Let’s not fool ourselves. It is not an outbreak of fighting we are seeing in Lebanon right now. It is war. Even if it ends tomorrow it will still be war. And there is no likelihood that is going to happen. Like all wars it is an atrocity. Innocents are killed in both Lebanon and Israel. Fleeing refugees are blown to bits by Israeli jets near the border. Israelis are killed in rocket attacks in Haifa. An Israeli warship is hit and Lebanese soldiers are killed by Israeli attacks. Societies are shattered, physically and emotionally. So, the only appropriate response is to try and stop it. But thus far, President Bush declines even to call for a cease fire.

Vapid rhetoric about how Israel has a right to defend itself or how Hezbollah is just acting in defense of Palestinians in Gaza is not useful. Neither is uninformed neoconservative commentary about how now is the time to go after Syria or Iran.  Let’s be honest, in terms of cool headed appraisals of national interest, which are the only useful ones to engage in, it profits the United States nothing to see another war in the Middle East. Especially now, given our forces in Iraq, and our “long war” on terrorist which, by default, includes much of the Middle East.  Frankly, we do not have the military or economic resources to deal with it now. Our current multi-front war has already put a severe strain on our military. (more…)

Watching the violence in the Middle East unfold, I cannot help but feel that Israel is making the same mistake as the Bush administration in responding to terrorism. After the September 11th attacks, America had the moral legitimacy and sympathy of the world on its side. The Bush administration intelligently used this worldwide support to build a case against the Taliban and then it brought military force against the regime in a targeted and skillful way. But then the Bush administration began seeing its role and legitimacy to act well beyond the contours of self-defense. Even though Iraq had ambiguous ties at best to September 11th and no certified weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration tried to use this link to justify its war. Although the administration quickly won the combat, thanks to a robust military strategy of “shock and awe,” America soon realized that it was quickly losing the battle for hearts and minds

Although a very different case, I fear that Israel may be making a similar error in judgment.  Yes, Israel may have the military strength to shock and awe its neighbors, and yes a strong response to Hezbollah is justified, but to the extent Israel diverges from a targeted path and begins using its shock and awe capacity more widely against innocent Lebanese citizens by bombing their airports and bridges, it runs the risk of quickly wiping out its international sympathy and losing the war of ideas. Worse yet, just like America’s war in Iraq, Israel runs the risk of furthering the cause of insurgents and widening the conflict. As this week’s Time reports:
…there is a real risk that the move may have the same unintended consequence of the raid 38 years ago: pushing Lebanon further into a spiral of internal strife and even a civil war that embroils the entire Middle East.

A few days ago, Chris Preble highlighted two important Washington Post op-eds in his post on this blog, which Chris called “The Costs of War.” The same day, July 11, Connecticut Representative Christopher Shays held a hearing of the Committee on Government Reform’s Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations. David Walker, the Comptroller General of the United States, testified on, among other things, the budgetary costs of the war in Iraq. They are quite substantial (about $3 billion a week, he estimated based on a new GAO report).

I wasn’t at the hearing and, frankly, I didn’t know anything about it until I heard David Welna’s story about it the next day on NPR’s Morning Edition. Welna’s story includes shocking examples of partisan rancor and spin — another cost of the Iraq War. I don’t know whether Welna’s exerpts from the hearing were truly representative of the session. But two particular comments stuck out to me. (more…)

I’ve been quite encouraged by the discussion on the UN and foreign interventions that has developed on the blog during the past several weeks.  Chip Andreae did a particularly good job of laying out many of the issues in his recent post.  I thought that I would take the opportunity today to reference a particularly nasty response that was written up right after PSA released its UN statement as a New York Times advertisement on June 23rd.  This scathing critique (subscription required) was by Martin Peretz, the Editor in Chief of the New Republic. 

Peretz writes:

“Then there is the Partnership for a Secure America which ran a full-page ad in Friday’s Times. (How much did that cost? My estimate: something just short of $150,000.) Half the page was devoted to a photograph of a smiling refugee child of no obvious national origin but probably in Africa where the United Nations has been especially callous. Of course, no refugee child would not, in all likelihood, benefit from the increased funding to the United Nations demanded by the “bipartisan leaders” whose names are appended at the bottom of the page. Any student of the institution knows that the money will be sent to Turtle Bay in New York, and it will allow the Secretariat, the Third Committee of the Assembly, the Fourth Committee of the Assembly, and various other talkfests, which constitute the bulk of the United Nations, to continue their jabber and have it translated into five languages and distribute the documents all around the world. An old friend of mine who works for a European country’s mission to the United Nations confided to me with a smile that, as soon as these official transcripts and reports arrive at his office, they are thrown directly into the waste heap. Not even by way of the shredder. Maybe the lumber industry should pay for administration of the United Nations.”

I’d like to take this opportunity to respond to some of Peretz’s attacks.  First of all, I question Peretz’s allegations of the United Nations being “especially callous” in Africa.  I admit that one can find examples of bad policy choices and improper conduct by the United Nations in Africa and in many other places.  However, when examined as a whole, the United Nations presence in Africa has generally been positive.  The UN like any large institution has much to criticize.  The PSA statement, in fact, acknowledged this and emphasized the continued need for reforms.  (more…)

Two absolutely must-read columns were published in Sunday’s Washington Post Outlook section.

The lead essay (“What’s an Iraqi Life Worth?“) by Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University, notes that the media attention on recent atrocities in Iraq misses a far more common, but in some ways more disturbing, problem: the accidental killing of civilians. These acts are not perpetrated by soldiers and Marines running amok. They are the result of simple miscalculation, error, the so-called fog of war.

In his book, The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, Bacevich dwells on the idea of defense transformation. One of the champions of this idea, Albert Wohlstetter, wanted to make the use of military force more palatable to policymakers and the public at large, but he recognized that people were understandably troubled by the killing of innocents. Precision guided weapons supposedly provided the answer, of war that could be made perfect and clean, targeted to the point where civilian casualties could be reduced or even eliminated.

When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Pentagon adviser Richard Perle, one of the leading advocates of the Iraq war, credited his mentor Wohlstetter with making it possible. This was “Albert’s vision of future wars”, Perle said in May 2003, “That it was won so quickly and decisively, with so few casualties and so little damage, was in fact an implementation of his strategy and his vision.”

Bacevich, who graduated from West Point and retired from the Army at the rank of colonel, is correctly skeptical of such fantastic notions. He knows that there will always be mistakes in war. The misplaced artillery round. The precision guided bomb that goes off-course, or that was incorrectly targeted. The car speeding toward a checkpoint that is filled not with murderous terrorists, but rather with a family desperate to return to their home before curfew, or to the hospital to deliver a new baby. What are the soldiers who are manning the checkpoint supposed to do? Assume the best, hold their fire, and risk being killed? Assume the worst, open fire, and risk killing innocents? Our men and women in uniform are placed in a position where they are forced to make dozens of life and death decisions every day. Most, by dint of training, sound judgement, courage and luck, choose wisely. But they cannot be expected to be perfect.

(For more on Bacevich’s fine book, you can read my review published in the Summer 2005 issue of The National Interest, or watch an event hosted at Cato last year, with the author, and commentator James Fallows of The Atlantic Monthly.)

For all of the focus on what Americans have spent in blood and treasure in Iraq, the costs endured by the Iraqi people have largely escaped scrutiny. We don’t even have reliable figures on the number of Iraqi civilians that have been killed since the war began in March 2003.

But the advocates for war with Iraq wanted it that way. They were openly disdainful of attempts to quantify the costs of war to the United States. They refused to even contemplate the costs for the people of Iraq. They could not credibly claim to be providing a great good if tens of thousands of Iraqis would likely die in the process. And yet certainly that many have died. The president in December 2005 guessed that 30,000 civilians had been killed. And the killings continue, with no end in sight.

Which leads to the other must-read, Fred Kaplan’s War Stories column (“Fighting Insurgents, By the Book“). Kaplan focuses on the Army’s new field manual for counterinsurgency, written by two highly respected officers, Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus and retired Lt. Col. Conrad C. Crane. The manual documents the countless pitfalls of counterinsurgency, the dos and don’ts. There are useful historical parallels, not just to the United States in Vietnam, but also to Napoleon in Spain. Of the need for cultural awareness and understanding. Excessive force is usually counterproductive. A defection is better than a surrender, a surrender better than a capture, a capture is better than a kill. The broader themes that run through the manual are also important:

these kinds of wars are “protracted by nature.” They require “firm political will and extreme patience,” “considerable expenditure of time and resources,” and a large deployment of troops ready to greet “hand shakes or hand grenades” without mistaking one for the other.

 

The field manual, and the debate surrounding its (not yet public) findings, forces to the surface the extremely difficult questions that must be answered by all political leaders, Democrat or Republican, who would take the nation to war. Kaplan expertly identifies the two most salient questions: 1) Can American armed forces maintain such exacting standards over a long, hazy conflict?; and 2) Can Americans maintain a long-term commitment to civil or insurgent wars at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars and perhaps tens of thousands of lives?

Kaplan doesn’t answer, but he notes considerable ground for skepticism. One consultant on the field manual project, who spoke to Kaplan on condition of anonymity, guessed that if the experts had been asked these two questions, they likely would have “put in some caveat like ’If the nation and its leaders are not prepared for the long, hard fight that counterinsurgency entails, they should not begin it in the first place.’”

Seems like a pretty important caveat to me. I close with this. In a study published by the Army War College in December 2005, David C. Hendrickson and Robert W. Tucker survey the criticisms of the conduct of the Iraq war, particularly the by-now familiar charge that the planning for the post-war period was hopelessly deficient. (For links to the paper, along with additional commentary, visit The Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy.)

Hendrickson and Tucker conclude:

Though the record of Iraq war planning [deserves scrutiny] critics also have neglected the larger lesson that there are certain limits to what military power can accomplish. For certain purposes, like the creation of a liberal democratic society that will be a model for others, military power is a blunt instrument, destined by its very nature to give rise to unintended and unwelcome consequences. Rather than “do it better next time,” a better lesson is “don’t do it at all.”

I agree.

On Friday, June 23, Partnership for a Secure America ran an ad in the New York Times declaring its position that the US should not withdraw funding from the United Nations, while simultaneously supporting the US call for reform within the organization.  As the world is nearing a nuclear-active Iran, and witnessing a provocative North Korea, the UN could be an effective tool for the US as we negotiate with those countries.  As a body, the United Nations clearly falls short of its potential due to lack of budgetary discipline and ethical oversight, but it is still better off with total US support than without.  And, more importantly, so are we.

I understand that withdrawing funds is not exactly tantamount to withdrawing support.  But the distinction is one of degree, not one of type.  Withdrawing funds will lead to a schism between the US and other members of the Security Council, perhaps with the exception of the UK.  Countries who would be our diplomatic allies increasingly see us as a hypocritical state that expects everyone to play by the rules, except when we don’t want to.  While this isn’t a totally fair perception, it isn’t exactly unfair either.  Withdrawing funds, as opposed to working with the Secretary General and other delegates to effectuate change, would only exacerbate this view and further isolate the US.   (more…)

Much of the discussion of late on this blog has been about when to intervene and under what authority. On that score, I agree with Jordan Tama that legitimacy – as amorphous a concept as that is – makes more sense than legality.

But we must also recognize that the determining factor in many cases is not the efficacy of the UN or the conclusions of international commissions – it is a domestic political decision taken within the United States. President Clinton wanted to intervene in Kosovo and President Bush wanted to intervene in Iraq – so they did, whether those actions were legal or legitimate or not. In other cases – Rwanda and Darfur come to mind – neither President (or Congress), had much stomach to make a case for intervention to the American people. And more often than not, absent U.S. leadership, robust intervention to stop genocide or stem humanitarian disasters does not take place.

The transcript of the first Gore-Bush debate in 2000 crystallizes this problem in an intriguing way. Of course, the now infamous Bush line from the debate is “The vice president and I have a disagreement about the use of our troops. He believes in nation building. I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders.” Bush also defines the circumstances for deploying troops very narrowly – certainly not offering a definition encompassing a principle of a responsibility to protect (or spread democracy). Perhaps more enlightening is this News Hour summary of a later Bush-Gore back and forth on intervention.

The point is that the U.S. has no political consensus – no center – on the question of intervention, so the pendulum swings in strange ways. When then-Governor Bush came out against nation building and humanitarian intervention, I’m sure a huge majority of GoP members of Congress firmly lined up behind him – those same members now make soaring speeches about the need to stand up for our values abroad. Flip that around and you’ll probably find a similar switch on the Democratic side.

But the standard by which to judge whether or not to intervene should not just be: what party is the President who is making the decision? The U.S. does itself, the UN, and the world a huge disservice if there is no predictability, no clear political consensus, about what constitutes a legitimate intervention. Both parties do agree on one thing – they want the U.S. to remain the sole superpower. But for that to work, people in both parties need to come together to figure out what that means with regard to intervention.  

I’d like to go back to the lively discussion here about the Responsibility to Protect, and the ideas launched by Christopher Preble and Jordan Tama as a spin-off from the debate over UN reform, genocide and preventive intervention. 

Christopher is cautious about the idea of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), seeing its potential to undermine sovereignty by enabling bands of nations to circumvent the UN Security Council and eroding (further) its effectiveness in dampening down bad actors. He argues that this could encourage new nations to reassert their sovereignty by unfettered development of nuclear weapons. Sounds bad, and he raises a good point.  Jordan argues strongly that the benefits of the R2P norm are worth this risk of impinging on sovereignty, especially if it translates into a real means to stop bad actors from genocide and offers a route to deal with the Darfur-type situations more effectively. He suggests that legitimacy of action should be the test, a thoughtful approach.

Despite their differences, I’d guess that they both oppose misguided preventive wars and genocide.  Ok, so what is a way forward? There is no perfect answer, but two points may help. 

First, let’s recognize that military forces are already deployed today to protect civilians in horrific conflicts and that we’d better figure out what their jobs really are. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, four million reportedly have lost their lives since 1998, according to the International Rescue Committee. About 18,000 UN peacekeepers are now deployed there, some highly skilled with combat experience (and, of course, others not) and operating in regions such as Ituri in the East, where violence is especially high.  Their UN mandate, approved by the Security Council since 2000, directs them to use “all necessary means” and to “ensure the protection of civilians under imminent threat.” They do not have an R2P banner, perhaps, but they have a huge job on their hands to protect civilians in the face of a failed sovereign.  (more…)

This week, our organization took our first step at engaging high school leaders in global affairs with a summer enrichment program called Global Scholar, and we have been very impressed by the types of students who joined us. They’re bright, forward-looking, and creative. Most of all, I’ve been impressed by how closely these young leaders identify with issues, instead of with parties. They wear green or white bands to express their support for different causes such as saving Darfur or increasing global asisstance. But while they care deeply about issues, very few who I’ve talked to say they define themselves primarily as a Democrat or Republican. Instead, they say they say they define themselves by the issues they care about.

This is exciting news for those who care about getting our country back on track. These students are growing up at a time when celebrities from Bono to Bill Gates are fighting for their issues in a coalitional, results-oriented style. And these high school students appear to be internalizing this style of non-partisan political leadership. Let’s hope this type of leadership can continue to grow, as our country badly needs it.

Albert Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. In that regard it is worth noting the actions of some of Congress regarding the four letter word starting with I; no not Iraq, the other I, Iran.

One might think, after all the news about Administration lies and deception about what the U.S. said about Iraqi WMD that members of congress would be, shall we say, a bit cautious about accepting at face value what the executive branch now says about Iran’s intent to go all out for nuclear weapons. Indeed, you might think that but you would be wrong. (more…)