Though Iranian negotiators accepted a nuclear deal this week in Vienna, we should contain our excitement until the mullahs back in Tehran approve of it and the thing is actually executed.

Here are the logistics: Iran is running low on uranium-derived fuel used in medical facilities (for MRIs, among other things). The country has enough uranium, but it’s not in the right form for medical uses and will run out before Tehran can enrich enough. Therefore, Iran had to look to the international community.

The U.S., France, and Russia proposed that Iran export the bulk of its uranium stock to Russia for enriching to the required medium-grade level (i.e., lower than weapons-grade). Russia then sends it on to France, where it will be fashioned it into fuel-plates.

On paper, the deal is a win-win: Iran gets its fuel but gives up most of its uranium. It will be almost another 12 months before it rebuilds its uranium stock to be able to attempt enriching it to weapons-grade (highly enriched). Or, as Joe Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund says, “If Iran ships the uranium out of the country, we’ve lengthened the fuse.”

Note that big “if.” There is the distinct possibility that Tehran is playing for time by negotiating this draft plan to decrease tensions in the short term by stringing along the U.S., France, and Russia. It’s always good to remember that actions speak louder than words.

However, Russia’s involvement in this process is critical — the Kremlin had appeared divided on whether to support sanctions against Iran. Now that Moscow has partial ownership of this deal, non-compliance by Tehran should anger Medvedev and Putin, who might be more disposed towards pressure.

Anne Applebaum theorizes in the Washington Post that NATO is essentially useless:

There is almost no sense anywhere that the war in Afghanistan is an international operation, or that the stakes and goals are international, or that the soldiers on the ground represent anything other than their own national flags and national armed forces. …

The fact is that the idea of “the West” has been fading for a long time on both sides of the Atlantic, as countless “whither-the-Alliance” seminars have been ritually observing for the past decade. But the consequences are now with us: NATO, though fighting its first war since its foundation, inspires nobody. The members of NATO feel no allegiance to the alliance, or to one another.

Questions surrounding NATO’s relevance have swirled as the war effort in Afghanistan has stalled. The alliance’s inability to keep members focused and actively engaged in the hard- and soft-power components of the mission is due to a variety of factors, not the least of which is the Bush administration’s neglectful resourcing of the conflict in favor of Operation Iraqi Freedom (a non-NATO mission, it should be noted). And this is something of a tragedy, given NATO’s invocation of Article V — stating an attack on one member is an attack on all members — in the wake of 9/11.

However, it is also true that NATO was not conceived to conduct an Afghan-type mission, particularly one lasting nine years. NATO was born, of course, as a security pact to face down the Soviet Union — a known quantity of traditional military capabilities. The potential threat coming from Afghanistan’s hinterland is a far cry from the Cuban missile crisis.

While Applebaum bemoans the “countless ‘whither-the-Alliance’ seminars,” I’d suggest that such discussions are necessary, if ill-timed. Instead, NATO’s Secretary General, ex-Norwegian Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, should squeeze out every possible commitment NATO countries are willing to devote to the Afghan mission in the short term, reminding them that attacks in the United Kingdom and Spain are compelling reasons to take the Obama administration’s refocused efforts there seriously.

When the Afghanistan mission is wrapped up in several years, NATO must sit down and decide when it is appropriate to fight, and what sort of resources its members are willing to commit.

My high school homeroom teacher, Mr. Grescovich, had some twenty homemade signs up in his classroom that extolled various life lessons. They were all home-made; and therein lay their charm. Since I went to what was then an all-boys school, Mr. G. got away with some mild profanity with which the Jesuits took no issue.

My favorite was, “When you ASSUME, you make an ‘ASS’ out of ‘U’ and ‘ME'”.

Such is today’s debate on Afghanistan. Plenty of assumptions are flying around, and the intelligentsia class is debating which to follow, and which to discount.

Richard Haass, the respected President of the Council on Foreign Relations, made a dangerous one over the weekend in a Washington Post editorial:

Al-Qaeda does not require Afghan real estate to constitute a regional or global threat. Terrorists gravitate to areas of least resistance; if they cannot use Afghanistan, they will use countries such as Yemen or Somalia, as in fact they already are.

It’s a mistake to assume that al Qaeda – the only group that ever had both the intent and capability of conducting a massive attack against the United States – has perfect mobility to just pick up and move from the AF/PAK border region to Somalia, Yemen, or Kalamazoo. It’s not that easy.

Al Qaeda is ensconced in that region and will remain so. It’s true that the group is much weakened from previous incarnations due to the ongoing NATO/Afghan offensive. But weakness doesn’t increase mobility: if faced with the choice of: a) riding out the counterinsurgency while hoping to reconstitute itself in Afghanistan/Pakistan after a delay, and b) picking up and moving to Africa or the Saudi peninsula, then it isn’t even close.

In fact, the second option simply isn’t possible. Even if al Qaeda is limited to some 100 full-time fighters, I’ve got a crisp $20 bill that says a good percentage would be captured trying to cross any significant international border (excluding, of course, the one between Afghanistan and Pakistan). Do you think UBL has a passport? Do you think he wants one?

What’s more, a hunk of usable real estate is a critical component to preparing a massive terrorist attack against the United States. While the London and Madrid bombings required nothing more than a few apartments in Leeds and Leganes respectively, the scale and complexity of those attacks – quite small in comparison to 9/11 – mirrored their planning environments. Furthermore, those groups had neither the intent nor capability to attack the United States.

But al Qaeda used to, and can again under the right circumstances. Free from the watchful eye of a competent local security service and protected under the veil of an amicable local government, a plot can be planned and rehearsed to increase its complexity, scale, and range by several orders of magnitude.

Therefore, Afghan real estate is a highly valuable commodity. And we need to permanently deny Al Qaeda access to it.

Michael Crowley expresses shock over a new Pew poll finding that 61% of Americans would favor military action to prevent Iranian development of nuclear weapons if other options fail.

I’m less shocked.  In the run-up to the Iraq War, the belief that Saddam Hussein had developed or was rapidly developing WMD, including nuclear weapons, was a pretty important factor in the robust majorities that favored military action.  And the discovery that he actually didn’t have WMD helped turn Americans against the war once his regime had been toppled.  Since evidence of an Iranian nuclear program is far better established, it’s not that shocking that Americans would react now as they did in 2002 and 2003.

But the other big thing that obviously turned Americans against the Iraq War was the immense cost and difficulty of consolidating the initial military victory.  In the Pew poll, respondents are asked if they favor “military action.”  It’s entirely possible that many of those answering “yes” are thinking in terms of some “surgical strike” that will destroy the nuclear program without a wider war.  Should negotiations and/or sanctions fail and we are actually contemplating military conflict with Iran, it will more than likely become apparent that eliminating Iran’s nuclear program will require an actual ground war aimed at regime change.  It’s at that point when the lessons of Iraq will truly begin to sink in, and support for “military action” will go down.  But we haven’t had that debate yet.

What the Pew poll does show is that Americans don’t seem to buy the argument that a nuclear Iran is deterrable (by the United States or by Israel), just as the regimes of Stalin and Mao–and for that matter, Hitler, who had stockpiles of chemical weapons he didn’t dare to use–were deterrable.  Perhaps that means that Americans, like many Israelis, view the current Iranian regime as uniquely dangerous, or at least frighteningly irrational, and capable of inviting unimaginable casualities in a nuclear exchange with Israel or the U.S.   Or perhaps they simply think a nuclear Iran would permanently destabilize the world’s most fragile region.  But deterrance is inevitably a matter of calculated risks.  Had it been possible during the Cold War to “take out” the Soviet Union’s or China’s nuclear capacity without a calamitous war, a majority of Americans would have supported doing just that.  Once the costs and risks of war with Iran are fully aired and debated, some Americans now favoring “military action” may decide that Iran is deterrable after all.

The fact remains that we haven’t yet had the full debate that will ultimately shape U.S. policy towards Iran.  In the meantime, it’s fine by me if Tehran reads about this Pew poll and reconsiders its current drive for nukes.

This item was crossposted at The New Republic.

Perhaps you’ve heard something about the case of Najibullah Zazi, the 24-year-old Afghan immigrant arrested in Colorado under suspicion of nearing the “execution phase” of a terrorist plot, purportedly against a target in New York City.

Then again, maybe you haven’t.

And that, my friends, isn’t a terrible thing. Zazi’s case illustrates the Obama administration’s shifting approach to protecting the country in a relatively discreet manner that doesn’t score political points with every arrest:

 

“The Zazi case was the first test of this administration being able to successfully uncover and deal with this type of threat in the United States,” a senior administration official said. “It demonstrated that we were able to successfully neutralize this threat, and to have insight into it, with existing statutory authorities, with the system as it currently operates.”

It’s also an approach that stands a better chance securing convictions of the arrested suspects. Ever heard this old joke: What does F.B.I. stand for? Famous But Incompetent.

That’s starting to change. It looks like the Bureau is a little less Famous And More Competent: Instead of preemptively arresting Zazi before getting the (court admissible) goods, the FBI has shown a more patient, discerning attitude in tracking him. They didn’t just jump in and arrest him the first day he popped on the radar, as they would have years hence. Rather, they watched him for several weeks, and as a result, the Bureau has better evidence of his movements, contacts, and terrorist activities.

And best of all:

 

With Zazi’s arrest, administration officials said they had a renewed sense of confidence that they could approach security threats in a new way. “The system probably worked the way it did before, but we made a conscious decision not to have a big press conference” about Zazi’s arrest, a senior official said. [emphasis mine]

We’re all safer and less paranoid because of it.

This looks like a trend. Back in May, the FBI arrested an unrelated cell of anti-Semities in Queens that looked to be on the verge of conducting attacks against Jewish targets in New York. Here too, the Bureau patiently waited to collect mounds of evidence, and as a result had better information to build a real court case.

Why the shift? Well, I’d like to take all the credit for this paper I wrote last year called “Getting Intelligence Reform Right”, but I’m not sure ALL the kudos go to lil’ ol’ me:

 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) — the agency charged with collecting intelligence on al Qaeda (and similar groups) within U.S. borders — remains mired in an organizational culture focused mainly on throwing bad guys in jail rather than preventing terrorist attacks in the first place. To a layman, the difference may seem inconsequential, but it drastically impedes the FBI from completing its counterterrorism mission.

As an aside, I’d like to make a final note in the wake of the Guantanamo debate. Congress just passed a non-binding resolution saying they didn’t want to dangerous inmates of Guantanamo to be transferred to detention facilities within the US. But Najibullah Zazi is as dangerous – if not moreso – than just about anyone housed in GTMO. Arrested in Colorado, Zazi will be tried and imprisoned on American soil.

So why can’t we do that with the GTMO detainees again? Paging Dr. Backbone … Dr. Backbone… you’re wanted on the House floor.

It’s no secret that Democrats are uneasy with sending more troops to Afghanistan.

But here’s something I found rather interesting – with or without troops, all Americans – Dems included – understand why we’re there, and their preference is to keep the country safe from another terrorist attack.

Here are some numbers:

A late September USAToday/Gallup poll says 50 percent of all Americans oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan (a number supported by just about every other poll), the figure is even higher amongst Democrats—62 percent.

But more importantly, all Americans place a premium on securing the country. Though not a majority, more Americans (47 percent) believe we are doing “the right thing” in Afghanistan than those (42 percent) who believe we shouldn’t be involved, according a late September New York Times/CBSNews poll.

Furthermore, 76 percent (including 76 percent of Democrats), according to a Pew Research Center poll, believe that if the Taliban took over Afghanistan again, it would constitute a “major threat” to American security. This is an important point for progressives, who should acknowledge that the Taliban made itself America’s sworn enemy when it gave shelter to al Qaeda in the first place, over the repeated protests and ineffectual warnings of the Clinton administration.

Finally, President Obama’s goals are sinking in with the country: a combined 72 percent, according to New York Times/CBSNews, believe the goal in Afghanistan is to defeat the Taliban and/or eliminate terrorism.

Americans may not like the strategy, but they know we’re in Afghanistan to keep America safe. Democrats should support the goal, not the strategy.

Conservatives absolutely love European missile defense. Why? My theory is that it brings them to a happy place, one full of stuffed dolls of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev and plastic Millennium Falcons. Yup, the European missile defense program was a vestige of the Cold War, when conservatives’ grip on national security strategy was tightest. Why else would the Bush administration have worked so hard to ensure that we had invested so much in the system that it’d be dang near impossible to back away?

So you’ll forgive them if they’re not exactly ready to give it up. Take House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), for example:

The Administration’s misguided action will cause our eastern European allies to question our commitment to their people and security, while heightening concerns in Israel. The European deployment is the only system that can protect both the U.S. and Europe against the common threat of an Iran armed with nuclear weapons and the capability to deliver them.

Doesn’t that sound more like 1989 than 2009? Yet Cantor’s statement is just the latest example of how out-of-touch Republicans are with America’s national security needs in the 21st century.

I know it can be counter-intuitive to claim that we’re making America stronger by removing a missile shield. At first glance, it doesn’t make obvious sense.

But it’s true: we’re actually improving our missile defense capabilities. Instead of the land-based, costly, behind-schedule, outmoded system in Europe, the Obama administration is set to emphasize a more accurate, cheaper, near-term, next wave sea-based system. When comparing the two, think of the choice this way:

If you were going to buy a security system for your house, would you rather spend $1000 on a system that catches 50 percent of the criminals and doesn’t start working until next year, or one that costs $800, catches 80 percent, and starts working next week?

The choice seems easy, right? Though greatly simplified, it isn’t terribly different from the obvious choice the White House just made upon the unanimous recommendation from the Defense establishment.

Diplomatically, the choice is also a win-win for a stronger American security. The conservative cabal doesn’t think so, excessively worrying about upsetting our Eastern European allies while groveling to Russia. Here’s House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH):

“Scrapping the US missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic does little more than empower Russia and Iran at the expense of our allies in Europe,”

Or does it? While it’s true that there may be some bruised egos in Warsaw and Prague, our relationships with our Eastern European allies are steadfast. How can I be so confident? Look no further that the NATO Treaty’s Article 5, which states that an attack on any one NATO member is an attack on all. That’s the very same article that NATO invoked in the wake of 9/11.

Even better, guess who’s a member of NATO? If you said Poland and the Czech Republic, then DING DING, Vanna has some lovely gifts for you.

Furthermore, moving missile defense to a sea-based element removes an unnecessary thorn in the side of US-Russia relations, one that endears Russia to our efforts when negotiating with Iran. Russia’s help isn’t guaranteed, but if it’s possible to generate Russian pressure on Iran while deploying a technically better missile defense system, then it’s a no-brainer.

Just like this entire situation: Conservatives need to wake up to the fact that the Cold War is over and America’s national security needs in 2009 are very different from just twenty years ago.

Crossposted from AllOurMight.com

A new Washington Post/ABC poll finds that 51 percent of Americans believe that the costs of fighting in Afghanistan outweigh the benefits. It’s a staggering number. Once you account for statical error, it’s safe to say that about half of this country has forgotten the reverberating costs of September 11, 2001.

First, it is vital that we remember why we’re in Afghanistan. While President Bush had a grand vision of bringing democracy and prosperity to the Afghan people, President Obama realized that Bush’s vision was impossible to achieve. President Obama has redefined America’s goals in the region, saying during the 2008 campaign that, “Our critical goal should be to make sure that the Taliban and al Qaida are routed and that they cannot project threats against us from that region.” Once he became Commander-in-Chief, Obama reiterated that approach:

I can articulate some very clear, minimal goals in Afghanistan, and that is that we make sure that it’s not a safe haven for al-Qaida, they are not able to launch attacks of the sort that happened on 9/11 against the American homeland or American interest.

In other words, our mission in Afghanistan is clearly linked to preventing the re-occurrence of a similar, massive terrorist attack.

With that in mind, it’s worth reviewing the costs of the 2001 attacks to remind the American people why we’re trying to prevent another one.

First, a few numbers:

• 2,973 individuals were killed in New York, at the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, PA.
• In the year following the attacks, the New York City Comptroller’s office estimated that 146,000 jobs were lost.
• In the year following the attacks, the New York City Comptroller’s office estimated that the total economic impact on the city was $94.8 billion, including personal wealth, lost wages, rebuilding costs, and others.
• In the three days after the attack, the Federal Reserve injected $300 billion into the economy in various forms. They were actions that were “essential to cushioning the terrorist effects on the economy.”
• The Congressional Research Service found long-term negative economic effects as per capital real income growth would slow.

It’s well-and-good to break down the attacks’ effect in cold, stark numbers, but it’s also worth remembering the price we paid in other ways:

• Recall the emotional trauma you – as someone possibly hundreds if not thousands of miles away with no direct connection to the tragedy – experienced to understand what happened and why?
• Remember how our key aspects of infrastructure were blocked? And that life didn’t return to normal for months?
• Remember how the Bush administration undertook highly questionable security measures like torture in the name of national security?
• Remember how the Bush administration quickly turned a moment that should have sponsored national unity into one that leaned heavily on the politics of fear?
• Or remember how the Bush administration pivoted off military action in Afghanistan to gin up ultimately dubious charges against Saddam Hussein of possessing weapons of mass destruction?

This is not an exhaustive list. Furthermore, I’m hardly saying that all of these outcomes will come to pass should another massive terrorist attack occur on American soil. For one, I believe President Obama owes his election to presenting a decidedly different version of national security from President Bush.

When Americans say that they don’t believe the costs of fighting in Afghanistan outweigh the benefits, I’d say this: Remember that we’re in Afghanistan to prevent another massive terrorist attack, and that the costs of those attacks were enormous to Americans’ lives, our economy, and our national identity.

Crossposted to AllOurMight.com