Why Not In My Back Yard? Posted by James Lamond

The biggest political problem against closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay is where to put its current residents.  Obstructionists in congress have been making the argument that we cannot bring these dangerous terrorists to the most secure prisons in the world.  Their argument is that the people who live near the prisons don't want the terrorists in their backyard, meanwhile the people who actually live in these neighborhoods don't seem to mind all too much.

Sen. Inhofe, for example, wrote in the Washington Times last week that bringing Guantanamo detainees onto American soil “would place America and its citizens at risk,” and  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “Americans don’t want terrorists plotting attacks against us anywhere. They certainly don’t want them doing so in our backyards, or down the road in the local prison.”

Well looks like these Senators haven’t been talking to the residents of Florence, Colorado, home to Florence ADX, America’s only supermax prison.The LA Times writes today that:

“Most locals don't blink at the idea of taking Guantanamo detainees -- and even the ones who object acknowledge that the issue has yet to replace cows, horses and the high school football team as a leading topic of conversation.

"‘People here don't care about it,’ said Bob Wood, editor and publisher of the community newspaper, the Florence Citizen. ‘We pretty much feel that if they ship them here, these guys [the federal prison guards] will take care of them.’”

While ADX is almost filled to capacity, it is one of the places best suited to house the detainees who are actually are too dangerous to release.  There has never been an escape from supermax.

Florence already hosts the worst of the worst.  Current residents of ADX Florence include,  Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings; Zacharias Moussaoui, convicted of conspiring to kill Americans for his role in the 9/11 attacks; the East African embassy bombing perpetrators; Richard C. Reid, the so called “Shoe Bomber”; Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, held as an enemy combatant in the continental United States; and Muhammad Salameh, convicted for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.  Domestic terrorists who have resided at ADX include Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, and Ted Kaczynski.

What is most ridiculous about all of this is that politicians like Mitch McConnell are claiming to speak for the people of these neighborhoods, yet they are don’t actually reflect their opinion.  Their audience is not is the people whose backyard the detainees would actually be transferred to, rather a political audience that is simply opposed to the president's plan to close Guantanamo- an initiative that almost all experts agree is necessary.

Reclaiming History Posted by Patrick Barry

A speech as ambitious in scope and detail as Obama's Cairo address lends itself to all kinds of interpretations, but one aspect which particularly struck me was his reference to the historical contributions of Muslims and Islam to the world.  Here's the relevant passage:

As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam. It was Islam - at places like Al-Azhar University - that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.

It would be easy to write off the stuff about algebra and medicine as just something politicians do, similar to Gordon Brown lavishing praise on the U.S. when he visited a few months ago.  But to leave it there would be to ignore something much more significant that I think the President was trying to accomplish in the speech, and that is to reclaim a certain way of interpreting history. 

A common and aggravating aspect of certain popular discourses about Islam is the tendency among some commentators to selectively interpret the past in order to argue that Islam and the West are culturally, historically, even geographically determined to clash.  Huntington's 'clashing civilizations' - which pits Western Society against Muslim Society - is probably the most well known contribution to this logic of determined conflict, but it's by no means the only one.  In last month's issue of Foreign Policy, Robert Kaplan brought the same approach to bear in explaining the concept of "shatter zones," a geographic designation, comprised of features that predispose certain parts of the world (including virtually all of the Muslim world) toward instability and conflict.

It would be bad enough if this phenomenon was confined solely to academia or commentary. But it exists in the policy world as well.  No matter how often the Bush administration (the most recent example, but not the only one) claimed they weren't fundamentally at odds with Muslims or Islam, their rhetoric and actions left the impression that they saw mostly intractable differences that could only be reconciled through sudden, dramatic action.  Hence the emphasis on regime change, popular uprisings, and forced elections, the results of which have not been so good.

So how does Obama's speech break with this tendency? By linking the past accomplishments of the Muslim world to the scientific and intellectual revolutions of the west, the President offers an alternative to the insights of Huntington and Kaplan.  According to the President's formulation, history is not solely the product of irreconcilable forces pitted against one another.  It's just as much the result of blending and borrowing.  Our achievements in math and science are in part owed to Ottoman scholars working 600 years ago, who preserved and advanced knowledge, which they passed on to Venetian merchants, who passed them on to someone else.  Not just the clash of ideas, but the exchange of them.

Speech Reaction - UPDATED Posted by Michael Cohen

Couple of meta reactions:

The first 15 minutes of the speech in which Obama talked about the links between Islam and the United States - and the need to break down incorrect stereotypes between the two cultures - was very strong if not a bit repetitive. In some ways, it wasn't really new. it's the sort of rhetoric you might have heard from George W Bush. But coming from Barack Obama it had a level of credibility that no speech by an American President ever has before. The sentiments were not original, but they took on far greater significance because of the speaker.

But then the President perhaps tried to do too much; it bordered on Clintonism. He identified six areas of tension between the US and the Muslim world. I might have cut it down - and in particular I thought the last section on economic development and opportunity was underwhelming.

But the President's words on the Arab/Israeli conflict were magnificent. These two grafs were particularly good:

Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered. . .  To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, and to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel's right to exist.

At the same time, Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop. . .  Israel must also live up to its obligations to ensure that Palestinians can live, and work, and develop their society

Good tough rhetoric, with real political markers laid for both sides. Israel stop the settlements; Hamas you want to seat at the table - stop the violence.

But on democracy, the President's words were a bit uneven. It felt like Obama was apologizing for the democracy promotion excesses of the Bush Administration, rather than laying out his own unique vision for the issue or making a strong call for political reform. He didn't lay down markers, he didn't name names, he didn't talk about the need for a political space for opposition groups. But perhaps I am quibbling, because he did say this:

America respects the right of all peaceful and law-abiding voices to be heard around the world, even if we disagree with them. And we will welcome all elected, peaceful governments – provided they govern with respect for all their people.This last point is important because there are some who advocate for democracy only when they are out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others. No matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who hold power: you must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy

Wow. If I'm reading this correctly, the President is saying that the United States will welcome ANY peaceful and law-abiding government.  For a speech given in Cairo that of course refers to Islamist parties. What's more he is telling Islamist parties, as long you play by democratic rules and treat democracy as more than just a route to power- but a system of government and a means of ensuring accountability -- you will have the support of the United States. And considering that members of Muslim Brotherhood were invited to the speech . . . well this does seem like kind of a big deal and a much needed corrective on the general US antipathy toward engaging with Islamist parties.

I can't say that I heard everything I would have liked to hear on democracy support, but this strikes me as a pretty impressive start on the President's part.

UPDATED - Over at the Plank, Larry Diamond offers a more substantive critique of the President's attention to democracy in his Cairo speech:

But much remains unsaid, or disappointingly vague. Ayman Nour, the Egyptian democracy advocate who was imprisoned for three years for having the temerity to challenge Egypt's modern pharaoh, Hosni Mubarak, in the 2005 presidential election, remarked after the speech: "It was actually better than we expected, but not as good as we hoped. ... His stance on democracy was very general, a bit weak, we hoped for more detail."

Democrats in Egypt and other Arab (and Muslim-majority) countries wanted to hear more. They wanted some specific criticism of authoritarian practices. They wanted Obama to call for the release of political prisoners and an end to the persecution (and torture) of regime opponents. Without violating his vow not to "impose" a system of government on another nation, Obama could much more clearly have aligned himself with Egyptians who are seeking such basic human rights as freedom of speech, freedom to organize, and an independent judiciary. These are the critical foundations for democratic progress, however gradual, throughout the region.

In a pre-trip interview, President Obama stressed that he did not want to be seen as "lecturing" other governments, or characterizing their leaderships. Perhaps he appealed in private to President Mubarak for progress on human rights. But if he was not prepared more explicitly to speak truth to power in this heart of the Arab world, it is reasonable to ask whether Cairo was the right place to give the speech.

I'm not sure that Obama could have gone quite as far as Larry suggested, but the notion that he should have "aligned himself with Egyptians who are seeking such basic human rights as freedom of speech, freedom to organize, and an independent judiciary" is spot on. I really like what Obama said about the role of Islamists in the region's political future, but it's hard to quibble with Larry's argument. If Obama is not prepared to push the Egyptians harder on political reform - or make aid conditional - this speech could end up being seen as a missed opportunity.

What Exactly is the Policy in Afghanistan? Posted by Michael Cohen

There's been quite a back and forth over the past few days about US strategy in Afghanistan and efficacy of counter-insurgency - and I thought it might be helpful to clear the air. The first thing that needs to be said is that there are no good options in Afghanistan - whether its CT or COIN or some mixture of both, all of the possible policy approaches have significant limitations.

Now a couple of days ago, I suggested "shouldn't destroying the Taliban and degrading their capabilities be the military's top and only priority?" This got blown a bit out of proportion, as some suggested that I was presenting the options in Afghanistan to be an either/or between protecting civilians or killing insurgents. Or even worse that I was calling for Operation Linebacker II. 

To some extent, I was offering a bit of a false choice. Killing the enemy (Taliban and Al Qaeda) shouldn't be our only priority (and I gave far too short thrift to the importance of building up Kabul's governing capacity and legitimacy). But taking on the enemy must be our top priority.

And it seems that at least one important man agrees with me - Barack Obama. In March when he laid out the US mission for Afghanistan he articulated three clear objectives - the first two are below:

I have already ordered the deployment of 17,000 troops that had been requested by General McKiernan for many months. These soldiers and Marines will take the fight to the Taliban in the south and east, and give us a greater capacity to partner with Afghan Security Forces and to go after insurgents along the border. This push will also help provide security in advance of the important presidential election in August.

At the same time, we will shift the emphasis of our mission to training and increasing the size of Afghan Security Forces, so that they can eventually take the lead in securing their country. That is how we will prepare Afghans to take responsibility for their security, and how we will ultimately be able to bring our troops home . .  We will accelerate our efforts to build an Afghan Army of 134,000 and a police force of 82,000 so that we can meet these goals by 2011 - and increases in Afghan forces may very well be needed as our plans to turn over security responsibility to the Afghans go forward.

Here the President is laying out a very specific strategy for degrading the Taliban's capabilities and offers a very specific benchmark for training the Afghan security forces (two points that I have made repeatedly in my posts here).

Now for the third part of the President's plan, which is a bit fuzzier and open to some interpretation:

This push must be joined by a dramatic increase in our civilian effort. . . . To advance security, opportunity, and justice - not just in Kabul , but from the bottom up in the provinces - we need agricultural specialists and educators; engineers and lawyers. . . That is why I am ordering a substantial increase in our civilians on the ground. . . 

We will work with local leaders, the Afghan government, and international partners to have a reconciliation process in every province. As their ranks dwindle, an enemy that has nothing to offer the Afghan people but terror and repression must be further isolated. And we will continue to support the basic human rights of all Afghans - including women and girls.

Now, here's the thing. I'm skeptical about this third part of the President's plan. First of all, we lack the civilian capacity to implement it (an assertion borne out by the fact that much of the civilian surge in Afghanistan is being carried out by the military). Second, I for one am unconvinced that it falls within America's national interests. Third, I think "a reconciliation process in every province" is unrealistic. But it bears noting that the President is a lot less specific about this part of the plan than he is first two parts. And, if the President's first two goals are met (degrading the Taliban and improving the Afghan security services), I would imagine there would be some incentive to jettison the more amorphous third part and get the hell out of Dodge.

And I'm not alone, Fred Kaplan at Slate had a similar analysis in recapping the COIN/CT debate in the Administration:

Those more strictly CT advocates, led I'm told by Vice President Joe Biden, concede that the COIN camp has a point. But they say that following that course would require too many troops, too much money, and way too much time—more of all three than the United States and NATO could muster—and that the insurgents might still win anyway. Better to focus U.S. efforts more narrowly on simply fighting the insurgents themselves, especially in the border areas with Pakistan.

In the end, Obama went for an option that might be called "CT-plus." Over the next several months, the U.S. military will basically follow Biden's advice. The "plus"—the extra things soldiers might be ordered to do in the months and years that follow—will be determined, in large part, by how well or how badly things are going. 

. . . Over the next several months, U.S. air and ground forces will step up direct attacks on al-Qaida and Taliban forces in the south and east, to kill as many of them as possible and to keep them away from populated areas, where they might disrupt the presidential elections in August.

. . . Biden's argument against an all-out COIN strategy stemmed from caution about getting sucked into a possible quagmire—a resistance to uncontrolled escalation. It's a resistance that Obama seems to share.

Just to be as crystal clear as possible - because I realize there was some confusion in my earlier post - this is precisely what I think we should be doing in Afghanistan. Focus our energies today on fighting the insurgents and degrading their capabilities all the while improving the capabilities of the Afghan security forces. (And we should do everything in our power to improve governing institutions in Kabul and ensure development aid is flowing to the places where it needs to go - all the while recognizing the limitations on these efforts).

Now to be clear that is NOT what Lt Gen McCrystal said in his testimony the other day. He said, "the measure of American and allied effectiveness would be 'the number of Afghans shielded from violence,' not the number of enemies killed."

Indeed, according to Spencer Ackerman, McCrystal goes even further:

He repeatedly emphasized how his approach in Afghanistan would be guided by “classic counterinsurgency” precepts, such as protecting the population from insurgent assaults, rather than focusing primarily on killing and capturing insurgents. A “military-centric” strategy would not succeed, he told senators.

Maybe I'm crazy here, but isn't this very different from the dominant message that came out of President Obama's speech in March - and doesn't the McCrystal method appear to place greater emphasis on population-centric counter-insurgency rather than, as the President suggested, "tak (ing) the fight to the Taliban"?

To make the point even further, in March President Obama is a bit vague on metrics for success, but he does say this:

We will set clear metrics to measure progress and hold ourselves accountable. We'll consistently assess our efforts to train Afghan Security Forces, and our progress in combating insurgents. We will measure the growth of Afghanistan 's economy, and its illicit narcotics production. And we will review whether we are using the right tools and tactics to make progress towards accomplishing our goals.

What I don't see here - or in the interagency white paper -- is a suggested metric that defines success by the number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan.

Now whether you agree or don't agree, something here doesn't smell right. Either President Obama is misleading the American people about his true strategy in Afghanistan or Lt General McCrystal is preparing to carry out an approach there that is decisively more population-focused and less military-centric than what the President described in March.

(In fairness, there is some ambiguity and division between the interagency white paper on Afghanistan and what the President said in his speech on March 27th. But perhaps most striking is the one word that does not appear in Obama's address - counter-insurgency).

For those of us who are concerned that the United States is preparing to dangerously go down the road of population-centric counter-insurgency, this should be an issue of great concern. And the fact that McCrystal appears to be setting a policy course in Afghanistan that appears to differ crucially from what the President laid out should be of even greater concern.

NSN Daily Update 6/4/2009 Posted by The National Security Network

See today's complete daily update here.

What We’re Reading

President Barack Obama gave a well-received speech in Cairo on the Middle East and the U.S. relationship with the Muslim world.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and challenger Mir Hussein Moussavi held a live public debate yesterday evening.  Moussavi accused Ahmadinejad of running a dictatorship and ruining Iran’s national image, and Ahmadinejad accused Moussavi of conspiring against him with former Iranian leaders and made personal attacks on his wife.

On the 20th anniversary of the crackdown on Tiananmen Square protests, China locked down the square, blocked information access, and expressed “strong dissatisfaction” with Secretary of State Clinton’s comments on the anniversary.

North Korea will put the two captured American journalists on trial, where they will face the possibility of 10 years in a labor camp.  It permitted one of the journalists to call her sister.

Commentary of the Day

Former student leader Wang Dan and reporters Nicholas Kristof and Claudia Rosett recall the crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests 20 years ago, and look at where China is today.

The New York Times responds to the OAS’ lifting of Cuba’s suspension.

Shimon Peres says that the time is ripe to end the Arab-Israeli conflict, asserting that the key is to “renew bilateral negotiations with the Palestinians, supported by clear economic and environmental incentives."

The Speech and Closing Guantanamo Posted by Adam Blickstein

One of the biggest applause lines in Cairo this morning was this:  

I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year.

That this point got a pretty boisterous response shouldn't surprise anyone. Guantanamo and torture have been and remain a singularly important focus for the region and broader Muslim world. Obama reiterating his order to close Guantanamo, and pledging to do so on the timetable he laid out (assuming early next year means January) should dispel any notion that he will not follow through on this, despite setbacks in Congress and speculation that the politics and complicating factors will force his hand. In fact, telling the Muslim world directly that he will close Guantanamo could be a stronger factor in forcing his hand to do just that, because any failure to do so will undermine everything else he laid out in his speech, least of which is rebuilding our fractured relationship with the Muslim world in the first place. You could argue that the fact Obama used the phrase "ordered" instead of saying "Guantanamo will be closed early next year" allows him enough space to not actually shutdown the detention facility by that time. But any delay or equivocation will be detrimental to his overall regional strategy. Guantanamo really has become a centrifugal policy force, and if he does not close it, or tweaks the policy in a way that makes it appear not to be closed, than any renewed goodwill towards the Muslim world could be largely squandered. At that point, everything from regional cooperation on Iraq, Iran and Mideast peace could be devastatingly undermined.  And hopefully, Congress is cognizant of this fact. 

Something else struck me as fairly politically significant: There are no Republicans who could give a speech like that, but more sadly, there are only a handful of Republicans who think the President should give a speech like that. Therein lies the largest philosophical chasm between the GOP, President Obama and more importantly what our political community's perception of governing has become in recent decades: the calculus that if there is little to be gained domestically and politically-or if rhetoric might incite negative short term reactions amongst important constituencies-than there is little reason to take action. This mentality defined the Bush administration and Rove era politics. But this speech was perhaps the biggest disengagement with that mentality, one that at first impression might not have an immediate beneficial impact domestically, but will in the long-term go far in actually enhancing America's national security.

The Strawiest of Strawmen Posted by Michael Cohen

Over at Abu Muqawama, Andrew Exum has responded to my concerns over counter-insurgency policy in Afghanistan - and my notion that the US should be focused more on degrading the enemy rather than protecting civilians -- with the following snarky observation:

Is there really someone left out there that thinks the goal of war-fighting is the destruction of the enemy's fighting forces and not the accomplishment of political aims? Really? Aren't we past this? Has Antoine Henri-Jomini been reincarnated as a fellow at the New America Foundation?

This is the strawiest of strawman arguments - and Andrew conveniently ignores the fact that my quibble always has been with the "political aims" of counter-insurgency (namely the notion that we able or willing to "protect Afghan civilians"). As I wrote yesterday:

The United States is not prepared to devote the time, sacrifice and patience to meeting this probably unreachable goal. Churchillian rhetoric sounds great in congressional testimony but the simple reality is that US forces in Afghanistan are operating under a constrained time frame. Gates has spoken about the need to see progress in a year. Our focus needs to be degrading the enemy, not some amorphous counter-insurgency goal.

Or this:

The US needs to recognize that we simply lack the capability to provide for the basic needs of the Afghan people; that our efforts to turn the Afghan population against the Taliban are beyond our capabilities. And thus we need to focus on what we can accomplish in Afghanistan: ensure that the country's security services are strong enough to prevent a Taliban takeover and degrade, as much as possible, Taliban forces.

Or this:

While I am sympathetic to the notion that enemy body counts are perhaps an imprecise way of judging military success I'm really not clear on how protecting Afghan civilians from the Taliban makes Americans any safer or fulfills our mission there.  Are American troops going to spend 10, 15, 20 years in Afghanistan "protecting civilians" from the Taliban? Are we going to try to meet David Kilcullen's goal of extending “an effective, legitimate government presence into Afghanistan’s 40,020 villages.”? Is that even possible in a country as large as Afghanistan and facing an enemy with far more staying power than the United States and NATO?

Perhaps Andrew or the other COIN-danistas could answer these questions and tell me precisely how they intend to marshal the resources and will to protect every Afghan village from the Taliban, all the while providing Afghan civilians with basic health care, education and good governance. Because, that is more or less what they are arguing we need to be doing in Afghanistan.

Amusingly, Andrew throws Clausewitz in my face and argues that political objective must drive the military objective. Um yeah. Either he doesn't realize or doesn't want to engage with the fact that I believe the political objective that McCrystal lays out is fatally flawed - and can't be achieved. This is the crux of the disagreement.

The US must recognize that in Afghanistan there are severe limitations on what we hope to accomplish there and that protecting civilians is an unreachable and unrealistic goal. Our political and in turn military focus must be on degrading the capabilities of those that most directly threaten US interests.

Oh and one last point, this notion that "civilian casualties were the metric we used to gauge success in Iraq in 2007" is the ultimate red herring because the implication here is that the decline in civilian casualties came about because of the surge and counter-insurgency tactics employed by the US. This flies in face of the 2007 NIE on Iraq, "Where population displacements have led to significant sectarian separation, conflict levels have diminished to some extent because warring communities find it more difficult to penetrate communal enclaves" and this factoid from McClatchy, that by 2007 "Baghdad was once 65 percent Sunni and is now 75 percent Shiite." Celeste Ward perhaps puts is best:

So why did the Iraqis stop the carnage and start deal-making by 2007? We don't fully know. A number of accounts give a nod to the Sunni Awakening and the cease-fire by the Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. Nonetheless, the prevailing interpretations of the surge narrative -- even competing ones, which tend to differ mostly over claims of paternity -- put the Americans in the driver's seat of history. The assumption seems to be that the United States, its leaders and the tactics it employed are primarily responsible for the events on the ground.

But the decisions of the Iraqis themselves surely made a material difference. They stopped fighting, whether due to political calculations, fear or exhaustion. The full story of Iraqi motivations and perceptions has yet to be told.

The fall in civilian casualties was a positive development, but to argue that it was the direct result of the surge - and that it can be replicated in Afghanistan as a metric for success -- is hugely overstated and probably wrong.

Ambition and international relations in the EU Posted by Max Bergmann

Former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard has an interesting oped -via the Economist's Europe blogger Charlemagne - in which he argues that the problems facing the EU are not due to organizational chaos as a result of expansion, but that these small countries that were brought in lacked the same global ambition, as existing members like France. Charlemagne translates:

Many of us dreamed of a federal Europe. We, meaning the French, as well as perhaps most of the peoples of the founding nations of Europe, saw European construction as a way of securing a dominant global role for our civilisation, for our very way of life. The idea was to give new life to our past glories, to the time when we led the world. Except that federal Europe died on us. It was killed by enlargement. The "little" countries that joined the union had never run the world. They were not looking to meddle in global problems, but to shelter from them. They had no need of our "Europe of strength"."

This is an interesting point, but I think its a little flawed. While France - especially under Sarkozy - does not lack the ambition to play a big role on the international stage, it seems pretty clear that Germany - Europe's economic engine - does. I recently argued in World Politics Review that Germany is at a moment where it has the opportunity to emerge as Europe's leader and take a more promenient role on the international stage. Not only has the economic crisis increased Germany's importance within the EU, but the U.S. is increasingly vocal about its hopes that Germany - and therefore Europe - take on a larger international role. But Germany has been reluctant. They have lacked the neccessary ambition, as Rocard would say.

In the same WPR series, Regina Karp argues, in a very interesting piece, that Germany lacks ambition, because the defining aspect of its post-WWII foreign policy has been to abandon its international assertiveness and embedd itself in NATO and the European community. Now that the EU and NATO look increasingly adrift, she argues that, Germany will have to move away from its emphasis on embedding itself in multilateral institutions and:

embrace the concept of the national interest, not as a return to power politics but as a legitimate instrument of statehood. This is the price of reunification. Notions of civilian power need not be abandoned, but they must become more than a mantra.

This to me however, is too narrow a conception of "national interest." One of the main drivers in France's support for the European project has been its global ambition. France has seen the EU historically as very much in their national interests. The EU was seen as having tremendous global potential, since a united Europe would have much greater clout on the international stage than France could have on its own. The problem of Germany's timidity on the international stage is therefore not the result of it blindly supporting multilateral institutions, or of Germany neglecting its national interests, it is that Germany's definition of what is in its national interests lacks any sense of ambition.

So instead of blaming the lack of ambition of the new members for the slowing of the European project, Rocard should blame his direct neighbor to the east.

Breaking News: Bin Laden Lacks Credibility. Posted by Patrick Barry

Hopefully Spencer is wrong, and Obama's speech in Cairo tomorrow won't amount to a rebuttal of Osama Bin Laden's world view.  As sparring partners go, I doubt very much that Obama could top Dubya, and I'd just as soon not see him try.  I do agree though that the tape cries for a smack of some kind.  Take UBL's transparent attempt at styling himself defender of Islamic justice in the Swat valley.  From the LA Times:

In the tape, the speaker accuses Obama of ordering Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to "prevent the people of Swat from implementing the Sharia law by fighting and killing them through bombings and destruction.

Nevermind the fact that Zardari actually signed a law implementing Sharia in Swat.  Let's leave that aside for now, and turn to the purported UBL tape from March, in which the speaker called for newly-elected Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed to be "fought and toppled."  Really? So Sharia is good in Swat, but bad when its promoted by a documented Islamist and supporter of the Islamic Courts Union, with acquiesence from the U.S.? That seems like a pretty clear demonstration that the man hasn't the slightest bit of interest in advancing Muslim causes, apart from using them as a foothold to antagonize the U.S.

I for one am glad we've dispensed with the days of going narrative for narrative with this clown.  

NSN Daily Update 6/3/2009 Posted by The National Security Network

See today's complete daily update here.

What We’re Reading

Osama bin Laden purportedly released a new audio message criticizing the Obama administration’s policies in Pakistan.

A U.S. report found errors in the May 4 airstrikes that killed dozens of Afghan civilians.

Another minister quit Gordon Brown’s cabinet, increasing pressure on the Prime Minister to resign.

Security tightens in China ahead of the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square tomorrow.

Commentary of the Day

Tom Friedman interviewed President Obama about his Middle East trip.

The LA Times thinks it’s time that Cuba rejoins the OAS, but neither Cuba nor the U.S. support the move.

Minxin Pei looks at how Beijing solidified its political power following Tiananmen Square.