Saturday, Iran celebrated their great victory over the “arrogant powers” by opening their first nuclear power plant at Bushehr. The opening coincided with dynamic conversation on Jeff Goldberg’s recent article in The Atlantic painting a picture of military action as a foregone conclusion, and prominent foreign policy leaders such as former UN Ambassador John Bolton fanned the flames by renewing calls for a preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

Dangerously, the discussion on how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program has moved away from the case for bombing Iran to who and when, ignoring the painful lessons learned from depicting military action as a clean and straightforward solution. We are still reeling from the burdensome commitments of Iraq and Afghanistan: a military response by either the United States or Israel will take much more than just bombs and have major potential consequences beyond Iran, realities noticeably absent from much of the conversation.

(more…)

I just made it through Hitch 22, Christopher Hitchen’s memoir.  For those of you unacquainted with Mr. Hitchens, he – and please, never call him “Chris” – is a journalist and political dissident of the first rank who deploys with unequalled deft the English language to challenge tyranny in all its varied guises and disguises.  Mr. Hitchens has engaged in spirited struggle against a wide array of ghouls and scoundrels, from Saddam Hussein (for inflicting terror on his own people) to the Ayatollah Khomeini (for issuing a fatwa on Salman Rushdie’s head) to our own Henry Kissinger (for a range of offenses too long to list).

While reading this brilliant memoir, a thought kept haunting me about the way we think about achieving foreign policy goals with military means and methods.  We tend to think of these goals as ones that can be achieved scientifically.  For example, if you want to dethrone an insipid dictator, you must simply determine what is necessary to remove him.  Regime change, then, is a scientific problem that can be addressed with the tools of an amateur’s logic:  identify the problem, formulate a strategy, and then execute that strategy carefully.  A reasonably clever schoolboy could work it out, we seem to believe.

The problem with this little tradition of ours is not just that the military is not an institution structured to win over the hearts and minds of those who live in a life world far from our own – though this is certainly true.  The real bugbear is that many foreign policy objectives are not well suited to being achieved through bloody military campaigns.  And it’s not that the military needs to change, far from it; we must stop expecting our soldiers to handle problems best addressed through other means. (more…)

Kenya captured headlines in December 2007 when the former beacon of stability and growth in East Africa descended into political and social chaos after elections heightened ethnic and tribal divisions. Yet despite over 1,300 deaths, 300,000 displaced, and fears of a second Rwanda, Kenya has pulled back from the brink with the creation of a fragile power-sharing government between the two major rival parties, facilitated by the collaborative efforts of multiple stakeholders locally, nationally, and internationally.

Today, Kenyans return to the polls for the first time since the post-election violence to usher in a new constitution and drastic political and judicial reforms. As Kenya takes a step in a positive direction, its trajectory from violence and complete institutional breakdown to slow but constructive change should be an opportunity for the international community and United States to evaluate the potential and limitations of preventive diplomacy as a concrete foreign policy tool.

International involvement in Kenya did not involve boots on the ground, but focused on rigorous negotiations and external economic and political pressure from international institutions and countries. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary-General Kofi Annan, President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania, the African Union, and others were all key in the process, threatening punitive measures and pushing both sides towards compromise. (more…)

Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet state in Central Asia, has made many headlines after its corrupt President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was toppled in April. On June 10th, riots erupted between the Kyrgyz and the Uzbek minority in Bakiyev’s stronghold Osh, leaving hundreds dead and sending a flood of refuges to neighboring Uzbekistan. The June 27th constitutional referendum ratifying a new constitution was deemed successful, but true peace is elusive in southern Kyrgyzstan. The violence continues as the Kyrgyz police abuse ethnic Uzbeks, and the unrest threatens to spread to neighboring countries. Riots may flare up anew when the local clans start vying for power in the upcoming parliamentary elections. Kyrgyzstan’s weak central authorities are unable to rein in the violence.

During this time, only the lazy refrained from opining about the Kyrgyz misfortune, but nevertheless world governments have not followed words with actions. Russia and the United States have limited their response to Kyrgyz pleas for help to providing humanitarian relief. Their continued inaction may have dire consequences. Even in the unlikely scenario that the conflict resolves itself, the indecisiveness of the two world powers will leave a bitter aftertaste in the former Soviet republics. (more…)

In a room full of computer screens, a US civilian with a joystick on the console kills a man thousands of miles away. Having aced a course on drones with ferocious names like Reaper, Hunter, and Tigershark, he is competent to take down a target — a dangerous terrorist, a drug lord connected with the Taliban, a farmer planting IEDs, or, accidentally, an innocent civilian, as the drones are liable to targeting errors. The drones often save American lives and tax dollars at the expense of the lives of innocent civilians: just last month, an air strike mistake led to 23 civilian deaths in Afghanistan.

However, instead of addressing the targeting failures or keeping the drones in the combat zone, the United States sometimes dismisses problems by defining its enemies as “unlawful combatants” and keeping the drone operations secret. If Washington continues to excuse itself from the rule of law in this manner, the use of armed unmanned vehicles may create more problems than it solves.

Last week, a 29-page report to the United Nations Human Rights Council called on the United States to exercise greater restraint in its use of drones outside of war zones because the use of drones undermined global constraints on the use of military force.  The report stressed that the drone technology is changing the rules of conflict and undermining the foundations of humanitarian behavior in war. Here are just some grounds on which the US use of drones could be challenged. (more…)

The Thai name for Bangkok, Krung Thep, roughly translates as “city of angels.” Rarely has this moniker seemed more of a misnomer than the past week, with its climatic battle between the Red Shirt protesters encamped in downtown Bangkok and the Thai government.

Early Wednesday morning, the Thai army made a final push on the protesters’ camp in downtown Bangkok, rolling through barricades in armored vehicles and prompting two prominent protest leaders, Jatuporn Prompan and Nattawut Saikua, to surrender to the Bangkok police on charges of terrorism. At least five people died in the operation, adding to the previous six days’ toll of 38 dead. While Prompan and Saikua asked protesters to surrender, saying “we cannot resist against these savages anymore,” some die-hard elements chose not to, turning instead to rioting, looting and continued street battles in defiance of the government’s 8pm curfew.  One of the more extremist protest leaders, Arisman Pongruengrong, managed to escape government forces. Protesters set fire to around thirty buildings, including the Thai Stock exchange; CentralWorld, one of Bangkok’s biggest and ritziest malls; two banks, a television station, and a movie theater.

While the height of the organized protest is now over, replaced by rioting, the situation is far from resolved. Bangkok is still nowhere close to calm, and guerrilla-style attacks and looting by more militant members of the Red Shirt movement who have so far escaped arrest will likely continue for another few days.

More important, however, are the long-term effects the violence and events of the past month will have on Thailand’s fragile political situation. The activities of both sides of the conflict have entrenched the positions and grievances of each party, and a peaceful and speedy resolution of the country’s difficulties is looking farther away than ever.

(more…)

Just a few years ago, conventional wisdom held that Google would be the vanguard of Internet freedom in China, transforming the way information flows throughout the historically closed society. But while the rapid expansion of the Internet in China has indeed served as a vital medium for political activism, Beijing has essentially kept pace with its extensive surveillance network to silence “cyber dissidents” and with its use of the Web as a pro-government propaganda machine to steer public opinion. At first glance, it appears that China’s censorship practices warrant a strong U.S. policy and a thorough condemnation from the Obama administration. But as Emily Parker, the Arthur Ross Fellow at the Asia Society, explains, U.S. technological innovation – not U.S. policy – is likely the most capable, effective, and politically sensible tool for chipping away at China’s Great Firewall.

Since Google’s departure, the Chinese government has taken action to tighten its grip on the Internet. Earlier this month, China quietly acknowledged the creation of a new “Internet news coordination bureau,” officially responsible for “guidance, coordination and other work related to the construction and management of Web culture.” And just this week, China’s legislature proposed an amendment to the Law on Guarding State Secrets that would require telecommunications companies to “detect, report and delete” leaks of “state secrets,” broadly defined by the government as “information concerning national security and interests that, if released, would harm the country’s security and interests.” These measures are just the latest pieces fastened to a massive regulatory system, much to the chagrin of the international human rights community and many of China’s 400 million Internet users. (more…)

President Sarkozy’s proposed ban on wearing full veils in public sends a clear message to Muslims living in France: your religion is not welcome here. France has already banned the display of religious objects in schools, a law that was primarily enacted to keep headscarves off of pupils, but one that nevertheless was at least nominally fair in its breadth. Sarkozy’s new proposal, which is popular with his party members and the French public alike, is targeted just at Muslim woman, making it – in a word-  discriminatory. Indeed, as France’s top legal advisory body, the Council of State, has noted, the law may be unconstitutional and breach the European Convention on Human Rights, making the chances of the legislation actually passing unclear. Regardless, the damage it done. Sarkozy’s enthusiastic support for the proposal will only serve to distance French Muslims from French society, further alienating a demographic already on the edges.

As a region, Europe has long struggled to relate to and assimilate its growing Muslim population. (more…)

Once again, Thailand finds itself gracing the front pages of newspapers around the world for all the wrong reasons. A month-long standoff between the Thai government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and hundreds of thousands of Red Shirt protestors erupted into violence this weekend when Prime Minister Abhisit issued an order for the Army to clear demonstrators from the streets using non-lethal force.  The resulting (lethal) clashes left 21 people dead and over 800 injured in the worst political violence Thailand has seen in twenty years.

(more…)

A very unique sort of blood drive is currently underway in Bangkok. Outside Government House, hundreds of Thais have lined up to donate their blood to the cause- the political cause, that is. The bags of blood are not intended for medical use, but are instead being ceremoniously splattered on the gates and pavement of Government House, a visceral and highly visible symbol of anger with the Thai government.

The congealed blood decorating Government House is simply the latest stunt of the latest protest against the latest government in Bangkok. Once again, tens of thousands of protestors clad in red have shut down parts of Thailand’s steaming capital in an attempt to force the current prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, to dissolve Parliament. Like the last few times the Red Shirts stormed Bangkok, the likely outcome of the protests will be a messy clean-up job, deaths- already, two soldiers were wounded when grenades were fired on a Bangkok military camp- and another blow to Thailand’s vital tourism industry, already shaken by the week-long takeover of Bangkok’s international airport in 2008.  What we are not likely to see, however, is any sort of meaningful political movement away from the vicious cycle of political in-fighting and corruption that has plagued Thailand’s government and effectively divided the country for the past several years.

(more…)