Tag: Iraq
Still righting the balance
These are my speaking notes for the talk I gave last night at the DC World Affairs Council on my book,
Righting the Balance (Potomac, 2013). I’ve added a bit about Ukraine, which is in part an instance of state weakness. It also illustrates the limited usefulness of conventional military instruments in meeting asymmetrical challenges, a key theme in the book. Click there on the right to order your own copy!
1. It is truly an honor to present here at the World Affairs Council. The 98 World Affairs Councils throughout this country play a key role in generating and sustaining the kind of citizen engagement in foreign policy that I think is so important in today’s increasingly interconnected world.
2. As I am going to say some harsh things about the State Department and USAID, and even suggest they be abolished in favor of a single Foreign Office, I would like to emphasize from the first that I have enormous respect for the Foreign Service and the devotion of its officers to pursuing America’s interests abroad. I feel the same way about the US military.
3. But I don’t think the Foreign Service is well served by the institutions that hire, pay and deploy our diplomats and aid workers. And I don’t think our military should be called upon to make up for civilian deficiencies.
4. My book, Righting the Balance, is aimed at correcting those imbalances. But it does not start there.
5. It starts with the sweep of American history, which has given our military a leading role in America’s foreign affairs since at least the French and Indian war.
6. Americans think of their country as a peaceful one, but in fact we have had troops deployed in conflict zones for more than a quarter of our history—not even counting wars against native Americans and pirates—and every year since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
7. With each of those wars, we improved our technology and expanded our reach, becoming by the end of the 20th century the world’s only remaining superpower.
8. We have a strong, well-exercised military arm for projecting power. It is so strong that it is reaching a point of diminishing returns: every additional dollar buys miniscule improvement.
9. But our civilian capacities are more limited. This was glaringly apparent in Iraq and Afghanistan, where State and AID struggled, and all too often failed, to meet the requirements.
10. It has also been glaringly apparent during the Arab uprisings, which not only caught our diplomats by surprise but left them puzzled about what to do.
11. These failures are more important than ever before. The enemies who cause us problems today are not often states: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq fell quickly, as did the Taliban government in Afghanistan.
12. We won the wars. We lost the peace.
13. The main threats to America today come not from other strong states but from non-state actors who find haven and support in fragile, weak and collapsing states.
14. Even in Ukraine, the Russians are not using the full weight of their armed forces but rather relying on disruption in challenging the legitimacy of Kiev’s government and its control over territory in the east and south.
15. National security, always more than a military mission, now requires conflict prevention and state-building capacities that are sorely lacking in both State and AID. They have scrambled hard to meet the needs in Bosnia, Kosovo, South Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan, but they are not much better configured than when I arrived in Sarajevo for the first time in November 1994.
16. Some of you will be thinking, that’s OK, because we never want to do this state-building stuff again.
17. It’s not only my colleague Michael Mandelbaum who thinks that way. Each and every president since 1989 has resisted getting involved in other countries’ internal politics, and each one has discovered that it is far easier to go to war and kill enemies than it is to withdraw, leaving behind a collapsed state that will regenerate those enemies.
18. Unless you are willing to fight on forever—even longer than the “long war”—you need to build capable states that protect their citizens reasonably well.
19. We are discovering this today in Yemen, where the drone war appears to have created more terrorists than it has killed. This is one of the main reasons President Obama has avoided military intervention in Syria, but the post-war effort there will still be a major one, even if is not primarily a U.S. responsibility. The same is true in eastern DRC and in Colombia, where peace is threatening to break out after decades of war.
20. America won’t be able to avoid being engaged when North Korea or Cuba collapses. Nor will we stay aloof if nuclear-armed Pakistan starts coming apart. Let’s not even think about Iran. If Ukraine is to be kept whole and independent, it will need a far better state than the one that has performed so badly since the Orange Revolution of 2005.
21. So my view is that we need to prepare for the day, not continue to delude ourselves that we will never do it again.
22. But I would be the first to admit that post-war state-building, a subject I teach at SAIS, is hard and expensive. Anticipation is cheaper and better. We need civilian foreign policy instruments that will take early action to prevent states from collapsing and help initiate reforms.
23. We’ve been reasonably successful at allowing this to happen in much of Latin America and East Asia, where recent decades have seen many countries turn in the direction of democratic transition. Brazil, Chile, South Korea, Indonesia are sterling examples of transitions that the United States allowed, nurtured and encouraged.
24. That’s what we failed to do effectively in the Arab world, with consequences that are now on the front pages every day. We failed to anticipate the revolution in Tunisia. In Libya we failed to help the new regime establish a monopoly on the legitimate means of violence. That failure cost us an ambassador and three of his colleagues and has left Libya adrift.
25. In Egypt, we’ve been inconstant, supporting whoever gains power. The result, as I observed during the constitutional referendum in January, is a restoration of the military autocracy, with voters intimidated into staying home rather than voting against the new constitution and human rights advocates imprisoned along with the Muslim Brotherhood leadership.
26. In Syria, we failed to support moderates, only to see them displaced and replaced by extremists. The result is a daily catastrophe of truly genocidal dimensions.
27. The specific areas I describe as lacking in today’s State and AID are these:
• Mobilizing early, preventive action
• Reforming security services
• Promoting democracy
• Countering violent extremism
• Encouraging citizen and cultural diplomacy
28. These are all efforts at the periphery of traditional diplomacy, and I readily admit that the last three are better done mainly outside government while the first two are more inherently governmental.
29. But I don’t think we can get them done with our current institutions, which were designed for different purposes in other eras. Inertia and legacy are too strong.
30. The State Department, originally the Department of the State, is now a conventional foreign ministry with a 19th century architecture: most Foreign Service personnel serve abroad in static embassies and other missions servicing agencies of the US government other than the State Department. Legacy and inertia, not current needs, dictate where it has people stationed and a good deal of what they are doing.
31. USAID was founded with a poverty alleviation and economic development mission to help fight the Cold War. Few of us still think that US government programs can fix poverty at home, much less overseas.
32. There have been a lot of proposals for reform. Let’s recall Condoleezza Rice’s transformational diplomacy and Hillary Clinton’s Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, now being reprised. None of these efforts have gained more than temporary traction.
33. What we need to do is conduct what scientists call a thought experiment: knowing what we do about the challenges we now face, what kind foreign policy instruments do we need?
34. The answer is nothing like what we’ve got.
35. My book doesn’t offer a detailed design, but it does suggest that we need a single Foreign Office with a national security focus as well as a much-enhanced nongovernmental effort, operated at arms’ length from officialdom but with much greater Congressional funding than it has today.
36. I am not however prepared to propose, as so many have before me, that this new Foreign Office be funded by passing up an F22 or two. I think State and AID have the resources needed, but unfortunately tied up in those elephantine embassies supporting other US government agencies.
37. Shrinking these dramatically would provide the funds for a much sleeker and more effective Foreign Office, including a corps of several thousand people able and willing to deploy, with or without US troops, to difficult environments to take on the hard work of conflict prevention and state-building where required.
38. What we need is a far more agile, anticipatory and mobile Foreign Service, one built for a world in which virtually everyone will soon be connected to worldwide communications at reasonable cost and ordinary citizens, including you, count for much more than ever before in world history.
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Peace picks May 5 – 9
1. Russia in East Asia: History, Migration, and Contemporary Policy Monday, May 5 | 9 – 11am 5th Floor, Woodrow Wilson Center; 1300 Pennsylvania Ave NW REGISTER TO ATTEND This talk explores Russia’s ties with East Asia through the lens of migration and policy. Russia spans the Eurasian continent, yet its historic and present connections with East Asia are often forgotten. At the turn of the 20th century, thousands of Asian migrants arrived in the Russian Far East, spurring fears of a “yellow peril.” A century later, the recent influx of new Asian migrants to Russia has generated similar sentiments. The talk discusses Asian migration in the context of cross-regional attempts to strengthen trade ties and diplomatic relations in the 21st century. SPEAKERS Matthew Ouimet, Public Policy Scholar Senior Analyst, Office of Analysis for Russia and Eurasia, U.S. Department of State. Alyssa Park, Kennan Institute Title VIII Supported Research Scholar Assistant Professor of Modern Korean History, University of Iowa 2. The Democratic Transition in Tunisia: Moving Forward Monday, May 5 | 10 – 11:30am Kenney Auditorium, The Nitze Building, Johns Hopkins University; 1740 Massachusetts Ave NW REGISTER TO ATTEND Mustapha Ben Jaafar, president of the National Constituent Assembly of Tunisia, will discuss this topic. Sasha Toperich, senior fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at SAIS, will moderate the event. Read more
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Triage, not retreat
I spent yesterday morning at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) annual shindig on the Middle East, “Allies, Adversaries and Enemies.” It began with a big-think panel on American foreign policy since 9/11: Robert Kagan, Walter Russell Mead and Leon Wieseltier. FDD President Cliff May moderated. The luminaries skipped any serious discussion of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Nor did they mention the drone wars in Pakistan and Yemen. The consensus was plainly and vigorously anti-Obama: he is shy of using force and leading an American retreat from the world that will get us into deeper trouble in the future. Congressman McKeon (R-CA) makes a similar argument in today’s Washington Post.
This is not my natural habitat, so I’ll try to give an account of the local fauna before launching into a tirade against them.
The panel hit President Obama hard and fast. Wieseltier criticized him for portraying all the alternatives to his policies everywhere as war. Spooked by Iraq, he trumps up phony dichotomies. The truth is he is looking for ways to pull the US out of overseas engagements, especially in the Middle East. As a result, all our friends need reassurance. His policy is one of introversion and absence. The President doesn’t see US power as a good thing and doesn’t recognize that even multilateralism requires US leadership. He wants no more land wars and is trying to ensure that with cuts at the Pentagon, an idea he admittedly inherited from Donald Rumsfeld.
Dissenting sardonically from the view that Obama is a Kenyan socialist, Mead offered a slightly more generous appraisal: Obama believes that as the US withdraws a balance of power will emerge, one that costs the US less than at present. This is a 1930s-style policy close to what most Americans want. But it won’t work, even if the limits of public opinion are real. We’ll get clobbered somehow. The president should harness pro-engagement sentiment and lead more forcefully. Only a balance of power under US hegemony can be stable and reliable.
Kagan concurred, remarking that Americans (unfortunately) have a high tolerance for a collapsing world. But the issue really is military power and America’s willingness to use force. We are on a slippery slope. The Obama doctrine is simply to avoid using force, which is undermining the world’s confidence in our ability and willingness to defend the liberal world order. That is the key objective for American foreign policy. We lost Iraq when Obama withdrew the American troops. The same thing could happen in Afghanistan. Nuclear Iran will be a big problem, but not a threat to the liberal world order, which is more threatened by the waxing military dictatorship in Egypt and the rebellion it will trigger in the future.
Doutbts about whether the US would attack Iran, or let Israel do it, wafted through the room. General Michael Hayden in the next session threw cold water on the idea that Israel either could or should undertake a military strike on its own. No one bothered to consider what would happen in the aftermath of a massive US strike on Iran. Would that stop or accelerate their nuclear program?
The only part of the panel presentations I would happily agree with is the well-established reluctance of the American public to be overly engaged abroad. It was notable that the panel offered not one example of something they thought Obama should do now to respond to the crises in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Egypt or lots of other places. They were full of examples of what he should have done in the past, and absolutely certain he would not do the right things in the future, including decisive military action against the Iranian nuclear program.
Time and energy don’t allow me to respond to all of the points above. Let me comment on three countries I know well: Iraq, Ukraine and Syria.
The notion that it was President Obama who decided to withdraw troops from Iraq is simply wrong. Here is a first-person account from Bob Loftis, who led the failed negotiations on the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA):
[The decision to withdraw US troops] happened in mid-2008 [during the Bush Administration]. My team and I were instructed to work on an agreement that would allow a long term US military presence. At no time did the issue of withdrawal arise, even when the term “SOFA” became politically toxic in Baghdad. SOFA talks were suspended in May 2008, with the focus placed on negotiating the Strategic Framework Agreement (which would have some vague references to “pre-existing arrangements” (i.e. certain parts of CPA17). I then heard in September 2008 that…there were new SOFA talks which were about withdrawal. The “Agreement Between the United States of America and the Republic of Iraq On the Withdrawal of United States Forces from Iraq and the Organization of Their Activities during Their Temporary Presence in Iraq” was signed on 17 November 2008 by Ryan Crocker: Article 24 (1) states “All the United States Forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011.”
People will tell you that President Bush thought the agreement would be revised in the succeeding administration to allow the Americans to stay in some limited number. But that doesn’t change the fact that it was Bush, not Obama, who decided on US withdrawal. Once in office, Obama did try to negotiate permission for the Americans to stay. Prime Minister Maliki didn’t want to give up jurisdiction over crimes committed by US troops. Hard for me to fault the President for not yielding on that point, especially in light of the arbitrary arrests and detentions Maliki has indulged in since. Nor do I think US troops in the mess that is today’s Iraq would be either safe or useful.
Ukraine loomed large over this discussion. No one on the panel had a specific suggestion for what to do there, except that Kagan demurred from the President’s assertion that we have no military option. Of course we do, he said. We have absolute air superiority over Ukraine if we want it. That may be true. But it would require the use of US bases in Europe and Turkey. How long does Kagan think US leadership and the liberal world order would last after war between the US and Russia?
On Syria, I dissent from the President’s policy as much as any of the panelists. But I have specific suggestions for what he should at least consider doing: recognize the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC) as the legitimate government of Syria, overtly arm its affiliated fighters and destroy as much of the Syrian air force and missile inventories as possible. I suppose big thinkers like Wieseltier, Kagan and Mead don’t trade in such small beer, but those of us who treasure concreteness think they should.
It seems to me what the President is up to is not retreat but triage: he is focusing on Iran’s nuclear weapons and the Asia Pacific because he thinks the issues there threaten vital US interests. Syria for him falls below the line. For me it is above: the threat to neighboring states in the Levant and the growth of extremism put it there. But that simple and entirely understandable distinction would not inspire the kind of disdain that the panelists indulged in and the audience applauded at yesterday’s event.
PS, May 6: For the skeptical masochists among you, here is video of the event, which arrived today:
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Maliki weakened but still relatively strong
Hayder al-Khoei (@Hayder_alKhoei) is reporting unofficial Iraq results from yesterday’s election for numbers of seats in parliament (total number of seats is 328, 165 needed for a majority):
Maliki: 68
Hakim: 48
Nujaifi: 37
Sadr: 31
Barzani: 20
Mustafa: 15
Allawi: 14
PUK: 14
Mutlaq: 11
Musa: 11
These are not final numbers, which often vary from initial reports.
If these hold, Maliki has done less well than many anticipated (80-90 was a common figure when I was in Iraq last month). He will need Hakim or Sadr or both to stick with him in order to win a third mandate. If he fails at that, the chances for an anti-Maliki coalition (presumably based on Hakim, Sadr, Nujaifi plus the Kurds) would rise significantly.
In any event, this is a more fragmented result than in 2010, when Allawi’s Iraqiyya beat Maliki 91 to 89 but Maliki formed a larger post-electoral coalition. Fragmentation could mean a lengthy government-formation period. Maliki would remain a caretaker with no parliament in place until the speaker is chosen and a president elected. That would give him time and running room, which he is adept at using.
We’ll have to wait and see whether this unofficial tally holds.
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Peace Picks April 21 – 25
1. America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East
Monday, April 21 | 4 – 5:30pm
6th Floor, Woodrow Wilson Center; 1300 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Reservations requested because of limited space: WHS@wilsoncenter.org
The CIA has an almost diabolical reputation in the Arab world. Yet, in the early years of its existence, the 1940s and 1950s, the Agency was distinctly pro-Arab, lending its support to the leading Arab nationalist of the day, Gamal Nasser, and conducting an anti-Zionist publicity campaign at home in the U.S. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Hugh Wilford uncovers the world of early CIA “Arabism,” its origins, characteristic forms, and eventual demise.
2. Iraq After 2014
Tuesday, April 22 | 12:30 – 2pm
Kenney Auditorium, SAIS (The Nitze Building), 1740 Massachusetts Ave NW
Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, counselor at CSIS, President and CEO of Khalilizad Associates, and former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the United Nations, will discuss this topic.
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Passover wandering
Like 70% of American Jews, I spent last night at a Seder, celebrating the story of liberation from pharaoh. Here are some of the thoughts that were on my mind.
Three years ago I wrote with enthusiasm about the Passover of Arab liberation. Two years ago Syria seemed already in the midst of ten plagues and ruled by a pharaoh who wouldn’t let his people go. Last year I thought things in the Middle East better than expected.
This year I’ve got to confess things are a mess, not only in the Middle East but also in Ukraine.
The war in Syria rages on. Israel/Palestine peace negotiations are stalled. Both sides are pursuing unilateral options. Egypt is restoring military autocracy. Libya is chaotic. Parts of Iraq are worse. The only whisper of good news is from Morocco, Yemen and Tunisia, where something like more or less democratic transitions are progressing, and Iran, where the Islamic Republic is pressing anxiously for a nuclear deal, albeit one that still seems far off.
In Ukraine, Russia is using surrogates and forces that don’t bother wearing insignia to take over eastern and southern cities where Russian speakers predominate. It looks as if military invasion won’t be necessary. Kiev has been reduced to asking for UN peacekeeping troops. NATO can do nothing. Strategic patience, and refusal to recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea and any other parts of Ukraine it might absorb, seems the best of a rotten bunch of options.
This is discouraging, but no one ever promised continuous progress. Even the Israelites wandered in the desert. Everyone forgets the part about getting stuck in one lousy oasis for 38 of those years. Freedom is not a one-time thing. It requires constant effort. There are setbacks. And there are breakthroughs.
Americans face their own liberation challenges. While the past year has seen giant strides in acceptance of gay marriage, there have been setbacks to the right to vote. Money is now speech and corporations are people, according to the Supreme Court. I’ll believe that when a corporation gets sent to prison and banks start accepting what I say as a deposit. The right to bear arms continues to expand, but not my right to be safe from those who do, except by arming myself. In Kansas City Sunday a white supremacist and anti-Semite allegedly shot and killed three people at Jewish facilities, all Christians.
The plain fact is that liberation, as Moses discovered, is hard. It requires persistence. There are no guarantees of success. The only directions history takes are the ones that people compel it to take. Some of those people are genuinely good. Others are evil. Sometimes they are both, as son Adam’s piece on LBJ this week suggests. There may be a right side and a wrong side of history, but it seems difficult for many people to tell the difference.
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