Foreign Policy 2010 - Foreign Policy Initiative

Transcription

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 ................................................................................................................................................8
FPI Analysis: President Obama's Foreign Policy, Year One, The Foreign Policy Initiative
Decline Is a Choice, Charles Krauthammer, The Weekly Standard
The Obama Doctrine, Gary Schmitt and Tom Donnelly, The Weekly Standard
Obama's Year One: Contra, Robert Kagan, World Affairs Journal
*The Perils of Wishful Thinking, Robert Kagan, The American Interest
*Idealism Isn‘t Dead, Robert Kagan, Newsweek
The War on Terror ......................................................................................................................31
Afghanistan/Pakistan ...............................................................................................................31
Support the President, Frederick W. Kagan and William Kristol, The Weekly Standard
No Substitute for Victory, Frederick W. Kagan and William Kristol, The Weekly Standard
FPI Fact Sheet: The case for a fully resourced counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan, The Foreign
Policy Initiative
The Two-Front War, Frederick W. Kagan, The Weekly Standard
Afghanistan Myths, Tom Cotton, The Weekly Standard
How We Can Win in Afghanistan, Max Boot, Commentary Magazine
Pashtuns and Pakistanis, Reuel Marc Gerecht, The Weekly Standard
Why Negotiate With the Taliban? Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan, Wall Street Journal
Beradar, Pakistan, and the Afghan Taliban: What Gives? Ashley J. Tellis, Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace
Iraq...........................................................................................................................................78
The Endgame in Iraq, Frederick W. Kagan, Jack Keane and Kimberly Kagan, The Weekly Standard
How We'll Know When We've Won, Frederick W. Kagan, The Weekly Standard
*Iraq‘s Stealthy Progress, Jamie M. Fly and Abe Greenwald, Forbes
Yemen .......................................................................................................................................90
How to Apply 'Smart Power' in Yemen, Frederick W. Kagan and Christopher Harnisch, 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 ...............................................................................................97
The Meaning of al Qaeda's Double Agent, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Wall Street Journal
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
*Full text of article not included in this briefing book; text available from original publication source.
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Iran/Middle East ........................................................................................................................104
Iran.........................................................................................................................................104
The June 12 Revolution, Reuel Marc Gerecht, The Weekly Standard
Iran Reveals its Real Intentions, Jamie M. Fly, The Weekly Standard
2010: Regime Change in Iran, Stephen F. Hayes, The Weekly Standard
Our Common Foe, Michael Rubin, National Review
Iran Outlook: Grim, John R. Bolton, National Review
Iran‘s Nuclear Program: Time is of the Essence, Jamie M. Fly, Inside Iran
Fact Sheet: The Future of Iran‘s Green Movement, The Foreign Policy Initiative
*Strategic Interests, J. Peter Pham, World Defense Review
*Last Chance for Iran, Daniel R. Coats, Charles S. Robb and Charles F. Wald, Washington Post
Middle East ............................................................................................................................131
Free at Last? Bernard Lewis, Foreign Affairs
All Process, No Peace, Elliott Abrams, The Weekly Standard
Israel ......................................................................................................................................143
Why Israel Is Nervous, Elliott Abrams, Wall Street Journal
The Path of Realism or the Path of Failure, Elliott Abrams, Weekly Standard
Dazed and Confused, Elliott Abrams, National Review
Seven Existential Threats, Michael B. Oren, Commentary Magazine
Syria .......................................................................................................................................164
The Syria Temptation—and Why Obama Must Resist It, Bret Stephens, Commentary Magazine
Obama Talks, Syria Mocks, Elliott Abrams, The Weekly Standard
China/East Asia ..........................................................................................................................180
China ......................................................................................................................................180
'Strategic reassurance' that isn't, Robert Kagan and Dan Blumenthal, Washington Post
Bearing Witness to Chinese Persecution, Dick Thornburgh, Real Clear World
'Bearing Witness' Isn't Enough, Ellen Bork, The Weekly Standard
Let a Hundred Flowers Be Crushed, Ellen Bork, Weekly Standard
Deng Undone, Derek Scissors, Foreign Affairs
China: Still an Intelligence Priority, Gary Schmitt, American Enterprise Institute
Our One-China Cowardice, Gary J. Schmitt, Wall Street Journal
The Realist Case for Tibetan Autonomy, Paula J. Dobriansky, Wall Street Journal
*China's Space Capabilities and Their Impact on U.S. National Security, Ashley J. Tellis, Carnegie
Endowment
*The Right Way to Help the Uighurs, Ellen Bork, Washington Post
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East Asia ................................................................................................................................204
A Road Map for Asian-Pacific Security, Gary J. Schmitt, American Enterprise Institute
Obama Blunders Through Asia, Ross Terrill, The Weekly Standard
North Korea ...........................................................................................................................219
Pressuring Pyongyang, Carolyn Leddy, Christian Whiton and Jamie Fly, The Weekly Standard
Burma.....................................................................................................................................222
Burma Wild Cards, Kelley Currie, Wall Street Journal
*Reaching Out to Burma, Bertil Lintner, Wall Street Journal
*Where Impunity Reigns, Benedict Rogers, New York Times
India/South Asia .........................................................................................................................224
Center Stage for the 21st Century, Robert D. Kaplan, Foreign Affairs
The Importance of India, Duncan Currie, The Weekly Standard
The New Great Game, Daniel Twining, The Weekly Standard
India‘s Time of Reckoning, Jonathan Foreman, Commentary Magazine
*More than just symbols, Ashley J. Tellis, Indian Express
*Not just in our backyard, Ashley J. Tellis, Indian Express
Russia/Europe ............................................................................................................................254
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
The Kremlin Kowtow, Lilia Shevtsova, Foreign Policy
NATO at 60, Rafael L. Bardaj, The Weekly Standard
Punishing Allies. . . Tod Lindberg, The Weekly Standard
A Stab in the Back, Jamie M. Fly, The Weekly Standard
*Obama and Russia, David Satter, Forbes
*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
*No 'Grand Bargain', David J. Kramer, Washington Post
Latin America.............................................................................................................................268
Can Chavez Be Stopped? 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
The Shores of Port-au-Prince, Thomas Donnelly & William Kristol, The Weekly Standard
Democracy Wins in Honduras, Jaime Daremblum, The Weekly Standard
A Bad Neighbor Policy? Jaime Daremblum, The Weekly Standard
Mexico‘s Cartel Wars, Mario Loyola, National Review
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Africa...........................................................................................................................................294
Pirates, Then and Now, Max Boot, Foreign Affairs
No Pain No Gain, Seth Cropsey, The Weekly Standard
How Tyranny Came to Zimbabwe, James Kirchick, The Weekly Standard
Mr. President, Liberate Zimbabwe, James Kirchick, The Weekly Standard
*Obama shouldn't repeat Clinton's Somalia mistakes, Fred Kagan, Washington Examiner
Defense ........................................................................................................................................318
Obama and Gates Gut the Military, Thomas Donnelly and Gary Schmitt, Wall Street Journal
Revolt of the Congress, Gary Schmitt and Tom Donnelly, The Weekly Standard
*Here's How to Make a Real Stimulus Take Flight, Tom Donnelly and Gary Schmitt, Washington Post
Democracy and Human Rights .................................................................................................323
The Only Way To Prevent Genocide, Tod Lindberg, Commentary Magazine
The Abandonment of Democracy, Joshua Muravchik, Commentary Magazine
What Do Dissidents Want? Ellen Bork, The Weekly Standard
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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
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enacted a program of brutality against its citizens. This resulted not merely in a lack of regime
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
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Holiness’s trip to Washington early last month. The administration indicated Obama did not
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-12
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.‖
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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.
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
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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
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
15
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."
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).
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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
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.
17
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.
* 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
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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.
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.
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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
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
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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.
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."
21
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
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
22
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.
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."
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 nations23
-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
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.
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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.
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
25
II and assumed a different 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
26
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. 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 ―winwin‖ 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
27
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
―zero-sum,‖ 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 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 de-emphasized 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
28
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.‖
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
29
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.
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The War on Terror
Afghanistan
Support the President
Beyond the squabbling and behind the mission.
BY Frederick W. Kagan and William Kristol
December 14, 2009, Vol. 15, No. 13
The Weekly Standard
President Obama has ordered sufficient reinforcements to Afghanistan to execute a war strategy
that can succeed. We applaud this decision. And we urge everyone to rally round the effort to
defeat our enemies and accomplish objectives vital to America's national security.
Obama's decision, and the speech in which it was announced, were not flawless. The president
should have met his commander's full request for forces. He should not have announced a
deadline for the start of the withdrawal of U.S. forces. He should have committed to a specific
and significant increase in the size of the Afghan National Security Forces. He should also have
explained more clearly the relationship between defeating the Taliban and defeating al Qaeda,
the significance of such a victory, and the reasons his Afghan strategy can succeed. The
secretaries of defense and state, as well as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made those
arguments far more compellingly in subsequent congressional testimony than the president did at
West Point.
We shouldn't miss the forest for the trees, however. 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 on Tuesday 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.
31
The bottom line: Our very capable field commander, General Stanley McChrystal, will have
100,000 American troops by the middle of next year to take the fight to the enemy and regain the
initiative in the war. General McChrystal has expressed confidence in his ability to execute his
strategy with these resources. He and his superior in the chain of command, General David
Petraeus, have earned the right to the nation's confidence in their judgment.
It's also important to note that General McChrystal and his forces have not stood still for the last
four months, as the president pondered his options. They have moved rapidly to set the
conditions to take advantage of the surge of forces, accomplishing a number of important tasks
that will make the job of taking the fight to the enemy in 2010 much easier.
Problems of command-and-control in particular have bedeviled our efforts in Afghanistan,
especially in the south where the fight is the most important right now. British forces have been
focused on Helmand and Canadian on Kandahar--such that the regions were often called
"Helmandshire" and "Canadahar"--but there was no unified approach even within Regional
Command South (commanded until recently by a Dutch general without a full staff working for
him), let alone between the south and the U.S.-controlled Regional Command East. There was
also no operational command in Afghanistan equivalent to the Multinational Corps-Iraq
structure. The effort to train Afghan security forces was run from a headquarters that was not
part of the same command structure as the U.S. and allied troops on the ground fighting.
These deficiencies made the development and execution of a coherent, theater-wide strategy for
fighting the insurgency and building up Afghan forces almost impossible. They generated
friction between allies and between the coalition and the Afghans. They played an important role
in the deterioration of the situation to this point.
All have now been corrected. Lieutenant-General David Rodriguez (who previously commanded
a division in Afghanistan) heads a newly created joint command similar to the Multinational
Corps-Iraq headed so successfully by General Ray Odierno during the 2007 surge. LieutenantGeneral William Caldwell heads the new NATO training command. The British have deployed a
full division headquarters to take control in Regional Command South and enact a coherent plan
for the entire region that fits perfectly with McChrystal's overall theater strategy.
Another major flaw in the U.S. and NATO approach to the Afghan conflict was the failure to
understand the full nature and scale of the challenge. Some NATO countries did not want to
admit that they were fighting a war or a counterinsurgency and such language was avoided. The
mission was understood to be supporting the Afghan government without addressing its endemic
corruption and abuse of power. Economic activities focused on development--as though what
mattered about Afghanistan was its poverty rather than the insurgency.
Additional NATO forces arriving in Afghanistan now know that they are going to fight a
counterinsurgency war. General McChrystal's assessment noted that the failings of the Afghan
government are as much of a challenge as the enemy's capabilities. The commanders are well
aware that they must do more than "connect the government with the people" (the previous
mantra), but must also reform and restrain the government while strengthening it. The American
aid community and parts of the international aid community are also changing their approaches
32
to recognize that defeating the insurgency and providing security are the pre-requisites to
development and anti-poverty efforts.
General McChrystal has in addition improved the effectiveness of the forces he has under his
command today. He pulled U.S. troops out of isolated and remote outposts where they were in
some cases more targets for the enemy than components of a coherent offensive strategy. He has
also taken steps to reduce Afghan civilian casualties.
Perhaps most important, he has transformed the way allied forces work to build the capacity of
Afghan Security Forces, importing critical lessons from our experience in Iraq. In addition to
mentoring and advising Afghan units with small numbers of embedded trainers, General
McChrystal has ordered American combat units to partner with their Afghan counterparts. They
plan and conduct operations together as units, share intelligence, and fight together. As we saw
in Iraq, a partnership at all levels is the fastest and most effective way to build indigenous
combat forces, and it will be the model for U.S. and allied training efforts in Afghanistan from
now on.
All of these changes create the conditions in which the deployment of additional American
combat forces may be able to achieve decisive results over the next 18 months. This would be
even easier if our civilian leadership in the country integrated their efforts with the military's as
was done in Iraq in 2007. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and his team were almost as crucial to our
success in Iraq as General David Petraeus. And the fact that Crocker and Petraeus worked handin-glove was of inestimable value. President Obama owes it to our troops--and to the American
people--to try to replicate that happy conjunction of civilian and military effort in Afghanistan.
Nothing is certain in war, and the enemy always gets a vote, but we can be confident that the
strategy and forces that will be in place in Afghanistan early next year have a good chance of
success. And success will mean more than merely reversing the Taliban's momentum. Taken
together with the recent achievements of the Pakistani military against that country's separate but
related Taliban movements, success in Afghanistan could mark a turning point in the struggle
against Islamism in South Asia. In this way, our efforts over the next couple of years in
Afghanistan are not simply the assumption of a distressing duty; they are the seizing of an
important opportunity in the global struggle in which we're engaged.
National security has been a polarizing issue in American politics for a long time. Democrats-including, unfortunately, many in the Obama administration--still want to blame the Bush
administration for all our woes. Republicans can't resist focusing on the flaws in the president's
plan and annoying aspects of his West Point speech. Everyone wants to relitigate past fights. In
the case of Afghanistan--a war both parties have agreed is vital to our national interest, with tens
of thousands of American soldiers already on the line and more on the way--we should get
beyond the squabbling.
Republicans will have the opportunity--and the responsibility--to criticize this administration's
policies toward Iran, China, and Russia; its defense budgets; and its detainee policies, to say
nothing of its domestic policy initiatives. Democrats will respond. But the president's
announcement of a sound and feasible strategy in Afghanistan gives us a chance to show to
33
ourselves and the world that politics really can stop at the water's edge when the nation's safety is
at stake and our troops are fighting on our behalf.
So we say: Support the troops. Support the mission. Support the president.
--Frederick W. Kagan and William Kristol
Copyright 2010 Weekly Standard LLC.
No Substitute for Victory
Don't abandon Afghanistan.
BY Frederick W. Kagan and William Kristol
November 30, 2009, Vol. 15, No. 11
The Weekly Standard
Can the United States win the war in Afghanistan? The antiwar left has long held the war is
unwinnable. Now some conservatives are arguing that President Obama's weakness and
indecision forecast American failure--and that, if we're going to fail, we should just get out now.
We would be the last to defend Obama's indefensible dithering. But the war in Afghanistan
remains both winnable and worth winning--even with Obama as president. And no form of
withdrawal or defeat is consistent with safeguarding key American interests in a volatile and
dangerous region of the world.
President Obama's apparent reluctance to pursue the fight does not inspire confidence. But he did
send General Stanley McChrystal to take command, along with 21,000 additional troops. Despite
efforts by political operatives around the president to push him toward withdrawal now, the
president may yet do the right thing--soon, please!--and provide General McChrystal with the
forces he needs to pursue decisive operations in 2010. And the president might put real effort
into explaining his decision and the war's importance to the American people. In any case, to the
extent the administration doesn't seem sufficiently stalwart or willing to provide those in the field
the resources they need, a loyal opposition should press the administration to do the right thing,
rather than relieving it of its responsibilities by preemptively deciding it won't.
Some Republicans are understandably dismayed at the prospect of supporting a war they worry
this president is incapable of prosecuting with sufficient vigor or conviction. They argue that
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keeping faith with the troops requires rejecting any halfhearted approach. They are right that
Americans who wish to support our troops in the field should not accept policies that deprive
them of the means to win. But a turn by Republicans to rhetorical opposition to the war would
only absolve the Obama administration of its Afghan duty. The better course is to push the
administration to take responsibility for the outcome in Afghanistan by continuing to support a
fully resourced war effort, while criticizing and opposing any decisions that undermine the
troops' chance of success.
After all, as Republicans pointed out on more than one occasion during the Iraq surge debate, it's
not really possible to support the troops while opposing the war they are fighting. The troops will
not be cheered by a collapse of political support for their effort at home, as they will not be
helped by declarations that they are on a fool's errand. Furthermore, a withdrawal of Republican
support for the war would allow the administration to claim that a collapse of bipartisan support
at home compelled the president's acceding to defeat. But if it turns out that the president is
ultimately unwilling to commit to succeeding in Afghanistan, he must be held accountable for
that decision
And we need not accede to defeat. The challenges, both military and political, on the ground are
great, but they are not greater than those we faced and overcame in Iraq. The U.S. military has
become the best counterinsurgency force in history and has only just started to bring its
capabilities to bear in Afghanistan. General McChrystal is an outstanding and battle-tested
commander with a creative staff and extremely talented subordinates. And he is working for the
architect of the Iraq surge, General David Petraeus.
The political team, on the other hand, is weak. Special Representative to Afghanistan and
Pakistan Richard Holbrooke and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry have been ineffective and even
counterproductive. The Obama administration appears to have recognized this, recently
relegating Holbrooke to a diminished role and assigning Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the
responsibility of formulating policy and working directly with Afghan president Hamid Karzai.
It is a sign of seriousness.
The president's indecision and delay have increased the challenges we face in Afghanistan. But it
remains unnecessary and unwise to accept defeat. A model for Republicans is the behavior of
Senator John McCain from 2003 to 2007. McCain consistently questioned, challenged, and
criticized President Bush's strategy and tactics in Iraq, but he never wavered in his determination
to do everything possible to succeed there. Both his steadfast opposition and his steadfast support
for the mission were essential in making possible the transformation of strategy that led to
success in Iraq. Success in Afghanistan also depends on sound strategy and sufficient resources,
which in turn are more likely if Republicans remain unyielding both in opposition to misguided
attempts to fight the war on the cheap and in support of a strategy that will lead to victory.
--William Kristol & Frederick W. Kagan
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FPI Fact Sheet: The case for a fully resourced
counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan
November 19, 2009 | 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
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,
36
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.
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
37
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,
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
38
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
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
39
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.
40
The Two-Front War
Pakistan is finally doing its part. Now we need to do ours.
BY Frederick W. Kagan
November 9, 2009, Vol. 15, No. 08
The Weekly Standard
A network of militant Islamist groups stretches from India to the Iranian border, from the Hindu
Kush to the Indian Ocean. These groups include Pashtuns and Punjabis, Arabs and Uzbeks and
more. They have no common leader, vision, hierarchy, or goal. But they do agree on a few key
points: Any government not based on their interpretation of Islam is illegitimate and apostate;
anyone who participates in or obeys such a government is not a Muslim and is therefore liable to
be killed; Muslims must be "liberated" from oppressive regimes such as Pakistan, India, and
Afghanistan; and the United States and its allies are the principal sources of support for these
unjust and apostate regimes and must be defeated or destroyed. Al Qaeda is the most infamous of
these groups because it alone succeeded in attacking the American Satan on its own soil, but all
of the Taliban groups and various other Pakistani organizations, including Lashkar-e-Taiba,
support each other morally, financially, ideologically, tactically, and strategically. They see an
attack on any one of them as an attack on all.
The West benefits from no such clarity. We are constantly bemused by the constellation of
names and initials by which these groups designate themselves. Is the Afghan Taliban related to
the Pakistani Taliban? Is al Qaeda related to either? What is anyone to make of a group that calls
itself "Tehreek-e Nafaz-e Shariat-e Mohammadi" (TNSM--Movement for the Enforcement of
Sharia)? This confusion has bedeviled our discussions about strategy for the war in Afghanistan.
It has distorted our relationship with Pakistan as well. In particular, resentment over the fact that
elements of the Pakistani security services continue to shelter and support some of the Taliban
groups fighting the United States in Afghanistan is blinding us to the importance of the current
Pakistani offensive against internal enemies in Waziristan. That operation--Rah-e Nijat or "Path
to Deliverance"--is striking a blow against one of the most important militant Islamist sanctuaries
in the world. The reactions of the other members of the Islamist network to this operation show
clearly the relationships among them and the real stakes of the American effort in Afghanistan.
PAKISTAN AND ISLAMISM
Pakistani governments and the Pakistani military have been supporting Islamism in one form or
another since the days of President Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in the 1970s. The Pakistani state defines
itself as the haven for India's Muslims, a notion that lends itself to sympathy with Islamism. The
main drivers of Pakistani support for Islamism, however, have been pragmatic (as Shuja Nawaz
41
has shown in Crossed Swords and Pakistani ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani in
Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military). Bhutto supported Islamism for domestic political
reasons. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, his successors supported the Islamist
groups that took the lead in fighting the Red Army. U.S. assistance to the mujahedeen was
funneled through Pakistan, inadvertently strengthening the ties between Pakistan and the
Islamists. Two mujahedeen who received much Pakistani assistance were Jalaluddin Haqqani
and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar--both now prominent leaders of insurgent forces operating against the
United States and its allies in Afghanistan (although Jalaluddin has largely handed over control
of his group to his son, Sirajuddin).
The Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in humiliation in 1989, and the United States lost
interest. Pakistan did not. As a new government of sorts coalesced in Kabul around Tajik and
Uzbek leaders of the mujahedeen in the early 1990s, Islamabad became concerned that it might
face a hostile Afghan state, compounding its traditional tensions with India by threatening to
open a new front in the event of renewed conflict. At first the Pakistani security services
supported Hekmatyar, but he proved ineffective. When a small band of Pashtuns under the
leadership of Mullah Mohammad Omar emerged to fight against the depredations of the
"warlord government" of Kabul in 1994, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI)
seized the opportunity. The ISI provided organization, training, equipment, and advisers to the
fledgling movement, which rapidly overran the fractious warlord state, rising to power as the
Taliban regime in 1996.
The withdrawal of American interest from Afghanistan coincided with a series of somewhatrelated crises that turned Pakistan sharply away from the United States and much more toward
the Islamist camp. Long-simmering discontent in Indian-controlled Kashmir erupted into open
violence in 1989. Pakistan's support for the Kashmiri militants led to U.S. condemnation of
Islamabad's support for terrorism. The Kashmir crisis, among many other things, led to the
deposition of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (Zulfiqar's daughter) in August 1990, further
fracturing the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. In October 1990, finally, President George H. W. Bush
refused to make the annual certification that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear weapon required
by the Pressler Amendment of 1985. As a result, all U.S. aid to Pakistan--including military
exchange programs--was cut off.
One important figure among the mujahedeen was a Palestinian Islamist named Abdullah Azzam.
His fiery sermons to raise money and support in Saudi Arabia found an eager follower in Osama
bin Laden, who migrated to the Afghan fight in the mid 1980s and continued to work with
Azzam in Peshawar. In 1987, Azzam founded an organization in Pakistan called Markaz Dawatul Irshad (Center for Religious Learning and Propagation, also known as Jamaat ut-Dawa),
together with Hafiz Mohammad Saeed. Azzam was assassinated in 1989, but his protégés did
him proud--bin Laden by founding al Qaeda, Saeed by founding the Lashkar-e-Taiba, "Army of
the Pure," to serve as the militant wing of the Markaz Dawat-ul Irshad.
The purpose of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) was to inspire jihadism among the world's Muslims.
Saeed once said, "We believe in [Samuel P.] Huntington's clash of civilizations, and our jihad
will continue until Islam becomes the dominant religion." Saeed established the movement's base
at Muridke, a town near Lahore in the heart of Punjab, where he aimed to develop a model city
42
to serve as an exemplar of the sort of Islamist government for which he was fighting. The
outbreak of conflict in Kashmir led Saeed to focus his nascent organization on that conflict-thereby earning the support of the ISI in addition to the continued support of the Saudi backers
who had helped him establish the group in the first place.
Pakistan drifted generally away from the United States and toward the Islamists in the 1990s.
Army chief of staff Mirza Aslam Beg called the 1991 Gulf war "a Western-Zionist game plan to
neutralize the Muslim World," as Shuja Nawaz writes, adding that Beg also initiated negotiations
with the Islamic Republic of Iran to ensure Pakistan's "strategic depth" in the event of a war with
India. Pakistan recognized the Taliban government in Kabul in 1996 (virtually the only
government to do so other than Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates). The revelation of a
missile deal between North Korea and Pakistan led to further U.S. sanctions in 1998. Pakistan
then tested six nuclear weapons in May 1998 following the testing of an Indian weapon, straining
relations with Washington even more. Tensions rose still further when Pakistani forces entered
Indian-controlled Kashmir in 1999. General Pervez Musharraf finally seized power in a military
coup in 1999 and suspended the constitution.
The 9/11 attacks thus found Pakistan locked in a close embrace with the Taliban in Afghanistan
and with Islamist groups such as the LeT within Pakistan itself. That was the context in which
Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered an ultimatum to Musharraf: Pakistan must be either
with the United States or against it in the coming war on terror.
Musharraf did not demur. He supported the U.S. military operation against the Afghan Taliban
government he had helped bring to power, announced his opposition to al Qaeda, and outlawed
the LeT. But the change was too sudden for members of the security services who had longestablished relationships with the groups against which Musharraf had suddenly turned. With or
without Musharraf's orders, the ISI helped resettle Mullah Omar and the Haqqanis in Pakistan
and continued to support them. Failings in the American military strategy in 2001--notably the
refusal by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to deploy ground forces to cut off the retreat of al
Qaeda fighters from northern Afghanistan--allowed both Taliban and al Qaeda leaders and troops
to escape.
The United States responded by pressing the Pakistani government ever harder to take effective
action against al Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan, especially within the Federally Administered
Tribal Areas (FATA) where many had taken refuge. Musharraf responded with a series of
grudging and incompetent military operations culminating in a 2004 offensive into Waziristan
that ended in humiliating failure. That failure led to a series of weak "peace deals" with antiAmerican leaders in Waziristan, particularly Maulvi Nazir Ahmad and Hafiz Gul Bahadur.
In the meantime, Musharraf's actions against some Islamist groups turned others against
Islamabad. LeT, Mullah Omar's Taliban, Hekmatyar's group, and the Haqqani Network remained
loyal to Pakistan in return for support and shelter. The TNSM, however, found new life in
supporting the Afghan Taliban against the U.S. attack by sending thousands of fighters from its
base in the Bajaur Agency of the FATA into Afghanistan. When that effort failed, the TNSM
turned its attention back to the Pakistani government, which it considered illegitimate because of
its failure to implement Islamic law.
43
Pakistani operations in Waziristan generated a backlash among the Pashtun tribes there that
coalesced in December 2007 with the formation of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan ("Pakistani
Taliban Movement") under the leadership of Baitullah Mehsud. Maulvi Nazir, commander of the
Wazir Taliban group in South Waziristan, described the phenomenon:
Our companions used to go to different areas like Ghazni and Zabul, but the Pakistani
government started hindering our path. In the beginning we had intended Jihad against America
and had not meant to fight here, but when the Pakistani government became an obstacle for us
and started hindering our passages, destroying our bases, martyring our brothers and ambushing
and arresting them from their route . . . we were left no choice other than directing our weapons
towards the Pakistani Government. [all translations by SITE Intel Group].
The TTP was meant to be an umbrella organization, and it soon claimed suzerainty over the
TNSM, the Mehsud fighting groups in Waziristan, and branches in Punjab. Its objective is the
overthrow of the apostate Pakistani government. Baitullah Mehsud described its aims in January
2008:
The Pakistani forces came here by order from Bush, and the soldiers of the army are destroying
our homes. Therefore, the goal of our alliance is the defense of the Muslim person. By the way,
the ultimate result of this alliance, which we basically formed for defense, will be the
implementation of Muhammadian Sharia law all throughout Pakistan.
The philosophical underpinnings of both groups are identical with those of al Qaeda, and also
with those of the LeT, as well as with those of all of the major Afghan Taliban groups. The TTP
and the TNSM recognize Mullah Omar as the "Commander of the Faithful." Maulvi Nazir noted,
"The Emir of the believers is Emir of the Jihad too. The Mujahideen all over the world accept
him as their Emir." Baitullah Mehsud declared, "We did pledge allegiance to the Emir of the
Believers before, and Allah willing, our allegiance to him will last forever. He is our legitimate
emir [as per Islamic sharia], and our allegiance to him stems from our love and respect for him."
By mid-2008 the Islamist groups appeared to have the Pakistani government on the ropes. The
TTP effectively controlled Waziristan through a series of "cease-fire" agreements that amounted
to surrenders by Islamabad to the Islamists. The TNSM/TTP controlled Bajaur Agency and much
of neighboring Mohmand Agency. It had spread beyond the FATA into the Northwest Frontier
Province as well, establishing a base in Dir District and even in Swat--a much more
cosmopolitan area close to metropolitan Pakistan and generally not amenable to extremist
Islamism. Musharraf had done nothing effective to check the expansion of these groups or the
consolidation of their control in their areas of influence. He had not curtailed the support of the
ISI for Afghan Taliban groups. And he had proved unwilling or unable to dismantle the network
of al Qaeda senior leaders using Pakistan as its base. It seemed likely that Pakistan's long support
for Islamist groups could well lead to its demise, an appearance strengthened by the assassination
of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007 purportedly at the orders of TTP leader Baitullah Mehsud.
PAKISTAN'S COUNTERATTACK
44
Musharraf resigned from the presidency on August 18, 2008. Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of
Benazir Bhutto, won the post on September 6. On that day, the Pakistani military launched
Operation Sherdil against a major TNSM/TTP base in Bajaur Agency. Chastened by the
experiences of previous years in which ill-prepared assaults in difficult terrain had resulted in
hundreds of dead, wounded, and captured Pakistani soldiers, the army proceeded with deliberate
and overwhelming force up the four major river valleys in Bajaur. It relied heavily on airpower,
leveling Islamist-held villages in the agency and generating tens of thousands of refugees. Loe
Sam, a key village in the midst of the agency, was completely destroyed as Pakistani military
operations continued for months. American forces in Afghanistan quietly assisted by deploying a
battalion along the Afghan border with Bajaur on the east side of the Kunar River. Despite the
violence of the operation, however, the Pakistanis could not capture or kill TTP leader Maulana
Faqir Muhammad. Neither could they stop the spread of TNSM/TTP influence in Dir and Swat.
The determination shown by the Pakistani government in the Bajaur fighting was undermined
when Islamabad signed a cease-fire in Swat with Sufi Mohammad, the founder of the TNSM. In
return for a halt in fighting, the government committed to enforce sharia law and only sharia law
in Swat. This experiment in meeting the demands of the Islamists was revealing about their true
aims. The Pakistani Constitution already contained provisions requiring the state to abide by and
enforce sharia law and Muslim tradition. From the government's perspective, recommitting to
that principle was not a significant concession. But Sufi Mohammad and Maulana Fazlullah
interpreted it to mean that they could choose the religious judges who would interpret sharia as
they desired. It is hard to say how this quasi-religious conflict would have proceeded had the
TTP fighters in Swat kept their side of the bargain. Instead, puffed up with their success, they
sent a raiding party into neighboring Buner in April, clearly violating the peace accord.
Zardari and army chief of staff Ashfaq Kayani responded decisively, launching Operation Rah-eRast ("Path of Righteousness") in mid-April to liberate Swat from the control of the TNSM and
TTP. The operation was largely successful, although it generated more than a million refugees.
The refugee flow was not entirely negative for the government, however. Swat refugees took to
the airwaves to describe the outrages of Islamist efforts to impose their extremist religion on a
moderate population. For the first time, Pakistani public opinion began to turn against the
Islamists. Zardari, sensing a political opportunity among other things, drove the fight further.
The Pakistani military cleared Swat, and then worked to clear neighboring Dir District. More
important, the military stayed in these areas after the initial clearing operations. Today, two
Pakistani divisions drawn from the Indian border--the 19th Infantry Division and the 37th
Mechanized Infantry Division--remain in Swat as part of what we would call the "hold" phase.
The Islamists responded to the Swat operation with terrorist attacks across Pakistan, including a
car-bomb in Lahore that a group called Tehrik-e-Taliban Punjab ("Punjab Taliban Movement")
claimed. The Pakistani government then prepared an operation against the last remaining major
Islamist sanctuary--South Waziristan. The preparations included moving significant regular
military forces into both North and South Waziristan in order to isolate the Mehsud tribal area.
They also included a protracted and difficult effort to persuade the surrounding Islamist leaders-particularly Maulvi Nazir to the south and Gul Bahadur in North Waziristan--to tolerate the
army's operations and refrain from fighting alongside Baitullah Mehsud's TTP. Islamabad was
able to conclude these agreements by playing up inter-tribal tensions; also, the radical Uzbek
45
Islamists supported by Mehsud had a talent for antagonizing the locals. It is likely that Pakistani
military operations in Swat and Bajaur and the large amount of military force they were bringing
into the area persuaded Gul Bahadur and Nazir that they were in earnest and could seriously
disrupt these leaders' power bases if they chose. An ostensible quid pro quo in this agreement
was that Pakistan would put a stop to U.S. drone strikes in the areas controlled by Bahadur.
In the meantime, the pressure on the Mehsud tribal area allowed the Pakistani military to obtain
actionable intelligence about Baitullah Mehsud. A U.S. Predator drone killed him on August 5.
Many analysts feared that the death of Mehsud would mean the end of the Pakistani operation,
but slow preparations for an offensive in the Mehsud tribal area continued as the TTP struggled
to select a new leader. It finally did so on August 22 with the announcement that Hakimullah
Mehsud had succeeded Baitullah.
The storm finally broke on October 17, when some 28,000 Pakistani troops drawn from the 7th
and 9th Infantry divisions, supported by around 10,000 members of the paramilitary Frontier
Corps, advanced along three axes toward the heart of the Mehsud resistance base. The ground
operation was preceded by a week of targeted air attacks and was supported by airstrikes and
helicopter gunships. It was not, however, as destructive as the Bajaur operation. Pakistani forces
have labored to seize key terrain around important objectives first (to avoid ambushes), and to
clear contested villages carefully rather than obliterating them. As of this writing, the operation
has continued unabated for two weeks, and Pakistani military forces are advancing on the three
most important TTP bases in the area methodically but unrelentingly.
ISLAMIST REACTION
Baitullah Mehsud was eulogized by no less a figure than Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's
deputy. Zawahiri praised him as a figure who sought to unify all Islamists into a fight against
their common enemies:
Then he, may Allah have mercy on him, participated in unifying the ranks of the mujahideen in
Pakistan, for he founded Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, which took over its emirate. He
participated in founding the Shura of the mujahideen that included all the mujahideen in Pakistan
in addition to their foreign brothers. Then this united force, with grace from Allah and His
assistance, hears and obeys the Islamic Emirate and its emir, the Emir of the Believers, Mullah
Omar, may Allah preserve him.
Baitullah "demonstrated, may Allah have mercy on him, that the rulers of Pakistan and the
leaders of its armies are merely a traitorous, bribe-seeking group that sold its religion, honor and
the blood of the Muslims in Pakistan and Afghanistan to the new Crusader-dom in exchange for
a few dollars and benefits." He also "demonstrated that he does not acknowledge the British
Durand line that separates Afghanistan from Pakistan, and that he will do jihad to expel the
Crusaders from Afghanistan and will do jihad as well against their agents that cooperate with
them in Pakistan and Afghanistan."
Other Islamist groups offered more practical assistance. TTP and allied movements have
launched a wave of terrorist attacks across Pakistan in response to the Waziristan operation.
46
Reports from Bajaur indicate that the TTP leadership there has been discussing pulling some of
their fighters out of Kunar and Nuristan provinces in Afghanistan and sending them to support
their comrades in Waziristan. A Pakistani paper reported on October 25: "Taliban sources said
Maulana Faqir Muhammad had convened a meeting of local and foreign militants to devise a
strategy for sending fighters to South Waziristan to fight alongside their fellow Mehsud Taliban
militants against the Pakistan Army." It added that "They said some Arab commanders also
attended the meeting and did not agree with Faqir Muhammad's proposal to go to Waziristan at a
time when they were engaged in, what they termed, a 'crucial and decisive' battle against the
U.S.-led forces across the border in Kunar and Nuristan provinces of Afghanistan." Arab
commanders in this context very likely refer to al Qaeda leaders or their representatives.
It is possible that the protests of these Arab commanders went unheeded. On October 29, Asia
Times reported that "in a telephone conversation on Wednesday, a militant linked to [Qari Ziaur]
Rahman [a Taliban commander in Nuristan] said that now that they had control of Nuristan, the
militants are 'marching towards Mohmand and Bajaur to help their fellow Taliban fighting
against Pakistani troops,' referring to two tribal agencies across the border." The report
continued, "As the militant who spoke to Asia Times Online said, there is now the opportunity to
open a new front, with Rahman's forces on the Afghan side and those of Moulvi Faqir
Mohammad on the Bajaur and Mohmand side."
The new TTP leaders, for their part, have restated their commitment to the ideological struggle:
And the conclusion is for us to work according to the Islamic Shariah, make others follow this
path as well, which is the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice, show concern about
educating and uprighting Muslims according to the Shariah law. As for the way to get rid of
positive courts and their police that were established by the English regime, that is through
implementation of Shariah, because there are Shariah judges and scholars. This is not impossible.
The Emir of the Believers Mullah Muhammad Omar provides a vivid example for the entire
world. Our brothers in Swat also established the same system that did not please those malicious
ones. They started to incite people against them and distort their image in the media and
launched a war against them after that. Was it not for this, Swat today would have become
another example where Shariah is practiced. They made numerous sacrifices for that, as did all
tribal children and Pakistanis. So we cannot abandon this matter.
And so the battle continues.
The Pakistani military has now deployed four regular army divisions and tens of thousands of
Frontier Corps forces in a series of operations that have lasted for more than a year to defeat the
Islamist groups that had taken control over large areas of Pakistan and threatened the survival of
the Pakistani state. Still the United States is disappointed. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just
last week twitted Islamabad for failing to eliminate al Qaeda. American analysts and officials
regularly complain that Pakistan is not "doing its part" by halting its support for Mullah Omar,
Haqqani, and Hekmatyar. At the same time, people seeking to downplay the importance of
defeating the Afghan Taliban increasingly argue that Mullah Omar's group has separated from al
Qaeda and from Pakistani Taliban groups and even that it would not support them or permit them
to establish sanctuaries in Afghanistan should it return to power. Above all, conventional
47
wisdom now goes, we must understand that the Taliban of all stripes are local movements
concerned with local power struggles and not a threat to the United States.
It is true that these groups do not have the capability or the intention at present to strike the
American homeland directly. It does not follow, however, that they are not a threat to the United
States except in this narrowest and most short-sighted sense. Their overall aims and ideologies
are indistinguishable from al Qaeda's. They all--including al Qaeda--recognize Mullah Omar as
"commander of the faithful" and an exemplar of right behavior both as an insurgent and as the
leader of an Islamic state. They coordinate their activities at all levels and come to each other's
assistance when attacked. They see the provision of sanctuary to their threatened comrades as a
religious (as well as tribal) obligation.
The network of Islamist groups in South Asia, in other words, really is a network. We must not
imagine that we can decide that the success of key elements of that network--especially Mullah
Omar's group--would not strengthen the elements that are most dangerous to America and to
stability in a nuclear-armed region.
We must recognize, finally, that Pakistan actually is making a major contribution to this struggle
by taking on the elements of the Islamist network that--while closely aligned with al Qaeda--pose
the greatest threat to its own stability. Defeating the Afghan Taliban is our job, working together
with our Afghan partners. However desirable and helpful it would be for Pakistan to evict or
capture the bases of Mullah Omar or Haqqani, the momentum of 30 years of support will be hard
to reverse. Nor is it even necessarily wise for the United States to demand that the fragile
Pakistani government, already engaged in an extremely difficult and controversial struggle
against its own internal enemies, open two additional fronts.
The war against Islamists in South Asia is now a two-front war. Pakistan has shown surprising
determination and competence in its struggle against one part of the Islamist network. The
United States must show similar determination and competence in our struggle against the other.
48
Afghanistan Myths
What Congress and the media think that isn't so.
BY Tom Cotton
November 23, 2009, Vol. 15, No. 10
The Weekly Standard
Early this month, I traveled to Washington with Vets for Freedom to advocate for General
Stanley McChrystal's request for 40,000 to 60,000 more troops in Afghanistan. I returned from
Afghanistan last summer and, along with other veterans of that theater, wanted to share my
experience with policymakers.
During our meetings in Congress and at the White House, I was surprised by how widespread
several misperceptions were. Though most officials seemed sincere, these myths are distorting
the debate about General McChrystal's request. Here are some of the most common:
A counterterrorism campaign is an effective alternative to counterinsurgency. Some analysts
believe precision counterterrorism strikes can defeat al Qaeda without a simultaneous counterinsurgency. This logic is faulty for several reasons.
First, General McChrystal is a counterterrorism expert, yet he has proposed a full-spectrum
counterinsurgency. A decorated Green Beret, he has commanded the Army's Ranger Regiment,
Delta Force, and Navy SEALs. His recommendation is entitled to great weight.
Second, a counterterrorism-only approach will lack actionable intelligence. Senior al Qaeda
operatives are extremely hard to track at a distance: They move constantly, live among fierce
loyalists, and avoid phones, radios, and computers. The best intelligence tends to come as tips
from cooperative locals who have come to trust troops on the ground. Locals can't provide such
tips if there are no troops to give them to.
Third, our counterterrorism tools have fatal limitations. Predator drones and special-operations
forces have limited ranges and need in-country bases, which generate large protective forces,
vulnerable supply lines, and sensitive political questions. Aerial or naval attacks require even
better intelligence and risk more self-defeating civilian casualties. To be sure, all these tools are
potent, but primarily in conjunction with forward-deployed counterinsurgent forces.
The Afghan people don't want us there. Although we frequently hear that the fiercely tribal and
proud Afghans instinctively rebel against foreign forces, I did not encounter this sentiment
during my deployment. Afghans rarely objected to our presence, but they did complain that we
49
haven't provided basic security. When I asked if they would accept more American troops in
exchange for improved security, the overwhelming answer was yes.
Our experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate that the key issue to the population isn't
troop numbers, but troop effectiveness. Afghanistan faces a growing insurgency after eight years
of limited deployments. Similarly, violence grew in Iraq for years, until the surge contained it. In
this light, we now have the worst possible situation in Afghanistan: enough troops to raise
Afghans' expectations, but not enough to protect them.
America cannot win a war in Afghanistan, the "graveyard of empires." How can America
succeed where Alexander the Great, the British, and the Soviet Union struggled? This refrain
belongs, as they say now in the military, in the graveyard of analogies.
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 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.
America needs a new political partner before committing more troops. This myth stands
counterinsurgency doctrine on its head. A government battling an insurgency is by definition
weak, else the insurgency would never have gained strength. We must accept this inescapable
fact and focus on helping improve President Hamid Karzai's government, not use it as an excuse
to abandon his government.
This dynamic played out in Iraq. When added troops and improved security there, we also
pursued corrupt officials, whether to prosecute them or to pressure them with the threat of
prosecution to improve their performance. In Afghanistan, which today depends more heavily on
the coalition for security and funding than did Iraq, we have even more leverage to root out
corruption and promote competent, honest government.
Specific reforms can also help. For example, the president appoints provincial and district
governors, which makes many unresponsive to their constituents. Political reform to allow for
local elections will tie the government more closely to the people and tribal leadership. This kind
of ground-up reform succeeded in Iraq and can succeed in Afghanistan.
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We should not put troops in harm's way without thorough debate. True, but we already have
68,000 troops very much in harm's way, and they urgently need reinforcements. The continuing
delay demoralizes those soldiers and puts them at greater risk. Also, our allies among the Afghan
people and government and in the Pakistani government are wondering if America is truly
committed to victory. According to General McChrystal, the security situation is deteriorating
and may be irreversible unless we can seize the initiative in the next year--and he made that
assessment in August. To put it bluntly, we are not winning in Afghanistan, and without more
troops we will lose.
Practically, too, the military needs to begin preparing for this deployment now. Afghanistan's
extreme terrain and weather, along with its rudimentary infrastructure, mean the deployment will
take many months. Likewise, the military's Spartan bases need significant expansion to
accommodate new troops.
The military will break if we send more troops to Afghanistan. This fear, heard often about Iraq
in 2004-06, is no truer now than it was then. 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.
To be sure, our military needs to grow in both size and funding to reflect wartime priorities and
alleviate the stress of repeated deployments. But the quickest way to break the military is to lose
a war.
In a country where firsthand knowledge of Afghanistan and its people is scarce, it is
understandable that these myths have gained currency. But they are just that--myths--and should
not be allowed to paralyze our war effort when victory is eminently achievable.
51
How We Can Win in Afghanistan
Max B oot From issue: Nove mb er 2009
Commentary Magazine
The terms counterterrorism and counterinsurgency have become common currency this decade
in the wake of September 11, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq. To a layman‘s
ear, they can sound like synonyms, especially because of our habit of labeling all insurgents as
terrorists. But to military professionals, they are two very different concepts. Counterterrorism
refers to operations employing small numbers of Special Operations ―door kickers‖ and hightech weapons systems such as Predator drones and cruise missiles. Such operations are designed
to capture or kill a small number of ―high-value targets.‖ Counterinsurgency, known as COIN in
military argot, is much more ambitious. According to official Army doctrine, COIN refers to
―those military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a
government to defeat insurgency.‖ The combined approach typically requires a substantial
commitment of ground troops for an extended period of time.
When General Stanley McChrystal was selected on May 11 of this year as the American and
NATO commander in Afghanistan, it was by no means certain which approach he would
employ. His background is almost entirely in counterterrorism. He had been head of the Joint
Special Operations Command (comprising elite units such as the Army‘s Delta Force and the
Navy‘s SEALs) when it was carrying out daring raids to capture Saddam Hussein and kill Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. If he had decided to follow the same approach
in Afghanistan, he would have had the support of Vice President Joe Biden and numerous
congressional Democrats who favor a narrow counterterrorism strategy to fight al-Qaeda and
who want to cut the number of American troops to a bare minimum.
But that is not what McChrystal has chosen to do. He has decided, as he put it in an ―interim
assessment‖ dated August 30 that was later leaked to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post,
that ―success demands a comprehensive counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign.‖ A close reading
of that document, which was directed at the Pentagon and White House, as well as the
―Counterinsurgency Guidance‖ drafted at his behest around the same time and directed at his
own troops, provides a window into his thinking. It shows why a COIN campaign is needed, how
it would be carried out, and why the kind of narrow counterterrorism effort favored by so many
amateur military strategists is unlikely to succeed.
_____________
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The case against a counterterrorism approach in Afghanistan is laid out most clearly in the
Counterinsurgency Guidance. McChrystal‘s focus is on explaining why conventional military
operations cannot defeat the insurgency in Afghanistan, but the same arguments apply to
counterterrorism generally, which is a smaller-scale version of the same conceit—that the U.S.
military can defeat an insurgency simply by killing insurgents. McChrystal writes that the math
doesn‘t add up:
From a conventional standpoint, the killing of two insurgents in a group of ten leaves eight
remaining: 10 - 2 = 8. From the insurgent standpoint, those two killed were likely related to many
others who will want vengeance. If civilian casualties occurred, that number will be much
higher. Therefore, the death of two creates more willing recruits: 10 minus 2 equals 20 (or more)
rather than 8.
He goes on to note that the ―attrition‖ approach has been employed in Afghanistan over the past
eight years by a relatively small number of American forces and their NATO allies. Yet, he
writes, ―eight years of individually successful kinetic operations have resulted in more violence.‖
He continues: ―This is not to say that we should avoid a fight, but to win we need to do much
more than simply kill or capture militants.‖
What else, then, must coalition forces do? McChrystal‘s answer:
An effective ―offensive‖ operation in counterinsurgency is one that takes from the insurgent
what he cannot afford to lose—control of the population. We must think of offensive operations
not simply as those that target militants, but ones that earn the trust and support of the people
while denying influence and access to the insurgents.
The Counterinsurgency Guidance points out that firing guns and missiles can often make it more
difficult to win ―trust and support.‖ An anecdote makes the point:
An ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] patrol was traveling through a city at a high
rate of speed, driving down the center to force traffic off the road. Several pedestrians and other
vehicles were pushed out of the way. A vehicle approached from the side into the traffic circle.
The gunner fired a pen flare at it, which entered the vehicle and caught the interior on fire. As the
ISAF patrol sped away, Afghans crowded around the car. How many insurgents did the patrol
make that day?
As an example of how ―self-defeating‖ the use of force can be, McChrystal could just as easily
have chosen an example involving a Predator drone firing a Hellfire missile or an F-16 dropping
a 500-pound bomb—the kind of strike that often causes considerable ―collateral damage‖ and
that, if the more limited counterterrorism approach were to be adopted, would become the
centerpiece of our strategy.
McChrystal counsels his troops to take a different path, to ―embrace the people,‖ to ―partner with
the ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces] at all echelons,‖ and to ―build governance capacity
and accountability.‖ He urges coalition troops to be ―a positive force in the community; shield
53
the people from harm; foster stability. Use local economic initiatives to increase employment and
give young men alternatives to insurgency.‖
This would mean putting less emphasis not only on using force but also on ―force protection‖
measures (such as body armor and heavily armored vehicles), which distance the security forces
from the population. As an example of what he expects, McChrystal cites an anecdote involving
an ―ISAF unit and their partnered Afghan company‖ that were ―participating in a large shura
[tribal council] in a previously hostile village.‖ During the shura, which was attended by ―nearly
the entire village,‖ he writes, ―two insurgents began firing shots at one of the unit‘s observation
posts.‖ The sergeant in charge of the post could have returned fire but he chose not ―to over-react
and ruin the meeting.‖ ―Later,‖ this example concludes, ―the village elders found the two
militants and punished them accordingly.‖
While counterintuitive to a conventional military mind, such thinking is hardly novel for anyone
familiar with the history of counterinsurgency. McChrystal‘s advice to embrace the population
and be sparing in the use of firepower has been employed by successful counterinsurgents from
the American Army in the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century; to the British in Malaya in
the 1950s and Northern Ireland from the 1970s to the 1990s; to, more recently, the Americans in
Iraq. By contrast, counterinsurgency strategies that rely on firepower have usually failed,
whether tried by the French in Algeria, by the U.S. in Vietnam, or by the Russians in
Afghanistan.
The risk of the counterinsurgency approach—which helps to explain why it has not been adopted
in Afghanistan until now or in Iraq until 2007—is that, in the short term, it will result in more
casualties for coalition forces. Placing troops among the people and limiting their expenditure of
firepower makes them more vulnerable at first than if they were sequestered on heavily fortified
bases and ventured out only in heavily armored convoys. But in the long term, as the experience
of Iraq shows, getting troops off their massive bases is the surest way to pacify the country and
bring down casualties, both for civilians and security forces.
_____________
Unfortunately, the NATO force that McChrystal now commands, the ISAF, has been failing for
years to carry out the tenets of sound counterinsurgency policy owing to a lack of willpower and
a lack of resources. Instead, it has combined conventional and counterterrorist strategies in an illcoordinated and incoherent mishmash. McChrystal‘s Initial Assessment is withering in its
description of the ISAF as ―poorly configured . . . inexperienced in local languages and cultures,
and struggling with challenges inherent to coalition warfare.‖ The result has been parlous:
Preoccupied with protection of our own forces, we have operated in a manner that distances us—
physically and psychologically—from the people we seek to protect. In addition, we run the risk
of strategic defeat by pursuing tactical wins that cause civilian casualties or unnecessary
collateral damage.
54
To turn around a ―deteriorating‖ situation, McChrystal has proposed major changes in both
doctrine and organization. Some of the organizational changes are already under way. The most
prominent of these is the creation of a new three-star headquarters known as the ISAF Joint
Command, which will be run initially by Lieut. General David Rodriguez, a former commander
of the 82nd Airborne Division. The creation of this new layer of command is based on the
example of Iraq, where, in 2007, General David Petraeus was in charge of overall policy, but
Lieut. General Ray Odierno was in charge of day-to-day operations.
In Afghanistan there has been no equivalent to Odierno, and therefore a notable lack of
coherence and coordination in operations. For instance, the McChrystal report notes that
counternarcotics efforts ―were not fully integrated into the counterinsurgency campaign.‖ That is
something that Rodriguez, whose headquarters will be fully operational in early November, will
have to fix—along with a host of other tasks that will be outlined in a confidential and detailed
―joint campaign plan.‖
Another part of the ongoing reorganization proposes to consolidate disparate training efforts
undertaken by numerous nations under a new organization called NATO Training Mission—
Afghanistan, which will be commanded by American Lieut. General William Caldwell. It will be
given the goal of expanding the Afghan security forces much more rapidly—growing the army
from 92,000 to 240,000, and the national police from 84,000 to 160,000. ―Tighter, restructured
training programs,‖ an appendix to the assessment says, ―will deliver an infantry-based, COIN
capable force in a shorter period of time with the capability of conducting ‗hold‘ operations with
some ‗clear‘ capability while closely partnered with coalition forces.‖ This is NATO‘s ultimate
exit strategy—creating local forces strong enough to police their own territory with minimal
outside assistance. That goal is slowly becoming a reality in Iraq, but it is years away from
realization in Afghanistan.
_____________
Meanwhile, a Combined Joint Interagency Task Force is being set up to ―transform detention
and corrections operations in the theater‖—something that happened in Iraq after the Abu Ghraib
scandal of 2004. This is an overdue necessity in Afghanistan, where the U.S. is holding only 600
detainees at its Bagram Theater Internment Facility, compared with 24,000 in Iraq at the height
of the surge. The Afghan government is holding 2,500 more insurgents in its own prisons, but
they are so badly run that, as the McChrystal report notes, ―hardened, committed Islamists‖ are
allowed to ―radicalize and indoctrinate‖ petty criminals. Insurgents actually use the prisons as a
―sanctuary and base.‖
The report‘s sobering finding is that ―there are more insurgents per square foot in corrections
facilities than anywhere else in Afghanistan‖ and that ―multiple national facilities are firmly
under the control of the Taliban.‖ The new detention task force, under the command of U.S.
Navy Vice Admiral Robert Harward, a veteran SEAL, will be charged with training Afghan
prison guards and applying ―sound corrections management techniques and Rule of Law
principles in all detention systems in Afghanistan.‖ Those techniques, developed in Iraq, will
55
include segregating ―hard-core insurgents from low level fighters,‖ bringing in moderate Islamic
teachers to ―de-radicalize‖ captured insurgents, and giving them vocational training so they can
find work after they are released.
Another urgent priority is to do better in ―strategic communications‖—the discipline once known
as propaganda. The report notes that the government of Afghanistan and the international
community ―need to wrest the information initiative‖ from the insurgency, which has become
adept at exploiting coalition missteps such as errant bombs while not being held to public
account for its own brutal excesses. Unlike detention operations or training, this responsibility
will not fall exclusively to a new organization. The assessment holds that strategic
communications should be ―an integral and fully embedded part of policy development, planning
processes, and the execution of operations.‖
Changing organizational flow charts is relatively easy. So too is redeploying troops from
sparsely populated rural areas to the areas where the population is concentrated—another major
tenet of ―population-centric‖ counterinsurgency. Much harder will be changing minds, especially
those of American allies who have little familiarity with, or interest in, the kinds of manpowerintensive counterinsurgency practices that U.S. forces learned to employ in Iraq.
Harder still will be improving the quality of Afghan governance so that, in the words of the
McChrystal report, ―a stronger Afghan government . . . is seen by the Afghan people as working
in their interests.‖ The presidential election held on August 20, 2009, which was marred by
widespread fraud, does not make the task any easier, but it is hardly impossible. Even if the
current president, Hamid Karzai, finally emerges victorious, this does not mean that the Afghan
people will have to remain alienated from their government. Karzai remains fairly popular,
especially in the Pashtun areas where the insurgency is based; he likely would have emerged as
the top vote getter in a completely fair election, although he might not have gotten the 50 percent
needed to avoid a runoff.
Whoever ends up as president, NATO forces will have to work with the United Nations, various
nongovernmental organizations, and civilian government agencies such as the State Department
to fight corruption and improve the delivery of basic services such as clean water, paved roads,
electricity, education, and a functioning legal system. Ultimately, the people of Afghanistan will
judge the quality of their government by what it delivers, not how it was set up. Moreover, for
the purposes of the overall effort in the country, the Afghan government does not have to be
perfect; it only has to be better than the Taliban‘s ―shadow government.‖
_____________
In trying to achieve these tasks, McChrystal will face a challenge American commanders did not
confront on the same scale in Iraq—cross-border havens. If there has been one consistent means
of enabling insurgent success, from the mujahedeen fighting the Russians in the 1980s to the
Vietcong fighting the French in the 1950s and the Americans in the 1960s, it has been the ability
56
to set up secure sanctuaries for recruitment, training, and equipping. This has been a small but
significant issue in Iraq, where insurgents continue to receive support from Syria and Iran. The
problem is much more acute in Afghanistan, which shares a porous 1,600-mile border with
Pakistan. As the Initial Assessment notes: ―Afghanistan‘s insurgency is clearly supported from
Pakistan. Senior leaders of the major Afghan insurgents are based in Pakistan, are linked with al
Qaeda and other violent extremist groups, and are reportedly aided by some elements of‖
Pakistan‘s intelligence service, the ISI.
Some have suggested that the involvement of Pakistan makes a favorable outcome in
Afghanistan a long shot. My Council on Foreign Relations colleague Daniel Markey, a former
State Department official, has written, ―As long as Pakistan‘s tribal areas are in turmoil, the
mission of building a new, democratic, and stable Afghanistan cannot succeed.‖ McChrystal
disagrees. He writes that ―Afghanistan does require Pakistani cooperation and action against
violent militancy,‖ but he also notes that the ―insurgency in Afghanistan is predominantly
Afghan.‖ He holds out the hope that by implementing the basics of sound counterinsurgency in
Afghanistan, the Afghan government and its coalition partners can regain control of its territory.
_____________
He might have added, but didn‘t, that those who say Pakistan is the ―real problem‖ don‘t offer
any idea of how to improve the situation in Pakistan if we pull back in, or move out of,
Afghanistan. An American scuttle from Afghanistan (which is how a transition to a
counterterrorism strategy would be perceived) would simply encourage Pakistan to go back to its
old strategy of allying itself with jihadist groups, because it would be convinced that the U.S.
was not a reliable partner. The U.S. could also lose access to bases in Afghanistan that are used
to target terrorists in Pakistan.
_____________
The most pressing problem for McChrystal lies not in Afghanistan, nor in Pakistan, but inside
the United States. To carry out his strategy, McChrystal must have more resources, especially
more troops. In his assessment, he writes, ―Resources will not win this war, but under-resourcing
could lose it.‖ NATO‘s war effort has in fact been under-resourced for years, ―operating in a
culture of poverty,‖ as McChrystal puts it. That has made it impossible to carry out classic
counterinsurgency operations, because those typically require a ratio of roughly 1
counterinsurgent per 50 civilians. Given Afghanistan‘s population of 30 million, 600,000
counterinsurgents would be necessary. At the moment, the total is roughly 270,000 (170,000
Afghans, 64,000 Americans, 35,000 from other nations). Actual force planning, however, is too
intricate to be reduced to such back-of-the-envelope calculations. Unique local characteristics
have to be taken into account, such as the fact that the insurgency is largely confined to the
Pashtun, an ethnic group that comprises 42 percent of the population.
57
McChrystal and his staff have drawn up a range of recommendations on extra troop levels. The
respected military analysts Frederick and Kimberly Kagan, who have consulted for McChrystal,
have completed a study of their own that suggests a need for 40,000 to 45,000 additional troops,
to be concentrated in eastern and southern Afghanistan. Such a number is reportedly at the high
end of what McChrystal has recommended, but in war it‘s always better to have too many troops
than too few.
Too few, however, is what he may get. After repeatedly pledging he would ―make the fight
against al Qaeda and the Taliban the top priority that it should be,‖ President Obama seemed to
have gotten cold feet in early September. With casualties rising and public support falling, he
delayed action on McChrystal‘s Initial Assessment and told the general not to bother submitting
his resource requirements until a new strategic review had been completed. That review will
arrive just six months after the last administration review, completed in March, which led to the
dispatch of 21,000 troops to Afghanistan as part of what Obama described as a ―comprehensive
new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.‖
Those who oppose sending more troops suggest that trying to fight and win in the supposed
―graveyard of empires‖ is a hopeless undertaking. Skeptics argue that Afghanistan is so
backward, feudal, and militaristic that no foreign army has any chance of prevailing no matter
what strategy it uses. Some go so far as to assert that Afghanistan is not a ―real‖ country, that it
has always been governed by feudal warlords, and that brutish warfare is its natural state. This is
a gross misreading of history. It‘s certainly true that Afghanistan is a tribal society and that it has
always been fairly decentralized. But it has also 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.
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. Anyone who has read The Kite Runner, Khaled
Hosseini‘s 2003 bestselling novel about life in Kabul before and after the Soviet invasion and the
triumph of the Taliban, will know that Afghanistan has not always been as unstable and violent
as it is today.
But isn‘t it the case that Afghans have always rejected all outside military intervention? 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.
58
Neither empire had popular support on its side, as foreign forces do today. In recent polling, only
4 percent of Afghans express a desire to see the Taliban return to power. Sixty-two percent have
a positive impression of the United States, and 82 percent have a favorable view of our chief onthe-ground ally—the Afghan National Army. McChrystal‘s Initial Assessment quotes
Afghanistan‘s defense minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak: ―Afghans have never seen you as
occupiers, even though this has been the major focus of the enemy‘s propaganda campaign.
Unlike the Russians, who imposed a government with an alien ideology, you enabled us to write
a democratic constitution and choose our own government. Unlike the Russians, who destroyed
our country, you came to rebuild.‖ This is a commonly held view, notwithstanding popular
perceptions that Afghans are inherently xenophobic. Foreign forces would be more popular still
if they were to do more to push back the Taliban and establish law and order.
Perhaps, despite everything, the skeptics are right—maybe it is impossible to deploy a successful
counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. But 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. Indeed, after a study of 66 20th-century insurgencies in which a foreign
power committed significant resources to the fight, political scientists Andrew J. Enterline and
Joseph Magagnoli found that population-centric strategies succeeded 75 percent of the time (66
percent in the post-1945 period). The odds are that such a strategy would work in Afghanistan,
too, but we won‘t know for sure until we try—and we haven‘t tried yet.
What we have tried is the other strategy, the counterterrorism strategy, and it has been found
wanting. This should not come as a surprise, because it is hard to point to any place where pure
CT 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.
Vice President Biden may think that a few long-range strikes will prevent terrorist sanctuaries
from emerging in Afghanistan. General McChrystal, who knows a thing or two about the CT
business, has concluded otherwise. Which man, one wonders, will the president listen to? He
doesn‘t have long to decide, because as McChrystal writes, ―Failure to gain the initiative and
reverse insurgent momentum in the near term (next 12 months) . . . risks an outcome where
defeating the insurgency is no longer possible‖—and an outcome in which the United States
finds itself experiencing a devastating and unnecessary defeat in a conflict that President Obama
himself has described as a ―war of necessity.‖
59
Pashtuns and Pakistanis
A not-so-great game, but one America can't give up.
BY Reuel Marc Gerecht
September 21, 2009, Vol. 15, No. 01
The Weekly Standard
The war in Afghanistan obviously isn't going well. Depressing critiques from all quarters
underscore Afghanistan's appalling poverty, warlordism, religious conservatism, corruption,
poppy fields, and retrograde matrix of ethnicity and tribe. Many of those who wanted to cut and
run from Iraq have become similarly anxious about what, at least until November 2008, they saw
as a better war. The stay-and-fight crowd is still the more powerful in Washington, but armed
tenacity is an unnatural position for many pro-war liberals and some post-Cold War
conservatives. Their support of President Barack Obama's war could wane. The prospect of a
long conflict in a Muslim country could be daunting.
To see that this war is worth fighting is not to deny that Afghanistan could become even more
demanding than George W. Bush's "war of choice." Topography alone could make the conflict
more wearing: Some of the most violent areas of Afghanistan have some of the world's most
formidable terrain. Iraq is a nation of well-paved roads; Afghanistan is a rough, rolling sea of
rocks and dirt. Like the Bush administration on Iraq, the Obama administration has yet to be
frank about what an American commitment to the war in Central Asia will cost. No Larry
Lindsey has yet arisen in the Obama White House and spoken truth to power. We could soon
have 100,000 soldiers deployed, and we could have them there for years. Comparisons between
the United States in Vietnam and in Afghanistan are for the most part surreal (the North
Vietnamese and Vietcong had the Soviet Union behind them), but the image of helicopters flying
over jungles will soon be matched--if the Obama administration is serious about fighting--by a
horizon of helicopters flying over Afghanistan's parched mountains, verdant river valleys, and
stacked-rock towns and villages.
We plan on massively augmenting the size of the Afghan army and police since we want them
eventually to replace us. Perhaps 300,000 armed locals may be required. Afghanistan has no
history of raising, let alone sustaining, such organized national forces. The cost of training and
providing logistical support to Afghan units can't be fully calculated yet, but it is clear that
Afghanistan cannot pay for what it desperately needs. It cannot do so even if Kabul legalizes the
production and export of opium, a policy that the United States and many Europeans would
oppose.
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And it's most unlikely that Obama will be able to guilt-trip the Europeans into spending more. It
will be a diplomatic miracle if the administration can just keep them contributing what they do
now. Obama, who regularly chastised the Bush administration for its supposedly unrivaled
capacity to alienate our allies, could well oversee the de facto dissolution of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization. European leaders have clearly shown that Obama's election didn't make
them any more willing to put their troops into combat.
Left-wing economists will soon be tabulating mind-boggling sums for the conflict, with all its
remotely possible collateral costs. Senator Obama found such arithmetic for Iraq appealing; it
may prove uncomfortable for him to make arguments for Afghanistan that sound, to borrow from
Mother Jones's David Corn, "slightly reminiscent of what the Bush-Cheney gang tried to pull off
when they were pushing the case for invading Iraq." And some of the president's arguments on
Afghanistan will be less compelling. Politically, Iraq is an enormously influential country in the
Middle East (its post-Saddam impact on Iran may already have been substantial); Afghanistan
remains a cultural and intellectual backwater, even for Pakistanis who can't resist trying to draw
their northern neighbor into a great game with India.
But there are many compelling reasons to keep fighting in Afghanistan. Most important among
them is that an American withdrawal would return Afghanistan to civil war and reinforce
frightful trends in Pakistan. In an Afghan civil conflict pitting the Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Shiite
Hazaras against the Pashtuns, the United States would have to choose the anti-Pashtun, antiPakistani side to protect against the possibility that the Taliban, a Pashtun-based movement,
would again gain the upper hand. Remember Western insouciance about Afghanistan between
1994 and 1996, as the Taliban gradually gained ground? This time around, Washington would be
obliged to intervene. It could not simply assume, as many suggest, that Pashtun jealousies, tribal
differences, and powerful competing warlords would be enough to thwart a neo-Taliban advance.
But successfully intervening in Pashtun politics from "over the horizon," with American troops
no longer significantly deployed in Afghanistan, would be impossible. The Taliban currently
have the offensive advantage throughout most of the Pashtun regions with U.S. forces active in
the country; imagine U.S. forces gone.
Choosing sides would immediately thrust us into conflict with Islamabad, which remains a
staunch and, at times, nefarious defender of Afghan Pashtun interests. Such a collision between
Washington and Islamabad would be awful, fortifying Islamic militancy within Pakistan and
placing al Qaeda and its allies, more clearly than ever before, on the same side as the Pakistani
military establishment, which is only now getting serious about countering the radical Islamic
threat at home.
The terrorist ramifications of this for us and for India could be enormous. Britain's domestic
intelligence service, MI5, is working around the clock to monitor and thwart terrorist plots
emanating from Muslim militants on the subcontinent. Great Britain does not receive the credit it
deserves for doing the heavy lifting in building a security barrier against subcontinent Muslim
radicals and their militant brethren resident in Europe. Even more than the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency, MI5 is America's frontline defense against
mass-casualty terrorism.
61
Pakistan, not the Arab Middle East, is where extreme Islamic militancy probably has the most
growth potential. And Britain's intelligence officers are quick to confess that they could not do
their work without cooperation on the Pakistani side, which today, even after Islamic militants
have lethally targeted members of Islamabad's intelligence and security services, remains
complicated and problematic. Pakistan has been loath to sever long-standing ties to the Afghan
and Pakistani Pashtun militant groups with which it has dealt for years. This is particularly true
for those who come under the Taliban umbrella. Mullah Omar, the Taliban's divinely anointed
founding father, is more or less an honored guest of Islamabad, holding court in Pakistan's
western province of Baluchistan. Imagine scenarios where the Pakistanis receive requests for
help from the British and the Americans, even as Western powers are aiding Afghanistan's
bitterly anti-Pakistani non-Pashtun minorities against pro-Taliban Pashtuns.
We should never underestimate the potential for Pakistani recidivism. Even the most secular,
pro-Western Pakistanis viewed the American invasion of Afghanistan with trepidation, if not
hostility. Afghanistan was their backyard: A broad Pakistani consensus backed Islamabad's
support of the Taliban. Even Pakistanis who serve Johnnie Walker Black at parties can like the
idea of Muslim holy warriors in Afghanistan abetting the anti-Hindu jihadists of Kashmir. The
Muslim identity is really all that Pakistan has as national glue. During the Soviet-Afghan war
(1979-89), Afghanistan became a revered place for devout Pakistanis, some of whom crossed the
border to fight with their coreligionists. For the secularized civilian and military elite,
Afghanistan became an escape valve--someplace for religious Pakistanis to focus their attention.
This attention was reciprocated north of the border.
Representing between 40 percent and 45 percent of the Afghan population and convinced of their
right to political preeminence, Pashtuns have never lost their ties to their ethnic kin across the
artificial, British-imposed border with Pakistan. The Soviet-Afghan war and the rise of religious
militancy in the Pashtun community--which predates the Soviet invasion--further cemented ties
and gave the Pashtun identity a sharper ideological edge. The long-standing cooperation among
the Pashtun Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI, where
Pakistani Pashtuns have served influentially), and the Pashtuns of Pakistan's Federally
Administered Tribal Areas, North-West Frontier Province, and Baluchistan is natural.
Also strengthening cross-border bonds has been the deepening sense of religious identity
throughout Pakistani society. The rule of General Zia ul-Haq (1977-88) in particular accelerated
the careers and sentiments of Islamists within Islamabad's armed forces. The cheek-by-jowl
association of diehard fundamentalists and whisky-loving English-educated wits within the
Pakistani officer corps was an astonishing and delicate balancing act; it was made possible only
by the secular-fundamentalist agreement about Afghanistan (support the Taliban) and Kashmir
(support the jihadists). September 11 and the American invasion shredded this harmony.
Since Pakistan's creation in 1947, Pashtuns in Afghanistan and Pakistan have been building
political, economic, and cultural muscle, but they have not developed a widespread ethnicnationalist movement, as have the poorer and less powerful Baluch, who have serious separatist
tendencies in Pakistan and no love for their Shiite Persianizing masters across the border in Iran,
who oppress the Sunni Baluch and their age-old desire to have nothing to do with Tehran. As the
French scholar Olivier Roy has pointed out, the Pashtuns' collective sense of themselves has
62
usually been expressed within radical Islamic movements, the Taliban being the most famous
and successful of these religious-cum-nationalist awakenings.
What is poorly understood in the West is the way radical religious callings have been a means
for young male Pashtuns to escape from tradition-bound tribal society by appealing to a higher
cause. This transnational, supra-tribal--and in that sense antitraditional--religious brew made the
pre-9/11 Taliban and has, in part, made the neo-Taliban now battling American and allied forces.
(It also gave birth to Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the two most vicious and
long-lived of al Qaeda's Pashtun allies.) Roy, who has been the most percipient diagnostician of
Afghanistan for a generation, doesn't believe that any policy designed in Washington and Kabul
that plays traditional "good tribal elders" against the "bad Taliban" can work since it pits a
decaying old order against a modern Islamist ideology.
Islamism and Afghanistan's deeply rooted tribal structure have often felicitously cohabited. (The
same was true of Afghanistan's brutal strain of communism, which sometimes spared the lives of
enemies from the right tribes.) But tension has been growing. Modern Islamism, which poured
into Afghanistan from Pakistan and the Arab world in the 1980s, appeals to the historic, global
mission of Islam and takes a dim view of local affections and social hierarchies that circumscribe
the religious calling. The Afghans who grew up in the Pakistani refugee camps during the
Soviet-Afghan war, and their philosophical descendants, aren't known for respecting the
traditions of a lost world. Many of their elders were slaughtered by Afghan Communists or the
Soviets. These men are modern in that their religious fundamentalism is stripped of the cultural
and social complexities of age-old traditions and tribes. The enormous Saudi missionary
influence on the practice of Islam among the Pashtuns has fortified this "purist" streak, nearly
obliterating the more easygoing Hanafi and Sufi practices that softened Afghan village and
especially urban culture.
Mullah Omar was ready for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda's global holy war because he'd drunk
deeply of fundamentalism, with its frenetic emphasis on extirpating insufficiently devout
Muslims from the community. This aggressiveness--the desire to weed the Afghan garden of its
imperfections--retains considerable appeal among devout young Afghans who feel their society,
or their tribe, is rife with injustices. American and British intellectuals and soldiers may still be
in love with the tribes of the Islamic Middle East and Central Asia (T.E. Lawrence is ever with
us). But among the natives, tribal solidarity and respect for elders aren't nearly as powerful as
they once were.
It's an excellent bet that if the Americans withdrew from Afghanistan, even the most secular
Pakistanis, who finally recognize the threat that radical Islam poses to them, would be strongly
tempted to try to make a deal with the Pakistani Taliban--a vastly worse deal than any they've
made so far. The upper crust from the Punjab and the Sindh, who make up the bulk of Pakistan's
civilian and military elite, normally find the folks in the northwest of their country and in
Baluchistan to be almost beyond the pale of civilization. Giving Afghanistan back to them--a
workshop for the rude and crude devout--would likely be enormously appealing. "Let's stop
fighting each other," would be the opening line. "The Americans are dialing back the clock to
pre-9/11. So can we." Most Pakistanis would no doubt be thrilled to have al Qaeda's headquarters
63
return to Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden, who has long loved Afghanistan, might well oblige
them.
It is the American presence in Afghanistan that keeps the Pakistani ruling class "honest."
Islamabad appears to be slowly and bloodily winning the battle against its own militants, who
want to push the country toward a religious civil war. The American army in Afghanistan is
allowing the all-critical Afghan Pashtun community time to recover from the Taliban--giving it
the chance to develop a competitive ideology that comprises Afghan nationalism, Pashtunism,
and serious religion.
Although there has been more ethnic cleansing in Afghanistan than has been reported in the
mainstream press (mostly Pashtuns migrating, voluntarily or under duress, from predominantly
Tajik and Uzbek areas), interethnic antipathy hasn't metastasized as it did in Iraq. Badly mauled,
the idea of Afghan fraternity still exists. The widespread savagery that we saw between Iraqi
Sunni and Shiite Arabs seems unlikely to happen in Afghanistan.
Some critics of Westerners in Afghanistan argue that U.S. and NATO forces, by their tactics if
not their mere presence, are breathing life into the neo-Taliban, who would remain deeply
unpopular among the Pashtuns if it were not for outsiders' mistakes. Although we can quickly
concede that Western mistakes make the Taliban look better, Westerners in Afghanistan have
actually generated much less village-level antipathy among the Pashtuns than might have been
expected given the Pashtuns' reputation for xenophobia. We might yet see a Pashtun-only
"national liberation" jihad develop in Afghanistan, but we are far from this now.
Even now, "our" Pashtuns probably represent a big majority of their brethren. If the Americans
were to leave, however, it's highly unlikely these friendly Pashtuns could long hold the high
ground against a resurgent neo-Taliban movement. The Taliban possess the most effective
Pashtun fighting force. Many, perhaps most, Pashtuns dislike the Taliban's aggressively
inflexible religion (it's Pashtun village faith on speed), but the Taliban do have an ideology,
tested repeatedly on the battlefield. It isn't just money and intimidation that bring them recruits.
Today's multiheaded Taliban movement is learning what Mullah Omar discovered after 1994:
You can marry an unpleasant, vaguely foreign ideology to local concerns, customs, and warlords
if you find the right mix of money, intimidation, Pashtun revanchism, the universal popular fear
of disorder, and God. The neo-Taliban have successfully laid claim to Islam as a war-cry; other
Afghan Pashtuns have not yet figured out how to harness the faith to their cause. And the
Pakistanis will throw their weight, as they did in the 1990s, behind those Afghan Pashtuns who
are the most militarily effective and have the strongest cross-border ties. The neo-Taliban could
conceivably cut a deal with militants over the border to stop the Pakistani fratricide. No other
Afghan Pashtuns would have such leverage.
The odds are, nevertheless, against the Taliban and their allies on both sides of the AfghanPakistani border. Unless Obama withdraws U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the Pakistani Army
will be forced to keep fighting its own insurgents. Things were never going to get better in
Pakistan before they got worse. The savagery of the Taliban in places like the Swat Valley has
brought home what Islamic militants are capable of, as have their lethal attacks on Pakistani
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officials. We are beginning to see a great debate within Pakistan about jihad and Islamic ethics.
Discussions of Pakistan's activities in Afghanistan and Kashmir are not yet what we might want,
but Pakistan's chattering classes are serious (much more than those in most Arab lands). If they
keep fighting their own demons, they may wind up asking themselves why their country's
premier intelligence service has been implicated in so many ugly, bloody activities abroad.
Corrupt, mean-spirited, feudal in practice, and fragile, Pakistan's democracy has been far better
at airing the country's dirty linen than was its military ruler, Pervez Musharraf. As the Pakistani
military slowly makes headway against the radicals, civilian officials and officers have started
sounding religiously more confident, going toe-to-toe with the radicals for the hearts and minds
of Muslims. Government-supported anti-Taliban media campaigns in the contested northwest of
the country have actually sounded sensible--something that cannot always be said for the
American bankrolled and overseen efforts on Pakistani radio. U.S. officials should not try to veto
Islamabad's hard-edged, very Muslim use of the Koran and the Prophet against radicals,
preferring that the message echo Washington's favorite anodyne line that "Islam is a religion of
peace." Political correctness hasn't yet come to the Swat Valley.
But the battle against the Taliban inside Afghanistan will be even harder since the creed
opposing the Taliban for now is so traditional and the Afghan Pashtun personalities who can
refute the militants are, with some exceptions, less than compelling. Traditional mores can
compete with modern ones if the latter shock: The slowly growing revulsion throughout the Arab
Middle East for al Qaeda is in great part a recoiling of devout Muslims from the violent excesses
committed by holy warriors who once had broad support. But this process isn't necessarily quick.
The grosser the atrocities, the faster the flip. In 2004, Sunni Arab opinion outside Iraq was
inclined to describe Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda jihadists who butchered Shiites as antiAmerican "martyrs"; by 2007, after tens of thousands of Shiites had been killed, and the Shiites
were brutally and successfully fighting back, a moral queasiness took hold among non-Iraqi Arab
Sunnis, and Iraq's Arab Sunnis raged against al Qaeda.
At present, neo-Taliban violence against civilians is escalating in Afghanistan. Given the
Taliban's nasty record under such dark figures as the suicide-bomber-loving Jalaluddin Haqqani,
the anti-Taliban Pashtuns should be able to ally militarily with the Americans and win the heartsand-minds tug-of-war with their countrymen. By the same token, however, if the neo-Taliban
refrain from atrocities and ramp up the jihadist call laced with Pashtun pride, the battle could be
far more difficult for the United States.
The allure of democracy for Afghans shouldn't be belittled, as has now become commonplace
among Americans, both conservative and liberal. Afghanistan is a backward land, with
entrenched sentiments and habits that are certainly deleterious to functioning representative
government. The fraud charges in the recent presidential election don't help the cause of Hamid
Karzai and other Pashtuns who are trying to develop, however fecklessly, an alternative creed for
Pashtuns to believe in. But the Afghans have lived through hell. Their tolerance for ineffectual
and corrupt government under the umbrella of the United States is probably still far from
exhausted. The Obama administration and the Pashtuns are going to have to do better than
they've done so far. But the bar for success is low--much lower in Afghanistan than it was in
Iraq.
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This is the biggest reason why Afghans can be quite straightforward about their desire to see
foreigners stay in their country. They generally do not possess a prickly religio-nationalist
consciousness that makes it extremely difficult to cooperate openly with Westerners. (Pashtuns
are pussycats compared with Iraqis.) When trained and armed, Afghans are not scared or
embarrassed to fight alongside foreigners. As battlefield allies, they are braver and more
effective than many of the Europeans who've nominally joined us.
The Afghan Muslim identity has been battered and radicalized since the early 1970s. But
Afghanistan is definitely one of those places--Iran is another--where many have actually become
less enamored of religious militancy. Experience matters. Nonstop war for 30 years has made the
Afghan people--especially their elites--more inclined toward rapacious corruption. They are
certainly less fraternally disposed toward each other than they once were. But war has also taught
many of them to back away from incendiary religious politics. The great Tajik Afghan military
commander Ahmad Shah Massoud was a diehard Islamic ideologue in his youth. By the time he
died in middle age, assassinated by bin Laden's men, he could wryly and mournfully reflect on
his earlier passion. Such wisdom is not uncommon in Afghanistan, even among Pashtuns who
are illiterate.
If we lose the devout Afghan Pashtuns and start seeing large swaths of Pashtun society siding
openly with the Taliban against us, while savage intercommunal hostilities break out among
Afghanistan's peoples, then we will have to debate withdrawing from Central Asia. But we
haven't seen that. And unless we withdraw--or persist in a counterproductive military strategy
(which, thanks to the failures and successes in Iraq, we won't)--the Pashtuns as a people probably
won't rally against us. Things will remain far from perfect in Afghanistan--doing well in the
Greater Middle East means that your successes just edge out your defeats. But we are cognizant
of our problems. And if we look into Pakistan, we can see what is at stake.
That alone should propel General Stanley McChrystal to recommend the deployment of all the
troops and resources he needs to turn the tide in Afghanistan. He and General David Petraeus,
the overall commander of U.S. forces in the region, surely know that they have the president
over a barrel. If Obama refuses to deploy all they request and Afghanistan continues to go south,
then he will have lost the "necessary war" that defined his campaign and his presidency.
If that happens, one fact will be paramount: The Pashtuns will have laid low both East and West.
Their brothers in arms who still truly believe in a global jihad against the United States will view
our departure as their victory and a mandate from heaven. Jihadists everywhere will be thrilled
and emboldened.
And in that case, we will all have to pray that MI5 is up to the challenge.
Reuel Marc Gerecht is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD and a senior fellow
at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
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Why Negotiate With the Taliban?
Military progress is being made in Afghanistan. There's no reason to alienate moderate
Pashtuns.
By FREDERICK W. KAGAN AND KIMBERLY KAGAN
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.
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
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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.
Beradar, Pakistan, and the Afghan Taliban: What
Gives?
Ashley J. Tellis
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
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.
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.
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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.
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
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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
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
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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.
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
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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
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.
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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.
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
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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
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
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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
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
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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.
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Iraq
The Endgame in Iraq
As the baton is passed to a new commander and a new president, there is still delicate work
to be done.
BY Frederick W. Kagan, Jack Keane and Kimberly Kagan
The Weekly Standard
On September 16, General Raymond Odierno will succeed General David Petraeus as
commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. The surge strategy Petraeus and Odierno
developed and executed in 2007 achieved its objectives: reducing violence in Iraq enough to
allow political processes to restart, economic development to move forward, and reconciliation
to begin. Violence has remained at historic lows even after the withdrawal of all surge forces and
the handover of many areas to Iraqi control. Accordingly, President Bush has approved the
withdrawal of 8,000 additional troops by February 2009.
With Barack Obama's recent declaration that the surge in Iraq has succeeded, it should now be
possible to move beyond that debate and squarely address the current situation in Iraq and the
future. Reductions in violence permitting political change were the goal of the surge, but they are
not the sole measure of success in Iraq.
The United States seeks a free, stable, independent Iraq, with a legitimately elected
representative government that can govern and defend its territory, is at peace with its neighbors,
and is an ally of the United States in the war on terror. The Iraqi leadership has made important
strides toward developing a new and inclusive political system that addresses the concerns of all
Iraq's ethnic and sectarian groups. But it has also taken steps in the wrong direction. An
understandable desire to seize on the reduction in violence to justify overly hasty force
reductions and premature transfer of authority to Iraqis puts the hard-won gains of 2007 and
2008 at risk. Thus, the president's announcement of new troop withdrawals has come before we
even know when Iraq's provincial elections will occur.
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Reducing our troop strength solely on the basis of trends in violence also misses the critical point
that the mission of American forces in Iraq is shifting rapidly from counterinsurgency to peace
enforcement. The counter-insurgency fight that characterized 2007 continues mainly in areas of
northern Iraq. The ability of organized enemy groups, either Sunni or Shia, to conduct largescale military or terrorist operations and to threaten the existence of the Iraqi government is gone
for now. No area of Iraq today requires the massive, violent, and dangerous military operations
that American and Iraqi forces had to conduct over the last 18 months in order to pacify various
places or restore them to government control. Although enemy networks and organizations have
survived and are regrouping, they will likely need considerable time to rebuild their capabilities
to levels that pose more than a local challenge--and intelligent political, economic, military, and
police efforts can prevent them from rebuilding at all.
American troops continue to conduct counterterrorism operations against Al Qaeda in Iraq,
which has not given up, and against Iranian-backed Special Groups, which are also
reconstituting. U.S. forces support Iraqi forces conducting counterinsurgency operations in the
handful of areas where any significant insurgent capability remains. But mostly our troops are
enforcing the peace.
In ethnically mixed areas, American troops are seen as impartial arbiters and mediators. In
predominantly Shia or Sunni areas, they are seen as guarantors of continued safety, destroying
the justification for illegal militias. American brigades also play critical roles in economic
reconstruction, not by spending American money but by helping Iraqis spend their own money.
American staffs help local Iraqi leaders develop prioritized lists of their needs, budgets to match
those priorities, and plans for executing those budgets. American troops support the Provincial
Reconstruction Teams that mentor Iraqi provincial leaders and help local communities
communicate their needs to the central government. American soldiers provide essential support
to Iraqi soldiers and police working hard to develop their ability to function on their own.
Indeed, American combat brigades have become the principal enablers of economic and political
development in Iraq. When an American brigade is withdrawn from an area, there is nothing to
take its place--all of these functions go unperformed. Clearly, then, the number of brigades
needed in Iraq should be tied not to the level of violence but to the roles the Americans perform
and the importance of those roles to the further development of Iraq as a stable and peaceful
state.
But American brigades do more than that. They also give us leverage at every level to restrain
malign actors within the Iraqi government and to insist that Iraqi leaders make concessions and
take political risks they would rather avoid. The notion, popular in some American political
discussions, that withdrawing our forces increases our leverage is nonsensical. The presence of
140,000 American troops on the ground in Iraq requires the Iraqi leadership to pay attention to
America's suggestions in a way that nothing else can. Every brigade that leaves reduces our
leverage just when we need it most.
For all the progress made to date, the next president will face significant challenges in Iraq. In
recent testimony, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates enumerated them: "the prospect of violence
in the lead-up to elections, worrisome reports about sectarian efforts to slow the assimilation of
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the Sons of Iraq into the Iraqi security forces, Iranian influence, the very real threat that al Qaeda
continues to pose, and the possibility that Jaysh al-Mahdi could return."
The existence of malign sectarian actors in the Iraqi parliament and in the prime minister's inner
circle is not news. Nor is it news that Iraqi politicians, elected under a closed-list system that
emphasized ethnosectarian identity at the expense of political interest, have weak electoral bases
and much reason to fear the results of open and honest elections. It is similarly well known that
Iran seeks to drive the United States out of Iraq and has been putting tremendous pressure on
Iraq's leaders to obey Tehran and reject Washington. These three factors help explain the
development of significant negative trends in Iraq in recent months: the downward spiral of
negotiations over the Strategic Framework Agreement, delays in the passage of an electoral law,
escalating tensions along the Arab-Kurd border, and Iraqi government attacks on certain Sons of
Iraq groups in and around Baghdad.
American errors have contributed to these developments. At the outset of negotiations over the
Strategic Framework Agreement, for instance, we should have offered Iraq a security guarantee.
Iraq's signing a Strategic Framework Agreement would have openly and publicly committed
themselves to the United States--and against Iran, in the zero-sum thinking of Tehran. It was
only reasonable that Maliki and others in the Iraqi government should have expected an
American commitment to match their own, and we should have given it to them. But American
domestic politics made that impossible.
Leading congressmen and senators insisted that a security guarantee would raise the Strategic
Framework Agreement to the level of a treaty requiring Senate ratification--which is true. They
also made clear that no such ratification would be forthcoming if the document bound the next
administration. The Bush administration therefore had to tell Baghdad at the outset that America
would not match the commitment we were asking the Iraqis to make with an equal commitment
of our own. American domestic politics also prevented the administration from placing the
security agreement in the larger context of a U.S.-Iraqi strategic partnership, since that concept
was ridiculed by those who refused to accept the possibility of success in Iraq.
The Iranians sensed an opportunity and responded with a massive public information campaign
in Iraq and a virulent private campaign to put pressure on Iraq's leaders. America's refusal to
offer a long-term security guarantee gave weight to the constant Iranian refrain that Iran will
always be there, while America will ultimately leave Iraq to its fate. Shrewdly refusing to admit
the degree of direct Iranian pressure, Maliki and his associates used the cloak of "Iraqi
sovereignty" to conceal their uneasiness at taking responsibility for making a deal with the
United States--uneasiness not before their own people, but before Tehran. As a result, the
negotiations have dragged on, Iraqi demands have increased, and it is possible that Maliki will
now wait until after the American election to see who wins--all because domestic political
constraints prevented the Bush administration from making the necessary opening bid.
Maliki has been using "Iraqi sovereignty" to do more than delay those negotiations, however. He
has also used it to insist on the accelerated transfer of Iraq's cities, especially Baghdad, to Iraqi
control and the withdrawal of American forces from those cities. As a result, the problems that
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premature transition can cause are on display in the city of Baquba, the capital of Diyala
Province northeast of Baghdad.
Diyala has always been one of the most challenging provinces in Iraq because of its swirling mix
of Kurds with Sunni and Shia Arabs and its proximity to Baghdad. It served in the past as a
staging area for Shia militias and al Qaeda terrorists launching attacks in Baghdad. It was
pacified in 2007 with a great deal of hard fighting that resulted in the defeat of illegal Shia
militias and the capitulation of the local Sunni insurgent groups, many of whom joined the Sons
of Iraq, volunteer security forces organized and initially paid by the United States. More
remained to be done in Diyala as the surge ended, however. Surge operations had cleared
Baquba and areas further east, but not the rim of the province from Khanaqin along the Iranian
border and then through Balad Ruz toward Baghdad. The end of the surge meant the withdrawal
of significant American forces from Diyala, so U.S. troops largely turned responsibility for the
city of Baquba over to the Iraqis and moved out to clear the peripheral areas of the province.
Rumors began circulating that the Iraqi government believed it would have to re-clear Baquba,
even though violence remained low and American leaders did not agree. In August 2008, the
Iraqi security forces, with limited support from American troops, did re-clear the city--but their
targets were primarily leaders in the Sons of Iraq movement and members of the local
government and community that had supported them. This action--which could not have taken
place if American forces had continued to patrol the city--was part of a larger effort by Maliki to
weaken the urban Sons of Iraq. It appears that the current Iraqi leadership has recognized that it
must allow the Sunni tribal movements, particularly in Anbar, to organize and gain power in
their own communities, but it sees the urban Sons of Iraq movements as political threats to its
power.
The return of the Sunni Iraq Islamic party (IIP) to the government appears to have created an
unholy alliance between Maliki and IIP leader (and Iraqi vice president) Tariq al-Hashimi aimed
at weakening grassroots Sunni political movements in and around Baghdad and ensuring that the
unpopular and unrepresentative IIP continues to wield power after provincial elections. A similar
alliance is operating in Ninewa Province, where Kurdish leaders appear to have joined with the
IIP to ensure that they will continue to have influence in the largely Arab province when
provincial elections eliminate the current disproportionate Kurdish sway in the provincial
government. This Kurdish-IIP alliance helps explain why there are virtually no Sons of Iraq in
Ninewa. The extremely limited American presence in Ninewa, as in Baquba, has enabled these
developments, which may call into question the legitimacy of the upcoming provincial elections
in some areas.
Maliki's actions may reflect the continued powerful influence of malign sectarian actors among
his advisers, or it may reflect the determination of a temporarily strong political leader
confronting elections that are likely to weaken his base. The specter of Iranian power combines
with the enormous question mark hanging over the future of American support to make Maliki
look to his own resources to stabilize his position. Again, contrary to conventional wisdom, the
threat of American withdrawal and America's refusal to guarantee the security of Iraq and its
constitutional processes presses Iraq's leaders to make bad decisions, not good ones.
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Whatever Maliki's motivations, however, the bottom line is clear. Although a dramatic increase
in violence or the rebirth of a large-scale Sunni insurgency in the next six months is unlikely, it is
possible that American policies are combining with Iraqi mistakes to undermine the long-term
prospects for success. These trends can be reversed, with care, over the coming months if the
United States can summon some strategic patience.
There is no question that we should be able to start withdrawing significant numbers of
American forces from Iraq in 2009 and accelerating our withdrawal in 2010. Assuming that Iraqi
provincial elections in 2008 or early 2009, and parliamentary elections in 2009 or 2010, are
accepted as legitimate by the Iraqi people and the international community, it is also highly
likely that we can continue to withdraw from Iraq's cities, including Baghdad, and move from a
patrolling role to an advisory and support role in the same period. But the timing of force
reductions and withdrawals from urban areas is critical, and the current pace is too fast.
It appears from media reports that General Petraeus initially proposed no reduction in the number
of U.S. brigades below the pre-surge levels, and that was certainly the right recommendation.
Current force levels may, in fact, already be too low. At all events, we must see Iraq through the
upcoming two elections, pressing the government to conduct them fairly and inclusively as well
as ensuring that enemy groups do not disrupt them with violence. Doing so requires a significant
American presence on the ground in Iraq's population centers, where, in addition to all the other
key non-combat roles they play, American soldiers are the canaries in the mine shaft. They know
before anyone else when Iraqi leaders at any level are starting to play games that can undermine
mission success.
We should therefore not withdraw any brigades from Iraq before the provincial elections have
occurred and the results have been certified and accepted. We should not accept timelines for the
departure of American troops from Iraq's cities, particularly Baghdad, before the parliamentary
elections of 2009. We should continually press the Iraqi government not simply to pay the Sons
of Iraq (as it has announced it will do beginning in October), but to bring most of them into the
political process. Some of the Sons of Iraq were leaders of the insurgency and should have no
place in Iraqi politics, but in its Baquba operation, the Iraqi government was not sufficiently
discriminating in whom it sought to exclude (much less detain). We must also support the Iraqi
government in its efforts to push Kurdish militias out of Diyala and Ninewa provinces.
This is not a matter of Iraqi sovereignty. American troops will not stay anywhere in Iraq if
ordered by the Iraqi government to leave. We are not going to depose Maliki or retake control of
Baghdad. We are not going to force the Iraqis to do anything. And, above all, we are not going to
maintain a large military presence in Iraq indefinitely. But we are engaged in continual
negotiations with the Iraqi government about what our forces will do and what Iraqi forces will
do, and we have tremendous leverage in those negotiations.
For too long, we have allowed domestic American political considerations to reduce our leverage
and weaken our bargaining position, and we have refused to recognize the critical role the
presence of our combat forces plays in keeping us in the game at all. When America provides
combat forces to maintain internal or external security in a foreign state, it acquires the right to
bargain hard for what it thinks is best for the common interest, even when the host state's
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government does not agree. We have engaged in such hard bargaining in South Korea and in
Europe, and it is a normal part of alliance relationships. We must bargain harder in Iraq and give
ourselves the tools and leverage we need to succeed.
Above all, we must recognize that there is never a glide path in war. As long as the outcome
remains in doubt, we must never imagine that the situation is under control and we can put it on
autopilot and ignore it. The relief of getting Iraqi violence under control and American casualties
down turns naturally into a desire to declare victory and withdraw. That is a danger to be avoided
at all costs. This administration must ensure that it hands its successor not only a relatively
peaceful Iraq, but an Iraq that is headed in the right direction.
General Jack Keane (USA, Ret.) is the former vice-chief of staff of the Army. Frederick W.
Kagan, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is a contributing editor to THE
WEEKLY STANDARD. Kimberly Kagan is president of the Institute for the Study of War.
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
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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.
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
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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
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.
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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
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.
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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
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
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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,
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.
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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
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
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
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
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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
nuanced strategy to help the Yemeni government disentangle al Qaeda from the southern tribes
that now support or tolerate it.
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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
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
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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,
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
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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
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
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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.
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
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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
The Meaning of al Qaeda's Double Agent
The jihadists are showing impressive counterintelligence ability that the CIA seems to have
underestimated.
By REUEL MARC GERECHT
Wall Street Journal
The recent death in Afghanistan of seven American counterterrorist officers, one Jordanian
intelligence operative, and one exploding al Qaeda double agent ought to give us cause to reflect
on the real capabilities of the Central Intelligence Agency and al Qaeda.
The report card isn't good. America's systemic intelligence problems were partially on display in
the bombing at the CIA's Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost province. Worse, al Qaeda
showed skill that had been lacking in many of its operations. In response, President Barack
Obama will likely be obliged to adopt counterterrorist methods that could make his
administration as tough as his predecessor's.
Professionally, one has to admire the skill of suicide bomber Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal alBalawi's handlers. This operation could well have been months—if not longer—in the making,
and neither the Jordanian intelligence service (GID), which supplied the double agent to the CIA,
nor Langley apparently had any serious suspicion that al-Balawi still had the soul and will of a
jihadist.
That is an impressive feat. The Hashemite monarchy imprisons lots of Islamic militants, and the
GID has the responsibility to interrogate them. The dead Jordanian official, Sharif Ali bin Zeid,
reportedly a member of the royal family, may not have been a down-and-dirty case officer with
considerable hands-on contact with militants, but al-Balawi surely passed through some kind of
intensive screening process with the GID. Yet the GID and the CIA got played, and al Qaeda has
revealed that it is capable of running sophisticated clandestine operations with sustained
deception.
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Indeed, al Qaeda did to us exactly what we intended to do to them: use a mole for a lethal strike
against high-value targets. In the case of al-Balawi, it appears the target was Ayman al Zawahiri,
Osama bin Ladin's top deputy. During the Cold War, the CIA completely dropped its guard in
the pursuit of much-desired Cuban and East German agents. The result? Most of our assets were
plants given to us by Cuban and East German intelligence. With al-Balawi supposedly providing
"good" information about al Zawahiri and al Qaeda's terrorist planning, a salivating CIA and the
GID proved inattentive to counterintelligence concerns.
Whereas al Qaeda is showing increasing proficiency, the same cannot be said for the CIA.
Competent case officers can get duped by a good double. And the GID, whose skill has been
exaggerated in fiction and film and by Hashemite-stroked American case officers, isn't a global
service. Take it far from its tribal society, where it operates with admirable efficiency, and it is
nothing to write home about.
The CIA uses the GID so often not because the Jordanians are brilliant but because the
Americans are so often, at best, mediocre. The GID's large cadre of English-speaking officers
makes liaison work easy with Langley, which has never been blessed with a large number of
Arabic-speaking officers, particularly within the senior ranks.
Language issues aside, the now-deceased chief of Base Chapman should have kept most of her
personnel away from al-Balawi, and should never have allowed seven officers to get that close to
him at one time. Traditional operational compartmentation clearly broke down.
It is also highly likely that all of the CIA officers at Chapman—and especially the chief of base,
who was a mother of three—were on short-term assignments. According to active-duty CIA
officers, the vast majority of Langley's officers are on temporary-duty assignments in
Afghanistan, which usually means they depart in under one year. (The same is true for the State
Department.) Many CIA officers are married with children and they do not care for long tours of
duty in unpleasant spots—the type of service that would give officers a chance of gaining some
country expertise, if not linguistic accomplishment.
Moreover, security concerns usually trap these officers into a limited range of contacts. Truth be
told, even the most elemental CIA activity—meeting recruited agents or "developmentals"
outside of well-guarded compounds—often cannot be done without contractor-supplied security.
Without Blackwater, now renamed Xe, which handles security for Langley in Afghanistan, CIA
case officers would likely be paralyzed.
The officers at Chapman were probably young. This isn't necessarily bad. As a general rule,
younger case officers do better intelligence-collection work than older colleagues, whose zeal for
Third World field work declines precipitously as their knowledge and expertise in CIA
bureaucratic politics increases. But experience does breed cynicism, which doesn't appear to
have been in abundance at the CIA base.
All of this reinforces the common U.S. military criticism of the Agency in Afghanistan and Iraq:
It does not often supply the hard tactical and intimate personal and tribal portraits that military
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officers need to do their work. Army officers are generally among the natives vastly more than
their CIA counterparts.
What does this all mean for President Obama? He did not come into office pledging to reform
the CIA, only restrain it from aggressively interrogating al Qaeda terrorists. There is near zero
chance that the president will attempt to improve the Agency operationally in the field. His
counterterrorist adviser, John Brennan, is as institutional a case officer as Langley has ever
produced. If Attorney General Eric Holder is so unwise as to bring any charges against a CIA
officer for the rough interrogation of an al Qaeda detainee during the Bush administration, the
president will likely find himself deluged with damaging CIA-authored leaks. Mr. Obama would
be a fool to confront the CIA on two fronts.
But the president is likely to compensate for systemic weakness in American intelligence in
substantial, effective ways. Mr. Obama has been much more aggressive than President George
W. Bush was in the use of drone attacks and risky paramilitary operations. One can easily
envision him expanding such attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. Visa issuances, airport
security, and perhaps even FBI surveillance of American Muslim militants are likely to become
much tougher under Mr. Obama than under Mr. Bush. President Obama will, no doubt, continue
to say empirically bizarre things about Guantanamo's imprisonment system creating jihadists, but
his administration will now likely find another location to jail militants indefinitely. Too many of
President Bush's released detainees have returned to terrorism.
National Security Adviser James Jones has already described the 21st century as the liaison
century, where intelligence and security services cooperate energetically. The CIA has often
compensated for its internal weaknesses through liaising with foreigners. President Bush and
then Central Intelligence Director George Tenet kicked these relationships into hyper-drive after
9/11; President Obama is likely to kick them even further. Mr. Obama may have foreclosed the
possibility of the CIA again aggressively questioning jihadists, but he's kept the door wide open
for the rendition of terrorists to countries like Jordan, where the GID does not abide by the
Marquess of Queensbury rules in its interrogations.
The deadly attack in Fort Hood, Texas, by Maj. Malik Hassan in November, the close call in the
air above Detroit on Christmas Day, and now the double-agent suicide bombing in Khost have
shocked America's counterterrorist system. Mr. Obama surely knows that one large-scale
terrorist strike inside the U.S. could effectively end his presidency. He may at some level still
believe that his let's-just-all-be-friends speech in Cairo last June made a big dent in the hatred
that many faithful Muslims have for the U.S., but his practices on the ground are likely to be a lot
less touchy-feely. This is all for the good. These three jihadist incidents ought to tell us that
America's war with Islamic militancy is far—far—from being over.
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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.
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
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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.
Sincerely,
Michael Hayden
Porter Goss
George Tenet
John Deutch
R. James Woolsey
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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)
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
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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.
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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Iran/Middle East
Iran
The June 12 Revolution
Whatever happens in Tehran, there’s no going back to the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic
Republic.
BY Reuel Marc Gerecht
The Weekly Standard
June 29 — July 6, 2009, Vol. 14, No. 39
The modern Middle East has had numerous ―game-changing‖ moments, when history turned.
Napoleon Bonaparte‘s invasion of Egypt in 1798, Muhammad Ali‘s conquest of the Nile Valley
in 1805, and the French invasion of Algeria in 1830 introduced Europeans and European ideas
into the region. The British discovery of oil in Persia in 1908, the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire in 1918, the Saudi conquest of Mecca and Medina in 1925, the awakening of the
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, the Arab Revolt in Palestine in 1936, and the God-fatherlike victory of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Cairo in 1954 further accelerated tradition-crushing
Westernization and gave birth to nationalism, pan-Arabism, and contemporary Islamic
fundamentalism. The Israeli triumph in the 1967 Six Day War, the Iranian revolution of 1979,
the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, and the birth of Iraqi democracy two years later buried
secular pan-Arab dictatorship, politically inflamed the Islamic identity, and set the stage for the
growth of representative government in a more religious Middle East.
The Iranian presidential election of June 12 may soon rank with these history-making events. We
may well look back on it as the ―June 12 revolution‖ even if—especially if—the regime cracks
down on the supporters of Mir-Hussein Mousavi, the candidate who ran second to incumbent
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the dubious official vote tally. Since the end of the Iran-Iraq war
(1980-88), which almost destroyed the Islamic Republic and forged the reputation and character
of then-Prime Minister Mousavi, most Iranians have been exhausted revolutionaries. More like
sheep than foot-soldiers of a dynamic faith, Iranians have largely veered away from confronting
their increasingly unpopular rulers.
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Now the election appears to have stiffened their backbones and quickened their passions.
They‘ve had enough of their unpleasant, joyless lives. The election has given a wide variety of
Iranians—many of whom would not voluntarily associate with each other because of religious,
political, and social differences—a simple and transcendent rallying cry: One man, one vote!
Even the supreme leader‘s favorite, President Ahmadinejad, must obey the rules. It is in some
ways a bizarre situation when hundreds of thousands of Iranians rally to protest the outcome of
an election that was rigged from the beginning: All candidates must pass a revolutionary litmus
test, and the vast majority of contenders, even from well-respected, nonthreatening families,
cannot. Yet it is in part precisely because this election was so strait-jacketed that it has become
pivotal.
We don‘t know yet how aggressively Iran‘s clerical overlord, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and
Ahmadinejad rigged the balloting. Ahmadinejad remains popular in small town Iran and among
the urban poor. His constant attacks on the corrupt revolutionary elite—especially the fabulously
wealthy cleric Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who probably bankrolled Mousavi‘s run for the
presidency—resonate, even among highly Westernized Iranians who align themselves with the
―pragmatic‖ Rafsanjani. Ahmadinejad‘s undiminished Islamic zeal, which he marries with
Iranian nationalism, appeals to many, especially those who fought in the ghastly Iran-Iraq war
and retained their faith. Nevertheless, Khamenei and Ahmadinejad felt compelled to cheat.
It is the crudeness of it all that is so revealing and damning. Although Iranians have a reputation
for being subtle, elegant, and polite, their political manners are usually pretty rough. The
government blatantly announced a majority of 63 percent for Ahmadinejad less than two hours
after the polls closed. If Khamenei had only allowed a respectable delay for counting all the
paper ballots, and then had Ahmadinejad win by just a few points (as he might actually have
done), the massive protests probably would not have happened. Khamenei surely knew that
Mousavi could be a stubborn man, blessed with a real revolutionary‘s sense of honor and no awe
whatsoever for Khamenei‘s status as successor to the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. But
Mousavi isn‘t an open book, which has probably redounded to his advantage among his
followers. One can drape the Islamic color green (the more typically Shiite black had already
been co-opted by the regime) all over Mousavi and no one, including Mousavi, probably has any
firm idea of what it means—except to say, We are good Muslims, so don‘t shoot.
Khamenei, who worked with and struggled against Mousavi for a decade, knows the former
prime minister politically as well as anyone. The supreme leader knows that what Mousavi lacks
in charisma he has always made up in doggedness. That Khamenei baited the candidate, and so
carelessly denied millions of Iranians the illusion that their votes mattered, shows how insular
and insecure Khamenei, a politicized cleric of some intellectual sensitivity, has become in his
august office. Whatever Mousavi has inside, it was enough to scare Khamenei profoundly, and
not just because the supreme leader didn‘t want to hand a victory to Rafsanjani, Khamenei‘s
brother-in-arms-turned-foe. Without Rafsanjani, the reformist cleric Mohammed Khatami would
never have risen to the presidency, which he held from 1997 to 2005. Once Khatami was in
office, both Khamenei and Rafsanjani worked to gut the reform movement that enveloped him.
Regardless of their deep personal differences, Khamenei and Rafsanjani no doubt could work
together in the future to gut Mousavi if the Machiavellian Rafsanjani felt so inclined.
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For now, though, Rafsanjani is backing Mousavi for his own survival. Ahmadinejad dreams of
downing Rafsanjani and his entire spoiled clan. For the poor-boy former Revolutionary
Guardsman who fought in the Iran-Iraq war, Rafsanjani is the quintessential target of the antimullah jokes that are a staple of life among Iran‘s poor. Ahmadinejad also undoubtedly
remembers that Rafsanjani, for good reason, once tried to abolish Ahmadinejad‘s beloved
Revolutionary Guard by folding them into Iran‘s regular army.
Similarly, Khamenei backs Ahmadinejad overwhelmingly for one reason: fear of Khatami.
(Hurting Rafsanjani is an ancillary pleasure.) Not Khatami personally, but what he represented
between 1997, when he won the presidency by a landslide, and 2000, when the regime fully
recovered its authoritarian composure. Although certain American analysts like to belittle the
historic importance of Khatami (―Really just Khamenei with a smile‖), the movement behind
him terrified Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard Corps (Pasdaran). Among intellectuals,
journalists, academics, students, and clerics—and among women from just about every walk of
life—an intense discussion began in the mid-1990s about how Iranians could honor the
revolution but also leave it behind them. The scholars Olivier Roy and Farhad Khosrokhavar, a
Franco-Iranian sociologist who has been the most insightful observer of his homeland, wrote a
book in 1999 that captured in its title the mood and debate within the Islamic Republic, Iran:
Comment sortir d’une 106symmetric religieuse (―How do you exit a religious revolution?‖). Roy
and Khosrokhavar were not optimistic that the reform movement could pull it off peacefully.
They were right.
Khamenei didn‘t, at least for a time, share the French scholars‘ pessimism. Not before or since
have we seen such ferment among Iranians about the Western idea of civil liberties. Serious men
with impressive Islamic pedigrees tried to devise an Iranian civil society with a bill of rights that
could withstand the challenges posed by anti-democratic clerics hurling Islamic law and custom
at the importation of Western models, clothed in Muslim dress, into the body politic. The
enormous tension between theocracy and democracy, visible in the Islamic Republic from its
founding and only quelled in the early years by the awesome, exquisitely Shiite charisma of
Khomeini, exploded. Iranian intellectuals, including well-known and fearsomely bright members
of the clergy, started to question the very foundations of the Islamic republic—first and foremost
the position of supreme leader (velayat-e faqih) that Khomeini had devised for himself, the office
that guarantees the marriage of church and state in the person of a nearly all-powerful divine.
Anyone who had the pleasure of reading the cornucopia of fresh, provocative Iranian
publications in the 1990s knows how ready millions of Iranians were to try greater democracy.
There was a severe hunger in the land. There still is.
Raised on a diet of mostly Western thought that the creation of the dictatorial Islamic Republic
has only amplified, Iranians have had quite a bit of democratic conditioning, that prelude to
representative government that ―realists‖ believe a people must experience before they can
handle democracy. As Khosrokhavar revealed in his astonishing book Avoir vingt ans au pays
des ayatollahs (―To Be Twenty in the Land of the Ayatollahs‖), Western ideas—especially
feminism and the right of individuals to define themselves—are more powerful today in the
deeply conservative holy city of Qom than they were 30 years ago. Khamenei began to realize in
the 1990s what Khomeini instinctively knew from a richer understanding of Islamic law and the
human condition: A majority of Muslims can do the wrong thing if given a chance.
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Khamenei acted so crudely and rashly on June 12 because he‘d already seen this movie. What‘s
happening in Iran now is all about democracy, about the contradictory and chaotic bedfellows
that it makes, about the questioning of authority and the personal curiosity that it unleashes.
Khamenei knows what George H.W. Bush‘s ―realist‖ national security adviser Brent Scowcroft
surely knows, too: Democracy in Iran implies regime change. Where Iranians in the 1990s could
try to play games with themselves—be in favor of greater democracy but refrain from saying
publicly that the current government was illegitimate—this fiction is no longer possible.
Khamenei has forced Mousavi and, more important, the people behind him into opposition to
himself and the political system he leads. Unless Mousavi gives up, and thereby deflates the
millions who‘ve gathered around him, a permanent opposition to Khamenei and his
constitutionally ordained supremacy has now formed. Like it or not, Mousavi has become the
new Khatami—except this time the opposition is stronger and led by a man of considerable
intestinal fortitude.
Everyone in Tehran may have crossed the Rubicon. It was always questionable whether the
office of the velayat-e faqih would survive Khamenei; he has now pretty much guaranteed that it
will not. If it turns out that Mousavi has actually had one of those life-changing epiphanies that
sometimes happen on the Iranian ―left‖—the cases of Abdullah Nuri, Iran‘s boldest clerical
dissident who was interior minister under Rafsanjani and Khatami, and Saeed Hajjarian, a dark
lord of Iran‘s intelligence service who became a source for some of the nation-rattling exposés
about domestic assassination teams in the ‗90s, come to mind—who knows what could happen if
Khamenei were so stupid as to rerun the election fairly.
Mousavi would probably win, perhaps by a wide margin, since he would have already faced
down Khamenei and Ahmadinejad in a head-to-head battle. The prestige, attraction, and fear of
established power, what the Iranians have historically called heybat, would have vanished. And
if the winning margin were large enough, it‘s possible that the Revolutionary Guard Corps, with
whom Khamenei has made a Faustian power-sharing bargain, would back down from a military
coup. The Corps is not a monolith. As it has greatly expanded in size, incorporating itself into
Iran‘s economy and placing its graduates in every university, its rank-and-file members have
probably become more attentive to the national mood of doom and gloom. The observations of
Bernard Hourcade, a regular visitor to Iran and the longtime head of the Iranian studies program
at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, about the pro-Khatami sympathies of
many Pasdaran in the 1990s were probably sound.
The smart money should still be on a coup by the Revolutionary Guard if Khamenei does not
stand firm against Mousavi and a repeat of the 1990s. But a coup is not a foregone conclusion. It
is a mistake to see the Mousavi-Ahmadinejad split as one of class and education, or of urban
versus rural, or more secular versus more religious. These factors are real, but so are
countervailing forces that have given Mousavi a good deal of support among men and women of
all classes and religious dispositions who are fed up with the spiritual depression that has been
the Islamic Republic‘s most notable gift to its people. Modernity has been no kinder to the
clerical regime than it was to the shah. Like Khatami before him, Mousavi has tapped into this
profound frustration, which thanks largely to Khamenei‘s missteps is turning into anger.
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The Guard‘s commanders, who are among the most ideologically committed Islamists in Iran,
certainly would be willing to kill their countrymen to protect the system they cherish. But there
may be cracks in the rank and file‘s esprit that are hard for outsiders to see. Whether Khamenei
fears this is impossible to know. He‘s probably not so blinded by personal dislike that he fails to
register Mousavi‘s war-gained, nation-saving reputation, which surely counts with older
Guardsmen. If the street demonstrations continue and Khamenei continues to blink (asking the
Guardian Council to review ―possible‖ voter fraud and thus showing himself to be off-balance
and unwilling to hammer Mousavi and his followers), then it‘s a reasonable guess that Khamenei
does not trust the Pasdaran. He may think they will go too far in oppressing the opposition—or
that they will be unwilling to do what all dictatorships must be able to do when challenged.
No matter what happens, the Islamic Republic as we have known it is probably over. All regimes
need some sense of legitimacy to survive, and the Islamic Republic has rested on two pillars.
One is the belief that the people of Iran continue to back the Islamic revolution and the essentials
of the political system that has developed since. Cynics may say that the regime has never really
believed this, that dictatorships always only pretend that they are popular but really know they
are unloved. Although cynicism isn‘t uncommon among Iranians, the illusion of representative
government backing the Islamic revolution has been inextricable from Iran‘s identity since 1979.
The ruling elite, in their domestic and foreign propaganda, have prided themselves on the image
of a country that is both more religious and more populist than any other Muslim country in the
Middle East. Khamenei‘s speeches, unlike Khomeini‘s, often focus on the God-fearing, virtuous
Iranian people as a source of his strength and the strength of the entire Muslim world. Khomeini
really did think of himself as a long-awaited Shiite manifestation of God‘s will. The Iranian
people weren‘t important to his ability to communicate with the Almighty. By contrast,
Khamenei is somewhat humble and earthbound. He needs the Iranian nation‘s approval in ways
that were utterly foreign to his predecessor. If Iran collapses into just another military
dictatorship, this populist raison d’être goes with it.
The second critical pillar of support has been the republic‘s appeal to both traditional and
revolutionary Shiism, which means most concretely the regime‘s embrace of the clergy as a
means of legitimating the state. The differences among clerics can be enormous—many despise
Khamenei for his political presumption and educational mediocrity. But the clergy is still a
brotherhood. And it has been, even at its crankiest, an institution wedded to Khomeini‘s Islamic
Republic. As much as Khamenei may scorn his more juridically accomplished and conservative
brothers, he needs them. If Khamenei makes the wrong move in the next few weeks and ends up
giving a green light to the slaughter of young Iranians on the streets, he‘ll probably lose the
clergy, all but the most retrograde, who do not represent the clerical establishment.
A coup by the Revolutionary Guard would be an unmitigated disaster in the eyes of most
mullahs, who have jealously guarded their preeminent position in society. Qom and perhaps even
Mashhad, an important clerical and pilgrimage site where Khamenei has his financial powerbase, would go into permanent opposition. Iraq‘s great clerical training ground in Najaf, the most
sacred of Shiism‘s ―gateways‖ to heaven, where an Iranian, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani,
presides, would likely become more assertive in expressing its views on how good Shiites
everywhere should live. Sistani is already probably the most widely respected religious guide in
Iran, in part because he‘s seen as a democracy-supporting ayatollah of moderate views who has
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refrained from dictating to his flock. It‘s impossible to know how all of this would play out, but a
coup by the Pasdaran would surely make Iran a much nastier place, where the Guards would
have to keep a brutal hand on society. The clever flexibility of Iran‘s clerical dictatorship—
knowing when to oppress the dissatisfied and when to allow them room to play—would be
replaced by a regime profoundly foreign to the Persian way.
It‘s not difficult to foresee the Islamic Republic spiritually unraveling. If it does, the most
important experiment of Islamist ideology since the birth of the Muslim Brotherhood will have
proven itself—to its own people, to the clerical guardians of the faith, and to the world—a —
failure. Unless Mousavi withdraws and leads his followers in a renewed quietist retreat, the
Islamic revolution, which shook the Muslim world 30 years ago, will now become either a real
laboratory of democracy or a crude and violent dictatorship that might rival the Baathist regimes
of Iraq and Syria in its savagery. Either outcome would be momentous.
It‘s a pity that President Obama has trapped himself in a doomed outreach to Khamenei. Even if
Mousavi wins the present tug-of-war, he‘ll probably support Iran‘s continued development of
nuclear weapons. He was in office when the Islamic Republic first became serious about
building the bomb; his powerful backer, Rafsanjani, is the true father of the nuclear program; and
there is little reason why Mousavi would want to anger a pro-nuclear Revolutionary Guard Corps
that had refrained from downing him.
But for there to be any chance that Iran will cease and desist from its nuclear quest, Mousavi
must win the present struggle. If Ahmadinejad and Khamenei triumph, they will not relent. For
them, and for the Revolutionary Guard behind them, nuclear weapons are the means to become
global players and secure the power they can no longer confidently draw from their own people.
Triumphant, the Revolutionary Guard, who have overseen all of the Islamic Republic‘s outreach
efforts to Arab extremists like Hamas and Hezbollah, will surely get nastier abroad as they
become more vicious at home.
The principal issue right now inside Iran isn‘t the nuclear question. It‘s what it has been since
Khomeini died: How do you escape from a religious revolution? Mousavi might, just might,
have an answer. Even if he is not our friend—and turns out to be in many ways our enemy—we
should all pray that he wins. President Obama would do well to be just a bit more forceful in
defending democracy for a people who must surely have earned his respect. Iranians will forgive
the president his ―meddling.‖ He does carry, after all, the name of the man—Hussein, the
prophet‘s grandson—who long ago defined Shiism‘s boundless admiration for those who defend
their people and their faith from tyranny.
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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.
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
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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 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.‖
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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.
2010: Regime Change in Iran
Engagement Didn’t Work.
BY Stephen F. Hayes
January 4 — January 11, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 16
The Weekly Standard
As a candidate, Barack Obama pledged to meet with leaders of rogue states ―without
preconditions.‖ He said the foreign policy of the United States had become too aggressive, even
domineering, under George W. Bush. We had made too many demands and spent too much time
lecturing and too little time listening. An Obama administration would use ―smart power‖ to
change all of that. Iran would be the first and most urgent test.
The new president started early.
―To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual
respect,‖ he said in his Inaugural Address, employing language he would use repeatedly about
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Iran over his first year in office. ―To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and
the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a
hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.‖
The speech was an extended hand. And the response was a clenched fist. ―Obama is the hand of
Satan in a new sleeve,‖ said a spokesman for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran‘s supreme leader.
―The Great Satan now has a black face.‖
Obama was not discouraged. He offered best wishes on the Iranian New Year in March,
promising ―engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect.‖ His administration then
proposed face-to-face meetings to discuss nuclear issues. Obama wrote directly to Khamenei in
May, renewing the offers of friendship. When the regime brazenly stole the presidential election
in June, Obama refused to question the results. (White House spokesman Robert Gibbs would
later call Ahmadinejad the ―elected leader‖ of Iran.) And when the regime violently cracked
down on the nationwide postelection protests—jailing some opposition leaders and killing
others—Obama worried primarily about any perception of U.S. ―meddling‖ in internal Iranian
disputes and repeated the American commitment to engagement. When Iran failed to meet a
September deadline for answers on nuclear negotiations, Obama gave them until the end of the
year. When Obama announced that Iran was building a secret uranium enrichment facility at
Qom, which could have no peaceful uses, he coupled his announcement with an offer for more
talks.
And on it went.
As often as not, Iran failed to respond to these goodwill gestures. And when it did, the responses
were uniformly negative and usually hostile. Khamenei accused Obama of following the
―crooked ways‖ of George W. Bush. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that Iran
was ―running the show‖ on nuclear issues and vowed that Iran would ―never negotiate‖ about its
nuclear program. The Iranian government accused the Obama administration of orchestrating the
opposition rallies and mocked his private missives. And last week, when the Obama
administration reminded the Iranian regime of the new deadline for negotiations, Ahmadinejad
dismissed the gentle chiding, saying: ―They say we have given Iran until the end of the Christian
year. Who are they anyway? It is we who have given them an opportunity.‖ The international
community, he added, can give ―as many deadlines as they want, we don‘t care.‖
The problem, it turns out, was not George W. Bush. It wasn‘t a lack of American goodwill or our
failure to acknowledge mistakes or our underdeveloped national listening skills. The problem is
the Iranian regime.
This should have been clear from the beginning, and should have been glaringly obvious after
the fraudulent election and the deadly response to the brave Iranians who questioned the results.
There were plenty of clues: an Iranian president who routinely denies the Holocaust and
threatens to annihilate Israel; a long record of using terrorism as an instrument of state power; the
provision of safe haven to senior al Qaeda leaders in the months and years after the 9/11 attacks;
and a policy, approved at the highest levels of the Iranian leadership, of trying to kill Americans
in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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What should now be clear, even to the letter-writers of the Obama administration, is that the only
way to solve the problem is to change the regime. Obama missed a unique opportunity to
undermine the regime after the elections this summer, when it was as fragile as it has been since
the 1979 revolution. It may well be too late, but there are still things the leader of the free world
should do.
The president has signaled that his patience with Iranian intransigence will end with the close of
2009. It‘s time for Obama to signal a dramatic change in strategy. Quickly and decisively after
the New Year, he should do four things: (1) Make clear that he is on the side of the Iranian
opposition and will do everything he can to add to their strength. (2) Enact the toughest possible
sanctions on Iran—especially targeting refining capabilities—with broad international support if
available, but with as many allies as will go along or unilaterally, if not. (3) Make clear that he
will be taking a zero tolerance view of Iranian support for terrorism, including the deliberate
targeting of U.S. diplomatic and military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. (4) Make clear that
the use of force to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons isn‘t off the table, and order the
military to be ready to act should it become necessary.
In 2009, we tried to engage the Iranian regime. In 2010, let‘s try to change it.
Our Common Foe
Obama should support the Iranian people by speaking out against their oppressors
MICHAEL RUBIN
National Review
Tear gas was still wafting through the streets of Tehran when, at a June 23 White House press
conference, The Huffington Post‘s Nico Pitney conveyed an Iranian‘s question to President
Obama: ―Under which conditions would you accept the election of [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad?
And if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn‘t that a
betrayal of what the demonstrators there are working towards?‖
Obama avoided a direct answer, saying only that the Iranian government should ―recognize that
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there is a peaceful path that will lead to stability and legitimacy and prosperity,‖ and expressing
hope that the clerics would take it. The president‘s implicit acceptance of Ahmadinejad is a
mistake. Obama may express concern about how the election was handled, but to Iranians, the
real issue is a much broader question: the regime‘s very legitimacy.
In the Islamic Republic, elections are not democratic. The Guardian Council, a group of strictly
traditionalist mullahs, must approve all candidates for office, and in the most recent election, it
allowed less than 1 percent of would-be candidates to run. Why then hold elections? To
demonstrate public support for the regime. As Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, chairman of the
Guardian Council, explained two days before the vote: ―The enemies have always tried to
question the legitimacy of the regime by trying to reduce public participation in elections. The
people must blind the eyes of the enemies by vast participation in elections.‖
The Iranian rulers‘ equation of the election with a blessing of their regime‘s legitimacy makes
neutrality difficult. To accept the election is to endorse theocracy. Indeed, this is how young
Iranians marching on the street frame the question. The clumsy disfranchisement of former prime
minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi‘s supporters may have sparked the recent unrest, but the protests
turned into something bigger when demonstrators began chanting, ―Death to the dictator!‖ —
meaning Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the ―supreme leader‖ who claims authority from God. Such
cries are calls for the downfall of the theocracy itself.
So why has Obama sought to chart a neutral course? His attempt to walk a tightrope between the
desire not to meddle and the imperative to express American outrage at brutal scenes on
Tehran‘s streets is based on two false assumptions — one legal and the other strategic — as well
as a misplaced moral concern.
The president‘s first mistake, an exaggerated respect for international rules, appears to stem from
his advisers‘ interpretation of the Algiers Accords. These were the Jan. 19, 1981, agreement that
led to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini‘s release of the hostages held at the U.S. embassy in
Tehran. In a last-minute Iranian addition to the agreement, which was accepted by Warren
Christopher, the Carter administration‘s deputy secretary of state, the United States pledged ―not
to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran‘s internal affairs.‖ That sounds
pretty categorical, but Obama should pay the prohibition no heed.
Christopher was negotiating under intense time pressure to obtain the hostages‘ release, a goal
achieved the next day, minutes after Reagan‘s inauguration. Subsequently, Washington and
Tehran used the accords only as a means to regulate financial claims. To be sure, the Iranian
government sometime cites the Algiers Accords to declare U.S. policies — for example, the
Clinton administration‘s economic sanctions — illegal, but every U.S. administration has treated
such claims as baseless.
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Only under George W. Bush, amidst his administration‘s efforts to boost radio broadcasting into
Iran and its internal debate over funding for Iranian democracy and civil-society groups, did the
State Department accept Iranian interpretations of the Algiers Accords and question whether
policies under consideration were compatible with it. The debate over that question was fierce,
but it ended when former national security advisers consulted by the State Department said the
department‘s interpretation of the Accords was inconsistent with those of previous
administrations.
In any case, even if the Algiers Accords do somehow prohibit rhetorical assistance to Iranian
civil society, Obama need not worry: As a mere executive agreement not ratified by Congress,
the Accords do not rise to the level of a treaty. The United States has no legal obligation to
accommodate the Islamic Republic‘s concerns.
Obama‘s second mistake has been an excessive caution about seeming to incite the protests. On
June 15, breaking two days of White House silence after their eruption, Obama declared, ―We
respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States‘ being the issue inside of Iran.‖
Such concern is misguided. With Iran‘s economy tanking and a young population disdainful of
clerical rule, the Iranian government routinely promulgates wild theories about foreign meddling
as a way to shirk responsibility. Iranians are nationalistic, but they are not stupid, so these oftrepeated lies have no credibility. True, U.S. endorsement of a candidate before elections would
backfire, but no U.S. policymaker has ever suggested such a thing. Speaking for the broader
principles of liberty, justice, and free and fair elections does not undercut the protesters.
Part of Obama‘s reticence may be reflect his advisers‘ tendency to conflate the Islamic
Republic‘s longstanding and somewhat limited ―reform movement‖ with Iranian civil society as
a whole. True, many of the pre-2009 reformists have said that U.S. assistance taints them. On the
op-ed page of the New York Times, for example, Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan blamed
Bush‘s advocacy of democracy for a backlash that culminated in Ahmadinejad‘s 2005 victory.
This theory conflicts with claims from unsuccessful candidates in the 2005 election that
Ahmadinejad won that vote through widespread fraud — claims whose credibility the most
recent election has heightened. Regardless, Derakhshan showed his and the reform movement‘s
true colors when he endorsed the regime‘s use of forced confessions from dissidents. As the
liberal American journalist Laura Secor wrote in 2005, ―Iran‘s reform movement, for all its
courage, was the loyal opposition in a fascist state.‖ It is unwise for Obama to permit this small
group, rather than the much larger and more moderate body of Iranians who oppose the
theocracy, to guide U.S. policy.
This does not mean that all dissidents want U.S. assistance. Journalist Akbar Ganji voices a
common complaint when he says that U.S. assistance provides an excuse for government
repression. Yet when Ganji was sent to prison for six years, Bush had not yet taken office.
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Obama should realize that the Islamic Republic‘s repression predates any U.S. support for the
Iranian people. The 1988 massacre of more than 3,000 imprisoned dissidents — described in
Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri‘s memoirs — had nothing to do with Washington and
everything to do with the character of the Iranian regime.
Then there is the Obama administration‘s misplaced moral concern, which rests on the idea that
offering rhetorical support for the Iranians would burden the White House with responsibility for
their welfare. The root of this worry is George H. W. Bush‘s entreaty in 1991 that the Iraqi
people rise up against Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi government massacred tens of thousands in
putting down the subsequent rebellion while the United States watched. But the supposed
parallel with the present Iranian situation is faulty, because the Iranian crackdown began before
Obama made any statement and grew in strength while he waffled. And as the case of Solidarity
and martial law in Poland demonstrated in 1981, the risk of a crackdown does not necessarily
outweigh the benefit of providing moral support to a protest movement: There, what in the short
term was a setback eventually proved a watershed and was followed by positive and lasting
change.
Obama‘s initial neutrality neither kept the Iranian government from calling the demonstrators
foreign agents nor spared them a harsh crackdown. In a nationally broadcast sermon on June 26,
Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami called the protest leaders ―worthy of execution‖ and declared,
―Anyone who fights against the Islamic system or the leader of Islamic society, fight him until
complete destruction.‖ Security forces continue to arrest students and professors and harass
Iranians working at foreign embassies in Tehran. Precedent suggests that Mousavi himself may
be destined for exile, a premature death, or both. While U.S.-based Iranian academics praise
Obama‘s hands-off approach, many ordinary Iranians have used Twitter to appeal for the world‘s
moral support.
The protests have shifted the paradigm on Iran, and this should make Obama reconsider his
approach. While every president since Carter has reached out to the Iranian people, Obama has
made recognizing the legitimacy of Iran‘s theocracy a cornerstone of his policy. In his March 20
message for the Persian New Year, he declared, ―The United States wants the Islamic Republic
of Iran [as opposed to simply ―Iran‖] to take its rightful place in the community of nations.‖
The street protests may be ending, but the larger battle over the Islamic Republic‘s legitimacy is
just beginning. Certainly, 30 years after the revolution, the failure of the Iranian people to
embrace theocracy highlights the regime‘s vulnerability. It is hard to preach that ―our nation is
united, and unity in Iran is a role model for the entire world,‖ as Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, chief
of staff of the Iranian armed forces, did in January, when people chant ―Death to the dictator!‖ in
the streets.
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As the White House makes policy, it should not give to Tehran what the Iranian people withhold.
Obama may face calls to engage the mullahs over Iran‘s nuclear program, for example, but U.S.
interests and moral leadership need not be mutually exclusive. Diplomacy is no panacea, and talk
is a tactic, not a strategy. Rushing into negotiations — and bestowing legitimacy on the regime
— rewards the Islamic Republic for its nuclear program and thereby encourages its continuance.
The irony is that the forces suppressing the Iranian people — the supreme leader and his
Revolutionary Guards — are the very forces that command and control the Islamic Republic‘s
nuclear program.
Recognition that the American and Iranian peoples have a common foe should form the basis of
a long-term strategy that seeks the triumph of the Iranian people over a destabilizing and
unpredictable regime.
© 2009 by National Review, Inc., 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10016.
Reprinted by permission
Granted by: Katherine Connell
Date: February 25, 2010
Iran Outlook: Grim
The failed policies of Presidents Bush and Obama have brought us to a difficult pass
JOHN R. BOLTON
National Review
The week of September 21 was supposed to be multilateralism on parade for President Obama:
attending the Climate Summit, addressing the U.N. General Assembly, chairing the Security
Council, and celebrating a new international economic order with the G-20. Until Friday,
everything went according to Obama‘s script: grandiose speeches, paper declarations and
resolutions, and, most important, the huzzahs of foreign leaders and America‘s media.
But on Friday, the shadow fell. Obama scrambled to hold a previously unscheduled press
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conference with British prime minister Gordon Brown and French president Nicolas Sarkozy, at
which they announced that Iran had constructed a uranium-enrichment facility near Qom, the
Shiite holy city. Housed in deeply buried chambers on a former missile base of the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the site had been officially disclosed to the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) by Iran that Monday, making it inevitable that word would leak
out soon. (Iran risibly claims that the Qom facility is for civilian purposes only.)
The president was obviously displeased with Iran‘s contumacious behavior, and perhaps more
displeased with the timing of his forced public disclosure of it, coming just before an October 1
meeting in Geneva between Iran and the Security Council‘s five permanent members plus
Germany (the ―Perm Five plus one‖). This session, the first since summer 2008, and the first in
which a U.S. representative would actively ―engage‖ with Iran, had been intended to showcase
Obama‘s multilateral bona fides. Now, however, Iran had threatened the carefully constructed
mirage of negotiations with inconvenient reality.
According to administration background briefings, Obama was first informed about the Qom site
during the transition following his election. Thus, all his pronouncements about the virtues of
negotiation with Iran and other rogue states — the inaugural address, the Cairo speech, and
countless others, including those of U.N. Week — were delivered with the knowledge that Iran
was telling lies about its nuclear program. We shall soon see whether Obama‘s ability to hold
two contradictory thoughts simultaneously is evidence of mental agility or of an excessively
tenuous acquaintance with reality.
The administration‘s spin, dutifully amplified by the media, was that revealing the Qom
enrichment facility was yet another Obama triumph, since it put more diplomatic pressure on
Iran just before the Geneva meeting. Adhering to this logic requires believing that progressing
toward a nuclear-weapons capability actually harms Iran, by increasing the risk of economic
sanctions. If Iran tests a nuclear device, that will really put pressure on Iran, and incinerating Tel
Aviv will presumably make the pressure for sanctions unstoppable. As Plutarch quoted Pyrrhus
as saying upon his defeat of the Romans at Asculum, ―One more such victory and we are lost.‖
Sad to say, Obama‘s Iran policy is not much different from that of George W. Bush in his second
term. Relying on multilateral negotiations (the Perm Five–plus–one mechanism), resorting to
sanctions (three Security Council resolutions), and shying away from the use of force are all
attributes inherited directly from Bush. Bush‘s policy failed to rein in Iran‘s nuclear ambitions,
and Obama‘s will fail no less, leading to an Iran with nuclear weapons.
The issue now, however, is not this bipartisan history of failure, but what to do next. The Qom
disclosure only highlights just how limited, risky, and unattractive are the four basic options:
allow Iran to become a nuclear power; use diplomacy and sanctions to try to avert that outcome;
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remove the regime in Tehran and install one that renounces nuclear weapons; or use preemptive
military force to break Iran‘s nuclear program. Let us consider them in turn.
OPTION 1 The easiest course, which Obama may well be on without explicitly admitting it, is
to permit Iran to become a nuclear-weapons power. Many believe that a nuclear Iran will not
constitute a significant threat, and that it can be contained and deterred, as the Soviet Union was
during the Cold War. This analogy is fundamentally flawed. First, who in his right mind would
willingly return to the days of mutual assured destruction, especially when the Tehran end of the
equation is staffed by religious fanatics who prize the hereafter more than life on earth? It may
not have been a virtue, but at least the Communists believed they went around only once. (A
Kenny Chesney song sums up the predominant U.S. view: ―Everybody want to go to Heaven /
But nobody want to go now.‖) Moreover, we increasingly appreciate that Cold War deterrence
was not all that stable, and therefore just how lucky we were to last 40 years without civilizationending nuclear exchanges. That Iran in the near future will have a much more limited offensiveweapons capability than the Soviet Union did in its prime is no solace. Iran‘s asymmetric threat
will not comfort those in cities that will have been obliterated by its ―limited‖ arsenal.
Even more devastating to the ―contain and deter‖ theory is the inevitability that Iran will not be
the only state in the region to acquire nuclear weapons. Other Middle Eastern states will
conclude (if they haven‘t already) that they must acquire them too, in response to Iran‘s efforts.
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey are all likely candidates, and Libya‘s Moammar Qaddafi may
well decide that his 2003 decision to give up his program was ill-advised and get back in the
game. Others in the region could follow.
Thus, in the not-too-distant future, the Middle East could have half a dozen or more states with
small nuclear arsenals, each calculating the advantages of striking first against its potential
adversaries to prevent them from doing the same. If deterrence during the Cold War‘s bipolar
standoff was problematic, imagine the multiplayer chess required to avoid nuclear exchanges in
such a Middle East, along with the likelihood that nuclear technology will pass into the hands of
global terrorists.
Allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons is manifestly the least desirable outcome of all.
OPTION 2 Pursuing diplomacy and impotent sanctions was Bush‘s policy and is now Obama‘s.
The only material difference is that Obama has even less reason than Bush had to believe that
diplomacy may yet work. Iran‘s credibility after its rigged June 12 presidential election and the
news about Qom is, yet again, in shreds everywhere — except the White House, where the
public evidence of Obama‘s first eight months shows not the slightest diminution of his nearreligious faith in diplomacy. Thus, the outcome of his efforts will be the same as Option 1,
although few will say so.
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Within the diplomatic approach, there is one hidden trap for the credulous: that Washington will
accept the existence of an Iranian uranium-enrichment program as long as it is (supposedly)
monitored by the IAEA under clear Iranian commitments that the program is (supposedly)
entirely peaceful. One can easily envision Obama describing such an outcome as a triumph for
his diplomacy, even though in fact it is exactly where we are today, and would inevitably lead to
precisely the result we are trying to avoid. Any resolution that leaves Iran‘s current regime with
control over the entire nuclear fuel cycle is simply a face-saving way of accepting Option 1.
Given Iran‘s fulsome 20-year history of denial and deception, there is simply no doubt that its
efforts toward building nuclear weapons would continue. If the Qom revelation does anything, it
should convince us that Iran‘s commitments are worthless.
Accordingly, while the October 1 Perm Five–plus–one meeting in Geneva could be an important
pivot point, it is highly unlikely in fact to be so. One possible outcome would simply be renewed
negotiations, while Iran‘s progress toward deliverable nuclear weapons continues essentially
unimpeded. In Pittsburgh, President Sarkozy said Iran had until December to change its ways, or
―sanctions will have to be taken.‖ Unfortunately, however, Obama‘s ―deadlines‖ for meaningful
Iranian action have been no firmer than Bush‘s, and several have already slipped. Time is a
precious asset for proliferators, and Iran has used it to great advantage over these last seven
years.
Moreover, as the Iran case demonstrates, diplomats rarely devise exit strategies in case their
negotiations fail. Those who ask, ―What do we lose by talking to Iran?‖ miss the point that
negotiation, like all human activity, has costs as well as benefits, and that here the balance lies
with Iran. If we adopt talk as our strategy, Iranians smoother than Ahmadinejad — not more
moderate, just smoother — will come to Geneva prepared to negotiate about everything,
including their nuclear program. President Obama and the Europeans will swoon, and Russia and
China will smile contentedly as a panorama of months, maybe years, of further negotiations
stretches before them.
If, on the other hand, Iran‘s posture on October 1 is more belligerent — and Ahmadinejad‘s
initial reaction after Pittsburgh certainly foreshadowed that tack — then Iran will effectively be
calling Obama‘s bluff, daring him to seek stricter sanctions. Here the critical test is not whether
more ―sanctions‖ (multilaterally through the Security Council, or less so through the European
Union and others) can be imposed. It is virtually certain that they will be, despite the noticeable
lack of enthusiasm by Russian president Dmitri Medvedev at Pittsburgh, and China‘s silence.
The test is rather whether whatever plan is agreed upon actually dissuades Iran from pursuing
nuclear weapons. And here sanctions are almost certain to fail.
Consider what Medvedev actually said after Obama‘s press conference, rather than the White
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House gloss on what he said: ―I do not believe sanctions are the best way to achieve results.
Sanctions were used on a number of occasions against Iran, but we have doubts about the results.
. . . I think we should continue to promote positive incentives for Iran and at the same time push
it to make all its programs transparent and open. Should we fail in that case, we‘ll consider other
options.‖ ―Promote positive incentives for Iran‖? ―Consider other options‖? This is what Obama
got from Russia for giving up the Polish and Czech missile-defense sites?
At best, further U.N. sanctions will be only marginally tighter than those previously adopted,
which have manifestly failed to dissuade Iran from its nuclear objective. Without Security
Council action, sanctions by a ―coalition of the willing‖ will be widely (and profitably) evaded.
Gasoline imports are a supposed area of vulnerability, but Iran has already taken steps to mitigate
the effects of a proposed ban on exporting refined petroleum products to Iran by increasing its
refining capabilities, reducing consumer subsidies that inflate demand, and preparing to shift to
natural gas, which it has in considerable quantity and can refine domestically. Similarly,
proposals to preclude writing insurance or reinsurance on Iranian shipping might make
commerce more difficult, but are insufficiently direct to have a timely effect. Moreover,
negotiating and implementing sanctions takes time, and since time works to Iran‘s advantage, we
move inevitably closer to Option 1. In truth, since the diplomacy/sanctions approach is Obama‘s
declared policy, we already know the end of the story: Iran with nuclear weapons.
OPTION 3 The most durable solution would be regime change in Iran that entirely sweeps away
the Islamic Revolution of 1979 — not just Ahmadinejad, but the whole crew of Ayatollah
Khomeini‘s successors. Iran‘s people are ready for this, as the regime is highly unpopular for
many reasons. First, the mullahs have mismanaged the economy for 30 years, and dissatisfaction
is intense and widespread. Second, the two-thirds of Iran‘s population that is under 30 is welleducated and aware of the world outside Iran; they know they could have a radically different
kind of life under a different government. Third, ethnic Persians make up only half the total
population, and the numerous other groups (including Arabs, Baluchis, Azeris, Kurds, and
Turkmen) are deeply discontented. Obviously, these fissures do not align exactly, but they are
severe enough that the Islamic Revolution would not survive long without military force behind
it.
The spontaneous protests that broke out across Iran following the fraudulent June 12 presidential
election demonstrated both the extent of the opposition and the possibilities for regime change.
Unfortunately, the post–June 12 results also reflect a tragic missed opportunity to topple the
regime, and the difficulty of regaining that chance. Had the Bush administration taken more than
a few trifling steps to aid the opposition, the post–June 12 protests might well have brought a
new Iranian government. Apart from White House rhetoric, however, Bush‘s eight years differed
little in hard operational terms from Obama‘s eight months, meaning that Iran‘s protesters were
basically on their own. Moreover, political power inside Iran is shifting away from clerical
leaders and toward the IRGC, moving from a theological autocracy toward military control. The
balance of power rests with those holding guns. The regime‘s willingness to use force and
political coercion against dissidents will be greater than it was before June 12, thus making it
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even harder to get rid of.
This is not to suggest the regime‘s popularity has increased. To the contrary, the regime is even
more unpopular than it was before June 12, but the chances of a ―velvet revolution‖ in the
foreseeable future are remote. But however long and difficult the struggle may be, America
should press for regime change, overtly and covertly, while taking care not to taint the people we
seek to enable by making them look like tools of Uncle Sam. Overthrowing the Islamic
Revolution is the most likely way to obtain a government that permanently renounces nuclear
weapons, which would be the best outcome. Almost certainly, however, regime change will not
happen before Iran‘s current rulers acquire such weapons — and once that happens, it may be
too late, both within Iran and for the Middle East and the rest of the world.
OPTION 4 That leads, by process of elimination if nothing else, to the preemptive use of
military force against Iran‘s nuclear infrastructure. No one argues that a successful strike would
end the Iran problem, but that is not the point. Destroying key aspects of Iran‘s program (such as
the Esfahan uranium-conversion plant, the Natanz uranium-enrichment facility, the Arak heavywater complex, and the Bushehr reactor) would buy time. Between two and five years is a
reasonable estimate, and that is close to eternity, because during that period time would be on our
side rather than on the proliferator‘s.
President Obama is all but certain not to use force, so any decision regarding this option now
rests with Israel alone. The revelation of the Qom site, and the risk that Iran has even more
covert nuclear-related sites, may mean that the military option is already no longer viable:
Destroying the known elements of Iran‘s program will be risky and difficult enough, but the
prospect of more unknown sites means that targeted military force cannot be relied upon to
completely break Iran‘s control over the nuclear fuel cycle. Israel would thus incur all the
downsides of the attack without achieving its main goal.
Even if circumstances are not so parlous, Israel must now calculate that it has less time to act
than it had before intelligence agencies confirmed Qom as a uranium-enrichment facility,
meaning a strike may well happen within the next six months. A later attack is not precluded,
and there is no red line beyond which it is unthinkable; nonetheless, every day that passes lowers
Israel‘s prospects for success, as Iran continues to protect and disperse its program, and as it
acquires ever-stronger air defenses. While much has been speculated, pro and con, about the
feasibility of an Israeli strike, one thing is certain: The Israelis have believed, at least until now,
that they can succeed, and they will make the ultimate decision, one way or the other — not
armchair pundits with incomplete information.
Many contend that the potential consequences of a preemptive strike are too horrible to
contemplate, but such concerns are unlikely to deter Israel, since the result of not striking could
well be a second Holocaust. The choice is not between the world as it stands today and the world
after an Israeli attack; the choice is between the world after the attack and a world where Iran has
nuclear weapons. That puts the oft-expressed fear of a spike in oil prices in context, at least for
Israelis. Nor are Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s promises of a ―defense umbrella‖
reassuring. At its time of maximum peril, the Jewish state is not going to rely on the goodwill of
anyone, friend or foe.
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In any event, Iran is highly unlikely to retaliate in a way that could prompt a direct confrontation
with the U.S. military (such as attempting to close the Strait of Hormuz or increasing terrorist
attacks against U.S. citizens in Iraq or elsewhere), or that would paralyze its own economy (such
as suspending oil exports). Iran‘s most likely response would be to unleash rocket attacks against
Israel through its proxy armies, Hezbollah and Hamas. This prospect certainly complicates
Israel‘s decision-making on whether to strike Iran. (Direct Iranian missile or air attacks against
Israel are unlikely, since Israel might well respond with nuclear weapons.)
One important consideration that is often ignored: However much they might publicly protest,
nearby Arab states would privately welcome an Israeli attack. These governments fear Iran‘s
nuclear program as much as Israel does, but they are powerless to stop it. If Israel does the job,
they are in a perfect place: Iran‘s nuclear program will be badly damaged, and they will have
another opportunity to criticize Israel. This also explains why Arabs will not interdict Israeli
overflights to and from Iran. Moreover, within Iran, not everyone will necessarily rally behind
the government, especially given post–June 12 developments. Effective public diplomacy could
make clear that the target is the mullahs‘ weapons program, not the Iranian people, and might
even provide new impetus for regime change.
With so many risks of failure and retaliation, the use of military force is hardly attractive to Israel
or anyone else. Even so, the consequences of a nuclear Iran could be far more devastating. Israel
has not hesitated to strike preemptively before, starting with the Six-Day War of 1967, and
including the destruction of the Osirak reactor outside Baghdad in 1981 and the North Korean
reactor in Syria in September 2007. Don‘t bet on passivity now.
***
Iran‘s nuclear-weapons program has cast a shadow over its region and the world for years. That
kind of regime, with those kinds of weapons, is a continuing mortal threat to America‘s friends
and allies, and to international peace and security. Under President Bush, we had a chance to
confront Iran‘s challenge, but backed away from it. Under President Obama, we have a leader
who doesn‘t understand the magnitude of the threat, who flinches at unpleasant choices
regarding force, and who believes that reductions of America‘s own nuclear arsenal will
persuade the IRGC to give up theirs. If Iran achieves its nuclear objectives, we will have only
ourselves to blame.
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Iran’s Nuclear Program: Time is of the Essence
October 8th, 2009
Inside Iran
WASHINGTON—The revelation on September 25 that Iran has been constructing a covert
uranium enrichment facility near the holy Shiite city of Qom for several years complicates an
already complex picture of Iran‘s nuclear capabilities and intentions.
What does this new facility say about the status of Iran‘s nuclear program, and what are the
implications for the international community‘s effort to dissuade Iran from developing a nuclear
weapon?
To understand the status of Iran‘s nuclear program, one must look at the three components
required to develop a nuclear weapon.
The first component is the delivery vehicle. As Iran demonstrated just this week when it tested
its Shahab-3 and Sajjil missiles, the country has a very active ballistic missile program, which
has made significant progress in recent years. In testimony in June of this year, Lieutenant
General Patrick O‘Reilly, director of the Missile Defense Agency, stated that, ―Iran has grown its
short- and medium-range missile inventories, while improving the lethality, deployment
capability, and effectiveness of existing systems with new propellants, more accurate guidance
systems, and payloads.‖ He also noted that recent test launches had demonstrated ―a capability to
strike targets in Israel as well as southern Europe‖ and ―demonstrated technologies that are
directly applicable to the development of ICBMs.‖
The second component required to deploy a nuclear weapon effectively is a warhead capable of
fitting on a delivery vehicle. It must be the proper size and be correctly configured to produce the
reaction required to initiate nuclear fission. Iranian scientists allegedly were working on a
suitable warhead prior to the supposed halt of Iran‘s military nuclear program in 2003. The
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) continues to investigate this pre-2003 activity, but
its requests to interview Iranian experts involved in this work have been denied by Tehran. The
information that the IAEA can ascertain about this research is important because it has
implications for Iran‘s nuclear timeline. If Iran‘s work prior to the halt was largely successful,
Iran may not require much additional effort in order to have a warhead capable of fitting on a
delivery vehicle. If the decision to halt the program came prior to completion of the work, then
additional work will be required, even if Iran has the necessary fissile material for a nuclear
weapon.
The third component is fissile material. This is where recent developments are the most
troubling. Iran has a declared uranium enrichment facility at Natanz that, as of late August, had
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approximately 8,300 centrifuges installed, roughly 4,500 of which were spinning uranium
hexafluoride (UF6) into low enriched uranium (LEU). In recent years, Iran has overcome
significant technical difficulties with its centrifuges, and its rate of production of LEU has
increased. Iran has successfully amassed a significant stockpile of LEU at Natanz, more than
enough for one nuclear weapon if it was further enriched to highly enriched uranium (HEU).
In a positive development, Iran reportedly agreed on October, 1 during talks in Geneva, to allow
much of its stockpile of LEU to be transferred to Russia and France for further processing into
fuel rods for the Tehran Research Reactor. If Iran follows through on this proposal, it will
significantly reduce the amount of LEU at Natanz.
Given that Natanz is under IAEA safeguards, to produce HEU at Natanz, Iran would have to kick
out the IAEA inspectors, break seals, disable monitoring equipment, and reconfigure the
infrastructure of pipes connecting the centrifuges. Such an action likely would be detected and
could cause Israel or other countries to take military action. Most experts thus assume that if it
made the decision to pursue HEU production, Iran likely would do so at a covert facility, such as
the one revealed on Friday. That site, with a reported capacity of 3,000 centrifuges, is just the
right size to produce roughly one weapon‘s worth of HEU per year, if the centrifuges were
properly configured.
Information about the site released by the Obama administration has been limited, but Iran is
claiming that the site was for the production of LEU, not HEU, and regardless, because of a
disagreement with the IAEA about Iran‘s obligations for reporting new facilities, they were not
required to report it until next year shortly prior to it becoming operational. Whatever the
outcome of that dispute, if Iran were able to build one such facility, there very well may be
others that are unbeknownst to Western intelligence agencies.
In sum, Iran has developed missiles capable of delivering a nuclear weapon to Israel and much of
southeastern Europe. It is unclear how advanced their weaponization work was prior to 2003,
when the U.S. intelligence community believes the program was halted, but Iran clearly has
mastered centrifuge technology and could use that technology to produce HEU at a covert
facility such as the one at Qom.
What are the implications of all of the above for policymakers?
The existence of the Qom facility raises questions about the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence
2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). The NIE stated that Iran‘s program had been halted
in 2003. Even if the weaponization work was halted by Iran‘s leaders, how should one construe
President Obama‘s statement that the new facility is inconsistent with peaceful purposes? Does
this mean that the Iranian leadership has made a conscious decision to pursue a weapon, or that
they are just keeping their options open?
Even if Iran has not formally restarted its push to develop a nuclear weapon, the status quo is just
as dangerous. Iran might be building up the various capabilities that would allow its leaders to
make a future decision to develop a nuclear weapon on short notice.
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FPI Fact Sheet: The Future of Iran’s Green Movement
April 1, 2010
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
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
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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.‖
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
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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
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,
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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.‖
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.‖
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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.
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
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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
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
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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.
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.)
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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.
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.
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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
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.
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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
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
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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.
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
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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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All Process, No Peace
The Obama administration needs to press the reset button on its Middle East diplomacy.
BY Elliott Abrams
January 25, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 18
The Weekly Standard
Peace in the Middle East has been on the Obama administration‘s mind from the beginning. Two
days after his inauguration the president traveled to the State Department to announce the
appointment of George Mitchell as his Middle East peace negotiator. Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton described the administration‘s approach as ―an intensive effort from day one.‖ Here was
the plan: Israel would freeze construction in all the settlements and in Jerusalem; Arab states
would reach out to Israel in tangible ways visible to their own publics and to Israelis; and the
Palestinians would do better at building political institutions, ending incitement against Israel
and fighting terror. With these achievements in hand the administration would lead the parties
into peace negotiations to be concluded within the president‘s first term. Nobel Prizes would be
the frosting on the cake.
That‘s not how it turned out, except for the Nobel Prize. As the Obama administration begins its
second year in office, its Middle East peace efforts are widely regarded as a shambles. Its initial
goals have all been missed. Israelis, Palestinians, and Arab governments have lost confidence in
American leadership. The challenge for Year Two will be how to get out of this mess and on to a
more positive track—but that will require some candor inside the administration in assessing
what went wrong.
From the start the White House—led by the president himself and his chief of staff Rahm
Emanuel—has pushed hardest for Israeli concessions, a reversal of the standard pattern where
the legendary Arabists in the State Department‘s Near Eastern Affairs bureau criticize Israel
while top officials defend her. This time, those at the top—including Mitchell and Clinton—
publicly and repeatedly demanded a total Israeli construction freeze. And this time, the experts in
the Near Eastern Affairs bureau and in U.S. embassies throughout the Middle East were the
voices of caution and realism, for whatever their biases they knew Obama‘s approach wouldn‘t
work. The Arabs would not step forward. Israel‘s coalition politics would not permit adoption of
a total freeze. What‘s more, once we demanded it as a precondition for new negotiations,
Palestinians could demand no less. And unlike us, they would not be able to walk away from that
demand when Israel predictably said no.
The great plan has collapsed, but the mystery of who exactly will be in charge of the policy in
Year Two—and whether they understand what happened—is now the center of conversations all
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over the region. Visitors are asked ―What‘s U.S. policy? Where is it headed? Is there a strategy?‖
In Israel, there is deep suspicion of the Obama administration, both at official levels and among
the population at large. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s decision to impose a partial
settlement freeze should not have been a surprise despite the months of friction with
Washington; for any Israeli government, relations with the United States are a central strategic
matter, while a (partial) moratorium in West Bank construction is not. It is fair to say that
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is as much responsible for this freeze as Barack Obama, for in the
coming year Israel may have to deal with the Iranian nuclear program—and therefore needs to
avoid tension with Washington whenever possible. One official of a previous Israeli government
put it this way to me: ―Bibi agreed to this freeze to enable Israel to concentrate on Iran without
the daily background noise about the settlements.‖
Israel will always go far to keep relations with Washington on an even keel but that feeling is
especially strong these days. The anti-Israel bias in the U.N.‘s Goldstone Report—condemning
Israel‘s conduct during the Gaza war a year ago—astonished Israelis, but what hurt them more
was the acceptance by the ―international community‖ of Goldstone‘s assault. His report, and the
many recent efforts in Europe to have visiting Israeli officials arrested for ―war crimes,‖
reminded Israelis how isolated they are in the world and how important American support
remains. So the ten-month construction moratorium—to reduce tension with Obama, and to shift
the blame for refusing new peace negotiations to the Palestinians—was approved 11-1 by
Israel‘s security cabinet.
But in Ramallah, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas—who heads the PLO and the Fatah
party—now faces what one Palestinian observer described to me as ―a double whammy.‖ First,
the United States greeted Netanyahu‘s compromise as a positive step and George Mitchell said it
is ―more than any Israeli government has done before and can help movement toward agreement
between the parties,‖ but the Palestinians instantly and vehemently rejected it. So while
American officials saw the Israeli move as the basis for commencing peace negotiations, the
Palestinians did not—putting them at odds with Washington. ―This conditional freeze does not
give Abbas the ladder he needs to climb down and resume negotiations,‖ an associate of his said
privately. Second, Israel continues to negotiate with Hamas via a German intermediary over the
release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured in June 2006 and held since then in Gaza. The
price will be Israel‘s release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, and if the deal goes through
many Palestinians will notice that Hamas, not the Palestinian Authority, has the ability to spring
people from Israeli jails.
Both developments—on settlements and prisoners—weaken President Abbas, who today seems
less powerful and less close to Washington. It did not help that he reacted to the growing
pressures by announcing he was tired of the frustrations of governing, wants to leave office, and
will not run for reelection. Abbas‘s office in the ―Muqata‖ in Ramallah—an old British police
station, later Arafat‘s headquarters and now the site of his glassed-in mausoleum—seems
increasingly the burying place of his generation‘s Palestinian politics as well.
So the Obama administration‘s Middle East adventures in 2009 came to a close with Netanyahu,
whom the administration has never much liked or treated well, stronger politically; and Abbas,
whom the administration wished to strengthen, weaker and talking of retirement. In Arab capitals
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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. A strongly pro-American former
Israeli official shook his head as he evaluated the Obama record in 2009: ―This is what happens
when -arrogance and clumsiness come together.‖
But who will tell the president that his judgments have been wrong and his policy is failing?
Does he recognize how much bad advice he was given last year? Who among the senior figures
is likely to say to this president that George Mitchell is now associated with a policy disaster or
that Rahm Emanuel‘s read on Israeli politics proved 180 degrees off course? Presumably no one
who wishes to continue to work in the White House after that.
What will Year Two bring? The evidence suggests that the administration, now in a hole, will
keep digging: All our diplomatic activity remains dedicated to getting ―peace negotiations‖
started. ―We‘re going to be even more committed this year, and we‘re starting this new year with
that level of commitment, and we‘re going to follow through and hopefully we can see this as a
positive year in this long process,‖ Secretary Clinton said in early January. George Mitchell,
building on his dubious achievements of the past year, told Charlie Rose, ―We think that the
negotiation should last no more than two years. . . . Personally I think it can be done in a shorter
period of time.‖ The media, here and in the Middle East, tell of ―letters of guarantee‖ that
President Obama may send Abbas and Netanyahu, promising the Palestinians an agreement on
borders in nine months and a full peace treaty in two years if only they will sit down and
negotiate.
Thus far the Palestinians are adamantly refusing to start negotiations and abandon their demand
for a construction freeze including in Jerusalem, in exchange for such promises. But if they do,
they will find the promised time limits to be illusory—as all previous ones have been. And no
matter who sits at what table, there will be no serious negotiations: The Israelis and Palestinians
are too far apart on the core issues to reach a deal now, and the Fatah and PLO leadership
(having lost the last elections to Hamas and having lost Gaza to a Hamas coup) is too weak now
to negotiate compromises and sell them to the Palestinian people. If there is any form of
reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, moreover, as Saudi Arabia and other Arab states
continue to promote, Israel will end the talks instantly.
For two decades the ―peace process‖ has failed to end the conflict and produce a Palestinian
state. Unilateral Israeli withdrawal has also been tried, in Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005, but
in both cases the vacuum was filled by terrorism: Hezbollah took over South Lebanon and
Hamas conquered Gaza. Yet there is a way forward, the one sensible option never really tried: to
start at the beginning rather than the end, by creating a Palestinian state from the bottom up,
institution by institution, and ending with Israeli withdrawal and negotiation of a state only when
Palestinian political life is truly able to sustain self-government, maintain law and order, and
prevent terrorism against Israel.
This may seem like a formula for endless delay but it is in fact the fastest way forward, and it is
beginning. In the West Bank, Palestinian security forces are doing more to bring law and order
and fight terrorism. Economic growth continues, and foreign visitors are often surprised by the
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amount of construction in Ramallah and commerce in Jenin and Jericho; far from looking like
Somalia or Yemen, the West Bank is increasingly prosperous. The Palestinian Authority prime
minister, Salam Fayyad, describes his goal this way: ―We have decided to be proactive, to
expedite the end of the occupation by working very hard to build positive facts on the ground,
consistent with having our state emerge as a fact that cannot be ignored. This is our agenda, and
we want to pursue it doggedly.‖
Fayyad‘s push for Palestinians to build their own state themselves has angered Israeli critics who
call it ―unilateral,‖ and Fayyad‘s rhetoric often offends them, but what good alternatives are
there? To watch yet another round of negotiations end in another failure? The Obama
administration gives lip service to Fayyad‘s approach—no one is against building Palestinian
institutions—but its own emphasis for Year Two remains entirely in the wrong places. U.S.
diplomacy, like Arab and European diplomacy, is all about reviving Abbas and getting him into
a room with Netanyahu—not about backing serious efforts to build a Palestinian state. Thus the
only way to lay the foundation for successful peace talks is ignored, and what will predictably be
unsuccessful peace talks are the obsessive goal of American foreign policy.
The Obama administration rarely demonstrated the ability to shift gears and change policy in its
first year. Even in the face of historic events such as the continuing demonstrations against Iran‘s
regime, it stuck devotedly to prior plans. Can there be a learning curve? Will someone tell the
president the policy isn‘t working and big changes are needed? Or can change come from the top
down, if the president himself comes to realize what underlings are reluctant to tell him? Middle
Eastern officials aren‘t the only people who still can‘t figure out the workings of the Obama
White House; the mixture of campaign stalwarts, career bureaucrats, old Chicago friends, and
outside advisers remains opaque. Obama White House personnel like to say the Situation Room
has no windows precisely so that people can‘t see in. In fact it has three windows that look out at
the Executive Office Building, but the error is telling: They want to preserve the sense of
mystery. The problem is, the main mystery in the Middle East is whether they‘ll cling to a policy
that has already failed or open their minds to one that has a chance of bringing serious progress.
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Israel
AUGUST 1, 2009
Why Israel Is Nervous
BY ELLIOTT ABRAMS
Wall Street Journal
The tension in U.S.-Israel relations was manifest this past week as an extraordinary troupe of
Obama administration officials visited Jerusalem. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, National
Security Advisor James Jones, special Middle East envoy George Mitchell and new White House
adviser Dennis Ross all showed up in Israel‘s capital in an effort to…well, to do something. It
was not quite clear what.
Since President Obama came to office on Jan. 20 and then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
on March 31, the main motif in relations between the two governments has been friction. While
nearly 80% of American Jews voted for Mr. Obama, that friction has been visible enough to
propel him to meet with American Jewish leaders recently to reassure them about his policies.
But last month, despite those reassurances, both the Conference of Presidents of Major American
Jewish Organizations and the Anti-Defamation League issued statements critical of the
president‘s handling of Israel. Given the warm relations during the Bush years and candidate
Obama‘s repeated statements of commitment to the very best relations with Israel, why have we
fallen into this rut?
U.S.-Israel relations are often depicted as an extended honeymoon, but that‘s a false image.
Harry Truman, who was a Bible-believing Christian Zionist, defied the secretary of state he so
admired, George C. Marshall, and won a place in Israel‘s history by recognizing the new state 11
minutes after it declared its independence in 1948. Relations weren‘t particularly warm under
Eisenhower—who, after all, demanded that Israel, along with Britain and France, leave Suez in
1956. The real alliance began in 1967, after Israel‘s smashing victory in the Six Day War, and it
was American arms and Nixon‘s warnings to the Soviet Union to stay out that allowed Israel to
survive and prevail in the 1973 war. Israelis are no fans of President Carter and, as his more
recent writings have revealed, his own view of Israel is very hostile. During the George H.W.
Bush and Clinton years, there were moments of close cooperation, but also of great friction—as
when Bush suspended loan guarantees to Israel, or when the Clinton administration butted heads
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with Mr. Netanyahu time after time during peace negotiations. Even during the George W. Bush
years, when Israel‘s struggle against the terrorist ―intifada‖ and the U.S. ―global war on terror‖
led to unprecedented closeness and cooperation, there was occasional friction over American
pressure for what Israelis viewed as endless concessions to the Palestinians to enable the signing
of a peace agreement before the president‘s term ended. This ―special relationship‖ has been
marked by intense and frequent contact and often by extremely close (and often secret)
collaboration, but not by the absence of discord.
Yet no other administration, even among those experiencing considerable dissonance with Israel,
started off with as many difficulties as Obama‘s. There are two explanations for this problem,
and the simpler one is personal politics. Mr. Netanyahu no doubt remembers very well the last
Democratic administration‘s glee at his downfall in 1999, something Dennis Ross admits clearly
in his book ―The Missing Peace.‖ The prime minister must wonder if the current bilateral friction
is an effort to persuade Israelis that he is not the right man for the job, or at least to persuade
them that his policies must be rejected. When Israeli liberals plead for Obama to ―talk to Israel,‖
they are hoping that Obama will help them revive the Israeli Left, recently vanquished in
national elections. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Mr. Obama and his team wish former
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni had won the top job and view Mr. Netanyahu and his Likud Party
with some suspicion. The result, of course, is to make personal relations among policy makers
more difficult, and to make trust and confidence between the two governments harder as well.
But the Obama administration has managed to win the mistrust of most Israelis, not just
conservative politicians. Despite his great popularity in many parts of the world, in Israel Obama
is now seen as no ally. A June poll found that just 6% of Israelis called him ―pro-Israel,‖ when
88% had seen President George W. Bush that way. So the troubles between the U.S. and Israel
are not fundamentally found in the personal relations among policy makers.
The deeper problem—and the more complex explanation of bilateral tensions—is that the
Obama administration, while claiming to separate itself from the ―ideologues‖ of the Bush
administration in favor of a more balanced and realistic Middle East policy, is in fact following a
highly ideological policy path. Its ability to cope with, indeed even to see clearly, the realities of
life in Israel and the West Bank and the challenge of Iran to the region is compromised by the
prism through which it analyzes events.
The administration view begins with a critique of Bush foreign policy—as much too reliant on
military pressure and isolated in the world. The antidote is a policy of outreach and engagement,
especially with places like Syria, Venezuela, North Korea and Iran. Engagement with the
Muslim world is a special goal, which leads not only to the president‘s speech in Cairo on June 4
but also to a distancing from Israel so as to appear more ―even-handed‖ to Arab states. Seen from
Jerusalem, all this looks like a flashing red light: trouble ahead.
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Iran is the major security issue facing Israel, which sees itself confronting an extremist regime
seeking nuclear weapons and stating openly that Israel should be wiped off the map. Israel
believes the military option has to be on the table and credible if diplomacy and sanctions are to
have any chance, and many Israelis believe a military strike on Iran may in the end be
unavoidable. The Obama administration, on the other hand, talks of outstretched hands; on July
15, even after Iran‘s election, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said ―we understand the
importance of offering to engage Iran….direct talks provide the best vehicle….We remain ready
to engage with Iran.‖
To the Israelis this seems unrealistic, even naïve, while to U.S. officials an Israeli attack on Iran
is a nightmare that would upset Obama‘s outreach to the Muslim world. The remarkable events
in Iran have slowed down U.S. engagement, but not the Iranian nuclear program. If the current
dissent in Iran leads to regime change, or if new United Nations sanctions force Iran to abandon
its nuclear weapons program, this source of U.S.-Israel tension will disappear. But it is more
likely that Iran will forge ahead toward building a weapon, and U.S.-Israel tension will grow as
Israel watches the clock tick and sees its options narrowed to two: live with an Iranian bomb, or
strike Iran soon to delay its program long enough for real political change to come to that
country.
Israel believes the only thing worse than bombing Iran is Iran‘s having the Bomb, but the
evidence suggests this is not the Obama view.
If Iran is the most dangerous source of U.S.-Israel tension, the one most often discussed is
settlements: The Obama administration has sought a total ―freeze‖ on ―Israeli settlement
growth.‖ The Israelis years ago agreed there would be no new settlements and no physical
expansion of settlements, just building ―up and in‖ inside already existing communities.
Additional construction in settlements does not harm Palestinians, who in fact get most of the
construction jobs. The West Bank economy is growing fast and the Israelis are removing security
roadblocks so Palestinians can get around the West Bank better.
A recent International Monetary Fund report stated that ―macroeconomic conditions in the West
Bank have improved‖ largely because ―Israeli restrictions on internal trade and the passage of
people have been relaxed significantly.‖ What‘s more, says the IMF, ―continuation of the
relaxation of restrictions could result in real GDP growth of 7% for 2009 as a whole.‖ That‘s a
gross domestic product growth rate Americans would leap at, so what‘s this dispute about?
It is, once again, about the subordination of reality to pre-existing theories. In this case, the
theory is that every problem in the Middle East is related to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. The
administration takes the view that ―merely‖ improving life for Palestinians and doing the hard
work needed to prepare them for eventual independence isn‘t enough. Nor is it daunted by the
minor detail that half of the eventual Palestine is controlled by the terrorist group Hamas.
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Instead, in keeping with its ―yes we can‖ approach and its boundless ambitions, it has decided to
go not only for a final peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, but also for
comprehensive peace in the region. Mr. Mitchell explained that this ―includes Israel and
Palestine, Israel and Syria, Israel and Lebanon and normal relations with all countries in the
region. That is President Obama‘s personal objective vision and that is what he is asking to
achieve. In order to achieve that we have asked all involved to take steps.‖ The administration
(pocketing the economic progress Israel is fostering in the West Bank) decided that Israel‘s
―step‖ would be to impose a complete settlement freeze, which would be proffered to the Arabs
to elicit ―steps‖ from them.
But Israelis notice that already the Saudis have refused to take any ―steps‖ toward Israel, and
other Arab states are apparently offering weak tea: a quiet meeting here, overflight rights there,
but nothing approaching normal relations. They also notice that Mr. Mitchell was in Syria last
week, smiling warmly at its repressive ruler Bashar Assad and explaining that the administration
would start waiving the sanctions on Syria to allow export of ―products related to information
technology and telecommunication equipment and parts and components related to the safety of
civil aviation‖ and will ―process all eligible applications for export licenses as quickly as
possible.‖ While sanctions on certain Syrian individuals were renewed last week, the message to
the regime is that better days lie ahead. Of this approach the Syrian dissident Ammar
Abdulhamid told the Wall Street Journal, ―The regime feels very confident politically now.
Damascus feels like it‘s getting a lot without giving up anything.‖ Indeed, no ―steps‖ from Syria
appear to be on the horizon, except Mr. Assad‘s willingness to come to the negotiating table
where he will demand the Golan Heights back but refuse to make the break with Iran and
Hezbollah that must be the basis for any serious peace negotiation.
None of this appears to have diminished the administration‘s zeal, for bilateral relations with
everyone take a back seat once the goal of comprehensive peace is put on the table. The only
important thing about a nation‘s policies becomes whether it appears to play ball with the big
peace effort. The Syrian dictatorship is viciously repressive, houses terrorist groups and happily
assists jihadis through Damascus International Airport on their way to Iraq to fight U.S. and
Coalition forces, but any concerns we might have are counterbalanced by the desire to get Mr.
Assad to buy in to new negotiations with Israel. (Is the new ―information technology‖ we‘ll be
offering Mr. Assad likely to help dissidents there, or to help him suppress them?)
Future stability in Egypt is uncertain because President Hosni Mubarak is nearing 80, reportedly
not in good health, and continues to crush all moderate opposition forces, but this is all ignored
as we enlist Mr. Mubarak‘s cooperation in the comprehensive peace scheme. As we saw in the
latter part of the Clinton and Bush administrations, once you commit to a major effort at an
international peace conference or a comprehensive Middle East peace, those goals overwhelm all
others.
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Israelis have learned the hard way that reality cannot be ignored and that ideology offers no
protection from danger. Four wars and a constant battle against terrorism sobered them up, and
made them far less susceptible than most audiences to the Obama speeches that charmed
Americans, Europeans, and many Muslim nations. A policy based in realism would help the
Palestinians prepare for an eventual state while we turn our energies toward the real challenge
confronting the entire region: what is to be done about Iran as it faces its first internal crisis since
the regime came to power in 1979.
Mrs. Clinton recently decried ―rigid ideologies and old formulas,‖ but the tension with Israel
shows the administration is—up to now—following the old script that attributes every problem
in the region to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while all who live there can see that developments
in Iran are in fact the linchpin of the region‘s future. The Obama administration‘s ―old formulas‖
have produced the current tensions with Israel. They will diminish only if the administration
adopts a more realistic view of what progress is possible, and what dangers lurk, in the Middle
East.
Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. 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
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
near future; and the focus should be on building the institutions that will allow for real
Palestinian progress in the medium or longer term.
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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.
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.
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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
every such trip, for every photo op with a smiling foreign leader, and for every international
conference, the Palestinians there would be thriving.
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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
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
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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
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.
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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
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
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conferences. For, again, it seems to me there are at present only two paths forward--the path of
realism and the path of failure.
Dazed and Confused
The Israelis can’t figure out U.S. policy. For that matter, who can?
ELLIOTT ABRAMS
National Review
When I visited Israel in late October, not long before the latest visits of U.S. envoy George
Mitchell and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Israelis of all political hues confessed that they
were amazed, perplexed, and confused by the policy those two diplomats and President Obama
are following.
First came an instant attitude of hostility on the part of the Obama administration toward Israel‘s
new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, even before he had taken office on March 31 and
despite his efforts to create a centrist coalition. Second came its obsession with a ―settlement
freeze,‖ which in fact was a demand for something that no Israeli prime minister of any party
could possibly agree to — a complete and immediate freeze on construction not only in every
settlement (including those Israel will obviously keep in any final-status agreement) but also in
Israel‘s capital, Jerusalem. Third came the demand that Arab states reach out to Israel, a demand
that the president himself delivered to the king of Saudi Arabia in a visit there in June and that,
predictably, was rejected immediately.
Fourth came the administration‘s handling of the Palestinian leadership, which it pulled out onto
the ―settlement freeze‖ limb — for how could any Palestinian leader be less insistent on a total
freeze than the Americans were? This meant that when the Obama team faced reality and
dropped the freeze demand in favor of a call for ―restraint,‖ the Palestinians out on that limb
were simply sawed off. Later, when American diplomats prevailed upon the Palestinian
leadership not to ask the U.N. Human Rights Council to approve the Goldstone Report on Israeli
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conduct during the Gaza War, they added insult to injury. Palestinian Authority president
Mahmoud Abbas seems to have accepted U.S. demands and instructed his delegation at the
Human Rights Council in Geneva to cool it, a move that won him unprecedented unpopularity at
home. He should have said no and simply told the U.S. to veto anything that arose in the Security
Council, but the U.S. should not have pushed him. That the administration did so suggests a
powerful American desire to avoid a veto, presumably because such actions are so ―Cold War,‖
so ―George W. Bush‖ — and therefore far out of line with the Obama era of global engagement
and multilateral action.
All of this has constituted a massive policy failure. The Obama administration has weakened the
Palestinian leadership it meant to strengthen, weakened the alliance with Israel by its hostility to
Israel‘s government, weakened its own reputation in Arab capitals for strength and reliability,
and painted itself into a policy corner. For where does it go now?
It is still possible that Mitchell, who ought to resign or be fired on account of his gross
misreading of the situation in the region, will get Netanyahu to sign some sort of construction
moratorium. But we know the conditions: It will not apply to Jerusalem, it will be time-limited, it
will permit construction of about 2,500 new units in various stages of preparation, and it will not
apply to needed public buildings like clinics or schools. The Palestinian leadership will
immediately denounce such a deal, which is not what they thought Mitchell and Obama were
demanding. They will not agree to commence peace negotiations on such a basis; indeed, on
October 31, Abbas so stated when he met with Secretary Clinton in Abu Dhabi. And if they did
start such negotiations, which is the fervent desire of the Obama administration, nothing could
possibly come of them right now. Abbas is too weak (partly thanks to us) and too close to
elections (called for January, though few believe they‘ll actually take place then) to undertake
serious negotiations at the moment. And remember: Last year, Israel‘s then–prime minister,
Ehud Olmert, made Abbas a peace offer that was so generous it probably couldn‘t have carried
in Olmert‘s own cabinet. Abbas turned that one down, so it‘s hard to believe that anything
Netanyahu offers now might be acceptable to the Palestinians.
So what has Mitchell achieved for all his travel and all his posturing? Nothing. Actually, worse
than nothing: Mitchell has managed to obscure the only good news emerging from the area,
which is the continuing improvement in life on the West Bank. More jobs, more freedom of
movement, more law and order are apparent in 2009. But that‘s usually mentioned in the fifth
paragraph of any administration statement. If Obama had used all his early prestige last winter to
ask Arab states to embrace the Palestinians (rather than to embrace Israel, which was an
impossible goal), perhaps he‘d have gotten somewhere. Perhaps the PA would today have the
funds to build more schools and roads and hospitals — and jails, for that matter.
American policy under Obama has aligned itself in a curious and possibly unintended way with
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the worst elements of Arab policy. Like that of the Arabs, it is cold toward Israel: Despite several
visits to the region, the president has skipped Israel, and the White House‘s aloofness toward
Netanyahu is obvious. This posture makes peace far harder to achieve. Again like Arab policy, it
is warm toward the Palestinians in ways that hurt the Palestinian leaders more than help them.
That is, the rhetoric is warm but little or nothing is actually done to assist them, and they emerge
weaker with every passing month. Again like the Arab approach, it puts a premium on rhetoric,
negotiations, and diplomacy, with few sensible concrete steps.
Israelis watch all of this and wonder whether it is intended, or rather the product of the Obama
team‘s incompetence. I was asked repeatedly during my visit: What are they doing? What do
they think they are doing? Do they realize it isn‘t working? Is there a learning curve?
Meanwhile, Israelis watch Obama‘s handling of Iran, which for them is a deadly serious matter.
They note that the administration congratulated itself on winning Russian president Dmitry
Medvedev‘s agreement for more sanctions, but they see that there actually was no agreement.
They watched as administration spokesmen smugly said they‘d gotten more from Iran in just
days of talks than Bush had in eight years of hostility, but then saw Iran‘s ―agreement‖ to export
almost all of its low-enriched uranium evaporate over the following weeks.
These episodes do not instill confidence that the mishandling of Israeli-Palestinian affairs is a
temporary aberration; instead they make Israelis suspect that the administration‘s approach to
world politics is simply naïve, and more given to self-congratulation than to making tough
choices. The president‘s decision on Afghanistan plays a role here too, for Israelis — like many
Americans — wonder whether the dithering of recent weeks bespeaks a lack of ―grit.‖ As in Iran,
North Korea, Russia, China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere, including downtown
Washington, an Obama decision to overrule Gen. Stanley McChrystal or to offer him half of
what he says he needs will be carefully noted in the Kirya, the headquarters of the Israel Defense
Forces. Israelis want a strong, tough America, and they want to be its ally. A weak
administration, whose judgment about the Middle East and about world politics is erroneous and
often naïve, and that expresses a coolness to Israel and an indifference to the threats it faces, is an
Israeli nightmare. Maybe feeling confused is their way of holding off the conclusion that that‘s
just what they‘ve got in Obama.
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Seven Existential Threats
Mi ch ael B . O ren From issue: May 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
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.
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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.
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
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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.
_____________
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.
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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.
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.
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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
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.
_____________
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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
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.
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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.
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
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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
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Syria
The Syria Temptation—and Why Obama Must Resist
It
B ret S tep h en s From issue: March 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
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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.
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.
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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
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
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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
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.
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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
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
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―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
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,
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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
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
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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
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
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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.
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
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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.
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
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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
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
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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
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.
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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
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
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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
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.
Obama Talks, Syria Mocks
The wages of appeasement.
BY Elliott Abrams
March 15, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 25
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).
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* 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.
* 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.
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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
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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China/East Asia
China
'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
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.
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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.
"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
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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.
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.
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.
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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.
'Bearing Witness' Isn't Enough
BY Ellen Bork
December 15, 2009 11:00 PM
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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.
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
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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.
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
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.
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
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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
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
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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.
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
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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
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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.
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
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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
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
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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.
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
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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.
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
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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
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 194
- 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
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.
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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.
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
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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
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
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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
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.
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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.
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
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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
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.
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
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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
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
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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.
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
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.
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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
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
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East Asia
AEI OUTLOOKS & ON THE ISSUES
A Road Map for Asian-Pacific Security
By Gary J. Schmitt
AEI Online
Friday, December 18, 2009
Reprinted with the permission of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy
Research, Washington, D.C.
American Enterprise Institute
There is a broad consensus that President Barack Obama's recent, first trip to Asia lacked any notable
successes. The president left Japan with a major dispute over U.S. military bases there still unresolved;
he attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit but was unable to announce any
substantive new trade initiatives; he visited China and made little to no substantive progress on Iran,
climate change, or trade and lost ground on human rights; and, in South Korea, the president
essentially spun his wheels, leaving Seoul without providing any fresh ideas about how he will deal
either with the problem of North Korea or the signed (but not ratified) free-trade agreement with South
Korea. All in all, the president's trip to Asia was, as one policy expert noted, "high on optics . . . but
low on policy substance. . . . The visit lacked any policy deliverables."[1]
If there is any positive note to be taken from the trip, it is that the administration has spent a
considerable amount of time and attention visiting and engaging key countries of the region. The
problem is that engagement is not sufficient; it is a process, not a substitute for policy.
Indeed, the administration's only larger vision appears to be its policy of "strategic
reassurance" with China--a policy designed to reassure Beijing that the United States has no
intention of trying to forestall China's rise to great power status and, more broadly, that the
administration is willing to accept China as something of an equal partner in addressing key
global problems. The hope is that this will lessen prospects for tension and make it more
likely that China's rise is in fact peaceful.[2] But the problem with this approach is that it is
premature. China might become a "responsible stakeholder," but it is not one yet. In the
meantime, its growing military and economic power worries our friends and allies in the
region. Nor does this Sino-centric emphasis take account of the other significant trends in the
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region, such as India's rise, the significant expansion of democratic governance in Asia, and
Asian nations' desires to create more effective multilateral structures.
In developing forums and institutional arrangements with Asian nations, America should take
better account of these other important but largely ignored trends. What follows is a new road
map for America's longer-term, strategic approach to the region.
The New Realities of Asia
More people live under democratic rule in Asia than in any other place on the globe. Asia is
also home to the two fastest-rising powers in the world, China and India. Yet neither
America's system of alliances nor the region's multilateral organizations sufficiently accounts
for these new realities.
In 1980, of the major countries in East Asia, South Asia, and the Asia-Pacific region, only
five--Japan, India, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, and Australia--could be described as democratic
and free. The total population of those five states was just shy of nine 900 million. Today one
can add to that list Indonesia, South Korea, Mongolia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand,
Nepal, East Timor, Malaysia, and Taiwan, with almost 2 billion people living under
democratic (if not always perfect) rule.
China and India are returning to the prominence they once held in global economic affairs. At
the beginning of the 1700s, China, Europe, and India each accounted for approximately 25
percent of the world's economic output. By the 1900s, China's and India's shares of the world
economy had dropped to less than 10 percent each. But with market reforms in place, both
economies have taken off; China's gross domestic product (GDP) may equal that of the
United States sometime in this century's third decade, and India could reach that marker a few
years later. Equally impressive is their respective growth and investment in high-end
technologies and expanding military capabilities. China's declared defense budget has seen
double-digit increases for nearly two decades, approaching 18 percent growth over the past
two years. Similarly, India's military expenditures have more than quintupled since the early
1990s. Both China and India are rising, and rising fast. As the National Intelligence Council
has noted, "The likely emergence of China and India as new major global players--similar to
the rise of Germany in the 19th century and the United States in the early 20th century--will
transform the geopolitical landscape, with the impacts potentially as dramatic as those of the
previous two centuries."[3]
Moreover, there has been a proliferation of multilateral institutions and forums in the region-the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the ASEAN Regional Forum, ASEAN
Plus Three (APT), the East Asia Summit (EAS), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO), APEC, and the so-called six-party talks. Yet, the United States has played an active
role in only the last two, with the former limited to economic affairs and the latter an ad hoc
arrangement among northeast Asian powers whose purpose is to address the North Korean
nuclear problem.[4] Apart from an occasional statement by Presidents Bill Clinton and
George W. Bush on their vision for a "fellowship" of Asian democracies, on the whole the
United States has been generally reluctant to move beyond its system of bilateral treaty
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relations or reexamine what multilateral organizations might best suit the changed Asian
strategic environment.[5]
This is not to say the United States has been entirely passive in the face of change. The Bush
administration set about strengthening ties with key allies, most notably Japan and Australia.
This meant working more closely with Tokyo and Canberra on a bilateral level, while also
conducting joint ministerial meetings among the three capitals and trying to create a new
consultative relationship with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for our AsiaPacific allies. Washington also began, in the face of the continued expansion of and
improvement in Chinese military capabilities, to increase its own air and sea forces in the
region and to increase military-to-military ties with a number of states in the region. As
Daniel Twining, a former State Department official, has pointed out, the United States
undertook a subtle effort to improve strategic ties with India, Indonesia, and Vietnam with the
goal of "facilitating the ascent of friendly Asian centers of power that will both constrain any
Chinese bid for hegemony and allow the United States to retain its position as Asia's decisive
strategic actor."[6] So, while it is true that the Bush team did not sit idly by in the face of
Asia's strategic evolution, it is also true that America was still largely relying on its Cold War
"hub-and-spoke" system of bilateral security ties with Japan, South Korea, Australia, the
Philippines, and Thailand, and whatever innovative steps the last administration took, the
relationships remained basically consultative, lacking the establishment of formal ties and
institutions that might help states withstand changes in governments and changes in political
and international winds. In short, the Clinton and Bush administrations' approach to allies in
the region was an opportunity lost.
Asia's Muddled Multilateralism
The problem in the Asia-Pacific region of course is not that there are no other institutions or
forums outside of those involving America's bilateral ties to its allies. The problem is that
none seem to address the strategic needs of the region adequately.
The oldest and most important multilateral forum in Asia is ASEAN. Now made up of ten
members (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar/Burma, the Philippines,
Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam), ASEAN celebrated its fortieth anniversary in 2007. The
forum was established at a time of considerable tension in the region as a result of the not-socold war in Indochina and ongoing territorial disputes among a number of states. The guiding
ASEAN principle was noninterference in the domestic affairs of other states. This principle
was in the interest of the then-member governments, each of which was, at the time, ruled by
autocrats of one form or another. ASEAN decision making was, in turn, to be by unanimity.
Although these principles helped stabilize the region and enabled economic progress, the
question is whether they are adequate today.
Some think not. In the run-up to the 2007 ASEAN annual summit, there was a move afoot to
create an "ASEAN Charter" that would bind members to liberal democratic principles and
governance and modify ASEAN's consensual decision-making processes. The proposed
charter would have had the salutary effect of allowing newer democracies, such as Indonesia,
to embrace a regional norm that would further solidify their own rule. At the same time, the
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charter's drafters recognized that new initiatives to harmonize economic and security policies
across the region were unlikely to be implemented by governments with radically different
philosophies. In brief, the goal of the new charter was to set in place something along the
lines of the 1957 Treaty of Rome, the founding document of what eventually became the
European Union (EU). What the ASEAN members ultimately adopted at the summit fell well
short of that goal--reaffirming the principles of "non-interference" and unanimity among
member states. The members provided no practical mechanism allowing ASEAN to take a
tough stance on such issues as human-rights violations or coups in member states.[7]
The fact that ASEAN's charter ended up where it did is not surprising. When the Treaty of
Rome was signed, all the signatory states were democracies, and their security was grounded
by membership in a U.S.-led NATO. ASEAN still reflects a mix of regimes (and will likely
continue to do so for some time) and sees itself as involved in a very careful balancing act
between an increasingly powerful China that resides in its backyard and the superpowerful
but distant--and sometimes distracted--United States.
ASEAN's goal with respect to China has been to avoid being locked into some sort of soft
tributary relationship by creating a web of economic, cultural, and defense ties with Beijing.
But, again, the question is, will such a strategy work over the long term? In the early 1990s,
China's GDP was roughly equal to that of all member states of ASEAN combined; today,
China's GDP is more than twice that of ASEAN. Similarly, in the early 1990s, China's
military was backward and poorly equipped, with only minimal power projection capabilities;
today, after nearly two decades of reform and new procurement, China's military is beginning
to look like that of a great power. And while "ASEAN can be expected to work harder at
shoring itself up as an effective regional organization in order to better manage increasing
interdependence with China,"[8] the issue is whether it has the institutional wherewithal or
resources to do so adequately.
In signing on to various nonbinding agreements with ASEAN, China has committed to very
little.For the time being, the ASEAN Regional Forum's "preferred strategy of managing
problems rather than solving them . . . serves China's rather than ASEAN's long-term strategic
interest."[9] Moreover, if China's power grows as expected, the so-called ASEAN way of
consensus may actually cause the region to fall into the subordinate relationship it would like
to avoid. Tactically, with a consensus-first approach to addressing issues, ASEAN gives
China a virtual veto over new initiatives within the region by having friendly ASEAN
members put a halt to anything with which Beijing disagrees.
Whatever the current and prospective problems with ASEAN may be, at least Southeast Asia
has an organization through which the member countries can communicate with each other on
a regular and sustained basis. The same is not true for Northeast Asia: that region does not
have a permanent institutional arrangement.
The six-party talks, which include the United States, Japan, South Korea, Russia, China, and
North Korea, are specifically tasked with addressing North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
Ever since the advent of the talks in fall 2003, there has been a steady drumbeat among area
specialists for turning this forum into a more enduring structure, perhaps along the lines of the
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Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).[10] Certainly, such a forum
would have plenty of issues to address: a possible North Korean regime collapse, Korean
unification, refugee flows, transparency in military affairs, and energy supplies are just a few.
Whatever the potential merits of perpetuating the six-party talks (or a modified five-party
version that would exclude North Korea), the missing element right now is an agreed-upon set
of principles that would guide any such organization. It is useful to remember that the OSCE's
predecessor, the Commission on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), was
established on the basis of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975 and included a lengthy list of
declarations and texts covering issues as disparate as security, economics, science, the
environment, and human rights.[11] Complicating the comparison to the OSCE further,
however, is the fact that, whatever the magnitude of a potential war between the West and the
Soviet empire at the time, Europe itself was relatively stable, divided between two great
military blocs. The Helsinki accords were largely meant to codify that situation, not establish
a problem-solving institution.[12]
This does not mean such a forum would be without utility, but it is limited--as both the Bush
and Obama administrations have learned in addressing the North Korean nuclear issue.
Negotiations over the most difficult issues will undoubtedly involve an ever-shifting
alignment of partners as each state enters the discussion with its own set of priorities. With no
overarching and agreed-upon strategic paradigm in place, the forum will remain an ad hoc
diplomatic forum of the willing.[13]
China's willingness to participate in multilateral forums is a significant change from its
Maoist days, when Beijing's diplomacy was far more distrustful of formal entanglements.
Nevertheless, it would be an exaggeration to say China's recent change signals a profound
transformation of its strategic perspective. Beijing picks and chooses its multilateral forums
with care. In the case of a prospective Northeast Asian security forum, built upon the sixparty talks, for example, China is presumably interested because it would potentially elevate
its regional stature and make the U.S.-Japan alliance less central.[14] Similarly, Beijing was
initially interested in the idea of the EAS (the pan-Asian forum held annually since 2005 by
the leaders of sixteen countries)[15] but became far less so when Japan, Indonesia, and
Singapore insisted that the democracies of India, Australia, and New Zealand be invited as
well. Instead, China's diplomats give far more attention to those forums where China's own
relative weight is significant and the U.S. role is less prominent or nonexistent, as is the case
with APT and the SCO.[16]
All of this suggests that Chinese multilateralism is highly instrumental. In short, it is not
driven by some new commitment to liberal internationalism but by old-fashioned realpolitik
and China's desire to stem interference in its own domestic rule.[17] This is not to say that
Beijing cannot be convinced to be more cooperative and that institutions might not help in
that regard, but it does suggest that cooperation with China will be on terms that are more
narrowly conceived than many might hope.
Nor does this suggest that Washington's own policy in the region has always shown a deep
commitment to liberal internationalism. As mentioned above, for the most part, the United
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States has stuck with a security architecture that revolves around its treaty-defined, hardsecurity commitments to Japan, South Korea, and Australia, as well as its less-defined
bilateral commitments to the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, and Taiwan. The United States
has also boosted its ties to Indonesia, Vietnam, Pakistan, and India in recent years. A bilateral
and unilateral approach to the region, of course, provides Washington "with greater autonomy
than a multilateral approach" and reflects the long-standing view that the region's history and
diversity preclude any serious attempts at effective multilateralism.[18] Which is to say, Asia
is no Europe.
As a result, recent administrations, including both the Clinton and George W. Bush White
Houses, have stood largely on the sidelines when it comes to the region's own efforts to
establish multilateral bodies. They neither fought the trend nor made much of an effort to
support it. The Obama administration has seemingly broken with this policy to some extent
by deciding this past summer to sign ASEAN's Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC).[19]
Whether this indicates a true reordering of Washington's willingness to support new, effective
multilateral structures is an open question, especially since the treaty itself commits the
United States to the principle of noninterference in the internal affairs of other signatories
and, as such, actually reaffirms the present state of Asian multilateralism.
As for the region's other major powers--Japan, Australia, South Korea, and India--their
relationships with the United States are more uncertain now than perhaps at any time in recent
memory. New governments in Canberra and Tokyo have raised doubts about the future
centrality of security ties with Washington, with Australia wondering about America's staying
power and Japan's new government publicly suggesting a regional order that does not include
the United States.[20] And both Australia and Japan are also working through a vastly more
complex relationship with China and neighboring countries. There is even more ambiguity
about South Korea's future security vision: ties with China have grown significantly, but so
have concerns about China's potential dominance. And an increased sense of Korean
nationalism is an uneasy fit with a Japan that wants to become a "normal" player on the
regional and world stage. Finally, there is India, a rising power in its own right. It believes it
is already in a strategic competition with China and, hence, is looking to expand multilateral
and bilateral ties in the region, albeit reluctantly, given its own history of diplomatic selfreliance. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations saw India as a potential new partner in
their hedging strategies against China, but candidate Obama seemed far less interested in
deepening strategic ties.[21] And while Obama's first state dinner was held in honor of Indian
prime minister Manmohan Singh's visit to the United States, it came on the heels of a visit to
Asia in which Obama failed to mention India's role in his vision of Asian stability and, in a
joint statement with the Chinese leader Hu Jintao, seemed to endorse a Chinese oversight role
for South Asia, while ignoring India altogether.[22] Hence, it is far from clear at this point
what the new administration's plans will be for strengthening ties with India. Nor is India's
own position without ambivalence; as Indian commentator and strategist C. Raja Mohan
points out, "India's recent attitudes toward the United States have swung between
expectations of a natural alliance between two democracies to fears of subordination in a
potential partnership with the world's sole superpower."[23]
Given the diversity of strategic approaches to alliances and multilateralism by the two major
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powers in the region (China and the United States); given the uncertainties of some of the
other major powers (Japan, South Korea, and India) about exactly what roles they will play
regionally; and, finally, given the diversity of regime types among the remaining powers, it is
no surprise that the region has been described as having a "fractured security structure"[24]
and a more muddled than coherent and viable framework for the future.
What Is Next?
For all the confusion when it comes to understanding the current state of multilateral and
bilateral relations within the Asia-Pacific theater, there are three undeniable trends that must
be addressed if any new architecture for the region is to have a chance of succeeding. The
first is Asia's own desire to create an Asian community of some sort. The past decade has
seen various fits and starts on this matter, reflecting both the difficulties of creating such a
community and the ever-present pressure to move forward given the growing interdependence
and interlocking policy agendas among the states in the areas of economics, security, health,
terrorism, and the environment. The second trend is the continuing growth of Chinese power,
which demands a policy of both engagement and hedging on the part of its neighbors and the
United States. Finally, the spread of democracy in the region has sparked past U.S. interest in
seeing the democratic Asia-Pacific states become something of a "community" of their own.
Reconciling each of these trends seems virtually impossible. Complicating matters further are
debates over issues such as "Asia-Pacific versus East Asian regionalism." Should Asia's
community consist of Asian countries alone, or should it include the likes of Australia, a
Pacific nation with vital interests in and ties to Asia? How will Washington's traditional
alliance-orientated strategy in Asia and its fondness for ad hoc multilateralism (as in the case
of the Proliferation Security Initiative)[25] fit with the region's increasing movement toward
multilateralism? And finally, what, precisely, is the character of that multilateralism? As Asia
hand Ralph Cossa notes, one would be hard-pressed to define the "nature of the organizing
principles and objectives behind" forums like the EAS or the APT.[26] Given these issues and
the cross-cutting trends noted above, it is hardly a surprise that the previous two
administrations largely took a wait-and-see approach to multilateral developments in the
Asia-Pacific region. And there is the possibility things will naturally fall into place to
America's advantage in the region--with a rising autocratic China leading the region's
democracies (and any number of its smaller states) to turn to the United States without much
effort on Washington's part.
There are, however, opportunity costs if Washington decides to wait for things to fall into
place. First, unlike the Soviet Union, China is unlikely to present itself as the kind of
overwhelming threat that moves nations to jump on the U.S. bandwagon. To the contrary,
both the United States and countries in the region will be heavily engaged with China in the
decades ahead, especially economically. The result will be a more complex set of
relationships that will likely lead more to policy drift than to states making hard strategic
choices. Second, China's power in the region will undoubtedly increase relative to that of the
United States. As China's power increases, the United States ought to be looking for ways to
maximize its influence through regionwide forums and institutional arrangements. Wellcrafted multilateral organizations can be force multipliers and can help allied states think
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more seriously about broader common security needs than bilateral relationships typically
can. Finally, there are costs to not taking full advantage of the opportunities that positive
trends--such as the spread of liberal economics and politics in the region--can present. Taking
advantage of these trends, however, requires creating organizations that shape and lock in
change. The most dramatic recent example has been the creation of a Europe "whole and free"
through the expansion of both NATO and the EU into Central and Eastern Europe after the
collapse of the Soviet Union.
But creating a NATO or EU-like structure for the Asia-Pacific is perhaps a bridge too far. The
differences historically, culturally, and geopolitically among the states of the region are
probably too significant to accomplish such a feat. Indeed, one of the strongest comments to
this effect was then-deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz's statement to journalists in
May 2002 that he "certainly" did not "envision a NATO-like security structure in East Asia.
NATO . . . started, obviously, from a Cold War period when we were allied together against a
common enemy. . . . East Asia is a very, very different situation where the diversity of
countries, the diversity of interests doesn't call for that kind of structure."[27] Accepting the
fact that the differences between the situation in Asia and Europe are great does not, of
course, mean that there are not parallels to be drawn. Nor should we assume that, over time,
institutions cannot lessen existing differences and modify a nation's behavior. To hear Asia
specialists tell it, Japan's history problem makes it virtually impossible for it to be accepted by
other states in the region as a "normal" country, let alone a leader reflecting its relative level
of power. Yet Japan's history problem is not unlike Germany's following World War II;
today, former Allied and Axis countries that killed millions of each other's citizens are part of
one union, whose borders and economies are open to each other. Again, it would be wrong to
draw strict parallels between Europe and Asia, but it would be equally incorrect to adopt a
form of geocultural determinism that ignores the art of the possible when it comes to Asia and
the Pacific.
So, the question is: what is possible?
Tier One: A CSCE for Asia
Perhaps the first step in thinking through a multilateral structure for Asia is to recognize that
the diversity of regimes in the region means there will be real limits to what a multilateral
organization or forum can accomplish. But that was equally true when the high
representatives of thirty-three European countries, the United States, and Canada signed the
Final Act of the CSCE in Helsinki on August 1, 1975. While the Cold War was perhaps a
little less frigid when the accords were signed, the line between East and West in Europe was
still one of concrete and barbed wire, with millions of men under arms in two opposing blocs-NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
The Helsinki Accords, as they came to be called, were divided into three "baskets." Basket I
dealt with questions related to European security and included a declaration of principles
designed to guide relations among the signatories. Key among these principles were
abstention from the threat or use of force, the territorial integrity of states, a proposal for a
dispute resolution system, and a modest set of confidence-building measures entailing
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notification of military maneuvers and the voluntary exchange of observers at military
exercises. Basket II concerned cooperation in the fields of economics, science, and the
environment, while Basket III, among other things, required states to act in conformity with
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to respect "the inherent dignity of the human
person" and the right of individuals "to know and act" on these rights, including the freedom
to emigrate from any country. Artfully written and not legally binding, the Final Act did,
nevertheless, help create an overall framework for a more stable Europe.
Can a similar accord be crafted for Asia? In fact, Asia is, in some respects, more than halfway
there already. On February 24, 1976, the heads of five Southeast Asian states (Indonesia,
Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines) signed the TAC. The guiding principles
of the treaty were "mutual respect for the independence, sovereignty, equality, territorial
integrity and national identity of all nations; the right of every State to lead its national
existence free from external interference, subversion or coercion; non-interference in the
internal affairs of one another; settlement of differences or disputes by peaceful means; the
renunciation of the threat or use of force; and effective cooperation among themselves."[28]
Since 1976, all member states of ASEAN as well as China, India, Japan, Pakistan, Russia,
South Korea, and Australia have signed the accord. And, as noted previously, at its summit in
November 2007, ASEAN took the next step in institutionalizing the principles of the TAC by
adopting a formal charter for the organization that establishes an ASEAN secretariat headed
by a secretary general as well as standing committees in the areas of economics, sociocultural
affairs, and political security. And while the charter renews the original ASEAN commitment
to noninterference in the internal affairs of member states and renounces aggression or the
threat of force, it also includes commitments on the part of member states to "market
economies," "economic integration," "good governance, the principles of democracy and
constitutional government," "respect for fundamental freedoms," and "the promotion and
protection of human rights."[29]
Of course, because ASEAN's process of decision making by consensus did not change, some
viewed the charter as having failed to lay the groundwork for a more dynamic and liberal
Asian community. But this may well be the charter's virtue. Scaled-up and modified as
needed, the charter could serve as the defining element for the larger Asian community,
whether that community is defined as participants in APT or the EAS. More modest in what it
could do or enforce, such a charter would be more acceptable to the diverse regimes in Asia
and the Asia-Pacific region. And, indeed, if the rest of Asia were to signal a willingness to
establish an organization along the lines outlined above, China would be hard-pressed to
explain to its regional neighbors why it would not join, especially given the fact that the
United States would not be a member.
Although more modest in vision, an Asian charter and organization would still, to a large
degree, fulfill Asia's continuing desire to become a "community" of some kind.[30]
Moreover, there are plenty of matters that Asia's nations can and should address together.
Disaster relief, the environment, trade, maritime safety, and territorial disputes are just a few
of the issues that such an organization could usefully address. The bottom line is that
globalization and transnational problems have put a premium on multilateral cooperation.
And while such a multilateral forum would be limited in its capacity to tackle more divisive
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issues, such as the status of Taiwan, it could provide a normative base line for state behavior
that would bring increased stability to the region.
Tier Two: Asia-Pacific Forum of Democracies
A CSCE for Asia has its advantages, but in the end, it will be of limited utility when it comes
to shaping and directing the region's future. Engaging in dialogue and setting norms are
important, but neither can deepen or expand the gains made by democrats in the region--nor,
frankly, can America's bilateral security ties with Japan, South Korea, or Australia. These are,
as Australian scholar Nick Bisley notes, "fairly blunt" security instruments and a poor bridge
to policy matters of concern to the democracies in the region.[31] And while a NATO for
Asia might be out of the question at the moment, a new multilateral "club" of Asian-Pacific
democracies ought not to be. In some respects, the region is already primed for such an
organization. Public opinion polls taken across the region by the East Asia Barometer, for
example, indicate that democracy is the preferred form of government by a majority of
populations residing outside of China.[32] In addition, a slow but maturing series of
ministerial meetings has taken place between Japan, Australia, and the United States since
2006. Japan also inked a strategic accord with India in 2006 and signed a formal security pact
with Australia in 2007. And, before the recent changes in governments both in Washington
and Tokyo, the two asked Australia to consider expanding the trilateral sessions into a
quadrilateral dialogue including India.[33]
But truly to construct in Asia (what the Bush administration called in its National Security
Strategy) "a balance of power that favors freedom" will require more than ministerial
meetings and bilateral accords. As others have noted, "there is a perception in Asia that
America's laser-like focus on defeating terrorism causes it to talk past allies primarily
concerned with fueling Asia's economic dynamism." In contrast, Beijing has talked
economics first and "its influence has increased accordingly."[34] A good place to start, then,
is the creation of a free-trade area between the United States, Japan, and the other democratic
states of the Asia-Pacific region. Membership in the arrangement would be governed by
adherence to a set of liberal criteria in governance as well as trade.[35] As with the EU, the
lure of access to markets should provide an incentive structure for states to become (and stay)
members in good standing. In addition, the organization could establish tools, as in the OSCE,
to monitor elections, provide peacekeeping forces, coordinate humanitarian operations and
nonproliferation efforts, and generally provide a forum for enhanced but still voluntary
security cooperation. As such, it would not attempt to replace existing bilateral security treaty
arrangements but would serve as a substantial "soft power" overlay tying the countries
together.
Taking a two-tiered multilateral approach in Asia means that the states in the region are not
forced to choose between China and the United States. Countries can have a foot in both
forums, creating a multilateral architecture that reflects the need both to engage China and to
hedge against its rise.
There are further advantages to such an approach. First, it provides a forum for Japan to ease
into becoming a "normal" country fitting its desire to play a larger role on the world stage but
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in a way that reassures other states of its limited and pacific intentions. Second, it provides
India a mechanism for maintaining its formal independent foreign and defense policies--a
point of pride for the rising power--but in a manner that allows it to work more closely with
the United States as it sees fit. Instead of force-feeding the relationship with grand bilateral
programs and initiatives, this arrangement allows New Delhi and Washington to build from
the bottom up. Third, a regional democratic forum could bridge the gap between Seoul's
understanding of its security in terms largely confined to the peninsula and Washington's
view of the issue through a broader strategic lens, helping to reintegrate South Korea into its
more natural association with the other democratic powers in the region. Fourth, a club of
democracies could finally help prevent Taiwan's slide into deeper international isolation by
providing a place for it to interact and cooperate with the other democracies in the region.
Finally, establishing a multilateral organization with liberal political criteria for maintaining
membership and structured incentives for doing so can be important in consolidating
democratic gains in countries like Indonesia and in potentially preventing the kind of
backsliding one sees in states such as the Philippines or Thailand.
China will complain that such an arrangement is a form of containment. To meet that
complaint, or at least mitigate it somewhat, Washington should define this new effort as
providing public goods to the region that would otherwise either be provided serendipitously
or not at all--a point that has the benefit of actually being true. That said, Beijing already
reads Washington's existing presence in the region, its move into Central Asia, and its new
ties to India and Vietnam as a form of encirclement. And, to the extent that China's military
and economic power continues to grow, American administrations will increasingly be forced
to take concrete steps to reassure allies and friends of its presence in the region if they want to
avoid the collapse of the prevailing security architecture in the Asia-Pacific region. It would
be more prudent to design a multilateral architecture that takes advantage of the democratic
strengths we have now than to play the great power game in an ad hoc and reactive fashion.
If, over the coming decades, China does not liberalize, Washington will have set in place a
framework that will allow the United States to speed security cooperation in the region as it
becomes necessary. If China does liberalize, there will be a ready-made structure for it to
integrate itself into the existing liberal international order.
Conclusion
The problem with Washington's current approach to Asia-Pacific multilateralism is that it has
neither kept up with China's increased levels of engagement throughout the region nor
sufficiently kept ahead of that country's growing hard power. The United States has appeared
to be a day late and a dollar short in reacting to trends and events in the region.
And the Obama administration appears to be following the same pattern--being slow to open
up new trade arrangements, giving muted attention to the security concerns raised by China's
military buildup, and appearing to accept the present hodgepodge of Asian multilateral
forums as satisfactory tools by which to engage the region. In addition, the Obama White
House has generally been more reluctant to follow the Clinton and Bush administrations' lead
in viewing India as a potential great power ally. And, finally, Washington has talked a good
game over the years about the revolution in democratic governance in Asia but has done little
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to reinforce it or take advantage of it--a failure the Obama administration appears likely to
continue as it downplays the strategic importance of human rights and democratic
governance.
How long Washington can ignore these underlying trends and realities is difficult to measure.
But the longer they are ignored, the more America's own strategic situation will deteriorate.
China will continue to grow, our allies will grow increasingly skittish, and, in the absence of
American partnership, India will seek its own way in the region that may or may not be
conducive to interests and the region's stability. The reality is, much is afoot in the AsiaPacific, and unless Washington takes more of an active hand in defining a new security
architecture for the area, it will find it increasingly difficult to exercise American leadership
there. The two-tiered approach to the Asia-Pacific region spelled out above is intended to
provide a better road map for current and future U.S. policy. It is a framework that recognizes
the complexity of U.S. and neighboring states' relations with China, while at the same time
reassures the region of our commitment to stay engaged on the basis of principles that serve
our long-term interests and those of our democratic partners in the Asia-Pacific.
Obama Blunders Through Asia
Undoing Bush's years of deft diplomacy.
BY Ross Terrill
November 30, 2009, Vol. 15, No. 11
The Weekly Standard
Much dire rhetoric has been unleashed in liberal quarters about the damage done by George W.
Bush's foreign policy. The alleged damage, however, is not evident in Asia. When Ken
Lieberthal, a respected China specialist and Democratic loyalist, spoke at Harvard early this year,
I asked him to name a single year in memory when Washington had as good relations with India,
Japan, and China as under Bush. He changed the subject.
The White House stated as Obama left Asia for home last week: "Overall, American leadership
was absent from this region for the last several years.'' Nonsense. Bush left office with U.S.
relations with Asia's big four--China, India, Japan, and Indonesia--taken together, better than
ever in history.
Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh many times remarked that President Bush was popular
in India, and so was the United States. U.S.-Japan relations were excellent under Bush, in
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partnership with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and two successors. Nor were U.S. relations
with Australia ever as good as in the years when Bush presided in Washington and John Howard
in Canberra. In Southeast Asia after 9/11 the U.S. position improved sharply with Singapore,
Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. And Bush drew Vietnam and, after 2007, South Korea,
under its new president Lee Myung Bak, closer to the United States.
As for China, in his second Inaugural Address and his oration at Kyoto en route to Beijing in
2005, Bush treated the Chinese with respect but also as laggards in world-historical terms. "Free
nations are peaceful nations," he said in Japan. "Free nations do not threaten their neighbors, and
free nations offer their citizens a hopeful vision for the future."
Speaking hours before he was to reach Beijing, Bush was more explicit, yet still positive: "We
encourage China to continue down the road of reform and openness, because the freer China is at
home, the greater the welcome it will receive abroad. As China reforms its economy, its
leaders are finding that once the door to freedom is opened even a crack, it cannot be closed."
The irony is large. "Cowboy" Bush pulled off the feat of speaking boldly to Beijing about
American values while also achieving a productive relationship with China. He secured solid
support from Japan over Iraq, Afghanistan, and other issues without bowing down before the
emperor.
Visiting China twice a year during the Bush administration, I watched the business sections of
big-city bookshops grow. Typically, they offered Chinese translations of U.S. business titles,
memoirs of successful American businessmen, and Chinese works applying U.S. entrepreneurial
ways to local conditions. Never did I see any work by Al Franken, Michael Moore, or Garrison
Keillor on offer in Chinese. Grassroots China was palpably pro-America and pro-Bush.
One hopes that continues, but it won't occur through apologies, embarrassment over U.S. power,
and chatter about moral equivalence. In Shanghai on November 16 in front of hundreds of
Chinese students, Obama touched on freedom only to say it is a challenge facing both the United
States and China!
Obama's one-man "change" seems to have little bearing on our actual Asian relationships. The
other day, the president encouraged North Korea to "rejoin the international community." When
did it join? His claim to be "America's first Pacific president" overlooked Kennedy's and Bush
père's service in the Pacific during World War II and Hoover's years as an engineer in Australia
and China.
Viewed historically, the position of the United States in East Asia is favorable because of the
sustained deployment of American power, the triumph of the American values of democracy and
free markets, and the attractiveness of American popular culture. For most of the twentieth
century, the United States had some difficulty in maintaining decent relations with Japan and
China simultaneously. Since the 1970s, however, with the Vietnam war behind us, a stable
balance between Japan and China has been secured by the superior strength of the United States
and an equilibrium created by American leadership.
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The U.S. military is still the linchpin of deterrence, keeping the peace in Korea, the Taiwan
Strait, and elsewhere, as it has for half a century. But Obama is backing away from American
leadership and proposing to reduce U.S. military strength in the hope that nasty regimes may do
the same.
Some good news is that America's China policy has been fundamentally stable since the NixonMao opening of 1971-72. This continuity has resulted from four enduring factors: Washington is
markedly more powerful than Beijing, and Chinese political and military leaders know it. China,
unlike the United States, faces multiple potent neighbors; challenges other than from Washington
can and do rear up. Third, for Chinese leaders, domestic development and stability is a higher
priority than foreign policy goals. Finally, successive American presidents have seen no net
benefit in again tangling militarily with China, as the United States did in Korea and Vietnam.
The age of globalization locks in this stability. We are no more dependent on China for buying
U.S. Treasury bills than the Chinese are dependent on us for buying their apparel and electronics.
This mutuality should prevent any collapse in China policy, whatever the Obama administration
does; mutuality on such a scale seldom breaks down suddenly.
The bad news about Obama and China is that his China policy resembles a pack of cards that is
reshuffled to suit the occasion.
In February, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that "issues such as Tibet, Taiwan and human
rights can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis, and the
security crisis." This is one of the worst statements by any secretary of state in memory.
The Taiwan issue is about whether 23 million people will live in a democracy or under the
Chinese Communist party. As Bush said, "Free nations are peaceful nations," and China
threatens Taiwan. Taiwan's future is also about the balance of power in Asia. But Clinton averts
her eyes and thinks, Don't let threats to Taiwan "interfere" with talking about global warming in
Copenhagen! Obama declined to see the Dalai Lama before his trip to China, because that would
displease Beijing. He will see the Tibetan after the trip to China: Who does that please?
Freedom is about whether the Chinese people will get news of the world unfiltered or only what
the Communist party chooses for them to have. Freedom is about whether American products
will get the access to Chinese markets that Chinese products have here. Freedom is about
whether American scholars doing research in China are allowed the unfettered access that
Chinese scholars working in the United States have. Freedom is not a card to pull out or whisk
away as the occasion may require.
Obama on November 14 welcomed "the rise of a strong, prosperous China" as a "source of
strength for the community of nations." Unlike Bush, he did not say a "free" or "democratic"
China. Here is change we must denounce. There is a world of difference between China as an
unfree superpower and China as a democratic superpower. Obama ducks the issue. Yet to see
East Asia's U.S.-led security system replaced by an authoritarian Chinese leadership would
undermine the interests of Washington and numerous capitals in the region.
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While in China, Obama let Hu take the lead on how the visit was handled and on how the issues
were framed. The mention of Taiwan in the joint Obama-Hu statement favors China by implying
that sovereignty is the heart of the issue (meaning Taiwan ultimately belongs to China). No
mention that any change in Taiwan's status should be with the Taiwan people's agreement or that
stability in Asia would be upturned by Taiwan's disappearance as a separate nation.
The joint statement also talks condescendingly about India as part of a problem (with Pakistan)
that Obama and Hu must together assess. But India is a partner no less important for Washington
than China; would Obama condescend to China by jointly pontificating with India on China's
relations with the appalling regimes of Burma and North Korea? It is simply not the case that
China is Washington's global partner, with democratic India down at a lower rank.
A Los Angeles Times editorial asserted in January, "Obama assumes the presidency in a
multipolar world." Not so. The United States was easily the world's only superpower on January
20, 2009. The danger is that Obama's "changes" will bring on a multipolar world: Talk with
everybody about nothing and with nobody about anything. Slight the notion of clashes of interest
among nations. Soft-pedal the idea of evil in the world. Such mushiness could soon shrink U.S.
power.
In East Asia, moral example may or may not be effective in disarming rogues, but deterrence has
worked. In this respect, 9/11 changed Asia less than it changed other parts of the world. Obama
is not required to "reset" our relations with Asia. Rather, he should maintain the balance between
Japan and China that has facilitated peace and economic development in East Asia since the
1970s. He should tell friend and foe alike that the United States considers democracy and free
markets superior to authoritarianism and command economies, and give top priority to
deepening America's relationships with its democratic friends, including Japan, India, South
Korea, Australia, and other smaller powers. The U.S.-Japanese tie is central. Japan is with us;
China is a question mark.
On particular matters, Obama must rouse the Democratic majority in Congress to end its
disgraceful failure to seal a free trade agreement with South Korea. In Burma, U.S. diplomats
should not be content to take one more cup of tea with Aung San Suu Kyi, but should say to the
Burmese military dictatorship and the world that next year's elections will mean nothing unless
Aung San Suu Kyi is fully free to campaign. On the Korean Peninsula--one place in Asia where
the Bush administration achieved little--Obama ought to end the farce by changing the agenda of
the Six-Party talks from terminating North Korea's nuclear program (near-impossible to agree
on, impossible to verify) to moving toward the reunification of Korea (which would end the
Pyongyang regime step by step and so solve the nuclear problem).
Of course, Obama might also, in a video message to Copenhagen, with an upraised arm and a
slight frown, demand an end to global warming in Asia, and in his thank you notes to his nearly
all male hosts on the Asia trip instruct them to roll back 5,000 years of oppression of Asian
women by Asian men. The president shouldn't let Hu take the lead on everything.
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North Korea
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
219
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.
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Burma
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.
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.
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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
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
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
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
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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
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.
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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
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
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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
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.
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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
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
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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.
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
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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.
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.)
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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
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
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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
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.
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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
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
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serve as a stabilizing power in this newly complex area. Indispensability, rather than dominance,
must be its goal.
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
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
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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
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.
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"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
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."
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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.
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
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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."
The New Great Game
Why the Bush administration has embraced India.
BY Daniel Twining
December 25, 2006, Vol. 12, No. 15
The Weekly Standard
Three recent events illuminate the contours and fault lines of Asia's emerging strategic
landscape, amid the lengthening shadows cast by China's growing power.
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First, the United States and India consolidated a wide-ranging military, economic, and
diplomatic partnership on December 9, when Congress passed legislation enabling U.S.-Indian
civilian nuclear cooperation. Then, at a summit in Tokyo on December 15, the leaders of India
and Japan declared their ambition for a strategic and economic entente between Asia's leading
democracies. This stands in sharp contrast to the intensifying rivalry between India and China:
Tensions over territory and Tibet simmered at a summit on November 21, where Indian prime
minister Manmohan Singh's assertion that "there is enough [geopolitical] space for the two
countries to develop together" sounded more like hope than conviction.
As its relationships with the United States, Japan, and China show, India has reemerged as a
geopolitical swing state after decades of marginalization as a consequence of the Cold War, its
own crippling underdevelopment, and regional conflict in South Asia. Although its status as a
heavyweight in the globalized world of the 21st century is new, India's identity as a great power
is not: It was for centuries one of the world's largest economies and, under British rule, a
preeminent power in Asia. Today, a rising India flush with self-confidence from its growing
prosperity is determined not to be left behind by China's economic and military ascent. "The
[Indian] elephant," says an admiring Japanese official, "is about to gallop."
The United States has an enormous stake in the success 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 prove to all those enamored of the
Chinese model of authoritarian development that democracy is the firmest foundation for the
achievement of humankind's most basic aspirations.
India is the world's biggest democracy, a nuclear power with the world's largest volunteer armed
forces, and the world's second-fastest-growing major economy. Few countries will be more
important to American security interests and American prosperity in the coming decades, as five
centuries of Western management of the international system give way to a new economic and
security order centered in the rimlands of the Indian and Pacific oceans.
India has been a factor in the global balance of power since at least 1510, when the establishment
of a Portuguese trading colony at Goa broke a seven-century monopoly on the Indian Ocean
spice trade by Muslim empires, unlocking the wealth of the East to European maritime states,
which used it to build global empires. Possession of India propelled Britain to the peak of world
power in the 19th century. "[T]he master of India," argued Britain's Lord Curzon, "must, under
modern conditions, be the greatest power in the Asiatic Continent, and therefore . . . in the
world."
During World War II, an Indian army under British command halted the Japanese army's
relentless march across Asia, inflicting on Imperial Japan its first military defeat. India's location
as an Indian Ocean and Himalayan power, its massive production of armaments, and its armed
forces--which fought in Europe, North Africa, and Southeast Asia--contributed decisively to the
Allied victory over the Axis powers.
Lord Curzon celebrated India's importance in The Place of India in the Empire (1909):
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The central position of India, its magnificent resources, its teeming multitude of men, its great
trading harbors, its reserve of military strength, supplying an army always in a high state of
efficiency and capable of being hurled at a moment's notice upon any point either of Asia or
Africa--all these are assets of precious value. On the West, India must exercise a predominant
influence over the destinies of Persia and Afghanistan; on the north, it can veto any rival in
Tibet; on the north-east . . . it can exert great pressure upon China, and it is one of the guardians
of the autonomous existence of Siam.
Possession of India gave the British Empire its global reach. Britain lost its status as a world
power when it lost India.
Independent India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, shared Curzon's expansive vision,
declaring India "the pivot round which the defense problems of the Middle East, the Indian
Ocean, and Southeast Asia revolve." Wary Chinese strategists perceive a continuity of strategic
design from Curzon to the Congress party today, accusing Nehru at that time of harboring
ambitions for a "greater Indian empire," and more recently criticizing India's aspirations for
"global military power."
"China and India," writes the Carnegie Endowment's Ashley Tellis, "appeared destined for
competition almost from the moment of their creation as modern states."
The taproots of modern Sino-Indian conflict, argues historian John Garver, are found in the
overlapping claims of traditional Indian and Chinese spheres of influence in Asia, and in
"conflicting nationalist narratives that lead patriots of the two sides to look to the same arenas in
attempting to realize their nations' modern greatness." These conflicts create acute security
dilemmas as India and China compete for influence across Central, South, and Southeast Asia,
where strategic gains by one power magnify the vulnerabilities of the other.
Indian officials perceive a Chinese design to box India into its subregion, curbing India's ability
to project power beyond its borders. China's 1950 invasion of Tibet, traditionally the buffer
between China and British India, established the trend. Beijing maintains pressure on New Delhi
by politely declining to resolve their 2,500-mile border dispute, a legacy of the 1962 Sino-Indian
war. China has deployed nuclear weapons along its disputed border with India in Tibet. "The
potential political and psychological impact" of nuclear-armed missiles "literally a few miles
from India's border . . . cannot be underestimated," argues political scientist Amitabh Mattoo.
China has refused to extend its nuclear "no first use" doctrine to include India.
China's military assistance to Pakistan, including the extensive transfer of nuclear and missile
components, inflates the power of a state with which India has fought three wars, enabling
Pakistan to challenge Indian primacy in South Asia. Since the 1990s, China has pursued a
consistent policy of encircling India by supplying military assistance and training to its
neighbors. The top three recipients of Chinese arms exports are Pakistan, Burma, and
Bangladesh; China has also established military supply and exchange relationships with Nepal
and Sri Lanka. China seeks to create "a string of anti-Indian influence around India" that is
"designed to marginalize India in the long term," according to one Indian strategist. Prime
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Minister Singh laments "the desire of extraregional powers to keep us engaged in low-intensity
conflicts and local problems, to weigh us down in a low-level equilibrium."
China is also expending money and manpower to construct strategic road and rail links in India's
backyard. A high-altitude rail line linking Qinghai in China with Lhasa in Tibet, which began
transporting Chinese military personnel in early December, reportedly features a planned
southern spur leading to the disputed Sino-Indian border, enabling the rapid movement of
Chinese military forces in the event of conflict. Beijing and Islamabad are conducting surveys
for a rail line across the Karakoram mountains linking western China to northern Pakistan, which
would tie up with Chinese-funded roads and railways leading to Pakistani ports on the Arabian
Sea. China is reported to be considering construction of a rail link to Nepal, traditionally a buffer
state under India's influence.
China has reportedly constructed 39 transport routes from its interior to its contested border with
India--which Indian planners perceive as more of a military threat than a commercial
opportunity, since much of the border is closed to trade. China's program of road and rail works
along its border with the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which Beijing claims as Chinese
territory, has led New Delhi to accelerate "strategically important" road construction in the
region. China is also funding extensive road and rail projects in Burma, traditionally the land
corridor for both commerce and armies between East and South Asia.
Around India, China is constructing deep-water port facilities capable of berthing warships at
Gwadar in Pakistan, on the Arabian Sea; at Rangoon, Kyaukpyu, and other harbors in Burma; at
Chittagong in Bangladesh; and at Sihanoukville in Cambodia. Chinese engineers are dredging
Burma's Irrawaddy River, which will give China a usable waterway connecting Yunnan province
to the Bay of Bengal. China operates naval and radar facilities on Burma's Coco Islands, just 30
miles from Indian territory and strategically situated near the Straits of Malacca, through which
pass half of all world oil shipments and one-third of all ship-borne cargo. India recently used its
influence with the government of the Maldives to veto a Chinese request for naval access rights
just off India's south coast.
The Pentagon has highlighted Beijing's design to construct a "string of pearls" of naval facilities
stretching from Southeast Asia to the Persian Gulf--a project that will help China protect
seaborne trade and, potentially, contain the Indian Navy's projection of power in what it
considers its home seas. China's construction of transport infrastructure and port facilities that
encircle India, says analyst Vikram Sood, is "designed to put India in pincers."
Amidst the drama of Washington's opening to Beijing in 1971, Henry Kissinger told President
Nixon that no country in the world, with the possible exception of Great Britain, shared a greater
convergence of strategic interests with America than Mao's China. Modern India's democratic
identity, and a striking congruence of interests between Washington and New Delhi after the
Cold War, give India the stronger claim to be America's "natural ally" in Asia.
As Prime Minister Singh has said, "If there is an 'idea of India' that the world should remember
us by and regard us for, it is the idea of an inclusive and open society, a multicultural,
multiethnic, multilingual society. All countries of the world will evolve in this direction as we
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move forward into the 21st century. Liberal democracy is the natural order of social and political
organization in today's world. All alternate systems, authoritarian and majoritarian in varying
degrees, are an aberration."
Former ambassador to India Robert Blackwill argues convincingly that New Delhi may more
closely share America's core foreign policy goals and perception of threat than any of our
traditional allies. More people have been killed by terrorists in India over the past 15 years than
in any other country. This makes India a natural partner to America in the campaign against
terror, centered in the Pakistan-Afghanistan nexus in India's backyard. Facing an acute missile
threat from China and Pakistan, India embraced President Bush's missile defense plans when, in
2001, the president dismayed many traditional allies by withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty. India was among the first countries to offer America the use of its military
facilities after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
India is encircled by failed and potentially failing states--including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal,
Burma, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. New Delhi shares Washington's interest in helping these
countries develop durable democratic institutions. "India would like the whole of South Asia to
emerge as a community of flourishing democracies," said Indian foreign secretary Shyam Saran
in 2005.
America is India's largest trading partner. Continued annual economic growth of 8-9 percent
depends on partnership with the world's largest economic power in trade, investment,
technology, and market access. India's dependence on imported energy--and its intense
competition with China for control of oil and gas supplies, from Ecuador to Angola--gives it an
abiding interest in energy cooperation with America and Japan, including protecting the sea lanes
linking the Persian Gulf to Asian waters.
India is committed to balancing Chinese power in Asia. "India has never waited for American
permission to balance China," says Indian strategist Raja Mohan. "I tell the Americans: You
balanced China from 1949 to 1971, but then allied with Beijing from 1971 to 1989. India has
been balancing China since the day the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1950. We have always balanced
China--and that's what we'll continue to do." India, Mohan insists, "will never play second fiddle
to the Chinese."
The challenge posed to India's security and its identity as a democratic Asian power by the rise
of authoritarian China is fueling the new warmth in India's relations with Washington and
Tokyo.
"[T]here is a major realignment of forces taking place in Asia," explained India's foreign
secretary in 2005. "There is the emergence of China as a global economic powerhouse. There
will be increased capabilities that China will be able to bring to bear in this region and even
beyond. India also is going to be a major player in Asia. . . . I think India and the United States
can contribute to a much better balance in the Asian region."
India, according to Indian Express editor in chief Shekhar Gupta, faces a strategic choice
between building economic and military power in partnership with America and playing
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underdog to China in a global anti-American axis. "Is it a good or bad thing for India that the
Cold War is over and that, in a resultant unipolar world, it has a mutually beneficial relationship
with the only superpower?" he asks. The alternative is for India "to be to tomorrow's China what
Cuba was to yesterday's Soviet Union. . . . [G]o seek a referendum from the people of India on
that."
Although Chinese military strategists worry less about India than about America and Japan, the
prospect of an enduring Indo-U.S. military partnership attracts Beijing's full attention. Indian
strategist Brahma Chellaney recounts, "On my visits to China, I have found as an Indian that the
only time the Chinese sit up and listen is when the U.S.-India relationship comes up. India and
the United States ganging up militarily is China's worst nightmare."
So, too, could be an emerging strategic entente between India and Japan. Japanese prime
minister Shinzo Abe has said, "It is of crucial importance to Japan's national interest that we
further strengthen our ties with India," which he calls "the most important bilateral relationship
in the world."
Since assuming office in September, Abe has enthusiastically backed the concept of a
quadrilateral security partnership among Japan, India, Australia, and the United States. Abe says
the values of "freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law" are central to Japan's
identity as an Asian great power. "I believe Japan should play a role in trying to spread such
values, for example in the Asian region," he recently told the Washington Post's Fred Hiatt. This
makes democratic India a natural strategic partner.
Indian officials are enthusiastic about what Abe calls the development of a "new Asian order"
based on strategic cooperation among Asian democracies. As Japan's ambassador in New Delhi,
Yasukuni Enoki, recently put it, an Indo-Japanese strategic partnership could become "the
driving force behind an emerging Asia," creating what Prime Minister Singh calls "an arc of
advantage and prosperity" that will "enhance peace and stability in the Asian region and
beyond."
Japan is expected to join India and the United States next year in high-profile naval exercises in
the South China Sea. The two countries are pursuing a comprehensive economic partnership that
includes Japanese provision of advanced technology to India to accelerate its rise. "India is the
key counterweight to China in Asia, along with Vietnam," says one senior Japanese official.
According to India's Mohan, "You'll see the India-Japan relationship change more over the next
few years than any of our other key relationships. India-Japan is the next big game."
Such cooperation between a rising India and a more muscular Japan raises the prospect of what
Chellaney, in his Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India, and Japan, calls the emergence of
an Asian "constellation of democracies" dedicated to preserving what the State Department's
Nicholas Burns calls "a stable balance of power in all of the Asia-Pacific region--one that favors
peace through the presence of strong democratic nations enjoying friendly relations with the
United States."
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To foster an Asian balance that safeguards its liberal principles, India will need to wield the
appeal of its democratic values as a strategic asset. India played a key role in brokering Nepal's
recent agreement to hold democratic elections, but it continues to appease Burma's military junta
in ways that alienate its natural allies, the Burmese people. They voted overwhelmingly for the
democratic, pro-Indian opposition in the country's last free elections.
"India's regional grand strategy must be based on our belief that what is good for us is also good
for our neighbors; in other words, pluralistic political systems, the rule of law, the rights of the
individual," argues Hindustan Times columnist Manoj Joshi. From Rawalpindi to Rangoon,
Indian leaders will find that democrats make better neighbors than military dictators.
India's quest for strategic autonomy and its identity as a great civilization mean that it will never
be the kind of subordinate ally the United States cultivated during the Cold War. The closest
historical model for America's ambition to accelerate India's rise to world power may be France's
decision to invest in Russia's economic and military modernization in the late 19th century.
France's goal was to build Russia up as an equal partner to help manage the rise of German
power in Europe--just as the United States today hopes to construct friendly centers of power in
Asia to limit China's ultimate ambitions.
"We're fully willing and ready to assist in th[e] growth of India's global power, . . . which we see
as largely positive," says Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Turning the caricature of allybashing unilateralism on its head, in India, the Bush administration is working concertedly,
writes journalist Edward Luce, "to play midwife to the birth of a new great power."
Now the enactment in Washington of legislation enabling Indo-American civilian nuclear
cooperation is a compelling riposte to leaders on the left and right of Indian politics who remain
skeptical of Secretary Rice's commitment that America will be "a reliable partner for India as it
makes its move as a global power." Senator Richard Lugar calls the agreement "the most
important strategic diplomatic initiative undertaken by President Bush." India's "normalization"
as a nuclear power through agreements with the United States, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and
the International Atomic Energy Agency will encourage it to remain a responsible nuclear state
committed to upholding a global nuclear order from which it had previously been excluded.
Civilian nuclear cooperation with Washington gives India even greater incentives to maintain
India's "impeccable" (Prime Minister Singh) and "excellent" (Secretary Rice) nonproliferation
record. It should also encourage Indian cooperation containing Iran's nuclear weapons program:
In February, India voted with the United States to refer Iran to the United Nations Security
Council for possible sanctions.
The notion of a Sino-American partnership to contain India's rise as a nuclear power, as
suggested by President Clinton's joint condemnation of India's nuclear tests with Chinese
president Jiang Zemin in Beijing in 1998--and more recently by American critics of the U.S.India nuclear deal--rankles Indian elites. They are confused by the determination of U.S. critics
to hold India to a far higher proliferation standard than China has displayed in its transfer of
nuclear technology to Pakistan. They are surprised that some American experts believe
excluding India from the legitimate nuclear order is more faithful to the cause of nonproliferation
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than enmeshing India in the rules of the nuclear club. And they are baffled that the West would
want to entrench a balance of terror between democratic India and authoritarian China that
permanently favors the latter.
Economic dynamism is fueling India's geopolitical ambitions. This new vigor is somewhat
mystifying when judged against the bureaucratic incompetence of the Indian state. Despite
scandalous underinvestment in education, sanitation, health, and infrastructure, India's economy
is growing at an annual rate of 8-9 percent and is forecast to surpass China as the world's fastestgrowing major economy next year. India remains burdened by acute poverty, yet possesses an
expanding middle class already larger than the entire population of the United States. It suffers
from stifling and corrupt government, yet boasts world-beating companies with global reach. Its
dizzying politics--which currently pit a profoundly reformist prime minister against oldfashioned Marxists and caste-based populists within his own governing coalition--do not lend
themselves to the kind of strategic economic liberalization China's leaders have managed since
1978.
"To race China, first let's get our feet off the brakes," implores the former editor of the reformist
Indian Express, Arun Shourie. If and when this happens, Indian power, prosperity, and culture
could change the world.
India's rapidly expanding middle class is expected to constitute 60 percent of its billion-plus
population by 2020. India is expected to surpass Japan in the 2020s as the world's third-largest
economy at market exchange rates, and to surpass China around 2032 as the world's most
populous country. India's relative youthfulness should produce a "demographic dividend": While
its 400 million-strong labor force today is only half that of China, by 2025 those figures will
reverse as China's population rapidly ages.
India's economic growth may be more sustainable than China's. Domestic consumption accounts
for nearly two-thirds of India's GDP but only 42 percent of China's, making India's growth
"better balanced" than that of China's export-dependent economy, according to Morgan Stanley's
Stephen Roach. India's combination of private-sector dynamism and state incompetence means
that "India is rising despite the state," in the words of economist Gurcharan Das. It is "an organic
success from below" rather than one directed by government planners, and is therefore "more
likely to endure."
Conventional wisdom that Indian democracy constrains economic growth, and is inferior to the
ruthless efficiency of China's authoritarian development model, is wrong. India's curse--like
China's until quite recently--has been an overweening state that squeezes out private investment
and creates massive opportunities for corruption. "India's problem isn't too much democracy, it's
too much socialism," says Prannoy Roy, the founder of India's NDTV.
This is rapidly changing as economic reform transforms India's economic landscape, fueling a
vast domestic consumer market and providing a launching pad for Indian companies like Infosys,
recently listed on the NASDAQ-100. More fundamentally, its democratic political foundation
gives India a long-term comparative advantage by rendering less likely the kind of revolutionary
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unrest that has regularly knocked China's growth off course throughout that country's long
history.
Infused with the missionary spirit and the ideology of the Open Door, Americans have long held
a fascination with the prospect of changing China in our own image. Yet authoritarian China's
rise and growing nationalism raise questions about when and whether China will embrace
political liberalism.
India may be a better template against which to judge the appeal of democratic values on Asian
soil--and a surer partner in managing security challenges, from Chinese power to global
terrorism, whose threat lies in their lack of democratic control. A durable Indo-American
partnership of values promises higher dividends than a century of failed attempts to forge an
enduring Sino-American alliance in Asia.
The United States is strangely popular in India. Polling regularly shows Indians to be among the
most pro-American people anywhere--sometimes registering warmer sentiments towards the
United States than Americans themselves do. But this is not so strange: India and America are
the world's biggest and oldest democracies. Both are multiethnic, continental empires with strong
cultural-religious identities. Each inherited the rule of law from Britain. Indian and American
foreign policies appear equally animated by a self-regarding exceptionalism and a habit of
moralizing in international affairs.
Both India and America are revisionist powers intent on peacefully recasting the contemporary
international order and ensuring themselves a prominent place in it. America's rise to world
power in the 19th and 20th centuries is, in some respects, a model for India's own ambitions. As
Indian analyst Pratap Bhanu Mehta told the New York Times, Indians have "great admiration for
U.S. power" and want their country to "replicate" it, not oppose it. How many of America's
European allies share such sentiments?
The CIA has labeled India the key "swing state" in international politics. It predicts that India
will emerge by 2015 as the fourth most important power in the international system. Goldman
Sachs predicts that, by 2040, the largest economies on earth will be China, the United States,
India, and Japan. A strategic partnership of values among the last three, naturally encompassing
the European Union, may defy predictions of a coming "Chinese century"--and set a standard of
democratic cooperation and prosperity China itself might ultimately embrace on its own path to
greatness.
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India’s Time of Reckoning
Jonathan Foreman From issue: February 2009
Commentary Magazine
The wind has changed in India‘s capital, though not in a way that might disperse the ever more
noxious smog produced by the thousands of new cars that hit the streets each week. Since the
November terrorist attack on Mumbai, India‘s richest and most populous city, magazine and
newspaper headlines have called for the country to get serious and make real ―war on terror.‖
India is no stranger to jihadist terrorism. In 2007, there were lethal bombings in the cities of
Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, and Delhi. In 2006, Pakistan-based terrorists, helped by local
accomplices, set off a series of explosive devices on Mumbai‘s commuter trains that killed 209
people. But November‘s attack was different. Mumbai‘s ―11/26,‖ as it is called here, targeted
sectors of Indian society that, because of wealth or position, have long believed they were
shielded from terrorism.
Most previous attacks were aimed either at the masses or at officialdom. The slaughter of the
former has generally had little impact on public policy; thousands of poor people die in insurgent
bombings, train wrecks, bus mishaps, and crowd panics every year, but in a nation with a
population of over 1 billion people, these deaths are of startlingly little political or social
consequence. At the same time, politicians and other high officials have enjoyed elaborate
protections since the assault on India‘s parliament in Delhi in December 2001. This time, by
going after guests at Mumbai‘s top two Indian-owned hotels, November‘s terrorists struck a
blow at India‘s ruling class.
In India, five-star hotels like the Taj Mahal and the Oberoi-Trident are sanctuaries for the
privileged and affluent. India‘s elites go to them to shop, make deals, dine at the country‘s best
restaurants, and entertain on a scale impossible in small Mumbai apartments. The hotels combine
the functions of a country club, an upscale shopping mall, and a well-appointed office building.
People save up for months for lunch or even a coffee at the Taj, to buy some time insulated from
the noise, crowds, and heat of real India, or to luxuriate in a polished Bollywood version of it.
Well connected and well educated, the kind of person who regularly goes to dinner at the Oberoi
or the Taj is likely to look down on the dirty business of Indian politics. Now that same class
feels insecure for the first time.
As so often in the global conflict against jihadist terrorism, the Mumbai terrorists and their
backers benefited from a clear understanding of their target society and its weaknesses. Lashkare-Taiba (LeT), the Pakistan-based group believed to have carried out the attacks, had previously
demonstrated a highly tuned sense of Indian society when attacking India‘s parliament in 2001:
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exploiting reflexive deference to officialdom, its gunmen drove a bureaucrat‘s official sedan to
the attack and were waved through initial security.
In November in Mumbai, the terrorists understood how gunning down members of India‘s
English-speaking cultural, social, and financial elite would reverberate around the subcontinent
and the globe. They knew they could rely on the incompetence of Mumbai‘s police. They
appreciated much better than the Indian authorities how the impact of their attacks would be
magnified by India‘s new 24-hour news channels, and how much more powerful a multi-day
siege might be than a single devastating explosion.
They were genuinely modern in a way that the law-enforcement institutions that fought them are
not. The troops that confronted the terrorists were dressed like top Western special forces but
were not up to the job; dressed in civilian clothes, the terrorists operated with the skillfulness of
well-trained commandos.
_____________
Those calling for an Indian ―war on terror‖ want to repair and modernize the intelligence,
paramilitary, and bureaucratic structures that failed to forestall the attacks and to defeat them
once they had begun. But the pundits and the newly mobilized upper middle class also want a
revolution in the country‘s response to Pakistan‘s use of terrorism as a means of proxy warfare.
India‘s armed forces have never struck first against Pakistan. Now many of India‘s citizens want
a more robust and aggressive approach. One of the main obstacles to such an approach is,
ironically and troublingly, India‘s new ally, the United States.
As Indian commentators have pointed out, if the Mumbai attacks had been carried out against the
United States by citizens of a hostile neighbor, they would have been considered an act of war by
the state that aided or abetted them. The United States toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan
for sheltering al Qaeda, whereas it seems likely that elements of the Pakistani state actually
trained and equipped the terrorists who attacked Mumbai.
The stated goals of LeT include the restoration of Muslim rule in all of Central and South Asia.
Though theoretically banned in Pakistan, LeT has operated openly for many years from its
headquarters in Lahore under the name Jamaat ud Dawa. It has enjoyed considerable political
clout because it runs hundreds of schools and clinics in areas where the Pakistani state fails to
provide its citizens with even minimal services. Under foreign pressure, the Pakistani
government banned Jamaat in December, but the group is expected to rename and re-form itself
soon, and its properties and bank accounts remain untouched by government action.
As always with Pakistan, it is impossible to know if the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officers
who allegedly helped coordinate what looked more like a commando operation than a terrorist
attack were ―rogue agents‖ acting on their own, or whether they had at least tacit permission
from the Director General of the ISI, Ahmed Shuja Pasha, or the head of the Pakistani army,
Ashfaq Kiyani, who is himself a former ISI chief.
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It is widely believed in India that the Pakistani military may have given the go-ahead to the
terrorist attacks because they knew it would lead to an Indian mobilization that would in turn
justify a shift of Pakistan‘s forces away from the Afghan frontier to the border with India. The
Pakistani security establishment loathes fighting the Taliban and its allies in those tribal areas;
after all, it was through the Taliban that Pakistan was able to run Afghanistan as a kind of colony
while keeping the pro-Russian, pro-Indian Northern Alliance at bay. Moreover, it has always
been both easy and politically useful in Pakistan to mobilize popular support against the Indian
―threat‖—never mind that it was Pakistan that started all three wars with its much larger
neighbor during the decades before both countries obtained nuclear weapons.
It does seem unlikely that Pakistan‘s civilian government had advance warning of the Mumbai
attacks. However, in the aftermath of the attacks, the government has officially hewed to the
absurd line that there is no evidence that the attackers were of Pakistani origin—even though
Pakistani journalists have interviewed the father of captured terrorist Mohammad Ajmal Amir
Kasab in his home village.
In the recent past, Pakistan has been able to back terrorist groups in various parts of India safe in
the knowledge that its huge neighbor would never strike back. Though India‘s vast military is
quick to react with overwhelming force and draconian methods against local rebellions, India has
tended to be pusillanimous when confronted by Pakistani-sponsored terrorism. In December
1999, after Pakistani terrorists hijacked a Delhi-bound Air India plane in Kathmandu and took it
to Kandahar, Afghanistan, the Indian government agreed to their demands and released three
high-value terrorist detainees, including the future founder of the Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM)
terrorist group and a jihadist who went on to decapitate the American Jewish journalist Daniel
Pearl. When, two years later, Pakistani-supported gunmen from JeM and LeT attacked India‘s
parliament in New Delhi, India mobilized its troops and broke off relations with Pakistan for
nine months, but did no more.
Since November‘s attack, however, the Indian government, under pressure from public opinion,
has seriously considered attacking the many militant training camps in the Pakistani-controlled
sections of Kashmir. There is good reason to believe that American pressure has been the
primary reason for India‘s decision to hold back for now. Pakistan made clear to the United
States that it would relieve military pressure on the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in the
mountainous areas adjoining Afghanistan if America did not restrain its ally. The U.S., as so
often in the past, gave in to Pakistan‘s threat of decreased cooperation.
This was despite the fact that Pakistan‘s forces have been notably unsuccessful in depriving
America‘s enemies in the region of a safe haven in Pakistani territory. (The second-rate troops
dispatched to the frontier areas have suffered high casualties and humiliating setbacks, while the
Pakistani army has generally kept its crack troops on the Indian border.) Indeed, there have even
been numerous occasions when Pakistani military and paramilitary forces have given direct
assistance to the Taliban on the border with Afghanistan.
Another factor explaining India‘s restraint thus far seems to have been a strong hint from
Islamabad that Pakistan might go nuclear in the event of an Indian attack, despite the promise in
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November of the new president, Asif Zardari, that his country will never launch a first nuclear
strike.
It may also have been the case that the Indian government feared that it could not successfully
pull off surgical strikes against Pakistan. This fear is humiliating for India‘s military. But the
failure of India‘s vaunted special forces to bring the Mumbai attacks to a quick and successful
conclusion has almost certainly sapped the enthusiasm of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh‘s administration to go after targets that would be hard to hit and whose destruction would
likely result in significant civilian casualties.
Still, American pressure on India not to take any kind of direct action against terrorist bases in
Pakistan-controlled territory has been widely seen as a betrayal, and as proof that the United
States will always subordinate Indian national interests to its complicated dance with Pakistan
and its war in Afghanistan.
It is all the more unfortunate that this apparent betrayal has taken place at a time when large
sections of Indian public opinion are readier than ever to make common cause with America.
There is still a good chance that in the wake of the November Mumbai attack, India and the
United States could continue to develop a closer anti-terrorist alliance. However, in the recent
past, American approaches to the region have been bedeviled by ignorance or misperception of
various South Asian political realities. These include a radical underestimation of the power of
anti-Americanism, especially among India‘s security establishment, naiveté about Pakistan‘s
goals and methods in the region, and a tendency to treat both India and Pakistan as if they had
the same ability and willingness to control ―non-state actors‖ within their territory as do the
United States and other Western countries.
_____________
The Mumbai attacks and the reaction to them should have opened foreign eyes to the peculiar
vulnerability of rising, globalized India to international terrorism. To watch the siege of Mumbai
unfold, as I did first-hand in November, was to see a clash between India‘s burnished image as a
modern economic titan and the social and political realities that her boosters prefer to forget.
The confusion and disorganization of the city‘s response to an invasion by as few as ten terrorists
was a sharp reminder that India‘s public sector has little of the entrepreneurial vitality of the
newly liberated private sector. This is a country in which the first, second, and third worlds
coexist within the same physical space.
The idea that security can be significantly improved given the vast endemic chaos of India‘s
cities seems doubtful. No one even knows if there are 4 or 8 million homeless migrants living on
the streets of New Delhi, almost all of them unregistered in any way with organs of the state.
Mumbai‘s harbor, the main port of entry into India‘s commercial and financial hub, is essentially
under the control of Dawood Ibrahim, an organized-crime kingpin turned sponsor of anti-Hindu
terrorism living in exile in the Pakistani city of Karachi. Everyone knows this, but Ibrahim‘s
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organization has too much influence over many politicians and officials for anything to be done
about it.
A recent poll showed that many Indians believe the police to be the most corrupt institution in
the nation. It is impossible to exaggerate the extent of the flouting of rules and laws to which
obedience is taken for granted in most developed countries. Even given the amount of formfilling the bureaucracy requires of legitimate visitors to the country, the idea that the Indian
authorities can significantly improve their ability to keep tabs on either Pakistani infiltrators or
their allies and relations among India‘s mostly loyal Muslim minority is far-fetched. As Vinod
Mehta, the editor of India‘s leading news magazine, Outlook, wrote in the aftermath of the
Mumbai attacks, ―We are a rotten state whose insides have been pillaged by politicians and
bureaucrats who masquerade as public servants.‖
_____________
Among other security weaknesses, India‘s internal intelligence agency, the Intelligence Bureau
(IB), is only 25,000 strong. Worse, it wastes much of its resources spying on innocent Western
visitors. Perhaps because its ranks are dominated by men who came of age during India‘s most
anti-Western and pro-Soviet period, the IB is particularly obsessed with American and British
visitors, rather than with potential Islamist terrorists. One British traveler who crossed the
Tibetan border in order to take his sick horse to a veterinarian was held in prison for seven
months as a spy. American journalists and NGO workers are routinely tailed and harassed on
suspicion of being CIA agents. If the IB and India‘s foreign intelligence service, known as
Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), were less obsessed with the CIA and MI6, they might do a
better job of preventing attacks like those in Mumbai.
This strange cold-war hangover is one of the quirks that American officials are going to have to
understand as the United States inevitably becomes more involved in the complicated politics of
the subcontinent.
Something of the flavor of Russophilia and related dislike for the United States still prevalent
among Indian officials is conveyed by an article by the prominent Indian terrorism expert B.
Raman, a former senior official of RAW, on the occasion of Vladimir Putin‘s last visit to India in
2007.
Raman wrote that he was delighted that Putin was the chief guest at the celebrations of India‘s
Republic Day, an honor never extended to any U.S. President, but furious that ―the excitement
over Putin‘s visit is confined to the policy making circles, the national security managers, the
Communists and other leftists, and the media.‖ He continued:
The comfort level between Indian public servants and their Russian counterparts continues to be
high. Indian public servants do not feel as comfortable with their American counterparts. . . .
Indian public servants have too many painful memories of the innumerable occasions when they
were bitten by the US—right from the day India became independent in 1947. How the U.S.
tried to obstruct the development of heavy industries! How President John Kennedy was
thwarted by the U.S. Congress when he wanted to help India in the construction of a steel plant
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at Bokharo! How the U.S. repudiated its solemn contractual commitments with regard to the
nuclear power station at Tarapore after India carried out its nuclear tests of 1974! . . . Can you
cite a single instance since our independence when the USSR or Russia had betrayed India and
its people? It stood by us through thick and thin.
Indian cold-war attitudes to America have often evolved into a new form of paranoia as India has
become wealthier and more powerful in the region. Many senior Indian military officers believe
that India‘s expanding sphere of influence is being violated and encircled by a United States
whose primary goal is quashing India‘s rise to superpower status.
An interesting example of this attitude is provided by a recently published, well-received book
by General S. Padmanabhan, the former chief of India‘s army staff. Titled The Writing on the
Wall: India Checkmates America 2017, it envisages a war between India and an AmericanPakistani alliance. It would be an understatement to say that it assumes American malice toward
India. Like many Indian commentators, Padmanabhan sees the Bush administration‘s preemption
doctrine and the invasion of Iraq as a direct threat to India, and envisages an alliance between
India, Russia, Iran, and Vietnam to counter that threat. Padmanabhan‘s fictional scenario
climaxes in a successful Indian cyberattack that cripples American government and commerce.
On the way to bringing America to her knees, India finally becomes a permanent member of the
UN Security Council, thanks to her Russian and Chinese friends.
_____________
Just as many influential Pakistanis believe that the U.S. and NATO war against the Taliban in
Afghanistan is linked to an Indian plot to deprive Pakistan of ―strategic depth,‖ many Indian
policymakers assume that there are sinister anti-Indian motives at work in America‘s relationship
with Pakistan.
India misconstrues the motivations for confusing U.S. policies in South Asia: there is probably
no one in the U.S. foreign-policy establishment to whom it has even occurred that America
should conspire to frustrate India‘s rise to regional power. Nevertheless, the United States
consistently provokes Indian mistrust by its contradictory and self-defeating policies toward
Pakistan.
India is right to note, for instance, that the F-16 fighter jets sold to Pakistan at subsidized rates
under the rubric of anti-Taliban and anti-terrorist assistance are really only useful as a defense
against the Indian Air Force. The sale was a wasteful and destructive gesture that made a
mockery of the pressure Washington was supposedly trying to apply on Islamabad to get serious
about the Taliban resurgence. Worse, it critically undermined the position of those Indian
opinion-leaders who have been pushing hard for a closer relationship with the United States.
American officials have consistently underestimated the amount of suspicion (the great Indian
vice, according to E.M. Forster) their words and actions inspire in New Delhi, just as they have
naively underestimated the duplicity of America‘s supposed allies in Islamabad. If the United
States is to build an effective working relationship with India‘s diplomatic and security
establishment—an achievement that might make Pakistan a more rather than less pliable ―friend‖
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in the battle against jihadist terrorism and the Taliban—it will have to learn how to assuage that
suspiciousness and sensitivity to apparent slights. India has had its day of reckoning, and its
awakening to the terrorist threat may soon put sobering new pressure on the United States to
choose sides between the devil it knows in Pakistan and the chaotic, paranoid, vital, vibrant India
that is its natural ally.
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Russia/Europe
Open Letter to President Obama on Central Europe
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
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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
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
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
257
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
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?
NATO at 60
BY Rafael L. Bardaj
March 24, 2009 11:00 PM
The Weekly Standard
By definition, all of the international summits are a success and the next one in Strasburg-Kehl,
where the allies will celebrate the 60th anniversary of NATO, will be no different. The final
press release will most certainly reflect the collective satisfaction of the Alliance's achievements
in its first 60 years of existence and will offer best wishes for the members in the coming
decades.
In a way they are right: Doesn't everyone--even the French--want to be part of this western
defensive organization? NATO as an institution is not in danger. Its effectiveness and centrality,
however, are. The Alliance currently has three big problems that are going to determine the
organization's future. The first is an operational problem: Afghanistan. The allies went to that
country because many believed that Afghanistan was the good war as opposed to the bad one in
Iraq. Moreover, the large majority went there because they thought the American troops had
already defeated the Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists and, therefore, their mission was going to
focus on reconstruction and not security. No matter what anyone says, that was the spirit that led
NATO to take charge of ISAF in 2003. Precisely for that reason, only a few of the allies, and
countries that are not members of NATO like Australia, have been prepared to take on combat
missions. A couple of years ago, the joke on the ground was that the real meaning of ISAF was:
"I See Americans Fight". Today, the situation has not improved: Americans are the ones that are
going to try to change the delicate balance of forces that exists today in Afghanistan and which
threatens to become an embarrassment for NATO as a whole. The allies can only expect two
things there: defeat or victory. To achieve the latter, they have to be willing to take on a
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responsibility that they have been eluding for the last few years. NATO cannot, and should not,
be only the U.S. Marines.
Second, NATO has a serious political problem. There has been a loss of credibility with regard
to collective defense and the necessary solidarity among its members, and this has gotten worse
with its capitulation to Russia. The European allies' dependence on Russian energy supplies and
the United States' dependence on Moscow to stop unwanted situations, like the nuclearization of
Iran, has meant that NATO has in fact accepted the Kremlin's policy of imposing its own sphere
of influence on Eastern Europe. We have seen the invasion of Georgia and Moscow's repeated
meddling in Ukraine, the constant threats and bravado of its leaders, its neo-imperial vision and
its threats to return to the Cold War with military deployment in the Caribbean. Instead of acting
calmly, clearly avoiding provocation but with a firm hand, the allies have preferred to forget
their promises to Georgia and Ukraine. To keep Moscow happy they have applauded Obama's
decision, even though it was unilateral, to abandon the anti-missile shield on European soil.
Ronald Reagan embraced the Russians from a position of strength, and he brought the
communist regime to an end. The recent NATO Council of Ministers has continued its sessions
with Moscow in exchange for nothing. Germany, France, and Italy must be happy because they
stress having good relations with the Kremlin above all else, but the Baltic countries and the
Polish, Czechs and Hungarians cannot be pleased. If Russia gets its way without paying a price,
Georgia will not be the last to be trapped in its net. Deploying part of its infrastructures and
forces in the more eastern members of the Alliance would be enough to reinforce the feeling of
solidarity that is needed in any military alliance. They have a legitimate right to do so, and this
would allow the allies to hold talks with Moscow on a more equal basis.
Third, the Alliance has a serious strategic problem. NATO, the center of the world for four
decades, from its birth in 1949 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, has voluntarily stayed on
the sidelines of the world's main security issues in recent years. First, declining to accept a role in
line with its resources in the war against Islamic terrorism. Beyond activating article 5 of the
Treaty when the 9/11 attacks occurred, very little else has been done. The essence of antiterrorist
policies has been left in the hands of EU members. Nobody in Europe wanted to be branded a
militarist after condemning the belligerent George W. Bush. Iraq is also part of the strategic
problem. The Alliance was cut wide open when some countries wanted to use it as an antiAmerican platform. Its inability to get involved collectively or, even worse, to help Turkey when
it needed it, not only isolated the Alliance from the Middle East, but from its main driving force,
the United States. And from what we are seeing from the new Obama administration, its
Atlanticism seems to be just lip service since it does not count on its allies when making
decisions that affect them all. Finally, NATO has chosen not to face the strategic issue of our
time, Iran and its accelerated nuclear program. It has not wanted to join the movements to stop
the bomb from falling into the hands of the ayatollahs, nor has it prepared itself to ensure greater
protection and deterrence in case we have to deal with an atomic Iran in the near future. It could
have sent some ships to visit the Gulf or give support to American forces in the region. And it
should have accelerated the anti-ballistic missile defense projects. But it did neither. It is about
time the allies discuss among themselves what they want to do with Iran.
France is returning to NATO, ending 43 years of anomaly. The return is, however, less important
in operational and military terms, since France already participates in NATO operations just like
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the rest of the allies. An important step will be to end our French neighbor's constant struggle to
weaken American influence in Europe and put France in its place. NATO has suffered a great
deal in having to deal on a daily basis with two antagonistic views of what it should be and
should do. If the French return truly means ending that, it will be positive. If it is only a struggle
to scale the ladder of the allied structures, France may gain something by placing 800 officers
where they had none until now, but collectively NATO will gain very little. The Alliance
urgently needs one single strategic conception which gives meaning to what it is doing and
guides it with regard to what it should do. France can contribute to this, but, as always, the
indispensable power will be America. Without the United States, NATO is nothing. The
European allies should know this, and Barack Obama should learn this quickly.
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.
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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
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
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clumsily, due to administration concerns about a leak, on the 60th anniversary of the Soviet
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.
A Stab in the Back
Canceling the missile shield betrays our allies.
BY Jamie M. Fly
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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Latin America
Can Chavez Be Stopped?
BY Jaime Daremblum
February 17, 2009 11:00 PM
The Weekly Standard
VENEZUELAN DEMOCRACY SUFFERED another major blow this past weekend with the
abolition of term limits for elected officials. This will enable Venezuela's autocratic leader, Hugo
Chávez, to run for president indefinitely. It will allow him to consolidate his budding dictatorship
and further undermine the country's fragile democratic institutions. Chávez's current term ends in
2013, but he wants to serve as president for at least another decade, if not longer. "I am ready,
and if I am healthy, God willing, I will be with you until 2019, until 2021," he said in November
2008. Chávez had previously expressed a desire to remain president through 2030.
In December 2007, Venezuelan voters narrowly defeated a proposed constitutional amendment
that would have eliminated presidential term limits. This was a big embarrassment for Chávez.
But on February 15, 2009, more than 54 percent of Venezuelan voters endorsed an amendment
that scrapped term limits for all elected officials. Chávez touted the referendum as "a historic
victory."
It is historic--but not in a good way. The amendment represents a naked power grab by Chávez,
who is systematically dismantling the checks on his authority. Make no mistake: Venezuela is
fast becoming a Cuba-style police state. In September, Human Rights Watch released a lengthy
report on the Chávez presidency. It lamented that "the Chávez government has engaged in often
discriminatory policies that have undercut journalists' freedom of expression, workers' freedom
of association, and civil society's ability to promote human rights in Venezuela." On Saturday,
February 14, one day before the vote, a Spanish lawmaker and referendum observer named Luis
Herrero was expelled from Venezuela after calling Chávez "a dictator."
Chávez allies may point to the February 15 referendum as proof that Venezuelans support their
"revolutionary" agenda. It's true that a majority of voters backed the elimination of term limits
for elected officials. But we must remember the context. The February 15 vote took place in a
climate of extreme intimidation and widespread fear. On February 12, the Washington Post
editorialized that "Mr. Chávez's regime has mounted a propaganda and intimidation campaign of
a ferocity rarely seen in Latin America since the region returned to democracy 25 years ago. ProChávez rhetoric dominates the national airwaves, from which opposition voices have been
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almost entirely excluded. Pro-government thugs have targeted student demonstrations, the home
of an opposition journalist, and the Vatican's embassy, which gave shelter to one student leader."
As the Post indicated, Venezuela no longer enjoys a genuine free press. That made it very
difficult for opposition leaders and democracy activists to campaign against the amendment.
Their voices were drowned by a tidal wave of government agitprop. Shortly before Venezuelans
went to the polls, the Paris-based NGO Reporters Without Borders said that the referendum
campaign had "seen frequent assaults on the media." Meanwhile, Venezuelan police harassed
and detained student demonstrators and others trying to foment opposition to the amendment.
(On January 20, as the Associated Press reported, Venezuelan police "used tear gas, plastic
bullets, and a water cannon" to disperse a student rally in Caracas.)
It was only 14 months ago that Venezuelans rejected Chávez's bid to ditch presidential term
limits. Chávez announced the February 15 referendum shortly after Venezuela's regional
elections in November 2008. Why was he in such a hurry to hold another referendum? Probably
because he was nervous--nervous that Venezuela was on the verge of a painful economic crisis
that would erode his popularity and weaken his grip on power.
Over the past several months, plummeting oil prices have created serious problems for Petróleos
de Venezuela, the national oil company, which Chávez has horribly mismanaged. The fate of
Venezuela's economy is closely tied to the fate of its oil industry. In mid-January, the New York
Times reported that Venezuelan officials had "begun soliciting bids from some of the largest
Western oil companies," including Chevron and Royal Dutch/Shell. Former CIA Director
Michael Hayden has said that the massive decline in oil prices could mean "real trouble" for
Chávez. "His strategy has been to bet on high oil prices and that's not working anymore,"
economist José Guerra, a former Venezuelan central bank director, told Reuters this week.
Regardless of Chávez's bluster, Venezuela has not been immune to the global economic
slowdown. On January 16, Chávez said the government was seizing $12 billion (or 28 percent)
of the central bank's international reserves in order to weather the downturn. Venezuela has the
highest inflation rate in Latin America. The central bank reports that annual inflation reached
nearly 31 percent in 2008, and some analysts think the real number is much higher. The country
is suffering from severe shortages of basic food products. Corruption is pervasive. Violent crime
has surged. Caracas is now considered the murder capital of the world.
Though Chávez has been bolstered by his referendum victory, these problems aren't going away.
Venezuela's economic situation will only get worse in 2009, which means the government will
have less money to spend on Russian arms and less money to shower on leftist governments in
Latin America. If Venezuela experiences a full-blown economic meltdown, Chávez may suffer a
political meltdown, regardless of the February 15 referendum.
How should the United States respond to the rollback of Venezuelan democracy? While
Washington has limited influence over Venezuela's internal political affairs, the Obama
administration should work with Latin American democracies and launch a multilateral
diplomatic campaign to pressure the Chávez regime on human rights. It would be a mistake for
the U.S. government to lash out at Chávez by itself--that would only play into his hands and
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encourage his propaganda efforts. Instead, Washington should enlist countries south of the
border. Latin American democracies must show solidarity with the beleaguered democrats in
Venezuela. Governments and NGOs should also champion the cause of Venezuela's independent
journalists. Without real press freedom, the opposition will find it hard to sway domestic
opinion.
Unfortunately, the Venezuelan opposition remains fragmented. Indeed, ten years after Chávez
first took office, his opponents have yet to congeal into a unified, broad-based movement. The
emergence of such a movement may be critical to saving Venezuelan democracy. After Sunday's
vote, time is quickly running out.
The Colombian Miracle
How Alvaro Uribe with smart U.S. support turned the tide against drug lords and Marxist
guerrillas.
BY Max Boot and Richard Bennet
The Weekly Standard
December 14, 2009, Vol. 15, No. 13
Bogotá
"Colombia has been the most successful nation-building exercise by the United States in this
century."
U.S. ambassador William Brownfield's declaration--delivered in an office adorned,
incongruously given his Texas background, with a prominent Baltimore Orioles logo--becomes
no less impressive once you realize that by "this century" he is referring to a century that is less
than ten years old. This is the century, after all, of Afghanistan and Iraq--wars that have
consumed far more resources than the low-key commitment to Colombia involving no U.S.
combat troops. But Brownfield is being modest. The progress in Colombia, which this
professional diplomat has overseen not only in the past two years as ambassador but also in
previous stints at the State Department, has few rivals in the annals of 20th-century nationbuilding either.
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A decade ago Colombia was on its way to becoming a full-fledged narco-state. An article in
Foreign Affairs' July/August 2000 issue written by a former Colombian minister of defense,
Rafael Pardo, summarized his country's woes:
In the last 15 years, 200 bombs (half of them as large as the one used in Oklahoma City) have
blown up in Colombia's cities; an entire democratic leftist political party was eliminated by rightwing paramilitaries; 4 presidential candidates, 200 judges and investigators, and half the
Supreme Court's justices, 1,200 police officers, 151 journalists, and more than 300,000 ordinary
Colombians have been murdered.
Andrés Pastrana, president of Colombia from 1998 to 2002, revealed the weakness of the state
when in 1999 he formally ceded 42,000 square kilometers--an area the size of Switzerland--to
the control of the primary insurgent group, FARC (the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de
Colombia, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). A Marxist-Leninist group founded in
1964, FARC had become one of the most powerful guerrilla armies on the planet. And it seemed
to be on the verge of victory. The government in Bogotá controlled so little of its own territory
that people considered it unsafe to drive out of the capital. The insurgency was fueled by drug
production which made Colombia the world's largest producer of cocaine and one of the largest
producers of heroin.
The idea of militarily defeating the FARC, the drug lords, and the paramilitary groups seemed
farcical. Received opinion was that, as Pardo wrote, "the international community in general and
the United States in particular must understand that the Colombian government's conflict with
the guerrillas can be solved only through negotiations." The problem was, the guerrillas took the
government's attempts to negotiate from a posture of weakness as an incitement to step up their
attacks. Colombia seemed locked in a downward spiral.
The turnaround in the past decade is so dramatic as to be almost unbelievable. During a week
spent in Colombia recently as guests of U.S. Southern Command, we saw nary a hint of the
country that in 2000 was described by the Washington Post as being in the throes of a
"comprehensive social and political breakdown." Bogotá is bustling, with a frenetic night-life
playing out amid rows of chic bars and restaurants that would be at home in Manhattan. The
biggest danger we encountered--aside from overindulging in artery-clogging cuisine--was
chaotic traffic. Collisions aside, the fog-shrouded roads leading out of the city are so safe that
they are full of locals and tourists flocking to warm-weather getaways far from the chilly heights
of the capital. During a three-hour drive to the major Colombian military base at Tolemaida, the
only inconvenience we encountered was road construction, part of a massive campaign to
upgrade the country's infrastructure. There was no hint of what we might have seen a decade
ago: illegal rebel checkpoints manned by FARC fighters intent on extracting "taxes" or
kidnapping victims.
Those who might come to Colombia to experience the thrills of guerrilla war are likely to leave
disappointed. In the November issue of the Atlantic, William Powers recounts that he was in
search of a "bit of adrenaline" when he booked a flight to Bogotá, his "imagination awash with
stereotypes--drug lord Pablo -Escobar's Medellín cartel assassinating politicians, Marxist FARC
guerrillas kidnapping tourists." What he found was a capital and a country that "was a little too
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tranquila." His experience (and ours) confirms the validity of the new Colombian tourist slogan:
"The only risk is wanting to stay."
Don't get us wrong. FARC still exists and it's still dangerous, but it has been pushed back to a
few remote areas mainly near the borders with Ecuador and Venezuela, whose governments are
friendly to the Marxist rebels. Its strength is down from 18,000 fighters a decade ago to fewer
than 9,000 today. More and more of its cadres are deserting--3,027 last year, up from just 529 in
2002. Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was not uncommon to see 100 or more FARC
fighters attacking an army base or government building. Municipalities were overrun with
disturbing frequency, and even crack army units suffered military defeats. Today it is rare to see
even 10 fighters massing for a single attack, and their ability to carry out more spectacular raids
has been all but eliminated.
Last year was a particularly bad one for the group. At the beginning of March, Raul Reyes, one
of seven members of FARC's ruling secretariat, was killed in an attack by Colombian armed
forces on his base inside Ecuador. That same month, another member of the secretariat, Ivan
Rios, was killed by one of his own bodyguards, who cut off Rios's hand as proof of his deed so
that he could collect a $2 million reward. March ended with the death, apparently of natural
causes, of FARC's senior leader and co-founder, 80-year-old Manuel Marulanda. Less than two
months later, one of FARC's best-known and most ruthless commanders, "Karina" (Nelly Avila
Moreno), who led the forces in the vicinity of Medellín, surrendered. Her decision to stop
fighting is part of a trend: Since 2004, the number of veteran fighters--those with more than 10
years of experience in the group--leaving the battlefield has increased by a factor of 10.
The most spectacular event of 2008 occurred on July 2 when Colombian commandos disguised
as guerrillas wearing Che Guevara T-shirts descended in a Russian-built helicopter into a FARC
camp deep in the jungle. Pretending they were transferring hostages to another FARC facility,
they took off with 15 kidnapping victims including three American contractors and former
presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt. Operation Jaque, carried out without a shot fired, has
elevated the reputation of the Colombian armed forces to new heights.
The results of many such successful operations are visible in a series of metrics prominently
displayed in the U.S. embassy in Bogotá. Colombia used to be the world capital of kidnappings,
but the number of victims is down from 2,882 in 2002 to 376 in 2008. Terrorist acts in the same
period have fallen from 1,645 to 303. Homicides are also down dramatically: from 28,837 in
2002 to 13,632 in 2008, a 52 percent reduction. Three hundred fifty-nine Colombian soldiers and
police lost their lives in battle in 2008, down from 684 in 2002.
The statistics also chart progress in the closely related war on drugs. Between 2002 and 2008, the
total hectares of cocaine eradicated rose from 133,127 to 229,227; tons of cocaine seized rose
from 105.1 to 245.5; and the number of drug labs seized rose from 1,448 to 3,667. All statistics
on narcotics production are hard to gather and therefore suspect, but the latest indications are that
last year cocaine production in Colombia fell by 40 percent.
While the illicit economy was taking a severe hit, normal economic activity has been soaring.
Although Colombia's GDP grew by only 2.4 percent in 2008 as a result of the worldwide
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slowdown, it grew almost 8 percent in 2007, up from less than 2 percent in 2002. Unemployment
is still high at 11.1 percent, but considerably lower than in 2002 when it was 15.7 percent.
Analysts attribute most of that growth to a more secure environment which encourages
investment and discourages capital outflows. To put it another way, Colombians now think their
country has a future worth investing in.
What accounts for this dramatic turnaround? And what lessons might Colombia offer for other
countries, from Afghanistan to Mexico, now facing severe problems of their own with narcoticsfueled violence?
In hindsight it is apparent that the turnaround began in 2000, when the U.S. Congress approved
$1.3 billion in military aid as part of Plan Colombia, a comprehensive aid agreement worked out
between the administrations of Andrés Pastrana and Bill Clinton. The aid package--by now
nearing a cumulative $7 billion--ran into criticism initially from members of Congress worried
about the potential for U.S. forces' getting involved in a hopeless counterinsurgency. Vietnam
analogies flew fast and furious in Washington while the bill was debated. To assuage
congressional concerns, the number of U.S. military personnel allowed into Colombia at any one
time was strictly limited. (The original cap was 500, later raised to 800--more than proved
necessary.) In addition, Colombian personnel with a history of human-rights violations were
barred from U.S. training, and the focus of aid efforts was counternarcotics. Thus the United
States bought helicopters for Colombia's armed forces and trained Colombian troops but insisted
they be used against drug growers and traffickers, not against insurgents. The U.S. government
employed contractors (including three who were shot down in 2003 and released as part of
Operation Jaque) to spray herbicide on coca crops.
That narrow focus on the drug problem proved counterproductive. In Colombia, as elsewhere,
you cannot separate criminals from insurgents; the two types of lawbreakers are closely
connected. FARC in many ways has become as much about drug trafficking as about its
ostensible ideological objectives. Without eliminating the group's influence and establishing the
government's authority at ground level, it proved impossible to eliminate coca crops. Fields that
were sprayed could simply be replanted. "Flying over with sprayer aircraft will not solve
problems unless you have institutions of the state present to do follow-up," a U.S. diplomat in
Bogotá told us. That doesn't mean antidrug efforts are useless; only that they must be integrated
in a larger campaign plan.
The big breakthrough in Colombia came in 2002 with the election of Alvaro Uribe, a former
senator and mayor of Medellín who instituted a wide-ranging campaign against drug traffickers,
insurgents, and paramilitaries--all the groups threatening the authority of the state. That same
year, following the 9/11 attacks, Congress eased the restrictions on Plan Colombia, allowing
more U.S. forces into the country and allowing them to work not only against drug traffickers but
also against terrorist groups such as FARC.
Uribe's strategy was known as "Democratic Security." Its thrust is laid out in a document posted
on the website of the Colombian Ministry of National Defense, which says that under the
constitution the armed forces have a duty "to protect the life, honor, property, beliefs, and other
rights and freedoms of all persons resident within Colombia." The strategy notes that "without
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security there is no guarantee of the right to life and physical integrity, and without those rights,
there is no basis for the enjoying of other rights."
That may sound like political boilerplate, but in Colombia this pledge had serious repercussions.
It meant that the government would no longer be content to cede any of its territory to insurgents
and narcotics traffickers, and that from now on the Colombian security forces would work to
safeguard the rights of all the people--even campesinos (poor farmers), whose safety had never
been uppermost in the minds of the Bogotá elites. Colombia is a vast country, with more than a
million square kilometers of territory--as big as France, Spain, and Portugal combined. The state
has never had the ability to police and govern so large an area. Much as in America's Wild West,
warlords and thugs traditionally filled the vacuum. No longer. "The security of Colombian
citizens will be reestablished in accordance with the law, within a democratic framework, which
in its turn will become stronger as greater security is guaranteed," Uribe promised, and he has
been as good as his word.
U.S. aid helped behind the scenes. Ambassador Brownfield stresses that "one of the reasons
we've been successful is we haven't been claiming too much credit, ensuring that Colombians
were in the lead." That's fitting in a country like Colombia that has a long history of democracy
and had a functioning state even at the height of its insurgency. The situation is different in
countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan where the United States overthrew governments and had
to start from scratch in building new ones.
With a full-fledged partner in Bogotá, Washington has been able to confine its assistance to
offering those things that Uribe's government couldn't do for itself. It could not, for example,
afford to buy helicopters needed to penetrate the most remote jungle and mountain areas where
guerrillas and drug traffickers hide. So the United States helped provide more than 250 Black
Hawk, Huey, and Mi-17 helicopters. But Uribe was not a passive recipient of foreign largesse.
He levied extra taxes on Colombia's wealthiest citizens to pay for a substantial beefing up of the
security forces. Defense spending soared from $2 billion in 2000 to $5.5 billion today, enabling
the armed forces to grow from 153,000 personnel to 270,000 in a country of 45 million.
Within that total, there has been an emphasis on increasing the number of professional soldiers,
who make up the mobile striking forces of the Colombian military. The most capable of all are
the Special Operations Forces, which are trained by American Green Berets. We saw some of
their troops practicing assaults on buildings and insertions by parachute at Tolemaida, which the
American trainers call the Fort Benning of Colombia. Conscripts who are not as well trained or
equipped are relegated to service in territorial units providing security in their home areas. The
armed forces have become among the best in Latin America, and arguably the best jungle
fighters anywhere. They are so tactically proficient that their need for American assistance has
been reduced. At Tolemaida's air strip, for instance, we saw how the Colombians are developing
the capacity to repair their own helicopters to include the upkeep of ultra-sophisticated avionics
possessed by few other nations. The relationship with the United States, one American trainer
tells us, "is not a parental relationship--it's a relationship of partners." To give something back to
their American partners, the Colombians are preparing to deploy troops to Afghanistan.
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The police have also grown in size and effectiveness, their total increasing from 95,000 in 2000
to 136,000 today. Since 2002, the government has opened 168 new police stations and 146
substations, while increasing the capacity of the Colombian National Police, including its highly
capable commando team, the Junglas. Along with the expansion of the security forces there has
been an expansion and streamlining of the legal system. The time needed to process the average
criminal case has fallen by 80 percent, and the conviction rate has risen from 3 percent to 60
percent.
Colombia's success is not just a question of resources but of how they are employed. In the past
the government emphasized going after FARC's leaders and the source of its financing--coca
fields and labs. Such "enemy-centric" counterinsurgency strategies have failed time after time,
and Colombia was no exception. What worked here was the same strategy that has worked
recently in Iraq and can work in Afghanistan: a population-centric strategy that is based upon
providing round-the-clock security so that people feel safe from insurgent intimidation. That, in
turn, leads to the collection of better intelligence on the insurgents.
In the past, the Colombian armed forces would sweep through an area, staying only a few weeks.
When they left, the insurgents returned and eliminated anyone they deemed a collaborator. The
U.S. armed forces in Iraq made the same mistake between 2003 and 2007. Only with the "surge"
of 2007 did the U.S. troops concentrate on holding terrain and protecting the population. Uribe
instituted the same shift in Colombia, and he did so earlier. The police and army were now
committed to staying and garrisoning every area that they liberated. To borrow the parlance of
Iraq and Afghanistan, they moved from "clear" operations to "clear, hold, and build." Drugeradication operations have become more effective now that narco-traffickers cannot return to
areas that are effectively policed.
The progress of this campaign can be tracked on a map generated by the U.S. embassy showing
which parts of Colombia are fully or partly controlled by the government and which are
effectively controlled by nonstate actors. In 2000, almost the entire country is shaded orange
(partly controlled by the government) or red (controlled by nonstate actors). The only tiny swath
of green (fully controlled by the government) shows Bogotá itself, and even that may have been
an exaggeration. By 2008, most of the country is either green or orange; only a few tiny patches
of red remain.
Another way to show the same progress is by noting that in 2000, 199 of Colombia's
municipalities had elected mayors who were afraid to report to work. Today all 1,099
municipalities have resident mayors--and resident security forces. The government is pursuing a
coordinated program to further increase the level of its presence and services in the areas where
guerrillas have traditionally found safe haven--a "whole of government" approach that echoes
successful counterinsurgency practice from Malaya and Northern Ireland to Iraq.
As in those other conflicts, the Colombian security forces have not concentrated on killing
insurgents. They are determined to capture as many as possible and to spur the defection of still
others, because they know that live rebels have more intelligence and propaganda value than do
corpses. Uribe has strenuously emphasized respect for human rights. This is not only a moral
necessity but an operational one: If the army is no longer seen as a killing machine, peasants are
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more likely to cooperate and guerrillas are less likely to fight to the death. "We respect human
rights," one Colombian army colonel told us, "and that gives us legitimacy in the eyes of the
populace and the international community."
There are still some abuses. Recent headlines reported illegal wiretapping by the Colombian
intelligence service, the DAS, and the deaths of some innocent civilians who were designated
guerrillas ex post facto by the security forces in what has become known as the "false positives"
scandal. But there is no doubt that the human-rights record of the Colombian military has gotten
a lot better and that malefactors who are caught today are punished. No longer are the armed
forces associated with shadowy right-wing paramilitaries; those groups, 30,000 strong, agreed to
disband in 2003 when it became clear that the military would take on the task of protecting the
population. Corruption remains a problem (as it does in the United States, for that matter), but it
has been greatly reduced. Once thought to be a crippling woe, it no longer stands in the way of
progress.
One of Uribe's signature initiatives is known by its acronym, PAHD (Programa de Atención
Humanitaria al Desmovilizado, Program for Humanitarian Care for the Demobilized
Combatant). This offers rebels the possibility of amnesty or reduced sentences if they surrender,
provided they have not committed "massacres" or other "crimes against humanity." Run-of-themill FARC fighters and even leaders can receive free medical care and mental treatment,
housing, and clothing, along with educational and vocational opportunities, to help them
reintegrate into society after years living in the jungle. Since 2002, more than 20,000 former
fighters have entered the program.
We met two of them--a slight, shy, dark-haired woman and her boyfriend, a short man with a
wispy mustache and slight pompadour wearing a black down vest over blue jeans. They told us
their names are Dario and Nativity, and they left the FARC in September. Dario is not yet 30, but
he is already a hardened veteran of 16 years of fighting. Starting as a 13-year-old recruit in 1993,
this third-grade dropout had risen to deputy head of the Abelardo Romero Front, one of the
FARC's basic units of organization, with more than 60 well-armed guerrillas under his
command. Along the way he had met Nativity, who was just 16 when she dropped out of school
in 2005 and ran away to a FARC base in the jungle to be with Dario.
Dario told us that life was good for FARC until 2002--the year that Uribe came to power and that
marked the end of FARC's sanctuary in the Zona de Despeje (demilitarized zone). He said that
the governmental "blockade" made it difficult for the guerrillas to obtain food, clothing,
medications, and weapons. They had to undergo food rationing and stay constantly on the move
to avoid detection. "We spent no more than two days in one camp," Dario said, adding that they
did not have enough time to plan offensive operations.
FARC keeps a strict eye on members to prevent defections under such trying conditions. Anyone
whose loyalty is suspect is court-martialed by a revolutionary tribunal and usually sentenced to
death. But Dario, like many other guerrillas, owned a small radio to which he was able to listen
clandestinely and thereby learn of the government's rewards for "demobilizers." While on an
intelligence-collection mission in civilian clothes, he sent away the other members of his unit on
various errands, enabling Nativity and him to walk into a military base. Now, he told us, "I just
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want to recoup my lost life." Nativity is pregnant, and he is looking forward to working in
construction and becoming a "family man."
Many more would join Dario in defecting were it not for the intimidation practiced by the FARC
leadership and the support they receive from outside sources. "We can annihilate them while
they are in our country," one National Police officer told us. "Unfortunately they seek refuge in
other countries." FARC has found a particularly important sanctuary in Venezuela, where Hugo
Chávez offers them not only bases and contacts with the outside world but also medical care,
arms, intelligence, money, and other support. The Colombian armed forces are especially
worried that, through Chávez's good graces, FARC may be acquiring portable antiaircraft
missiles that could negate their helicopters.
One government minister we spoke with in Bogotá asked us to imagine what would have
happened in Northern Ireland in the late 1990s if the IRA, after years of setbacks, had suddenly
received a lifeline from Dublin. That did not happen, of course, and the result was the 1998 Good
Friday Agreement which led to the demobilization of the IRA. No such peace accord is likely in
Colombia, the -minister -suggested, until Venezuela ends its support for FARC. That, in turn,
will probably require a change of regime in Venezuela or at least more outside pressure on
Chávez.
There is considerable cause to doubt whether President Obama--last seen exchanging a smile and
a handshake with Chávez at a Latin American summit in April--will be willing or able to apply
any such pressure. Colombia was a major priority for President Bush who enjoyed a close
relationship with Alvaro Uribe. No such warmth is evident from Obama, who has opposed the
U.S.-Colombia free trade accord, signed in 2006 but still unratified by the Senate amid labor
union opposition.
The good news is that Colombia's progress is so far advanced that even a lessening of American
support probably would not unravel what has been achieved. The key variable now, one
Colombian official told us, is: "How quickly can we move to occupy space and consolidate
territorial control?" That is the task confronting whoever wins Colombia's presidential election
next year. Uribe has taken steps toward running for an unprecedented third term, which would
require amending the constitution. But even if he decides not to run, the odds are that whoever
wins will continue the policies responsible for what should be known as the Colombian Miracle.
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Cuban Hopes
The people find their voice — but will the world help the Castros silence it?
OTTO J. REICH & ORLANDO GUTIERREZ
National Review
In the 1980s, most American foreign-policy experts and intelligence analysts failed to see the
internal changes taking place in the Soviet bloc as serious challenges to the regimes. Could
history be repeating itself closer to home, this time in Cuba?
After 50 years of living under the most repressive dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere, the
Cuban people are losing their fear and beginning to push off the Communist boot from their
collective neck. Paradoxically, this is happening as a dark cloud of authoritarian populism
spreads throughout Latin America, financed by Hugo Chávez‘s petrodollars, undergirded by
Castro‘s intelligence and security infrastructure, and propelled by years of incompetence and
selfishness on the part of political elites. Democratic change in Cuba, long deemed an
impossibility, could turn the tide and usher forth a rebirth of freedom in the region.
An uncommon sound was heard throughout three Cuban cities in early May of this year: pots and
pans being banged in protest over political and economic conditions on the island. The protest
was as unusual as the way in which it was organized: An incipient movement of young bloggers
used their limited access to the Internet — the Cuban government severely restricts access to
computers and the Web — to call on the population to carry out the protest.
A few weeks earlier, on March 29, at the annual Havana Arts Festival, some of these same
bloggers, together with young artists, had taken the stand during a presentation and proclaimed
an ―open podium‖ — calling on the hundreds of onlookers and participants to express
themselves freely. Many did, openly and courageously mocking government censorship.
These reports are unusual because any anti-government protests in Cuba have traditionally been
met with furious physical attacks by police and government-organized ―rapid-response brigades‖
of local goons armed with iron bars and other blunt instruments. In these recent cases, however,
the rapid-response brigades have not been effective: The citizens have responded with passive,
but consistent, resistance.
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At a government-sponsored concert a few weeks before the Havana Arts Festival, many youths
had openly protested the arrest of Gorki Aguila, leader of a punk-rock band known for its
obscene lyrics and no-holds-barred critique of the Castro regime. The Castros‘ gerontocratic
ruling clique is attempting to maintain total control over a nation whose population averages less
than half its age.
In the town of Placetas, in the central part of Cuba, lives 44-year-old Jorge Luis García Pérez,
also known as ―Antúnez,‖ a black Cuban who served 17 years in prison for calling for glasnost
and perestroika on the island. Antúnez has been called ―the Black Diamond‖ by his fellow
prisoners, for his tough resistance to the dictatorship and in reference to the color of his skin. He
has organized meetings, marches, fasts, and vigils in a crusade to mobilize a nonviolent civic
movement for change, and he recently went on a hunger strike to draw international attention to
the plight of Cubans.
Antúnez has reasons to be hopeful. The Castro regime itself has recognized that it cannot
extinguish what it calls ―indisciplina laboral,‖ or rampant worker non-cooperation with the
regime‘s command-and-control apparatus. What‘s more, after a grassroots campaign by activists
throughout the island, more than 1.5 million Cubans of voting age refused to cooperate with the
sham one-party, one-candidate ―elections‖ organized by the government in January 2008 in order
to ―legitimize‖ the passing of presidential power from Fidel Castro to his younger (by almost
five years) brother, Raúl. Never before had Cubans in such large numbers dared to defy the
rigidly enforced order to vote. For the first time in half a century — because of this innovative
campaign, carried out with fasts, public protests, workshops, Internet postings, leafleting, and
programs on short-wave radio — citizens were galvanized into rejecting sham elections.
Since the March 18, 2003, crackdown that landed 75 civic activists and leaders in prison, the
resistance movement has developed innovative ways of expanding the struggle for freedom,
including the founding of groups such as the Rosa Parks Women‘s Movement for Civil Rights,
underground independent newsletters, and even citizen committees against police abuse. The
movement grows, fueled by increasingly open popular discontent.
A number of U.S. congressmen and foreign governments are pressuring the Obama
administration to accelerate U.S. diplomatic approaches to Cuba regardless of the action — or
inaction — of the dictatorship. The result of following this misguided suggestion would be to
undermine the growing dissident movement on the island and delay the day when democracy and
freedom can return. The resilient civic resistance movement that has flowered in Cuba presents a
constant challenge to a once all-powerful totalitarian regime. Unarmed but persistent, these
nonviolent resisters represent a positive alternative future for Cuba.
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Nor is frustration with the current government limited to the young and anonymous. In March,
some of the most powerful people in the government — including Carlos Lage, a key economic
official, and Felipe Pérez Roque, the foreign minister — were summarily removed from their
posts. Their future is being debated at the highest levels, including within the Politburo, the
Communist party‘s policy-making body, from which they were also expelled. Their crime:
having been secretly tape-recorded mocking Raúl and Fidel Castro‘s incompetence (and, in the
case of Fidel, incontinence), as well as the advanced age of the ruling clique. Furthermore, they
could be heard hoping for the day when a younger generation could rule. The political
significance of the demotion of formerly trusted, high-ranking leaders of the next generation of
the island‘s rulers must not be underestimated.
A dialogue with the Castro government that ignored the growing dissidence and despair at all
levels of Cuba would be as counterproductive as would have been ignoring Lech Walesa in
1980s Poland and addressing only General Jaruzelski. The U.S. should instead draw attention to
the courageous Cuban resistance and insist that nations that engage Castro not turn their backs on
these freedom fighters. In this decade, too many European embassies in Havana (most of them
from ―Old Europe‖) have, under pressure from the Castro regime, stopped even inviting
dissidents to diplomatic functions. Fortunately, the Eastern European states have not followed
suit, since they remember what it is like to live under a Communist dictatorship, and how
important it is for dissidents to know they have friends on the outside.
It is said that ―generals are always ready to fight the last war,‖ because they fail to recognize the
changes that follow it. The same may be said about diplomats and politicians who are calling for
commercial and diplomatic engagement with Castro‘s Cuba. They are ready to talk to a
government that does not represent the future of Cuba — or even its present.
But perhaps they cannot be blamed. After all, when was the last time that the U.S. or
international mainstream media reported the events described above?
Mr. Reich served three U.S. presidents in the State Department and White House. He
heads Otto Reich Associates, an international consulting firm in Washington, D.C. Mr.
Gutierrez is national secretary of the Directorio Democratico Cubano, which supports
efforts of the Cuban civil resistance.
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The Shores of Port-au-Prince
The U.S. military's Haiti mission.
BY Thomas Donnelly & William Kristol
January 25, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 18
The Weekly Standard
President Obama‘s response to the Haitian earthquake has been sure-minded and swift. He saw
the situation as ―one of those moments that calls out for American leadership‖ and has acted
accordingly.
We support the president without reservation. The moral case is self-evident; our hemisphere‘s
poorest people have been visited with a disaster of epochal proportions, and we are in the
position to offer them the greatest help. But the strategic case is also compelling. Haiti is our
very near neighbor, with which we have long cultural and political connections. With a transition
looming in Cuba and challenges in Central America from Venezuela among others, there is a
political reason to be—and to be seen to be—a good and strong neighbor.
The earthquake struck at a particularly delicate moment for Haiti‘s internal security and political
development. From the days of François ―Papa Doc‖ Duvalier‘s ―Tonton Macoutes,‖ armed and
violent gangs have been a principal source of power in Haiti. In recent years, the most notorious
has been the Chimères—strong supporters of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Press
accounts from Port-au-Prince make it clear that, amidst the devastation and the chaos, with the
main prison collapsed and 1,000 inmates escaped, the machetes have come out again.
The earthquake devastated the Haitian police and the leadership of the U.N. mission in Haiti.
Since Aristide‘s ouster in 2004, the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti, as many as 7,000 troops,
has been conducting a painstaking counterinsurgency-like campaign to suppress the gangs.
Aristide is clearly looking to exploit the new situation from his exile in South Africa. In
Johannesburg last week he held a press conference to announce that he ―cannot wait to be with
our sisters and brothers in Haiti.‖
Thus President Obama‘s decision to include the 2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne and the 3rd
Battalion, 2nd Marines among the 8,000 troops that will arrive in Haiti by the weekend is both
tactically and strategically sound. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
has indicated that the total U.S. military presence in the region could soon climb above 10,000
for what is both a humanitarian relief mission and an armed stabilization mission to prevent the
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renewal of a violent struggle for power in Haiti.
Securing the conditions for any effort at larger-scale reconstruction is going to take a long time
and considerable American involvement. President Obama is rightly committing us to this effort.
But there is a danger in the president‘s detailing his ―national security team‖ to make Haiti ―a top
priority for their department and agencies right now.‖ The State and Defense departments have
got a lot of other priorities that should not be shortchanged. And given our repeated shortchanging of the military in the last two decades, meeting our responsibilities in Haiti and
everywhere else won‘t be easy. A brigade of airborne troops and a battalion of Marines for Haiti
may not seem like much. But the Army and the Marine Corps are so much smaller than they
should be that the mechanism of ―force generation‖ for various theaters is a brittle, just-in-time
thing, sorely tested by the constant deployments since 9/11. President Obama‘s timetable for a
rapid Afghanistan surge was already doubtful; Haiti will make it even more difficult.
And a successful Haiti mission will obviously demand much more than a healthy infantry
contingent. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson will provide, essentially, an extra airport for
Port-au-Prince. The USNS Comfort will be the largest and most advanced medical facility in
Haiti. The U.S. military will bring a varied set of engineering capabilities to rebuild the port and
clear streets. The Vinson and the large-deck Marine amphibious ship USS Bataan will be stocked
with fleets of helicopters to ferry the needed water, medicines, shelter, and food to suffering
Haitians. The U.S. Air Force, already running the Haitian air traffic control system, will deploy
waves of cargo aircraft and, even more critically, the cargo-handling expertise and equipment
needed to get supplies unloaded and airplanes off the overcrowded tarmac.
It is therefore no small irony—and no small problem—that in two weeks‘ time, the
administration will be unveiling a defense review, a long-term defense plan, and a 2010 defense
budget that will accept a further decline in U.S. military capabilities. Apparently two aircraft
carriers are to be mothballed. The four-year defense review will describe a plan to ―balance
risk,‖ as though international politics were a stock portfolio to be carefully managed, and
security commitments subject to periodic divestments.
President Obama‘s response to the Haitian catastrophe has had a galvanizing effect. But that is
largely because of the incredible capacity of the U.S. military to give substance to words. More
than just ―hard power‖ or ―soft power‖ or ―smart power,‖ our military capabilities are the tools
of action. It‘s good to have them. It would be better to have enough of them, now and in the
future.
—Thomas Donnelly & William Kristol
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Democracy Wins in Honduras
BY Jaime Daremblum
November 5, 2009 11:00 PM
The Weekly Standard
The four-month Honduran political crisis appears to be over. Last week, Honduran officials
signed an agreement to establish a provisional "unity" government and allow the Honduran
Congress to determine the fate of Manuel Zelaya, who was removed as president in late June for
constitutional violations. At first, some media outlets reported that the deal would automatically
restore Zelaya as president, but that was inaccurate. Zelaya could be restored--but Honduran
legislators will make the final call. The United States, which helped broker the accord, agreed to
end sanctions against Honduras and recognize the legitimacy of its November 29 elections.
This represents a major triumph for Honduran democracy. The Obama administration had
previously argued that the termination of U.S. sanctions and the acceptance of this month's
Honduran elections were both contingent on Zelaya's reinstatement as president. At some point,
the administration decided that Honduras should be permitted to make its own decision about the
Hugo Chávez acolyte. If the Obama administration still believed that Zelaya's removal was an
illegal "military coup" and an assault on democracy, it would not have endorsed an agreement
that lets the Honduran Congress reject Zelaya's return to the presidency.
Zelaya, not surprisingly, is confused. He thought, understandably enough, that the U.S.
government had taken his side. After the agreement was announced, he wrote a letter to the State
Department demanding to know "if the position condemning the coup d'etat has been changed or
modified." In all likelihood, the Honduran Congress will not reinstall him as president. An
adviser to Roberto Micheletti, who became interim Honduran president after Zelaya's ouster, told
Bloomberg News that "Zelaya won't be restored--I don't think so." But the agreement has
nonetheless boosted Honduras's diplomatic standing. "Just by signing this agreement," the
Micheletti adviser told Bloomberg, "we already have the recognition of the international
community for the elections."
Implementation of the agreement will be monitored by a "verification commission," whose
members will include U.S. labor secretary Hilda Solis and former Chilean president Ricardo
Lagos. Again, it is important to remember that nothing in the agreement stipulates Zelaya's
return as president. Honduran lawmakers will decide that issue themselves. They will base their
decision partly on the opinion of the Honduran Supreme Court, which ordered the military to
arrest Zelaya back in June. Even if Zelaya is restored, his term will end in January. A new
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president will be elected by the Honduran people on November 29 and inaugurated on January
27.
The Obama administration may have been persuaded to change its position on Honduras by a
Law Library of Congress study that analyzed the legal circumstances of Zelaya's ouster. The
study concluded that "the judicial and legislative branches applied constitutional and statutory
law in the case against President Zelaya in a manner that was judged by the Honduran authorities
from both branches of the government to be in accordance with the Honduran legal system." The
study also found that Zelaya's exile to Costa Rica was unconstitutional, but that has no bearing
on his legal entitlement to return as president.
The administration deserves credit for its reversal on Honduras, though it should have changed
course much sooner. There was no "coup" in Honduras; rather, the country's democratic
institutions exercised their legal authority to remove a president who had trampled the
constitution and used thuggish mob tactics as part of a blatant power grab. U.S. sanctions against
Honduras were never justified, nor did Honduras deserve to be suspended from the Organization
of American States. Zelaya should not have been deported, but his removal from office was
constitutional. Honduras never ceased being a civilian-led democracy. From the first minute it
took office, the Micheletti government had constitutional legitimacy, despite being labeled as a
"coup regime" by uninformed or ideologically biased critics.
Generally speaking, the U.S. media does not seem to appreciate the significance of what
Honduras has achieved. To review: A Chávez crony launched an illegal attack on democracy,
and his opponents used constitutional mechanisms to thwart his efforts. Honduran democracy
survived. Authoritarian tactics were defeated. Free elections will soon be held. The country won't
be transformed into another Venezuela.
All of this is worth celebrating.
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A Bad Neighbor Policy?
The Obama administration loses ground in Latin America.
BY Jaime Daremblum
December 21, 2009, Vol. 15, No. 14
The Weekly Standard
Given the challenges that President Obama faces in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, North
Korea, China, and elsewhere, the fact that he has thus far neglected Latin America is hardly
surprising or scandalous. Obama has committed several unforced errors in the Americas,
however, most notably in Honduras, and his relatively weak performance has raised concerns
about declining U.S. influence.
Obama's Latin America policy has evolved through four stages. During stage one, Obama
practiced what might be called Sally Field diplomacy ("You like me!"), marveling over his own
popularity in the region while trying to make nice with both friendly and adversarial
governments. The administration engaged Venezuela and stayed quiet as Hugo Chávez
continued demolishing its democratic institutions. In a May 24 editorial, the Washington Post
said of Obama's Venezuela policy, "This may be the first time that the United States has watched
the systematic destruction of a Latin American democracy in silence."
The president also pursued olive-branch diplomacy with the Cuban dictatorship. Prior to April's
Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, the White House announced a loosening of
U.S. sanctions against Cuba--and got nothing substantive in return. Addressing the summit,
Obama declared that his administration wanted "a new beginning with Cuba." He did not attempt
to refute Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega's vicious and hysterical attacks on U.S. foreign policy,
which had consumed nearly an hour of the summit's opening ceremony. Instead, Obama stressed
the need to move beyond "past disagreements" and "stale debates" in order "to build a fresh
partnership of the Americas," adding, "I'm grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for
things that happened when I was three months old" (a reference to the Bay of Pigs affair).
If Obama believed that his personal charm and assurances of good will would be sufficient to
sway Chávez and the Castro brothers, he was mistaken. Chávez remains as belligerent and
dangerous as ever--consolidating an authoritarian regime at home and fomenting instability
abroad. As for Cuba, a November 2009 Human Rights Watch report notes that the "machinery"
of government repression on the Communist island remains "firmly in place and fully active."
In the opening months of his administration, Obama missed a golden opportunity. He could
have--and should have--used his enormous popularity to expand U.S. leadership in the
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hemisphere. Instead, the president made clear that he would defer to the Organization of
American States (OAS) on regional disputes. Unfortunately, the OAS has been weakened by the
poor stewardship of Secretary-General José Miguel Insulza, the corrupting influence of Hugo
Chávez, and structural deficiencies that lead to operational paralysis. Insulza, a Chilean socialist,
has pursued a strongly ideological agenda driven by left-wing politics. Meanwhile, Chávez has
used economic assistance (namely, oil subsidies) to gain significant influence over the votes of
more than half the OAS member countries, including Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua,
Paraguay, and most Caribbean nations. As a result, the OAS, once the premier democratic forum
in the Western Hemisphere, has lost much of its moral credibility and grown increasingly
irrelevant.
The imprudence of Obama's deference to the OAS became more apparent during stage two of his
Latin America policy, which began after the June 28 arrest and exile of Honduran president
Manuel Zelaya, a Chávez crony and aspiring autocrat who had committed constitutional
violations as part of a failed power grab. The Obama administration immediately joined Insulza
and other regional officials in denouncing Zelaya's removal as an illegal military coup. As the
rhetoric escalated, Costa Rican president Oscar Arias stepped in to mediate between Zelaya and
the interim Honduran government. These negotiations failed to produce a resolution, mainly
because of Zelaya's intransigence and efforts to stoke a violent uprising.
When Honduran authorities did not restore Zelaya as president, the Obama administration
imposed sanctions on the Central American country and announced that U.S. recognition of the
November 29 Honduran elections was contingent on Zelaya's reinstatement as president. The
administration maintained that Zelaya's removal from office was a coup against democracy. But
in fact, as a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service concluded, "the judicial
and legislative branches applied constitutional and statutory law in the case against President
Zelaya in a manner that was judged by the Honduran authorities from both branches of the
government to be in accordance with the Honduran legal system." The release of these findings
made it difficult for the Obama administration to continue labeling the interim Honduran
government a "coup" regime.
Stage three of Obama's Latin America policy commenced in late October, when U.S. officials
helped finalize a deal that established a provisional "unity" government and allowed the
Honduran congress to determine Zelaya's fate. Regardless of whether Honduran legislators chose
to reinstall Zelaya, the United States agreed to accept the legitimacy of the November 29
elections. By shifting its stance on Honduras, the Obama administration signaled that it was
embracing a more pragmatic approach to the crisis, and perhaps to the entire region. However
belated the decision, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton deserve credit for
changing course.
The Honduran elections saw the conservative candidate, Porfirio Lobo, emerge victorious. The
United States and several other Latin American countries--including Colombia, Costa Rica,
Mexico, Panama, and Peru--have recognized his election as legitimate. But many other
governments--including the pro-Chávez regimes and, more significantly, the governments of
Brazil and Chile--have not. Shortly after the elections, Honduran legislators emphatically
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rejected the idea of returning Zelaya to the presidency to serve until Lobo's inauguration in late
January. The vote was 111 to 14.
Upon hearing news of the anti-Zelaya decision, Obama's newly appointed assistant secretary of
state for Western Hemisphere affairs, Arturo Valenzuela, told reporters, "We're disappointed by
this decision since the United States had hoped that Congress would have approved his return."
Unless Valenzuela was being disingenuous, his comment was inexplicable: After everything that
has transpired, how could Zelaya be allowed to return to the presidency? Furthermore, prior to
the 111-14 vote, Zelaya had said that he would refuse to be reinstated by the Honduran congress,
so as not to validate the "coup."
Valenzuela's confirmation as senior U.S. official for the Western Hemisphere marked the
beginning of stage four of Obama's Latin America policy. His confirmation had been delayed for
months by Republican senator Jim DeMint and some of his GOP colleagues who were incensed
over Obama's handling of the Honduran crisis. Valenzuela was finally confirmed by the Senate
on November 5. At this point, it is unclear whether his elevation (he replaced veteran diplomat
Tom Shannon, a Bush appointee) will have an appreciable impact on U.S. policy. Valenzuela's
comment on the anti-Zelaya vote was not encouraging.
President Obama deserves credit for changing his position on Honduras, for aiding Mexico's war
on the drug cartels, and for expanding military cooperation with Colombia. But he has not
succeeded in getting the Democratic congressional majority to approve pending free trade
agreements with Colombia and Panama. Moreover, his inattention to the region and assorted
policy missteps have weakened U.S. influence and created a dangerous leadership vacuum that is
being filled by Chávez and his allies, including Iran (which is collaborating with Venezuela on
the development of nuclear technology) and Russia (which in recent years has signed bilateral
arms deals with Venezuela worth more than $5 billion). If Obama really does want to construct
"a fresh partnership of the Americas," he shouldn't waste any more time.
Mexico’s Cartel Wars
In some ways, the nation’s rampant violence is a sign of progress
MARIO LOYOLA
National Review
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Archbishop Héctor González caused a mini-scandal in Mexico when he declared recently that
the country‘s most notorious drug baron, Joaquín ―El Chapo‖ (―The Kid‖) Guzmán, was living
right outside a small town in the archbishop‘s home state of Durango, and that ―everyone except
the authorities‖ knew it. No sooner had González apologized for what one commentator called
an irresponsible ―diffusion of gossip‖ than the bodies of two military-intelligence officers on an
undercover surveillance operation turned up right where the archbishop had indicated, riddled
with bullets from high-powered rifles. The bodies bore a characteristic warning: ―Neither
government nor priests will ever be able to take on El Chapo.‖
It‘s not an idle boast. Even the Pentagon has started to worry. Noting that Mexico‘s governing
institutions ―are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels,‖ one
recent Joint Forces Command study warned of the ―serious implications for homeland security‖
of ―any descent by Mexico into chaos.‖
Ironically, Mexico‘s struggle against the cartels is both a symptom and a symbol of the country‘s
increasingly successful march to modernity and affluence. After 15 years of steady growth,
Mexico‘s GDP per capita is now the highest in Latin America (and five times that of China),
while unemployment is the lowest in the OECD. Today‘s Mexico bears little resemblance to the
country I visited 20 years ago. Here in Mexico City, packed bars and restaurants abound, and
commerce seems frenetic. Cities such as Monterrey are brimming with industry, shopping malls,
and Wal-Marts. But in other parts of Mexico, where drug cartels battle for control of trafficking
routes and bases of operation, violence is rife, the streets are deserted, and entire police forces
have disintegrated. With official corruption still ubiquitous, Mexicans have little confidence in
their government, or in the rule of law.
Pres. Felipe Calderón has staked his legacy on changing that mentality — and we have a lot
riding on his success. To protect the gains of recent decades — and because they truly believe
that Mexico can achieve first-world status — Calderón and his predecessor, Vicente Fox, refused
to turn a blind eye to the drug trade, as prior governments had done. Fox began prosecuting
corrupt senior officials rather than merely pushing them out of their positions, and abandoned a
policy against extraditions to the United States. Calderón has gone further: From his first days in
office, he has made crushing the cartels and ridding the government of corruption the focus of
his administration.
The results have been bloody. As cartel leaders have been captured and killed, exceedingly
violent power struggles have ensued. According to Juan Zarate, Pres. George W. Bush‘s deputy
national-security adviser for counterterrorism, the cartels‘ battle for control of key trafficking
routes is terrorizing border cities like Tijuana and Juárez. There were nearly 6,000 drug-related
assassinations in Mexico last year, about double the prior year‘s number, heavily concentrated in
areas where cartels clash. The vast majority of the victims were cartel members, but perhaps 10
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percent were law-enforcement and government officials. As police forces are vetted and purged
of corrupt elements, the cartels are forced to switch from bribery to intimidation, murder, and
terrorism to keep them at bay.
Reducing drug use and even drug trafficking are, in a sense, secondary goals of Mexico‘s drug
war. The main goal is to break up the cartels themselves. The reason is simple: Their efficient
organization allows them to leverage firepower and money on a scale large enough to threaten
the state. But they have been hit hard by the government‘s offensive: Most of their founding
members are now dead or in prison, and in many cases, top-down leadership has disappeared
altogether, giving way to atomized, horizontal structures, fleeting alliances, and chronic
intramural conflict.
Most accounts put the number of Mexico‘s major drug cartels at five or six. Each is thought to be
based in a particular town or region, but they are present at production sources throughout Latin
America and have distribution networks across the U.S. market.
Part of what has made the cartels so dangerous is their progressive militarization. The best
example is the Gulf cartel, which, along with its paramilitary wing, the infamous Zetas, is
thought to be the best-armed and most dangerous in Mexico. Years ago, a senior Mexican army
officer disappeared and began recruiting Zetas from among Mexico‘s military. The Zetas have
developed the sort of platoon- and company-size tactical operations that one associates with fullblown insurgencies. They use these tactics to battle law-enforcement agents and army troops,
destroy rival cartels, and murder, kidnap, or intimidate citizens who oppose them, including
journalists.
A dizzying array of military firepower has been seized from this organization, including antitank rockets, rocket-propelled-grenade launchers, and hundreds of grenades and assault rifles.
But after two of its leaders were captured and extradited to the U.S. in rapid succession, the
cartel appeared to degenerate into a power struggle among perhaps eight different drug barons,
several of whom have been captured or killed. Meanwhile, attrition has sapped the Zetas of their
best-trained and most disciplined cadres.
At the same time, however, the cartels have managed, through a combination of intimidation and
corruption, to bring about the disintegration of entire law-enforcement agencies. The best
example is the Juárez cartel, based across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. Last year, after it
threatened to kill an officer every 48 hours until the police chief resigned, the Juárez police force
simply fell apart, and Calderón had to send in some 8,000 army soldiers to patrol the streets.
According to Juan Zarate, this has helped to break the cycle of corruption, but in many places the
city remains a virtual ghost town. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of vehicles continue to
cross back and forth between Juárez and El Paso every month, leading some in the U.S. to call
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for closing the border. But this is out of the question: Millions of jobs in both countries depend
on cross-border traffic, and the cartels would simply find another way to get in. Indeed, they are
already making increased use of the scores of illegal crossing points that have been identified by
the Drug Enforcement Administration, which is woefully understaffed at the border.
The worst-hit cartels have responded by diversifying their sources of revenue. In far northwest
Mexico, across the border from San Diego, the Tijuana cartel (whose travails were dramatized in
the Steven Soderbergh film Traffic) has delved into human trafficking, prostitution, and
brokering access to corrupt officials. As the territory it controls has shrunk to just the border
towns of Tijuana and Mexicali, and as several of its major figures have deserted to other cartels,
the resulting carnage has made Tijuana one of Mexico‘s most violent cities, with more than
1,200 assassinations last year. At least 300 families there have reported missing persons, and
many streets that once teemed with American tourists are now deserted.
One of the core competencies of the cartels is penetrating government institutions, both to secure
police protection and to conduct espionage (particularly to keep abreast of ongoing investigations
and planned operations). The organization of the Beltrán Leyva brothers — another major cartel
— is infamous in this respect; a member of President Calderón‘s bodyguard was recently
indicted on charges of spying for the brothers on a monthly retainer of $100,000. Widely
believed to have given El Chapo his start in the crime business, the brothers later reportedly
broke with him and displaced his cartel from the Pacific state of Sonora in what one Mexican
official described as a ―bloodbath.‖ According to a U.S. law-enforcement official in Mexico
City, this highlights one major result of the drug war: Cartel alliances are no longer rigid or
lasting, but rather transactional, dynamic, and often violent.
Another result of Mexico‘s war on the cartels resembles what happened to al-Qaeda after 9/11.
Having lost much of their senior leadership, the cartels have reduced their vertical integration,
adopting a more fluid horizontal model — a system of autonomous franchises that maintain
mutual isolation for greater protection. The cartel that has managed this transition most
effectively is the one widely seen to be Mexico‘s most powerful: the Sinaloa ―Federation‖ of
Joaquín ―El Chapo‖ Guzmán.
This cartel is based in the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa; in combination with a few nearby
affiliated organizations, chiefly the ―Family‖ of Michoacán, it is also referred to as the ―Pacific
cartel.‖ According to Mexican law-enforcement officials, the Sinaloa cartel has the most resilient
structure of any cartel in Mexico, and has managed to secure the best police and military
protection in its areas of operation, which run from northern Mexico to the Yucatán Peninsula
and Chiapas. It is present throughout the Western Hemisphere, from Argentina, Peru, and
Colombia to the U.S. and even Canada. Last February, a massive raid against the cartel by U.S.
law-enforcement agencies — dubbed ―Operation Xcellerator‖ — netted some 750 arrests of
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Sinaloa foot-soldiers in 26 states across America.
Despite the beating they have taken, Mexico‘s drug cartels remain entrenched, well armed, and
fantastically well financed. Last year, hundreds of millions of dollars were seized from the
cartels, more than the U.S. Congress appropriated for counter-narcotics efforts in Mexico. This
year, El Chapo made it onto Forbes‘s list of the world‘s richest people (in an absurd touch,
Forbes lists his industry as ―shipping‖).
The outcome of Calderón‘s fight against the cartels remains very much in doubt — at least in the
near term — and things could get much worse before they get better. According to one former
Bush-administration official, the cartels may soon be able to ―buy themselves an election‖ in
Mexico, bringing to power an anti-American government tolerant of their activities and friendly
to Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez.
On the other hand, the situation in Mexico today is not nearly as bad as the situation that faced
Colombia ten years ago, when, according to the former Bush official, ―the FARC was in a
position to march on Bogotá‖ and the country was on the verge of becoming a narco-state.
Presidential candidates were on the take and vulnerable to assassination, and they could be
kidnapped with impunity: Consider the case of Ingrid Betancourt, who was held captive for more
than six years in dense jungle. As Juan Zarate points out, the FARC controlled large swathes of
jungle territory, and that jungle is one main difference between Colombia and Mexico:
Impassable rainforest, which takes up about half the country, provided effective cover for
terrorists and other criminal organizations. But in Mexico, according to one U.S. lawenforcement official, the difficulty of accessing remote areas is mostly logistical. Not many parts
of the country are impassable, so a few advanced helicopters can make a big difference.
Helicopters have been the most high-profile element of the assistance the U.S. is providing to
Mexico under the Bush administration‘s Mérida Initiative, which President Obama has wisely
embraced. The program has been compared to Plan Colombia, which helped that nation survive
its years of civil turmoil, but a more apt comparison is to the ―partnership capacity building‖
efforts that have guided U.S. policy in the War on Terror. The basic idea of ―partnership capacity
building‖ (a term coined by Douglas Feith, the former under secretary of defense for policy) is to
ensure that partner governments are able to govern all of their sovereign territory. As we learned
on 9/11, transnational threats thrive in weakly governed or ungoverned areas.
The policy consists of helping nations where transnational terrorist and criminal networks are
present to build lawful and effective governance. Areas of assistance range from the military and
law enforcement to legislation and even budget administration. As the phrase ―partnership‖
implies, the U.S. seeks to build connections between its institutions and those of its partners. The
idea of the Mérida Initiative is not to put U.S. personnel on the ground — as happened in Plan
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Colombia — but rather to help Mexico become fully effective in our common struggle against
drug traffickers. According to one U.S. official in Mexico City, the Mérida Initiative has greatly
changed the character of cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico. And the cooperation goes
both ways: Mexican law-enforcement personnel are now sometimes embedded with U.S. agents
hunting drug traffickers in the southern U.S., to help the agents understand what they are looking
at.
But to be successful, such efforts require a steadfast commitment throughout the institutions of
the partner nation. And while Calderón‘s commitment is not in doubt, the scale of corruption in
Mexico leaves a great deal of doubt about the rest of his government. The large number of senior
officials under indictment for corruption and drug trafficking, including a former drug czar and a
former federal police chief, is both good news and bad news. The good news is that they are
being investigated, prosecuted, and punished; the bad news is that so many of them are corrupt in
the first place. But with vetting programs such as ―Operation Cleanup,‖ Calderón has made the
fight against corruption a centerpiece of his administration. A few weeks ago, ten mayors were
among dozens of officials arrested on drug-related charges in a single operation. Both the drug
barons and the government officials in their pockets are visibly losing their ―untouchable‖
mystique.
Another promising new effort is Plataforma México, an integrated law-enforcement network and
database that will provide real-time intelligence to local, state, and federal law enforcement.
Under the umbrella of the Mérida Initiative, the U.S. has furnished powerful computer servers,
and a variety of U.S. agencies are assisting the effort. Perhaps even more important in the long
run is a sweeping court reform that will replace Mexico‘s antiquated and corruption-prone
criminal-justice system with modern American-style criminal procedures.
The greatest challenges, however, remain local. While the national government is increasingly
modern and effective, state and municipal governments remain ensnared in a culture of
patronage that is resistant to reform and susceptible to corruption. In the southern state of
Chiapas, one young resident of the beautiful town of San Cristóbal tells me that during her few
years working in the town government, she was horrified at the extent of corruption — starting
with that of the mayor, who would routinely instruct her to sign dubious requests for project
funds from favored officials, even when it was clear that the project was merely a cover for graft.
Calderón wants public office to be seen as a public service, but in Mexico it is still all too often
seen as a lucrative asset.
The town of San Pedro — the Beverly Hills of Monterrey — is emerging as a leader in the effort
to forge modern municipal government. While visiting Monterrey, I had several opportunities to
meet with San Pedro‘s mayor, former senator Fernando Margáin, who was chairman of the
Mexican senate‘s foreign-relations committee during the presidency of Vicente Fox. He tells me
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that after the town‘s police chief was assassinated two years ago, local authorities visited the
U.S., as well as several countries in Europe and the Middle East, to survey law-enforcement
technologies and ―best practices.‖
Out of that effort came a modern ―C4‖ (command, control, communications, and computers)
center, which integrates images and communications from fixed surveillance cameras — as well
as cameras onboard new American-style police vehicles — in a heavily armored building that
can continue to function even if cut off from outside sources of electricity and water. Perhaps
more important, half the members of the police force were let go after vetting, and the remainder
were retrained while their wages were almost doubled — a policy that has also been used to
good effect in Iraq. New recruits have to go through extensive background checks and must
submit to routine lie-detector tests. Fernando Margáin reports that theft and other violent crime
has plummeted in San Pedro, though drug trafficking has not fallen quite as far.
But there is a long road ahead. After one San Pedro police officer was assassinated in a gangland
shooting, Margáin made a statement on television slamming the drug cartels as cowards and
killers of innocent people. As he was driving home a short while later, his cell phone rang. ―We
are not cowards,‖ the voice on the other end said. ―We don‘t kill women or children. Why don‘t
you just let us work?‖ Mexican drug traffickers are surprisingly touchy about their reputations:
Many view themselves as almost romantic figures, men of principle and property and even
philanthropic inclinations. The lavish and faintly grotesque mausoleums they provide for
themselves and their dearly departed receive visitors regularly, often daily. Like Pablo Escobar,
the Colombian drug lord who was killed in 1993, some drug barons are local heroes.
This may seem quaint, but it is one more way that the cartels pose a deadly threat to Mexican
society. As long as cartel members are respected, the state‘s grip on legitimacy is weakened. Iraq
and Afghanistan face similar problems, as did the United States itself in the days of the Wild
West. Today we romanticize the outlaws of Sam Peckinpah‘s The Wild Bunch, but it was a good
and necessary thing that modernity closed in on them and swept them from the land.
The day before I arrived in Mexico, 44 members of the upper echelon of the Michoacán
―Family‖ were arrested in church while attending a baptism. Once again, operational security
was preserved, the suspects had no warning, and not a shot was fired. The subsequent photo op
— which got the intended play on front pages across Mexico — seemed staged to deliver a
message: The suspects were lined up in handcuffs in front of an imposing police helicopter, as if
to symbolize the power of the state. Visible on the engine casing, just above their heads, was a
legend both mundane and unmistakably modern: ―To Protect and Serve the Community.‖
Reprinted by permission, Granted by: Katherine Connell, Date: February 25,
2010
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Africa
Pirates, Then and Now
How Piracy Was Defeated in the Past and Can Be Again
July/August 2009
Max Boot
Foreign Affairs
The world's attention was riveted in April 2009 when Somali pirates tried to seize the Maersk Alabama, a
U.S. cargo vessel delivering relief supplies to Africa. Although the crew was able to fight off the
intruders, the pirates seized the ship's skipper, Richard Phillips, and spent the next five days holding him
hostage in a lifeboat bobbing in the Gulf of Aden, until U.S. Navy SEAL snipers killed the three
remaining pirates and freed Phillips. There was a sigh of relief back in the United States, but it hardly
meant an end to the pirate menace. In fact, within two days of Phillips' rescue, pirates had seized four
more merchant ships and more hostages.
Piracy off the coast of East Africa is growing at an alarming rate, with 41 ships attacked in 2007,
122 in 2008, and 102 as of mid-May 2009. The more high-profile captures include a Saudi
supertanker full of oil and a Ukrainian freighter loaded with tanks and other weapons. An
estimated 19 ships and more than 300 crew members are still being held by pirates who are
awaiting ransom payments from ship owners or insurers. Such fees have been estimated to total
more than $100 million in recent years, making piracy one of the most lucrative industries and
pirates one of the biggest employers in Somalia, a country with a per capita GDP of $600.
Reported connections between the pirates and al Shabab -- "the youth," a Taliban-style group of
Islamist extremists with ties to al Qaeda -- make the situation even more worrisome,
notwithstanding some recent evidence of an Islamic backlash against the marauders in parts of
Somalia.
THE SWARMING SEAS
Piracy was once a far more serious problem than it is today. In a history of piracy published in
1907, Colonel John Biddulph, a retired British army officer, wrote of the early 1700s:
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From the moment of losing sight of the Lizard [the southernmost post in England] till the
day of casting anchor in the port of destination an East India ship was never safe from attack,
with the chance of slavery or a cruel death to crew and passengers in case of capture. From
Finisterre to Cape Verd[e] the Moorish pirates made the seas unsafe, sometimes venturing into
the mouth of the [English] channel to make a capture. Farther south, every watering-place on the
African coast was infested by the English and French pirates who had their headquarters in the
West Indies. From the Cape of Good Hope to the Head of the Persian Gulf, from Cape Comorin
to Sumatra, every coast was beset by English, French, Dutch, Danish, Portuguese, Arab, Malay
or other local pirates.
There was no peace on the ocean. The sea was a vast No Man's domain, where every man
might take his prey.
Biddulph was not exaggerating. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, pirate communities
flourished in and around the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Pirates were also prevalent in East
Asia, with the seas around the Malay archipelago -- modern-day Indonesia and Malaysia -infested for centuries by pirates such as the fierce Dyaks of Borneo and the Ilanun of the
Philippines. Koxinga, a Chinese pirate and anti-Manchu rebel, at one point led as many as
100,000 men, and in 1661 he seized Taiwan from the Dutch. In the early eighteenth century, a
confederation of 40,000 pirates based in Canton dominated the South China Sea, first under the
leadership of Cheng Yih and then, after his death in 1807, under that of his widow, Cheng Shi, a
former prostitute better known as Madam Cheng.
The North African corsair Barbarossa -- known as Khayr ad-Din in Arabic -- born to a Turkish
father and a Greek mother on the Aegean island of Lesbos, was even more successful. In the
early sixteenth century, he conquered Algiers and Tunis and, with the blessing of the Ottoman
emperor, turned them into bases for sea raiding, which they would remain for the next three
centuries. Although commonly called piracy, this activity was more properly known as
"privateering," the term for state-sanctioned piracy. Morocco and Tripoli, the other states along
the Barbary Coast, joined in this lucrative business, which involved hijacking ships from
Christian nations, selling their cargoes, and either ransoming the passengers and crew back to
their families or selling them into slavery.
In the early sixteenth century, Algiers alone was estimated to have a hundred sailing ships
manned by thousands of sailors all engaged in privateering. With such a formidable force at its
disposal, Algiers was able to hold 30,000 Christian captives (including, at one point, the Spanish
novelist Miguel de Cervantes). These Muslim corsairs were matched by Christian adversaries
from the Knights of St. John, who used bases first in Rhodes and then in Malta to plunder
Muslim ships around the Mediterranean. Europeans also took many Muslims as slaves;
Barbarossa's brother served for a time as a galley slave to the Knights of St. John.
Beginning in the 1690s, further south, not far from where today's Somali pirates lurk, the "Red
Sea men" attacked not only ships belonging to the British, Dutch, and French East India
Companies but also those belonging to wealthy Indians and other Asians. The ships targeted
were often full of gold, cash, and jewels -- booty so rich that it drew aspiring pirates from as far
away as New York. The most popular base for the freebooters was St. Mary's Island, off the
coast of Madagascar. The historian Jan Rogozinski has called the Red Sea men "the most
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successful criminals in human history." He estimates that a single ship seized in 1695 by the
Englishman Henry Every, "the King of Pirates," was worth at least $200 million in modern
currency.
The Caribbean Sea was not as lucrative a hunting ground for pirates, but it became better known
to posterity because of Charles Johnson's 1724 book, A General History of the Robberies and
Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates. More than any other source, A General History has
forged the popular stereotype of the peg-legged and eye-patch-wearing pirate that has been
mined over the years by artists from Robert Louis Stevenson to Johnny Depp. At their height in
the early eighteenth century, the Caribbean pirates employed 2,400 men aboard 25 to 30 ships,
many of which flew the Jolly Roger, with its infamous skull and crossbones. Other Caribbean
pirate flags had images of cutlasses or bleeding hearts -- all designed to terrify potential victims
into surrendering without a fight. The men who sailed under these outlaw emblems were based in
the Bahamas, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Tortuga, the Virgin Islands, and other islands. The most
successful captain, Bartholomew Roberts, or "Black Bart," was said to have looted 400 ships.
The better-known Edward Teach, or "Blackbeard," who operated from a base in North Carolina,
was a tyro by comparison.
Caribbean buccaneers not only raided ships but also looted Spanish settlements. In one of their
most daring operations, the Welsh privateer Sir Henry Morgan sacked the well-defended city of
Panama in 1671. Like the Somali pirates of today, Morgan preferred to attack large ships from
small boats, relying on shock to overpower the startled crews.
Morgan tried to stay on the right side of the law by obtaining sanction from the royal governor of
Jamaica, which was then a British colony. However, because Morgan's last commission was
signed after the conclusion of a peace treaty between England and Spain, he was arrested
following the Panama raid and sent back to London. He was not imprisoned, though; in fact, the
English government knighted him and returned him to Jamaica as lieutenant governor.
As Morgan's example makes clear, the first step needed in fighting piracy was to change official
attitudes toward it. For many years, nations such as England and France had looked on piracy as
either a minor nuisance, such as smuggling, or, when directed against their enemies, a potentially
useful tactic. Before countries began to develop standing navies, in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, the primary way to wage a war at sea was to hand out "letters of marque
and reprisal," authorizing privateers to attack enemy ships.
In the late sixteenth century, for example, a group of Dutch privateers known as the Sea Beggars
helped liberate the Netherlands from Spanish rule. The French privateer Jean Bart was so
effective in attacking Dutch shipping in the late seventeenth century that King Louis XIV
ennobled him and gave him a captain's commission in the French navy. In the sixteenth century,
English privateers such as Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Sir John Hawkins justified
their attacks on Spanish shipping vessels by claiming they were fighting for the Crown. In many
instances, their legal authority was dodgy. Their real protection came from sharing the rich
proceeds of their journeys with Queen Elizabeth and her officials, which bought them high-level
protection. In later years, countless lesser adventurers would emulate this strategy by greasing
the palms of colonial officials in such ports as New York City and Port Royal, Jamaica.
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But by the seventeenth century, when overseas trade became a primary source of the British
Empire's wealth, the state's attitude began to change. Piracy and privateering became less
tolerable to a nation that had much to lose from such attacks. Authorities began to remove
corrupt officials who were in cahoots with the brigands. Governor Nicholas Trott of the Bahamas
was deposed in 1696, followed the next year by Governor Benjamin Fletcher of New York.
Governments also began to hire privateers to root out pirates. Pirate hunters were tempted with
generous bounties and told that they could keep all or part of whatever loot they recovered. This
led to the capture of some outlaws, such as Blackbeard's associate Stede Bonnet, "the gentleman
pirate," who was taken in 1718 after a bloody fight with a privateer ship commissioned by the
governor of South Carolina. But some gamekeepers turned poachers. The most notorious "pirate
hunter" was William Kidd, who in 1695 received a royal warrant to police the Red Sea and the
Indian Ocean. Instead, Captain Kidd began seizing merchant ships for himself. He was
ultimately returned to England and hanged.
OF MASTS AND MEN
Harsh penalties that were swiftly and regularly enforced were, not surprisingly, of central
importance in suppressing robbery at sea. Pirates had long been regarded as hostes humani
generis, "common enemies of mankind." States going back to the days of the Roman Empire
reserved the right to capture and summarily execute pirates under what became known as "the
doctrine of universal jurisdiction." But in practice, few pirates were executed on the spot, at least
not in the modern age.
In the British Empire prior to 1700, pirates were dealt with by common-law courts, although not
very effectively. Pirates, like modern mafia dons, could often bribe, intimidate, or otherwise
suborn jurors in coastal towns, where many locals were connected to this illegal business. There
was also a special Admiralty court in London that could try pirates. But in order be convicted,
the pirates had to be transferred for trial to England along with all the necessary evidence and
witnesses -- a cumbersome procedure in the age of sail.
In order to speed up prosecutions, in 1700 Parliament set up Vice-Admiralty courts that could
convene abroad to try pirates. These courts were composed of seven "commissioners," who were
drawn from the ranks of naval officers and colonial officials rather than from ordinary judges or
jurors. Defendants were not given any legal representation. The historian Marcus Rediker
estimates that between 1716 and 1726 -- the so-called golden age of piracy -- 400 to 600 AngloAmerican pirates were executed under the terms of this system, or at least ten percent of all the
pirates active at the time. Many were left to dangle in port as a "spectacle for the warning of
others." Subsequent laws required the death penalty for those who cooperated with pirates and
six months imprisonment for those who failed to defend their ships against pirates.
British justice may have been harsh, but it was not inflexible. A pirate could get off, for example,
if he could convince the court that he had been coerced into a life of crime. Others were set free
during periodic amnesties designed to thin the ranks of the marauders. In order to get pirates to
give evidence against their accomplices, authorities relied on incentives, such as the possibility
of leniency, along with rewards for informants.
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Passing laws was a necessary step, but applying them was much harder, because pirates were
notoriously elusive. A sine qua non for effective enforcement was the expansion of the British
navy. In 1600, the British navy was virtually nonexistent, but by 1718, it had swelled to 124
ships, and by 1815, to 214. The lesser powers of the early nineteenth century had smaller but still
substantial fleets: France had 80 ships, Spain 25, and the United States 17. In theory, all these
ships could have been employed against hostes humani generis; in practice, other tasks, such as
fighting one another, usually took precedence.
But gradually, countries began to commit more naval power to policing sea-lanes. The Royal
Navy devoted only two ships to this task in the 1670s, but by 1700, it had 24 ships and 3,500
sailors stationed in strategically important outposts, such as Barbados, Cape Verde, Jamaica,
Virginia, and West Africa. The Royal Navy also cooperated with other Western forces -especially, in the years after the American Revolution, the U.S. Navy. After the War of 1812,
British and U.S. forces worked closely together to battle pirates from the Caribbean to the East
China Sea.
One of the more valuable tasks that naval forces could undertake was to convoy merchant ships.
The Spanish took great care to safeguard the fleets transporting treasure back from the New
World that sailed twice a year from the 1520s to the 1780s. Although a few were destroyed by
bad weather or enemy attack, the only Spanish treasure fleet ever captured in more than 250
years of voyages was taken in 1628 by a Dutch naval squadron, not pirates. But the Spanish navy
did not have enough warships to protect other Spanish merchant vessels, which became easy
prey for English and French privateers. In 1579, Drake seized a Spanish ship sailing from Lima
to Panama whose cargo was said to be worth $18 million in today's money.
Some merchant ships were armed, but usually they did not try to resist attacks from pirate ships
that had more cannons and more crew members. Most ship owners, then and now, have been
loath to spend what it takes to defend their ships because they know this will cut into their profit
margins -- and still not ward off determined attackers. In the end, the task of defense has been
left to navies.
As naval forces took a more active role in the pirate wars, there were inevitably some fierce
battles. Navy warships usually came out ahead in these confrontations because of the superior
discipline and skill of their crews. On April 29, 1700, for example, the H.M.S. Shoreham, a 28gun frigate, traded fire for ten hours with the 20-gun pirate vessel La Paix, crewed by French and
Dutch sailors, which had taken refuge in Lynnhaven Bay, Virginia, after capturing several
merchant ships. After killing many of the pirates onboard La Paix, the sailors on the Shoreham
forced the survivors to surrender.
Although Blackbeard and Black Bart were both killed in battles with the Royal Navy, most
pirates usually shied away from fights to the death. Instead, they preferred to hide ashore or in
shallow coastal waters, where large warships could not follow them. Rooting them out required
tactics such as those employed by the U.S. Navy in the Caribbean in the 1820s. The navy's
Mosquito Fleet was based in Key West, Florida, and included oared barges that would, in the
words of the fleet's commander, Captain David Porter, allow his men to pursue "freebooters and
murderers" into their "haunts . . . among the roaring of breakers and the scream of sea-birds."
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Porter's men scoured the inlets and lagoons around Cuba and Puerto Rico, two well-known pirate
enclaves. They managed to expel the outlaws but caused an international incident when they
came ashore in Spanish-held Puerto Rico to demand an apology at gunpoint for insults leveled
against one of their officers. Porter was court-martialed -- and it was precisely to avoid such
incidents that the United Kingdom, the United States, and other powers hesitated to pursue
pirates onto foreign shores. But doing so was essential if these marauders were to be caught.
Oftentimes, rooting out pirates meant risking not only an international incident but also full-scale
war. In its early days of independence, the United States paid large tributes to the Barbary States
in exchange for the safe passage of its ships. Under a treaty signed in 1795, Algiers alone
received more than $1 million in goods and cash, or one-sixth of the U.S. federal budget at the
time. But the Barbary States were never satisfied. Eventually, U.S. President Thomas Jefferson
decided that "nothing will stop the eternal increase of demands from these pirates but the
presence of an armed force." So in 1801, he sent a U.S. naval squadron to the Mediterranean to
wage war on Tripoli.
Over the next four years, the U.S. Navy and the Marine Corps blockaded and bombarded Tripoli,
engaged in numerous battles with Tripolitan ships, and even undertook an unsuccessful
campaign to overthrow Tripoli's ruler and install a more pro-American regime. The worst
disaster of the Barbary Wars was the capture of the U.S.S. Philadelphia in 1803; its luckless
captain was William Bainbridge, the namesake of the U.S. Navy destroyer that recently rescued
the Maersk Alabama. Following the dispatch of another U.S. naval squadron to the
Mediterranean in 1815, the Barbary States agreed to stop attacking American ships and
demanding tribute -- a concession they had previously made to Great Britain, France, and the
Netherlands after those states waged their own Barbary wars in the seventeenth century.
The threat from Barbary pirates lingered until European colonists began to occupy North Africa,
starting with the French conquest of Algeria in 1830. States realized that the surest way to create
peace at sea was to impose the rule of law on the land where pirates hid. That still holds true
today. Unfortunately, this has usually been a costly and difficult business, as the French learned
when they faced an insurgency in Algeria led by the guerrilla leader Abd al-Qadir from 1832 to
1847. Similarly, on the other side of the globe, the threat from Malay pirates was not suppressed
until the mid-nineteenth century, when the region fell under the sway of Europeans such as Sir
James Brooke, "the White Rajah of Sarawak."
SURF AND TURF
Countries took a dozen or so steps to safeguard the seas during the pirate wars that stretched
roughly from 1650 to 1850. These included changing public attitudes, hiring private pirate
hunters, rooting out corruption, improving the administration of justice, offering pardons to
pirates who voluntarily surrendered, increasing the number of naval ships dedicated to antipiracy
duty, cooperating with other nations, convoying merchant ships, blockading and bombarding
pirate ports, chasing pirates both at sea and on land, and, finally, occupying and dismantling
pirate lairs.
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What is striking and depressing about this list is how few of these measures are being
implemented today. This is a reflection of the fact that most countries are not taking the problem
of piracy all that seriously, notwithstanding some stern pronouncements from political leaders.
The existence of other priorities, such as fighting terrorism or preparing for conventional wars,
means that countries are reluctant to devote naval resources to combating piracy. Meanwhile,
shipping companies and their insurers are willing to pay ransoms that are said to average $1
million per ship because they know that the odds of one of their vessels being seized are slim -last year less than one-half of one percent of ships transiting the Horn of Africa were attacked,
and most of those attacks were not successful. Ship owners would rather take their chances than
arm crews or hire guards because they are afraid that this would only lead to an escalation of the
violence. Similar concerns once led airlines to tell crews not to resist hijackers. This approach
changed after 9/11, and one hopes it will not take a similar disaster at sea for ship owners to
reconsider their policies.
Left unchallenged, piracy is spiraling out of control, and now threatens the sea-lanes that
transport almost half the world's cargo, including one-third of Europe's oil supplies. In addition,
many of the proceeds from this modern-day piracy may wind up underwriting an extreme
Islamist movement. This collective inaction is another example of "the tragedy of the commons,"
in which decisions to pursue individual self-interest result in a public disaster -- not least for the
hundreds of sailors held hostage. To make ship owners and insurers take the problem more
seriously, the U.S. government could adopt a proposal such as the one made by the retired army
officer Ralph Peters, who suggested that any company that pays off pirates should be denied the
right to do business in the United States.
The United States and its allies should also increase the number of warships stationed off the
Horn of Africa. Naval forces from the United States and more than 20 other countries operate
under the aegis of Combined Task Force 151, currently commanded by a Turkish admiral. But
although there are as many as 30 warships in the region, most are devoted to antiterrorist
missions or other tasks, often leaving no more than 14 warships available for combating pirates.
This is a reflection of the shameful decline in the size of Western fleets: the Royal Navy is down
to fewer than 100 ships, the U.S. Navy, to fewer than 300, and both will continue to shrink based
on current trends. It is incumbent on the United Kingdom and the United States, which for
centuries have taken the lead in maritime enforcement, to buy more warships, especially small
vessels along the lines of the U.S. Navy's Littoral Combat Ship, which is designed to operate in
coastal waters.
In the meantime, these meager national forces could be supplemented by private security
companies that could patrol the seas with their own ships or station guards aboard merchant
ships -- an option suggested by Claude Berube, of the U.S. Naval Academy, in an article
provocatively entitled "Blackwaters for the Blue Waters." Reviving letters of marque is another
possible option that is authorized by the U.S. Constitution (Article 1, Section 8). But doing so
could cause considerably more problems, because it would be hard to control latter-day Captain
Kidds.
Regardless of however many additional warships are sent, it is important that they be allowed to
use more effective tactics than currently permitted by their political masters. Most of the naval
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ships now stationed off the Horn of Africa are not convoying merchant vessels, hunting down
pirate ships, or bombarding pirate lairs. Instead, all they are authorized to do is float around in an
attempt to deter pirates from striking and respond to distress calls when they do strike. These are
fools' errands when undertaken by a dozen or so ships scattered across an area four times the size
of Texas. The pirates are equipped with satellite phones and GPS devices and are sophisticated
enough to monitor naval movements and strike when and where patrollers are absent.
The problem is twofold: a lack of legal authority and a lack of will to enforce what authority
does exist. The UN Security Council has passed a series of Chapter 7 resolutions -- five last year
alone -- that authorize military forces to pursue pirates into Somalia's territorial waters and
ashore, if necessary. In theory, this gives the United States the right to carry out air strikes and
amphibious raids on pirate lairs and to sink pirate ships. But as of this writing, such strikes have
not happened -- after 18 U.S. soldiers were killed in a clash with Somali militiamen in 1993, U.S.
policymakers are reluctant to send troops back to the region. The only time President Barack
Obama has authorized the use of lethal force was when Captain Phillips' life was judged to be in
danger.
U.S. and other naval forces stationed off East Africa have not been given the kind of robust rules
of engagement that are used in war zones such as Iraq. There, at least until the implementation of
the new status-of-forces agreement signed in late 2008, U.S. troops could shoot armed enemy
combatants on sight when they felt threatened and detain those deemed a security risk, even if
there was not sufficient evidence to convict them of a crime. In contrast, there is not much a U.S.
Navy ship can do if it encounters a "fishing trawler" full of armed young men off the coast of
Somalia, because under current international rules, these likely pirates are treated as civilians, not
combatants, and there is no prohibition against sailors toting guns.
In fact, this very scenario has happened several times. To take only one example, according to
The New York Times, in September 2008, "a Danish warship captured 10 men suspected of being
pirates cruising around the Gulf of Aden with rocket-propelled grenades and a long ladder. But
after holding the suspects for nearly a week, the Danes concluded that they did not have
jurisdiction to prosecute, so they dumped the pirates on a beach, minus their guns."
As this incident indicates, naval forces are severely hindered by the lack of an effective
mechanism for dealing with captured pirates. Under legal doctrines dating back to the Roman
Empire, any state can try suspected pirates in its own court system, even if they did not attack its
own ships. But as Eugene Kontorovich, a law professor at Northwestern University, notes in an
upcoming article in the California Law Review, legal obstacles to effective prosecution have
emerged in recent years from "international humanitarian law, including the Geneva
Conventions, a variety of human rights treaties, international refugee law, the UN Convention on
the Law of the Sea, and other sources." The result is that Western nations no longer want to try
pirates themselves. In an extreme example of this kind of reticence, the British Foreign Office
has expressed concern that captured pirates might demand asylum or complain of having their
human rights violated.
As a stopgap, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States have entered into
agreements with Kenya -- which, in addition to being next to Somalia, is a functioning state with
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an interest in keeping shipping lanes open -- to turn over suspected pirates to Kenya's justice
system. Although this has resulted in some convictions, the Kenyan courts lack the resources to
deal with many more malefactors. Other suspected pirates, such as the ten men detained by the
Danish navy last year or the nine men seized by the U.S. Navy in February, are simply released
due to a lack of "ironclad" evidence. "Somali pirates to date have suffered few consequences,
even when they were apprehended," noted Rear Admiral William Baumgartner, of the U.S.
Coast Guard.
This question of how to try and process pirates is closely related to the problem of how to deal
with terrorists, another species of international outlaw. With the detention policies of former U.S.
President George W. Bush generating endless adverse publicity, neither the Obama
administration nor any other Western government is eager to hold suspected pirates or terrorists.
"No one wants a Guantánamo on the sea," the German defense minister, Franz Josef Jung, said
last year. But nor does anyone want to simply set predators loose to strike again. One option
would be to negotiate an international agreement that would allow the processing and detention
of pirates and terrorists through legal venues such as the International Criminal Court or a
specially created UN tribunal. Failing that, the United States and other states should use their
national courts to try pirates, much as a U.S. court in New York is now hearing the case of one of
the pirates who attacked the Maersk Alabama. Under laws that date back to the nineteenth
century, U.S. courts have the authority to try pirates even if they did not attack U.S. vessels.
The entire issue, at least as far as Somali pirates are concerned, could be made largely
superfluous if only Somalia had a responsible government capable of policing its own territory.
Given that country's long history of chaos, the only sure way to achieve this goal would be
through the imposition of an international regency similar to the UN administration in Kosovo.
But since U.S. and UN forces were chased ignominiously out of Mogadishu in the early 1990s,
there is scant chance they will be willing to return to Somalia and risk another fight.
The odds that Somali piracy will disappear without a robust response from maritime nations are
equally remote. Even if bringing law and order to Somalia is beyond the will of the international
community, it still should be possible to curb the pirate menace through military and legal
initiatives that stop short of actual occupation. All that is required is to apply the lessons of
history. If previous generations could defeat the Barbary corsairs, the Caribbean buccaneers, and
the Red Sea men, surely this generation can defeat the ragtag sea robbers of Somalia.
More than 20 countries, including China, France, India, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the
United States, have responded by sending naval forces to the waters off East Africa. But with an
average of only 14 warships focused on combating piracy in the region at any one time, they
have been unable to effectively police the more than one million square miles of ocean that is
transited by over 33,000 cargo vessels every year. It helps to look at previous plagues of piracy
and how they were defeated to understand why these efforts fall short and what type of tactics
might prove more effective.
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No Pain No Gain
BY Seth Cropsey
April 10, 2009 3:15 PM
The Weekly Standard
Barack Obama's good luck holds steady. When, for the first time in more than two centuries,
pirates seized an American-flagged ship on April 8th, the 20-man American crew recaptured
their ship hours later a few hundred miles east of the Somali coast. Although the captain
remained a hostage, the recapture of the Maersk Alabama, a 17,000 ton container ship with a
cargo of humanitarian assistance destined for Kenya, diminished potential public interest to a
single individual, just as Iran's jailing of a single American journalist in late January relieved the
new administration of having to address a crisis magnified by a large number of hostages. In the
short term, the narrowing of these incidents to a couple of American citizens buys the Obama
administration time as they search for solutions. The larger picture is more ominous.
The principles that are being tested in Iran and off the coast of Somalia hold no matter how many
Americans are wrongfully detained by hostile governments or international outlaws: the United
States is obliged to protect its innocent citizens. Failing to do so effectively invites more and
bigger trouble. A similar principle applies to Chinese naval vessels' harassing of the unarmed
U.S. Naval Survey ship, Impeccable, in international waters off Hainan island early in March.
The Obama administration made diplomatic remonstrances and sent a destroyer to the area. This
is not likely to have impressed China's leaders. The result is that there will be more such
incidents--and not only in international waters near China--that test American resolve.
The hijacking of the Alabama offers President Obama an exceptional opportunity to act
resolutely, justly, and effectively in reducing the likelihood of more attacks against American-and other--ships off the increasingly dangerous coast of east Africa, near one of the world's most
important oceanic choke points: the Strait of Bab al Mandeb where the Red Sea empties into the
Gulf of Aden. Some 20,000 vessels, most of them on their way to or from the Suez Canal or the
Straits of Hormuz, pass through the gulf each year.
The ocean area that has become the pirates' hunting ground is immense, between one and 2.5
million square miles. In land terms, this ranges between roughly twice the size of India, and--at
the lower end--an area about that of Argentina. NATO patrols the region with five ships besides
three frigates from the European Union. The U.S. Navy maintains a presence of between five and
10 vessels. Notwithstanding, Lt. Nathan Christensen, the spokesman for the U.S. Navy's Fifth
Fleet, noted that "we can't be everywhere at once," a remark that, while not aimed at the
Pentagon's coming budget battle, is particularly appropriate given the slow, unabated shrinkage
of the U.S. combat fleet. Lt. Christensen pointed out that the U.S. naval combatant nearest the
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Alabama when it was commandeered about 280 miles southeast of the Somalia pirate center,
Eyl, was approximately 330 miles away at the time of the attack.
The U.S. and its allies are not the only contributors to the western Indian Ocean anti-piracy
mission. China, India, Japan, and Russia as well as other nations have sent naval vessels to help
secure the area.
Diplomatic efforts have paralleled naval ones. The United Nations Security Council in December
2008 unanimously passed Resolution 1851 whose title page "authorizes states to use land-based
operations in Somalia." Subsequent language muddies this apparently tough grant of
international authority requiring such government authority as exists in the minimally functional
Somali state to notify the U.N. in advance of actual military operations. But since the resolution
neither addresses nor prohibits less red-tape-bound military means, these remain possible. The
same Security Council resolution directly supports international naval action to discourage
piracy off the Somali coast.
Still, Secretary of State Clinton seems uncomfortable. She told a news conference on 9 April that
"the administration is seeking a 21st century response" to piracy.
What could this mean? The basic requirements that senior Obama administration officials,
including the president, have set as a standard for conducting foreign policy are all in place. The
participation of many different navies off the Somali coast is diverse and multi-lateral. The U.N.
has authorized the use of force against the pirates. Solid reason exists for taking full advantage of
the careful work that preceded these measures: an attempt was made in international waters to
steal American property, and an assault was made on an American crew. The American captain
remains a hostage of the pirates.
Certainly, negotiations should continue for the captain's release and return. But, what then? Does
a "21st century" response mean that with the crew and ship safely returned, the case is dismissed
and we go about our business? This will guarantee more attacks on U.S.-flagged ships and
American merchant marine sailors.
It will add to the appearance that the new administration's idea of a "21st century" response is
one in which there are no consequences for those who violate international laws and customs in
crossing the United States.
There are plenty of other reasonable alternatives that would send a clear message. If the pirates
who seized the Alabama can be apprehended and transferred to a U.S. Navy ship, Title 18 of the
U.S. Code allows them to be brought to the U.S. and, if found guilty, imprisoned for life. A more
convincing approach would be to use the same unmanned aerial vehicles that have been
operational since U.S. involvement in Bosnia to target pirates in the centers where they are
known to congregate on land. Special operations missions could accomplish similar objectives,
albeit with less plausible deniability.
Punishing the guilty would do justice, increase respect for the Obama administration while
conforming to its standard of soliciting international approval, and decrease the likelihood of
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repeated attacks against Americans abroad. It might also provide the same benefit for mariners
aboard ships carrying the flags of other states who go about their business peacefully in the
region. This is more likely to increase respect for the administration abroad than ignoring direct
challenges to the U.S. and packaging such sideways glances as policy that befits the 21st century.
Least likely to produce positive tangible result are approaches that bypass the administration's
own foreign policy standard of multilateralism and UN sanction in pursuit of the additional and
dubious requirement that wrongdoers escape serious consequences for their action.
The destroyer that was sent to the aid of Alabama is the U.S.S. Bainbridge. The ship was named
for Captain William Bainbridge who served several tours in the American naval expeditions that
eventually used force successfully to end the Barbary pirates' threat to American merchant
shipping in the Mediterranean during the first two decades of the 1800s. Sometimes the 19th
century, including the statesmanship of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, is the most
appropriate model for U.S. policy.
How Tyranny Came to Zimbabwe
Jimmy Carter still has a lot to answer for.
BY James Kirchick
June 18, 2007, Vol. 12, No. 38
The Weekly Standard
In April 1979, 64 percent of the black citizens of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) lined up at the polls
to vote in the first democratic election in the history of that southern African nation. Two-thirds
of them supported Abel Muzorewa, a bishop in the United Methodist Church. He was the first
black prime minister of a country only 4 percent white. Muzorewa's victory put an end to the 14year political odyssey of outgoing prime minister Ian Smith, the stubborn World War II veteran
who had infamously announced in 1976, "I do not believe in black majority rule--not in a
thousand years." Fortunately for the country's blacks, majority rule came sooner than Smith had
in mind.
Less than a year after Muzorewa's victory, however, in February 1980, another election was held
in Zimbabwe. This time, Robert Mugabe, the Marxist who had fought a seven-year guerrilla war
against Rhodesia's white-led government, won 64 percent of the vote, after a campaign marked
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by widespread intimidation, outright violence, and Mugabe's threat to continue the civil war if he
lost. Mugabe became prime minister and was toasted by the international community and media
as a new sort of African leader. "I find that I am fascinated by his intelligence, by his dedication.
The only thing that frustrates me about Robert Mugabe is that he is so damned incorruptible,"
Andrew Young, Jimmy Carter's ambassador to the United Nations, had gushed to the Times of
London in 1978. The rest, as they say, is history.
That second election is widely known and cited: 1980 is the famous year Zimbabwe won its
independence from Great Britain and power was transferred from an obstinate white ruler to a
liberation hero. But the circumstances of the first election, and the story of the man who won it,
have been lost to the past. As the Mugabe regime--responsible for the torture and murder of
thousands, starvation, genocide, the world's highest inflation and lowest life expectancy--teeters
on the brink of disaster after 27 years of authoritarian rule, it is instructive to go back and
examine what happened in those crucial intervening months.
To understand the genesis of that oft-forgotten 1979 election, it is necessary to revisit Rhodesia's
Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965, when the British colony joined the United States
as the only territory in history to separate successfully from the British Empire without its
consent. Five years earlier, in a speech to the South African parliament, British prime minister
Harold Macmillan had warned that the "wind of change" was blowing through Africa. "Whether
we like it or not," Macmillan said, "this growth of national consciousness is a political fact."
Rhodesian whites would not stand for the British policy of "No Independence Before Majority
African Rule," however, and in 1964 they overwhelmingly elected Smith premier. When the
Rhodesian government reached an impasse with the British over conditions for autonomy, Smith,
widely supported by the country's whites, declared Rhodesia independent. And so, on November
11, 1965, the sun abruptly set on another outpost of the British Empire.
The move was immediately condemned as illegal ("an act of treason") by the British
government, the Commonwealth, and the United Nations. Independent Rhodesia was not
recognized by any country; even apartheid South Africa sent no ambassador to Salisbury, the
capital. Britain and the U.N. imposed economic sanctions, and many Rhodesians worried that an
oil embargo would cripple their landlocked country.
Over the next decade there followed a series of failed negotiations between the two sides. The
British demanded majority rule, but would consider at most a phased plan that would gradually
bring a black government to power. Smith, whose Rhodesian Front party was consistently
reelected, would have none of it. He spoke of Rhodesia's defense of "Western, Christian
civilization" and out-maneuvered a succession of British prime ministers, who all had to contend
with the embarrassing "Rhodesia problem." Somehow, this tenacious little former colony held
out against the world's once-great British Empire, busting sanctions, increasing white
immigration, and keeping domestic black political opposition at bay with a succession of
authoritarian laws that effectively banned political dissent.
Smith's obstinacy played a role in emboldening--and radicalizing--his enemies. The refusal of the
country's whites to accept black rule created the vacuum in which leaders like Robert Mugabe, of
the Chinese-backed Zimbabwean African National Union (ZANU), and Joshua Nkomo, of the
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Soviet-supported Zimbabwean African People's Union (ZAPU), emerged. In 1972, these two
organizations started a civil war, aiming to overthrow the white regime by force. ZANU and
ZAPU viewed Smith as a mortal enemy, but they were hardly more pleasant to each other, in
spite of forming an official alliance, the Patriotic Front, in 1976. With rival superpower backers
and different staging grounds (ZANU in Mozambique, ZAPU in Zambia), the two groups spent
about as much effort fighting for control of the revolutionary movement as they did against the
white regime. Both the white government and the guerrillas demonstrated remarkable
ruthlessness, and the seven-year Bush war would claim some 20,000 lives in a country of 7
million.
Moderates to the rescue
By 1977, it was clear that change was coming. Aided tremendously by the shuttle diplomacy of
Henry Kissinger during the Nixon and Ford administrations (Kissinger enticed the apartheid
government of South Africa with promises of greater international legitimacy if it would give the
boot to the friendly white regime on its northern border), Smith finally came to accept the
principle of majority rule, though with major conditions. He insisted that whites maintain control
of key government institutions like the army, civil service, and judiciary. He also required that
whites have a disproportionate number of seats in parliament so as to prevent any radical
constitutional changes. And Smith ruled out serious land reform.
Despite these vestiges of the old regime, Smith's acceptance of majority rule was momentous: It
opened the way for a peaceful transition. For years, Smith had tried to negotiate a settlement with
several black nationalist leaders who had renounced violence in their campaigns for nonracial
democracy. Primary among them was Muzorewa, a small, American-educated pastor who
avoided the internecine fighting that had characterized Zimbabwean resistance politics
throughout the 1960s. He was a forthright critic of the government's racial discrimination and
had supported civil disobedience and mass protest in the past. The United Nations had honored
him for Outstanding Achievement in Human Rights. "If religion just means to go to church and
pray, then it is a scandal. The gospel is concerned about where a man sleeps, what a man earns,
how he is treated by the government," he told congregants. The other black leaders with whom
Smith pledged to work were the Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole, a Methodist founder of ZANU who
had been imprisoned for 10 years for opposition activities--including an alleged assassination
attempt against Smith--but who had forsworn violence, and Chief Jeremiah Chirau, a tribal elder
who had long been amenable to white interests. Smith and his moderate black allies hoped that if
a multiracial government could be cobbled together, black African states would withdraw their
support for the guerrillas and make way for an anti-Communist black government.
Muzorewa and Sithole, contrary to the patronizing and ugly attacks that would soon come from
the Carter administration and the Western left, were not stooges (although Chirau, it should be
noted, was funded by the Rhodesian government and depended on it for his status as a
recognized tribal leader). Sithole had actually led the guerrilla fight against the white regime
until the power-hungry Mugabe deposed him. Muzorewa's speeches regularly drew crowds of
hundreds of thousands, and he was widely considered the most popular black political leader in
the country. He solidified his antigovernment bona fides when the Smith regime branded him a
Soviet lackey (as it did all its opponents) even though he was staunchly anti-Communist. These
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moderate black leaders were motivated, first and foremost, by a desire to end the bloodshed. By
contrast, Mugabe and Nkomo made it clear that their Patriotic Front would not give up the fight
and participate in elections unless they were assured of victory. In so doing, the guerrilla leaders
removed any doubt that they had no interest in democracy.
African politics, Carter-style
Into this picture stepped Andrew Young. Early in his tenure at the United Nations, Young, a
former mayor of Atlanta, displayed a naive, if not baleful, outlook on southern African affairs,
remarking that Cuban troops brought a "certain order and stability" to wartorn Angola. Young
had earlier called Smith a "monster" and likened him to Uganda's mass-murdering Idi Amin.
Nevertheless, Carter made Young his point man on Africa. According to Martin Meredith, a
former southern Africa correspondent for the Sunday Times of London, "Young was not,
perhaps, the best choice the Americans could have made" for negotiations in Rhodesia. "He had
a reputation for being recklessly outspoken on subjects about which he appeared to know little,
and Rhodesia was no exception." Time said some State Department careerists thought of Young
as an "unguided missile."
In September 1977, the Carter administration announced its "Anglo-American plan," drawn up in
conjunction with the Labour government of Prime Minister James Callaghan. The plan called for
British administration of Rhodesia backed up by a U.N. peacekeeping force, a constitution
ensuring universal adult suffrage, and majority rule by 1978. Majority rule was to be tempered,
however, by the reservation of 20 out of 100 parliamentary seats for whites. The proposal also
called for the incorporation of ZANU and ZAPU guerrilla units into the new country's army and,
more important, the participation of the two nationalist movements in the country's elections.
Smith, along with the moderate black leaders, opposed this plan because it would have led to a
military dominated by Mugabe and Nkomo's forces.
Instead, Smith came up with what he and his popularly supported black allies termed the
"internal settlement." In March 1978, they formed an executive council that would serve as a
transitional government until democratic elections were held the following year. This internal
settlement called for the promulgation of a new constitution establishing majority rule, but
maintaining 28 out of 100 seats in the new parliament for whites. This was not a perfect
proposal, but Muzorewa--no doubt expressing the desires of the country's justly impatient black
majority--declared that it created "the machinery for dismantling the structure and practices of
colonialism and racism and of minority rule." Muzorewa, Sithole, and Chirau understood the
economic necessity of keeping the white population engaged in Zimbabwe's future, and hoped
that an agreement acceptable to both black and white would discredit the guerrilla groups and
help put an end to the Bush war. Eighty-five percent of the country's whites supported the
agreement in a January 1979 referendum: The illusion of perpetual white rule was dead.
Elections were scheduled for April 1979. Both Mugabe and Nkomo--in spite of their
commitment to violence and opposition to democracy--were offered seats on the Executive
Council along with the other black leaders but, fearing this would hurt their chances of ever
gaining absolute control over the country, they refused.
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It was not altogether unreasonable to protect the interests of the white minority, as the
functioning of the Zimbabwean economy depended on the skills of educated whites who, by the
late 1970s, were fleeing the country at the rate of 1,000 per month. To understand what sort of
fate might befall a Rhodesia conquered by Marxist rebels, one had only to look to the former
Portuguese colonies of Mozambique and Angola, which, when overthrown in 1975 after the fall
of the Caetano regime a year before, witnessed the immediate mass emigration of Portuguese
citizens (about a quarter of a million from each country) and the collapse of those nations'
economies. In light of these disastrous post-colonial developments, the desire to keep as many
skilled whites as possible within Rhodesia after the transition to a black government was not just
the selfish concern of the whites themselves; the presidents of African states that depended on
Rhodesia for trade understood that white interests would have to be protected for an extended
period of time. This was not an unusual consideration; Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia, former
British colonies all, reserved extra parliamentary seats for whites for a transitional period. Alas,
it did not stop the three countries from turning into dictatorships.
The 1979 election
The Carter administration, the Labour government in Britain, and the international left all
insisted that Mugabe and Nkomo be part of the negotiating process--on its face a concession to
terrorism. Presaging the edicts of Al Qaeda in Iraq, both guerrilla leaders pledged violence
against any black Zimbabwean who dared take part in the April balloting. Nkomo called for a
"bloodbath." A year earlier he had ridiculed the "all party nonsense" advocated by the moderate
black leaders and said, "We mean to get that country by force, and we shall get it." Mugabe, not
to be outdone, issued a public death list of 50 individuals associated with the internal settlement,
including the three black leaders of the executive council. ZANU described these individuals as
"Zimbabwean black bourgeoisie, traitors, fellow-travelers, and puppets of the Ian Smith regime,
opportunistic running-dogs and other capitalist vultures." Mugabe also expressed his belief that
"the multiparty system is a luxury" and said that if Zimbabwean blacks did not like Marxism,
"then we will have to reeducate them." This was the same Mugabe whom Young, in that 1978
interview with the Times of London, had called "a very gentle man," adding, "I can't imagine
Joshua Nkomo, or Robert Mugabe, ever pulling the trigger on a gun to kill anyone. I doubt that
they ever have."
Nevertheless, in April 1979, in a scene reminiscent of the recent Iraqi elections, nearly 3 million
blacks came out to vote under a state of martial law and with armed guerrillas actively seeking to
disrupt the balloting. Although 100,000 soldiers protected the polling places, 10 civilians were
killed by Mugabe and Nkomo's forces. Even so, the election was a resounding success and
produced a clear verdict. An overwhelming majority of voters chose Muzorewa to become the
first black prime minister of Zimbabwe Rhodesia, as the country was now called.
Sadly, this democratic outcome was a chimera. Muzorewa--spurned by the West, deemed
illegitimate by the African dictatorships, and forced to contend with Communist-armed
insurgents--would hold power for a mere matter of months. The betrayal of Muzorewa is one of
the more craven episodes in American foreign policy.
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Liberal international opinion condemned the election before it ever took place. Andrew Young
called the interim government "neofascist," and the New York Times editorialized that the
election would be a "moral and diplomatic disaster." In March 1979, 185 individuals signed a
statement calling it a "fraud" and opined that "free elections require . . . freedom for all political
parties to campaign," presumably even parties committed to one-party rule and violence if they
do not win. Then, once the election took place, the left discredited it as a charade. A cover story
in the Nation by British journalist David Caute, entitled "The Sham Election in Rhodesia,"
featured a cartoon with a smiling white man in safari outfit holding a gun as sheep with black
faces ("electoral livestock," in Caute's words) lined up to vote. Caute likened the new black
government to Vichy France.
The appearance of a popularly elected, black-led, anti-Marxist government in Africa confronted
Western liberals with a challenge: Would they accept this interim agreement, widely endorsed by
the country's blacks, as a step on the path to full majority rule, or would they reject the
democratic will of the Zimbabwean people in favor of guerrilla groups that supported Sovietstyle dictatorship? Caute at least had the honesty to admit that "Mugabe, indeed, openly espouses
a one-party state and makes no secret of the fact that any election won by ZANU would be
Zimbabwe's last."
Bayard Rustin, the black civil rights leader who had been the chief organizer of the 1963 March
on Washington and the national chairman of the Social Democrats USA, observed the April
election as part of a Freedom House delegation. A founder of the Committee to Support South
African Resistance, Rustin was outraged at the response of those on the left. "No election held in
any country at any time within memory has been more widely or vociferously scorned by
international opinion than the election conducted last April in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe
Rhodesia," he wrote in Commentary. The Freedom House delegation, whose members had
previously monitored elections in 26 countries, interviewed over 600 black voters and visited
more than 60 polling stations throughout the country. Rustin determined the elections to be
"remarkably free and fair." Even the Nation editorial board conceded that the elections had
"undeniably mobilized a genuine outpouring of sentiment for peace among black Rhodesians."
The New York Times, like Mugabe and Nkomo, however, did not care about the democratic
means employed, only the end result. "The real issue is not how the election was conducted, but
what it was about," the Times intoned, snidely referring to the black political organizations
participating in the elections as the "collaborating parties."
"The contrast between how the election was viewed by most Zimbabweans (the name preferred
by blacks) and how it was described by critics outside the country is nothing less than
extraordinary," Rustin wrote. With the United States openly deferring to the wishes of ZANU,
ZAPU, and their enablers among the African tyrannies, Rustin said, "We have found ourselves,
until now, tacitly aligned with groups armed by Moscow, hostile to America, antagonistic to
democracy, and unpopular within Zimbabwe Rhodesia itself." Rustin appropriately referred to
the Patriotic Front as a "paper political alliance" that claimed not only a base of popular support
it did not have, but also, and more ominously, a natural right to everlasting power it certainly did
not merit. Rustin was hardly the only liberal supportive of the interim government; it should be
noted that accompanying him on the Freedom House delegation was the former U.S. ambassador
to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, Al Lowenstein (the founder of the 1968
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Dump Johnson movement), who aggressively lobbied Congress to support the nascent,
democratic Zimbabwe Rhodesia.
After the election, the Patriotic Front continued to wage war on the new multiracial government,
which proceeded to defend itself with an army and police force that were, respectively, 85
percent and 75 percent black. But the government also extended an olive branch to the guerrillas
in hopes of achieving a ceasefire and promised that any and all guerrillas willing to put down
their guns would have a "safe return" to civilian life without fear of punishment. Would the
guerrilla groups maintain their campaign against Zimbabwe Rhodesia now that a black prime
minister had been elected? The government got its answer in May. Four of Prime Minister
Muzorewa's envoys to the guerrillas were seized by Mugabe's forces, displayed before 200
tribesmen, and shot as an example of what would become of those who negotiated with the new
black government. Six weeks later, 39 representatives of Rev. Sithole were also murdered.
The question remained of how the United States would relate to the new democratically elected
black government. In 1978, Congress had passed the Case-Javits Amendment, which compelled
the president to lift the sanctions on Rhodesia (in place since a 1966 U.N. Security Council
resolution) if the regime held free and fair elections and showed a good-faith effort to negotiate
with guerrilla leaders. Undoubtedly, the April 1979 election and the interim government's
invitation to the Patriotic Front to participate met these conditions. Appropriately, two weeks
after the election, the Senate passed a nonbinding resolution 75-19 calling on the Carter
administration to lift sanctions. Unable to challenge the validity of the Zimbabwe Rhodesia
government on the merits as stipulated by Congress, Carter persuaded congressional allies to
pass a new bill that would allow him to maintain sanctions in order to protect America's national
interests in Africa, which he believed would be threatened if the United States recognized a
government not favored by the thugs and tyrants on the continent.
In July, Muzorewa came to the United States determined to "remove the blindness" of the Carter
administration. He said that there were "some people who are sick in the head in the international
world" for maintaining sanctions against a country that had transitioned peacefully from white
power to majority rule. Muzorewa was far too sanguine about his ability to persuade Jimmy
Carter and Andrew Young; their blindness was incurable. In October, all four members of the
Zimbabwe Rhodesia executive council traveled to the United States to plead for recognition, and
Carter refused to meet with them. Disappointed by the West's rebuff, Muzorewa noted that while
Zimbabweans "are prepared to forget the past and work together with our white brethren, . . .
some people in Britain, America, Africa, and other parts of the world appear unwilling to allow
us to do so."
Of the election that had catapulted Muzorewa to power, Martin Meredith wrote, "However much
disappointment there was with a constitution which entrenched white privilege, the opportunity
to vote for a black leader who promised peace was worth having." But as Muzorewa
immediately discovered, to the Carter administration, no government without Robert Mugabe in
charge was worth having.
The shame of 1980
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Ultimately, what guided the thinking of the British and the Americans was the fear that siding
with Muzorewa and other black moderates over Mugabe would alienate black African states and
thus imperil Western diplomatic objectives in sub-Saharan Africa. Because of a narrow Cold
War calculus insistent on the notion that black Africa be prevented from turning pro-Soviet (at
least those states that were not already in the Soviet camp) and a postcolonial guilt that awarded
moral superiority to the first generation of African leaders (many of whom were no better, and in
some cases worse, than their colonial oppressors), the pronouncements and interests of the
African states weighed far too heavily in the Carter administration's foreign policy.
But the decision to oppose the internal settlement was faulty for two reasons. First, if the United
States and Britain had supported the pact, there is no telling what further diplomatic pressure
they might have brought to bear on Smith to wrangle more concessions for the country's black
majority. Western support for the internal settlement would have elevated Muzorewa's standing
as a legitimate black leader and thus further deprived the guerrilla groups of the ideological
oxygen needed to sustain their war. And with Western backing, Muzorewa would have been
better equipped to convince his African neighbors to end their support for Mugabe and Nkomo.
In 1978, Chester Crocker (who would later serve as Reagan's assistant secretary of state for
African affairs) wrote in the pages of the New Republic that, "given the weak, war-torn
economies and minimal military strength of its neighboring states, a black Zimbabwe
government which issued from the internal talks would have a good opportunity to establish
itself." Sadly, because of misguided Western policy, that black government never had a fighting
chance.
Second, the Carter administration's preening before black African countries was morally
bankrupt. Few of the nations that made up the pro-Patriotic Front Organization of African Unity
showed much concern for democracy; it was quite rich to see presidents Julius Nyerere of
Tanzania and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, both of whom had instituted one-party rule soon after
independence, giving instructions on democracy to America and Britain. The military
dictatorship of Nigeria, threatening to cut off oil to the United States, had the audacity to term
one of the rare African democracies "the outcast puppet regime of Bishop Abel Muzorewa." The
one-party, pro-Soviet dictatorship of Mozambique (host to Mugabe) offered similar invective.
Rustin aptly wrote that "if the presidents of Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Angola have
their way, majority rule will take a form more or less similar to what exists in their own
countries; which is to say that it will be a dictatorship by a small black elite over a destitute black
population." In response to Carter's refusal to accept the legitimacy of the April 1979 election,
the Washington Post editorialized that the administration was "ignoring fairness and impartiality
in order to court those black African states, mostly petty dictatorships or paper democracies."
And so the guerrilla war against Zimbabwe Rhodesia went on unabated. His country laboring
under continuing sanctions, Muzorewa could do little to reassure the black population that he had
the ability to bring the peace he had promised. Demoralized by the rejection of Great Britain, the
United States, and their African neighbors, the leaders of Zimbabwe Rhodesia agreed in late
1979 to a new set of negotiations to be held at Lancaster House in London, in which the Patriotic
Front would participate. The agreement that emerged was essentially the same as the internal
settlement, except that it reduced the number of white parliamentary seats from 28 to 20,
established a land reform policy of "willing buyer, willing seller" funded by the British and
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Americans, and, most fatefully, allowed ZANU and ZAPU to participate in a new election, to be
held in February 1980.
If the international community had rejected the 1979 election, it should have been utterly
disgusted with the one held less than a year later. Mugabe insisted that the two wings of the
Patriotic Front run separately; he knew that with 75 percent of the country's blacks belonging to
his Shona tribe, he would be catapulted into power and could shunt Nkomo (a member of the
Ndebele tribe) to the sidelines. Lord Christopher Soames, charged by the British with overseeing
the election, found, according to Meredith, that "the scale of intimidation in eastern Rhodesia
[bordering Mozambique, which had sheltered Mugabe's ZANU guerrillas] was massive. . . . The
mere presence of Mugabe's guerrillas in the villages was enough to deter the local population
from showing support for any party other than ZANU." ZANU apparatchiks once again
compiled "death lists," making clear to black servants and local tribesmen that they would pay
the consequences for not supporting Mugabe.
In the weeks leading up to the February election, the British Combined Operations Headquarters
was informed of at least one political murder every day. Ultimately, Soames's election observers
concluded that in five of Rhodesia's eight electoral provinces, "conditions for a free election no
longer existed." Both Muzorewa and Nkomo demanded that Mugabe not be allowed to
participate in the elections, but, fearing that any rebuke to Mugabe would restart the guerrilla
war, the British and American governments insisted on his participation. In an early indication of
what sort of ruler he would become, Mugabe demanded that a Kalashnikov rifle be the ZANU
election symbol. At least the interim British administration rejected this ominous request.
To top matters off, Mugabe announced in advance that he would abide by the elections only if he
won. According to Martin Meredith, throughout the Lancaster House negotiations, Mugabe's
"real fear, as it had been all along, was that a negotiated settlement threatened his aim of
achieving revolutionary change in Rhodesia." Mugabe finally agreed to the British terms only
because the African leaders could no longer put up with the consequences of the Bush war
(during the conference, Smith's army bombed crucial railways in Zambia and Mozambique) and
because Nkomo went along with the settlement, isolating ZANU. Everything in Mugabe's
history indicates that if he had lost the 1980 election, he would have reverted to war. For
Rhodesia's beleaguered blacks--who had suffered more than anyone else not only from the
oppressive counterinsurgency operations of the white minority government but also from the
unforgiving tactics of the guerrillas--the threat of a worsening, protracted civil war all but
assured victory for Mugabe.
The election result was announced on March 4, 1980.Mugabe took 64 percent of the vote, with
over 90 percent of eligible blacks voting. No doubt the higher participation in 1980 had to do
with the fact that, in contrast with 1979, guerrillas did not violently suppress turnout.
Nevertheless, British election commissioner Sir John Boynton reported that death threats, the
murder of candidates and their supporters, property destruction, violent intimidation, and, most
portentously, the threat of continued war all occurred with disturbing frequency in the two-month
campaign. Mugabe's forces were responsible for 70 percent of ceasefire violations.
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And lest anyone doubt that Mugabe was the favorite of the front-line states that had aided him in
his war against Muzorewa, he left the country during the balloting for meetings with the leaders
of Mozambique and Tanzania, a presumptuous act for a would-be president. In the midst of the
election, Mugabe announced he would "seek the aid of our friends in Africa if needs be."
Freedom House found that "the open or implicit threat by the formerly externally based parties
[ZANU and ZAPU] that they would renew the insurgency should they not win represented an
important indirect form of intimidation" and that "threats by black and white African states of
nonrecognition or intervention in the event of particular electoral outcomes were an external
form of intimidation."
The Carter administration had declared that though the 1979 election of Muzorewa had been
conducted in a "reasonably fair way," it did not merit the United States' support because Mugabe
was not involved. The 1980 election, on the other hand, which Mugabe won largely by
threatening violence, the Carter administration declared to be "free and fair," leading to the
lifting of sanctions. Mugabe, it seems, would have liked to return the favor. In 1980, mere
months before Carter would resoundingly lose his reelection bid to Ronald Reagan, Zimbabwe's
new prime minister told African-American leaders at a White House ceremony that if Carter
"were running in our territory, he would be assured of victory."
The defeat of Muzorewa and the triumph of Mugabe cast the West's Rhodesia policy in stark
relief: If Muzorewa had chosen Marxist revolution over diplomacy and had endeared himself to
African dictators, he would have won Western support. Critics of Muzorewa alleged that his
inability to stop the civil war during his brief tenure as prime minister demonstrated ineffectual
leadership. In fact, it reflected the determination of Mugabe and Nkomo to keep fighting until
they secured power for themselves. The United States and Great Britain gave Mugabe and
Nkomo legitimacy by indulging the demands of the African dictators.
Muzorewa warned what would happen if Mugabe won: "Any talk of democracy, freedom, and
independence will be turned into an impossible dream. . . . This country will find itself
wallowing in the dust of poverty, misery, and starvation." To Mugabe's Western enablers,
particularly Andrew Young, this must have seemed like the jealous sniping of a man who had
been turned out of office. Yet from the vantage point of 2007, Muzorewa's prescience is plain for
all to see.
Tyranny sets in
The Carter administration's victory in Rhodesia was a hollow one. It is true that not every
fearsome forecast was immediately borne out: Mugabe did not turn out to be the Soviet or
Chinese agent many thought him, and the conflagration raging in Angola did not spread into
Zimbabwe. But fatal damage was done. As early as August 1981, just over a year after taking
power, Mugabe called for a referendum on whether Zimbabwe should be a one-party state. In
1982 he proclaimed, "ZANU-PF will rule forever," just as he had promised throughout the Bush
war. And writing in the New Republic in early 1983, Xan Smiley, an editorial writer for the
London Times, reported that Mugabe's "rhetoric of egalitarianism and the demands of traditional
authoritarianism mean that individuals are going to get crushed." Not just individuals, but whole
groups of people would be crushed. From 1983 until 1987, Mugabe unleashed his North Korean314
trained Fifth Brigade troops against supposed Ndebele plotters in the Matabeleland massacres,
slaughtering an estimated 25,000 people.
The country's black leaders who dared to oppose Mugabe received the treatment inevitably
meted out by a paranoid tyrant. In 1983 Mugabe jailed Muzorewa for 10 months, accusing him
of plotting with South Africa and Israel to overthrow the regime. He now lives quietly in
Zimbabwe, ignored by the world that spurned him nearly 30 years ago. The same year Nkomo,
Mugabe's erstwhile ally, fled the country fearing assassination. Mugabe persuaded his old
comrade to return and in 1987 forced him to agree to a virtual one-party state, in which ZANU
absorbed ZAPU and took 147 out of 150 seats in parliament. Nkomo spent the next 12 years of
his life in obscurity. Also in 1987, rightly fearing for his safety, Sithole sought political asylum
in the United States. He later returned to Zimbabwe and was elected to parliament. But in 1997,
Sithole was convicted of attempting to assassinate Mugabe and was barred from returning to
office. Other political opponents either fell into line or have been imprisoned or killed.
For some years, Mugabe kept his promise to leave the whites alone. But in 2000 he instigated the
forcible seizure of private farmland, which has brought Zimbabwe economic collapse, famine,
and a massive refugee crisis. One-third of the country's population is estimated to have fled in
the past seven years. The dictator, now 83, having brought his country to its knees, is hanging on
only by the support of his armed forces and his fellow African leaders, who share a residual
admiration for this hero of African "liberation."
Carter is unrepentant about his administration's support for Mugabe. At a Carter Center event in
Boston on June 8, he said that he, Young, and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance had "spent more
time on Rhodesia than on the Middle East." Carter admitted that "we supported two
revolutionaries in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo." He adopts the "good leader
gone bad" hindsight of Mugabe's early backers, stating that "at first [Mugabe] was a very
enlightened president." While conceding that Mugabe is now "oppressive," Carter stressed that
this murderer of tens of thousands "needs to be treated with respect and assured that if he does
deal with those issues [democratization and human rights], he won't be punished or prosecuted
for his crimes." Though it has supervised elections in over 60 countries, the 25-year-old Carter
Center has no projects in Zimbabwe, nor has Carter (who demonstrates no compunction about
lecturing others) attempted to atone for the ruin that his policies as president wreaked.
History will not look kindly on those in the West who insisted on bringing the avowed Marxist
Mugabe into the government. In particular, the Jimmy Carter foreign policy--feckless in the
Iranian hostage crisis, irresolute in the face of mounting Soviet ambitions, and noted in the postWhite House years for dalliances with dictators the world over--bears some responsibility for the
fate of a small African country with scant connection to American national interests. In response
to Carter's comment last month that the Bush administration's foreign policy was the "worst in
history," critics immediately cited those well-publicized failures. But the betrayal of Bishop
Muzorewa and of all Zimbabweans, black and white, who warned what sort of leader Robert
Mugabe would be deserves just as prominent a place among the outrages of the Carter years.
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Mr. President, Liberate Zimbabwe
A good deed for Bush's final days.
BY James Kirchick
The Weekly Standard
December 22, 2008, Vol. 14, No. 14
In the final days of his presidency, George W. Bush will face an avalanche of requests. Wellconnected political hands will inquire if so-and-so could receive a coveted pardon, lobbyists will
ask for that last-minute executive order, obscure foreign leaders will finally call in chits for
having joined the Coalition of the Willing. In the routine and predictable nature of these appeals,
Bush's remaining time in office will be little different from those of his predecessors granting
last-minute favors to the privileged and powerful. But Bush has an opportunity to benefit some
of the world's most destitute individuals and to secure a positive and lasting legacy in a country
that has suffered under the boot of a megalomaniacal thug for decades.
Zimbabwe, which for the past eight years has been careening from one disaster to another, is
today on the precipice of humanitarian catastrophe. Ruled by Robert Mugabe for nearly 29 years,
the country has been in political stalemate since March when Mugabe lost a presidential and
parliamentary election to Morgan Tsvangirai and his Movement for Democratic Change.
Mugabe rejected the results and won a rigged follow-up. He was then coaxed by African leaders
into negotiations to establish a coalition government, but has refused to cede control of the army,
the police force, or the central bank. He uses the negotiations to prevent any handover of power
to the real winners of the country's election and to frustrate all attempts at economic reform.
What ought to bring Zimbabwe to the forefront of international concern is a spreading cholera
epidemic, incubated in sewage-infested townships, which threatens to overtake the country and
the region. The World Health Organization has confirmed nearly 800 deaths so far (though it
believes many more have perished) and 16,000 more cases. Most of the country's hospitals are
inoperative, and the Zimbabwean government has no means to stanch the spread of the disease.
Indeed, it couldn't prevent the initial outbreak, which it blames on Western governments'
poisoning of water wells.
Given the massive refugee outflows to bordering states and an intensified mortality level brought
about by the policies of the Mugabe regime over the past several years, it is no longer possible to
even state Zimbabwe's current population. U.S. government estimates of the number of citizens
residing in-country range from 5.8 million to 12 million. Most of these people are in need of
emergency food supplies, and they will starve unless outside actors like the United Nations or the
United States comes to their help.
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Calls for Mugabe's forcible removal are growing stronger. For some time now, the president of
neighboring Botswana, Ian Khama, has supported intervention to topple Mugabe. He was joined
earlier this month by the Kenyan prime minister, Raila Odinga, who said that "it's time for
African governments . . . to push [Mugabe] out of power." He told Tsvangirai to boycott the
stalled power-sharing talks as the negotiations, with their patina of international legitimacy, have
become a way for an illegitimate leader to maintain his grip on power--not unlike another "peace
process" in a different part of the world. Even South Africa's Desmond Tutu supports
intervention.
African leaders have long protected Mugabe, fearful of the precedent that ushering out a
liberation-era hero could set for their own political survival. Last week, amid the growing chorus
of calls for Mugabe to step down, a spokesperson for the chairman of the African Union said,
"Only dialogue between the Zimbabwean parties, supported by the AU and other regional actors,
can restore peace and stability to that country." Mugabe, meanwhile, continues to threaten
violence against anyone who would try to ease him or his party out of power. "We won this
country through the barrel of the gun and we will defend it the way we won it," a government
spokesman said.
Mugabe has the backing of both Russia and China, meaning that, as with NATO's intervention in
Bosnia, military action would have to be taken outside the parameters of the United Nations.
With the vocal support of Botswana and Kenya, an American- and British-led force could work
alongside African troops to decapitate the regime and facilitate the delivery of emergency aid
and the installation of the duly elected government. The Zimbabwean military is poorly equipped
and demoralized; last month, soldiers rioted in response to the government's failure to pay them
on time (a task complicated by the fact that the country faces 231 million percent inflation). In
the face of professional armies, many units would surrender or revolt against their commanders.
"The [Zimbabwean] military would be very weak and have a difficult time in resisting any
credible intervention," says J. Anthony Holmes, a former Foreign Service officer now with the
Council on Foreign Relations.
A few days ago, I chatted online with the Zimbabwean fixer I worked with during a visit to the
country in 2006. He has not been wanting for work. Since the March election, a steady stream of
journalists has come to report on the stalled negotiations and needed his skills at ferrying them
around the country, arranging interviews, and dodging military cordons and security operatives.
But he finds the utter lack of political progress frustrating and the humanitarian situation
unendurable. "I have given up," he says. He described the horrors he saw recently taking a
French journalist to the cholera-infected area. "He cried," my friend told me.
"It is time for Robert Mugabe to go," Bush said last week, recognizing the growing momentum
in favor of a humanitarian intervention to save Zimbabwe. "Across the continent, African voices
are bravely speaking out to say now is the time for him to step down." Asked to reflect upon his
legacy in an interview last month, Bush said, "I'd like to be a president [known] as somebody
who liberated 50 million people and helped achieve peace." In his final days in office, he could
liberate millions more.
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Defense
Obama and Gates Gut the Military
The secretary's new budget will leave us weaker to pay for the president's domestic
programs.
By THOMAS DONNELLY and GARY SCHMITT
Wall Street Journal
On Monday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced a significant reordering of U.S. defense
programs. His recommendations should not go unchallenged.
In the 1990s, defense cuts helped pay for increased domestic spending, and that is true today.
Though Mr. Gates said that his decisions were "almost exclusively influenced by factors other
than simply finding a way to balance the books," the broad list of program reductions and
terminations suggest otherwise. In fact, he tacitly acknowledged as much by saying the budget
plan represented "one of those rare chances to match virtue to necessity" -- the "necessity" of
course being the administration's decision to reorder the government's spending priorities.
However, warfare is not a human activity that directly awards virtue. Nor is it a perfectly
calculable endeavor that permits a delicate "balancing" of risk. More often it rewards those who
arrive on the battlefield "the fustest with the mostest," as Civil War Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest
once put it. If Mr. Gates has his way, U.S. forces will find it increasingly hard to meet the Forrest
standard. Consider a few of the details of the Gates proposals:
- 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 need for these sophisticated, stealthy, radar-evading planes is already apparent. During
Russia's invasion of Georgia, U.S. commanders wanted to fly unmanned surveillance aircraft
over the region, and requested that F-22s sanitize the skies so that the slow-moving drones would
be protected from Russian fighters or air defenses. When the F-22s were not made available,
likely for fear of provoking Moscow, the reconnaissance flights were cancelled.
As the air-defense and air-combat capabilities of other nations, most notably China, increase, the
demand for F-22s would likewise rise. And the Air Force will have to manage this small fleet of
Raptors over 30 years. Compare that number with the 660 F-15s flying today, but which are
literally falling apart at the seams from age and use. The F-22 is not merely a replacement for the
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F-15; it also performs the functions of electronic warfare and other support aircraft. Meanwhile,
Mr. Gates is further postponing the already decades-long search for a replacement for the
existing handful of B-2 bombers.
- The U.S. Navy will continue to shrink below the fleet size of 313 ships it set only a few years
ago. Although Mr. Gates has rightly decided to end the massive and expensive DDG-1000
Zumwalt destroyer program, there will be additional reductions to the surface fleet. The number
of aircraft carriers will drop eventually to 10. The next generation of cruisers will be delayed,
and support-ship projects stretched out. Older Arleigh Burke destroyers will be upgraded and
modernized, but at less-than-needed rates.
The good news is that Mr. Gates will not to reduce the purchases of the Littoral Combat Ship,
which can be configured for missions from antipiracy to antisubmarine warfare. But neither will
he buy more than the 55 planned for by the previous Bush administration. And the size and
structure of the submarine fleet was studiously not mentioned. The Navy's plan to begin at last to
procure two attack submarines per year -- absolutely vital considering the pace at which China is
deploying new, quieter subs -- is uncertain, at best.
- 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 secretary noted that the Army's modernization plan does not take
into account the $25 billion investment in the giant Mine Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP)
vehicles. But it's hard to think of a more specialized and less versatile vehicle.
The MRAP was ideal for dealing with the proliferation of IEDs (improvised explosive devices)
in Iraq. But the FCS vehicle -- with a lightweight yet better-protected chassis, greater fuel
efficiency and superior off-road capacity -- is far more flexible and useful for irregular warfare.
Further, the ability to form battlefield "networks" will make FCS units more effective than the
sum of their individual parts. Delaying modernization means that future generations of soldiers
will conduct mounted operations in the M1 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles designed in the
1970s. Finally, Mr. Gates capped the size of the U.S. ground force, ignoring all evidence that it is
too small to handle current and future major contingencies.
- The proposed cuts in space and missile defense programs reflect a retreat in emerging
environments that are increasingly critical in modern warfare. The termination of the Airborne
Laser and Transformational Satellite programs is especially discouraging.
The Airborne Laser is the most promising form of defense against ballistic missiles in the "boost
phase," the moments immediately after launch when the missiles are most vulnerable. This
project was also the military's first operational foray into directed energy, which will be as
revolutionary in the future as "stealth" technology has been in recent decades. The
Transformational Satellite program employs laser technology for communications purposes,
providing not only enhanced bandwidth -- essential to fulfill the value of all kinds of information
networks -- but increased security.
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Mr. Gates justifies these cuts as a matter of "hard choices" and "budget discipline," saying that
"[E]very defense dollar spent to over-insure against a remote or diminishing risk . . . is a dollar
not available to take care of our people, reset the force, win the wars we are in." But this calculus
is true only because the Obama administration has chosen to cut defense, while increasing
domestic entitlements and debt so dramatically.
The budget cuts Mr. Gates is recommending are not a temporary measure to get us over a fiscal
bump in the road. Rather, they 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. But what is true for the
wars we're in -- that numbers matter -- is also true for the wars that we aren't yet in, or that we
simply wish to deter.
Revolt of the Congress
Robert Gates's defense cuts meet resistance on Capitol Hill.
BY Gary Schmitt and Tom Donnelly
July 20, 2009, Vol. 14, No. 41
The Weekly Standard
One of Barack Obama's most politically adept decisions upon winning the White House was to
ask Robert Gates to remain in place as the nation's secretary of defense. By choosing Gates--who
had served with distinction at the CIA, the National Security Council, and most recently at the
Pentagon under George W. Bush--Obama added credibility to his administration in the area of
national security where his own résumé was lacking. Perhaps inspired by Doris Kearns
Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln--a book candidate Obama
said he had read and been taken with--the new president hoped the choice would help him sell
his decisions on national security and the military to moderates in his own party and members of
the GOP since his front man had been the successful, war-winning Pentagon chief under the
previous president.
And for a while, it worked. In early April, Gates announced a series of cuts in defense programs
and spending that, with few exceptions, generated only isolated criticism on the Hill. The
ostensible justifications for the cuts were two: the current fiscal crisis and the need to focus the
military on today's wars, not speculative future contingencies. For many, these rationales seemed
reasonable enough, especially coming from Secretary Gates.
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But in fact they're not reasonable. If the fiscal crisis was the driving force behind the cuts, then
someone forgot to notify the rest of the administration. While the Pentagon was being told to
shut down programs, the Obama team was encouraging the rest of government to spend like
drunken sailors. As the stimulus package was being cobbled together, military projects best fit
the Keynesian profile of "shovel-ready," yet the Pentagon received just one half of one percent of
the $787 billion in additional funding.
If Gates, moreover, had truly been concerned about today's wars, he would have taken the
savings that came from his program cuts in April and used them to increase the size of the Army.
But he didn't. Instead, he's capped ground forces and appears satisfied to live with an Army and
Marine Corps that are severely stretched and will remain so as we build up in Afghanistan.
The first sign that there might be a crack in the wall of the Gates-Obama defense plan was the
mid-June decision by the House Armed Services Committee to begin buying parts for 12 more
F-22s, the stealthy air-dominance fighter that Secretary Gates has wanted to limit to 187 planes.
As one Democrat on the committee put it, "It's not a Democrat or Republican thing at all, but
rather a Congress versus the executive in terms of who's in charge."
Then, in late June, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved the acquisition of seven
more F-22s as well, even as the White House was announcing a possible veto of the defense bill
if it contained money for keeping the jet fighter's production line open. In addition, the
committee's version of the bill authorized a 30,000-soldier expansion of the active Army--in
other words, it made a more substantive commitment to winning "the war we're in" than Gates
himself. As Senator Joseph Lieberman, who sponsored the provision, observed, "The number of
deployed soldiers will increase into next year because we will be sending more troops to win the
war in Afghanistan before a large number of soldiers begin to return from Iraq."
Less reported on but no less significant a sign that Congress may have a different vision of the
country's defense priorities came when the House version of the annual defense authorization bill
called for the revival of an independent "National Defense Panel" to assess the administration's
Quadrennial Defense Review. If there is to be a larger revolt against the Gates cuts and defense
vision, this will be the central bureaucratic battleground.
Here's why: The Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) is the process by which a new
administration determines whether U.S. military forces are adequate to meet America's strategic
needs. There have been three previous QDRs--indeed five counting the first Bush
administration's "Base Force" and the Clinton administration's "Bottom-Up" reviews. In the postCold War environment, answering the traditional question of force-planning--"How much is
enough?"--has proved difficult.
When the Republican Congress wrote the law mandating the 1997 QDR, it specified that an
outside National Defense Panel should evaluate the Pentagon's work; congressional defense
leaders did not trust the Clinton administration to do an honest review. The House Armed
Services Committee has revived the panel for exactly the same reason and has done so with the
explicit backing of both the committee chairman, Representative Ike Skelton, and the ranking
Republican, Howard "Buck" McKeon. When the House and Senate versions of the defense bill
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go to conference to be reconciled, there is a good chance that Senate Republicans and key
Democrats like Lieberman will accede to the House's call for an oversight body.
And so the National Defense Panel will be a natural rallying point for the disparate forces on
Capitol Hill and throughout Washington seeking to derail the Gates train. It will provide a
vehicle not just for reviewing the termination of the F-22 and other major procurements but also
for advocating a more meaningful commitment to irregular warfare by increasing the numbers of
U.S. land forces. It would offset the twin Gates strategies of divide-and-conquer--playing off one
procurement program against another--and pitting concerns about irregular and high-tech
conventional warfare against each other in a zero-sum budget game.
As of today, the QDR is an exercise in putting strategic lipstick on a budget-cutting pig; it is part
and parcel of the administration's larger goal of fundamentally reordering federal priorities. At
the end of eight years, if the White House has its way, the U.S. budget will ape those of most
European countries: huge domestic entitlements, with a defense burden shrinking to or below 3
percent of GDP.
The proposed National Defense Panel could be a small but significant sign that some Democrats
and Republicans are having second thoughts about this direction and are willing to challenge
Gates's aura of infallibility. If the Senate adds the National Defense Panel provision to the final
defense bill, the stage will be set, if not for a battle royal, then at least for an honest debate about
the country's future defenses.
Tom Donnelly is resident fellow in defense studies and Gary Schmitt is resident scholar in
strategic studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
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Democracy and Human
Rights
The Only Way To Prevent Genocide
T od L in d b erg From issue: Ap ri l 2009
Commentary Magazine
Have you ever found yourself in the position of asking, on your own behalf or on behalf of
others, how many or precisely which people it would be useful to kill in order to secure a benefit
for yourself or your cause? And just how to do it? No? Others have. Their answers have ranged
from Cain‘s original ―Abel, with my bare hands‖ to Hitler‘s ―all the Jews, mainly by gas,‖ and
the widespread Hutu view in the Rwanda of 1994, ―the Tutsis, with machetes.‖ The question
burns today for the government of Sudan and in the Congo.
Humanity will never be able to solve the problem of Cain, of fratricidal rage born of jealousy or
some equivalent passion, nor of the more calculating retail impulse to profit in some way from
doing someone in. Thus, for individuals, we maintain a system of laws, police forces, courts,
prisons, mental hospitals, and, for extreme cases, the apparatus of the death penalty to punish
those whom an impulse or cold calculation has led to murder—thereby deterring (so we hope) at
least some others from embarking on a similar course of action. But we understand that our
system is no solution to the problem of murder.
It is not obvious, however, or should not be, that because the human condition gives us no
prospect of ridding the world of murder, we must be similarly pessimistic about our ability to rid
the world of murder on the scale of populations. Mass atrocities, up to the point of genocide, are
not simply collective acts of individual murder. Though genocides are not uniform in character,
they are all political. Genocide constitutes the most extreme possible terms for settling
differences: a stronger party‘s decision to annihilate or extirpate the weaker. Genocide is
organized. It entails a project, which in turn requires leaders with a purpose in mind and their
acquisition of the means of death, including followers to do the dirty work.
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We simply do not have to put up with this. By ―we,‖ let me be clear. I do not mean ―humanity,‖
although I would welcome the collective conclusion of mankind that genocide is unacceptable. I
do not mean the ―international community,‖ although a decision on the part of all national
governments to refrain from engaging in mass atrocities at home or abroad would be most
welcome, as would a collective intention to stop and punish leaders or would-be leaders seeking
to deviate from the norm. What I really mean by ―we‖ is ―we who are strong enough to stop the
murderous bastards before they can get away with it.‖
This ―we‖ is an inclusive group; everyone with a will and a way is welcome. But its purpose
must go far beyond declaratory well-wishing. It is not a bad thing but a grossly insufficient thing
to join in choruses of ―never again,‖ the familiar refrain after something really bad has
happened—say, 6 million dead Jews, 2 million dead Cambodians, or 800,000 dead Tutsis. No,
we must act to stop the malefactors.
And by ―we,‖ in the last analysis, I mean the United States.
_____________
We have the privilege to live at a time of unprecedented prosperity, and we know how to
generate more of it. Anybody who thinks the present financial crisis has changed these
fundamental facts is engaged in the time-honored human propensity for self-dramatization Our
prosperity is accompanied by a likewise unprecedented confluence of power and moral
sensibility—or at least it seems to be. With regard to atrocities on a mass scale, we have the
means at our disposal to stop what we and all right-thinking people know is wrong. It comes
down to the choice of whether to act or not.
If we are unable to muster the political will to prevent or halt genocide and mass atrocities, the
long-term consequences are truly chilling to contemplate. This is of course especially true with
regard to future victims: the terror of being rounded up and held at gunpoint, especially in the
final few seconds, as the shooting starts; of feeling the first slash of a swinging machete,
knowing that more are coming. But it is also true for us. Future generations more committed to
the principles we espouse but fail to act on may look back with disdain or disgust on our failure.
Or, more horrifying still, future generations will conclude that all moral reasoning in political
matters is sentimental superstructure that should be jettisoned in the interest of clarity about the
first and only true principle of politics: the strong take care of themselves and the weak are on
their own.
The progress of politics and civilization itself is nothing other than the long, difficult, incomplete
struggle to overcome the original political principle of self-regard by instilling in the strong an
empathetic regard for others. The first successes came in the mists of prehistory in the form of
small groups ceasing to fight among themselves—clan, tribe, city. With the spread in terms of
territory and clout of rights-regarding nation-states in recent centuries, it became possible to
imagine cooperative efforts among such states to extend a principle of regard for others across
international boundaries, indeed globally. In 1998, the NATO alliance—led, of course, by the
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United States—went to war against Serbia to stop ethnic cleansing and atrocities in Kosovo,
averting a potential genocide in close proximity to NATO territory. But in 2004, after the U.S.
Secretary of State, Colin Powell, declared that atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan amounted
to genocide, the response of the United States and others was uncertain and halting at best.
Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost and millions evacuated their homes for refugee and
displaced-persons camps. There they remain.
So, in recent memory, ―we‖ have acted effectively, showing that we can, and ―we‖ have failed to
act effectively, revealing a gap between our professed moral sense and what we are prepared to
do to vindicate it. The test of progress for this generation is whether we will be able to extend the
principle of regard for others by acting when necessary to prevent or halt genocide.
_____________
Words are not enough; however, words matter. All things considered, when it comes to the
importance of preventing genocide and mass atrocities, we talk a pretty good game. First there
are American words. It is (or should be) a point of pride for believer and atheist alike that our
founding national document, the Declaration of Independence, affirms that people are endowed
by their Creator with, first of all, a right to life. The right to live can be especially difficult to
vindicate. There is no one to whom a drowning man can appeal; it is not wrong for the water to
drown him. But it surely is wrong if governments, wholly the creations of people, deny or violate
this basic right. The Declaration sets forth the correct aspiration. True, certain historical
conduct—the treatment of Native Americans in particular—miserably fails to measure up to the
stated aspiration. But should we therefore abandon the aspiration? Of course not. We discredit
only ourselves when we fail to live up to our ideals. The ideals themselves are not discredited.
Then there are words inspired by America‘s founding that, in their drafting, sought to extend
those ideals to the rest of the world, words in the United Nations Charter and the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. These documents affirm the rights of the individual against states
or other actors that violate those rights. But the affirmation is more theoretical than actual, since
the UN Charter also embraces a doctrine of sovereign right according to which states may not
interfere in the internal affairs of others.
This aspect of the Charter gives states so inclined a ready cloak behind which to repress their
people—including by commission of mass atrocities. This is what I mean when I say that words
matter but are not enough. The UN‘s universalist human-rights creed is honored far more in the
breach than in the observance. At the same time, the UN Security Council is also charged to act
in the interest of peace and security, which can create an opening in response to extreme
situations in which large numbers of lives are at risk.
In 1946, with the dimensions of the horror of the Holocaust still unfolding, the UN General
Assembly passed a resolution declaring genocide a crime under international law. Genocide
―shocks the conscience of mankind,‖ the resolution memorably declared. This effort to
―internationalize‖ the crime of genocide might have been the world body‘s finest hour. The
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ensuing Genocide Convention of 1948 provides for ―the prevention and punishment of the crime
of genocide‖ whether ―committed in time of peace or time of war‖ and elaborates a definition,
which includes ―acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical,
racial or religious group.‖
The Convention isn‘t self-executing, in that it doesn‘t compel its signatories to take any
particular action if the terms of the treaty are violated. But it does provide an international legal
and, more important, moral framework for preventive action in response to the risk of genocide.
Breakthrough though it was, one unintended consequence of the Genocide Convention has been
a serious problem. The definition of genocide is good as far as it goes, and the prevention
mandate seems to allow latitude for timely action against would-be perpetrators. But whether
―genocide‖ as defined in the treaty is actually occurring or about to occur is a complicated
question both epistemologically and legally. For if you act to prevent genocide and succeed,
there is no genocide—and so you cannot prove you have prevented one. Moreover, those you act
against can claim you have violated their sovereign rights, and the argument will carry weight.
If, on the other hand, there is a legal finding of genocide, then it is too late for prevention. All
that is left is mitigation. Moreover, if ―genocide‖ is the trigger for action, then the bar is rather
high: Atrocities short of genocide may somehow end up as tolerable, or at least tolerated. In
2005, a year after Colin Powell announced the U.S. finding of a genocide in Darfur, a UN special
inquiry issued a report saying that while criminal atrocities had taken place in Sudan for which
perpetrators needed to be held accountable, it lacked the basis for a conclusion that those crimes
amounted to genocide. The bloodstained rulers in Khartoum were delighted to characterize the
report as a vindication.
A further attempt to ―internationalize‖ the Declaration‘s ―right to life‖ came in 2005, when the
World Summit at the United Nations embraced in its ―Outcome Document‖ the principle of the
―responsibility to protect.‖ The doctrine of ―responsibility to protect,‖ known colloquially as
―R2P,‖ holds that a state has an obligation to protect those living on its territory from atrocities
(specified in the Outcome Document as ―genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes
against humanity‖). If a state is unable or unwilling to fulfill this requirement, the protection
function falls to the international community, which can take measures up to and including the
use of force in order to protect populations. With sovereign right comes sovereign responsibility.
The principle of noninterference gives way in circumstances of mass atrocities.
I had a small role in the adoption of R2P. Congress (principally in the person of Frank Wolf, a
Republican member of the House of Representatives from Virginia) chartered a bipartisan task
force on UN reform run by the U.S. Institute of Peace and co-chaired by former House Speaker
Newt Gingrich and former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell. I ran the Task Force‘s
expert group on human rights. Not without difficulty, we were able to include in the June 2005
consensus report a strong endorsement of the ―responsibility to protect.‖ This was the first major
bipartisan statement on behalf of R2P, which before had mainly been the province of liberal
internationalists and human-rights groups on the Left.
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The Task Force recommendation in turn influenced the Bush State Department to back the
concept at the World Summit. In the absence of the Gingrich-Mitchell recommendation, the
State Department‘s traditional institutional wariness as well as ideological conservative
skepticism would likely have led to U.S. opposition, which would have doomed the project.
As for the objections, the main concern has been (and remains) that the United States, by
embracing R2P, will subject itself to the whims of the ―international community‖ on whether and
when to intervene in fulfillment of the protection function. Thus Steven Groves of the Heritage
Foundation has expressed alarm that ―the United States would cede control—any control—of its
armed forces to the caprice of the world community without the consent of the American
people.‖ In the extreme case, in this view, the U.S. might incur a legal obligation to go to war
whether it wants to or not. The latter concern is so far down a trail of speculation piled on
intemperate inference on top of worst-case hypothesizing that it hardly bears consideration. In its
less extreme form, this is the question of how much the U.S. should engage with others to find
common ends or interests and pursue them jointly.
Power is power, and the United States has more of it than any other state. But international
political support is of value, and the U.S. does benefit from seeking it in fora that others regard
as legitimate. We will never give the UN Security Council the last word. Other countries don‘t
like that, but then a Kosovo comes along, Russia blocks Security Council action, and people of
good will realize that the price of calling off war because the Security Council hasn‘t authorized
it will be several hundred thousand dead Kosovars.
In other words, one should try one‘s best at the UN for the simple reason that one might succeed.
But failure at the UN does not end the discussion, as the U.S. determination in the months
leading up to the war in Iraq demonstrated, and certainly should not when a genocide is brewing.
A more practical concern is that R2P would simply be used against Israel. This is true, but no
more of R2P than of everything else, alas. Given bad will, any principle can be distorted almost
into its opposite in the application. Vladimir Putin‘s Russia cleverly cited the responsibility to
protect as a reason for its invasion of Georgia in 2008—it was just acting to protect Russians in
the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, don‘t you see! It fell to the
Swedish foreign ministry to inform the Russians that the ―responsibility to protect‖ here was
Georgia‘s, since it was on Georgian territory that the supposed offense against Russian ethnics
was taking place—and that in case Georgia failed, the responsibility would fall to the
―international community.‖
All of these documents, from the Declaration to the UN Charter to the R2P language in the
Outcome Document, are subject to the criticism that, again, they are mere words on paper.
Whom have these words actually protected? The answer is that these words are tools of moral
suasion. The principles they espouse represent some of our best conclusions about how the world
should be and what we should do in pursuit of such a world. They are, of course, works in
progress and remain subject to refinement. But we can‘t say we haven‘t really thought about
genocide and mass atrocities, whether they matter to us or what we should do when confronted
with them. By now, we know.
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_____________
Institutions cannot respond effectively to the threat of genocide and mass atrocities in the
absence of political will on the part of their members. Nevertheless, institutions can be more or
less adroit, responsive, and effective. Here, we have a long way to go, though a range of
promising steps has been taken.
Let me offer two snapshots of the problem and the response. The first comes from 2005, during
work on the Gingrich-Mitchell report. The second comes from work I did last year on the
Genocide Prevention Task Force,1 which issued a report in December 2008 with
recommendations to the U.S. government on forestalling the threat of atrocities. The institutional
change over the course of three years has been staggering.
In 2005, all was confusion, and the Darfur situation in particular was a frustrating daisy chain of
inaction: Everybody who was potentially in a position to do something useful—from the
Secretary General‘s office at the United Nations to the UN Security Council to the European
Union to NATO to the African Union mission on the ground in Darfur to the United States
government itself—was full of explanations about why somebody else had to do something first.
In 2004, the African Union (AU) deployed a small number of troops to Sudan to protect outside
monitors of a cease-fire agreement. They were able to do little to contain the depredations
Sudanese government forces were inflicting on Darfur in conjunction with the Janjaweed militia,
irregular forces of nomadic Arabic-speaking tribes at odds with the sedentary population of
Western Sudan. As was well known to everyone involved in early 2005, the AU force was too
small and woefully underequipped and unprepared. To be even minimally effective, the African
Union needed a package of assistance that would include communications and intelligence
assets, lift, planning and headquarters help, and training. Where to get it?
Well, maybe a military alliance with serious capabilities along those lines, like NATO. Or maybe
NATO acting in conjunction with the European Union, which was already providing the main
funding for the AU mission. Or maybe the European Union itself, if it could get its act together
on its desire for a ―common foreign and security policy.‖ Or maybe just the United States,
leading a coalition of the willing or even acting on its own, if necessary.
It turned out that in the previous year, in the summer of 2004, the NATO military command
under General James Jones (now Barack Obama‘s national- security adviser) had begun a
―prudent planning‖ exercise on Darfur—essentially, an inquiry into what might be done to help
out the AU. It was undertaken without the authorization of the North Atlantic Council, NATO‘s
political decision-making body.
That exercise was interrupted when several allies, notably France, objected to NATO assigning
itself a role in Africa. Some saw in the objection an effort to protect the EU‘s turf. The planning
didn‘t cease, but it moved out of NATO auspices to the U.S. European Command, our military‘s
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headquarters on the continent. As matters stood, there was no prospect of a NATO mission—but
it seemed to us that matters need not have stood there.
We knew that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had given a couple of speeches urging NATO
to assist the African Union‘s Darfur efforts. One ambassador at NATO told us he thought this
represented an opening. The Europeans who were reluctant to involve NATO would not change
their minds based merely on a speech by Annan, but if the Secretary General actually sent a
formal letter to NATO asking for alliance help, that might change the debate. It would be one
thing to say NATO shouldn‘t insert itself into Africa, quite another to decline a UN request for
help.
Does this sound ridiculous? Hundreds of thousands of lives potentially at stake over whether the
contents of a speech are transferred to a letter? It does, and this is an indication of just how illequipped the ―international community‖ as a whole was to deal with an emergency on the scale
of Darfur.
Skeptics at the European Union‘s headquarters in Brussels, meanwhile, informed us that the
African Union would be reluctant to accept assistance from the West‘s military alliance, since
doing so would smack of neo-imperialism and colonialism. A better avenue would be through
the European Union, according to the European Union—not that the EU actually had a plan.
So why not have Annan send a letter? We asked that question at a meeting with senior UN
officials on the top floor of the organization‘s building in New York. The answer was that
Annan‘s representatives had sounded out NATO and determined that there was simply no
support for the alliance‘s involvement in Africa. Annan couldn‘t possibly ask for help only to be
rebuked, explained Mark Malloch Brown, Annan‘s top adviser (now an intimate of British Prime
Minister Gordon Brown).
I found myself, to my surprise, shouting at Malloch Brown from the staff seats in the second
row: Their information was simply wrong, there was substantial will at NATO to do just that.
What was needed was a letter—Annan had already given speeches saying the same thing, all he
needed to do was send a letter, just a letter. My importuning, though impolitic, got Malloch
Brown‘s attention and drew an invitation for follow-up on the matter. On the train on the way
back to Washington, we drafted an e-mail explaining the situation as we had found it, why
everything was so horribly stuck, and how it might at last get unstuck.
We quickly heard through intermediaries that though Annan was favorably disposed to the idea
of a formal request, he didn‘t think he had the authority to write such a letter—he didn‘t want to
get out too far in front of the Security Council on a matter that was subject to difficult ongoing
negotiations there.
So now what? Another avenue to change the debate in NATO would be a letter directly from the
African Union asking for assistance in Darfur—notwithstanding the patronizing assurance we
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had received that the African Union could not conceivably accept the neocolonialist assistance of
monstrous Americans who had invaded poor Iraq.
Success. For what Annan could not write personally, he evidently could get written. After days
of back-channel exchanges with Annan‘s office, a letter arrived at NATO headquarters on April
26, 2005 from African Union chairman Alpha Konare specifically requesting NATO‘s help in
Darfur. Hard upon it, NATO‘s North Atlantic Council—the same body that had insisted on an
end to the previous year‘s ―prudent planning‖ exercise on how the genocide might be
interrupted—formally approved the assistance.
I make no claim about the efficacy or adequacy of that NATO assistance. The best one can say
about it is that things could have been worse. More than a million people in displaced-person and
refugee camps are better than more than a million dead. The presence of peacekeepers, though
woefully inadequate, seems nevertheless to have had some deterrent effect on the monstrous
Janjaweed militia and the government.
The chief fact we found as we tried to manage the rules of the international system in 2005 was a
high level of dysfunctionality. Nobody really knew what was on the minds of the key players in
the African Union. The United Nations Secretary General didn‘t know what was possible at
NATO. NATO itself was uncertain about getting involved in Africa. Some Europeans seemed
more interested in protecting their African turf than in action that might help those at risk.
Meanwhile, the only organization that seemed genuinely interested in taking action, the African
Union, was hobbled by a grievous lack of resources and capacity, and didn‘t know how or whom
to ask for help.
So what do you need to deal with a situation like Darfur? You need soldiers, and they had better
be well trained and well led, otherwise you can end up (as the UN unfortunately has on more
than one occasion) with peacekeepers who also dabble as sexual predators on the populations
they are supposed to be protecting. You need equipment, like armored personnel carriers, and
better still, helicopters. You need a mandate that enables your soldiers to take effective action, so
they‘re actually able to protect the locals in danger (not just to protect, as was notoriously the
case in Darfur, the cease-fire monitors). Above all, you need the political will to take action.
And you really need to have figured out how to put together all of the above before a crisis
spirals out of control. That means you‘ve got to do the tedious work of getting people,
governments, and institutions to think about what they need and plan in advance on how to get it.
It means a hundred different letters and memorandums of understanding. The machinery of
international politics was not developed to address problems such as Darfur. If we want to
address them, and we must, then we have to retool and refine what we‘ve got. To that end, the
Gingrich-Mitchell report included a number of recommendations on things like ―capacitybuilding,‖ an unlovely bit of foreign policy jargon, but one that nonetheless captures the
imperative to close the gap between what you have and what you need.
_____________
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Fast forward a few years later: Making the fact-finding rounds again, this time with the Genocide
Prevention Task Force, I was astounded to see that all of the things we recommended in
Gingrich-Mitchell were starting to happen. I don‘t say these changes occurred because GingrichMitchell recommended them. But we had clearly been onto something in terms of identifying the
gaps and roadblocks in the international system.
Far from resisting American or European assistance on neocolonial or any other grounds, the
African Union and other organizations on the continent welcome help. They are increasingly
finding the political will to confront the continent‘s malefactors. They have been working to
develop ―early warning‖ systems. They have the troops, but they need training and equipment
before they will be fully prepared to act swiftly in response to trouble, and that‘s where the
developed world can be useful.
NATO, meanwhile, is in the process of figuring out how to do more in partnership with others
and is favorably disposed to helping out with peace building and peacekeeping missions
conducted under UN or other auspices. A deputy secretary general at NATO now has the
responsibility to serve as the focal point for engagement with other organizations and
institutions. A document outlining how NATO will work with the UN has been approved. And
there is now a NATO liaison officer to the African Union.
The emphasis on Africa is obvious, but mass atrocities are not, of course, a problem unique to
Africa. For the first time, the charter of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations now includes
a provision on human rights. The UN Secretary General now has a special adviser on the
―responsibility to protect‖ as well as a special adviser on the prevention of genocide. These
offices are small, and they necessarily view their subjects from a UN perspective, which is too
limiting for U.S. policymakers. But again, the more constructive the UN can be, the better.
One could go on. The point is that governments and international and regional organizations
have made a beginning of taking the problem of preventing genocide and mass atrocities with the
level of seriousness the subject demands. On the home front, the Genocide Prevention Task
Force offered a large dose of specific guidance on internal government reform that holds out the
promise of more effective and timely policymaking. This is no place for a discussion of the
specifics of the interagency process and military planning procedures. Suffice it to say that better
internal organization is within reach.
The missing institutional piece on the international scene now, it seems to me, flows from the
absence of coordination and mutual awareness among the various parties that are now taking the
issue seriously. The Task Force recommended that the U.S. government undertake a ―major
diplomatic initiative‖ whose purpose would be to put together a formal network linking all the
parties that engage on the issue—governments, non-governmental organizations, and regional
and international institutions. The idea would be to share information and strategize responses to
emerging threats.
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The report does not quite say so, but it would be prudent to have someplace to go where people
with a record of taking the issue seriously and with genuine moral authority gather, in the all-toolikely event that the UN Security Council finds itself paralyzed once again in the face of mass
atrocities. Such a network would have no legal authority, but it might well have moral authority
of the sort that contributes to the generation of political will.
In the end, unsurprisingly, effective action may come down to U.S. power and will. Those of us
who see an imperative for action in these cases should welcome encouragement to that end from
wherever it may come. And realistically, it would most likely be due only to very poor
diplomacy if the United States found itself without supporters and allies in preventing or
stopping genocide.
_____________
The response to Darfur has to be judged a failure. But it has perhaps been a constructive failure
that has galvanized people to think about how to make the system more nimble in response to
gathering dangers. Those with a profound distaste for ―nonconsensual military intervention‖—
that would be an ―invasion‖ to the plain speakers among us—should be all the more concerned
about timely action to identify the gathering danger of mass atrocities and nip the problem in the
bud. Those with a will to argue for whatever is necessary to halt a slide into mass slaughter must
realize that they will be most effective in galvanizing a response if they amass a chorus of the
like-minded to speak as one on the moral imperative.
But we cannot assure ourselves that our best planning will always enable us to act early, nor can
we count on having a phalanx of the like-minded alongside us. In the extreme case, halting or
failing to halt genocide has come down to whether the political will exists within the United
States to act. We will not be spared from such decisions in the future. If we are serious, we have
to be willing to take upon ourselves the burden of providing the leadership, the arms, the troops,
and the resources, and of bearing the casualties, the reversals of fortune, and the inevitable
complaints and second-guessing.
Because the would-be genocidaires are out there, thinking about it: whom to kill; how many;
how to do it. Whether they can get away with it.
Footnotes
1
The Task Force, chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former
Secretary of Defense William Cohen, was a joint project of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the American Academy of Diplomacy.
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The Abandonment of Democracy
Jos h u a Mu ravch i k From issue: Ju l y/ Au gu st 2009
Commentary Magazine
The most surprising thing about the first half-year of Barack Obama‘s presidency, at least in the
realm of foreign policy, has been its indifference to the issues of human rights and democracy.
No administration has ever made these its primary, much less its exclusive, goals overseas. But
ever since Jimmy Carter spoke about human rights in his 1977 inaugural address and created a
new infrastructure to give bureaucratic meaning to his words, the advancement of human rights
has been one of the consistent objectives of America‘s diplomats and an occasional one of its
soldiers.
This tradition has been ruptured by the Obama administration. The new president signaled his
intent on the eve of his inauguration, when he told editors of the Washington Post that
democracy was less important than ―freedom from want and freedom from fear. If people aren‘t
secure, if people are starving, then elections may or may not address those issues, but they are
not a perfect overlay.‖
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed suit, in opening testimony at her Senate confirmation
hearings. As summed up by the Post‘s Fred Hiatt, Clinton ―invoked just about every conceivable
goal but democracy promotion. Building alliances, fighting terror, stopping disease, promoting
women‘s rights, nurturing prosperity—but hardly a peep about elections, human rights, freedom,
liberty or self-rule.‖
A few days after being sworn in, President Obama pointedly gave his first foreign press
interview to the Saudi-owned Arabic-language satellite network, Al-Arabiya. The interview was
devoted entirely to U.S. relations with the Middle East and the broader Muslim world, and
through it all Obama never mentioned democracy or human rights.
A month later, announcing his plan and timetable for the withdrawal of American forces from
Iraq, the president said he sought the ―achievable goal‖ of ―an Iraq that is sovereign, stable, and
self-reliant,‖ and he spoke of ―a more peaceful and prosperous Iraq.‖ On democracy, one of the
prime goals of America‘s invasion of Iraq, and one toward which impressive progress had been
demonstrated, he was again silent.
While drawing down in Iraq, Obama ordered more troops sent to Afghanistan, where America
was fighting a war he had long characterized as more necessary and justifiable than the one in
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Iraq. But at the same time, he spoke of the need to ―refocus on Al Qaeda‖ in Afghanistan, at least
implying that this meant washing our hands of the project of democratization there. The
Washington Post reported that ―suggestions by senior administration officials . . . that the United
States should set aside the goal of democracy in Afghanistan‖ had prompted that country‘s
foreign minister to make ―an impassioned appeal for continued U.S. support for an elected
government.‖
In early April, former New York Times correspondent Joel Brinkley summed up the
administration‘s initial performance:
Neither President Obama nor Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has even uttered the word
democracy in a manner related to democracy promotion since taking office more than two
months ago. The State Department‘s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor has put out
30 public releases, so far, and not one of them has discussed democracy promotion. Democracy,
it seems, is banished from the Obama administration‘s public vocabulary.
At a glance, Obama‘s motives seemed readily apparent. Former State Department official J.
Scott Carpenter observed that it was ―obvious and understandable‖ that ―the Obama
administration wanted to distance itself from the tone and perceived baggage of the Bush
administration.‖ But there were two reasons why this explanation did not satisfy.
For one, Obama might have put his own stamp on the issue without turning so sharply away
from the goals of human rights and democracy. In 1981, Ronald Reagan came to the presidency
with a mandate analogous to Obama‘s, namely, to undo the works of an unpopular predecessor.
At first, Reagan was inclined to eschew human rights as just another part of Jimmy Carter‘s
wooly-minded liberalism. In an early interview, Secretary of State Alexander Haig announced
that the Reagan administration would promote human rights mostly by combating terrorism. But
soon Reagan had second thoughts: instead of jettisoning the issue, he put his own distinctive spin
on it by shifting the rhetoric and the program to focus more on fostering democracy.
In a similar vein, Obama could have faulted the Bush administration for its ineffectiveness in
promoting democracy and promised that his own team would do it better. Indeed, Michael
McFaul, who handled democracy issues in the Obama campaign, declared after the election that
the new administration would ―talk less and do more‖ about democratization than Bush had
done. But when McFaul was appointed to the National Security Council staff, he was given the
Russia portfolio rather than the job of overseeing democracy promotion. The latter task, which
had been entrusted to senior staff during the Bush years, was given to no one.
The other reason why Obama‘s tack cannot be understood merely by his impulse to be unlike
Bush is that his disinterest in democracy and human rights is global. The idea of promoting these
values did not originate with Bush but with Carter and Reagan, reinforced by Bill Clinton.
Bush‘s innovation was to apply this to the Middle East, which heretofore largely had been
exempted. Repealing Bush‘s legacy would have meant turning the clock back on America‘s
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Middle East policy. But Obama scaled back democracy efforts not only there; he did it
everywhere.
Thus, for example, Clinton, on a first state visit to China, told reporters she would not say much
about human rights or Tibet because ―our pressing on those issues can‘t interfere with the global
economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis.‖ Amnesty International
declared it was ―shocked and extremely disappointed‖ by her words. Unfazed, Clinton moved on
to Russia, where she glibly presented its dictator, Vladimir Putin, with a toy ―reset button‖ even
while the string of unsolved murders of independent journalists that has marked his reign
continued to lengthen.
To be sure, China and Russia are powerful countries with which Washington must do business
across a range of issues, and because of their importance, all U.S. administrations have been
guilty of unevenness in lobbying them to respect human rights. However, the Obama
administration has downplayed human rights not only with the likes of Beijing and Moscow but
also with weak countries whose governments have no leverage over America.
For example, Clinton ordered a review of U.S. sanctions against the military dictatorship of
Burma because they haven‘t ―influenced the Burmese government.‖ This softening may have
emboldened that junta to place opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on trial in May after having
been content to keep her under house arrest most of the last eighteen years. The government of
Sudan is even weaker and more of an international pariah than Burma‘s, but the Obama
administration also let it be known that it was considering easing Bush-era sanctions applied
against Khartoum in response to the campaign of murder and rape in Darfur. According to the
Washington Post:
Many human rights activists have been shocked at the administration‘s apparent willingness to
consider easing sanctions on Burma and Sudan. The Obama presidential campaign was scornful
of Bush‘s handling of the killings in Sudan‘s Darfur region, which Bush labeled as genocide, but
since taking office, the administration has been caught flat-footed by Sudan‘s recent ousting of
international humanitarian organizations.
While it is hard to see any diplomatic benefit in soft-pedaling human rights in Burma and Sudan,
neither has Obama anything to gain politically by easing up on regimes that are reviled by
Americans from Left to Right. Even so ardent an admirer of the President as columnist E. J.
Dionne, the first to discern an ―Obama Doctrine‖ in foreign policy, confesses to ―qualms‖ about
―the relatively short shrift‖ this doctrine ―has so far given to concerns over human rights and
democracy.‖
Whether or not there is something as distinct and important as to warrant the label ―doctrine,‖ the
consistency with which the new administration has left aside democracy and human rights
suggests this is an approach the president has thought through. Following his meeting with the
Organization of American states in April, Obama told a press conference: ―What we showed
here is that we can make progress when we‘re willing to break free from some of the stale
335
debates and old ideologies that have dominated and distorted the debate in this hemisphere for
far too long.‖ His secretary of state echoed the thought: ―Let‘s put ideology aside,‖ she said.
―That is so yesterday.‖
his begs the question of exactly which ideologies are passé or whether all are equally so.
Communism, which so roiled the twentieth century, is certainly on its deathbed. Democracy, on
the other hand, has flourished and spread in recent decades as never before, to the point where
more than sixty percent of the world‘s governments are chosen in bona fide elections. To lump
together these ―ideologies‖ is gratuitously to belittle democracy.
Obama seems to believe that democracy is overrated, or at least overvalued. When asked about
the subject in his pre-inaugural interview with the Washington Post, Obama said that he is more
concerned with ―actually delivering a better life for people on the ground and less obsessed with
form, more concerned with substance.‖ He elaborated on this thought during his April visit to
Strasbourg, France:
We spend so much time talking about democracy—and obviously we should be promoting
democracy everywhere we can. But democracy, a well-functioning society that promotes liberty
and equality and fraternity, does not just depend on going to the ballot box. It also means that
you‘re not going to be shaken down by police because the police aren‘t getting properly paid. It
also means that if you want to start a business, you don‘t have to pay a bribe. I mean, there are a
whole host of other factors that people need . . . to recognize in building a civil society that
allows a country to be successful.
Whether or not the President was aware of it, he was echoing a theme first propounded long ago
by Soviet propagandists and later sung in many variations by all manner of Third World
dictators, Left to Right. It has long since been discredited by a welter of research showing that
democracies perform better in fostering economic and social well being, keeping the peace, and
averting catastrophes. Never mind that it is untoward for a President of the United States to
speak of democracy as a mere ―form,‖ less important than substance.
The trend of downgrading democracy and human rights has already been evident in some
important actions abroad. When Venezuela‘s would-be dictator, Hugo Chavez, held a
referendum to set aside the country‘s long tradition of presidential term limits, the U.S.
government went out of its way to endorse the process. The Associated Press reported:
The Obama administration says the referendum that cleared the way for Venezuelan President
Hugo Chavez to run for re-election was democratic. It was rare praise for a U.S. antagonist after
years of criticism from the Bush administration. U.S State Department spokesman Gordon
Duguid noted ―troubling reports of intimidation.‖ But he added Tuesday that ―for the most part
this was a process that was fully consistent with democratic process.‖
336
While focusing on lack of irregularities in the polling, this response studiously ignored the larger
issue. Term limits have been a pillar of democracy across Latin America, where there is a
lamentable history of elected leaders holding onto office by unscrupulous means.
However punctilious the procedure, this constitutional maneuver on the part Chavez, who makes
no secret of his ambition to serve as president for life, posed a dire threat to the preservation of
democracy in that country.
Perhaps the clearest shift in U.S. policy has been toward Egypt. By far the largest of the Arab
states, and the most influential intellectually, Egypt has also been the closest to Washington.
Thus, the Bush administration‘s willingness to pressure the government of Hosni Mubarak was
an earnest sign of its seriousness about democracy promotion.
For their part, Egyptian reformers urged the U.S. to make its aid to Egypt conditional on reforms.
The Bush administration never took this step, but the idea had support in Congress, and it hung
like a sword over the head of Mubarak‘s government. Obama has removed the threat. As the
Associated Press reported: ―Egypt‘s ambassador to the U.S., Sameh Shukri, said last week that
ties are on the mend and that Washington has dropped conditions for better relations, including
demands for ‗human rights, democracy and religious and general freedoms.‘‖
―Conditionality‖ with Egypt ―is not our policy,‖ Secretary of State Clinton said in an interview
with Egyptian TV earlier this month. ―We also want to take our relationship to the next level.‖
While promising unimpeded assistance to the regime, the Obama administration backed away
from aiding independent groups, something the Bush administration had insisted on doing
despite objections from the authorities. Announcing the elimination of programs directly
supporting Egyptian civil-society organizations, the U.S. ambassador, Margaret Scobey,
explained that this would ―facilitate‖ smoother relations with the Egyptian government. The New
York Times summarized the Obama administration‘s steps:
The White House has accommodated President Mubarak by eliminating American funding for
civil society organizations that the state refuses to recognize, and by stating publicly that neither
military nor civilian funding will be conditioned on reform. This has provoked alarm from
liberals, from scholarly experts and from activists in the region.
As the popular young Egyptian blogger, ―Sandmonkey,‖ irrepressibly irreverent and
scatological, put it: ―Let‘s face it, [Obama] ain‘t going to push on human rights and democracy.
That era is gone. We are all about diplomacy and friendship now, and that‘s what the American
people want, even if the price is that the democracy activists in Egypt get f—ed.‖
This formed the backdrop to the president‘s much-anticipated speech to the Muslim world
delivered in Cairo on June 4. Of the many thorny issues he was expected to address, the setting
337
necessitated that he spell out his views on democracy and human rights in the Middle East more
explicitly than before. In the New York Times, James Traub formulated the question this way:
Egypt was the central target of President Bush‘s Freedom Agenda . . . . But when an opposition
Islamist party did well at the polls, Egypt‘s security apparatus cracked down. The Bush
administration, concerned about pushing a key ally too far, responded meekly. . . . President
Obama‘s words in Cairo are presumably being framed in the context of that episode. Should Mr.
Bush have pushed harder for democratic reform in Egypt and with other allies? Should his
administration have spoken more softly, less publicly? Should he, like his father, have devoted
less attention to the way regimes treat their citizens, and more to winning cooperation on
America‘s national security objectives?
In the speech, Obama tackled the issue head-on, making ―democracy,‖ ―religious freedom,‖ and
―women‘s rights‖ three of the seven ―specific issues‖ that he said ―we must finally confront
together.‖ On democracy, he spoke with eloquence:
All people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are
governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that
is transparent and doesn‘t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. These are not
just American ideas; they are human rights. And that is why we will support them everywhere.
Strong as this was, its ultimate import remained elusive. Obama followed these words
immediately with the caveat that ―there is no straight line to realize this promise.‖ And while he
asserted his belief in ―governments that reflect the will of the people,‖ he added, ―Each nation
gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people. America
does not presume to know what is best for everyone.‖
This, alas, is very much the claim advanced by many authoritarian regimes, including the
absolute monarchy of Saudi Arabia, which Obama had visited the day before. Nowhere did the
president make the critical point that elections are the only known way to determine the will of
the people. That, apparently, would have been ―presumptuous.‖
When he turned to women‘s rights, Obama‘s strongest words were that women should be
educated and free to choose whether or not to live in a traditional manner. Here, too, he was at
pains to avoid sounding as if America had a worthier record than the nations he was addressing
or had something to teach them. To the contrary: ―Women‘s equality [is] by no means simply an
issue for Islam. In Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, we‘ve seen Muslim-majority
countries elect a woman to lead. Meanwhile, the struggle for women‘s equality continues in
many aspects of American life, and in countries around the world.‖
At three different points in the speech, Obama defended a woman‘s right to wear the hijab,
apparently as against the restrictions in French public schools or Turkish government offices or
perhaps in the U.S. military, which insists on uniform headgear. But he said not a word about the
right not to wear head covering, although the number of women forced to wear religious
338
garments must be tens of thousands of times greater than the number deprived of that
opportunity. This was all the more strange since he had just arrived from Saudi Arabia, where
abbayas—head-to-toe cloaks put on over regular clothes—are mandatory for women whenever
they go out. During Obama‘s stop in Riyadh, the balmy spring temperature was 104 degrees; in
the months ahead it will be twenty or thirty degrees hotter. The abbayas must be black, while the
men all go around in white which, they explain, better repels the heat.
Nor did Obama mention either directly or indirectly that all Saudi women are required to have
male ―guardians,‖ who may be a father, husband, uncle or brother or even a son, without whose
written permission it is impossible to work, enroll in school or travel, or that they may be forced
into marriage at the age of nine. Speaking on women‘s rights in Egypt, he might—but did not—
also have found something, even elliptical, to say about genital mutilation, which is practiced
more in that country than almost anywhere else.
On religious freedom, Obama invoked Islam‘s ―proud tradition of tolerance.‖ In one of his more
prodding passages, he declared that ―the richness of religious diversity must be upheld—whether
it is for Maronites in Lebanon or the Copts in Egypt.‖ One of the two institutions co-hosting his
speech was Al-Azhar University, which Obama saluted in his opening paragraph as ―a beacon of
Islamic learning.‖ This may be so, but Al-Azhar admits only Muslims. Foreign as well as native
adherents to the message of the Prophet may attend, but Egyptian Christians are excluded.
Perhaps this could be understood if it were only a school of Islamic learning (although, even
then, why?), but today Al-Azhar offers degrees in medicine, engineering, and a panoply of
subjects. Its tens of thousands of students are subsidized by state funds provided by Egyptian
taxpayers, ten percent of whom are Copts, barred from Al-Azhar.
In these passages, as throughout the speech, Obama‘s method was to induce his audience to
swallow a few perhaps-unwelcome truths by slathering them over with a thick sauce of soothing
half-truths, distortions, omissions, and false parallels.
Thus, the Cairo oration was a culmination of the themes of Obama‘s early months. He had
blamed America for the world financial crisis, global warming, Mexico‘s drug wars, for ―failure
to appreciate Europe‘s role in the world,‖ and in general for ―all too often‖ trying ―to dictate our
terms.‖ He had reinforced all this by dispatching his Secretary of State on what the New York
Times dubbed a ―contrition tour‖ of Asia and Latin America. Now he added apologies for
overthrowing the government of Iran in 1953, and for treating the Muslim countries as ―proxies‖
in the Cold War ―without regard to their own aspirations.‖
Toward what end all these mea culpas? Perhaps it is a strategy designed, as he puts it, to
―restor[e] America‘s standing in the world.‖ Or perhaps he genuinely believes, as do many
Muslims and Europeans, among others, that a great share of the world‘s ills may be laid at the
doorstep of the United States. Either way, he seems to hope that such self-criticism will open the
way to talking through our frictions with Iran, Syria, China, Russia, Burma, Sudan, Cuba,
Venezuela, and the ―moderate‖ side of the Taliban.
339
This strategy might be called peace through moral equivalence, and it finally makes fully
intelligible Obama‘s resistance to advocating human rights and democracy. For as long as those
issues are highlighted, the cultural relativism that laced his Cairo speech and similar
pronouncements in other places is revealed to be absurd. Straining to find a deficiency of
religious freedom in America, Obama came up with the claim that ―in the United States, rules on
charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation.‖ He was
referring, apparently, to the fact that donations to foreign entities are not tax deductible. This has,
of course, nothing to do with religious freedom but with assuring that tax deductions are given
only to legitimate charities and not, say, to ―violent extremists,‖ as Obama calls them (eschewing
the word ―terrorist‖).
Consider this alleged peccadillo of America in comparison to the state of religious freedom in
Egypt, where Christians may not build, renovate or repair a church without written authorization
from the President of the country or a provincial governor (and where Jews no longer find it safe
to reside). Or compare it to the practices at the previous stop on Obama‘s itinerary, Saudi Arabia,
where no church may stand, where Jews were for a time not allowed to set foot, and where even
Muslims of non-Sunni varieties are constrained from building places of worship.
In short, while it may be possible to identify derogations from democracy and human rights in
America, those that are ubiquitous in the Muslim world are greater by many orders of magnitude.
If democracy and human rights are held as high values, then all societies are not morally equal.
This is a thought that cuts sharply against Obama‘s multicultural sensibilities.
America not only embodies these values, it is also more responsible than any other country for
their spread. Many peoples today enjoy the blessings of liberty thanks to the influence of the
United States, thanks to its aid, its example, and its leading role in bringing down the Axis
powers, the Soviet Union, and European colonialism. Moreover, the advancement of human
rights and democracy requires the exercise of American influence and in turn may serve to
strengthen that influence—neither of these, it seems, processes to be welcomed by apostles of
national self-abnegation.
In Cairo, once again, President Obama criticized the Bush administration for having acted
―contrary to our ideals‖ when it infringed rules of due process in the course of the war against
terror and authorized ―enhanced interrogation techniques‖ that many believe are tantamount to
torture. At worst, these infringements were bad answers to questions to which there were no
good ones. Some of these practices may have been wrong, but there has not been a single serious
allegation that any official employed them for any ulterior purpose, that is, for anything other
than the goal of protecting our country in a time of war and national peril.
To dwell on this subject, as Obama has done, is to place great emphasis on humane values. How
odd, then, to remove human rights and democracy from the agenda of our foreign policy. This is
not the place to enter the debate about torture, but even if Khaled Sheikh Mohammed—the
mastermind of the 9/11 attacks who was the main victim of waterboarding—and others were
abused, there is little doubt that they were up to evil. It is hard to understand vociferating over
their treatment even while silencing America‘s voice on behalf of such brave liberals as Ayman
340
Nour and Sa‘ad Edin Ibrahim, persecuted by the government that hosted Obama in Cairo for the
peaceful advocacy of democracy. In this can be found neither strategic nor moral coherence.
About the Author
Joshua Muravchik is a fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins
University School of Advanced International Studies. His new book, The Next Founders:
Voices of Democracy in the Middle East, has just been released by Encounter.
What Do Dissidents Want?
A little support from Washington, for starters.
BY Ellen Bork
February 22, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 22
The Weekly Standard
The Obama administration is faltering on democracy and human rights. Take the president‘s
November trip to China. His ―town hall meeting‖ was stage-managed by Communist authorities,
and Liu Xiaobo, the most prominent dissident on a list given to Chinese authorities, was
sentenced a few weeks later to 11 years in jail. Iranian protesters have asked whether Obama is
―with us or with them,‖ meaning the Iranian regime. Even the president‘s performance in Russia
last July elicited faint praise. ―Less than we needed, but more than we expected,‖ said Garry
Kasparov, a leader of Solidarity Russia, after the president met with civil society activists and
opposition politicians.
What do dissidents want? With few exceptions, they welcome American support, moral but also
material. Yet their views are not always represented in the often abstract debate over what
priority should be given to democracy and human rights in foreign policy. That issue is usually
framed as a trade-off. The United States, the argument goes, needs cooperation from
dictatorships like Russia, China, Egypt, and Iran on nuclear proliferation, terrorism, Middle East
peace, and most recently climate change. If democracy and human rights are subordinated to
these goals, that is regrettable but necessary. In any case, top officials are quick to lament their
341
lack of ―leverage‖ in pursuit of democracy and human rights, concluding that there is little to be
done.
Dissidents, by contrast, are convinced the United States has leverage. ―Believe me, everybody
wants to be recognized by the United States, even those who have been professional at bashing
the United States right and left,‖ insisted Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian dissident, speaking in
Washington last fall. ―They realize that their legitimacy is contingent on being recognized by
Western democracies.‖ Ibrahim also challenges the assumption that cozying up to dictators
yields rewards. ―What have you gotten out of it?‖ he asks, referring to close relations with the
Mubarak regime. ―Nothing in the peace process. Not one inch beyond what the late President
Sadat accomplished. Not one iota. And yet the regime is using its role in the peace process to
keep the pressure off.‖ If anything, Egypt‘

Foreign Policy 2010 - Foreign Policy Initiative

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