Tag: Iran
Farewell Iraq, more or less
The Americans are reported to be abandoning plans to leave troops in Iraq after the end of the year, with the exception of the Embassy’s usual (and in this case large, more than 150) complement for “defense cooperation” and occasional training missions.
Why do I not quite believe this? First, because training missions can last a long time. Second because no one is talking about the substantial numbers of contractors who will need to be in Iraq to support military sales (like the F16s). And third because a lot of the counter-terrorism cooperation with Iraq is presumably done by the CIA, which doesn’t put out press releases about it.
Still, it is a major development that Iraq will be without overt foreign fighting forces on its territory for the first time in more than eight years.
Is it a good thing? There are people in Washington concerned that this more or less complete withdrawal will open the door to greater Iranian influence. And there are Iraqis–many in Kurdistan but also some in Anbar, Ninewa and elsewhere–who think it would have been a good thing for the Americans to stay. Kurds, Christians and many Sunnis see the American presence as protection.
But this “decision,” if we can call a failed negotiation a decision, is positive in other ways. It was taken on the Iraqi side under popular pressure–Prime Minister Maliki is reported to have thought he couldn’t get approval to extend an American presence through the parliament. I’d call that kind of decisionmaking democratic, which is not a word many people are using today to describe Maliki’s Iraq. Without American troops, the Iraqis will have to bear the full brunt of the responsibility for keeping the country stable, including by confronting the Iranians if they overstep. No more Uncle Sam will take care of it for you.
Will the Iraqis be up to the challenge? I don’t pretend to know, but they are certainly more capable than at any time in the past eight years. Bad things still happen in Iraq, on a more or less daily basis. But security has improved, oil production is up, services are marginally better and people are worried about corruption, which is one of my personal indicators that the worst of the physical violence is coming to an end.
What is not clear is how long they’ll keep the more or less democratic system of governance we bequeathed them. Maliki shows signs of grabbing for power by appointing army commanders loyal to him personally, ignoring the parliament, pressuring the constitutional court and stiff-arming both his coalition partners and the opposition. His ungenerous reaction to Iraqi protesters calling for better services and more democracy, as well as his support for Bashar al Assad, have raised a lot of eyebrows.
Iraqis should bear the responsibility for ensuring that the democratic system prevails. Keeping it propped up with American troops was helping Maliki consolidate his position, and seemed to provide precious little leverage over his decisions. I find it hard to believe that either Kurds or Sunnis will accept a Shia autocracy, and there are lots of Shia who will object as well. Iran will not find Iraqis any easier to push around than the Americans did. Maybe it is time to take off the training wheels altogether and hope for the best. We’ve got a lot of other things to worry about.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
The limits of military power
Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading Joe Nye’s The Future of Power, but every event I’ve been to lately around DC has reminded me of the limits of military power in achieving U.S. national security objectives. It is certainly not lack of admiration for the prowess of the American military–they are fantastically good at not only the military tasks that are their bread and butter, but also at the many other tasks presidents toss their way. And if you haven’t had the privilege of hearing David Petraeus or James Stavridis talk, you’ve missed some first class intellectual heft.
But consider today’s problems: Iran, Syria, Afghanistan.
If Iran did in fact plot with a Mexican cartel to murder the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., what are we going to do about it? Sure there are military options, and
people who advocate them. If the plot had succeeded we would probably have used one or two like leveling Quds force headquarters with cruise missiles or capturing a few Iranian miscreants in Iraq or Afghanistan. But it is all too obvious that the Iranians would respond, blowing up some favorites of ours or grabbing a few more Americans taking walks in Kurdistan. The more realistic options in response to a plot that did not succeed are the nonmilitary ones I pointed to yesterday.
Syria is a case where military intervention like that undertaken in Libya might make a big difference, and some of the protesters against President Assad’s regime would like to see it happen. But it won’t: the Russians haven’t even allowed a denunciation of the regime’s violence against the demonstrators to pass, and the Arab League is sitting on its duffs. I know there are some who still hope NATO will undertaken the kind of unauthorized campaign it unleashed from the air against the Serbs in 1999, but it isn’t going to happen so long as Bashar keeps the level of atrocities in the daily dozens. The protesters are in for a long struggle without foreign force on their side.
In Afghanistan, the Americans have really brought to bear most of their military capability, without a clear result. No one serious believes any longer that there is a military solution there. We’ll have to settle for a political arrangement that gives the Taliban (hopefully not Al Qaeda) some significant measure of what it wants. Afghanistan is looking more and more like Vietnam, less and less like even Iraq. We aren’t likely to come out in 2014, when withdrawal is to be completed, with much.
Let’s not even discuss Israel/Palestine and North Korea, where American interests are certainly at stake. American military capabilities are vital to shaping the environment in both places, but the opportunities to use it are very limited. It is more an insurance policy against gross misbehavior by one of the protagonists than a tool that we can use on a daily basis. In Joe Nye’s terms, military power in these environments can be converted into influence, persuasion and agenda-setting (i.e. soft power) even if use of American force is not likely.
Of course our flag officers know they need stronger civilian counterparts in defending national security. They have repeatedly called for beefing up civilian capabilities. But it isn’t happening. Congress is tearing the budget of the civilian side of foreign policy to shreds, even as the game of chicken between Republicans and Democrats on the budget approaches the moment of truth. I think we know what will happen if it comes down to cutting the national security budget, which includes both military and civilian expenditure. The military may not like what it ends up with, but it will be a feast relative to what the State Department and the Agency for International Development have on their plates.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Keeping focused
While Iran’s defenders are pooh-poohing the charge that Iran’s Quds force backed a plot to murder the Saudi ambassador to the United States, its detractors see escalation in the covert war with the United States.
Certainly if the charges are true, it is hard not to see the plot as escalation. But it is important to remember that there are at least two, if not more, belligerents in the covert war. Murder of Iranian nuclear scientists, the Stuxnet virus that seems to have slowed the nuclear program, U.S. capture of Iranians who claim diplomatic immunity working inside Iraq, and support to ethnic rebellions inside Iran all indicate that paranoid Iran really does have enemies.
It is important now for Washington to show some cards. The alleged plot supposedly involved Iranian hiring of Mexican drug cartels to carry out the dirty work. A cooperating alleged perpetrator seems to have identified Quds force operatives and arranged financial transfers from them. Putting at least some of the evidence into the public domain would go a long way to removing skepticism, which is rife even among those who are no friends of Iran.
This development comes at an awkward moment. Iranian President Ahmedinejad has been flashing an offer that some American analysts would like to take up, if only to call his bluff:
[Ahmedinejad] has stated on a number of occasions that his country will cease domestic efforts to manufacture fuel for one of its nuclear reactors if it is able to purchase the fuel from abroad. The United States should accept this proposal — publicly, immediately and unconditionally.
That seems highly unlikely at first blush: how do American diplomats make nice with Ahmedinejad while announcing to the world that Iran’s security forces have been plotting murder, even mass atrocity if one version of the alleged plot had taken place, inside the United States? But it is precisely at a moment like this–when Iran is going to find itself weakened and isolated–that the international pressure might be sufficient to force progress on the nuclear issue, with the added potential benefit of further fragmenting a regime whose president and “supreme leader” are already on the outs. Maybe taking up the offer privately, cautiously and conditionally would work too.
Preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons is a vital American interest, all the more so if the regime there is prepared to contemplate mass atrocity on American soil. We need to not lose sight of that objective while holding Iran accountable for whatever role it had in the alleged plot to murder the Saudi ambassador. Focusing on two objectives at once is not easy, but nonetheless necessary.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Who is right?
When it comes to vital American interests, little trumps stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Bruce Riedel may be right that we need to begin to imagine how we can live with the prospect, but most of those who worry about these issues would want to maximize at least the non-military effort to prevent it from happening. Ken Pollack and Ray Takeyh think we need first to “double down.” Stephen Walt says that would be counterproductive. Instead we should ease up and try to get an agreement that Iran will not weaponize its nuclear technology. Who is right?
Walt starts from the obvious: pressuring the Iranians hasn’t worked. Regime survival is Tehran’s primary concern. Increasing the pressure implicitly or explicitly threatens the regime, which sees nuclear weapons as a guarantee of regime survival. Pressure will only solidify Tehran’s determination to get them. So why would redoubling work?
Pollack and Takeyh agree that regime survival is Tehran’s primary concern. They propose that we threaten it. Doing so, they argue, will require that we support the Green Movement–Iran’s so far failed popular uprising–as well as ethnic opponents of the regime, try to block (mostly Chinese) investment in the energy sector, target the Revolutionary Guards in ways they claim we have been reluctant to do, and increase criticism of Iran’s human rights record.
I’ll be accused of straddling, or maybe of mixing and matching, but it seems to me the sweet spot lies somewhere in between these stark perspectives. Yes, the United States should talk with the Green Movement and the ethnic groups in Iran and provide what support they think will be productive, so long as they remain nonviolent (violence, especially from the Baloch and Kurds, gives the regime the excuse it needs to crack down). It should certainly be focusing global attention on Iranian human rights abuses.
But it is unlikely that the Chinese are going to pass on energy investment in Iran unless there is a broad international agreement (read Security Council resolution) that asks them to do so, and we’ve got to be cautious about the ways and means used to support the Greens and other oppositions. American support, especially in covert form, can do more to harm them than to help.
Walt may be correct in his analysis of the failure of current policy. But it does not follow that if we ease up now the Iranians will be interested in accommodating our interest in seeing them stop their nuclear program short of weaponization. Why wouldn’t they just plow ahead if there is no clear cost associated with doing so? If making the benefits of stopping clear would help, why wouldn’t it also help to make the costs of plowing ahead clear?
Walt concludes his piece with his “real concern”:
…by falsely portraying the United States as having made numerous generous offers, by dismissing Iran’s security concerns as unfounded reflections of innate suspiciousness or radical ideology, and by prescribing a course of action that hasn’t worked in the past and is likely to fail now, Pollack and Takeyh may be setting the stage for a future article where they admit that “doubling down” didn’t work, and then tell us — with great reluctance, of course — that we have no choice but to go to war again.
That is a separate issue, perhaps the most important of war and peace question of this decade.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
A step in the right direction
Nadim Shehadi argues in The Guardian
Syrian political society will emerge and show its real face only after the regime is gone, and not before. This will not be a phoenix rising from the ashes, rather a battered society that will be trying to find its way after a long and dark period.
Until then, he advises we stop calling the opposition “the opposition” (because doing so legitimizes the regime) and lower our expectations to about as close to zero as possible, since no Syrian can reveal his true political identity without serious risk.
Fortunately, the Syrian opposition seems not to be taking Shehadi’s advice. Instead it formed a Syrian National Council on Sunday in Istanbul, whose chair outlined its purposes:
…[to] achieve the goals of the revolution to topple the regime, including all of its components and leadership, and to replace it with a democratic pluralistic regime.
Admittedly, this is not yet much of a program, and the people ready to speak openly for the Syrian National Council at present appear all to be expatriates, even if it is claimed that the Local Coordinating Committees that organize demonstrations inside Syria were represented in Istanbul.
But it is vital that the Syrians create something that can be viewed internationally and internally as a legitimate alternative to Bashar al Assad. If diaspora Syrians can help provide the alternative, all the better, even if their role is likely to decrease in the future.
No one watching the course of events in Libya and Egypt can doubt the importance of minimal coherence and legitimacy in the leadership of a rebellion. Libya had such a body, now called the National Transitional Council and recognized widely as the legitimate governing authority. Egypt did not. As a result, the protesters acquiesced in turning over the transition to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which has proven an infelicitous choice from the perspective of those who forced Hosni Mubarak to step down.
The Syrian National Council has a tough job ahead. Some Syrians have begun to take up arms against the regime, which has not hesitated to use indiscriminate force against the protesters. They cannot expect foreign military help. NATO is in no mood for another Libya. There is no demand for it in the Arab world, and the Russians won’t let a Security Council resolution authorize it because of their longstanding alliance with Syria, which includes a naval base at Latakia. While sanctions are taking their toll on the Syrian regime, Iran is doing what it can to relieve its friends in Damascus and ensure that they survive.
Syria is a complex society, with ethnic, sectarian and religious divisions that the Assad regime has long exploited to prevent the emergence of a united opposition. It will not be easy to keep Kurds and Arabs, Sunni and Shia, Christiansand Muslims on the same wavelength. That a reasonably united opposition appears now to be emerging is significant, even if Shehadi is correct that the real, battered face of Syria will only emerge after the Assad regime is gone.
Here is a recent (September 28) Al Arabiya report on the demonstrations in Syria:
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
This week’s peace picks
With thanks to former student Jeff Jorve (who suggested it), I’ve decided to try to highlight a few Washington, DC events each week as interesting to those who follow peace and war issues. I’ll welcome volunteers to write any of these up for peacefare.net Just let me know (daniel@serwer.org) if you are intending to do a writeup, so that I can avoid duplicates.
Warning: some of these events require invitations, membership and/or RSVPs. I don’t arrange those. I advise checking with the host organization before going. I’ve included links to their web sites when I could figure out how to do it.
Here are this week’s peace picks:
1. The Georgian-South Ossetian Conflict: Perspectives from the Ground, Carnegie Endowment, October 3, 9:15-10:45
Carnegie Endowment’s Russia and Eurasia Program event with Archil Gegeshidze, senior fellow at the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies (GFSIS), and Lira Kozaeva, director of the Association of South Ossetian Women for Democracy and Human Rights, South Ossetia. Susan Allen Nan, assistant professor at the Institute for Conflict Alalysis and Resolution (ICAR), George Mason University, serves as discussant. Carnegie senior associate Thomas de Waal moderates.
2. Egypt After Mubarak, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, October 3, 12-2
Of all the momentous developments in the Middle East this year, none was more riveting than the sight of Egyptian “people power” forcing Hosni Mubarak from the presidential palace. But since those heady days, Egypt has entered a period of uncertainty as military leaders and newly unchained civilian parties alike wrestle with the responsibilities of democratic rule and the enormous problems facing the country.
Abdel Monem Said Aly is president of the al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo and a senior fellow at Brandeis University’s Crown Center for Middle East Studies. His most recent publications include The Paradox of the Egyptian Revolution (PDF).
David Schenker, the Aufzien fellow and director of the Program on Arab Politics at The Washington Institute, is author of Egypt’s Enduring Challenges: Shaping the Post-Mubarak Environment.
3. Share the Water, Build the Peace, World Affairs Council at Lindner Commons, GWU, October 3, 6:30-8:30 pm
The extraordinary Gidon Bromberg of Friends of the Earth Middle East followed by a panel.
4. The Impact of Sanctions on Iran, the U.S., and the Global Economy, Rayburn HOB, October 4, 9-10:30 a.m. 2237
Speakers: Robert Pape – Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago Lucian (Lou) Pugliaresi – President of the Energy Policy Research Foundation Bijan Khajehpour – Iranian Political and Economic Analyst and Chairman of Atieh Group Moderator: Barbara Slavin – Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S. and the Twisted Path to Confrontation
5. Why Al Qaeda Is Winning: The War We’re Fighting, and The War We Think We’re Fighting, Barnes and Noble, 555 12th St NW, October 4, 6:30 pm
Carnegie’s Nathan J. Brown will present his new paper on al-Azhar, Egypt’s leading religious institution, and analyze Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Georgetown University’s Jonathan AC Brown will discuss his recent research conducted in Egypt on debates over Islam’s role in society, with a focus on Sufi and Salafi groups. The Brookings Institution’s Khaled Elgindy will discuss politics and Islam. Carnegie’s Marina Ottaway will moderate.
8. What Next?: the Palestinian U.N. Bid, Israel and Options for the U.S., U.S. Institute of Peace (also webcast), October 7, 9:30 am
On September 23, President Mahmoud Abbas submitted an application to the U.N. Secretary-General for Palestine’s admission as a full state member of the United Nations. The United States, which sought to prevent this step, has threatened a veto in the Security Council, and there have been calls for a suspension of U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority over the matter, currently worth more than $500 million per year.
The Middle East Quartet has proposed a re-launch of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations with the goal of achieving a final agreement by the end of 2012.
However, the two sides continue to adhere to opposing views on even the conditions for returning to the table. What is needed to move the peace process forward? Is the diplomatic track in sync with the Palestinian state-building effort? What are the options for U.S. policy?
The United States Institute of Peace is pleased to host the below panel of discussants to explore these questions.
- Elliott Abrams, Discussant
Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations - Dr. Ziad Asali, Discussant
President, American Task Force on Palestine - Neil Kritz, Discussant
Senior Scholar in Residence, U.S. Institute of Peace - Congressman Robert Wexler, Discussant
President, S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace - David Sanger, Moderator
Writer-in-Residence, U.S. Institute of Peace
9. Taking Stock of Iran’s Nuclear Program: What Does it Mean, and What are the Implications? Linder Family Commons, rm 602, Elliott School (1957 E Street NW), October 7, 9:30-11 am.
David Albright, Founder and President, Institute for Science and International Security
David Albright, a physicist, is founder and president of the non-profit, Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington, D.C. He directs the project work of ISIS, heads its fundraising efforts, and chairs its board of directors. In addition, he regularly publishes and conducts scientific research. He has written numerous assessments on secret nuclear weapons programs throughout the world. Albright has published assessments in numerous technical and policy journals, including the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Science, Scientific American, Science and Global Security, Washington Quarterly, and Arms Control Today. Research reports by Albright have been published by the Environmental Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. and Princeton University’s Center for Energy and Environmental Studies.
RSVP at: http://bit.ly/odf93s
Sponsored by the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies and the Nuclear Policy Talks
RSS - Posts
