The Same Old Song: The 2006 National Security Strategy Posted by Gordon Adams

I can’t close out this round of guest blogging without discussing the newly released national security strategy. The release may be new, but the lyrics and tune are quite familiar. The new strategy is largely a retread of the old one, with some reshuffling and a data dump from the past four years.

The verses have been shuffled a bit. Compared to the 2002 strategy, today’s “first pillar” of US national security strategy is: “promoting freedom, justice, and human dignity – working to end tyranny, to promote effective democracies, and to extend prosperity through free and fair trade and wise development policies.” Democracy has now become the key to every other goal: international stability, an end to regional conflicts, ending terrorism, and ensuring economic growth. The American national religion is now the global religion, even to the point of the strategy adopting Morton Halperin’s flagship concept – the Community of Democracies. And there is a new focus on “ending tyranny,” with specific countries targeted by the strategy: Iran, the DPRK, Syria, Cuba, Belarus, Burma, and Zimbabwe. Interesting choices – no Central Asian country made the list.

In some ways, this is nothing new. Ronald Reagan wanted to expand democracy; Bill Clinton made enlarging the family of democracies a centerpiece of his policy, as well. Democracy is, by and large, a good thing; only tyrants (and neo-authoritarian regimes like Russia) think it is dangerous.  And, neither the US nor any other country has a great track record at making it happen, especially outside the industrialized, well-educated, middle class world of countries, most which (Japan, Germany, the Czech Republic) already had some experience of democracy.

Moreover, the list of success stories for this goal, as cited in the strategy, is a bit thin, even questionable. Afghanistan – elections, yes, and war lords, narcotics, and a rising resistance from Taliban remnants. Iraq – well, more on that in a moment. Then we go into the weeds of “progress toward”democracy: Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt (where the US promotion campaign has basically been told to take a hike), Kuwait, and Morocco, all said to be “pursuing agendas of reform.” From there, we are down to otherwise unidentified countries in continents – Africa (including Uganda’s President-apparently-for-life Yoweri Museveni?), Latin America (where democracy was already pretty well rooted), and Asia.

Understanding the Civil War in Iraq Posted by Michael Signer

Even those of us who are reasonably well-informed and paying close attention to Iraq are desperately in need of facts -- those boring things -- to help make sense of the maddening Chinese water torture rhythm of violence there.

But in trying to figure out what's actually going on inside Iraq, it is almost impossibly difficult to wade through the surges of rhetoric from both sides (the right's idealism, the left's pessimism).  There's a fog of war on both sides.

We can finally get a few answers in a searching, thoughtful, and thoroughly chilling interview with Nir Rosen in Foreign Policy (and it's a Web exclusive, so anyone can read it).

Instead of engaging in the meta-debate of who's-right-who's-wrong-in-America, Rosen just plainly tells us what's going on in Iraq on the ground.  For starters, the violence against Americans is only incidentally against America -- a civil war really has started inside the country, and it's just on low burn now.  As Rosen writes:

Posted by The Editors

Is the Tail wagging the Dog? “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”, a Harvard University sponsored working paper by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.

Business As Usual? How Defense Decisions Are Made Posted by Gordon Adams

I have observed several times that the Pentagon’s recent Quadrennial Defense Review was, in fact three reviews stapled together. QDR I is a discursive and interesting speculation on how the world in which the military operates has changed. The threats are now rarely a peer competitor or major regional hegemon, armed to the teeth and challenging US dominance. Instead, they are asymmetrical – catastrophic attacks by small groups, insurgencies by enemies of our friends, terrorists attacking any available target, groups that would destabilize governments we support.

These threats come in smaller doses, some with significant consequences, if they succeed. The military response requires different forces from most of the ones we still have, as Iraq and Afghanistan are demonstrating – smaller ground forces units, larger and more agile special forces, enhanced human and technical intelligence, more unmanned ways of gaining intelligence and supporting forces. Pretty much unarguable stuff.

QDR II, which is echoed in the newly released National Strategy Review, is about how the US military cannot go alone in this new world, cannot conduct stabilization and peacekeeping missions on its own, and cannot carry out reconstruction as a purely military mission. It calls for stronger civilian capabilities in our own government and willing participation from far more allies than stepped up in Iraq in order to succeed. Again, a lesson drawn from recent experience.

QDR III, though, is the one that really matters. The strategic and budgetary rubber hits the road in force planning and acquisition, acquiring the capabilities we need to meet these new missions. QDR III appears to have been written by somebody other than the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and makes minimal reference to the other two. Here we find little discussion about how to incorporate forces of other nations, or their equipment, into US planning and little focus on tradeoffs between the new missions and the forces we have been buying for decades.

Conservatives and National Security:Their Philosophical Blind Spot Posted by Lorelei Kelly

It's not just the majority in Congress that is stifling open discussion. Word is that before today's vote on the Iraq supplemental (tipping the cost of war over $400 billion), Democrats were told during their party caucus that amendments were strongly discouraged.  That's discouraging.  Especially when we need to put every national security item on the table for scrutiny. With the budget train rolling along on rims, this better happen fast or all opportunity for informed trade-offs will disappear (like defeating incoming missiles with ramped up port security instead of non-functional missile shields in Alaska).

Stifling debate also limits the kinds of questions that will lead liberals back to a governing philosophy based on convictions of progress and ideas about problem-solving. Take the missed opportunity behind the now shelved Dubai port deal. The political point scoring didn't leave much time for much needed and ultimately more important questions: What is the essential role of government today? What are the limits of capitalism? Given the free-market cult that has dominated conservative circles for 30 years, taking responsibility for this discussion would liberate Democrats as an opposition party, and enable them to return to their roots when they have huge cover for boring old issues of government competence (As Atrios points out, the word Americans now associate with the Bush Administration is "incompetence").

Posted by The Editors

What do Vernon Jordan and Rudy Giuliani have in common? Apparently, Congress believes they will be able to provide “fresh eye