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Thursday, July 24, 2008 Obama in BerlinI admit that I got chills up my spine when I heard that 200,000 people showed up to hear Barack Obama speak in Berlin. I don't know what it feels like to have almost a quarter of a million living, breathing human beings, spread out in front of you off into the distance, hanging on your every word. For that matter, there probably aren't too many people alive who know what that feels like. But I imagine it's not you're ordinary, everyday kind of adrenaline rush. (The only video I found so far of the event is kind of anti-climactic, though, since the audience is a little offbeat in their applause, probably due to the language barrier, but also due to the sheer time it took for the sound to reach them, and it seemed to hamper Obama's delivery.) Anyway, I read a transcript of the speech, and truth be told wasn't that impressed. It hits all the right notes in terms of repairing the mistrust within the trans-Atlantic alliance, which Obama implicitly but correctly identifies as existing on a popular level. (The arrival of Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy has already largely repaired the damage on a political level.) The two areas where he got bold were on global warming (on which he basically said, "Our bad, we'll get it right next time."), and Afghanistan, where he called for Europe and NATO to double down. On the first, I'm in agreement, on the second, I'm not. After years of using the removal of military resources from Afghanistan as a club to beat the Bush administration over the head with for its conduct of the war in Iraq, Democrats (and increasingly Republicans) have come to believe that with more troops in Afghanistan we can achieve our objectives. I'm far from convinced that that's the case, and think that the claims of how important success there is to NATO's future are exagerrated. More practically, calling for greater troop contributions from Europe ignore the fact that it's not going to happen. England's looking to reduce its engagement, Germany has already ponied up, and France has already downsized the contingent it committed to send at the April NATO summit. The Afghanistan reference is pure Obama, who often uses his privileged iconic position to deliver a gentle chiding lecture. In that, it might disabuse his German listeners of what Josef Joffe calls in The New Republic "their infatuation with Obama":
Finally, Obama closed with a call to "remake the world once again," a theme that I'm not terribly comfortable with. The speech probably works from a political perspective, in that by making demands of Europe and not assuming unilateral responsibility for the challenges the trans-Atlantic alliance has faced, he hasn't provided John McCain with any ammunition to use against him. It also probably did nothing to diminish his popularity in Europe. But if Afghanistan becomes central to Obama's European policy, he's in for some tough sledding. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Wednesday, July 23, 2008 Obama's Pre-Victory LapWhat's remarkable about Barack Obama's Middle East tour is how unprecedented it is to see a presidency begin before the actual election. But that's obviously what's happening here. For both Obama, who has overnight assumed the presidential air he was by some accounts lacking, and for the leaders he's meeting, who are very clearly eager to get a head start on getting to know the next American president, this is a pre-victory lap. And he hasn't even touched down in Europe, where the buzz around him has already taken on the dimensions of a cultural phenomenon that's being compared to the Beatles' first tour. Obviously, no one here gets to vote, but I can't imagine the American electorate being unmoved by the sight of a candidate for president having this kind of effect everywhere he goes. It would be silly not to put that to good use. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Wednesday, July 23, 2008 Why the Rush with Iran?If you'd like an alternative take on the latest round of Iran nuclear talks, try Flynt Leverett's and Hillary Mann Leverett's corrective in the National Interest. They condemn the rush to impose what they call an artificial deadline on Iran to accept our pre-conditions, even if those are more generously defined. Instead, they put the negotiations in the context of consistent Iranian efforts to use issue-specific cooperation as a way to engage a "comprehensive diplomatic agenda," efforts consistently disappointed by this and previous American administrations. The Leverett's suggest that recent shifts in American posture have created a receptive climate in Iran to once again try to arrive at some sort of grand bargain. But that opportunity will be lost if we once again reduce the negotiating track to a deadline-enforced single-issue track. There's a danger, in the Leverett's argument, of getting lulled into the kind of longterm, potentially fruitless negotiations that in essence give the Iranians time to proceed with their technological advances in the nuclear fuel cycle. But there's also the chance that by treating the roots, the leaves take care of themselves. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Wednesday, July 16, 2008 The Militarization of American Foreign PolicyI've made a point of not bringing the subject up for a while, because it's never good to get fixated on an idea and see everything through that lens for too long. But believe me, it hasn't been easy. So if none other than Robert Gates himself up and goes there (via U.S. Diplomacy), then I think I'm entitled to cut myself a little slack:
There's also this, on what makes America strong:
It's striking to see a Secretary of Defense with such a keen understanding of -- and obvious affection for -- diplomacy. A lot of folks have been calling for Gates to stay on in the next administration as SecDef. Funny that no one's mentioned him as Secretary as State material. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Wednesday, July 16, 2008 Negotiating with IranLast night, Iran's less than satisfying response to the P5+1's latest offer on the nuclear standoff was leaked to the press by a European source. Today, the Bush administration leaked the news to both the Times and the AP that William J. Burns, the third ranking State Dept. official, will attend this weekend's meeting between the EU's Javier Solana and Iran's nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili. It's the highest-level contact between the two countries, but there are a number of caveats:
I'd be curious to know who leaked the story, and what faction in the internal administration wrangling over Iran that Burns belongs to. His Congressional testimony on Iran from just last week (.pdf) is an equal dose of firmness and openness to dialogue, therefore hard to decipher. The Times article frames the decision to send Burns as a response to some background noise coming out of Iran that ". . .led the administration to conclude that there could be more chance of a diplomatic resolution than some Iranian declarations and a battery of missile tests last week suggested." But Burns' presence remains ambiguous, in that it signals what amounts to a reversal in the American position of no discussions without a freeze in Iran's uranium enrichment program, at the same time that the message he's being sent to deliver communicates the exact opposite. In combination with last night's leak, it plays to the court of public opinion to create the perception of an American willingness to negotiate, thereby effectively raising pressure on Iran to come up with something substantive at the meeting. The question is whether the Iranians will perceive it in the same way. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Tuesday, July 15, 2008 Orwell RevisitedThe screens aren't fixed into the wall, they're mobile. The controlling authority isn't a political entity, it's a normative consumerism. Information isn't destroyed, it's buried under more information. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Wednesday, July 9, 2008 Grow the Army?Call me a crank, but when everyone starts agreeing on something, I start looking for flaws in the argument. I get the feeling that Steven Metz is the same way, which is probably why I get such a kick out of reading his work. In this case it's a short op-ed (.pdf) from the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute questioning the gathering consensus that the U.S. Army needs to be expanded. Metz points out that the troops needed to ease the strain caused by Iraq and Afghanistan will take five years to generate, especially the officer corps. If we still need them at that point, it's worth questioning whether we ought to be in Iraq and Afghanistan to begin with. Beyond that, the larger force structure is mainly applicable to the kinds of boot-heavy, longterm counterinsurgency campaigns justified by what Metz argues is a flawed causal link between unstable conflict zones and the global terror threat. Worth a read, as always. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Wednesday, July 9, 2008 The Iranian ThreatI found this Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation chart via Matthew Yglesias last night. As you can see, it uses a side by side comparison of U.S. and Iranian military capacity to effectively debunk the idea that Iran poses any kind of existential threat to the United States. Yglesias acknowledges the risk to regional stability represented by Iran acquiring a nuclear weapons capacity, but says that's "a far cry from saying that Iran is, as such, any kind of serious military threat." My first thought last night was that this line of argument is convincing because it blurs the distinction between existential threat and military threat. In particular, it ignores the fact that Iran is aggressively pursuing a ballistic missile capacity which will soon put it in the position of striking Israeli targets, and eventually put European capitals within range. My first thought this morning was that had I posted that thought last night, the news that Iran just test launched a Shahab 3 missile capable of reaching Tel Aviv would have made me look like a genius. The fact is that for over twenty years now, Iran has been a hostile nation that has exercised a destabilizing influence in the region and demonstrated a willingness to use force -- including terrorist attacks carried out by proxies and state agents -- to further its interests. They are not the only nation that fits that description, but they are the most prominent among the group. The fact that American policy towards Iran over that time might not have been ideally formulated to modulate that posture is an exacerbating factor, but not a causal one, and it doesn't make Iran's posture any less real. For a variety of reasons, it would be counterproductive to try to achieve our strategic objectives vis à vis Iran through military means. That means we need to engage them diplomatically, which entails allowing for a realistic recalculation of Iran's regional status, to our detriment. But we need to do that clearsightedly, which means recognizing both the difficulties of negotiating with Tehran (the response to the P5+1's latest offer on the nuclear dossier is an example), and also the threat a hostile Iranian state poses to our interests and those of our allies. The case against a military approach to Iran can be made without minimizing or ignoring the military threat Iran poses. It is far from being existential, either to the U.S. or to our allies. But it exists. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Friday, July 4, 2008 Happy Fourth of July"Other states indicate themselves in their deputies . . . . but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors . . . but always most in the common people. Their manners speech dress friendships -- the freshness and candor of their physiognomy -- the picturesque looseness of their carriage . . . their deathless attachment to freedom -- their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean -- the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the citizens of all other states -- the fierceness of their roused resentment -- their curiosity and welcome of novelty -- their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy -- their susceptibility to a slight -- the air they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors -- the fluency of their speech -- their delight in music, the sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of soul . . . their good temper and openhandedness -- the terrible significance of their elections -- the President's taking off his hat to them not they to him -- these too are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it." -- Walt Whitman, introduction to Leaves of Grass, 1855 edition. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Friday, July 4, 2008 No Place Like HomeMe and the Not-So-Lil' Feller ran around most of the afternoon getting him ready for his summer vacation. At the shopping center where we found his sandals, swimming gear and sunglasses, he managed to convince me to let him spend his allowance in the video game arcade. There, to my surprise, we found a full-fledged bowling alley and pool hall. He's played billiards before, but it was his first time bowling, and watching him roll the ball two-handed down the lane brought back memories of what seems like a rite of passage. Not quite a barbecue, but it struck me as about American an afternoon as you can spend in Paris. Happy Fourth, everyone! e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Thursday, July 3, 2008 Ingrid Betancourt FreedI don't know how much coverage it's gotten in the States, but because she's a dual citizen of France, Ingrid Betancourt has been a cause célèbre here for the past six years. And today she's free. I've found myself particularly moved by the personal tragedy of her story over the years, but also of the national tragedy it incarnates, and never more so than watching her ten-minute address on the tarmac following her liberation. The courage of her political struggle grew out of her love for her country, and she and her family suffered terribly for it. Yet the sentiments she expressed upon being freed were still of her love for Colombia, and her desire to see it healed from its self-inflicted wounds. She also expressed her gratitude to the media for keeping her story in people's hearts and minds, as well as to the Colombian Army, calling the operation that freed her, three American military contractors, and eleven other hostages "perfect." The operation, which was based on high-level infiltration of the FARC command and in which apparently not a single shot was fired, convinced the FARC commander who was holding Betancourt hostage that he was simply transferring her to another FARC location. Betancourt herself didn't realize she was free until the helicopter had taken off, and the men wearing Che Guevara t-shirts revealed that they were actually Colombian soldiers. She proudly mentioned that previously only Israel was known for this kind of operation, and sure enough, according to Le Monde, it was carried out with the help of retired Israeli national security operatives as consultants. Ingrid Betancourt is an extraordinary woman and a fierce advocate for peace and justice. It's good news for her family, for Colombia and for the world that she's back among us. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Monday, June 30, 2008 Diplospeak Quote of the Day"We are willing to make joint efforts with the U.S. to cohere to the dialogue and consultation mechanism and take each other's concerns into consideration to better achieve mutual benefits." -- Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in remarks following his meeting with Condoleezza Rice.
Thanks for sharing, Wen. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Monday, June 30, 2008 Sarkozy the EuropeanI've got a new piece up over at World Politics Review titled, Sarkozy the European: France's EU Presidency:
Also, remember that if at any time during the week you don't see anything posted here, click through to the WPR blog, because I'm posting there every day. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Sunday, June 29, 2008 Syber WarThe new Sy Hersh piece is up at the New Yorker and -- with the caveat that it might be time to coin a term along the lines of a "Friedman Unit" to describe Hersh's Iran reporting -- to the extent that his account of the Bush administration's covert operations against Iran is accurate, the operations are misguided for all the obvious reasons. Hersh identifies most of them, but leaves unmentioned the fact that encouraging ethno-sectarian faultlines as a means of undermining the Iranian regime is logically inconsistent with the Western strategic consensus that identifies the effects of ethno-sectarian conflict as one of the principle threats to regional and global stability, and repairing them as the emerging justification and goal of military intervention. It's reassuring to note that Vali Nasr, in the piece, dismisses the effectiveness of applying such a tactic to Iran due to the country's well-established national identity, but I remember hearing the same logic used to explain why Iraq's Shiite community would be resistant to Iranian influence in Iraqi internal politics. Another point that Hersh treats obliquely is that the groups we're supporting covertly, in particular PJAK but to a lesser degree Jundullah, represent threats to our friends as well as to Iran. Hersh mentions the tension this might cause us with Turkey and Afghanistan respectively, but it's worth noting that, as Turkey's security cooperation with Iran regarding Kurdish guerillas in northern Iraq illustrates, our covert Iran policy is also working at cross purposes with our overt Iran policy, namely to isolate Tehran from its neighbors. But to my mind, the greatest risk of these covert operations is not so much the threat they pose to our Middle East policy, so much as the threat they pose to the health and integrity of our domestic political institutions. The degree of secrecy in which the current administration's covert operations are shrouded is all the more worrying given the Bush administration's willingness, according to Hersh, to keep not only Congress but to a large degree the uniformed military chain of command in the dark about covert operations as well. That takes on added significance in the context of the upcoming presidential transition. Most of the discusion of that transition has focused on the conduct of the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the need for institutional and operational continuity. But with so much of the Bush administration's counterterror and now Middle East policy taking place off the books and being arguably illegal, there's reason to worry about whether or not we'll ever really track all of it down. And that raises the very real risk of these operations becoming rogue operations directed by a private chain of command, if they're directed at all. A lot of this has to do with executive overreach, and both Barack Obama and John McCain have discussed ways in which they would return the executive branch to the Constitutional framework largely ignored by President Bush. But the guiding logic of all of the operations discussed by Hersh is the War on Terror, which the Bush administration has used to justify the Commander-in-Chief override of the oversight process. The next president should declare the War on Terror over in a legal sense, even while pursuing it operationally. It would send the right message to Americans, to American agents and to the region that we're ready to shine some light into the shadows, instead of operating in them. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Friday, June 27, 2008 Chad DispatchesI'd just like to flag a couple of WPR articles for any readers who might enter the site directly through the blog. David Axe, who is a frequent WPR contributor, has travelled to Eastern Chad to report on the humanitarian crisis in the region as over 250,000 Darfur refugees, refugees of the Central African Republic's civil war, and internally displaced Chadians converge on the frontier delta. I covered the story last March for WPR from the comfort of Paris. David's conditions are quite a bit more dangerous, and his first two dispatches (here and here) are well worth a read. These are the kinds of stories that really go overlooked unless courageous people like David stick their neck out to get them, and journals like WPR decide to run them. Hats off to both. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Tuesday, June 24, 2008 Engagement vs. ProvocationDiplomatic engagement with Iran is inevitable, not because they're "ten feet tall and on a roll," as this WaPo article (via Laura Rozen) puts it, or even because they're "dangerous, and clever, and good at asymmetric warfare." Diplomatic engagement is inevitable because it's the only official means of communication between nations besides war, and war is in neither Iran's nor our interest. On the other hand, I don't think that diplomatic engagement should be organized under a logic of "[T]hey have a lot of vulnerabilities -- and. . .we can exploit them." At this point, too, how to manage the second most thorny strategic challenge facing the country (I put Russia first) is a question best left to the incoming administration. The opening of a State Department interests section in Tehran during the last six months of a Bush administration comes across as yet another provocation. The opening of a State Department interests section in Tehran during the first six months of a new administration comes across as an initial feeler. So it's a good idea, but for the wrong reasons at the wrong time. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Monday, June 23, 2008 Quantum War, Quantum WarfareDr. iRack over at Abu Muqawama has emerged recently as an authoritative analyst of the Iraq War (and everything that term implies), so I recommend this rundown of the current situation that he posted over the weekend. Without getting too much into the details of his post (which is pretty comprehensive), it's reassuring to see that I'm not the only one who finds it difficult to make any meaningful sense out of the various narratives and counter-narratives that are now coming out of Iraq. Glass half-full or glass half-empty depends to a great deal on the observer. But I'd venture to say that in many ways, some of them doctrinal and some of them practical, it no longer matters. We've entered a phase, both in the Iraq War and in the theory of warfare in general, that I'd characterize as quantum, where every tactical action has a multiplicity of possible significances and outcomes. And it's only the final strategic outcome that will eventually determine which particular meaning, in retrospect, was the correct one. In this case, the final outcome of a stable, pro-Western Iraq will signal strategic success, and anything else failure. That in turn will allow us to determine which events along the way were decisive and which anecdotal. But progress can no longer be measured with certainty along the way. The implications for policy are obvious. Interventions must be very carefully weighed from the outset and the desired outcome very clearly identified, because once engaged, they become not only military quagmires, but political ones as well. Victory or defeat will always be just beyond the next car-bombing or IED attack, depending on one's point of view, and the arguments for pressing onward or withdrawing subject to second-guessing. Those conditions were obviously not met with regards to this war. But if we fail to recognize the nature of the changes taking place in warfare itself, it's unlikely that they'll be met with regards to the next one either. Update: Very good schematic of the Iraqi political landscape by a guest poster over at the other Abu (Aardvark). Again, little in the way of answers, but the questions are noteworthy. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Thursday, June 19, 2008 Swedish FISAIt's not easy, but with a little imagination you could probably come up with some sort of category that groups together America, Saudi Arabia and China. Consolation pool for the soccer World Cup, for instance, or a snarky "Friends of the Ozone Layer" award. But toss Sweden in there, and the exercise becomes a bit more challenging. Until you consider that yesterday, Sweden's parliament passed an aggressive surveillance bill that allows its national intelligence agency to scan all telephone and electronic communications that cross the country's borders for key words without a court order:
Proponents justify the measure, which passed by a very close margin, by the terrorist threat. Which brought to mind a remark made by Yves Boyer (one of the analysts I interviewed for last week's Livre Blanc series) on a TV program the other night. He referred to other European countries that have become too lazy to think for themselves strategically, instead adopting the American posture by default. He suggested that might be the case with regards to France's Livre Blanc, and it would be easy to say that's what's going on here with Sweden. I agree to a certain extent, but I'd also argue that American doctrine is moving towards the French-European position as well, both in terms of military interventions and for domestic counter-terrorism police work. French counter-terrorism measures, for instance, are more muscular than America's, as are England's. (I'm talking about domestic measures, not those carried out in offshore black sites to our great national shame.) So it's possible to argue that Sweden is following that trend as much as our own example. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Tuesday, June 17, 2008 Iran Proposal Signals American ShiftIn case you haven't seen it yet, ISIS (via Laura Rozen) has posted an English-language version (.pdf) of the EU3+3 Iran proposal I referred to yesterday. And in comparing it to the last concrete offer made in June 2006, it's very clear that the major difference is in the political incentives added to sweeten the deal. Here's the political component, circa 2006:
Here's the same section from this week's offer:
I was a little lazy last night about tracking down the 2006 offer, which explains why I called the above a cosmetic change. My bad. There's obviously no guarantee that the negotiations will bear fruit, and the uranium freeze (Iran's red line) is still a pre-condition. But keep in mind that the above paragraph bears Condoleezza Rice's signature on behalf of the United States. That, to me, constitutes at least the suggestion of a pretty broad engagement. That might explain why Iran has declared that it will examine the proposal carefully. Given that the Ayatollah Khamenei, who will ultimately mae the decision, has already expressed that any engagement with the U.S. would have to wait for the next administration, it's very possible that they'll either play for time or flat out reject it. But this is a pretty big shift, even if it is only one on paper for the time being. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Saturday, June 14, 2008 Sarkozy's WorldIf you have an interest in French politics, you probably already know about Art Goldhammer's blog, French Politics. It's the most in depth and intelligent English language treatment of French domestic politics I've seen, equal parts policy analysis and cultural criticism. It's also the principle reason I don't spend more time writing about the subject here. Art also has a piece on Sarkozy's foreign policy in e-International Relations which dovetails nicely with this week's WPR series on the French strategic posture review. I've seen Sarkozy's method referred to as that of an "avocat d'affaires" before (literally business lawyer, but with a dealmaker connotation). But Art draws the interesting parallel between the emerging global order and the political playing field Sarkozy navigated in his rise to power. There's a method to the madness, and Art does a good job of nailing it down. As he suggests, the world order taking shape favors Sarkozy's style of working multiple deals simultaneously, although it's easy to imagine circumstances arising that could force his hand and make him pick a side once and for all. In the past, France has always responded by choosing France's side, for better or worse. But with Sarkozy increasingly identifying France as part of the "family of the West," this time might be different. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Friday, June 13, 2008 Interview with Hubert VedrineThe last installment of the French strategic posture review series is up over at WPR. It's the full text of my interview with former French Foreign Minister, Hubert Vedrine:
The rest has to do with Sarkozy's foreign policy, the emerging world order, and France's place in it. Vedrine is a fascinating and gifted thinker, and one of the foreign policy world's "eminences grises". Definitely give it a look. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Thursday, June 12, 2008 Intervention FatigueI'm not sure about Phil Carter's take on the Madeleine Albright NYTimes op-ed that's generating a good deal of discussion. Here's the key passage from Albright's piece:
Carter steers that last question back to a more practical one:
Outside of self-defense and treaty obligations, the major arguments for intervention as they have shaped up over the past ten years are humanitarian reasons (liberal hawks), Western values (neocons), and the globalization stability function that's emerging. The arguments aren't necessarily exclusive. Interventions against terrorism, for instance, are defended based on a mixture of self-defense, values (democracy promotion), and stability. In fact, I think the argument can be made that on the level of American domestic opinion they might actually be mutually dependent. The problem Albright has identified has more to do with the international wariness of American intentions due to the neocons' legacy more than the other two, and while the next president will in fact have to make the decisions Carter enumerates, he will have to do so in the context of a more complex constellation of interests and consensus. (Nikolas Gvosdev has some very interesting thoughts on that here.) Albright has already illustrated the ways in which the former influences the latter. The question Carter leaves out is how the latter will influence the former. Cross-posted to World Politics Review. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Wednesday, June 11, 2008 A Widening FocusPart three of the series on France's strategic posture review is up over at WPR. Today's installment explores the widening geographic focus of France's strategic vision:
There are some surprising twists, so click through. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Tuesday, June 10, 2008 Crystal MathI think this is proof that Sudoku will eventually become punishable as a criminal offense. The first time I saw it in an airport bookstore, I recognized Sudoku for what it was, and just said no. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg Tuesday, June 10, 2008 NATO and European DefenseThe second installment of my weeklong series in WPR is up. This one is on Nicolas Sarkozy's proposal to reintegrate the NATO command structure, and what it means for European defense:
For the rest, click through. And in case you missed part one, it's right here. e-mail | del.icio.us | digg |
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