More from the Blame-America-Last crowd

As previously mentioned. It seems this line of reasoning knows no partisan bounds.

Today's Washington Post: As Iraq Deteriorates, Iraqis Get More Blame

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2007 Grawemeyer winner

University of Ottawa professor Roland Paris has won the 2007 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. The prize is worth $200,000.

One of the members of the final selection committee outlined the main argument of Paris' book in Tuesday's local paper:

Charles Ziegler, chairman of U of L's political science department, said Paris' "institutionalization before liberalization" theory is an important contribution to international thinking about post-conflict peace missions.

"His proposal is for a new peace-building strategy," Ziegler said. "It has real applicability to a lot of conflicts now," including Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

The Chronicle of Higher Education added this:

Mr. Paris is being recognized for his scholarship on how to establish and maintain peace after warfare. In his 2004 book At War's End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict (Cambridge University Press), he outlines strategy proposals that he says NATO must adopt if it hopes to keep Afghanistan from reverting to a terrorist haven. According to the proposals, NATO should place less emphasis on its efforts to destroy Afghan poppy crops and more on training police and military forces, eliminating government corruption, and stemming the flow of fighters entering the nation from Pakistan.

If NATO cannot meet those objectives, he says, then it should withdraw.

The Louisville Courier-Journal article includes a juicy quote about Iraq:

"The postwar stabilization mission in Iraq was lost the day after the United States entered Baghdad with too few troops," said Paris,

That paper also describes a bit about his book:

Paris' book said that establishing such institutions as the police, courts and a government that can run basic services are more important to a nation in the early period after a civil war than rushing to democracy and opening economic markets.

In his book, he examined 14 cases in the 1990s involving international missions attempting to stabilize nations after civil wars. Among them were Bosnia, Angola, Rwanda, Nicaragua and Cambodia.

The article has some additional quotes about policy failings in both Iraq and Afghanistan, so I encourage everyone to read it for a brief overview of the scholarship.

Disclosure: I chair the Department Committee that overseas the administration of this prize.


Filed as: Grawemeyer award

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Iraq by any other name

I have this thing about Definitions. In short, I hate them. Perhaps its the influence of Wittgenstein in my work, but nothing irks me more than people who lay out a dictionary definition, as if its obvious, and proceed with a political or academic analysis, leading logically to some conclusion. As those people say in debates, well, if we could only agree on defining terms..... well, sure, then the debate would be all over.

Within IR, one of the most important insights of critical, constructivist, post-structural (and others) theory is that the political battle over definitions is a central aspect of how the world works. Once something is "labeled" and "legitimated" as that thing, it creates a whole realm of possible pathways for action and forecloses others. So, to say, well, the definition of such and such a thing is X, Y, Z is to engage in a political act creating a topography of possibility for that such and such a thing. Unpacking and investigating that battle is then a very interesting locus of academic study.

Which brings us to tonight's word: Civil War.

On Sunday, the NYT posed the very relevant, pertinent, and vital question: "Is Iraq in a civil war?"

Though the Bush administration continues to insist that it is not, a growing number of American and Iraqi scholars, leaders and policy analysts say the fighting in Iraq meets the standard definition of civil war.

The common scholarly definition has two main criteria. The first says that the warring groups must be from the same country and fighting for control of the political center, control over a separatist state or to force a major change in policy. The second says that at least 1,000 people must have been killed in total, with at least 100 from each side.

American professors who specialize in the study of civil wars say that most of their number are in agreement that Iraq’s conflict is a civil war.

“I think that at this time, and for some time now, the level of violence in Iraq meets the definition of civil war that any reasonable person would have,” said James Fearon, a political scientist at Stanford.

Now Fearon, who is regarded as one of the smartest folks in our profession, has built a rather impressive career applying the tools of rationalist game theory analysis to the analysis of civil wars and ethnic conflict. So, from an "expert" perspective, he certainly knows what he's talking about. But, at this moment, notice what is happening-- he has left the realm of scholarly analysis and has become part of the political discourse on the problem-definition of Iraq. Back in September, he gave a very poignant and insightful bit of testimony to the House of Representatives summarizing his research and what it might mean for Iraq (link to Word file of the testimony here).

Now, as a policy person, I love this stuff, because here you have someone with a clue about what he is discussing offering insights about how the world works drawn from the "reality based community" (and, as an aside, if you haven't read that article yet, drop whatever you are doing and check it out) giving an informed analysis of what the US Government might be able to do in a given situation in Iraq. But, in doing so, he's stepping out of the realm of academic and into the realm of policy adviser. Introduces an interesting endogenaity problem into his research, doesn't it--from now on, all of his analysis on Iraq must factor in the fact that US policy is, in part, based on knowledge he presented based on his previous research. Might upset a trend-line or preference ordering.

Its all part of the high-stakes battle to define Iraq.

In the United States, the debate over the term rages because many politicians, especially those who support the war, believe there would be domestic political implications to declaring it a civil war. They fear that an acknowledgment by the White House and its allies would be seen as an admission of a failure of President Bush’s Iraq policy.

They also worry that the American people might not see a role for American troops in an Iraqi civil war and would more loudly demand a withdrawal.

Surprising? To some, yes.

“It’s stunning; it should have been called a civil war a long time ago, but now I don’t see how people can avoid calling it a civil war,” said Nicholas Sambanis, a political scientist at Yale who co-edited “Understanding Civil War: Evidence and Analysis,“ published by the World Bank in 2005. “The level of violence is so extreme that it far surpasses most civil wars since 1945.”

Only stunning if you ignore the politics of the situation--the battle over the use of language to define and legitimize power, policy, and governance. Its not about what Iraq is, but rather, what it means to us. Yes, we can "measure" the number of people getting killed (though such numbers are much more difficult to come by and legitimize than you'd think). We can even measure "control" over territory and government effectiveness and such, or how much civil conflict there is. But, giving those deaths meaning is the real issue at stake. Is it a civil war or not, because we react differently to civil wars than we do to terrorist insurgencies.

David Laitin, (a "favorite" of some of my fellow Duck contributors), almost, but doesn't quite, gets this.

Scholars say it is crucial that policy makers and news media organizations recognize the Iraq conflict as a civil war.

“Why should we care how it is defined, if we all agree that the violence is unacceptable?” asked Mr. (David) Laitin, the Stanford professor. “Here is my answer: There is a scientific community that studies civil wars, and understands their dynamics and how they, in general, end. This research is valuable to our nation’s security.”

Its crucial IF you subscribe to a certain set of policy options that follow from "civil war." If you are the Bush Administration, then its crucial that it not be defined as a civil war. There is a substantial literature on civil wars and their particular dynamics. But, its only valuable to our nation's security if and when that security is defined in certain ways. If you define our national security as staying out of civil wars or having a particular side win a civil war, then, yes, its valuable. But, if you define our nation's security as something else, as the Bush Administration does, then, its not so crucial.

Either way, its a political power play to set the terms of the discourse for national security policy.

Filed as: Iraq Civil War

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Film class -- week 14

Film #14 "The Whale Rider" (2002). We viewed it Tuesday.

Reading: Ann Tickner, "Man, the State, and War: Gendered Perspectives on National Security," Chapter 2 of Gender in International Relations; Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security (NY: Columbia University Press, 1992). (CIAO subscribers only)

Ann Tickner's book is perhaps the best-known feminist treatise in the field of international relations. In the assigned chapter, she describes how classic levels of analysis studied by scholars in the field -- man, the state and war (for individual, national and systemic) -- reflect and reinforce gendered notions about security politics.

For example, Tickner discusses the importance of the so-called "warrior citizen" in classic realist theorizing:

In Politics Among Nations, Hans Morgenthau describes "political man" as an individual engaged in a struggle for power. In my book I take this construction of "political man" and link it to a militarized version of citizenship which has a long tradition in western political theory and practice. Feminist political theorist Wendy Brown suggests that for the Greeks, manly virtue was linked to victory in battle. The association of manly behavior and war was also important in Machiavelli's glorification of the warrior prince. Machiavelli's concept of virtu was equated with might, energetic activity, effectiveness and courage -- for Machiavelli, these were all explicitly masculine characteristics. Virtu must struggle against its opposite, fortuna, described by Machiavelli as female. Machiavelli is quite explicit in his belief that women posed a danger to soldiers and therefore to national security more generally.

Today, citizenship continues to be tied to soldiering....The privileged position of citizen warrior carries over into civilian political life where politicians with war records are especially valorized.

At the national level, Tickner argues that states are essentially warrior states, which require warrior citizens.

The ultimate purpose of Tickner's work is to suggest and advocate for an alternative concept of security -- dependent upon the elimination of unjust social relations (including gender inequality) as well as physical violence. Ideas and identities are socially constructed, so prevailing ideas and identities have to be re-constructed if they are to be transformed.

"The Whale Rider" is a film about a 12-year old girl named Paikea, the only living child in the line of a Maori family that directly descends from a heroic figure named Pai, who rode atop a whale from Hawaiki. Paikea's mother and twin brother died during the childbirth and her grandfather, the current chief, is desperate to find a successor. By tradition, the tribe's leader should be a first-born son and his own first-born son has abandoned the tribe to become an artist in Germany.

How feminine, eh? Ultimately, the grandfather decides to instruct all the tribe's boy children so as to identify a potential successor. He teaches them sacred chants, use of a fighting stick, and other important skills. By Tickner's reasoning, he is teaching them to be warrior citizens. Paikea is not welcome in these classes.

Secretly, however, Paikea observes many of the sessions and trains herself. She readily learns the chants and her uncle teaches her to use the fighting stick. She even defeats one of the most promising boy students in an impromptu fight.

From the title and my description, you can probably guess what happens in this film of female empowerment. The interesting academic question, of course, is whether Paikea succeeds only because she becomes a warrior citizen -- or does she offer something genuinely new and transformative?

In other words, does Paikea destroy old myths, or simply reinforce them in a subtle way -- like "iron lady" Margaret Thatcher?



Filed as: IR films

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As my wife and I prepare for our annual tour of the NJ Turnpike...

...I would like to wish all my fellow members of the Duck and our loyal readers a happy and safe Thanksgiving.


Filed as: Thanksgiving

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My week in a nutshoe

Despite the many important global developments of the last few weeks, I haven't been blogging much lately. Nor have I accomplished a great deal of the last substantive rewrite I need to do for my book manuscript.

Today, I hope, marked the culmination of my increasing lack of focus.

Yes, I did wear these shoes all day. I discovered them when my daughter wanted to walk on my shoes and pointed out that "you're wearing this shoe on this foot, and that shoe on that foot!"

Happy Thanksgiving to our American readers!

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Go Big, Go Long, or Go Home: Moonwalking out of Iraq

We now have 3 major review panels asking "serious" and "hard" questions about the future of US policy in Iraq. There is the infamous Baker Commission, a high-level group within the National Security Council, and a top-secret review within the Pentagon. Despite all of these "outside-the-box" efforts to take a "fresh look" at Iraq, the supposed solutions are seeming rather conventional. In great Washington policy tradition:



The Pentagon group has, predictably, arrived at 3 choices.
As Ricks reports in the Wash Post:

"Go Big," the first option, originally contemplated a large increase in U.S. troops in Iraq to try to break the cycle of sectarian and insurgent violence. A classic counterinsurgency campaign, though, would require several hundred thousand additional U.S. and Iraqi soldiers as well as heavily armed Iraqi police. That option has been all but rejected by the study group, which concluded that there are not enough troops in the U.S. military and not enough effective Iraqi forces, said sources who have been informally briefed on the review.

"Go Home," the third option, calls for a swift withdrawal of U.S. troops. It was rejected by the Pentagon group as likely to push Iraq directly into a full-blown and bloody civil war.

The group has devised a hybrid plan that combines part of the first option with the second one -- "Go Long" -- and calls for cutting the U.S. combat presence in favor of a long-term expansion of the training and advisory efforts. Under this mixture of options, which is gaining favor inside the military, the U.S. presence in Iraq, currently about 140,000 troops, would be boosted by 20,000 to 30,000 for a short period, the officials said.

Earth-shattering stuff.

Only weeks after the Democrats won back Congress running largely on a platform of reducing America's involvement in Iraq, you have a number of serious proposals out there to increase troop levels. According to the Post:

The purpose of the temporary but notable increase, they said, would be twofold: To do as much as possible to curtail sectarian violence, and also to signal to the Iraqi government and public that the shift to a "Go Long" option that aims to eventually cut the U.S. presence is not a disguised form of withdrawal.

Even so, there is concern that such a radical shift in the U.S. posture in Iraq could further damage the standing of its government, which U.S. officials worry is already shaky. Under the hybrid plan, the short increase in U.S. troop levels would be followed by a long-term plan to radically cut the presence, perhaps to 60,000 troops.

That combination plan, which one defense official called "Go Big but Short While Transitioning to Go Long," could backfire if Iraqis suspect it is really a way for the United States to moonwalk out of Iraq -- that is, to imitate singer Michael Jackson's trademark move of appearing to move forward while actually sliding backward. "If we commit to that concept, we have to accept upfront that it might result in the opposite of what we want," the official said.

And then what do we do?

So here we have a standard inside-the-beltway Goldilocks plan to deal with Iraq. Yet here, none of the options are "just right." Each one is more inclined to fail than succeed. The status quo is failing, leaving quickly could plunge the country into civil-war chaos, but more troops won't make it better. Everyone wants a "solution" to the problem. Perhaps its time to admit that there isn't one.

Sure, its not the politically savy thing to do. It also brings with it a high degree of moral responsibility for the mess to follow. When your house is on fire, you need to send in more firefighers to battle the blaze. But once your home is reduced to a pile of smoldering ashes, all the firefighters with all the firetrucks in the world won't do you much good. Its time to admit you're homeless and move on. rebuild somewhere else. Our policy in Iraq has already burned to the ground. The time for a "solution" such as sending in more troops (and better equipped troops at that--not just the proverbial body armor, but translators and some cultural understanding) was years ago. Now its time to look for a new place to live and to try to figure out how to live there.

Take for instance, my favorite paragraph from this morning's Post: (I don't even know if this fits here, but its so rich, so typical, you have to read it for yourself twice just to grasp the profoundity of the Major's statement)

The U.S. military's effort to train Iraqi forces has been rife with problems, from officers being sent in with poor preparation to a lack of basic necessities such as interpreters and office materials, according to internal Army documents.

The shortcomings have plagued a program that is central to the U.S. strategy in Iraq and is growing in importance. A Pentagon effort to rethink policies in Iraq is likely to suggest placing less emphasis on combat and more on training and advising, sources say.

Some of the American officers even faulted their own lack of understanding of the task. "If I had to do it again, I know I'd do it completely different," reported Maj. Mike Sullivan, who advised an Iraqi army battalion in 2004. "I went there with the wrong attitude and I thought I understood Iraq and the history because I had seen PowerPoint slides, but I really didn't."

One more example of PowerPoint killing our society. And our Iraq policy.


Filed as: Iraq

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Film class -- week 13

Film #13 "Gandhi" (1982). We viewed it Tuesday.

Reading for Thursday: Sharp, Gene, There Are Realistic Alternatives (Boston: Albert Einstein Institution, 2003).

Photo credit: U.S. Department of State

"Gandhi" is an outstanding film about the public life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, often called Mohatma for "great soul." The work won 8 Academy Awards, including Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Director. Unfortunately, at 188 minutes, it is difficult to use in a classroom setting. The Tuesday section of my class meets for 150 minutes, plenty of time for almost every film this semester, but insufficient for this one.

Nonetheless, I selected the film because of the unique perspective it offers on global politics.

After all, Gandhi was the key figure in the mass movement leading up to Indian independence and is best known for his advocacy and use of nonviolent noncooperation. Gandhi's beliefs, teachings and practices constitute the "text" of this film. It is essentially impossible to separate his ideas and life from the action on the screen.

The struggle for independence was difficult. It took years for civil disobedience to evict the British from the Indian subcontinent, many thousands of Gandhi's followers died in the various related struggles, and his desire for a unified India failed when the independent and separate Muslim state of Pakistan was created.

Nonetheless, the film tells a story of inspirational success -- and focuses on actors and ideas that are rarely discussed in the mainstream of the international relations field. Unlike the discipline, this film centers upon the nonviolent noncooperative strategies employed by ordinary people in places -- for the most part, at least -- far removed from the Great Hall or battlefield.

Arguably, the film belongs to the genre of comedy, which allows me to place it within the broader theme of this class. Comedies, recall, typically focus on the day-to-day successes of ordinary people. While Gandhi's accomplishments ultimately proved to be sweeping in scope, and certainly changed the identity of those sitting in the Great Hall, the film emphasizes the prolonged incremental progress achieved by his "constancy of purpose."

Gene Sharp's monograph, which the author has placed in the public domain, puts noncooperative nonviolence in a broader context. On the macro-level, he develops ideas about nonviolent grand strategy. On the micro-level, Sharp identifies nearly 200 tactics for implementing nonviolent action.

I encountered Sharp about 20 years ago in a workshop in Mexico sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation and Social Science Research Council. He is a founder of the Albert Einstein Institution and continues to produce interesting work for that organization. His CV is lengthy and impressive, but includes few publications in IR journals.

The students and I discussed a number of reasons why the field pays so little attention to nonviolent strategies of noncooperation. Given core assumptions traditionally embraced by IR scholars, the answer is perhaps unremarkable.


Filed as: IR films

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Blame America Last

We have all heard the charge before that some in the public sphere always “Blame America First” whenever there is a negative outcome in world politics. Critics charge that these folks are quick to find some connection, however remote or irrational, between American action (or inaction) and the ills of the world. To be fair this characterization is obviously a stereotype, however it isn’t entirely inaccurate. There are certainly some voices that consistently (though not always) go to great lengths to assign blame to American policies.

However, we rarely see the flip-side of the “Blame America First” argument mentioned: “Blame America Last”. Those who subscribe to this view go to great lengths to deny any responsibility when it comes to American action or inaction. American policy makers are seen as consistently noble and capable, doing what they can in a selfless attempt to make the world a better place—any negative outcomes cannot be assigned to our policy makers since a) their motives were noble and who, after all, can blame a noble man for trying, and b) the outcome was destined to be bad; the situation was determined by forces outside the control of American capabilities.

In this morning’s Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer puts forth just such a “Blame American Last” argument in his attempt to explain why Iraq is crumbling. Does he blame the Republican administration for its flawed strategy and handling of the war? No. Does he blame Democrats for creating dissention and doubt at home by their mere mention of troop redeployments and pull-outs? Oddly, no. Does he blame the Iraqis themselves for their inability to create a stable ruling coalition that can govern for the greater good and establish national stability? Yes. Krauthammer states that:

"...unless the Iraqis can put together a government of unitary purpose and resolute action, the simple objective of this war -- to leave behind a self-sustaining democratic government -- is not attainable."

I have to somewhat agree with Krauthammer on this point. Where we would diverge--and diverge sharply--is the imlpication that this failure does not lie with the current administration.

To absolve the Bush administration is to ignore that many of the reasons Krauthammer puts forth for why establishing a stable government that acts in the national, not sectarian, interest were known to policy makers well before March of 2003. Krauthammer's foundational claim is that "the root problem lies with Iraqis and their political culture". To underscore that claim he provides a number of observations and examples of this defective political culture. Here are just a few:

• The problem is the allegiance of the Iraqi troops. Some serve the abstraction called Iraq. But many swear fealty to political parties, religious sects or militia leaders.
• [T]he problem here is Iraq's particular political culture, raped and ruined by 30 years of Hussein's totalitarianism.
• What was left in its wake was a social desert, a dearth of the trust and good will and sheer human capital required for democratic governance. All that was left for the individual Iraqi to attach himself to was the mosque or clan or militia.
• At this earliest stage of democratic development, Iraqi national consciousness is as yet too weak and the culture of compromise too undeveloped to produce an effective government enjoying broad allegiance.
• It was never certain whether the long-oppressed Shiites would have enough sense of nation and sense of compromise to govern rather than rule

I find it hard to argue with Krauthammer on many of these points. However, all these points do, in the end, is undermine the overall point of the article--that the Iraqis themselves are to blame for their lot and there is little the administration could have or can do to bring about a different outcome.

Many who thought that the Iraqi operation was both unecessary and unwise repeatedly warned that the probability of establishing a stable Iraqi democracy in the short term by US intervention was neglible mostly due to preexisting conditions on the ground. We were well aware of these preexisting conditions--sectarian animosity, lack of experience with democratic institutions and political culture, Stalin-like dictatorship that cultivated a culture of distrust and violence amongst Iraqis (particularly different religous and ethnic sects)--and the difficulties they can pose to the establishment of democracy. Combine that with the shoddy record of establishing democracy through military intervention as well as the existence of a skilled transnational group able to stoke the fires of sectarian distrust and violence and the probability of success nosedives.

Krauthammer might be right--that going forward only the Iraqis themselves can alter the current course of the country. But the idea that the administration has no role to play in the current status quo is absurd and myopic (just the sort of essay I have come to expect from Mr. Krauthammer). No doubt that the region, the world, and US interests will be damaged if the country continues on its present path, drawing in its numerous neighbors in a bloody, prolonged civil conflict. But the responsibility for creating the conditions under which such a scenario could develop rests with the current administration. It is their failure of vision to honestly asses the chances for establishing a stable regime in the wake of Saddam's fall.


Filed as: Iraq

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Can Baker channel Scowcroft?

Soon, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by longtime Bush family friend James Baker (and former Indiana House member Lee Hamilton, who filled a similar role on the 9/11 Commission), is going to report its recommendations about the future of the US war.

Inside the beltway, the great hope is that the 10-member team will "solve" the wrenching problems concerning the future of America's role in Iraq. As reported in today's Christian Science Monitor:

"Maybe an outside group can craft a policy that both sides [in the US domestic debate] can accept, though they don't want to have responsibility for drafting it," says William Martel, an associate professor of security studies at the Fletcher School at Tufts University

Anyone who thinks seriously about Iraq knows that the status quo has failed to attain stated US objectives.

Yet, the most apparent primary alternatives aren't great:

• The US could massively increase troops in hope that order could be imposed within Iraq.
  
  Almost no one supports this and it might be impossible given the state of the army. The US was able to put half a million soldiers in Vietnam by the late 1960s, but that cold war army doesn't exist any more. Neither does conscription, which made it possible.
  
  Oh, and half a million troops weren't enough to win in Vietnam -- and might not be enough to "win" in Iraq.

• The US could withdraw as fast as possible, though the "mainstream" in both parties seems to oppose this approach.
  
  Centrists and hawks alike fear that Iraq will face civil war and may become a failed state sanctuary for terrorists.

President Bush, perhaps predictably, just yesterday stated his opposition to the two solutions that are gaining favor among the chattering classes.

1. One is a "regional roundtable" conversation that would include Iran and Syria.
   
   Bush wants no discussions with Iran until Tehran first agrees to many nuclear-related concessions, including a freeze on their enrichment program.
2. The second is gradual or phased withdrawal from Iraq, beginning almost immediately.

There are other reported middle-ground solutions:

the panel has reportedly been weighing an option called "Stability First," which emphasizes withdrawing US resources from much of the country to focus all efforts on Baghdad stability; and an option called "Redeploy and Contain," which would involve withdrawing most US forces to surrounding nations, where they would serve as a mobile reserve for Iraqi national forces.

The US essentially tried a version of "Stability First" earlier this year -- and it increased the violence in Baghdad.

Obviously, I don't know what the so-called "Baker Commission" will say -- and no one can know with 100% certainty the path in Iraq that will lead to the quickest exit with minimal adverse security consequences.

However, I am willing to place some hope in the ISG. This is partly because I remember the great influence of the so-called Scowcroft Commission in 1983.

In the late 1970s, a number of hawkish (many were neoconservative) defense and foreign policy analysts argued that the Soviet Union had deployed so many land-based missiles that they posed a disastrous threat to US security. Deterrence itself was threatened because these weapons allegedly had too much first-strike capability. They were fast, accurate and numerous -- able to overwhelm the deployed US land-based force. The US, these hawks argued, faced a "window of vulnerability." Most urged the deployment of a new US land-based system to close the window.

Meanwhile, the left wanted an immediate "nuclear freeze" that would prevent MX deployment -- and halt production of many other proposed weapons systems.

In the context of the MX deployment debate, President Reagan appointed a bipartisan Commission on Strategic Forces, headed by Lt. General Brent Scowcroft (another close friend of George H.W. Bush).

While the Scowcroft Commission offered a (somewhat silly strategic) justification for deploying MX in old fixed Minuteman silos -- based essentially on its value as a signal of American resolve and utility as a potential bargaining chip -- they also made a very strong argument in defense of the robust US nuclear deterrent. Because of mobile submarines and the third leg of the strategic triad (the bomber force, armed with cruise missiles), the US nuclear force was simply NOT vulnerable to a Soviet first strike.

This effectively closed the debate about the "window of vulnerability." No window had been open. The report did not completely end the MX (Reagan renamed it "Peacekeeper") debate, but the most controversial "shell game" and "dense pack" schemes were eliminated.

In short, the bipartisan commission was able to toss a bone to the hawks even as they dismissed their most overblown fears and eliminated the most stupid alternative policy choices then being advocated. Scowcroft reminded everyone that deterrence was working just fine and that new weapons needed to be deployed within a larger arms control context. In some ways, Thomas Schelling (newly pictured at right) couldn't have handled it any better himself.

So, maybe the Baker-Hamilton group will tell America that the US has to leave Iraq ASAP, forestall any fantasies of increased troop presence, and minimize fears about Iraq as a terror haven.

That would be just about the best case.


Filed as: Iraq Study Group

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Don't make the Japanese MAD

Bennett Richardson of the Christian Science Monitor reports that some LDP politicians are raising the nuclear issue in Japan. The article provides plenty of food for thought about the impact of North Korea's nuclear test on Japanese politics, but it also includes a rather strange quotation from a Japanse academic

Alarmist views have been continually wrong in the past and they are wrong again now," says Shunji Taoka, a defense writer and former professor at Tsukuba University.

One strategic factor against Japan acquiring a nuclear arsenal is that the country's small size cancels the principle of mutual destruction, HE SAYS?. Japan's concentrated population centers would more than likely be wiped out after a first strike [emphasis, but not accidentally left-in editorial comment, added].

The whole point of mutually assured destruction is that both sides will suffer unacceptable losses in the event of a nuclear exchange. This requires two conditions.

First, both sides must have a secure second strike capability. In other words, if the other side strikes first the target needs to have sufficient surviving nuclear forces -- missiles in hardened silos, nuclear-missile subs, bombers, and so forth -- to inflict unacceptable causalities when it retaliates.

Second, both sides need to have vulnerable civilian populations. If, for example, one side has a reasonable expectation that its civil-defense preparations will ensure the survival of a significant proportion of its population and infrastructure, it might be able to contemplate a first strike against its adversary.

It sounds to me as if Taoka's arguing that the second condition will necessarily hold for Japan....

Did Richardson misquote him?

Or perhaps I'm missing something.

Thoughts?

Filed as: Japan, MAD, and nukes

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Film class -- week 12

Film #12 "Network" (1976). We viewed it Tuesday.

Readings for Thursday: Michael Massing, "Now They Tell Us," 51 The New York Review of Books, February 26, 2004.

PIPA (Program on International Policy) and Knowledge Networks Poll, "Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War," October 2, 2003.

I selected this film for a number of reasons. First, it highlights the power of transnational corporations in global politics. Arthur Jensen, head of a conglomerate that owns the television network highlighted in the film's title, eventually lectures anchorman-turned-prophet Howard Beale:

You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West! There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today.

...You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen, and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and A T & T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

...We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale! It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war and famine, oppression or brutality -- one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.

That speaker uses hyperbole, of course, but it is not all that far removed from some of the points made by globalization cheerleaders in the past decade or so.

The second reason I selected the film is that it emphasizes the role of the media in highlighting violence in the world -- particularly terrorist violence. Ultimately, the UBS network executives hire a terrorist group to commit and film acts of terror so that the footage can be usedly in a weekly scheduled program. Unsurprisingly, this choice proves to be a ratings bonanza.

Before 9/11, terror experts in the social sciences argued that terrorists did not want to kill large numbers of people -- and that their primary goal was to gain attention for their political cause. As Brian Jenkins wrote in 1987, "Terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead." In this film, perhaps as in real life, television and terrorists work synergistically, with insufficient discussion of the societal implications.

The readings selected for this week addressed the media's role in manipulating information used to promote war. Massing's much-discussed piece elaborates the failure of the New York Times and Washington Post to investigate Bush administration claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Even when the papers did identify and cover dissent, they tended to place these stories well within their pages, rather than on the front page where hawkish administration claims were typically found.

The PIPA study, however, found that people were far less likely to have been misled about the Iraq war if they relied upon print media rather than television for their news. Unfortunately, 80% of the people they surveyed primary relied upon TV. Viewers of Fox and CBS were particularly likely to think (erroneously) that WMD had been found in Iraq, that Iraq had participated in the 9/11 attacks on the US, and/or that most of the world supported the US attack in March 2003.

The least likely members of the public to suffer the misperceptions? Viewers of PBS and listeners of NPR. While 80% of Fox viewers believed one or more misperceptions about the war (along with 71% of CBS's audience, 61% ABC, and 55% NBC and CNN), only 23% of the PBS-NPR audience had these beliefs. For readers of print media, the corresponding figure is 47%.

In "Network," every UBS programming decision is made with an eye toward achieving higher ratings and increasing advertising revenues. The executives find a way to avoid potential roadblocks from their own legal affairs advisors, standards and practices offices and FCC regulators.

As critic Roger Ebert pointed out in a 2000 review, "the movie has been described as 'outrageous satire' (Leonard Maltin) and 'messianic farce' (Pauline Kael)," but "a quarter-century later, it is like prophecy."

My students have seen Osama bin Laden's home movies and viewed the twin towers being hit by commercial aircraft -- and then falling. Like the rest of us, they saw these images again and again and again. They have seen the shocking images from Abu Ghraib, heard the rants of Bill O'Reilly, and watched Jerry Springer's guests scream and fight with one another. What was nearly over-the-top in 1976, a live on-air assassination, seems almost like regular programming now.

After viewing "Network," I wanted the students to think about why they have repeatedly seen all these images. Who makes those decisions? Why do they make those decisions? Who benefits? What are the social and political costs? Does it make certain threats seem overblown? Does it make all of us vulnerable to manipulative leaders? What is the public interest?


Filed as: IR films

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Election Roundup, part I of probably many

Last night's election seems to have been the political wave that some had anticipated. Democrats won big-- taking not just the House and Senate (it seems), but also governorships and other local races nationwide.

Aside from all the post-election analysis that will be coming out in the next few days, 2 points stick out from an International Relations perspective.

1. Former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neil once famously said "all politics is local" and that mantra usually applies in Congressional elections, when local issues are very important for local candidates. This election was markedly different. Looking at the exit polls, its rather clear that Iraq was a top if not the top issue for the voters, and they voted to send a message to the President on Iraq. A foreign policy issue, not a domestic issue, dominates a mid-term election. Nearly unheard of in American politics.

As a result, incoming Democratic leadership in Congress can clearly claim a mandate to change direction on Iraq.

2. It didn't take long. Remember last week when Bush said he wanted Rumsfeld to stick around for the remainder of the term? Reports are now out that SecDef Rumsfeld is "resigning", to be replaced by Robert Gates. Gates was director of the CIA back in the first Bush Administration, and is now (or was up until now) president of Texas A&M University. While the outcome of the Senate is still officially in doubt, it seems that the D's will take the 2 seats necessary to get the majority. Bush knows this, and knows that his nominee will face a much more confrontational, if not hostile, confirmation process. This seems to be the beginning of a major shift in Iraq policy. You can bet that the Senators will be asking Gates what his plan is on Iraq and won't confirm him until he comes up with an acceptable answer.


Filed as: election

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Been missing you

Let's all say a warm welcome to our old friend, Checks and Balances. You may not remember him -- it seems like he's been gone forever -- but he used to play a key role in our Constitutional Architecture.

I sure hope he sticks around for a while.

Image source: http://www2.semo.edu/vending/PS103/us%20checks%20and%20balances.jpg

Filed as: election

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QED

Shorter Ken Mehlman, Rick Santorum, and assorted other Republican talking heads:

Lots of bad things are happening. Iran just tested advanced missiles. Anti-US forces are on the rise in Latin America. Terrorism is on the rise. We've made the world more dangerous.

Vote for us!

I leave the natural conclusion up to our readers.

Don't forget to vote.

Filed as: 2006 Elections

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Victor Davis Hanson proves once and for all that he is completely insane

I often strive to be evenhanded. I really do. At other times my anger and frustration at American foreign policy leads me to lose any sense of dispassion. With Hanson, I fear, evenhandedness is impossible. In Friday's National Review Online, the classicist and yeoman farmer plumbs new depths of surreal self-parody.

How can one mock Hanson's reminders of all the good things that have happened in Iraq, the Middle East, and South Asia? The Iraqis, he tells, us, "have been given a chance for something different than the old nightmare...." Indeed they have.

But Hanson doesn't stop there.

Long forgotten is the inspired campaign that removed a vicious dictator in three weeks. Nor is much credit given to the idealistic efforts to foster democracy rather than just ignoring the chaos that follows war — as we did after the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan, or following our precipitous departure from Lebanon and Somalia.

Yes, we should give props to the Bush team for not letting Afghanistan slowly spiral into chaos. And applause to the idealism of an Administration willing to pursue the invasion, regime change, and occupation of Iraq without much in the way of a post-war plan, sufficient troops, or government oversight of an army of private contractors.

The whole essay goes on and on in this idiom. Historical details contort into strange and sublime shapes. Sometimes they appear out of the dim recesses of neoconservative fantasy, in which, for example, the end of the Cold War had nothing to do with Reagan bucking his hard-line advisers and accepting Gorbachev as a negotiating partner. Hanson draws false equivalences of many kinds, including a rather strained analogy between the US failure to take decisive action against the ongoing genocide in Rwanda and invading Iraq with inadequate force and preparation.

But the clear height of Hanson's indifference to his own craft comes towards the end of the screed.

The conventional wisdom was that, after Afghanistan (7 weeks of fighting) and its postbellum stability (a government within a year), a more secular Iraq (3 weeks of fighting) would follow the same timetable. In September 2002, well after the “miracle” in Afghanistan, I listened to a high-ranking admiral pontificate that war on the ground was essentially over in the new age of Green Berets and laptops, that after Bosnia and Afghanistan, air power and Special Forces were all that were needed.

We should take a moment to reflect on Hanson's strange turn of phrase: "a more secular Iraq...." Is this a Freudian slip? The result of a bad editing job? Or did Hanson really believe that a more democratic Iraq would be more secular than Hussein's regime? [Thanks to PM for pointing out my misreading of Hanson's strained point].

But the most important, and revealing, part of this windup to Hanson's conclusion is his use of the passive voice: the "conventional wisdom was that." His construction nicely evades the question, "the conventional wisdom among whom?"

Hanson's apologies for the Bush administration all share a similar refrain: it wasn't their fault, it was the spirit of the times. We cannot blame Rumsfield for refusing to listen to those who called for more post-war planning and to those who suggested the US needed more troops to stabilize Iraq. The Administration found itself caught up in the "conventional wisdom," even though reports prior to the invasion pointed to heated debate over all of these issues within the Executive Branch.

Anyway, read the whole thing. It isn't so much a cogent argument as it is a series of sentences strung together: signs and mumblings signifying nothing.

Filed as: Iraq

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Film class -- week 11

Film #11 "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (1964). We viewed it Tuesday.

Readings for Thursday: Lee Butler, "The Risks of Nuclear Deterrence: From Superpowers to Rogue Leaders" National Press Club, February 2, 1998.

Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, "The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy," Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006.

"Dr. Strangelove" is one of my all-time favorite films and its powerful 40-year old critique of American nuclear deterrence strategy continues to resonate today -- even though the cold war is over and contemporary nuclear delivery technologies are much more accurate and deadly.

In the 1998 speech noted above, retired Air Force General Lee Butler -- who served as commander-in-chief of the Strategic Air Command -- argues that the comical and absurd premises of "Dr. Strangelove" were all too real throughout the cold war:

I was present at the creation of many of these systems, directly responsible for prescribing and justifying the requirements and technology that made them possible. I saw the arms race from the inside, watched as intercontinental ballistic missiles ushered in mutual assured destruction and multiple warhead missiles introduced genuine fear of a nuclear first strike. I participated in the elaboration of basing schemes that bordered on the comical and force levels that in retrospect defied reason. I was responsible for war plans with over 12,000 targets, many struck with repeated nuclear blows, some to the point of complete absurdity.

Butler adds that American nuclear retaliation against post-cold war threats is "inconceivable;" deterrence itself "serves the ends of evil."

Given the "stakes of miscalculation" or "of crisis spun out of control," some of which are emphasized in the film classic, Butler arrived at "a set of deeply unsettling judgements" about nuclear deterrence:

That from the earliest days of the nuclear era, the risks and consequences of nuclear war have never been properly weighed by those who brandished it. That the stakes of nuclear war engage not just the survival of the antagonists, but the fate of mankind. That the likely consequences of nuclear war have no politically, militarily or morally acceptable justification. And therefore, that the threat to use nuclear weapons is indefensible.

Butler's call for a "reasoned path toward abolition" of nuclear weapons was affirmed by 60 retired generals and admirals, as well as more than 100 current and former heads of state and other senior civilian leaders. See the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons for a report in defense of this conclusion.

Lieber and Press make an argument about nuclear strategy that has been discussed previously here at the Duck of Minerva. Essentially, these scholars warn that the American force posture has nearly achieved nuclear primacy against both Russia and China, which is political science jargon that means a viable first-strike capability.

In the film, of course, General Buck Turgidson makes an argument for launching an "all out and coordinated" nuclear attack against the Soviet Union in the midst of the crisis featured in the film. He considers 20 million dead Americans, killed in response to this action, "modest and acceptable civilian casualties."

Lieber and Press note that the original US nuclear primacy ended about the time "Dr. Strangelove" was made. But because of American techological advancements as well as deterioration in Russian capability, the US may now be able to "think the unthinkable" again.

In "Dr. Strangelove" and in Butler's account of the cold war, the risk of any nuclear war is doomsday. Lieber and Press worry that American nuclear primacy might invite "crisis instability," which means that Russian and Chinese leaders might be forced to use their limited nuclear arsenals in any crisis situation. It would be a case of "use 'em or lose 'em," as was often discussed during the cold war.

A relatively small nuclear strike launched by Russia or China might not invite the doomsday scenario of mutual suicide feared (and perversely, revered) during the cold war, but it would trigger an unprecedented catastrophe.


Filed as: IR films

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Charting Iraq's Descent into Chaos

The New York Times published today a chart obtained from a classified military briefing that shows how the US military is measuring Iraq and charting its descent toward chaos.

This chart is fascinating on so many levels.

The first is the most obvious. The US military paints a bad and worsening picture of sectarian violence in Iraq. Quite disturbing, actually. Moreover, this is not new-- they have been monitoring this for some time. The article reports that:

According to a Central Command official, the index on civil strife has been a staple of internal command briefings for most of this year. The analysis was prepared by the command’s intelligence directorate, which is overseen by Brig. Gen. John M. Custer.

Of secondary interest is the methodology. This chart presents several indicators giving a descriptive picture of what the military is monitoring in Iraq. These are items that military intelligence in Iraq is keeping track of. Some are easy to "measure"-- you can talk about incidents of violence, or number of times an ISF unit refuses to take orders. But some require much more ethnographic methods-- like violence motivated by sectarian differences or governance. How is one to know the level of violence and from whence it originates? How is one to know the effectivenes of the police or army unless one goes on patrol with them, observes them in action, and reports an understanding of what just went on?

Of futher interest is how the military chooses to make sense of all this information. As anyone who has ever worked with the military knows, all important knowledge now exists in the form of briefings, and no briefing is complete unless it is chock full of overly-busy powerpoint.

Still, for a military culture that thrives on PowerPoint briefings, the shifting index was seen by some officials as a stark warning about the difficult course of events in Iraq, and mirrored growing concern by some military officers.

The concern is "real"--we've been briefed on it.

Now you've been briefed too.

Filed as: Iraq

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