Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, Iraq and Libya Posted by Heather Hurlburt

While we hold our breath to see whether Gaddafi's cease-fire is real, it's worth taking a long view -- in both directions -- on what happened at the UN last night.

19 years ago and 11 years ago, groups of neighboring states, the US and NATO tried and failed to use the UN effectively to get Slobodan Milosevic to back down.  Those efforts -- both of which I was peripherally involved in -- were (justly) criticized as disjointed, slow, unclear, not sufficiently goal-oriented.  Yet the Bosnia efforts eventually ended a war; the Kosovo efforts resulted in a remarkable saving of human life, and the prevention of a regional cataclysm.  What is more -- and unrecognized -- they set up the successful intervention to prevent fighting and a humanitarian catastrophe in Macedonia in 2001.

16 years ago the world chose, with the US and France at the front of that choice, not to intervene in Rwanda.  After that great stain on our common humanity, there were slow and late efforts that helped end killing in Sierra Leone and Liberia; successful efforts to stave off a similar scale of killings in Burundi; herculean efforts to make modest but real progress to protect civilians in Southern Sudan and Darfur; efforts, unequal to the task, in Congo; and the creation of institutions and doctrines, like the International Criminal Court and the Responsibility to Protect, intended to make this task easier.

The resolution passed last night drew on much of the structure created by that painful history.  It drew in -- indeed, was sparked by -- African and Arab governments and found them willing to support measures that have been condemned as "colonialist" over and over in the past -- even to lead in their enforcement. 

This is a remarkable achievement, and a terribly tenuous one.  The countries that are taking the lead in enforcement, and making choices about arming the rebels, have an enormous responsibility.  It is not at all clear how they -- we -- can meet it, for all the reasons Michael has been outlining below.  But whether you're an idealist who still secretly longs for world government, or a realist who wants to see US "hard" power reserved for a strictly limited set of goals, this is a development you must want to see succeed.

The Questions Not Being Asked on Libya Posted by Michael Cohen

My friend and blogging mate Shadi Hamid has been passionately beating the drum in support of US military intervention in Libya for the past several weeks - and in the end I hope that his view about the efficacy of intervention ends up being correct and my skepticism is proven wrong.

Having said I think the argument that he utilizes below justifying military intervention gets the US strategic equation decidedly backward: 

For realists, I would love to hear how doing nothing in Libya was going to help U.S. security interests.

I don't actually consider myself a realist (ish), but I'll take a crack at this. The question that needs to be asked is not how will doing nothing further US interests; the question is how will doing something further US interests. 

The argument that 'doing something' will improve our "plummeting credibility" in the Arab world is both not a rationale for acting; it's not even in the national interest of the United States. In general, I'm sort of amazed that progressives - after Vietnam, after Iraq and after Afghanistan - would be using the argument that we need to send US troops in harm's way to preserve US credibility. After all, wars should be fought for national interests, not national image.

Indeed I'm having hard time finding a single reasonable national security argument in Shadi's post below for intervention in Libya.

More troubling is Shadi's argument that "Doing nothing in Libya would also have set a dangerous precedent: that Arab (or any other) leaders could slaughter their own people with impunity." Well I suppose, but by acting we are setting another precedent - that by doing something in Libya we are practically on the hook if another Arab leader starts slaughtering his people. If Assad starts massacring Syrian or the Saudi leadership starts killing pro-democracy protesters is the United States undermining the cause of freedom and liberty in the Arab world by doing nothing?

Of course there are a whole other set of "what if" questions that remain unanswered? What if a NFZ and airstrikes don't work in stopping Gaddafi? Do we then send in ground troops? What if a foreign pilot is shot down - do we send in search and rescue teams?

What if the war ends up in stalemate do we accept a status quo or do we send troops to Tripoli to liberate the entire country (Shadi seems to think we should)? What if the rebels are successful in overthrowing Gaddafi and begin massacring those loyal to Gaddafi? Would we have to respond to this violence as well? And to this point who exactly are the rebels that we are no going to war on behalf of?

What if our military intervention creates a power vacuum in Libya leading to political instability and violence? What is our responsibility to clean up the mess i.e. the Pottery Barn rule?

Now maybe these are questions we can answer later and perhaps they pale in comparison to doing nothing. And having asked all these provocative questions there is certainly the possibility that while the US is supportive of intervention it doesn't actually intend to play a starring role leaving the dirty work to the Europeans and the Arabs. My sense is if these countries want to take the lead more power to them.  After all, for these folks there actually is an argument that what happens in Libya impacts their national security interests.

And as a strident internationalist the fact that the UNSC has signed off on this gives me a bit less pause. Certainly one could make the argument, and quite rightfully so, that this situation falls under the concept of R2P - and obviously the humanitarian factor must be considered as well. In other words, it's sort of a close call on what to do. It's not a slam dunk like Iraq.

But what I generally find so shocking about this whole situation is that no one seems to be answering the hard questions about what comes next. None of the pundits calling for intervention; no one in the Obama Administration and certainly no one in Congress, which hasn't even been consulted, it seems, on this. The United States could within the next 24-48 hours be going to war in Libya and there has been no national debate, no presidential address, no authorization by Congress. It's sort of insane actually.

At the end all I can say is that I hope things go well - but there are very good reasons to be concerned about the consequences of getting involved in a fight that is decidedly tangential to US interests. I only wish that those so fervently pleading for military prevention were as circumspect about what comes next in this fight. 

Libya, the US, and the Moral Imperative to Intervene Posted by Shadi Hamid

Finally, after much "dithering" - which seems to be the consensus word choice for Obama's sputtering Mideast policy - the US has finally suggested that it can, sometimes, do the right thing, even if it does it three weeks later (I looked back to see when I had written my Slate article calling for international intervention - February 23). 

The arguments against military intervention struck me as surprisingly weak and almost entirely dependent on raising the spectre of Iraq and Afghanistan. It was somewhat unclear how and why Iraq 2003 should be compared to Libya 2011. Michael Cohen, whose preference for foreign policy restraint is admirable, worried recently that John McCain and Joe Lieberman's support for a no-fly zone portended bad things to come. Just because McCain and Lieberman support something doesn't automatically mean it's bad. 

Cohen writes that Iraq and Afghanistan "are daily reminders that the use of U.S. military force can have unforeseen and often unpredictable consequences." Yes, but that's sort of the point with bold action. It's supposed to be risky (in fact, if it's not, you may not be going far enough). Success isn't guaranteed. And no one is pretending that a positive outcome in Libya is a foregone conclusion now that the UN Security Council has adopted a resolution authorizing military force. But it does make a successful outcome more likely. Leon Wieseltier, in a moving must-read, writes:  

It may be, as Clinton said, that the consequences of a no-fly zone would be unforeseeable, but the consequences of the absence of a no-fly zone are entirely foreseeable. They are even seeable.

For realists, I would love to hear how doing nothing in Libya was going to help U.S. security interests. Having an oil-rich pariah state that could very well return to supporting terrorism and wreaking havoc in the region would be disastrous, creating Iraq part 3 and making it more likely we'd have to intervene sometime further into the future, at much greater cost and consequence. Did we not learn from the quelched Shia uprisings of 1991? Or from standing by idly (or supporting) the military coup that ended Algerian democracy in 1991? The Arab world suffered for the international community's failure to do the right thing. Literally, hundreds of thousands died as a result. Having Libyans and Arabs feel that we betrayed them yet again would do wonders for our already plummeting credibility, particularly after the Obama administration has moved to back autocratic regimes in Bahrain and Yemen, rather than the peaceful protesters struggling for their freedom and getting shot in the process. 

Another argument we heard endlessly the past three weeks was that Arabs wouldn't want another foreign intervention or that intervention would taint the protesters. Maybe we should have asked the Libyans themselves whether they agreed with this assessment, which, again, was based on an incorrect reading of the Iraq war. Libyan rebels have been pleading for Western military intervention for quite a while now. A child had held up a poster in Benghazi saying "Mama Clinton, please stop the bleeding." When you're bleeding you don't really care you saves you. You just want to be saved. 

It is remarkable, and more than a touch ironic, that the Arab League, the GCC - made up entirely of autocrats - and the Organization of the Islamic Conference all supported a no-fly zone before the U.S. did (see my discussion of the Arab role here). This is the new American leadership. We will lead only after others lead first. Our credibility has a taken a major hit as a result, and offers more evidence that the U.S. seems congenitally unable to get on the right side of history even after history has already happened. 

Doing nothing in Libya would also have set a dangerous precedent: that Arab (or any other) leaders could slaughter their own people with impunity. Now the precedent may be reversed, offering much-needed momentum not just to Libyan pro-democracy forces but to those fighting for freedom all over the region. 

Sometimes showing "reticence" and "deliberating" are necessary. But sometimes decisive action is necessary, especially when civilians are being slaughtered (and this is where the "responsbility to protect" comes in). Cohen warns "that once the US gets involved in these type of interventions it can be awfully difficult and expensive to get out of them." He is right. This UN resolution is not the end. It is the beginning of a long, difficult road. To see this through, the US and its allies will need to more than just provide a buffer around Benghazi. The buffer zone will have to move along with the rebels - all the way toward Tripoli. 

Don't Blame the Iraq War Cheerleaders; It Was All Rummy's Fault Posted by Michael Cohen

So apparently everyone thinks that Don Rumsfeld was a horrible Defense Secretary and his new memoir is a self-serving blight on all humanity.  Seems about right to me; and this view is so widely held that even Max Boot agrees. His review of Rumsfeld's book is lacerating. In particular Boot savages Rumsfeld's lack of introspection and his abundant tactical mistakes in waging the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am of course sympathetic to these arguments, but coming from Max Boot they are risible. 

Indeed even eight years after the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan Boot can find no fault with the strategic decisions to go to war in first place. In Boot's narrative the mistakes we've made are purely operational and had we utilized different tactics (like the ones that Max Boot supported) things would have gone swimmingly. Aside from being largely unprovable (one can never know if a different tactical approach might have worked) it also ensures that no one can blame Boot and other Iraq war supporters for anything that went wrong in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Case in point, Boot's criticism of Rumsfeld's handling of the post-war situation in Afghanistan:

He stayed on a disastrous course in Iraq, which was not reversed until he was removed from office in 2007, along with two senior generals whom he had appointed. Less understood, even now, is that Rumsfeld inflicted a similar disaster on Afghanistan. By refusing to increase troop levels after 2001, he allowed the Taliban to get back on their feet and to mount a major offensive, beginning in 2006, that is only now starting to be checked by another troop surge that he undoubtedly would have opposed were he still in office.

This is indeed rich. Of course, as we all know a large part of the reason the US didn't increase troop levels in Afghanistan (and in some cases took troops out of the country) is because the United States decided to invade Iraq in March 2003 - a decision strongly supported by one Max Boot. Might that have had something to do with the revitalization of the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan and the lack of focus on the war effort there? Apparently not.

In fact, in Boot's view, Rumsfeld's refusal to use US troops for nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq is one of his most cardinal sins:

Rumsfeld explains that he opposed Bush’s freedom agenda: “I did not think resolving other countries’ internal political disputes, paving roads, erecting power lines, policing streets, building stock markets, and organizing democratic governmental bodies were missions for our men and women in uniform.” Accordingly, even though the commander-in-chief had made the establishment of democracy one of the objectives of Operation Iraqi Freedom (“the transformation from dictatorship to democracy will take time,” Bush said on May 1, 2003, “but it is worth every effort”), Rumsfeld chose to pursue a narrower agenda and did not send enough troops to implement a sweeping political transformation. 

But of course this is not true. Establishment of democracy was not one of the key publicly stated objectives of OIF and it's rather telling that the quote Boot uses to make this misleading argument . . . came a month after the war had ended. In fact, Rumsfeld's desire to avoid doing nation building in Iraq (another job he failed miserably at) is one of the few good things you can say about the man.

Not surprisingly this is one of Boot's most prominent criticisms (not unexpected from a man who has publicly extolled the virtues of imperial policing). According to Boot the failure to put enough troops in Afghanistan meant that the US couldn't do nation building there (and there is little doubt that in Boot's view had we done so it would have been successful).

Boot's extraordinarily upbeat view about the US military's capabilities to remake societies is not restricted to just Afghanistan. It's true of Iraq as well and in particular the first few years of the post-war occupation:

We concentrated our troops on giant Forward Operating Bases where they were cut off from the Iraqi population and hence presumably less of an irritant. Far from decreasing violence, however, this led to ever-increasing bloodshed, as Sunni and Shiite extremists used the resulting vacuum of authority to bring Iraq to the brink of all-out civil war.

This is a rather familiar argument from Boot; the inclination to give agency for all political and security developments in Iraq - to non-Iraqis. It wasn't that Sunni-Shiite rivalry was long-standing in Iraqi society or even that the potential for civil war or certainly ethnic violence had been predicted by Iraq observers. No, the fault lies almost exclusively with US military commanders . . . and Donald Rumsfeld. Had we deployed more troops, and in a more population-centric manner, things would have been quite different in Iraq:

The experience of the surge in 2007-2008 showed that American forces were not helpless to resist this rising tide of blood; all that was required was to beef up troop strength and order the troops to protect Iraqi civilians where they lived

"All that was required!" This has to be the most creative reading of what happened in Iraq to quell the fearsome bloodletting of 2005-2006. Again in this narrative, the Iraqi people themselves had virtually no agency; the future of Iraq was predicated almost exclusively on the actions of the United States and especially its armed forces. This argument reaches its apogee with Boot's take on the Sunni Awakening:

Obviously we can never know if “the surge”—meaning an expansion of troop numbers and the adoption of a population-centric counterinsurgency strategy—might have worked earlier, but the odds are that it would have done so.

Certainly there had been earlier expressions of dissatisfaction in the Sunni community with Al Qaeda in Iraq, but they had been ruthlessly snuffed out by AQI because we did so little to protect the population. Contrary to Rumsfeld’s sly insinuation that Petraeus only came to favor a counterinsurgency strategy in 2007, Petraeus had been in favor of such an approach all along. And such a strategy had paid spectacular dividends in 2005-2006 in the northern city of Tal Afar, which Colonel H.R. McMaster’s Third Armored Cavalry Regiment had pacified before the beginning of the Anbar Awakening.

It's really an amazing argument; everything that went wrong in Iraq was operational (somewhere Krepenevich and Sorley are smiling). Again fault lies not with the decision to go to war in Iraq; but how US troops were utilized.

Relying on threadbare pieces of evidence (all of which have little to do with internal Iraqi politics and almost everything to do with US decision-making) Boot makes an argument about the surge that I've never heard a single observer of Iraq defend. Indeed, what spurred the decrease in civilian casualties in 2007-2008 were not efforts to protect the population - instead the surge's success coincided with enhanced US efforts to kill insurgents, the ethnic enclaving of Sunni and Shiite communities in Baghdad, the overreach of AQI by 2006 and perhaps above all the Sadr ceasefire. In short the decline in ethnic killing and the improvement in security was not a result of the surge; it coincided with the surge. Strikingly none of these "other" factors are even mentioned by Boot. 

And the reason is not hard to figure out; an argument of tactical and operational failure is predicated on the notion that invading Iraq wasn't a strategic error, but instead was a mistake solely in execution.  That Afghanistan went to hell is not because we diverted attention from that war or because nation building is hard - it's because we didn't send enough troops. Iraq was a disaster not because the US overstated its own capabilities and by toppling Saddam opened the genie's bottle of long-suppressed national and ethnic rivalry in that country. No, it was because Don Rumsfeld resisted nation-building in Iraq and US military commanders adopted the wrong operational approach. It's quite a thesis; it's also deeply misleading and simply wrong.

At one point in this odious and blame-shifting article Boot offers what is perhaps his most devastating attack on Rumsfeld, "Rather than looking in the mirror to figure out what went wrong, Rumsfeld prefers to point the finger of blame in other directions."

Et tu, Max. Et Tu.

The 'Do Something' Crowd Strikes Again in Libya Posted by Michael Cohen

Over at World Politics Review I have a new piece up on the strange bipartisan consensus emerging in Washington that we must "do something" to respond to events in Libya:

Next week the United States will mark the 8th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq -- widely considered one of the worst foreign policy disasters in American history. Meanwhile, more than 100,000 U.S. troops remain mired in Afghanistan, nine years after the Taliban were toppled from power. 

Both conflicts are daily reminders that the use of U.S. military force can have unforeseen and often unpredictable consequences. For that reason, force should be considered only in the most pressing of national security circumstances. Unfortunately, if the response to the uprising in Libya is any indication, it seems many members of the foreign policy community need a refresher course on this point.

There is a rising, bipartisan crescendo of calls for President Barack Obama to intervene in the Libyan crisis, including, potentially, through military means. Instead of a healthy sense of skepticism about what American arms can hope to achieve, there is a growing sense that the U.S. must "do something" to respond to the violence in Libya -- and that U.S. credibility is on the line if we fail to do so.

You can read the whole thing here

The Libyan Rebels Deserve Outside Military Help Posted by David Shorr

There are many good reasons to be cautious about outside international intervention (especially American) on behalf of the Libyan rebels. For that matter, there are always good reasons to pause before getting involved in a violent conflict. In the current case, those reasons have been swamped by recent developments -- i.e. the apparent appeals from the opposition themselves and the support from within the region and the wider Muslim world.

When it comes to the so-called 'values agenda' (aka freedom agenda), I'm always genuinely ambivalent. On the one hand, Americans are often too presumptuous and sanctimonious in our self-image as a beacon of democracy. Yet there is something true and essential about the values we represent and the international role that goes with them. The trick is to fill that mission with self-awareness and practical sense.

In the Libya situation, my main qualms about a genuine local desire for help and legitimization from a broad segment of international opinion are being met. First off, let me thank Steve Clemons, with whom I disagree but who has done great service to the debate on this issue. While I reject Steve's main argument, I accept two of his caveats. The entire question hinges on what help the Libyan opposition is indeed seeking. If there is the kind of ambiguity about their requests that Steve has flagged, then this needs to be cleared up (I'm guessing the administration is trying to).

As to the question of international legitimacy, the recent calls for a no-fly zone from the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) strengthen the case substantially. Need I even say it? Historically, neither of these bodies has been a hotbed of interventionism or democratic values. President Obama is right to worry about reactions to yet another US military involvement in a Muslim country. When the possibility looms, however, that you could actually be outflanked by the Arab League and the OIC, events are trying to tell you something. For that matter, the OIC is the multilateral representative of the Muslim world.

Now as for Steve's worries about a fundamental shift in the narrative -- from homegrown people power to 'what's America up to' -- I don't see it. Yes, that was the danger of an loud and over-eager American profile in the earlier stages of this democratic wave. But the credit for the revolutions earned by the people themselves isn't so fragile. In this regard, President Obama's low-key response helped, and rightly so. At this point, it's not only clear who are the real authors of the struggle, they seem to be asking for help.

Closing the loop on the issue of legitimacy, there's the matter of a mandate from the UN Security Council. It was very interesting to see how Anne-Marie Slaughter tiptoed around the issue of a potential veto of a Security Council resolution. But Anne-Marie is correct that pushing for passage of a resolution is the question at hand. The United States should do so.

There is also a debate about military efficacy, where Steve Clemons makes a good point. If other forms of military and intelligence support would be more effective, more ardently sought from the rebels, and less delayed by Security Council divisions, then by all means -- that's only practical. Some of the pessimistic assessments from the US military though, should be taken with a grain of salt. There's an old and familiar dance involved. The military wants civilian policymakers to think a mission will be harder rather than easier; as civilians make clear their serious interest, options become less stark. Speaking of which, for those interested in some smart ideas about international burdensharing in a Libya operation, see Kori Schake over at Shadow Government.

Investing in International Affairs Is A National Security Priority Posted by The Editors

This guest post is by Sara DuBois, Interim Communications Director at National Security Network.

As the budget debate moves forward, lawmakers in D.C. face tough choices about where to spend U.S. dollars.  The international affairs budget, which accounts for less than 1 percent of the federal budget, has been a target of GOP spending proposals.  Some in the GOP, especially Republican House leaders like House Foreign Affairs Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) have championed cuts to foreign aid (with exceptions for Israel). As serious national security experts from both sides of the aisle have pointed out, however, an approach that sacrifices foreign assistance is detrimental to our national security.

Today, in prepared testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee Gen. David Petraeus warned that cuts to foreign assistance would threaten our strategic interests in Afghanistan:

I am concerned that levels of funding for our State Department and USAID partners will not sufficiently enable them to build on the hard-fought security achievements of our men and women in uniform. Inadequate resourcing of our civilian partners could, in fact, jeopardize accomplishment of the overall mission. I offer that assessment, noting that we have just completed a joint civil-military campaign plan between US Forces Afghanistan 11 and the US Embassy which emphasizes the critical integration of civilian and military efforts in an endeavor such as that in Afghanistan.

Petraeus’s testimony echoes the concerns of bipartisan security experts.  Senate Foreign Relations Committee has issued repeated cautions about cutting the international affairs budget. As SFRC Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) recently explained,

These cuts are not abstractions. These are people. Cutting these programs will do almost nothing to reign in our budget deficit, but it will cost thousands of lives. And by reducing our diplomatic capacity around the globe, we will increase the threats to our own country.

Similarly, Mark Green, former GOP Congressman and Ambassador to Tanzania under President George W. Bush, wrote yesterday that we can and must “be fiscally responsible and still make the critical investments we need in our International Affairs Budget.”

Earlier this year, Green joined fellow Republicans Jim Kolbe and Rob Mosbacher to proclaim in the conservative Daily Caller that foreign assistance pays “real dividends.” They explain,

The world has changed dramatically even in the last decade, becoming more interconnected and full of challenges that defy narrow solutions. Our foreign assistance is a projection of our responsible leadership in the world; it is more important than ever to our security and economic interests. We must take the politics out of this debate and get down to the facts.

[…]In releasing America’s first-ever foreign assistance policy last year, President Obama made economic growth the key goal of our outreach efforts and said that the time has come to be more selective about our assistance, because the U.S. cannot do everything, everywhere, particularly in places that do not share our values of free people and free markets. At the same time, Dr. Rajiv Shah, the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has undertaken significant reforms to improve the agency by decreasing inefficiencies, increasing transparency, and in the process delivering millions of dollars in savings.

But perhaps the most important idea of all, shared by both the Bush and Obama administrations, is that the mission of U.S. foreign assistance is to put itself out of business by helping build vibrant private sectors and middle classes, thriving civil societies, and more efficient local governments that are accountable to citizens. This is the way to put the people we are trying to help in control of their own development.

Tremendous progress has been made in addressing the conditions of despair that lead to extremism, containing the spread of pandemic disease, and creating the kinds of economic opportunities that lead to greater global stability. In a world that is shrinking — with fewer borders and growing interdependencies, less isolation and greater shared challenges — more effective foreign assistance can lead to real dividends in terms of our security, our prosperity, and our leadership in the world. We hope that bipartisan policymakers will come together to strengthen U.S. foreign assistance and our global leadership. [emphasis mine]

Petraeus and other military leaders have joined civilians in pointing out that, whether it’s disaster relief or nuclear safety or police training, our civilian and military objectives are not easily separated.  Just as civilian and military leaders of all stripes have spoken out in support of the international affairs budget, experts of all stripes have pointed out that some of the sacrifices to balance our budget must come from Pentagon spending, which now represents more than half of all discretionary spending. Taking a meat ax to the U.S. international affairs budget would mean sacrificing long-term gains in American leadership, prosperity and security from Atlanta to Afghanistan to the Arab World. The assault on U.S. foreign assistance programs is not only unnecessary, it is not a choice we can afford to make. 

 

New Concerns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Posted by Kelsey Hartigan

Lot of changes last night at Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Station. Two more explosions, one at Reactor No. 2 and the other at Reactor No. 4, which was not operating at the time the quake and tsunami hit.

The situation has rapidly deteriorated. Radiation levels appear to have risen dramatically, but readings vary depending on location and may be subsiding. There are six reactors at Fukushima, three of which were operating at the time of the earthquake and tsunami, and three of which were under maintenance. There seems to be a consensus among experts that the damage has surpassed the 1979 Three Mile Island incident and is the worst such accident since Chernobyl.

As reports came in about the explosion at Reactor No. 2, word spread that the containment vessel—the last line of defense—had been damaged. This of course, is not good news. David Wright at UCS explains the two most serious concerns and translates what this might mean:

The first is that Monday night TEPCO confirmed there is damage to the Unit 2 containment and that it may be leaking gases and or liquids. Normally the reactor building is intended to act as a secondary containment and capture radiation leaking from the primary containment so that filters can remove the radioactivity before it is released to the atmosphere. But the reactor buildings for all three reactors have been damaged by explosions and no longer provide this secondary containment.

So if the primary containment is leaking, then a core meltdown could lead to a very large release of radioactivity to the environment.

The second concern is that even if the primary containment is currently intact, the Mark I containment system used in these reactors has a known vulnerability to meltdowns. Molten fuel that enters the primary containment area can melt through the wall of the primary containment—a situation called liner melt-through—which would also allow the release of large amounts of radioactivity to the environment.

Unfortunately, the problems don’t stop there.

The hydrogen explosion and fire in the spent fuel pool at Reactor No. 4 could pose the biggest risk. Robert Alvarez explains why:

The pools “contain very large concentrations of radioactivity, can catch fire, and are in much more vulnerable buildings,” he warns. If the pools lose their inflow of circulating cooling water, the water in the pools will evaporate. If the level of water drops to five or six feet above the spent fuel, Alvarez calculates, the release of radioactivity “could be life-threatening near the reactor building.” Since the total amount of long-lived radioactivity in the pool is at least five times that in the reactor core, a catastrophic release would mean “all bets are off,” he says.

The severity of this situation underscores the truly heroic efforts by the workers who have stayed at Fukushima to continue to try and cool the reactors. Not only have they survived a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and a devastating tsunami, but they’re putting their lives on the line to reign in what is already one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents in history.

More Good News From Afghanistan Posted by Michael Cohen

Where does one begin detailing the tales of woe emanating from the war in Afghanistan?

According to the International Red Cross the situation for civilians in Afghanistan has become "untenable" and the problems seem to be particularly acute in the South which is where the lion's share of US-led fighting is occurring. And for all the 'progress' being made in places like Sangin (where 29 US soldiers have died and 75 wounded since October) and Helmand Province it now appears that Taliban fighters are slipping back into both places.

Things are not much better in Kunduz where on Friday the province police chief was murdered and over the weekend 36 people were killed at a police recruitment center - both by suicide bombers. In all more than 200 civilians have died in the last six weeks from Taliban attacks. The uptick in violence in the North probably shouldn't come as a huge surprise: as Candace Rondeaux of ICG mentions, " In many ways, the effect of the surge has been to push people northward towards areas where there is actually greater population density." I seem to think some people mentioning last year that this might happen.

And now even President Karzai thinks that NATO should be ending operations in Afghanistan after the killing on nine boys gathering firewood in Kunar province (an incendiary statement that of course he quickly backed away from after, one would imagine, some sort of US pressure).

It appears to be, ironically a view shared by our NATO allies, which led to this rather undiplomatic upbraiding by Secretary of Defense Gates in a recent trip to Brussels:

“Frankly, there is too much talk about leaving and not enough talk about getting the job done right,” Mr. Gates said. “Too much discussion of exit and not enough discussion about continuing the fight. Too much concern about when and how many troops might redeploy and not enough about what needs to be done before they leave.”

Perhaps Gates should deliver those words to the American people who seem to have the same view. According to a poll published today in the Washington Post, nearly two-thirds of Americans think the war is no longer worth fighting and want to see "substantial" troop reductions come July.

But alas perhaps all this bad news has it backwards - and the pessimistic public opinion is just missing the many signs of progress. Indeed, it now appears that we have reached a "turning point" in Afghanistan:

“This is a critical time for him (the Taliban) but I think he’s going to see the landscape dramatically different,” said US Army Colonel David Furness, in charge of troops in the key Helmand districts of Marjah, Garmsir and Narwar.

“He’s going to find us better positioned this year to deal with him than last and he’s going to pay for it.” US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, visiting Helmand on a two-day visit to Afghanistan last week.

However, as Josh Foust very nicely points this is not the first time we've hit a positive turning point in Afghanistan. It seems to be happening, oh I don't know, about once every year we've been in Afghanistan.

In fact, things are progressing so well, and the US military effort is making such progress, that ABC News is reporting that "Field commanders in Afghanistan are asking for more troops" and "some are openly challenging the wisdom of withdrawing any U.S. force by the July 11 date set by the administration."

So once again we've hit a point that we seem to hit every few weeks with Afghanistan; reems of data and anecdotal evidence suggests that the war in Afghanistan is going badly; that civilian death tolls have increased; that the Karzai government remains deeply alienated from the US/NATO effort; that our security gains may not be sustainable . . . and then confident predictions from the US military that we are on the cusp of turning the tide in the war.

In short, we have reality in Afghanistan - and then we have what our military and political leaders tell us.

Decoding Japan's Nuclear Crisis: What You Need to Know Posted by Kelsey Hartigan

The situation is constantly changing.  IAEA Director General Amano cautioned earlier today, “It is very important to bear in mind that we are dealing with a situation that is constantly developing.”

The Union of Concerned Scientists is posting smart, timely updates on their blog, All Things Nuclear.

Blogs of War has a nuclear crisis monitor that streams the latest tweets on #Fukushima
#Radiation #Nuclear #TEPCO and #IAEA.

It’s bad, but it’s no Chernobyl.  David Hoffman points out, “The terrible sequence of events in Japan — massive earthquake, and then a tsunami — make the nuclear crisis different from Chernobyl in 1986. The Chernobyl accident was not a consequence of a natural disaster, but happened at the hands of people. The design of the reactor was such that it lacked a protective containment; once it exploded, radioactive debris was ejected into the air. So far, at least, the Japan nuclear crisis does not appear to have reached this level of danger.”

Sharon Squassoni at CSIS also breaks it down: “This is not a Chernobyl. The International Atomic Energy Agency has rated Japan’s nuclear emergency “4” on the International Nuclear Events Scale (INES), which runs from 1 to 7. Three Mile Island was rated a 5; Chernobyl was rated a 7. Chernobyl has been the most severe accident yet. The nuclear chain reaction there could not be controlled for a variety of reasons (including the reactor’s design), and the lack of a containment structure around the reactor meant widespread radioactive contamination. The situation in Japan is much more like Three Mile Island, where a partial core meltdown occurred because of loss of coolant.” [For what it’s worth, the French are now suggesting that the Japan crisis might be a five or six. Again, this is a fluid situation.] 

Christine Russell explores the Three Mile Island comparison here.

Don’t know your cooling system from your containment vessel?  For those who don’t speak wonk, read this overview on Nuclear Energy 101. 

Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund has also been dominating the airwaves and doing a great job of explaining the metrics of a meltdown.

Jeffrey Lewis has a good overview of the latest IAEA report, which he may or may not have written while wearing pants.

Carnegie’s James Acton has also made the rounds and is surprisingly easy to understand, especially for a physicist.   

Harvard's Matt Bunn lays out six take-aways for lessons learned so far.

The experts have you covered. The conversation will inevitably turn to what the Japan crisis means for nuclear power writ large.  There is a lot of good information on the pros and cons of nuclear power.  Here are a few of the best:

Sharon Squassoni’s report on the so-called “nuclear renaissance” continues to be one of the best reports on the risks and questions associated with nuclear power.

CFR’s Nuclear Energy Guide has everything you need to know—and much more—about nuclear power. 

Charles Ferguson looks at where Japan might go from here.