Tag: Egypt
Producing more enemies than you can kill
No doubt one of the few international issues President Obama will highlight in tonight’s State of the Union speech is the threat of international terrorists associated with the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. He will cite the American military response in Iraq and Syria as vital to our national interests and claim we are making progress, at least in Iraq.
He is unlikely to acknowledge that the problem is spreading and getting worse. In Libya, there are two parliaments and two governments, one of which has ample extremist backing. In Yemen, rebels have laid siege to the government the Washington relies on for cooperation against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. In northeastern Nigeria, Boko Haram is wrecking havoc. In Syria, moderates have lost territory and extremists have gained. Taliban violence is up in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Fourteen years ago when the World Trade Center was attacked in New York City Al Qaeda amounted to a few hundred militants hiding out mainly in Afghanistan, with small clandestine cells in Europe and the US. Now estimates of the number of extremists change so rapidly it is hard to know which to cite, but there are surely more than 100 times as many actively engaged in extremist Islamist campaigns or recruitment efforts in close to a dozen countries, including (in addition to the ones cited above) Somalia, Egypt, Niger, Mali, Algeria, Palestine and Tunisia. Counting the numbers of sympathizers in Europe, Russia and the United States is just impossible.
The long war against Islamist extremism is not going well. It can’t, because we are fighting what amounts to an insurgency against the existing state system principally with military means. Drones and air strikes are killing lots of militants, and I am even prepared to believe that the collateral damage to innocents is minimized, whatever that means. But extremist recruitment is more than keeping up with extremist losses. We are making more enemies than we are killing. Insurgencies thrive on that.
The Obama administration is apparently prepared to make things worse, as it now leans towards supporting UN and Russian peace initiatives in Syria that are premised on allowing Bashar al Asad to stay in power. The Islamic State will welcome that, as it will push relative moderates in their direction and weaken the prospects for a democratic transition. Bashar has shown no inclination to fight ISIS and will continue to focus his regime’s efforts against democracy advocates.
President Obama knows what it takes to shrink extremist appeal: states that protect their populations with rule of law and govern inclusively and transparently. This is the opposite of what Bashar al Asad, and his father, have done. But President Obama has no confidence the US or anyone in the international community can build such states in a matter of months or even years. So he does what comes naturally to those whose strongest available means is military power: he uses it to achieve short-term objectives, knowing that its use is counter-productive in the longer term.
But producing more enemies than you can kill is not a strategy that works forever. The Union is recovering from a devastating economic crisis and can now afford to take a fresh look at its foreign policy priorities. I’ll be with the President when he calls tonight for completion of the big new trade and investment agreement with Europe (TTIP) and its counterpart in the Pacific (TTP). These are good things that can find support on both sides of the aisle, among Democrats and Republicans.
I’ll groan when he calls for a new Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) but says little or nothing about building the kind of states in the Greater Middle East that are needed to immunize the region against extremism. Support for restoration of autocracy in Egypt and for Gulf monarchies is not a policy that will counter extremism. We are guaranteeing that things are going to get worse before they get better.
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Peace picks January 19-23
- A Year in Crisis: The Middle East in 2015 | January 20 | 9:30 – 11:00 | Woodrow Wilson Center | REGISTER TO ATTEND | The Middle East, already the world’s most volatile region, faces some of its toughest challenges in a century: Borders have been redrawn in Syria and Iraq. States from Libya to Yemen are collapsing. Autocracy is again on the rise in Egypt. And diplomacy is teetering with Iran. Meanwhile, the United States is being sucked back into the region. Come hear four top experts explore the crises of 2015, the stakes, and where they’re headed. The panel of speakers includes Robin Wright, USIP-Wilson Center Distinguished Scholar, Marina Ottaway, Senior Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Center, Shaul Bakhash, Professor of History, George Mason University and David Ottaway, Senior Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Center.
- Managing, Ending and Avoiding Wars in the Middle East | Tuesday January 20 | 13:00 – 15:30 | Middle East Policy Council | REGISTER TO ATTEND | The Middle East Policy Council is organizing its 79th Capitol Hill Conference on the management and resolution of conflict in the Middle East. The conference will feature Michael Hayden, General, USAF (ret.), former Director, CIA and Principal, the Chertoff Group, Daniel Bolger, Lt. General, US Army (ret.), Dafna H. Rand, Deputy Director of Studies, Center for a New American Security and Francis Ricciardone, Vice President and Director, Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. It will be moderated by Omar M. Kader, Chairman of the Board, Middle East Policy Council, and Thomas R. Mattair, Executive Director, Middle East Policy Council will be the discussant.
- Breaking the Cycle: Creating Solutions for Water Security in the Middle East | Wednesday January 21 | 9:30 – 11:30 | Hollings Center for International Dialogue | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Often overshadowed by political turmoil, the Middle East faces increasing environmental and resource-based challenges, notably its depleting water resources. Overuse enabled by government subsidies, growing demographic challenges and misuse of what scarce resources do exist challenge the long-term sustainability of the region’s resources. Despite the gravity of the issue, many innovative ideas for solutions do exist and technological improvements provide hope for addressing these challenges. Please join us for a conversation exploring these potential solutions. The panelists are Raymond Karam, Program Associate at EastWest Institute, Scott Moore, International Affairs Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations and Paul Sullivan, Adjunct Professor of Security Studies, Georgetown University. The talk will be moderated by David Dumke,Director, Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd Program for Strategic Research and Studies, University of Central Florida, with introductions by Michael Carroll, Executive Director, Hollings Center.
- New Challenges for Islamist Movements | Thursday January 22 | 12:00 – 14:00 | POMEPS| REGISTER TO ATTEND | From the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria to the regional suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood and decline of Ennahda’s prominence in Tunisia, Islamist movements across the Middle East are confronted by new challenges at the start of 2015. Join POMEPS for a panel discussion on the organizational challenges facing Islamist movements and how Islamists, from youth members to senior leadership, are responding. The panelists are Khalil al-Anani, Adjunct Professor of Middle East Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Raphaël Lefèvre, Gates Scholar, University of Cambridge, Monica Marks, Doctoral Researcher, Oxford University and Quinn Mecham, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Brigham Young University. The discussion will be moderated by Mark Lynch, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, George Washington University.
- Once Upon a Revolution: An Egyptian Story | Friday January 23 | 13:00 – 14:30 | New America Foundation | REGISTER TO ATTEND | In his new book, Once Upon A Revolution: An Egyptian Story,Thanassis Cambanis tells the inside story of the 2011 Egyptian revolution by following two courageous and pivotal leaders—and their imperfect decisions, which changed the world. In January 2011, in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, a group of strangers sparked a revolution, but had little more than their idealism with which to battle the secret police, the old oligarchs, and a power-hungry military determined to keep control. Basem, an apolitical middle-class architect, jeopardized the lives of his family when he seized the chance to improve his country. Moaz, a contrarian Muslim Brother, defied his own organization to join the opposition. While Basem was determined to change the system from within, becoming one of the only revolutionaries to win a seat in parliament after new elections were held, Moaz took a different course, convinced that only street pressure from youth movements could dismantle the old order. This book launch features a discussion with Thanassis Cambanis, Fellow, The Century Foundation, moderated by Nadia Oweidat, Senior Fellow, New America Foundation.
- Politics, Comedy, and the Dangers of Satire | Friday 23 January | 16:00 | Georgetown University’s Davis Performing Arts Center | The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics will host this timely forum, presented in association with the U.S. premiere of Ajoka Theatre of Lahore’s Amrika Chalo (Destination USA). Ajoka Theatre has been the target of violent threats, and Pakistani authorities have banned Nadeem’s Burqavanza for the play’s criticism of a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. Nadeem himself lived in exile until 1993 because of violent responses to his satirical plays. The tragic incidents in Paris provide a bracing reminder and a highly charged political and ideological context for the complex and essential role satire and freedom of expression play in our society. The forum will feature Shahid Nadeem, Executive Director, Ajoka Theatre, Nikahang Kowsar, Iranian-Canadian cartoonist previously imprisoned in Tehran for his satirical cartoons and Imam Yahya Hendi, Georgetown University Muslim Chaplain. The forum will be moderated by Prof. Derek Goldman, Co-Director of the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics.
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Why we are losing the long war
The United States went to war with Islamic extremism in the aftermath of the murder of nearly 3000 people on 9/11, when its adherents were largely concentrated in Afghanistan. The Bush Administration called this the Global War on Terror (GWOT), a term that misleadingly included the invasion of Iraq. The Obama Administration has abandoned that appellation but continued what others now term the “long” war, which has spread throughout the Greater Middle East into Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Mali, Syria, Egypt, Libya and into sub-Saharan Africa, even as it has subsided in Indonesia, the Philippines and other parts of Asia.
Even this rudimentary description suggests we are not winning. It isn’t even clear what “winning” means, but it almost certainly does not entail spreading the enemy to a dozen or more additional countries, where they are challenging established governments. The geographic spread makes this a tougher fight. Our military much prefers to concentrate forces on a center of gravity whose defeat spells the end of the war.
But now it is no longer clear where the center of gravity is: we used to think it was Al Qaeda Central, holed up in Peshawar or somewhere else along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. But Osama bin Laden’s death did nothing to stem the jihadi tide, even if Al Qaeda Central has lost significance. Today the press would have us believe the center of gravity is with the Islamic State (ISIS), somewhere in eastern Syria or western Iraq. But defeating it there will all too obviously not defeat Al Qaeda-linked terrorists in Yemen and Mali, or the ISIS affiliate in Sinai.
Islamic extremism, despite ISIS’s claim, is still more an insurgency than a state. Insurgencies do not need to win. They only need to survive.
This one is not only geographically resilient but also demographically resilient. I know of no indication that anything we have done for the past decade or more has seriously limited recruitment to Islamic extremism. To the contrary, efforts to repress it using military force seem to make recruitment easier, not harder. New leaders have far more often than not stepped into the roles of those we have killed. Nor have any of our propaganda/psychops efforts worked. There is on the contrary lots of anecdotal evidence that ISIS propaganda efforts do work, at least to recruit cannon fodder.
So we’ve got an enemy that is difficult to locate, whose center of gravity is unclear, and whose psychops are better than ours. What should we do about it?
First is to keep a sense of proportion. For Americans, trans-national terrorism is a vanishingly small threat. The odds are one-ninth those of being killed by a policeman, and comparable to those of being killed by an asteroid. Ninety-nine per cent of the time no American need really fear terrorism outside a war zone, and those who enter war zones do so knowing the risks.
Second is to recognize that if we want to reduce the risk–in particular reduce the risk that the risk will grow in the future–military means are proving massively inadequate and inappropriate. Islamic extremism was far less likely to grow like topsy when confined to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan than it is now, dispersed in at least a dozen weak states. Those cats are out of the bag. We are not going to be able to force Islamic extremists back to where they came from. But we should be cautious about continuing to bombard them with drones wherever they appear. We may think the risks of collateral damage are minimal, but the people who live in Yemen don’t. For those who join extremist groups because of real or imagined offenses to “dignity,” drone strikes are an effective recruiting tool.
This brings us third to the fraught question of countering extremist narratives. I know of no evidence that direct government efforts to counter extremist narratives have been successful. There is evidence that former terrorists and their families can have some influence, working with local communities. But that requires the existence of a relatively free civil society in which religious institutions and private voluntary organizations are at liberty to organize. Community policing is also an effective strategy. But community policing requires the existence of a legitimate and inclusive state that uses security forces to protect its citizens rather than itself.
It is no wonder that we are losing the long war. We are using our strengths, which lie in technology and military action rather than in the far messier (and more difficult) tasks of building civil society and legitimate governance. It is arguable that our technology and military are actually making the task of countering violent extremism even harder. Drone strikes don’t encourage people to think their government is committed to protecting them. Nor do they encourage former terrorists and their families to speak out against extremism, as community-based civil society organizations might.
If the long war is worth fighting, it should be fought to win. For now, we are fighting it in ways bound to make us lose.
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Even good things won’t make 2015 a good year
Mark Leon Goldberg wrote just before Christmas that 2015 might be one of those rare years that shakes up the international system, he thought for the better. His hopes are based on
- adoption next September of the Sustainable Development Goals and
- conclusion of a treaty on climate change before the end of the year.
I’m not optimistic, even if both these hopes are realized.
Mark is correct that the Millennium Development Goals, which expire in 2015, have been a significant success. But unfortunately that is unlikely to be repeated with the follow-on Sustainable Development Goals. Success has encouraged overreach. The MDGs were restrained and reachable. There were only eight of them:
The current draft of the SDGs is ridiculously over-ambitious and unrealistic. They start with “end poverty in all its forms everywhere.” They repeat that sweeping over-ambition for hunger, health, education, gender equality, water, energy, economic growth, employment, infrastructure, inequality (within and between countries), cities, oceans, terrestrial ecosystems, justice and sustainable development. Seventeen goals in all. This is a catalog of the developed world’s current concerns, not a set of achievable goals for countries and organizations with limited capacity and even more limited resources.
Unless a real effort is made to prune and prioritize, the SDGs risk irrelevance or worse. There is certainly no risk they will be achieved if they remain in their current formulation. A real effort should be made in the next few months to pare them back, both in number and ambition. A tighter and shorter set of goals would bode much better for implementation.
I too am optimistic about a climate change treaty concluded in 2015. But unfortunately there is no hope it will be strong enough to avoid truly serious impacts of global warming. We are well on our way to breaching the 2 degrees centigrade rise over pre-industrial levels that is generally regarded as a benchmark, albeit an arbitrary one, signalling serious problems due to irreversible melting of major ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. The way I read this World Bank report, we are likely to double that figure before the end of the century. You have to believe that countries will all meet their current pledges and tight new ones will be made in order to avoid it.
I’m not a climate disaster monger. But I do have a long memory. What I remember is that the “greenhouse effect” (which is what causes the fossil fuel contribution to global warming) was already an issue at the 1972 (first) UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. I was a young staffer on the secretariat and amazed that human activity could affect the entire planet. Our collective failure to do anything serious about it in the more than forty years since suggests that we will need some real disasters before acting. New York City is building up its coastal defenses, in response to the massive flooding that occurred due to Hurricane Sandy, and other big cities have invested heavily (London has floodgates, Venice is getting them). The Netherlands has its dikes. But much of Asia is at serious risk, as are lots of islands. Bangladesh, Mauritius and Vietnam can’t afford the defenses that New York and the Dutch build.
We’ve likely already seen some of the disasters and their consequences. Climate variation caused heightened conflict between pastoralists and agriculturalists in Darfur and drought in Syria, where an influx of farmers into urban areas was contributed to the rebellion against Bashar al Assad. We are going to see a lot more such climate-induced violent conflicts as competition for resources–especially water–grows and productive land area shrinks. The United Arab Emirates can afford to desalinate sea water. Egypt much less so, but its needs will soon exceed what the Nile will provide.
So no, I am not sanguine. Even good things won’t make 2015 a good year.
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The troubles we see
This year’s Council on Foreign Relations Preventive Priorities Survey was published this morning. It annually surveys the globe for a total of 30 Tier 1, 2 and 3 priorities for the United States. Tier 1s have a high or moderate impact on US interests or a high or moderate likelihood (above 50-50). Tier 2s can have low likelihood but high impact on US interests, moderate (50-50) likelihood and moderate impact on US interests, or high likelihood and low impact on US interests. Tier 3s are all the rest. Data is crowdsourced from a gaggle of experts, including me.
We aren’t going to be telling you anything you don’t know this year, but the exercise is still instructive. The two new Tier 1 contingencies are Russian intervention in Ukraine and heightened tensions in Israel/Palestine. A new Tier 2 priority is Kurdish violence within Turkey. I don’t believe I voted for that one. Ebola made it only to Tier 3, as did political unrest in China and possible succession problems in Thailand. I had Ebola higher than that.
Not surprisingly, the top slot (high likelihood and high impact) goes to ISIS. Military confrontation in the South China Sea moved up to Tier 1. Internal instability in Pakistan moved down, as did political instability in Jordan. Six issues fell off the list: conflict in Somalia, a China/India clash, Mali, Democratic Republic of the Congo Bangladesh and conflict between Sudan and South Sudan.
Remaining in Tier 1 are a mass casualty attack on the US homeland (hard to remove that one), a serious cyberattack (that’s likely to be perennial too), a North Korea crisis, and an Israeli attack on Iran. Syria and Afghanistan remain in Tier 2 (I think I had Syria higher than that).
The Greater Middle East looms large in this list. Tier 2 is all Greater Middle East, including Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Turkey and Yemen (in addition to Tier 1 priorities Israel/Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and Palestine). That makes 11 out of 30, all in the top two tiers. Saudi monarchy succession is not even mentioned. Nor is Bahrain.
Sub-Saharan Africa makes it only into Tier 3. Latin America and much of Southeast Asia escape mention.
There is a question in my mind whether the exclusively country-by-country approach of this survey makes sense. It is true of course that problems in the Middle East vary from country to country, but there are also some common threads: Islamic extremism, weak and fragile states, exclusionary governance, demographic challenges and economic failure. From a policy response perspective, it may make more sense to focus on those than to try to define “contingencies” country by country. If you really wanted to prevent some of these things from happening, you would surely have to broaden the focus beyond national borders. Russian expansionism into Russian-speaking territories on its periphery might be another more thematic way of defining contingencies.
One of the key factors in foreign policy is entirely missing from this list: domestic American politics and the difficulties it creates for a concerted posture in international affairs. Just to offer a couple of examples: failure to continue to pay Afghanistan’s security sector bills, Congressional passage of new Iran sanctions before the P5+1 negotiations are completed, or a decision by President Obama to abandon entirely support for the Syrian opposition. The survey ignores American “agency” in determining whether contingencies happen, or not. That isn’t the world I live in.
For my Balkans readers: no, you are not on the list, and you haven’t been for a long time so far as I can tell. In fact, it is hard to picture how any contingency today in the Balkans could make it even to Tier 3. That’s the good news. But it also means you should not be looking to Washington for solutions to your problems. Brussels and your own capitals are the places to start.
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Peace Picks December 15-19
- The Escalating Shi’a-Sunni Conflict: Assessing the Role of ISIS | Monday December 15 | 9:30 | The Stimson Center | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Today, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) controls and effectively governs large parts of territory based on a sectarian agenda. By implementing an ideology of religious intolerance, ISIS plays a significant role in deepening the already existing sectarian divide in a region deeply embroiled in conflict. Its appeal namely lies in its ability to offer an alternative to many communities that have felt marginalized and threatened in the past, and more so since the Arab uprisings began. Given its anti-Shi’a agenda, did ISIS capitalize on the conditions in Iraq and the Levant or did it help create them? Does ISIS have the potential to spread to other countries in the region where there is a sectarian problem, such as Lebanon? What is the potential for the US to push back on the ISIS march? Is Washington throwing money at the problem or are US military efforts actually making a difference on the ground? The discussants will address these issues, with a particular focus on Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. The panelists are Joseph Bahout, Visiting Scholar, Middle East Program, The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Omar Al-Nidawi, Director for Iraq, Gryphon Partners LLC. The event is moderated by Geneive Abdo, Fellow, Middle East Program, The Stimson Center.
- International Diplomacy and the Ukraine Crisis | Monday December 15 | 9:30 – 10:30 | International Institute for Strategic Studies | To date, international diplomatic efforts to address the Ukraine crisis – the most severe threat to European security since the Cold War – have been episodic and largely unsuccessful. A discussion on the attempts thus far and how they might be improved going forward with three highly experienced negotiators from Russia, the US, and the EU. The discussants are Vladimir Lukin who was the special envoy of the Russian president for the February 21st talks in Kyiv between then-President Viktor Yanukovych and opposition leaders, Richard Burt who serves as managing director at McLarty Associates, where he has led the firm’s work in Europe and Eurasia since 2007 and Michael Leigh who is a Transatlantic Academy Fellow, consultant and senior advisor to the German Marshall Fund.
- Congressional Options and Their Likely Consequences for a Nuclear Deal with Iran | Tuesday December 16 | 1:00 – 2:00 | Rand Corporation | REGISTER TO ATTEND | With nuclear negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 now extended beyond the original November 24 deadline, some members of Congress might now attempt to intervene legislatively. Congressional action could either help or hinder the implementation of whatever deal may be reached. What options are available to Congress, and what are the likely consequences of each for the United States? The talk is with analyst Larry Hanauer as he identifies and assesses eight potential courses of action that Congress could take that might either facilitate, hinder, or block implementation of a nuclear deal.
- The State and Future of Egypt’s Islamists | Thursday December 18 | 12:00 – 1:00 | Hudson Institute | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Who are Egypt’s Islamists? What are the internal dynamics among Islamism’s various individual and collective constituents? How have the dramatic political developments in Egypt over the past four years affected the country’s Islamists, and what are their future prospects? Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Samuel Tadros’s two-year long study of Egyptian Islamism has resulted in two landmark reports. The first, Mapping Egyptian Islamism, profiles 128 currents, groups, and individuals that form the complex Egyptian Islamist scene. The second, Islamist vs. Islamist: The Theologico-Political Questions, examines the internal dynamics of Islamism in terms of the relationships among its leading figures and major tendencies, and their disagreements on key theological and political questions. The discussion will surround the future of Egypt’s Islamists and Tadros’s two new reports featuring Mokhtar Awad of the Center for American Progress, William McCants of the Brookings Institution, and Eric Trager of the Washington Institute. Samuel Tadros will moderate the discussion.
- Bordering on Terrorism: Turkey’s Syria Policy and the Rise of the Islamic State | Friday December 19 | 9:30 – 11:00 | Foundation for Defense of Democracies | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Southeastern Turkey has become a hub for terror finance, arms smuggling, illegal oil sales, and the flow of fighters to extremist groups in Syria including the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra. Ankara has made explicit that it supports the arming of Syrian rebels, although whether Ankara is directly assisting jihadist groups remains unclear. Nevertheless, Turkey’s reluctance to cooperate with the international coalition acting against the Islamic State has undermined domestic stability, threatened the country’s economy and placed it on a collision course with the United States. Should Washington, therefore, seek to persuade Ankara to confront extremism at home and its neighborhood? And if Turkey refuses, should there be implications for its NATO membership? A conversation with Tony Badran, Jamie Dettmer, and Jonathan Schanzer.
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