We Win: Then What? Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Whether progressives triumph in one or two houses of Congress tomorrow, they will immediately face tough questions about what to do next on the thorny foreign policy questions that have dominated the campaign.  Here are ten quick pieces of advice:

1. Don't Overstate the Influence of Congress Over Foreign Policy Making - Foreign policy is the responsibility of the executive branch.  Even in the majority, progressives will not be at the helm and shouldn't pretend to be.  Particularly given the hard-headedness of this administration (Dick Cheney's "full steam ahead" comment on Iraq yesterday epitomizes it) progressives should not pretend to enjoy more sway than they do.  For example, there's been lots of talk of a regional conference to activate Iraq's neighbors on behalf of stability.  That will be tough to make work, but especially so for an Administration that still won't admit what's gone wrong.

2. Don't Let Anyone Forget How We Got Here - The reason the American public is contemplating switching horses absent what many pundits thought was essential to progressive victory: namely, a consensus plan for Iraq, is that they have come to blame the Administration for creating an insoluble crisis.  Iraq will get likely get worse before it gets better, and a changeover on Capital Hill cannot undo most of the mistakes already made.   We need a bipartisan approach to digging out from the crisis, but should not lose sight of who got us into it.

3. Don't Expect an Easy Out From Iraq - Lots of progressives have been speaking as though some tough talk to the al-Maliki government in Iraq will get it to step up to the plate, get security under control, and allow us to exit without a complete meltdown into sectarian violence.  While I don't pretend to know to what degree the Iraqi government's failings are attributable to lack of will versus lack of competence, it seems certain that regardless, the problem will not be solved.  While it may make good campaign rhetoric, its not plausible that the government is willfully allowing their country to devolve into chaos but, with the right stern words, will suddenly reverse course and get things under control.  Short of that all scenarios are pretty bleak.

4.  Be Honest with the American Public - Half-truths got us into Iraq, but they won't get us out.  With greater control in the Congress, progressives will have the authority to unpack the Administration's statements and claims and let the public in on the truth about how the war effort is going, what the likely consequences of withdrawal will be, and what needs to be done to mitigate them.

5.  Look for a Handful of Tangible Ways to Push Policy in the Right Direction - Rather than trying to pull off a miracle in Iraq, progressives should focus on preventing the White House from digging us deeper into the whole, and on some tangible steps to address the worst of the policy lapses.  A few specifics:

Democracy after Bush: 10 Lessons for Progressives Posted by Suzanne Nossel

One major piece of fallout from the Bush foreign policy era is the discrediting of America's role in promoting democracy around the world.  A few days ago, I heard a Senate candidate recounting what I assume was a line he uses on the stump; something to the effect that by making the mistake of holding elections amid a population that suffers from poor education, an absence of civic institutions, and no tradition of the rule of law, you will wind up with Hamas in power.   

While Americans are right to conclude that elections alone do not a democracy make, this does not mean its wrong to support free elections in places that fall well short of the criteria for full-fledged democracy.   Here are 10 conclusions I draw after 10 years of democracy promotion the Bush way:

1.  The U.S. must remain at the forefront of promoting democracy worldwide - The hangover of the Bush years will lead many to urge retreat from efforts to advance democracy in farflung places, on grounds that such work is costly, dangerous, and bound to fail.  While the impulse is understandable, this would be a huge mistake.  America's role in fostering democracy and aiding democrats the world over helped fuel us to superpowerdom during the first half the twentieth century, and keep us there during the second.  This drive was behind many of America's greatest contributions to the international system - including the creation of the multilateral order and the rise of great democracies on all continents.  We cannot throw the baby of democracy promotion out with the bathwater of Bush Administration policies.

2.  Democracy is not the same as pro-Americanism - One of the rationales behind American support for democracy is the idea that Democratic regimes are more inclined to support the US.  While this is true in the long term, the effect is neither immediate nor universal, as we've learned the hard way in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and - arguably - Iran.  Where there are longstanding grievances, immediate resentments, and/or political elements who rally support based on anti-Western and anti-American agendas, the democracy won't necessarily temper these sentiments.  Americans need to understand that fostering democracies around the world will benefit US interests over time, and not to expect immediate gratification in the form of pro-US governments.

3.  Democracy delayed will be seen as democracy denied - The US cannot afford to take the position that where democratic elections may result in the rise of extremist or anti-US elements, such elections should be indefinitely postponed.  If there are reasons to believe feasible, relatively quick steps can be taken to foster more free and fair elections, there may be nothing wrong with advocating that those happen first.  But a position that only once US-friendly parties are poised for victory does a population deserve to elect its own government will be seen as self-serving and hypocritical. 

4.  Elections are necessary but not sufficient for democracy - Rather than downplaying the importance of elections, US policymakers should place more emphasis on dimensions like the development of democratic institutions; the building of an independent judiciary; freedom of the press and of expression; civic education; a firm state monopoly on the use of force, and more.  These get short shrift because they take more money and time, and don't provide the same photo ops as peasants waving ink-stained fingers in the air.  In Eastern Europe and elsewhere, the US, other Western governments and international bodies have gained experience promoting a full range of democratic accouterments.  We need to get to work as energetically in these areas as we do in the business of holding elections.

5.  Pro-democracy and anti-corruption must go hand-in-hand - The big lesson of Hamas' victory is not that elections were a bad idea, but that West's erred glaringly in failure to ensure that the previous Fatah-led government provided adequate levels of law and order and social services to sustain its hold on power.   By most accounts, Hamas' win reflected less popular extremism than abject frustration with the corruption and ineptitude of the Fatah regime.  Similar tendencies are reportedly behind Hezbollah's popularity in Lebanon.   It is no surprise, and is laudable, that voters prize competence and reject corruption.  The West needs to do what it can to ensure that they don't need to vote in violent extremists in order to get them.

You Say You Got a Resolution: What's Next in Lebanon Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Tomorrow morning the UN negotiated ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon will enter into force.  This represents a long-awaited milestone, and yet leaves open as many questions as it answers.  We've talked before about how these much-heralded international agreements sometimes wind up doing little more than paper over differences that just burst back open as deeply as ever.  Will that happen here?  Here are some signs to watch for in the coming days and weeks:

1.  What will Israel do with its forces currently in Lebanon - The idea behind the ceasefire resolution is that Israeli troops will end offensive operations, and gradually withdraw as international peacekeepers and the Lebanese army take their place.  But with intense political pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert after an operation that's seen at best as a partial victory, will the post ceasefire period be sufficiently free of provocation that Israel's guns stay quiet, and will the international force be mobilized quickly enough so that the motions of withdrawal can start?

2.  Will Hezbollah comply with the resolution's requirement that it disarm south of the Litani River - Sheikh Nasrallah has said he will comply with this only once Israel leaves Southern Lebanon (including Shebaa Farms) and is replaced by the Lebanese army and an expanded UNIFIL.  A dispute over this point led to impasse at a Lebanese cabinet meeting this morning, because Israel will not leave with an armed and ready Hezbollah still unchecked in what is to become the buffer zone.  If not solved, this gap could yield a stand-off that quickly turns violent.

3.  Will the Lebanese government be able to coopt Hezbollah into rejecting violence - As long as Hezbollah remains a guerrilla state-within-a-state in Lebanon, even if there's a semblance of partial disarmament in the south, the organization will be poised to regroup and restart its attacks.  The only way to stop that is for Hezbollah to disband, or to transform into a legitimate political party.  Some suggest that a package of incentives - control over ministries and resources, perhaps - might lure Hezbollah into such a conversion.

4.  How quickly does an international force get mobilized - There is no agreement on when the 15,000-strong international force will be deployed, nor who will lead it.  France, Italy, Turkey and others have said they'll contribute troops.  The UN, largely for reasons outside the organization's direct control, is notoriously slow in getting peacekeepers out into the field.  Having witnessed the US's experience in Lebanon in 1982 and in Iraq, other governments will naturally hesitate.

5.  How well can a UN force rein in a terrorist group - I posed the same question some weeks ago in pondering the viability of an expanded UNIFIL as a route to resolving the conflict.  If Hezbollah stands down, that's one thing.  But unless they abandon or put on hold their raison d'etre of returning the region to its 1948 borders (minus the State of Israel, that is), the UN force will be faced with trying to contain an aggressive, well-armed, and sophisticated guerrilla group, something both the US military (in Iraq) and the Israel Defense Force (in Lebanon in recent weeks) have failed at.  This could be a humiliating defeat for the UN, or potentially a triumph that shows the organizations relevance in an era of terror.

6.  How does Hezbollah approach the arrival of a beefed up UN force - This brings up the directly-related question of how Hezbollah deals with the UN troops:  in its heretofore skeleton-staffed and weakly mandated form, UNIFIL seems to have been largely ignored by Hezbollah fighters.  But the augmented force will be far more heavily armed and have robust rules of engagement.  Will Hezbollah want to be seen as cooperating?  Will their quiescence mask behind-the-scenes plotting and rearmament? 

7.  What kind of mettle will the Lebanese army show - The abject failure of the Lebanese army to exert a monopoly on force in Southern Lebanon is at the root of Hezbollah's opportunism and the skirmishes that erupted into this (thus far) mini-war.  Now the world is relying on Lebanese soldiers to play a major role in retaking and securing the country's Hezbollah-ridden border areas.   If past is prologue, this is a recipe for continued Hezbollah infiltration.  If that happens, its a matter of time before Israel comes back in in some form.

8.  Do Syria and Iran still want to rumble with the world - Both governments, known to be political, financial and military backers of Hezbollah, have announced their opposition to the ceasefire resolution.  Both are assumed to have been behind Hezbollah's initial provocations.  In the face of UNSC unanimity and an international peacekeeping force, do they decide that the optics of trying to spoil the deal are untenable?  Or do they see this as some sort of epic battle against the West that they're bent on fighting until Israel returns the Golan and the UN backs off Tehran's nuclear program?

9.  What's next in Gaza - Before this last round started in early July, the big worry was friction between Israel and Gaza, brought to a head by the abduction of an Israeli soldier, subsequent military retaliation, and exchanges of rocket and missile fire.  Before that, the big worry was a restive population as a result of a starved Palestinian authority that could not pay its civil servants because the flow of funds had been cut off after Hamas' election.  The situation could easily boil over if subsequent international efforts are not made to extend the ceasefire to Gaza in some form.

10.  What level of engagement in the conflict will the Bush Administration sustain - The speed with which the international force is mobilized, the pace at which Israel withdraws, and the role the Lebanese government plays will all be influenced by the degree to which the Administration - and others, including notable the EU and the other Permanent UNSC members - continue to pressure the parties.  With an election coming up, will Bush - as never before - be willing to tie his fate to events in the Mideast he cannot control? Truth is he's tied to them like it or not.

Whose Afraid of the Big, Bad Left? 10 Reasons Why Progressives Shouldn't Be Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Peter Beinart and others are worried that the fiasco of the Iraq War will result in the resurgence of a staunchly anti-imperialist, neo-isolationist left of the sort the American public will never trust with its national security.   I have been arguing for four years that progressives will not retake power if they are perceived not to trust America's military hand around the world. 

So while I agree with Peter's premise that only a robustly internationalist liberalism can resurrect American power and redirect American policy, I think its a mistake to get distracted at this point by worrying about how to manage the left.  Here's why:

1.  Talking up a hawk-dove progressive rift plays right into conservative hands - Conservatives would like nothing more than to paint the opposition as riven with divisions and wracked by isolationist, anti-interventionist sentiment.  This feeds their case that progressives cannot be trusted to defend America and that tough but blundering is better than cowardly and retreatist.  The fact is that progressives have come together to drive some major Congressional victories and are largely in agreement what needs to happen to put America on course.  We should not help conservatives paint us otherwise.

2.  9/11 and Globalization Dealt a One-two Punch Against Isolationism - While Americans rue the conduct of the Iraq war, the combination of economic and technological globalization and the 9/11 attacks have convinced most Americans that the U.S. cannot turn away from the world.  While Iraq has engendered grave misgivings about the Bush Administration's approach, history offers many other more successful models for America's global leadership.  Most Americans, even on the far left, will be receptive to internationalism as long as it is not of the Bush variety.

3.  Talk of isolationism today is greatly exaggerated - As I and others have written, Bush likes to talk about isolationism as a way to tar his critics as head-in-the-sand America-lasters.  The reality is that many of his opponents have far deeper internationalist credentials than he does and that few, if any, are arguing that America can retreat from global leadership.  Rather than arguing against supposed isolationists, progressives should expose Bush's attempt to deflect legitimate criticism by crying isolationism.

4.  Being anti-war doesn't mean being anti a strong defense and an aggressive foreign policy - Though the Administration would have us believe otherwise, there's nothing incoherent about supporting assertive, effective American global leadership and believing that a) the Iraq war was anything but and b) the problems in Iraq won't be fixed by a continued American prresence.  The Fighting Dems and the retired Generals who have openly criticized the conduct of the war all advocate a strong national defense and tough line on terror regardless of where they come out on Iraq.

5.  Iraq is not Vietnam - Vietnam did engender a long period of American isolationism and protracted misgivings about U.S. military intervention in virtually any form.  But Iraq won't do the same for various reasons:  the mistakes and misconceptions of the Iraq adventure are so obvious that people are less prone to believe any American intervention would be similarly flawed; also, as painful as Iraq has been, casualties still are small relative to Vietnam;

10 Lessons from the Corporate World For Donald Rumsfeld's Fight to Keep His Job Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Since I spend my days in the corporate world, given the outcry over Donald Rumsfeld’s leadership at the Pentagon the analyses of commentators like David Brooks who tie the SecDef’s failings to the style he developed in business, I thought it might be fun to try to distill 10 lessons from the corporate world that apply to Iraq:

1. If a Seemingly Wise and Sound Venture is Failing, Question the Management – This is the basic principal behind calls for Rumsfeld’s ouster:  if, as Bush insists, the Iraq invasion was correctly conceived and still stands a chance to succeed, there’s got to be some explanation for why the detritus of failure piles up day after day.  Had new management in the form of John Kerry come in in January 2005 there would still have been a chance to turn things around.  It may well be too late now, but the retired Generals and the public are right to demand that Bush try, and the way to start is with new management.

2. Don’t Confuse Marketing with Sales – The Administration has put heavy efforts into trying to market the Iraq War through speeches, outreach, and artfully worded statistics.  But sagging poll numbers show that no one’s buying.  To get the public to buy into this war would have required addressing their fundamental qualms – the shaky rationale, poor planning, and absent international support.  The biggest marketing blitz in Hollywood can’t sell tickets to movies people don’t want to see.

3. After About 9 Months, Lack of Trained Personnel is No Longer an Excuse – When the occupation of Iraq began in 2003 there might have been some grounds for excusing the unavailability of American troops trained in peacebuilding (after all, Bush had decried nation-building during the 2000 campaign).  But three years later soldiers are still finding themselves in roles and jobs for which they had not training.  The Pentagon ran out of excuses a while back.

4. Staff Must be Obligated to Dissent – Well-run companies spend a lot of time trying to tease out alternative thinking from their executive and line ranks, knowing that functional experts see things top management cannot.  At the McKinsey consulting firm, consultants have a “obligation to dissent,” meaning that they are urged to speak their minds if they think a project is off course.  This is easier to administer in paper than in practice, where loyalties and career fears constrain openness.  But well-managed companies find ways of overcoming these barriers.  From all reports, the Rumsfeld Pentagon does the opposite.

5. Ventures that Start Very Badly Are Typically Impossible to Turn Around – This is true in the corporate world (think the AOL-Time Warner acquisition or Bertelsmann's acquisition of Napster, to name a couple of fairly recent and sexy examples), and – it would be my guess – equally so for the military.  There are a variety of reasons why:  leaders wind up spending more time trying to defend failed policies than looking ahead; they lose confidence; they cannot attract the support of others; competitors are emboldened by the perceived failure; shareholder pressure increases which can curb resources, etc.  Many of these are at work in Iraq too.

State of the Union: 10 Things Bush Needs to Say on Foreign Policy Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Word is that the President's State of the Union Address this week will focus on domestic issues.  Given the firestorm over the wiretaps, the carnage in Iraq, the frightening results of the Palestinian election, the latest tape from Osama, the war talk out of Tehran, and the mounting chaos on the Afghan-Pakistan border, it's hard to blame Bush for trying to divert attention from foreign policy.  But the truth is that American security is growing more precarious, partly because of Bush's own policies.  Here are 10 things the president ought to say this week.  I'll check back in afterward to evaluate whether he has.

1.  No More Illegal Wiretaps - Illegal wiretaps have trammeled civil liberties, undermined the rule of law, eroded Americans' trust in their government, and wasted thousands of hours of analysts' time reviewing useless transcripts.  The law is clear that to wiretap, a president needs a court order.  There's no evidence that this requirement has stood in the way of the intelligence agencies getting information they need.  While the debates and lawsuits on past practice will rage on, Bush should pledge no more wiretaps without a judge's approval.

2.  No Tolerance for Torture - Bush has never spoken out forcefully on torture.  He should disavow torture by any arm or official of the U.S. government and renounce the practice of extraordinary rendition of suspects to countries that practice torture.  It's painful to recognize that this even needs to be said by our president, but it does.

3.  No Permanent Bases in Iraq - Regardless of what you think about the Iraq war effort, permanent bases are a bad idea.  Analysts of the war on terror are focusing on the role that U.S. troops on Mideast (and Saudi in particular) sand and soil have had in inflaming anti-Americanism.  Though we can debate when to leave Iraq, few doubt that at some point we will go.  But Bush has never said this and it's something both Americans and Mideast need to hear.

4.  No Questioning of Patriotism for Critics of the War - It is McCarthyistic to suggest that it's un-American to question the Iraq war effort.  In the coming year, more than a dozen Iraq war veterans will run for Congress.  Along with John Murtha, John Kerry, and anyone else who has something to say, they sure as hell are going to talk about the war.  For Bush to unequivocally defend the right of all Americans to debate our foreign policy would bespeak a level of self-assurance this president hasn't shown since right after 9/11.

5.  U.S. to Mount Direct, Sustained Engagement in the Middle East Peace Process - While many factors helped foster Hamas' landslide victory in the Palestinian elections last week, the Bush Administration's Mideast policies - its sporadic engagement in the peace process after Arafat's death, its war in Iraq - are among them.  Bush has dispatched Rice to build consensus in Europe on how to deal with Hamas.  But this cannot be another short-lived blitz.  The administration has strong influence on both sides of the conflict. Now is the time to use it.

Iraqi Elections: 10 Key Things to Look Out for During and After Posted by Suzanne Nossel

We all know this week's elections for a permanent Iraqi parliament are important, but what tea leaves are worth focusing on to determine whether this will be a watershed for democracy, another halting and ambivalent step in Iraq's tortured transition, or the beginning of the end of Iraq as a unitary state.    Here are 10 things to watch for after the election to see whether the balloting winds up being as transformative as the Bush Administration hopes.

1.  Performance and Cohesion of the United Iraqi Alliance - This coalition of 18 conservative religious Shiite parties nominated current Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.  If it prevails in its strongholds of Iraq's 8 southern provinces and Baghdad, this means increasing Iranian influence in Iraq.   If the alliance falls short of the 45-50% of seats projected or fragments during post-vote horsetrading, that may bode well for the emergence of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi or another secular moderate, and for the US's continued strong sway.  See here for more.

2.  Performance of the Iraqi National List - This is Allawi's party, and represents the US's best bet for a friendly Iraqi leadership that will cooperate with our efforts to engineer a smooth exit and sustain our influence long-term.   Allawi got 14% of the vote in January running as a sitting Prime Minister.  If that number rises, it may suggest that secularism in Iraq has legs.

3.  Speed with Which a New Government is Formed Post-Vote - This took three months after the January elections for an interim Iraqi Parliament.  Petty infighting ruled the day, and momentum toward political reform and integration stalled.   Now, the incoming Parliament faces a four-month deadline to fill in the most contentious blanks in the constitution adopted in October.  The more time they lose, the remoter the chances that a grand and sustainable bargain on issues like federalism and apportionment of oil proceeds emerges.

What Iraq Has Taught Us About Humanitarian Intervention Posted by Suzanne Nossel

There's an important debate underway on America Abroad about where the liberal internationalist consensus for humanitarian intervention stands after Iraq (see Anne-Marie Slaughter's latest post for a partial summary).  The gist is an argument over whether, as David Rieff claims, after Iraq, humanitarian intervention can no longer be distinguished from self-interested, imperialistic interventions done under the guise of promoting human rights and ousting despots.  Back in the Spring of 2004 (actually, the Summer of 2003, in light of FA's pub cycle) I fretted that exactly this would happen, writing in Foreign Affairs that:

After September 11, conservatives adopted the trappings of liberal internationalism, entangling the rhetoric of human rights and democracy in a strategy of aggressive unilateralism. But the militant imperiousness of the Bush administration is fundamentally inconsistent with the ideals they claim to invoke. To reinvent liberal internationalism for the twenty-first century, progressives must wrest it back from Republican policymakers who have misapplied it.

Shadi Hamid has touched on similar issues in posts immediately below.   There's much I agree with in responses to Rieff from Slaughter, Bruce Jentleson, Ivo Daalder and John Ikenberry, including the essential point that Iraq was emphatically not a humanitarian intervention.  It doesn't even qualify as the hard case that might make bad law.   But that said, Iraq has taught us key lessons that can and must guide future thinking on humanitarian intervention, mostly raising the bar for when we should intervene and how we need to do it.  I list 10 of them.  Look forward to additions, subtractions and comments.

1.  Principle Motivation Must be Perceived as Humanitarian - I disagree strongly with Rieff that humanitarian intervention has already been discredited beyond salvation.  But after a few more Iraqs, that likely would be true.   No matter the stated reasons for intervention, audiences in the affected country and at home will judge motives for themselves.  Humanitarian intervention will normally implicate some strategic US interest, writ broadly.  But any whiff of narrower self-interest (especially involving economic or domestic political considerations) can foul the air completely.  James Baker's observation that we had no dog in the fight in Bosnia may, ironically, have helped legitimize our interventions in Bosnia and later in Kosovo.

2.  While it Need Not Necessarily Derive from Any Single Source, Legitimacy is Essential - Anne-Marie Slaughter and Ivo Daalder illuminate how the US operation in Kosovo, though without UN imprimatur, had the effect of "pushing" international law to provide broader license for similar interventions, culminating in this Fall's adoption of a UN "responsibility to protect" (a duty that, unaccountably, has not been invoked in Darfur).   Rather than fixating exclusively on a single form of sanction (UN Security Council, for example), advocates of humanitarian intervention will need to ensure they can credibly claim some source of legitimacy (for example, from a regional organization).

3.  Humanitarian intervention is war - Rieff is right to emphasize this, particular since the point was forgotten by those (outside the Administration) who favored war in Iraq on humanitarian grounds.    Many expected a quick, clean conflict and thought that if a brutal tyrant like Saddam could be ousted relatively bloodlessly well, then, why not?  Iraq is a reminder of the  risks that make going to war a momentous decision:  loss of American lives, loss of foreign lives, physical dislocations, social and psychological disruptions, regional destabilization and risk of unpredictable horribles.  While we rightly rue our failure to act in Rwanda, we perhaps don't think enough about what the never-fought "Rwanda War" (and subsequent occupation?) might have been like.

4.  Humanitarian intervention is more than just war - Those of us who believe that humanitarian intervention needs to be among the options available to US policymakers face a major challenge in bringing US capabilities to carry out the non-military aspects of intervention (stabilization, state-building, socio-economic reconstruction, etc.) up to the standards applied to our conventional military operations (counter-terrorism, unfortunately, excluded).   See here for more.

5.   Intervenor Bears Strict Liability for Anything That Goes Wrong - The reasons the operation in Iraq has gone so badly wrong have everything to do with the fact that this was not a humanitarian intervention:  if the US's motives weren't at issue, we wouldn't face the kind of insurgency we do.  But Iraq has nonetheless taught a sobering lesson about the responsibility an intervenor shoulders, fairly or not.  We should never again intervene without a serious examination of the worst-case scenario consequences and how to deal with them.

6.  Negligent Intervention May be Worse than No Intervention - Until Iraq, it never dawned on most of us that the US was capable of an operation as poorly planned and executed as the aftermath of the Iraq intervention.  But we know now.  A hard-headed assessment of preparedness and capabilities is essential to any future humanitarian intervention debate.

7.  When We Go at it Alone, We'd Better Understand Why - Many progressives subscribe to the mantra "with others where possible, alone where necessary."  When it comes to humanitarian intervention, we need to answer honestly why we're alone.  If its because of the rest of the world's biases, indifference, cowardice or helplessness, fine.  If its because we haven't proffered a rationale convincing enough to rally others, because they suspect our motives, or because they believe that measures short of intervention might work, we need to look hard at whether to go ahead.   Analyzing this objectively will be tough.

8.  Humanitarian Intervention Represents a Preventive Policy Failure - Given the emphasis that we progressives place on diplomacy, alliances, multilateral institutions, and fostering democracy and the rule of law, humanitarian intervention should only arise as a need once our best efforts on all these fronts have failed.  That notion may seem obvious, but truly embracing it means rejecting humanitarian intervention"ism" as a major pillar of progressive foreign policy (an pillar that wins favor partly because it allows liberals to demonstrate that they don't shy away from force).  John Ikenberry makes a similar point.

9.  Putting Values into Action Abroad Invites Scrutiny at Home - This is one of the most dangerous aspects of the neo-conservative hijacking of progressive priorities like human rights and the rule of law.  The abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have tainted the way these concepts are understood abroad, and we will spend years undoing that damage.

10.  Today's Interventions Will Both Dictate and Circumscribe Tomorrow's - What we used to think of as "Vietnam Syndrome" has turned out to be an eerie pendulum that swings from one era's mistakes of action (Vietnam, Somalia) into the next's errors of omission (Rwanda, Bosnia), and then back again (Iraq) and again (Darfur).   The challenge of us defenders of humanitarian intervention is to take the last 30 years of experience and build from it a vector of progress (Anne-Marie Slaughter's faith) rather than than a bloody cycle of repetition (Rieff's fear).

While Washington Slept Posted by Suzanne Nossel

I could not bring myself to weigh in this week either on Plamegate or on the latest "plans" for Iraq.  Yet writing about virtually anything else seems to sidestep what's uppermost on all of our minds.  But as important as the areas in which the Administration has botched US policy, are the ancillary effects of its missteps on neglected and overlooked issues.  We all know that domestic preparedness has been buried under the bureaucratic avalanche of the Department of Homeland Security, and that our military is dangerously overstretched.   But a host of other issues crawl across our minds - flickering in and out as we absorb ourselves in more immediate problems like Plamegate and Iraq.   But if we don't start paying attention soon, they'll catch up with us.  Here are 10 of them.

Middle East Peace Process – The Bush Administration's failure to engage deeply and consistently in the Mideast peace process has left the most contentious conflict in the Middle East in a dangerous limbo.  Ariel Sharon's historic decision to pull out of Gaza left a host of questions unanswered, and the Administration has done little to try to ensure that the Gaza withdrawal be followed by further steps to implement the road map.  Bush's own wise decision to reject Arafat's leadership, followed by Arafat's death, could have allowed this Administration to make history a very different kind of history in the Middle East.

Doha Round- The Doha Round of trade talks, aimed at reducing the agricultural subsidies that result in cows in France enjoying higher per capita income that millions of people in Africa, are in danger of collapse.   The worst culprits are the French, who refuse to support even modest EU proposals to trim welfare for farmers.    But while USTR Rob Portman has made important conditional commitments to reduce US subsidies, the Senate Ag Committee has voted to extend benefits for rice, cotton and other agribusinesses til 2011.  The demise of Doha will perpetuate global poverty, (fairly or not) deepen resentment toward the US, and set back economic growth at home and abroad.  The Administration should redouble its efforts to prevent that from happening.

Galloping Anti-Americanism – Karen Hughes' ear-muffed listening tours of the Middle East and Indonesia make great comic relief, but do nothing to allay the march of anti-Americanism.   While I objected to Hughes' 8-month long voluntary hiatus before taking office, now that she's on the job Hughes' tone-deafness may well be making things worse.  Apart from the serious political consequences of anti-US attitudes, businesses are increasingly worried that the friction may hurt the bottom line.  Despite years of Administration talk on the need to win hearts and minds, we aren't.

China's Growing Political Influence - China's economic and diplomatic influence in Southeast Asia, Africa and elsewhere has grown tremendously since Bush took office.  Whether or not we consider China a likely military threat, for a country that shares so few of our political values to enjoy a level of global influence that rivals our own will complicate our foreign policy for decades to come.   We could have a long debate about the best strategy to deal with this, but looking the other way while our own sway wanes is not it.

Russia - As James Goldgeier and Michael McFaul point out in a new piece in Policy Review, Russia has made no meaningful contribution to any of the Bush Administration's three chief policy objectives:  fighting terror, controlling the spread of nukes, and promoting liberty.  In many respects, the US-Russian relationship seems to be slipping backward into Cold War era antagonisms.  Despite Condi Rice's expertise in the region, Russia has not been a focus for this Administration, and it shows.

Shoring Up American Influence in Our Own Backyard - US ties to Mexico are strained, and perceptions of the US in Canada are worse than at any point in the last 25 years, with the latest tension over what the Canadians are dubbing flagrant US violations of NAFTA.   The upcoming Summit of the Americas is expected to be an anti-Bush fest and a planned POTUS visit to Brazil afterward is already attracting protests.  Meanwhile outspoken anti-American Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is consolidating his influence.

Global Warming - Remember when the Administration's repudiation of the Kyoto Protocol on emissions and its failure to propose alternatives ranked among Bush's chief foreign policy failings?  Well, that day may come again.  Since then the Administration has continued to deny the link between greenhouse gasses and global warming, impeding efforts to control pollution and prevent climate change.  The result has left countries like India and China free to continue polluting without the pressure of emerging global standards.

The Balkans - The US military intervention in Kosovo in 1999 seems to get mentioned these days only as a reminder that Democrats are unafraid to use force.   There's little talk about the fact that Kosovo's political future remains unresolved (though Charlie Kupchan has a great recent Foreign Affairs article on the subject), and that peace in the territory is contingent on continued international presence.  More than 10 years after the Dayton Accord Bosnia is likewise heavily dependent on an international administration to avoid political disintegration.  Eventually the US will have to reengage to help these territories shift toward permanent status.

Bird Flu - The Administration has finally gotten off the dime in response to the threat of bird flu, now that new cases of the disease seem to be surfacing daily.   Bush will give a major speech on the topic this week at the NIH.  But make no mistake, in terms of real preparations for an outbreak, we are near nowhere.

Pakistani Attitudes Toward the US - I wrote about this last week, but the reports now are that the second wave of post-earthquake deaths from disease and exposure are already beginning.  UN agencies will have to scale back their aid this week unless more donor money flows fast.  If tens of thousands of Pakistanis die this winter because not enough help reached them, Pakistan's number one international "partner" - the US - is the most likely target for blame.  If that happens, the failure to deal more adequately with Pakistan's October 8 earthquake could go down as one of the greatest lapses of Bush's fight against terror.

National Security Contract With America Posted by Suzanne Nossel

There's been talk in recent weeks about the need for progressives to devise their own version of Newt Gingrich's 1994 Contract with America.  Nancy Pelosi is apparently putting the finishing touches on such a document, and analysts including Robert L. Brosage at The Nation are proffering their own formulations.   Walter Cronkite has called for convening a mid-term Convention to ratify the ideas.  The bulk of any such proposal will deal with domestic policy, but here are nine ideas to get the ball rolling on what the foreign policy planks of such a contract could be.  When the Gingrich contract was issued within weeks of the 1994 mid-term elections, each provision was accompanied by draft legislation. 

1.  Truth in War Act - This law would require that before Congress could declare war (or shortly thereafter in exigent situations), the maximum possible disclosure of information be made to the American people concerning the grounds for military action and the challenges and risks of the proposed operation.  It could  be up to the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence to jointly certify that the requisite level of disclosure was made under the circumstances and the Senate could hold public hearings on their findings.

2.  Strengthening America's Military Act (aka Uncle S.A.M.) - This law would enlarge the active-duty military and the the Special Forces, and reduce reliance on over-taxed reservists, stop-loss orders and extended tours.  It would provide resources for DOD to develop recruitment, training, benefits and outplacement packages necessary to lure substantial additional recruits for active duty.  More details on each of these are contained in this CAP report.  CAP also identifies potential cuts to wasteful programs that could make expansion of the army revenue-neutral.

10 features of today's landscape that we would not have imagined on 9/11 Posted by Suzanne Nossel

It's hard to put oneself back in the mindset of that brilliantly sunny but paralyzingly dark September day four years ago, nor the surreal weeks and months right after.  But I've tried to do so today, and to consider what aspects of today's American situation could have been predicted, and what would have seemed unfathomable.  I don't think the war in Iraq would have been inconceivable, nor that it was impossible to imagine the US dead in a military conflict in the Middle East creeping up toward the number of 9/11 casualties.  It may be a little strong to say that none of the items on this list were imaginable:  truthfully we may have imagined we might see them, though fervently hoped we wouldn't. 

Osama on the Loose - Remember "dead or alive?"  First we thought Osama would be caught during the war on Afghanistan.  Then we thought that the Administration would surely find him before the 2004 elections (see this TNR article entitled "July Surprise").  It was hard to judge which imperative was more powerful:  punishing the man who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, or decapitating al Qaeda.   I would not have guessed that neither would be accomplished by now.

Homeland security seemingly in disarray - There are two surprises here:  1) that we're so woefully ill-prepared for another major disaster on the homefront; and 2) that few realized this until the Katrina debacle two weeks ago.   In retrospect, as tragic and horrifying as it was for New York City in particular, 9/11 was nowhere near the challenge in terms of emergency response that a major hurricane or a dirty bomb would pose.

Public diplomacy effort has gone nowhere - There was an enormous amount of talk about outreach and diplomacy in the weeks and months after 9/11.  While a stack of thorough reports have been written on the topic and dozens of solid recommendations issued, progress has stalled almost completely.  This GAO report details the manifold reasons why this effort has yet to get off the ground.  Karen Hughes was sworn in the day before yesterday to the post of Under-Secretary for Public Diplomacy, a post that had been vacant for 16 months.   We'll see where we are a year from now under her stewardship.

Afghanistan having become an afterthought - In the weeks and months after 9/11, it was expected that rooting out the Taliban and transforming Afghanistan into a stable country would consume American foreign policy for years to come.  Four years later, Afghanistan rarely makes the front page.  The country has made significant progress but according to this UNDP report, remains in danger of devolving back into a failed state.  Militarily, large swaths of territory remain under hostile control.    Its no surprise that Afghanistan still needs US attention; what's amazing is that it no longer gets it.

Nowhere on non-proliferation - When President Bush famously referenced an axis of evil based comprised of known nuclear proliferators, the expectation was that his Administration would launch a focused crackdown on those weapons.  In the intervening years, apart from launching preemptive war on the only one of the three regimes in question that turned out not to have WMD, the Administration has been "stumbling and reactive" in response to the very real threats posed by North Korea and Iran.

That US policy would have resulted in the recruitment of hundreds if not thousands of potential Middle East terrorists - Here's how CIA Director Porter Goss put it in February:  "The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists," Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.   "Those jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism. They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries."

No Sputnik relative to Arab world - One of the biggest obstacles to effectively fighting terror identified in the months after 9/11 was the scarcity of Americans with deep knowledge of Arab languages and cultures.  According to this report, four years later we know neither how many Arab linguists and translators the Defense Department has, nor how many it needs.  We are still busy convening task forces to look at the problem and figure out what needs to be done.

Still having detainees at Guantanamo without trial - When the military first started using Guantanamo to house detainees from the Afghanistan war in early 2002, the notion was that it would be temporary.  Nearly four years later, the facility is still being used to house more than 500 detainees who have not been tried.

Energy independence nowhere - When it was revealed that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals, an outcry rose about the need to free the U.S.  from dependency on foreign oil and the unholy alliances that reliance creates.  While the White House pays lip service to this idea, the reality of his corporate-friendly proposals doesn't come close to matching the rhetoric.

No further attack on US soil - Living in Manhattan on 9/11 and ever since, I've been waiting for another attack since that day.  As of today, its impossible to know whether al Qaeda and kin are today incapable of carrying out something on the scale of the attack four years ago, or whether they are planning something even worse for, say, tomorrow.  Which brings me to my final point . . .

No clear sense of whether we're gaining ground against terror or not - I'm not sure whether anyone's to blame for this, but four years ago I sure would have thought that this long into the future, we'd have a better sense of whether our efforts to combat terror were paying off.  We know which American policies aren't working, but it seems almost impossible to answer whether we are - in sum - more or less vulnerable than we were on that horrible day.

Top 10 List: Consequences of Iraq Becoming A Failed State Posted by Suzanne Nossel

There is genuine uncertainty over whether, at this point, there’s anything the U.S can do to turn things around in Iraq. Kevin Drum suggests that the only reason to hesitate in calling for a pull out is the fear of looking weak.   As we debate what’s next, though, its worth considering what the consequences of a failed Iraq will be. 

I define failure as a situation in which the result of the U.S.’s invasion and subsequent occupation are not the stability (never mind the democracy) that we all hoped for, but instead continued chaos, factionalism, violence, and uncontrollable outside influence by the likes of Iran and Syria. It’s a scenario in which Iraq’s domestic security forces never gain the upper hand against insurgents, the economy does not recover, the fractious politics never coalesces into a functioning government, and the violence goes on unabated. In short, current conditions persist.

Noone, neither hawk nor peacenik, wants this to happen. But as we contemplate options that we long dismissed, its worth remembering why we’ve said for so long that the prospect of Iraq as a failed state was unacceptable. Even if we come to the conclusion that – though it may leave the country in ruins - U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is the best of an array of terrible options, if Iraq becomes a failed state that choice will not be without devastating consequences.

This post is intended not to suggest a particular course of action, but rather to point out that the result of recent years’ policies in Iraq is a painfully short list of options, all bad. Those guiding the war effort bear responsibility for backing us into this corner. At every stage, proposals have been made (to internationalize, involve the UN, improve planning, increase the number of troops when it still could have made a difference etc.) that could have helped us avoid this conundrum.

Some of the casualties if Iraq becomes a failed state:

1.   The fate of the Iraqi people – The Iraqi people will be left with a state that’s vulnerable to rampant violence, possible civil war and economic ruin. Those that believe that virtually anything is better than life under Saddam may face a Baathist resurgence.

2.   Stability in the Middle East – Chaos in Iraq will bleed over to the wider region.  Iraq’s neighbors can be expected to react opportunistically to the void, meddling in Iraqi affairs to serve their own interests, and very likely entering into violent conflict with one another.

3. Attitudes toward the U.S. in the Middle East – The U.S.’s image in the Middle East has gone from bad to worse in much of the Middle East as a result of the Iraq war. If the result of our efforts leaves the Iraqi people worse off, all the resentment over the perceived unilateralism of the Iraq invasion and the distortions of fact over WMD will harden into even deeper bitterness.

4. The fight against terrorism – Everyone from President Bush to al Qaeda #2 Ayman al Zawahri has declared the Iraqi insurgency the primary front of the fight against terrorism. If Iraq winds up a failed state, it will represent a territory terrorists have conquered and can claim. In addition to offering terrorists safe harbor to operate, the resources of the Iraqi state – oil, military, communications infrastructure, and funds – may fuel terrorist purposes.

5. Fight Against WMD, especially in Iran - Iranian influence is already on the rise in a chaotic Iraq; if Iraq fails, the role of the mullahs will only grow.  As illustrated by Ahmadinejad's election, the Iraq war has already undercut the support we used to enjoy among moderate Iranians sick of their repressive regime.  If Iraq becomes a failed state and U.S. influence in the Middle East correspondingly diminishes, the pressure on Iran to accede to American demands in relation to its nuclear program will further weaken.  Chinese and Russian economic ties to Iran will pose increasingly powerful buffers against counter-proliferation efforts.  Its hard to imagine Kim Jong Il won't find some way of scoring points off this as well; he's already benefitted from the consensus that a military response to N. Korea's nuclear program is off the table.

10 things that matter more to the fight against terror than a new acronym Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Anne-Marie Slaughter at America Abroad, Fred Kaplan on Slate, Sid Blumenthal on Salon and the mainstream media have been buzzing this week about President Bush's pivot away from the language of Global War on Terror (GWOT) and toward the so-called Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism, aka GSAVE. 

For the record, led by Derek Chollet, we here at DA were writing about this months ago, opining here and here about what was - until Madison Avenue had its way - known as the Global War on Extremism (I personally think we all ought to stick with the Elmer Fuddish but factual GWOE rather than buying into the boosterist GSAVE).

Most commentators judge the rebranding of the fight against terror to be more politics than substance.  So, in a month of dastardly attacks from London to Sharm el Sheikh to Baghdad,  let's not let this bit of spin doctoring obscure all that needs to be done to shore up an anti-terror fight that is targetting an ever more complex, and constantly changing enemy.  Here are 10 priorities:

1. Wage the War of Ideas in Earnest - The Administration has until now resisted calling the war on terror is a fight over values and purposes.  That ideas play a role is, after all, potentially in tension with the view of Islamic terrorists as nihilistic and devoid of reason.  But while the core of extremist terrorist groups may be a fanaticism too deep and immutable to be tackled with reason, beliefs and viewpoints certainly do matter in the outer spokes of terrorist support networks, to the ordinary people who either grant or deny terrorists the funds, political support and safe harbor they need to operate.  These are the people we need to appeal to and pry away from their terrorist sympathies.

2. Recognize that U.S. Soldiers and Prison Guards are the Frontlines of Public Diplomacy - In waging a battle over ideas and perceptions among ordinary populations, what we do matters more than what we say.  Like it or not, our military, our prison guards, and our private contractors are on the frontlines of public diplomacy.  They do us proud much of the time, but the lapses that have occurred - some more than accidental - have hurt us badly by playing right into the worst fears and misperceptions about the United States.  But the Administration remains in denial on this score.

3. Get Politics Out of Homeland Security - The shameless pork-barrelling of this month's Homeland Security budget dealt a blow to the anti-terror efforts.  Whereas the 9/11 Commission and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff made a compelling case that funds be strictly apportioned on the basis of threats, the Senate decided on its own formula that shortchanges New York, California, and our ports and nuclear facilities for the benefit of unlikely terrorist targets like Wyoming, Idaho and Maine.

4. Put Forward A Clear Strategy For Iraq - Without a strategy to achieve U.S. goals in Iraq, no matter what we call the fight against terrorism, many Americans will fear that we are losing on the most important front.  This is not because we are fighting terrorists in Iraq to avoid fighting them here.  Rather, inadequate planning, a shaky justification for war, and inadequate global support have enabled America's enemies to use the struggling Iraq effort as a rallying cry for terrorist recruitment.   Bush claims to be committed to seeing Iraq through to stability, yet this week's talk is of a pullout.    More on what needs to be done here and here.

5.            Refocus on Counter-Proliferation - Everyone agrees that the gravest terrorist danger is that posed by a nuclear weapon in terrorist hands.  Yet as Peter Scoblic writes in the latest New Republic (tip to Matthew Yglesias) the Bush Administration is doing a dismal job responding to this threat.  To encapsulate, the Administration's focus on countries' intentions (good or evil) has eclipsed efforts to hold in check their capabilities, with the result that while we've deliberated over the potential for regime change in places like North Korea and Iran, they've continued to build their nuclear capabilities unfettered by the flawed non-pro regimes that Bush has done little to try to improve.

10 Open Questions On the Gaza Pullout Posted by Suzanne Nossel

If we're lucky, this summer will be remembered not as the moment the U.S. Supreme Court took a swerve to the right or for the quickening of Iraq's spiral out of control.  It could be known instead as the watershed moment in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the time when Israel proved it was serious about dismantling settlements and allowing a 2-state solution to take hold, and the Palestinians showed they were capable of  controlling, governing and developing truly independent territory.

But the devil is in the details and, 24 days before the actual pullout (which may be expedited to forestall further protests) , lots of unanswered questions remain, questions that may determine whether Israeli withdrawal from Gaza turns out to be a major step forward or a backward stumble for the peace process.  Here are some of the most important unanswered questions:

1.  Will the actual withdrawal date proceed smoothly? - No one expected the Gaza pullout to be clean.   Die-hard protests by furious settlers, violent outbreaks and mutual frustration were inevitable.  With the killing of two innocent motorists and an attempted suicide bomb, the situation is becoming explosive.  Rumor is that Israel will expedite the pullout to avoid further escalation (as was done with the end of the US occupation in Iraq - - it seemed to help, but only very, very briefly).  If violence boils over and Israel cracks down (in an operation already planned and labeled "Iron Fist"), the pullout has the potential to become a fiasco before it is even completed.   Sinai in 1982 offers the benchmark for a painful, but largely peaceful, withdrawal.

2. Will the Palestinians be able to maintain security in Gaza post-withdrawal? This is the linchpin.  If Gaza is relatively stable and turns out to be a decent neighbor to Israel, the political weight in the Jewish state will shift inexorably toward favoring a final settlement and substantial disengagement from the West Bank.  If not, not.  Mohammed Dahlan, this is your hour.  If you can keep Gaza quiet (without trampling rights in a way that undercuts the Palestinian State's long-term stability), you will deserve a Nobel.

3.  Will Egypt do its part to keep arms from flowing into Gaza - Just last night Israel struck a preliminary agreement, long in the making, with the Egyptian government over the control of the Philadelphi Corridor between Egypt and Gaza.  Some 750 Egyptian border policemen will patrol the area, necessitating an amendment to the Camp David agreement.  Egypt will also be responsible for intelligence-gathering in Sinai.  After this weekend's carnage at Sharm el Sheikh, one hopes Egypt views tight border control, good intelligence, and a stringent arms crackdown as matters of straightforward self-interest.

4.  Will Hamas take over Gaza?  Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority has only a tenuous hold over Gaza.  Just days ago PA Civil Affairs Minister Mohammed Dahlan accused the group of plotting a coup.  Hamas, through its social-service minded style of politics, has been making strides at the polls in Gaza.  If Hamas, with its active military wing, takes over, the U.S. will be confronted with whether to continue to boycott a terrorist organization.   In terms of the Israeli-Palestinian relationships, all bets are off in this scenario.

5.  Will the Palestinians be able to keep Gaza economically viable? - This World Bank report details why disengagement in itself may mean precious little to the moribund Palestinian economy.  While Israeli farmers were prosperous in Gaza, for Palestinians to simply pick up where they have left off will pose challenges.  For one thing, the renowned Gush Katif greenhouses, employer to 600 Israelis and 1200 Palestinians, are being dismantled and relocated near Ashkelon.  To be healthy, a Gaza economy will depend on careful husbanding of the territory's agricultural resources, open access to markets, and generous foreign aid, none of which is guaranteed.

6.  How will goods flow from Gaza into Israel? - To thrive, Palestinian farmers in Gaza there will need ways of swiftly transiting produce into Israel for sale and shipment overseas.  If every car and truck were to be stopped and searched for weapons, the citrus and vegetables would rot in the heat.  But the parties have yet to hammer out a formula for this common customs envelope to encase the two territories.  Maybe the answer lies in an airport-style "Fastlane" - regularly pre-checking and validating certain producers and drivers who become eligible for swifter passage at the border.  One of the big debates is whether Israel will trust a reputable 3d party to do this sensitive job.

7.  Will true freedom of movement for people be possible - A ready flow of labor from Gaza into Israel will be essential for the territory to avoid isolation and economic ruin.  Thousands of Gaza residents commute daily into Israel for jobs.   With Israel in control of Gaza, border closures were routine.  Unless the security situation improves dramatically, this is likely to continue.

8.  How will people and goods transit between Gaza and the West Bank? - One of the most awkward elements of any conceivable peace settlement is the fact that Gaza and the West Bank are not contiguous, and the only route between the two cuts through 40km of Israel.  For the Palestinians to build a viable polity and economy, passage needs to be made simple.  The World Bank has proposed a kind of desert chunnel - - an sunken road linking the two.   Rail link is another option. 

9.  How quickly can Gaza's airport and seaport be reopened? - No matter how optimistic one is about the post-withdrawal period, there's no getting around the fact that security considerations were a key driver behind Israel's desire to withdraw from the combustible Strip.  So leaving the Palestinian economy fully dependent on open borders is a recipe for ruin.  Israel has approved the reopening of sea and airports.  While the airport should be up and running more quickly, the seaport is projected to take years to get started.

10.  What happens next?  Assuming the pullout is less than disastrous, what's next?  Do Sharon and Abbas continue to lead their respective peoples forward, implementing the road map to a two-state solution (or something close to it)?  Is Sharon really - as some accuse - using Gaza simply as a way to tighten Israel's hold on the the West Bank?  Are the Palestinian terrorist factions kept sufficiently in check to enable progress?

Top 10 Questions About the Long-Term Future of U.S. Foreign Policy Posted by Suzanne Nossel

This is a pretty indulgent one - - but, hey, its mid-summer and apart from the London investigation, the smoldering of Iraq and Plamegate, things seem a tad slow.  The big event at our house is that this week my son Leo turns one.   I always thought it cheesy when politicians advocated various policies as being in the interests of "our children."   But motherhood has changed all that.  With Leo growing longer in years, my thoughts turn to the foreign policy issues that concern me most in terms of his future.  Here are 10 of the questions that most concern me in terms of the world we'll hand to Leo and his generation sometime in 2040 or s0:

1.    Will nuclear weapons still be a threat -  I grew up in the era of "The Day After" and the enduring threat of nuclear conflict between the U.S. and the USSR.  Though that threat has changed radically it hasn't disappeared and is in now in many ways harder to manage and control.  The real question, though almost to frightening to raise, is whether nukes will be used in my son's lifetime.   At the going rate, without only halting progress on non-proliferation and control of loose nukes, the answer could well be yes.

2.   Will the U.S. still be the only superpower - My hope is yes, my fear is no.  I suspect that 35 years from now the U.S. will share political, economic and military dominance with China.  If that comes true, can a polarized duality be avoided, and is there a scenario where the two countries collaborate to solve global problems?  I find it difficult to predict and will be fascinated to see how this plays out.

3.  Will terrorism be a major feature of U.S. life - There will undoubtedly still be terrorism 35 years from now, but will the terrorist threat against the U.S. be a permanent feature of life in the 21st century?  Will future attacks on U.S. soil lead us to become more like Israel - a security state where issues of life-and-death surface amid the most workaday activities like eating pizza or shopping in a mall?  My hope is that a combination of settling the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and slow but steady liberalization and economic development in the Middle East dampen Islamic terrorism to a point where its occasional flare-ups are out-of-the-ordinary enough not to impact daily life in the U.S.  This is very optimistic.

4.  Will we have faced environmental disaster - Environmental issues are not my area of expertise, and are questions we probably don't spend enough time on on this blog.   But I do worry that global warming may really catch up with us sometime in the next generation, and that we will have only ourselves (and President Bush) to blame for failing to act when we could have.

5.  Will the U.S. still be the center of economic opportunity - While I could do without some of his polemics, I do worry about Thomas Friedman's thesis in The World is Flat about eroding American competitiveness in education, innovation and technology.  Where I part ways with Friedman is his implicit notion that the competition from India and elsewhere is to be feared:  I think we ought to just be energized by the idea that the game is being played harder and faster than ever before, and work on positioning the U.S. to win.   I do worry that we're underinvesting right now in tools like broadband and wide-scale internet access and literacy that we will need to keep up.  I hope we soon have leadership that changes that.

Top 10 Things To Do and Not To Do in Iraq Posted by Suzanne Nossel

There's a lot of great discussion underway at theWashington Monthly, IntelDump and Matthew Yglesias on what to do next in  Iraq. It's too soon to talk of cutting and running and offering public timetables for withdrawal. The minute that's out, we may as well fold the tent since we've declared defeat and our opponents know its simply a matter of waiting it out.

Given the importance of the Middle East to America's security and what we have put at stake in Iraq, there are at least a few more tacks to try before walking away.  Phil Carter and Richard Clarke talk about the permanent damage to our military if we stay in, but there's also harm in pulling out: the almighty American military bested by a ragtag insurgency in its most important ambitious and important mission in decades . . . again (see this post at Operation Truth about how vital it will be for the military of the future to be able to deal credibly with guerilla forces).

As preposterous as it was for Bush to declare that we're fighting terrorists in Iraq so they won't make it here, that message enlarges the meaning of defeat. That's not to say the time to seriously consider a swift pull-out won't come, but there are enough sound measures we haven't yet exhausted to make that call just yet.  Here are 10 things we should and shouldn't do in the next 3-6 months (dealing with military situation – not reconstruction, constitution-making etc. though there are plenty of to-do's on that front too). If we fail at them or they don't work, let's reconsider.

1. Launch a full-court press to get other countries involved in any capacity feasible. See full post here.  Ideally foreign troops would do things like policing towns where    U.S. forces have already cleared out the insurgents.

2. Re-start talks on expanded UN participation. A UN umbrella may be one of the only ways to attract foreign troops back into Iraq. If the U.S., for example, topped up the regular reimbursement rates for troop contributors, its not impossible to envision some developing countries with peacekeeping experience coming forward, particularly for tasks away from the front lines.

3. Make a long-term investment in the training of Iraqi military leadership. There has been so much pressure to quickly get Iraqi forces to a point where they can take over for us that the emphasis of the training effort has been on immediate, short-term results.  But keeping Iraq stable is a long-term proposition, and to achieve it Iraq's military leaders will need years of training.  We should make that investment starting now.

4. Rethink the risk-reward calculus for American soldiers. Our military personnel, reservists and National Guard members are getting much more by way of danger, disruption to their lives and long-term disabilities than they bargained for. We should ensure that every American service-member feels well taken-care of in terms of armor and equipment (still serious issues) and that military benefits aren't stingy (see this piece about homeless veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars).  In addition to being the right thing to do, this will further motivate our forces in Iraq and help ensure that the damage Iraq has wrought to military recruitment efforts doesn't wind up being fatal.

5. Invest heavily in better understanding the insurgency.  Confusion about the nature of the insurgency is clouding military and political decision-making.   Has the insurgency gotten stronger or weaker in the last year?  What is its precise connection to the constitution-making process?   To what degree is the U.S. presence fueling the insurgents – what role do other factors play?   How are insurgents likely to react to, e.g., news of potential American withawal?  finalization of an Iraqi constitution?   partition?

See post continuation for 5 things the U.S. should not do in the next 3-6 months.

The Long Arm of Halliburton Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Apropos of last week's post on 10 reasons to close Guantanamo, it seems Halliburton has been extended a $30 million contract to build a new prison at the naval base.   The work won't be completed until July, 2006.

Reason #11.

Weekly Top 10 - 10 Reasons to Close Guantanamo Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Amnesty International's gulag remark was hyperbole and may have just made it tougher to get the Administration to own up to a prison gone wrong.  And – while the Administration pretends it is otherwise - no one is suggesting that the Guantanamo inmates simply be set free - - many and probably most may need to be detained for years to come, though this could be done in prisons in their home countries and the U.S.  People also aren't suggestion Gitmo be shut overnight.  While it will take some time to work out what to do with the 540 inmates, declaring a shut-down date that is months away would make that work go faster.   There are good reasons to close down the Guantanamo detention camp, and here are 10:                                                                                                                                                                        

1.         Because conditions there have given rise to torture – For reasons that will be debated for years to come, multiple incidents of torture have occurred at Guantanamo.  The revelations of abuse continue to spill out, including this latest from Time Magazine.  The U.S. rejects torture unequivocally (as does President Bush ), and cannot maintain a facility where we know torture occurs.

2.         To eliminate what has become a liability in the war on terror – Reports of ill-treatment of Afghan detainees at Guantanamo have become a rallying cry for anti-U.S. insurgents across the Muslim world.  Getting rid of Guantanamo won't solve the problem, but – particularly if coupled with serious efforts to prevent all abuses in detention and interrogation - it will deprive them of what has become a highly evocative symbol around the world. (see Biden's comments - -  Rep. Mel Martinez (R-FL) agrees). 

3.         To recapture the U.S.'s position as a human rights standard-bearer – Despite the Administration's denunciations, Amnesty's fingering of the U.S. as a major human rights violator has been heard 'round the world.  The claim resonates because of the revelations concerning Guantanamo, Bagram and elsewhere.  To counter this, we need to make a dramatic gesture to show that the U.S. maintains its reputation on the forefront of promoting human rights. (see Jimmy Carter's comments).

4.        To expedite the determination of which inmates warrant continued detention – One of the most egregious aspects of the Guantanamo process is the fact that after being captive for three and a half years, many of the 540 detainees have still not had the benefit of a hearing to determine whether there is evidence to back their designation as enemy combatants.   Some still haven't even seen a lawyer.  With a fixed timeline to shut down Guantanamo, those hearings would need to happen more quickly. 

5.        Because legal advantages to offshore detention are dwindling – The original reason to use Gitmo for Afghan detainees was to stop them from asserting their rights in U.S. courts by asserting a loophole based on the fact that the prison isn't on American soil.   But the Supreme Court has held that the writ of habeas corpus does apply at Gitmo, and the Administration has been dealt a series of similar setbacks in lower courts.  So any legal advantage the Administration hoped to gain by offshoring detentions is dwindling. 

Top 10 Things To Do for Darfur Short of U.S. Military Intervention Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Kevin asks whether we ought to be prepared to send in armed troops to stop genocide. My answer is yes, provided we think we can get the job done and there isn’t an equivalent or better alternative to get the killing stopped. Given the weaknesses of the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed, I assume the operation would ordinarily be eminently doable.

But one of the worst things about our single-handed Iraq invasion is that for