How Benghazi Became a Strategic Blunder

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Today the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is holding a hearing on the Obama administration’s response to the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya on 9/11 last year. Although the hearing is aimed at investigating whether the administration tried to cover up the events of that night, a perfectly legitimate topic, it is just the latest indication that the Benghazi attack has become a strategic blunder for the United States.

It didn’t have to be this way. In fact, objectively speaking the aftermath of the Benghazi attack should have been a strategic boon to America’s war against al-Qaeda and its affiliates. A combination of partisan politics and policy disagreements have unquestionably turned it into a blunder; one that was conceived of and produced in Washington, DC.

The attack first and foremost was a tragedy, given the loss of innocent lives that are so often the byproduct of violent misguided ideologies from al-Qaeda and Christian Identity to revolutionary Communists and Aum Shinrikyo. The attack was also an affront to peace-loving people everywhere who send diplomats abroad to ensure interstate war is conducted solely through other means.

But that the attack occurred at all was not that surprising. Sadly, America’s diplomatic and other outposts in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa have all too often been the target of terrorist attacks in the last half century. The consulate in Benghazi seemed particularly vulnerable given its location in a country that had essentially disintegrated into one controlled by feuding local war loads.

What happened in the immediate aftermath of the attacks was nothing short of extraordinary, however. Specifically, tens of thousands of Libyans took to the streets in Benghazi to protest the killings of the U.S. Ambassador, seizing the headquarters of radical militant groups and turning them over to the Libyan national army. Many of the estimated 30,000 protesters held up signs reading:  “We want justice for Chris,”  “The ambassador was Libya’s friend” and “Libya lost a friend.”

To appreciate how revolutionary this was consider how many reacted to the events eleven years prior when al-Qaeda’s attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon killed an estimated 3,000 people mainly Americans and overwhelming civilians. While almost all political leaders condemned the attacks, and in a few cases like Iran the general public held open vigils for the victims, the Arab street’s reaction was largely indifferent intermixed with some who openly danced in the streets. Meanwhile, especially during the first few years of the Global War on Terrorism, Osama bin Laden became fairly popular in the Arab world, with many seeing him as something of a freedom fighter given his defiance of American hegemon.

Yet eleven years later the killing of four American diplomats and marines had led 30,000 Arabs to take to the streets to protest and actively dispose of those they held responsible. To be sure, this reaction was limited to the Libyan people themselves. Even still, this is highly significant given the fact that, according to al-Qaeda documents captured by U.S. forces in Iraq in 2007, eastern Libyans constituted nearly 20 percent of the foreigners who had traveled to Iraq to wage Jihad against the U.S. and coalition forces. That was around double of any other Arab country when calculated on a per capita basis. This remarkable turnaround in eastern Libya’s opinion of the U.S. contrasts sharply with bin Laden and al-Qaeda’s rapidly diminished favorability throughout the Islamic world.

Especially since U.S. drones and special forces having decimated al-Qaeda’s ability to carry out any sizeable attack on the American homeland, the so-called global war on terrorism is essentially a battle of ideas within the (primarily Arab) Muslim world. With the obvious exception of Hosni Mubarak’s fall, Libyans pouring into the streets of Benghazi in support of a U.S. ambassador was the most symbolically powerful rebuke of al-Qaeda and its ideology to date. In the larger scheme of things it was far more important in this struggle than any drone strike or military action the U.S. could take.

And yet this entire story was absent from the U.S. public discourse on the attack, which quickly disintegrated into bitter partisan attacks over politics and policy disagreements. This began in the hours after the attack when a presidential candidate tried to exploit the attacks to salvage his hopeless campaign. In the months since, political motives have made common cause with those attempting to discredit President Obama’s light footprint approach to prosecuting what used to be called the global war on terror.

Although impassioned investigations aimed at identifying ways to improve embassy security would be most welcome, neither side of the political aisle has done much in this department. Instead, the endless partisan and emotional hearings and investigations have made scant effort to hide that their aim is to heap more blame on the president, his administration, and his policies on the one hand, or to counter the perception that these individuals or policies were in any way responsible.

The result is that Benghazi has become a strategic blunder for the United States which will have repercussions for years to come. As I noted a couple of years ago, one of the most difficult counterterrorism issues facing a U.S. president today is trying to find a way to wind down the war on terrorism in a way that is politically acceptable. As a growing body of research and investigative journalism has documented, the U.S. built a huge edifice to prosecute the war, and in turn stakeholders with invested interests in the status quo. Plain and simply al-Qaeda cannot in anyway justify such a sizeable operation and maintaining it is entirely counterproductive to fighting terrorism. It also distracts from much more important interests the U.S. has at home and elsewhere in the world, most notably in Asia.

Yet politically this task was always going to be difficult given the high likelihood that small level terrorist attacks would persist for some time during the transition away from the war on terrorism, and the certainty that domestic opponents of the president would ruthlessly exploit these attacks for their political advantage. The response to the Benghazi attacks serves as an all too real demonstration of the political perils that await a president seeking to follow the national interest. None are likely to undertake it in the near future.

The great irony is that this fits in perfectly with bin Laden’s vision. As he marveled in 2004:

“[It is] easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two Mujahedin to the farthest point East to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qa’ida in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human economic and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits to their private companies. This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers as we alongside the Mujahedin bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat. All Praise is due to Allah. So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.”

America Needs to Manage ‘Rogue’ Allies

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When Japan announced it was nationalizing the Diaoyu/Senkakus Islands last September, I pondered the role the U.S. had played in this, noting that word of the announcement first began leaking out through Japan’s press when then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in China. This suggested either that the U.S. had either agreed to Tokyo’s plans or that Japan was seeking to create the impression that it had in order to advance its own aims vis-à-vis China.

Just as tensions were finally starting to simmer from that decision, Tokyo has once again placed the U.S. in the middle of its provocative actions towards China. This week­­– while General Martin Dempsey and Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns were in China on separate trips—three members of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s cabinet and 168 mostly Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers visited the controversial Yasukuni Shrine that honors Imperial Japanese soldiers including some war criminals.

This obviously sparked outrage in China and South Korea, who were only further enflamed when Abe implied that he didn’t consider Imperial Japan’s policies as aggression.  In response, South Korea’s Foreign Minister cancelled a visit to Japan while China sent the more maritime patrol ships to the disputed waters in the East China Sea than at any point since the crisis broke out in September.

In this case, the timing of the Shrine visit can be attributed to the annual Spring Festival at the shrine, rather than Dempsey and Burns being in China. At the same time, and also in contrast to the nationalization issue, the Obama administration is known to have warned Abe against unnecessarily inflaming regional tensions. These warnings might be the reason that Abe decided against visiting the shrine himself, but this is simply not good enough.

Unlike nationalizing the Diaoyu/Senkakus Islands in the face of China’s growing power, this week’s actions do not advance Japan’s strategic interests. They also inhibit cooperation between Japan and South Korea on common threats like North Korea. Most importantly, Tokyo’s actions threaten to place the U.S. on a collision course with China’s military. The Obama administration simply cannot lead from behind when the actions of those leading can result in a U.S.-China nuclear war.

Japan’s actions over the past seven months have underscored a large dynamic Washington has yet to grapple with: namely, that America’s allies in the Asia-Pacific are both its greatest asset and, potentially, its most dangerous liability. Like Europe during the Cold War, alliances are necessary for Washington to maintain a constant presence in the Indo-Pacific.

Unlike the Cold War, however, there is not going to be two coherent blocs with interaction mostly limited to that between their two leading members.  Nor are China and the U.S. going to exercise the same degree of control over their allies as the U.S. and the Soviet Union did over NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Japan and North Korea’s recent actions are proof enough of that.

The danger of all this should lead the United States to give greater attention to the delicate task of alliance management. Indeed, it’s worth noting that at the beginning of the Cold War the amount of alliance cohesion was nowhere near as great as it would later become.  It was only because the U.S. and Soviet leaders made a number of touch decisions that they were able to exercise the imperfect amount of influence over allies that they did.

In the case of the United States, most of these choices were made by President Dwight Eisenhower. For instance, the U.S. pushed West Germany to rearm despite France’s unyielding opposition, and the U.S. refused to intervene to prevent France from losing its Indochina colony. Most notably, when France, the U.K. and Israel conspired to seize the Suez Canal in 1956, Eisenhower refused to endorse their move ex post facto.

Instead, the U.S. joined the Soviet Union in voting in for a UN resolution calling on the Western troops to withdraw immediately. The failure to win U.S. support was particularly dramatic for the three powers given the nuclear threats the Soviet Union was making. Even after the crisis passed, Eisenhower asked the U.S. Congress to authorize funding for the U.S. to intervene to reserve aggression by any country in the Middle East in the future.

Although the Warsaw Pact didn’t afford the non-Russian members any autonomy, the Soviet Union initially failed to keep its Asian allies in line. As Princeton Professor Thomas Christensen has shown, Kim Il-Sung was almost solely responsible for starting the Korean War, dragging along the very reluctant leaders in Moscow and Beijing only after great effort. And Mao’s refusal to heed Moscow’s post-Stalin line caused the Soviet Union to openly break with China.

In the end, both Washington and Moscow paid real costs in order to prevent allies from freelancing their foreign policies. While Moscow lost China, the U.S. policies mentioned above motivated France and Israel to pursue independent nuclear arms, and cooperate closely in achieving this goal. Ultimately, France would choose to withdraw from NATO’s command structure in the late 1960s.

These events illustrate that American policymakers during the Cold War made imperfect choices to deal with complex contingencies. Yet they invested a great deal of attention into managing alliances in order to keep them intact while preventing them from causing a conflict between the superpowers. The U.S. must once again devote a similar amount of attention to this task.

This doesn’t always mean strong arming allies; in fact, usually just the opposite. In the most recent case, the Obama administration should have worked closely with Abe to deal with the domestic politics of the issue. For instance, they could have devised a plan that would allow Abe to cite specific “threats” the U.S. had made, to justify to his party why no cabinet members would be attending the annual festival.

 

China’s Aircraft Carrier: Coming to a City Near You?

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China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, will begin a “high-sea voyage” within a year’s time, Xinhua News Agency reported on Friday.

If true (and that’s a big if) this would indicate that the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and the PLA’s Air Force (PLAAF) have acquired some rudimentary skills in operating an aircraft carrier more quickly than many expected when the Liaoning was first commissioned in September of last year.

The aircraft carrier was originally ordered by the Soviet Navy in the mid-1980s. The Soviet Union collapsed before the ship was completed, however, and it subsequent laid dormant and incomplete in a Ukrainian port until China expressed interested in purchasing it starting in the earlier 1990s. The formal sale of the vessel was completed in 1998 and it arrived in China in 2002 after being stripped by Ukraine. China spent the next decade refitting it and conducting sea trials before commissioning it in September.

In anticipation of the aircraft carrier’s completion, China spent four years building a port capable of hosting it in East China’s Shandong Province. The Liaoning first anchored at its homeport, Qingdao, in February of this year.

“The Liaoning and its crew members have been conducting a series of scheduled tests and training drills” since the carrier arrived at its homeport, Xinhua reported on Friday. The state-run newspaper said that all the drills so far had gone smoothly.

Xinhua further reported that the People’s Liberation Army Navy had conducted over a 100 exercises and experiments since it was commissioned in September. Some of these drills have been broadcast to the world via photos and videos. One such video appeared to show PLAAF pilots taking off and landing from the deck of the Liaoning.

China’s media said that PLAN intended to have the Liaoning “undergo further tests including ocean-going trials and flight-landing exercises” according to schedule, before embarking on its first high seas voyage. It did not offer any details as to where this voyage might take the carrier.

Notably, Xinhua’s report was published as America’s top uniformed officer, General Dempsey, was en route to the region. Dempsey began his Asia trip in South Korea on Saturday but is now in China where is he hoping to strengthen mil-to-mil cooperation with the PLA. Although the timing of the report could be purely coincidental, China has a history of announcing or demonstrating military advances when U.S. defense officials come to town. It also bears noting that this was not the only surprise from China’s military last week; earlier in the week it published a defense paper.

Don’t Treat Boston Bomber as Enemy Combatant at this Time

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On Saturday, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) and Senators Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), John McCain (R-AZ), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), released a statement urging the Obama administration to treat the Boston Marathon bombing suspect that is in police custody as an enemy combatant in order to withhold his Miranda rights (particular the right to remain silence) longer than the 48 hours that is allowed under the public safety exception to the law. Their rationale is that the suspects may have received assistance from a formal terrorist group and, if so, interrogating the suspect once he has recovered from his injuries could yield information about future attacks on the American homeland.

Although some prudence is warranted, and no resources should be spared in investigating the possibility of outside assistance in the coming months, the facts of the case do not justify operating on this assumption in determining how to treat the detainee— who is a newly naturalized American citizen— at this time. The details that we know make it highly unlikely that any sophisticated terrorist group had a role in the operation. Furthermore, these same facts make it inconceivable that any terrorist group would have shared information about a future attacks with the suspects.

The first reason that it’s unlikely a terrorist group assisted the suspects is because of the ineffectiveness of the attack. Without understating the seriousness of the unspeakable tragedy, someone with formal training from an experienced bombmaker be able to construct an IED that is capable of killing more than 1.5 people and injuring approximately 65 others when it is detonated in a large crowd on the streets of a major American city. As tragic as the marathon bombings were, we are fortunate more people weren’t injured and killed. Our fortunate makes it unlikely that the operatives received formal training from an experienced bombmaker.

It’s of course possible that one or more of the operatives received personal training (rather than read manuals posted online) over the internet from a terrorist group, which would explain the relatively amateur IED construction. If this indeed did occur, however, the terrorist group would not have shared details about other attacks with the suspects. No terrorist group practices such shoddy operational security as to jeopardize a future attack by sharing the details of it over cyberspace, especially when the person they are sharing these with will soon be a suspect in a major terrorism case.

The second reason why it’s unlikely a terrorist group was involved is because nearly a week after the attacks occurred and over 48 hours after the final suspect was detained, no group has claimed responsibility. Terrorist groups carry out these types of operations primary to gain exposure for their political message. Although it’s possible the group would be embarrassed by the relative ineffectiveness of the bombs, the immense media coverage of the attack would be too big of a temptation for any terrorist group to remain silent.

The biggest reason to think no outside terrorist group was involved with the attack, much less had shared details of other ones with the perpetrators, is because of the suspects’ escape plan (or lack thereof). It’s difficult to understate the suspects’ level of incompetence in this regard. Most individuals with any degree of common sense would be perceptive enough to assume they’d be caught on camera when conducting an attack on the streets of a major American city. This is especially true when the attack was carried out at the finish line of one of the largest marathons in the world—when many people in the crowd, including members of the media, are certain to be taking pictures and videos. Even if this was obvious and crucial detail was overlooked beforehand, the operatives could have realized their mistake from listening to the media’s coverage of the attack.

Thus, even the most rudimentary terrorist group would know enough to operate on the assumption that the operatives would be identified by law enforcement officials in videos and pictures fairly quickly. Furthermore, most individuals and certainly any groups would have operated on the assumption that law enforcement would have been able to use these pictures to identify the suspects by name, given that the FBI had previously interrogated the older brother (and possibly his mother and father).

Yet none of this appears to have dawned on the suspects. In the days after the attack they didn’t even bother to leave the greater Boston area. Once their pictures were released by the FBI they appear to have panicked, held up a convenience store, killed an MIT campus police officer and stole a car (holding its driver hostage temporarily). This erratic behavior suggests they were improvising (poorly) as they went, and the decision to rob a convenience store in particular suggests the operatives at this point had decided to flee town. All in all their reaction suggests that they had been completely caught by surprise when law enforcement officials released their photos to the public.

In trying to explain this, some commentators have speculated that the brothers may have been promised help in escaping from a third party, only for that third party to have failed to come through. This strikes me as unlikely given that the brothers were still in Boston three days after the attack. They would have presumably been planning on leaving town right after the attacks on Monday, and thus by Thursday afternoon would have had ample time to devise a new plan to flee town after learning they had been betrayed.

In any case, if a terrorist group had promised the suspects an escape route with no intention to follow through on that promise, they surely would not have shared any information of value with them. After all, the operatives would then want revenge for having been betrayed, and would likely get this revenge by telling authorities everything they knew about the group in the likely event that they ended up in police custody.

It’s also the possible that operatives planned to go out in a blaze of glory after being identified by police, and the younger brother either lost his nerve or mistakenly survived the firefight with police. Yet no terrorist group would practice such poor operational security as to not contemplate the possibility that the operatives wouldn’t end up dead as planned, whether because they lost their nerve, were wounded but not fatally, or were caught by surprise when police came to arrest them.

Again, it’s too early to know definitively whether or not the operatives received assistance from a formal terrorist group, and if so, what kind of assistance and how much of it. U.S. law enforcement should and will spend months if not years investigating this possibility. No resource should be spared in doing so.

At this time, however, the facts of the case do not warrant operating on this assumption in denying an American citizen his Miranda Rights indefinitely. The public safety exception is the proper level of prudence at this time, and law enforcement should focus on devising a strategy to ensure the suspect cooperates once he has recovered enough to be interrogated. The parents will be a key asset in this regard as the details of the case suggest the suspect in custody was heavily influenced by his brother in agreeing to participate in the attack.

In the end, however, it’s important to bear in mind the suspect is not a hardened terrorist who has waged Jihad across the world ever since the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, but a 19-year-old amateur who grew up in the suburbs of Boston. Law enforcement personnel have a number of tools at their disposal to get the suspect to cooperate, and voluntarily cooperation will ultimately yield more and better information than forced cooperation.

Why Iran Is Not Using P5+1 Talks to Stall For Time

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A persistent criticism of negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program has been that talks just allow Tehran to stall for time as it races towards building a nuclear weapon. Although this criticism always rested on faulty logic, it has become completely untenable given the trajectory of Iran’s nuclear program since December 2011.

The argument that Iran would use diplomatic talks to stall for time emerged in 2003 when the EU3 (France, the U.K. and Germany) first undertook its nuclear diplomacy with Iran following the full extent of Iran’s nuclear program being revealed by the political arm of the Iranian terrorist group, Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MeK), in late 2002.

Although the argument that Iran was using talks to stall for time couldn’t be entirely dismissed at this time, it at the very least seemed implausible. This was because that, even putting aside the nuclear work done under the Shah, the Islamic Republic had restarted Iran’s nuclear program two decades ago by the time diplomacy with the EU3 got underway. At that point Iran wasn’t operating a large scale uranium enrichment plant and had at most enriched a couple of kilograms of uranium to 3-5 percent levels, far below the 90 percent levels needed for a nuclear bomb.

Given the slow rate of progress Iran had thus far achieved in twenty years of working on the nuclear program, it was difficult to understand the utility Iran would gain from the additional months or possibly a year that would come from talking to the EU powers. This became especially true after Iran agreed to suspend enrichment activities for the duration of the talks.

Ten years after the EU3-Iran talks the argument that engaging in nuclear diplomacy with Iran just gives the Islamic Republic more time to build a nuclear bomb continues to be made. For instance, after the first round of the Almaty talks between Iran and the P5+1 powers in February, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the American-Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that Iran was “running out the clock” and said that “It has used negotiations, including the most recent ones, in order to buy time to press ahead with its nuclear program.”

Although Iran has made notable progress on the nuclear front over the past decade, it is at least two or three years away from being capable of building a nuclear weapon, according to the latest estimates of the Israeli intelligence agencies.

More to the point, Iran cannot reasonably said to be rushing towards a nuclear weapon. In fact, over the past year and a half it has been taking actions that inhibit its ability to quickly produce a nuclear weapon. According to the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), since late 2011Iran has been converting its stockpile of 20 percent uranium into metal fuel plates for use in the Tehran Research Reactor.  In fact, between December 2011 and June 2012 it converted one-third of its stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium into these fuel rods, which in that form cannot be enriched further to make bomb grade fuel.

This was not a one-time occurrence but in fact has continued ever since. According to the most recent IAEA report, over the course of its nuclear program Iran has enriched 280 kg of uranium to 20 percent levels, but had already converted all but 167 kg of it for use in its research reactors. Furthermore, Iran’s Foreign Minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, recently pledged to increase the conversion rate of its 20 percent stockpiles in the future. The Washington Post editorial board this week wrote an editorial arguing that Iranhas indeed been accelerating the rate by which it is converting its stockpile into nuclear fuel plates.

None of this behavior is at all consistent with a country that is using talks to stall for time while it races towards acquiring the capability to build a nuclear weapon. In fact, these actions suggest that Iran is at least holding out the possibility that a deal with the United States and its allies can be reached.

South Korea’s Dangerous “Active Deterrence”

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As I noted in passing last week, amid escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula South Korea’s Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin announced a new doctrine of “active deterrence,” which included Seoul taking preemptive action against North Korean missile and nuclear sites that it judged were being prepared for use.

This point seems obvious. No country is going to wait for nuclear weapons to actually reach their cities if they can avoid it.

Nevertheless, there were a couple of issues with last week’s announcement.

The first problem is that it occurred at all. By announcing that Seoul was considering a first strike against North Korea’s limited nuclear and/or missile capability, Defense Minister Kim gave North Korea every incentive to put these weapons on a higher state of alert. This may not matter currently if Pyongyang can’t place a nuclear warhead on a missile, but it certainly will in the future especially once North Korea has developed solid fuel missiles. Given that it’s taken weeks for North Korea to prepare for nuclear tests in the past— and that it likely has solid fuel short range missiles— Pyongyang is almost certain to have its forces in place to launch a nuclear or conventional attack at a moment’s notice in light of South Korea’s announcement.

Furthermore, the announcement also gave North Korean leaders a strong(er) reason to adopt a “use-it-or-lose-it” nuclear doctrine in which they launch nuclear warheads at the first sign of an attack. The reason is simple: Seoul has overtly adopted a strategy of trying to destroy Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal and, given its limited size, could very well be successful unless North Korea can successfully launch its nuclear warheads before South Korean aircraft or missiles reach their intended targets. The same largely holds true for conventional weaponry, a successful preemptive attack by the ROK would almost certainly destroy a large chunk of Pyongyang’s deterrent forces. North Korea is determined to prevent this from occurring.

The danger of this should be readily apparent: in an atmosphere in which U.S. and ROK forces are engaged in extensive military drills—including over flights by nuclear capable American aircrafts— one cannot dismiss the possibility that North Korea mistakes these drills for an in-process first strike against its nuclear and/or missile sites. Indeed, given that the North presumably lacks sophisticated early warning radar systems, even something like a defector crossing back into North Korea by sea or the U.S. and Japan flying intelligence drones over Northern air space could theoretically set off a jittery leadership in Pyongyang.

Finally, there is good reason to believe that South Korea intends to undertake this action unilaterally. Indeed, last February the ROK Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Jung Seung-jo, was quoted as saying:

“If [the North] shows a clear intent to use a nuclear weapon, it is better to get rid of it and go to war, rather than being attacked…. A pre-emptive attack against the North trying to use nuclear weapons does not require consultation with the United States and it is the right of self-defense.”

In theory the ROK forces exercising some autonomous capabilities could help stabilize the situation on the Korean Peninsula. If communicated carefully (i.e. ROK-only and designed to achieve limited objectives) an ROK-only operation could allow Seoul to respond to small North Korean provocations like the ones in 2010 without as much risk of the situation escalating to a full nuclear-scale war.

A preemptive first strike designed to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities— or an attack that the North might interpret as such— would not qualify as an operation with a limited objective. As noted above, should it fail or be identified before taking place it carries a high risk of the North actually using its nuclear weapons should it have the capability to do so now or in the future.

Consequently, if such a risky operation is to be undertaken it must be done using the full spectrum of capabilities at one’s disposal (with the possible exception of nuclear weapons). South Korea has been adding increasingly effective missiles to its arsenals. Nonetheless, there is little doubt that the U.S. military has the greatest chance of undertaking a successful first strike against North Korean nuclear and missile targets and therefore it should be included in any such operation. This is all the more true given that the U.S.—which has 26,000 troops in South Korea— would hardly be unaffected by a failure on South Korea’s part to destroy the North’s nuclear and missile sites.

What Clausewitz Would Say About the Hagel/McCain Spat

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One of the nastiest spats during Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearing to be assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs last week took place with Senator John McCain. Senator McCain’s main concern of course was Chuck Hagel’s 2007 prediction that the Iraq surge would be the biggest blunder in U.S. foreign relations since Vietnam. McCain insisted that Hagel admit that the surge had actually been a success, which Hagel refused to do instead maintaining that history would be the judge of that.

To the point that I’ve heard anyone defend Hagel on this point it has been done by noting that it is unclear if the surge’s success was due more to the influx of U.S. troops and change of military strategy or whether the Anbar Awakening was more consequential in the decline of violence Iraq witnessed. I don’t feel that we need some future historians to answer this question—while both of the factors were important obviously the influx of U.S. troops would not have stopped the sectarian civil war unless the Anbar Awakening took place.

Instead, I think what Hagel was implying was that we don’t know if the Iraq surge was a success at all. Furthermore, if we are using a Clausewitzian definition of the purposes of war, and this indeed the definition we use, Hagel is absolutely correct—we don’t know if the Iraq surge was a success and indeed it looks like it has not been.

As Clausewitz famously noted, war is the continuation of politics by other means. In saying this he meant that war is an instrument-however blunt- to achieve political ends. What McCain seems to have forgotten is that the political objective of the surge was not to temporarily lower the amount of violence in Iraq.

Rather, many believed at the time that the violence on the streets was preventing political reconciliation between Shi’a, Sunnis, and Kurds and therefore to the creation of a functioning Iraqi government. As former President Bush put it when announcing the Iraq surge, providing security in Baghdad would give the Iraqi leadership “the breathing space it needs to make progress in other critical areas. Most of Iraq’s Sunni and Shia want to live together in peace. And reducing the violence in Baghdad will help make reconciliation possible.”

He continued that once security was established the Iraqi government would provide a number of basic governance tasks, including: “To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country’s economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis. To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs. To empower local leaders, Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year. And to allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation’s political life, the government will reform de-Baathification laws and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq’s constitution.”

Bush finally went on to define “victory in Iraq” as “something new in the Arab world – a functioning democracy that polices its territory, upholds the rule of law, respects fundamental human liberties, and answers to its people. A democratic Iraq will not be perfect. But it will be a country that fights terrorists instead of harboring them – and it will help bring a future of peace and security for our children and grandchildren.”

And thus Hagel was right: the Iraq surge was portrayed as a generational challenge that has yet to be fully played out. Still, although the U.S. surge and Sunni Awakening greatly reduced violence in the country, more and more it seems that the assumptions for why we needed to do that were not found. To be sure, a full-blown sectarian civil war is not conducive to Sunnis, Shi’ites, and Kurdish politicians coming together. But that appears to not have been the only impediment.

As is often the case, especially when it comes to Iraq, Tom Ricks summed the point up well in his book The Gamble:

The surge campaign was effective in many ways, but the best grade it can be given is a solid incomplete. It succeeded tactically but fell short strategically. There is no question that the surge was an important contributor to the reduction in violence in Iraq and perhaps the main cause of that improvement. But its larger purpose had been to create a breathing space that would then enable Iraqi politicians to find a way forward and that hadn’t happened. As 2008 proceeded, not only were some top Iraqi officials not seizing the opportunity, some were regressing, Odierno… said. “What we’re finding is that as Iraq has become more secure, they’ve . . . moved backwards, in some cases, to their hard-line positions, whether it be a Kurdish position, an Arab position, a Sunni position, a Shi’a position, a Da’wa position, an ISCI position”—these last two being the two major Shiia parties.

And therefore, Clauswitz would say that the Iraq surge failed. I would note, however, that it failed for the Iraqis. For the U.S., and the U.S. military in particular, it was a success in allowing us to satisfactorily say that we gave the Iraqis a chance to create a better future for themselves and their families. If they fail to grasp this opportunity, it will be their failure alone.

 

Compared to Hagel, Reagan was an Anti-Semite

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Congressional Republicans and neoconservatives like to refer to themselves as “the children of Reagan,” to borrow Senator Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) phrasing. Oddly, however, they don’t seem to share his views on Israel.

Although considered a staunch Israel supporter in his own day, by contemporary Washington standards Ronald Reagan seems like a full blown anti-Semite. Indeed, Chuck Hagel’s record on Israel is undoubtedly friendlier to the Jewish state than Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Whereas Chuck Hagel has faced withering criticism from radical Republicans in Congress and the punditry for occasionally venting frustration against the so-called “Jewish lobby” in America, Reagan was more inclined to take it right to the source. Furthermore, while Hagel has shown some reluctance to provoke a war with Israel’s enemies, Reagan developed the habit of arming these adversaries.

Thus, after Israel bombed West Beirut in February 1982 Reagan wrote in his diary “Right now Israel has lost a lot of world sympathy.”

Later that same year, Israel invaded Lebanon. It did so almost certainly under the impression that the U.S. would not oppose this action given the exchanges Israeli diplomats had been having with Secretary of State Alexander Haig.  While Obama has reportedly said to his advisers in private that Israel does not know always have a clear eyed view of its interests, Reagan again went right to the source in making this assertion. Thus, Reagan’s letter to Israeli PM Begin on June 9, 1982 reads in part:

I am extremely concerned by the latest reports of additional advances of Israel into central Lebanon and the escalation of violence between Israel and Syria. Your forces moved significantly beyond the objectives that you have described to me. The tactical advantages may be apparent, but a much more important need is to avoid a wider war with Syrian involvement, and possibly with that of the Soviets as well.

Today I received a letter from President Brezhnev which voices grave concern that a very serious situation has been created that entails the possibility of wider acts of hostility. Of course, I did not accept most of the points in his letter, but the danger of further escalation does exist.

It is now clear that escalation of Syrian-Israeli violence has occurred. I now call on you to accept a ceasefire as of 6:00 a.m. on Thursday June 10, 1982. I implore you to recommend to your government the acceptance of my proposal.

Menachem, a refusal by Israel to accept a ceasefire will aggravate further the serious threat to world peace and will create extreme tension in our relations [my emphasis].

Two months later the Sipper’s patient had run out after he witnessed an Israeli bombing of Lebanon in which a child was videotaped being injured. Reagan explained his response in his diary: “”I told him [Saudi King Fahd] I was calling P.M. Begin immediately. And I did — I was angry – I told him it had to stop or our entire future relationship was endangered. I used the word holocaust deliberately & said the symbol of war was becoming a picture of a 7-month-old baby with its arms blown off [my emphasis].”

Even before these events Reagan had won the irk of Israel when, soon after assuming office, he made clear his intent to sell arms to Saudi Arabia, which Tel Aviv considered a security threat. According to newspaper accounts at the time: “The $8.5 billion sale includes five Airborne Warning and Control System radar planes plus missiles and extra fuel tanks to increase the range and firepower of 62 US-built Saudi F-15 fighters.” The Israeli government, the pro-Israel lobby, and many in Congress put up fierce and prolonged objections. Congress threatened to veto the arms sale. Reagan eventually won.

But if Israel viewed Saudi Arabia as a security threat at the time, it saw Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as enemy number one. Proof enough of this was that Israel carried out a dangerous mission against Iraq’s nuclear facilities while the program was still in its infancy. By contrast, it has watched Iran’s buildup a sizeable nuclear program while only threatening to attack it in the future.

Despite Israel’s profound fear of Saddam Hussein, in his first term Reagan reversed decades of U.S. policy by embracing Iraq in order to wean it off the Soviet Union and, more importantly, to bolster Saddam’s forces in their war against Iran. Israel repeatedly decried U.S.-Iraqi cooperation but to no avail. At the same time, for years the Reagan administration refused Israel’s requests to join it in aiding Iran in the war. Later it briefly caved into this pressure, of course, which led to the Iran-Contra Scandal. Still, Reagan’s aid to Iraq but refusal to support Iran would, from Israel’s perspective, be not completely dissimilar from Obama aiding Iran against Turkey if those two countries were to go to war.

And as a final parting gift to Israel, right before leaving office the Reagan administration began the United States’ first official dialogue with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). In sum, Reagan began his Presidency by berating Israel for invading Lebanon in order to upend the PLO, spent most of his time in office engaging in military-to-military cooperation and arm sales with the country Israel viewed as its greatest threat, and ended it by bestowing legitimacy on the PLO by engaging in a direct dialogue with it. Roughly comparable actions today would be the Obama administration berating Israel for attacking Hamas, establishing a defense relationship with Iran against Turkey or Egypt, and establishing an official dialogue with Hamas.

The CCP’s Soft Power Delusions

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In a little noticed event on New Year’s Day, China inaugurated its first non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of soft power—China Public Diplomacy Association (CPDA). Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi attended and spoke at the unveiling ceremony for the group, which elected as its president Li Zhaoxing, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of China’s National People’s Congress. Addressing the group after the vote, Li told its members that the CPDA would mobilize and coordinate “social resources and civilian efforts” towards the goal of “promoting China’s soft power.”

In some ways, China’s desire to strengthen its soft power capabilities seems entirely logical. After all, ancient Chinese leaders masterfully wielded soft power. And as China’s economic power has risen in recent years, the Chinese government has adopted various measures to enhance China’s soft power, such as establishing globalnews services (most recently, China Daily’s Africa Weekly) andConfucius Institutes across the world. Outside of China some have spoken of a Beijing Consensus that is supposedly supplementing the Washington Consensus in terms of the most favored political-economic model.

Yet even as China inaugurated its first organization dedicated to enhancing Beijing’s soft power, a number of disparate events in China were illustrating why the CCP’s charm offensive is doomed to fail.

For example, in recent weeks the Chinese government has redoubled its efforts to censor the internet.After social media users in China exposed a series of scandals involving low-level government officials, the CCP adopted new regulations that require internet service providers to quickly delete “illegal” posts and turn over the evidence to government officials. Additionally, after trying to require citizens to use their real names on social media sites like Weibo, the new regulations require citizens to use their real identities when signing up with an internet provider. More secretly, according to many inside China, authorities have been strengthening the great firewall to prevent users from employing various methods in order to gain access to a growing number of sites that are banned.

 

China is hardly the only government concerned about the political instability unfettered internet access can generate. In fact, last month China joined 89 countries in supporting a United Nations telecommunications treaty that over 20 nations opposed over fears that it would open the door to greater government control over cyberspace. But while China’s suppression of information may resonate with political elites in authoritarian states, the world is living in the information age and attempts to restrict the flow of information for political reasons will not endear China to the global masses that soft power seeks to attract.

China’s internet policies also conflict with the stated goals of its soft power offensive in more concrete ways as well. For example, one of the primary goals of the CPDA is to increase the number of people-to-people exchanges with other countries. However, if the CCP is successful in preventing users from accessing popular sites like Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, and the New York Times, it is likely to discourage foreigners from living or studying abroad in China. Similarly, blocking access to these sites inhibits communication between Chinese and foreigners over cyberspace.

Along with tighter restrictions on the Internet, Chinese authorities have also increased their scrutiny on media outlets, both domestic and foreign. Domestically, the CCP ushered in the New Year by closing downthe fiercely liberal magazine, Yanhuang Chunqiu, ostensibly because its registration had been invalid since August 2010. Then, on Friday, 51 prominent journalists issued an open letter demanding the resignation of Tuo Zhen, the Communist Party’s propaganda chief in Guangdong Province, who they accused of “raping” the Southern Weekly’s editorial page when he allegedly altered its annual New Year’s Greeting right as it went to press, and without the knowledge or consent of the editor. The journalists were later joined by over two dozen prominent academics from the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan who published their own open letter calling for Tuo’s resignation.

Southern Weekly (also referred to as Southern Weekend) is a highly regarded reform-minded Guangdong newspaper, and its annual New Year’s Greeting has traditionally pushed the bounds of acceptable political discussion in China. This year’s editorial originally parodied Xi Jinping’s “Chinese Dream” by calling for the realization of the “dream of constitutionalism in China” where civil rights and the rule-of-law are respectedand upheld. After Tuo’s changes, the editorial expressed gratitude to the Communist Party for helping the country achieve the Chinese Dream.  According to David Bandurski, editor of China Media Project,”This kind of direct hands-on interference is really something new” and extreme even by China’s strict regulation of domestic media. Indeed, after the government tried to silence the growing outrage over Tuo’s actions, including by shutting down Southern Weekly staff members’ personal Weibo accounts, the entire editorial staff at the newspaper decided to stage a strike, marking the first time in over two decades that the editorial staff of a major Chinese newspaper has gone on strike over government censorship, according to the South China Morning Post.

 

China also continued its campaign against foreign journalists and news organizations last week when Chris Buckley, an Australian-national and China correspondent for the New York Times, was forced to leave the country because Beijing wouldn’t renew his visa. Following Buckley’s departure the New York Times said its China bureau chief, Philip P. Pan—author of Out of Mao’s Shadow—has been waiting since March to receive his own credentials.

Beijing later claimed Buckley hadn’t submitted the proper paperwork, but his case follows on the heels of Al Jazeera’s Melissa Chan’s expulsion from the country and the Washington Post’s Andrew Higgins finally ending his three-year quest to gain reentry into China, which failed even after the newspaper enlisted the help of Henry Kissinger. Thus, the more plausible explanation for Buckley’s inability to renew his visa is that Beijing is retaliating against foreign journalists because of the extraordinary reporting organizations like the New York Times have been doing on politically taboo subjects in China, such as stories on the enormous amount of wealth the families of senior leaders have accumulated. This reporting is also why the websites of the New York Times and Bloomberg News are no longer accessible in China, and why reporters from these organizations weren’t able to attend the unveiling of the Politburo Standing Committee at the 18th Party Congress in November.

Finally, the CCP’s soft power offensive is doomed to fail because of its ability to tolerate (much less cultivate) “cultural ambassadors.” In the realm of soft power, a county’s entertainers, artists, and intellectuals are some of its strongest assets. One needs only to look to South Korean rapper Psy, and the “flash mobs” he’s inspired in places as varied as Jakarta, Bangkok, Sydney, Dhaka, Mumbai, Dubai,American college campuses and shopping malls, Taipei, Hong Kong, and, yes, the Chinese mainland.

A country as large and dynamic as China undoubtedly has many potential worldwide celebrities. And yet, as a China Daily op-ed points out, China “is still far from making a product like Gangnam Style. China does export a large amount of cultural products every year, but few of them become popular abroad.”

The major reason China fails to export its cultural products, as Peng Kan, the author of the op-ed rightly notes, is that “Government organizations and enterprises are the main force behind the exports….But these organizations and enterprises… cannot promote satires like Gangnam Style through official communication channel. But cultural products without entertainment value rarely become popular in overseas markets.”

 

Indeed, it’s telling that China’s most popular non-governmental figures abroad are all opponents of the CCP. One such individual is democracy advocate Liu Xiaobo, who celebrated his 57th birthday on December 28th and the 3rd anniversary of  being sentenced to an 11-year prison term on December 25th.  This sentence only increased Liu’s international stature where he has been celebrated widely and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 (which the CCP responded to by placing his wife under house arrest).  Indeed Liu’s international renowned was on display last month when 134 Nobel laureates sent Xi Jinping a letter urging him to release Liu.

Eclipsing Liu in popularity at least in the West, however, is Ai Weiwei, the famous Chinese artist and dissident. Ai Weiwei’s remarkable artistic talent made him famous in some circles, initially including the CCP and across the globe before his turn to social activism. It is undeniable, however, that much of his popularity has come from his courageous and witty challenge to Communist Party rule in China. It is this charismatic political dissent that explains why documentaries of him win at Sundance, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times interviews him while visiting China, and his “Gangam Style” parody becomes an instant You Tube sensation, despite the fact that its underlying political message is lost on almost all its viewers.

China is hardly alone in making dissidents it persecutes famous internationally. In fact, this problem is practically inherent in authoritarian states (just ask Vladimir Putin). There’s a nearly universal tendency for people to sympathize with an “underdog” who is courageously battling a powerful force like a government, which is why a Tunisian street vendor setting himself on fire can spark uprisings throughout the Arab world, and David and Goliath is one of the most recognizable stories from Jewish and Christian religious texts.

But this fact does not make Liu and Ai Weiwei any less damaging to the CCP’s ability to project soft power. Symbolic figures like Liu and Ai Weiwei ingrain into people’s minds the perception that the CCP is synonymous with injustice. And hardly any emotion is as universally held as the righteousness of justice, however one defines it.

On a more primeval basis, people are attracted to confidence, and attempts to suppress information and dissidents creates the perception that, despite all its power and remarkable achievements, the CCP remains at its core fearful and paranoid. Few people are attracted to, much less want to emulate, those they consider fearful or paranoid. Which is why, despite China’s ancient history of soft power, and the soft power individuals like Ai Weiwei command, modern China’s soft power will remain limited under the current political leadership.

This piece originally appeared on The Diplomat.

The GOP’s Hagelian Dialectics

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Soon after the U.S. election in November, I suggested that President Obama should nominate outgoing Republican Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) as his secretary of state. One reason I gave for this was that Lugar,as a moderate Republican, would force GOP Senators to throw their support behind him or else risk creating greater disarray within their party at a time when they could ill afford it.

Not surprisingly, my recommendation for making Lugar secretary of state never gained traction. But President Obama has reportedly elected to nominate another moderate former Republican Senator as his secretary of defense: Chuck Hagel from the state of Nebraska. Obama’s formal nomination today came after weeks of floating Hagel’s name was met with unrelenting outrage from the loose coalition of individuals and organizations that comprise the fictitious group, Americans Against a Sensible Middle East Policy (AASMEP).

Much of the attention surrounding Hagel’s potential nomination has focused on his policy positions towards the Middle East and military spending, as well as the torturous political terrain he’ll have to navigate to win confirmation. Many speculate this terrain will include overcoming opposition from some Democratic senators like Chuck Schumer (D-NY). My own sense is that many Democratic senators will play their cards close to their chest as the political circus surrounding Hagel’s nomination unfolds, but will ultimately vote with the president if Hagel garners enough support from the GOP to win confirmation.

More importantly, whatever tension Hagel’s nomination creates for within the Democratic Party is almost certain to be overshadowed by the havoc it wreaks upon the Republican Party. The GOP has been struggling to contain a simmering civil war within their ranks ever since their disappointing showing at the polls last fall forced them to acknowledge the increasingly stark divisions between establishment Republicans and Tea Party radicals.

Although this was discussed at length in the weeks following the election, it became even more contentious during the recent “fiscal cliff” negotiations when legislation put forward by House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) was strongly rebuffed by his own caucus, which then almost voted down alternative legislation that was crafted largely by their Senate brethren. Following this debacle, Boehner managed to retain his Speakership despite some initial doubts, but evidently felt compelled to promise to not meet with President Obama any longer as a show of gratitude to House Republicans for their begrudging support.

President Obama’s selection of Hagel was likely guided primarily by the former senator’s policy expertise and their personal relationship. That being said, the politics of choosing Hagel could not have been lost on Obama or his political strategists. With the GOP already facing a tenuous couple of months with debates over the debt ceiling and government spending on the agenda, the White House has now added Hagel’s confirmation into this combustible mix.

In some ways, this will merely strengthen existing divisions within the GOP. Hagel is a DC insider who spent twelve years in the Senate and has strong ties with many establishment Republican senators and veteran Capitol Hill staffers. Many of these individuals—though certainly not all of them—will find it difficult to oppose his confirmation, especially if he makes personal appeals. On the other hand, since the 2010 election (Hagel left the Senate in 2009) there have been at least 18 new GOP Senators to take office that still hold it, although some were previously House members. While not all of the new GOP senators are Tea Partiers or anti-establishment Republicans, many are, and these members will have few personal loyalists to Hagel and are likely to see him as an Obama stooge; a RINO (Republican in Name Only) in every sense of the word.

That being said, the true political genius of Hagel’s nomination for Obama and the Democrats is that it will exacerbate the already messy divisions inflicting the Republican Party. For example, members of the libertarian camp of the Tea Party such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) may actually support Hagel preciously because of his views on defense spending and Middle East policy. Thus, while remaining united with Tea Party members on the debt ceiling and spending cuts, Paul and others may find solidarity with certain establishment Republicans over Hagel’s nomination. In the same vein, some establishment Republicans like Senator John McCain (R-AZ) who are traditionally moderate and inclined to compromise on domestic issues, will almost certainly unite with anti-establishment Republicans that oppose Hagel’s confirmation.

But nowhere will Hagel’s nomination be more divisive than within the Republican foreign policy establishment, currently undergoing some much needed soul-searching of its own. In the realm of foreign policy the GOP is essentially divided between two camps: the moderate realists usually associated with Cold War warriors like Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft, but also including the likes of Mitchell Reiss, Colin Powell, Richard Haass, and Robert Zoellick on the one hand; and the upstart-turned-dominant neoconservatives most closely identified with the George W. Bush administration.

The issues Hagel is being scrutinized for are at the very core of the divisions between these two camps. On defense spending, moderate Republican administrations like those under Eisenhower, Nixon, and Bush Sr. have initiated some of America’s largest defense cuts in the post-WWII era, while more neoconservative-minded administrations like those of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush have presided over some of its largest military buildups. Although Israel has enjoyed near universal backing in Washington since the late 1960’s, Republicans like Eisenhower, Bush Sr., and even Ronald Reagan have been the most willing to exert pressure on Tel Aviv when its policies conflicted with U.S. foreign policy. More recently, however, neoconservative Republicans have vied and arguably outdone the Democrats in demonstrating their unconditional support for Israel foreign policy, and done their best to demonize all who had the audacity to do otherwise.

U.S. policy towards Iran and its nuclear program also illuminate core differences between the realist and neoconservative wings of Republican foreign policy. Traditionally, the GOP has been the more cautious of the two parties in initiating large-scale military conflict, having done so only once (the Spanish-American War) before the first Gulf War (although Republicans, starting with Lincoln, never shirked from a war that was thrust upon them.) Instead, moderate Republicans dating at least as far back as Teddy Roosevelt have been the most able practitioners of diplomacy, even when that entailed negotiating with adversaries and rogue states they disdained, like the Vietcong, Maoist China, Egypt under Sadat, Iraq and Iran during the 1980’s, and the Soviet Union.

By contrast, the neoconservative camp that has dominated post-Cold War Republican foreign policy has struggled to find a conflict, dictator, or foreign policy challenge in which the U.S. military didn’t provide the optimal solution.  Much like the more radical elements of their party in Congress, negotiating and compromising with ideological opponents is antithesis to the neoconservative foreign policy camp, and they have shunned it time and time again, from the Soviet Union and North Korea in the early 1990’s to Iraq and Iran in the 21st Century.  Similarly, no international treaty has proved too sensible, or Cold War treaty too sacred, to not warrant the neoconservatives’ strongest opposition.

Chuck Hagel didn’t create these divisions, but his nomination will almost certainly deepen them. Indeed,the battle for the soul of Republican foreign policy has already begun.

This piece first appeared on The Diplomat.