No pain, no gain
With less than a month to go before the deadline for completing nuclear talks with Iran, what does it look like? Touchdown, punt or overtime?
From the US perspective, the time is ripe to bring this negotiation to a successful conclusion:
- Further delay risks encouraging opponents, especially in Congress. Once the 2016 presidential campaign gets started in earnest (no later than spring 2015 I’m afraid), the odds of concluding the negotiation successfully go way down.
- Failure to reach an agreement would either open the door to an unrestrained Iranian push for nuclear weapons or, in case the current temporary Plan of Action is extended, risk deterioration of the sanctions that have been so effective in bringing Iran to the table.
- The need to respond ever more forcefully to the Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria makes it imperative to get other issues off the priority table as quickly as possible.
What is a “successful conclusion”? To make a long story short, it is one that verifiably blocks any Iranian route to building a nuclear weapon, including enrichment and reprocessing conducted either covertly or overtly. Ideally it would provide at least a year’s warning before any “break out” could occur.
This may be a goal the Iranians share. They claim to have forsworn nuclear weapons and have good reason to do so. Were Iran thought to have them, Israel would be prepared to attack on warning (not on launch, but before that). A conventional attack might be deemed inadequate to the case. The Americans might then step in to do the job. When President Rouhani says Iran would be less secure with nuclear weapons than without them, he is not exaggerating. It’s true.
The moment is ripe also for the Iranians:
- Further delay would risk encouraging President Rouhani’s opponents in the majlis and in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The Iranians know the American political timetable, and their own also argues for no long delay. Rouhani’s term ends in 2017. Sanctions relief won’t produce real results in less than 6-12 months.
- Failure to reach agreement could cause the US Congress to ratchet up sanctions, which combined with lower oil prices would deal another severe blow to the Iranian economy, which Rouhani promised to repair.
- It doesn’t make sense for Iran to be wrestling with the Americans, who also oppose the Islamic State, on nuclear issues. Better to clear the decks and get as much cooperation as Washington will permit. Tehran will also hope to earn enough credit with the Americans to continue to protect Bashar al Assad from direct attack.
None of this means the negotiations will in fact conclude successfully, or precisely on time. It will not be easy for Iran to swallow the necessary limits on its nuclear program. Nor will it be easy for the Obama administration to sell an agreement that allows Iran to continue enriching uranium, even if there is tight verification that it is not being used for weapons purposes.
But no one said this would be easy. The standard rule of exercise applies to international negotiations: no pain, no gain.
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Obama needs to answer his own question
General John Allen, Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, said Monday in Kuwait:
It’s useful to imagine Da’esh [the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant] existing in three spaces. First, in the physical space, or, if you will, in the battle space. And make no mistake: Da’esh will be defeated militarily. It will not happen overnight, but it will happen. The combined efforts of the coalition partners supporting Iraq and the moderate Syrian opposition forces on the ground will continue to eliminate the targets of Da’esh, degrade their fighting capabilities, and ultimately push Da’esh out of the territories it controls today, defeating it….
The second space in which Da’esh operates is the financial space. We must choke off the oxygen that gives Da’esh life, – its money, and its resources – and do so through targeted sanctions, stopping the oil smuggling, and ending their access to the global financial marketplace.
But we are all here today to talk about the third area in which Da’esh operates – the information space. For it is here that Da’esh celebrates its horrendous brand of warfare, and here where Da’esh recruits and perverts the innocent. And it is only when we contest Da’esh’s presence online and deny the legitimacy of its message – the message that it sends to vulnerable young people – and as we expose Da’esh for the un-Islamic, criminal cult of violence that it really is – it is only then that Da’esh will be truly defeated.
There is a big piece missing here. The sad fact is that ISIS now operates also in the governance space, providing minimal public services, a kind of justice, and jobs to several million people in eastern Syria and western Iraq. It is a mistake to imagine that we are going to be able to defeat ISIS’s military capabilities and make no provision for governance. If we do, we’ll find the terrorists, or the Ba’athists, or some other pathology back in place sooner rather than later.
The Obama Administration continues to make a basic diagnostic error. ISIS is not only a terrorist group. It is also a successful insurgency that now controls and governs territory. Pretending otherwise renders the strategy the Administration is pursuing to defeat ISIS partial, ineffectual and even counterproductive.
This is surprising, given the President’s own admission that he made a mistake not to follow up in Libya after its revolution. In August, he said:
So that’s a lesson that I now apply every time I ask the question, ‘Should we intervene, militarily? Do we have an answer [for] the day after?’
It is now almost November and the Administration has no answer for the day after in Syria. It continues to pooh-pooh the Syrian opposition, in my view unfairly. But if the plan does not include serious support to the Syrian Interim Government, who will govern? Mr. President, when will you answer your own question?
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Ebola in perspective
On Monday, the Heritage foundation hosted for a discussion of Ebola policy options, domestic and international, Robert Kodiac, the Managing Director of RPK Consulting, Charlotte Florence, a Research Associate for Economic Freedom in Africa and the Middle East at the Heritage Foundation, Tevi Troy, President of the American Health Policy Institute and Tara O’Toole, former Under Secretary of the Science and and Technology Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security. The event was moderated by Steven Bucci, Director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy. The video of the event is at the end of this post. Or you can watch Jon Stewart’s short version, which covers some of the same points:
Epidemics have had less prevalence in the last century in part due to the advancement of medical science, sanitary practices, and antibiotics. However, the West African nations of Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia have seen upwards of 4,900 deaths from Ebola, spreading in what Florence believes to be a “perfect storm.” While very few cases have struck the United States, the Ebola scare has swept through the country. The hysteria has reached the far corners of the country, fueled by incessant media coverage of the virus. In Maine, an elementary school teacher was put on paid leave for up to 21 days after parents expressed concern over a recent trip she took to Dallas, where the first case of Ebola was diagnosed and subsequently two nurses were infected.
Kodiac notes this visceral reaction to Ebola but believes more important is domestic preparedness. The 2.8 trillion dollar health care industry only spends 1% or so on domestic health care preparedness. This is a minimal amount for medical responses to potential pandemics. While Kodiac believes that Ebola can be managed due to the relatively confined areas of exposure, there must be a bigger push to limit the spread of disease not only in the United States but globally. Combating the disease in the three most affected Western African states will prove challenging. Florence cites behavior and cultural practices that have spread of Ebola, especially procedures surrounding the disposal of the deceased.
She also notes that allocation of resources to combat Ebola has caused loss of focus on malaria, tuberculosis and other critical issues in Africa. In addition, farmers are not producing at the rates they previously were, markets are closed and as a result there is a fear of food shortages. While Sierre Leone has historically been one of the fastest growing economies in Africa, it is projected the country will experience no growth in the upcoming year.
Troy looked at four areas that need to be addressed: detection, development, deployment and directives. The United States and the rest of the world were slow to react to Ebola. Countermeasures such as vaccines have not become commercially available. We should have questions about deployment of the US military and the rules of engagement. The “woefully ignorant” perspective of the Department of Homeland Security has hindered progress.
O’Toole notes that all epidemics start slowly and are not explosions. The situation will get worse before it gets better due to the failure of preparedness and lack of rapid diagnostic methods. Epidemics always “engender fear,” because people have a “hard time understanding the unpredictability of disease.” Ebola will not disappear within the upcoming months or in the next year.
The numerous calls for a ban on travel to those who have visited high-risk Ebola countries are misguided, the panelists thought. The advantages do not outweigh the costs. Implementation of a travel ban would not only discourage travel for health care workers but potentially damage relationships with restricted countries. All panelist agreed the US needs improved capabilities and cooperation with the global community.
Here is the video of the event:
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Nothing settled, but progress
There were several important elections yesterday in sharply divided countries. In Brazil, incumbent president Dilma Rousseff barely squeaked past her more business-oriented challenger. Secularists in Tunisia beat Ennahda, the Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, in a parliamentary contest (the presidential election is scheduled for November 23). Pro-Europe figures led in Ukraine, where voting was impossible in Crimea (now controlled by Russia) and those parts of the southeast Russophile separatists control. With that important exception, the electoral mechanisms appear to have functioned well, with relatively few allegations of fraud.
None of these elections produced a solid one-party majority. Coalitions will be required to govern. This is good. All three of these countries are polarized. Elections accentuate differences. Formation of a governing majority in parliament provides incentives for moderation and compromise. The incentives may not be strong enough. In Kosovo a winning party and its opposition coalition, which controls more seats in parliament, are quarreling over who will get first dibs on forming the government months after the election. But in the three countries that held elections yesterday there is an opportunity to overcome divisions and form governments committed to resolving difficult problems.
In Brazil, the main issue is the economy. After a long stretch of growth and investment with low inflation, Latin America’s largest country (yes, 78 million more than Mexico’s 122 million) is facing a slowdown and rising prices. Brazilian expectations have been rising with incomes. Rousseff now has to find a way to reconcile her popularity among the poor and her support for a strong social safety net with the reforms needed to reignite growth.
Tunisia is the one “Arab spring” country seemingly headed in a good and peaceful direction. It managed to write a constitution most of its Islamists and non-Islamists can live with. Now it has managed a second post-revolution parliamentary election, one that displaces the Islamists from their previously dominant position. Peaceful alternation in power based on electoral results is one of the key indicators of progress in a democratic direction. Tunisia is too small and marginal to the Arab world to be regarded as a model. But if government formation goes smoothly, it will become a lodestar in a part of the world that needs one.
The Ukrainian election cannot be expected to overcome the division between pro-Kiev and pro-Moscow forces, which are locked in a continuing political and military struggle even if currently there is a nominal ceasefire. Pro-Moscow forces in parliament will be much weaker than in the past, but some of the more extreme Ukrainian nationalists will be as well. President Poroshenko and Prime Minister Yatseniuk led parties that did well at the polls. They have no hope of winning back southeastern Ukraine by military force so long as Russian President Putin is prepared to commit Russian troops to the fight, as he did this summer and fall. They need to negotiate a new constitutional arrangement that will “make unity attractive” (in the Sudanese formulation, which failed) and win over the majority of the Russian speakers to Kiev’s legitimacy.
None of these elections settled anything. But they open up possibilities that did not exist two days ago. That’s progress.
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Guess who came to dinner
Shpend Limoni of Kosovo’s Gazeta Express asked some questions last Thursday, so I answered:
1. Kosovo’s Foreign Minister attended a regional conference in Belgrade becoming a first high level official to visit Serbia since Kosovo declared independence. This comes after incidents that took place during the football match in Belgrade. How do you comment on these events?
DPS: It is a good thing that the Foreign Minister attended a regional conference in Belgrade. This is part of normalizing relations between neighbors. I hope such visits, both to Belgrade and Pristina, will become routine.
2. Is it a bit strange having in the same time the wave of nationalism and harsh statements caused by a football match and good neighborly relations at the conference in Belgrade? How do you explain this?
DPS: In any democratic society there are people with a wide range of views. The football stadium is not necessarily where you find the more moderate ones. It is important that more moderate political leaders lean towards understanding and cooperation, whatever happens on the pitch. The wars are over. It is time for peace and prosperity.
3. President Jahjaga also received an invitation to attend a conference in Belgrade. Do you think that President should go to Belgrade?
DPS: President Jahjaga should certainly go to Belgrade at some point, but presidents usually go to conferences only if other, or former, presidents are there. And they generally expect government officials to handle conferences that fall clearly within the competence of the government, which is certainly the case for “EU accession” [the subject of the conference in question]. Presidents Jahjaga and Nikolic have met—in Ashton’s office last year—but we should also expect that they will someday meet bilaterally in Belgrade and Pristina.
4. How do you see the political deadlock in Kosovo, do you think it could be settled soon with a new coalition as suggested by Senator Murphy during his visit in Kosovo or we will have new elections?
DPS: I have no idea. New elections are expensive and time consuming. But waiting for a solution with the current election results isn’t proving fast either. One of the really nice things about democracy is that representatives of Kosovo citizens will decide this issue, no matter what the views of professors or senators in Washington, DC. I do hope they decide it soon, as Kosovo needs a new parliament and the government it will approve to get on with the state’s business. Citizens are entitled to that.
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Peace picks October 27-31
- Ebola: U.S. Domestic and Foreign Policy Options | Monday, October 27th | 12:00 – 1:00 | Heritage Foundation | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Months after the outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa, the news of two American nurses becoming infected has sparked fear amongst the general U.S. population. With Ebola victims now in the United States, concerns are growing over the ability of the administration, Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and hospitals to control the spread of disease. The speakers will discuss the very real risks of the Ebola virus, but without the fear brought on by speculation and hype. Through clear communication of the nature of the threat and what policy options are available in the U.S. and in West Africa, the U.S. can make clear, rational decisions as to how to best deal with the current situation. The speakers are Dr. Robert Kadlec the Managing Director of RPK Consulting LLC, Charlotte Florance, a Research Associate for Economic Freedom in Africa and the Middle East at The Heritage Foundation and. Tevi Troy, President of the American Health Policy Institute.
- The New Threat in Town: Iraq, ISIS, and Managing the Crisis | Monday, October 27th | 6:30 – 8:00 | American University School of International Service | A panel discussion on the current security situation in Iraq regarding ISIS, the implications it has on the regional security of the Middle East, and how the United States can engage with the region in order to mitigate the situation from spiraling out of control. Panel speakers will include Dr. Tricia Bacon, Ambassador James F. Jeffrey from the Washington Insitute, and Dr. Paul Salem from the Middle East Institute.
- Ukraine Update: Elections, Conflict, and the Future of the EU’s Eastern Partnership | Wednesday, October 29th | 2:00 – 5:15 | Brookings Institution | REGISTER TO ATTEND | In 2009, the European Union established its Eastern Partnership to advance political association and economic integration with six neighboring nations to its east. However, in November 2013, Ukrainian President Yanukovych refused to sign an association agreement with the EU, triggering mass protests in Ukraine that ultimately led to his departure and accusations that the EU “sleepwalked” into a conflict in Ukraine. Although the EU long asserted that the framework was never directed against Russia, the agreement with Ukraine was perceived in Moscow as a step too far. In the wake of the ongoing crisis between Ukraine and Russia, some are questioning whether the EU’s Eastern Partnership should be fundamentally altered—and, if so, how? Against the backdrop of simmering conflict in eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian people will go to the polls on October 26 to elect a new parliament. The new parliament members will then have to form a majority coalition and begin to tackle the pressing challenges facing the country. The herculean tasks include not just the violent conflict in the east and the troubled relationship with Russia, but needed economic and political reforms as well as measures to curb corruption. Questions remain about Ukrainian public expectations and potential tensions in the immediate aftermath of the vote. A panel discussion assessing next steps for Ukraine and the EU’s Eastern Partnership. The first panel will explore the Ukrainian election and what it means for politics within Ukraine, the Ukrainian economy, and Ukraine’s relations with Russia and the West. The second panel will focus on international perspectives on the EU’s Eastern Partnership and the EU’s role in supporting Ukraine in this time of turmoil.
- A Nuclear Deal with Iran? Weighing the Possibilities | Thursday, October 30th | 2:00 – 3:00 | American Enterprise Institute | REGISTER TO ATTEND | As global crises unfold, President Barack Obama appears to see one silver lining in the clouds on the foreign policy horizon: a nuclear deal with Iran. However, it appears increasingly likely that the November 24 deadline will come and go without a comprehensive agreement, and the stakes could not be higher. A bad deal that leaves too much of Tehran’s nuclear capabilities intact or enables Iran to develop nuclear weapons in the months or years to come could set off a nuclear arms race across the Middle East. Alternatively, a good deal could solve a problem at the heart of much of the turmoil in the region. Are the United States and European powers prepared to renew sanctions if Iran refuses to comply with demands from the international community and International Atomic Energy Agency? Will the Iranians refuse to concede on any of their own red lines? Will the Obama administration sidestep Congress to achieve a nuclear deal? The speakers are David Albright, George Perkovich and Danielle Pletka.
- Public Opinion in the Arab World: What do the latest surveys tell us? | Friday, October 31st | 10:00 – 12:00 | United States Institute of Peace | REGISTER TO ATTEND | The Arab uprisings were a vivid demonstration of the importance of public opinion in the Middle East. Frustrated by poor governance and the lack of economic opportunity, citizens demonstrated in mass protests on the streets, and online, throughout the region. As autocrats fell, instability and extremism rose. Although democracy appears to be succeeding in Tunisia, in most of the Arab Spring countries the future is far from secure. To learn how citizens in these countries view government, religion and economic opportunities, please join the U.S. Institute for Peace (USIP), the Arab Barometer, the Arab Reform Initiative, the Project on Middle East Democracy, and the Project on Middle East Political Science for discussion on how publics view the situations in their respective countries. The event will highlight new findings from the third wave of surveys (late 2012-2014) of the Arab Barometer across 12 Arab countries including Egypt, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iraq, and more. The speakers are Amaney Jamal a Professor of Politics at Princeton University, Michael Robbins the Project Director of the Arab Barometer, Khalil Shikaki, the Director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and Senior Fellow at the Crown Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University, Mark Tessler a Professor of Political Science from the University of Michigan and Steven Riskin a Senior Program Officer for Grants at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
- Challenges in Nuclear Verification: The IAEA’s Role on the Iranian Nuclear Issue | Friday, October 31st | 10:30 – 12:00 | Brookings Institution | REGISTER TO ATTEND | The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has for almost 60 years been at the forefront of international efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Its safeguards system is indispensable in providing credible assurance that states are honoring their international obligations, including under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and ensuring that any misuse of nuclear material or technology by a state can be quickly detected. The IAEA has been addressing the Iran nuclear issue for over 10 years. More recently, it has played a critical role in verifying and monitoring the implementation of nuclear-related measures agreed by Iran under the Joint Plan of Action negotiated by Iran and the P5+1 countries. It is likely to play a central role in monitoring and verifying nuclear-related measures under any comprehensive agreement that may be reached between Iran and the P5+1 countries. The Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative at Brookings will host IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano, who will discuss the IAEA’s role in nuclear verification, including in monitoring the November 2013 interim agreement between the P5+1 countries and Iran. Brookings Senior Fellow Robert Einhorn will moderate the question and answer session
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