Day: March 16, 2016
Exploiting disorder
The International Crisis Group (ICG) takes appropriate transnational aim in its latest report at Al Qaeda (AQ) and the Islamic State (IS), introduced Monday at Brookings by ICG President, Jean-Marie Guehenno. The main thesis is that success of the terrorist dual threat is the result of instability. No surprise there. Few of their supposed enemies in the Middle East and North Africa regard either Al Qaeda or the Islamic State as their top priority. Again no surprise. Neither is invincible, though AQ in Guehenno’s view is underrated at present. It is learning to apply a lighter, more gradual touch that has greater prospects of success than IS’s draconian approach.
It is when we get to the policy prescriptions that I start to part company, as usual with ICG reports. Guehenno and the report argue for containment, or perhaps marginalization, rather than outright victory, because we would not in any event know what to do if we win. It is already apparent in Iraq that the government lacks the means to govern effectively and inclusively in all the territory recaptured from IS. But nowhere does ICG advocate that we acquire the state-building capacities needed to eliminate the disorder in which the terrorists thrive or to repair the societies that they have broken. This is not only short-sighted; it is a formula for unending warfare. The very least ICG should have done is to point out the incapacity and put forward some sort of idea how it can be repaired.
The report argues for keeping open lines of communication, by talking with whomever will talk with us, apparently including the Islamic State and Al Qaeda provided they meet that condition. This includes “unofficial, discreet lines of communication, through community leaders, non-state mediators or others.” I like that, since official talking lends an air of legitimacy that many groups don’t merit. But the argument offered in favor is the US rejection of Taliban offers in 2001 as well as similar reluctance in Somalia, Mali, Libya and Nigeria. None of those examples pertain to the Islamic State or Al Qaeda per se, both of which are arguably an order of magnitude or two less acceptable than the people and groups specifically mentioned. My guess is that we are in communication, directly or indirectly, with many of the groups mentioned, if only to try to free American hostages. It is hard to see how to do that with either Al Qaeda or the Islamic State.
Other recommendations get stronger grounding. Their suggestion for narrowing the countering violent extremism (CVE) agenda seems to me intellectually correct, even if the bureaucratic temptation to tie the development and peacebuilding agendas to the latest well-funded pet rock is irresistible. Respecting international humanitarian law, curbing targeted killings and investing in conflict prevention also make good sense to me. Neither the drone wars nor coddling of autocrats in the Middle East has served our strategic purposes well. Both have done more to spread the terrorist problem than defeat it.
In the end I thought Guehenno was correct in his talk at Brookings when he admired President Obama’s effort to keep the terrorist threat in perspective by noting its limited capacity to affect American national security. That effort Guehenno suggested was intellectually correct even if politically damaging. Unfortunately, the ICG report is less prudent:
World leaders’ concern is well-founded: IS’s attacks kill their citizens and threaten their societies’ cohesion.
It then urges us not to make mistakes that risk aggravating the situation, but it nowhere says what Guehenno did: the jihadists are not a threat on the order of the Soviet Union and should not arouse us politically in the way the nuclear threat once did.
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Shudder
Last night Hillary Clinton made her nomination inevitable and Donald Trump made his all but certain, unless the Republican establishment wants a damaging fight at the convention. Most of Washington is staying home today because the region’s Metro trains are shut down for a safety inspection. We’ll have time to contemplate our presidential options and how wrong things have gone in a political system that has served so well for so long.
The Trump puzzle is easy to solve. Despite a sharp increase from the past, still few people are voting in these primaries: about 17% of eligible Republicans. 
Trump has mobilized uneducated, lower income whites who have not seen an increase in their incomes for decades. His voters are also predominantly male. Trump’s barely coded racism, blatant lies and loud bragging mark him as one of them. Identity politics don’t only happen in other countries.
Hillary Clinton is the more conventional candidate. She is a relatively moderate democrat who has aligned herself with her former rival and boss Barack Obama, who can’t run again. She would serve his third term and perhaps even his fourth.
With the “misery index” declining sharply since 2008 and minority voters rising, she would be a shoe-in were it not for the baggage she carries: a vote in favor of George Bush’s mistaken Iraq war, support for trade deals she now questions, the Benghazi non-scandal and the continuing investigation of allegedly classified information found on her private email server.
President Obama today nominated middle-of-the-road, white, male Federal court judge Merrick Garland to right-wing Republican Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court. This surprised me: I expected nomination of a minority, but the scuttlebutt says the President didn’t want to “burn” a strong minority candidate in a process likely to fail. Confirmation would tilt the balance of the Court towards the Democrats. Senate Republicans have vowed not even to consider the nomination. This sets it up as a campaign issue, one likely to bring out a few more Democrats, even as more moderate Republicans either stay at home or reluctantly mark ballots for Clinton.
So this election is Clinton’s to lose, which she could still do. Trump is scrappy and energetic. He knows how to mobilize his constituency. He has gotten an enormous amount of free airtime on American media. Clinton is far less inspired in dealing with hers. She is not a natural campaigner, as she herself puts it. Overly wonkish, a bit strident and inclined to talk down to her supporters, she has so far failed to generate the youthful energy and enthusiasm that her rival Bernie Sanders has inspired. He will support her, I suppose, but by then the air will have gone out of his balloon.
The great virtue of American elections is that their outcome is truly unpredictable. We have no Council of Experts or Guardian Council to limit our choices. We unfortunately allow money and party organization do much of that. The uncertainty scares non-Americans. It makes our international behavior difficult to predict. But no one can complain this time around that the candidates and parties offer no real alternatives. They certainly do. One makes me wonder why she is the best on offer. The other makes me shudder.
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