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.

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.

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

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.

For the last decade, leaders from both parties have agreed that the gravest danger facing the U.S. is the threat of the use of a nuclear bomb by a terrorist group or rogue state. But while nonproliferation has long been the provenance of governments, there is a clear role for industry to play as well.

Many of the components used to build a nuclear bomb — including the technology to create a uranium enrichment program — are inherently dual-use. This means that the same technology used for innocuous industrial purposes can also be used to help build a nuclear weapon. Some of these items, such as high-quality steel and bearings for centrifuges, are now well-known to be dual-use. Others, such as “triggered spark gaps” or very high-speed switches with medical purposes, are somewhat less well-known.

The U.S. and other countries use a series of restrictions on the export of certain goods — very high-speed computers, for example — to prevent adversaries from developing better weapons. But too often, both state and industry are slow to realize the dual-use nature of some products. When Iran started its centrifuge program, it was unable to acquire the ultra-high grade maraging steel typically used to build the rotors due to export controls. Instead, it purchased the highest quality steel it could buy — and that turned out to be good enough.

Further, there is little to no sharing of information among companies about who is trying to purchase what from whom. While some individual companies have internal compliance programs, a broader approach is required to share information among companies and industries. The sharing of information would ultimately prevent those who shouldn’t have access to such items from shopping around to find a company that will sell the technology with little concern for who the final customer may be. Some claim that Iran was able to use a series of front companies to eventually purchase the maraging steel that it needed, in addition to the “good enough” stuff.

Fixing this problem will not be easy. Companies exist to generate profit, and denying potential customers never makes shareholders happy. And one could imagine that some customers would lodge discrimination complaints. Further, information about sales, both actual and potential, is naturally considered commercial proprietary information.

How can this problem be solved? Two models spring to mind. In the first, government collects and analyzes information from applications for export licenses. In the second, industry leads the effort. From my perspective, the latter is preferable.

Government leadership on this problem would probably raise more concerns than it would solve: Which government would collect the data? How would governments share data? How would government gain access to information not contained in export license applications — especially for rejected sales? And how could industry be guaranteed that commercial secrets would not be leaked?

Having industry lead this effort would solve many of these problems. For starters, companies know about sales in progress and about sales denied, so they would be able to identify problems earlier. Industry also already collects much of this data to track sales, identify future markets and stay ahead of the competition. And it’s possible to come up with schemes where the information is not shared between companies until it’s needed. This would also reduce the role and intrusiveness of government, while probably being a cheaper regulatory regime than a government-run one.

Granted, industry leadership would also raise some questions — Who would fund the effort? How would information be protected? — but an important model already exists: Las Vegas casinos. This intensely competitive industry has learned how to share information about problem gamblers and cheaters between casinos in a way that helps them all earn more. No casino wants the competition to know how much profit it is making or how much money it is losing. But if an individual or a small group has found a way to beat the casinos and win large stakes, it helps all of the casinos to identify them and keep them from winning even more. What’s more, this is completely driven and funded by the industry, which realized that it could reduce losses through cooperation. Just as casinos can keep track of problem customers collectively, so can companies that supply dual-use materials.

The challenge, of course, is to convince those companies that they would serve themselves and their legitimate customers by working together to develop such an oversight system. After all, the promise of a nuclear-free world – a collective good – isn’t quite the same incentive as preventing cheaters from winning in your casino. While an industry-run regulatory system is the best solution, it may take the specter of an intrusive government regulatory scheme to spur companies to act in our shared interest and perhaps prevent the next Iran.

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

As the administration’s Nuclear Security Summit takes place in Washington this week, CNN has a new look at public opinion on a variety of issues related to nuclear weapons policy. And it’s safe to say that there is strong public support for what the President’s is proposing, if not always for the utopian-sounding goals he has articulated.

The latter problem is not new. In a May 2009 Democracy Corps survey that found remarkably strong support for Obama’s foreign policy and national security leadership — strong enough, in fact, to all but erase the traditional “national security gap” between Democrats and Republicans — Obama’s stated goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons got a decidedly lukewarm reaction, with 60 percent of Americans agreeing that “eliminating all nuclear weapons in the world is not realistic or good for America’s security.”

The DCorps question on this subject combined skepticism about a nuclear-weapons-free world with opposition to the idea on national security grounds. But CNN separates the two issues, and while respondents split right down the middle (with significant differences based on age, as over-50s who remember the Cold War tend to be negative) on the desirability of eliminating nuclear weapons, the percentage thinking this can actually happen has dropped from one-third in 1988 to one-fourth today.

But the big difference between May 2009 and today in terms of nuclear weapons policy is that the President is now taking concrete steps to address the “loose nukes” issue, to build-down nuclear weapons in conjunction with Russia, and to strengthen the international non-proliferation regime (in conjunction with efforts to isolate Iran’s defense of its nuclear program). And CNN finds strong support for Obama in every tangible area, even if his long-range goals still produce skepticism.

Most importantly, 70 percent of Americans — including 68 percent of independents and even 49 percent of Republicans — think the Senate should ratify the START Treaty with Russia, despite the predictable charges of “weakness” against Obama that have been emanating from many conservative circles since the treaty was signed. With a two-thirds Senate vote being required for ratification of the treaty, that’s probably just enough public support to keep Republican defense hard-liners (and/or obdurate Obama-haters) from launching a big Senate fight.

Moreover, by giving high-profile attention to the “loose nukes” issue, Obama is tapping a deep well of public anxiety about the possibility of nuclear terrorism. By a 7-to-1 margin, respondents to the CNN poll said “preventing terrorists from getting nuclear weapons” should be a high priority than “reducing nuclear weapons controlled by unfriendly countries.” One of the great ironies of the Bush years was that his administration constantly promoted fears about nuclear terrorism while making nuclear security a very low priority, even in bilateral relations with Russia. Dick Cheney, in particular, treated truculent and unilateral behavior towards potential adversaries as the sole means of preventing nuclear terrorism. By unpacking nuclear security from other issues and making it a focus of bilateral and multilateral initiatives, Obama is linking diplomacy with a national security concern that Americans care about passionately.

Public support for the president’s nuclear weapons policies will get its strongest test beginning next month with the beginning of a scheduled review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As Steven Clemons notes in an excellent overview of Obama’s “nuclear wizardry” at Politico today, that’s where the rubber will need to start meeting the road in terms of the administration’s efforts to round up the world community for an effective united front towards Iran’s nuclear program. But it’s clear the president’s nuclear initiatives are off to a very good start despite generic conservative carping.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.