Iran Takes Over... the Media Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Kudos to US and international media and my analyst friends -- we have lots and lots and lots of good reporting and analysis on the Iran situation this morning.  An embarrasse des riches, as Mitt Romney might say. I'm organizing my thoughts for an Iran panel on the Hill at 1230 today, and I thought I'd share.

Military-Strategery

Three heavyweight Israelis lay out the full range of strategic considerations to be debated:

• are Iranian nukes an existential threat to Israel
• can a nuclear Iran be deterred
• What would the regional and inside-Iran consequences of an Israeli attack be
• what are the long-term security consequences of Israel launching an attack against US wishes

The Pentagon doesn't think its current bunker-buster bombs will do the trick against Iran's defenses, and has asked for heavier weapons to be developed urgently. (Wall Street Journal)

Geo-Strategery

Iran's Foreign Minister invites IAEA inspectors to extend their visit... at same time as Iran's military tests new delivery systems.

Israeli intel journalist (and author of this weekend's NY Times Mag piece predicting Israel will bomb) seems to reverse himself by suggesting to Laura Rozen that Israel is asking the West to hold it back.

The Economist says China will choose regional stability over its relations with Iran.

Beltway Strategery

Les Gelb says Obama should bite the bullet and officially offer the peaceful-enrichment-for-full-inspections-and-safeguards deal.

Sara Sorcher at National Journal reports that Senate leadership says they want to move another round of sanctions -- this one targeted at Revolutionary Guard, human rights violators, crowd control equipment... also a proposal to deny entry to US ports to any ship that has visited Iran in last 180 days.

The New Yorker's Steve Coll reads the tea leaves, says that war is not imminent, and that a strategy of "patience and persistence" should be kept on the table. 

what does all this add up to? A lot of posturing for domestic and international audiences... some progress toward the foundations of a negotiated outcome... consensus among experts and the business community, but emphatically not among political factions here or elsewhere, on what an acceptable negotiated outcome would look like... and some big opportunities for miscalculation and unintended escalation.

Reacting to Robert Kagan on American Decline Posted by David Shorr

Now that the White House and President Obama himself (thanks Josh Rogin) have given Bob Kagan a heaping helping of buzz for his New Republic piece, I want to offer a few thoughts. First off, the cheesy partisan debate over perceived decline has been bugging me for a long time, so kudos to Bob for helping spur a more substantive discussion. (Take a look at Dan Drezner and Stephen Walt to see what Bob was drawing on.)

As indicated by President Obama's warm endorsement, Kagan lays the ground for a bipartisan internationalist consensus. Responding to calls for the US to pull back from our role as a global power -- often couched in terms of being financially unaffordable -- he rightly asks about the costs of such a pullback itself. It's worth quoting at length:

If the decline of American military power produced an unraveling of the international economic order that American power has helped sustain; if trade routes and waterways ceased to be as secure, because the U.S. Navy was no longer able to defend them; if regional wars broke out among great powers because they were no longer constrained by the American superpower; if American allies were attacked because the United States appeared unable to come to their defense; if the generally free and open nature of the international system became less so—if all this came to pass, there would be measurable costs. And it is not too far-fetched to imagine that these costs would be far greater than the savings gained by cutting the defense and foreign aid budgets by $100 billion a year. You can save money by buying a used car without a warranty and without certain safety features, but what happens when you get into an accident?

American power indeed plays a constructive hegemonic function in undergirding the international economic and political order. We have the job and giving it up would be a dereliction and likely come to grief. I would stress one amendment, however. The more successfully we are at gaining international support and cooperation, the more we'll be able to buttress the international system and share the associated burdens. Indeed, that's the strategy behind President Obama's emphasis on shared international obligations and responsibilities. 

I'd like to focus on one other passage of the Kagan piece, and it's a point he, Drezner, and Walt all dwell on. Bob offers a response to the perception that "the United States can no longer shape the world to suit its interests and ideals as it once did." Confession time: I have harped on this exact challenge pretty regularly. Again, let me quote Bob at length: 

And of course it is true that the United States is not able to get what it wants much of the time. But then it never could. Much of today’s impressions about declining American influence are based on a nostalgic fallacy: that there was once a time when the United States could shape the whole world to suit its desires, and could get other nations to do what it wanted them to do, and, as the political scientist Stephen M. Walt put it, “manage the politics, economics and security arrangements for nearly the entire globe.”

He then proceeds to list the many aggravating episodes of the Cold War when other international players defied America's wishes. It's an impressive list, yet one of the examples didn't seem quite right. In 1956, France, Israel, and the UK invaded Egypt against President Eisenhower's wishes to seize control of the Suez Canal. And then were forced to withdraw. So can't we make the opposite interpretation that the crisis' outcome reinforced American influence? Was Eisenhower's influence eroded or enhanced by the episode?

I do understand Bob's warning not to consider these challenges to be 'new under the sun.' Even if we consider the problem of influencing other actors and steering events to be a hardy perennial, however, doesn't it still seem like the salient underlying challenge for foreign policy at the present moment? Can it be argued that the difficulty of exerting influence needs to be kept in mind, and is too often underestimated?

And this is where I have to play mood-killer to all this good bipartisan comity. Because I see a major gap between Kagan's sober reminder that world events don't yield so easily to America's control, and Republican talking point after talking point argument after argument that assume the opposite.

Get Real on Cuba Posted by The Editors

This post by NSN intern Ian Byrne.

During Monday night’s GOP debate in Florida, Brian Williams asked Mitt Romney what he would do as president if he received a 3 AM phone call reporting that Fidel Castro had died and “half a million Cubans may take that as a cue to come to the United States.”

Romney started with a hypothetical “thank heavens that Fidel Castro has returned to his maker and will be sent to another land,” before offering up his policy prescriptions: “Now, number two, you work very aggressively with the new leadership in Cuba to try and move them towards a more open degree than they have had in the past.”

Sorry Mitt, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Fidel’s brother Raúl is in charge of Cuba’s leadership now and will be in charge of Cuba’s leadership after Castro’s death.

Newt followed with his idea of a “Cuban Spring”:

“I would suggest to you the policy of the United States should be aggressively to overthrow the regime and to do everything we can to support those Cubans who want freedom. You know, Obama is very infatuated with an Arab Spring. He doesn't seem to be able to look 90 miles south of the United States to have a Cuban Spring.”

Romney and Gingrich doubled down on their criticism of the Obama administration’s policies and calls for regime change on Wednesday. Romney remarked that President Obama “does not understand that by helping Castro; he is not helping the people of Cuba; he is hurting them.” Gingrich lamented that the Obama administration’s policy is "almost exactly the opposite" of what it should be.

The Obama administration’s new policies aren’t all that new, as Arturo Lopez-Levy notes in Foreign Policy:

“Obama's new policy restores the "people-to-people" contacts between the United States and Cuba that existed under Bill Clinton's administration, restoring the embargo exemptions for Americans traveling for humanitarian, religious, and academic purposes that were disallowed under Bush. More direct flights to the island -- albeit chartered ones -- will be allowed, and Americans now can transfer remittances of up to $500 per quarter, as long as they aren't going to the Cuban government or Communist Party.”

(A full fact sheet of the policy revisions can be found here.)

I’d challenge Romney to highlight how the administration’s policies directly help Castro and hurt the Cuban people. Wouldn’t hurt to ask how the trade embargo benefits the people either. If Gingrich asserts that the administration’s policy is all wrong, what can he offer besides drawing policy inspiration from Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II and Margaret Thatcher in leading up to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, besides the film that has any and all a conservative has ever wanted?

Romney and Gingrich offer ambiguous and tired (see: neoconservative) policy options where “might makes right.” If Gingrich believes we can look 90 miles south “to have a Cuban Spring” he has failed all duties of being a historian or a scholar.

The Arab Spring was unique in that it was, well, Arab. Cuba is not the Middle East (I can’t believe I actually have to write that) and each possess different dynamics on the ground. I imagine the people of Cuba, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Syria all have the same yearning for freedom. But as we’ve seen in the Middle East and North Africa, each process is going to be different getting from point A to point B.

The administration’s current policies appreciate the limitations of what can be done. Lifting the trade embargo would require congressional approval and any Washington-Havana communication is out of the question as diplomatic relations are nonexistent.

Our decades long policy of isolation towards Cuba has failed. The guy in charge of Cuba’s last name is still Castro. If one wants to change U.S. policy, as the candidates seem so intent on doing, perhaps there is a lesson to be learned from our recent policy towards Burma.

Anya Landau French, a Cuba policy analyst, writes that by enacting sanctions that expired within a defined period of time, the U.S. offered incentives to the Burmese government which planted the seeds for reform. Case in point: Washington will soon have a Burmese ambassador. 

Indefinite sanctions offer Cuba no incentive to reform. I imagine that Cuba sees little incentive in the prospect of being “aggressively overthrown” as well.

President Obama’s “people-to-people” policies circumvent the Cuban government and are able to operate in the constricted environment where U.S.-Cuba policy exists. If we are proposing new policy, let us take a page from the Burma playbook. If the GOP candidates want the Cuban people to truly experience freedom, perhaps they should propose something a little more groundbreaking than continuing the trade embargo. 

Einstein said that the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” It has been a rather kooky 54 years.

Photo: AP via MSNBC

Mitch Daniels preview* Posted by Heather Hurlburt

So rumors are flying around the interwebs that Mitch Daniels' response to the State of the Union is "partisan and nasty." That'll be funny, given Daniels' record on the national security issues that bookend the speech:

Eight months ago, the Post's Jennifer Rubin found his conservatism wanting:

On foreign policy, he said that he’s a “water’s edge” kind of guy. He is sure that the President is in a position to know a lot more about what’s needed in Afghanistan than he is. He said he didn’t think Obama had “made the case” for the Libya intervention, though this doesn’t mean there is no case. Pressed to say something critical about Obama’s foreign policy, he said that he was “uncomfortable” with the President’s “apology tours.” But he didn’t look comfortable saying it.

Jamie Rubin asked him a clever question, right out of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”: if he had just one phone call to make about some foreign policy issue and he could call either Richard Lugar or John McCain, which would it be? After a little hemming and hawing, he said that he is “always comfortable” talking with Lugar...That’d be strike three. Relying on the Senate Republican most despised by the conservative base (who’s sure to be primaried) and who has run interference for President Obama on foreign policy issues such as START and a Russian reset will set alarm bells ringing on the right. If personnel is policy, then a Daniels administration would seem to be to the left of George H.W. Bush.

Will he like Obama's call for tougher trade enforcement?  As governor, he signed $350 million of trade deals with China, but the Washington Post reports that his forthcoming book foresees a "horror movie-like" war scenario with China, in which China cuts off financing and chaos ensues in the US -- then, as a bonus, China invades Taiwan.

The same chapter agonizes about how we are now "borrowing our entire defense budget from China." Will he support the president's pledge to cut half a billion dollars from the defense budget?

Finally, Daniels - who has Syrian heritage (yeah, bet you'd forgotten that) - accepted an award from the Arab-American Institute last year and spoke movingly about his support for the Arab Spring:

Now I am so proud that brave Syrians have stepped forward, as their Egyptian and Tunisian and other counterparts have — and against, apparently, brutal threats and repressions — have stood up for the right to dream.

At the timel, conservatives called him to task for expressing too much sympathy for the Arab cause, with some alleging that he might be, by their lights, insufficiently pro-Israel. Will he disagree with the similar sentiments Obama expresses in tonight's State of the Union?

Should be fun.

*With thanks to NSN's superstar intern Ian Byrne for researching this post.

The Incredible GOP Flying Circus Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Last night in Florida, again we saw the GOP candidates for president advocate foreign policies that defy facts, Americans’ wallets and top security experts.

Fact defying: The candidates’ unchallenged misstatements included a US-Israeli joint exercise which Israel’s defense minister has said he, not the U.S., cancelled; misleading comparisons of the 2012 and 1917 US Navies that previously earned a “pants on fire” rating from nonpartisan Politifact; and an apparent lack of awareness that Fidel Castro has transferred many powers to his brother Raul and others, and experts generally don’t expect a mass exodus on his death.

Security-defying: Perhaps more surprising was the candidates’ hurry to call for using all means necessary to effect regime change in Cuba and – counter to advice from military and political leaders – in Iran; and to go against the advice of top commanders and stop talks with the Taliban.

If the rhetoric sounds familiar, there’s a reason. Each of the top three contenders’ camps is filled with architects of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld Iraq War approach – people like John Bolton and Dan Senor.

Lacking leadership: The test of a president is whether he will be a commander or a manager; a buck-stops-here decision-maker or a follower of ideologues. The candidates’ eagerness to “listen to the military” has drawn critiques from top military leaders like Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey who calls total deference to the military ‘offensive.’ Last night, though, the candidates took positions from war with Iran to expanded Navy shipbuilding that the military in fact does not support. With an incumbent who has taken the tough decisions to use force and to talk to our adversaries, Americans have the right to expect more about how an alternate path would work.

SOTU dreaming on a winter's day Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Imagine if the state of the union began:

“My fellow Americans, the state of our bailed-out auto industry is strong – in fact, sales of American cars overseas is driving private-sector job creation here at home, and General Motors passed Toyota last year to become again the world’s largest automaker.”

Or this:

“My fellow Americans, one thing we can agree on, from Wall Street to Occupy Wall Street, is that we need a healthy banking sector lending money to large and small business to fuel our recovery.  And our banks are closely linked to Europe’s banks.  This year, one of the top three things I will do to keep our recovery going is to make sure that our European friends get their act together and right their banking sector – with our help if necessary. For 45 years of Cold War Americans and Europeans stood together knowing that a war that started in Central Europe would not end there.  What was true of our values then is true of our prosperity today.

Or this:

Sitting next to my wife Michelle tonight is Gene Sharp.  Most Americans have probably never heard of him, but his work on non-violent change, in the great American tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King, has made him well-known among the Tunisian, Egyptian, Yemeni and Syrian [and, if I really get going into dreamland, Bahraini] citizens who risked their lives to demand freedom and dignity. His lifetime commitment to helping others claim for themselves freedoms we too often take for granted is something of which every American can be proud – and by which every one of us can be inspired to again make our country all that it can be.

TB resistant to every antibiotic now existing could enter the US on a flight from India any day. The way to fight it is the same way we’ve controlled smallpox and polio in the past, and H1N1 and other diseases today – combining the funds and expertise of our Centers for Disease Control with the funds and expertise of the World Health Organization, Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria and other international health organizations that can bring the fight where the disease is – before it ever lands in the US.

What do all these dreamy paragraphs have in common?  They situate the Obama Administration’s considerable foreign policy and national security achievements in Americans’ daily reality.  They also do the same for the sharpest national security disagreements buried in the campaign rhetoric:

Why do we talk to our enemies? Because that’s how you get things done, in a fine tradition from Franklin Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan.

Why should we include our military budget in financial sacrifice? Because investments that safeguard Americans’ security and prosperity are critically-needed in economic growth, health and education.

Why does an America that walks its talk, even on hard issues like giving fair trials to people suspected of repugnant terror crimes, matter?  Why is the Golden Rule a vital source of our strength rather than an outmoded cliché? Because in a global media age, the world can see us talking and walking, and it’s those images that matter, whether it’s democracy activists in Tunisia, the mother of a Nigerian terrorist convincing her son to cooperate with law enforcement, an Al Jazeera correspondent who says she’d rather face a US court than an Iranian one, or Afghan villagers who must make a split-second decision about whether to help or harm US soldiers they encounter.

Taking a few steps back from debates about talking to the Taliban and bombing Iran would open windows to a worldview in which those decisions come more naturally – because they’re part of the same architecture that leads us to cooperate and compete with China; help Japan recover from its earthquake even as we try to surpass its auto companies; and work with democratic allies with whom we sometimes strongly disagree from Europe to Brazil to Israel. 

But I haven’t been out of government so long as to be naïve about this.  As I’ve written before, the exercise of writing the national security/foreign policy section of a president’s State of the Union is one you could market to masochists.  Hundreds of versions of dozens of paragraphs, slowly edged out by domestic priorities and whittled away by political consultants, down to a sad few paragraphs on wars, troops and –always – a nod to trade. What I’ve just done is rough out an oil painting.  Election-year messaging, rather, is somewhere between street graffiti and Etch-a-Sketch – quick, bright, simple, impermanent.

 

Grand Strategy in Four Points Posted by Jacob Stokes

In the next week or so, details of next year’s defense budget will begin to seep from the halls of the White House and the Defense Department. The budget will, at least in theory, be guided by the Defense Strategic Review released by the White House earlier this month. That document laid out a military strategy.

But the conduct of foreign affairs goes beyond issues of force structure and military doctrine (although those are, of course, essential). A military strategy should follow a grand strategy. Several attempts have been made at exploring a grand strategy for a post Iraq and Afghanistan/financial crisis-era. Richard Haass has argued for a “restoration” strategy. Dan Drezner has looked at the Obama administration’s strategy, which he characterizes as “counterpunching.” Officially, there's the National Security Strategy.

In the latest issue of Democracy (yes, I’m behind on reading), Charlie Kupchan of Georgetown and CFR puts forth four principles for a progressive grand strategy. The piece is a strong addition to the discussion. Below are those four principles, along with portions of the piece that are especially relevant in the context of the U.S. political debate:

Restore political and economic solvency: “The first first principle of a progressive agenda is that political and economic renewal at home is the indispensable foundation for strength abroad. Conservatives do not offer a credible alternative to this first plank of a progressive agenda. They not only fail to appreciate the vital link between bipartisanship and national security but deliberately seek to undermine political consensus. President George W. Bush sought to exploit, not repair, political divides; his advisers explicitly advocated polarizing policies that catered to the Republican base, not the moderate center. Since Obama entered office, Republicans have consistently sought to obstruct his foreign policies—regardless of the substantive merits.”

Balancing means with ends. “Progressives have the right formula for finding this balance between doing too much and too little. Going back to the days of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, the progressive foreign policy agenda has consistently embraced a liberal internationalism that is equal parts power and partnership.”

Making room for the rising rest: “While perhaps emotionally satisfying, the neoconservative preference for regime change is a recipe for self-defeating adventurism; America’s recent forays into nation-building have produced scant benefits at enormous costs. The assumption that illiberal regimes yield only when forced into submission also flies in the face of history. The most notable geopolitical breakthroughs of the twentieth century came not through coercion, but bold diplomacy—Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin in Jerusalem, Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong in Beijing, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik. Moreover, stabilizing the global economy, ensuring energy supplies, combating nuclear proliferation and terrorism—these and many other international challenges require working with, not isolating, non-democracies.”

Reviving the Atlantic Community. “Although conservatives are often dismissive of Europe due to its lack of hard power, they generally appreciate the importance of a transatlantic community that rests on common values and interests. While neoconservatives tended to denigrate the Atlantic partnership during George W. Bush’s first term—particularly because many Europeans opposed the Iraq War—Bush changed course during his second term and worked hard to repair the Atlantic link.”

Kupchan’s piece is nicely balanced in terms of accessibility and comprehensiveness. It’s a clear blueprint for how to integrate the domestic with the international, the political with the economic and military components of power--and turn the whole mix into a coherent approach to the world. Go and read the whole thing.

Photo: CFR

Romney’s Afghanistan Plan Comes Into Focus Posted by Jacob Stokes

Thus far in the campaign, Mitt Romney has not elucidated a clear position on what he’d do in Afghanistan. Dan Balz pointed this out back in October (I commented on that piece here). Basically, early on and intermittently throughout the campaign, Romney has suggested that he wants to avoid “nation building” and that “only the Afghanis can win Afghanistan’s independence from the Taliban.” But those comments, aimed to pick up on some of the isolationist sentiment in the conservative movement, drew quick rebukes from the establishment. In response, Romney has reverted back to a more hardline position. We saw this last Monday when Romney, directly opposing the advice of his advisors, rejected talks with the Taliban. (David Ignatius has a good explanation of why this zinger was a mistake.)

It seems fair now to assume that Romney’s position on Afghanistan as explained lately and in his campaign documents and official foreign policy speeches represents his actual position, despite equivocations to the contrary. In those places, Romney has laid out several firm strategic principles. Let’s look at each of them and draw conclusions. After all, as Romney has said, “The commander in chief also has to be the educator in chief and has to communicate to the American people why he is making the decisions he’s making.” 

Principle 1: The Taliban—not just al Qaeda and international terrorism—must be completely crushed. Romney’s first strategic principle is that the mission in Afghanistan includes the total defeat of the Taliban, not just the end of international terrorism emanating from Afghanistan. In his Citadel speech, Romney asked, “In Afghanistan, after the United States and NATO have withdrawn all forces, will the Taliban find a path back to power? After over a decade of American sacrifice in treasure and blood, will the country sink back into the medieval terrors of fundamentalist rule and the mullahs again open a sanctuary for terrorists?” Romney explained that, “I will order a full review of our transition to the Afghan military to secure that nation’s sovereignty from the tyranny of the Taliban.” Romney’s foreign policy white paper also says the U.S. goal in Afghanistan is military defeat of the Taliban or at least an Afghan army that can hold them off. “He will order a full interagency assessment of our military and assistance presence in Afghanistan to determine the level required to secure our gains and to train Afghan forces to the point where they can protect the sovereignty of Afghanistan from the tyranny of the Taliban.”

Principle 2: No talks with the Taliban until they stop fighting. The second strategic principle, articulated Monday night, is no talks with the Taliban. As Romney said then, “The right course for America is not to negotiate with the Taliban while the Taliban are killing our soldiers. The right course is to recognize they’re the enemy of the United States. It’s the vice president [Joe Biden] who said they’re not the enemy of the United States. The vice president’s wrong. They are the enemy. They’re killing American soldiers.”

Principle 3: The Obama administration’s withdrawal policy is too fast. The third strategic principle is that the current plan for withdrawing ISAF forces is too fast. This is what Romney means when he says that he would listen to the “commanders on the ground” and slow the withdrawal going into 2014. (For an explanation of why this particular construct is misguided, see here and here.)

Given these strategic principles, the promised review by a future President Romney would, almost by definition, require the U.S., to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan and to commit them to stay there indefinitely – call it a “Romney surge.” With no talks on the horizon and a U.S. commitment to their total defeat—combined with the safety of a haven in Pakistan—the Taliban would have strong incentive to keep fighting and no incentive to renounce al Qaeda and international terrorism. More broadly, increasing the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan would continue add stress to our defense budgets and require a larger force or lower troop numbers in Asia or the Middle East. The rebalancing of U.S. foreign policy would stop in its tracks.

It’s time to recognize that, despite his equivocations, Mitt Romney has the outlines of an Afghanistan policy. The media and pundits should take the candidate as his word, follow the strategic outlines he’s established to their logical conclusions and hold the candidate accountable. Right now, those strategic principles augur a forever war in Afghanistan, one that differs from John McCain’s “100 years war” in Iraq only because Romney hasn’t put a figure on his.

We know what Romney thinks. Now he needs to make the case for why that’s in the American national security interest.

Photo: Flickr

Will Romney Defend Our Turkish Allies? Posted by Heather Hurlburt

I don't really care that Rick Perry has doubled down on his attacks on Turkey's government as "Islamic terrorists," that his top foreign policy advisor* said that Ankara's democratically-elected government "has some explaining to do," and is "extremely supportive of Hamas."  (Note: if we could only get Iran's support of Hamas to look like Turkey's, what a great place the Middle East would be. But I digress.) I sympathize with our friends the fact-checkers, who think they have better things to do than respond to this kind of, well, falsehood isn't even the word for it.

No, I care -- and the Perry campaign seems to agree -- what frontrunner Mitt Romney thinks about our Turkish allies.  Like Perry advisor Victoria Coates, I too find it surprising that Romney hasn't weighed in on the controversy.  Herewith, a guide to enterprising journalists:

What is the US Relationship with Turkey? Turkey has been a member of NATO for 60 years; Turkish troops fought alongside Americans in Afghanistan.

Does Partnership With Turkey's Avowedly Muslim Government Serve American Interests? Turkey is the leading provider of shelter and humanitarian assistance to Syrian citizens fleeing Bashar al-Assad’s murderous rule. Turkey's transition away from authoritarianism over recent decades has inspired the secular and moderate leaders of transitions in our NATO ally Albania; in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country and Muslim democracy; in the former Soviet countries of Central Asia; and now in the Middle East and North Africa.

Do Human Rights Advocates View The Turkish Regime in Apocalyptic Terms? Turkey's democracy is far from perfect, and we don't agree with all of its foreign policy choices. Review Freedom House's most recent report on Turkey, which refers to it as a "country at the crossroads" with no reference to the rule of Islamic terrorists.

Things Getting Pretty Dicey With Iran Posted by David Shorr

Depending on how you look at it, tensions with Iran are mounting to: an accidental war, an intentional war, a recession-causing oil price spike, a dizzying sequence of moves / countermoves / signals, an escalating cycle of assassinations, renewed negotiations, or a combination thereof. At any rate, they're mounting. 

Even before all the drama of last week, looming sanctions against the Iranian central bank sparked a debate on whether such harsh economic measures are the functional equivalent of seeking regime change. I argue that the international pressure forged by the Obama administration has been consistent in its aim: opening Iran's nuclear program to the kind of scrutiny that will prove its civilian character. The administration has had to ratchet up the pressure because of Iranian leaders' intransigence. As I said in my post last Monday, it's vital to distinguish this policy-change goal from regime-change because "the only way Iranian leaders would cooperate in proving Iran's non-weapon status is if that would make them less, rather than more, vulnerable."

Which is why the stakes were so high when the initial version of a Washington Post story last Tuesday reported that the new sanctions weren't merely equivalent to regime-change, but that the administration's official policy is to seek the ouster of Iran's leaders. The tension between the two objectives and trade-off with the nuclear issue also made the Post's article a target of immediate criticism and fairly prompt revisions, actually two sets. (For details, see Blake Hounshell at Foreign Policy's Passport blog and Jasmin Ramsey at AlJazeera.com.) So that was Tuesday.

Then on Wednesday Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was assassinated by a car bomb during his morning commute in Tehran, the sixth target (at least) of such an attack in the last several years. Unlike the Stuxnet computer virus used in 2010 against equipment in Iran's nuclear complex -- a covert project for which the US and Israeli governments seem quietly content to be perceived as joint authors -- the two allies gave starkly different reactions to the assassination (see the NYTimes report). The Israeli military spokesman indicated his satisfaction over the killing, yet also disavowing any knowledge, while the Obama Administration went to great lengths to distance itself from the attack. Dan Drezner outlines all the possible interpretations and explanations, but the short version is that Washington is extremely worried by apparent Israeli moves to escalate the crisis at a delicate moment. Not that Iranians themselves should be ruled out as potential suspects; Trita Parsi posted on Fareed Zakaria's GPS blog to note a longtime pattern of incidents just prior to planned international negotiation sessions.

Hang on, there's more on US-Israeli relations. Publicly President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu are speaking from the same page about the potential for sanctions to bring the Iranians back to the table (though Netanyahu's deputy Moshe Ya'alon seems not to have gotten the memo). Yet at the same time, the Wall Street Journal reports that behind the scenes, the US military is developing contingency plans in case Israel takes things up several notches from covert action to a military strike against Iran. This all makes for a pretty full agenda when the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Martin Dempsey makes his first trip to Israel in his new role later this week. It's also unclear whether the postponment of a long-planned joint military exercise was due to the diplomatic friction or practical difficulties.

Seems like a moment for cool heads and deep breaths, huh. Let me offer the following points about both the diplomacy and domestic politics of this morass:

1. The idea that President Obama hasn't done enough about Iran's nuclear program is ludicrous. It's been a top priority since the day he took office, and the degree of international support for sanctions is testament to the administration's steady diplomatic full-court press. (Oh, forgot to mention that Treasury Secretary Geithner travelled to Japan and China last week to court their support for sanctions.)
2. International support is the name of the game. As the administration often reminds us, the world community is now more unified and the Iranian regime more divided -- a reverse of the situation under President Bush. The Republican presidential candidates love to talk about how they'd ignore or defy other international players, but they don't explain how that could lead to a peaceful solution. 
3. I'd rather decry Iran's assassination attempts than kill their scientists. The last time we were talking about assassination, it was an Iranian plot against Saudi diplomats in the United States. Such demonstration of Iran playing international renegade helpfully reinforced our diplomatic message; conversely, key countries hesitate when they see our ally as responding in kind. I've written before about what I call "the moral authority of the other guy looking like a jerk," a strategy I think the Obama administration has played quite well. Also, Avner Cohen asks in Haaretz where the targetting of scientists ultimately will lead.
4. We are not at -- or even near -- the point of needing to use force as a last resort. And I've written before about how the Far-Right, with their itchy trigger fingers, seem to blot out any negative repercussions.
5. It's time to take the exit ramp to negotiations. Gary Sick and Trita Parsi explain why and how.
6. Bring back the Turks and Brazilians as mediators. What Anne-Marie Slaughter said.
7. Are we sure how the domestic politics of an Iran War play? An awful lot of conventional wisdom lately about Republican tough talk being a political winner. Maybe with primary voters, I suppose. Looking toward November, I'm not so sure.
8. Do we know how a war would affect US-Israeli relations? Ditto all the predictions about an attack on Iran as a booster shot for solidarity between our two nations.

UPDATED: The book cover image in an earlier version of this post has been replaced with a more appropriate text.

Today in Retro Far-Right Alarmism: "Unilateral Disarmament!" Posted by David Shorr

If FP wonks of a certain age ever worried about losing their bearings here in a 21st Century election year, today brings the comfort of an all-too-familiar right wing shriek. Over on the Weekly Standard blog, Mark Davis today dusted off the old "unilateral disarmament" chestnut, in response to the Obama Administration's new defense strategy.

I should immediately acknowledge that the strategy indeed includes cuts in the nuclear arsenal that will be undertaken on the US' own initiative. So the reductions that have been indicated are, strictly speaking, unilateral. What's most notable about Davis' post, however, is the way he extrapolates far beyond what DoD is planning. Perhaps Davis knows that the scale of the envisioned cuts are not, in themselves, all that shocking -- given that they'll leave us with lots of nuclear weapons. 

But even as closely as I follow the rants of our ultra-conservative colleagues, the following passage struck me as a new low in willful mischaracterization:

A larger issue: President Obama, in articulating a cherished goal of abolishing nuclear weapons, seems to conceive this goal of a nuclear free world, which many experts believed was at best the work of decades, as something that could be close to finalized in his second term. How is that going to work when most nuclear powers explicitly reject our zero vision?

I almost feel a perverse awe for the audacity here. (Takes deep breath.) The president thinks he can reach zero nuclear weapons within five years?!? (Oh, hell with it.) I cannot imagine where Davis got this idea except by pulling it out of his -- well, you know. Indeed, when the president talks about this very issue of a timeframe, he says it may well take longer than his own lifetime. Or, to coin a phrase, "the work of decades." Why will it take so long? Probably because of the complex challenges of drawing down all of the world's nuclear powers. 

So with apologies to Pete Nicely (aka @LOLGOP), let me conclude by saying that if you have to invent an imaginary President Obama to run against, your ideas suck. 

The GOP's Iran Obsession Posted by Michael Cohen

Over at Foreign Policy I have a new piece up looking at why the Republican candidates for President can't stop talking about Iran's nuclear program . . . and why it might actually be dangerous for them to keep doing it:

Why are Republican candidates treating Iran like it's the modern embodiment of Nazi Germany, al Qaeda, and the Soviet Union, all wrapped up in a mischievous and explosive ball?

The long answer is Americans don't like Iran, they are afraid of nuclear weapons and images of mushroom clouds, and Muslims with weapons of mass destruction are scary. Frankly, GOP primary voters care about threats to Israel -- and sanctions and diplomacy are less impressive than the promise that American airplanes will soon be dropping bombs on reinforced bunkers.

But the short answer is this is pretty much all the GOP has. Want to claim that Obama has been soft on terror? That whole killing Osama bin Laden thing makes that a bit tough. Same goes for all the al Qaeda lieutenants who have been killed in drone strikes. What about pulling out of Iraq? Good luck finding many Americans who disagree with that decision. How about Afghanistan and Obama's call to begin pulling out troops in 2014? First, it's hard to argue that Obama didn't give war a chance in the Hindu Kush; second, Afghanistan is a less and less popular war every day. How about the claim that Obama has thrown Israel under the bus vis-à-vis the Palestinians? That's not going to make all that much of a difference. It turns out the two groups of voters most concerned about Israel (American Jews and evangelical Christians) likely already have a pretty clear sense whom they'll be voting for in November.

You can read the whole thing here

Will Pressuring Iran Backfire? Posted by David Shorr

These days we're hearing two sets of concerns about the US and international pressure on Iran over its nuclear program. From one direction, GOP presidential candidates and other ultra-hawks argue for an escalated conflict with Iran. According to them, President Obama isn't doing enough or is actually coddling Tehran. Not that the candidates really know much about the Administration's Iran policy, but that's par for the course and part and parcel of an increasingly bizarro Republican foreign policy aproach.

For some of Obama's critics, their faith in military action gives them utter confidence that attacking Iran would squelch its nuclear ambitions without the kind of backlash we might regret. (Hmm, where have we heard that before?)

Yet another set of commentators, who are less sanguine about a war with Iran, warn that tightening the screws of economic sanctions -- currently being prepared -- already puts things on a dangerous course. Prominent voices in this camp are Trita Parsi and Suzanne Maloney, two of the foreign policy community's top experts on the region and certainly warranting close attention. Indeed, the questions they raise are central: has the Obama administration put higher priority on the sanctions than on the nuclear program itself, and in the process complicated (if not doomed) the effort to reach a peaceful solution? Here's now Trita captures the core policy dilemma:

The challenge with multilateral sanctions, however, is that the diplomatic resources required to create concensus around sanctions are so great that once the sanctions threat gains momentum, the commitment of the sanctioning countries to this path tends to become irreversible.

He's also correct that the moment just prior to sanctions is a time of heightened leverage -- also a moment of opportunity, when the target of this international pressure might offer key concessions. And yes, when you hear people downplay eleventh-hour concessions as merely ploys to alleviate pressure, this misses the entire point that the aim of pressure is ... to extract concessions. 

Here's where I have to offer a counterpoint, though. In short, not all concessions are created equal. When you're doing this statecraft right, the leverage of impending sanctions produces measures that really move the parties toward a solution. But just because it's foolish to choose sanctions over meaningful concessions, doesn't mean it's wise to suspend sanctions in exchange for whatever the targeted government offers. With all the effort that goes into building support for sanctions, they should only be traded in a fair bargain.

That goes doubly when you're bargaining over a deal that had been agreed earlier on. In Trita's piece, he recounts the story of October 2009 - June 2010, the months after Iran agreed and then reneged on a plan to transfer most of their enriched uranium out of the country. As UN Security Council countries were preparing for a new sanctions vote, the leaders of Turkey and Brazil undertook a dramatic initiative to mediate and obtained a last-minute agreement that resurrected the uranium transfer. The Obama administration was not impressed, and immediately called the vote in the Council, which passed.

As Trita sees it, the administration refused to take 'yes' for an answer. But I can argue that the Iranians were trying to sell us the same horse twice. For one thing, the agreement with Brazil and Turkey didn't sufficiently account for the uranium that had been enriched in the intervening months. Contrary to Parsi's analysis, I believe the administration would have welcomed a reasonable compromise. (I look forward to reading Trita's more detailed account in his new book, A Single Roll of the Dice, which focuses on President Obama's Iran diplomacy and will be out this month.)

Suzanne Maloney similarly argues that Obama's sanctions diplomacy is undercutting its intended aim:

[T]he United States cannot hope to bargain with a country whose economy it is trying to disrupt and destroy. As severe sanctions devastate Iran's economy, Tehran will surely be encouraged to double down on its quest for the ultimate deterrent. So, the White House's embrace of open-ended pressure means that it has backed itself into a policy of regime change, something Washington has little ability to influence.

Not only is it far beyond America's control to relpace Iran's government, it is also at odds with the objective of preventing it from developing a nuclear weapon. The only way Iranian leaders would cooperate in proving Iran's non-weapon status is if that would make them less, rather than more, vulnerable. After the overblown "axis of evil" rhetoric of President Bush, it's actually been crucial for President Obama to highlight that nuclear weapons are the real issue, and not the Iranian leadership themselves.

Still, is severe international economic pressure tantamount to a regime-change policy? I don't see the two as equivalent. For me, the main point is that by resisting nuclear transparency, Iran is losing sympathy and becoming isolated. Suzanne emphasizes Iran's long record of enduring hardship and pressure, but standing completely alone in the world community is easier said than done.

A policy of "open-ended pressure" would indeed be counterproductive. It is just as important for the Obama Administration to highlight that Tehran can get out of the penalty box, as it is to build a strong international coalition to keep up the pressure. Unlike Maloney, I still think the policy can keep these two in proper balance. 

This Wacky Iraq Withdrawal Debate Posted by David Shorr

Someone please explain to me like I'm a four-year-old this idea that President Obama "owns" the situtation in Iraq. As I work on catching up with some of the Iraq pull-out commentary from over the holidays, I won't try to match the depth of Steve Clemons' counterpoint to Fred and Kimberly Kagan's recent Weekly Standard piece. Instead, I'll direct some of the views I share with Steve toward engaging Peter Feaver over at Shadow Government and ploughing the ground Feaver stakes out: setting fair terms to judge the president's Iraq policy. His questoin is "Can Obama take credit for ending the Iraq War without taking blame for what happens next?" To which my answer is: "why the hell not?" 

Feaver cries foul on the attempt he sees by Obama supporters to give him full credit for anything positive in Iraq and saddle President Bush with everything negative. Well, what is the Obama Administration claiming to have done? President Obama claims credit for extricating American forces from nearly nine years of military involvement there.  By the way, can I pause for a moment to say how absurd it is to talk about a hasty exit after nine years?!?

But returning to Feaver's argument, he'd have a stronger point about taking responsibility for the bad along with the good if Obama was claiming credit having locked in a stable future for Iraq. Except that's not the claim. Like President Bush before him, the president has tried to use the US military presence to the best stabilizing effect for Iraqis and express gratitude and pride in the efforts of the those who served that mission. But how did all of this come about, and by what notion of fairness and responsibility do we treat the original act of invasion as water under the bridge?

As Feaver points out, there is also the issue of the administration's negotiations to keep a residual force in Iraq past 2011:

Besides, it is Bush's fault, the bitter-ender Obamaphiles say, because he saddled Obama with the 2008 framework agreement that  set the 2012 troop exit deadline.  Of course, to cling to this view requires ignoring that both sides, U.S. and Iraqi, viewed the 2008 agreement as an interim step, one that would be renegotiated after the Iraqi elections to allow for a longer-term U.S. presence.  More problematically, it requires ignoring the lengthy but ultimately failed negotiations by Obama-appointed representatives to accomplish just such an extension.

But surely he can see the problems this poses for the conservative side of the argument--even the glaring contradiction right within that passage. I can count three ways in which this debate-within-a-debate only reinforces Obama's rightful credit for the Iraq withdrawal. First, if the 2008 SOFA agreement was merely a temporary placeholder that masked an actual plan to remain, then that only heightens the contrast with the administration's pull-out. Second, the loud cries from critics reinforce the idea that conservatives favor preserving more of a presence. (And oh by the way, the sabre-rattling over Iran perpetuates the image Republican appetite for military conflict and overextension.) More problematically, Feaver's argument requires ignoring the issue over which the SOFA re-negotiations faltered: immunity form prosecution for US personnel. After all the debate over the ICC, I can't imagine this would've been something conservatives could abide.

The divide in this debate is not over who's concerned about the situation in Iraq, or who feels an American sense of responsibility. Most of us do. This is a debate about the need to set limits and make choices about the right investments and engagements of American power -- and not imagine that those choices make themselves. 

Pruning the Pentagon Posted by Jacob Stokes

I have a new piece in The American Prospect on Obama's military strategy. Here's an illustrative sample:

The document flows from this question, posed by President Obama in his speech: “What kind of military will we need after the long wars of the last decade are over?” The answer, according to Panetta, is a force that’s “smaller and leaner, but will be agile, flexible, ready, and technologically advanced.” That means reductions in the size of the Army and Marines, reportedly almost back down to pre-9/11 levels.

It also signals that the U.S. is in no hurry to engage in another extended occupation like the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan. In other words, this marks a move away from the counterinsurgency operations of the last decade. Instead, America will build a military poised to respond quickly to events around the world. The operation in Libya and even the raid that killed Osama bin Laden serve as models for this strategy. To be sure, we will retain the capability to project force for long-term operations if our vital interest are at stake, but such operations will be the exception, not the rule.

Read the whole thing here.

Also, read Heather on the BBC. Here's the portion on what the strategy says about nuclear weapons:

Stephen Young of the Union of Concerned Scientists describes the future of the nuclear weapons complex as "cautious but suggestive". The strategy review document maintains a nuclear arsenal but hints at reductions, saying "it is possible our deterrence goals can be achieved with a smaller nuclear force".

What might this mean in practice? In the near-term, disappointment for those on the US right who have advocated aggressive investment in new nuclear bombs and even a return to testing. In the longer-term, many Pentagon generals, especially those not in submarine, missile or nuclear bomber commands, are willing to consider shrinking the nuclear "triad". There is also a raft of influential players in the nuclear sphere who have been eager to retire the weapons.

Full piece here.

Photo: Flickr

When are Two Wars Not Two Wars? Posted by Heather Hurlburt

As we wait for the Pentagon strategy review announcement this morning, the first attempt to use it for political advantage has broken out over efforts to move officially away from the "two-war strategy" -- the idea that the US military must be prepared to fight and win two regional conflicts -- ie Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea -- at the same time.

It turns out that this is one of those bedrock doctrines that is much more bedrock for politicians than for military planners.  Flag officers will quietly tell you that it hasn't been true, or truly doctrine, for a long time -- and they're out saying publicly that it clearly failed in Iraq/Afghanistan in the last decade.

What do experts say?

Winslow Wheeler, who worked 31 years on defense in the Senate, including as the first and last staffer to work simultaneously for a GOP and Democrat:

If it were a strategy, it doesn't describe any strategy or capability
we've had for decades. The construct was for two "Major Regional Conflicts"
in the 1990s. These meant conflicts like Korea and Desert Storm, which in
turn meant force deployments of half a million or so. Neither Iraq
(2003-2011) nor Afghanistan quality as "major" in that regard; both were
much smaller AND they totally crapped out our forces as regards both
manpower and equipment. In other words, we were not able to even support
two minor conflicts, let alone major ones.

We had an inadequate force for two opponents that lacked an air force, an
air defense, a navy, or any coherent ground forces. People who declare
coming off the two MRC "strategy" as unraveling our defenses (eg. Dov Zakheim) are dilettantes.

Time's Mark Thompson calls the strategy "Mythical Routine Canards" and notes:

The only problem is that the two-war construct has been shot through with enough caveats and loopholes to render it worthless. Formally doing away with it, consequently, is just as vaporous.

Going back to World War II, when the nation had 12 million in uniform, the U.S. and its allies couldn’t beat the Japanese in the Pacific until they had defeated the Germans in Europe. Flash forward 60 years: the U.S. and its allies couldn’t prevail in Afghanistan – assuming they ever will – once President George W. Bush had decided to invade Iraq. “It is simply a matter of resources, of capacity,” Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress in late 2007. “In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must.” That, in a nutshell, is a definition of a nation lacking the ability to wage and win two wars at once. It not only lacked it during World War II, but it also was MIA less than five years ago.

Charles Knight of the Project on Defense Alternatives:

It is misleading to discuss the two war construct as if it were
strategic doctrine. The U.S. did not simultaneously undertake the
intense fighting phases of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Its
military problems in those conflicts are associated with subsequent
commitments to counterinsurgency and nation building. As with World
War II, the long-standing American practice is for sequential focused
action in different theaters. What has been called a strategy of
“win, hold, win” is simply being sensible and not being carried away
with a false sense of power that the U.S. can do everything,
everywhere at once.

Pentagon Strategy Review – Why It Matters Posted by Heather Hurlburt

A week ago, no visions of Pentagon strategy reviews were dancing in the heads of journalists, pundits or budget wonks.  One well-placed New York Times article and one little announcement of a Presidential stop-by later, and all eyes that can tear themselves away from the froth of New Hampshire will be watching the President and Secretary Panetta roll out a “strategic review “, intended to guide the 2013-2018 budgets, at the Pentagon today.

Why should you care, what should you be watching for, and how will the announcement affect politics, the budget process and the security of actual Americans?  Your questions answered below.

What is this?  It’s a rare out-of-cycle re-consideration of fundamental US military strategy, aiming to realign the behemoth of our national defense (more costly than just about every other global military entity combined) with three new realities:

• Post-post-9/11: The post-9/11 decade, with its focus on extremist terrorism above all other threats, and its primary counter-strategy of Asian land wars and extended military occupations, is receding in the rear-view mirror. This means we don’t need the ground forces (Army and Marines) at the size to which they were built up to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan simultaneously.
• Asia pivot:  Obama and Panetta have both said the military will beef up its Asia-Pacific presence as part of a larger rebalance of focus away from Europe and the Middle East.  In addition to ending the wars, this implies reducing the number of troops stationed in Europe; and it implies a greater focus on sea lanes, airpower and offshore presence, as distinct from ground-based counterinsurgency warfare.
• End of the gravy train:  More than a year of quiet conversation at the Pentagon and defense-industry consolidation have made clear that insiders knew, as then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen said last year: having this ready spigot of money "hasn't forced us to make the hard choices. It hasn't forced us to prioritize. It hasn't forced us to do the analysis. And it hasn't forced us to limit ourselves and get to a point or deciding, in a very turbulent world, what we're going to do and what we're not going to do."^[2]    

No, Really, What Is This?  Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced it last April in the context of the White House’s initial announcement that it would hold growth in Pentagon spending below inflation.  It’s an admission that the February 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, designed to set military strategy, was insufficiently transformational for the strategic and budgetary environment.  And it’s a structure that gave the Pentagon’s vast bureaucracy, not to mention the outside complex of contractors and advisers, time to absorb new financial realities.

How Dramatic Are These Changes? Not very.  2012 and 2013 Pentagon spending will represent the first real declines in military spending in more than a decade; but the total 8% cut envisaged is less than the Reagan defense builddown of the 1980s (yes, you read that right).  As Colin Powell said: “When the Cold War ended 20 years ago, when I was chairman and Mr. Cheney was secretary of Defense, we cut the defense budget by 25 percent. And we reduced the force by 500,000 active duty soldiers, so it can be done. Now, how fast you can do it and what you have to cut out remains to be seen, but I don't think the defense budget can be made, you know, sacrosanct and it can't be touched."

 Moreover, even if the more dramatic cuts in the Budget Control Act sequester were enacted, they would only return the Pentagon to 2007 levels.  (Dear Congress, please return the value of my house to its 2007 level.  ASAP)  On the strategic level, the much-ballyhooed move away from maintaining the ability to fight and win two regional wars simultaneously is less than meets the eye:  the change has been discussed since the Cold War ended, and even as we fought two wars to something less than “wins” in Iraq and Afghanistan, military strategists have quietly moved toward a “win-hold-win” model where we have enough forces to, for example, respond to a North Korean attack while keeping the Taliban out of Kabul until Pyongyang was vanquished, and we could resume the mission in Afghanistan.

Is this a rare sighting of bipartisan security strategy? Yup. The Obama crowd is midwifing a set of moderate changes that military strategists of many stripes have been discussing for decades. Eliminate an aircraft carrier because missile technology has made them expensive sitting ducks?  Naval analysts wrote about it in the 1980s.  Slow or reduce the deployment of new nuclear submarines? Navy brass and arms control experts agree on that one.  Cut back the entire 20^th-century nuclear complex? A deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs and four ex-Cabinet Secretaries agree. Less spending on ground troops, more on technology? That crazy liberal Donald Rumsfeld was all over it. Reform, consolidate the ridiculous excesses of the F-35 and its multi-service variants?  Get in line. No more land wars in the Middle East:  we refer you to former Secretary Gates – anyone who contemplates that “should have his head examined.” The third rail of military health care and retirement benefits?  Bush Administration Pentagon Comptroller Dov Zakheim and the Defense Business Board are the ones leading the cheering section.

How Will the Politics Play? Some of these reforms will gore particular regional oxen – Connecticut on submarines, for example.  Gates and then Panetta have moved carefully and worked hard to bring the Pentagon with them, limiting the flow of outraged leaks. The overall strategic frame is not easy to argue with.  But given that the President’s leading rival has argued for increasing US defense spending to a permanent 4% of GDP, adding 100,000 US ground troops and increasing annual shipbuilding from nine to fifteen – and that Rick Santorum, this week’s anti-Romney, has called for land invasions of Iran and Syria – it’s a safe bet that the 1970s-vintage “Democrats-Gut-the-Military” press releases are already loaded.

 

What was done right this year? Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Ezra Klein asked this morning that the Administration had done well this year and, jokes aside, I filled up my 140 Twitter characters an embarrassing number of times.

1. Rebalancing in Asia. Maintaining productive ties with China while signalling to our neighbors and China's allies that the US is with them for the long haul and sees value in balance between a growing China and the concerns of its neighbors.

2. Finding its feet on human rights.  Few will have noticed even among the wonk-erati, but from institutionalizing government procedures for catching potential genocides in advance, focusing on women's role in international peace and security and improving Pentagon training on human rights, the Administration put several long-fought initiatives into place this year.  Secretary Clinton's LGBT initiatives only got noticed at home when conservatives tried to make political hay out of the radical idea that sexual orientation should not be a death sentence; her speech that accompanied the women's initiative in December didn't even get that much attention.  but in the rest of the world, where sexual and gender violence are all-too prevalent, and three women were among the Nobel Prize winners, this kind of US leadership will matter.  The relevance of the US intervention in Libya for human rights will be debated for decades; what should be remem bered is how it also allowed a UN Security council-backed mission to remove a sore election loser in Cote d'Ivoire and end developing carnage.

3. South Sudan.  That the new nation was able to come into existence successfully, and relatively quietly, this year is due in no small part to the Administration's interventions at the UN and on the ground. 

4. Iraq troop withdrawal. Not so long ago, this didn't seem a foregone conclusion at all.

5. Inflection point in Afghanistan.  Whether the speed of the drawdown is too fast or too slow, it has at long last begun.

6.  Decline of Al Qaeda. US military actions, including but not limited to the killing of Bin Laden, have hastened the organization's decline and its loss of support among the global Muslim community, dramatized so vividly in the Arab Spring.

7.  Durban agreement to negotiate a climate change convention. Not every administration, confronting half-a-dozen political opponents who "don't believe in climate," would have agreed to get anywhere near even this future-oriented gesture.  It was a late glimmer of hope on what has been a very bleak vista.

An interesting problem.  These achievements-- which are real and substantial-- are for the most part downpayments on a better future, on a set of global institutions and relationships which work better and function smoothly in a different, more prosperous time.  It is hard, from either a security or an economic perspective, to stack that long-range view up against the real or perceived challenges we face, or that we hear shouted about on cable. 

GOP Foreign Policy v. Reality -- A Messy Divorce Posted by David Shorr

With war fever mounting for an attack on Iran, Michael builds on Steve Walt's and Dan Drezner's take-downs of the new Matthew Kroenig charge bugle call Foreign Affairs essay. Like Michael, I want to look through a wider angle lens so that we see the bigger problems with the far-Right GOP approach to the world. The right wing's tendency to inflate threats and discount potential blowback is indeed part of a larger pattern of playing fast and loose with reality.

In a weird way, I'm kind of envious of the critics who offer themselves as a replacement for the Obama administration. Foreign policy is so much easier the way they do it. True to Mencken's classic put-down, they have a clear and simple answer for every complex problem. I like how Michael encapsulated it in a recent ForeignPolicy.com piece on the candidate debates:

To listen to the GOP candidates on Iran is to think that an American president can use a little military force here, drop a few sanctions there, and voilà, the Iranian nuclear program will be stopped dead in its tracks.

Right, magical thinking.

Plus, they get to feel all Winston Churchill-ey -- which may indeed be a main point. As Churchill's presumptive heirs, they pride themselves on unique insight into the true nature of the threats we face (i.e. worse-than-Democrats-recognize) and the necessary response (i.e. tougher-than-Democrats-would-do). Republicans have become so entranced by this political self-image that they are staking their entire foreign policy on moral clarity, threat-inflation, defiance toward the rest of the world, and toughness for its own sake.

It's left them with a strange commander in chief test in their primary contest. Rather than showing how they'd serve as wise stewards of American power and steer the country through turbulent times, the candidates have been straining to outdo one another in pure bluster. When second-generation North Korean strongman Kim Jong Il dies, obviously the priority is to express America's repugnance, rather than to worry about possible escalation in one of the world's hottest flashpoints.

And since this is a competition to reinforce ultra-conservative image and ideology, facts and reality have no bearing on the matter. As I outlined in my recent Republican FP Mad Libs post, part of the formula is to call for "tough-sounding steps that might / might not be practical and President Obama may or may not already be doing." Michele Bachmann's proposal to shut down an American embassy in Iran that's been closed for over 30 years was merely a high/lowpoint in a steady flow of absurdity. In her own mind, and those of the GOP base, it was plausible that President Obama has an ambassador in Tehran -- since, you know, he's such a reason-with-evildoers appeaser. Conversely, the Republican monopoly on toughness means President Obama must be denied any credit for killing Osama bin Laden. If you'll recall, the cognitive dissonance prompted several true believers to actually give Obama's predecessor the credit, which must have set some kind of world record for audacity.

This is how a major political party loses its foreign policy sanity: via a slippery slope from delusions of Churchillian grandeur to just plain delusional. But let me trace back to where I began. The topic was the way Republicans rig up a whole parallel universe to bolster their foreign policy approach -- one where a nuclear-capable Iran brings the most dire of consequences, but attacking Iran is nearly cost-free. Again, this is part of a much more extensive pattern. As a close observer of the proponents of ultra-hawk foreign policy, let me run through the main precepts of their approach:

1. Get-tough policies will consistently produce the desired result, and without unintended consequences. These people are so good at painting rosy scenarios, it's just astounding that they try to tag Dems with being naive. 
2. The targets of US policy will do terrible things if we don't show them who's boss, but will be cowed by our displays of strength. I've always liked Phil Gordon's retort to Donald Rumsfeld's pet idea about weakness being provocative; as Phil noted in his Winning the Right War book, "it turns out that toughness can be provocative as well." As I read Cohen, Walt, and Dresner, I was struck particularly by the Right's beilef that Iranian leaders will somehow make a lot of mischief if we don't attack them, but will behave if we do.
3. The rest of the world should just say "thank you," and go on their way. Fans of "A Few Good Men" can call it the Col. Jessup Doctrine, but international sentiment isn't much of a factor in the Right's foreign policy -- except as something they make a big show of flouting. For all the conservatives' talk about respecting America's allies, they can be rolled right over whenever they take issue with US unilateralism. 
4. Do as I say, not as I do. Another convenience of American exceptionalism (more properly labeled infallibility or narcissism, as I've argued) is that it gives us a HUGE amount of license for us to shrug off international obligations while we run around telling others to abide by international obligations. Since our moral authority is inherent, America's actions cannot be questioned along with the behavior of others. According to the Right wing's rules of domestic political debate, anyone drawing a link between the two will be accused of believing in a moral equivalence between America and the bad guys. 

Which is a long way of saying they haven't learned anything from the Iraq War debacle. During our time in the political wilderness, we progressives actually wrestled with the challenges of exerting American influence in a fast-changing world. By the look of things, our conservative friends -- the loudest ones any way (a key distinction) -- have become intellectually inbred. I'm not hearing anything that sounds like it's been updated since 2002. Put it this way, if Pamela Geller and Donald Trump are associated with your movement as any kind of spokespersons, you have a problem. (Sharia law, really!?@?#?)

But hey, I guess it's good for Democrats, even if it is tragic for the two-party system. The Republican foreign policy argument has been so tailored to their base that it's left them without a plausible case for being able to govern. As scary and out-of-touch as these ideas are, though, the good news is that a sizable majority of Americans (and certainly of swing voters) will find them just as horrifying in 2012 as they did in 2006 and 2008. They haven't forgotten the Iraq debacle and know very well that the real world doesn't work according to Right wing dogma.

Next Stop Tehran Posted by Michael Cohen

Matthew Kroenig a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations has written this year's version of Ken Pollack's "Next Stop Baghdad" - namely the Foreign Affairs article that makes the case for US war in the Persian Gulf. Nine years ago, Pollack was writing about Iraq; this year Kroenig is writing about Iran.

But to be fair this is an article that could have been written nine years ago insomuch as the author appears to draw no lessons whatsoever from US military engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan - and while we're at it, Vietnam.

Over at Foreign Policy, Stephen Walt has done an excellent job of demolishing the main points of Kroenig's piece, which is poorly reasoned, based on overly optimistic scenarios and dramatically overinflates the strategic impact of an Iranian nuke on Iranian regional behavior. But I want to pick up on a few points that are not only problematic about this whole problematic argument - but indeed much of the foreign policy analyst community.

The problems begin at the top of the piece:

The truth is that a military strike intended to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, if managed carefully, could spare the region and the world a very real threat and dramatically improve the long-term national security of the United States.

And is summed up at the end:

Iran’s rapid nuclear development will ultimately force the United States to choose between a conventional conflict and a possible nuclear war

Notice what happens in these paragraphs and the assumptions that are made - Iran is a threat to not just the region, but to "the world"; a military strike can be "managed carefully" (more on that later) and finally that waging such a war would improve the "long-term national security of the United States" with the untested and unassessed assumption being that to allow Iran to get a nuke would imperil the long-term national security of the United States.

Moreover, in Kroenig's construct the only real option ultimately facing the US is war . . . or war. The possibility of a diplomatic or containment solution doesn't really enter into the equation.

This is of practically the default position of the DC-based foreign policy analyst; war can be waged carefully, US national interests are so broad and acute that even using force is a price the country should be willing to pay to protect them and lastly every challenge is a "threat" (and a global one at that) that can best be managed not via diplomatic or other coercive means, but rather by the use of force. 

Of course to draw such conclusions one must begin with the assumption not only that the US has a direct national security interest in preventing Iran from getting a bomb, but that such a situation while perhaps not an existential threat, is of grave danger to the United States and its interests. This is the strawman that Kroenig constructs:

A nuclear-armed Iran would immediately limit U.S. freedom of action in the Middle East. With atomic power behind it, Iran could threaten any U.S. political or military initiative in the Middle East with nuclear war, forcing Washington to think twice before acting in the region. Iran’s regional rivals, such as Saudi Arabia, would likely decide to acquire their own nuclear arsenals, sparking an arms race. To constrain its geopolitical rivals, Iran could choose to spur proliferation by transferring nuclear technology to its allies -- other countries and terrorist groups alike. Having the bomb would give Iran greater cover for conventional aggression and coercive diplomacy, and the battles between its terrorist proxies and Israel, for example, could escalate. And Iran and Israel lack nearly all the safeguards that helped the United States and the Soviet Union avoid a nuclear exchange during the Cold War -- secure second-strike capabilities, clear lines of communication, long flight times for ballistic missiles from one country to the other, and experience managing nuclear arsenals. To be sure, a nuclear-armed Iran would not intentionally launch a suicidal nuclear war. But the volatile nuclear balance between Iran and Israel could easily spiral out of control as a crisis unfolds, resulting in a nuclear exchange between the two countries that could draw the United States in, as well.

Let's put aside for a second the first two sentences of this paragraph which assume that constraints on US freedom of action in the Middle East or "acting in the region" are actual casus belli for war.

Dan Drezner also noted the bolded contradiction above - and it's an important one. If Iran is not intent on committing national suicide that would assume a certain level of rationality by the mullahs. So with that in mind, why would they follow the course of action above and potentially inflame Israel and/or the United States . . . and risk national suicide. Many countries have had nuclear weapons; few that are as economically, politically and military vulnerable as Iran have followed as provocative a course as Kroenig is suggesting Tehran will. I can see no reason to believe that Iran is different from these other nuclear nations and at the very least Kroenig hardly makes the case that it is. Indeed, this entire argument is a bit of 1% doctrine on steroids or perhaps the domino theory (another worst case scenario theory that proved to be disastrously wrong). Everything potentially bad that Iran could do, says Kroenig, they will do. 

In addition, Kroenig later writes that even after the US strike that he believes should occur Iran might feel pressured to act out against its neighbors, but Kroenig says they won't: "It would also likely seek to calibrate its actions to avoid starting a conflict that could lead to the destruction of its military or the regime itself."

Again why would Iran not make the same strategic calculation after it has a bomb? It's not as if the bomb provides Iran with omnipotence. Iran would still want to avoid the destruction of its military or the regime itself, wouldn't they? Kroenig says that the US could impose "redlines" on Iran even after conflict breaks out. Again, as Barry Posen has suggested, why can't redlines be imposed on Iran after it has a bomb?  Is Iran the only country ever to get a nuclear bomb that can't be deterred or have redlines placed on its behavior?

Now Kroenig is certainly correct that if Iran gets a bomb things could easily spiral out of control in the region. Indeed I made precisely this argument not long ago - and it's one of the reasons why efforts to stop Iran from getting a nuke are quite important. But here's the thing I don't understand - couldn't things just as easily spiral out of control if the US went to war against Iran? Why is it only worst case scenarios occur when the US does nothing; but when the US acts militarily everything goes rosy? Now granted if Iran doesn't have a bomb you have a lessened chance of nuclear conflict - but there are many out of control situations that can develop below nuclear conflict yet still quite deadly. 

Indeed, wouldn't the safer course of action for the US be not to create new conflict in the region, but rather create a security structure that will ensure that even if Iran gets a bomb worst case scenarios can be minimized? Quite simply, isn't containment a smarter, likely more effective approach than war? it's not as if the United States didn't spend 60 years successfully carrying out a containment strategy versus a nuclear power. We have some experience in this area.

This gets to the inevitable next part of the "pro-war" argument - containment doesn't work. This of course was the exact argument used in the run-up to the Iraq War. Although Kroenig approaches the question from a different perspective; he says containment is too difficult and too expensive:

To keep the Iranian threat at bay, the United States would need to deploy naval and ground units and potentially nuclear weapons across the Middle East, keeping a large force in the area for decades to come. Alongside those troops, the United States would have to permanently deploy significant intelligence assets to monitor any attempts by Iran to transfer its nuclear technology. And it would also need to devote perhaps billions of dollars to improving its allies’ capability to defend themselves. This might include helping Israel construct submarine-launched ballistic missiles and hardened ballistic missile silos to ensure that it can maintain a secure second-strike capability. Most of all, to make containment credible, the United States would need to extend its nuclear umbrella to its partners in the region, pledging to defend them with military force should Iran launch an attack.

In other words, to contain a nuclear Iran, the United States would need to make a substantial investment of political and military capital to the Middle East in the midst of an economic crisis and at a time when it is attempting to shift its forces out of the region.

This is by far the weakest part of Kroenig's argument and I found it to be so poorly conceived that is practically disqualifying of the entire piece. Kroenig is asserting that rather than put in place a containment structure that "might" cost several billion dollars, the more cost-efficient approach would be go to war. How is is possible to argue that containment would be a "substantial investment of political and military capital to the Middle East in the midst of an economic crisis" and not say the same thing about initiating military conflict?

I suppose this makes sense; it's not as if foreign wars have ever cost more than assumed at the beginning of the conflict. Just ask Larry Lindsay. 

Although Kroenig has a bit of a solution to this problem:

The U.S. government could blunt the economic consequences of a strike. For example, it could offset any disruption of oil supplies by opening its Strategic Petroleum Reserve and quietly encouraging some Gulf states to increase their production in the run-up to the attack. Given that many oil-producing nations in the region, especially Saudi Arabia, have urged the United States to attack Iran, they would likely cooperate.

It begs a rather obvious question: if the US can get Saudi Arabia to cooperate in helping pay for the consequences of a war in the Gulf . . . why can't the US get them to cooperate in helping pay for a containment regime in the region? The lack of seriousness with which Kroenig addresses the containment question is a telling sign. Containment is by far the least intrusive, most realistic alternative to the use of force against Iran. Kroenig's inability to honestly and forthrightly grapple with it as an alternative suggests to me that he doesn't have a good explanation for why such a strategy should not be undertaken. Quite simply, the weaknesses of his own argument - and his clear bias in favor of force - is evident. 

it is worth noting also that we have a great deal of evidence demonstrating that countries, even nuclear powers can be contained. Iran's neighbor Iraq was contained quite effectively for 12 years. North Korea got a bomb; it is still largely contained. India and Pakistan is a little trickier, but for the most part both countries have avoided actions that would risk nuclear conflict. There is no reason why Iran should be any different. In fact, already Iran has found itself more and more isolated in the region . . . and it didn't even take an air campaign to do it.

This gets to the last point - Kroenig's bizarre assumption that war against Iran will be easily manageable and obviously successful. I'll just use a few small quotes to demonstrate the fallacy of Kroenig's argument:

Attacking Iran is hardly an attractive prospect. But the United States can anticipate and reduce many of the feared consequences of such an attack.

. . . A carefully managed U.S. attack would prove less risky than the prospect of containing a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic -- a costly, decades-long proposition that would likely still result in grave national security threats. 

Really? When in American history or in the history of warfare for that matter has the US or any other country correctly anticipated and reduced the consequences of going to war?

Forget history - how about the last ten years? Did the US anticipate not being welcomed in Iraq as liberators; did they anticipate an insurgency; did they anticipate full-fledged sectarian war; did they anticipate that its key allies and the UN would largely abandon the effort; did they anticipate a nine-year occupation at the cost of several trillion dollars? I could point to similar examples in Afghanistan, in Vietnam, the first Gulf War, hell even Kosovo.  

If there is one lesson that every serious foreign policy analyst should take from the study of armed conflict it is that war is utterly and completely unpredictable. Precisely for this reason if you are going to make the case for war it is essential to argue that truly no other option, short of war, exists. Kroenig doesn't even come close.  He adopts a position that would have made the Johnson and Bush war cabinets proud - 'there is no recourse short of the use of military force.' And even more bizarrely he writes, "attempting to manage a nuclear-armed Iran is not only a terrible option but the worst." How can anyone possibly believe this when the alternative is the initiation of military conflict with all its obvious uncertainties and unknowables? 

As Stephen Walt pithily puts it, "Kroenig makes the case for war by assuming everything will go south if the United States does not attack and that everything will go swimmingly if it does. This is not fair-minded "analysis"; it is simply a brief for war designed to reach a predetermined conclusion."

The thing about this article is that eleven years ago it would have been considered a crazy and easily dismissed polemic. But one would think that after the Iraq disaster there would perhaps be some introspection and humility among those making the case for another war in the Persian Gulf. One would think that there would be perhaps more meditation on whether rosy assumptions about the use of US military force still hold up under the harsh light of scrutiny. 

But alas, instead you get articles like Kroenig's - ones that present the use of military force as both the default position in dealing with international challenges and the ONLY option for protecting and furthering US interests. It makes you wonder if after ten years we have learned anything.

Republican Foreign Policy Mad Libs Posted by David Shorr

For many of those traveling for the holidays, this will involve a long road trip by car. When I was young, the best way to amuse ourselves was Mad Libs. So I thought our Republican friends might enjoy a Mad Libs edition of their foreign policy argument:

This president has been a disaster in foreign policy. That’s because he doesn’t believe in ________________. Over and over again, Pres. Obama

                      Superlative about American greatness 

has acted as if it matters what they think in other countries. He lets foreign leaders believe they can disagree with America and refuse to do what we tell them. 

 

We need a president who will be _________________________ . When

                                  adjective that sounds good when said with set jaw / steely gaze

___________ is president, the rest of the world will understand that they

GOP candidate

can’t run around disobeying the United States.   The key to foreign policy is an unwavering belief in our rightness and policies that drive home our unwillingness to compromise. President ___________ will never allow _________  to do / have __________. 

                                                                                          GOP Candidate                                   bad guy / country                                bad thing

S/he would _______________________________________________

tough-sounding step that might / might not be practical and President Obama may or may not already be doing

 

Most disastrous of all, President Obama has not supported America's allies _________. A Republican

                                                                                                                                                                      Israel

administration would _____________________________. It's obvious that this president doesn't take the threat 

                             action or position that'd be extreme-right even in Israeli politics

of a nuclear-armed Iran seriously, because he hasn't attacked Iran yet.

 

And speaking of wars, it's also obvious that President Obama doesn't understand the need for more of them. Why is he pulling US troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan? As the party that has for decades benefitted politically from an image of being pro-military, we call for presidents to listen to military commanders. Because as it says in the Constitution, the president is the advice-receiver-in-chief. 

My bit of holiday fun for our Republican friends. Hope they enjoy it. Best thing is, none of the mad libs have to have a basis in fact.

Needed: Political and Diplomatic Solutions for Iraq Posted by The Editors

This post by Brian Katulis, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

The series of bombings in Baghdad this morning and a growing political crisis inside of Iraq’s government show that Iraq remains a bitterly divided country along political, ethnic and sectarian lines –- divisions that were downplayed in America’s policy debate over the past few years. Despite all of the talk about smart power and the need to lead through civilian power with diplomatic, political and economic tools in the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, the simple fact of the matter is that the military and security components dominated the Iraq policy debates.

These latest events have prompted some to argue that the Obama administration should have kept troops in Iraq and ignored the deadline set by the security agreement that the Bush administration signed in 2008 with the Iraqi government. 

It is important to keep in mind Iraqi government did not want the United States to stay – as NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel reminded us this morning on the Today  Show, “We did not have a choice to stay in Iraq – the Iraqis threw us out… this is a false debate [about whether we should have stayed]. The US was leaving, the Iraqis wanted us out, and now they are fighting again over the real character of this country.”

The surge in Iraqi nationalism and desire to take back control of their affairs has existed for years now. People forget that in 2006 the Iraqi government initially opposed the surge of U.S. troops that was implemented in 2007. As Michael Abramowitz and Peter Baker reported in the Washington Post, when President George W. Bush flew to Amman, Jordan, and met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki on November 30, 2006 at the Four Seasons Hotel, Maliki and his national security advisor did not want more U.S. troops, just more authority for Iraqi forces. In a PowerPoint presentation, the Iraqis asked that U.S. troops withdraw from outside of Baghdad as a devastating sectarian civil war raged in the capital city -– one that changed the sectarian composition and contributed to a major refugee and internally displaced persons crisis. This is a point worth noting once again because it says something about the intent and motivations of the leadership in the Iraqi government at that time. It also helps provide some understanding about the Iraqi government today, still led by Prime Minister Maliki.

Flash forward towards the end of 2008, when the additional U.S. surge troops started to depart –- and no doubt Iraq had become a more secure country compared to the devastating years of 2005-2007. This was largely due to the increase in Iraqi forces -– as my colleague Larry Korb and I pointed out in this article, the surge of U.S. troops amount to only a 15 percent temporary increase in U.S. troops. Whereas the surge that really mattered was the doubling of the size of the Iraqi security forces during that same period.

By the end of 2008, even though Iraq was less violent, it remained divided politically. As I wrote in this report with some colleagues analyzing Iraq’s enduring internal political divisions as U.S. troops started withdrawing under the Bush administration, “the increased security achieved over the last two years has been purchased through a number of choices that have worked against achieving meaningful political reconciliation. The reductions in violence in 2007 and 2008 have, in fact, made true political accommodation in Iraq more elusive, contrary to the central theory of the surge.”

In other words, the additional troops and money America spent in 2007-2008 in Iraq helped eliminate some very deadly security threats, but it did little to address the core political divisions that Iraq faced –- and continues to face. Instead of motivating Iraqis to deal with their political divisions, the surge ended up freezing those divisions in place.

A few years ago, there was a strong debate about what to do about those Iraqi divides -– Vice President Biden co-wrote a plan with Les Gelb that talked about decentralization and greater autonomy, and the bipartisan Iraq Study Group put regional diplomacy at the core of its ideas. In reports I coauthored, including Strategic Reset, a number of recommendations about placing political reform and regional diplomacy at the core of a strategy to address Iraq’s internal divisions were a key feature. Others argued that the United States could use its military presence and assistance to shape and influence political progress in a conditional engagement strategy.

These ideas were either ignored or were tried half-heartedly, but in any case they failed to produce sustainable results. With Iraq now in the rear view mirror of most Americans, it seems there won’t be much of a debate about what’s likely to happen in Iraq over the coming months. A continued fight over power in Iraq could get even more violent in the coming months. Sending large numbers of U.S. troops back into Iraq seems unlikely -– and it wouldn’t address those core political divisions anyways. What’s been missing for years is the lack of a coherent political and diplomatic strategy for Iraq. The U.S. debate has instead focused on the surface level debate about the number of U.S. troops, rather than the broader elements of power that could shape and influence outcomes in Iraq.

The recent events in Iraq serve to highlight how weak the political and diplomatic elements of the U.S. strategy in Iraq have been -– under both the Bush administration and the Obama administration. It also reminds us that military success or tactical gains produced by counterinsurgency efforts do not necessarily produce sustainable political outcomes on their own, a point worth keeping in mind on Afghanistan. With U.S. troops out of the country, the Americans who remain in the largest diplomatic presence the United States has around the world face daunting challenges. On center stage is the current political crisis in Iraq. The next few months will present one of the most difficult tests of U.S. civilian agencies and the notions of smart power discussed for many years.

Photo: Flickr

The Leon Panetta Is Trying Too Hard Watch Posted by Michael Cohen

At times, I feel a little sorry for Leon Panetta. He just so badly wants everyone to like him! It's so obviously important to Leon that everyone thinks he's tough enough and salty enough to be a Democratic running the American armed forces, well bless his little heart, sometimes he just goes a little overboard.

• There was the time he claimed that Obama was sending troops to Uganda to fight al Qaeda affiliated terrorists
• Or when he said the US was in Iraq because of 9/11 . . .
• . . . at the same time he contradicted the President by saying the US would keep 70,000 troops in Afghanistan after 2014
• That was a doozy
• And remember that time he said that cuts to the defense budget would "invite aggression"
• Or when he suggested that returning the DoD to 2007 budget levels would be "catastrophic," "draconian" "doomsday"-inducing and akin to America "shooting itself in the head." 
• Adorable!
• Oh and then there was two times that he intimated that India might be a threat to the United States
• Boy, DoD really had to backtrack from that one
• Of course my favorite Panetta-ism was when he said that no Democratic President could ever afford to go against military advice
• And keep in mind the guy has only had the job since the summer!

But just in case you were concerned that Leon Panetta would stop putting his foot in his mouth or saying deeply inappropriate and wrong things about US national security . . . you can stop your worrying. 

You see this week, Panetta kept it up at a rapid pace. First he said that because Iraq was now stable (HA!) and "stabilizing factor" in the region (HA!) the US effort there had been "worth it." You see in Panetta-land whenever there is an opportunity to pander to the troops - there is always room to pander more.

Then this week he said this about Iran's nuclear program:

“It would be sometime around a year that they would be able to do it,” he said. “Perhaps a little less.”

Turns out that's not actually true. In fact the recent IAEA report on the subject of Iranian nukes said that Iran has suspended its nuclear program. In what has become a regular occurrence for the DoD press office, Pentagon spokesman George Little was forced to walk back the Sec Def's comments

Panetta also said that Iran's ability to become a nuclear-weapons state could be accelerated if there was “a hidden facility somewhere in Iran that may be enriching fuel” and that an Iranian bomb would be unacceptable and a red line for the United States. Because when there is a chance for Leon Panetta to try to sound as tough as possible - there is always room to sound tougher. 

Robert Gates Channels His Inner David Broder Posted by Michael Cohen

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is apparently unhappy that people in Washington can't get along. Last week in a speech at the Atlantic Council honoring Brent Scowcroft he bemoaned the lack of bipartisanship in Washington and the rise in scorched-earth politics. 

Civility, mutual respect, putting country before self and country before party, listening to and learning from one another, not pretending to have all the answers and not demonizing those with whom we differ: For all the platitudes to the contrary, these virtues, in this town, are – seem to be increasingly quaint, a historic relic to put on display at the Smithsonian next to Mr. Rogers’ sweater or Julia Child’s kitchen. Zero-sum politics and ideological siege warfare are the new order of the day.

So why is this happening? Says Gates it's a result of "structural changes taking root over several decades" including the gerrymandering of congressional districts "to create safe seats for incumbents of both parties, leading to elected representatives totally beholden to their party’s ideological base," and "wave elections" where each party "seized with ideological zeal and the rightness of their agenda" makes compromise impossible, the decline in congressional powerbrokers and finally "a 24/7 digital media environment that provides a forum and wide dissemination for the most extreme and vitriolic views leading, I believe, to a coarsening and a dumbing-down of our national political discourse."

The result says Gates is that at "just at the time this country needs more continuity, more consensus, and, above all, more compromise to deal with our most serious long-term problems, most of the trends are pointing in the opposite direction."

I read things like this and I really wonder what world Bob Gates has been living in for the past several years. What goes unmentioned in this list of woes is the actual reason for dysfunction in Washington - not some made up fantasy world of equal party malfeasance - the unceasing, historic and unprecedented obstructionism of the modern Republican Party.

Any analysis of the problems in Washington that fails to mention this salient factor in DC dysfunction is not an analysis that should be taken seriously at all. Here's a handy chart that I've pilfered from Kevin Drum, which explains this. Virtually this entire increase in use of the filibuster came during periods when Republicans (the one in red) were in the minority.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If one looks closely one will note that the unprecedented rise in the use of the filibuster has precisely coincided with the control of the Senate by Democrats and the Republican party being in the minority. Keep in mind, this chart is from November and since then Republicans filibustered a bill to maintain the payroll tax and the nomination of Richard Cordray to head the newly created Consumer Protection Bureau .  . simply because they don't like the agency.

It is also worth noting that Gates argument claiming gerrymandering is causing polarization in Washington has been regularly disproven by political scientists. Also, it's pretty rich for Bob Gates to be complaining that political parties come into office on political waves and then seek to impose their agendas on the country. I wonder if Gates is familiar with the Democratic president who hired a Republican whose name rhymes with Shmiil Shmates to run the Defense Department. Finally, Gates must have been asleep or otherwise occupied during the many unsuccessful efforts by President Obama to reach out to Republicans on a host of domestic policy issues. This would be familiar to anyone who has been relatively sentient - and living in DC - over the past three years.

There is a simple, not hard to understand explantion for Washington's fundamental dysfunction - Republicans.

Some will say this is a partisan argument. Meh. Pointing out facts is not partisan, particularly since facts have a long history of possessing non-partisan credibility. Moreover, why should this be considered a political argument - Republicans are not exactly hiding from their unprecedented obstructionism. They argue it is a necessary tool to stop Obama and the Democrats. Fine. Under Senate rules that is certainly their right. But let's call this what it is. One party is pretty much single-handedly responsible for the ills that Robert Gates describes about our current political system. For Gates to lump both parties together in this cavalcade of incapacity not only gives Republicans a pass it furthers their agenda to prove to Americans that Washington is a horribly dysfunctional place where nothing can get done. It's a horribly dysfunctional place because Republicans have made it this way.

Why is it so difficult for people to acknowledge this fact?

Remembering the “There Is No Spoon” Tour Posted by The Editors

This post by Price Floyd, who served at the U.S. Department of State from 1989 until 2007.

Yesterday's passing of DPRK leader Kim Jung Il has brought back memories of Secretary Albright’s visit to North Korea in October of 2000. I was on the advance team that arrived a week before the Secretary and stayed until the day after she left.

The title of this blog refers to a quote from The Matrix movie which had just come out the year before and highlights the fact that nothing we saw was authentic or “real.” (For the film clip, see here.)

We arrived in the capitol of Pyongyang via multiple cars and vans that we drove across the DMZ from South Korea. Each of our vehicles had any South Korean or western writing and/or images covered up with tape. This included the license plates and even the Chevy symbols on the car hoods. 

We saw the massive defensive works put in place by the North to thwart any invasion by South Korea -– huge cement boulders that could be rolled into the road way, giant anti-tank barriers, etc. During the entire drive from the DMZ to the capitol there were thousands of people digging a trench along the road with wooden shovel –- not sure why. Not one of them turned around to look at our motorcade, even though we were the only vehicles on the road.

When we arrived at our hotel and checked in, I met a Russian hotel guest who was grateful for our visit as they now had electricity and hot water for the first time since he had been there –- he noted that the power had been turned on the day before our arrival.

We then began a series of visits to a circus (where they used an electric cattle prod to get a bear to “dance,” a dance performance at a fairly small theater, visit to the Great Leaders Mausoleum and a visit to a kindergarten class. We demurred on the need to bring the Secretary to the bear “dance” and the visit to the mausoleum (but I have to admit the glass sarcophagus was pretty cool looking) and had settled on most of the visit being all business and bilateral meetings.

Here is a list of some of the highlights of what actually happened:

When the Secretary’s plane arrived all the reporters had their satellite phones confiscated since the DPRK officials didn’t want uncontrolled information getting out of the country.  NOTE: These were returned after negotiations.

Bilateral meetings did take place and happened at their own pace and schedule.

After several rounds of meetings a senior staff member emerged from the talks and said that the sides had agreed to attend that nights performance of what was described as a gymnastic exhibition at the local stadium.

I was dispatched along with the other advance officer to reconnoiter the site and make sure there all was as it was supposed to be. What we found was a huge stadium filled with tens of thousands of North Koreans practicing what seemed to be cheers. On one side of the stadium directly across from the official seating area there was an entire section devoted to a massive flip card display that rotated through hydroelectric power images (not sure what the fascination is among pseudo-Marxist with hydroelectric power), launching of their latest missile –- the Taepo-dong I think -- and various other impressive totalitarian images.

We could not communicate back to the Secretary’s party as the North Koreans wouldn’t allow us to have repeaters so they wouldn’t work and at the time there was no cell phone coverage in country. Secretary Albright arrived and we sat through what seemed like hours of precision marching, goose stepping, etc… all set to ear piercing traditional North Korean Marxist music (at least it sounded traditional to me).

I also negotiated the return of a camera from NBC Correspondent Andrea Mitchell’s production team as they had gone walking around town without their “minder” and took pictures of people walking out of a barber shop.  Tisk-tisk.

Then there was the final press conference by Secretary Albright. I was standing outside the location and it was pitch black outside as there were no street lights that I could see.  Suddenly, when the Secretary was about five minutes away the street lights did come on.  Then the outside lights of the building across the street, and finally the traffic lights came on (remember there are no cars on the roads). All of a sudden the entire scene looked like a perfectly normal downtown city anywhere in the world. The only problem is that it hadn’t existed five minutes before then.

And the highlight: I was asked to be the protocol person since we had not brought someone to perform those duties. I stood between Secretary Albright and Kim Jung Il as our interpreter explained to the Dear Leader what our gift -– a basketball signed by all of the Chicago Bulls. The Dear Leader seemed appropriately impressed. I can’t remember what his gift was to Secretary Albright as I was intent on not dropping the basketball.

In short while I have no idea what will happen next in North Korea, if past is prologue, what that regime wants to have happen will play a large role.

Photo: Flickr