issue: Foreign Policy & Defense

Gates and Fiscal Responsibility (Again)

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

This past weekend Secretary of Defense Bob Gates continued to talk his Kansas brand of sense about Pentagon spending. After a lecture on shipbuilding last week at the Navy League teed up tough questions to the Navy — like whether we can continue to afford $7 billion submarines — Gates took to the Eisenhower Library in his home state to expand that theme across his entire department. I’d bet you a crisp $20 bill that this is the line that caused an audible gasp in Reston and on the Hill:

The Defense Department must take a hard look at every aspect of how it is organized, staffed, and operated – indeed, every aspect of how it does business. In each instance we must ask: First, is this respectful of the American taxpayer at a time of economic and fiscal duress? And second, is this activity or arrangement the best use of limited dollars, given the pressing needs to take care of our people, win the wars we are in, and invest in the capabilities necessary to deal with the most likely and lethal future threats?

As a starting point, no real progress toward savings will be possible without reforming our budgeting practices and assumptions. Too often budgets are divied up and doled out every year as a straight line projection of what was spent the year before. Very rarely is the activity funded in these areas ever fundamentally re-examined – either in terms of quantity, type, or whether it should be conducted at all. That needs to change.

But then again, maybe the shock value has worn off — fiscal responsibility has been such a theme under Gates’ leadership that perhaps tough-minded rhetoric on defense spending now comes with little surprise.

Then Gates delved into specifics. And now it was the soldiers’, sailors’, airmen’s, and marines’ turn to get nervous:

[H]ealth-care costs are eating the Defense Department alive, rising from $19 billion a decade ago to roughly $50 billion – roughly the entire foreign affairs and assistance budget of the State Department. The premiums for TRICARE, the military health insurance program, have not risen since the program was founded more than a decade ago. Many working age military retirees – who are earning full-time salaries on top of their full military pensions – are opting for TRICARE even though they could get health coverage through their employer, with the taxpayer picking up most of the tab. In recent years the Department has attempted modest increases in premiums and co-pays to help bring costs under control, but has been met with a furious response from the Congress and veterans groups. The proposals routinely die an ignominious death on Capitol Hill.

The resistance to dealing with TRICARE stems from an admirable sentiment: to take good care of our troops, their families, and veterans – especially those who have sacrificed and suffered on the battlefield. This same sentiment motivates the Congress routinely to add an extra half percent to the pay raise that the Department requests each year. Furthermore, the all-volunteer force, which has been a brilliant success in terms of performance, is a group that is older, more likely to have spouses and children, and thus far costlier to recruit, retain, house, and care for than the Eisenhower-era military that relied on the draft of young single men to fill out its ranks.

Those are the political and demographic realities we face. To a certain extent they limit what can be saved and where. But as a matter of principle and political reality, the Department of Defense cannot go to the America’s elected representatives and ask for increases each year unless we have done everything possible to make every dollar count. Unless there is real reform in the way this department does its business and spends taxpayer dollars.

Two quick points here.

First, America’s armed personnel and their families represent an important political constituency. No administration wants the baggage that comes with reducing benefits for America’s fighting men and women. For the time being, that includes this one. If a serious restructuring of military pay and benefits ever occurs, it would likely be in about year six or seven of the Obama administration, safely after reelection.

Even then, it might prove impossible as Congress continues to feed the beast of fiscal irresponsibility. News broke just today that the Hill is about to vote on a 1.9 percent military pay raise. Guess what? That’s a half-percent more than the Pentagon recommended.

Second, in my mind, the structure of the benefits isn’t the problem. It’s the amount of care. I wrote a paper last year called “The Pentagon’s Most Expensive Weapon,” and I concluded that once you add up all outlays — including costs associated with the Department of Veterans Affairs — for military personnel, DoD spends not the $136 billion it tells you, but more than $300 billion.

Why are these costs skyrocketing? It’s a simple function of our foreign policy — America’s service members may be getting older and costlier, but since Afghanistan and Iraq, they’re also getting injured more frequently and in greater numbers.  Here’s my conclusion:

The problem of rising personnel costs can only be addressed from higher up the chain. Extended deployments overseas invariably increase costs because of the strain they place on the force — in casualties, logistics, sustainability, and recruiting and retention costs. Once the force has recovered from Iraq and Afghanistan, it is incumbent on America’s civilian leadership to carefully weigh the extended cost burden placed on the Pentagon’s personnel account when plotting our global security strategy. In short, America must choose its wars and deployments carefully, as exploding personnel costs are the untold story of Pentagon spending in 2010 and beyond.

In other words, you can talk about trimming benefits and reducing the ever illusive “waste, fraud, and abuse,” and that is no doubt a good thing. And so is eliminating unneeded weapons systems.

But if we’re going inject real savings on personnel into the system, we can’t just talk about TRICARE, we have to stop fighting dumb wars. And ultimately, that decision is above Gates’ pay grade.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/eschipul/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Miranda Rights, the Public Safety Exception and Congress

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The arrest of Faisal Shahzad has revitalized the conversation about the legal rights of terrorism suspects apprehended in the U.S. In February, I wrote that a public safety exception to ordinary Miranda procedures exists, and called it a useful tool in terrorism cases because it could allow for interrogation of terrorism suspects for a reasonable period of time before they are read their Miranda rights, as happened in the case of the Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

The incident in Times Square has given even more momentum to the idea of Miranda-less interrogations. On Sunday, Attorney General Holder came out and said that he wants Congress to pass a law specifically allowing interrogations without Miranda warnings in international terrorism cases. Such a law would obviate the need for law enforcement to rely on the current public safety exception.

Holder’s proposal is unique. The public safety exception is not the result of congressional action, but rather was created by a 1984 U.S. Supreme Court decision. In fact, all exceptions to Miranda rights under federal law come from court decisions and not from Congress. The question is this: Is it necessary for Congress to create a Miranda exception for terrorist suspects, or is the existing public safety exception enough? The congressional approach has several pros and cons.

The major benefit to Congress passing a law that explicitly creates a Miranda exception would be the specificity it would provide. Currently, law enforcement officials decide whether to invoke the public safety exception depending on whether they think a risk to public safety exists. Whether or not an officer’s belief is legitimate is determined on a case-by-case basis in court. Congress could make a law that lays out specific timeframes and circumstances under which a terrorist suspect could be interrogated without Miranda rights. Law enforcement officials would benefit greatly from knowing exactly what kinds of constraints exist.

Another benefit would be that, as long as law enforcement acted within the bounds of the statute, prosecutors would be more easily able to justify Miranda-less interrogation. As it is now, if a terrorist’s defense attorney challenges his client’s interrogation, prosecutors must show that law enforcement acted out of a legitimate concern for public safety. That process can be significantly more difficult and time-consuming than if prosecutors could simply point to a statute authorizing interrogation without Miranda.

Conversely, the existing exception’s major benefit could be its flexibility. The exception was created without specific constraints because the Supreme Court knew that it could not foresee all possible scenarios in which the exception could be applied. Similarly, Congress will not be able to foresee all possible terrorism scenarios. This could lead to a situation in which Congress creates a law that gives law enforcement less latitude than they might receive under the current exception.

It’s likely that Congress will try to pass a law that allows for a terrorist suspect to be interrogated for 48-72 hours, or even more, without being read his Miranda rights. Interrogations of such length would probably not be allowed under the existing exception. Should Congress authorize long interrogations without Miranda, expect a significant backlash from civil liberties advocates and some elected officials. Moreover, a statute granting law enforcement a great deal of flexibility could run the risk of being overturned in the courts. Stay tuned.

Faisal Shahzad’s Relationship to the Pakistani Taliban

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It was the Pakistani Taliban! Yes, yes, of course. They sat in their evil lair and activated one of their top sleeper agents to infiltrate American territory with a devilish plan to thwack hundreds of unsuspecting victims. And they monitored it all from their giant TV screens in real time, having tapped into NYPD’s closed-circuit television. Should visual monitoring fail, robo-operative Faisal Shahzad would simply activate the GPS tracking system linked to the Pakistani Taliban’s satellite via the computer chip inserted behind his ear.

Or not.

As Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton all took to the Sunday shows yesterday to proclaim Faisal Shahzad’s “connection” to the Pakistani Taliban, it struck me that such rhetoric often conveys, falsely, the sense of an ironclad connection between the operative and his terrorist mentors.

Secretary Clinton deserves credit for her answer on 60 Minutes yesterday, when she said, “There are connections. Exactly what they are, how deep they are, how long they’ve lasted, whether this was an operation encouraged or directed … those are questions still in the process of being sorted out.”

She’s right, of course. But my worry is that people stop paying attention after that first sentence.

I think I have a pretty good idea of Faisal Shahzad’s relationship to the Pakistani Taliban. My inkling is based on not a single piece of intelligence reporting as it pertains to this case, but rather my experience investigating the bombings in Madrid (2004) and London (2005). Both those operations featured “home-grown” operatives — locals who were “clean” (i.e., had all the proper paperwork to access the target country) and who had explicit or nebulous associations with al Qaeda in Afghanistan or Pakistan. The Madrid bomber’s connection to AQ has always been slightly murkier, but the London bombers were known to have traveled to Pakistan on prior occasions.

The Metamorphosis

Based on London and Madrid, here’s an attempted reconstruction of how Faisal Shahzad went from being a nice young father in the Connecticut ‘burbs to an attempted mass murderer:

First, the part we don’t exactly know: What made him travel to Pakistan with the intent to hook up with the Taliban? While a lot of bad stuff had happened to Shahzad over the course of the previous months — quitting his job and losing his house among them — we don’t know what mechanism drove him from “depressed” to “seeking revenge.” It could have been a chat room; it could have been secret meetings at a mosque; it could have been one influential mentor, as was the case with the first London cell in the north of England (the cell met regularly with an Islamic extremist in the backroom of a bookstore before traveling to Pakistan).

However, we do know that it was one of these (or something like it). Faisal went from having a bad run in life to actively seeking revenge. We know that someone — whom we’ll call his “mentor” — got him to translate his frustration into action and was well-connected enough to link up Shahzad with Taliban elements in Pakistan.

Next, as he’d done several times, Shahzad traveled to Pakistan. Most of his previous trips were likely family-related. This one might have been, as well. But at some point, Shahzad’s mentor told his contacts in the Pakistani Taliban that he had an American passport-holding recruit who was open to learning more. What’s more, Shahzad’s mentor must have been highly trusted in Pakistan because Taliban elements view U.S.-based operative as spies. That the mentor could vouch for Shahzad’s legitimacy would have been critical.

The mentor would have given Shahzad contact information in Pakistan, but it would have likely been up to Shahzad to initiate contact with Pakistani Taliban.

Upon traveling to Pakistan, Shahzad obviously decided that he was interested in learning more. He got in touch with his mentor’s network, and agreed to spend a certain period of time — as few as a couple weeks, but up to several months — in the Pakistani wilderness with Taliban members. Travel records indicate that Faisal went to Karachi and then Peshawar, the Taliban hotbed where Shahzad likely jumped off the grid.

During his time in the Taliban camp, Faisal would have gone through Terrorism 101. He’d have been given physical training, religious indoctrination (which is critical to sustaining his commitment), bomb-making classes and likely small-arms instruction. If there was a group of students, they would have bonded and shored up their commitment to jihad in small group sessions where they solidified their hatred of America.

A Freelance Terrorist

Faisal would have received all of this training, but would likely not have been given a specific plan of attack. This is the changing model of terrorism today. No longer do al Qaeda masterminds sit deep in caves and dream up logistically complex plots akin to 9/11. Instead, it’s more likely that the Taliban would have provided him training, possibly some cash, and given Shahzad the autonomy to imagine and execute his own plot. That’s right — the Pakistani Taliban likely would have taught him, paid him, and told him, “Good luck with whatever you end up doing. Just do something.”

In today’s world of increasing counterterrorism capabilities, this model stands a significantly higher degree of success. By not weighing Faisal down with the who’s, what’s and when’s of an operation, logistics are simplified dramatically, thus decreasing the chances of intercepted communications or arrested operatives that could scuttle the whole shebang. Cost drops, too. And since the Taliban has been isolated, they wouldn’t have on-the-spot access to scout a potential attack site, and are therefore almost forced to cede control to local operatives.

Of course many of these operatives, Shahzad and the Underwear Bomber included, aren’t “professional terrorists” with years and years of extensive training and indoctrination. But the Pakistani Taliban now seems willing to give up operational control and experience in order to increase the chances of a successful attack, even if that attack is significantly smaller than before. And since politicians are ready to use terrorism to score political points, a small attack could potentially carry as great a weight as another 9/11.

Secretary Gates, Defense Spending and Ship Building

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In a little-covered address this week at the Navy League Sea-Air-Space Exposition in Maryland, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates stopped just short of ripping defense contractors a new one. Of course, Gates was diplomatic in his admonishment, but the message was clear: we have to be smarter about defense spending, particularly when it comes to the Navy:

These [spending] issues invariably bring up debates over so-called “gaps” between stated requirements and current platforms — be they ships, aircraft, or anything else.  More often than not, the solution offered is either more of what we already have or modernized versions of preexisting capabilities.  This approach ignores the fact that we face diverse adversaries with finite resources that consequently force them to come at the U.S. in unconventional and innovative ways.  The more relevant gap we risk creating is one between capabilities we are pursuing and those that are actually needed in the real world of tomorrow.

Considering that, the Department must continually adjust its future plans as the strategic environment evolves. …

[W]e have to accept some hard realities.  American taxpayers and the Congress are rightfully worried about the deficit.  At the same time, the Department of Defense’s track record as a steward of taxpayer dollars leaves much to be desired. …

[I]t is important to remember that, as the wars recede, money will be required to reset the Army and Marine Corps, which have borne the brunt of the conflicts.  And there will continue to be long-term – and inviolable – costs associated with taking care of our troops and their families.  In other words, I do not foresee any significant increases in top-line of the shipbuilding budget beyond current assumptions.  At the end of the day, we have to ask whether the nation can really afford a Navy that relies on $3 to 6 billion destroyers, $7 billion submarines, and $11 billion carriers.

Talking tough on spending has been a theme for Gates.  While much of the problems he identifies will continue to exist for years, beginning this conversation is a critical signal that will eventually — think decades — change the way the Pentagon does business. He knows this, and he also knows that this idea won’t be solved on his watch. But if he doesn’t start talking about it, who will?

If you’re looking for a good suggestion about how to buy weapons more sensibly, read Jordan Tama’s excellent Memo to the New President, where he calls for a BRAC-style commission to propose a weapons budget each year.

Gates’ whole speech is worth a read, so check it out here.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/smwalton73/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Here We Go(P) Again…Why do Republicans Instantly Politicize Terrorism?

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Fifty-three hours — that is how long it took our law enforcement agencies to apprehend Faisal Shahzad, the main suspect in Saturday’s attempted Times Square bombing. The only thing faster has been Republican efforts to once again politicize a failed attack. Just like they did after the apprehension of the failed Christmas Day bomber, Republican leaders wasted no time yesterday trying to spin up mass hysteria by reminding us that we need to be living in a heightened state of perpetual fear, that Constitutional rights are meaningless, and that, oh yes, this is all Democrats’ fault.

Take Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA). At a speech he gave yesterday at the Heritage Foundation, the House minority whip made it abundantly clear that he believes the entire country should be living in a permanent state of nationwide panic:

[Yet] with each close encounter, my fear is that the country goes on heightened alert only as long as the media tend to cover it. All too often that means hours and days rather than permanently.

Does he not realize there are hundreds of thousands of American service members at war right now and have been for going on nine years? Cantor went on to say:

Many of the same critics who groused about how we failed to connect the dots prior to 9-11 are today repeating the same pattern. As a result, America is at risk of slipping into the type of false sense of security which prevailed before that September morning.

Rudy Giuliani could not have said it better — noun, verb, 9-11.

Equally disappointing was the predictable line of attack dragged out by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Rep. Peter King (R-NY). The two pounced on the administration and the Department of Justice for reading Shahzad his Miranda rights after he was taken into custody — even though the suspect was interrogated (and apparently sang like a bird) before those rights were read. McCain said it would be a “serious mistake” to read the suspect his Miranda rights, while King was quoted as saying, “I know he’s an American citizen, but still.”

Republicans are blatantly suggesting that we ignore what our Constitution requires and our Supreme Court has mandated. They proudly embrace the argument that this suspected criminal — who is, whether you like it or not, an American citizen accused of committing crimes on American soil — has no protection under American laws. This is a very slippery slope.

Even Glenn Beck (yes, Glenn Beck!) disagrees with this, stating yesterday that this is no time to “shred the Constitution.”

This “strategy” of fear-mongering coupled with the casual application of due process and the rule of law is pathetic, predictable and dangerous. Republicans continue to insist that every act or attempted act of terrorism on American soil must be met with a militarized response straight from an episode of “24.” They ignore, at our peril, the long and successful track record our criminal justice system has in convicting these terrorists.

I fundamentally believe that there is only one way the terrorists “win,” and that is when we ourselves destroy the very ideals that are the foundation upon which our nation stands. Republicans seem to have no issue tearing down those pillars by themselves.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/republicanconference/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

The Times Square Bomb and Public Education

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

This weekend’s bomb plot in Times Square was the third significant terrorist try in the U.S. since August. After Najibullah Zazi‘s arrest that month and the failed underwear bomber on Christmas Day, it was also the third to fail. (Note that I’m leaving out the Ft. Hood incident, which I don’t classify as terrorism.)

Whether or not the Pakistani Taliban’s claims of responsibility prove true, the plot’s simplistic nature and the bomb’s failure to detonate are the latest anecdotal evidence that the terrorist threat has shifted. Out — for now — is the rarer, mass-causality, 9/11-style plot, while “in” is the more frequent but smaller-impact variety.

While it’s good news that the possibility of thousands of deaths in a single attack has decreased, there’s a sobering reality about this morphing modus operandi: Sooner or later, one of these small-fry, rig-it-up-in-my-garage plots is bound to work. While the recent cases aren’t connected to the same ultimate terrorist authority, their frequency and near-success indicate that similar attempts will keep coming, perhaps as often as three or four per year.
Amateurs may throw these plots together, but they stand a great chance of success even in an era of improving cooperation between police and intelligence services. A U.S. counterterrorism official points out something in today’s WaPo that I’ve believed for a long time: “‘Unsophisticated’ can still cause a lot of pain and misery… These events are so hard to detect in advance. If there were a foolproof way of finding people before they acted, whether it’s the [snipers] in D.C. or someone who puts a bomb in his car . . . it has to be understood how very difficult this business is.”

That’s where the White House has come up a bit short. While President Obama’s initial statements praising the NYPD and vows “to do what’s necessary to protect the American people” are important, they create the public expectation that the government actually can provide complete security, 100 percent of the time.

Instead, the White House should marry tough-minded rhetoric with an explanation of the evolving threat. It’s a delicate dance to be sure – it’s unnatural for any president to acknowledge chinks in America’s armor. Fortunately, complex explanations play to President Obama’s rhetorical skills, and its possible to envision a speech that strikes the right tone of strength, vigilance, caution and honesty about where we stand against an evolving threat.

The stark likelihood of an eventual success dictates the White House shouldn’t miss the opportunity to engage the public on this critical national security issue.

Labour’s Last Stand?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Things look grim for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Heading into tonight’s third and final debate, his Labour Party trails not only the Conservatives, but even the Liberal Democrats, who usually finish a distant third. London odds-makers don’t give much for Brown’s chances of pulling off a Harry Truman-like upset.

If the pollsters and bookies are right, the May 6 election could end a remarkable, 13-year run in power by the “New Labour” tandem of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. But in Britain, electoral victory is denominated in parliamentary seats, not popular votes. The Lib Dems’ unexpected rise, behind a breakout performance by party leader Nicholas Clegg in the first debate, has scrambled the race in ways that make a variety of untoward outcomes possible, if not probable.

Many observers are predicting a hung parliament if the Lib Dems win enough seats to deprive either of their opponents a majority. This would trigger intense efforts by Labour and the Tories to woo the Lib Dems into a coalition government. In any case, however, the result likely would be curtains for Gordon Brown.

Tonight’s debate is probably his last chance to reverse Labour’s slumping prospects. It’s on the economy, which would ordinarily be Brown’s forte, but Britain’s economy also has been hammered by the financial crisis. It’s also true that Labour governments, under pressure from traditional constituencies and the unreconstructed “Old Labour” left, spent heavily on public services. Now those services will likely face draconian cuts as the next government grapples with ways to whittle down a huge (by British standards) $236 billion deficit.

But the dismal economic picture isn’t Labour’s only problem. Public worries about immigration also have roiled the race. Brown stumbled yesterday when he was caught on tape calling one voter who expressed such qualms a “bigoted woman.” He then compounded the gaffe by going to her house to apologize, ensuring that the incident dominated campaign coverage.

If the episode underscored Brown’s lack of political touch, it ought to be said in fairness that 13 years is a long time for any party to hold power in Britain. Clegg has bolted from obscurity by tapping into the inchoate desire for “change” that another newcomer, Barack Obama, tapped so effectively here in 2008.

If this really is Labour’s last stand, it’s worth recalling a few things about its significance for U.S. progressives. First, “New Labour” was a joint, Blair-Brown project that borrowed heavily from Bill Clinton’s New Democrat innovation. In a similar fashion, they helped Labour cast off old socialist dogma and revive itself as a modernizing force not only in Britain but in center-left politics generally.

Not the least of New Labour’s achievements was a long economic boom whose chief architect, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, was none other than Gordon Brown. Unlike France and Germany, Britain enjoyed robust growth rates and low unemployment. It also depoliticized monetary policy, created new incentives for work, kept labor markets flexible and encouraged innovation and trade.

Finally, Blair and Brown were, and remain, sturdy friends of the United States. Blair stood with America after 9/11, was a forthright critic of the kind of fashionable anti-Americanism in which Clegg indulges, and risked his career by supporting the Iraq war. Brown likewise has firmly backed President Obama’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, despite mounting pressures within his own party and a war-weary public to bring British troops home.

Americans of course have no business mucking around in British elections. But if Gordon Brown does go down next week, we should recognize at least that we have lost a staunch friend and faithful ally.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pasokphotos/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Postcard from Stockholm: Energy, Security and Social Democracy

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For the last three days, I’ve been running around Stockholm giving what seems to be 27 lectures on energy security and/or President Obama’s foreign policy. I’ve spoken at think tanks, the American Embassy (twice!), with MPs, corporate executives, and the guy who wrote the definitive Swedish book about the Obama campaign (“Are you going to have it translated into English?” I asked naively. “Well, I looked on Amazon,” he responded, “and there are already 637 English language books on Obama’s campaign. So I think I’ll start with Danish instead.”) It has been a whirlwind tour thus far but should slow down a bit toward the weekend, which would allow me to enjoy a few days with some good friends in Stockholm.

My energy talks are designed to shed some light on the political framing of energy issues since Obama took office. Since only six out of 10 Americans believe there is solid scientific evidence that the earth is warming, I talk a lot about the $400 tank of gas in Afghanistan and energy independence from power thugs like Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez. As a matter of fact, if you’d like the basic gist of a good chunk of my talk, just read this post.

But beyond gasoline and warzones, I’m also banging the drum about nuclear power, a power source that PPI has long supported even as the left keeps it at arms-length, and that is a critical component of America’s drive towards energy independence. I’ve been telling the story of Barack Obama’s embrace of nuclear power in the State of the Union, which was closely followed by a trip down to Georgia to announce the first construction of a nuclear plant in the U.S. in about 25 years.

Why does all this matter to Sweden? Sweden is facing a general election this September. The Red-Green Coalition of Social Democrats and the Green Party is currently in opposition but stands a good chance of beating the incumbent center-right coalition. And that, in a sense, would be a return to normalcy in this social-democratic mecca. I don’t have the numbers of the top of my head, but only about 15 of the last 90 years haven’t seen a Social Democrat in the PM’s office.

And while SD party leader Mona Salin may get there, it will be with significant help from the Greens. The Greens stand to rocket up from 5 percent last election to near 10-15 percent this year. And guess what? They hate nuclear power, falsely believing that it is unsafe and dangerous. Just yesterday, the coalition presented a plan that would tax “excessive profits” of energy companies, including nuclear.

Political insiders here think energy could be one of the more contentious issues within the Red-Green coalition. In the article I cite above, note how the Green Party spokeswoman says that her faction had to compromise, which implies that the Social Dems were resistant to higher energy taxes. But giving the Greens’ increasing appeal, their policy carried the day.

Penalizing nuclear power isn’t natural for the Social Dems — in the ‘60s and ‘70s, they led the charge to build Sweden’s 10 reactors that today produce nearly 50 percent of its power. Indeed, Sweden draws 90 percent of its power from hydro and nuclear, meaning that nearly all of its power is from non-carbon sources. It is an unfortunate about-face to propose taxing an energy source that is established, clean, and safe.

And that’s where I come in — an American progressive who can talk about creative ways to frame energy issues, and use Barack Obama’s nuclear story to give Swedish Social Dems a few reasons not to turn their backs on power sources that they once endorsed and that continue to make sense.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tobin/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Confronting Iran: The Case for Targeted Sanctions

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The following is a guest column from Pirooz Hamvatan, a pseudonym for a Washington, D.C.-based analyst focusing on Iranian domestic and security issues, and Ali K., currently a business student in the U.S. and a supporter of Iran’s Green Movement who was severely beaten by the Basij militia during a peaceful demonstration in Tehran last year.

Congress is on the verge of sending a petroleum sanctions bill to President Obama that has wide bipartisan support in Congress. But far from posing a serious challenge to the regime, the bill could in fact inadvertently undermine long-term U.S. interests by weakening the Iranian civil rights movement and strengthening President Ahmadinejad and his cronies.

The Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2009, currently in conference committee, will direct the president to impose sanctions on any entity providing Iran with “refined petroleum products” worth $200,000 or more per transaction, or $1 million per year. The bill defines refined petroleum products to include diesel, gasoline, jet fuel and aviation gasoline.

The new bill aims to cripple Iran’s economy in response to Iran’s refusal to halt its nuclear program. But the sanctions being proposed are not the right answer. Such a sweeping measure would end up only hurting ordinary Iranians, especially the middle class that the U.S. must shore up to improve Iran’s chances for reform.

Instead, our top priority should be helping to increase the space for the Iranian civil rights movement. That means moving beyond the limited focus on “solving” the nuclear issue. An Iranian government that is more accountable to — and representative of — its moderate majority would not pose a security threat to the U.S. and its allies. Rather than heavy-handed sanctions, the Obama administration should consider restrictions that are more targeted, which would hit the ruling regime where it hurts, and increase the possibility of change from within.

The Wrong Path

Introduced in the House by Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) and in the Senate by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), the sanctions bill currently in conference aims to limit Iran’s access to gasoline in the hopes that the suffering population will pressure the regime to give in to Western demands. But if the end goal is to induce Iran to be a more responsible regional actor that doesn’t threaten U.S. security interests, then petroleum sanctions are likely to achieve the opposite effect.

Just look at the experience of the last couple of decades. In 1995, in response to Iranian pursuit of nuclear technology and support of terrorism, President Clinton issued two executive orders prohibiting American investment in Iran’s energy sector and banning U.S. imports of most Iranian goods. The following year, Congress passed the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (PDF), calling for sanctions on foreign firms investing more than $20 million per year in Iran’s energy sector. Although such measures have impeded the development of Iran’s economy, they have not caused the Islamic Republic to change course on its nuclear program or its funding of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. In fact, in order to achieve their foreign policy and domestic goals, Iran’s leaders have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to let the Iranian people suffer.

Just as important, history has shown that crippling sanctions undermine the middle class — the very people who are the backbone of civil society and the voices of moderation. International sanctions on Iraq weakened its population, making them more reliant on, and more vulnerable to, Saddam Hussein’s regime. Gasoline sanctions on Iran could have a similar effect, exacerbating inflation, lowering the quality of life for the middle class and pushing more people below the poverty line.

Gasoline sanctions would also distract Iranians from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s own mismanagement of the economy — an important issue mobilizing people around the Green Movement — and divert blame to the U.S. Iran is already facing a 20-percent inflation rate, a crippled domestic industry, unemployment of over 11 percent (with 24 percent of 15-to-24 year-olds unemployed), and one of the worst rates of brain drain in the world. Many Iranians are still seething over the fact that, since becoming president in 2005, Ahmadinejad squandered unprecedented oil revenues that the Islamic Republic accrued as a result of high world oil prices. Amid all of this, Ahmadinejad has backed a controversial measure that would phase out government subsidies on gasoline and is likely to increase inflation. The Iranian people are already facing enough hardship without the U.S. adding to their woes and diminishing the pro-American sentiments of a wide array of Iranians.

Nor will the sanctions loosen the regime’s grip on power. Ahmadinejad’s faction would, in fact, fare better than the majority of the populace. Masters of smuggling, Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps members would still be able to bring in gasoline through Iran’s porous borders, perversely enriching themselves even more.

The Right Path

But if broad sanctions are a heavy-handed tool that could only risk the development of Iran’s civil rights movement, what options do U.S. policy makers have to challenge the regime?

A preferred approach would be something more targeted against those responsible for Iran’s actions: the members of the ruling regime. Congress should consider the following:

  • Pass a bill calling on the U.S. State Department to identify Iranian human rights abusers (primarily from within the Revolutionary Guards; the Basij, the regime’s volunteer militia; and the judiciary) and impose travel bans on them. The bill should also seek the cooperation of our allies in enforcing the ban as widely as possible and place pressure on key countries like Dubai to block entry to these individuals. The list of targeted offenders should be made public in order to show the Iranian people that the U.S. is on their side.
  • Pass a measure calling for human rights abusers’ assets to be frozen. Because Iranian officials have gone to great lengths to distance themselves from the U.S. financial system, the U.S. Treasury may not have much of a role to play here. Rather, such a measure would simply be a first step in convincing banks in Europe and the United Arab Emirates — where many regime insiders’ assets are squirreled away — to enforce restrictions.

What specific effect will travel bans have on hardline officials and their mid-ranking employees? Besides being a major inconvenience, it would hurt their pocketbooks. This is because a large number of these individuals have side-businesses in which they smuggle goods from places like Dubai, Thailand, Indonesia and Syria — buying, for example, electronic goods and bringing them back to Iran through Revolutionary Guard-controlled customs stations without having to pay import duties. They then sell these goods at highly marked-up prices in the isolated Iranian market. A strictly enforced travel ban — including on individuals working for these human rights abusers’ front companies — would close off a lucrative source of income.

To be clear, the overall intent of this plan is not necessarily to deal a significant economic blow to the entire hardline establishment — that would be next to impossible. Neither will it convince, in the short term, current Iranian leaders to change course on the nuclear program — no outside pressure will. Rather the strategy is to increase the disincentives for individuals to participate in or condone oppressive behavior, with the goal of helping the Green Movement flourish.

At the same time, it is important not to target certain high level officials who may have the capacity to play a role in moving Iran toward reform. For instance, while it may be justified to sanction Judiciary Chief Sadegh Larijani for allowing hardliners to abuse Iran’s legal system to persecute reformers, his brother Ali Larijani — the pragmatic conservative Speaker of Parliament and bitter Ahmadinejad rival — has not been complicit in human rights abuses, and thus should not be snared by the sanctions net. This nuanced targeting will send a signal to the regime’s officials that they will be left alone if they refrain from abusing their fellow citizens.

Moreover, certain Iranian leaders are sensitive to international accusations of human rights abuses. This is not for altruistic reasons, but because they want the Islamic Republic to be seen as a role model to the Islamic world, and not simply another run-of-the-mill Middle Eastern dictatorship.

To be sure, human rights sanctions alone may not alleviate the pressure currently being placed on Iran’s Green Movement. Regime hardliners could blame the U.S. for fomenting post-election unrest and paint Iran’s dissidents as Western spies. Republican Guard members and Basijis could continue their human rights abuses regardless of travel bans and asset freezes. But that is the status quo in Iran. There is little cost to the U.S. if human rights sanctions don’t work — and much to gain if they do.

A Broader, Pro-Reform Agenda

Human rights sanctions are not a silver bullet. They will not bring the regime to its knees. But neither will gasoline sanctions. Fortunately, it appears that the Obama administration is asking Congress to slow down its push for unilateral gasoline sanctions as the U.N. Security Council deliberates over its own sanctions during the next few months. Meanwhile, targeted sanctions against human rights abusers is being pushed by Sen. John McCain, though not as stand-alone legislation but as an amendment to the flawed gas sanctions bill.

A human rights sanctions package can be an effective part of a broader effort to help Iran’s Green Movement chart its own course toward a better future for Iranians. Other essential pieces to this strategy would include:

  • Rep. Jim Moran’s (D-VA) Iranian Digital Empowerment Act, which seeks to help get information-sharing software and filter-breaking technology into the hands of Iranian reformers.
  • Rep. Keith Ellison’s (D-MN) Stand With the Iranian People Act, which (in addition to calling for human rights abusers to be sanctioned) calls for suspension of U.S. government funding to entities that sell censorship and surveillance equipment to the regime, and seeks to ease restrictions on American charities that want to work in Iran.

Bills focusing on the Islamic Republic’s human rights abuses have an excellent chance of passing in Congress because they are politically appealing — they help legislators look tough on national security while promoting American values of freedom and democracy. Moreover, they avoid the danger that is inherent with sweeping economic sanctions: that of harming the people they were intended to help.

Moreover, U.S. passage of human rights sanctions could lead allies in Europe to follow suit. Although the U.N. Security Council is unlikely to do so — China and Russia are adamantly opposed to interfering in others’ domestic affairs — if the U.S. and European allies banded together to pressure countries like Dubai to enforce travel bans, sanctions would have a greater chance of success.

In the end, it is important to remember that the members of the Green Movement are fighting for reform within the Islamic Republic system. Their demands include an independent electoral commission, the release of all political prisoners and freedom of speech. Acknowledging that it is up to the Iranian people to chart their own course, the U.S. can best protect its own security interests by helping to level the playing field in Iran, allowing the moderate, peace-loving majority of Iranians to continue their journey toward a better future for their country and the broader Middle East.

 

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Progressive Policy Institute.

Taking Liberties

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The following is an excerpt from Will Marshall’s essay in today’s Democratic Strategist. The piece is part of a Democratic Strategist/Demos online forum on “Progressive Politics and the Meaning of American Freedom.”

Freedom, says John Schwarz, is too important to be left to conservatives. No argument there. For too long, liberals have been flummoxed by conservatives’ success in posing as defenders of liberty against government encroachment. This stance has given the conservative cause a simple, reductive logic and ideological coherence that liberals lack – and often envy. It has enabled the right to tap the deep strain of anti-statism that really does make American politics exceptional.

Modern liberals have chafed at the constraint that this classically liberal understanding of freedom imposes on their social vision. For decades, they’ve struggled to articulate a countervailing principle that can trump the power of what Louis Hartz called America’s underlying “Lockian” consensus.

Arriving in Washington just after Ronald Reagan’s election, I’d often ask shell-shocked liberals to define their first principle. The invariable, deflating answer: “affirming a positive role for government.” This trope reflected a confusion of means with ends – and it goes a long way toward explaining why only about a fifth of Americans have been willing to call themselves liberals since the early 1970s.

The story of how liberalism came to be linked with social engineering and redistribution, with tax and spend, and with rights and entitlements to favored groups is too familiar to need rehashing here. Suffice it to say that liberal efforts to expand government’s role to advance worthy social goals have often crossed lines that are important to many if not most voters. These lines mark the boundaries between individual and collective responsibility, and between government’s legitimate efforts to assure equal opportunity as opposed to equal outcomes.

So Schwarz’s diagnoses is right: the public’s abiding suspicion that expansive government means contracting freedom tends to stack the political deck in conservatives’ favor and keep liberals on the defensive. His ideas for reversing the presumption in liberals’ favor, however, fall short.

When it comes to freedom, liberals face an inescapable dilemma. They can never be as simple-minded as conservatives. They can’t simply counter conservatives’ classic-liberal conception of freedom with a social liberalism that aspires to greater equality and social justice. Mid-century liberals succeeded by keeping these often antagonist approaches in equipoise. Modern liberals have lost the balance, and with it, the ability to persuade a majority of Americans to their point of view.

Read the rest at The Democratic Strategist.

Earth Day and Energy Security

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Throughout the progressive blogosphere, Earth Day generates tons of buzz as like-minded liberals gather in chat rooms and on message boards for an annual rally to protect Mother Earth. Re-energizing (pun intended) focus on the environment in the wake of a so-so Copenhagen Summit is a worthy endeavor, of course, but it can sometimes feel like preaching to the choir.

Meanwhile, the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman bill is languishing in the Senate with little hope of movement before November’s elections. And despite its tri-partisan co-sponsorship, conservatives continue to insist on peddling the notion that climate change and Santa Claus share more than a melting polar ice cap. Meanwhile, their supporters continue to buy it, grasping at incontrovertible “proof” like leaked emails from Cambridge.

While the right is intent on pretending climate change doesn’t exist, there’s one aspect of it that’s getting tougher and tougher to ignore: energy security. Not everyone believes that the earth is warming, but most eagerly accept the idea that America should be buying less gasoline from the Middle East. The most credible messenger is the military — the one organization whose mission demands that it become more energy efficient.

Late last year, my PPI colleague Mike Signer wrote a piece on the topic for U.S. News. Here’s what he said:

[T]he most innovative and effective actors in the carbon-reduction arena bear zero resemblance to this outdated cartoon. No hemp-wearing hippies here: Today, it’s the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard who are aggressively pursuing plans for sustainable energy, reducing carbon, and achieving energy independence.

It’s no mystery why: Our armed men and women are truly the point of the spear. The services aren’t motivated just by the “soft power” of moral authority or the pursuit of idealism for its own sake. It’s in fact “hard power” concerns—the security of our troops, the economic independence of our energy supply, and the long-term need to better control the geopolitical implications of climate change—that have driven the military to take the lead.

Consider the facts. Today, an infantry soldier on a three-day mission in Afghanistan carries over 25 pounds of batteries to charge his equipment, hampering his maneuverability and can even causing muscular-skeletal injuries. In Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. forces have suffered chilling casualties guarding convoys of trucks carrying oil. Meanwhile, every $10 increase in the price of oil translates into a $1.3 billion increase in the Pentagon’s operating costs.

In all of these cases, clean energy and efficiency programs would not only help reduce our carbon output and achieve energy efficiency; they would directly increase the effectiveness of our military.

Remember in the summer of 2008 when the price of a gallon of gas ran to a shocking $4? Well, multiply that by 100 — literally — to get cost of a gallon every day in Afghanistan. By the time you add the transportation price and supply losses from attacked convoys, the Pentagon estimates that fuel costs the American taxpayer $400 a gallon. And much of that $400/gallon is put in Abrams tanks that get… wait for it… just over a half-mile to the gallon. Ergo, one mile in an Abrams tank costs about $700.

The good news is that organizations like Operation Free — a group of military veterans who recognize the life and death nature of fuel efficiency – are traveling the country to promote the policies that will improve our energy security. So whether or not you “buy” climate change – and frankly, you really should — it’s tough to argue against a military that is trying to cut the tether to carbon-based fuels that hamper mission effectiveness. Focusing on this aspect of the issue may well be the best bipartisan way to move public opinion on reducing the use of carbon-based fuels.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/soldiersmediacenter/ / CC BY 2.0

Earth Day at 40: Can Obama Outperform Nixon?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Today is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, the first of which took place in 1970 at the beginning of the golden age of environmental legislation in the United States. It’s a telling statement that in the past four decades, the most successful environmental record belongs to Richard Nixon.

Our most disgraced president looks rather hippie-esque when you look at the achievements that passed during his administration: the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Marine Mammals Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Endangered Species Act all became law under his watch, and he established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) soon after Earth Day One.

Since then, environmental policy has often meandered from favored conservative punching bag to a second-tier issue. President Barack Obama has a chance to cement a similar environmental legacy by acting on climate, energy and natural conservation legislation. How has he done so far? In his first term in office, President Obama has achieved notable environmental progress by simply not being President Bush.

Following arguably the most anti-environment administration since the 1970s, almost anyone would shine in comparison. Like on many other fronts, Obama does not lack for ambition. He included energy as one of his three top priorities during the 2008 campaign and has signaled that it will be getting his attention very soon. That being said, the Obama administration has not yet established an impressive or even cohesive environmental record. Many of the president’s actions have been piecemeal, either addressing specific policy problems or cleaning some of the messes left over from the previous eight years. He has yet to achieve a stout victory on the environmental front, but it has only been one year. He still has time to work.

Below is a list of the top five environmental actions that occurred in the first year of the Obama administration – and five other items on which he needs to do more work:

The Accomplishments

  • Endangerment finding: This finding, which said that carbon dioxide is a pollutant that endangers human health, gave the EPA authority to regulate it under the Clean Air Act. This is the most significant step toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions the U.S. government has yet taken.
  • CAFE standards: The EPA increased average fuel economy standards for cars and trucks in the U.S. fleet to be 35 mpg in 2020, the first increase since 1990. The regulation is estimated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 960 million metric tons by 2030.
  • The stimulus package: The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act channeled $8 billion toward energy projects, mainly focusing on renewables and energy efficiency. It included another $6 billion in water and wastewater projects.
  • Copenhagen: Simply put, international climate negotiations would have collapsed were it not for the direct personal involvement of the president. He was instrumental in getting almost every country in attendance to commit to two-degree temperature rise targets, helped get important concessions from China on emissions monitoring and established long-term financing ($100 billion annually by 2020, $20 billion for the U.S.) for international adaptation efforts.
  • Executive appointments: Lisa Jackson at EPA. Steven Chu at Department of Energy. Nancy Sutley at Council on Environmental Quality. Ken Salazar at Department of Interior. John Holdren at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Jane Lubchenco at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Carol Browner as special adviser to the president on energy and climate change issues. These are all smart, competent, committed people who will help the president shape effective environmental policies over the course of his administration.

So what can Obama do for the environment in 2010 and the second half of his term? Here are just a few things:

The To-Do List

  • Climate: Above all, the president should push Congress hard to pass legislation that controls greenhouse gases by setting a price on carbon. The president already has a climate bill, Waxman-Markey, that had passed the House last year and was ready to go to the Senate. Instead of pushing this bill, he and the Senate leadership chose to focus on health care. That process consumed the heart of this Congress’ legislative calendar and much of its political energy. While that choice was understandable, it leaves action on climate and energy as the largest unfulfilled element of the president’s legislative agenda.Debates on climate appear set to start again in the Senate with the release of a new bill next week. The president should push the debate forward, hopefully resulting in a new law that sets economy-wide greenhouse gas controls before the November elections. This is admittedly an ambitious goal. If it proves impossible, Obama should dedicate as much energy in the second half of his term to climate as he did to health care in the first.
  • Air pollution: With so much focus on climate, traditional forms of pollution haven’t drawn much attention. Conventional pollutants like sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, mercury and ozone still pose significant health risks, and economists believe reducing emissions of these pollutants would result in substantial net benefits to the economy in life expectancy and quality of life. The EPA’s recent attempts to tighten regulations on these pollutants (both of which, it must be said, were authored by the Bush EPA) were struck down by courts. The Obama EPA should renew efforts to regulate these pollutants by issuing new versions of these rules (called CAIR and CAMR) as soon as possible. The president should throw his support behind proposed “3-pollutant” legislation on the Hill that would remove the legal barriers to stricter regulation of these pollutants, and follow that legislation up with action from the EPA. (More on that bill in a later post.)
  • Nuclear waste storage: The president has thrown his support behind nuclear power with $8 billion in loan guarantees for two new plants in Georgia. Regardless of your opinion of nuclear power as an energy source, you have to admit the storage of waste poses quite a problem. The president eliminated Yucca Mountain, the long-controversial water repository in Nevada, without proposing a specific alternative. He organized a blue-ribbon panel to look into solutions to the nuclear waste problem, and the commission is supposed to issue its recommendations sometime next year. They have their work cut out for them.
  • Environmental foreign policy: The president should also consider making environmental issues a more central part of his foreign policy. Whether it’s pushing China, India, Russia and others to agree to global cuts in carbon emissions, or calling Japan out for its cynical efforts to avoid limits on bluefin tuna fishing, ample opportunities exist for advancing U.S. environmental interests internationally and re-establishing our position as the global leader on environmental policy innovation. The president has made a good start in this area, but he can do more.
  • Future environmental dangers: Finally, the president can move beyond environmental issues that have been neglected in the past to examining possible future environmental risks. Many such risks, such as pollution of water with pharmaceuticals and the environmental impacts of nanotechnology, aren’t sufficiently understood. Government also lacks the tools to deal with these issues even if they are identified as dangers. The president should dedicate resources to investigating these and other future risks, and push Congress to give the EPA authority to regulate them when supported by the science. These are the kinds of forward-looking reforms that Nixon pursued, and which could give Obama an enduring environmental legacy.

Success on these fronts — and above all on climate — would not only fulfill President Obama’s environmental promises, but would put him in contention as the most environmentally successful president since Nixon, and likely ever.

Four Things Obama Needs to Do in the Middle East

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In a recent piece, I discussed the growing sense of “Bush nostalgia” among Arab reformers. Such nostalgia has less to do with George W. Bush and more to do with the period of democratic promise the Middle East experienced in 2004-5, partly a result of aggressive, but short-lived, efforts to put pressure on authoritarian regimes.

For its part, the Obama administration has shown little real interest in democratization in the Arab world, falling back on the “pragmatic” neo-realism of the Clinton and first Bush administrations. Compared to the destructive policies of his predecessor, President Obama’s approach seems a breath of fresh air. But his foreign policy vision, while certainly sensible, has so far been remarkably conventional and unimaginative. Perhaps that’s what was initially needed. Now, however, is the time for bolder, more creative policy making. Here are four things Obama can – and should – do in the Middle East to advance U.S. interests and ideals:

  • Recognize the region’s changing balance of power. Traditional allies like Egypt and Jordan (two of the world’s largest U.S. aid recipients) are losing influence. Increasingly authoritarian, erratic and perceived as excessively pro-American, they have little credibility with Arab audiences. On the other hand, emerging powers like Turkey and Qatar are pursuing independent foreign policies and maintaining positive relations with both the West and the “rejectionist” camp (Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah). Not surprisingly, both countries, seen as “honest brokers,” have played a major role in mediating regional conflicts and supporting dialogue efforts, including on the Syrian-Israeli, Israeli-Palestinian, Hamas-Fatah and internal Lebanese tracks. The U.S. should encourage their efforts, keeping in mind that they may be uniquely well-positioned to exert influence on Iran and Syria.
  • Promote Turkish accession to the EU. Turkey is the closest thing the Middle East has to a “model,” one of only two countries in the world led by a democratically elected Islamist party. According to a 2009 survey, 64 percent of Arab respondents in seven countries believe “Turkey’s EU membership prospects make Turkey an attractive partner for reform in the Arab world.” Considering its growing regional importance, the U.S. cannot afford for Turkey to turn inward and become embroiled in conflict between its secularist military and Islamist-leaning government. For a time, Turkey’s desire to join the EU provided incentives to implement wide-ranging legal and political reforms. However, as the EU drags its feet on accession talks, and Turks lose hope in EU membership, the reform process looks less encouraging than ever. Turkey must, however, remain enmeshed in Western institutions and partnerships. The Obama administration should use its leverage with European allies to ensure the accession process moves forward.
  • Begin strategic engagement with nonviolent Islamist groups. In most Arab countries, Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Jordan and Syria, are the largest, most influential opposition groups. But Obama has so far failed to engage them, despite his emphasis on “dialogue” with diverse actors. Engagement would serve several purposes, discussed in detail here, including information-gathering, improving our credibility with Arab publics and putting pressure on autocratic regimes to open up. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, or another senior official, could begin by giving a major speech on the U.S. and political Islam (something which the Clinton administration did on several occasions), stating unequivocally that the U.S. will accept democratic outcomes, even if that means the election of Islamist parties. The State Department should also issue a directive explicitly permitting State Department employees, including ambassadors in the region, to meet with and incorporate members of Islamist organizations in their programming.
  • Embrace “positive conditionality.” The U.S. gives hundreds of millions of dollars annually to Arab authoritarian regimes. Rather than cutting aid, which is unlikely to be politically viable, the U.S. could offer large packages in additional assistance, conditioned on meeting a series of explicit benchmarks on democratization. If the country failed to meet these benchmarks, the aid would be withheld and carried over to a reform “endowment” for the next fiscal year. This way, the more governments rejected the aid, the greater the incentive would be to accept it in future years.

None of these four “steps” are particularly revolutionary. But that’s the point: the Obama administration could take action immediately – if it had the political will. With the troop drawdown in Iraq, and the Iranian nuclear threat, there may be a temptation to wait for a better time. But, in the Middle East, the better time, sadly, never seems to come.

If anything, a confluence of factors appears to be converging, suggesting the time to act is now. There are critical elections in Egypt and Jordan coming up in 2010 (and 2011). For the first time in Egypt, there is an inspiring national figure, Mohamed ElBaradei, who seems capable of uniting a notoriously fractious opposition behind a common vision for reform. Egypt, along with Algeria and Tunisia, will be facing succession struggles sooner rather than later. Meanwhile, internal tensions in Turkey seem to be rising, with the threat of escalation looming in the background. In other words, this is a difficult time of transition in the Middle East and the U.S. will need to do considerably more than just tread water.

The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect those of the Progressive Policy Institute.

On Mideast Policy, We Can Walk and Chew Gum at the Same Time

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A few publications over the past week continue to highlight the importance of democracy promotion in the Middle East. Some have done a better job than others.

First up is Jackson Diehl’s piece in today’s Washington Post. Diehl makes one excellent suggestion — then diminishes it with a faulty assumption. His premise is that the Obama administration fails to understand that diplomacy in the Middle East is inextricably linked to timing. Diehl believes current geopolitical conditions suggest the White House should push for a democratic opening in Egypt, with elections looming this year to replace an aging president, and former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei building a credible reform movement in the country.

But as a consequence, Diehl believes that the Obama administration should set aside the larger Israeli-Palestinian peace plan that the Obama administration is cooking up to focus on Egypt.

The former is an excellent initiative and should be pursued despite America’s tricky, decades-long relationship with Egypt that has centered far more on regional military hegemony and diplomatic stability than democracy promotion. But Diehl treats Middle East policy as a zero-sum game, with Israel-Palestine being thrown by the wayside. According to Diehl, rather than focusing on Egypt:

Obama has focused most of his personal energy and diplomatic capital on the Arab-Israeli conundrum — where, for a variety of reasons, there is no immediate opportunity. …[T]he big challenge for the president is to set aside his preconceived notions about what big thing he can or should accomplish in the region — and seize the opportunity that is actually before him.

I ran this by my friend Andrew Albertson, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy, and he dismissed the notion that we can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. In an email, he responded:

I certainly agree that the U.S. can and should be doing more in response to events in Egypt. Egyptians view this year as an opportunity to push for important political reforms in their country, and I think we need to support that. But no — I don’t think this is an either-or proposition. In fact, on the contrary, I think we will be more credible — and more effective — if we convey our support for the region’s people and basic issues of human dignity across the board.

The point is that both democracy and Egypt and big initiatives on Israel-Palestine are worthy endeavors. The former seizes on the opportunity available, and the latter attempts to create a bit of opportunity over the long run.

So how is the Obama administration doing on promoting democracy? Albertson’s POMED has just put out a new report by Stephen McInerney that takes a hard look at the Middle East democracy budget. McInerney finds that “total funding for democracy and governance is up” with important programs that promote Internet freedom, as well as aid to Afghanistan/Pakistan and Yemen, emphasized.

One of the big concerns, McInerney says, closely echoes Diehl’s original point:

Controversial changes in U.S. assistance to Egypt have been reinforced.• Funding for democracy in Egypt remains at levels sharply reduced in March 2009, which included disproportionate cuts in funding for civil society. The decision to provide USAID funding only to organizations registered and approved as NGOs by the Egyptian government remains in place. Finally, the administration is now exploring the establishment of an “endowment” proposed by the Egyptian government to remove congressional oversight over future U.S. economic aid.

By all means we should address these problems. But doing so need not come at the expense of other Mideast initiatives.

Don’t Let Anyone Tell You Counterinsurgency Ain’t Tough

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

If you ever needed a reminder about the difficulties of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, Joe Klein’s piece in Time is it. Klein tells the story of Capt. Jeremiah Ellis, a 29-year-old Army officer leading 120 soldiers in Dog Company, the only American presence in the remote village of Senjaray. Though anecdotal, the piece is a highly detailed, pitch-perfect account of why stabilizing Afghanistan is so difficult.

Here are some of the highlights.

On the Taliban:

Unlike many of his fellow officers in Zhari district, and many of the troops under his command, Ellis really believed in counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine.

He still does, but he’s more skeptical now. The past four months in Senjaray have taught him how difficult it is to do COIN in an area that is, in effect, controlled by the enemy — and with a command structure that is tangled in bureaucracy and paralyzed by the incompetence and corruption of the local Afghan leadership. Indeed, as the struggle to open the school — or get anything of value at all done in Senjaray — progressed, the metaphor was transformed into a much bigger question: If the U.S. Army couldn’t open a small school in a crucial town, how could it expect to succeed in Afghanistan?

… [A]lmost any development project the Americans tried in Senjaray would end up benefitting the Taliban — except one: reopening the Pir Mohammed School.

On rules of engagement:

General McChrystal has issued a series of tactical directives and rules of engagement banning most forms of air support. There are also new rules governing when and how troops on the ground can use their weapons. “Look at these,” Ellis told me, tossing a fat sheaf of directives onto his desk. “Some of these are written by freaking lawyers, and I’m supposed to read them aloud to my troops. It’s laughable. We can’t fire warning shots. We can’t even fire pen flares to stop an oncoming vehicle. If a guy shoots at you, then puts down his weapon and runs away, you can’t fire back at him because you might harm a civilian.”

The troops hate the new rules. Indeed, a soldier from another of the 1/12’s companies sent an angry e-mail to McChrystal, saying the new rules were endangering the troops. The General immediately flew down to Zhari and walked a patrol with that soldier’s platoon. “It was a good experience,” McChrystal told me later. “I explained to them why we needed the rules. And I’ve been making it my practice to go out on patrol with other units ever since.”

Ellis understands the rationale for the rules — “It’s what distinguishes us from the Taliban” — but that doesn’t make them easier to enforce.

On internal military bureaucracy:

Lieutenant Reed Peeples, a former Peace Corps volunteer whose 2nd platoon patrolled the area around the school, put it more simply: “For months, we’ve been trying to win over the people of this town — and we haven’t produced anything tangible. They are sitting on the fence, waiting to see which side is stronger. We haven’t had much luck with development projects. We haven’t proved that we can take care of them. Reopening the school would be our first real win.”

It was unimaginable that the higher-ups — those in “echelons above reality,” as Ellis liked to say — would actually stop the Pir Mohammed project. He figured it would be delayed a day or two and decided to move ahead with his plan.

Read the whole article, it’s worth your time, and is a clear depiction of the challenges the U.S. military, including those they bring on themselves.

Now that we’re on the subject, I just want to remind readers of the arguments I made for counterinsurgency last year. In recent days I’ve been essentially accused of being a shill for the administration who would have blindly saluted and supported whatever the administration decided.

Wrong. While I certainly applaud the administration’s process in arriving at its policy, I’m on record as calling for a counterinsurgency strategy before the administration announced its plan. In an October column, Will Marshall and I made the case that administration should hew closely to the counterinsurgency strategy outlined by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, during a period when our Afghanistan strategy was very much up in the air.

When the counterinsurgency strategy was announced, I offered my praise for what I thought was the right call, calling it our “best choice to offer definitive and lasting security,” even as I warned that it was “hardly a guaranteed success.” If the administration had taken a different route, I probably would have offered my criticism, even as I praised the careful and thoughtful process behind it. I’d just like to think that good process tends to lead to good policy – and I think that’s what happened here.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/soldiersmediacenter/ / CC BY 2.0

What Will Our Cybersecurity Apparatus Look Like?

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As I write, Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander is giving Senate testimony about why he’s qualified to lead Department of Defense’s new Cyber Command. He undoubtedly fits the bill and is probably about the most qualified senior-level military man in the country to serve in this capacity. He’s led the National Security Agency for the last four and half years, and has 35 years of experience within the ranks of Army Intelligence.

That’s why the issue isn’t with Lt. Gen Alexander’s qualifications, but whether the structure of the whole cyber defense enterprise is the right one. The Pentagon stands up its new Cyber Command to coordinate all cyber activities under its umbrella, but he’ll also remain in his job at the NSA. He believes his new organizational mission is to integrate:

[C]yberspace operations and synchronizing warfighting effects across the global security environment; providing support to civil authorities and international partners; directing global information grid operations and defense; executing full-spectrum military cyberspace operations; serving as the focal point for deconfliction of DOD offensive cyberspace operations; providing improved shared situational awareness of cyberspace operations, including indications and warning.

… which sure sounds a lot like his old organizational mission at Ft. Meade.

And Alexander is christened with his new duties as Noah Shachtman has actually proposed to separate powers within the cyber community:

There’s the signals-intelligence directorate, the Big Brothers who, it is said, can tap into any electronic communication. And there’s the information-assurance directorate, the cybersecurity nerds who make sure our government’s computers and telecommunications systems are hacker- and eavesdropper-free. In other words, there’s a locked-down spy division and a relatively open geek division. The problem is, their goals are often in opposition. One team wants to exploit software holes; the other wants to repair them. This has created a conflict — especially when it comes to working with outsiders in need of the NSA’s assistance. Fortunately, there’s a relatively simple solution: We should break up the NSA.

While it would seem that these two actions — elevating the NSA’s director to oversee the whole kit-and-caboodle while keeping him entrenched in his old job and thus creating overlapping bureaucracies — are working at cross-purposes, it’s quite possible that perhaps we’re moving in that direction, albeit in measured fashion.

Sounds crazy? Think of it this way — in order to separate the NSA’s directorates, there would have to be political breathing space within the cyberspy bureaucracy to break them up. So instead of appearing like Alexander is getting a demotion by only controlling whichever half his old agency he ends up with, he gets a new title and the current directorate heads get elevated to new positions.

This surely isn’t gospel, but remains an interesting possibility.