Archive for the ‘Foreign Policy and National Security’ Category
The Country’s Biggest Spy Center
Under insufficiently sharp questioning, the head of the National Security Agency, Keith Alexander, has denied the substance of a Wired report on the agency’s massive new computer facility and the capabilities the government has to monitor our communications—even heavily encrypted communications.
If you want a sense of how Congress, still panicked by 9/11, has abdicated its responsibilities and permitted the construction of a “turnkey totalitarian state,” read the whole thing.
Americans Favor Accelerated Withdrawal from Afghanistan
In case you haven’t heard, the war in Afghanistan is in a tailspin. Following the turbulent events of the past two weeks—including yesterday’s incident on a Helmand runway and the disarming of U.S. Marines before Defense Secretary Leon Panetta—Afghan president Hamid Karzai has demanded U.S. troops withdraw from villages and operate only from large NATO bases. Furthermore, the Taliban announced that it is breaking off peace talks with the United States.
These new developments further call into question the Obama administration’s ability to implement its strategy of a gradual transition of responsibilities to the Afghan national security forces by 2014. And the American people recognize this.
A USA Today/Gallup poll finds 50 percent of respondents support an accelerated troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, while an Washington Post-ABC News-poll shows 54 percent favor a U.S. military withdrawal even if it means the Afghan security forces are not “self-sufficient.” That same poll finds 60 percent believe the war is “not worth fighting.” A majority of Americans rightly understand the futility of staying the course. Leaders in Washington should, too.
The Massacre in Panjwai
In yesterday’s Politico, my coauthor Robert Naiman and I examine the U.S. mission in Afghanistan in the wake of the sad and inexplicable massacre of 16 Afghan civilians—nine of them children, most of them allegedly toddlers—by a U.S. soldier in Panjwai, Kandahar. While we address some of the possible policy implications, it is equally instructive to read what is happening on the ground. On Monday, the New Yorker‘s Amy Davidson aggregated reports from local witnesses. I would encourage everyone to read Davidson’s piece in full; below are some of the more interesting excerpts:
First, in the early hours of Sunday, there was noise. “I told my son not to speak because the Americans are here,” an Afghan woman told the BBC. “They went next door and the first thing they did was shoot the dog. And then there was a muffled bang inside the room—but who could go and see?”
A mother using the word “Americans” to scare her child into silence is alone cause for reflection. And “who could go and see”? Despite the dark and noise and confusion—was there more than one soldier? A helicopter?—some Afghans in the village saw something. Here is what another woman told the BBC:
There was one man, and he dragged a woman by her hair and banged her head repeatedly against the wall. She didn’t say a word.
And Mohammad Zahir, age twenty-six, to the AP:
He was walking around taking up positions in the house—in two or three places like he was searching. . . . He was on his knees when he shot my father. . . . [My father] was not holding anything—not even a cup of tea.
Abdul Hadi, age forty, to the Times.
My father went out to find out what was happening, and he was killed. . . . I was covered by the women in my family in my room, so that is why I survived.
Gul Bashra, identified as a “mother,” on Al Jazeera (and the woman who told the BBC about the noises):
They killed a child who was two years old. Was that child Taliban?
Anar Gula, an elderly neighbor, to the Times:
All the family members were killed, the dead put in a room, and blankets were put over the corpses and they were burned. . . . We put out the fire.
War is heart wrenching, as Afghans surely know. Their country has been in near ceaseless conflict for the last thirty years, and according to the latest U.N. report on armed conflict in Afghanistan, 2011 was the fifth straight year in which civilian casualties rose. Although insurgents were mainly responsible for those deaths, in 2009 the Obama administration adopted a new mission: protecting ordinary Afghans and winning over their allegiance, a case put forward most vigorously by General David Petraeus (ret.), General Stanley McChrystal (ret.), and other military and civilian experts in what now seems like eons ago.
Today, the metric for success is to help Afghans establish some semblance of internal security, a shifting goalpost that was always an uphill battle. During and after the surge, it was clear that the administration’s new strategy did not have enough troops, enough time or enough competent local partners—as called for by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps in its counterinsurgency (COIN) field manual—to compete credibly with the Taliban. As a result, officials in Washington and Kabul fed foreign observers stage-managed showpieces like the offensive in Marjah.
Applied according to doctrine, COIN in Afghanistan would have required several hundreds of thousands of troops, ten to twelve years of implementation and local government leaders who were not motivated primarily by personal advancement. It’s difficult to imagine a successful application of COIN in that landlocked country even if the coalition had these essential building blocks. After all, in addition to the oft-mentioned issue of cross-border militant sanctuaries, the cultural chasm between foreigners and rural locals has always persisted—and the Taliban have readily exploited this rift.
As Army Special Forces Maj. Fernando M. Lujan noted in a March 4 article, “One of the first things we learned was the power of a simple narrative, repeated endlessly by the Taliban: The coalition is here to occupy Afghanistan and destroy Islam.” Indeed, right after last Sunday’s massacre and the allegation that the soldier’s multiple deployments may have created mental-health issues, the Taliban issued this statement:
If the perpetrators of this massacre were in fact mentally ill, then this testifies to yet another moral transgression by the American military because they are arming lunatics in Afghanistan who turn their weapons against the defenseless Afghans without giving a second thought.
Although a new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that 54 percent of Americans believe we should withdraw before the Afghan army is “self-sufficient,” the administration remains committed to withdrawing in 2014. Between now and then, it hopes to set up a minimally functioning government in the middle of central Asia that is resistant to internal insurrection and to foreign invasion. It’s going to be a long two years.
Iranian Rhetoric: Heard and Unheard
Commentators who believe that Iran would nuke another nation unprovoked tend to infer the clerical regime’s future intentions from its hyper-inflated rhetoric. The problem with this logic is that statements from its leadership often get cherry-picked.
Anti-Israeli diatribes made by Iran’s fiery-tongued President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are typically taken at their word, while statements made by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s top leader, go virtually unnoticed. For example, last month Khamenei repeated his country’s vow not to seek nuclear weapons. He called their possession a “sin,” “useless,” and “dangerous.” Last Thursday, Khamenei reportedly praised President Obama’s recent comment that he saw a “window of opportunity” to use diplomacy to resolve the nuclear dispute.
If Iran’s rhetoric is as reflective of its intentions as some lead us to believe, then the Obama administration should applaud these rare and positive overtures.
Indeed, Meir Dagan, head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency for eight years, last night on 60 Minutes declared, “The regime in Iran is a very rational regime.” When pressed to elaborate, he said, “No doubt that the Iranian regime is maybe not exactly rational based on what I call Western-thinking, but no doubt they are considering all the implications of their actions.”
That assessment echoes the chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, when he told Fareed Zakaria, “…[W]e are of the opinion that the Iranian regime is a rational actor. And it’s for that reason, I think, that we think the current path we’re on is the most prudent path at this point.”
The administration should be highlighting such statements publicly, especially to members of Congress in order to dampen their ever increasing pro-war hysteria.
Bombing Iran Risks Mission Creep
In an op-ed in today’s New York Daily News, my co-author Jonathan Owen and I argue that damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities from limited strikes would be modest, and likely require further strikes every few years or a long-term occupation on the ground. The better option at present is for the Obama administration to show restraint and continue to explore diplomatic options:
Unless Americans are willing to fight Iranians to the death — possibly every few years — Washington must stop polarizing the situation. Aggressive policies and rhetoric do not benefit our security.
Without demanding that Iran surrender on the issue of uranium enrichment, the U.S. — which accounts for almost half of the world’s military spending, wields one of the planet’s largest nuclear arsenals and can project its power around the globe — should lift sanctions, stop its belligerence and open a direct line of communication with Tehran.
The President has said repeatedly that “all options are on the table.” But contrary to popular belief, diplomacy with Iran is an option that has yet to be fully exhausted.
Left out in the final cut was the important point that if the United States was to go to war with Iran, U.S. soldiers will once again be asked to risk their lives by prosecuting a reckless war of choice against an enemy willing to accept high casualties. Iraq and Afghanistan should have taught policymakers that mission creep often drives seemingly easy and limited interventions toward prolonged wars of occupation and nation-building. Attacking Iran’s nuclear infrastructure would risk a similar, unacceptable mission creep.
Viral Video Strips Down Strip-Search Machines
The TSA’s response yesterday to a video challenging strip-search machines was so weak that it acts as a virtual confession to the fact that objects can be snuck through them.
In the video, TSA strip-search objector Jonathan Corbett demonstrates how he put containers in his clothes along his sides where they would appear the same as the background in TSA’s displays. TSA doesn’t refute that it can be done or that Corbett did it in his demonstration. More at Wired’s Threat Level blog.
More than six months ago, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals required the Transportation Security Administration to commence a rulemaking to justify its strip-search machine/prison-style pat-down policy. TSA has not done so. The result is that the agency still does not have a sturdy security system in place at airports. It’s expensive, inconvenient, error-prone, and privacy-invasive.
Making airline security once again the responsibility of airlines and airports would vastly improve the situation, because these actors are naturally inclined to blend security, cost-control, and convenience with customer service and comforts, including privacy.
I have a slight difference with Corbett’s characterization of the problem. The weakness of body scanners does not put the public at great danger. The chance of anyone exploiting this vulnerability and smuggling a bomb on board a domestic U.S. flight is very low. The problem is that these machines impose huge costs in dollars and privacy that do not foreclose a significant risk any better than the traditional magnetometer.
Corbett is right when he urges people to “demand of your legislators and presidential candidates that they get rid of this eight billion-dollar-a-year waste known as the TSA and privatize airport security.”
Recalculating Romney’s Four Percent Gimmick
I have a new piece up at ForeignPolicy.com on Ron Paul and the Republican Party, focused in particular on the strong support that Paul draws from young people, with some additional speculation about where those young people will end up, if and when Paul steps back from his very public role. My instincts are that these young people are motivated at least as much by the ideas that Paul espouses as by Ron Paul, the person. If I am correct, many of them are likely to remain active in politics. I close with a warning to GOP leaders that they would be making a grave error if they ignored this libertarian-leaning voting bloc. Unfortunately, that is what the GOP’s leading candidate, Mitt Romney, seems to be doing by pushing a short-sighted plan for boosting military spending at a time when the country is awash in debt.
I have always been puzzled by the fact that conservatives who rail against welfare dependency here at home miss the pernicious effects of security dependency among our allies. Tim Pawlenty didn’t get it. Neither does Mitt Romney. Rather than questioning the mantras that have guided U.S. foreign policy for over a generation, Romney simply assumes that the United States will remain the world’s policeman, other countries will continue to free-ride on our security guarantees, and U.S. taxpayers will happily foot the bill. He proposes spending at least four percent of GDP on the military’s base budget, plus whatever additional money might be needed to fight the wars that he wants to fight (for example, this one).
I commented on the Four Percent Gimmick a few months ago, and now I have a bit more detail about Romney’s plan relative to the Obama administration’s latest 10-year projections. I alluded to these numbers in the ForeignPolicy.com piece, and below provide some more detail. (I am grateful, as always, for the help of my colleague Charles Zakaib in sorting through these, and in preparing the charts).
Read the rest of this post »
Obama’s War Spending Cap
Along with Chares Knight of the Project on Defense Alternatives, I have just published commentary on the National Interest’s website about President’s Obama’s proposed $450 billion nine-year cap on war spending. We argue that a war cap—better yet a war tax—is a good idea, but this particular proposal is nearly useless.
For one, it is unlikely to become law. The White House has shown little interest in pushing for it. Meanwhile, Republicans are already bashing the president for possibly shortchanging troops amid a war. And even if it does become law, the cap is unlikely to matter. By the time the cap has any effect, economic recovery may have slackened Congress’s appetite for austerity. With the president’s support, Congress may undo the cap or evade it by claiming an emergency, especially if any new war has begun. The bottom line is that there is no effective fiscal restraint here.
As is often the case, the promise of savings tomorrow serves mainly to distract us from their absence today. If the White House wanted thrift rather than its appearance, it would push an annual war spending cap.
The argument in favor of a war cap or tax follows from the arguments the late Bill Niskanen made against the (starve the beast) claim that cutting government revenue will cut government spending:
It is most implausible that reducing the current tax burden of federal spending would reduce the amount of federal services that voters demand. Orthodox price theory…is unambiguous in concluding that reducing the price of a good or service increases the amount demanded. Reducing the current tax burden of federal spending has much the same effect as a price control, increasing the amount demanded relative to that supplied from current revenues.
Just as people don’t value what they don’t pay for, democracies won’t correctly value policies with hidden or deferred costs. That prevents the competing interests from being weighed carefully, screwing up debate and policy outcomes.
Policies producing diffuse costs and concentrated benefits exacerbate this problem. As I have occasionally written (once with Bill), U.S. defense policies, including wars, fall into that policy category. Americans face few personal consequences when their government makes war. Few of us fight, and danger from fiascos is remote. Much rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding, the survival of our freedoms or way of life is no longer at stake in our wars. Our volunteer professional military bears great risk in war of course, but professional norms prevent it from publicly complaining much. War’s cost for most of us is slightly higher taxes, subsidized by debt. We can support war casually.
A war cap or war tax would somewhat mitigate this problem. A tax encourages taxpayers to consider the value they are getting for that money. A cap heightens competition for resources within the government and thus among Congressmen and interest groups, which ought to sharpen debate. That won’t prevent dumb wars, but it ought to help.
Russia Primed for Strife after Sunday Elections
Sunday’s so-called “presidential election” inRussia will be neither free nor fair. Prospective candidates like Leonid Ivashov or Grigory Yavlinsky were not allowed to participate. Opposition leaders were denied access to mass media with exception of an eight-day-long “thaw” in January. TV channels are overwhelmed with aggressive propaganda for current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin who, through the September 24, 2011, decision to swap seats with Dmitry Medvedev, decided to come back as the president for a third term. During the special “parliamentary election” operation on December 4, the Central Electoral Commission, infamous for mass falsifications in previous polls, hit another record by stealing between 13 to 17 million votes (out of about 50 million who did in fact appear at the polling stations) in favor of the pro-Putin United Russia party.
Putin has been running his campaign on a clear anti-Western, anti-American and “anti-Orange” platform. A special peculiarity of his campaign is that it is illegal for Putin to even participate in the election, since the Russian Constitution forbids any president fom serving more than two terms. The 1998 decision of the Constitutional Courtand the 2011 decision of the Supreme Court — as well as the commentary of the Chair of the Constitutional Court, Valery Zorkin, in 2009 — unequivocally confirm these constitutional provisions.
More fuel was added to the fire Wednesday, February 29, when Putin hinted that some of the well-known opposition leaders might be killed as “sacred victims.” At this moment it seems almost certain that Putin will be announced as the winner of this special operation regardless of the actual number of people who appear at the polling stations, or the number of those who would vote for or against him. It is also certain that on March 5 tens if not hundreds of thousands of Russians will go to the streets to protest.
The GOP Foreign Policy Establishment Is Still Neoconservative
Karl Rove’s and Ed Gillespie have written a piece arguing that the conventional wisdom is wrong because a) foreign policy can be made into a big issue in the 2012 presidential campaign, and b) Obama is vulnerable on the subject. I did not find the piece persuasive at all, and my disagreement with it has produced not just a podcast on the subject, but an appearance on bloggingheads. The University of Kentucky’s Robert Farley and I discuss a range of subjects, from the Rove/Gillespie piece, to burning Qurans in Afghanistan, to the future of U.S.-China relations. To give you a flavor, here’s a clip where I denounce the GOP foreign policy establishment:
For what it’s worth, I think the only way to solve the problem I identify above is a decades-long project to build a counter-counterestablishment of foreign policy thinkers who could staff the foreign policy wing of a notionally sensible GOP presidential candidate. I have not yet read this book, but in reading reviews of it, my understanding is that it does a good job describing how the neocons built their counterestablishment, which I think by now has essentially become the establishment. The neoconservative insurgency benefited from remarkable largesse from their funders, a large bench of aspiring policy professionals, and a sharp-elbowed ability to successfully fight within bureaucracies. If people wish to reverse the course of GOP foreign policy, I suspect a similar effort will be needed on the part of realists. (We’re working on it. Happy to talk to any Democrats, too.)
For the entire bloggingheads video, go here. For my podcast on the Rove/Gillespie piece, go here. For my prior denunciation of the Beltway foreign-policy establishment, here.
My thanks to Farley and the bloggingheads people for having me on.
How to Burn a Quran
In today’s Cato Daily podcast, I talk with Caleb Brown about the fallout from the Quran burning incident in Afghanistan. I also wrote about the situation here. Nevertheless, there is one point I missed in the podcast that I want to address.
One narrative emerging from this whole fiasco is that some Afghan prisoners had defaced the Qurans before their incineration; they were allegedly using the holy books to distribute radical messages. The evidence on this remains fragmentary at best; however, even if Islamic scholars argue that burning is the proper way to dispose a defaced Quran, one would expect that after more than a decade at war, the coalition would have a less incendiary protocol to handle such a situation: hire an Afghan, not a Christian foreigner, to burn the Qurans.
According to this handy informational guide put together by Colonel Chet Lanious, a chaplain at and the director of the Center for World Religions at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, if one decides to dispose of “unwanted religious and Islamic literature,” one either casts it “into a flowing river” or buries it. Alternatively, one can burn it, but “only after erasing the names of Allah, His Angels and His Messengers.” I would assume that NATO did not do that. I’m also prepared to believe that some Afghans would protest regardless of whether NATO followed that protocol.
I’m not a scholar on Islam. So leaving standard operating procedure aside, the fact that the Qurans were defaced would imply that NATO had a motive for having them deliberately destroyed, which would contradict the established narrative that the incineration was a mistake. More to come…
North Korea: Déjà Vu All Over Again!
North Korea wants to deal. Or, more likely, North Korea wants to be paid to deal. Washington has reached another agreement with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The North promises to—again—halt nuclear tests and uranium enrichment, and the U.S. will—again—provide Pyongyang with food aid. The so-called Six Party talks, which also include China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea, are—again—expected to resume.
It is better for the U.S. and Northeast Asia if North Korea is talking rather than shooting, as it was two years ago, when it sank a South Korean naval vessel and bombarded a South Korean island. However, Washington should have at most modest expectations: the DPRK has given no indication that it desires to yield the only weapons which allow it to command the world’s attention. Moreover, the ongoing leadership transition in Pyongyang makes it unlikely that anyone has either the desire or authority to challenge military priorities.
The U.S. should step back as it encourages resumption of negotiations. Other than following through with its promised food shipments, Washington should leave aid to private NGOs and the North’s neighbors. More important, American officials should inform both the Republic of Korea and Japan that the United States will be phasing out its forces in both countries, leaving them with responsibility for their own security. They should plan accordingly.
Removing America as the focus of regional attention would highlight the roles of other nations. Reaching a peaceful settlement on the peninsula would be primarily an issue between South and North Korea. Encouraging the DPRK to avoid confrontation would be primarily a responsibility of China. Supporting any new security and economic regimes that might result would be primarily a task for Japan and Russia, which are historically involved and geographically near.
The latest U.S.-North Korean agreement is more cause for skepticism than celebration. It could lead to denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, but is more likely to trigger a repeat of history: interminable talks with only minimal practical results. That would still be better than a war, but still would warrant only minimal effort by Washington.
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