The Wonk Room

Support Iran’s Opposition Or Bomb Iran: You Can’t Do Both

Washington Times national security editor Barbara Slavin has an article on Iranian filmmaker and dissident Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who has become a spokesperson for Iran’s Green Movement in the wake of the June 12 elections. Makhmalbaf called upon President Obama to more explicitly support Iran’s opposition movement and more strongly condemn Iranian human rights abuses. He also had some interesting things to say about the prospect of further sanctions:

“Inevitably, you are going to put [new] sanctions on Iran,” Mr. Makhmalbaf told a small group of Iran specialists and journalists in Washington. He said the U.S. should “let the Iranian people know why you are going to sanction and what the targets are so they can support you.”

He rejected proposed U.S. legislation that would target gasoline imports to Iran, saying that would hurt average people. He said it was better to focus on the Revolutionary Guards, who have been at the forefront of repressing demonstrations and who have taken control of considerable elements of the Iranian economy.

You know who also opposes U.S. legislation targeting gasoline imports to Iran? The Iranian regime. For some, this shared interest is quite enough to tar Makhmalbaf as a regime apologist. Those who are genuinely interested in supporting Iran’s opposition — and not just in smoothing the road toward a U.S.-Iran war — understand that this is silly, of course. The Iranian opposition — and its supporters outside the country — include a number of different factions and trends with various end goals and methods of reaching them.

Speaking of smoothing the road toward a U.S.-Iran war, the very same Washington Times also runs an editorial today telling Americans to Get Ready To Bomb Iran:

Force need not be used to be effective, but the threat of force must be credible to have any chance of influencing Iranian behavior. Right now, there is no credible threat emanating from the United States. The Obama administration unambiguously opposes military action against Iran, particularly by Israel. But it would help to have a little ambiguity on this issue. So long as Tehran thinks the United States will work actively to prevent Israel from taking action, it has one less reason to worry. It would be most helpful if the United States began to send signals to Tehran that the United States will assist Israel in its preparations for military action and maybe even participate when the attack ultimately is launched.

If the regime in Tehran is not made to fear serious consequences for its continued intransigence, it has no reason to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

Leaving aside that anyone who talks seriously about bombing Iran has revealed themselves to be no friend of Iran’s opposition — Abbas Milani represents the overwhelming consensus when he writes that “the forces now controlling Iran would be immeasurably strengthened by an American or (especially) Israeli attack” — this shows a pretty serious misapprehension of the situation in Iran right now.

It’s not at all clear that Iran’s ruling hardliners, who are currently weathering the most serious crisis of legitimacy in the Islamic Republic’s history, wouldn’t actually welcome a military strike by either Israel or the U.S. Such a strike, in addition to extinguishing the Green Movement, would effectively end the ongoing debate within the regime over whether to obtain a nuclear weapon in favor of those who have been arguing “yes,” in very much the same way that the preventive U.S. invasion of Iraq convinced Iran’s hardliners that they needed to keep open the option of having a strategic deterrent.

It’s pretty broadly understood across the U.S. defense establishment that a strike on Iran — either by Israel or the U.S. — would very likely result in a number of disastrous consequences, consequences Iran knows that the U.S. would rather avoid. There’s really no credibility to be generated by pretending otherwise.

New Study On Nuke Testing Proves Kyl Wrong

A new congressionally commissioned report just stuck it to Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ). Kyl is the leading advocate in the Senate for testing nuclear weapons and has led the charge against the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) – a treaty that seeks to stop countries from testing nuclear weapons.

Obama has made ratifying the treaty a major priority and there are hopes that the Senate will bring it up next year, yet conservatives led by Kyl are looking to block it. One of Kyl’s main arguments against CTBT is that it would prevent the U.S. from physically exploding nuclear weapons, which he insists we need to do to ensure the effectiveness of the US nuclear arsenal. Writing an oped in the Wall Street Journal last month titled Why We Need To Test Nuclear Weapons, Kyl wrote that “a ban on testing nuclear weapons would jeopardize American national security.” He asserted that “concerns over aging and reliability have only grown” and insisted that “the reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons still cannot be guaranteed without testing them, despite more than a decade of investments in technological advancements.”

Unfortunately for Kyl, a new congressionally-commissioned study (pdf) conducted by a panel of independent scientists has proven him dead wrong. The study concluded that the current programs in place to maintain the effectiveness of the US nuclear arsenal – a program called the Life Extension Program (LEP) – have demonstrated that:

Lifetimes of today’s nuclear warheads could be extended for decades, with no anticipated loss in confidence, by using approaches similar to those employed in LEPs to date.

In other words, there really is no need to ever test a nuclear weapon – something the US hasn’t done in the last 17 years – or build new replacement warheads. This study effectively undercuts one of the main arguments of CTBT opponents and should strengthen the push to ratify the treaty next year. As Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association concluded: “There is no technical or military reason to resume U.S. nuclear weapons testing, and it is in the U.S. national security interest to prevent nuclear testing by others. A growing list of bipartisan leaders agree that by ratifying the CTBT, the U.S. stands to gain an important constraint on the ability of other states to build new and more deadly nuclear weapons that could pose a threat to American security.”

Positive Steps And Missed Opportunities In China

Our guest blogger is Winny Chen, Research Associate for the National Security and International Policy Team at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Looking at the deliverables from President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao’s first summit is a lot like looking at the box score on the sports pages: it only tells part of the story. Sometimes, the best plays — astute defense, patience in the pitch count, taking the charge — won’t manifest in the final readout, but they could be the game-changing plays.

At first glance, the results of the summit were a mixed bag. The trip, at times, seemed to highlight the differences between the United States and China more than it did to deliver results. There was agreement on the need for free trade but also mutual finger-pointing on currency and protectionism, recognition of the progress in the Strait but the same catechisms on arms sales and One-China.

Perhaps the biggest loser was human rights. To be fair, President Obama did speak directly to President Hu about the issue, asserting “America’s bedrock beliefs that all men and women possess certain fundamental human rights,” and urging Chinese leaders to meet with the Dalai Lama. But at the end of the day, what some deem as President Obama’s more practical approach resulted in some missed opportunities. Unlike in past presidential summits, China didn’t release any political dissidents as a symbol of goodwill. Indeed, China went the opposite direction and detained activists before the President Obama’s arrival. The Obama team did not meet with any political activists or dissident leaders in China, nor did they directly reference China’s human rights record on the trip. The president’s much-publicized call for greater internet freedom was, ironically, censored in China. And ultimately, President Obama’s more conciliatory approach seemed to soft-pedal human rights.

But there was progress, too. Obama and Hu recommitted to improving and increasing military exchanges, programs, and dialogue and have laid out an affirmative agenda focusing on law enforcement and counterterrorism. They reaffirmed a unified approach to the crisis on the Korean peninsula. On non-proliferation, Presidents Obama and Hu agreed to work together to achieve a successful Review Conference of Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 2010 and supported the launching of negotiations on the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty at an early date in the Conference on Disarmament. Most surprising was the progress made on climate change. So, all in all, a mixed tally.

But what the score, and many accounts of the trip, won’t reflect is the important contributions that President Obama’s trip made to U.S.-China relations. There were three intangibles that we cannot overlook. First, he signaled that the United States is back in Asia, ready to assume its role as an engaged Pacific power once again. Second, his remarks at the joint press conference with President Hu on Tuesday threw support and momentum behind sustaining the U.S.-China dialogue at the highest levels in both governments. Third, he made clear to the Chinese and to the American audiences at home, that, like it or not, on the big issues — security, economy, climate change — we’re in this together.

Dubious Article Leaves Paranoid Right Seeing IAEA–Iran Conspiracy

A report that came out yesterday from the conservative Times of London has gotten the American right into a tizzy. The Times reported that longtime bogeyman for the right, Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, was negotiating a “secret” plan with Iran:

United Nations and Iranian officials have been secretly negotiating a deal to persuade world powers to lift sanctions and allow Tehran to retain the bulk of its nuclear programme in return for co-operation with UN inspectors. …The plan would require the UN Security Council to revoke the three existing sanctions and five resolutions ordering Iran to halt its uranium enrichment — an unthinkable development at a time when the West is focused on how to impose more, not fewer, sanctions on Iran.

Fox News profiled the story, Rachel Abrams of the Weekly Standard concluded that ElBaradei was a “collaborator with tyrants,” and John Hull writing in the Examiner papers concluded that “Elbaradei conspired with Iraq, as he is now doing with the Islamic Republic of Iran, to hide nuclear weapons from the infidels.” This comes a day after the IAEA released a report accusing the Iranians of misleading the agency over the extent of its nuclear program. A report, Julian Borger of the Guardian said, was “marked by the impatient and sceptical language that has become an increasingly regular feature of the agency’s Iran reports.” This is hardly the tone or the conclusions one would expect from an agency headed by a guy who collaborates with tyrants. But reality rarely matters when developing a conspiracy theory.

Furthermore, the Times story that they have all seized on seems highly dubious for a number of reasons.

First, this apparent “plan,” according to the Times, was put together in September – not November. But this would likely make the Times’ “plan” totally irrelevant, since the talks with Iran in Vienna that resulted in the current deal on the table took place in October. The IAEA has also denied the plan’s existence but if there ever was such a plan it was probably just one of the many possible plans being floated prior to the October meeting.

Second, any “secret deal” negotiated by ElBaradei with the Iranians would ultimately have to be agreed to by the U.S. and other powers – and lifting sanctions definitely won’t be agreed to.

Finally, if this draft plan is current, than none of this really make any sense. If the Times story is right that – “It was thought that Mr ElBaradei was anxious to secure his legacy after infighting over his perceived weakness in dealing with Iran” – then why would he be advancing a plan to remove sanctions that he knows would be dead in the water with the West and which would only serve to exacerbate his “perceived weakness” vis-à-vis Iran.

ElBaradei has been a constant target of the right. He entered their cross hairs after correctly assessing Iraq’s WMD programs and questioning Bush administration claims that a Saddam sponsored mushroom cloud was imminent. So despite the dubious nature of the Times’ claims, the right has grabbed hold of its conclusions and gone crazy with it.

When Do We Stop Pretending Netanyahu Is A Partner For Peace?

Americans for Peace Now’s Lara Friedman analyzes Bibi Netanyahu’s latest thumb in the Obama administration’s (and the Abbas government’s, and the international community’s) eye, the authorization of 900 new homes in the East Jerusalem settlement of Gilo. “This is a crisis engineered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” Friedman writes, one “intended to create a head-on collision with the Obama Administration over Jerusalem.”

[W]hile Bibi had a number of “conventional” options for dealing with the issue, he chose to go nuclear by making this issue — and his defiance of US concerns — a top story. In doing so, he has undermined the prospects for the very negotiations he claims he wants. [...]

The plan, if implemented, will allow the construction of 844 units, and these units won’t be inside the existing footprint of the settlement. Rather, they will be on the settlement’s southwestern flank, expanding Gilo in the direction of the Palestinian village of Wallajeh (a village in which a large number of the homes are fighting Israeli demolition orders). This new Gilo plan clearly dovetails with another plan to build a new settlement, called Givat Yael, which would straddle the Jerusalem border and significantly extend Israeli Jerusalem to the south, further sealing the city off from the Bethlehem area and the West Bank (and connecting it to the Etzion settlement bloc). That plan, it was reported yesterday, also appears to be suddenly gaining steam. (for a map showing both the Gilo plan and Givat Yael, click here.)

The Gilo plan is thus extremely provocative on several levels. It represents a clear and public statement from the Netanyahu government that it is neither “freezing” nor acting with “restraint” in East Jerusalem. It compels the Palestinians to respond, just as it compels other regional actors to respond. Finally, it has important strategic implications, since the plan, implemented, would impact on border options for Jerusalem under a future peace agreement.

Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth reported — and a U.S. official confirmed – that Obama administration envoy George Mitchell had asked an aide to Netanyahu at a meeting in London on Monday to block the proposed construction in East Jerusalem. This latest affront comes less than a week after President Obama met with Netanyahu for 70 minutes in the White House.

Writing in yesterday’s New York Times, Roger Cohen suggested that recent history “makes clear that the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won’t deviate from the pattern of settlement growth established since 1967.” The U.S. has its own history of recognizing the illegitimacy of the settlements, and recognizing the role that they play in powering Palestinian resentment and violence, while never undertaking serious measures to pressure Israel to curb them. The Obama administration showed admirable clarity at the outset about these things, but then refused to stand strong behind its demand that Israel abide by its previous commitments to halt settlement growth, and its credibility has suffered for it.

The administration has certainly made its own mistakes on this issue, and I think the Palestinians have been unwise in refusing to negotiate without a complete settlement freeze. But we need to recognize that Netanyahu’s intransigence, born of an ideological commitment to seizing as much Palestinian land as possible, is a huge part of the problem here. Add this to his tendency to provoke crises and humiliate his country’s key patron, the United States, at almost every opportunity, I wonder when the Obama administration will simply stop pretending that Netanyahu is a partner for peace.

The Fruits Of ‘Dithering’ In Afghanistan

Given that the charge that President Obama is “dithering” on Afghanistan originated with former Vice President Dick Cheney, one can and should dismiss it out of hand as a transparent attempt to distract Americans from the fact that the Bush-Cheney administration vastly under-resourced the U.S.-led effort there for the last five years. But it’s also worth pointing out that, as it has conducted its deep review of options in Afghanistan, the president and his team haven’t simply been sitting around talking. They’ve been working with and encouraging and cajoling our partners in the Pakistan and Afghanistan government to step up and play a more positive role. And they’ve made it clear to both governments that a demonstrated willingness to do that will influence the president’s decision on U.S. troop and resource commitments to the effort.

On Sunday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton again made it clear that Hamid Karzai’s government must do more to eliminate corruption if he wanted continued civilian aid from Washington. Government corruption at all levels has been a huge problem in Afghanistan, preventing the state from establishing any genuine legitimacy and powering the resentment that feeds the Taliban insurgency.

Yesterday, the government of Afghanistan “announced new anticorruption measures in response to pressure from Washington and its allies, unveiling a special task force that will investigate graft by senior officials”:

“This force will make sure no high-ranking official who is involved in corruption will go unpunished,” said Interior Minister Hanif Atmar, accompanied by the U.S. and British ambassadors to Kabul. The new body will get training and support from the European Union and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, officials said.

The task force, which began operating in recent days, has netted three high-ranking government officials and charged them with stealing money meant for the families of policemen killed in the line of duty, said Amrullah Saleh, chief of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security. He didn’t identify the detained men beyond saying that one of them was a general.

Obviously, simply creating a new anti-corruption unit and making some arrests isn’t the same as actually “fighting corruption,” but it’s a positive step. As with the Pakistan Army’s move against Taliban redoubts in Waziristan, a sustained commitment on the part of the Afghanistan will significantly impact the ability of the U.S.-led coalition to roll back the Taliban and stabilize the country. Karzai’s move is a welcome one, though, and should be recognized as the result of the successful use of American leverage by the Obama administration to elicit a positive change in behavior — as well as proof that the administration’s hawkish critics continue to be best ignored.

Scoring Obama’s Foreign Policy Record »

As the President Obama continues his first trip to Asia, prepares to order more troops to Afghanistan, and completes his eighth month in office, it’s worth looking back on the foreign policy campaign pledges candidate Obama made in the pages of Foreign Affairs in mid-2007. There, candidate Obama set himself and the nation a set of goals to accomplish in his first term. While we shouldn’t expect President Obama to have met all of these commitments in only eight months — for one, some are highly dependent on the reaction of fickle governments elsewhere — we can use these benchmarks to determine how far along the Obama administration has come on its foreign policy.

1.“[B]ring the Iraq war to a responsible end.”

Partially met. Outlined a plan to withdraw all U.S. troops by end of 2011, in accordance with U.S.-Iraq security agreement. Iraqi national elections are to occur in January 2010, after which U.S. troops will draw down to 50,000 by August 2010.

2.”[L]aunch a comprehensive regional and international diplomatic initiative to help broker an end to the civil war in Iraq.”

Unmet. No overt movement toward a comprehensive regional and international diplomatic initiative to help resolve internal political conflicts in Iraq has occurred.

3.“[F]ocus our attention and influence on resolving the festering conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians”

Partially met. Appointed former Senator George Mitchell as senior envoy on Middle East peace, but has achieved little in terms of Israelis and Palestinians keeping their previous commitments or returning to the negotiating table.

4.“Although we must not rule out using military force, we should not hesitate to talk directly to Iran.”

Incomplete. Engaged Iran in serious direct negotiations on its nuclear program and engaged in public diplomacy, but has not received a positive or constructive response yet from Tehran.

5.“Diplomacy combined with pressure could also reorient Syria away from its radical agenda to a more moderate stance”

Incomplete. The administration has engaged Syria at the assistant secretary and special envoy levels, but results remain unclear. Additionally, Administration officials have stated a desire to send an ambassador to Syria, but none has been sent so far. However, the U.S. military held talks in August with Syrian officials on Syria-Iraq border control issues.

6.“[E]xpand our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the army and 27,000 marines”

Met. The Bush administration implemented this increase. Secretary of Defense Gates has since announced an expansion of the Army by 22,000 more troops.

7.“[W]ork with other nations to secure, destroy, and stop the spread of these weapons in order to dramatically reduce the nuclear dangers for our nation and the world. America must lead a global effort to secure all nuclear weapons and material at vulnerable sites within four years — the most effective way to prevent terrorists from acquiring a bomb.”

Partially met. The administration has achieved outline agreement on replacement for START treaty with Russia, with negotiations currently underway. Serious engagement underway on Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs. President Obama has pledged ratification of Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, but no action has yet been taken in the Senate. The review conference for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is upcoming in 2010. More »« Less

Russia Reset Showing Results

A year ago, there was a rising fear that the US and Russia were on the verge of a new Cold War. Today the relationship seems to have gone 180. The US and Russia are now on the verge of signing a new nuclear disarmament agreement and look increasingly in sync on Iran. Yesterday, Obama met directly with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific summit in Singapore where both leaders said negotiations on a new START agreement were close to completion. Medvedev also expressed his displeasure with Iran, giving another indication that Russia may back Obama should the Iranians reject the nuclear deal on the table. Following the meeting and Medvedev pronouncements, Obama concluded that “the reset button has worked.”

The turnaround in US-Russian relations is a huge foreign policy accomplishment for President. In the final years of the Bush administration US-Russian relations deteriorated to the point where many in the Bush administration were advocating an outwardly confrontational approach. This only escalated further following the Russia-Georgia war in August of 2008, as John McCain actively pushed for escalating the hostility. However, sensible foreign policy experts from both parties rejected this dangerous approach, arguing that the US needed to prevent relations from deteriorating further and should seek to establish a more grounded business-like relationship with the Russian. In September of last year, five former Secretaries of State all emphasized this point. Henry Kissinger, hardly a liberal softy, insisted:

We have a number of common issues that we have to settle, if possible, with Russia. We need Russia for a solution of the Iranian problem. We may need Russia if Pakistan evolves in some of the directions that it might. And it is helpful to cooperate with Russia not just on the [nuclear] question, but on the issues of energy.

James Baker added:

Look at it [Russia] in a strategic context and not tactically…we have some big-picture issues that we need to be conscious of when we think about our future with Russia, and we ought to cooperate with them where we can, where they fit, but we ought to also be willing to confront them where our vital interests are involved.

This past year has seen the Obama administration successfully implement this approach. Unlike President Bush, Obama has kept the relationship in the right context, avoiding naïve pronouncements of a new beautiful friendship (as Bush did in 2001 when he looked in Putin’s soul). Instead, the relationship is now about getting stuff done on issues of key strategic importance like nuclear proliferation, Iran, and Afghanistan. This level-headed policy has resulted in major progress in reducing the dangers of nuclear proliferation, as well as potentially removed one of the biggest obstacles to a cohesive international response on Iran. There is still a long way to go on all these issues, but the turn around in relations is clear.

Yet neoconservatives today seem to see improved relations with Russia and the fact that a new Cold War has not materialized as not a cause for rejoicing, but one for panic. What does it say about a political movement that sees improved relations as a form of bad news?

The Only Thing That Can Destroy Us Is The Terror-Industrial Complex

In light of the conservative meltdown over the Obama administration’s decision to bring the 9/11 plotters to trial in New York, I think it’s worth revisiting this October 2007 Colin Powell interview, in which the retired four-star general and former Secretary of State said that one of the best ways for the United States to combat global extremism was to “show the world a face of openness and what a democratic system can do.”

That’s why I want to see Guantánamo closed. It’s so harmful to what we stand for. We literally bang ourselves in the head by having that place. What are we doing this to ourselves for? Because we’re worried about the 380 guys there? Bring them here! Give them lawyers and habeas corpus. We can deal with them. We are paying a price when the rest of the world sees an America that seems to be afraid and is not the America they remember.

You can drive up the road from here and come to a spot where there is a megachurch over here, a little Episcopal church over there, a Catholic church around the corner that’s almost cathedral-size, and between them is a huge Hindu temple. There are no police needed to guard any of this. There are not many places in the world where you would see that. Yes, there are a few dangerous nuts in Brooklyn and New Jersey who want to blow up Kennedy Airport and Fort Dix. These are dangerous criminals, and we must deal with them. But come on, this is not a threat to our survival! The only thing that can really destroy us is us. We shouldn’t do it to ourselves, and we shouldn’t use fear for political purposes — scaring people to death so they will vote for you, or scaring people to death so that we create a terror-industrial complex.

Today in the Weekly Standard, one of the key organs of the terror-industrial complex, former Bush administration official Michael Anton exemplified this mindset. “The odds are of course against KSM winning an acquittal, though one never knows,” Anton wrote. “But that is not the point.”

The point is that our civilian justice system is designed to do specific things, and to try non-citizen enemy combatants who make war on this country and slaughter innocent civilians is not one of them. Now that system will be used for what will likely be a months-long propaganda circus that will make a mockery of our principles and broadcast a message of weakness and pusillanimity to terrorists, their fellow travelers, and intellectual mentors around the world. Even if the U.S. government ends up winning the legal case, we all lose. And the reversion to a federal court trial will, along with other actions of the current administration, conspire to lull the American public into the view that we’re not really at war.

The indefinite detention without trial of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay has itself been a years-long propaganda circus that did make a mockery of our principles and broadcast a message of weakness and pusillanimity to terrorists, their fellow travelers, and intellectual mentors around the world. As Powell noted more than two years ago, correcting the Bush administration’s tragic error in opening the Guantanamo facility in the first place is essential to re-establishing American credibility on the rule of law. That credibility an important force multiplier in U.S. attempts to combat global extremism. As Gen. David Petraeus said in his statement of support for closing Guantanamo Bay prison, “We ought to live our values.”

Chinese Strateg-urrance

Our guest blogger is Nina Hachigian, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund

Earlier this week, as he prepared to leave for Asia, President Obama called the U.S. relationship with China a “strategic partnership.” This is a big move. The term is an upgrade from President Bush’s label “constructive and cooperative and candid” and a far cry from Bush’s campaign term “strategic competitor.” President Obama’s comments are 100% certain to be met with accusations of appeasement and naivete by the not-always-so-loyal opposition. The neocons didn’t like the concept of “strategic reassurance” that Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg unveiled a few weeks ago, and spoke about at a recent event, and they are going to like this even less. But using this term before his first visit is a very smart move.

First, let’s be clear about what President Obama said and the context in which he said it. In response to a reporter’s question about how he views China, President Obama began by saying that he sees China as “a vital partner, as well as a competitor.” Later he stated that “on critical issues, whether climate change, economic recovery, nuclear non-proliferation, it’s very hard to see how we succeed or China succeeds in our respective goals without working together. And that is, I think, the purpose of the strategic partnership.”

So it is clear, in case you hear otherwise, that President Obama does not think China is our best friend. In addition to calling China a “competitor,” he went on to say that he raises human rights, “universal rights” he called them, in every meeting with the Chinese. We know that he hasn’t hesitated to anger Beijing when policy calls for that, as his controversial decision on trade sanctions on Chinese tires illustrates. In fact, the entire trip itinerary makes clear that China is only one element of US Asia policy. President Obama is strengthening our traditional alliances in Japan and South Korea, and finally getting the US in the game of multilateral diplomacy in APEC and ASEAN on which China has been running the tables over the last eight years.

Obama referred to a strategic partnership with China in the context of major transnational threats. China is the world’s largest emitter of carbon, its most dynamic large economy and a nuclear power that neighbors North Korea and buys more oil from Iran than any other country. If China isn’t our partner, then we are in trouble.

The problem is that China has not been a reliable partner. It has been reluctant to take the kind of proactive steps on global challenges that the US wants and needs it to. As I detail in a new report, China is very engaged in all the international institutions and very prepared at the international summits—and this is a big step in the right direction—but you can count on a couple of fingers the number of times China has taken proactive leadership on a global threat: (1) North Korea (but it took enormous and constant US pressure to get them to lead on the Six Party Talks) and (2) the avian and swine flu pandemics, but on those their active leadership has consisted of convening international conferences, not exactly a mind-blowing example of international problem-solving.

Beijing is not using its leverage with Iran to end its nuclear program, it has so far resisted agreeing to limits on its carbon emissions that would make a necessary global deal to address climate change possible, and the steps China is taking to move to a domestic-led growth model that will address global economic imbalances are welcome but too few and too slow.

What the Chinese will tell you is that they achieve a trusting relationship by, first, developing trust with their counterpart and only then doing things together. This is exactly reverse, they will say, of Americans, who want to get things done together and develop trust in the process. President Obama’s gesture gives China’s leaders some strategic reassurance that he has a positive view of the relationship. He is offering a modicum of pre-trust that the Chinese say they need. This is not weakness — it is clever diplomacy.

If, over time, the Chinese do not cooperate more deeply, then “strategic partnership” will fail to become an accurate description of the relationship. The term could end up just a blip in the historical fluctuations of US-China terminology. But instead I hope that, in a few years, it turns out to be a positive, accurate and unremarkable description of our relationship with China.

WSJ’s Henninger: Bush Critics Enabled Ft. Hood Shootings

The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger thinks he knows how the Fort Hood shootings happened:

In our time, nothing was bigger than the nearly 3,000 killed on September 11. But anyone who got involved with the development of public policy then knows that for the next seven years the battle never stopped over the details of the Patriot Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, then Guantanamo, then waterboarding, renditions and secret prisons and all the other issues that for some could be summed up in two words: “Bush-Cheney.”

This will never come up in the Lieberman hearings next week, but I think that nonstop policy battle is why Hasan’s overseers dropped the ball.

The most-heard reason for the possible failure is political correctness. No doubt. But Sen. Lieberman’s committee should avoid making this its main line of inquiry, because that is a problem without a policy fix. It minimizes the real problem.

The problem is confusion. The combatants at each end of the spectrum in the war over the war on terror know exactly what they think about surveilling suspected terrorists. But if you are an intel officer or FBI agent tasked with providing the protection, what are you supposed to make of all this bitter public argument? What you make of it is that when you get a judgment call, like Maj. Hasan, you hesitate. You blink.

Now everyone thinks the call was obvious. But it wasn’t so obvious before the tragedy. Not if for years you have watched a country and its political class in rancorous confusion about the enemy, the legal standing of the enemy, or the legal status and scope of the methods it wants to use to fight the enemy.

In war, uncertainty gets you killed. It just did.

Yes, if we could all just stop being so confused and see things more clearly, we could do something about all the problems. It should go without saying that the idea that we can simply do away with “uncertainty” when managing the tension between liberty and security is nonsense. Did authorities either miss or fail to act on what, in retrospect, seems like solid evidence of Hasan’s increasing radicalization? I think it’s fair to say yes. Is there any evidence that this failure was the result of “confusion” generated by the “nonstop policy battle” between the Bush administration and its critics? No, there isn’t.

Essentially, Henninger’s argument is that the practice of democracy itself set the stage for the Fort Hood tragedy. If everybody would have just shut up after 9/11 and not distracted President Bush with stupid questions about warrantless surveillance and indefinite detention and torture and the Constitution, then maybe the FBI wouldn’t have been so scared of hurting peoples’ feelings. And of course it goes without saying that this applies only to criticisms coming from the left. Conservatives who challenge Democratic presidents are just patriots asking tough questions. Progressives who challenge Republican presidents are sapping the nation’s vital essence.

What Does A Conservative Have To Do To Be Considered ‘Unserious’ On National Security?

My friend Rob Farley recently recorded an interesting diavlog with John Mueller, author of the new book Atomic Obsession. In his book, Mueller argues that fears of nuclear holocaust during the Cold War, and now of nuclear terrorism, are overblown.

In one funny segment, Farley and Mueller chuckle over the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) “awareness movement” — I think the “Pulsers” deserve their own spot alongside the Birthers and Deathers in the grand and glorious tapestry of goofballery that is the contemporary conservative movement — noting that achieving the sort of effect that they warn of — detonating a nuclear device at a high altitude, shutting down electrical power across most of the continental United States — would require a level of technical expertise that even the United States may not possess:

MUELLER: There’s a guy named Lawrence who used to be head of the Los Alamos lab, in weapons design, and in a recent book he asked somebody who knew all about EMP about that, and the idea that the North Koreans could do that, could basically wipe out the communications of the United States with a single bomb — I mean, right now their delivery system can barely hit the Pacific Ocean –but he didn’t even think the United States could do that. [...]

The technological ability to do that is fantastically high. It takes a huge amount of ability to even begin to do that.

Watch it:

Farley recently wrote an article about the EMP crowd which offers up this slice of fried gold:

Despite the effort that conservatives have devoted to this cause, it appears to have gained little traction in the mainstream media. The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, and other major television news organizations declined to cover the EMPACT conference. Indeed, even the neoconservative Weekly Standard, which seems perpetually on the lookout for ways to plug purported existential threats to the homeland, stayed away from Niagara. One Standard editor said in an interview with the author, “I don’t go for that EMP stuff. Kind of more interested in dangerous scenarios that might actually happen.”

Think about that for a moment: The threat from EMP is so remote that not even the Weekly Standard is willing to fear-monger about it. This hasn’t stopped two of the leading likely GOP presidential contenders, Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich, from making it a big part of their national security agenda. In terms of “serious ideas about things that might ever actually happen,” it’s the equivalent of a leftist candidate calling upon Americans to simultaneously begin chanting and thinking good thoughts about Al Qaeda in the hopes that our “love rays” will cause them to abandon their war against us. It’s a sad commentary both on the state of the GOP and on the nature of the U.S. national security debate that Gingrich and Huckabee’s advocacy of these ideas hasn’t prevented them from being taken (kind of) seriously.

Was It Terrorism?

It is utterly unsurprising that most of the usual right-wing suspects declared Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan a terrorist as soon as they heard his name was Nidal Malik Hasan. That, however, doesn’t mean that there aren’t difficult questions to ask in regard to Hasan’s motivations. As I see it, there are two main ones: How much did Hasan’s faith play into his decision to commit mass murder? And if the answer to that question is “a lot” does that necessarily make the shooting a terrorist act?

Jeffrey Goldberg writes that “Elite makers of opinion in this country try very hard to ignore the larger meaning of violent acts when they happen to be perpetrated by Muslims,” and suggests this “simple test“:

If Nidal Malik Hasan had been a devout Christian with pronounced anti-abortion views, and had he attacked, say, a Planned Parenthood office, would his religion have been considered relevant as we tried to understand the motivation and meaning of the attack? Of course. Elite opinion makers do not, as a rule, try to protect Christians and Christian belief from investigation and criticism. Quite the opposite. It would be useful to apply the same standards of inquiry and criticism to all religions.

The obvious example here is the assassination of abortion doctor George Tiller by anti-choice activist Scott Roeder. Roeder had a long association with extremist anti-abortion groups, had been caught with bomb-making materials before, and had threatened violence against abortion providers before.

I think relevant to point out that acts of murder by devout Christians do not, as a rule, result in reprisals and discrimination against American Christians. To the extent that some opinion makers were trying to “protect” anyone, I think they are (rightfully) simply trying to avoid jumping to conclusions and lower the temperature on a situation that could have real consequences for American Muslims. I’d also suggest that an aversion to drawing immediate conclusions about Muslims and violence is appropriate, given the very recent American history of using wild claims about Muslims and violence to generate public support for enormously stupid invasions and occupations of Muslim countries. That said, obviously we shouldn’t avoid recognizing the evidence of religious radicalization when it’s there.

As for the question of whether the Ft. Hood shooting qualifies as an act of terrorism, as I noted Friday, despite what Daniel Pipes and Michelle Malkin would have us believe, the definition of terrorism is not “any violence by any Muslim anywhere, at any time, for any reason.” It’s gotten somewhat lost in the years since 9/11, but terrorism actually does have a fairly broadly accepted meaning, “the use of force or the threat of force against non-combatants to achieve a political goal.” Did Hasan have a political goal, as Scott Roeder clearly did? Did Hasan intend his violence to frighten Americans away from enlisting in the military? Did he intend to cause Americans to withdraw their support for U.S. interventions in the Middle East (even more than they already have done)? As James Joyner writes “If he’s just an angry Muslim who went nuts and started shooting people, he’s a psychopath and a killer but not a terrorist.” On the other hand, if it’s determined that Hasan did hope to achieve some broader political goal through his violence, then it should be considered terrorism.

Panel: Iran Will Look To Repair Regional Appeal Damaged After Election

The unrest and repression in Iran following the country’s controversial elections is reversing some of the regional political gains that the Islamic regime enjoyed over the past decade, according to a panel at the University of Maryland today.

Speaking at the symposium After the 2009 Elections: Domestic, Regional, and International Dimensions, Stanford University professor Abbas Milani said that that the Islamic Republic is currently dealing with “the most serious crisis in thirty years,” and “is more divided than it has ever been.” Milani said that “Two pillars of the regime” — Khamenei and Rafsanjani — “are at each others’ throats.” More importantly, Abbas said, not do people no longer believe in the regime, but many of the people “now believe that the regime is afraid of them.”

At the same time, according to Milani,”The international situation has never been as dangerous for [Iran] as it is now.” After significantly increasing its political reach and influence as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, post-election repression has caused the regime to lose legitimacy not only in the eyes of much of the international community, but also in the eyes of many Islamists throughout the Middle East who had previously looked to Iran as a standard bearer of resistance against the West.

Milani referred to a recent paper by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the seminal Islamist organization in the Middle East, which he said described the Brotherhood’s shifting view. “Before June 12,” Milani said, “the view among the Muslim Brotherhood was to support Iran against the West’s bullying.” But now “Brotherhood leaders are finding it more difficult to defend Iran.’

Groups like Hezbollah and Iraq’s Shia parties, Milani said, are also “hedging their bets, [and] are no longer assured that their future lies in an alliance with the Islamic Republic.

Assessing Iran’s appeal to the Arab Middle East, Panelist Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace quipped that “Iran is to the Middle East what Rush Limbaugh is to the US.” They appeal to “the alienated and downtrodden.” Iran’s “Death to America” propaganda resonates most “when people are outraged over U.S. and Israeli behavior”.

UMD’s Shibley Telhami noted the divergence between how Arab governments view Iran and how Arab publics view Iran. “Many Arab regimes are unpopular for their own corruption,” Telhami said “but also, in the case of Egypt and Jordan, because of the Israeli issue.” It is the continuing importance of the Israeli-Palestinian issue to their publics, and anger at regional governments for not having donw more to help the Palestinians, Telhami said, that compels states like Egypt and Jordan to hype the threat from Shiite Iran.

Iran’s loss of appeal could have negative short-term consequences for the region, however. Sadjadpour said that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps is now “essentially running Iranian foreign policy in the region, [while] the foereign ministry been sidelined.” Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaqi “is basically a spokesperson, [and] not deciding policy,” according to Sadjadpour.

The recent seizure by Israel of what Israel claims were Iranian arms headed for Hezbollah could be an ominous sign of what’s to come, as the Iranian regime may look to regain some of its lost resistance bona fides by drawing from the well that never runs dry: The Israel-Palestine conflict.

Rule Of Law, Local Ownership Essential For Security Assistance

Nearly every major U.S. plan for Afghanistan under serious consideration by the Obama administration as it deliberates its options involves some form of an expanded train-and-equip program for the Afghan security forces. General Stanley McChrystal’s leaked assessment calls for expanding the Afghan National Army to 240,000 and the Afghan National Police to 160,000. Influential lawmakers like Senator John Kerry (D-MA) and Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) — respectively the chairs of the Senate’s Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees — are skeptical of sending additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, but agree with McChrystal that the United States must rapidly build Afghanistan’s security forces.

With an apparent consensus on the need to train more Afghan security personnel more rapidly, it’s instructive to take a look at the United States’ smaller scale efforts to build security forces elsewhere in the Middle East. On Tuesday, I attended an event at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Yezid Sayigh’s report on security sector reform in Palestine, Lebanon and Yemen. Sayigh’s presentation made several interesting points that should have a direct impact on U.S. decision makers and the implementers, most likely in the military, as they prepare for a larger train-and-equip effort in Afghanistan.

First, Sayigh noted that U.S. and EU efforts tend to have competing priorities — in the cases of Palestine, Lebanon, and Yemen, embedding security forces in a democratic rule of law framework versus building an effective counterterrorism force. In the cases he studied, Sayigh found that U.S. and EU efforts tend to focus on creating special counterterrorism units to the detriment of the rest of the security sector, and these new CT units are then prime targets for capture by political factions. Nicole Ball, a panelist at the event, later made the point that even solely CT-focused efforts wind up unsuccessful at achieving CT objective.

Second, success in building and reforming security sectors is possible when there is local ownership of the overall effort. As Sayigh told the attendees, “no amount of external coercion or bribery will work without local ownership.” He cites the relative success in reforming the Palestinian Authority’s security sector under Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad in 2007 and 2008.

These two main points have important implications for an expanded training effort in Afghanistan. The most important in my view is the need to get buy-in for the expanded effort from President Hamid Karzai and his new government, especially the defense ministry. Current Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak has long argued for a bigger Afghan army, and should he remain defense minister it’s likely he and his ministry will be on board with an expanded training mission. U.S. and NATO country diplomats should also work to make sure the opposition to Karzai, such as Abdullah Abdullah’s political faction, also support the new training program.

After buy-in is obtained, the United States will have to avoid Karzai politicizing the security sector. While Karzai has so far avoided overly politicizing Afghanistan’s national security forces, leaders with dubious legitimacy will always face the temptation to create regime protection forces loyal to themselves rather than professional security forces loyal to the state. U.S. and NATO diplomats and military trainers will have to work in tandem to ensure Karzai does not go down the path of security force politicization. Such politicization has occurred in Iraq, where former mayor Najim Abed al-Jabouri has stated entire divisions of the Iraqi army are beholden to the various political parties there. In addition, the United States needs to be careful to not let elite units like the ANA’s commando force become pawns in political jockeying in Kabul.

These largely political issues need to be considered by decision-makers here in Washington and implementers in the military as they embark on an expanded training effort. The key takeaway from our much smaller-scale efforts in Palestine, Lebanon, and Yemen is that these political issues can make or break a training effort, and are therefore integral to success. Fortunately, Afghans regard the ANP and ANA generally positively, and Karzai has shown little inclination toward politicizing them so far. The key for the United States is to keep its eyes open for signs of politicization and make sure Karzai and other Afghan government and political figures stay bought-in to the expanded training program. This task may be difficult, but it’s not insurmountable.

Report: Israeli F.M. Lieberman Walks Out Whenever Mitchell Raises E. Jerusalem

In the midst of a profile of Secretary of State Clinton, Joe Klein drops a pretty shocking tidbit:

The Palestinians are weak and divided. The Israelis have been difficult, as always: whenever Mitchell raises East Jerusalem in talks with the Israeli Foreign Minister, the Israeli stands up and walks out of the room. Despite Netanyahu’s momentary, tactical enthusiasm for peace talks, his Likud Party has always favored the de facto incorporation of Palestinian lands into the state of Israel.

This is how Israel treats the guarantor of its security? It seems to me that if Prime Minister Netanyahu was actually serious about getting the U.S. to move with greater urgency on Iran — instead of just using the Iran threat (and the Goldstone Report, and whatever else is at hand at any given moment) to forestall serious 2-state negotiations — he might instruct his foreign minister not to behave this way toward the president’s special envoy. That he does not tells you a lot about what the current Israeli government’s actual priorities are.

Klein’s point about the Likud Party’s policy toward the taking of Palestinian lands is also important, and far too little reported. The Likud Party constitution states that “The government headed by the Likud will keep Jerusalem the unified capital of Israel under Israeli sovereignty.” Understanding the importance of East Jerusalem to the Palestinians, saying that Netanyahu supports a negotiated solution but won’t allow for Palestinian sovereignty of Palestinian areas of Jerusalem is like saying that Abbas supports a Jewish state as long as it’s in Burma. It’s a non-starter.

In the face of protests by the United States and the international community, under Netanyahu the Israelis have in fact been ramping up efforts to preclude any division of Jerusalem by strengthening the Jewish presence in Palestinian areas. A new study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation found that, since 1967, “Israel has expropriated some 35 per cent of East Jerusalem’s territory, over 24,000 dunums of land, from its Palestinian owners”:

The study by the Germany-based organisation examined the building policies in Jerusalem intended to change the facts on the ground and ensure a solid Jewish majority in the city, said a statement e-mailed to The Jordan Times yesterday.

“The study highlights that since 1967, Israeli governments developed building and planning policies that were designed primarily according to the current struggle occurring in Jerusalem. The central tool used by the Israeli governments was the expropriation of land from private hands,” the press release said, adding: “Since 1967, Israel has expropriated over 24,000 dunums, mostly from their Palestinian owners.”

The report, which was prepared in partnership with the Macro Centre for Political Economics, indicated that about 50,000 housing units were built exclusively for the Jewish Israeli population within the framework of new neighbourhoods/settlements, while for the Palestinian population, Israel has built fewer than 600 housing units since 1967 in the scope of government assistance, the most recent of which was built over 30 years ago.

To be fair, this isn’t just a problem of the Likud. All Israeli governments since 1967 are implicated in the attempt to change the demographic character of Jerusalem in order to diminish the Palestinian’s claim to it. The latest report only confirms work done by other organizations like Israel’s B’Tselem, who report that “the government of Israel’s primary goal in Jerusalem has been to create a demographic and geographic situation that will thwart any future attempt to challenge Israeli sovereignty over the city.” Israel’s policy, according to B’Tselem, “gravely infringes the rights of residents of East Jerusalem and flagrantly breaches international law.”

In March, an EU report accused the Israeli government “of using settlement expansion, house demolitions, discriminatory housing policies and the West Bank barrier as a way of ‘actively pursuing the illegal annexation’ of East Jerusalem.”

The document says Israel has accelerated its plans for East Jerusalem, and is undermining the Palestinian Authority’s credibility and weakening support for peace talks. “Israel’s actions in and around Jerusalem constitute one of the most acute challenges to Israeli-Palestinian peace-making,” says the document, EU Heads of Mission Report on East Jerusalem.

Probably shouldn’t hold your breath for Congress to jump on this. On a GOP delegation to Israel in August, Rep. Eric Cantor spoke out strongly in favor of Israel’s right to evict Palestinian families to make way for Jewish settlers.

Americans for Peace Now’s Noam Shelef writes “Rising tensions in Jerusalem can be a matter of life and death. Past Israeli actions that were perceived as efforts to change the status quo in the Old City — such as the opening of the Hasmonean Tunnel in 1996 or the visit to the Temple Mount by Ariel Sharon in 2000 — triggered riots that caused many casualties.” In the event that continuing Israeli provocations in East Jerusalem result in a violent Palestinian response — as many increasingly fear they might — you can bet Congress will hop to it to sign another AIPAC-penned resolution blaming the Palestinians for everything.

Arguments That Don’t Get Better With Time

Defending recent suggestions that National Iranian American Council director Trita Parsi is an instrument of Iran, Reihan Salaam doubles down on one of the hoariest of hoary old conservative foreign policy arguments:

[W]hile Parsi is undoubtedly a believer in democratic liberalism who wants to see Iran radically reform its institutions, he objectively serves Iranian interests insofar as he discourages Western efforts to exert pressure on the regime. This doesn’t make Parsi a bad person. Plenty of Iranian dissidents believe that a democratic Iran should have a nuclear deterrent. Plenty want a denuclearized Iran, yet believe that Western pressure amounts to a kind of imperialism that should be actively resisted. This isn’t that complicated.

Iran doesn’t have an actual AIPAC. Instead, there is a loose network of policy scholars, activists, think tanks, civil servants, etc., who strongly oppose a forward-leaning U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf for a wide, sometimes overlapping variety of reasons. Some of these people have a real financial interest in a better relationship between Washington and Qom [sic], but most don’t. On some issues, members of this loose network get important things right. A lot of realists have raised important questions about the efficacy of sanctions, and they are right to do so. But it’s also true that these voices help today’s Iran. The Iranians among them have added credibility.

Remember when people who opposed the Iraq war — that is, the people who turned out to be right — were accused of being “objectively pro-Saddam“? They didn’t want the U.S. to invade Iraq, and neither did Saddam!

By this reasoning, those in favor of the Iraq war — that is, those who supported what I guess Reihan defines as “a forward-leaning U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf” — “objectively served Iran’s interests” insofar as the war removed Iran’s most hated foe and produced an Iraqi government dominated by Iran’s Shia Islamist clients. This isn’t that complicated. But it is very, very silly.

What is complicated, however, is answering the question of whose interests in Iran, exactly, would be served by further sanctions, or undermined by continued engagement. Reihan writes about “Iran” as if it were one group of people with one set of interests, but of course this is not the case, especially post-June 12.

For example, it’s pretty clear that the gasoline sanctions bill currently wending its way through Congress would hurt the Iranian people while benefiting the Revolutionary Guardsmen who control large portions of the Iranian black market. Does this make all of those who voted for and support the bill objectively pro-IRGC? I doubt anyone would say so. “Objectively pro-Evildoer X” arguments tend to apply only to those who don’t believe that “a forward-leaning U.S. policy” has to necessarily entail unilateral escalation and confrontation.

What Does The Pentagon’s ‘Afghanistan-Pakistan Hands Program’ Say About Obama’s ‘Smart Power’ Efforts? »

Our guest blogger is Brian Katulis, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

An interesting effort at the Pentagon caught my attention in recent weeks: the “Afghanistan-Pakistan Hands Program.” Introduced earlier this year, the program raises broader questions about the emerging Obama doctrine on U.S. national security and the right balance of resources between military and non-military efforts.

Yochi Dreazen at the Wall Street Journal mentioned the program in this article earlier last month (calling it the “Afghan Hands”), and this recent article on the Pentagon’s website provides more details.

The program seeks to bring officers from all of the military services to serve for 3-5 years on Afghanistan and Pakistan. The overall aim is to promote greater focus and continuity on these countries as well as reduce the steep learning curve facing personnel on language and cultural issues when they land in Afghanistan. The program has 300 billets, including 121 new positions. Military personnel who enter the program would have their assignments focused on the Af-Pak region of the world –so after serving on the ground, they would rotate to positions in the Defense Department that are focused on this part of the world. The training would include several weeks of language training in Pashto, Dari, and Urdu, as well as combat training. And the Pentagon has stated that those who enter the program won’t be penalized in terms of advancement and seniority – easier said than done with the sometimes rigid bureaucratic procedures governing such a large group of personnel.

The idea for the program emanated from the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s review of Afghanistan strategy that General Stanley McChrystal chaired before he became the current top U.S. commander in Afghanistan.

Obama administration officials are careful to note the obvious – that this program could be scaled back if the commander-in-chief decides to move to a strategy that includes a more modest military footprint in Afghanistan. I doubt that the creation of this program signals all that much about what President Obama will decide in the coming weeks, beyond restating the obvious that we’re seeing a recalibration of more resources to Afghanistan and Pakistan and that the center of gravity for U.S. policy in the broader Middle East and South Asia is shifting eastward.

Two questions I had about the Af-Pak Hands Program:

1. Why did it take eight years to come up with this idea? I don’t find it a particularly innovative idea that America might want to know something about the countries where it sends tens of thousands of soldiers and Marines and spends billions of taxpayer dollars. There are more tactical questions such as whether a few weeks of language training are really enough – as an Arabic speaker, I know how hard it is to develop and then maintain the language skills. The creation and existence of this program demonstrates the gap that exists between what counterinsurgency (COIN) theorists often propose our troops should do and the actual capacity among our troops to implement those tasks.

2. What do Pentagon programs like these mean for the “smart power” ideas that are the threads of an emerging Obama doctrine on national security? The Obama administration’s top national security officials have all talked about the need to focus on investing in diplomacy and development as tools of national power – putting it under the label of smart power. And Afghanistan and Pakistan are probably the toughest test cases of this emerging Obama doctrine of smart power.

More »« Less

Mousavi and Iran’s Nuclear Politics

The New York Times has a very good and interesting analysis of the way that post-6/12 internal politics are threatening to derail any nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1, but I don’t think this is quite right:

Since he was first elected president four years ago, Mr. Ahmadinejad has been the face of confrontation. Now he is talking about cooperation with the international community while the so-called pragmatic conservatives have sharply attacked the nuclear agreement as a potential trick that would undermine Iran’s rights.

Iran’s reformers, stung by Mr. Ahmadinejad’s past criticism of them for suspending enrichment, have also criticized the deal. Led by Mir Hussein Moussavi, a former presidential candidate, they have been looking to take a page from Mr. Ahmadinejad’s own playbook, using the nuclear card to try to score political points.

“To have an opportunity to go at Ahmadinejad for not being nationalist enough, it looks like an opportunity for someone like Moussavi,” said Michael Axworthy, a former diplomat and an Iran expert who lectures at the University of Exeter in England.

As one of the members of Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolutionary inner circle, Mousavi’s nationalist credentials are not in question. That’s a big part of what enables him to maintain his opposition of Ahmadinejad, and by extension to Khamenei, and remain free and alive. It’s true that Mousavi has seized the chance to attack Ahmadinejad from the right on the nuclear question, but this is consistent with Mousavi message during the campaign — back in April, Mousavi was quoted as saying “No one in Iran will accept suspension” of enrichment. And given his own significant past role in Iran’s nuclear program, I think it’s wrong to characterize it as simple opportunism.

After the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini had decided to abandon the Shah’s nuclear program — begun in the 1950’s under President Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program– because Khomeini felt that going forward with the program would require too much of a dependence on Western assistance for components and expertise. Then-prime minister Mousavi and Hashemi Rafsanjani were key supporters of keeping the nuclear program going. The international community’s — and specifically U.S.’s — support for Saddam’s war against Iran gave a huge boost to their argument, convincing Ayatollah Khomeini that Iran should at least keep open the option of obtaining a strategic deterrent. Mousavi then gave the okay for the purchase of centrifuges on the black market.

All of this is to say that Mousavi has been a long-standing proponent of Iran’s right to enrich, a consensus issue among Iranians, and has as strong a claim as anyone to credit for Iran’s nuclear progress. What does this mean for the possibility of a deal between Iran and the P5+1? Nothing good, unfortunately. As was feared in the wake of the June 12 unrest, we now apparently have arrived at a situation in which neither Iran’s ruling clique nor the opposition can countenance the other being able to deliver rapprochement with the West. Apart from some sort of internal reconciliation, which does not seem to be in the cards, it’s unclear how we arrive at a deal that is both acceptable to the P5+1 and can survive Iranian politics.

Electronics and Atrocities: Tech Supply Chains Must Do No Harm »

Our guest bloggers are Sarah K. Dreier, a graduate student at the University of Washington and a former researcher at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and David Sullivan, Research Associate at the ENOUGH project.

From the satellite mapping of atrocities and data-driven prosecution of war criminals to the use of social networking to mobilize against repressive regimes, advances in science and technology hold unprecedented potential to make human rights a reality across the world.

A new report from the Center for American Progress, “New Tools for Old Traumas,” calls on President Obama — recently dubbed “Scientist in Chief” for his unprecedented commitment to research and development — to lead efforts to use these new tools to bring human rights perpetrators to justice; halt ongoing atrocities; and empower victims to fight against injustice. Cell phone companies have crucial roles to play as well because part of the complexity of this issue is ensuring that these tools do not foster human rights atrocities as well as stop them.

Today, the mobile phone that an activist uses to mobilize protesters in Tehran is made with tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold, whose mining in eastern Congo has fueled the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II.

All electronic devises — from satellites to smart phones — require these specialized metals. Tin is used to affix components to circuit boards. Tantalum is a vital element of capacitors that store electrical charge. And tungsten is a key ingredient in vibrate alert functions and LCD displays.

Unfortunately, the mines in eastern Congo that produce these mineral ores fuel and support armed groups on all sides of the conflict. These groups — including the Rwandan Hutu rebels who helped commit the 1994 genocide and Congo’s ill-disciplined and predatory armed forces — exploit impoverished miners and extort exorbitant ‘taxes’ from this trade. They use the profits to finance some of the worst human rights abuses in the world, including an epidemic of sexual violence that makes eastern Congo the most dangerous on the globe to be a woman or a girl.

Eastern Congo is the sight of the worst abuses in the supply chain for electronics products, but it is by no means the only one. From extraction in mining to unsafe and exploitative conditions in manufacturing facilities in Asia, the intricate supply chains that produce these products are opaque and electronics companies have yet to fully assume responsibility for the behavior of their suppliers or their suppliers’ suppliers.

More »« Less