The wisdom of any application of military force will involve much more than the goals initially laid out and the resources initially applied to achieve those goals. Those initial conditions are only a snapshot in time of what is inevitably a dynamic process. History has repeatedly shown that overseas military endeavors have a way of becoming something much different from what they began as. History also has repeatedly shown that the dominant type of change is escalation to something bigger and costlier than originally intended, sometimes even to the point of expanding to blunders of tragic proportions.
Several processes, working together or independently, drive the process of escalation. Some of these processes are, considered in isolation, logical and reasonable. Some of them are rooted in universal human nature; some are more characteristically American.
The “Win the War” Objective. A distinctively American (and non-Clausewitzian) way of approaching the use of military force is to believe that if something is worth fighting for, then we ought to realize that we are “at war” and ought to do whatever it takes to “win” the war. This mindset has had a huge influence through the years on discourse in the United States about using the military instrument in foreign affairs, including in more recent years with a so-called “war on terror”. The attitude severs the use of force from all other calculations about the costs and benefits of using it in particular ways and particular circumstances. There thus is no limit to potential escalation as the sometimes elusive “win” is pursued.
Standard Procedures and the Military’s Operational Requirements. Military forces, for quite understandable reasons of operational security or effectiveness, insist that if they are called on to perform certain missions then they must be permitted to use certain minimal levels of forces, to put their troops in certain places, or to operate in certain other ways regardless of the political or diplomatic side-effects. Some of the classic and most consequential examples occurred at the onset of World War I, when mobilization schedules of armies helped to push statesmen into a much bigger armed confrontation than they wanted, and when German troops violated Belgian neutrality because that’s what a military plan called for. More recent U.S. military history has had many more modest examples of military requirements driving escalation, such as ground forces being needed to provide security for air bases. In the interest of force security, a remarkably large amount of firepower has sometimes been used in support of quite small objectives (such as the deposition and capture of Manuel Noriega in Panama in 1989).
Hoping That Just a Little More Will Do It. If a given level of force does not accomplish the declared objective, then an understandable and quite reasonable next question is whether a bit more force will be sufficient to do the trick. It may be logically sound to decide that it is worth trying some more force. The calculation of the moment weighs the marginal costs of doing so against the marginal benefits. The marginal cost of a slight escalation may be low, with the benefit being the chance of a significant breakthrough. But a series of individual decisions like this, while they may be individually justifiable, can result in escalation to total costs that are far out of proportion to any possible benefit. The U.S. escalation of the Vietnam War from 1965 to 1968 is an example.
One Objective Leads to Another. The nature of some objectives is such that if they are to be achieved—or as a consequence of being achieved—some other objective needs to be pursued as well. Or even if it does not really need to be pursued, it comes into play naturally and is not easily dismissed amid the momentum and fog of war. This is the process that often is given the namemission creep. An example is how Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, which began as an offensive to oust the Taliban, became a long-term nation-building effort.
Responding to the Adversary’s Escalation. It take two to tango and to make war. The adversary has many of these same reasons to escalate a conflict against us, and perhaps other reasons as well. When he does, we are apt to counter-escalate, not only for emotional reasons of revenge but also perhaps for more justifiable reasons of deterrence. This is the chief type of escalation that was the subject of much strategic doctrine developed during the Cold War.
Domestic Political Vulnerability. Statesmen do not make their decisions about military force in a political vacuum. They have domestic political flanks to protect. Mitigating charges of weakness or wimpiness is an added, and possibly even the principal, motivation to escalate the use of force against what is widely perceived as a threat.
The emerging military campaign against ISIS will not become another World War I or Vietnam War, but all of the above factors are seeds of escalation of that campaign, possibly to levels well above what either the Obama administration or its more hawkish critics are talking about. Some of the factors are already quite evidently in play. The absolutist vocabulary about being at war and having to win the war is very prevalent. The president already has been pushed by the political and rhetorical forces this vocabulary represents toward greater use of military force than he otherwise would have preferred. The dynamic of each side in the armed conflict escalating in response to the other side’s escalation also has already begun. A major stimulant for the American public’s alarmist and militant attitude toward ISIS was the group’s intentionally provocative videotaped killings—which the group described as retaliation for U.S. military strikes against it.
The military’s operational requirements are also starting to come into play as a mechanism of escalation, as we hear military experts telling us how air and ground operations really are inseparable, and how effective air strikes depend on reliable spotters on the ground. There also will no doubt be decision points ahead about whether a little more use of force will do the job, as the United States pursues the impossible to accomplish declared objective of “destroying” ISIS. Finally, the potential for mission creep is substantial, with unanswered questions about what will follow in the countries in conflict even if ISIS could be “destroyed.” Perhaps the most glaring such question is in Syria, where, given the anathema toward dealing with the Assad regime, it remains unclear what would fill any vacuum left by a destroyed ISIS—and what the United States can, should, or will do about it. The much-discussed “moderate” forces are far from constituting a credible answer to that question
There is significant danger of the campaign against ISIS and the costs it incurs getting far, far out of proportion to any threat the group poses to U.S. interests.
This article was first published by the National Interest and was reprinted here with permission.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
In an earlier article I discussed the apoplectic reaction by the United States to the Palestinian decision to send letters of accession to fifteen international conventions and treaties. This was condemned by Samantha Power in congressional testimony as a threat to Israel. Earlier, a White House spokesman had [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
In an earlier article I discussed the apoplectic reaction by the United States to the Palestinian decision to send letters of accession to fifteen international conventions and treaties. This was condemned by Samantha Power in congressional testimony as a threat to Israel. Earlier, a White House spokesman had equated this Palestinian move with Israeli settlement expansion and reneging on the agreed release of prisoners by calling both moves “unhelpful, unilateral actions.”
So let’s examine these unilateral steps by the Palestinians and what existential threat they pose to Israel. Here is the list of the fifteen conventions that the Palestinians want to become a party to:
1. The Four Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and the First Additional Protocol
2. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations
3. The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations
4. The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in armed conflict
5. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
6. The Hague Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its annex: Regulations Concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land
7. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
8. The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties
9. The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
10. The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
11. The United Nations Convention against Corruption
12. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
13. The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid
14. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
15. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
As you can see, the Palestinian applications do not affect Israel in any way. In fact, the Palestinians went out of their way to avoid impactful applications, such as to the Rome Statute (which would allow them to bring war crimes charges against Israel to the International Criminal Court) or to any United Nations bodies (which, thanks to Israel’s bought-and-paid-for US Congress would force the United States to suspend funding to any such bodies, as it did in response to UNESCO accepting the Palestinians in 2011).
If we want to really stretch our imaginations, we can come up with two things Israel might be concerned about. One is that by joining these conventions, Palestine looks a little bit more like a state. The second is that if Palestine is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, it helps to undermine Israel’s argument that the Conventions don’t apply to the Occupied Territories because after the 1948 war, they were merely occupied by other countries, rather than being truly part of a neighboring state.
But those imaginative leaps don’t amount to much, because even if they were Israel’s concerns — and they’re not — they’d be very minor. The accession to these conventions would be nothing next to the UN General Assembly’s decision to admit Palestine as a “non-member observer state” in November 2012. And no one who takes international law seriously buys Israeli arguments that the Geneva Conventions don’t apply to the Occupied Territories.
No, Israel’s concerns are that the Palestinians took an action that Israel did not agree to, and that the action they took is a reminder that the Palestinians can, any time they wish to, apply for accession to the Rome Statute, which Israel clearly fears.
There’s a real irony in the Israeli and US reactions. Ethically, and as a way to take some sort of action, the Palestinian decision is beyond reproach. But strategically, the particular conventions they applied to could cause some problems for them. The fact is, the Palestinian Authority (PA), from its inception, has had major problems with human rights. As attorney Darryl Li explains, “Many of the human rights agreements Abbas signed have monitoring mechanisms whereby committees of experts monitor state compliance through periodically holding hearings and issuing reports.” Israel, which has never been concerned about hypocrisy, will no doubt use such reports to attack the PA while condemning the same bodies when they issue reports critical of themselves.
That aside, the real issue here is that the United States is criticizing and threatening the Palestinian Authority for signing conventions committing them to international law, protecting human and civil rights, and agreeing to diplomatic norms. At the same time, Israel reneges on its commitments to the US, expands settlements and threatens to withhold tax monies from the Palestinians that Israel is not legally entitled to control, and the US expresses mild displeasure but threatens absolutely no action in response.
All of us who have followed this conflict for any length of time have likely become jaded by the US double standard. That’s why it’s worthwhile to examine what’s happening when that double standard is this blatant. We need to remember how much of a problem it really is.
Photo: US Secretary of State John Kerry and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas shake hands before a meeting in Paris, France, on February 19, 2014. Credit: State Department/Public Domain
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
There are many false clichés about the Israel-Palestine conflict. There are also some very true ones, though these are heard less frequently. Perhaps the most profound of these was proven once again this week: the United States is incapable of playing a positive role in this arena.
There is [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
There are many false clichés about the Israel-Palestine conflict. There are also some very true ones, though these are heard less frequently. Perhaps the most profound of these was proven once again this week: the United States is incapable of playing a positive role in this arena.
There is nothing about that statement that should be controversial. A decades-long line of US politicians and diplomats have spoken of the need to resolve this conflict. In recent years, these statements have often been accompanied by an acknowledgment of the need for “Palestinian self-determination.” But Israel is the one country, among all of the world’s nations, of whom those very same leaders speak in terms of an “unbreakable bond,” a country between whose policies and ours there “is no daylight.”
Let’s say my brother gets in a dispute with someone else, perhaps even someone I am acquainted with. Would anyone think that I would be the appropriate person to mediate that conflict? If my brother also had a lot more money and influence in the conflict, and therefore a fair mediation required a broker who was willing to pressure my brother into compromise because, right or wrong, he does not have incentive to do so, am I the right person for that job?
Of course that would be absurd, yet that is exactly what has been expected of the United States. The comparison goes even deeper because the political forces in the United States, as my father would do in this scenario, exert personal pressure (familial and financial) favoring my brother. While being quite natural, this isn’t justice, and it’s a recipe for disaster, not resolution.
US Secretary of State John Kerry now says that the United States is going to “re-evaluate” its efforts for Israel-Palestine peace. But will that be an honest evaluation, one that asks the hard questions? Because after twenty years of failure, there is but one fundamental question: is the United States, given its self-imposed diplomatic parameters and its AIPAC-directed domestic political obstacles, capable of mediating this conflict?
We need to understand, when evaluating the Obama administration’s performance here, that, reality aside, it is perceived as the toughest on Israel since George H.W. Bush. And, to be sure, it worked harder to get small concessions from Israel than its predecessor in the George W. Bush administration. But for those who still don’t understand the extent to which US policy prioritizes Israeli preferences over basic Palestinian needs, this past week’s events should have made it clear. Indeed, it is because of that potential clarity that Israel has moved immediately to replace the facts with its own, demonstrably false, narrative.
A Clear US Failure
Let’s review the collapse of the Kerry Talks. Eight months after scoring his victory in getting Israel and the Palestinians back to talks, Kerry had nothing but increased acrimony between the two parties to show for it. For many weeks, both Israel and the Palestinians had tacitly recognized the futility and had directed their efforts toward jockeying for a position to emerge from the inevitable collapse of talks as the more reasonable side. As the date that had been designated for the fourth and final release of 26 long-time Palestinian prisoners approached, Israel began to signal it would not follow through on its agreement to let them go. And Kerry’s frank incompetence started to become even more apparent.
Israel had been saying for weeks that the last batch of prisoners included Palestinian citizens of Israel whom they had not agreed to release. It is unclear exactly what happened here, but Kerry gave no indication that Israel was not being honest about that claim. The picture that emerged was that Israel agreed to the 104 prisoners being released but not necessarily to these specific ones, who, as citizens of Israel, do fall into a different category. Rather than clarify, it looks like Kerry simply assured Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that he’d convince the Israelis to get it done. If that is what happened, it indicates a serious lack of understanding on Kerry’s part of the difference the Israeli status of those prisoners made in Israel. It would mean that the US secretary of state was woefully ill-suited to this task.
Had Kerry bridged this gap, it might have been enough to move the prisoner release forward. This was the objection Israel started with. But by March 29, the date designated for the last prisoner release, Israel, certainly with US agreement, shifted gears and made the release contingent on the Palestinians committing to continuing the talks for another twenty months. This sat well with Kerry, since at this point, all he was really after was continuing the talks. Any goals of substance had long since evaporated.
Seeing that the Palestinians were not going to agree to this arrangement, Kerry tried to get Israel to sweeten the deal with a phony limitation on settlement construction that committed Israel to nothing at all and guaranteed accelerated settlement expansion in the Jerusalem area, and the freeing of 400 additional prisoners of Israel’s choosing which would have almost certainly meant freeing thieves and other common criminals whom the Palestinians would not necessarily even want to give back. In exchange for this Israeli “largesse” not only would the talks be extended, but the US would give Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu a massive political plum to please his right-wing: the freeing of convicted US spy Jonathan Pollard.
Kerry secured Netanyahu’s agreement then started to show the Palestinians this deal he had worked out with Israel and wanted them to accept. He never got that far, because that was when the Palestinians finally said “enough” and began applying for membership in numerous international bodies, as is their right.
When Kerry left the region in a huff, he blamed both sides for taking “unhelpful” and “unilateral” steps. That, in itself, is an inaccurate description of a collapse that was largely engineered by Israel. But it was clear that the Obama administration was planning to go further. The US Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, expressed the administration view clearly in her testimony before a House of Representatives subcommittee hearing on UN funding.
“On the Palestinian question, it just would underscore that we will oppose attempts at upgrades in status anywhere,” Power testified. “The [International Criminal Court] is, of course, something that we have been absolutely adamant about. Secretary Kerry has made it very, very clear to the Palestinians, as has the president, I mean, this [the Palestinians joining the ICC and bringing cases against Israel] is something that really poses a profound threat to Israel. It is not a unilateral action that will be anything other than devastating to the peace process…”
So it is either the Palestinians’ fault for threatening to hold Israel accountable for its actions in the international legal system or it’s both sides’ fault. No administration official has singled out Israel for its actions as they have the Palestinians, despite the fact that the Palestinians were acting on their rights which they had only agreed to hold off on as long as Israel lived up to its commitments and kept the talks going. It was Israel, not the Palestinians who reneged, and while the United States is well aware of this, they won’t say it.
Instead, US officials are helping clean Netanyahu’s image by shifting the blame for the announcement of new settlement units to Housing Minister Uri Ariel. Ariel, of the Jewish Home party, which is a right-wing rival of Likud, certainly seized an opportunity to torpedo any peace talks, in line with his views and his party’s policies. But the idea that this was done behind Netanyahu’s back is absurd. Netanyahu has offered no rebuke of Ariel, nor has he distanced himself at all from the announcement of the new settlement units or the timing of the announcement. Given that Kerry had made an emergency trip to the region just at that time, even most of the right-wing would not have had a problem with Netanyahu putting the new buildings on hold for a while. No, this was not Ariel’s initiative. It was Netanyahu’s.
Where to now: Israel
The Palestinians applied to fifteen international bodies. But the ones they chose to apply to pose no threat to Israel. Indeed, if anything, the choices they made, which largely consist of various human rights conventions, serve to make the Palestinian Authority (PA), not Israel, more accountable. The PA made a point of not applying to the International Criminal Court, which is Israel’s chief concern. The applications they made only moderately upgrade the Palestinians’ status, acquired over a year ago when they won admission to the UN General Assembly as a non-member observer state. The applications are, certainly, a threat that they will do more if things keep going as they have been.
Israel has declared that it will punish the Palestinians, though so far, aside from officially cancelling the last prisoner release, the only specific measure they have announced is the withdrawal of a permit for a West Bank telecommunications company to start building its wireless infrastructure in Gaza. There will likely be more measures soon. But the telling point is the absolute absence in Israel of any criticism of Netanyahu for the collapse of the talks.
The parties in the governing coalition that were supposed to hold Netanyahu to the peace track, Yesh Atid and HaTnuah, have been unwavering in their support of Netanyahu since the talks collapsed. The major opposition parties, particularly Labor and Shas, have either been silent or offered measured support to Netanyahu. It is clear that Netanyahu faces no pressure to modify his position.
This tells us that Israel is going to continue on its present course. It leaves little doubt that Netanyahu is perfectly comfortable with Kerry simply giving up and turning his attention to other matters. And why shouldn’t he feel that way? Congress remains locked into mindless obedience to any and all Israeli actions, and the Obama administration has made it clear it is not going to expend the political capital necessary to bring about any changes.
Where to now: Palestine
Now that Abbas has finally reached the point where he could not accept another one-sided US proposal, he needs to consider his options. He has thrown down a gauntlet with his applications to the international bodies. The message: Palestine will take full advantage of its rights if Israel remains unwilling to negotiate in a spirit of compromise that acknowledges the legitimacy of Palestinian claims. Remember that the Palestinians have surrendered 78% of Palestine, accepted the principle that Jerusalem will be shared and acknowledged that the implementation of refugee rights would be negotiable and considerate of Israel’s demographic needs.
Abbas absolutely cannot be seen to be bluffing. If Israel does not change its stance, he must apply to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for recognition of Palestine and begin bringing war crimes cases there. There is a reason Ambassador Power considers this a real threat to Israel. The United States will indeed shield Israeli leaders from imprisonment if they are found guilty by the ICC, but Israeli leaders will find themselves unable to travel to Europe, which, despite US largesse, is by far Israel’s biggest trading partner. That matters, a lot.
Abbas must be willing to follow through, even if he is unlikely to be around for the endgame. Israel would certainly respond harshly to such actions, and the PA is not going to survive that kind of Israeli action. That’s why Abbas will be sorely tempted to find another way. But, as we’ve already seen, popular pressure is beginning to boil in the West Bank.
Where to now?
The breakdown of these talks is a turning point. Yes, there will be desperate cries for another “last chance” for the Oslo-based two-state solution, but there is a growing realization that this is now a pipe dream. The United States will likely continue for some time to play the same role it has for twenty years, but if this round generated miniscule hope, future attempts will be met with virtually absolute cynicism.
The politics of all of this is going to move farther away from Washington, although the pull from Congress will slow the process. But even the bought and paid for Congress won’t be able to stop it. Europe will be forced to take more actions, and Israel is going to be increasingly isolated. The parameters are becoming more fluid and, in a departure from the Oslo years, the new ones are going to be dictated by events in Israel and the Palestinian Territories more than in Washington.
The smart thing for Washington to do is to reset the process, bring together real experts — rather than AIPAC-endorsed lawyers for Israel like Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross and David Makovsky — with leaders from Israel, Palestine, Europe and the Arab world and start over. There may be a way to find a formulation, whether one state or two, that justly addresses Palestinian rights as well as Israeli ones, but it must start with admitting that the Oslo process is dead. Continuing self-deception, whether from right-wingers like Netanyahu who gamed the system, or well-meaning centrists like J Street who staked their existence on the vain hope that this process, ill-formed at birth, could ever succeed, must be treated now like the threat to any progress that it is.
Photo: US Secretary of State John Kerry leaves US Ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro behind as he ends his failed trip to Israel. Credit: State Department
]]>Turnover in top US foreign policy and national security jobs can often be a “good thing” — for the nation and the world. New brooms at least start out with a different look at the world, its problems, challenges to the United States, and choices about what to do.
This also [...]]]>
Turnover in top US foreign policy and national security jobs can often be a “good thing” — for the nation and the world. New brooms at least start out with a different look at the world, its problems, challenges to the United States, and choices about what to do.
This also often happens when the presidency changes, though that time is also fraught with the downside of newness — what in Washington jargon is sometimes referred to as the need first to find one’s way to the washroom, in addition to getting to know and adjust to one’s new colleagues.
The foreign policies of those leaving office (especially if the party in control of the presidency also changes) are remembered as almost universally bad — the partisan spin; though within months, the old gang is understood to have not got things all that wrong, given the (necessarily) limited latitude that the US has, even as the world’s most powerful country.
Change at the top in the midst of an administration is a different thing. Even if a new team has a will to change things — note, for instance, Secretary of State John Kerry’s hyperactive efforts to restart talks between Israel and the Palestinians — existing policies and practices already have momentum, or a quality of bureaucratic inertia and integration within Washington politics.
At the same time, however, members of the new team have an advantage in that they have likely already been working together, developing their relationships and learning how the government “really works.”
Thus it is with Susan Rice’s moving from her position as US Ambassador to the United Nations to National Security Advisor in the White House and her replacement, from the current National Security Council staff, Samantha Power. Both have the critical quality of lengthy (and trusted) associations with President Obama, one of the most invaluable “coins of the realm” in Washington power politics and position.
Instant commentary has largely focused on the foreign policy activism of both officials newly at the top. And that has apparently been true — up until now.
In 2011, both were reportedly in the camp, along with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, credited with tipping the president over the edge into supporting Britain and France in their efforts to topple Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi.
While that account is most likely exaggerated, the key point is that Rice/Power’s activism for “humanitarian interventions,” as several commentators have opined, will be sharply constrained by a more basic fact of life: Obama has made clear he is not about to trade his ending US military engagement in Iraq and sharply reducing it in Afghanistan for more wars in the Middle East.
Thus Obama has resisted pressures from US hawks and Israel to make war on Iran, though he has given hostages to fortune by accepting “red lines,” of some indefinite nature, along with his continued claims that “all options are on the table”.
In other words, he has made a critical war-peace decision conditional on Iranian and Israeli restraint — never a good place for a US president to be — but so far his bet (a handful of aces or bluffing with a busted flush) has not been called.
Obama has also been so reluctant to get the US more deeply engaged in the Syrian civil war that it is unlikely that the change in personnel will produce a decisive difference. At the margins, perhaps — and in those details lurk a hundred devils.
It’s also important to understand what Obama has been about up until now. It appears, at least to this writer, that he sees his legacy as domestic; summarized in two words: economy and equality.
This is quite an agenda and one that, if considerably advanced, would mark him as a major figure in US history, a legitimate legatee of FDR and LBJ. This inference contains a lesson for engagement abroad, however: Obama should accomplish what the US has to do, but keep this from interfering with the pursuit of his domestic agenda.
This can include accomplishing abroad tasks critical to that purpose, such as working to restore confidence in the global financial system, launching a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and recognizing the growth of the Economic Beasts of Asia: China, the Greater, and India, the Lesser.
Hence the “pivot” to Asia slogan, or the less-colorful, “rebalancing”. But so far there’s only slogans with limited policy substance and certainly no coherence across the different instruments of power and influence and US domestic fiefdoms.
Keeping the world from interfering unduly with Obama’s own “rebalancing” or primary attention to his domestic agenda (which, on the economic side, is actually a demand, given the mess he was handed in 2009) — was arguably the principal job of the foreign policy team for the First Term.
Tom Donilon, the outgoing National Security Advisor, was not a foreign policy mastermind, but in the Obama scheme of things he didn’t need to be.
Helping Obama with the running down of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, making sure that two more didn’t begin, maintaining a pretty tight hold on policy overall, and keeping foreign policy to the extent possible out of the 2012 presidential campaign, Donilon did his job.
But trying to put the world “on hold” has now run its course.
For more than two decades, the United States has in effect been eating its seed corn in terms of strategic assessment, thought and planning for the post-Cold War world.
Following George H.W. Bush’s two signal foreign policy achievements of wrapping up the Cold War in Europe (as well as setting the basis, followed by Bill Clinton, for writing finis to the European Civil War of 1870-1991) and showing that the US could and would use its unmatched and unmatchable military power to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991, the US has been acting as though its great reserves of power and influence can substitute for thinking about a truly new construction of global relationships.
While there has been an attempt to understand that, in the new world, working with others is absolutely necessary, along with sharing the right to make the Big Decisions and melding effectively military, diplomatic and economic instruments, not much has been done to build on that basis.
Iraq and Afghanistan have been major cases in point. While “kinetic” power has largely done its job, the work of economic and political development has largely failed.
And in Afghanistan, not long after the 2014 end of the lead role for Western forces, the world’s verdict is likely to be — both there and in much-more-important Pakistan — Mission Not-Accomplished.
Much can be said about the various tasks that Susan Rice will now assume in the White House, but nowhere with more immediate importance than in regard to the Middle East (and Southwest Asia).
There, three administrations in a row have not managed to forge an integrated approach and strategy, but have tended to see the bits and pieces of the region from North Africa to the Hindu Kush as just that — bits and pieces.
As much as anything else, domestic politics has driven much of US policy in the region, in particular the US part of the long-running confrontation with Iran, and there is no indication that this will change.
The US still has not been willing to put “all options on the table” by recognizing that the legitimate security needs of three counties — the US, Israel, and Iran — all need to be considered.
The failure to create a viable strategy toward Iran and its nuclear program, short of the president’s hand being called at some point regarding military attack, was underscored this past week when he signed an executive order further ratcheting up sanctions.
He did this a mere 10 days before the Iranian presidential elections on June 14th.
If someone in Washington were trying to think up a way to ensure that the worst of the worst will be elected — to the extent we could have any impact — it would be hard to think of a more effective tactic.
(Consider, for instance, how the US electorate would have responded if, say, China or Russia had rattled sabers in 2008 just when “dovish” Barack Obama was running against “hawkish” John McCain).
Then there is Syria, in civil war, with a rolling civil war across the region, where the US has got itself smack in the middle of age-old competitions and hatreds between Sunnis and Shi’as, and where some of America’s closest Sunni allies are deeply involved in supplying weapons (and ideologies bitterly and aggressively hostile to the West) to the so-called rebels.
And at least in public, there is not even a hint that the administration has been planning what it will do if Syria’s Bashar al-Assad is removed from power…or if he stays.
In either event, there will be another product of the ripples of the religious and geopolitical rivalries that began spreading across the region when the US dropped a great big bolder on Iraq in 2003, thus ending three centuries of minority Sunni dominance over the majority Shi’as, and thus leading Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and others to try righting the region’s Sunni-Shi’a balance through Syrian regime change.
When it comes to what the new National Security Advisor should do, the first step is obvious: Ms. Rice should assess the NSC team she is inheriting and ensure she has first-rate players in terms of capacity to engage in strategic thinking and relate systematically the world’s apples to its oranges.
Whether Susan Rice is herself a top-rate strategic thinker and leader, able to do what has to be done in terms of analysis and craft, is not yet clear; we must hope that she will prove to have these skills.
In any event, she needs to get the best people possible for her Senior Staff, where it is a great stretch of the imagination to argue that the Obama Administration has either sought out the best, from within and without the government, or employed them effectively.
This is at a time when the NSC staff has become bloated to being the largest ever: effective, perhaps to meet the Donilon task of having enough people-power to assert control over the rest of the foreign policy apparatus, but an oxymoron in regard to serious strategic thinking.
The rule of thumb (demonstrated when Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft were National Security Advisors) is that capacity for strategic analysis, thought, planning and policy tends to exist in inverse proportion to the number of people involved in doing it.
In sum, shifts in global power and influence mean that we must learn to think our way toward the future.
In particular, as has happened to every US president since Harry Truman, the Middle East demands that the president and his team get it right or suffer unfortunate consequences.
As the top official closest to the president, both in physical distance (a few yards) and in prior association, this buck stops with Susan Rice.
]]>via IPS News
In a reshuffle of top foreign policy posts in his second term, U.S. President Barack Obama Wednesday announced that his controversial and blunt-spoken U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, will replace Tom Donilon as his national security adviser.
He also announced that another longtime aide on the [...]]]>
via IPS News
In a reshuffle of top foreign policy posts in his second term, U.S. President Barack Obama Wednesday announced that his controversial and blunt-spoken U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, will replace Tom Donilon as his national security adviser.
He also announced that another longtime aide on the National Security Council staff who began working with Obama when he was still a freshman senator from Illinois, Samantha Power, will replace Rice as Washington’s U.N. envoy, a cabinet position.
The moves, which had been anticipated but whose precise timing was uncertain, are considered unlikely to signal major changes in U.S. policy, despite the fact that both Power and Rice have been associated with the more-interventionist tendencies within the Democratic Party.
“I don’t think this change in personnel marks a turning point in policy,” said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“From the get-go, foreign policy under Obama has been run from the (White House) Oval Office, and Obama’s brain trust has included primarily a small inner circle of folks that cut their teeth on the (2008 presidential) campaign. Susan Rice and Samantha Power have been part of that inner circle all along.”
“I see the move as a confident second-term president promoting people who will be more visible,” noted Heather Hurlburt, director of the National Security Network (NSN), a think tank considered close to the administration.
“Donilon’s great strength was his managerial skill and willingness to work behind the scenes. Rice’s public persona is one of her great strengths, and I’m sure the White House will use it.”
“Power will be one of the people most knowledgeable about the UN that the U.S. has ever sent to represent us there, and that’s quite a statement about the U.S. commitment to that organisation’s potential,” she added, noting that Power’s knowledge is based on her years as a journalist and author covering the world body and some of its most controversial and difficult missions.
Late last year, Rice was considered Obama’s first choice to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state but withdrew from consideration after Republicans accused her of deliberately misleading the public about events surrounding the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other U.S. personnel in last September in Benghazi.
She will be Obama’s third national security adviser. Unlike secretary of state or U.N. ambassador, the national security adviser is not subject to Senate confirmation.
Unlike Rice, Donilon, or Power, the first national security, Gen. James Jones (ret.), was never close to Obama and tended to see his work primarily as coordinating the advice of the other top national-security officials, notably the secretaries of defence and state and the director of national intelligence.
After two years, Donilon, Jones’ deputy and a Democratic political heavyweight, replaced him, moving quickly to concentrate foreign policy making in the White House and greatly increasing the size and workload of the NSC staff.
A top aide to Secretary of State Warren Christopher during President Bill Clinton’s first term, Donilon is given credit for a number of major strategic initiatives – most recently, promoting this week’s informal and potentially historic California summit between Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Indeed, one prominent NSC historian, David Rothkopf, wrote on foreignpolicy.com Wednesday that his “greatest contribution was his strategic mindset” that led to “…a restoration of balance to the U.S. national security agenda, a move away from the conflict-dominated view of the years right after 9/11 to one that is more global and has room to consider opportunities, new alliances, and new challenges more effectively.”
If Donilon was more inclined to the more non-interventionist stance of his mentor, Christopher, Rice is best seen as the protégée of Clinton’s second-term and more-interventionist Madeleine Albright whom she has known since childhood and served as assistant secretary of state for African Affairs.
Haunted by Washington’s refusal to act during the 1994 Rwandan genocide (when she worked on Clinton’s NSC), Rice, as well as Power, has been a leading exponent of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the doctrine that the international community has a responsibility to intervene in order to prevent genocide or mass atrocities if the otherwise sovereign state is unwilling or unable to do so.
“Power and Rice are smart, tough, and experienced. But both are firmly in the interventionist consensus that has guided U.S. foreign policy for many years, and neither is going to go outside the mainstream on any controversial issues,” Stephen Walt, a prominent international-relations professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, told IPS in an email message.
Citing R2P, both Rice and Power reportedly played an important role in persuading Obama to intervene in the civil war in Libya, although, significantly, Rice sided with Donilon against other cabinet officials and CIA director Gen. David Petraeus who recommended a limited military intervention on behalf of rebels in the Syrian civil war late last year, according to numerous published reports.
“Everyone knows there have been disagreements on the team, and the person who resolves them is Barack Hussein Obama. People debate this as if Obama had no opinions on these issues,” noted Hurlburt. “But second-term presidents evolve and get more active (in foreign policy). If that happens, that will be primarily because Obama wants to go there.”
One area in which there could be a major difference is managerial. While concentrating power in the White House, Donilon, a high-priced lawyer outside government, consistently ensured that relevant cabinet secretaries were continually consulted and their policy recommendations presented to the president.
Known for driving his staff particularly hard and making little secret of his unhappiness if in his judgement they failed to perform, he also maintained a deliberately low profile and a carefully calculated demeanour.
While a loyal team player – and the graceful manner in which she withdrew from consideration as secretary of state gained wide admiration and no doubt clinched her claim to her new post – Rice is flamboyant and impulsive by comparison, particularly in her preference for blunt, if colourful — sometimes even scatological — language, a habit that many of her U.N. colleagues found off-putting or difficult to get used to.
“She can be quite charming and likeable, and she is awfully smart,” CFR’s emeritus president Leslie Gelb wrote in the Daily Beast Wednesday. “And unlike Donilon, she often rushes to judgment, and then digs in. She’ll have to learn to count to 100, I mean 1000, before making up her mind, and meantime, listen to different views carefully.” He also noted that “she has a temper that needs tempering.”
Indeed, some sources who asked not to be named predicted that she faced major challenges in working out collegial relationships with Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry – both of whom are also new to their jobs and would be expected to make life difficult for her if they felt she was hogging the media spotlight or failing to consult adequately with their departments in formulating options for the president.
“No shrinking violet is she,” one insider told IPS.
In that respect, according to Rothkopf, she could be greatly aided by Donilon’s former deputy and Obama’s new chief of staff, Denis McDonough, a foreign policy wonk in his own right and one of the very few people who are considered as personally close to Obama as Rice herself.
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