The Same Old Song: The 2006 National Security Strategy Posted by Gordon Adams

I can’t close out this round of guest blogging without discussing the newly released national security strategy. The release may be new, but the lyrics and tune are quite familiar. The new strategy is largely a retread of the old one, with some reshuffling and a data dump from the past four years.

The verses have been shuffled a bit. Compared to the 2002 strategy, today’s “first pillar” of US national security strategy is: “promoting freedom, justice, and human dignity – working to end tyranny, to promote effective democracies, and to extend prosperity through free and fair trade and wise development policies.” Democracy has now become the key to every other goal: international stability, an end to regional conflicts, ending terrorism, and ensuring economic growth. The American national religion is now the global religion, even to the point of the strategy adopting Morton Halperin’s flagship concept – the Community of Democracies. And there is a new focus on “ending tyranny,” with specific countries targeted by the strategy: Iran, the DPRK, Syria, Cuba, Belarus, Burma, and Zimbabwe. Interesting choices – no Central Asian country made the list.

In some ways, this is nothing new. Ronald Reagan wanted to expand democracy; Bill Clinton made enlarging the family of democracies a centerpiece of his policy, as well. Democracy is, by and large, a good thing; only tyrants (and neo-authoritarian regimes like Russia) think it is dangerous.  And, neither the US nor any other country has a great track record at making it happen, especially outside the industrialized, well-educated, middle class world of countries, most which (Japan, Germany, the Czech Republic) already had some experience of democracy.

Moreover, the list of success stories for this goal, as cited in the strategy, is a bit thin, even questionable. Afghanistan – elections, yes, and war lords, narcotics, and a rising resistance from Taliban remnants. Iraq – well, more on that in a moment. Then we go into the weeds of “progress toward”democracy: Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt (where the US promotion campaign has basically been told to take a hike), Kuwait, and Morocco, all said to be “pursuing agendas of reform.” From there, we are down to otherwise unidentified countries in continents – Africa (including Uganda’s President-apparently-for-life Yoweri Museveni?), Latin America (where democracy was already pretty well rooted), and Asia.

Understanding the Civil War in Iraq Posted by Michael Signer

Even those of us who are reasonably well-informed and paying close attention to Iraq are desperately in need of facts -- those boring things -- to help make sense of the maddening Chinese water torture rhythm of violence there.

But in trying to figure out what's actually going on inside Iraq, it is almost impossibly difficult to wade through the surges of rhetoric from both sides (the right's idealism, the left's pessimism).  There's a fog of war on both sides.

We can finally get a few answers in a searching, thoughtful, and thoroughly chilling interview with Nir Rosen in Foreign Policy (and it's a Web exclusive, so anyone can read it).

Instead of engaging in the meta-debate of who's-right-who's-wrong-in-America, Rosen just plainly tells us what's going on in Iraq on the ground.  For starters, the violence against Americans is only incidentally against America -- a civil war really has started inside the country, and it's just on low burn now.  As Rosen writes:

Posted by The Editors

Is the Tail wagging the Dog? “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”, a Harvard University sponsored working paper by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.

Business As Usual? How Defense Decisions Are Made Posted by Gordon Adams

I have observed several times that the Pentagon’s recent Quadrennial Defense Review was, in fact three reviews stapled together. QDR I is a discursive and interesting speculation on how the world in which the military operates has changed. The threats are now rarely a peer competitor or major regional hegemon, armed to the teeth and challenging US dominance. Instead, they are asymmetrical – catastrophic attacks by small groups, insurgencies by enemies of our friends, terrorists attacking any available target, groups that would destabilize governments we support.

These threats come in smaller doses, some with significant consequences, if they succeed. The military response requires different forces from most of the ones we still have, as Iraq and Afghanistan are demonstrating – smaller ground forces units, larger and more agile special forces, enhanced human and technical intelligence, more unmanned ways of gaining intelligence and supporting forces. Pretty much unarguable stuff.

QDR II, which is echoed in the newly released National Strategy Review, is about how the US military cannot go alone in this new world, cannot conduct stabilization and peacekeeping missions on its own, and cannot carry out reconstruction as a purely military mission. It calls for stronger civilian capabilities in our own government and willing participation from far more allies than stepped up in Iraq in order to succeed. Again, a lesson drawn from recent experience.

QDR III, though, is the one that really matters. The strategic and budgetary rubber hits the road in force planning and acquisition, acquiring the capabilities we need to meet these new missions. QDR III appears to have been written by somebody other than the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and makes minimal reference to the other two. Here we find little discussion about how to incorporate forces of other nations, or their equipment, into US planning and little focus on tradeoffs between the new missions and the forces we have been buying for decades.

Conservatives and National Security:Their Philosophical Blind Spot Posted by Lorelei Kelly

It's not just the majority in Congress that is stifling open discussion. Word is that before today's vote on the Iraq supplemental (tipping the cost of war over $400 billion), Democrats were told during their party caucus that amendments were strongly discouraged.  That's discouraging.  Especially when we need to put every national security item on the table for scrutiny. With the budget train rolling along on rims, this better happen fast or all opportunity for informed trade-offs will disappear (like defeating incoming missiles with ramped up port security instead of non-functional missile shields in Alaska).

Stifling debate also limits the kinds of questions that will lead liberals back to a governing philosophy based on convictions of progress and ideas about problem-solving. Take the missed opportunity behind the now shelved Dubai port deal. The political point scoring didn't leave much time for much needed and ultimately more important questions: What is the essential role of government today? What are the limits of capitalism? Given the free-market cult that has dominated conservative circles for 30 years, taking responsibility for this discussion would liberate Democrats as an opposition party, and enable them to return to their roots when they have huge cover for boring old issues of government competence (As Atrios points out, the word Americans now associate with the Bush Administration is "incompetence").

Posted by The Editors

What do Vernon Jordan and Rudy Giuliani have in common? Apparently, Congress believes they will be able to provide “fresh eyes” with regards to the war in Iraq. Along with Co-Chairs, James A. Baker and Lee Hamilton, the congressionally chartered U.S. Institute for Peace and three non-partisan think tanks have launched the “Iraq Study Group”.

Human Rights Council: You Say Yes, I Say No Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Today the US was virtually the lone dissenter as the UN Human Rights Council was voted into being to replace the body's discredited Human Rights Commission.  We've had plenty of posts here on the issues surrounding the composition and credibility of the Council. 

The compromise terms of reference adopted for the Council manifestly fall short of what both the US government and most human rights advocates wanted to see, particularly in terms of ensuring that the Council's membership excludes human rights violators, and those who intend to use the Council for political point-scoring rather than to advance the cause of human rights.

Here's how Ambassador John Bolton put it: 

We must not let history remember us as the architects of a council that was a ‘compromise’ and merely ‘the best we could do’ rather than one that ensured doing ‘all we could do’ to promote human rights

This is a statement that, at least a few weeks ago, most human rights NGOs would have agreed with.

Bolton also said, however, that the US intends to work with the new Council, and will agree to fund it.

So here's the question, given that the new Council is not all it could or should have been, was it right for the US to cast a protest vote reiterating its principled reservations?  After all, why should the US acquiesce in mediocrity and half-measures when it comes to something as important as human rights?

The Politics of Incoherence: Congress and Foreign Policy Spending Posted by Gordon Adams

I have been making the argument in these blogs that we need to consider all the instruments of statecraft, balance their funding, and operate them in an integral way for the US to have an effective national security strategy. Yesterday I was hard on the administration for failing to do so, both because defense planning has abandoned discipline to the false comfort of supplementals, and because the budget for diplomacy and foreign assistance lacks a sense of strategic integration.

I want to give equal time to the Congress, however, for making an integrated and strategic view of national security resources virtually impossible. We have a classic case of this coming into view this week. Both the House and the Senate are rushing to produce an overall budget plan that is different from the President’s. They are moved by broader considerations than national security, of course; principally the growing sense among Republicans that federal spending is out of control and the party that was once the party of fiscal conservatism is going to pay for that profligate deficits next November.

But this rush to prove fiscal integrity is going to give major heartburn to anyone who feels that spending on diplomacy and foreign assistance ought to be an integral part of our national security strategy. The Budget Committees intend to cut federal spending, especially “domestic spending.” Most of it is, indeed, domestic, but Sen. Judd Gregg’s committee has reported a resolution that would include a cut of $2 b. from the President’s $35 b. request for “international affairs.” The full Senate will vote on this proposal when it takes up the full budget resolution this Thursday.

Israeli Elections: Candidates and Cottage Cheese Posted by Gayle Meyers

Israelis will go to the polls on March 28 to elect new leadership (or to re-elect old leadership.) Campaign commercials pit a talking sperm against an ostrich with his head in the sand, and the ghost of Entebbe hero Yonatan Netanyahu against the hovering spirit of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who suffered a stroke on January 5, 2006, and has been in a coma ever since. The silliness of the ads cannot disguise the different visions that candidates are offering to the public, not only on domestic issues but on issues that could shape the future of peace and war in the Middle East.

Sharon’s party, Kadima, which he formed shortly before his illness, is now in the hands of former Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert. It is leading in the polls but is fighting for votes with Labor on its left and Likud on its right.

Israel is a parliamentary democracy in which political parties contend for seats in the 120-member parliament, or Knesset. The party that wins the most seats gets to form a government. Its leader becomes the prime minister and the political leader of the nation. (There is a president, but his post is mostly ceremonial.) A March 9 poll gave Kadima a leading 37 seats, with 19 going to Labor and 17 to Likud. Smaller parties, with agendas ranging from civil rights for Israel’s Arab minority to ensuring the role of traditional Judaism in the country’s law and educational systems, vie to become part of the governing coalition.

Electioneering here is a funny mix of slick and simple. The public election system gives every party a certain amount of television and radio airtime, and the ads started running last week. There is some handwringing about whether political candidates can or should be “sold like cottage cheese.” As an American used to short soundbites and attack ads sponsored by shadowy interest groups, not only is the answer to this question an obvious “yes,” but I find the ads to be remarkably long and full of information.

Dealing with Evil to End Evil Posted by Derek Chollet

The death of Slobodan Milosevic has sparked loads of commentary, looking both forward and back: about the future of Serbia and international war crimes tribunals, whether reconciliation in the Balkans will ever be possible, and the West’s failures in that region during the 1990s.

But when thinking about the practice of American foreign policy, Milosevic’s ugly legacy -- and the ways we used him to end the war he had started in Bosnia -- illustrates one of the greater challenges of statecraft.  Throughout the Dayton negotiations in 1995 and far into implementation, American diplomats bargained with--and to a great extent relied upon--individuals like Milosevic, who bore direct responsibility for the worst crimes against humanity in Europe since the end of World War II.  While Milosevic would not be indicted for war crimes until 1999, the Americans knew at the time that his hands were dirty, placing them in the moral dilemma of dealing with evil to end evil.

Such dilemmas were hardly new to international diplomacy or unique to the Balkans.  The architect of America’s Balkan policy during the 1990s, Richard Holbrooke, often cites the example of Raoul Wallenberg and Folke Bernadotte, two Swedish leaders who negotiated with two of the most notorious Nazis, Adolf Eichmann and Heinrich Himmler, during World War II to save thousands of Jews.  For years, American diplomats also negotiated with figures like Yasir Arafat, or even once worked with and supported dictators like Iraq’s Saddam Hussein against mutual enemies like Iran.

Yet these precedents did not make the dilemma any less troubling – then or now.