The Political Romantics and the End of History Posted by Shadi Hamid

Ross Douthat has a fascinating post on Christopher Hitchens and 'political romanticism.' He cites David Runciman's essay in the London Review of Books:

Political romantics are driven not by the quest for pseudo-religious certainty, but by the search for excitement, for the romance of what he calls ‘the occasion’. They want something, anything, to happen, so that they can feel themselves to be at the heart of things.

That sounds like Hitchens to me, and I don't necessarily mean that as a bad thing. It reminds me of the last paragraph of Fukuyama's "End of History," which is probably one of my favorite paragraphs of political writing and one that's worth re-reading every year or so:

The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one's life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands... I can feel in myself, and see in others around me, a powerful nostalgia for the time when history existed. Such nostalgia, in fact, will continue to fuel competition and conflict even in the post-historical world for some time to come. Even though I recognize its inevitability, I have the most ambivalent feelings for the civilization that has been created in Europe since 1945.

For many of us, our politics is, or becomes, personal. Through politics, we wish to transcend politics. We want to believe we're fighting for something that matters, rather than for one uninspiring policy option over another. So we impress upon ourselves the notion that there is, and will continue to be, an existential struggle of some kind. I remember what it felt like reading Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism for the first time. It was an inspiring read, although I intuitively knew that much of the analysis was off. All the same, Berman was enlisting us in a fight that was about something bigger. This is the same way I often feel about Hitchens - the prose is nearly as romantic as the ideas. He's always fighting pitched battles that I - and I imagine most others - are not privy to. The battles are, in some sense, created, which is a bit different than saying they don't exist. 

With 9/11, history began again, or so we thought. Or maybe too many of us wanted to believe it had. Looking back at some of my older writing, I notice how it was inflected with a surfeit of existential urgency. I feel a bit sheepish about it. I think I probably attached too much importance to the treat of terrorism, a threat it may not have been (take for example this two-part essay I wrote for the American Prospect in 2006). If terrorism was a big enough threat, then it had the power to force us to fundamentally alter the way we looked at our relationship with the Middle East and the rest of the world. Terrorism became the engine of change in U.S. foreign policy, for better - the effort to promote Arab democracy - but, more often, for worse - pre-emptive and preventative war. Much of the overblown threat assessment of the post-9/11 period was probably due to somewhat subconscious desire to jump start history.

That said, so much of what Hitchens writes is refreshing because something, sometimes, is actually at stake. Reading Glenn Greenwald is enough to realize there are still existential battles - about basic matters of freedom - that have to be fought. It seems to me that so much of the Washington discourse on U.S. foreign policy suffers from the inverse of romanticism. I'm often struck by the smallness of so many of the foreign policy prescriptions that are bandied about in Washington - even, or perhaps particularly, the ones that are supposed to be new and original. In the age of post-Bush "realism," what we suffer from, more often than not, is a failure of imagination. And that certainly goes for our notoriously myopic Mideast policy, which has been so consistently bad for so long that it really is something to marvell. It's difficult to imagine a new Middle East, if you're, well, unable to imagine a new Middle East. Sometimes that needs a bit of political romanticism. It's just helpful to know when to stop.

More Alternatives for Afghanistan - The CT Strategy Posted by Michael Cohen

Here's some weekend reading for DA readers (well at least it's what I'll be reading) - Austin Grant Long's  recent Orbis article on what a counter-terrorism strategy in Afghanistan might look like. (This is a longer version of the the short piece I sent around a few days ago).

Austin makes a fairly compelling case for why a CT strategy makes more sense than the current COIN approach . . . and what it would look like. An excerpt below, but read the whole thing:

The troop increase authorized by the president for Afghanistan will not directly disrupt, dismantle, or defeat al Qaeda even if executed exactly as General McChrystal proposes. It will only indirectly be able to do so if Pakistan takes action against its Afghan proxies, who in turn allow al Qaeda to shelter with them, yet there is little prospect of that. Finally, the chance of actually succeeding in making Afghanistan stable in the first place is low if Pakistan does not take action against its Afghan proxies. 

Even attempting to stabilize Afghanistan as General McChrystal proposes will be extraordinarily expensive. This seems to pose an insoluble problem for the United States. This insoluble problem is why the counterterrorism option is important. If even a costly effort in Afghanistan cannot fully achieve the goal against al Qaeda, then it is crucial to determine whether a less costly effort can achieve a similar effect by keeping Afghanistan inhospitable to al Qaeda. This would be a clear and cost-effective alignment of resources with goals, the essence of strategy. 

Determining the viability of the counterterrorism option requires detailing what it might look like. Most discussion of the counterterrorism option has been vague. Riedel and O’Hanlon sum it up as ‘‘a few U.S. special forces teams, modern intelligence fusion centers, cruise-missile-carrying ships and unmanned aerial vehicles. . .’’ But there has been little effort to put flesh on this skeleton in terms of numbers and locations of U.S. troops. 

Oh Max . . . Posted by Michael Cohen

There is so much to comment on in Max Boot's response to Andrew Exum's response to Max Boot's response to Andrew Exum, but this graf really is the gold standard:

Population-centric counterinsurgency has worked in countries as diverse as Iraq, Malaya, the Philippines, Northern Ireland, Oman, and Colombia. Historically speaking (and I say this based on research I’m currently doing for a book on the history of guerrilla warfare and terrorism), it is the most successful counterinsurgency strategy there is. Does that mean it will work in every instance? Of course not. But it works more often than not, and I have yet to see any evidence that Afghanistan is uniquely resistant to such an approach.

Where does one begin? Did population-centric counterinsurgency work in each of these places - well I suppose it depends on how you define work, but one thing is clear: the COIN approaches used in Malaya, the Philippines, Northern Ireland and Iraq look almost nothing like the approaches we are currently using in Afghanistan. Each of them relied on healthy doses of coercion and violence against the civilian population; things like forced relocation in Malaya and the Philippines and ethnic cleansing and enclaving in Iraq and to a lesser extent Northern Ireland. These are of course tactics that are quite different from the approaches we are using in Afghanistan today. Indeed, as I've written before what makes the COIN fight in Afghanistan different from nearly all other COIN fights is the lack of coercion and violence against the civilian population. This is an apples to bicycles comparison.

Also to argue that population-centric is the determinative element of successful COIN strategies is even more bizarre. What about enemy centric approaches like those utilized by Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Russia or even the US in the American Civil War? For heaven's sake the Roman method has been used by countless countries over the millennium and with some demonstrated level of success. And again, none of the approaches that Boot cites really qualify as population-centric at least in the sense of how that term is understood in the US military today.   

Next Boot makes a key category error; Colombia with has no foreign troops is not the same sort of COIN fight as Malaya, which was a colonial effort led by British soldiers, and it's not the same as Iraq or Afghanistan, with foreign troops supporting a sovereign (ish) government. Moreover, success in places like the Philippines and Malaya was due to a number of factors; in Malaya the ethnic homogeneity of the insurgent force helped a great deal, but so did the lack of a safe haven in both places. In fact, there is a whole body of scholarship on the importance of sanctuaries for a COIN fight. And as I don't have to remind any regular DA reader . . . the Afghan Taliban have an unmolested safe haven in Pakistan.

To argue that Boot has "yet to see any evidence that Afghanistan is uniquely resistant to such an (population-centric) approach" is to suggest a rather shallow understanding of what makes for a successful counter-insurgency strategy - and a real set of blinders to the mounting evidence that the assumptions underpinning American's COIN strategy in Afghanistan are fatally flawed.

About That Timeline For Withdrawal Posted by Michael Cohen

Joe Klein picks up what seems to be a new meme about Afghanistan - that President Obama's 18-month timeline for withdrawal is hamstringing the military's efforts:

There are increasing grumblings about the timetable set by Obama, which would begin troop withdrawals in July 2011. "It's like fighting with both arms tied behind your back," a former senior military official told me.

This is a particularly insidious and dangerous argument and its fundamentally wrong on two key levels. First, there is this excerpt from Jonathon Alter's new book about Obama's Presidency:

Obama asked Petraeus, “David, tell me now. I want you to be honest with me. You can do this in 18 months?”

“Sir, I’m confident we can train and hand over to the ANA [Afghan National Army] in that time frame,” Petraeus replied.

“Good. No problem,” the president said. “If you can’t do the things you say you can in 18 months, then no one is going to suggest we stay, right?”

Right? I have no doubt that parts of Alter's article might be exaggerated but I'm hard-pressed to believe that there is no kernel of truth to this anecdote. If Petraeus signed off on meeting the president's goal in 18 months no one in the armed forces has leg to stand on in criticizing the President . . . of course General Petraeus is a different issue.

Second, despite these clarifications the military is following through on a strategy that is incredibly time and resource-intensive (population-centric counter-insurgency) and it is sending troops to locales like Helmand and Kandahar that will be the absolute hardest to turn over to Afghan government control by June 2011. Namely it is perhaps the worst possible approach when you are operating under an 18-month timeline for commencing troop withdrawals.

The simple fact is that the military strategy should be predicated on the president's timeline for withdrawal - and if the top generals didn't think it was possible to accomplish that goal in the time frame given . . . well they should have said to. Complaining off the record to reporters is pretty unbecoming. The bottom line is that if the military doesn't like President Obama's June 2011 timetable they have no one to blame but themselves.

Looking forward to 2021 Posted by Jacob Stokes

There’s a great piece out in the newest issue of Democracy Journal entitled “America 2021: The Military and the World.” The piece features CAP’s Larry Korb, P.W. Singer of Brookings, Rand’s Robert Hunter and NSN’s Heather Hurlburt, and it’s moderated by E.J. Dionne. They all sat down for lunch one day and had a loosely structured conversation based on the topic: In what state will America be in 2021 vis-à-vis the rest of the world and the military? The predictions—especially considering the current soda straw focus of the national security community on Afghanistan and terrorism—are a stark call to action, a reminder that we need to step back and open our eyes to the world as it's changing.

The conversation considers which countries are important to us, where terrorism will fall on our list of threats, what posture the military should take and what experiences will have shaped how leaders of 2021 view the world. In order to convince you to read the whole thing, I’m throwing in a few out-of-context excerpts that can give a flavor of what’s in the piece, the sort of big-picture thinking that’s going to be needed when we get to 2021. Enjoy:

Robert Hunter: We do have some compatible interests with the Iranians. We can explore–we’re not prepared to, but we could–whether in Iraq they would be able to support an outcome there that is not dysfunctional. We know they have worked with us in the past on Afghanistan. They helped us overthrow the Taliban, because they were on the Taliban’s hit list. They’re on the Al Qaeda hit list now. We’ve been unprepared to say to the Iranians: "If you behave ourselves and just do everything we want, we will give you security guarantees." We won’t do it. Every country that’s gotten the atom bomb has done so primarily for security reasons, yet we’re not prepared to explore that angle.

Larry Korb: I’d increase Special Forces, and I’d downplay nuclear weapons. There’s a great article in Strategic Studies Quarterly in which three experts say we can cut the number of nukes to 311. That’s incredible. The other thing I’d do is buy more existing equipment instead of spending so much on new next-generation conventional weapons. That would actually modernize our forces more rapidly and more completely. I also think you want to develop a long-range bomber so you’d be able to project power from the United States without putting people on the ground like we’ve done.

P.W. Singer: : It’s important not to approach [terrorism] as something that we don’t have any control over, that what happens in ten years is unknowable and we can’t see it. We have an enormous amount of control over how we structure our own thinking and talking about resilience and response. Because, as you say, as people are empowered to do all kinds of things outside traditional government structures, the potential for lethality will grow. But the potential for lethality to equal societal disruption doesn’t have to grow along with it. In fact, it can shrink and go back down as people see what we can absorb. On the other hand, if somebody detonated a nuclear weapon, that would change everything.

Heather Hurlburt: In 2021, the president will need a mix of tools to help him or her deal with a resurgent China, which will have gotten much further along with its economy and its military. But China will also be facing tremendous crises at home, dealing with demographic and environmental concerns, as well as other internal political issues that get expressed externally. In dealing with China, India, and Pakistan, the president will discover that our civilian toolbox has further atrophied. And just about anything the president wants to, whether it’s military or not, will have to be done through the Department of Defense, because that will be the last adequately resourced part of our international affairs structure.

Has the Worm Turned on Afghanistan? - UPDATED Posted by Michael Cohen

As regular readers of DA are well aware I have been beating the drums on the incoherence of our Afghanistan policy for more than a year - well for the first time in a long while I have some company and from two individuals whose voices should wake people up. Both Tony Cordesman and Andrew Exum served on General McChrystal's strategic review team that last year recommended a pop-centric COIN strategy for Afghanistan. Both are now having second thoughts:

Cordesman:

There is nothing more tragic than watching beautiful theories being assaulted by gangs of ugly facts. It is time, however, to be far more realistic about the war in Afghanistan.

 . . . The fact is, the strategic case for staying in Afghanistan is uncertain and essentially too close to call. The main reason is instead tactical. We are already there. We have major capabilities in place. If we can demonstrate that the war can be won at reasonable additional cost in dollars and blood, it makes sense to persist. But, only if we can demonstrate we can win and show that the additional cost has reasonable limits. Containment and alternative uses of the same resources are very real options, and would probably be more attractive ones if we could somehow “zero base” history. The reality is, however, that nations rarely get to choose the ideal ground in making strategic decisions. They are prisoners of their past actions, and so are we.

Exum:

I still think, as echoed in this New York Times editorial, that "General McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy still seems like the best chance to stabilize Afghanistan and get American troops home." But a lot of the same reasons Tony outlines in his most recent paper for the CSIS, I am not sure we can pull it off. I think we need to reexamine our assumptions, reconsider our strategy, and do both with the requisite epistemological humility about the environment in which we’re fighting.

Contrast these sentiments with the all the "good news" and "progress" being reported in congressional testimony by Petraeus, Flournoy and Gates:

"I think frankly that the narrative ... has been too negative. I think that we are regaining the initiative. I think that we are making headway," Gates said.

"It is truly an 'up and down' (experience), when you're living it, when you're doing it," Petraeus said. "But the trajectory in my view has generally been upward, despite the tough losses, despite the setbacks."

Michele Flournoy, under secretary of defense for policy, told the Senate Armed Services panel the fight was "going to be hard."

"There are going to be times when we take one step back and two steps forward," she said.

Keep in mind that this perspective is very much contradicted by the most Pentagon report on Afghanistan; by a recent GAO report and by a steady drumbeat of bad news from Afghanistan. If ever there was an opportunity for the President to change course it would be right now. I mean outside his own advisors and generals it's pretty hard to find anyone in Washington who has a scintilla of optimism about our current mission in Afghanistan.

Still, it would be nice to hear from more of my progressive brethren . . .

UPDATED: You know when I said that it's hard to find anyone in Washington who is optimistic about Afghanistan I was clearly forgetting Max Boot. In response to Exum's crie de couer he writes this:

The question is whether President Obama will have the will to see this through as President Bush did in the face of much greater public opposition. All it would take would be a speech from the president saying something like this: ”I was wrong about trying to set a timeline for American withdrawal. I wanted to inject fresh vigor into our military and diplomatic efforts. But I now realize that my talk about starting to pull American troops out next summer has been misinterpreted; it has caused some in the region to doubt our resolve. So let me be clear. We will stay as long as necessary to defeat the cruel evil of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and associated extremists. I now pledge that, to paraphrase another young Democratic president, we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty in Afghanistan.”

Boom. With a few gutsy words like that, President Obama could instantly change assumptions about our willpower.

Heavens to Murgatroyd. Perhaps Max could think a bit about how that whole pay any price, bear any burden thing worked out in Vietnam. It ended in the worst military disaster in US history . .. well until the next disastrous war in 2003 that Max Boot shamelessly cheerleaded in support of.

There is a great deal about Max Boot's analysis that makes me wonder - but his refusal to ever consider public opinion or the historical lack of political will among countless democracies to fight overseas conflicts is perhaps the most perplexing. Consistently we have seen that lack of popular support can undermine the support for long, drawn-out conflicts - as was the case in Vietnam, Algeria, Iraq and to a lesser extent Malaya, Kenya, South Lebanon to name a few examples. And even in countries that weren't democracies this has been the case.  Even in one of the examples that Boot cites - the Iraq War - he ignores the fact that stubborn adherence to a failing war cost Republicans control of Congress and the White House.

Why Boot never factors in the role of political will and seems to believe - against all evidence to the contrary - that it can simply be manufactured by "resolute" leaders is beyond my meager ability to comprehend.

New Treasury Sanctions on Iran's Nuclear and Missile Programs Posted by Joel Rubin

Here's a hot-off-the-presses listing of new Treasury Department targeted sanctions against Iranian entities.  It names names, goes after the IRGC, and focuses on financial, shipping, nuclear and military activities.  The administration is justifying these measures by citing the new UNSCR 1929, which it argues provides them with the space to move forward on these sanctions.

Common Interests, Clashing Interests Posted by David Shorr

The premise that nations generally, and pivotal powers in particular, share a set of communal interests is a pillar of current foreign policy and also the subject of much skepticism. Thomas Wright and I went three rounds in a recent issue of Survival (pay wall) focused largely on this question, and I address it in my portion of this pre-summit report (free), co-published with Centre for International Governance Innovation and the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. While we conduct this debate on whether nations are more that united or divided in their interests, I think we also need to clarify the nature of those interests.

First off, I've noticed a tendency to trace all diplomatic disputes to differences of national interest, with the effect of making every deadlock seem intractable. This isn't to minimize the diverging views on, say, Iran or financial regulation, but nor should we inflate them. The Chinese leadership, for instance, has staked its politicial survival on continued annual GDP growth of 8-10%. Strictly speaking, I suppose this is an interest of the Chinese Communist Party, rather than a national interest. But either way, Beijing's stances on carbon emissions and currency valuation certainly qualify as core interests. For many other Chinese positions, the driver is a desire to avoid any more diplomatic exertion (and accompanying internal debate) than necessary. Now, there's no denying this is a strong impulse and consideration for China's leadership -- and a real impediment to international consensus on some issues. As I say, though, skeptics of the shared interests theory are too quick to heighten the diplomatic obstacles by tagging them as non-zero sum clashes of interest.

As I've been thinking about these questions of how governments align with respect to each other, I've started to think in terms of three levels: selfish interests, affinity, and the collective greater good. The first category is classic national interests, straightforward bottom-line considerations for any government. Affinity is the class of cultural, ideological, alliance ties that bind NATO, the G-77, etc. In the third category, we return to the shared interests hypothesis.

I think the strongest case for the reality of common interests is the way nations share the consequences of the problems on the global agenda. This is how I've been describing it:

Pick any major problem on the agenda and the trajectory without an infusion of international leadership and cooperation could lead to a dire foreseeable future: nuclear arms races in Northeast Asia and the Middle East, a generation of children in extreme poverty with their development stunted by malnutrition, a tipping point of irreversible climate change, mounting bitterness over the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, mounting suspicion that globalization is rigged for the benefit of the few. In sum, inertia is not a great option.

It's the same idea we hear from administration officials when they talk about the status quo being unsustainable for many of the issues we confront. It's not hard to think of an anaology in day-to-day life. When we talk about individuals needing to make wise choices, we say it's in their "own best interests," which parallels pretty closely what we're talking about in international affairs.

The way many people see it, particularly the realist school of IR, there is no such thing as a purely altruistic act in international relations. But I think we can pinpoint some actions the US has taken because it was the right thing to do. For the following list, my criterion was that the United States did not have a direct near-term benefit it could count on as a result of these steps:

• Rebuilding Japan & Germany
• Intervening militarily to stop the killing in Bosnia & Kosovo
• Decolonization of Africa in the 1960s
• The founding of Israel
• Wide distribution of anti-retrovirals to combat AIDS

Let me anticipate a few reactions. There was an issue of NATO credibilty on the line in Bosnia, so maybe only Kosovo should be on the list. I'd distinguish US-Israeli relations as they've evolved -- a major example of affinity -- from Truman's decision in 1948.

It was interesting to talk recently with Steve Clemons, a self-professed realist, about this list. Steve said these acts were not selfless good deeds, but were the United States paying its renewal fees to be accepted as a legitimate global leader. Which I guess means we take slightly different paths to a nearly identical conclusion. From my vantage, these were stands taken by American leaders to uphold their notions of justice or invest in their vision of a future global order. To Steve, they were instances of the US cementing its geopolitical position. You be the judge.

 

Channeling Joseph McCarthy Posted by Kelsey Hartigan

Today kicks off another intensive week of hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the New START accord.  Rose Gottemoeller, chief negotiator of the treaty, and Ed Warner, DoD’s representative for the negotiating team will appear before the committee today at 2:30pm EST.  This will be the second time this duo testifies to the SFRC—the first meeting was a closed session. 

I’m expecting one of two outcomes.

1.     Other than Dick Lugar, most GOP senators won’t bother to show up.

2.    The hearing turns into a political circus, with critics interrogating the negotiators about “secret deals” with the Soviets…errr, Russians. 

Neither of these options are particularly appealing, but given the state of the current debate and the fact that critics have absolutely no support, these are the two most likely outcomes.  Critics are desperately seeking something to latch onto—they need a scapegoat so that their political ploys aren’t so transparent.  Their latest attempt?  Murmurs of secret, back room deals with the Russians.  Cue the creepy music. 

Conservatives’ long-standing obsession with missile defense has triggered the recent accusations.  The New START agreement, like START 1 and nearly every arms control agreement since the Kennedy administration, contains language that allows either side to withdraw from the treaty if they believe their national interests have been threatened—a provision which, by the way, allowed the Bush administration to withdraw from the 1972 ABM treaty in 2002.  This reality hasn’t stopped the critics who are hell-bent on finding some sort of ground on which to base their opposition.  Neither has Dick Lugar’s explanation that the non-binding perambulatory statements are essentially “editorial opinions.”  Instead, critics are launching attacks based on deeply rooted, outdated suspicions.  Joseph McCarthy would have been proud.  In a SFRC hearing last week, Senator Kaufman asked the former National Security Advisors for George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, General Brent Scowcroft and Stephen Hadley, if they believed a super-secret deal had been made:  

Senator Kaufman:  Do you think there's some kind of secret deal, I mean, that's going on, which is what's also implied by many of the critics?

General Scowcroft:  No, I would say that on both sides this is an issue of domestic politics.  And the treaty is amply clear. It does not restrict us. Would the Russians like it to restrict us? Yes, of course. But there isn't -- I don't think there's substance to this -- to this argument.

Mr. Hadley:  I don't think there's secret understanding.

Every single national security expert who has appeared before the SFRC has supported ratification of New START.  The National Security Advisors of both Bush presidents explain that any suspicions over a “secret deal” are simply a result of “domestic politics.”  Maybe the critics won’t show up after all.

Kristol and Fly vs. The World Posted by Patrick Barry

Adam Serwer is definitely right to cast doubt on Iraq invasion proponent turned Iran invasion proponent Bill Kristol's credibility. Kristol's vociferous support for what he thought would be a consequence-free war against Iraq pretty seriously undermines Kristol's ability to cheerlead for a consequence-free war against Iran.

But another reason to doubt Kristol's credibiliy is that pretty much everyone and their brother thinks what he's saying goes completely against U.S. interests. I'm not kidding. This literally comes down to Jamie Fly and Bill Kristol versus everyone else:

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen said in April:  "I worry, on the other hand, about striking Iran. I've been very public about that because of the unintended consequences of that... The diplomatic, the engagement piece, the sanctions piece, all those things, from my perspective, need to be addressed to possibly have Iran change its mind about where it's headed." [Admiral Mullen, via Reuters, 4/18/10]

General David Petraeus, CENTCOM Commander: A military strike "could be used to play to nationalist tendencies...There is certainly a history, in other countries, of fairly autocratic regimes almost creating incidents that inflame nationalist sentiment. So that could be among the many different, second, third, or even fourth order effects (of a strike)." [Gen. David Petraeus, 2/03/10]

Michael O'Hanlon and Bruce Riedel:  "The strike option, however, lacks credibility. America is engaged in two massive and unpopular military campaigns in the region. Given Iran's ability to retaliate against the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is simply not credible that we would use force in the foreseeable future." [O'Hanlon & Riedel, 2/28/10]