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.

...

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.

The Environment Versus the Poor, Part 2

In an anarchic international system in which international law is at best weak and at worst toothless and ignored, questions of duties beyond borders are difficult ones. Do states have obligations, be they legal or moral, to actors outside of their own political control? Many issues of international politics touch on this question, such as promulgation of human rights, but in no case is the problem raised more clearly than in the issue of biofuels. As I blogged about last week, there is strong evidence that the push by developed states to develop biofuels is directly contributing to recent food shortages by artificially encouraging under-production of food crops (not to mention that fact that biofuels may be worse for the environment than the fuels they replace). This has led to a call from many leading food scientists to cease producing food-based biofuels, an action which they claim could reduce the price of corn by 20% and wheat prices by 10%. So, if the actions of the developed states are causing food shortages in the developing world, does the developed world have any obligation to change its policies?

Not according to President Bush. In a recent press conference, the president called for the US to increase the use of ethanol (the leading biofuel) to reduce rising fuel prices and to reduce American energy dependence. According to Bush, "it's in our national interest that our farmers grow energy, as opposed to us purchasing energy from parts of the world that are unstable or may not like us."

While other states are moving away from the production of biofuels, the US is by far the largest global producer, so unless the US does so as well, there is likely to be little impact on prices (not to mention that collective action problems will dissuade others from stopping production if the US won't). The impact of biofuel production on food prices is disputed: President Bush asserted that 15% of the recent rise is due to biofuels, while the US Department of Agriculture put the number at 20%. Furthermore, "a soon to be released International Food Policy Research Institute analysis blames 30 percent of the overall food price rise from 2000-2007 on biofuels, while a [biofuel] industry-funded study put the food cost rise at 4 percent."

This is an excellent illustration of many of the problems that make international relations so fascinating and so frustrating. Today's globalized and interdependent world has certainly changed the contours of the notion of obligation -- even if one doesn't believe in moral or legal obligations, the notion of economic and political interdependence connects obligation to national interest in a powerful way. States that ignore the needs of others in one issue area can be made to pay a high price in a different issue area. For example, the west's inability to lift domestic agricultural subsidies gave the developing world the leverage to refuse to agree to new market openings at the recent Doha round of WTO negotiations. Simply being wealthier and more powerful isn't enough to get one's way in a globalized world.

Additionally, policy imperatives compete, and often conflict, with one another. Leaving aside the likely irony that biofuels are worse for the environment than fossil fuels, how do states decide between competing obligations? Do we save the environment if doing so means condemning people to starvation or depriving the developing world with the means to develop? Needless to say, answering these questions is a unenviable task.

In this case, the US needs to end incentives for biofuel production immediately. It's one thing to make a hard choice to pursue one agenda at the expense of another; it's another thing entirely when pursuing one agenda is entirely counterproductive. Given the evidence that biofuels are worse for the environment, it seems like that the US program to encourage their production is more a sneaky way to protect the US agricultural market than a genuine effort to save the planet. And given the impact that this protection is having on the global food market, that choice isn't just bad politics, it's just plain bad.

The Environment Versus the Poor

In the wake of Earth Day, and in the run-up to the conference on energy dependence and aviation this Friday here at UPS, is the need to confront the stark truth that goods in the world are scarce and that attending to one concern often produces unintended consequences. Case in point: the mounting evidence that the production of biofuels is greatly contributing to rising food prices, food shortages, and even widening hunger and starvation in the developing world. According to the New York Times:

The food crisis is not only being felt among the poor but is also eroding the gains of the working and middle classes, sowing volatile levels of discontent and putting new pressures on fragile governments.

In Cairo, the military is being put to work baking bread as rising food prices threaten to become the spark that ignites wider anger at a repressive government. In Burkina Faso and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, food riots are breaking out as never before. In reasonably prosperous Malaysia, the ruling coalition was nearly ousted by voters who cited food and fuel price increases as their main concerns.

“It’s the worst crisis of its kind in more than 30 years,” said Jeffrey D. Sachs, the economist and special adviser to the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. “It’s a big deal and it’s obviously threatening a lot of governments. There are a number of governments on the ropes, and I think there’s more political fallout to come.”

Indeed, as it roils developing nations, the spike in commodity prices — the biggest since the Nixon administration — has pitted the globe’s poorer south against the relatively wealthy north, adding to demands for reform of rich nations’ farm and environmental policies. But experts say there are few quick fixes to a crisis tied to so many factors, from strong demand for food from emerging economies like China’s to rising oil prices to the diversion of food resources to make biofuels.

It's the last that is of particular concern as governments are encouraging and subsidizing the production of biofuels as a means of reducing emissions responsible for global warming. The problem is that government involvement is distorting the market, as subsidies for biofuels artificially change the market incentives to convert farm crops into biofuels and to replant cropland to produce grains for biofuel production. These decisions then raise the global price of food staples that, particularly in the developing world, contribute to food shortages, riots, and starvation. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute:

biofuel production accounts for a quarter to a third of the recent increase in global commodity prices. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations predicted late last year that biofuel production, assuming that current mandates continue, would increase food costs by 10 to 15 percent.

Of course, there are other factors contributing to the rising cost of food. Escalating oil prices raise the price of transport, burgeoning populations and improving economic conditionks have increased demand, and droughts and other disasters have destroyed production. But costs accruing from biofuel production are entirely within the ability of the developed world to control. Furthermore, there is little evidence that biofuels do, in fact, contribute positively to the regulation of global warming. According to a New York Times article from February 8, 2008, biolfuels may be more harmful to the environment that the fuels they replace.

Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these ''green'' fuels are taken into account, two studies published Thursday have concluded.

The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent months, as scientists took a closer look at the global environmental cost of their production. These latest studies, published only by the journal Science, are likely to add to the controversy. These studies for the first time take a detailed, comprehensive look at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is being converted to cropland globally to support biofuel development.

The destruction of natural ecosystems -- whether rain forests in the tropics or grasslands in South America -- not only releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed, but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon emissions. Cropland also absorbs far less carbon than the rain forests or even scrubland that it replaces.

Together the two studies offer sweeping conclusions: It does not matter if it is rain forest or scrubland that is cleared, the greenhouse gas contribution is significant. More important, they discovered that, globally, the production of almost all biofuels resulted, directly or indirectly, intentionally or not, in new land's being cleared for food or fuel.

''When you take this into account, most of the biofuel that people are using or planning to use would probably increase greenhouse gases substantially,'' said Timothy Searchinger, lead author of one of the studies and a researcher in environment and economics at Princeton.

So, if biofuels are actually harmful to the environment and contribute to hunger and starvation in the developing world, why would governments encourage their production? Because biofuels subsidies are politically popular. As pressure increases on the governments of the US, Europe, and Japan to lift the agricultural subsidies that undermine development, biofuels have emerged as a way to protect the politically important farm constituency without appearing to do so. But a market distortion is a market distortion. Even discounting the non-beneficial nature of biofuels, clearly if their production was left to the market, farmers would be producing food instead. That is reason enough for the governments of the developed world to stop subsidization and incentive programs.

Trading Darfur For Tibet

With the uproar over the Chinese crackdown on Tibetan pro-independence/autonomy protests, the hubbub over the Olympic torch relay, and the to-do over the Dalai Lama's visit to the US, it's no wonder that the 2008 Beijing Olympics are being referred to as the "Tibet Olympics." As world leaders debate whether to boycott, or just skip, the Opening Ceremonies or the Games themselves, more and more attention gets turned to the cause of Tibet.

To the detriment of Darfur.

Before the protests in Tibet broke out, the Beijing Olympics were supposed to be the "Darfur Olympics." Much attention was paid to China's role as Sudan's patron and protector in the UN Security Council; Mia Farrow and Steven Spielberg criticized the Chinese government; I even spoke at a rally sponsored by SaveDarfur here in Tacoma about China's role in Sudan and what might be done. And the campaign seemed to be paying off. As I blogged last April:

after two years of shielding Sudan from international sanctions over the situation in Darfur, China has recently begun applying more pressure to Sudan.

Just when it seemed safe to buy a plane ticket to Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games, nongovernmental organizations and other groups appear to have scored a surprising success in an effort to link the Olympics, which the Chinese government holds very dear, to the killings in Darfur, which, until recently, Beijing had not seemed too concerned about.

Groups focusing on many issues, including Tibet and human rights, have called for boycotts of the Games next year. But none of those issues have packed the punch of Darfur, where at least 200,000 people — some say as many as 400,000 — mostly non-Arab men, women and children, have died and 2.5 million have been displaced, as government-backed Arab militias called the janjaweed have attacked the local population.

But now, all that attention has shifted to Tibet. The situation in Darfur continues to worsen, but the pressure is now off China to do anything to reverse things there. Political capital and the energy needed to motivate protests is, of course, limited. It may be that the media, non-governmental organizations, protesters, and the general public only have the resources to focus on one issue. If so, it seems as if Tibet has won out over Darfur for linkage with the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

But that would be a mistake. If only one cause can be aggressively championed (or even if championing both detracts from each), that cause should be Darfur. Not because the Darfuris are more worthy of protection that are the Tibetans, not because the situation is worse in Darfur (although a strong case could probably be made for that argument), not for any reason other than practicality. China is much more likely to yield to pressure over Darfur than it is over Tibet. Sudan represents important political and economic interests for China; Tibet represents sovereignty. China will, most likely, never cede Tibet. Greater autonomy is possible, but not in the short term. Using the Olympics to pressure and shame China into leaning on Sudan to moderate its behavior in Darfur seemed to be paying off. Using the Olympics to pressure and shame China into backing off Tibet is only likely to alienate and anger Beijing.

It would truly be a shame if an opportunity to help the people of Darfur went unrealized so that people can vent their anger over Tibet. The Tibetan people may very well deserve independence and our support. But not in ineffective protests that distract from and obstruct progress over Darfur.

One More Reason for NATO To Expand

Building on my post from last week that argued the US and NATO should, if the choice is between the two, choose to expand NATO with the inclusion of Ukraine and Georgia rather than develop and deploy an anti-ballistic missile defense system in Eastern Europe. One reason for NATO expansion was, I wrote, the fact that "Russia has demonstrated a disturbing willingness to involve itself in the affairs of its former partners."

Today, we have more evidence of that disturbing willingness that reinforces the need to expand NATO up to the Russian border. According to a Reuters report:

Russia will take military and other steps along its borders if ex-Soviet Ukraine and Georgia join NATO, Russian news agencies quoted the armed forces' chief of staff as saying on Friday.

"Russia will take steps aimed at ensuring its interests along its borders," the agencies quoted General Yuri Baluyevsky as saying. "These will not only be military steps, but also steps of a different nature," he said, without giving details.

Such a reaction from Russia is, at best, inappropriate and, at worst, dangerous and bellicose. Russia does have legitimate security needs and concerns. But Russia is no longer the superpower that was the USSR, and Russian legitimate security needs no longer should be understood to include a sphere of influence over other sovereign states. During the Cold War, it was Soviet military and political might that forced the US and NATO to recognize and respect Soviet authority over Eastern and Central Europe. But the Cold War is no more. Ukraine and Georgia are free to pursue their own security needs as they see fit.

Such belligerent declarations from Russia only demonstrate the need to expand the club of democratic states and bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. The more countries that are bound together by political and military ties, the less likely is the possibility of interstate war. Wounded Russian pride or faded memories of the glory days of the USSR should not be allowed to prevent the expansion of NATO.

Progress in Uganda?

The New York Times is reporting that Uganda is very close to signing a peace agreement between the government and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army. However, an agreement has seemed to be at hand before, only to collapse or be delayed. The problem this time?

[I]nternational war crimes indictments against [Joseph] Kony and three top commanders. Mr. Kony’s aides have indicated that he will sign the treaty to show he is serious about peace, but the Lord’s Resistance Army will not fully disband until the indictments, issued in 2005 by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, are dropped.

Despite the fact that "many Ugandans have said that they are more eager for lasting peace than international tribunals, and they have been urging the court to cancel the indictments against Mr. Kony," the ICC has, so far, not relented. According to Maria Mabinty Kamara, a public relations officer of the ICC, “The I.C.C.’s position has been over and over again that the indictments stand and they are valid.”

However, there are indications that the ICC may be willing to back away from its position. The Times reports that "judges in The Hague are reviewing the case and recently sent a letter to the Ugandan government asking for more information about the country’s court systems and its capacity to try Mr. Kony." As I discussed when I last wrote about this, the ICC relies on the principle of complementarity, meaning that if the ICC believes, or can convince itself, that Uganda is willing and able to dispense justice, the ICC will step back.

The question is whether the ICC will consider a plan to minimally punish Kony in order to move towards reconciliation to be "adequate justice." Ugandan officials have demonstrated a willingness to come with some kind of arrangement that will allow Kony to escape criminal punishment. According to the Times:

Ruhakana Rugunda, Uganda’s internal affairs minister, said the key to ending the conflict was balancing accountability with reconciliation.

“Our legal system and the traditional system will provide an adequate framework for dealing with impunity and justice and reconciliation,” he said.

While the Times reports that "many Ugandans have said that they are more eager for lasting peace than international tribunals," no numbers or national polling data are presented. Nevertheless, if the Ugandan government can demonstrate that an agreement will lead to a real and lasting peace, the ICC's insistence on criminal punishment should not be an obstacle to ending one of the longest and most brutal wars in the world.

Flying In a Carbon-Constrained World

On Friday, April 25th, the University of Puget Sound will be hosting a conference on aviation and energy security. Entitled "Flying in a Carbon-Constrained World: Aviation's Role in Oil Dependence and Climate Change -- National Security, Economic, and Environmental Implications of Oil Dependence and Climate Change on Military and Civil Aviation." The conference is co-sponsored by the Department of Politics and Government at the University of Puget Sound, 2020 Vision, the Sound Policy Institute, and the United States Air Force. The conference is free and open to the public, but pre-registration is requested. The agenda for the conference is here. If you're in the Seattle/Tacoma area, or anywhere nearby, come on down!!

A Little-Recognized Danger of Iraq

There is much, if not constant, talk about the dangers the US faces in Iraq. The constant stream of body bags home, the damage done to US soft power and reputation, the creation of a breeding ground for terrorists, the likelihood of ethnic cleansing and genocide if the US withdraws, the prospect of US troops staying in Iraq for 5 years or more. The list goes on. But there's another danger, one that rarely gets mentioned or discussed. That danger is that, as a result of Iraq, the US adopts a more realist foreign policy that calculates US foreign policy on narrowly-based grounds of power and ignores the proud and noble liberal mission that has always guided America in the world.

Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune nicely summarized this danger in an op-ed column he wrote on Sunday, in which he wrote:

...it's worth remembering what helped to get us into Iraq: a bipartisan consensus on foreign policy that favors U.S. military intervention abroad whenever we may be able to accomplish something that looks appealing.

...

Attitudes like that got us involved in the Balkans, where we had no national interest at stake; in Somalia, where we found ourselves fighting a war we didn't anticipate; and in Haiti, where our good intentions accomplished very little. Iraq, where conservatives turned idealistic liberal ideas to their own ends, was the ruinous culmination of that approach.

If there has been a flaw in U.S. foreign policy in recent years, it has not been an excess of disengagement, but the opposite: an irrepressible urge to use force for purposes that do not enhance our security but expose us to needless risk. The result has been that we find ourselves with more enemies, weakened influence, higher costs, greater strains on our military and less safety.

After the Iraq debacle, you would think our leaders would be willing to undertake a fundamental examination of the long-established and broad-based folly that made it possible. Not a chance.

And if you think that this problem is solely one of the neo-conservatives who get so much of the blame for the invasion of Iraq, think again. As Chapman points out, all three presidential candidates have expressed sentiments and foreign policy suggestions guided more by morals, values, and ideals than by realpolitik considerations.

During the early 1990s, McCain was wary of the use of American military power. But he supported sending American peacekeeping forces to Bosnia in 1995. When a civil war erupted in Kosovo in 1999, he became a fervent voice for using American bombers and even ground troops against Yugoslavia -- this when House Republicans were voting against giving President Clinton authority to go to war.

Soon after, McCain was urging a "rogue state rollback" policy. "We must be prepared," he said, to apply "military force when the continued existence of such rogue states threatens America's interests and values." Hmm. Whatever happened to that idea?

McCain's positions bear an eerie resemblance to those of Hillary Clinton, who vigorously favored her husband's decision to act in the Balkans. "I urged him to bomb," she said later. "You cannot let this go on at the end of a century that has seen the major holocaust of our time."

Her impulse to improve the world at the point of a gun was also on display in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. Besides supporting the war resolution, Clinton often sounded like a crusading neoconservative, envisioning that Iraq would be a "model for other Middle Eastern countries" that would "shake the foundations of autocracy."

If Barack Obama is averse to fighting wars to spread democracy or to advance other noble purposes, he hasn't let on. He claims the United States has a "moral obligation" to act against "genocide" in Darfur, and he supports sending NATO forces to stop the bloodshed. One of his chief foreign policy advisers -- until she resigned over calling Clinton a "monster" -- was Samantha Power, a self-described "humanitarian hawk," who excoriated Bill Clinton for ruling out U.S. military action in Rwanda in 1994.

In a recent speech, Obama rejected the idea of cutting back our expansive role in the world. "We can choose the path of disengagment," he scoffed, "and cede our leadership."

Chapman's vision, and that of realists more broadly, is one where US foreign policy determinations are made along narrow lines of power, rather than any sense of "moral obligation," liberalism, or any other value.

To be sure, moralistic foreign policies have led the US into dangerous situations which have backfired. Somalia is the prime example of this, where the US intervened in a humanitarian disaster which escalated into a nation-building operation. But because the US didn't have the will to match its goals, the mission ended disastrously. But the common wisdom about Somalia isn't quite right. As Duke University professor Peter Feaver (full disclosure: Feaver was on my dissertation committee at Duke and I worked closely with him as a TA as well) writes:

The White House, having lost its stomach for the mission [in Somalia], cultivated a myth that it was the public, enraged by the death of U.S. troops, that demanded an exit from that country. The public was really only defeat-phobic -- not casualty-phobic -- but President Bill Clinton allowed defeat to be measured chiefly in terms of U.S. losses.

Chapman fears that a foreign policy based on ideals and values will get the US embroiled into conflicts where "national interest" is not at stake. But as Feaver demonstrates, national interest is largely defined by political leadership. When the leaders do a good job of defining a foreign policy endeavor as commensurate with national interest, the public will support it. And Somalia is an excellent example of what happens when the public is not convinced.

It may be more difficult to make the case that a humanitarian intervention or the prevention of genocide is truly in the American national interest. And that is as it should be. The president should have to demonstrate to the American people that the use of US military power is in the national interest. But national interest cannot and should not be drawn solely along narrow, power-based lines. National interest is not, as realists argue, an objective phenomenon determined by external calculations like the balance of relative power. Power matters, but so does the national will, ideals, and values. As Robert Kagan points out in his excellent book Dangerous Nation, US foreign policy has always been guided by a moral compass.

As I wrote when I blogged about this problem 18 months ago:

If we learn anything from Iraq, it's that the US must be exceedingly careful if it ever thinks about attempting large-scale coercive nation-building. But that lesson must not force the US to retreat from its liberal mission. The US does not always act in accordance with its principles nor should it. But it is unthinkable that the US would NEVER do so. It was the US that rebuilt the shattered European and Japanese states after World War II, it is the US that presses Zimbabwe and Burma to improve their human rights records, it is the US that is standing firm in its refusal to negotiate with North Korea, it is the US that is keeping attention focused on Darfur. And without the security umbrella provided by US military hegemony, issues of human security such as the ICC would be nowhere near the international agenda.

Let's hope things stay that way.

What to Do About Russia?

NATO has been quite busy this week, with much of the interesting activity at the on-going NATO summit revolving around Russia. The main question is: How much should NATO respect or defer to Russian concerns? All states have legitimate security concerns, and with a state as large as Russia, NATO would be wise to pay some heed to those concerns. But, is Russia still a world power that demands that NATO back away from its own security concerns? How much leverage does Russia still have? How much does it still deserve?

The questions are all present in the two main issues under discussion: NATO's possible expansion into Ukraine and Georgia -- former Soviet republics -- and the proposed missile defense system that the US wishes to build in Eastern Europe. In spite of Russian objections, NATO decided to endorse the European missile shield. Russian officials have repeatedly expressed their concerns over the system: Russian President Putin has warned that deploying such a system could fuel a new arms race, while Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the international affairs committee of the Russian Parliament has said "said Russia doubted Washington’s motives. “We still do not have a proper explanation of this project,” he said. “It is not about the number of interceptors. It’s about undermining mutual confidence and trust.”"

On the other hand, NATO has been unable to agree on offering Ukraine and Georgia membership in Membership Action Plans, a program that prepare states to join NATO. Both Germany and France are opposed to the move, arguing that "since neither Ukraine nor Georgia is stable enough to enter the program now, a membership plan would be an unnecessary offense to Russia, which firmly opposes the move."

The first problem is that NATO got its priorities exactly backwards. Both programs are likely to antagonize Russia, but if NATO was only to get one of the two (missile defense or NATO expansion) it should have gone with NATO expansion. I've written several times about the folly of deploying missile defense systems (quick summary of my view: it's technically possible, but the threat of ballistic missile attack by a rogue state does not justify the massive amounts of money). But NATO expansion is one of the most powerful pacific forces of the post-Cold War era. The transformation of NATO from a security organization to a democratization organization has resulted in democracy becoming entrenched in most of Central and Eastern Europe. Spreading NATO up to Russia's borders will all but ensure that war in Europe is a thing of the past. Both Ukraine and Georgia have shown themselves to be willing and able allies of the US and the West, and Russia has demonstrated a disturbing willingness to involve itself in the affairs of its former partners. Contrary to the predictions of realists, the persistence and expansion of NATO are essential to cementing the spread of democracy and preserving the current moment of European peace. If NATO is to upset Russia about one thing, it should have been NATO expansion, not missile defense.

But the other, and more fundamental, question is: Should NATO be paying attention to Russian concerns at all? Today's Russia is certainly not the Soviet Union of the Cold War. It is a second-, if not third-, rate military power now, it is moving away from democracy and the rule of law, its economy is a mess. Does Russia deserve the kind of respect and deference due a great power? Answering that question requires a look at what a cooperative Russia has to offer, and what an upset Russia could do to interfere with the West's interests.

There are few issues on which the West would certainly prefer to have a cooperative Russia. Russia does seem to have more influence than anyone else over Iran and Iran's nuclear program. Russia provides large amounts of oil and natural gas to Europe. On the other hand, Russia's membership in the G-8 is more of a sop to Russian pride than it is due to Russian economic power. The much-fretted-over rapprochement between Russia and China in 2005 that some analysts took as a sign of impending balancing against the US and the West has produced little tangible shifts in power, capabilities, or even intentions.

NATO certainly neither needs nor wants to provoke Russia unnecessarily. But it does seem as if too much deference is being given the once-Great Bear. Russia probably cares more about NATO expansion up to its borders than it does about the ABM system, which perhaps explains why NATO rejected the former and approved the latter. But maybe that concern should have been reason enough to do the opposite. Russian security concerns should be taken into account. But to allow those concerns to move NATO away from its pacific mission is the wrong choice.

Bad Signs in Zimbabwe

In the wake of reports today that the opposition party in Zimbabwe had defeated the majority party of Robert Mugabe, now, breaking reports out of Zimbabwe indicate that Mugabe may be trying to hang on to power. The Associated Press is reporting that:

Security agents and paramilitary police in riot gear are surrounding a Harare hotel housing foreign journalists.

A man answering the phone at the hotel says they are taking away some reporters.

The man refused to give his name but said about 30 police entered the hotel Thursday and were preparing to take away four or five journalists.

Furthermore, the New York Times is reporting that:

Despite losing control of Parliament, President Robert G. Mugabe of Zimbabwe and his party were increasingly explicit on Thursday about their willingness to continue fighting for the presidency.

After days of public reticence about the party’s intentions in the wake of Saturday’s elections, Bright Matonga, a deputy information minister for Mr. Mugabe, indicated that the president was not prepared to step aside and would compete in a second round of voting if results showed that neither candidate had won a majority in the first round.

While the Times article focuses on the likelihood that Mugabe and his party would try to force a run-off or even a second vote, the AP report gives a more ominous spin to events there. The US and the international community need to move quickly to put pressure on Mugabe and his African allies alike to ensure that Mugabe knows that a seizure of power will not be tolerated in Zimbabwe, in Africa, and in the greater international community.

UPDATE: The Associated Press is now reporting that:

Police raided offices of the main opposition party and detained foreign journalists Thursday in an ominous sign that President Robert Mugabe might turn to intimidation and violence in trying to stave off an electoral threat to his 28-year rule.

...

MDC [the opposition party] secretary-general Tendai Biti said hotel rooms used as offices by the opposition at one of Harare's main hotels were ransacked by police during the raids.

"Mugabe has started a crackdown," Biti told The Associated Press. "It is quite clear he has unleashed a war."

This doesn't look good.

Zimbabwe On the Precipice

It appears as if the long, nightmarish rule of Robert Mugabe over Zimbabwe is finally at an end. Since assuming power 28 years ago, Mugabe has ruined a country once held up as a model of what post-colonial Africa might be. A country that once was referred to as the "breadbasket of Africa" is now a food importer. The economy has contracted by 40-50% since 2000. Inflation is at an incomprehensible 2,000%, if not higher. Over 3 million people are "missing". An "urban reclamation" program has made thousands of urban poor homeless, removing them from the cities and evicting them into the countryside. Entire towns have been destroyed. The list of misery goes on and on.

But, if the results from the election are as anticipated, Mugabe's reign of destruction may be over. But now is an all-important moment. Will he step down? Will Mugabe and his party accept the results and accept exile into the political minority? If he refuses, or tries to sabotage the election results or the process, violence could easily erupt. Already, there are ominous rumblings from Mugabe's party:

[Mugabe's] government immediately rejected the MDC victory claim as "mischievous."

Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga told Sky television: "President Mugabe is going nowhere. We are not going to be pressurized into anything."

The government has warned that victory claims before an official result would be regarded as a coup d'etat.

Matonga said in a telephone interview with Sky: "No-one is panicking around President Mugabe. The army is very solidly behind our president, the police force as well."

He added: "We are not going to be rushed by anybody. They can make statements left right and centre, but they are merely wasting their time."

Certainly, the international community needs to move quickly to inform Mugabe that it will not tolerate any subversion of the democratic process. But Zimbabwe and Mugabe have proven remarkably immune to international pressure in the past.

More importantly, the West, and in particular the UK and the rest of the British Commonwealth, needs to put pressure on those actors that do seem to have some influence over Zimbabwe: other African states. In the past, African states have been reluctant to sanction, condemn, censure, or even criticize Mugabe, largely due to his Mandela-like stature as a leading figure in the decolonization and independent movement. Now, however, the stakes are different. Allowing Mugabe to subvert and destroy the democratic process can simply not be allowed if Africa is to have any hope. The West must immediately tell Zimbabwe's African allies, especially South Africa and the African Union, that if there is any hint of interference or obstruction from Mugabe or his party they will be expected to intervene to ensure the peaceful transition of power. The AU should know that the funding and supplies it receives from Western states will be stopped, and South Africa should be told that its economic and political ties will be severely damaged unless they are willing to take a meaningful stand and action.

If the results are as predicted, Robert Mugabe must not be permitted to remain in power one second longer than is necessary. And while the West may not be able to ensure that he steps down, other states in Africa can. And they must.

Iraq's Ties to International Terrorism

Last week, with very little fanfare, the Institute for Defense Analyses (an independent, non-profit think tank that provides the US government, and particularly the Department of Defense, with analysis and reporting) released its exceedingly comprehensive study of 600,000 captured documents laying out Iraq's connections, interactions, and activities connected to international terrorist groups (the redacted report, in five volumes, is available on the webpage of the Federation of American Scientists). According to the Executive Summary:

The Iraqi Perspectives Project (IPP) review of captured Iraqi documents uncovered strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism. Despite their incompatible long-term goals, many terrorist movements and Saddam found a common enemy in the United States. At times these organizations worked together, trading access for capability. In the period after the 1991 Gulf War, the regime of Saddam Hussein supported a complex and increasingly disparate mix of pan-Arab revolutionary causes and emerging pan-Islamic radical movements.

...

This study found no "smoking gun" (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda.
Saddam's interest in, and support for, non-state actors was spread across a variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist, and Islamic terrorist organizations. Some in the regime recognized the potential high internal and external costs of maintaining relationships with radical Islamic groups, yet they concluded that in some cases, the benefits of association outweighed the risks. A review of available Iraqi documents indicated the following:

• The Iraqi regime was involved in regional and international terrorist operations prior to OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM. The predominant targets of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside of Iraq.

• On occasion, the Iraqi intelligence services directly targeted the regime's perceived enemies, including non-Iraqis. Non-Iraqi casualties often resulted from Iraqi sponsorship of non-governmental terrorist groups.

• Saddam's regime often cooperated directly, albeit cautiously, with terrorist groups when they believed such groups could help advance Iraq's long-term goals. The regime carefully recorded its connections to Palestinian terror organizations in numerous government memos. One such example documents Iraqi financial support to families of suicide bombers in Gaza and the West Bank.

• State sponsorship of terrorism became such a routine tool of state power that Iraq developed elaborate bureaucratic processes to monitor progress and accountability in the recruiting, training, and resourcing of terrorists. Examples include the regime's development, construction,
certification, and training for car bombs and suicide vests in 1999 and 2000.

From the beginning of his rise to power, one of Saddam's major objectives was to shift the regional balance of power favorably towards Iraq. After the 1991 Gulf War, pursuing this objective motivated Saddam and his regime to increase their cooperation with-and attempts to manipulate-Islamic fundamentalists and related terrorist organizations. Documents indicate that the regime's use of terrorism was standard practice, although not always successful. From 1991
through 2003, the Saddam regime regarded inspiring, sponsoring, directing, and executing acts of terrorism as an element of state power.

And from the abstract on the FAS webpage:

Captured Iraqi documents have uncovered evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism, including a variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist, and Islamic terrorist organizations. While these documents do not reveal direct coordination and assistance between the Saddam regime and the al Qaeda network, they do indicate that Saddam was willing to use, albeit cautiously, operatives affiliated with al Qaeda as long as Saddam could have these terrorist–operatives monitored closely. Because Saddam’s security organizations and Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network operated with similar aims (at least in the short term), considerable overlap was inevitable when monitoring, contacting, financing, and training the same outside groups. This created both the appearance of and, in some ways, a “de facto” link between the organizations. At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust. Though the execution of Iraqi terror plots was not always successful, evidence shows that Saddam’s use of terrorist tactics and his support for terrorist groups remained strong up until the collapse of the regime.

So, while there is no evidence of any direct links between Iraq and al Qaeda, the report makes two things abundantly clear: One, that Iraq had extensive ties to numerous terror organizations and was willing and able to use terror as a tool of state politics, and; Two, that the religious nature of radical Islamic groups like al Qaeda would not prevent the secular, pan-Arab Iraq from working with them. As today's Wall Street Journal makes clear:

A pan-Arab nationalist, Saddam viewed radical Islamists as potential allies, and they likewise. According to a 1993 memo, Saddam decided to "form a group to start hunting Americans present on Arab soil; especially Somalia," where al Qaeda was then working with warlords against U.S. humanitarian forces. Saddam also trained Sudanese fighters in Iraq.

The Pentagon report cites this as "a tactical example" of their cooperation. When Saddam "was ordering action in Somalia aimed at the American presence, Osama bin Laden was doing the same thing." Saddam took an interest in "far-flung terrorist groups . . . to locate any organization whose services he might use in the future." The Harmony documents "reveal that the regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al Qaeda -- as long as that organization's near-term goals supported Saddam's long-term version."

For 20 years, such "support" included using Fedayeen Saddam training camps to school terrorists, especially Palestinians but also non-Iraqis "directly associated" with al Qaeda, continuing up to the fall of Baghdad. Saddam also provided financial support and weapons, amounting to "a state-directed program of significant scale." In July 2001, the regime began patronizing a terror cartel in Bahrain calling itself the Army of Muhammad, which, according to an Iraqi memo, "is under the wings of bin Laden."

It's true that the Pentagon report found no "smoking gun," i.e., a direct connection on a joint Iraq-al Qaeda operation. Supposedly this vindicates the view that Iraq's liberation was launched on false premises. But the Administration was always cautious, with Colin Powell alleging merely a "sinister nexus" in his 2003 U.N. speech. If anything, sinister is an understatement. The main Iraq intelligence failure was over WMD, but the report indicates that the CIA also underestimated Saddam's ties to global terror cartels.

The Administration has always maintained that Iraq is just one front in the war on terror; and the report offers "evidence of logistical preparation for terrorist operations in other nations, including those in the West." In 2002, an IIS memo explained to Saddam that Iraqi embassies were stockpiling weapons, while many of the terrorists trained in Fedayeen camps were dispatched to London with counterfeit documents, where they circulated throughout Europe.

Around the same time, the IIS began to manufacture better improvised explosive devices "designed to be used in civilian areas," and the regime bureaucratized suicide operations, with local Baath Party leaders competing to provide recruits for Saddam as part of a "Martyrdom Project."

Reading over (or to be more accurate, looking over...volume 1 of the report alone is 94 pages while the volumes containing the documents are over 500) the report certainly paints a disturbing picture of a regime looking to export terror wherever and whenever possible. The documents show connections to nearly every major Islamic and Arab terror group, the operations of training camps, attempts to undermine Western and Arab states, the use of Iraqi embassies in countries like Greece, Austria, India, Turkey, and the Czech Republic to hide and distribute weapons such as missile launches and plastic explosives, as well as documentation of major operations. The report certainly gives credence that, as the WSJ put it "all of these are inconvenient facts for those who want to assert that somehow Saddam could have been easily contained and presented no threat to the U.S."

Five Years of War

After five long, hard years of war in Iraq, where do things stand? ABC News has produced what seems to me to be the most comprehensive poll of Iraqi public opinion (the article-length summary is here, the pdf with the complete questionnaire and charts is here). The results? "Improved security and economic conditions have reversed Iraqis' spiral of despair, sharply improving hopes for the country's future. Yet deep problems remain in terms of security, living conditions, reconciliation and political progress alike."

According to the survey:

Fifty-five percent of Iraqis say things in their own lives are going well, well up from 39 percent as recently as August. More, 62 percent, rate local security positively, up 19 points. And the number who expect conditions nationally to improve in the year ahead has doubled, to 46 percent in this new national poll by ABC News, the BBC, ARD German TV and the Japanese broadcaster NHK.

Without directly crediting the surge in U.S. forces, fewer report security as the main problem in their own lives  25 percent, nearly half its peak last spring. Forty-six percent say local security has improved in the past six months, nearly double last summer's level.

The number of Iraqis who feel entirely unsafe in their own area has dropped by two-thirds, to 10 percent. And with Sunni Arab buy-in, U.S.-funded Awakening Councils, created to provide local security, are more popular than the Iraqi government itself.

Even more striking is the halt in worsening views. In August, Iraqis by 61-11 percent said security in the country had gotten worse, not better, in the previous six months. Today, by 36-26 percent, more say security has improved. The new positive margin is not large. But the 35-point drop in views that security is worsening is the single largest change in this poll.

In almost all cases, however, the improvement since August and March still has not brought Iraqi sentiment back to its pre-2007 levels. While 46 percent now expect improvements for the country in the next year, that's still far below its level in November 2005, 69 percent. While 55 percent say their own lives are going well, that's down from 71 percent in late 2005.

Similarly, while there's been a big drop in the number who cite security as their own main problem, 50 percent still volunteer it as the nation's main problem overall  little changed from 56 percent in August. One in four Iraqis still report suicide attacks, sectarian fighting and other violence in their own area in just the past six months. And the provision of basic services has barely budged; 88 percent lack adequate electricity.

Much of the improvement since August is driven by Baghdad and Anbar provinces, focal points of the surge. Seventy-one percent in Anbar, and fewer in Baghdad but still 43 percent, now rate local security positively  up from zero in both locales last year. While a dramatic gain, most in Baghdad, home to a quarter of Iraqis, still say security is bad  a reflection of continued, albeit reduced, violence there.

Economic improvement complements the security gains. Fifty-seven percent rate their household finances positively, a 20-point jump, again steepest in Baghdad (especially its Sadr City area) and Anbar. The availability of basic consumer goods has soared even more sharply; 65 percent rate it positively, up by 26 points since August to its highest in polls dating to early 2004. And family incomes are up by 26 percent, about $80 a month.

...

Challenges remain broad and deep. Beyond their own lives, most Iraqis, 55 percent, still say things are going badly for the country, even if that's down from a record 78 percent in August. Violence remains common, particularly in the cities; local car bombs or suicide attacks, just within the past six months, are reported by 45 percent in Baghdad, 51 percent in Kirkuk and 39 percent in Mosul.

Living conditions for many remain dire, with sizable majorities reporting a lack of electricity, fuel, clean water, medical care and sufficient jobs. Improvement in all these has been modest at best. Six in 10 say they can't live where they choose without facing persecution, although this, too, is well down from its peak.

Sectarian differences remain vast. While more than six in 10 Shiites and seven in 10 Kurds say their own lives are going well, that drops to a third in the Sunni Arab minority. Eighty-three percent of Sunnis rate national conditions negatively. And while half of Shiites and six in 10 Kurds expect their children's lives to be better than their own, a mere 12 percent of Sunnis share that most basic hope.

...

Views of the United States, while still broadly negative, have moderated in some respects. Just shy of half, 49 percent, now say it was right for the U.S.-led coalition to have invaded, up by 12 points from August; the previous high was 48 percent in the first ABC News poll in Iraq in February 2004.

Similarly, the number of Iraqis who call it "acceptable" to attack U.S. forces has declined for the first time in these polls, down to 42 percent after peaking at 57 percent in August. Even with a 15-point drop, however, that's still a lot of Iraqis to endorse such violence. (Just 4 percent, by contrast, call it acceptable to attack Iraqi government forces.)

Sunni Arabs, dispossessed by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, are a good example. In August 93 percent of Sunnis called it acceptable to attack U.S. forces. Today, that's down to 62 percent  a dramatic decline, but one that still leaves six in 10 Sunnis on the side of anti-U.S. attacks.

...

An integral part of the surge strategy  the creation of U.S.-funded and -equipped "Awakening Councils" to provide local security  is generally popular. The councils are better-rated than the United States, local leaders, local militias and even the Iraqi government.

Fifty-six percent of Iraqis express confidence in the councils, compared with 49 percent in the national government of Iraq, 47 percent in local leaders, 22 percent in local militias and 20 percent in U.S. forces. The councils attract confidence from 73 percent of Sunni Arabs  generally the most alienated Iraqis  as well as from 60 percent of Shiites.

...

On a structural level, 66 percent of Iraqis say the country should continue as a unified nation with its central government in Baghdad, as opposed to a confederation of regional states or outright partition. While Sunnis have been and almost unanimously remain behind a single state, there's been an advance in this view among Shiites, from 41 percent last March to 56 percent in August and 67 percent now. The holdouts are Kurds, nearly all of whom want autonomy or semi-autonomy (details below).

...

ne thing on which Iraqis tend to agree is the difficult state of their living conditions. In the single worst item, 88 percent say their supply of electricity is bad. (In another measure, just two in 10 report receiving electricity from power lines for more than 12 hours a day, although that is up from just 12 percent last March.)

It's not just about power. Eight in 10 lack adequate fuel for cooking or driving. Sixty-eight percent rate their supply of clean water negatively. Sixty-two percent say they lack adequate medical care, a number that's grown sharply from 36 percent in November 2005  likely relating to the flight of doctors, among other professionals, who've had the wherewithal to leave the country.

As noted, ratings of local security and family finances are sharply better; so is protection from crime  closely related to security and now rated positively by 54 percent, up from 35 percent in August (but still below its peak, 66 percent in November 2005).

The biggest improvement, also as noted, is in the availability of basic household goods, up 26 points to 65 percent positive. Laggards, though, include some essentials: electricity, medical care, clean water, fuel, enough jobs to go around and freedom of movement.

That's certainly a better picture than I believe many of us in the US would have described.

So, what do we learn from these results? First, the surge must not be undone. In the wake of the successes stemming from the increase in US troop presence has come the inevitable, short-sighted response that it's time for troops to come home. Doing that could be disastrous. US forces must remain in Iraq until the security gains have had more time to coalesce into political and societal improvements. Yes, that could take a while. But the alternative is so disastrous as to be unthinkable.

Second, the US and the Iraqi government need to work at improving basic living conditions. It is inexcusable that, five years in, barely 20% of Iraqis have reliable electricity, 80% lack adequate fuel for heating and cooking, and that around 2/3rds of Iraqis lack clean water or adequate medical care. The improved security from the surge has made political reconciliation possible, but if people lack the essentials of day-to-day life, political gains rapidly become meaningless.

The picture in Iraq certainly doesn't seem to be as bleak as many here in the US describe. But it is, at best, extremely fragile. Keeping high levels of US troops in place may be necessary, but so is improving the lives of Iraqis. If these things can be done, the situation will likely continue to improve.

Deterring Terrorists?

Today's New York Times has a fascinating article about how the US defense community is beginning to think about applying principles of deterrence to terrorist groups. Some excerpts:

The 2002 National Security Strategy, signed by the president one year after the Sept. 11 attacks, stated flatly that “traditional concepts of deterrence will not work against a terrorist enemy whose avowed tactics are wanton destruction and the targeting of innocents.”

Four years later, however, the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism concluded: “A new deterrence calculus combines the need to deter terrorists and supporters from contemplating a W.M.D. attack and, failing that, to dissuade them from actually conducting an attack.”

For obvious reasons, it is harder to deter terrorists than it was to deter a Soviet attack.

Terrorists hold no obvious targets for American retaliation as Soviet cities, factories, military bases and silos were under the cold-war deterrence doctrine. And it is far harder to pinpoint the location of a terrorist group’s leaders than it was to identify the Kremlin offices of the Politburo bosses, making it all but impossible to deter attacks by credibly threatening a retaliatory attack.

But over the six and a half years since the Sept. 11 attacks, many terrorist leaders, including Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, have successfully evaded capture, and American officials say they now recognize that threats to kill terrorist leaders may never be enough to keep America safe.

So American officials have spent the last several years trying to identify other types of “territory” that extremists hold dear, and they say they believe that one important aspect may be the terrorists’ reputation and credibility with Muslims.

Under this theory, if the seeds of doubt can be planted in the mind of Al Qaeda’s strategic leadership that an attack would be viewed as a shameful murder of innocents — or, even more effectively, that it would be an embarrassing failure — then the order may not be given, according to this new analysis.

Senior officials acknowledge that it is difficult to prove what role these new tactics and strategies have played in thwarting plots or deterring Al Qaeda from attacking. Senior officials say there have been several successes using the new approaches, but many involve highly classified technical programs, including the cyberoperations, that they declined to detail.

They did point to some older and now publicized examples that suggest that their efforts are moving in the right direction.

George J. Tenet, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, wrote in his autobiography that the authorities were concerned that Qaeda operatives had made plans in 2003 to attack the New York City subway using cyanide devices.

Mr. Zawahri reportedly called off the plot because he feared that it “was not sufficiently inspiring to serve Al Qaeda’s ambitions,” and would be viewed as a pale, even humiliating, follow-up to the 9/11 attacks.

And in 2002, Iyman Faris, a naturalized American citizen from Kashmir, began casing the Brooklyn Bridge to plan an attack and communicated with Qaeda leaders in Pakistan via coded messages about using a blowtorch to sever the suspension cables.

But by early 2003, Mr. Faris sent a message to his confederates saying that “the weather is too hot.” American officials said that meant Mr. Faris feared that the plot was unlikely to succeed — apparently because of increased security.

“We made a very visible presence there and that may have contributed to it,” said Paul J. Browne, the New York City Police Department’s chief spokesman. “Deterrence is part and parcel of our entire effort.”

...

Even as security and intelligence forces seek to disrupt terrorist operations, counterterrorism specialists are examining ways to dissuade insurgents from even considering an attack with unconventional weapons. They are looking at aspects of the militants’ culture, families or religion, to undermine the rhetoric of terrorist leaders.

For example, the government is seeking ways to amplify the voices of respected religious leaders who warn that suicide bombers will not enjoy the heavenly delights promised by terrorist literature, and that their families will be dishonored by such attacks. Those efforts are aimed at undermining a terrorist’s will.

“I’ve got to figure out what does dissuade you,” said Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, the Joint Chiefs’ director of strategic plans and policy. “What is your center of gravity that we can go at? The goal you set won’t be achieved, or you will be discredited and lose face with the rest of the Muslim world or radical extremism that you signed up for.”

Efforts are also under way to persuade Muslims not to support terrorists. It is a delicate campaign that American officials are trying to promote and amplify — but without leaving telltale American fingerprints that could undermine the effort in the Muslim world. Senior Bush administration officials point to several promising developments.

Saudi Arabia’s top cleric, Grand Mufti Sheik Abdul Aziz al-Asheik, gave a speech last October warning Saudis not to join unauthorized jihadist activities, a statement directed mainly at those considering going to Iraq to fight the American-led forces.

And Abdul-Aziz el-Sherif, a top leader of the armed Egyptian movement Islamic Jihad and a longtime associate of Mr. Zawahri, the second-ranking Qaeda official, has just completed a book that renounces violent jihad on legal and religious grounds.

Such dissents are serving to widen rifts between Qaeda leaders and some former loyal backers, Western and Middle Eastern diplomats say.

“Many terrorists value the perception of popular or theological legitimacy for their actions,” said Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser. “By encouraging debate about the moral legitimacy of using weapons of mass destruction, we can try to affect the strategic calculus of the terrorists.”

It's about time. I have been saying for quite some time (just ask my students) that 9/11 represented a failure in American deterrence. The tepid responses to the numerous attacks against the US and American interests during the 1990s (the first WTC bombing, the dual embassy bombing in Africa, the bombing of the Khobar Towers, and the bombing of the USS Cole, all of which were met by police work and limited [and ineffective] cruise missile strikes) sent a clear message to the leadership of al Qaeda that the US did not consider international terrorism to be a primary concern and that the US would not respond seriously. If Osama bin Laden had believed that bringing down the twin towers and striking the Pentagon would result in the loss of Afghanistan as a haven, it's hard to imagine them not thinking twice about whether the cost would be worth the benefit.

Terrorists are rational actors; they use violence as a means to an end. And even if that rationality is hard for us to understand, they are nonetheless rational. The violence is not meaningless; it is not random. Targets are chosen for particular reasons and to advance particular goals. If the use of violence is ineffective, or even counterproductive, then its use makes no sense. It's about time that the US defense community has begun taking the deterrence of terrorists seriously.

UPDATE: Over at his blog, Dan Drezner notes that:

It's good stuff. But it's not "deterrence" in the Cold War sense of the word.

Successful deterrence of Al Qaeda would be taking place if the organization decided not to take action because they feared retaliation by the United States against assets that they held dear. Deterrence works if an actor refrains from attack because they calculate that the cost of the adversary's response would outweigh any benefit from the initial strike.

But that's not in the U.S. strategy. Instead, what U.S. officials appears to be doing is decreasing the likelihood of a successful attack -- by sowing confuson, interdicting logistical support, and reducing sympathy for the organization. The closest one could come to deterrence is if one defined Al Qaeda's reputation as a tangible asset that would face devastating consequences after a successful attack. Even here, however, the U.S. strategy is primarily to weaken Al Qaeda by increasing the odds of an unsuccessful attack.

The more appropriate word to use here is "containment." The United States is trying to sow divisions within the jihadi movement -- much like Kennan urged the United States to do among communists of different nationalities. The United States is applying counter-pressure in areas where Al Qaeda is trying to gain supporters and symathizers -- much like Kennan urged the application of "counter-force" in areas where the Soviets tried to advance their interests.

He's right. Mostly. Most of what the authors are describing isn't really deterrence, but containment or defense. But, deterrence does have elements that begin to blend into the other two concepts. Denial deterrence, for example, works by convincing the opponent that his attack will not succeed. From an article on the NATO website:

The deterrence by denial theory is not limited to missile defences, of course. The theory applies to any capability that can deny an enemy success in achieving his objectives. For example, passive defences such as decontamination equipment and suits and gas masks for protection against chemical and biological weapons might help to convince an enemy not to use such weapons. The National Security Strategy suggests that "consequence-management" capabilities for responding to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) attacks may contribute to both dissuasion and deterrence by denial. It states: "Minimizing the effects of WMD use against our people will help deter those who possess such weapons and dissuade those who seek to acquire them by persuading enemies that they cannot attain their desired ends."

If al Qaeda can be persuaded that their attacks will be, as I said before, ineffective or counterproductive, they may be deterred from carrying them out. True, this begins to look more like defense, but the lines are blurry here.