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.

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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…)

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…)

Amid the intense domestic coverage of the health care debate came a reminder of the hope that even hardened global figures have for the Obama Presidency and its ability to transform global affairs.

In the hours after Congress acted last Sunday, the White House announced that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was one of the first two global leaders to call and congratulate Obama on his domestic victory.

Now, it is reasonable to assume that the Saudi leader was not particularly concerned about health care reform itself but recognized that its passage would strengthen Obama domestically and perhaps reignite his desire to be remembered as a transformative President not simply at home but also abroad.

In 2008 Obama ran a campaign that, in part, portrayed his very election as a step towards resetting U.S. relations with the international community. Further more, by illustrating his understanding of specific hot button issues ranging from Indo-Pakistani disagreements in Kashmir to the harm caused by the Bush administrations “war on terror”, Obama suggested that he would prioritize tackling the policy matters that had corroded relations between the U.S. and the Muslim world and thus undermined U.S. national security.

His early actions as President, from the appointment of Middle East envoy Mitchell to his historic Cairo speech, collectively suggested that Obama was looking to move beyond simply the reset offered by his election and was seeking a fundamental realignment between the U.S. and the Muslim world that would transform the international arena.

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Even as it withdraws from Iraq, the United States is increasing its military presence and arming the states in the Persian Gulf. President Barack Obama has boosted arms sales, stepped up the deployment of anti-missile defenses, and upgraded defenses for the oil infrastructure in the region. This military buildup is intended to deter the Iranian “enemy”, reassure and strengthen the Arab “friends”, and pacify the trigger-happy Israelis, but will it actually bring the intended result?

US commitment to security in the region is a noble goal, and the military buildup in the Gulf seems to be of a purely defensive nature. Hopefully, the American support will reassure the Gulf states and encourage them to form a united front against Iran’s nuclear pursuits. Indeed, engaging the neighbors must be the first step for solving the Iranian problem. However, further militarizing an already volatile region and meddling into the Arab states’ regional rivalry with Tehran could instead exacerbate the situation. The fact remains that – for economic and political reasons – the Gulf states are not ready to unequivocally align themselves with the United States against Iran. And additional weapon sales are hardly going to change that. (more…)

I have to admit that I am struggling to judge the Obama administrations approach to Iran over the past 12 months. At times the President and his team have got the tone and approach right (e.g. the early restrained comments as the election dispute escalated and the way Sec. Clinton engaged the Iranians at an Afghanistan conference in early 2009) but at other moments the administration has seemed to be clumsy or guilty of following a flawed game plan (e.g. the unwillingness to push for a holistic dialogue with Iran spanning issues ranging from nukes to Afghanistan to Iranian security concerns).

I don’t feel ready to prescribe a specific 2010 game plan at this moment but wanted to share one of the more interesting pieces I have reviewed on the internal dynamics in Iran.  Michael Fischer outlines four possible ways in which the internal situation could evolve in the months ahead….it makes for interesting reading and this request from Michael is a very reasonable one:

It is important for Iran’s future and that of the world that more attention be focused on these alternative outcomes, so as to avoid the worst of them. Iran needs less our intervention or sanctions than an insistent questioning of who the players and their connections and alliances are.

What do you think about the scenarios outlined by Michael? Are there others that the administration needs to consider?

Sometimes I wonder if Al-Qaeda sympathizers have infiltrated America’s right wing.

Because ever since the news broke of the Christmas Day attempt by 23-year old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried and failed to blow up a U.S. airliner over Detroit using explosives he had smuggled past airport security in Amsterdam, Netherlands and had reportedly joined a Yemeni affiliate of al Qaeda which trained and equipped him with explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America, there have been calls for America to escalate American involvement in Yemen. People are now saying that broader and more clearly visible retaliatory military action must be taken.

As Glen Greenwald wrote in Salon:

Actually, if you count our occupation of Iraq, our twice-escalated war in Afghanistan, our rapidly escalating bombing campaigns in Pakistan and Yemen, and various forms of covert war involvement in Somalia, one could reasonably say that we’re fighting five different wars in Muslim countries — or, to use the NYT’s jargon, “five fronts” in the “Terror War” (Obama yesterday specifically mentioned Somalia and Yemen as places where, euphemistically, “we will continue to use every element of our national power”).  Add to those five fronts the “crippling” sanctions on Iran many Democratic Party luminaries are now advocating, combined with the chest-besting threats from our Middle East client state that the next wars they fight against Muslims will be even “harsher” than the prior ones, and it’s almost easier to count the Muslim countries we’re not attacking or threatening than to count the ones we are.  Yet this still isn’t enough for America’s right-wing super-warriors, who accuse the five-front-war-President of “an allergy to the concept of war.”

Uh, excuse me, but earth calling the Republican Party and Fox News. What exactly do you think the U.S. has been doing in Yemen for the past several years? Sitting down and playing tiddlywinks?

The U.S. has been backing airstrikes against suspected Al Qaeda members in Yemen for some time.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which claimed responsibility for the attempted attack on a US airliner bound for Detroit, is led by a Yemeni who was once a close aide to Osama bin Laden. The group formed in January 2009, when leader Naser Abdel Karim al-Wahishi announced a merger between operatives from Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

The group has been blamed for a series of attacks in Yemen, including an assault against the US embassy in Sanaa, and suicide bombings targeting South Korean visitors. Recently, the group indicated it was ready to take its fight beyond Yemen.

Reportedly, Abdulmutallab claims that he was one of many bombers being groomed by the Yemeni al Qaeda affiliate to attack American-bound aircraft. If this is true then is failed attempt is beneficial insofar as it helps the United States to focus on a real threat. (more…)

This is my last post for 2009 I thought I would write about Afghanistan but on second thought I will, no doubt, be doing that quite a lot during 2010. Thanks to the Obama Administration’s surge strategy Afghanistan will, from a blogging viewpoint, be the gift that keeps on giving.

So, as we contemplate whether 2010 will be better or worse let’s take a moment to consider 2009. In the spirit of Dave Barry’s classic annual year in review column let’s acknowledge, albeit with some poetic license commentary by moi, a few of the significant events that made, however briefly, the headlines.

Although it started on Dec. 28 2008 the month of January saw massive Israeli air strikes and a ground force invasion of the Gaza Strip. Heavy fighting took place in Gaza City between the Israeli forces and Hamas. At least 1300 Palestinians were killed. On Jan. 17 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced a unilateral ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, declaring that Israel has achieved the goals it set when launching the military operation. On Jan. 21 Israel completes its troop withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

Also that month President Barack Obama signed executive orders closing the US detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, within a year; closing the CIA’s secret prisons; requiring a review of military trials for terror suspects; and requiring all interrogations to follow the non-coercive methods specified in the Army Field Manual.

Of course, nobody knew back then that the camp would end up in Illinois. One can only hope that the inmates are not too acclimated to the Caribbean climate to adjust to a midwest winter.

On Jan 27 Hama declared that it previously was just kidding and broke the ceasefire by attacking an Israeli frontier patrol. Israel immediately responded that it lacks a sense of humor and renewed its air strikes on the Gaza Strip border with Egypt.

On Feb. 3 Iran launched its first domestically built satellite into orbit. Iran stated that the satellite is meant for research and telecommunications purposes, but Western states express concern that the technology could be used in the development of ballistic missiles. The U.S. intelligence community, estimating that Iran will show the same swift progress with its missiles that it did with its nuclear program, predicted the next flight will be in 2040.

On Feb. 6, renewing their classic rivalry, a British and a French nuclear submarine collided in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Political leaders from both countries sighed in relief that it was merely submarines and not their respective football fans that collided. (more…)

There’s enough Turkey for everyone this season. The United States has Ankara’s support for stopping the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, and the Islamic Republic of Iran enjoys Ankara’s backing of the Iranian nuclear program. One day, however, Turkey will need to choose whose side it is on. With the American and Turkish foreign policy preferences increasingly divergent, Washington may lose an important ally in the region vital to its security, unless it reinvigorates its strategic partnership with Turkey and starts paying more attention to Turkey’s security concerns.

It is the prime minister of Turkey, a state that has been a Western ally for over half a century, who now publicly supports the President of Iran. Last week, Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a friend and accused the West of treating Iran unfairly. Erdogan reaffirmed Iran’s peaceful intentions and pointed out that Iran’s loudest critics are states possessing the largest nuclear arsenals themselves. (more…)

President Obama said when he took office that Afghanistan would be his number one foreign affairs priority.  It may become his nemesis.  President Obama has said that he is not going to make new commitments until he is sure that the plan is the correct one.  In this, he is correct.  Gen. McChrystal has pointed out that we need firm, long-lasting commitment to win.

None of the bewildering array of clocks that deal with Afghanistan seems to tick slowly enough for victory.  A long time frame is needed.  However, more than half of the American people no longer wish us to be there.  The same is true in many other countries.

A failure in Afghanistan could ignite Pakistan in ways that none of us wishes to see.  Pakistan is a tinderbox of social discontent, regional resentment and fundamentalist activity.  It is also bankrupt, has a weak government and possesses a nuclear arsenal that it already nearly used against India.  Its military plays both sides of the war against fundamentalism and struggles to be preeminent in running the country.  We cannot allow an Islamist takeover in Pakistan.

During the first few years after 2001, the Taliban withdrew and optimism encouraged a “light-foot approach,” a belief that only a little needed to be done.  Very wrong.  And Washington did little to get rid of the warlords it had allied with out of expediency.  Wrong again.  Washington diverted its attention and its resources to Iraq, and Afghanistan has paid the price.  Now things are much worse and will cost much more to repair.

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