Recently, Dr. Victor Asal and Dr. R. Karl Rethemeyer from the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy located at the University of Albany, State University of New York presented their ongoing research project, Big Allied and Dangerous: The Behavior of Terrorist Organizations (BAAD).  The project, funded by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence, based at the University of Maryland, focuses on creating and maintaining a comprehensive database of terrorist organizational characteristics.  Currently, there is a plethora of event data (attacks) but very little data on the organizations that use violence themselves.  Understanding attacks is important in order to identify trends but understanding the organizations that commit the attacks has the greatest potential for the intelligence community.

The database has the potential to empirically demonstrate which characteristics and relationships make terrorist organizations lethal and effective at achieving its desired goals. The information could help inform homeland security, defense, and the intelligence communities on resource management decisions.  The findings may also offer a second opinion based on statistics as an additional layer of analysis in addition to the contributions of Subject Matter Experts (SME’s), which are widely used to develop policy.

The BAAD research team created a visual network map (see below) using ‘nodes’ to  represent terrorist organizations and corresponding lines to represent the connections between organizations.  This visual representation helps to better to understand and clarify the relationships between different terrorist organizations.  The size of the node denotes the size of the organization, with red nodes representing Islamist organizations and blue nodes representing all others.  Red lines denote known, direct relationships (joint operation or training) and blue lines denote relationships with only rhetorical support.

See a larger version of the image

A few preliminary observations are immediately apparent.  First, the data suggests that the more connections an organization has, the more likely it is to be a violent actor. For instance, Al Qaeda has a large number of global relationships while most other groups only enjoy regionally based connections.

One question this project looked to answer was the contributing factors which account for the dramatic differences in organizational lethality among terrorist organizations. Out of the 395 terrorist organizations identified in BAAD, 68 have killed ten or more people from 1998 to 2008, and only 28 have killed more then 100 people, during the same period of time.  The BAAD team found both ideological and capability factors that determine if an organization will or will not resort to lethal violence.

According to the research, an organization is more likely to use lethal violence if they follow a religious ideology or a combination of ethno-nationalist and religious ideology. However, an organization that follows an environmental, anarchist, or leftist (not mixed with religion or ethno-nationalism) ideology is less likely to use lethal violence.  From a capability perspective, and not surprisingly an organization is more likely to use lethal violence if they are large and enjoy state sponsorship while an organization that is predominantly dilettante, small, or young, is subsequently less likely to use lethal violence.

Another question the project attempts to answer is what factors cause an organization to target or attack U.S. interests.  Current literature on the topic largely attributes ideology along with various grievances relating to U.S. foreign policy, military activity, global economic penetration, and U.S. cultural penetration; as primary reasons why a terrorist organization targets U.S. interests or citizens.

BAAD’s findings suggest that national security resources should be appropriately balanced toward environmental, anarchist and leftist organizations as they present little lethal threat.  The data confirms that well-connected organizations, like al-Qaeda, present the largest threat and should receive a corresponding level of resources.  As this and other research data sets are updated and improved, the implications for how the United States Government should confront the terrorist threat will become more accurate and actionable.

The academic community has the unique ability to provide an objective analysis and unbiased view on terrorism, which presents a clear opportunity for collaboration between the academic and intelligence communities in the area of national security research and policy.  The question that remains is how will this research be integrated into the American policy structure?  Currently, there is not a clearly identifiable agency responsible for coordinating academic research in key areas and ensuring the results are put into the hands of the right policy and operational decision makers.  Without the clear direction of Congress or the White House, academic research and all of its powerful implications for national security policy will continue to be ad-hoc.

The BAAD team is currently working on BAAD Version 2 (BAAD2), which will expand on BAAD1 by expanding the data to include events from 2005 to 2008 and additional variables.  All the BAAD data and any other data from START is freely available to anyone who requests it.

Victor Asal  PhD
Associate Professor of Political Science
Co-Director of the Project on Violent Conflict
Rockefeller College, University at Albany, SUNY
Email: vasal@email.albany.edu
Office # 518 591-8729
fax # 518 442-5298

Liam Fitzsimmons, James Fenlon and Brent Hall are all alumni of PSA’s Congressional Fellowship Program. To learn more about the program, please see PSA’s CFP page.

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It’s a brave new world out there, but I don’t think it is the one Aldous Huxley had in mind when he wrote his famed book in 1932.

What Huxley gave us was a frightening vision of the future. And in one sense, though not the one Huxley was writing about, that vision is becoming reality. I refer to the expanding role of robots in war.

The most visible aspect of this is the use of aerial drones such as targeting Al Qaeda militants with Predator drone strikes. Predictably, some places, such as the Weekly Standard, think this fine and dandy, and worry only that we do not use them more for which they criticize President Obama. That is ironic as the President has authorized more drone attacks in the first year of his term in office than Bush did in his entire presidency.

But war is inherently unpredictable. One of the few ways we have of restraining its destructiveness is by having military personnel perform their duties in a framework of carefully wrought, time tested framework grounded in civic-military and ethical considerations. While pilots may sometimes be egomaniacal Top Guns they at least spend some time thinking about these things. But what happens when the man operating a Predator is just another technician, no different from any other journeyman such as an electrician or plumber? What happens when the use of deadly force is just another day at the office?

Boston Globe columnist H.D.S. Greenway noted that before 9/11, the CIA hesitated to strike bin Laden’s farm in Afghanistan because women and children might be killed. But as the war drags on the rules of engagement, rules against targeted assassination, whom to kill and not kill, have slipped, as they invariably do in all wars.

If that is too philosophical a consideration for you to ponder let’s consider the practical. Is the United States ready for the time when other nations use such technology? According to a Newsweek article by Peter Singer of the Brookings Institute who, last year, published the definitive book on the subject, “Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century“  at least 40 other countries-from Belarus and Georgia to India, Pakistan, and Russia-have begun to build, buy, and deploy unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, showcasing their efforts at international weapons expos ranging from the premier Paris Air Show to smaller events in Singapore and Bahrain. In the last six months alone, Iran has begun production on a pair of weapons-ready surveillance drones, while China has debuted the Pterodactyl and Sour Dragon, rivals to America’s Predator and Global Hawk. All told, two thirds of worldwide investment in unmanned planes in 2010 will be spent by countries other than the United States.

And what happens when the weapons doing the killing are controlled by civilian agencies, as opposed to the armed forces? In January Hakimullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistan Taliban, was killed by a missile fired an unmanned aircraft hovering over the Afghan-Pakistani border – but launched by an operator in the US. He was the mastermind of multiple suicide bomb attacks in Pakistan and was part of the suicide mission on December 30 at Khost, just across the border in Afghanistan, which killed seven CIA agents.

In the effort to get payback the United States launched 15 clinical drone attacks in which more than 100 people died along the border. Thus, for the first time ever, a civilian intelligence agency is manipulating robots from halfway around the world in a program of extrajudicial executions in a country with which Washington is not at war.

As Singer wrote last month:

Q. Are We at War in Pakistan ? (Or Is It Not a War Because We’re Only Using Drones?)

American unmanned systems have carried out more than 80 air strikes into Pakistan, more than we did with manned bombers in the opening round of the Kosovo War just a decade ago.

By the old standards, this would be a war. But why do we not view it as such? Is it because it is being run by the CIA and not the military? Is it because Congress never debated it? Is it because we view the whole thing as costless (to us)? Or, are the definitions changing — and what used to be war, isn’t anymore?

Furthermore, a cost-benefit analysis of the use of drones indicates that it may be less effective than thought. A study last October by the New American Foundation estimated concluded that, since January 2008, the American kill has included ”about 20 leaders of al-Qaeda, the Taliban and allied groups in addition to hundreds of lower-level militants and civilians. Under President Obama, the strikes have taken out at most [a] half-dozen militant leaders while also killing as many as 530 others – of those, around 250 to 400 are reported to have been lower-level militants, about three-quarters; and about a quarter appear to have been civilians.” In other words, about  one-third of those killed were civilian.

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Last week the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations released a new report that called on the U.S. to better engage religious communities in the conduct of its foreign policy.  Although foreign policy analysts frequently acknowledge the integral role of religion in conflicts and peacemaking around the world, the reality is that too often religious communities are not engaged in U.S. policy decisions.   Last Tuesday task force members met with Obama administration representatives to present the findings of the report.  If heeded by this administration, this advice could, in the long run, substantially strengthen our hand in achieving our national security goals.  This report’s prescriptions are particularly applicable to how the United States deals with madrassas in the Muslim world.

The report states

Religion has been a major force in the daily lives of individuals and communities for millennia. Yet recent data show that the salience of religion is on the rise the world over. Once considered a “private” matter by Western policymakers, religion is now playing an increasingly influential role—both positive and negative—in the public sphere on many different levels….. What is needed is an informed and coherent framework that allows actors within and outside government to better understand and respond to religiously inspired actors and events in a way that supports those doing good, while isolating those that invoke the sacred to sow violence and confusion.

This inability to fully understand religion and the role it plays in international relations has been characteristic of both Democratic and Republican administrations.  When speaking of her 2006 book, the Mighty and the Almighty, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said,

As a practitioner of foreign policy, I certainly come from the generation of people who used to say, “X problem is complicated enough. Let’s not bring God and religion into it.” But through my being in office, and as I explored the subject much further in writing “The Mighty and the Almighty,” I really thought that the opposite is true. In order to effectively conduct foreign policy today, you have to understand the role of God and religion.

President Bush can also be faulted for referring to the war on terrorism as a “crusade”.  Although this was surely a slip of the tongue, such religiously-loaded words can have tremendous consequences and this fit all too well into Bin Laden’s narrative of a grand clash of civilizations.

The report presents a number of recommendations for how U.S. policy makers can better integrate religion into their decision making process.  These range from making adjustments to the training that diplomats receive to naming an ambassador to the Organization of Islamic Conference.  Just today the Obama administration announced that Rashad Hussain would take up this post.

Another change that ought to be considered is a rethinking of how the United States addresses madrassas in the Muslim world.  Madrassas are private Islamic religious schools that many point to as a source of extremist ideology and terrorism.  Former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld famously said, “Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?”  Others such as Peter Bergen discount the role that madrassas play in promoting terrorism.  Although proving a direct causal link may be difficult, I think that it’s safe to say that some madrassas do promote to a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam that can contribute to a mindset that encourages extremism and sometimes violence.

So, what is the United States doing about this?  Very little, it turns out.  In Pakistan, for example, the bulk of U.S. assistance for strengthening education goes to secular schools.  On this face of it, this makes sense.  Why should U.S. taxpayers be supporting religious schools that are teaching students to adopt a version of Islam that preaches violence?  Of course, we should continue supporting the secular education system, but it would be wrong to completely ignore the madassa system.  There is much that could be done to provide training and materials to madrassa teachers and administrators to promote a more tolerant version of Islam.  This sort of assistance is not particularly expensive and can make a big difference.

If you say it can’t be done, I’d encourage you to take a look at the work of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy.  Last week I attended a presentation by this organization that has engaged a number of Pakistan’s madrassas for the last five years.  They have trained more than 2,200 madrassa leaders and senior faculty from some 1,450 madrassas, including a sizable number in the more radical areas of the country.  The training emphasizes critical thinking skills, religious tolerance and human rights — especially women’s.  This type of program should be expanded and would complement the important work that the U.S. is already doing to improve the secular education system in Pakistan.

Just as the recent Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs report encouraged policy makers not to ignore the religious facets of U.S. foreign policy, we must be ready to engage these religious schools.  What is particularly ironic is that during the Afghan war with the Soviet Union, the U.S. supported such religious schools and their radical views when it suited the purpose of the overthrow of the Soviets.  It’s not too late to return to those schools with a new message of tolerance and respect for human rights.   I can’t think of a better way to seriously address the God-gap in U.S. foreign policy.

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There’s little new in Russia’s new military doctrine, approved by President Dmitry Medvedev on February 5. The document turned out to follow closely its predecessor, albeit possessing more clarity and concision. Fortunately, the role of nuclear weapons in Moscow’s security policy did not rise. Unfortunately, Russia continues to distrust NATO and resent its expansion. From the very day when the text of the doctrine appeared on the Kremlin’s official web site, the former has not been appreciated enough and the latter has been too strongly criticized.

Alarmed by Nikolai Patrushev’s divulging the plans to assign nuclear weapons to “local conflicts,” the international community sighed with relief upon reading the final document that keeps strategic weapons restricted to regional and large-scale wars.

However, instead of applauding the triumph of reason in the Russian military establishment, some hazarded guesses that the new doctrine is sane only because the true nuclear policy is concealed in “Basic principles of state policy in the area of nuclear deterrence to 2020,” a classified document approved simultaneously with the new doctrine. While the contents of the unpublished document remain secret, it hardly conceals the true contours of Russia’s nuclear policy: the point of deterrence is to make the others aware of the risks so that they refrain from aggression.

It is notable that instead of expanding the role of strategic weapons or specifying uses for its massive sub-strategic nuclear arsenal, Moscow has narrowed the criteria for crossing the nuclear threshold in its new doctrine, as Nikolai Sokov pointed out. The 2000 doctrine allowed the use of nuclear weapons “in situations critical for national security”, but the 2010 version provides for their use only when Russia’s “very existence” is threatened.

With the reset of the US-Russian relationship, the worldwide praise for Obama’s vision of the nuclear weapon-free world, and the large-scale modernization of the Russian military underway, Russia seems to be wising up and going with the flow. Its decision to play down its nuclear capabilities reacting to the gush of criticism evoked by Patrushev’s comments should be appreciated.

Concerning the NATO references in the new doctrine, critics should give Moscow credit for its candor and reread the text on a cool head.

First, Russia’s mention of NATO in its military doctrine should not have come as a surprise to anyone. When the 2000 version of the doctrine brought up “the broadening of military blocs and unions” that would “harm the military security of the Russian Federation and its allies,” everyone already knew what bloc Russia had in mind. Ten years later, NATO having welcomed nine states in its fold and considering extending the welcome to Ukraine and Georgia, Russia merely wrote down what it has been repeating year after year since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. And, for those who still failed to take notice, Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008 should have been the clearest indication of the Kremlin’s threat assessment.

Second, a more sober look at the document shows that it is not NATO per se that Moscow sees as a threat, but merely some of NATO’s policies and actions that, if continued, could make NATO the Kremlin’s enemy. In Russia, NATO is resented only to the extent that it sees acceptable to circumvent the UN Security Council, ignores Moscow’s views when taking military actions in its neighborhood, and creeps up to Russia’s borders from all directions, surrounding it with missile defense systems and radars. This is why in the new doctrine Russia’s concern is, first and foremost, NATO’s goal “to arrogate to itself the assumption of global functions in violation of international law,” and only then – its expansion to Russia’s borders.

Moscow clearly feels its security interests ignored by the West. While acknowledging in the doctrine that “the probability of unleashing large-scale warfare against the Russian Federation” has lowered, the Kremlin contends that the “existing international security structure, including its international law mechanism, does not provide equal security for all states.”

Even though the United States is never mentioned in the text of the document, it is Washington that Moscow has in mind when discussing threats like “attempts to destabilize countries and regions and undermine strategic stability,” “deployment of military contingents of foreign states (and blocs) on territories neighboring Russia and its allies,” “the establishment and deployment of strategic missile defense systems,” and “ the militarization of outer space and deployment of high-precision non-nuclear systems.” Whereas the United States considers Russia a potential partner in its efforts to combat WMD proliferation and terrorism, as its Quadrennial Defense Review has shown, Russia never mentions the United States as a potential ally in its military doctrine.

What has been largely unnoticed, however, is that Russia does declare its readiness to cooperate with NATO in Article 19 of the doctrine. It is important not to ignore this brief mention and continue engaging Moscow.

It is even more important to realize that whatever the doctrine says, Russia will continue to work with NATO and the United States, provided they take Moscow’s interests into account, accept its role as a regional power, and play by the rules. The success of this cooperation will depend on both sides, and the failures will not be the fault of Moscow alone.

Russia’s new doctrine hardly warrants the reaction its critics have exhibited. Instead, it should serve as a reminder of the cost of isolating Moscow. In the end, it is not the contents of the doctrine but the engagement and dialogue that could help defuse the antagonism between Russia and the West and rebuild their trust.

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I confess that I have been fantasizing. I realize that most people have moved on from Iraq to Afghanistan. But given the enormous toll paid both by Iraqis and Americans in terms of lives and money and overall social and cultural destruction I have been trying to imagine what it would look like if the United States actually undertook a fact based investigation into the decisions by the Bush Administration to invade Iraq in 2003.

By that I don’t mean the past investigations by special commissions or congressional committees into what the intelligence community knew or didn’t know, or what pressure they were under to cherry pick information. Rather I mean an investigation into what former President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other cabinet officials knew and did, day by day, leading up to the invasion.

Fortunately, I don’t really have to imagine. Instead I can just look across the Atlantic to Great Britain. There they have been conducting an inquiry, officially launched 30 June 2009. The terms of reference of the Iraq Inquiry,  also known as the Chilcot Inquiry, after its chairman Sir John Chilcot, state:

It will consider the period from the summer of 2001 to the end of July 2009, embracing the run-up to the conflict in Iraq, the military action and its aftermath. We will therefore be considering the UK’s involvement in Iraq, including the way decisions were made and actions taken, to establish, as accurately as possible, what happened and to identify the lessons that can be learned.

Consider some of what has been revealed just during the past few weeks. Tony Blair privately assured President George Bush in letters written a year before the invasion of Iraq that Britain would “be there” in any US-led attack on the country.

Senior British diplomats said that regime change was being discussed by Blair in the US in 2002 even though, according to leaked documents, Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, warned the then PM that military action aimed at regime change, as opposed to disarmament, would be unlawful.

Fresh evidence has emerged that Tony Blair’s discredited Iraqi arms dossier was “sexed up” on the instructions of Alastair Campbell, his communications chief, to fit with claims from the US administration that were known to be falseIntelligence outlining the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was taken out of context when it was used as part of the Government’s case for invading Iraq.

Sir David Omand, who was Mr Blair’s security co-ordinator, said that including the claim that Saddam had missiles that he could launch within 45 minutes in the now-infamous September 2002 dossier on Iraq was “asking for trouble“. If all the intelligence on Iraq had been published, the public reaction would have been “Is that it?”, he said.

Tens of thousands of secret documents form the core of the ongoing inquiry into the Iraq war. The inquiry also hinted that such documents showed British officials knew George Bush intended to invade Iraq even if it complied with the UN weapons inspections.

It is especially ironic that this investigation is taking place in Great Britain, the country that has D-Notices and an Official Secrets Act , not to mention it being the country that gave us the not so fictional concept of Big Brother.

Yet, the obvious point is that if Great Britain can do this so should the United States. The Obama Administration and the Democratic congress have refrained from doing so on the mistaken assumption that it would only antagonize out of power, but not out of venom, Republicans, like Dick Cheney, and make cooperation with Republicans impossible. News flash for the Obama administration. Cheney and Republicans are going to hate you no matter what you do, so you shouldn’t care. Concentrate on what is doing right, not what is politically expedient.  No to do so is to dishonor the memories of all those killed in a war that did not have to happen.

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President Obama’s announcement of his intention to work with Congress and the military to repeal the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy is the sort of change that should receive broad bipartisan support.  The public backs such a change.  A poll last year by the Washington Post/ABC news found that 75% of Americans supported the repeal.  The same poll found that 64% of Republicans wanted to allow homosexuals to serve openly.  This is now a mainstream opinion of both Democrats and Republicans.

President Truman’s landmark decision to integrate African-Americans into the military was particularly noteworthy because it led a transition in public opinion.  Today, public opinion has already shifted, which makes this repeal even more overdue.

Many advocates of the repeal of this policy have strong moral and human rights arguments.  Although such arguments are appealing, the stronger rationale for this repeal is simply that it will make America safer.

Even though the public is on board, there are some political leaders who still support the ban.  John McCain, who once said that he would follow the advice of the military leadership regarding the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy has changed his tune and says that now is not the right time to change the policy because we are in the midst of two wars.  House Minority Leader John Boehner said, “In the middle of two wars, and, and in the middle of this giant security threat, why would we want to get into this debate?” This is where McCain and Boehner get it wrong.  This is precisely the time to make such a change.  Today our forces are stretched thin in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  Yet, at this time of tremendous need in the military we are kicking out brave soldiers simply because they admit openly to being gay.

The statistics are particularly disturbing.  More than 13,500 service members have been fired since 1994.  In the past five years 800 mission critical troops, including 59 Arabic and nine Farsi linguists have been dismissed.  The current “don’t ask don’t tell” policy is putting our troops at greater risk and making it harder for them to accomplish their missions.  The United States has spent $1.3 billion to conduct the investigations that led to the dismissal of homosexual service members.  I can think of many alternative uses of that money that would have actually contributed to the safety of American citizens.

The story of Anthony Leverde, described in a recent Washington Post op-ed, is indicative of the absurdity of our current system.  Leverde was an Air Force loadmaster with the 27^th Airlift squadron in Iraq.  He’s the guy that plans the placement of cargo and soldiers in an aircraft to make sure that it doesn’t come crashing to the ground – a pretty important job!  In April 2008 the Air Force dismissed him when he revealed to his commander that he was gay.  Soon after his honorable discharge the defense contractor KBR hired him and and eventually he found himself working in Afghanistan alongside many of the same soldiers that had previously served with him.  Except this time he was working for a contractor that could care less if he was gay.  Although his contract with KBR doubled his salary, he would have preferred to continue serving in the Air Force.  A fellow soldier summed up the absurdity quite well when he remarked, “I can’t believe they are still discharging people for being gay.  Don’t they know we need everyone we can get in this fight?”

Some opponents point out that repealing the ban will happen eventually, but now is not the right time to push the process forward.  They will say that although we are losing some service members because of the ban, greater harm would come from repealing the ban in the midst of two wars.  The argument is that unit cohesion could suffer, putting more soldiers at risk.

If there was data to support this argument it might be a compelling reason to slow down the process.  However, the experience of many other militaries that have integrated homosexual service members into their operations easily refutes this argument.  These include allies such as Britain, Canada, and Israel.  The experience of Britain is particularly noteworthy.  Former General John Shalikashvili reported in an op-ed that after the British Ministry of Defense lifted its ban on gays in the military, it conducted several follow up studies to see if any harm had been done.  The end conclusion:  the transition had been a “solid achievement.”  A Rand study of the U.S. military found that there was no correlation between a unit’s readiness and whether or not known gays serve in it.  Although opponents may continue to argue that gays serving openly will damage our military, the data just doesn’t support that.

Repealing this ban is the right thing to do.  Our soldiers’ lives are depending on it.

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Retired Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral James Lyons argued in a Washington Times opinion piece on Monday that the US should “halt our participation in the START negotiations until we bring balance back into the equation.” The equation to which Lyons refers is that of nuclear deterrence: by maintaining the ability to destroy any potential nuclear-armed adversary, the logic runs, we can ensure that none will attack the United States. Unfortunately, a focus on the conventional logic of deterrence doesn’t fit in a world where the most urgent threats to US national security are posed by terrorists and other non-state actors who are difficult to identify, much less deter.

Lyons asserts that Russia has “embarked on an aggressive modernization program to field new nuclear weapons” and seeks a “breakout” capability, allegedly so that it could quickly build and deploy new weapons after withdrawing from any new arms control treaty. China, he adds, may be emboldened if the US commits to nuclear reductions, triggering a panic among our East Asian allies. Our looming nuclear weakness, the Admiral concludes, is exacerbated by the proliferation threats of North Korea and Iran.

Each of these assertions twists reality, but even if true, none would justify withdrawing from bilateral arms control, which is essential to protecting Americans from the clear and present danger posed by proliferation of nuclear weapons and materials to those most likely to use them against us. In recent Senate testimony, the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, himself a retired four-star Admiral, called the possibility of terrorists acquiring nuclear capability a “top concern,” and noted that traditional means of deterrence would likely be of “less utility” against such a threat. For that reason the President has committed to stopping proliferation at its source, by halting the spread of nuclear weapons to new states, and securing fissile materials. These efforts depend greatly on US-Russian cooperation, since our two countries possess over 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons and material. A new agreement to replace the expired START treaty is an absolutely essential first step.

On the other hand, were the United States to give Russia and other nuclear powers a pass on nuclear security by withdrawing from bilateral arms control and expanding our own arsenal, the danger that terrorists could buy or steal what they need to build a nuclear weapon would expand exponentially. The simple fact is that the more nuclear weapons there are, and the more states have them, the more likely they are to fall into the wrong hands. It is hard to imagine how Admiral Lyons thinks such a scenario would benefit American national security, even if we built and deployed deadly new nuclear weapons, as he recommends. In fact, the most likely consequence of building a new US nuclear weapon would be to usher in a renewed global nuclear arms race, with all the dangers of Cold-War style mutually assured destruction and none of the multilateral cooperation that has helped to keep nuclear materials out of terrorists’ hands to date.

Of course, completing negotiation of a new START agreement by no means precludes sensible investments to upgrade the safety, security and reliability of the US nuclear arsenal. Lyons is absolutely right that new personnel will need to be trained, and new programs implemented to ensure that the US nuclear arsenal sets the global standard for safety and security, while continuing to effectively serve in the deterrent role assigned to it by our military planners. The brand new 2011 budget request already includes about three times as much for nuclear weapons activities as for nuclear non-proliferation programs. In reality, these categories are closely linked, because US nuclear security today is as much about advancing a comprehensive, multilateral approach to preventing proliferation as it is about maintaining the best possible nuclear arsenal.

Terrorists have declared time and again their intention to acquire a nuclear device and use it against us; even after the Cold War, governments from Pyongyang to Islamabad have crossed the nuclear threshold, while Iran’s iron-fisted dictators are pursuing a weapon of their own; and despite proof he sold nuclear technology on the black market, AQ Khan was released from house arrest last year. The equation is clear: If we fail to work with Russia, China and others to rein in and reduce global nuclear arsenals, we are far more likely to see a nuclear terror attack in the future.

Cartoon by Volha Charnysh.

Related posts:

1. Obama Takes a Long View of Missile Defense
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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.

The Gulf states will invest over $63 billion toward their armed forces and security in 2010, according to Forecast International. Over the next five years, the greater Middle East defense market is projected to grow by over 11 percent, reaching nearly $120 billion by 2014. These figures foreshadow more than a steady profitable business for the US military-industrial complex, however.

While the possibility of Iranian missile strikes is a recent development, the United States has been arming that very region for decades. And so far the results have been all but positive: they continue to challenge US security and values.

The Gulf states embarked on a costly rearmament drive in the 1980s, in light of the Iraqi-Iranian war, after Washington had to protect the Gulf oil routes and tankers and later defend the region against Iraqi Scuds. As the United States started combining diplomatic isolation, economic pressure and military warnings to contain Iran, its ties with the Gulf states grew stronger. Even though most of the hijackers were from the Gulf region, the US-Arab cooperation withstood 9/11, and the Gulf states joined Washington in its war on terrorism and contributed to the American efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Allying with the United States did not automatically make them Iran’s enemies, however. While the US-Iranian post-1979 enmity has gone from bad to worse, Iran’s relationship with the Gulf states has improved. Facing isolation from the West, Tehran needed good neighbors and trade partners more than ever before.

Iran’s trade with the Gulf states grew fivefold between 2000 and 2007, and even the 2005 election of the Iran-Iraq war veteran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not disrupt that trend. Iran remains a much more important export market than the United States for states like the UAE. Iran’s neighbors have large Iranian minorities, thrive on Iranian investments, host thousands of Iranian companies and even several Iranian universities.

A tangled web of political rivalry, economic cooperation, and ethnic and cultural ties, Tehran’s relationship with its neighbors is far more complex than its relationship with the United States. And the Gulf states’ views of regional security and Iran’s place in it are, accordingly, much more nuanced. Among other things, these states do not see economic and diplomatic ties with Tehran as contradictory to arming up against the Islamic Republic and pragmatically avoiding confrontation.

As a result, the Gulf states chose to sit on the fence on what would seem to be the most obvious threat to their security – Iran’s nuclear program. While the Gulf Cooperation Council (UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Qatar) seems to agree with Washington over the dangers of nuclear proliferation, Qatar provided the sole dissenting vote on the resolution calling on Tehran to “suspend all enrichment related and reprocessing activities, including research and development” when it represented the Arab states on the UN Security Council in 2006-07. Keeping these things in mind, the US government should perhaps demand more loyalty from the states it is fortifying and at least get their unequivocal backing for tougher sanctions against Iran.

Having experienced first hand what Tehran’s Scud attacks feel like, the Gulf states are wary about acknowledging US guardianship, and with good reason. Just as the US battery of interceptors on Polish soil not only strengthened the country’s ties with Washington, but also thrust it into the middle of a dispute with Russia, so the presence of US bases and missiles makes the Gulf states potential targets for Iran. Were Iran to retaliate, it wouldn’t even need to launch a missile attack, against which the region has been busily fortifying. Instead, Tehran might simply cut some trade ties, incite the Shiite communities to rise, or interrupt the oil routes with mines.

Ironically, as the Gulf states’ security dependence on the United States grows, so does their wariness and suspicion of the US influence. Iran has been accusing the GCC states of having invited a hostile power into the region for a long time, and the growth of US military presence in the Gulf (and plans like tripling the size of a 10,000-man protection force in Saudi Arabia) could give some credibility to Tehran’s argument, spurring local opposition. It could also further strengthen Tehran’s determination to develop nuclear weapons as the threat to the Islamic Republic is becoming quite real.

When weighing the pros and cons of further arming the Gulf, one needs to recall the role of US military presence in the Middle East in its conflict with al-Qaeda or the reverberations of Washington’s support for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Washington should rethink its policy of arming the unstable region and increasing its military footprint where it has never been welcome. It should realize that its Gulf “allies,” who so easily agreed on the types and cost of weaponry to purchase, will continue having fundamental disagreements with the United States not only in the democratic and cultural realm, but also on the Iranian issue, the very reason cited for the US arms sales to these states. Instead of helping the Gulf states withstand Iran’s bullying, the military support could accelerate the arms race and feed the anti-American sentiments in the Middle East.

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Last night’s State of the Union address made clear that the Obama administration has reassessed its priorities in light of recent events. Health care legislation has stalled in Congress, and Democrats experienced the loss of two governorships and Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in Massachusetts to the Republicans. Opinion polls reveal the President’s approval rating hovering around 20 points lower than they were at this same time last year.

These setbacks are a sea change from the expectations put forth for a new way of communicating and governing when Mr. Obama was inaugurated a little over a year ago. He was the transformational candidate complete with a goal to increase bipartisan cooperation on many issues – from fixing the economy, health care, energy and climate change to addressing national security, WMD, terrorism and foreign policy issues.

Congress has presented him with a different reality, however. Congressional Quarterly recently measured partisanship on Capitol Hill and came to a stark conclusion: No matter the issue, we have just experienced the most partisan year of Congress since they started measuring in 1953. According to CQ:

A roll call vote is considered partisan if a majority of Democrats votes against a majority of Republicans. It has hovered around a relatively high 50 percent in the House for the past two decades and stayed there this year, at 51 percent. But in the Senate, it was a whopping 72 percent – the highest percentage of partisan votes ever tallied in that chamber.

While the majority of Mr. Obama’s address focused on the economy and his plans to stimulate job growth, he also took Congress to task for its continued partisan division. He played the role of populist explaining why the American people have lost faith in government. “They wonder why Washington has been unwilling or unable to solve any problems. They are tired of partisanship, pettiness and the shouting. They want us to overcome the numbing weight of our politics.”

So he went about reminding Congress where there is common ground. He reiterated his administration’s success in renewing America’s standing in the world. He outlined his support for building more nuclear power plants, a willingness to consider and debate the merits of offshore drilling, and expressed the country’s obligation to those who serve in the armed forces, especially when they return home. He plainly stated that throughout our history, we have found the most unity when addressing our national security. He believes our greatest threat is from terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons and detailed the goals of the upcoming summit to reduce our stockpile while strengthening deterrence capabilities. He received applause and standing ovations from both sides of the aisle when he highlighted these topics.

After all, politicians like the idea of governing from the middle. But translating intention to action within the legislative process is difficult. There is some hesitation on the part of those in office to make hard choices and follow-through. Republicans feel shut out and Democrats feel they have extended a hand but have been rejected for political reasons. This leads to gridlock and as Mr. Obama illustrated, “It is sowing further division among our citizens, further distrust of our government.”
There is room for the parties to work together on addressing issues but the window is closing the closer we get to Election Day, 2010. The President has called on Congress to “Reform how we work with one another.” But just two days ago, the Senate rejected his proposal for a bipartisan commission on the deficit so the President will establish the commission with an executive order instead. Whether rhetoric translates into engagement across the aisle remains to be seen. A Congress that commits itself anew to working in a bipartisan fashion would be welcomed not only by the President, but by the American people alike.

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Last week the State Department released its Afghanistan and Pakistan Regional Stabilization Strategy.  There is much to like in this comprehensive document that seeks to elevate development and diplomacy efforts alongside that of defense.  Although the troop increase announced in December by President Obama will be integral to success, for too long the military has overshadowed development and diplomacy in this part of the world.  They are all part of the solution.  We’re now moving in the right direction, but there’s more to be done to get the Pakistani public on board.

The strategy in Afghanistan focuses on reconstruction and development, improved governance, rule of law, and an expanded civilian presence.  The Pakistan component deals with the recently passed Kerry-Lugar-Berman legislation that devotes $7.5 billion over 5 years to Pakistan.  It also emphasizes security assistance, communications, and strengthening people-to-people ties.   The strategy isn’t just a list of impressive goals, but rather it lays out measurable milestones that we should all use to hold the U.S. government accountable.

This all sounds great.  So what’s missing?  Here’s my concern, particularly related to Pakistan.  Poll after poll reports that the Pakistani public continues to harbor strong anti-American sentiment.  For example, in an August poll by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, 64% of Pakistanis viewed the U.S. as an enemy.  Only 22% of Pakistanis felt that the U.S. takes their interests into account when making foreign policy decisions.  There were many references in the strategy about the commitment to a long-term partnership with Pakistan.  Although the Pakistani government might have agreed, I’m quite concerned that the Pakistani people are not yet convinced.

This was particularly evident last fall with the huge debate in Pakistan over the Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill that provided an unprecedented amount of aid to Pakistan.  Rather than being a huge public relations boon to the U.S., the ensuing debate in Pakistan ended up having the exact opposite effect.  There was tremendous concern about conditions being placed on the aid.  When a country’s economy is in tatters and its people consider rejecting a huge assistance windfall, you know that there are real problems brewing.  Although the uproar was largely based on misperceptions, if our strategy is based on a long-term partnership, this is not a good way to start.

Fortunately, the strategy highlighted an enhanced communication effort and stronger people-to-people ties.  These should help.  In the long run, the disbursal of aid will hopefully make a real difference.  However, there are a few things that the U.S. could do right now that could have a tremendous impact:

1.  Show Blackwater the door. The Pakistani press has been obsessed with Blackwater’s presence in the country.  No one knows how many Blackwater operatives are on the ground, but Secretary Gates, on his recent visit to Islamabad confirmed the firm’s presence.  The costs of having Blackwater employees pack up their bags is probably relatively low.  The cost in terms of continued negatives public perception of the U.S. is quite high if their operatives continue to be in the headlines. It’s about perception here, and that really matters.

2.  Think seriously about the costs of drone attacks. The U.S. military considers drones its most effective weapon against Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and they have been successful in eliminating some high value targets.  At the same time, there is huge backlash from the Pakistani public.  They are concerned both with the collateral civilian deaths and the infringement on Pakistani sovereignty.  In the Pew poll, 95% of Pakistanis had a negative view of the drone attacks.  If you ask ordinary Pakistanis, this will be the one issue that comes up again and again.  Perhaps the drone attacks are a tactical victory and a strategic mistake.  The problem is that there aren’t good alternatives.   Other than completely eliminating the attacks, we may want to place an even greater emphasis on reducing civilian casualties or hand more control over to the Pakistani government.  Each of those options has costs, but we’re already paying a tremendous price with our current course of action.  What’s clear is that as long as these attacks are in the headlines, the harder the overall development and diplomacy strategy will be to implement.

3.  For long term development, invest in social entrepreneurs and learn from them. There will be millions of dollars in development aid pouring into Pakistan.  If used effectively, this could be a tremendous benefit to Pakistan and strengthen its people’s confidence in the U.S. long-term commitment.  However, it could also be a setback if improperly distributed.  Figuring out how to utilize this money effectively is going to be key.  Many Americans are now familiar with Greg Mortenson, the author of Three Cups of Tea, who has built or supported over 130 schools in the Pakistan/Afghanistan region over the past 16 years.  What can we learn from him?  Understanding and appreciating the local culture and needs is critical to success.  Aid workers need to get out in the communities they are serving. There are plenty of social entrepreneurs in Pakistan who are finding local solutions to pressing social problems.  Ashoka is finding and supporting many of them.   Social entrepreneurs like Greg Mortenson can be a key part of that effort and we should be learning from their successes.

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