An Analysis of US Foreign Policy

Theory and Policy

2009-04-14T16:46:00.001-04:00

Joe Nye has an op-ed in Monday’s Washington Post decrying the gap between theory and policy in political science. You should read it, in part because its the most press our discipline is likely to get this year, which almost proves his point. I am largely sympathetic to his view, and I lament the fact that our profession, which professes to understand how the world works, has seemingly so little to offer in terms of useful insight to those who might benefit from it. One would think, given all our collective study of foreign policies and state interactions, we might have something helpful that would construct better foreign policies and better state interactions. I recognize that, per Weber, politics and academics are two different vocations, but that doesn't preclude the study of one from assisting in the practice of the other.

That said, I want to take issues with two of Nye’s points.

First, Nye says: “Yet too often scholars teach theory and methods that are relevant to other academics but not to the majority of the students sitting in the classroom before them.” While I want to agree with Nye here, I refrain because to do so, I will end up denigrating the IR theories I don’t like. Now, there are plenty of IR theories out there not to like, but one of the marks of a good theory is that it has some larger lesson for its adherents. All theories have this, when well taught. What bothers me about Nye’s assertion is that it can too easily be read as a back-door critique of all theories “post”—the typical slam against post-positivist, post-structural, and thicker construstivist theories is that they are too “impenetrable” and need to be more relevant to the real world. Now, as a card-carrying constructivist, I think that my approach to the analysis of world politics has plenty to offer policy makers, students, and other academics. There is a barrier to entry, though, in that you have to learn some terminology and a few foundational concepts from basic social theory. It’s the same way with a lot of the quantitative and formal theory. That stuff is not my cup of tea, but the good versions of it do hold powerful lessons for policymakers and academics alike. Don’t denigrate the theory for being difficult, sophisticated, or challenging. Denigrate a theory for being useless, offering empty ideas and unsupported conclusions.

The lack of theory speaking to policy is the Academy’s own fault. Nye is correct in identifying the most significant mechanism for change: “Departments should give greater weight to real-world relevance and impact in hiring and promoting young scholars.” Graduate Students and Junior faculty are driven by what they are told they will need for hiring and tenure. That is academic oriented work. The oft-repeated advice is wait until after tenure to dabble in policy. Unfortunately, this is not something that Joe Nye, scholar / practitioner can remedy. Rather, it takes Dean Joe Nye to offer a job to a policy-relevant, young scholars and provide tenure to that scholar for a portfolio of policy-relevant work.

Second, I do want to disagree with Nye on one major point. While much of the academy is at fault for marginalizing itself, policymakers deserve some share of the blame. In particular, I think that policy makers need to promote a greater appreciation for theory and method that the academy brings to its work and preparing its analysis. What passes for analysis, reasoning, and research in many government briefings is anecdotal analysis, poorly deployed historical analogies, and assertions. Policymakers should perhaps expect more rigor in their analytical work. Far too many line-officers in key national security agencies lack the methodological training to produce solid analysis. There is a culture to drafting cables and writing reports, but that culture doesn’t include some of the basics I teach in my undergraduate research methods class. A better appreciation of theory and method, and demanding that in new hires might help policy makers receive the better advice they seek.

Moreover, the policy world similarly needs to reward the type of work Nye seeks from academics. Nye calls for more regional expertise, and yet, the government policy making structure is designed to mute regional expertise. Foreign Service officers are expected to be generalists, regularly rotated in and out of assignments. Foreign Area Officers in the military are rarely (never?) promoted to flag rank. Making a career as a regional expert in the government service is not rewarded. There is substantial regional expertise, but all too often, policymakers are reluctant to tap into it, let alone create the institutional incentives to promote those individuals to positions of senior authority. While some areas of federal service have a highly educated workforce, replete with Ph.D.’s, there is rampant anti-intellectualism, particularly in the military, that dissuades the deployment of more sophisticated, academic arguments based on theoretical insights, researched conclusions, and sound methodological investigation. Read Tom Ricks’ account of the Army War College essentially blackballing authors who disagree with them.

Theory and Policy exist on a two way street. Theory informs policy, policy decisions and implementation form the material that we scholars study to generate our theories. For academics to be policy relevant, they must, as Nye suggests, emerge from self-imposed isolation. But policymakers need to meet them half way and be willing and able to listen.

Replace the Dollar?

2009-03-24T11:16:00.000-04:00

A friend writes, "What the end of hegemony looks like..."

In another indication that China is growing increasingly concerned about holding huge dollar reserves, the head of its central bank has called for the eventual creation of a new international currency reserve to replace the dollar.

In a paper released Monday, Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, said a new currency reserve system controlled by the International Monetary Fund could prove more stable and economically viable.

A new system is necessary, he said, because the global economic crisis has revealed the “inherent vulnerabilities and systemic risks in the existing international monetary system.”

On the one hand, true. China's over $1 trillion in dollar-denominated reserves aren't as safe as they once were, and a devaluation of that asset through inflation would not be good for China. But, where else are they going to go?

While few analysts believe that the dollar will be replaced as the world’s dominant foreign exchange reserve anytime soon, the proposal suggests that China is preparing to assume a more influential role in the world. Russia recently made a similar proposal.

Lets look at this more closely. The Dollar has its privileged position in the world economy because a) many economists believe that the world economy needs some sort of stable reserve currency, b) the US is willing and can afford to maintain such a strong currency, and c) the rest of the world has left this arrangement unchallenged and benefits from it. Much of this is classic Kindleberger--the world economy needs a stabilizer, one stabilizer, to stabilize the global economy as market, currency, and lender of last resort. The US is that stabilizer.

The third of those reasons--acceptance by other world powers--is now under some degree of threat as China starts to fret about its dollar position. However, absent another actor willing and able to play the role of stabilizer, everyone--China included--risks putting themselves in a significantly worse position should the dollar lose its pride of place in the international economic system.

China suggests that the IMF's SDR form a new reserve currency. This indicates they really aren't all that serious about actually doing anything to dislodge the dollar. For one, to have a currency able to act as a reserve currency requires backing of a stable, authoritative, empowered entity that can manipulate fiscal and monetary policy as needed to protect the value of its currency. We call this a sovereign state. To give the IMF such rights would make the IMF a de-facto global economic sovereign. China has no demonstrated desire to create supra-national authority, not at the UN, nor the IMF. Moreover, there is a significant and real cost to maintaining a strong reserve currency. The strength of the dollar makes the US a great destination for products--we can afford to buy others' cheap stuff. A significantly de-valued dollar (coupled with an increased value of other currencies like the Yuan or Yen or Won) would be a disaster to economies that rely on exports. China would need to show that it is willing and able to take on a stabilizing role in the global economy, which just doesn't seem in the cards as of yet.

Perhaps, though, this might be read as an attempt to gain leverage:

The timing of the Chinese announcement, analysts said, could also be aimed at giving Beijing more leverage to negotiate with the United States and other nations in London on trade and on proposals about how to stabilize the global economy.

All that said, it would be foolish for US policy planners to simply ignore China's (and others) growing dissatisfaction with the Bretton Woods legacy system that now constitutes the global economy. The fundamental bargains that made such a hegemonic system possible (cf Ikenberry) have become frayed, and while neither China nor the EU (nor India, for that matter) are poised to overthrow US hegemony in the short term, they can clearly erode US hegemony by driving up the cost of acting as a stabilizer. In the medium term, this imposes a cost on everyone, as the global economy (and security order) falters without a clear stabilizer, but from a realist perspective, the relative gains (or in this case declines) could benefit the challengers to US hegemony--at least that's what they are betting on.

Becoming Relics

2009-03-17T12:01:00.001-04:00

Yesterday as I drove to work, two stories on NPR caught my attention with how completely out of touch the interviewees sounded about their particular fields. These are people who are highly trained, performing what used to be important--if not vital--services, and well rewarded professionally for their accomplishments. And yet, listening to them talk about the importance of preserving the culture, practices, and institutional arrangements that enabled their profession, their claims rang so hollow, so 20th century, that I was struck that they would even say such things on radio.

The culprits? Bankers and Fighter Pilots. The Bankers were all upset about the "strings attached" to the TARP bail-out money they had received. Of particular concern was the limits on executive pay, and how this was going to cause a talent drain in the financial sector. All I could think was how tone-deaf the bankers sounded--while some of these guys may have had talent, it was a talent for destruction, not necessarily talent that you want to keep around. And, have they tried looking for jobs lately? There are quite literally thousands of finance professionals out of work, ready to step in to the jobs these supposed talents are vacating.

The Fighter Pilots were not quite as egregious, but still sounded like relics of a day gone bye. Morning edition has a nice 2 part story (yesterday and today) about fighter pilots and the changing fighter pilot culture. I'm not quite going to give the full Farley here, but listening to these guys, who sound as if they stepped off the set of Top Gun and into the story, you wonder if they are living in a bygone era (yes, I know one is AF and the other USN, but half of the first NPR segment is all about Top Gun, check it out, they even have the great music).

So why is there such an emphasis on training fighter pilots?

"None of us, I think, can really say with certainty who it is that we may end up having to fight next or what their capabilities are or what weapons systems they'll have," [Lt. Col. Dan "Digger" Hawkins, the deputy commander at Red Flag] says. "And so that's why we keep our skills honed with exercises like Red Flag — so that we can be ready to defend the country at a moment's notice against whoever it is who may try to attack us."

No one who is currently training at Red Flag has ever been in a dogfight, but the training they receive is what Hawkins calls "very realistic dogfights."

"As far as actual live combat, I'll believe that some of the last air-to-air kills that the U.S. Air Force had was in Bosnia back in the 1990s."

That was before these students were even pilots.

It sounds like such a valiant culture, much like the Pony Express was a valiant way to deliver cross-country mail in its day. For the past SIX years, the US has been engaged in two wars, actual ongoing combat operations, in one case against a real enemy that had actually attacked the United States, and fighter pilots have had no place to operationalize all that wonderful training at Red Flag. Instead, they have been pushed aside by robots. These days, Drones are the US weapon of choice in fighting Al Qaeda:

Pentagon officials say the remotely piloted planes, which can beam back live video for up to 22 hours, have done more than any other weapons system to track down insurgents and save American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The planes have become one of the military’s favorite weapons despite many shortcomings resulting from the rush to get them into the field.

There is a near insatiable demand for more Predators and Reapers, but no the "pilots" don't want to actually fly them. Its just not the same--pulling 9Gs vs sitting in a small room playing video games--they say.

Bankers and Fighter Pilots. Heroes of the 80's and 90's. Sounding like relics of bygone era. It would be cute, if it wasn't so darn expensive to maintain the institutions that facilitate their cultures.

Obama's NSC

2009-02-12T17:18:00.001-05:00

I want to call attention to a WaPo article from Sunday on the emerging structure of Obama's national security council--it was front page, but largely lost among the coverage of the Stimulus package. Indeed, only Rozen really seems to have picked up on it. While largely an interview with new National Security Adviser James Jones about organizational charts and workflows, it nevertheless offers a substantial insight into the new Administration's ability to deal with foreign policy--both crises and long-term issues.

Students of foreign policy analysis focus on the decision-making process that Administrations use to make foreign policy. At the heart of that process is the NSC. Since the Kennedy Administration (remember Ex-Comm?), the NSC has largely taken over from the cabinet agencies as the President's main source for foreign policy management, planning, and coordination. Any introductory foreign policy course covers the evolution of the NSC (as Daalder and Destler do in the most recent Foreign Affairs), noting how the organization and function of the NSC reflect the President's decision-making style. JFK had a collegial group, Nixon a rigid hierarchy, Bush I an well organized coordinating system, and so on.

Jones tells the Post that:

President Obama plans to order a sweeping overhaul of the National Security Council, expanding its membership and increasing its authority to set strategy across a wide spectrum of international and domestic issues.

The result will be a "dramatically different" NSC from that of the Bush administration or any of its predecessors since the forum was established after World War II to advise the president on diplomatic and military matters, according to national security adviser James L. Jones, who described the changes in an interview. "The world that we live in has changed so dramatically in this decade that organizations that were created to meet a certain set of criteria no longer are terribly useful," he said.

A couple changes are worth pointing out.

1. Obama plans to radically alter membership. By law, the only standing members of the NSC are the President, VP, SecState, and SecDef. The CJCS is the military adviser and DNI intelligence advisor. By design, its a flexible structure, allowing the President to add members as he sees fit. Traditionally other agencies have attended as required--Justice, Treasury, etc. Jones plans to draw in members from across the executive branch, involving any agency relevant to an issue. In part, this reflects the increasing role that other agencies, from law enforcement to energy to agriculture play in foreign policy. The potential pay-off is greater coordination and a greater ability to focus the government's actions on a topic. The downside, of course, is that more people in the room always makes for a more difficult meeting.

2. Jones will assert greater control over access to the President and Presidential involvement in decision-making. Largely, this is a reaction to the Bush II NSC, where back-channels and unilateral action, especially among State, Defense, and the Vice President's office, undermined effective coordination. (Do note the comparison between Bush Administrations--largely composed of the same cast of characters. Bush I is widely regarded as having had a model NSC, while Bush II is widely regarded as having had a highly dysfunctional NSC).

3. He plans to re-draw agency maps. Yes, maps. Each department divides the world into region--State has its regional bureaus, DoD has its Unified Command Plan, and the NSC has its Senior Directors. These regional division, however, reflect Agency-specific needs and do not correspond in any way to each other. State's South Asia bureau includes Afghanistan and India, while in DoD, CENTCOM runs the show in Afghanistan while PACOM has jurisdiction over India. His goal is to have parallelism within agencies, creating peers who oversee policy with the same group of countries. It would certainly make it easier to know who to pick up the phone and call.

The point here is that, from a foreign policy analysis perspective, this stuff really matters. A significant chunk of foreign policy theory asserts that the decision-making process has a substantial influence in the quality of decision made, and thus effectiveness of US foreign policy.

The NSC is how Presidents do this. A functional NSC can provide the President with options, information, and advice to make the best possible decision when faced with a foreign policy choice. A functional NSC can make sure that government agencies work in concert to carry out the President's chosen course of action. A dysfunctional NSC process can rapidly reproduce its dysfunction across the government and embed itself within US foreign policy.

So, take note of Jone's comments, as his success in creating the working NSC structure he describes will be a sizable indicator of the Administration's ability to handle the myriad of critical foreign policy issues it faces.

Metaphors of War: Superbowl Edition

2009-02-01T11:18:00.001-05:00

Football and War have long been metaphors for each other, with players famously (and infamously in some cases) referring to themselves as "warriors" who will "do battle" on the gridiron led by "field generals" at quarterbacks, throwing "long bombs" to score, and Generals "calling an audible" to launch a "blitz" or a "hail-marry pass." Indeed, those seeking to inject greater tolerance into American culture have long counseled that we do away with such metaphors, as they trivialize war on both sides of the equation. George Carlin saw this years ago.

Today's Superbowl between the Arizona Cardinals and Pittsburgh Steelers provides a rare moment reflection on this seemingly inescapable current in American popular culture. The Cardinals offer a unique mechanism for this, as until this year, they were probably best know for being the team of Pat Tillman, the former Cards player who joined the Army and was killed in Afghanistan.

It also provides a moment to notice, as the Washington Post reports, that the NFL seems to have re-thought its role in this process:

In a little-discussed shift in recent years, the NFL has moved away from depicting its games in military terms. While the league continues to embrace the military as an entity, inviting Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of Central Command, to make the Super Bowl's opening coin toss and having the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds perform a pregame flyover at Raymond James Stadium, the NFL no longer endorses using military terminology to describe its contests.

It is inappropriate, league officials say, to do so at a time when American forces are fighting two wars halfway around the globe.

"It's a matter of common sense," NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said as he stood outside the stadium the other day.

The same is true at NFL Films, an arm of the league that perpetuated for decades the image of football as controlled warfare by producing movies glorifying the game's violence with phrases like "linebacker search and destroy." In recent years the company's president, Steve Sabol, ordered all allusions to war be removed from its new films.

"I don't think you will ever see those references coming back," he said. "They won't be back in our scripts, certainly not in my lifetime."

The sport that once saw itself as the closest thing in athletics to the military no longer holds to this once-cherished notion.

"We're not going to fight no war, man," Pittsburgh Steelers defensive end Nick Eason said....

"They were basically cliches anyway," Sabol said. "Just like you would hear coaches say, 'That's a guy I want to be in a foxhole with,' they've never been in a foxhole and they're trying to articulate that to a player who has no idea what a foxhole is."

At the extreme, these metaphors were always silly, at their worst, they devalued the true sacrifices of soldiers and dehumanized the true destruction and human devastation wrought by actual war. Its a good thing that the NFL is moving in this direction.

Rice Gives Political Scientists a Bad Name

2008-12-18T14:38:00.000-05:00

Yglesias points out an interview Condi Rice gave where she claimed:

And I’m especially, as a political scientist, not as Secretary of State, not as National Security Advisor, but as somebody who knows that structurally it matters that a geostrategically important country like Iraq is not Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

Matt astutely points out that:

My colleague Ryan Powers reminds us that, in fact, many of the leading lights of the international relations subfield of political science tried to warn the country against the invasion of Iraq.

The warning he links to is a full-page NYT advertisement opposing the war, signed by the leading scholars in our field.

Many points on this deserve comment, but as I'm behind in grading final exams, 3 will have to suffice.

First, I would highly recommend that you revisit the work on this subject done by members of the field. Prof. Patrick Jackson's piece on Weberian Activism is worth re-reading as you recall this debate. Dan nexon re-posted the letter here and you can see a reporting of the signatures here. While not as high-profile as the NYT add, this effort of hundreds of scholars in the field, showed remarkable consensus of judgment that as a political scientist, Rice is running quite counter to the analysis of nearly everyone else in her field.

Second, as a bit of political science, her analysis is quite shallow. As I'm in final exam grading mode, as a final exam for her tenure with the Bush Administration, this effort does not merit a passing grade. First off, many political scientists flat out disagree. The billiard ball model of the international system, espoused by realists, suggests that all states react to systemic, that is to say, structural, pressures in similar ways. Thus, it makes no difference structurally if its Saddam Hussien's Iraq or anyone else's Iraq, as the balance of power works the same for all. I believe, as a Political Scientist, Rice styled herself a "realist." That's an F for IR theory for the semester.

And finally, I agree with Matt on this vital point, and think it deserves more emphasis:

One of the most annoying habits of the press and the DC conventional wisdom more generally has been a persistent habit of ignoring these facts in favor of the rhetoric of “seriousness” that casts war opponents as a much of ignorant hippies and foul-mouthed bloggers who, at best, were right about Iraq by accident or something. But the vast majority of credentialed experts in Middle East regional studies, and the vast majority of credentialed experts in international relations have always been extremely skeptical of the adventure in Iraq. The main supporters of the war have been politicians, magazine and newspaper pundits, and a smallish group of heavily politicized think tank-based experts and “experts” who, for whatever reason, are granted privileged access to the media over people in a better position to offer genuinely independent analysis. I think many political observers watching the debate unfold in 2002-2003 would have gotten the impression that most experts were more-or-less backing the president on Iraq. But while it’s certainly true that most op-ed columnist and most Brookings fellows were behind Bush, the broader group of political scientists who specialize in these issues has always taken the opposite view.

So many of the arguments for the war were so shallow and so dismissive of an entire corpus of knowledge that understood the foolishness of this enterprise.

Analyzing Obama's National Security Cabinet

2008-12-01T16:17:00.001-05:00

Today Obama formally announced the core of his National Security team: Clinton at State, Gen. Jones as SAPNSA, and Gates to remain at DoD. It’s a team of experienced insiders, centrists, pragmatists, and even Republicans. Some have asked the obvious question: Is this Change you can Believe in for national security and foreign policy?

The selection of Jones is particularly interesting. He breaks a recent trend in the National Security Advisor position as a close policy associate of the President. Condi once said that her top job as NSA was to “staff the President” and she is very close to Bush. While Jones does not come from an academic or “policy” background, he is perhaps more experienced in areas relevant to the position.

First, he has significant first hand experienced in the integration of diplomacy as well as political and military security from his time as head of NATO. SACEUR is a unique posting within the US military. It’s a ‘dual-hatted’ job, as both powerful regional combatant commander and head of the NATO alliance. The NATO role gives the SACEUR direct access to allied heads of state and a large diplomatic role in intra-NATO politics. The tough part of the job is balancing responsibility to the USA and the US chain of command as head of EUCOM and responsibility to the alliance as SACEUR. Wesley Clark talked about the tensions in this arrangement in his Waging Modern War book. It’s a job with no parallel. That Jones could successfully negotiate it bodes well for his chances to successfully negotiate the White House and National Security Council.

Second, he has experience managing a large and complex organization and coordinating intra-bureaucratic activities. This perhaps suggests a shift in the role of the NSA and NSC. Originally, the NSA and NSC were designed as a coordination mechanism, to hash out differences within the bureaucracy in order to present a clear decision to the President and then ensure that the relevant agencies implemented the Presidents decisions in a coordinated and coherent manner. Over the years, the NSC has become the head policy shop and the NSA a key policy advisor—staffing the president rather than keeping State and Defense on the same page. The selection of Jones gives Obama an NSA who has the heft, skill, and experience to coordinate the massive cogs of the national security bureaucracy to implement Obama’s agenda. This is critical—too many seem to be focusing on the wrong indicator of change, be it a Cabinet secretary or potential policy prioritization. Any change you can believe in will require years to complete the slow boring of hard boards. Policies need to be implemented and institutionalized to provide lasting change, and Jones has the resume to accomplish this key task.

With respect to Clinton at State, this remains somewhat a mystery to me—not that Obama would select her, but that she would take the job. For him, it takes the person who is potentially his biggest political rival off the political stage and puts her on the team where he’s in charge and she toes the line. She will win some battles, but she will lose some battle, and like all Secretaries of State, she will advance the President’s agenda in diplomacy. For her, it takes her out of the Senate where she has an independent platform to maintain a national political profile and pursue an agenda of her own choosing.

It is, however, reflective of an emerging trend in Obama’s administration—selecting leaders with extensive Hill experience. Emmanuel as COS, Daschle at HHS and Health Czar, Clinton at State—these are three major players in Congress now joining the Administration. It suggests that Obama will place a key priority on relations with Congress, and he has people who know how to get a legislative agenda enacted. Maybe Clinton, using her Senatorial experience, will be able to win more funding for State and expanded foreign aid. That would be a welcome change.

At Defense, instead of keeping Bush’s appointee, what if Obama had nominated a SecDef who had said:

I am here to make the case for strengthening our capacity to use “soft” power and for better integrating it with “hard” power.

Now, that could have come from any Nye-reading foreign policy pragmatist, but it is a change from the Bush Administration’s policy of spreading democracy by invasion and fighting terrorism with military force. And yet in Gates, Obama has found just such a person. About a year ago, Gates gave an under-appreciated speech where he set out an agenda for the future of DoD in a larger national security bureaucracy that sounded like it could be very much at home in an Obama administration. To quote Gates at length:

Funding for non-military foreign-affairs programs has increased since 2001, but it remains disproportionately small relative to what we spend on the military and to the importance of such capabilities. Consider that this year’s budget for the Department of Defense – not counting operations in Iraq and Afghanistan – is nearly half a trillion dollars. The total foreign affairs budget request for the State Department is $36 billion – less than what the Pentagon spends on health care alone. Secretary Rice has asked for a budget increase for the State Department and an expansion of the Foreign Service. The need is real.

Despite new hires, there are only about 6,600 professional Foreign Service officers – less than the manning for one aircraft carrier strike group. And personnel challenges loom on the horizon. By one estimate, 30 percent of USAID’s Foreign Service officers are eligible for retirement this year – valuable experience that cannot be contracted out.

Overall, our current military spending amounts to about 4 percent of GDP, below the historic norm and well below previous wartime periods. Nonetheless, we use this benchmark as a rough floor of how much we should spend on defense. We lack a similar benchmark for other departments and institutions.

What is clear to me is that there is a need for a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security – diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action, and economic reconstruction and development. Secretary Rice addressed this need in a speech at Georgetown University nearly two years ago. We must focus our energies beyond the guns and steel of the military, beyond just our brave soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen. We must also focus our energies on the other elements of national power that will be so crucial in the coming years.

Now, I am well aware that having a sitting Secretary of Defense travel halfway across the country to make a pitch to increase the budget of other agencies might fit into the category of “man bites dog” – or for some back in the Pentagon, “blasphemy.” It is certainly not an easy sell politically. And don’t get me wrong, I’ll be asking for yet more money for Defense next year.

Still, I hear all the time from the senior leadership of our Armed Forces about how important these civilian capabilities are. In fact, when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen was Chief of Naval Operations, he once said he’d hand a part of his budget to the State Department “in a heartbeat,” assuming it was spent in the right place.

After all, civilian participation is both necessary to making military operations successful and to relieving stress on the men and women of our armed services who have endured so much these last few years, and done so with such unflagging bravery and devotion. Indeed, having robust civilian capabilities available could make it less likely that military force will have to be used in the first place, as local problems might be dealt with before they become crises.

Appointing a person with this agenda to head DoD fits in with Obama’s overall approach to international affairs, and this speech may be a major impetus behind keeping Gates.

At Homeland Security, Napolitano is perhaps the biggest and under-appreciated change, as she is the only true “outsider” (non-Washington) appointee. She represents a vision for DHS that is less counter-terrorism and more immigration and disaster response, both areas in which she, as a Governor (and former AG) of a border state, has existing expertise

At Justice, Holder seems like a very good pick, especially given the monumental job of rebuilding the disaster that is the Bush DOJ. My guess is that while he will play an important role in national security affairs (ie the legal issues surrounding the closing of Gitmo), his plate will be full with more pressing issues in the domestic legal arena.

Not mentioned and still to be determined: what Obama will do with the Intelligence portfolio in selecting his DNI and CIA head. He could treat the positions as ‘non-partisan’ and keep McCarthy and Hayden for a while (both served as head of the National Security Agency under the Clinton Administration and as career military men are more career officials than strictly Bush people) or he could bring in his own person to institute key changes and make statements on items like, say, torture policy.

Ultimately, though, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Obama’s promise to bring change will be judged by what he does as President: the policies he advances, the priorities he sets, the decisions he makes, the resolve he displays when under pressure, the course he sets for the United States in world affairs. While naming a couple of cabinet secretaries is certainly part of that, its only one small part. Regardless of what one may think of Clinton or Gates, they serve at the pleasure of the President and, in the end, are only as good or as bad as he allows them to be.

President Elect Obama

2008-11-05T01:13:00.002-05:00

From Obama's speech in Chicago tonight, after winning the Presidency:

And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

Its a clear reference to America's role and position in the world. A clear dose of American Exceptionalism, a rejection of both realism and classical liberalism, and an embrace of a more liberal constructivism. Ruggie argues how the most important element of American Hegemony is its social purpose, those very ideals that shape institutional form and substance, the liberalism that forms the content of the order the US has built and led since 1945. Its the order that Obama now leads as President of the United States.

Asking the Wrong Questions

2008-10-11T14:12:00.000-04:00

One thing that has been bothering me of late in the Presidential debate is how the press and the public are asking the wrong questions of the candidates about the economy. While part of it may be symptomatic of a general lack of understanding as to what is going on, it also betrays an intellectual laziness in those covering and discussing the campaign. Wedded to tired lines of debate, these questions rehash what we think is important and distract from the development of an understanding of the current state of affairs which has very little relationship to the ancien regime.

Two general areas of inquiry really stand out.

The first is the "How are you going to pay for this?" bit. Lehrer asked a version of this in the first debate. The set-up goes something like this: We've spent $300B on Fannie and Freddie, authorized $700B for the TARP bailout/rescue, have 2 wars, and you want to cut taxes. So, clearly something you are promising will have to go. What promise are you going to break?

Here's the problem with that answer: It assumes that the government is going to have the luxury of choosing among its spending programs as this economic crisis deepens. The old-school view is that government debt is part of the problem and steps must be taken toward a balanced budget. But, in a matter of weeks, several decades of economic orthodoxy has fallen by the wayside as the Administration reaches deeper and deeper into the government's interventionist toolbox trying to find something that works. In one day, Paulson spent as much money as the Wars cost in a year on a government take-over of AIG. Former Bush-
Administration officials are calling for faster government action, picking winners and losers from among US financial institutions. As Brad DeLong points out, the pendulum has swung back toward (if not past) Keynes.

What Keynesian economics calls for is counter-cyclical government spending to mitigate the effects of an economic downturn on a society. We're well into the crisis, but have yet to see a real move toward counter-cyclical spending. We've seen all kinds of other ad-hoc government intervention in the economy in the financial sector, but little for "main street."

What this question overlooks is the fact that the government probably ought to be spending on all of the candidate's priorities, and maybe then some. Does it drive up the deficit? Sure. But that's the Keynesian point--increased government debt now to avoid a deeper recession later. Given the potential severity of the economic downturn, all this spending and more might be necessary. Yet, asking the question as posed--what will you cut--frames the discussion in the old and now discredited economic context. It makes it harder for the next President to spend what he'll need to in order to help the nation as a whole.

The second question that bothers me is "What's your plan" to solve the crisis. This question has both a flawed premise and produces a counter-productive discussion.

The flawed premise is to realistically expect these two campaigns to come up with a silver bullet before they have the full resources of the US government at their disposal. Obama and McCain have a team of very smart economic advisers working for them from their current jobs. The Treasury and Fed have full time staff who have spent a career working on issues just such as this. They have legal authority, resources, and expertise to gather information, devise plans, and map out potential consequences. They also have the ability and responsibility to consult and coordinate with allies in the G-7 and international institutions like the IMF. And, despite all these advantages, they still have not come up with anything that seems to work.

This question also produces a counter-productive discussion. This crisis is moving with such velocity that any plan seems outdated days later. The $700 Billion TARP that just had to pass? Already obsolete, as Paulson has moved on to directly injecting capital into banks--something that wasn't even in his original plan. Does anyone think that either a McCain or Obama plan would still be relevant by Election Day, let alone Inauguration Day? Neither candidate can do anything now--what we want is what they will do once they get into office--but no one has any idea what the financial markets will look like in mid-January.

Asking the wrong questions generates tremendous amounts of heat with little light to illuminate any useful understanding of the issue.

Leadership in times of Economic Crisis

2008-10-01T08:49:00.002-04:00

The current economic crisis has quickly become a global crisis. Banks around the world are teetering on the edge of failure and governments and central banks are stepping in with as much financial ammunition as they can to bolster the world economy. Despite these actions, and calls for a financial summit by France's President, the world still is looking to the United States Government as the only actor capable of stemming the growing credit crunch and financial panic.

The Washington Post gives a survey of the reaction from bankers and officials around the world. The lede, says it all:

Central bankers and elected leaders around the world acknowledged Tuesday that they lacked a comprehensive strategy to protect their countries from the global financial crisis and were as dependent as ever on Washington to come up with a solution.

Even the EU is sidelined in the current crisis. While the economy of the EU rivals the US and its central bank is strong, it lacks the fiscal tools and policy coordination mechanisms among member states to convincingly act to shore up financial markets. An EU spokesperson said:

"The United States must take its responsibility in this situation, must show statesmanship for the sake of their own country and for the sake of the world," Johannes Laitenberger, a spokesman for the European Commission, told reporters.

Bailing out the bailout

2008-09-29T21:32:00.001-04:00

Rachel Maddow just asked perhaps the most insightful question of this bailout to date: Is this economic crisis global warming or the Iraq War? Is it a real crisis that builds slowly that people fail to acknowledge, or is it a bunch of hype and hysteria over what is, in the end, nothing.

Laura D'Andrea Tyson says that this credit crunch is real and real bad, and your job is at risk. Its not a bail-out, but a rescue of a broken market.

Therein lies the rub. I think there are two fundamental issues that have doomed the bailout bill earlier today.

First, this is a really complicated mess, and no one understands what is actually going on. Who among you actually understands credit-default swaps, or the leveraging of commercial paper for mortgage-backed securities? Not me. Probably not you. One of the major difficulties here is that there is no story to explain what is happening, leaving no reason to justify the extraordinary actions necessary to save the economic markets. There's a lot of assigning of blame, but there's little explanation of what actually is the problem. I'm not saying that there needs to be a blue-ribbon commission producing a report. Rather, what is needed is a narrative that makes sense of what is going on in such a way that people can actually understand what is happening and that justifies a response. All we have now is a series of bank failures, the biggest drop in the Dow ever, and a back and forth of Presidential politics.

So what has actually happened? Two items have broken through: 1) people can't pay mortgages and 2) wall street bankers made some poor bets. Neither of these really sounds all that drastic, and neither of these really calls out for action. People are annoyed with others who borrowed over their heads when they were responsible, but its hard to blame families for tough economic times. No one really has any sympathy for Wall Street.

The massive problems that remain--the credit crunch, the insolvency of key financial instruments, the potential lack of cash for business operations, this is much more significant but much less of the story. If a rescue operation is going to have any chance of success, its proponents need to develop a narrative on the crisis before they can sell the solution.

Second, this is a "bailout." Of Wall Street, no less. No one likes to bail-out fat cats who make poor decisions. Except that at this point its far beyond a bailout, its rescue of a broken financial system by extensive nationalization, regulation, and government intervention. This intervention needs another frame. FDR, who has re-emerged as everyone's favorite President these days, was an expert at this. The New Deal socialized large parts of the economy. Lend-Lease paved the way for entry into World War II. But Roosevelt was expert in telling the American People that, when your neighbor's house is on fire, you give them the hose now and worry about payment later.

This is more than a bailout, its a rescue of a broken system on the verge of collapse. Except that you wouldn't know that from the event itself. If Congress and the Administration are going to rescue the economy, they need a plausible narrative of what is going on to explain the seriousness of the problem and to form the basis of a political coalition. Then they need to start talking about a government rescue to save the economy, and drop all this Wall Street bailout jargon.

One decline in American intelectual leadership worldwide

2008-09-17T16:47:00.003-04:00

The NY Times has a very interesting article out today reporting that the influence of the US Supreme Court is waning--internationally. While the Court holds no jurisdiction beyond the US borders, for a long time it served as an intellectual leader in world judicial opinion. Other nations looking to develop a strong judicial system looked to the US Supreme Court as a model, and looked to the Court's opinions as cutting-edge legal thought that could--and did--shape legal arguments elsewhere.

The signature innovations of the American legal system — a written Constitution, a Bill of Rights protecting individual freedoms and an independent judiciary with the power to strike down legislation — have been consciously emulated in much of the world. And American constitutional law has been cited and discussed in countless decisions of courts in Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa and elsewhere.

In a 1996 decision striking down a law that made it a crime to possess pornography, for instance, the Constitutional Court of South Africa conducted a broad survey of American First Amendment jurisprudence, citing some 40 decisions of the United States Supreme Court. That same year, the High Court of Australia followed a 1989 decision of the Supreme Court in a separation-of-powers case, ruling that a judge was permitted to prepare a report for a government minister about threats to aboriginal areas because the assignment did not undermine the integrity of the judicial branch.

Sending American ideas about the rule of law abroad has long been a source of pride. “The United States Supreme Court is the oldest constitutional court in the world — the most respected, the most legitimate,” said Charles Fried, a law professor at Harvard who served as solicitor general in the Reagan administration.

Interesting enough, while the US Courts serve as a source for other countries legal arguments, US judges don't often rely on International Law. Some, like recently retired Justice Sandra Day O'Conner or current Justice Anthony Kennedy, would like to see a greater use of international law. But, as one scholar observed

“We are used to encouraging other countries to adopt American constitutional norms, “ he wrote in an essay last month, “but we have never accepted the idea that we should adopt theirs.”

“It’s American exceptionalism,” Professor Posner added in an interview. “The view going back 200 years is that we’ve figured it out and people should follow our lead.”

The Bailout

2008-09-12T09:49:00.002-04:00

The US bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was a massive government intervention into the securities market. Why do this?

Dan Drezner gives some insightful instant analysis, noting how the fall-out has reverberated through the global economy, hitting China, Russia, Sovereign Wealth Funds, and many other key international actors. The US Government:

is also trying to soothe financial markets and-more important-please foreign creditors. China is far and away the largest foreign investor in long-term U.S. government agency debt-more than $375 billion. In the past month Chinese officials had warned about the implications of a collapse of the two housing giants.

Beijing was not the only foreign government to raise hackles about the status quo-other foreign officials voiced their concerns directly to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Senator Chuck Schumer told the Wall Street Journal that, "There was a real fear that foreign governments would start dumping Fannie and Freddie...and not buy the bonds."

As long as the United States runs a current account deficit of more than $500 billion a year, it will need the trust of foreign capital and foreign governments. Judging by the global market reaction, seizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac helped preserve that goodwill abroad. One reason this happened on a Sunday was so that Asian stockmarkets would have the first opportunity to respond.

How necessary was this reassurance to international capital markets? The nightmare scenario Paulson faced was:

But let's say that the Treasury did not support the debt of the mortgage agencies. The Chinese bought over $300 billion of that stuff and they were told that it is essentially riskless. The flow of capital from them and from other central banks, sovereign wealth funds, and plain old ordinary investors would shut down very quickly. The dollar would fall say 30-40 percent in a week, there would be payments system gridlock, margin calls at the clearinghouses would go unmet, and only a trading shutdown would stop the Dow from shedding half its value. Most of the U.S. banking system would be insolvent. Emergency Fed/Treasury action would recapitalize the FDIC but we would lose an independent central bank and setting the money supply would be a crapshoot. The rate of unemployment would climb into double digits and stay there. Many Americans would not have access to their savings. The future supply of foreign investment would be noticeably lower. The Federal government would lose its AAA rating and we would pay much more in borrowing costs. The deficit would skyrocket.

Charles Kindleberger famously observed:

For the world economy to be stabilized, there has to be a stabilizer--one stabilizer.

Here you have the US acting to stabilize the international economy. It needed to be done, and no one else could do it.

One less base

2008-09-06T13:26:00.002-04:00

Ecuador has decided not to renew the lease the US has on its base there. The roughly 450 US personnel there had been very involved in anti-drug operations.

This move reflects two negative trends for US relations in Latin America. First, is the simple reduction in US influence. The Post reported that the millions the US pays each year no longer buy the influence that they once did, as more millions from other countries (ie Venezuela) and development infrastructure projects flow into the country.

Second, and more disturbing, is the wide-spread currency of anti-American politics. Part of this is a reaction to policies of the Bush Administration. But another part of it is structural. As the Ecuadoran Security Minister observed,

"This is a problem for us of sovereignty," [Security Minister] Larrea said. "It's as if we had a base in New York. This would be incomprehensible for North Americans."

Mapping the Pengagon's Global Footprint

2008-08-27T09:36:00.002-04:00

From MotherJones.com, this interactive map is rather cool. It has a global accounting of where the US military is and has been. The associated articles provide the background.

The Power of NBC

2008-08-25T13:30:00.003-04:00

The NYT had a fascinating behind the scenes profile of NBC's Olympics coverage. In it, they revealed how much influence NBC, and by extension, the American media market, has had on the Olympics. The IOC (and China) moved the games back from September into August to accommodate the US TV schedule.

The time of some of the events (swimming and gymnastics) was moved to the morning so it could be live in the US in the prime-time evening broadcast hours.Switching swimming and gymnastics to prime time was not the biggest scheduling coup Mr. Ebersol helped pull off. Long before that, during the Games in Sydney, Mr. Ebersol played the central role in a move to alter the weeks when the Beijing Games would be held.

By the summer of 2000, NBC already possessed the rights to the Winter and Summer Games through 2008. The network had made a deal in 1995 to secure them all even before the Games were awarded to any cities - a notion Mr. Ebersol sold effectively to the I.O.C. as a better way to go than having the cities make plans without knowing how much they were going to acquire in TV rights.

But the Sydney Games, which took place in late September, were not doing especially well in the ratings. Juan Antonio Samaranch, then the I.O.C. president, left Sydney after the first day because of the death of his wife. When he returned, Mr. Ebersol related, he visited the NBC broadcast center and observed that the ratings were not what NBC had hoped. He asked Mr. Ebersol if there was anything he could do to help.

"Not for these Games," Mr. Ebersol said he told him. But he wanted to plant another thought. "I believed China was going to win the bid for 2008," he said. And he had heard that China planned to bid based on dates similar to Sydney. He asked Mr. Samaranch if China could move the dates of its bid four weeks back into August.

"If you’re into September, you’re going to lose a big percentage of your male viewers," Mr. Ebersol said. "There’s N.F.L. coverage on Sundays and Mondays, and college football is now on four or five nights a week. All of that goes away if you start in mid-August."

Also, he said, moving the dates back meant bringing in children who would be in school a month later and thus not allowed to stay up late to see American stars like Nastia Liukin on the balance beam. "The Olympics are about the last event that gets the whole family viewing together," Mr. Ebersol said.

Mr. Samaranch listened to the arguments carefully. "Forty-eight hours later, when the Chinese made their official bid, the dates were in mid-August," Mr. Ebersol said.

The start date of 8-8-08 was not picked because it was lucky, it was picked to accommodate NBC (and the tennis people).

Also fascinating is the sheer amount of money the US, through NBC, has poured into these Olympics to ensure prime consideration.

In both cases when NBC’s desires were accommodated, "no money changed hands," Mr. Ebersol said. The $894 million that NBC paid for the American television rights was already in a Chinese bank, Mr. Ebersol noted. But the I.O.C. has an intense interest in assuring that its American TV partner has a success with the Games, he said, because American television money accounts for more cash for the I.O.C. than all the world’s other broadcasters combined. (By contrast, he said China paid $17 million for its television rights, while selling $400 million worth of ads.)

We often refer to a similar stat in military spending, that US spends as much as the Rest Of The World combined. Do we now need a similar stat for TV rights?

Point being, there is a very subtle influence of cultural and economic hegemony here. No other national broadcasting corporation could dare to ask for what Ebersol and NBC requested. That the IOC was so concerned with US TV ratings shows how powerful the US market is, and how powerful its position is in setting the global cultural agenda.

So, while these are a global games, the influence of the US lurks behind in many ways, and its a kind of influence that not even the host nation can match.

Georgia: Thoughts on what it might mean

2008-08-12T23:03:00.002-04:00

With the Confrontation in the Caucuses seemingly over, I wanted to try to think through some of the implications for US foreign policy. Although it was a short conflagration, these past 5 days have the feeling of an important turning point. I don’t think that the Confrontation itself has fundamentally altered the nature of International Politics, but rather it seems endemic of a slow shift that had been underway for some time. Though the past order may have eroded gradually, Russia’s stark exploitation of the situation reveals the full extent of the shift.

First, US credibility and influence has taken a severe blow. Georgia had been a “darling” of the US, sending troops to Iraq, a model of democracy and liberalism in the Caucuses, and potential NATO member. There are clearly mixed signals as to who knew what when. Georgia seems to think that it had either implicit US backing for its moves in South Ossetia or a tacit promise of support should Russia retaliate. Russia seems to have at least thought it had a free hand to intervene within South Ossetia. Its possible the US signaled all of this, just as its possible that the US didn’t intend to signal any of this. As Rob points out, mixed signals happen all the time in IR and we have no shortage of theories to explain it.

Regardless of who may have said what to whom, what matters now is who is affixing what meaning to who’s actions. Importantly, Russia’s ability to escalate with relative impunity against a Western ally coupled with such a tepid US, European, NATO, and Western response certainly sends a message. First and foremost: Sending troops to Iraq doesn’t buy you much, get the Article V guarantee first. In other words, aligning with the US doesn’t buy you much in terms of real security because there really isn’t much the US can do in a situation like this. No one (rather I should say no credible and sane person) has suggested that the US intervene to support Georgia and take in Russia.

In a sense, it sounds like the opening chapter of some of the novels on my table for beach reading on my upcoming vacation: A set of covert and suspicious circumstances halfway around the world from two leaders determined to advance their own power agendas leads to a conflict that soon spirals out of control. Pressure builds, and the US is on the verge of intervention, which would mean war between nuclear superpowers, the nightmare of nuclear World War III everyone thought had died in 1991. Only Jack Ryan / Mitch Rapp / Austin Powers can stop nuclear Armageddon…

That’s fiction. The reality is that the limits of US influence have been exposed. Russia had a relatively free hand to do what it did in Georgia and there was nothing that the US (or anyone else for that matter) was going to do about it. If you’re Poland, do you think twice about hosting a missile defense site? If you’re Estonia, do you think twice about your statues? Now, these are NATO allies, but they will now require reassurance, a complex intra-Alliance game. More to the point, what of the rest of the Caucuses and central Asia? What does China think about Taiwan or Mongolia?

It also forces a re-thinking of Bush’s foreign policy legacy. Now, the Administration itself has already completed this process, moving far away from its first term international activism to a more traditional second term pragmatism. The greatest element of Bush’s policy was its promotion of democracy. The multi-colored revolutions, including the Rose in Georgia, were seen, in part, as a successful demonstration effect of Bush’s democratization agenda. This agenda was threatening to Russia and China (and Iran…), where democracy promotion is seen as a form of US imperialism. From a US perspective, the success of Democracy in the Ukraine, Georgia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and such pressures Russia, China, Iran, and such. Putin’s increasingly authoritarian Russia was able to spank Georgia’s Rose Revolution, again setting a marker limiting the influence of US-backed democratization movements.

While democracy promotion may be a normatively preferred plank in US strategy, it suffered a blow here. The pleadings of neoconservatives, still committed to the original Bush project, for intervention on behalf of Georgia drives the agenda to its logical end, a reduction-ad-absurdum that somehow bolsters the appeal of a more traditional realpolitik.

Finally, it shows the end of the unipolar moment. While the US may still enjoy its position of hegemony (and probably will for some time), the end of US Unipolarity has come. Dan’s insight here is prescient and bears repeating:

Russia wants status, wealth, and predominance in what it considers its sphere of influence. Only the last goal brings it into conflict with the US, and perhaps it is time that a less subtle, and more credible, discussion of precisely what that sphere of influence entails needs to happen. It obviously cannot include the Baltic States, Poland, and Romania--and this is one reason why NATO cohesion must be at the top of the US agenda. But there's something odd in claims that "sphere of influence" are somehow inherently immoral; the real issue seems to be that, in a "unipolar world," a bid for a sphere of influence means relatively less influence for the US.

In a unipolar world, there is only one sphere of influence—the whole world is the US’s sphere of influence. Russia’s ability to carve any sphere of influence effectively ends Unipolarity (if there ever was such a moment).

The significance of the Confrontation in the Caucuses is not that it ended the Unipolar moment, but that it signaled the end of a unipolar order. Russia has taken an aggressive step in the art of the possible, pushing the boundaries of what a great power can do in this new age of multipolar / non-polar US hegemony.

Bad Week for the USAF

2008-06-22T10:34:00.001-04:00

Certainly not a winning week for the Air Force. Already reeling from the high-profile dismissal of both its uniformed and civilian leader, the USAF was slammed again in two major stories this week.

First, the GAO slammed the Air Force's procurement procedures with a stinging rebuke of its decision to award its major tanker contract to the Northrup-Grumman. The USAF has been looking to upgrade its tanker fleet for years but the entire process has been clouded by scandal. There was the ill-fated sweetheart lease deal for Boeing. There was the criminal interference by senior Boeing leaders and a senior civilian AF official, where the official steered contracts to Boeing in return for a job after retiring from government (this led to actual jail time). Supposedly this competition for the tanker contract would move beyond the dysfunction, but alas, no. The Boeing team cried foul after it lost the contract, and as it turns out, the GAO found substantial problems with the process and recommended the Air Force scrap the existing contract and start all over again.

The Post quoted one analyst:

"We've not seen a document as scorching as this from an independent, nonpolitical agency," he said. "They are essentially saying there is either incompetency in the Air Force or there was political interference that led them to bend over backwards to benefit one competitor because they feared the power of the purse strings. Either way, the Air Force procurement system has gone horribly, horribly wrong."

Given that they were bending over backward to avoid the political interference given the outcome of the previous tanker debacle, I'd lean toward incompetency.

On top of that, we learn from the NYT that the Army, fed up with the Air Force, recently stood up its own air unit to provide UAV surveillance in Iraq.
Since the days of the Key West Agreement, the Army has only maintained rotary aircraft (helicopters) while the Air Force took care of all fix-winged air assets. This has led to years of inter-service tension, as the Army must depend on the Air Force for transport, close air support, and recon/surveillance. The Air Force has long focused on its strategic role (nukes), with an emphasis on fighters and bombers, leaving the help-the-Army portions of the service to play second fiddle.

This overall attitude certainly played a role in Gates decision to fire the top AF brass. Note the discrepancy in assessment of the USAF in today's active combat zones:

Army and Marine Corps officers in Afghanistan have complained that Air Force pilots flying attack missions in support of ground operations do not come in as low as their Navy and Marine counterparts. Instances of civilian casualties from bombing and missile attacks have increased tensions among local populations, which have to be eased by ground commanders, adding to their burden of winning hearts and minds in the counterinsurgency efforts.

“We are supporting the Army as best we can,” Michael W. Wynne, the departing Air Force secretary, said Friday.

Its pretty clear that a large part of the defense establishment has concluded that "as best we can" is not good enough.

B-2 Crash

2008-06-08T20:39:00.001-04:00

A little water, and $1.4 billion goes up in flames...

via Rob at LGM

Being there

2008-06-02T11:33:00.000-04:00

In the latest incarnation of the Iraq war issue in the general election, John McCain is criticizing Barak Obama because Obama hasn’t been to Iraq in some time, and therefore, he’s not qualified to comment on Iraq policy because he hasn’t “been there” to “see it for himself.”

Rhetorically, it’s a slick move by McCain. Take a widely perceived negative, his support of the war, and turn it into a positive by emphasizing experience and criticizing Obama’s capacity for sound judgment. There was some press speculation that Obama might now need to visit Iraq as a candidate to blunt this line of attack, which plays into McCain’s hands because its debating the issue on his turf.

This, however, raised a larger issue for me, one with implications not just for the election, but for research methods in the social sciences. Namely, how important is it to be there (or have been there) in order to make an argument and draw a defensible conclusion about a thing. We seem to have a fetish for certain types of experience, thinking it leads to insight about how certain things work. But such doesn’t always seem to be the case.

Take, for example, baseball. You’ll notice that the world of baseball analysts, managers, and team executives is replete with former players who supposedly “know the game” having been there and played it. For a long time this kind of claim to expertise ruled the day, until the “stat-heads” came along and showed that much of what the “baseball people” thought didn’t quite work that way. Hall of Fame player Joe Morgan is celebrated by some as one of the best baseball commentators for his work on ESPN’s Sunday Night baseball. He also has inspired a fantastic blog that revels in point out how foolish most of his comments are when subjected to statistical analysis. Can Bill James, who never played the game, know more about baseball than someone with a Hall of Fame career?

Back to Iraq and the election—can John McCain really “know more” about the war because he 1) served in the military and 2) has visited Iraq many times when compared to Obama who has 1) not served and 2) visited rarely, and not for some time? Does being there really matter? Can one develop and claim expertise from non-experiential research?

Now, before this becomes a stats vs. anthropology argument (as the baseball analogy might portend), I want to suggest that both McCain and Obama have an important point. It is important to be there, but being there alone does not necessarily mean that your evidence, evaluation, and conclusion is any more valid. I’m reminded of an ISA panel I attended, maybe this year, where a number of critical security scholars were discussing the state of the discipline, and one prominent senior member of the panel talked about how important it was to ‘be there,’ to get the mood of the place, to write from that perspective.

Just being there, however, doesn’t mean that you have greater access to “fact” or “Truth” than anyone else. Take McCain in Iraq. He goes on a CODEL. He meets with select troops, who are probably on their best behavior for the famous Senator. He meets with members of the Iraqi government, who probably ask him for stuff, hoping to work the levels of US political power. He tours a marketplace, with a brigade providing security. There’s no way he can get “out” to see the rest of the country, there’s no way he can meet with many of the forward deployed troops out on the FOB—a more representative sample is simply impossible for him. Its just too dangerous (and rightly, not worth the risk to him). Is it important that he goes? Sure. Does this mean that his assessment and evaluation of Iraq is fundamentally superior to Obama’s? Not really.

So, when McCain criticizes Obama, and when those in the “field” criticize those back at the desk, and those who played criticize those who haven’t, they have a very important point to make. Being there does shape and deepen your analysis about certain things in certain ways. But not everything, and not always in the most appropriate way. Just because you were there doesn’t mean you saw the whole picture while you were. Just because you were there doesn’t mean you paid attention to the things you later comment on as an expert. Just because you were “there” doesn’t mean that you are able to understand how “there” is now relevant “here.”

In the social sciences, we arbitrate these disputes with our methodology. We ask—what did you do while you were there, in the field? What did you read while sitting in your office? The methodology gives us a standard for what counts as enough knowledge about a thing or place on which to offer meaningful analysis.

In the campaign, it looks like we might have “We’re winning, can’t you see?” vs. “You were wrong then and you’re wrong now.”

Foreign Policy and Presidential Elections: Appeasement Part Deux

2008-05-21T10:40:00.001-04:00

How do electoral politics influence US foreign policy? Look no farther than Miami Dade County and US relations with Cuba. Cuban-Americans remain a highly mobilized electoral block in that state's largest county, and they tend to be single-issue voters, supporting the candidate who is tough on Fidel's Cuba. So, you have a history of candidates talking about the need to crack down on Castro to curry favor in the Cuban community and put Florida in play. Do a few hundred more votes in Florida really matter? Well, since 2000, making this point is like shooting fish in a barrel. Recall that Clinton signed the Libertad Act in early 1996 on his way to re-election, winning Florida.

So of all the countries that McCain could accuse Obama of "appeasing," its not surprising to see at the top of the list Iran (stoke fears of terrorism, still a Republican strong issue), closely followed by... Cuba. Yes, McCain is now saying that Obama's statements that he would consider loosening the Embargo and initiate talks with the Cuban Government constitutes appeasement. We've already been over why McCain's statement is nonsense. But, given electoral politics, is it any surprise why he'd try to bring Cuba into play?

Or, put differently, you'd have to wonder if the Republican party was already dead (and maybe they already are...)* if they didn't play the appease Cuba card.

*Really, this parenthetical is an excuse to link to the Packer article that is a very good read on the state of conservativism in America--it is worth a read and deserves its own post, but I just couldn't resist tossing in the link.

You Can't Appease Chris Matthews

2008-05-18T16:20:00.002-04:00

If you haven’t heard about or seen the clip of Chris Matthews dressing down one of his guests, a conservative talk show host, you might wan to take a look. Aside from the sheer entertainment value of the thing, it might, maybe, be a turning point for the fall election.

Matthews was in his regular Hardball segment where they have a conservative and a liberal radio talk show host to spin the issue of the day. They were discussing the Foreign Policy back and forth between Bush and Obama. The conservative guest launched into Obama as soon as Matthews started the segment, talking about how Obama would be horrible for the country because he was an “appeaser.” Annoyed, Matthews asked him if he knew what appeasement meant—in particular, what did Chamberlain do that was so wrong in 1938? The guy finally had to admit he didn’t know, and Matthews schooled him on some pre-WWII history. I don’t think the liberal guest got to say any more than when you’re in a hole, stop digging. It is high political theater, or, cable news at its worst.

At the core of the discussion was the deployment of “Appeasement” to delegitimate the foreign policy of an opponent. In this case, the accusation was that Obama’s position to talk to foreign leaders with who the US has policy differences would appease them, weakening the US and emboldening America’s enemies. Appeasement, as the Lesson of Munich, has a long been one of the most important analogies used in defining, evaluating, and legitimizing foreign policy choices. Rodger’s post has an excellent discussion of the use and mis-use of the concept, and I recommend you check it out.

What Matthews did was to call the conservative on his mis-use of the term. Rather than simply allow his deployment of the appeasement trope remain unchallenged, Matthews asked: what was it that Chamberlain did that was so objectionable? Its comical to watch the guest stammer and stall, like a student who hasn’t done the readings for class, before Matthews finally gives the class the answer: Appeasement came not from talking to Hitler, but from giving him half of Czechoslovakia. Talking to the enemy is not appeasement. Giving the enemy what he or she wants with no significant concession in hope that the enemy is thus satisfied, that is appeasement.

The Matthews moment means that it may be, might be harder in the future to use such analogies so far out of context. He created an opening to challenge the deployment of such broad analogies and labels, and has forced those who want to use labels such as appeasement to augment their statements by adding the offending act. Now, this could all be for naught, if everyone lets it drop, but it could also be a subtle but important shift in the way this powerful label is used. To pass the Matthews test, anyone on his show now needs to show the dangerous concession. Matthews had defined a rhetorical space in which simply talking to another actor cannot constitute appeasement, and anyone who tries to suggest as much will look like a fool.

Now, this is by no means guaranteed. Matthews could let it drop (but I doubt it, given his tenacity on issues such as this). Moreover, MSNBC has become a much more important player in election coverage (really, its gotten quite good. Olberman is in rare form, Matthews is always fun, and its impossible to top Rachel Maddow). So, if Obama’s opponents want to deploy the appeasement label for him, they are going to have to figure out how to go on Hardball and make it stick. Otherwise, the attack loses some of its steam.

Yet another reason that MSNBC has become must-see TV.

Burma

2008-05-10T23:51:00.000-04:00

With the unfolding of the humanitarian tragedy in Burma following the cyclone, people are once again (re)learning how awful that regime is (by one popular account, the 3rd worst dictatorship in the world—don’t laugh, even Drezner loves the list).

Back in The Day, when the Axis of Evil (you remember that—Iran, Iraq, North Korea) came out, I used to go through a little exercise with my students called what makes a country Evil? In particular, I would ask them why not include Burma on the list? An “evil” regime by all accounts that is certainly not friendly to the US, but it gets nary a mention by the President. In fact, he seems to have sub-contracted Burma policy to the First Lady.

The Junta is supremely isolationist, concerned with its own hold on power, but largely staying out of world affairs. As far as we know, they don’t really involve themselves in the wild world of weapons of mass destruction or international terrorism. They generally don’t bother the US, and as a result, we generally don’t bother them.

One might even ask, why not invade Burma? After all, they do have a civil society looking to engage in a democratic transition, a relatively peaceful religious community, and a leader in waiting (with a Nobel no less). They even have some natural gas that is supposed to be valuable.

Interestingly enough, given the Junta’s poor performance after the cyclone and steadfast refusal to accept the international aid offered, a French proposal emerged to force aid into the country. The idea was quickly rejected, but it was revealing in that it showed just how limited international influence can be on a stubborn regime with little connection to the rest of the world, absent the threat of military force.

From the Junta’s perspective, as many have noted, this whole situation is a danger. The poor response to the disaster threatens their legitimacy on the eve of a sham vote to legimate their hold on power. However, allowing in hundred of international aid workers and thousands of tons of international assistance is also a danger, in that it not only questions the legitimacy of the government, unable to care for its own people, it also creates a social structure outside of government control. Aid distribution networks, moving materials and information, are the very sorts of civil society that a totalitarian regime must quash to prevent opposition movements from capitalizing on these tools to further threaten the government. An interesting point of reference are the North Korean famines of the mid 1990’s. After severe weather (and poor government planning and response) wiped out crops, the country had no food. It too resisted offers of assistance, similarly threatened by the potential ‘contamination’ to its domestic society that international aid workers and distribution networks might bring. North Korea eventually did get some aid, but much of it came in the context of the nuclear negotiations and subsequent Sunshine diplomacy with the South.

In that case, two things were important. First, the US led the international response. Fully engaged in the process, the US was able to lead the international community in negotiating with the DPRK. The US is again playing a lead role in Burma, but is somewhat, shall we say, distracted by Iraq, Afghanistan, and the whole GWOT thing. Second, North Korea and the US were engaged in a larger game at the time, the nuclear negotiations, and that provided an opening for the food aid. The DPRK was already trying to extract some sort of payment from the US, and the US had several things it wanted from the DPRK. So, food aid could enter into the discussion at some point. Burma has nothing we want, really, and we have had nothing substantive to say to them in quite a while.

So, unless the US and the “international community” want to force their way into Burma to deliver a planeload of high energy biscuits, there is unfortunately very little they can do to get aid to those in need. It reaffirms the importance of the state—even a weak state such as Burma—to set its own tone for its domestic affairs when the big boys of the neighborhood (China, the US, the EU) are unwilling to play hardball.

Moral of the story: if you’re evil, we’ll go to the mattress to take care of business. If you’re just plain bad, you’re probably in the clear.

John Stewart provides a constructivist analysis of Bush Administration policies

2008-04-09T22:01:00.001-04:00

"With this administration, if a passenger blows up a plane, it's a failure in the war on terror. But if the plane just blows up on its own — eh, it's the market self-regulating."

Click here to stream the full bit.

I watched this on my DVR and thought, gee, I ought to post it. But Kevin Drum beat me too it, hat tip to him.

The Economist Reports on US Foreign Policy

2008-04-02T20:48:00.001-04:00

This week's Economist has an outstanding look at US foreign policy (Leaders and Special Report), with a pointed analysis of Bush's policy shifts that have made him hugely unpopular both at home and abroad and an insightful look at the dilemmas that the next President will face. Their conclusion: While the new President will certainly enjoy a brief honeymoon, there are deep currents of world politics and US foreign policy that auger for more continuity, rather than change.

The crux of the analysis centers on a traditional realist's reading of the current state of international affairs:

[I]n a world that is still Hobbesian, the country that is for now still the world's sole superpower is going to continue to put its own interests first.

And those interests aren't always shared by the rest of the world.

In my class this semester, I have been using Hegemony and its attendant IR theories to make sense of this conundrum. Though it doesn't label it as such, the Economist adroitly lays out the dilemmas of a mature hegemony.

Check it out, its certainly worth your time.

Meet the new boss...

2008-03-03T16:50:00.000-05:00

A focus on foreign policy has returned to the campaign, and the Washington Post had an telling series of articles yesterday and today on what the next President might do in the Foreign Policy arena. A column in Sunday’s Outlook section speculated on what lies ahead:

The next president will inherit a turbulent, intractable world that sharply constrains the room for creative new U.S. initiatives, according to many foreign policy experts of varying ideological persuasions. Despite the sharp campaign jousting, it's not hard to imagine the next president – even a Democrat – pursuing basically the same set of policies as Bush has in recent years on such big subjects as North Korea's nuclear program, Arab-Israeli peace talks, development and conflict in Africa, Russia's increasing belligerence and China's integration into the world.

"The truth is, a combination of realities . . . make a certain degree of continuity more likely than not," [Kurt] Campbell told me.

Philip Zelikow, a University of Virginia professor who served for two years as counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, echoed that thought. Obama and Clinton's "critique in general of the administration, aside from Iraq, is we are going to be more competent and collegial," he said. "They don't really debate many of the underlying premises of the administration's current policies."

This may come as a surprise and a shock to fans of the candidates, all of whom have distanced themselves from the current administration. Even McCain has been critical of Bush to demonstrate his independence on key issues such as Iraq or terrorism, though admittedly not nearly as critical as Clinton or Obama. Regardless, those expecting that campaign criticisms presage a break with the past across the board in US Foreign Policy should temper their expectations.

[H]istory also tells us to be cautious about using campaign rhetoric to predict how presidents will operate on the world stage. In 1992, Bill Clinton famously attacked George H.W. Bush for coddling "the butchers of Beijing," only to revert to the long-term U.S. strategy of patiently trying to engage China. In 2000, George W. Bush sharply condemned Clinton's approach to "nation-building" -- only to engage, in Iraq and Afghanistan, in two of the biggest nation-building projects in U.S. history.

Here's another good reason to be dubious about grandiose promises of foreign policy change: Bush himself has shifted course. After his wholesale repudiation of all things Clinton in his more ideologically charged first term, Bush moved to reorient his foreign policy along more traditional, realist lines, experts say. He has opened nuclear negotiations with North Korea, sought to repair frayed relations with key European allies, backed off from pressuring friendly Arab regimes such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia to democratize, and made a new diplomatic offer to Iran over its nuclear program. So far, he has resisted pressure to open a third war front by bombing Iranian nuclear facilities.

Today’s paper has a full profile of Obama’s foreign policy team and his major foreign policy positions. The Post’s analysis:

Yet for all the criticisms leveled at Obama, and his own professions of being the candidate of change, most of the policies outlined in his speeches, in the briefing papers issued by his campaign and in the written answers he gave to questions submitted by The Washington Post fall well within the mainstream of Democratic and moderate Republican thinking. On a number of issues, such as the Middle East peace process, Obama advocates a continuation of Bush administration policies but promises more energetic and intense presidential involvement.

Now, this expose might come as a surprise and shock to those up to their eyeballs in campaign horse-race coverage, but none of this should surprise anyone familiar with IR theory. All the major IR theories have a strong structural bias, that is to say, the ability of any one individual to shift world politics ranges from not at all to rather limited. The most liberal of foreign policy analysis theories suggest that a different President would make different policy choices, but the menu of those choices and the resulting pay-off matrix changes little from administration to administration. No presidential candidate can alter the international balance of power, and all strands of realism say that the pressures of power politics will, largely, push any president onto the same path. Even constructivists, who celebrate agency, still acknowledge that though president’s may make history, they will be doing so in circumstances not of their own making (yes, nod to Marx there….). The norms, rules, and identities that constrain and enable world politics don’t change with one Presidential election—developing new norms and identities takes and effort, limiting the number of changes any President can make.

Ergo, IR theory, writ large, suggests continuity on a wide range of key foreign policy issues. This should be neither a surprise to any observer nor a detriment to any candidate. It’s the

“combination of realities . . . make a certain degree of continuity more likely than not”

What is certain to change is the tone of US foreign policy. Obama certainly sounds different than Bush. Bush is, simply, unpopular around the world, and Obama gives one heck of a good speech. The question is: Does that really matter, and how much?

Kitty Hawk to India?

2008-02-28T21:40:00.002-05:00

From Rob at LGM, via Kevin, via Winds of Change:

The latest ROUMINT suggests that Secretary of Defense Gates, now visiting India, might give them the USS Kitty Hawk, CVN-63. The carrier is scheduled to be decommissioned soon, so rather than steaming back to the US, it could steam to India. Potential benefits to the US might include: parts and maintenance contracts, sales of planes to India from Boeing or Lockheed (F-18 and/or F-16), a strategic ally with a Blue Water navy in the Indian Ocean to help fight pirates and such.

The coolest thing came from one of Kevin's comments:

The Kittyhawk spent most of the last few decades based out of there [Yokosuka] working with the JMSDF (you can see her in Google Earth at 35°17'28.13"N 139°39'47.29"E. Look 1200m S-E at 35°17'6.33"N 139°40'27.91"E and you'll see the pre-WWI Japanese battleship Mikasa which is a museum piece. Compare the sizes of two first-rate warships of their time...)

I looked, its there, its kinda cool.

China's Role in USFP

2008-02-18T20:46:00.003-05:00

One of the interesting and recurring themes in USFP, especially when you look at it through the lens of Hegemony as we are this semester, is the role that certain countries play in the domestic debate. That is to say, there are certain type-cast roles that are used to justify certain policy positions, and having someone to fit that role really helps the person making the particular policy argument in question.

One of the classics is 'China' as "the next big thing." As a rhetorical device, this has little to do with what China is actually doing or plans to do. Rather, there is a role for the future challenger to the USA that requires action today, and China now fits that role. It didn't always have this role--long ago, it was the Soviets, then for a brief time it was Japan.

Fred Kaplan, in Slate, has a very interesting write up of the latest use of the China Card, this time in the Air Force's desire to buy more F-22's. Secretary of Defense Gates wants to stop production of the F-22, which costs $385 million per plane.

Gen. Carlson's rationale for this expansion: "Most people say in the future there will be a China element to whatever we do." In plainer words: He says we need more than twice as many F-22s than the secretary of defense says we need because of the future military threat from China.

Two things should be noted about this claim. First, by the Pentagon's own measure, the Chinese military has a long way to go before it constitutes a threat to U.S. forces. Second, even if it does become a threat, it's not at all clear that the F-22 would be the best weapon to deal with it....

The F-22 is the centerpiece of Air Force procurement at the moment. It has nearly no role in the sorts of wars that the United States has been fighting in the last 20 years—or has much prospect of fighting in the next 20.

And so, the China threat is dragged out of the cellar once again, as it has been to justify troubled weapons systems for 40 years now.

Kaplan goes on to document the leaps and bounds by which Chinese military power is behind the US. Its certainly worth reading all of it, especially if you are a China-o-phile. The moral of the story: China's military doesn't fit the role today, but the role is quite powerful--powerful enough to drive billion-dollar military spending at a time when the US military has many other more pressing and immediate needs. He concludes

In other words, it's worth keeping an eye on China. But it's probably not worth spending tens or hundreds of billions of dollars now for a program like the F-22, which its own sponsors admit might be needed in case a threat develops 20 years in the future.

(plus, how can you not love a chance to have some cool F-22 pics on the blog?!?!)

Signaling Great Power status

2008-02-13T22:35:00.002-05:00

Last weekend, a pair of Russian TU-95 "Bear" bombers buzzed the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier.

According to published reports, one Bear buzzed the Nimitz while another circled several miles off. The Nimitz launched planes to intercept the bombers, and escort them away from the carrier. (you wonder if it was anything like when Maverick and Goose 'communicate' with a MiG in the opening of Top Gun...)

This type of military signaling is something that used to happen all the time during the Cold War--on both sides. We'd send ships in international waters all around their coast, just to show them we could, we'd send planes to fly along the outskirts of their airspace. They'd send planes to fly by our ships, just to let us know that they knew we were there and the like. It was a complex signaling game, each side showing that it could maintain a deterrent posture, communicating its resolve and intentions.

Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has abandon these kinds of flights, as they are quite expensive. The Bears were, literally, thousands of miles from home, and you need a superpower-sized military budget to keep that up.

Interesting, though, is that even with the supposed "rise" of other countries / currency zones and the relative decline of Russia, its really hard to imagine anyone else doing this. The US still sends out its patrols (recall the P-3 incident with China back in early 2001--a similar deal where we sent a P-3 up their coast in international waters, and they sent a plane out to 'communicate' back). Still, only Russia has anywhere near the ability to do this in the middle of the ocean. Neither China nor India have the projection capabilities. The EU simply wouldn't think to do such a thing--they lack much of the capabilities, but as 'allies' they could just have a guy on the US ship as a guest.

A small incident but telling of what it takes to offer any kind of challenge to the US military.

Failure in Iraq redux

2008-02-11T22:10:00.000-05:00

The New York Times has a fascinating article uncovering an unclassified report by RAND for the Army that details the multiple instances of failure of US policy in Iraq. The report, based on documents, public information, and interviews with over 50 policymakers, identifies failures at all levels, from the White House to CENTCOM to the State Department to the Intelligence agencies.

The Army, concerned that the report bit off more than the Army wanted to chew, buried the report, ergo, all we know about it is what Gordon revealed in his NYT story from his paper copy. Timothy Noah at Slate likens the study to the Pentagon papers, but as of now, the NYT doesn't quite see it that way.

Super Tuesday for a Super Power

2008-02-05T19:59:00.000-05:00

Paraphrasing (very roughly) a conversation I had earlier today with an SIS faculty colleague (A) and another professional colleague who works for a government-funded peace research institution (B) here in DC:

Blah, blah blah, super Tuesday, voting, Obama, etc...

B: If Obama wins, that would have a tremendous impact on my job. The message that would send to the world, electing a black man President, and the way he speaks about international issues, would completely change the way people look at the US.

A: Quite literally, it would be like the old Monty Python bit-- And now for something completely different.

B: Yes, very much so.

Me: Considering how many people globally are paying attention to this race, its amazing. (vague reference to the post below)

B: Yes, for many of those people, the winner of this race has more impact on them than it does on you.

Given how Liberal ideals and Liberalism underlie US hegemony (particularly as Latham describes it), how big would an Obama Presidency be for the US? A Hillary Clinton presidency? Or does it not really matter?

Its super Tuesday, a day that could go a very long way in deciding the next President of the USA.

Hegemonic Decline?

2008-01-27T22:25:00.001-05:00

A must-read for the Hegemony class in today's New York Times magazine. Parag Khanna writes that the unipolar moment is over and a new tri-polar order is emerging, with Europe, China, and the US negotiating the future of world politics.

From a hegemony perspective, this is a must read and Khanna's analysis of the emerging work order is very insightful, and he has some important recommendations on how USFP can adapt to this new situation. Dan Nexon, over at The Duck, raises some good points to critique the article, also worth reading.

I'm guessing this will make an appearance again later in the semester...

Running for President.... of the world?

2008-01-27T10:14:00.000-05:00

Saturday's NYT had a fascinating story about ongoing Presidential election from a global perspective. Quite possibly unlike any election anywhere, ever, the whole world is watching. I don't mean watching, as in interested in the outcome. I mean watching as in participating, following every debate, poll, and story arc.

To look at the reams of coverage in newspapers outside the United States or to follow the hours of television news broadcasts, you might conclude that foreigners had a vote in selecting an American presidential candidate — or, at least, deserved one, so great is America’s influence on their lives.

From Berlin to London to Jakarta, the destinies of Democratic and Republican contenders in Iowa or New Hampshire, or Nevada or South Carolina, have become news in a way that most political commentators cannot recall. It is as if outsiders are pining for change in America as much as some American presidential candidates are promising it.

The personalities of the Democratic contest in particular — the potential harbinger of America’s first African-American or female president — have fascinated outsiders as much as, if not more than, the candidates’ policies on Iraq, immigration or global finances.

And there is a palpable sense that, while democratic systems seem clunky and uninspiring to voters in many parts of the Western world, America offers a potential model for reinvigoration.

They then do a round-the world report of how folks view this election. An election like no other.

The New Space Race

2008-01-23T15:21:00.001-05:00

As Barry Posen argues, American Hegemony is based on military command of the commons: the ability of the superior US military capability to control the global common areas of airspace, the high seas, and outer space.

This week's Economist has an excellent discussion of the importance of space-based assets to American military superiority:

The Combined Air Operations Centre's exact location in “southwest Asia” cannot be disclosed. But from here commanders supervise tens of thousands of sorties a year. Through aircraft surveillance pods they get a god's eye view of operations that range from old-fashioned strafing to the targeted killing of insurgent leaders with bombs guided by global positioning system (GPS) satellites, and emergency air drops to isolated soldiers using parachutes that steer themselves automatically to the chosen spot.

If Napoleon's armies marched on their stomachs, American ones march on bandwidth. Smaller Western allies struggle to keep up.

(implying that lesser developed potential rivals--Iran, North Korea, for instance--are left in the dust...)

[T]he armed services' hunger for electronic data means that four-fifths of America's military data is transmitted through commercial satellites. A single Global Hawk unmanned surveillance aircraft flying over Afghanistan can eat up several times more satellite bandwidth than was used for the whole of the 1991 war against Iraq.

In a nutshell, the US relies on space-based assets as the backbone for all of its technologically dominant military technology.

China, starting with its 2007 A-Sat test, is making an overt play to challenge the US military by placing these space-based assets at risk. Even by creating more space-junk, they put valuable satellites at risk of collision with a deadly piece of debris. Now, a poorly developed challenger to US influence has no hope of countering the massive military advantage afforded by space dominance. But a so-called "near peer" competitor (ie China, Russia) could. By blinding or even taking out US satellites, they could drastically reduce the US military's ability to exercise its dominance in other areas of the global commons.

While it will be a long time before any other nation can match what the US has produced and launched into space, its a current reality that several nations could level the playing field significantly by taking out America's space based assets.

The key question: How likely is such an action, and how much would it really matter?

Syria covers up

2008-01-11T21:23:00.000-05:00

The saga continues…

Back in October, Israeli jets bombed a mystery site in Syria. While it was clearly a major operation, the silence by all parties was remarkable, and heightened the mystery. Some claimed it was a terrorist arms shipment, some claimed it was a nuclear site, and others thought it was a practice-run / signal for Iran. But, with everyone remaining silent, the story slowly faded away.

The NYT is reporting that recently released satellite photos show that Syria is rebuilding a structure on the suspect site.

The puzzling site in Syria that Israeli jets bombed in September became more curious Friday with the release of a satellite photograph showing new construction there that resembles the site’s former main building.

Israel’s air attack was directed against what Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged to be a partly constructed nuclear reactor. The Syrians vigorously denied the atomic claim.

Before the attack, satellite imagery showed a tall, square building there measuring about 150 feet on a side.

After the attack, the Syrians wiped the area clean, with some analysis calling the speed of the cleanup a tacit admission of guilt. The barren site is on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, 90 miles north of the Iraqi border.

The image released Friday came from a private company, DigitalGlobe, in Longmont, Colo. It shows a tall, square building under construction that appears to closely resemble the original structure, with the exception that the roof is vaulted instead of flat. The photo was taken from space on Wednesday.

Several clues emerge here. First, the NYT seems rather confident in asserting the US / Israeli analysis that it was a nuclear site. This was hotly contested back in October, but is taken for granted here.

Second, the article goes on to report that the IAEA asked to inspect the sight, again indicating that there was some nuclear suspicion to clear up. Syria refused, and the rebuilding will make it more difficult to ever figure out what was there.

My question is—what’s the back story? An airstrike this big, nuclear proliferation in a country that was, once, “next” up on the axis of evil (and borders Iraq), and nothing happens?

Note to self: in 10 years or so, submit a FOIA on this and find out what the heck was going on.

Bhutto and Democracy in Pakistan

2008-01-07T10:06:00.000-05:00

I was listening to the International Hour of the Diane Rehm Show Weekly News Round-Up on podcast while jogging yesterday, and I heard David Ignatius (as noted previously, a friend of Bhutto's from their Harvard days...) make an interesting point.

He said that we in the US tended to see Bhutto as the future of democracy in Pakistan in large part because she seemed like one of us. Educated at Harvard, fully conversant in Western culture, history, and politics, darling of the media and political establishment, she charmed nearly everyone in Washington she met. But, in practice, she was not all that democratic. She was yet another example of dynasty politics, coming from a great feudal family of Pakistan. She had named herself chairperson of the PPP for life, and was dogged by corruption scandals from both her terms as PM.

His remarks reminded me of the continuing importance of Ido Oren's critique of the Democratic Peace theory. Oren concluded that:

The claim that democracies do not fight one another is not about democracies per se; it is better understood as a claim about peace among countries conforming to a subjective ideal that is cast, not surprisingly, in America's self-image. Democracy is "our kind," and the coding rules by which it is defined are but the unconscious representations of current American political values. These values are elastic over time, and their historical change is influenced by America's changing international circumstances. The normative standards embodied in the present definition of democracy were selected by a subtle historical process whereby standards by which America resembled its adversaries have been excluded, while those that maximized the distance between America and its rivals have become privileged. In the process, not only has the perception of friends and adversaries changed, but so has America's own self-perception. Democracy, therefore, is not a determinant as much as a product of America's foreign relations. The reason we appear not to fight "our kind" is not that objective likeness substantially affects war propensity, but rather that we subtly redefine "our kind."

Bhutto was "our kind" in Pakistan.

Bhutto

2008-01-02T16:05:00.000-05:00

I’ve been pondering the assassination of former (and potentially future) Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto for a few days and have been struggling with what I might say about it. It was this column by Anne Applebaum that provided the hook to crystallize a few thoughts.

If you read the coverage of Bhutto’s death, particularly in the Washington Post, you notice a strong movement to lionize her and her legacy. Applebaum pointed this out (with helpful links) in a column that appeared in both Slate and the Post:

It would also be hard to think of a person in the Islamic world who could possibly have inspired more affectionate and well-informed obituaries. An extraordinarily high percentage of the world's English-speaking pundits appear to have known Bhutto at Harvard, to have encountered her at Oxford, or to have interviewed her, at some length, when in Karachi or Rawalpindi. If one only read the encomiums to her bravery and her zest for politics over the past week, it would have been difficult, without knowing anything else about her, to understand why such a person should have been so hated by so many of her own countrymen.

You don’t have to dig very deep to see what’s going on. Bhutto’s father was very smart to send her to Harvard at 16, where she got the very best Harvard has to offer—connections to the future elite of American society. The NY Times noted:

Ms. Bhutto, the Pakistani opposition leader and two-time prime minister, who was assassinated in Rawalpindi on Thursday as she campaigned for the office a third time, had a more extensive network of powerful friends in the capital’s political and media elite than almost any other foreign leader. Over the years, she scrupulously cultivated those friends, many from her days at Harvard and Oxford. She was rewarded when her connections — at the White House, in Congress and within the foreign policy establishment — helped propel her into power in Pakistan….

Ms. Bhutto… quickly befriended not only [Peter W.] Galbraith but E. J. Dionne and Michael Kinsley, now both columnists for The Post, and Walter Isaacson, the president of the Aspen Institute and a former managing editor of Time….

Ms. Bhutto’s first important trip to Washington was in the spring of 1984, when Mr. Galbraith, then a Democratic staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, acted as her host and tutor….

Her goal in Washington was to persuade conservative Reagan administration officials that they would be better off with her in power. It was not going to be easy: Ms. Bhutto’s father was known for his fiery anti-Western rhetoric, and she had marched against the Vietnam War at Harvard. “What she was up against was her reputation of being this anti-American radical,” Mr. Galbraith said. “So we spent a lot of time talking about what messages she needed to convey.” …

On that same trip, Mr. Galbraith introduced Ms. Bhutto to Mark Siegel, a political operative who had been executive director of the Democratic National Committee. Mr. Siegel was taken with Ms. Bhutto and supported her cause. He became a lobbyist for the government of Pakistan when Ms. Bhutto was in power. Most recently he was her collaborator on a book scheduled for publication in 2008.

In short, Bhutto crafted and scrupulously maintained a large and powerful network of friends and supporters in Washington. Applebaum notes the:

…reasons why there might be a division between Western and domestic feelings about certain politicians, particularly when that politician is associated with domestic issues that we either don't know about, don't care about, or don't understand. Bhutto, despite her eloquent and sincere defense of democracy on the pages of the New York Times, was just as well known in Pakistan for the longstanding corruption charges against her and her husband, as well as for encouraging the birth and growth of the Taliban during her years as prime minister: Allegedly, she had hoped to make use of the fanatical group's military success in Afghanistan as a tool in Pakistan's longstanding struggle with India for regional dominance. To many Pakistanis, even those who didn't want to see her murdered, these were not insignificant political errors, but horrendous, unforgivable, disqualifying blunders.

We didn't know about these sides of Bhutto's character, or didn't remember them, or simply didn't think them as significant as her democracy rhetoric…

And yet they are essential to Bhutto’s legacy and would have been important issues had she become prime minister. Her friend, Galbraith, paints these choices in a sympathetic way:

Benazir's two abbreviated terms as prime minister (she was sacked twice) disappointed her countrymen and, I think, herself. In the years before her first election, we spent hours discussing her goals: a real democracy where the army took orders from elected leaders and otherwise stayed in the barracks; peace with India; a halt to Pakistan's nuclear weapons program; government spending on social needs, including girls' education. She never accomplished any of this, but not for lack of trying.

After arriving in Karachi the day after the 1988 elections, we eventually got through the crowds to her newly built house in an upscale suburb. As we talked late into the night, she asked me to draft a detailed proposal for improved relations to be given to Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. At 3 in the morning, she copied the proposal into her own hand for me to deliver to Gandhi the next day. At a subsequent summit, the two leaders looked more like newlyweds than the rulers of countries that had fought three wars in the previous half-century. But then the Pakistani military stepped in, making it clear that, elected prime minister or not, she had no say on Kashmir or nuclear weapons -- two crucial elements of any durable peace.

So Benazir well understood that, without bringing Pakistan's military under civilian control, her country would never become a real democracy. That meant depriving the generals of their ability to use the threat of India to justify their outsized claims on the national budget and Pakistan's political agenda. But in order to make peace with India (and to combat growing Islamist extremism after 9/11), she needed the military on her side. This balancing act drove her to contemplate a power-sharing deal with Gen. Pervez Musharraf, over fierce criticism from her own party. She hoped to create a "coalition of moderates" that would enable her to be prime minister in fact and not just in name…

Indeed, as far as the Bush Administration’s handling of Pakistan goes, it wasn’t a bad plan per se—to encourage the development of a secular, pro-US political force outside of Musharraf utilizing the tools of democracy. From the US point of view, its pretty hard to imagine a better alternative than Bhutto. Unfortunately, now we must.

Taken for a Ride

2007-12-25T11:41:00.001-05:00

I saw Charlie Wilson’s War Saturday night (two thumbs up, Phillip Seymour Hoffman is fantastic, and the great irony about the film is that they had to tone it down from Wilson’s actual life). What’s most fascinating about watching a movie like that is how much of a commentary it is on the present day, as the events from 20+ years ago have a direct and not at all subtle link to the present day’s politics.

There’s a very poignant scene in the movie where Wilson goes to Pakistan for the first time and meets President Zia ul-Haq and his two military advisers. They are asking Wilson for billions in new aid, and at the end of the pitch, Zia says “all the money should flow through us.” And it did.

Now, 20-some years later, the US is fighting another war in Afghanistan, sending billions through Pakistan to fund it. Pakistan is now the #3 recipient of US foreign aid, receiving over $700 million in FY 2007. Two investigative stories in the NY Times reveal that the billions already spent have been fruitless at best and damaging to US interests at worst, while future plans to develop a new AID package for the tribal regions bordering Afghanistan might be dead on arrival, regardless of how the US organizes its operation.

The idea behind the initial and ongoing direct payments to Pakistan were to build the Pakistani military’s effectiveness in counter-terrorist operations and quelling the insurgent Taliban / Al Qaeda forces. However,

Bush administration and military officials said they believed that much of the American money was not making its way to frontline Pakistani units. Money has been diverted to help finance weapons systems designed to counter India, not Al Qaeda or the Taliban, the officials said, adding that the United States has paid tens of millions of dollars in inflated Pakistani reimbursement claims for fuel, ammunition and other costs….

The $5 billion was provided through a program known as Coalition Support Funds, which reimburses Pakistan for conducting military operations to fight terrorism. Under a separate program, Pakistan receives $300 million per year in traditional American military financing that pays for equipment and training…

“I wonder if the Americans have not been taken for a ride,” said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Bush Administration is now reviewing its AID program to Pakistan. The goal is to have funds flow to the massively underdeveloped northwestern provinces to build social and governmental capacity to combat terrorist influence. But,

Because the United States is viewed with such opprobrium, it will not be identified on any of the aid, preventing any possible flow of good will. The aid will instead be presented as Pakistani. That, said a senior United States Embassy official, would help the Pakistanis feel like owners of the effort. “This is about teaching them how to get smart about how to run the country and win people’s support,” the official said.

Asked what he thought of the American goal to improve the “capacity” of the administration of which he is a senior member, Mr. Iqbal, the Pakistani official, who attended college in the United States, replied, “Bunkum.”

So here (not Iraq) you have the ‘central front in the war on terrorism’ and the US is pouring in all kinds of money in military and development assistance, and with next to nothing to show for it. Standing right there next to nothing is

one senior American military officer in Afghanistan said that he did not know that the administration was spending $1 billion a year until he attended a meeting in Islamabad in 2006.

“I was astounded,” said the officer, who would not speak for attribution because he now holds another senior military post. “On one side of the border we were paying a billion to get very little done. On the other side of the border — the Afghan side — we were scrambling to find the funds to train an army that actually wanted to get something done.”

Huray AU!

2007-12-22T19:26:00.000-05:00

AU beat cross-town rivals Maryland Terrapins in hoops today for the first time since 1927! The one person on the team who I know for a fact is an SIS major had 2 points in 14 minutes.

AU's other major sports star, national champion wrestler Josh Glenn is also an SIS major.

Where else do you have major college athletes majoring in international relations?

This could be the highlight of the AU hoops season, right here.

Spy-hard

2007-12-21T22:22:00.000-05:00

In the post- 9-11, post Iraq world of Intelligence and policy, the great hue and cry has been that the US needs better Human Intelligence. To that end, the Intelligence Reform act created the National Clandestine Service out of the CIA's old Directorate of Operations, in an attempt to beef up our human intelligence capability.

Joseph Weisberg, writing in the Washington Post, raises an interesting and provocative argument:

Although we dedicate enormous resources to recruiting "human sources," there just aren't many good ones available. The central problem is that the people who actually know the secrets we'd be interested in aren't recruitable. Officials at the highest reaches of foreign governments have wealth and power and usually no compelling reason to put those at risk. The most knowledgeable members of terrorist groups are ideologically committed and aren't going to work for the CIA or anyone else.

Those 'assets' that the CIA (or other agencies) do manage to recruit, he asserts, are essentially useless:

Intelligence from almost all CIA assets is unreliable for the simple reason that so many of them are double agents, meaning that the CIA recruited them but that they are being controlled by their own countries' intelligence services. When I worked at CIA headquarters in the early 1990s, I once suggested to a friend who worked in counterintelligence that up to a third of all CIA agents could be doubles. He said the number was probably much higher.

Concrete proof is always scarce in these matters, but from the late 1970s to the late 1980s, most and very likely all Cuban agents on the CIA payroll were doubles. So were a majority of East German agents during the Cold War.

So why even bother? Now, Weisberg is does not want to totally scrap HUMINT, he just feels that the CIA should target more obtainable and useful (and boring) information and get over the myth of the super-spy:

Sympathetic Europeans who work at companies involved in the illicit transfer of nuclear components might help us understand how the underground nuclear supply chain works. Scientists who attend highly specialized conferences might glean valuable insights into foreign capabilities.

What Weisberg's article made me think about (and this is an example of poor blog writing, as I'm burying the lead, but the nice thing about blogs is that I can write as I think, and this is what I was thinking on Sunday...) is perhaps "secret" information is really not all that valuable. Perhaps this massive expansion of the intelligence community, producing a great number of classified intelligence products is only marginally more useful than a subscription to the Washington Post, Google, and regular reading of Abu Aardvark.

What leads me to this question is not any empirical study-- I've never read a classified TS document (though once, as a State Department Intern, I did have a Secret clearance to read cables and such, but little that I read then was all that exciting, and what was dealt with operational security, like the plans for a Secretarial trip to Lebanon that was of course public news the minute she landed...). Rather, what gets me here is some of the theoretical work I've done on language, building on Wittgenstein's Private Language argument--you can't have a private language because to have a meaningful social relations, you must speak in a way others can understand. Red, Pain, Beetle In the Box, that kind of stuff.

Add to this one of the rules of Networks. The bigger the network, the more powerful it is. The original Fax machine wasn't all that valuable because there wasn't anyone else to fax to. Only when everyone had a fax machine did it become a valuable thing to have because then you could actually use the fax to communicate and expect people to be able to fax.

Put this together, and perhaps you get to the point where information--intelligence--is only valuable when lots of people know it. Thus, secrecy, classification, and the like are usually more harmful than beneficial. As an illustration, consider the NIE on Iran. The public conclusion has been very powerful and had a tremendous impact on both the domestic political debate on what to do about Iran's nuclear program, as well as the way Iran views the potential for negotiations with the US about its nuclear program. I don't know what is in that report, but does it matter?

Now, I can understand two counter-arguments for 'secrecy' and classification.
1) OP-SEC: When I was interning at State, Secretary Albright was going to Lebanon. The first visit by a US SecState in several decades. Obviously a difficult security situation, and you don't want to put her at risk, so the trip details are classified. But, once she got there, it was all public.
2) Sources and Methods: This is no different than the reporters who have anonymous sources--people talk more freely on a not-for-attribution basis. But in this case, what difference is there between a CIA officer and Dana Priest? (she's a Post Reporter who covers national security). Once, in a chat she was doing, someone asked her the question-- who has better info, you or a spy--and she said her. People were more willing to talk to a reporter than a spy for a whole host of reasons. Essentially, being overt was more of an asset than being under cover.

So, I've just taken an interesting Post Op-Ed on the problems of HUMINT and turned it into an ontological discussion of secrecy in spying. Not quite sure how I got there (well, actually I am rather sure of how I got there, but not in any way that I could explain in a blog post. Private language and all that...).

But, its going to be a fun long weekend with plenty of time to blog over the next 4-5 days, so a) you have more of this to look forward to and b) i hope this keeps you as entertained as it does me and c) if you've read this far, you deserve a medal or a cookie or something. Perhaps go read this Drezner post and decide if its Funny. I am still not sure.

The Mitchell Report and Global Governance

2007-12-14T10:03:00.000-05:00

Obviously, the Mitchell Report is all the big news in the world of sports, culture, and politics this morning, and is receiving saturation coverage. Rather than try to add my 2 cents as a baseball fan, I thought I might try to tease out an interesting IR angle to the whole thing.

As I was driving home yesterday, I heard Selig in his press conference assert that Baseball had one of the most stringent testing drug policies (now) of any major sport. The radio commentators were discussing this and said, well, if by major sport you mean NFL, NBA, and MLB, then yes. But, compared to the testing at the Olympic level, it has a long way to go.

Earlier this morning, on my way into work, I heard Sen. McCain on ESPN, and they were asking him what, if anything, the government could do about this (and recall that most of the good stuff in the Mitchell Report is the result of government work--the hearing and several drug busts and plea agreements). McCain said (paraphrasing): Not much, except to fund the USADA to improve testing practices and perhaps work more with the World Anti-Doping Agency.

From an IR perspective, I think this raises a rather interesting question--given that there is a robust international organization with a well developed regime of anti-doping rules and norms that apply to international sport, why is it that the major US sports feel that they are somehow exempt or above or beyond these global norms? Past attempts to apply Olympic-level testing to US pro athletes (NHL hockey and NBA basketball players) by the USOC met with resistance from the leagues and players associations of those sports.

So, why is it that the US and US-based organizations place themselves above this global anti-doping norm? Many major international sports have an Olympic-caliber anti-doping regime, which requires tough random testing, and a number of their most significant events have been hit by drug scandals (Tour de France...). As US pro sports go global in an every increasing way (particularly baseball and basketball), how can they make global inroads and yet flout a global norm on drug testing?

I suspect the answer has something to do with Hegemony (free preview of my Spring class!) in two ways. First, I think the sheer market size of the US and the dominance of the US professional sports leagues in their respective sports means that they don't need to comply. The best basketball in the world is in the NBA, and its become a very international league, with the best players from everywhere. The NBA doesn't need anyone else. Same with MLB--you now see the best Japanese players coming over, wanting to play in the Majors in a way that they didn't even 5 or 10 years ago.

Second, I think there's an identity component to it--why we call it the World Series or the Superbowl winner World Champions. They aren't world champs, they just won a league. But, the US doesn't recognize any other league as being on par with the US leagues. Interestingly enough, the major sports are starting to recognize the impact of globalization and playing US vs. the World all star games or stating up such things as a World Cup for baseball. But, the World Baseball Classic is largely an MLB dominated activity, not an international event like The World Cup.

Hegemony. When your champion is the world's champion.

So, why then doesn't the hegemon follow the world norm on anti-doping?

Must read

2007-12-05T19:24:00.001-05:00

Patrick Jackson has an excellent post up at the Duck about the NIE.

Its a must read.

See it here.

Elections, Democracy, and USFP

2007-12-05T19:22:00.000-05:00

Last week there were two major elections, in Venezuela and Russia, and looking back on them together offers a moment to discuss democracy and US foreign policy of democracy promotion.

This allows us to ask the question—are Russia and Venezuela really democracies? The US has been highly critical of Hugo Chavez and his political revolution in Venezuela, and somewhat less critical of Vladimir Putin and his power grab in Russia. Both purport to be democracies, but the US is challenging that assertion in each case. The elections mark a chance to interrogate our notions about the definition and status of democracy.

In some respects, the mere having of elections might be sufficient to label them democracies. One thing that I’ve noticed of late is the tendency to dumb-down democracy to the mere holding of elections. If you are elected, then you are the legitimate leader, and therefore anything you do is legitimate. As an illustration, recall the declaration of emergency rule in Pakistan. It was roundly condemned in the US, but differently by various people. I had my class do a short discourse analysis assignment on this, and one thing that came up was the difference in how the democrats vs. Bush called for a return to the status-quo ante. Bush simply said: take off the uniform and be elected as a civilian president. Others, however, called for the restoration of the constitution, the restoration of the Supreme Court, and the freeing of jailed opposition leaders. Bush did not. Likewise, think back a few years to Iraq, the purple finger day as they voted in the present government. Iraq had an election and that secured US victory. They voted for a government, and that was all that mattered. Bush, and thus the US, seems to be saying that so long as you are elected, you are a legitimate democratic leader.

This inclination by the Bush Administration has emerged in domestic politics as well, as Bush says don’t question my methods on anti-terrorism, torture, or domestic spying. Don’t oppose my appointments or my war. I won the election, I get to do what I want, end of story. This assertion of executive power has been a stated agenda of VP Cheney, and has served to annoy many a member of Congress.

What is lost in all this is the more nuanced, complex, and messy definition of democracy that includes representative government, rule of law, separation of powers, individual rights, and fairness and equality of all before the law. Bush certainly doesn’t talk about any of this in Iraq. We talk about security, violence, and the elected government. Not discussed is the status of the rule of Iraqi law or the development of national political institutions. These elements are important constitutive elements of a functioning democracy. Democracy is not just about how one attains power (election) but also how one exercises power (laws, institutions) and the limits of that power (laws, rights, checks and balances). Most importantly, democracy locates the source of power within the people, not the leader, allowing the people to transfer power to an opposition without compromising the integrity of the state.

It seems that we’re learning that Chavez’s Venezuela some important parts of this—much more so than Putin’s Russia. Both Chavez and Putin had turned the respective elections into mechanisms that would allow them to hold onto power longer then they are currently allowed under the present rules. Chavez offering constitutional amendments that would permit him an additional term, Putin offering his name at the head of his party’s list such that he might become prime minister after his presidential term is through.

One of the most important moments in a democracy is allowing power to flow back and forth between opposing factions vying for power. It is why George Washington is deservedly an American hero and icon—he set the tone of voluntary giving up the office to a successor, of peacefully passing power from one leader to the next. With his acceptance of the legitimacy of the No vote on the current round of constitutional ‘reforms,’ Chavez has allowed the opposition to win. That’s a positive signal. Putin, on the other hand, bullied and harassed opposition parties he was already poised to trounce.

The real question about the status of democracy in both countries can only be answered at the end of each presidential term. Does each man give up power and pass it on to a successor? Can you really see Chavez handing over power to an opposing government after losing an election. Putin? As much as many didn’t like it (and I’d imagine he really didn’t like it), Clinton gave power to Bush, just as Bush will give power to Clinton or Obama or whoever wins the upcoming US presidential election. Genuine democracies recognize the value of the system and the rights of others to play fairly within the system.

The great failing of the US which occupies so much of the discussion here and elsewhere on this front, is to extol so much of the virtues of democracy, like Bush’s second inaugural, and then abandon those principles in the face of immediate gain or need.

But, I think its valid to ask, so what? Is the US the only country, is Bush the only leader, who offers platitudes of freedom and democracy and then turns on those statements the next day? Why do people get more upset when the US fails to live up to its words than any other country in the world?

I think there are 2 reasons for this.

The first is US Hegemony. The US is not like other nations, its the one that set up this system where Democracy is the preferred system of government, and only the can really change it. The US, as an agent of a liberal hegemony, has made it so that all major international institutions, forums and agendas advance the banner of democracy. Consequently, the US version and views and statements of democracy matter more than others.

The second is disappointment. Despite the fact that so many people don’t like the US (check any global opinion survey) many still want to move here or send their kids to school here. Why? Because, I think, people know that many Americans are largely good folks, and that in daily life, these principles of democracy are better expressed here, by the average American, on a routine basis than just about anywhere in the world. Despite all the structural impediments to advancement often discussed, it is still possible for anyone here to succeed in a way that simply isn’t possible nearly anywhere else in the world. I think people are more disappointed in US failures to live up to those foreign policy platitudes because they know we can, and sometimes do, when others just cannot. Its not all idle talk from the US, and hence the disappointment and betrayal when it can’t live up to the standards it sets for itself and others.

In other words, lots of nations are hypocritical in foreign policy statements, but few to the degree that Americans are. The US always criticizes in the name of such democratic ideals, the US calls for action in the name of such ideals, and much more so than other states who are much more comfortable talking about interests instead of ideals. So, the US talks an idealistic game, but then shirks away in the face of criticism that it violates its own ideals by alliances with Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the like.

Or, perhaps there’s a third reason—people really do believe in these American principles of democracy and are deeply pained and hurt to see them thrown under the bus in the name of interest and stability. It certainly could lead if we, as a nation, truly believe those principles, or if those who do are simply fools and patsies for taking them seriously. Indeed, if more Americans were genuinely troubled by compromises in our democracy principles, perhaps the US wouldn’t violate them so much.*

Which brings us back to Chavez and Putin. In both cases, the US will criticize the general direction of the government of each country—probably more heavily Venezuela than Russia. And yet, Chavez, for all the criticism by Bush, is probably the more democratic of the two (or three, if you want to toss in Pakistan—really, more than a lot of US allies) while Putin is the more authoritarian, and taking his country down a more authoritarian path. But, really, what can the US do to Russia? What can the US do in Pakistan? Iraq? Iran?

Democracy is more than just holding elections. Its messy, its hard, and it takes a while to figure out and put into practice. In that time, polities can and do develop the institutions, structures, and processes that make a genuine democracy feel democratic, even in non-election years. Its not something that one can adequately judge moment to moment, it requires a close look nuance and the chain of unfolding events. Perhaps its time to put some of that nuance back into US foreign policy.

*significant debt owed to anonymous friend for inspiring this discussion

MEPP take 2

2007-11-27T12:11:00.000-05:00

A US President, needing a signature policy victory, faced with a hostile Congress controlled by the opposing party, nearing the end of his term, seeks ensure his legacy and make a major foreign affairs statement by brokering a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. He brings them together for a big meeting here in the US, hoping to put together the structure of a deal to bring peace to the region.

Sounds familiar. It could be George Bush, presiding over the Mid East Peace conference in Annapolis that starts today. Or, it could be Bill Clinton, making one last push for peace at Camp David back in 2000. You could even argue that it might apply to the senior George Bush and his Madrid conference in 1991. In short, we've seen this show before, and I'm not convinced that the current production will have an ending that is in any way markedly different.

Granted, there are a few thing new about Bush's current conference that make it substantively different than previous peace process attempts. The first is that this is Bush's first real foray into personal diplomacy for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Entering office in 2001, the administration disengaged from the Mid-East Peace Process that the Clinton Administration was so heavily invested in. Instead, the Bush Administration offered its 'Roadmap' for peace, largely removing the US from the daily push for peace talks. The current summit marks the most significant US foray into the issue in over 7 years. A lot has happened in that time.

First and foremost, there is different leadership leading different nations. Yassir Arafat, long the face of the Palestinians, has passed from the scene. His successor, Mahmoud Abbas, presides over half a quasi-state, significantly weaker than his predecessor, having essentially lost Gaza to Hamas. Ehud Olmert comes from a secular, pragmatic centrist coalition that broke from the right and picked up some of the left, having up-ended Israeli politics and reduced the influence of certain right-wing religious factions.

Then, there's the small matter of the Us invasion of Iraq. On the one hand, this makes the US a much bigger player in the Middle East, as it occupies an enormous country in the middle of the map, with hundreds of thousands of troops in the region engaged in active combat. On the other hand, it has significantly weakened and skewed US policy in the region, as everything has been filtered through the lens of Iraq, leaving the core Israeli-Palestinian issues on the sidelines until now. It has also reshaped the role and identity of the US in the region, providing new burdens to public legitimation of any US-brokered deal.

And, there's the shift in regional power to Iran. Iran's rise and growing influence (aided in part by the US invasion of Iraq) has troubled both the Israelis as well as some Arab states suspicious of Iran's bid for regional hegemony. Shi'ia Iran's ability to appeal to Islamisist groups potentially threatens the secular and Sunni regimes such as Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.

Finally, there are another 7 years of fighting between Israeli and Palestinian forces and people. Its been a long 7 years, with many on both sides tired of the fighting and eager for some sort of settlement.

So, you might think that these changes would make the conditions ripe for a peace agreement. Perhaps. But, I remain skeptical that this summit and the Bush Administration's current push will achieve any significant and tangibile results (other than the obligatory joint statement and promise of future negotiations).

Part of the problem lies with the Bush Administration itself. To date, it hasn't shown itself to be all that concerned with policy implementation and follow-through. It, has succumbed to the classic liberal fallacy that once compromises are made, interests satisfied, and an agreement is reached, the deal is done. The fallacy is that such agreements don't implement themselves--someone has to take a compromise and legitimize the new set of interests it represents to the group required to make the deal work. The Administration thought that if it simply removed Saddam that the Iraqis would suddenly emerge from their shells, a civil society and market economy would spring up from the people, and everyone would realize that they are all better off in a democracy. Except that it didn't happen that way--the removal of Saddam's government removed what little order there was in Iraq, and with no alternative legitimate social order, chaos followed. The terms of the deal that Olmert and Abbas will strike are rather obvious to anyone who has followed this issue over the years. They, and their advisers know what that eventual compromise is. The issue isn't reaching that compromise, the issue is politically legitimating that compromise to the respective societies in a way that both Olmert and Abbas can be seen as having achieved a victory and not having sold out their people. I haven't seen any of that rhetorical groundwork in any major form. For such a deal to work, the Administration will need to sell it, legitimize it, and implement it with a concerted Presidential effort far more strenuous than that which was given to either Iraq or Afghanistan. Someone will need to take ownership of this process, in the way Chris Hill has taken responsibility for sheparding the North Korean nuclear deal to fruition.

And, part of the problem lies with the participants. As I mentioned above, the real key to any peace deal is the legitimation of a compromise to both societies. Each group has, over the years, incorporated into its national identity indivisible items that must be cut up in any deal. Israelis hold Jerusalem as the center of the Jewish state in which they live. Palestinians hold as central the right to return to their former homes. In practice, both must be compromised to reach a deal. But woe is the leader who sells out his people's core identity. What Palestinian leader can go back to his people, having sold out the right to return? What Israeli leader can go back to his people having given away half of Jerusalem? Under the current conditions, its a political death sentence, and why there will be no real progress on a peace deal. (And not just these 2 issues--there are clearly more, but those serve to illustrate the point sufficiently).

What is needed is a reshaping of the rhetorical-identity topography. Someone, perhaps a US president (though perhaps not), needs to offer the Israelis a vision of an Israeli identity with a shared Jerusalem. Someone needs to offer the Palestinians a vision of a Palestinian identity without a right of return. Someone on each side needs to enact such an identity, producing the interests that support a peace deal. Then, and only then, is the potential for compromise possible.

No love for the net

2007-11-12T21:58:00.001-05:00

Front page article in today's Washington Post on Condi Rice's management style as Secretary of State.

Yeah, all the usual stuff about Blackwater, Baghdad, and Passports, but here's the zinger, as far as I'm concerned:

Condi Rice does not use email.

Seriously? Not at all?

How on earth does she communicate? Is she a Luddite? Is she too busy going hither and yon to sit down at a computer? Or, is she too paranoid that anything she writes emails will one day be subject to a FOIA (or worse)?

How on earth does anyone manage a large, global organization without email these days? I know some senior managers who claim to spend half their day on email. That may be a bit of overkill, but no email whatsoever? That boggles the mind just a bit.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

2007-11-03T23:06:00.001-04:00

In Pakistan today, General / President Pervez Musharraf declared martial law, sacking the Chief Justice of the supreme court, suspending the constitution, and doing all the other things generally associated with martial law.

Now, both Bush and Musharraf are stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place, up the proverbial creek without the requisite paddle.

For Musharraf, you have the same situation he's faced in Pakistan for nearly his entire rule: "extremist" Islamists very sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda on the one side and a secular elite that wants a return to actual (or at least more) democracy.

For the Bush Administration, you have a very serious conundrum. The NYT hits the obvious nail clearly on the head:

For more than five months the United States has been trying to orchestrate a political transition in Pakistan that would manage to somehow keep Gen. Pervez Musharraf in power without making a mockery of President Bush’s promotion of democracy in the Muslim world.

On Saturday, those carefully laid plans fell apart spectacularly. Now the White House is stuck in wait-and-see mode, with limited options and a lack of clarity about the way forward.

General Musharraf’s move to seize emergency powers and abandon the Constitution left Bush administration officials close to their nightmare: an American-backed military dictator who is risking civil instability in a country with nuclear weapons and an increasingly alienated public.

That's pretty much the deal--it doesn't get any clearer than that.

1. Sham. Mockery. Shamockery.

2. The fundamental issue:

There has long been a deep fear within the administration, particularly among intelligence officials, that an imperfect General Musharraf is better for American interests than an unknown in a volatile country that is central to the administration’s fight against terrorism.

We'll now put that to the test, now won't we?

3. Did I mention the nuclear weapons?

Now, I admit, its easy to heap blame and scorn on the Bush Administration. It has been pretty clear for quite some time that Pakistan is among the most dangerous countries on the planet and a true Frenemy in every sense of the word. They have a population where many people are sympathetic to "the terrorists" and the US is highly unpopular. Its a rather open secret that Al Qaeda has a strong presence in Northwest Pakistan, in the provinces along the Afghan border. But, it has also long been assumed by many that Musharraf was all that stood between an allied and permissive Pakistan and a radical, nuclear armed Pakistan.

Indeed, one could argue that any administration would have done the same thing.

But, it was the Bush Administration that placed Democratization at the center of its Middle East / Anti-Terrorist agenda, only to watch it spectacularly fail. It was the Bush Administration that decided to deepen strategic ties to Pakistan, showering the military with aid, enabling the present state of affairs.

Now they, and we, and the people of Pakistan (right... lets not forget them in all this...) are all in a spot of trouble right now, all stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Clear Images Produce a Cloudy Picture

2007-10-27T22:42:00.000-04:00

This week new information emerged in the ongoing mystery as to what Israel bombed in Syria several months ago—much anticipated satellite imagery of the suspect site. These pictures below, originally printed in the NY Times, are commercial imagery, analyzed by David Albright at the Institute for Science and International Security (pdf of his report here). They show the critical before and after pictures—before the strike and just recently.* The smoking gun?

Sort of. Its clear that something was there, and, interestingly, its clear that Syria doesn’t want to discuss it—they’ve apparently already cleaned the site, plowing over whatever they had initially build. As the NYT reported:

“It’s clearly very suspicious,” said Joseph Cirincione, an expert on nuclear proliferation at the Center for American Progress in Washington. “The Syrians were up to something that they clearly didn’t want the world to know about.”

Mr. Cirincione said the photographic evidence “tilts toward a nuclear program,”

but of course, no one can be certain. There are some buildings, they layout of the before pictures bears some of the signs of a nuclear site, but we can’t see into the buildings and have no idea what went on there. The images, Albright told the NYT, are “consistent with being a North Korean reactor design.” But consistent is not certain.

Syria’s action—totally dismantling whatever was there—only serves to fuel the suspicion. Its clear they don’t want to discuss the specifics of the incident, it certainly suggests they have something to hide, and encourages speculation that they want this incident to just go away.

Thus the mystery grows. William Arkin of Early Warning sees three possibilities:

1. Israel actually did bomb a nascent Syrian nuclear program. The photos suggest as much. He is suspicious:

But, it's hard to believe that Syria, possibly with the help of North Korea, is stupid enough to think it could build a nuclear reactor and get away with it.

2. Israel thought it bombed a nuclear site, but acted on faulty intelligence and erred.

3. It’s a red herring, ‘cover’ for something else. But what?

I’m inclined to side with the possible nuclear site for a couple of reasons. First, this attack was a serious risk. Tensions between Israel and Syria had been rising recently. In authorizing this mission, Israel certainly had to appreciate the risk that Syria could and might retaliate—either directly across the border in the Golan or through Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Either would be costly for Israel and could easily risk war. So, I don’t think that this was an action Israel undertook lightly. They clearly thought that there was something extremely serious in Syria. The stakes are just a bit too high for them to have undertaken this for much less. Second, Syria clearly has something to hide. This situation is ripe for exploitation domestically and across the so-called “Arab Street.” They did offer a few faint protests, but where is the outcry? Where is the Syrian propaganda? The ‘cleaning’ of the site furthers this idea—Syria knows that this would be observable from overhead photography, and they cleaned the site rather thoroughly and quickly. Third, where’s the outrage? None of the other Arab states have said a thing. At one point in time, any Israeli attack on an Arab state would produce instant denunciations. Here? Nothing. Apparently some of Syria’s supposed friends aren’t all that upset. The only country to have said anything? North Korea. Finally, the US has been suspiciously quiet. Former Administration officials have intimated that it was a nuclear site and that North Korea might be involved. Its clear top US officials knew all about this strike and they have been unusually quiet about the whole thing. No confirmations, no denials.

How confident am I of this? Maybe a 4 out of 10.

Still, the only thing on which there is a clear consensus is that something significant happened about which there are more questions than answers.

Arms Control Wonk:

In short, we don’t know what the site was, what (or who) survived the strike, and where it is now.

Syria Comment:

There are many too many unanswered questions.

Arkin:

Until we see evidence that Israel bombed something, it's fair to assume that there's a lot going on behind the scenes.

Stay tuned until we get the next peek behind the scenes.

*On a side note, this imagery, in and of itself, I think is nothing short of amazing. Here you have what used to be the most precious intelligence gathering capability, limited to only a few space-faring states, now a commercial technology that anyone can use. While these images aren’t as high-quality as the best US spy satellites, they are pretty darn good and available to anyone who cares to buy them and learn the art of photo interpretation.

John Mearsheimer on The Colbert Report

2007-10-03T22:12:00.001-04:00

Arch Neo-Realist John Mearsheimer was on Colbert last night, talking about his new book, The Israel Lobby.

In his book,
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, the most recent Neo-Realist manifesto and required reading in my class this semester, says that all states rationally seek to maximize their power in anarchy, and that inevitably leads to competition and conflict in world politics.

Where in Neo-Realism, the theory of the unitary, rational state actor, is there room for an Israel lobby (or Indian lobby, or any other lobby for that matter) to have any meaningful influence over state action?

Not to mention, in the interview where he says that the US should treat Israel like any other country, like Britain (his example)? So, we shouldn't go to war with them, and give military aid, jointly develop new fighter planes, share top secret intelligence and intelligence gathering, or otherwise have a 'special relationship' with our close allies? After all, isn't that what allies do, construct a shared identity of a 'special relationship?'

Hat tip: Rodger

Social Construction and the IED

2007-10-02T19:16:00.000-04:00

A fascinating post my my colleague over at the Duck of Minerva on the social trajectories of IEDs in Iraq.

Its certainly worth a read. Click here.

Realism vs. Idealism in US Foreign Policy

2007-09-19T10:15:00.001-04:00

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates gave a fascinating speech Monday to the World Forum on the Future of Democracy addressing "a 'realist's' view of promoting democracy abroad."

The whole speech is worth reading (here). In it, Gates reflects on the longstanding debate between the "realists" and "idealists" in US Foreign Policy. It is very closely related to the great debate between Liberals and Realists in IR Theory, a debate we are now addressing in class. In IR theory, we like to look back to Woodrow Wilson as the paragon of Idealism, and study EH Carr's withering criticism of the 20 Year's Crisis as the paragon of realism. As Gates reminds us, this debate has even deeper roots than that:

[W]e Americans continue to wrestle with the appropriate role this country should play in advancing freedom and democracy in the world. It was a source of friction through the entire Cold War. In truth, it has been a persistent question for this country throughout our history: How should we incorporate America’s democratic ideals and aspirations into our relations with the rest of the world? And in particular, when to, and whether to try to change the way other nations govern themselves? Should America’s mission be to make the world “safe for democracy,” as Woodrow Wilson said, or, in the words of John Quincy Adams, should America be “the well-wisher of freedom and independence of all” but the “champion and vindicator only of our own”?...

...In short, from our earliest days, America’s leaders have struggled with “realistic” versus “idealistic” approaches to the international challenges facing us. The most successful leaders, starting with Washington, have steadfastly encouraged the spread of liberty, democracy, and human rights. At the same time, however, they have fashioned policies blending different approaches with different emphases in different places and different times.

Gates recalls his own career as a realist, opposing the Helsinki Final Acts, for example, and comes to terms with the value they ultimately had, both as idealist goals and realist tools of national interest.

The obvious backdrop for this is Gate's realist reputation contrasted with Bush's crusading idealism (epitomized in his second Inaugural speech) to democratize ~~the World Middle East~~ Iraq. This administration has been particularly hostile to some traditional realists (ie Scowcroft) but the failure of its grandest Idealistic project in Iraq has prompted a reconciliation of sorts. Gates attempts just such a balancing act:

It is our country’s tragedy, and our glory, that the tender shoots of freedom around the world for so many decades have been so often nourished with American blood. The spread of liberty both manifests our ideals and protects our interests – in making the world “safe for democracy,” we are also the “champion and vindicator” of our own. In reality, Wilson and Adams must coexist.

How well does he do?

Secret Strike (and the consequences of failure)

2007-09-17T23:04:00.000-04:00

Something is brewing in the Middle East that merits close attention, because the more we learn about it, the more intriguing it becomes. It also brings home some chickens to roost, so to speak, for earlier Bush Administration foreign policy failures.

Last week, Israel launched a highly secret air-strike deep into Syria. Despite the fact that Israel and Syria share a border (the direct route), the squadron of Israeli F-15's flew over the Med, through Turkey (a very close Israeli military ally), and dropped significant ordinance onto a Syrian target. The entire operation has been cloaked in secrecy--Syria didn't denounce the attack for over 12 hours after it happened, and has been unusually quiet about the entire incident. Israel has said nothing, and the US is also tight-lipped. The loudest condemnations have come from North Korea, recently rumored to be cooperating with Syria on nuclear issues.

The current speculation, per the NYT, is that Israel hit a nascent North Korean supplied nuclear facility in Syria. This speculation is fueled by China's abrupt cancellation of talks over North Korea's nuclear program--a program they had just agreed (with the US) to give up.

So, what are we to make of all this? It was clearly a very aggressive move by Israel, but what is most interesting, to me, about it, is the muted response by Syria and the rest of the Arab world. Syria and Israel are taking this very seriously--there are reports that both are mobilizing their armed forces and reserves along the border. But the public statements have been muted--more so on the Israeli side (total silence) than on Syria (who did formally protest to the UN).

Its the North Korea connection that I find most fascinating. North Korea and Syria have a longstanding relationship buying and selling weapons. Its the nuclear aspect that is troubling--in part that Syria was taking steps to proliferate, and in part that North Korea was willing to facilitate that proliferation.

It also highlights the consequences of several years of failure of the Bush Administration's North Korea policy. Coming into office back in 2001, there was an opportunity to re-engage North Korea and reach a nuclear deal. The Bush Administration opted for confrontation and containment, and while isolated, North Korea tested several new ballistic missiles and, most significantly, tested a nuclear device, entering the nuclear club. Only after all of this, did the Administration relent and re-engage in meaningful diplomacy, reaching a deal whereby North Korea agreed to give up its nuclear program and subject itself to inspections.

And now this. Hard-liners such as John Bolten, a staunch opponent of any talks with North Korea both while at the State Department and while outside of government, will point to this as proof-positive that North Korea can't be trusted, that any deal with them isn't worth the paper its printed on, that North Korea is cheating.

But consider the alternative scenario--had the US engaged in meaningful nuclear diplomacy in 2002, giving Charles Prichard the same brief as Christopher Hill now has, its quite possible that a situation such as this could have been avoided. With nuclear inspectors in North Korea, there would have been a much better accounting of the DPRK nuclear program. Had this happened earlier, the recent breakthroughs that allowed North Korea to test a weapon would not have happened. And, in a functioning deal with the US, North Korea would probably have been less likely to risk upsetting that deal by working with the Syrians.

How much of this idle speculation looks at the situation with rose-colored glasses? Perhaps some. But not all. Indeed, had the Bush Administration placed nuclear proliferation and North Korea at the top of its national security priority list instead of, say, Iraq, back in 2002, most of the antecedent conditions that led to this raid could have been avoided.

Neo Realism Week

2007-09-06T15:16:00.000-04:00

From LGM:

MM... Pithy

Kenneth Waltz, via Travis Sharp:
To say that militarily strong states are feeble because they cannot easily bring order to minor states is like saying that a pneumatic hammer is weak because it is not suitable for drilling decayed teeth.

Bush's Attempt to find a Legacy

2007-09-06T12:52:00.000-04:00

With his approval ratings in the low thirties--historic lows for a sitting President--Bush is now turning to "history" to vindicate him and his decisions on Iraq. He's hoping to become another Truman, unpopular due to a war on his watch but later lauded by those looking back on his acomplishments. I don't think this is likely to happen.

First, this weekend, we recieved an interesting look inside the Bush inner-circle and decision-making process. Harry Truman is venerated for making tough decisions--considering the right path, confering with top advisors, making a choice, seeing it through, and taking responsibility for the outcome. The rap on Bush, especially from his opponents, is that he's an intelectual light-weight incapable of such weighty deliberations. Remember the 2000 election--a Governor with zero foreign policy experience (couldn't even name a couple of world leaders) but a good team from his father's administration to act as a steady hand on the ship of state. The narratives of Iraq that emerges from this auspicious begining are that Bush's advisors essentially duped him into the Iraq war--devious neoconservative ideologues Wolfwitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld and company steamrolled the Administration into Iraq. Bush, caught in simplistic post-9-11 rhetoric, bought it hook, line, and sinker. The promenance of this narrative is why many observers expected things to change as the top officials in charge of Iraq policy have changed. Gates, England in at Defense, Rice over to State, Crocker and Petraeus in Iraq. Bolton, Perle, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby out of government.

What we're seeing, however, is that these personnel movements are not significantly improving the situation because the dysfunction was never with the staff, it was with the President. The President is much more involved and knowledgable in these decisions than this common narrative suggests.

Take, for example, the criticism of Rice as National Security Adviser:

But none of that has been enough to erase the view that as national security adviser she largely served as a rubber stamp for a series of foreign policy blunders, during a period that critics say will ultimately weigh most heavily on her legacy. “It turned out to be a very disastrous four years in my view,” said Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Mr. Powell’s chief of staff at the State Department while Ms. Rice was national security adviser.

A president poorly served by his senior staff? Perhaps, but don't blame the staff:

But Mr. Armitage said his view of Ms. Rice had since mellowed. “I’ve become more conscious of the fact that the president got the national security adviser he wanted,” he said in an interview this week.

The President knew full well what he was getting when he selected his advisers, and was seeking the kind of advice they would provide consistent with his own decision-making style.

And in apparent reference to the invasion of Iraq, he continued, “This group-think of ‘we all sat around and decided’ — there’s only one person that can decide, and that’s the president.”

Each and every key decision on Iraq has Bush's fingerprints all over it.

Take, for example, the decision to disband the Iraqi army, now seen as a poor choice that both increased the instability the US now faces in the country and removed one of the key tools to combat just such violence. Again, the conventional wisdom is that Bremer acted imperiously and alone. Even Bush tries to perpetuate the narrative, somewhat insulating himself:

Mr. Bush acknowledged one major failing of the early occupation of Iraq when he said of disbanding the Saddam Hussein-era military, “The policy was to keep the army intact; didn’t happen.”

But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush’s former Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army’s dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush said, “Yeah, I can’t remember, I’m sure I said, ‘This is the policy, what happened?’ ”

Except that:

A previously undisclosed exchange of letters shows that President Bush was told in advance by his top Iraq envoy in May 2003 of a plan to “dissolve Saddam’s military and intelligence structures,” a plan that the envoy, L. Paul Bremer, said referred to dismantling the Iraqi Army.

Mr. Bremer indicated that he had been smoldering for months as other administration officials had distanced themselves from his order. “This didn’t just pop out of my head,” he said in a telephone interview on Monday, adding that he had sent a draft of the order to top Pentagon officials and discussed it “several times” with Mr. Rumsfeld.

A White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House is not commenting on Mr. Draper’s book, said Mr. Bush indeed understood the order....

Throughout the course of the War in Iraq, Bush knew exactly what he was doing, and far to often, when he had a choice to make, he made the wrong one. When he was poorly served by an adviser or Cabinet member, it was a person he personally selected for that position. He got the staff he wanted, the war he wanted, and he knew what he was asking for. When you take the role of "The Decider" you are also saddled with the consequences. The buck stops there.

Second, consider what Bush has built in his term as President to leave to future occupants of the office.

But he said he saw his unpopularity as a natural result of his decision to pursue a strategy in which he believed. “I made a decision to lead,” he said, “One, it makes you unpopular; two, it makes people accuse you of unilateral arrogance, and that may be true. But the fundamental question is, is the world better off as a result of your leadership?”

Mr. Bush has often said that will be for historians decide....

Perhaps. Historians do have the advantage of knowing how things turn out. But in making this claim, Bush is resting his entire hopes of a legacy on the long-term outcome of Iraq.

Compare it to Truman. It was pretty clear that Korea was not going well and would not end well for the US. Indeed, the best Ike could do was a stalemate armistice quite close to where the war started. However, Truman's legacy is based less on Korea than it is his handling of the rest of post World War II era. In particular, Truman and his administration built the foundations of international order that still guides much of world politics today: The Breton Woods system, the UN, NATO, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the National Security Act of 1947, and others. Truman led the establishment, legitimization, and early development of so many key institutions that have had such staying power that its difficult to find a President not in his debt (even Bush--who is now relying on NATO, a Truman Administration product, to take over Afghanistan). What has Bush built? What future President will rely on a Bush Administration project, program, or institution as a cornerstone of international security?

Finally, its quite likely that we political scientists as well as historians and presidential scholars hold this administration's penchant for secrecy against it. We thrive on records--archives, interviews, transcripts, documents, and such. This administration has gone to great lengths to keep those records secret from researchers despite a legal regime designed to open them up for research and historical judgment 12 years into the future.

Contrast this with JFK. Lionized by his contemporaries for his idealism and his tragic assassination, Kennedy's stature sagged as many of the details behind his carefully manipulated image came to the fore--womanizing, illness, and hiding much of this from the public. Indeed, his Presidential library has been accused of selectively releasing documents to protect his image. However, his legacy has also received a boost from the full disclosure of his Administration's records. The Kennedy Tapes have reaffirmed his critical role and leadership in a defining crisis of the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis. Well studied by historians and political scientists, it has been dissected repeatedly. Yet Kennedy's actions and decisions stand the test of time. The tapes, documents, and memoirs help, allowing scholars to weed out the wishful memories and celebratory memoirs and replace them with documented historical evidence (compare Essence of Decision 1971 and 1999--lots more data, but JFK still does alright). Historians need this evidence to build a president's legacy. Bush is keeping it secret, making it harder for historians to write about him and making its revelation all the more significant when it finally does come to light.

As Bush winds down his term and prepares to leave office, it doesn't look like history will vindicate Bush. If anything, these trends, over time may only serve to lower his stature among modern Presidents.

Be careful what you wish for

2007-08-23T10:27:00.000-04:00

Several days ago, Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin (D-MI) returned from a visit to Iraq and called for the ouster of Prime Minister Maliki, calling him "non-functional."

On the one hand, Levin makes a critical point. The main problem in Iraq is political, not military, and the dysfunction of the Iraqi government is not really helping to solve the problem. Indeed, the Iraqi parliament is indicative of the sectarian and political conflict that continues to plague the country.

On the other hand, be careful what you wish for. In the on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again,
its not but it is comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam, (this debate and policy reversal is so rich, it could and probably should be the subject of a separate post, but my syllabus isn't done yet and classes start Monday. So it will just have to wait....) I wanted to bring up one historical lesson that seems somewhat relevant and foreboding in this instance.

In 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground...

No, wait, wrong Vietnam parallel....

In 1963, a crack commando unit of the ARVN Army overthrew and subsequently murdered South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in a coup sanctioned by the US Government. The Kennedy Administration was frustrated with Diem's government as they were not making sufficient progress in the fight against communism, autocratic, ineffective, and such. To make a long story short, what they failed to appreciate was that sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know. The successive Vietnamese governments after Diem were no more effective in fighting the communists, while US participation in the coup gave the US a deeper responsibility and commitment to the successive Vietnamese governments. Indeed, many historians see the 1963 coup as the moment when Vietnam went from bad to disaster for the the US.

So, perhaps in this instance, the Bush administration's backing of the Maliki government isn't such a bad idea. Its a problematic government, to be sure, but Maliki is the devil we know, and we might want to be wary of engineering a transition to the devil we don't know, especially when any alternative to Maliki seems no better at 'solving' Iraq's current political crisis.

Obama vs. Clinton on USFP

2007-08-05T14:38:00.000-04:00

Its always exciting when foreign policy comes front and center in an election. Usually its "The Economy" or some other domestic issue that separates the candidates, so its particularly interesting that the Democrats have turned to foreign policy as the first major issue on which the major candidates have (or have at least manufactured) a stark difference. Today's installment of Ducking the Issues examines the Clinton - Obama dust-up over meeting with foreign leaders.

Lets go to the Transcript:

QUESTION: In 1982, Anwar Sadat traveled to Israel, a trip that resulted in a peace agreement that has lasted ever since. In the spirit of that type of bold leadership, would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?

COOPER: I should also point out that Stephen is in the crowd tonight. Senator Obama?

OBAMA: I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them -- which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration -- is ridiculous. (APPLAUSE) Now, Ronald Reagan and Democratic presidents like JFK constantly spoke to Soviet Union at a time when Ronald Reagan called them an evil empire. And the reason is because they understood that we may not trust them and they may pose an extraordinary danger to this country, but we had the obligation to find areas where we can potentially move forward. And I think that it is a disgrace that we have not spoken to them. We've been talking about Iraq -- one of the first things that I would do in terms of moving a diplomatic effort in the region forward is to send a signal that we need to talk to Iran and Syria because they're going to have responsibilities if Iraq collapses. They have been acting irresponsibly up until this point. But if we tell them that we are not going to be a permanent occupying force, we are in a position to say that they are going to have to carry some weight, in terms of stabilizing the region.

Obama did get this answer right, despite the significant criticism he has endured for it, and its important to note why. First, look at the question--it asks if the candidate would be willing "to meet, without precondition" a number of leaders, and frames it in the spirit of bold diplomacy and leadership from past global peacemakers. Obama seeks to pick up that mantle of global leadership, and does so with his answer. He draws a sharp and important contrast with the current administration, which has chosen confrontation over negotiation in dealing with hostile regimes, and says that he's willing to chart a diplomatic course.

The key line, of course, is "without precondition." Now, every world leader, including Bush, is willing to meet with any other world leader, including the aforemention rogues gallery, if the right conditions are met. Were Castro willing to announce his abdication, or were Kim Jong Il willing to de-militarize, they could both win a White House invitation tomorrow. In fact, a hallmark of the Bush administration has been to lay out such stringent conditions on any diplomacy that it renders it all but impossible, thereby creating a rhetorical justification for unilateral action. Obama wants to draw a sharp contrast, and does so.

COOPER: Senator Clinton?

CLINTON: Well, I will not promise to meet with the leaders of these countries during my first year. I will promise a very vigorous diplomatic effort because I think it is not that you promise a meeting at that high a level before you know what the intentions are. I don't want to be used for propaganda purposes. I don't want to make a situation even worse. But I certainly agree that we need to get back to diplomacy, which has been turned into a bad word by this administration. And I will purse very vigorous diplomacy. And I will use a lot of high-level presidential envoys to test the waters, to feel the way. But certainly, we're not going to just have our president meet with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and, you know, the president of North Korea, Iran and Syria until we know better what the way forward would be. (APPLAUSE)

COOPER: Senator Edwards, would you meet with Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Kim Jong Il?

EDWARDS: Yes, and I think actually Senator Clinton's right though. Before that meeting takes place, we need to do the work, the diplomacy, to make sure that that meeting's not going to be used for propaganda purposes, will not be used to just beat down the United States of America in the world community. But I think this is just a piece of a bigger question, which is, what do we actually do? What should the president of the United States do to restore America's moral leadership in the world. It's not enough just to lead with bad leaders. In addition to that, the world needs to hear from the president of the United States about who we are, what it is we represent.

Clinton (with Edwards tagging along for the ride) does two important things with her answer. First, she draws a contrast between her and Obama. This is the well-reported story, she trumpets her White House (albiet East Wing) experience vs. his youthful inexperience, which when cast as naivety, becomes dangerous rather than refreshing and undermines Obama's campaign mantra of sound judgment. Second, though, notice how she shifts the question to make such an answer possible. Clinton says that she will not promise to meet anyone without some sort of positive deal (negotiated at lower levels) is in place. On the one hand, such is the case--this is how Presidents have historically used the power of the office and the power of a Presidential visit, as a reward for making a deal with the US. On the other hand....

Obama never "promised" to meet with anyone. He said he'd be willing to meet with them, and that he'd be willing to set up such a meeting without a laundry list of preconditions. This does not necessarily imply that he would actually meet with them, let alone become some propaganda on Hugo Chavez's behalf (do you really think Chavez or Ahmadinejad wants to meet with the American President? It could hurt them as much as us.) Obviously, the President of the United States doesn't just drop by Fidel's place for coffee. Obviously, there's the prep work that Clinton spoke of. But, notice how Edwards and Clinton then take the opportunity to back Obama's main point--that the current Administration has ignored diplomacy, and in doing so has weakened American's global leadership.

Moreover, and here's where I think Obama is in fact justified in his position, Clinton says that she wants to know the "way forward" before she meets with these types of world leaders. Typically, that's how most high-level meetings happen. But, it also displays a certain degree of foreign policy establishment conservatism (with a small c, as in slow to change). As the questioner points out, bold diplomacy such as Sadat going to Jerusalem or Reagan meeting Gorbachev requires meetings between heads of state without preconditions. It is sometimes the fact that diplomats, operating in a standard policy framework, can't see a way forward, and need a jump start from an involved President personally willing to invest credibility to move an international reconciliation forward. Could there have been a Camp David Accords without Sadat taking charge and making such a bold statement? If he had left it to his foreign ministry to work out all the details before he took his trip, would the trip ever have been made?

The point is this. Clinton's answer is a good one, and plays to her real strength as a candidate: 8 years of presidential-level experience in the White House, and a sense that she is a real leader fully capable of making the right decisions for the nation on tough choices. It also knocks her opponent down a peg, attacking what he is trying to play up as his key strength--judgment over experience--by casting him as naive.

However, Obama's answer does not deserve all the bad press its getting. Its a good response, a fresh response, and reflects an inherent dissatisfaction with the Bush Administration's approach to foreign policy--especially Iraq. It is in fact rather responsible to offer to talk to Iran, despite our obvious historical and policy differences, in order to make sense of the future of Iraq. Indeed, the very problem with Iraq is that no one has a clue "what the way forward would be" and Obama's alternative is to suggest that perhaps talking with the Iranians might help improve the situation. Its a reasonable alternative and legitimate policy criticism of the Bush Administration.

College Credit

2007-08-02T22:54:00.000-04:00

The State, Surveillance, and El Pollo Rico's Pretty Good Chicken

2007-07-17T11:50:00.001-04:00

On Thursday, ICE agents raided El Pollo Rico, a very, very popular Wheaton area pollo a la brasa restaurant, charging the owners with money laundering and hiring illegal immigrants.

Now, as it happens, I live really close to this place, and I often (used to) go there for chicken. It is perhaps the best chicken one can get anywhere--in the DC area Zagat guide, they usually had a top 10 finish for food, up there with all the fancy restaurants, and they were a decidedly cheap eats venue. For $13.50, I could feed my whole family on a whole chicken, cooked to perfection, with a side of fries, cole slaw, and plantains.

Now the local blogosphere is all over this, with predictably mixed reaction. On the one hand, the law and order, close the border types are applauding the government while fans of the fantastic chicken are quite annoyed that a hard-working community icon they frequent is being shut down.

Aside from serving as yet another flash-point on the ongoing immigration debate in this country, I think that this story is indicative of yet another long-term trend in Political Science that often is under appreciated and under-noticed. That is: in the techno-globalized-capitalist marketplace, the state grows ever more powerful, and many of the things supposedly responsible for the retreat of the state, the eclipse of the state, actually are enabling the state to become significantly more powerful.

As the story goes, the heyday of the sovereign state was several decades ago, when the State controlled all the interesting and relevant levers of power in the international realm. With the rise of the global economy, globalization, and the Internet, there emerged a realm of significant international activity outside the purview of the state. Indeed, it was possible to have a complete existence outside the state, and in some cases, these global forces were powerful enough to even discipline the state into complying with global or market norms. Unfettered flow of capital, movement of people, and the exchange of ideas all beyond, across and through borders seemed to render the state irrelevant. The State is Dead.

And yet, Long Live the State. One tends to forget that many of these so called global institutions and structures that permit individuals and businesses to move beyond the state (the upside of globalization) also permit a seamy underside of globalization, but both are still dependent on structures formed, maintained, and monitored by the State. Moreover, the very same technology available to those challenging the state is also available to the State itself.

Most tend to look at this the other way--that which the state has is now available to the common NGO, business, or individual. But, in this case, its the state making use of powerful surveillance equipment to know more about what is going on in and around its borders than ever before. In the supposed heyday of the state, how much did the state really "know" about its citizens? Yet today, it can monitor each and every one of them and track scads of data in ways that were previously unfathomable. According to the Post report of the story, the key charges against the family that owned El Pollo Rico were financial:

The restaurant, at 2541 Ennalls Ave., accepted only cash. The Solanos paid employees who were in the county illegally in cash and wrote checks to those who were here legally, prosecutors said.

Federal agents say the Solanos deposited more than $6.6 million into a business account between June 2002 and September 2006 in increments of $7,000 to $9,000, which authorities say was done to avoid filing currency transaction reports that must be submitted with deposits that exceed $10,000.

The Solanos deposited checks from the business account into their personal accounts and used the proceeds to purchase residences, vehicles, loan and life insurance policies, and retirement accounts, according to the affidavit. Federal agents seized more than $2 million in cash and jewelry from the Solanos' residences and vehicles, authorities said.

NBC4 (WRC) reported:

Officials said their investigation began about a year ago because of suspicious banking activity such as a quick succession of high-volume deposits and withdrawals. Officials said the underlying immigration violations were revealed over the course of the investigation.

In other words, El Pollo Rico was done in by the high-tech surveillance of the state attracted by its financial transactions. FinCEN has primary responsibility in the US for catching money laundering criminals, and the primary way they do that is with transaction reports by banks and other institutions that distribute cash (like Casinos). Every cash transaction over $10,000 must be reported to FinCEN, as well as any suspicious financial activity. As one might expect, they receive thousands of reports per year, so they rely on sophisticated technology and computer surveillance equipment to sort through all of that and identify questionable activities (as opposed to cash-heavy legitimate businesses).

20 or 40 years ago, it was next to impossible for a State operating in such a free market to really know all that much about what was going on inside or across its borders. Transactions like those at El Pollo Rico would have gone unnoticed until someone spilled the beans. Like Al Capone, you had to know who the bad guys were in order to finally find the financial crimes to put them away. Now, however, the state can survey financial flows, identify suspicious activity, and use that as a springboard to larger investigations.

That's some power for the state.

And, it means I now need to find a new Chicken joint.

Analogies of War

2007-06-27T21:32:00.000-04:00

Political leaders have long relied on historical analogies to frame, explain, and justify important policy choices. The current administration is no exception when discussing its policy toward Iraq—the most recent instance occurring when Tony Snow described keeping US forces in Iraq “as we have in South Korea.” Indeed, Iraq has been a war full of analogies: Bush’s father analogized Saddam Hussien to Hitler in the first Gulf War, Rumsfeld wanted to rebuild Iraq like Germany after World War II, the insurgents in Iraq created another Vietnam, though the US did not want to leave like Vietnam, with Baghdad well on its way to becoming a new Beirut, and now it looks like the US will remain, as we have in Korea.

Analogies are more than just passing references to history. Analogies are caricatures of key moments seared into the country’s collective memory, commonplaces that evoke a particular emotion, triumph, or failure. The specific details of the historical moment in question are less important than the memory it evokes. At Munich, appeasement failed and subsequent Munichs are avoided by leaders invoking the analogy and standing strong against aggressive dictators.

Leaders use analogies because they offer a powerful tool to legitimize policy options. Analogies frame the discussion by identifying the key issues at stake. Historical commonplaces are known for one key moment. Beirut is a once proud city in the chaos of an intractable civil war. Invoking Beirut brings the discussion to civil war and sectarian strife. German reconstruction successfully created a thriving democracy out of a former enemy, focusing the discussion on democratic success. Analogies explain policy by laying out a simple story of how a process works. Each historical moment has a caption, and that widely recited caption gives a logical progression of how a goal can be achieved. Robust deterrence contained the Soviet Union and brought about its downfall. Analogies justify by drawing on widely shared collective judgments on historical events. The unfamiliar situation of the present can be read through a well-understood template on which society’s collective judgment has already been rendered. Everyone “knows” Vietnam was a failure, so avoiding another Vietnam in Iraq is to avoid national humiliation.

When Snow invoked the Korea analogy, he was attempting to legitimize the Administration’s current policy in the face of substantial criticism. Korea frames the policy as a discussion of long term engagement with a partner country in the face of a mutual threat. Korea explains the policy: just as a robust but isolated US presence deters further aggression from North Korea, allowing South Korea to thrive, so too would a sustained US presence in Iraq help ward of future threats from terrorism in the Middle East. Finally, Korea justifies the policy as a successful, sustainable, and affordable price to pay to realize a key national interest.

The problem, as political scientists who study the use of analogies readily point out, is that analogies are a particularly bad way to make decisions and lead to highly flawed policy choices, usually with disastrous outcomes. Analogies are caricatures of history, not history itself, and as a result, this selective memory leaves out the messy, complicated, and contingent details that produced the relevant outcome. The strained comparison between past and present glosses over significant differences between wars and important historical details that are, in fact, essential factors of success or failure. Iraq is neither Germany nor Vietnam nor Korea, and treating it as such is sure-fire recipe for disaster. Trying to win the last war is no way to win the current one.

Quibbling over the accuracy of a historical comparison—Korea, Vietnam, Germany—misses the larger significance these analogies the contemporary policy debate. As historical commonplaces, analogies are rhetorical tools to define a debate and legitimate its resolution. Despite overwhelming public opinion to the contrary—61% of Americans say the war is not worth fighting and 55% want to reduce US forces in Iraq—the Bush Administration has made a clear decision to maintain a substantial military presence in Iraq for the long haul. Deploying the Korea analogy narrows the debate. Discussion moves away from what kind of progress the troops in Iraq are actually able to make and what future outcomes are even possible to hollow choice of Korea or Vietnam. If the administration can shift the debate to a question of what a sustained US presence in Iraq looks like by using the Korea analogy, it will make the point that such a presence is acceptable to the American public. In doing so, it will gloss over the tremendous gap between Yongsan Garrison in Seoul and the Green Zone in Baghdad, and side-step the fundamental question of what now constitutes success in Iraq and what compromises we must accept to approach it. Korea is not a model for the future of the US in Iraq, it’s a justification for a policy that the Bush Administration would rather obfuscate with history than discuss and defend in the present.

Its About Time

2007-06-25T11:43:00.000-04:00

Last Thursday, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill made a sudden and surprise visit to North Korea to talk directly with the North Korean government about their nuclear program.

All I can say is-- its about (_______) time. And, it shows the power of good, pragmatic diplomacy.

From 2001 through 2004, the Bush Administration held a very tough line toward North Korea--axis of evil, no direct talks, CVID, etc. This tough line was very popular with the Administration's base conservative philosophy about getting tough with the evil dictators around the world and not negotiating with untrustworthy regimes. Their rationale remains--North Korea is an evil regime that will eventually cheat on its agreements anyway, so don't give them anything and make them take not just the first step, but absorb most of the risk as well. The result? North Korea backed out of the Agreed Framework nuclear deal the Clinton Administration had negotiated and reactivated its nuclear program. Eventually, the Bush Administration convened the 6-Party Talks, designed to be a multi-lateral format for all those in the region to pressure North Korea to move on its nuclear program, particularly China. This almost worked, in that several near-deals were negotiated, but, like the 2005 deal, fell apart soon thereafter. At the center of the 6-party talk policy was a position that the US would not directly negotiate with the DPRK, all meetings should be in the multi-lateral format. To be sure, there were some side meetings between US and DPRK people around the 6-party talk venue, but a side meeting is not the same as the recognition accorded by a formal bi-lateral meeting.

The problem with the get-tough approach was that North Korea got rather frustrated with its lack of progress, and in an attempt to signal the US, it re-started its nuclear program, tested a couple of missiles, and ultimately tested its first bomb. They were particularly annoyed with the US cutting off access to its funds through a Macao bank.

That alone stands as one of the greatest foreign policy failures of the Bush Administration-- a new no-friendly nuclear state on its watch, when all the evidence points to the fact that some sort of continued engagement would have postponed, if not forestalled, the DPRK going nuclear.

Finally, after a number of years of get tough, the administration reverses course to a more engagement / negotiation approach, very similar to the approach taken (with modest success) by the Clinton Administration. They agreed to return North Korea's money. And it seemed to work. It was telling that now-former administration officials such as John Bolton and Robert Joseph (both who served as Under-Secretary of State for International Security, a key office in these types of negotiations) heavily criticized the deal reached with North Korea.

But Hill, a very skilled diplomat and now the senior State Department North Korean negotiator, was persistent, and pressed for the ability to deal directly with the DPRK. When the invite was issued, he snapped it up and set up his trip.

Lo and Behold, it seems to have paid off. North Korea agreed to shut down its Yongbyong reactor, ending its production of plutonium for bombs. The IAEA is set to enter North Korea this week for the first time since 2002 for inspections and to set up a plan to monitor this reactor shut-down. And there is (yet another) commitment to restart the 6-party talks. This is a big deal. First, it ends the production of plutonium, meaning that North Korea's nuclear arsenal won't grow as it continues to negotiate the future of its nuclear program. Its a pragmatic choice first made in 1994--the US doesn't get a full accounting of or end to the nuclear program, only a promise to negotiate over it, but the nuclear arsenal stays put. This was obviously more important prior to the test, as it kept North Korea from being able to develop a bomb to test, but still, it contains the problem and keeps it from getting significantly worse. Second, it gets IAEA inspectors back into North Korea. This is very important because, as we've learned over the past decade of global non-proliferation, the IAEA is pretty good at its job. They had Iraq's nuclear program pegged after '91. Having that inspection regime in place is a tremendous asset in learning about the DPRK program-- it keeps what they've got in check and gives the international community tremendous insight into the North Korean program. Moreover, it significantly increases the legitimacy of any future deal or hard line with North Korea. It places a UN-family organization in a critical seat and brings dedicated IAEA member-states into the process as stakeholders. The IAEA can legitimate an agreement, and non-cooperation with the IAEA is not the same as non-cooperation with the USA. There are many tired allies who might now be willing to look the other way when North Korea and the US get into a future shouting match. But, bringing the IAEA into the mix helps to legitimize the role of the international community, making this a global problem, not just a regional or bilateral one.

This is a move the US should have made a couple of years ago-- its not that costly to send one Assistant Secretary of State to Pyongyang, and the payoff for the move (at this point) seems significant. Now, lets see State is able to follow up on its initial gains and implement this agreement. If it can, its a success for diplomacy enhancing the National Security of the USA.

Bomb Iran?

2007-06-19T11:23:00.000-04:00

Reading Sunday's NYT, I was somewhat surprised to read about the intensity of debate within senior Administration circles about how to address Iran's nuclear program.

The debate has pitted Ms. Rice and her deputies, who appear to be winning so far, against the few remaining hawks inside the administration, especially those in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office who, according to some people familiar with the discussions, are pressing for greater consideration of military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities....

But conservatives inside the administration have continued in private to press for a tougher line, making arguments that their allies outside government are voicing publicly. “Regime change or the use of force are the only available options to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapons capability, if they want it,” said John R. Bolton, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations.

Only a few weeks ago, one of Mr. Cheney’s top aides, David Wurmser, told conservative research groups and consulting firms in Washington that Mr. Cheney believed that Ms. Rice’s diplomatic strategy was failing, and that by next spring Mr. Bush might have to decide whether to take military action.

Then, take Joe Lieberman's statements on Face the Nation:

"I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq," Lieberman told Bob Schieffer. "And to me, that would include a strike into... over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers."

Is it time to bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran?

a perfect excuse for some audio and video links--McCain singing it here (youtube), but he ripped it from the Capitol Steps, who did 'Bomb Iraq' back in the Clinton years (on this album). Here (MP3) they update the parody, the song is about 2/3 of the way into the clip.

Actually, a friend asked me this very question a few weeks ago, and what follows is our email exchange on the subject.

His question:

Dear Peter,

Seriously, as scholars of international security, is the idea of a U.S. invasion of Iran in the cards at all? I mean, yes, Duncan Hunter mentioned a tactical nuclear strike and Clinton-esque air strikes against Iranian targets could well be a possibility but isn't all this talk of "war" with Iran pure hyperbole?

How, for example, is this implicated in the current row with Russia over missile defense elements in Eastern/Central Europe and therefore the overall U.S.-Russia strategic relationship?

Inquiring minds want to know. :)

Sincerely,

(redacted for privacy considerations)

My Response:

Dear (redacted again)

Its an astute question.
My 'expert' analysis: (and if its any good, maybe it will morph into a blog post at some point)
and here it does just that!...

Is war with Iran possible? Sure. We don't like them, they don't like us, and we each have been escalating--both diplomatically and militarily-- the confrontation between us. So, yes, it could happen, and as such responsible deep thinking planners at State, DoD, and CENTCOM should have an up to date contingency plan for just such an occasion.

The appropriate line, I think, comes from a scene in one of my favorite movies, "Hunt for Red October" where the Soviet Ambassador and US National Security Adviser are discussing the growing naval presence in the North Atlantic and the NSA says-- "It would be well for your government to consider that having your ships and ours, your aircraft and ours, in such proximity... is inherently DANGEROUS. Wars have begun that way, Mr. Ambassador."

Or, to put it another way (and foreshadow the rest of the answer)-- never underestimate the role that stupidity and bad luck play in the unfolding of history. Anything can happen.

That said, is a war probable? I don't think so.

Every major explanatory tool / theory we have in IR / Security, save one, suggests no war. To be clear, this is not a political or policy recommendation against war, but IR theory / Security Studies offering a theoretical prediction on future outcomes. Your base realism / strategic analysis suggests no war. Iran is big and strong (stronger than Iraq pre-invasion), offering a more robust deterrent. The US is weaker--though the US flanks Iran with ongoing military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, those two ongoing wars have stretched the US military about as far as it can go in its current configuration. As any military person around town will tell you, we're stretched very very thin just to keep up the surge. Troops are on quick rotations, the Army is burning through all its equipment, the carriers are maxed out in deployments-- where is the fighting force going to come from? With Iraq, there was never a question of a relatively easy victory (over Saddam's regime-- the post war is a different story). That assurance is no longer there with respect to Iran. Power politics says that it’s not going to happen.

The domestic / liberal explanations similarly suggest no war. When Bush went into Iraq, he had a pliant public, a cheerleader Congress, bureaucratic support within the government, and significant public approval. Today, none of that exists. The public is against the Iraq war, has no appetite for further war, and Bush's approval ratings are low--historic lows for a president. Congress is now controlled by opposition Democrats, and while, yes, they are not as active as many would like in taking steps to end the current war, you can assuredly bet that any Congressional authorization for a new war is a non-starter. Its one thing to do as Biden claimed in the debate the other night and support troops already in the field, but its another thing to prevent troops from going into a new field. Even the bureaucratic organs of the government seem reluctant to build up for a war. The Intel community, chastened by its failures (and being hung out to dry for those failures) on Iraq would resist, and DoD, really, the career military, particularly senior officers, don't seem willing to support such adventurism any more. They'll fight the war in which they are implicated (Iraq) but I don't see the bureaucracy lining up to support a new war with Iran.

And, the campaign is now on. Who among the R-10 do you see lining up for a full-on war, and how do you see even the most modestly competent D campaign responding? Its one thing to spout campaign rhetoric of I'm the Tough Guy (tough on crime, tough on terrorists, tough on proliferaters)--there are votes to be won there--but its another thing to be the war candidate--there are only votes to be lost there. Contrast the R-10's tough talk on Iran with the subtle attempts to open some distance between themselves and the President in Iraq.

Plus (to pay homage to my friend's leanings here), where's the money in it? The "Special interests" of the 'war machine' and oil people have their hands full in Iraq, which has turned out, I would argue, to be less of a payoff (or rather a much more costly investment for a payoff), than anticipated. There's plenty of oil in Iraq left un-tapped, who can handle Iran's on top of that? Who even needs it? Even Blackwater probably can't handle an Iran operation on top of Iraq, they're very busy as it is.

The only analytical tools in the IR kit that leaves open the possibility of war are the individual / psychological / group-think ones. Its still possible for key actors to misperceive the situation and massively screw things up. More likely, though, is that there remains a core of true believers, blinded by ideology, within the administration that necessarily include the President and VP. These folks, in a group-think situation, could talk themselves into a war with Iran. You do see hints of this-- anything that comes out of Cheney's office (see the lead-in above), Bush at some point saying he wanted to deal with Iran and not leave it for the next president. So, like the Tuesday lunch group, they could decide that a war with Iran is the way to go.

But, again, I consider that highly unlikely. When that happened with Iraq, the decision was a 'slam dunk' but the legitimation and justification and bringing the country / bureaucracy along was much easier due to the political alignment at the time and post-9-11 shock of the country that was suddenly in a mood to go after 'those guys'. Those things aren't there any more, and even if Bush and Cheney wanted a war, I just don't see how they could sell it and get the necessary support within the government and within the country to make it work. When you hear that John Ashcroft, of all people, and his senior staff almost resigned en-mass after the president ordered certain domestic spying programs, and you look at the reception Gen. Newbold now gets, its all the sudden plausible to believe that a revolt of the Generals or Senior State / DoD / Intel staff is possible in the event of a proposed War with Iran.

So, no, I don't see it as likely.

Iraq as Shakespearean Tragedy

2007-06-12T14:50:00.000-04:00

How many ways, how many times, can one say that the US is screwed in Iraq?

Today, two of the better military correspondents following Iraq (each with a must-read book on Iraq) dispense key insights as to how problematic Iraq is for the United States.

Michael Gordon in the NYT reports that:

The top American military commander for the Middle East has warned Iraq’s prime minister in a closed-door conversation that the Iraqi government needs to make tangible political progress by next month to counter the growing tide of opposition to the war in Congress.
In a Sunday afternoon discussion that mixed gentle coaxing with a sober appraisal of politics in Baghdad and Washington, the commander, Adm. William J. Fallon, told Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki that the Iraqi government should aim to complete a law on the division of oil proceeds by next month.
The admiral’s appeal, which was made in the presence of Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador to Iraq, a senior political adviser to the command and this reporter, elicited an assurance from Mr. Maliki that he hoped to make some progress over the coming weeks. But he also offered a lengthy account of all the tribulations facing the Iraqi government, including tenuous security, distrustful neighboring Sunni states and a complex legal agenda.

The US, now driven by domestic politics opposing the war, wants yet another quick fix to the problem of governing Iraq. Time and again, the US has pushed for institutions, events, and milestones hoping that the country would catch up to its 'leaders' while ignoring the large-scale political processes necessary to legitimate such institutions of government that allow them to function. Gordon's pearl of wisdom:

At times, the two sides appeared to be operating on two different clocks. While Admiral Fallon emphasized the urgency of demonstrating results, Mr. Maliki cast the political process as a long journey from dictatorship to democracy.

Therein lies the rub. We need a quick fix for Iraq, but there is nothing quick about fixing things in Iraq. The US is part of the problem, and yet, the US leaving is also part of the problem. Staying allows the Iraqi government to put off the really tough choices it needs to make about how it will govern and who will be part of the governing coalition. Leaving opens the door for a whole host of political factions to vie for power in what could easily devolve into a civil war. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Hell of a way to run a war.

Tom Ricks dispensed his wisdom in one of the Washington Post's regular on-line chats about Iraq, Q & A style (with me paraphrasing the longer Q's, but his answers in full). His central insight:

I think the beginning of wisdom on Iraq is to understand there are no good answers available. So the question is, What is the least bad answer?

Question: Is there a way to get out without making things worse?
Ricks:

That is very much the vibe that I picked up in Baghdad in recent weeks--that there are different ways of getting out, or reducing the US military presence, and that we could do it in ways that intensify the violence, or we might be able to do it in ways that lessen the violence, and that we should starting thinking through these courses of action.

As one officer put it to me, "Just because we invaded Iraq thoughtlessly doesn't mean we should leave it that way."

Question: Does that mean we we're in for another 18 months, until Bush is out of office?
Ricks:

18 months? That's optimistic. In my view, this is a Shakespearean tragedy. His works had five acts, and I think we are only in Act III.

When I was writing 'Fiasco' I'd sometimes look out the window at about 3:30 in the afternoon and see a group of kindergarteners being led from the elementary school down the street to a nearby day care center. On my pessimistic days (most of them), I'd think, "One of those kids is going to fight and die in Iraq."

I do think that is a possibility. I don't like it. But I think that Iraq is a tougher problem for the US government, and people, than the Vietnam War was. We could walk away from that one. Yes, it was awful if you were Cambodian, or a Vietnamese who had cast your lot with the Americans. But the United States as a nation could pretty much wash its hands of Vietnam. I don't think it will be as easy to walk away from Iraq.

It is too bad we didn't have this conversation in the summer and fall of 2002, huh?

Question: So will Iraq ever be able to govern / secure itself?
Ricks:

This question gives me a headache. That doesn't mean it is a bad question, it is just that it points to how damn difficult the Iraq situation yes.

No, there is no guarantee that Iraqi security forces will be competent--or even-handed. Again, that is another reason US planners are thinking about a "post-occupation" presence, because Sunni leaders might ask for such a force to guarantee that Shiite-dominated Iraqi army and police forces don't attack them. But just how do we guarantee that? Do we attack the Iraqi government? Do we post soldiers to protect Sunni enclaves?

I think the fingers-crossed answer we will get from American officials is that political accommodation should ease the security situation, and so lessen the need for US intervention. But that's a hope, not a plan.

Iraq doesn't seem to get any easier, does it?

Too bad there are no candidates from Hope running in this election (sorry, bad pun!).

Here's the heart of the matter-- for all those on the far left or far right who think the the 'only way' to go in Iraq is to either get out now or stay the course (it doesn't matter which)--its high time to recognize that neither is much of a solution--its "a hope, not a plan." Unfortunately, trying to sell a bad anwer to Iraq is a sure loser in any election, which is why no one wants to do it. But its pretty clear that we have painted ourselves into a corner from which there is no easy way out. The honest answer is to admit as much.

A new Command for Africa

2007-06-02T09:10:00.001-04:00

Last summer, I noted the significance of the Pentagon's creation of an Africa Command in the unified command plan. My conclusion then was:

By creating such a high-profile position for Africa, the bureaucracy of the Pentagon and the US Government as a whole, will see Africa in a whole new light.

On Monday, the Washington Post ran an article based on analysis of a CRS Report on the new command (You can read the entire CRS Report here).

There are two broad issues here that I think merit discussion and reflect more than just the basic reorganization of boxes on the Pentagon's Org chart.

First is the concern over the militarization of US policy toward Africa.

The creation of the Defense Department Africa Command, with responsibilities to promote security and government stability in the region, has heightened concerns among African countries and in the U.S. government over the militarization of U.S. foreign policy, according to a newly released study by the Congressional Research Service.

AFRICOM would have traditional responsibilities of a combat command "to facilitate or lead [U.S.] military operations" on the continent, but would also include "a broader 'soft power' mandate aimed at preemptively reducing conflict and would incorporate a larger civilian component to address those challenges," according to the CRS study.

Fear that it could represent a first step toward more U.S. troops in Africa led [Ryan Henry, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy] to assure African leaders that the "principal mission will be in the area of security cooperation and building partnership capability. It will not be in warfighting."

As has been discussed often on this blog, usually by Dan, the US role as hegemon with a global order / empire to manage has required a number of US policy and grand strategy shifts in recent years. The US has become more involved militarily in more corners of the globe, not only fighting terrorism, but also enforcing and maintaining the current global order. Africa, long ignored in this process, now gets its own military command, allowing the Pentagon to further extend US military interests in Africa. Given the power of the Pentagon in the current Administration, its highly likely that under the new Command, the Pentagon's priorities for Africa will come to dominate the US Government's priorities and policies toward Africa, thereby increasing the militarization of US Foreign Policy.

However, the interesting line above is:

also include "a broader 'soft power' mandate aimed at preemptively reducing conflict and would incorporate a larger civilian component to address those challenges,"

How soft can power be? Nye's idea of soft power rests on getting people to want what you want so that one can achieve outcomes without having to resort to military or economic force. Unresolved in Nye's definition, I think, is the very question raised by AFRICOM--can the military employ 'soft power?' Is soft power defined by the tools used to realize it, making it a cultural/media/internet type phenomenon, or is soft power defined by the way one exercises power over another--in this case, allowing for the possibility that the military might be the organization that is best able to convey values and ideas to other actors.

The US Military has a very mixed record on this front. On the one hand, military engagement programs have been very very effective in helping to transform former communist countries into Western-European, NATO allied market democracies. These engagement programs have been all run out of EUCOM, so creating an AFRICOM might similarly duplicate this success in Africa. Moreover, the military may in fact be one of the most powerful social institutions (for good or ill) in many African countries, so using soft power to spread certain ideas through the military could be a good way to reach more (and more important) people than working through some other social network. On the other hand, the military does like to see and solve military problems, and its hard to see how a special forces A-team or IMET money will make serious progress in sustainable agriculture, clean water, or combating HIV-AIDS.

Second is the change in US bureaucratic politics:

A State Department civilian official is to be one of the two deputy commanders of AFRICOM, though that official would not be in the chain of command on military operations, according to the CRS report. In addition, more than one-third of AFRICOM headquarters personnel would be from outside the Pentagon. Defense officials told CRS that "the new command will seek greater interagency coordination with the State Department, USAID and other government agencies," according to the report.

Now this is very interesting. In my earlier piece on AFRICOM, I noted that having a high-profile, well funded bureaucratic organization within the government to generate knowledge, raise and define issues, advocate for positions, and implement programs would change the way the US government sees Africa. Now, there already is one person who ostensibly does this: Jendayi E. Frazer, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. I never heard of her either until I looked up that link. Compare her stature and resources to those of the eventual three or four star flag officer who will assume command of AFRICOM, and under Goldwater-Nichols report directly to the National Command Authority--The President and Secretary of Defense. Add, on top of that, the rise of the Unified Command Combatant Commanders in recent years and the rise of the Pentagon within the national security bureaucracy under the current administration, and you have a very strong new player on African Issues who will probably come to dominate the agenda (leading to the worries of militarization above).

But, notice how 'inter-agency' the new command is supposed to be. Having a State Department official as a Deputy Commander will create a new role in the diplomatic corps and give State and other civilian agencies a huge say in the Command's activities. Having one third of staff from non-military agencies, including USAID, suggests that AFRICOM may very well start to champion inter-agency cooperation on African issues and perhaps might even be able to raise the profile of key development issues on the continent. Of course, there is the price of securitizing development, AIDS, and the like, but the lesson in Washington is that this is how things get done these days. Perhaps the new, inter-agency make up of the Command will lead to a 'softer' military presence, and engagement in non-military or partially military development and capacity building activities.

Do you think it would make a difference if a 4-star general in full uniform heads up to the Hill to testify on behalf of an increase in the 150 account (the foreign aid budget) for development in Africa?

If this model works, it could very well serve as a model for future government reforms, where inter-agency cooperation and coordination is a key need. Look no farther than Iraq where DoD, State, and everyone else couldn't get along and it turned into a colossal disaster (as Dan just pointed out). Key agencies worked at cross-purposes to the detriment of the government's policy agenda. Worse, they failed to learn from each other, ignoring key bits of knowledge, expertise, and insight that could have prevented many of the worst elements of the post-invasion occupation from happening. Granted--the failings of the inter-agency process in Iraq were as much the result of fighting among principles, not line-workers, but having some more State Dept and AID folks on Frank's staff might have helped them just a bit when the "planned" the invasion.

So, I think the creation of this new Command and the way in which its being done will have far-reaching affects--on how the US sees the world, develops policy, and goes about its business as a national security state.

China's Bid

2007-05-24T11:41:00.003-04:00

China is in the Satellite business.

The NYT reports that China is launching a communications satellite for Nigeria (pictured right).

The lead says it all:

For years, China has chafed at efforts by the United States to exclude it from full membership in the world’s elite space club. So lately China seems to have hit on a solution: create a new club.

Beijing is trying to position itself as a space benefactor to the developing world — the same countries, in some cases, whose natural resources China covets here on earth. The latest and most prominent example came last week when China launched a communications satellite for Nigeria, a major oil producer, in a project that serves as a tidy case study of how space has become another arena where China is trying to exert its soft power.

This past semester, in my Hegemony and US Foreign Policy class, we talked about China often--usually in terms of a 'hegemonic challenger.' One of the point that we often noted, however, was that a hegemonic challenger must do two things: 1) overthrow the old hegemonic order, in this case, knock the US off its block as teh global #1, and 2) replace it with a new hegemonic order. In most of our discussions, we concluded China not really keen on either--instead treating the US as a rival (as opposed to an enemy) and looking to improve its own position within the system, as China now benefits tremendously from certain aspects of the current US order--especially in areas such as trade.

The key line in the lead is "form its own club." Space has long been seen as a global commons, one where the US can provide certain public goods (such as satellite communication and navigation) and exercise its Command of the Commons as a foundational aspect of US Hegemony. Here you have not just China challenging that US order, but starting its own club for other states with similar interests.

You also see the invocation of "Soft Power." I must admit, we read a lot of Nye in the class (probably second only to Ikenberry on the syllabus) and his work was popular with the students. The notion of Soft Power as a tool for hegemonic management is the heart of Nye's work--get them to like you and want what you want so you don't have to force them to do what you need them to do--and here you have the NYT reading China in that light.

The second interesting thing is the impetus toward the move into space. What I found notable was that the NYT managed, in the span of 3 brief paragraphs, provide ample evidence for Constructivist, Liberal, and Realist explanations of this launch:

For China, the strategy is a blend of self-interest, broader diplomacy and, from a business standpoint, an effective way to break into the satellite market. Satellites have become status symbols and technological necessities for many countries that want an ownership stake in the digital world dominated by the West, analysts say....

China’s more grandiose space goals, which include building a Mars probe and, eventually, putting an astronaut on the moon, are based on an American blueprint in which space exploration enhances national prestige and advances technological development. But Beijing also is focused on competing in the $100 billion commercial satellite industry....

Satellites also are becoming vital to Beijing’s domestic development plans. In the next several years, China could launch as many as 100 satellites to help deliver television to rural areas, create a digital navigational network, facilitate scientific research and improve mapping and weather monitoring. Research centers on microsatellites have opened in Beijing, Shanghai and Harbin, and a new launching center is under construction in Hainan Province....

But China’s focus on satellites has also brought suspicions, particularly from the United States, since most satellites are “dual use” technologies, capable of civilian and military applications. Currently, China is overhauling its military in a modernization drive focused, in part, on developing the capacity to fight a “high tech” war.

Constructivism: Prestige, status, and identity: having a Satellite shows you're one of the cool kids.
Liberalism: Maximize gains: satellites as income generating, development promoting devices with a key focus on domestic political factors.
Realism: Enhances military power relative to the USA.

All that from one fun picture.

Chavez's Challenge

2007-05-14T10:44:00.000-04:00

Hugo Chavez is talking a tough game, challenging the USA, and the Bush Administration in particular, all over the globe. He's rallying leaders in Latin America, meeting with 'rogues' world-wide, and even calling Bush the "devil" at the UN. He's become public Frenemy #1. A challenge to the USA, but (and you have to say it like Home Simpson longing after a donut) oooooooooh, Oil. That precious, thick heavy molasses-like Venezuelan Crude.

In a fascinating story, The Washington Post reported that:

[A] new study of trade and oil consumption data shows that Venezuela appears ever more dependent on selling its oil to the country Chávez calls "the cruelest, most terrible, most cynical, most murderous empire that has existed." And U.S. government energy trade data show the United States is slightly less dependent on Venezuela, which at one time challenged Canada, Mexico and Saudi Arabia as the No. 1 provider of foreign oil but now tussles with up-and-coming Nigeria for the fourth spot.

Chavez is able to run such a strong Anti-US campaign because he is flush with cash from the high price of Venezuela's exported Oil. But, more and more, the source of that cash is the very enemy he's railing against. Despite his anti-US policies, he's become more dependent on the voracious US appetite for Oil.

Yet the country's once-vaunted oil industry has seen its production and capacity to produce decline over the last decade, according to oil analysts and statistics from the U.S. Energy Department and the International Energy Agency in Paris.

The world's fourth-largest oil exporter a decade ago, Venezuela is now seventh, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. The 1.1 million barrels of crude that Venezuela exports to the United States every day amount to less than 11 percent of American imports, down from 17.3 percent in 1996. By contrast, the No. 1 supplier to the American market, Canada, is now sending more than 1.8 million barrels a day and topped 2 million barrels daily in November.

During most of Chávez's eight years in office, more than 60 percent of the country's total crude exports have gone to the United States, up from 50 percent throughout much of the 1990s, according to Ramón Espinasa, a former chief economist at PDVSA who is now a consultant in Washington. The trend is due to growing U.S. demand, Venezuela's rising consumption and what oil analysts say is the state's inability to diversify its base of clients to include big consumers.

As Chavez spends money helping his global political pals, he's investing less in his national Oil company. The nasty secret about Venezuela's Oil is that, though bountiful, is really thick, like sludge. Unlike Saudi light sweet crude which is easy to refine anywhere in the world, Venezuelan heavy crude is so heavy that only select refineries dedicated to processing such a heavy grade of Oil, can handle it.

So a country less capable of producing oil, analysts say, is more tied to the United States, where refineries wholly or partly owned by PDVSA refine Venezuela's molasses-like oil. The installations exist nowhere else, which makes some analysts skeptical that Venezuela is exporting as much to China as it claims.

"It's three months by tanker to China, five days to the East Coast of the United States, so the American client is too important for Venezuela."

So, at any point, the US could end Chavez's antics with a simple Oil embargo. He's got no where else to send his product. Would it hurt? Maybe a little (though with gas already over $3.00/gallon, I guess we can tolerate more than most people ever thought we could...), but it would hurt him a heck of a lot worse than it would hurt us.

The World Bank

2007-05-05T17:04:00.000-04:00

This is so brilliant, and I can't believe I hadn't seen it until Dan posted it.
But you absolutely must watch, especially if you've been with us talking about Bretton Woods all semester (or you've ever heard me talk about Bretton Woods).

Click here to see it.

A new challenge from China

2007-04-22T15:05:00.000-04:00

Since its China as Hegemonic Challenger week and Earth Day, I though that this report might be an interesting issue to discuss (hat tip to Dan Drezner):

China will overtake the United States as the world’s biggest emitter of heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) either this year or next, the International Energy Agency said on Wednesday.

The estimate is much firmer than the IEA’s previous forecast, last November, that on current trends China would overtake the United States before 2010.

”Either this year or next year,” IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol told Reuters, in answer to the question of when China would overtake the United States.

Talk about a challenge to a key US #1 ranking....

Of course, you have to consider that China is like 4 or 5 times the size of the USA population-wise. But, that's part of the allure of China as hegemonic challenger.

Chinese officials point to their country’s relatively low per capita emissions of greenhouse gases, saying historically the main culprits are developed nations, who have no right to deny economic growth to others.

U.N. data for 2003 put the United States top with 23 percent of world carbon dioxide emissions and China second on 16.5 percent. U.S. individuals were far bigger emitters, at 20 tonnes per capita against China’s 3.2 tonnes and a world average of 3.7.

But China is catching up quick and is having to try to balance 10 percent annual economic growth with environmental and energy supply issues.

Latest data shows China is building a coal-fired power plant every four days, British foreign ministry official John Ashton said on Monday.

Growth in the emerging Asian giant’s emissions puts in perspective Western efforts to fight climate change, Birol said.

”What we do in Europe may be with good intentions, may be very ethical... but if you put it in terms of numbers its meaning is very limited.”

A senior staff scientist at the U.S. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) last month estimated it was very likely that China would overtake the United States this year, estimating China’s CO2 emissions in 2005 at 5.3 billion tonnes versus the United States’ 5.9 billion, but with China growing much faster.

So what does this do to all the dire predictions of China overtaking the US at some point?

You'd Never Guess this from our campus...

2007-04-18T15:34:00.000-04:00

The conventional wisdom is that young people, as in 18-29 years old, are at the vanguard of opposition to the Iraq War and the Bush Administration. Well, perhaps the Conventional Wisdom is wrong. From the NYT.com:

The younger generation is opposed to the war in Iraq, right? Wrong. Actually, they're divided on the war, far more so than their grandparents, according to a New York Times/CBS News Poll in March. Seems younger people are more supportive of the war and the president than any other age group.

Forty-eight percent of Americans 18 to 29 years old said the United States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, while 45 percent said the United States should have stayed out. That is in sharp contrast to the opinions of those 65 and older, who have lived through many other wars. Twenty eight percent of that age group said the United States did the right thing, while 67 percent said the United States should have stayed out.

This is nothing new, said John Mueller, author of "War, Presidents and Public Opinion," and a professor of political science at Ohio State University. "This is a pattern that is identical to what we saw in Korea and Vietnam, younger people are more likely to support what the president is doing," he said.

A review of the March poll suggests Mr. Mueller has a point. Overall, 34 percent of Americans said they approved of the way the president was handling his job, and 58 percent disapproved. But younger Americans were more approving than older Americans. Forty percent of 18-29 year olds said Mr. Bush was doing a good job, while 56 percent said he was not. While 29 percent of people 65 and older said they approved of the way Mr. Bush was handling his job as president, 62 percent said they did not.

The nationwide telephone poll was conducted March 7-11 with 1,362 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

A look back at the Vietnam years showed a similar divide between young and old. Older Americans were defined as 50 and older, but the comparison is still apt. In October 1968, when Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon and George Wallace were running for president, a Gallup poll found that about half, 52 percent, of people under the age of 30 supported the war in Vietnam. But among those 50 and older, 26 percent supported the war.

Some of the respondents to the March poll were called back to talk about the differences between the young and the not so young. "Experience," "the draft," "other wars," were mentioned by respondents on both sides of the generational divide.

Mildred Jenkins, 68, a retired telephone operator from Somerville Tennessee, said: "We've experienced more than the younger people. Older people are wiser. We've seen war and we know." Ms. Jenkins said she usually votes Republican but "may go Democratic this time."

More than one person who lived through the Vietnam war mentioned the draft and the absence of one for this war. "It's because of life experience," said Jimmie Powell, 73, a bartender and factory worker from El Reno, Oklahoma. "I don't think younger people really know a whole lot about anything. They don't care because there is no draft. If there were a draft, we'd finally have the revolution we need."

Mr. Powell describes himself as a political independent.

Some of the younger respondents said they were more aggressive than their elders by virtue of age.

"I think old people tend to want to solve things more diplomatically than younger, more gung ho types," said Mary Jackson, 28 a homemaker from Brewton, Alabama. "Younger people are more combative."

Younger people are also more optimistic. Forty-nine percent of them said the United States was either very likely or somewhat likely to succeed in Iraq, while only 34 percent of older people said the same thing.

Since many of the readers of this blog fall into the target demographic (young voters), why do you think this is so? Does this poll reflect what you see among your peers?

Signs of Trouble on Iraq

2007-04-11T23:10:00.001-04:00

Two lead articles in today's news reveal severe trouble for the Administration with respect to Iraq policy. Both are "inside-baseball" type of articles, but they are indicative of real problems with the overall direction of the course of the war.

The first was the Washington Post's front page story:

The White House wants to appoint a high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies, but it has had trouble finding anyone able and willing to take the job, according to people close to the situation. At least three retired four-star generals approached by the White House in recent weeks have declined to be considered for the position...

One of the former Generals who turned down the position hit the nail on the head:

"The very fundamental issue is, they don't know where the hell they're going," said retired Marine Gen. John J. "Jack" Sheehan, a former top NATO commander who was among those rejecting the job. Sheehan said he believes that Vice President Cheney and his hawkish allies remain more powerful within the administration than pragmatists looking for a way out of Iraq. "So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, 'No, thanks,' " he said.

To summarize the fundamental problem, the top NSC official now in charge of this is Meghan O'Sullivan, a young, fast-rising national security policy star. Her fundamental problem, though, is twofold. First, she can't "task" agencies, which is to say, she can't direct State or DoD to do X or Y. Second, she's still relatively junior and in no position to win bureaucratic battles with Gates and Rice. The Administration recognizes (about 4 years too late) that interagency cooperation is needed to run an overall war effort by the US Government, where the talents, resources, and capabilities of each agency work together rather than at cross-purposes, and they need someone in place to make sure that happens (though as Crooks and Liars asks, isn't that Bush's job?). But, as Sheehan points out, you can only direct a war when there's somewhere to go, and to repeat his line, "The very fundamental issue is, they don't know where the hell they're going."

Then the report (I first saw it on the NYT) that the Pentagon is extending combat tours for the Army in Iraq to 15 months, up from the 12 months they now (used to) serve. The given rationale is that

Mr. Gates said the change would enable the Central Command, which runs American military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East, to maintain an increased number of American troops in Iraq to stabilize Baghdad for another year if necessary....

Mr. Gates said the impetus for the increase in Army combat tours had come from the service’s leaders, who saw a demand for “more clarity and fairness.”

As strains on the military have increased, some soldiers home from Iraq and Afghanistan have had to go back before a year’s rest. At least now, General Pace said, soldiers will know when they are coming and going. He said they would be able to “sit around a dinner table and know on such-and-such a date,” and plan their lives accordingly.

The new policy will ensure a year at home and that “all share the burden equally,” Mr. Gates said.

The WaPost points out what this 3-month extension says about the overall approach to Iraq:

The announcement makes official what had been an ongoing military strategy of keeping force levels up in Iraq, as commanders had sought extensions for several brigades over the past year to maintain pressure on enemy forces, especially in Baghdad. Gates and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news conference today that the broad-based extensions will provide a predictable and dependable deployment schedule for troops and their families.

The extended tours are also an indication of how much strain has been placed on the Army as a result of repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan for wars that have lasted far longer than expected.

In essence, the long-time criticism that there just aren't enough troops in Iraq to secure the country was spot-on, and the difficulty that the Military, the Army in particular, has in meeting those increased troop requirements is now starkly revealed. In the short run, this should help the regional commanders because they have some more troops for a sustained time. Officially, the Army can do this (and any soldier worth his salt will always say, sure we can do it-- that can-do attitude lies at the heart of the US military), but these demands are severely straining the military, and will have a profound effect for years to come, as experienced, veteran NCO's and Officers don't re-enlist, and instead abandon military service, taking hard-learned lessons and institutional knowledge with them.

Taken together, these two stories reveal the serious, profound, fundamental difficulty and disconnect at the heart of the Administration's Iraq policy. It can't find anyone willing to take charge of the situation (begging the question, who's in charge now), and it can barely sustain enough troops in theater, and does so by running the Army into the ground.

Choose one: Counter-proliferation or Counter-terrorism?

2007-04-07T17:28:00.000-04:00

National Security is all about prioritizing tough decisions. Often, an administration can get away with avoiding the really tough calls, but from time to time, issues arise that force policy makers into pragmatic trade-offs between vital values and interests. Those choices are very instructive and insightful as to how a President sees the world. The NY Times reports that the Bush Administration faced just such a choice between its key goals of counter-terrorism and counter-proliferation:

Three months after the United States successfully pressed the United Nations to impose strict sanctions on North Korea because of the country’s nuclear test, Bush administration officials allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from the North, in what appears to be a violation of the restrictions, according to senior American officials.

The United States allowed the arms delivery to go through in January in part because Ethiopia was in the midst of a military offensive against Islamic militias inside Somalia, a campaign that aided the American policy of combating religious extremists in the Horn of Africa.

The NYT story is quite clear about the central issue:

But the arms deal is an example of the compromises that result from the clash of two foreign policy absolutes: the Bush administration’s commitment to fighting Islamic radicalism and its effort to starve the North Korean government of money it could use to build up its nuclear weapons program.

The Administration has identified both counter-terrorism and counter-proliferation as vital national security interests. But when they happen to conflict, as in when fighting terrorists requires looking the other way on a major North Korean arms deal, we see where the Administration's priorities lie. They would rather allow Ethiopia to purchase tens of millions of dollars worth of weapons from North Korea, providing North Korea with vital cash and circumventing UNSC sanctions limiting arms transfers out of North Korea in punishment for its nuclear test than not, so long as those weapons go to fight terrorists, and by terrorists we mean the Islamic militias in Somalia.

They had a clear choice--cut off one of North Korea's few sources of cash on the international market or equip an allied government with weapons necessary to launch an attack on Islamist militias.

Its one of those tough choices that National Security policy-makers make that reveals their priorities and values. It is also one of those choices with real repercussions long into the future, many of which have real consequences for vital US national security interests.

Been a while...

2007-03-31T00:58:00.000-04:00

Yes, its been a while since I've updated the blog. But, I've been busy.
I'm now a dad.
We had our first child, a boy, on March 12. He's very cute. He's still learning the difference between night and day, so we're up all night with him, feeding him, holding him, trying to convince him to go back to sleep-- which he'll do, just not until like 9am. It all seems so obvious, the difference between night and day, but you forget, its a lesson that you need to learn very early on. A necessary lesson so your parents can get some sleep.
I could use some sleep.

The interesting development of the week is the Iran / UK standoff / hostage situation. A few UK naval folks try to inspect a ship, Iran takes them into custody. Iran says they were spying, violating Iranian waters. The UK releases top-secret GPS positions to say they were in international / Iraqi waters and within their rights under applicable international law.

Its interesting how the one female hostage is being treated--certainly a site for the exploration of the role of gender in IR there. Very fascinating.

The latest from the BBC is here.

I'd love to say more about this, but the kid needs to be fed. Time for the 1am feeding!

China starts investing

2007-03-09T13:55:00.000-05:00

China has over $1 trillion of US treasury bills. Its a well described cycle--China produces massive amounts of consumer goods, the US buys those goods, the trade is imbalanced, so China ends up with a lot of dollars, and they invest them in T-bills, essentially loaning them back to the US government to finance the US federal budget deficit.

So far, China has been sitting on this mound of cash, content to save. That seems to be changing, reports the NY Times today:

China will create a new agency to invest the country’s immense reserves of foreign currency, now totaling more than $1 trillion, the country’s finance minister announced today.

The minister, Jin Renqing, offered no specifics about how much of China’s currency reserves would be under the new agency’s control. But whatever the precise figure, analysts say that the agency is certain to begin life as one of the world’s biggest investment funds.

China’s currency holdings are already the world’s largest, and they are growing rapidly because of China’s huge trade surpluses. Most of the reserves are now invested very conservatively, in United States Treasury bonds and other government securities, a strategy that helps to keep interest rates low in the United States and other developed countries but earns little profit for China.

A trillion dollar investment fund controlled by the Chinese government!

Now, A) that's a lot of money and B)strategically invested, it could do some interesting stuff for China and reshape some significant relationships in world politics.

The new agency will be able to invest some of the money more diversely and aggressively, analysts said, with the possibility of hundreds of billions of dollars put into acquiring “strategic assets” — mines, oil fields, whole companies — around world, especially in developing countries in Africa and Latin America.

“They’re not going to be looking for financial assets, but energy assets and natural resources, minerals, things China desperately needs,” said Jing Ulrich, an analyst at J.P. Morgan.

For those who see the specter of a rising China behind every corner, this is surely a sign of an assertive China challenging US hegemony by buying up all that the US can no longer afford to protect.

But, really, how significant is such a fund? Well, in the first place,

The government said that the new agency would be modeled in part on Temasek Holdings, the Singapore government’s hugely successful investment agency, which manages an $84 billion global portfolio of investments....

Andy Rothman, a strategist at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, said the government was likely to proceed cautiously and give the agency only a relatively small part of the reserves to work with at first, perhaps $20 billion. “It’s not going all of a sudden going to change the world,” Mr. Rothman said. “I think they are going to move very, very slowly in diversify what they are doing. Nobody should expect that suddenly they are going to invest $1 trillion.”

A quick comparison:

The Endowment of Harvard University is around $25 billion.
CalPers, the retirement fund of California teachers, is one of the largest investment funds in the US and worth about $230 billion.
The largest Hedge Fund is worth about $21 billion, and the entire hedge fund industry has about $1.1 trillion in assets (pdf).
The largest Asset Management firms in the world (all US or Western Europe) manage about $1 trillion each.

So, China would start out as powerful as the Harvard Endowment in the global economy, but rapidly approach the power of Fidelity or Barclays.

That's still some serious investing power, but not take over the world type power. It would put China Fund in the top 10 of global asset managers, but only the top 10. The rest would still be US based / backed capital, and China's primary investment remains US Dollars.

Now, if China Inc. focuses its investments on maximizing return--which many think it will do out of necessity--

And with that growth have come rising costs at home for education, health care and pensions. Earning more on government holdings, analysts say, will allow the government to better cope with some of these problems.

--then this new entrant creates inflationary pressure in the investment markets (more cash chasing a shrinking number of performing investments) but doesn't fundamentally alter the system.

The more interesting element comes if and when the government dictates the fund to invest in politically / strategically important asset (like an oil field or bauxite mine or something) that performs poorly or even loses money. Will the government A) sacrifice its own financial well-being for national political / strategic gain or B) be disciplined and socialized by the market and get out of the poor investment. Now that's a long way off, but could certainly accelerate key debates about China's future as hegemonic challenger or member of the existing system.

Oscar Blogging and Hegemony

2007-02-25T22:31:00.000-05:00

I'm watching the Oscars-- I don't really know why, I don't really like the show, its far too much Hollywood self congratulations (you're great, no, you're great, heck, we're all great!) and yet I'm watching when I should be reviewing Ikenberry and Ruggie for tomorrow's class. (I'll get to that at some point, probably between Best song and best director in a supporting role).

What really made me think, though, was when they did best Foreign Language film (won by some German film I'd never heard of. The one I did see, Volver, didn't win). The Academy gives out Best Picture, for The Best Movie of The Year. A few foreign films have been nominated but never won. This year could be interesting, as Letters from Iwo Jima could win best picture and is a foreign language, though American produced film.

Yet what other country's national film awards offer an award for Best American film?

--Ooooh, lets take a brief break to see if Al Gore wins an Oscar!!!
And yes, he did. How about that. George Bush may have won the election but I doubt he'll ever get an Oscar. Gore's a bona fide celebrity now.

Anyway, as I was saying / typing...

What other country would even bother to have a Best American Film? Could you see the French Film Awards giving an award to the Best American film?

But The Academy can certainly judge the best picture of the year, not just here, but from around the world. And the world's celebrities all come to Hollywood for the Oscars. These are the awards to get. This is the Academy to please.

If you want to think about American Hegemony and its influence in shaping the current world in which we live, and if you want to understand how much bigger American Hegemony is than the mere US Government, perhaps The Academy might be an interesting place to start.

They're doing a tribute to an Italian movie score guy. He did the music for The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. I love that. And he's accepting the award in Italian, with Eastwood semi-translating. Fantastic.

Frenemies

2007-02-14T09:35:00.000-05:00

Colbert has caught on to the power of the Frenemy!

Who says Colbert isn't relevant for US Foreign Policy?

(for further discussion of this key issue, watch this!)

Something fun to watch in the snow.

Dictators on Parade

2007-02-11T09:07:00.000-05:00

Parade Magazine--that little thing in your Sunday paper with all the advertisements from Best Buy and office Depot--has one article each year that I think is completely brilliant: Who is the World's Worst Dictator?

Its such a simple thing, yet such a powerful statement, I'm surprised more people don't do it. Yet I love that its in Parade magazine--something with such mass circulation in the Sunday paper that people normally look to for celebrity interviews and such. One week a year, they lay out the "bad people" in the world and call American's attention to the other 'evil-doers' in the world outside of the war on terrorism.

This year's list:

1) for the third year in a row topping the list, its Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, in power since 1989. Bashir earned and keeps his ranking because of Darfur.

This is why I love this article-- it reminds a large number of people that there are international issues and leaders worthy of US attention and action. Darfur lingers on the edge of the current USFP agenda, crowded out by items such as Iraq and terrorism. I'm not saying that these things aren't important, but rather, the point is, the worst person in the world (as Olberman might say) is not associated with either issue. There are other things out there that demand attention.

2) Kim Jong Il, everyone's favorite lonely dictator, trying hard to recapture his number 1 ranking he last held in 2004.

3) Sayyid Ali KhamEnei of Iran. Key educational point here-- its not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president, but the Supreme Leader, the head of the religious clerics who control Iran who really calls the shots.

4) Hu Jintao, China

5) King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia

Ahhh, now it gets complicated. Key American Frenemies. We need them, we're good friends with them, but Parade reminds us that we're not always friends with the world's best people. Was the source of a fantastic assignment on "Frenemies" in my National Security class last semester-- if anyone from that class is out there reading this, here's a shout-out to you.

6) Than Shwe of Burma (Myanmar). When I posted this over at the Duck, I only gave the top 5, but this one's a shout-out to regular reader MK who wrote all of her papers about Burma.

Check out the rest of the top 20.

Football: the sport of hegemony

2007-02-06T17:04:00.000-05:00

As its ideational hegemony this week, and as I spent a good 3+ minutes in class Monday talking about the Superbowl, I though that this might be appropriate, at least to start.

Gregg Easterbrook, Brookings Institute scholar and author of one of my favorite columns (where else can you get a discussion of football with asides in public policy, international politics, and science fiction?), Tuesday Morning Quarterback, writes today:

The popularity of American-style football is likely to grow internationally – gridiron is taking off in Mexico at the moment, for instance. Not only is football fun to watch and to play, most of the world continues to admire the United States and look up to us – it's our foreign policy the world disdains; the American dream remains beloved almost everywhere. As democracy expands and more nations liberalize, more nations will long to become like the United States. And since football resides near the core of American culture, more people internationally will want the sport. They will reason, "America is strong and free and prosperous, America loves football, maybe football somehow helps you become strong and free and prosperous." There's a case to be made that football actually does help society – I'll suggest why in a moment. Anyway, this awareness, spreading globally, will increase the impact of the sport.

Rather nicely dovetails with Joe Nye's soft power arguments.
Easterbrook continues, however:

Now we get to the major ways in which football will become more important – ways that concern the evolution of culture and economics. As Michael Mandelbaum wrote in his wonderful 2004 book "The Meaning of Sports," football in the past century has leapfrogged other team games in importance because its structure reflects the modern industrial era. Like big corporations and complex organizations, football requires large numbers of people cooperating. As recently as the stillness before World War II, most Americans made their livings working alone or in small groups in agriculture, craftsmanship, merchandising or owner-operated industry. For the past 60 years, large organizations have dominated the social structure of the West. Large organizations ask large numbers of people of diverse backgrounds to work together cooperatively. Football asks large numbers of people of diverse backgrounds to work together cooperatively. And it's not just the guys on the field who must cooperate. TMQ's Law of the Hidden Moms holds that for every boy who steps onto the high school football field, two people worked behind the scenes to make it possible. In big-college and the pros, it's more like five or six behind the scenes for every one on the field. Other team sports require much less in terms of group commitment. For football to happen, large numbers of people who otherwise would have nothing to do with each other must make a commitment to get along. And that describes a modern economy, doesn't it?

Now consider the direction in which the global economy is headed. In a global world, communication and interpersonal skills grow ever-more important. The explosion in communication, especially, means the successful person of coming decades must be able to cooperate with not just those in his or her immediate field of vision, but people all around the country and all around the world. Daily contact with people all around the country, if not all around the world, is the likely state of affairs for coming generations. Because sports are part of education, there will be rising emphasis on sports that teach interpersonal skills. And that points to more importance for football.

Learn to love football, and learn to organize your society and economy in a way that serves the "modern industrial era." Learn to want what we want to uphold a particular economic and cultural order. Almost Gramscian (via Cox in IR), one could say.

Football as the new tool of hegemony?

Speaking of a lot of money...

2007-02-02T18:55:00.000-05:00

Bush Administration Seeks $245B for Wars

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration will ask for another $100 billion for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year and seek $145 billion for 2008, a senior administration official said Friday.

Now that's some serious cash.

Bowing to pressure from Congress, the administration will also break down the $145 billion request for next year into detailed form.

For 2009, the White House assumes spending will be down to $50 billion, with no funding planned beyond then in hopes the war in Iraq will have wound down.

Lesson #1 in Washington: Budget is policy. There are no better clues as to how the Bush Administration plans to fight the war over the next two years than the budget requests.

The spiraling war spending _ up from $120 billion approved by Congress for 2006 _ is largely to replace equipment destroyed in combat or worn out in harsh conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lesson #2-- War's expensive. Very expensive.

$245 Billion. Wow, that's some serious cash....

A trillion here, a trillion there--its some real money

2007-01-31T10:27:00.000-05:00

1.2 Trillion dollars is a lot of money. A whole lot of money.
As David Leonhardt pointed out in the NYT last week(subscription required, full column is below), it can buy you a lot of things--health care for everyone, curing all kinds of disease, rebuilding New Orleans, school all around. Not just one or two of these things, but all of them, and for quite a long time.

Or, you could have the war in Iraq. 1.2 Trillion dollars.

There have been many studies of how much the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq cost the US (like this, this, this or this). While they each vary in particulars of method and final estimate, they seem to all agree that the cost is in the trillion dollar range.

What really strikes me is the fact that a) what other country on earth has 1.2 trillion dollars to spend on anything and b) how, over the past 4-5 years, the US could have spent 1.2 trillion dollars on a war with so little perceived damage to the US economy and economic standing in the world. Now, part of the answer to this second question is that a significant part of the US economy is based on Government, specifically DoD, contracting, meaning much of that money is plowed right back into US companies like Haliburton or Blackwater or SAIC or Lockheed-Martin.

Its the first issue that I find more interesting--who in the world could even muster that kind of investment for what is a regional war? Moreover, who could afford to pay for such a large investment without planning ahead (remember, the original public Bush estimates were that the war would cost less than a hundred billion, and when a White House economic adviser ventured a figure north of $200 billion he was fired) and yet still show few ill effects of it within the global economy?

After all, 1.2 trillion starts to become some serious money.

(oh, and there is absolutely no coincidence that Leonhardt was on Colbert last night and I'm writing this post today.... none, not one.)

Since the entire column rests behind the subscription wall, I've cut and pasted it here for your reading pleasure.

ECONOMIX; What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy

By DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: January 17, 2007

The human mind isn't very well equipped to make sense of a figure like $1.2 trillion. We don't deal with a trillion of anything in our daily lives, and so when we come across such a big number, it is hard to distinguish it from any other big number. Millions, billions, a trillion -- they all start to sound the same.

The way to come to grips with $1.2 trillion is to forget about the number itself and think instead about what you could buy with the money. When you do that, a trillion stops sounding anything like millions or billions.

For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign -- a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children's lives.

Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn't use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.

The final big chunk of the money could go to national security. The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that have not been put in place -- better baggage and cargo screening, stronger measures against nuclear proliferation -- could be enacted. Financing for the war in Afghanistan could be increased to beat back the Taliban's recent gains, and a peacekeeping force could put a stop to the genocide in Darfur.

All that would be one way to spend $1.2 trillion. Here would be another:

The war in Iraq.

In the days before the war almost five years ago, the Pentagon estimated that it would cost about $50 billion. Democratic staff members in Congress largely agreed.

Lawrence Lindsey, a White House economic adviser, was a bit more realistic, predicting that the cost could go as high as $200 billion, but President Bush fired him in part for saying so.

These estimates probably would have turned out to be too optimistic even if the war had gone well. Throughout history, people have typically underestimated the cost of war, as William Nordhaus, a Yale economist, has pointed out.

But the deteriorating situation in Iraq has caused the initial predictions to be off the mark by a scale that is difficult to fathom. The operation itself -- the helicopters, the tanks, the fuel needed to run them, the combat pay for enlisted troops, the salaries of reservists and contractors, the rebuilding of Iraq -- is costing more than $300 million a day, estimates Scott Wallsten, an economist in Washington.

That translates into a couple of billion dollars a week and, over the full course of the war, an eventual total of $700 billion in direct spending.

The two best-known analyses of the war's costs agree on this figure, but they diverge from there. Linda Bilmes, at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate and former Clinton administration adviser, put a total price tag of more than $2 trillion on the war. They include a number of indirect costs, like the economic stimulus that the war funds would have provided if they had been spent in this country.

Mr. Wallsten, who worked with Katrina Kosec, another economist, argues for a figure closer to $1 trillion in today's dollars. My own estimate falls on the conservative side, largely because it focuses on the actual money that Americans would have been able to spend in the absence of a war. I didn't even attempt to put a monetary value on the more than 3,000 American deaths in the war.

Besides the direct military spending, I'm including the gas tax that the war has effectively imposed on American families (to the benefit of oil-producing countries like Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia). At the start of 2003, a barrel of oil was selling for $30. Since then, the average price has been about $50. Attributing even $5 of this difference to the conflict adds another $150 billion to the war's price tag, Ms. Bilmes and Mr. Stiglitz say.

The war has also guaranteed some big future expenses. Replacing the hardware used in Iraq and otherwise getting the United States military back into its prewar fighting shape could cost $100 billion. And if this war's veterans receive disability payments and medical care at the same rate as veterans of the first gulf war, their health costs will add up to $250 billion. If the disability rate matches Vietnam's, the number climbs higher. Either way, Ms. Bilmes says, ''It's like a miniature Medicare.''

In economic terms, you can think of these medical costs as the difference between how productive the soldiers would have been as, say, computer programmers or firefighters and how productive they will be as wounded veterans. In human terms, you can think of soldiers like Jason Poole, a young corporal profiled in The New York Times last year. Before the war, he had planned to be a teacher. After being hit by a roadside bomb in 2004, he spent hundreds of hours learning to walk and talk again, and he now splits his time between a community college and a hospital in Northern California.

Whatever number you use for the war's total cost, it will tower over costs that normally seem prohibitive. Right now, including everything, the war is costing about $200 billion a year.

Treating heart disease and diabetes, by contrast, would probably cost about $50 billion a year. The remaining 9/11 Commission recommendations -- held up in Congress partly because of their cost -- might cost somewhat less. Universal preschool would be $35 billion. In Afghanistan, $10 billion could make a real difference. At the National Cancer Institute, annual budget is about $6 billion.

''This war has skewed our thinking about resources,'' said Mr. Wallsten, a senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a conservative-leaning research group. ''In the context of the war, $20 billion is nothing.''

As it happens, $20 billion is not a bad ballpark estimate for the added cost of Mr. Bush's planned surge in troops. By itself, of course, that price tag doesn't mean the surge is a bad idea. If it offers the best chance to stabilize Iraq, then it may well be the right option.

But the standard shouldn't simply be whether a surge is better than the most popular alternative -- a far-less-expensive political strategy that includes getting tough with the Iraqi government. The standard should be whether the surge would be better than the political strategy plus whatever else might be accomplished with the $20 billion.

This time, it would be nice to have that discussion before the troops reach Iraq.

No Longer the Final Frontier

2007-01-18T19:20:00.000-05:00

There's nothing like the start of the semester, always a fun time on campus. A very exciting week indeed.

This semester, I'm rolling out a new course, Hegemony and US Foreign Policy, so over the next 15 weeks or so, you'll probably see my posting reflect that. As I read things, I'm looking at them from this perspective.

Case in point-- the NYT just reported that China tested an Anti-Satellite Weapon. This is a big deal in its own right, demonstrating the rapidly advancing capability of the Chinese military. From a US perspective, though, its a very direct signal directed from China to the USA.

Bary Posen has argued that the US hegemony is currently based on a military that allows it "Command of the Commons" (click for link to the full article). The core of his argument is that the US derives much of its hegemonic strength from its ability to exert military use and control over global commons--namely the high seas and outer space. While many nations have some space capability, the US and US military dominate space, and the Bush Administration's recent Space Strategy (to read click here) eschewed international governance of space to preserve US freedom of action in space. The military relies heavily on space-based assets to keep its dominant position: GPS, communications, intelligence, imaging, and more.

To give one example, the most popular bomb in both the Air Force and Navy arsenal is the JDAM, a kit that is added to a conventional "dumb" bomb and uses GPS information to guide it to the target. This allows the Air Force to use B-52's for close air support, as they did (and still do) in Afghanistan. Take out GPS with anti-sat weapons, and they are reduced to dropping dumb bombs, losing a key battlefield advantage.
(not to mention that no one in the military would know where on earth they were...)

So, how to read the anti-satellite weapon test? On one level, you can see it as a new weapon in the Chinese arsenal, allowing them greater capability. On a deeper level, its clearly a signal directed at the US--the current hegemon relying on military assets in space for terrestrial military dominance.

Jack is Back!

2007-01-14T22:27:00.000-05:00

Previously on 24....

Yes, everyone's favorite special counter-terrorism agent is back for another season of 24. As many of you know, I am a big fan. Watched both of tonight's season premier episodes, and already we see that Jack Bauer is one bad-ass dude.

A few facts about Jack Bauer that you might not have known:

When bad things happen to good people, its probably fate. When bad things happen to bad people, it’s probably Jack Bauer.

There have been no terrorist attacks in United States since Jack Bauer has appeared on television.

Lets get one thing straight, the only reason you are conscious right now is because Jack Bauer does not feel like carrying you.

On a high school math test, Jack Bauer put down "Violence" as every one of the answers. He got an A+ on the test because Jack Bauer solves all his problems with Violence.

So, I'm very excited for another season of 24. It promises 22 more hours of terrorism, torture, action, civil liberty debates, and a new President Palmer (because the old one has a new Unit and sells insurance). Plenty to discuss.

That, and hegemony. Maybe, if we're lucky, we'll even figure out how to combine the two.

Who's on First?

2007-01-05T10:39:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I wondered what was going on with the reports that Negroponte was leaving the DNI post to take over as Deputy SecState. Well, I awoke to NPR reporting that this is part of a much larger reshuffling of Bush's Iraq team--and yes, you really do need a program to keep up with who is going where.

Negroponte out at DNI, in as Deputy SecState, to handle Iraq issues
Mike McConnell to be nominated to be DNI
Khalilzad out as Ambassador to Iraq, in as UN Ambassador
Ryan Crocker to be nominated as new Ambassador to Iraq
Gen. Casey out as commander of troops in Iraq
Gen. David Petraeus in as commander of us troops in Iraq
Gen. Abizaid out as CENTCOM, Adm. William Fallon (from PACOM) in as CENTCOM
Harriet Miers out as White House counsel
And, lets not forget Rumsfeld out and Gates in as SecDef.

With the President set to announce a new Iraq policy this week, the Post reports that:

President Bush is overhauling his top diplomatic and military team in Iraq, as the White House scrambles to complete its new war policy package in time for the president to unveil it in a speech to the nation next week, officials said....

The White House declined to comment yesterday on its personnel moves, but a senior administration official said the changes are a precursor to revamping policy. "It is appropriate to have the people in place as soon as possible to implement the new policy," said the official, who declined to be identified because the president has not made his announcement.

Or, as the NYT reported it:

“The idea is to put the whole new team in at roughly the same time, and send some clear messages that we are trying a new approach,” a senior administration official said Thursday.

Beyond a "fresh start," the Administration also seems to be gearing up for a more substantial fight with the new Democratic Congress on issues across the board. The WP quotes:

Republican advisers have been telling the White House to be ready for war, and many cited Miers as the wrong general. "The White House knew they needed to get a tough street fighter -- that's what this is about," said one such adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve access to the White House.

As in the Congress will be issuing a lot of subpoenas and the Administration will need a better staff to deal with them.

Already, we're hearing a much tougher Congressional response to the personnel changes:

Top Congressional officials responded angrily to the news of Mr. Negroponte’s departure.

“I think he walked off the job, and I don’t like it,” said Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the new chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Now, I don't see Senate Democrats blocking any of these moves (and all need confirmation, with the exception of the new WH Counsel), but I do see them asking a lot harder, deeper, more difficult questions and extracting a few promises in return for votes.

I also think that these moves signal the last act of the Bush Administration. Its rare, very rare, for senior officials to stay in any one job for a full 8 years. Usually the turn-over comes at the mid-point (and we saw it here, ie Powell out and Rice in), and in the final years, as the President becomes more of a lame-duck policy wise, turning to administrators and career folks to run things instead of the political policy drivers of the first years of the Administration.

When its all said and done, Bush will be remembered for two things-- Sept 11, 2001 and the war in Iraq. This is his last chance to have any impact on how those two policies / narratives / events play out, and we're seeing his big push to get both turned in a more positive direction with new people and maybe a slightly new policy direction.

Filed as: Bush

AU Style

2007-01-04T10:49:00.000-05:00

Flipping around the channels on my Dish last night-- after a fascinating Military Channel program on the strategic bomber race-- I came across a fascinating little program on the Style Channel.

My Celebrity Home
Episode 203: Dolce

Several students over in Anderson contacted the show to come and remake their dorm lounge so that faculty resident and my current office neighbor, Prof. John Richardson (aka Dorm Grandpop), would have a top-quality space to cook his regular dinners for students.

The AU magazine has the full write up.

Quite honestly, the only reason I watched was because I had seen the article on-line and as I was flipping through the channels, I saw the episode and figured, hey, its AU, so lets check it out.

Gerald Ford, 1913 - 2006

2006-12-27T09:58:00.000-05:00

Former President Gerald Ford died yesterday.

I'm sure that there will be much discussion of Ford's legacy as the only non-elected President in US history, following the resignation of Nixon, and the implications of his pardon of Nixon, perhaps the defining moment of his presidency. As he was only in office briefly, serving out the remainder of Nixon's second term, Ford is not generally credited with many major foreign policy initiatives or successes. He inherited Nixon's agenda, team, and issues, but spent much of his presidency focused on domestic and economic issues. Nevertheless, Ford did leave at least three important though probably under-appreciated legacies in the realm of US Foreign Policy.

First, many of the familiar senior figures of today's foreign policy debate got their start in the Ford administration. It was under Ford that a young Dick Cheney became the President's Chief of Staff and Don Rumsfeld became the youngest Secretary of Defense. Brent Scowcroft was National Security adviser and George Bush was director of the CIA. The experience of these men, and many others from that time, continues to have a profound impact in shaping US Foreign Policy. One need look no farther than the strong alliance between Rumsfeld's Pentagon and Cheney's office of the Vice President in shaping Iraq policy, an alliance forged in the Ford Administration.

Second, Ford really began the era of intelligence oversight by issuing Executive Order 11905. The order is perhaps most famous for its ban on assassination by US government agencies. Since their founding in the early years of the Cold War, the US intelligence agencies, notably the CIA and NSA, gave themselves a wide mandated to fight the Cold War. Some of this activity became rather questionable, and included spying on US citizens in violation of US law. However, until the mid-70's, there was no Congressional oversight of the Intelligence Community. Following high-profile investigations by Congress, several laws were passed establishing the legal framework for Intelligence oversight that we have today. Ford's executive order was the first in a series of steps to regulate what sort of spying the US can and cannot do. The order banning assassination remains in effect to this day, having stood the test of time across administrations of varied political leanings. The Global War on Terror has renewed the debate over this ban, yet it remains in force. Now, the US government still targets individuals, such as Saddam Hussein on the first day of the 2003 Iraq war, or various Al Queda terrorists. But, because of Ford's order, these efforts must pass through a complicated legal framework and justification as legitimate military targets, not assassinations. One can debate the point of this, but the fact that that debate is there at all is part of Ford's legacy.

Finally, Ford signed the Helsinki Final Acts in 1975. The Helsinki accord was formally about the end of World War II in Europe, recognizing and fixing the borders of European states, in particular the changes made by the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe. However, one "basket" of the accords contained key provisions about the importance of Human Rights, and when the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites signed the accords, they committed themselves, formally, for the first time, to upholding basic human rights. At the time, this was not seen as a major issue, but it would perhaps be the longest lasting legacy of the Accords. This moment marked a the entry point of Human Rights as a key issue in US foreign policy and helped end the Cold War. While subsequent Presidents, notably Carter and Reagan, would put Human Rights at the forefront of US foreign policy, Ford's signing and ratification of the Helsinki Accords made it possible for them to do so in a meaningful way. Having the USSR as a signatory to the document gave them a touchstone against which to measure Soviet treatment of their own people. Even more importantly, the Accords led to the foundation of many NGO's dedicated to monitor their implementation. In the West, the best known is Human Rights Watch (originally founded as Helsinki Watch, to "watch" the signatories adherence to the accords). In the Soviet Bloc, groups such as Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia were formed, inspired by the Helsinki Accords. These groups ability to hold their governments accountable for human rights abuses by highlighting the standards to which the governments had agreed in Helsinki was one of the key beginnings of the end of the Cold War. The modern discourse of Human Rights, government policies to uphold human rights, and international network of NGO's who monitor human rights issues owes much of its existence to the Helsinki process, a process that Gerald Ford was willing to stand up for, sign, and incorporate into US foreign policy.

Its certainly not a Truman or Reagan, Kennedy or even Eisenhower-esque legancy, to be sure, but as much of the discussion of Ford's life and Presidency will most certainly focus on Nixon, its important to remember a few of the important things he did accomplish in his brief time as President.

2006-12-23T18:05:00.000-05:00

The Iraq Legacy

Where to start? About 2 years ago, Prof. Patrick Jackson and I did an event with the campus Debate Club, where he and I each teamed up with a student and debated "US Foreign Policy: Going to Hell in a Hand Basket." It was great fun. I was on the side of hell in a hand basket (and won), though it helped to have reality on my side. Reality is back in force, and its not good for the Bush Administration and its not is it good for US foreign policy.

The Washington Post has a solid overview in today's paper.

On three key flash points -- North Korea, Iran and Sudan -- the Bush administration confronts the possibility that its current diplomatic approaches have reached the end of their effectiveness, forcing it to consider potentially riskier "Plan B" alternatives, administration officials and outside experts said.

Six-nation talks on ending North Korea's nuclear programs ended in failure yesterday, suggesting the format could be scrapped after more than three years of inconclusive results. Today, after months of negotiations, the U.N. Security Council may finally approve a relatively weak resolution sanctioning Iran for its pursuit of nuclear power, freeing the administration to try a more unilateral approach to punishing Tehran.

And Sudan faces a U.S.-imposed deadline of Dec. 31 to comply with demands that it allow more peacekeeping forces in the troubled region of Darfur -- or else U.S. officials might move toward such options as imposing a no-fly zone over Darfur.

Now, on the one hand, these breakdowns aren't exclusively the Administrations' "fault." The North Korea talks broke down after the North Korean delegation came with a limited brief--the removal of financial sanctions against Banco Delta Asia in Macao that have shut down a significant amount of the DPRK's alleged illegal international financial activities. It shows that the Administration finally found a negotiating lever that has the North's attention. But, it also shows how stagnant the talks are, if this is the only item of conversation. The UNSC sanctions did pass, a weaker resolution than the US originally sought, does represent a moment of agreement among the P-5. The question is, of course, what next-- the ball is in Iran's court, yet Iran can honestly doubt if the resolution has any teeth. The US and UN are being somewhat aggressive on Darfur, but the Sudanese government can still stall to its heart's content.

Indeed, individually, you can explain away any one of the issues without too much spin. Its easy to fall into the notion that the US and the UN are dealing with some really "rogue" regimes, and its to be expected that they will be uncooperative. But, to do so misses the larger and more significant point. These are not individual failures, they are linked, and reflect a serious failing in US foreign policy over the past 4 years.

Ivo Daalder's take:

"Including Iraq, they have four real crises," he said. "But they have less leverage and less capability and less credibility to deal with any in a diplomatic way."

Ahhh, Iraq. The war we're not winning, yet not losing. Its the 18 million ton elephant in the room. It reveals the extended price of Iraq--beyond the blood and treasure expended there, beyond the damage to US policy in the Middle East--it has paralyzed the US Government elsewhere in the world, damaging the US's ability to credibly conduct diplomacy across the globe.

The shadow of the Iraq war hangs over all these issues, distracting the attention of top U.S. officials and limiting the leverage of the United States. "One of the challenges we face is that because Iraq is there, there is not a lot of oxygen in the room to think creatively about any of these problems," said Derek Chollet, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Iran can rightly ask--why play ball on the nuclear issue, what are you really able to do to us? The US doesn't have enough troops to keep its current levels in Iraq and lets not forget Afghanistan. The Baker-Hamilton commission recommended talking to Iran about helping out with Iraq, a plan Rice quickly shot down. Why wouldn't Iran think it has the upper hand?

The cost of the debacle in Iraq is now rearing its ugly head. It dominated all discussion in US policy circles--domestic, military, economic, foreign. The financial cost prevents investment in other areas. The military cost has left the the US in a precarious position to respond to a myriad of other global threats. While it has always been the case that the US military can't be everywhere at once, its overstretch in Iraq is so well known that threats now lack credibility elsewhere in the world. And, diplomatically, the US has burned so many bridges over Iraq, its hard to reconstruct those diplomatic ties to deal with other pressing problems. The benefits of unilateral action are its swiftness and decisiveness. The down side is that you weaken the institutions and alliances you need to deal with other problems down the road.

Its becoming a systemic failure, as the hegemon is losing its ability to manage the system it created, and worse, its losing its credibility as the provider of security and stability within the system. It creates a window of opportunity for states to get away with things that might have been unthinkable crossing of diplomatic red-lines a decade ago-- case in point, North Korea. In 1994, building a nuke was grounds for war on the Peninsula, Clinton was listening to the war plan from the Joint Chiefs when Jimmy Carter called the White House to announce the deal he reached. Today, that is an empty threat, and no deal is in sight.

Alone, each crisis is a significant problem. But they are not isolated incidents. Linked by US involvement in Iraq, examined globally, this reveals a much more disturbing trend, and the wider and more profound cost of the war in Iraq. Its a foreign policy problem of the first order.

Filed as: foreign policy

2006-12-18T21:31:00.000-05:00

6-Party Talks, Part Deux

The Six Party Talks are on again. For any of you who have taken one of my World Politics classes in which we did the 6 party talks simulation, you will find this very, very familiar.

The NYT reports:

Each side appears to be insisting that the other give ground first. At the opening of the talks, the United States offered to normalize diplomatic relations with North Korea, but only after the Pyongyang regime abandons its nuclear program once and for all, the Associated Press reported.

Meanwhile, the North’s chief negotiator, Kim Kye Gwan, its vice foreign minister, said on Saturday that North Korea would refuse to halt its nuclear program until the United States abandoned its “hostile” policy toward his country and lifted financial restrictions imposed last year, according to a report today in The China Daily, a state-run newspaper.

It seems the talks opened with a familiar tone, the Post reports:

But North Korea's opening speech at the talks took a "department store approach," presenting "an exhaustive list of all its demands" and demanding that Washington end a "hostile policy" before Pyongyang reins in its nuclear arsenal, a South Korean official told reporters.

It sounds familiar. The DPRK wants the US to end sanctions, particularly the financial sanctions that cut down on North Korea's counterfeiting activities, and extend full diplomatic recognition before anything happens. The US wants the North to give up its nukes before anything happens. Its the same problem, with the same solution-- a trade implemented sequentially over time. In essence, that's the solution that we always get in class.

But, as everyone points out in the reaction papers and final exam question, its one thing to do it in class. Its quite another do to it in real life, when there are real nuclear weapons involved, and when those compromises raise fundamental questions about the legitimacy of your government's identity and purpose.

OR, as Linda Richman might say: The Six Party Talks-- neither talks nor six parties. Discuss.

2006-12-14T09:50:00.000-05:00

At least John Stewart is asking the right question about Iraq.

Check out how Fareed Zakaria gives a very diplomatic "Yes" in response.

Then consider this: The Pentagon is pondering three basic strategies for Iraq-- Go Big, Go Long, or Go Home

If we try to go home, the Saudis are now saying that they might back the Sunnis in the follow-on civil war to prevent a hostile, Iran-friendly Shiite state on their border.

If we try to go big, according to the Washington Post, we just don't have the troop strength to increase boots on the ground in any meaningful way. "According to Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East, the Army and Marine Corps today cannot sustain even a modest increase of 20,000 troops in Iraq."

And, if we go long, we continue to fight a war that has lost nearly all public support. Moreover, we learn in today's Post:

Pentagon chiefs think that there is no purely military solution for Iraq and that, without major progress on the political and economic fronts, the U.S. intervention is simply buying time, the sources said.

So, all and all, I give Fareed rather good marks in this interview.

And, because I don't want you to miss the second half...

2006-12-08T10:54:00.000-05:00

Dueling Diplomats, Dueling Theories

Today, the NYT has a nice bit of news analysis of the Iraq Study Group Report and how it pits the world-view of current SecState Rice with former SecState and ISG head Baker.

The contrast is striking:

Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III... has been talking on television, to Congress and to Iraqis and foreign diplomats about how he would conduct American foreign policy differently. Very differently....

[H]e then proceeded to make a passionate argument for a course of action he believed Condoleezza Rice, the current secretary of state, should be pursuing — while carefully never mentioning Ms. Rice by name....

Meanwhile, Ms. Rice remained publicly silent, sitting across town in the office that Mr. Baker gave up 14 years ago. She has yet to say anything about the public tutorial being conducted by the man who first knew her when she was a mid-level Soviet expert on the National Security Council. She has not responded to Mr. Baker’s argument, delivered in a tone that drips with isn’t-this-obvious, that America has to be willing to talk to its adversaries (a premise Ms. Rice has questioned if the conditions are not right), or his dismissal of the administration’s early argument that the way to peace in the Middle East was through quick, decisive victory in Baghdad.....

Ms. Rice makes no apology for the premium she has placed on promoting democracy in the Middle East, even though that is an idea that Mr. Baker and his commission conspicuously ignored in spelling out their recommendations. “I don’t think that the road to democracy in Iraq is at all utopian,” she said in April.

It is plenty utopian to Mr. Baker, who has made clear his view that the quest is entirely ill-suited to the realities of striking a political deal that may keep Sunnis and Shiites from killing each other, and that may extract American forces from Iraq.

Mr. Baker said nothing on Thursday about looking for Jeffersonian democrats in Iraq; he would be happy with few good “Iraqi nationalists” who can keep the country from splintering apart....

“They start from completely different places,” said Dennis Ross, the Middle East negotiator who worked for Mr. Baker years ago and left the State Department early in the Bush administration. “Baker approaches everything with a negotiator’s mindset. That doesn’t mean every negotiation leads to a deal, but you engage your adversaries and use your leverage to change their behavior. This administration has never had a negotiator’s mind-set. It divides the world into friends and foes, and the foes are incorrigible and not redeemable. There has been more of an instinct toward regime change than to changing regime behavior.”

Ross is right, they are coming from completely different places. Rice is articulating a policy premised on classic liberalism, very much in line with the tradition established by Woodrow Wilson. Baker is coming from a classic realist position, following in the line of someone like Kissinger or Bismark. Rice's policies make no sense without an appreciation of the transformative power of democracy and moral sense of rightness to bring it about within liberal idealism. Baker's policies make no sense outside of the pragmatic, balancing, stability-seeking, state-centric notions of classical realism.

For all you fans of the the IR theory classic, this liberal utopian tradition is exactly what E.H. Carr was cautioning against in the Twenty Years Crisis.

Who says IR theory can't be useful and fun?

2006-11-29T16:11:00.000-05:00

No Love for Maliki

(and I had a better post written for this, but of course my browser crashed just as it started to get interesting....)

Anyway, Bush is en-route from the NATO Summit in Latvia to Jordan to meet with King Abdullah and Iraqi PM Maliki, and while he is in the air, they canceled the big meeting. The NYT reports:

President Bush’s hastily-planned trip to Jordan to see Mr. Maliki, tacked on to a swing the president made through the Baltics to attend a NATO summit, was intended to address the increasing level of violence in Iraq....

The cancellation of the evening meeting capped a day in which White House aides struggled to put a favorable spin on the classified memorandum, which was written by Stephen J. Hadley, the president’s national security adviser, after an Oct. 30 visit to Iraq to meet one-on-one with Mr. Maliki.

Mr. Hadley wrote in the memo that while the prime minister seems to have good intentions when talking with Americans, “the reality on the streets suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what’s going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient.”

Nothing like the hastily arranged meeting falling apart while you are on your way there.

The offending memo itself is quite interesting, and worth a read. The NYT reprinted a version of it in its entirety here.

As an aside, for those of you in one of my memo writing classes, check out how it gets to the point, how it gives specific recommendations, how it provides options and actions for each one.

For everyone else, its quite an insight into how this administration views Iraq and what few options there are for doing anything about it.

2006-11-20T14:19:00.000-05:00

State Department Moves to Study Iran

The NY Times reports today that the State Department is setting up a new office in Dubai to study Iran.

The State Department announced early this year that it would open the office in Dubai and set up an Iran desk in Washington to make contact with Iranians and improve its institutional knowledge of the country at a time when tensions over Iran’s nuclear ambitions are high.

As all of you astute students of Bureaucratic Politics know, where you stand depends on where you sit. For a long time, there wasn't anyone inside the US Government who "sat" at the Iran desk.

"When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined the department last year, Mr. Burns said, it had only two people working on Iran issues."

Now, that's changing.

Today eight are assigned to the Iran desk in Washington and six in the Dubai office, which is within the American consulate.

Key to this whole enterprise is the "institutional knowledge" mentioned above coupled with bureaucratic advocates within the government to advance that institutional knowledge within the policy debates. When it works, this kind of thing can have a powerful impact on US Foreign Policy.

On Friday, R. Nicholas Burns, under secretary of state for political affairs, said the Dubai office was created in the spirit of the Riga station in Latvia, which became a critical source of knowledge about the Soviet Union at a time when the United States did not have diplomatic relations with Moscow.

“We sent a young kid from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1926 out to Riga station: George Kennan,” he said, referring to the man who would become one of the world’s foremost Soviet experts. “We said: ‘Go and learn Russian. Sit in Riga. You be our window into the Soviet Union.’

“That is what we are saying to these young kids today. ‘You go to Dubai. We can’t be in Iran. You interview every Iranian you can find, get to know them — all the Iranians who come out and do their banking there and do their weekends there — and you tell us how we should understand Iran.’”

So here's hoping that the US Government develops some institutional knowledge and expertise on Iran, allowing for the possibility of more sophisticated policy options toward Iran. Its a small thing, but opening this office and staffing the desk have the real potential to go a long way in changing how the US relates to Iran.

2006-11-18T10:23:00.000-05:00

I like Ohio State!!!

To say that I'm excited about the OSU-Michigan game today might be a bit of an understatement. Its only the biggest college football game ever-- 1 vs. 2, conference and national title on the line, in the biggest and best rivalry in college football ever. I'll be in front of my TV, with my OSU Marching Band music cranked up, rooting for my team.

Go Bucks!!!

2006-11-08T13:15:00.000-05:00

Election Madness!

Last night's election seems to have been the political wave that some had anticipated. Democrats won big-- taking not just the House and Senate (it seems), but also governorships and other local races nationwide.

Aside from all the post-election analysis that will be coming out in the next few days, 2 points stick out from a foreign policy perspective.

1. Former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neil once famously said "all politics is local" and that mantra usually applies in Congressional elections, when local issues are very important for local candidates. This election was markedly different. Looking at the exit polls, its rather clear that Iraq was a top if not the top issue for the voters, and they voted to send a message to the President on Iraq. A foreign policy issue, not a domestic issue, dominates a mid-term election. Nearly unheard of in American politics.

As a result, incoming Democratic leadership in Congress can clearly claim a mandate to change direction on Iraq.

2. It didn't take long. Remember last week when Bush said he wanted Rumsfeld to stick around for the remainder of the term? Reports are now out that SecDef Rumsfeld is "resigning", to be replaced by Robert Gates. Gates was director of the CIA back in the first Bush Administration, and is now (or was up until now) president of Texas A&M University. While the outcome of the Senate is still officially in doubt, it seems that the D's will take the 2 seats necessary to get the majority. Bush knows this, and knows that his nominee will face a much more confrontational, if not hostile, confirmation process. This seems to be the beginning of a major shift in Iraq policy. You can bet that the Senators will be asking Gates what his plan is on Iraq and won't confirm him until he comes up with an acceptable answer.

2006-10-27T11:43:00.000-04:00

Collective Goods and Collective Action

This week was Tragedy of the Commons week in World politics. We read Garrett Hardin's classic essay on the Tragedy of the Commons and discussed the relevance of the concept in contemporary world politics.

As I read my Washington Post today over breakfast, lo and behold, what did I see? David Ignatius, editorializing about how global security is a collective good and suffers from the same tragedy of the commons problems that Hardin raised. Ignatius uses Mancur Olsen, the famous theorist of collective action, as his entry into the discussion, but the tragedy of the commons and the collective action problem are in fact two sides of the same coin. The tragedy of the commons laments the destruction of common space because actors, acting rationally to maximize thier near-term self-interest, overuse the common area creating long-term destruction that makes everyone worse off. The collective action problem laments how hard it is to get people to band together to engage in a long-term cooperative action to preserve a common area because everyone rationally can reap more reward by going off to do their own thing--let someone else maintain the common area.

You can talk about the global environment or the global economy in this way (that's what we did in class), but it also works for international security.

The column is interesting enough that I'll just post the whole thing here:

A theory that explains the chaotic world of 2006 -- one where people from Baghdad to Beijing seem unable to cooperate on projects that would make them better off -- was written more than 40 years ago by an obscure American economist named Mancur Olson Jr. His short 1965 book, "The Logic of Collective Action," explained why big groups, including nation-states, cannot agree on actions that are in their common interest.

You can see this perverse "logic" at work in nearly all the conflicts that vex the planet today. The divisive political dynamic that blocks collective solutions -- what Olson described as the "surprising tendency for the exploitation of the great by the small" -- is apparent even in the United States. But I'm going to stick to foreign examples.

Start with Iraq, the conflict that is grinding up U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians in horrifying numbers. Iraqis know they would all be better off if they could agree on a national compact that would subordinate sectarian differences to the larger national interests of stability and prosperity. Their leaders keep pledging support for this goal, but it doesn't happen.

Why? Olson, who taught at the University of Maryland until he died in 1998, explained the underlying problem this way: "Unless the number of individuals in a group is quite small, or unless there is coercion or some other special device to make individuals act in their common interest, rational, self-interested individuals will not act to achieve their common or group interests."

The problem, he said, is that although everyone would benefit from the collective good of, say, greater security, it's irrational for any individual to make voluntary sacrifices to achieve it.

I put a version of this dilemma to L. Paul Bremer in Baghdad in January 2004, when he was head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. In an interview in the Green Zone, I said that although people were describing him as an imperial proconsul, his situation seemed closer to that of a bankruptcy trustee: If one of his three big creditors -- the Shiites, the Sunnis and the Kurds -- decided to push for unilateral advantage and "call their loans," they would drive the enterprise into ruin. But if Bremer could coax the parties toward an agreement, everyone would emerge better off.

Bremer's initial response to the bankruptcy analogy was unforgettable: "Is that Chapter 7, or Chapter 11?" he asked. He went on to say that, like a bankruptcy trustee, he had to believe that the parties around the table were rational.

But individual rationality often pushes us toward solutions that are collectively ruinous. That was Olson's point. He was writing at a time when most social scientists embraced upbeat theories about the inherent cohesiveness of politics. He showed why this optimism was misplaced. It was, in fact, irrational for any individual to pay taxes voluntarily to support an army; better to let your neighbor pay, and get the benefit for free. Groups that acted voluntarily for the common interest were "composed of either altruistic individuals or irrational individuals," he wrote.

Iran illustrates the Olson problem. Every Iranian I encountered on a recent trip there expressed a belief that this is Iran's moment to emerge as a leading political and economic force in the Middle East. But to get this collective benefit every Iranian wants, the country's leaders will have to limit a nuclear program that some Iranians want. Olson would tell us that, absent compulsion, it isn't going to happen: Powerful pressure groups will prevent the collective good.

An Olson problem also afflicts North Korea's neighbors as they deal with its nuclear weapons program. China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and the United States would all be better off if they had stopped Kim Jong Il before he detonated a bomb. But it's like fixing potholes. It was easier to wait for someone else to do it -- for Washington to wait for Beijing and vice versa. And, of course, the job never got done.

Olson's escape from this conundrum was his recognition that it's necessary to compel the collective behavior that is in everyone's interest. Workers must be compelled to join a union; otherwise, they'll freeload. Citizens must be required by law to pay taxes; otherwise, they won't do it. Sectarian groups must be forced to obey the national government; otherwise they will create anarchy. And individual nations must be compelled to obey rules limiting the spread of nuclear technology and other threats to common security. Otherwise, we will have unending wars.

In the international arena, the appropriate instrument of compulsion is not, as the Bush administration has believed, the United States. It is the United Nations. Making the United Nations effective enough that it can compel the common good is the right answer to Olson's paradox.

2006-10-23T14:15:00.000-04:00

Iraq Report: not good

Last week, we were treated to a stunning admission from the head General in Iraq. What he said was not all that stunning--anyone who has been paying attention could see that things in Iraq were getting bad-- but stunning in that he actually said it. As reported in the WaPo:

A two-month U.S.-Iraqi military operation to stem sectarian bloodshed and insurgent attacks in Baghdad has failed to reduce the violence, which has surged 22 percent in the capital in the last three weeks, much of it in areas where the military has focused its efforts, a senior U.S. military spokesman said Thursday.

The assessment by Army Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV followed a 43 percent spike in attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces in the capital since midsummer that has pushed U.S. military fatalities to their highest rates in more than a year.

The operation "has not met our overall expectations of sustaining a reduction in the levels of violence," Caldwell said Thursday at a weekly news briefing. Violence has risen in the areas where the U.S.-Iraqi operation has focused, because of counterattacks, he said.

"We're finding insurgent elements, the extremists, are pushing back hard. They're trying to get back into those areas" where Iraqi and U.S. forces have targeted them, he said. "We're constantly going back in and doing clearing operations."

Its a pretty dire picture. Several months ago, aware that a) they did not have enough forces in country to conduct necessary operations everywhere and b) Baghdad was the lynchpin to the whole country, US forces in Iraq set out to concentrate in and around Baghdad in a effort to Clear, Hold and Build. Clear an area from insurgents, hold the territory, and build it up as a functioning entity, allowing Iraqi forces to take over and run a "clean" bit of space. Repeating the process, the idea was to slowly spread US influence in Baghdad's most troubled neighborhood.

As it turns out, the strategy isn't working. As Caldwell and Casey have admitted, violence and killings in Baghdad are up, not down, and the US can't seem to hold any of the territory it clears. The increase in troop strength is having the opposite of its intended effect--instead of helping clear out insurgents, the additional forces are targets for increased attacks, leading to the significantly higher death rate this past month.

Its become a rather dire situation. As Michael Gordon notes in today's NYT:

But military commanders here see no plausible alternative to their bedrock strategy to clear violence-ridden neighborhoods of militias, insurgents and arms caches, hold them with Iraqi and American security forces, and then try to win over the population with reconstruction projects, underwritten mainly by the Iraqi government. There is no fall-back plan that the generals are holding in their hip pocket. This is it.

Dire indeed. We're on our last major initiative, and its not working. Meanwhile, the Administration refuses to contemplate any strategy changes other than "victory." Over the weekend, the two top Generals in Iraq, Abizaid and Casey, met with Bush and his national security team at the White House, and they didn't discuss any major changes to what is now admittedly failing.

Now part of this might be partisan posturing until the election. If (when?) Democrats take over part of Congress, they could very well force a new Iraq policy on the Administratoin, which, coupled with Baker's Iraq Study Group, could provide Bush the political cover to begin some sort of pull-out from Iraq.

What are our options? Stay the course? Well, the course is not going well. Add more troops? One of the instructive things that the Baghdad approach shows is that at this point in the nascent civil war, more American troops don't help unless or until we're willing to take sides against one of the militias. But, that only works if our Iraqi partners can and are able to consolidate the tactical combat victories we hand them. Pull out? A time-table and phased withdrawal might be the only way to get Maliki to take ownership of the major mess we've made for him.

As Gordon ends his analysis, so will I:

“Part of our problem is that we want this more than they do,” General Thurman said, alluding to the effort to get the Iraqis to put aside sectarian differences and build a unified Iraq. “We need to get people to stop worrying about self and start worrying about Iraq. And that is going to take national unity.”

“Until we get that settled I think we are going to struggle,” he added.

And we're a long, long way from that point.

Filed as: Iraq

2006-10-09T09:07:00.000-04:00

North Korea tests a Nuke

North Korea announced that it had tested a nuclear device last night. Though initial reports are still a bit cautious, it seems pretty clear from the global reaction that this was in fact some sort of nuclear test. You can see the seismic event catalogued here, click on the red dot in North Korea to see the event of magnitude 4.2 in the northwest of North Korea (and thanks to the current student who pointed out this cool website).

This is, needless to say, a significant event, one that substantially and forever changes Northeast Asia. The initial reactions to the test all condemn it. The Post also has good coverage of this.

Interesting things about the test: It happens on the 9th anneversary of Kim Jong Il taking power (assuming the formal role of leader after mourning his father for a few years) in North Korea. It happens as new Japanese PM Abe is visiting China and South Korea. It also happens as the US is very bogged down in nuclear diplomacy with Iran and in Iraq.

The immediate analysis all points out that this is a bad thing, that the relevant parties will go to the security council in an attempt to somehow sanction North Korea, and that it will increase pressure on Japan to further militarize, as well as increase pressure on Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan to all develop their own nuclear weapons. The conventional wisdom is that this also puts China in a tough spot. China has been North Koreas supposed ally, and the DPRK told China about the test ahead of time (and China condemned it). China's border with North Korea is the source of nearly all of its international trade, its energy, and its economic links to the outside world.

Two notes: First, this puts the US in quite a bind. While this test is not all "Bush's fault,"--all of the 6-parties share some degree of "blame," the Bush Administration has a special responsibility for the test. North Korea still regards the US as its principle enemy, and its developing its nuclear program with the US in its sights. All DPRK willingness to talk about its nuclear program has focused on diplomacy with the US. When Bush entered office, there was still the Agreed Framework that had frozen the DPRK nuclear program for 6+ years. Highly imperfect, it nevertheless kept the North Korean nuclear program on hold. In many ways, this is the ultimate negative feedback of the Bush Doctrine. By declaring North Korea part of the Axis of Evil, continuing hostile rhetoric toward North Korea, and then invading Iraq, North Korea most likely figures that the only way to survive the pending confrontation with the US is to have its own nuke. Now, we may not have any intention of invading North Korea, but we haven't done a good job of signaling that to the North Koreans. Now the Administration has said it "won't tolerate" a nuclear North Korea. Well, what exactly does that mean? We're not in a good position to do anything militarly (and, now that they are a nuclear power, we must assume they have another nuke that could be used in the event of military action). So, what do we do?

Second, there is great irony in how all of this is playing out. This will come before the security council at some point today, and there is sure to be a push for sanctions, and this will land squarely on China's doorstep. In the past, they have held a firm line discouraging North Korea's adventurous behavior, but also discouraging the rest of the world (led by the US) from placing really harsh sanctions on North Korea, for fear it might collapse. In many ways, the problem is that the world has long been more afraid of North Korea's weakness much more than its strength. Even now, it remains to be seen how tough China and, to a lesser extent Russia, will be willing to be at the UNSC. The DPRK has achieved the most powerful weapon in the world, it has joined the elite club of nuclear powers, it has a million man army, and yet the world still fears its weakness more than its strength. Its amazing how this has played out. The US, for all of its bold talk and actions, has relatively little punative leverage on North Korea. The US already has full sanctions on North Korea and has cracked down on North Korea's illicit activity (particularly counterfiet US currency). There's not much more the US can do. Some have mentioned a Naval Blockade, but that's a bold step that can easily lead to escalation and war-- you don't go down that road lightly unless you're prepared to back it up with force in case things go bad. South Korea has more leverage-- it can and probably will cut its economic assistance and shutter the mutual development projects in the Kaesong district. But, the real leverage lies in China, which can close the border and cut of North Korea's energy, food, and other imports. The fear is that such actions would prompt refugees and collapse.

So, what to do? A nuclear North Korea may not be "tolerable" but the US doesn't have a whole lot of leverage to make it otherwise unless we're willing to go all the way on this one (as in be ready to credibly threaten war with the DPRK-all options, such as blockade, need to have this behind them to work)-- and I just don't think that we are at this point.

Its quite possible that we're all going to have to learn to live with a nuclear North Korea, and that's not a happy thought.

2006-10-03T11:22:00.000-04:00

State of Denial

Lots of interesting reading about the Bush Administration and Iraq over the weekend.
Bob Woodward has a new book out, and the Post ran exclusive exerpts in the Sunday and Monday paper. The argument, in a nutshell: The war in Iraq is going much, much worse than the Administration has admitted to in public, and the President himself is in a state of denial about how bad things actually are.

There was a vast difference between what the White House and Pentagon knew about the situation in Iraq and what they were saying publicly. But the discrepancy was not surprising. In memos, reports and internal debates, high-level officials of the Bush administration have voiced their concern about the United States' ability to bring peace and stability to Iraq since early in the occupation.

On 60 Minutes on Sunday, Woodward said that Gen. John Abizaid, commander of all US Forces in Iraq has serious doubts about Rumsfeld and the war:

And, according to Woodward, another key general, John Abizaid, who’s in charge of the whole Gulf region, told friends that on Iraq, Rumsfeld has lost all credibility.

"What does that mean, he doesn’t have any credibility anymore?" Wallace asks.

"That means that he cannot go public and articulate what the strategy is. Now, this is so important they decide," Woodward explains. "The Secretary of State Rice will announce what the strategy is. This is October of last year." She told Congress the U.S. strategy in Iraq is "clear, hold and build."

"Rumsfeld sees this and goes ballistic and says, 'Now wait a minute. That’s not our strategy. We want to get the Iraqis to do these things.' Well it turns out George Bush and the White House liked this definition of the strategy so it’s in a presidential speech he’s gonna give the next month," Woodward tells Wallace. "Rumsfeld sees it. He calls Andy Card, the White House chief of staff and says 'Take it out. Take it out. That’s not our strategy. We can’t do that.' Card says it’s the core of what we’re doing. That’s two and a half years after the invasion of Iraq. They cannot agree on the definition of the strategy. They cannot agree on the bumper sticker."

"General John Abizaid, commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East, you quote him as saying privately a year ago that the U.S. should start cutting its troops in Iraq. You report that he told some close Army friends, quote, 'We’ve gotta get the f out.' And then this past March, General Abizaid visited Congressman John Murtha on Capitol Hill," Wallace says.

"John Murtha is in many ways the soul and the conscience of the military," Woodward replies. "And he came out and said, 'We need to get out of Iraq as soon as it’s practical' and that sent a 10,000 volt jolt through the White House."

"Here’s Mr. Military saying, 'We need to get out,'" Woodward continues. "And John Abizaid went to see him privately. This is Bush’s and Rumsfeld’s commander in Iraq," Woodward says.

"And John Abizaid held up his fingers, according to Murtha, and said, 'We’re about a quarter of an inch apart, said, 'We’re that far apart,'" Woodward says.

Even Colin Powell has his doubts, as another book excerpt in the Post Magazine details.

Now, there's a ton more juicy tidbits of dirt that Woodward digs up-- Laura Bush even dislikes Rumsfled-- but the core issues is this: the war is going badly, getting worse, government officials know about it, but the President won't hear any of it and is determined to stay the course, even if his wife and dog are the only two people left in the world who support him (paraphrasing Woodward).

2006-09-26T23:00:00.000-04:00

Iraq and Terrorism

On Sunday, the NY Times reported:

A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.

National Intelligence Estimates are very important intelligence products, designed to reflect the consensus analysis of all the members of the Intelligence Community, using all the available intelligence to draw important conclusions.

Bush, at his press conference with Afghan President Karzi, disputed the NIE.

Now, the whole report has been declassified, so you can read it for yourself.

2006-09-21T00:59:00.000-04:00

Its all Iraq, All the Time...

Question of the day: are we winning?

Answer:

Asked point-blank whether the United States is winning in Iraq, Abizaid replied: "Given unlimited time and unlimited support, we're winning the war."

In other words--no. We don't have unlimited time, and its rather clear that the Administration hasn't offered unlimited resources to its Commanders in Iraq. We've never been close to 200,000 troops in-country. Though....

The general's comments effectively ended hopes for a big troop withdrawal from Iraq this year, which had long been the military's target for reducing forces. As violence has intensified over the spring and summer, military leaders and the Pentagon's official assessment of the war have delivered increasingly tough characterizations of conditions in Iraq.

Now, six weeks before the U.S. midterm elections for which Iraq is a galvanizing issue, Abizaid is delivering the message that there will be no hasty exit from the costly conflict...

While dampening hopes of troop cuts this year, Abizaid left open the possibility that the U.S. troop level could be increased. "We'll bring in more forces if we have to," he said.

The military would draw, if necessary, on reserve forces already in Kuwait and elsewhere in the region before asking the Pentagon to send more U.S. troops, Abizaid said. He added that there is currently no plan to further extend the tour in Iraq of the Army's 172nd Stryker Brigade. That unit had been scheduled to return home over the summer but was abruptly diverted to Baghdad in July when sectarian killings spiraled there.

Happy times, especially with the election just around the corner.

Kerry (finally--maybe 2 years too late) asked:

“What’s the endgame? We need a deadline to force Iraqis to stand up for Iraq and get our combat troops home,” said Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat.

The Bush end-game is (or was) we'll stand down our forces as the Iraqis stand up thier forces. That's not going so well either:

Senior Iraqi and American officials are beginning to question whether Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has the political muscle and decisiveness to hold Iraq together as it hovers on the edge of a full civil war.

Four months into his tenure, Mr. Maliki has failed to take aggressive steps to end the country’s sectarian strife because they would alienate fundamentalist Shiite leaders inside his fractious government who have large followings and private armies, senior Iraqi politicians and Western officials say. He is also constrained by the need to woo militant Sunni Arabs connected to the insurgency.

You can ask how on earth we got in this mess. You can read all about it in Sunday's WaPo which has quite good book-excerpt article on life in the CPA-Green Zone. Dan Drezner now has a heated debate on whether it was the idea or the implementation of the idea that failed in Iraq (and if anyone from that class is reading, its a nice preview of what we'll discuss that day).

But, of course the more pertinent question is in fact Kerry's--where do we go from here? What's the end game?

I have a really long answer to that, but perhaps I'll let you all comment on it for a while and save that rambling rant for a subsequent post.

2006-09-15T15:33:00.000-04:00

Current and former students might find this interesting.
From Marc Fisher's blog at WashingtonPost.com:

10 Reasons Why Tony Williams Might Be AU's Next President

Mayor Anthony Williams is a short-timer now and some D.C. residents have started to wonder whether he, as did Sharon Pratt Kelly before him, will forsake Washington and start a new life somewhere else.

Despite numerous pledges to buy a house in the District, Williams never did move out of his Watergate-area rental. He seems to spend most of his time gallivanting around the globe. And he's hardly ever seen even at the site of his most historic and controversial achievement, the home games of the Washington Nationals.

Will Tony stick around town? And if he does, what will he do? The rumor for many months has been that American University is more than a little interested in hiring Williams as its next president. The last couple haven't exactly worked out terribly well.

Herewith, 10 reasons why AU would--heck, let's just say it: should--make the move:

You can read the whole list here.

2006-09-13T01:06:00.000-04:00

Safer, but Not Yet Safe.

Bush declared:

The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad.... In truth, it is a struggle for civilization.

Not going all that well for civilization this week.

Thomas Ricks has an absolutely must read in the Post:

Situation Called Dire in West Iraq
Anbar Is Lost Politically, Marine Analyst Says

The chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq recently filed an unusual secret report concluding that the prospects for securing that country's western Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there, said several military officers and intelligence officials familiar with its contents.

The officials described Col. Pete Devlin's classified assessment of the dire state of Anbar as the first time that a senior U.S. military officer has filed so negative a report from Iraq.

One Army officer summarized it as arguing that in Anbar province, "We haven't been defeated militarily but we have been defeated politically -- and that's where wars are won and lost."

Which may be OK, since we're really not trying to win--its enough to train someone else to fight for the heart and soul of civilization, reports the NYT:

The senior Marine commander in Iraq said Tuesday that he had sufficient forces to carry out his mission but that the mission did not include defeating the insurgency.

“For what we are trying to achieve out here I think our force levels are about right,” said Maj. Gen. Richard C. Zilmer, who defined his primary mission as training the Iraqi forces who ultimately would be responsible for security in the area.

“Now, if that mission statement changes — if there is seen a larger role for coalition forces out here to win that insurgency fight — then that is going to change the metrics of what we need out here,” General Zilmer added.

2006-09-10T22:10:00.000-04:00

Five Years Later...

How many ways is Sept 10, 2006 different from Sept 10, 2001? Five years ago, there was a football game on in Prime Time, the Yankees heading for the post season, a Bush presidency struggling a bit to find its legs in the world of international affairs, and a general sense that tomorow would be like today, a regular work day, conducting the Nation's Business. It wasn't, of course, and that's why despite the fact that tonight, as you have prime-time network football, the Yankees on a roll, a struggling Bush presidency, and a general sense that tomorow, September 11, 2006 will be, for the most part, just like today, it won't be, it will be a day marked by rememberences and reflection along with the regularity of the workday.

Its interesting to look back and recall the mood in the days and weeks after 9-11, and think about what has happened since. In the intervening 5 years:

Ossama Bin Laden went from obscure radical to public enemy #1
The US had the sympathy, compassion, and cooperation of the world
We invaded Afghanistan, toppling the Talaban and installing a new regime
The economy dipped
The President had bi-partisan, overwhelmingly high approval ratings
We invaded Iraq
We lost most of the cooperation and sympathy of much of the world
The number of terrorist attacks has risen over the past several years
No "major" attacks have occured on US soil
A sniper (not a terrorist) held the Washington DC region hostage for over a month
Anthrax in the postal system paralyzed the Washington DC region and killed several postal workers
The US government underwent its most significant reorganization since 1945, creating a Department of Homeland Security and National Intelligence Director
The economy rebounded
Ossama Bin Laden remains at large, releasing tapes
The Talabin is making a comeback in Afghanistan
A US occupied Iraq seems near civil war
A second US city, New Orleans, was nearly wiped out.
The President has horribly low approval ratings
National security is a top issue in midterm Congressional elections
And the list goes on...

The cliche is that "everything has changed," we're in a "new era" and that Sept 11, 2001 was some sort of end of innocence for the American public.

On the one hand, I'm inclined to disagree. As William Dobson argues in this month's Foreign Policy:

Yet, if you look closely at the trend lines since 9/11, what is remarkable is how little the world has changed. The forces of globalization continue unabated; indeed, if anything, they have accelerated. The issues of the day that we were debating on that morning in September are largely the same. Across broad measures of political, economic, and social data, the constants outweigh the variations. And, five years later, the United States’ foreign policy is marked by no greater strategic clarity than it had on Sept. 10, 2001.

If you were in either of the two cities that were attacked on September 11, you might have picked up a copy of one of the daily newspapers. The headline of one story in the Washington Post read, “Israeli Tanks Encircle a City in West Bank.” The front page of the New York Times led with a story headlined, “Scientists Urge Bigger Supply of Stem Cells.” Inside the paper, readers might have also noticed a small item that read, “Iran: Denial on Nuclear Weapons.” The headlines on that morning—before the world learned of the attacks—suggest that our pre-9/11 preoccupations are certainly not that different from those we carry today.

Indeed, if you look at post 9-11 Bush Administration foreign policy, it does have much more in common with a second term-Clinton foreign policy that either might care to admit. Clinton laid the groundwork for most of Bush's arguments in favor of the Iraq war (bomb in response to WMD threat a la Desert Fox, unilateral action a la kosovo). As Dobson argues, the globalization of the late 90's continues.

You could even make the case that Bush would have invaded Iraq, with similar results, regardless of 9-11-- it may have been no more than an enabling event creating an opportunity for policymakers convinced of the rightness of their cause.

On the other hand, certainly a lot has changed. Everyone will probably be asking--Are we Safer today than we were then? In a sense, yes, but not because of anything that the Bush Administration, Congress, or any other Government Officials have done. The 9-11 Commission identified a host of failures that led to the attacks of 9-11, but perhaps the most damning was a "failure of imagination." Across the board, everyone realized the intelectual possibility of a terrorist attack (indeed, Tom Clancy even wrote about crashing a plane into Congress back in a book in the early 90's), but no one thought that "it could happen here."

What has changed is that now everyone realizes that it "can" "happen here" and that possibility shapes the course of our collective lives. In many ways, America became "safer" a mere 90 or so minutes after the first plane struck the first tower, when the passengers on flight 93 decided to confront their attackers, crashing their plane over PA instead of in DC. At that very moment, our collective narrative as a nation changed. Now, people look for and report suspicious packages and passengers. People are accepting of more invasive searches in the name of "security." We can now imagine another 9-11, and hope to prevent it. We now see terrorism and terrorist links all over the place.

Which, if another 9-11 style attack is forthcoming, makes us much "safer"--we know what to look for But, somehow I don't feel so optimistic--because if the future is anything like the past, the future won't be anything like the past. Its quite possible the War in Iraq and the Department of Homeland Security will be no more than a second Maginot line, trying to safeguard our security in a very uncertain and turbulent world. I really hope not, but I'm still searching for a truly reassuring answer.

Filed as: September 11