Inside the conservative mind Posted by Suzanne Nossel

I have taken advantage of my stint in Dreznerworld to pose a series of questions about the conservative take on a variety of foreign policy issues.  I'm dying to know the truth about conservative viewpoints on a lot of these subjects, though we'll see what replies I get.  I've said that anything that smacks of by-the-books Scott McClellanism won't be worth the html its written with.

I promised the Dreznerites I would ask a bunch of similar questions of the progressive side to be posted here later this week.

Weekly Top 10 List: Top 10 Things the UN Does Well Posted by Suzanne Nossel

This will take a look at the top 10 things the U.S. does well or, in a few cases, not quite "well" but at least better than any other organization out there.  The approach of D-Day on John Bolton makes this as good a time as any to remind ourselves why the UN matters and some of the ways that we count on it.

1. Food Aid. This is an easy one.  The UN's World Food Programme is among the most effective multilateral bodies bar none.  They feed 104 million people a year in 80 countries.    They feed people in war zones, natural disaster situations, health emergencies, and just plain poor countries.   They've also got brilliant and creative people like Richard Wilcox and Tony Banbury (both former colleagues) on staff who are constantly trying to up the organization's game, Richard by building a futures market for natural disasters and Banbury by making sure the world delivers on its promise to tsunami victims.

2. Aid to Refugees. Also easy, because the UN High Commissioner on Refugees is another star in the UN galaxy.  There were 17 million asylum-seekers, refugees and the like in 2004 who got help from UNHCR.  They both help refugees directly and work to ensure that governments meet their responsibilities to these displacees.  The organization got one of its first ever major bouts of bad press in February because of allegations of sexual harassment against its head, Ruud Lubbers, a former Prime Minister of the Netherlands, who was forced to resign.  But nothing Lubbers did undercuts the efficacy or value of UNHCR's work.   

3. Protecting Children. Although I still remember the days of holding back my pennies from their contribution boxes on Halloween because the organization was thought to be one-sidedly pro-Palestinian, UNICEF has built a reputation as an advocacy and service powerhouse, with programs ranging from immunizations to AIDS prevention to education and protection against exploitation.

4. Peacekeeping. The UN has 16 active peacekeeping missions right now, in places like Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Lebanon, Liberia and Burundi.  Make no mistake:  in most of those places if the UN weren't there, no one else but the marauders would be and the peace or relative peace being kept would have disintegrated long ago.  The history of UN peacekeeping is checkered for at least 2 reasons:  a) vague mandates and inadequate resources decreed by the countries on the UN Security Council and b) poor planning, management and capabilities.  On the latter front (the only front which the UN qua UN can do anything about), the organization has made real progress based on a 2000 reform report.  While holes still exist, a most-improved-player award is in order here.

5. Intervenor of Last Resort. In peacekeeping but also more broadly, the UN gets involved in messes when noone else will.   The meltdowns in Congo and Liberia are prime examples.  When the U.S. and Europe have no interest in getting involved, and there's no regional player with the will and capabilities, the choice is often letting slaughter and mayhem continue untrammeled, or throwing the problem to the UN.   The UN deserves credit for taking on these quagmires.

6. Running Elections. The UN has quietly built an impressive capacity to run elections under tough circumstances.  This was put to the test in Iraq where, due to security concerns, the organization was able to deploy only a small fraction of the staff it thought it needed, yet still managed to pull off January's historic polling.    The organization has also managed successful first-ever polls in places like East Timor and Afghanistan.  This Spring it was revealed that the electoral assistance division is mired in a host of management problems.  But still, they seem to get the job done.

7. Reproductive Health and Population Management. The UN has built a great specialty in mother and childhood health, family planning, and the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases.  The UN Population Fund is widely respected, and is credited with helping to drastically reduce infant and maternal mortality in more than 100 countries.  Unfortunately due to its global gag rule designed to prevent health care workers from even talking about abortion, the Bush Administration has deprived UNFPA of funds needed for this vital work.

8. War Crimes Prosecution. This is a fairly new line of business for the UN.  The Tribunals it has set up for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda have had their share of delays and management problems but, all in all, they are respected, have developed important case law on genocide and human rights and have provided a measure of justice that is taken very seriously by the people of affected regions.  The UN is still experimenting with new judicial models for places like Sierra Leone and Cambodia.   The UN deserves credit for the progress it is making in this area, another arena in which its hard to imagine any other country or body taking the lead to the same degree.

9. Fighting AIDS. The UN is the leader when it comes to the global battle against HIV/AIDS.  Between the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria the UN is at the heart of every aspect of dealing with the epidemic, from heightening awareness to raising funds to making sure appropriate programs for prevention and treatment are implemented.  The UN has wisely recognized that the organization itself cannot shoulder this one alone, and has set up the Fund and other mechanisms aimed at drawing governments, other multilaterals, NGOs and corporations into the fight.

10. Bringing invisible issues to the fore. Were it not for the UN, an awful lot of suffering around the world would go even less noticed and addressed than it does today.  Landmine victims, Marburg fever and cholera sufferers, child soldiers, modern-day slaves, lepers and thousands of other populations beleagured by one or another either visible or obscure plight have a place to turn at the UN.

None of this is to say that the UN does anything perfectly, or that there isn't a pressing need for reform.  Its hard to overlook the common theme that emerges above involving good organizations and functions that are nonetheless beset by serious and often embarrassing management shortcomings.  While many of the UN's problems can be blamed on its Member States, poor oversight and lousy personnel practices are the responsibility of the UN Secretariat and Kofi Annan.  Its a good illustration of how the UN's weaknesses get in the way of people recognizing the body's many strengths.

As you know, I am guest-blogging this week on Dan Drezner.   Check out that site for some items that ought to be on the UN's list of strengths, but aren't, and for my best assessment of who and what is to blame.

Help State Help the Army Posted by Lorelei Kelly

This past week, the House and -Senate agreed to the FY 2005 SUPPLEMENTAL CONFERENCE REPORT.

The final bill provides nearly $76 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The funding for the State Department's new office for the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization ended up a disappointing $7.7 million, down from an initial request of $17 million. The final bill also funds international peacekeeping activities at $680 million, $100 million less than the President's request of $780 million. See a final summary on the appropriations website.

From these numbers, its obvious that most Members of Congress don't see foreign policy and defense as integrated concepts yet, despite all of our post Cold War experiences illustrating that they are. The need for a reconfigured division of labor in our national security apparatus should be obvious to any elected leader who is paying attention to the news for the past three years or even talking to a few returned soldiers back home in the district.

Creating a fully coordinated capacity for reconstruction and stabilization is perhaps the single most important step our government could take to lessen the load of our beleagured armed forces. In order to do this collaboration, we need parallel structures in Defense and State –which we don't have. Yet Congress allocates chump change to that end when it comes to setting priorities in the budgeting process. 

The under funding of capacity for civilian stabilization and reconstruction presents one of those moments when we all need to remind ourselves that there is no such thing as the word "should" on on Capitol Hill.  How could this have happened?

1. The Administration didn't really go to bat for the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization. The White House could have rounded up the full funding with one or two phone calls to the Hill.

2. Which leads me to suspect that recent proclamations in support of democracy as a sort of new Grand Strategy is passive, not active. In other words, nobody actively disagrees, but there is no active nor identifiable political constituency to push it through.  Congress follows the path of least resistance and without strong support from the Executive Branch, it gets triaged out.

3. The people with the best stories to tell about the vastly changed needs on the ground. i.e. the Army and Marine Corps. are not political advocates.  They also don't have relationships with the progressive members of Congress who would take up this cause and fight for it.  Until recently, there has been no real concerted education effort to bring Congress--much less the progressives-- up to speed and to help them be effective on content and message.

4. Congress (Members and staff) are skeptical of new offices/bureaucracies in general, nothing personal against S/CRS. Most Members and staff know very little about post conflict reconstruction and many are generally anti-participation. (Yes, despite the fact that our Army is doing it anyway!)

5. There is resistance within State to S/CRS, and that resistance is known to Congress, thus inhibiting support.  This is partly territorial, partly resource protection, partly skepticism that S/CRS can do anything worthwhile.

There are some pieces of legislation floating around Congress right now that address the problem of civilian capacity. Senators Lugar and Biden have reintroduced their bill.  In the House, David Dreier (CA) (formerly only lukewarm on the issue) has introduced another. Here is a list of all the initiatives ongoing. My favorite comprehensive package is  Lynn Woolsey's (CA), bill called SMART  security.

One key challenge at the moment is to build a much broader citizen-based political constituency for conflict resolution in foreign policy.  This must happen before Congress will truly respond to the pressing need for change. Maybe the first step would be to make yellow ribbonbumper stickers that say "we support our troops AND our diplomats."

Intelligence Manipulation: If at first you don't succeed, you're off the hook Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Check here for my take on the Bush Administration's astounding logic on why people like John Bolton haven't actually manipulated or politicized intelligence.

More on North Korea Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Kevin Drum and Laura Rozen have taken up these arguments too.  So read my take and then have a look at theirs.  My bottom line is that even if we think bilateral talks are futile, they may be essential if only to convince the rest of the world that we've pulled out all the stops, and that there's no alternative to action in the the UN Security Council (not that that's any kind of panacea, but when we're out of options there's nowhere else to kick problems like this).   As long as the Russians, Chinese and others can convince themselves that nuclear impasses are partly the result of U.S. intransigence, they have an excuse to duck the issues (our faulty intelligence on Iraq and parallels that will inevitably be drawn give them another excuse that's harder to chip away at, but that's another matter).  A good part of U.S. diplomacy at the UN is methodically wresting away excuse after excuse for passivity, eventually laying bear the imperative to act.   If the "international community" still fails to move, at the very least we have a cleaner, more compelling rationale for moves made unilaterally or with ad hoc coalitions. 

North Korea - Will Bush Fess Up to Failure? Posted by Suzanne Nossel

This week I will be guest blogging on Dan Drezner's blog, along with my husband, David Greenberg.  This way I can foist my views on a whole bunch of unsuspecting conservatives.  I will also try to hold up my end of things here, though my fellow arsenalists will be pitching in a bit more than usual too (and may strut some of their stuff Drezner-side as well).  My first post is up so check it out.

Daily Debacles Posted by Suzanne Nossel

I have often wished I had the time to document the daily missteps and hypocrisies of conservative foreign policy, each linked to a larger thematic critique (partly because I know that if progressives ever get back in power, we can be sure conservatives will make the time to chronicle ours in minute detail).   Since my baby is taking a blissful early morning nap, I'll put down a few from today's headlines.  Here's what you get combing through just the NYT front section on a slow news day (virtually the entire front page is devoted to domestic stuff:

Gratuitous and unprompted insults toward Russia - While visiting Latvia the President has chosen to provoke Putin by reopening disputes of interpretation over the post-World War II occupation of the Baltics.    In doing so he egged on the Latvian President to accuse the Russians of lying "through their teeth." Our relationship with Russia is sensitive enough.  Although I don't minimize the importance of setting historical records straight, the current furor between China and Japan suggests how pointless and needlessly antagonizing it can be for politicians to take the lead in doing so.  The U.S. is already extremely popular in Eastern Europe and the Baltics.   File under:  flatfooted diplomacy.

- Nowhere on nuclear plant security - Almost four years after 9/11 and President Bush having made the fight against terror and for homeland security his highest priority, it appears that little progress has been made on securing our nuclear facilities.  File under:  failure to deliver on professed priorities.

- Credible evidence of Bolton's interfering with the provision of unbiased intelligence - Former CIA #2 John McLaughlin has testified to the SFRC that John Bolton attempted to oust an analysis who objected to Bolton's making statements at odds with the best intelligence available on Cuban military capabilities.  McLaughlin described this as the the only time in his 32 years in intelligence that such a request was made from a policymaker.  Despite claiming to be committed to reforming intelligence and ridding it of biased political meddling, the White House sees nothing in Bolton's conduct that raises concern about his nomination.  File under:  hypocrisy; intolerance of criticism/dissent.

- Administration fails to come to grips with mis-treatment of detainees - The U.S. has submitted a report to the UN's Committee against torture in which it affirms its unequivocal opposition to torture under all circumstances.  But the report overlooks the situation of so-called "ghost detainees" kept incommunicado and unregulated.  Nor does it address any of the cultural issues that led to abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, nor the fact that the senior officers responsible have - well - not been held responsible.  It also leaves out the practice of sending terrorist suspects to countries where torture is practiced.  File under:  Erosion of the U.S.'s status as human rights standard-bearer

- Administration retaliates against FBI translator for revealing flaws in intelligence gathering - An appeals court has upheld the firing of an FBI translator who blew the whistle on slipshod translations and the blocking of translations of materials relating to terrorism on personal and political ground.   The Administration is invoking a "state secret" privilege (don't think we studied that one in law school . . .") to block her suit to recover her job.  The translator plans to appeal to the Supreme Court.  File under:  intolerance of criticism/dissent.

The reviled head of Los Alamos is appointed to a Pentagon post - The head of Los Alamos has prompted open rebellion among the staff of the nuclear weapons lab because of his high-handed style.   The lab finally got rid of him, but he's getting a position at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.  File under:  failing upward.

Now there are some items that could be pointed to as wins on the other side:  despite British outrage over the lies en route to Iraq, Blair holds onto power, thus avoiding becoming another Aznar paying the price for fealty to Bush;  the Iraqis are a little closer to forming a Cabinet (though another 26 have died due to the insurgency). 

Luckily the front section is short today -- baby's up and keeping track of this stuff is exhausting. 

Sudan and What We Stand For Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Holocaust remembrance day seems like as good a moment as any to reflect on why the Administration seems to have abandoned the effort to curb genocide in Darfur. Darfur has posed a difficult problem for a long time. Brad Plumer, writing for MotherJones.com has a good description of why every option for action is problematic. 

So what is the Administration doing? Essentially, nothing. Nearly eight months after calling the mass killings in the Darfur region genocide and doing the heavy lifting on a resolution to get the UN involved, the Administration seems to have backed away from that term, and from any sustained effort to address the crisis. As Mark Goldberg has reported in The American Prospect, Bush has also been blocking passage of the Darfur Accountability Act, a measure sponsored by Brownback and Corzine that is aimed accelerating and expanding the intervention of African Union and UN troops and imposing sanctions and a no-fly zone in Sudan.

The consensus on why is the turnabout has occurred is that the Sudanese government is providing useful support in the fight against terror, a story first reported in the LA Times last week. Sudan used to be al Qaeda’s headquarters, and it seems a number of terrorist groups retain close ties there. The Sudanese government is apparently credited with preventing terrorist attacks against the U.S. by detaining suspects. The intelligence officials leading the cooperation are reportedly the very people who could but won’t clamp down on the atrocities in Darfur. A letter sent by Condi Rice to the Sudanese last month urged an end to the conflict in Darfur but also said the administration hoped to establish a "fruitful relationship" with Sudan and looked forward to continued "close cooperation" on terrorism.

People like Phil Carter at Intel Dump have been thinking about whether the decision to allow the crackdown on terror to prevail over the imperative against genocide is the right one. He concludes as follows:

In the final analysis, I think that the U.S. government has made the right decision there to work with the Khartoum regime to get intelligence about Al Qaeda. But I'm very uncertain about that judgment. We know that genocide itself can breed instability and terrorism, just as failed states like Sudan can. And we also know that many, many more have perished in Darfur than from all of the terror attacks in the last 100 years combined. Should this effort bear no fruit, I will likely question my judgment that this policy is prudent, and lament the lost opportunity to save the victims of genocide in Darfur.

Here at Democracy Arsenal we tend to hold fairly hard-headed views on international affairs questions. We recognize that U.S. foreign policy must be guided by national interests and, above all, national security considerations. So I can’t simply dismiss the tangible help we’ve evidently been receiving from the Sudanese. But I still think its inexcusable for this to stand in the way of acting against genocide (I am going to leave aside for tonight what we ought to do, and instead address only whether the cooperation we are receiving is grounds to refrain from measures – like those in the Accountability Act – that we might otherwise undertake).

Part of this comes down to gut feeling and moral considerations that are hard to articulate, but here’s a meandering stab at some of why:

Bush has always articulated the struggle against terror in moral terms, as good against evil. The slaughter in Darfur is, more than anything else at this moment in history, a emblem of evil recognized all over the world. To calculate that the benefit of Sudan’s cooperate outweighs the harm of their continued abuses undercuts the moral force of the American quest against terror, hollowing out our claims of righteousness.

Does this matter? I think so. When it rallied to America’s side after September 11 and when attacked Afghanistan the world was imbued with a sense of moral outrage. Its hard to know if that sense of outrage would reemerge if there was another terrorist attack, but I think we all have the sense that, given the events of the last four years, the world’s reaction may well be different. 

Foreign policy will never be pure. There will always be unseemly trade-offs. The U.S. will always be vulnerable to criticism for self-interestedness and for picking and choosing how to apply our principles. Political considerations, resource constraints, and conflicting interests combine to ensure this. Those who believe American policy can or should be 100% consistent probably belong on the outside commenting and criticizing, rather than in government trying to get things done.

$100 Million Gone in Iraq -- Now What? Posted by Michael Signer

My normal day to post is Friday, but I'm off to my buddy Matt's wedding in Seattle at the butt-crack of dawn tomorrow, so I'm going to have to do this a day early...

So, there are a lot of things I'd like to talk about, from the weirdly Byzantine Florida murder mystery reported in Sunday's Washington Post to which Tom DeLay has tangential, but disturbing, links; to Kenny Baer's stellar reporting on why the British elections matter to us here in the colonies; to the powerful work by Sojourners on Darfur and the intriguing opening I think it represents for an emerging movement of progressives-of-faith.

But I'm going to write instead about Thursday's WaPo revelation that a criminal investigation is afoot into why the Administration has lost almost $100 million in Iraq so far.

I kind of caught it on the chin from some of you last week for my posting on how progressives should stand for probity as a first principle in politics. (This alliteration is actually accidental). 

I think my answers will be a little more effective in light of this incredible story confirming my original point that the other side is corrupt, and we shouldn't be:

Investigators have opened a criminal inquiry into millions of dollars missing in Iraq after auditors uncovered indications of fraud in nearly $100 million in reconstruction spending that could not be properly accounted for.

The money had been intended for rebuilding projects in south-central Iraq. But auditors with the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction found that of $119.9 million allocated, $7.2 million could not be accounted for at all, and $89.4 million in reported spending could not be backed up with sufficient documentation, according to a report released yesterday.

Last fall, the Kerry campaign only really got traction when the Senator honed in on this message (the only one that, Mr. Shrum, worked):  incompetence in Iraq.  And that's because the American people sensed all the mistakes stemmed from deeper flaws in this Administration's basic theory of governance:  a deferral to the will of large, energy-based corporations; a zeal to effect grudges through contracting policies; a wild-eyed belief that privatization is always more efficient.  All of which were dead wrong -- and demand a reform-based response.

Wargaming for peace Posted by Lorelei Kelly

Democrat of the Week:  Representative David Price (NC) who introduced a bill late Thursday that would require the federal government to give better guidance to private military contactors and to collect information on cost, personnel, and casualties. These requirements address concerns raised by the contractors themselves, and they were highlighted in a GAO report that Congressman Price also requested.

This past Monday, I had the pleasure of teaching a class at the Army War College Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute. My charge was to lead a discussion about national security decision making in the US Congress. With the 300 billion dollar costs of  Iraq and Afghanistan serving as a backdrop, the most consistent theme of the discussion was Congress’ inability to perform a central duty: oversight on matters of  budget and national security.   Through our discussion one theme stood out: the GWOT (global war on terror) is both over-militarized and under-resourced.

Military doctrine points to four instruments of national power: DImE.  This stands for  Diplomacy, Information, military and Economics.  The military is not capitalized to make a point: it is always supposed to be the tool of last resort—after the other instruments have been exhausted.   A typical federal budget funds the military at sixteen times the rate of all other foreign policy tools combined. Indeed, today’s defense budget, adjusted for inflation, is 12% larger than typical Cold War era budgets. This serious and worsening imbalance between our national instruments of power is not lost on the Army. In fact, there is increasing realization that in order to relieve itself of some of the burdens of both war and post-conflict peacemaking, the military may have to go to bat for other agencies when budget time rolls around.  This would be astounding. It also might be the only way to turn the tide of what Andrew Bacevich calls the new American militarism.

This week the War College also happened to be hosting a wargame called “Unified Quest 05” so I sat in on one of the overview briefings.  I actually played in Unified Quest two years ago, so I was encouraged to see that many of the lessons of past years were deliberately inserted into this year’s gameplan.

The Army has progressed light-years since the 1990’s when the National Training Center was still playing blue on red (US versus USSR) maneuver warfare. (for example, vast mechanized forces meeting on the plains of Poland).  This year’s game highlighted three areas of focus: conflict prevention and deterrence, stability operations, and irregular warfare. Now, major areas of investigation include governance, humanitarian crisis and consequence management.  Achieving political success is another important factor—which leads to perhaps the most important innovation in today’s wargame: a separate assessment team that is neither red nor blue—that focuses on the civilian populations of either side.  This is significant:  It helps close the gap between military action and political consequence (i.e. flatten Fallujah and set yourself back months on the "hearts and minds" campaign). Definitely not touchy-feely, but a sure sign of the Army’s emotional intelligence. They are becoming aware of the fact that lasting, meaningful relationships are keys to success.

A large portion of the officers attending the War College these days have served in either Iraq or Afghanistan and so they increasingly bring ground-truth perspectives to these discussions.   Progressives need to encourage this kind of forward-thinking by the military by re-claiming democracy arguments—chief among them conflict prevention.  The big challenge is how we take the raw knowledge and momentum that is currently preoccupied with post-conflict reconstruction and use it to make the case for preventive action. After all, if good governance is important after pre-emptive war, why not avoid the war altogether and focus on institutions and democracy as part of a balanced DImE?

Both civilian and military organizations have, for years, asked the question: how do we make prevention operational? During the 1990’s the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict invested considerable resources in parsing apart the dilemmas of prevention. Since the end of the Cold War, the military has taken some creative initiatives: During the 1990’s the National Defense Panel outlined a strategy of “shaping stability”. Former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry co-authored a book on Preventive Defense and the Naval War College initiated a study on Formative Engagement to cite just three examples.

How this issue is framed will be vital.  The progressive perspective must include long-term considerations, where actions have implications over time and  therefore values leaders who understand the importance of relationships and context. The raw material is all over the place.  The progressive task is not one of documentation, but packaging.

When I taught conflict resolution classes many years ago, we distinguished between two types of power: Power as forceful dominance versus Power as the ability to influence change.   Therein lies the difference between pre-emptive war and a progressive democracy policy.