Reflections on the Coup, Part 2

This article authored by former Senator Alan Simpson originally appeared in the McClatchy Company news service.

The U.S. Needs the U.N., and the U.N. Needs the U.S.

Jan. 12 marked the second anniversary of the horrific earthquake that ripped Haiti apart. While we quite properly remembered the unthinkable loss of Haitian lives that day, less well remembered were the deaths that same day of more than 100 U.N. officials in the collapse of the building that housed the headquarters of the U.N. mission in Haiti.

They were there in an effort to help the process of nation building in Haiti and to assist with humanitarian relief efforts there. Their deaths remind us that the United Nations and its staff members serve in many difficult places working on the most difficult issues. Their efforts serve us all.

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Advisory Board Member and former Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, discusses his recommendations for U.S. Policy in Iran. His recommendations include greater cooperation with the United Nations, collaboration with regional partners, and intelligence sharing in addition to many other points of leverage and influence the United States could use. The article originally appeared here on CNN.

Washington (CNN) — Longtime observers of the Middle East are baffled by allegations that high-ranking officials in the Iranian government approved a plan to assassinate Saudi Arabia Ambassador, Adel al-Jubeir, and blow up the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington. Commentators have described the plan as “brazen,” but “bizarre” and ‘bone-headed” might be more appropriate adjectives.

It’s difficult to comprehend either the motives or the means selected to carry out the plan outlined by the Justice Department in its criminal indictment of Manssor Arbabsiar and Gholam Shakuri. Tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia are not new, but Iran has been both cautious and clever enough to restrain its ambitions for regional dominance.

If the allegations of the assassination and bombing plot are true, and the covert operation had proved successful, Iran’s leaders would have invited retaliation on a scale far more vigorous than any they might have contemplated. Indeed, I think it’s fair to say that the Iranian landscape would likely have been substantially altered.

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If there were Foreign Service action figures (and budding toddler foreign policy wonks out there, you know you would want one of these), then the Robert Ford one might well be the hot toy for this holiday season.  For the last six months, Ford, the US Ambassador to Syria, has brought increased attention to President Bashar al-Assad’s escalating campaign of violence against anti-regime demonstrators.  The toll has become harder and harder to ignore; to date, at least 2,700 have been killed and more than 20,000 have been detained.  But so have Ford’s actions, meeting with activists and documenting the unrest, all the while facing blowback (sometimes severe) from those loyal to the regime.  Until recently, though, he had been serving on a one-year recess appointment.  Now, in lieu of an action figure, Ford has gotten the next best thing: on Monday, he was finally confirmed by the Senate to serve a full term as the Ambassador in Damascus.

Ford’s actions certainly eased his road to Senate confirmation, but it is worth remembering that the idea of sending an Ambassador back to Syria was a contentious one only less than a year ago.  The post had been vacant since 2005 after Washington withdrew its ambassador following the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and some contended that filling the post again was a bad move.  When President Obama appointed Ford to a recess appointment last December, incoming Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen argued that it sent the “wrong message” and that “making undeserved concessions to Syria tells the regime in Damascus that it can continue to pursue its dangerous agenda and not face any consequences from the US.”  Rather than a sign of strength, an American ambassador there was seen as a sign of weakness.

On Monday, September 19^th, Partnership for a Secure America along with the Stanley Foundation and the Hudson Institute hosted Ambassador Linton Brooks in a series of events at the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center, which focused on the nuclear challenges facing the United States. Ambassador Brooks, currently a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was the lead US negotiator on the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) and also served as Director of Arms Control for the National Security Council and as an administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration.

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Nearly ten years ago, on a clear blue morning in New York City, the beginning acts of the worst terrorist attack on American soil were set in motion.  The air filled with smoke, debris, and the endless sound of sirens as nearly 3,000 were killed.  This past Sunday, with night already descended on the city, the air instead filled with the sounds of crowds cheering upon hearing the news that Osama bin Laden, the man responsible for those attacks, had been killed.  As President Obama summed it up, “Justice has been done.”  The New York Post put it more bluntly:  “the son of a bitch is dead.”

The story behind the death of Osama bin Laden is exciting in itself:  a small team of Navy Seals conducts a daring 40-minute raid, gets the most wanted man in the world, and scores a major victory against al Qaeda.  But we should also be proud of the way our government worked for years, across administrations and agencies, to ultimately carry out this critical mission.  The intelligence community, though much maligned, tirelessly spent six years unraveling OBL’s courier network to track him down.  Once he was found, the military did its job with surgical precision.  And the President exhibited decisive leadership when given the opportunity to take OBL out, choosing, after careful deliberation, a riskier operation than others on the table to make sure the job was finally done. (more…)

PSA Board of Directors member Dr. Andrew K. Semmel recently co-authored a new Stanley Foundation report with Jack Boureston, managing director at FirstWatch International, called The IAEA and Nuclear Security: Trends and Prospects. The report concludes that the international community should strengthen the role of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The authors state that adequate international nuclear security standards to prevent non-state actors from acquiring nuclear materials are absent. Currently, the international community has only “a diverse patchwork of initiatives that, when combined, constitute an awkward architecture of prevention, detection, and response.” The report urges the adoption of an international agreement to lay out minimally acceptable standards and create increased international coordination, monitoring, and reporting. The authors suggest that, while no international organization is currently vested with the level of responsibility for nuclear security functions to achieve these standards, the IAEA is “best positioned to fill that role.” To download the full report, click here.

My perspective is that of a stability operations policy wonk and pre-deployment training leader.  I’ve been working and thinking about conflict and stability since the early 1990s when I was at OSD and as a Director on the NSC Staff.  Bosnia and Kosovo were the conflicts du jour and though these are worlds apart from Afghanistan, many of the challenges, shortcomings, and frustrations we face today were just as plainly visible then.

About five years ago, I started working extensively with the military on Iraq and Afghanistan pre-deployment training.  My company provides the field experts, curriculum, and training to the military on what is essentially “smart power” — the interagency/PRT/whole of government tools in the Iraq and Afghan tool kit.  We also support the training of PRT civilians.  My company has extensive field experience in Afghanistan although I do not.  With another trip under my belt, I can pretend to be as smart as my trainers!

Let’s see if I can remember what I learned on my last visit, in Spring 2009.   That trip focused on meetings in Kabul and RC-East in the last days of GEN McKiernan’s command of ISAF.   The first Obama strategy review was still underway. (more…)

There is much bipartisan agreement about the nature of the struggle against terrorism.  Many have said that this is a war of ideas and will not be won just on the battlefield.

In George Bush’s 2002 national security strategy he wrote, “We will also wage a war of ideas to win the battle against international terrorism.”

Barack Obama spoke in 2007 in a similar manner when he said, “Bin Ladin and his allies know they cannot defeat us on the field of battle or in a genuine battle of ideas.”

Finally, in 2005 John McCain McCain wrote, “To prevail in this war we need more than victories on the battlefield. This is a war of ideas, a struggle to advance freedom in the face of terror in places where oppressive rule has bred the malevolence that creates terrorists.”

The battle we are waging is not just about guns and tanks.  It’s not just about overpowering and overwhelming the enemy.  Although those are certainly elements of the struggle, the battle is about something much greater.  It’s about competing visions of how the world should be.  The vision that the United States seeks to promote is a world where differences are settled not through violence but through the rule of law.  It’s a society that celebrates diversity and promotes tolerance.  It’s a society where Muslims and Christians can live together and worship in their own manner.  These are the ideas that so many Americans are fighting and dying for. (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…)