Madman of Chu

The Lessons of Ron Paul

2011-12-28T10:54:00.000-05:00

The last few weeks have been a study in self-reproach, as revelations about Congressman Ron Paul's early newsletters pervade the airwaves and print media. I have never counted myself a Paul supporter, but I confess to being intrigued by his anti-war message and seemingly fearless integrity. I was only vaguely aware of Mr. Paul in 2008, but in this election cycle he had made, for me as for many others, an increasingly larger impression. Facebook has shown me friends and family who are ardent "Paulites." When some of my brightest students asked what I thought of his candidacy, I answered that I found some of his positions interesting but discounted the chances of someone who wanted to eliminate the Federal Reserve. I now feel remiss at having failed to tell them the truth, which is that Mr. Paul is political poison.

My culpability is compounded by the fact that there is no excuse for my ignorance. This information about Paul has been publicly available for years, and is only now being highlighted because he took the lead in polling in Iowa. My students asked particularly about the unfairness of the media's inattention to Paul's campaign, and I should have been able to tell them that such inattention was rather benign, that Paul would not look any better if more light was shown on his candidacy. Instead, I had allowed my own information about Paul to be shaped by the delivery mechanisms of the marketplace. I had been a passive consumer of knowledge that had been pre-packaged for me by newspapers and television producers, rather than going out to satisfy my own curiosity about this man and his past. It was a classic "do as I say and not as I do" scenario, for which I am heartily ashamed.

Paul has taught us all a valuable lesson about the difficult necessity of engaged citizenship. He has also offered us a snapshot of American political culture circa 2011. I do not pretend to know whether Mr. Paul personally holds the vile opinions that he allowed, year after year, to be published in his name. The trajectory of his career, however, demonstrates just how much traction such noxious ideologies still have in our society. The fact that Paul could not reach the political plateau at which he stands now without associating himself with racists and other bigots, and that even now he can not afford to effectively disassociate himself from them, stands testimony to the economic and political clout wielded by purveyors of hatred, intolerance, and paranoia in America today. If Barack Obama's election is a sign of how much social progress we have made as a nation, Ron Paul's candidacy is a sign of how much farther we have yet to go.

The Invention of Newt Gingrich

2011-12-11T15:05:00.001-05:00

Watching the GOP debate last night, it was frustrating to see Newt Gingrich's opponents stammer and fumble in search of a critique of his latest inflammatory rhetoric. If nothing else, the irony that Newt Gingrich, perhaps the American politician with the greatest gift for self-invention and reinvention, should judge the Palestinian people as "invented," is too rich to miss. It is perhaps too much to expect that a current GOP candidate could formulate an effective response in this context, however. All contenders last night were looking forward toward the general election, thus the polemical impotence of Newt's rivals on this score is an acknowledgment that he had stolen a march on them, finding just the right tone on this issue to score points with constituencies that will matter.

It is hard to know which possibility is worse in this case, that Newt's words were cynical or misguided. As a historian and a former professor, he surely knows that the question of whether (or when, or how) the "Palestinian people" were "invented" is entirely academic. "Palestine" is no more or less an invention than "Israel," arguments over which nation exists more "in essence" are hopelessly semantic. As I watched last night's debate, I waited in vain for someone to ask, "What exactly is your point, Newt? How does the 'inventedness' of the Palestinian people change the facts on the ground?"

The answer, of course, is that it does not. If the West Bank and Gaza were to be annexed by Israel today, it would no longer be a majority-Jewish state. At that point the Palestinian people, through the exercise of their franchise, would be free to invent whatever Palestine they would like, at the expense of Israel's very existence. Arguments over which nation is more organically "real" do not change that fact one iota. For Israel to remain true to its Zionist principles, a two-state solution must be effected.

No one on the dais last night in Iowa had the courage to call out Newt Gingrich on his bombast, perhaps sensing that the truth was a political loser for the GOP in the long term. President Obama is hurt by the widespread (though erroneous) perception that his support for a two-state solution makes him anti-Israeli. One can only hope, for the sake of both Israelis and Palestinians, that the current Gingrichian moment is not a harbinger of things to come.

Iraq Through the Parallax View

2011-11-04T15:59:00.002-04:00

Even before the last U.S. soldier has left Iraq, President Obama's order to withdraw forces is being filtered through distorting prisms on the left and right. In these opposed descriptions Iraq itself appears as if reflected in an array of funhouse mirrors, unrecognizable as a single nation from one account to the next. It would seem as if, whatever their ideological view, American observers are incapable of seeing Iraqi society as anything but a passive operand of U.S. power.

On the right, for example, Charles Krauthammer decries Obama's "unseriousness" in attempting to retain a mere five thousand soldiers in Iraq rather than the twenty thousand recommended by military commanders, demonstrating that "he simply wanted out." "Years from now," prognosticates Krauthammer, "we will be asking not 'Who lost Iraq?' — that already is clear — but 'Why?'"

The view from the left, though inverted, is weirdly symmetrical. Immanuel Wallerstein castigates the Obama administration for "trying as hard as they could to negotiate an agreement with the Iraqis that would override the one signed by President George W. Bush to withdraw all troops by Dec. 31, 2011." The fact that they failed in this attempt spells defeat for the U.S. and "a victory for Iraqi nationalism." "No one should be surprised," opines Wallerstein, "if, after the next Iraqi elections, the prime minister will be Muqtada al-Sadr."

The common fallacy of Krauthammer and Wallerstein resides in their shared rhetoric of American "victory" and "defeat." It should be clear to anyone who has looked critically at events in Iraq for the past eight years that the situation there was not America's to "win" or "lose." Since the fall of Saddam Huseein, Iraqi society has been evolving almost entirely under the impulses of its own people and culture. Views like those of Krauthammer and Wallerstein demonstrate a complete failure to view Iraq authentically and on its own terms.

Krauthammer's insistence that twenty thousand American troops will make the difference between triumph and disaster in Iraq is made most remarkable by his lack of interest in explaining the principles upon which this judgment is based. He seems to assume that the logic of his case is self-evident, but it is only so if one ignores any portion of Iraq's past in which the U.S. did not play a role (and some others in which it did). Krauthammer lambasts the Obama administration's inability, given three years, to "broker a centrist nationalist coalition" for Iraq's government, a failure that looms large unless it is compared to the failure of the Bush administration to accomplish the same task in five. He posits the "lost" twenty-thousand troops as an end unto themselves, declaring that Obama has missed "the opportunity to establish a lasting strategic alliance with the Arab world’s second most important power." But if garrisoning an Arab nation is of such vital strategic benefit, the U.S. deployment in Saudi Arabia prior to the invasion of Iraq arguably already fulfilled that role, much good that it did. In like fashion, Krauthammer complains that a continued U.S. presence is necessary to forestall growing Iranian influence. Not only does this ignore the historic tensions between Iraqis and Iranians, it overlooks the fact that if reducing Iranian influence in Iraq is the sine qua non of American victory, the U.S. could have won best by not invading Iraq in the first place, as Iranian influence was at its nadir under Saddam Hussein.

Wallerstein's view similarly ignores the particulars of Iraq's past and present. Though Iraq is not and has never been wholly dependent upon or malleable to U.S. power, Iraqis are not and have never been homogeneously and reflexively anti-American. To characterize a "victory for Iraqi nationalism" as synonymous with "U.S. defeat" is to adopt an absurdly reductionist and one-dimensional model of both nations. This is clearly illustrated by Wallerstein's "prediction" that Muqtada al-Sadr might become prime minister of Iraq. Al-Sadr has been a consistently anti-American force, it is true, but to believe that this makes him the poster child for Iraqi nationalism in all precincts of the Iraqi community is to completely misunderstand his role in Iraqi culture and society. There is no scenario in which Muqtada al-Sadr becomes prime minister of Iraq in which that nation is not plunged immediately into civil war.

The invasion of Iraq should provide no precedent for U.S. foreign policy moving forward. That will only be guaranteed, however, if Americans can break the habit of viewing foreign nations as driven entirely by the shifting dispositions of U.S. power and interests, and come to appreciate that each nation has its own history, culture, and particular political dynamic. This latter sort of perspective was expressed by one American observer in 2002, who warned "that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences." How true that proved to be.

Occupy the Ballot Box

2011-10-27T19:16:00.000-04:00

I have many excuses for failing to appear at Zuccotti Park. Work and family preoccupy my time. Well into middle age, I simply do not feel hip enough to join the drum circle. Rank laziness is, if I am completely honest, a factor.

My guilt at this lapse is genuine. As income disparity grows, the relentlessly widening chasm between the wealthiest segment of our society and everyone else threatens the very foundation of our Republic. The issues being raised by the OWS protesters are vitally urgent, the crisis of this generation. Yet, all excuses aside, my aloofness reflects a genuine ambivalence.

I can not summon a robust motivation to join the protests because I am hounded by a persistent question: how many of the protesters voted in the last election? This is, I know, a heavily freighted question. The old adage warning us not to assume is well taken, and I might well be surprised by the empirical answer to my query. But I can not shake the doubts my question raises.

If many of the constituencies popularly associated with OWS (I am thinking especially of the young) had showed up at the ballot box in 2010 in the same numbers as 2008, our political landscape would be radically different right now. Real progress would have been made on some of the issues most central to the OWS protest- the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans would almost certainly already have been repealed, giving us a start toward redressing the crisis of income inequality.

In that climate, if a Democratically-controlled Congress continued to show reticence to address the concerns of the 99%, a broad-based popular movement like the one we are seeing now could have exerted real pressure to influence the legislative agenda. Alternatively, if the OWS protests had begun before the 2010 race, perhaps they could have mobilized groups that were absent from that electoral contest. It is in this respect of timing that the OWS movement is most distinct from the Tea Party. Though both groups are motivated by similar senses of anger and disaffection, the Tea Party translated that political energy into real effects at the ballot box.

At the moment, it is difficult to imagine OWS having that kind of impact. The Republican House will not be moved one iota from its commitment to obstructionism. Until the legislative logjam is broken, little can be accomplished by way of redressing the widening inequalities of American society. With every passing electoral cycle, the problem becomes more intractable. As wealth shifts ever-upward, the forces of regression acquire new power to entrench and institutionalize the dysfunctional status quo.

The way back from this precipice, however, can not be found in the complete absence of our established political institutions. Money may have corrupted politics to an unprecedented degree, but government action remains the greatest lever for change. The passion and cause of the OWS protesters are admirable, but their means will not attain their goals unless and until they can be translated into electoral impact. All depends on the vote.

The End of the Iraq War

2011-10-22T14:50:00.001-04:00

President Obama's announcement of a total troop withdrawal from Iraq by the end of this year is a watershed moment in U.S. foreign policy, and one that should be applauded. Those critics, mainly in the GOP, who excoriate the President for "prematurely" disengaging from Iraq demonstrate their fundamental incomprehension of the situation. This moment is one toward which the U.S. has been heading ever since the invasion of Iraq in March of 2003, and it is transpiring under circumstances more optimistic than those for which I and many other opponents of this war had dared to hope. The assertion that this withdrawal may confidently and definitively be deemed "too early" is based on the same kinds of flawed premises that led to the ill-conceived invasion from the outset.

Critics of the withdrawal are not wrong to hope that Iraq will remain relatively stable, peaceful, and prosperous. However misguided our initial invasion of Iraq may have been, since the defeat of Saddam Hussien our soldiers have been fighting and dying to secure the Iraqi people a future free from violence and terror, and it would be a tragic squandering of their sacrifice if Iraq slips back into civil war and anarchy. It is delusional, however, given the experience of the last nine years, to imagine that the long-term stability and prosperity of Iraq hinges on any actions by the United States right now. Since the first tanks rolled across the border in 2003, Iraq has served as an object lesson in the limits of U.S. power. Though America had the might to bring a swift end to the Hussein regime, from that point on it lost control of the situation. Iraqis, representing various constituencies, under varying degrees of pressure and influence from the U.S., have been driving events in Iraq for most of the nine years leading up to President Obama's withdrawal declaration. The removal of our last military personnel brings our strategic influence down to a new nadir, but this is a change to the situation in degree, not in kind.

Those pundits and gurus who declare that the failure to leave 5,000 trainers in Iraq is a disastrous mistake betray either cynicism or ignorance. After nine years of blood and struggle, Iraq remains a conflicted society whose state rests on a tenuous foundation. Perhaps the retention of 5,000 U.S. soldiers could spell the difference between continued stability and a slide into chaos, perhaps not. There is no real way to know. This last fact is not an argument for the ill wisdom of President Obama's order to withdraw. It is proof that the invasion of Iraq should never have been undertaken in the first place.

The Obama Doctrine

2011-10-20T19:53:00.000-04:00

Even as today's news of the demise of Muammar Gaddafi inspires admiration for the courage and sacrifice of the Libyan people, it is not inappropriate to ask what lessons it holds for U.S. foreign policy. The contrast between U.S. actions in Iraq and Libya is quite stark. In both cases similar outcomes resulted, despite immeasurably greater losses of blood and treasure in Iraq. Perhaps now the theories of neoconservatism, that "unchallenged" U.S. power can remake the world according to America's preferences, may finally be put to rest. In its place Libya has given us an Obama Doctrine, the tenets of which may be listed as follows:

1. U.S power may be applied in foreign nations to assist trends that serve American interests and embody American values, only when those trends originate and have a substantial and organic basis of support in the nation where the operation will take place.

2. U.S. power should ideally be applied only when it is most urgently needed, to avert a major crisis or catastrophe.

3. U.S. power should be applied with the lightest possible footprint.

4. U.S. power should never be applied unilaterally, but in concert with the broadest and most capable coalition of allies possible.

The U.S. could do far worse than to embrace this Obama Doctrine moving forward. If it had been followed in places like Rwanda and Darfur, events might have transpired differently. In future, the more nearly U.S. foreign interventions approximate the ideals of the Obama Doctrine, the more likely outcomes will resemble those of Libya rather than Iraq.

A Zionist Appraisal of the Release of Gilad Shalit

2011-10-18T16:17:00.000-04:00

The release of abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian detainees has elicited much comment around the world. Many are critical of the terms of Shalit's return, noting that among those Palestinians being released are Hamas operatives and others guilty off horrendous crimes. As a Zionist, I cannot share in the condemnation of this exchange. Though I abhor what I view as the Netanyahu government's criminally negligent obstruction of a two-state solution, I would insist that in this instance they have acted as any other Israeli regime would have done, in accordance with the best principles upon which the Israeli state was founded.

If this exchange were likely to provide incentive for Hamas to abduct more Israelis, criticism might be more warranted, but it is not. Hamas did not capture Shalit with the main goal of freeing jailed Palestinians. They killed four of Gilad Shalit's comrades and took him captive in order to undermine Ariel Sharon's attempt to unilaterally disengage from the Palestinian Authority, which would have thwarted Hamas' aspirations for a "one-state solution." In the wake of Shalit's capture the Israelis re-occupied Gaza, killing many Hamas operatives and capturing many others, more than offsetting any "gains" Hamas has realized from the current prisoner exchange. In the face of those facts, the only arguments to be made against the exchange are the security threat posed by released Palestinian detainees and the propaganda value of a Hamas "victory" in this instance, but both these considerations are displaced by the larger principle embodied in the Israeli government's actions.

The Jewish state exists to defend the dignity and humanity of Jewish life in the face of powerful and enduring threats. On the basis of this urgent imperative, Israel demands a Herculean sacrifice of military service from all its citizens, but is also obligated to requite them with absolute commitment and support. Other governments have given Jews numbers, set them to work, and expected them to die. For the Israeli government to treat Gilad Shalit in such a fashion would be to betray the animating spirit of the Zionist movement. Israel calls on all its men and women to live in death's shadow, but in return it promises to move Heaven and Earth to bring them home alive after the completion of their duty, or, failing that, to see that their remains are properly interred rather than being cast into an oven or a mass grave.

Was the cost to bring Gilad Shalit home high? Yes. Was it right to pay that cost? Yes.

Welcome home, Gilad.

The Clear Precedent for the Attack on Al-Awlaki

2011-10-03T00:52:00.002-04:00

In the wake of the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, by U.S. forces in Yemen last Friday, some commentators have raised questions about the implications this attack has for civil liberties and due process in the United States. Critics express fear that this attack will radically expand presidential powers for use of military forces against U.S. citizens. Such doubts hinge on the assertion that this situation is unprecedented in U.S. military and legal history, however. It is not.

Anwar al-Awlaki is far from the first American citizen to go to war against the U.S. For example: during World War II, two Americans, Peter Delaney and Martin James Marti, served in the SS-Standarte Kurt Eggers, a Waffen-SS unit that specialized in propaganda aimed at Allied nations. Their role in the German military was thus remarkably similar to that performed by al-Awlaki in Al-Qaeda. Delaney was killed in action by Allied forces in 1945.

Senate Joint Resolution 23 of the 107th Congress authorizes the President "to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001." As a result, the United States is effectively at war with Al-Qaeda as unequivocally as it was at war with Nazi Germany in 1945. U.S. forces thus had the same legal justification to target Anwar al-Awlaki as they did to target Peter Delaney during World War II.

If there is anything unprecedented about the current situation, it is not in the actions of the President or the military, but in the nature of Al-Qaeda itself as a combatant force. Peter Delaney formally invited U.S. hostility by donning the uniform of the Waffen-S.S. Al-Qaeda is a much more vaguely structured entity than the Nazi Party, the Wermacht, or the Greater German Reich, thus Anwar al-Awlaki's participation in Al-Qaeda did not generate the kind of formal, activating symbols that made Peter Delaney a target. If the enemy wears no uniform, how can we identify them? In al-Awlaki's case, we could take his word for it. He declared to the world repeatedly that he was a member of Al-Qaeda and that he shared its mission, thus there was no reason to doubt that he was at war with the United States of America.

The apprehension surrounding al-Awlaki's case is, in part, a product of unfortunate rhetoric that has marked U.S. foreign and military policy since 9/11. From the outset, many critics warned of the obscuring potential of a vaguely labeled "war on terror." The suspicions aroused by the death of al-Awlaki are just this type of consequence. Rhetoric should not blind us to what are evident facts and clear principles, however. Though a "war on terror" may be ill-conceived, a war on Al-Qaeda is just and necessary. In this context, our clearest guides to the identity of enemy combatants in the current struggle are the claims they themselves profess to make. We may never entirely understand why al-Awlaki joined Al-Qaeda, any more than we can understand the motives of Peter Delaney for joining the SS, but both men were equally at war with the United States of America, and suffered the same consequences.

Impressions of a Trip to China

2011-09-01T20:19:00.000-04:00

Anyone who has traveled periodically to China over the past 25 years (as I have) will remark upon how rapidly and profoundly China has changed over that time. In my most recent trip (from which I returned yesterday), however, even I who have been acculturated to the extreme dynamism of the new China was amazed by how drastically it has changed in the eight years since I last visited. Prosperity has advanced in China to a degree that would have been difficult to imagine when I first set foot in Beijing in the winter of 1987.

The first inkling we had of this transformation was on our first full day in Beijing, on a visit to the Forbidden City. The site was overrun by a throng of tourists one would not encounter anywhere in the U.S., with the possible exception of Disneyland. These were people from all over China. In casual conversations we encountered families from Shandong, Shaanxi, and Fujian, and I am sure if we had taken the time we could have found someone from every province and autonomous region of the PRC. Even accounting for the summer season, the crowds of leisure travelers signified the rise of a new middle class that simply had not existed at any other time I had visited China in the past 25 years.

That new socioeconomic reality was made more dramatic on our excursion to Beijing's most famous roast duck restaurant, Quan Ju De. In 1987 I and my other college friends used to roll up to the door on our bicycles and be escorted promptly into the half-empty (and prohibitively expensive, from the perspective of most Chinese citizens) restaurant to dine next to party cadres. This time my family and I arrived at the front door to find a crowd of at least 150 people perched on small plastic stools, each clutching a number and waiting to hear it called over a megaphone by a hostess in a beautiful silk qipao. Such culinary democracy was unknown in the China I had seen in the past.

These were only two instances of the enormous rise and spread of prosperity that we encountered on this trip. To be sure, there was still real poverty, and the limits of the new prosperity could be observed. New buildings were under construction everywhere, but certain key resources were poorly maintained. In Chengdu my mother suffered a laceration that required stitches, and the trip to the emergency room of the local hospital was like a journey to 1988. Vast sums have been spent on assets that have a high international profile, such as the Chengdu airport (which is tripling in size), but Chengdu's hospitals do not seem to have benifited as significantly from these capital investments.

Even acknowledging these shortfalls, the rising tide of prosperity in China is astounding and impressive. I do not know the hard statistics, but I would be willing to bet that, in either absolute or proportional terms, the PRC government has overseen the largest expansion of wealth in human history. This fact has forced me to reassess my expectations regarding China's short-term future.

I have felt in the past, and continue to believe, that China's political system is in dire need of democratization and decentralization. Indeed, this trip was not without signs of political trouble. In the Forbidden City we saw a policeman carelessly scatter a poor peddlar's wares with his nightstick, and on the walk back to our hotel we encountered a battalion of police who had cordoned off a one-block perimeter around a disturbance and who refused either to let us pass or to answer questions about what was happening. Beyond this, in every city but Hong Kong to which we traveled we saw ubiquitous political slogans, which had been almost totally absent from the urban landscape eight years ago. Everywhere banners, billboards, and posters exorted citizens to be "civilized 文明" or praised "the unity of the party and the people." Such insistent propoganda smacks of political insecurity.

While this is true, and while I remain convinced of the need for real political change in China, my latest visit makes me less confident that it will come in short order. The impact of the sheer magnitude of wealth China has generated in the last twenty years is difficult to assess or anticipate. On the one hand, rising prosperity will most likely lead to rising expectations, which will produce agitation for change. On the other hand, the government's success in overseeing rapid economic expansion must contribute in some measure to its legitimacy, and might understandably make the populace reticent to disturb the status quo. In any case, what I observed on this visit convinces me of one basic truth: if its leaders and people can take the steps necessary to make the rising tide of prosperity ecologically and politically sustainable, the future belongs to China.

Obama, Israel, and the Jews

2011-05-24T11:32:00.003-04:00

President Obama's speech to the State Department last week has occasioned much heated debate in the American Jewish community. These arguments have centered chiefly on the President's unprecedented declaration that "‎the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states." Though it is true that this has been the tacit basis of negotiations for more than a decade, Obama is the first U.S. president to publicly endorse such a formula.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has added more heat than light to this situation, responding with a long tirade as to why Israel can not return to its pre-1967 boundaries. This was a deeply obfuscatory rhetorical strategy, one that I suspect, given the power of Mr. Netanyahu's intellect, was quite disingenuous. Netanyahu knows very well that the issue is not whether Israel can or should return to its pre-1967 boundaries, but whether those should serve as the conceptual basis for a new Palestinian state. All negotiations in recent years have assumed that many Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank will remain within Israel; the adoption of the 1967 boundary as a benchmark only establishes the principle that a future Palestinian state must be compensated for such Israeli annexations by the transfer of equivalent uninhabited lands to Palestinian sovereignty.

The "indefensibility" of the 1967 boundaries was a well-worn shibboleth invoked by Netanyahu in response to Obama's speech. This is a further deflection from the point of Obama's initiative, and willfully ignores the heart of his message. In the same speech Obama committed the U.S. to the proposition that the future Palestinian state must be constitutionally demilitarized, an acknowledgment that both states emerging from the two-state solution will be secure jointly or not at all. Israel will in effect have to stand surety for the safety of the future Palestinian state, leaving the defensive perimeter of Israel virtually unchanged in the wake of a two-state solution.

As a Jew and a Zionist, I hope my fellow Americans will correctly see the right side of this divide. What Obama has offered is a reasonable way forward, and what Netanyahu has offered is a truculent and tendentious defense of an unsustainable status quo. The timing of Obama's speech is, as many commentators have noted, far from arbitrary. The Palestinian Authority is planning to apply for UN recognition this fall, and such recognition will only be forestalled by a U.S. veto. Should that happen, both Israel and the U.S. will be cast into severe diplomatic isolation, and the path toward peace will become even more intractable. In the face of this contingency, President Obama's initiative is as wise as it is bold. For him to risk some of the political capital that he has accrued in the wake of Osama bin Laden's demise shows vision, leadership, and a sincere concern for the cause of Israel and peace. It would be a shame if the American Jewish community were to be taken in by the rhetorical attacks of Prime Minister Netanyahu. If that should happen, the greatest losers (after the Palestinians) would not be Obama or his party, but the Israelis themselves.

Tragedy in Arizona

2011-01-10T11:23:00.003-05:00

I am heartbroken by the murder of so many innocents in Arizona, and in the midst of sorrow I have one regret which, with some trepidation, I feel moved to articulate. In December of 2008, Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw a shoe at President Bush during a press conference in Baghdad. Despite being deeply angry at Mr. Bush for what I felt was negligent leadership on his part, I was shocked and saddened to hear of the incident. The assault was an affront to the dignity of the United States, and exposed vulnerabilities in the President's security that might embolden would-be assassins. I did not, however, publicly express outrage or condemnation. I take little solace from the fact that I was not alone in this lapse.

The current tragedy throws my inattention at that time into sharp relief. It may seem grotesque to compare the somewhat farcical incident of 2008 to the terrible events now, but they do exemplify a common principle. Any assault, no matter how trivial, on the person of an American government official, is an assault upon the office he or she holds, and an attack on the nation that office embodies. For anyone of any political stripe who claims to love our country there can be no question of degree or area of gray on this score. Our democratic Republic can not long withstand the repetition of acts like that in Tucson. Either the persons of our elected and appointed officials are sacrosanct, or our Constitution is not worth the paper upon which it is written. Anyone who suggests, even rhetorically or in jest, any sort of physical trespass upon the person of any official of the United States government, is not a patriot, and should be given no attention whatsoever in serious discourse.

I realize that it is in bad taste to express an abstract principle on the occasion of what is a horrific personal tragedy for so many, but I hope I may be excused. My thoughts and condolences go out to all who have been affected by this heinous act. May God bless you and grant you strength to endure your grief.

A Note From Gen X to the Millenials

2010-10-26T08:42:00.004-04:00

Dear Young Compatriots,

How I envy you. When I was in college, my comrades and I took to the barricades for Michael Dukakis. Ah, the heady days of youth. We were going to bring the Reagan Era to a screeching halt. Long story short, it did not turn out that way.

You, by contrast, have done what so many generations aspire to but few achieve. You have made revolution; you have made history! You more than any other part of our Republic brought about the presidency of Barack Obama. Bravo! On behalf of the nation I extend you thanks!

Since then you may have heard a lot of whingeing (mainly on the part of Baby Boomers) that Barack Obama is a big disappointment, that he has fallen short of expectations. Don't believe it! In my entire life before 2009 I was witness to a single piece of landmark, progressive social legislation- the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 (during the Nixon presidency). The excitement of that moment was lost on me at the time- I was three years old. The next 39 years were rather surreal, watching a government that seemed incapable of doing ANYTHING.

Against that backdrop, the last two years have been a shock. To see our government do so much- avert a depression, rescue the auto industry, make ground-breaking investments in new energy, pass historic legislation for health care reform, re-regulate the financial sector, and transform the student loan process- is almost too much to take in. It is like watching a corpse suddenly get up off the pavement and breakdance.

Now, however, conventional wisdom expects our Lazarus government to go back to sleep. On election day, so goes this view, the GOP will take the House, and gridlock will return. The next two years will be a carnival of subpoenas and investigations. The nation will be turned from questions like health care and clean energy to the problem of whether Barack Obama has a birth certificate.

On this score I envy you all over again, because you are going to turn conventional wisdom on its ear! All of the prognostications of imminent doom are based on statistical models that calibrate for "likely voters," and in all of those models you are not "likely voters!" The statisticians (and the GOP candidates measuring the drapes for their new offices) are all counting on you to stay home. Ha! Contemplating the surprise you have in store for them makes me laugh. When you actually show up to vote every playbook will have to be rewritten, every political assumption will have to be reassessed. You will have made revolution twice in as many years. Lucky bastards. Green with envy as I am, I extend you thanks again, in advance.

Consuming China

2010-10-02T12:20:00.010-04:00

On Wednesday the House of Representatives passed the Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act (H.R. 2378), a bill that would impose tariff penalties on Chinese goods unless the PRC allows the renminbi to appreciate against the dollar. In the lead-up to and in the wake of this event, there has been much media commentary on the escalating showdown between China and the U.S. over currency valuation. In yesterday's New York Times, Paul Krugman ("Taking on China") wrote that the bill is "a step in the right direction." Krugman notes that the undervaluation of the renminbi is causing trade imbalances that not only harm the U.S., but are retarding growth and economic recovery globally. On the same editorial page on Tuesday, Stephen Roach, a senior fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale ("Cultivating the Chinese Consumer"), warned that "forcing such a currency realignment would be a blunder of historic proportions." Roach argues that currency recalibration is not an effective escape from the current predicament, but that only a long-term reorientation of the Chinese economy toward increased consumer spending will redress the imbalances and set global markets back on the road to growth.

These and other well-informed commentators who have weighed in on either side of the issue make substantive arguments, but most American commentators have failed to account for a key dimension of the problem. Krugman and others are no doubt right, the Chinese Communist Party leadership is using monetary policy to keep the value of the renminbi artificially low, thus subsidizing exports to the U.S. and other foreign markets. But U.S. observers and leaders underestimate the power of the domestic Chinese political forces that drive CCP leaders to this choice.

Since the Tiananmen conflict of 1989 the CCP has labored under a persistent legitimacy deficit, one that it can only overcome through the maintenance of uninterrupted growth and full employment. An increasingly prosperous population has not forgotten its earlier aspirations for a more participatory government and a more liberal political culture. Unrest is only forstalled by the tacit understanding that inertia in political reform will be tolerated as long as economic prosperity is maintained. Any slackening of the rising tide of prosperity will reawaken the political grievances simmering below the surface of the social scene. This could lead to massive unrest, perhaps even to the overthrow of the CCP itself. In the face of such potential disaster, there is little with which the U.S. can threaten Chinese leaders. The displeasure of the U.S. President or Congress holds little terror next to the rising anger of the great mass of China's citizens.

If the tariffs imposed by the House ever do go into effect, it will of course create just the sort of economic pain Beijing hopes to avoid at all cost, but the CCP leadership will have the recourse of portraying that misfortune to their own people as the result of U.S. economic aggression. If a drop in growth and employment must come, having it come because of Washington rather than Beijing would, from the perspective of the CCP, definitely be the lesser of two evils. Given the "caged and cornered" outlook of CCP leaders, Beijing is most likely to keep calling Washington's bluff until the brink has been reached and passed, and a full-blown trade war gets underway.

Though such circumstances argue against the wisdom of the House's recent action, policies like that proposed by Stephen Roach are also problematic, for similar reasons. Any measures to increase consumer spending in China would, like a drop in employment, re-open the issue of political reform. As consumption increases so does official corruption, a problem which is already at epic levels throughout the PRC. Moreover, as people consume they increasingly come to think of themselves as property owners with a greater stake in the system at large. The more I buy, the more I have to lose, and the more means I will want to protect what I have. It is rare to find a society in which a citizen who is a consumer is not also a voter, or at least wants to be. Finally, increased consumption in China would add to the already dire ecological crisis she faces. Anyone who has seen the state of public sanitation in many areas of China given current levels of consumption will understand that a major overhaul of the political system will be necessary to mitigate the damage of an increase. To create the conditions that would foster local governance capable of handling such growth, power must devolve from Beijing onto the provinces, localities, and citizens, otherwise local authorities could not be held accountable for the tasks that must be undertaken.

A shift to a more consumer-driven economy in China is thus not possible in the absence of a simultaneous process of political decentralization and democratization, a fact of which the CCP leadership is aware. This is, in fact, one of the latent motivations for Beijing's monetary policy. Besides fueling exports, undervaluing the renminbi has the serendipitous effect of suppressing consumption, obviating the need for the kinds of political reforms that would otherwise be necessary in the face of rising prosperity.

What do all of these facts mean from the perspective of U.S. policymakers? Unfortunately, given the power of the inertial forces driving Beijing's currency policy, the U.S. possesses virtually no effective levers of persuasion. The trade imbalances created by the undervaluation of the renminbi are a real problem for the U.S., but it is unrealistic for American leaders to expect that they may be resolved either diplomatically or through punitive legislation. The best measures that can be taken in the face of this problem are changes in U.S. domestic economic policy. Tax incentives and public investments in industries that can compete in Chinese markets despite Beijing's efforts at currency manipulation are the most effective tools at the disposal of U.S. leaders, and have the added appeal of increasing employment and prosperity at home in the short term. Beyond this, everyone's best hope is that leaders and citizens in China will undertake the kind of political reforms that will alleviate the dysfunctional conditions fostering today's trade imbalances.

Letter to President Obama on Afghanistan

2009-09-29T10:49:00.004-04:00

Dear President Obama,

In your speech of March 27, 2009, you laid out in clear terms why the conflict in Afghanistan is a vital security concern to the United States. As you stated then, Afghanistan was and is a "war of necessity;" the U.S. had no choice but to engage those harboring the murderers of more than 3,000 Americans. Unfortunately, under the previous administration the conflict was both under-resourced and conceptually ill-planned, resulting in eight years of stalemate. Your call for renewed effort, increased commitment, and a global strategic overhaul was absolutely correct, as was your decision to increase U.S. troop levels by 17,000 personnel.

I am distressed, therefore, to see signs that you are contemplating a retreat from this wise declaration of resolve. Partisan politics has predictably created a perfect storm of opposition to your Afghan policy, coming from all parts of the political spectrum. This should not, however, dissuade you from the correctness of the strategic principles on which you campaigned. As a long-time supporter and a donor from the days before the Iowa caucuses, I write to express my support for your position on Afghanistan and Pakistan as it was originally formulated: that this theater represents the true epicenter of the war against al-Qaeda, and must be engaged with all the strategic resources and energies of the United States. I would urge you not to capitulate to political pressure, but to implement the advice of the Commander of the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal.

Like you I opposed the invasion of Iraq, and agree that the mission there was an unfortunate distraction from the vital conflict in Afghanistan. Though almost every aspect of the previous administration's strategic thinking with regard to Iraq was deeply flawed, one important principle is exemplified by that experience. The resolve that the Bush administration evinced in Iraq must be doubly applied to Afghanistan, as the stakes in the latter mission are exponentially higher.

Withdrawal from Iraq was and is a viable strategic option from the perspective of U.S. security, where withdrawal from Afghanistan is not. Al-Qaeda never had genuine traction within Iraqi society. It was absent from Iraq during the regime of Saddam Hussein and only achieved a tenuous foothold there as a result of the power vacuum created by the U.S. invasion. We can be highly confident, therefore, that a worst-case scenario does not include a robust presence of al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Iraqis have historically exhibited a low tolerance for al-Qaeda, and there is no reason to expect that will change in the near or short term.

Such calculations do not apply in Afghanistan.The Iraqis are deeply divided by sectarian allegiances and united (with the exclusion of the Kurds) by their common Arab ethnicity, thus religious ideologies like that of al-Qaeda have little political utility in Iraqi society. The situation is reversed in Afghanistan (and central Asia more broadly). There the community is riven by ethnic divisions but largely united by a common affiliation with Sunni Islam, thus a politicized religious ideology like that of al-Qaeda or the Taliban can be an effective mechanism for building broad strategic coalitions. Where the presence of U.S. troops boosted al-Qaeda's presence in Iraq, it is only the insertion of U.S. troops that effectively displaced both al-Qaeda and the Taliban from Afghanistan. Where a U.S. withdrawal will not increase al-Qaeda's presence in Iraq, withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan will almost certainly result in the return of al-Qaeda to its bases of operation there.

Though the worst-case scenario for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq presents no compelling argument for constraint, the best-case scenario for a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan gives genuine cause for alarm. It is true that the Taliban is deeply unpopular through much of Afghanistan, and may not possess the strategic power to retake Kabul in the wake of a U.S. withdrawal. Even if they do not, however, we can be certain that the Taliban, already deeply entrenched despite a robust ISAF presence, will enjoy an even broader and more deeply rooted position along the Afghan-Pakistani frontier once the ISAF is gone.

This would effectively constitute a "Talibanistan" quasi-state, one empowered, in the absence of either the ISAF or a robust Afghan government, to cultivate and manage its own revenues (from narcotics smuggling and other enterprises) and to conduct foreign policy with neighboring nations and international organizations. The mayhem that might be sewn by such a "Talibanistan" is difficult to overestimate. The possibilities range from abetting extremist groups in Pakistan and elsewhere to purchasing nuclear technology from rogue elements of the Pakistani intelligence services. Though al-Qaeda and the Taliban should of course be treated as distinct from a tactical perspective, in general strategic terms they both represent an equivalent threat to the security of the U.S.

Critics of the Afghan mission might protest that we are faced with the choice of either allowing a "Talibanistan" to emerge or committing to a permanent U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. This is not true. As General McChrystal observes in his strategic assessment, the Afghan people themselves are deeply disaffected with the Taliban and its history of abusive rule. They have lived through the results of rapid U.S. disengagement following the Soviet defeat of the 1980's, and are open to a partnership with NATO in pursuit of a more stable and progressive social contract, if only the U.S. and its allies will demonstrate the resolve that had been lacking in the past. A window of opportunity exists to assist the Afghans in establishing a robust state of their own, one that would effectively counter the influence of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the region. The window will be lost, however, if the U.S. wavers at this critical moment in the mission.

It has been widely reported in the press that you are contemplating an alternative strategy championed by Vice President Biden, a plan to reduce our forces in Afghanistan and redirect their mission toward rooting out al-Qaeda along the Pakistan frontier. This would be an extremely unwise change of course. As General McChrystal and other analysts have noted, the crux of the struggle against both al-Qaeda and the Taliban is not military, but political. Al-Qaeda will not be dislodged from the region as long as state authority remains weak and local society remains embattled. There is no alternative remedy to a sustained counterinsurgency campaign that combines military operations with improved governance and efforts to bolster state legitimacy. Deploying a small force that ignores the plight of the Afghan people as it engages in a wild goose chase after al-Qaeda operatives is a recipe for disaster. Such a strategy would be rapidly self-subverting and surely leave the U.S. less secure in the long term.

General McChrystal lays out in stark terms the profound difficulties entailed by the strategic objectives of an intensified Afghan mission. The parallels to Vietnam are numerous and real. The insurgency enjoys the advantage of a difficult terrain, numerous outside sources of assistance, and the tactical cover of the frontier with Pakistan. One stark difference with Vietnam is determinative of our strategic priorities going forward, however. Unlike Vietnam, the Afghan-Pakistani theater harbors forces that have directly attacked the United States and are planning to do so again if given the opportunity. The U.S. thus has no choice but to pursue this counterinsurgency campaign despite its daunting obstacles.

Among the many outstanding policy shifts you initiated upon taking office was an overhaul of the mechanisms by which strategic decisions were made in the executive branch. The previous administration had all but completely politicized the strategic planning process, thus in most instances when the former President declared that he was "consulting with his generals" everyone understood that he was waiting to be told what he originally wanted to hear. Thus far you have demonstrably operated in a different mode. The past few years have brought to the fore a new generation of erudite and sophisticated commanders, such as General David Petraeus and Brigadier General H.R. McMaster, who have adapted to the strategic and tactical complexities of our ongoing engagements. You have demonstrated, with moves such as the appointment of General McChrystal in Afghanistan, your resolve to work with this new generation of commanders in the crafting of an effective strategy for mission success.

Having made these initial steps in the reform of executive strategic culture, I would urge you not to retreat now. Do not allow your planning of policy to be derailed by partisan politics. You tasked General McChrystal with developing an informed, coherent, and intelligent strategic plan for the mission in Afghanistan, and he has risen to those demands. Do not set aside his counsel, and your own strategic judgment, because of the pressure being exerted upon you by misguided or self-serving politicians. You have the opportunity to establish the kind of sober, deliberate strategic process our nation desperately needs in this time of crisis. Please do not let that opportunity pass.

The politics of an intensified Afghan mission here at home present obvious difficulties. The electorate has been disenchanted by eight years of official obfuscation and strategic inertia. The security stakes are too high, however, to admit faltering in the face of such challenges. Efforts must be made to explain the necessity of the mission to the public at large. Democrats like myself (to borrow a phrase, the "silent majority" who support the continued Afghan mission) should be systematically mobilized to counter and deflect pressure from the "left." Most importantly, the opportunity for genuine bipartisanship should be seized. Republicans like Senator John McCain and independents like Senator Joseph Lieberman may be persuaded to rally in support of a strategy derived from the assessment of General McChrystal. Though consensus may never be reached on contentious domestic issues such as health care and energy policy, our common national security interests may serve as the focal point of a broad centrist coalition that would drive the implementation of a difficult but necessary strategic engagement.

Like millions of Americans I was inspired by your tough yet elegant campaign and by your historic election to our highest office. I know that your patriotism is unsurpassed by any citizen's, and remain confident of your leadership in days ahead. Please accept my thanks for your attention and my prayers for your continued success in the execution of your duties.

Sincerely,

Andrew Meyer

The Iran that Could Have Been (and Might Yet Be)

2009-06-15T10:24:00.005-04:00

The current moment of fear and anticipation in Iran is (or should be) another reminder of the unrealized potential of Iranian-U.S. relations. Americans' habitual view of Iran as a dangerous enemy distorts the underlying historical truth: the past fifty years of Iranian-U.S. relations were a tragedy that might have been avoided. If the current moment of potential passes unrealized, it will be all the more disappointing for the fact that the chance to restore Iranian-U.S. relations to what they should have been will have slipped away yet again.

Many Americans view Iranian agitation for democracy as a kind of anomaly. As a traditional Muslim society, so this view goes, Iran is a nation deeply unsuited to democratic culture. This is of course a complete misreading, both of recent Iranian history and the nature of Islamic societies more generally. In the decade after WWII, Iran had all of the ingredients of a modern success story akin to that of Japan or South Korea: a long history of stable state institutions, a relatively well-educated populace, a robust commercial economy, copious oil reserves, and a nascent industrial sector and middle class. Turbulent struggles between the monarch, Shah Reza Pahlavi, and the parliament had set Iran on the course toward constitutional democracy.

Iran's late twentieth century might have been a bright one except for the curse of geopolitics: its nascent democracy was sacrificed on the altar of the Cold War. In 1951 Mohammed Mosaddeq, an able, charismatic, and secular leader, was elected by popular majorities as prime minister. Though he enjoyed the confidence of much of Iran's populace, especially the intelligentsia and the middle class, his policies put him afoul of the United States. He opposed British exploitation of Iran's resources and undertook a nationalization of the petroleum industry. In foreign policy he attempted to preserve Iranian neutrality in the emerging strategic contest between the U.S. and Iran's northern neighbor, the Soviet Union. For these transgressions the American CIA helped engineer a monarchist coup that toppled Mosaddeq and drove him into exile, ushering in twenty-five years of absolutist rule by the Shah.

The shadow of Mosaddeq lays across the last fifty years of Iran's history. The choice that Iranian society made for theocracy in the revolution of 1979 was conditioned as much by the bitter disappointment of Iran's brief constitutional spring as the intrinsic prestige of the Shi'ite clerical establishment. The 1953 coup taught the Iranian people that their democratic aspirations, however deeply cherished, could be crushed by the strategic whims of the great powers. The appeal of the theocracy was its resilient capacity to survive the crushing pressures of the Cold War geopolitical vice. A government led by mullahs was a disappointment to some, a tragedy for others, but it had the redeeming virtue of being authentically Iranian.

Despite its theocratic basis, the post-1979 Iranian Republic has persistently incorporated a degree of participatory politics, no matter how restricted and anemic. What the current unrest demonstrates is that the democratic aspects of the Islamic Republic are as much a genuine expression of the political impulses of the Iranian people as the exalted position of Ayatollah Khamenei, perhaps more so. The choice for theocracy never entailed a wholesale abandonment of democratic aspirations: the Iranian people have tolerated the controls placed by theocrats on the electoral process on the implicit understanding that the loss of democratic sovereignty was a fair trade off against the anti-colonial autonomy afforded by clerical rule. The most recent interference by the mullahs, however, in which they seem to have simply discarded the choice of the voters even after rigging the ground rules to induce the outcome they desired, has proved a case of overreach.

Beyond this, the global setting that helped nurture the Iranian Republic's social contract has changed. The Soviet Union is gone, and in its place Iran is now bordered by independent Inner Asian republics. The United States, the nation that overthrew Mohammed Mosaddeq, has elected a man named Barack Hussein Obama who holds out hope of a new orientation in U.S. foreign policy. Both threats that helped redeem the excesses and disappointments of the theocracy have thus somewhat ameliorated, making the theocrats' meddling with the longstanding democratic aspirations of the Iranian people less tolerable.

Though the current violence in Iran may ultimately bring only sorrow, it also marks a moment of potentially hopeful change. We may be witnessing the turn of Iran from its Cold War tragedy back toward the positive course that should have been, and if so we should be prepared to take advantage of this opportunity. In order to do so, America should face this moment mindful of the role we played in forestalling Iran's progressive dreams. If we insist on viewing Iranians through the prism of our own biases, as caricatures of "backward Muslims" or "crazed terrorists," the chance for improving Iranian-U.S. relations will be lost. Rather, we should remain open to the Iran that has always been possible, and which has been circumvented as much by our own transgressions as any inherent weaknesses of Iranian culture or society: an important ally and a force for progress in the Middle East and the world at large.

Obama and Israel

2008-12-01T22:14:00.004-05:00

President-elect Obama's choices for his national security team suggest that will he adopt a gradual and cautious posture toward changes of course in foreign policy. One arena in which he would be well-advised to embrace an early proactive engagement, however, is U.S.-Israeli relations. Until its very waning days the Bush administration treated this relationship with what it no doubt perceived to be "benign neglect," ignoring the Palestinians and offering no suggestions to or critiques of Israel's Kadima government. The result has been a totally moribund peace process and an exacerbation of instability throughout the Middle East.

The situation needs saving badly, and a solution will not come quickly or easily. Much time and effort will have to be spent working back to the point at which the peace process stalled eight years ago, so even minimal forward motion toward genuine peace is a distant prospect. If the new administration begins work on day one, there is some small hope that progress could be achieved in a second term.

Unfortunately, U.S.-Israeli relations is an area in which the President-elect's disposition toward caution might be highly intensified, even, perhaps, to the point of paralysis. Throughout the election campaign, relations between Obama and some elements of the American Jewish community remained strained. Questions about Obama's past associations and their associations played to visceral fears of anti-Semitism. Liberal Israelis are excited about Obama's election and look toward a renewed and robust U.S. effort in support of a two-state solution. They imagine a revived commitment to bilateral policy-implementation with the Palestinian Authority and an opposition to ultra-orthodox settlers who impede plans for Palestinian sovereignty. Obama may be reluctant to take even steps far short of such as these, however, for fear that any moves in support of Palestinian statehood will be interpreted by American Jews as confirmation of their darkest suspicions, unleashing a political firestorm that will impede reelection hopes in 2012.

One can only hope that this latter scenario will not come to pass, and that Obama's Israel policy will more closely approximate the hopes of liberal Israelis than the inertia which might appease suspicious American Jews. One effective measure that Obama might take in circumventing the political problems he faces at home is to delegate the task of Arab-Israeli peace to a trusted and capable proxy. The natural choice in this regard would be former president Bill Clinton. Clinton came closest of any outside intermediary toward brokering a stable two-state solution in Israel-Palestine, and the agreement to which he brought Yassir Arafat and Ehud Barak outlines the basic parameters of what is most likely the best achievable deal for all sides.

If Clinton were made minister plenipotentiary for Mideast peace, with his own staff and budget (under the supervision of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton), the sheer prestige, credibility, and celebrity power that he brought to the table might go a long way toward jump-starting the peace process again. According to his own memoirs, the failure to reach a long-term resolution in Israel-Palestine is one of the deepest regrets Clinton harbors concerning his own legacy, thus in Clinton's surrogacy Obama could harness not only talent and intellect but a haunted yearning for redemption. Finally, the credibility that Clinton enjoys with all segments of the U.S. population would buy the Obama administration the political cover it needs to pursue a robust and proactive Israel policy.

Whether or not to delegate U.S.-Israel policy to a surrogate is a tactical question to which there are many possible answers. The larger strategic issue leaves no room for doubt, however. If Obama hopes to enhance the global position or preserve the domestic security of the U.S., he can not treat U.S.-Israel relations with the same degree of neglect as his predecessor.

Plumbing Joe the Plumber

2008-10-16T09:15:00.008-04:00

At last night's debate, John McCain unveiled a new line of attack against Barack Obama, the "Joe the Plumber" offensive. The plumber in question is Joe Wurzelbacher, a resident of Holland, Ohio who posed a question to Obama on the campaign trail this Sunday. Joe was concerned that under Obama's tax plan, a business he plans to purchase that has revenues of $250,000-280,000 dollars would have its taxes raised. The entire exchange was caught on camera, Obama goes through the specifics of his tax plan with Joe in rather extensive detail. In the end he suggests that, with capital gains cuts and other small-business incentives built into Obama's plan, Joe may actually see his taxes cut, though he could not guarantee that without looking at the particulars of Joe's business.

All of this might have been less than a footnote to history, except that Obama uttered three words which are a lightning rod of American political discourse: "spread the wealth." A cursory survey of the blogosphere and pennings of the commentariat reveals that these remarks of Obama's will be among the most misquoted in the annals of American politics. Republicans will hammer away at these three words to craft them into a singular message: "Obama wants to take your hard-earned money away and give it to other people."

This kind of rhetoric is always good for stirring up partisan anger. It bears no relation to what actually passed between Obama and Joe Wurzelbacher on the campaign trail in Ohio, however. Obama never told Joe that he wanted to "spread his wealth around." If you watch the video and listen carefully to the exchange, the context in which the three dread words are uttered is this:

OBAMA: My attitude is, if the economy is good for folks from the bottom up, it's going to be good for everybody. If you've got a plumbing business, you're going to be better off if you've got a whole bunch of customers who are going to pay to hire you. Right now the economy is so pinched that business is bad for everybody, and I believe that when we spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody.

So there you have it. Obama is not talking about taking Joe's money away and giving it to those in need, he is talking about spreading purchasing power to a broader segment of the economy so that service providers like Joe will have an expanded revenue base. This makes good economic sense, and is about as "socialist" as a BLT with cheese is kosher.

Mr. Wurzelbacher has evidently, in subsequent interviews, decried Obama's ideas as socialist and detrimental to the American dream (though, it is interesting to note, as of this writing he has yet to endorse John McCain). Joe is an appealing and likable figure, and it would not surprise me if this fifteen minutes of fame translates into a career move from plumbing to politics. I think that John McCain's attempt to use Joe as a political icon will ultimately backfire, however.

Some people, like Joe himself, will watch his encounter with Obama and come away with the impression of insidious socialism. My guess is, however, that if the video of Obama's conversation with Joe Wurzelbacher gets the airplay it should, it will reinforce the positive impressions that the electorate has been building about Obama himself. Here is a man who, as of Sunday, had been on the campaign trail for a grueling two years, enduring constant attacks to his judgment and character. Confronted with a direct and challenging question about his policy he was not irritated or dismissive, but candid, earnest, and respectful. He addresses Joe's concerns with rigorous detail and minimum rhetoric, every inch the statesman who is sensible of his personal accountability to the voter. If that is not the kind of person we should have as our president, I do not know who is.

Same-Sex Marriage as a Civil Right

2008-10-11T09:44:00.007-04:00

The decision of the Connecticut Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage is a welcome step forward in the struggle to advance the cause of American civil rights. Though it has already (and predictably) been attended by conservative complaints about "legislation from the bench," the decision is in the best tradition of constitutional jurisprudence and faithful to our nation's most basic values. This was noted most forcefully by historian Joseph Ellis (New York Times, February 29, 2004) in the wake of a parallel verdict by the Massachusetts Supreme Court. Of the principles encoded in that state's constitution by its author, John Adams, Ellis wrote:

[L]ike Jefferson's more famous formulation of the same message, Adams framed the status of individual rights in absolute and universal terms. Certain personal freedoms were thereby rendered nonnegotiable, and any restrictions on those freedoms were placed on the permanent defensive. At the very birth of the republic, in effect, an open-ended mandate for individual rights was inscribed into the DNA of the body politic, with implications that such rights would expand gradually over time.

In 1848, for example, the women at Seneca Falls cited Jefferson's magic words to demand political equality for all female citizens. In 1863 Lincoln referred to the same words at Gettysburg to justify the Civil War as a crusade, not just to preserve the Union, but also to end slavery. In 1963 Martin Luther King harked back to the promissory note written by Jefferson to claim civil rights for blacks. Now the meaning of the mandate has expanded again, this time to include gay and lesbian couples wishing to marry. With all the advantages of hindsight, it now seems wholly predictable that America's long argument would reach this new stage of inclusiveness.

In Ellis' formulation, the recognition of same-sex marriage rights is an organic development of the intrinsic evolutionary trajectory of our ongoing American Revolution. This assertion finds corroboration in the work of Gordon S. Wood, who wrote in his masterful The Radicalism of the American Revolution:

The republican revolution was the greatest utopian movement in American history. The revolutionaries aimed at nothing less than a reconstitution of American society. They hoped to destroy the bonds holding together the older monarchical society-kinship, patriarchy, and patronage-and to put in their place new social bonds of love, respect, and consent. (page 229)

The radicalism of the American Revolution was to celebrate and give priority to all forms of self-definition and social station rooted in personal autonomy and freedom of choice. Institutions that kept the individual locked into hierarchical structures beyond his or her control-the monarchy, the nobility, the established church-were rejected in favor of liberal safeguards that empowered people to determine their own place in the community and the world. Among the institutions most impacted by these revolutionary currents was the family. Membership in one's natal family was not a matter of personal choice, and thus not only did family ancestry diminish in importance in the revolutionary American society, but a whole series of systemic reforms were embraced that decreased the power of the family over the individual. Consequently, marriage increased in importance as a foundation of one's social and civic identity. Marriage is the only kinship relation that is truly elective, thus marriage has evolved in American law and politics as the paramount familial bond- surpassing all others in intimacy and legal cogency. No U.S. official or institution would allow two spouses to be kept apart by their parents or siblings, for this would be to privilege an involuntary relationship over one forged by a couple's own free will.

Conservative critics typically complain that the legalization of same-sex marriage will "alter" the age-old definition of marriage that has remained unchanged for eons. This is pure fallacy, however. Marriage has been evolving profoundly and constantly within our society and as a result of our republican Revolution. The very fact that the marriage bond in America is first and foremost forged by each spouse's declaration of intent (the fabled words "I do"), and that it can be undone by a reversal of that same intent (among the earliest developments in American family law was a liberalization of the institution of divorce) marks a radical break with the manner in which marriage operated as an institution for most of human history. This principle, moreover, has not been a constant in American history, but has evolved by stages and degrees as our republic has developed. As recently as 1993 spousal rape was not considered a prosecutable crime in many states, a vestige of the old, illiberal doctrine that marriage was a bond rooted in procreational biology rather than mutual affection and consent. The recognition of the rights of same-sex couples to enter the marital bond embodies the same imperative that has impelled the evolution of American marriage as an institution throughout the nation's history: the preservation of individual dignity and personal autonomy (in the words of the Declaration of Independence, the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness").

The most recent decision in Connecticut is a progressive unfolding of this imperative, but it will no doubt engender vehement resistance. Unfortunately, this year's Democratic presidential candidates are committed to the shopworn triangulation that opposes same-sex marriage but embraces "civil unions." At this late hour it is unrealistic to expect Barack Obama and Joe Biden to flip-flop on this issue, and economic issues so overwhelm the discourse of this electoral cycle that consideration of same-sex marriage is not likely to achieve much traction. Political tidal forces are bringing this issue to a head, however, and it will not long be possible for politicians on either side of the aisle to prevaricate. It can only be hoped that Democrats will stop running from their political convictions in this regard, and will embrace the position that clearly occupies the downhill slope of history: that same-sex marriage is a civil right, and one that should be safeguarded for all citizens throughout our American Union.

McCain, Vietnam, and Pakistan

2008-10-01T10:27:00.005-04:00

The difference between John McCain and Barack Obama over foreign policy toward Pakistan has generated much press coverage of late. It was revisited in last week's debates, and has received new vitality this week from video showing Senator McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, agreeing with Obama that U.S. forces should wage attacks against Islamist militants across the Pakistani frontier. McCain's campaign has trumpeted this dispute as exemplary of Obama's inexperience and naïveté, but it is more indicative of McCain's own tone-deafness on and ahistorical sense of foreign policy.

The counterinsurgency in Afghanistan is failing because it is caught in one of the oldest strategic traps in military history. When an insurgent force can exploit the frontier zone between two jurisdictional authorities as a safe haven, it achieves massive leverage over its counterinsurgent opponents. Any student of Chinese history is aware that this pattern played itself out repeatedly through successive eras. A rebel force would lodge itself at the frontier between two or more provinces and nimbly jump back and forth across that boundary. When authorities in one province were mobilized to fight the rebels it would withdraw to the periphery of a neighboring province to replenish and recuperate. Because coordination between provincial authorities was poor, and the peripheral areas of provinces were generally sparsely penetrated by official personnel, rebel groups could survive this way for decades. This strategy was exploited effectively by the Nien (1851-1868) rebels in the late Qing dynasty and again by Communist guerillas against the KMT in the first half of the 20th century, to name just two instances.

It is ironic that John McCain would not recognize this pattern in present-day Afghanistan, because another classic example of the use of this strategy to defeat a counterinsurgency was the war that so shaped McCain's own character and outlook, the Vietnam War. Viet Cong and NVA opponents of the Republic of South Vietnam were free to operate back and forth across the frontiers of Cambodia and North Vietnam, placing U.S. and ARVN counterinsurgent forces at a crippling disadvantage. McCain is fond of repeating U.S. soldiers' pleas to "let us win" in Iraq, making the explicit comparison to Vietnam. He insists, however, that he would tie the hands of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in precisely the manner that insured defeat in Vietnam.

I am not suggesting that the war in Vietnam could have been won had the U.S. adopted a more "hands free" strategy. Such a strategy could not be pursued in Vietnam without risking a global conflict with China and the USSR, which is why the Vietnam War was an intractable strategic task from the outset and should never have been undertaken. Nor is the pursuit of a cross-border strategy along the Afghan-Pakistani frontier without risk. Trespassing upon Pakistani territory by U.S. forces could incite massive hostility from the Pakistani people, and could, in the most extreme scenario, lead to the collapse of the Pakistani state and the onset of a state of anarchy in that large and nuclear-armed nation.

These risks must be weighed against the single stark contrast between the conflict in Afghanistan and those in both Vietnam and Iraq, however. Unlike the latter conflicts, that in Afghanistan is of vital urgency to the security of the U.S. The forces that attacked the U.S. on 9/11 were lodged in Afghanistan and are currently fighting among the insurgents there. The U.S. can no more relinquish this counterinsurgency than it could refrain from retaliating for the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Given that the safety and security of the nation is at stake, the U.S. must pursue all necessary means to defeat the insurgency in Afghanistan. It therefore has no choice but to treat Afghanistan and Pakistan as a single operational theater. If Pakistani territory is treated as "off limits" in the prosecution of the counterinsurgency, then the conflict in Afghanistan will end in the same manner as the war in Vietnam. If John McCain does not realize this fact, he is a poor student of history and a poor judge of foreign policy.

The challenges of operating within the Afghan-Pakistani theater are acutely complex. Every tool in the strategic arsenal of the U.S., military, diplomatic, and economic, must be used simultaneously in careful coordination with one-another. The tactical and political consequences of each action must be weighed cautiously. U.S. political and military leaders will have to walk a virtual razor's edge: discovering how they may operate within Pakistani territory without either broadening the conflict or precipitating the collapse of the government in Islamabad. All of these tasks will require the total focus and full resources of the U.S. government, a fact that argues in favor of a leader who understands that the invasion of Iraq was a distraction, and that it must be wound down in order to shift focus to Afghanistan.

Welcome to Iraq

2008-09-26T12:50:00.002-04:00

After more than five years of trying to remake Iraq in our image a transformation has finally occurred- the US has become Iraq. As the nation teeters on the brink of financial meltdown three factions duke it out. The Shiites and Sunnis in Congress bicker over emergency measures, while the Kurds in the White House remain sidelined.

Conventional wisdom holds that an advantage of our bipartisan system (despite its many drawbacks) is its intrinsic flexibility in a crisis. Because it has the capacity to gel into two negotiating camps emergency compromise measures can be reached quickly, freed from the complexities of a multilateral debate. Well, kiss those days good-bye.

This tripartite standoff might seem to parcel blame out equally to all concerned. In fact, however, the fault lies with the two Republican sides of the triangle. The policies that brought us to this juncture are all Republican ones. Deregulation of capital markets combined with tax cuts and deficit spending created an enormous speculative bubble, the bursting of which has created the current crisis. The sectarian rift which has opened up in the GOP is between the White House, which has belatedly awoken to the need for a compromise of the ideological principles that created this disaster, and House Republicans, who with their proposals for new tax cuts (!) are intent on continuing to walk, lemming-like, down the same path that has brought us to this precipice. There are differences of degree to be distinguished here, but both sects are guilty.

It is hard for those of us who have endured years of Republican sanctimony about how tax cuts and deficits create wealth to contain our anger at this point. If tax rates had remained at their pre-2001 levels, the $700,000,000,000 being poured into this bailout would have been prevented from fueling a speculative bubble in the first place. Imagining what might have been done with that money in the hands of responsible leadership is enough to make one weep. Investment in alternative sources of energy, health care, education, infrastructure: capital improvements that would have both stimulated the immediate consumer economy and generated income streams of wealth for generations to come. Instead that money has been gambled away, or at least the part of it that has not been spent on luxury cars and vacation homes for speculators. For shame.

There has been enough talk of patriotism. Any citizen who continues to suborn the politics of House Republicans has no right to call themselves a patriot. Anyone who cares about this country should be on the phone to Republican representatives and senators, demanding that they reach a compromise solution to this crisis. Hopefully, as Paul Krugman wrote in today's New York Times, adult heads will prevail and catastrophe will be averted. If not, we may be visiting a future in which being compared to Iraq would feel like a lucky break.

Lessons of Vietnam (and Iraq) Lost on GOP

2008-09-06T00:41:00.005-04:00

Watching the Republican convention one might well have become confused as to whether the U.S. was winning the conflict in Iraq or had already won it. Triumphalism and optimism were the watchwords of the day. The only theme that was elaborated upon as enthusiastically as our imminent victory in Iraq was the benighted inclination of Barack Obama to forestall it.

This is all effective rhetoric, but is a deeply ironic message from a presidential campaign that repeatedly claims to put country first and party second. It is especially disappointing from John McCain, a veteran of Vietnam. Iraq differs in many important respects from Vietnam, but in one aspect they are the same. Iraq is, as Vietnam was, an extended counterinsurgency mission, the political dimensions of which are of greater importance to ultimate success than strictly military operations. As in Vietnam, U.S. efforts have been impeded by its leaders' failure to identify the obstacles of the mission, to define its goals, or to communicate these clearly to the public at large, resulting in a crippling gap between the expectations created by government rhetoric and the evolving reality on the ground.

This lesson of Vietnam was roundly ignored by the Bush administration in the lead up to and early stages of the Iraq war. Overconfident predictions of WMDs, promises that the mission would pay for itself in Iraqi oil revenues, that U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators, that casualties would be light and the mission short in duration, and premature declarations of "Mission Accomplished," all deprived the Bush administration of any semblance of the credibility it required to manage the conflict, and drained the U.S. public of the political will to support the war effort. After this grossly negligent dereliction of the duty of commander in chief, one would think that President Bush's party would seek to avoid making this same mistake yet again.

Any chance at effective governance in the face of the Iraq conflict will require careful management of the expectations of the electorate: persuading citizens of the merit of adopted strategy while yet eliciting from them the patience to endure setbacks and unexpected contingencies. Instead, the Republicans are squandering any prayer of administering effective policy in pursuit of short-term political success. Pumping up the citizenry's expectations of victory is well-suited to the aspirational tendencies of our American culture, but it is heedlessly rash given the difficulties and uncertainties that face us in Iraq. To paraphrase John McCain: the Republicans, with McCain leading the charge, are putting their ambition to capture the White House before any consideration of what would be best for the U.S. if they actually do so.

Almost all of the claims that various GOP speakers made at their convention are not true. The U.S. is not safer as the result of the invasion of Iraq; Al-Qaeda has not been materially weakened by this mission in aggregate. Any battlefield losses Al-Qaeda suffered in Iraq have been more than offset by the recruits the U.S. occupation has attracted to the cause. Any demoralization Al-Qaeda has suffered due to recent setbacks in Iraq is offset by the gains made in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where skills and tactics learned in battle against U.S. soldiers in Iraq are being applied to tragic effect. While it is true that Al-Qaeda's position in Iraq itself has degraded over the last year, it still has far greater purchase there than it did during the regime of Saddam Hussein, which was virtually none at all. Nor has the Iraq conflict significantly deprived Al-Qaeda of resources. The material needs of Al-Qaeda are so small that they are virtually limitlessly replenishable.

Moreover, "victory" in Iraq is neither imminent or assured. The New York Times had an excellent piece in Friday's Op/Ed, co-authored by Lt. Colonel John Nagl, one of the principal architects of the Army's new counterinsurgency doctrine. It warns that one cost of recent improvements in Iraq has been decreased U.S. influence: the more confident the Iraqi government feels in the security of its own position, the less it is inclined to heed U.S. demands. This implicitly means that the evolving situation will become increasingly unpredictable in years to come. As far as the situation has improved in the past year, hard times and hard sacrifices may yet lie ahead, a contingency for which U.S. leaders should begin to prepare the public right now.

The GOP knows that these facts are all complex truths, and that any attempt to articulate them in extended debate will leave Democrats' vulnerable to being caricatured as "nervous nellies" and defeatists. However, Democrats do not necessarily need to focus overmuch on the factual inaccuracies undergirding Republican rhetoric. They only need to point out that John McCain, among other Republicans in the the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, repeatedly predicted: "[W]e will win this conflict. We will win it easily." The question then becomes why the American people should accept McCain's assurances a second time. Moreover, it raises severe doubts about the wisdom of giving such assurances, given the damaging effect such overconfident predictions have had on the political conduct of the mission thus far. One would like to believe that John McCain has not, as he has accused his opponent of doing, traded what is in the best interests of the nation for what is politically expedient. A more charitable view would be, as has been said of him recently, that he "just doesn't get it."

Reproductive Freedom as a Civil Right

2008-08-30T11:30:00.020-04:00

The choice of Governor Sarah Palin as the Republican Vice Presidential nominee is among the most surprising and intriguing developments to hit the American political scene in many years. That it will materially impact the current electoral contest is undeniable. How and to what degree that effect will manifest itself are open questions, ones likely to occasion debate among political analysts long after the last ballot has been cast.

One effect that is hopefully clear to observers on both sides of the partisan divide is an increase in the urgency of the issue of reproductive freedom. Two facts that obviously figured in to the choice of Governor Palin as running-mate are her potential appeal to fellow women angered at the persistent glass ceiling of American power and her high profile among fellow social conservatives as an advocate of the so-called "pro-life" political agenda. These two forms of appeal work at cross-purposes to one another. This state of affairs should occasion open, frank and critical discussion of the issue of reproductive freedom, though inertia may (perhaps "most likely will" is more apt) cause the campaign debate to run along well-worn ruts, making it as oblique and obfuscatory as it has been for many years.

The Democrats would be especially ill-advised to let such a state of inertia prevail. Already the signs of it are distressingly apparent. At the recent "faith in politics" forum hosted by Pastor Rick Warren, when confronted with the comparison of the practice of abortion in the U.S. to a "Holocaust," Barack Obama did not offer a robust defense of the principles of reproductive freedom that have animated Democratic policies on this issue. Rather, he went in to the evasive rhetorical tailspin that has ubiquitously typified Democratic discussion of abortion in recent years: abashedly detouring into the topics of facilitating adoption, educating teens, and making prenatal care more widely available.

This is only one of many examples of how Democrats have ceded control of both the political discourse and their own public image to Republicans in recent years. Through self-censorship Democrats not only grant the Republicans unlimited freedom to frame the issue, they make themselves look like opportunistic pols who do not really believe the content of their own campaign positions. In a race that looks to be very close and in which the stakes are high, such political anemia will once again prove fatal, especially on the issue of reproductive freedom.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the Clintonian position that abortion should be "legal but rare," but if Democrats leave off their positive engagement with the issue at that point they will abdicate any chance of depriving the GOP maximum political traction from the nomination of Sarah Palin. Reproductive freedom can not be reduced to a question of the morality of abortion. It is a civil rights issue, and one that impacts women profoundly (though not exclusively).

The failure of Democrats to fully engage the debate over reproductive freedom has allowed flagrant misconceptions to persist among the voting public. Many people, if closely questioned on the issue, would express the view that the legality of abortion is basically a lifestyle issue. "Pro-choice" advocates, so they assume, propose that abortion should be legal to prevent the sexually active from being burdened by any unintended consequences of their behavior. Reproductive freedom thus reduces, in the eyes of many on all parts of the political spectrum, to a defense of an individual's unfettered pursuit of personal happiness. However sympathetic many voters may be to such a stance, this distortion of the issue and its philosophical content saps the defense of reproductive freedom of its moral force and social urgency.

The question of the legality of abortion is one of freedom, but of a kind much more fundamental and constitutionally significant than that of personal lifestyle. Believers in reproductive freedom begin from the premise that whatever else a fetus might be, it is first and foremost a part of a woman's body. "Pro-life" advocates would insist that the central question pertaining to the legality of abortion is "what are the 'rights' of the 'unborn?'" Advocates of reproductive freedom, however, insist that the first question in this debate must be "what are the rights of a woman with regard to her own body?" Tag-lines like "legal but rare" elide this basic philosophical concern and thus trivialize the issue of reproductive freedom and its advocates.

As a result, lost in the current anemic discourse is any awareness that to ban abortion would entail a vast increase in the power of the state. No American would tolerate a law that empowered the government to prevent a woman from having surgery to remove cancer. Pregnancy, like cancer, invariably has profound physiological effects, with potential health consequences ranging up to and including death. We accept that an individual should not have to appear in court to have his or her tumor assessed as benign or malignant, it is not a great leap to the position that a woman should enjoy the same discretion with regard to a fetus.

The important thing to remember in this regard is the reality of state power and how it operates. Imagine a rape victim who has a pre-existing condition that makes her pregnancy life-threatening. As the fetus grows in her body and her health deteriorates over weeks and months she is forced to wait for a court hearing, or to sit in a courtroom and answer the questions of a state prosecutor as to her medical condition and character (is she lying? has she bribed her doctor to lie for her?). Perhaps she will die before the court completes its findings, perhaps she will be allowed the medical treatment she needs and live. Either way, can anything that happens in that courtroom genuinely be called "justice?"

The ethical and moral injustices that flow from this augmentation of state power are exacerbated by the power dynamics of American society at large. One in every six women in the U.S. is the victim of sexual assault during her lifetime. In an average year more than 570,000 women are the victims of domestic violence, ten times the incidence of such violence against men. An estimated 20 million Americans have been the victim of parent incest. To comprehensively ban abortion would be to effectively harness the full power of the federal government on behalf of rapists and abusers. An abusive man who wanted to leverage his power over a woman would only need to impregnate her, ensuring that the state would intervene to insist that he be the father of her child.

Any redemptive objections ("any unwanted child may be given up for adoption") are contingent on the most benign circumstances. For a woman who has been trying to escape an abusive man, falling under his sway for nine months might be a death sentence. Moreover, those who discount such concerns as trivial ("the law already protects abused women") have an unrealistic image of how state power operates. Any legal climate in which the "rights" of the "unborn" were given equal status to those of a woman would empower men in ways that many citizens would not anticipate but are a virtual certainty. Imagine a pregnant woman who has been systematically raped and abused, though her husband has been clever enough to allow no witnesses and leave no physical marks on her body. She climbs aboard a long-distance bus to escape (perhaps fully intending to carry her child to term), but is dragged off the bus by police because her husband has filed a complaint accusing her of intending to abort their unborn child. Anyone who scoffs at the possibility of such a scenario knows little about American legal history.

It is against these injustices that believers in reproductive freedom take a principled stand, in the view that they represent a moral evil far superseding any that might hypothetically flow from legalized abortion. Advocates of a ban on abortion, of course, view the philosophical parameters of the problem very differently. In their eyes the "unborn" have all of the rights of a human being, and thus to legalize abortion is to condone murder. These citizens are entitled to their views, but they are not entitled to have their principles exclusively privileged in the public square.

There is nothing intuitively obvious, philosophically ironclad, or religiously universal about the proposition that the "unborn" have the same moral status and rights as a living human being. The Jewish Torah, for example, though it treats the killing of a fetus as a crime, sanctions it as one many orders of magnitude less severe than the murder of a human being. Moreover, proponents of the assertion that life begins at conception must address the statistic that 40% of all conceptions spontaneously end in miscarriage. It is fair to ask of those who insist that the law be rewritten to redress the inconsistency between the treatment of "abortion" and "murder" if they are as consistent in their treatment of "death" and "miscarriage." For example, every time a sexually active woman has her period late, should investigations be done to determine whether or not she had conceived an embryo? If she had, should final rites be performed for her "child?" Should investigations be opened as to whether her behavior may have contributed to the miscarriage, making her guilty of "negligent homicide?"

The question of whether or not life and all of the rights pertaining to it begin at conception is, of course, a matter of faith that cannot be resolved logically or empirically. For a person of a particular faith, the example I gave above of a rape victim facing death due to her pregnancy is no argument for the legalization of abortion. Her position may be tragic, but it is a function of the will of God. Defenders of reproductive freedom ask whether it is right or just for the government to force women who do not share that faith to submit to its strictures, even at the cost of their own lives. Beyond this, believers in reproductive freedom stand opposed to the degradation of our constitutional system and its safeguards of individual rights that would result from a government that exercised such arbitrary and invasive power over one half of its citizenry but not the other.

The fact that their views hinge on articles of faith does not disqualify opponents of reproductive freedom from championing them in the public square. It does make it fair, however, to assess the political implications of faith-based positions in quantitative terms. For example, a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that 26% percent of respondents believe that abortion should be illegal in "most cases," 18% believe that abortion should be illegal in "all cases." Support for a ban on abortion is thus a minority view, albeit one that accounts for a substantial plurality of the electorate. These raw statistics, however, make the position appear more mainstream and less contingent on particular religious views than is actually the case. As many as 20% of "pro-life" advocates are against legal contraception. This is a logical extension of religious objections to reproductive freedom, as the attempt to avoid conception may be construed as a contravention of God's will as serious as abortion itself. Though logically perfectly consistent with support for a ban on abortion, this stance reflects a world view and social outlook far more out of step with mainstream American culture than the mere fact of opposition to abortion would suggest. If (hypothetically) this number were subtracted from the block opposed to reproductive freedom, a constitutional amendment legislating the findings of Roe v. Wade would most likely pass ratification.

All of these dimensions of the issue go unseen as long as Democrats continue to run from their own beliefs and seek rhetorical cover in tepid formulas like "legal but rare." If they are to win this presidential contest, they must give full-throated voice to the reasons why a ban on abortion would be a civil rights disaster. At the very least, they should scrutinize their opponents' position and their understanding of its human implications. Does Senator McCain see no connection between reproductive rights and the widespread abuse of women? Does Governor Palin favor a ban on contraception to supplement that on abortion? Some of her more extreme social conservative supporters might be particularly interested in her answer to such a question, especially if it is negative. If Democrats do not proactively engage this debate, John McCain and Sarah Palin will derive substantial political capital from their "pro-life" stance without suffering any of the political liabilities of their assault upon reproductive freedom and Americans' (particularly American women's) civil rights.

Reclaiming the Dark Night

2008-08-08T10:33:00.006-04:00

Alert: Spoilers below. Read on at your own peril.

I have recently taken a break from blogging to pursue scholarship, and in turn took a break from scholarship to go see The Dark Night in our local multiplex. Nothing boosts one's credibility like a declaration against interests, so as a college professor it should earn me some trust to declare that this was one of many superhero movies I have viewed and enjoyed, and by far my favorite to date. Since seeing it, though, I have been distressed to hear commentators and pundits broadcasting the idea that this was somehow a "pro-George W. Bush" movie; that its latent message is to vindicate and defend our president from the short-sighted criticism of "the left." It has occurred to me that this movie will reach vastly more Americans and have far greater impact than any of the ancient Chinese texts I have been writing about all summer. Moreover, as someone who believes that the presidency of George W. Bush has been a disaster, I am loathe to yield The Dark Knight to his apologists. I thus hereby leap into the fray over how this text should be interpreted.

Part of what makes The Dark Knight so enjoyable is that it is undeniably very topical. The late Heath Ledger's "Joker" is an apt analogue of the terrorists who so dominate headlines today. I would thus follow the "pro-Bush" pundits as far as admitting that the film does encode some commentary on current events. In the film we see Batman and his fellow spirit Harvey Dent take a principled stand against terrorism that is publicly unpopular. Both men stand up for the idea that rules sometimes have to be bent in order to fight the forces that threaten the very social fabric itself, and both men suffer public scorn on that account. This is where "pro-Bush" readers draw a similarity between Batman and Bush, but this is where the similarity ends.

The metaphorical heart of the movie is a story that Alfred, the butler (played, in a brilliant piece of casting, by Michael Caine), tells Bruce Wayne about his days as a colonial official in Burma. There he encountered a bandit who committed murder and mayhem to very little purpose. Jewels the bandit had stolen were found in the possession of small children. "Some men," explains Alfred, "just want to watch the world burn." This principle, Alfred explains, is in operation in the attacks by the Joker upon Gotham City. In enlisting the Joker's aid Gotham's criminal underground has unleashed a force that they don't understand and can not control, and everyone is in peril as a consequence.

The moral of Alfred's story is delivered later in the movie, however, and is overlooked by anyone who seeks an enthusiastic endorsement of George W. Bush's presidency in this work of fiction. Bruce Wayne asks Alfred how the Burmese bandit was eventually caught, and Alfred replies, "We burned the forest down." Those who would read this as declaring that "sometimes harsh measures must be taken" are reading the text through a very phantasmal lens. Anyone who suggests that British colonial policy in Burma should be the role model for anything should read The River of Lost Footsteps by Thant Myint-U. One does not have to seek that far outside the text to contest such a distorted reading, however. One need only remember that Alfred had described the bandit as a man who wanted "too see the world burn." In the end, therefore, thanks to the tactics Alfred and his comrades employed, the bandit GOT EXACTLY WHAT HE WANTED.

In The Dark Knight we see that, in their understandable zeal to arrest the Joker's nihilistic assault on Gotham, Harvey Dent and Batman come very close to burning the forest down. Harvey Dent applies torture to a deranged criminal in search of information, a tactic even the steely-eyed Batman finds reprehensible (draw your own connections to current events). The Batman himself violates the privacy of every citizen of Gotham by building an illegal surveillance system (ditto).

Though this tactic does, indeed, discover the Joker, it does nothing to foil the criminal's plans, as it was always his intention to be caught eventually. The Joker is shooting for bigger game than sowing mere terror, he is attempting to undermine people's trust in and decency toward one another, thus working to unravel civil society itself. By violating the privacy of his fellow citizens, Batman plays directly into his hands. In the end (though a few well-placed punches from Batman help), the Joker's plan is not foiled by high-tech surveillance or illegal torture. Rather, the Joker is defeated by ordinary citizens' refusal to be baited into harming one-another and by the integrity of Lucius Fox (the scientist portrayed by Morgan Freeman) in destroying the surveillance machine built by Bruce Wayne.

I will not go as far as "pro-Bush" pundits in declaring that this is an anti-Bush text. Like most admirable works of art it is thought-provoking and complex; attempts to reduce its message into neat formulas do violence to the text (as ironic as that may be to say about a "text" riddled with so many loud explosions). In the final analysis, every audience member has the right to take away what message he or she most perceives in the movie. On that score, one of the most significant moments in the movie for me was the point at which the Joker begins to burn the enormous pile of cash belonging to his underworld "employers." When they ask, amazed, why he would do such a thing, he replies, "My work only requires gasoline and explosives, and those are cheap." Taking policy advice from a comic-book movie is no doubt a stretch, but this is the principle I would distill from that screen moment: when faced with an opponent whose material needs are as small as the Joker's, invading another country will not seriously deter him.

Obama Was Wrong About the Surge (But Right About Everything Else)

2008-07-30T16:08:00.005-04:00

Today's New York Times reports that US troop casualties in Iraq have fallen to virtually the lowest point since hostilities there began. Only five US soldiers have been killed in combat since the beginning of July. This is welcome and heartening news, and combined with steadily decreasing civilian fatalities among Iraqis testifies to the effectiveness of the "troop surge" begun in January. It is clear that those who opposed or doubted the troop surge, including Barack Obama (and myself), were wrong. The surge has not cured all of Iraq's ills, but to deny that it has improved the situation in that country is simply tendentious.

Obama's judgment did not measure up to that of Senator John McCain in this matter, but it surpassed and continues to surpass it in virtually every other respect. The successes of the surge do not vindicate the decision to invade Iraq in the first place, nor are they likely to do so. Nor is the surge an end unto itself or a path to ultimate victory, as John McCain seems to view it. Iraq has, for the moment, been brought back from the brink of chaos, but it is still a society wracked by terrible discord and in peril of cataclysmic collapse. The danger of McCain's repeated rhetoric about how "the surge is working" is its potential to lull American policymakers back into the delusional mindset that brought on the Iraq war in the first place: the misbegotten belief that conditions in Iraq are ultimately under American control.

The surge is a testament to the valor and ingenuity of America's armed forces, but to recognize that reality does not negate the fact that none of the surge's effect would have been possible if the US had not found competent Iraqi partners in Nuri al-Maliki's government, the Iraqi Army, and the Anbar Awakening. The charge that "withdrawal=defeat" rests on the fallacious assumption that Iraqi society will tolerate a massive US troop presence indefinitely, a notion for which there has been no empirical proof (quite the contrary). The peace that has been won can only be kept if the responsibility for maintaining it can be successfully transfered to the Iraqi government, military, and police. Otherwise the gains of the surge will begin to unravel and chaos will return.

One might well object that having been wrong about the surge, its opponents are on poor ground to maintain that gradual disengagement is best suited to the likely dispositions of Iraqi society. This is to ignore much of the evidence that continues to fill daily newspapers, however. Though violence is down in Iraq, it cannot be called "low." The forces of entropy in Iraq may be fatigued, but they may also be playing a wait-and-see game in the run-up to the US election. Both, indeed, may be true at once. Though US troop casualties are down, the cost-per-troop of the Iraq mission (representing, in part, the extraordinary precautions that must be taken to ensure force security) are still astronomically high. Moreover, common sense dictates that any foreign force, whether of US soldiers or Martians, would face insuperable difficulties in keeping the peace in Iraq for the long term. Iraqi society is so deeply divided that it is almost impossible for any outside element to cultivate and maintain the role of "fair broker" between mutually hostile factions. In the long run, nothing can replace the Iraqis' negotiating a stable social contract among themselves, a process that will ultimately require the disengagement of US forces.

Senator McCain seems to think that his superior wisdom in supporting the surge should be an argument that carries him to the White House. That tack, however, opens the question of whose judgment was better with the regard to invading Iraq in the first place (if we are to argue the past...), and on that score Obama is likely to carry the argument for most Americans. They seem to feel, as I do, that whatever good news there has been of recent, the costs of the Iraq war have been too high and the risks are still very, very severe.

Obama would be well advised to remain focused on the future, though, because there he has a better argument than McCain as well. Withdrawal does not equal defeat, as McCain would contend. Disengagement from Iraq, rather, is the only path to potential victory. No peace in Iraq will endure unless it is one that the Iraqis themselves establish and superintend. Thus Obama is right that the long-term mission given to US commanders like David Petraeus should be to plan for and execute the ultimate disengagement of US combat forces from Iraq. This is the argument that Obama can wield very effectively against McCain this fall. Disengagement is the best way to honor the sacrifice of our troops, as disengagement is the only path that may yield the long-term fruits that could still be reaped from their struggle: a stable, prosperous, and sovereign Iraq.

Obama, Race, and History

2008-03-21T13:16:00.009-04:00

In today's Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer offers a denunciation of Obama's recent speech on race relations that is exemplary of its reception by many Americans. According to Krauthammer, the speech is a "brilliant fraud." This judgment hangs on two points. Firstly, Obama asserts a false "moral equivalence" between the private sentiments of his white grandmother or leaders like Harry Truman (who was known to use racial and ethnic epithets) and the public sentiments of Jeremiah Wright. In doing so, Obama confuses "the moral difference between the occasional private expression of the prejudices of one's time and the use of a public stage to spread racial lies and race hatred." Secondly, Obama relies on what Krauthammer calls "white guilt" in falsely contextualizing Wright's speech: "By context, Obama means history. And by history, he means the history of white racism....But Obama was supposed to be new. He flatters himself as a man of the future transcending the anger of the past as represented by his beloved pastor."

These arguments will no doubt be persuasive to many white Americans who are shocked at the level of anger expressed in Jeremiah Wright's sermons. This is unfortunate, as Krauthammer mischaracterizes Obama's assertions and offers up an analysis built on flawed logic. What strikes me as most objectionable in Krauthammer's analysis is his misuse of history. On the one hand Harry Truman's racial views may be dismissed as "the prejudices of his day," while on the other any attempt to explain black anger as a response to white racism is invalid. This is clearly a double standard. By contrast, Obama's speech expressed a much more nuanced and coherent historical sensibility:

"Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety...The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America. And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright."

Obama does not claim, as Krauthammer would have him do, that Wright's attitudes are the natural product of white racism. He does, however, admit that Wright's "bitterness and bias" are an organic gauge of the state of public discourse in the black community today; not in the sense that all or most blacks agree with Wright, but that a critical portion of the community is at least willing to overlook his biases in assessing his leadership. In other words, to use Krauthammer's phrase, Wright was guilty of no more than expressing "the prejudices of his time." Thus Obama "could no more disown [Wright]" than he could "disown the black community."

Still, Krauthammer's argument about the moral distinction between "public" and "private" expressions of racially charged sentiments might be cited by way of rebuking Obama. This ignores, however, the ways in which the nature of "public" and "private" discourse changes over time. Harry Truman might have felt constrained in the expression of his views in ways that Jeremiah Wright did not, but this is more a gauge of the historical state of race relations than the moral status of either man. One fair test might be to search for a genuine moral equivalent, for a white leader that Americans revere despite his or her publicly expressed views on race.

In a speech in Springfield Illinois, the "Great Emancipator" Abraham Lincoln declared, "There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races ... A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation." In his debates with Steven Douglas, Lincoln asserted, "...I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people...There is physical difference between the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality..."

These sentiments are naturally abhorrent to our present-day sensibilities, and despite being tolerated in the political discourse of the nineteenth century were, in absolute terms, as morally deficient then as now. Do such realities invalidate the present-day reverence in which Americans hold Lincoln? Are we wrong to build monuments to him, place his picture on our currency, to count him among the greatest Americans who have ever lived? I would argue not, and Barack Obama would agree. What he indicates, however, is that to be American is and was to inhabit a social reality that chronically and violently distorts our orientation towards issues of race, no matter what side of the racial divide we inhabit (or whether, like Obama himself, we stand astraddle that divide). There are many points on which one might protest the comparison of Jeremiah Wright to Lincoln, but in this one respect they are equal: in their problematic orientation toward questions of race (and here one must note that Wright has not, to my knowledge, said anything as personally disparaging of whites as those remarks about blacks quoted above) they are equally American.

Barack Obama launched his campaign for the presidency in Springfield, Illinois, on the steps of the same state house where both he and Abraham Lincoln served as legislators. Obama speaks with frequent pride about his historical connection with Lincoln, and wrote with passion about the inspiration he draws from Lincoln in an essay in Time. In assessing Obama's response to the Jeremiah Wright controversy, one must ask what a reasonable response would be if one were to confront Obama with the words of Lincoln's Springfield speech (of which Obama himself evinces being aware). Would anything less than a complete denunciation of Lincoln and repudiation of Obama's former praise amount to a betrayal of the black community? Or, could he reasonably reject and denounce Lincoln's abhorrent statements while persisting in his judgment that Lincoln had been "our greatest president?" If one accepts that the latter response to Lincoln's flawed legacy would be understandable, it is difficult to explain why Obama's current response to the controversy surrounding Jeremiah Wright is not.

Obama on Iraq

2008-03-16T15:51:00.002-04:00

Of late there has been a concerted effort to cast Barack Obama's position on Iraq as inconsistent, naive, or politically cynical. Most recently Michael Gerson claimed that where John McCain won his party's nomination for resisting "overwhelming pressure," Obama will only win the Democratic nomination "because he surrendered to that pressure." By Gerson's telling, McCain's support of the surge showed political courage, whereas Obama's continued support of a phased withdrawal in the face of the surge's effects both contradicts earlier positions he articulated and amounts to mere pandering to the supposed Democratic "anti-war" base.

Smoothly plausible as arguments like Gerson's may be, none amount to more than political spin when put to the least empirical test. No one, least of all John McCain, can claim to have possessed a crystal ball or to have been perfectly consistent in his or her policy advice on Iraq. Where in 2003 McCain expressed confidence that the war would be brief in duration and would virtually pay for itself, today he preaches the need for firm resolve and stoic sacrifice. No doubt he and his supporters would insist that his analysis has changed rightly and naturally as conditions on the ground in Iraq have evolved, and that this is no more than the strategic wisdom of any leader concerned for the security of our Republic. There is little to dispute in such claims, except to point out that any such explanation for Senator McCain's changeability with respect to Iraq applies equally to Senator Obama, a fact that commentators like Gerson would seem to hope we will ignore.

In fact, the basic strategic principles underpinning Senator Obama's orientation toward the Iraq war have remained unchanged since his now famous speech opposing the war delivered in October of 2002: "I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences." Obama has always understood, in ways that McCain and Clinton seemingly do not, that the US has never been in control over how the Iraq conflict has evolved. All pundits and leaders have been in the position of making inaccurate predictions and changing policy prescriptions precisely because there have been few or no criteria by which one might judge what the short- and long- term effects of applying US power might be. Iraq's destiny has always been in the hands of Iraq's people and Iraq's leaders, it has never been in the United States' power to do anything more than catalyze forces already at work in Iraqi society at large. Those forces are so entropic and so volatile, moreover, that even Iraq's most firmly entrenched social and political leaders cannot confidently predict how the political terrain will shift and change from one month to the next. It is thus utter folly to imagine that any US plan will effect transparent outcomes.

McCain's call to remain in Iraq for "one hundred years" still clings to the myth of US omnipotence- any outcome we imagine may be achieved if only we Americans summon the resolve to accomplish it. Such sentiments make for good copy, but one can only stand amazed at the strategic folly of an aspiring US president tying himself to such an unequivocal threshold of success. By equating withdrawal with defeat, McCain has narrowed all of his strategic options to one- remain in Iraq irrespective of the harm or benefit the US presence might cause. To do otherwise would be "surrender."

By contrast, Obama's strategic position has always centered on the pragmatic core of the policy problem rather than symbolic superficialities like the false choice between "withdrawal" and "staying the course." As he said in July of 2004, "The failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster." It is this problem, and not some abstract notion of "victory," that has been the focus of Obama's policy advice since his speech of 2002. Obama has argued consistently that the viability of the Iraqi state itself, and not some permanent US presence in Iraq or other symbolic benefit, must remain the focus of US policy efforts, and that to that end eventual disengagement from Iraq is our best and clearest course. Many scoff at Obama's position as naive, but after five years and tens of thousands dead and wounded on all sides such scorn says much more about the deep-seated ethnocentrism of US leaders and pundits than it does about Obama's judgment.

John McCain has undoubtedly been catapulted to the head of his party's ticket by his support of the surge. In January McCain's stance seemed as prescient as that of Obama's 2002 speech in defiance of the war itself. But as the months drag on, there is less and less cause to believe that the surge is the magic bullet that will forestall "the failure of the Iraqi state." Obama cannot claim to possess a crystal ball any more than McCain, but he can claim to have correctly perceived the limits of American power going in to this conflict. In other words, he is among the few American leaders to have predicted just how unpredictable this policy endeavor would prove to be. In that light, Obama's call for a phased withdrawal may be no more sure a solution to the crisis than John McCain's exhortation to stoic resolve, but it is likewise no less sure. Moreover, it recommends itself by virtue of two facts: 1)it has not as yet been tried in the course of this five-year tempest; 2)it is the considered analysis of one whose judgment has proved remarkably wise thus far.

Selling the Hundred-Year Sojourn

2008-02-28T18:16:00.003-05:00

Though it has fallen somewhat below the political radar in recent weeks, the coming election will nonetheless be as much a referendum on the Iraq war as any other issue. The differences between the two remaining Democratic candidates on this score are negligible by comparison the position of the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain. Thus whatever the outcome of the Democratic contest, voters will be presented two clear alternatives on the issue of Iraq.

McCain's position is exemplified by his oft-quoted declaration that the U.S. should stay in Iraq for "a hundred" years, "as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed." Senator McCain has recently complained that these remarks are being distorted. His complaint has some logical basis, but as he himself admits, he could hardly expect otherwise. Democrats routinely cite McCain as if he endorses the decision to carry on with hostilities for one-hundred years, if necessary. The point of McCain's remarks, as he is quick to point out, is that American troops will be able to remain in Iraq for one-hundred years because (so he claims) hostilities there will end soon. Once the resistance to US occupation has been quelled, it will be possible for US troops to withdraw to bases and remain peacefully garrisoned in Iraq just like our forces based in South Korea or Japan.

Though Senator McCain may express some chagrin at the way his remarks are taken out of context, they are not, in fact, being distorted as egregiously as he would insist. Most often the "distortion" is exclusively one of omission: "John McCain says we will be in Iraq for one-hundred years." This kind of statement lacks the qualifiers that conditioned McCain's initial claim, but it does not substantively misrepresent his words. The rhetorical impact of such statements does not arise from a distortion of Mr. McCain's meaning, but from skepticism (latent or self-conscious) on the part of the listener that the stable homeostasis McCain predicts can ever be achieved. American troops have been in Iraq for five years now, and though we have seen rates of violence and casualties go up and down over the course of that time, a steady loss of American life has been a constant. Mr. McCain's vision of a future Iraq that is not lethal terrain for US soldiers is not something that experience has intuitively disposed American voters to accept.

This is the challenge facing McCain going in to the general election in November: persuading the American public that his vision of strategic success in Iraq is correct. For all that Senator McCain is being lampooned, one must admire that from the outset, he has laid down conditions for "victory" in Iraq much clearer than any articulated by the Bush White House over the entire course of the conflict: the US must stay and fight in Iraq until it is no longer necessary to fight to stay. In order to win the general election in November, McCain will have to persuade American voters that this vision of victory is both possible and necessary.

The possibility of arriving at the point where Iraq is no longer lethal terrain for US forces is the hardest sell. Critical as McCain has been of Bush administration policy under the Rumsfeld Defense regime, he shares President Bush's vision of Iraq as a basically bilateral struggle, between the US and its allies on the one hand and those opposed to US interests on the other. If there are only two contenders in Iraq, it should be possible to fight through to a point where one contender quits and the other is left standing.

If Senator McCain can persuade the American electorate of this bipolar picture, he may succeed in winning their assent to his strategy. An alternative picture, however, seems to enjoy broadly intuitive traction among the US populace. This is of Iraq as a multipolar conflict, implicating both a variety of groups and factions within Iraq itself and an array of interests among foreign nations throughout the region. This view perceives that alliances and conflicts among and between the different forces in Iraq are constantly shifting and realigning, making it impossible to predict what the long-term impact of any application of US power will be upon the course of future violence.

An example of the pragmatic differences between these two perspectives may be drawn from the recent "surge." From the point at which the increased deployment of troops was completed last summer until the end of last year, US troop fatalities in Iraq declined; from 101 in June to 23 in December. But 40 US soldiers died in January of this year, and 29 have died this month thus far. Senator McCain would interpret this as a clear-cut tale of bilateral struggle: from June to December of '07 US forces had our enemies on the run. In January and February they have rallied an counterattacked, with variable success.

Plausible as such a reading may be, it is not the only or most persuasive one. Those disposed to view Iraq as a multipolar conflict would insist that the greater infusion of US troops (along with other factors unrelated to US military action) had produced a proportional increase in stability. The point at which fatalities reached their nadir was thus not the place at which US enemies "rallied," but the point at which the capacity of US forces to assist in creating stability reached its margin of diminishing returns. Whether or not US casualties continue to fall is thus not dependent on whether US enemies are defeated, but on whether Iraqi society becomes more orderly; a contingency that is seemingly beyond US control from this point forward (unless we decide to gamble that a further infusion of troops might garner more order).

Senator McCain and his surrogates are already promoting the former assessment of the surge: "the surge is working." On the surface this would seem to be a rhetorically unassailable strategy, as it would appear to box in any Democratic opponent to the position that "the surge is not working," which will seem defeatist and unpatriotic. After five years of war, however, the American public is likely to intuitively see this for the false dichotomy that it is. The fact that the surge has had positive effects does not argue for the conclusion that the US is any more in control of the conflict than it has been since day one. The situation may not get any worse if the current status quo is maintained, but there is no guarantee that it is going to get better, and it must do so in order to give McCain's scenario credibility. It is entirely possible that the surge has brought violence and casualties levels down as low as this strategy can, and that they will continue to fluctuate within a variable band indefinitely as long as current tactics are applied.

The longer such conditions persists, the less likely McCain's prospective hundred-year sojourn will appear, and time is not on his side. The clock began ticking as soon as he made his "hundred years" remark. In the intervening months between that point and November, Americans will view conditions on the ground in Iraq as an empirical test of how long we will have to wait before McCain's peaceful "hundred year" sojourn begins. If US fatalities fall below the threshold they reached in December '07, or if there are marked indications that Iraq is becoming safer for US personnel (for example, a sharp decrease in the cost of providing security to American soldiers and officials), then McCain will enjoy an electoral boost similar to that which aided him in securing the Republican nomination. If the conditions of January and February remain characteristic however, skepticism of McCain's position will be even more widespread and intense by October than it is now, and Iraq will be a serious liability going into November's polls.

The only argument Senator McCain will be able to fall back on in the face of such skepticism is the necessity of fighting to preserve a permanent US presence in Iraq. Here McCain is on firmer ground, for he can appeal to Americans' fear that Al Qaeda could profit from a US withdrawal. Such arguments are not likely to gain much traction, however. McCain obviously feels that Al Qaeda will remain in Iraq until the US "flushes them out," but this is a position that has become somewhat fatigued among the electorate at large. Most Americans now realize that Al Qaeda had no purchase in Iraq before the US invasion, and that its recent decrease in strategic power in Iraq is due far more to Iraqi resentment of Al Qaeda brutality and fanaticism than military action by US forces. If it does not seem that a "peaceful sojourn" will be possible, Americans will be ill inclined to keep our soldiers in danger in order to do what Iraqi society seems well equipped to do on its own.

"Fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here" is likewise not an argument that will be broadly persuasive. Americans realize that this is asymmetrical war- the resources that Al Qaeda requires to create mayhem are minuscule by comparison to the resources the US must expend in order to hunt them down overseas. No one can really believe that the expense of fighting in Iraq, which can only be some tiny fraction of what the US has spent, has left Al Qaeda short the cost of a few boxcutters and a dozen or more airplane tickets. If damaging Al Qaeda's operational capabilities is forwarded as a justification of further operations in Iraq, most Americans are likely to be left with the impression, "there has got to be a better way."

The last "necessity" argument, one that McCain cites often, is the imperative to withhold any semblance of a propaganda victory from Al Qaeda. As soon as the US begins to withdraw, so this argument goes, Al Qaeda will trumpet to the world that it has driven the American infidel from Islam's heartland. Such a prediction is likely true, but this does not in and of itself make McCain's argument a persuasive one. If Americans remain or grow more skeptical of the prospects of a "hundred-year" sojourn, and Al Qaeda is certain to claim victory whenever the US disengages from Iraq (whether now or fifty years from now), the question then becomes: "How long do US soldiers have to die simply to refuse Al Qaeda bragging rights?" The world can see that Al Qaeda is vastly less powerful in Iraq now than it was back in the dark days when it controlled much of Anbar Province, and there is little prospect of those times returning, regardless of what the US does. Continuing to spend blood and treasure so that a bunch of thugs refrain from making a self-evidently hollow claim is not likely to be perceived as wise strategy by voters come November.

McCain and his supporters seem to believe that the Democratic position can be successfully portrayed as defeatism to the voting public, but their confidence in this regard may well prove unwarranted. Once the Democratic nominee squares off against McCain, he or she will have a very simple yet elegant message with which to counter McCain's more difficult "hundred-year" sell: "Senator McCain promises that if we stay in Iraq and continue to spend blood and treasure as we are now, we may eventually be able to sojourn there one-hundred years. But what if staying in Iraq has produced as much benefit (for both ourselves and the Iraqi people) as it is going to? What if the only way to improve the situation is to begin to disengage from Iraq? What if disengagement could actually reduce the violence and increase stability? There is no guarantee that it would work, but is it not worth trying?" Many American voters are already very receptive to this line of reasoning, and (depending on how conditions evolve in Iraq itself) by November their numbers may be vastly larger.

Kosovo "Newborn"

2008-02-18T12:38:00.005-05:00

The images now coming out of Pristina make for heady news. It is not every day that one witnesses the "birth" of a new nation, though the end of the Cold War set off a cascade of such events that does not seem to have run its course just yet. It was perhaps predictable that both the EU and the United States would recognize the emergent state, but neither that nor the celebratory atmosphere surrounding the event can dispel the real causes for worry that this issue presages.

In a historical sense, Kosovo's declaration of independence continues a debate about self-determination and sovereignty first raised and briefly pursued robustly in the immediate aftermath of World War I. That discourse collapsed under a panoply of political pressures, however, and since then it has never been taken up on the international level in a systematic way. With the Cold War's end some scholars and pundits predicted a global transition to a "postnational age." That prediction is far from bearing fruit, however. The world is more balkanized today than it was ten years ago, and all indications are that the trend will continue apace.

None of this is to suggest that the Kosovars were wrong to declare independence or that those elements of the international community that have welcomed them acted ill. However, critics of the event like Vladimir Putin of Russia, whatever else anyone may think of them, raise distressing concerns that can not be shrugged off or wished away. If one examines all of the factors contributing to the nascent sovereignty of Kosovo, one recognizes that some or all of them are replicated in myriad situations throughout the world. This places the international community in a very difficult position. If Kosovo is treated as a systemic precedent, this will open a Pandora's box brimming with "suspended conflicts (to borrow Putin's phrase)" that could create havoc of various kinds worldwide. If Kosovo is treated as an idiosyncrasy (i.e. a "fluke"), this will debase principles of human rights and self-determination that have been central to the hopes of a more humane world order for the past century or more.

Consider some of the particulars of Kosovo's history in comparison to other parts of the world. Kosovo's populace is mainly ethnic Albanian, their only claim to a nationhood separate from that of Albania itself is the unique historical experience of living under Serbian rule. A similar argument, however, could be made for the nationhood of Taiwan. The claims of Serbia to sovereignty over Kosovo are generally held to have been abnegated by the cruelly abusive nature of Serbian rule. A similar argument could be made in favor of Chechyan (to name only one people) independence. The US is disposed to recognize Kosovo (in part) because to do otherwise would be to countenance the continued subjection of a Muslim population to a Christian nation, and that perception would materially damage US strategic efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Kurds, however, could reasonably complain that in this regard the Kosovars have benefited from the arbitrary vagaries of identity politics, and that any objective scrutiny of the principles on which the US has recognized Kosovo should compel the embrace of a sovereign Kurdistan.

All of these caveats may seem like the mark of exaggerated pessimism, but they point to a larger problem that will not go away and that the international community ignores at its peril. Multilateral negotiations must take place to work out an international framework whereby the community of nations agrees to address and adjudicate questions of disputed sovereignty. Such an imperative is especially urgent, in that these disputes are the chief impetus to the use of "terror," thus the political dimension of any "war on terror" hinges upon the successful resolution of this problem. The questions are obviously too complex to be resolved in a single meeting or in any compressed time frame. A series of summits over the course of a decade or more would be warranted. Even before a comprehensive resolution was reached, however, such a process might help cool the superheated political climate that pushes ongoing sovereignty disputes further and further into the terrain of violence. Here is a case, moreover, where the US might exert international leadership and contribute to the stability and security of the world at large. If the President of the United States called for such summits to be convened, the international response would most likely be very positive, even from "volatile" quarters such as Russia and China. A presidential campaign might be the perfect venue in which to float such an idea....

The Fruits of Disengagement

2007-10-13T00:13:00.000-04:00

Among the most under reported stories in the coverage of the Iraq crisis this week was that of the truce between rival Shi'ite militia leaders Moqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Mahdi Army, and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Together these two groups command the majority of Shi'ite paramilitary power in Iraq, thus their reconciliation, should it last, would remove one major fracture line of instability from the perilously fragile edifice of the Iraqi body politic. Little attention has been paid this development, perhaps in no small part because (like so many positive developments in Iraq) it is difficult to explain by reference to any proactive policy undertaken by the United States.

What, then, is the proximal cause of this truce? There are likely to be many factors, large and small, personal and societal, that have brought these two leaders to the table. The most obvious and profound change in the strategic landscape they inhabit, however, also has the greatest power to explain their current tactical choices. In recent weeks Great Britain has accelerated its withdrawal of forces from its zone of occupation in southern Iraq, a policy that Prime Minister Gordon Brown made clear this week would be carried rapidly forward to totality. That zone of occupation is (not so) coincidentally the area of Iraq in which Shi'ite militia power has operated most preeminently, and which has seen the bitterest fighting between SCIRI and the Mahdi Army over control of the organs of local power.

It is the withdrawal of British forces first and foremost that has compelled al-Sadr and al-Hakim to make peace. As long as the British garrisoned southern Iraq both leaders (and their respective organizations) were shielded from the worst consequences of a zero-sum contest for survival. Each group felt secure in jockeying for position against the other because each was confident of Britain's impulse to move against any group that was growing too powerful relative to its rivals. No matter how bitter infighting between SCIRI and the Mahdi Army became, neither group feared total annihilation because both believed Britain would intercede before such a cataclysm ever occurred. Moreover, the presence of the British attenuated the risks of expending human and material assets in a struggle against one-another, as the presence of British forces made Shi'ite militias less vulnerable to assault by Sunni and Kurdish paramilitaries. Now that the British are leaving, the buffer that existed for the Mahdi Army and SCIRI, both between one-another and against their ethnic and sectarian enemies, has been removed.

The truce between al-Sadr and al-Hakim may not last, but it is among the most substantive steps toward normalcy and stability that any groups within Iraqi society have taken since the destruction of the Golden Mosque in Samarra in 2006. Getting even one of the myriad fault lines in Iraqi society to heal, even temporarily, is an indispensable step toward restoring civic order and rebuilding robust political institutions. Wittingly or not, the British have thus shown the US the strategic principle that may ultimately be applied with greatest effect throughout the entire operational theater of the Coalition. Disengagement is the forward course toward restored order in Iraq.

Whatever tactical impact the "surge" may have had on improving security in Baghdad, US leaders cannot point to any discrete strategic improvement as profound as the Sadr-Hakim truce that it has effected since it was implemented. The surge is not an innovative plan, it is basically a variation of the "Oil Spot Strategy" proposed by Andrew Krepenevich back in 2005. Part of what Krepenevich prescribed seems to have been achieved in Baghdad, in very relative terms. Baghdad is becoming more orderly by virtue of having fewer dramatic attacks by Sunni militants and fewer sectarian killings by Shi'ite militias. In order for the second prescriptive element of the "oil spot" plan to take effect, however (for the orderliness of parts of Baghdad to "seep out" through ever greater areas of Iraq as an oil spot steadily pervades the fibers of a piece of cloth), "the surge" would have to operate on a truly strategic rather than purely a tactical foundation.

What is that strategic basis? As the new counterinsurgency manual sponsored by the current custodian of the surge, General David Petraeus, declares, "Long-term success in [counterinsurgency] depends on the people taking charge of their own affairs and consenting to the government’s rule." An "oil spot" counterinsurgency strategy is only really a strategy if it serves to bolster the sovereign authority of the government against which the insurgency is waged. The surge has done nothing to bolster the sovereign authority of Nuri al-Maliki's government, it has made David Petraeus (partial) master of Baghdad while continuing to underscore the impotence of the Maliki government through fiascos like the Blackwater massacre. The surge is thus an effective counterinsurgency tactic applied in the absence of a genuine counterinsurgency strategy.

This is underscored by the other tactical arena to which Bush apologists point as vindication of the surge- the struggle against Al Qaeda in Anbar Province. There Sunni tribes have been effectively recruited and armed to resist the encroachment of Al Qaeda in Iraq, a policy that has vastly amplified the effectiveness of Coalition operations in the region and greatly increased security. This development was not a product of the surge, however, but of the brutally repugnant behavior of Al Qaeda- Sunni tribes formed the Anbar Salvation Council months before the surge was contemplated by the Bush White House. Moreover, as positive a development as this is, it works at profound cross-purposes to the goal of fostering "the people's consent to government rule." The same Sunni tribes we are arming in Al Anbar are bitter enemies of the Maliki government in Baghdad, and the US alliance with them has driven them further from accepting the authority of the central government.

It would be foolish to suggest that the US should not have capitalized on the opportunity presented by the willingness of the Sunni tribes to join the fight against Al Qaeda, but it was even greater folly to embark upon such a course without taking steps to bolster the prestige and raw combat power of the central government and its armed forces. In effect the US has not been pursuing a single plan in Iraq, but has simultaneously been pursuing two mutually opposed tactical options. While the "surge" implements the principles of Krepenevich's "oil spot strategy" in Baghdad, the "bottom up" strategy being pursued in Anbar is a variation of the Biden-Gelb plan for "soft partition." The former plan hinges on a process of ever expanding centralization while the latter calls for progressive regionalism, thus the current situation is is the strategic equivalent of setting one crew to work repairing a bridge and another to begin tearing it down from the opposite bank. US leaders on both sides of the aisle grouse about the Maliki government's inability to politically reconcile with the Sunni community, but the US itself has impeded that process by enlisting Sunni tribes as allies and reducing their motivation to bargain reasonably with the Maliki regime.

Neither the tactics being pursued in Baghdad nor in Al Anbar will have lasting positive effects until we emulate the strategic principles exemplified by the British forces in the southern zone of occupation. Where the British disengagement from Iraq has driven al-Sadr and al-Hakim closer together, all of the travails of US forces in the north have only managed to drive the Sunni tribes and the Maliki government further toward positions of mutual hostility and suspicion from which civil war and anarchy become increasingly likely, if not inevitable. As long as the Bush administration remains committed to a permanent US presence in Iraq none of the tactical efforts of soldiers like General Petraeus, earnest and deeply reflective as they may be, will achieve positive strategic results. One can not fight a counterinsurgency on behalf of a government that one persistently undermines. Only when the US commits to a course of ultimate disengagement from Iraq- with the goal of having no permanent bases or significant garrison on Iraqi soil- will it be able to contribute to the restoration of civic order and robust political authority in that nation.

Where Was Tet?

2007-09-19T11:02:00.000-04:00

Much of the logic from apologists for the Bush strategy in Iraq has begun to resemble that of the protagonist in an old joke:

A: Why are you banging your head against that wall?

B: It keeps the snakes away.

A: There are no snakes around here.

B: See! It's working!

Like the snake-warder who ignores the agenda of the snakes, Bush pundits declaim upon the situation in Iraq with very little thought for what the motives of the Iraqis themselves might actually be. One recent example was the broad anticipation, much discussed throughout the print, broadcast, and blog media, of a "Tet Offensive" on the part of Iraqi insurgents set to coincide with General David Petraeus' testimony before Congress. Insurgents were so determined to discredit "the surge," so this story went, that they would launch a series of high profile attacks in the lead up to the General's assessment report earlier this month.

Well, the "surge assessment" has come and gone, and the "Iraq Tet Offensive" has yet to materialize. The levels of violence in Iraq have remained high, but one can not argue that we have seen a significant spike in the numbers of attacks against either Iraqi civilians or Coalition forces. One might argue that the prevention of a "Tet" is one index of the the success of the "surge," but this is the equivalent of declaring that banging our heads against the wall has kept the snakes away.

So many predictions from the Bush White House and its supporters about the course of the war have come up wrong that it may seem gratuitous to comment upon this one. Moreover, the prediction itself was corollary to a very blatant act of political theater, thus it may have been issued as a form of "prophylaxis." In other words, whether those who broadcast this prediction felt it to be true, they were compelled to issue it against the chance that a spike in violence might occur, thus it is not a genuinely fair gauge of their prognosticative powers.

All of this being taken into account, it is nonetheless reasonable to examine the failure of the "Tet prediction" and what it says objectively about the trajectory of the Iraq conflict. Its logic is clear- it is predicated on the assumption that the Iraqis are closely calculating their actions to influence the conduct of the US government and military. The failure of the Tet prediction, whether any of its proponents really believed it or not, calls into question the logic upon which it was based. If the launching of a "Tet offensive" would have proved that Iraqi insurgents are determined to influence US policy, does not the failure of it to materialize at least suggest the opposite possibility- that Iraqis, insurgents or not, have little interest in the ultimate shape of US policy?

The original Tet Offensive from which this metaphor derives was deeply rooted in the strategic interests of US opponents in Vietnam, most particularly the Communist Party of Vietnam. Historian have long understood that Tet was a tactical defeat for the insurgents of South Vietnam, any strategic advantages US opponents derived from it were entirely in the realm of propaganda. This was a fair trade off for the CPV, the architects of Tet, however, in that the tactical assets that were expended during the offensive would eventually have become a liability if and when the US withdrew from Vietnam. A robust force of South Vietnamese guerrillas, many of whom were not Communist, might have resisted the speedy subjugation of South Vietnamese society to the authority of the CPV, thus it was expedient to "sacrifice" them in a largely symbolic (but nonetheless politically efficacious) act of resistance.

No such logic is operative in Iraq today. The foremost concern of every interest group in Iraq is its position relative to other Iraqis, and all groups are only interested in US policy to the extent that it affects that internal power dynamic. Any tactical assets that any Iraqi party expends in attempting to move US policy are assets they will miss if and when the US leaves and the internal struggle over the fate of Iraq begins. Almost no group in Iraq, therefore, has a long-term interest in expending any assets to influence the course of "the surge." Security in Baghdad may have improved, there have been no strikes recently as spectacular as the bombings of the Iraqi parliament and the al-Sarafiya bridge in April. But this development has little bearing on the strategic interests of most Iraqi groups currently participating in the conflict.

This judgment is corroborated by the new counterinsurgency manual sponsored by David Petraeus. That text declares that a conflict like that in Iraq cannot be assessed by conventional means, using maps depicting the dispositions of forces and terrain. It proposes an alternative conceptual model for analyzing the course of such a conflict, dubbed a "logical line of operation (LLO)," an example of which is charted at left. Along the vectors articulated by this model very little strategic rationale for the success of "the surge" may be found. Whatever effect the "combat operations" of the additional troops deployed during the surge may have had, no one can argue that there has been much movement from the left side of this graph toward the right side since the beginning of extra deployments in January. Indeed, anyone who studied this chart with an eye toward the intrinsic motives of the Iraqi participants in the conflict would have refrained from predicting a "Tet offensive." Just as the surge has produced little movement from left to right along this LLO, a "Tet offensive" would have done very little to hinder it- less, certainly, than would have justified the expenditure of assets needed to contend with other Iraqi factions in the long term.

The latest "Tet prediction" moment (for it is not the first, and will not likely be the last) has come and gone without raising many eyebrows. It is dismaying, however, not merely for exemplifying how little US policy analysts understand the motives of the Iraqis, but how little interest they evince in even attempting to do so. I wish that US leaders would begin to scrutinize this litany of failed predictions and rethink the ill logic that has guided them since the Iraq policy began, but I do not hold out much hope of such an event. For the foreseeable future it seems that we will continue banging our heads against a wall in order to keep the snakes away.

A Tale of Two Occupations

2007-07-20T15:09:00.000-04:00

The US occupation of Japan was obviously a major historical model upon which Bush administration officials drew in planning for the invasion of Iraq. The United States' perceived success in bringing postwar order and democracy to Japan stood testimony, so our leaders thought, to the possibility of replicating that success in Iraq. Such logic failed to grasp the underlying historical dynamics at work in both mid-twentieth-century Japan and current-day Iraq. In essence, one may say that in 1945 and 2003 the US did approximately the same thing to two radically different societies, effecting, unsurprisingly, vastly different results in either case. Where the defeat and dissolution of the Japanese Imperial Army helped bring Japan back from the brink of self-destruction and set it once again on a progressive path, the dismantling of Saddam Hussein's military produced quite the opposite effect. Understanding why this is so is essential to grasping not only the ill wisdom of having invaded Iraq from the outset, but the few effective options that might produce positive results in Iraq moving forward.

Japan prospered so well after being defeated in World War II because the defeat itself rid Japan of the single most dysfunctional and malignant institution of twentieth-century Japanese society: the Japanese Imperial Army. Though the Army had played a somewhat progressive modernizing role in the early Meiji Era, with the acquisition of colonies in the wake of the first Sino-Japanese War of 1895 the Japanese military began to grow and evolve in ways that were destructive of Japanese social stability and prosperity. Serving under hardship conditions among hostile populations, constantly harassed by guerrillas and rebels, compelled to adopt ever-increasingly brutal tactics in the struggle to maintain imperial authority, the colonial garrisons of the Japanese military developed a world view that was at once clannish, belligerent, paranoid, expansionist, and utterly contemptuous of civilian political leadership.

Due to the perceived urgency of their mission, the proximity of Japan's colonies to the metropole, the influence of geopolitical forces (the spread of Eurasian communism, the Great Depression, etc.), and the lack of inhibiting checks and balances in the Meiji Constitution, the colonial garrisons steadily grew in scope of power and control. Each expansion of Japan's territorial domain brought more insecurity, the favored military remedy for which was always further aggression and expansion. This, in turn, drew more resources into the military and made its penetration into political and social life more total. Thus the militarization of Japanese state and society steadily accelerated over the first decades of the twentieth century, becoming incredibly rapid in the years between the Mukden Incident of 1931 and the final defeat of Japan in 1945. By 1945, ordinary Japanese citizens found themselves co-opted into doing things they would not have dreamed of scant years before. For example, the incredible speed with which the military expanded led to the creation of bizarre rituals for rapidly acclimating new personnel to the culture of the armed forces. New officers were asked to behead unarmed prisoners or participate in atrocities against civilians, so as to induce a sense of alienation from civilian life and forge a bond with the military unit through shared transgression.

Deeply malignant as it had become, the Japanese army was a conventional military and could be defeated through conventional strategic means. Deprived of the large capital assets that gave it structure and the state offices through which it was organized by a sustained campaign of positional warfare, the Japanese military could not retain institutional coherence. Free from the destructive influence of the military, Japanese society followed an intrinsic dynamism that quickly tended toward restored prosperity. In the absence of the army Japanese state and society still retained many other institutions and cultural resources that could serve as the matrix of restored civil order: the imperial throne, commonly revered Shinto and Buddhist religious establishments, a robust school system, a shared language and history, a tradition of representative government. Americans often point to constitutional innovations "imposed" upon Japan by the US occupation, but in the absence of fundamental indigenous social, cultural and political resources no new institutional structures would have sufficed to create civil order in Japan ex nihilo.

The historical situation of Iraq at the time of the US invasion in 2003 was vastly different than that of Japan. It would be wrong to call the Iraqi military a "benign" force, but it would be equally inaccurate to label it the most malignant and destructive influence on Iraqi state and society. The most destructive elements of the Iraqi state were affiliated with the Ba'ath Party and a narrow oligarchic clique centered around Saddam Hussein and his Tikriti kin. The military had been thoroughly co-opted to serve the oppressive ends of these malignant groups, but it was never the "hand at the switch" setting the policy of the Hussein regime. As complicit as the military was in the crimes of the Hussein regime, it did serve as an institution that could provisionally mediate between and somewhat ameliorate the ethnic and sectarian tensions of Iraqi society. Hussein himself exploited the "social coherence" potential of the military at the expense of the military's operational efficiency. Large units that were tactically non-functional were kept on the books as a way of "buying off" young men that would otherwise be unemployed, thus turning the military into an ad hoc social welfare program. The Iraqi military was not a force, like the Japanse Imperial Army, which generated its own doctrine and pursued its own initiatives, but was one that served the whims and agendas of agents independent of itself.

The swift destruction of the Iraqi army through the same kind of campaign of positional warfare that had brought down the Japanese military was not, therefore, an effectvie remedy for Iraq as the latter victory had proved to be for Japan. Since the forces that had oppressed Iraq had never wholly identified with the army, they were able to survive its collapse, and live on in the form of the insurgency that still persists today. Moreover, Iraqi state and society never possessed the kinds of resources that Japan could summon toward the restoration of civil order. Absent the military, Iraq was left without social or cultural structures that could create genuine community. There is no common Iraqi language or ethnicity and little shared sense of history. What cohesive institutions do remain, such as the Shi'ite clerical establishment, enjoy the allegiance of only part of the community and attract the violent enmity of the rest.

Where demilitarizing Japan had been the key solution to Japan's social and political problems, such is not the case for Iraq. By destroying the Iraqi military the US deprived Iraq of one of the only truly pan-communal institutions it possessed. To date, the US has yet to restore the Iraqi military to anything approaching its former potency. The Iraqi Army as it currently exists is only one of many armed factions, and absent the heavy weapons (tanks, planes, helicopters, artillery) that the Hussein-era military once possessed it remains suspended in a state of virtual parity with the various militias and insurgent groups that operate throughout Iraq, totally lacking in the prestige, authority, or raw combat power of a genuine sovereign military.

Until a viable and full-blooded Iraqi army exists once again there is no chance of building authoritative state and social institutions in Iraq, and until such institutions are built Iraq will know no stability or peace. Creating a fully-armed Iraqi military will create a power contest that may become very violent. The final outcome of that contest will be decided by Iraqi leaders, and because the US can not predict who those leaders will ultimately be or control what sort of institutional order they ultimately impose, America chooses not to entrust real power to its Iraqi partners. The risks of entrusting military power to Iraqis may be real, but if the US should refuse to trust Iraqis one is forced to ask why American soldiers should die to aid a people whom we hold in such contempt. Whatever US leaders decide to do the fact shall remain: though dismantling the Japanese military may have been an effective remedy for Japan, only fully rebuilding the Iraqi military will set Iraq back on the path to order and stability.

No Suribachis Here

2007-06-19T10:13:00.000-04:00

Last year saw the release of two films directed by Clint Eastwood devoted to the Battle of Iwo Jima. The first, "Flags of Our Fathers," told the story of the US servicemen whose raising of the flag on Mount Suribachi was captured in a famous photograph by Joe Rosenthal. Its companion, "Letters from Iwo Jima," tells the story of Iwo Jima from the perspective of its Japanese defenders. Both films garnered critical acclaim, but it was the latter story that most vividly engaged the moviegoing public.

Why was this? Though many would argue (and I would agree) that, from an artistic perspective, "Letters from Iwo Jima" was a stronger film, I would assert that there is a further cause for its broader and more profound impact. Given the state of the world today and the current moment of US foreign affairs, "Letters from Iwo Jima" is a more topical and timely film for American audiences. Though "Flags of Our Fathers" was an artful and insightful work, it failed to strike a timely chord on two counts. Firstly, its central insight, that even during a righteous war the US government was not above the use of exploitive propoganda, is not a message that can surprise many Americans today. Secondly, the cinematic audience must sense that the key image of "Flags of Our Fathers" has little relevance to the current conflicts in which the US is embroiled. However cynically US leaders may have manipulated Joe Rosenthal's classic photo, it was nonetheless an unambiguous image of victory. After more than four years the conflict in Iraq has yielded no such image, and the realization is dawning that on the long road ahead one is not likely to materialize.

The relative anachronism of "Flags of Our Fathers" is contrasted by "Letters from Iwo Jima." The latter film's portrayal of the brutally self-annihilating defense by the Japanese Imperial Army resonates very poignantly with the destruction wrought by suicide bombers in Iraq and Afghanistan today. "Letters" presents a mirror in which many of the same sociological forces at work in Iraq today may be seen reflected.

One of the tragic ironies of Iwo Jima is that Joe Rosenthal's famous photo was taken on the fourth day of fighting. That image, of the US flag flying at the highest point of the island, marked certain tactical victory for the US. With Suribachi in American hands there was no way that the Japanese defenders of Iwo Jima could prevail, yet the battle went on for another 31 days, the Japanese fighting on suicidally in the face of certain defeat. Almost 7,000 US servicemen died; more than 20,000 of the island's 22,000 Japanese defenders perished.

Why would the Japanese give their lives in such numbers to a lost cause? The answer is not in some deep cultural tradition of conformity or a cult of "bushido." Though patriotism was a factor for some, as "Letters" portrays, these nobler impulses can not be wholly seperated from an acute pathology that had seized Japanese state and society in the years leading up to Pearl Harbor. War, revolution, colonialism, industrialization, the Great Depression, the perceived threat of communism, and the general corrosive shock of modernity had impacted Japanese society in such a way as to progressively entrench and institutionalize self-destructive values and imperatives. Japanese leaders and citizens had come to accept, despite some of their nation's most ancient traditions and deeply held values, that torture and terror were essential instruments of state control, that dissent must be quashed, that diplomacy was ineffectual, and that the mass suicidal sacrifice of the nation's youth was preferable to retreat, negotiation, or surrender. Whether or not the individual soldiers who died on Iwo Jima did so out of a sense of higher calling or personal conviction is not ultimately knowable. What can be asserted with relative certainty, however, is that the power structures that had taken hold in their homeland left them very little choice.

In similar fashion to pre-war Japan, chronic corrosive forces have impacted Iraqi society over the course of the twentieth century, and nihilistically self-destructive imperatives have achieved institutional purchase in elements of Iraqi society today. There is virtually no chance that Iraq will ever see a Sunni caliphate or a Shi'ite theocracy ensconced in Baghdad, yet bombings and murders continue on a daily basis in pursuit of these imaginaries. Unlike the Japanese Imperial Army, however, the destructive forces that create mayhem in Iraq cannot be defeated or defused through a sustained campaign of positional warfare.

Joe Rosenthal's photograph was so inspiring to the American public in 1945 because it visually encapsulated a tactical fact- the seizure of the highest point on Iwo Jima signified forward movement along a territorial trajectory that brought the US one step closer to victory. No such strategic logic is operable in Iraq. Coalition forces occupy the whole of Iraqi terrain, yet they are no closer to ending the insurgency today than they were four years ago.

The closest thing to a "Suribachi moment" that the Iraq crisis has yielded was the famous image of Saddam Hussein's statue being pulled down in Baghdad in the first weeks of the invasion. We now know all too well that that image did not signify an end to bloodshed and chaos, but a beginning. The great weakness of Saddam Hussein's regime was not best expressed in the image of his statue being pulled down, but in the need for the statue to be erected in the first place. Hussein's regime was pathological, to be sure, but its dissolution has only unleashed even more destructive and entropic forces that pulsed beneath its brutal facade and that now murderously rend the fabric of Iraqi society. These forces cannot be defused by the seizure of critical terrain, nor do institutions exist whose power can be harnessed (like that of the Japanese imperial throne) to bring violence to a halt. In the face of such realities Coalition forces cannot end the current crisis using the conventional tactics and strategies that brought down the Japanese Empire. New institutions must be created and new values established that can displace the destructive forces that hold Iraqi society in thrall. That is a victory that cannot be won on a battlefield by foreign soldiers, but can only be secured through an arduous and painstaking negotiation conducted amongst the Iraqis themselves.

The Korea Delusion

2007-06-11T14:10:00.000-04:00

Recent statements by Bush administration officials to the effect that the President envisions a "Korea model" for the future trajectory of US involvement in Iraq add a new dimension to the vast edifice of distortion, delusion, and sheer lunacy that is the Bush Iraq policy. Previously one had to guess (though Tom Englehart is right, one did not need to look hard to see the clear signs) at the Bush regime's plan to maintain a permanent US troop presence in Iraq. Now discussion of the "Korea model" has drawn the curtain away from Oz and revealed the Bush strategy in all its demented glory. The willful ignorance embodied in such invocations would be comic if it had not been, and did not continue to be, so tragically destructive of human life.

Bush's Korea fallacy is the product of a logical defect that, unfortunately, is not exclusive to him alone. Many American leaders and intellectuals share in it. The President and his advisers look around the world for historical "models" to draw upon in constructing Iraq policy, and in doing so they assume that any strategic situation the US currently inhabits is autonomously of American making. We conquered Japan, we turned it into a democracy, we remained in the archipelago to steward the newly democratic society we had created. We saved South Korea from Communist takeover, we remained on the Peninsula to see that it remained free.

Such thinking completely ignores the real roots of current US geostrategy in Asia. The US remains in Japan because the Japanese people want it there. In the wake of WWII demilitarization was a goal broadly embraced by the vast majority of Japanese across the political spectrum. There were critics of the strategic partnership into which Japan would ultimately enter with the US, but its most powerful opponents were not advocates of a remilitarized Japan that would take charge of its own strategic defense. Rather, opponents of alliance with the US wanted to see Japan become a ward of the UN and to have Japan's defense entrusted to a multinational force administered by the UN Security Council. Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru did not enter into the series of treaties that have structured US-Japanese relations ever since because he was bending to American will. Rather, he saw alliance with the US as the most pragmatic way to achieve the collectively desired Japanese goal of demilitarization (as, in his view, custodianship by the UN was a practical impossibility). If the collective political will of Japan had been determined to evict US soldiers from Japanese soil, there is no way that a significant US troop presence could have remained in Japan for the long run.

On those same principles, the US continues to garrison 37,000 soldiers in South Korea for one reason only- because the South Korean people tolerate their presence. Although successive postwar governments of South Korea have required a steady US troop presence in order to remain sovereign in the face of the threat from the North, such dependency has not robbed them of legitimacy in the eyes of South Korea's people. Because the citizens of South Korea generally accept the legitimacy of their government they are willing to tolerate a garrison of US soldiers as an unfortunate necessity until there is some dramatic change of the status quo in the North. If this were not true guerrilla attacks against US forces in Korea would be as frequent as they are in Iraq.

The Iraqi people as a whole will never tolerate a significant US troop presence to the degree that the people of South Korea do, and any cursory examination of the history of Iraq would demonstrate why. As brutal as the regime of Saddam Hussein was, the Sunni citizens of Iraq generally supported it and felt represented by it. The force that displaced Hussein will always remain suspect and hostile in the eyes of a significant proportion of Sunni society. Moreover, Iraqi Arabs more broadly, both Sunni and Shi'ite, will always harbor suspicions of and animosities toward the US because of Iraq's historical experience of colonialism. The US may never have directly colonized Iraq, but as a predominately English-speaking and Christian nation many Iraqis feel there is little to choose between the US and its ally Great Britain, a country that did ruthlessly exploit Iraq as a quasi-colony in the wake of WWI. It does not help the US case that our President Woodrow Wilson did not promote self-determination for Arab-speaking former Ottoman colonies with the same fervor or effect as he did for the European colonies of the Austro-Hungarian and German empires, thus abandoning the people of the Middle East to the tender mercies of the French and British.

These historical grievances are compounded by more recent trends. Many Iraqis are angered by the role the US plays in supporting Israel and its lack of either interest or success in promoting the claims of the Palestinians for a sovereign homeland. Though Israel/Palestine is a very visible and emotional issue, perhaps of even more significance to Iraqis is the US role in the development of the petroleum industry throughout the Middle East. In nations like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait the US has provided technological and political support to narrowly despotic and regressive regimes in return for a share in the profits from private exploitation of oil resources and steady access to cheap free-market petroleum. Iraq has historically resisted this model of development, preferring a mixed economy in which petroleum resources were largely state-owned and nationally managed. Suspicion of the US in this regard is not exclusively "guilt by association" with past policies. Bush spokespeople have trumpeted their concern about the "failure" of Iraqi parliamentarians to draft and pass a law mandating the disposition of oil revenues in a federal Iraq, but such protestations elide the role of the US itself in hindering an effective compromise. US officials have insisted that Iraqi law structure the petroleum industry on free-market principles and allow US companies to participate in and profit from the development of Iraq's oil resources, a self-serving position that flies in face of long Iraqi trends going back to before the Hussein era.

In addition, the problematic relationship between the US and Iran precludes the presence of US troops becoming routine or legitimate for much of Iraqi society. Though the position of the Shi'ite clergy is a contested issue even among Shi'ite Iraqis, the institution is broadly revered and enjoys sweeping authority. The deep historical ties between the ulama of Iraq and Iran are not severable, thus as long as the US remains in a rhetorical battle with Iran's theocrats it will be viewed by many Iraqis, even some who agree with many aspects of US policy, with ambivalence and/or hostility.

Thus, though not all Iraqis are violently anti-American, suspicion and animosity toward the US is prevalent through a broad enough spectrum of Iraqi society to make a "Korea model" completely unworkable in Iraq. No Baghdad government that depends upon or even tolerates a large US troop presence in Iraq will ever enjoy sufficient authority to stabilize and pacify Iraqi society. As long as US soldiers remain on Iraqi soil a critical mass of Iraqis will remain irreconcilably opposed to the regime in power. These forces are never likely to possess the power to forcibly drive the US out of Iraq or overthrow the regime in Baghdad, but they will have enough support (some active, some tacit) in Iraqi society to fight on and keep Iraq in perpetual turmoil until such time as US troops depart.

The only way to defuse such forces is to remove the proximal condition that feeds their base of support- US troops. A plan to garrison Iraq a la South Korea is a plan to condemn Iraq to unending torment. The fact that President Bush and his advisors did not recognize this fact before invading Iraq was a shame, the fact that they still do not do so after more than four years of crisis is beyond a disgrace. All patriotic Americans on any part of the political spectrum should rise up to decry the folly of Bush policy on this score. Those who would defend Bush leadership in the face of such grotesque fallacies must be deemed either ignorant or disdainful of the best interests of the nation.

Al Qaeda in al-Anbar

2007-05-31T20:05:00.000-04:00

Proponents of the Bush administration's Iraq policy (such as Frederick Kagan) point repeatedly to one phenomenon as vindicating the whole past and future US strategy in Iraq. In recent months a swell of opposition to Al Qaeda has arisen among the predominately Sunni tribes of Anbar Province. Beginning last September, an alliance of tribal sheiks has formed into the Anbar Salvation Council (ASC), a group dedicated to driving Al Qaeda and other foreign jihadists from the soil of Iraq. The group represents a substantial (if not majority) constituency within Anbar, and its formation has completely transformed the strategic situation of Coalition forces operating within the province.

The ASC has joined cooperative negotiations with the Shi'ite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Its member sheiks have encouraged Anbari citizens to join the local police forces and militia, substantially increasing the manpower resources and prestige of local security forces. US soldiers find themselves operating with new mobility and effectiveness throughout Anbar Province, partnered with new allies possessed of intimate knowledge of the regional terrain and local society.

Pundits such as Mr. Kagan leap from these facts to the conclusion that the US occupation of Iraq should be intensified and extended. Now that "we" have Al Qaeda on the run, so goes this logic, we should keep the pressure on. If current troop levels committed to this point have produced such positive results, more troops kept longer will work to even better effect.

Such logic is fundamentally flawed. It ignores the basic fact that the current strategic turn in Anbar is not the result of any positive action undertaken by the US. The Sunni sheiks of Anbar have not formed the ASC out of fear of US power or love of US virtue. In fact, virtually all of its members admit freely that they were actively campaigning to make Anbar a living hell for US forces not so long ago. No change in US policy shifted the allegiance of the ASC's members, rather it was the repellent policies and tactics of Al Qaeda that drove Sunni tribal leaders into the camp of the Coalition.

Such a development was virtually a foregone conclusion from the outset. The Sunni Arab society of Anbar has historically been markedly secular and nationalist, conditions which made it fertile ground to serve as a base of support for Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime. The US invasion made Anbar's Sunni tribes welcome Al Qaeda's jihadist to the region as allies against the foreign invader, but prior to the US invasion Anbaris had never been positively disposed toward Al Qaeda or its militant brand of Islam. Al Qaeda's zealous and sanguine campaign to create a universal Islamic caliphate was sure to alienate the denizens of Anbar Province sooner or later. In March of 2006 I wrote that a staged withdrawal of US forces was advisable because it

...will drive a wedge between the most extreme elements of the Sunni insurgency led by Al Qaeda and secular Sunni Arabs with whom they are currently allied. In the face of the threat posed by the US ideological and nationalist tensions have already somewhat undermined the operational unity of the Sunni Arab insurgency, in the absence of that threat those tensions would likely cause the insurgent “coalition” to crack and hemorrhage personnel into the political process.

Current developments in Anbar do not prove my assertions wrong- quite the contrary. The fact that a schism between Al Qaeda and its Anbari allies has emerged even before US forces begin to withdraw only demonstrates that this fracture point is extremely fragile, so much so that it can be depended upon to break under its own strain with virtually no action by the US whatsoever (as I wrote in November of 2006, "once the US leaves the Iraqis will pass [the jihadists] like a kidney stone"). Withdrawal of US forces will not rob the ASC's campaign of momentum. US troops were not half as effective in Anbar before the formation of the ASC, thus it is the ASC itself and not the presence of US troops that is of crucial importance to the strategic trajectory in Anbar.

Beginning to withdraw US troops now will not lessen the ASC's animosity toward Al Qaeda, it will only compel the Sunni sheiks into closer partnership with the Maliki government. Such a development is profoundly to be desired, both from the perspective of the US and of Iraq itself. The only long-term hope for Iraq lies in the establishment of an effective and sustainable Iraqi central authority, and the extension of the Maliki government's reach into Anbar would be a critical first step in the development of just such a state apparatus. If anything, developments in Anbar evince the danger of withdrawing US forces too late rather than too early. One must not forget that members of the ASC were killing US soldiers until they decided that their hatred of Al Qaeda eclipsed their hatred of the US. When the moon eclipses the sun it does not mean that the sun is altogether gone, the good money is always on its reappearing. Keeping US forces in Anbar risks producing "occupation fatigue" that could cause cooperation between the tribes and the Coalition to fray, if not collapse. A timely and well-coordinated withdrawal of US forces from the region (coinciding with an expanded presence of the Iraqi military) is the best strategy for maintaining positive momentum in the struggle against Al Qaeda.

Of China and Sub-Prime Bondage

2007-05-12T08:58:00.000-04:00

Much attention has been focused recently on the potential impending crisis of sub-prime mortgages on the U.S. housing market. The past few boom years of soaring real estate prices both fueled and were fueled by a spate of irregular mortgages issued to financially insecure borrowers. Loans made on little or no collateral with widely variable interest rates have left many homeowners in danger of bankruptcy and foreclosure, as they find that their yearly interest rate has skyrocketed even as the value of their property has dropped far below its previous market price. Analysts fear that a wave of defaults could create a vicious cycle of foreclosures and fire-sale liquidations that would bleed U.S. real estate markets of massive equity.

While this situation is well reported, little has been said about its link to Chinese fiscal policy and U.S.-China trade relations. My brother, Lee Meyer, a securities analyst and salesman specializing in East Asian markets, observes an integral link between the forces sustaining the endemic Sino-U.S. trade imbalance and the growing crisis of sub-prime mortgages. China's foreign currency reserves have grown to 1.2 trillion dollars U.S. The reasons for this mounting pile of cash are well-understood: China has kept the value of the Renminbi (RMB) relative to the dollar artificially low so as to keep prices in China low and spur employment and economic growth. The ancillary effects of this policy have not been widely commented upon, however.

What relation may be drawn between Chinese fiscal policy and the sub-prime mortgage market? $350 billion of China's foreign currency reserve is held in U.S. T-bills. A further $230 billion of this cash, however, is held in bonds issued by U.S.-backed agencies such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. These latter instruments are bonds that consolidate the debt of homeowners toward the purchase of their houses, much of which was generated by the issuance of risky sub-prime mortgages.

When one parses out the motives for Chinese fiscal policy, the link between it and the sub-prime mortgage crisis becomes clear. The PRC can only keep the value of the RMB against the US dollar artificially low by parking the profits from its massive trade surplus in U.S.-denominated assets. This has created a constant fund of cheap cash available to lenders in US housing markets. Bankers do not need to stringently calculate the risks associated with sub-prime loans because they know that they can always sell off that debt to an eager Chinese treasury in the form of a US-backed bond. The chronic need of the Chinese fisc to hypercirculate RMB has thus created a number of economic aberrations, including a Shanghai Stock-market bubble at home and a US real-estate market bubble abroad.

What the long term effects of this situation will be is anyone's guess, but most economists would agree that when there is a bubble it is bound to burst. The effects will not be good, the only open question is their ultimate severity. One lesson from the situation is clear: US complacency about the domestic political situation in China is self-defeating. US leaders express frequent frustration over Chinese fiscal policy and the distorting effect it has on Sino-US trade, but this ignores the deeper structural motives that perpetuate the anomaly. Chinese leaders continue to prime the economic pump that is causing securities and real estate bubbles for fear of the political consequences of any degree of economic slowdown. They hope that they will not be held to account for failing to deliver fundamental political reform as long as the Chinese economy continues to enjoy robust growth. How long this inherently unstable situation can be sustained is an open question. The political consequences of acute economic collapse are likely to be far more grave than the instability that might be engendered by proactive and preemptive reform, but this contingency does not seem to have registered upon China's leadership. If such an acute collapse does occur it will most likely cause the US suffering to parallel that of China, and at that moment America, having enjoyed the prosperity that inflated real estate markets brought, will have reaped the whirlwind.

Spitzer Makes History, Democrats Should Follow

2007-04-30T10:38:00.000-04:00

In fulfillment of a campaign promise, newly elected Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York has proposed legislation to the New York State Assembly that would legalize same-sex marriage in the state. Though the prospects for passage of the bill are low even in a legislature controlled by Mr. Spitzer's own party, already he has made history by being the first governor to give the support of his executive office to this issue. In doing so the Governor shows remarkable courage and integrity, flying in the face of the conventional wisdom that though it is inconsequential for President Bush to propose a constitutional amendment "defending marriage," it would be political suicide for any Democrat aspiring to executive office to champion the cause of same-sex marriage rights.

Eliot Spitzer has shown a way for Democratic candidates going into the election in 2008. "Wedge issues" such as same-sex marriage and reproductive freedom have fueled GOP electoral support for decades, and the conservative media have so dominated the national discourse on these topics that Democrats remain in perpetual retreat in these realms. When George W. Bush declares that he is willing to amend the constitution but Hilary Clinton or Jonathan Edwards or whatever other Democrat one cares to mention declares that s/he is for "civil unions" but against same-sex marriage the President looks like a person who has the courage of his convictions and Democrats look like intellectual and moral cowards.

Same-sex marriage and reproductive freedom are civil and human rights issues, they are concerned with securing for ourselves and our fellow citizens the liberties and protections promised to all Americans in the founding principles of our Republic. Opponents of these concerns may have a moral sensibility that deserves respect, but such respect should not extend to a dilution or repudiation of the profound philosophical and moral principles upon which the urgent advocacy of same-sex marriage rights and reproductive freedom rest. Relying on the courts to secure same-sex couples and women their civil rights is a failing strategy. History shows that the courts have been a regressive force as often as they have been a progressive force on issues of civil and human rights. Moreover, housing such concerns in the courts places a distorting strain on those institutions that they were never designed to sustain and that is harmful to our Republic in the long term.

I would urge all Democratic candidates in the upcoming election to follow Eliot Spitzer's lead. A bold advocacy of same-sex marriage rights and reproductive freedom would raise quite a hue and cry, and would no doubt energize the conservative base of the GOP. But at the same time it would cast the debate over these issues into clear terms and foreground them in ways that would bring out the real majority tenor of American public opinion. The next Democratic presidential hopeful should call for our Constitution to be amended to defend same-sex marriage rights in all fifty states and to permanently defend a woman's right to choose an abortion throughout the Union. Such a move might drive some conservative independents toward the GOP, but it would bring far more disenchanted liberals back to the fold who are tired of the moral equivocation of recent Democratic campaigns. Moreover, though a bold advocacy position might not achieve a constitutional change, it would demand a precise and logical debate on these issues that would deflate much of the obfuscatory rhetoric that has served the GOP so well. A genuine debate about these issues might just demonstrate to Americans on both the left and right that they are not quite as far apart on these issues as television and radio pundits make them out to be.

The Wrong Reid on Iraq

2007-04-23T10:29:00.000-04:00

Last week's comments on Iraq by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, to the effect that "this war is lost," mirror the dysfunctional thinking of the Bush regime. I stand with Congressional Democrats who oppose the White House's conduct of Iraq policy, but Mr. Reid's critique is at best a poor political strategy for effecting a remedy. Mr. Bush persists in casting Iraq as a "win or lose" situation, but this logic is itself one of the reasons why the US remains mired in a strategic deadfall in Iraq. Declaring the war "lost" only throws gasoline on the fire of delusion that the Bush White House has ignited and keeps stoking.

If Democrats agree with Mr. Bush that Iraq is a "win-lose" scenario and insist that the only aspect in which the President is wrong is that we have already "lost," they will find their political support among the American electorate evaporating. Americans may be very disenchanted with the reasons why the US invaded Iraq, but they remain persuaded when supporters of the Iraq policy like Senator McCain assert that the consequences of failure in Iraq would be too dire to tolerate. If the electorate is faced with a choice between someone who declares the war "lost" and someone who professes to have a plan to "win," no matter how implausible, they will choose the latter.

To prevail in the political arena Democrats must point out that every aspect of Bush policy concerning Iraq is erroneous, including the regime's insistence on viewing the crisis as a "win-lose" conflict. No one can win or lose in Iraq except the Iraqi people themselves, the only meaningful long term gauge of outcomes in Iraq is the stable political system that eventually emerges from the current instability. That system may be very different from what US leaders had hoped to establish in Iraq in 2003, but there is little chance that the groups fighting US forces in Iraq today will control or even have much of a hand in shaping that emergent government. In the end, no matter what US leaders do, it will not be the US that prevents groups like Al Qaeda or the Mahdi Army from controlling Iraq, it will be the inherent dynamic of Iraqi society itself.

As long as US soldiers stay in Iraq, social forces in Iraq are not wholly free to negotiate a new political order. Once US soldiers depart, a negotiation will ensue that will determine the stable shape of the Iraqi state. This negotiation may be a very violent one, and it may produce a government that would be an unhappy one for the Iraqi people. The worst case scenario is probably a government much like that of Saddam Hussein, only led by a Shi'ite military officer who is slightly less anti-American than that latter despot. The US can not ultimately control whether such an outcome occurs. However, the likelihood of this worst-case scenario depends in part on the manner in which the US disengages from Iraq. What the US must do now is to disengage from Iraq in a manner that best facilitates the evolution of Iraqi politics along progressive lines. The recognition of this reality is not an admission of defeat, it is a resolution to do what is right both for the security of the US and the liberty and prosperity of the Iraqi people.

This is the case that the Democrats must take to the American people. It is a more complicated one to make, and it requires discussing the particulars of the Iraqi political situation with more detail and nuance than has ever been expressed by the Bush administration. To do less, however, is not only to paternalistically scorn the intellectual faculties of the American people, it will be a gross tactical miscalculation at the polls. Americans are concerned enough to want leadership in these troubled times, and they are smart enough to know real leadership when they see it. Mr. Reid's comments do not express real leadership. They follow the logic of Mr. Bush's rhetoric, and if Mr. Reid is going to follow the President the American people will take his example.

It is imperative that America acquire new leadership in the coming election. As critical as I may be of Mr. Reid and other Democratic leaders, I remain a committed partisan out of the conviction that the Democrats could only do better, on both foreign and domestic policy fronts, than the depths to which Republican leadership has brought us since the election of 2000. Because the stakes in the 2008 election are so high, I would implore Democratic leaders to genuinely differentiate themselves from the Rovian politics of the Bush era. Give the American people the benefit of the doubt, you will be surprised at the results.

Reading Signs in the Rubble in Iraq II

2007-04-15T12:23:00.000-04:00

In February of last year the Golden Mosque of Samarra was destroyed. In the rubble of that blast could be seen the whole future history of the Iraq crisis until now. That attack was the single most successful tactical strike launched by any party in the Iraq conflict. It reshaped the entire political and military situation of Iraq and created repercussions that continue to reverberate powerfully today.

Last Thursday a truck bomb destroyed the monumental al-Sarafiya bridge across the Tigris River in Baghdad. On the same day a suicide bomber struck the cafeteria of the Iraqi Parliament, killing one person, the Sunni Parliamentarian Muhammad Awad. The Islamic State of Iraq, a group affiliated with Al Qaeda, has claimed responsibility for both attacks. In the same way that the rubble of the Golden Mosque portended much that has transpired in the last year, in the twisted girders of the al-Sarafiya bridge and the destruction of the Parliament cafeteria one can see the future of President Bush's Baghdad security plan. Neither attack will likely prove to have achieved the enduring tactical effect of the Samarra bombing, but taken together they evince systemic problems that will likely prove the security plan unworkable.

Defenders of the Bush plan have pointed to measurable successes that have been achieved in its early phases. Unfortunately, those successes have been mainly in the realm of reducing sectarian violence perpetrated by Shi'ite militias throughout the capital. Until now it has been statistically unclear whether or not the security plan and its US troop increase has been having a measurable impact upon the other grave security concern in Baghdad: bombing attacks by Sunni insurgents such as the Islamic State of Iraq. These latest bomb attacks cast serious doubt on any positive assessment of the effectiveness of the security plan in this latter realm.

Keeping Shi'ite militias off the streets is a task for which the mobility and firepower advantages of the US military provide effective leverage. Though the capability of the Shi'ite militias to "go to ground" would make it very difficult for US forces to completely neutralize them, any standing "hot war" conflict with the US would cost the militias dearly in manpower and material resources, as prior conflicts between the US and the Mahdi Army have shown. The commitment of new US forces to Baghdad has thus succeeded in making the militias "blink," and turn down the heat in their campaign of ethnic cleansing.

The challenge of protecting Baghdadis from suicide and car bombers, however, is one for which the technological dominance of the US military provides less advantage. The destructive combat power of US troops provides no deterrent or genuine protection against those who are already resolved to die. As the insurgent attacks themselves require little in the way of personnel or materials, ramping up the US troop presence in the capital does not really increase the strategic risks for the insurgency. Whether they succeeded by blind luck or careful planning, Thursday's attacks registered points that cannot be ignored by anyone observing or experiencing the security situation in Baghdad. The attack on the al-Sarafiya bridge demonstrated that the insurgency can target vital infrastructure and materially degrade the conditions necessary for effective policing of the capital. The attack on the Parliament showed that the insurgency can penetrate the areas where the strictest security measures have already been put in place, sowing doubt that the security plan will be able to make the ordinary citizens of greater Baghdad, where nothing even approaching such strict measures have yet to be implemented, any safer.

In defending against attacks like those on Parliament or the al-Sarafiya bridge no technology exists that can genuinely stand in place of observant eyes and ears on the ground, scanning for suspicious activity. On this principle it would be difficult to know how many troops would be "enough." In a city of six million people, how many soldiers would create enough vigilance to prevent attacks like those of last Thursday? One can choose whatever number one desires- double, triple, or quadruple the number of US soldiers called for in the current plan. It would be impossible to know the effectiveness of such numbers until they were implemented. Such speculation is in any case moot, as the recent extension of Iraq tours for US units from 12 to 15 months suggests that at the levels programmed into the current security plan the US military is already working at something close to its maximum threshold. Moreover, the security plan itself puts US forces into a paradoxical bind. In expending manpower and energy on keeping Shi'ite militias off the streets, the US is intensifying the difficulty of warding off the insurgency. Without the eyes and ears provided by militia forces, the burden placed upon US soldiers to stand sentinel against insurgent attacks becomes even greater.

Senator John McCain is quoted in today's New York Times as supporting Mr. Bush's security plan, declaring that he has no "Plan B" for how to ameliorate the crisis in Iraq. In real terms the security plan itself is in fact probably "Plan X" or "Plan Y" if one counts through all of the various shifts in tactics and policy attempted by the Bush regime since the invasion of 2003. What Thursday's attacks demonstrate is not merely the weaknesses of this latest plan, but that there should never have been a "Plan A"- the invasion of Iraq- in the first place.

As much as this is true, one must note that there is another sign to be read in the rubble of the Iraqi Parliament and the al-Sarafiya bridge. Though these attacks target an irredeemable vulnerability of Mr. Bush's security plan, they also evince the strategic and moral impoverishment of the insurgency. Any movement grounded so firmly in gratuitous destruction has little long-term chance of enduring success. One must keep in mind that the political forces which perpetrated these attacks only possess the traction that they do in Iraqi society because the US invasion opened up a space for them. The US can thus go a long way toward eroding that traction by constructively disengaging from Iraq. This is the "Plan B" that Mr. McCain fails to grasp, though in fairness there seem to be few leaders on either side of the partisan divide in the US who do.

Stop Chasing Victory; Start Making Sense in Iraq

2007-04-10T00:00:00.000-04:00

The time for US leaders and citizens to cease imagining the Iraq crisis in terms of "winning" and "losing" has long past. The US faces no tangible enemy that it may defeat in Iraq. Conversely, virtually any potential "victory" for US foes involves such suffering and loss for the putative "victor" that to call such a triumph "Pyrrhic" would be a ludicrous understatement. The Coalition mission right now, to the extent that it has any coherent and viable motive principle, is not a military or even a political contest in any meaningful sense. US leaders must stop using the logic and rhetoric of competition and begin to conceptualize and articulate the Iraq mission as a nation-building enterprise. Only when the US and its allies realize that they need to help make Iraq, not war, will any path to resolution of this crisis emerge.

Though erroneous logic prevails in almost all corners of the US discourse on Iraq, any review of the reigning climate of confusion must begin with the Bush regime. Though Mr. Bush and his subordinates speak constantly of "victory," they give no specific definition of what such a state would entail. "A free and democratic Iraq" is too vague to serve as any standard. Iraq already has as democratic a government as it has ever enjoyed and freedom is running riot through the streets of its cities and towns, yet no one could call the current state of affairs "victory." The shape of Bush "victory" must be inferred from the negative spaces in Bush rhetoric.

Mr. Bush's refusal to state definitively that the US desires no permanent troop presence in Iraq would seem to indicate that such a permanent troop presence is precisely one of his fundamental criteria of "victory." Right now in order to remain in Iraq the US must tolerate the death of about 50-150 US soldiers per month. Mr. Bush seemingly intends to fight until this number reaches zero. Once Iraq is no longer hostile terrain for the US military "victory" will have been secured.

The first question one must ask of such a "victory" is how one reaches it. After four years of occupation Iraq is deadlier terrain for US soldiers today than it was in March of 2003. Undaunted, the US military has implemented a new "counterinsurgency" doctrine. Such a doctrine is no doubt quite useful in addressing the tactical problems faced day-to-day by US units operating in Iraq. But a "counterinsurgency" strategy will not win through to any enduring victory.

The task of fighting the insurgency in Iraq is bedevilled for US soldiers by the fact that the insurgency is not fighting the US, nor is it compelled to. The insurgents have no ultimate stake in whether or how long the US remains in Iraq, their one critical task is to prevent the success of the constitutional government in Baghdad. Some insurgent attacks on US soldiers are no doubt motivated by anti-American feeling, and all such attacks are useful to the insurgents as propaganda among certain Iraqi constituencies. But the insurgency is not bound to any timetable or specific "to do" list in its strategic orientation toward the US military. The insurgents may attack the US if and when they choose to, very little is at stake if the insurgents choose not to attack US soldiers on any given occasion or in any given period.

Herein lies a deeply intractable conundrum for the US military: how does one fight an opponent who is only incidentally interested in fighting oneself? The liabilities of this conflict are stacked almost exclusively on the side of the US, and US assets of firepower and mobility are trumped by insurgent advantages of local knowledge, time flexibility, and logistical proximity. Beyond this, the US military finds itself locked in the jaws of a Catch-22 that could spin Yossarian's head clear off his shoulders:

The US is fighting the insurgency;

the insurgency is fighting the government;

the continued US military presence undermines the government's legitimacy,

therefore:

Every tactical move the US military makes against the insurgency, whether it inflicts damage upon the insurgents or not, aids the insurgency in its struggle against the government.

This situation would be bad enough, and would argue strongly against the practicability of a plan for the type of "victory" the Bush administration is chasing. This analysis only begins to enumerate the complexities faced by the US military in Iraq, however. If the insurgency was the Coalition's only worry "victory" might be imaginable in some impossibly rosy best-case scenario. But the insurgency is by far the easiest of the challenges confronting the US and its allies. Even as the insurgency fights to destroy the government the US helped establish, elements of that same government are mobilized to assault both the Coalition and the larger fabric of Iraqi civil society. Paramilitaries such as Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army cannot properly be called "insurgents," in that they are deeply implicated in the political process the Coalition is fighting to protect. Yet such Shi'ite militias rampage through major urban centers throughout central and southern Iraq, killing Sunni civilians and Coalition soldiers in a sustained campaign of ethnic cleansing punctuated by occasional expressions of anti-foreign rage.

In essence, the US military has been tasked with protecting a government that does not yet exist even in embryo. Elections have been held and cabinet posts filled , but exquisitely convoluted battles rage over which institutions will hold real power in Iraq and who will be authorized to speak for those institutions. One small corner of this drama has been playing out in Diwaniyah (80 miles south of Baghdad), where US and Iraqi Army forces have been locked in battle with the Mahdi Army for three days, inciting anti-US protests among Shi'ites throughout southern Iraq. The proximal cause for this conflict was an assault by the Mahdi Army upon the municipal police headquarters of Diwaniyah. Was this attack motivated by anti-US feeling? Anti-Sunni hatred? None of the above. The Mahdi Army targeted the Diwaniyah police because they had been infiltrated and were controlled by the Badr Corps, a rival Shi'ite militia under the leadership of Ayatollah Aziz al-Hakim. The struggle in Diwaniyah is thus not ultimately over whether the US will remain in Iraq or even what role the Shi'ite clergy will enjoy in Iraq's new order. It is over what groups within the Shi'ite community will be authorized to represent the Shi'ite clergy in the political arena.

Convoluted as it undoubtedly is, the Diwaniyah incident embodies only one of myriad such volatile schisms which riddle every element of Iraqi society. Individually, either extinguishing the insurgency OR putting a stop to interethnic and interpartisan violence would most likely have proven beyond the capacity of the US and its allies to accomplish militarily. Together they present a completely insurmountable strategic task.

What can or should be done? Though the Bush strategy for "victory" is logically bereft, Mr. Bush's critics among the Democrats have come up with little better in the way of long-term proactive thinking. Democratic leaders like Senator Carl Levin talk of setting political "benchmarks" for the Iraqi government to meet, but this is in effect an altered form of the same kind of "win-lose" game theory propounded by the Bush White House. In the same way the Bush White House cannot explain how deploying US troops can make Iraq safer for US troops, Mr. Levin cannot explain how a government that cannot defend itself meets "benchmarks" or what effect it will produce should it do so. Senator Hilary Clinton (among other Democratic leaders) has proposed ideas that combine all of the worst elements of the Bush strategy with none of its merits. She would withdraw most US troops from Iraq and leave a small contingent behind to fight Al Qaeda, thus completely subverting the chances of the nascent Iraqi government by treating Iraq as a geostrategic chessboard for the furtherance of US interests. Iraq would burn bright and hot as US troops engaged in a wild goose chase that could do little damage to Al Qaeda and bring even less security to the US.

The situation in Iraq is so complex that not only are positive steps difficult to conceive, developing criteria by which progress toward some goal might be measured is virtually impossible. If US casualties were the only significant gauge of "victory" or "defeat" some murky picture might be discernible. But such numbers exist alongside and are ultimately eclipsed by the 2,800+ Iraqis who have died per month over the last year of the conflict (according to UN figures). In relative terms this is the equivalent of more than 36,000 US citizens dying violently per month. Iraq is a society in cataclysmic and self-devouring collapse. All notions of US "victory" or "defeat" are rendered meaningless by this glaring and tragic fact, and all other goals are superseded by the urgent necessity of turning Iraq back toward sustainable stability.

The Coalition must abandon all notions of "victory" and focus exclusively on this latter goal of returning Iraq to stability. The strategic principles that should guide such a nation-building effort are:

1) Coalition casualties are a less important gauge of success than Iraqi civilian casualties. All policies should be focused on reducing the number of Iraqi deaths in the long term, even if it requires a short term rise in Coalition casualties.

2)All aspirations for a permanent US military presence in Iraq must be abandoned. The ultimate strategic goal of the US should be to disengage from Iraq in the manner that affords that nation its best chances for enduring stability.

3)Aspirations for a cease of hostilities against US forces must be abandoned. Not only will it be impossible for US forces to stay in Iraq, no exit will be possible free of continued lethal violence against US personnel. Iraq will remain provisionally lethal terrain for US soldiers until the day the last soldier departs, our best hope is for that departing soldier to leave behind an Iraqi government and military that can survive and ultimately restore order.

4)Aspirations to bring a total end to the insurgency and/or interethnic and interpartisan violence before the final departure of Coalition forces must be abandoned. Though the number of Iraqi civilian deaths should stand as the ultimate gauge of policy success in Iraq, the US and its allies must be prepared to see that number hold steady and perhaps even rise immediately after Coalition forces depart Iraq. The goal of nation-building should not be to force a Pax Americana on Iraqi society, but to help foster the creation of an Iraqi state authority that will, over time, be able to bring Iraqi society into order. Though the Coalition may take (and has taken) steps to help create such an authority, it may only fully establish itself after Coalition troops have fully withdrawn.

5)The US should embrace the goal of full autonomy for the Iraqi state and military, and undertake all risk and expense necessary to supply the Iraqi government and army with all the economic and military assets it will need to assert and defend its authority. The US should abandon self-serving interests such as privatization of Iraq's oil markets if it will aid the Iraqis in coming to a political settlement that will strengthen the foundations of government authority.

These are the basic principles of what I would term a strategy of nation-building rather than "victory." In several posts below I have outlined specific policies that would help advance such a strategy toward potential, provisional success.

Congress, Iran, and the Surge

2007-04-03T22:48:00.000-04:00

Both the US House and Senate have passed spending bills that fully fund the Bush regime's Iraq deployment yet place provisional constraints on its continuing duration. The White House and its spin machine are in full lockhorn mode, broadcasting the message that if and when George W. Bush vetoes this legislation Congress will be guilty of starving the troops and leaving them bootless. The brazeness of this politicking would be impressive if the message was not so derivative. This is old wine in a new bottle- no matter how badly the Bush White House mismanages the Iraq policy it always comes back to somehow being Congress' fault.

In typical Bush regime fashion, the divisive belligerence of this latest offensive comes unalloyed with any empirical assessment of whether Congress' very mild conditions are in any way an impairment of current policy. An objective assessment would have to conclude that Congress' legislation can only enhance, not impair, the chances of the ongoing Baghdad security plan. The President's "surge" seems to have made some headway in reducing violence in the Iraqi capital. But there is no indication that any of what has been achieved depends on Baghdadis' belief that the surge will be permanent or enduring, quite the contrary.

We have seen no arrests of major militia leaders, no stockpiles of guns confiscated from Shi'ite paramilitaries. The security plan's access to neighborhoods like Sadr City was obviously brokered by a negotiated truce between the Shi'ite militias and US Centcom. Would that truce hold if groups like the Mahdi Army felt that US troops would be patrolling Sadr City indefinitely? This seems highly unlikely. One strongly suspects that one of the conditions which has made it possible for joint US-Iraqi Army teams to patrol through Sadr City in force and unmolested is the understanding that the "surge" is a temporary state of affairs.

This fact is underscored by the recent actions by Iran's Revolutionary Guard. The seizing of British marines and the escalation of that hostage drama on the world's television screens would be puzzling given all of the saber-rattling occasioned by Iran's nuclear program. Such actions would seem to be tempting fate, unless Tehran felt that the precariousness of the Baghdad security plan allowed it to bargain from a position of strength. Why the marines were seized and what Tehran hopes to gain from this fiasco are questions about which I would not speculate. But Tehran seems to feel that the prevailing homeostasis in Baghdad precludes US military action against Iran for the moment, and in this they are probably correct. As soon as American bombs hit Iranian targets Baghdad would most likely become a much deadlier place for US forces, as their prevailing truce with Shi'ite militias collapsed.

The fact that Shi'ite militias view the US surge as temporary does not preclude it from achieving provisional gains. Groups like the Mahdi Army are no doubt lying low in the assumption that once the surge winds down they can go back to business as usual. US Centcom must know that this is the case, but are counting on the fact that any window in which the Iraqi military and police can be shown as taking even partial control over security throughout Baghdad will help normalize these institutions and solidify their authority, making a return to unrestrained militia mayhem impossible. Whatever the merits of this plan, it is all too likely that the longer it is sustained the more it will encounter a harsh margin of diminishing returns. If Iraqi military and police effectiveness is seen to depend too much for too long upon an increased US troop presence, the Iraqi people's faith in the security plan will erode and its long-term impact will be squandered.

Congress' moves to limit the duration of the surge and the US deployment more generally are thus in accord with the general climate of expectations that may facilitate its provisional success. If anything, Congress' restraints did not go far enough in curbing the White House's tactical profligacy. The security situation in Iraq will only improve for the long term if and when the US openly commits to a complete withrdrawal from Iraq and complete autonomy for the Iraqi government and military. Mr. Bush would be wise to sign Congress' legislation, if he does not the only one to blame for depriving the troops will be he himself. Let him veto the bill and let every Republican representative and senator campaign while trying to explain why he or she did not vote to override. Mr. Bush's faith that his current rhetoric will be politically effective embodies the same kind of miscalculation that cost the Republicans so dearly in the mid-term election.

China Ad Astra

2007-03-18T16:00:00.000-04:00

Speaking in Sydney, Australia on Friday, February 23, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney asserted that a recent anti-satellite missile test and China's general military buildup are "not consistent with China's stated goal of a peaceful rise." At a press conference concluding the latest session of the National People's Congress, PRC Premier Wen Jiabao deflected questions about the missile test and China's decision to increase military spending by 18 percent, asserting, "China’s position on the peaceful utilization of outer space remains unchanged." Inquiring minds no doubt want to know which of these leaders has got the story straight.

The incommensurability of Wen's and Cheney's remarks exemplifies a deep-seated clash of perspectives. For the Chinese, expressions of concern over China's presence on the "final frontier" smack of racism and 19th century propaganda about the "Yellow Peril." For Europeans and Americans, Cheney's ideas enjoy a long pedigree extending back to Napoleon's famous injunction, "Let China sleep, for when she awakens, she will shake the world." The Chinese view is undoubtedly well-founded. The idea that technology already possessed by other powers (say, the US) poses a unique threat in Chinese hands is a paternalistic one at the very least, especially in the wake of events like the most recent Gulf War. On the other hand the proposition that any nation of more than one billion people, whatever their race or creed, poses a distinct challenge to the international "balance of power" is not ridiculous.

While this latter principle may be true, it does not provide an easy calculus by which development of China's military strength may be judged inimical to peace. Pundits will always fret over the "balance of power," but such concern is only useful if it is done in full acknowledgment of the fact that the international "balance of power" is an infinitely more complex phenomenon now than it was in the age of Napoleon or Metternich. Dick Cheney (and others) presumably singled out China's anti-satellite missile test because it involves a technology that (according to their view) presupposes a conflict between China and another sovereign power. Only a nation-state can maintain militarily useful satellites, so goes this reasoning, so if China is developing weapons to destroy satellites it must anticipate a conflict with another sovereign power.

It takes little examination of the facts of the 21st-century world to realize that this line of thinking is erroneous. An increasing number of private groups and corporations deploy satellites in space, it is not inconceivable that a nation state might someday view a privately owned satellite as a threat. One does not have to imagine a James Bond scenario in which a mad scientist controls a laser in space. For example, if terrorists hacked into the computers of a company whose satellites could acquire images of important economic or military targets, a sovereign government pursuing an "all options" strategy might be very relieved to have such a system as China tested at its disposal.

In similar ways many of the fears about China's military power are rooted in antiquated or distorted notions of how the international balance of power works today. China's size is always cited as the root of international concern, but such thinking discounts the ways in which size is a liability as much as an asset. Pundits too often assume that a nation's ability to project force is uniform throughout its territorial domain, thus China's capacity to take military action against Vietnam is greater than the U.S.'s ability to project force against Cuba. China's logistical "home court" advantage only begins diminishing as one moves away from its sovereign borders, thus Vietnam is poised to bear the full force of Chinese military power.

Yet the history of China well demonstrates that the internal coherence of a state fluctuates in inverse proportion to its size. The further one moves from Beijing, the less firm CCP political control becomes. Thus when a PRC military unit penetrates one kilometer into Vietnam the CCP has not, in essence, projected force one kilometer. That distance must be measured between the operational zone of the unit in question and Beijing itself. At one kilometer into Vietnam, the CCP has thus projected force more than two thousand kilometers.

Moreover, most pundits vastly overestimate the importance of China's population to the calculation of its effect on the balance of power. Warfare has evolved over the course of the late 20th and early 21st century to give far greater prominence to technology than manpower. The US military is a mere fraction of the size to which it grew over the course of WWII, yet the entire military of that era could not match the combat power of a single brigade or carrier group of today. The most recent Gulf War provided the empirical proof of this principle. Despite having one of the world's largest standing armies, Iraq was defeated with lightning speed due to the vast technological superiority of the US military. Until China possesses technology to match that of the US, the size of its population or armed forces does not really figure into a calculation of the balance of power.

Then should not the world be concerned about China's acquisition of space-age technology? Concern may be warranted, but not paranoia. Most experts would agree that China is decades from developing military technology to match that of the US, and in the decades it would take to develop that technology the US will remain a moving target. Even if and when the day came that China and the US were on a technological par, war would not be inevitable or even likely. Until some technology is discovered that negates the threat of nuclear ballistic missiles the deterrence of "mutually assured destruction" will continue to restrain the strategic options of all powers.

Even if a war between superpowers is averted, would not a technologically advanced China be more prone to aggression against its neighbors? Here the realities of China's own internal political coherence are not the only facts to bear in mind. Though the speedy defeat of Saddam Hussein demonstrated the power that advanced technology affords, the subsequent aftermath of that conflict has been an object lesson in the limits of that power. The world is a very different place than it was when Napoleon spoke his sage advice. Nationalism, capitalism, industrialization, telecommunications, and economic globalization have created a world in which even a technological superpower faces discrete constraints upon its potential to project force beyond its borders.

Unless profound changes occur to stabilize China's internal political dynamic it is difficult to contemplate the circumstances in which the PRC would enjoy more success projecting force than the US has experienced in Iraq, space-age technology or no. Certainly China's political institutions as they currently exist could not withstand the kind of strain that the Iraq war has placed upon those of the US. One can never predict all the contingencies that might prompt a government to war, and it would be foolish to declare outright that China (or any other nation, including the US) poses no threat to peace. But where historically the Chinese are no less prone to conflict than anyone else, they are also certainly no more so. Whether China will ever pose a threat to peace is in this sense an imponderable, but in real terms one can predict that no matter how much China spends or what type of technology it comes to possess, the PRC will not pose a threat to the global balance of power any time in the near future.

Mogadishu Calling

2007-02-24T11:24:00.000-05:00

The New York Times reports this week that U.S. Special Forces and air units were operating in Somalia during the recent fighting that drove Islamist forces from Mogadishu, a fact that comes as no surprise. The Bush administration, in essence, made a second, more successful pass at waging war by proxy in Somalia. Whereas previously Bush agents had attempted to stem the rising tide of Islamism by providing cash and weapons to clan warlords, in this second phase they have partnered with the Ethiopian military to undo the Islamist takeover that the first proxy war failed to prevent. Though the recent campaign has managed to install the internationally recognized Provisional Government of Somalia in the capital, the rapidly degenerating situation provides another sign of the incompetence and shortsightedness of Bush foreign policy.

The use of US air power underscores Bush administration priorities. Helicopter gunships targeted suspected Al Qaeda operatives active in Somalia; this appears to be the central strategic goal around which the entire recent campaign was built. This narrow focus upon military responses to the threat of Al Qaeda is in lock step with Bush policy since the administration's inception, and evinces the same flawed strategic thinking that has set the cause of US security so far back in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Though Al Qaeda operatives may well have been killed in these US raids, the overall campaign has done little to deny Al Qaeda safe haven and strategic purchase in Somalia. An Islamist insurgency has begun to wreak havoc in Mogadishu, and America's Ethiopian partners are withdrawing, having no will to sustain anything close to the level of casualities the US has endured in Iraq.

Here again is a lesson that the Bush White House seems determined to ignore no matter how many times they encounter it. Al Qaeda suffers very little from momentary personnel losses, as it is a political movement that requires few warm bodies for front-line action and is constantly recruiting and replenishing its human resource base. Attacking and killing Al Qaeda's standing personnel will never have a long term strategic effect unless such an effort is paired with an exponentially more intense campaign directed at its political recruitment capacities. The Bush administration, however, seems satisfied that "finding the terrorists" and "killing the terrorists" can stand in place of a genuine long-term foreign policy. This is the essence of the ludicrous "fly-paper" theory propounded in support of the Iraq war. In the same way that the Bush administration fails to understand that the momentary benefit of killing Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq is vastly offset by the strategic advantages of fertile anarchy and safe haven that have accrued to Al Qaeda as a result of the US invasion; they cannot see that the threat of Al Qaeda in Somalia will never be ameliorated until order and relative prosperity return to that beleaguered nation.

Where Iraq had no significant Al Qaeda presence prior to the US invasion, growing Al Qaeda operations in Somalia do pose a clear and present danger to US security. Moreover, unlike Iraq, Somalia could benefit from a US-led multilateral intervention. The Bush administration has not undertaken a more robust intervention in Somalia for three reasons: 1)though such an intervention would require military forces, it would more urgently require lengthy, intense efforts at diplomacy and economic aid for which the Bush White House has little patience; 2)such an intervention would provide little commercial profit to US enterprises akin to oil revenues to be garnered in Iraq; 3)the crippling commitment of US military forces in Iraq precludes robust action elsewhere in the globe.

One might object that to criticize Bush policy in both Iraq and Somalia is a contradiction in terms. Where Bush is held to task for being too aggressive in the former instance he is condemned for failing to be aggressive enough in the latter. But the issue is not whether aggressive tactics are good in and of themselves, it is whether our leaders have the foresight and knowledge required to understand when and where they might be applied to best effect in the post-9/11 world. Somalia is a completely failed state which has been the subject of many years of desperate international efforts to rebuild state infrastructure and repair civil society. If the US had stepped in to provide genuine leadership in this instance it would have garnered copious good will and enjoyed the support and cooperation of virtually the entire community of nations. Bringing order to Somalia would be arduous and require sacrifice to be sure, as the "Black Hawk Down" incident of the Clinton administration showed. But the prospects for success in Somalia have always been better than Iraq, and (prior to the US invasion of 2003, at least) the task was more vital to the global struggle against Al Qaeda.

The Bush administration's recourse to war by proxy in Somalia is more than an opportunity lost. Coupled with its application of aggressive force where Al Qaeda is lacking yet oil is abundant, it sends the signal to the rest of the world that the US will only take on the commitment of an extended intervention when there is economic gain to be had. The Bush White House has abdicated the moral authority of "world policeman" in favor of the image of "world profiteer." In the political struggle against Al Qaeda this is a tragic misstep. Many have noted that Al Qaeda's ideology is as imperialist as any. Even as this is apparent, enough (for Al Qaeda's needs) young Muslims throughout the world would rather sign on to create an Islamic imperium if they feel that the alternative is an American corporate imperium. Hopefully the next US administration will have the courage and wisdom to embrace the challenge of nation-building in all its complexity and diversity throughout the globe. Perhaps then the moral authority of the US will slowly be redeemed, and the terrible damage of the Bush years can begin to be undone.

Neocolonial Fog

2007-01-04T23:03:00.000-05:00

One question hangs over the entire Coalition enterprise in Iraq:

"Why doesn't the Iraqi military have its own air force?"

Or, perhaps, the question should be revised:

"Why doesn't anyone in the U.S. ask, 'Why doesn't the Iraqi military have its own air force?'"

The White House and the Congress are locked in a squabble over whether 21,000 more troops should be sent to Iraq, but no one in our government seems willing or able to address the fundamental problem, that Iraq is no closer to having a sovereign government now than it was three years ago. This new troop escalation is doomed to fail, because it is targeted at symptoms rather than root causes of the crisis. More U.S. soldiers are needed in Baghdad not because there are too few Iraqi soldiers, but because the Iraqi soldiers that exist are unwilling to put an end to ethnic violence in the capital. It is true that Iraq's political leaders have shown little enthusiasm for this task, but much of their reluctance no doubt stems from a sense that their soldiers would not obey orders to attack Shi'ite militias like the Mahdi Army even if they were given.

Any platitudes about how the Iraqi army needs further "training" are ridiculous, and the new plan to "embed" U.S. soldiers among Iraqi units is an admission of this fact. Placing U.S. soldiers among Iraqis is an attempt to force the Iraqi military to cleave to the mission designed by U.S. Centcom. This is not likely to have much success. If they so desire, Iraqi units can find ways of evading or altering the mission that are imperceptible to their U.S. "embeds," who do not speak Arabic or understand the local culture.

No progress will be made in Iraq until the Iraqi military commits to the mission of national order and unity, and that is not going to happen as long as the status quo persists. Air power is key to the counterinsurgency. When any unit, Coalition or Iraqi, finds itself ambushed or outnumbered, fighter jets and helicopter gunships come to bail them out. It is these assets (along with heavy artillery and armored tanks) that give government forces the combat power advantage over insurgents, and right now all such assets are U.S.-owned and -controlled. The hand that controls air power is the hand that holds the leash, and Iraqi soldiers will not fight as long as that hand is an American one. The U.S. has spouted a great deal of rhetoric about desiring Iraqi soldiers to "stand up," but in reality what U.S. leaders have wanted is for Iraqi soldiers to "sit up and heel," and the Iraqis know it.

Control of air power is what makes a government sovereign. This is the post-WWII corollary of Mao Zedong's dictum- "political power grows from the barrel of a gun." While it is true that any armed group may exercise political power to a degree, the hallmark of sovereign power in the 21st century is control over the capital assets that reign over the modern battlefield- planes, helicopters, tanks, missiles- as possession and maintenace of such assets requires a stable base of tax revenue. Iraqis learned this lesson the hard way in the wake of the first Gulf War. Saddam Hussein's government was on the verge of being overthrown by a Shi'ite uprising before George H.W. Bush agreed to lift the "no fly" ban and allow Hussein to deploy helicopter gunships to "restore order." These weapons were the steel spine that secured Hussein's position of political supremacy. By contrast the current Iraqi government hunkered down in the Green Zone is spineless.

No doubt U.S. leaders have refrained from equipping the Iraqi military with heavy weapons in part out of fear of unintended consequences. Few voices can be found in the U.S. who will advocate trusting the Iraqis on this score. This sentiment is as strong among opponents of the war as its advocates (as this blog post by Steven Pizzo demonstrates). As legitimate as concerns about the misuse of heavy weapons may be, persistent refusal to entrust such power to the Iraqi military amounts to no more than crass paternalism. It is difficult to understand why no one on either side of the aisle in the U.S. government would realize as much. A latent form of neocolonial bigotry seems to pervade the mindset of U.S. leaders both Democrat and Republican, so that no one questions the wisdom of treating the Iraqi military with unrelenting and unalloyed contempt.

Moreover, it is obvious that the concerns preventing the U.S. from supplying the Iraqi military with heavy weapons are not merely prudential. As the conflict drags on it becomes clear that there was never any plan to develop a fully national and sovereign military for the Iraqi state. The Bush administration seems to have believed that post-conflict Iraq could enter into a strategic relationship with the U.S. parallel to that between the U.S. and Japan post-WWII. Iraq would not need heavy weapons, without which no sovereign nation can defend itself from even its smallest, weakest neighbor, because the U.S. would stand guarantor of Iraqi sovereignty against the threat of foreign invasion (presumably from permanent bases in Iraq akin to the U.S. facility on Okinawa).

Such a plan was foolish in the extreme and based on a misreading of historical precedents. The reasons for the practicability of the strategic partnership between the U.S. and Japan are complex. In comparing that situation to Iraq, however, only one difference need be examined to demonstrate why such a structure could not hold. If Japanese society had contained constituent groups as deeply divided against one-another as Sunni, Shi'a, and Kurds in Iraq, a strategic partnership could never have been forged, as each group would have been too suspicious of possible U.S. partiality toward its opponents to rest tranquil in a situation of U.S. strategic predominance. The U.S. will never be able to stand guarontor of Iraqi sovereignty the way it has in Japan, the Iraqi military will ultimately have to be fully equipped if a stable homeostasis is ever to be achieved in that country.

No end game will be reached in Iraq until the Iraqi military is fully armed. Yes, tragic consequences may follow that step, but the U.S. has no choice other than to take it and let the chips fall where they may. U.S. leaders worry about the power that heavy weapons will afford the Iraqi military, but one must remember that such assets are simultaneously a liability. Helicopters, planes and tanks are acutely expensive, once a government or army possesses them they immediately begin to calculate how they must behave in order to assure that these assets are not lost or destroyed. Right now, with the U.S. army standing arbiter between the warring factions, Iraqis are free to commit atrocities without fear of what they might lose as a result. If the Iraqi military were possessed of assets it needed to guard, its leadership (both political and military) would be compelled to strategize to contain the conflict and thus preserve those assets for the long term.

As Iraq spirals ever more rapidly into chaos, it becomes increasingly imperative to build Iraqi institutions that can endure and wield authority in the eyes of the Iraqi people themselves. There is little the U.S. can do to assist Iraq's political institutions toward that end. The Iraqi military, however, is an institution that the U.S. can bolster through one easy step. Once Iraq's military has all of the powers of a modern, sovereign, and autonomous armed force, it will enjoy the authority of a legitimate institution in Iraqi society. Until it does there will be no end to conflict and violence in Iraq.

Beijing vs. Jesus

2006-12-15T23:33:00.000-05:00

The execution last month in Heilongjiang of Xu Shuangfu, the founder of the Three Grades of Servants Church, was the latest milestone in an ongoing trend that has attracted only sporadic attention outside of China. The number of Christians in China has been growing exponentially in the past two decades, and concurrently Christian worship has become an increasingly volatile flashpoint of conflict between the PRC government and rural society. No one can be certain how many Christians live in China right now. Some estimates place the number as high as eighty million and growing.

The greatest share of this Christian demographic surge has not been within established denominations recognizable to congregations outside China. This is not entirely surprising, as religious life remains under tight state control. Anyone desiring to "legally" participate in Christian worship in the PRC must join one of two officially established churches (one Catholic and one Protestant) chartered and regulated by the Chinese Communist Party. The new Christian explosion, however, has not taken place within the domain of the official churches, but within wholly novel and indigenous Christian communities that have sprouted and spread throughout rural China.

These new religious communities have come to be called "house churches" in the English language media. I am not sure who first applied this label to the new Christian groups in China, but the phrase is highly charged with symbolic historical associations. Scholars of late antiquity identified the "house church" as the focal unit of Christian communal worship during the first centuries of the religion's history. The implication of the label is thus to link current events in China to the narrative of Christianity's rise from persecution to triumph in Roman times. The facts on the ground provide much fodder for imaginative parallelism: the PRC is a vast empire, Beijing is Rome, the Party is Caesar, the house churches are communities of humble origins akin to those of the first Apostles. Indeed, many Christians in the US and Europe perceive developments in China as an epochal event with potentially prophetic implications.

The "house churches" themselves, however, do not easily assimilate to scriptural narratives cherished by non-Chinese Christians. Many of them are doctrinally quite idiosyncratic, such as the Eastern Lightning Church that insists that Christ has been reborn as a young Henanese woman (it is not entirely clear that the woman in question actually exists). Xu Shuangfu, the recently executed founder of the Three Grades of Servants Church, claimed to be in direct communication with God. Many of the new Christian churches are as distinct in social practice as they are in doctrine. The use of violence and extortion to win converts is quite common. Such violence is not reserved for unbelievers, but is aggressively applied to other Christians. Beatings and murders of the clergy and congregants of competing churches have been very common, and violence has even been applied to non-Chinese missionaries attempting to proselytize on behalf of orthodox denominations. Though PRC law technically empowered the state to execute Xu Shuangfu for his illegal religious activities, he and his lieutenants were in fact sentenced for murdering members of the rival Eastern Lightning sect. In the face of such theological and ethical complexities even the most enthusiastic observers of China's Christian effervescence have been compelled to develop a heuristic distinction between "house churches" and "cults."

China's new Christian communities thus sit at a complex nexus of cultural perceptions and expectations that colors many observers' readings of the implications of this phenomenon. In this climate it is perhaps most clarifying to focus on those aspects of the "house church" movement that fit integrally into the long context of Chinese cultural history. In many respects the "house churches" are no different from the long succession of Buddho-Daoist religious groups that have been a fixture of rural Chinese society since the Later Han Dynasty (25-220 C.E.).

Even during peak eras of imperial power central government institutions had very limited reach into the local domain of rural village society. Rural communities were free (indeed compelled) to organize themselves around locally rooted social and cultural institutions. Alongside family, clan, and lineage organizations, devotional traditions were ubiquitous matrices for the structuring of village life. Because these traditions picked up at the point where the ordering energies of the imperial state ebbed away (and because the imperial state itself was conceptualized as a grand spirit-cult), their "political" and "religious" functions could never be practically disaggregated.

Most of the time these local forms of religious life existed in a state of mutual benign indifference with the imperial government. The popular forms of Buddhism and Daoism that persisted in local society, however, preserved doctrinal visions that were radically at odds with the rationale of the imperial state. Self-cultivation traditions promised the practitioner health, long-life, and the acquisition of mystical powers that conveyed moral and spiritual authority. Eschatological teachings predicted the advent of a new age in which spiritual powers would effect the inversion of the current social and political order. Rural religious groups thus always retained the latent potential to explode into sudden and often violent political militancy. Though economic or political stresses can sometimes explain why this latent potential became actualized in any given instance, the metamorphosis from local religiuos group to armed millenarian rebellion was often completely unpredictable and seemingly motivated solely by the doctrinal teachings of the group itself. For this reason, though the imperial goverment remained practically committed to a posture of benign neglect toward local popular religion, it retained a broad and draconian system of prohibitions against any form of "heterodox (i.e. non-state -sanctioned)" religious expression so that state officials might be legally empowered to move swiftly and ruthlessly against any group that showed incipient signs of millenarian militancy. Thus though the extraordinary repression that the PRC government has applied to groups like the Falun Dafa and the Catholic Church has obvious roots in Communist ideology, in many respects they are in lock step with a pattern that has governed relations between the Chinese state and popular religion for many centuries.

Focusing upon the "house churches" we also see many aspects of a long historical pattern at work. These new Christian groups offer their adherents programs of self-cultivation (cast in terms of "prayer" rather than "meditation" or "yoga") that promise the same rewards of vitality and mystical power formerly claimed by Buddhist and Daoist teachings. Eschatalogical visions rooted in the New Testament nonetheless offer the same kind of social and political inversions predicted by Chinese millenarian groups in the imperial era. The violent militancy of groups like Three Grades of Servants and Eastern Lightning expresses the same political volatility exemplified by earlier non-Christian groups like the "Celestial Masters" or the "Eight Trigrams."

What, then, do these indigenous historical comparisons have to teach us about the "house churches" and their contemporary significance? One analysis is that these churches may be viewed as "old goods in a new wrapper." This view would hold that the rise of "house churches" is fueled by the same forces that impelled the spread of various popular Buddho-Daoist traditions throughout rural China for much of Chinese history. These groups are thus stepping into the same role as was filled by those earlier groups, and much of their social behavior can be understood as an expression of the same impulses that have always inhered within local religious life. There is much truth to this view, and it is indispensible to any clear global analysis of the "house church" movement.

The Christian nature of these groups cannot be completely discounted as ancillary or insignificant, however. The turn of local religious life toward Christianity may be a product of some essential appeal of the Christian message, as non-Chinese Christians would assert. This perspective is not wholly incompatible with an instrumental reading of the house church movement, moreover. If religious life has always been a medium for the expression of the collective political aspirations of rural Chinese communities, the choice of Christianity cannot be dismissed as arbitrary in the current political climate. In this regard, the most appealing aspect of traditional "Christian" narratives for Chinese congregants might be the long history of Christian opposition to Communism. Conversion to Christianity might represent a form of "voting with the spirit," electing to join the group that is most irreconcilably opposed to the ideology of the ruling Party. Awareness of the sympathies of Christians living overseas could play a role (if even a subconcious one) in this decision. Not only is the choice of Christianity an intrinsically anti-Communist one, but for precisely that reason the formation of a Christian group creates certain constraints within which the Communist Party must operate if it is to avoid international censure.

If something like this dynamic is a part of the "house church" phenomenon (and I strongly suspect it is) then anyone who is concerned about the long term stability of the PRC should pay attention. The Chinese Christian explosion is not only a religious or cultural event, but is one among many gauges of the political temperature of Chinese rural society. Along these lines, the course of Beijing's interraction with the house churches should not be wholly subsumed by narratives that are imported from outside the Chinese historical context. The execution of Xu Shuangfu is not first or only the execution of criminal justice or religious persecution, but is part of a longer struggle over whether the Communist Party will continue to retain control over the countryside.

Acknowledgment of this struggle does not provide clear ethical or pragmatic insights into who should "win." The "house churches" are not uniformly pious and humble apostles in search of spiritual redemption and the agents of Beijing are not uniformly brutal tyrrants bent on religious oppression. The great destructive potential of this conflict lies not in the moral character of its participants but in the systemic dynamic that makes the contest between Chinese state and local religion a zero-sum game. Decentralization and democratization of China's political institutions would help defuse the tensions that are bringing the house church movement to a political boil. The increasing violence transpiring at the interface between state and local religion suggests that the time for making these needed changes is running out.

Partition: No Magic Bullet

2006-11-25T09:05:00.000-05:00

As US leaders cast about for ideas on how to pull the Iraq conflict out of the jaws of catastrophe one notion that has become very vogue is the partition of Iraq. Leslie Gelb, Peter Galbraith, and Senator Joseph Biden have all asserted in various forums that the road out of the Iraq quagmire lies in some form of tripartite division. Though this idea is often dressed in euphemisms like "federalism" or "confederation" (Biden writes of giving each region "breathing space" to manage its own affairs), it invariably reduces to division of Iraq into three independent states: one Kurd, one Sunni, one Shi'ite. This notion is superficially appealing for obvious reasons. Iraq right now is a portrait of sectarian strife. What better resolution to the problem than allowing the "sects" to go their separate ways? Unfortunately, as seductive as such a notion appears while one focuses on the current moment, it evaporates like a desert mirage as soon as one contemplates the history of Iraq and the larger region.

The greatest problem with any partition scheme centers on the Kurds. Unlike the Arabic Iraqi splinter groups the Kurds genuinely do desire their own independent and sovereign nation. The Kurdish nation is a dream deferred, Kurds still nurse lingering bitterness over Allied promises of "self-determination" in the immediate aftermath of WWI that have never been made good. US leaders seem to take for granted that Iraq's Kurds will blithely accept any "federalist" plan that is dictated to them. Yet nationalist passions run deep, and any steps toward greater Kurdish independence could easily snowball into a secessionist movmement, a development that would surely portend both deepening civil war in Iraq and a widening regional conflict. The natural boundaries of Kurdistan are not confined to Iraqi territory, Kurds are also a majority in parts of Turkey, Iran, and Syria. Those nations would go to war to prevent the emergence of a sovereign Kurdistan so as to staunch secessionist aspirations among their own Kurds. Moreover, the grant of any degree of sovereignty to Iraqi Kurds would cause enormous anger and resentment throughout the Arab world. The reduction of an Arab state to create a Kurdish nation would undoubtedly be compared to the international community's failure to reduce the Jewish state to create an Arab nation in Palestine. This would play directly to the rhetoric of groups like Hamas and Al Qaeda and would undermine US efforts throughout the Middle East.

As problematic as the situation of the Kurds is for any "federalist" plan, the condition of Iraq's Sunni and Shi'ite Arabs is little better. Neither community possesses the requisite coherence for functional nationhood. The Sunni minority would be left in control of a rump territory alienated from its economic and social centers of gravity. As the Sunnis were for years the proprietors of the Iraqi state that community's chief assets are concentrated in the "alpha city" of Baghdad, which would surely not be incorporated into the new "Sunni republic" and is in any case highly ethnically mixed. Such a scheme would be akin to asking the outer boroughs of New York City to carry on without any economic or political ties to Manhattan.

Iraq's Shi'ites, on the other hand, appear quite cohesive while the US occupation casts into sharp relief their differences with the Sunnis. But the Shi'ite community is impacted by historical forces that subvert its potential for functional political autonomy in the long term. The collective identity of Iraqi Shi'ites resides in their participation in a confessional community that crosses national and ethnic boundaries. Though divisions between Iraqis and Iranians, Arabs and Persians, are minimized by the current conditions of sectarian strife, those distinctions have historically been sources of profound friction. Very soon after the establishment of an Iraqi "Shi'ite republic" conflict will break out between those figures whose roots in the Shi'ite clerical establishment incline them toward closer ties with Iran and those individuals whose deep-seated feelings of Arab nationalism make the prospect of "Persion domination" anathema. The ultimate result would be a "republic" at war with both the Sunni community and itself.

"Iraq" as it exists today is obviously a terrain riven by social and cultural forces that make any degree of political coherence highly problematic. This does not indicate, however, that further fragmentation would be constructive. In historical terms one could argue that Iraq has arrived at its current impasse through hyper-fragmentation rather than the reverse. In the immediate aftermath of WWI Arab leaders who lobbied for independent nationhood on Wilsonian principles of "self determination" envisioned the Arab Middle East divided into far fewer nations than currently exist. Current political divisions express the colonial ambitions of Britain and France more than any intrinsic national consciousness of the peoples of the Middle East. The larger independent "Mesopotamia" envisioned by Arab leaders in the early 20th century would have had a more even admixture of Sunni and Shi'ite citizens, and might have been less susceptible to sectarian suspicion and violence.

In any case US plans for further partitioning of Iraq are deeply ill advised. The Biden-Gelb Plan, for example, calls for Iraqi "federalism," but such principles are already written into the Iraqi constitution. What, therefore, is new in this plan? The answer lies in provision 1: "Form regional governments -- Kurd, Sunni and Shiite -- responsible for administering their own regions." In other words, because the national government established by the US occupation is not working, the US should establish regional governments to rule in its stead. But if the US could not succeed in setting up a functioning national government why should it have any better luck setting up regional governments? According to the plan the central government would remain in order to oversee "truly common interests...like oil production and revenue," but a government that lacks the power to maintain the peace can hardly be expected to have the power to enforce a division of oil revenues, especially when its authority has been further eroded through the creation of three regional sub-governments with which it is forced to compete. If there is dire strife now in the absence of three regional governments it will only grow worse once those governments exist and are set to squabbling with one-another over oil revenues. The Biden-Gelb plan is effectively a recipe for replacing one dysfunctional government with three even more deeply dysfunctional governments, thus trading a slow-burning civil conflict for an all-out interregional civil war.

The lesson the US should take from its experience in Iraq thus far is this: Iraqi society is impelled by forces over which the US has little or no control, thus US meddling will most likely do more harm than good. If the government the US has assisted in creating does not operate as well as we like the answer is not to subvert it by creating new institutions that diminish its authority. Iraq may well be moving in the direction of some kind of functional partition, but the US should not imagine that it can "catch that wave" by way of retaining some residual influence over Iraqi politics. History dictates that within its current territorial boundaries (which for geopolitical reasons are unlikely to change in the near future) Iraqi society requires some form of central authority to function at all. Having planted the seeds of a central government the US would be very unwise to "change horses in mid stream," if only because this would undermine the already slim chances of the Baghdad government upon which the hope of any positive outcome rides. Ultimately the US must step back and let the Iraqis negotiate a modus vivendi between and among themselves, rooted in institutions of their own design and creation. The resulting outcome may not be entirely pleasing to the people or leaders of the US and its allies, but it is certain to be more constructive than what will result from further attempts by the US to compel a resolution of its own devising.

Exit Stage Three: The Eighteen Month Plan for Withdrawal from Iraq

2006-11-16T14:08:00.000-05:00

This week senior military leaders such as General Anthony Zinni and General John Abizaid have warned against a hasty withdrawal from Iraq. One must respect their assessment of the "facts on the ground," but the danger of a hasty withdrawal does not argue for the wisdom of an extended American military presence in Iraq. Generals Zinni and Abizaid present sober cautions against changing the status quo but few new suggestions for moving the conflict forward. The blame for this lies with our civilian leaders, who persistently frame the problem in politically expedient and reductionist terms of "redeployment (i.e. withrdawal)" or "stay the course." Military officers can only give advice concerning the mission as it has been defined for them. The clock is ticking, however, on the American public's patience with the Iraq War. Voters will no longer make an open-ended commitment to a policy without a clear direction or goal.

It is long past time that American leaders lay a candid assessment of what is possible in Iraq before the public. Rhetoric about "victory" is both illogical and cripplingly counterproductive. Democrats and Republicans alike should confess to the American people that we no longer have (indeed we have never had) control over final outcomes in Iraq. We can not dictate what the institutions of the Iraqi government will ultimately look like or how power will be distributed socially, geographically, or ecomically. We can not produce an end to hostilities in Iraq or choose which of the current combatant forces will remain standing in the long run. America can not determine the destiny of Iraq, its best hope now is to disengage in a manner that gives the Iraqi government and people the best chance of achieving stability and progress.

To that end I propose the following eighteen month plan, divided into three six-month stages:

Stage 1- Full Armament of the Iraqi Security Forces

This is the most dangerous task that the Coalition must accomplish/facilitate, and entails the aspect of the conflict about which the US leadership has been most obtuse. US officials' constant intonation of the need to "train Iraqi forces" has become Orwellian in its ever-widening removal from practical reality. It is pristinely clear now that the problem with the Iraqi Army is not professional but political. No one can seriously believe that more training would make the Iraqi battalions that most recently refused orders to deploy to Baghdad more willing to accept such a mission. Every aspect about the IA's performance is rooted in its status as a dependent junior partner of the US military. The armed forces of virtually every sovereign nation on earth has its own air corps, artillery, and armor. No army can hope to survive on the modern battlefield without such elements, yet the IA remains a force composed almost entirely of infantry with light weapons.

This fact cries out for an explanation, yet I have never read of a US civilian or military leader being challenged on this issue in a public forum. Though the motives of press and academic observers of the conflict in this capacity are puzzling, the desire of US officials to avoid having to account for the strategic toothlessness of the IA is quite understandable. There are only two possible answers to such a query, neither of which are comfortable admissions for US leaders to make. The first is that the US has always intended to keep the IA in a state of dependency, so that responsibility for the strategic defense of Iraq would fall upon the US in perpetuity (this would explain the reluctance of the Bush regime to disavow maintaining permament US bases in Iraq). The other is that US officials have so little confidence in the competence and/or loyalty of Iraqi civilian and military leaders that they fear any move toward full armament of the Iraqi security forces would result in calamity.

The former possibility is a moot point. If the Bush administration had ever intended the US to assume the role of Iraq's permanent patron/defender that plan has become a complete impossibility. Iraq will remain lethal terrain for US soldiers for as long as they remain on Iraqi soil, a stable homeostasis like that of South Korea will never be reached. The operative motive for keeping the IA in a state of neutered limbo is thus a fear of how badly the process of full armament might go awry.

These fears are genuine. As the IA acquires heavy weapons many mishaps are possible. Fatal friendly fire clashes may occur between IA and Coalition forces. Infiltration of heavy weapons units by insurgents or militiamen could result in costly sabotage or the use of heavy weapons against Coalition troops or Iraqi government targets. As Iraqi military commanders achieve strategic independence they may "slip the leash" of civilian control and effect a military takeover. Worst of all, heavy weapons-armed IA units might square off against one-another in an all-out civil war.

As distressing as these concerns are, the full armament of the Iraqi security forces is an unavoidable necessity. In order to bolster the legitimacy of the Iraqi government and nurture civilian control the actual task of arming the security forces should be left in the hands of the Iraqi government itself. The Iraqi Defense Ministry should purchase weapons on its own budget-line, with funds borrowed from the US if necessary. Training new pilots, gunners, and technicians may have to be done outside of Iraq but it should be paid for by the Iraqi government and under Iraqi supervision. Iraqi intelligence services should perform security clearances on all trainees or skilled reinlistees from the Hussein-era armed forces.

Six months is a rush order. In that time weapons would have to be purchased, personnel recruited and trained, and further training exercises carried out in order to integrate the new heavy weapons units into the operational dynamic of already existing Iraqi security forces. Though these are complex tasks they could be provisionally accomplished in six months with a concerted US effort, in part because the Iraqis themselves will cooperate very enthusiastically. Moreover the armament program would not have to be entirely completed in six months. As the first heavy weapons units came through the "pipeline" stage two of the eighteen-month withdrawal plan could begin and continue as further units come on line. This is in fact advisable, as in order to minimize the temptation of internicine conflict it should be made clear to the Iraqi civilian and military leadership that this armament phase is step one in the final and inexorable withdrawal of US forces.

Stage Two- Internal Redeployment of US Forces

In the second six-month phase US forces should be withdrawn from Anbar Province and the Sunni Triangle, to be replaced by newly fully armed units of the Iraqi Army. Insurgent activity will continue and may intensify as US forces withdraw, but armed with helicopter gunships, tanks, and artillery IA units will be able to hold their own against the insurgents who, by all reports, display a bare minimum of military competency. If necessary small US teams could stay behind to help the IA in an advisory capacity, but the IA should ultimately assume 99% of the counterinsurgency effort in the Sunni Triangle.

The risks of this strategic shift are also high. The IA is predominantly Shi'ite, thus sectarian animosity might incite them to acts of brutality against the residents of the Sunni Triangle. There is the hope, though, that commitment to the mission in cities like Falluja and Ramadi might help professionalize and nationalize the IA. Brutality might produce as much resistance as it suppresses, forcing the IA to ameliorate its tactics and combine political suasion with military coersion. Moreover, Shi'ite IA soldiers struggling to pacify the Sunni Triangle might learn to construe their own self-interest differently than their more radical co-religionists in Baghdad and Basra. When IA soldiers perceive that atrocities committed by the Mahdi Army in Baghdad deepen support for the Sunni insurgency in Falluja their sympathy for the program of the Shi'ite militias will hopefully decrease sharply, thus creating pressure on the Iraqi civilian leadership to interdict and disarm the militias. While IA troops take over counterinsurgency duties in Falluja and Ramadi the US troops thus freed can be redeployed to mixed-ethnic areas like Baghdad and Diyala Province. The resulting increase in troop presence in those areas (combined with increased cooperation from Iraqi civilian authorities under pressure to support their troops in the field) would hopefully help restore order and diminish sectarian strife.

Stage Three-Phased Withdrawal of US Forces From Iraq

If the assumption of counterinsurgency duties by the IA in the Sunni Triangle has had the desired effect upon the working ethos of the IA, in six months the stage will be set for transferring all internal security duties in Iraq to the Iraqi armed forces themselves. US forces can thus begin to transfer their operational zones to Iraqi units of corresponding stength and skills. Some US units can remain deployed in the region (in Kuwait, say) to assist Iraqi forces as requested. As US troops depart Iraq, however, all bases and infrastructure built within Iraq for US use should be dismantled or turned over to the IA. Fighting is likely to be continuing as US troops depart and to go on for a long while after US forces have gone, but there is a chance that at the end of eighteen months the Iraqi military and government together will have the coherence and political will to win through to eventual peace and stability.

This plan is by no means assured of success, in fact it might well be an extreme long-shot gamble. The current situation offers no better alternative, however. In the end the odds of success or failure can not be set by the US, they will be determined entirely by the Iraqis. If the Iraqi people and their leaders can summon the will, the courage, the flexibility, and the political skills to weave together a new social contract from the current anarchy then no matter how quickly the US withdraws Iraq will eventually stabilize and prosper. If the Iraqis can not gather these energies then no matter how long the US stays the result will be chaos and bloodshed. Indeed, every day the US remains in Iraq now helps increase the odds of this darker outcome, as each such day depletes the legitimacy of the Iraqi government in many of its people's eyes and helps habituate Iraqi leaders to dependency upon US protection and assistance. An eighteen-month staged US withdrawal is not a perfect or a sure choice, but it the best choice for the people of America, Iraq, and the world at large.

Base Motives

2006-11-10T13:33:00.000-05:00

The Democratic electoral victory and the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld are both hopeful developments for the war effort in Iraq, the former because it signals clearly that the American public has lost patience with the current failed strategy and the latter because Mr. Rumsfeld was its principal architect and civilian custodian. This institutional sea change naturally raises the question of what can and should be done differently going forward. The departure of Rumsfeld is likely to be the most important development in the long and short term. With Robert Gates as the new Secretary of Defense the US General Staff will feel more confident to assert their prerogative in charting the course of the conflict, a trend that is sure to produce profound changes in tactics and overall strategy. As the resolution of the Iraq conflict requires political maneuvers as much as military, however, there are steps that the civilian leadership can take right away that will assist Coalition forces in their task. Moreover, they are steps in which both Defense and Congress may participate.

The clearest and easiest policy shift that would help move the conflict toward resolution is for the US government to forswear maintaining any permanent military bases in Iraq. Such a move would bleed both the Sunni insurgency and provocateurs such as Moqtada al-Sadr of a great deal of political capital. The clear wisdom of this policy is so evident that it cries out for an explanation as to why the Bush administration has not embraced it already. The only real risk it entails is to foster the impression that the US is capitulating to terrorist pressure, but given the benefits at stake such a consideration only argues for the policy to be adopted as soon as possible. The longer the US waits to renounce a permanent military presence in Iraq the more it courts political embarrassment for doing so, but no matter how high that liability gets ratcheted up the inescapable necessity of renunciation will remain.

Why, then, has the Bush administration tarried? The only ultimately logical answer is oil. If we take Bush regime pronouncements at face value this conflict has always been driven by a "big theory" strategy to foster US security in the extreme long term. One does not have to be entirely cynical about Bush assertions of "promoting democracy" to deduce that the regime closely associate the long-term security of the US with the assurance of access to oil reserves. Any argument about the true nature or moral status of such motives is now moot, as an enduring US military presence in Iraq is simply not a sustainable strategy if a positive resolution to the current conflict is ever to be found. One of the potential long-term benefits of the nascent shift in US "Iraq politics" is thus a corresponding shift away from allowing fossil fuel dependency to drive foreign policy and towards using domestic policy to decrease or eliminate dependency on fossil fuels.

The first step, however, is a renunciation of permanent US bases in Iraq, a policy that both Defense and Congress should move to insititutionalize immediately, preferably in concert. New construction on bases should be halted, and contingency plans laid for the disassembly of current facilities or their staged transfer to the Iraqi Army. Congress can help effect this strategy by writing it into law, preferably with the input of both Defense and Centcom. The wording of such legislation would have to be worked out carefully, as it should not place artificial constraints on the current military conduct of the conflict. A simple solution might be to place a deadline for dismantlement or transferal far in the future- five to ten years hence. Such legislation would do much to deflect criticism of the Coalition mission as "neocolonial" and sap insurgent propoganda of most of its vitality and appeal.

Right Where They Want Us

2006-11-03T00:13:00.000-05:00

As the midterm election draws nigh the Bush administration remains on message concerning the Iraq conflict: the US cannot withdraw troops before "we get the job done." Democratic rejoinders about the ill wisdom of "staying the course" are weak at best, as they might be taken to imply that the US should not "stay the course" because it cannot "get the job done." This latter prospect cannot be appealing to voters however persuaded they are of the shortcomings of the Bush Iraq policy, and Democrats would be better served by pointing out why Bush's "get the job done" injunction simply does not make sense.

Bush rhetoric immediately raises two questions for which there are no simple answers: 1)what job? 2)what can the US do that it has not already done to "get the job done?" Bush defenders might insist that there is a clear answer to question one: foster a free and a stable Iraq. But that still leaves unanswered what problems must be overcome to get there, and in that respect it must be acknowledged that if the US troops are in fact to proactively work toward that end they must accomplish three jobs: 1)end the violent ethnic cleansing campaign being waged by Shi'ite militias; 2)defeat the Sunni insurgency; 3)dislodge the foreign jihadists.

Once one acknowledges that US troops in Iraq are faced with three jobs, not one, it soon becomes clear that they will not be able to accomplish any of them by staying in Iraq. The first job of ending the Shi'ite ethnic cleansing campaign is manifestly beyond the strategic reach of US forces. This weeks' standoff between CentCom and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki makes clear a trend that has become increasingly evident these past months- the US military does not have the full cooperation of the Iraqi government in its anti-militia operations, an obstruction which will preclude success in those endeavors.

The second job of defeating the Sunni insurgency is also out of reach of US forces as they are currently deployed, a fact that US Centcom itself acknowledges. This is the crux of the "stand up, stand down" policy- only when the Iraqi Army and police reach full combat readiness, so goes the Bush strategy, will there be enough troops in place to defeat the insurgency. But as the length of the Iraq conflict draws even with that of the US participation in WWII the proposition that more time will yield more or better Iraqi soldiers grows increasingly absurd. By now a significant number of US soldiers patrolling the streets of Baghdad had never fired a weapon prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Unless an Iraqi for some reasons requires 3 or 4 times as much training as an American to be made into a soldier more time on the current tack is not going to create a significant change in the strategic trajectory of the counterinsurgency.

With regards to jobs 1 and 2 the plain fact is that they will only be accomplished by the withdrawal, not the continued deployment of US troops. Iraqi soldiers will only begin to make headway against the Sunni insurgency when they have true strategic and tactical autonomy. As long as the Iraqi Army remains dependent on the air, armor and artillery support of the US military the denizens of the Sunni triangle will continue to tacitly support the insurgents. Only when it has its own tanks, planes and guns will the Sunnis view the Iraqi Army as a serious and permanent force with which they are compelled to deal, and only then will a negotiated resolution to the Sunni insurgency be achievable.
In the same vein, the Iraqi government and army will never feel compelled to deal politically with the problem of the Shi'ite militias as long as the US military remains to shield them from the consequences of their neglect. Only as the US withdraws and Iraqi authorities are forced to weigh the competing priorities of defusing the Sunni insurgency and placating the Shi'ite militias against one-another will the Iraqi government and army move aggressively to disarm groups like the Mahdi Army.

In many American assessments of the Iraq war, job number 3 is the "clincher" concern that compels the US to keep its troops in Iraq despite all other reasons to withdraw. The foreign jihadists now based in Iraq are lethal enemies of the US, and it would be disastrous if they could ever develop a stable base in Iraq from which they could plan and launch 9/11-type attacks against US soil. As real as that concern is, it must be viewed against two factors:

1)Keeping US troops in Iraq to hunt down jihadists is simply not a tactically viable mission. US Centcom estimates that foreign jihadists make up 5-7% of the insurgency,thus asking our troops to hunt them in the vast expanse and dense society of the Sunni triangle and Baghdad is effectively sending them after a needle in a haystack. More concretely, we would be sending our soldiers to search for the needle with a flamethrower, and the "hay" in which it was hidden would be the Iraqi people. With so few boots on the ground and so little intelligence-gathering assets in place the only thing our troops could accomplish would be to further anger and alienate the Iraqis and thus make the very terrain in which they were operating more dangerous for themselves and more welcoming to the jihadists.

2)The history of Iraq shows that the ONLY condition that gives the jihadists any purchase in Iraq is the presence of US soldiers. As long as a critical mass of Iraqi society is angered at the US presence in Iraq the jihadists' suicidal malevolence makes them welcome allies of anti-Coalition forces. If and when the US pulls out, however, the jihadists' militancy for an Islamic state and their willingness to provoke foreign nations to further ideological ends will make their welcome in the relatively secular and nationalist society of Sunni Iraq expire very quickly.

Again, the plain fact is that the jihadists have us right where they want us. As long as US soldiers remain in Iraq the jihadists' toehold in Iraqi society remains firm, once the US leaves the Iraqis will pass them like a kidney stone. Bush critics who want to defuse the political efficacy of Bush's rhetoric must expose the rotten logical foundations upon which it rests. The one card the US has left to play to get anything like "the job" done in Iraq is a staged withdrawal, and the longer the US waits to begin that strategy the lower its prospects of success will sink.

The Autumns of Our Discontent: Falluja 2004 to Amarah 2006

2006-10-21T10:26:00.000-04:00

As of today US forces in Iraq have suffered 73 fatalities during the month of October, already double the low casualty count of 30 reached during March of this year. These numbers in and of themselves do not present a clear strategic picture. March was the nadir of a six-month declining trend in US casualties, and pro-Bush pundits asserted that this was attributable to technological and tactical innovations that were frustrating efforts of the insurgents to target US soldiers. It now seems clear that that analysis was not sound, and that the trend from October 2005-March 2006 was conditioned primarily by a policy of "hunkering down" in fortified bases rather than sending US soldiers out on frequent patrols. After the Samarra mosque bombing of February set off an accelerating wave of sectarian violence, that defensive posture was no longer sustainable, and as US troops have been increasingly exposed to Iraqi society casualty figures have correspondingly risen.

Absent specific information about the frequency of US patrols, casualty figures do not provide concrete evidence of whether the risks to US soldiers in Iraqi society at large are rising or holding steady, and default assumptions would have to favor the latter case. The US infantry soldier enjoys such an advantage in training, armor, firepower, and logistical support that under the most perilous circumstances s/he is very difficult to kill. Though October's casualty figures are alarmingly high, they would have to double by the end of the month to reach the high casualty figures for April and November of 2004, the months when US forces launched frontal assaults on insurgent strongholds in Falluja. Unless Iraqi insurgents again achieve the same degree of territorial, social and political purchase acquired in Falluja 2004, they are unlikely to inflict the same kinds of high losses upon the US military as were suffered in the reduction of that defensive position.

A look at Falluja today explains why that is unlikely. Though the city was garrisoned by 3000 US soldiers in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 siege, today it is garrisoned mainly by Iraqi Army and Police, with only a "quick reaction force" of 300 Marines and a few dozen US reservists embedded as "military transition teams" among the battalions of the Iraqi Army garrison. Michael Fumento spent time observing joint US-Iraqi operations in Falluja in May 2006. He acknowledges that there are problems of tactical coordination between the Marines and their Iraqi Army partners- he describes one case of mistaken identity which almost ended with the Marines calling in a helicopter strike on IA soldiers. On the other hand, he speaks optimistically of the high morale of the IA forces- he reports one instance in which an IA patrol accompanied by only 3 US Marine advisors held off 50-80 insurgents until a Marine quick reaction team showed up to save the day with helicopter support.

Taken together, these incidents paint a picture of neither victory nor defeat for US forces in Falluja, but indefinite stalemate. As long as the Iraqi Army can be relied upon to cohere and patrol the city precincts (the units in question are mainly Shi'ite, so there is little prospect of them being infiltrated by/sympathizign with the local Sunni insurgents) the insurgents will not have the breathing space to consolidate control over the city's instititutions and infrastructure as they did in 2004. However, as long as the insurgents can summon the human resources to launch coordinated attacks of 50-80 combatants the IA will not be able to safely patrol the city without the backup of the Marine quick reaction force.

As the role of helicopters in both of Fumento's anecdotes conveys, in 21st century warfare infantry soldiers are in effect armed forward observers. The real combat power of a modern infantry unit resides in its ability to direct airpower, armor, or artillery to battlefield targets. Fumento reports that IA patrols can call in air support, but the coordination problems he describes suggest that only the Marines must have quick and unobstructed access to air power. Even if and when IA forces do successfully call for air cover, it is of course US planes or helicopters that respond. The IA has not been given heavy weapons of any kind, the Iraqi soldiers and officers Fumento spoke to lamented that they have not even been issued heavy machine guns for tactical use.

This is a situation that could persist indefinitely. The Bush White House and US Centcom is presumably hoping that civil society in Falluja will stabilize and state control will regenerate, displacing the resources of the insurgency. This is not a realistic expectation, however. As long as the IA is seen to be dependent on US support the residents of Falluja have no reason to totally withhold support from the insurgents. Fallujans have watched the US enter and leave their city several times, they have been conditioned to expect that the US will eventually depart. Were they to do so at a time when the IA remains dependent upon their fire support the insurgents might well regain control of the city, thus a Fallujan who is hedging his/her bets will continue to give at least passive support to the insurgency against the day when they potentially return to power.

The prospect for the US mission in Iraq for the near future thus might be read this way: in cities like Falluja a stalemate will hold, while in Baghdad and its environs civil unrest will force chronic exposure of US soldiers to mortal danger. If those circumstances could be counted upon to continue, US casualties would not be likely to again drop to the low level of this March, but nor would they be likely to rise again to the high levels of April and November 2004. Unfortunately, recent developments do not inspire confidence that current conditions will hold steady.

On Friday the Mahdi Army launched a (seemingly) abortive attempt to take over the city of Amarrah in southeastern Iraq. Though the Maliki government now claims that the situation has stabilized, even the prospect of such a takeover raises a troubling specter. Though the joint IA-US investment of cities in the Sunni triangle like Falluja have staved off the reemergence of an insurgent stronghold as had to be reduced in 2004, Amarah holds out the possibility that an analogous Shi'ite stronghold could be developed outside of the Sunni triangle, forcing the Coalition back to a strategy of frontal urban assault that would cause new spikes in ground force mortality. Moreover, the "hold" and "build" phases of those campaigns would present problems that have as yet not encumbered operations in the Sunni triangle. As IA forces are disproportionately Shi'ite, in a Shi'ite city such as Amarah IA units might not cooperate with Coaltion troops in the same kind of joint operational dynamic that currently prevails in Falluja. If Amarah is the thin edge of an advancing wedge the strategic situation of US forces in Iraq may be about to degrade drastically.

What is the best course of action with which to address this situation? Though it may seem counterintuitive, staged US withdrawal is still the best current option from the perspectives of both the US and the Iraqi people. As long as IA forces in the Sunni triangle remain dependent upon US support teams they will not truly be a national army, as they will not identify wholly with their mission or remain thoroughly invested in its success. However, if the IA were given complete control and responsibility for restoring order in cities like Falluja and Ramadi it would quickly be compelled to take a national perspective. If the IA were alone in policing Falluja they would realize that inflammatory behavior on the part of their Shi'ite coreligionists in other parts of Iraq cost them in local animosity and bloodshed in Falluja. Commitment to their strategic goal in the Sunni Triangle would bleed them of sympathy for provocateur forces like that of the Mahdi Army in Amarah.

The only force that has any hope of restoring unity and order to Iraq is the Iraqi government and the Iraqi Army. The Defense Ministry of the Iraqi government must be given true budgetary and strategic autonomy. They must be allowed to control their own fiscal resources and purchase the heavy weapons that will give the IA true combat superiority over insurgents in the Sunni triangle. Once that is done the US can withdraw completely from the Sunni triangle and focus on peacekeeping duties in Baghdad, Kirkuk, and other heavily mixed ethnic areas. Over the course of the next year US forces could then draw down throughout Iraq and transfer law-and-order duties to the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police. This is by no means a foolproof strategy- its success depends entirely on the commitment of Iraqi leaders to the genuine professionalization of the Iraqi security forces and the development of an authentically national policy in government affairs. Neither of those things might come to pass, but there is no alternative strategy that the US may employ that can accomplish what the Iraqis can not.

Two Dissidents

2006-10-10T22:51:00.000-04:00

Last week saw the murder and imprisonment, respectively, of two dissidents on opposite sides of the line that is becoming increasingly reified in current discourse, that between "Islam" and "the West." The first was Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist and outspoken critic of the war in Chechnya, shot dead in her apartment over the weekend. The second was Ayatollah Mohammed Kazemeini Boroujerdi, who was arrested in Tehran on Sunday for his opposition to clerical rule in Iran.

Ms. Politkovskaya's reporting revealed that the treatment the Putin regime dealt the Chechen people rose to and surpassed the level of cruelty visited upon the Kurds by Saddam Hussein. The fact that Saddam Hussein sits in jail while Vladimir Putin remains at the helm of one of the G8 can hardly create any other impression except that crimes against Muslims will be held to account only if they are committed by other Muslims. The only redemption for "the West" on this score was provided by the outspoken courage of Ms. Politkovskaya herself, in that Saddam Hussein let no one of her ilk survive in his Iraq. Now she has paid for that courage with her life, and the thin thread by which any conceivable moral superiority of "the West" hung in this instance has snapped.

Ayatollah Boroujerdi provides a counter-example of the crimes of "Islam," but one that confounds the usual parameters within which that boogeyman is perceived. Here is an oppressed critic of the rightly decried Tehran regime, but rather than being an apostle of "modern rationalism" or "enlightened secularism" he speaks from the heart of Islam itself. Though Boroujerdi has not yet paid the ultimate price for his stance and his clerical rank perhaps affords him a degree of protection Ms. Politkovskaya did not enjoy, still his criticism took a similar kind of courage. His reasons for opposing clerical rule are no doubt complex, but the fact that they are rooted more in Koran and Hadith than in Locke and Rousseau does not make them any less principled.

What then, may we learn from Politkovskaya and Borourjerdi? Whatever else may be true of "Islam" and "the West" they are alike in the capacity to oppress or destroy those who take a principled stand against values that have strong institutional roots. Pope Benedict XVI's recent call for a "great dialogue of cultures" rooted in rationalism and tolerance was no doubt a message for the age. It will only serve a constructive purpose, however, if all people of conscience understand that no culture exercises a monopoly on intolerance or irrationality; these are universal human potentials that find expression wherever abstract principles or naked self-interest are put before the sanctity of human life. In this light, "the West" and "Islam" are best abandoned as categories that lack any real utility in a genuinely productive "great dialogue of cultures."

A Tale of Two Cities

2006-09-30T13:36:00.000-04:00

Foreign occupying soldiers fire on a crowd of unarmed civilians, killing five. The soldiers are put on trial and a talented local lawyer steps forward to defend the men who had killed his compatriots. With skill and effort he wins acquittal for most of the accused. Twenty-seven years later he becomes the second president of his country.

The lawyer, of course, was John Adams, whose political career was launched in part by his defense of the perpetrators of the Boston Massacre in 1770. Later that same year he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives and joined the Sons of Liberty. The contrast between those events and the legal drama playing out in Baghdad today could not be more stark. Some of the lawyers and judges involved in the trial of Saddam Hussein may someday rise to positions of great prominence in Iraq, but for now they must preoccupy themselves with a day-to-day struggle to survive. Three of the lawyers defending Hussein have already been killed.

The contrast between Boston 1770 and Baghdad 2006 exemplifies the profound systemic problems that militate against the formation of a stable, much less a democratic, order in Iraq. That John Adams was able to continue breathing after successfully defending the Boston Massacre culprits was not because colonial America lacked class, ethnic, gender, racial, or sectarian tension. Rather, it was because a long and sometimes violent complex of negotiations had created a cultural and institutional framework imbued with enough legitimacy to stave off anarchy even during times of revolutionary change. Iraqi society does not enjoy the benefit of any such history, it is an arbitrarily and inorganically formed community that has never come to terms with the destructive centrifugal forces that tear at its social fabric. This was true long before the Coalition invasion of 2003 and should have been the central guiding fact of US foreign policy toward Iraq.

Much ink has been spilled on the mistakes made by the Bush administration during the occupation of Iraq- too few troops were deployed, too little administrative talent was recruited, the UN was alienated, the Iraqi army disbanded, the nascent insurgency ignored, corrupt and inefficient contractors employed, strange laissez-faire economic policies pursued, etc. etc. ad infinitum. Yet however true this litany of mistakes may be, it should not create the false impression that "had things been done differently" this policy would have been a success. Had all the mistakes since 2003 been averted, had the US pursued the optimal policy within its power to execute, the Iraq mission would still most likely have gone awry. No invasion of Iraq could have succeeded without the Iraqis themselves cooperating in a revolution to form a newly stable and functional state, and counting on that contingency right now was like counting on snow in July.

This assertion is neither an indictment of the Iraqi people nor an impeachment of their desire to be free. As Michael Goldfarb's book, Ahmad's War, Ahmad's Peace: Surviving Under Saddam, Dying in the New Iraq demonstrates, Iraq does not lack its own Adamses or Jeffersons, yet in the current conditions of anarchy and strife no such person can give free rein to their talent and integrity and hope to survive. These conditions are not an index of the moral weakness of the Iraqi people, they are a product of historical circumstance. As rapidly and profoundly as John Adams' Boston was about to change circa 1770, it was a society that rested on foundations laid by centuries of revolution in the British metropole and adaptation on the American continent. Even after the movement of which Adams was a part won through to stability, the system he helped found was riven by violent conflicts and destined to experience cataclysmic schism and bloodshed.

The Iraqi revolution that the Bush administration imagined it could custodian was no less profound than that of 18th century America, yet it was attempted in a society that had none of the social and institutional assets that had made the latter revolution possible. The delusion that American military power could induce revolution was the gravest and most inexcusable mistake of the Bush White House, it expressed a scorn for the arduousness with which democratic institutions are established and a paternalistic disregard for the complex and dynamic humanity of the Iraqi people themselves.

As we run up to the mid term elections here in the US, the Bush White House has taken its usual offensive tack in addressing the issues that will register at the polls. Iraq weighs heavily on voters' minds, and President Bush has been relentless in broadcasting the message that Iraq is part of the "great ideological conflict of our time." This is simply not true. Great ecumenical conflicts are of little significance to the Iraqi people at this time, theirs now is a struggle to negotiate, under extremely difficult circumstances, a new and stable social contract between the diverse conflicting groups that are compelled to live together in Iraq. That was never a struggle over which the US could exercise much control or to which it could be much assistance. Though the negligence of the Bush regime has nullified what little influenced the US ever possessed in the evolution of Iraqi politics, even had they not done so the mission of the Coalition would most likely have proven impossible. The shame of the Bush regime's failing to realize this plain fact before lives were lost is now compounded by their insistence on feeding the American public self-interested rhetoric instead of pragmatic policy.

Puzzling Out Hezbollah

2006-09-24T11:57:00.000-04:00

Despite the fact that fighting between it and Israel has, for the moment, ceased, Hezbollah and its media-savvy leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah continue to make headlines. Nasrallah spoke to thousands of supporters on Friday in Beirut, declaring that Hezbollah will not disarm and that the government of Lebanon does not faithfully serve the Lebanese people. This kind of rhetoric alarms many concerned for peace in the Middle East, leading many to lump Hezbollah in among other forces pursuing a militant agenda in the region. At his UN speech this week George W. Bush cited Hezbollah as one example of the general threat against which the civilized world must unite in the "War on Terror." Others are prone to characterizing Hezbollah as a proxy of Iran.

None of these analyses completely account for the historical conditions that shape Hezbollah and inform its leaders' strategic choices. Hezbollah has been, since the days of the Lebanese civil war in the 1980's, a major force in Lebanese politics. As such it is, for good or ill, a major player in the geopolitics of the entire Middle East. If world governments are to build an effective policy for interacting with Hezbollah they must adopt an informed and pragmatic understanding of Hezbollah as a movement and resist reductionist, one-dimensional conceptions.

As Shi'a Muslims Hezbollah's affinity for Iran is predictable. Shi'a Islam is founded on an enduring ambition to fully integrate the practice and doctrine of divinely ordained religion with the reigning institutions of state. Where Sunnis accept a policy of "render unto Caesar," Shi'ites insist that Caesar and the Prophet must be combined. In this sense the Iranian Revolution presents a compellingly appealing model for all Shi'a communities throughout the modern world. Not only is Iran the country in which Shi'a political control has been consolidated to the greatest extent in history, it presents an enduring model of how traditional Shi'a religious institutions may be integrated with (and control) the working organs of the modern nation state.

It is thus natural for Shi'ites seeking to participate collectively in modern politics to look to Iran as a model. Even so, the modular appeal of Iran does not nullify or replace the domestic impulses that drive Shi'ites into the political arena of their home states in the first place. Anyone insisting that the impetus of an Iranian-modeled group in Lebanon resides not in Tyre or Byblos but in Tehran must explain why we do not find Hezbollah-like movements in every nation with a significant Shi'a population. Bahrain is the prime example of this conundrum. Bahrain has only 489,000 Shi'ites as opposed to Lebanon's 850,000. Bahrain's Shi'ites, however, make up a 70% majority of that small Gulf State. Moreover, its geographic proximity to Iran gives Tehran easier access to Bahrain than Lebanon. Yet Bahrain's Shi'ites live peacefully under the constitutional rule of a Sunni monarch. Bahrain's main Shi'a political party, Al Wefaq, does not militate for a clerical theocracy but participates in parliamentary politics alongside Sunnis, nationalists, and Maoists.

If Iran's influence were sufficient to create a Hezbollah-like group in every Shi'a community Bahrain and many other countries would be experiencing something akin to what now transpires in Lebanon. The only other majority Shi'ite Arab nation, Iraq, is arguably the single nation in which the Iranian model has exerted the most influence, surpassing even that found in Lebanon. Yet despite sharing a border with Iran its Iranian-inspired political movements have neither been able to claim a majority hold over the loyalties of Iraq's Shi'ites or the explicit sanction of Iraq's most senior Shi'a cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Thus Hezbollah's power and influence within the Lebanese Shi'a community is as much or more the product of domestic Lebanese social and political forces as the external influence of Tehran. Hezbollah formed in the context of the Hobbesian "all against all" anarchic civil conflict into which Lebanon descended in the 1980's, in which each of Lebanon's ethnic constituencies felt compelled to form its own political/military organization as a matter of survival. It was given further impetus and coherence by the Israeli decade+ occupation of southern Lebanon which is home to the majority of Lebanon's Shi'ites. All of Hezbollah's actions, up to the present day, must be understood in that context.

One might ask how this serves to illumine Hezbollah's motives in the most recent conflict. The incursion into Israel and the seizure of two Israeli reservists in immitation of Hamas' earlier raid may strike many outside the Middle East as gratuitously belligerent. Why would Hezbollah undertake such a step if they were not acting under orders of Tehran? What other than a grand conspiratorial urge to destroy Israel could make Hezbollah join in the provocations of Hamas, a group with which it shares few common sympathies outside of anti-Zionist rage?

As superficially persuasive as such questions may be, they overlook certain hard pragmatic realities. Whatever appeal an attack against Israel might have had it came with very grave risks. Bravado aside, the recent round of fighting cost Hezbollah dearly in human and material resources, a reality of which they were well aware even as they committed to war. Tehran may have had motive to distract the world from its nuclear ambitions (though if this was the plan its effect was obviously short-lived), but however much Tehran may have desired a provocation it was always Hezbollah that was going to bleed for it. No matter how much financing or material assistance it receives from Tehran, Hezbollah would not have attacked Israel if they had not felt it was in their immediate interests.

This leads naturally to the question of what those interests were. In the wake of Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon the political field in that country has returned to a fluid state fraught with both potential and peril. Lebanon's Shi'ites might well wonder whether Lebanon's newly independent political institutions can be established on an enduring and stable footing or whether the country will descend once again into interethnic violence. What about this situation would tempt Hezbollah's leaders to attack Israel? Hezbollah views the Israeli Defense Forces as both a direct enemy of itself and an ally of its domestic opponents. Given the newly fluid state of Lebanese politics all political players in Lebanon are highly sensitive to any change in the strategic balance of power between and among them. The withdrawal of Syria alienates Hezbollah from its principal ally in any interethnic conflict. Were that to be combined with an increase of Israeli involvement in Lebanese politics/military affairs Hezbollah might very likely view that as a "doomsday scenario" threatening its (and its constituent Shi'a community's)survival.

If Hezbollah fears increased Israeli involvement in Lebanon, why would it provoke an Israeli attack? The answer lies in the motives of the group Hezbollah was imitating- the military wing of Hamas in Gaza. As I have written in earlier posts, Hamas hoped through its provocation to put the brakes on the Israeli Kadima party's policy of unilateral withdrawal from the occupied territory. Hamas hopes to derail unilateral disengagement because any two-state solution will preclude Palestinian extremists' dream of one day destroying Israel and turning all of Israel-Palestine into an Arab state. Hezbollah likewise fears a two-state solution, not out of sympathy with the Palestinian cause, but because the withdrawal of the Israeli Army from the occupied territories will free up more of Israel's military and economic resources for use in Lebanon. Hezbollah did not attack Israel on the orders of Iran or as a proxy attack on the U.S., it did so to help turn Israeli public opinion against disengagement and weaken Ehud Olmert's mandate to carry through the policies of Ariel Sharon. Whatever the costs of Hezbollah's attacks it must be acknowledged that in this regard they (and Hamas) achieved their strategic obective- plans for withdrawal from the West Bank are on indefinite hold and Ehud Olmert's governing coalition is in political trouble.

Recognizing Hezbollah's intrinsic domestic power-base and agenda compels the realization that there is no easy solution to the challenge Hezbollah poses to Middle East peace. However inflamatory its actions may have been, demonizing Hezbollah and adopting a purely military posture in confronting it is a recipe for failure. More than a decade of Israeli occupation in Hezbollah's heartland was not sufficient to root it out or nullify it as a political force, thus no military solution will ever effectively rid Israel or anyone else of Hezbollah's threat. Embracing superheated rhetoric which labels Hezbollah a pawn of Iran or an enemy in the "War on Terror" abandons the effective political tools that might be used to integrate the group into a stable regional political dynamic. Hezbollah must be disarmed, but that will only happen if the world comes together in good faith to help build strong, stable, and democratic central institutions in Lebanon as a whole. Such a process will require many years and a virtually limitless commitment of diplomatic effort, money, and human and material resources. Only when all ethnic groups in Lebanon feel that they have a share in their nation's collective destiny and share equally in the protection and stewardship of their government will Hezbollah no longer pose a threat to the regional peace.

The "Hail Mary" Oil Spot vs. the Praise Allah Oil Spot

2006-09-16T12:50:00.000-04:00

The New York Times reports today that the Iraqi government under Nuri al-Maliki is planning to construct a trench cordon around Baghdad to restrict traffic in and out of the city. This would seem to indicate that the Coalition command (who presumably had a hand in these plans) has finally decided to implement something akin to Andrew Krepinevich's proposed "Oil Spot Strategy." On the one hand this new plan is hopeful news, as it demonstrates that both the Iraqi government and the Coalition command are taking proactive steps to stem the rising tide of chaos in Iraq. On the other hand this strategy could all too easily amount to "too little too late."

Establishing order in Baghdad and allowing it to "seep outward" toward the rest of the country is the last best hope for the current Iraqi government. Though Krepenivech deserves credit for articulating this strategy, its current implementation does underscore some of the shortcomings in his original formulation (and, to be fair to Krepenivech, in the original strategic planning of the Bush White House). If building such a cordon around Baghdad now is such a good idea one must naturally ask why it was not done three years ago. The answer, of course, is that there were not enough soldiers then to build and maintain such a cordon. This is the most unrealistic promise made in Krepenivich's strategic manifesto- that an "oil spot" strategy could employ fewer rather than more troops to prosecute an effective counterinsurgency.

In this regard the plan to build a Baghdad "Oil Spot" does offer a glimmer of hope for the Iraqi government. The number of Coalition troops in Iraq has not significantly increased (though it is notable that more troops have been deployed to Baghdad itself in the face of the current crisis), thus the commitment to this new plan hopefully evinces that the Iraqi Armed Forces have increased in size and combat readiness to make such a strategy practicable.

As optimistic a trend as that may be, any objective analysis must acknowledge that the current situation is very grave, and that the prospects for success are not high. The strategic task that must be accomplished by the planned "oil spot" cordon is vastly more complicated than the implementation of such a strategy would have been three years ago. Though Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead, his legacy lives on in the horrific sectarian violence sparked by the Samarra mosque bombing in February. Before the Samarra bombing the only effective task of an "oil spot" cordon around Baghdad would have been to stop Sunni insurgent provocateurs from launching terror attacks within the city limits.

Now that the genii of sectarian violence is already out of the bottle, however, simply keeping insurgent terrorists out of Baghdad will not be enough to restore order. Inside the cordon thrown up around Baghdad someone (either the Iraqi Armed Forces or the Coalition) will have to move very aggressively against the Shi'ite militias that are on the rampage against Sunni civilians. The currently planned "oil spot strategy" will in fact have to contend with a countervailing "oil spot" strategy, one being violently carried on even now by groups like SCIRI and the Mahdi Army. The indiscriminate mass-killing of Sunni civilians by Shi'ite militias can only have one aim- to drive Sunnis out of Baghdad and transform it into a Shi'ite stronghold. As Baghdad is indisputably the economic, demographic, and political center of any Iraqi state, ethnically cleansing Baghdad is the first logical step in any attempt to bring the Iraqi government uncontestably under Shi'ite (clerical) control. Even as the Iraqi government attempts to turn Baghdad into an "oil spot" of stability from which effective control over the nation can be extended, radical Shi'ite groups are trying to make Baghdad an "oil spot" from which a new Shi'ite sectarian order can be imposed on the nation as a whole.

Establishing a security cordon around Baghdad will help stem the tide of Shi'ite radicalism by virtue of reducing the incidence of insurgent terror attacks that enrage Shi'ites and drive them into the radical camp. The Iraqi Armed Forces can most likely be relied upon in that regard, as they are composed principally of Shi'ites and have little reason to sympathize with the goals of the Sunni insurgency. Such a campaign will not be enough to quell the radical Shi'ite "oil spot" campaign, however. The SCIRI militias and Mahdi Army must be disarmed, and that task will require a sustained campaign that will undoubtedly necessitate recourse to force of arms. Toward that end the Iraqi Armed Forces are far less reliable, as their sympathy for their coreligionists (combined with their own concern for self-preservation) may trump their loyalty to the nascent Iraqi government. Even if they could theoretically be relied upon, it will take an enormous degree of courage and political will for Nuri al-Maliki and his governing partners to superintend such a potentially violent campaign against their own political allies. Perhaps they secretly plan to rely on Coalition forces to execute the "internal" phase of this oil spot campaign. If this is the case, it remains an open question whether the Coalition can restore order in Baghdad without the logistical, political, and intelligence support of the Maliki government (or whether the Maliki government will make such resources available to the Coalition in sufficient supply).

There are some good signs that the Maliki government is sincere in its desire to carry through on this new plan and restore order both in Baghdad and Iraq at large. The recent meeting between Maliki and Ahmedenijad of Iran may be counted among such signs. Any campaign to rein in Shi'ite radicalism stands a much better chance if political pressure can be brought to bear on SCIRI and the Mahdi Army from Tehran even as IAF and/or Coalition forces apply military heat on the ground in Baghdad. Still, one must acknowledge that the task is very difficult and the stakes are very high. As well advised and proactive as this Baghdad cordon plan may be, it must be judged the last best hope of the Maliki government. If this new strategy fails to establish order in the capital, it is difficult to see how the Maliki government can preserve any structural coherence in the long term, or how Iraq can avoid a slide into unbridled anarchy.

China, North Korea, and the US

2006-07-06T14:54:00.000-04:00

A new sobriquet for North Korea could be drawn from an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel: The Land that Time Forgot. Everywhere else the Cold War is a fading memory. Free market economics are rapidly transforming Russia, China, Eastern Europe, and Vietnam. Even Fidel Castro's Cuba has made tentative accomodations with the globalized world. North Korea, however, remains suspended in an ideological deep freeze. The preternatural stasis of the regime has even produced the world's first Communist dynasty, as the "Great Leader" was succeeded by the "Dear Leader" with hardly a pause for breath.

This stagnation is not only embodied in the workings of North Korea's government and economy, however, but extends to the geopolitics of the entire Korean Penninsula. In most of the world the strategic barriers and defensive protocols of the Cold War have disintegrated. Germany is reunited. The "iron" and "bamboo" curtains are fallen. A U.S. embassy is operating in Hanoi. Yet the Demilitarized Zone remains a no-man's land so full of mines it may never be fit for human traffic or habitation. This state of affairs is so taken for granted now that one rarely sees a commentator ask "why?" Why have the chilled relationships of the Cold War warmed everywhere else but on the Korean Penninsula? What is keeping North Korea on ice?

Isolation is obviously the key to this conundrum. Pyongyang has been able to keep its political and economic system operating on strictly Stalinist principles because it has avoided the pitfalls of commerce and communication which so eroded the ideological purity of other Communist systems. But "isolation" itself is not a satisfactory answer, for it begs the further question of what has enabled the North to remain so isolated. Why has Pyongyang resisted the globalizing tide that has penetrated Moscow, Beijing, and even Havana?

To begin approaching this question one must merely look at a map. North Korea has only two borders over which any threat to its isolation might approach. The DMZ to the south is obviously a non-porous frontier. Less obvious, however, is why North Korea's frontier with China would not be a worrisome source of subversive influences.

Beijing has not, of course, embraced democracy. But it has opened its arm to free-market commerce and a general depoliticization of the economic realm. I remember when the most prominent billboards one noticed bicycling down Changan Boulevard proclaimed the supremacy of "Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought." Now as one passes those same billboards in a Toyota or BMW one sees ads for French facial cream or Irish beer. Why have the winds blowing from Beijing not led to a thaw in the rigidly Stalinist posture of Pyongyang?

North Korea remains heavily dependent on economic aid coming across the Chinese frontier, yet none of it has come with the attached condition that Pyongyang conform to Beijing's reformist line. This fact may not be dismissed as insignificant, as ideological differences have been a source of friction between Beijing and its Communist neighbors in the past. Moreover, tolerance of Pyongyang's anti-reform stance must have cost reformist leaders in Beijing politically. Allowing a client state to remain ideologically "pure" would provide fodder to those in the Chinese Communist Party who opposed free-market reform.

Given these potential costs, therefore, Beijing must have tolerated North Korean puritanism out of perceived self-interest. Why would Beijing desire stasis in Pyongyang? Because stasis is the only condition in which North Korea may persist as a single-party state. The Korean Communist Party can only maintain its authority through draconian control of communication and commerce, any degree of "Pyongyang Spring" would most likely lead to the implosion of the North Korean state and its absorption within the liberal democracy of South Korea (a la Germany 1990). This is a scenario Beijing fears far more urgently than any retrogressive chill coming from Pyongyang. The democraticization of North Korea following on the heels of full-sufferage elections in Taiwan would send shock waves through the PRC that could threaten the unravelling of Beijing's single-party autocracy. It is for this reason first and foremost that Beijing abets and encourages North Korea's policy of isolation and stagnation.

These realities cast a harsh light on recent US policies on the Korean Penninsula. Since 1993 Washington has labored fruitlessly to pressure Pyongyang into surrendering its nuclear program. A central pillar of that policy has been reliance on the assistance of Beijing. Such an expectation is founded on a confusion of both Beijing's motives and practical influence, however. Beijing might well desire that Pyongyang relinquish its nuclear arsenal, but in certain respects the PRC is less equipped to exert pressure on North Korea than the US, as Beijing's own self-preservation is intertwined with Pyongyang's survival. Beijing will never threaten Pyongyang with genuinely dire sanctions (the refusal of food aid, for example) for fear that such a move would cause its fragile client state to collapse.

Herein lies the basic flaw of US policy toward North Korea. An unremitting focus on North Korea's nuclear weaponry will never produce desired results, as any sanctions which Washington is able or Beijing is willing to apply will only deepen the isolation upon which the KCP thrives. Thus every method the US has applied thus far to break the nuclear standoff in Korea has only nurtured the conditions that cause it to persist.

The only tactic that can move Pyongyang is one that forces a crack in its self-sustaining isolation. Since Beijing will never be anything but complicit in maintaining the North's antiseptic cordon, the sunlight of a "Pyongyang Spring" can only come from one direction- south. Maintenance of a hostile posture of "regime change" has made Washington Beijing's unwitting accomplice in abetting North Korea's stagnation. If the US would drop "regime change" in favor of a policy of "reconciliation and reunification" on the Korean Penninsula as a whole, such a move would rock both Pyongyang and Beijing back on their heels.

If the President or the Congress (or both) announced the US' intention to pursue negotiations toward the peaceful, bilateral reunification of Korea the strategic deadlock would be broken. The KCP, trapped by its own history and rhetoric, could not reject such overtures absolutely. The US and South Korea could make Northern disarmament a precondition of discrete aspects of reconciliation. Though both Beijing and Pyongyang would attempt in ways both subtle and overt to stonewall such a process, in the long run neither regime would likely succeed in preventing at least some commerce and communication from opening up across the DMZ, any amount of which would be radically destabilizing to Pyongyang.

Beijing would no doubt fear the long-term consequences of such a development, but diplomatic propriety would preclude the CCP from acting too aggressively to interdict it. It is thus in the power of US leaders to break the deadlock on the Korean Penninsula with a modicum of ingenuity, skill, and flexibility. First and foremost, however, they must recognize that the same motives prevailing in Washington are in not force in Beijing.

The Omen

2006-06-27T09:47:00.000-04:00

The kidnapping of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit on Sunday is dire news to anyone concerned about the prospects of peace in Israel-Palestine. My response to this affair is conditioned by my personal convictions as both a Jew and a Zionist. On the one hand and foremost, I hope fervently that Shalit is unharmed and will be returned safely to his family. Beyond this, however, I hope that Israeli and American leaders will draw the right lessons from this perilous moment moving forward. Sunday's attack is undeniably a gratuitous provocation, but it is nonetheless an omen of what will surely come if Israel continues down the path of unilateralism staked out by Ariel Sharon.

Israeli officials assert that the seizure of an Israeli military hostage was one of the primary aims of Sunday's raid, the ultimate goal being to negotiate for the release of Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel. The former part of this analysis makes sense- the effort expended and risk undertaken by the perpetrators of the raid indicate that the seizure of Shalit was not an arbitrary whim. The latter assertion, however, does not stand up to scrutiny. Their refusal to release any information that would confirm Shalit's status casts suspicion on the seriousness with which his captors approach potential negotiations. Moreover, the prospects of negotiation are slim at best, while an Israeli military incursion into Gaza is a virtual certainty as a result of Sunday's raid. Unless the militants are supremely daft they must understand these odds, thus in all likelihood it was not the extremely tenuous negotiations but the all-but-definite Israeli military incursion that was the true object of Sunday's raid.

Why would Palestinian militants want to provoke an Israeli military incursion into Gaza? Because it is the only way to undermine Kadima's strategy of unilateral disengagement. The perpetrators of Sunday's raid are not merely anti-Semites and anti-Zionists, they are opposed in principle to any successful two-state resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Polls show that most Paletinians are opposed to Kadima's unilateralist policy because they feel it will ultimately establish boundaries between Israel and Palestine that are unfair. Even so, if pressed they would most likely admit that a Palestinian state with abridged borders is preferrable to no Palestinian state at all. The militants who carried out Sunday's raid would not agree with this majority consensus, however.

For Sunday's attackers anything short of a Palestinian state that occupies all of Israel-Palestine is an unconditional defeat. They would thus prefer a situation in which the Israeli army occupied every inch of Israel-Palestine to one in which a stable and sovereign Palestinian government was ensconced in Gaza and the West Bank. As long as the bloodshed and hardship continue the militants' dream of "Greater Palestine" (in their minds, at least) remains theoretically possible, as enough violence might someday lead to the collapse of the Israeli state. A stable and sovereign Palestinian state bordering Israel would cut off all chance of "Greater Palestine," as that government would have a vested interest in cooperating with Israel to keep violence to a minimum. Sunday's raid was thus not merely an attack on Israel, but an attack on the peace process itself.

Unfortunately, if Ehud Olmert moves forward with Kadima's planned unilateral disengagement Sunday's attack will serve as a harbinger of things to come. Unilateralism may seem like a magic knife that can cut the Gordian knot of disputed Israeli-Palestinian sovereignty, but in the final analysis it is only a formula for putting extremists and terrorists in the driver's seat of Arab-Israeli relations. Drawing a line in the sand and building a wall on it will undoubtedly increase Israelis' security in the short term, but in the long run no wall can stand in place of diplomacy in dertermining Israel's boundaries. Sunday's attack shows that any wall is permeable. Tunnels can be dug under it, missiles can be fired over it. A determined opponent will, given time enough and murderous effort, succeed in launching a provocation that demands a response and undermines any attempt at unilateral disengagement. As Kadima moves forward with its planned disengagement in the West Bank this problem will evolve a domestic dimension as well. Extremists on the Israeli side are not likely to give up dreams of "Greater Israel" in the face of a Kadima defensive wall, they will almost certainly launch similarly provocative attacks into Palestinian territory by way of undermining any stable two-state peace.

Nothing justifies Sunday's attack against Israel, as it can only result in more bloodshed and hardship for all of Israel-Palestine's residents. Nor is it realistic to expect Israel to refrain from taking military action when one of her soldiers is in mortal jeopardy. Hopefully, however, Israel's leaders will read the signs of this sad affair for what they portend- unilateral disengagment will never ultimately lead to enduring stability, security and peace. Israel must have a sovereign and authoritative Palestinian counterpart with which to negotiate a two-state resolution and to coordinate joint efforts at security. If such a Palestinian partner does not now exist this is not an argument for unilateralism, but a sign that Israeli leaders must assist those on the Palestinian side, like Mahmoud Abbas, who are committed to a two-state solution to establish their authority so that a bilateral peace process may move forward.

The Complex Specter of Vietnam

2006-06-13T10:21:00.000-04:00

Comparisons to Vietnam began haunting the Bush administration's Iraq policy even before the Coalition invasion was launched in 2003. The specter of Vietnam is not a simple or univalent influence on the US political climate surrounding the Iraq conflict, however. It impinges upon the perceptions of both opponents and supporters of the Bush policy in complex ways that reflect the vagaries of memory and its perceived reverberations in future policy.

Opponents of the Iraq policy (among which I count myself) are frustrated not only or least by the sense that "the lessons of Vietnam" have been ignored, but that in certain political circles those lessons themselves remain ambiguous more than thirty years after the fall of Saigon. The image of "the last helicopter" leaving the US embassy in April 1975 leaves no doubt that the US Vietnam policy was a failure, the reasons for that failure, however, remain contested.

For those who opposed the Vietnam War (with whom I retrospectively agree, having been born at the conflict's height) the Vietnam policy ultimately failed because it was flawed at the outset. Certain pundits, however, insist that the Vietnam War was "lost" not because of any prior deficiency in US policy but because of domestic opposition among the American public and political leadership. This latter argument manifests in several forms, the most empirically plausible of which is the assertion that at the conflict's tail end the Nixon administration's policy of "Vietnamization would have worked" had it not been undermined by withdrawal of funding by a Democratic Congress in 1974 and 1975.

Arguments that US Congressional miserliness doomed the Thieu regime are dubious at best. Congress did barter down the executive's proposed package of aid in fiscal year 1974, but this was not an exceptional case of appropriational wrangling. A supplemental request for additional military aid made by the Ford administration never reached the appropriations stage before the collapse of the Thieu regime. Despite failing to meet Nixon administration targets (which were likely inflated in anticipation of Congressional bargaining) US aid to South Vietnam was expansive- 4 billion dollars from the signing of the Paris Peace Accords, with an additional 1 billion dollars of donated equipment. By 1974 South Vietnam, a nation of 20 million people, had the world's fourth largest army and air force and fifth largest navy. The South Vietnamese military initially enjoyed a 4 to 1 superiority in heavy weapons over that of the North. Under these conditions the idea that the South was defeated for lack of bullets is a stretch of the imagination.

Moreover, the notion that Congress was ultimately responsible for the collapse of South Vietnam rests on two false assumptions. The first is a misunderstanding of what role any legislature may play in the conduct of an armed conflict. Any battle that depends on particular action by a legislative body is lost from the outset- a body like Congress simply cannot be relied upon to respond with the kind of alacrity that warfare demands.

Secondly, the "Congress lost Vietnam" myth assumes a degree of control over events in Southeast Asia that the United States never had. At most Congressional action helped catalyze a crisis of confidence within South Vietnam that hastened the collapse of the Thieu regime. But a government whose legitimacy balanced so precariously on perceptions of the American political climate was bound to collapse sooner or later, the idea that a further infusion of cash could have precluded such a crisis altogether is a fantasy. In the end the fate of the Thieu regime is not best epitomized by the fabled "last US helicopter," but by the South Vietnamese F-5E jet flown by Lt. Nguyen Thanh Trung that made three bombing passes over President Thieu's residence on April 8, 1975. Any regime so lacking in coherence and political control that it would find such an expensive and destructive asset turned against itself could not stand long. Ultimately South Vietnam was not defeated by a lack of US volition or even a failure of South Vietnamese leadership, but by the aggregate unwillingness of the Vietnamese people themselves to live in a partitioned nation.

The "Congress lost Vietnam" myth does not have enormous traction in the American public perception of Vietnam and its legacy. Even so, opponents of the Bush policy in Iraq may be forgiven for fearing that such myths continue to distort foreign policy. Structurally similar myths to those that precipitated and persist in the wake of Vietnam are propounded in support of the decision to invade Iraq and by way of apology for the mission's setbacks.

First among these is the idea that the invasion of Iraq was a necessary blow against the global power and influence of Al Qaeda. This notion persists despite being demonstrably false- even with the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi last week Al Qaeda enjoys far greater purchase in Iraq now than it did in April of 2003. The consistent invocation of the "war on terror" in defense of the Bush Iraq policy echoes calls for "containment" during the Vietnam War. Both arguments overestimate the degree to which the perceived threat (global Communism or political Islam) expresses itself universally uniformly and to which local conditions are shaped by larger geopolitical forces. Just as the expense and destruction of the Vietnam War could not be justified in terms of its impact on global Communism, the human and material costs of Iraq will not be worth the damage inflicted on Al Qaeda (assuming that, in the best case scenario, Al Qaeda's strategic position is ever materially degraded by events in Iraq at all).

The second disturbing myth current in the Iraq crisis is the structural doppleganger of the "Congress lost Vietnam" myth: the idea that the current Iraqi insurgency would not exist (or would be much attenuated) if there were no domestic US opposition to or criticism of the war. This latter myth rests upon the same faulty reasoning of the former, an assumption that the US enjoys far greater control over local political developments internationally than it ever actually has. The Iraqi insurgency exists because a certain critical mass of Iraqis are intrinsically opposed to the Baghdad government the Coalition is trying to establish, and that opposition is not reducible to nationalistic anger at US imperialism. If the US departed tomorrow the insurgency would continue and even intensify, because the Baghdad regime embodies forces (multiethnic rule, democracy, relative secularism, protection of Shi'ite religious freedom) with which the insurgents (to varying degrees) will not be reconciled.

Given the eery parallelism between the myths surrounding Vietnam and those surrounding Iraq, opponents of the Bush administration's policy might reasonably fear the long-term consequences of any degree of success in Iraq. Despite the clear failure of the Vietnam policy, myths such as the "Congress lost Vietnam" canard seem to have had just enough traction to bring those who propound them back into control of the US' foreign policy apparatus for another bite at the apple. If such a costly and misguided policy could be launched on such a flimsily established precedent one trembles at the prospect of what might be attempted on the basis of even provisional success in Iraq.

Such reasoning must be tempered by two considerations, however. First is that it rests on an overestimation of the degree to which Vietnam precedents figured in to the initiation of the Iraq policy. The policy pundits who gave us Iraq never wholly subscribed to US strategic doctrine during the Cold War, at the time they were advocates of "rollback" rather than containment. The Rumsfeld Defense Department knew full well that the very structure of the 21st century all-volunteer US military was predicated on the assumption that it would never be engaged in a prolonged occupation such as Vietnam. Their decision to go ahead with the invasion of Iraq was rooted in the conviction that it would not develop into an extended occupation, they did not so much ignore the lessons of Vietnam as obstinately insist those lessons were irrelevant.

Moreover, in contemplating Iraq one must hold in mind that the complexion of total failure there would look very different than the previous case of Vietnam. If the current insurgents could be expected to form a coherent state that would be bad enough, as they do not have anything approaching the nationalist goals or credentials of the Viet Cong or the NVA. Instead, however, the more likely outcome of a complete failure of the Bush policy would be total, destructive anarchy. A failed state in Iraq would result not only in untold misery for the Iraqi people and a vastly amplified terror threat to the United States, but might well spill over into a broader regional conflict that could make prior events in Laos and Cambodia pale by comparison.

Ultimately provisional success is the best possible scenario for which the US and the Coalition might hope, and even that outcome is beyond the power of the US or its allies to guarantee- it can only be brought about by courage and skill on the part of Iraq's leaders. Even so, the possible future ramifications of provisional success in Iraq are troubling to consider. If even Vietnam can be spun as a worthwhile and all-but-won cause, should Baghdad win through to stability one cannot but fear what expenditure of blood and treasure might be advanced on that precedent in years to come. In the final analysis, however, such thinking amounts to an abdication of the duty of citizenship. Baghdad will hopefully establish its authority over a stable Iraqi state and the violence in that beleaguered country will subside. If and when that happens US proponents of the current Iraq policy will trumpet it as a great victory and a vindication of the policy from its outset. Such a political climate will place a great burden upon those of us who know how ill-conceived this policy was. We will have to redouble our commitment to remain politically engaged, to insist on a clear and factual assessment of the Bush administration's policy and its consequences, and to see that future foreign policy is not predicated on the same faulty thinking that prevailed in March of 2003.

Goodbye and Good Riddance

2006-06-08T11:04:00.001-04:00

The death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq yesterday must come as welcome news to anyone concerned about the fate of Iraq, the US, or the world at large. As leader of one of the most violent and high-profile elements of the insurgency Zarqawi has ordered or perpetrated execrable acts of cruelty and destruction. He lent his imprimatur to senseless and gratuitous attacks that can produce nothing but death, anarchy and mayhem. The shattered rubble of the Golden Mosque and the copious innocent blood spilled in his vicious career stand mute testimony that any portrait of Zarqawi as a "freedom fighter" is a pathetic falsehood.

The ability of the US military to track and target Zarqawi is a hopeful sign. This action is a victory for the counterinsurgency, and the soldiers and leadership of the Coalition forces deserve ample credit for carrying out a difficult and vital mission. Though the long-term strategic significance of Zarqawi's demise will take time to assess, for now it is undeniably a significant psychological triumph for the Coalition. At the very least it will detract from the insurgents' aura of inviolability and boost confidence in the prospects of the counterinsurgency among the Iraqi populace, the Coalition forces, and the international public.

All that being said, US leaders would be wise to temper caution with optimism in communicating this development to the public at large. Though the defeat of Zarqawi is undeniably a positive event in the short term, the ultimate effect it will have upon the insurgency itself is an open question. Much hinges on a question that may seem counterintuitive or obvious to some observers: did Zarqawi create the insurgency or did the insurgency create Zarqawi? This was an irresoluble question as long as Zarqawi was alive and operating in Iraq, but it might be resolved by observing how the insurgency does or does not transform in the wake of his demise.

On a surface level it is clear that Zarqawi did not create the insurgency. Though he is a foreigner to Iraq and leads a tendency of the insurgency heavily constituted of non-Iraqis his activities do not indicate that the Iraq insurgency lacks a domestic base of support. The international Al Qaeda movement to which Zarqawi swore allegiance has carried out terror attacks across the world. Yes, Al Qaeda would very much like to see the govnerment in Baghdad collapse. But the same could be said about the government of Morocco, or Saudi Arabia, or Turkey, or Indonesia, or that of any number of a host of countries that have been targeted by the movement. The only condition that can account for the disparity between the degree of violence that Zarqawi has managed to engineer in Iraq and that which Al Qaeda has produced in other nations is the fact that Zarqawi's movement was operating in support of and in tandem with a home-grown Iraqi insurgency of which it was a part. Zarqawi might have perceived himself to be an agent of an international Islamic jihad, but he only achieved the degree of purchase in Iraq that he did because his aid and leadership were perceived as instrumental to furthering the interests of a critical mass of disaffected Iraqis (principally Sunni Arabs). Zarqawi's appeal in Iraq owed as much or more to his credentials as an experienced insurgent from his Afghan days and the perceived anti-American successes of Al Qaeda post-9/11 as to his devotion to an ecumenical Islamic revolution. Zarqawi would not have been embraced by his Iraqi hosts and comrades if they had not already been intrinsically opposed to both the Coalition and the nascent Baghdad government and persuaded that Zarqawi had the "right stuff" to help defeat both.

Acknowledging that fact, however, still compels the question of how much Zarqawi's presence influenced the goals and methods of the insurgency itself. According to both Zarqawi himself and official observers among the Coalition, Zarqawi's element of the insurgency was resposible for the most lurid and destabilizing attacks of the ongoing conflict. Zarqawi lent his name to the indiscriminate homicidal assault upon the Iraqi Shi'ite community and its sacred icons that has done so much to sow the dragon's teeth of chaos in Iraq in recent months. Was this strategy one of his devising or did it grow organically from the intrinsic impulses of the insurgency itself?

At first glance the former might seem the case. The most militarily powerful opponent of the insurgency has always been the Coalition, and the strategically wise course in attempting to oust the Coalition from Iraq would have been to make common cause with all armed groups that oppose the US presence. The popular Shi'ite leader Moqtada al-Sadr had taken up arms against the Coalition twice in the immediate wake of the invasion, and even after being militarily defeated it has never been clear that his commitment to the political process is firm. The insurgency could have doubled or tripled its combat power by allying with the Mahdi Army and incorporated an "interface" that might have drawn progressively more Shi'ites into the anti-Coalition cause. Given the advantages that might have accrued from such a policy the brutally sadistic anti-Shi'ite campaign pursued by the insurgency seems anomalous, prompting suspicion that it originated in the personal initiative and leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Though such a conclusion seems plausible, there is some evidence to suggest that it is incorrect. Zarqawi's ruthless anti-Shi'ite strategy costed him in support and confidence among the international leadership of Al Qaeda. US intelligence intercepted communications from Al Qaeda leaders urging Zarqawi to ameliorate his anti-Shi'ite campaign. In the broad view it would seem clear why such would be the case- Osama bin Laden and his confederates ex-Iraq were chiefly concerned with co-ordinating an ecumenical Islamic jihad, antagonizing other Muslims (like the leaders of Iran) did not make good tactical sense toward that goal in the short term. Why, then, would Zarqawi have pursued his anti-Shi'ite strategy though it cost him standing among Al Qaeda internationally? The most likely answer is that this strategy was not dictated by Zarqawi himself but by the Iraqi hosts and comrades upon which his position of leadership among the insurgents depended. The insurgency itself is fueled as much or more by fear of a Baghdad government in which Kurds and Shi'ites enjoy significant power as it is by hatred of the US or the Coalition. Pursuing a brutally anarchic anti-Shi'ite strategy was the condition upon which Zarqawi's influence in the insurgency was sustained.

Thus though the personal defeat of Zarqawi is a step forward in the counterinsurgency for which the Coalition is to be congratulated, it would be ill advised to leap to the conclusion that a sustained Coalition troop presence is the answer to Iraq's problems. If it is true that Zarqawi and his tactics were more product than source of the insurgency then his removal does not eliminate the underlying political impulses that nurtured his sadistic career. In the end only a broad belief in and trust of the Baghdad government on the part of the Iraqi people will defeat the insurgency, and in that regard the continued presence of Coalition soldiers will prove more hindrance than help to the political defeat of the insurgents in the long run.

Re-remembering Tiananmen

2006-06-04T13:12:00.000-04:00

Today marks the 17th anniversary of the violent suppression of China's pro-democracy movment by the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Liberation Army. If Beijing is anything like the city I lived in during the 7th anniversary of those sad events it is very quiet. I was quartered in a foreign dormitory of Beijing University at the time, and the silent stillness combined with the massive presence of soldiers and police created a claustrophobic atmosphere even in what is normally a beautiful, expansive campus. Rigid precautions against anything that might hint at the repression of 1989 have become a yearly ritual in Beijing, creating a postmodern tradition in which the event is commemorated in the very effort that must be expended on forgetting.

This sad irony is made doubly tragic by the opportunity that is lost in such bouts of Orwellian doublethink. The need for political reform becomes more evident every year in the PRC. Increasing rural violence and successive ecological crises make evident the degree to which the current system is incapable of responding to China's needs. The students of Tiananmen may have been naive and idealistic, but it becomes harder and harder to escape the conclusion that they were right.

Reforming a political system as complex and vast as that of China will not, assuming it is ever possible, be easy. It would be comforting to assume that reform has not happened because the CCP leadership are hidebound ideologues or power-mad despots. Even if China's leadership were exclusively composed of visionaries, statespersons, and patriots (and there is no reason to assume that China lacks enough of these to get the job done) the necessary reform would be excruciatingly difficult and could easily degenerate into cataclysmic violence despite everyone's good intentions. Though the reasons for China's political stagnation are obviously diverse and complicated, one powerful factor is the fear that any proactive step could set off a violent chain reaction leading to anarchy or worse.

Given both the acute risk and urgent necessity of reform no opportunity should be lost that might forestall or ameliorate the crisis toward which China is heading. Though nothing will serve as a magic bullet to make change easy or painless, one "baby step" that might ease the system onto the road to redemption without violence would be the rehabilitation of the 1989 Tiananmen demonstators and a reversal of the official verdict on that movement as a "counterrevolutionary" putsch. The time is past to "re-remember" Tiananmen. If the CCP had the courage to admit that the student protesters of 1989 were sincere patriots and that the repression of their movement was wrong it could set in motion a constructive dialogue about the system's problems and necessary change. Though admittedly an incremental move, such a dialogue just might set China on the path toward enduring stability and prosperity.

Haditha Tragedy

2006-06-02T22:10:00.000-04:00

U.S. soldiers entered a town after the enemy had surrendered. A group of unarmed civilians accused of looting were gathered together in a bombed-out factory and summarily shot. Among the dead were children.

The town was Canicatti, Sicily during July of 1943. The soldiers were military policemen serving under the command of General George S. Patton. Accounts of what happened at Canicatti differ, but the evidence leaves little doubt that a terrible atrocity was committed and that it was tightly covered up by the US high command at the time.

More recent events at Haditha, Iraq come to light in a superpoliticized atmosphere and are sure to deepen the partisan divide between those who support the Bush policy and those who do not. Arguments over what happened or who is to blame add little moral clarity to what is, in the final analysis, an ineffable human tragedy. Beyond this, no amount of moral clarity will do much to illuminate the significance of Haditha for the Coalition mission in Iraq.

Juxtaposing Haditha with Canicatti helps clarify its broader ramifications in ways that no amount of wrangling over the specific tragedy can. Rightly or wrongly, the growing public perception in both Iraq and the US is that something comparable to (or worse than) the massacre at Canicatti transpired in Haditha. If, in fact, such a horror did occur it no more serves as a blanket indictment of the Coalition mission in Iraq than Canicattti does of the Allied mission in World War II. However, the strategic significance of Haditha does infinitely outweigh that of Canicatti because of the structural differences between the Iraq conflict and World War II.

World War II was a war of position and maneuver, it was decided by the deployment and engagement of large capital assets (tanks, guns, planes ships) over strategically critical terrain. There were some political dimensions of the conflict, but the concretely military aspects of the war were vastly more important in determining victory and defeat. The number of incidents like Canicatti committed by the Allies could have been doubled or tripled and it would not have had a material effect on the outcome of the war.

The same cannot be said of the Iraq war. The phase of the Iraq conflict that resembled WWII ended after the short weeks in which Saddam Hussein's army was tactitly routed. The conflict since then has not been a war of position and maneuver (though the Bush adminsitratioin has been inclined to treat it as such), but a long, hard counterinsurgency. Like WWII the Iraq counterinsurgency has both political and military dimensions, but in the case of Iraq their relative importance to the outcome of the conflict are inverted. The old saw is no less true for being by now cliche- counterinsurgency warfare is 80% political, 20% military.

Thus though one could have doubled or tripled the number of atrocities committed by US troops in World War II without retarding the Allies' strategic position, every act of misconduct in Iraq costs the Coalition dearly. The only hope of victory in Iraq is to bleed the insurgency of civilian support and political legitimacy, and rightly or wrongly every act of misconduct by Coalition forces solidifies the insurgents'support and political standing. This was a hard reality that the US and its allies faced coming into the Iraq conflict, and it is a central fact driving events now.

Where a dozen Canicattis may not have been enough to sink the Allied war effort, in the wake of Abu Ghraib Haditha is one tragedy too many for the Coalition. The actual events of Haditha are in some respects moot by now in this regard- Premier Maliki's unequivocal excoriation of the Coalition troops demonstrates that the Iraqi public has already rendered its verdict. Otherwise, it is difficult to understand why the Iraqi government would distance itself so urgently from the very soldiers it relies on to maintain order.

Does this mean that the Coalition mission is now doomed to failure and the insurgency will win? No- the insurgency will never possess the coherence and substantive political and military assets necessary to conquer, much less govern, Iraq. But the strategic efficacy of the Coalition force is severely depleted in the long term. One year ago doubling the number of Coalition soldiers in Iraq (in concert with progress in the nascent Iraqi political process) might have had some hope of turning the strategic tide against the insurgency. Now that hope is gone- no troop increase can have any positive impact given the political handicap under which the Coalition must now work. The only viable strategic option left open to the Coalition now is a staged withdrawal undertaken in tandem with a redoubled effort to help build strong Iraqi political, economic, and social institutions to lay the foundations for order and peace as Coalition soldiers depart.

Cold War Redux in Somalia

2006-05-29T09:49:00.000-04:00

Recent press coverage has highlighted an open secret in the regional politics of Eastern Africa: the renewed involvement of the U.S. in the civil conflict in Somalia. Fighting now rages in the capital city of Mogadishu between Islamist militias and a coalition of warlords calling itself the "Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism." This latter "Alliance" contains many of the same elements that were responsible for the killing of US soldiers during the "Black Hawk Down" incident of 1993. Ironically there is strong evidence to suggest that the current "Alliance" is formed and backed covertly by the US and its CIA.

The motivation of the Bush administration to undertake such a policy is clear- they are concerned about the growing influence of Al Qaeda among the Islamic militias fighting to control Mogadishu. This is indeed a troubling reality, but it does not warrant a tactic so callous and short-sighted as the backing of a warlord "Alliance." Despite being the regime to usher the US into the 21st century, the Bush administration does not seem able to get past the stale, calcified strategic and political doctrines of the Cold War. The Bush White House seems to feel that the "war on terror" may be conducted in the same manner as the Cold War, wherever Al Qaeda's influence is perceived the US may enlist proxy agents to contend against it, irrespective of the larger political, diplomatic, or moral context.

Such a strategy is doubly foolish in that it never served well even during the Cold War. Innumerable US policies would have been better conducted if American leaders had had the imagination and insight to treat local conflicts as unique events rather than jamming them into the "one size fits all" mold of US-Soviet geopolitics. This truth applies even more urgently to the current case of the struggle against Al Qaeda. Political Islam is an even more variable and diverse phenomenon than global Communism was, it will be even more counterproductive and self-injurious to adopt a rigid and doctrinaire approach toward fighting it on an international scale.

Supporting a warlord "Alliance" in Mogadishu is exactly the kind of penny-wise and pound-foolish policy that helped exacerbate the problem of Al Qaeda as the 20th century drew to a close. Yes, the warlords may help staunch the influence of Al Qaeda somewhat in the short term. But in the long view Al Qaeda will emerge stronger from such a conflict and the warlord "Alliance" itself will mushroom into a force with destructive potential that far outweighs the immediate "benefits" they provide now. Just as the US must regret enlisting Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as proxies against the Soviets in Afghanistan, America will surely regret having armed and funded the Somali "Alliance to Promote Peace and Counterterrorism."

The Bush administration is no doubt resorting to this expediency because the interim government in Somalia is too weak to counter the influence of Al Qaeda on its own. This is not only rank hypocrisy, however, but is also poor strategy. If the threat of Al Qaeda is so grave as to justify any alliance of convenience why depose Saddam Hussein rather than fund and arm him against Bin Laden? Any hope of success in the "war on terror" does not lie in short-sighted tactics as are being pursued in Mogadishu. If the government of Somalia is too weak to resist Al Qaeda the US must commit to a long, hard project of economic, social, and military "nation-building" (hopefully in coalition with many international partners) in order to lay the foundations of peace, prosperity and order. In Mogadishu the Bush regime is diplaying the impatience and contempt for the task of "nation building" that Bush himself expressed in his first election campaign and which has hampered reconstruction efforts in Iraq. The US needs leaders with real vision who have the courage to make hard choices and pursue long-term policies, even if they are unpopular in the political short-term.

Darfur, Genocide, and Terrorism

2006-05-02T15:47:00.000-04:00

Today a US Deputy Secretary of State arrives in Nigeria to press for a resolution to peace talks that will enable a UN peacekeeping mission in Darfur. Any government action is of course an improvement upon the passivity that has marked the international response to Sudan's crisis. Even so, there is reason to fear that the current proactive response, tentative and hesitant as it is, is moving in the wrong direction. Darfur has become a moral tragedy of epic proportions. It is thus urgent that the world not only act immediately, but do so in a way that lays the groundwork for global policies and protocols that preclude such monstrosities in the future.

The UN is following longstanding institutional imperatives in requiring a peace settlement before launching a peacekeeping mission in the Sudan. The fact that there are "two" combatant sides in Darfur, however masks the true character of the crime being committed as the world watches. Rebel groups have committed attacks in the name of the non-Arab minorities of Darfur who have been the object of genocidal slaughter. However, the indiscriminate murder of 200,000 individuals that has occasioned the moral horror of the world is almost exclusively the work of Arab "janjaweed" militias funded and encouraged by the government in Khartoum.

Though the UN cannot be blamed for following its chartered principles in seeking a peace settlement before intervention, such a course runs the risk of sanctioning genocide as a tactic in political negotiations. Darfur rebels have come under criticism for being unwilling to sign the peace agreement that might set a peacekeeping mission in motion and stop the slaughter of Darfur's people, but does not such criticism tacitly ascribe legitimacy to genocide as a means to political ends? If the Darfur rebels are forced to capitulate to a political settlement with which they do not agree (rightly or wrongly), what other lesson can the repressive governments of the world take away but that committing genocide is the surest way to marshal the international community to put pressure on their opponents?

The principle must be established that genocide is a totally illegitimate and irredeemable breach of international law and ethics, and that recourse to genocide forfeits any consideration of the perpetrators' political interests in negotiations with the global community at large. Thus in the case of the Darfur an immediate military incursion should be undertaken to stop the killing of non-Arab Sudanese, the janjaweed should be forcibly ejected from Darfur and the Sudanese military should be prohibited from operating within its precincts. Once that is achieved it may serve as a new baseline from which negotiations between the Sudanese government and the Darfur rebels may proceed. This will obviously place the Sudanese government at an artificial disadvantage, but it would serve to establish that there is a price for sanctioning or encouraging a policy of genocide. To do otherwise lays down a very dangerous precedent that is sure to have severe repercussions in the future.

It is immediately obvious that the kind of action I have proposed is beyond the scope of the UN mandate and operational doctrine. This should not induce the conclusion that effective action in Sudan is impossible. Rather, until such a time as the UN is reformed to effectively address such contingencies, counter-genocide missions must be undertaken by organizations that enjoy greater latitude and flexibility of response- the EU, NATO, or the United States government acting unilaterally. This last might seem a hopelessly idealistic proposition, but not much reflection is required to understand that this impression is false. The question of Darfur is not merely one of moral principle, but embodies a broader underlying problem that clearly threatens the pragmatic security interests of the United States and its allies.

Genocide has become more frequent in the post-Cold War era due to the same forces that have amplified the danger and prevalence of terrorism. Absent the surpressing influence of the stand-off between the Cold War's two opposed superpowers local conflicts have tended toward ever-increasingly violent expression. Terrorism (as it is conventionally understood- the somewhat random targetting of civilians) is the frequent recourse of the "deficit" side of assymetrical conflicts, those disaffected groups who do not control the machinery of state and face institutionally well-established opponents. This tactic is primitive but effective and intensely difficult to counter militarily. Effectively targetting a terrorist or insurgent group among a civilian population of any size is the most intractable strategic problem facing a state engaged in counterinsurgency, a fact which generally forces states facing a determined opponent to seek political resolution of assymetrical conflicts. In increasingly more cases, however, post-Cold War states have foregone such political solutions in favor of genocide. They end-run the strategic problem of targetting insurgents among a civilian population by undertaking to wipe out the civilian population in toto. Like terrorism, then, genocide is a deliberate tactic adopted by political actors enmeshed in assymetrical conflicts that have erupted into violence in the wake of the Cold War. Genocide is, in effect, terrorism's more malevolent twin (or perhaps, terrorism writ large- the targetting of civilians on an absolute rather than a limited scale).

What does this imply for the US? In the wake of 9/11 the US has rightly undertaken a mission to reduce or eliminate global terrorism. The hard reality that Darfur points to is that waging a "war on terror" is pointless unless it is undertaken in tandem with a "war on genocide." Neither terrorism or genocide are ideologies, they are political-military tactics, albeit ones that embody the unscrupulousness of their perpetrators. No limited struggle against any particular instance or perpetrator of these tactics will ever ultimately succeed. The only meaningful policy that can effectively counter these forces and the destruction they portend is a deliberate, principled, and aggressive campaign to reduce the brutality of international politics as a whole. Until the world intervenes to dismantle the vicious terrorism/genocide complex that has grown up in the wake of the Cold War we will be consigned to an endless repeating parade of Darfurs, Rwandas, Beslans, and 9/11s.

Is the current US strategic and diplomatic doctrine effectively configured to deal with this threat? Clearly, it is not. The Bush administration's aggressive posture of internationalism and unilateralism perhaps embodies the correct disposition for the current crisis, but its specific policy initiatives have been misguided. Unilateral action in Darfur would be/will be costly in both blood and treasure, but it surely would not exceed the cost that continues to mount in Iraq and would yield more immediate and enduring benefits to the US, its allies, and the world at large. The kind of resolve and audacity the Bush administration has shown in Iraq would serve well in Sudan and other places where genocide threatens global peace and stability. What the current situation requires is that the US follow the Clinton administration's policy of undertaking peace-enforcing actions in places (like Somalia, Kosovo) where no immediate US economic interests are at stake with the same tenacity and commitment the Bush administration has displayed in Iraq. If the US government and military would change their strategic doctrine from regime change and democracy-promotion to a determined policy of countergenocide/counterterrorism it might show the world the way forward into a sustainable post-Cold War order in which political progress would be possible on many fronts.

The China Syndrome

2006-04-19T13:44:00.000-04:00

This week's meetings between presidents Hu Jintao of China and George W. Bush of the US have drawn new press attention to Sino-US relations. Today's media reports underscore the degree to which China's accelerating oil consumption will figure prominently in the discursive agenda. I agree with those who note the inconsistency of rebuking China for its fossil fuel consumption while that of the US goes on unabated. Aside from its diplomatic shortcomings this tack is an error in "grand strategy," in that it affirms and endorses a form of political inertia that poses a serious threat not only to China and the US but to the world at large.

In brief, the greatest danger in China is not the pace of her economic liberalization and growth, but the extent to which it has exceeded the pace of desperately needed political liberalization. China's political system is snared in a structural deadfall that is taking an ever-increasing toll on its ecology, social institutions, and communal stability. Unless something is done to alleviate the situation the system is sure to experience dramatic collapse, and the longer that cataclysm takes in coming the worse it will be.

The question raised by such conditions is, of course: what sign is there that China's current leaders are aware of the present danger and are moving to respond? Unfortunately, the answer can only be "not much." Last year Hu Jintao's government launched a mass campaign to reaffirm Party authority by compelling all CCP members to study the written works of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping (an ideological shotgun wedding if there ever was one). In March a colloquium was held to debate the merits of economic reform at which calls for further political liberalization were shunted aside. Abuses within the judicial system and rural unrest continue to intesify and accelerate and are met with purely tactical, short-term responses from Beijing (for example, the deterent beating and intimidation of those who attempt to bring lawsuits before China's high courts).

China is obviously on the cusp of a major historical change (when exactly that change will occur I wouldn't venture to predict, in chronological terms China can remain on "the cusp" of a major change for 50-100 years), the current system cannot persist as it is and will eventually give way to another. The only open question is whether that change will go hard or easy. In this regard it is perhaps instructive to compare the situation in China today to that one-hundred years ago. By 1905 the legitimacy of the Qing dynasty had so eroded that the need for fundamental change was obvious to virtually all actors along the entire political spectrum. In that year the Zhonghua Tongmeng hui (Chinese Alliance) was formed under the leadership of Dr. Sun Yat-sen. That group was dedicated to the very radical proposition that the 2200+ year-old Empire should be replaced by a Chinese Republic. As unlikely as this must have seemed at the time, it in fact transpired a mere 6 years after the Alliance's formation.

Though its practicality or achievability is an open question, there can be no doubt that the Alliance confronted the collapse of the Empire with a clear and proactive agenda. In simplistic terms the Alliance program had three basic components- nationalism, democracy, and socialism (these would, in fact, become the "Three Principles of the People" after the Alliance was restructured as the KMT). The 1911 Revolution only minimally carried through on the first goal of nationalism, the latter goals of socialism and democracy were aggressively and violently quashed. This was not because the Alliance failed to play a key role in the transition from Empire to Republic, but rather because it members were compelled to cooperate and share power with constituencies whose economic, social, and regional interests clashed with the imperatives of democracy and socialism.

The Alliance's debacle exemplifies a common pattern in Chinese political history. China is such a vast, diverse, and complex realm that substantive changes require the coordination of widely and at times antipathetically divergent forces. Most mass movements tend to collapse or implode in the face of such obstacles. Those that survive and carry through to an enduring outcome spontaneously narrow in focus and effect until they settle upon the "least common denominator" among the interests of the myriads involved. Thus the Alliance's threefold program of nationalism, democracy and socialism in 1911 won through to a partially realized expression of nationalism.

The situation of China today is quite comparable to that of the Qing Empire in 1906. The People's Republic is deeply disfunctional and must be transformed. Economic liberalization and modernization must continue, but they must be coupled with a robust program of democratization and political decentralization. Unfortunately, the same type of inertial forces that derailed the 1911 Revolution seem to be at work in the PRC today. Many leaders within and without the government recognize the need for democratization and decentralization, but institutional energies and policy initiative remain exclusively focused on the more broadly palatable goal of continued economic reform.

This situation poses dire peril not only for China but for the world at large. The failings of the 1911 Revolution led ultimately to complete collapse and an extended period of anarchy and partisan civil war. It is far from impossible that a failure to address the mounting crisis in China today could lead to an equally cataclysmic and violent outcome, only this time within a strategic domain containing nuclear as well as conventional weapons. As apparent as this urgency is, it does not afford obvious or easy choices for US leaders in the shaping of America's relationship with China. It is clear, however, that US leaders should be less focused on the dangers of China's economic growth and more concerned with its political stagnation. Rather than warning Beijing about its expanding economy, Washington should express concern about the growing sources of instability and unrest within Chinese society

The Coetzee Principle

2006-04-03T14:26:00.000-04:00

The release of journalist Jill Carroll has understandably sent a wave of relief through all concerned observers of Iraq. Though her return to safety is a cause for celebration, some of the circumstances surrounding her release should give US policymakers pause to contemplate. The statements that she made on tape just prior to and just after her release about the “lies” of the US government and the “good treatment” afforded her by her captors were, according to Ms. Carroll herself, coerced, and should by no means be held against her. Such statements give some aid to the propaganda efforts of the insurgency, but it would be unreasoningly cruel to expect Carroll to lay down her life rather than make them.

Her captors reportedly told Carroll that they had infiltrated the Green Zone and would be watching her closely after her release. If she “cooperated” with the US embassy she would be killed. This would explain why even after her release, when she was already in the office of the “moderate” Sunni political party to whose custody she had been given, she continued to make recorded statements about being “well treated.” Her colleague at the Christian Science Monitor ultimately had to persuade her to come into the Green Zone, the place where (had she been thinking reasonably) she would have realized she would be safest. After witnessing the murder of her interpreter and having been in the life-and-death power of her captors for almost 3 months Carroll cannot be blamed for having taken their threats at face value.

Indeed, the deliberate nature of her captors’ threats and the specificity of the comments they elicited from Carroll were transparent attempts to mitigate the damage from what was ultimately a political victory for the Coalition. What is difficult to explain, however, is the tacit assistance Carroll’s captors received toward their propaganda efforts from the “moderate” political party that managed the actual exchange. Why, immediately upon arrival to “safety” was Carroll placed in front of a camera and interviewed about the treatment she had received from her captors? Though Carroll may clarify what her state of mind was after she has recovered from her ordeal, it seems likely that she was still in the very impressionable state of terror induced by her captors’ threats, and nothing had yet been done to reassure her that she was, in fact, safe. Why would her “liberators” record an interview with her before she had been securely passed into the hands of the US embassy (or at least the Iraqi security forces)? The intent may be murky (to a degree), but the effect is quite clear. The fact that Carroll repeated her statements about being “well treated” once she was already “safe” provided corroboration for the video recorded by her captors prior to her release.

Reading about these circumstances brought to mind the novel Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee. In that book set in post-apartheid South Africa, the white protagonist, David Lurie, and his daughter are assaulted by a group of black men. Lurie is later shocked to discover one of the assailants at a party being hosted by his employee, a black farmer named Petrus. It turns out that the men are kin by marriage. Though shocked and angry, Lurie does not believe that a conspiracy has transpired. Rather, he deduces that he and his daughter have fallen victim to something far more “anthropological.”

The hasty interview by Jill Carroll’s “moderate” Sunni liberators may well be an example of the sort of “anthropological” occurrence Coetzee describes, and it is only one instance of many in which such “anthropological” forces have worked and are working to subvert the Coalition mission in Iraq. Sunnis who have entered the political process are almost certain to retain cultural and social ties to kin and associates fighting as part of the insurgency. Attempts to end sectarian or ethnic violence will be sabotaged by tribal allegiances, persistent blood feuds, or patterns of religious authority.

In a recent OpEd piece Thomas Friedman coined a new epithet for the Iraqi insurgency: “Islamonihilists (a term which I will confess brought The Big Lebowski immediately to my adolescent mind).” The US could not have anticipated, says Friedman, the emergence of such a foe- one that is committed only to destruction without any positive plan for what to build amid the ruins. This portrait is clearly wrong. Any serious student of Iraqi history, society, and culture should have been able to anticipate the insurgency currently faced by the emergent Iraqi government and the Coalition. There is no denying that the insurgency is tragically nihilistic in its effect, but this is because of the disparity of its constituents’ goals and the asymmetry between the insurgency’s power and that of its opponents. The insurgents do not “believe in nothing,” they believe in a whole bevy of goals, ideas, and motives. Some of these are reducible to simple self-interest as understood in a particular social and cultural context. Some of these are fantastic dreams whose impracticality is matched only by their potential destructiveness. Some of these are crypto-fascist ideologies that are truly repugnant. If the insurgents were truly “nihilists” their defeat would be a much less complicated affair. In fact, as the circumstances surrounding Jill Carroll’s release demonstrate, the insurgency draws fuel from a whole complex of historical, ideological, and “anthropological” forces that make its defeat by the US extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible.

Negotiations Underway

2006-03-28T15:44:00.000-05:00

This Sunday (3/26) a joint Iraqi-US Special Forces team conducted an assault in which 16 people were killed, 3 were wounded, and one man being held hostage was freed. According to US commanders the 16 people were insurgents, the structure in which they were held up was a secular building. According to Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr the building in question was a mosque, those killed were worshippers. One need not question the sincerity of US commanders to know that this situation does not bode well for the Coalition mission in Iraq. The whole truth of the incident may never be knowable, yet the very fact that the Coalition and the Iraqi government disagree as to whether or not casualties of the conflict were "insurgents" poses a serious conundrum that compels analysis.

There are basically three possibilities, each of which bears serious negative implications for the Coalition mission in Iraq (though to varying degrees):

1)The situation was basically as Minister Jabr and others have described it, and the joint US-Iraqi patrol accidentally targeted innocent civilians. If so the incident need not necessarily be held up as an indictment of the US military mission, it could simply be a tragic mistake induced by the fog of war. What is most troubling in this particular case, however, is that as grave a situation as such a mistake would create, this is by far the most optimistic of the three possible scenarios. If those killed on Sunday were innocent worshippers one need not dig deeply to find the source of Shi'ite anger over this incident. If any part of what US commanders currently say is true, however, then the possible motives of Shi'ite politicians like Mr. Jabr become quite complex, and none of those possibilities bode well for the US.

2)Those killed in the raid were armed members of a Shi'ite militia group (most likely Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army). If so then the other aspects of the US report were likely true- the militiamen used deadly force against the joint team and were holding an innocent (presumably Sunni Arab) detainee. The use of the term "insurgents" to describe such combatants by the US military is understandable- whatever those militiamen had done before Sunday the moment they turned their guns on US and (especially) Iraqi soldiers they became insurgents. But the strident denials and accusations of the Shi’ite political leadership underscore a troubling fact. If those “insurgents” were, in fact, Shi’ite militiamen they belonged to a constituency that in ordinary circumstances supports the nascent government and is represented within its leadership. If those constituents become “insurgents” in any significant numbers then the entire complexion of the Iraq conflict will have been completely transformed and the task of state-building will become exponentially more difficult.

3)Though scenario #2 is bad, there is one possibility which is even worse (in the sense of portending even greater difficulties for the Coalition)- that the 16 people killed in the raid were in fact Sunni Arab insurgents, and that for ulterior motives the Shi’ite political leadership is seizing upon the ambiguities of this incident to fabricate a crisis.

Of these three possibilities #2 may be judged most likely by appeal to Occam’s Razor; many dark purposes and coincidental mishaps would have to be afoot for #1 or #3 to be the “absolute truth.” Deciding which of these three scenarios is “real,” however, is not essential toward analyzing the implications of the current crisis except as a matter of degree. If the Shi’ite political leadership in Iraq felt that their political and strategic interests were completely aligned with those of the Coalition their reaction would not be this extreme even if scenario #1 were the case, and scenario #3 would be totally unimaginable. Even President Talabani’s eminently reasonable step of convening a joint Iraqi-American investigative committee would not have been necessary even in the case of scenario #1- Shi’ite leaders would have found a much less complicated way of letting the US military off the hook for a clearly regrettable mistake.

Whatever actually happened on Sunday, what is going on right now in Baghdad is very clear. A negotiation is transpiring, one between the Shi’ite political leadership and the Coalition command over control of the political and military machinery of the emergent Iraqi state. The Coalition (and behind them the governments and citizenry of the US and its allies) want to see an Iraqi government that possesses a monopoly on the use of force, that fully integrates secular and Kurdish Iraqis, and that will foster a political process that may draw Sunni Arabs away from the insurgency. The current crisis indicates that the Shi’ite political leadership are opposed to some or all of these objectives- they would preserve the independence of the Shi’ite militias from the Iraqi regular army, insist upon a cabinet and prime minister of their choosing and their constituency, and would defend their followers’ prerogative to pursue a bloody campaign of anti-Sunni sectarian violence. Determining how many of and to what degree these goals are cherished by Shi’ite leaders requires discovering how far removed their claims about Sunday’s incident diverge from actual events. Even if everything Shi’ite leaders claim about the incident is true, their strident denunciations and unequivocal political response (the Shi’ite parliamentarians’ break-off of negotiations for a new government, the Baghdad governor’s unilateral termination of US-Iraqi security coordination) send a clear message that their priorities diverge from those of the Coalition and will be acted on nonetheless.

A negotiation is in process, and it is hard to see how the Coalition can possibly come out the winner. Shi’ite leaders are playing a very strong hand- if pushed too hard they could quit the government and throw their militias into the insurgency. This would not spell absolute defeat for the Coalition, but it would exponentially complicate the political and military task at hand. The US army has defeated Shi’ite militias in the field before and would most likely do so again, but if the militias were driven underground the loss of the security shield they have been providing would leave sensitive targets like the Golden Mosque more vulnerable to attack by the Sunni insurgency, setting in motion a potentially endless vicious cycle of accelerating sectarian violence and making the strategic climate increasingly more dangerous not only for Iraqis but for Coalition forces as well.

Such a situation would obviously pose risks for the Shi’ite leadership, but they may well feel that another armed conflict with the US military will do much less to erode their position of leadership than joining the kind of government the Coalition desires would do to improve it. They may also feel that the Coalition has much more to lose from an open break with the Shi’ite leadership than vice-versa, and in this perception they would seem to be very correct. US commanders are effectively caught between Scylla and Charybdis- if they “blink” and concede Shi’ite leaders the degree of control and autonomy they demand the resulting sectarian violence will greatly deter efforts toward a political resolution of the insurgency. If they force the issue and drive the Shi’ite parties into an openly hostile posture toward the emergent government they may face the same spike in sectarian violence coupled with the lethal opposition of the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades. Looking ahead it seems certain that this negotiation instigated by Sunday’s incident can only end one way- with US officials further alienated from political control of the state-building process and military control of the counterinsurgency.

All of this raises the question of what the US should do next. One option is to call the Shi’ite leadership’s bluff and push the long-standing political agenda of the Coalition. This option is all too likely to result in the worst-case scenario described above, however. Another possibility is to back away from demands for a unity government and an end to sectarian violence on the part of the militias and continue the Coalition mission at current levels. This option is much safer in the short-term but carries with it very serious long-term risks. If the Shi’ite political leadership come to feel that they may depend on the security shield of the US army in the absence of any checks upon their political program their aggression may not ultimately be exclusively directed at their Sunni compatriots. Their confidence might lead them into policies that violently alienate the Kurdish and secular Arab constituents of the nascent government, at which point the Coalition would be faced with an irreparable political process and irredeemable strategic chaos.

Faced with these possibilities, a staged withdrawal becomes the increasingly imperative option left to the Coalition. In the short term a gradual withdrawal would likely produce a spike in insurgent violence. But in the long term a withdrawal will have two crucial effects:

1)It will drive a wedge between the most extreme elements of the Sunni insurgency led by Al Qaeda and secular Sunni Arabs with whom they are currently allied. In the face of the threat posed by the US ideological and nationalist tensions have already somewhat undermined the operational unity of the Sunni Arab insurgency, in the absence of that threat those tensions would likely cause the insurgent “coalition” to crack and hemorrhage personnel into the political process.

2)US withdrawal would undermine the secure complacency of the Shi’ite political leadership. Left to defeat the insurgency on their own they would most likely avoid alienating their secular and Kurdish governmental co-participants and rein in the bloody sectarian violence being perpetrated by the militias.

It would be alarmist to suggest that the crisis set in motion by Sunday’s incident (whatever actually occurred) spells imminent doom for the Coalition mission. Even so, it is hard to see how coming days and weeks will fail to end with the range of strategic options open to the Coalition significantly narrowed. Future historians looking back on current events may well mark this week as a crucial turning point that set the Iraq conflict moving in a fundamentally new direction.