Not A Clue

It has been a true disappointment to watch our Middle East strategy visibly collapse these last few weeks as American officials have steadily turned a blind eye to Israeli settlement building. To their credit, the Obama administration had initially, at least for several months, been relatively clear about the need for Israel to stop construction of additional housing units. That is, until recently, when the administration began to drop the ball on the issue and their tough line against settlements started to fade perceptibly.

Then came Hilary Clinton's statement this week that appeared to praise Netanyahu's "unprecedented" policy towards settlements. No surprise, the Arab world erupted in anger, assuming that her words were evidence of a new American policy towards Israel based upon a highly lenient view of additional settlement construction. By the time that Clinton got to Morocco on the next leg of her overseas tour, she was already being roundly criticized by Arab leaders as a flip-flopper.

Clinton has since "clarified" the statement, but her simple poor choice of an adjective went a long way to undermining the Arab world's trust in the new American leadership. Reader of the Arab press over the last few days get a clear sense of a broad feeling of disappointment on the part of many Arabs. Obama, people thought, what with his majestic speech in Cairo not long after his inauguration, was supposed to herald in a new era of diplomacy and sustained American engagement. He was supposed to be different.

In the context of this latest controversy, no one should be surprised that Arab leaders haven't more enthusiastically jumped on board to Obama's plan for solving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute - a plan that involves, for them, undertaking a range of good-faith measures towards Israel. Arabs have little faith in America's commitment to this issue; they know the history of our biased and spotty engagement. Why should they sacrifice politically, putting themselves on the chopping block of rabidly anti-Israeli domestic audiences, for an effort that -- like its predecessors -- is likely to fail because of Washington's lack of commitment? Clinton's latest statements, combined with the general lethargy of the Obama administration towards this issue in recent weeks, has done nothing but further discourage the kind of Arab participation that Washington so desperately wants.

Adding to the administration's troubles, a now-humiliated Mahmoud Abbas has said that he won't run for re-election in light of the lack of peace progress. Now, our primary Palestinian partner, Fatah, which had already been undermined politically when they were told to disregard the Goldstone Report, is looking shakier than ever. More generally, Palestinian moderates who argue that only dialogue and engagement with the Israelis will bring a just solution to the conflict are appearing increasingly weak in the face of militant Hamas supporters who point to signs of another failed peace initiative as an indication that negotiations are a dead end.

Meanwhile, our Secretary of State, exemplifying the poor leadership that she has exhibited on the Israel-Palestine issue, now seems to think that she can just give the Arabs more money to make them like us. On Tuesday, just as the settlement controversy was breaking, she unrolled a miserly initiative to give a few dollars to "vulnerable young people" in Jordan (alongside some other projects in the region.) Shockingly, this bold, dramatic new initiative got little attention in the press.

Memo to Clinton: want to curry favor in the Middle East? Then tell the Israelis to stop settlement construction and then threaten them with aid cuts if they don't do it. That will, I can guarantee it, be a much more fruitful public diplomacy effort.

Quick Hit: The Absurdity of Authoritarian Rule

This isn't the most analytical thing I've ever written, and maybe I'm just punch drunk from being up nights lately, but as deadly serious as the subject is, I couldn't help but laugh when I read the following bit in the Times about Iranian hard-liners' attempts to circumscribe demonstrations around the thirtieth anniversary of the taking of the American Embassy in Tehran:

No rallies would be permitted except the state-sanctioned ones outside the old embassy and anyone chanting anything except “death to America” would be arrested.

Again, I don't mean to make light of the very real crimes committed by a very repressive state, but stepping back, one has to appreciate the profound absurdity involved in choreographing support for authoritarian regimes. They've gone beyond the standard tactics of rounding up some supporters and putting implicit boundaries around the general gist of what they're supposed to express. They're quite literally demanding that people get together at a particular time and place and look REALLY EXCITED while reading from a meticulously prepared script. The closest parallel I can think of is certain elements of religious ritual, but when was the last time you heard someone put real passion into the Nicene Creed?

Quick Hit: Europe Says No to Crucifixes in Italian Schools

The European Court of Human Rights has reportedly ruled that the display of crucifixes in Italian public schools violates religous freedom, and, barring a successful appeal by the Italian government, such displays must end within three months. The AP quotes the Court's ruling:

...the court said the presence of the crucifix ''could easily be interpreted by pupils of all ages as a religious sign and they would feel that they were being educated in a school environment bearing the stamp of a given religion.'' It added that the presence of such symbols could be ''disturbing for pupils who practiced other religions or were atheists.''

The court said secular, state-run schools must ''observe confessional neutrality in the context of public education,'' where attendance is compulsory.

The Italian right, needless to say, is going mildly ballistic (if you can read Italian, check out reporting from La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera). I'd imagine that Italian Euroskeptic parties will make plenty of hay out of this decision in the coming months. I don't have much commentary yet, except to say that it's an interesting intrusion of trans-European institutions into issues of identity and values in one of the E.U.'s constituent states (the Italian government has generally argued that the crucifix is as much a symbol of Italian history and cultural identity as it is of Catholicism explicitly). It's worth noting that this decision overturns the verdict of the Italian Constitutional Court, which is the highest national authority on such matters.

Finally, while there's a sense in which this bodes well for the strength of European institutions, I wonder whether or not the Court is playing with fire. Issues of national identity remain immensely important in Europe, and are primary rallying points around which Euroskeptic forces gather. It will be interesting to see which way the political winds blow.

Photo Credit: Correire della Sera

The Meaning of "Pressure"

The New York Times reports that Secretary Clinton has denied that the Obama Administration has eased pressure on Israel to implement a full settlement freeze, saying that such a freeze remains an American goal. Here's the thing, though: "pressure" involves more than just saying stuff. It involves more than just saying stuff forcefully. What "pressure" generally means is credibly threatening undesirable consequences if behavior doesn't conform to the wishes of the entity applying it.

The Administration called rather forcefully for a settlement freeze months ago. At that point, the words themselves were significant enough, because they represented a startling departure from previous U.S. rhetoric. It made many in Israel very uncomfortable, precisely because the Administration's implication was that, if Israel wasn't going to play ball, there would be consequences. Now that Israel hasn't played ball, and there haven't been consequences, words no longer constitute "pressure." Indeed, they've arguably been devalued by their lack of correspondence with reality.

If the Obama Administration actually wants leverage with the Israelis, it is going to have to come up with some strategies for making them believe they'll actually pay a price for not doing what it asks them to. If not, talk of "pressure" is basically meaningless.

Boots Alone Can't Win Afghanistan

President Obama hasn't officially announced his new Afghanistan strategy, but as Matt noted on Thursday, leaks indicate that he is leaning towards an approach that would focus on reinforcing and protecting major population centers, increasing the speed of training for Afghan forces, and relying to a greater extent on unmanned Predator drones to kill Taliban and al-Qaeda militants. Ignoring, for a moment, the nuts and bolts of the military strategy, there is one thing that really concerns me: the absence of a comprehensive political plan to make the Kabul government a legitimate and respected authority for the Afghan people.

It should be obvious that the US cannot prop up one of the most corrupt governments in the region through military smarts alone (think Diem in Vietnam) - and hope to be successful. All of the additional troop numbers and strategic force relocations can't change the fact that if Karzai's administration has no popular legitimacy, the insurgency will still have a strong base of support from which to operate. Effective governance, in other words, is the foundation upon which the military strategy will either succeed or fail. As Major General Michael T. Flynn, a senior American military intelligence official told the NYT, "If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves."

In general, counterinsurgency only tends to succeed under two scenarios: either when brutal and overwhelming force is used (think of Sri Lanka's crush-them-and-mop-them-up offensive against the Tamil Tigers earlier this year), or when the government waging the counterinsurgency campaign is popular enough to win over the majority of the people and thereby marginalize its anti-government opponents.

The Obama administration obviously is not about to adopt a military strategy with its Kabul allies that is styled on the brutal approach that the Sri Lankan government recently embraced in its own domestic struggle. The reasons are obvious. The Taliban are largely based in the border regions of Pakistan and targeting them on a major scale would not be well received in Islamabad; moreover, international public opinion would never tolerate the kind of bloodshed that it would take to eliminate the Taliban problem.

The only other policy option, then, is the second one, based on the much repeated "winning hearts and minds" mantra, which is designed to undermine the insurgents' base of support. But Obama, by failing to include in this new strategy any major focus on reforming Afghani politics, is dooming his plan to failure before it has even begun. We should have no illusions: if we look the other way as Hamid Karzai's administration destroys its own legitimacy through corruption, election stealing, and poor management, our military strategy - no matter how creative - is certain to fail to bring stability to Afghanistan.

You have to wonder if our military commanders understand this. For my part, I found this line in the recent NYT profile piece on General McChrystal to be hauntingly prophetic:

...[I]ncreasingly, McChrystal, as well as President Obama and the American people, are being forced to confront the possibility that they will be stuck fighting and dying and paying for a government that is widely viewed as illegitimate. When I asked McChrystal about this, it was the one issue that he seemed not to have thought through.

Photo: White House.

In Defense of History

Given the amount of half-sober arguments I've had over the past few weeks with various historians-in-training about the merits of their discipline, I feel a bit odd saying this, but Matt Yglesias's view of historical "lessons" strikes me as weird and insufficiently charitable to serious historians and social scientists. Responding to a thoughtful bit by Spencer Ackerman on the "lessons of Iraq" and how they're now being applied to Afghanistan, Yglesias writes:

I think appeals to “the lessons of history” are, in general, dangerous. Efforts to make predictions based on observations of human history tend to fail. But it’s especially difficult when you’re basically talking about learning lessons based on a single case.

Now, I'll be the first to agree that you have to be very careful when drawing historical parallels (for a prime example, see my recent analogy to the Chinese civil war, which in retrospect was so tortured as to merit referral to the ICC), but if you're not going to use history to inform and enrich your view of current events, what the hell are you going to use? History, broadly defined, is basically the only dataset from which social scientists and pundits have to draw. The danger, of course, is that the lens through which people view history will lead them to overemphasize facts that support the conclusions they want to draw anyway. History's a bit like the Bible, in that you can use it to justify basically any argument if you willfully ignore context. Still, I really really hope that when Administration planners are considering what course to take in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Latin America, or the U.S. Congress for that matter, they're drawing on a deep well of historical knowledge. I'll take the risks of incorrect inferences over the risks of no inferences at all any day of the week.

Quick Hit: Obama Lifts HIV Travel Ban

Via Feministing.

Missed this one yesterday, but President Obama ended the week by announcing the federal government would lift the 22-year-old ban on travel and immigration to the U.S. by HIV-positive people.

The President called the original ban "a decision rooted in fear rather than fact."

"We are one of only a dozen countries that still bar people with HIV from entering our own country," he said. "If we want to be the global leader in HIV, we need to act like it."

Damn right.

More Thoughts on Afghanistan

A couple of days ago, the Times reported that the Obama Administration seems to be settling on an approach in Afghanistan that falls somewhere in between the "Biden" strategy of scaled-down troop commitments and anti-al-Qaeda operations and the "McChrystal" strategy of scaled-up troop commitments and a broader counterinsurgency campaign. Evidently, a consensus seems to be forming around the idea of using U.S. troops to protect major population centers, pulling back (at least in part) from many of their outposts in the Afghan countryside, then focusing on training the Afghan army to pick up the slack.

After reading the Times story, my immediate thought (nightmare?) was Chiang Kai-Shek's 1948 offensive against Mao's forces in the north of China. Supported by American materiel (though going against the advice of American advisers), Chiang initiated a major attack and captured most of the population centers that had previously been controlled by the communists. The problem, though, was that his troops never secured the countryside where Mao's support base rested, and so became stuck in urban islands surrounded by a hostile rural "sea." By 1949 Chiang was in Taiwan and Mao was in Beijing. Now, obviously, it's a very imperfect analogy. By the end of the Chinese civil war, the conflict had become a fairly conventional war of maneuver, and Chiang's troops, who were mostly half-starving conscripts, basically collapsed in the face of the final communist assault. I don't see that happening here. There's also the crucial difference that Mao was extraordinarily popular in the Chinese countryside, and communist governance there had actually increased his popularity (because of land redistribution and other reforms). Attitudes toward the Taliban are certainly more mixed. Bottom line: the U.S. can stay in Afghanistan, and support the government's control over some areas of Afghanistan, for basically as long as it's willing to commit the human, financial and political resources. The question this brings when it comes purely to the security element of the strategy is whether the U.S. public, realistically, is going to support a major presence in Afghanistan for as long as it might take to get an Afghan army in shape to control the country on its own.

This brings us to the two principal political questions operating here. The first is whether or not the political elements of the Afghan state are sound enough to, at the very least, make real forward progress on being able to engage in power-sharing, (re)legitimizing themselves in the eyes of most of the Afghan population, and running (and controlling) a military and security apparatus that will be able to effectively secure the country. It's a very tall order, but it seems to be what the strategy's implicitly banking on happening with time. Time, in turn, is key to the second political question, namely how long the U.S. public will realistically countenance a large American presence in a still-violent Afghanistan. Putting aside the personal fortunes of Obama and his administration, one way or another a war that the public does not support can't be continued indefinitely. Even taking into account the reduced salience of the war in the U.S. because of the lack of a draft, the economic and human price being paid just won't seem worth the gains. The question, then, is whether or not there's a real chance of this strategy showing measurable results before outlasting the patience of the American public. Also a tall order.

Finally, there's the question of tradeoffs in American policy that have to be made elsewhere because of its presence in Afghanistan. It hampers U.S. flexibility in Central Asia and complicates its relationship with Russia. It ties down large portions of a military already exhausted by almost eight years of war. It also complicates (to an extent), the American relationship with Pakistan and India.

All that said, the presence of al-Qaeda in the region does give the U.S. a compelling reason to be there, and a complete exit any time soon doesn't seem feasible or probably wise.

I'm thus waiting on the official announcement of a new strategy with a healthy skepticism. If it seems as though there's a sophisticated political strategy that shows a good chance of paying dividends in better governance, reduced corruption and effective security services, and furthermore paying them soon enough to maintain support for the war here at home, that will be encouraging. If such a strategy isn't forthcoming (or just isn't within American capabilities), I'll be far more concerned.

MISSING THE POINT

I used to read the Huffington Post a lot more than I do now. It's the MSNBC of the internet, and I can only take so much massively ideologically skewed news, even when I agree with it. Still, it's worth pointing out that the current massive headline on the site's front page kind of misses the point. It reads (in about the biggest font imaginable) "OVERKILL: Troops in Afghanistan Already Outnumber Taliban 12:1."

Now, if we were fighting a conventional war of maneuver against regular enemy units, this would probably be something relevant to point out. We're not doing that, though. We're (at present anyway) fighting a counterinsurgency. My understanding of counterinsurgency war, for what it's worth, is that the important ratio is troops:population, not troops:enemy. It's the population whose attitudes and political orientation you need to secure. The number of Taliban obviously isn't irrelevant, but just empirically if we had enough troops in Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban, I doubt they'd currently control large sections of the country. The fact that we probably can't put enough boots on the ground to decisively defeat the Taliban and control the country, at least not quickly, is the reason our strategy there is being reexamined.

I know Arianna Huffington has taken up the mantle of the liberal Matt Drudge. That doesn't mean she needs to be blatantly misleading.

Labeling Turkish Foreign Policy

The thrust of Soner Cagaptay's recent piece in Foreign Affairs is similar to many like-minded articles that worry about Turkey's trend towards Islamism. In this case, the fear is about the country's increasingly Eastern-facing foreign policy. Cagaptay argues that Turkey's AKP leaders are not just trying to reengage with the Muslim world (a region that the historically Western-oriented Turkey had neglected); they are also actively pursuing friendships with radical Muslim countries. It's a sign, he says, of the increasing "Islamism in the country's foreign policy."

[T]he AKP's foreign policy has not promoted sympathy toward all Muslim states. Rather, the party has promoted solidarity with Islamist, anti-Western regimes (Qatar and Sudan, for example) while dismissing secular, pro-Western Muslim governments (Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia). This two-pronged strategy is especially apparent in the Palestinian territories: at the same time that the AKP government has called on Western countries to "recognize Hamas as the legitimate government of the Palestinian people," AKP officials have labeled Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas the "head of an illegitimate government." According to diplomats, Abbas' last visit to Ankara in July 2009 went terribly -- now, these diplomatic sources say, Abbas does not trust the AKP any more than he trusts Hamas.

...After seven years of the AKP's Islamist rhetoric, public opinion has shifted to embrace the idea of a politically united "Muslim world." According to independent polling in Turkey, the number of people identifying themselves as Muslim increased by ten percent between 2002 and 2007; in addition, almost half of those surveyed describe themselves as Islamist. The AKP's foreign policy now has a welcome audience at home, making it more likely to become entrenched. After Erdogan stormed out of his session at the World Economic Forum, thousands gathered to greet his plane as it arrived back home in what appeared to be an orchestrated welcome. (Banners with Turkish and Hamas flags stitched together appeared from nowhere in a matter of hours.)

The transformation of Turkish identity under the AKP has potentially massive ramifications. Guided by an Islamist worldview, it will become more and more impossible for Turkey to support Western foreign policy, even when doing so is in its national interest.

It is true that we've seen a warming of relations between Turkey and such Islamist heavyweights as Iran and Sudan - perhaps at the expense of the West. But there is a certain amount of analysis that is missing here. Cagaptay's reading is deeply pessimistic; I see a more nuanced and a less dire situation. One of the points made in the article is that Turkey is trying to systematically sever its ties with Israel. Such a reading seems inaccurate, given that until a very recent set of successive diplomatic spats, Turkey maintained relatively stable relations with its neighbor. As evidence of this, Ankara had established enough credibility with Tel Aviv to mediate informal peace talks with Damascus (no small task!) that lasted for a number of months. Indeed, up until the attack on Gaza, Turkish-Israeli relations seemed to be on relatively stable ground. (Even after the Gaza war ended, I would add, Turkey was reportedly pushing through back channels to restart its mediation effort of the stalled Israeli-Syrian peace track, an indication of its commitment to the Israeli-Turkish relationship.)

Ankara has also continued to pursue attempts to join the European Union. Although there is undoubtedly some waning of enthusiasm (largely, I would argue, due to the discouraging talk about Turkish accession from some EU members -- I'm looking at you, France), there continues to be engagement on this issue. Certainly, it should be noted that during the first period after they took office, the AKP, in the hopes of furthering the country's EU bid, passed the greatest expansion of women's rights since Ataturk alongside a range of other reforms. Reform measures have obviously slowed down since then, but efforts are still ongoing. (See Turkey's historic moves towards normalizing relations with Armenia, widely seen as an attempt to "assuage European Union opponents of Turkish membership.")

Turkey's foreign policy doesn't lend itself well to simple labels. For my part, I see Ankara as pursuing an approach to foreign affairs that is multi-pronged but still based largely on simple realism, not religious ideology. Specifically, Turkey appears to be continuing with a policy that has proven highly advantageous to it in the past: that of making nice with all of its neighbors, particularly those countries who, by association, will provide Ankara with increased regional clout. What I don't see is a clear shift by Turkey into the "Islamist" camp. Cagaptay portrays the AKP as long having had ambitions to unite the Islamist world at the expense of secular and Western-leaning Muslim countries like Jordan and Tunisia. Such talk seems grandiose.

A more realistic picture is the image of a Turkey which, hoping to cause "zero problems" with its neighbors, initially pursued good relations with both Europe and the Middle East during the early part of the AKP's tenure; however, having been rebuffed in its efforts by several prominent European countries, Turkey's leaders are now looking more towards the East. That they are cultivating ties with Iran and Sudan more than, say, Jordan and Egypt, should be seen as a sign that Ankara views these relationships as the way to becoming a bigger player in the region - not that they endorse these countries' world views or envision them as part of an effort to unite and spread the Islamist ideology.

In other words, make friends with Tehran and Khartoum while also maintaining relations with the West and you become a key link and an important regional power-broker. Focus on ties with Cairo and Amman, on the other hand, and you risk being seen as just another spineless lapdog of the United States.

Cartoon credit: The Economist.

Forgot To Recycle? If You're British, Look Out

The rise of government surveillance in Britain has certainly not gone unnoticed. But given what's at stake and the rate at which these changes are taking place, I'd argue that attention to the issue (and subsequent outrage) has been far, far too limited. Britain is truly getting into a level of monitoring and information gathering that is unprecedented in the history of Western democracies. Concerns about the Patriot Act or other European legislation of a similar nature seem to pale in comparison to the British system of surveillance. According to a 2004 European Commission report, the system is built on the distribution of 40,000 cameras across 500 British cities and towns. Compare that with, say, Germany, where there are roughly 100 cameras spread over a little more than a dozen cities.

The New York Times takes on this issue today, detailing the story of Jenny Paton, a British mother-of-three who, after falsifying her address on her daughter's school application form, was put under surveillance from local authorities. Without her knowledge, they got ahold of her telephone records and they assigned an officer to follow her around and track her every move. The officer's log, sounding a lot like a high-profile drug investigation, was reported to have referred to the "female and three children" and Paton's car as the "target vehicle." (She was ultimately found not guilty of any crime.) Turns out, the NYT reports, it's not just national intelligence agencies in Britain that are watching people -- localities have also been given the authority to put people under surveillance, even for the most petty of suspected crimes:

Local governments regularly use these surveillance powers — which they “self authorize,” without oversight from judges or law enforcement officers — to investigate malfeasance like illegally dumping industrial waste, loan-sharking and falsely claiming welfare benefits. But they also use them to investigate reports of noise pollution and people who do not clean up their dogs’ waste. Local governments use them to catch people who fail to recycle, people who put their trash out too early, people who sell fireworks without licenses, people whose dogs bark too loudly and people who illegally operate taxicabs.

It's just more evidence that government, when they have too much power in the area of law enforcement and surveillance, is likely to abuse it.

Quick Hit: Graveyard of Analogies

Ahmed Rashid, who has been covering Afghanistan since the Soviets literally rolled in to Kabul, argues in an excellent article for The National that the US is not the Soviet Union and that we still have a chance to succeed in Afghanistan:

...to compare the American and Soviet invasions is misguided, as Gregory Feifer’s brilliant and timely new history of the Soviet war, The Great Gamble, makes clear: the Soviets had no support inside or outside the country when they blundered in with their tanks to prop up an unpopular Afghan communist government that took power by coup.

The Soviet army, badly underfunded and overwhelmed by adverse conditions in Afghanistan that drained troop morale, relied on massive firepower to kill and maim Afghans rather than winning their hearts and minds. So long as the Afghan mujahideen maintained their sanctuaries in Pakistan, where they were rearmed and funded by the CIA – and where they could recruit from among the vast pool of Afghan refugees – the Soviets could not defeat them.

There is little question that the oft-repeated line that Afghanistan is the "graveyard of empires" has been well overplayed. Don't forget that the Mongols took Afghanistan and controlled it succesfully; moreover, the British ruled the country as a kind of "informal protectorate." That said, we have to keep in mind that the Americans, unlike any of their previous colonialist counterparts, are hoping not only to "subdue" the country (what a terrible phrase), but also to maintain the country's first nationwide democracy. A tall order indeed.

A Lesson on the US Constitution

This is not exactly foreign policy related, but since I'm writing this at 4 in the morning on a Friday, I figure that most blogging rules need not apply.

Earlier today, GOP Congressman Paul Broun of Georgia introduced yet another amendment to deny all funding to ACORN. Rep. Alan Grayson took the five minutes allotted to him to question Rep. Broun about this thing called "the Constitution" and, specifically, "bills of attainder," which happen to be prohibited by the "Constitution." What ensued is both hilarious and very worthwhile. Every member of Congress should be subjected to questioning like this on a daily basis... (Glenn Greenwald)

Amen. And now, without further ado, here's a great use of five minutes:

Nuclear Logic

First off, apologies for the light posting of late. I'm coming to the fascinating realization that graduate school involves doing work, so I'm still in the process of figuring out a reasonable equilibrium.

Anyway, I woke up this morning to find the latest Foreign Affairs under my door. Good times. Flipping through, I noticed an article (not yet up on their site, so you'll just have to trust me) by Keir Lieber and Daryl Press on nuclear deterrence in the 21st Century. These two authors published a piece a few years ago in the same journal arguing that a new age of American nuclear primacy that would trump the logic of Cold War deterrence was now beginning.

Their current aims are somewhat more modest. Conceding the wisdom of cutting the number of large, city-destroying warheads that the United States currently deploys, the authors argue that any restructured American nuclear arsenal needs to have a robust "counterforce" capability. In particular, they argue for keeping and (likely) upgrading small warheads with hyper-accurate delivery systems designed to take out an enemy's nuclear forces. Now, there may be wisdom in this course of action, but the authors' justification for it is suspect.

They start from several premises. First, they argue that peacetime nuclear deterrence ought not be the central focus of those who think about the nuclear balance. It's important, of course, to maintain a general balance of nuclear threat with theoretical adversaries like Russia and China, but unlike during the Cold War, the likelihood of a quick, large scale nuclear exchange between great powers is quite low. What's more critical, the authors say, is managing deterrence (or at least limited use) of nuclear weapons in the context of a conventional war with a nuclear-armed adversary.

Given the slow but steady spread of nuclear weapons, and given American committments in East Asia and the Middle East, the authors take it as more or less certain that the United States will, at some point, find itself at war with a country that has a nuclear arsenal. What America needs, therefore, is the capability to launch a counterforce strike that would functionally disable that force in order to deter its limited use against American military targets (such as a carrier battlegroup or airbase). Such a limited strike would neither justify nor make rational a nuclear response against an adversary's cities, but having the ability to remove an enemy's nuclear weapons would then free up other options, such as regime change via conventional arms.

To their credit, Lieber and Press do point out some credible objections to this course of action. In particular, they note that given the current style of American warfare, which focuses on destroying enemy air defenses and communications, and generally blinding and confusing them during the early stages of a war, knowledge that the U.S. has the capability and doctrinal propensity to launch a counterforce strike might actually increase the likelihood of a hair-trigger nuclear response at the start of a conflict. After all, if you have reason to believe that you're about to lose your nuclear ace-in-the-hole, you'd best use it. Unfortunately, the authors don't really respond to this criticism in any kind of a rigorous way. They just note it, but then say the benefits are worth the costs.

More to the point, though, the authors have a view of nuclear weapons' role, and of U.S. foreign policy more generally, that is expansive and dangerous. Of course, the United States must be theoretically capable of fighting adversaries like Iran, North Korea and (at least in a limited capacity), China, but viewing such conflicts as inevitable or even very likely has the danger of becoming self-fulfilling. A large scale war, nuclear or conventional, against any one of those countries would be a disaster for the United States. There are of course scenarios in which it might be the least-worst option, but American planners shouldn't make such conflicts their sole or even principal consideration when configuring America's nuclear structure. Nuclear weapons are as much political as they are military, and so their role needs to be viewed through a political lens. From that standpoint, perceptions that the U.S. was planning to widen the role of nuclear weapons, not narrow them, would likely trump whatever PR gains were achieved through an absolute reduction in numbers. This would be especially true if the logic behind such an expansion was that posed by the authors: to ensure the United States retains the capability to conquer other states.

The fact, alternately comforting and irritating, is that a nuclear arsenal is a very, very powerful tool for protecting home territory and ensuring regime survival. A regime with a functional nuclear arsenal of any size can more or less ensure that it isn't bluntly forced out of power by foreign arms. Lieber and Press propose that the United States can leverage its technological advantages to avoid this reality, but that seems far-fetched. They note, for example, that China has always fielded a very small nuclear arsenal, just enough to deter nuclear attack. They seem to treat this state of affairs, though, as being static. I imagine that if the Chinese began to seriously worry that the United States could launch a counterforce strike against their nuclear weapons, they'd do precisely what the Soviets did and expand their arsenal. Lord knows they have the resources and technology to do so.

The same logic more or less works with Iran. Assuming Iran goes nuclear, there will likely be a period in which their arsenal is fairly small and vulnerable to the kinds of strikes the authors envision, but if the Iranians know that, I doubt it will stay small and vulnerable for long. The authors also speak of using low-yield, airburst weapons for a counterforce strike in order to avoid large scale fallout and minimize the escalatory potential of civilian casualties. If I'm in the Iranian leadership, I solve this by placing my nuclear forces near civilian centers, depriving the U.S. of that option. I'm sure Lieber and Press aren't the only ones who've considered this problem.

The larger point is that trying to attain and keep the ability to launch counterforce strikes against an enemy arsenal would be quite difficult. There are just too many ways of countering that capability that are comparatively easy and cheap. Furthermore, many of them involve nuclear arsenals of mushrooming size (see Cold War, comically-large nuclear forces during), which opens up a whole host of other problems.

Rather than focus on nuclear primacy, U.S. leaders would be better off recognizing that a world of nuclear proliferation places limits on the most extreme options (conquest and regime change) in the portfolio of Ameircan power. Adapting to that fact, rather than fighting it, seems like a more rational way to go.

Dead End for Palestinian Reconciliation...And the Squabbling Continues

The title of this post is actually somewhat misleading, since it implies that the Cairo-led Palestinian reconciliation talks have just recently broken down. It is true that in the past few days, events have reached a new crescendo of disorder and the future of the reconciliation project appears less certain than ever before. (See Daniel Levy's post for details on the latest developments.) But the talks have been breaking down, in a sense, for months. Whether it was the chaos surrounding the Fatah summit and the refusal of Hamas to allow Gaza-based Fatah members to attend, or regular accusations by Hamas that Fatah is working in league with Israel, or mutual accusations about politically-motivated arrests and persecution, or the multiple missed deadlines for reaching an agreement, the road to Palestinian reconciliation has never been a smooth one. Indeed, watching the vitriol that is regularly exchanged between rival Fatah and Hamas leaders on Arab TV networks, it seems quite clear that a miraculous reunification of the PA is not in the works any time soon. Too much bad blood exists and too many accusations have been hurled.

If Palestinian reconciliation is dead (for now), then what does that mean for Obama's peace efforts? The answer is no secret. Without a unified Palestinian Authority, any peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians would lack obvious credibility. On the Palestinian side, Fatah -- and Mahmoud Abbas, in particular -- have only themselves to blame for destroying this opportunity for progress. Abbas's absurd response to the UN-sponsored Goldstone Report (he wanted it ignored), which accused Israel of having committed war crimes in Gaza, reinforced his image as a stooge of the Israelis. His own party, which had been riding high on a wave of relative unity following the Fatah conference, split into camps as supporters and detractors of Abbas's decision traded accusations. As a result, now, not only have do we have a Fatah-Hamas divide, but there are also internal Fatah schisms to add to the Palestinian leadership crisis.

Obama's team has certainly added to these problems. You have to wonder what they think they are doing. It was Obama that asked Abbas to agree to ignore the Goldstone Report, a move that, as Marc Lynch points out, was so absurdly illogical and short-sighted that it makes you wonder who is making the decisions on Palestine within the White House.

Why was the PA leadership put in this untenable situation? The Obama team has consistently identified building Palestinian Authority legitimacy and capacity as a key part of its strategy. Did nobody consider the impact that such an important symbolic issue as the perceived suppression of the Goldstone report would have on this supposedly crucial dimension of the strategy?

Indeed, I would go as far as to argue that the Obama team's strategy for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians has fallen into disorder. They no longer have a clear strategy. If they do have one, it's based on begging and hope, rather than smart-minded statesmanship. That's, at least, the angle from which analyst Steve Clemons based his argument in a piece yesterday for Al Jazeera English. Noting the lack of clarity that defines our current approach to the conflict, Clemons suggested that maybe George Mitchell is no longer the right man for the job.

But Mitchell, with all due respect to this great man, is practically begging Israel to co operate. Israel will not. It has no incentive to do so. It is the regional superpower and has the upper hand as the occupier in question.The most important lesson to be learned from the failed Annapolis process is that without two things - genuine US presidential 'engagement' and a broader stakeholder approach to the problem that does not depend on the goodwill of just Palestine and Israel - the conflict will not be resolved.

Mitchell has been meeting with everyone in the region about the conflict but his comments and his focus have been on trying to move Palestine and Israel to behave responsibly and in ways that fit their collective interest. He should have been seeking agreement from the Saudis, Jordanians, Russians, Europeans, Syrians, Egyptians, the UN, and the Arab League in general to come to terms on what the world feels would be acceptable in a final status framework - and then impose that construct on the parties. This would move us beyond the pathetic whining to try to get the process started to one that would be more about the implementation of a final status framework.

...If Mitchell does not reinvent himself and the process, if he does not get to a point where he communicates Obama's steel-fashioned resolve to see results from both parties, and does not begin to assemble a ring of stakeholders willing to reward and punish both Israel and Palestine in a tough-minded agreement on final status issues, then he needs to be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Obama for his good work and then given another big task, perhaps in Mexico.

Steve's right that Mitchell's approach (he calls it "whining") appears to be getting us nowhere. But the problem is with the president's strategy, not the messenger's. At the end of the day, Obama is directing the show. It is he who needs to take the reins and get tougher. Indeed, after months of meetings, it is time for us to either see results on Mitchell's consensus-building diplomacy or try a different, harder approach that uses serious sticks to get what we want. As Obama once said, this is not just an Israeli national security issue - it's also an American national security issue. It's time to act like we actually believe that to be true.

That said, even if the Obama team were to get its act together, the lack of Palestinian reconciliation truly poses an impossible barrier to Israeli-Palestinian peace. Without a united Palestinian Authority, in name as well as in spirit, no agreement is feasible.

It's truly one hell of a position we find ourselves in.

A Future with the Karzai Government?

Tom Friedman's column today is not terribly original, but it reiterates an important point for people to remember about the war in Afghanistan: behind all the talk about troop levels and the tactical work of defeating al-Qaeda/the Taliban/both, there lies the fact that the Afghan government we're working with - the one that we more or less installed eight years ago - is universally recognized as being undemocratic, corrupt and ineffective, and in some quarters simply illegitimate. Many observers (myself included for what it's worth) view this as one of the principal difficulties with the notion of escalating a true counterinsurgency war there. We probably can't commit the resources for it, we likely don't have the political support at home to see it through, but beyond that it's just really questionable whether or not we'll be able to stabilize a government that rests on such a rotten structural base.

The problem I've been mulling over in my head (and which I haven't seen anyone address in a particularly comprehensive way) is what our relationship with the Afghan government would look like under the conditions of a scaled back commitment. Now, it doesn't seem as though we'll be seeing any serious reductions in the number of troops in the region any time soon, but news reports indicate that there is considerable debate going on in the White House about whether or not to keep troop levels static and narrow their mission to counter-terrorism. Presumably, this would mean slackening the U.S. commitment to the viability of the Karzai government, as Friedman suggests in his column.

It strikes me, though, that this could lead to a rather sticky situation. If U.S. policy shifted in the direction of counter-terrorism, how would the Afghan government react? How would that affect the legal justification for NATO's presence (my understanding is that ISAF is currently in Afghanistan under a U.N. mandate that gets extended by the Security Council every year - not sure how the Afghan government's opinion bears on that)? While I doubt the Karzai government would actually try to kick the Americans out of the country (at the end of the day, U.S. troops would be an option of last resort for the government to keep control of the capital if things went really pear-shaped), we might end up in a weird situation where we get little or no cooperation from the Afghan army, and have to deal with an Afghan political class that uses anti-imperialist rhetoric to try and bolster its legitimacy and undermine U.S. troops' standing with the populace. Our presence would be justified largely on the basis of America's own national security, but would likely hemorrhage legitimacy both within Afghanistan and abroad.

I'm not sure that this means escalation is our "only option," but it's worth considering that the notion of keeping a small force in the country, without using that force to help out the country's government, has some serious internal contradictions.

A Lesson From McNamara

Having been thinking about the Afghanistan-Vietnam parallels recently, I have been digging in to Robert McNamara's book, In Retrospect, which is about the lead-up and the execution of the Vietnam War. The book, in many ways, is a self-indictment by McNamara for his own role and that of his colleagues; but most importantly, it's a call to future generations to not replicate the mistakes that were made during his era. Although McNamara does not explicitly apologize for his part in the war, he is extraordinarily critical of the ignorance that pushed both the Kennedy and the Johnson administrations, of which he was a major player, into deeper and deeper involvement in Vietnam (from the 16k troops playing a mere advisory role in the early 1960s to the over 500k combat troops by the end of the decade.)

Repeatedly he criticizes himself and those around him for assuming that the war could be won. But caught up by the fear of losing and the potential consequences that such a loss might have on American security, he and most of the other members of the Johnson Cabinet steadily came around to the position that there was no other option in Vietnam than escalation. But, McNamara notes, the evidence that they could destroy the enemy was slim, based more on doomsday scenarios and vague hopes than on-the-ground realities.

In trying to explain where they went wrong, McNamara writes that he and his colleagues failed to fully understand and implement a basic rule of war: that any type of counter-insurgency campaign can only be successful if the besieged government is able to gain the broad-based support of the local population. In the book, he mentions this lesson many times, noting that the Johnson administration, in particular, just didn't get it.

The government in Saigon was unraveling faster than we could even discuss our possible courses of action with the president. On September 6, [Ambassador to South Vietnam] Max [Taylor] cabled in exasperation that "only the emergence of an exceptional leader could improve the situation and no George Washington is in sight." Since the first days of the Kennedy administration, we had regarded political stability as a fundamental prerequisite for our Vietnam strategy. Now Max as much as said it appeared unattainable. (154)

...South Vietnam's political instability deeply troubled President Johnson, and he wondered aloud whether it made all our efforts worthless. Max flatly stated we could not afford to let Hanoi win. [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs] Bus [Wheeler] emphatically agreed, emphasizing the chiefs' unanimous belief that losing South Vietnam meant losing all Southeast Asia. Dean Rusk and John McCone forcefully concurred. But no one (including me) asked whether or how we could prevent it! (155)

Regardless of these concerns, LBJ ultimately decided to escalate our military involvement on behalf of a weak and unpopular South Vietnamese government. Needless to say, we lost. And at a great price to the Vietnamese people and to ourselves.

With the Obama administration's public re-commitment to the war in Afghanistan recently, it seems safe to assume that McNamara is rolling in his grave. On behalf of whom, he would ask, are we fighting? The answer, of course, is that we are fighting on behalf of a highly corrupt and questionably democratic government that is unpopular throughout the country. Karzai's administration has recently been accused of massive electoral fraud and, if turnout during the recent presidential election is any indication, Afghanis think little of their nation's leaders.

To make matters worse, there has been little discussion about a comprehensive political strategy [here's an interesting one] to reform the current Afghani government. Does the Obama administration truly think that they can win this through military means alone? Do they think they can succeed with the type of corruption and authoritarianism that currently characterize the Kabul government? Do they expect to ignore the fraudulent elections -- or perhaps just let the UN deal with the consequences?

If they do, then they will perilously be ignoring McNamara's lesson: that a steady house cannot be built on a broken foundation. Make no mistake about it, though. Only if Afghanistan is on strong political footing is there any chance of defeating the Taliban insurgency. I fear that policymakers in Washington do not clearly understand this.

The Burden of the Hymen

The LATimes reports on a new, Chinese-made gadget that, some say, could be very useful in the Muslim world:

Whether it's seen as a clever little gadget to help a woman keep a secret or a devilish deception that threatens Islam, the Artificial Virginity Hymen Kit is not welcome in Egypt. The kit allows a bride who is not a virgin to pretend that she is. A pouch inserted into the vagina on her wedding night ruptures and leaks a blood-like liquid designed to trick a new husband into believing that his wife is chaste. It's a wink of ingenuity to soothe a man's ego and keep the dowry intact.

Egyptian conservatives condemn the device as technology that will promote promiscuity in a culture that forbids premarital sex. Their protests are arising in a nation that over the last 40 years has gone from miniskirts and secularism to hijabs and religious devotion. But seldom have conservatives faced such brazen advertising.

"No more worry about losing your virginity. With this product, you can have your first night back any time," states the website of Gigimo, a Chinese mail-order company that sells the kit and other sexual products, including sex dolls and bondage toys, worldwide. "Add in a few moans and groans, you will pass through undetectable."

I doubt that this new product is going to catch on, mostly because of the difficulty that Gigimo is likely to find in trying to import and market the product in countries like Egypt. But make no mistake that this is a major problem for women in the Arab world. Hymen reconstruction surgery is reportedly quite popular in countries like Egypt since the implications of not being a virgin on your wedding night can be truly terrible - social ostracization, disgrace for your family, even murder.

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I was good friends with a woman in Syria who told me a familiar story: that she was forced into marriage at a young age with a distant relative that she was not in love with. She told me that in her village, the custom was to put a bloody sheet outside the window to show to the neighbors that the marriage had been consummated. But when she failed to have sex with her husband for the entire first month of marriage, people started asking questions. The husband's masculinity was questioned, as was her "purity." It was a subject of great shame to her and to her family. (The couple eventually got divorced.)

Her own virginity, she described to me, had ceased to be hers. Rather, it's existence had become a social commodity to be bought and sold by the highest bidder - in this case, the husband who would bring the most status and respectability to her family. When she resisted, holding on to her dream of falling in love and marrying a man of her own choosing, her family shamed her and, in turn, the family was shamed by others in the community (particularly the dad, who was laughed at for not even having "control over his own daughter.")

There is, however, no burden of proof or even expectation that men should be virgins when they enter marriage. A blatant double standard exists. Men are largely free to do as they wish, assuming that they do not impregnate a woman before they are legally married. Nor is there much of an understanding that a woman may break her hymen without having sex - say, by riding a horse or a bicycle.

This intense obsession with virginity, with the shedding of "pure" blood, is not only creepy, but it is also a terrible burden for Muslim women to bear. Rafia Zakariah, a Muslim attorney living in the United States, has a thoughtful discussion of this issue in the Daily Times (of Pakistan):

The fact is, in Egypt, as in a majority of Muslim countries, the onus of protecting a society’s delusions of purity and piety are placed solely and singularly on the shoulders of women. In ensuring that virgins are venerated and non-virgins vilified, social constructions of good and bad women are enforced in a society where the value of a woman is little else than her ability to breed sons, please her husband and be a good housekeeper. The myth that is continually forwarded is that all those women who are not virgins are somehow dirty, impure and unworthy of marriage. No consideration is given to the fact that the majority of these women may be widows, divorcees or victims of sexual assault. In other words, male complicity in reducing women to a non-virgin status is completely ignored in the whole discussion.

Because of this, thousands of widows, divorcees and rape victims in countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are forced to live lives at the very margins of social acceptability. Not only can they not expect to be married again, they are further dealt the burden of being somehow morally compromised simply because they are no longer the pure virgins venerated as brides. Examples from Islamic history that suggest otherwise, for instance, the notable fact that the first marriage of the Prophet (pbuh) was to a widow are given short shrift and virtually ignored.

Najaf No Longer A Good Place to Party

Al Arabiya is reporting [Arabic] that the Iraqi city of Najaf has banned the consumption, selling, or transportation of alcohol within its jurisdictional territory, saying that it will prosecute anyone who violates the "sanctity of the city." Even advertising alcohol is now off limits. This law isn't the first of its kind - Basra also institute legislation of a similar nature last August.

World Says WTF To Nobel Committee

The Nobel Committee did a nice job this morning of continuing to undermine their own legitimacy (a process which started long ago when Henry Kissinger got an award) when they made a "surprise" decision (understatement of the year) to award our own President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. The reaction from the press, the blogosphere, political analysts, and administration officials has been what you might expect: a puzzled "WTF."

So why did he get it? According to the New York Times article, the committee "cited in particular the president’s efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons" through the creation of a "new international climate” conducive towards nuclear disarmament; additionally of note was the notion that Obama's leadership has allowed "multilateral diplomacy [to regain] a central position." The fact that he has "captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future” was another important factor.

That's an impressive list of Nobel-worthy accomplishments. "Capturing the world's attention," creating a "new climate" for arms control, providing people with hope. Hot damn. Of particular amusement was the comment by Thorbjorn Jagland, the chairman of the Nobel Committee, who described this award as stemming from Obama's character as a leader "who is not only willing but probably able to open dialogue and strengthen international institutions.” (What does that even mean?)

Needless to say, I have nothing but respect for Obama's return to classical diplomacy, his re-emphasis on alliances and consensus-building, and his efforts to reinvigorate international institutions like the UN. But to give him a Nobel for this change in American policy is truly absurd. A shift in diplomatic approach and a reemphasis on traditional statecraft is not a reason for Nobel stardom. If, on the other hand, he were to solve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, or forge an agreement over Kashmir between India and Pakistan, then, fine, the award would make sense. But in the absence of such a major diplomatic accomplishment, giving Obama an award for merely changing the diplomatic approach of that of his predecessor (for, indeed, that is what this award is truly about) is...well, just silly.

Photo credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times

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UPDATE:

FPW's blogger-on-hiatus, MDC, writes:

If anything, I think awarding Obama - whom I support - the Nobel prize downplays the significance of the concrete achievements of past recipients who truly deserved the award and sets, however inadvertently, false expectations for the numerous challenges he faces.

Another reader writes in:

..I think it's really embarrassing, actually. He should have very respectfully declined it. Better to breach protocol with the Nobel committee than to accept a laurel he has not earned. I think people will forget about this in a few months...but for the moment, I would say not helpful.