Month: September 2014

The NFL and foreign policy

Some of you are not going to like this post, which will draw the invidious parallel between America’s excessive reliance on military force in international affairs with the National Football League’s reliance on violence, both on and off the field. But I do think there is something in it.

NPR this morning delved into the NFL’s problems.* It has two:

  1. violence by its players against women and children off the field
  2. violence on the field that is causing serious health problems.

The former has been grabbing lots of headlines lately. The latter is the long-term threat to the game. Like boxing, football depends on hits so strong that many of its greats are ending their lives either disabled or early. Knowing this, it is difficult to understand any parent who allows a child to play the tackle version of the game.

Sport as a metaphor for life is not a new idea. The popularity of professional football in America has grown enormously in recent decades. It would be surprising if that did not manifest itself in other spheres. I once asked a foreign minister who had played football for Tulane what he had learned from the game that was applicable to diplomacy. “Hit the opponent hard,” he said. That lesson is being applied increasingly not only in football but also in the other game that has grown enormously in popularity in recent decades:  basketball is now a contact sport. Soccer, sad to say, is also headed in the same direction, though it is far behind football and basketball.

Let me be clear:  I am not against physical competition. But there is relatively safe physical competition (basketball and soccer still fall in that category) and relatively dangerous physical competition. Football is over my threshold, as is boxing. Both reward maximum damage to the opponent, so long as it is delivered in a licit fashion. Neither basketball nor soccer does that, yet.

In international affairs, there are opponents who merit maximum damage. The Islamic State in Syria and the Levant (ISIL) is one of them. I am not among those who advocate negotiations with mass murderers. But even in the war on ISIL, we need to be careful not to rely exclusively on kinetic effects (that is what the military calls shooting at people and other targets). ISIL was successful in Iraq because the Sunni community there actively and passively supported it, preferring the jihadists to the Iraqi army and other security forces. Anyone who understands why a virtually all-white police force in Ferguson, Missouri is likely to be ineffectual should understand why mostly Shia security forces in virtually all-Sunni provinces of Iraq would also be ineffectual.

The military traditionally regards efforts to influence people other than by kinetic effects information or psychological warfare intended to win “hearts and minds.” But the material aspects are increasingly important:  winning a war now means not only defeating the enemy but somehow restoring services to the people he governed. Otherwise, you end up spawning more conflict, or terrorism. It was above all failure to delivery security to Sunnis that created the conditions in which ISIL flourished in Anbar and Ninewa provinces.

There is no equivalent in American football to service delivery and winning hearts and minds. If you want to win, you score more points than your opponent, delivering in the process as many hard blows as possible, within the ample range of the permissible. Intellect plays an important role in football, as the choice of plays and when to run them is critical to strategy. But what we cheer and admire on the field is mainly the kinetic aspect of the sport. And we unfortunately do the same with our foreign policy.

PS: Here is the NPR piece:

PPS: For those who are still doubting that violence on the field causes serious health problems: Scientists Dissected the Brains of 79 NFL Players. What They Found Is Disturbing. | Mother Jones.

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Peace Picks September 29-October 3

 A busy Monday and Tuesday over at USIP, as Washington focuses on extremism and what to do about it:

  1. MENA Region in Crisis: Islam, Democracy and Extremism Monday, September 29 | 10:00 am – 11:30 am US Institute of Peace; 2301 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington DC REGISTER TO ATTEND Rached Ghannouchi, President of the Ennahdha Party of Tunisia, will discuss the current political and security crisis in the region, including how Tunisia’s democratic transition and experience can be drawn upon when seeking solutions to the protracted crises ongoing in the Middle East and North Africa. He will also consider how dialogue and compromise can pave the way for national unity and reconciliation. Ghannouchi will be joined by Robin Wright, journalist, and fellow at USIP.
  2. Security and Justice in Post-Revolution Libya: Dignity, Dawn, and Deadlock Tuesday, September 30 | 10:00 am – 12:00 pm US Institute of Peace; 2301 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington DC REGISTER TO ATTEND With Libya’s state security and justice institutions now largely nonfunctioning, some communities have turned to vigilante justice, tribal leaders and elders, or resorted to self-help when faced with conflicts and disputes. USIP will host a discussion to address how this situation arose, and what can be done to change it. Naji Abou-Khalil, Project Manager at Altai Consulting, along with Senior Program Officers at USIP Fiona Mangan and Christina Murtaugh, will form the panel.
  3. Meet Syria’s Rescue Workers: Saving Lives, Building Peace Tuesday, September 30 | 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm US Institute of Peace; 2301 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington DC REGISTER TO ATTEND Some 600 Syrians known as “White Helmets” or Syrian Civil Defense units, are organized volunteers who act as rescue workers in areas like Aleppo and Idlib provinces in the country’s northwest. They are unarmed and impartial, and operate on principles of solidarity, humanity and impartiality. In the last six months, they have recorded more than 2,500 lives saved. The United States Institute of Peace, The Syria Campaign and the Syrian American Medical Society bring together two such rescuers, Raed Salah and Khaled Harah, to discuss the future of peacebuilding in Syria. They will be joined by Samer Attar, member of the Syrian American Medical Society. The panel will be moderated by Hind Kabawat, Senior Program officer, USIP.
  4. Exploring ISIL: Context and Repercussions Tuesday, September 30 | 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm World Affairs Council; University of California Washington Center, 1608 Rhode Island Ave NW, Washington DC REGISTER TO ATTEND World Affairs Council will hold a discussion about ISIL, one of the most momentous and imposing insurgent groups in the world today. The panel will discuss the group’s background, the US response to it, and how both will impact the security of the region. Speakers include Shadi Hamid, fellow at the Brookings Institute, Thomas Sanderson, co-director and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic International Studies Transnational Threats Project, and moderator Kate Brannen, senior reporter at Foreign Policy.
  5. Countering ISIS: An Evening with Ambassador Jeffrey, Former US Ambassador to Iraq Thursday, Oct 2 | 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm Elliott School of International Affairs; 1957 E Street NW, Washington DC REGISTER TO ATTEND Ambassador James F. Jeffrey will discuss ISIS as an organization, the international community’s current plan to counter ISIS, and offer his own opinions and critiques on these plans, in an open discussion with all those in attendance.
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I hope the Senate listens to these guys

I’ve been negligent in not calling attention to the truly sterling testimony of my cousin Ben Connable and my colleague at the Middle East Institute Robert Ford at Senate Foreign Relations on September 17. So to remedy that mistake, here it is. I’ve failed in many efforts to clip the right piece, so you can watch a few hours of John Kerry as well, if you want. The really good stuff starts a couple of minutes after the three-hour mark:

This is Robert’s written testimony; this is Ben’s.

PS: here is a far shorter piece I did for CCTV last Friday (September 26):

PS: Crispin Smith, able Middle East Intern, has kindly clipped the Ford/Connable testimony:

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Repeating Bush’s real mistake

Anyone still under the impression that the Obama Administration has laid out an adequate strategy to defeat what it prefers to call the Islamic State in Syria and the Levant (ISIL) need only read Secretary Kerry’s op/ed in this morning’s Boston Globe to be convinced otherwise. His formula for success is this:

  • air attacks, no US boots in combat;
  • reduce the flow of foreign fighters;
  • cut off funding, initially by preventing oil sales and eventually by taking back the territory ISIL controls (thus preventing extortion and tax collection).

Missing here is any clear sense of how territory retaken from ISIL will be governed. It won’t matter how many countries join the coalition of the willing Secretary Kerry is building if that gap is not filled.

In Iraq, there is at least an implicit concept of post-conflict governance:  a more inclusive government in Baghdad should allow the Sunni-populated areas now in ISIL control to govern themselves. That is the implication in particular of Prime Minister Abadi’s effort to organize National Guard forces on a provincial basis. But success will require far greater generosity in revenue and power sharing with the Sunnis than Abadi has so far shown.

Iraq’s Sunnis will not be easy to satisfy. Many continue to believe themselves more than 50% of the population (there is no evidence of this, and lots of evidence to the contrary) and prefer to rule in Baghdad rather than in the provinces. While arguing for democratic ideals, many Sunnis in Iraq are really dreaming of a restored but more benevolent dictatorship. Their Shia brethren are going to allow that.

In Syria, the Secretary’s concept is far more tenuous:

By degrading the Islamic State and providing training and arms to the moderates, we will promote conditions that can lead to a negotiated settlement that ends this conflict.

The problem is that the moderates are so weak after three years of battering by both Bashar al Assad’s regime and Islamic extremists that they are in no position to take much advantage of American air strikes. It will be months if not years of training and equipping before the Syrian Free Army and its allies can redress the imbalance and begin to govern in liberated areas. A negotiated outcome in Syria that meets the American goal of beginning a democratic transition is impossible without also beefing up the civilian Syrian Opposition Coalition, which will take time and money.

Without a serious answer to the question of how areas liberated from ISIL control will be governed, the air attacks risk creating a vacuum that extremists of one stripe or another will inhabit as a safe haven. They also risk spreading the cancer they are intended to cure. American military victories over the past decade did not end the threat but spread it: from Afghanistan to Pakistan and Yemen, from Iraq into Syria and back into Iraq, from Libya into Mali. Metastasis is the usual course for malignancy, not the exception.

The Obama administration wants to avoid what it regards as the Bush Administration’s mistake of using ground forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. But that was not the big mistake. We won both of those wars. What we lost was the peace that followed, by being unprepared for the vital statebuilding tasks that are required when defeating an insurgency.

ISIL is not just a small group of terrorists, as President Obama claims. A counter-terrorism strategy will not suffice. It is an insurgency that aims to collapse the state structures in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and beyond. This insurgency cannot be defeated without replacing the governance it is now providing. That was where the Bush administration failed. It looks as if the Obama administration will repeat the mistake.

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Defeating ISIS

Monday the Washington Institute for Near East Policy hosted Jean-Pierre Filiu, professor of Middle East studies at Sciences Po, Ambassador James Jeffrey, a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute, and Michael Eisenstadt, a senior fellow and director of the Washington Institute’s Military and Security Studies Program to discuss “Defeating ISIS: From Strategy to Implementation.”

Filiu, who has been following jihadists for the past 25 years, believes that the threat of ISIS is significantly greater than that of Al-Qaeda in its heyday, citing the economic viability of the caliphate. Filiu thinks that ISIS can be defeated only if we attack it in Syria, not only Iraq. Filiu was “appalled” when President Obama told the New York Times last month that the United States could not rely on a Syrian coalition made up of “former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth.” Those are the people, Filiu commented, who made the American Revolution. They are capable of governing liberated areas, provided they get adequate military support.

Ambassador James Jeffrey addressed President Obama’s use of the phrase “degrade and destroy” versus the standard “defeat.” Defeat connotes an adversary that is a state or military force that can decide to stop fighting and surrender. ISIS does not fall in this category. It cannot be defeated or contained. When ISIS is stopped in one area, it will reemerge elsewhere. The elimination of ISIS will prove to be difficult as they are “part of an ideological movement that reflects the realities of the Middle East.” The United States must demonstrate resolve in order to reassure allies in the region, who have doubts because of the withdrawal from Iraq and the decision last summer  not to use military power in Syria.

What distinguishes ISIS from Hezbollah, the Taliban and other transnational Islamic groups? ISIS is more than just a terrorist or an insurgent group. It is an organized militia with substantial access to finances and arms. It is a territorial power that controls an area larger than several American states. Jeffrey thinks there must be a three-step approach: stop ISIS’s potential and momentum, degrade its potential, and undercut its appeal to disaffected and extremist elements in the Muslim world.

Eisenstadt had a bleaker outlook than the other panelists, as he believes the United States will undoubtedly fall short of expectations because partners on the ground are not ready. This made him differ with the other speakers on timing. While keeping in mind the urgency, Eisenstadt believes in a “paced approach” in combating ISIS that will allow allied forces on the ground–both Iraqi and Syrian–to get up to speed. We should keep in mind the resilience of ISIS due to ideological and organizational factors as well as the operational environment. At the same time, ISIS has major liabilities. It is spread too thin, its application of Islamic law is harsh, and its resources–while large for a terrorist organization–are too small to allow effective governance and services for the population.

You can watch the video of the event here.

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Forewarned is forearmed

Today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, so (courtesy of Buzzfeed):

That’s just in case you get invited for a holiday dinner, or a break-fast on Yom Kippur. Forewarned is forearmed.

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