When the Washington Post Doesn't Verify Posted by Kelsey Hartigan

The State Department’s recently released Compliance Report—a 95 page document that devotes roughly two pages to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty—finds that “Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine were in compliance with the START strategic offensive arms (SOA) central limits for the 15-year term of the Treaty.”

Apparently that doesn’t make for a good headline, though—let alone a story.  The hysterical pieces put out today by the Washington Post and Washington Times left out quite a few items—namely, facts.  

In an exclusive interview with The Cable, Rose Gottemoeller, State's lead negotiator for New START and Assistant Secretary of State for Verification, Compliance, and Implementation, explains that the findings of the report were positive.  “‘We think [the compliance report] actually tells a good story about Russia and its willingness to resolve compliance and verification issues and should help ratification,’ said Gottemoeller, citing a now-resolved dispute over re-entry vehicles as one example of constructive U.S.-Russia dealing over compliance.”

The original START agreement contained a complex and intrusive verification regime with detailed provisions—a lot of them—so the negotiators established a Joint Compliance and Inspection Commission to deal with issues that popped up throughout the life of the treaty.  According to the State Department’s Compliance Report, through the duration of the treaty, “the Parties worked through diplomatic channels and in the JCIC to ensure smooth implementation of the Treaty and effective resolution of compliance issues and questions.”   

As the report noted, Russia was “in compliance” with START and a majority of the issues that came about were successfully addressed. A few unresolved questions about “how to implement the complex inspection and verification provisions of the START Treaty” remained, but many of the long-standing issues were agreed upon.

The verification regime in the New START Treaty incorporates the lessons learned over the past fifteen-plus years.  Its streamlined verification provisions restore the transparency and predictability that the START 1 agreement provided and in a manner that is consistent with the technological advancements of the 21st century.  As STRATCOM Commander General Kevin Chilton testified before Congress, “New START will re-establish a strategic nuclear arms control verification regime that provides access to Russian nuclear forces and a measure of predictability in Russian force deployments over the life of the treaty.”

State’s Compliance Report should reassure Senators who are concerned with Russian cheating, however suddenly this “concern” came about.  As Gottemoeller noted during her interview, "Cheating implies intent to undermine a treaty. There's no history of cheating on the central obligations of START; there's a history of abiding by the treaty.  Generally the record for the major conventions is a good one. With regard to START, the Russians have been very serious and it has been a success."

Without the New START Treaty, there is no standard with which to judge Russian compliance.  The Russians can do anything they please with their force structure, and the United States won’t have the verification and monitoring provisions in place to know a thing about it.  Our diplomatic channels will be shot and our strategic stability will hang in balance.  With the original START agreement having already expired on December 5, 2009, we are already on thin ice.  If the Senate chooses to deliberately reject this treaty, the good faith and stability this Administration has worked to rebuild will disintegrate. 

Just today, seven retired Commanders of STRATCOM, the combatant command center responsible for America's strategic deterrence, wrote to the Chairmen and Ranking Members of both the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee, saying, “The New START Treaty contains verification and transparency measures—such as data exchanges, periodic data updates, notifications, unique identifiers on strategic systems, some access to telemetry and on-site inspections—that will give us important insights into Russian strategic nuclear forces and how they operate those forces. We will understand Russian strategic forces much better with the treaty than would be the case without it."

As the Commanders concluded, "The New START Treaty will contribute to a more stable U.S.-Russian relationship. We strongly endorse its early ratification and entry into force." 

As does nearly every other national security expert. 

Nothing New on Afghanistan - Situation Remains FUBAR Posted by Michael Cohen

Matt Yglesias flags this smart post from Amy Davidson:

What does it mean to tell the truth about a war? Is it a lie, technically speaking, for the Administration to say that it has faith in Hamid Karzai’s government and regards him as a legitimate leader—or is it just absurd? Is it a lie to say that we have a plan for Afghanistan that makes any sense at all? If you put it that way, each of the WikiLeaks documents—from an account of an armed showdown between the Afghan police and the Afghan Army, to a few lines about a local interdiction official taking seventy-five-dollar bribes, to a sad exchange about an aid scam involving orphans—is a pixel in a picture that does, indeed, contradict official accounts of the war, and rather drastically so.

Well sure this is true; but it's not altogether surprising. One could argue that that we have an actual strategy for Afghanistan and we're working to carry it out. Sure it's a terrible strategy that isn't working and isn't going to work - but it's not a lie.

Yet there is one pretty big whopper that these leaks exposed, which isn't getting nearly enough attention. The same country (Pakistan) that Hillary Clinton recently said was joined with the US in "common cause" against extremists is actually not. But as the Beltway crowd helpfully reminds us, "everyone knows" the Pakistani military and its intelligence services are actively supporting the Afghan Taliban. Yawn, nothing to see here.

Yet, as Jon Stewart presciently noted last night; what's interesting is not the "new" part of the story, but rather the "f***ed-up-it-ness" of it.

Why isn't a bigger story when one of the biggest recipients of US foreign aid and our nominal ally in the fight against extremism is actively undermining that goal? Why isn't it a bigger deal, that this Administration has been less than forthright with the American people about Pakistani involvement in supporting the Taliban insurgency?

In his West Point speech last December President Obama dangerously and wrongly conflated the Afghan Taliban and Pakistan Taliban, intimating that they were somehow one and the same. While such a conclusion is, to put it in the most charitable terms, a dubious one what the President didn't mention is that the Pakistani government has very different "attitudes" toward these two groups.

Yesterday National Security Advisor Jim Jones again adopted the same rhetorical trick; praising Pakistan for going after "extremists" that threaten the national security of the Pakistani state and have killed countless Pakistanis. But the role of the Pakistanis in supporting the Afghan Taliban well that goes unmentioned. 

Also little mentioned is the very basic fact that the Taliban insurgency would not exist in its current form without the tacit and active support of the Pakistani government - a government that is receiving $1.5 billion a year in financial assistance. Or how about the fact that nearly nine years after 3,000 Americans were killed on September 11th the Pakistani government still can't seem to find Osama bin Laden or the top al Qaeda operatives that have found shelter in their country. And if anyone believes they can't rather than won't find him . . . well I got some swampland for sale that you might enjoy. Apparently all of Washington "knows" this, but feels it that isn't quite important enough in judging the effectiveness of the current US policy in Afghanistan.

A few years ago there were calls in Congress to get tough with Iran because it was supporting Shiite insurgents in Iraq, who as the nomenclature went at the time had the blood of US troops on their hands. How is the behavior of the Pakistani government demonstrably different? They are not only giving safe haven to insurgent groups that are directing the insurgency in Afghanistan, but they are providing sanctuary for anti-American terrorist groups.  

And why exactly are we looking the other way? Why is it again that billions in US assistance dollars are being directed toward improving the image of the United States in Pakistani eyes? Because supposedly we "need" Pakistan; because they are such a key ally in the fight against extremists; because we can't risk the Pakistani government falling to jihadist groups - even thought we seem a heck of a lot concerned about this than they do. When will the United States learn that the Pakistani government and its military is not just that into us?

And reading news reports of US officials yesterday engaging in fervent damage control with the Pakistanis was enough to turn ones stomach. 

But, the Administration's obfuscation on Pakistan's role in feeding and supporting the Afghan Taliban insurgency is hardly surprising. If it turns out that the Pakistani government is not an ally in the fight against extremism, but indeed a willing participant in aiding and abetting it, well then it shows how bankrupt - and likely to fail - our policy in Afghanistan really is. 

For some reason, it's imperative to maintain the fiction that Pakistan is a willing partner in the fight against extremism and that US diplomacy will have a positive impact in shifting Pakistani attitudes toward Afghanistan. But after nine years of the US acting like Charlie Brown to Pakistan's Lucy I'm at a loss at understanding why anyone believes this.

More and more our Afghanistan policy looks like a game of Jenga: pull out enough pieces (incompetent and corrupt Afghan government) or (poorly trained and unmotivated police and Army) or (lack of time and resources for a COIN fight) or (nominal ally in Pakistan that is actually providing safe haven for Taliban insurgency) and the whole policy comes crumbling to the ground.

As official Washington solemnly debates the appropriateness of the Wikileaks disclosure and tut-tuts that this is a "non-story" the real revelation from these documents is actually a further and vivid reminder of how screwed up and unrealistic the mission in Afghanistan has become - based on a set of assumptions that are both dubious and counter-productive to US interests. 

Perhaps the foreign policy establishment should spend a bit more time chewing over that part of the story. 

Daniel Schorr -- An Appreciation Posted by David Shorr

To have the last name that I have and work on US foreign policy issues means being asked regularly whether you're related to Daniel Schorr. The short answer is no. The longer version is that for both of our (slightly different) family names, they are shortened versions of what used to be longer Eastern European Jewish names. Dan once called me "the guy who doesn't know how to spell his own name."

To work in the Washington foreign policy community has also meant the good fortune of crossing paths with Dan Schorr a handful of times over the years. In that context, I just want to remark on what an unusual person he was. To begin with, Dan was a one-man institutional memory of US diplomacy and national security. In some ways, journalism is an inherently ephemeral business. You know what they say about yesterday's papers. So I mean it as the highest praise to say that Daniel Schorr's commentary and reporting combined insight into the current moment as well as the many moments that preceded it.

That insight came from someone who toiled in the news media for all the right reasons. Notwithstanding Schorr's famous quote about the importance of sincerity, for me, he personified journalism's cardinal virtue: curiosity. Even to someone who's only 'up-close' vantage was to be together at a foreign policy briefing or dinner event, it was clear that Schorr saw his professional mission as a constant challenge to figure out what was going on. For some journalists who reach the heights of the Washington media elite -- not the best, mind you -- the reward is the ability to deal exclusively with a narrow circle of sources in similarly high places. Dan Schorr's restless curiosity immunized him against any such myopia; I doubt it would ever even have occurred to him

NSN at Netroots Nation Posted by The Editors

The National Security Network hosted The Obama Doctrine:  Successes, Challenges and the Future during the 2010 Netroots Nation Convention in Las Vegas, NV. 

Watch it now:

PANELISTS: Max Bergmann, Wendy Chamberlin, Paul Eaton, Lawrence Korb, Adam Serwer

The Obama administration faced a daunting foreign policy agenda when it came to office. Two wars, a sagging economy and bruised American prestige overseas translated into diminished global influence. Nevertheless, the Administration undertook a daunting foreign policy agenda intended to clean-up the mess the Bush administration left behind. This agenda did not lack ambition, as the President’s commitment to seek a world free of nuclear weapons was made clear. Nor was it going to be easy. As the ongoing struggles to move past the Bush-era mindset on terrorism toward a new strategy based on resilience and fortitude showed, the Administration’s agenda has not been not free of obstacles or controversies. A key question is whether President Obama will be remembered for his foreign policy accomplishments that make the front page—such as his approach to Iran—or those which don’t always make the headlines, such as the effort to rebalance America’s instruments of power so that its economic, diplomatic and development instruments are on par with military power. This panel, comprised of leading foreign policy experts and commentators will assess the emerging Obama ‘doctrine,’ analyzing its major successes, its persistent challenges and what the future has in store.

Swiftboating Sestak on Israel Posted by Joel Rubin

A new right-wing neoconservative attack group on Israel policy has been formed by the same ideologues that brought you the war in Iraq. This group — the Emergency Committee for Israel — has decided to make Pennsylvania’s upcoming Senate race its pivotal moment to enter national politics. It has done so by running television ads against Democratic Senate candidate Joe Sestak that turn Israel into a political wedge issue, cynically playing on the worst fears of Americans who do not share their policy views on Israel.

We have seen this script before, particularly when the national security credibility of Sen. John Kerry was impugned during the 2004 presidential campaign. The term used to describe that episode was “swiftboating,” which created the impression that Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, was not to be trusted on national security while George W. Bush, who served but never deployed, was better qualified to defend the nation.

Now, the same forces are threatening to swiftboat Sestak as “weak” on Israel because he supports active American diplomacy to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, never mind the fact that he is a retired three star admiral and the highest-ranking former military officer currently serving in the U.S. Congress.

The motivations for these attacks are similar to 2004, when these same neoconservatives attacked Kerry’s strength — his military service record — in order to block his ascent to the presidency and his desire to change course in Iraq. They won that battle, and the country is still recovering from the consequences of that disastrous war.

What is shamelessly clear from these cynical attacks against Sestak is that Israel policy is being used for harsh political purposes, with the ultimate goal of dealing President Obama a devastating foreign policy setback while blocking his attempts to promote Middle East peace. Unfortunately, these ideological warriors have little care for the real world consequences of such actions, which if successful, would undercut American interests in the Middle East for narrow partisan gain.

So let’s examine some of the myths about these ads.

These ads would have you believe that Sestak’s opponent, Pat Toomey, is stronger on Israel than Sestak. Yet Toomey voted against military aid to Israel when he was in Congress while Sestak has consistently supported it. In addition, Sestak personally helped to protect Israel at the start of the 2003 Iraq war when he was in the Navy, while Toomey was sitting safe in Congress, voting for that war.

These ads would also have you believe that Sestak doesn’t recognize Israel as an ally because he signed a congressional letter earlier this year — along with 53 other members of Congress — that asked President Obama to ask the Israeli government to, among other items, provide access to clean water, medicine and sanitation supplies to the Palestinians in Gaza. Yet the ad failed to criticize Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, despite the fact that his government now supports these same positions.

These ads would also have you believe that Sestak refused to show sufficient support for Israel because he didn’t sign a congressional letter on Israel that the ad failed to describe. However, the ad neglected to mention that Sestak just signed a major bipartisan congressional letter that expressed its “ … strong support for Israel’s right to defend itself” after the flotilla incident. The letter was strongly backed by AIPAC and attracted 338 bipartisan signatures, yet the ad never criticized AIPAC for asking the alleged anti-Israel Sestak to sign it.

Lastly, these ads would have you believe that Sestak, the retired three star admiral, is a terrorist sympathizer because he spoke at an event organized by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in 2007, even though the FBI had used this group for outreach to the Muslim community during that time and up until 2009. Not surprisingly, the ad somehow failed to criticize the FBI and the Bush Administration for having dealt with CAIR at the same time that Sestak did.

Fortunately, we already have evidence of how Jewish voters in Pennsylvania — the apparent target of these ads — react to this type of political chicanery. In the Democratic primary, Sestak defeated Sen. Specter in almost every suburban Pennsylvania community that has a substantial Jewish population, despite similar smears made at the end of their campaign.

There is a lesson in this, as the hard right partisans that use Israel policy as a political wedge may find that not only is it not to their advantage to make such attacks, but that it can actually backfire. It certainly contradicts America’s most celebrated military officers, Gen. David Petraeus, who is firmly on the record in stating that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in America’s interest. Perhaps someone should remind the Emergency Committee for Israel about this fact, before they do more damage.

My bet is that it will be Pennsylvania’s voters.

(This article first appeared in the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle and reflects the author's personal views, not necessarily those of the National Security Network.)

Who Will Tell the People? UPDATED Posted by Michael Cohen

If you want a picture perfect example of the disconnect between Washington elites and the American people the reaction to the massive leak of 92,000 pages of secret intelligence regarding the war in Afghanistan is a good place to start.

Here is the New York Times on the close relationship between Pakistan and are nominal enemy in Afghanistan, the Taliban:

The documents suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.

Taken together, the reports indicate that American soldiers on the ground are inundated with accounts of a network of Pakistani assets and collaborators that runs from the Pakistani tribal belt along the Afghan border, through southern Afghanistan, and all the way to the capital, Kabul.

. . . While current and former American officials interviewed could not corroborate individual reports, they said that the portrait of the spy agency’s collaboration with the Afghan insurgency was broadly consistent with other classified intelligence.

Der Spiegel goes even further:

The documents clearly show that the Pakistani intelligence agency is the most important accomplice the Taliban has outside of Afghanistan. The war against the Afghan security forces, the Americans and their ISAF allies is still being conducted from Pakistan.

The country is an important safe haven for enemy forces -- and serves as a base for issuing their deployment. New recruits to the Taliban stream across the Pakistan-Afghan border, including feared foreign fighters -- among them Arabs, Chechnyans, Uzbekis, Uighurs and even European Islamists.

According to the war logs, the ISI envoys are present when insurgent commanders hold war councils -- and even give specific orders to carry out murders. These include orders to try to assassinate Afghan President Hamid Karzai. For example, a threat report dated August 21, 2008 warned: "Colonel Mohammad Yusuf from the ISI had directed Taliban official Maulawi Izzatullah to see that Karzai was assassinated." 

The Guardian uncovers evidence that the Afghan and Pakistani Army - nominal allies in the fight against the Taliban - are engaging in regular firefights along the Durand Line.

To the laymen this might seem like a pretty big deal; one of the largest recipients of US foreign assistance - and the country whose stability is a big part of the stated reason why we are in Afghanistan - is actually working against US goals and directly supporting insurgent forces. 

But if you look at the reaction of your foreign policy community - nothing to see here. Andrew Exum, jokes that this is about as shocking as finding out Afghanistan has four syllables. The bottom line seems to be; that we knew this already - Pakistani support for the Taliban is old news.

But these documents don't exactly jibe with what President Obama had to say about Pakistan in December at West Point:

In recent years, as innocents have been killed from Karachi to Islamabad, it has become clear that it is the Pakistani people who are the most endangered by extremism. Public opinion has turned. The Pakistani Army has waged an offensive in Swat and South Waziristan. And there is no doubt that the United States and Pakistan share a common enemy.

In the past, we too often defined our relationship with Pakistan narrowly. Those days are over. Moving forward, we are committed to a partnership with Pakistan that is built on a foundation of mutual interests, mutual respect, and mutual trust. We will strengthen Pakistan's capacity to target those groups that threaten our countries, and have made it clear that we cannot tolerate a safe-haven for terrorists whose location is known, and whose intentions are clear. 

America is also providing substantial resources to support Pakistan's democracy and development. We are the largest international supporter for those Pakistanis displaced by the fighting. And going forward, the Pakistani people must know: America will remain a strong supporter of Pakistan's security and prosperity long after the guns have fallen silent, so that the great potential of its people can be unleashed.

Hmm, for something that everyone seemed to know was true, it's funny how President Obama didn't seem fit to mention it in his public remarks explaining why he was sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. And I'm genuinely curious if any of the various supporters of escalation felt urged to mention at the time that the American people were receiving a rather incomplete picture of the war their country was fighting in Afghanistan - and the role of Pakistan in prosecuting that conflict. 

Just as President Obama inaccurately conflated the Pakistan Taliban and the Afghan Taliban in his West Point speech (the former is a target of the Pakistani military; the latter is protected by it), the White House continues to confuse this point, “The Pakistani government — and Pakistan’s military and intelligence services — must continue their strategic shift against violent extremist groups within their borders,” noted White House spokesman Ben Rhodes.

Which violent extremist group? Praising the Taliban for going after enemies of the Pakistani state doesn't really deal with the larger issue of Pakistani support for the Afghan Taliban, not to mention the continued protection of top al Qaeda leaders. This is not a semantic point; it speaks to the very duplicity practiced daily by the Pakistani government and its military.

In his statement on the Wikileaks disclosures, National Security Advisor Jim Jones congratulates the Pakistani military for going after Taliban forces that killed hundreds of Pakistani civilians, but fails to mention the protection provided by Pakistan for the insurgent forces that are killing Afghan civilians and, of course, US troops. 

Indeed, take one look at the fact sheets put forward by the White House on this: lots of quotes from US officials decrying Pakistani support for "extremists" or lumping all Taliban groups under an al Qaeda umbrella. But far fewer make the connection between the ISI's support for the Afghan Taliban or describe the divergent ways in which the Pakistani government deals with the Pakistan Taliban and Afghan Taliban. But not to worry, "everyone knows" about that.

And as Les Gelb helpfully points out, one of the key rationales that US policymakers have used to support our presence in Afghanistan is to stabilize Pakistan - yet as "everyone knows" the Pakistanis are actively undermining our stabilization efforts in Afghanistan. As Gelb points out, these documents further demonstrate that US goals in Afghanistan are not quite the same as the Pakistani government - even if Secretary of State Clinton declares the US and Pakistan are "partners joined in common cause."

Now to be fair the Pakistani government doesn't have complete control over the actions of the ISI, which is the key supporter in Pakistan of the Taliban - but that hardly exonerates the Pakistani's for their behavior or for their failure to go after al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban safe havens at the same time they are receiving billions in US aid.

Of course, the disconnect between these words and the reality in Afghanistan has been well-known among many in the foreign policy establishment for some time. So in a sense, the shoulder shruggers are right - for those who have followed this conflict closely nothing in these documents is new . . . as it pertains to the war itself. 

But what it tells us about the incomplete information being fed to the American people about the war being fought in their name - and the arrogance of official Washington in pooh-poohing these revelations - well that's something else altogether. 

UPDATE: Over at his eponymous blog my colleague Bernard Finel makes a similar point:

If these documents paint an accurate picture, it reveals a troubling disconnect between public pronouncements and private assessments.  Ultimately, democratic governance and accountability requires giving the public sufficient information to make informed decisions. Keep doubts and concerns private may serve legitimate strategic objectives, but we need to acknowledge that our strategic objectives in Afghanistan may be at odds with the requirements of democratic governance at home.  In short, is it ever worth fighting a war that requires your to compromise and weaken accountability at home? 

Cooperation, Not Isolation Posted by James Lamond

Just watched a Netroots panel that goes along with the theme addressed in Heather’s and Alex’s posts below.  The panel topic was on spying, surveillance and other counterterrorism policies, focusing on efforts at home.  One topic that came up is the need a for two way discussion between local communities and law enforcement and counterterrorism officials.

Farhana Khera, President and Executive Director of Muslim Advocates, pointed out that Muslim communities want to get out more and talk more, but there are limited ways to do so and that many are not sure how to even enter the conversation.  This echoes comments made earlier this month by Nadia Roumani, of the American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute at an NSN/CAP event on domestic radicalization.  She pointed out that Muslim Americans want to do more, but that most Muslim Americans know little about terrorists' recruiting methods and that they could learn a great deal from law enforcement and intelligence officials.  These communities are under a lot of pressure and, as Nadia pointed out, there is a lack of “safe places” for Muslim Americans to engage on this issue.  Many would like to learn more but are hesitant to visit certain websites out of fear of being associated with it.  DHS has made some good progress, reaching out to Muslim American leaders.  But much more remains to be done. 

Yet, despite the delicacy of the issue and the need for two-way cooperation, conservatives have continued with inflammatory rhetoric that only serves to isolate and demonize an important part of American society.  Perhaps the worst offense came just yesterday, from Newt Gingrich.  Gingrich is fueling the divisive frame that the building of an Islamic cultural center at ground zero is an imposition of Islamic culture on the United States.  He gave a stark warning this week that: “America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization. Sadly, too many of our elites are the willing apologists for those who would destroy them if they could.”  Concluding with a strong, even hysterical finish,  he said, “No mosque. No self deception. No surrender.”  Gingrich’s comments are only the most recent on this topic.  Sarah Palin last week tweeted: “Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand. Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in the interest of healing,” and “Peaceful New Yorkers, pls refute the Ground Zero mosque plan if you believe catastrophic pain caused @ Twin Towers site is too raw, too real.” 

What is ironic is the Gingrichs and Palins of this world like to think that they are the tough ones on national security.  But as we have seen time and again, working with local communities is one of the best tools to combat domestic radicalization and terrorism.  From CAIR’s cooperation that led to the arrest of the five northern Virginia men who were just sentenced in a Pakistani court to Aliou Nasse, the Senegalese Muslim immigrant who saw smoke coming from an unattended SUV parked in Times Square, we have repeatedly seen the important role that Muslim American play in helping to keep America secure.  But with the extreme rhetoric coming from the Right, they are only isolating millions of Americans, reducing the chances of future cooperation.

Mosque at Ground Zero: What Would George Washington Do? Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Surprisingly, we know -- because we know what Washington wrote to the country's first synagogue, in Newport, Rhode Island, in response to their letter seeking protection from an intense climate of bigotry and fear:

The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy, a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

Update:  via Robert Wright, give Mayor Bloomberg credit for channeling our first President:

“Government should never — never — be in the business of telling people how they should pray, or where they can pray,” Bloomberg said last week. “We want to make sure that everybody from around the world feels comfortable coming here, living here and praying the way they want to pray.”

Oklahoma’s Misguided Crusade Posted by The Editors

This  post was written by Alexandra Siegel, an intern at the National Security Network

Congressman Rex Duncan [R-OK] has gone to war. Leading his state into battle, Duncan recently launched what he called a “preemptive strike” in the “war for the survival of America.” Earlier this summer Duncan placed an amendment dubbed “Save Our State” on Oklahoma’s November ballot, which would ban local courts from considering sharia or Islamic law in their judgments. According to Duncan, this amendment is necessary to prevent judges from “undermin[ing] those founding…Judeo-Christian… principles of America.” 

While Duncan has certainly professed its urgency, his “strike” is indeed quite preemptive. As the Economist reports, there has not been a single proposal by a US citizen (Muslim or otherwise) to make appeals to sharia law in Oklahoma or any other state. Despite this, Duncan reports that the use of sharia in American courts is “not just a danger” but “a reality.” He argues that we must act now to avoid suffering the same “fate” as our allies across the Atlantic. Sharia law, he maintains, is “a cancer upon the survivability of the UK” which will have equally negative impacts in the US. Ironically, the destructive “cancer” that Duncan warns of is the British application of sharia law in some civil and family court cases when requested by both parties. In these cases, the primacy of the law of the land remains paramount—hardly a cause for hysteria.

Regardless of its absurdity, recent events indicate that Congressman Duncan is not alone in his fight. In reference to the proposed building of a Mosque near Ground Zero, Newt Gingrich asserted: “There should be no mosque…so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization...No mosque. No self deception. No surrender.”  Similarly organizations like the “Virginia Anti-Sharia Task Force” (VAST) which has a self professed mission to “oppose and assist others in resisting the implementation of the radical, barbaric and anti-Constitutional Shariah law in Virginia or anywhere in America,” have sprung up around the country.  

Unfortunately, by alienating Muslim Americans who play vital roles in combating domestic and international terrorism, those who dream up legislation like the “Save Our State” or organizations like VAST do far more to undermine American national security and values than the unfounded threats they warn against. 

As was highlighted at the event that the National Security Network organized with the Center for Ameriacn Progress Action Fund on July 14th featuring Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) and a prestigious panel of experts, including former New York and Los Angeles Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, community organizations and the families of radicalized individuals have shown themselves to be critical actors in disrupting terrorist plots and preventing radicalization. Furthermore, attacking and excluding Muslim American communities not only runs counter to fundamental American values, but also serves to foster the kinds of conditions that breed domestic radicalization. As events like the attempted attack in Times Square indicate, this poses a serious threat to our national security. 

Inflammatory and discriminatory campaigns like the one launched by Rex Duncan not only spark unnecessary fear, but also alienate many Muslims who play indispensible roles in U.S. counterterrorism efforts. Paradoxically, in his fight “for the survival of America,” Duncan dangerously undermines U.S. national security.

Re: Should Liberals be Giving Obama a Break? Part III Posted by Shadi Hamid

Michael Cohen strongly disagrees with my previous post on why liberals are angry with Obama. Unfortunately, as I suspected, some of what I wrote was misinterpreted. I'll do a quick response now. Michael writes:

The notion that signals or dog whistles to the left should be more important than actual accomplishments (like passing legislation that provides health insurance for 30 million Americans) is crazy to me.

Pretty sure I didn't say that. So let me be clear: at the end of the day, liberals should have supported health care reform in its final and imperfect form (and most did). My post wasn't actually about that. It was about getting there. It was about not accepting constraints as a given. This, as a great philosopher once said, is the "soft bigotry of low expectations." Politics is the art of the possible and, as Michael tells it, so little is apparently possible. It's unclear how accepting these limits without at least testing them is of benefit to the "actual Americans" who are suffering and, presumably, would have benefited from, say, $1 trillion in stimulus spending rather than $800 billion.

It might be said - it often is - that only liberal elites have the luxury of being ideologically pure. Well, it might also be said - if often isn't - that liberal elites also have the luxury of being flexible pragmatists. After all, painful policy compromises - that hurt the middle and lower class - are painful for, well, the middle and lower class. I think it's fair to say that the liberal DC establishment isn't exactly known for its inflexible ideological proclivities. The ones criticizing Obama for "compromising," if that's even the right word, are pretty clearly in the minority.

By this notion, Obama should have fought for the public option - as a signal to the left - even if it risked undermining the entire effort at comprehensive health care reform.

No that's not the correct implication. It's not a zero-sum game. Obama (clearly) signaling that he cared about the public option would not have destroyed the health care reform effort. Because 50+ senators saying they cared about it and most of the House Democratic caucus caring about it did not undermine the "entire effort." In fact, it strengthened the Democrats' bargaining position. 

It's also worth pointing out that liberals' preference for the "public option" wasn't about standing for "principle" at the expense of people. I think a public option is probably a good thing in part because it would help "actual Americans suffering from lack of health insurance" gain access to more affordable care. 

Indeed it is striking that Shadi is standing on principle over an issue (the public option) that he acknowledges he doesn't have a strong, informed opinion about.

My question to Michael would be: when is it appropriate, if ever, to stand on principle? How do we make that call? Where are the red lines? When should liberals fight and when should they back down? 

Afghanistan Exit Strategy Watch Posted by Michael Cohen

So I'm about to do something decidedly unwise; I'm going to go a bit out on a limb in predicting where things are headed with the US mission in Afghanistan. As you can see from the title above; I have a sneaking suspicion that something has dramatically changed about the national discourse regarding our policy in Afghanistan.

The first and most obvious sign - and perhaps the catalyst for change - was the replacement of Stanley McChrsytal with David Petraeus. As I wrote at the time, President Obama was getting rid of a general who seemed to be operating under the premise that the US could win in Afghanistan (and was in it for the long haul) versus one who has shown a history of more pragmatic behavior and a better understanding of political realities. 

But really since then it feels like the whole narrative on Afghanistan has changed. Once upon a time US options in Afghanistan were reduced, in popular debates, to staying the course or cutting and running. But in recent weeks you've had Robert Blackwill call for de jure partition of Afghanistan; Richard Haass is now arguing that Afghanistan is not worth it and we need to drawdown; Fareed Zakaria is expressing incredulity at the level of US commitment to Afghanistan to combat a minimal threat. Hell even Newt Gingrich said things "won't end well" there. 

And today in the New York Times, David Sanger makes the following observation, "Mr. Obama has begun losing critical political figures and strategists who are increasingly vocal in arguing that the benefits of continuing on the current course for at least another year, and probably longer, are greatly outweighed by the escalating price."

Aside from John Nagl, it's getting harder and harder to find anyone who thinks things are going well, we're going to "win" in Afghanistan or that a course correction is unneeded. (Well of course, the Obama Administration would be the other exception).

So with that backdrop, on Monday I went to hear David Kilcullen at an event hosted by the World Policy Institute here in New York. As you can likely imagine I was loaded for bear, ready to take on Kilcullen's pro-COIN arguments. 

Well he started off by going through all the reasons why you don't want to do counter-insurgency. And this wasn't an Accidental Guerrilla argument; it was a litany of the challenges in trying to capture "hearts and minds" or fighting your way out of a COIN fight or trying to marshall political will or relying on a host country government for support or trying to "out-service provide" your enemy etc. In short, Kilcullen was basically making the basic anti-COIN argument.

So I then asked what seemed like an obvious follow-up observation: knowing all the inherent challenges in fighting a counter-insurgency - and considering the US-imposed timeline for beginning withdrawals from Afghanistan - isn't it pretty much a terrible idea to try and wage a COIN campaign in Afghanistan today. 

And Kilcullen basically said yes, arguing instead that the US should move away from COIN and focus more on stability operations. He talked about the need for a bottom-up rather than top-down strategy and the importance of devoting more resources to stable areas of Afghanistan, rather than the red zones in the south and east.

By the time he was done, I leaned over to a friend and noted that Kilcullen answered my question pretty much the exact same way I would have. 

Now the fact that David Kilcullen and I agree on the hopelessness of doing COIN in Afghanistan is, in of itself, not terribly interesting. After all, if you go back to the fall Kilcullen was sounding some discordant notes about the Obama Administration trying to find some middle way to find a counter-insurgency. He seemed to be arguing that it was an all or nothing. I don't really agree with that, because it sort of assumed COIN or nothing; but to Kilcullen's credit he was willing to push back on the conventional wisdom.

But what is interesting, I think, is that now (in July 2010) Kilcullen seems to have basically concluded that the current mission can't work - and that the hopes for a successful counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan have come and gone. And this is someone who just got done writing a book on counter-insurgency.

Now I'm not arguing that as Kilcullen goes . . . so goes the US military or even the Obama Administration. But it seems increasingly clear that elite opinion on Afghanistan is beginning to shift against the current mission and toward a more limited set of goals. Unless Barack Obama is LBJ re-incarnated I think that has to, at some point, make a difference.

It will be interesting to see how things play out on the ground over the next few months, but I think we've hit a genuine inflection point on Afghan policy - and it leans toward de-escalation, not escalation.

Should Liberals be Giving Obama A Break? Part III Posted by Michael Cohen

In response to my call for the left to lay off the criticism of Obama, Shadi Hamid makes the following observation:

The Left wants to feel that Obama is on their side, fighting for what they believe on, independent of whether or not that leads to tangible policy/legislative successes. If he can't deliver, fine, but at least put in some effort and say it like you mean it (see public option). Do I have a strong opinion on the public option, as a policy? No. Do I know anyone who has a strong opinion on the public option, as policy? Maybe, but only a few. Do I know anyone who has a strong opinion on the public option, as a signal and as an idea? Yes.

I really like Shadi and I agree with much of what he writes on the Middle East, but I think this is just wrong on a number of levels. The notion that signals or dog whistles to the left should be more important than actual accomplishments (like passing legislation that provides health insurance for 30 million Americans) is crazy to me. By this notion, Obama should have fought for the public option - as a signal to the left - even if it risked undermining the entire effort at comprehensive health care reform. 

While I suppose this would have made some folks happy, what would that have meant for actual Americans suffering from lack of health insurance? Every years tens of thousands of Americans die because they don't have health insurance. Those are the people the the left quite reasonably claims they are fighting for - the notion that their needs should be secondary to the "signal" that would be sent to liberals by fighting for a public option is borderline amoral. For Shadi to say that failure is "fine" . . . well actually that's not fine.

I supported Barack Obama, not because I cared one iota for the public option, but because I thought Obama would be able to pass important progressive legislation, which is exactly what he did in husbanding all of his political capital to pass comprehensive health care reform. I would be willing to venture that the vast majority of people who voted for Obama could care less about the public option; I'm pretty positive that is true of the 40 million Americans who currently don't have health insurance.

That there are folks on the left who dismiss Obama's accomplishment because he didn't fight hard enough for a public option (which had no chance of passing and in the grander scheme of things wouldn't have made a huge difference) shows how out of touch they may actually be with own constituency. Indeed it is striking that Shadi is standing on principle over an issue (the public option) that he acknowledges he doesn't have a strong, informed opinion about.

We sometimes seem to forget sometimes that politics is not an end in itself. Winning an election only matters so far as how you utilize the political power you've gained to affect public policy decision-making. If you're a progressive it's about using the power government to help those who need a helping hand or correct inefficiencies in the free market. That's what this imperfect health care legislation has done.

To achieve that goal there are compromises that must be made along the way. For liberals to not acknowledge that reality or give short shrift to accomplishments that help working and middle class Americans because they don't line up perfectly with their ideological preferences . . . well that just strikes me as a rather naive way to think about American politics.

(Let me also add, for the record, that none of this is meant to suggest that left should not hold Obama's feet to the fire when he screws up or fails to adhere to progressive values. My blogging on Afghanistan is a testament to that belief. We should and we must criticize - nothing could be worse than if the left become cheerleaders for the Administration. But we must also acknowledge and praise victories and temper our criticism with an acknowledgment of basic political realities).

Re: Is It Time to Give Obama a Break? Posted by Shadi Hamid

Michael Cohen is asking liberals to "give Obama a break." I don't find his case very convincing. And I'm starting to think that "pro-Obama" liberals don't really understand why their colleagues are so disappointed. I've already written about this in a recent Huffington Post piece. So let me reiterate and expand on a couple of the points I made.

First of all, this isn't really about policy. Most people - even people who follow policy - don't particularly care about policy. That's not what gets them angry. That's not even really why/how they vote. Much of it, rather, has to do with the emotional component of politics, something which, I think, some liberals are quick to dismiss. This is very much in keeping with that most annoying post-Bush fetish - "pragmatism" - perhaps the most hollow, misleading, and misunderstood word ever to be bandied about in Washington.

What many liberals believed Obama would do was redefine how partisan and ideological debates were conducted and shift the American electorate leftward. He wouldn't accept Republican framing as a given and insist on presenting liberal policies in those terms. For once, as I wrote then, "we'd have Democrats who were proud of being liberals and didn't feel compelled to apologize for what they actually thought." Note that none of these things actually have to do with legislation or what extent congress blocks the president's agenda. They have to do with perceptions of strength, ideology, and conviction, three things not often considered the strong suit of American liberalism. 

In other words, the Left wants to feel that Obama is on their side, fighting for what they believe in, independent of whether or not it leads to tangible policy/legislative successes. If he can't deliver, fine, but at least put in some effort and say it like you mean it (see public option). How many instances are we aware of where the Obama administration arm-twisted centrist Democrats, making clear the repercussions if they failed to support liberal objectives (again, see public option)?

Do I have a strong, informed opinion on the public option, as a policy? No. Do I know anyone who has a strong, informed opinion on the public option, as policy? Maybe, but only a few. Do I know anyone who has a strong opinion on the public option, as a signal and as an idea? Yes.

Had We But World Enough And Time, This Coyness, Senate GOP, Were no Crime* Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Some of the more thoughtful right-of-center voices on the New START Treaty debate have picked up a new theme in recent days:  it's not that we're going to oppose the treaty, it's just that we need more time.

Henry Sokolski wrote:

Assuming the Senate gets down to business now and starts deliberating, ratification early in 2011 is both feasible and reasonable. Trying to short-circuit this process, on the other hand, is more likely to result in more of what we have already have — an unhelpful game of political chicken.

Talking points have gone to Hill offices asserting that the 13 months between submission and ratification of START I in 1991-2 (Bush 1, Democratic Senate, whatever that's worth) should be the norm.  But something rather significant -- the breakup of  the Soviet Union -- occurred after the treaty was signed and submitted, requiring negotiation of an addendum to the Treaty.  I'm wracking my brain on what of similar significance has happened since New START's April 8 signing and May 13 submission to the Senate.  Maybe commenters can help me out.

Perhaps of more relevance:

• President Reagan's INF Treaty was approved in four months (1988);
• President H.W. Bush's CFE Treaty was approved in four and a half months, during the collapse of the Warsaw Pact (1991);
• Treaties for each of the three rounds of NATO expansion have been approved in ten weeks or less by Senates controlled by both parties (1998, 2003, 2008).  

INF and START I, and the first round of NATO expansion, were epochal, strategy-shifting documents that had taken many years to conceptualize and negotiate over harsh criticism and divides.  Yet Trent Lott, George Mitchell, and Harry Reid managed to lead the Senate through what its members seemed to think was sufficient debate in 10-20 weeks.  A document amending the CFE Treaty was approved by a Republican Senate in just five weeks (1997).

It's not as if Secretary Gates, Admiral Mullen, 8 former Secretaries of Defense and State, 3 former National Security Advisers, the former head of Strategic Command (STRATCOM), and several dozen other national security leaders who have given the treaty full-throated endorsements are going to change their minds.  

Indeed, our allies are already complaining about slowness and people such as Brent Scowcroft and Chuck Hagel are using words like "state of chaos" and "worst possible outcome since World War II" to describe what happens if the treaty doesn't pass promptly.

*Andrew Marvel, "To His Coy Mistress."  All those @Shakespalin tweets inspired me.

Give Barack Obama a Break Redux Posted by Michael Cohen

Over at the New York Daily News today I expand a bit on my post from a few days ago on why the left needs to give Obama a break:

In the ordinary world of politics, last week might have seemed like a pretty good one for Barack Obama. Far-reaching financial reform legislation passed the Senate and headed to the President's desk. Add that to comprehensive health care reform (the lodestar of the left's domestic agenda), overhaul of the student lending program and an $800 billion stimulus measure, and the first 18 months of Obama's presidency are the most successful period of progressive legislative activity in more than four decades.

Yet even with this list of accomplishments, there is a growing sense of gloom and anger among the President's liberal supporters. 

Bob Kuttner of The American Prospect has accused the President of not governing like a progressive. Eric Alterman says most progressives would agree that Obama's presidency "has been a big disappointment." Enthusiasm among rank-and-file Democrats pales next to that of Republicans.

The left's litany of complaints will be familiar to regular readers of the liberal blogosphere. Obama didn't fight hard enough for a public option during the health care debate; he didn't push for a bigger stimulus; he's sat on his hands in the climate change debate; he's been too cautious on gay rights; he's adopted the fuzzy language of postpartisanship. In short, to liberals, Obama has been a "sellout."

This criticism is misdirected. It ignores the administration's significant accomplishments, but it also fails to take into account the significant institutional impediments that are thwarting Obama and, in, turn, a larger progressive agenda.

 You can read the whole thing here . .  (and no, I didn't choose the headline).

America's Unquenchable Defense Spending Posted by Michael Cohen

With all the talk these days in Washington about the need to trim the deficit it seems one piece of the budgetary pie keeps getting ignored - the defense budget. A couple of weeks ago, the Sustainable Defense Task Force (which includes NSN head Heather Hurlburt and occasional DA blogger Will Harting) put out a new report that offers policymakers a helpful guide for wringing more savings out of the DoD budget. 

The report is linked to here and I've got a short piece over at AOL highlighting some of its conclusions as well as the need to look for defense dollars as a way to trim America's growing deficits:

The calls from Republicans and Democrats for belt-tightening rarely, if ever, seem to extend to the military. Deficit hawks in the House have even demanded that an amendment to the $37 billion Afghanistan spending bill that would allocate $10 billion to prevent teacher layoffs next school year be paid for with offsetting spending cuts. No such demands have been made about war spending, which since 9/11 tops more than $1 trillion. When it comes to paying for America's wars, Washington's attitude has seemingly been, "Put it on the credit card ... preferably the Chinese one."

Yet, outside the nation's entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the defense budget is by far the biggest chunk of the nation's fiscal pie. Aside from money allocated for the Pentagon there is another more than $300 billion in additional outlays for costs like homeland security, military aid, veteran's benefits and military-related interest on the national debt. That's more than $1 trillion in taxpayer money -- or about $3 out of every $10 in tax revenue.

And while the defense budget has been growing for decades, since 9/11 the numbers have jumped significantly. In fact, 65 percent of the increase in discretionary spending has gone to the Department of Defense in the years since 2001. And the money is not just going to pay for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nonwar defense spending makes up more than a third of the increase.

All of this is happening at a time when the U.S. faces no major foreign rival and al-Qaida, according to the nation's intelligence chiefs, has been reduced to a mere 400 to 500 key operatives in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan alone, the U.S. is spending $100 billion and deploying 100,000 troops to face an enemy that has only about 50 to 100 operatives in the entire country.

Trimming the defense budget will not solve the country's deficit woes, but it would certainly help. Moreover, smart spending cuts would allow lawmakers to divert money toward creating jobs and growing the economy -- steps that would, over time, do far more to reduce the deficit.

A recent report by the Sustainable Defense Task Force provides a useful guide going forward. Tasked by Rep. Barney Frank to identify areas of the defense budget that could be cut without compromising U.S. vital interests, the task force found nearly $1 trillion in possible savings over 10 years.

You can read the whole thing here.

New START’s Many Strengths: What the Experts Say Posted by Kelsey Hartigan

The Heritage Foundation recently pulled together a rather entertaining list of quotes about the New START treaty.  It back-fired.  Big time. 

After Senator Jim DeMint fumbled missile defense 101, Senator Lugar responded that he didn't know any "serious thinker" who would suggest what DeMint had just asserted.  Well, based on the lack-luster list of commentary Heritage pulled together, fringe conservatives are struggling to find a "serious thinker" who opposes New START.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has held months of hearings and heard from the nation's most respected military and national security leaders from both sides of the aisle.  Over the course of twelve hearings, Senators have been repeatedly urged to ratify New START as it is essential to our national security.  Here's just a taste of what the experts are saying:

SUPPORT FOR RATIFICATION

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates:  “The New START Treaty has the unanimous support of America's military leadership—to include the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all of the service chiefs, and the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, the organization responsible for our strategic nuclear deterrent.  For nearly 40 years, treaties to limit or reduce nuclear weapons have been approved by the U.S. Senate by strong bipartisan majorities. This treaty deserves a similar reception and result-on account of the dangerous weapons it reduces, the critical defense capabilities it preserves, the strategic stability it maintains, and, above all, the security it provides to the American people.” [Secretary Gates, 5/13/10]

James Schlesinger, Secretary of Defense for Presidents Nixon and Ford and the Secretary of Energy for President Carter: “It is obligatory for the United States to ratify.”  [James Schlesinger, 4/29/10]

Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “I am pleased to add my voice in support of ratification of the New START treaty and to do so as soon as possible. We are in our seventh month without a treaty with Russia." [Admiral Mullen, 6/17/10]

Dr. James Miller, Principal Deputy Defense Undersecretary for Policy:  “The New START Treaty is strongly in the national security interest of the United States. The Department of Defense fully supports the treaty.” [James Miller, 6/16/10]

Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN):  “I support the New START treaty and believe that it will enhance United States national security.”

Henry Kissinger, National Security Advisor to President Nixon and Secretary of State to Presidents Nixon and Ford:  “In deciding on ratification, the concerns need to be measured against the consequences of non-ratification, particularly interrupting a [bilateral arms control] process that has been going on for decades, the relationship to the NPT, and to the attempt to achieve a strategic coherence. And so, for all these reasons, I recommend ratification of this treaty...In short, this committee's decision will affect the prospects for peace for a decade or more. It is, by definition, not a bipartisan, but a nonpartisan, challenge.”  [Henry Kissinger, 5/25/10]

Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, Samuel Berger, Frank Carlucci, Chuck Hagel, John Danforth and many other prominent national security experts:   “We, the undersigned Republicans and Democrats, support the New START treaty.”  [30 Bipartisan Leaders via Partnership for a Secure America, 6/24/10]


BENEFITS OF THE NEW START AGREEMENT

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen:  “The New START deals directly with some of the most lethal of those common challenges - our stockpiles of strategic nuclear weapons.  By dramatically reducing these stockpiles, this treaty achieves a proper balance more in keeping with today's security environment, reducing tensions even as it bolsters nonproliferation efforts.  It features a much more effective, transparent verification method that demands quicker data exchanges and notifications... In other words, through the trust it engenders, the cuts it requires, and the flexibility it preserves, this treaty enhances our ability to do that which we have been charged to do: protect and defend the citizens of the United States.”  [Admiral Michael Mullen, 3/27/10]

General Kevin Chilton, STRATCOM Commander:  “As the combatant command responsible for executing strategic deterrence operations, planning for nuclear operations, and advocating for nuclear capabilities, we are keenly aware of how force posture and readiness changes can affect deterrence, assurance, and overall strategic stability. The New START agreement, in my view, retains the military flexibility necessary to ensure each of these for the period of the treaty.” [General Chilton, 4/22/10]

Stephen Hadley, National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush: “The New START Treaty makes its modest but nonetheless useful contribution to the national security of the United States and to international stability.” [Stephen Hadley, 6/10/10]

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu: “New START is an important part of President Obama's nuclear security agenda. If ratified and entered into force, the treaty will commit the United States and the Russian Federation to lower levels of deployed strategic nuclear weapons in a transparent and verifiable way. This will increase stability between our countries, while demonstrating our joint commitment to a nuclear nonproliferation treaty.” [Secretary Chu, 6/17/10]

Former Secretary of State James Baker:  “Although I am not an expert on the nuances of the proposed New START treaty, it appears to take our country in a direction that can enhance our national security while at the same time reducing the number of nuclear warheads on the planet. It can also improve Washington's relationship with Moscow regarding nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles, a relationship that will be vital if the two countries are to cooperate in order to stem nuclear proliferation in countries such as Iran and North Korea.” [James Baker, 5/19/10]

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:  “This is a treaty that if ratified will provide stability, transparency and predictability for the two countries with more than 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons. It is a treaty that will reduce the permissible number of Russian- and U.S.-deployed strategic warheads to 1,550, a level not seen since the 1950s.” [Secretary Clinton, 6/17/10]

General Kevin Chilton, STRATCOM Commander:  “I believe that there are three reasons why the New START agreement represents a positive step forward. First, New START limits the number of Russian ballistic missile warheads and strategic delivery vehicles that can target the United States. Second, New START retains efficient flexibility in managing our deterrent forces to hedge against technical or geopolitical surprise. And third, New START will re-establish a strategic nuclear arms control verification regime that provides access to Russian nuclear forces and a measure of predictability in Russian force deployments over the life of the treaty.”  [General Chilton, 6/16/10]

Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:  “The chiefs and I believe the New START treaty achieves an important and necessary balance between three critical aims. It allows us to retain a strong and flexible American nuclear deterrent. It helps strengthen openness and transparency in our relationship with Russia. It also demonstrates our national commitment to reducing the worldwide risk of a nuclear incident resulting from the continuing proliferation of nuclear weapons.”  [Admiral Mullen, 6/17/10]

CONSEQUENCES OF NONRATIFICATION

General Brent Scowcroft (Ret.), President George H.W. Bush's National Security Advisor:  “The principal result of non-ratification would be to throw the whole nuclear negotiating situation into a state of chaos.” [Brent Scowcroft, 6/10/10]

James Schlesinger, Secretary of Defense for Presidents Nixon and Ford and the Secretary of Energy for President Carter:   Failure to ratify this treaty “would have a detrimental effect on our ability to influence others with regard to, particularly, the nonproliferation issue.”  [James Schlesinger, 4/29/10]

Former Defense Secretary William Perry: “If we fail to ratify this treaty, the U.S. forfeits any right to leadership on nonproliferation policies.”  [William Perry, 4/29/10]

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:  “The consequences of not ratifying this treaty would have very serious impacts on our relationship with Russia, and would frankly give aid and comfort to a lot of the adversaries we face around the world.” [Hillary Clinton, 6/17/10]

Henry Kissinger, National Security Advisor to President Nixon and Secretary of State to Presidents Nixon and Ford:  “This START treaty is an evolution of treaties that have been negotiated in previous administrations of both parties. And its principal provisions are an elaboration or a continuation of existing agreements. Therefore, a rejection of them would indicate that a new period of American policy had started that might rely largely on the unilateral reliance of its nuclear weapons, and would therefore create an element of uncertainty in the calculations of both adversaries and allies. And therefore, I think it would have an unsettling impact on the international environment.”  [Henry Kissinger, 5/25/10]


MISSILE DEFENSE

Director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, Lieutenant General Patrick O'Reilly:  “The New START Treaty actually reduces previous START treaty's constraints on developing missile defense programs in several areas.” [General O'Reilly, 6/16/10]

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates: “The treaty will not constrain the United States from deploying the most effective missile defenses possible nor impose additional costs or barriers on those defenses.” [Sec. Gates, 6/17/10]

Commander of U.S. Strategic Command General Chilton:  “As the combatant command also responsible for synchronizing global missile defense plans, operations, and advocacy, this treaty does not constrain any current missile defense plans.” [General Chilton, 6/16/10]

Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy and Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology & Logistics Ash Carter:  “Missile defenses have become a topic of some discussion in the context of the Senate's consideration of the New START Treaty with Russia. The fact is that the treaty does not constrain the U.S. from testing, developing and deploying missile defenses. Nor does it prevent us from improving or expanding them. Nor does it raise the costs of doing so. We have made clear to our Russian counterparts that missile defense cooperation between us is in our mutual interest, and is not inconsistent with the need to deploy and improve our missile defense capabilities as threats arise.” [Flournoy and Carter via WSJ, 6/17/10]

Is It Time to Give Obama A Break? Posted by Michael Cohen

Over the past couple of weeks there has been a great deal of sturm and drang from the left about President Obama for failing to fulfill the promise of his 2008 campaign. Bob Kuttner's claim in the Huffington Post that Obama isn't really a progressive was perhaps the most prominent recent example; but there was also Eric Alterman's cri de couer in the pages of Nation and Glenn Greenwald's regular fulminations at Salon. Today, Politico weighs in. Yet, so many of these criticisms seem deeply misplaced and divorced from the very real constraints on Obama's ability to follow through on his agenda.

What so many of these criticisms ignore is the unprecedented level of GOP obstructionism and collusion from centrist Democrats. What stopped a bigger stimulus from being enacted in 2009? Filibustering Republicans and centrist Democrats. What stopped the public option? Joe Lieberman, centrist Dems and the GOP. What is stopping an extension of unemployment benefits from being passed? The GOP and Ben Nelson. What is stopping climate change legislation from becoming law? Republicans who don't believe in the science of global warming and Democratic Senators from coal and gas producing states. I could go on. 

Those who argue that Obama should have "fought harder" for these unattainable goals are making arguments that lack a very basic understanding of presidential power, particularly in an era when political parties are nowhere near as powerful as they once were.  This is the very nature of domestic legislating. It's not pretty, but it's the system we've got. 

And in fact, what is most aggravating about these assertions is that they tend to ignore the President's shining progressive success - health care reform. Indeed, in an entire op-ed criticizing Obama's progressive credentials, Kuttner mentions health care reform once but offers the back-handed compliment that Obama showed "rare hands-on leadership." You'd think that passing the most important piece of social policy legislation in more than 40 years - and guaranteeing health care coverage for 30 million Americans - would rate a bit higher. Think again.

And the constraints on domestic policy also exist in foreign policy even though on these issues the president has far more latitude. For example, on Afghanistan I think the President made a huge mistake in supporting escalation last December. I continue to believe that he could have resisted the generals, but it would have taken almost all of his political capital to do so . . . at the same time that he was trying to pass health care reform. It's one of the reasons I don't necessarily begrudge his decision to escalate vs. the far worse decision to not demand his generals come up with a better, more realistic strategy for achieving US goals in Afghanistan.

And it wasn't as if liberals gave him a lot of ammunition back in the spring of 2009 or even the summer and fall in resisting the military's COIN fetish. To a large extent, on Afghanistan, the president's hands were tied - tied by his own rhetoric, tied by his own supporters who cheered lustily when he said he would devote more attention to the war in Afghanistan (myself included), tied by a military that organized a crackerjack PR campaign to force his hand, tied by his liberal supporters for failing to push back on the military and tied by an opposition party that cares more about the politics of national security than they do national security policy.

And while it's much harder to defend Obama on his civil liberties and rule of law positions, I hark back to something I wrote in March when word was leaked that KSM would not get a civilian trial after all:

The depressing conclusion to all this is that a good part of our political class isn't really that interested in promoting the rule of law when it comes to dealing with the threat of terrorism.  That so many Americans are willing to go along with this; and that so many politicians are either willing to use the fear of terrorism to abrogate the rule of law (or are unwilling to stand up for it) is not all on Barack Obama. It's on America.

Of course, Obama is not blameless here. He has at times needlessly upset the left; he's failed to make critical appointments to the judiciary and other federal positions; his rhetoric on terrorism has dangerously aped the Bush-era "war on terrorism" narrative; he has failed to take bolder steps on dealing with torture and rule of law issues and in some cases has taken a step back; he perhaps took too long to jettison the post-partisan rhetoric and take on the GOP's know-nothingness and mindless, naked obstructionism. But these critiques only tell a small part of the story.

Instead when you consider how often depraved that opposition is, for example, in opposing economic stimulus for political gain or lying about the impact of proposed legislation or branding any effort to moderate US foreign policy as "weakness" or "surrender" . . . well Obama looks pretty good by comparison.After all American politics is not a zero sum game; it's a competition between two competing forces in which sometimes the lesser of two evils is the better choice.

There is with every president and every leader both good and bad - but in the face of unprecedented political opposition Obama's track record is one that is far more glass full, than glass empty. Indeed I would argue it's about three-quarters full.

Maybe it's about time that the left (myself included) gave Obama a break . . . and aim their broadsides at the real enemy of progressivism and good governance in this country. Or perhaps we can continue to dump all over Obama and then sit around and wonder in 2013 how Mitt Romney got elected President.

America's Bizarre Budget Priorities: Money For Wars Not Education Posted by Michael Cohen

Loyal DA reader; see if you can figure out what's wrong with this few sentences from this Christian Science Monitor article on Dave Obey's efforts to increase funding for the nation's teachers:

There's broad, bipartisan support for the $58.8 billion the Senate approved on May 27 to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ($37.1 billion), Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange ($13.4 billion), Haiti earthquake relief ($2.9 billion), the Gulf oil spill ($162 million), and other disaster relief. 

At issue is the $22 billion in additional spending that the House added to the Senate bill on July 1, including $10 billion to hire teachers or prevent widespread teacher layoffs this fall, $5 billion to cover an expected shortfall in Pell grants for college students, and $700 million for border security. 

Rep. David Obey (D) of Wisconsin, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, initially proposed $23 billion for teachers. But he had to pare it back to $10 billion after protests from fiscal conservatives in the House Democratic caucus. 

Ok, I guess I made that too easy. 

There are times when you really start to wonder about what kind of screwed up place Washington has become when $37 billion for a war in Afghanistan to combat an enemy of approximately 400-500 terrorists (50-100 of which are actually in Afghanistan) is uncontroversial . . . but $23 billion for teachers has to be pared back because it will blow up the deficit. 

To make matters even worse Obey is trying to offset the $10 billion for teachers by making significant cuts in the Obama Administration's effective "Race to the Top" program, which is supporting education reform efforts around the country. So to hire more teachers, Obey is willing to undercut efforts to improve education reform. Brilliant.

It's also worth mentioning here that the same US Senate where there is broad, bipartisan support for funding the war effort in Afghanistan has been tied up in knots for eight weeks over extending unemployment insurance for those Americans who can't find work in the midst of an economic downturn - as well as funding that will keep state government from making draconian budget cuts. This comes even after the Senate found spending offsets for the approximately $30 billion spending bill. (As near I can tell the supplemental contains only offsets for increased funding for teachers - and no offsets for the more than $37 billion in war spending).

So again, money for fighting wars - uncontroversial and unpaid for. Money for helping the unemployed and preventing teacher layoffs - meh.

This is not to say that funding the troops while they are in harm's way is unimportant; considering the mission we've asked them to fulfill, it certainly is. But it speaks volumes about the priorities in Washington that we have now spent more than a trillion dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (all on a Chinese credit card) and that raises few hackles on Capitol Hill; but relatively small expenditures for our own citizens in the midst of an economic downturn produces partisan gridlock and solemn declarations that we are imperiling future generations by growing the budget deficit. 

Imagine what a different world we would live in if every time the US government decided to engage in an overseas adventure - they actually had to pay for it.

The "We Care About Afghan Civilians Myth" Posted by Michael Cohen

Spencer Ackerman responds to my post about civilian casualties with the following observation:

Here’s where those who base their opposition to the war its promotion of human suffering have to meet halfway as well. If the U.S. stops prosecuting its end of the war, civilian casualties will not end. What will end is the civilian casualties we directly cause. The Taliban-led coalition will continue its insurgency until victory or negotiation, with all the acceleration of civilian casualties that will entail. (I would think it’s likely that the Taliban would greet an abrupt U.S. withdrawal, in the absence of a capable Afghan security apparatus, as a disincentive to negotiate, since its coalition will perceive itself to be winning. Negotiations would become a venue for the Karzai government to capitulate.)

Now, you can argue that such a circumstance ultimately benefits the U.S. national interest better than an indefinite, bloody and expensive war. Or you can argue that the counterinsurgents are wrong, and while civilian casualties are to be avoided in general, they don’t have strategic implications. But you can’t simply argue that a U.S. withdrawal comes with a pony for every Afghan citizen since that overlooks the United Nations' documented increase in the proportion of civilian casualties for which the Taliban are responsible.

I have a few quibbles with this argument. One, as our friend Andrew Exum recently pointed out, withdrawal from Afghanistan isn't really on the table as an alternative to the current policy so this argument just isn't really relevant to this debate. (Although to those who are urging immediate withdrawal Spencer's point is one that pokes a hole in the notion that Afghanistan will be better off if we just leave.)

Second, Taliban atrocities will certainly continue if say, we depart southern and eastern Afghanistan, but I would imagine that they would not continue at the same pace. As the UN report I flagged the other day mentions violence in eastern and southern Afghanistan has jumped because of our presence there. If there is a reduced US and ANSF footprint in these areas it only stands to reason that you will see fewer assassinations, fewer reprisal killings, fewer roadside bombs etc. Proponents of the current COIN strategy have to come to grips with the fact that just as in Iraq, our destabilizing presence leads to more, not less violence even if the number of civilians being killed by US arms decreases (which it isn't!). Spencer is right that the Taliban are responsible for an increase in civilian casualties . . . but NATO has something to do with that.

Of course, the rejoinder to this argument is that if we leave, the people living in southern and eastern Afghanistan will be even worse off since they are going to suffer under Taliban rule. This brings us to the last point.

All of this is true, but ultimately this isn't the concern of the United States. I don't mean that to sound flippant or to argue that US shouldn't care - I say it, because in the end if the US can get out of Afghanistan with its interests protected and with a reasonably stable government in Kabul that is in little danger of falling we'll quite easily sell out those civilians in eastern and southern Afghanistan (and it's not as if staying will necessarily make their situation any better). 

The inherent problem with our stated focus on Afghans civilians is that this is simply a means to an end - namely weakening the Taliban and protecting US interests. If we can meet those goals without protecting civilians we will and ultimately we're simply not going to stay in Afghanistan to ensure that Afghan civilians have their rights protected from the Taliban. Our focus on Afghan civilians only goes so far as it dovetails with US interests. Beyond that . . . not so much.

This whole focus on what we can "provide" for the Afghan people is a giant shell game and one gets the sense that the Afghan people are smart enough to realize it themselves. Ultimately, we are fighting this war for reasons that narrowly have to do with protecting US interests - and we should be honest about it. And if we really want to help Afghan civilians we should perhaps shift our focus to those parts of the country where we can really do some good and where our efforts will likely be sustainable.

About Those Restrictive Rules of Engagement Posted by Michael Cohen

As has become his wont Rajiv Chandrasekaren has another must read in the Washington Post today about the issue of rules of engagement in Afghanistan and its impact on civilian casualties. I won't try to summarize the entire piece here, but as Rajiv argues the focus on protecting civilians at all costs is lowering morale, limiting the ability to go after insurgents and is being utilized by Taliban fighters as a weapon against US troops.  

Reacting to Rajiv's article, Spencer Ackerman makes the argument that "care to prevent civilian casualties won't be enough to protect US interests in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda and the Taliban; but lack of care will ensure that the population decisively turns against the U.S.-led coalition, and that pretty much forecloses U.S. options here."

I would quibble with this slightly. The problem here is that it is our presence - not necessarily our actions - that is putting Afghan lives in peril.  As this recent UN report show, roadside bombings, assassinations and suicide attacks are all up significantly from last year - as are the number of Afghans killed by NATO forces. So it's not as if lack of care by the United States is improving the lives of Afghans. Indeed, if our overriding goal was truly to protect civilians . . . well then we wouldn't be in southern and eastern Afghanistan in the first place.

As I noted today at World Politics Review, "U.S. military operations have created the worst of both worlds: continued violence against Afghan civilians and no significant rollback of Taliban momentum. Paradoxically, if Petraeus relaxes U.S. rule of engagement in Afghanistan, civilians may find themselves at greater risk of being harmed by U.S. soldiers, but still safer overall."

Moreover, continued failure to blunt the momentum of the Taliban militarily will almost certainly foreclose US options in Afghanistan - and that may come from both the Afghan government or perhaps more likely US public opinion.

So the choice we face in Afghanistan isn't between protecting civilians and not protecting civilians or blowing things up and not blowing things up.  As Spencer seems to be implicitly suggesting the issue is finding the middle ground between these two options.

And that means being clear about the fact - that if we are intent on fighting a war in southern and eastern Afghanistan -civilians are going to die in the process. While great care must be given to minimizing the loss of human life, it's not possible to square the circle and believe that such deaths can be avoided or even that the number of Afghans killed by American arms tells us much at all about how our presence there is perceived and ramifications of the war we are choosing to fight. 

If we're not willing to accept the fact that civilians are going to be killed in war - and that lives will be upturned by the determination that our perceived interests in southern and eastern Afghanistan trump those of local civilians - then we have no business fighting this war in the first place. This isn't intended as a dig on Spencer (who I'm sure understands this) but there is something frustrating about the way we seem to talk about civilian casualties in Afghanistan as if our very presence and our very decision to go to war is not a fundamental part of civilian suffering in Afghanistan.

The Pragmatic “Pacific President” Posted by Jacob Stokes

Newsweek has a story up by Joshua Kurlantzick entitled, “How Obama Lost His Asian Friends.” The piece brings some much-needed focus back on America’s relationship with East Asia and away from the immediate crises in the Middle East and South Asia. Aside from that shift though, the article has some significant flaws. Kurlantzick argues that, after some early successes and sweeping rhetoric about being the first “Pacific President,” Obama has allowed America’s allies in the region to languish.

As evidence of this, Kurlantzick offers the Administration’s about-face on the South Korea free trade deal, which, he admits, “would create the most important American trade deal since the North American Free Trade Agreement.” At no point does Kurlantzick mention the fact that the trade deal represents an important gesture on the part of the Administration to show solidarity with South Korea in the wake of the Cheonan sinking by the North. There’s not much else America can do (except for maybe a highly misguided use of force) to show support for our allies in the region as they face real threats, especially when China refuses to call out Pyongyang.

The piece also suggests that Obama made a mistake in cancelling his trip to Indonesia three times, two of which were used to make a final push on the healthcare bill and to deal with the BP oil spill, respectively. While it’s certainly unfortunate that these trips had to be cancelled, if you hold even a modicum of support for Barack Obama—which, I don’t know, maybe Kurlantzick doesn’t, and that’s fine—it’s easy to see why those two actions were essential to maintaining his strength at home.

Healthcare needed a final push and the optics of Obama cavorting abroad  (with whomever, allies or not) would have allowed the president’s domestic opponents to wipe the floor with him. America’s allies in Asia are much better served with Obama having strong support at home than they are feeling individually satisfied while Obama’s domestic support flounders. (All this despite whatever completely objective observer Walter Lohman at Heritage, who the piece quotes, thinks.)

What’s more, as Liz Economy points out over at Asia Unbound, Kurlantzick’s sense of how damaging these trip cancellations are to public opinion in Asia is skewed at best:

Josh’s handwringing over the negative perceptions of the United States throughout the region seems misplaced. The 2010 Pew Research Center polling data reports the United States garnering a 66 percent favorability rating in India, 66 percent in Japan, and a whopping 79 percent in South Korea, reflecting, perhaps, the close relationship between Presidents Obama and Lee. Even Indonesia, where as Josh rightly points out the President has squandered significant good will by cancelling his state visit three times, offers up a 59 percent approval rating.

The whole piece is really summed up by two quotes Kurlantzick uses as examples of the region’s opinion of Obama. Early in the piece, he quotes Lee Kuan Yew saying, “If you [the U.S.] do not hold your ground in the Pacific, you cannot be a world leader.” Kurlantzick then goes on to whine about how Obama didn’t let a vacillating, anti-American Democratic Party of Japan roll him on marine bases. Later Kurlantzick quotes Japanese lawmaker Kuniko Tanoika as saying, “the very stubborn attitude of no compromise of the U.S. government… is clearly pushing Japan away, towards China.”  As Economy notes in her post, this is a highly flawed proposition. Japan may increase its ties with China, but it’s not likely to turn away from the U.S. anytime soon. The basing issue was an attempt at that, and it failed miserably.

Kurlantzick is basically saying that America should do whatever its allies in the region ask, no matter how ridiculous it is, while pushing back against anything China tries to do in order to stand our ground in the region. The Obama administration is practicing a much more nuanced diplomacy than what Kurlantzick suggests, one that’s obviously willing to support allies and stand up to China and North Korea. We’ve seen this with the South Korea trade agreement, a series of trade disputes with China and threats to label China a currency manipulator. But Obama’s strategy is also one that realizes compromise is necessary sometimes.

The Administration’s Asia policy is not perfect, but Obama is hardly ignoring the region and hanging America’s friends out to dry – no matter how good of a Newsweek headline that idea makes.

Finding the Exit From Afghanistan Posted by Michael Cohen

Over at World Politics Review I have a new piece arguing that in the wake of the command change in Afghanistan US strategy must switch from trying to "win" in Afghanistan (whatever that means) to finding an exit strategy:

In the two weeks since Gen. David Petraeus was nominated to be the new commander for U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan, continuity has been the dominant theme in describing what his replacement of ousted Gen. Stanley McChrystal represents. After all, Petraeus literally wrote the book on U.S. counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine, which McChrystal tried to apply in Afghanistan over the past year. It only seems natural to expect that Petraeus will maintain the same approach.

But continuity is the worst possible option for U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, because it would mean maintaining a strategy that appears increasingly unlikely to succeed.  Instead, President Barack Obama should use the change in command to modify his goal, from "winning" the war in Afghanistan to laying the  political and military groundwork for withdrawal.

Failure to clearly identify which of these two paths would define the U.S. mission has been perhaps the Obama administration's greatest strategic failing in Afghanistan.  

In March 2009, Obama declared that his goal in Afghanistan was to defeat, dismantle and disrupt al-Qaida, and pointedly noted that "dictating" Afghanistan's future was not in the cards. But McChrystal's strategy, laid out only months later, was predicated not only on protecting the Afghan people, but also on providing "a secure environment allowing good government and economic development to undercut the causes and advocates of insurgency."  

Even after the administration's lengthy Afghanistan review last fall, the gap between Obama's stated goal and McChrystal's ambitious strategy remained unresolved.  The president's 18-month timeline to begin drawing down U.S. troops and his order to McChrystal not to occupy territory that couldn't be turned over to Afghan security forces by June 2011 suggested a more minimal goal of stabilizing Afghanistan and speeding the path toward withdrawal. But McChrystal's military forays into Taliban-controlled and Pashtun-dominated southern and eastern Afghanistan and his emphasis on U.S.-led nation-building spoke to a different aspiration. 

Indeed, under McChrystal, the U.S. and NATO mission was to both out-fight and out-govern the Taliban -- in short, to "win" in Afghanistan. But victory has not been in the cards in Afghanistan for a very long time. With polling indicating that Americans are souring on both the war and Obama's stewardship of it, the focus must shift to protecting U.S. interests while leaving Afghanistan as stable as possible after our withdrawal.  

Read the whole thing here

Obama's Foreign Policy: It Sure Beats the Alternative Posted by Michael Cohen

As any regular reader of DA is well-aware I have not been a huge fan of President Obama's foreign policy to date. I like the START treaty, the effort to repair relations with key allies, the creation of the G-20 etc; but in general Obama has shown a bit too much timidity and too little follow through on issues like democracy promotion, reconfiguring the foreign policy bureaucracy and weaning the country away from the 'war on terror' narrative. But it's early, the political constraints on Obama are significant and so my general inclination is to withhold judgment for the time being. 

Unfortunately, however, what really makes me appreciate Obama's approach to foreign policy is America's opposition party and its apparent belief that American needs a foreign policy that looks not like George Bush's . . . but John Bolton's.

Case in point, Mitt Romney's factually inaccurate, insidious and generally stupid op-ed in the Washington Post yesterday about the START treaty. Fred Kaplan demolishes Romney's absurd arguments here, but I think Barron YoungSmith over at TNR gets to the heart of the issue:

The responsible Republican foreign policy establishment is not coming back. Mandarins like George Schultz, Henry Kissinger, and James Baker, who have all testified or written on behalf of the START treaty - calling it an integral, uncontroversial way of repairing the bipartisan arms-control legacy that sustained American foreign policy all the way up until the George W. Bush - are going to be dead soon (or they've drifted into the service of Democrats). The people who will take their place will be from a generation of superhawks, like John Bolton, Liz Cheney, and Robert Joseph, who are virulently opposed to the practice of negotiated arms control. 

As YoungSmith points out, Romney is not only running to the right of John McCain's rather conservative 2008 foreign policy platform it suggests that Republican presidential candidates are going to return to the Reagansque "peace through strength" mantra from the late 1970s. But it's actually even worse than that. Mitt Romney is a frontrunner for the 2012 GOP nomination and he seems to believe that the best way to win that nod is to stake out foreign policy positions that are basically Cheneyesque in nature - namely rejecting international diplomacy, viewing American power solely through the lens of our military might and calling for a foreign policy of American unilateralism. This is foreign policy for people who hark back to those halcyon days of 2001-2003 in US diplomatic relations. And for those who might be inclined to argue that this is just politics . . . well I say hark back to US diplomatic relations in 2001-2003. It WAS alive back then. 

The very fact that one of the GOP frontrunners for his party's presidential nomination believes that the START treaty is one of Obama's "worst foreign policy mistakes" and then runs to the op-ed page of the Washington Post to argue that pretty much every single prominent Republican and conservative thinker on national security is wrong on this issue. Well to me it's the best possible evidence that the Republican Party has become a political party of children with no serious interest in running the country's foreign affairs competently or effectively. 

Think of it in these terms; the Bush Administration's foreign policy was a complete disaster. But at least you had someone like Colin Powell in the first term and Bob Gates and Condi Rice (ish) in the second to keep the crazies in check. Who would play the role of Powell or Gates in a Romney, Huckabee or, god forbid, Palin Administration? Part of me wants to believe that this is just politics run amok (and I think some of that is at play here) but increasingly it should be apparent that GOP foreign policy thinking is dominated by a small group of extremist national security thinkers whose only lesson learned from the Bush Administration is that it wasn't conservative enough.

And while I sort of hate these types of political arguments . . . this all makes Obama look pretty good doesn't it?

Some Imagination About Afghanistan Strategy Posted by Michael Cohen

Over at Politico, Robert Blackwell who was deputy national security advisor in the Bush Administration lays out a possible alternative to our present strategy in Afghanistan.

After years of faulty U.S. policy toward Afghanistan, there are no quick, easy and cost-free  ways to escape the current deadly quagmire. But with all its problems, a de facto partition offers the best available U.S. alternative to strategic defeat. Announcing that we will retain an active combat role in Afghanistan for years to come and that we do not accept permanent Taliban control of the south, the United States and its allies could withdraw combat forces from most of Pashtun Afghanistan (about half the country), including Kandahar, over several months. 

. . . We would then focus on defending the north and west regions -- roughly 60 percent of the population. These areas, including Kabul, are not Pashtun-dominated and locals are largely sympathetic to U.S. efforts. 

. . . We would then make it clear that we would rely heavily on U.S. air power and special forces to target any Al Qaida base in Afghanistan, as well as Afghan Taliban leaders who aided them. We would also target Afghan Taliban encroachments across the de facto partition lines and terrorist sanctuaries along the Pakistan border. 

We would continue accelerating our Afghan army training. We would devote nation-building efforts to the north and west region where, unlike the Pashtun, people are not conflicted about accepting U.S. help and not systematically coerced by the Taliban. 

This approach is similar to what Gilles Dorronsorro has been saying for a while and what I argued for last spring in the pages of Dissent. Now Blackwell's strategy isn't perfect and he highlights some of the problems with this strategy - reluctance by the Karzai government to go along; the potential for jihadist safe havens to pop up in Taliban areas; Pakistani resistance (although on this point I'm a bit skeptical that the Pakistanis would be that upset, especially if they their interests in Afghanistan were protected); and of course human rights in Taliban-dominated areas would be "abysmal."

But these problems notwithstanding, defacto partition is almost certainly where things are heading in Afghanistan; we can't defeat the Taliban and the Taliban likely can't take over the country. But the key to make such a strategy work is, as Blackwell suggests, to make clear that the US will not leave the country until the Karzai government and its military is strong enough to maintain its rule. Blackwell talks about maintaining US troop levels of between 40 and 50,000, which seems very high to me. But whatever the number the US should make clear its long-term commitment to Afghanistan's security and stability . . . just not to nation-building. At the same time, US policymakers must make clear that its most important and non-negotiable redline is no al Qaeda presence of any kind in Taliban-controlled areas.

Whether you agree or disagree with Blackwell's strategy - or any of the alternatives that have been floated - it's becoming increasingly clear that the change in course will have to come. The current strategy isn't working and it unlikely to be any more successful in the future - not without a significant and unjustifiable outlay of US blood and treasure.

To be sure, we should have been talking about some of these alternatives a year ago . . . but better late than never.