How A League of Democracies Could Work

Matt over at Foreign Policy Watch has an excellent post challenging the recently-popular concept of a League or Concert of Democracies. Such a league, which I've been writing about for sometime now (here, here, and here), has been championed by Republican presidential candidates John McCain and Rudolph Giuliani, the Princeton Project on National Security, and Ivo Daalder and Robert Kagan. So what doesn't Matt like about the idea?

...this concept is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world really works and is based on three false premises: that democracies are somehow more inclined to act in the name of the common goodwill; that democracies will agree not only on what is broken, but what needs to be done to fix it, and; that alliances are forged from common values, and not shared interests.

1. Democracies are more inclined to act... There is no reason to suspect that the creation of the League of Democracies will prompt increased attention to a situation such as, say, Darfur....In the case of Darfur, the international community has - to put it crudely - simply been too busy elsewhere. The ongoing conflict there has been only of peripheral interest to the US - it scarcely has the time or human resources at its disposal to provide the type of attention a challenge like Darfur requires. A nation acts when it is in its interest to do so and, most importantly, is actually available to do so. If anything, the competing priorities on the US foreign policy agenda (I'm looking at you, Iraq) prevent Washington from taking the sort of action on the ground in Darfur that would be necessary to end the bloodshed.

2. Collectively, democracies will do what needs to be done... To solve the litany of problems plaguing the international community today requires that states involved in the effort not only agree on what the threat is, but define its nature and agree on the steps needed to resolve the problem. By what objective standards are democracies more capable of this than other states?

In the end, the world's leading democracies already enjoy perhaps some of the closest and most interlinked alliances in all of history, yet are split on numerous foreign policy decisions - from Iraq and Iran to missile defense and arms sales to China. How would codifying their relationships into a formal "League of Democracies" make their ability to face today's threats to international security or their ability to agree any differently?

3. Alliances are built on shared values... This is the largest conceptual flaw behind the push for creating a League of Democracies, mistaking alliances among states for a nod that the two are in agreement for how the world should look both within and among states. Alliances are forged when interests between one or more states converge and a cooperative relationship between two states becomes the most realistic means of achieving shared goals. This is why the US has a closer relationship with Saudi Arabia than it does with, say, Belgium. (Pervez Musharaff and a few other Central Asian autocrats have often made quite useful partners in recent years, one might add.)

All of Matt's critiques are excellent, and right on the money. But the sum of his arguments don't add up to the total of his conclusions. He's right on all of his points: Democracies aren't necessarily any more likely to act on issues of low national interest, democracies aren't necessarily any more capable of coming to consensus, and shared values aren't always the strongest or best metric of mutual alliance.

But, to take the critiques in turn, the whole point of the league is to create a mechanism that will be more effective at spurring these countries into action. When Daalder and Kagan speak of creating a "formal mechanism" they presumably are thinking of some kind of enforcement mechanism as exists in the WTO that would bind states to their institutional commitments. The impetus behind finding a institution to replace the UN is to find one that works: That punishes states that break the rules and that forces its members to act when those rules have been broken.

Matt wonders why democracies would be any more likely than a mixed body to agree on means. Perhaps. But to discard the notion of an alliance on those grounds would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. First, NATO, the WTO, and other institutions made of up like-minded states have certainly been more able to design coherent plans of action than has been the UN. Matt points to the problems experienced by the US surrounding the invasion of Iraq, but that seems to work against his argument, as Iraq was conducted outside of the framework of an institution. Iraq was done by the whims of the US, ignoring the advice and warnings of America's allies. A league would create some formal mechanism for planning, akin to NATO's unified command structure. Now, before you mention Kosovo, yes, I'm aware Kosovo was a problem for NATO planners. But it was still better than the UN could have done.

Finally, Matt argues that interests rather than values are the basis for partnerships in international politics, asking why, if the opposite were true, would the US have a closer relationship with Saudi Arabia than it does Belgium. This is a very short-sighted understanding of interest. While it's true that interest plays a role, the American interest in Saudi Arabia is a tactical one; oil. The American interest in Belgium is a much more long-term one; shared values. So while America may need to placate Saudi Arabia in the short-term to get access to oil or to get cooperation in counter-terror efforts on Iraq, the US relationship with Belgium is much stronger and deeper and is ultimately more fundamental to US and global security.

Matt's critiques are trenchant and powerful, but ultimately, unconvincing. Properly constructed (and that is no easy task), a league of democracies could be a powerful and meaningful force in international politics. The WTO has fired the first shot across the bow...will there be more?

A New and Improved France?

Much has been made of the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and his seemingly overt pro-American leanings. He has already vacationed in New England, and his policies seem to be much warmer towards Washington than those of his predecessor. But today, Sarkozy has given us a clear signal that his France will not be the sissified, wishy-washy, knee-jerk anti-American France of Chirac.

In his first major speech on foreign policy, Sarkozy warned that a serious diplomatic effort on Iran's nuclear program is the only alternative to "an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran." Sarkozy made it clear that he prefers the diplomatic option, but even the mention of the use of force is a refreshing change coming from France.

I have blogged before about a critical problem in the push for more multilateral action: The unwillingness of the international community -- such as France, Germany, and the UN -- to back their negotiations and threats with military force. There is little chance that the US will trust its international security to multilateral efforts if those efforts won't even consider using force when and where diplomacy fails. It is refreshing to see Sarkozy discuss the use of military force, even if he does so in the context of a bad option to be avoided. But only when France and other countries that lead the drive for multilateral action step up and recognize that sometimes force is a necessary option, and one that is more often needed in the background of diplomacy, can multilateral action be truly successful.

Antigua 1, US Nil

Typically, international politics is an arena dominated by power. In conditions of anarchy, those who can do, and that rule is frequently followed by the US, which uses its hegemonic status to ignore rules that the US finds inimical to its interests.

International institutions are the primary ways in which anarchy is mitigated in international politics, as strong institutions can create norms and rules that states must follow or risk falling afoul of the enforcement mechanism of the institution. The WTO is one of the most significant of these institutions, as it possesses a relatively credible and powerful enforcement mechanism (described here) and has succeeded in forcing states to change their policies and domestic laws.

However, the WTO now faces a difficult situation by virtue of its very strength. The WTO has found that US laws barring American citizens from gambling on-line with off-shore casinos are a violation of free trade and of the US's obligations under the WTO. The ruling, initially made in 2004 and upheld in two appeals, supported Antigua's claim that the US law has unfairly impacted Antigua's trade in Internet gambling (Antigua's second-largest business behind tourism), and the case is now in damage assessment, with Antigua claiming $3.4 billion in damages and asking for the right for reciprocal violations of US intellectual property. If the US wishes to avoid allowing Antigua to violate US IP protections (to the amount determined by the damage assessment hearing), the US will either have to allow Americans to gamble with off-shore casinos on the Internet or ban all forms of domestic on-line gambling, such as the on-line purchase of state lottery tickets, off-track betting on horse-racing, and even fantasy sports leagues in which prize money is awarded.

The problem is, as the New York Times notes, that:

For the W.T.O. itself, the decision is equally fraught with peril. It cannot back down because that would undermine its credibility with the rest of the world. But if it actually carries out the penalties, it risks a political backlash in the United States, the most powerful force for free-flowing global trade and the W.T.O.’s biggest backer.

“Think of this from the W.T.O.’s point of view,” said Charles R. Nesson, a professor at Harvard Law School. “They’re this fledgling organization dominated by a huge monster in the United States. People there must be scared out of their wits at the prospects of enforcing a ruling that would instantly galvanize public opinion in the United States against the W.T.O.”

Over at his blog, Dani Rodrik sees this as a serious problem for the WTO, writing that "this is another example of how existing WTO practices are leading to the narrowing of policy space to the detriment of legitimacy (and economic logic). When the system serves to enforce new restrictions on domestic policy autonomy that would be wildly unpopular at home, it is time to rethink the system."

But I don't see why this example is any different than any other trade dispute for which the WTO has jurisdiction. The point of the WTO is to allow states to tie their own hands. That is, states know that free trade is an overall good, but that they have powerful short-term domestic reasons to opt for protection. Committing to the WTO allows states to avoid the collective actions problems that are so endemic in trade and stick to a free trade policy. There are exceptions, under which states are allowed to impose protectionism, such as protection of domestic morals, national security, public safety, and so on. But states often try to disguise protectionist policies with legitimate rationales, like France's attempt to ban GMOs.

Indeed, the US invoked such language, claiming that the US has the right to ban Americans from on-line gambling "on moral grounds, just as any Muslim country would be within its rights under international trade agreements to ban the import of alcoholic beverages." However, given that the US allows many types of gambling, including on-line wagering, the claim rang hollow, and was rejected by the WTO.

Despite Rodrik's claim, this is exactly the kind of issue that the WTO should be dealing with. The US has no legitimate reasons to ban on-line gambling, given that gambling is obviously legal and quite prevalent in this country. There are entire cities devoted to gambling, states run massive gambling operations, and every local paper prints sports odds on a daily basis. Gambling has long been subject to massive protectionism in this country for no good reason, but the advent of on-line gambling has changed the venue and scope of the country's ability to maintain that protection. As other countries, like Antigua, developed gambling industries, the US's double standards looked more and more like unfair and illegal protectionism.

It is very important that the US comply with the WTO's decision. The WTO is one of the cornerstones of the international order, and is vital for insuring the continued prosperity of this country, and nearly every other country in the world. Furthermore, the US has been trying to get smaller, developing countries to accept American intellectual property rights laws under the WTO. Why would they do so if the US refuses to play by the rules (of course, the American, European, Japanese, and Korean refusals to ease or cease agricultural subsidies are already driving this line of thought, but at least ag policy is not currently covered by the WTO)? Refusing to comply will fundamentally damage US credibility and interests to a degree that not even the invasion of Iraq was able to do. It is vital to the US that other countries commit themselves to the WTO and comply with its obligations; it is equally vital that the US do the same.

A Few Days Off

I'll be taking a few days off...the wife and I are heading out to Yellowstone National Park for several days of hiking and relaxing. We'll definitely be hanging out in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (pictured above)....

See you next week!!

The Abomination That Is The Farm Bill

There are few things in the world I hate more than domestic politics, and fewer things still that illustrate why I hate domestic politics so than the US farm bill. In testimony before Congress on July 24, the General Accounting Office revealed that the US Department of Agriculture:

paid $1.1 billion in farm payments in the names of 172,801 deceased individuals. ... 40 percent went to those who had been dead for three or more years, and 19 percent to those dead for seven or more years.

Over $200 million went to farmers who had been dead for more than 7 years. Meanwhile, farmers in Africa are unable to find decent prices for their goods as global prices are suppressed by artificially inflated supply from the US. This year alone, the US farm bill will cost the average American family about $320 in subsidies.

But wait you say...the farm bill preserves the tradition of small farming, a la Willie Nelson's Farm Aid.

Hardly.

As Nicholas Kristof notes in his recent mea culpa revealing that he, a New York Times journalist who writes most often about human rights, is paid $588 a year not to farm the land he owns in Oregon, "the majority of payments go to commercial farmers who earn more than $200,000 annually, while 95% of farmers get little or no benefit from the farm bill." Meanwhile, the Democratic Congress defeated a proposed $200,000 cap on payments, preferring to set the maximum that any single farmer can receive at $1 million (per farmer, so a farming couple can get $2 million).

And as John Stossel notes, the farm bill undercuts American legitimacy on free trade. Why should developing countries join the WTO and comply with US intellectual property laws if the US won't play by the rules on agriculture (it goes without saying that Europe is even worse, but that's no excuse for the US).

The farm bill is shameful. But unfortunately, it is not surprising. As Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, "government even in its best state is but a necessary evil, in its worst state an intolerable one."

Amen.

How NOT To Deal With Hamas

The British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee has released a report criticizing the UK's policy towards Hamas and the Palestinians, stating that the refusal to deal with or talk to Hamas has been counter-productive. The all-party committee concludes that:

that the decision not to speak to Hamas in 2007 following the Mecca agreement has been counterproductive. We further conclude that a national unity Government could and should have been established much earlier than the spring of 2007. We recommend that, in its response to this Report, the Government set out when it began to actively support the establishment of a national unity Government in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

This is exactly the wrong solution. There is no possibility for a successful unity government between Hamas and Fatah, and given the civil war, it's hard to imagine why the committee feels it would have been better to create a unity government earlier (to be fair, the committee also wants the UK to end the political and economic isolation of Hamas, so it may be that it's thinking is that if economic conditions hadn't been so dire, things would have worked out differently).

As I have written on numerous occasions, the problem in the Palestinian territories is that neither side, nor the government in a general sense, possesses a monopoly of violence, which enables each side to undermine the other. There are only two ways to deal with this situation (assuming one wants to eventually reunite the West Bank with Gaza in an independent Palestinian homeland): support Fatah against Hamas, or support Hamas against Fatah. So long as the two groups maintain military/police power outside of the aegis of the government, there will no lasting peace and no political stability. Creating a unity government merely papers over this situation, but only until a divisive problem arises that splits the two parties. I don't have any intrinsic problems with Hamas ruling (although I would prefer it be Fatah); what is critical is that whichever group controls the government do so completely and totally.

The Source of Legitimacy in International Politics

As President Bush has learned as a result of the invasion of Iraq, legitimacy is exceedingly important in international politics. Soft power and interdependence have become such prominent features of the international landscape that acting in opposition to global norms and mores can be very costly.

However, while legitimacy may be important, its sources aren't clear. Most people look to the UN -- the closest thing that exists to a global parliament or legislative body -- for that legitimacy. But ultimately doing so makes no sense. Legitimacy must stem from a collective of shared values; that is, the actors from whom legitimacy is sought must agree on the basic values and rules to be followed that define the legitimacy. But the UN does not represent the kind of values that should define American (or global) legitimacy. The UN stands for sovereignty, nothing more. Every state is treated equally no matter how reprehensible the state, no matter how many of the UN's own rules it violates. Thus, we get states like Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Sudan not just participating, but leading committees and being treated as normal. However, despite this seeming democratic nature, the UN is fundamentally non-democratic, as the UN's institutional structure allows one of five states (the permanent members of the Security Council) to veto any action and block the will of the rest of the international community.

Seeking legitimacy from this institution makes no sense. Why is it acceptable to allow Russia or China to veto international action in Kosovo or Darfur? Why should the US seek approval from an organization that allows Sudan to serve, and chair, on the Human Rights Committee? That allows Zimbabwe to chair the Sustainable Development panel? That repeatedly condemns Israel but makes no mention of the genocides in Darfur, the brutalization in Zimbabwe, or the misery of North Korea? And the UN is, obviously, subjected to the politics of national self-interest which undermines its ability to define legitimacy. As Ivo Daalder and Robert Kagan note in their Washington Post op-ed from Monday:

the U.N. Security Council, no longer suffices [as a source of legitimacy], if it ever did. Under the United Nations Charter, states are prohibited from using force except in cases of self-defense or when explicitly authorized by the Security Council. But this presupposes that the members of the Security Council can agree on the threat and the appropriate response. From Rwanda to Kosovo to Darfur, however, and from Iraq to North Korea to Iran, the Security Council has not been able to agree and has failed to act decisively. Its permanent members are deeply divided by conflicting interests as well as by clashing beliefs about the nature of sovereignty and the right of the international community to intervene in the internal affairs of nations.

If the UN can't provide legitimacy, where should states look? According to Daalder and Kagan, "the answer is the world's democracies, the United States and its democratic partners in Europe and Asia." They continue:

As the war in Kosovo showed, democracies can agree and act effectively even when major non-democracies, such as Russia and China, do not. Because they share a common view of what constitutes a just order within states, they tend to agree on when the international community has an obligation to intervene. Shared principles provide the foundation for legitimacy.

A policy of seeking consensus among the world's great democratic nations can form the basis for a new domestic consensus on the use of force. It would not exclude efforts to win Security Council authorization. Nor would it preclude using force even when some of our democratic friends disagree. But the United States will be on stronger ground to launch and sustain interventions when it makes every effort to seek and win the approval of the democratic world.

Eventually, perhaps, these matters could be addressed and decided in a more formal arrangement, a Concert of Democracies, where the world's democracies could meet and cooperate in dealing with the many global challenges they confront. Until such a formal mechanism has been created, however, future presidents need to recognize that legitimacy matters, and that the most meaningful and potent form of legitimacy for a democracy such as the United States is the kind bestowed by fellow democrats around the world.

I have supported this idea many times in these pages. Back in May, I wrote about John McCain's idea of a league of democracies, arguing that:

that the democratic states of the world need to create, perhaps using the WTO and NATO as foundations, a meta-institution that can spread western values, enforce international laws and norms, maintain peace and security, and bolster the international economic order. The general vision is to connect the various economic and political institutions together, whereby membership in one is predicated on adherence to commitments in the others. Thus, violating the NPT or the genocide convention is met by punishment in the WTO. Such a strategy is based on the logic of engagement which has been working reasonably well in China, where the desire to participate in and receive the benefits of the international economic order (and the fear of the economic damage that would result from being excluded) creates incentives to maintain a status quo posture. Such a network, or meta-institution, could go a long way in dealing with the issues with which the UN is incapable of dealing.

I also claim that its not as important that the members of the group be democratic so long as they are committed to globalization, economic interdependence, and preservation of the status quo.

The UN is simply not capable of dealing with issues of global security, nor should it be seen as a source of legitimacy where such issues are concerned. The UN is invaluable when it comes to peace keeping, nation building, and social initiatives like disease prevention, education, and the like. But it is time to recognize the UN's limits. While the UN dithered getting a weak, watered down resolution in Darfur, more than 200,000 people died and millions more were displaced. If such an parallel institution existed, perhaps the Kosovo model, in which the democratic members of NATO authorized their own intervention contrary to international law, could have applied and countless lives saved.

Making Politics A Little More Real

People often refer to the academic study of politics as if it is somehow not the "real world." Maybe, although most academics would argue that the theoretical issues and policy applications we study are critical for actually making policy.

But the Politics and Government Department here at the University of Puget Sound is doing its best to keep our study of politics connected to the real world. To that end, we have begun working with Kiva. Kiva is a microcredit organization that matches up individual donors with people in the developing world who need small amounts of cash to start their own businesses. Several donors contribute to make up one loan package, typically amounting to around $1000, which the recipients pay back over time on a manageable schedule. The interest charged goes to maintain the program, and the donors get their original seed money back, which can then be reinvested. To date, Kiva boasts a repayment rate of over 99%. My department is currently contributing to Sorn Sophea in Cambodia who got $1000 to open her own tailoring business.

A quick peek at Kiva's business-in-need page reveals an interesting mix: Lots of women, lots of Iraqis...lots of people trying to get up on their own feet and provide for their families. Microcredit is one of the best ideas in development, as evidenced by the last Nobel Peace Prize going to Muhammed Yunis and the Grameen Bank, one of the pioneers in microcredit lending who has probably done more to end poverty and encourage development than all the government organizations combined.

I would encourage any of Security Dilemmas readers to get involved with Kiva. Make a loan, change someone's life!!!

UPDATE: I decided to take it one step farther, and became a Kiva lender on my own. I lent $25 to Dung Truong Thi of Ham Thuan Nam, Viet Nam so she can expand her pig business to care for her family. It looks like Dung is now fully funded, so let's hope her business flourishes!!

The Return Of The Club For Growth

The passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930 is now widely seen as one of the most disastrous laws ever passed by Congress. The high tarrifs lengthened and intensified, if not caused, the Great Depression and contributed to the coming of World War II by exacerbating poor economic conditions in Europe and undermining any sense of international trust. At the time, it was opposed by 1,028 of this county's leading economists, who called themselves the Club For Growth. Unfortunately, Congress thought it knew better than the economists and ignored their advice.

History seems to be repeating itself today as a newly protectionism-minded Congress prepares to pass legislation that will impose punitive tariffs on China if China does not raise the value of its currency, the yuan. While the yuan has risen by about 9% in value relative to the dollar, it may still be undervalued by 40%.

Fortunately, the Club For Growth has returned, as 1,028 of our leading economists have once again signed a petition urging Congress to abandon punitive tariffs as a policy tool. Unfortunately, it's likely that the current incarnation of the Club will be ignored just as was the first.

There are so many reasons why these tariffs would be a bad idea. First, they are little more than protectionism disguised as congressmen seek to protect their inefficient and struggling manufacturing industries from foreign competition. Succeeding will cost this country, and the global economy, billions of dollars, and will punish the poorest Americans who can least afford to waste their money on tariffs.

Second, this policy threatens to undermine the long-standing US policy of engagement towards China. While China is not a model global citizen, there can be no question that the China of today is infinitely better -- economically, socially, politically -- than the China of 20 years ago, and little doubt that the China of tomorrow will be better than the China of today. And there is little question that economic interdependence, globalization, and engagement are large reasons why.

Undermining such a critical long-term policy for short-term political benefit is so short-sighted as to be moronic. But why would we expect anything less from our elected officials?

If The Surge Is Working, Why Are We Still Losing Iraq?

By many accounts, the surge of US troops in Iraq is beginning to pay dividends. Admiral Michael Mullen, the pick to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified at his confirmation hearing that the security situation is "better, not great, but better." Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, two vocal critics of the handling of the Iraq occupation (although Pollack was a strong supporter of the invasion itself) wrote a piece in the New York Times arguing that the situation is improving: "We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with." In a long interview with Hugh Hewitt, New York Times reporter John Burns argued much the same point:

I think there’s no doubt that those extra 30,000 American troops are making a difference. They’re definitely making a difference in Baghdad. Some of the crucial indicators of the war, metrics as the American command calls them, have moved in a positive direction from the American, and dare I say the Iraqi point of view, fewer car bombs, fewer bombs in general, lower levels of civilian casualties, quite remarkably lower levels of civilian casualties. And add in what they call the Baghdad belts, that’s to say the approaches to Baghdad, particularly in Diyala Province to the northeast, to in the area south of Baghdad in Babil Province, and to the west of Baghdad in Anbar Province, there’s no doubt that al Qaeda has taken something of a beating.

[Shia on Sunni violence since the surge] is reduced, and it’s reduced primarily, as far as we can see, because of the increment, and I’m talking here of a virtual doubling of American troop strength in Baghdad, to speak only the neighborhood in which the New York Times operates here, the Rusafa neighborhood on the east side of the Tigris River, we here now have American troops quartered about a half a mile away from us for the first time in three years. So when you put American boots on the ground, you definitely have an inhibiting effect on this, and we’ve seen that in falling levels of sectarian violence. Where you don’t have American boots on the ground inside Baghdad, you see higher levels of sectarian violence. So I would that on the whole, the situation is somewhat better than it was, which is exactly what you would have expected by introducing a significant increase of American combat troops.

Peter Beaumont of The Guardian, no fan of the invasion or Bush's policies, remains critical, but also notes progress:

And while in Iraq it has usually been the best policy to deal with officials with a strong dose of scepticism following the years of pronouncements of victory around the corner, for now at least there appears to be corroborating evidence that in the north, the war may be drawing, ever so slowly, towards some kind of close.

In Mosul, which once hosted 21,000 US soldiers in the city, now only a single battalion, in the mid-hundreds, remains inside the city, matched by an equivalent drop in attacks. And it is not only in Mosul that security is improving. The sense that things are getting better is reflected in Nineveh Province. In two years US troop levels around Tal Afar, once the heartland of al-Qaeda, have been reduced from 6,000 to 1,200.

The general trend for acts of violence - despite some spikes - also has been steadily decreasing. Indeed, until Jamil Salem Jamil detonated his human bomb there had not been a suicide vest attack in Tal Afar since 14 January.

And there are other striking indicators. The last time that I flew across this area, two years ago, what agriculture there was was sporadic. Now it has turned golden with a vast expanse of freshly cut wheat fields that have turned the flat plains that touch the Kurdish foothills into a vast prairie, using almost every patch of viable land.

At this point, we are still only few months into the surge, with most analysts agreeing that we won't know much for sure until September, at the earliest. But if early signs are trending positive, why is there still so much cynicism and pessimism?

The problem is that the military component is but one aspect of the overall solution, and is not even the most important solution. The only way to succeed in Iraq is for the political process to develop in such a way that the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds all believe that their interests will best be protected by the government and through participation in that process. The surge is intended not to pacify the country, but rather to provide sufficient security to create breathing room in which the government can pass needed laws and stabilize the political situation.

But while the surge may be working, the political process is not. All of the people cited above for their optimism on the military aspect of the surge also voiced their pessimism about the political side. Admiral Mullen stated that "there does not appear to be much political progress" in resolving the critical issues that might ease sectarian violence. O'Hanlon and Pollack note that Iraq "still faces huge hurdles on the political front. Iraqi politicians of all stripes continue to dawdle and maneuver for position against one another when major steps towards reconciliation — or at least accommodation — are needed. This cannot continue indefinitely. Otherwise, once we begin to downsize, important communities may not feel committed to the status quo, and Iraqi security forces may splinter along ethnic and religious lines" and that "Iraqi high-level politics remains completely log-jammed, we saw zero evidence of progress there." According to Burns, the political situation is:

probably the most depressing or discouraging aspect of the entire situation. I think it’s probably fair to say that the Iraqi political leaders, Sunni, Shiia, Kurd in the main, are somewhat further apart now than they were six months ago. In other words, the Bush administration’s hope that the military surge would be accompanied by what they called a political surge, a movement towards some sort of national reconciliation, uniting around a kind of national compact, that has simply not occurred. Indeed, the gulf between the Shiite and Sunni leaders in the government is probably wider than it has ever been. There’s a great deal of recrimination. There’s hardly a day when the Sunnis do not, as they did again today, threaten to withdraw from the government altogether. There’s virtually no progress on the key benchmarks, as the Bush administration calls them, matters like a comprehensive oil law that will settle the issue of how oil revenues, which account for 90% of government revenues here, will in future be divided and spent between the various communities, and many other issues, eighteen of them, benchmarks identified by the Congress, there’s very little progress on those benchmarks. Where there is some progress is at the grass roots level, some progress, though we’re beginning to see tribal leaders, in particular, in some of the most heavily congested war areas, beginning to stand up and say they’ve had enough of it, and to volunteer to put forth their young men, either to join the Iraqi police or army, or to join in tribal auxiliaries, or levees if you will. That’s probably the most encouraging political sign. But at the Baghdad level, unfortunately, the United States still does not have an effective political partner.

Meanwhile, amidst these reports of political failures, the Iraqi parliament prepares to adjourn for the entire month of August, since it had not been presented any laws on which to vote.

The political stalemate is unquestionably undermining the military progress. But what can be done? The problem is that, as I blogged about more than a year ago, the US has been too quick to hand the reins of power over to the Iraqi government, which is not up to the task (nor should be expected to be). It is simply not realistic to expect a brand-new democracy to be capable of dealing with such difficult and contentious issues while setting aside years of ethnic hatred and desires for vengeance. It is time to recognize that the Iraqi government is failing in what must be done.

To that end, I strongly agree with Senator Barack Obama's proposal (found in his recent Foreign Affairs article outlining his presidential foreign policy) to institute a soft deadline for a US troop withdrawal. A soft deadline would contain a solid date (Obama proposes March 31, 2008; I would defer to military analyses of how long the surge needs to be truly effective) by which US troops would be pulled from Iraq; however, that deadline could be waived if the Iraqi government meets certain benchmarks on its political progress. The deadline would put serious pressure on the government to make progress; not even the Sunnis in the government want the process to collapse. But the waivers take away the possibility of the insurgents lying low until US troops leave. If progress occurs, the US military will remain as long as needed to ensure security and train Iraqi forces to handle matter on their own. If no progress occurs, then what's the point (other than preventing a massive civil war and genocide, which at that point would likely become unavoidable as US troops certainly won't remain in Iraq indefinitely in the absence of political progress) in keeping the troops there?

Something must be done. Strong steps must be taken to prevent the weaknesses of the Iraqi government from squandering the sacrifices of our soldiers.

A Trade Trade?

The Washington Post reports that congressional Democrats are seeking to expand the role, scope and power of the Trade Adjustment Assistance program. The TAA was implemented to help workers adjust to the impact of globalization, by providing funds for re-training, relocation, and job searching to those "whose hours of work or wages are reduced as a result of increased imports." Currently, TAA assistance is limited to those in the manufacturing sectors, whom had been the hardest hit by globalization; the Democrats are trying to expand TAA to jobs in the service industries, such as computer programmers and call-center staffers. According to the Post:

Last year, the Labor Department approved 1,400 petitions covering about 400,000 workers, according to a recent study by the Government Accountability Office, though fewer than 100,000 workers sought and received benefits. The agency denied 800 petitions, mainly because the workers did not produce "an article" and hence fulfill the basic definition of a manufacturing worker. Most of the denials involved two industries, the GAO said: business services such as computer programming and airport-related services such as aircraft maintenance.

The TAA is a grand political compromise that helps make globalization possible. While globalization produces massive net benefits, those benefits tend to be spread across the entire population, while the costs of globalization are typically localized in inefficient industries that suffer as jobs move abroad. Those that lose their jobs have a larger incentive to lobby their congressmen than the vast majority that benefit from lower prices and increased quality; thus, globalization contains the seeds of its own defeat. The TAA helps reduce the cost of economic dislocation, making it easier for the public and politicians alike to "do the right thing" by advancing the cause of globalization. The TAA has typically enjoyed broad bipartisan support, and the current bill is co-sponsored by Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT).

Why is this effort from the Democrats problematic then? In the past, TAA has been part of a grand trade deal: Republicans would support TAA and in return Democrats would support free trade deals. But the current Congress doesn't seem as willing to give that quid pro quo. The extension of Trade Promotion Authority (formerly known as Fast Track, TPA means that Congress can only vote up-or-down on trade bills, rather than amending, adding, and subtracting to the deal. Without TPA, it is exceedingly difficult to conclude trade agreements, as other states are loathe to make concessions knowing that Congress may very well undo whatever US concessions are given in return.) is in danger, and Congress has delayed consideration, let alone approval, of the previously signed trade deals with Peru, Panama, Colombia, and South Korea, despite a deal in May to bring the agreements to a vote. Protectionism was a major theme of many of the Democrats who won office in last year's election, and passing TAA in the absence of a commensurate expansion of global trade will only further retard the global and domestic economy.

Hopefully, Senate Republicans will insist that the Democrats acquiesce on trade in exchange for expanding protection for those who suffer from globalization. If they don't, and the growing anti-trend continues, economic promise will grow dim.

Shame on the Senate

Last night, the US Senate held an all-night debate on a proposal to force a withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in 120 days. The fact that a bunch of middle-aged (and older) millionaires would be staying up all night was irresistible to the New York Times, which ran a front-page picture of the cots that the tired legislators would be using (doesn't that defeat the purpose of an all-night debate? Just shows just how useless big government is...it can't even get an all-nighter right). The Times thought the even so important to run a page 7 article that described the idiotic theater that went on: Pizza boxes (one would hope that the Senate has good enough taste to order from Pizzeria Paradiso, but I doubt it), the photo shoots of the cots (in which the Times obviously participated) and the gift bags sent to the Republicans by the majority leader Harry Reid which were tied with yellow ribbons and bore a note reading “A few supplies for your sleepless night — help us bring an end to this war.” (And Reid insists this all-night debate wasn't about political theater.)

I don't quite understand the oohing and aahing about the Senate doing what many of my students do on a routine basis. So a bunch of rich people who only work half the year (true, I only work half the year, but I don't make $165,000 a year) stayed up all night once? So what? Are we supposed to be awed by how seriously the Senate is taking the question of withdrawing troops? Only a group as self-congratulatory and narcissistic as the Senate could believe that such a transparent and empty gesture as an all-nighter could substitute for intelligent and informed discourse.

But the shame of the Senate goes even farther. What was the point of the debate? To pass a law requiring the withdrawal of troops from Iraq in 120 days; a law which would undoubtedly be vetoed or simply ignored as unconstitutional (as I have argued several time, unless the power of the purse is used, Congress may not tell the president how to use the armed forces). The time to oppose the surge, or even the entire mission, is not now; it was months ago when Congress voted on the appropriations bill to fund the war in Iraq. The Senate didn't have the guts then to do what it would take to end the war, so the surge went forward and the war continued. It's now only a few months into the surge, so why give up now? Not that the Republicans are any better. Several prominent GOP Senators, like Richard Lugar (R-IN) or Pete Domenici (R-NM) have backed away from the Iraq mission publicly but failed to back the Democrat's bill. So why have they distanced themselves from the larger mission?

For the Senate to behave this way is shameful. Iraq demands and deserves serious political discussion. It demands politicians who have the spine to do what they believe is right, even if it may be politically damaging to them. But to put on political theater to convince us that they're serious is utterly disgraceful.

Losing Afghanistan

As if the situation in Iraq wasn't bad enough, things in Afghanistan are looking dire. Unfortunately, due to the obsession with Iraq of our political leaders (both Republican and Democrat) and the myopia of our national media, Afghanistan doesn't get much press here.

Not so in Great Britain, where the UK's most senior generals have told the prime minister that NATO is facing a catastrophic failure in Afghanistan, one that even threatens the stability of Pakistan. The Guardian reports that "Lord Inge, the former chief of the defence staff, highlighted [the generals'] fears in public last week when he warned of a 'strategic failure' in Afghanistan." According to the report:

'The situation in Afghanistan is much worse than many people recognise,' Inge told peers. 'We need to face up to that issue, the consequence of strategic failure in Afghanistan and what that would mean for Nato... We need to recognise that the situation - in my view, and I have recently been in Afghanistan - is much, much more serious than people want to recognise.'

Inge's remarks reflect the fears of serving generals that the government is so overwhelmed by Iraq that it is in danger of losing sight of the threat of failure in Afghanistan. One source, who is familiar with the fears of the senior officers, told The Observer: 'If you talk privately to the generals they are very very worried. You heard it in Inge's speech. Inge said we are failing and remember Inge speaks for the generals.'

Inge made a point in the Lords of endorsing a speech by Lord Ashdown, the former Liberal Democrat leader, who painted a bleak picture during the debate. Ashdown told The Observer that Afghanistan presented a graver threat than Iraq.

'The consequences of failure in Afghanistan are far greater than in Iraq,' he said. 'If we fail in Afghanistan then Pakistan goes down. The security problems for Britain would be massively multiplied. I think you could not then stop a widening regional war that would start off in warlordism but it would become essentially a war in the end between Sunni and Shia right across the Middle East.'

...

Ashdown said two mistakes were being made: a lack of a co-ordinated military command because of the multinational 'hearts and minds' Nato campaign and the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom offensive campaign against the Taliban. There was also insufficient civic support on, for example, providing clean water.

'There is a very short shelf life for an occupation force. Once that begins to shift against you it is very very difficult to turn it round.'

The warnings from Ashdown and the generals on Afghanistan will be echoed in a report this week by the all-party Commons defence select committee. MPs will say that the combination of civilian casualties, war damage and US-led efforts to eradicate lucrative poppy crops risk turning ordinary people towards the Taliban.

The immediate impulse here is to blame President Bush and the war in Iraq from diverting focus and resources away from Afghanistan, and such criticism would most definitely be valid. But it would also not be complete. NATO as an institution has had problems before with its military command: Read General Wesley Clark's or Robert Kagan's account of the intervention in Kosovo for excellent descriptions of this. Divided command and competing national interests have hamstrung NATO, making it difficult to conduct military operations in a coherent, unified manner. Furthermore, many NATO members have not been willing to provide sufficient troops or materiel for the Afghan campaign.

These are some of the critical problems with multilateral military action, and it is not surprising that they are present in Afghanistan. If the situation is to be saved, two things, neither of which is likely to occur must happen. First, the US must increase the number of ground forces in Afghanistan. The all-too-frequent air strikes with high civilian casualties are undermining the "hearts-and-minds" campaign, undoing all the good work being done in other areas. More troops are needed to secure villages and hunt down the Taliban units. Second, NATO needs to develop a more unitary command structure, in which member states provide troops to be used at the discretion of the NATO commander. If NATO is to remain a serious and competent military force, it cannot continue to be incapable of sustaining military operations.

Losing the War on Terror

Picking up from my previous post, today's news is filled with intelligence reports that al Qaeda has rebuilt its operational capacity. A National Intelligence Estimate entitled "Al-Qaeda Better Positioned to Strike the West" to be released soon asserts that al Qaeda is "considerably operationally stronger than a year ago," has "regrouped to an extent not seen since 2001," and "[is] showing greater and greater ability to plan attacks in Europe and the United States." Furthermore, al Qaeda has succeeded in creating"the most robust training program since 2001, with an interest in using European operatives" while the US is suffering from"significant gaps in intelligence" so U.S. authorities may be ignorant of potential or planned attacks.

One of the main successes so far in the War on Terror was the destruction of al Qaeda's formal institutionalized command structure that existed in Afghanistan pre-9/11. It was the organized nature of the group that enabled it to carry out such sophisticated attacks like 9/11, the bombing of the USS Cole, and the double bombings of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. However, since the loss of the organizational structure, al Qaeda has been largely incapable of mounting attacks of high sophistication, and has largely relied on suicide bombs on soft targets, like buses, trains, and discos. While deadly, such attacks are not what al Qaeda wants to be doing, as they don't raise its operational profile or seriously threaten the target states.

If al Qaeda is in fact reorganizing itself as it was before 9/11, that is very bad news. The new al Qaeda may be decentralized and dispersed, making it harder to find the leaders, but it is also less dangerous. While it should be easier to locate al Qaeda if it has rebuilt its organizational capacity and training camps, the US hasn't exactly demonstrated the will to go after those new organizational structures.

The failure by the US to deal with a regrouping al Qaeda calls into question all of the gains and sacrifices this country and its soldiers have made to date. It is disgraceful. It is one thing to be sensitive to Pakistan's precarious position and not press too hard for democratization for fear of undermining Musharraf or emboldening the radical Islamists. It's another thing entirely to allow al Qaeda to recreate itself as a serious threat to this country.

Questioning the Nature of the Threat

Since 9/11, I have been in an intellectual debate with myself about the nature of the threat posed by global terrorists to the United States. On the one hand, I look at the low numbers of people killed by terrorists, even in hot spots like Israel, and question how this problem could truly threaten the stability of the free world. The arguments of people like John Mueller make an convincing argument that the threat is overblown, largely because the government reacts to the irrational fears of a skittish public, and that scarce resources would be better spent protecting the nation from more serious threats.

On the other hand, I understand the ultimately fragile foundation on which liberal democracies rest: belief in the ability of government to provide security and order. If citizens do not believe that the government is in charge and can protect society, the social order unravels as people do what they can to protect themselves. No free society can exist if people lose faith in their government. Now, the case of Israel demonstrates that that faith can be sustained even in the face of a sustained campaign of suicide bombings; it's not the amount of risk that matters, but whether citizens believe the government is doing what it can to deal with the threat.

I go back and forth on this issue and find myself perhaps more conflicted on this than on any other question in international politics.

Which is why I found a story in yesterday's New York Times so disturbing. The Times reported that, in 2005, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld aborted a raid on a meeting of al Qaeda chiefs in Pakistan, a meeting at which Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number 2 in the terrorist organization, was believed to be attending. According to the article, "Mr. Rumsfeld decided that the operation, which had ballooned from a small number of military personnel and C.I.A. operatives to several hundred, was cumbersome and put too many American lives at risk, the current and former officials said. He was also concerned that it could cause a rift with Pakistan, an often reluctant ally that has barred the American military from operating in its tribal areas, the officials said."

Furthermore:

the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected an 11th-hour appeal by Porter J. Goss, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence official involved in the planning.
...
Officials said one reason Mr. Rumsfeld called off the 2005 operation was that the number of troops involved in the mission had grown to several hundred, including Army Rangers, members of the Navy Seals and C.I.A. operatives, and he determined that the United States could no longer carry out the mission without General Musharraf’s permission. It is unlikely that the Pakistani president would have approved an operation of that size, officials said.

Some outside experts said American counterterrorism operations had been hamstrung because of concerns about General Musharraf’s shaky government.

“The reluctance to take risk or jeopardize our political relationship with Musharraf may well account for the fact that five and half years after 9/11 we are still trying to run bin Laden and Zawahri to ground,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University.

In and of itself, there is nothing particularly surprising or troubling about the decision to cancel the raid. Politics is a messy business, and goals always need to be considered in the larger picture. Given the uncertainty about Zawahiri's presence, given the risk to US personnel, given the risk to the stability of the Pakistani government, a plausible case for canceling the raid isn't hard to grasp.

However, the decision can't even be examined solely in those lights. It was made in the context of a "War on Terror" in which this country is being asked to place extraordinary trust in our government. We are being asked to permit our government to listen in to our phone calls without warrants, to use coercive interrogation techniques, to suspend habeas corpus for those suspected of terrorism, to spend billions of dollars on protecting this country (not to mention impose idiotic regulations like the restrictions of liquids on planes), to sacrifice thousands of our soldiers, and many other leaps of faith.

I do not support all of the policies that the Bush Administration has implemented, but I have tried to view all of them in the context of the nature of the threat. I believed that the Administration believed terror to be a primary threat to this country and that the policies represented honest attempts to do what would best protect the US.

But how can the Bush Administration justify these requests when it won't take risks to apprehend or kill one of the two most important global terrorists? If the threat from terrorism has been overblown and isn't really that serious, then the decision to abort the raid makes sense: Why take all those risks to deal with something that isn't all that threatening? But in the context of the policies that the Bush Administration has implemented, the decision cannot be justified. If terror is the primary threat, or at least one of the primary threats, if combating terror requires the encroaching on civil liberties, then shouldn't the potential risks of the mission been outweighed of neutralizing Zawahiri?

This one instance does not resolve the argument in my head, but it certainly tips the scales.

Happy July 4th!!!!

Dissent Is Patriotic (Isn't It?)

I find it interesting that so many people who take pride in dissent, especially when President Bush or the war in Iraq is concerned, are among those who try to stifle discussion of global warming by asserting that the science is settled. When I blogged a while back about this, I was greeted by the predictable dismay that I wasn't toeing the party line, with incredulity that I could possibly consider that global warming might not be the problem that Al Gore tells me it is, and with disbelief that I have accepted that the science is settled.

The whole tenor of the global warming activists is evident in the very title of Gore's slide-show cum documentary An Inconvienent Truth, with emphasis on the word "truth." Things are rarely, if ever, true, especially when science and politics are concerned, and even more so when they meet. Clearly the title is an effort to squash any dissent, for how can one argue against the truth (not the idiotic anti-smoking campaign that runs those awful TV commercials where people pretend to die in front of tobacco companies' offices is also called the "truth")? Gore clearly believes that the science surrounding global warming is settled; all that's left to argue about is how dire the consequences will be and how much the world should spend to forestall those consequences.

And yet, Gore's movie is riddled with inaccuracies -- large ones -- that belie the title. Many of the examples he uses to illustrate the devastating impact of global warming are simply false. An op-ed in the Chicago Sun Times lays out some of these inaccuracies:

Gore claims that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking and global warming is to blame. Yet the September 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate reported, "Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame."

Gore claims the snowcap atop Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro is shrinking and that global warming is to blame. Yet according to the November 23, 2003, issue of Nature magazine, "Although it's tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain's foothills is the more likely culprit. Without the forests' humidity, previously moisture-laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine."

Gore claims global warming is causing more tornadoes. Yet the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in February that there has been no scientific link established between global warming and tornadoes.

Gore claims global warming is causing more frequent and severe hurricanes. However, hurricane expert Chris Landsea published a study on May 1 documenting that hurricane activity is no higher now than in decades past. Hurricane expert William Gray reported just a few days earlier, on April 27, that the number of major hurricanes making landfall on the U.S. Atlantic coast has declined in the past 40 years. Hurricane scientists reported in the April 18 Geophysical Research Letters that global warming enhances wind shear, which will prevent a significant increase in future hurricane activity.

Gore claims global warming is causing an expansion of African deserts. However, the Sept. 16, 2002, issue of New Scientist reports, "Africa's deserts are in 'spectacular' retreat . . . making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa."

Gore argues Greenland is in rapid meltdown, and that this threatens to raise sea levels by 20 feet. But according to a 2005 study in the Journal of Glaciology, "the Greenland ice sheet is thinning at the margins and growing inland, with a small overall mass gain." In late 2006, researchers at the Danish Meteorological Institute reported that the past two decades were the coldest for Greenland since the 1910s.

Gore claims the Antarctic ice sheet is melting because of global warming. Yet the Jan. 14, 2002, issue of Nature magazine reported Antarctica as a whole has been dramatically cooling for decades. More recently, scientists reported in the September 2006 issue of the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Series A: Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences, that satellite measurements of the Antarctic ice sheet showed significant growth between 1992 and 2003. And the U.N. Climate Change panel reported in February 2007 that Antarctica is unlikely to lose any ice mass during the remainder of the century.

None of these inaccuracies mean that global warming isn't happening. But they do call in to question to what degree Gore is providing us with the "truth." They highlight the difficulties inherent in ever knowing the "truth."

Again, I do not know whether global warming is occurring, whether humans are to blame, and what the results of that warming may be. But I certainly don't trust Al Gore to tell me the "truth" about it and to provide solutions as to what should be done.

Understanding the Surge, Pt. 2

Much has been written about "the surge" in US troops that began these past few months. Pundits on both sides weigh in arguing that the surge is or isn't working. Investor's Business Daily provides a nice example of the former position, arguing that most domestic media are not reporting the successes in Iraq:

This year, for instance, the U.S. has killed roughly 650 terrorists a month, according to published reports and Defense Department estimates. That compares with about 37 U.S. combat deaths per month, through May.

The ratio, thus, is about 18 terrorists killed in combat for every allied soldier killed. And that doesn't include the current offensive in Diayala Province, Operation Arrowhead Ripper, which dispatched 159 enemy combatants in just the first five days.

Since the war began, we've lost about 70 troops a month. This compares with 526 a month in Vietnam, more than 900 a month in Korea and 6,639 a month during World War II.

In other words, by any meaningful metric employed, the U.S. is winning this war. But it will never be reported that way.

On the other position, for example, is my co-columnist at The Internationalist, Una Hardester who argues that:

The “surge” is not working. Violence is going up, not down. Every day brings news of another bomb in a marketplace, another dozen bodies found. Attacks on places of worship continue, and sectarian death squads roam the streets of Iraq’s cities, killing their victims with medieval brutality and instilling terror in the civilian population.

Neither argument, nor the larger arguments for which each is a proxy, is sustainable and largely for the same reasons: Both lack any theoretical framework in which to assess the surge and rely only on casualties as their critical metric.

It is clearly wrong to look at enemy body counts, as does IBD, and conclude that the US is winning. Just as that was not the way to judge progress and success in Vietnam, it is not sufficient in Iraq today. This is not a traditional war; what matters is not how many of the enemy our forces kill, but who controls the political situation on the ground, and that can't be measured with body counts.

Nor can one point to the recurring violence against either Iraqi civilians or US troops as evidence of the surge's failure. It is simply to easy too kill large numbers of civilians. True, the violence might be a symptom of a larger problem that indicates that surge isn't working (more on this later), but the numbers don't provide that in and of themselves.

So, how to judge the surge? Two of our most esteemed military analysts discussed this issue this week before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Affairs (and a former professor of mine at Georgetown) and Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute testified on how to judge the surge.

In his testimony, Cordesman focused on the connection between the tactical and strategic goals of the surge, arguing that "it is all too clear that the US, its Coalition allies, and the Iraqi government cannot win any form of security and stability if insurgent movements can keep large areas of Iraq unstable and constantly provoke Iraq’s civil conflicts." While the current surge may be working tactically, Cordesman warns that "there are serious serious issues regarding its strategic value," largely because, as he sees it, there's not as much progress on the strategic front: "none of this matters unless the Iraqis can move towards political conciliation – or at least a relatively stable form of coexistence."

What needs to happen? According to Cordesman, "giving tactical victories lasting meaning requires the following additional elements:"

1. Iraqi Army forces must begin to take over meaning operations without US embeds and US partner units, and dependence on US reinforcement and support. There does seem to be increasing Iraqi Army capability here, but Coalition reporting does not provide a meaningful picture of progress – merely grossly inflated figures on areas of responsibility and total numbers of battalions in the lead.

2. Iraqi police and local security forces must establishing a lasting security presence in the areas where tactical victories are won, and do so credibly in ways that give ordinary Iraqis security. There can be no “win” without “hold.” So far, the US has made claim after claim to have secured cities after winning tactical battles to control them, and has never actually established lasting security in even one of them. The most critical problem has been the lack of active, combat-capable police, without corruption and sectarian and ethnic ties. Falluja and Samara are only the most obvious cases of such failures.

Coalition reporting so far talks about the number of police posts established or with US embeds. It has not said a word about the ability provide lasting security using Iraqi police in parts of Baghdad or anywhere else. It also has not talked about the ability to support police efforts with an effective local criminal justice and court system or to screen detainees in ways that do not breed local hostility.

The Coalition also needs to start talking about who actually does provide local security, and stop treating militias, local security forces, and police hired locally without Coalition training, as if it was always hostile or did not exist. In the real world, these forces and not the “trained and equipped” police are the real local security force in most of Iraq. There has to be a credible plan to use, absorb, or contain them.

3. The Iraqi government must follow-up security with a meaningful presence and by providing steady improvements in services. “Winning hearts and minds” doesn’t come from public information campaigns and propaganda. It comes from providing real security for ordinary Iraqis, and showing the government cares, is present, and can steadily improve services. Once again, promise after promise has been made in past campaigns, and the central government has not yet shown it can follow up in even a single case. If this is happening even in the “secured” areas of Baghdad, no one has yet said so. How it can happen in Diyala or other high threat areas is even unclear.

4. There must also be effective local government. The liberation of various areas often has seen the emergence of local leaders willing to work with the Coalition – although often with little faith in, or ties to, the central government. In most cases, however, they have become targets, and the effort has broken down in local faction disputes or because of a lack of effective government support and problems in Coalition civil affairs efforts. Once again, if there is progress in creating stable, survivable, effective local government; none of the details are clear.

5. There has to be economic aid and progress. Iraqis have to give priority to physical security and key services, but unemployment , underemployment, and shut or failed businesses affect some 60% or more of Iraqis nationally and the figures are even higher in high threat and combat areas. The strategy President Bush advanced in January 2007 advanced proposals for accomplishing such an effort in Baghdad. Once again, there has been no meaningful Coalition reporting on broad progress in such efforts in the secured areas of Baghdad, and past promises such aid would be provided in “liberated” cities like Samara and Falluja were not kept.

6. There must be an end to sectarian and ethnic cleansing and displacement. There is no near and perhaps midterm answer to suicide bombings and atrocities, to attacks on sacred shrines and critical facilities. No mix of security forces can stop even small cadres of extremists from occasional successes. No tactical victory has meaning, however, unless Iraqis can be secure in neighborhoods and areas where they are in the minority, and can reach across ethnic and sectarian lines and barriers in ordinary life.

One of the greatest single failures of the current approach to fighting in Iraq is that it does not track sectarian and ethnic separation and displacement and make ending this on a local and national level at least as important as halting major attacks and killings. It may take years to make Iraqis secure from Islamist extremists and the worst elements of Shi’ite gangs and militias. There can be no meaningful tactical success, however, unless Iraqis can be safe from their own neighbors and begin to lead ordinary lives in their own neighborhoods.

Regardless, Cordesman warns that it is far too early to judge the surge: "both the media and outside analysts need to focus far more on the full range of actions it takes to win, and do so with patience and objectivity. No strategy or campaign could possibly achieve significant success in all of these elements by this fall, or even ensure a successful start." Furthermore, "The odds are bad enough given the problems in Iraq; they are hopeless if the political environment in the US offers no hope of the necessary time and bipartisanship."

Kagan makes a similar argument, claiming that while "the early signs are positive in a number of respects, difficulties and challenges clearly remain. But it is too soon to evaluate the outcome of an operation that is just moving into the first of several phases intended to produce significant positive change in the situation overall." Kagan focuses on the surge itself, describing its aims and goals:

This new approach focuses on establishing security in Baghdad and its immediate environs as the prerequisite for political progress. It recognizes that American forces must be in the lead in many (but not all) areas, and that they will have to remain in areas that have been cleared for some time in order to ensure that security becomes permanent. The aim of the security strategy is to buy space and time for the political process in Iraq to work, and for the Iraqi Security Forces to mature and grow to the point where they can maintain the dramatically improved security situation our forces will have helped them to establish.

...

The purpose [of the first phase] was instead to establish positions within those key areas and to develop both intelligence about the enemy and trust relationships with the local communities that would make possible decisive clear-and-hold operations subsequently. During this phase of the operation, additional Iraqi Security Forces deployed to Baghdad in accord with a plan developed jointly by the U.S. and Iraqi military commands.

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The purpose of [the second phase] operation—Phantom Thunder—is to disrupt terrorist and militia networks and bases outside of Baghdad that have been feeding the violence within the city. Most of the car bomb and suicide bomb networks that have been supporting the al Qaeda surge since January are based in these belt areas, and American commanders have rightly recognized that they cannot establish stable security in the capital without disrupting these networks and their bases.

But even this operation—the largest coordinated combat operation the U.S. has undertaken since the invasion in 2003—is not the decisive phase of the current strategy. It is an operation designed to set the preconditions for a successful clear-and-hold operation that will probably begin in late July or early August within Baghdad itself. That is the operation that is designed to bring security to Iraq’s capital in a lasting way that will create the space for political progress that we all desire.

The U.S. has not undertaken a multi-phased operation on such a large scale since 2003, and it is not surprising therefore that many commentators have become confused about how to evaluate what is going on and how to report it. Sectarian deaths in Baghdad dropped significantly as soon as the new strategy was announced in January, and remain at less than half their former levels. Spectacular attacks rose as al Qaeda conducted a counter-surge of its own, but have recently begun falling again. Violence is down tremendously in Anbar province, where the Sunni tribes have turned against al Qaeda and are actively cooperating with U.S. forces for the first time. This process has spread from Anbar into Babil, Salah-ad-Din, and even Diyala provinces, and echoes of it have even spread into one of the worst neighborhoods in Baghdad—Ameriyah, formerly an al Qaeda stronghold. Violence has risen naturally in areas that the enemy had long controlled but in which U.S. forces are now actively fighting for the first time in many years, and the downward spiral in Diyala that began in mid-2006 continued (which is not surprising, since the Baghdad Security Plan does not aim to establish security in Diyala).

...

To say that the current plan has failed is simply incorrect. It might fail, of course, as any military/political plan might fail. Indications on the military side strongly suggest that success—in the form of dramatically reduced violence by the end of this year—is quite likely. Indications on the political side are more mixed, but are also less meaningful at this early stage before security has been established.

Both analysts see that the surge is producing tactical results. The real question is whether the tactical successes can be connected to the larger strategic victory. It's clearly far to early to determine whether the strategic picture is coming together, but the bits and pieces we do see are mixed. What is clear is that more time is needed to let the surge continue to improve security around the country.

The US is an impatient country. We like our results quick and clearly decisive, like the invasion of Iraq. But the rebuilding of the country will not be like that at all. But rash and uninformed judgments from either side of the argument do not help matters. We shouldn't put blind faith in the Bush Administration to get it right. Hardly. But nor should we simply assume things are doomed to fail. We need to sit back and think carefully about what constitutes success, and then determine whether US military and political operations are creating those conditions. And, above all, we need to be patient.

Understanding the Surge

Over at Small Wars Journal, David Kilcullen has a very interesting post on "Understanding Current Operations in Iraq." Why should we listen to Kilcullen? Because he is the Senior Counter-Insurgency Adviser to the Multi-National Forces in Iraq.

According to Kilcullen:

This post is not about whether current ops are “working” — for us, here on the ground, time will tell, though some observers elsewhere seem to have already made up their minds (on the basis of what evidence, I’m not really sure). But for professional counterinsurgency operators such as our SWJ community, the thing to understand at this point is the intention and concept behind current ops in Iraq: if you grasp this, you can tell for yourself how the operations are going, without relying on armchair pundits. So in the interests of self-education (and cutting out the commentariat middlemen—sorry, guys) here is a field perspective on current operations.

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These operations are qualitatively different from what we have done before. Our concept is to knock over several insurgent safe havens simultaneously, in order to prevent terrorists relocating their infrastructure from one to another, and to create an operational synergy between what we're doing in Baghdad and what's happening outside. Unlike on previous occasions, we don't plan to leave these areas once they’re secured. These ops will run over months, and the key activity is to stand up viable local security forces in partnership with Iraqi Army and Police, as well as political and economic programs, to permanently secure them. The really decisive activity will be police work, registration of the population and counterintelligence in these areas, to comb out the insurgent sleeper cells and political cells that have "gone quiet" as we moved in, but which will try to survive through the op and emerge later. This will take operational patience, and it will be intelligence-led, and Iraqi government-led. It will probably not make the news (the really important stuff rarely does) but it will be the truly decisive action.

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Personally, I think we are doing reasonably well and casualties have been lower so far than I feared. Every single loss is a tragedy. But so far, thank God, the loss rate has not been too terrible: casualties are up in absolute terms, but down as a proportion of troops deployed (in the fourth quarter of 2006 we had about 100,000 troops in country and casualties averaged 90 deaths a month; now we have almost 160,000 troops in country but deaths are under 120 per month, much less than a proportionate increase, which would have been around 150 a month). And last year we patrolled rarely, mainly in vehicles, and got hit almost every time we went out. Now we patrol all the time, on foot, by day and night with Iraqi units normally present as partners, and the chances of getting hit are much lower on each patrol. We are finally coming out of the "defensive crouch" with which we used to approach the environment, and it is starting to pay off.

I'll follow up today or tomorrow with some thoughts of my own on the surge.

Israel v. the US

Imagine that you're on the highway, driving in to a major city, like New York. All of sudden, traffic comes to a complete standstill. Nothing moving at all. You tune your radio to the news to find out what's causing the jam and hear the police chief of NYC announcing that there is solid evidence that a terrorist is heading into NYC and that all roads have been blocked off and the city closed to impede the terrorist's access to the city. The police officer announces that helicopters will bring in water and be capable of extracting anyone in need of medical care, but that because the terrorist may already be on the road, no one is allowed to pull off of the highway so that each car may be examined and searched.

It's hard to know what would happen first: A mass panic or a lawsuit from the ACLU. This is but one of the critical differences between the US and the Israeli approaches to the problem each faces from terrorism.

Without question, Israel is subjected to a more regular threat. While things are relatively quiet now, largely due to the construction of the security fence around the West Bank, the withdrawal from Gaza, and the infighting between Hamas and Fatah, there were 135 (according to my count) suicide bombings in Israel between the outbreak of the second intifida in November 2000 and the Gaza pullout. It boggles the mind to think what would happen in the US if there were even four or five suicide bombings a year, let alone 44 like Israel suffered in 2002.

That difference has produced a big difference in reactions. First, Israel doesn't have time or the resources to waste on efforts that assuage public fears but accomplish little in actual security. So, security on El Al, the Israeli national airline, doesn't bother making you pack teeny bottles of liquids in plastic bags. Rather, as you stand in line to check in, someone walks up and down swabbing bags and people for explosives. Profiling is used as well. Not the blunt kind, but a more common sense kind. When I was on the way back to the US in Ben Gurion Airport, one of my colleagues on the trip caused a minor kerfuffle when he revealed that he had not received his commemorative book bag in the US with the rest of us, but rather in Israel (he had gone to Israel a few days before the group...the rest of us got our bags in the Newark Airport). After a security manager looked at his bag and asked a few questions, he became convinced everything was fine, no doubt because he wasn't worried about a group of academics from the States.

Armed guards stand at the entrance to nearly every restaurant or public place, like shopping malls, and stop everyone entering and inspect their bags. Restaurants are, in fact, allowed by law to charge a security surcharge, which is optional and can be refused (but no one does).

These are merely the tactical differences. One key strategic difference is that Israel does not have a national strategy or policy for combating terror; rather it makes and changes policies as needed. Not having a formal strategy enables Israel to be more flexible; it encourages free thinking among the various agencies and operatives responsible for protecting the country. The US, on the other hand, has, among other ponderous and platitudinous documents, a National Strategy for Combating Terrorism. But reading it doesn't provide any guidance on how to actually deal with the problem of terror, and it certainly doesn't ask the question of what is the nature of the threat to the US posed by global terrorism. And it doesn't explain how Old MacDonald's Petting Zoo or the Amish Country Popcorn Factory get on a federal list of potential terror targets, or how Indiana is ranked as nearly having more potential terror targets (8,591) than New York (5,687) and California (3,212) combined.

Israel even has a saner legal strategy for dealing with terror. Israel has one of most activist court systems in the western world, and terror subjects, or those defending them, often have direct access to the Supreme Court. Furthermore, while Israel uses the "unlawful combatant" designation, as does the US (this is done to prevent suspected terrorist from having access to the traditional civilian justice system, which Israel has deemed inadequate for dealing with questions of terror). However, anyone designated as an unlawful combatant is given counsel and brought before a judge for the opportunity to challenge that designation, and the suspect has the right to appeal the judge's decision. As I mentioned in an earlier post, any use of coercive force during an interrogation must be authorized by the Army's legal department and the Attorney General's office.

Now, it's true that Israel has been dealing with the problem of terror longer than has the US, and has had more time to develop a rational and effective policy, as well as more opportunities to use trial and error to implement good policies. But the fact remains that Israel approaches the problem much more rationally and effectively than does the US. Too much of American counter-terror efforts, at least those seen by the public, are reactive and primarily for show. How else to explain full-page ads in the New York Times explaining how people can prepare a room in their house in case of a chemical or biological attack? [I can't find a link to these ads...but I saw 'em!!] Benjamin Friedman has a devastating critique [RR] of the Department of Homeland Security, arguing that the US counter-terror response is more about responding to, and creating, fear than it is about providing real and meaningful security.

The threats faced by Israel are different than those faced by the US. As are the political systems and the public's willingness to tolerate restrictions of freedoms. In some ways, Israel is more aggressive in its fight against terror, as with the constant presence of security guards. That reflects a rational response to the type of threat faced. In other ways, Israel is more relaxed than is the US, for example, in its willingness to give every "unlawful combatant" a chance to challenge that designation, something that the Bush Administration is unwilling to do. That reflects the recognition that terror, and even high levels of terrorism, can be borne without the collapse of society.