The recent burst of recriminations about what the U.S. intelligence community did or did not tell the president of the United States in advance about the rise of the extremist group sometimes called ISIS, and about associated events in Iraq, is only a variation on some well-established tendencies in Washington discourse. The tendency that in recent years has, of course, become especially strongly entrenched is that of couching any issue in the way that is best designed to bash one’s political opponents. For those determined to bash and frustrate Barack Obama at every turn, it is a tendency that trumps everything else. Thus we now have the curious circumstance of some of Mr. Obama’s Republican critics, who in other contexts would be at least as quick as anyone else to come down on U.S. intelligence agencies (and most other parts of the federal bureaucracy) like a ton of bricks, saying that the president got good information but failed to act on it. (Some critics, however, have tried to lower their cognitive dissonance by saying that “everyone” could see what was coming with ISIS.)
Relationships between the intelligence community and presidential administrations over the past few decades have not fallen into any particular pattern distinguishable by party. One of the best relationships was with the administration of the elder George Bush—perhaps not surprisingly, given that president’s prior experience as a Director of Central Intelligence under President Gerald Ford. Probably the worst was during the presidency of the younger George Bush, whose administration—in the course of selling the Iraq War—strove to discredit the intelligence community’s judgments that contradicted the administration’s assertions about an alliance between Iraq and al-Qaeda, pushed for public use of reporting about alleged weapons programs that the community did not consider credible, and ignored the community’s judgments about the likely mess in Iraq that would follow the ouster of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Relations also have varied under Democratic presidents. Mr. Obama, given the evidently deliberate and methodical way he weighs input, including from the civilian and military bureaucracy, before major national security decisions, probably has been one of the better users of intelligence, at least in the sense of paying attention to it. His remark on 60 Minutes that led to the accusations about ISIS, however, did sound like gratuitous blame-shifting.
One very longstanding and bipartisan tendency that this recent imbroglio has diluted (because the political motive to attack Obama is even stronger than political motives to attack intelligence agencies) is to assume that any apparently insufficient U.S. reaction to an untoward development overseas must be due to policymakers not being sufficiently informed, and this must be because intelligence services failed. It is remarkable how, when anything disturbing goes bump in the night overseas, the label “intelligence failure” gets quickly and automatically applied by those who have no basis whatever for knowing what the intelligence community did or did not say—in classified, intra-governmental channels—to policymakers.
The current case does demonstrate in undiluted form, however, several other recurrent tendencies, one of which is to affix the label “surprise” to certain events not so much because of the state of knowledge or understanding of those who make national security policy but more because we, the public—and the press and chattering class—were surprised. Or to be even more accurate, this often happens because those of us outside government weren’t paying much attention to the developments in question until something especially dramatic seized our attention, even though we actually had enough information about the possibilities that we should not have been surprised. Thus the dramatic gains by ISIS earlier this year have been labeled a “surprise” because a swift territorial advance and gruesome videotaped killings grabbed public attention.
Another tendency is to believe that if government is working properly, surprises shouldn’t happen. This belief disregards how much that is relevant to foreign policy and national security is unknowable, no matter how brilliant either an intelligence service or a policymaker may be. This is partly because of other countries and entities keeping secrets but even more so because some future events are inherently unpredictable—given that they involve decisions that others have not yet made, or social processes too complex or psychological mechanisms too fickle to model. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was referring to this epistemological reality in the comment that he made recently about the Iraqi army’s collapse and that the president erroneously characterized in his 60 Minutes interview. Clapper was not saying that the intelligence community messed up on this question; he instead was observing that this type of sudden loss of will in the heat of battle has always been unpredictable.
Yet another recurring tendency is to think that proper policy responses always flow from a good empirical understanding of the problem at hand, including the sort of information, analysis, and predictions that a well-functioning intelligence service might be expected to provide. In fact, proper responses often do not flow that way from an understanding of the problem. Often there are conflicting national interests at stake, there are serious costs and risks to possible responses, and the likely benefits of responses may not outweigh the likely costs. No matter how accurate a picture of ISIS the intelligence community may be providing to the president and his policy advisers, that picture is not likely to constitute a case for the United States to take more, rather than less, forceful action in Syria or Iraq. If President Obama is now taking more forceful measures in those places than he was earlier, it is neither because he is belatedly reacting to good intelligence nor because the intelligence community is belatedly getting its judgments right, but instead because he is responding to how the rest of us have decided that we are not just surprised but alarmed by ISIS.
This article was first published by the National Interest and was reprinted here with permission.
]]>by Emile Nakhleh
In a speech before the United Nations on Wednesday, President Barack Obama offered a rhetorically eloquent roadmap on how to fight the Islamic State (ISIL or ISIS) in Iraq and Syria. He called on Muslim youth to reject the extremist ideology of ISIS and al-Qaeda and work toward a more promising future. Obama repeated the mantra, which we heard from former President George W. Bush, that “the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam.”
The group that calls itself the Islamic State must be defeated, but is the counter-terrorism roadmap, which the president laid out in his 40-minute speech, sufficient to defeat the extremist ideology of ISIS, Boko Haram, or al-Qaeda? Despite American and Western efforts to degrade and defeat these deadly and blood-thirsty groups for almost two decades, radical groups continue to sprout in Sunni Muslim societies.
Obama also urged the Arab Muslim world to reject sectarian proxy wars, promote human rights, and empower their people, including women, to help move their societies forward. He again stated that the situation in Gaza and the West Bank is unsustainable and urged the international community to strive for the implementation of the two-state solution.
The president did not, however, adequately address Muslim youth in Western societies who could be susceptible for recruitment by ISIS, al-Qaeda, or other terrorist organizations.
Contradictions
Arab publics will likely see glaring inconsistencies in the president’s speech between his rhetoric and actual policies. They would most likely view much of what he said, especially his global counter-terrorism strategy against ISIS, as another version of America’s war on Islam. Arabs will also see much hypocrisy in the president’s speech on the issue of human rights and civil society.
Although fighting a perceived common enemy, it’s a sad spectacle to see the United States, a champion of human rights, liberty, and justice, cozy up to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Bahrain, serial violators of human rights and infamous practitioners of repression. It’s even more hypocritical when Arab citizens realize that some of these so-called partners have often spread an ideology not much different from what ISIS preaches.
These three regimes in particular have emasculated their civil society and engaged in illegal imprisonment, sham trials, and groundless convictions. They banned political parties—Islamic and secular—and silenced civil society institutions as well as prohibited peaceful protests.
The president praised the role of free press, yet al-Jazeera journalists are languishing in Egyptian jails without any viable justification. The Egyptian government continues to hold thousands of political prisoners without indictments or trials.
In addressing the youth in Muslim countries, Obama told them “Where a genuine civil society is allowed to flourish, then you can dramatically expand the alternatives to terror.”
What implications should Arab Muslim youth draw from the president’s invocation of the virtues of civil society when they see that genuine civil society is not “allowed to flourish” in their societies? Do Arab Muslim youth see real “alternatives to terror” when their regimes deny them the most basic human rights and freedoms?
The Sisi regime has illegally destroyed the Muslim Brotherhood, and Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have used the specter of ugly sectarianism to destroy the opposition. They openly and viciously engage in sectarian conflicts even though the president stated that religious sectarianism underpins regional instability.
Human Rights Watch and other distinguished organizations sent a letter to Obama asking him to raise the egregious human rights violations in Egypt when he met with Sisi in New York. Yet in his speech UN speech Wednesday, Egyptian Field Marshall Abdel Fattah el-Sisi expressed hope that the United States would tolerate his atrocious human rights record in the name of fighting ISIS.
Obama should not give Sisi and other Arab autocrats a pass when it comes to their repression and human rights violations just because they joined the American engineered “coalition of the willing” against ISIS.
New Realities
Regardless of how the air campaign against the Islamic State goes, American policymakers will have to begin a serious review of a different Middle East than the one President Barak Obama inherited when he took office. Many of the articles that have been written about ISIS on Lobelog and elsewhere warned about the outcome of this war once the dust settles.
Critics correctly wondered whether opinion writers and experts could go beyond “warning” and suggest a course of policy that could be debated and possibly implemented. If the United States “breaks” the Arab world by forming an anti-ISIS ephemeral coalition of Sunni Arab autocrats, Washington will have to “own” what it had broken.
A road map is imperative if a serious conversation is to commence about the future of the Arab Middle East. But not one deeply steeped in counter-terrorism. The Sunni coalition is a picture-perfect graphic for the evening news, especially in the West, but how should the US deal with individual Sunni states in the coalition after the bombings stop and ISIS melts into the population?
As the United States looks beyond today’s air campaign over Syria and Iraq, American policymakers should realize that ISIS is more than a bunch of jihadists roaming the desert and terrorizing innocent civilians. It’s an ideology, a vision, a sophisticated social media operation, and an army with functioning command and control.
Above all, ISIS represents a view of Islam that is not dissimilar to other strict Sunni interpretations of the Muslim faith that could be found across many Muslim countries, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan. In fact, this narrow-minded, intolerant view of Islam is at the heart of the Wahhabi-Salafi Hanbali doctrine, which Saudi teachers and preachers have spread across the Muslim world for decades.
Nor is this phenomenon unique in the ideological history of Sunni millenarian thinking. From Ibn Taymiyya in the 13th century to Bin Ladin and Zawahiri in the past two decades, different Sunni groups have emerged on the Islamic landscape preaching ISIS-like ideological variations on the theme of resurrecting the “Caliphate” and re-establishing “Dar al-Islam.”
Although the historical lines separating Muslim regions (“Dar al-Islam” or “Abode of Peace”) from non-Muslim regions (“Dar al-Harb” or “Abode of War”) have almost disappeared in recent decades, ISIS, much like al-Qaeda, is calling for re-erecting those lines. Many Salafis in Saudi Arabia are in tune with such thinking.
This is a regressive, backward view, which cannot possibly exist today. Millions of Muslims have immigrated to non-Muslim societies and integrated in those societies to escape this ideology.
If President Obama plans to dedicate the remainder of his term in office to fighting and defeating the Islamic State, he cannot do it by military means alone. He should:
If President Obama does not pursue these tangible policies and use his political capital in this endeavor, his UN speech would soon be forgotten. Degrading and destroying ISIS is possible, but unless Arab regimes move away from autocracy and invest in their peoples’ future, other terrorist groups would emerge.
The American president has over the years given memorable speeches on Muslim world engagement, but unless he pushes for new policies in the region, the Arab Middle East will likely implode with Washington left holding the bag. This is not the legacy President Obama would want to leave behind.
This article was first published by LobeLog and was reprinted here with permission. Follow LobeLog on Twitter and like us on Facebook
]]>“Speak loudly and carry a small stick.” That pretty much sums up the advice provided by a steady stream of withering critics of President Obama’s foreign policy.
Spurred by off-the-cuff remarks the president made at a news conference in the Philippines last April, the elite blogosphere lit up across the spectrum [...]]]>
“Speak loudly and carry a small stick.” That pretty much sums up the advice provided by a steady stream of withering critics of President Obama’s foreign policy.
Spurred by off-the-cuff remarks the president made at a news conference in the Philippines last April, the elite blogosphere lit up across the spectrum with attacks on Obama’s “small ball” diplomacy. Apparently his detractors think that ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while avoiding costly new military entanglements, preventing terrorist attacks on American soil, ratifying a strategic arms limitation treaty with Russia, removing chemical weapons from Syria, freezing Iran’s nuclear program, closing secret detention facilities, and mounting a humanitarian response to Haiti’s massive earthquake don’t count for much.
Amid all the puffery, what few seem to recognize is how closely Obama’s foreign policy hews to what Stephen Walt describes as the realist philosophy. The president has refrained not only from “naïve idealism” but also from “threat-mongering and the misguided military engagements that flow from both tendencies.” An approach that “relies on the United States deploying every possible economic and institutional lever before resorting to armed force,” as the Washington Post characterized the Obama doctrine, is a sign of wisdom, not of weakness.
In defending his steady, pragmatic approach to the complex challenges around the world, Obama lashed out against those who have failed to learn the lessons of the Iraq war. “Frankly,” he said, “most of the foreign policy commentators that have questioned our policies would go headlong into a bunch of military adventures that the American people had no interest in participating in and would not advance our core security interests.”
No Boots on Ground
Neither the American public, Congress, nor most of Obama’s hawkish critics actually have the stomach for “boots on the ground,” be it in Syria, Ukraine, or anywhere else that red lines have been crossed, rights trampled, and lives destroyed. After over a decade of war that left the U.S. economy in tatters, such an approach would not be politically sustainable. Recent polling data shows that nearly half of Americans want the United States to reduce its role in global affairs, and a majority say that Washington should “mind its own business” internationally.
True, the “alternatives” proposed by right-wing critics of Obama’s foreign policy often fall short of outright intervention overseas. They recommend arming opposition forces, conducting provocative military exercises, pre-positioning military equipment, ratcheting up sanctions, and taking firm rhetorical stances. But while they caution against drawing “red lines,” their prescriptions amount to throwing a few Molotov cocktails and then retreating to the safety of their armchairs.
Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) call for supplying the Ukrainians with anti-armor and anti-aircraft systems, shifting military assets eastward, and urgently expanding NATO. Representative Buck McKeon (R-CA), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, asserts that “radios, body armor, night-vision goggles and such could well alter Russian President Vladimir Putin’s calculus.” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer would have us respond to Russia by creating “the possibility of a bloody and prolonged Ukrainian resistance to infiltration or invasion.”
What President Obama understands is that sending weapons to ill-equipped and poorly trained forces is highly unlikely to deter far more capable adversaries or to change the eventual outcome. On the other hand, it is quite likely to prolong the suffering of civilians, increase the risk of weapons ending up in the wrong hands, and draw us ever closer to direct military confrontation. And once we intervene, we have a responsibility to think about not just “the day after,” but the months and years and decades after.
The Lessons of Libya
This, in fact, is precisely the lesson we learned in Libya, where factional fighting has intensified over the last weeks. As the Washington Post editorialized, “The Obama administration and its NATO allies bear responsibility for this mess because, having intervened to help rebels overthrow Gaddafi, they then swiftly exited without making a serious effort to help Libyans establish security and build a new political order.” Post-conflict recovery requires significant commitments that often include boots on the ground. For instance, nearly 15 years after the end of the conflict, NATO retains 5,000 troops to keep the peace in Kosovo.
Libya has been a cautionary lesson for the Obama administration: political order is rarely established on the battlefield. Leaving military action, direct or indirect, as a last resort is not an indication of indecisiveness or lack of resolve. It’s an acknowledgement that the use of force has a poor record of creating lasting stability at an acceptable cost. And it’s a refusal to take on long-term financial commitments without informed public consent.
Owning the Legacy
Ultimately, however, Obama’s foreign policy legacy will not be secured unless he addresses head-on the belief that we have the right, the responsibility, and the power to achieve our objectives by threats, intimidation, and coercion. Many of the greatest challenges to our own national, economic, and human security — climate change, pandemic disease, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the desperation of over a billion people living in extreme poverty — transcend borders and defy military solutions.
It’s time to give up on the notion that we can or should control the world. Instead we should focus on building a more effective and constructive model for engaging with it. Given a better articulation and the development of new diplomatic tools, this could be the enduring value of the Obama doctrine.
*Diana Ohlbaum is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former senior professional staff member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
This article was first published by Foreign Policy in Focus and was reprinted here with permission.
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