Secrets Overshadow Rice Visit to Europe Posted by Julianne Smith

Derek Chollet has asked me to guest blog this week.  Who am I?  Click here. 

Anytime transatlantic tensions have soared in recent years, Atlanticists on both sides of the pond have found solace in the fact that counter-terrorism cooperation between the two continents remains rock steady.  Even at the height of the Iraq debate, when the French were creating a multipolar moment with the Germans and the Russians in an attempt to block the U.S. invasion, French and American security officials were busily sharing intelligence on suspected terrorist cells, ironing out extradition agreements, and strengthening judicial cooperation.  No matter how many times the headlines have said we hate each other, no matter how many polls have highlighted our “values gap,” and no matter how loud the shouting has become at Munich’s annual security conference,  the counter-terrorism community has slogged on.   

But new accusations about secret prisons in Europe run by the CIA, coupled with other concerns about U.S. policy on torture and rendition, now threaten to erode the mainstay of transatlantic security cooperation.  American policymakers have been inundated with requests for more information on the so-called “black sites,” and the EU has launched an official investigation, threatening to suspend the voting rights of any EU member state that is found to have hosted such sites.  Unlike past transatlantic debates over the EU arms embargo or Iran, this one threatens to damage the Teflon-coated world of intelligence sharing and law enforcement cooperation across the Atlantic.  Intelligence sharing between Europe and the United States certainly won’t grind to a halt but European political elites are coming under increasing pressure from their angry publics to distance themselves from any U.S. practices that infringe on human rights and international law.  That spells trouble for European intelligence officers who cannot say with certainty how the intelligence they share will be used by their U.S. counterparts. 

In an effort to preempt the barrage of questions she will face on the subject in Europe this week, Secretary Rice hosted a press conference yesterday just before her plane left Andrews Air Force Base.  But her broad reassurances that the U.S. does not condone torture and promises to look into the matter are unlikely to prevent this black cloud from following the Secretary across Germany, Belgium, Ukraine, and Romania.  The Europeans want details and dialogue – two things the State Department isn’t providing at the moment.  Until that changes, attempts to focus on any of the multiple items on our common transatlantic agenda will be tough. 

Daniel Benjamin (who just wrote a great piece in Time tied to this subject) and I leave for Holland later today for a dialogue with Europeans on terrorism-related issues.  Time allowing, I will report back with fresh insight from the land of wooden shoes.

Thinking about the Insurgents Posted by Michael Signer

One silver lining in the stormclouds of the public outcry about American policy in Iraq might be a public push to make our leaders think harder, and more accurately, about just what's going on in Iraq.  Just last week, Donald Rumsfeld explained the motivations of the insurgents in Iraq as religiously motivated: 

"These people aren't trying to promote something other than disorder, and to take over that country and turn it into a caliphate and then spread it around the world."

But it looks like Rumsfeld just might be dead wrong about the motivations of the insurgents.  Is it any surprise that a faith-based Administration would make the mistake of assuming our enemies are motivated solely by faith?

A Looming UN Crisis Posted by Morton H. Halperin

Having spent most of Friday at the United Nations headquarters in New York, I am much more pessimistic about the chances for reaching agreement on a new human rights council.  More alarming, I fear that the US is precipitating a crisis which will further weaken American ability to lead and which could debilitate the UN. 

As reported in an editorial in the New York Times on Friday,  John Bolton has informed his colleagues that the United States will only support an interim three month budget for the UN and will accept a longer budget only after the US reform agenda is implemented.   This position has provoked a sense of alarm in New York, causing the Secretary General to cancel a long-planned trip to Asia.   With the possible exception of Japan, the US position has no significant support. UN officials say that the UN will run out of money by late February if this course is adopted.

Perm Reps from friendly nations, deeply involved in these negotiations, believe that Bolton went directly to the President (perhaps through the Vice President) and that the Secretary of State was told by the President that the US would not budge from its opposition to adopting the regular UN budget this month.

So much for the promise to the Senate that Bolton would simply be an Ambassador taking orders from the State Department. Only a concerted counter-attack from supporters of the UN, in the administration, the Congress, and the public, can prevent a train wreck.

UN Election Chief Perelli Ousted on Eve of Iraq Polling Posted by Suzanne Nossel

I just stumbled on this while previewing tomorrow's New York Times:  Carina Perelli, head of the UN's election arm expects to be dismissed Monday as a result of a management review that found she demeaned staffers and created a work environment rife with sexual innuendo.

I have no idea if the charges, which Perelli vehemently denies but have been around for a while, are true.   But whether this is a case of grave managerial abuse or a errant cabal out to get one of the UN's rising stars, the development is bad news for both the UN and for those who support it.

Thanks in no small part to Perelli, running elections has emerged as one of the UN's core competencies, and a task that - because of its international credibility - the organization is well-placed to carry out virtually anywhere in the world when outside assistance is needed.  Back in May election assistance made my list of the Top 10 Things the UN Does Well.

The charges against Perelli have been around since at least March.   Yet she claims not to have ever been approached about the possibility of quietly resigning.  Why not?  If there was no choice but ouster, why not do the deed over the summer when the highest-profile elections were months away?  Or wait until January when all the Iraqi ballots are counted and attention has turned away?

In light of the high stakes associated with maintaining the public image of one of its most effective arms, an entity set apart from oil for food and the UN's other scandals, its hard to imagine Kofi Annan could not have avoided the equivalent of the army ousting the commanding officer a week before the planned invasion is to start.   

Governments, corporations and organizations are constantly faced with the problem of easing out bad managers.   There are ways of doing these things that avoid firestorms, and the UN has faced far to many scandals not to have developed tactics to avoid this needless Perelli embarrassment.

As Mort discussed Friday one reason US Ambassador John Bolton is counterproductive at the UN is that he is so frustrated with the organization's failures that his rash, impracticable proposals for change go nowhere and actually impede tangible progress.  I will address this point in relation to the UN budget debate later this week.  But in the meantime, its worth remembering that while his tactics are often singularly ineffectual, Bolton's frustration is not without some basis.

Iraq: Bush Begging for Benchmarks Posted by Suzanne Nossel

I am returning to an idea of a few weeks ago, because President Bush has asked for it. Instead of benchmarks for withdrawal from Iraq, we should adopt benchmarks for staying in.  We need regular measurements to assess if the Bush Administration's strategy, announced this week, is working.  In its bullet-pointed “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq” the Administration invited benchmarking, telling the public that:

We track numerous indicators to map the progress of our strategy . . . Detailed reports . . . are issued weekly, monthly, and quarterly . . . Americans can read and assess these reports to get a better sense of what is being done in Iraq and the progress being made on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

But the reports the document links to (see the links here) are a lot to wade through and, in some cases, offer more public affairs-style puffery than hard metrics.  Having been urged to audit the Administration, we should take up the offer but choose our own measures of progress.

Consider a private corporation.  Right now, most Americans would consider the Iraq war a failed business venture, losing more than its gaining.  In a corporation, management of a failing venture might get a chance to turn it around, but would be watched closely on whether their turnaround plan is paying off.

Now, Robert McNamara got into trouble thinking that the management principles he learned at Ford Motor Company would win the Vietnam War. But here are a few quantitative measures we ought to track to see whether Bush’s strategy is working. I’ve included only measures that seem to get reported monthly – if you cannot track the benchmark, its no use. Here at Democracy Arsenal we’ll return to these 9 benchmarks periodically.

"We are losing." Posted by Heather Hurlburt

"We are losing. Four years and two wars after September 11, 2001, the United States is no closer to victory in the 'war on terror.' In fact, we are unwittingly clearing the way for the next attack."

So opens the new book by my old colleagues Dan Benjamin and Steve Simon, The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting It Right.  (They're the guys who brought you The Age of Sacred Terror a couple years back.)

You can check out their argument -- and poke holes in it, if you like -- tomorrow, when Dan Benjamin will hold forth live at 5pm EST on Monday, December 5 over at Campusprogress.org.**  I haven't read this one yet, but anybody who's not afraid to come out and say that we aren't winning deserves attention.  In addition to being a leading terror wonk, Dan is a former reporter AND fellow recovering speechwriter, which means his books are if not enjoyable (given the subject) at least highly readable.

But don't take my word for it -- check Dan out tomorrow.

**and yes, Campus Progress is, like Democracy Arsenal, an initiative of/with the Center for American Progress.  If you like us, you'll love Campus Progress.  If you love to argue with us, you'll love arguing with Dan in real time.

10 more Posted by Michael Signer

CNN and MSNBC are both reporting that 10 Marines were killed today by a homemade bomb... DOD doesn't have it up on their site yet though. 

So unbelievably painful -- and this one seems somehow worse -- such a large number, and they're Marines, and it all comes after the President's speech...

I've been accused recently of occasionally being snarky, and I suppose I concede the point.  But all I really have to offer now is my recollection of audible dismay (something between a gasp and a sigh) when I checked CNN's page. 

I hate where we're at, that all we have to choose between are equivalently poor options, and that our soldiers (and, man, do I admire Marines) are suffering for it all.  For me, this isn't about party.  It's about my wounded pride in our great nation, and a sense of rage at this death by a thousand (now over 2,100) gashes.

John Bolton and the UN Human Rights Council Posted by Morton H. Halperin

What is John Bolton up to?  Is he conducting his own policy or is he taking orders from the State Department, as promised? 

With attention focused on Iraq, these questions have not gotten the attention they deserve.  Mr. Bolton has been off on his own suggesting that voluntary contributions should substitute for UN dues and that the US will soon start looking for other ways to work with friendly governments if the UN does not reform.

On one key issue -- the creation of a new Human Rights Council -- the evidence is mixed.  After jeopardizing success on this and other issues in his now famous rewrite of the consensus statement of world leaders,  Bolton has largely stayed out of the fight over the creation of the new Council, giving the lead to officials from the State Department.

As the negotiations come to a head over the next two weeks, one can only hope that he will remain on the sidelines and that the Administration will use its influence to secure a favorable outcome.

Misunderstanding Iraq/Recommendations for U.S. Policy Posted by Morton H. Halperin

Yahia Said is Director of the Open Society Institute's Iraq Revenue Watch and a Research Fellow at the London School of Economics' Centre for the Study of Global Governance.  The son of an Iraqi journalist and leading Iraqi feminist - who was imprisoned by Saddam Hussein - Said left Iraq in 1979.  He specializes on issues of post-totalitarian and post-conflict transition, and is starting a research project at LSE analyzing the post-Saddam transition in Iraq.  He travels to Iraq regularly to meet activists, intellectuals, political and spiritual leaders and ordinary citizens.  He has written an interesting analysis of the situation in Iraq that puts forth concrete recommendations for U.S. policy. I have posted the piece below:

Summary:  Many of the seemingly intractable problems the United States faces in Iraq stem from a series of fundamental misunderstandings about the situation and the views of Iraqis. Following is an attempt at a more accurate assessment of what is happening and policy suggestions which could improve the situation and, most importantly, lay the groundwork for a US withdrawal.

The United States faces a series of related problems in Iraq.  They are:

• A majority of Iraqis perceive US troops as a threat, particularly in Sunni Arab areas where counterinsurgency efforts are becoming part of a sectarian conflict.

• Unreserved US endorsement of the actions of the Iraqi government, its security structures and militias implicates the US in the government's failings, corruption and its emerging authoritarian tendencies

• The US approach to Iraqi politics is seen as contributing to the emergence and entrenchment of sectarianism.

• Open-ended presence of US troops prevents many Iraqis from joining the fight against terror.

Recommendations for US Policy

To address these challenges, the United States should:

• Acknowledge the ineffectiveness of large scale counterinsurgency operations and refrain from using heavy weapons in residential areas.

• Openly condemn human rights violations, authoritarian tendencies, sectarianism, corruption (especially in the oil sector), and incompetence by Iraqi officials.

• Return to a robust approach to the building of Iraqi security structures in particular in relation to ethnic composition and the militias.

• Intensify efforts to bridge differences on constitutional issues and develop a charter which better represents the aspirations of all Iraqis.

• Engage with cross-ethnic, non-political initiatives aimed at addressing the constitution’s main weaknesses in regards to federalism, women’s rights and oil.

• Use every opportunity to reaffirm US commitment to Iraq’s territorial integrity.   

• Negotiate a roadmap for redeployment of US troops within a framework that reintegrates nationalist insurgents and unites Iraqis in the fight against Al-Qaeda.

The Iraq Document we Should be Reading Posted by Lorelei Kelly

What did I think of the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq --the NCVI?  As a war plan, what's not to like? Only problem is that this document should have been ready in October 2002, after the US Congress voted for the war.  In fact, the content reminds me of a strategy paper written by Army academics in January 2003 called Reconstructing Iraq:Challenges and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario.

This strategy paper had over 100 necessary tasks listed for US post-war planning.  I remember attending a January 03 briefing with the somber authors as they laid out the tremendous chore we were hurtling toward.   They went unheeded like many of the reality-brakes on the war policy.  If our civilian leadership had listened to the military back then, we wouldn't have fought this war.  But nobody likes a crank wearing a uniform. It messes up the photo op.  Here's a good post on the NCVI

Can't resist a little snark: I rolled my eyes when I read the details of the political strategy in the NSVI document. It includes:  nurture a culture of reconciliation, Human Rights and transparency, cooperation across religious divides, focus on issues and platforms instead of identity.  The manly Karl Rove must have been holding a live chain-saw and eating raw hamburger as he proofed it.   I must remember to take a scrolled copy of these political instructions and hammer them on the door of the Republican National Committee next time I'm on the Hill--advice just in time for the 06 elections.

In the shadow of the attention hogging National Strategy, a really important Defense Department document was released yesterday--one that represents a silver lining for our time spent in Iraq.  The Stability Operations Directive  that has been on the verge of being signed for weeks is now done.  I need to read it closely, but here are my first impressions: