Tag: Al Qaeda
Why US foreign policy keeps failing
SAIS master’s student Solvej Krause reports:
Harvard Professor Stephen Walt, influential international relations scholar and co-author of “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” delivered a damning assessment last week at SAIS of the failure of US foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. Highlighting the ever-present tension between ambitions and capabilities in US foreign policy, Walt offered a realist view of what he perceives as an activist, overreaching foreign policy agenda promoted by both neoconservatives and liberal interventionists in consecutive administrations.
“We forgot that there might be limits to what we could do,” he said, referring to the extraordinarily powerful geostrategic position of the US in the international system since 1990. Walt advocates greater restraint in American involvement abroad and a drastic reduction in the US military footprint, especially in the Middle East. His call for more restraint has important implications for post-conflict scenarios. Given the troubled experiences with state and nation-building efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the current administration’s appetite for complex and costly post-conflict involvement has diminished.
Between 1945 and 1950, a small group of foreign policy makers achieved extraordinary results, including the Marshall Plan and formulation of the policy of containment. They created key arrangements that influenced foreign policy for the coming decades.
Post-Cold War foreign policy legacy is by comparison “terrible,” despite the lack of a geopolitical rival. The US should be doing much better than it actually has, given the enormous growth of the foreign policy apparatus (more staffers, more academic research, greater diversity among officials) since 1990. But the US has failed to secure peace in the Middle East (Israel-Palestine), failed to prevent Rwanda, and has not managed to build a lasting relationship with Russia. 9/11 was mostly “a reaction to perceived sins of US foreign policy in the Middle East.” The Balkan wars were ended successfully but in a lengthy and costly process. The situation there is still precarious.
Walt identifies two sources of US foreign policy failure: problems arising from the structural (geostrategic) position of the US in the international system and problems arising from inside the American foreign policy establishment. The internal problems should be fixable, says Walt, but it won’t be easy.
Outside the system – Structural problems
The US foreign policy agenda is “perennially overcrowded.” The primacy of the United States in the international system makes it difficult to set priorities and pick battles wisely. Since the US alone has the power to intervene and prevent atrocities, it becomes very hard not to act. Since the scope of US foreign policy is global, the military has divided the entire world into regional military commands (Africom, Centcom). “We forgot that there might be limits to what we can do,” says Walt. British historian Paul Kennedy said that one reason why the British Empire lasted so long was that they were smart at picking their battles.
There are no more “easy” foreign policy problems left. The issues left today that have not been solved over the past century are the “really hard residuals.” Today’s agenda is filled with problems we don’t know how to solve without great costs, e.g. Israel-Palestine, Iran, North Korea. They are almost intractable. Some require social engineering in ethnically heterogeneous societies, which is hard for anyone to do.
US primacy encourages obstructive behavior by allies and non-allies: Non-allies Russia and China oppose intervention in Syria because they went along with the US in the Libyan case, allowing the US to pursue a mission aimed at regime change, not only humanitarian protection. The dominance of the US encourages “reckless driving” by smaller, weaker states, such as Georgia, Israel and Taiwan. This leaves the US vulnerable to blackmail. For example, President Karzai in Afghanistan can do pretty much everything he wants because he knows that he is the only game in town.
Inside the system – Internal problems
Within the US government, groups that favor activist foreign policy dominate groups that favor more restraint. There is little difference between neoconservatives and liberal interventionists in this regard. Both are activist. Realists are an endangered species in the foreign policy apparatus.
The same is true for think tanks: the Council on Foreign Relations, Brookings, Carnegie – all favor favor American leadership in the world and lean towards interventionist, activist policies. On the other end of the spectrum you have the Cato Institute, which favors greater restraint, but these institutions have less money, fewer people and less influence than the activist institutions.
There is a dangerous tendency in the foreign policy establishment to inflate threats in order to convince the public that involvement is necessary. Walt cited NSC-68, which ushered in the McCarthy era by exaggerating the threat of Communist infiltration in the US government and society. He finds parallels to today’s inflation of the Iranian threat and the threat of Al Qaeda. “Remember: Iran’s defense budget is $$10 billion per year.” What is called “Al Qaeda” are a bunch of loosely affiliated criminal groups that adopt the AQ brand like Baskin Robbins. The entire “war on terror” was misconceived. AQ should have been framed as international criminals, not combatants in a global war. The inflation of threats makes us “collectively stupid,” says Walt.
There is a lack of real debate about American foreign policy. The range of disagreements in the foreign policy establishment is not very broad. Most think tanks lean towards activism. Politicians show enormous deference towards military leaders. To be credible in the foreign policy establishment you have to sound hawkish.
There are three taboo issues where absolutely no open debate in Washington is possible:
US policy towards Iran: For decades the US has employed threats of military action combined harsh sanctions. “We’re effectively blackmailing Iran.” This approach is not working. “Threatening others with regime change is not very effective. But anyone who proposes a different approach is treated as a policy pariah.”
The US relationship with Israel: Any criticism of it will end your career. There were 178 mentions of Israel during Chuck Hagel’s hearings.
The US drone program: The problem is excessive secrecy. How can we judge the efficacy of the drone war if we don’t know what is going on? What if you have created more terrorists than you have killed?
Walt also worries about the precedent that the US is setting in using cyber warfare so generously.
The problem with these taboos is that they force policy leaders to say things they don’t really believe in. But being deadly wrong or incompetent does not harm your career. Being right can end your career. Given how Iraq turned out, you’d think that the makers of the Iraq policy would be discredited now. But they are still highly influential, e.g. Bill Kristol, Elliott Abraham, Paul Wolfowitz, Tommy Franks. If you get it right, your career suffers. The most common reason why American military leaders are fired is sexual misconduct, not misconduct on battlefield. There is too much blind deference to military leaders. There is a corrupt, co-opted relationship between politicians and those who are supposed to hold them to account.
Academics, afflicted with a “cult of irrelevance,” are not doing their job. They should be using the protection of tenure to challenge foreign policy dogma. But instead they are getting caught up in “simplistic hypothesis testing.” The gap between the world of academia and world of policy is too wide.
We have the “worst possible system for staffing the executive branch you can imagine.” Civil service employees are few, so there is a large turnover every four years. The appointments process has gone off the rails, leaving important positions unfilled for a long time.
The presidential term lasts four years while the election season lasts for over one year. This means that the President is preoccupied with campaigning for at least 25% of his term, which is extremely bad for good policy-making.
The problem with advances in military technology that make a “light footprint” approach (drones, special forces) possible is that they make interventions cheaper and easier – both in terms of costs and lives lost. All of a sudden, there are many reasons to intervene. But the US cannot be everywhere. The American military was not designed to do nation-building, and there are many reasons why it is not well-suited for it.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Peace Picks: February 25 to March 1
A relatively quiet but high quality week:
1. Al Qaeda in the United States
Date and Time: February 26 2013, 10-11 am
Address: Center for Strategic and International Studies
1800 K Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20006
B1 Conference Center
Speakers: Michael Hayden, Robin Simcox, Stephanie Sanok
Description: In recent years, several individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds have attempted to attack the United States on behalf of al-Qaeda. These individuals have defied easy categorization, creating challenges for intelligence, law enforcement, and other agencies tasked with countering their activities. However, with the publication of ‘Al-Qaeda in the United States’, the Henry Jackson Society seeks to provide new insights into the al-Qaeda movement and its U.S. operations by rigorously analyzing those involved or affiliated with the organization. Please join CSIS and the Henry Jackson Society on February 26 for an on-the-record discussion of this new report and the nature of al-Qaeda-related terrorism in the United States.
Register for this event here: http://csis.org/event/al-qaeda-united-states
2. The United States, India and Pakistan: To the Brink and Back
Date and Time: February 26, 2013, 2-3 pm
Brookings Institution, 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC
Speaker: Bruce Riedel
Description: India and Pakistan are among the most important countries in the 21st century. The two nations share a common heritage, but their relationship remains tenuous. The nuclear rivals have waged four wars against each other and have gone to the brink of war several times. While India is already the world’s largest democracy and will soon become the planet’s most populous nation, Pakistan has a troubled history of military coups and dictators, and has harbored terrorists such as Osama bin Laden. In his new book, Avoiding Armageddon: America, India and Pakistan to the Brink and Back (Brookings, 2013), Brookings Senior Fellow Bruce Riedel, director of Brookings Intelligence Project, clearly explains the challenge and importance of successfully managing America’s affairs with these two emerging powers while navigating their toxic relationship.
Based on extensive research and his experience advising four U.S. presidents on the region, Riedel reviews the history of American diplomacy in South Asia, the conflicts that have flared in recent years and the prospects for future crisis. Riedel provides an in-depth look at the Mumbai terrorist attack in 2008—the worst terrorist outrage since 9/11—and concludes with authoritative analysis on what the future is likely to hold for the United States and South Asia, offering concrete recommendations for Washington’s policymakers.
On February 26, the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings will host an event marking the release of Avoiding Armageddon. Bruce Riedel will discuss the history and future of U.S. relations with India and Pakistan and options for avoiding future conflagration in the region. Senior Fellow Tamara Wittes, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, will provide introductory remarks, and Tina Brown, editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast and Newsweek, will lead the discussion.
3. Democrats, Liberals, the Left and the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Date and Time: February 27 2013, 12 pm.
Address: Georgetown University
37 St NW and O St NW, Washington, DC
Edward B. Bunn, S.J. Intercultural Center CCAS Boardroom, 241
Speaker: Jonathan Rynhold
Description: Prof. Jonathan Rynhold (George Washington University) will present his analysis of the various grand strategies of Democrats, Liberals, and the Left towards the Middle East, as well as elite discourse and public attitudes towards the conflict. He explains the trend towards increasing criticism of Israel and increasing preference for a neutral approach to the conflict. Prof. Rynhold argues this is not simply to do with changes in Israeli policy but deeper changes within the Democratic Party and among liberals in their attitudes to foreign policy and politics in general.
Register for this event here: http://events.georgetown.edu/events/index.cfm?Action=View&CalendarID=349&EventID=101111
4. The Resistible Rise of Islamists?
Date and Time: February 27 2013, 12-1:30 pm
Address: Woodrow Wilson Center
1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. 20004
Speakers: Moushira Khattab and Marina Ottaway
Description: Some call it the Islamist winter while others talk of revolution betrayed. Neither claim portrays accurately what is happening in Arab countries in the throes of popular uprisings and rapid political change. The rise of Islamist parties in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings took most by surprise, including in some cases the Islamist parties themselves, which were more successful than they dared to hope. Coupled with the disarray of the secular opposition, the success of Islamist parties augurs poorly for democracy, because a strong, competitive opposition is the only guarantee against the emergence of a new authoritarianism.
Register for this event here: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/the-resistible-rise-the-islamists
5. Economic Effects of the Arab Spring: Policy Failures and Mounting Challenges
Date and Time: February 28 2013, 12-1 pm.
Address: Middle East Institute
1761 N Street
Speakers: Dr. Zubair Iqbal and Dr. Lorenzo L. Perez
Description: The Middle East Institute is proud to host economists Dr. Zubair Iqbal and Dr. LorenzoPérez for an examination of the economic impact of the upheavals affecting Arab Spring countries, including Egypt and Tunisia. Since the 2011 uprisings, growth in the MENA region has slowed, inequality worsened, and unemployment increased, thus weakening the popular support needed for new governments to introduce difficult, but necessary, economic reforms. The speakers will address the reasons for the inadequate reforms taken by these new governments and the economic consequences of an unchanged policy environment. By focusing on developments in Egypt, they will highlight the economic challenges posed by recent events, strategies to address them and what role the international community can play in helping stabilize Arab economies.
Register for this event here: https://www.mei.edu/civicrm/event/register?id=300&reset=1
6. No One Saw It Coming: Civil Resistance, the Arab Spring and the Conflicts That Will Shape the Future
Date and Time: February 28, 5:30 pm
Address: Johns Hopkins/SAIS, 1740 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC
Speaker: Peter Ackerman, Founding Chair, International Center for Nonviolent Conflict
Register here.
7. The 2013 Annual Kuwait Chair Lecture: US Military Intervention in Iraq: Cost and Consequences
Date and Time: February 28 2013, 6:30-7:45 pm
Address: Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20052
Harry Harding Auditorium
Speaker: Ambassador Edward W. (Skip) Gnehm Jr.
Description: Ambassador Edward W. (Skip) Gnehm, Jr., Kuwait Professor of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Affairs, GW
The final convoy of U.S. combat forces withdrew from Iraq in December 2011, but the U.S. military intervention produced transformative effects that continue to reverberate in Iraq and throughout the region. On the 10 year anniversary of the U.S. intervention, Ambassador Gnehm will reflect on the costs and consequences of that action on the U.S., Iraq, specifically, and the Middle East, more broadly.
Register for this event here: https://docs.google.com/a/aucegypt.edu/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEJIbXNYazRvODZyakN2aGJTNEFkUFE6MQ
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Tunisia: stalled
With no constitution written and no date yet for elections, the political transition in Tunisia is stalled. At SAIS’s Thursday discussion of economic decline and political violence in Tunisia, former governor of the Tunisian Central Bank Mustapha Nabli warned that continued political stagnation will condemn Tunisia to a serious economic crisis.
The post-revolutionary transition has neglected the country’s economy. Inflation reached 6% in 2012, up from 3.5% in 2010. The budget deficit reached 8% of GDP in 2012, up from a mere 3% in 2010. The slow transition has already cost Tunisia at least 200,000 jobs. In the absence of firm political leadership, the indicators will continue in this undesirable direction.
The sharp polarization between Islamists and secularists is stalling the transition and obstructing progress on the economic front. Steve McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy, argued that since coming to power Ennahda has increasingly catered to Islamist radicals while ignoring secularist and Western fears. Party leader Rashid Ghannouci’s high profile 2011 visit to Washington soon after the revolution brought assurances of moderation. But the party’s strategy changed thereafter as the Salafists appear to gain strength. A worrisome video featuring Ghannouchi strategizing with Salafists on how to drive liberals out of positions of power disturbed secularists. Since then events have escalated, culminating in the assassination of secularist opposition leader Chukry Beleid and the subsequent dissolution of the government.
Tunisia has more than political instability and an uncertain economic prospect to worry about. A perfect storm of porous borders, floods of Libyan weapons, Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, and the flow of uprooted militants from France’s Mali intervention increasingly threatens Tunisia’s security. Alexis Arieff, an analyst at Congressional Research Services, pointed to evidence of Tunisia’s role as a transshipment point for weapons, people and militants to the rest of the region. Skirmishes between Tunisian security forces and militants are on the rise. Instances of religious-based Salafist violence are also on the increase.
Nabli claimed that the political stagnation stems from misunderstanding of the October 2011 elections. The elections were meant to establish a constituent assembly, but Ennahda insisted it had a mandate to govern. Until this fundamental issue is sorted out, it will be difficult to address political differences and move on to taking care of the economy.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Lawful but awful
I don’t usually get worked up over the drone wars and killing terrorists. I’d rather see many of them dead before a single innocent victim is killed or maimed. But the Justice Department “white paper” on “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen Who Is a Senior Operational Leader of Al Qa’ida or an Associated Force” has chilled my blood.
I hasten to note that I am not a lawyer. If you want the opinion of one, try Lawfare. But I spent decades as a bureaucrat. I could drive a massacre through the policy loopholes outlined in this memo.
The obvious first: the memo focuses on “imminent” threats, but then it includes in “imminent” an operation that hasn’t even yet been planned. That’s a neat trick. By that standard, Ron Paul’s election as president was imminent before he announced he was running. That’s not what the word means. If you call a horse’s tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have?
Capture has to be “infeasible” for the killing to be lawful. But infeasible is in the eye of the beholder. I suspect it is infeasible more often than not because we no longer have anyplace to put such captives. Or is it only infeasible because a military operation with capture as its purpose cannot be mounted without unreasonable risks? And what would unreasonable risks be?
But the problems don’t end there. The decision-maker in the memo is not the president of the United States. It is a well-informed senior official. Presumably he or she gets a delegation of authority from the president. Do we really think killing a U.S. citizen in Yemen by a drone operator in Utah does not require the decision of an elected leader? It should be done by a GS-15? Admittedly we delegate the authority to decide whom to kill on a battlefield to 18-year-old soldiers. But that is the difference between targeted killing at a great distance and conventional warfare requiring split-second decisions to protect our forces.
What is a “senior operational leader?” Here the white paper is more explicit: it is someone known to be “actively engaged in planning operations to kill Americans.” I’ve got no problem with targeting someone who is targeting Americans. But how do we know that a particular person is a senior operational leader? The obvious problem is someone like Anwar al Aulaqi, who certainly encouraged killing Americans but publicly available evidence that he was an operational commander at the time of his killing in 2011 was thin. Did the Administration have more? Or is the definition of “senior operational commander as loose as the definition of imminence? Did some well-informed senior official get worked up over Aulaqi’s explicit incitement of violence against Americans?
Then there’s that “associated force” loophole. Is the Taliban a force associated with Al Qaeda? Their goals are certainly distinct, but they have been associated. Is the Movement for the National Liberation of Azawad (the Tuareg rebel organization in northern Mali) associated with Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM)? It certainly was for a while last spring, but right now it seems to be helping the French do in AQIM. Is the Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence directorate “associated” with the Haqqani network? Some days yes, who knows right now?
Let’s not forget the problem of collateral damage: innocent people (including children) who happen to be nearby when a Predator strikes, or targeting errors. That too is a problem on the conventional battlefield, but I might hope that it could be considered more fully when our own soldiers are not at risk. We need to ask the obvious question: are drone strikes creating more enemies than they are killing? Are we raising the risks to ourselves rather than lowering them?
What difference does it make that the person killed is a U.S. citizen? A lot of the problems I see would be just as troubling if the person were not. Nor do I see much in this paper that makes me think it could not also be applied inside the United States. Now that gets a bit paranoid, but would we feel comfortable with drone strikes against terrorists–U.S. citizen or no–holed up in a bunker in Alabama?*
This white paper raises more questions than it answers. It is hard to imagine that no mistakes are made. Judicial review is the method we use to avoid mistakes in the criminal justice system. A soldier’s behavior on the battlefield is subject to military judicial review. But there is no judicial review of drone strikes, before or–if the Administration continues to have its way–after the fact. Nor is it clear that the bureaucratic process envisaged is adequate to minimize error.
I’m convinced: killing terrorists is not unlawful. But for more than legal reasons we need to be careful about who, how, when, where and why we do it. The white paper suggests the system in place is still far from adequate, even after several hundred drone strikes that have killed thousands. That really is awful.
*PS, March 6, 2013: For those who think I was hallucinating about drone strikes inside the US, read what Attorney General Eric Holder has now said on the subject.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Copts at risk
With the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to power, the fate of Egypt’s non-Muslim minorities, especially the substantial Coptic minority, is uncertain. This week the Institute of World Politics discussed “The Rise of Islamists: The Challenges to Egypt’s Copts.” Samuel Tadros and Nina Shea discussed discrimination against Copts in pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary Egypt as well as the future perils, as manifested by the experiences of other religious minorities in the region.
Samuel Tadros, Research Fellow at the Center for Religious Freedom of the Hudson Institute, is an Egyptian Copt. He focused on the situation within Egypt, where in the Mubarak era the interaction of four factors ensured discrimination against Copts:
- the Egyptian state, while claiming to protect minorities, treated the Copts as a collective rather than as equal citizens;
- the Islamists viewed Copts as a challenge to Egyptian identity;
- the Egyptian religious establishment;
- society at large.
Post-revolution, exclusion from positions of authority in the police, the army, and intelligence service has continued. New factors include collapse of the state, which has removed constraints on anti-Copt behavior, the rise of emboldened Islamists, the filing in court of blasphemy cases, and an increase in attacks on Christians. The country’s new constitution, with its many loopholes and Sharia-based limitations to freedoms, will make religious minorities worse off than before. Tadros concluded his discussion:
It is not Christians as individuals who are being attacked. It is any manifestation of Christianity.
Nina Shea, Director of the Center for Religious Freedom of the Hudson Institute, focused her attention on discrimination against religious minorities and sectarian-related violence in the region. The situation is not just a human rights issue but also a security issue. The Islamists could pose additional security threats to the region if members of Al Qaeda find a place among radical Salafis. Shea also said:
If Copts disappear, the region will be Islamized for the first time in history.
In her view, it is the responsibility of the US government to ensure the well-being of religious minorities. It should halt its military aid to Egypt until it can ensure that no massacres like the Maspero killing of Christian protestors by the military forces in 2011 will occur again. Shea thought there might be systematic violence against the Copts, suggesting that another Iraq may develop in Egypt and that the Copts might even “disappear.” Any sectarian strife in Egypt would destabilize the country and have spill-over effects throughout an already turbulent region. Tadros thought that genocide would not occur but that mass emigration may take place. A Coptic exodus would undermine pluralism in the Middle East.
It went unremarked, but is important to note, that the Islamists are not only a threat to the Coptic community. They also represent a threat to Muslims who have different interpretations of Islam or seek to incorporate Islamic norms with non-Islamic ones. Egypt’s Islamists seek to monopolize the right of interpreting and defining what is and what is not Islamic. Their rise is not only a threat to a certain community or group of Egyptians, but rather to Egyptian identity as developed over more than 7,000 years of history.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Round 1 to the French
As the residents of Timbuktu and Gao celebrate their French liberation from Islamist extremists, it is tempting to think that things are now okay and we can go back to ignoring Mali. Nothing could be further from the truth. If Mali was a problem last week, it is still a problem this week too. What the French have done is to chase the extremists northwards, into even more forbidding terrain. They were not resoundingly defeated. If given the chance, there they will regroup.
Here’s your primer on the main jihadi players. Get ready for the pop quiz. None of them sound like people who will be giving up the cause anytime soon.
One key to what happens now are the Tuareg. Their National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (NMLA) precipitated the current difficulties with a rebellion last spring that chased the Malian army from the north, with cooperation from al Qaeda-linked Islamist extremists. But the Tuareg fell out with the Islamists. They will now presumably try to take advantage of the Islamist defeat at the hands of the French to reassert control over “Azawad” and continue their push for independence.
Will the French contest the Tuareg? They are more likely to try to get them on side. They will be relieved if the Tuareg oust the Islamists and hope thereafter to broker a deal between the Tuareg and the central government in Bamako. Will the Tuareg do in the Islamists? Hard to tell. It is not clear they can, even if they try. The jihadi betrayed them first time around, and proved a more formidable fighting force, but if independence is their objective the Tuareg cannot really expect to get it from the French, who support the government in Bamako. Nor from the trans-national jihadi.
Meanwhile, the African Union is pledging to solve Africa’s problems. With the French army retaking northern Mali and conflicts raging in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and elsewhere, that seems unlikely. But it is still worth considering the proposition of getting African forces more engaged than they have been so far in Mali. There is already UN Security Council authorization. The question is whether the Africans can get their act together to field a serious force, as they appear to have done in Somalia.
The French army seems to have won this round. Good for them, and for Malians who like music. But the war is unlikely to be over.
PS: Here’s a piece I participated in for Voice of America that tries to make similar points:
RSS - Posts
