Month: March 2013
Do unto others…
As soon as the dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo was elevated to the prime ministerial level, the process began to proceed much more smoothly, until the current round. The slowdown is understandable given the complexity of the topic: dismantlement of illegal Serb institutions in northern Kosovo.
In an attempt to prevent full integration of the Serb-dominated municipalities into the institutional framework of Kosovo, the government in Belgrade is demanding the formation of an association of Serb municipalities in Kosovo. The problem is that Serbia insists that the association should have executive and legislative powers, including in the area of public security and rule of law. Priština has rejected the proposal as inconsistent with Kosovo’s Constitution. Washington also seems to oppose the idea, as the US Ambassador to Serbia, Michael Kirby, said that his country would not like to see another Republika Srpska in the Balkans.
The growing divergence between the two sides has prompted Brussels to intensify its diplomatic activity. For that reason, EU High Representative Catherine Ashton held a meeting with Serbia’s top figures – President Tomislav Nikolić, Prime Minister Ivica Dačić and his deputy Aleksandar Vučić.
Prior to the meeting, President Nikolić was pessimistic about the outcome, expressing concern that Serbia could be asked to concede more than it can accept. But when the meeting was over, he appeared in a quite different mood and told media that an agreement would likely be reached by the end of the month, as Priština agreed to make some concessions. Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi denied Nikolić’s words, demanding an explanation. This week Lady Ashton will visit Kosovo to try to sort things out.
Whatever Belgrade is hoping for, it is clear that no executive or legislative powers beyond the Ahtisaari agreement should be granted to the Serb municipalities. The most Serbia should get is more clarity on the implementation of Ahtissari in northern Kosovo, so that the government can save face in the eyes of more nationalist voters. The probabilty that premature elections will be held this autumn is growing with each passing day. Fortunately for the governing coalition, two thirds of people in Serbia accept that Kosovo is independent according to the latest opinion poll. For the record, the support to European integration is also on a steady decline for two years already.
Meanwhile, Albanians from the Preševo Valley in southern Serbia have requested an association of Albanian municipalities in Serbia along the lines of the one that Belgrade wants for Kosovo Serbs. Zoran Stanković, a Serbian government official, countered that the institution of such an association would violate Serbia’s Constitution. But so too would the Serb one in Kosovo, if it extends its functionality to police and courts.
Thaçi likewise faces elections, in 2014. He will need to save face as well. Even if the appeal for the Albanian association in Serbia was made only to put pressure on Belgrade to soften its own demands, the idea is worth considering. As Daniel Serwer wrote:
Whatever the Serbs of Kosovo gain in this negotiation should also be available to the Albanian-majority community of Presevo in southern Serbia.
Stability in the long-term requires reciprocity. It may be the only feasible solution.
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How serious is the cyber threat?
By now, Americans should be thoroughly acclimated to exaggerations of threat: the Soviet threat was inflated, the Iraq weapons of mass destruction threat was inflated, and the global terrorism threat has been inflated. Now we’ve got the Defense Science Board (DSB) and the Director of National Intelligence warning about cyber threats and the National Security Advisor fingering China. So how serious is the situation, and how far should we go in responding to it?
Like all the threats that came before it, cyber sounds serious enough: foreign powers could not only steal your emails and block your internet access but also disrupt power and water supplies, purloin valuable commercial secrets and render US military operations unusable, including our nuclear forces. If you believe the newspapers, we know the Chinese are already grabbing emails from organizations they are interested in as well as intercepting commercially important plans and data. We also know from the press that Israel and the US have used cyber attacks to slow the Iranian nuclear enrichment program, which suggests a capability to disrupt vital infrastructure. Iranians are smart–if we’ve done something to them, you can be pretty sure they are trying to figure out how to do it to us. The Chinese won’t be sitting on their laurels either.
The DSB gives this graphic description of the consequences of a full-spectrum cyber attack on US forces:
…attacks would be expected to include denial of service, data corruption, supply chain corruption, traitorous insiders, kinetic and related non-kinetic attacks at all altitudes from underwater to space. U.S. guns, missiles, and bombs may not fire, or may be directed against our own troops. Resupply, including food, water, ammunition, and fuel may not arrive when or where needed. Military Commanders may rapidly lose trust in the information and ability to control U.S. systems and forces. Once lost, that trust is very difficult to regain.
But that is only the military piece. A full-spectrum cyber attack would also target civilian systems:
The impact of a destructive cyber attack on the civilian population would be even greater with no electricity, money, communications, TV, radio, or fuel (electrically pumped). In a short time, food and medicine distribution systems would be ineffective; transportation would fail or become so chaotic as to be useless. Law enforcement, medical staff, and emergency personnel capabilities could be expected to be barely functional in the short term and dysfunctional over sustained periods. If the attack’s effects were reversible, damage could be limited to an impact equivalent to a power outage lasting a few days. If an attack’s effects cause physical damage to control systems, pumps, engines, generators, controllers, etc., the unavailability of parts and manufacturing capacity could mean months to years are required to rebuild and reestablish basic infrastructure operation.
While warning about the societal threats, the DSB focuses its recommendations on the Department of Defense. Most of what they say seems reasonable to me, though I confess I find it difficult to imagine–as the DSB does–the use of nuclear weapons to deter an “existential” cyber attack. We are going to threaten to nuke the nerds? We are not even likely to know which country they’ve launched their attack from.
The DSB proposes a three-tiered response to cyberthreats: defense, consequence management and deterrence. Here is where things get hard. Exaggeration of a threat is not in and of itself necessarily harmful, except insofar as it diverts resources from higher priorities. But it is arguable that we’ve done more damage to ourselves responding to threats than the threats themselves were likely to do. There aren’t too many people who think the Iraq war was worth it, since Saddam Hussein did not have nuclear weapons and we’ll be paying the trillion-dollar bill for decades. The Soviet space threat got us excited enough to go to the moon, but how much good has that done for people in Peoria?
It would be easy to do serious damage to the openness of the internet and the social media it has spawned by too much concern about cybersecurity. Lots of us are already struggling to remember all our damn passwords and usernames. Adding levels of unnecessary security will make our entire economy less efficient and the benefits of openness more difficult to obtain. I’m really not all that concerned with the Chinese reading my emails. In fact, it might make them a bit less competitive than they would otherwise be.
I don’t mean to pooh-pooh the threat. I only mean to urge us not to overreact. Wisdom, not panic, should be the mood. What really needs to be done to reduce the vulnerability of our vital infrastructure? What are the cheapest and best means? The DSB takes a “systems” approach. That seems to me right: rather than clamping down on everything, which is the natural bureaucratic reaction, lets look at what is most serious and deal with that first. If our nuclear deterrent has to be protected from cyberattack, I’m all for it. But let’s not treat my emails the same way.
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Listen to Karzai
The American press is so anxious to parse what Afghan President Karzai said Sunday, and to interpret it as anti-American, that it is hard to find an actual text. This is the closest I’ve found, not surprisingly from the Australians.
What is Karzai saying, and why? There are two basic assertions:
- Taliban attacks keep the US in Afghanistan;
- the US and the Taliban are concerting against the Afghan state.
The first is unquestionably true and often asserted by Americans. If the Taliban had stopped attacking, the US would have drawn down its forces in Afghanistan long ago. In the negotiations over the post-2014 security agreement, the Americans are arguing that a substantial residual presence is still needed after 2014. The reason for this is the inability of the Afghan forces to deal with the Taliban. As Karzai put it:
It is their slogan for 2014, scaring us that if the US is not here our people will be eliminated
The more the Taliban attacks, the more apparent it is that Afghan security forces cannot control the situation and that NATO (including US) forces are still needed.
The second is the more dubious proposition, but it is important to look at the situation from Karzai’s perspective. Karzai suspects the Americans are dealing with the Taliban outside Afghanistan, while the Taliban continue to refuse to deal with him. If his premise is true, it is not such a big leap for him to conclude that the Americans and Taliban are colluding against him.
So are the Americans and Taliban talking outside Afghanistan? Official Americans deny it. I’d be surprised if the denials are completely true. The CIA maintains a major role in the fighting in Afghanistan. All that kerfuffle over Afghan forces not under Kabul’s control has been denied by the US military. But I’d put good money on the existence of Afghan forces under CIA command.
Whatever its role inside Afghanistan, the CIA would be less than diligent if it were not also pursuing “reconciliation” with at least some Taliban. Inside Afghanistan this has likely become difficult. Karzai won’t allow it, because he is trying to get the Taliban to deal with him. So is it so unlikely that the CIA has contacts with the Taliban outside Afghanistan and is trying hard to win over at least some of them to giving up the fight? Of course this is not the same as colluding with the Taliban to undermine the Afghan state, but it might have that effect, or appear to have it from Karzai’s perspective.
In any event, listening to Karzai tells us something important about what is going on in Afghanistan: he and everyone else is adjusting to an Afghanistan where the Americans will be less important and the Taliban more important than for the last 12 years. He needs somehow either to weaken the Taliban (hence the accusation that they are conspiring with the Americans) or neutralize them (hence his own willingness to negotiate with them, even as he tries to block the Americans from doing so).
Of course we react badly to the assertion that we are conspiring with the Taliban against a government we have supported with more than 2000 lost lives (including at least a dozen CIA). But we also need to recognize what Karzai knows: we have fought this war in our own interest, mainly to counter al Qaeda rather than the Taliban. As we draw down, the temptation to make a separate peace with as many Taliban as possible will be great, but Karzai cannot be expected to share our pleasure in it if he is cut out of the deal.
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Peace Picks: March 11-15
A few fine events as spring begins to arrive in DC:
1. Understanding Who’s Who in Northern Mali: Terrorists, Secessionists, and Criminals
Date and Time: March 11, 4:30 to 6:00 pm
Location: Johns Hopkins SAIS – Rome Building
1619 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C.
Rome Auditorium
Speakers: Eamonn Gearon, Rida Lyammouri, Michael Shurkin, Larry Velte
Description: Events in northern Mali are complex and sometimes confusing. Attempts to oversimplify the situation have resulted in much imperfect analysis. A product of both the Arab Uprisings and security concerns unique to the Sahara and Sahelian Africa, the crisis in Mali has deep, local and regional roots.While al-Qaeda steals the headlines, it is vital that we develop a better understanding of all the groups in place, as well as the distinct nature of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Labelling all parties terrorists not only confuses the picture, but also prevents any chance to create a meaningful strategy for dealing with the multi-faceted issues, both now and in the long term. Terrorists, Secessionists and Criminals will present a guide to Who’s Who of the various groups and their leaders.
Register for this event here: http://dc.linktank.com/event/understanding_whos_who_in_northern_mali_terrorists_secessionist_and_criminals#.UT13BmBU05w
2. Rising Violence in Pakistan: A Complex Challenge
Date and Time: March 11, 5:00 to 8:30 pm
Location: East-West Center
1819 L St NW, Suite 600, Washington, D.C. 20036
Speakers: Najia Ashar, Nisar Ali Khokar, Abdul Ghani Kakar
Description: The story of violence and extremism in Pakistan is extremely complex, with many varying actors and motivations at play. Solutions are equally complicated and will not just involve combating militants in the frontier regions and Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
Please join the East-West Center in Washington for on-the-ground perspectives from Karachi, interior Sindh, and Balochistan. Veteran members of Pakistan’s media will provide unique insight and nuanced perspectives on the reports of increasing violence coming out of Pakistan; demonstrating the complexity of the challenges facing the new government that will come into office in Pakistan’s historic upcoming elections in May 2013.
Each panelist is a participant in the East-West Center’s United States-Pakistan Journalist Exchange Program and will describe the trends they are seeing as the country prepares for this important democratic political transition.
Register for this event here: http://www.eastwestcenter.org/events/rising-violence-in-pakistan-complex-challenge
3. The Rise and Decline of the American “Empire”: Power and its Limits in Comparative Perspective
Date and Time: March 12, 3:30 to 5 pm
Location: Woodrow Wilson Center
1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. 20004
Speaker: Geir Lundestad
Description: Geir Lundestad, director and professor of The Norwegian Nobel Institute will discuss his latest book, The Rise and Decline of the American ‘Empire’: Power and its Limits in Comparative Perspective.
The Rise and Decline of the American ‘Empire’ explores the rapidly growing literature on the rise and fall of the United States. Lundestad argues that after 1945 the US has definitely been the most dominant power the world has seen and that it has successfully met the challenges from, first, the Soviet Union and, then, Japan, and the European Union. Now, however, the United States is in decline: its vast military power is being challenged by asymmetrical wars, its economic growth is slow and its debt is rising rapidly, the political system is proving unable to meet these challenges in a satisfactory way. While the US is still likely to remain the world’s leading power for the foreseeable future, it is being challenged by China, particularly economically, and also by several other regional Great Powers.
Lundestad also explores the more theoretical question of what recent superpowers have been able to achieve and what they have not achieved. How could the United States be both the dominant power and at the same time suffer significant defeats? And how could the Soviet Union suddenly collapse?
No power has ever been omnipotent. It cannot control events all around the world. The Soviet Union suffered from imperial overstretch; the traditional colonial empires suffered from a growing lack of legitimacy at the international, national, and local levels. The United States has been able to maintain its alliance system, but only in a much reformed way. If a small power simply insists on pursuing its own very different policies, there is normally little the United States and other Great Powers will do. Military intervention is an option that can be used only rarely and most often with strikingly limited results.
Christian F. Ostermann, director of the Wilson Center’s History and Public Policy Program will chair the event.
Register for this event here: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/the-rise-and-decline-the-american-empire-power-and-its-limits-comparative-perspective
4. How America’s War on Terror became a Global War on Tribal Islam
Date and Time: March 14, 3:00 to 5:00 pm
Location: Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036
Falk Auditorium
Speakers: Martin S. Indyk, Akbar Ahmed, Sally Quinn, Mowahid Shah
Description: Along with the ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, America’s global war on terror has been characterized by the use of drones. In his new book, The Thistle and the Drone (Brookings, 2013), Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Akbar Ahmed-the Ibn Khaldun, chair of Islamic Studies at American University and former Pakistani high commissioner to the United Kingdom, examines the tribal societies on the borders between nations who are the drones’ primary victims. He provides a fresh and unprecedented paradigm for understanding the war on terror, based in the broken relationship between these tribal societies and their central governments. Beginning with Waziristan in Pakistan and expanding to similar tribal societies in Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe, Ahmed demonstrates how America’s war on terror became a global war on tribal Islam. This is the third volume in his trilogy about relations between the U.S. and the Muslim world after 9/11 that includes Journey into Islam (Brookings, 2007) and Journey into America (Brookings, 2010).
On March 14, the Brookings Press will host the launch of The Thistle and the Drone featuring a discussion on the regional, societal and humanitarian effects of the war on terrorism. Following Ahmed’s presentation, Mowahid Shah, a former Pakistani minister, and Sally Quinn, editor-in-chief of the Washington Post’s ‘On Faith,’ will join the conversation. Khalid Aziz, a leading official from Pakistan, formerly in charge of Waziristan, will offer recorded remarks via video.
Register for this event here: http://www.brookings.edu/events/2013/03/14-thistle-drone?rssid=UpcomingEvents&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BrookingsRSS%2Ftopfeeds%2FUpcomingEvents+%28Brookings+Upcoming+Events%29
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A counterweight to Western pessimism
I wasn’t planning to write about Kishore Mahbubani‘s talk at SAIS this week, but it was too good to pass up. He is the dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. He appeared at the Bernard L. Schwartz Forum on Constructive Capitalism (yes, that’s its name). He is on a book tour promoting The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World. This was a good performance: clear and interesting, but not altogether persuasive.
Only 12% of the world lives in the West, the dean began. The rest are now far more optimistic. They have reason to be. There is good news: interstate war and poverty are declining. Many of the millennium development goals will not be met, but poverty will be halved by 2015 and possibly eliminated by 2030 (one of the unpersuasive features of this presentation was its tendency to extrapolate present trends). Infant mortality is also declining and the middle class is burgeoning, especially in Asia and Africa. By 2030 it could be half of the word’s population. Six of the world’s fastest growing economies are African.
Why is this happening now? There is a global convergence on a “consensual” cluster of norms:
- Modern science, medicine and hygiene
- The spread of reason and logic
- Free market economics
- Social contracts requiring governments to serve citizens
- Multilateralism
But of course there are also problems. The big one is that the international system has not kept pace with changes. We still behave as if we are traveling in 193 separate and sovereign boats. In fact, we are now all in the same boat without a captain. The G20 worked well enough in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, but we are now back to business as usual, without global leadership. There is no way we can meet the challenges of global finance, global warming and pandemics without stronger multilateral institutions, which the West (read the United States) has intentionally kept weak.
This is a mistake. A rules-based international order is needed to constrain the next number 1 world power, which will be China. America’s refusal to even think about this prospect is disturbing. The Chinese economy will grow larger than the American one within a decade or so. There is no way to avoid this, but America’s leadership refuses to accept it.
National sovereignty as it existed from 1648 to 1945 is now outmoded. We need to stop strangling international organizations: the World Health Organization, which used to depend on assessed contributions for 75% of its budget, now depends on voluntary contributions for that percentage. The UN Security Council needs to be reformed with the addition of three new permanent members and the subtraction (if I got it right) of one European seat (by giving the EU a single representative in place of the UK and French seats); there will also be a need to add other seats for the rivals of the new permanent members and for smaller states.
In response to questions, Mahbubani suggested that growth of the middle class may lead to disruptive political change, including in China (where nationalism may also be an issue). But he doubted any fundamental failure in China, as it is run by capable technocrats (that struck me as the legacy of Lee Kuan Yew speaking). Aging and inequality are also growing issues. ASEAN is doing well, but northeastern Asia (China, Japan, the Koreas) lags in developing a political framework for cooperation. Education is the key to the middle class, not consumption. Development aid does not do much to help recipients and ends up mostly in the pockets of donor citizens.
This hopeful picture of the world from a thriving bit of Asia ignored a lot of current issues: Arab spring, Iran’s nuclear program, Islamic extremism and cyber warfare, just to mention a few. But it was a useful counterweight to Western pessimism, as Mahbubani intended.
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Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan post-2014
George Washington University’s Pakistani and Afghan Student Associations co-sponsored Thursday’s panel discussion of Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan post-2014, when NATO troop reduction spells uncertainty for Pakistan as well as for Afghanistan. The discussion focused mainly on the effect of the drawdown inside Pakistan.
Deteriorating security
Zubair Iqbal of the Middle East Institute projected that the Afghan government will have to decrease government spending as international funding declines, leading to increased unemployment, socio-economic strain and security challenges. Without foreign support, Afghan security forces will encounter difficulties in maintaining security in southern and eastern provinces, including Kandahar. Taliban resurgence in southeast Afghanistan would have serious consequences also for the Pakistani state, which faces its own terrorist insurgency.
What Jonathan Landay of McClatchy characterized as a “defacto economic and security partition” between northern and southeastern Afghanistan could trigger a significant influx of refugees into Pakistan, with serious economic, political and security implications. Adding a refugee crisis to the strain of fighting an insurgency will spread thin the reduced resources of a Pakistani government accustomed to receiving fat stacks of military aid. The upcoming civilian elections will make little difference in Pakistani policy towards Afghanistan. Military preferences will prevail, as they have in the past.
Threats to Pakistan
Pakistan fears US abandonment of the region like in 1989, when US interest declined following the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan. Decreased US interest in the region reduces Pakistan’s leverage, which derives in part from its role as the main transit route for military supplies to Afghanistan.
Shuja Nawaz, Director for the South Asia Center of the Atlantic Council, highlighted that no single Pakistani point of view exists. The Pakistani army has a “schizophrenic” position on US withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Although some elements of the ISI remain distrustful of US intentions in the region, others fear the reduction of US military aid. When the US draws down in Afghanistan, Pakistan could be forced to rely on deficit financing to support its army. This would lead to inflation and undermine the army’s struggle against Pakistan’s internal terrorist insurgency. If Pakistan cedes territory to the Punjabi Taliban and chaos erupts in Afghanistan following the NATO drawdown, the Pashtun Taliban may take over the border and use Afghanistan as a base to attack the Pakistani state.
Landay laid out another, not mutually exclusive, scenario for Pakistani involvement with Afghanistan post 2014. With the departure of NATO forces, the Pakistani military will revert to seeing India as a lens through which to formulate policy in Afghanistan. To ensure pre-eminence there, Pakistan might indiscriminately back a Pashtun strongman in Afghanistan, an approach that brought the Taliban to power in the first place, when Afghanistan had no serious security forces to resist the maneuver. Today, the well-armed, US-trained, multi-ethnic Afghan army increases the risk of such a strategy.
Pakistan’s inability to absorb Afghan refugees
Today’s Pakistan is characterized by greater insecurity and economic fragility than the Pakistan of the 1980s and 1990s that managed to absorb three million refugees from Afghanistan. Landay claimed that an injection of refugees into the already over-crowded Af-Pak border camps would increase the porousness of the border, providing the Pakistani Taliban with an “inverse sanctuary” from which to access Afghanistan and draw recruits.
The influx of refugees might also exacerbate tensions between Afghans and Pakistani Pashtuns in competition for Pakistani state resources. Iqbal predicted that tensions could lead to Pakistani calls for forced Afghan refugee repatriation back across a border that many in the region view as a bureaucratically contrived boundary.
Nawaz went as far as to claim that “refugees” was not a term applicable to the region, since many individuals on either side do not recognize the legitimacy of the line. He claimed that the only solution to the current and future Afghan refugee problem lies in giving the refugees Pakistani papers and absorbing them into Pakistani society.
Pakistan’s internal terrorist insurgency
According to Ahmad Khaled Majidyar, a Senior Research Associate at the American Enterprise Institute, Al Qaeda remains a network and an ideology in Pakistan, despite Bin Laden’s death. Pakistan and its economy fail to satisfy the demands of its young population, two-thirds of which is under 30. The 20,000 madrasas that often represent the only form of education available to impoverished youth raise the likelihood of extremism. The problem of militants requires a societal solution, not a military solution.
Iqbal suggested addressing the sectarian discord that lies at the core of the Pakistani terrorist insurgency. He claimed it falls to the army — as the country’s most ethnically representative body – to seek out a representative constituency of the warring groups willing to voice their concerns and to mediate a path towards a solution.
US drone strikes will shape the future of Pakistan’s domestic insurgency. The strikes eliminated the Taliban’s middle ranks. A new generation of young men inculcated with what Landay characterizes as “bin Ladenism” replaced them. Today’s Taliban does not pursue nationalist goals but rather ascribes to re-establishment of the caliphate advocated by Bin Laden. The drone strikes do not solve the issues underlying extremist militancy. They may, however, have contributed to dispersing militants, as recent events in North Africa and the Sahel indicate.
The Pakistani military distinguishes between a “good” and a “bad” Taliban, characterizing Taliban elements that conduct missions against NATO forces in Afghanistan as “good” and those that attack the Pakistani state as “bad.” This shortsighted policy fails to recognize the shared mentality that will unite the groups against the Pakistani state.
Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan
The panel offered many possibilities for how NATO troop drawdown in Afghanistan may destabilize Pakistan, but little concrete insight on Pakistan’s future role in Afghanistan. Nawaz did offer one remedy: the best role for Pakistan in Afghanistan is no role. Pakistan should look inward and focus on embracing its pluralism, instead of fanning the flames of sectarianism.
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