prestige. Over the ten days I was in China, I met several dissidents who had signed
the open letter.
Hangzhou is a tourist city with a large lake and historic villas where Mao Zedong, Chiang Kaishek, and literary figures used to vacation. Wen, who is in his mid-30s, spent several years
working in the import-export business before turning more or less full time to writing and civic
action. Fifteen minutes into our ride, he told me that two black cars had been with us since the
airport. They followed us for the next three days.
I hadn't noticed any surveillance in Beijing, and neither had my guide there--a scientist whose
career had been derailed by his involvement in the protests at Tiananmen Square, violently
suppressed by the government on June 4, 1989. Yet I'd visited one of China's most prominent
dissidents, Ding Zilin, the mother of a teenager killed in the Tiananmen massacre. Possibly
someone watching her apartment, or that of another dissident I visited, the literary critic Liu
Xiaobo, had seen me and alerted the authorities in Hangzhou. Before my trip, my friends and I
had agreed that it was actually a good thing for the authorities to know the dissidents had
supporters outside China. Now, seeing the black cars in the side-view mirror, I still believed that,
but I couldn't help worrying.
Wen had planned to register my hotel room in his name so I wouldn't have to turn over my
passport to the hotel, which reports information to security officials. We went through with this
plan even though it didn't make sense any more. Over the next few days I met with a human
rights lawyer, a journalist who had been fired for reporting on the demolition of an unauthorized
church building, and a writer who publishes articles with titles like "Hu Jintao: Kneel Down
Before Me" on overseas Chinese websites.
The dissidents in China walk a tightrope. The Communist party allows certain things, but draws
the line at others. The dissidents I am writing about here communicate fairly easily with each
other and with the outside world. When they are careful, there is a kind of modus vivendi with
the authorities. But there are some things they know they cannot do without serious
consequences.
The case of my guide in Beijing, the scientist Jiang Qisheng, is a good example. The party
refuses to reverse the official position that the demonstrations of 1989, joined by protesters in
cities throughout China, were the work of a "small handful" of counterrevolutionaries. To
commemorate Tiananmen as a tragedy and question the official position is to challenge the
party's legitimacy. In 1999, Jiang wrote an open letter encouraging Chinese people to remember
and honor the victims of Tiananmen. Then he talked about it on Radio Free Asia, the U.S.funded service that broadcasts into China in Mandarin. He was promptly arrested and sent to jail
for four years. "What I did, what landed me in prison, was really quite simple," he wrote in the
New York Review of Books after he was released in 2003. "I just said in public what my fellow
citizens were saying" in those "nooks in China where ordinary people have determined that they
can speak their minds without incurring disaster." The party cannot tolerate any call to the
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Chinese people on an issue as sensitive as Tiananmen; speaking directly to the nation on Radio
Free Asia--as opposed to writing for a mainly American audience--crossed a line.
One problem is knowing where the line is. Another is deciding whether you are willing to cross
it.
On its face, the August letter is quite bold. It condemned human rights abuses and showed the
signers have no illusions that merely hosting the games will moderate the behavior of China's
Communist party rulers. "We, as citizens of the People's Republic of China, ought to be feeling
pride in our country's glory in hosting the Games, whose purposes include the symbolization of
peace, friendship, and fairness in the world community. . . . Instead we feel disappointment and
doubt as we witness the continuing systematic denial of the human rights of our fellow citizens
even while--and sometimes because--Olympic preparations are moving forward."
Yet the letter--reported around the world and relayed back into China via Chinese language
websites monitored by the regime--stopped short of calling for a boycott of the Olympic games,
which the signers thought would trigger a harsh reaction from the government. The letter also
asked for the creation of an independent group to monitor preparations for the Olympics. The
dissidents know, however, that if they actually set up such an independent group, it would be
crushed.
The letter also did not mention the Tiananmen massacre, despite the pall it still casts over China.
In the days after the letter's release, I was able to visit Ding and her husband, both retired
professors in their early 70s. After their 17-year-old son was killed, Ding began gathering
information about what happened the night of the Tiananmen massacre. She started by collecting
the names of the victims. Despite official harassment, she interviewed relatives of the victims to
document their deaths and counter the official denial; one man told her that, looking for his
brother at a hospital morgue, he was shown just a hand. Ding and another mother began speaking
to foreign reporters about their children. Other relatives joined their efforts. They became the
Tiananmen Mothers, a group of nearly 200. Now they themselves are getting old and beginning
to die.
Several years ago, security officials came to Ding and told her they wouldn't post agents at her
building if she promised not to meet with foreigners and journalists at home. She refused. It was
their job to keep people away, she said. If visitors made it to her apartment, she would be a good
hostess. She gave me tea. Even a few months ago, she said, it would not have been possible to
meet her at home, but the authorities "have put on their masks" for the Olympics. She expects a
few months of relative latitude before things tighten up for the next June 4 anniversary, then the
games. The line has moved, for a time. It will move back.
We talked about the importance of memory and efforts made by people in other countries to
accept history, like the German artist who installs small plaques in the sidewalk outside
addresses from which Jews were deported to death camps. I told Ding about two exiled Iranian
sisters, Roya and Ladan Boroumand, who have created a database of human rights violations as
an online memorial to victims of the Islamic revolution. Their father was assassinated in Paris for
his opposition to the Khomeini regime. Ding's face drew taut and she made a sound of empathy.
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After her son was killed, Ding Zilin went to buy a cake to mark his birthday. A security officer
followed her. They waited in silence until the clerk brought out the cake. The icing read, "We
miss you." The agent's eyes became wet with tears.
I asked Ding if she would show me where her son was killed. She went to another room to get
her glasses. She returned and drew a small circle on my tourist map at an intersection about four
miles from the square. Most of the victims were killed on the outskirts as troops rolled in to
secure the city. "Muxidi," she said. He was shot in the back while trying to take cover in the
entrance to the Muxidi subway stop.
The Tiananmen massacre and the ensuing political crackdown also took a toll on Pu Zhiqian, a
lawyer who works on politically sensitive cases. His participation in the protests at Tiananmen as
a youth ruined his chances for an academic career. He says he became a lawyer because he
couldn't do anything else. Pu is a broad shouldered man with a crew cut who carries his own tea
leaves and thermos in a crocheted bag. "Sometimes I forget I am a lawyer," he says. "I go a little
too far. . . . I feel just as if I was accused."
In 2004, Pu defended two writers who had been sued for libel by a local party official for
portraying local party officials in Anhui province as thugs. In an emotional, free-wheeling
courtroom argument, Pu cited New York Times v. Sullivan, a landmark American libel case, and
the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The case has still not been decided, which in a
legal system overseen by the Communist party counts as something of a victory.
Pu told me that one year around the June 4 anniversary, when extra security measures are taken,
some agents were assigned to sit in his law office all day. Pu left them in a conference room with
a DVD playing The Lives of Others, the Oscar-winning film about an agent of the Stasi, the East
German Ministry for State Security, who develops sympathy for the playwright he is spying on.
Pu said he felt a little bad that the disc was pirated.
The afternoon the dissidents' letter was released in August, a security official telephoned Liu
Xiaobo and asked to meet with him. Because Liu's wife, Xia, doesn't like having policemen in
the apartment, they met at a tea house. Liu is in his early 50s, a bit gangly with a short, stubbly
haircut and big glasses. In 1989, eager to show intellectuals' support for the demonstrators, he
had returned from abroad to join the democracy protests. After the massacre, Liu had been
detained for nearly two years. Then again in 1996, he'd been summarily sentenced to three years'
"reeducation through labor"--a practice that allows for imprisonment without trial--for signing a
letter that criticized President Jiang Zemin.
Liu received me in his living room and study, dark with books and decorated with his wife's
paintings and photographs. One of her photographic subjects is dolls with distorted facial
expressions. She gave me a stack of her pictures to look through. One of them showed a doll, as
if gasping for air, with a sheet of plastic wrapped around its head. "That is from when he was in
jail," she said.
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I asked about the relationship between the dissidents and their minders. No one I'd spoken with
had mentioned any instance of personal cruelty. Most, it seemed, had a story of kindness shown
by a member of the security apparatus--though always when no one else was around.
Liu explained the difference between people's public and private face in China's Communist
party dictatorship. Privately, people can behave decently. In public, people have to behave in a
particular way to protect themselves. Each of the dissidents I met has broken with this
convention of the system. All have chosen to merge their public and private selves as much as
they can, by signing an open letter, talking freely about the Tiananmen massacre, or meeting me.
They are waiting for the line to move far enough that to behave this way--to integrate one's
public and private selves--is no longer an act of courage.
One day in Hangzhou, Wen and I had some time to kill. We spent a few hours on a boat on the
lake on the west side of town. While our police detail stayed on the shore, Wen told me about a
visit he'd had the year before. Liu Xiaobo, the literary critic I'd met in Beijing, and Liu's wife had
come to see him. Tailed by police, they went to a scenic lake outside of Hangzhou. There was
only one boat, and Wen had already rented it. The policemen came on board. The dissidents and
the policemen sat in silence ten feet apart, floating on the water. At lunch later that day, Wen
tried to pay the bill and discovered that the policemen had reciprocated for the boat ride by
paying the check.
My trip ended without incident. At least, for me. In the months since I returned to Washington,
however, two of the people I met but do not mention here have been arrested. I have an idea of
what they did to cross the line, but it's hard to know for sure.
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North Korea
SEPTEMBER 26, 2010
It's Time for a Political War on Pyongyang
Instead of looking forward to more talks with a new leader, why not try to topple a
weak regime?
BY CHRISTIAN WHITON
The Wall Street Journal Asia
North Korea's leaders tomorrow will hold a rare gathering of the ruling Korean Workers' Party.
Analysts believe they will name the eventual successor to current dictator Kim Jong Il. This
creates a challenge for foreign ministries around the Pacific: how to react. Some will
undoubtedly see an opportunity to revive nuclear talks with a new, and hopefully more
reasonable, leader in Pyongyang. Instead, Washington and allied capitals should seek to give an
already wobbly Pyongyang regime a shove.
Kim Jong Il's third son, Kim Jong Eun, is expected to be named as successor. The elder Kim was
anointed as the eventual successor to his father Kim Il Sung at the last Party assembly in 1980.
At that time he was 39 years old and already well entrenched in the Party leadership. He had the
14 ensuing years to prepare for his role as "Dear Leader" of the country. Kim Jong Eun probably
won't have that advantage. His father is said to be in declining health. And the son himself is
only in his 20s and has never been observed playing a major role in Pyongyang politics.
One consequence is that those who believe a diplomatic bargain can be had from North Korea
will be disappointed. Because Kim Jong Eun is unlikely to be able to take full control right away,
Pyongyang under "new" management will still have many of the same personalities, institutional
memories and incentives of the past two decades. Those leaders have taken to heart Kim Jong Il's
example of the benefits of double-dealing. On his watch, Pyongyang convinced the Clinton and
George W. Bush administrations that it would surrender its nuclear weapons program in return
for copious amounts of foreign assistance. Instead he was able to pocket the aid and keep the
nuclear program—even sinking a South Korean naval ship and killing 46 sailors—without any
adverse consequences.
The fact that more nuclear talks would be futile doesn't mean America and its allies have no
options, however. The apparent fragility of the succession and weakness of the heir apparent
offer clues to a better strategy: political warfare aimed at helping the North Korean people topple
the regime.
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One component of this strategy would be to instill in Pyongyang's elites a fear that the end for
their rule may be near. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has started sending this message
with his August proposal for a "unification tax" in the South to pay for the expected costs of
helping North Korea to its feet when the regime collapses. While the tax itself is a bad idea—it
would risk impeding the economic growth that's the best way for the South to ensure it can
afford reunification—the move sent a clear message that Seoul expects the Pyongyang regime to
fall one day and thinks the free world can be prepared.
Pyongyang's heated response suggests it got the point. State media declared the proposal a
"hideous provocation against the dignity of [North Korea] and the most advantageous socialist
system in it." Washington, Seoul and Tokyo should keep pressing this point, perhaps by
organizing more, and more public, meetings to discuss regime-collapse contingency planning.
Were Pacific democracies to begin serious, ongoing talks about this, the message to the Kim
family's enablers in Pyongyang would be clear. Their time is limited.
A political warfare strategy also would involve empowering North Korean people. In a closed
society like North Korea, the best way to do this is by giving them access to information.
Broadcasts into North Korea help undermine Pyongyang's censorship, inspire North Koreans,
and increasingly provide information to the outside world about the North. Unfortunately, Radio
Free Asia's Korean service is facing an immediate budget cut, and a large reduction in
transmission funding is expected for next year. More critically, the State Department cut off new
funding for Free North Korea Radio, whose network and defector-led broadcasts are perhaps the
most effective of all.
Finally, political warfare can utilize a military element to help undermine the regime by driving a
wedge between civil and military authorities and demoralizing the latter. Washington, Tokyo and
Seoul should continue holding military exercises such as that recently conducted in the Yellow
Sea. It would also be well worth holding a frank discussion about whether North Korea's nuclear
capabilities now call for an allied nuclear counterforce. This could consist of U.S. intermediaterange nuclear missiles in South Korea and Japan or aboard U.S. Navy submarines.
Such steps would signal to military leaders in the North that they could never win a confrontation
if they started one. And these measures also would send a useful message to Pyongyang's patrons
in Beijing that North Korea's actions could force other countries into measures that could
undermine China's own regional aims. For instance, China frowned on recent U.S. drills in the
Yellow Sea as a threat to its own security; those drills might not have happened had America and
South Korea not felt compelled to counter threats and provocations from the North.
Those hoping that a fresh new face in Pyongyang will finally allow the old strategy of nuclear
talks to work will be disappointed. But by adopting a new strategy to face the new leadership,
America, Japan and South Korea could seize this unique opportunity to address the Pyongyang
problem once and for all.
Mr. Whiton, a State Department senior advisor from 2003 to 2009, is a principal at D.C.
International Advisory.
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Reprinted from The Wall Street Journal © 2010 Dow Jones & Company. All Rights
Reserved.
Pressuring Pyongyang
BY Carolyn Leddy, Christian Whiton and Jamie Fly
April 30, 2009 11:00 PM
The Weekly Standard
North Korea's actions over the past month, including its restarting of its nuclear reactor at
Yongbyon and its threats this week to conduct nuclear and ballistic missile tests, serve as the latest
reminder that American policy toward Pyongyang has failed. Unfortunately, the Obama
administration is likely to continue an approach to Pyongyang utilized by the Clinton and Bush
administrations that has not prevented North Korea from obtaining a nuclear capability, developing
the means to deliver it over great distances, and proliferating related technology.
The administration should consider alternatives. A successful North Korea policy needs to discard a
key faulty assumption: that the regime will give up its sole lifeline for an ample amount of
inducements. It is now clear that the Kim Jong Il regime has no intention of trading away its
nuclear or missile programs. Those programs enable the regime to generate resources through
proliferation proceeds and to extort foreign assistance. This sustenance allows Kim to sustain his
brutal regime, which holds some 200,000 political prisoners.
U.S. North Korea policy should also be based on realistic assumptions, including the limitations of
the parties involved. The Six-Party Talks were predicated on the premise that Beijing would use its
influence over Pyongyang to curb its nuclear activities. This did not happen. China never cut aid to
North Korea for a sustained period, and UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1718, passed
after North Korea's October 2006 nuclear test, was never seriously enforced by any country,
including the United States.
A realistic approach to North Korea lies in deterrence, counter-proliferation and real efforts to
erode the regime's repression apparatus over time.
First, we should resuscitate the U.S.-Japan alliance, which was damaged by the Bush
administration's focus on cutting a deal with Pyongyang. This requires a new commitment to
alliance military cooperation including on missile and air defense. Japan should be permitted to
acquire the top-of-the-line F-22 fighter jet as a symbol of renewed partnership. We need to plan and
exercise seriously with the Japanese about North Korean contingencies ranging from proliferation
292
to missile attacks. And we must not dismiss the genuine concerns of the Japanese public about
issues such as Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea. Second, we should redefine our alliance
with South Korea. The North's primary threat to the South is its arsenal of hundreds of artillery
systems that could devastate Seoul. Rather than a U.S. presence that still includes ground forces,
the primary focus of our military cooperation with Seoul should be on counter-battery systems that
could neutralize this threat in the first minutes of a conflict. We should also release Seoul from
some of its bilateral commitments to us, allowing it to develop and purchase more advanced
weapons systems including missiles and UAVs.
Third, there should be a renewed focus on North Korea's proliferation of nuclear and missile
technology that transits through the region on its way to countries such as Iran and Syria. This is
not merely a theoretical threat. The Kim regime has proliferated virtually every major weapons
technology it has. The Proliferation Security Initiative developed by the Bush administration is
useful but has limitations. Key countries in East Asia have not joined, including South Korea. The
Obama administration should renew efforts to persuade Seoul to join.
Furthermore, the United States should step up its implementation of UNSCR 1718. Absent U.S.
leadership, enforcement will remain nonexistent. Every North Korean ship suspected of carrying
illicit cargo should be boarded by the U.S. and allied navies. This should include Japan, which we
can encourage to take on new missions that broaden its traditional view of self-defense.
Beijing is highly unlikely to help with these efforts. While there are limits to what can be done
about this, the U.S. can dispense with the fantasy that China is a cooperative partner on North
Korea. Beijing is concerned about its international image, and a policy of truth-in-advertising could
have a beneficial effect.
Next, the U.S. should return to the successful tactic of targeting the finances of the North Korean
regime and organizations related to it. This was done with great success early in the Bush
administration, but abandoned to entice North Korea to agree to talks and concessions, which then
went unfulfilled. Macau's seizure of a relatively small amount of Pyongyang's cash after the U.S.
Treasury designated Banco Delta Asia as a primary money laundering concern in 2005 was one of
the few measures that got North Korea's attention--until it was reversed at the request of the Bush
administration.
First among those sanctioned should be the North Korean individuals and entities who were
involved in the construction of Syria's plutonium reactor, destroyed by the Israeli Air Force in
September 2007, which was the first step toward making a state sponsor of terrorism a nuclear
power. It is unfathomable that the U.S. has yet to designate a single North Korean nuclear entity.
Moreover, the U.S. should undertake efforts to expose, target, and sanction Kim's personal cash
reserves and assets scattered around the globe. Missile defense is key. Secretary Gates should
reverse his plans to cancel installation of additional interceptors in Alaska. In a future missile
launch scenario, he should approve his commanders' request to deploy the military's powerful SBX
radar to the region and attempt to shoot down North Korean missiles--ideally before they provide
useful telemetry to Pyongyang's engineers. Critically, Congress should ignore the $1.4 billion of
requested cuts to missile defense sought by the administration.
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Finally, U.S. policy should seek to change the nature of the North Korean regime over the longterm. This means getting more information into North Korea, which in repressive systems
expedites regime decay. Limited resources provided by the last administration for independent
Korean-speaking broadcasters should be increased considerably. The U.S. should fund an airborne
broadcast platform similar to the one we use on Cuba--and provide more resources to the
broadcasters themselves. Ending U.S. support for food aid that is routinely diverted from intended
recipients to the military is key.
An honest and pragmatic North Korea policy that acknowledges the true nature of the North
Korean regime, its proliferation of the world's most dangerous weapons, and the brutal treatment of
its people will make America safer and will ensure that U.S. policy reflects our core ideals. North
Korea has been conditioned to expect foreign assistance and legitimacy in return for its bad
behavior--a lesson reinforced by the past several U.S. administrations. Until this cycle is terminated
and replaced by a policy based in reality, the North Korean threat will persist and grow.
Jamie Fly served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and on the National Security Council
Staff from 2005-2009. He is Policy Director of the Foreign Policy Initiative. Carolyn Leddy served
at the State Department and on the National Security Council Staff from 2003-2007. She was a
member of an official U.S. delegation that visited the Yongbyon nuclear facility in North Korea in
2007. Christian Whiton was a State Department official from 2003-2009 and served as deputy
special envoy for human rights in North Korea. He is a policy adviser to the Foreign Policy
Initiative.
Copyright 2010 Weekly Standard LLC.
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Burma
Burma: The Next Nuclear Rogue?
By Dana Rohrabacher
September 24, 2010
National Review Online
For our sake as well as theirs, America must start assisting the brave opponents of the Burmese junta.
Over the past decade, while America has struggled with intractable conflicts in Iraq and
Afghanistan, ominous long-term changes in the international landscape have evolved into an
ugly new reality. Once we have freed ourselves from the mayhem of Iraq and Afghanistan, we
may be shocked to find that our attention has been needed elsewhere. A number of so-called
―brush-fire‖ wars may have serious long-term consequences, and North Korea‘s and Iran‘s
uncompromising and unrelenting efforts to obtain nuclear weapons are coming to a crisis. It
seems that while we have been focused elsewhere, they have been fixated on their goal.
As the U.S. participates in the gathering of the United Nations General Assembly that opened
yesterday morning, our feeble response to both North Korea and Iran has set a bad example —
potentially resulting in a nuclear arsenal in the hands of one or both of these erratic and irrational
regimes. A number of other unsavory characters also seek the clout, security, and respectful
attention that nuclear weapons provide. There have been recent revelations, for example, that the
Burmese junta, a government that is the worst of the worst, is engaged in a long-term endeavor
to obtain nuclear capability.
Over the past two decades, the Burmese military has turned a once-prosperous country with
enormous potential into a poverty-stricken police state where the government literally enslaves
its own people for manual labor. Village after village in Burma‘s ethnic tribal areas has been
burned and savaged by the junta‘s forces, turning hundreds of thousands of Burmese into
displaced persons. The more fortunate refugees have managed to flee across the Thai border in
order to reach some semblance of safety. But even Thailand, with its long history of benevolence
and charity toward refugees fleeing tyranny, is reaching its limits.
295
The suffering of the people of this hidden corner of Asia knows no bounds. When a massive
cyclone hit Burma in 2008, the military delayed Western aid from reaching devastated areas,
with no concern for the suffering of their own people. The ruling generals are tyrannical,
bloodthirsty, and without moral restraint. So how do nuclear weapons fit into this picture?
Recent reports indicate that the regime is actively pursuing a nuclear program, with the help of
North Korea. Such awesome new power in the hands of psychotic bullies who have no regard for
human life would be a nightmare — not just for the suffering Burmese, but for all of humanity.
Like North Korea‘s nuclear program, Burma‘s does not suggest that it‘s time to cut a deal. It‘s
time for regime change. Such a goal does not require us to send troops, but it does require a
commitment to an alternative, and it requires our attention.
Thankfully, there is an alternative to the Burmese military establishment. Aung San Suu Kyi and
her ethnic allies are democratic and give the West a viable and powerful option. They would
already have succeeded in toppling their oppressors, except that China has supplied the junta
with an arsenal of modern arms and other instruments of repression. There is a steep price for
China‘s assistance. Burma‘s vast natural resources are being plundered, and China is being
provided with strategic military positioning for its army and navy, which puts India in serious
jeopardy. All of this is, of course, in keeping with China‘s global game plan of adding to its own
power by helping the world‘s most rotten regimes, including North Korea, Iran, Sudan, and
Venezuela, among others.
America, stuck in quagmires of our own, has not made any serious effort to counter the Chineseled coalition of despicable regimes. The State Department‘s policy of engagement and patience
has not resulted in domestic changes, while at the same time some of these countries have made
great progress toward gaining nuclear-weapon capabilities. The suffering of their people
continues even as they pour their money into nuclear-weapon development. Iran and Burma both
have organized opposition movements, but while America may applaud them, our government
has always stopped short of full and vigorous support.
I recently returned from the Thai-Burmese border, where I consulted with members of the
Burmese democracy movement. I was deeply impressed with not only their courage, but also
their commitment to a decentralized, denuclearized, democratic Burma. The freedom-loving
people of the region want to be our allies against an evil enemy, as they were in the fight against
the Japanese in World War II. The American government has treated them as pariahs.
A few Americans — missionaries, former members of the Special Forces, and a sprinkling of
adventurers — are there on the border as volunteers. Reminiscent of the Flying Tigers before
Pearl Harbor, though not as well equipped, this ragtag contingent of American idealists help as
best they can, though often facing hostility from elements in our own government. They are
doing what my father used to call ―the Lord‘s work‖ — literally as well as figuratively.
Our government did not support brave anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan, like Commander
Massoud, until after we had been attacked on 9/11. Had we done so, the attack might not have
happened. So there is a cost to a policy of ignoring those struggling against tyrannical and/or
fanatical forces, as in Afghanistan — and in Burma.
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When America supports those brave souls fighting for their freedom against despicable tyrants,
we are not only doing the right thing by them, we are invariably bolstering the safety of our own
country. This is especially true in an era when proliferation of nuclear weapons is not just a
theoretical threat.
— Dana Rohrabacher (R.) represents California‘s 46th CD.
© 2010 by National Review, Inc., 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10016. Reprinted by
permission
Granted by: Katherine Connell
Date: October 5, 2010
The Wall Street Journal
Burma Wild Cards
Offering to talk to the junta can work, but only under certain conditions.
By KELLEY CURRIE
Wall Street Journal
The Obama administration recently clarified its intentions to expand direct contact with the
Burmese junta, starting with a meeting with junta officials in New York this week. For her part,
Aung San Suu Kyi—the democratically elected leader of Burma barred by the junta from taking
power for two decades—has made some moves of her own to restart dialogue, sending a letter to
junta leader Than Shwe offering to work with the military regime to ease Burma's pariah status
and help get western sanctions lifted. For both the United States and Ms. Suu Kyi, there are big
risks but also potential rewards for laying their cards on the table with the junta.
Ms. Suu Kyi has mastered the skill of being tactically flexible while adhering to core principles
and focusing on the long-term goals. Her offer to help ease sanctions is a vintage Suu Kyi tactic.
While reiterating that the sanctions are not hers to lift or keep, she correctly acknowledges the
ability to make things better or worse for the junta on this score.
The letter appears conciliatory, but in reality seems designed to put the junta on the defensive.
Those who are frustrated by the junta's determined hold on power will take note of her continued
willingness and ability to confront the regime. After more than 20 years in power, the junta itself
has made remarkably little progress in its efforts to establish legitimacy at home or abroad. Ms.
Suu Kyi's very existence serves as a constant check on their efforts to establish legitimacy and
she seems fully aware of the power this gives her.
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Ms. Suu Kyi also appears to make a virtue of her current house arrest at the hands of the junta by
asking for briefings on the impact of sanctions from representatives of the countries that imposed
them. She also wants to discuss her findings with her fellow party members—difficult to do
while under house arrest. She apparently has repeated her long-standing request for discussions
with humanitarian organizations on both the problems they are seeing in Burma and ways that
they can work with the democratic opposition to help resolve them. By positioning herself as
objectively looking at the facts and willing to adapt her views accordingly, she contrasts her
reasonableness with both the obdurate ridiculousness of the junta and the rigid image that her
critics have attempted to create.
Ms. Suu Kyi has a limited ability to communicate her messages directly, due to her confinement.
She thus runs a risk that her tactics will be misunderstood as compromises of the principles that
give her moral authority. This has already happened to a degree, as reports by news outlets like
CNN, the Independent and the Associated Press have portrayed her latest move as a complete
turnabout when it is nothing of the sort. However, the bigger risk of her approach is that the
western countries she relies on to give substance to her leverage over sanctions will abandon her
by attempting to cut their own deals with the junta.
Herein lies the danger for the Obama administration as well. Having shown tactical flexibility
with its own bid for direct talks, the U.S. now must likewise exhibit an uncompromising
commitment to principle. In rolling out their new approach, Assistant Secretary of State for Asia
Kurt Campbell said "we will continue to push for the immediate and unconditional release of
Aung San Suu Kyi and all political prisoners, an end to conflicts with ethnic minorities and gross
human rights violations, and initiation of a credible internal political dialogue with the
democratic opposition and ethnic minority leaders on elements of reconciliation and reform." He
also indicated that there will be no move to lift sanctions until and unless the junta takes concrete
steps on these core concerns.
Even with these caveats, the Obama team runs the risk of sending a misleading message to the
generals that they are being brought in from the cold, especially in light of Senator James Webb's
recent trip to Burma and his recent statements. Mr. Webb seems to want the U.S. to emulate
China's behavior in Burma and abandon principled support for the democracy movement to
better check China's influence. He has expressed unqualified support for the junta's planned 2010
elections, which will institutionalize military rule, and has called for preemptive lifting of
sanctions. There is a significant difference between that version of engagement and the kind Ms.
Suu Kyi supports. She has already seemed to publicly rebuke the senator for putting words in her
mouth about sanctions. Senator Webb's clumsy efforts could easily undercut the kind of
sophisticated diplomacy that the Obama administration hopes to employ.
Ms. Suu Kyi has signaled that she will not be sidelined by any new engagement track the U.S.
opens, but rather that she is integral to its success. Her invitation to talk to the regime about
sanctions—together with the new U.S. outreach—puts the onus squarely where it belongs: on
Than Shwe and the junta. Should the generals choose to ignore her offer or attempt to negotiate
directly with the U.S., she seems poised to revoke her qualified support for engagement, leaving
the Obama administration in the politically difficult position of engaging with the regime without
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her blessing. That would be a losing gamble for the U.S., and more importantly, for the Burmese
people.
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India/South Asia
Diplomatic Negligence
The Obama administration fumbles relations with India
BY Daniel Twining
The Weekly Standard
May 10, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 32
In 1998, President Bill Clinton flew over Japan without stopping on his way to spend nine days
in China. This led to acute concern in Tokyo over ―Japan passing‖—the belief that Washington
was neglecting a key Asian ally in favor of the region‘s rising star, China. Twelve years later,
Indians worry that the same thing may be happening to them, despite the transformation in U.S.
relations symbolized by the 2008 nuclear deal.
A decade ago, new hopes for the relationship were embodied by Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee‘s declaration that India and America were ―natural allies‖—a formulation embraced by
President Clinton in 2000 when he became the first American head of state to visit India since
Jimmy Carter. President George W. Bush assumed office with a view of India as a future world
power, a frontline Asian balancer, and a pluralistic democracy with which America should
naturally cooperate in world affairs. But New Delhi‘s exclusion from an international nuclear
order constructed by Washington and its allies stood in the way of normal relations.
Hence the Bush administration‘s revolutionary campaign starting in 2005 to integrate India into
the global nuclear club. India proved itself worthy of this sea change in its relations with
America and the world. To overcome parliamentary opposition to the nuclear deal, Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh submitted his government to a high-stakes confidence vote—the first
time an Indian government had put its survival on the line over a question of foreign policy, no
less one involving strategic partnership with India‘s longtime nemesis, the United States.
By enacting the nuclear deal, Singh argued, India would finally assume its seat at the top table of
world politics—with American sponsorship. Nuclear cooperation opened vast new areas for
collaboration between India and the United States in defense, civilian space, high-tech trade, and
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other areas. This was the transformational legacy that President Bush, with strong bipartisan
support, bequeathed to President Obama.
But signs of trouble in U.S.-India relations emerged early on Barack Obama‘s road to the White
House. As a senator, he offered a killer amendment to restrict nuclear fuel supply to India during
consideration of the civilian-nuclear agreement, which India‘s friends in Congress had to work
hard to defeat. During the campaign, Obama toyed with appointing Bill Clinton as special envoy
for Kashmir—alarming Indians in the way that Americans might be alarmed if the European
Union offered to send a former head of state to mediate between Mexico and the United States
over the status of Texas. Following Obama‘s election, Indian officials lobbied hard to exclude
India from Richard Holbrooke‘s Afghanistan-Pakistan portfolio, anticipating inevitable U.S.
pressure on India to make concessions to Pakistan—even as elements of Islamabad‘s security
apparatus were deemed complicit in the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai.
Obama had also pledged, if elected, to push for U.S. ratification and global entry into force of the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. This issue divided Washington and New Delhi in the 1990s,
especially when the United States and China ganged up on India at the United Nations to press it
to accept a test ban that would guarantee its permanent inferiority to its larger neighbor. India‘s
worries were intensified when the Obama administration excluded India from its inaugural list of
foreign policy partners and priorities, despite references to six other Asian powers. Indian
diplomats were dumbfounded when Prime Minister Singh was not among the first two-dozen
world leaders to receive an introductory phone call from President Obama. India did not feature
in the inaugural trips to Asia by either President Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
In the ancien régime, President Bush himself was sometimes called the desk officer for India,
which gave an array of senior officials good reason to prioritize the relationship. Today, no
senior official holds a particular brief for India; Secretary Clinton‘s clear affinity for the country
and strong political support from Indian Americans have not been matched by a strategic vision
for upgraded relations. At the National Security Council, a China hand oversees all Asia
relations; at the State Department, the ranking South Asia official is a former U.S. ambassador to
Sri Lanka. Indian elites recall the days when their country was at the top of Washington‘s agenda
with the lament, ―We miss Bush.‖
China‘s elevation over India in Washington‘s hierarchy of foreign policy priorities ignores the
advantages to American interests that would accrue from India‘s success. For one, India puts the
lie to the myth that China‘s model of directed authoritarian development is the wave of the
future. This year, India‘s economy is projected to grow about as fast as China‘s, and its trend rate
of economic growth is expected to surpass that of its Asian neighbor over the coming decade.
Moreover, domestic consumption comprises two-thirds of India‘s GDP but well under half of
China‘s, giving India a more sustainable, less export-dependent economic foundation for growth.
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In two decades, India‘s population—70 percent of which is under age 35—will surpass China‘s
to make it the world‘s most populous country. Its rapidly expanding middle class—currently the
size of the entire U.S. population—should constitute 60 percent of its 1.3 billion-plus people by
2020. While India‘s 400 million-strong labor force today is only half that of China, by 2025
those figures will reverse as China‘s aging population ―falls off a demographic cliff,‖ in the
words of Nicholas Eberstadt, with dramatic implications for India‘s economic trajectory.
The character of a country‘s foreign policy cannot be separated from the nature of its internal
rule. As one Asian statesman has asked, why does no one in Asia fear India‘s rise even as they
quietly shudder at the prospect of a future Chinese superpower? The United States has an
enormous stake in the emergence of a rich, confident, democratic India that shares American
ambitions to manage Chinese power, protect Indian Ocean sea lanes, safeguard an open
international economy, stabilize a volatile region encompassing the heartland of jihadist
extremism in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and constructively manage challenges of proliferation,
climate change, and other global issues.
India is the kind of revisionist power with an exceptional self-regard that America was over a
century ago. America‘s rise to world power in the 19th and 20th centuries is, in some respects, a
model for India‘s own ambitions, partly because both define their exceptionalism with reference
to their open societies. As analyst Pratap Bhanu Mehta puts it, Indians have ―great admiration for
U.S. power‖ and want their country to ―replicate‖ rather than oppose it. How many other
countries—including America‘s closest allies—share these sentiments? It is therefore past time
to put to bed the myth that America somehow has more in common with China, or needs
Beijing‘s interest-based cooperation more than New Delhi‘s on issues as diverse as Afghanistan
and Pakistan, terrorism, the international economy, and nonproliferation.
Despite the many affinities between the United States and India, the Obama administration risks
putting India back into its subcontinental box, treating it as little more than a regional power,
while it elevates China, through both rhetoric and policy, to the level of a global superpower on
par with the United States. President Obama‘s early flirtation with a Sino-American ―G2‖
condominium raised alarm bells from Brussels to Bangalore. More recently, Indian officials were
astonished and outraged when President Obama and Chinese president Hu Jintao, at their
November 2009 Beijing summit, issued a joint statement encouraging China to lend its good
offices to resolve conflicts in South Asia. For Indians, China‘s growing footprint in their
neighborhood is a problem, not a solution.
China has armed Pakistan with nuclear weapons and advanced ballistic missile technology,
neutralizing India‘s conventional superiority over a neighbor with which it has fought four wars.
The top recipients of Chinese military aid are all India‘s immediate neighbors in South Asia.
China has built strong military-to-military ties with Burma, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri
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Lanka as part of what Indians see as a strategy to tie India down, Gulliver-like, in its region.
China is developing a range of deep-water ports in the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, and
Indian Ocean islands like Sri Lanka and the Seychelles, portending the projection of blue-water
naval power in what India considers its home seas. Despite resolving land border disputes with
its other neighbors, China has taken the opposite tack with India, pressing its claims to vast tracts
of Indian territory through strident rhetoric, punitive administrative measures in institutions like
the Asian Development Bank, and localized military skirmishes.
One explanation for the Obama administration‘s missteps on India is that the president and his
senior officials do not have a strategic vision of India‘s geopolitical importance within the wider
Asian balance of power. This is ironic, because leaders in India, China, and Japan clearly do.
Indian strategist C. Raja Mohan insists that India ―will never play second fiddle to the Chinese‖
and has ―always balanced China.‖ Indian diplomat Venu Rajamony, explaining why China‘s
leaders began taking India seriously as a great power, attributes it to the Bush administration‘s
―doing a China on China‖—forging a breakthrough strategic partnership with India that shifted
the international balance of power in the mid-2000s, just as the U.S. opening to China in the
1970s tilted the global balance against the Soviet Union.
For their part, Chinese observers complained in the state-run media that India went ―from a
potential partner of China and Russia to an ‗ideal ally‘ for the United States in its containment of
China.‖ One Chinese newspaper editorialized that ―the United States and India joined hands to
contend with China‖ because ―only India can rival China economically and politically in Asia.‖
Japanese leaders have identified strategic partnership with India as essential to maintaining
regional equilibrium as China rises. In the long term, says a senior Japanese diplomat, ―India is
the key counterweight to China in Asia.‖
For President Bush, strong Indo-U.S. relations were central to sustaining what the 2002 National
Security Strategy called ―a balance of power that favors freedom.‖ Bush administration officials
believed Washington‘s strategic investment in India was essential to shape not only a balance of
material power but an ideational balance conducive to the values of open societies. ―By reaching
out to India,‖ declared Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns in 2007, ―we have made the bet
that the planet‘s future lies in pluralism, democracy, and market economics rather than in
intolerance, despotism, and state planning‖ of the kind that characterizes China. Because of these
natural affinities, even a strong India, writes the dean of Indian strategists, K. Subrahmanyam,
would ―prefer a preeminent United States to a preeminent China.‖
President Obama‘s India policy, however, has not been rooted in either a geopolitical or valuesbased calculus. Instead, his administration until recently has pursued a China-centric Asia policy
grounded in the belief that cooperation between Washington and Beijing is essential to
delivering solutions to the big global challenges—and, implicitly, that intensified strategic
relations between Washington and New Delhi risk undermining an American policy of ―strategic
reassurance‖ toward China.
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―Strategic reassurance‖ hasn‘t worked out. Sino-American relations have deteriorated
dramatically over the past year, and China now has become President Obama‘s biggest greatpower headache. Beijing almost daily tests the limits of American patience on matters from trade
to currency to human rights to Internet freedoms to Iran sanctions to Taiwan arms sales. In light
of this troubling turn in Sino-U.S. relations, President Obama reportedly came to a certain
meeting of minds with Prime Minister Singh, in a one-on-one Oval Office conversation last
November, about the dangers an overweening China posed to both Indian and American interests
in Asia. Yet even if their threat perceptions are once again converging, Indo-U.S. relations still
lack an overarching strategic vision and a senior U.S. government champion. The relationship
remains buffeted not only by America‘s continued focus on solving the Chinese puzzle, but also
by the calculations of U.S. officials determined, with Pakistan‘s help, to wind down the war in
Afghanistan.
The Obama administration is right to frame the challenges of Pakistan and Afghanistan in their
regional context. But India can be part of the solution rather than part of the problem, as
administration officials sometimes imply. New Delhi has enormous equities in the construction
of a democratic state in Afghanistan. As one of Afghanistan‘s largest bilateral donors, it is
building infrastructure, training Afghan civil servants, and constructing schools and health
clinics. For its efforts, India has suffered repeated terrorist attacks against its embassy in Kabul
and Indian workers around the country—attesting to how important its support for building the
new Afghanistan is perceived to be by the enemies of that project. New Delhi has long wanted to
do more in Afghanistan, including training security forces, but Washington‘s Pakistan-centric
bureaucracy remains resistant.
For their part, Indian officials are aghast that Washington might willingly pursue a strategy of
reconciliation with the Taliban that, rather than ensuring its decisive defeat, instead brings it into
government from a position of strength. Many Indian elites have concluded that the United
States has shifted from a victory strategy in Afghanistan to an exit strategy—and that India
should think twice in the future before trusting Washington to meet shared security objectives.
Perversely, New Delhi is in some respects a truer proponent of America‘s original objectives in
Afghanistan—the Taliban‘s decisive defeat and the construction of a capable Afghan
democracy—than some American leaders are now. Afghanistan is in India‘s backyard. Indian
strategists fear the Taliban‘s ascendancy in Afghanistan could embolden violent extremists next
door in ways that induce Pakistan‘s ―Lebanonization,‖ with the Pakistani Taliban and associated
terrorist groups becoming a kind of South Asian Hezbollah that launches waves of attacks
against India. India cannot rise to be an Asian balancer, global security provider, and engine of
the world economy if it is mired in proxy conflict with terrorists emanating from a weak,
nuclear-armed state on its border.
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America is now looking to the Taliban‘s original sponsor to help deliver a settlement to the
Afghan conflict that allows U.S. forces to come home. This puts Rawalpindi, headquarters of
Pakistan‘s military-intelligence complex, in pole position and gives Pakistan further leverage
against the United States to pressure New Delhi on Indo-Pakistan issues. Aside from the risks
such Pakistani influence poses to Afghanistan‘s future, its growing influence with Washington
on the Afghan endgame raises dangers for the long-term health of Indo-U.S. relations.
The Bush administration‘s de-hyphenation of India and Pakistan policy after decades of
Pakistan-centricity created a range of new strategic possibilities—including the most substantial
progress ever made between India and Pakistan in back-channel negotiations on Kashmir. Dehyphenation allowed the United States to improve relations with both Islamabad and New Delhi
rather than treating them in zero-sum terms. Indian trust that Washington won‘t favor Pakistan‘s
revisionist agenda in both Afghanistan and Kashmir—and that America has a stake in India‘s
democratic security against terrorism emanating from Pakistan—would do more to promote the
normalization of Indo-Pakistani relations than putting pressure on India in ways that rekindle old
sentiments about a U.S. approach that seeks not to strengthen India but, rather, to keep it down.
Today, victory in Afghanistan is essential, as are strengthening civic institutions and security in
Pakistan. But democratic India is the region‘s big strategic prize. India can be an essential
partner for the United States in promoting a more peaceful, prosperous, and liberal world. But an
untended relationship could degenerate in a way that recalls the troubled past—at a time when
India‘s region, wider Asia, and the international economic and political order are growing less
stable in ways that threaten both countries‘ core interests. ―Given all the authoritarian regimes,
terrorism, and the tenuous economic recovery in Asia,‖ asks Indian-American scholar Sumit
Ganguly, ―can Mr. Obama really allow U.S.-India relations to backslide into the mutual neglect
last seen during the Cold War? We may be about to find out.‖
Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh has framed India‘s foreign policy debate in terms of
the tension between the country‘s ―G20 identity‖ as a partner of the West and its ―G77 identity‖
as part of a bloc of developing nations that define their interests in opposition to the West. Until
recently, intensive American engagement had a gravitational effect that pulled India into closer
alliance. But left to its own devices, India could rekindle alliances that move it in the other
direction. India will make its own strategic choices, but they will be critically shaped by the
nature of American engagement.
The United States has a deep interest in India‘s success as a democratic superpower—one that
can shape a non-Western modernity that is inherently peaceful, pluralistic, prosperous, and
attractive to the wider world. The affinities between the United States and India are striking.
Both countries are threatened by terrorism, state weakness in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the rise
of China, and economic protectionism. Both countries want to live in a world safe for the values
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and interests of open societies. Indian Americans are this country‘s wealthiest immigrant
community. Indians outnumber all other foreign students at American universities. India‘s
enormous middle class embraces an ―Indian dream‖ charmingly similar to the American one.
India‘s people hold the United States in high regard—in some polls, Indians have a higher
opinion of America than do Americans themselves.
But there remains a residue of mistrust from five decades of geopolitical alienation stemming
from a Cold War split that put the two countries on opposite sides of the great ideological divide
of that era. To prevent a new and unnatural polarization in world affairs between two great
democracies that could shape the future of the international system, surely it‘s time for President
Obama to embrace the bipartisan tradition launched by President Clinton of investing in a
potentially transformative relationship with India that could change history.
Daniel Twining, senior fellow for Asia at the German Marshall Fund, previously served as a
member of the State Department‘s policy planning staff responsible for South Asia.
Center Stage for the 21st Century
Power Plays in the Indian Ocean
March/April 2009
Robert D. Kaplan
Foreign Affairs
For better or worse, phrases such "the Cold War" and "the clash of civilizations" matter. In a
similar way, so do maps. The right map can stimulate foresight by providing a spatial view of
critical trends in world politics. Understanding the map of Europe was essential to understanding
the twentieth century. Although recent technological advances and economic integration have
encouraged global thinking, some places continue to count more than others. And in some of
those, such as Iraq and Pakistan, two countries with inherently artificial contours, politics is still
at the mercy of geography.
So in what quarter of the earth today can one best glimpse the future? Because of their own
geographic circumstances, Americans, in particular, continue to concentrate on the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans. World War II and the Cold War shaped this outlook: Nazi Germany, imperial
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Japan, the Soviet Union, and communist China were all oriented toward one of these two oceans.
The bias is even embedded in mapping conventions: Mercator projections tend to place the
Western Hemisphere in the middle of the map, splitting the Indian Ocean at its far edges. And
yet, as the pirate activity off the coast of Somalia and the terrorist carnage in Mumbai last fall
suggest, the Indian Ocean -- the world's third-largest body of water -- already forms center stage
for the challenges of the twenty-first century.
The greater Indian Ocean region encompasses the entire arc of Islam, from the Sahara Desert to
the Indonesian archipelago. Although the Arabs and the Persians are known to Westerners
primarily as desert peoples, they have also been great seafarers. In the Middle Ages, they sailed
from Arabia to China; proselytizing along the way, they spread their faith through sea-based
commerce. Today, the western reaches of the Indian Ocean include the tinderboxes of Somalia,
Yemen, Iran, and Pakistan -- constituting a network of dynamic trade as well as a network of
global terrorism, piracy, and drug smuggling. Hundreds of millions of Muslims -- the legacy of
those medieval conversions -- live along the Indian Ocean's eastern edges, in India and
Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia.
The Indian Ocean is dominated by two immense bays, the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal,
near the top of which are two of the least stable countries in the world: Pakistan and Myanmar
(also known as Burma). State collapse or regime change in Pakistan would affect its neighbors
by empowering Baluchi and Sindhi separatists seeking closer links to India and Iran. Likewise,
the collapse of the junta in Myanmar -- where competition over energy and natural resources
between China and India looms -- would threaten economies nearby and require a massive
seaborne humanitarian intervention. On the other hand, the advent of a more liberal regime in
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Myanmar would undermine China's dominant position there, boost Indian influence, and quicken
regional economic integration.
In other words, more than just a geographic feature, the Indian Ocean is also an idea. It combines
the centrality of Islam with global energy politics and the rise of India and China to reveal a
multilayered, multipolar world. The dramatic economic growth of India and China has been duly
noted, but the equally dramatic military ramifications of this development have not. India's and
China's great-power aspirations, as well as their quests for energy security, have compelled the
two countries "to redirect their gazes from land to the seas," according to James Holmes and
Toshi Yoshihara, associate professors of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College. And the very
fact that they are focusing on their sea power indicates how much more self-confident they feel
on land. And so a map of the Indian Ocean exposes the contours of power politics in the twentyfirst century.
Yet this is still an environment in which the United States will have to keep the peace and help
guard the global commons -- interdicting terrorists, pirates, and smugglers; providing
humanitarian assistance; managing the competition between India and China. It will have to do
so not, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, as a land-based, in-your-face meddler, leaning on far-flung
army divisions at risk of getting caught up in sectarian conflict, but as a sea-based balancer
lurking just over the horizon. Sea power has always been less threatening than land power: as the
cliché goes, navies make port visits, and armies invade. Ships take a long time to get to a war
zone, allowing diplomacy to work its magic. And as the U.S. response to the 2004 tsunami in the
Indian Ocean showed, with most sailors and marines returning to their ships each night, navies
can exert great influence on shore while leaving a small footprint. The more the United States
becomes a maritime hegemon, as opposed to a land-based one, the less threatening it will seem
to others.
Moreover, precisely because India and China are emphasizing their sea power, the job of
managing their peaceful rise will fall on the U.S. Navy to a significant extent. There will surely
be tensions between the three navies, especially as the gaps in their relative strength begin to
close. But even if the comparative size of the U.S. Navy decreases in the decades ahead, the
United States will remain the one great power from outside the Indian Ocean region with a major
presence there -- a unique position that will give it the leverage to act as a broker between India
and China in their own backyard. To understand this dynamic, one must look at the region from
a maritime perspective.
SEA CHANGES
Thanks to the predictability of the monsoon winds, the countries on the Indian Ocean were
connected well before the age of steam power. Trade in frankincense, spices, precious stones,
and textiles brought together the peoples flung along its long shoreline during the Middle Ages.
Throughout history, sea routes have mattered more than land routes, writes the historian Felipe
Fernández-Armesto, because they carry more goods more economically. "Whoever is lord of
Malacca has his hand on the throat of Venice," went one saying during the late fifteenth century,
alluding to the city's extensive commerce with Asia; if the world were an egg, Hormuz would be
its yolk, went another. Even today, in the jet and information age, 90 percent of global commerce
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and about 65 percent of all oil travel by sea. Globalization has been made possible by the cheap
and easy shipping of containers on tankers, and the Indian Ocean accounts for fully half the
world's container traffic. Moreover, 70 percent of the total traffic of petroleum products passes
through the Indian Ocean, on its way from the Middle East to the Pacific. As these goods travel
that route, they pass through the world's principal oil shipping lanes, including the Gulfs of Aden
and Oman -- as well as some of world commerce's main chokepoints: Bab el Mandeb and the
Straits of Hormuz and Malacca. Forty percent of world trade passes through the Strait of
Malacca; 40 percent of all traded crude oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz.
Already the world's preeminent energy and trade interstate seaway, the Indian Ocean will matter
even more in the future. Global energy needs are expected to rise by 45 percent between 2006
and 2030, and almost half of the growth in demand will come from India and China. China's
demand for crude oil doubled between 1995 and 2005 and will double again in the coming 15
years or so; by 2020, China is expected to import 7.3 million barrels of crude per day -- half of
Saudi Arabia's planned output. More than 85 percent of the oil and oil products bound for China
cross the Indian Ocean and pass through the Strait of Malacca.
India -- soon to become the world's fourth-largest energy consumer, after the United States,
China, and Japan -- is dependent on oil for roughly 33 percent of its energy needs, 65 percent of
which it imports. And 90 percent of its oil imports could soon come from the Persian Gulf. India
must satisfy a population that will, by 2030, be the largest of any country in the world. Its coal
imports from far-off Mozambique are set to increase substantially, adding to the coal that India
already imports from other Indian Ocean countries, such as South Africa, Indonesia, and
Australia. In the future, India-bound ships will also be carrying increasingly large quantities of
liquefied natural gas (LNG) across the seas from southern Africa, even as it continues importing
LNG from Qatar, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
As the whole Indian Ocean seaboard, including Africa's eastern shores, becomes a vast web of
energy trade, India is seeking to increase its influence from the Plateau of Iran to the Gulf of
Thailand -- an expansion west and east meant to span the zone of influence of the Raj's viceroys.
India's trade with the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf and Iran, with which India has long
enjoyed close economic and cultural ties, is booming. Approximately 3.5 million Indians work in
the six Arab states of the Gulf Cooperation Council and send home $4 billion in remittances
annually. As India's economy continues to grow, so will its trade with Iran and, once the country
recovers, Iraq. Iran, like Afghanistan, has become a strategic rear base for India against Pakistan,
and it is poised to become an important energy partner. In 2005, India and Iran signed a
multibillion-dollar deal under which Iran will supply India with 7.5 million tons of LNG
annually for 25 years, beginning in 2009. There has been talk of building a gas pipeline from
Iran to India through Pakistan, a project that would join the Middle East and South Asia at the
hip (and in the process could go a long way toward stabilizing Indian-Pakistani relations). In
another sign that Indian-Iranian relations are growing more intimate, India has been helping Iran
develop the port of Chah Bahar, on the Gulf of Oman, which will also serve as a forward base
for the Iranian navy.
India has also been expanding its military and economic ties with Myanmar, to the east.
Democratic India does not have the luxury of spurning Myanmar's junta because Myanmar is
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rich in natural resources -- oil, natural gas, coal, zinc, copper, uranium, timber, and hydropower - resources in which the Chinese are also heavily invested. India hopes that a network of eastwest roads and energy pipelines will eventually allow it to be connected to Iran, Pakistan, and
Myanmar.
India is enlarging its navy in the same spirit. With its 155 warships, the Indian navy is already
one of the world's largest, and it expects to add three nuclear-powered submarines and three
aircraft carriers to its arsenal by 2015. One major impetus for the buildup was the humiliating
inability of its navy to evacuate Indian citizens from Iraq and Kuwait during the 1990–91 Persian
Gulf War. Another is what Mohan Malik, a scholar at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security
Studies, in Hawaii, has called India's "Hormuz dilemma," its dependence on imports passing
through the strait, close to the shores of Pakistan's Makran coast, where the Chinese are helping
the Pakistanis develop deep-water ports.
Indeed, as India extends its influence east and west, on land and at sea, it is bumping into China,
which, also concerned about protecting its interests throughout the region, is expanding its reach
southward. Chinese President Hu Jintao has bemoaned China's "Malacca dilemma." The Chinese
government hopes to eventually be able to partly bypass that strait by transporting oil and other
energy products via roads and pipelines from ports on the Indian Ocean into the heart of China.
One reason that Beijing wants desperately to integrate Taiwan into its dominion is so that it can
redirect its naval energies away from the Taiwan Strait and toward the Indian Ocean.
The Chinese government has already adopted a "string of pearls" strategy for the Indian Ocean,
which consists of setting up a series of ports in friendly countries along the ocean's northern
seaboard. It is building a large naval base and listening post in Gwadar, Pakistan, (from which it
may already be monitoring ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz); a port in Pasni, Pakistan,
75 miles east of Gwadar, which is to be joined to the Gwadar facility by a new highway; a
fueling station on the southern coast of Sri Lanka; and a container facility with extensive naval
and commercial access in Chittagong, Bangladesh. Beijing operates surveillance facilities on
islands deep in the Bay of Bengal. In Myanmar, whose junta gets billions of dollars in military
assistance from Beijing, the Chinese are constructing (or upgrading) commercial and naval bases
and building roads, waterways, and pipelines in order to link the Bay of Bengal to the southern
Chinese province of Yunnan. Some of these facilities are closer to cities in central and western
China than those cities are to Beijing and Shanghai, and so building road and rail links from
these facilities into China will help spur the economies of China's landlocked provinces. The
Chinese government is also envisioning a canal across the Isthmus of Kra, in Thailand, to link
the Indian Ocean to China's Pacific coast -- a project on the scale of the Panama Canal and one
that could further tip Asia's balance of power in China's favor by giving China's burgeoning navy
and commercial maritime fleet easy access to a vast oceanic continuum stretching all the way
from East Africa to Japan and the Korean Peninsula.
All of these activities are unnerving the Indian government. With China building deep-water
ports to its west and east and a preponderance of Chinese arms sales going to Indian Ocean
states, India fears being encircled by China unless it expands its own sphere of influence. The
two countries' overlapping commercial and political interests are fostering competition, and even
more so in the naval realm than on land. Zhao Nanqi, former director of the General Logistics
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Department of the People's Liberation Army, proclaimed in 1993, "We can no longer accept the
Indian Ocean as an ocean only of the Indians." India has responded to China's building of a naval
base in Gwadar by further developing one of its own, that in Karwar, India, south of Goa.
Meanwhile, Zhang Ming, a Chinese naval analyst, has warned that the 244 islands that form
India's Andaman and Nicobar archipelago could be used like a "metal chain" to block the
western entrance to the Strait of Malacca, on which China so desperately depends. "India is
perhaps China's most realistic strategic adversary," Zhang has written. "Once India commands
the Indian Ocean, it will not be satisfied with its position and will continuously seek to extend its
influence, and its eastward strategy will have a particular impact on China." These may sound
like the words of a professional worrier from China's own theory class, but these worries are
revealing: Beijing already considers New Delhi to be a major sea power.
As the competition between India and China suggests, the Indian Ocean is where global
struggles will play out in the twenty-first century. The old borders of the Cold War map are
crumbling fast, and Asia is becoming a more integrated unit, from the Middle East to the Pacific.
South Asia has been an indivisible part of the greater Islamic Middle East since the Middle Ages:
it was the Muslim Ghaznavids of eastern Afghanistan who launched raids on India's
northwestern coast in the early eleventh century; Indian civilization itself is a fusion of the
indigenous Hindu culture and the cultural imprint left by these invasions. Although it took the
seaborne terrorist attacks in Mumbai last November for most Westerners to locate India inside
the greater Middle East, the Indian Ocean's entire coast has always constituted one vast
interconnected expanse.
What is different now is the extent of these connections. On a maritime-centric map of southern
Eurasia, artificial land divisions disappear; even landlocked Central Asia is related to the Indian
Ocean. Natural gas from Turkmenistan may one day flow through Afghanistan, for example, en
route to Pakistani and Indian cities and ports, one of several possible energy links between
Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Both the Chinese port in Gwadar, Pakistan, and the
Indian port in Chah Bahar, Iran, may eventually be connected to oil- and natural-gas-rich
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and other former Soviet republics. S. Frederick Starr, a
Central Asia expert at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said at a
conference in Washington last year that access to the Indian Ocean "will help define Central
Asian politics in the future." Others have called ports in India and Pakistan "evacuation points"
for Caspian Sea oil. The destinies of countries even 1,200 miles from the Indian Ocean are
connected with it.
ELEGANT DECLINE
The United States faces three related geopolitical challenges in Asia: the strategic nightmare of
the greater Middle East, the struggle for influence over the southern tier of the former Soviet
Union, and the growing presence of India and China in the Indian Ocean. The last seems to be
the most benign of the three. China is not an enemy of the United States, like Iran, but a
legitimate peer competitor, and India is a budding ally. And the rise of the Indian navy, soon to
be the third largest in the world after those of the United States and China, will function as an
antidote to Chinese military expansion.
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The task of the U.S. Navy will therefore be to quietly leverage the sea power of its closest allies - India in the Indian Ocean and Japan in the western Pacific -- to set limits on China's expansion.
But it will have to do so at the same time as it seizes every opportunity to incorporate China's
navy into international alliances; a U.S.-Chinese understanding at sea is crucial for the
stabilization of world politics in the twenty-first century. After all, the Indian Ocean is a seaway
for both energy and hashish and is in drastic need of policing. To manage it effectively, U.S.
military planners will have to invoke challenges such as terrorism, piracy, and smuggling to
bring together India, China, and other states in joint sea patrols. The goal of the United States
must be to forge a global maritime system that can minimize the risks of interstate conflict while
lessening the burden of policing for the U.S. Navy.
Keeping the peace in the Indian Ocean will be even more crucial once the seas and the coasts
from the Gulf of Aden to the Sea of Japan are connected. Shipping options between the Indian
Ocean and the Pacific Ocean will increase substantially in the future. The port operator Dubai
Ports World is conducting a feasibility study on constructing a land bridge near the canal that the
Chinese hope will be dug across the Isthmus of Kra, with ports on either side of the isthmus
connected by rails and highways. The Malaysian government is interested in a pipeline network
that would link up ports in the Bay of Bengal with those in the South China Sea. To be sure, as
sea power grows in importance, the crowded hub around Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia
will form the maritime heart of Asia: in the coming decades, it will be as strategically significant
as the Fulda Gap, a possible invasion route for Soviet tanks into West Germany during the Cold
War. The protective oversight of the U.S. Navy there will be especially important. As the only
truly substantial blue-water force without territorial ambitions on the Asian mainland, the U.S.
Navy may in the future be able to work with individual Asian countries, such as India and China,
better than they can with one another. Rather than ensure its dominance, the U.S. Navy simply
needs to make itself continually useful.
It has already begun to make the necessary shifts. Owing to the debilitating U.S.-led wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq, headlines in recent years have been dominated by discussions about land
forces and counterinsurgency. But with 75 percent of the earth's population living within 200
miles of the sea, the world's military future may well be dominated by naval (and air) forces
operating over vast regions. And to a greater extent than the other armed services, navies exist to
protect economic interests and the system in which these interests operate. Aware of how much
the international economy depends on sea traffic, U.S. admirals are thinking beyond the fighting
and winning of wars to responsibilities such as policing a global trading arrangement. They are
also attuned to the effects that a U.S. military strike against Iran would have on maritime
commerce and the price of oil. With such concerns in mind, the U.S. Navy has for decades been
helping to secure vital chokepoints in the Indian Ocean, often operating from a base on the
British atoll of Diego Garcia, a thousand miles south of India and close to major sea-lanes. And
in October 2007, it implied that it was seeking a sustained forward presence in the Indian Ocean
and the western Pacific but no longer in the Atlantic -- a momentous shift in overall U.S.
maritime strategy. The document Marine Corps Vision and Strategy 2025 also concluded that the
Indian Ocean and its adjacent waters will be a central theater of global conflict and competition
this century.
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Yet as the challenges for the United States on the high seas multiply, it is unclear how much
longer U.S. naval dominance will last. At the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Navy boasted about
600 warships; it is now down to 279. That number might rise to 313 in the coming years with the
addition of the new "littoral combat ships," but it could also drop to the low 200s given cost
overruns of 34 percent and the slow pace of shipbuilding. Although the revolution in precisionguided weapons means that existing ships pack better firepower than those of the Cold War fleet
did, since a ship cannot be in two places at once, the fewer the vessels, the riskier every decision
to deploy them. There comes a point at which insufficient quantity hurts quality.
Meanwhile, by sometime in the next decade, China's navy will have more warships than the
United States'. China is producing and acquiring submarines five times as fast as is the United
States. In addition to submarines, the Chinese have wisely focused on buying naval mines,
ballistic missiles that can hit moving targets at sea, and technology that blocks signals from GPS
satellites, on which the U.S. Navy depends. (They also have plans to acquire at least one aircraft
carrier; not having one hindered their attempts to help with the tsunami relief effort in 2004–5.)
The goal of the Chinese is "sea denial," or dissuading U.S. carrier strike groups from closing in
on the Asian mainland wherever and whenever Washington would like. The Chinese are also
more aggressive than U.S. military planners. Whereas the prospect of ethnic warfare has scared
away U.S. admirals from considering a base in Sri Lanka, which is strategically located at the
confluence of the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, the Chinese are constructing a refueling
station for their warships there.
There is nothing illegitimate about the rise of China's navy. As the country's economic interests
expand dramatically, so must China expand its military, and particularly its navy, to guard these
interests. The United Kingdom did just that in the nineteenth century, and so did the United
States when it emerged as a great power between the American Civil War and World War I. In
1890, the American military theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan published The Influence of Sea Power
Upon History, 1660–1783, which argued that the power to protect merchant fleets had been the
determining factor in world history. Both Chinese and Indian naval strategists read him avidly
nowadays. China's quest for a major presence in the Indian Ocean was also evinced in 2005 by
the beginning of an extensive commemoration of Zheng He, the Ming dynasty explorer and
admiral who plied the seas between China and Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Persian Gulf, and the
Horn of Africa in the early decades of the fifteenth century -- a celebration that signals China's
belief that these seas have always been part of its zone of influence.
Just as at the end of the nineteenth century the British Royal Navy began to reduce its presence
worldwide by leveraging the growing sea power of its naval allies (Japan and the United States),
at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the United States is beginning an elegant decline by
leveraging the growing sea power of allies such as India and Japan to balance against China.
What better way to scale back than to give more responsibilities to like-minded states, especially
allies that, unlike those in Europe, still cherish military power?
India, for one, is more than willing to help. "India has never waited for American permission to
balance [against] China," the Indian strategist C. Raja Mohan wrote in 2006, adding that India
has been balancing against China since the day the Chinese invaded Tibet. Threatened by China's
rise, India has expanded its naval presence from as far west as the Mozambique Channel to as far
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east as the South China Sea. It has been establishing naval staging posts and listening stations on
the island nations of Madagascar, Mauritius, and the Seychelles, as well as military relationships
with them, precisely in order to counter China's own very active military cooperation with these
states. With a Chinese-Pakistani alliance taking shape, most visibly in the construction of the
Gwadar port, near the Strait of Hormuz, and an Indian naval buildup on the Andaman and
Nicobar Islands, near the Strait of Malacca, the Indian-Chinese rivalry is taking on the
dimensions of a maritime Great Game. This is a reason for the United States to quietly encourage
India to balance against China, even as the United States seeks greater cooperation with China.
During the Cold War, the Pacific and Indian oceans were veritable U.S. lakes. But such
hegemony will not last, and the United States must seek to replace it with a subtle balance-ofpower arrangement.
COALITION BUILDER SUPREME
So how exactly does the United States play the role of a constructive, distant, and slowly
declining hegemon and keep peace on the high seas in what Fareed Zakaria, the editor of
Newsweek International, has called "the post-American world"? Several years ago, Admiral
Michael Mullen, then the chief of naval operations (and now chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff), said the answer was a "thousand-ship navy . . . comprised of all freedom-loving nations -standing watch over the seas, standing watch with each other." The term "thousand-ship navy"
has since been dropped for sounding too domineering, but the idea behind it remains: rather than
going it alone, the U.S. Navy should be a coalition builder supreme, working with any navy that
agrees to patrol the seas and share information with it.
Already, Combined Task Force 150 (CTF-150), a naval force based in Djibouti and comprising
roughly 15 vessels from the United States, four European countries, Canada, and Pakistan,
conducts antipiracy patrols around the troubled Gulf of Aden. In 2008, about a hundred ships
were attacked by pirates in the region, and over 35 vessels, with billions of dollars worth of
cargo, were seized. (As of the end of 2008, more than a dozen, including oil tankers, cargo
vessels, and other ships, along with over 300 crew members, were still being held.) Ransom
demands routinely exceed $1 million per ship, and in the recent case of one Saudi oil tanker,
pirates demanded $25 million. Last fall, after the capture of a Ukrainian vessel carrying tanks
and other military equipment, warships from the United States, Kenya, and Malaysia steamed
toward the Gulf of Aden to assist CTF-150, followed by two Chinese warships a few weeks later.
The force, which is to be beefed up and rechristened CTF-151, is likely to become a permanent
fixture: piracy is the maritime ripple effect of land-based anarchy, and for as long as Somalia is
in the throes of chaos, pirates operating at the behest of warlords will infest the waters far down
Africa's eastern coast.
The task-force model could also be applied to the Strait of Malacca and other waters surrounding
the Indonesian archipelago. With help from the U.S. Navy, the navies and coast guards of
Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia have already combined forces to reduce piracy in that area in
recent years. And with the U.S. Navy functioning as both a mediator and an enforcer of standard
procedures, coalitions of this kind could bring together rival countries, such as India and Pakistan
or India and China, under a single umbrella: these states' governments would have no difficulty
justifying to their publics participating in task forces aimed at transnational threats over which
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they have no disagreements. Piracy has the potential to unite rival states along the Indian Ocean
coastline.
Packed with states with weak governments and tottering infrastructure, the shores of the Indian
Ocean make it necessary for the United States and other countries to transform their militaries.
This area represents an unconventional world, a world in which the U.S. military, for one, will
have to respond, expeditionary style, to a range of crises: not just piracy but also terrorist attacks,
ethnic conflicts, cyclones, and floods. For even as the United States' armed forces, and
particularly its navy, are in relative decline, they remain the most powerful conventional military
on earth, and they will be expected to lead such emergency responses. With population growth in
climatically and seismically fragile zones today placing more human beings in danger's way than
at almost any other time in history, one deployment will quickly follow another.
It is the variety and recurrence of these challenges that make the map of the Indian Ocean in the
twenty-first century vastly different from the map of the North Atlantic in the twentieth century.
The latter illustrated both a singular threat and a singular concept: the Soviet Union. And it gave
the United States a simple focus: to defend Western Europe against the Red Army and keep the
Soviet navy bottled up near the polar icecap. Because the threat was straightforward, and the
United States' power was paramount, the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization arguably
became history's most successful alliance.
One might envision a "NATO of the seas" for the Indian Ocean, composed of South Africa,
Oman, Pakistan, India, Singapore, and Australia, with Pakistan and India bickering inside the
alliance much as Greece and Turkey have inside NATO. But that idea fails to capture what the
Indian Ocean is all about. Owing to the peripatetic movements of medieval Arab and Persian
sailors and the legacies of Portuguese, Dutch, and British imperialists, the Indian Ocean forms a
historical and cultural unit. Yet in strategic terms, it, like the world at large today, has no single
focal point. The Gulf of Aden, the Persian Gulf, the Bay of Bengal -- all these areas are burdened
by different threats with different players. Just as today NATO is a looser alliance, less
singularly focused than it was during the Cold War, any coalition centered on the Indian Ocean
should be adapted to the times. Given the ocean's size -- it stretches across seven time zones and
almost half of the world's latitudes -- and the comparative slowness at which ships move, it
would be a challenge for any one multinational navy to get to a crisis zone in time. The United
States was able to lead the relief effort off the coast of Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami only
because the carrier strike group the USS Abraham Lincoln happened to be in the vicinity and not
in the Korean Peninsula, where it was headed.
A better approach would be to rely on multiple regional and ideological alliances in different
parts of the Indian Ocean. Some such efforts have already begun. The navies of Thailand,
Singapore, and Indonesia have banded together to deter piracy in the Strait of Malacca; those of
the United States, India, Singapore, and Australia have exercised together off India's
southwestern coast -- an implicit rebuke to China's designs in the region. According to Vice
Admiral John Morgan, former deputy chief of U.S. naval operations, the Indian Ocean strategic
system should be like the New York City taxi system: driven by market forces and with no
central dispatcher. Coalitions will naturally form in areas where shipping lanes need to be
protected, much as taxis gather in the theater district before and after performances. For one
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Australian commodore, the model should be a network of artificial sea bases supplied by the
U.S. Navy, which would allow for different permutations of alliances: frigates and destroyers
from various states could "plug and play" into these sea bases as necessary and spread out from
East Africa to the Indonesian archipelago.
Like a microcosm of the world at large, the greater Indian Ocean region is developing into an
area of both ferociously guarded sovereignty (with fast-growing economies and militaries) and
astonishing interdependence (with its pipelines and land and sea routes). And for the first time
since the Portuguese onslaught in the region in the early sixteenth century, the West's power
there is in decline, however subtly and relatively. The Indians and the Chinese will enter into a
dynamic great-power rivalry in these waters, with their shared economic interests as major
trading partners locking them in an uncomfortable embrace. The United States, meanwhile, will
serve as a stabilizing power in this newly complex area. Indispensability, rather than dominance,
must be its goal.
Copyright © 2002-2009 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
All rights reserved.
The Importance of India
BY Duncan Currie
January 14, 2009 11:00 PM
The Weekly Standard
BILL EMMOTT, a former editor of the Economist magazine, has written that George W. Bush's
"bold initiative" to strengthen U.S. relations with India "may eventually be judged by historians
as a move of great strategic importance and imagination." It "may turn out to be the most
significant foreign policy achievement of the Bush administration," says historian Sugata Bose,
an India expert at Harvard. Bilateral ties had improved toward the end of the Clinton
administration, thanks largely to the efforts of Strobe Talbott, then serving as deputy secretary of
state, and Jaswant Singh, then serving as Indian foreign minister. But "the big jump in relations
came under President Bush," says Columbia economist Arvind Panagariya, author of the 2008
book India: The Emerging Giant.
By far the most controversial element of Bush's India policy was the U.S.-India civilian nuclear
cooperation agreement, which Congress approved this past fall. It was announced in 2005 but
then delayed for years by opposition from Democrats in Washington, left-wing parties in New
Delhi, and an Indian nuclear establishment that was skeptical of U.S. intentions. "The
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determination of the White House was very important," says Panagariya, who believes the Bush
administration played a "crucial" role in convincing the Indian government to fight for the deal.
Critics of the nuclear pact "really exaggerated the risks to the non-proliferation regime," says
Stephen Cohen, an India expert at the Brookings Institution. As part of the accord, India has
accepted new international safeguards on its nuclear program. In turn, the United States has lifted
a longstanding ban on U.S.-India civilian nuclear trade. Cohen predicts that the deal will help
New Delhi pursue a more sensible arms control policy.
Beyond the nuclear pact, the United States and India have also upgraded their broader strategic
cooperation. After the 2004 Asian tsunami, they launched a joint relief mission with Japan and
Australia. In June 2005, they signed a new defense framework which enhanced bilateral military
ties and stated that "the United States and India agree on the vital importance of political and
economic freedom, democratic institutions, the rule of law, security, and opportunity around the
world. The leaders of our two countries are building a U.S.-India strategic partnership in pursuit
of these principles and interests." In September 2007, India hosted and participated in
multilateral naval exercises that included ships from the United States, Japan, Australia, and
Singapore.
To appreciate where U.S.-India relations are today, recall how frosty they were during much of
the latter half of the 20th century. The first prime minister of independent India, Jawaharlal
Nehru, who served from 1947 to 1964, was an avowed socialist and champion of the NonAligned Movement. Throughout the Cold War, Indian scholar Ramachandra Guha writes in his
2007 book, India After Gandhi, the United States "tilted markedly toward" Pakistan while India
"tilted somewhat toward" the Soviet Union. (During the 1971 India-Pakistan war, Richard Nixon
groused to Henry Kissinger that "the Indians are no goddamn good.") It was not until the late
1990s, notes Guha, "that the United States moved toward a position of equidistance between
India and Pakistan."
Today, the U.S.-India partnership seems to make perfect strategic sense: Both countries are
English-speaking democracies; both are wary of a rising China; both are fighting against Islamic
terrorism; and both have an interest in promoting bilateral economic cooperation. India wants to
secure a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, and it needs America's support.
Economic links between the two countries are now "so strong that they stabilize the overall
relationship," says Cohen.
Then there is the cultural dimension of the relationship. Panagariya points out that most people in
India have a relative, friend, or neighbor who is a member of the Indian diaspora. "They see so
many Indians being successful in the U.S.," he says. India is a youthful country, and its younger
generation has no serious connection to the anti-Americanism of the Cold War era. In a 2008
Pew Global Attitudes Project survey, 66 percent of Indians expressed a favorable view of the
United States.
To be sure, the U.S. and Indian governments will not always be in harmony. Bose says that India
probably took a more "strident" position than necessary in the Doha round of global trade talks,
which collapsed in late July after a fierce debate over agricultural policy. He adds that Indian
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officials are worried about Barack Obama's commitment to free trade, given his repeated
criticism of "companies that ship jobs overseas." American officials, meanwhile, are concerned
about India's relatively warm relations with Iran. But Panagariya says the Iran issue will not
prove a major hindrance to U.S.-India collaboration. After all, India is very friendly with Israel.
"You don't hear a peep out of the Israelis about India's Iran policy," says Cohen.
As for Pakistan, it has always bedeviled U.S.-India relations. Now the war in Afghanistan is
complicating things even more. In the aftermath of the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai, "India
and the United States are likely to come closer," says Bose, provided the Americans use their
leverage with Pakistan and pressure Islamabad to reform its army, clean up its intelligence
services, and clamp down on militant groups. Despite all the saber-rattling, Bose expects that
New Delhi will stay focused on its international ambitions and act prudently.
"India wants to play a role on the global stage," he says. Right now, however, with a national
election due by May, the South Asian giant is experiencing severe economic turmoil. The
worldwide downturn has taken a harsh toll on India and disrupted its lengthy run of 9 percent
annual GDP growth. World Bank economist Sadiq Ahmed reckons that the Indian growth rate
will dip below 7 percent in the 2008-2009 fiscal year and below 6 percent in the 2009-2010
fiscal year. "Job losses are going to be enormous due to the global slowdown," Indian commerce
ministry spokesman Rajiv Jain recently told Bloomberg News. Meanwhile, the Indian financial
industry has been rocked by news of a massive fraud scandal at outsourcing giant Satyam.
Painful as they are, India's economic troubles should not be overblown. "It's not a disaster
scenario by any means," says Ahmed, who thinks that Indian policymakers have thus far done "a
very good job" in responding to the slump. He notes that inflation has fallen sharply, interest
rates have returned to normal levels, and the domestic liquidity situation has stabilized. India is
benefiting from its high savings rate. "We are not expecting a prolonged downturn," says
Ahmed.
Whatever its current woes, India has remarkable potential. Its middle class is still dwarfed by
that of China, but it will balloon over the next few decades. A May 2007 McKinsey Global
Institute study estimated that between 2005 and 2025, average real household disposable income
in India will nearly triple, the Indian middle class will swell from roughly 50 million people to
around 583 million, and the country's consumer market will grow from the 12th largest in the
world to the fifth largest.
Goldman Sachs reckons that India could have a larger economy than the United States by 2050.
As Goldman economists Jim O'Neill and Tushar Poddar observed in a June 2008 paper, the
United Nations has projected that India's population will increase by around 310 million between
2000 and 2020. "India will in effect create the equivalent of another U.S.," wrote O'Neill and
Poddar, "and for those of working age between 2000 and 2020, India will create the equivalent
of the combined working population of France, Germany, Italy, and the U.K. We estimate
another 140 million people will migrate to Indian cities by 2020."
India's long-term progress is stunning. The 2007 McKinsey study pointed out that, "in effect,
there are 431 million fewer poor people in India today than there would have been if poverty had
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remained at its 1985 rate." There is no question that "India's economic reforms, and the increased
growth that has resulted, have been the most successful anti-poverty program in the country's
history."
Long a bastion of socialism, India flirted with economic liberalization during the 1980s, under
the leadership of Rajiv Gandhi, who served as prime minister from 1984 to 1989 (and was
assassinated in 1991). But the reform process didn't begin for real until 1991, when India was
facing an economic crisis. As Robyn Meredith of Forbes magazine writes in her 2007 book, The
Elephant and the Dragon, some 110 million Indians "had been thrown into poverty in just the
preceding two years," and "330 million people, or two of every five Indians, lived below the
poverty line." Inflation had surged to 17 percent, and the country "was flat broke."
In response, the Indian finance minister, Manmohan Singh, embraced a bold agenda of
deregulation, privatization, tariff reductions, and tax cuts. Singh devalued the rupee, removed
obstacles to foreign investment, and expanded trade. "Early steps were also taken to open
telecommunications and domestic civil aviation to the private sector," writes Panagariya. "These
measures yielded the handsome growth rate of 7.1 percent between 1993-94 and 1996-97, and
also placed the economy on a long-term growth trajectory of 6 percent."
The reform process stalled in the late 1990s but regained momentum during the third term of
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, which began in 1999. As Panagariya writes, "the Vajpayee
government systematically moved to open the economy to foreign and domestic competition and
to build the country's infrastructure." Singh's Congress Party took power in 2004 as the leading
coalition member of the United Progressive Alliance, and Singh became prime minister.
Economic reformers had high hopes for the government, especially given Singh's record as
finance minister, but they have been disappointed, as the reform process has stagnated.
Moving forward, further economic reforms will be critical. The United Nations Population Fund
says that India will eclipse China as the world's most populous country by 2050. Will India's
population explosion produce a "demographic dividend," or a demographic disaster? "That's the
million-dollar question," says Bose. Indeed, a rising population does not guarantee that India will
fulfill its potential. It will need to create millions of new jobs and also ensure that its workers are
properly equipped to do those jobs. In their recent paper, O'Neill and Poddar outlined ten steps
that India must take "to achieve its 2050 potential." These include strengthening its education
system, containing inflation, liberalizing its financial markets, boosting trade with its neighbors,
and improving its infrastructure.
India's biggest weaknesses are education and infrastructure. As Emmott writes in his 2008 book,
Rivals, "The country's large, young population will not be an economic advantage unless it can
be educated to the standards required by manufacturers and service companies." The current
Indian education system "is grossly inadequate for that task, and putting that right will be
costly." Consider these numbers: "Only 28 percent of India's schools had electricity in 2005;
only half had more than two teachers or two classrooms." India has a significantly lower literacy
rate than countries such as China, Vietnam, and Malaysia, Emmott notes.
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As for the infrastructure problem, it remains a huge drag on Indian economic growth. According
to the World Bank, more than half of India's state highways are in "poor condition." In its latest
survey of global competitiveness, the World Economic Forum found that Indian business
executives consider "inadequate supply of infrastructure" to be "the most problematic factor for
doing business" in their country. The next four "most problematic factors" were (in order)
"inefficient government bureaucracy," "corruption," "restrictive labor regulations," and "tax
regulations."
Though India has come a long way since the 1991 crisis, its business sector remains heavily
shackled. The latest World Bank report on "the ease of doing business" around the world ranks
India a lowly 122nd out of 181 economies. By comparison, China ranks 83rd. Meanwhile, the
most recent Index of Economic Freedom, compiled by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall
Street Journal, ranks India 123rd out of 179 economies, barely ahead of Rwanda.
"Indians joke that India is like a drunk walking home: it takes one step forward, then two steps
sideways, but eventually makes it home," writes Meredith. "Indian reforms, hampered especially
by local politics, tend to lurch ahead, then jolt to a stop, only to hurl forward again." Besides
local politics, Indian reforms have also been hampered by persistent social tensions, ethnic
conflicts, and domestic security threats. As Meredith observes, "The advances of the glittering
New India mask stubborn problems, such as high child-mortality rates, violence against women,
caste-based discrimination, and religious strife."
The 2008 Mumbai massacre offered a grisly reminder that India has long been plagued by
Islamic terrorism. (In December 2001, jihadists attacked the Indian parliament building.) It has
also spent several decades battling Maoist rebels known as "Naxalites." Then there is the
longstanding dispute over Kashmir and plenty of other spats with India's nuclear-armed
neighbor, Pakistan. Tensions with Islamabad have been high in the aftermath of the Mumbai
attacks. Though many Indians wish they could just disregard Pakistan, that is not a viable option.
"When you have a neighbor whose house is falling down, you simply can't ignore it," says
Cohen.
Barack Obama will inherit a dangerous situation in Pakistan, but he will also inherit a U.S.-India
partnership that is stronger than ever. Over the coming decades, as global power continues
shifting to Asia, the importance of that partnership will only increase. Embracing India may
indeed prove to be a significant part of President Bush's legacy. As Bose puts it, Bush elevated
the relationship "to a completely new level."
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Central Asia
Could Kyrgyzstan be the democracy in
Afghanistan's back yard?
By Thomas A. Daschle
Friday, September 17, 2010; A17
The Washington Post
Kyrgyzstan rarely makes headlines in the United States. It is a small, landlocked country in
Central Asia that is overshadowed by neighbors such as China, Kazakhstan, Pakistan and
Afghanistan. When I recently visited Bishkek, the capital, it was clear that Kyrgyzstan's strategic
importance and democratic impulses deserve greater attention. At the same time, the people of
Kyrgyzstan would rather be recognized for their democratic ambitions than as an asset in the war
in Afghanistan.
One narrative among American Kyrgyzstan-watchers goes something like this: Kyrgyzstan is
important because it hosts a U.S. airbase, which serves as a key transit point for personnel en
route to Afghanistan. Although the rights to this base were reasonably secure under the
autocratic administration of Kurmanbek Bakiyev, his ouster in April threw the fate of the base
into question. Kyrgyzstan is now ruled by a more democratic but weak interim government that
was unable to quell the deadly ethnic violence that erupted in June, has been unable to remove a
hostile mayor in the south, has been unreliable about meeting international commitments, and
has risked increasing tensions by holding a constitutional referendum in June and scheduling
parliamentary elections in October. The narrative's subtext seems to be that this government is
less predictable than its authoritarian predecessor. Indeed, a recent headline in The Post
described Kyrgyzstan as a "new headache" for U.S. policy.
I see it differently. Kyrgyzstan is important not only because it houses an airbase but also
because it has the most democratic potential in the region. Processes and institutions do not yet
align with citizens' aspirations, but popular demand and respect for democracy still burn bright.
The Bakiyev regime toppled in April at least in part because it failed to deliver on democratic
promises and trampled on political freedoms and human rights.
Kyrgyzstan is at a crossroads. What transpires at this transformational moment will have an
extraordinary impact on its future and the politics of the wider region.
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The interim government has taken concrete steps toward democratic reform by limiting its
tenure, holding a referendum that endorsed new checks and balances in the constitution, and
organizing parliamentary elections for Oct. 10. Large numbers of citizens turned out peacefully
to vote in favor of the new constitution, despite the trauma of June's ethnic violence. Surveys
forecast that turnout should also be high for the parliamentary polls. The major political parties
have pledged to run responsible, peaceful campaigns. The Central Election Commission appears
determined to administer the elections openly and fairly. Kyrgyzstan arguably has more
democratic wind in its sails than ever before.
A democratic outcome is not assured. The country is beset by divisive ethnic tensions,
corruption, defiance among some officials and a fragile economy. The controversial sentencing
this week of an ethnic Uzbek human rights activist to life in prison for his alleged part in the
ethnic violence reflects these ongoing tensions. These problems are compounded by a growing
suspicion of "outside interference" and international efforts to prevent conflict. President Roza
Otunbayeva has played a heroic role as the first female head of state in the region, but she is
beleaguered from many sides.
Yet democratic reforms are the only solution to Kyrgyzstan's many problems. More important
than the strength of any single leader is the confidence of citizens in their government. Until
public support for Kyrgyzstan's political processes and institutions is restored, it will be
impossible to reconcile ethnic conflict, eradicate corruption, improve the judiciary, strengthen
the economy or establish reliable international partnerships. The United States and the wider
international community should help the government, whoever happens to be in office, meet
citizens' expectations through democratic means.
If Kyrgyzstan is left to face these challenges alone, we can almost certainly predict an outcome
of renewed authoritarianism, extremism or state failure, any of which would be devastating for
Kyrgyzstan's people, regional stability and U.S. strategic interests.
The international community still has time to take a more active role in providing meaningful aid
in the only Central Asian country where genuine democratic progress is a near-term prospect.
This will require greater assistance and patience. It will also require a diplomatic approach that
prioritizes long-term support for the democratic principles Kyrgyz citizens demand.
I was struck during my visit that politicians and citizens of all stripes voiced admiration for the
rule of law, representative parliaments, civil society and political pluralism. How meaningful it
would be if we could look back in a decade or two and see that those goals had been realized and
that we were on the right side of history.
The writer, a former Democratic senator from South Dakota, is a vice chairman of the National
Democratic Institute.
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Russia/Europe
Russia
Open Letter to President Obama on Russian
Human Rights Abuses
August 11, 2010
View this letter in PDF format
The Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States
The White House
Washington, DC
Dear Mr. President:
In recent weeks, attempts by Russian citizens to stage peaceful demonstrations were met with
force and arrests. Newspaper accounts report dozens of arrests. In Moscow, the authorities
arrested Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister and leader of the opposition Solidarity
Russia movement whom you met during your July 2009 visit to Russia. Video of the July 31
demonstration shows that authorities targeted Mr. Nemtsov while he calmly attempted to
proceed to the demonstration. Mr. Nemtsov was released but charged with obstructing the police
in the course of their duties.
Mr. Nemtsov was attempting to take part in an opposition demonstration designed to exercise the
Russian people‘s right to freedom of assembly as guaranteed in Article 31 of the Russian
Constitution. Previous rallies have also been broken up by militia who brutally beat participants,
and harassed representatives of the opposition and human rights organizations, including the
longtime human rights champion, Lyudmila Alexeyeva. It is imperative that future
demonstrations be allowed, and that this pattern of abuse, harassment and arrests ends.
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Mr. President, you have noted the connection between democracy and security, asserting that
―governments that protect these rights are ultimately more stable, successful and secure." Mr.
Nemtsov has argued that the problem in U.S.-Russia relations was one of values and that ―to
ignore the problem of human rights and democracy means to fail ... strategically." The
signatories of this letter support your efforts to improve relations with Moscow. We are also
unified in agreement that improved relations must not be achieved at the expense of democracy
and human rights.
We believe that these arrests, the passage of a new law expanding the powers of the Federal
Security Service (FSB) and other anti-democratic steps constitute an alarming trend. American
policy should proceed from the premise that productive and successful relations require respect
for human rights and democratic freedoms by the Russian government. Nor can the Russian
government hope to achieve its goal of modernization while it oppresses its people.
Continued abuses of Russia‘s democracy and human rights should lead to greater U.S. support
for the brave Russians attempting to exercise their freedoms. We commend your administration
for expressing concern about last week‘s arrests and reiterating the importance of respecting the
rights to freedom of expression and assembly. We urge you to continue to convey to the Russian
government the American people's condemnation of these assaults on universal human values in
Russia today and make clear that their continuation cannot help but have a deleterious effect on
the relationship between our two nations.
Sincerely,
Elliott Abrams
Leon Aron
Ellen Bork
William Courtney
Larry Cox
Eric Edelman
Jamie M. Fly
Carl Gershman
Morton Halperin
Michael Haltzel
Robert Herman
Bruce Pitcairn Jackson
Robert Kagan
Rachel Kleinfeld
David Kramer
Irina Krasovskaya
William Kristol
Tod Lindberg
Elisa Massimino
Clifford D. May
A. Wess Mitchell
Joshua Muravchik
Sam Patten
Danielle Pletka
Arch Puddington
Stephen Rademaker
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David Satter
Randy Scheunemann
Richard Schifter
Gary Schmitt
John Shattuck
Dan Senor
Paula Schriefer
Gare A. Smith
Kenneth R. Weinstein
Leon Wieseltier
Damon Wilson
R. James Woolsey
FPI Analysis: Evaluating the U.S.-Russian ―Reset‖
The Foreign Policy Initiative
The Obama administration often cites its ―reset‖ of relations with Russia as a major foreign
policy accomplishment. According to administration officials, through deft diplomacy with
Russian President Medvedev, President Obama has reversed a ―drift‖ in relations that emerged in
the final years of the Bush administration as the United States and Russia faced off over issues
such as missile defense and Russia‘s 2008 invasion of Georgia, and competed for influence in
the former Soviet satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe.
Proponents claim three main successes of the ―reset‖: the conclusion of a New START
agreement, increased Russian cooperation on Iran‘s nuclear program, and enhanced Russian
assistance on Afghanistan. This FPI Analysis reviews these ―accomplishments‖ and also
examines two other areas that are often not mentioned by the Obama administration – the
negative impact of the ―reset‖ on U.S. relations with Russia‘s neighbors as well as Russia‘s
internal political developments, including its burgeoning opposition. A careful review of the
record indicates that the concessions made by Washington as it engages Moscow vastly
outweigh what the Kremlin has offered in return.
Arms Control
President Obama described the follow-on agreement to the 1992 Strategic Arms Reduction
Treaty (START) that he and President Medvedev signed in April as ―an important milestone for
nuclear security and non-proliferation, and for U.S.-Russia relations.‖ In reality, the impact of
the agreement is more limited than this rhetoric belies, achieving miniscule reductions while
appearing to place new restrictions on the United States.
Although New START will theoretically lead to reductions in the size of the U.S. and Russian
nuclear arsenals, when compared to previous agreements, the treaty‘s reductions are
insignificant. The cuts are so minute that Russia was technically in compliance with the
agreement before the treaty was signed. New START also falls short in other key respects. The
treaty does not address Russia‘s overwhelming advantage in tactical nuclear weapons, while
arcane counting rules -- where a bomber armed with multiple cruise missiles is counted as one
launcher -- could allow the Russians to increase the size of their deployed nuclear arsenal, should
they find the resources to expand their bomber fleet.
Furthermore, the agreement may limit U.S. missile defense systems and future global strike
capabilities, despite Obama administration statements to the contrary. In its signing statement,
Russia states that were the United States to pursue a ―qualitative or quantitative build-up in [its]
missile defense system capabilities,‖ the Russian Federation would withdraw from the treaty.
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Although the Russian statement is not legally-binding, one wonders what lengths an
administration committed to a world free of nuclear weapons will be willing to go to ensure that
Russia does not follow through on this threat.
In sum, New START places restrictions on the United States, while having only a limited impact
on Russia‘s nuclear force. As Bob Joseph and FPI Director Eric Edelman write, ―Our nation
faces daunting challenges with regard to nuclear terrorism and new nuclear states. The Senate
will have to decide whether the limitations on future U.S. capabilities that are in this treaty will
enable us to have adequate means for meeting the threats we know we will face, as well as those
that we cannot know but may well emerge.‖
Iran
The passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1929 on June 9th has led
some to argue that one of the greatest accomplishments of the ―reset‖ has been an improved
Russian position on Iran‘s nuclear weapons program. Supposed Russian willingness to cooperate
on Iran has been a chimera for several U.S. administrations.
In actuality, Russia‘s assistance in curtailing Iran‘s nuclear program has been minimal. Russia
has provided instrumental support for Iran‘s nuclear program for over a decade, and has
repeatedly used its veto-wielding power to dilute the Security Council‘s efforts to censure the
Islamic Republic both before and after the ―reset.‖
In addition, Russian rhetoric on Iran continues to vacillate depending on the day and the
spokesman. Russia continues to construct a nuclear reactor at Bushehr, which Prime Minister
Putin announced would go online this summer. Just weeks after the passage of UNSCR 1929,
President Medvedev complained about U.S. and European Union sanctions that went beyond
those passed by the Security Council.
To get Russian support for new sanctions, the Obama administration paid a steep price –
removing U.S. sanctions against five Russian entities, and resubmitting a nuclear cooperation
agreement that was previously frozen after Russia‘s invasion of Georgia. Despite administration
denials, many observers wonder whether President Obama‘s cancellation of missile defense sites
in Poland and the Czech Republic in September 2009 also were part of a package deal with
Moscow. Although in the wake of the resolution‘s passage, some Russian statements indicated
that Russia would continue to freeze its sale of the advanced S-300 air defense system to Iran,
top Russian officials have not been clear about the issue, epitomizing what Secretary Gates
recently called Russia‘s ―schizophrenic‖ approach to Iran.
Despite U.S. efforts to placate Russia in return for support on Iran, Russia has done little more
than it did during the Bush administration to halt Tehran‘s march toward a nuclear weapon. As
FPI Director Robert Kagan writes, ―Russia has responded to the Obama administration in the
same ways it did to the Bush administration before the ‗reset.‘ Moscow has been playing this
game for years. It has sold the same rug many times. The only thing that has changed is the price
the United States has been willing to pay.‖
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Afghanistan
Another supposed success of the ―reset‖ has been increased Russian support for U.S. efforts to
secure new logistical routes into Afghanistan. In July 2009, President Obama hailed a new
agreement on air routes over Russian territory as ―a substantial contribution by Russia to our
international effort, and it will save the United States time and resources in giving our troops the
support that they need.‖ The New York Times reported that the agreement would permit up to
ten flights a day, amounting to thousands per year.
Unfortunately, only five supply flights occurred in the first six months of the program, an
underwhelming number considering the administration‘s bold projections. This failure to meet
expectations prompted Politico‘s Ben Smith to remark that it was ―hard to see this as a
particularly major achievement of a revived relationship.‖ Philip Gordon, the Assistant Secretary
of State for European and Russian Affairs, recently stated that as of June 18, only 275 flights had
occurred over Russian territory. Had the administration‘s bold projections proved accurate,
nearly 3,500 flights should have already occurred.
Russia has also played an extensive role in undermining NATO transportation capabilities in
other countries throughout the region, and in some cases has actively worked against U.S. efforts
to adequately supply forces in Afghanistan. Recently, the United States was forced to triple its
annual leasing rights payments to Bishkek after Moscow placed significant pressure on
Kyrgyzstan to remove the U.S. air base at Manas. A Russian-influenced campaign led to the
ouster of President Bakiyev of Kyrgyzstan and placed the tenuous status of the Manas air base
again in peril. If continued unrest in Kyrgyzstan leads to a closure of Manas, Russian
intransigence in Central Asia could prove to be very costly for the American war effort.
Russia‘s Neighbors
The Obama administration has argued that its efforts to ―reset‖ relations with Moscow have not
come at the cost of relations with key allies in Central and Eastern Europe. In one of the earliest
enunciations of the ―reset‖ policy, Vice President Joe Biden stated that ―We will not agree with
Russia on everything…We will not recognize any nation having a sphere of influence. It will
remain our view that sovereign states have the right to make their own decisions and choose their
own alliances.‖
In reality, the ―reset‖ has put U.S. relations with current and future NATO allies under great
strain. In July 2009, a group of distinguished leaders from Central and Eastern Europe wrote a
letter to President Obama that welcomed the ―reset,‖ but expressed concerns about its impact on
their region. President Obama‘s September decision to cancel planned missile defense sites in
Poland and the Czech Republican and replace them with an alternate system was poorly
executed. The allies involved were informed literally in the middle of the night with little prior
consultation, leading to speculation (denied by the administration) that ―reset‖ priorities were
given precedence over alliance concerns. Although the administration has made an effort to
assuage the concerns of Central European leaders, the events of 2009 caused lasting damage.
In addition to NATO allies, the ―reset‖ has had implications for U.S. relations with allies Georgia
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and Ukraine. In 2008, at NATO‘s Bucharest Summit, these countries were promised eventual
membership in the alliance. In the wake of the Russian invasion of Georgia, the perception in the
region is that the United States and other NATO allies are rethinking this commitment given
their unwillingness to confront Russia. Recently, Prime Minister Putin suggested merging
Ukraine‘s national energy company with the Russian state-owned firm Gazprom, which would
place the entirety of Ukraine‘s oil pipelines under Moscow‘s control. Russia also continues to
occupy the Georgian territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which it seized in 2008. Perhaps
stating the obvious, a senior administration official recently said ―To be very candid…I don‘t see
us having a strategy that can actually achieve that goal of reunifying Georgia‘s borders.‖
As David Kramer recently wrote in The Washington Post, ―Obama and other senior U.S.
officials have repeatedly said they do not recognize a Russian "sphere of influence," but actions,
or non-actions, speak louder than those words. Through its neglect of countries in the region
except for Russia, the administration is ceding to Moscow exactly such a sphere.‖
Human Rights
One of the most troubling aspects of the ―reset‖ is the fact that it has subjugated concerns about
Russia‘s internal situation to issues such as arms control and Iran. The Russian political situation
is marked by unfair elections and the abolition of elected governorships, control of civil society
organizations through intimidation, harassment and regulation, the dominance of state controlled
media and restrictions on independent media, impunity for perpetrators of violence, including
murder, against regime critics and brutal abuses in the Caucasus. Opposition parties struggle to
compete in elections and to hold demonstrations. A monthly effort to protest the lack of freedom
of assembly was violently broken up by police on May 31 and more than 100 people were
arrested.
In the midst of the Federation‘s continuing chokehold on basic liberties, a boisterous Russian
opposition has emerged, as thousands of protestors have taken to the streets of Russian cities in
recent months, braving swift and severe responses from Putin‘s security forces. Last week,
200,000 copies of a report by Russian opposition figures critical of Vladimir Putin‘s leadership
were confiscated by security forces and the website on which the report was hosted suffered a
crippling cyber attack.
In short, the ―reset‖ has not led to improvements in Russia‘s internal behavior. When President
Obama met with a large number of opposition leaders and rights activists on his visit to Moscow
last July, Garry Kasparov, a leader of the Solidarity-Russia opposition party called the effort
―"less than we needed but more than we expected." Since then, the administration‘s main thrust
on democracy and human rights has been the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission‘s
Civil Society Working Group. The sincerity of the Russian side is reflected in the fact that its
delegation is led by Vladislav Surkov who is better known as the architect of Putin‘s concept of
―sovereign democracy,‖ a fig leaf for Putin‘s authoritarianism. A meeting of this commission
took place shortly before the arrests at the May demonstration. Participants representing Russia‘s
human rights community criticized the event: one of them called it ―a political exercise to show
that they are officially having discussions. But nothing came out of it, no criticism and no
discussions.‖
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Conclusion
In recent testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State Clinton
stated that New START would ―continue our progress toward broader U.S.-Russia cooperation,‖
and reap benefits for ―other foreign policy priorities, including dealing with Iran‘s nuclear
program, [and] cooperating on Afghanistan.‖ ―[O]ur efforts,‖ she emphasized, ―including this
treaty, are producing tangible benefits for U.S. national security.‖
As Russian intellectual Lilia Shevtsova wrote earlier this year, ―The United States, of course,
needs to have a dialogue with Russia on security issues, including arms control. But turning a
nuclear arms pact into the main item on the agenda only reveals how reluctant both sides are to
discuss the real issues at stake -- the fundamental political differences between the two societies.
Instead, Moscow and Washington revive ghosts of the past and use a Cold-War era mechanism
to try to imitate cooperation. In the end, the U.S.-Russian security dialogue will do little to help
President Barack Obama accomplish his goals of reining in an aggressive Iran, ending the war in
Afghanistan, and advancing a nonproliferation regime. Instead, it will work in the Kremlin's
favor, bolstering Russia's great-power status and making it easier to prop up the current
authoritarian system.‖
Even during the Cold War, the United States was able to engage Moscow on key national
security issues while simultaneously making clear where U.S. and Russian interests diverged.
The Obama administration has thus far shown itself either unable or unwilling to do the same.
The supposed successes of the ―reset‖ related to arms control, Iran, and Afghanistan have been
limited and the United States has paid the heavy price of alienating key allies in Central and
Eastern Europe and those fighting for human rights and enhanced freedoms on the streets of
Russian cities.
As he continues to pursue a ―reset‖ or relations with Russia, President Obama should heed the
plea from the Central and Eastern European leaders that wrote him last year. "When it comes to
Russia," they wrote, "our experience has been that a more determined and principled policy
toward Moscow will not only strengthen the West's security but will ultimately lead Moscow to
follow a more cooperative policy."
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Open Letter to President Obama on Central Europe
The Foreign Policy Initiative
October 2, 2009
The Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States
The White House
Washington, DC
Dear Mr. President,
In the wake of your recent decision on European missile defense, we write in the hope that you
honor the deep and principled connections that have bound the United States and the nations of
Central and Eastern Europe since the time of Woodrow Wilson. Mindful of these links, we are
concerned about the impact that canceling the planned missile defense sites in Poland and the
Czech Republic will have on our relationship with these strategic allies, other countries in the
region, and our global credibility.
The Polish and Czech installations were a proposed response to the threat from Iran's missile and
nuclear programs. As you said in April in Prague, "Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile activity
poses a real threat, not just to the United States, but to Iran's neighbors and our allies. The Czech
Republic and Poland have been courageous in agreeing to host a defense against these missiles."
Let us not ignore that courage amid debates about revised time tables, intelligence estimates, and
technological feasibility.
We urge you to reiterate America's commitment to these allies that have endured Russian
intimidation in support of the United States and a shared commitment to democracy. One way to
do this is to move quickly to ensure that some of the land-based SM-3 missile defense sites your
administration is proposing will be placed on Polish and Czech soil. Further, the United States
should leave the door open to deploying Ground Based Interceptors should a long-range missile
threat from Iran materialize sooner than you anticipate and alternative technologies not be
available to defend against it. The planned deployment of a U.S. Patriot battery to Poland should
proceed without delay, and similar arrangements should be explored with other allies in the
region. We also encourage you to explore other ways to improve the U.S. defense relationship
with both countries as well as their neighbors, including increased U.S. support for defense
modernization efforts.
In July, a group of Central European leaders addressed to you, in an open letter, their concerns
about the weakening state of U.S. relations with their region. "When it comes to Russia," they
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wrote, "our experience has been that a more determined and principled policy toward Moscow
will not only strengthen the West's security but will ultimately lead Moscow to follow a more
cooperative policy." Mr. President, our friends' advice is sound. Their wisdom has been earned
both under the thumb of Soviet rule and in the shadow of today's more assertive Kremlin.
Polish and Czech leaders supported U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan despite heavy
criticism. Though the signatories of this bipartisan letter have varying views on the merits of
your administration's proposed missile defense architecture for Europe, we are united in our
concern about the effect that even the perception of U.S. disengagement from Central Europe
could have on our allies in the region. Supporters of the United States should not have to gamble
on the staying power - or the commitment - of American leadership. We urge you to make every
effort to ensure that Moscow does not conclude that America retreats in the face of threats to its
most loyal allies.
Continuing plans to build missile defense sites in both Poland and the Czech Republic would
send a clear message about the depth and sincerity of America's engagement in this region that
shares our values and is vital to our security. The Central European letter stated: "Many in the
region are looking with hope to the Obama Administration to restore the Atlantic relationship as
a moral compass for their domestic as well as foreign policies." Many in America are hoping the
same. Rather than raising additional doubts about our commitment to European allies, we urge
you to work assiduously to strengthen it.
Sincerely,
Elliott Abrams
Max Boot
Seth Cropsey
Thomas Donnelly
Jamie M. Fly
Richard W. Graber
Brian Green
Jakub Grygiel
Larry Hirsch
Robert Kagan
David J. Kramer
William Kristol
Charles W. Larson
Robert J. Lieber
Tod Lindberg
Thomas G. Mahnken
Michael Makovsky
Clifford D. May
A. Wess Mitchell
Martin Peretz
Peter Podbielski
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David Satter
Randy Scheunemann
Gary Schmitt
Dan Senor
Simon Serfaty
Marc Thiessen
William Tobey
David J. Trachtenberg
Ken Weinstein
Leon Wieseltier
Open Letter to President Obama on Democracy and
Human Rights in Russia
The Foreign Policy Initiative
July 1, 2009
The Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States
The White House
Washington, DC
Dear Mr. President:
You have stated your intention to forge a positive relationship between the United States and
Russia. We write on the eve of your summit meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev to express
our belief that such a relationship requires a commitment by both countries to democracy and
human rights and to urge you to reiterate that these values, which you have called universal, are
inextricably linked to humane behavior at home and responsible behavior abroad. Furthermore,
we ask you to meet with human rights, civil society, labor and opposition political party leaders
while you are in Moscow.
Since Vladimir Putin became President in 2000, Russia has been on a downward spiral away
from the democratic and economic reforms made in the 1990‘s after the collapse of communism.
Human rights activists, opposition political party leaders, lawyers and journalists are targets of
brutal, even deadly attacks. Freedoms of speech and the media are increasingly limited by the
state and the Kremlin has asserted growing authority over the economy, especially the energy
sector.
We urge you to challenge Russian leaders about the lack of political and economic freedom in
Russia. In your Cairo speech you stated that the freedom of speech, the ability to choose one's
own government and way of life, the rule of law and transparency ―are not just American ideas;
they are human rights. And that is why we will support them everywhere.‖ Moreover you noted
the connection between democracy and security, asserting that ―governments that protect these
rights are ultimately more stable, successful and secure." This principle gained even more
salience as Russia's invasion of Georgia last year revealed the lengths to which it will go to assert
a sphere of influence in the region.
For decades, the United States was a beacon of hope to those behind the Iron Curtain who longed
for their freedom. As you stated in Prague, after the Iron Curtain was lifted ―freedom spread like
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flowing water. Just as we stood for freedom in the 20th century, we must stand together for the
right of people everywhere to live free from fear in the 21st.‖
As you go forward, we hope that you will maintain a clear-eyed assessment of Russia‘s
intentions and keep the above principles in mind in order to ensure that the effort to ―reset‖ U.S.Russian relations does not come at the expense of the Russian people or Russia's neighbors.
Sincerely,
Stephen Biegun
Max Boot
Ellen Bork
William Courtney
Larry Cox
Lorne Craner
Larry Diamond
Nicholas N. Eberstadt
Eric Edelman
Jamie M. Fly
Jeffrey Gedmin
Carl Gershman
Morton H. Halperin
Bruce Pitcairn Jackson
Max M. Kampelman
Robert Kagan
David Kramer
Irina Krasovskaya
William Kristol
Tod Lindberg
Clifford D. May
Thomas O. Melia
A. Wess Mitchell
Joshua Muravchik
James O'Brien
Danielle Pletka
Stephen Rickard
David Satter
Randy Scheunemann
333
Gary Schmitt
Dan Senor
Stephen Sestanovich
Gare A. Smith
John Sullivan
William H. Taft IV
Peter Wehner
Kenneth R. Weinstein
Christian Whiton
Leon Wieseltier
Damon Wilson
Jennifer Windsor
Kenneth D. Wollack
R. James Woolsey
Obama Is Making Bush‘s Big Mistake on
Russia
Remember when George W. Bush thought he could get things done by making nice
with Vladimir Putin? Barack Obama is repeating the same error with Dmitry
Medvedev.
BY JAMIE M. FLY, GARY SCHMITT | MARCH 22, 2010
Foreign Policy
Still in the midst of a diplomatic fracas with Israel, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
also found herself in a mini-crisis with Russia during last week's Moscow trip. Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin publicly snubbed Clinton during a meeting Friday, hectoring
her in front of reporters after announcing Thursday that Russia would bring the
nuclear reactor it is constructing in Iran online later this year. This comes just as
Washington is hoping to tighten the screws on Tehran over its illicit nuclear program.
Putin's treatment of Clinton raises doubts about the Barack Obama administration's
strategy toward Russia, which has focused on building up the supposedly moderate
President Dmitri Medvedev, reportedly one of the few foreign leaders Obama has
bonded with, as a counterweight to Putin.
Obama's focus on a personal relationship with a Russian leader is nothing new; in fact
it's drearily consistent with how past U.S. presidents have handled their relations with
Russia. After his first meeting with then-President Putin in June 2001, George W.
Bush famously said: "I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his
soul." But despite some early agreements between the two leaders that enabled the
United States to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and cooperate in
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Central Asia in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, by the end of Bush's second
term relations with Russia had appreciably worsened and Russian democracy was in
full retreat.
Bush's focus on his personal relationship with the thuggish Putin was rightly scorned.
But Bush was not the first American president to place a bet on personal ties between
himself and a leader in Moscow. As the Soviet Union was coming to an end, George
H. W. Bush clearly preferred doing business with its no-nonsense leader, Mikhail
Gorbachev, to the disheveled, vodka-loving Boris Yeltsin. But Gorbachev's agenda
was about saving the Soviet Union, while Yeltsin, for all his flaws, wanted to bury
that corpse and move Russia toward the West and democratic rule. And now, we're
hearing that Obama believes he has a different and promising relationship with
Medvedev -- one independent of Putin.
Medvedev, to be sure, talks a different game than Putin. On the domestic front, he has
spoken and written extensively about the need to liberalize Russia's politics and
economy, tackle corruption, and unwind the worst features of the autocratic and
oligarchic system now in place. And it is on this basis that Obama's efforts to build a
solid personal relationship with Medvedev can be justified. Or can they?
For all his talk of reform -- and so far it is just that, talk -- Medvedev still claims that
Russia is a working democracy that protects the liberties of individual Russians
despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. And on the national security front, it
is difficult to see much light between Medvedev and Putin if Medvedev is judged by
his actions, not just his rhetoric. Since becoming Putin's hand-picked successor as
president in May 2008, Medvedev has done little to blunt his predecessor's Russian
revanchist policies. On Medvedev's watch, Georgia has been invaded and Abkhazia
and South Ossetia effectively annexed, and Russia has continued to threaten its
neighbors and put forward a "new security architecture" whose obvious goal is to
undermine NATO's role in Europe.
Medvedev's defenders -- both in Washington and Brussels -- argue that such is the
price he must pay for sharing power with Putin. However, even if Medvedev's more
moderate and liberalizing words are to be taken as a reflection of his own views,
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Russia's recent actions suggest that he may not even have much control over the
Kremlin's notorious bureaucracy, particularly the security services, since there has
been no noticeable effort to reform the Russian regime at home or tame its bullying
tactics abroad.
In fact, his seemingly well-meaning comments about arms control or Iran have often
been overshadowed days later by more bellicose moves from Putin, as happened last
week. The obvious point is that Putin is still calling the shots and will likely continue
doing so as he plots a return to the Russian presidency in 2012. This shouldn't come as
any great surprise; it's a stretch to think that Medvedev could, if he wanted to, break
with the system that promoted him, gave him power, and keeps him there. As Michael
Corleone, the Godfather's youngest son, learned, going legit is no easy task for
members of the mafia.
In short, there is little reason to believe that basing a "reset" of U.S.-Russian relations
on increased personal ties between presidents Medvedev and Obama will buy Obama
any particular advantage. If anything, doing so reinforces Moscow's incentive to
continue the "good cop, bad cop" routine. In January, thousands of Russians took to
the streets in Kaliningrad to campaign for democratic reforms and thousands
protested deteriorating economic conditions in cities across the country on Saturday.
The success or failure of these democratic forces will likely be more important for the
United States in the long run than Obama's personal relationship with a leader that
many Russians view as little more than a puppet.
It's always possible of course that Medvedev could be his generation's Gorbachev. But
given all we've seen so far, that possibility seems remote. More likely, come 2012
Obama will find himself in a position similar to that of his predecessor -- defending an
ineffective U.S.-Russia policy that rests on the weakest of reeds: close personal ties
with a Russian leader.
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The Kremlin Kowtow
Why have Western leaders and intellectuals gone soft on Russia's autocracy?
BY LILIA SHEVTSOVA | JANUARY 5, 2010
Foreign Policy
At a recent meeting with Russian liberals in Moscow, a well-known European intellectual started
trying to convince them that, as he put it, "Russia is not a dictatorship these days. [President
Dmitry] Medvedev is trying to liberalize the system, and with time Russia will become a
democracy. You shouldn't try to hurry things." Not surprisingly, this advice provoked
consternation among an audience that had expected at least some encouragement from
Continental liberals.
At a conference last month in Berlin, I witnessed another example of this divide. When I started
to raise the question of democratic standards in Western-Russian relations, I was interrupted by
another Western attendee. "You irritate us," he said. "International relations are not about values;
they are about power!" If he is right, Russian liberals will have to reconsider their expectations
about the Western opinion-leaders they have long counted on for moral support and
understanding.
A consensus seems to be growing among Western policymakers and intellectuals that Russia is
not ready for liberalism and that there are even certain advantages to dealing with the illiberal
political order built by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. This may be why Western policy toward
Russia has only served to shore up the Russian powers that are pursuing anti-Western interests.
The results could be catastrophic -- not merely for the activists who are working to make Russia
a free country, but for the moral authority of those in the West who preach liberty but practice
something quite different.
The U.S. "reset button" policy demonstrates this paradox nicely. The United States, of course,
needs to have a dialogue with Russia on security issues, including arms control. But turning a
nuclear arms pact into the main item on the agenda only reveals how reluctant both sides are to
discuss the real issues at stake -- the fundamental political differences between the two societies.
Instead, Moscow and Washington revive ghosts of the past and use a Cold-War era mechanism
to try to imitate cooperation. In the end, the U.S.-Russian security dialogue will do little to help
President Barack Obama accomplish his goals of reining in an aggressive Iran, ending the war in
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Afghanistan, and advancing a nonproliferation regime. Instead, it will work in the Kremlin's
favor, bolstering Russia's great-power status and making it easier to prop up the current
authoritarian system.
The European Union's policy on Russia is also helping to maintain the Russian status quo,
buying Russian energy resources and raw materials, and helping to finance Russia's oligarch
class and strengthen the political elite. Having accepted Russia into European institutions -- the
Council of Europe in particular -- European leaders try not to notice that Russia's system does
not conform to the very principles these organizations are designed to promote. One could get
the impression that, for the sake of advancing their economic interests, European governments
have decided not to make an issue out of these principles, convincing themselves that Russia is
simply not ready for them yet.
Some Western leaders have no qualms about openly legitimizing the Russian regime. Gerhard
Schroeder, who now serves on the board of the Gazprom-led Nord Stream pipeline project, is
just the most well-known example of how morally flexible Western leaders can be for the right
price. The former German chancellor behaves as Russia's world envoy, defending the Kremlin's
policies with such enthusiasm that Germans have started to joke, "The parrot sitting on his
shoulder speaks with a Russian accent." Another of Putin's friends is Italian Prime Minister
Silvio Berlusconi, the Kremlin advocate who long since seems to have stopped caring about his
own reputation. And then there are France's leaders. In his time, former French President Jacques
Chirac did not allow what he called "little" European countries to criticize Putin at EU-Russia
summits. Chirac even awarded Putin France's highest decoration -- the insignia of Grand Croix
of the Légion d'Honneur. He did it secretly, not wanting to infuriate the French public.
Chirac's successor, Nicolas Sarkozy, not only thinks it proper to congratulate the Kremlin on
manipulated elections, but actually allows the Kremlin to manipulate him politically. In August
2008, when France held the EU presidency, Sarkozy pretended not to notice that Moscow wasn't
fulfilling two key provisions of the Medvedev-Sarkozy plan to settle the Russian-Georgian
conflict: withdrawing Russian troops and allowing international discussion on the final status of
Georgia's breakaway regions. This gave the Russian elite further reason to see the European
Union as an organization it could string along or simply ignore.
Key to the European policy toward Russia is Germany -- and just because Schroeder isn't in
power doesn't mean Schroederization is at an end. Previous generations of German leaders did
business with the Soviet Union, but they at least tried to bring change -- or dreamed about it. One
gets the impression that the current German elite, on the other hand, is hoping only to avoid
change in Putin's Russia. Although the East Germany-raised Chancellor Angela Merkel was once
known as a critic of Russia's undemocratic tendencies, her government has expanded its
economic cooperation with Russia as the German economy has slumped, seeking deals in the
shipping and automotive sectors. Germany's decision to abandon a value-based approach to
Russia has encouraged the European Union's Russia policy to be equally "pragmatic" -- focused
on maintaining the status quo, in other words.
True, when some Western leaders come to Moscow they make a point of meeting human rights
activists or the moderate opposition. "They ask us how they can help us. We explain that they
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should raise the question of human rights and democracy when talking to Russian leaders," says
Arseny Roginski of the human rights group Memorial. "But after that, usually nothing happens."
Western intellectuals are even more prone to the Kremlin's enticements than the politicians. They
battle for the honor of taking part in the Valdai Club -- a series of regularly arranged meetings
with Russian leaders. At these meetings, prominent attendees have been known to put
preapproved questions to the Russians, playing the latter part in the Kremlin-orchestrated show.
"Mister prime minister ... you are a democrat!" exclaimed a leading French intellectual at the
meeting with Putin when he was still president. "You are really a liberal!" declared a well-known
German expert at the meeting with Medvedev.
Experts from the European Council on Foreign Relations recently transmitted the Kremlin's
ideas to Western audiences in the essay collection, What Does Russia Think?, which included
little in the way of critical assessment, instead simply rehashing justifications for
authoritarianism and Moscow's geopolitical ambitions. Leading Kremlin spin doctor Gleb
Pavlovsky argued in the afterword, "The consensus that Putin has created in Russia ... is a valuebased reality. It is based on the possibility of a free life in a secure environment -- something that
Americans take for granted." Regretfully, the European experts had no response to this assertion.
Does that mean they agree?
Other intellectuals take part in Kremlin-organized forums to discuss new standards for
democracy and Russia's contribution to their development. One such forum took place under
Medvedev's aegis in Yaroslavl last autumn. The French and Spanish prime ministers, François
Fillon and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, respectively, who attended the event, clearly had no
real idea what was going on, but their presence raised the event's prestige. Among those taking
part in the forum were Western intellectual gurus such as Alvin Toffler, Immanuel Wallerstein,
and Fareed Zakaria -- who should certainly know better than to give their names to an event that
suggests any positive link between "Russia" and "democracy."
One influential European leader, Robert Cooper, the E.U. director-general for external and
politico-military affairs, does not shy from discussing democracy with the Russian political elite.
In an interview with the pro-Kremlin Russian Institute he concluded, "Sometimes I think that the
word 'democracy' becomes problematic. I would prefer to talk about responsible, open
government that defends the rights of nations ... but has enough legitimacy to use tough
administrative measures when there is a need for them." Such an understanding of democracy is
exactly what the current Russian government is looking for.
Russia's reform-minded forces have long since stopped calling on the West to help advance
democracy in Russia. They understand that transforming Russia is a job for Russian society
itself. But reform-minded Russians expect the West at least to avoid holding back change by
supporting the authoritarian forces that would suppress it. Prominent Russian human rights
activists and liberals like Sergei Kovalev, Garry Kasparov, and Grigory Yavlinsky, long
considered pro-Western voices, have recently become critics of the West's increasingly
accommodating policies toward Russia. One might say that these voices are just a small minority
of Russian society. But if the West loses this pro-Western minority, it will lose Russia altogether.
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So what would a more principled Russia policy entail? Western leaders must keep liberal and
democratic principles in mind while dealing with the Russian elite. They must be wary of the
latest fairy tales about "modernization," avoid naively spreading the Kremlin's ideas, and try to
understand what is actually taking place inside the Russian system, which is showing signs of
serious instability and degradation and may soon become a challenge for the West.
At the moment, there are no hints that the West is ready to make even these minimal efforts. This
begs the question: How can Western civilization resolve its own internal problems with
democracy if it abandons its mission of promoting liberty?
Punishing Allies. . .
The view of Obama from Central Europe.
BY Tod Lindberg
December 7, 2009, Vol. 15, No. 12
The Weekly Standard
The Obama administration has hit more than a few reset buttons since taking office. In the case
of the Islamic world, resetting has meant respectful outreach exemplified in Obama's Cairo
speech. With China, resetting means minimizing the American hectoring on human rights and
conspicuous displays of antagonism toward Beijing such as a meeting for the Dalai Lama with
the American president. The effort to reset Israel-Palestine, now itself reset, entailed early
pressure on Israel to halt all settlement construction in the West Bank. In Iran, the reset was an
offer of carrots--up to normalization of relations in exchange for an end to Iran's ambition to
acquire a nuclear weapon. And, of course, the biggest reset of all has been with Russia, where
the administration has sought to de-ideologize relations for the sake of arms-control agreements
and future help with Iran.
To be fair, it's too soon to say what will come of all this resetting. A successor agreement on
nukes with Russia seems very achievable; a breakthrough in the Middle East peace process much
less so. Perhaps the most generous way to understand the new administration's initiatives is as a
series of medium- to long-term bets. At least potentially, the payoffs are high: A China
continuing its "peaceful rise" is in everyone's interest. A Russia committed to a nonnuclear Iran
might go a long way toward slowing that country's secretive weapons program.
Clearly, the administration as a whole sees merit in trying approaches very different from the
ones associated with George W. Bush. But the question is how much of the world's trouble was
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Bush's fault. If our Iran problem has more to do with Iran than with Bush administration policy
toward Iran, our Russia difficulties more to do with Russia than with Bush's Russia policy--and
likewise with the Middle East, Asia, the Islamic world writ large, and elsewhere--then there is
not much reason to be very optimistic about the prospects of an un-Bush reset. The payoffs may
be high, but the odds are long.
And the potential collateral damage is not negligible. Already, the left-leaning side of the human
rights community is beginning to express dismay over an administration that seems reluctant to
speak out against repression when its words might get in the way of all the resetting. The
examples are many, from Iran's violent crackdown on street demonstrations protesting electoral
fraud last summer to China and Burma. The administration's decisions to close Guantánamo and
to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in the U.S. criminal justice system won plaudits from the left,
but it's a bit much to act as if the biggest human rights issue in the world today is whether the
U.S. government seeks the death penalty for KSM in a criminal court or before a military
commission.
Not the least of the collateral damage has been to traditional U.S. allies. The September decision
to cancel the missile defense system planned for deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic
and staunchly opposed by Russia is a case in point. The one thing the planned system had the
least to do with was its stated purpose of stopping long-range missiles fired by Iran at Europe.
No one took such a contingency as anything but a remote threat. In fact, recently revised U.S.
assessments of Iranian priorities showed greater emphasis on development of short and mediumrange missiles, providing the Obama administration the rationale for scuttling the interceptors in
Poland and the radar in the Czech Republic.
For the Poles and the Czechs, though, the proposed deployment was something more, a
conspicuous indication of U.S. commitment under the auspices of NATO to the territorial
defense of Central and Eastern Europe. Suspicions about Russian intentions with regard to both
the "near abroad" of former Soviet territory and the territory of the former Warsaw Pact have
long been present there. And they have heightened considerably since Russian tanks rolled into
Georgia in August 2008--ostensibly to defend ethnic Russians in the breakaway Georgian
territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but clearly a display of raw clout staking a claim to a
sphere of influence outside Russian borders.
For Russia, the missile defense system was a threat. True, perhaps not to its nuclear arsenal
(though the Russians liked to claim the system was a precursor to an ABM capability directed
against them)--but certainly to Russia's desire for deference. Moscow had long opposed NATO
enlargement. But its opposition was largely ineffectual until Georgia was denied the Membership
Action Plan the Bush administration was pushing for at a summit in April 2008.
It's fair to say that missile defense has never been as high a priority in Democratic defense policy
circles as Republican. It would have taken little to persuade the new administration that the
Polish-Czech deployment was unnecessary, while stressing the potential for improved relations
with Russia as a result of its cancellation. In making the decision--announced prematurely and
clumsily, due to administration concerns about a leak, on the 60th anniversary of the Soviet
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invasion of Poland--the administration lost sight of or was indifferent to the symbolic aspects of
the deployment as a display of U.S. commitment to its allies.
Throughout Europe these days, there are substantial worries about U.S. disengagement. The
concern is not confined to Central and Eastern Europe, though it is most acute there. Western
European publics are gaga about Obama, whom they regard as the antidote to George W. Bush.
Policy-makers see a rather different picture. Obama is happy to accept European adulation and
accolades, including a Nobel Prize, but seems less inclined to view Europe as much of a strategic
priority or as an especially valuable partner in pursuit of U.S. policy objectives. It's not quite a
European sense of abandonment (though that worry seems to get stronger the farther east you go,
as I saw at a recent conference in Latvia). Rather, it's the sense of being an object of so-far
benign neglect.
True, the United States remains keenly interested in allied commitments to Afghanistan. But not
quite to the point of seeming to involve anyone else very much in the months-long deliberations
over how to go forward there. Meanwhile, it became shockingly clear following the Georgia
conflict that there had been no serious NATO contingency planning for the territorial defense of
the new, post-Cold War allies. That would seem like the bare minimum due to all members who
have pledged in Article V of their treaty to regard an attack on one as an attack on all--the more
so given their participation in the Afghanistan mission.
NATO is currently involved in drafting a new "strategic concept" to guide the alliance in the
years to come. Nothing wrong with that, but NATO is currently fighting an actual shooting war
against a tenacious set of adversaries in Afghanistan and has yet to develop credible plans for
defending all its members. Winning the war you are fighting and making sure you can deliver on
the alliance's core promise of collective self-defense are not bad strategic concepts. First things
first.
Yet even such basic priorities for the alliance as territorial defense aren't obvious to everyone
these days. A show of hands at the recent Halifax International Security Forum, a major proNATO gathering of North Americans and Europeans, revealed a number of participants who
regard improving relations with Russia as more important than defense planning. Yes, most
members seemed to think that you need both, but the point is that there is a detectable inclination
among some to conclude that serious defense planning may antagonize Russia and is therefore
undesirable. That's the point at which the Russian reset poses basic risks.
Central and Eastern Europeans would like some reassurance about the U.S. security commitment
to them. That was the message of a somewhat alarmist but nevertheless compelling July open
letter to the Obama administration from more than 20 current and former leaders in the region.
They deserve their reassurance sooner rather than later. It seems likely that Europeans--Eastern,
Central, and Western--will assume greater salience in the administration's thinking as reset bets
fail to pan out: You can work most constructively with those who are most willing to work
constructively with you. That means Europeans and others around the world who share our
views on such matters as human rights, free expression, and democratic government.
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It may not be the best way to get to the right conclusion, but it seems likely the U.S. government
will once again find its voice on democracy and human rights if for no other reason than that
Russia, China, Burma, Sudan, and company are unlikely to make it worth our while not to speak
up on such matters.
Copyright 2010 Weekly Standard LLC.
A Stab in the Back
Canceling the missile shield betrays our allies.
BY Jamie M. Fly
September 28, 2009, Vol. 15, No. 02
The Weekly Standard
President Obama's decision to cancel plans for U.S. missile defense sites in Poland and the
Czech Republic is a knife in the back for those countries. The implications for U.S. security and
the transatlantic relationship are profound. Critics rightly note that the sudden announcement
Thursday sends a dangerous message to allies, both in Europe and elsewhere, who rely on U.S.
security guarantees.
Even those who agree with the administration's approach concede that the rollout was clumsy-middle of the night phone calls and little prior consultation. In July 2007, Senator Obama
criticized his predecessor for this very thing. The Bush administration, he said, had "done a poor
job of consulting its NATO allies about the deployment of a missile defense system that has
major implications for all of them."
In addition to the geopolitical implications of this con-cession to Russia, there are several major
problems with the administration's plan.
Questionable intelligence on Iran. In his announcement, President Obama stated that his decision
was driven by an updated intelligence assessment of Iran's missile programs. According to the
White House fact sheet, the administration appears to believe that it doesn't need to worry about
Iran's possessing an ICBM capability until around 2020.
In the wake of the intelligence community's failures before the Iraq war and its mismanagement
of intelligence regarding Iran's nuclear program, it is surprising to see the White House take
intelligence about Iran's sensitive military programs at face value. It is naïve to believe that Iran,
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as it makes strides in its nuclear program, will not also speed up its efforts to develop long-range
missile technology or acquire it from a country like North Korea.
This shift in the intelligence community's assessment dovetails conveniently with the views of
Ellen Tauscher, the new undersecretary of state for arms control and international security and a
former member of Congress, who earlier this year accused supporters of European missile
defense of "running around with their hair on fire about a long range threat from Iran that does
not exist."
Reliance on unproven technology. Obama and his Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill have
traditionally claimed that they support missile defense, but only systems that are fully tested or
"proven." The problem for defenders of Obama's decision is that the system they now support is
exactly what they accused the Bush system of being--unproven.
The White House fact sheet notes that by 2020, the United States will deploy the SM-3 Block
IIB "after development and testing." Even James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, admitted on Thursday that the technology is "still to be proven." The ground-based
interceptors the Bush administration intended to place in Poland were much farther along than
Obama's system.
Again, President Obama is doing precisely what Senator Obama found objectionable when he
said, in 2007, "The Bush administration has in the past exaggerated missile defense capabilities
and rushed deployments for political purposes."
Exorbitant cost. The administration has not stated what its four-phase approach will cost.
General Cartwright in his briefing did argue that relying on SM-3 missiles is more cost effective
than using the ground-based interceptors intended for Poland because the individual interceptors
are cheaper. What Cartwright did not mention is the cost of the additional radars and bases, as
well as development and testing.
Last year, the Congressional Budget Office waded into the debate over missile defense options
for Europe and concluded that a sea-based SM-3 system--which the Obama administration plans
to deploy during phase one--would cost $21.9 billion, much more than the $12.8 billion for the
Bush missile shield.
The announcement came prior to a flurry of autumn diplomacy--the president's upcoming
bilateral meetings with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev at the United Nations General
Assembly and the G-20 in Pittsburgh later in the month, the October 1 sit down between
Undersecretary of State William Burns and the Iranians, and the reconvening in Geneva of the
START negotiations, in which the Russians have insisted that limits on U.S. missile defenses be
part of any new agreement.
President Obama seems to think that by making a grand gesture and downplaying the Iranian
threat he will garner good will from the Russians and the Iranians going into these talks, never
mind the hurt feelings of long-time allies. More likely, Iran, Russia, and a watching world will
see this for what it is: a colossal sign of U.S. weakness.
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Europe/Turkey
July 2010 - August 2010
Ukrainian Blues
Yanukovych's Rise, Democracy's Fall
Alexander J. Motyl
ALEXANDER J. MOTYL is Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University in Newark, New
Jersey
In February 2010, Viktor Yanukovych made a remarkable political comeback. In the 2004
Ukrainian presidential election, Yanukovych, who was then Ukraine's prime minister and the
handpicked successor to President Leonid Kuchma, was accused of fraud and ousted by the
Orange Revolution, which was led by Viktor Yushchenko
Just over five years later, surrounded by his party's blue-and-white banners, Yanukovych
became president.
When it first came to power, Ukraine's Orange government seemed like it would fulfill
popular demands for radical political reform and rapid integration into Europe. But those
expectations were quickly dashed. Yushchenko, as president, and Tymoshenko, as prime
minister, proved incapable of working together, continually clashing and publicly criticizing
each other. Soon, Ukraine's dysfunctional political system became known to Ukrainians as a
durdom, or "madhouse."
Then, the global economic crisis sent Ukraine's economy into a tailspin. In 2009, the country's
GDP fell by about 15 percent, exports by 25 percent, and imports by just under 40 percent.
The consumer price index rose by more than 12 percent. Popular anger and frustration set in.
Yearning for stability, Ukrainians were willing to support anyone in this year's election who
could fix the mess. Tymoshenko, Yanukovych's main challenger, was seen to share fault for
Ukraine's problems and could not easily claim to be that person.
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Wisely, Yanukovych presented himself as a moderate, democratic professional who could
unify a country increasingly divided over whether it should align with Russia or the West. He
claimed that he would be able to strike the right balance between the two and could transform
Ukraine into an economic tiger, making it one of the world's 20 richest nations. Yanukovych's
campaign slogan -- "Ukraine is for people" -- captured the right tone to counter his previously
negative image. It suggested that he was a man of the people who would place the interests of
citizens above his own, in contrast to the supposedly power-hungry Tymoshenko.
Yanukovych also claimed to have learned from his mistakes in 2004. In December 2009, he
wrote in Dzerkalo Tyzhnya, one of Ukraine's most widely read newspapers, that although he
still believed that the real goal of the Orange Revolution had been "to weaken Russia," he
accepted that it represented a popular call for democracy. He further noted that a government
"cannot promote serious socioeconomic plans without the active participation of the entire
society."
Whatever the reasons for Yanukovych's victory, it was a surprisingly narrow one. In the first
round, Yanukovych received just over 35 percent of the vote and made it into the runoff
round with Tymoshenko. He received just under 49 percent of the vote in that round,
compared with Tymoshenko's 45 percent. But really he had won over only about one-third of
Ukraine's electorate since turnout was around 69 percent. Moreover, had Yushchenko not
encouraged his supporters to select the "against all" option on the ballot, Tymoshenko would
probably have won.
With such a slim mandate, most expected Yanukovych to pursue a moderate course after the
election, reaching out to the opposition and working toward economic stability and political
reform. Instead, he immediately took actions that undermined democracy, neglected the
country's badly broken economy, and aligned Ukraine too closely with Russia for the comfort
of much of the electorate
DEMOCRATIC ROADKILL
After the Yushchenko government was dismissed, on March 3, Yanukovych had 30 days to
form his own. Because his Party of Regions lacked a clear majority of seats in the Verkhovna
Rada, Ukraine's parliament, it needed a coalition partner and so began negotiations with the
Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defense (NU-NS) Bloc, led by Yushchenko. The NU-NS knew
that no majority coalition could be formed without it, and so it demanded control over a range
of portfolios, including the prime ministership.
The Party of Regions responded by changing the Rada's rules so that it could form a coalition
without the NU-NS by joining with willing individual deputies. In mid-March, Yanukovych's
party formed a governing coalition called Stability and Reform with the Communists, the
Lytvyn Bloc (the bloc allied with the Rada's Speaker, Volodymyr Lytvyn), and 16 individuals
who crossed party lines to join the coalition. Those who crossed over have come to be known
as tushki, a pejorative Russian term roughly meaning "roadkill." Although the tushki gave
Stability and Reform just enough votes to form a government, Yanukovych's willingness to
use unconstitutional measures to do so -- in 2008, Ukraine's Constitutional Court explicitly
outlawed the use of individual deputies to form coalitions, although it has now refused to
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challenge Yanukovych -- set a disturbingly antidemocratic precedent. As the German political
scientist Andreas Umland noted in late March in the Kyiv Post, "Ukraine is now less
democratic than it was. . . . With their change of allegiance the tushki have grossly
misrepresented the preferences of the Ukrainian voters."
After the coalition was formed, Ukrainians expected Yanukovych to live up to his campaign
promises and appoint professionals, reformers, and moderates to government posts, but he did
the opposite. Most of Yanukovych's political appointees hail from his home region, Ukraine's
highly Sovietized rust belt, the Donbass, and have little experience with democratic politics or
the technical know-how required to run a clean government and a functioning market
economy. Like the old Donbass Communist Party bosses did, with whom many of these
appointees cut their political teeth, Yanukovych acts as a patron. He doles out favors,
provides access to power, and makes most decisions.
The position of prime minister, for example, went to Yanukovych's longtime ally Mykola
Azarov. As head of the Rada's budgetary committee and the State Tax Administration in the
1990s, Azarov turned a blind eye to government graft and imposed ruinously high tax rates on
small businesses. His relationship with Yanukovych was cemented when he served as the first
deputy prime minister and finance minister to notoriously unscrupulous cabinets headed by
Yanukovych in 2004 and 2006-7. Together, Yanukovych and Azarov have doled out 29
cabinet seats to their cronies. Such a large cabinet, with two more members than even the
ineffective Council of the European Union, is almost certain to become a talking shop that,
like the Council of the European Union, is incapable of reaching consensus or making tough
decisions. Meanwhile, the positions of economic minister and finance minister have gone to
politicians who lack experience in either field but are dependent on Yanukovych for power
and are thus unlikely to cross him. Contrary to his campaign slogans, reform and democracy
are clearly not Yanukovych's priority.
To be sure, Yanukovych and his chief of staff, the economist Iryna Akimova, have created -and will be heading up -- the new Committee on Economic Reform. Although there are some
economists among the committee's 26 members, there are also many political appointees
beholden to Yanukovych. The inclusion of political appointees and the committee's
impractically large size suggest that it will be as ineffective as Yanukovych's cabinet. And
even if it does develop some real economic reforms, they are likely to fall victim to turf
battles between the Economy and Finance Ministries and the committee itself. Parallel
organizations with overlapping jurisdictions are doomed to tussle over control, even with
wise, professional management -- something Yanukovych is unlikely to provide.
Yanukovych's hub-and-spokes political system -- with Yanukovych at the center and key
political roles filled by yes men -- has put the president "on top of [the] Ukrainian power
pyramid," as analysts at Kiev's Penta Center, a political think tank, have put it. Yanukovych
even went so far as to redefine democracy as "order" in a press conference in Strasbourg on
April 27. But political order is not democracy. Such hypercentralized political systems are
rarely efficient and almost always corrupt. There is no reason to think that the Donbass-based
dons who man the Yanukovych system will be able or willing to pursue the economic reform
Ukraine so badly needs
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EASTWARD BOUND
Just as Yanukovych has failed to live up to his democratic and economic promises, he has
acted against his campaign promise to unify the country. As president, Yushchenko actively
favored his ethnic Ukrainian base by promoting the Ukrainian language, culture, and identity
in schools, government, and the media. In the process, he alienated many of the ethnic
Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the country's east and south. Most observers
expected Yanukovych to calm the tense situation by neither advocating nor disparaging
Ukrainian heritage. Instead, he surprised everyone by attacking it.
Dmytro Tabachnyk, Yanukovych's appointment for minister of education and science, has
spearheaded this assault. Tabachnyk is an odious choice because, besides having a weak
academic pedigree, he openly espouses anti-Ukrainian views. He claims that the ethnic
Ukrainians in the west of the country are too westernized to be true Ukrainians. He believes
that Ukrainian culture flourished in Soviet times, when it was in fact suppressed in favor of
the colonial power's culture. He also insists that today the Russian language is discriminated
against, even as Russian-language publications and broadcasts make up the overwhelming
majority of media available in Ukraine. Since assuming his new position, Tabachnyk has
reduced the role of Ukrainian in schools, urged the cessation of Ukrainian-language dubbing
of foreign films, and expressed indifference to the construction of a statue of Stalin in the
southern city of Zaporizhzhya. Unsurprisingly, his assault on Ukrainian identity has provoked
demonstrations, student protests, and petitions -- directed as much at Yanukovych as at
Tabachnyk.
Yanukovych's overly centralized, anti-Ukrainian regime has been unable to forge a genuine
national consensus on the country's political and economic direction, either. A case in point is
the April 2010 Russian-Ukrainian pact, in which Yanukovych agreed to extend until 2047 the
basing rights of Russia's Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, a port city on the southern part of the
Crimean Peninsula, which juts off Ukraine and into the Black Sea, and Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev agreed in return to lower the price Ukraine pays for Russian natural gas by
30 percent through 2019.
The agreement's critics charge that Yanukovych has sold out to Russia. This may be true, but
the more damning criticism is that the agreement was pushed through the Rada without regard
for transparency or democratic procedure. As one senior Ukrainian diplomat told me, "The
haste with which the agreement was signed is daunting. There was no expert evaluation of the
draft and no proper consideration of the issue in parliamentary committees. . . . The decision
was taken by a small group of individuals, if not by one person."
There are four separate issues concerning the Sevastopol deal that the Rada should have had
the opportunity to debate: the geopolitical implications for Ukraine of basing the Black Sea
Fleet in Sevastopol, the fair rate that Russia should pay in rent for using the base, the price
Ukraine should pay for Russian gas, and the cost to Russia of transporting gas through
Ukraine's pipelines. But instead of airing these issues individually in the Rada, Yanukovych
bundled them and thus bartered away Ukraine's security by ceding informal control of the
Crimea, its potentially vital sea-lanes, and the natural gas deposits that surround it to Russia
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for the foreseeable future. In return, Yanukovych secured gas prices that will likely save
Ukraine some $1-$3 billion annually for only the next nine years. Worse, Russia merely
agreed to cut its gas prices to current average world rates, pay below-market gas transit fees,
and pay a long-term rent on the base that, at $100 million per annum, is about one-fifth of
what experts calculate it should be, based on rents for comparable bases around the world.
With open consideration of the agreement's terms in the Rada and a team of professional
negotiators, Ukraine could have gotten much more out of the deal: it should at least have
demanded European-level transit fees and a higher basing rent.
The deal's passage unleashed a riot in the Rada, complete with egg throwing and smoke
bombs. Yanukovych's subsequent negotiations with Russia over closer cooperation on
aviation, nuclear energy, transportation, and gas transit have led to protests across Ukraine.
Intellectuals and opposition leaders have accused Yanukovych of treason, declared
unconditional opposition to his regime, and predicted that civil war was in the offing. Even if
this response is exaggerated, it shows that a significant portion of the population -- at least the
one-third or more who are opposed to closer ties with Russia -- now detests Yanukovych
CAN'T HOLD US DOWN
The rise of such discontent matters. Ukraine is home to a politically conscious civil society
that, thanks to the Orange Revolution, is more vigorous than at any time in Ukraine's almost
20-year independent existence. Professionals, intellectuals, students, and businesspeople will
increasingly resist Yanukovych's efforts to establish strongman rule and will continue to
protest if he kowtows to Russia or the economy grows worse. They have already started to
organize: in mid-March, over 300 representatives of the so-called New Citizen movement met
in Kiev to begin monitoring the activities of the Yanukovych government; in May, branches
of the similar Save Ukraine Committee were operating across the country. Local elections in
2011 and parliamentary elections in 2012 could also mobilize the population against
Yanukovych and his regime. If he continues on his current course, radical nationalists may be
the big winners.
Faced with growing popular resistance, Yanukovych may contemplate cracking down on
dissent. But such a move would likely provoke violence and destabilize Ukraine. Moreover,
authoritarianism along the lines of Belarus in the mid-1990s or Russia at the start of this
century is almost certainly not a viable option for Yanukovych. When Aleksandr Lukashenko
became president of Belarus in 1994, he inherited an intact Soviet security apparatus. And
former Russian President Vladimir Putin could rely on thousands of siloviki, political
operatives in the secret police and the army, for support. Ukraine's security service and army
are a far cry from those in Belarus or Russia. Without a strong coercive apparatus,
Yanukovych cannot succeed even as an authoritarian.
Ukraine's first president, in office from 1991 to 1994, the generally cautious Leonid
Kravchuk, has joined the chorus of Yanukovych critics. In an open letter published in March,
he wrote, "Your team has many people who want to continue along the path of lawlessness,
permissiveness and corruption. They're developing a taste for solving complex problems by
force. This has nothing in common with democracy." Kravchuk's comments should worry
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Yanukovych. They demonstrate that even neutrally inclined Ukrainian elites (Kravchuk did
not support the Orange Revolution) are turning against him
SLEIGHT-OF-HAND REFORM
If Yanukovych keeps on his current course, he could very well provoke a second Orange
Revolution. Lacking the ability, capacity, and will to change the system, Yanukovych will
probably try to enhance his regime's legitimacy by continuing to rally the more radical of his
constituents at the expense of the Ukrainian language, culture, and identity; do everything
possible to appease the gas-hungry oligarchs of eastern Ukraine; and use the Union of
European Football Associations (UEFA) championship, which Ukraine will host in
partnership with Poland in 2012, to promote his image as a pro-European modernizer.
Viewed through this lens, Yanukovych's choice of the incendiary Tabachnyk as education and
science minister makes some sense. As Tabachnyk antagonizes nationally conscious
Ukrainians, he enhances Yanukovych's appeal among his pro-Russian constituents in the
country's south and east. That said, this course risks encouraging ethnic violence between
radical ethnic Russians and ethnic Ukrainians. Additionally, Yanukovych cannot provoke
moderate ethnic Ukrainians without limit. They are the ones who took to the streets in 2004 to
prevent him from coming to office and could do so again to kick him out.
The lower natural gas price that Yanukovych negotiated with Russia will bring immediate
benefits to the oligarchs who run Ukraine's heavily industrialized southeast. Lower gas prices
will allow them to keep the costs of their products low and globally competitive without
forcing them to modernize or become more efficient. This will certainly endear them to
Yanukovych in the short term. In the medium term, however, Ukraine's overarching
economic stagnation will eat into their profits. And even if the population welcomes lower
gas prices at first, the Yanukovych regime is likely to become more corrupt as it draws closer
to Russia's notoriously unscrupulous energy business. Sooner or later, as their living standards
stagnate or deteriorate, Yanukovych's working-class constituents may begin to realize that
they got the short end of the deal.
Yanukovych's best chance to rally public support (and address some economic problems)
might be the 2012 UEFA championship. Ukraine's roads are in terrible shape; its railroads,
although efficient, require modernization; and its airports and hotels are in need of significant
improvement. A state-led campaign to fix these problems before the influx of tourists in 2012
could generate economic activity, create jobs, and attract more capital. Unsurprisingly,
readying Ukraine for the championship has become a priority for Yanukovych, who in April
created a special committee to oversee the preparations.
The UEFA preparations will buy Yanukovych time but cannot fix Ukraine's underlying
economic and political problems. To do that, Yanukovych would have to democratize his
regime, control corruption, cease his anti-Ukrainian campaign, and persuade his compatriots
to accept the economic pain that goes with serious reform. He may eventually come to realize
that democracy is preferable to ignominy. Or oligarchs worried about their long-term
economic interests may persuade him that hypercentralization will destabilize Ukraine. Rather
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than waiting for these eventualities to happen, however, Russia and the West should help
Yanukovych change his course now, before it is too late
HELPING YANUKOVYCH HELP HIMSELF
At the start of his presidency, Yanukovych laid out his foreign policy priorities: restoring
Ukraine's close ties with Russia, European integration, and building relationships with
strategic partners such as the United States. By playing to these priorities and, at the same
time, pursuing their own interests in the region, Russia, the European Union, and the United
States can help stabilize the Yanukovych presidency and Ukraine.
Russia considers Ukraine part of its sphere of influence and would prefer it to be a weak state
rather than an independent, strong democracy. But although a weak Ukraine may be to
authoritarian Russia's benefit, a deeply dysfunctional Ukraine on the verge of popular
revolution is not. For his part, Yanukovych has said that he wants Ukraine to serve as a bridge
between Russia and the West. But a bridge must be sturdy. With the gas and fleet deal,
Yanukovych has amply demonstrated his fealty to Russia and solidified his pro-Russian
credentials with his base. The Kremlin should return the favor by encouraging Yanukovych to
fire the controversial Tabachnyk to appease some of his critics in the rest of the country.
The West has an even greater role to play in nudging Yanukovych in the right direction. The
International Monetary Fund -- which gave Kiev an emergency loan at the start of the global
economic crisis and will likely need to do so again -- should insist on strict conditionality. It
should not only demand that Yanukovych balance his budget but also pressure him to
undertake significant structural economic reforms, including reducing taxation, simplifying
business registration procedures, raising the retirement age, and raising the cost of utilities.
Europe should hold to the European Parliament's February 2010 resolution, which reaffirmed
Ukraine's strategic importance to the EU and stated that the country could apply for
membership if it "adheres to the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights
and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law." As the European Parliament recommended,
Europe should assist Ukraine in meeting these standards and should deepen ties between the
two by working toward visa-free travel, better energy cooperation, and a free-trade zone.
Yanukovych has affirmed that he is interested in further integration with the EU. Europe
should take him at his word and offer Yanukovych the prospect of associate member status
for Ukraine if he tackles some of the country's political and economic problems.
Washington must remind Yanukovych that Ukraine -- especially a democratic Ukraine -remains important to the United States, even as the Obama administration works to improve
U.S. relations with Russia. Historically, the U.S.-Ukrainian relationship has atrophied when
the United States has pursued closer ties with Russia and has grown stronger when U.S.Russian relations were strained. But President Barack Obama should resist this pattern. Just as
a stable Ukraine is in Russia's interests, so, too, is a stable and democratic Ukraine in the
United States' interests. If Yanukovych precipitates a government collapse or state failure,
Russia may be tempted to step in, disrupting the balance of power in eastern Europe.
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If no popular revolution intervenes, Russia and the West will have to deal with Yanukovych
and his "blue counterrevolution" for the next five years. Unfortunately, during that time,
Yanukovych will probably grow increasingly ineffective and embattled, destabilizing
Ukraine. Yet it remains conceivable that Yanukovych could reverse course, democratize
Ukraine, and enact genuine economic reform. But this is likely only if Russia and the West
act soon to save Yanukovych from himself.
Reprinted by permission of FOREIGN AFFAIRS, (July 2010 - August 2010). Copyright (2010) by
the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
Turkey, from Ally to Enemy
Michael Rubin
From issue: July/August 2010
Commentary
Traveling abroad on his first trip as president, Barack Obama tacked a visit to Turkey onto the
tail end of a trip to Europe. ―Some people have asked me if I chose to continue my travels to
Ankara and Istanbul to send a message,‖ he told the Turkish Parliament. ―My answer is simple:
Evet [yes]. Turkey is a critical ally.‖ On the same visit, however, the president showed that he
considered Turkey more firmly part of the Islamic world than of Europe. ―I want to make sure
that we end before the call to prayer, so we have about half an hour,‖ Obama told a town hall in
Istanbul. Obama was not simply demonstrating cultural sensitivity. The fact is that Turkey has
changed. Gone, and gone permanently, is secular Turkey, a unique Muslim country that
straddled East and West and that even maintained a cooperative relationship with Israel. Today
Turkey is an Islamic republic whose government saw fit to facilitate the May 31 flotilla raid on
Israel‘s blockade of Gaza. Turkey is now more aligned to Iran than to the democracies of
Europe. Whereas Iran‘s Islamic revolution shocked the world with its suddenness in 1979,
Turkey‘s Islamic revolution has been so slow and deliberate as to pass almost unnoticed.
Nevertheless, the Islamic Republic of Turkey is a reality—and a danger.
The story of Turkey‘s Islamic revolution is illuminating. It is the story of a charismatic leader
with a methodical plan to unravel a system, a politician cynically using democracy to pursue
autocracy, Arab donors understanding the power of the purse, Western political correctness
blinding officials to the Islamist agenda, and American diplomats seemingly more concerned
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with their post-retirement pocketbooks than with U.S. national security. For Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it is a dream come true. For the next generation of American presidents,
diplomats, and generals, it is a disaster.
_____________
The Middle East is littered with states formed from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire‘s defeat in
World War I. Most have been failures, but in Anatolia, one has flourished: in 1923, Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk founded the Republic of Turkey and, soon after, abolished the Ottoman Empire
and its standing as a caliphate, a state run according to the dictates of Islamic law. In subsequent
years, he imposed a number of reforms to transform Turkey into a Western country. His
separation of mosque and state allowed Turkey to thrive, and he charged the army with
defending the state from those who would use Islam to subvert democracy. While Middle
Eastern states embraced demagogues and ideologies that led to war and incited their peoples to
hate the West, Turkey became a frontline Cold War and NATO ally. Turks faced down terrorists,
embraced democracy, and dreamed of full inclusion as a nation of Europe. No longer.
Turkey‘s Islamic revolution began on November 3, 2002, when Erdogan‘s Justice and
Reconciliation Party (AKP) swept to power in Turkey‘s elections. Through a lucky quirk of the
Turkish election system, the AKP‘s 34 percent total in the popular vote translated into 66 percent
of the Parliament‘s seats, giving the party absolute control.
Initially, Erdogan kept his ambition in check. He understood the lessons to be learned from the
undoing of his mentor, Necmettin Erbakan, the first Islamist to become prime minister. After
taking the reins of power in 1996 with far less power in Parliament, Erdogan‘s predecessor
sought to shake up the system—to support religious schools at home and to reorient Turkey‘s
foreign policy away from Europe and toward Libya and Iran. This became too much for the
military, which exercised its power as guardians of the constitution and demanded Erbakan‘s
resignation. Afterward, Turkey‘s Constitutional Court banned the party to which Erdogan
belonged because of its threats to secular rule.
Erdogan himself had been banned from politics because of a 1998 conviction for religious
incitement. And so he initially managed the newly created AKP from the sidelines only, working
through Abdullah Gul, the lieutenant who served as caretaker prime minister after the party‘s
2002 victory. Gul pushed through a law to overturn the ban against Erdogan, and the latter
became prime minister in March 2003. Learning the lessons of Islamist failures of the past,
Erdogan sought to calm Turks who feared the AKP would dilute Turkey‘s separation of mosque
and state. As mayor of Istanbul, Erdogan described himself as a ―servant of Sharia,‖ or Islamic
canon law. But after his party‘s 2002 victory, he declared that ―secularism is the protector of all
beliefs and religions. We are the guarantors of this secularism, and our management will clearly
prove that.‖ He took pains to eschew the Islamist label and instead described his party as little
more than the Muslim equivalent of the Christian Democrats in Europe—that is, all democracy
and religious in name only.
Both Turks and Westerners can be forgiven for taking Erdogan at his word. He had cultivated an
image of probity as a local official that stood in sharp contrast with the corruption of many
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incumbent Turkish politicians. Rather than upend the system or pursue a divisive social platform,
as prime minister Erdogan first sought to repair the Turkish economy. This was an attractive
prospect for Turks across the political spectrum, since in the five years prior, the Turkish lira had
declined in value eight-fold, from 200,000 to 1.7 million to the dollar, leading to a ruinous
banking crisis in 2001. A Coca-Cola cost millions. Erdogan stabilized the currency and
implemented other popular reforms. He cut income taxes, slashed the value-added tax, and used
state coffers to subsidize gasoline prices. The Turkish electorate rewarded his party for its
efforts. The AKP won 42 percent of the vote in the March 2004 municipal elections and placed
mayors in four of Turkey‘s five largest cities. In July 2007, it increased its share of the popular
vote to 47 percent.
But there was far less here than met the eye. Rather than base economic reform on sound, longterm policies, Erdogan instead relied on sleight of hand. He incurred crippling debt and, in effect,
mortgaged long-term financial security of the republic for his own short-term political gain.
Deniz Baykal, the former leader of the main opposition party, has said that the state debt accrued
during Erdogan‘s first three years in power surpassed Turkey‘s total accumulated debt in the
three decades prior.
And that was only official debt. Outside of public view, Erdogan and Gul, now his foreign
minister, presided over an influx of so-called Green Money—capital from Saudi Arabia and the
oil-rich Persian Gulf emirates, much of which ended up in party coffers rather than in the public
treasury.
And here begins the tale of the interweaving of Turkey‘s destiny with the nations to its east and
south, and to the Muslim world rather than with the West.
Between 2002 and 2003, the Turkish Central Bank‘s summary balance of ―payments for net
error and omission‖—which is to say, money that appeared in the nation‘s financial system for
which government reporting cannot account—increased from approximately $200 million to
more than $4 billion. By 2006, Turkish economists estimated the Green Money infusion into the
Turkish economy to be between $6 billion and $12 billion, and given the ability of the
government to hide some of these revenues by assigning them to tourism, that is probably a wild
underestimation. Some Turkish intelligence officials privately suggest that the nation of Qatar is
today the source of most subsidies for the AKP and its projects.
Thus, if Iran‘s Islamic revolution was spontaneous, Turkey‘s was anything but: it was bought
and paid for by wealthy Islamists.
AKP officials are well-placed to manage the Green Money influx. Throughout much of the
1980s, Erdogan‘s sidekick, Gul, worked as a specialist at Saudi Arabia‘s Islamic Development
Bank. Before the 2002 victory, he criticized existing state scrutiny of Islamist enterprises. Senior
AKP advisers made their fortunes in Islamic banking and investment. Korkut Ozal, for example,
is the leading Turkish shareholder in al--Baraka Turk, Turkey‘s leading Islamic bank, as well as
in Faisal Finans, which also has its roots in Saudi Arabia.
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Erdogan has systematically placed Islamist bankers in key economic positions. He appointed
Kemal Unakitan, a former board member at both al--Baraka and Eski Finans, as finance minister
and moved at least seven other al-Baraka officials—one of whom had served as an imam in an
illegal commando camp—to key positions within Turkey‘s banking regulatory agency.
Erdogan also reoriented Turkey‘s official foreign trade. In 2002, bilateral trade between Turkey
and the United Arab Emirates hovered at just over half a billion dollars. By 2005, it had grown to
almost $2 billion. That same year, Kursad Tuzmen, the state minister for foreign trade,
announced that United Arab Emirates ruler Sheik Khalifa bin Zayid al-Nuhayyan would invest
$100 billion in Turkish companies. Not to be outdone, Saudi Arabia‘s finance minister
announced earlier this year that Saudi Arabia would invest $400 billion in Turkey over the next
four years. In contrast, in 2001, Turkish-Saudi trade amounted to just over $1 billion. When
Turkish-Iranian trade surpassed $10 billion in 2009, Erdogan announced a goal to increase it to
$30 billion. Whether or not Turkey and its Persian Gulf allies are exaggerating their figures, the
trajectory of trade is clear.
_____________
For wealthy donors, the conversion of Turkey has been a good investment. For decades, Turkey
stood out like a sore thumb for Islamists. Here was a ma