A New Cold War?

The aftermath of the Russian invasion of Georgia in defense of the separatist territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia certainly has not smoothed any of the ruffled feathers. Yesterday, Russia recognized the independence of the break-away territories, making it clear that the invasion was pay-back for the west's protection of and support for Kosovo, which declared its independence from Russian-allied Serbia. The US and most of its allies denounced the move, with the US declaring that it would veto any attempt by Russia to get the UN to recognize the territories' independence. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said “Abkhazia and South Ossetia are a part of the internationally recognized borders of Georgia, and it’s going to remain so.”

Today, the tensions continued to rise, as a US warship arrived in the Georgian port of Batumi, ostensibly to deliver humanitarian aid. However, the interjection of US sailors and vessels into the region will undoubtedly be read by Russia as a signal of the American willingness to support Georgia in any further crises, and perhaps even as a commitment to defend Georgian territorial integrity. In response, Russia sent three warships to a port in Abkhazia, clearly signaling Russian intentions to break the region, along with South Ossetia, away from Georgia. Meanwhile, the Russian invasion prompted Poland to move quickly to accept deployment of an American ballistic missile defense system, a move to which Russia has responded with threats of military action. Russian President Dimitri Medvedev has responded to the west's support of Georgia, as well as the deployment agreement of the ABM system, by stating that “[Russia is] not afraid of anything, including the prospect of a Cold War.”

Is that where all of this is leading? Does Russia, desperate to regain the glory, power, and respect held by the Soviet Union, want to enter into a new global struggle with the United States, NATO, and the western powers? Is the US ready to accept such a development?

While it's possible that Russia prefers a new Cold War to the status quo of weaknesses, dependence, and perceived humiliation, it's not likely to happen. The Russia of the 21st century is a far cry from the Soviet Union. Russia lacks, plain and simple, the military capability, and the power projection in particular, to challenge the US for global leadership. While Russia's economy has strengthened, it has done so largely on the basis of energy exports, which makes Russia as dependent on foreign economies as foreign states are on Russia. Meanwhile, the rest of the economy is underdeveloped and highly dependent on foreign investment, which gives the outside world a fair amount of leverage over Russia. The Russian stock market has taken a beating since the invasion of Georgia, and lost billions of dollars in value with the recognition of independence. Foreign investors, wary about the chance of war, sanctions, or other punishments, are pulling their money out of Russia, and the stock market lost 4.1% of its value, and the ruble has slid 4% as well. Also yesterday, Russian officials acknowledged that Russia is not likely to be admitted into the World Trade Organization any time soon. And while there were real economic concerns over Russia's accession, the invasion more or less sealed Russia's fate.

All of this demonstrates the potential power of engagement. If Russia seeks a new Cold War, it will have to do so at the expense of its domestic economy, which, given that many of the leading Russian government officials are connected to Russian state-owned enterprises (Medvedev was chairman of Gazprom until ascending to the presidency in May), will directly affect their personal finances.

This is not to say that Russia will not continue to challenge the West. But the price of starting a new Cold War is likely far more than Russia would be willing to pay. The US, NATO, and the western powers need to make it painfully clear to Russia that the price for this behavior will be, first and foremost, economic, and secondly, Russian participation in international organizations. Far from being empty, such threats can actually be carried out, and can impose serious costs on Russia.

Russia Learns A Lesson, But Was It The Right Lesson?

In the last few days, the diplomatic wires have been burning up as US officials warn Russia about possible consequences of the invasion of Georgia. SecState Rice is in Tbilisi working on the details of the ceasefire and trying to get Russian troops out of Georgia. President Bush referred to Russia's actions as "bullying and intimidation," warned of as-of-yet unspecified consequences, and wondered, perhaps tellingly, what the G-7 would do about the invasion. SecDef Gates warned that “Russia’s behavior over the past week has called into question the entire premise of that dialogue and has profound implications for our security relationship going forward, both bilaterally and with NATO. If Russia does not step back from its aggressive posture and actions in Georgia, the U.S.-Russian relationship could be adversely affected for years to come.”

So, what did Russia learn from all of these warnings and blustering. Apparently, not much. Despite the signing of a cease-fire, Russian armored vehicles were, as of Friday night in Georgia, moving towards the capital city of Tbilisi, seizing a village about 15 miles out of town. Russian troops also moved west through Georgia, to the town of Abasha, although they seem to have withdrawn. Most concerning, however, was Russia's reaction to the signing of a deal to place a ballistic missile defense system in Poland. A senior Russian defense official lashed out at the move, saying that "cannot go unpunished." This, of course, is of direct and immediate concern to the US. Not only is Poland a member of NATO, but the deal ties the US closer to Poland than ever before:

In exchange for providing the base, Poland would get what the two sides called “enhanced security cooperation,” notably a top-of-the-line Patriot air defense system that can shoot down shorter-range missiles or attacking fighters or bombers.

A senior Pentagon official described an unusual part of this quid pro quo: an American Patriot battery would be moved from Germany to Poland, where it would be operated by a crew of about 100 American military personnel members. The expenses would be shared by both nations. American troops would join the Polish military, at least temporarily, at the front lines — facing east toward Russia.

...

the United States would be obliged to defend Poland in case of an attack with greater speed than required under NATO, of which Poland is a member.

Polish officials said the agreement would strengthen the mutual commitment of the United States to defend Poland, and vice versa. “Poland and the Poles do not want to be in alliances in which assistance comes at some point later — it is no good when assistance comes to dead people,” the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, said on Polish television. “Poland wants to be in alliances where assistance comes in the very first hours of — knock on wood — any possible conflict.”

Would Russia really attack Poland if such an attack risks bringing NATO into the fight? If Russia does attack Poland, would the US go to war to defend its new ally, if that war was against a military power (fading though it is) like Russia?

Certainly, the failure of the West to come to Georgia's aid has emboldened Russia, as has the to-date unwillingness to set out any punishment. But Poland and Eastern Europe are a different story from Georgia. America's credibility, alliance structure, and policies of engagement and enlargement depend on the expansion of NATO and the US's ability to protect its allies. The US cannot fail to protect Poland, even if that means going to war with Russia. Such a war would, hopefully, remain limited (this isn't the Cold War, after all, and Russia doesn't see its interest or sphere of influence as global). But if Russia seeks such a war, it would be far too damaging to American long-term interests not to fight. Which means that the US must be willing to engage in high-stakes brinksmanship to ensure that such a war does not happen and that Russia knows that the US will go to war to defend its NATO ally.

All of these events have the realists waving their "told you so" signs about the dangers of NATO expansion. For realists, the end of the Cold War signaled the end of NATO's relevance; it makes no sense, they argue, to antagonize Russia over Georgia, Ukraine, or Poland. Russia has a legitimate security concern in Eastern Europe, the US does not. Thus, NATO should not push towards Russia's western border.

As I have argued many many times on these pages, the US should not, and does not, understand its interests along the narrow lines outlined by realists. It's not all about power. The problems in Georgia do not represent a victory for realism; they do expose the difficulties in advancing an agenda of engagement and enlargement. If Georgia had been admitted into NATO, Russia's decision to invade would have been made in a very different strategic environment.

US hegemony and leadership has moved much of the world further away from war than it has ever been. But that program requires constant maintenance, and comes at a high cost. The US must not shirk its duty here. President Bush should immediately make it clear that Poland is a member of NATO, and that the US and all NATO members will, if need be, fulfill their obligations to Poland. Then, as soon as possible, a nominal number of US troops should be rushed to Poland, to make a credible demonstration of US will and intent. Russia clearly feels emboldened and empowered by the west's debacle in Georgia. But Russian interests must be put back in their place.

Russia Gets Nervous (But Not Nervous Enough)

In Monday's post on the Russian invasion of Georgia, I wrote that Russian membership in the G-8 should be immediately and indefinitely suspended, if not revoked all together. Of course, I wasn't the only person to suggest such a move. Charles Krauthammer takes the argument one step further, arguing that the US should "suspend the NATO-Russia Council established in 2002 to help bring Russia closer to the West," dissolve the G-8 (later reforming it as the G-7 sans Russia), bar Russia from joining the WTO, and boycott the 2014 Winter Olympics to be held in Russia, just 15 miles from the Georgian border. While neither President Bush nor the presidential candidates have made such concrete proposals, it won't be surprising to such such punishments come down the line in the near future. WTO membership will be hard enough for Russia now, as every member, including Georgia, has to agree to a bilateral agreement with Russia for Russia to join. If President Mikheil Saakashvili can hold on to power (the thrust of the violation of the ceasefire by Russia seems to be replacing Saakashvili with a Russian puppet leader as well as preventing Georgia from retaining the separatist provinces), getting that agreement will be next-to-impossible.

Nonetheless, Russia seems to be a bit worried about these possibilities. Today, a senior Russian official expressed concern, saying that "there are no formal reasons to stop these (accession) talks," and that "The statements that our accession should be delayed because of events in Georgia sound strange. It contradicts basic logic, common sense and promises that were given by the governments of Western countries to Russia." This statement seems to indicate that Russia is concerned about the possibility of being shut out of the global economic system. Of course, Russia doesn't seem too concerned, probably because no such threat is immediately forthcoming.

President Bush should immediately make it clear to Russia what the consequences of this action will be, not only for US-Russian relations, but for Russia's whole approach to the west. Sending humanitarian aid is not enough; the credibility of the American role as protector of the global order is at stake here. Bush needs to move quickly to prevent the Georgian government from collapsing and the Finlandization of Georgia, with Ukraine sure to follow.

Georgia On My Mind

In the wake of this weekend's invasion of Georgia by Russian armed forces, things seem to be proceeding from bad to worse. After Georgian forces took action against ethnic Russian separatists in the region of South Ossetia, Russian forces entered the country in a self-proclaimed effort to force Georgia to "bring peace" to the region. However, Russia quickly expanded the conflict, conducting air strikes against Georgian cities and crossing the border and occupying a military base in the region of Abkhazia. Reports today from Georgia claim that Russian forces have seized a vital highway, effectively splitting Georgia in two, while a Georgian official in the embassy in Russia has said that Russian forces are moving towards the Georgian capital of Tbilisi and that Russia's goals are the "complete liquidation" of the Georgian government.

Most of the blame deservedly falls on Russia for using force to reassert its fading power in areas Russia deems critical to its own national security. And Russia is also clearly sending a message to the West in the wake of the declaration of independence by Kosovo. If NATO is free to use force to intervene in an ethnic conflict over sovereignty, so is Russia. And finally, Russia is likely punishing Georgia for its recent move towards the West, particularly the US, that culminated in Georgia's failed bid to join NATO.

But some blame for this situation must fall on the West as well. NATO allowed Georgia to put itself in a very dangerous position with its bid for membership, and then failed to follow through and admit Georgia. At the time, I wrote that NATO made a bad choice by bowing to Russian concerns over Georgia (and Ukraine); now we see the consequences of that bad choice. Georgia put itself out on a limb by seeking NATO membership (not to mention by contributing troops to Iraq), and the West is now standing by while Russia saws that limb off. Needless to say, this is likely to have a very negative impact on the value of ties to the US, NATO, and the West, if seeking such ties produces an outcome such as Georgia is now experiencing.

What is to be done at this point? Given Russia's membership on the UN Security Council, the UN is not likely to be capable of playing any kind of role, be it meaningful or token, in resolving this crisis. Nor is the NATO-end-around viable here, as war with Russia is certainly not on anyone's radar screen at this point.

However, the West, and particularly the US, must not roll over here. It is vital to send a message to countries, such as Georgia and Ukraine, that warming up to the West will not end in abandonment and a Russian invasion. If globalization, engagement, and other aspects of Western global strategy are to succeed, nations in hot spots must be willing to take risks and confidently believe that those risks will pay off and that the West will help them.

For starters, Russia should have its membership in the G-8 suspended immediately and indefinitely, if not revoked all together. I have long argued that Russia's participation is a joke and more of a sop to a fading former power. But now that membership is a true farce. If Russia chooses to act in this way, it cannot be a participant in the global order. The whole logic of engagement is predicated on the benefits of the global system acting as an inducement for states to liberalize their behavior. Now, not only is Russia's domestic situation problematic, but it's international behavior is as well. Russia cannot be allowed to continue as a member of the G-8 so long as it remains involved in Georgian affairs to this degree.

After that, I'm not sure what steps should follow. But the G-8 has served as a useful carrot in the past, now it is well suited to be a stick.

Peter Rodman, RIP

My first foreign policy mentor, Peter Rodman, died this past Saturday. I first worked with Rodman as an intern when he was the director of Middle East Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. I moved with him to the Nixon Center, where he was Director of National Security Studies. Peter has had an impressive, albeit largely behind the scenes, career at the center of US foreign policy and national security, having been one of Henry Kissinger's top aides during events such as the opening of China, the peace talks ending the Vietnam War, and the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Peter helped me understand the difficult decisions inherent in policy making, but also worked with me to see how analysis and clear thinking helped uncover the best decision. I hadn't spoken with him in several years, but I will never forget the guidance, support, and wisdom he imparted to a 23 year old intern, eager to learn about foreign policy.

He will be greatly missed.

From the New York Times:

Peter Rodman, Foreign Affairs Expert, Dies at 64

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Peter W. Rodman, a foreign policy expert who served every Republican president from Richard M. Nixon to George W. Bush, including as an assistant secretary of defense for nearly six years in the current administration, died on Saturday in Baltimore. He was 64.

The cause was complications of leukemia, said Danielle Pletka, vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Mr. Rodman was lured into government by his senior thesis adviser at Harvard, Henry A. Kissinger, then the national security adviser, and he became Dr. Kissinger’s aide in negotiations that included the opening of China, peace talks on Vietnam and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

As assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, he traveled with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to gather allies for the war on terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. He led a mission to London to help establish the multinational peacekeeping force for Kabul after the overthrow of the Taliban.

His jobs included being director of the State Department’s policy planning staff; a senior editor at National Review; and director of national security programs at the Nixon Center, a foreign policy research organization. He had been a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution since March 2007.

Peter Warren Rodman was born on Nov. 24, 1943, in Boston. He became interested in foreign policy at 4 and later taught himself Russian to listen to Soviet broadcasts, his family said. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in three years and earned a master’s degree from Oxford and a law degree from Harvard.

In 1994, he published “More Precious Than Peace: The Cold War and the Struggle for the Third World,” a study of Soviet-American competition in the developing nations that Foreign Affairs called a “tour de force.” Next year, Knopf is to publish his “Presidential Command: Power, Leadership, and the Making of Foreign Policy from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush,” which melds his own experiences with extensive research.

Mr. Rodman also worked extensively with Mr. Kissinger on Mr. Kissinger’s memoirs and published many monographs and articles, some in the popular press.

Mr. Rodman is survived by his wife, the former Veronique Boulad, a daughter, Theodora, and a son, Nicholas, all of Washington; his father, Sumner, and mother, Helen, of Chestnut Hill, Mass; and a brother, John, of Newton Centre, Mass.

Should Congress Declare War on al Qaeda?

Testifying before Congress today, Attorney General Michael Mukasey urged Congress to formally declare war on al Qaeda. Appearing to provide testimony about pending legislation concerning the decision in the Boumediene case that detainees in Guantanamo Bay do have habeas rights, Mukasey argued that the legislation should:

prohibit courts from ordering a detainee to be released within the United States, protect secrets in court hearings, ensure that soldiers are not taken from the battlefield to testify and prevent challenges from delaying detainee trials,

In addition, he said, "Any legislation should acknowledge again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us."

"Congress should reaffirm that for the duration of the conflict the United States may detain as enemy combatants those who have engaged in hostilities or purposefully supported al Qaeda," and related groups, he said.

As readers of this blog, I have long argued that the congressional power to declare war is about the legal status of individuals under the jurisdiction of US law, rather than the power to deploy troops and initial hostilities, and Mukasey's request fits along that opinion.

However, it would be disastrous if Congress declared war. Fortunately, it's hard to imagine Congress doing so, especially as the Bush presidency comes to an end. But, if Congress agrees with Mukasey and does declare war, Bush would be placed at the absolute zenith of presidential power. Declarations of war are tools by which Congress recognizes the grave danger faced by the nation and expands presidential power to meet that threat. The expanded power enjoyed by the president under a formal declaration of war is, in essence, the power to legislate normally possessed by Congress. Thus, under a declaration of war, presidents are able to intern US citizens, seize domestic industry, censor the press, and take similar actions of a legislative nature. Clearly, these are the kinds of powers Mukasey has in mind, as he seeks stronger powers to detain, investigate, and try those suspected of involvement in international terrorism.

And that is why Congress should not declare war. Reasonable people can and do debate over the nature of the threat posed to the US by al Qaeda. But al Qaeda does not threaten to destroy the United States, and has not even be able to mount a successful attack against the US since 2001. While the threat may very well be serious, and may even be the most serious threat faced by the US today, it does not justify giving such broad powers to the president. True, the administration has faced several setbacks in its efforts to combat al Qaeda at the hands of the Supreme Court, which very well may hurt those efforts. But cutting the Court out of the process by getting a declaration of war is not the answer. Rather, the Bush Administration should consult more with Congress to get legislative backing for its policies.

Is the War in Iraq Over?

If you're not familiar with the work of Michael Yon, you should be. He is an independent reporter who has spent more time in Iraq than any other journalist, and most of that time he has been embedded with various military units. According to Yon:

barring any major and unexpected developments (like an Israeli air strike on Iran and the retaliations that would follow), a fair-minded person could say with reasonable certainty that the war has ended. A new and better nation is growing legs. What's left is messy politics that likely will be punctuated by low-level violence and the occasional spectacular attack. Yet, the will of the Iraqi people has changed, and the Iraqi military has dramatically improved, so those spectacular attacks are diminishing along with the regular violence. Now it's time to rebuild the country, and create a pluralistic, stable and peaceful Iraq. That will be long, hard work. But by my estimation, the Iraq War is over. We won. Which means the Iraqi people won.

Yon also provides statistics to back up his claim (they can be found here in a PowerPoint file). The statistics are amazing to look at, as are the trends. Michael Totten summarizes them over at Commentary:

Security incidents, or attacks, are at their lowest level in four years. Civilian deaths are down by almost 90 percent since General Petraeus’ counterinsurgency “surge” strategy went into effect. High profile attacks, or explosions, are down by 80 percent in the same time period. American and Iraqi soldiers suffer far fewer casualties than they have for years. Ethno-sectarian deaths from Iraq’s civil war plunged all the way down to zero in May and June 2008.

Reports from all over Iraq indicate that al Qaeda is all but defeated, and the US Embassy in Iraq recently reported that Iraq has met 15 of the 18 benchmarks established by Congress. According to the report:

the only remaining shortfalls were the Baghdad government's failure to enact and implement laws governing the oil industry and the disarmament of militia and insurgent groups, and continuing problems with the professionalism of the Iraqi police. All other goals -- including preparations for upcoming elections, reform of de-Baathification and disarmament laws, progress on enacting and spending Iraq's budget, and the capabilities of the Iraqi army -- were rated "satisfactory."

The GAO has disagreed with this report, stating that there has been "little improvement in the political and economic spheres and noted continuing military problems despite a significant decline in overall violence." Still, the significant decline in violence is astounding. The embassy report stated that:

the Iraqi parliament has passed significant legislation on de-Baathification reform, the division of powers between the central and provincial governments, and amnesty for former insurgents. It grades progress in all of those areas as newly "satisfactory" even as it acknowledges that the laws in most cases have been implemented slowly, if at all. Congress mandated that Iraq both "enact and implement" the benchmark laws.

The embassy cited progress toward increasing the number of Iraqi security force units capable of independent operations. Although it says that the overall number of units that can operate independently has increased "marginally," it concludes that "70% of all formed units can now conduct [counter-insurgency] operations with or without Coalition support."

This is not to say that there won't be more deaths, either of US soldiers or Iraqis. But if al Qaeda has in fact been defeated, and the Iraqi government is stabilizing, there may in fact be a light at the end of the tunnel.

Dark Days for Darfur

Things are getting much, more worse for Darfur lately. Last week, a convoy of UN peacekeepers was ambushed by 200 gunmen on horseback and in SUVs. Seven peacekeepers were killed, and 22 wounded in the attack, which reinforces the argument that peacekeeping forces are inappropriate and ill-suited for a conflict which has not been resolved. Peacekeeping forces normally are introduced into conflict situations that have ended by agreement of all warring parties but who do not trust one another to keep the peace. Thus, a neutral third party interposes itself between the sides, guaranteeing that each side will adhere to its commitments. But Darfur is not a settled conflict. The central government in Khartoum is still conducting its raids, the janjaweed continue to raid refugee camps, and the Darfuri rebels are still fighting back, even having attacked peacekeepers in the past.

As if the situation isn't bad enough, it's like to get much worse in the near future. Today, the International Criminal Court announced that its prosecutor has requested an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir on three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of murder. While it will be months before the ICC to rule on the application, but if the warrant is issued, President al-Bashir will "effectively turn al-Bashir into a prisoner in his own country. In the past, Interpol has issued so-called Red Notices for fugitives wanted by the court, meaning they should be arrested any time they attempt to cross an international border."

But even if the warrant isn't issued, the damage is already done. The UN, which backs the ICC, also maintains the current peacekeeping force in Darfur, and it seems unlikely that Sudan will allow the peacekeepers to remain if their political leaders face indictment and arrest. The removal of the peacekeeping force, as ineffectual as it has been, would likely herald the resumption of a massive cleansing campaign by the Sudanese government in an effort to "solve" the Darfur problem before international intervention occurs again (if it ever does). Furthermore, the BBC reported on Sunday that China was breaking the UN-imposed arms embargo on Sudan, "roviding military equipment and training pilots to fly Chinese jets." While this development is all that surprising, given the diversion of international pressure on China from Darfur to Tibet, it is a troubling one, as it signals, perhaps, the end of Chinese cooperation on Sudan.

Given the precarious nature of the international community's involvement in Darfur, the indictment of al-Bashir by the ICC was definitely ill-timed and most likely ill-advised. I've blogged several times before about the problems inherent in international justice and law, and this is no different. Given that al-Bashir is unlikely to ever stand trial, maintaining the peacekeeping presence was more important than making a point through law.

The international community needs to prepare itself for more attacks on the peacekeepers, if not their expulsion from Sudan. And if (and when) that happens, given China's backsliding, it is all but impossible for the UN to put together a stronger intervention. So, the burden and responsibility will likely fall on the United States and its NATO allies. Sudan must not be allowed to continue its murderous campaign against Darfur, and China must not be allowed to shield Sudan. President Bush and the heads of states and government of the western countries should immediately threaten to boycott the Olympics, not over Tibet (which is a lost cause) but over Chinese violations of the arms embargo and protection of Sudan. China must be leveraged away from Sudan.

However, while China may be willing to support increased sanctions on Sudan, it will not, nor will Russia, support an intervention without the permission of the Sudanese government. Thus, NATO needs to be ready, if it cares at all about saving the Darfuri people, to deploy a force to Sudan immediately. Anything less will likely condemn the people of Darfur to their doom.

Know How to Photoshop? Iran Needs Your Help!

The international community was on edge this week as tensions rose in the Middle East between Israel and Iran. News of an Israeli wargame leaked out, and Iran responded by testing four missiles that potentially have the range to hit Israel.

However, as the photo above reveals, the evidence of the missile test was faked by Iran. According to the New York Times:

Agence France-Presse, which distributed the image of the four missiles to the West, said it was obtained on Wednesday from the Web site of Sepah News, the media arm of the Revolutionary Guards.

On Thursday, The Associated Press released what appeared to be a nearly identical photo, but Little Green Footballs a conservative blog, identified the altered image on its site on Wednesday night . Last year the blog pointed out a manipulated image that had been distributed by Iran’s semiofficial Fars News Agency. As in the case of Wednesday’s photograph and many others that the site has uncovered, the one from 2007 appeared to contain several cloned elements.

Iranian leaders have overstated military developments in the past. “They’ve made some exaggerated claims from time to time,” said Gary Sick, an expert on Iran at Columbia University. “They clearly want the world to be impressed with their missile capability.”

Agence France-Presse retracted its original image on Thursday morning, saying the fourth missile “has apparently been added in digital retouch to cover a grounded missile that may have failed during the test.”

Furthermore, many analysts questioned Iran's claim that the test revealed improvements in Iran's strategic capabilities. In the Los Angeles Times, Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School, states that “There is no evidence of a significant advance in previously known missile capabilities of Iran’s medium- and long-range missiles.”

If it weren't so scary, it would be pretty funny.

The Absurdity of International Climate Change Policy

Yesterday, the leaders of the G8 countries announced a break-through (of sorts) on international climate change policy. In exchange for getting the United States to agree to the relatively modest goal of reducing carbon emissions by 50% by 2050, the other members signed on to a statement that developing countries -- including China (now the leading producer of carbon emissions), India, Brazil, and Mexico -- need to cut their emissions as well.

But therein lies the rub. The developing countries do not feel that they should be required to cut their emissions, as they did not contribute to the current problem. In a statement, the five major developing countries announced that "It is essential that developed countries take the lead in achieving ambitious and absolute greenhouse gas emissions reductions," and that they rejected the notion that all should share in the 50-percent target, since it is wealthier countries that have created most of the environmental damage up to now.

This might be true in a moral sense. Certainly, the developed economies of the Western countries have produced more carbon that have those of the developing nations. But morality doesn't count for much in politics. If the developing countries refuse to cut their emissions, political theory tells us that the developed states will be hesitant to do so, for fear of losing their edge and seeing their relative power diminish. Ultimately, the environment is a massive tragedy of the commons, in which the absence of over-arching regulatory authority means that a public good gets overused, as no actor will restrain his use of the commons while other actors remain free to exploit it. Why should the US damage its own economy if China remains free to pollute? China will enjoy the gains of a better environment, without paying the costs, while the US will pay the costs without reaping the full benefits, due to China's continued polluting.

The international arena is not the best venue for producing global environmental change. The collective actions problems, as well as other barriers to action, are simply too large. As states like California have recently developed, the best strategy is to focus on local change, and to allow other mechanisms to spread the successful innovations and developments to other parts of the country and the world. The international system is far too anarchic and power-based to expect any real progress.

Fixing the War Powers Resolution

As readers of Security Dilemmas may know, I am currently working on questions of presidential-congressional war powers, and have a contract with Praeger Press for my book Restoring the Balance: War Powers in an Age of Terror. So, it is of course of interest to me that the National War Powers Commission has published its report (the pdf file of the final report is here) on how to fix war powers. The Commission also published an op-ed in today's New York Times summarizing their findings.

The Commission notes that the War Powers Resolution of 1973 has been monumentally ineffective at resolving fundamental questions -- both constitutional and political -- of war powers. The WPR is also, most likely, unconstitutional, as the stipulation that Congress need only pass a concurrent resolution to force the president to withdraw deployed troops seems to violate the prohibition on legislative vetoes established in INS v. Chadha. But, more importantly, the WPR wasn't really in tune with political reality:

it too narrowly defines the president’s war powers to exclude the power to respond to sudden attacks on Americans abroad; it empowers Congress to terminate an armed conflict by simply doing nothing; and it fails to identify which of the 535 members of Congress the president should consult before going to war.

Their recommendations:

Our proposed statute would provide that the president must consult with Congress before ordering a “significant armed conflict” — defined as combat operations that last or are expected to last more than a week. To provide more clarity than the 1973 War Powers Resolution, our statute also defines what types of hostilities would not be considered significant armed conflicts — for example, training exercises, covert operations or missions to protect and rescue Americans abroad. If secrecy or other circumstances precluded prior consultation, then consultation — not just notification — would need to be undertaken within three days.

To guarantee that the president consults with a cross section of Congress, the act would create a joint Congressional committee made up of the leaders of the House and the Senate as well as the chairmen and ranking members of key committees. These are the members of Congress with whom the president would need to personally consult. Almost as important, the act would establish a permanent, bipartisan staff with access to all relevant intelligence and national-security information.

Congress would have obligations, too. Unless it declared war or otherwise expressly authorized a conflict, it would have to vote within 30 days on a resolution of approval. If the resolution of approval was defeated in either House, any member of Congress could propose a resolution of disapproval. Such a resolution would have the force of law, however, only if it were passed by both houses and signed by the president or the president’s veto were overridden. If the resolution of disapproval did not survive the president’s veto, Congress could express its opposition by, for example, using its internal rules to block future spending on the conflict.

This is an admirable effort, and is infinitely better than the War Powers Resolution (not to mention that it solves the legislative veto problem). However, it is not likely to satisfactorily resolve the concerns over war powers.

On one hand, the proposed statute gives broad powers to the president, but still couches the commander-in-chief power under the domain of the legislative branch. As I have argued multiple times on this site, as well as in two law review articles and my forthcoming book, it is not at all clear that the Constitution intends Congress to have any say whatsoever over the deployment of the armed forces of the United States. If, as I argue, the "declare war" clause is about the power to transform the legal status of the political arenas rather than the power to deploy troops or initiate hostilities, then giving Congress any power to force the president to bring deployed troops home is a violation of the separation of powers mandated by the Constitution.

On the other hand, the method by which the proposed statute functions is unlikely to satisfy proponents of a more robust role for Congress on the issue of war powers. Forcing the president to bring the troops home would require: 1) A vote to authorize the deployment to fail; 2) Both Houses to pass a "resolution of disapproval," and; 3) Both Houses to override the inevitable presidential veto by a 2/3 vote. It is all but inconceivable that this would happen. Even in a fantastically unpopular war, like the current one in Iraq was during its darkest days, it is unlikely that enough of the president's fellow party members would defect. Furthermore, as Iraq has clearly demonstrated, even those congressmen vehemently opposed to the war are loath to go on record opposing the president, and even more hesitant to take actions to end the war when such actions would place blame and responsibility on their heads, rather than on the president's.

The report is a welcome improvement on the War Powers Resolution. But I do not expect that it will have any meaningful impact on the balance of war powers between the president and Congress. It does mandate regular reporting on active troop deployments, and creates a clear mechanism for doing so, and that is a good thing. But, even while rejecting the War Powers Resolution, presidents have tended to regularly report to Congress, so not much will change there either. Still, the War Powers Resolution is a terrible piece of legislation, and deserves to be put to rest. Whether this proposed legislation can and will pass is a question to which I do not know the answer. It definitely seems to reduce the power of Congress (although only hypothetically, as Congress has never even really tried to enforce the WPR), so it should be an interesting debate.

UPDATE: I'm currently teaching US Foreign Policy in summer school, and as we talked about war powers yesterday, we considered the Commission's report today. It occurred to me that there's another reason this proposal might be not-so-good from the perspective of desiring a strong congressional role. Forcing a vote on approving the deployment of force at the 30 day mark may make it more likely that Congress will fail to stand up to the president. It's exceedingly hard for Congress to go on record as opposing the use of force by the president. After all, no one wants to be seen as soft on ____ (Insert communism, terrorism, or whatever bogeyman is popular); furthermore, congressmen don't want to be blamed for whatever happens, especially if they force the troops to come home. So, at the 30 day mark, when the conflict is still relatively fresh, there may be bureaucratic inertia that favors the president and renders any dissent impotent.

The Torture of Christopher Hitchens

This blog has spent a fair amount of time in the past considering the question of torture (a few of the posts can be found here, here, here, here, and here). I've gone back and forth on the issue, but, in brief, my position is this: Measures amounting to torture, if they are to be used at all, must only be used in rare and specific cases and always in accordance with existing laws. But, for all my theoretical exploration of the issue I have, thankfully, no practical experience on which to base my argument.

But Christopher Hitchens does. Recently, Hitch allowed himself to be waterboarded by the people who train US Special Forces soldiers to resist torture at the hands of the enemy. The experience is, by all acounts, horrifying. Over at Vanity Fair, Hitchens has written an article about the experience, and there is a video as well. Both are well worth your time. In Hitchens' opinion, "if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture."

I don't know quite what to make of the torture of Hitchens. Watching the video is truly shocking. He lasts all of 10 seconds (more or less) before ending the demonstration in sheer terror, and confesses to now having panic attacks and nightmares. However, while I may not have experienced waterboarding, I was under no naive conceptions about its nature. Nor does that change the theoretic logic with which I understand the dilemma. Of course, interrogation measures like waterboarding are extreme, terrifying, and torturous. They are, and should be, beyond the pale of all but the most extreme interrogations. If the country as a whole believes that there are absolutely no circumstances under which such techniques would be justified, then the techniques should be clearly and explicitly prohibited. Congress' refusal to explicitly ban waterboarding has left the door open for its use. While I do believe that the use of torture may, in very rare, unique, and controlled cases be justified, I also believe that the law must be followed.

The question of the use of torture is a difficult one to think clearly and rationally about. Hitchens manages to do so, even having undergone torture himself. As he notes (quoting a discussion he had with Malcolm Nance:

1. Waterboarding is a deliberate torture technique and has been prosecuted as such by our judicial arm when perpetrated by others.

2. If we allow it and justify it, we cannot complain if it is employed in the future by other regimes on captive U.S. citizens. It is a method of putting American prisoners in harm’s way.

3. It may be a means of extracting information, but it is also a means of extracting junk information. (Mr. Nance told me that he had heard of someone’s being compelled to confess that he was a hermaphrodite. I later had an awful twinge while wondering if I myself could have been “dunked” this far.) To put it briefly, even the C.I.A. sources for the Washington Post story on waterboarding conceded that the information they got out of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was “not all of it reliable.” Just put a pencil line under that last phrase, or commit it to memory.

4. It opens a door that cannot be closed. Once you have posed the notorious “ticking bomb” question, and once you assume that you are in the right, what will you not do? Waterboarding not getting results fast enough? The terrorist’s clock still ticking? Well, then, bring on the thumbscrews and the pincers and the electrodes and the rack.

As I've noted in my posts linked above, some of these arguments I do not buy; others I have great sympathy with. This is not an easy discussion to have; even having it is likely to get one branded as a "torture sympathizer." But we must have it.

A Chance for the UN to Show Its Quality

Things are looking pretty bleak in Zimbabwe. In the wake of the March elections in which opposition parties won more votes than the ruling ZANU-PF party, President Robert Mugabe has sunk to new, depraved lows in his efforts to hold on to power. Opposition parties have been arrested and charged with treason, rallies have been attacked, supporters have been killed, and there are accusations that the ZANU-PF has set up "torture camps" to systematically terrorize any who dare oppose it. This week, just days before the run-off election forced on the country by Mugabe, opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai has taken refuge in the Dutch Embassy and, on Sunday, withdrew from the race, claiming he would not subject his supporters to violence and even death when their votes would not matter. The UN has disparaged the election, which ZANU-PF has announced will take place this Friday regardless of Tsvangirai's withdrawal, international accusations of electoral fraud and intimidation, and the mounting violence, saying that they will lack legitimacy.

However, though, ultimately, it doesn't look like there's much hope. As the Washington Post editorialized yesterday, "Only concerted and aggressive intervention by the United Nations and Zimbabwe's neighbors can now prevent this crime, brazenly carried out in front of the world, from going forward" and that doesn't seem likely to happen. As the Post notes: "While the United States and Britain have repeatedly condemned Mr. Mugabe's terror and have tried to inspire action by the UN Security Council or the Southern African Development Community, they have been blocked by Mr. Mugabe's allies -- foremost among them Thabo Mbeki , South Africa's lame-duck president."

This blog has already called for the US and the Europeans to sanction South Africa if it refuses to play a responsible role in forcing Mugabe to accept the results of a free election. But that doesn't seem likely to happen either. The situation calls for stronger measures.

I hereby call upon the UN to expel, or suspend, Zimbabwe from the General Assembly and the community of nations. A state whose leader openly says that he would go to war before accepting defeat at the polls cannot be considered a legitimate state. Zimbabwe's legal international sovereignty should be immediately suspended, and Zimbabwe's membership in every international organization should end. Until Mugabe and the ZANU-PF end the campaign of organized electoral intimidation and publicly pledge to accept the results of the election, until the election can be monitored by independent third-party observers, and until the people of Zimbabwe are given the opportunity to have their voices counted, Zimbabwe does not deserve to be a member of the community of nations.

There is little chance that the UN will take such a principled stance, wedded as it is to sovereign equality. But this is a real opportunity for the UN to move beyond its stultifying addiction to treating every state equally. Until the UN is ready to make judgments about countries, to criticize them for openly subverting the will of their peoples, there is no hope for the people of Zimbabwe, let alone those in Darfur or anywhere else people are tormented by their authoritarian rulers.

The Danger of International Law

Recently, I was interviewed by a Danish journalist who is writing an article on the 10th anniversary of the founding of the International Criminal Court. She wanted some opinions that were more skeptical of the prospects of international law, so she turned to me (for an overview of my thoughts on the subject see this post or this one).

Answering her questions got me to thinking about the state of international law, and some of its more problematic aspects. In particular, I find it interesting that the conventional wisdom is that the US is some kind of outlier on international law. There seems to be a sense that the US is stuck in some kind of barbaric, conservative past, while Europe and our other allies move forward into some kind of post-modern, international-law-abiding future. One obvious example of this is in the death penalty, where the US remains one of the only western countries to continue its practice. In fact, the death penalty provides a critical moment in the development of international law domestically. In Roper v Simmons, the Supreme Court considered the question of whether someone under the age of 18 could be executed for a capital crime. In the majority opinion, Justice Kennedy wrote that "our determination that the death penalty is disproportionate punishment for offenders under 18 finds confirmation in the stark reality that the United States is the only country in the world that continues to give official sanction to the juvenile death penalty" and that "the Court has referred to the laws of other countries and to international authorities as instructive for its interpretation of the 8th Amendment's prohibition of 'cruel and unusual punishment'." Kennedy went on to point to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (which the US had not ratified), the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights, and the fact that of the seven other countries that had executed a minor since 1990 (Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and China), each had either abolished the practice or publicly disavowed it. The upshot was international law was used as a mechanism to interpret the meaning of US domestic law.

While I don't disagree with the outcome, the decision is particularly troubling. Justice Scalia's dissent is of particular interest here. He wrote that the United States has a unique approach to many different kinds of law than does the rest of the world, and that the US shouldn't abandon those approaches simply because the rest of the world does things differently. And lest we think that everything the US does differently is of a more conservative bent, Scalia notes that:

a categorical exclusionary rule has been 'universally rejected' by other countries, including those with rules prohibiting illegal searches and police misconduct, despite the fact that none of these countries "appears to have any alternative form of discipline for police that is effective in preventing search violations." England, for example, rarely excludes evidence found during an illegal search or seizure and has only recently begun excluding evidence from illegally obtained confessions. Canada rarely excludes evidence, and will only do so if admission will "bring the administration of justice into disrepute." The European Court of Human Rights has held that the introduction of illegally seized evidence does not violate the "fair trial" requirements in Article 6, Sec. 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

...

And let us not forget the Court's abortion jurisprudence, which makes us one of only six countries that allow abortion on demand until the point of viability. Though the Government and amici in cases following Roe v Wade urged the Court to follow the international community's lead, these arguments fell on deaf ears.

This argument is made even more clear by an article in yesterday's New York Times about a lawsuit in Canada against a magazine that published an article by Mark Steyn claiming that "the rise of Islam threatened Western values (the article can be found here)." While this would undoubtedly be protected speech under the First Amendment here in the US, in Canada the laws are quite different:

Two members of the Canadian Islamic Congress say the magazine, Maclean’s, Canada’s leading newsweekly, violated a provincial hate speech law by stirring up hatred against Muslims. They say the magazine should be forbidden from saying similar things, forced to publish a rebuttal and made to compensate Muslims for injuring their “dignity, feelings and self-respect.” The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, which held five days of hearings on those questions here last week, will soon rule on whether Maclean’s violated the law.

As the Times notes, Canada isn't alone in its more restrictive stance towards freedom of speech:

Canada, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia and India all have laws or have signed international conventions banning hate speech. Israel and France forbid the sale of Nazi items like swastikas and flags. It is a crime to deny the Holocaust in Canada, Germany and France.

Earlier this month, the actress Brigitte Bardot, an animal rights activist, was fined $23,000 in France for provoking racial hatred by criticizing a Muslim ceremony involving the slaughter of sheep.

Of course, there are those in America who think that the Europeans have it right:

“It is not clear to me that the Europeans are mistaken,” Jeremy Waldron, a legal philosopher, wrote in The New York Review of Books last month, “when they say that a liberal democracy must take affirmative responsibility for protecting the atmosphere of mutual respect against certain forms of vicious attack.”

Professor Waldron was reviewing “Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment” by Anthony Lewis, the former New York Times columnist. Mr. Lewis has been critical of efforts to use the law to limit hate speech.

But even Mr. Lewis, a liberal, wrote in his book that he was inclined to relax some of the most stringent First Amendment protections “in an age when words have inspired acts of mass murder and terrorism.” In particular, he called for a re-examination of the Supreme Court’s insistence that there is only one justification for making incitement a criminal offense: the likelihood of imminent violence.

The imminence requirement sets a high hurdle. Mere advocacy of violence, terrorism or the overthrow of the government is not enough; the words must be meant to and be likely to produce violence or lawlessness right away. A fiery speech urging an angry mob to immediately assault a black man in its midst probably qualifies as incitement under the First Amendment. A magazine article — or any publication — intended to stir up racial hatred surely does not.

Mr. Lewis wrote that there was “genuinely dangerous” speech that did not meet the imminence requirement.

“I think we should be able to punish speech that urges terrorist violence to an audience, some of whose members are ready to act on the urging,” Mr. Lewis wrote. “That is imminence enough.”

This kind of thinking should be seen as the dangerous twaddle that it is. First, if we begin to relax the imminence requirement, how would we do that? Short of a direct incitement to immediate violence, what other kind of standard could we set? And who would judge? It's hard to imagine giving that kind of power to the government, as it would then be in charge of determining which of its critics falls afoul of the law. One only need look at the history of the Alien and Sedition Act, not to mention the modern fears over executive power in the hands of Bush, to see where this all leads.

But back to the point. Law is not good simply because it is law, nor is international law good simply because it is international law. Law is good when it reflects the interests and norms of its community. Just because the international community does one thing does not mean the United States should as well. And we certainly shouldn't fall into the trap of believing that international law is always advancing liberal or progressive values. There are many issues on which the US is still the vanguard of freedom. And our laws should continue to do that, no matter whither the rest of the world.

The Not-So-Wise Wisdom of Peanuts

I often tell my students that political science can be a dismally pessimistic field of study...war, poverty, injustice, genocide are but a few of the topics we consider.

And as today's Peanuts strip demonstrates, sometimes political science even makes it impossible for us to enjoy a simple comic strip. For as we all know, human nature has little to do in explaining international conflict. Poor old Charlie Brown.

Realism Kicks In

[First, let me apologize for the absence of posts lately. I am currently working on a book project, and I've been writing like a fiend lately. The book is entitled Restoring the Balance: War Powers in an Age of Terror, and is under contract with Praeger Press. The book presents the argument about presidential war powers that I have made multiple times on this blog: Namely, that the declare war power of Congress is not about the power to send troops into battle, but rather about control of legislative powers).

Now that Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic Party nomination to run for president of the United States, it may come as a surprise to some that he already seems to be moving away from some of his foreign policy statements made during the campaign. Following the hubbub over Obama's statement that he would negotiate with Iran without preconditions comes this report that he has "no interest in sitting down with our adversaries just for the sake of talking." Obama went on to say that while he "would be willing to lead tough and principled diplomacy with the appropriate Iranian leader at a time and place of my choosing if and only if it can advance the interests of the United States," he deemed the danger posed by Iran as "grave" and that he will do "everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon -- everything."

But this tough talk shouldn't be surprising for two reasons. First, Obama's foreign policy statements don't necessarily match up with the liberal image he has a domestic lawmaker. His essay in Foreign Affairs had very much a neo-con ring to it, as he wrote of expanding the military and "using military force in circumstances beyond self-defense in order to provide for the common security that underpins global stability -- to support friends, participate in stability and reconstruction operations, or confront mass atrocities."

The second reason we shouldn't be surprised is that, as realism predicts, domestic politics is a poor driver of international politics. Presidents tend to behave in international politics as presidents, not as Republicans or Democrats. While one's political affiliation has some impact on how national interest is perceived, international politics is a very macro level phenomenon that forces states to behave in certain ways. Thus, looking at their foreign policies, many of the most interventionist presidents during the Cold War were Democrats.

What this means is the job of being president is very different than the job of running for president, and if Obama wins, he will realize that many of the campaign promises he made are very unwise. As I have predicted in my classes, for example, it is hard to imagine that Obama will, as he has promised, "remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months." Doing so would not only undermine all of the recent progress that has been made in Iraq, but could also lead to genocidal bloodbath. Indeed, Obama seems much more realistic in Foreign Affairs where he writes that the withdrawal of US combat troops "could be temporarily suspended if the Iraqi government meets the security, political, and economic benchmarks to which it has committed." It is also difficult to imagine him reopening NAFTA, as he has pledged to do. Doing so would undermine the credibility of every international agreement that US has created and will seek to forge in the future. The damage it would do to US interests is inconceivable.

As a theory of international politics, realism has its many, many flaws. But one thing it does get right is that the person running a country matters less than the country itself. The US will behave as a state in its position should and does behave. And it won't matter if the president is Obama or McCain.

Can't the UN Do ANYTHING Right?

I've spent a fair amount of time on this blog bashing the United Nations. From its insistence on championing sovereign equality to making Zimbabwe the chair of the Sustainable Development Commission to the absurdity that is the Human Rights Council, the UN provides no end of opportunities to ridicule it. But, I am willing to give credit when its due. In my classes, if not on this blog, I often discuss how one thing that the UN is good at is peacekeeping. The UN is really good at peacekeeping, in fact, and may be the only actor really capable of doing it. Peacekeeping, as opposed to peace building, peace making, or peace enforcement, happens when two warring parties are ready to end the conflict between them, but do not have sufficient mutual trust to lay down their arms. A neutral third party is needed to, almost literally, stand in between the warring parties, to ensure that the terms of the settlement are followed and to reassure each side that the other is adhering to the rules. The UN, as a non-state actor with a reputation for neutrality and impartiality, is very good at doing this, and is capable of drawing peacekeeping forces from smaller, non-aligned states. From the Sinai to the Golan, from Cambodia to Cyprus, UN peacekeepers can take pride in the fact that their efforts have helped end numerous conflicts around the world.

Which is what makes this piece in today's New York Times so distressing. Written by Matthias Basanisi, a former deputy chief investigator with the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services in Congo, the piece asserts that there is credible evidence of "gold smuggling and arms trafficking by [UN] peacekeepers in Congo." Basanisi was previously in charge of the investigation into these allegations, but claims that:

the investigation was taken away from my team after we resisted what we saw as attempts to influence the outcome. My fellow team members and I were appalled to see that the oversight office’s final report was little short of a whitewash.

The reports we submitted to the office’s senior management in 2006 included credible information from witnesses confirming illegal deals between Pakistani peacekeepers and warlords from the Front for National Integration, an ethnic militia group notorious for its cruelty even in such a brutal war. We found corroborative information that senior officers of the Pakistani contingent secretly returned seized weapons to two warlords in exchange for gold, and that the Pakistani peacekeepers tipped off two warlords about plans by the United Nations peacekeeping force and the Congolese Army to arrest them. And yet, much of the evidence we uncovered was excluded from the final report released last summer, including corroboration from the warlords themselves.

Basanisi claims that the impetus for the cover-up is an unwillingness to offend Pakistan and India, two countries that provide large numbers of troops for UN peacekeeping missions.

Beyond the criminality and sheer audacity of these actions (not to mention reports of rape, pedophilia, and prostitution), it is absolutely imperative that the UN not only address these allegations, but move swiftly to punish those responsibility. The success of the UN in peacekeeping rests on its reputation; only if peacekeepers are seen to be unbiased, neutral, and fair can their missions succeed. If actors worry that UN peacekeepers will give preferential treatment to whichever side can pay more and that the UN itself will do nothing in response, it will become less and less likely that warring parties will be willing to end their conflict and allow peacekeepers to deploy. This scandal is about much more than criminal actions; it threatens to undermine one of the vital tools for ending conflict that the international community has at its disposal.

Good Thing the UN Has Its Priorities Straight

UN Watch is reporting that while the UN Human Rights Council has responded positively to Cuba's request to investigate rising food prices, the Council isn't interested in looking into the refusal by the ruling junta of Myanmar to allow relief to the millions of people suffering in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. When asked why the Council was h0lding a special session on food prices (an important, but long-term issue) but not on the situation in Myanmar, Rupert Colville of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights responded that "the Council had a very full programme, including the Universal Periodic Review, so it was a pretty packed schedule at the moment and it would be difficult to fit it in."

Seriously.

This would be shocking, if it wasn't so unsurprising. Bashing the UN is like shooting fish in a barrel. A country's government blocks and steals humanitarian relief aid, and the international body tasked with investigating human rights abuses can't be bothered to find time to even look in to it? The Human Rights Council should be abolished and not replaced unless the UN can get beyond its slavish devotion to sovereign equality and create an institution that works.

Kiva It Forward

It's a very exciting day in my career as a micro-financier! My first loan, made on August 1, 2007 to Dung Truong Thi of VietNam, has been repaid! Dung borrowed $75 from three lenders to expand her pig raising business. Dung repaid her loan $9 per month, and made the final payment today. Congratulations, Dung! I hope your business is thriving and that you have been able to allow your children to continue their educations.

Once a Kiva loan is repaid, you have the option of getting your money back, or relending the funds. I have chosen the latter option. The newest recipient is Phou Ly of Cambodia, who is borrowing $1,200 to expand her restaurant in Phnom Penh. She will be repaying her loan over the next 10 months.

As for my other loan, the news isn't quite as good. Julita Milka Aoko Onyango of Kenya borrowed $350 back in August to add charcoal and paraffin to the stock of goods she can offer for sale in the Kongowea Market in Mombasa. While Julita had been repaying her loans, the ethnic violence that erupted in Kenya back in January interrupted her business and she hasn't made a payment on her loan since December. Kiva has not been able to provide any news about specific borrowers, so I don't know what's going on with her, or even if she is still alive. A small payment was made last month, but not by Julita, and it's not clear to me what's going on. I hope Julita is alive and that her business is still extant, and that she will be able to repay her loan as the political situation in Kenya continues to stabilize.

Once again, let me say that there is simply no better way to address the problem of international development than through microfinance organizations like Kiva. The money goes directly to those who both need it and can best make use of it. A look at the website reveals scores of people asking for second and third loans to expand their businesses. I am proud that I have been able to help Dung, Julita, and Phou, and I hope to expand my lending in the future. Please consider lending!

To Send Aid Or Not To Send Aid, That Is The Question

In the wake of the destruction left by Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (Burma) -- the government is announcing 23, 335 deaths and 37, 019 people missing, while international humanitarian organizations are putting the death toll at more than 100,000 and more than 1 million displaced people -- the international community is faced with a difficult decision of how best to aid the suffering people. Initially, the ruling junta obstructed relief efforts, stopping aid shipments at the airport, seizing UN food packages, and holding off US naval ships coming to help. On Friday, the junta reversed course, announcing that it would "accept aid from any corner"and allowing emergency UN food shipments to enter the country, delivering food and temporary shelters (although a shipment from the World Food Programme that arrived on Friday was seized). On Saturday, the Myanmar government began handing out food packages emblazoned with the names of the junta members and taking credit for the relief. Despite the devastation wreaked by the cyclone, the junta was intending on proceeding with a previously-scheduled "referendum" on a constitution that would further entrench the power of the junta, and the provision of aid seems to be a propaganda exercise designed to cement support for the vote.

Meanwhile, as the government controls and exploits relief supplies for its own ends, relief experts are warning of impending catastrophe if help is not provided soon:

A total of 23 international agencies were providing aid to people in the devastated areas, said Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Byrs said another U.N. flight with 33 tons of plastic sheets, water and sanitation items and mosquito nets got clearance to take off from Brindisi, Italy later on Saturday.

But a large number of organizations still were awaiting government clearance for more aid shipments, staff and transport.

"It's a race against the clock," Byrs said. "If the humanitarian aid does not get into the country on a larger scale, there's the risk of a second catastrophe," she said, adding that people could die from hunger and diseases.

Health experts have warned there was a great risk of diarrhea and cholera spreading because of the lack of clean drinking water and sanitation.

Also:

"We think we need to be moving 375 tonnes of food a day down into the affected areas. We are doing less than 20 percent of that," World Food Program spokesman Marcus Prior said in the Thai capital.

At the United Nations in New York, Ban delivered his most critical comments so far of the Myanmar authorities' response.

"Today is the 11th day since ... Nargis hit Myanmar," Ban told reporters. "I want to register my deep concern -- and immense frustration -- at the unacceptably slow response to this grave humanitarian crisis.

"We are at a critical point," he said. "Unless more aid gets into the country very quickly, we face an outbreak of infectious diseases that could dwarf today's crisis."

Myanmar's reclusive military government was accepting aid from the outside world, including the United Nations, but refused to admit foreign experts waiting in Bangkok for visas from the Myanmar Embassy.

Whenever humanitarian emergencies occur in the most repressive countries of the world, as is the case here or during famines in North Korea, the international community is faced with an exceedingly difficult political and moral choice: Provide aid, knowing that much of it will be diverted for use by the government and hoping that some of it will trickle down to the people, or refuse to help, believing that helping the government remain in power is the worst option. Usually, the international community chooses to help.

In this case, the decision is complicated by the blatant manipulation of the aid in connection with the constitutional referendum. If the reports are accurate, the relief effort will end up further entrenching the junta in power, now with the cloak of democratic approval. That does not bode well for the future of the Burmese people.

So what else should be done? Assuming that doing nothing is off of the table, there are really only two options: Provide relief without going through the government through airdrops or invade the country to force the government to allow access to relief experts and the depoliticized distribution of food, medicine, and shelter. None of these is really an attractive option.

Many people have begun discussing the possibility of providing aid without going through the junta. Mark Faramaner, the director of Burma Campaign UK, argued that the UN should begin providing aid throughout the country without permission from the military leaders, but Douglas Alexander, the British Secretary for International Development, argues that doing so would be "incendiary":

"Our responsibility is to make sure that our sole focus is getting the aid to the people who desperately need it."

He said carrying out forced air-drops of supplies would be the wrong action to take.

"We believe that the best way forward would be for the junta to provide access, which the whole international community - including Ban Ki-moon [secretary general of the UN] - is requesting.

"That's why we've been making direct approaches, but we've also been speaking to other governments, including the government of China, urging them that there should be a united front to say that the access needs to be provided immediately."

Even those in favor of airdropping relief supplies acknowledge that doing so may not provide relief in anything approaching an efficient manner:

Former Liberal Democratic leader Sir Menzies Campbell said air drops were a "possibility" because of the scale of the disaster, but were not the most efficient way of distributing supplies.

"I don't think we have any legal right to impose it - we might have a moral obligation.

"But I don't believe we could give effect to that moral obligation for this reason - Burma is essentially a state run by the generals with an extremely powerful army.

"Any effort to impose humanitarian aid might well be the subject of resistance which would have the effect of damaging yet more of the people of that blighted country."

Former Conservative deputy prime minister Michael Heseltine said air drops should only be considered if they could be guaranteed to be effective.

"Who is going to be at the receiving end of the air drops? It could be the Burmese army. It could be the very people least affected by the tragedy that is going on."

Meanwhile, arguments for invading Myanmar have been raised as well. Writing in the Asia Times, Shawn Crispin argues that:

A unilateral - and potentially United Nations-approved - US military intervention in the name of humanitarianism could easily turn the tide against the impoverished country's unpopular military leaders, and simultaneously rehabilitate the legacy of lame-duck US President George W Bush's controversial pre-emptive military policies.

...

In the wake of the cyclone, the criminality of the junta's callous policies has taken on new human proportions in full view of the global community. Without a perceived strong UN-led response to the natural disaster, hard new questions will fast arise about the UN's own relevance and ability to manage global calamities.

This week, French Foreign Minister Bernard Koucher suggested that the UN invoke its so-called "responsibility to protect" civilians as legitimate grounds to force aid delivery, regardless of the military government's objections. On Friday, a UN spokesman called the junta's refusal to issue visas to aid workers "unprecedented" in the history of humanitarian work.

Because of the UN's own limited powers of projection, such a response would require US military management and assets. US officials appear to be building at least a rhetorical case for a humanitarian intervention. While offering relief and aid with one hand, top US officials have with the other publicly slapped at the Myanmar government's lame response to the disaster.

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This time, it is almost sure-fire that Myanmar's desperate population would warmly welcome a US-led humanitarian intervention, considering that its own government is now withholding emergency supplies. Like his father then, Bush is now clearly focused on his presidential legacy, which to date will be judged harshly due to his government's controversial pre-emptive military policies, waged until now exclusively in the name of fighting global terror.

In an era when the US routinely launches pre-emptive military strikes, including its 2003 invasion of Iraq, the 2003 Predator drone assassination attack against an alleged al-Qaeda leader in Yemen, a similar drone attack in 2006 in northwestern Pakistan, and last week's attack against a reputed al-Qaeda ringleader in Somalia, it is not inconceivable that the US might yet intervene in military-run Myanmar, particularly if in the days ahead the social and political situation tilts towards anomie.

Whether or not a US military intervention in the name of humanitarianism would, as in Somalia, eventually morph into an armed attempt at regime change and nation-building would likely depend on the population's and Myanmar military's response to the first landing of US troops. Some political analysts speculate that Myanmar's woefully under-resourced and widely unpopular troops would defect en masse rather than confront US troops.

While Myanmar ally China would likely oppose a US military intervention, Beijing has so far notably goaded the junta to work with rather than against international organizations like the UN, and more to the point, it lacks the power projection capabilities to militarily challenge the US in a foreign theater. Most notably, the US would have at its disposal a globally respected and once democratically elected leader in Aung San Suu Kyi to lead a transitional government to full democracy.

But, in Time magazine, Romesh Ratnesar writes that:

A coercive humanitarian intervention would be complicated and costly. During the 2004 tsunami, some 24 U.S. ships and 16,000 troops were deployed in countries across the region; the mission cost the U.S. $5 million a day. Ultimately, the U.S. pledged nearly $900 million to tsunami relief. (By contrast, it has offered just $3.25 million to Burma.) But the risks would be greater this time: the Burmese government's xenophobia and insecurity make them prone to view U.S. troops — or worse, foreign relief workers — as hostile forces. (Remember Black Hawk Down?) Even if the U.S. and its allies made clear that their actions were strictly for humanitarian purposes, it's unlikely the junta would believe them. "You have to think it through — do you want to secure an area of the country by military force? What kinds of potential security risks would that create?" says [Jan Egeland, the former U.N. emergency relief coordinator]. "I can't imagine any humanitarian organization wanting to shoot their way in with food."

So, what to do? Despite the rafts of criticism I have leveled at the institution, this is a case where the UN can potentially be a critical asset. The problem here is, of course, one of sovereignty. Myanmar is a sovereign state that has the right to determine how it receives international aid. But the UN should invoke its "responsibility to protect" doctrine (the logic that enabled the UN to retroactively approve of NATO's intervention in Kosovo) and declare that sovereignty does not confer the right to deny one's people of basic supplies and relief. The UN should, as it did in 1990, put together a global coalition of humanitarian and military forces to deliver relief supplies to Myanmar. Most of the coercive force would, of course, come from the US, but the international community could, as it did during Operation Desert Shield/Storm, bear much of the financial burden (and provide much of the relief as well). While obtaining China's assent may be difficult (China is both a patron to Myanmar and exceedingly wary of authorizing international violations of state sovereignty), the recent negative publicity of the problems in Tibet may lead Beijing to seize this as an opportunity to burnish China's image leading up to the Olympics.

The US needs to look at the disaster in Myanmar through a strategic, as well as a moral, lens. Just as US relief in the 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami was a major boost to US soft power, taking an aggressive approach to helping the victims of Cyclone Nargis can have a similar effect. The US must realize that doing the right thing here is clearly in the US national interest as well. The US should pressure China and the UN Security Council to authorize a humanitarian mission with or without official sanction. Such a move could save tens or hundreds of thousands of lives, help the US image, and even force the UN to reconsider its slavish devotion to the concept of sovereign equality. All of these are excellent goals for US foreign policy.

More Strikes Against Russia

A few weeks back, I blogged about what the US, NATO, and the Western powers should do about Russia, writing that while "Russian security concerns should be taken into account, to allow those concerns to move NATO away from its pacific mission is the wrong choice." Today, I find more support for my position with specific regard to NATO expansion.

Today comes reports from Georgia that war is "very close" between Georgia and Russia. Perhaps in response to Kosovo's breakaway from Serbia, Russia has been increasing the number of peacekeepers it deploys to protect the ethnically-Russian region of Abkhazia. Russia has accused Georgia of threatening war against the region, while Georgia sees the Russian troop deployment as a not-so-subtle move to create de facto independence there. So far, Russia has kept troop levels under the maximum number (3,000) allowed by a UN agreement, but a self-proclaimed "foreign minister" of Abkhazia has announced that "[Abkhazia] agrees to Russia taking this territory under its military control. In exchange, we will demand guarantees of our security." The US, in response, has "urged the Russian government to reiterate its commitment to Georgia's territorial borders and sovereignty, reverse the troop movements and "cease from further provocation."

The Russian government is behaving extremely irresponsibly here, likely using blunt threats and posturing to send messages over the nature of Russian strategic interests and the need to preserve state integrity and sovereignty. But such ham-fisted attempts merely reinforce the questions over Russia's intentions and strengthen the case and need to get Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. Russia's actions clearly throw into doubt whether Russia can be seen as a long-term status quo power and overall trends do not show even the kind of progress that can be seen in China. While the Cold War is not reemerging, the US, NATO, and the West should make it abundantly clear to Russia that its own interests will only be respected so far as Russia adheres to legitimate means to pursue those interests.