There is widely accepted (though largely unexamined) conventional wisdom in US national security circles which holds that our military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan are serving to stabilize the Pakistani state.  Or, as it is more commonly construed, that the withdrawal of a large portion of our armed forces, and recalibration of our strategic objectives, would destabilize Pakistan and, as a [...]]]>

There is widely accepted (though largely unexamined) conventional wisdom in US national security circles which holds that our military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan are serving to stabilize the Pakistani state.  Or, as it is more commonly construed, that the withdrawal of a large portion of our armed forces, and recalibration of our strategic objectives, would destabilize Pakistan and, as a result, put that country’s nuclear arsenal in jeopardy of being seized by militant groups. 

What’s odd is that this presumed dynamic runs counter to what are the most common effects of wars, generally speaking.  To state a series of truisms, wars have a tendency to destabilize regions, breed conflict, radicalize populations, empower warlords and militants, create huge refugee flows, give impetus to small arms proliferation that can perpetuate conflict, disrupt society’s day-to-day ongoings and give rise to myriad other maladies that sow turmoil, rather than stability.

So why would our war be having an opposite, beneficial impact on the stability of Pakistan? The short answer is, it isn’t.  One would be hard-pressed to argue that Pakistan is more stable now, than when we first invaded Afghanistan. The reasons are manifold.

Our continued military operations targeting a highly valued proxy of Pakistan’s national security state (the Taliban), while shifting the balance of influence in Afghanistan away from Pakistan and toward a more India-friendly regime (Karzai’s), is creating real divisions, anxiety and conflict within Pakistan.  That is true in terms of its political/military elites, as well as with smaller indigenous factions and groups becoming more radicalized and militarized in response to crackdowns and a perceived loss of sovereignty in the face of US demands.

Along these lines, we have been continuously pressuring Pakistani political leaders to cooperate with our goals and policy objectives, which have included both allowing us to strike individuals/groups on Pakistani soil, as well as to encourage the Pakistani military to undertake campaigns to root out various home-grown and foreign militant groups.  While these types of controversial, fraught policies would be a hard sell to a Pakistani public struggling with inequality and economic stagnation under even ideal circumstances, that these policies are seen as originating with the US government at a time when America is wildly unpopular, and our “interference” is viewed with the most nefarious assumptions, makes them political poison.

To sum it up, our military operations are roiling Pakistan’s elites, giving rise to more anti-Americanism and radicalizing/mobilizing militant groups to act against the Pakistani state. Not to mention, greatly straining US/Pakistani relations.  That’s not exactly a stability cocktail.

Nevertheless, there is a commonly held assumption that should we withdraw our forces, Pakistan would be further destabilized (without acknowledging the potential ameliorative effects) – with a particular emphasis on the possibility that Pakistani militants would use Afghanistan as a redoubt from which to wage war on the Pakistani state and, according to those warning of dire consequences, possibly overrun state facilities and seize nuclear material.

Joshua Rovner and Austin Long do an excellent job of puncturing this and other “strategic myths” commonplace in arguments for continuing the war in Afghanistan as it currently comprised. Here is a sample:

If the Afghan Taliban succeeded in retaking part or all of Afghanistan, it would risk losing ISI support if it offered a substantial sanctuary to Pakistan’s enemies. It is possible that some members of the Pakistani groups might find shelter there, but the Afghan militants would have a strong incentive to ensure that their numbers remained low enough to be plausibly deniable to the ISI. And even if the Afghan militants are foolish enough to grant safe haven to substantial numbers of Pakistani militants, the protection they offer will be qualitatively different from the sanctuary currently enjoyed by Afghan militants in Pakistan. The sanctuary in Pakistan derives from the existence of a Pakistani state and, more importantly, a nuclear-armed Pakistani military. Attacking Afghan militants on Pakistani soil without permission would be an act of war. Moreover, the United States receives Pakistan’s help with intelligence collection along the border region and elsewhere. This means U.S. officials have large incentives to negotiate with the government before conducting operations in Pakistan. Because of the significant risks involved, the United States usually reserves unilateral actions for extraordinary cases…Drone strikes are only allowed in certain areas and ground force operations are apparently not allowed (or are so covert as to be invisible).

Paradoxically, Afghan militants have a fairly robust sanctuary from U.S. forces only because of the mixed interests of America’s ally. In contrast, who would stop the Pakistani military from acting in Afghanistan if its proxies harbored substantial numbers of Pakistani militants? If the United States withdrew from Afghanistan and the Kabul government collapsed, the answer is nobody. Pakistan could take covert or overt military action at will or could find new proxies. Indeed, the Taliban was created by ISI when its old proxies proved unable to secure Afghanistan. The fact that ISI created the Taliban provides yet another reason to believe that few if any of the Afghan proxies of the ISI would shelter large numbers of Pakistan’s enemies. To do so would put them between the devil and the deep blue sea, with the Pakistani military playing the part of the sea and the Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras of Afghanistan (the old Northern Alliance) in the role of the devil. These latter groups fought the Taliban before September 11, 2001, reportedly with aid from Russia, Iran, and India. They would certainly fight on after a U.S. withdrawal in much the same way. Only ISI support enabled the Afghan Taliban to succeed in the 1990s; if Pakistan was actually fighting against them, they would be in serious trouble.

Right, and we could and would likely aid Pakistan in its targeting of those militant groups even if we didn’t have 100K troops undertaking a nation building exercise in Afghanistan. The Taliban tail is just not capable of wagging the dog, and the Pakistani government knows it.  That is why that government continues to support those same Afghan Taliban factions that allegedly pose such a serious threat to Pakistan and that we are, ostensibly, protecting Pakistan from.  Maybe they know something we don’t?

Fear of destabilizing Pakistan by the withdrawal of our armed forces from the region should not be a basis for our continued military operations – at least not in their current incarnation in terms of size and strategic objectives. Speaking of which, Rovner and Long also have some very smart suggestions for how to scale back our mission to a more sustainable, efficient posture that serves our core interests, with less negative impact on the region.

(Photo Credit: U.S. Army under creative commons license)

(Cross-Posted at Democracy Arsenal)

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After [...]]]> This Frederic Wehrey piece in Foreign Affairs explores some of the cleavages and divisions in Libya’s population/power structures that could come to the fore if and when the Qaddafi regime is toppled – as well as some of the challenges in rebuilding (or building anew) a society left dilapidated by years of inept dictatorial rule:

After Libyans, and much of the civilized world, rejoice in the seemingly inevitable fall of Muammar al-Qaddafi, the country will face the difficult task of repairing a society long traumatized by the Middle East’s most Orwellian regime. Libya lacks both legitimate formal institutions and a functioning civil society. The new, post-Qaddafi era, therefore, is likely to be marked by the emergence of long-suppressed domestic groups jostling for supremacy in what is sure to be a chaotic political scene. 

In the near future, even with Qaddafi gone, the country may face a continued contest between the forces of a free Libya and the regime’s die-hard elements. In particular, Qaddafi’s sons — Saif al-Islam, Khamis, Al-Saadi, and Mutassim — and their affiliated militias may not go quietly into the night; the struggle to root them out may be violent and protracted…

Lined up against these Qaddafi holdouts are the members of the Libyan military and officer corps who have joined the opposition. [...]

Libya’s tribes will also be critical for governance and reconciliation. Qaddafi’s 1969 coup overturned the traditional dominance of the eastern coastal tribes in Cyrenaica in favor of those drawn from the west and the country’s interior. Although the Qaddafi regime was, at least in theory, opposed to tribal identity, its longevity depended in large measure on a shaky coalition among three principal tribes: the al-Qaddadfa, al-Magariha, and al-Warfalla. [...]  

In the post-Qaddafi era, the recently defected tribal bulwarks of the ancien régime — the al-Magariha and the al-Warfalla — will play a critical role in lending legitimacy and unity to a new government. That said, the weakness and fragmentation of the military and the tempting availability of oil resources highlight the very real threat of tribal warlordism.

In a prior post, I raised the all-too-possible specter that the aftermath of Qaddafi’s ouster could give rise to (or perpetuate) internecine conflict that would require policing by international forces and/or a prolonged nation building effort in order to avoid a massive conflagration.  Wehrey’s piece highlights some of the fault lines along which such conflicts could erupt. 

While it is possible that Libya could undergo a smooth, relatively violence-free transition to stable governance, we cannot afford to plan based on best-case-scenario assumptions. Though this is no great insight, it remains true: wars, revolutions and lesser armed conflicts are notoriously unpredictable. 

Considering the enormously expensive, long-term, resource-intensive nation building/policing efforts that the United States is currently undertaking in Afghanistan and Iraq, it would be beyond imprudent to risk getting embroiled in yet another such enterprise at this juncture. Which is why my reaction to the possibilities discussed in this piece in the Small Wars Journal was more of hopeful relief than concern:  

Let’s make something clear, the civil war in Libya will not end in a stalemate. The French will likely intervene with ground forces and topple the Gaddafi regime, and they will probably do it within a month. It is quite possible that they will do so with Italian help. President Obama has fervently wished for America to be just one of the boys; in the end, this may be a case of wishing for something so much that you get it. America has abrogated the role of global marshal that it assumed after World War II. Every posse needs a Marshal to lead it. The French will likely pick up the tin star they found lying in the street of the global village. [...]

None of this is to say that the French may not be walking into a situation similar to that we faced in 2004-6 in Iraq when Iraqi factions fought over the remains of their country and the more radical factions turned on their would-be Coalition Force liberators. Libya will likely be a mess for years to come. However, I am suggesting that the U.S. will not be calling the shots if the French intervene decisively, and we should think about if that is what we really want. [emphasis added]

A situation in which France, rather than the United States, takes the lead in managing a potentially chaotic, conflict riddled, post-regime-change environment in a foreign country (that we remain largely ignorant of on a granular level) sounds like something that we should not only “want,” but strongly encourage.  While ceding the lead role does have its drawbacks in terms of prerogatives and priorities, we quite simply do not have the resources to lead the “posse” in every global conflict that we choose to intervene in – especially at a time when we are already leading the pack in two other theaters.

(cross-posted at Democracy Arsenal)

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I watched the 60 Minutes piece on Greg Mortenson with disappointment. If you haven’t heard of Greg Mortenson, he is a humanitarian that has built more than 100 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as the best-selling author of Three Cups of Tea (co-written with Oliver David Relin). Three Cups [...]]]> by Benjamin Orbach

I watched the 60 Minutes piece on Greg Mortenson with disappointment. If you haven’t heard of Greg Mortenson, he is a humanitarian that has built more than 100 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as the best-selling author of Three Cups of Tea (co-written with Oliver David Relin). Three Cups of Tea is the inspirational story of Mortenson’s personal journey from a lost K2 mountain climber to the founder of the Central Asia Institute, an organization devoted to children’s education, primarily girls, in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

If you haven’t watched the 60 Minutes  piece, Mortenson is accused of embellishing his personal story and of his mismanagement of the Central Asia Institute. He has offered a partial response to the accusations – none of which are criminal – and I hope that he clarifies further the points that have been raised.

In the interim, I have two thoughts on the subject. First, by the impact of his actions, Greg Mortenson remains a hero. He built mountains from sand both on an individual and organizational level. He went from sleeping in his car to building more than 100 schools, many of them for girls, in villages in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Without his personal efforts and investment, there are thousands of young women who never would have had the opportunity for an education. There are about double that number of parents who have been able to see their children take a path to opportunity. In the end, that impact, and the future accomplishments of those children as productive citizens are more important to Mortenson’s legacy as a person and activist than the details of his personal narrative.

Second, however this story unfolds, Greg Mortenson’s actions were an extraordinary service to the American public.  His personal narrative, even if it turns out to be flawed, introduced millions of Americans to the concept of forming people-to-people partnerships to support the human development needs of local leaders and citizens. These partnerships and their impact are unquestionably in our country’s national interest, both at home and abroad. Three Cups of Tea ruled the bestseller lists at a time of acute disinterest and despair with the war and people of Afghanistan. The story that Mortenson and Oliver David Relin introduced to the world showed Americans the complexities, humanity, and needs of a people who were stereotyped en mass for harboring terrorists and abusing women.

Whether it is in Pakistan, Palestine, or Peru, if you have worked in development in a marginalized community, you understand the human element of it all – that parents want the same things for their children around the world and that young people aspire to dreams of their own success and normalcy if given the chance. Through his story, Mortenson took American readers – from Oprah book clubbers to servicemen about to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq – to a place of understanding that we are dealing with people in our foreign policies, not just faceless security issues. And from that, he inspired people to act – to donate and to serve. In this moment of national apathy, that is admirable.

Frequently, when I’m speaking about America’s Unofficial Ambassadors, I mention Greg Mortenson, his achievements, and comment that very few of us are going to devote our lives to building people-to-people partnerships in development in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Yet, many if not all of us are able to engage in some type of short-term volunteer service for a week or a month or even a year in the Muslim World, as an English teacher in Indonesia perhaps or as a public health volunteer in Senegal. Mortenson is still hero. His actions have made the world a better place; he has mobilized tens of thousands of people to support the dreams of strangers in need. He understands that those dreams intersect with our American aspirations, and he educated people about that connection. None of us are perfect, and I’ll continue to cite Greg Mortenson as one of America’s fine Unofficial Ambassadors.

Benjamin Orbach is the Director of the America’s Unofficial Ambassadors initiative at Creative Learning and the author of Live from Jordan: Letters Home from My Journey through the Middle East.

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When I lived in Cairo in 2003, I was in on the ground floor of the protests in Liberation Square at the start of Iraq War. I took pictures, I wrote an oped, and there is a chapter in Live from Jordan about the event. The security forces roughed [...]]]> Guest Post by Benjamin Orbach

When I lived in Cairo in 2003, I was in on the ground floor of the protests in Liberation Square at the start of Iraq War. I took pictures, I wrote an oped, and there is a chapter in Live from Jordan about the event. The security forces roughed up some protestors that day, but the whole thing was a sham. Egyptians were upset about the war, but no one cared enough to stop working, to stop eating at McDonalds, or really to alter their lives in any meaningful way.

The opposite is true in Egypt, today. Tunisians showed Egyptians what was possible in 2011, and Egyptians, long the standard-bearer of the Arab World in so many ways, couldn’t bear to live with the shame of the Mubarak regime any longer. Hundreds of thousands of people, if not a couple million people, have taken their lives into their hands to challenge the repressive authority.

At this point in the standoff, it is clear that the regime has made its internal deals and that succession has passed over Mubarak’s son. The military – Egypt’s strongest institution – would have been shamed by the father passing the baton to his son. Egyptians are proud of their history and the turning of their faux-Republic into a Syrian-styled family business would not have been acceptable. This democratic moment preempted that discomfort for the military, and its mission is accomplished. While not securing his son’s throne must surely have been a bitter pill for Mubarak, his redline is undoubtedly a refusal to die in exile as a banished villain, to be sent away like a 21^st Century version of King Farouk.  The regime has dug in, and the brass has little stake in a continued confrontation.

At the same time, these Egyptian everyday heroes have lived a dream this past week. They’ve come together in the power of numbers, bound by common frustrations and propelled by common hopes. When the protests first began, they never could have hoped to gather this type of lasting attention and to win back such dignity. They’ve been kicked for years and they finally stood up and said no more. Their movement has morphed, though, from making a show of pride to changing the reality of their country and the way their government operates.

Egyptians are on the cusp of changing the very premise of what is possible. That’s intoxicating. It is light and fresh air in a teeming, dark basement. This isn’t regime change from the turret of an American tank; rather it could be a renaissance of Egyptians’ own creation.

But it is a fine line between dreams and nightmares. Together, Egyptian demonstrators are safe. Alone, they will suffer. If the plain-clothes thugs who are beating protestors at this very moment succeed in clearing Liberation Square without a formal political transition in place, then it will all end. There will be no promise of that better tomorrow. Instead, there will be the lurking fear of the knock on the door. Bloggers, Facebook posters, and photographed protestors – they’ll all be vulnerable without the strength of numbers.

Egypt has one of the most notorious prison systems in the Arab World. Many contend that the ideology of al Qaeda was spawned in Egypt’s prisons, where Islamist dissidents were tortured and radicalized further. That style of abuse is what falling short of the dream means.

Yesterday, I co-wrote an oped about this moment as an opportunity for Israelis, about how those who live in a democracy need to support those who are willing to die for democracy. This isn’t just about Israelis, though; it is about us as Americans. There is no question that Egypt is an integral strategic partner to the United States, and foreign policy is based upon interests, not sentimentality. As long as Egyptians were content to go about their everyday lives and not to seek change – as was the case in 2003 – then I didn’t have much of a problem with the practicalities of having to deal with a dictator. But people are dying in the streets to remove that dictator, and journalists are being beaten and arrested to clear the scene of witnesses.

Tomorrow, after Friday prayer, will be a big day. Without the protection of the White House, I don’t think the pro-democracy forces will tip the balance.

There are times when we have to ask what side of history do we want to be on? Supporting human rights and governing democratically are pillars of the identity we espouse as a country. You can argue that we risk strategic interests and stability as related to Iraq, the Suez Canal, and Israel by siding with democratic change in this case. I argue that we risk losing the very character of who we are, any claim to American exceptionalism, if we don’t support our friends who are risking their lives, en masse, for their rights.

To live in a democracy is a privilege and a responsibility. As citizens, we have a duty to support others who are actively struggling for that same privilege and responsibility. Contact the White House, post on Facebook, stop what you are doing for five minutes, and do something to support the citizens of Egypt.

Benjamin Orbach is the author of Live from Jordan and the Director of the America’s Unofficial Ambassadors initiative at Creative Learning.

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It is hard to believe that Israelis are watching the scenes from Cairo with anything but dread. Yet, the Arab Awakening has presented Israelis with an opportunity to secure their place in the Middle East.

The Arab-Israeli conflict has led many Israelis to believe that armed [...]]]> Guest Post by Benjamin Orbach & Samir I Toubassy

It is hard to believe that Israelis are watching the scenes from Cairo with anything but dread. Yet, the Arab Awakening has presented Israelis with an opportunity to secure their place in the Middle East.

The Arab-Israeli conflict has led many Israelis to believe that armed struggle for their existence is an enduring fact of life. Israel’s wars have evolved from existential to territorial over the last sixty years, but competing narratives and the experience of Jewish history have created a siege mindset. Israel’s peace with Egypt has solidified its security and contributed to an economic boon, but it has not relieved that siege mentality. Though dubbed the “cold peace,” peace with Egypt has enabled Israel to face threats to the north and to curtail weapons smuggling into Gaza. The uncertainty in Egypt is bound to send tremors through Israel.

For decades, America has looked at the governments of the Arab World and seen stability. There have been flare-ups in the form of intifadas and bread riots, but the Arab World’s 20^th Century dictators have enabled access to oil and passage through Suez. They have spoken of peace and cooperated on terrorism, all the while keeping the lid on tight at home. The 9/11 attack was like the first scents of a gas leak; we saw that regimes’ degradation of citizens’ rights, opportunities, and dignity would eventually lead to an explosion.

That explosion occurred in Tunisia and has turned into a mushroom cloud in Egypt. It is inevitable that the mushroom cloud will drive Mubarak from office if not today, than on a soon to come tomorrow. In Damascus, Sanaa, and Amman, people are watching and waiting – there is no tourniquet for the Internet.

The new order that is being tweeted from North Africa is definitive in what it is against – human rights transgressions, corruption, and dictators’ security forces – but not yet clear on the issues that it will coalesce around. It is easier to oppose something than to build it, and today’s protestors will spend years figuring out how they want to build.

As the Arab World works through these issues, where does that leave Israel, its long time foil?

Israel, too, bought into the logic of a pharaoh and his subjects. Israel has claimed the mantle of the region’s lone democracy for decades, but it has done little to speak for the civic and human rights of its neighbors. Rather, Israel has sought peace agreements with its neighbors’ rulers, rulers who would dictate to their people the terms of an Arab-Israeli co-existence.

As the status quo in the Middle East begins to fracture, there is an opportunity for Israel to change its approach. Certainly peace agreements have not lost their value – if there was ever a region that needed to spend more on education and employment and less on defense, it is the Middle East and North Africa. However, Arab democracies are not going to normalize relations with Israel as long as Israel occupies Palestinian lands, enacts human rights abuses, and in effect, sides with Hosni Mubarak over the Egyptian people.

Israelis should seize upon the potential of democratic systems and aspirations to build peace. They should ask themselves whether the occupation of the West Bank is consistent with the principles of the democratic state they have strived so hard to build. The threat of the future is not a land invasion from Iraq that will be slowed by settlement and military outposts, but the human rights hurricane that will come from within, that has brought together one million Egyptians. Israel will face a Mubarak-like quandary when (not if) Palestinians protest non-violently for their own state or for Israeli citizenship. As long as suicide bombers stay home, who believes that South American and European countries won’t recognize the state of Palestine, and the Netanyahu Government won’t be the casualty of this new order? 

This is a watershed democratic moment and the time for Israelis to demonstrate their credentials.  With placards that call for human rights in Cairo, Beirut, and Ramallah, they should gather in the hundreds of thousands in Rabin Square. They should advocate for a “just peace,” i.e. a peace that works for both parties and not a signed surrender that legitimizes the largest land grab.

Israelis should understand, that as citizens of a democracy, their place in the Middle East is with the demonstrators in Cairo, not the crumbling authoritarian order. Those Egyptians aren’t killers who want to throw them into the Mediterranean. They are oppressed citizens. They want the kind of dignity and a relationship of equals that Israelis expect from their government.

A month ago, Hosni Mubarak was securing his son’s succession. Today, he is figuring out how to live out his last years, in freedom, in Egypt. Israel is the strongest country in the Middle East. From a position of strength, it can cast its lot with the people of its region and take a significant step towards building peace. Things can change quickly; Israelis shouldn’t miss the Mubarak moment.

Benjamin Orbach is the author of Live from Jordan, and the Director of the America’s Unofficial Ambassadors initiative at Creative Learning. Samir I Toubassy is a 2010 Senior Fellow at the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard University.

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At the time, there was some discussion of the purpose of the blockade: with certain Israeli [...]]]> Wikileaks has shed some light on the controversial blockade of Gaza, a subject that recveived rare (and fleeting) attention in US media when a flotilla of aid to that besieged region was attacked by Israeli soldiers in the Spring/Summer of 2010.

At the time, there was some discussion of the purpose of the blockade: with certain Israeli factions claiming the blockade was meant to prevent arms shipments to Gaza, while most aid groups and human rights organizations pointed to the broad, wide-ranging nature of the items on the blockade list as evidence of an intent to collectively punish the residents of Gaza by choking off economic activity and denying other vital materials.

Evidence unearthed by WikiLeaks seems to vindicate the latter view:

According to a leaked United States diplomatic cable sent to Washington from the American embassy in Tel Aviv in late 2008, Israeli officials told American diplomats “on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge.”

The cable, headlined, “Cashless in Gaza,” was published on the Web site of the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten on Wednesday. Aftenposten announced recently that it now has access to the entire trove of 250,000 leaked communiques obtained by WikiLeaks.

The cable also delves into some of the more complex financial aspects of Israel’s embargo of Gaza, including the fact that Israeli shekel continued to be used as the currency of the territory, even after it was taken over by the Islamist Hamas movement.

One section of the report explained that while the government of Israel “believes that maintaining the shekel as the currency of the Palestinian Territories is in Israel’s interests, it treats decisions regarding the amount of shekels in circulation in Gaza as a security matter.”

This blockade continues with only slight modifications. It remains a cruel form of collective punishment.

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-Fyodor Dostoevsky

Glenn Greenwald has unearthed some disturbing accounts of the five month (and counting) detention of Army Private Bradley Manning, the suspect accused of leaking classified material to WikiLeaks. Again, he is a suspect who is accused of a crime:

In this post, Bady discusses the normalization of the war footing that took hold on [...]]]> One of the fortunate byproducts of the most recent wave of WikiLeaks revelations was that I came across Aaron Bady’s thought-provoking blog – this due to the fact that a few of his eloquent examinations of the WikiLeaks mission were widely cited.

In this post, Bady discusses the normalization of the war footing that took hold on a permanent basis during the Cold War and has been difficult to shake ever since. This under siege posture has perverted several aspects of our society from, as relevant to the WikiLeaks debate, the tendency to overclassify material and rely ever more on secrecy to shield the actions of government (even the mundane or rightfully public), to budgetary imbalances due to the enormous costs of maintaining a standing army, as secured and defended by an extremely powerful Military-Industrial-Congressional-Complex.

As Bady points out, and as I have argued previously, maintaining a standing army wasn’t always the norm in the United States – in fact, it was a possibility that caused great consternation for many of the nation’s founders:

It can be difficult to get your head around how perverse this transformation has been, in the grand constitutional scheme of things. But it is. I’ve been reading Edmund Morris’ Colonel Roosevelt, and one of the naggingly strange things that strikes you in the lead up to WWI is how relentlessly pacifist* the USA was (at least until Wilson’s decision to enter the conflict)…

This is a very simplified version of a complicated story, of course, but taking an impressionistic Roosevelt-shaped snapshot of 1915 and comparing it to the present at least allows us to get a sense for how dramatically and unrecognizably different this nation has become, how far our daily political practice has moved from the presumptions and principles that inform its constitutional framework. People who claim to be “originalists” without expressing concern about the effect of a standing army on democracy are either disingenuous or uninformed, or both.

You probably already knew that. But one of the things people tend not to realize is that the founders weren’t just worried about standing armies because they felt like a powerful army would make civilian rule impossible (though certainly this was part of it). They also worried — and the irony of this kills me — that a standing army would be dangerous to a democracy because it would produce and necessitate Big Government. A permanent army requires a permanent transformation of the state: while a civilian militia could be mobilized in times of need, they believed* that the good thing about such a defense structure was precisely that it wouldn’t require the kind of permanent tax structure that a permanent standing army does. And the founders were not a little bit concerned about taxation, remember?

Which is why, for example, military appropriations were given a particular, special little feature in the constitution: unlike all other forms of appropriation, army funding was only to last two years. Which meant that every two years, when the nation direct-elected an entire new House of Representatives (and remember, the direct-elected two-year-term-serving ”the People’s House” was to be a populist counterbalance to the aristocratic, appointed-for-six-years Senate), the populist House would have to actively choose to re-appropriate for the Army.  If the burden had instead been placed on congress to repeal the army’s appropriation, a single element (say, an aristocratic senate) would be able to prevent such action from being taken. But the founders eventually settled on a design that was aimed to prevent exactly that scenario: by weighting the inertia of the system against a standing army — making it automatically expire every two years — the people were intended to have as direct a check on the military’s financial existence as possible, precisely because of the anti-democratic effect that a standing army was seen to have.

Indeed, our military posture does require big government, and the spending necessitated thereby has greatly inflated our levels of debt (and perpetual deficit spending).  However, few of the so-called small government advocates and deficit hawks, whether donning tri-corner hats in protest or not, turn to the biggest of all government programs when sharpening the trimming shears.  

As I’ve argued previously, it would be next to impossible to turn back the clock to the state militia structure that dominated prior to World War I, and it is not even clear that such a move – were it possible – would be prudent. Similarly, the level of classification and secrecy in a modern setting, with the increase in volume of government documents and advances in technolgoy, is going to be, rightly, farther reaching than the state of affairs that predominated centuries ago.  However, some semblance of balance must be restored, more structural obstacles erected and vigilance against overreach re-animated.    

* The author, rightly, concedes in comments that the term “pacifist” is qualified, and that its use in the present context elides the significant military activity of the United States in the Western Hemisphere prior to WWI including, without limitation, within our present day borders.

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3. Amid Concrete and Clay, and General Decay

Two Nokia phones, $150 each, two HP printers, $300 each, plus shipping, transportation and other miscellaneous expenses add up to a total bill of $4,200. [...]]]> Daveed Gartenstein Ross has written an insightful piece outlining the latest trend in al-Qaeda’s ever-evolving choice of tactics in its economic war against the United States and other Western powers:

Two Nokia phones, $150 each, two HP printers, $300 each, plus shipping, transportation and other miscellaneous expenses add up to a total bill of $4,200. That is all what Operation Hemorrhage cost us… On the other hand this supposedly ‘foiled plot’, as some of our enemies would like to call [it], will without a doubt cost America and other Western countries billions of dollars in new security measures.”

Thus begins the lead article in the latest issue of Inspire, the English-language online magazine produced by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the jihadi group’s Yemen branch, which was released Saturday. The cover features a photo of a UPS plane and the striking headline: “$4,200.” It is referring to the recent cartridge-bomb plot, and specifically the great disparity between the cost of executing a terrorist attack and the cost to Western countries of defending against asymmetric warfare — costs now numbering in the billions of dollars a year and climbing. The magazine warns that future attacks will be “smaller, but more frequent” — an approach that “some may refer to as the strategy of a thousand cuts.”

The slick packaging may be new, but al Qaeda’s emphasis on bleeding the U.S. economy is not. From Osama bin Laden’s earliest declaration of war against America, al Qaeda has linked its attacks to the U.S. economy. He and other salafi jihadi thinkers had long believed that economic power was the key to America’s military might; they thus saw weakening Western economies as their path to victory.

As Gartenstein-Ross tells it, al-Qaeda has gradually refined its strategy from initially focusing on economically vital targets, to attempting to draw the US into protracted and costly wars (there are currently two of those ongoing), to targeting oil production and, now, to a flurry of smaller attacks that, even when “unsuccessful”, inspire a massive overreaction in terms of the inevitable security response (both in terms of interdicting the actual attempted attack, and in the countermeasures adopted in the distant aftermath).

Considering the crescendo of opposition to the new, ever-more-invasive airport security measures that, in many ways, are a response to the “failed” underwear bomber, Gartenstein-Ross’s timing is impeccable.  His piece is a reminder of the urgent need to shift away from alarmist overreactions to terrorism in both the domestic and foreign theaters.

Domestically, we need to come to understand that reacting to the details of the most recent failed attempt will leave us spending billions pointlessly fighting the last war, so to speak.  That is not to say that there should not be some hardening of targets but we need to be more realistic, and ever-vigilant that our responses are not taken to such extremes that we cede al-Qaeda a series of victories every time they make any old slapdash attempt at an attack that has some at least some novel features.

For example, in reaction to a failed (and scientifically implausible) plot to mix liquid explosives on a plane, we required all carry on liquids to be in containers of a certain size because…what exactly?  On the one hand, mixing liquid elements to create a bomb in an airplane bathroom is exceedingly difficult, calling into question the need for stringent restrictions.  On the other hand, if the near-impossible feat can be achieved, then mandating that the liquids that eventually comprise the explosive be in 100ml bottles will be of little solace to the passengers on board (even if, due to size limitations, multiple terrorists will be needed to carry the smaller containers on board). 

In the foreign theater, the United States must shift away from an active, interventionist approach.  Instead, what we need is a posture akin to the approach recommended by George Kennan during the Cold War, call it Containment 2.0.  Parker Potter explains some of the contours:

At its best, it is a practical idea. It holds that, without exhausting or overextending ourselves, we can bound a threat and curtail its ability to operate, then wait patiently for it to wither into an irrelevance or nuisance. It works well with a self-defeating enemy, be it the Soviet Union with its doomed Marxist-Leninist system and imperial overstretch, or al-Qaida, a movement that habitually alienates the very Muslims it claims to represent. Containment is not only about outlasting the enemy, but about keeping costs down and avoiding self-defeating behaviour. [...]

It’s time for restraint over activism, for power conservation over its expenditure, for doing no harm over doing good. It means combating terrorism with ordinary police work and intelligence sharing and calibrated disruption. We should focus our military most on what it does most effectively: secure our territory and sea lanes, deter other states and exist as a wise insurance policy for emergencies. Let’s try that for the next 10 years, and see where it takes us.

It also means being restrained in how we think. The world may be chaotic. But we are part of that chaos. Except in atypical circumstances, the military is not a surgical tool of political engineering, but a bludgeon wielded by specialists in violence. We therefore don’t have the power to alter the political condition of others at our own timetable. 

Robert Wright* further expands on the concept, driving home the point that al-Qaeda’s ideology/worldview is self-limiting, and will eventually die out of its own accord – just like Communism.  However, whereas there was at least some arguable virtue in taking a more active role in competing with the USSR on a global scale (by requiring the USSR to compete with us, and the spend the money to do it, we hastened their economic collapse), when confronting non-state actors in such a way, the economic leverage has shifted. 

Rather than hastening the demise of the non-state actor by forcing them to keep up with our actions, their costs remainminimal while we are left spending multiple trillions of dollars chasing shadows, whacking moles, inspecting zip-lock bags of shampoo and installing backscatter imagers to scan 3 year old children on airport security lines. 

That is, when they are not being groped by TSA inspectors instead.

(*Full Disclosure: Robert Wright is my boss of sorts with respect to The Progressive Realist website that I edit)

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3. If Bin Laden Said, “Jump” Would You Ask, “How High”?

For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end [...]]]> If there was any one incident that could serve as a microcosm of our increasingly muddled, aimless and confused mission in Afghanistan, this would deserve serious consideration: 

For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all.

In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

Joshua Foust is appropriately harsh:

Think about this for a moment: a man whose identity no one was able to verify was flown, by NATO, for face-to-face meetings with high-ranking members of the coalition (though Karzai denies having met Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, the impersonated Taliban leader in question). We don’t know what his intentions were, nor do we know what information he may have stolen for whatever his ultimate goals are. We can speculate all we want about what really happened: the impostor was out to grab cash (“we gave him a lot of money,” one U.S. official lamented), he was an ISI agent sent to penetrate the negotiations process, and so on. But no matter how we spin it, this is hugely embarrassing for ISAF, for the war, and for any prospects of ending it soon.

Mullah Omar, who leads one group of Taliban fighters based in Quetta, has insisted from the beginning that the [widely reported] talks last month were not taking place. At the time, Filkins had written that Omar was being “explicitly being cut out” of the talks. Now, it seems that is because the talks weren’t really occurring. [...]

But ISAF and Afghan officials spun the talksas evidence that the new, aggressive stance taken by General Petraeus, focused on killing mid-level commanders to ‘force’ the Taliban to the negotiating table, was working. They were partially right: something had changed. But it wasn’t the effectiveness of their tactics or strategy. Instead, this episode confirms what many Afghanistan watchers have long feared: the leadership of ISAF doesn’t seem to have any idea what it’s doing, who it’s talking to, and (probably) who it is really killing.

Regarding that last point, Steve Hynd applies some gallows humor to reveal the very real limitations we face in that theater, and the tragic and likely counterproductive outcomes that result:

Can’t ID a Talib leader across a table – but via a drone lens from 1000s of miles? No problem! 

There has been a concerted effort of late to shift the narrative on the Afghanistan war from quagmire to discernible progress, from stalemate to progress, and this PR campaign is in the service of extending the war indefinitely (with some factions attempting to push the aspirational date to commence withdrawal from 2011 to 2014).  Alex Strick van Lischoten points out, however, that there is little empirical basis to justify this optimism and, in some cases, the assertions seem little more than wishful thinking and self-delusion masquerading as fact. 

There’s a lot of that going around these days.

[UPDATE: Michael Cohen has a less snarky take, laying down some solid ideas to begin disengagement in earnest.]

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Rubio, the son of refugees from Cuba, promised in his moving victory speech never to forget the exile community he comes from. That probably means that any pro-Castro measure is going to need 60 votes [...]]]> Jackson Diehl discusses some of the implications for US foreign policy that resulted from the GOP’s recent gains in Congress:

Rubio, the son of refugees from Cuba, promised in his moving victory speech never to forget the exile community he comes from. That probably means that any pro-Castro measure is going to need 60 votes to pass the U.S. Senate.

More importantly, the House Foreign Affairs Committee under Republican rule is likely to be chaired by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a champion of Cuban human rights who was born in Havana. The outgoing chairman, Democrat Howard Berman, decided in September to put off a vote on the bill lifting the travel ban. Under Ros-Lehtinen’s leadership, it will almost certainly be buried for good.

The bad news for the Latin left doesn’t end there. Ros-Lehtinen has been an outspoken critic of Venezuelan caudillo Hugo Chavez and allies like Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega and Bolivia’s Evo Morales.

As you can tell from the language used (“pro-Castro measure”??), Diehl thinks this is a good thing. However, Daniel Larison is making much more sense:

So our ridiculous, outdated Cuba policy has just won a new lease on life, and we will have a House Foreign Affairs chair who is unduly attentive to some of the least important countries on the planet. Obviously, Diehl thinks is good news, but other than perpetuating a failed embargo out of fifty-year-old spite and complaining about the conduct of unimportant governments what will any of this accomplish? [...]

Diehl focuses on Chavez and Castro in his post because they are a) dramatic failures and b) growing weaker daily, but that is why it makes no sense to think of an ease on the U.S. travel ban as a “recharge” for the Castro regime. American tourists in Cuba might bring a much-needed infusion of cash for the moment, but the more that America opens up Cuba to trade and travel the sooner that regime will vanish. Dictatorships can usually hang on to power in impoverished countries much more easily than they can in prospering ones. Castro’s most ferocious opponents here in the U.S. keep doing what they can to help keep Cuba poor and Castro in power. Castro’s government is not important, except to the Cuban people, and if it is wobbling this would be as good a time as any to undermine it with an infusion of tourists and investors.

What Diehl doesn’t seem to appreciate is that the “much-celebrated surge of the Latin left” (who has been celebrating it aside from a few actors?) has partly been a long backlash against U.S. influence and interference in the region

Just as constant saber rattling and threats of war with Iran empowers the hardliners that we are, ostensibly, seeking to weaken, so too do the confrontational policies that Diehl would count as “anti-Castro” actually achieve the opposite result of what is intended.  Nor does it make any principled sense to have warm relations with Communist regimes in China and Vietnam, while applying a glaring double standard to Cuba.

This is also why the ascendance of hardliners like Rubio and Ros-Lehtinen (who actually called for the assassination of Castro) might not be such “bad news” for the rest of the Latin American Left.  Heavy-handed interference hasn’t won us many friends in the past, but it has provided sustenance to those political actors that have taken an adversarial position.

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1. The Iranian Meaning of Hizbullah
2. China in Latin America
3. Squalor Victoria

Ultimately, Obama opted for an amalgamation of [...]]]> In March of 2009, when the Obama administration was conducting a strategic review to determine the way forward in Afghanistan, the primary tension was between engaging in a long term, multi-decade COIN campaign, or beginning the disengagement and reconciliation process – which would, itself, take several years to play out.

Ultimately, Obama opted for an amalgamation of the two: increasing troop levels again (on top of an earlier increase), giving General Stanley McChrystal free reign to implement COIN tactics, but also setting an aspirational timeline for the commencement of withdrawal, and emphasizing the fact that the mission was not open-ended.

One read of the Obama administration’s approach was that the surge of troops, and uptick in operations, was meant to shift momentum, and pressure the Taliban to seek reconciliation on terms more favorable to the coalition and Afghan government – to tilt the battlefield in our favor so that the Taliban were not negotiating from a position of strength (or refusing to negotiate altogether).

Although preferable to engaging in an extended COIN campaign, there have been numerous problems with this hybrid approach (more on those below), and the early results are not encouraging.  Anand Gopal reports:

The US’ initial strategy was to talk and shoot—step up raids and targeted killings against insurgent commanders, while pressuring (or enticing) them to quit the fight. While officials spoke often about reconciliation, their terms—abandon the armed opposition and recognize the Afghan government and constitution—were those of surrender, the type a victor imposes on the vanquished. Talks with senior leaders (except when discussing a possible surrender) were strictly ruled out, and as recently as this summer the US was placing insurgent leaders known to have communicated with the Kabul government on terror black lists. Under the US plan, a more broad-based reconciliation process, involving the Taleban as a whole, as well as other sectors of society, would have to wait until the US military could recapture momentum on the battlefield.

But ten months into the new US approach to Afghanistan, shifting momentum has not come. Instead, 2010 is the bloodiest year on record for this war, with insurgent-initiated attacks through the first half of this year up by 60 per cent compared to last year, according to one tally; the Taleban have been able to replace commanders as quickly as they are killed; the reach of the insurgency and the area under their control is at its height; and showcase offensives meant to mark progress, like Marja, have failed.

One of the problems with this strategy is the fact that an increase in military activity (kinetic operations) can create more enemies in the long run through the inevitable killing of innocent civilians and non-combatants.  As Matt Waldman explains in a thoughtful report based on interviews with Taliban/insurgent leaders:

Interviews suggest that the longer the conflict has gone on, the greater the significance and prevalence of this motivation [retaliation against coalition forces for military aggression]. One southern commander explained how an attack by foreign forces incited him to fight:

I am a landowner and was working on the land. I was not a Talib. But some years ago American special forces came and entered my home without my permission at night and killed my two sons, my father, and two uncles without any reason. Another time they did the same thing in another village in my district. When I saw their acts and knew they came only to kill us, not to help, I started fighting against them. They forced me to fight them and now I will continue to fight them so long as they are in Afghanistan.14

Another commander argued that “if international forces keep bombing and killing civilians not only the Taliban but also all the rest of the nation will fight them.”

In addition to swelling the ranks of insurgents through imprecise military action, intensifying the conflict serves to breed mistrust between the various factions that will, eventually, be expected to cease fighting, disarm and broach a peace agreement.  Waldman again:

Meanwhile, the short-term effect of the coalition’s approach is to intensify the conflict and reinforce mistrust. As a southern commander asked: “Why is the West pouring millions of dollars into reconciliation and then trying to kill us with big operations like Marja?”

The climate has grown so toxic that Waldman sets forth a series of trust building measures that he views as necessary pre-requisites to even commencing earnest negotiations.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Scahill highlights a related phenomenon in a recent piece in The Nation, focusing instead on the impact of special forces raids conducted against insurgent elements that themselves were pursuing reconciliation through official Afghan government channels:

On March 26, 2009, Mullah Sahib Jan, a militant Taliban imam from the Mohammed Agha district in Afghanistan’s Logar province, walked into the office of the Independent National Reconciliation Commission, the main body encouraging the Taliban to lay down their weapons and work with the government. He was escorting fifty Taliban fighters who, he said, had committed to ending their fight against the Afghan government and entering the process of integration. To the government, Sahib Jan was a shining example of how reconciliation with the Taliban is supposed to work. But less than a year later, the former militant’s story would stand as a devastating symbol of how the actions of US Special Operations Forces are sabotaging the very strategy for reaching a political settlement that US officials claim to support. [...]

“He was preaching to the Taliban, encouraging them to come to the government, telling the fighters there were a lot of benefits to laying down their arms,” says Mohammed Anwar, director of Logar’s reconciliation commission and an adviser to a local tribal council. Council officials credit Sahib Jan with putting Taliban fighters on the road to reconciliation.

But on the morning of January 14, Sahib Jan’s bullet-riddled body lay on the ground outside his family’s mud-brick compound in Logar’s Safed Sang village. According to local officials and his family, he was killed in a night raid by US Special Operations Forces…

Officials at the reconciliation office point to several night raids over the past year, which they say targeted former Taliban who entered the process of reconciliation, as devastating to their work.

While there is some doubt as to how senior a Taliban leader Sahib Jan was, there is increasing concern that the campaign of picking off Taliban leaders is having a serious detrimental effect in terms of the eventual negotiation process.  While much of the Taliban movement has operated under a fairly cohesive hierarchical structure - with regional commanders/governors taking orders from the Quetta-based Shura (headed by Mullah Omar) – the recent assassinations have weakened the Quetta Shura’s control, which will make it more difficult for the Taliban side to successfully implement the terms of any peace deal.

On top of that, the younger Talibs that rise up to replace the slain commanders tend to be more radical, less interested in negotiation and more concerned with establishing their credentials on the battle field.  Scahill observes:

[Abdul Salam] Zaeef, the former senior Taliban official, who spent four years in Guantánamo prison, confirmed that the American targeted-killing campaign of Taliban leaders has been successful, but he believes that the strategy will backfire for both the US and Afghan governments. “If these people, important, known people, disappear from the [Taliban] movement, what will happen? Who should [the Afghan government] make a dialogue with?” he asks. “The fighting will not stop. I know the new generation is more extremist than the last generation. The new generation will not listen to anyone. This is a dangerous thing. It will be bad for the Americans, but it will be worse for the people of Afghanistan.”

Waldman echoes this point: 

Special forces operations against insurgent commanders might also be reducing the prospects for negotiations. As an insurgent political figure observed, “Foreign forces kill commanders but they are just replaced, and the one that replaces the commander often has more confidence and more enmity. The people coming up are more aggressive, vengeful, and also become angrier.”48

And, finally, Gopal recounts a troubling episode:

While leaders in Quetta have been probing the government side for some time, there does not appear to be any consensus yet on the approach. And as ISAF’s assassination campaign succeeds in killing or capturing field commanders, they are replaced by a new generation of younger recruits, who lack ties to the senior leadership. Recently in Paktia province Quetta sent an alim to reprimand a group of young commanders who were breaking the organization’s rules. But the defiant young commanders killed the cleric. While such incidents are still isolated, the danger is that as the Taleban undergo a massive demographic change in the coming years, this trend accelerates, and the ability of Quetta to enforce decisions on its rank-and-file will be diminished.

There are strong indications that the Obama administration’s half-and-half approach is resulting in the worst of both worlds: empowering the insurgency, poisonining the environment between Afghan government and insurgent forces while peeling off the more responsible and reliable leadership, but preparing for a withdrawal which, ultimately, will require negotiations under the aforementioned sub-optimal conditions.

It’s time to re-align a policy that currently works at cross-purposes, and put all our weight between attempting to establish conditions that are truly conducive to some sort of eventual negotiated settlement.  That entails, at the very least, pulling back on the throttle of increased military activities.

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