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. 

Viva La Presidenta: Michelle Bachelet's Chile Posted by Johanna Mendelson Forman

For Michelle Bachelet September 11th is a day to remember.  But it is not the 9/11 of 2001, but the 9/11 of 1973, the day General Augusto Pinochet turned Chile into a dictatorship that crushed the opposition, repressed free speech and disappeared hundreds of innocent victims.  Her life since 1973 is a the history of how a young medical student, daughter of an Air Force General who was murdered by Pinochet,forced into exile, could on March 11, 2006 assume the presidency of Chile.  This personal journey is a tribute to the return of democracy, the importance of women in participating in political change, and a tribute to the personal charisma of Michelle Bachelet.

As part of the largest delegation of women organized by The White House Project, a US organization that supports the election of a women to elected office, I attended the three days of ceremonies that marked this important moment in Chile's history.  The air electric with excitement as Bachelet entered the Congressional chambers on Saturday morning to take the presidential sash from retiring president, Ricardo Lagos.  In the presence of more than 50 heads of state, she became the first woman who achieved the presidency in her own right in South America. Winning 53% of the popular vote, with men and women supporting her Concertacion coalition, she has broken new ground in country where machismo and conservative leanings have long characterized the political class.  It was a day of joy for women, for victims of the dictatorship, and it opened a new era for women as Bachelet promised and implemented a parity cabinet, with a 50/50 gender mix.

Has Competence Returned? Posted by Gordon Adams

To hear the pundits tell it, competence and reason have returned to US national security policy. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, it is said, leads the charge, ably supported by National Security Advisor Steve Hadley, with Secretary Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney in eclipse. Policy will now competently balance the various instruments of statecraft and reach out to the international community for the kind of support US national security policy needs to be effective in the 21^st Century.

Evidence: the careful march to the UN Security Council on Iran; the President’s call for greater international cooperation in Iraq, Secretary Rice’s proposals for diplomatic transformation and the reform of foreign assistance, among others.

The just is out, however and the database for remaining confused and uncertain about our national direction is large and wide-ranging. The Middle East/Gulf region is at the very top. In Iraq, a civil conflict is underway – muted as it may appear, in part because it is hard for reporters to get at the hard news. Even Amb. Khalilzad seems discouraged by the demons let loose by the US invasion and occupation. As for Iran, the move to the UN carries echoes of how we walked into Iraq, though the international community is being held together a bit better. Rather than “jaw, jaw, jaw,” our diplomacy and that of the Iranians has taken on a schoolyard tone: “If you do this, I’ll do that.”

Khalilzad Says What the Administration Won't On Permanent Bases In Iraq Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Juan Cole quotes US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad as saying in an interview with al Hayat as telling sectarian opponents of the US presence that:  "We don't want to stay in Iraq."  He's apparently concluded that one way to tamp down the hostility toward the American military, and perhaps even political tensions more broadly, is to reassure the relevant parties that America does not intend to station its military permanently in the country.  But President Bush and and Secretary Rumsfeld have never given such assurances, and - as Kevin Drum has reported - are instead allocating resources to build up what are said to be permanent military installations. 

Right now Khalilzad's efforts are about the only thing standing between Iraq and full-scale sectarian warfare.  Why won't the Administration support him by officially disavowing any intention to build permanent bases?

Caught in the Middle of An Iraqi Civil War Posted by Suzanne Nossel

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that the only thing worse than civil war in Iraq was civil war in Iraq with 130,000 American troops serving there.  This weekend, after a couple of weeks of relative calm, things blew up again with six simultaneous bombings in crowded markets in Shiite areas.  Shiite militiamen are out on the street and the fear is that this will spark a rash of sectarian violence akin to the outbreak triggered by the bombing of a Shiite temple three weeks ago, and maybe worse.  All this coincides with the planned drawdown of US troops starting this Spring.   

If sectarian violence flares up untamed, what will the US do?  It's been obvious for a long time that the consequences of Iraq becoming a failed state are so severe that the US must do everything in its power to avoid that outcome.  It's equally clear that the US's strategy - despite several reincarnations - has not placed Iraq on a trajectory toward stability.  It increasingly looks as though, despite the best efforts of our military and some improvements in American tactics, Iraq is sliding in the wrong direction. 

The worst thing about this is that now, with Iraq descending into chaos, even if everyone agreed that our presence was doing no good, it would be virtually impossible to leave.  Last fall, when John Murtha called for US withdrawal and the Center for American Progress argued for redeployment elsewhere in the region, drawing down struck many as premature and faint-hearted.  If we leave as Iraq descends directly into mass-killings, however, it will look even worse: unconscionable and craven, an invitation for Iran to have its way.  Given the Administration's rhetoric over the last few months, I can't see it happening.