For the last decade, deep in the heart of the African continent the Democratic Republic of the Congo has laid claim to one of the most devastating humanitarian crises in history. Since the beginning of the Second Congo War (also known as Africa’s World War) in 1998, an estimated 5.4 million people have died, making the war and its ongoing six-year aftermath the deadliest conflict since World War II. Equally appalling is the fact that only 10% of deaths are attributed to violence, with most resulting from starvation and easily preventable disease. An estimated 45,000 people are still dying each month – more than triple the mortality rate at the peak of the Darfur crisis in 2003 – and, according to both the World Bank and the IMF, the Congolese people are, quite simply, the poorest in the world.

The extraordinary level of Congo’s suffering is perhaps only rivaled by the conflict’s own complexity. Congo’s eastern provinces contain massive mineral deposits that are the source of the metals used in the cell phones, laptops, mp3 players, and digital cameras we use every day. But the minerals are mined in horrendous conditions under the watchful eye of many ambiguously interrelated militant factions, earning the lucrative natural resources the name “conflict minerals”.

Recently, strides have been taken toward achieving transparency of the origins of the minerals with the introduction of the Congo Conflict Minerals Act, co-sponsored by Senators Brownback, Durbin, and Feingold. The legislation would require all U.S.-registered electronics companies selling products containing columbite-tantalite, cassiterite, or wolframite to annually disclose the country of origin – and, if derived from Congo or an adjacent country, the mine of origin – to the SEC. Through oversight by the State Department, the intended outcome of the bill will be to sever the funding of the armed groups at the source. By modeling the effort on the Kimberley Process – the regulatory policy that has brought relative stability to the diamond trade in Liberia and Sierra Leone – the plan hopes to achieve the same results. (more…)

Given that one of my distant relatives (no, not Johnny Depp) was one of the first Americans assigned the task of defeating pirates, I take a particular interest in the subject of piracy. Throw in my few years in the U.S. Navy, and I can’t help myself. Even though I was technically on vacation last week, I followed the story of the Maersk-Alabama and Captain Richard Phillips with great interest. And I exulted when three of the four pirates met their end. The safe return of the Maersk-Alabama and her entire crew was a clear win for the cause of justice, and could serve as a model. Future efforts to protect ships from pirates are likely to include some combination of greater vigilance on the part of the shipping companies and crews, in collaboration with the navies of the many different nations who have an interest in keeping the sea lanes open and free. (This is one of the themes that I develop in my new book, and that I will discuss next Monday at Cato.)

We do not need to reorient our grand strategy to deal with pirates. We don’t need to reshape the U.S. Navy to fight a motley band of young men in leaky boats. As my colleague Ben Friedman has written, piracy is a problem, but decidely minor relative to many other global security challenges.

But some are criticizing the approach taken to resolve last week’s standoff. They say that the only way to truly eliminate the piracy problem is to attack and ultimately clean out the pirates’s sanctuaries in lawless Somalia. This “solution” fits well with the broader push within the Washington foreign policy community that would deal with our security problems by fixing failed states.

I have gone on at length, usually with my colleagues Justin Logan and Ben Friedman, on the many reasons why a strategy for fixing failed states is unwise and unnecessary. I won’t expand on that thesis here, other than to point out that of all failed states in the world, Somalia is arguably the most failed of the lot. “Fixing” it would require a massive investment of personnel, money, and time — resources that would be better spent elsewhere.

Mackubin Owens offers one of the more intriguing defenses of this approach in a just published e-note for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Owens likens a strategy of fixing Somalia to Gen. Andrew Jackson’s military operations in Florida, a story that features prominently in John Lewis Gaddis’s Surprise, Security and the American Experience. As Owens notes, when some members of President James Monroe’s cabinet wanted to punish Jackson for exceeding his mandate — in the course of his military campaign he captured and executed two British citizens accused of cavorting with the marauders who had attacked American citizens – Secretary of State John Quincy Adams jumped to Jackson’s defense, and proposed a different tack. He demanded that Spain either take responsibility for cleaning up Florida, or else give it up. And we all know what happened. Under the terms of Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819, Florida became a territory of the United States. 26 years later, it became our 27th state.

I’ve vacationed in Florida many times. Walt Disney World is wonderful for the kids; I’ve been there six times. I spent three memorable days watching March Madness in Miami a few years back. Spring training baseball is great fun.  Adams couldn’t have imagined any of these things when he acquired a vast swampland; he cared only that Florida under Spanish control, or lack thereof, posed a threat.

Here is where the parallels to the present day get complicated. I’ll admit that I’ve never been to Somalia. Perhaps they have their own version of South Beach, or could have some day. But I’m frankly baffled by the mere intimation that our national security is so threatened by chaos there that we need to take ownership of the country’s — or the entire Horn of Africa region’s — problems.

And yet, that is what many people believe. And this is not a new phenomenon. In many respects, we have chosen to treat all of the world’s ungoverned spaces as the modern-day equivalent of Spanish Florida.

It is a dark irony that the printing press – the nifty device that made religion available to the masses – is often in the crosshairs of the world’s most militant believers.  Perhaps this isn’t alarming at all, since the right to think what one will and speak as one pleases is at odds with the core dogmas of religion. And what, pray tell, are these core dogmas?  First, religious truths can be neither criticized nor defamed.  Second, the attempt to criticize or defame those truths is a sin of unparalleled proportion, an abomination, as it were.

If you have any doubt that these core dogmas are alive and kicking, consider this:  A diverse yet similarly cantankerous and commonly-minded group of Muslims, grouped under the umbrella of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, are now demanding that Islam be shielded from criticism.  In July of 2008 the Conference formally asked the United Nations to recognize that “Islamophobia” is a real threat affecting the lives of well-meaning, peaceful Muslims.  According to the Conference, not only are Muslims often subject to stereotyping and discriminatory treatment, they must also endure the most insulting, offensive and contemptuous treatment from others, since the world is quite eager to “defile” and “denigrate” the sacred symbols of Islam.  Islam is itself under attack, a vicious and baseless siege that will only end if the United Nations steps in to level the playing field.

If Islam is “under attack,” is that a bad thing?  The United Nations seems to think so, and appears keen to intervene, as it recently renewed a non-binding resolution (62/154) entitled Combating defamation of religions.  This resolution has a number of lovely instances of non-sense on stilts, but focus your attention, dear friends, on the following gems:

(The U.N.) Expresses its deep concern that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism.  (5)

(The U.N.) Stresses the need to effectively combat defamation of all religions and incitement to religious hatred, against Islam and Muslims in particular.  (9)

Paragraph 5 is quite entertaining, if you put just a bit of pressure on it.  Is the problem that Islam is sometimes or even often correctly associated with human rights violations and terrorism, but in absolute terms “frequently” incorrectly associated with human rights violations and terrorism without sufficient grounds?  Or is the problem that in relative terms, people tend to incorrectly associate Islam with human rights violations and terrorism?  My sense is that the latter cannot be correct.  But the real issue isn’t the relative proportion of correct to incorrect associations between Islam, on the one hand, and human rights violations and terrorism, on the other.  The real bugbear is whether the U.N. should spend its valuable time trying to malign a practice – i.e., the criticism of Islam – that in a non-trivial number of instances gets the association between Islam and the underlying problems exactly right. (more…)

The UN has prepared a draft report on the recent escalation in the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and the results are damning.  The report, which is due to be presented to the Sanctions Committee of the Security Council this week, accuses the governments of both the DRC and Rwanda of fuelling the long-standing conflict through the covert supply of arms, personnel (including child soldiers) and financial aid.

The report alleges that the Rwandan government, headed by a former Tutsi rebel, has been supplying troops and heavy artillery to General Laurent Nkunda, the leader of the Tutsi community in the DRC.  Meanwhile, the DRC government (or more precisely, the DRC army) stands accused of collaborating with the FLDR, a Hutu militia encompassing many of the leaders of the 1994 genocide.  The result is a proxy war of sorts, between two governments eager to formally distance themselves from the conflict and keen to portray the civil war as a battle between renegade forces.

The report will force the Security Council in general, and the Sanctions Committee in particular, to think long and hard about novel ways to approach the DRC conflict.  Clearly, the current approach of combining an arms embargo with a significant, in-country UN peacekeeping presence has been ineffective in addressing rising security and humanitarian concerns.  The arms embargo, the UN report has found, has been repeatedly breached by the Rwandan and DRC governments, among other organisations.   The UN peacekeeping force, whilst being the largest and most expensive of its kind in the world today and the beneficiary of a recent injection of a further 3,000 troops, still faces considerable problems in terms of both legitimacy and practical power.  The disparate nationalities of the troops and the size of the peacekeeping force, relative to the civilian population, have made it difficult for the peacekeepers to fulfil their mandate of disarming the rebel forces.  Suggestions that the peacekeeping force has not been appropriately prioritising the protection of civilians, including by respected aid agencies such as Oxfam, have only added fuel to the fire.  (more…)

One might think that the current crisis roiling the American economy might be an opportunity for Senators Obama and McCain to spell out their differences on one important issue; U.S. military spending.

Consider the fact that on September 24th, during the fight over the Wall Street bail out, the House of Representatives passed, bill passed by a vote of 392-39, a $612 billion defense authorization bill for 2009 without any public protest or meaningful press comment. This show there is unlikely to be any significant pressure to cut military or related national security spending.

Instead, Senators Obama and McCain seem to be reading off the same page. That is the kind of bipartisanship we do no need. The time is long past for someone to stand up and say the obvious; that both military and associated “national security” spending is out of control and continually getting more outrageous.

The latter category includes nuclear weapons spending at the Energy department, plus the State department, as well as Veterans Affairs, and the intelligence agencies. All together that totals exceeds a trillion dollars annually.

Let’s stipulate that there are multiple factors which impact U.S. military spending. And yes, while the financial crisis will increase pressure to reduce military spending, other countervailing political factors will ensure that there likely will be no significant reduction.

Why is this? The primary reason is that the United States is at war, even if is an undeclared one and one which the country is largely disengaged and removed from. And no politician dares cutting military spending for fear of being accused being ’soft on defense” or not “supporting the troops.”

Unlike the situation at the end of the 1980s and early 19980s there is nothing comparable to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, which drove significant reduction in U.S. military spending.

Today the situation is reversed. The United States is fighting the “long war” (formerly known at the global war on terror) and politically both the incumbent administration and the opposition party are reluctant to cut military spending at such a time.

Sadly, there is nothing in the campaign platforms of either Sen. John McCain or Barrack Obama to suggest that they would significantly reduce military spending.

In fact McCain says the United States must enlarge the size of its armed forces. That alone will guarantee that operation and support costs, traditionally one of the highest categories of U.S. military spending will stay high.

Likewise Sen. Obama supports plans to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 soldiers and the Marines by 27,000 troops.

(more…)

Taking into account some of the arguments made by Devil’s Advocate in response to my previous post, I’d like to expand on some of my original points as well as clear up a few inconsistencies and misunderstandings that seem to have emerged in this exchange. I’ll return to the question of defense spending and America’s geostrategic position in a moment, but I’d like first to clear the debate of some straw arguments that Devil’s Advocate makes, likely due to my incomplete exposition of some of my original ideas.

In disputing my diagnosis of likely causes of twenty-first century instability, Devil’s Advocate makes the following argument:

Mr. Eckel attributes 21st century instability to “poor resource management, unresolved tensions between political institutions and political identity, [and] governments that are unresponsive to the needs of their people.” The exact opposite in fact is true: The instability in the world is directly caused by governments that attempt to manage their resources and economies (Pre-1995 India, Soviet Union, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Cambodia, Indonesia, Maoist China, Vietnam, etc.) Planned economies create much more instability than ones that rely on the free market and capitalism.

Just to be clear, I’m not advocating the reintroduction of central planning as the guiding principle of global economic management. I’m certainly not advocating for, nor defending, the kinds of klepto-socialism practiced by the leadership of Zimbabwe, Vietnam, Maoist China or the now-defunct U.S.S.R. When I talk about “managing” the global economy, I’m talking about using market-based institutions to guide global development. This isn’t a new idea, nor is it a particularly leftist one. The I.M.F. manages the global economy by ensuring that individual government insolvencies don’t lead to the systemic collapse of global finance. The W.T.O. manages global trade. The World Bank attempts to manage economic development. None of these institutions are particularly socialistic, and they certainly aren’t back doors to central planning. (more…)

Amidst the din of expert commentary following Russia’s invasion of Georgia, two basic interpretations of the US-Russia relationship have emerged. The first focuses on Russia as a strategic competitor to the US, and calls for a tough line against the Kremlin’s consolidation of power at home and expansion of Russia’s so-called “sphere of influence.” The second acknowledges the United States’ own responsibility for policies that exploited Russia’s weakness in the 1990’s, and favors offering more conciliatory treatment now in exchange for cooperation on key US goals.

Both schools of thought presume that Washington is still the center of gravity in the US-Russia relationship, and that a change in US policy will yield a direct and predictable response from Moscow. But today it is the US which faces an economic and geostrategic “time of troubles,” and Russia which enjoys a position of relative strength, security and prosperity. Thus, for the first time since the Cold War, the balance of power in the US-Russia relationship favors Moscow, leaving the initiative for closer ties in the hands of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev. Although Russia’s long term interests should favor partnership over confrontation, its immediate incentives to cooperate are much weaker.

(more…)

This past July 4th, former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev penned an op-ed for the International Herald Tribune in which he expressed concern over “the size of America’s defense budget and the militarization of its foreign policy.” Without going into the details (just read the piece; it’s short), Gorbachev questions what role the United States will play in the world of the twenty-first century, stating that “the next president… will have to decide and state clearly whether America wants to be an empire or a democracy, whether it seeks global dominance or international cooperation. They will have to choose, because this is an either-or proposition: The two things don’t mix, like oil and water.” Putting aside Mr. Gorbachev’s specific motivations – he is, after all, Russian, and, as he chose to remind us in a more recent piece likely has the interests of his own country at heart – he raises some important questions that U.S. leaders have yet to answer with any coherence or unanimity: What role should the United States play in the world of the twenty-first century? How does the U.S. military fit into that role? Can America remain prosperous, free, safe and hegemonic all at once? (more…)

According to the New York Times, a donors’ conference in Paris today pledged a record $7.4 billion of aid for the embattled Palestinian Authority over the next three years. That’s a big number, and it is intended to support critical government functions in the Palestinian territories, while jump-starting economic growth to help provide Palestinians with a tangible “peace dividend.”

As observers of the conflict have learned by now, there is a direct and critical correlation between political stability and economic growth, so that neither can last long without the other. I hope, in particular, that the latest infusion of charity to the Palestinian territories will be quickly followed by for-profit investment, especially from wealthy Arab states, demonstrating the concrete benefits of stability to Palestinians, and helping to deflate the bloated state bureaucracy by offering attractive private sector employment. (more…)

The “Pottery Barn Principle” has tremedous informal influence in the on-going debate about what to do in Iraq. The quick summary is incredibly evocative: “you broke it, you bought it” applies in international affairs, just as it does at Pottery Barn and other stores. So the U.S. “owns” the Iraq problem and can’t leave until stability and happiness return to the land.

Of course, the principle is rarely enforced at stores like Pottery Barn. Nice stores understand in advance that they have fragile displays, with glasses stacked in precarious poses to make them look nice for potential customers. So the owners and managers expect some glasses to break from time to time. And the stores focus on making the unfortunate customer who accidentally bumps into the wine glass display while backing away to get a different perspective on the beautiful $800 console table feel comfortable enough to come back to the store — or perhaps even to buy the console table that very day. Other customers don’t turn and stare and clap and otherwise humiliate the unfortunate, clumsy person, as they would do in a high school cafeteria. Nice stores are much more grown up and understanding.

Yet the analogy still holds strange power in the foreign policy debate. Many Americans really have a deep streak of responsibility. The U.S. “owes” something to Cambodia, to Guatemala, to the Philippines. As a country, we don’t always act on our guilt, but sometimes we do, and there’s a deep reservoir of support that prioritizes efforts to improve the lives of people that the U.S. had something to do with harming over efforts simply to help people. Many Americans want to do good in the world, and that matters; the impulse to do good tinged with the guilt of having done ill in the past matters even more.

But how much sense does that make? Even in the moral framework, I think it’s tough to make the case for the pottery barn principle. (more…)