Tag: United States
Could we go to war by mistake again?
I was on C-Span this morning talking about Iraq. The program is now up on their website. A lot of questions focused on the past: why we went to war in Iraq, who should be held accountable for the mistake and whether oil was a motive. The moderator, Rob Harrison, tried to keep the focus on the future, but he was only partly successful.
While I too worry more about the future than about the past–there is more you can do about it–I regard it as healthy to ask why we made a mistake like invading Iraq.
I am convinced oil had little to do with it–we were getting oil from Saddam Hussein, and we are getting some oil from Iraq now. Few American companies have benefited from Iraq’s new openness to foreign oil companies, and most of those are active in Kurdistan. The stuff is sold on a world market at market prices. No need to invade anyone to get it.
One caller suggested we were unhappy with Saddam because he wanted customers to pay for oil in a currency other than dollars. Lots of oil producing countries have tried that trick, which has been abandoned as often as it has been adopted. The day will come, but it is not here yet. And it is certainly nothing to go to war about.
There are two other explanations for the mistake that strike me as far more likely: the argument that a democracy in Iraq would transform the region and concern about weapons of mass destruction (WMD). There is no doubt that many within the Bush 43 administration were arguing the former. They were dead wrong: the Arab world regards today’s Iraq as a catastrophe, not a model democracy. The Arab spring owes nothing to Iraq. But the argument likely carried some weight in 2002-3.
The more decisive argument was WMD. I can’t know what was in George W. Bush’s head, but in the public sphere that was the argument that was prevalent, and prevailed. We had only recently been attacked, on 9/11 (2001, for those too young to remember!). The Bush 43 administration claimed that Saddam Hussein was harboring international terrorists and pursuing nuclear and biological weapons (he was known to have chemical weapons, and to have used them against Iraqi Kurds). It was a small step to concluding that he represented a grave and imminent threat to the United States, which is what Colin Powell argued at the UN Security Council. Condi Rice won the day with her warning that the smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud. I doubt she or Colin Powell knew the premise they were acting on was wrong.
We are now facing in 2011, and soon 2012, the same argument with respect to Iran, more than once. This does not mean that the argument is wrong. There is lots of evidence that Iran is trying to assemble all the requirements, including non-nuclear high explosive technology, to build atomic weapons. There is nothing like the cloud of uncertainty that surrounded Iraq’s nuclear program. But still we need extra care to make sure that we have pursued all other avenues to stop Iran from going nuclear before deciding to use our military instruments.
There is ample evidence that the Obama administration has in fact done this:
1. We’ve tightened sanctions, and gotten others to tighten theirs.
2. We’ve offered negotiations, which so far have been fruitless.
3. Cyberattacks and assassinations targeted against key technologies and people, respectively, occur often.
4. Support is flowing to the Iranian opposition, perhaps even to ethnic separatists.
5. We’ve repeatedly said that no options are off the table.
Trouble is, none of this guarantees that Tehran won’t go ahead anyway, hoping that possession of nuclear weapons, or more likely all the technology required to build them, will end American attempts to topple the theocratic regime.
If so, we still have to answer one further question: will military action make us better off, or not? Certainly in Iraq it did not. It is easy enough to imagine that the Arab spring might have swept away Saddam Hussein, as it has other autocrats. Iran’s green movement, quiescent as it is for the moment, could still be our last best hope, not so much for ending the nuclear program as for removing the fears that have fueled it since the days of the Shah. Military action would do serious damage to dissent in Iran, especially as it will have to be repeated periodically to prevent Tehran from repairing damage and moving ahead with redoubled determination to build nuclear weapons.
If there is anything worse than going to war by mistake, it is doing it twice.
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Maliki as Rigoletto
It isn’t funny, but it is still hard to recount what is going on in Iraq with a straight face: the prime minister has accused a vice president of helping (or ordering?) terrorists to try to kill him, the vice president and a deputy prime minister have fled to autonomous Kurdistan to avoid arrest, and their coalition in parliament has withdrawn its members but continues to occupy its ministerial posts. Then this morning bombs explode at more than a dozen sites in Baghdad targeted mainly at Shia This terrorist response to the prime minister’s accusations ironically tends to confirm them.
All of this comes with dramatic sectarian and ethnic overtones. If Iraq were an opera, it would be composed by Verdi, not Mozart. Rigoletto, who manages to bring about all the outcomes he most fears, comes to mind.
It is hard to picture a happy ending. Michael Knights suggests several possible denouements. First: Prime Minister Maliki and Vice President Hashimi might still work a deal to restore the status quo ante. I doubt it, as five judges have supposedly signed Hashimi’s arrest warrant. Hard to forget about that, or about today’s bombs.
Second: the Kurds betray Hashemi and throw their support behind Maliki and his Shia allies, in exchange for concessions on their own demands. There will be hell to pay for this in the Sunni community, as Knights also suggests. And the Kurds have been fooled more than once by Maliki’s promises. It is doubtful they are prepared to be fooled again.
I think the best outcome is in fact Knights’ third, which he regards as an outside possibility: fall of the Maliki government in a parliamentary vote, with Kurds and the Sunni-based alliance Iraqiyya voting him out with support from the Shia-based Sadrists. But the bombings today will encourage Maliki in his worst instincts. Mass arrests? Martial law? Anything he can do to prevent Iraqiyya politicians from showing up in parliament will help preserve his hold on power.
Unfortunately the most likely outcome is an attempt by Maliki to use the forms of parliamentary democracy while establishing a de facto autocracy, as Reidar Visser suggests. This would be a sad fulfillment of many prophecies.
There is a tendency to blame it all on the Americans. I don’t see it that way. Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic divisions were not invented in Washington, which withdrew troops from Iraq only after an extraordinary effort to stabilize the country. What is going on now is essentially invented in Baghdad.
I have been relatively sanguine about the prospects for Iraqi democracy, despite all its difficulties. Even now, it is notable that the arrest warrant for Tariq al Hashemi, the vice president, was signed, apparently by five judges. Saddam Hussein did not bother with such niceties. He used extra-judicial killings to enforce his rule. But it is hard to see a good outcome when the protagonist is so bent on moves that will destroy rather than cure his precious offspring. I repeat what I said six months ago:
Ultimately, whether Iraq continues to develop as a democracy or lapses into something more like its unfortunate past depends on the Iraqis themselves. They seem ambivalent. Some of them, at least on some days, appreciate the freedom they enjoy today, which far exceeds the norm in the Middle East as well as Iraq’s own past. They want more democracy, not less, as recent street protests have demonstrated.
Others, or maybe the same people on other days, are impatient with democratic processes and cry out for “action”—someone who will fix all that ails the country without bothering to consult, legislate or show respect for human rights. Any serious effort to restore autocracy in the whole country would be met with dramatic opposition, most likely organized on an ethnic or sectarian basis.
My guess is that the appreciation of democracy will prevail over the hope for a quick fix. We should certainly do what we can to try to help ensure that outcome.
Today my guess would be reversed: the hope for a quick fix may prevail over democracy. It is up to the Iraqis. We can do little to prevent that outcome.
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Time to make the inevitable happen right
Theatlantic.com published this piece of mine today, under the title 5 Ways the U.S. Can Help Syria:
Dec 22 2011, 8:19 AM ET The Obama administration appears closer to acting, but it will have to do more than carry over old ideas from Libya or elsewhere
The White House yesterday said again, this time in a written statement, that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad regime does not deserve to rule Syria.
We urge Syria’s few remaining supporters in the international community to warn Damascus that if the Arab League initiative is once again not fully implemented, the international community will take additional steps to pressure the Assad regime to stop its crackdown. Bashar al-Assad should have no doubt that the world is watching, and neither the international community nor the Syrian people accept his legitimacy.
What are these additional steps? Is this a bluff? Or have they got something in mind?
If the White House is planning something, let’s hope it doesn’t simply go back to some shopworn ideas that wouldn’t have any real relevance to the situation in Syria. A no-fly zone? The Syrians aren’t using aircraft to attack demonstrators. Safe areas? They will quickly become targets for shelling by the regime, as they did in Bosnia and will have to be protected with force. This may be what those who call for them hope, but we should not be tricked into it. Corridors for deliver of humanitarian assistance? There seems to be no lack of food, water and shelter.
But we do have options. Here are a few less talked about notions that might have an impact:
1. Make sure the Arab League observers have real access. This means guiding them to places where we see concentrations of military force. It means making sure that they can communicate instantaneously with their home governments without being eavesdropped on by Syrian security forces, including by uploading text and photos. It means using diplomatic pressure to counter any intimidation or restrictions they encounter.
2. Ensure that the Syrian National Council and protesters inside Syria continue to communicate and collaborate. There are already efforts in this direction, but they will need to be redoubled. The regime will offer “dialogue,” hoping to split the opposition and find a way to remain in place for a promised transition period. There can be no serious transition with Bashar al-Assad inside Syria. This was Yemen’s mistake, and we should avoid it.
3. Help maintain the opposition’s nonviolence. The regime has ratcheted up its killing to hundreds per day, including many army deserters or others who have refused orders to fire on demonstrators. This makes it exceedingly difficult for the opposition to maintain nonviolent discipline, but in force-on-force clashes the demonstrators are bound to lose more than they win. Violence also disincentivizes people from joining the demonstrations, limiting their numbers and making them easier prey for violence by the security forces (see, for example, Egypt). More Syrians should be trained in nonviolence outside the country; they can then return and train others.
4. Encourage the Syria National Council to present its transition plans publicly. The opposition group in exile is working on them already, and maybe they are not perfect yet. But the time has come for the SNC to tell the country what is supposed to happen after Bashar al-Assad falls. The constitutional framework the Libyan Transitional National Council presented last August made an enormous contribution to improving the prospects for a successful outcome. The failure of the Egyptian military to present and stick with a comparable plan has been enormously delegitimizing. The Syrians should try to follow the Libyan path, not the Egyptian one.
5. If you must consider force, aim it at the security forces’ headquarters, including their communications capabilities. It would be a mistake to respond to attacks on civilians with responses targeted against those who perpetrated the attacks, who may be conscripts acting on orders. The killing in Syria is instructed, not spontaneous. Destroying the regime’s capability to communicate with and coordinate its forces would be far more effective.
Former Middle East advisor to the Obama administration Dennis Ross, fresh from a White House that still seems behind the curve on Syria, is touting the notion that the regime is doomed. I agree, but it makes a great deal of difference how it goes down. If it falls to a unified and nonviolent opposition, one with representatives from different sects and ethnic groups and a plan for the transition period, Syria has a chance to imitate Tunisia, admittedly a much smaller and more homogeneous society. But if the process is drawn out, with sectarian and ethnic violence as well as looting of state assets, the chances for a halfway democratic and unified Syria will be sharply reduced.
Time to make the inevitable happen the right way.
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That was a signal, not a Biden gaffe
If you’ve been wondering whether there are really secret talks going on with the Taliban, Vice President Biden’s “gaffe” yesterday is confirmation: “the Taliban, per se, is not the enemy,” he said.
This is not a change in policy, but it is certainly a shift in emphasis. When President Obama announced the surge of troops into Afghanistan two years ago, he made it clear we were targeting not only Al Qaeda but also the Taliban. We sought, he said, to reverse the Taliban’s momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government, on our way to disrupting, defeating and dismantling Al Qaeda. He added that “We will support efforts by the Afghan government to open the door to those Taliban who abandon violence and respect the human rights of their fellow citizens.”
The lyrics have changed, if not the tune. Now we are talking with the Taliban, with help from the Germans, whether the Afghan government likes it or not. I am not hearing a lot of talk about respect for human rights or even the requirement to abandon violence. It would appear to be sufficient for the Taliban to foreswear support to Al Qaeda and give up on toppling the Karzai government. Here is the fuller context of what Biden said:
…we are in a position where if Afghanistan ceased and desisted from being a haven for people who do damage and have as a target the United States of America and their allies, that’s good enough. That’s good enough. We’re not there yet.
Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests. If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us. So there’s a dual track here:
One, continue to keep the pressure on al Qaeda and continue to diminish them. Two, put the government in a position where they can be strong enough that they can negotiate with and not be overthrown by the Taliban. And at the same time try to get the Taliban to move in the direction to see to it that they, through reconciliation, commit not to be engaged with al Qaeda or any other organization that they would harbor to do damage to us and our allies.
Note that the White House backed him up. This was a signal to the Taliban that there is a door to a deal with the Americans that did not previously exist. If, as is rumored, Afghan detainees at Guantanamo are transferred to Kabul’s control, that will be a clear indication that we think the Taliban ready to walk through. Confidence building measures of this sort are an important part of the diplomatic game. A prisoner transfer would help the Taliban to sell the idea of a deal to their cadres and supporters.
The road ahead is still not an easy one. The options for a real deal with the Taliban are not appetizing. And the reaction to Biden’s trial balloon suggest it will be hard to sell to many people in the U.S. What if those prisoners are transferred and then released, or they escape? That’s not something the Obama administration will want to see happen in the lead-up to a presidential election.
So there is still a lot of uncertainty and risk on the path to a negotiated exit from Afghanistan. But that was a signal, not a Biden gaffe.
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Half the world
The goal of this National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security is as simple as it is profound: to empower half the world’s population as equal partners in preventing conflict and building peace in countries threatened and affected by war, violence, and insecurity. Achieving this goal is critical to our national and global security.
Those are the opening lines of the U.S. National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security unveiled yesterday at Georgetown University by Secretary of State Clinton. My friends at Inclusive Security asked me if I would blog on it–I hope they won’t be too disappointed in the results.
The plan is impeccably right-minded: it makes engagement and protection of women central to U.S. policy, complements existing efforts, establishes inclusion as the norm, emphasizes coordination and declares U.S. agencies accountable for implementing the plan. Nothing wrong with any of that.
The problem is that women are not often the problem. Only in rare instances do they join armed groups, chase civilians from their homes, rape and pillage or commit other war crimes. Men do most of these things, and men generally order these things done. When the time comes to make peace, the people you need at the negotiating table are the ones who control the ones with the guns.
The people you should want at the negotiating table are the ones without guns: victims, male or female, who have a stake in ending war and building peace. But only rarely are they brought in, mainly because the guys with guns don’t want them there. In my time working on the Bosnian Federation in the 1990s, I can’t recall an occasion on which a woman was in the room during a negotiation as a representative of one of the “formerly warring parties.” But neither was there ever a man in the room who hadn’t been a belligerent, who just wanted a normal life, who thought the safety and security of his family was more important than ethnic identity. Constituents for peace are a threat to belligerents, who want all the cards in their own hands, not in someone else’s.
This does not explain why women aren’t used as mediators. Of the current State Department special envoys and representatives who report directly to Hillary Clinton, only four of twenty-one are women, if I am counting correctly. Seven of the ten who do not report directly to the Secretary are women. Certainly these are higher numbers of women than at times in the past, but that 4/21 is not exactly smashing the glass ceiling. The UN, which naturally reflects not only American values, has never used a woman as a chief mediator, according to the report.
While I would be the last to quarrel with the need to protect women from sexual and gender-based violence during and after conflict, as well as their right to resources during recovery from violence, it is in the conflict prevention section that I think the report says some really interesting things. Let me quote at some length:
…gender-specific migration patterns or precipitous changes in the status or treatment of women and girls may serve as signals of broader vulnerability to the onset or escalation of conflict or atrocities. This focus will help to ensure that conflict prevention efforts are responsive to sexual and gender-based violence and other forms of violence affecting women and girls, and that our approaches are informed by differences in the experiences of men and women, girls and boys. Further, we will seek to better leverage women’s networks and organizations in activities aimed at arresting armed conflict or preventing spirals of violence.
Finally, the United States understands that successful conflict prevention efforts must rest on key investments in women’s economic empowerment, education, and health. A growing body of evidence shows that empowering women and reducing gender gaps in health, education, labor markets, and other areas is associated with lower poverty, higher economic growth, greater agricultural productivity, better nutrition and education of children, and other outcomes vital to the success of communities.
I’m not sure I am completely comfortable with the notion that women and girls are the canaries in the coal mine, but the notion that women’s employment, health and education, often viewed as the softer side of peacebuilding, are in fact central to the enterprise is one that I think has real validity. If Afghanistan has any chance at all of coming out all right from the last decade of hellish conflict, it is because of what has been done on health and education, two of the relative success stories in an otherwise bleak picture. Education is one of the failed sectors in Bosnia, where its segregation has helped to sustain ethnic nationalists in power. The role of women in North Korea, where they are increasingly responsible for providing livelihoods from small gardens, is likely to be fundamental.
We won’t really know if this “action plan” is effective for another year, or perhaps two or three. It is probably too much to hope that the forcefulness and clarity of purpose with which it was prepared will blow away the barriers that have stood for so long. But if it enables America to tap more of its own talent as well as draw on constituencies for peace in conflict-prone countries, it will have served a useful purpose.
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North Korean winter: stability or discontent?
As regular readers will know, North Korea is not my thing, even if I have a good deal of experience on nuclear nonproliferation issues. The last time I posted a piece devoted to it was more than a year ago, though I’ve mentioned it more often as an American priority. In the wake of Kim Jong-il’s death, the best I can do is offer a summary of what I think obvious.
North Korea is a priority for the U.S. because of the risks its nuclear weapons program poses, both for proliferation and for targeting America and its allies in South Korea and Japan. Kim Jong-il’s regime managed to test something like nuclear weapons twice (in 2006 and 2009), was developing longer-range missiles and is thought to be on the verge of acquiring substantial quantities of enriched uranium. North Korea has already been involved in murky missile and nuclear technology trade with Pakistan and Iran.
The first American concern will be short-term stability. The Obama Administration is quite rightly indicating that it is watching the situation and consulting with Seoul and Tokyo, but it would be a mistake to say or do anything that could provoke military action by Pyongyang, which readily perceives threats and uses attacks on the South both to rally internal support and to extract assistance from the international community.
This will put Washington for the moment on the same wavelength with Beijing and Moscow, which fear instability. China in particular is concerned about millions of refugees crossing its border. It will also worry that the Americans intend to take advantage of Kim Jong-il’s death to liberate North Korea and reunify it with the South. That is something Seoul says it wants and the Americans would be hard put not to support, but the process by which it happens could be dramatically problematic as well as costly. China does not want a reunified, Western-oriented, strong Korea on its border.
A great deal now depends on what happens inside North Korea. The New York Times quotes an unnamed American military source:
Anyone who tells you they understand what is going to happen is either lying or deceiving himself.
I would be deceiving myself. So I won’t try to tell you I understand what is going to happen. Things to watch for? Whether calm prevails for the next week or so, whether the funeral comes off on December 28 without signs of tension in or with the army, whether the succession to Kim Jong-un is orderly, whether food prices remain more or less stable, whether there are military maneuvers against the South. So far, the announcements out of the North suggest things are under control.
Past the next few weeks, Washington will need to decide what to do. In a remarkable but little remarked shift of policy, the Americans–who had said they would not meet with North Korea bilaterally unless it gave up its nuclear weapons programs–began meeting bilaterally with the North Koreans in 2006 as soon as they tested a nuclear weapon. Now they say they won’t return to the six-party talks (involving China, Russia, Japan, and the Koreas) unless than the talks are substantial (which means progress can be made on nuclear issues).
My guess is that we’ll see talks, but with a few months delay. North Korea is not as desperate as once it was. It will not want to rush into international talks before settling its domestic situation. The regime will want to reconsolidate itself and bargain with the five other parties from a position of strength, which likely means continuation of the nuclear and missile programs in the interim.
The wild card could be the North Koreans themselves. If protests start, the regime will crack down hard. There are signs the security forces are deploying to prevent trouble. Markets are closed. North Korea is a brutal dictatorship far beyond the imagination of Tunisia or Egypt, where protests have felled long-ruling presidents. Could this be the winter of discontents?
PS: Written before Kim Jong-un became the designated successor, but still of interest: Preparing for Sudden Change in North Korea – Council on Foreign Relations.
PPS: Just imagine what these people will do the day they are free to do as they like:
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