So, what now? Posted by Derek Chollet

I’ve tried to stay away from the Bolton mess, feeling that there were already enough cooks in that kitchen.  And now that he is out of Committee and we’re in the often murky land of Senate floor procedure, the nomination will be largely dependent on how the nuclear politics of judges plays out.  It seems to me that if the Republicans are smart they will try to jam a vote in next week before any action on judges; otherwise, the Dems will hold him up – along with many other pieces of Senate business -- in the nuclear winter that would follow the vote on the filibuster.

So for us, it’s not too early to look ahead: after Bolton, what will progressives turn to?  On this score I was sobered to read this piece by Anatol Lieven, the Carnegie Endowment scholar, which appeared in last week’s Financial Times.  For years he has been a staunch critic of both conservatives and progressives in foreign policy, and in this article he makes the case that by a mixture of idealism and old-school realism (meaning a revisionist policy in the Middle East combined with a fairly status quo policy elsewhere), the Bush Administration has left progressives with little to talk about:

“By stealing the Democrats' Wilsonian trousers while avoiding further international adventures, the Republicans have almost paralysed their opponents. Except when a Bolton comes along to concentrate their attention, internal Democratic discussions on foreign policy at present are generally a mixture of nitpicking, imitation and confusion.”

Now, there’s a lot I disagree with Lieven about – in this article and elsewhere – but he does have a point.  I think we at DA and many others have shown that we are capable of far more than nitpicking, but let’s face it, we’re hardly the core of progressive America – in fact, that’s why blogs like DA exist!  In the past few months, the only time progressives have really gotten it together across-the-board in foreign policy is against someone like Bolton.  So after this is over, maybe as early as next week, what will we turn to next?  We need to ensure that the Bolton debate was the start of something, not the end.

Dispatch this Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Just a quick reply to Joseph Britt on Belgravia Dispatch.   Joseph points out that whereas some - Europeans for example -  around the world react to events like the abuses at Abu Ghraib thinking they are at odds with American ideals, others - e.g. in the Muslim world - see such actions as of a piece with our mores and culture.

I actually think both groups see such behavior as some of both.  Yes, its hypocritical in that we talk a good game about human rights, and yet show signs of being unwilling to confront abuses when they occur within our own ranks.  At the same time, they tie the deviance to what they both see (though in differing degrees) as negative features of our culture - boorishness, lack of respect for tradition, moral looseness, glorification of violence.   

These two reactions and the tension between them is itself linked to what they see as contradictions in our society and signs that - Abu Ghraib aside - we are not what we purport to be.  We will confront perceptions of our own hypocrisy and disingenuousness almost no matter what we do.  But events like Abu Ghraib and the latest Koran flushing at Guantanamo only feed into these and make life harder for those charged with getting U.S. policies implemented.

Supporting State Posted by Michael Signer

The rash of violence in Iraq continues, with two Iraqi officials assassinated and 18 more dead yesterday -- an insurgency driven at least in part by local resentment driven by a lack of trust in the occupying forces.  The same dynamic's in place in Afghanistan, too, where there was a massive anti-American riot yesterday. 

Local understanding, based on patient, long-term knowledge of local politics and culture, and long-range thinking about trends and attitudes toward America -- does this sound like a job for (a) the military?  Or (b) professional diplomats at the State Department?

If you answered (b), you win the prize.

Last night, I was at a dinner with Lorelei, several Hill staffers, and an Army officer who has been involved in the reconstruction of Iraq.  The conversation -- over middling but cheerfully served Greek food right near Capitol Hill -- circled around several topics, but most consistently returned to a single glaring focal point:  America lacks a professionalized diplomatic corps to put in place long-term planning and strategy for the world's hot spots.  And our politicians too often lack the will to sell diplomacy to their constituents.

Abu Ghraib and Its Aftermath Posted by Suzanne Nossel

My latest posting on the Drezner blog deals with Abu Ghraib and the long-term implications it may have for American credibility and influence.  I make the point that incidents like Abu Ghraib, coupled with a fairly hollow effort to show that the abuses bore no link to wider policies and cultural factors within the military plays right into the hands of those trying to weaken American influence around the world.

Belgravia Dispatch (Joseph Britt) agrees with me, but points out that such debates will play out in the Londons and Ottawas of the world, not in the streets of Damascus or Ramadi.  I am not sure I understand his point.  He writes: 

What I'm suggesting is that Suzanne's view of the prisoner abuse scandal essentially as a series of policy errors damaging to America's image overseas most accurately reflects opinion in countries other than the ones we are now trying to spread freedom and liberty in. In many of these, America is distrusted not only because it seems we do not mean what we say but also because it seems that we do; not all the things they dislike or distrust about us are the things we think they might or ought to.

I am not sure if he is trying to say that the cultural lenses through which American actions are interpreted in the Muslim world are so thick and distorted that there's little we can do to control our image there.  If that's the point, I think there's some truth to it but that its becoming less true every day.

I don't have proof for this (and I haven't yet thought through whether or how it may have played out over Abu Ghraib) , but my intuition is that the Canadian-European-Australian etc. vantage point on American actions is emerging as a kind of filter through which other parts of the world are also evaluating us.  In other words, if the Europeans are behind something we do, the Arab world - even if predisposed against he particular policy - is almost forced to take another look at it.  They know that if the French haven't found anything to criticize, what we are doing is probably justifiable.

Likewise, if Canada et al decry something, that feeds into the sense in the Arab world that America, once again, is on a power trip or is acting at odds with the Western ideals it purports to uphold. 

In this way, the view of our "friends" (think of someone you went to high school with and still share a deep bond with, but who has irritated you a lot in recent years) may matter more than it used to - - they usually won't themselves act in overtly hostile ways toward us, but others who are listening to them might.

The filter works through debates in the UN corridors, diplomatic ties between all these countries and through the likes of CNN international, BBC, al Jazeera, and maybe even the blogosphere.

Anyway, I'm not sure I got Joseph's point right, but maybe he'll care to clarify.

Life in the Kool Aid Jacuzzi Posted by Lorelei Kelly

Small steps forward for the UN: In the interests of documenting UN reform, how's this?:  Recently Kemal Dervis was named head of the United Nations Development Programme despite financial enticements offered to the organization by two other nations with candidates in the running, Japan and Norway. Meritocracy worked.

I agree with Derek about the need for Members of Congress and their staffs to travel abroad. The more international perspectives we can get on Capitol Hill, the better. As a Hill staffer, I experienced both the boondoggle and the worthy educational tour. Sometimes they were truly over-the-top. Awhile back, I was on a trip to view some very expensive military hardware with a group of (mostly Republican) staff. It was like being the Greenpeace observer on a tuna boat--with the crew eating roasted dolphin for dinner. Unbelievable. Over the course of a week, defense industry lobbyists in tow, I found out how easy it was to go from drinking the kool-aid to full-out swimming in the kool-aid jacuzzi. Eeeuw! I had to shower for a week when I returned.  But most of the international trips were to rainy Brussels in January to discuss NATO or the European constitution. Not too sexy, but very helpful.

Congress insanity:  The Hill --when not fleeing incoming cessnas-- is going through its yearly appropriations process--the time when the money is doled out.
Here's how distorted the oversight and budgeting procedure has become: The State Department requests funding through the Defense budget because it is so beleagured and unsupported that it can't get the funding in its own right.  Then the Defense Department transfers the money back to State.  Why? Because Congress only really wants to fund military spending.

Why is our policy making process so out of whack, despite the many warnings from all quarters, criticisms from greybeard Republicans and promises to improve heard across the government? I'm relying once again on the social sciences for an explanation.  Remember intro psychology? More to the point, remember the Stockholm Syndrome?  It is commonly known as identifying with the hostage taker--named after an incident in Sweden in 1973.

Well, both political parties are presently stuck in a sort of Stockholm Syndrome of defense policy, captured by President Bush, his right wing allies, and cowed by his main policy theme: inspirational fear.

Captives of Stockholm Syndrom begin to identify with their captors initially as a defensive mechanism, out of fear of retribution and based on the idea that the captor will not hurt those who cooperate (They won't run those awful ads in my district.) Small acts of kindness by the captor are magnified and are cause for groveling or rationalization (I feel queasy, but, well, he did go to the UN, so let's go ahead and approve of pre-emptive war in Iraq by 77-23 in the Senate and 296-133 in the House.) Capitives also vociferously defend the hostage taker (Zell Miller at the convention.) Rescue attempts are seen as a threat (Quit giving me all those namby pamby alternatives, traitor!)

Putting policy makers in analysis: Foreign Policy in Focus has just released its Unified Security Budget which makes the case that it is pro-military to be against militarization.

"During the last year, the ground under the security debate has begun to shift. A diverse and growing universe of voices, including former national security advisors, representatives of the business community, and the Bush administration itself, now recognizes that expanding the role of nonmilitary tools in our portfolio of security spending is necessary to keep Americans and the rest of the world safe. In the
federal budget, though, where the debate takes concrete form, this shift barely registers. Small increases planned by the administration for some nonmilitary security programs would still leave the overall proportion of resources severely unbalanced."

This document underscores the need for more soft power--economic aid, rule of law support, diplomacy--in other words, the power to attract others to our interests.  But it also moves beyond the traditional liberal "guns versus butter" framework and moves forward with the guns versus guns debate.

So now everyone is on the same page about the need for more soft power to balance out our military dominance--neo-cons and liberals. A true test of this belief will be if President Bush aligns his administration and the Republicans on the Hill with his rhetoric, and follows it up with demonstrated political will. Although many military professionals are talking about the need for change, few civilian elected leaders stand up for real difference. 

There is no obvious political constituency for soft security and team Bush squandered a great public education opportunity to talk to Americans about new threats and different priorities during campaign 2004. Instead, he skewered John Kerry repeatedly for saying that defeating terrorism will require a law enforcement and an economic strategy. His campaigned continued this absurd line of reasoning despite the fact that his own administration testified to the same end in Congress. 

For policy, then, The Stockholm Syndrome is self-defeating.  But not for elections. At least not yet.

Congress Abroad Posted by Derek Chollet

Having spent the last week on vacation in Ireland, it has taken me awhile to clear the cobwebs (ok, I really mean the Guinness) out of my head.  But a week out of Washington does wonders and, as always, provides a different perspective on the scandals that fuel so much of what happens here.

No, thank god, I did not hear or mention the name John Bolton once while abroad.  But one name that came up was Tom Delay – as I’ve written elsewhere, the Europeans are completely obsessed by all things Bush, and are intensely interested in all the maneuverings of those around him, especially those from Texas, and those who they see as pulling the strings: the likes of Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, and yes, Tom Delay.

Delay’s troubles have been the scandal of the season here in Washington, much to the delight of Congressional Democrats (especially the besieged House Democrats) and progressives everywhere.  The details of the scandal are dizzying – involving Indian casino gambling, Scotland golf getaways, Moscow meetings, and the activities of one of the most infamous Beltway Bandits, Jack Abramoff – and the heart of issue is one of Washington’s oldest and enduring problems: influence peddling.

But the reason I started pondering this is not because I’m thinking about what to do about the House ethics committee debacle or whether or not Delay should go down, but what the unintended effects of all this might be for a responsible Congressional role in foreign policy.

You see, Delay is in trouble (in this scandal at least) because of who funded some trips he and his staff took overseas.  Now these trips have all the trimmings of good old-fashioned boondoggles, but a worry I have is that the effects of this scandal will make legitimate Congressional travel abroad (and by that I mean traveling to meet with foreign leaders, see our troops, attend policy conferences to discuss issues, or see challenges first-hand) harder – and therefore more rare – because everyone will be worried about getting into trouble or getting caught up in some political payback for Delay’s fall.

Having worked on Capitol Hill and having done a bit of official travel both with a Senator and on my own as a staffer, I can tell you that the environment up there is, for the most part, already one of extreme caution when it comes traveling abroad.  For many, the trouble just isn’t worth it.  Some offices even have a blanket policy of not allowing any travel overseas that is paid for by someone else – a think tank, foundation, etc.  But the problem is that other official travel – that paid for by the American taxpayer –is just as unattractive to many members of Congress.  Given the potential for such trips becoming a political liability (especially when members are “in-cycle,” or up for reelection), they just choose to stay at home.

A decade ago, we went through a version of this – remember the Gingrichites coming into Congress bragging about how many of them did not have passports?  This helped create an atmosphere of isolationism in Congress that plagued the Clinton Administration.  There is already evidence that the Delay scandal has created a similar chilling effect on the Hill by making the issue of travel politically toxic again.

A Congress that stays at home is not good for the institution, and it’s not good for our foreign policy.  In fact, at a moment when the world is becoming more interconnected and our challenges abroad becoming more complex, creating a more isolated Congress is just perverse.

So what do we do?  I think that we must seek a bipartisan effort to create some sort of compact regarding legitimate congressional travel.  Part of the problem has been that the rules are riddled with loopholes (which those like Delay appear to have used), and what we need are clearer rules of road to define what is above the board and what is not.  We also need a strong endorsement from current and former Congressional leaders (from the likes of Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, John Danforth, Tom Daschle, Al Gore, etc) as well as former Presidents and Secretaries of State about the value of legitimate Congressional travel -- and clearly defining what that is -- and the responsibility members of Congress have to remain engaged and informed abroad.

According to today’s Washington Post, the House leadership is talking of doing some things along these lines – including by implementing the sensible policy of requiring prior ethics committee approval before a trip – but so far they are not including the Democrats in these plans.  This is a huge mistake.  For the good of Congress and the country, this is one issue where we have to demand that our leaders rise above partisanship and do something for the greater long-term good.  Ok, I know, maybe that’s the optimism of my vacation (or the Guinness) talking – but at least we can hope. 

Today, Are Suicide Bombings News, John Tierney? Posted by Heather Hurlburt

I'm sorry that John Tierney is tired of covering suicide bombers.  God knows I'm tired of reading about them, tired of worrying about whether my little boy understands what's coming out of the radio, tired of the gore splashed across my newspapers and magazines.

I even applaud him for using his column to try to open a discussion about what newspapers choose to cover and why, and how that coverage relates to perceptions about violence and security in America and internationally.

But c'mon, John, suicide bombings are not news?

The day that American troops get blown up, and the readers of the New York Times can say, "that doesn't concern me," we are all in big trouble.

Similarly, it seems purely ideological to assert that, when citizens of a country whose future we have taken responsibility for can't serve in the government or police, walk to school or take in a movie without risking being blown up, it's not news.

Then, try replacing "Iraq" with "Israel."  How many would agree that suicide bombings in Israel are no longer news?  Or, closer to home, what if we replaced "suicide bombings" with "school shootings?"  The arguments are the same, maybe even better in terms of not encouraging copycat behavior.

I started this post yesterday, before the latest rash of bombings across Iraq.  There's a challenge here for coverage that goes beyond charnel-house descriptions to digging into why this is happening and what effect it is having on Iraqis.  But this sure ins't the time to cut coverage to a "box  score."  Today it would read Terrorists 60, peace and freedom 0.

Debating the Dreznerites Posted by Suzanne Nossel

My list of questions for conservatives over at the Drezner site elicited an avalanche of replies which I am slowly trying to dig out from under.  There's a fair amount of ranting and raving, but reading through the posts one does get some sense of where we can find common ground and where we part ways. 

On anti-Americanism, I'm not sure there's much disagreement on the causes.  I think most progressives tend to think there are fairly low-cost ways of mitigating a  portion of anti-Americanism, and that doing so would make it a lot easier to achieve policy goals. 

On the UN, I think we likewise agree on what most of the problems are.  But whereas most of the Drezner commentators see them as reason to write off the UN (or, at the very least, let loose John Bolton to go after it), progressives place a lot more importance on the organization's upside and believe that, as difficult as it will be to fix, we need to keep trying.

Anyway, some interesting discussions . . .

Iraqi Split: Hold off on the chocolate sprinkles, maybe Posted by Heather Hurlburt

OK, I'll  take the mandarins on:  I groan every time I hear or read Les Gelb talking about how the US should "promote" a three-state solution, whether a confederacy or formal independence, for Iraq's regions.  (For those who don't want to listen to the NPR interview, here is an older Gelb op-ed that makes the case clearly.)

Mike is right to say that progressives should be talking about what happens next in Iraq.  It's a discussion that, in the ideal world, all serious foreign policy thinkers would be having, regardless of ideology or views on the war.  BUT that discussion needs to start, and end, in Iraq.  What we think ought to become less and less relevant.  And for now, while what we think is at least as relevant as what Iraqis think, jumping immediately to federalism -- or beyond -- is likely to do more harm than good.

Here's why:  first, it feeds every conspiracy theorist in the Arab world (and that seems to be a good chunk of the population) who is already convinced that the US aim in the Middle East is to weaken Arab states and prevent them from standing up for themselves, their people and Islam.  And here we want to dismember Iraq?  US policy doesn't come much more self-defeating than that.

Second, it is pretty disheartening to our allies in Turkey, who sought and got some explicit promises from us about not promoting Kurdish independence and destablizing their southeast as a result.

I know, I know, what about the rights of peoples to self-determination?  The international jurisprudence on what is "right" is not exactly clear.  The right to self-determination co-exists with the right to territorial integrity.  The international community, heck, even Europe and the US, have had six years to agree on what those principles say ought to be the final status of Kosovo and still cannot do it.

For those reasons, it is very, very difficult to imagine any division of Iraq that could gain acceptance in the Arab world and more broadly.  We should also list the ways that such an arrangement would be at least as unstable as the current arrangement:

i.  Kurdish irredentism in Turkey and Syria, coupled with hostility bordering on paranoia from Turkey's security forces;

ii.  already-hostile Sunnis in central Iraq feeling extremely hard done by, with support from much of the Arab and Muslim world; and

iii.  new and unforeseeable currents between Shiites and Iran.

I'm always astonished that Gelb and others promote a partition as a way to get US troops out of Iraq, because supposedly the three entities would be self-policing and everyone would go quietly to his or her "own" state.  That seems to me completely at odds with the history of partitions in Europe, Asia and Africa over the last century.  Juan Cole, also in an older argument against Gelb, spins out some of the less pleasant possible consequences.

So Mike, I think that progressives thinking hard about what comes next in Iraq is good.  But the only people who ought to be talking about federation or partition are the Iraqis.   

 

A Three-State Iraq? Posted by Michael Signer

So, if you heard NPR's interview with Les Gelb this morning, you heard Gelb argue that Iraq will ultimately have to be a three-state confederacy -- Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the middle, Shiites in the south.  He feels that a weak central government, and relatively autonomous regions, would best keep Iraq's internal tensions from boiling over into full-fledged civil war. 

Gelb has been making the same argument for years, like in this 2003 op-ed in the New York Times.

It's the right debate to begin right now.  If the insurgency continues, the question is what direction the Administration will take on Iraq's constitutional system.  Gelb's proposal is a subtle, and quintessentially American, one (we had some experience with loose confederacies). 

There's a profound contradiction in the Bush democratization policy between the ideal of self-determination, on the one hand, and nation-state unity, on the other.  We have a difficult record on the democracy front when it comes to allowing large nation-states to stay together despite a considerable amount of misery, and tyranny, as in our support of the one China policy, and Russia over the Chechens.  See Peter Beinart's devastating TNR article from last year about Chechnya for the contradictions.

The question, then, is when we allow regional self-determination to trump national borders.  The obvious (and, apologies to the neocons, realist) answer is when American security interests are less obviously at risk with states like China and Russia.  That's when we put all our chips with the region-as-emerging-state.  Our support of increasing home rule in Northern Ireland and the Bush Administration's original goal of a Palestinian state by 2009 are obvious examples. 

So where's the breakpoint?  No China or Russia is involved in Iraq.  We can therefore be more ambitious there, and more idealistic. 

But at the same time the Administration can't allow hubris to trump clear-eyed constitutional policy in Iraq.  We shouldn't invest in an overly idealistic scheme to make the Iraqis one people if they aren't one to begin with.

So, our progressive policy elites here at home -- the check on the neocons, if you will -- should be actively thinking about the possibility of a federalist Iraq -- especially if the insurgency continues. 

In short:  thanks, NPR.